The Girl From His Town Part 16

By her sofa, leaning over her, in a choked voice he murmured:

"You _shan't_ sing! You shan't go out to-night!"

"Don't be a goose, boy," she said. "You've no right to order me like that. Stand back, please." As he did so she whisked herself off the sofa with a sudden ardor and much grace. "Now," she told him severely, "since you've begun to take that tone with me, I'm going to tell you that you mustn't come here day after day as you have been doing. I guess you know it, don't you?"

He stood his ground, but his bright face clouded. They had been so near each other and were now so removed.

"I don't care a d.a.m.n what people say," he replied.

She interrupted him. She could be wonderfully dignified, small as she was, wrapped as she was in the woolen shawl. "Well," she drawled with a sudden indolence and indifference in her voice, "I expect you'll be surprised to hear that _I_ do care. Sounds awfully funny, doesn't it?

But as you have been coming to the theater now night after night till everybody's talking about it-"

"You don't want my friends.h.i.+p," he stammered.

And Letty Lane controlled her desire to laugh at his boyish subterfuge.

"No, I don't think I do."

Her tone struck him deeply: hurt him terribly. He threw his head up defiantly.

"All right, I'm turned down then," he said simply. "I didn't think you'd act like this to a boy you'd known all your life!"

"Don't be silly, you know as well as I do that it won't do."

He did know it and that he had already done enough to make it reasonable for the d.u.c.h.ess, if she wanted to, to break their engagement. Slowly preparing to take his leave, he said wistfully: "Can't I help you in any way? Let me do something with you for your poor. It's a comfort to have them between us, and you can count on me."

She said she knew it. "But don't come any more to the wings; get a habit of _not_ coming."

On the threshold of her door he asked her to let him know when she would sing in Park Lane, and in touching her hand he repeated that she must count on him. With more tenderness in his blue eyes than he was himself aware, he murmured devotedly:

"Take care of yourself, won't you, please?"

As Blair pa.s.sed from the sitting-room into the hall and toward the lift, Mrs. Higgins came out hurriedly from one of the rooms and joined him.

"How did you find her, Mr. Blair?"

"Awfully seedy, Mrs. Higgins; she needs a lot of care."

"She won't take it though," returned the woman. "Just seems to let herself go, not to mind a bit, especially these last weeks. I'm glad you came in; I've been hoping you would, sir."

"I'm not any good though, she won't listen to a word I say."

It seemed to surprise the dressing woman.

"I'm sorry to hear it, sir; I thought she would. She talks about you often."

He colored like a school-boy. "Gosh, it's a shame to have her kill herself for nothing." Reluctant to talk longer with Mrs. Higgins, he added in spite of himself: "She seems so lonely."

"It's two weeks now since that human devil went away," Mrs. Higgins said unexpectedly, looking quietly into the blue eyes of the visitor.

"She hasn't opened one of his letters or his telegrams. She has sold every pin and brooch he ever gave her, scattered the money far and wide.

You saw how she went on with Cohen, and her pearls."

Dan heard her as through a dream. Her words gave form and existence to a dreadful thing he had been trying to deny.

"Is she hard up now, Mrs. Higgins?" he asked softly. And glancing at him to see just how far she might go, the woman said:

"An actress who spends and lives as Miss Lane does is always hard up."

"Could you use money without her knowing about it?"

"Lord," exclaimed the woman, "it wouldn't be hard, sir! She only knows that there is such a thing as money when the bills come and she hasn't got a penny. Or when the poor come! She's got a heart of gold, sir, for everybody that is in need."

He took out of his wallet a wad of notes and put them in Higgins' hands.

"Just pay up some bills on the sly, and don't you tell her on your life.

I don't want her to be worried." Explaining with sensitive understanding: "It's all right, Mrs. Higgins; I'm from her town, you know." And the woman who admired him and understood him, and whose life had made her keen to read things as they were, said earnestly:

"I quite understand how it is, sir. It is just as though it came straight from 'ome. She overdraws her salary months ahead."

"Have you been with Miss Lane long?"

"Ever since she toured in Europe, and n.o.body could serve her without being very fond of her indeed."

Dan put out his big warm hand eagerly. "You're a corker, Mrs. Higgins."

"I could walk around the world for her, sir."

"Go ahead and do it then," he smiled, "and I'll pay for all the boot leather you wear out!"

As he went down-stairs, already too late to keep an engagement made with his fiancee, he stopped in the writing-room to scribble off a note of excuse to the d.u.c.h.ess. At the opposite table Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky, writing, as well. The Hungarian did not see Blair, and when he had finished his note he called a page boy and Dan could hear him send his letter up to Miss Lane's suite. The young Westerner thought with confident exaltation, "Well, he'll get left all right, and I'm darned if I don't sit here and see him turned down!"

Dan sat on until the page returned and gave Poniotowsky a verbal message.

"Will you please come up-stairs, sir?"

And Blair saw the Hungarian rise, adjust his eye-gla.s.s, and walk toward the lift.

CHAPTER XV-GALOREY GIVES ADVICE

Lord Galorey had long been used to seeing things go the way they would and should not, and his greatest effort had been attained on the day he gave his languid body the trouble to go in and see Ruggles.

"My G.o.d," he muttered as he watched Dan and the d.u.c.h.ess on the terrace together-they were nevertheless undeniably a handsome pair-"to think that this is the way I am returning old Blair's hospitality!" And he was ashamed to recall his western experiences, when in a shack in the mountains he had watched the big stars come out in the heavens and sat late with old Dan Blair, delighted with the simple philosophies and the man's high ideals.

"What the devil does it all mean?" he wondered. "She has simply seduced him, that's all."