CHAPTER XXII--WHAT WILL YOU TAKE?
When Dan, on the minute of two, went to the Savoy, Higgins, as was hercustom, did not meet him. Miss Lane met him herself. She was reading aletter by the table, and when Dan was announced she put it back in itsenvelope. Blair had seen her only in soft clinging evening dresses, inwhite visionary clothes, or in her dazzling part costume, where the playdress of the dancer displayed her beauty and her charms. To-day she worea tailor-made gown, and in her dark cloth dress, in her small hat, sheseemed a new woman--some one he hadn't known and did not know, and heexperienced the thrill a man always feels when the woman he lovesappears in an unaccustomed dress and suggests a new mystery.
"Oh, I say! You're not going out, are you?"
In the lapel of her close little coat was a flower he had given her. Hewanted to lean forward and kiss it as it rested there. She assured him:
"I have just come in; had an early lunch and took a long walk--think ofit! I haven't taken a walk alone since I can remember!"
Her walk had given her only the ghost of a flush, which rose over herdelicate skin, fading away like a furling flag. Her frailness, herslenderness, the air of good-breeding her dress gave her, added to Dan'sdeepening emotions. She seemed infinitely dear, and a thing to beprotected and fostered.
"Can't you sit down for a minute? I've come to make you a real call."
"Of course," she laughed. "But, first, I must answer this letter."
His jealousy rose and he caught hold of her hand that held the envelope."Look here, you are not to write it if it is to that damned scoundrel. Itook you away from him last night and you are never to see him again."
For the first time the two really looked at each other. Her lips partedas though she would reprove him, and the boy murmured:
"That's all right. I mean what I say--never to see him again! Will youpromise me? Promise me--I can't bear it! I won't have it!"
A film of emotion crossed his clear young eyes and her slender handswere held fast in his clasp. His face was beautiful in its tendernessand in a righteous anger as he bent it on her. Instead of reproving himas she had done before, instead of snatching away her hands, she swayed,and at the sight of her weakness his eyes cleared, and the film liftedlike a curtain. She was not fainting, but, as her face turned towardhis, he saw it transformed, and Dan caught her in her dark dress, theflowers in her bodice, to his heart. He held her as if he had snatchedher from a wreck and in a safe embrace lifted her high to the shore of acoral strand. He kissed her, first timidly, wonderingly, with thesacrament of first love on his lips. Then he kissed her as his heartbade him, and when he set her free she was crying, but the tears on hisface were not all her tears.
"Little boy, how crazy, how perfectly crazy! Oh, Dan--Dan!"
She clung to him, looking up at him just as his boy-dreams had told hima girl _would_ look some day. Her face was suffused and softened, herlips--her coral-red, fine, lovely lips were trembling, and her eyes wereas gray, as profound as those seas his imagination had longed toexplore. Made poet for the first time in his life, as his arms werearound her, he whispered: "You are all my dreams come true. If any mancomes near you I'll kill him just as sure as fate. I'll kill him!"
"Hush, hush! I told you you were crazy. We're both perfectly mad. I havetried my best not to come to this with you. What would your father say?Let me go, let me go; I'll call Higgins."
The boy laughed aloud, the laugh of happy youth. He held her so closethat she might as well have tried to loose herself from an iron image ofthe Spanish Inquisition as from his young arms. This slender, delicious,willowy thing he held was Letty Lane, the adored star London went madover: the triumph of it! It flashed through him as his pulses beat andhis heart was high with the conquest, but it was to the woman only thathe whispered:
"I've said a lot of stuff and I am likely to say a lot more, but I wantyou to say something to me. _Don't you love me?_"
The word on his lips to him was as strange, as wonderful, as though ithad been made for him.
"I guess I must love you, Dan. I guess I must have for a long time."
"God, I'm so glad! How long?"
"Why, ever since you used to come to the soda-fountain and ask forchocolate. You don't know how sweet you were when you were a littleboy."
She put her slender hand against his hot cheek. "And you are nothing buta little boy now! I think I must be crazy!"
As he protested, as she listened intently to what his emotion taught himto say to her, she whispered close to his ear:
"What will _you_ take, little boy?"
And he answered: "I'll take you--you!"
At a slight sound in the next room Letty Lane started as though theinterruption really brought her to her senses, put her hand to herdisheveled hair, and before she could prevent it, Dan had called MrsHiggins to "come in," and the woman, in response, came into thesitting-room. The boy went up to her and took her hands eagerly, andsaid:
"It's all right, all right, Mrs. Higgins. Just think of it! She belongsto me!"
"Oh, don't be a perfect lunatic, Dan," the actress exclaimed, halflaughing, half crying, "and don't listen to him, Higgins. He's justcrazy."
But the old woman's eyes went bright at the boy's face and tone. "Inever was so glad of anything in my life."
"As of what?" asked her mistress sharply, and the tone was so cold andso suddenly altered that Dan felt a chill of despair.
"Why, at what Mr. Blair says, Miss."
"Then," said her mistress, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself. He'sonly twenty-two, he doesn't know anything about life. You must be crazy.He's as mad as a March hare and he ought to be in school."
Then, to their consternation, she burst into a passion of weeping; threwherself on Higgins' breast and begged her to send Dan away--to sendeverybody away--and to let her die in peace.
In utter despair the boy obeyed the dresser's motion to go, and histransport was changed into anxiety and dread. He hung about down-stairsin the Savoy for the rest of the afternoon, finally sending up toHiggins for news in sheer desperation, and the page fetched Blair a notein Letty Lane's own hand. His eyes blurred so as he opened the sheet, hecould hardly read the scrawl which said:
"It was perfectly sweet of you to wait down there. I'm all right--just tired out! Better get on a boat and go to Greenland's Icy Mountains and cool off. But if you don't, come in to-morrow and have lunch with me.
Letty."
The Girl From His Town Page 22
