CHAPTER XXIV--RUGGLES' OFFER
He felt as he waited for her in that flower-filled room, for she hadrecovered from her distaste for flowers, as he glanced at thephotographs of women like herself in costumes more or less frank, moreor less vulgar, he felt as though he wanted to knock down the walls andlet in a big view of the West--of Montana--of the hills. With such asetting he thought he could better talk with the lady whom he had cometo see.
Ruggles held an unlighted cigar between his fingers and goose-flesh roseall over him. His glasses bothered him. He couldn't get them brightenough, though he polished them half a dozen times on his silkhandkerchief. His clothes felt too large. He seemed to have shrunken. Hemoistened his lips, cleared his throat, tried to remember what kind offellow he had been at Dan's age. At Dan's age he was selling a suspenderpatent on the road, supporting his mother and his sisters--hard work andfew temptations; he was too tired and too poor.
Miss Lane kept him waiting ten minutes, and they were hours to herguest. He was afraid every minute that Dan would come in. The thoughtshe had gathered together, the plan of action, disarranged itself in hismind every time he thought of the actress. He couldn't forget his visionof her on the stage or at the Carlton, where she had sat opposite themand bewitched them both. When she came into the sitting-room at length,he started so violently that he knocked over a vase of flowers, thewater trickling all over the table down on to the floor.
She had dazzled him before the footlights, charmed him at dinner, and itwas singular to think that he knew how this dignified, quiet creaturelooked in ballet clothes and in a dinner dress, whose frankness had madehim catch his breath. It was a third woman who stood before Ruggles now.He had to take her into consideration. She had expected him, saw him byappointment. She was a woman of mind and intelligence. She had notclimbed to her starry position without having acquired a knowledge ofmen, and it was the secret of her success. She showed it in the dress inwhich she received her visitor. She wore a short walking skirt of heavyserge, a simple shirtwaist belted around, a sailor hat on her beautifullittle head. She was unjeweled and unpainted, very pale and very sweet.If it had not been for the marks of fatigue under her eyes, she wouldnot have looked more than eighteen. On her left hand a single diamond,clear as water, caught the refracted light.
"How-de-do? Glad you are back again."
She gave him a big chair and sat down before him smiling. Leaning herelbows on her knees, she sank her face upon her hands and looked at him,not coquettishly in the least, but as a child might have looked. Fromher small feet to her golden head she was utterly charming.
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Ruggles made himself think of Dan. Miss Lane spoke slowly, noddingtoward him, in her languid voice: "It's no use, Mr. Ruggles, no use."
Holding her face between her hands, her eyes gray as winter's seas andas profound, she looked at him intently; then, in a flash, she changedher position and instantly transformed her character. He saw that shewas a woman, not an eighteen-year-old girl, but a woman, clever, poised,witty, understanding, and that she might have been twenty years olderthan the boy.
"I'm sorry you spoke so quick," he said.
"I knew," she interrupted, "just what you wanted to say from the start.I couldn't help it, could I? I knew you would want to come and see meabout it. It isn't any use. I know just what you are going to say."
"No, ma'am," he returned, "I don't believe you do--bright as you are."
Ruggles gazed thoughtfully at the cold end of his unlighted cigar. Itwas a comfort to him to hold it and to look at it, although not foranything in the world would he have asked to light it.
"Dan's father and me were chums. We went through pretty much together,and I know how he felt on most points. He was a man of few words, but Iknow he counted on me to stand By the boy."
Ruggles was so chivalrous that his role at present cost him keendiscomfort.
"A lady like you," he said gently, "knows a great deal more about howthings are done than either Dan or me. We ain't tenderfeet in the West,not by a long shot, but we see so few of a certain kind of picture showsthat when they do come round they're likely to make us lose our minds!You know, yourself, a circus in a town fifty miles from a railroaddrives the people crazy. Now, Dan's a little like the boy with his eyeson the hole in the tent. He would commit murder to get inside and seethat show." He nodded and smiled to her as though he expected her tofollow his crude simile. "Now, I have seen _you_ a lot of times." Andshe couldn't help reminding him, "Not of your own accord, Mr. Ruggles."
"Well, I don't know," he slowly admitted; "I always felt I had mymoney's worth, and the night you ate with us at the Carlton I understoodpretty well how the boy with his eyes at the tent hole would feel." Buthe tapped his broad chest with the hand that held the cigar between thefirst and second fingers. "I know just what kind of a heart you've got,for I waited at the stage door and I know you don't get all yourapplause inside the Gaiety Theater."
"Goodness," she murmured, "they make an awful fuss about nothing."
"Now," he continued, leaning forward a trifle toward her languid, halfinterested figure, "I just want you to think of him as a little boy.He's only twenty-two. He knows nothing of the world. The money you giveto the poor doesn't come so hard perhaps as this will. It's a bigsacrifice, but I want you to let the boy go."
She smiled slightly, found her handkerchief, which was tucked up thecuff of her blouse, pressed the little bit of linen to her lips asthough to steady them, then she asked abruptly:
"What has he said to you?"
"Lord!" Ruggles groaned. "_Said_ to me! My dear young lady, he is muchtoo rude to speak. Dan sort of breathes and snorts around like alunatic. He was dangling around that duchess when I was here before, butshe didn't scare me any."
And Letty Lane, now smiling at him, relieved by his break from a moreintense tone, asked:
"Now, you are scared?"
"Well," Ruggles drawled, "I was pretty sure that woman didn't _care_anything for the boy. Are you her kind?"
It was the best stroke he had made. She almost sprang up from her chair.
"Heavens," she exclaimed, "I guess I'm not!" Her face flushed.
"I had rather see a son of mine dead than married to a woman like that,"he said.
"Why, Mr. Ruggles," she exclaimed passionately, addressing him withinterest for the first time, "what do you know about me? What? What? Youhave seen me dance and heard me sing."
And he interrupted her.
"Ten times, and you are a bully dancer and a bully singer, but you doother things than dance and sing. There is not a man living that wouldwant to have his mother dress that way."
She controlled a smile. "Never mind that. People's opinions are verydifferent about that sort of thing. You have seen me at dinner with yourboy, as you call him, and you can't say that I did anything but ask himto help the poor. I haven't led Dan on. I have tried to show him justwhat you are making me go through now."
If she acted well and danced well, it was hard for her to talk. She wasevidently under strong emotion and it needed her control not to burstinto tears and lose her chance.
"Of course, I know the things you have heard. Of course, I know what issaid about me"--and she stopped.
Ruggles didn't press her any further; he didn't ask her if the thingswere true. Looking at her as he did, watching her as he did, there wasin him a feeling so new, so troubling that he found himself more anxiousto protect her than to bring her to justice.
"There are worse, far worse women than I am, Mr. Ruggles. I will neverdo Dan any harm."
Here her visitor leaned forward and put one of his big hands lightlyover one of hers, patted it a moment, and said:
"I want you to do a great deal better than that."
She had picked up a photograph off the table, a pretty picture ofherself in _Mandalay_, and turned it nervously between her fingers asshe said with irritation:
"I haven't been in the theatrical world not to guess at this 'WorriedFather' act, Mr.
Ruggles. I told you I knew just what you were going tosay."
"Wrong!" he repeated. "The business is old enough perhaps, lots of goodjobs are old, but _this_ is a little different."
He took the turning picture and laid it on the table, and quietlypossessed himself of the small cold hands. Blair's solitaire shone up tohim. Ruggles looked into Letty Lane's eyes. "He is only twenty-two; itain't fair, it ain't fair. He could count the times he has been on alark, I guess. He hasn't even been to an eastern college. He is no fool,but he's darned simple."
She smiled faintly. The man's face, near her own, was very simpleindeed.
"You have seen so much," he urged, "so many fellows. You have been sucha queen, I dare say you could get any man you wanted." He repeated."Most any one."
"I have never seen any one like Dan."
"Just so: He ain't your kind. That is what I am trying to tell you."
She withdrew her hand from his violently.
"There you are wrong. He _is_ my kind. He is what I like, and he is whatI want to be like."
A wave of red dyed her face, and, in a tone more passionate than she hadever used to her lover, she said to Ruggles:
"I love him--I love him!" Her words sent something like a sword throughthe older man's heart. He said gently: "Don't say it. He don't know whatlove means yet."
He wanted to tell her that the girl Dan married should be the kind ofwoman his mother was, but Ruggles couldn't bring himself to say thewords. Now, as he sat near her, he was growing so complex that his brainwas turning round. He heard her murmur:
"I told you I knew your act, Mr. Ruggles. It isn't any use."
This brought him back to his position and once more he leaned toward herand, in a different tone from the one he had intended to use, murmured:
"You don't know. You haven't any idea. I do ask you to let Dan go,that's a fact. I have got something else to propose in its place. Itain't quite the same, but it is clear--marry me!"
She gave a little exclamation. A slight smile rippled over her face likethe sunset across a pale pool at dawn.
"Laugh," he said humbly; "don't keep in. I know I am old-fashioned asthe deuce, and me and Dan is quite a contrast, but I mean just what Isay, my dear."
She controlled her amusement, if it was that. It almost made her crywith mirth, and she couldn't help it. Between laughing breaths she saidto him:
"Oh, is it all for Dan's sake, Mr. Ruggles? Is it?" And then, biting herlips and looking at him out of her wonderful eyes, she said: "I know itis--I know it is--I beg your pardon."
"I asked a girl once when I was poor--too poor. Now this is the secondtime in my life. I mean just what I say. I'll make you a kind husband. Iam fifty-five, hale as a nut. I dare say you have had many betteroffers."
"Oh, dear," she breathed; "oh, dear, please--please stop!"
"But I don't expect you to marry me for anything but my money."
Ruggles put his cigar down on the edge of the table. He looked at hischair meditatively, he took out his silk handkerchief, polished up hisglasses, readjusted them, put them on and then looked at her.
"Now," he said, "I am going to trust you with something, and I know youwill keep my secret for me. This shows you a little bit of what I thinkabout you. Dan Blair hasn't got a red cent. He has nothing but what Igive him. There's a false title to all that land on the Bentley claim.The whole thing came up when I was home and the original company, ofwhich I own three-quarters of the stock, holds the clear titles to theBlairtown mines. It all belongs now to me, if I choose to present mydocuments. Dan knows nothing about this--not a word."
The actress had never come up to such a dramatic point in any of herplays. With her hands folded in her lap she looked at him steadily, andhe could not understand the expression that crossed her face. He heardher exclamation: "Oh, gracious!"
"I've brought the papers back with me," said the Westerner, "and it isbetween you and me how we act. If Dan marries you I will be bound to dowhat old Blair would have done--cut him off--let him feel his feet on theground, and the result of his own folly."
He had taken his glasses off while he made this assertion. Now he putthem on again.
"If you give him up I'll divide with the boy and be rich enough still tohand over to my wife all she wants to spend."
She turned her face away from him and leaned her head once more upon herhands. He heard her softly murmuring under her breath, with an absentlook on her face, accompanied by a still more incomprehensible smile.
"That's how it stands," he concluded.
She seemed to have forgotten him entirely, and he caught his breath whenshe turned about abruptly and said:
"My goodness, how Dan will hate being poor! He will have to sell all hisstickpins and his motor cars and all the things he has given me. It willbe quite a little to start on, but he will hate it, he is so verysmart."
"Why, you don't mean to say--" Ruggles gasped.
And with a charming smile as she rose to put their conversation at anend, she said:
"Why, you don't mean to say that you thought I _wouldn't stand by him_?"She seemed, as she put her hands upon her hips with something of adefiant look at the older man, as though she just then stood by herpauperized lover.
"I thought you cared some for the boy," Ruggles said.
"Well, I am showing it."
"You want to ruin him to show it, do you?"
As though he thought the subject dismissed he walked heavily toward thedoor.
"You know how it stands. I have nothing more to say." He knew that hehad signally failed, and as a sudden resentment rose in him heexclaimed, almost brutally:
"I am darned glad the old man is dead; I am glad his mother's dead, andI am glad I have got no son."
The next moment she was at his side, and he felt that she clung to hisarm. Her sensitive, beautiful face, all drawn with emotion, was raisedto his.
"Oh, you'll kill me--you'll kill me! Just look how very ill I am; you aremaking me crazy. I just worship him."
"Give him up, then," said Ruggles steadily.
She faltered: "I can't--I can't--it won't be for long"--with a terriblepathos in her voice. "You don't know how different I can be: you don'tknow what a new life we were going to lead."
Stammering, and with intense meaning, Ruggles, looking down at her,said: "My dear child--my dear child!"
In his few words something perhaps made her see in a flash her past andwhat the question really was. She dropped Ruggles' arm. She stood for amoment with her arms folded across her breast, her head bent down, andthe man at the door waited, feeling that Dan's whole life was in thebalance of the moment. When she spoke again her voice was hard andentirely devoid of the lovely appealing quality which brought her somuch admiration from the public.
"If I give him up," she said slowly, "what will you do?"
"Why," he answered, "I'll divide with Dan and let things stand just asthey are."
She thought again a moment and then as if she did not want him towitness--to detect the struggle she was going through, she turned awayand walked over toward the window and dismissed him from there. "Pleasego, will you? I want very much to be alone and to think."