The Girl From His Town Part 10

"Well, there's none of them as rich as you are, I reckon, Dan."

And the boy turned on him violently.

"See here, Josh, if you speak to me again of my money, when there's a woman in the question-"

He did not finish his threat, but s.n.a.t.c.hed up his coat and hat and gloves and went out of the door, slamming it after him.

Mr. Ruggles' profound and happy snore was cut short by the page boy, who fetched in a note, with the Savoy stamping on the back. Ruggles opened it not without emotion.

"Dear boy," it ran, "I haven't yet thanked you for the primroses; they were perfectly sweet. There is not one of them in any of my rooms, and I'll tell you why to-night. I am crazy to accept for supper"-here she had evidently struck out her intended refusal, and closed with, "I'm coming, but don't come after me at the Gaiety, please. I'll meet you at the Carlton after the theater. Who's the other boy? L. L."

The "other boy" read the note with much difficulty, for it was badly written. "He'll have to stop sending her flowers and going every night to the theater unless he wants a row with the d.u.c.h.ess," he said dryly.

And with a certain interest in his role, Ruggles rang for the head waiter, and with the man's help ordered his first midnight supper for an actress.

CHAPTER XI-RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER

The bright tide of worldly London flows after and around midnight into the various restaurants and supper rooms, and as well through the corridors and halls of the Carlton. At one of the small tables bearing a great expensive bunch of orchids and soft ferns, Josh Ruggles, in a new evening dress, sat waiting for his party. Dan had dined with Lord Galorey, and the two men had gone out together afterward, and Ruggles had not seen the boy to give him Letty Lane's note.

"Got it with you?" Blair asked when he came in, and Ruggles responded that he didn't carry love letters around in his dress clothes.

They could tell by the interest in the room when the actress was coming, and both men rose as Letty Lane floated in at flood tide with a crowd of last arrivals.

She had not dressed this evening with the intention that her dark simplicity of attire should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan took from her shed the perfume of orris and revealed the woman in a blaze of sparkling _paillettes_. She seemed made out of sparkle, and her blond head, from which a bright ornament shook, was the most brilliant thing about her, though her dress from hem to throat glistened with discs of gold like moons.h.i.+ne on a starry sea. The actress' look of surprise when she saw Ruggles indicated that she had not expected a boy of his age.

"The other boy?" she asked. "Well, this is the nicest supper party ever!

And you are awfully good to invite me."

Ruggles patted his s.h.i.+rt front and adjusted his cravat.

"My idea," he told her, "all the blame on me, Miss Lane. Charge it up to me! Dan here had cold feet from the first. He said you wouldn't come."

She laughed deliciously.

"He did? Hasn't got much faith, has he?"

Miss Lane drew her long gloves off, touched the orchids with her little hands, on which the ever present rings flashed, and went on talking to Ruggles, to whom she seemed to want to address her conversation.

"I'm simply crazy over these flowers."

The older man showed his pleasure. "My choice again! Walked up myself and chose the bunch, blame me again; ditto dinner; mine from start to finish-hope you'll like it. I would have added some Montana peas and some chocolate soda-water, only I thought you might not understand the joke."

Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he was unconscious of it, she was not fully at ease: he was not the kind of man she had expected to see.

Accustomed to young fellows like the boy and their mad devotion, accustomed to men with whom she could be herself, the big, bluff, middle-aged gentleman with his painfully correct tie, his rumpled iron-gray hair, and his deference to her, though an unusual diversion, was a little embarra.s.sing.

"Oh, I know your dinner is ripping, Mr. Ruggles. I'm on a diet of milk and eggs myself, and I expect your order didn't take in those." But at his fallen countenance she hurried to say: "Oh, I wouldn't have told you that if I hadn't been intending to break through."

And with childlike antic.i.p.ation she clapped her hands and said: "We're going to have 'lots of fun.' Just think, they don't know what that means here in London. They say 'heaps of sport, you know.'" She imitated the accent maliciously. "It's just we Americans who know what 'lots of fun'

is, isn't it?"

Near her Dan Blair's young eyes were drinking in the spectacle of delicate beauty beautifully gowned, of soft skin, glorious hair, and he gazed like a child at a pantomime. Under his breath he exclaimed now, with effusion, "You bet your life we are going to have lots of fun!" And turning to him, Miss Lane said:

"Six chocolate sodas running?"

"Oh, don't," he begged, "not that kind of jag."

She shook with laughter.

"Are you from Blairtown, Mr. Ruggles? I don't think I ever saw you there."

And the Westerner returned: "Well, from what Dan tells me, you're not much of a fixture yourself, Miss Lane. You were just about born and then kidnapped."

Her gay expression faded. And she repeated his word, "Kidnapped? That's a good word for it, Mr. Ruggles."

She picked up between her fingers a strand of the green fern, and looked at its delicate tracery as it lay on the palm of her hand.

"I sang one day after a missionary sermon in the Presbyterian Church."

She interrupted herself with a short laugh. "But I guess you're not thinking of writing my biography, are you?"

And it was Dan's voice that urged her. "Say, do go on. I was there that day with my father, and you sang simply out of sight."

"Yes," she accepted, "out of sight of Blairtown and everybody I ever knew. I went away the next day." She lifted her gla.s.s of champagne to her lips. "Here's one thing I oughtn't to do," she said, "but I'm going to just the same. I'm going to do everything I want this evening.

Remember, I let you drink six gla.s.ses of chocolate soda once." She drained her gla.s.s and her friends drank with her. "I like this soup awfully. What is it?"-just touching it with her spoon.

"Why," Ruggles hastened to tell her, "it ain't a _party_ soup, it's Scotch broth. But somehow it sounded good on the bill of fare. I fixed the rest of the dinner up for you and Dan, but I let myself go on the soup, it's my favorite."

She did not eat it, however, although she said it was splendid and that she was crazy about it.

"Did you come East then?" Dan returned to what she had been saying.

"Yes, that week; went to Paris and all over the place."

She instantly fell into a sort of melancholy. It was easy to be seen that she did not want to talk about her past and yet that it fascinated her.

"Just think of it!" he exclaimed. "I never heard a word about you until I heard you sing the other night."

The actress laughed and told him that he had made up for lost time, and that he was a regular "sitter" now at the Gaiety.

Ruggles said, "He took me every night to see you dance until I balked, Miss Lane."

"Still, it's a perfectly great show, Mr. Ruggles, don't you think so? I like it better than any part I ever had. I am interested about it for the sake of the man who wrote it, too. It's his first opera; he's an invalid and has a wife and five kids to look after."

And Ruggles replied, "Oh, gracious! I feel better than ever, having gone ten times, although I wasn't _very_ sore about it before! Ain't you going to eat anything?"

She only picked at her food, drinking what they poured in her gla.s.s, and every time she spoke to Dan a look of charming kindness crossed her face, an expression of good fellows.h.i.+p which Ruggles noted with interest.