"I wish you could have seen this same author to-day at the rehearsal of the play," Letty Lane went on. "He's too ill to walk and they had to carry him in a chair. We all went round to his apartments after the theater. He lives in three rooms with his whole family and he's had so many debts and so much trouble and such a poor contract that he hasn't made much out of _Mandalay_, but I guess he will out of this new piece.

He hugged and kissed me until I thought he would break my neck."

London had gone mad over Letty Lane, whose traits and contour were the admiration of the world at large and well-known even to the news-boys, and whose likeness was nearly as familiar as that of the Madonnas of old. Her face was oval and perfectly formed, with the reddest of mouths-the most delicious and softest of mouths-the line of her brows clear and straight, and her gray eyes large and as innocent and appealing as a child's; under their long lashes they opened up like flowers. It was said that no man could withstand their appeal; that she had but to look to make a man her slave; and as more than once she turned to Dan, smiling and gracious, Ruggles watched her, mutely thinking of what he had heard this day, for after her letter came accepting their invitation he had taken pains to find out the things he wanted to know. It had not been difficult. As her face and form were public, on every post-card and in every photographer's shop, so the actress' reputation was the property of the public.

As Ruggles repeated these things to himself, he watched her beside the son of his old friend. They were talking-rather she was-and behind the orchids and the ferns her voice was sweet and enthralling. Ruggles tried to appreciate his bill of fare while the two appreciated each other. It was strange to Dan to have her so near and so approachable. His sights of her off the stage had been so slight and fleeting. On the boards she had seemed to be an unreal creation made for the public alone. Her dress, cut fearlessly low, displayed her lovely young bosom-soft, bloomy, white as a sh.e.l.l-and her head and ears were as delicate as the petals of a white rose. Low in the nape of her neck, her golden hair lay lightly, and from its soft ma.s.ses fragrance came to him.

Ruggles could hear her say: "Roach came to the house and told my people that I had a fortune in my voice. I was living with my uncle and my step-aunt and working in the store. And that same day your father sent down a check for five hundred dollars. He said it was 'for the little girl with the sweet voice,' and it gives me a lot of pleasure to think that I began my lessons on _that money_."

The son of old Dan Blair said earnestly: "I'm darned glad you did-I'm darned glad you did!"

Letty Lane nodded. "So am I. But," with some sharpness, "I don't see why you speak that way. I've earned my way. I made a fortune for Roach all right."

"You mean the man you married?"

"Married-goodness gracious, what made you think that?" She threw back her pretty head and laughed-a laugh with the least possible merriment in it. "Oh, Heavens, marry old Job Roach! So they say _that_, do they? I never heard that. I hear a lot, but I never heard that fairy tale." She put her hands to her checks, which had grown crimson. "That's not true!"

Dan swore at himself for his tactless stupidity.

Ruggles had heard both sides. She was adored by the poor, and, as far as rumor knew, she spent thousands on the London paupers, and the Westerner, who had never been given to reveling in scandals and to whom there was something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, no matter whom she might be, listened with embarra.s.sment to tales he had been told in answer to his other questions; and turned with relief to the stories of Letty Lane's charity, and to the stories of her popularity and her success. They were more agreeable, but they couldn't make him forget the rest, and now as he looked at her face across the bouquet of orchids and ferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great pity for her, and still a decided enmity. He disapproved of her down to the ground. He didn't let himself think how he felt, but it was for the boy. Ruggles was not a man of the world in any sense; he was simple and Puritan in his judgments, and his gentle nature and his big heart kept him from pharisaical and strenuous measures. He had been led in what he was doing to-night by a diplomacy and a common sense that few men east of the Mississippi would have thought out under the circ.u.mstances.

"Tell Mr. Ruggles," he heard Dan say to her, "tell him-tell him!"

And she answered:

"I was telling Mr. Blair that, as he is so frightfully rich, I want him to give me some money."

Ruggles gasped, but answered quietly:

"Well, he's a great giver, Miss Lane."

"I guess he is if he's like his father!" she returned. "I am trying to get a lot, though, out of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night I said to myself, 'I'll accept, for it will be a good time to ask Mr.

Blair to help me out in what I want to do.'"

At Ruggles' face she smiled sweetly and said graciously:

"Oh, don't think I wouldn't have come anyway. But I'm awfully tired these days, and going out to supper is just one thing too much to do! I want Mr. Blair," she said, turning to Ruggles as if she knew a word from him would make the thing go through, "to help me build a rest home down on the English coast, for girls who get discouraged in their art. When I think of the _luck_ I have had and how these things have been from the beginning, and how money has just poured in, why," she said ardently, "it just makes my heart ache to think of the girls who try and fail, who go on for a little while and have to give up. You can't tell,"-she nodded to Ruggles, as though she were herself a matron of forty,-"you can not tell what their temptations are or what comes up to make them go to pieces."

Ruggles listened with interest.

"I haven't thought it all out yet, but so many come to me tired out and discouraged, and I think a nice home taken care of by a good creature like my Higgins, let us say, would be a perfect blessing to them. They could go there and rest and study and just think, and perhaps," she said slowly, as though while she spoke she saw a vision of a tired self, for whom there had been no rest home and no place of retreat, "perhaps a lot of them would pull through in a different way. Now to-day"-she broke her meditative tone short-"I got a letter from a hospital where a poor thing that used to sing with me in New York was dying with consumption-all gone to pieces and discouraged, and there is where your primroses went to-" she nodded to Dan. "Higgins took them. You don't mind?" And Blair, with a warmth in his voice, touched by her pity more than by her charity, said:

"Why, they grew for you, Miss Lane; I don't care what you do with them."

Letty Lane sank her head on her hands, her elbows leaned on the table.

She seemed suddenly to have lost interest even in her topic. She looked around the room indifferently. The orchestra was softly playing _The Dove Song_ from _Mandalay_, and very softly under her breath the star hummed it, her eyes vaguely fixed on some unknown scene. To Dan and to Ruggles she had grown strange. The music, her brilliancy, her sudden indifference, put her out of their commonplace reach. Ruggles to himself thought with relief:

"She doesn't care one rap for the boy anyway, thank G.o.d. She's got other fish to land."

And Dan Blair thought: "It's my infernal money again." But he was generous at heart and glad to be of service to her, and was perfectly willing to be "touched" for her poor. Then two or three men came up and joined them. She greeted them indolently, bestowing a word or a look on this one or on that; all fire and light seemed to have gone out of her, and Dan said:

"You are tired. I guess I had better take you home."

She did not appear to hear him. Indeed she was not looking at him, and Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky making his way toward their table across the room.

Letty Lane rose. Dan put her cloak about her shoulders, and glancing toward Ruggles and toward the boy as indifferently as she had considered the new-comers, who formed a small group around the brilliant figure of the actress, she nodded good night to both Ruggles and Blair and went up to the Hungarian as though he were her husband, who had come to take her home. However, at the door she sufficiently shook off her mood to smile slightly at Dan:

"I have had 'lots of fun,' and the Scotch broth was great! Thank you both so much."

Until they were up in their sitting-room her hosts did not exchange a word. Then Ruggles took a book up from the table and sat down with his cigar. "I am going to read a little, Dan. Slept all day; feel as wide-awake as an owl."

Dan showed no desire to be communicative, however, to Ruggles'

disappointment, but he exclaimed abruptly:

"I'll be darned, Ruggles, if I can guess what you asked her for!"

"Well, it did turn out to be a pretty expensive party for you, Dannie, didn't it?" Ruggles returned humorously. "I'll let you off from any more supper parties."

And Dan fumed as he turned his back. "_Expensive!_ There you are again, Ruggles, with your infernal intrusion of money into everything I do."

When the older man found himself alone, he read a little and then put his book down to muse. And his meditations were on the tide of life and the beds it runs over; the living whirlpool as Ruggles himself had seen it coursing through London under fog and mist. It seemed now to surge up in the dark to his very windows, and the flow mysteriously pa.s.sed under his windows in these silent hours when no one can see the muddy, muddy bottom over which the waters go. Out of the sound, as it flowed on, the cries rose, he thought, kindly to his ears: "G.o.d bless her-G.o.d bless Letty Lane!" And with this sound he closed his meditations, thinking of a more peaceful stream, the brighter, sweeter waters of the boy's nature, translucent and clear. The vision was happier, and with it Ruggles rose and yawned, and shut his book.

CHAPTER XII-THE GREEN KNIGHT

The d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater had made Dan promise at Osdene the day he went back to London that he would take her over to her own place, Stainer Court, and with her see the beauty, ruins and traditions of the place.

When Dan got up well on in the morning, Ruggles had gone to the bank.

Dan's thoughts turned from everything to Letty Lane. With irritation he put her out of his mind. There had come up between himself and the girl he had known slightly in his own town years ago a wall of part.i.tion.

Every time he saw her Poniotowsky was there, condescending, arrogant, rude and proud. The prince the night before had given the tips of his fingers to Dan, nodded to Ruggles as if the Westerner had been his tailor, and had appropriated Letty Lane, and she had gone away under his shadow. The simplicity of Dan's life, his decent bringing up, his immaculate youth, for such it was, his aloofness from the world, made him nave, but he was not dull. He waited-not like a skeptic who would fit every one into his pigeonholes-on the contrary, he waited to find every one as perfect as he knew they must be, and every time he tried to think of Letty Lane, Poniotowsky troubled him horribly and seemed to rise before him, and sardonically look at him through his eye-gla.s.s, making the boy's belief in good things ridiculous.

He wrote a note to Ruggles, saying that he would be back late and not to wait for him, and set out in his own car for Blankshire, where the d.u.c.h.ess was to meet him at Stainer Court at noon. On his way out he decided that he had been a fool to discuss Letty Lane with the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater, and that it had been none of his business to put her duty before her, and that he had judged her quickly and unfairly. He fell in love with the lovely English country over which his motor took him, and it made him more affectionate toward the English woman. He sat back in his car, looking over the fine shooting land, the misty golden forests, as through the misty country his motor took its way. The breath of England was on his cheeks, he breathed in its odors fresh and sweet, the windless air was cool and fragrant. His cheeks grew red, his eyes shone like stars, and he was content with his youth and his lot. When they stopped at Castelene, the property belonging to Stainer Court, he felt something of proprietorship stir in him, and at Stainer Arms ordered a drink, bought petroleum, and then pushed up the avenue under the leafless giant trees, whose roots were older than his father's name or than any state of the Union. And he felt admiration and something like emotion as he saw the first towers of Stainer Court finally appear.

The d.u.c.h.ess waited for him in the room known as the "Green Knight's Room," because of a figure in tapestry on the walls. The legend in wool had been woven in Spain, somewhere about the time when Isabella was kind, and when in turn a continent loomed up for the world in general out of the mist. The subject of the Green Knight's tapestry was simple and convincing. On a sheer-cut village of low ferns, where daisies stood up like trees, a slender lady poised, her dark sandaled feet on the pin-like turf. Her figure was all swathed round with a spotless dress of woolly white, softened by age into a golden misty tone, and a pair of friendly and confidential rabbits sat close to her golden slippers. The lady's face was candid and mild; her eyes were soft, and around her head was wound a fillet of woven threads, mellow in tone, a red, no doubt, originally, but softened to a coral pink by time. This lady in all her grace and virginal sweetness was only half of the woven story. To her right stood a youth in forest green, his sword drawn, and his intention evidently to kill a creature which, near to the gentle rabbits, out of the daisied gra.s.s lifted its cruel snakelike head. For nearly five hundred years the serpent's venom had been poised, and if the serpent should start the Green Knight would strike, too, at the same magic moment.

Close to the tapestry a fire had been laid in the broad fireplace, and the d.u.c.h.ess had ordered the luncheon table for Dan and herself spread with the cold things England knows how to combine into a delectable feast. The room was full of mediaeval furnishings, but the Green Knight was the best of all. The d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater took him for granted. She had known him all her life, and she had only been struck by his expensive beauty when the offer came to her from the National Museum to buy him, and she wondered how long she could afford to stick to her price.

When Dan came in he found her in a short tweed skirt, a mannish blouse, looking boyish and wholly charming, and she mixed him a c.o.c.ktail under the Green Knight's very nose and offered it with the wisdom of the serpent itself, and the d.u.c.h.ess didn't in the least suggest the white-robed, milk-white lady.

The friends drank their c.o.c.ktails in good spirits, and Dan presented the lady with the flowers he had brought her, and he felt a strong sentiment stir at the sight of her in this old room, alone and waiting for him.

The servants left them, the d.u.c.h.ess put her hands on the boy's broad shoulders. Nearly as tall as he, she was a good example of the best-looking English woman, straight and strong, and her eyes were level, and Dan met them with his own.

"I am so glad you came," she murmured. "I've been ragging myself every minute since you went away from Osdene."

"You have? What for?"