of her grace and her good looks. She was certainly better to look at than the simple girls with their big hands, small wits, long faces, and, as the boy expressed it, “utter lack of get-up.” The duchess shone out to advantage.
“Why don’t you talk to me?” she asked softly. “You know you would rather talk to me than the others.”
“Yes,” he said frankly; “they make me nervous.”
“And I don’t?”
“No,” he said. “I learn a lot every time we are together.”
“Learn?” she repeated, not particularly flattered by this. “What sort of things?”
“Oh, about the whole business,” he returned vaguely. “You know what I mean.”
“Then,” she said with a slight laugh, “you mean to say you talk with me for educational purposes? What a beastly bore!”
Dan did not contradict her. She was by no means Eve to him, nor was he the raw recruit his simplicity might give one to think. He had had his temptations and his way out of them was an easy one; for he was very slow to stir, and back of all was his ideal. The reality and power of this ideal Dan knew best at moments like these. But the Duchess of Breakwater was the most lovely woman – the most dangerous woman that had come his way. He liked her – Dan was well on the way to love.
The two were alone in the big dark room. At their side the small table, from which they had taken their tea together, stood with its empty cups and its silver. Without, the day was cold and windy, and the sunset threw along the panes a red reflection. The light fell on the Duchess of Breakwater, something like a veil – a crimson veil slipped over her face and breast. She leaned toward Dan, and between them there was no more barrier than the western light. He felt his pulses beat and a tide rising within him. She was a delicious emanation, fragrant and near, and as he might have gathered a cluster of flowers, so in the next second he would have taken her in his arms, but from the other room just then Lady Galorey, at the piano, played a snatch from Mandalay, striking at once into the tune. The sound came suddenly, told them quickly some one was near, and the Duchess of Breakwater involuntarily moved back, and so knocked the small tray, jostled it, and it fell clattering to the floor.
CHAPTER III – THE BLAIRTOWN SOLOIST
Blairtown had a population of some eight thousand. There was a Presbyterian church to which Dan and his father went regularly, sitting in the bare pew when the winter’s storms beat and rattled on the panes, or in the summer sunshine, when the flies thronged the window casings, when the smell of the pews and the panama fans and the hymn-books came strong to them through the heat.
One day there was a missionary sermon, and for the first time in its history a girl sang a solo in the First Presbyterian Church. Dan Blair heard it, looked up, and it made a mark in his life. A girl in a white dress trimmed with blue gentians, white cotton gloves, and golden hair, was the soloist. He knew her, that is, he had a nodding acquaintance with her. It was the girl at the drug store who sold soda-water, and he had asked her some hundreds of times for a “vanilla or a chocolate,” but it wasn’t this vulgar memory that made the little boy listen. It was the girl’s voice. Standing back of the yellow-painted rail, above the minister’s pulpit, above the flies, the red pews and the panama fans, she sang, and she sang into Dan Blair’s soul. To speak more truly, she made him a soul in that moment. She awakened the boy; his collar felt tight, his cheeks grew hot. He felt his new boots, too, hard and heavy. She made him want to cry. These were the physical sensations – the material part of the awakening. The rest went on deeply inside of Dan. She broke his heart; then she healed it. She made him want to cry like a girl; then she wiped his tears.
The little boy settled back and grew more comfortable and listened, and what she sang was,
“From Greenland’s icy mountains,
From India’s coral stra – ands.”
Before the hymn reached its end he was a calm boy again, and the hymn took up its pictures and became like an illustrated book of travels, and he wanted to see those pea-green peaks of Greenland, to float upon the icebergs to them, and see the dawn break on the polar seas as the explorers do… He should find the North Pole some day! Then he wanted to go to an African jungle, where the tiger, “tiger shining bright,” should flash his stripes before his eyes! Dan would gather wreaths of coral from the stra – ands and give them to the girl with the yellow hair! When he and his father came out together from the church, Dan chose the street that passed the soda-fountain drug store and peeped in. It was dark and cool, and behind the counter the drug clerk mixed the summer drinks: and the drug clerk mixed them from that time ever afterward – for the girl with the yellow hair never showed up in Blairtown again. She went away!
CHAPTER IV – IN THE CORAL ROOM
“Mandalay” had run at the Gaiety the season before and again opened the autumn season. Light and charming, thoroughly musical, it had toured successfully through Europe, but London was its home, and its great popularity was chiefly owing to the girl who had starred in it – Letty Lane. Her face was on every post-card, hand-bill, cosmetic box, and even popular drinks were named for her.
The night of the Osdene box party was the reopening of Mandalay, and the curtain went up after the overture to an outburst of applause. Dan Blair had never “crossed the pond” before this memorable visit, when he had gone straight out to Osdene Park. London theaters and London itself, indeed, were unexplored by him. He had seen what there was to be seen of the opera bouffe in his own country, but the brilliant, perfect performance of a company at the London Gaiety he had yet to enjoy.
The opening scene of Mandalay is oriental; the burst of music and the tinkling of the silvery temple bells and the effect of an extremely blue sea, made Dan “sit up,” as he put it. The theatrical picture was so perfect that he lifted his head, pushed his chair back to enjoy. He was thus close to the duchess. With invigorating young enthusiasm the boy drew in his breath and waited to be amused and to hear. The tunes he already knew before the orchestra began to charm his ear.
On landing at Plymouth Dan had been keen to feel that he was really stepping into the world, and at Osdene Park he had been daily, hourly “seeing life.” The youngest of the household, his youth nevertheless was not taken into consideration by any of them. No one had treated him like a junior. He had gone neck to neck with their pace as far as he liked, furnished them fresh amusement, and been their diversion. In all his rare unspoiled youth, Blair had been suddenly dropped down in an effete set that had whirled about him, and one by one out of the inner circle had called him to join them; and one by one with all of them Dan had whirled.
Lord Galorey had talked to him frankly, as plainly as if Dan had been his own father, and found much of the old man’s common sense in his fine blond head. Lady Galorey had come to him in a moment of great anxiety, and no one but her young guest knew how badly she needed help. He had further made it known to the lady that he was not in the marriage market; that she could not have him for any of her girls. And as for the Duchess of Breakwater, well – he had whirled with her until his head swam. He had grown years older at the Park in the few weeks of his visit, but now for the first time, as the music of Mandalay struck upon his ears, like a ripple of distant seas, he felt like the boy who had left Blairtown to come abroad. He had spent the most part of the day in London with a man who had come over to see him from America. Dan attended to his business affairs, and the people who knew said that he had a keen head. Mr. Joshua Ruggles, his father’s best friend, whom Dan this afternoon had left to go to his room at the Carlton, had put his arm with affection through the boy’s:
“Don’t look as though it were any too healthy down to the place you’re visiting at, Dan. Plumbing all right?”
