The bright tide of worldly London flows after and around midnight into
the various restaurants and supper rooms, and as well through the
corridors and halls of the Carlton. At one of the small tables bearing a
great expensive bunch of orchids and soft ferns, Josh Ruggles, in a new
evening dress, sat waiting for his party. Dan had dined with Lord
Galorey, and the two men had gone out together afterward, and Ruggles
had not seen the boy to give him Letty Lane's note.
"Got it with you?" Blair asked when he came in, and Ruggles responded
that he didn't carry love letters around in his dress clothes.
They could tell by the interest in the room when the actress was coming,
and both men rose as Letty Lane floated in at flood tide with a crowd of
last arrivals.
She had not dressed this evening with the intention that her dark
simplicity of attire should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan took
from her shed the perfume of orris and revealed the woman in a blaze of
sparkling _paillettes_. She seemed made out of sparkle, and her blond
head, from which a bright ornament shook, was the most brilliant thing
about her, though her dress from hem to throat glistened with discs of
gold like moonshine on a starry sea. The actress' look of surprise when
she saw Ruggles indicated that she had not expected a boy of his age.
"The other boy?" she asked. "Well, this is the nicest supper party ever!
And you are awfully good to invite me."
Ruggles patted his shirt front and adjusted his cravat.
"My idea," he told her, "all the blame on me, Miss Lane. Charge it up to
me! Dan here had cold feet from the first. He said you wouldn't come."
She laughed deliciously.
"He did? Hasn't got much faith, has he?"
Miss Lane drew her long gloves off, touched the orchids with her little
hands, on which the ever present rings flashed, and went on talking to
Ruggles, to whom she seemed to want to address her conversation.
"I'm simply crazy over these flowers."
The older man showed his pleasure. "My choice again! Walked up myself
and chose the bunch, blame me again; ditto dinner; mine from start to
finish--hope you'll like it. I would have added some Montana peas and
some chocolate soda-water, only I thought you might not understand the
joke."
Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he was unconscious of it, she was not
fully at ease: he was not the kind of man she had expected to see.
Accustomed to young fellows like the boy and their mad devotion,
accustomed to men with whom she could be herself, the big, bluff,
middle-aged gentleman with his painfully correct tie, his rumpled
iron-gray hair, and his deference to her, though an unusual diversion,
was a little embarrassing.
"Oh, I know your dinner is ripping, Mr. Ruggles. I'm on a diet of milk
and eggs myself, and I expect your order didn't take in those." But at
his fallen countenance she hurried to say: "Oh, I wouldn't have told you
that if I hadn't been intending to break through."
And with childlike anticipation she clapped her hands and said: "We're
going to have 'lots of fun.' Just think, they don't know what that means
here in London. They say 'heaps of sport, you know.'" She imitated the
accent maliciously. "It's just we Americans who know what 'lots of fun'
is, isn't it?"
Near her Dan Blair's young eyes were drinking in the spectacle of
delicate beauty beautifully gowned, of soft skin, glorious hair, and he
gazed like a child at a pantomime. Under his breath he exclaimed now,
with effusion, "You bet your life we are going to have lots of fun!" And
turning to him, Miss Lane said:
"Six chocolate sodas running?"
"Oh, don't," he begged, "not that kind of jag."
She shook with laughter.
"Are you from Blairtown, Mr. Ruggles? I don't think I ever saw you
there."
And the Westerner returned: "Well, from what Dan tells me, you're not
much of a fixture yourself, Miss Lane. You were just about born and then
kidnapped."
Her gay expression faded. And she repeated his word, "Kidnapped? That's
a good word for it, Mr. Ruggles."
She picked up between her fingers a strand of the green fern, and looked
at its delicate tracery as it lay on the palm of her hand.
"I sang one day after a missionary sermon in the Presbyterian Church."
She interrupted herself with a short laugh. "But I guess you're not
thinking of writing my biography, are you?"
And it was Dan's voice that urged her. "Say, do go on. I was there that
day with my father, and you sang simply out of sight."
"Yes," she accepted, "out of sight of Blairtown and everybody I ever
knew. I went away the next day." She lifted her glass of champagne to
her lips. "Here's one thing I oughtn't to do," she said, "but I'm going
to just the same. I'm going to do everything I want this evening.
Remember, I let you drink six glasses of chocolate soda once." She
drained her glass and her friends drank with her. "I like this soup
awfully. What is it?"--just touching it with her spoon.
"Why," Ruggles hastened to tell her, "it ain't a _party_ soup, it's
Scotch broth. But somehow it sounded good on the bill of fare. I fixed
the rest of the dinner up for you and Dan, but I let myself go on the
soup, it's my favorite."
She did not eat it, however, although she said it was splendid and that
she was crazy about it.
"Did you come East then?" Dan returned to what she had been saying.
"Yes, that week; went to Paris and all over the place."
She instantly fell into a sort of melancholy. It was easy to be seen
that she did not want to talk about her past and yet that it fascinated
her.
"Just think of it!" he exclaimed. "I never heard a word about you until
I heard you sing the other night."
The actress laughed and told him that he had made up for lost time, and
that he was a regular "sitter" now at the Gaiety.
Ruggles said, "He took me every night to see you dance until I balked,
Miss Lane."
"Still, it's a perfectly great show, Mr. Ruggles, don't you think so? I
like it better than any part I ever had. I am interested about it for
the sake of the man who wrote it, too. It's his first opera; he's an
invalid and has a wife and five kids to look after."
And Ruggles replied, "Oh, gracious! I feel better than ever, having gone
ten times, although I wasn't _very_ sore about it before! Ain't you
going to eat anything?"
She only picked at her food, drinking what they poured in her glass, and
every time she spoke to Dan a look of charming kindness crossed her
face, an expression of good fellowship which Ruggles noted with
interest.
"I wish you could have seen this same author to-day at the rehearsal of
the play," Letty Lane went on. "He's too ill to walk and they had to
carry him in a chair. We all went round to his apartments after the
theater. He lives in three rooms with his whole family and he's had so
many debts and so much trouble and such a poor contract that he hasn't
made much out of _Mandalay_, but I guess he will out of this new piece.
He hugged and kissed me until I thought he would break my neck."
London had gone mad over Letty Lane, whose traits and contour were the
admiration of the world at large and well-known even to the news-boys,
and whose likeness was nearly as familiar as that of the Madonnas of
old. Her face was oval and perfectly formed, with the reddest of
mouths--the most delicious and softest of mouths--the line of her brows
clear and straight, and her gray eyes large and as innocent and
appealing as a child's; under their long lashes they opened up like
flowers. It was said that no man could withstand their appeal; that she
had but to look to make a man her slave; and as more than once she
turned to Dan, smiling and gracious, Ruggles watched her, mutely
thinking of what he had heard this day, for after her letter came
accepting their invitation he had taken pains to find out the things he
wanted to know. It had not been difficult. As her face and form were
public, on every post-card and in every photographer's shop, so the
actress' reputation was the property of the public.
As Ruggles repeated these things to himself, he watched her beside the
son of his old friend. They were talking--rather she was--and behind the
orchids and the ferns her voice was sweet and enthralling. Ruggles tried
to appreciate his bill of fare while the two appreciated each other. It
was strange to Dan to have her so near and so approachable. His sights
of her off the stage had been so slight and fleeting. On the boards she
had seemed to be an unreal creation made for the public alone. Her
dress, cut fearlessly low, displayed her lovely young bosom--soft,
bloomy, white as a shell--and her head and ears were as delicate as the
petals of a white rose. Low in the nape of her neck, her golden hair lay
lightly, and from its soft masses fragrance came to him.
Ruggles could hear her say: "Roach came to the house and told my people
that I had a fortune in my voice. I was living with my uncle and my
step-aunt and working in the store. And that same day your father sent
down a check for five hundred dollars. He said it was 'for the little
girl with the sweet voice,' and it gives me a lot of pleasure to think
that I began my lessons on _that money_."
The son of old Dan Blair said earnestly: "I'm darned glad you did--I'm
darned glad you did!"
Letty Lane nodded. "So am I. But," with some sharpness, "I don't see why
you speak that way. I've earned my way. I made a fortune for Roach all
right."
"You mean the man you married?"
"Married--goodness gracious, what made you think that?" She threw back
her pretty head and laughed--a laugh with the least possible merriment in
it. "Oh, Heavens, marry old Job Roach! So they say _that_, do they? I
never heard that. I hear a lot, but I never heard that fairy tale." She
put her hands to her checks, which had grown crimson. "That's not true!"
Dan swore at himself for his tactless stupidity.
Ruggles had heard both sides. She was adored by the poor, and, as far as
rumor knew, she spent thousands on the London paupers, and the
Westerner, who had never been given to reveling in scandals and to whom
there was something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, no matter whom
she might be, listened with embarrassment to tales he had been told in
answer to his other questions; and turned with relief to the stories of
Letty Lane's charity, and to the stories of her popularity and her
success. They were more agreeable, but they couldn't make him forget the
rest, and now as he looked at her face across the bouquet of orchids and
ferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great pity for her, and still a
decided enmity. He disapproved of her down to the ground. He didn't let
himself think how he felt, but it was for the boy. Ruggles was not a man
of the world in any sense; he was simple and Puritan in his judgments,
and his gentle nature and his big heart kept him from pharisaical and
strenuous measures. He had been led in what he was doing to-night by a
diplomacy and a common sense that few men east of the Mississippi would
have thought out under the circumstances.
"Tell Mr. Ruggles," he heard Dan say to her, "tell him--tell him!"
And she answered:
"I was telling Mr. Blair that, as he is so frightfully rich, I want him
to give me some money."
Ruggles gasped, but answered quietly:
"Well, he's a great giver, Miss Lane."
"I guess he is if he's like his father!" she returned. "I am trying to
get a lot, though, out of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night I
said to myself, 'I'll accept, for it will be a good time to ask Mr.
Blair to help me out in what I want to do.'"
At Ruggles' face she smiled sweetly and said graciously:
"Oh, don't think I wouldn't have come anyway. But I'm awfully tired
these days, and going out to supper is just one thing too much to do! I
want Mr. Blair," she said, turning to Ruggles as if she knew a word from
him would make the thing go through, "to help me build a rest home down
on the English coast, for girls who get discouraged in their art. When I
think of the _luck_ I have had and how these things have been from the
beginning, and how money has just poured in, why," she said ardently,
"it just makes my heart ache to think of the girls who try and fail, who
go on for a little while and have to give up. You can't tell,"--she
nodded to Ruggles, as though she were herself a matron of forty,--"you
can not tell what their temptations are or what comes up to make them go
to pieces."
Ruggles listened with interest.
"I haven't thought it all out yet, but so many come to me tired out and
discouraged, and I think a nice home taken care of by a good creature
like my Higgins, let us say, would be a perfect blessing to them. They
could go there and rest and study and just think, and perhaps," she said
slowly, as though while she spoke she saw a vision of a tired self, for
whom there had been no rest home and no place of retreat, "perhaps a lot
of them would pull through in a different way. Now to-day"--she broke her
meditative tone short--"I got a letter from a hospital where a poor thing
that used to sing with me in New York was dying with consumption--all
gone to pieces and discouraged, and there is where your primroses went
to--" she nodded to Dan. "Higgins took them. You don't mind?" And Blair,
with a warmth in his voice, touched by her pity more than by her
charity, said:
"Why, they grew for you, Miss Lane; I don't care what you do with them."
Letty Lane sank her head on her hands, her elbows leaned on the table.
She seemed suddenly to have lost interest even in her topic. She looked
around the room indifferently. The orchestra was softly playing _The
Dove Song_ from _Mandalay_, and very softly under her breath the star
hummed it, her eyes vaguely fixed on some unknown scene. To Dan and to
Ruggles she had grown strange. The music, her brilliancy, her sudden
indifference, put her out of their commonplace reach. Ruggles to himself
thought with relief:
"She doesn't care one rap for the boy anyway, thank God. She's got other
fish to land."
And Dan Blair thought: "It's my infernal money again." But he was
generous at heart and glad to be of service to her, and was perfectly
willing to be "touched" for her poor. Then two or three men came up and
joined them. She greeted them indolently, bestowing a word or a look on
this one or on that; all fire and light seemed to have gone out of her,
and Dan said:
"You are tired. I guess I had better take you home."
She did not appear to hear him. Indeed she was not looking at him, and
Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky making his way toward their table across the
room.
Letty Lane rose. Dan put her cloak about her shoulders, and glancing
toward Ruggles and toward the boy as indifferently as she had considered
the new-comers, who formed a small group around the brilliant figure of
the actress, she nodded good night to both Ruggles and Blair and went up
to the Hungarian as though he were her husband, who had come to take her
home. However, at the door she sufficiently shook off her mood to smile
slightly at Dan:
"I have had 'lots of fun,' and the Scotch broth was great! Thank you
both so much."
Until they were up in their sitting-room her hosts did not exchange a
word. Then Ruggles took a book up from the table and sat down with his
cigar. "I am going to read a little, Dan. Slept all day; feel as
wide-awake as an owl."
Dan showed no desire to be communicative, however, to Ruggles'
disappointment, but he exclaimed abruptly:
"I'll be darned, Ruggles, if I can guess what you asked her for!"
"Well, it did turn out to be a pretty expensive party for you, Dannie,
didn't it?" Ruggles returned humorously. "I'll let you off from any more
supper parties."
And Dan fumed as he turned his back. "_Expensive!_ There you are again,
Ruggles, with your infernal intrusion of money into everything I do."
When the older man found himself alone, he read a little and then put
his book down to muse. And his meditations were on the tide of life and
the beds it runs over; the living whirlpool as Ruggles himself had seen
it coursing through London under fog and mist. It seemed now to surge up
in the dark to his very windows, and the flow mysteriously passed under
his windows in these silent hours when no one can see the muddy, muddy
bottom over which the waters go. Out of the sound, as it flowed on, the
cries rose, he thought, kindly to his ears: "God bless her--God bless
Letty Lane!" And with this sound he closed his meditations, thinking of
a more peaceful stream, the brighter, sweeter waters of the boy's
nature, translucent and clear. The vision was happier, and with it
Ruggles rose and yawned, and shut his book.