Marie Van Vorst - The Girl From His Town

The fact that much he said, because of his unconscionable slang, was incomprehensible did not take from the charm of his conversation as far as the Duchess of Breakwater was concerned. The brightness of his expression, his quick, clear look upon them, his beautiful young smile, his not too frequent laugh, his “new gayness,” as the duchess called his high spirits, his supernal youth, his difference , credited him with what nine-tenths of the human race lack – charm.

His tone was not too crudely western; neither did he suggest the ultra East with which they were familiar. American women went down well enough with them, but American men were unpopular, and when the visitor arrived, Lady Galorey did not even announce him to the party gathered for “the first shoot.”

The others were in the armory when the ninth gun, a young chap, six feet of him, blond as the wheat, cleanly set up and very good to look at, came in with Lily, Duchess of Breakwater. Lady Galorey, his hostess, greeted them.

“Oh, here you are, are you? Lord Mersey, Sir John Fairthrope.” She mumbled the rest of the names of her companions as though she did not want them understood, then waved toward the young chap, calling him Mr. Dan Blair, and he, as she hesitated, added:

“From Blairtown, Montana.”

“And give him a gun, will you, Gordon?” Lady Galorey spoke to her husband.

“I discovered Mr. Blair, Edie,” the duchess announced, “and he didn’t even know there was a shoot on for to-day. Fancy!”

“I guess,” Dan Blair said pleasantly, “I’ll just take a gun out of this bunch,” and he chose one at random from several indicated to him by the gamekeeper. “I get my best luck when I go it blind. Right! Thanks. That’s so, Lady Galorey, I didn’t know there was to be any shooting until the duchess let it out.”

To himself he thought with good-natured amusement, “Afraid I’ll spoil their game record, maybe!” and went out along with them, following the insular noblemen like a ray of sun, smiling on the pretty woman who had discovered him in the grounds where he had been poking about by himself.

“Where, in Heaven’s name, did you ‘corral’ – word of his own – the dear boy, Edith? How did he get to Osdene Park, or in fact anywhere, just as he is, fresh as from Eden?”

“Thought I’d let him take you by surprise, dearest. Where’d you find Dan?”

“Down by the garden house feeding the rabbits, on his knees like a little boy, his hands full of lettuces. I’d just come a cropper myself on the mare. She fell, I’m sorry to say, Edie, and hacked her knees quite a lot. One of those disguised ditches, you know. I was coming along leading her when I ran on your friend.”

The young duchess was slender as a willow, very brunette, with a beautiful, discontented face.

“I’m going to show Dan Blair off,” Lady Galorey responded, “going to give the débutantes a chance.”

Placidly nodding, the duchess lit a cigarette and began to quote from Dan Blair’s conversation: “I fancy he won’t let them ‘worry him’; he’s too ‘busy!’”

“You mean that you’re going to keep him occupied?”

The duchess didn’t notice this.

“ Is he such a catch?”

Neither of the women had walked out with the guns. The duchess had a bad foot, and Lady Galorey never went anywhere she could help with her husband. She now drew her chair up to the table in the morning-room, to which they had both gone after the departure of the guns, and regarded with satisfaction a quantity of stationery and the red leather desk appointments.

“Sit down and smoke if you like, Lily; I’m going to fill out some lists.”

“No, thanks, I’m going up to my rooms and get Parkins to ‘massey’ this beastly foot of mine. I must have fallen on it. But tell me first, is Mr. Blair a catch?”

Lady Galorey had opened an address book and looked up from it to reply:

“Something like ten million pounds.”

“Heavens! Disgusting!”

“The richest young man ‘west of some river or other.’ At any rate he told me last night that it was ‘clean money.’ I dare say the river is responsible for its cleanliness, but that fact seemed to give him satisfaction.”

The duchess was leaning on the table at Lady Galorey’s side.

“Dan’s father took Gordon all over the West that time he went to the States for a big hunt in the Rockies. He got to know Mr. Blair awfully well and liked him. The old gentleman bought a little property about that time that turned out to be a gold mine.”

With persistency the duchess said:

“How d’you know it is ‘clean money,’ Edith? Not that it makes a rap of difference,” she laughed prettily, “but how do you know that he is rich to this horrible extent?”

Lady Galorey put down her address book impatiently: “Does he look like an impostor?”

The other returned: “Even the archangel fell, my dear Edith!”

“Well,” returned her friend, “this one is too young to have fallen far,” and she shut up her list in desperation.

The duchess sat down on the edge of the lounge and raised her expressive eyes to Lady Galorey, who once more looked at her sarcastically, and went on:

“Gordon liked the old gentleman: he was extraordinarily generous – quite a type. They called the town after him – Blairtown: that is where the son ‘hails from.’ He was a little lad when Gordon was out and Mr. Blair promised that Dan should come over here and see us one day, and this,” she tapped the table with her pen, “seems to be the day, for he came down upon us in this breezy way without even sending a wire, ‘just turned up’ last night. Gordon’s mad about him. His father has been dead a year, and he is just twenty-two.”

“Good heavens!” murmured the duchess. Lady Galorey opened her address book again.

“Gordon’s got him terribly on his mind, my dear; he has forbidden any gambling or any bridge as long as the boy is with us…”

Her companion rose and thrust her hands into the pocket of her tweed coat. She laughed softly, then went over to the long window where without, across the pane, the early winter mists were flying, chased by a furtive sun.

“Gordon said that the boy’s father treated him like a king, and that while the boy is here he is going to look out for him.”

Over her shoulder the other threw out coldly:

“You speak as though he were in a den of thieves. I didn’t know Gordon’s honor was so fine. As for me, I don’t gamble, you know.”

Lady Galorey had decided that Lily’s insistent remaining gave her a chance to fill her fountain pen. She was, therefore, carefully squirting in the ink, and she flushed at her friend’s last words.

Lady Galorey herself was the best bridge player in London, and cards were her passion. She did not remind the lady in the window that there were other games besides bridge, but kept both her tongue and her temper.

After a little silence in which the women followed each her own thoughts, the duchess murmured:

“I’ll toddle up-stairs, Edie – let you write. Where did you say we were going to meet the guns for food?”

“At the gate by the White Pastures. There’ll be a cart and a motor going, whichever you like, around two.”

“Right,” her grace nodded; “I’ll be on time, dearest.”

And Lady Galorey with a relieved sigh heard the door close behind the duchess. Wiping her fountain pen delicately with a bit of chamois, she murmured: “Well, Dan Blair is out of Eden, poor dear, if he met her by the gate.”

A fortune of a round ten million pounds was a small part of what this young man had come into by direct inheritance from the Copper King of Blairtown, Montana. For once the money figure had not been exaggerated, but Lady Galorey did not know about the rest of Dan’s inheritance.