Lord Loveland Discovers America

He glanced hastily round, and assured himself that no one was near: no one could have seen the incident, which luckily for him had happened at some distance from a street lamp. He thought carefully but quickly. If anyone should come – if an alarm were given – if he should find himself in the hands of the police – that would be the worst thing that had happened yet.

This beast who lay there – this beast who had taken advantage of a stranger's misfortunes to try and bribe him to the basest dishonour – wasn't hurt half as badly as he deserved to be. Loveland was glad he had struck the wretch, and would do it again, if it had to be done again, pay for the satisfaction dearly as he might have to pay. But he did not see that there was need to pay at all. If the fellow complained to the police of his assault, Val couldn't defend himself by telling the truth, because Mrs. Milton's name must not be brought in. He did not admire her particularly, and he owed her no gratitude, but she was a woman; and suddenly he knew of himself that he would bear the worst that might befall him, rather than drag Mrs. Milton into a scandal.

For as long as he might have taken to count twelve, perhaps, Lord Loveland stood making up his mind and staring at the man on the ground: then he walked away as quickly as he dared.

How interminable the length of this cross-street seemed! He did not even know what street it was into which he had turned almost mechanically with Milton, as they talked, nor did it matter, if only he could get out, and far enough away before Milton came to himself, to gabble some malicious lie about what had happened.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Introducing Shakespeare

The end of the street, and no pursuing steps, nor shouts of accusing voices!

Once round the corner, Loveland breathed more freely; but with the white glint of his uncovered evening shirt, he was a marked man among men whose overcoats acknowledged winter, and his one anxiety for the moment was to get on as far as possible in as short a time as possible.

He had two or three small pieces of American money in his pocket, rather more than equal to the value of an English shilling, and he thought of hurling himself into a tearing electric car, or rushing up the steps of an "L" station to board the first train that should come in. But he did not know what destination to name, and feared that, if he professed indifference as to the end of the journey, he might arouse suspicion. It was wiser, he decided, to go on foot, dodging from the brilliantly lighted avenues into the darker cross-streets, and so on, indefinitely, until it seemed safe to call a halt.

Before the unexpected climax of his interview with Mr. Milton Loveland had still hoped for ultimate shelter and dinner, but now he ceased to regard either as a likely goal of his adventure. The great thing was, not to be caught by the New York police, and "run in" for assault, clapped into prison, into print, and forever out of the matrimonial court. The present was very bad, but there was hope for the future, although Milton's hints and strange manner had brought closer the cloud of dark presentiment until it pressed like a thick veil over Loveland's eyes.

When he found himself in the Plaza, and saw the black forest of the park billowing away into distance like the gulf of night, he looked towards it as a refuge. If only it were still open at this hour! If only he could get in!

His doubt died at birth; for a big motor car whizzed by him and into the velvet gloom. Evidently Central Park was not shut to the public at night.

Loveland followed the car; and though moving ghostlike along a tree-walled road, he had not quite the wished-for sense of being blotted out by darkness, it was good to escape from glaring lights and staring people.

When Loveland became accustomed to the gloom, it took on colour to his eyes, and turned from black to a deep, transparent blue which shimmered round him like the shadows of spirit forms; and far away where flared the lights of the "Great White Way" the dusk was beaten into sparks of flame as if a dying torch had been shaken down the sky. The blazing eyes of motor lamps, and yellow-winking carriage-lights moved along the dim drives, and drew the night in after them like a folding curtain.

Val turned out of a broad thoroughfare of the park into a quieter road to avoid the procession of vehicles and the faces that peered from their windows. There were no faces in the world that he wanted to see now, save his mother's – and Lesley Dearmer's, and he was ashamed of the longing which ached in him for those two.

"Buck up, you blighter," he admonished himself. "Don't be an ass or a baby."

It was easy to lash his soul with sage advice. But he felt very small and pitiful in the vast, unfriendly city, where it seemed that there were warm overcoats and good dinners for everybody except the Marquis of Loveland.

He strayed aimlessly along a winding way haunted by a melancholy fragrance of dying leaves, and a silence that rustled with scurrying thoughts which could never embody themselves in words.

In the great illuminated cañons of the New York streets electricity outshone the stars, and it was hard to tell whether the moon lived or died. But above the Park hung a sky like a bell, purple in its dome, and touched with metallic gleams at the rim where the earth-lights climbed. And bye and bye that purple paled slowly with the moon-dawn that sifted down in silver dust over the black trees, whitening the autumn mists that clung close to the grass like a face-cloth on the dead.

Loveland was bitterly cold now – cold all the way through to his heart – but he flung himself down on a bench under a low-branching tree, and wondered desolately if he had found his quarters for the night.

For a moment he had sat there, trying to marshal the routed army of his thoughts, before he realised that he was not alone on the seat. Something stirred at the far end where the shadow was deepest. There was a faint tinkle as of a fairy bell – a cracked fairy bell, and a tiny shape leaped from the bench. Loveland watched it flitting here and there, darting across the glimmering grey road, and then about to prick daintily back again when a motor swung round the curving corner.

The fragile sound of the bell was drowned, and the little shape would have gone under the fat-tyred wheels, to be swept into nothingness like chaff by the wind, had not Val sprung forward, and dashed across the road in front of the car, catching up the morsel in his rush.

He risked his life, but the lights of the car had shown him in one blinding flash that the frisking thing was a miniature black dog, no bigger than his hand; and Val loved dogs big and little with all that was best and warmest in him. Nothing could have tempted him to hurt a dog, or indeed any animal save those it was the legitimate sport of Englishmen to kill; and he could imagine himself murdering a man guilty of cruelty to any helpless creature.

The motor horn gave a shriek, and there was a grinding of brakes, jammed on with savage suddenness, but the car could not have stopped in time. It was only Loveland's quickness which saved him, and scarcely beyond touch of the tyres he stumbled, drawing up his knees to keep from being run over; but he had the tiny, beating body in his hand, held up out of harm's way.

"You fool! You'd have had yourself to thank if you'd been smashed!" growled the chauffeur, who was alone in the car. "And it's God's wonder you didn't make me skid smack into that bench."

Loveland, picking himself up, did not think it worth while to answer, and the chauffeur, who heard the arrival of a policeman unsympathetic to motor men, decided not to stop for further argument. With a parting grumble, he slipped away into the night; and Loveland, by this time on his feet, walked quietly across the road again with the cause of the disturbance quivering in his hand.

"That was a close shave for you, you little beggar," he said half aloud. "Who are you, I wonder, and where did you spring from?"

"Answers to name o' Shakespeare, and dropped out o' my pocket while I snoozed, I guess," said a voice from the shadow. "You bet I'm obliged to you for what you done. 'Twas fine."

Under the big tree that roofed the seat, moon rays dripped between branches like water that trickles slowly through holes in old netting. A man who had been huddled asleep on one corner of the bench was on his feet, holding out eager hands to take the dog from Loveland: a shabby figure even in the dim light, with a hatchet face thin as a new moon, that glimmered pale between the black blot of a frowsy hat and the inky blur of a turned-up coat collar. Val could make out the features but indistinctly, yet he caught the impression of a quaint, patient humourousness, as if a character sketch penned on white paper in three or four sharp black lines had been passed quickly before his eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Shakespeare's Master

Lord Loveland's habit was to give a wide berth to common people, if Chance, the democrat, threw him near them, with the exception of "Tommies," who for him as a soldier were a class by themselves – a class in which he recognised humanity that touched his own. He did not love ugliness or shabbiness, which as like as not meant microbes; but he had come down so near to the depths of reality tonight, that he had no sense of his own superiority, or inclination to shrink away when the man's hands touched his as they took the rescued animal.

"I came along in the nick of time," said Loveland, "and I like dogs. I thought I could just do it, and I did."

"'Twas fine, all the same," repeated the dog's master. "I ain't much of a public speaker, but I guess you know how I feel, all right. 'Twould 'a pretty near put me out o' business if – " He did not finish his sentence, but the tenderness with which he tucked into his pocket the wretched little apology for a dog made further words superfluous.

Loveland, always polite to inferiors, unless overmastered by rage, looked at the bench as if it were the first comer's property.

"If you don't mind, I'll sit down," he said.

The shabby one laughed. "I ain't paid for my lodgings," said he, "and if I had, you'd be welcome – after what you done. You can have me for a doormat if you like."

"Thanks," said Loveland, laughing, too. "I don't need a doormat. If it was an overcoat, now – "

"You could have mine, if you weren't twice the size for it, and if Anthony Comstock wouldn't run me in if he saw what I've got on underneath. But I guess you wouldn't have to wish twice for a coat, if 'twas in your part."

"My part?" repeated Val.

"If the piece you're in called for it."

"I don't understand."

They were both sitting down now, filling the far corners of the bench, and talking across it.

"Well, 'tain't my show. I don't want to be fresh. But though I've seen a lot o' night-bloomin' plants growin' in this flower garden, I don't just recall seein' one like you take root."

"You wouldn't now, if I had anywhere else to go," returned Loveland, with his usual frankness.

"Gee! You take me for the fall guy. But say, do you want anything out o' me? 'Cause, if you do, you can have it. If you're a journalist out on a night stunt, and what you're fishin' for is the history o' my life, I'm on, for Shakespeare's sake. Any form you like, sad or gay, moral lesson or otherwise."

"Hang journalists!"

"Think so? Well, millionaire then, seein' how the poor live. You look the swell all right."

"Thank you. Wish I felt as I look, then."

"You'd make the Gould and Vanderbilt crowd look like visitors, if you hadn't forgot your overcoat."

"I left it at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel – "

"Sa – ay, if that ain't like me!" drawled the man, the twinkle of moonlight striking a humourous glint in his eye. "Kind of absent-minded. I left my Sunday suit just that way at the White House last week, where I'd been spending Saturday to Monday with my friend Willy T."

"You think I'm lying?" said Loveland, with curiosity rather than resentment.

"Just kiddin'."

"You're mistaken. They turned me out of the hotel – "

"Gee! But you was there?"

"Yes."

"If that ain't the swell thing! I wouldn't mind bein' turned out, if once they'd let me in. I should say to myself, 'Well, sir, you've lived.' That's what I never have done, but what I'm always meanin' to do, when my time comes. Say, would it be offensive if I asked why they – er – "

"Turned me out? I couldn't pay for my dinner."

"Had you eat it?"

"No. I wish now I had."

"I believe you. Whe – ew! Just to eat once at the Waldorf!"

"I had lunch there," said Val, beginning to be a little warmer, because he was amused.

"Bet it was bully."

"I wasn't hungry – then."

"Pity! Still," the man at the other end of the bench murmured reflectively, "you've got it to remember, and I guess a lot of other nice things."

"If that were any comfort!"

"'Twould be to me. Say, I don't throw myself out much to strangers, but you saved my dog for me, while I was snoozin' like a sick dormouse, and there's somethin' about you kind o' gets me. Suppose we swop stories, – if you really ain't on in this act. If you're not kiddin' – playin' some game – if you're here because you're stumped, why maybe I might put you up to somethin' – see? Wasn't there a verse in the Bible about a lion and a mouse?"

"I think the lion and the mouse were Æsop," said Val.

"Never heard of the gent. But anyhow, I caught on to it in Sunday School – when I was a kid, I'm dead sure of that, and I always was a quoter. You ain't a New Yorker, are you?"

"No. I'm an Englishman," Loveland answered quickly.

"Gee, but you're a swell-lookin' emigrant! I ain't a New Yorker myself – not by birth. I was a hayseed till I turned nineteen; workin' on my stepfather's farm – mean old skinflint, but I couldn't see my way to cuttin' till my mother was gone. Then I footed it to New York – sixty mile – chuck full of hope, and nothin' else, unless beans."

"A regular Mark Tapley," said Val.

"Never played the part. In private life my name's Bill Willing: some switches it round to Willing Bill, because I generally do my day's work without howlin'; I blew into New York without attractin' much notice, and that's nineteen years ago, and I haven't attracted much since, that's a fact. But you may do better. Don't be discouraged by a setback, if your game's square, and I bet it is, or you wouldn't be in the dog savin' business. What is your lay, anyhow? – excuse the liberty."

"Retrieving my fortune," said Val, after a moment's reflection.

"You can see me one better. Mine's to make yet, and I'm no kid – like you. I won't see thirty-eight again. I'm an artist. But New York ain't woke up to my talent. Maybe I've been too versatile. That never did pay. The line I'd mapped out was paintin' pictures, but my chance was slow comin'. Had to take what I could get on the way along: supin', sandwichin', barkin' – "

"Eh, what?" broke in Loveland.

"You don't savvy? Oh, supin' in theatres. There's several, specially one in the Bowery, wouldn't 'a been complete without me for years, till I got the chuck like you did at the Waldorf. Sandwichin' – why, you know what that is, sure? You wouldn't think how you get the cramps shut up between the boards? The sandwichin' was generally in the theatrical line, too, so I've always kind of hovered around the profession, though I don't say I'm proud of my career as a barker in the dimes – museums, you know. There was money in the business, though, if the freaks hadn't caught on that I had the heart of a soft boiled egg – always ready to part if they worked the aged mother dodge, or the baby brother who threw fits. I ain't no penny-in-the-slot savings bank. Wish I was. I should be better off now. Besides, my voice ain't an automobile horn, and barkin' for a couple of seasons stove a hole in my top note. After that, no manager would take me with a pound of tea and a chromo, but one of my old govs switched me onto a job paintin' freak showboards, and I'd 'a been at it yet if freaks didn't last too long. Once you've put them on the boards, there they are. At present my speciality's meenoos."

Val looked blank, thinking of emus.

"French for grub cards. A swell like you ought to be on to that. But I'm just thinkin' what there is for you. This stunt of mine I dropped into by luck. 'Twas Shakespeare introduced me – like he did to you tonight."

"Why Shakespeare?" Loveland cut in.

"Oh, there's a – a girl in that story: actress in the theatre where I suped – a real actress, mind you, a Fascinator from Fascinatorville. Why Lil so much as looked at me, I don't know – but she did. I was near twice her age, and 'twould have been playin' the game too low down to try and hook onto her, though I was tempted – she was so pretty, so good to me. I don't know what would 'a been the upshot, if the property man, who had his eye on the gal, hadn't got me the sack, and Lil an engagement on the road. She and I drifted apart. I never wrote, though she asked me to; I knew 'twas better not, for her. But you see why I'm nuts on the dog. He was hers, and Shakespeare was her name for him. She loved Shakespeare's plays, and her ambition was to act in 'em. But all that's somethin' I wouldn't 'a mentioned – if you hadn't kind of earned the right to Shake's history. I was tellin' you about my speciality, and how Shake introduced me to it. We was on our beam ends, Shake and me, our ribs showin' through the silk. One mornin' after a night out – like this, only in a square downtown, I was circulatin' around till I blew into Twelfth Street, and dropped my eyes onto a new restaurant, with a good fried smell, and an idea hit my brain like a hammer. In I walks and offers to swop it with the boss for a dinner. He wasn't takin' any just then, but I talked till I waked him up, showed him what I could do in the art line, and began to work on the spot with a grand new thing in meenoos. I've been at it ever since, and though the pay don't go up by leaps and bounds, the house has, and lots o' the eaters say it's my work's made it what it is – brought in the public like a flock of sheep. I get two meals and three dimes a day out of the job, and I wouldn't be sleepin' in my country house tonight, if I hadn't run acrost a guy who needed my money more than I did. Well, it's all in the day's work; and I guess there ain't many swells have got a finer palace than this, though it's kind of draughty. Your castle across the pond ain't got a finer park, I bet?"

"My castle's full of draughts, too," Loveland humoured him.

"So you came over here to get out of 'em?"

"Exactly."

"And that fortune you want to retrace, or retrieve. Wisht I could help."

"I'm expecting a cablegram in the morning, that will put me all right, thank you," said Loveland. "You're a good chap, and I'm glad to have met you, for you've – er – broadened my outlook, as well as passed the time. I've only to worry through till tomorrow."

"That's some hours off," said Bill Willing. "Wisht I could invite you to my hotel where I hang out when I'm not at my country place, but the trouble is to see the colour of your money, or you don't see the colour of their beds."

"How much is it for a room?" asked Loveland.

"Oh, a room! I don't run to a room. A bed in a vast wilderness is good enough for me. But a quarter'll get you one. Three nickels for a bed."

Loveland searched his pockets, and dubiously exhibited two silver coins mixed democratically with a few nickels and impotent looking little coppers. The prospect appeared hopeless to him, but Willing exclaimed with delight.

"Gee! Forty-five cents! You're a bloated millionaire. You might be asleep in two beds at the Bat Hotel, instead of cooling in this ice-cream freezer."

"If there's the price of two beds, you must have one," said Loveland.

"Thank you. You're the real stuff," returned Bill, gratitude in his voice. "But I'm O. K. where I am. You stick to your stamps. I know just how you feel. I'm always chuckin' my last cent away on some poor dickybird, thinkin' 'twill be all right tomorrow and what's the odds."

"There are no odds against me this time," Val assured him. "You've cheered me up no end, and you must share what I have. But about the hotel?"

"It's clean all right. Mayn't be the Plaza or the Waldorf, but no dive. It's warm, and the rooms are real natty."

"What about food?" asked Loveland. "Can we run to it?" and he glanced at the coins in his hand.

"Keep the change. We'll eat for nothing. Now's our time to join the Bread Line."

Again Val looked blank, and again it was necessary for Bill Willing – guide, philosopher and friend – to explain. There were, said he, two very important lines drawn every night in New York for the benefit of the poor: the Bread Line and the Bed Line. Each was drawn in a public square; the former in Herald, the latter in Madison; and both were traced by the finger of Charity.

The Bed Line, Bill did not often patronize, because he could generally pay for his own sleeping accommodation, and if he couldn't, there were always the Parks. Besides, the parson chap who spoke in Madison Square every night for the benefit of the poor, could collect only money enough to supply a limited number of men with beds. There was such a long line waiting, always, and the unlucky ones went away into the night looking so disappointed. Bill couldn't bear that, or the thought that one more must go bedless because he had got in ahead. As for the Bread Line, that was different. There was usually enough to feed the whole line, with coffee thrown in. It was a good show, too, and sometimes when Bill had separated himself from his last coin, and wanted a little cheerful company, he linked onto the Bread Line. Tonight they would both go. "Unless," added Mr. Willing, "you're afraid some o' your swell friends may spot you?"

Even if Loveland had been afraid, he would have denied the imputation. "You're the only friend, swell or otherwise, that I have in New York," said he.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Lights of New York

It seemed to Lord Loveland that he had never known how dazzling light could be, till the night-lights of New York flung their diamonds into his eyes.

Though it was nearly midnight when he emerged from behind the purple bed-curtains of the sleeping Park, there was no sign that less secluded quarters of the city thought of sleep.

The amazing jewels of the city still scintillated against the sky, flashing coloured fire. The Great White Way still blazed with brightness brighter than day: the huge plate-glass windows of shops closed to customers, advertised attractions for tomorrow. Electric cars were still crowded, going up and down. Overhead was a ceaseless rush and roar of elevated trains: and Herald Square, which the comrades reached by short cuts and devious ways known to the initiated, seemed the beating heart of the big, vital body whose diamond-crowned head was in the sky.

In the glass-sided palace of the "Herald," tomorrow morning's paper was visibly going to press. There was a chewing rumble of huge printing machines, and from somewhere out of sight of the bronze owls' staring, electric eyes sprang covered wagons loaded with "up-state" editions, which must catch early trains. Newsboys were yelling extras, trying to howl each other down above the confused storm of sound; and as "Willing Bill" towed his convoy into the Square, Minerva lifted her noble bronze arm to give the midnight signal. Her pair of obedient blacksmiths swung their hammers lustily, and struck the bell twelve times.

Val and his companion were nearly the last in a long procession of applicants for newspaper hospitality, and for the first time in his life Lord Loveland found himself among the dregs of humanity, learning what it might be to suffer as they suffered, they who seethed in the cauldron of the world's misery.

He had known that this sort of thing existed; that there were men and women who went hungry and thirsty, who slept out of doors, and who had no place on earth's surface which even for a night they might call their own; but he had been wont to skip paragraphs about them in the papers, and had always avoided brushing against a shabby person in a crowded street. He had never felt any tie of blood between himself and common men, except the Tommy Atkins who fought and died round him in South Africa. Yet these weary ones on whom the light of Herald Square blazed down, these men of hopeless, concave faces, beaten in by sin or sorrow, pressed near to Loveland's soul and waked some feeling in it which he had never known. It was as if his friend of the Park had initiated him into some strange, secret society, in joining which the bare fact of membership gave at once a mysterious sense of brotherhood. Val was surprised that he felt no repulsion against the ragged wretches who crowded round him. He did not draw himself away from them, or resent their lack of respect for him as a superior being. He was sorry for them all, with a consciousness of kinship, which, he thought, he would probably remember with amusement tomorrow.