Mr. Lane

“ It is frequently easy to make Mr. Lane more universal and attractive ; to write, for instance, " universal ends " instead of " the universal end," just as we pull open the petals of a flower with our fingers where they are confined by its own sweets. ”

“ Lane (I taught her children, you know) , took great interest in a London asylum for the blind. In this asylum they are taught many useful arts by which they can earn an honest livelihood, notwithstanding their sad affliction."
"Oh! If we could but get Sophy there!" cried Norah. "She is so quick, so clever, so neat-fingered, she would learn if any one could!"
"I will go to Mrs. Lane to-morrow," said Persis, "and see if she be able to help us. I believe that Mr. Lane is a liberal subscriber, and I can answer for the kindness of his lady." ”

“ In the afternoon an unfamiliar voice enquired for him by telephone.
"Lady Crawleigh speaking. Mr. Lane, I want you to do something for me, if you'll be so kind. Are you engaged this evening?"
Eric could hardly believe that Barbara had gone the length of appealing to him through her mother.
"Well, I have a man dining with me," he improvised tentatively.
"Oh, can you possibly put him off? I'll tell you why. My husband and I have to dine out, and that means leaving Babs alone. ”

“ I thought as much,” she replied, with a knowing smile. “There’s always a secret about the movements of such men as Mr. Lane.”
“Yes,” answered Muriel, suddenly seeing red, as the saying is; “absolute frankness and absolute honesty must always seem fishy to those who can’t conceive what such things mean. If you want to know, Daniel Lane has gone away because he was fed up with the rotten life we lead here in Cairo. ”

“ Eric walked up the familiar stairs, with the august butler, at whose nod or frown he had once trembled, turning at intervals to impart confidences from the advantageous height of an advance stair. ("We" had only come back the day before and were, on the whole, better for the change. He was afraid her ladyship would hardly be dressed yet.... If Mr. Lane did not mind waiting a moment.... There was the evening paper....) Eric settled himself with a comfortable sense of home-coming, his eyes on Barbara's bedroom door, wondering how she would greet him. ”

“ Shelley had eclipsed both her rivals by the chance of having known Eric Lane for ten years; to Lady Maitland he was still "Mr. Eric," to Lady Poynter "Mr. Lane."
"You don't mind my coming like this, do you?" she asked timidly, disengaging herself from Lady Poynter's embrace and indicating her commandant's uniform. "I was at the hospital until eight."
"As if I minded what you wore!" her hostess cried. "In war-time, when we haven't a moment to turn round ... ! ”

“ The evening of our choice is an early one in June. The air is slightly chilly and damp, therefore the parlor is preferable to the vine-sheltered piazza, screened by the first tender foliage. We can thus observe Miss Vosburgh's deportment more closely, and take a brief note of her callers.
Mr. Lane is the first to arrive, perhaps for the reason that he is a downright suitor, who has left the city and business, in order to further the interests nearest his heart. He is a keen-eyed, strong-looking fellow, well equipped for success by knowledge of the world and society ”

“ They melted sleet in the frying-pan to get water to wash it. "Mis' Lane" kept feeling no better fast, and about the time they got the poor baby dressed a second little one came.
That she told me herself is proof she didn't die, I guess, but it is right hard to believe she didn't. Luckily the fire lasted until the babies were dressed and the mother began to feel better, for there was no wood. Soon the wind stopped and the snow fell steadily. It was warmer, and the whole family snuggled up under the wagon sheet and slept.
Mr. Lane is a powerful good husband. ”

“ Whatever theory or theories might be forming in his mind, and there could be no doubt that it was working at full-speed all the time, and readjusting itself to every fresh turn of events, Lane would make no disclosures till he judged the time was ripe.
He shook his head with great gravity: “We work very slowly, Mr. Morrice; we come to conclusions with equal slowness, in our profession. I dare say to a keen business man like yourself who plan your coups with lightning rapidity, make and clinch a deal of many thousands in a few minutes, we must seem dull, plodding fellows. ”

“ Wanning had repeatedly steeled herself to bear the blow. But the young men went to follow a career in Mexico or the Philippines, or moved to Yonkers, and escaped without a mortal wound.
Roma turned graciously to her father.
“I met Mr. Lane at the Holland House today, where I was lunching with the Burtons, father. He asked about you, and when I told him you were not so well as usual, he said he would call you up. He wants to tell you about some doctor he discovered in Iowa, who cures everything with massage and hot water. It sounds freakish, but Mr. Lane is a very clever man, isn’t he?” ”

“ There's always that little element of chance in any business, legitimate or otherwise. . . . And now, if you'll finish your breakfast I'll show you a view you'll never forget and then we'll hit the trail."
"But, Mr. Lane," she asked, "you don't intend to leave him here all alone? He will get well with the proper attention; but be must have that."
"Within another hour or so," Norton told her, "Tom Cutter will be back with one of Brocky's cowboys. They'll move Lane into a cañon on the other side of the mountain. Oh, I know he oughtn't to be moved, but what else can we do? ”

“ The corridors and stairs were wrapped in warm darkness, and, after one stumble, Eric felt a hand running down his sleeve and twining round his fingers.
"Are you angry with me?" Barbara whispered. "You were so grumpy in the taxi. And I made such a success of your lunch. Mr. Manders and Mr. Grierson loved me, and I made even you smile."
Eric tried to locate Manders in the velvety darkness before replying.
"You were very amusing," he answered unenthusiastically. "But it's possible to be amusing even when you're making rather a nuisance of yourself to several very busy men." ”

“ I'll do my best——"
"I'm depending on you, Mr. Lane."
Dinner, but no one to share it with him, had been ordered for a quarter past eight. He telephoned at seven to say that he might be a little late and set out for Berkeley Square. Barbara was alone when he arrived, and he entered her room in some embarrassment. He could not imagine Sybil's receiving male visitors in her bedroom, and{180} he was shy to find himself alone with Barbara and to see her lying in a blue silk kimono with the Persian kitten asleep on a chair by her side and two tables submerged by Madonna lilies. ”

“ FRANKLIN K. LANE To George Dorr, Bar Harbor, Maine
Washington, [September 2,1917]
MY DEAR MR. DORR,—You do not know what good you did my tired politics-soaked soul by showing me, under such happy conditions, the beauties and the possibilities of your island. And I came to know two men at least, whose heads and hearts were working for a less pudgy and flat-footed world. ... To have enthusiasm is to beat the Devil. ”

“ Eustace Bernhard Lane, only son of Mr. Merton Lane, of Carlton House Terrace, was born in London twenty-eight years ago. He is married to one of the belles of the day, and is probably the most envied husband in town.
“Although he is such a noted figure in society, Mr. Eustace Lane has never done any conspicuously good or bad deed. He has neither invented a bicycle nor written a novel, neither lost a seat in Parliament, nor found a mine in South Africa. Careless of elevating the world, he has been content to entertain it, to make it laugh, or to make it wonder. ”

“ I told George Oakleigh so that night. That's why the public loves your play."{30}
Eric turned to Lady Poynter.
"I have a new play coming out next month," he explained, "and Lady Barbara wants me to hang it up till she's taught me—did you say 'life'?"
"Yes! Margaret, darling, any young man may write one successful bad play——"
There was a gasp of orotund protest from Lady Poynter.
"My dear Babs!"
"Of course it's a bad play! What I don't know about bad plays isn't worth knowing, I've seen so many of them! Have you ever met a woman, Mr. Lane? Have you ever even fancied that you were in love?" ”

“ Manisty, who claimed young poets as of right and helped them to parturition in the pages of the Utopia Review; there was a flamboyant, short-haired young woman who had launched on the world a war-emergency code of sex-morals under the guise of a novel; there were three bashful aliens sus{69}pected of being pianists and one self-assured journalist who told Mrs. Shelley with suitable heartiness that he had not met Mr. Lane, but of course he knew his work and went on to ask Eric if he was engaged on a new "work." ”

“ He's very clever and he's had a big success," Sybil conceded critically. "But, if any one says 'Lane,' the whole world thinks of Eric, while father, who's spent his life——"
She was interrupted by Mr. Nares, who stationed himself at her elbow, coughing apologetically until she gave him an opportunity of asking her to sing. As she went to the piano, Eric moved across the room to Agnes' chair and suggested that they should go out on the terrace. ”

“ Do not let anything that I may have said last night influence you to leave your comfortable home. The adventure offers too many dangers for a woman. Read the inclosed. G."
The inclosed was a telegram from X., sent during the night, and evidently just received at Headquarters. Its contents were certainly not reassuring:
"Another person missing. Last seen in Lost Man's Lane. A harmless lad known as Silly Rufus. What's to be done? Wire orders. Trohm."
"Mr. Gryce bade me say that he would be up here some time before noon," said the man, seeing me look with some blankness at these words. ”

“ As she could no longer sustain herself on a horse, they put her into the coach, gave the reins to her devoted lackey, and themselves rode off on horseback. One man, the fellow who had driven them to that place, said that the clock struck twelve from the chapel tower as the coach turned away and began its rapid journey home. This may and may not be so. We only know that its apparition always enters Lost Man's Lane a few minutes before one, which is the very hour at which the real coach came back and stopped before Mr. Knollys' gate. And now for the worst, Miss Butterworth. ”

“ FRANKLIN K. LANE TO HON. WOODROW WILSON THE WHITE HOUSE Washington, March 13, 1916
MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT,—I shall be pleased to go to the San Diego Exposition, on my way to San Francisco, and say a word as your representative at its opening.
I hope that you may find your way made less difficult than now appears possible, as to entering Mexico, My judgment is that to fail in getting Villa would ruin us in the eyes of all Latin- Americans. I do not say that they respect only force, but like children they pile insult upon insult if they are not stopped when the first insult is given. ”

“ The remark he made in passing Deacon Spear's house showed that something more than spite was working in his slow but vindictive brain.
"There's a man of your own sort," he cried. "You won't find him doing anything out of the way; oh, no. Pity your visit wasn't paid there. You'd have got a better impression of the lane."
To this I made no reply.
At Mr. Trohm's he spoke again:
"I suppose that you and Trohm had the devil of a say about Lucetta and the rest of us. I don't know why, but the whole neighborhood seems to feel they've a right to use our name as they choose. ”

“ The next day Ambrose received a note:
"Dear Mr. Webb: I have been thinking how pleasant my visit to you was that morning. It has not been possible for me to get the carriage since or I should have been out to thank you for your beautiful present. The squabs appealed to me. A man who loves them must have tender feeling; and that is what all my life I have been saying: Give me a man with a heart! ”

“ Lord Archibald Beaupré was left standing in the street, clutching the sheet of paper tightly in his hand.
As Mr. Townsend entered a woman came forward to greet him. She wore an air of considerable concern.
"Oh, Mr. Townsend, sir, I'm so glad it's you. Burton's out, and something has happened which has quite upset me.
"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Lane, that you should have been upset. What has upset you?"
"There's been a man who wanted to see you--leastways, he didn't look as if he was a gentleman, and he didn't behave like one. ”

“ There was no one else. Had their lives depended on it, Lashmar could not yield another man or woman.
"Entertaining here always reminds me of a musical comedy," Eric murmured to Sybil. "Where one goes, all go:
"Oh, we're all of us a-going back to Lon-don,
Over ocean; that's the notion....
"Song and dance. Curtain. Who's the fellow in uniform?"
"Mr. Benyon. A friend of the Warings," Sybil an{96}swered. "You're not going to be patronizing, are you?"
Eric pulled up and banished the ill-humour induced generally by the sleepiness of the country and, in particular, by that tepid bath-water. ”

“ To prove where a man was by outside witnesses, many of them, is proof, when his own statement is far from proof. Now if we could check up Miss Lindsay as we did Mr Pollard, that would settle her question. But we can’t.”
“Where was she?” Lane asked of Millicent.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. She came home just in time to dress for the dinner-party. But I don’t know what time it was.”
“That’s the trouble,” Prescott said, despairingly. “Nobody ever knows what time anything happened. ”