CHAPTER II-THE d.u.c.h.eSS APPROVES

His attentions to the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater had not been so conspicuous or so absorbing as to prevent the eager mothers-who, true to her word, Lady Galorey had invited down-from laying siege to Dan Blair. Lady Galorey asked him:

"Don't you want to marry any one of these beauties, Dan?" And Blair, with his beautiful smile and what Lily called his inspired candor, answered:

"Not on your life, Lady Galorey!"

And she agreed, "I think myself you are too young."

"No," Dan refuted, "you are wrong there. I shall marry as fast as I can."

His hostess was surprised.

"Why, I thought you wanted your fling first."

And Dan, from his chair, in which, with a book, he had been sitting when Lady Galorey found him, answered cheerfully:

"Oh, I don't like being alone. I want to go about with some one. I should like a fling all right, but I want to fling with somebody as I go."

The lady of the house was not a philosopher nor an a.n.a.lyst. She had certain affairs of her own and was engrossed in them and lived in them.

As far as Lady Galorey was concerned the rest of the world might go and hang itself as long as it didn't do it at her gate-post. But Blair couldn't leave any one indifferent to him very long, not unless one could be indifferent to a blaze of sunlight; one must either draw the blinds down or bask in its brightness.

She laughed. "You're perfectly delicious! You mean to say you want to be married at once and let your _wife_ fling around with you?"

"Just that."

"How sweet of you, Dan! And you won't marry one of these girls here?"

"Don't fill the bill, Lady Galorey."

"Oh, you have a sweetheart at home, then?"

"All off!" he a.s.sured her blithely, and rose, tall and straight and slender.

The d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater had come in, indeed she never failed to when there was any question of finding Blair.

Dan stood straightly before the two women of an old race, and the American didn't suggest any line of n.o.ble ancestors whatsoever. His features were rather agglomerate; his muscles were possibly not the perfect elastic specimens that were those muscles whose strain and sinew had been made from the same stock for generations. He was, nevertheless, very good to look on. Any woman would have thought so, and he bent his blond head as he looked at the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater with something like benevolence, something of his father's kindness in his clear blue eyes.

Neither of the n.o.ble ladies vaguely understood him. His hostess thought him "a good sort," not half bad, a splendid catch, and the other woman, only a few years his senior, was in love with him. The d.u.c.h.ess had married at eighteen, tired of her bargain at twenty, and found herself a widow at twenty-five. She held a telegram in her hand.

"We've got the box for _Mandalay_ to-night at the Gaiety, and let's motor in."

Only Lady Galorey hesitated, disappointed.

"Too bad-I had specially arranged for Lady Grandcourt to drive over with Eileen. I thought it would be a ripping chance for her to see Dan."

When at length the d.u.c.h.ess had succeeded in getting Dan to herself toward the end of the day in the red room, after tea, she said:

"So you won't marry a London beauty?"

And rather coldly Dan had answered:

"Why, you talk, all of you, as if I had only to ask any girl of them, and she would jump down my throat."

"Don't try it," the d.u.c.h.ess answered, "unless you want to have your mouth full!"

Dan did not reply for a second, but he looked at her more seriously, conscious of her grace and her good looks. She was certainly better to look at than the simple girls with their big hands, small wits, long faces, and, as the boy expressed it, "utter lack of get-up." The d.u.c.h.ess shone out to advantage.

"Why don't you talk to me?" she asked softly. "You know you would rather talk to me than the others."

"Yes," he said frankly; "they make me nervous."

"And I don't?"

"No," he said. "I learn a lot every time we are together."

"Learn?" she repeated, not particularly flattered by this. "What sort of things?"

"Oh, about the whole business," he returned vaguely. "You know what I mean."

"Then," she said with a slight laugh, "you mean to say you talk with me for _educational purposes_? What a beastly bore!"

Dan did not contradict her. She was by no means Eve to him, nor was he the raw recruit his simplicity might give one to think. He had had his temptations and his way out of them was an easy one; for he was very slow to stir, and back of all was his ideal. The reality and power of this ideal Dan knew best at moments like these. But the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater was the most lovely woman-the most dangerous woman that had come his way. He liked her-Dan was well on the way to love.

The two were alone in the big dark room. At their side the small table, from which they had taken their tea together, stood with its empty cups and its silver. Without, the day was cold and windy, and the sunset threw along the panes a red reflection. The light fell on the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater, something like a veil-a crimson veil slipped over her face and breast. She leaned toward Dan, and between them there was no more barrier than the western light. He felt his pulses beat and a tide rising within him. She was a delicious emanation, fragrant and near, and as he might have gathered a cl.u.s.ter of flowers, so in the next second he would have taken her in his arms, but from the other room just then Lady Galorey, at the piano, played a s.n.a.t.c.h from _Mandalay_, striking at once into the tune. The sound came suddenly, told them quickly some one was near, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Breakwater involuntarily moved back, and so knocked the small tray, jostled it, and it fell clattering to the floor.

CHAPTER III-THE BLAIRTOWN SOLOIST

Blairtown had a population of some eight thousand. There was a Presbyterian church to which Dan and his father went regularly, sitting in the bare pew when the winter's storms beat and rattled on the panes, or in the summer sunshine, when the flies thronged the window casings, when the smell of the pews and the panama fans and the hymn-books came strong to them through the heat.

One day there was a missionary sermon, and for the first time in its history a girl sang a solo in the First Presbyterian Church. Dan Blair heard it, looked up, and it made a mark in his life. A girl in a white dress trimmed with blue gentians, white cotton gloves, and golden hair, was the soloist. He knew her, that is, he had a nodding acquaintance with her. It was the girl at the drug store who sold soda-water, and he had asked her some hundreds of times for a "vanilla or a chocolate," but it wasn't this vulgar memory that made the little boy listen. It was the girl's voice. Standing back of the yellow-painted rail, above the minister's pulpit, above the flies, the red pews and the panama fans, she sang, and she sang into Dan Blair's soul. To speak more truly, she _made him a soul_ in that moment. She awakened the boy; his collar felt tight, his cheeks grew hot. He felt his new boots, too, hard and heavy.

She made him want to cry. These were the physical sensations-the material part of the awakening. The rest went on deeply inside of Dan.

She broke his heart; then she healed it. She made him want to cry like a girl; then she wiped his tears.

The little boy settled back and grew more comfortable and listened, and what she sang was,

"From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral stra-ands."

Before the hymn reached its end he was a calm boy again, and the hymn took up its pictures and became like an ill.u.s.trated book of travels, and he wanted to see those pea-green peaks of Greenland, to float upon the icebergs to them, and see the dawn break on the polar seas as the explorers do.... He should find the North Pole some day! Then he wanted to go to an African jungle, where the tiger, "tiger shining bright,"

should flash his stripes before his eyes! Dan would gather wreaths of coral from the stra-ands and give them to the girl with the yellow hair!

When he and his father came out together from the church, Dan chose the street that pa.s.sed the soda-fountain drug store and peeped in. It was dark and cool, and behind the counter the drug clerk mixed the summer drinks: and the drug clerk mixed them from that time ever afterward-for the girl with the yellow hair never showed up in Blairtown again. She went away!