Lord Loveland Discovers America

The Discovery of Lord Loveland by America

It was a brilliant scene into the midst of which Loveland plunged.

Society begins to dine earlier in New York than in London; therefore at eight o'clock dinner was in full swing. There was scarcely an empty table; and many of the women being in hats and semi-evening dress, the red and gold restaurant suggested to the newcomer a living picture of Paris.

He had had the forethought to telephone down and order a table to be kept for him, and informing an interrogative waiter that he was Lord Loveland he learned that his place would be found at the far end of the room.

It looked a very far end indeed, gazing across an intervening sea of flowerlike hats, charming faces, and jewelled necks that glimmered white under film of lace and tulle; but Loveland was not shy. Among all the men who protected the charming faces, his sweeping, faintly supercilious glance did not show him one whose physical advantages he need envy. He rather enjoyed his progress, winding on and on along narrow paths between rose-burdened tables, with lovely eyes lifting to his as he passed by. He wondered if any pair of those eyes was destined to look down his own table at Loveland Castle some day. Well, they should be beautiful eyes to deserve the honour! the thought slipped vaguely through his head, and then his own eyes brightened with the light of recognition.

There, at a large table decorated with white and purple violets, sat Elinor Coolidge, her father, Mrs. Milton and Fanny, and two men whom Loveland had never seen before. Standing, and bending slightly down to talk in a confidential tone with one of these men, was Major Cadwallader Hunter.

His back was turned towards Loveland, who recognised him instantly, however, by the set of his high, military shoulders, and the bald spot on his head which Lesley Dearmer had likened to the shape of Italy on the map. He seemed to listen with deep interest to what one of the seated men was saying, and then to chime in eagerly with some addition of his own. Everyone at the table was absorbed in the conversation between these two, and as Loveland came nearer, he saw that the expression of all the faces, including those of the three ladies, was so grave as to appear out of keeping with the liveliness of the scene. Suddenly, however, Loveland caught Fanny Milton's eye. She started, and blushed scarlet. The slight, involuntary movement she made drew Miss Coolidge's attention: and Elinor, seeing the direction in which Fanny's eyes were turned, sent a glance that way.

Loveland, within bowing distance now, met the glance, and returned it, smiling. He was annoyed that Cadwallader Hunter should be with the party, even though evidently not of it. Yet, after all, he said to himself, perhaps it was as well. He did not mean to apologise to Cadwallader Hunter, for he thought his own rudeness more or less justified by the liberty the other had taken; but he had already made up his mind that, the next time he met the man, he would act as if nothing disagreeable had happened. As to Cadwallader Hunter's readiness to snatch at the olive branch, Loveland had not the slightest doubt of it. He thought he had only to hold out a hand for the Major to kiss it, grovelling.

Elinor Coolidge did not blush at the sight of Lord Loveland as Fanny Milton did, but her beautiful face changed curiously. Its cameo-clear lines hardened, her lips were pressed together, and her large eyes narrowed, gleaming like topazes between their dark lashes, as the lights from the shaded candles on the table lighted sparks in their yellow-brown depths.

The thought flashed into Loveland's head that the quick change in her face meant jealousy of Fanny Milton. He had noticed more than once on shipboard that she had seemed jealous of Fanny, and now that deep blush of the younger girl's at sight of him, had probably vexed her. He could not attribute the hardening of the beautiful features to any other cause, and as of the two it was wise to prefer Elinor and her millions to Fanny and her thousands, he let his first look, his first words, be for the Coolidges, father and daughter.

"How d'you do?" he asked, pausing at the table.

Instead of answering, or putting out her hand to him as he expected, Elinor almost convulsively grasped the sticks of a delicate little fan which lay beside her plate. She shot a topaz glance at one of the two new men, then let her eyes under raised brows seek and hold her father's.

Lord Loveland was at once surprised and puzzled by this extraordinary reception. "Can Cadwallader Hunter have told them all some lie to set them against me?" he asked himself. But it was no more than a passing thought. It was incredible that Miss Coolidge should believe anything against him.

At the sound of Loveland's voice, Cadwallader Hunter straightened up in haste and turned round, looking suddenly stiff and wicked as a frozen snake.

He stared into Loveland's eyes, his own like grey glass; and an unpromising smile depressed the corners of his thin lips.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" thought Val, with the carelessness of a man used to dominating situations. "He's afraid I'm not going to speak to him, and he daren't speak first for fear of being snubbed again. Well"—and Val felt pleasantly magnanimous—"I'll give him a lead. How are you?" he asked, with the patronising tone his voice unconsciously took when he spoke to this man.

Then he could hardly believe his eyes which told him that Cadwallader Hunter had turned a contemptuous shoulder upon him, darting disgust in a venomous glance.

"This is the—person we were speaking of," he said to the dark, clean-shaven man towards whom he had been bending (he seemed always to be bending towards someone) when Loveland came up. "Shall we have him turned out?"

Mr. Coolidge half rose in his seat, losing his characteristic stolidity. "No, no," he returned, in a low, decided voice, "there must be no scene here, for the ladies' sake. Keep quiet, everybody."

"You're right, Coolidge," returned the dark, smooth-faced man.

Then the latter fixed his eyes on Loveland with a stare under a frown; and the other new man stared also; but the three women looked away, trying in vain to think of something easy and natural to say to each other. A slight, nervous twitching which occasionally disturbed the tranquillity of Mrs. Milton's camellia-white face became visible; Elinor Coolidge was pale and motionless; and Fanny's eyes swam in a lake of tears which she struggled to keep from over-flowing.

Again it struck Loveland that he was living in a dream; the gorgeous room; the crowd of well-dressed men and beautiful women; the hurrying waiters; the lights; the fragrance of flowers and food, and scented laces; the chatter of laughing voices subdued by distance; and more unreal than all, the table surrounded by the faces that he knew, faces he had expected to find smiling in friendship, now frozen into something like horror—horror at him, Lord Loveland, whom everybody had always wanted and admired.

It could not be true. It was not happening really. Things like this did not happen.

He stood for a moment, stupidly, like a boy in the school-room who has been bidden to stand up and be stared at as a punishment for some misdemeanour. He was almost inclined to laugh at the insolence of Cadwallader Hunter, as a lion might laugh at a fox terrier worrying his foot. It was on his lips to say, "What a tempest in a tea-pot! Surely you're not going to believe any idiotic tale that tuft-hunting ass may have trumped up about me?"

But he bit back the words. If they chose to champion Cadwallader Hunter in his silly grievance against a Marquis of Loveland, why, let them. They would be sorry afterwards—when it was too late. To sneer Cadwallader Hunter down as he deserved would be to make a disagreeable scene, and the business was squalid enough already. He would have thought better of the Coolidges, if not of the Miltons, mother and daughter; but he said to himself that none of them were worth even the shrug of the shoulders he gave, as with his head held gallantly high, he passed on towards his own table.

The little dramatic episode, if observed by any audience, had been played too subtly to be understood by those not concerned. Those seated nearest might have seen that, when a handsome young man stopped to speak to some members of a party at a table, another man who did not belong to that party, had looked at him scornfully and whispered venomously; that then one or two others had spoken hurriedly, and that the handsome young man had stalked away apparently in disgust.

But several of the neighbours knew the party at the table by sight, and Cadwallader Hunter also. These consulted together, and wondered who was the tall young man who looked like an Englishman. The women commented flatteringly upon his face or his figure, but the men were of the opinion that, judging by the way Cadwallader Hunter ("Pepys Junior" they called him) had eyed the chap he must be the rankest kind of an outsider.

There were two chairs at Loveland's table-placed in case he might choose to bring a guest—and he deliberately selected the one which put him with his back to the Coolidge party. But he had forgotten that Major Cadwallader Hunter was not one of that party, and might wander at will to any part of the dining-room. Presently he did begin to wander, stopping to talk with another group of people, then with another, and so on, always on his way somewhere else.

Loveland, utterly sick now of his late friend, did not bestow a glance upon the thin, high-shouldered figure as it paused and flitted, flitted and paused, like a fastidious bee in a flower-garden. A polite waiter had slipped a menu into the hand of Loveland, who regarded the decorated square of cardboard as if it were a fetish to preserve him from evil. But if he had deigned to let his eye follow Cadwallader Hunter, he would have seen that each group of people glanced with furtive curiosity at him; stared, whispered, stared again, and afterwards signalled each other from table to table, across flowery spaces, lifting eyebrows and exchanging signs of a secret intelligence.

Cadwallader Hunter prided himself on knowing all the people who were worth knowing, wherever he went, and those he did not know at the start, he generally contrived to know at the finish. He had at least twenty or thirty acquaintances in the restaurant of the Waldorf-Astoria tonight; and having heard from one of these a startling piece of news (which would have been less welcome yesterday) he dropped bits of the rich honey-pollen here and there, as he made his way towards the door. He had dined early, because he had been minded to show himself, rather late, at the first performance of a new comedy by the brilliant young playwright, Sidney Cremer; but now he found himself appearing on the stage and acting almost a leading part in a drama a hundred times more exciting than he could see at any theatre. He went straight from the restaurant to the long row of desks in the hotel office for a heart to heart talk with the clerk he had interviewed in the morning. Then, having made the impression and obtained the assurance he desired, he searched for other acquaintances in that vast, decorative corridor of marble, facetiously known as "Peacock Alley." He knew several of the best Peacocks there (for there were all kinds, from North, South, West and East, to many of whom Cadwallader Hunter would not have deigned to bow, even if they were smeared with gold and dipped in diamonds), and he talked to those of his choice more loudly than he had talked in the dining-room. Acquaintances whom he button-holed, and strangers who could catch the drift of what he was saying—listened with interest, and then sat or stood about with the air of expecting that some exciting event might happen.

Meanwhile Loveland ordered his dinner, though not quite as carefully as he would had it not been for the disagreeable little incident which he tried to forget as if it were but one more in the series of pin-pricks. As he had no money—at present—to pay for it, he thought he might as well drown his vexations in champagne, and asked for a bottle of the brand he liked best, without even enquiring the New York conception of its price.

As the waiter would have gone off with the order, Val called him back, on a sudden thought. "Do you know the names of the people at the table where I stopped?"

"Yes, sir," replied the man. "They are very well known here. We often have them dining and lunching. Mr. Coolidge is a millionaire. He and his daughter are just back from Europe, and Mrs. and Miss Milton, too."

"Yes, yes," said Loveland, impatiently. "I know all that. But the others?"

"Oh, the smooth shaved gentleman with the black hair and prominent eyes, he's Mr. Milton, Mrs. Milton's husband, rather a gay sort of gentleman, sir. The story is, he and Mrs. Milton don't get along very pleasantly. There'll be plenty here tonight will be interested, seeing them together just after her coming home with the young lady. And the other gentleman, sir, the good-looking, young one with the dark moustache, that's one of our greatest New York swells, Mr. Henry van Cotter. He——"

"Thank you. That will do," broke in Loveland, suddenly annoyed by the servant's knowing loquacity. The name of Henry van Cotter had, in such a connection, stirred a dim sense of discomfort within him. This van Cotter was one of Harborough's friends. Val had left Jim's letter, and a visiting card this afternoon at a huge palace of an "apartment house," where Mr. van Cotter had a flat.

The waiter, thus checked, trotted away with the order for dinner, and was so long in returning that Val (who did not see him stopped and harangued by a grave-faced superior) wondered and grew impatient. Other people were served, while he still sat idle. He was not hungry, for an angry tingling in his veins had burnt up his appetite for dinner, as his keenness for luncheon had been destroyed, but he resented being kept waiting, as if he were a person of no importance.

At last he saw his waiter coming back, and was about to ask irritably whether the man thought it was tomorrow's breakfast he'd ordered, when a sealed envelope of the hotel paper was laid on the table in place of the expected oysters.

The servant discreetly retired out of sight behind his lordship's chair, like a little boy who has lit a squib and awaits the explosion; and Loveland tore open the envelope which, very oddly, he thought, was not addressed.

He had a vague expectation that the contents would prove to be a note from Cadwallader Hunter, and the reality came upon him as a complete surprise.

"Sir," he read, in neat typing, "the management of the hotel presents its compliments, and informs you that the suite you are occupying will be required from this evening, also that they regret they have no other room to place at your disposal. They therefore enclose your account up to date, and request the favour of immediate payment. Should you wish for dinner and wine, they would be obliged if you would kindly pay in advance. The bill for same (as ordered by you) is enclosed separately from the other account."

Now, surely, he would at last wake up from this wild nightmare, and find himself at home in England, or still on the ship. Nothing had seemed real since he landed, and could not be real. Foxham could not have stolen his clothes; the New York bank could not have refused to give him money; Cadwallader Hunter could not have induced Henry van Cotter, the Coolidges and Miltons to cut him; and, above all, the hotel he honoured with his patronage could not have flung in his face this monstrous insult.

Nevertheless, there was the bill staring up at him, as he stared down at it.

Lord Loveland, hardly knowing what he said or did in the persistent nightmare from which he could not wake, called the waiter to him, from ambush behind his chair.

The man came, with eyes cast patiently down, not to meet the angry blaze turned dangerously upon him. He knew that something was wrong, very wrong, indeed, but it was not his affair, except that he was consumed with honest curiosity, and he did not wish grievances to be visited on him.

"There must be some mistake here," said Loveland, folding up the paper, and replacing the three sheets in the envelope, with fingers that were not quite steady. "This can't be for me. You see, there's no name on the thing. You've brought it to the wrong person."

"No—o, sir," returned the servant. "I was told to bring it to you. If there's a mistake, sir, it isn't me who's made it."

"Very well, then, somebody else has," insisted Loveland. "I tell you this can't possibly be meant for me. Give the envelope back to whoever gave it to you, and ask him to hand it to the manager, saying that in error it was delivered to Lord Loveland."

"Yes, sir." The waiter obediently took charge of the offensive envelope, and ambled away with it, to confer at a distance with the person from whom it had been received five minutes ago. There were a few gestures, a few shrugs, and then the two approached Lord Loveland's table together.

"It's quite right, sir," murmured the newcomer. "The letter is for you, sir. There's no mistake." As if by way of reminder he gently laid the envelope down on the table, in the place where those iced Blue Points never would be now.

Deadly white under his brown tan, Val rose without a word, crumpling the envelope in a hand that itched to clutch someone by the throat, and flinging down a silver dollar for the waiter. The Coolidges and their party were still at the violet-decked table as Loveland passed by, but he did not see them. He had forgotten their existence.

"Papa, the Major has done it!" exclaimed Elinor Coolidge, looking across at her father, who sat between Mrs. Milton and Fanny.

"Yes, he has done it," replied Mr. Coolidge, smiling the wooden smile which was of fair, carved ivory when reproduced on the beautiful face of his daughter. "I don't know what's come over the Major since this morning. He seemed to love that Englishman like a son, on board the Mauretania; but tonight he fairly jumped out of himself with joy when he heard Van Cotter's piece of news."

"I'm sure we were all as nice as we could be to Lord—to him," faltered Fanny Milton, who had drained the lake from her eyes when no one was looking, but only to make way, it seemed, for a new supply of salt water.

"Oh, speak for yourself, Fanny," said Mrs. Milton, with her exaggerated English accent. "As for me, I——"

"Why, Mamma, you were just lovely to him, every minute!" cried the girl, defending herself briskly. "If you weren't married, with a grown-up daughter, people might have thought you were in love with him yourself, sometimes."

"Nonsense!" retorted Fanny's mother, darting a furious look at her child. "The way you talk shows you're not grown up."

"I always thought he was the most conceited young man I ever saw," broke in Elinor Coolidge. "I could have boxed his ears often, and it would have served him right. I just enjoy this. It's like a play."

"Well, I think that's real mean of you, Elinor," said Fanny. "And I don't see how you can feel that way. He looks so pale—it makes me sick to think what he's got to go through, poor fellow, and he's so handsome! Did you ever see anything as beautiful as he looked just now when he went stalking by us with his head high, and his face pale, and his eyes like blue fire?"

"I certainly never saw a British 'Lord' as handsome. They don't make 'em like that," said good-looking Henry van Cotter; and then they all laughed—all except Fanny Milton. She was wondering what Lesley Dearmer would do, if she were here tonight, instead of tearing away towards Louisville as fast as an express train could carry her. Lesley had been Loveland's friend, in quite an unpretending, humble little way, knowing that she was no match for him, and never could be. But Lesley was a strange girl. She thought of such odd, original things to do. Would she do anything odd and original if she were here now? And if she did, would it be for or against the man who was down?

As it happened, Lesley was thinking of Lord Loveland at that very moment. Perhaps it was a kind of telepathy which brought her image so clearly before Fanny Milton's eyes; for Lesley's thoughts included Fanny.

It was not yet time for the coloured porters to begin "making down" the beds in the sleeping cars, and Lesley and her aunt sat opposite one another, each with a book in her hand. Mrs. Loveland had a story of the South, as she could dimly remember it, before the Civil War, and she was reading with interest half sad, half pleased. Lesley had a novel, too, one which had been making quite a sensation while she was in Europe, and her aunt had bought it for her in the Grand Central Station, before taking the train. She had often said that she would like to read the book, but now, though her eyes travelled from one line to another, and she mechanically turned a page here and there, she did not even know the names of the characters, or what they were saying or doing.

The panting of the great engine and the rushing roar of the wheels had come to have a refrain for her. "Never again—never again," she heard them say, as if the words were shouted spitefully into her ears. "Never see him again—never again. He'll forget you—forget you. Soon he'll marry—marry some rich girl."

Then she wondered who the rich girl would be. Elinor Coolidge, perhaps? Elinor was very rich, and very beautiful, and already very proud. Everything about her was superlative. A great many glowing descriptive adjectives were called for, when one only thought about Elinor, and Lesley's experience as a story-writer had made her expert with adjectives—painfully expert, it seemed now, as her imagination ran ahead—even ahead of the rushing train—to picture Elinor as a bride.

"Oh, I'm sure she wouldn't make him happy!" Lesley thought, and then asked herself whether Lord Loveland deserved to be happy.

No, of course he didn't deserve happiness with a girl he married for money. Yet Lesley couldn't bear to think of him as miserable or disappointed in life. The brilliant sparks which showered past the train windows seemed to her like the moments she had spent with Loveland, moments left behind for ever now, and she could not help wishing that she might live them over again.

"Perhaps I might have helped him to be different, if I'd tried," she said to herself, as she watched the specks of fire which flashed and died. "But I didn't try. I was too proud to try, I suppose. It was a silly kind of pride, for he could be—he could be such a man, if he knew himself, and would live up to himself."

Elinor could not help him to do that. She was not the kind of girl to dream of the existence of that real self, of which Lesley had fancied she caught glimpses sometimes, as if behind a veil that never had been torn aside. Miss Coolidge would be well enough satisfied with Lord Loveland as he was, for she would only want from him material things, such things as she could afford to buy with her money. And if they married, the bright loveableness in Val's nature would be clouded and obscured. He would grow hard, and wholly selfish.

But with Fanny Milton, if he should marry her?

It was just as Lesley asked herself this question, that Fanny's thoughts flew to Lesley, wondering what Lesley would do if she saw Lord Loveland held up to public scorn.

"Fanny would love him," Lesley reflected. "But——" Her mind paused at that "But," and she took herself to task for mean jealousy because it was in her head, or her heart, that Fanny would not love him in the way best for his highest development. "She'd spoil and pet him, and make him worse than he is now, because it's a strong tonic, not a diet of sugar that he needs. And if he said a cross word, or looked at another woman, Fanny would cry."

Although Lesley knew that all this was true, still she was afraid that jealousy of a girl looked upon by Lord Loveland as eligible, was really the foundation of her argument.

"I am jealous," she admitted, "although I have no right to be. I could have made him care enough about me to lose his head and say that if I'd promise to marry him, he'd count the world well lost. Oh, yes, I could have done that! I know it. But how would he have felt, the minute the words were out of his mouth? He'd have regretted them bitterly, and thought himself mad. Then, even if I'd said 'no'—which I would have said, of course,—he'd have thought forever with a kind of wild horror of the narrow escape he'd had, and all his memory of me would have been spoiled. Oh, I'm glad, glad, I kept it to friendship from first to last, and laughed at him always! I told him that he'd forget, and that I wanted him to forget; but I don't, and he won't. Just because we were friends, and because I laughed, and was different from the others, he'll remember—even years from now, when he's married, and the world has given him all it can."

Of course Lesley ought not to have been glad that Loveland would remember her as the one dear blessing he had been denied, and think of her when it would be more suitable that he should be thinking of his Marchioness; but she was glad, with a kind of fierce gladness that hurt, and made her young face look strained in the crude white light of the sleeping-car.

"Dear me, Lesley, that must be an exciting book!" complained Aunt Barbara. "I've spoken to you twice without your hearing."

"I'm so sorry, dear," said Lesley.

"What's it about?" asked the elder woman, who had dutifully put away her novel, because it had occurred to her that it was time to go to bed.

"About?" echoed Lesley. "Oh—about love. And marrying the wrong people."

"What a pity!" sighed Aunt Barbara. "I do think stories ought all to end well, don't you?"

"Some can't," said the girl. "It wouldn't be for the best, I suppose, if they did."

"You look tired, dear," said Mrs. Loveland. "How happy and peaceful we shall feel when we're at home again."

"I wonder?" answered Lesley. But she whispered the words too softly for Aunt Barbara to hear.

Exit Lord Loveland

Loveland walked out of the dining-room of the Waldorf-Astoria hardly knowing what he meant to do.

His wish was to punish those who had insulted him; but how?—was the question ringing in his brain. A gentleman could not knock down a management, or punch its head. "A Management" seemed intangible, out of reach.

Val's first thought was to march up to the desk, and "have a row" with somebody, but an instant's reflection showed him that it would be more in accordance with dignity to go to his own quarters and command a representative of the "Management" to come to him.

This resolve he carried out. Having reached his room, and called down through the telephone for the manager, he was not kept waiting long before a gentlemanly, middle-aged person appeared at his sitting-room door.

"Are you the manager of this hotel?" Loveland enquired brusquely.

"I represent the manager," the newcomer returned.

"Very well, then," said Loveland. "I want you to tell me the meaning of this." And he indicated the typewritten letter and the two bills, which he had laid conspicuously on the table.

The man scarcely glanced at the papers, about which he was evidently well informed already. "The meaning is, that unfortunately we're obliged to request that you vacate this suite immediately," he replied.

"Then, this notice is actually intended for me?"

"It certainly is."

"Why were the rooms let to me this morning if they were wanted tonight?"

"That I can't say. I only know they are wanted."

"Suppose I refuse to go?"

"Oh, I guess you won't do that."

"You're right," said Val. "I wouldn't stop here now if you paid me twelve times as much as you want me to pay you. And, by the way—I can't pay tonight. You'll have to wait till tomorrow, when I can get to the—er—bank."

"I'm afraid we can't wait," the other answered quickly. "If you aren't able to pay we shall have to keep your baggage till you do."

Loveland stared. "That's a little too steep, isn't it?" he sneered. "You turn me out of your hotel in the most insulting and unprovoked manner, and then expect me to go somewhere else without my luggage. Are these American manners with foreigners?"

"They have to be, with some foreigners," returned the other, smiling mysteriously.

"I intend to go now, whether you like or not," said Val, "and take my luggage with me."

"You can't take it unless you pay your bill. That's the law, and our police know how to enforce it. If I were you I wouldn't do anything to make it necessary to call the police. Once in their hands, you might be quite a while getting out, you know."

Loveland clenched his hands, to keep from striking this mouth-piece of the "Management." He would not be drawn into a vulgar brawl, as a preface to his New York campaign in search of an heiress. Things had begun badly enough, as they were, but nothing had happened yet at which he might not be able to laugh—rather bitterly perhaps—tomorrow. He had heard of horrors in connection with the New York police; innocent British visitors arrested and kept for days in gaol, for some offence never committed; the newspapers printing lies about them, to be copied in London, and read by their shocked acquaintances. Such things he had been told, and though they mightn't be true, Loveland could not afford to risk any such incident for himself. He was far too important.

It seemed to him that there was a peculiar significance, almost a menace, in the hint he had just been given. If he were a criminal escaping from justice, instead of a British peer with a proud name which he would willingly bestow on a daughter of America, just such an emphasis might have been used to warn him that he had better bear the ills he knew, if he did not want to incur worse evils.

Val believed that Cadwallader Hunter had somehow contrived to bring about this hideous state of affairs; though he could not imagine how, unless all Americans were ready to band together and avenge one another's fancied wrongs against a stranger. On the face of it, nothing could be more ridiculous than to suppose that an Englishman of title was being asked to leave a New York hotel in the evening, because he had been a little rude to a retired Major and a newspaper man, in the morning. Yet, for his life, Loveland could think of no other reason; and his polite but cold companion did not seem inclined to explain, unless in answer to undignified entreaties.

"My luggage is worth a lot more than what I owe you here," he said.

"We have heard all about that luggage," was the meaning reply.

Val bit his lip. For the moment he had forgotten Foxham's treachery, but he remembered it now with recurring rage. Evidently the valet had poured forth the history of the great unpacking episode.

Lord Loveland made no retort to the innuendo, for he was busy with a mental calculation. His sole worldly possessions in America consisted of the things he had had in use on board ship. The luggage itself was old, though good of its kind; and the silver fittings in his suit-case would not fetch much if sold. As for his watch, it was a mere cheap, stop-gap affair of gun-metal, bought to tide over the interval until he could redeem the gold repeater he had rashly pawned in London. The studs and sleeve-links that he was wearing were the poorest in his collection. They had been Foxham's choice for the voyage, not his; and now he understood Foxham's underlying motive.

"In my opinion we shall be lucky if the sale of your effects covers the bill," calmly went on the representative of the "Management."

"I wouldn't advise your people to try and sell my things!" exclaimed Loveland.

"They will wait the customary length of time."

"They'd better be jolly careful what they do," Loveland broke out. "Anyhow, I'm much mistaken if I haven't a case in law against the hotel already. If I have—and in justice I ought to have—I shall proceed."

The other smiled for the first time. "I don't expect that any of us will lie awake nights worrying," said he.

Loveland tried to crush the man with a look, but he was not to be so easily abashed. "I've said all I want to say now," Val informed him icily. "You can go, and I will give up the rooms when I'm ready."

"That's all right, as long as it's inside half an hour," returned the other, still with unruffled politeness. "But I have to stay till you do give them up."

"Why this fondness for my society?" enquired Loveland, with raised eyebrows.

The man smiled with a certain good-natured perception of the humour in the situation. "It's duty keeps me as much as pleasure," said he.

"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest, eh? This hotel seems to follow that rule with a vengeance. But I'll take the will for the deed. Strange as it may seem" (Loveland was enjoying his own sarcasm) "I want you to go."

"Very sorry I can't oblige you."

"Confound you, do you think I'll set the place on fire the minute your back is turned?"

"Not so much that as—there are other things you might do."

"What other things? Really I should like to know, for the sake of curiosity."

"Well, if you're bound to get it out of me, I've got to stay and see you don't remove any articles of value."

"By Jove! So that's it? My own, or yours?"

"What's yours is ours at present, and what's ours is our own—as the bride said to the bridegroom."

Val could almost have laughed, though not at the joke. He—the Marquis of Loveland, an officer in the Grenadier Guards—was to be watched lest he should steal the hotel soap, or sneak off with his own toothbrush!

He went white and red, and white again. If by a word he could have tumbled the whole hotel down in an earthquake, he would have been willing to be caught under the ruins. He had a wild, boyish conviction that by subjecting himself now to the extremest inconvenience, he could by and by cause the hotel management poignant remorse. Yes, he would take them at their word. He would walk out of the house just as he was, leaving everything he had behind him. This would make their guilt the blacker when it came to be brought up against them, as it would be very soon, probably as soon as tomorrow. Then they would seek him out, and crawl in apology, begging him to come back at any price, or at no price. But nothing would induce him to cross the threshold of the Waldorf-Astoria again, no, not even if every member of the staff grovelled at his feet. He would not even take his overcoat, and if he were struck down with pneumonia, so much the worse for these insolent people. As for himself, he did not care what happened. He felt as he had when a little boy, and some tutor of unusual firmness had dared to reproach him or attempt punishment. At such times he had wished that he might instantly die, or at the least, fall in a fit, for the sake of frightening his cruel persecutor.

His cap (his only head-covering, as he had forgotten a bowler on board ship) lay on a table, and he held it out for the enemy's inspection. "You say all that is mine is yours," he sneered. "This may have cost six or seven shillings when it was new. Now it would fetch two at most. I will pay you for it. Half a crown is the least I have. Pray, keep the change."

He laid a coin—his last large coin—down on the table where the cap had been, and without another word walked nonchalantly out of the room.

The gentlemanly man did not follow to protest, or to offer the overcoat, as Val half fancied he would do. And without stopping to think coherently, Loveland passed by the lift, scorning to take advantage of its convenience, and ran down flight after flight of stairs, his blood drumming in his ears.

A red cloud before his eyes seemed to screen him from the world. Below, in the great hall through which he had to pass on his way out of the hotel, lights glared and dazzled, and the talk and laughter of many persons sounded in his ears like the evil voices of the Black Stones that beset Arabian Nights' travellers on their way to the Singing Tree and the Golden Water.

Loveland pushed on, blindly, conscious of himself as the one real entity in a crowd of Will o' the Wisps, and wicked lure-lights. His sole concern with the people in the hateful, glaring picture, was that they should suspect nothing of his feelings. He walked with his head up and something that he meant for a smile on his lips; nor was it an affectation that he appeared to recognize no one, though Cadwallader Hunter—who had been waiting to see this exit—believed it to be.

The Major was standing almost in Loveland's path, speaking with a lady whose name had been on one of Jim Harborough's envelopes, and as the tall Englishman came towards him, he deliberately turned his back.

"Sic semper milordibus," he said half aloud. Which far-fetched witticism made the lady laugh.

Shadows

The night was warm for November in New York; still, there was a decided crispness in the air which Loveland felt as he went out.

The streets were brilliant with light, and half New York appeared to be abroad, although the theatres had been in full swing for nearly an hour. But all the women wore cloaks, and the men overcoats. Loveland, in his dinner jacket and wide expanse of shirt front, his pumps and silk stockings, his cloth travelling cap pulled over his eyes, would have been noticeable even if his height and good looks had not made him a marked figure. Everybody who passed stared, and more than a few glanced back at him. Here and there some pretty woman laughed at a joking comment whispered by her escort; and when his first hot rage began to cool, it was uncomfortably borne in upon Loveland that he was the observed of many observers.

Like most Englishmen, he loathed being conspicuous, and in his present plight it was especially hateful, since being conspicuous meant also to be ridiculous.

His ears, shut by anger, were opened by vanity, and he heard a woman say to a man that he "looked as if he'd just been turned down by his best girl." "And kicked out by Pa," added her companion; at which they both giggled, and the tingling in Loveland's veins drove out the chill which had begun to creep in.

He longed to call a cab, and hide himself from staring eyes, but he had scarcely a shilling left. There was nothing to do but walk on, until he found some hotel which would take him in on trust. As his brain cooled, he began to realise that it might be difficult to find any such hotel.

Here he was, on a winter's night, a foreigner in a strange city, walking the streets without an overcoat, and with only a coin or two in his pocket. He remembered that, in the afternoon, when dealing out visiting cards and letters of introduction, he had slipped his cardcase into a pocket of his overcoat, where it still remained. That overcoat remained in one of the rooms lately his at the Waldorf-Astoria. What a fool he had been after all to leave it behind. The watcher could hardly have torn it off his back. As it was, a whim of silly pride had deprived him of a means of identification, as well as a decent protection for his body.

Why should a hotel-keeper consent to take him in, without luggage, and with nothing save his bare word—not even a bit of engraved pasteboard—to prove that he was the Marquis of Loveland? He had never put himself mentally in the place of anything so low down in the social scale as the keeper of a hotel; yet instinctively he performed the feat now, and judged the case against his own interests.

Nevertheless, as he did not wish to prowl about New York all night, he could but try his luck. Meeting a policeman, he enquired for a respectable, inexpensive hotel in a quiet street, not too far away; and did his best to look unconscious of the big man's concentrated gaze fixed on the large white oval of his shirt front.

"Yez might try the New House, on Toyty Thoyd Street," was the advice that followed upon reflection; and Loveland was obliged to ask three times before he was able to translate "Toyty Thoyd" into Thirty-third Street. Then, he had to turn and retrace his steps, for he had been wandering uptown, and must have covered some distance, as he guessed by the length of time it took him to reach the Waldorf-Astoria again. Coming near, so that the huge building loomed above him like a mountain flaming on all its heights, he was tempted to cross to the other side of the street; but, ashamed of the impulse as childish, he marched stolidly ahead, and even forced himself to turn his face towards the brilliant square of the door-way. As the light caught and photographed him in passing, a man who had been standing in front of the hotel under the iron canopy, with the air of waiting for someone, started after Loveland, walking just fast enough to keep him well in sight.

Val turned into Thirty-third Street, and stopped before the New House, which advertised itself in a blaze of starry electric letters. The man on his trail smiled as he saw the tall figure in evening dress hesitate for an instant, and then hurl himself at a revolving door. He himself strolled on, but he did not go far. When he had taken a dozen steps he wheeled, passed the hotel again, took a dozen more steps, and again came back.

He was a short man, with square shoulders, a large, close-cropped black head set on a short neck into which a double chin bulged, as if he had swallowed a sponge, and it had stuck in his throat as it expanded. His hair glittered like a thick coat of black varnish, and his black eyes glittered also. They looked out from under heavy lids which pouched underneath, and were set too close on either side of a well-cut nose. He was clean shaven, thus making the most of his best feature, a mouth which was handsome despite the hard lines that deep draughts from the cup of life had traced round it. The man was well dressed, with a white silk scarf protecting his evening shirt from the sealskin lining of his overcoat, and he looked not only successful but confident of success. Yet there was anxiety and nervous excitement in the flash of his eyes towards the door of the hotel, each time he passed and repassed.

It was when he had just taken his sixth turn that Loveland shot out through the revolving door even more suddenly than he had shot in. The watcher was near enough to see the look on his face—the tenseness of the lips and drawing together of the eyebrows—and his own expression said "I thought so!" as plainly as words—if there had been anyone there to read it. But Loveland was entirely absorbed in himself, and in bitter thoughts of the hateful experience he had just gone through. He did not notice the man who lingered not far away, and the few people passing had no idea that a little drama was being enacted in pantomime under their eyes. They all looked at the tall young Englishman without an overcoat, but they did not connect the other man with him.

It was hardly to be hoped that there would be a room disengaged in a hotel for a nervous young gentleman with an exposed white shirt-front, no luggage, and a missing cardcase. When Val had explained that he was Lord Loveland, just landed from England, the hotel clerk turned away to hide either a yawn or a grin, and seemed no more inclined to remember the existence of an unoccupied bedroom than if his client had been plain Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones.

"We had a gentleman from England here last week," he said, pleasantly. "His name was Walker, London. Sorry we can't accommodate your lordship."

Then Loveland had squared his shoulders and marched out into the night, which seemed by now grimly cold and unfriendly. The very stars had a sarcastic twinkle, as if they glimmered down from their safe, comfortable heights and laughed.

Val was not inclined to try any more hotels. He felt very young in his loneliness and humiliation, and his heart yearned wistfully for the shabby Scotch shooting-box where his mother lived and thought long thoughts of her. The snow that had fallen so coldly outside her windows seemed warmer than these stars that with their sparkling embroidery canopied a strange land; and the sparsely furnished rooms of the lodge were more beautiful in his remembrance than the gorgeous suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

His mother grudged herself comforts for his sake, yet she had a fire. Val generally pictured her in autumn and winter, bending towards the glow of the rosy flames, holding out her beautifully shaped hands to their kisses. He would be thankful to share the warmth of that fire now; and the faint scent of burning peat—cheapest fuel!—as it stole fragrantly into his memory, gave him a horrid twinge of homesickness such as he had never felt, even in South Africa; for he had had friends around him in the war days.

When he had been in Scotland last—on that flying visit which began with good advice and ended with pink pearls—he had complained of the cooking.

He thought of that, too, at this moment, and laughed a little to himself. He would have been very glad of a chance to taste some of that Scotch broth which he had discarded because it was too thick and too salt. He was sharply hungry; and this hunger gnawed with a wicked persistence it had lacked in South Africa, because in those stirring times it had been shared by all alike, merrily, with jokes.

Yes, he was hungry, sickeningly hungry; and he did not see any prospect of satisfying his appetite that night, unless he should tear the gold sleeve-links out of his shirtcuffs to offer humbly in some cheap restaurant in exchange for a meal. They were not worth much intrinsically; but the thought of the cuffs denuded, ignominious, and the picture of himself—metaphorically—swallowing the buttons like a conjurer, so revolted his fastidious imagination, that he snatched at an alternative, almost any alternative. So it was that, when something which his mother would have called an inspiration floated nebulously through his head, Loveland welcomed it as an astronomer welcomes a new star.

He remembered hearing Betty or Jim Harborough say that in American towns a man might call upon a family he knew well, up to the hour of ten in the evening. It was not nearly ten yet, and though there was no family in New York whom Val knew well, it was a case of any port in a storm.

The Coolidges were now out of the running, and the Miltons; but a Mr. and Mrs. Beverly, with a daughter, had (half apologetically) invited him to visit at their house in Park Avenue. They were rich or richish, though with a trail of trade behind them, and the girl was pretty or prettyish. She seemed positively beautiful to the hungry and homeless Loveland, as the vision of her face lightened the cloud of his misery, and he would have been almost ready to pledge his future to Miss Beverly for a mess of pottage in the way of a kindly welcome, a dinner, a bed, and money in hand for the letter of credit.

He had cannily refused the invitation, pleading many engagements difficult to keep if visiting (the same formula had answered several hospitable offers), but he could easily explain the late call, by lightly recounting the story of his misfortune, making a jest of it, and throwing himself on the family's mercy. He hoped and believed that they would insist upon his staying all night in their house, also that a loan sufficient to pay his hotel bill and redeem his luggage might be suggested.

The prospect of release from all his woes was so soothing, and apparently so easy to compass, that the mere thought was a warming cordial. Val walked briskly back into Fifth Avenue, and asked the way of the first man he met.

The man was amiable, and Loveland felt an impulse of gratitude towards him for lucid and fluent explanations. After all, some of these Americans had very agreeable manners!

Val found Park Avenue a dignified street, and with the pleasantest anticipations ran up the steps of the Beverlys' house, the number of which had fortunately stuck in his memory. There were lights in all the windows of the two lower floors, and as he pressed the electric bell, he saw a shadow flit across the half transparent silk curtains—a shadow which was like a faint silhouette of plump little Madge Beverly.

"It's all right—they're at home, thank goodness!" he said to himself, as he waited for the door to open; and a sense of calm well-being fell upon him, with the assurance that his troubles were over at last. It was like the joy of a bad sailor when the bell of the Channel boat clangs at Calais after a hideous welter of seas in crossing.

A neat servant was soon framed against a yellow background of cheerful light; and at some distance, screened in shadow, the man who had followed Loveland waited once more with a certain anxiety in his eyes.

Val enquired for Mr. and Mrs. Beverly. They were at home, said the servant, in the "living room," with a party of relations who had come to welcome them back after their visit to Europe. If the gentleman would step into the reception room and send up his card, Mr. and Mrs. Beverly would no doubt be down in a minute.

"But when people are at home one doesn't send in one's card," said Loveland, arguing according to English ways.

The servant, trained to American fashions and knowing no others, looked surprised at this statement. He thought the tall gentleman without an overcoat must be a peculiar person, and he had been taught to distrust peculiar persons.

"Tell your master and mistress that Lord Loveland has called, but will not keep them long from their friends," said Val, growing impatient under the man's narrow look.

The servant resented the suggestion that, as a free man, in a free country, he could have a master and mistress. And a Lord Anybody sounded like a practical joke to him; for though he had begun by being a Swede, he had been an American since he was short-coated. However, he was well trained, according to his lights and the family traditions of the Beverlys. He ushered the Practical Joker into a handsome drawing-room, and vanished upstairs to explain the odd young gentleman who never announced himself with cards.

The parlour was a very nice parlour, tastefully furnished. There were portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly, facing each other upon the walls; and the lady's picture, evidently painted many years ago, so poignantly suggested what Madge would be at her age, that Loveland was alarmed.

"I'll do anything else to show my gratitude except marry the daughter," he was making up his mind in advance, when the servant returned, with a grave face. Indeed, it could not have been more solemn if he had come to break the news that all Lord Loveland's surviving relatives had perished together in a holocaust.

"Mr. and Mrs. Beverly are very sorry, sir," said the man, "but they are too much engaged to see anybody tonight."

Val rose, haughtily. His pride and his hopes had both received another severe rap, all the sharper because unexpected, but his face did not show his mortification.

"I'll trouble you to open the door," he said, as the servant stood petrified. And so once more Lord Loveland was thrown upon the hospitality of the streets. The flitting shadows were gone from the windows, which still gleamed cheerily; but they were dark to the outcast's heart.

"I needn't have bothered about how to show my gratitude," he reminded himself. "I don't think they're exactly going to make a point of my marrying their girl, after all."

He was able to smile at this thought, but it was a very faint, chill smile. And his amazement at the treatment he was receiving everywhere, in place of the flattering attention he had been led to expect, was blank and blind as a high stone wall without doors or windows.