CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Man Who Waits
There came no cablegram from Scotland next day. Loveland's mother did not answer his appeal. But Val tried to persuade himself that this was not strange. Perhaps she could not get together such a sum as he had asked for, without a little delay, but she would send as soon as possible. He was sure of that as he was sure that his present address ought to be First Circle, Hades.
The dollar which remained to him after sending his expensive cry across the sea, was gone. He borrowed of Bill Willing, who offered and was delighted to lend. In a day or two at most, Loveland said, he would repay, and planned to give Bill a handsome present as well. Meanwhile Loveland passed his time miserably between Alexander the Great's and the Bat Hotel, or walking the streets in the desperate hope of seeing some English face he knew. He saw many pleasant faces, to whom no appeal of sorrow would be made in vain. But they were strangers' faces, and he was not a beggar yet.
He had bought with Bill's money – an advance from Alexander – two or three collars, a change of linen, and a dark necktie, therefore he looked smart and prosperous enough in his tweed suit to pass muster in a crowd, the absence of an overcoat seeming a mere eccentricity. Perhaps there were men who envied the handsome young Englishman who strolled past them with a jaunty, leisured air, while they were forced to hurry. But he would have given a good deal for the need of hurry.
Four days dragged by, including one ghastly Sunday; and when there was still no word from Lady Loveland, Val began to feel the heavy conviction that none would ever come. Some awful spell had fallen upon him, it seemed, a curse which made him a pariah even for those who loved him best. It had begun with Foxham's treachery; and now it had come to his mother's neglect. What might follow, he could not guess; he would rather not try to guess.
He thought over his past, and realised that he had been selfish; but he did not feel that he had ever done anything which deserved such a punishment as this, if punishment it were – if there were a God who watched the children of the earth, and punished, or rewarded, their deeds. Never before had it occurred to him to pity others, beyond a "poor old chap, so sorry, don't you know," and a quick forgetting; but now he was filled with a dumb sympathy for everyone who suffered. Above this bright, gay city – the gayest and brightest Val had ever known – it seemed that his eyes had gained a magic keenness to see the smoke of human suffering rise like incense, to the clear remoteness of the sky.
Loveland did not always take his meals at Alexander's. Sometimes he let a meal-time pass, too deeply depressed to be hungry; or if Bill Willing insisted on food for both, there were places where it could be obtained even more cheaply than at Alexander the Great's – when Alexander himself, and not Isidora, was behind the counter.
Val had met the "Boss" now, though not officially. While he had a few dimes and nickels in his pocket, he patronised the restaurant, glad to have a glimpse of Isidora's friendly, pretty face, and a chance to warm himself at the glowing stove. The "Boss" regarded him as a client – a "queer cuss," down on his luck, but worth being civil to, for in New York you never knew how men's fortunes might change.
Nevertheless, Loveland realised that Alexander had as much real kindness of heart for the world in general as Shylock, or a tiger. He had his friends, perhaps – for tigers may have friends, in their native jungle, if there be no question of a carcass to divide; but when most sleek and smiling, there was something vaguely terrible about the fat Jew. Wake the tiger in him from its sleep of purring prosperity, and it would spring, tearing and rending with unsheathed claws the creature who had roused it.
Isidora, thought Loveland, must resemble her mother, who, it appeared, was long ago dead; and maybe that was one reason why the fierce-eyed Jew loved the girl so jealously, as a tiger loves its young, or as Shylock loved Jessica. She had something of his Hebraic cast of feature, although he had taken a Christian wife; but nothing could be less like the hawk-eye, with its fierce glance suddenly unveiled, the cruel nose, and the big rapacious mouth of the gross, elderly man, than the langourous beauty of the young girl.
His father had been a German Jew, but he – once Isaac Solomon, now Alexander the Great – had been born in the slums of New York, and had fought his way up, biting, clawing, or fawning, whichever seemed the wisest course. Now he was growing rich. He was proud of his own portrait on the walls, in the battle-paintings, proud of the queer pictorial menus and smart advertising cards which helped to make the success of the venture in which he had risked his capital; but he acknowledged no debt of gratitude to Bill Willing's ingenuity, and would have sacked the artist the moment he ceased to be useful. He decried the value of Bill's work; he bullied his two black cooks and his ill-paid waiters; nor had his prosperity given him any fellow feeling for others, who, like himself, were struggling to reach the top.
If you deserved to get on, you got on, and devil take the hindmost, was Alexander's motto. But he loved and admired Isidora, and though he grumbled when she asked for money, secretly his chief joy in piling up a fortune was for her future, that she might marry well and hand his name on, for posthumous honours. He had already picked out the bridegroom, a young Jew with goggle eyes, a turned up moustache, and glittering black hair; a fondness for celluloid collars and red neckties; a smooth manner with his prospective father-in-law, and a truculent front for his inferiors. The young man was making "good money" as a "drummer" for a firm of Jewish tobacco merchants, but there was a slight "tache" upon his parentage, and he would be willing to take Alexander's name, on marrying Alexander's daughter. Bye-and-bye, when years from now Alexander might wish to retire on his pies and fried oysters, as other heroes had retired on their laurels, Leo Cohen would, with Isidora, carry on the restaurant and its glory from generation to generation.
This was Alexander's dream, and woe unto him who should try to interfere with its fulfilment! But he had no fear of any such dangerous person, even when Leo was away drumming up interest for a certain firm in the West, and a tall, handsome, sulky-looking young Englishman was dropping in every day for cheap food and a smile from Isidora.
If Loveland had had money, he would have sent off other cablegrams, but he soon came down to his last copper; and Bill, though willing by nature as by name, seldom had in his best days more to lend him than fifteen cents at a time.
On the fifth day the situation passed beyond bearing. Not only was Loveland penniless, but he could not bring himself to borrow more of Bill's pitiful nickels and hard-earned dimes. Each one of those coins was more to Bill than a sovereign (usually someone else's sovereign) had been to Lord Loveland in his palmy days. The thing couldn't go on; and so Val was saying to Bill as the two drank hot coffee (at Bill's expense) standing up before the counter at Alexander the Great's on the fifth morning after Loveland's arrival in New York.
It was not quite seven o'clock, but Bill had finished his work on the "meenoos," and had invited P. Gordon to "stoke his furnace" at an expenditure of two cents.
Alexander, who had presided at a political ward meeting the night before, had not yet come down to growl at his man-servant, his maid-servant, and all within his gates. "Dutchy" had been discharged with violence the night before, because he had drowned his vast homesickness in unlimited beer, and "Blinkey" was the only member of the household on view except the black cook Dick and Dick's assistant.
"Bill, I can't stand this any longer. I shall have to work or steal – anything but borrow more – until I can touch my money," Loveland broke out, when Blinkey had disappeared behind the red curtain and was being harangued in the distance by big Dick.
"It ain't easy to do either in New York," said Bill, mildly.
"To think of my being practically reduced to starvation and nakedness, with a letter of credit for a hundred and fifty pounds in my pocket!" groaned Val. "Do you think old Alexander would advance me anything if I told him my whole story?"
"Oh, I guess I wouldn't tell him the story," Bill advised, hastily.
"Why not?"
"Well, he's got a sharp tongue, Alexander has."
"In England such a fellow could only get at me at all through my servants."
"I – suppose so," agreed Bill, gently. "But this ain't England."
"I should think it wasn't, worse luck."
"You do have bad luck," said Bill. "But 'twouldn't change it if you asked Alexander for a loan on that letter of credit. If he said anything fit for publication, he'd only say, if the bank wouldn't accommodate you, he wouldn't; and what the dickens did you take him for? When I want a quarter before it's due, it's like gettin' milk out of a corkscrew; and the one thing he thinks of, is whether I shall get run over by an automobile before I work out the money next morning. Oh, I know Alexander."
"What's Pa been up to now?" pertly demanded the voice of Pa's fair daughter.
Isidora had come in while the two were so deeply occupied in conversation and the dregs in their coffee cups, that they had not seen her lift the curtain.
Since the day of her first introduction to P. Gordon, she had not appeared at this early hour of the morning. Her father was generally at his post, and when he was there, Isidora was supposed to exist not for use, but for ornament. However, she knew that Alexander was now reposing after last night's eloquence, and she had taken advantage of his absence. This time she was not in wrapper and curling pins. She had dressed herself with great care for the day, having learned from the "hired girl" that Bill Willing's "swell friend" had come in with him.
"What's Pa been up to now, I say?" she asked again, before the startled and mortified Bill could answer.
"Oh, nothing," replied the artist, apologetically. "We was just talkin'."
"I was wondering if he would advance me anything, enough to get back to England with – on my letter of credit?" Loveland frankly explained.
Isidora's eyes dilated at Val's suggestion of going back to England. It had not occurred to her, facts being as stated in the newspapers, that he would wish to return to his own country; and as fortunately, after the first sensational paragraphs, his affairs had been crowded out of public interest by various startling events of far greater importance, she had thought that he would be thankful to "worry along" as he was.
"Get back to England!" she echoed, blankly.
"It seems the one thing to do now, if I weren't kept here by the lack of a few wretched sovereigns," said Loveland. "If your father would trust me – "
"Oh, he wouldn't!" Isidora hastened to put that idea out of P. Gordon's mind, once and for ever. "He never trusted anybody yet, and he wouldn't begin with you. Why, he says his success in life comes from never believin' anybody but himself. If a man tells him it's a nice day, he goes to the window and peeks out before takin' a walk without his umbrella. And he'd think 'twas like takin' a walk in his best clothes when it rained cats and dogs, to lend a furriner money."
"On a letter of credit?"
"Pa perfectly despises that word 'credit.'"
Loveland gave up hope of winning confidence and obtaining dollars from Alexander the Great. "This state of things is enough to make a man blow his brains out!" he exclaimed.
"I guess you need your brains now more than you ever did," suggested Bill. "And you couldn't git 'em put back where they belonged, if everything come right directly they was out. What I think of, when them ideas get to workin' in my head, is the awful long time you have to stay dead, whether you're suited or not. It's a lot easier to pawn your dress clothes, and see what turns up."
Before Loveland could answer Isidora clapped her pretty hands, which were much cleaner than usual since P. Gordon had come into her daily life.
"Don't pawn 'em!" she cried. "That's made me think of something. Pa's always talkin' about visible assets, or somethin' like that. Well, your dress suit might be a visible asset if – if you're really sick of life when you can't pay your way. But are you dead sure you are sick of it?"
"Dead sure!" echoed Loveland. "What have you thought of for me to do?"
"You won't be mad if I tell you?"
"What nonsense! Am I in a position to be 'mad'? – in the sense you mean – though it's a wonder I'm not mad in another sense. I'd sweep crossings if I could get the job – or break stones – if anyone wanted them broken. But I suppose you're not going to suggest one of these employments, as evening clothes wouldn't be suitable to either."
"I was thinking," said Isidora, "that – I might tease Pa to take you in – in Dutchy's place, if – you'd care about it?"
"Good Heavens! Be a waiter?" stammered Loveland. He had felt ready for any ignominious, if paying, work when in the abstract; but as soon as it took definite form – and such a form as this —
"Oh! I knew you'd be cross!" Isidora pouted.
Loveland was silent; and as his dark eyebrows – so like his cousin Betty's – were drawn together in a frown, the girl supposed that he was sulking.
"I only thought it'd be better than nothing," she explained hurriedly, "if Pa'd let you; but perhaps he wouldn't. He'd think he was doin' a favour – see? He wouldn't understand how you felt about it. I'd have to explain you was temp'rily embarrassed; and my, what a howling swell of a waiter you'd look. You'd get two dollars fifty a week, to begin, and your food. That's what Dutchy did. And now and then folks give a nickel to the waiter, even in a place like this, which I suppose you turn your nose up at, after the Waldorf-Astoria. But I shan't say any more, you needn't be afraid – "
"I beg your pardon," said Loveland. "If your father'll take me, I'll do it. When he comes – "
"Oh, you mustn't ask him yourself! You'd spoil the whole thing," Isidora broke in. "You must let me get at him. Two or three raw Germans and Swedes are bein' sent round this mornin' to look at; but while Pa's dressin' I'll talk you up, and you can be on hand when he gets downstairs. I'll go this minute, and Blinkey can see to anybody that comes in. You call him, Bill."
She darted off, all excitement; and Loveland sat waiting for the great man's verdict, feeling as if he had laid down his soul for sale with the pumpkin-pie and pork and beans.
Bill tried to cheer him. He would have practically no expenses, and being such a "good looker" would be sure to pick up a lot of nickels and even dimes. Why, he might save three dollars a week, and as for that trifling debt to him – Bill – they would wipe it off the slate and consider it paid; or, if Gordon wouldn't consent to do that, he might send the money from England when he'd got home – if he really did think it best to go home. At three dollars a week it wouldn't be long before a chap could lay up enough to cross in the steerage, the way those big ships were fighting each other for rates. For fifteen dollars you could do it, on some boats; and at three dollars a week —
But before Bill could finish his calculation – a rather intricate one for him – Isidora had flown in, her cheeks as red as her poppy-coloured blouse.
"Pa's in one of his funny moods," she whispered. "Won't give me any satisfaction. But I know he'd take you if you'd let me tell him who you are. I mean, if you're willing, I'll say you're the man all that stuff was in the papers about, how you was at the Waldorf as the Markis of Loveland, and how it was you knocked that swell Mr. Milton down. Nobody appreciates the value of advertising better than Pa (Bill can tell you that), and amatoor or no amatoor, you can be gettin' not only your two-fifty a week but twice that, and maybe more, out of Alexander the Great."
"I'd rather starve or drown myself," said Loveland, turning red, and then white.
"It's nasty, starving," ventured Bill. "And folks are that interfering, they're always fishing you out of the water and puttin' you into the newspapers as a Case. Besides, what's the odds? If you've got any swagger friends, they ain't likely to come nosin' round here. Alexander's is 'great,' but it ain't swell."
Loveland had shuddered at the thought of the steerage, when Bill suggested it a few moments ago, but now it seemed to him that the "horrors of the middle passage" would be heaven to the humiliations he endured. For fifteen dollars, Bill said, he could get back to England. If Alexander would give him five dollars a week, in three weeks he could be off – or say, four, having paid Bill what he owed. But, no, that was an eternity – not to be endured. At bay and desperate Val determined to strike high.
"Tell your father who I am, then," he exclaimed, "but say he can't have me for any beggarly two-fifty, or even five dollars a week. I'll have ten, or nothing."
Isidora looked at him with respect, and dashed away behind the curtain. Neither man spoke. The sound of her little high-heeled slippers, clicking on the uncarpeted stairs, was sharp in their ears. In three minutes – before Loveland had had time to repent – she was down again.
"Pa says 'Done,'" she panted. "He's going to use you for all you're worth."
"I bet he will," murmured Bill, sotto voce. But neither he nor Loveland guessed in what way Alexander the Great meant to make the "swell waiter" worth his wage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
News From the Great World
"Lesley, wasn't Loveland the name of that Lord you knew on the boat?" asked Lesley's Aunt Barbara, peering at her niece from behind an immense newspaper which hid all the upper part of her body as if with a screen.
Lesley was curled up on a sofa at the other end of the room, which had for some reason or other, more or less appropriate, been called "the library" for several generations. The girl was writing a story, which was promised for a certain time, but her heart was not in her work, and she welcomed interruptions, instead of discouraging them, as usual.
If it had been her habit to shut herself up alone for several hours a day, or if she had sat bolt upright at a desk, Mrs. Loveland would have taken Lesley's work more seriously; but when a pretty girl, looking scarcely more than a child – a girl you have seen grow up from babyhood – nestles cosily in a bank of ruffly silk cushions, with a frivolous "scribbling pad" on her knee, and a pencil in her hand, how can one realise that she is gravely pursuing literature as a profession, and must not be addressed even if one has the most exciting things to say?
Lesley did not answer at first, for she was composing her voice, that Aunt Barbara might not guess she had been taken by surprise; therefore Mrs. Loveland asked the same question over again in a louder tone.
"Yes," said Lesley. "Don't you remember my telling you his name was the same as yours?"
"There! I thought so!" exclaimed the little dovelike lady. "Only I wasn't quite sure whether you said the name was exactly the same, or rather like mine. You didn't talk as if you took much interest in him, and it seemed as though you would, if we'd been namesakes. I don't think you spoke of him more than once, did you?"
"I don't remember, I'm sure," replied Lesley, beginning to scrawl the name of "Loveland" aimlessly across the top of the page which ought by this time to have been covered with brilliant conversation between her hero and heroine. She answered in an indifferent tone, almost as if she were thinking of something else; but if her mind had indeed been properly bent on the story, she would have said: "Auntie, darling, I'm a thousand miles away, please, with Dick and Susanne. Don't bring me back, there's a dear!"
"Well, I'm glad you didn't take much interest in him," went on Mrs. Loveland, in a tone pregnant with mystery and importance. "I know I oughtn't to be talking to you when you're at work, and I don't often, do I?"
"Not very often," smiled Lesley, her dimples softening the gentle little reproach, if it were a reproach. But she didn't look up at her aunt. She pretended to be writing on; and so she was. But it was only one word, over and over again, that she wrote: "Loveland – Loveland." And her heart had begun to beat in a hurried, warning way, as often it had on shipboard when she heard Loveland's voice, and wondered if he were coming to talk to her – or to some other girl.
"But this is something really very special," Aunt Barbara apologised. "It's quite exciting. Only fancy having known him! I almost wish you'd pointed him out to me that last morning on board, when I was up on deck. It would be interesting to remember what he was like."
"Is there something about him in the paper?" asked Lesley, who had been expecting news, but would have preferred to read it herself, if she could have chosen.
"I should think there was!" exclaimed her aunt, screened behind the great printed sheets again.
"Is he engaged already?" Lesley enquired, making a sketch of Lord Loveland's profile in the midst of a speech of Dick's, though Dick was a very different sort of young man from Loveland, a very different sort indeed. How many times she had caught herself tracing the outline of those features – so clear, so straight, so perfect an outline, that it was as easy to draw as to copy a Greek statue. She knew every line, and often the little profile-portrait was there before her eyes on the paper before she knew what she had been doing. She was almost perfectly certain what Aunt Barbara's answer to her question would be. Of course he was engaged. He had hardly had time to make the acquaintance of any new girls in New York, and propose marriage, so it must be Elinor Coolidge – or Fanny Milton.
"Engaged!" echoed the elder. "No, indeed. What a mercy he's been found out before some nice girl was mixed up in the scandal. Of course he wanted – "
"A scandal!" Now at last Lesley did lift her head, quickly, and the last profile-sketch looked as if it had been struck by lightning.
"Shocking," answered Mrs. Loveland. "What a dreadful thing that our country should be looked upon as a sort of gold mine by these foreign birds of prey."
Lesley's little ears burned pink as if her aunt had boxed them. Her eyes sent out a spark, but its fire was quenched in a sudden trickle of nervous laughter. "Dear Aunt Barb! Would 'birds of prey' make successful miners?"
Aunt Barbara laughed, too. "You're always catching me up for my similes," she said. "But luckily I don't write stories, so it doesn't matter. And anyway that's what they are; birds of prey. As for what they do, they marry our girls, who find them out too late, and then try to get divorces. What an escape for some poor little heiress, that this creature is hoist with his own petard in the very midst of baiting his wicked trap! You needn't look at me like that, child. I don't care how mixed up I am. Did this man look like a gentleman?"
"Yes," said Lesley. "Naturally, because he is a gentleman."
"My dear! he must have been clever to hoodwink an observant little thing like you, who can see right down into people's hearts, even when you hardly seem to be noticing how they do their hair, or the colour of their neckties. This man is nothing but his own valet."
"So am I my own maid," said Lesley. "He never said he was rich, or – "
"I mean he isn't a Marquis."
The soft outline of the girl's figure stiffened, and she sat up very straight on the sofa.
"Who says he isn't a Marquis?" she asked sharply.
"Everybody. The newspaper."
"Oh – the newspaper!"
"But it's true. He's been turned out of his hotel. I'll read you the – "
"Please, I think I'll read it myself, if you don't mind, dear," said Lesley. "That is – when you've finished. I can wait."
"I have finished, all I care about reading," Mrs. Loveland hastened to assure her, for she invariably discovered that she has ceased to want anything which Lesley could even be suspected of wishing for.
"Take the paper, dear. Don't get up. I'll bring it to you."
But Lesley did get up, and stood with her back to her aunt as she read the Louisville version of Tony Kidd's sensational "story." She took a long time to read it, and when she had come to the end, she laid the paper on her aunt's lap without saying a word.
"Well – has it struck you dumb?" exclaimed Mrs. Loveland, disappointed: for if she spoiled Lesley with petting, Lesley spoiled her with responsiveness.
"I am rather horrified," said the girl.
"No wonder. You actually knew him – or thought you did."
"I think so still."
"Why – did you suspect at all?"
"Nothing that I don't suspect now. Poor fellow!"
"'Poor!' Dearest, that's carrying soft-heartedness too far. Think – if he'd married some girl."
"I have often thought of it."
"What must Mrs. Milton and Fanny be feeling?" went on Mrs. Loveland. "Friends on the ship – and now he knocks down the husband and father in the street, because – "
"Ah, yes, because of what?" echoed Lesley.
"Mr. Milton says – "
"I read what he said. But his photograph is in the paper."
"What has that got to do with it?"
"Nothing, unless one's interested in physiognomy."
"I don't know anything about physiognomy," said Mrs. Loveland.
"Neither do I," said Lesley, "except what I was born knowing."
"Well, dear, I don't think I'd talk to any of our friends about having met this dreadful impostor," Aunt Barbara suggested, gently. "People might fancy, if you did, that there'd been – oh, some little shipboard flirtation, perhaps, nothing serious, of course, but – "
"So they might," admitted the girl. "I didn't think at the time, myself, that it was anything serious."
"I should hope not!" breathed Aunt Barbara. "A valet!"
"Marquis or Valet?" murmured Lesley, with a quaint little smile. "It sounds like the title of an old-fashioned story."
"For goodness' sake don't use it," begged her aunt. "The material isn't worthy of you."
"Oh, my stories are always new-fashioned," said Lesley. "You know, the critics reproach me for running ahead of the times in my ideas."
"You certainly are rather unexpected," replied Mrs. Loveland. "Sometimes I almost wish you were a tiny – just a tiny bit more conventional."
"You wished it when I said 'poor fellow.'"
"Oh, but you didn't really mean that."
"I did," persisted Lesley. "I should be disappointed in myself if I thought I could fail to recognise a valet when I saw one. And I hate being disappointed – in anyone."
"It must be disappointing to an author – one who has to be a student of character," assented Aunt Barbara, soothingly.
"Even when she's forgotten all about that part of herself for awhile, owing to – interruptions."
The dovelike little lady looked hurt. "Oh, my dear, I do beg your pardon!" she cried. "Of course I know, at this time of day – I'm only in the library on sufferance."
"I didn't mean you, Auntie," said Lesley, kissing her.
"Not me? Who, then – "
"But I really ought to write."
"I do hope I haven't taken your inspiration away, dearest."
"No. You've given me one."
"I'm so glad. Well, I'll run away now. I've lots of things to see to. Forget all about the Marquis of Loveland – I mean the valet. Put him out of your mind."
"Don't worry, Auntie. It's quite easy to put a valet out of a tidy, well-regulated little mind like mine."
"Think of Dick," said Mrs. Loveland. "He's going to be a splendid fellow."
"Dick's a paper doll," said Lesley.
Perhaps it was because she was not in a mood to play dolls that, when Aunt Barbara was gone, Lesley did not go back to her sofa and her story writing. She picked up the paper which Mrs. Loveland had left lying on the table, but she did not read. She merely looked at Mr. Milton's photograph. Then she went to the desk where she kept papers, and took a cheque-book from a drawer.
"No, that won't do," she said to herself, after thinking for a minute. She put the cheque-book back in its place, and opened another drawer, not locked, for neither drawers nor cupboards nor hearts were ever locked in this old-fashioned Kentucky house.
The second drawer was full of greenbacks. Perhaps it was a kind of savings bank for the young author; but, poor or rich, authors are proverbially easy about parting with their earnings, and Southern-born Lesley was no exception to the rule.
She counted out a number of bills – (more than half) – folded them up in a blank sheet of paper, torn off the writing pad, that there might be no address upon it, and pressed the flattened parcel into a large, stout envelope. This she sealed with blue sealing wax, and after a moment or two of puzzled reflection, began to print, in big black letters: