The Girl From His Town. Van Vorst Marie
first, and after the third night slept through most of the performance. When he waked up he tried to discover what attraction Letty Lane had for Dan. For the young man never left Ruggles’ side, never went behind the scenes, though he seemed absorbed, as a man usually is absorbed for one reason only.
In response to a telegram from Osdene Park, Dan motored out there one afternoon, and during his absence Ruggles was surprised at his hotel by a call.
“My dear Mr. Ruggles,” Lord Galorey said, for he it was the page boy fetched up, “why don’t you come out to see us? All friends of old Mr. Blair’s are welcome at Osdene.”
Ruggles thanked Galorey and said he was not a visiting man, that he only had a short time in London, and was going to Ireland to look up “his family tree.”
“There are one hundred acres of trees in Osdene,” laughed Galorey; “you can climb them all.” And Ruggles replied:
“I guess I wouldn’t find any O’Shaughnessy Ruggles at the top of any of ’em, my lord. The boy has gone out to see you all to-day.”
Galorey nodded. “That is just why I toddled in to see you!”
Ruggles’ caller had been shown to the sitting-room, where he and Dan hobnobbed and smoked during the Westerner’s visit. There was a pile of papers on the table, in one corner a typewriter covered by a black cloth. Galorey took a chair and, refusing a cigarette, lit his pipe.
“I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting you in the West when I was out there with Blair. I knew Dan’s father rather well.”
Ruggles responded: “I knew him rather well too, for thirty years. If,” he went on, “Blair hadn’t known you pretty well he wouldn’t have sent the boy out to you as he has done. He was keen on every trail. I might say that he had been over every one of ’em like a hound before he set the boy loose.”
Galorey answered, “Quite so,” gravely. “I know it. I knew it when Dan turned up at Osdene – ” Holding his pipe bowl in the palm of his slender hand, he smoked meditatively. He hadn’t thought about things, as he had been doing lately, for many years. His sense of honor was the strongest thing in Gordon Galorey, the only thing in him, perhaps, that had been left unsmirched by the touch of the world. He was unquestionably a gentleman.
“Blair, however,” he said, “wasn’t as keen on this scent as you’d expect. His intuition was wrong.”
Ruggles raised his eyebrows slightly.
“I mean to say,” Lord Galorey went on, “that he knew me in the West when I had cut loose for a few blessed months from just these things into which he has sent his boy – from what, if I had a son, God knows I’d throw him as far as I could.”
“Blair wanted Dan to see the world.”
“Of course, that is right enough. We all have to see it, I fancy, but this boy isn’t ready to look at it.”
“He is twenty-two,” Ruggles returned. “When I was his age I was supporting four people.”
Galorey went on: “Osdene Park at present isn’t the window for Blair’s boy to see life through, and that is what I have come up to London to talk to you about, Mr. Ruggles. I should like to have you take him away.”
“What’s Dan been up to down there?”
“Nothing as yet, but he is in the pocket of a woman – he is in a nest of women.”
Ruggles’ broad face had not altered its expression of quiet expectation.
“There’s a lot of ’em down there?” he asked.
“There are two,” Galorey said briefly, “and one of them is my wife.”
Ruggles turned his cigarette between his great fingers. He was a slow thinker. He had none of old Blair’s keenness, but he had other qualities. Galorey saw that he had not been quite understood, and he waited and then said:
“Lady Galorey is like the rest of modern wives, and I am like a lot of modern husbands. We each go our own way. My way is a worthless one, God knows I don’t stand up for it, but it is not my wife’s way in any sense of the word.”
“Does she want Dan to go along on her road?” Ruggles asked. “And how far?”
“We are financially strapped just now,” said Galorey calmly, “and she has got money from the boy.” He didn’t remove his pipe from his mouth; still holding it between his teeth he put his hand in his pocket, took out his wallet, drew forth four checks and laid them down before Ruggles. “It is quite a sum,” Galorey noted, “sufficient to do a lot to Osdene Park in the way of needed repairs.” Ruggles had never seen a smile such as curved his companion’s lips. “But Osdene Park will have to be repaired by money from some other source.”
Ruggles wondered how the husband had got hold of the checks, but he didn’t ask and he did not look at the papers.
“When Dan came to the Park,” said Galorey, “I stopped bridge playing, but this more than takes its place!”
Ruggles’ big hand went slowly toward the checks; he touched them with his fingers and said: “Is Dan in love with your wife?”
And Lord Galorey laughed and said: “Lord no, my dear man, not even that! It is pure good nature on his part – mere prodigality. Edith appealed to him, that’s all.”
Relief crossed Ruggles’ face. He understood in a flash the worldly woman’s appeal to the rich young man and believed the story the husband told him.
“Have you spoken to the boy?”
“My dear chap, I have spoken to him about nothing. I preferred to come to you.”
“You said,” Ruggles continued, “there were two ladies down to your place.”
Galorey had refilled his pipe and held it as before in the palm of his hand.
“I can look after the affairs of my wife, and this shan’t happen again, I promise you – not at Osdene, but I’m afraid I can not do much in the other case. The Duchess of Breakwater has been at Osdene for nearly three weeks, and Dan is in love with her.”
Ruggles put the four checks one on top of the other.
“Is the lady a widow?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“So that’s the nest Dan has got into at Osdene,” the Westerner said. And Galorey answered: “That is the nest.”
“And he has gone out there to-day – got a wire this morning.”
“The duchess has been in an awful funk,” said Galorey, “because Dan’s been stopping in London so long. She sent him a message, and as soon as Dan wired back that he was coming to the Park, I decided to come here and see you.”
Ruggles ruminated: “Has the duchess complications financially?”
“Ra-ther!” the other answered.
And Ruggles turned his broad, honest face full on Galorey: “Do you think she could be bought off?”
Galorey took his pipe out of his mouth.
“It depends on how far Dan has gone on with her. To be frank with you, Mr. Ruggles, it is a case of emotion on the part of the woman. She is really in love with Dan. Gad!” exclaimed the nobleman. “I have been on the point of turning the whole brood out of doors these last days. It was like imprisoning a mountain breeze in a charnel house – a woman with her scars and her experience and that boy – I don’t know where you’ve kept him, or how you kept him as he is, but he is as clear as water. I have talked to him and I know.”
Nothing in Ruggles’ expression had changed until now. His eyes glowed.
“Dan’s all right,” he said softly. “Don’t you worry! He’s all right. I guess his father knew what he was doing, and I’ll bet the whole thing was just what he sent him over here for! Old Dan Blair wasn’t worth a copper when the boy was born, and yet he had ideas about everything and he seemed to know