Naturally it occurred to Val that the trail of Cadwallader Hunter must have reached as far as the Beverly household; and almost he found it in his heart to respect a man with executive ability to accomplish so swift, so sweeping, so secret a revenge.
"The old fellow must have had a busy day," Loveland thought, half amused on top of hunger and discouragement. He pictured the Major running lithely about since the snub at lunchtime, up to the last moment before dressing for dinner, prejudicing all the friends made on board theMauretaniaagainst the Englishman to whom he had proudly introduced them.
And besides, one must grant a certain cleverness to a brain able to weave grounds of prejudice against a person—nay, a personage—important and unimpeachable, as Loveland considered himself to be. How Cadwallader Hunter had done it, Val could not imagine; but that the mysterious thing which had been done was the Major's work, he did not doubt. As for the bother with the bank, of course that was another matter, a coincidence unconnected with the annoyances which had followed, for Cadwallader Hunter could not have known anything about the letter of credit, or where it was to be presented. And though the spiteful old thing was apparently acquainted with Mr. van Cotter, who had been one of the Coolidge party, he could scarcely have read clairvoyantly all the names on the letters of introduction, even if he knew the people.
As Val asked himself forlornly what was left for him to do next, this last argument brought consolation, and a welcome new idea at the same time. As the Major had "got hold of" the Coolidges, the Miltons and Beverlys, why not go and throw himself on the mercy of some of Jim Harborough's friends?
Loveland had conscientiously distributed all the letters in the afternoon, and had put the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as a New York address on his visiting cards. Now, owing to unforeseen circumstances (another name for the Major's vindictiveness) that address was his no longer. When people called, as no doubt they would do tomorrow, they were likely to find that he had vanished into space. Yes, without doubt the best thing he could do was to call tonight at one of the houses where he had alighted in the afternoon. He would walk to the nearest one; but—now he came to think of it, which was the nearest, and of which was he certain that he could remember the street and number?
Val had not charged his mind with the addresses on the letters, so sure had he been that the recipients would lose no time in calling. Now, he went over the eight or nine names in his head, and thought that he had kept them all straight; but to save his life he could not say which number, which street, appertained to which person.
This was a dilemma, almost a calamity. But one address seemed to stand out before his eyes—a number in Fifth Avenue; and he thought it was a Mrs. Anson who lived there. The house was a handsome one, at a corner. He had admired it; and as it was not far uptown he would not have more than a mile to travel. He could still make his visit, and tell his pitiful tale, before ten o'clock.
He walked fast, and it was by an effort that the man of the shadows kept him in sight; for Val's legs were long, and his were not. But he did contrive to cling close enough to see a tall figure slowly descend a flight of stone steps climbed with alert hopefulness a few moments earlier.
This time there was a discouraged droop of the head and shoulders and a dragging hesitation in the gait which seemed to show that the wanderer did not know what his next move ought to be.
At last the watcher decided that he had waited long enough. The Englishman had come to the end of his tether. He was tired out and sick at heart; in fact, precisely in the mood which the other had been patiently expecting.
Loveland walked away from the house where Mrs. Anson was "giving a dinner party and regretted that she was unable to receive visitors." Jim Harborough's friend! Could it be that Cadwallader Hunter's tentacles had wormed themselves round this lady's sympathies also, or was the dismissal another coincidence, like that of the bank? Loveland did not know, but he did know that the sole possessions left him were a great hunger which he might not satisfy, and a great longing to have somewhere to lay his head.
"Good evening," said the man who had caught up with him, speaking somewhat breathlessly, but in a friendly voice.
Loveland turned with a slight start, and looked at the other's face, which at that moment could be plainly seen by the light of a street lamp.
There was a vague familiarity in the stranger's appearance, but Val had come into contact with so many new people lately, that he could attach no label to these features.
"I was dining near you at the Waldorf-Astoria," explained the unknown.
"Oh!" exclaimed Loveland, instantly adjusting the label. "You were with the Coolidges, I remember." The tips of his ears began to tingle. This fellow must have seen him walk out of the restaurant where he'd been denied his dinner—probably knew that he had been practically turned away from the hotel, because he hadn't the money to pay his bill.
"My name's Milton," the short, dark man introduced himself. "I've been trying to catch you up for some time."
"Why?" abruptly asked Loveland, suspicious of everybody and everything now.
"Why? Oh, well, I wanted the pleasure of a conversation with you."
"You know who I am?" Loveland enquired.
"Yes, I know who you are." Mr. Milton emphasised each word separately, as if with a tap of a miniature hammer. There was an intentional significance in his way of speaking, but the meaning was obscure to Loveland.
Val could not guess what the other's object was in following him, and in his smarting sensitiveness was on guard against some new indignity.
"I met Mrs. Milton and—your daughter, on theMauretania," he ventured, by way of keeping on neutral ground until he should learn where to take his stand. And truth to tell, he had been so miserable in his homesickness, his sense of desertion and humiliation, that any friendly-seeming companionship was pitifully welcome. A few hours ago he would have quickly decided that he did not like the man's face or manner, and would have made no bones about snubbing him; but there was a high barrier between "then" and "now," and Lord Loveland almost clung to Mr. Milton.
"I know you met my wife and daughter on theMauretania," said the watcher. "That's why I was anxious to make your acquaintance."
Loveland laughed. "You're the first person since I left the ship, who has wanted to make it," he retorted. "And it struck me this evening that neither Mrs. nor Miss Milton was keen on keeping it."
"Miss Milton is a child," answered Miss Milton's father. "She daren't say her soul's her own, if her mother says it isn't; and Mrs. Milton has reasons over and above what anyone else may have, for not wanting to know you, in front of me."
"Over and above what anyone else may have?" Val repeated, lost in surprise at this turning. "Why should she or anyone have reasons for not wanting to know me? That's the thing I should like to find out. Perhaps you'll be good enough to explain the mystery—if you can? What has Major Cadwallader Hunter been doing to put all New York against me?"
"So far as I can see, it wasn't the Major who set the ball rolling, though of course he'd like people to think he was on to it from the first. And it seems he heard you give yourself away a bit to a girl one day, on shipboard—or says he did. But let's not discuss that now. What you are, or what you did before you stepped on board theMauretania'snothing to me. The game you and I are in together (as it's up to me to show you) is this. You're in a pretty bad scrape, and you want to get out of it. Is that true or isn't it?"
"Yes, it's true enough," admitted Val. "But that's not the question. I——"
"Excuse me, it is the question, where I'm concerned. I don't go back on that. I don't want to know anything, or be in anything, else. I can help you out of your fix. That's what I'm here to do."
"Thank you," said Val, drily. "But why?" He half expected that Mr. Milton'squid pro quowould be a promise in advance to make Fanny the Marchioness of Loveland.
"Well, I'm coming to that, in one minute and a half. First and foremost let's chat about what I can do for you. Then we'll get to what you can do for me. I guess a thousand dollars would come handy to you, wouldn't it, especially if you could see half in hard cash tonight?"
"If I saw any 'hard cash,' as you call it, lying in the street, and nobody claimed it, I confess I might find a temporary use for the money," said Loveland. "The trouble is, my letter of credit——"
"I know all about that letter of credit, just as well as if you'd told me," broke in Mr. Milton, with a queer mingling of tolerant good-nature and roughness which puzzled Loveland so much that he almost forgot to be annoyed.
"Tomorrow it will be all right," Val went on.
"I wouldn't bet on its being all right tomorrow," said Milton. "But we can wait to talk business till the day after, if you like. That'll suit me just as well; for I stand to make better terms. It's for you to say where. I can give you my card, and you can drop round at my club—I don't ask you to write, for by that time it might happen you wouldn't have a stamp, or a sheet of paper handy. You can call day after tomorrow, and we'll have our talk then. So long as we've established communication, there isn't much danger of your losing touch with me till we've fixed something up."
"I don't like your manner or your innuendoes," said Loveland, stiffening.
"Oh, I don't mean any innuendoes," protested Mr. Milton, apologetically. "Let's keep friends. I want to help you. You had a little trouble with them at the hotel, didn't you?"
"I was abominably insulted, and I'll make them regret it."
"The best way to do that is to pay the bill right off. There's five hundred dollars in my pocket that's just crying to be in yours. And five hundred more——"
"What do you want me to do?" sharply asked Loveland.
"You'd like to know whether the candle's worth the game, eh? Well, I'm no Shylock. But see here, shall we come to terms over a drink? We're not far off the best bar in New York, and——"
"No, thank you," Val cut in decidedly, though he was cold enough, and hollow enough within to be tempted by the thought of warmth, and refreshment of any sort. "Tell me now what possible motive you, a stranger, can have in offering to lend me two hundred pounds."
"I said nothing about lending," insinuated Mr. Milton. "But if you like to call it a loan, you can. You've got your 'family traditions' to keep up, I suppose?" And he laughed in high good humour.
"I have," said Val, coldly.
"That's all right," returned the other. "Well, to get to business then. You were on pretty friendly terms with Mrs. Milton on board ship?"
"She was very kind to me," replied Val, more sure than ever now that the proposal to come would be matrimonial.
"Good! You've heard, I expect, from Cadwallader Hunter, or some other general purveyor of gossip, that she and I aren't on the best of terms—that we don't get along like a pair of turtle doves?"
"I believe I did hear some hint of that sort, which went in at one ear and out at the other."
"You needn't consider my feelings. My wife and I hate each other like poison. She'd have thrown me over long ago, if she didn't want my money—all my money; not what she might get in alimony if we said 'Goodbye; the parting words are spoken.' Eh? Well, that's just what Idowant to say to her. We've never had any open break, but the time's come. That's why I sent her to Europe, and sent for her to come back. I played my fish, and now I want to land it. A queer fish, Mrs. Milton is, too, bye the bye. I'm going to bring a case against her, and I want to use you for a trump card in it. You understand?"
A hot wave of rage swept over Loveland. He did understand, and never in his life had he been so angry. He had not known it was in him to be so angry at a thing which did not affect his own selfish interests; but he was not thinking of himself at all. A new or, at least, unknown self stirred faintly in the depths where all his life it had lain asleep, because, perhaps, it had never been called upon to wake. He was not angry because such a proposal had been made to him—Lord Loveland; he had not thought of that part yet. Disgust with the man who could make such a proposition was the one emotion which shook him.
"You beast!" he broke out, in his young, clear voice.
The other man looked up at the flushed, angry face in genuine surprise.
"Oh, I suppose I haven't offered 'your lordship' enough," he sneered, with a sarcastic emphasis on the title. "Well, I'll raise you——"
But something unexpected happened before the offer could be completed. Furious, Loveland slapped him across the mouth, and in dodging the insult, Milton slipped on a morsel of thin ice which glazed the pavement. He staggered, tried to regain his balance, lost it finally, and fell flat upon his back.
Loveland felt suddenly as if he had been drenched with cold water. The man's fall, the stillness of the limp form which lay grotesquely, like a dummy made of rags, was a sight to chill even righteous anger. Loveland hadn't yet begun to think of himself or the danger he might be in. He thought of the man—who seemed to him hardly a man—and wondered if he were dead. Then, after a dazed instant, he bent down over the motionless form, and felt a great throb of relief when he saw no stain of oozing blood on the pavement. The fur lined collar of Milton's coat had been pulled up behind his ears and had broken the force of the fall for the back of his head on which, otherwise, he must have struck with terrible force. Already his thick eyelids were twitching. In another moment or two he would open them. And realising this, Val at last turned to that thought which generally came first: Lord Loveland and Lord Loveland's welfare.
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.
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.
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 youwasthere?"
"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 youeatit?"
"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. Whatisyour 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 theyare. 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, orretrieve. 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.
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.
"They think you're some fly reporter, takin' notes; or a swell doin' the night sights," said Bill. "They don't like you much. But they won't bother you neither, only some chap may say 'What queer things you see, when you haven't got your gun.' If he does, don't you take notice, that's all."
Loveland promised forbearance, but his patience was not tried. In his turn (which came when his nose had turned a pale lilac with cold, and the silk-clad insteps above his pumps were slowly congealing) he received a tin of hot coffee, and a roll. Food and drink were so good, and, as Bill said, "filled such a long-felt want," that Val bolted them greedily, only to yearn for more when both were gone. But etiquette was strictly preserved in Herald Square. No one asked for a second helping, and each applicant, when he had drained his coffee to the last drop, walked away without a word unless it were a "thank you."
"Now, ho for the Bat Hotel," exclaimed Bill cheerfully. "It's a goodish step; but as for me, after that grub, I feel like I could do a sprint round the world."
Loveland was refreshed, too, and more than ever inclined to look on the experience as an adventure over which he would laugh tomorrow night. But he did not intend to forget Bill Willing when he forgot the troubles through which Bill was his pilot. He must do something for the poor chap, he said to himself, and glowed with hot coffee and a sense of warm generosity.
Bill's hotel, it appeared, was situated in the Bowery. There were others more or less of the same sort, dotted about in various streets of far eastern and far western New York, but Bill would not guarantee these. "I ain't a top wave swell myself—yet," he said, "but dirt and I ain't friends, and I won't risk no menagerie for neither of us, nor Shakespeare either. I've raised him to be particular. He's thatsadwhen he's made a public thoroughfare of by one or two o' them critters as boarded the ark in disguise, that he won't look me in the face."
Shakespeare, who had shared his master's roll, and lapped the last spoonful of coffee, was an incredibly small, black animal of somewhat moth-eaten texture, who in form rather resembled a grasshopper. He had a little sharp nose, which might have been whittled into shape with a penknife; his legs were too long for his tiny body, and not much thicker than a pencil; but his gentle eyes, curiously like his master's, beamed with affection, and he was turning grey in the flower of his youth, owing to the lava heat of his boiling emotions.
Loveland had visions of buying Shakespeare a red collar when he had cashed his letter of credit tomorrow; but with a sudden pang, he remembered a difficulty concerning that letter of credit which had not occurred to him before. He had wired to the bank in London in the afternoon, and given as his address the Waldorf-Astoria. After the way in which he had been treated, and the manner of his exit, it would be beneath his dignity to go back, on any errand whatever. He must send to the hotel for the cablegram which, it seemed certain, would arrive during the morning; also for the visiting cards which some of Jim and Betty Harborough's friends were sure to leave after calling and finding him gone. Perhaps some of these cards would make the hotel people regret the error of their ways. But apologies would be in vain. He would go to the Plaza, or the Belmont——
"We approach the castle doors, me lord," grandiloquently announced Bill, little guessing that his jesting way of address was that to which Loveland was accustomed from his inferiors.
Val started from the reverie in which he had been walking at his companion's side like a mechanical figure. He waked to find himself in a brilliantly illuminated street, like a tenth-rate imitation of Broadway, lined with lighted shops, gaudy restaurants and strange houses of entertainment.
"This is the Bowery," Bill mentioned with pride.
The Bowery? English Loveland had vaguely expected a gentle suburb of trees and flowers, such as American Bill might have pictured Bloomsbury. And as Willing knew naught of the pleasant "Bouweries" of old Dutch days, he had no explanation to mitigate his companion's disillusionment.
They passed a tall building whose red front was pictorial with advertisements of Wonders such as the world could not have survived had it seen them in the flesh.
"My old pitch," said Bill. "I painted the Fat Twins with their heads under their arms, and the Half-Zebra-Half-Camel. The Fair One with Golden Locks, too, and the Human Bone are my Shay Doovers. What do you think of 'em, chum?"
"Chum" was filled with respectful admiration of the artist's imagination, if not of histechnique, and he replied fervently that the Shay Doovers in question were marvellous.
"Here's where I used to bark," went on Bill with a sigh for past glories. "They'd ought to give us free passes for a look round, if you'd like, but the Boss ain't built that way, and there's nothing to see anyhow. The Freaksain'twhat they're painted.Couldn'tbe, for a dime."
Loveland answered that no doubt the pictures were the best part of the show, which pleased the artist, and they walked on, Bill blasé, Val interested to the point of self-forgetfulness. A few doors to the left, after passing a shooting gallery and a drinking saloon which called itself a café, Mr. Willing paused in front of a tall building which loomed up dingy and ill-lighted in comparison with its gaudy neighbors. A lamp over a low-browed door drew sufficient attention to the announcement, printed in faded lettering, that this was "The Bat Hotel. For Gentlemen Only."
Bill Willing opened the door as if he were at home, as indeed he was, for "The Bat" had been his headquarters, more or less, for years. He sometimes paid in advance for a week, or weeks, at a time, and then the same bed and locker were scrupulously reserved for him; but he had been a little irregular lately, owing to his many promiscuous charities.
"Come in, do," he said hospitably, and Loveland obeyed, to find himself standing directly at the foot of a long, dimly lit stairway, the steps of which were protected from the wear and tear of time and boots by strips of iron.
At the top was a closed door; and this open, Loveland was plunged into the life and movement of the Bat Hotel, appropriately named for its night activities. Behind a grating, which formed a small room, stood the proprietor or manager of the establishment, ready to accept payment, allot beds, inscribe the names of new clients in a book, and deal out keys of lockers or cubicles. This tiny office was cut out of a long narrow room, in which fifty or sixty men were sitting glancing over the newspapers, or writing a last letter before they went to bed. They were grouped at one of several long tables that ran down the length of the room, or assembled round a huge iron stove whose fat body was almost red hot. The crude white light of unshaded electric lamps exaggerated the hollows in tired faces, and brought out a kind of tragic family likeness among them, different as were the types, and features: the likeness born of the same kind of hardships endured without hope of anything better in the world.
There were two windows at front and back of the long room, but they were closed, save perhaps for a furtive crack at the top, and the heated atmosphere was charged with the smell of cheap tobacco (for the men were allowed to smoke, though not to drink, in the Bat Hotel), badly aired clothing and hot humanity. As Bill easily leaned his elbows on a narrow shelf in front of the office grating, explaining his errand to the manager, Loveland wished himself back in the Park again, half drowned in perfumed, moony vapour; but it was too late. He was "in for it" now, he said to himself, as Bill, with a certain pride, announced that "his friend" wanted a room. "A bed for mine," he went on pleasantly. "I'd be glad of 81, if it's free. I always sleep mighty well in 81."
Eighty-one was engaged, but Bill got another number to which he was accustomed, and then his friend's name was asked.
"Anything you like, up to Edward Seventh, or down to J. Smith," whispered Mr. Willing, as he moved away that Loveland might take his place at the grating.
Loveland hesitated for an instant, and then gave the name of P. Gordon, one to which he had a right, among many others.
As Bill was competent to play host, they were given their keys, and allowed to find their own way to their quarters. Loveland's number was on the next floor, but Bill's cheaper lodging was higher up.
At the top of another flight of iron-bound stairs was a row of cubicles, boarded in half-way up to the ceiling, and protected above by thick wire netting, lest some nimble night-prowler, moved by curiosity or a less fanciful motive, should be minded to enter his neighbour's dwelling in spite of lock and key.
The cubicles were not numerous, for such accommodationde luxewas beyond the means, beyond even the ambition of a hundred out of the hundred and sixty men whom the Bat Hotel sheltered each night. The row (called "Fifth Avenue" by those who could not afford to sleep there) was partitioned off from a long room the size of the reading-room below; but here, instead of tables and benches running along the walls, were beds, many beds, placed at small, irregular distances from each other. A faint light revealed them, and the straight dark shapes of the lockers shared, half and half, by the sleepers whom Loveland could dimly see hunched up under their grey blankets.
Some men slept in their clothes for warmth, though the room was not cold. Here and there a hat or cap made a black blot on a thin, flattened pillow, and the turned-up collar of an overcoat appeared above a tightly-wrapped blanket. At the back, dark door-ways led to the washroom; and a few wearily drooping figures flitted to and fro, silently as the bat which lent its name to their lodging. Save for their dragging footsteps, which scarcely sounded on the cement floor, damp with disinfectant, there was no sound in the big dormitory, unless an occasional snore or a word blurted out in sleep.
Bill unlocked the door of Loveland's cubicle for him. "This is pretty complete, ain't it?" he asked in a whisper which respected the slumber of others. "The beds are good enough for mine; but these rooms are fit for a lord."
It was a much humbled lord who shut himself up in the boasted magnificence of No. 15, there finding himself possessed of a narrow hospital bed spread with a grey blanket strongly scented with carbolic, and just space enough in the case to undress if he chose. But for reasons which seemed good to him he did not choose.
Having bidden Bill "good-night" without saying a word in disparagement of the Bat Hotel (moved by a new unselfishness which would not for the world have hurt his friend's feelings) Loveland took off collar, necktie and shoes, to roll himself up in the disinfected blanket. The bed was not more than three or four inches too short for his tall body, and though the mattress and pillow were as flat as stale jokes, and hard as poverty, Val fell asleep.
Sleeping, dreams came to him, more real in seeming than any happenings of the strange, nightmare day just passed.
They were of storms at sea, of fighting in South Africa; and when a light persistent tapping at the thin door wrenched him awake he thought he was being called for a nightsortie.
"Yes! All right!" he muttered, sitting up dazedly. "I—what——"
"Sh! You'll rouse everybody," whispered Bill Willing's warning voice. "Unlock the door, will you?"
Still half asleep, Loveland blinked in the dim light, found the key in the lock and turned it. Like a shabby ghost, Bill stole into the cubicle. "Mighty sorry to rout you out so early," he said, in cautiously lowered tones, "but it's six o'clock, and in half an hour I've got to be at the restaurant to begin work. If you'll get ready and come along, the Boss's daughter, Miss Izzie, may take a shine to you, and smuggle you a breakfast when Alexander the Great, her pa, ain't there to say no."
By the time that Bill had made his plans clear, Loveland's drugged memory had begun to work. He recalled everything, with the sensation of having opened a gate to set free a troop of grunting wild pigs. He was cold: the carbolic smell, which he hated, made him feel sick. His head throbbed as if tacks were being stuck into his temples and torn out again. His muscles were stiff, and he felt more tired than when he had lain down. It was disgusting to think that he had slept in his clothes, in such a place as this, and had nothing fresh to put on, and he loathed his own body because of the squalor in which it had consented to wallow.
How he longed for a cold bath in a great white porcelain tub, clean linen, neat tweeds, and the luxurious silver toilet things, all of which would have been his morning portion at home, or at the Waldorf-Astoria! But repinings only added to the hatefulness of his situation. He saw that, and shook them off, yet it was on the tip of his tongue to vent his irritation on Bill, and yesterday he would have yielded as soon as tempted. But something had changed in him since yesterday. Something stirred, that through all his life had been asleep.
He made himself as neat as he could, did not grumble at the washing accommodation, and moved with caution for fear of disturbing men whom twenty-four hours ago he would have considered no more than sheep. That was because he had been of the brotherhood, and though he expected soon to give up his membership, he would never be able to forget. Men such as these with whom he had touched shoulders would never be Things for him again.
It was still night in the Bat Hotel as Loveland and Bill slipped their keys into the key-box, and tip-toed downstairs; but outside, though the lights of New York had been put out, the light of the world, climbing up the far horizon, had begun to gild the city's domes.
It was not often that Loveland came into personal relations with sunrise, and to see the rose and golden banners float high and higher above the roofs and sleeping windows of New York, was like being first gazer at some great painting in a Private View. There was hope and promise of joy in such beauty, but he felt wretchedly out of the picture in his rumpled evening clothes.
The virginal purity of dawn, translucent above the turgid darkness of the town, made Lesley Dearmer seem suddenly to be very near him, so that the air shone with her invisible presence. How sweet she was, how delicately quaint in all her thoughts, how kind to others despite her clear wit, and how sure of ultimate goodness, as she was of life!
Lesley had said that she had "faith in his other side," as she had faith in the other side of the moon, though she did not expect ever to see either. "You will always go on getting what you want," she had prophesied just before they parted. What would she think of that prophecy if she were even to dream of this humiliated figure, creeping out of night to a new day?
Bill's hatchet face glimmered sallow and shabby through the pearly twilight, and there was a frayed look under the patient, humourous eyes. "Are you cold?" he asked.
"A little," replied Val. "But I don't mind."
"You ain't used to the climate yet," said Bill, "and I'd make you squeeze into my overcoat, only I'm a bit too sketchy underneath. Can't afford to get me winter wardrobe back from my uncle's yet."
They passed out of the Bowery, and turned into Twelfth Street. Most of the houses still had their eyelids shut in sleep, and their brick faces looked dull, lacking all interest in life, as if it were hardly worth while to wake up for another day patterned upon a dreary yesterday. But in the middle of the first block there was one house which showed some faint signs of life.
Originally it had resembled its neighbours in all essential features, but the front on the ground floor had been altered, a large window of plate glass having been put in; and from this window a sleepy, sulky, bullet-headed youth was in the act of removing a few gouts of mud splashed up by some passing cart. Above the wide window, in all the glory of red and gold paint not yet faded, was the legend: "This is Alexander the Great's." Inside, its face turned towards the glass, was a big, framed blackboard covered with pictorial advertisements of various dishes, done in chalks of violent hues, while from a gilded strip of cornice depended large squares of cardboard glorifying Alexander the Great and his system, in lettering of black and scarlet.
"Yesterday's show," explained Bill. "My work, the whole lot. The cards last out the week; but the meenoo on the blackboard's new every day. I tell you, it takes brain work! Hurry up, chum. I'm late."
The sleepy youth left the door open, and they went in, passing directly into a room fitted up as a restaurant. The walls were painted with lurid representations of Alexander the Great's battles, the costumes and scenery having been studied more with a view to sensational effect than accuracy of historical detail. There was a wild melée of warriors mixed with palm trees, against backgrounds of rose-red sky, and cobalt sea; and the face of Alexander—always a prominent figure in each scene—was evidently a portrait done from a Hebraic model.
"What do you think of it?" asked Bill, who was hastily unbuttoning his overcoat, to reveal a collar of immaculate celluloid and a jacket or "blazer" of blue and yellow stripes.
"It's very striking," replied Val.
"My idea," said Bill, proudly. "Got it from the name over the door, as I passed by that first day. Came to me like a shot. And then I thought of the picture meenoos. When they're goin' to have rabbit, give 'em a rabbit nibblin' a bit of lettuce—make it realistic. When they're goin' to hev punkin pie, just make their mouths water only to see its portrait in the window, so they'vegotto walk in and eat a chunk of the old original, if it takes their bottom nickel. Now, while I work like heat lightnin', you amuse yerself examinin' my Shay Doovers."
As he spoke, he darted to a door at the back of the room, in front of which hung a red curtain. Behind this curtain he disappeared with his cherished overcoat, returning in a moment without the coat and with the materials for his work, in a wooden box originally intended for starch. Whistling melodiously "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," he mounted the low platform in the window, which supported the blackboard, and began to mop out yesterday's brilliant triumphs with a wet sponge.
A list of the principal dishes for the day had been jotted down for him in pencil on a bit of paper which he pinned to the frame of the blackboard lest memory prove treacherous in some succulent detail; and then, with true artistic abandonment, he forgot everything except his work.
Meanwhile, Loveland sought the neighbourhood of a huge stove which, its flaming mouth muzzled with talc, looked like a black, round-bodied goblin squatting, short-legged, on an island of zinc. The sulky boy had made up the fire; and carrying off a coal-scuttle full of grey ashes which he had raked out, he too vanished behind the red curtain.
Evidently ventilation was not one of the many popular specialities of Alexander the Great's establishment, for the atmosphere of the restaurant was heavy with the fumes of yesterday's food, the pictorial advertisements of which were being now expunged from the blackboard. There were gay duplicate patches on the two sides of this board; and Loveland thought, in faint disgust, that he could detect a separate smell for each dish represented. There was the ferocious-looking, horned animal which might be anything from a mere mad bull to a Minotaur, rising head and shoulders out of a blue cup. Yes, certainly the beast had left a rich, soupy perfume, which mingled curiously with that of the defiant fighting cock who spurred his way out of, or into, a pie-dish, and with the fruity fragrance of a roly-poly pudding which belched forth azure steam.
"Alexander the Great Fights Fair," announced one dangling card in the window. "Alexander the Great Wins Every Time," alleged another. "Alexander the Great Gives Great Grub." "Dine at Alexander the Great's, and you Dine like a Prince." "You Get From Alexander the Great for 25 c. More than You Get Anywhere Else for a Dollar." And so on, one glowing eulogy after another, all round the window and hanging like a fringe from the front of a large red desk at the back of the room near the window of a kind of butler's pantry.
The room itself, with its bare but tolerably clean floor, was crowded with small marble tables whose iron supports were painted light vermilion to match the desk, the chairs and benches; in fact, everything that could be red in the room was red, including doors, window-frames, and even the clock on a rough mantel-piece which cut one of Alexander's horses and a palm tree in halves.
Loveland had warmed himself thoroughly for the first time since leaving the Waldorf, and had lost his disgusted sense of the close atmosphere, when the red clock struck seven. At the same moment someone pushed aside the door curtain, and came into the restaurant from a passageway at the back. Val turned his head, and saw a very handsome, very untidy young Jewess.
Her heavy black hair was twisted up anyhow on the top of her head, and half a dozen patent arrangements for waving the front locks dangled low over the double arch of beautiful brows. A full white throat which would seem not quite long enough at forty, was gracious in its ivory curves at nineteen, even though it rose out of a purple flannel dressing-gown that left the wearer's figure to the beholder's imagination.
The girl came in yawning, but at sight of Loveland her languishing, almond-shaped eyes opened wide, and a lovely carnation stained the peachy sallowness of her rounded cheeks. She bit her full underlip, with little even teeth that were white as kernels of corn in contrast with the coral of her mouth.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, catching together her unbuttoned wrapper at the throat, and taking a step backward, towards the door. Suddenly she looked haughty, and a little defiant. "I didn't know anybody was here, except Bill. We don't open till seven thirty. People don't come in this early. But if you——"
"Thank you, I'm afraid I'm not a customer," said Loveland, pulling off his cap, and flushing a little with embarrassment for himself and for the girl.
"This gent's me friend. His name's Gordon—P. Gordon," explained Bill.
The girl laughed, self-consciously, pleased, yet half suspicious of the handsome young man who had paid her the compliment of taking off his hat. She was not used to men who did that, even for pretty girls like her; but then she was not used to such men as Loveland. She recognised the difference between him and the others, in an instant, and decided that he was not "guying"; therefore that she need not hold herself stiffly on guard. Not only was he the handsomest young man she had ever seen, but he was a "swell," and swells did not patronise Alexander the Great's. She wondered what he wanted, and why he should pose as a friend of Bill's. Evidently he had been up all night, or he would not be in evening dress at seven o'clock in the morning, but he had not the air of having enjoyed himself. Perhaps Bill had helped him out of some scrape. He looked gloomy and savage, like some gallant and beautiful animal driven to bay, an effect which interested the girl very much and made her like him better.
"I must trespass on your hospitality for a few minutes," Val said hastily, "until Mr. Willing has time to help me carry out my plans for the day. When he's finished his work——"
"You ain't in anyone's way here, I'm sure," returned the young woman, still eyeing the mysterious stranger aloofly, but with admiration. She put up one plump hand and uneasily touched the dangling hair-wavers, as if she wished to tuck them out of sight.
"This is Miss Izzie, that I told you about," announced Bill, in his best society manner, "the Boss's daughter."
The girl bowed, as she had seen heroines do on being introduced to heroes, in plays at an adjacent melodramatic theatre. "How often must I tell you, Bill, not to call me 'Miss Izzie'? Miss Isidora—if you please. I hate Izzie." And she glanced out of the corners of her long almond-shaped eyes at Loveland. "You're an actor, ain't you, Mr. Gordon?" she asked.
"No, I'm not," replied Val, stiffening slightly.
"Excuse me, if I've said the wrong thing," cooed the girl, in her soft, rather guttural tones, sweet as if she spoke with honey in her mouth. "I didn't see how Bill come to have a swell friend, unless 'twas an actor. Bill used to be always around the theatres before he worked for us, so I thought——" She paused, still gazing through drooped lashes; then turned away with a little shrug. "But I must go. I only came down like this, Bill, to have a look round for Pa, because he's sick with a cold. I told him I'd see after things till he's better. He don't like me foolin' round in business hours, with a lot of men staring and passing remarks" (she threw another glance at Val, to see if he were impressed by this exclusiveness) "but he feels too bad to care today. I'll go pour myself into my glad rags now and be down again as soon as I can."
"Boss sick, is he?" said Bill, who was finishing his work on the room side of the blackboard, by indicating a lobster with thick, scarlet strokes of fast flying chalk. "Won't be down till bye-and-bye!"
The daughter of Alexander the Great showed her dimples. "You think that means you'll get a free meal, I guess. When the cat's away——"
"And has got a pretty, kind kitten for his understudy," Bill finished.
"We—ell, you know I'm soft, don't you? If you want anything, look sharp and get it, or Pa might change his mind and pop in. Won't you have something, Mr. Gordon?" she went on, hospitably, dropping the rough and ready manner she used with Bill, for another attempt at imitating the stage heroine who was her ideal of high-born feminine graciousness.
"If you'll trust me till afternoon for the price of a breakfast," Val answered, trying to speak lightly.
"O!" she exclaimed, "I didn't ask you topay. Pity if I can't invite a friend to have a meal, without anyone making a fuss. I was just guying about Bill. Besides, he's different. Pa throws in his dinner and supper as part of his pay, and he's supposed to look out for his own breakfast. He gets good money here, I'm sure, and if he's so soft that every old applewoman or lame bootblack can wheedle his money off him, why that's his business, and Pa says we ought to learn him better instead of encouraging him to go on the way he does. That's why I have to sneak him a doughnut and a cup of coffee on the sly sometimes. But I want you to understand I'veinvitedyou to breakfast, as a gentleman friend of mine, and I shall be real hurt if you talk about paying."
"Very well, I'll accept your invitation with thanks, provided you'll breakfast with me," said Val, as gallantly as if he were addressing a Duchess—or a popular chorus girl.
"My! I couldn't do that," answered Isidora. "Pa'd be wild if he got to know I eat a meal in the restaurant. We've a parlour upstairs," she went on, with a pretty air of importance, "and the hired girl brings our meals, Pa's and mine, for he doesn't have his down, either, except when he's in a hurry, and just picks up a bite as he goes. But you'll be seeing me soon again," she reassured Loveland. "I shall be at the desk in Pa's place."
This was her exit speech, and she made it close to the red curtain, which in another moment had blotted her out of sight. From some region beyond the drapery, now came an appetizing smell of breakfast: coffee, frizzling ham and frying sausages. The sulky boy, his face shining with kitchen soap, came in with a tray full of dishes, and a red-faced, middle-aged German followed, who stared with goggling, gooseberry eyes at Loveland, the while he clawed clean cups and saucers from a hidden cupboard.
Not fifteen minutes had passed when Miss Alexander alias Solomon reappeared, this time in all her glory, panting with haste and the snugness of her stays (perhaps she had drawn them in extra tight), yet smiling in conscious beauty.
"My, but youaregot up to kill, this morning!" exclaimed Bill Willing; and the fair Isidora darted a vexed glance at him, for she had wanted the "swell" to believe that this gorgeousness was her daily toilet.
She had put on a red cloth dress, which might have been made to suit the restaurant, as well as the wearer; her bust was magnificently full, and her waist impossibly small. She had powdered her olive face to a pearly whiteness, and her black pompadour, with its bright undulations, looked as if it would have scorned the plebian aid of metal hair-wavers.
"Now, the show's ready to begin," she announced, with a smile and a glance, all, all for Loveland. And she was so lusciously handsome in her richly developed young beauty that Val, despite the revolt of his fastidiousness, admired her reluctantly.
No customers had come in yet, and Isidora insisted that Mr. Gordon should have his breakfast. Bill, she said, could go into the kitchen and "sneak something" from the cook; but it was Loveland's whim not to eat unless his chum ate with him, and Isidora secretly liked him the better for his loyalty to one so humble, not knowing that it was a new development.
She had little of Bill's delicacy in the matter of asking questions, and found it so impossible to restrain her curiosity that while Loveland disposed of ham and egg, coffee and a doughnut, she hovered near the table, trying with all her skill to probe the handsome stranger's mystery.
Inclined to be reserved at first, it soon occurred to Loveland that, since any port in a storm was better than no port, he had better enlist Miss Alexander's aid. In response to her bids for confidences, he said that he had landed in America yesterday, and had gone to the Waldorf-Astoria, to find on his arrival that his clothes had been stolen out of his luggage by an English servant. He added that his London bankers had been dilatory about instructing their New York correspondents; that when the hotel people, for some extraordinary reason known only to themselves, demanded immediate payment, he had been practically penniless, and had walked out in a rage, leaving everything, even his overcoat. Not only did he keep the secret of his real name and title, but he did not think it necessary to mention either his failure to get in at houses where he had left letters of introduction or his encounter with Mr. Milton. Yet, glibly as the story ran, it seemed to the daughter of Alexander the Great like a fairy tale.