Dan Blair had not been back of the scenes at the Gaiety since his first
call on the singer. Indeed, though he had told the duchess he pitied
Miss Lane, he had not been able to approach her very closely, even in
his own thoughts. When she first appeared on his horizon his mind was
full of the Duchess of Breakwater, and the singer had only hovered round
his more profound feelings for another woman. But Letty Lane was an
atmosphere in Dan's mind which he was not yet able to understand. There
was so little left that was connected with his old home, certainly
nothing in the British Isles, excepting Ruggles, and to the young man
everything from America had its value. Decidedly the nice girl of whom
he had spoken to Gordon Galorey, the print-frocked, sun-bonneted type,
the ideal girl that Dan would like to marry and to spoil, had not
crossed his path. The Duchess of Breakwater did not suggest her, nor did
any of the London beauties. Dan's first ideal was beginning to fade.
He left Osdene Park on protest and returned the same night to London,
and all the way back to town tried to register in his mind, unused to
analysis, his experience with the Duchess of Breakwater on this last
visit.
He had experienced his first disappointment in the sex, and this
disappointment had been of an unusual kind. It was not that he had been
turned down or given the mitten, but he had seen one woman turn another
down. A woman had been mean, so he put it, and the fact that the Duchess
of Breakwater had refused to lend a moral hand to the singer at the
Gaiety hurt Dan's feelings. Then, as soon as his enthusiasm had calmed,
he saw what a stupid ass he had been. A duchess couldn't mix up with a
comic opera singer, of course. Still, he mused, "she might have been a
little nicer about it."
The education his father had given him about women, the slender
information he had about them, was put to the test now; the girl he had
dreamed of, "the nice girl," well, she would have had a tenderer way
with her in a case such as this! Back of Dan's hurt feelings, there was
a great deal on the Duchess of Breakwater's side. She had not done for
herself yet. She hadn't fetched him nearly up to the altar for nothing,
and back of his disapproval, there was a long list of admirations and
looks, memories of many tête-à-têtes and of more fervent kisses which
scored a good deal in the favor of Dan's first woman. The Duchess of
Breakwater had gone boldly on with Dan's unfinished education, and he
really thought he loved her, and that he was in honor bound to see the
thing through.
* * * * *
That evening, once more in the box he had taken all to himself, he
listened to _Mandalay_, carried away with the charm of the music and
carried away by the singer. He was in the box nearest the stage and
seemed close to her, and he imagined that under her paint he could see
her pallor and how thin she was. Nothing, however, in her acting or in
her voice revealed the least fatigue. Blair had obtained a card of
entrance to the theater, which permitted him to circulate freely behind
the scenes, and although as yet the run of his visits had not been
clear, this night he had a purpose. Dan stood not far from the corridor
that led to Letty Lane's room, and saw her after her act hurriedly cross
the stage, a big white shawl wrapping her slender form closely. She was
as thin as a candle. Her woman Higgins followed closely after her, and
as they passed Dan, Letty Lane called to him gaily:
"Hello, you! What are you hanging around here for?"
And Dan returned: "Don't stand here in the draft. It is beastly cold."
"Yes, Miss," her woman urged, "don't stand here."
But the actress waited nevertheless and said to Dan: "Who's the girl?"
"What girl?"
"Why, the girl you come here every night to see and are too shy to speak
to. Everybody is crazy to know."
Letty Lane looked like a little girl herself in the crocheted garment
her small hands held across her breast. Dan put his arm on her shoulder
without realizing the familiarity of his gesture:
"Get out of this draft--get out of it quick, I say," and pushed her
toward her room.
"Gracious, but you are strong." She felt the muscular touch, and his
hand flat against her shoulder was warm through the wool.
"I wish _you_ were strong. You work too darned hard."
Her head was covered with the coral cap and feather. Dan saw her billowy
skirt, her silken hose, her little coral shoes. She fluttered at the
door which Higgins opened.
"Why haven't you been to see me?" she asked him. "You are not very
polite."
"I am coming in now."
"Not a bit of it. I'm too busy, and it is a short entr'acte. Go and see
the girl you came here to see."
Dan thought that the reason she forbade him to come in was because
Prince Poniotowsky waited for her in her dressing-room. It was his first
jealous moment, and the feeling fell on him with a swoop, and its fangs
fastened in him with a stinging pain. He stammered:
"I didn't come to see any girl here but you. I came to see you."
"Come to-morrow at two, at the Savoy."
But before Dan realized his own precipitation, he had seized the
door-handle as Letty Lane went within and was about to close her room
against him, and said quickly:
"I'm coming right in now."
"Why, I never heard of such a thing," she answered sharply, angrily;
"you must be crazy! Take away your hand!" And hers, as well as his,
seized the handle of the door. Her small ice-cold hand brought him to
his senses.
"I beg your pardon," he murmured confusedly. "Do go in and get warm if
you can."
But instead of obeying, now that the rude young man withdrew his
importuning, Miss Lane's hands fell from the knob, and close to his eyes
she swayed before him, and Dan caught her in his arms--went into her
room, carrying her. He had been wrong about Prince Poniotowsky; save for
Higgins, the room was empty. The woman, though she exclaimed, showed no
great surprise and seemed prepared for such a fainting spell. Dan laid
the actress on the sofa and then the dresser said to him:
"Please go, sir; I can quite manage. She has these turns often. I'll
give her brandy. She will be quite right."
But Dan hesitated, looking at the bit of humanity that he had laid with
great gentleness on the divan covered with pillows. Letty Lane lay
there, small as a little child, inanimate as death. It was hard to think
the quiet little form could contain such life, fire and motion, or that
this senseless little creature held London with her voice and grace.
Higgins knelt down by Letty Lane's side, quiet, capable, going about the
business of resuscitating her lady much as she laced the singer's bodice
and shoes. "If you would be so good as to open the door, sir, and send
me a call page. They'll have to linger out this entr'acte or put on some
feature."
"But," exclaimed Blair, "she can't go back to-night?"
"Lord, yes," Higgins returned. "Here, Miss Lane; drink this."
At the door where he paused, Dan saw the girl lifted up, saw her lean on
Higgins' shoulder, and assured then that she was not lifeless in good
truth, he went out to do as Higgins had asked him. In a quarter of an
hour the curtain rose and within half an hour Dan, from his box, saw the
actress dance to the rajah her charming polka to the strains of the
Hungarian Band.