Spring in Paris, which comes in a fashion so divine that even the most
calloused and indifferent are impressed by its beauty, awakened no
answering response in the heart of the young man who, from his hotel
window, looked out on the desecrated gardens of the Tuileries--on the
distant spires of the churches whose names he did not know--on the square
block of old palaces. He had missed the boat across the Channel taken by
Letty Lane, and the delay had made him lose what little trace of her he
had. In the early hours of the morning he had flung himself in at the
St. James, taken the indifferent room they could give him in the crowded
season, and excited as he was he slept and did not waken until noon.
Blair thought it would be a matter of a few hours only to find the
whereabouts of the celebrated actress, but it was not such an easy job.
He had not guessed that she might be traveling incognito, and at none of
the hotels could he hear news of her, nor did he pass her in the
crowded, noisy, rustling, crying streets, though he searched motors for
her with eager eyes, and haunted restaurants and cafés, and went
everywhere that he thought she might be likely to be.
At the end of the third day, unsuccessful and in despair, having hardly
slept and scarcely eaten, the unhappy young lover found himself taking a
slight luncheon in the little restaurant known as the Perouse down on
the Quais. His head on his hand, for the present moment the joy of life
gone from him, he looked out through the windows at the Seine, at the
bridge and the lines of flowering trees. He was the only occupant of the
upper room where, of late, he had ordered his luncheon.
The tide of life rolled slowly in this quieter part of the city, and as
Blair sat there under the window there passed a piper playing a shrill,
sweet tune. It was so different from any of the loud metropolitan
clamors, with which his ears were full, that he got up, walked to the
window and leaned out. It was a pastoral that met his eyes. A man
piping, followed by little pattering goats; the primitive, unlooked-for
picture caught his tired attention, and, just then, opposite the Quais,
two women passed--flower sellers, their baskets bright with crocuses and
giroflés. The bright picture touched him and something of the springlike
beauty that the day wore and that dwelt in the May light, soothed him as
nothing had for many hours.
He paid his bill, took courage, picked up his hat and gloves and stick
and walked out briskly, crossing the bridge to the Rue de Rivoli,
determined that night should not fall until he found the woman he
sought. Nor did it, though the afternoon wore on and Dan, pursuing his
old trails, wandered from worldly meeting place to worldly meeting
place. Finally, toward six o'clock, he saw the lengthening shadows steal
into the woods of the Bois de Boulogne, and in one of the smaller
alleys, where the green-trunked trees of the forests were full of purple
shadows and yellow sun discs, flickering down, he picked up a small iron
chair and sat himself down, with a long sigh, to rest.
While he sat there watching the end of the _allée_ as it gave out into
the broader road, a beautiful red motor rolled up to the conjunction of
the two ways and Letty Lane, in a summer frock, got out alone. She had a
flowing white veil around her head and a flowing white scarf around her
shoulders. As the day on the Thames, she was all in white--like a dove.
But this time her costume was made vivid and picturesque by the coral
parasol she carried, a pair of coral-colored kid shoes, around her neck
and falling on their long chain, she wore his coral beads. He saw that
he observed her before she did him. All this Dan saw before he dashed
into the road, came up to her with something like a cry on his lips,
bareheaded, for his hat and his stick and his gloves were by his chair
in the woods.
Letty Lane's hands went to her heart and her face took on a deadly
pallor. She did not seem glad to see him. Out of his passionate
description of the hours that he had been through, of how he had looked
for her, of what he thought and wanted and felt, the actress made what
she could, listening to him as they both stood there under the shadows
of the green trees. Scanning her face for some sign that she loved him,
for it was all he cared for, Dan saw no such indication there. He
finished with:
"You know what Ruggles told you was a lie. Of course, I've got money
enough to give you everything you want. He's a lunatic and ought to be
shut up."
"It may have been a lie, all right," she said with forced indifference;
"I've had time to think it over. You are too young. You don't know what
you want." She stopped his protestations: "Well, then, _I_ am too old
and I don't want to be tied down."
When he pressed her to tell him whether or not she had ceased to care
for him, she shook her head slowly, marking on the ground fine tracery
with the end of her coral parasol. He had been obliged to take her back
to the red motor, but before they were in earshot of her servants, he
said:
"Now, you know just what you have done to me, you and Ruggles between
you. For my father's sake and the things I believed in I've kept pretty
straight as things go." He nodded at her with boyish egotism, throwing
all the blame on her. "I want you to understand that from now, right
now, I'm going to the dogs just as fast as I can get there, and it won't
be a very gratifying result to anybody that ever cared."
She saw the determination on his fine young face, worn by his sleepless
nights, already matured and changed, and she believed him.
"Paris," he nodded toward the gate of the woods which opened upon Paris,
"is the place to begin in--right here. A man," he went on, and his lips
trembled, "can only feel like this once in his life. You know all the
talk there is about young love and first love. Well, that's what I've
got for you, and I'm going to turn it now--right now--into just what older
people warn men from, and do their best to prevent. I have seen enough
of Paris," he went on, "these days I have been looking for you, to know
where to go and what to do, and I am setting off for it now."
She touched his arm.
"No," she murmured. "No, boy, you are not going to do any such thing!"
This much from her was enough for him. He caught her hand and cried:
"Then you marry me. What do we care for anybody else in the world?"
"Go back and get your hat and stick and gloves," she commanded, keeping
down the tears.
"No, no, you come with me, Letty; I'm not going to let you run to your
motor and escape me again."
"Go; I'll wait here," she promised. "I give you my word."
As he snatched up the inanimate objects from the leaf-strewn ground
where he had thrown them in despair, he thought how things can change in
a quarter of an hour. For he had hope now, as he hurried back, as he
walked with her to her car, as he saw the little coral shoes stir in the
leaves when she passed under the trees. The little coral shoes trod on
his heart, but now it was light under her feet!
Jubilant to have overcome the fate which had tried to keep her hidden
from him in Paris, he could hardly believe his eyes that she was before
them again, and, as the motor rolled into the Avenue des Acacias, he
asked her the question uppermost in his mind:
"Are you alone in Paris, Letty?"
"Don't you count?"
"No--no--honestly, _you know what I mean_."
"You haven't any right to ask me that."
"I have--I have. You gave me a right. You're engaged to me, aren't you?
Gosh, you haven't _forgotten_, have you?"
"Don't make me conspicuous in the Bois, Dan," she said; "I only let you
come with me because you were so terribly desperate, so ridiculous."
"Are you alone?" he persisted. "I have got to know."
"Higgins is with me."
"Oh, God," he cried wildly, "how can you joke with me? Don't you
understand you're breaking my heart?"
But she did not dare to be kind to him, knowing it would unnerve her for
the part she had promised to play.
He sat gripping his hands tightly together, his lips white. "When I
leave you now," he said brokenly, "I am going to find that devil of a
Hungarian and do him up. Then I am going to tackle Ruggles."
"Why, what's poor Mr. Ruggles got to do with it?"
Dan cried scornfully: "For God's sake, don't keep this up! You know the
rot he told you? I made him confess. He has had this mania all along
about money being a handicap; he was bent on trying this game with some
girl to see how it worked." He continued more passionately. "I don't
care a rap what you marry me for, Letty, or what you have done or been.
I think you're perfect and I'll make you the happiest woman in the
world."
She said: "Hush, hush! Listen, dear; listen, little boy. I am awfully
sorry, but it won't do. I never thought it would. You'll get over it all
right, though you don't, you can't believe me now. I can't be poor, you
know; I really couldn't be poor."
He interrupted roughly: "Who says you'll be? What are you talking about?
Why, I'll cover you with jewels, sweetheart, if I have to rip the earth
open to get them out."
She understood that Dan believed Ruggles' story to have been a
cock-and-bull one.
"You talk as though you could buy me, Dan. Wait, listen." She put him
back from her. "Now, if you won't be quiet, I'm going to stop my car."
He repeated: "Tell me, are you alone in Paris? Tell me. For three days I
have wandered and searched for you everywhere; I have hardly eaten a
thing, I don't believe I have slept a wink." And he told her of his
weary search.
She listened to him, part of the time her white-gloved hand giving
itself up to the boy; part of the time both hands folded together and
away from him, her arms crossed on her breast, her small shoes of coral
kid tapping the floor of the car. Thus they rolled leisurely along the
road by the Bois. Through the green-trunked trees the sunlight fell
divinely. On the lake the swans swam, pluming their feathers; there were
children there in their ribbons and furbelows. The whole world went by
gay and careless, while for Dan the problem of his existence, his
possibility for happiness or pain was comprised within the little room
of the motor car.
"Are you alone in Paris, Letty?"
And she said: "Oh, what a bore you are! You're the most obstinate
creature. Well, I am alone, but that has nothing to do with you."
A glorious light broke over his face; his relief was tremendous.
"Oh, thank God!" he breathed.
"Poniotowsky"--and she said his name with difficulty--"is coming to-night
from Carlsbad."
The boy threw back his bright head and laughed wildly.
"Curse him! The very name makes me want to commit a crime. He will go
over my body to you. You hear me, Letty. I mean what I say."
People had already remarked them as they passed. The actress was too
well-known to pass unobserved, but she was indifferent to their
curiosity or to the existence of any one but this excited boy.
Blair, who had not opened a paper since he came to Paris, did not know
that Letty Lane's flight from London had created a scandal in the
theatrical world, that her manager was suing her, and that to be seen
with her driving in the Bois was a conspicuous thing indeed. She thought
of it, however.
"I am going to tell the man to drive you to the gate on the other side
of the park where it's quieter, we won't be stared at, and then I want
you to leave me and let me go to the Meurice alone. You must, Dan, you
must let me go to the hotel alone."
He laughed again in the same strained fashion and forced her hand to
remain in his.
"Look here. You don't suppose I am going to let you go like this, now
that I have seen you again. You don't suppose I am going to give you up
to that infamous scoundrel? You have got to marry me."
Bringing all her strength of character to bear, she exclaimed: "I expect
you think you are the only person who has asked me to marry him, Dan. I
am going to _marry_ Prince Poniotowsky. He is perfectly crazy about me."
Until that moment she had not made him think that she was indifferent to
him, and the idea that such a thing was possible, was too much for his
overstrained heart to bear. Dan cried her name in a voice whose appeal
was like a hurt creature's, and as the hurt creature in its suffering
sometimes springs upon its torturer, he flung his arms around her as she
sat in the motor, held her and kissed her, then set her free, and as the
motor flew along, tore open the door to spring out or to throw himself
out, but clinging to him she prevented his mad act. She stopped the car
along the edge of the quiet, wooded _allée_. Blair saw that he had
terrified her. She covered her beating heart with her hands and gasped
at him that he was "crazy, crazy," and perhaps a little late his dignity
and self-possession returned.
"I am mad," he acknowledged more calmly, "and I am sorry that I
frightened you. But you drive me mad."
Without further word he got out and left her agitated, leaning toward
him, and Blair, less pale and thoroughly the man, lifted his hat to her
and, with unusual grace, bowed good night and good-by. Then, rushing as
he had come, he walked off down through the _allée_, his gray figure in
his gray clothes disappearing through the vista of meeting trees.
For a moment she stared after him, her eyes fastened on the tall slender
beautiful young man. Blair's fire and ardor, his fresh youthfulness, his
protection and his chivalry, his ardent devotion, touched her
profoundly. Tears fell, and one splashed on her white glove. Was he
really going to ruin his life? The old ballad, _The Earl of Moray_, ran
through her head:
"And long may his lady look from the castle wall."
Dan had neither title nor, according to Ruggles, had he any money, and
she could marry the prince; but Dan, as he walked so fast away, misery
snapping at his heels as he went, stamping through the woods, seemed
glorious to Letty Lane and the only one she wanted in the world. What if
anything should happen to him really? What if he should really start out
to do the town according to the fashion of his Anglo-Saxon brothers, but
more desperately still? She took a card from the case in the corner of
the car, scribbled a few words, told the man to drive around the curve
and meet the outlet of the path by which Dan had gone. When she saw him
within reaching distance she sent the chauffeur across the woods to give
Mr. Blair her scribbled word and consoled herself with the belief that
Dan wouldn't "go to the dogs or throw himself in the river until he had
seen her again."