CHAPTER XIV--FROM INDIA'S CORAL STRANDS

Mrs. Higgins, in Miss Lane's apartment at the Savoy, was adjusting the photographs and arranging the flowers when she was surprised by a caller, who came up without the formality of sending his name.

"Do you think," Blair asked her, "that Miss Lane would see me half a minute? I called yesterday, and the day before, as soon as I saw that there was a substitute singing in _Mandalay_. Tell her I'm as full of news as a charity report, please, and I rather guess that will fetch her."

Something fetched her, for in a few minutes she came languidly in, and by the way she smiled at her visitor it might be thought Dan Blair's name alone had brought her in. The actress had been ill for a fortnight with what the press notices said was influenza. She wore a teagown, long and white as foam, her hair rolled in a soft knot, and her face was pale as death. Frail and small as she was, she was more ethereal than when in perfect health.

"Don't stand a minute." And by the hand she gave him Dan led her over to the lounge where the pillows were piled and a fur-lined silk cover thrown across the sofa.

"Don't give me that heavy rug, there's that little white shawl." She pointed to it, and Dan, as he gave it to her, recognized the shawl in which she wrapped herself when she crossed the icy wings.

"It's in those infernal side scenes you get colds."

He sat down by her. She began to cough violently and he asked, troubled, "Who's taking care of you, anyway?"

"Higgins and a couple of doctors."

"That's all?"

"Yes. Why, who should be?"

Dan didn't follow up his jealous suspicion, but asked in a tone almost paternal and softly confidential:

"How are your finances getting on?"

Her lips curved in a friendly smile. But she made a dismissing gesture with her frail little hand.

"Oh, I'm all right; Higgins told me you had some news about my poor people."

The fact that she did not take up the financial subject made him unpleasantly sure that her wants had been supplied.

"Got a whole bunch of news," Dan replied cheerfully. "I went to see the old man and the girl in their diggings. Gosh, you couldn't believe such things were true."

She drew her fine brows together. "I guess there are a good many things that would surprise you. But you don't need to tell me about hard times. That's the way I am. I'll do anything, give anything, so long as I don't have to hear hard stories." She turned to him confidentially. "Perhaps it's acting in false scenes on the stage; perhaps it's because I'm lazy and selfish, but I can't bear to hear about tales of woe."

What she said somewhat disturbed his idea of her big-hearted charity.

"I don't believe you're lazy or selfish," he said sincerely, "but I've got an idea that not many people really know you."

This amused her. Looking at him quizzically, she laughed. "I expect you think you do."

Dan answered: "Well, I guess the people that see you when you are a kid, who come from your own part of the country, have a sort of friendship." And the girl on the sofa from the depths of her shawl put out a thin little hand to him and said in a voice as lovely in tone as when she sang in _Mandalay_:

"Well, I guess that's right! I guess that's about true."

After the tenth of a second, in which she thought best to take her little cold hand away from those big warm ones, she asked:

"Now please do tell me about the poor people."

In this way giving him to understand how really true his better idea of her had been.

"Why, the old duffer is as happy as a house afire," said the boy. "Not to boast, I've done the whole thing up as well as I knew how. I've got him into that health resort you spoke of, and the girl seems to have got a regular education vice! She wants to study something, so she's going to school."

"Go on talking," the actress invited languidly. "I love to hear you talk Montana! Don't change your twang for this beastly English drawl, whatever you do."

"You have, though, Miss Lane. I don't hear a thing of Blairtown in the way you speak."

And the girl said passionately: "I wish to God I spoke it right through! I wish I had never changed my speech or anything in me that was like home."

And the boy leaning forward as eagerly exclaimed: "Oh, do you mean that? Think how crazy London is about you! Why, if you ever go back to Montana, they will carry you from the cars in a triumphal chair through the town."

She waited until she could control the emotion in her voice.

"Go on telling me about the little girl."

"She was so trusting as to give the money up to me and I guess it will draw interest for her all right."

"Thank you," smiled the actress, "you are terribly sweet. The child got Higgins to let her into my dressing-room one day after a matinée. I haven't time to see anybody except then."

Here Higgins made her appearance in the room, with an egg-nog for her lady, which, after much coaxing, Dan succeeded in getting the actress to drink. Higgins also had taken away the flowers, and Letty Lane said to Dan:

"I send them to the hospital; they make me sick." And Dan timidly asked:

"Mine, too?"

This brought a flush across the ivory pallor of her cheek. "No, no, Higgins keeps them In the next room." And with an abrupt change of subject she asked: "Is the Duchess of Breakwater very charitable?" And Blair quickly replied:

"Anyhow she wants you to sing for her at a musicale in Park Lane when you're fit."

Miss Lane gave a soft little giggle. "Is _that_ what you call being charitable?"

Dan blushed crimson and exclaimed: "Well, hardly!"

"Did you come here to ask me that?"

"I came to tell you about 'our mutual poor.' You'll let me call them that, won't you, because I happened to be in your dressing-room when they struck their vein?"

Miss Lane had drawn herself up in the corner of the sofa, and sat with her hands clasped around her knees, all swathed around and draped by the knitted shawl, her golden head like a radiant flower, appearing from a bank of snow. Her fragility, her sweetness, her smallness, appealed strongly to the big young fellow, whose heart was warm toward the world, whose ideals were high, and who had the chivalrous longing inherent in all good men to succor, to protect, and above all to adore. No feeling in Dan Blair had been as strong as this, to take her in his arms, to lift her up and carry her away from London and the people who applauded her, from the people that criticized her, and from Poniotowsky.

He was engaged to the Duchess of Breakwater. And as far as his being able to do anything for Letty Lane, he could only offer her this politeness from the woman he was going to marry.

"I never sing out of the theater." Her profile was to him and she looked steadily across the room. "It's a perfect fight to get the manager to consent."

Blair interrupted and said: "Oh, I'll see him; I'll make it all right."

"Please don't," she said briskly, "it's purely a business affair. How much will she pay?"

Dan was rather shocked. "Anything you like."

And her bad humor faded at his tone, and she smiled at him. "Well, I'll tell Roach that. I guess it'll make my singing a sure thing."

She changed her position and drew a long sigh as though she were very tired, leaned her blond head with its soft disorder back on the pillow, put both her folded hands under her cheek and turned her face toward Dan. The most delicate coral-like color began to mount her cheeks, and her gray eyes regained their light.

"Will two thousand dollars be too much to ask?" she said gently.

If she had said two million to the young fellow who had not yet begun to spend his fortune, which as far as he was concerned was nothing but a name, it would not have been too much to him; not too much to have given to this small white creature with her lovely flushed face, and her glorious hair.

"Whatever is your price, Miss Lane, goes."

"I'll sing three songs: one from _Mandalay_, an English ballad and something or other, I don't know what now, and I expect you don't realize how cheaply you are getting them." She laughed, and began to hum a familiar air.

"I wish you would sing just one song for me."

"For another thousand?" she asked, lifting her eyebrows. "What song is it?"

And as Dan hesitated, as if unwilling to give form to words that were so full of spell to him, she said deliciously: "Why, can you see a London drawing-room listening to me sing a Presbyterian hymn tune?" Without lifting her head from the pillow she began in a charming undertone, her gray eyes fixed on his:

"From Greenland's icy mountains, From India's coral strands, Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sands."

Blair, near her, turned pale. There rose in him the same feeling that she had stirred years ago in the little church, and at the same time others. He had lost his father since then, and he thought of him now, but that big, sad emotion was not the one that swayed him.

"Please stop," he pleaded; "don't go on. Say, there's something in that hymn that hurts."

Letty Lane, unconscious of how subtly she was playing, laughed, and suddenly remembered that Dan had sat before her that day by the side of old Mr. Blair. She asked abruptly:

"Why does the Duchess of Breakwater want me to sing?"

"Because she's crazy about your voice."

"Is she awfully rich?"

"Um ... I don't know."

Letty Lane flashed a look at him. "Oh," she said coolly, "I guess she won't pay the price then."

Dan said: "Yes, she will; yes, she will, all right."

"Now," Letty Lane went on, "if it were a charity affair, I could sing for nothing, and I don't doubt the duchess, if she is as benevolent as you say she is, could get me up some kind of a charity show."

Dan, who had started to rise, now leaned toward her and said: "Don't you worry about it a bit. If you'll come and sing we will make it right about the price and the charity; everything shall go your way."

She was seized upon by a violent fit of coughing, and Dan leaned toward her and put his arm around her as a brother might have done, holding her tenderly until the paroxysm was past.

"Gosh!" he exclaimed fervently, "it's heartbreaking to hear you cough like that and to think of your working as you do. Can't you stop and take a good rest? Can't you go somewhere?"

"To Greenland's icy mountains?" she responded, smiling. "I hate the cold."

"No, no; to some golden sands or other," he murmured under his breath. "And let me take you there."

But she pushed him back, laughing now. "No golden sands for me. I'm afraid I've got to sing in _Mandalay_ to-night."

He looked at her in dismay.

She interrupted his protest: "I've promised on my word of honor, and the box-office has sold the seats with that understanding."

By her sofa, leaning over her, in a choked voice he murmured:

"You _shan't_ sing! You shan't go out to-night!"

"Don't be a goose, boy," she said. "You've no right to order me like that. Stand back, please." As he did so she whisked herself off the sofa with a sudden ardor and much grace. "Now," she told him severely, "since you've begun to take that tone with me, I'm going to tell you that you mustn't come here day after day as you have been doing. I guess you know it, don't you?"

He stood his ground, but his bright face clouded. They had been so near each other and were now so removed.

"I don't care a damn what people say," he replied.

She interrupted him. She could be wonderfully dignified, small as she was, wrapped as she was in the woolen shawl. "Well," she drawled with a sudden indolence and indifference in her voice, "I expect you'll be surprised to hear that _I_ do care. Sounds awfully funny, doesn't it? But as you have been coming to the theater now night after night till everybody's talking about it--"

"You don't want my friendship," he stammered.

And Letty Lane controlled her desire to laugh at his boyish subterfuge. "No, I don't think I do."

Her tone struck him deeply: hurt him terribly. He threw his head up defiantly.

"All right, I'm turned down then," he said simply. "I didn't think you'd act like this to a boy you'd known all your life!"

"Don't be silly, you know as well as I do that it won't do."

He did know it and that he had already done enough to make it reasonable for the duchess, if she wanted to, to break their engagement. Slowly preparing to take his leave, he said wistfully: "Can't I help you in any way? Let me do something with you for your poor. It's a comfort to have them between us, and you can count on me."

She said she knew it. "But don't come any more to the wings; get a habit of _not_ coming."

On the threshold of her door he asked her to let him know when she would sing in Park Lane, and in touching her hand he repeated that she must count on him. With more tenderness in his blue eyes than he was himself aware, he murmured devotedly:

"Take care of yourself, won't you, please?"

As Blair passed from the sitting-room into the hall and toward the lift, Mrs. Higgins came out hurriedly from one of the rooms and joined him.

"How did you find her, Mr. Blair?"

"Awfully seedy, Mrs. Higgins; she needs a lot of care."

"She won't take it though," returned the woman. "Just seems to let herself go, not to mind a bit, especially these last weeks. I'm glad you came in; I've been hoping you would, sir."

"I'm not any good though, she won't listen to a word I say."

It seemed to surprise the dressing woman.

"I'm sorry to hear it, sir; I thought she would. She talks about you often."

He colored like a school-boy. "Gosh, it's a shame to have her kill herself for nothing." Reluctant to talk longer with Mrs. Higgins, he added in spite of himself: "She seems so lonely."

"It's two weeks now since that human devil went away," Mrs. Higgins said unexpectedly, looking quietly into the blue eyes of the visitor.

"She hasn't opened one of his letters or his telegrams. She has sold every pin and brooch he ever gave her, scattered the money far and wide. You saw how she went on with Cohen, and her pearls."

Dan heard her as through a dream. Her words gave form and existence to a dreadful thing he had been trying to deny.

"Is she hard up now, Mrs. Higgins?" he asked softly. And glancing at him to see just how far she might go, the woman said:

"An actress who spends and lives as Miss Lane does is always hard up."

"Could you use money without her knowing about it?"

"Lord," exclaimed the woman, "it wouldn't be hard, sir! She only knows that there is such a thing as money when the bills come and she hasn't got a penny. Or when the poor come! She's got a heart of gold, sir, for everybody that is in need."

He took out of his wallet a wad of notes and put them in Higgins' hands. "Just pay up some bills on the sly, and don't you tell her on your life. I don't want her to be worried." Explaining with sensitive understanding: "It's all right, Mrs. Higgins; I'm from her town, you know." And the woman who admired him and understood him, and whose life had made her keen to read things as they were, said earnestly:

"I quite understand how it is, sir. It is just as though it came straight from 'ome. She overdraws her salary months ahead."

"Have you been with Miss Lane long?"

"Ever since she toured in Europe, and nobody could serve her without being very fond of her indeed."

Dan put out his big warm hand eagerly. "You're a corker, Mrs. Higgins."

"I could walk around the world for her, sir."

"Go ahead and do it then," he smiled, "and I'll pay for all the boot leather you wear out!"

As he went down-stairs, already too late to keep an engagement made with his fiancée, he stopped in the writing-room to scribble off a note of excuse to the duchess. At the opposite table Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky, writing, as well. The Hungarian did not see Blair, and when he had finished his note he called a page boy and Dan could hear him send his letter up to Miss Lane's suite. The young Westerner thought with confident exaltation, "Well, he'll get left all right, and I'm darned if I don't sit here and see him turned down!"

Dan sat on until the page returned and gave Poniotowsky a verbal message.

"Will you please come up-stairs, sir?"

And Blair saw the Hungarian rise, adjust his eye-glass, and walk toward the lift.