CHAPTER XI--RUGGLES GIVES A DINNER
The bright tide of worldly London flows after and around midnight intothe various restaurants and supper rooms, and as well through thecorridors and halls of the Carlton. At one of the small tables bearing agreat expensive bunch of orchids and soft ferns, Josh Ruggles, in a newevening dress, sat waiting for his party. Dan had dined with LordGalorey, and the two men had gone out together afterward, and Ruggleshad not seen the boy to give him Letty Lane's note.
"Got it with you?" Blair asked when he came in, and Ruggles respondedthat 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 oflast arrivals.
She had not dressed this evening with the intention that her darksimplicity of attire should be conspicuous. The cloak which Dan tookfrom her shed the perfume of orris and revealed the woman in a blaze ofsparkling _paillettes_. She seemed made out of sparkle, and her blondhead, from which a bright ornament shook, was the most brilliant thingabout her, though her dress from hem to throat glistened with discs ofgold like moonshine on a starry sea. The actress' look of surprise whenshe 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 tome! 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 littlehands, on which the ever present rings flashed, and went on talking toRuggles, 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 myselfand chose the bunch, blame me again; ditto dinner; mine from start tofinish--hope you'll like it. I would have added some Montana peas andsome chocolate soda-water, only I thought you might not understand thejoke."
Miss Lane beamed on him. Although he was unconscious of it, she was notfully 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 rumplediron-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 milkand eggs myself, and I expect your order didn't take in those." But athis fallen countenance she hurried to say: "Oh, I wouldn't have told youthat if I hadn't been intending to break through."
And with childlike anticipation she clapped her hands and said: "We'regoing to have 'lots of fun.' Just think, they don't know what that meanshere in London. They say 'heaps of sport, you know.'" She imitated theaccent 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 ofdelicate beauty beautifully gowned, of soft skin, glorious hair, and hegazed 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!" Andturning 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 youthere."
And the Westerner returned: "Well, from what Dan tells me, you're notmuch of a fixture yourself, Miss Lane. You were just about born and thenkidnapped."
Her gay expression faded. And she repeated his word, "Kidnapped? That'sa good word for it, Mr. Ruggles."
She picked up between her fingers a strand of the green fern, and lookedat 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 notthinking of writing my biography, are you?"
And it was Dan's voice that urged her. "Say, do go on. I was there thatday with my father, and you sang simply out of sight."
"Yes," she accepted, "out of sight of Blairtown and everybody I everknew. I went away the next day." She lifted her glass of champagne toher lips. "Here's one thing I oughtn't to do," she said, "but I'm goingto just the same. I'm going to do everything I want this evening.Remember, I let you drink six glasses of chocolate soda once." Shedrained her glass and her friends drank with her. "I like this soupawfully. What is it?"--just touching it with her spoon.
"Why," Ruggles hastened to tell her, "it ain't a _party_ soup, it'sScotch broth. But somehow it sounded good on the bill of fare. I fixedthe rest of the dinner up for you and Dan, but I let myself go on thesoup, it's my favorite."
She did not eat it, however, although she said it was splendid and thatshe 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 seenthat she did not want to talk about her past and yet that it fascinatedher.
"Just think of it!" he exclaimed. "I never heard a word about you untilI heard you sing the other night."
The actress laughed and told him that he had made up for lost time, andthat 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? Ilike it better than any part I ever had. I am interested about it forthe sake of the man who wrote it, too. It's his first opera; he's aninvalid and has a wife and five kids to look after."
And Ruggles replied, "Oh, gracious! I feel better than ever, having goneten times, although I wasn't _very_ sore about it before! Ain't yougoing to eat anything?"
She only picked at her food, drinking what they poured in her glass, andevery time she spoke to Dan a look of charming kindness crossed herface, an expression of good fellowship which Ruggles noted withinterest.
"I wish you could have seen this same author to-day at the rehearsal ofthe play," Letty Lane went on. "He's too ill to walk and they had tocarry him in a chair. We all went round to his apartments after thetheater. He lives in three rooms with his whole family and he's had somany debts and so much trouble and such a poor contract that he hasn'tmade 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 theadmiration 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 ofold. Her face was oval and perfectly formed, with the reddest ofmouths--the most delicious and softest of mouths--the line of her browsclear and straight, and her gray eyes large and as innocent andappealing as a child's; under their long lashes they opened up likeflowers. It was said that no man could withstand their appeal; that shehad but to look to make a man her slave; and as more than once sheturned to Dan, smiling and gracious, Ruggles watched her, mutelythinking of what he had heard this day, for after her letter cameaccepting their invitation he had taken pains to find out the things hewanted to know. It had not been difficult. As her face and form werepublic, on every post-card and in every photographer's shop, so theactress' reputation was the property of the public.
As Ruggles repeated these things to himself, he watched her beside theson of his old friend. They were talking--rather she was--and behind theorchids and the ferns her voice was sweet and enthralling. Ruggles triedto appreciate his bill of fare while the two appreciated each other. Itwas strange to Dan to have her so
near and so approachable. His sightsof her off the stage had been so slight and fleeting. On the boards shehad seemed to be an unreal creation made for the public alone. Herdress, cut fearlessly low, displayed her lovely young bosom--soft,bloomy, white as a shell--and her head and ears were as delicate as thepetals of a white rose. Low in the nape of her neck, her golden hair laylightly, and from its soft masses fragrance came to him.
Ruggles could hear her say: "Roach came to the house and told my peoplethat I had a fortune in my voice. I was living with my uncle and mystep-aunt and working in the store. And that same day your father sentdown a check for five hundred dollars. He said it was 'for the littlegirl with the sweet voice,' and it gives me a lot of pleasure to thinkthat I began my lessons on _that money_."
The son of old Dan Blair said earnestly: "I'm darned glad you did--I'mdarned glad you did!"
Letty Lane nodded. "So am I. But," with some sharpness, "I don't see whyyou speak that way. I've earned my way. I made a fortune for Roach allright."
"You mean the man you married?"
"Married--goodness gracious, what made you think that?" She threw backher pretty head and laughed--a laugh with the least possible merriment init. "Oh, Heavens, marry old Job Roach! So they say _that_, do they? Inever heard that. I hear a lot, but I never heard that fairy tale." Sheput 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 asrumor knew, she spent thousands on the London paupers, and theWesterner, who had never been given to reveling in scandals and to whomthere was something wicked in speaking ill of a woman, no matter whomshe might be, listened with embarrassment to tales he had been told inanswer to his other questions; and turned with relief to the stories ofLetty Lane's charity, and to the stories of her popularity and hersuccess. They were more agreeable, but they couldn't make him forget therest, and now as he looked at her face across the bouquet of orchids andferns, it was with a sinking of heart, a great pity for her, and still adecided enmity. He disapproved of her down to the ground. He didn't lethimself think how he felt, but it was for the boy. Ruggles was not a manof 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 andstrenuous measures. He had been led in what he was doing to-night by adiplomacy and a common sense that few men east of the Mississippi wouldhave 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 himto 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 toget a lot, though, out of him, and when you asked me to dine to-night Isaid 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 tiredthese days, and going out to supper is just one thing too much to do! Iwant Mr. Blair," she said, turning to Ruggles as if she knew a word fromhim would make the thing go through, "to help me build a rest home downon the English coast, for girls who get discouraged in their art. When Ithink of the _luck_ I have had and how these things have been from thebeginning, 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, whogo on for a little while and have to give up. You can't tell,"--shenodded to Ruggles, as though she were herself a matron of forty,--"youcan not tell what their temptations are or what comes up to make them goto pieces."
Ruggles listened with interest.
"I haven't thought it all out yet, but so many come to me tired out anddiscouraged, and I think a nice home taken care of by a good creaturelike my Higgins, let us say, would be a perfect blessing to them. Theycould go there and rest and study and just think, and perhaps," she saidslowly, as though while she spoke she saw a vision of a tired self, forwhom there had been no rest home and no place of retreat, "perhaps a lotof them would pull through in a different way. Now to-day"--she broke hermeditative tone short--"I got a letter from a hospital where a poor thingthat used to sing with me in New York was dying with consumption--allgone to pieces and discouraged, and there is where your primroses wentto--" 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 hercharity, 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 lookedaround the room indifferently. The orchestra was softly playing _TheDove Song_ from _Mandalay_, and very softly under her breath the starhummed it, her eyes vaguely fixed on some unknown scene. To Dan and toRuggles she had grown strange. The music, her brilliancy, her suddenindifference, put her out of their commonplace reach. Ruggles to himselfthought with relief:
"She doesn't care one rap for the boy anyway, thank God. She's got otherfish to land."
And Dan Blair thought: "It's my infernal money again." But he wasgenerous at heart and glad to be of service to her, and was perfectlywilling to be "touched" for her poor. Then two or three men came up andjoined them. She greeted them indolently, bestowing a word or a look onthis 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, andDan saw Prince Poniotowsky making his way toward their table across theroom.
Letty Lane rose. Dan put her cloak about her shoulders, and glancingtoward Ruggles and toward the boy as indifferently as she had consideredthe new-comers, who formed a small group around the brilliant figure ofthe actress, she nodded good night to both Ruggles and Blair and went upto the Hungarian as though he were her husband, who had come to take herhome. However, at the door she sufficiently shook off her mood to smileslightly at Dan:
"I have had 'lots of fun,' and the Scotch broth was great! Thank youboth so much."
Until they were up in their sitting-room her hosts did not exchange aword. Then Ruggles took a book up from the table and sat down with hiscigar. "I am going to read a little, Dan. Slept all day; feel aswide-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 moresupper 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 puthis book down to muse. And his meditations were on the tide of life andthe beds it runs over; the living whirlpool as Ruggles himself had seenit coursing through London under fog and mist. It seemed now to surge upin the dark to his very windows, and the flow mysteriously passed underhis windows in these silent hours when no one can see the muddy, muddybottom over which the waters go. Out of the sound, as it flowed on, thecries rose, he thought, kindly to his ears: "God bless her--God blessLetty Lane!" And with this sound he closed his meditations, thinking ofa more peaceful stream, the brighter, sweeter waters of the boy'snature, translucent and clear. The vision was happier, and with itRuggles rose and yawned, and shut his book.
The Girl From His Town Page 11