The Girl From His Town Part 19

The other man flicked the ash from his cigarette and looked at Blair's boy through his monocle.

"And you thought that Lily might befriend her, old chap?"

"Yes," nodded Dan, "just give her a lift, you know."

Galorey nodded back, smiling gently. "I see, I see-a moral, spiritual lift? I see-I see." He glanced at the woman with his strange smile.

She put her cigarette down and seated herself, clasping her hands around her knees and looked at her fiance.

"It's none of my business what Letty Lane's reputation is. I don't care, but you must understand one thing, Dan, I'm not a reformer, or a charitable inst.i.tution, and if she comes here it is purely professional."

He took the subject as settled, and asked for a copy of the program and put it in his pocket. "I'll get the names of her songs from her and take the thing myself to Harrison's. And I'd better hustle, I guess; there's no time to lose between now and Sunday." And he went out triumphant.

Galorey remained, smoking, and the d.u.c.h.ess continued her notes in silence, cooling down at her desk. Her companion knew her too well to speak to her until she had herself in hand, and when finally she took up her pen and turned about, she appeared conscious for the first of his presence.

"Here still!" she exclaimed.

"I thought I might do for a safety valve, Lily. You could let some of your anger out on me."

The d.u.c.h.ess left her desk and came over to him.

"I expect you despise me thoroughly, don't you, Gordon?"

They had not been alone together since her engagement to Blair, for she had taken pains to avoid every opportunity for a tete-a-tete.

"Despise you?" he repeated gently. "It's awfully hard, isn't it, for a chap like me to despise anybody? We're none of us used to the best quality of behavior, you know, my dear girl."

"Don't talk rot, Gordon," she murmured.

"You didn't ask my advice," he continued, "but I don't hesitate to tell you that I have done everything I could to save the boy."

She accepted this philosophically. "Oh, I knew you would; I quite expected it, but-" and in the look she threw at him there was more liking than resentment-"I knew you, too; you _couldn't_ go very far, my dear fellow."

"I think Dan Blair is excellent stuff," Gordon said.

"He is the greenest, youngest, most ridiculous infant," she exclaimed with irritation, and he laughed.

"His money is old enough to walk, however, isn't it, Lily?" She made an angry gesture.

"I expected you'd say something loathsome."

Her companion met her eyes directly. She left her chair and came and sat down beside him on the small sofa. As he did not move, or look at her, but regarded his cigarette with interest, she leaned close to him and whispered: "Gordon, try to be nice and decent. Try to forget yourself.

Don't you see what a wonderful chance it is for me, and that, as far as you and I are concerned, it can't go on?"

The face of the man by her side grew somber. The charm this woman had for him had never lessened since the day when he told her he loved her, long before his marriage, and they were both too poor.

"We have always been too poor, and Edith is jealous of me every day and hour of her life. Can't you be generous?"

He rose and stood over her, looking down at her beautiful form and her somewhat softened face, but his eyes were hard and his face very pale.

"You had better go, Gordon," she said slowly; "you had better go...."

Then, as he obeyed her and went like a flash as far as the door, she followed him and whispered softly: "If you're really only jealous, I can forgive you."

He managed to get out: "His father was my friend; he sent the boy to me and I've been a bad guardian." He made a gesture of despair. "Put yourself in my place. Let Dan Blair go, Lily; let him go."

Her eyelids flickered a little, and she said sharply: "You're out of your senses, Gordon-and what if I love him?"

With a low exclamation he caught her hand at the wrist so hard that she cried out, and he said between his teeth: "You _don't_ love him! Take those words back!"

"Of course I do. Let me free!"

"No," he said pa.s.sionately, holding her fast. "Not until you take that back."

His face, his tone, his force, dominated her; the remembrance of their past, a possible future, made her waver under his eyes, and the woman smiled at him as Blair had never seen her smile.

"Very well, then, goose," she capitulated almost tenderly; "I don't love that boy, of course. I'm marrying him for his money. Now, will you let me go?"

But he held her still more firmly and kissed her several times before he finally set her free, and went out of the house miserable-bound to her by the strongest chains-bound in his conscience and by honor to his trust to Dan's father, and yet handicapped by another sense of honor which decrees that man must keep silence to the end.

CHAPTER XVII-LETTY LANE SINGS

The house of the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater in Park Lane was white, with green blinds and green balconies; beautiful, distinguished and old, mellow with traditions, and the tide of fashion poured its stream into the music-room to listen to the Sunday concert. Without, the day was bland and beautiful, mild spring in the deep sweet air, and already the bloom lay over the park and along the turf. Piccadilly was ablaze with flowers, and in the windows and in the flower-women's baskets they were so sweet as to make the heart ache and to make the senses thrill. Keen to the spring beauty, the last guest to go into the drawing-room of the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater was the young American man in whom the magic of the season had stirred the blood. He seemed the youngest and the brightest guest to cross the sill of the great house whose debts he was going to pay, and whose future he was going to secure with American money.

Close after him a motor car rolled up to the curb, and under the awning Letty Lane pa.s.sed quickly, as though thistledown, blown into the distinguished house. The actress was taken possession of by several people and shown up-stairs.

Dan spoke to his hostess, who wore, over her azure dress, a necklace given her by Dan. She said he was "too late for words," and why hadn't he come before. After greeting him she set him free, and he went eagerly to find his place next an elderly woman whom he liked immensely, Lady Caiwarn. She had given him twenty pounds for some of his poor. Lady Caiwarn had a calm, kind face, and Dan sat down beside her, well out of the crush, and they talked amiably throughout the violin solo.

"Think of it," she said, "Letty Lane of the Gaiety is going to sing. I'd sit through a great deal for that. Let that man with the fiddle do his worst."

Blair laughed appreciatively. He thought Lady Caiwarn would be a good friend for Miss Lane, better than the d.u.c.h.ess herself. "I wish Lily could hear you talk about her violinist," he said, delighted; "she thinks he's the whole show." And tentatively, his ingenuous eyes fixed on his friend, he asked: "I wonder how you would like to meet Miss Lane.

She's perfectly ripping, and she's from my State."

"_Meet her!_" Lady Caiwarn exclaimed, but before she could finish, through the room ran the little antic.i.p.atory rustle that comes before the great, and which, when they have gone, breaks into applause. The great actress had appeared to give her number. Dan and Lady Caiwarn, behind the palms in a little corner of their own, watched her.

A clever understanding of the world into which she was to come this day, had made the girl dress like a charm. She stood quietly by the piano, her hands folded. Among the high ladies of the English world in their splendid frocks, their jewels and feathers, she was a simple figure, her dress snow white, high to her throat, unadorned by any gay color, according to the fashion of the time. It was such a dress as Romney might have painted, and under her arms and from across her breast there fell a soft coral-colored silken scarf. The costume was daring in its simplicity. She might have been Emma, Lady Hamilton, because perfectly beautiful, perfectly talented, she could risk severe simplicity, having in herself the fire and the art and the seduction. Her hair was a golden crown and her eyes like stars. She was excited, and the scarlet had run along her cheeks like wine spilled over ivory.

She looked around the room, failed to see Blair, but saw the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater in her velvet and her jewels. Letty Lane began to sing. Dan and she had chosen _Mandalay_ and she began with it. Her dress only was simple. All the complexity of her talent, whatever she knew of seduction and charm, she put in the rendering of her song. Even the conventional audience, most of which knew her well, were enchanted over again, and they went wild about her. She had never been so charming. The men clapped her until she began in self-defense another favorite of the moment, and ended in a perfect huzzah of applause.

She refused to sing again until, in the distance, she saw Dan standing by the column near his seat. Then indicating to the pianist what she wanted, she sang _The Earl of Moray_, such a rendering of the old ballad as had not been heard in London, and coming, as it did, from the lips of a popular singer whose character and whose verve were not supposed to be sympathetic to a piece of music of this kind, the effect was startling.

Letty Lane's face grew pale with the touching old tragedy, the scarlet faded from her cheeks, her eyes grew dark and moist, she might indeed herself have been the lady looking from the castle wall while they carried the body of her dead lover under those beautiful eyes.

Dan felt his heart grow cold. If she had awakened him when he was a little boy, she thrilled him now; he could have wept. Lady Caiwarn did wipe tears away. When the last note of the accompaniment had ended, Dan's friend at his side said: "How utterly ravishing! What a beautiful, lovely creature; how charming and how frail!"