CHAPTER X--THE BOY FROM MY TOWN
He went the next day to see Letty Lane at the Savoy and learned that shewas too ill to receive him. Mrs. Higgins in the sitting-room told himso.
Dan liked the big cordial face of the Scotch-woman who acted ascompanion, dresser and maid for the star. Mrs. Higgins had an affableface, one that welcomes, and she made it plain that she was not an enemyto this young caller.
The visitor, in his blue serge clothes, was less startling than most ofthe men that came to see her mistress.
"She works too hard, doesn't she?"
"She does everything too hard, sir."
"She ought to rest."
"I doubt if she does, even in her grave," returned Higgins. "She is toofull of motion. She is like the little girl in the fairy book thatdanced in her grave."
Dan didn't like this comparison.
"Can't you make her hold up a little?"
Higgins smiled and shook her head.
Letty Lane's sitting-room was as full of roses as a flower garden. Therewere quantities of theatrical photographs in silver and leather frameson the tables and the piano. Signed portraits from crowned heads;pictures of well-known worldly men and women whom the dancer hadcharmed. But a full-length picture of Letty Lane herself in one of thedresses of _Mandalay_ lay on the table near Dan, and he picked it up.She smiled at him enchantingly from the cardboard, across which waswritten in her big, dashing hand: "For the Boy from _my_ Town. LettyLane."
Dan glanced up at Mrs. Higgins.
"Why, that looks as though this were for me."
The dressing woman nodded. "Miss Lane thought she would be able to seeyou to-day."
The picture in his hand, Dan gazed at it rapturously.
"I'm from Blairtown, Montana, where she came from."
"So she told me, sir."
He laid the picture back on the table, and Higgins understood that hewanted Miss Lane to give it to him herself. She led him affably to thedoor and affably smiled upon him. She had a frill in her hand, a thimbleon her finger, and a lot of needles in her bodice. She looked motherlyand useful. Blair liked to think of her with Letty Lane. He put his handin his pocket, but she saw his gesture and reproved him quietly: "No,no, sir, please, I never do. I am just as much obliged," and her faceremained so affable that Blair was not embarrassed by her refusal. Hisparting words were:
"Now, you make her take care of herself."
And to please him, as she opened the door, she pleasantly assured himthat she would do her very best.
Dan went out of the Savoy feeling that he had left something of himselfbehind him in the motley room of an actress with its perfumed atmosphereof roses and violets. The photograph which he had laid down on the tableseemed to look out at him again, and he repeated delightedly, "That onewas for me, all right! I'm the 'boy from her town' and no mistake." Andhe thought of her as she had lain, lifelessly and pale on thedressing-room sofa, under the touch of hired hands, and how, no doubt,she had been lying in her room when he called to-day, with shades drawn,resting before the long hard evening, when London would be amused byher, delighted by her, charmed by her voice, by her body and her grace.He had wandered up as far as Piccadilly, went into a florist's and stoodbefore the flowers. Her sitting-room had been full of roses, but Danchose something else that had caught his eye from the window,--a hugecountry basket of primroses, smelling of the earth and the spring. Hesent them with his card and wrote on it, "To the Girl from My Town," andsent the gift with a pleasure as young and as fresh as was his ownheart.
He got no note of acknowledgment from his flowers. Miss Lane wasevidently better and played every night; no mention was made of herindisposition in the papers. But Dan couldn't go to the Gaiety or bearto see her make the effort which he knew must tire her beyond words toconceive.
After a few days he called at the Savoy to get news of her. He got asfar as the lift when going up in it he saw Prince Poniotowsky. The sightaffected Miss Lane's townsman so forcibly that instead of going up tothe dancer's apartment Dan took himself off, and anger, displeasure andsomething like disgust were the only sentiments he carried away from theSavoy. He sent her no flowers, and gave himself up unreservedly toJoshua Ruggles and to a couple of men who came in to see him byappointment. And when toward four o'clock he found himself alone withRuggles, Dan threw himself down in a big chair and looked intenselybored.
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"Well, I guess we don't need to see any more of these fellows for aweek, Dan," Ruggles yawned with relief. "I'm blamed if it isn't as hardto take care of money as to get it. I was a poor man once, and so wasyour father. Those were the days we had fun."
Ruggles took out a big cigar, struck a match sharply, and when he hadlit his Henry Clay he fixed his gaze on the flying London fog, whoseblack curtain drew itself across their window.
"There's a lot of excitement," Ruggles said, "in not knowing what you'regoing to get; may turn out to be anything when you're young and on thetrail. That's the way your father and me felt. And when we started outon the spot that's Blairtown on the map to-day, your father had fortydollars a week to engineer a busted mine and to pull the company intoshape."
Dan knew the story of his father's rise by heart, but he listened.
"He took on with the mine a lot of discontented half-heartedrapscallions--a whole bunch, who had failed all along the line. He didn'tchuck 'em out. 'There's no life in old wood, Josh,' he said to me, 'butsometimes there's fire in it, and I'm going to light up,' and he did. Hewon over the whole lot of them in eighteen months, and within two yearshe had that darned mine paying dividends. Meanwhile something came hisway and he took it."
From his chair Dan asked: "You mean the Bentley claim?"
"Measles," his friend said comically, with a grin. "Your father was sickto death with them. When he was sitting up for the first time, peelingin his room, there was a fellow, an Englishman, a total stranger, comein to see him. 'Better clear out of here,' your father says to him. 'I'mshedding the damnedest disease for a grown man that ever was caught.''I'm not afraid of it,' the Englishman said, 'I'm shedding worse.' Whenyour father asked him what that was, he said the idea that he could makeany money in the West. He told your father that he was going back toEngland and give up his western schemes, and that he had a claim tosell, and he told Blair where it lay. 'Who has seen it?' your fatherasked. 'Any of my men?' And the Englishman told your father that nobodyhad wanted to buy it and that was why he had come to him. He said hethought his only chance to sell was to hold up some blind man on hisdying bed and that he had heard that Blair was too sick to stir out ofhis room and to prospect. Your father liked the fellow's cheek and whenhe found out that he had the maps with him, your father bought the wholeblooming sweep at the man's price, which was a mere song.
"Your father never went near his purchase for a year or more, and whenhe had turned the mine he was managing over to the original company,with me as manager in his place, at a salary of twenty thousand dollarsa year, he said to me one day, 'Ruggles, you'll be sorry to know thatthe fun is all over, I've struck oil.' But the oil was copper. The wholeblooming business that he'd bought of that Englishman was rich with ore.Well, that's the story of Blairtown," Ruggles said. "You were born thereand your mother died there."
Dan said: "Galorey told me what dad did later for the man that sold himthe mine, and it was just like everything else he did, for dad was allright, just as good as they come."
Ruggles agreed. He left his reminiscences abruptly. "Your dad and me hadthe fun in our time; now you are going to get the other kind; you'regoing to make the dust fly that he dug up."
And the rich young man said musingly: "I'll bet it isn't half as good atmy end."
And Ruggles agreed: "Not by a jugful." And followed: "What's onto-night? _Mandalay?_"
Dan's fury at Prince Poniotowsky came back. "I guess you thought I was alittle loose in the lid, didn't you, Josh, going so often to the sameplay?"
"You wouldn't have been the first rich man that had
the same disease,"Ruggles answered.
"There is nothing the matter with _Mandalay_, but I'm not gone on anyactress living, Josh; you are in the wrong pew."
Dan altered his indolent pose and sat forward. "But I _am_ thinking ofgetting married," he said.
"I hope it's to the right girl, Dan."
And with young assurance Blair answered: "It will be if I marry her. Iknow what I want all right."
"I hope she knows what she wants, Dan."
"How do you mean?"
"You or your money. You have the darnedest handicap, my boy."
Blair flushed. "I'll get to hate the whole thing," he said ferociously."It meets me everywhere--bonds--stocks--figures--dividends--coupons--deeds--it's too much!" he said suddenly, with resentment. "It istoo much for me. Why, sometimes I feel a hundred years old, and like ahunk of gold."
Ruggles, in answer to this, said: "Why, that reminds me of what a manremarked about your father once. It was the same English chap yourfather bought the claim of. Speaking of Blair, he said to me: 'You knowthere's all kinds of metal bars, and when you cut into them some isbullion and some's coated with aluminum, and there's others that whenyou cut down, cut a clean yellow all along the line.' If, as you say,you feel like a hunk of metal, it ain't bad if it is that kind."
"It's got to stop coming in between me and the woman I marry, all right,though." Dan did not pursue his subject further, for his feelings aboutthe duchess were too unreal to give him the sincere heartiness withwhich he would have liked to answer Ruggles.
He went over to the window, and, with his hands in his pockets, stoodlooking out at the fog. Ruggles, at the table, opened the cover of thebook of _Mandalay_ and took out the four checks made out to Lady Galoreyand which he had forgotten. He hurriedly thrust them into his pocket.
"Come away, Dannie," he said cheerfully, "let's do something wild. Ifeel up to most anything with this miserable fog down on me. If it hadany nerve it would take some form or shape, so a man could choke itback."
Ruggles blew his nose violently.
"There's nothing to do," said Dan in a bored tone.
"Why don't you see who your telegram is from?" Ruggles asked him. Itproved to be a suggestion from Gordon Galorey that Dan should meet himat five o'clock at the club.
"What will you do, Rug?"
"Sleep," said the Westerner serenely; "I'm nearly as happy in London asI am in Philadelphia. It's four o'clock now and I can't sleep more thanfour hours anyway. Let's have a real wild time, Dannie."
Dan looked at him doubtfully, but Ruggles' eyes were keen.
"What kind of a time do you mean?"
"Let's ask the Gaiety girl for dinner--for supper after the theater."
"Letty Lane? She wouldn't go."
"Why not?"
"She is awfully delicate; it is all she can do to keep her contracts."
He knows that, Ruggles thought. "Let's ask her and see." He went over tothe table and drew out the paper. "Come on and write and ask her to goout with us to supper."
"See here, Rug, what's this for?"
"What's strange in it? She is from our state, and if you don't hustleand ask her I am going to ask her all alone."
Dan was puzzled as he sat down to the table, reflecting that it wasperfectly possible that old Ruggles had fallen a prey to the charms ofan actress. She wouldn't come, of course. He wrote a formal invitationwithout thinking very much of what he said or how, folded and addressedhis note.
"What did you say?" Ruggles asked eagerly.
"Why, that two boys from home wanted to give her a supper."
"Well," said Ruggles, "if the answer comes while you are at the clubI'll open it and give the orders. Think she'll come?"
"I do not," responded Dan rather brutally. "She's got others to take herout to supper, you bet your life."
"Well, there's none of them as rich as you are, I reckon, Dan."
And the boy turned on him violently.
"See here, Josh, if you speak to me again of my money, when there's awoman in the question--"
He did not finish his threat, but snatched up his coat and hat andgloves and went out of the door, slamming it after him.
Mr. Ruggles' profound and happy snore was cut short by the page boy, whofetched in a note, with the Savoy stamping on the back. Ruggles openedit not without emotion.
"Dear boy," it ran, "I haven't yet thanked you for the primroses; theywere perfectly sweet. There is not one of them in any of my rooms, andI'll tell you why to-night. I am crazy to accept for supper"--here shehad evidently struck out her intended refusal, and closed with, "I'mcoming, but don't come after me at the Gaiety, please. I'll meet you atthe Carlton after the theater. Who's the other boy? L. L."
The "other boy" read the note with much difficulty, for it was badlywritten. "He'll have to stop sending her flowers and going every nightto the theater unless he wants a row with the duchess," he said dryly.And with a certain interest in his role, Ruggles rang for the headwaiter, and with the man's help ordered his first midnight supper for anactress.
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