Lord Loveland Discovers America

"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.

CHAPTER TWELVE

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.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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.