CHAPTER XXVII-AT MAXIM'S

At the Meurice, Miss Lane gave strict orders to admit only Mr. Blair to her apartments. She described him. No sooner had she drunk her cup of tea, which Higgins gave her, than she began to expect Dan.

He didn't come.

Her dinner, without much appet.i.te, she ate alone in her salon; saw a doctor and made him prescribe something for the cough that racked her chest; looked out to the warm, bright gardens of the Tuileries fading into the pallid loveliness of sunset, indifferent to everything in the world-except Dan Blair. She believed she would soon be indifferent to him, too; then everything would be done with. Now she wondered had he really gone-had he done what he threatened? Why didn't he come? At twelve o'clock that night, as she lay among the cushions of her sofa, dozing, the door of her parlor was pushed in. She sprang up with a cry of delight; but when Poniotowsky came up to her she exclaimed:

"Oh, you!" And the languor and boredom with which she said his name made the prince laugh shortly.

"Yes, I. Who did you think it was?" Cynically and rather cruelly he looked down at Letty Lane and admired the picture she made: small, exquisite, her blond head against the dark velvet of the lounge, her gray eyes intensified by the fatigue under them.

"Just got in from Carlsbad; came directly here. How-de-do? You look, you know-" he scrutinized her through his single eye-gla.s.s-"most frightfully seedy."

"Oh, I'm all right." She left the sofa, for she wanted to prevent his nearer approach. "Have you had any supper? I'll call Higgins."

"No, no, sit down, please, will you? I want to know why you sent to Carlsbad for me? Have you come to your senses?"

He was as mad about the beautiful creature as a man of his temperament could be. Exhausted by excess and bored with life, she charmed and amused him, and in order to have her with him always, to be master of her caprices, he was willing to make any sacrifice.

"Have you sent off that imbecile boy?" And at her look he stopped and shrugged. "You need a rest, my child," he murmured practically, "you're neurasthenic and very ill. I've wired to have the yacht at Cherbourg-It'll reach there by noon to-morrow."

She was standing listlessly by the table. A ma.s.s of letters sent by special messenger from London after her, telegrams and cards lay there in a pile. Looking down at the lot, she murmured: "All right, I don't care."

He concealed his triumph, but before the look had faded from his face she saw it and exclaimed sharply:

"Don't be crazy about it, you know. You'll have to pay high for me; you know what I mean."

He answered gallantly: "My dear child, I've told you that you would be the most charming princess in Hungary."

Once more she accepted indifferently: "All right, all right, I don't care tuppence-not tuppence"-and she snapped her fingers; "but I like to see you pay, Frederigo. Take me to Maxim's."

He demurred, saying she was far too ill, but she turned from him to call Higgins, determined to go if she had to go alone, and said to him violently: "Don't think I'll make your life easy for you, Frederigo.

I'll make it wretched; as wretched-" and she held out her fragile arms, and the sleeves fell back, leaving them bare-"as wretched as I am myself."

But she was lovely, and he said harshly: "Get yourself dressed. I'll go change and meet you at the lift."

She made him take a table in the corner, where she sat in the shadow on the sofa, overlooking the brilliant room. Maxim's was no new scene to either of them, no novelty. Poniotowsky scarcely glanced at the crowd, preferring to feast his eyes on his companion, whose indifference to him made his abstraction easy. She was his property. He would give her his t.i.tle; she had demanded it from the first. The Hungarian was a little overdressed, with his jeweled b.u.t.tons, his large _boutonniere_, his faultless clothes, his single eye-gla.s.s through which he stared at Letty Lane, whose delicate beauty was in fine play: her cheeks faintly pink, her starry eyes humid with a dew whose l.u.s.ter is of the most precious quality. Her unshed tears had nothing to do with Poniotowsky-they were for the boy. Her heart sickened, thinking where he might be; and more than that, it cried out for him. She wanted him.

Oh, she would have been far better for Dan than anything he could find in this mad city, than anything to which in his despair he would go for consolation. She had kept her word, however, to that old man, Mr.

Ruggles; she had got out of the business with a fatal result, as far as the boy was concerned. She thought Dan would drift here probably as most Americans on their wild nights do for a part of the time, and she had come to see.

She wore a dress of coral pink, tightly fitting, high to her little chin, and seemed herself like a coral strand from neck to toe, clad in the color she affected, and which had become celebrated as the Letty Lane pink. Her feathered hat hid her face, and she was completely shielded as she bent down drawing pictures with her bare finger on the cloth. After a little while she said to Poniotowsky without glancing at him:

"If you stare any longer like that, Frederigo, you'll break your eye-gla.s.s. You know how I hate it."

Used as he was to her sharpness, he nevertheless flushed and sat back and looked across the room, where, to their right, protected from them as they were from him by the great door, a young man sat alone. Whether or not he had come to Maxim's intending to join a congenial party, should he find one, or to choose for a companion some one of the women who, at the entrance of the tall blond boy, stirred and invited him with their raised lorgnons and their smiles, will not be known. Dan Blair was alone, pale as the pictures Letty Lane had drawn on the cloth, and he, too, feasted his eyes on the Gaiety girl.

"By Jove!" said the Hungarian under his breath, and she eagerly asked: "What? Whom? Whom do you see?"

Turning his back sharply he evaded her question and she did not pursue the idea, and as a physical weakness overwhelmed her, when Poniotowsky after a second said, "Come, _cherie_, for heaven's sake, let's go"-she mechanically rose and pa.s.sed out.

Several young men supping together came over eagerly to speak to her and claim acquaintance with the Gaiety girl, and walked along out to the motor. There Letty Lane discovered she had dropped her handkerchief, and sent the prince back for it.

As though he had been waiting for the reappearance of Poniotowsky, Dan Blair stood close to the little table which Letty Lane had left, her handkerchief in his hand. As Poniotowsky came up Dan thrust the small trifle of sheer linen into his waistcoat pocket.

"I will trouble you for Miss Lane's handkerchief," said Poniotowsky, his eyes cold.

"You may," said Dan as quietly, his blue eyes like sparks from a star, "trouble me for h.e.l.l!" And lifting from the table Poniotowsky's own half-emptied gla.s.s of champagne, the boy flung the contents full in the Hungarian's face.

The wine dashed against Poniotowsky's lips and in his eyes. Blair laughed out loud, his hands in his pockets. The insult was low and noiseless; the little gla.s.s shattered as it fell so softly that with the music its gentle crash was unheard.

Poniotowsky wiped his face tranquilly and bowed.

"You shall hear from me after I have taken Miss Lane home."

"Tell her," said the boy, "where you left the handkerchief, that's all."

CHAPTER XXVIII-SUCH STUFF AS DREAMS

Dan was in his room at the hotel. He woke and then slept again. Nothing seemed strange to him-nothing seemed real. It was three o'clock in the morning, the rumble of Paris was dull; it did not disturb him, for he seemed without the body and to have grown giantlike, and to fill the room. He had a sense of suffocation and the need to break through the windows and to escape into ether.

The entrance of Poniotowsky's two friends was a part with the unreal naturalness. One was a Roumanian, the other a Frenchman-both spoke fluent English. Dan, his eyes fixed on the foreign faces, only half saw them; they blurred, their voices were small and far away. Finally he said:

"All right, all right, I can shoot well enough; this kind of thing isn't our custom, you know-I'd as soon kill him one way as another, as a matter of fact. No, I don't know a darned soul here." There was a confab incomprehensible to Dan. "It's all one to me, gentlemen," he said. "I'd rather not drag in my friends, anyhow. Fix it up to suit yourselves."

He wanted them to go-to be alone-to stretch his arms, to rid himself of the burden of sense, and be free. And after they had left, he remained in his window till dawn. It came soon, midsummer dawn, a singularly tender morning in his heart. His mind worked with great rapidity. He had made his will in the States. He wished he could have left everything to Letty Lane, but if, as Ruggles said, he was a pauper? Perhaps it wasn't a lie after all. Dan had written and telegraphed Ruggles asking for the solemn truth, and also telling him where he was and asking the older man to come over. If Ruggles proved he was poor, why, some of his burden was gone. His money had been a burden, he knew it now. He might have no use for money the next day. What good could it do him in a fix like this? He was to meet Poniotowsky at five o'clock in a place whose name he couldn't recall. He had seen it advertised, though; people went there for lunch.

They were to shoot at twenty-five paces-he might be a Rockefeller or a beggar for all the good his money could do him in a pinch like this.

His father wouldn't approve, the old man wouldn't approve, but he had sent him here to learn the ways of the old world. A flickering smile crossed his beautiful, set face. His lessons hadn't done him much good; he would like to have seen good old Gordon Galorey again; he loved him-he had no use for Ruggles, no use-it had been all his fault. His mind reached out to his father, and the old man's words came dinning back: "Buy the things that stay above ground, my boy." What were those things? He had thought they were pa.s.sion-he had thought they were love, and he had put all on one woman. She couldn't stand by him, now that he was poor.

The spasm in his heart was so sharp that he made a low sound in his throat and leaned against the casing of the window. He must see her, touch her once more.

The fellows Poniotowsky's seconds had chosen to be Dan's representatives came in to "fix him up." They were in frock-coats and carried their silk hats and their gloves. He could have laughed at them. Then they made him think of undertakers, and his blood grew cold. He handled the revolvers with care and interest.

"I'm not going to let him murder me, you know," he told his seconds.

They helped him dress, at least one of them did, while the other took Dan's place by the window and looked to the boy like a figure of death.