The Girl From His Town Part 29

The hour was getting on; he heard his own motor drive up, and they went down, through the deserted hotel. The men who had consented to act for Dan regarded their princ.i.p.al curiously. He wasn't pale, there was a brightness on his face.

"_Partons_," said one of them, and told Blair's chauffeur where to go and how to run. "_Partons._"

CHAPTER XXIX-THE PICTURE OF IT ALL

As far as his knowing anything of the customs of it all, it was like leading a lamb to slaughter.

Villebon, lovely, vernal, at a later hour the spot for gay breakfasts and gentle rendezvous, had been designated for the meeting between Dan and Poniotowsky. There in his motor he gave up his effort to set his thoughts clear. Nothing settled down. Even the ground they flew over, the trees with their chestnut plumes, blurred, were indistinct, nebulous, as if seen through a diving-bell under the sea. Fear-he didn't know the word. He wasn't afraid-it wasn't that; yet he had a certainty that it was all up with him. He was young-very young-and he hadn't done much with the job. His father would have been ashamed of him. Then all his thoughts went to Her. The two men in the motor floated off and she sat there as she had sat yesterday in her marvelously pretty clothes-her little coral shoes.

He had held those bright, little feet in his hand on the Thames day: they had just filled his great hands. Mechanically he spread out his firm, broad palms on the soft shoes. Letty Lane-Letty Lane-a shiver pa.s.sed through his body; the sense of her, the touch of her, the kisses he had taken, the way she had blown up against him like a cloud-a cloud that, as he held her, became the substance of Paradise. This brought him back to physical life, brutally. He was too young to die.

Those little, red shoes would dance on his grave. Was she asleep now?

How would she know? What would she know?

Then Letty Lane, too, spirited away, and the boy's thoughts turned to the man he was to meet. "The affairs are purely formal," he had heard some one say, "an exchange of b.a.l.l.s, without serious results."

One of his companions offered Blair a cigar. He refused, the idea sickened him. Here the gentlemen exchanged glances, and one murmured, "Is he afraid?"

The other shrugged.

"Not astonishing-he's a child."

At this Dan glanced up and smiled-what Lily, d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater, had called his divine young smile. The two secretly were ashamed-he was charming.

As they got out of the motor Dan said:

"I want to ask a question of Prince Poniotowsky-if it is allowed. I'll write it on my card."

After a conference between Prince Poniotowsky's seconds and Dan's, the slip was handed the prince.

"If you get out all right, will you marry Miss Lane? I shall be glad to know."

The Hungarian, who read it under the tree, half smiled. The navete of it, the touching youth of it, the crude lack of form-was perfect enough to touch his sense of humor. On the back of Dan's card Poniotowsky scrawled:

"Yes."

It was a haughty inclination, a salute of honor before the fight.

The meeting place was within sight of the little rustic pavilion of Les Trois Agneaux, celebrated for its _pre sale_ and _beignets_: the advertis.e.m.e.nts had confronted Dan everywhere during his wanderings those miserable days. Under a group of chestnut trees in bright feathery flower Prince Poniotowsky and his seconds waited, their frock-coats b.u.t.toned up and their gloves and silk hats in their hands. As Blair and his companions came up the others stood uncovered, grim and formal, according to the code.

On the highroad a short distance away ranged the motors which had fetched the gentlemen from Paris, and the car in which the physician had come-an ugly and sinister gathering in the peace and beauty of the serene summer morning.

Finches and thrashes sang in the bushes, over the gra.s.s the dew still hung in crystals, and a peasant walking at his horses' heads on the slow tramp back from the Paris market, was held up and kept stolidly waiting at a few hundred yards away.

Twenty-five paces. They were measured off by the four seconds, and at their signal Dan Blair and the prince took their positions, the revolvers raised perpendicularly in their right hands.

Still more indistinctly the boy saw the sharp-cut picture of it all ...

the diving-bell was sinking deeper-deeper-into the sea.

"If I aim," he said to himself, "I shall kill sure-sure."

Blair heard the command: "Fire!" and supposed that after that he fired.

CHAPTER x.x.x-SODAWATER FOUNTAIN GIRL

His next sensation was that a warm stream flowed about his heart.

"My life's blood," he could dimly think, "my heart's blood." Redder than coral, more precious, more costly than any gift his millions could have bought her. "I've spent it for the girl I love." The stream pervaded him, caressed him, folded his limbs about, became an enchanted sea on which he floated, and its color changed from crimson to coral pale, and then to white, and became a cold, cold polar sea-and he lay on it like a frozen man, whose exploration had been in vain, and above him Greenland's icy mountains rose like emerald, on every side.

That is it-"Greenland's icy mountains." How she sang it-down-down. Her voice fell on him like magic balm. He was a little boy in church, sitting small and shy in the pew. The tune was deep and low and heavenly sweet. What a pretty mouth the soda-fountain girl had-like coral; and her eyes like gray seas. The flies buzzed, they droned so loudly that he couldn't hear her. Ah, that was terrible-_he couldn't hear her_.

No-no, it wouldn't do. He must hear the hymn out before he died.

Buzz-buzz-drone-drone. Way down he almost heard the soft note. It was ecstasy. Sky-high up-too faint. Ah, Sodawater Fountain Girl-sing-sing-with all your heart so that it may reach his ears and charm him to those strands toward which he floats.

The expression of anguish on the young fellow's face was so heartbreaking that the doctor, his ear at Dan's lips, tried to learn what thing his poor, fading mind longed for.

From the bed's foot, where he stood, Dan's chauffeur came to his gentleman's side, and nodded:

"Right, sir, right, sir-I'll fetch Miss Lane-I'll 'ave 'er 'ere, sir-keep up, Mr. Blair."

He was going barefoot, a boy still following the plow through the mountain fields. Miles and miles stretched away before him of dark, loamy land. He saw the plow tear up the waving furrows, tossing the earth in sprinkling lines. He heard the shrill note of the phbe bird, and looking heavenward saw it darting into the pale sky.

"What a dandy shot!" he thought. "What a bully shot!"

Prince Poniotowsky had made a good shot....

Ah, there was the smell of the hayfields-no-violets that sweetly laid their petals on his lips and face. He was back again in church, lying p.r.o.ne before an altar. If she would only sing, he would rise again-that he knew-and her coral shoes would not dance over his grave.

He opened his eyes wide and looked into Letty Lane's. She bent over him, crying.

"Sing," he whispered.

She didn't understand.

"Sodawater Fountain Girl-if you only knew how ... the flies buzzed, and how the droning was a living pain...."