"Mandalay" had run at the Gaiety the season before and again opened the
autumn season. Light and charming, thoroughly musical, it had toured
successfully through Europe, but London was its home, and its great
popularity was chiefly owing to the girl who had starred in it--Letty
Lane. Her face was on every post-card, hand-bill, cosmetic box, and even
popular drinks were named for her.
The night of the Osdene box party was the reopening of _Mandalay_, and
the curtain went up after the overture to an outburst of applause. Dan
Blair had never "crossed the pond" before this memorable visit, when he
had gone straight out to Osdene Park. London theaters and London itself,
indeed, were unexplored by him. He had seen what there was to be seen of
the opera bouffe in his own country, but the brilliant, perfect
performance of a company at the London Gaiety he had yet to enjoy.
The opening scene of _Mandalay_ is oriental; the burst of music and the
tinkling of the silvery temple bells and the effect of an extremely blue
sea, made Dan "sit up," as he put it. The theatrical picture was so
perfect that he lifted his head, pushed his chair back to enjoy. He was
thus close to the duchess. With invigorating young enthusiasm the boy
drew in his breath and waited to be amused and to hear. The tunes he
already knew before the orchestra began to charm his ear.
On landing at Plymouth Dan had been keen to feel that he was really
stepping into the world, and at Osdene Park he had been daily, hourly
"seeing life." The youngest of the household, his youth nevertheless was
not taken into consideration by any of them. No one had treated him like
a junior. He had gone neck to neck with their pace as far as he liked,
furnished them fresh amusement, and been their diversion. In all his
rare unspoiled youth, Blair had been suddenly dropped down in an effete
set that had whirled about him, and one by one out of the inner circle
had called him to join them; and one by one with all of them Dan had
whirled.
Lord Galorey had talked to him frankly, as plainly as if Dan had been
his own father, and found much of the old man's common sense in his fine
blond head. Lady Galorey had come to him in a moment of great anxiety,
and no one but her young guest knew how badly she needed help. He had
further made it known to the lady that he was not in the marriage
market; that she could not have him for any of her girls. And as for the
Duchess of Breakwater, well--he had whirled with her until his head swam.
He had grown years older at the Park in the few weeks of his visit, but
now for the first time, as the music of _Mandalay_ struck upon his ears,
like a ripple of distant seas, he felt like the boy who had left
Blairtown to come abroad. He had spent the most part of the day in
London with a man who had come over to see him from America. Dan
attended to his business affairs, and the people who knew said that he
had a keen head. Mr. Joshua Ruggles, his father's best friend, whom Dan
this afternoon had left to go to his room at the Carlton, had put his
arm with affection through the boy's:
"Don't look as though it were any too healthy down to the place you're
visiting at, Dan. Plumbing all right?"
And the boy, flushing slightly, had said: "Don't you fret, Josh, I'll
look after my health all right."
"There's nothing like the mountain air," returned the Westerner. "These
old fogs stick in my nostrils; feel as though I could smell London clean
down to my feet!"
* * * * *
From the corner of the box Dan looked hard at the stage, at the fresh
brilliant costumes and the lovely chorus girls.
"Gosh," he thought to himself, "they are the prettiest ever! Dove-gray,
eyes of Irish blue, mouths like roses!"
Leaning forward a little toward the duchess he whispered: "There isn't
one who isn't a winner. I never struck such a box of dry goods!"
The duchess smiled on Dan with good humor. His naïve pleasure was
delightful. It was like taking a child to a pantomime. She was wearing
his flowers and displaying a jewel that he had found and bought for her,
and which she had not hesitated to accept. She watched his eager face
and his pleasure unaffected and keen. She could not believe that this
young man was master of ten million pounds.
When Letty Lane appeared Blair heard a light rustle like rain through
the auditorium, a murmur, and the house rose. There was a well-bred
calling from the stalls, a call from the pit, and a generous
applause--"Letty Lane--Letty Lane!" and as though she were royalty, there
was a fluttering of handkerchiefs like flags. The young fellow with the
others stood in the back of the box, his hands in his pockets, looking
at the stage. There wasn't a girl in the chorus as pretty as this prima
donna! Letty Lane came on in _Mandalay_ in the first act in the dress of
a fashionable princess. She was modish and worldly. For the only time in
the play she was modern and conventional, and whatever breeding she
might have been able to claim, from whatever class she was born, as she
stood there in her beautiful gown she was grace itself, and charm. She
was distinctly a star, and showed her appreciation of her audience's
admiration.
At the end of the tenor solo the Princess Oltary runs into the pavilion
and there changes her dress and appears once more to dance before the
rajah and to prove herself the dancer he has known and loved in a café
in Paris. Letty Lane's dress in this dance was the classic ballet
dancer's, white as the leaves of a lily. She seemed to swim and float;
actually to be breathed and exhaled from out her filmy gown; and the
only ray of color in her costume was her own golden hair, surmounted by
a small coral-colored cap, embroidered in pearls. The actress bowed to
the right and left, ran to the right, ran to the left; glanced toward
the Duchess of Breakwater's box; acknowledged the burst of applause;
began to dance and finished her _pas seul_, and with folded hands sang
her song. Her beautiful voice came out clear as crystal water from a
crystal rock, and her words were cradled like doves, like boats on the
boundless seas....
"From India's coral strand...."
But there was no hymn tune to this song of Letty Lane's in _Mandalay_!
To the boy in the box, however, the words, the tune, the droning of the
flies on the window-pane, the strong odor of the hymn-books and panama
fans, came back, and the clear sunlight of Montana seemed to steal into
the Gaiety as Letty Lane sang.
The Duchess of Breakwater clapped with frank enthusiasm, and said: "She
is a perfect wonder, isn't she? Oh, she is _too_ bewitching!"
And she turned for sympathy to her friend, who stood behind her, his
face illumined. He was amazed; his blue eyes ablaze, his head bent
forward, he was staring, staring at the Gaiety curtain, gone down on the
first act.
He laughed softly, and the duchess heard him say:
"_Good!_ Well, I should say she was! She's a girl from our town!"
When the duchess tried to share her enthusiasm with Dan he had
disappeared. He left the box and with no difficulty made his way as far
as the first wing.
"Can you get me an entrance?" he asked a man he had met once at Osdene
and who was evidently an habitué.
"I dare say. Rippin' show, isn't it?"
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Dan put his hand on ducal shoulders and followed the nobleman through
the labyrinth of flies.
"Which of 'em do you want to see, old man?"
Dan, without replying, went forward to a small cluster of lights in one
of the wings. He went forward intuitively, and his companion caught his
arm: "Oh, I say, for _God's_ sake, don't go on like this!"
But without response Dan continued his direction. A call page stood
before the door, and Dan, on a card over the entrance, read "Miss Lane."
The smell of calcium and paint and perfume and the auxiliaries hung
heavy on the air. The other man saw Dan knock, knock again and then go
in.
Unannounced Dan Blair opened the door of the dressing-room of the
actress. Miss Lane's dressing-rooms were worth displaying to her
intimate friends. They were done with great taste in coral tint. She
might have been said to be in a coral cave under the sea, as far as
young Blair was concerned. As he came in he felt his ears deaden, and
the smoke of cigarettes grew so thick that he looked as through a veil.
The dancer was standing in the center of the room, one hand on her hip,
and in the other hand a cigarette. Her short skirt stood out around her
like a bell, and over the bell fell a rain of pinkish coral strands. She
wore a thin silk slip, from which her neck and arms came shining out,
and her woman knelt at her feet strapping on a little coral shoe.
Blair shut the door behind him, and began to realize how rude, how
impertinent his entrance would be considered. But he came boldly forward
and would have introduced himself as "Dan Blair from Blairtown," but
Miss Lane, who stared at the entrance through the smoke, burst into a
laugh so bright, so delightful, that he was carried high up on the coral
strands to the very beach. She crossed her white arms over her breast
and leaned forward, as a saleswoman might lean forward over a counter,
and with her beautifully trained voice, all sweetly she asked him:
"Hello, little boy, what will _you_ take?"
Blair giggled, quick to catch her meaning, and answered: "Oh, chocolate,
I guess!"
And Letty Lane laughed, put out her white hand, the one without the
cigarette, and said: "Haven't got that brand on board--so sorry! Will a
cocktail do? All sorts in bottles. Higgins, fix Mr. Blair a Martini."
As the dresser rose from her stooping position, the rest of Letty Lane's
dressing-room unfolded out of the mist and smoke. On a sofa covered with
lace pillows Blair saw a man sitting, smoking as well. He was tall and
had a dark mustache. It was Prince Poniotowsky, whom Dan had already met
at the Galorey shoot.
"Prince Poniotowsky," Miss Lane presented him, "Mr. Blair, of Blairtown,
Montana. Say, Frederick, give me my cap, will you? It is over by your
side. I've got to hustle."
The man, without moving, picked up a small red cap with a single plume,
from the sofa at his side. In another second Letty Lane had placed it on
her head of yellow hair, real yellow hair and not a doubt of it, like
sunshine--not the color one gets from inside bottles. Her arms, her hands
flashed with rings, priceless flashes, and the little spears pricked Dan
like sharp needles.
"It's the nicest ever!" she was saying. "How on earth did you get in
here, though? Have you bought the Gaiety Theater? I'm the most exclusive
girl on the stage. Who let you in?"
Her accent was English, and even that put her from him. As he looked at
her he couldn't understand how he had ever recognized her. If he had
waited for another act he wouldn't have believed the likeness real. The
girl he remembered had both softened and hardened; the round features
were gone, but all the angles were gone as well. Her eyes were as gray
as the seas; she was painted and her lids were darkened. Seen close, she
was not so divine as on the stage, but there was still a more thrilling
charm about the fact that she was real.
"To think of any one from Montana being here to-night! Staying very
long, Mr. Blair?" Between each sentence she directed Higgins, who was
getting her into her bodice. "And how do you like _Mandalay_? Isn't it
great?"
She addressed herself to Dan, but she smiled on both the men with
extreme brilliance.
"You bet your life," he responded. "I should think it was great."
Poniotowsky rose indolently. He had not looked toward the new-comer, but
had, on the other hand, followed every detail of Miss Lane's dressing.
"Better take your scarf, Letty. Hand it to Miss Lane," he directed
Higgins. "It is so damned drafty in these beastly wings."
He drew his watch out, gathered up his long coat, flung it over his arm
and picked up his opera hat which lay folded on Letty Lane's
dressing-table.
The call page for the third time summoned "Miss La--ne, Miss La--ane," and
she took the scarf Higgins handed her and ran it through her hands,
still beaming on Dan.
"Come in to see me at the Savoy on any day at two-thirty except on
matinée days."
"Put on your scarf." Poniotowsky, taking it from her hands, laid it
across her white shoulders, and she passed out between the two men,
light as a bird, smiling, nodding, followed by the prince and the boy
from Montana. The crowds began to fill the lately empty wings--dancers,
chorus girls with their rustling gowns. Letty Lane said to Dan:
"Guess you'll like my solo in this act all right--it's the best thing in
_Mandalay_. Now go along, and clap me hard."
It gave him a new pleasure, for she had spoken to him in real American
fashion with the swift mimicry that showed her talent. Dan went slowly
back to his party. As he took his seat by the duchess she said to him:
"You went out to see Letty Lane. Do you know her?"
"Know her!" And as Dan answered, the sound of his own voice was queer to
him, and his face flushed hotly. "Lord, yes. She used to be in the drug
store in Blairtown. Sold soda-water to me when we were both kids.
Whoever would have thought that she had that in her!" He nodded toward
the stage, for Letty Lane had come on. "She sang in our church, too, but
not for long."
"Who was with her in her dressing-room?" the duchess asked. Blair didn't
answer. He was looking at Letty Lane. She had come to dance for the
rajah and in her arms she held four white doves; each dove had a coral
thread around its throat. It was a number that made her famous, _The
Dove Song_. Set free, the birds flew about her, circling her blond head,
surmounted by the small coral-colored cap. The doves settled on her
shoulders, pecked at her lips.
"Was it Poniotowsky?" the duchess repeated.
And Dan told her a meaningless lie. "I didn't meet any one there." And
with satisfaction the duchess said:
"Then she has thrown him over, too. He was the latest and the richest.
She is horribly extravagant. No man is rich enough for her, they say.
Poniotowsky isn't a gold mine."
The doves had flown away to the wings and been gathered up by the Indian
servants. The actress on the stage began her Indian cradle song. She
came, distinctly turning toward the box party. She had never sung like
this in London before. There was a freshness in her voice, a quality in
her gesture, a pathos and a sweetness that delighted her audience. They
fairly clamored for her, waved and called and recalled. Dan stood
motionless, his eyes fastened on her, his heart rocked by the song. He
didn't want any one to speak to him. He wished that none of them would
breathe, and nearly as absorbed as was he, no one did speak.