The Girl From His Town

by Marie Van Vorst

Close after him a motor car rolled up to the curb, and under the awning Letty Lane passed quickly, as though thistledown, blown into the distinguished house. The actress was taken possession of by several people and shown up-stairs.

Dan spoke to his hostess, who wore, over her azure dress, a necklace given her by Dan. She said he was “too late for words,” and why hadn’t he come before. After greeting him she set him free, and he went eagerly to find his place next an elderly woman whom he liked immensely, Lady Caiwarn. She had given him twenty pounds for some of his poor. Lady Caiwarn had a calm, kind face, and Dan sat down beside her, well out of the crush, and they talked amiably throughout the violin solo.

“Think of it,” she said, “Letty Lane of the Gaiety is going to sing. I’d sit through a great deal for that. Let that man with the fiddle do his worst.”

Blair laughed appreciatively. He thought Lady Caiwarn would be a good friend for Miss Lane, better than the duchess herself. “I wish Lily could hear you talk about her violinist,” he said, delighted; “she thinks he’s the whole show.” And tentatively, his ingenuous eyes fixed on his friend, he asked: “I wonder how you would like to meet Miss Lane. She’s perfectly ripping, and she’s from my State.”

“Meet her!” Lady Caiwarn exclaimed, but before she could finish, through the room ran the little anticipatory rustle that comes before the great, and which, when they have gone, breaks into applause. The great actress had appeared to give her number. Dan and Lady Caiwarn, behind the palms in a little corner of their own, watched her.

A clever understanding of the world into which she was to come this day, had made the girl dress like a charm. She stood quietly by the piano, her hands folded. Among the high ladies of the English world in their splendid frocks, their jewels and feathers, she was a simple figure, her dress snow white, high to her throat, unadorned by any gay color, according to the fashion of the time. It was such a dress as Romney might have painted, and under her arms and from across her breast there fell a soft coral-colored silken scarf. The costume was daring in its simplicity. She might have been Emma, Lady Hamilton, because perfectly beautiful, perfectly talented, she could risk severe simplicity, having in herself the fire and the art and the seduction. Her hair was a golden crown and her eyes like stars. She was excited, and the scarlet had run along her cheeks like wine spilled over ivory.

She looked around the room, failed to see Blair, but saw the Duchess of Breakwater in her velvet and her jewels. Letty Lane began to sing. Dan and she had chosen Mandalay and she began with it. Her dress only was simple. All the complexity of her talent, whatever she knew of seduction and charm, she put in the rendering of her song. Even the conventional audience, most of which knew her well, were enchanted over again, and they went wild about her. She had never been so charming. The men clapped her until she began in self-defense another favorite of the moment, and ended in a perfect huzzah of applause.

She refused to sing again until, in the distance, she saw Dan standing by the column near his seat. Then indicating to the pianist what she wanted, she sang The Earl of Moray, such a rendering of the old ballad as had not been heard in London, and coming, as it did, from the lips of a popular singer whose character and whose verve were not supposed to be sympathetic to a piece of music of this kind, the effect was startling. Letty Lane’s face grew pale with the touching old tragedy, the scarlet faded from her cheeks, her eyes grew dark and moist, she might indeed herself have been the lady looking from the castle wall while they carried the body of her dead lover under those beautiful eyes.

Dan felt his heart grow cold. If she had awakened him when he was a little boy, she thrilled him now; he could have wept. Lady Caiwarn did wipe tears away. When the last note of the accompaniment had ended, Dan’s friend at his side said: “How utterly ravishing! What a beautiful, lovely creature; how charming and how frail!”

He scarcely answered. He was making his way to Letty Lane, and he wrung her hand, murmuring, “Oh, you’re great; you’re great!” And the pleasure on his face repaid her over and over again. “Come, I want you to meet the Duchess of Breakwater, and some other friends of mine.”