When the chair of Mrs. Loveland had been indicated, as it soon was by a tactless deck-steward, the girl was obstinate in her determination to seek it. Val went with her, carrying the rug and the book; but as there was no vacant place on either side of the new chair, he was obliged presently to go back to his own. And it was on the way back that Major Cadwallader Hunter's chance came.
"Lord Loveland, I see you don't remember me," he began, attaching himself to the younger man, with an air of "should auld acquaintance be forgot" in the bend of his back, and speaking in a low tone, that his words might not be heard by any curious ears. Then he hurried on, lest Loveland should deny him with undesirable frankness: "Quite natural you shouldn't remember" (which indeed it was, as they had never come within miles of each other) "but I feel I've some right to remind you of my existence, because we're connected in a way. I am Major Cadwallader Hunter——"
"Never heard the name in my life," said Loveland rudely. He thought that his uninvited companion looked like a bore, and he had never yet suffered a bore gladly. A flash of reflection told him that he possessed no envelope in Jim's or Betty's handwriting addressed to Major Cadwallader Hunter. The fellow would hardly be so mildly ingratiating if he were a millionaire with daughters to guard, and Val resented a trumped-up claim of connection.
Cadwallader Hunter could swallow a snub with a smile, but never would he forgive the snubber.
He smiled now; but if Lord Loveland had not been Lord Loveland——
"I'm a distant relative of Jimmy Harborough's," he explained, "and I generally run over to London for a few weeks in the season. Jim seems to be as popular on your side the water as on his own."
Loveland did not trouble himself to reply. If Jim had thought this alleged relative an interesting or profitable person for him to know, the name of Major Cadwallader Hunter would probably have been on one of the introduction envelopes.
Undismayed by the chilling silence, Cadwallader Hunter still walked by Lord Loveland's side and prattled. His next sentence hinted that he possessed in some degree the quality of clairvoyance.
"I suppose Jim's given you lots of letters," he continued, "but it's not likely there's one to me. I'm a mere bachelor, and therefore must take a back place. Jim would naturally send you to married people with big houses of their own, where they can entertain you. Still, in my own small way, I can be useful to strangers, and should be glad to be useful to you, because in my eyes you don't seem quite a stranger. I am, by the by, a great admirer of your cousin, charming Lady Betty, and if you'll allow me to say so, there's a strong family resemblance between you." (Major Cadwallader Hunter had been out of America during Betty's visit, but had seen her photograph.) "If this is your first time on our side, you don't know the ropes yet, and you must let me tell you anything you care to hear; about people, about places, about hotels; about the sights, should you want to see them. I can begin, for instance, by telling you who is Who on this ship. There are several of our millionaires."
Loveland's handsome young face lost its frozen stare. He had taken a dislike to Cadwallader Hunter, but it was not so serious a dislike that he could not bury it. He wanted to know several things which this man might be able to tell, but most of all he wanted to know about the niece of Mrs. Loveland. As he confessed to her, he had passed over the coincidence of names with indifference, when idly noting it on the passenger-list, thinking that the existence of a Mrs. B. Loveland could not concern the Marquis of that ilk. Now, however, if this know-all, officious sort of person could prove that the lady sprang from the same stock, be she no matter how remote a cutting, it would be pleasant news.
Cadwallader Hunter, who was a student of faces, saw the change on Lord Loveland's features and was relieved, though relief brought no liking. He had begun to be anxious as to the result of the conversation, because a failure to thaw on Loveland's part would have been awkward after certain boasts lately made. Now he saw that he had, as usual, taken the right tack, and that his efforts were destined to succeed.
"I know almost everybody on board," went on the American. "That is, everybody who counts."
"Who is that man walking with the tall girl in grey?" Val deigned to enquire, as his first choice among the beauties of the ship came in sight. "Is he someone of importance?"
Cadwallader Hunter naturally understood that it was the girl, not the man, in whom Loveland was interested. "That is Judson R. Coolidge," he replied, "and it is Miss Elinor Coolidge, his only child, who is with him. He is a rich man, though not one of our richest. Made his money in the wholesale dry goods business in Chicago. But Miss Elinor, whom he adores, 'runs' him (the mother's dead); and as the girl knows her market value, she's induced her father to take a big house in New York and a cottage at Newport. Would you care to meet them?"
"Thanks, yes. A little later," answered Val, very civilly for him.
"There are several other pretty young women on board," said Cadwallader Hunter.
"So I've noticed," said Loveland.
"Ah, men of your country appreciate the charming women of ours! You've carried away many of our fairest flowers. And some of the best worth plucking."
"Is that a pun?" asked Loveland, staring at his companion to see if he had the impudence to mean anything.
Major Cadwallader Hunter tittered. He had an irritating little habit of tittering when he was ingratiating himself with new acquaintances. But it was a most refined titter.
"Oh, dear, I see what you mean. But, no indeed, I was quite innocent of anydouble entendre. I was merely trying my best to be poetical, I assure you. There was no question of 'plucking' in the international alliances of British titles and American dollars I had in mind. A familiar, and, to my idea, suitable combination. But perhaps you disapprove of international marriages?"
"Not I," said Val.
The tone told Cadwallader Hunter all that he wanted to learn. He now knew, if he had not been practically sure before, that Lord Loveland was in search of a rich wife. He saw his way to earning considerable kudos in playing bear-leader to a young and unusually good-looking British peer, and he determined to become that bear-leader, whether the bear yearned for his leadership or not.
"Miss Coolidge is not the only handsome heiress on board. There are others—there are others," he went on airily. "You have only to point out any young lady whose acquaintance you would like to make, and the thing is afait accompli."
"Do you know a Mrs. Loveland on the ship?" Val enquired, after a slight hesitation which he could hardly have explained to himself.
Major Cadwallader Hunter shook his head. "Now that you speak of it, I think I do recall there being a Mrs. Loveland on the passenger-list, but——"
"She has a niece," said Val.
"Ah?" The elder man pulled a folded passenger-list out of his pocket, and ran his eye down the "L's." "Then the niece has not the same name. But I'll engage to find out all about the ladies for you, if you're interested in them."
Loveland paused for an instant, on the point of refusing the service. But he reflected that making enquiries about unknown ladies was not a dignified proceeding, and that he would prefer to have Major Cadwallader Hunter undertake it, rather than compromise himself.
"It will be easy for me, as I know so many people," volunteered the American.
"Oh, very well. Thank you," said Loveland, stiffly, with that upward inflection of the voice, which can make a "thank you" as irritating as a mosquito-bite.
He was ready now to use Major Cadwallader Hunter for catspawing in all its branches, but did not intend to be over civil in return. He divined that Cadwallader-Hunter by name was a Tuft-Hunter by nature; that vast wealth, or even a really good title was to him balm in Gilead; and that he was not one of those sensitive souls who find it difficult to be kind to the rich, for fear of being misunderstood by the world.
And the would-be leader was delighted to become Lord Loveland's catspaw, because he hoped that his way of handling the chestnuts would do him honour. He believed that, if through Lord Loveland he did not become King of all the lions in New York that season, he might at least be King's jester.
Presently, still smiling, he left Val stretched luxuriously in the labelled deck-chair, and trotted away to tell more people what a charming fellow Lord Loveland was. All the while it would have done his soul good—what there was of it—to box Val's ears. But it would have done him still more good to be re-souled or even half-souled, for all that he had ever possessed was long ago worn to rags.
Major Cadwallader Hunter prided himself on being able to find out everything about everybody, even when starting from the point of complete ignorance, and handicapped by a time limit. Indeed, he had a nice detective instinct, and putting it to use was one of the games he played best. But he found himself confronted with difficulties in the case of Mrs. Loveland and her niece.
It was simple to find out the girl's name, and that Mrs. Loveland, the aunt, was a delicate little person, at that time of life when sensible women cling no longer to the ragged edge of youth, as a bat clings to a shutter. It was easy to learn (stewards and stewardesses reveal such things, if handled by experts) that Mrs. Loveland had slipped into her berth on starting, with the intention of remaining there during the whole voyage, weather or no weather. But as to Wealth and as to Ancestors (Cadwallader Hunter was as devout a worshipper of Ancestors as any Chinaman) the matter was more difficult. However, he was eventually fortunate enough to stumble upon an acquaintance, a Mrs. Milton, who had met Mrs. Loveland and her niece while travelling in England. Mrs. Milton was a charming woman, but she had some weaknesses. In a sojourn of six weeks, she had become so much more English than the English that she had taken to calling her daughter Fanny "Fawny." She pitied Mrs. Loveland and Mrs. Loveland's niece because they were so—"sounnecessarilyAmerican, don't you know?" Also she was perfectly certain from their way of doing things, from remarks they had let drop, and answers they had given to her questions, that they were nobodies. They lived in a town in the middle west, knew no New York people, poor things, and were altogether provincial. They had been abroad for the first time, had enjoyed themselves with the most countrified enthusiasm everywhere, and were so much interested in history and dull subjects of that sort that Fawny's mother fawncied they were perhaps schoolteachers on their holidays, especially as they were so reserved about their own affairs, that there must be something they were ashamed of.
Major Cadwallader Hunter was glad to hear these damaging details, because it was evident that the Englishman was taken with Mrs. Loveland's niece. The self-appointed bear-leader wanted his bear for more important girls.
It was not till nearly dinner-time that he was able to make his report to Loveland. Meanwhile, during his leader's absence, the bear had found out some things for himself, and had forgotten Major Cadwallader Hunter. Val had felt the need of another constitutional, and seeing his namesake's niece struggling with a wind-blown rug, had tucked it round her feet. They were pretty feet, and Val was very fastidious about a woman's feet. These were even prettier, and many sizes smaller than Miss Coolidge's, therefore he was glad that a next-door chair stood empty for the moment. He begged so meekly to sit down and talk for a little while, that his mother, could she have heard him, would have trembled lest he might be sickening for something. But he had talked for more than a "little while," and then had been forced to go because the owner of the next-door chair came back and hovered suggestively.
Loveland had only just got up, and was taking his leave when Major Cadwallader Hunter arrived from the Music-room, where he had been gleaning facts. "She is a Miss Dearmer," he announced.
"Oh, I know that already," Val returned, ungratefully. "She told me herself."
"Lesley Dearmer."
"I hadn't got as far as the Lesley yet." Val laughed lightly, for he had had a delightful conversation with Miss Dearmer. That cleft in her chin had not proved a trap to catch the unwary, whom it tempted to expect a merry wit. And while Loveland sat beside her, she had flung bright thought after bright thought, carelessly as a cashier in a bank shovels out gold for other people's purses. He had never met a girl like Miss Dearmer. No wonder she could write stories. But he felt it was far more suitable that she should entertain the Marquis of Loveland.
"Of course you must do exactly as you please," said Cadwallader Hunter, "but from what I've learned, I fancy you can pass your valuable time better on this trip than in the society of Miss Dearmer."
"What do you mean?" Val flashed out at him.
"Oh, only that it's just as I thought. She and her aunt are ordinary, provincial little people, with no money or connections. They live in the southwest, near a city called Louisville. These ladies, aunt and niece, have been 'doing' as much of Europe as they could afford, and are now returning to their native wilds, where they'll probably stay for the remainder of their respectable, colourless lives."
The picture was not alluring, and Loveland's face fell.
"Mr. and Miss Coolidge are at your table," said Cadwallader Hunter, "and I've just been arranging to sit there, too, so I can introduce you this evening at dinner. You'll be next Miss Coolidge, and opposite, you'll have a very nice girl, a Miss Fanny Milton, who admires Englishmen. Her mother is a youngish woman with a temper. She doesn't get on well with her husband, but he is a very rich man who must give a dot of at least five hundred thousand to his daughter. These people are friends of mine, and will be very pleased to know you."
Loveland did not doubt the last statement, nor did he feel grateful to his benefactor, this general provider of charming, rich young ladies. He was sulkily regretting that Miss Dearmer was poor and provincial, and altogether impossible as the future Lady Loveland.
"Well," said the girl, "what do you think of things?"
"I think," answered Loveland, "it's a beastly shame we're not put at the same table."
"I mean of things in general."
"I prefer to think of you in particular."
"It wouldn't pay," said the girl, with one of her whimsical smiles.
Loveland looked at her sharply. "What makes you say that?" he wanted to know.
"Because it's true."
"Why do you insinuate that I only want to do things that pay?"
"I told you I wrote stories, didn't I? Well, to write stories, one must make a study of Man. I do. And I never found it dull yet."
"I'm glad you don't find it dull where I'm concerned," said Val. "But I'm not glad you consider me a swine."
"Lucky I've just been in England, and heard other Englishmen talk," said the girl. "If not, I should hardly understand that pretty expression."
"So you've been making a study of other Englishmen? What did you think of us?"
"That you, as a race, are very tall and tweedy. And that you aren't precisely dissatisfied with yourselves."
It was the next morning, and they were pacing up and down the long white deck. Loveland had joined Miss Dearmer as she walked, and she had not been repellent in her manner. Yet somehow her friendliness did not encourage him to increasing conceit. Even before she had made that little remark about studying Man, he had vaguely felt that she read him as if he were a cypher of which she had found the key.
"I hope you met the right kind of men," he said.
"You mean, men like you? You see, I know who you are, now."
"Who told you anything about me?"
"Miss Milton."
"Oh, you know her—daughter of the white-faced woman, pretty, blushy little thing who sits at my table?"
"Yes. We were travelling in England at the same time, and met often at hotels."
"What did Miss Milton say about me?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Yes. I'm not a coward."
"She said she wondered if you were going over to our country to try and marry an American girl."
"By Jove! Well, supposing I do try, what's your opinion? Do you think I stand a good chance of bringing it off?"
"It's rather soon for me to judge."
"You seem to have made up your mind quickly about some of my other qualities. About my wanting to do things which pay, for instance."
"You haven't forgiven me that? It might pay to 'try' and marry an American girl."
"Well," admitted Loveland on an impulse, "no matter how much I might want to, I couldn't marry one if it didn't pay."
"Now you are being frank," replied Miss Lesley. "I like people to be frank."
"So do I," said Loveland, "when that doesn't mean being disagreeable, as it generally does from one's relations, especially one's maiden aunts."
"England expects that every aunt will do her duty."
"Luckilyyou'renot my aunt, so please don't do yours if it's unpleasant. But couldn't we be frank—and friends? I should like most awfully to have you for my friend. You could be no end valuable to me, you know, about giving me good advice, if you would."
She laughed. "I dare say. But could you be valuable to me?"
Loveland wished that he might dare to be dangerous; but the idea of having her for a friend, into whose pink shell of an ear he could pour confidences, really attracted him—since her value, not being cash value, could be realised by him in no other way. And, of course, if she would promise to be his friend, it would be caddish to make love to her. He felt very virtuous as he laid down this rule for himself.
"I'll let you study me as much as you like, and put me into your next story."
"As the villain?"
He looked rather blank. His conception for himself was always the part of hero.
"But after all, it's usually baronets who're villains—in stories and plays," she went on. "A Marquis—you are a Marquis, aren't you—may perhaps be a fellow being."
"Please treat me as such, then," said Loveland.
"I will, anyway till further notice. Now you may begin to tell me frank things, and I'll give you frank advice about them, as a friend."
"How I wish you were rich!" exclaimed Loveland, thinking aloud, as he did sometimes.
"How do you know I'm not? Oh, of course Major Cadwallader Hunter found out for you. He would! He's the sort of man who takes a worm's eye view of the world, and of women and wealth. But never mind if I'm not rich."
"I do mind. I shouldn't want you for a friend if you were."
"You wouldn't—oh! Well, now you are being still franker, aren't you?"
"You said you liked people to be frank."
"Ye—es."
"I haven't offended you, have I?"
"No. I'm just getting used to you. It's quite interesting. What do you want my advice about? Other girls, I suppose?"
"It may come to that," Loveland admitted.
"Anyone in particular, at the moment?"
"Well, supposing I were forced to marry money, for the sake of—of—my estates and all that, is there anyone on board you'd recommend?"
"You've two very eligible girls at your table."
"Yes. But hang it all, it's too much of a good thing having them at one's elbow like that, you know. If only it were you, instead——"
"On the principle of having the poor always with one. But for that you'd have to change and sit at mine. We're all poor there, I think. It's the Ineligible's Table, for both sexes. Would you care to come?"
"I'd care to, but I couldn't afford it," said Val. "I must stop where I am and take the goods the gods provide."
"You mean the dining-room steward who arranged the seats."
"What else did Miss Milton say about me?"
"That you were very good-looking—as we're being frank."
"I hope you agreed with her?"
"Oh, yes, I had to. Your looks are so obvious—so much a part of your stock-in-trade, if you don't mind my saying so, it would be silly to deny that the shop windows are well decorated. It was apropos of your marrying that she spoke. I said a handsome man oughtn't to be driven into the obscurity of marriage, by necessity. He ought simply to be supported by the nation, become a sort of public institution, and be the pride of his country; be sent, beautifully got up, to walk in Parks, and dance at balls, and make life pleasant for girls."
"Thank you. Anything else?"
"From Miss Milton or me?"
"From you."
"Nothing more from me. The rest was silence."
"From Miss Milton, then?"
"Let me see. She said it seemed as if you'd bought your eyelashes by the yard, and been frightfully extravagant."
"Wish I could pawn them!"
"If you marry as you intend, you won't need to."
"I say, I'm afraid you're frightfully sarcastic," said Loveland, who had never had an American girl for a friend before, and found that having one kept his hands full. "You think I'm a beast to marry a girl for her money."
"First catch your hare."
"You mean I mayn't get one to take me."
"One never can tell. There have been slips between cup and lip."
"Although I'm poor, I can give my wife a lot of things a woman likes to have."
"Second best things."
"Oh, come! You haven't stopped to think what they are."
"I've stopped to think that love's the best thing—the thing a girl cares most for a man to give her."
"It seems to me that all the girls I know would be pretty well satisfied with the right to walk into a dining-room behind a Duchess, and——"
"Do you? What a lot you've got to learn about girls."
"I don't think I have," said Val. "I think I know most of it."
"About life, then, and about yourself."
"Oh, I know nearly all there is to be known about them."
"You really do need a friend," laughed the girl.
"To keep me from being bored?"
"To keep you from heaps of things."
"Well, go on being my friend, and giving me good advice, please," said Loveland. "There's Miss Coolidge, too. She's a beautiful creature. Are there many other girls in the States as beautiful as she?"
"As beautiful, but few more beautiful."
"Any beautiful ones richer?"
"I'm not up in that kind of statistics. Major Cadwallader Hunter is."
"Yes. But I don't care for the fellow. I'd rather take counsel with you. Do you know Miss Coolidge?"
"No."
"I wish you did."
"Would you like me to use my influence with her?"
"I should like you to use your influence with me to keep me up to the mark. She's rather hard to talk to. So different from you."
"She knows her value. She's 'worth' several millions, as we say in America. (I wish we didn't!) Why should she worry to make herself agreeable? She can get all the attention she wants without bothering. Whereas, we poor girls have to work hard, if we want to be popular in spite of our poverty."
"I suppose there's something in that," said Loveland, too deeply absorbed in his own affairs not to take her in earnest. And the girl would have liked to turn a scornful shoulder upon him, if his voice had not been so nice, and if he had not been so handsome. As it was, she wanted to turn upon herself, because she knew that she was influenced by the nice voice, the clear features, and the black-lashed blue eyes. "He is a perfectly worthless young man," she reflected savagely, yet she did not tell him, as he deserved, that she had reconsidered and would not after all undertake the extra hard work of being his guide, philosopher and friend.
"It will be an experience for me," she thought. And she remembered that she had summed up his character from the first. The revelations he had just made of his inner self ought not now to surprise her.
So the days went on. And the pair remained friends; a state of affairs which took more of Val's time than he should have spared from his real ambitions.
Loveland had tried at intervals to be nice to Miss Coolidge and Miss Milton, and he met other pretty girls to whom he felt obliged to be agreeable, because Major Cadwallader Hunter said that they were heiresses. But it is difficult to be equally nice to five or six charming young women at once and within a comparatively limited area, when you have not made up your mind which of them you want to marry, or whether you will not in the end throw them all over to marry someone else whom you have not yet seen. And it is a particularly difficult task when you would prefer to be nice to someone else whom you have already seen.
Besides, Lord Loveland thought too much of himself to pretend love-making successfully when, so far from being in love, he was considerably bored. Each girl he knew on the ship bored him in her own separate way, except his friend Miss Dearmer, to whom he went frequently for good advice about the others. Perhaps if he had not known her, the other girls, or some of them, would not have bored him. But as it was, they were occasionally tiresome in his eyes when he would have liked to be with Lesley instead; and though Lord Loveland was clever, he was not clever enough to hide his feelings. Sometimes, so sure was he of their forgiveness if he wanted it, he was downright rude; and there is nothing a nice American girl forgives less easily than rudeness which springs from a man's self-conceit.
At first, all the girls had admired Loveland, not only because he had a title, but because he was himself; and some of the younger ones, like Fanny Milton and Madge Beverly, had been inclined to regard him as a starry Paladin. Fanny said he was "so handsome, it almost hurt," and that she "could hardly talk to him for gazing at his Gibson chin." But when the more sophisticated Eva Turner, Elinor Coolidge, Kate Wood and a few others realised that their starry Paladin was impudently inspecting them all with a view to the possible purchase of the most satisfactory, each began to hate him secretly with forty-woman power. Secretly, because there was a kind of glory in him as an asset, and a rivalry for the asset, just as there might be among smaller girls with only one doll—an unlovable but expensive doll—to play with. Not one of the number would sacrifice all right in the doll, and give it up to her companions.
They were worldly, though good-hearted, girls to whom Major Cadwallader Hunter had introduced his prize, and they foresaw that handsome Lord Loveland would be petted, perhaps fought for, in Society, when he had left the little world of theMauretaniafor the bigger world of New York. There would be an advantage in having known him first in case he should become the "rage," as he was sure to do, if not too insufferably rude and offensive. Thinking of this, each girl clung to her share of him, and refrained from trampling on the expensive doll, as, for her pride's sake, she ached to do. Nor did Elinor Coolidge and Fanny Milton and the rest speak their true feelings frankly out to one another. Each wished her friends to believe that he was nice to her alone, that his insolence was charmed into lamb-like docility in a duet with her; for in that way self-respect could be maintained and jealousy aroused.
Val was unaware of the hatred, but conscious of the rivalry, and was altogether kept very busy. He forgot to Marconi to his mother that he had sailed on theMauretania, as Jim Harborough had thought he might forget. As for writing, he had not a moment for any such sedentary employment. Once or twice he did make up his mind to begin a letter to Lady Loveland; but, when he could get a few minutes off duty, it seemed such a waste of time not to go and ask for good advice from Lesley Dearmer, that somehow pen was never put to paper.
And so at last came the day for landing.
TheMauretaniapassed the noble statue of Liberty enlightening the world, and Loveland admired her impersonally, but felt that had she been a live millionairess he would not have dared propose to her.
Then, presently, the hugeness of the great city loomed monstrous, mountainous in purple shadow against such a blue sky as Italy and New York know.
A crowd was massed on the dock to welcome theMauretaniaand her passengers; and for the first time since he had left England, Val felt a vague homesickness stirring in his breast. Almost everyone else on board seemed to have at least one handkerchief-waving friend, and some had half a dozen, but all the smiling eager faces looking up were strange to his eyes. There was no one for him; and he had a sudden, queer sensation of not being at home in the world. This, in spite of invitations from everybody he had met on the ship—except one: the One who mattered.
Mr. Coolidge and several other fathers and uncles of pretty girls had asked him to make their house his home; but he had taken Jim Harborough's advice to heart, and excused himself warily. His idea was to let New York society pass before his eyes in review, before risking a premature entanglement. To this course he committed himself in cold blood. Since he could not have Lesley Dearmer, all that mattered to him in a girl was decent manners, decent looks, and—many millions.
He should have rejoiced that it was time to land, and have felt keen to set to work upon the business which had brought him across the sea, but he was in no mood to rejoice at anything; and it was Lesley Dearmer's fault.
He had planned a moonlight farewell for the night before, but Lesley thwarted him by talking the whole evening long with a sporting youth, whom Val wrathfully stigmatised in his mind as suffering from motor bicycle face, bridge eye, clutch knee and tennis elbow. Then when she had tired of her flirtation she went to bed.
Next morning it was only as theMauretanianeared her slip that the girl appeared again. Without seeming to notice Loveland she stood leaning her elbows on the rail, not far from him. It occurred to Val that after all it was a matter of no importance to her that their lives were to be lived apart. And the separation was at hand. He had thought of this hour, but now it was here. He was going to lose her. Tomorrow, and all the tomorrows, he would have no sweet, merry, mysterious-eyed friend to advise him and listen half-amused, half in earnest, to his confidences.
Suddenly his heart felt like a large, cold boiled beetroot in his breast. He went and stood behind the girl, dumb with a strange new misery he could not understand, and, as though she had heard the "unerring speech" of his silence, she turned.
At first her beautiful brown eyes flashed a laughing challenge at him, as if they said, "Wouldn't you like to make me think you really care? But I don't think it, and won't. And neither do you care. We've both been playing."
Then, something in his look softened hers. She smiled kindly, though not wholly without guile.
"Aren't you excited?" she asked.
"Why should I be excited?" he grumbled.
"Because—well, you're a soldier, and know what war is like. I've heard that the most exciting thing which can happen is a call to make asortiein the middle of the night, in the midst of a dream—and on an empty stomach. But I should think the call to a matrimonial sortie——"
"On an empty purse?"
"Yes; when it's a question of selling yourself to fill it."
"I don't mean to sell myself. I shall still belong to myself and to one other. I won't say who that other is, for I've pretty well told you already."
"It's no use pretending not to understand. I know what you want me tothinkyou mean."
"If I never knew before how much I do mean it, I know now, when I've got to say 'goodbye.'"
"You needn't say it."
"You've tried hard to keep me from saying it, haven't you? But look here, Lesley—do look at me. I'm awfully cut up at leaving you."
"You're not to call me Lesley."
"You can't prevent my calling you Lesley to myself."
"You'll soon forget the name."
"Never. I can never forget you—worse luck. The thought of you is going to come between me and—other things."
"The thought must learn better manners. Not to 'butt in,' as we say over here. Oh, it will soon be tamed. You'll have so much to do."
"I hope I shall," said Loveland. "I say, are you going to forget me as soon as we're parted?"
The girl was silent for a moment. Then she laughed. Yet her laugh had not quite the frank lightheartedness which was usually one of its charms. "I shall make a note of you for my next story but one," she answered.
"You're not very kind."
"Are you sure you deserve kindness?"
"I'm sure I want it—from you."
"How you have always got what you wanted in your life, haven't you—one way or another?"
"Life wouldn't be worth living if one didn't."
"Oh, it's not much good saying to you that that's a selfish way of looking at life. But you've never had any lessons, and I suppose you never will have. You'll go on getting what you want, and taking it for granted that you ought to get it, till the end."
"I hope so, sincerely," said Val, without shame. "But I shan't get one of the things I want most, unless you promise to write to me."
She shook her head. "I can't promise that. I wouldn't if I could. As for getting your news, I shall read it in the papers, which are sure to chronicle all Lord Loveland does and says, and a lot he doesn't do or say. The Louisville papers will have things about you, copied from New York, in the Sunday editions. Yes, I shall be able to read about you every Sunday—lots of things you wouldn't tell in letters if I let you write. I shall see rumours of your engagement, then an announcement. I wonder if it will be the survival of the prettiest; Miss Coolidge—or if you'll be knocked down—on your knees—to a higher bid?"
"You're not letting me get much pleasure out of my last moments with you," he complained, his blue eyes really pathetic. "Do you despise me, after all?"
She looked up at him. "Only one side of you," she answered, a little sadly. "But—you're rather like the moon. We see only one of her sides. The other we have to take on faith. Perhaps it's silly of me, yet sometimes—in some moods—I do take your other side on faith."
"What is there,—on that side?" he asked, eagerly.
"I don't know. And I'm sure you don't. You probably never will. For the light shines so brightly on the one turned towards the world. Now itmustbe 'goodbye.' There's my dear little aunt—who's been on deck ever since we passed Governor's Island—looking for me."
"Are these to be our last words together, then?" Val had a sickening pang. He had not known it was going to be as bad as this. And it wouldn't have been so bad, if she had seemed to care more.
"Yes, they must be the last, unless just a snippy 'goodbye, very pleased to have met you,' as we leave the ship. I wish you the best luck. Shall I say 'Thine own wish, wish I thee'?" She spoke in a hard, bright tone, just poising like a bird on the wing, before flitting to her aunt.
"Don't forget me. Think of me sometimes," Loveland implored, as he wrung the little hand she held out. And perhaps never in his life had there been so much true feeling in his voice.
"I will think of you sometimes," she said, as if mechanically repeating the words.
"Try and think the best of me."
"Yes. I'll try to do that, too. Goodbye."
But he would not let her hand go. It seemed to him that he could not—although he knew he must. It was all he could do to keep back a plea that she would love him, that she would marry him, even though the crumbling walls of Loveland Castle fell. But instead he stammered, "Am I never to see you again? Can't you stop in New York for a few days, and let me call on—on you and your aunt—just to break the blow of parting?"
"No, we can't stop," she said. "We've been away from home too long already. We have lots to do. You know I work for my living."
"Those stories! Yes. But couldn't you write them in New York?"
"No, I couldn't, indeed. Aunt Barbara and I start for Louisville this afternoon. We live not far away."
"Mayn't I go with you to the train?"
"What! desert valuable friends whom it's your duty to cultivate—if you're to have flowers in the garden of your future?"
"I'd desert anyone or anything for you."
"Thank you. I believe you really mean that—this minute."
"I——"
"No. Don't protest. Sufficient for the minute is the meaning thereof. I must go—Iwantto go—while you still mean it all. And I'd rather not see you again, because I'd like to keep the memory of you as you look and are in this minute—nothing less. It will seem afterwards to justify our temporary partnership, in case I ever ask myself—Why?"
And before he could answer she was gone.
He dared not follow, and instantly lost sight of her in the crowd that poured to the rail to greet the waiting crowd below. Afterwards, on the dock, he saw her again, but only at a distance, for her aunt's luggage had been marked "D," that it might chaperon Miss Dearmer's, and enable the two ladies to keep each other company during the tedious time of waiting.
From the far off stall under the big letter "L," Loveland gazed sadly at the back of his lost friend's head, her face, either by accident or design, being turned from him. His boxes were long in coming, and as it happened that none of his ship-acquaintances were "L's," he had no one to talk to, nothing pleasanter to do than look at Miss Dearmer's back and gradually lose hope of her relenting.
She had brought a little camp-stool for her aunt, and that lady sat facing Loveland, her eyes so destitute of interest when now and then they strayed in his direction, that he began to believe her niece had never mentioned his existence. More than once he had pictured Lesley describing her aunt's distinguished namesake; had fancied Mrs. Loveland asking questions; and wished that he might hear the answers. The lady's indifference was not flattering to his self-esteem; but Mrs. Loveland did not look a woman to claim a relation because he was a peer.
Lesley's aunt was a little woman with dove-grey hair, folded like dove's wings that slanted softly down her forehead, covering her ears. Hers was a gentle face, with eyes that gazed kindly, and somehow impersonally, out upon the world. She had the air which many American mothers wear, of having contentedly stepped aside from the fore-front of life in favour of a younger generation, and of having lost interest in herself as a separate entity.
Lesley and Mrs. Loveland all got their luggage dumped down under letter "D," before a single "L" box had appeared. Then, when Val's did come, and the property of other impatient "L's" at the same time, the outside world was lost to view. Loveland got hold of a good-natured Custom House man, who, considering the indubitable fact that he was dealing with a British subject, and believing the "Britisher's" statement that he was merely on a visit to America, made no unnecessary trouble. He was in a hurry, like everybody else, and did little more than casually open the leather portmanteaux, the cabin trunk, the hat box, and the fitted suit-case glittering with coronets, which constituted Lord Loveland's luggage.
Very few minutes were wasted in the examination, though Americans all around were suffering severely. Nevertheless, when his keys were in his hand again, and Val was ready to separate himself and his belongings from the seething mass of anxious "L's," Miss Dearmer and her aunt had vanished off the face of the dock.
Loveland tried to put thoughts of the girl out of his head as he drove through the exciting streets of New York, which seemed to him colourful and strange as a vast flower-garden, sown regardlessly. But, despite the rush and roar of "elevated trains" above his head, the swift whirr of electric trams to left, to right, of him on a level, and the bizarre effect of the "sky-scrapers," which turned long thoroughfares into shadowed valleys, he could not throw open his mind to the rush of new impressions. This brilliant New York made him feel after all a person of comparatively small importance. He began to repent having refused invitations, for instead of bumping dolefully to a hotel, in a cab which was the least modern thing New York had shown him, he might now be spinning uptown in any one of half a dozen hospitable ten-thousand-dollar motor cars. In his isolation he regretted the Coolidges, and even Cadwallader Hunter who had pressed him to spend a day or two at his flat; however, he was consoled by the reflection that he had decided wisely, and that wisdom would be its own reward. It was better not to lend himself to anyone until he had seen everyone, and decided to whom he would permanently belong.
When the bear had refused the hospitality of its leader's cage, Cadwallader Hunter had suggested a quiet new hotel, uptown and near his apartment. But the bear did not know that it was a bear, and had tired of dictation. Loveland had heard of the Waldorf-Astoria, and he had not heard of the quiet new hotel. Men he knew, who ran over to New York on such errands as his own, stopped at the Waldorf-Astoria, or Holland House, or the Plaza, and Val, who believed that the best was only just good enough, would not risk hiding his light under a bushel. True, he had very little money, but he had plenty of invitations and was certain to have more. A couple of days at the most expensive hotel could not break him; and Jim and Betty Harborough's millionaire friends would probably expect him to be conspicuous. Now was the tide in his affairs which must be taken at the flood, and he could not afford to let his future relations-in-law (whoever they might be) learn to despise him.
Loveland's intention had been to ask for a small room, high in situation and low in price; but once inside the immense, red-brown building, which looked vast enough to hold half New York, pride tied his tongue. Pretty girls, beautifully dressed, and prosperous-looking men, with facial expressions as supercilious as his own, were standing within earshot; and Loveland could not resist satisfying an impulse of boyish vanity. He announced to a superior gentleman at a desk that he wanted a good room with a bath. His charming voice and "English accent" attracted the Americans near him, and under his mask of indifference Loveland was aware of the attention he excited.
The superior gentleman thought for a moment and consulted a book. Then he said that he had no single rooms with baths disengaged at present, but that there was a suite consisting of bedroom, bath and parlour; just one suite, and that probably would be gone in another minute.
The hint of rivalry decided Loveland. "Very well. I will take it," he said. "Here's my card, if you wish to know to whom you are letting your rooms," he went on haughtily, in response to a sharp glance from shrewd, experienced eyes. And the hotel clerk read aloud, "Marquis of Loveland."
At this, everyone who had not been staring at the handsome, arrogant young Englishman, began to stare, and Loveland was not displeased.
"My luggage will be here soon, I hope," he said, showing several metal discs about which his ideas were rather vague. The clerk answered civilly that the trunks ought to arrive in half an hour or so, and a smart youth in livery was told off to show Lord Loveland his rooms.
They were very luxurious rooms, almost too luxurious, and Loveland experienced a faint qualm as it occurred to him that he had neglected to ask the price. "But they can't come to more than five or six pounds a day at the worst," he thought, hopefully.
He had brought his suit-case in the cab, and as the letters of introduction were in a little portable writing-desk contained among the fittings, he got out the packet to read over the addresses. All the friends to whom Jim and Betty were commending him lived in New York, and Cadwallader Hunter had said that most New Yorkers were at home in November. Loveland was just deciding that the letters had better reach their destination before night, when his baggage appeared, looking not much the worse for wear.
Now was the moment when the inestimable Foxham would be really missed. On shipboard there had been little to unpack; but the contents of the portmanteaux must have been rudely stirred on the dock, and ought immediately to be rescued by an expert. Loveland touched an electric bell in his bedroom, demanded of an unexpectedly responsive telephone that the hotel should produce a valet; and criticised the product adversely when it came.
Luncheon time was near, and Val was hungry, but he would not leave wardrobe and jewellery to the discretion of a strange servant. In a mood swinging towards impatience, he sat down on a cushioned sofa to watch the valet's proceedings.
The larger of the two noble portmanteaux was opened; the neat square of gold-braided and coronetted brown velvet, with which Foxham always covered the contents of each box, was removed; and a pile of clothing was deftly excavated.
Loveland's face changed from attention to surprise, then to bewilderment. "By Jove!" he exclaimed, "those don't look like my things." Then springing up alertly he began to toss over the pile as the hotel valet deposited it upon the bed, to toss it over as a haymaker tosses hay. But, in the midst, he drew back his hand as if he had inadvertently touched pitch. "Jove!" he stammered again.
"Wrong luggage, sir?" ventured the servant.
Loveland did not reply. He did not even hear, for his thoughts had taken a trip of record quickness across the sea, and were already in London, chasing a mystery. But, if the valet had stopped to think, an answer would have been unnecessary. The keys fitted the portmanteaux; and there were the big initials and the small coronets which distinguished Lord Loveland's property from the vulgar trunks of the common herd.
Had Foxham gone mad? For the moment Loveland could think of no other explanation. The portmanteau was filled with discarded garments, many of which Loveland had given to Foxham at parting. Other things were there, too, which Val dimly remembered having actually seen on the person of Foxham, and it was from the touch of these contaminated remnants that he recoiled in disgust.
"Open the other portmanteau," he directed, flushed now, and anxious-eyed.
The hotel servant obeyed. Another neat square of brown velvet was whisked away, and piles of shirts were revealed; but, save for a deceitful top layer, they were not Loveland's shirts. They might have been bought ready-made in the Edgware Road; probably had been—by Foxham. There was underclothing also; but not the pale pink, blue and heliotrope silk variety affected by Foxham's master.
"Now the hat box," Loveland went on, almost sure that he was talking in his sleep. For it was unbelievable that he would not soon wake up to find that this was a bad dream.
There were hats in the hat box; Foxham's hats, perhaps; certainly not Lord Loveland's. And in the boot box which came next were boots, but boots which had lost all claim to self-respect; boots which even Foxham would have found it difficult to give away.
Only the Custom House official's good nature and haste, and Loveland's complete absence of mind on the dock had delayed discovery until this moment, but now that the secret was out, there seemed nothing to do, if not to rage helplessly.
Loveland spluttered a few colourful words, but was still too bewildered by the catastrophe to become volcanic. The eruption would follow later.
"What shall I do with the things, sir?" the valet wanted to know.
"Do with them?" repeated Loveland, exasperated by the creature's calmness. "Pitch 'em into the fire—get rid of them anyhow, out of my sight, and be quick about it. I've been robbed, by my own man."
Loveland seemed to hear these words spoken by an unknown voice, as if they had been uttered by a stranger, and instantly he accepted them as the solution of the mystery.
That was it! Foxham had robbed him. Foxham had not gone mad. Foxham was simply a scoundrel.
There was too much method in the planning of this trick, even for madness.
The careful arrangement of the cabin luggage, with all the right things in the right places, except for the jewel-case containing tie pins, sleeve links and shirt studs, which for five days Loveland had believed to have been stowed away somewhere else by mistake. The packing of the portmanteaux and boxes with a nice judgment as to their proper weight and the neatness of top layers; all this was too well thought out to be the work of a lunatic.
No wonder Foxham had not asked for wages in arrear. No wonder he suddenly developed a defunct grandfather with an eccentric will. From the moment he heard of the proposed trip to America, he must have been quietly planning thiscoup, acoupworth making for the sake of the bran new wardrobe, to say nothing of the jewellery. And hot with rage, Loveland ran over in his mind the contents of that missing jewel-box. The pearl studs which Lady Kitty Manning had given him on his last birthday—each one of the three worth fifty pounds, if it was worth a shilling. How he wished he had sold the things, as he had been tempted to do, and would have done, if they had not been the gift of a pretty woman! The diamond and enamel sleeve-links, too, and the sapphire buttons; a hundred pounds more in Foxham's pocket. Then the cravat pins, in two long rows on a white velvet background: Loveland could see them, as he had seen them last—a cherished collection representing not only so many golden sovereigns, but so many queens of beauty, the charming givers.
What a rogue to send his master off to a strange country, stripped practically naked; and how the master longed to have the rogue within kicking distance, instead of safe across the sea.
Forgotten faults of Foxham's flashed back into his memory; small slynesses winked at, or condoned; rumoured "airs" assumed in the servants' hall at country houses; fibs found out and overlooked, because no other valet had Foxham's skill and resourcefulness. Still—who would have expected such depravity?
If this blow had fallen on some other man, Loveland would have laughed, and chaffed him; but he was far from seeing his own predicament as a laughing matter. He was like a knight of old who, having journeyed to a far land to joust for a great prize, finds himself robbed of his armour. How was he to fight on the tilting ground of society, and bear away a millionairess, when his sole possessions consisted of what he stood up in, and the contents of a suit-case and a cabin trunk?
Luckily Foxham had not been able to annex his master's letter of credit; but Val had uses for the hundred and fifty pounds other than buying a new outfit. How he wished now that he had not played Bridge quite so often on board ship, emptying his pockets of spare cash. The scrape he was in was as hard to win out of as a black London fog; and while groping for light, a mild question from the hotel valet did not sweeten his temper.
"Am I really to carry all these things away, sir?"
"Oh, go to the devil and take them with you!"
The servant—lest he remember that he had been born a man, and retaliate—bolted towards safety, with a leaning tower of Foxham's garments on his arm. It was nobody's business how he meant to dispose of them; and a second later he would have passed the danger line, had not a page boy selected that identical instant to knock at Lord Loveland's door.
Man and youth collided. The top-heavy pile of clothing crumbled into ruin, Foxham's loathed shirts and waistcoats blotting out the threshold. What the valet said, long habits of servitude rendered inaudible, but what Loveland said might have been heard at the end of the corridor. And there were listeners nearer: Major Cadwallader Hunter and a companion who "represented" one of New York's leading newspapers.
Major Cadwallader Hunter had been somewhat doubtful of his wisdom in paying this uninvited call. He had hinted that he might drop in at the Waldorf to see how Lord Loveland got on, and had not been encouraged to do so. But Tony Kidd of "New York Light" was a pretty good excuse for persevering, and he certainly had been badly in want of an excuse.
Having cast himself for the part of bear-leader it was imperative that Society should know who led the bear, whether the bear recognised his position or not.
Had he, like Loveland, been merely a guest in America, he would have left the ship's dock when Lord Loveland left, and have been able to show all whom it concerned at the Waldorf-Astoria that Loveland was his property. But he was subjected by the dreaded Custom House officials to treatment very different from that meted out to the Englishman, being baited and bullied as if he were a bear instead of a bear-leader.
The detention, however, proved a blessing in disguise, for it gave him Mr. Anthony Kidd of "Light." The journalist, sent down by his paper to meet theMauretania, had just exhausted the available supply of home-coming millionaires when he spied Major Cadwallader Hunter, and carelessly culled him by the way, as worth a short paragraph at the bottom of a column.
Cadwallader Hunter was glad of a paragraph anywhere, but thought he saw his way to one higher up, perhaps even with a headline. So he happened to mention "a connection of his," the Marquis of Loveland who had been on board, though, for reasons, the noble name did not appear on the passenger list, and Mr. Kidd took the bait. Loveland was described by his alleged cousin as a "dear boy," so handsome, so clever; one of the oldest peerages in England, et cetera, et cetera; in the Grenadier Guards, don't you know, and all that sort of thing. Had gone on ahead to secure rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria, though invitations had been showered upon him by the best people on board ship. As soon as he could escape with life and luggage Cadwallader Hunter intended to pay a friendly call and inspect Lord Loveland's new quarters.
Of course Mr. Kidd wanted to call, too, and get a "story" for his paper. But at this suggestion the bear-leader shook his head. Charming fellow as Loveland was when you knew him, he was rather a difficult man to approach, and had some ridiculous prejudice against American pressmen. Certainly, unless influence were brought to bear, he would refuse to see Mr. Kidd; but Cadwallader Hunter would like to do "Light" a good turn, and give the paper a chance for a "scoop." He would take Mr. Kidd under his wing, and use his persuasive powers to obtain some sort of an interview.
Perhaps there was more confidence in his manner than in his mind as he made this offer, for the bear's leader had already seen the bear's claws; but the risk was worth running. And when, arrived at the Waldorf, he had talked for a few minutes with pleasant condescension to a hotel clerk, his self-esteem had so risen that he no longer dreaded a cold reception.
Nor did he receive one. His welcome was, on the contrary, far warmer than he had expected, and the hot blast of Loveland's wrath swept him back a step or two, so that he trod hard upon Tony Kidd's most pampered toe.
A difficult young man to approach, indeed!
The representative of "New York Light" was a brilliant journalist with a keen sense of humour, and a headline jumped into his head as Cadwallader Hunter stamped upon his toe. "A Difficult Young Man to Approach." He thought he saw his way to something rather choice for tomorrow morning's "Light."
Somehow, between valet and page, the wild litter of shirts, trousers, boots, and other horrors reminiscent of Foxham, was re-built into a tower more leaning than before. Then, while the valet scuttled away with his trailing, sliding load, the page remained behind and courageously announced the visitors.
Perhaps if Foxham had spared him a few of his favourite tie pins, or if the blow of his loss had not caught him on an empty stomach, Loveland might have seen the humour of the situation as Tony Kidd saw it. But everything was against him in a black world; and his late shipmate's intrusion with a stranger was the one last drop in a bitter cup which he refused to swallow.
Never had Cadwallader Hunter's handsome bear looked less handsome or more dangerous than he looked as he stood blocking the way to his den, at bay against fate and against his leader.
"My dear fellow, what has happened to upset you?" exclaimed Cadwallader Hunter, warned by Loveland's expression that the only hope lay in getting the first word.
"Upset me?" echoed Val, glaring blue fire so vindictively that Kidd expected his introducer to be the next one "upset." "My d——d valet has stolen all my clothes, and made me a present of his own, that's all."
"How shocking!" sympathised Cadwallader Hunter.
"Well, yes, it is rather a shock," returned Loveland drily, "and if you don't mind, I think I'd better ask you to let me get over it alone."
"Oh! certainly, I quite understand," purred the banished courtier. But Kidd was making mental notes, and Cadwallader Hunter strove to retain his reputation as a valued cousin. "Just a minute or two, dear boy, and we'll take ourselves off. This is Mr. Kidd, from one of our most important papers——"
"Happy to see him another time," snapped Loveland. "Just now I'm in no temper to entertain strangers."
"But at least," Cadwallader Hunter protested, "you mustn't look on me as a stranger, my dear fellow—and if there's anything I can do——"
"My dear fellow," Loveland flung back at him, in angry mimicry, "if you keep on, I'm more likely to look on you as a bore. The one thing you can do for me is to go, and take your newspaper friend with you. Good morning."
And the bear shot back into his den, banging the door.