There are certain natures to whom each appearance of evil, each form of
delinquency is a fresh surprise. They are born simple, in the sweet
sense of the word, and they go down to old age never of the world,
although in a sense worldly. If Dan Blair's eyes were somewhat opened at
twenty-two, he had yet the bloom on his soul. He was no fool, but his
ideals stood up each on its pedestal and ready to appear one by one to
him as the scenes of his life shifted and the different curtains rose.
He had been trained in finance from his boyhood and he was a born
financier. Money was his natural element; he could go far in it. But
_woman_! He was one of those manly creatures--a knight--to whom each woman
is a sacred thing: a dove, a crystal-clear soul, made to cherish and to
protect, made to be spoiled. And in Dan were all the qualities that go
to make up the unselfish, tender, foolish, and often unhappy American
husband. These were some of the other things he had inherited from his
father. Blair, senior, had married his first love, and whereas his boy
had been trained to know money and its value, how to keep it and spend
it, to save it and to make it, he had been taught nothing at all about
woman. He had never been taught to distrust women, never been warned
against them; he had been taught nothing but his father's memory of his
mother, and the result was that he worshiped the sex and wondered at the
mystery.
With Gordon Galorey and the others he had ridden, shot better than they,
and had played, but with Lady Galorey and the Duchess of Breakwater he
was nothing but a child. As far as his hostess was concerned, on several
occasions she had put to him certain states of affairs, well,
touchingly. Dan had been moved by the stories of sore need among the
tenants, had been impressed by the necessity of reforms and rebuildings
and on each occasion had given his hostess a check. She had asked him to
say nothing about it to Gordon, and he had kept his silence. Dan liked
Lady Galorey extremely: she was jolly, witty and friendly. She treated
him as a member of the family and made no demands on him, save the ones
mentioned.
In the time that he had come to know the Duchess of Breakwater she, on
her part, had filled him full of other confidences. Into his young ears
she poured the story of her disappointment, her disjointed life, from
her worldly girlhood to her disillusion in marriage. She was beautiful
when she talked and more lovely when she wept. Dan thought himself in
love with the Duchess of Breakwater. His conversations with her had
brought him to this conclusion. They had motored from Osdene Park
together, and he had been extremely taken with the pleasure of it, and
with the fact of their real companionship. Two or three times the words
had been on his lips, which were fated not to be spoken then, however,
and Dan reached the Gaiety still unfettered, his duchess by his side.
And then the orchestra had begun to play _Mandalay_, the curtain had
gone up and Letty Lane had come out on the boards. But her apparition
did not strike off his chains immediately, nor did he renounce his plan
to tell the duchess the very next day that he loved her.
When with sparkling eyes Lady Galorey raved about _Mandalay_, Dan
listened with eagerness. Everybody seemed to know all about Letty Lane,
but he alone knew from what town she had come!
They went for supper at the Carlton after the theater.
"Letty," Lady Galorey said, "tells it herself how the impresario heard
her sing in some country church--picked her up then and there and brought
her over here, and they say she married him."
Dan Blair could have told them how she had sung in that little church
that day. Dan was eating his caviare sandwich. "Her name _then_ was
Sally Towney," he murmured. How little he had guessed that she was
singing herself right out of that church and into the London Gaiety
Theater! Anyway, she had made him "sit up!" It was a far cry from
Montana to the London Gaiety. And so she married the greasy Jew who had
discovered her!
Dan glanced over at the Duchess of Breakwater. She was looking well,
exquisitely high bred, and she impressed him. She leaned slightly over
to him, laughing. He had hardly dared to meet her eyes that day, fearing
that she might read his secret. She had told him that in her own right
she was a countess--the Countess of Stainer. Titles didn't cut any ice
with him. At any rate, she would be able to "buy back the old farm"--that
is the way Dan put it. She had told him of the beautiful old Stainer
Court, mortgaged and hung up with debts, as deep in ruins as the ivy was
thick on the walls.
As Dan looked over at the duchess he saw the other people staring and
looking about at a table near. It was spread a little to their left for
four people, a great bouquet of orchids in the center.
"There," Galorey said, "there's Letty Lane." And the singer came in,
followed by three men, the first of them the Prince Poniotowsky,
indolent, bored, haughty, his eye-glass dangling. Miss Lane was dressed
in black, a superb costume of faultless cut, and it enfolded her like a
shadow; as a shadow might enfold a specter, for the dancer was as pale
as the dead. She had neither painted nor rouged, she had evidently
employed no coquetry to disguise her fag; rather she seemed to be on the
verge of a serious illness, and presented a striking contrast to the
brilliant creature, who had shone before their eyes not an hour before.
Her dress was a challenge to the more gay and delicate affairs the other
women in the restaurant wore. The gown came severely up to her chin. Its
high collar closed around with a pearl necklace; from her ears fell
pearls, long, creamy and priceless. She wore a great feathered hat,
which, drooping, almost hid her small, pale face and her golden hair.
She drew off her gloves as she came in and her white, jeweled hands
flashed. She looked infinitely tired and extremely bored. As soon as she
took her seat at the table intended for her party, Poniotowsky poured
her out a glass of champagne, which she drank off as though it were
water.
"Gad," Lord Galorey said, "she _is_ a stunner! What a figure, and what a
head, and what daring to dress like that!"
"She knows how to make herself conspicuous," said the Duchess of
Breakwater.
"She looks extremely ill," said Lady Galorey. "The pace she goes will do
her up in a year or two."
Dan Blair had his back to her, and when they rose to leave he was the
last to pass out. Letty Lane saw him, and a light broke over her pallid
face. She nodded and smiled and shook her hand in a pretty little
salute. If her face was pale, her lips were red, and her smile was like
sunlight; and at her recognition a wave of friendly fellowship swept
over the young man--a sort of loyal kinship to her which he hadn't felt
for any other woman there, and which he could not have explained. In
warm approval of the actress' distinction, he said softly to himself:
"_That's_ all right--she makes the rest of them look like thirty cents."