The Girl From His Town Part 27

"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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d," 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sionately. "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, hus.h.!.+ 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 c.o.c.k-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 G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sed. The actress was too well-known to pa.s.s un.o.bserved, 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 _allee_. 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, rus.h.i.+ng as he had come, he walked off down through the _allee_, 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 t.i.tle 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 fas.h.i.+on 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."