His next sensation was that a warm stream flowed about his heart.
"My life's blood," he could dimly think, "my heart's blood." Redder than
coral, more precious, more costly than any gift his millions could have
bought her. "I've spent it for the girl I love." The stream pervaded
him, caressed him, folded his limbs about, became an enchanted sea on
which he floated, and its color changed from crimson to coral pale, and
then to white, and became a cold, cold polar sea--and he lay on it like a
frozen man, whose exploration had been in vain, and above him
Greenland's icy mountains rose like emerald, on every side.
That is it--"Greenland's icy mountains." How she sang it--down--down. Her
voice fell on him like magic balm. He was a little boy in church,
sitting small and shy in the pew. The tune was deep and low and heavenly
sweet. What a pretty mouth the soda-fountain girl had--like coral; and
her eyes like gray seas. The flies buzzed, they droned so loudly that he
couldn't hear her. Ah, that was terrible--_he couldn't hear her_.
No--no, it wouldn't do. He must hear the hymn out before he died.
Buzz--buzz--drone--drone. Way down he almost heard the soft note. It was
ecstasy. Sky--high up--too faint. Ah, Sodawater Fountain
Girl--sing--sing--with all your heart so that it may reach his ears and
charm him to those strands toward which he floats.
* * * * *
The expression of anguish on the young fellow's face was so
heartbreaking that the doctor, his ear at Dan's lips, tried to learn
what thing his poor, fading mind longed for.
From the bed's foot, where he stood, Dan's chauffeur came to his
gentleman's side, and nodded:
"Right, sir, right, sir--I'll fetch Miss Lane--I'll 'ave 'er 'ere,
sir--keep up, Mr. Blair."
* * * * *
He was going barefoot, a boy still following the plow through the
mountain fields. Miles and miles stretched away before him of dark,
loamy land. He saw the plow tear up the waving furrows, tossing the
earth in sprinkling lines. He heard the shrill note of the phoebe bird,
and looking heavenward saw it darting into the pale sky.
"What a dandy shot!" he thought. "What a bully shot!"
Prince Poniotowsky had made a good shot....
Ah, there was the smell of the hayfields--no--violets that sweetly laid
their petals on his lips and face. He was back again in church, lying
prone before an altar. If she would only sing, he would rise again--that
he knew--and her coral shoes would not dance over his grave.
He opened his eyes wide and looked into Letty Lane's. She bent over him,
crying.
"Sing," he whispered.
She didn't understand.
"Sodawater Fountain Girl--if you only knew how ... the flies buzzed, and
how the droning was a living pain...."
She said to Ruggles: "He wants something so heartbreakingly--what can we
do?" She saw his hands stir rhythmically on the counterpane--he didn't
look to her more than ten years old.... What a cruel thing--he was a boy
just of age--a boy--
Ruggles remembered the nights he had spent before the footlights of the
Gaiety, and that the pale woman trembling there weeping was a great
singer.
"I guess he wants to hear you sing."
She kneeled down by him; she trembled so she couldn't stand.
The others, the doctor and Ruggles, the waiters and porters gathered in
the hall, heard. No one of them understood the Gaiety girl's English
words.
"From Greenland's icy mountains,
From India's coral strands ..."
They were merciful and let him listen in peace. Through the blur in his
brain, over the beat of his young ardent heart, above the short breaths
the notes reached his failing senses, and lifted him--lifted him. There
wasn't a very long distance between his boyhood and his twenty-two years
to go, and he was not so weak but that he could travel so far.
He sat there by his father again--and heard. The flies buzzed, and he
didn't mind them. The smell of the fields came in through the windows
and the Sodawater Fountain Girl sang--and sang; and as she sang her face
grew holy to his eyes--radiant with a beauty he had not dreamed a woman's
face could wear. Above the choir rail she stood and sang peerlessly, and
the church began to fade and fade, and still she stood there in a shaft
of light, and her face was like an angel's, and she held her arms out to
him as the waters rose to his lips. She bent and lifted him--lifted him
high upon the strands....