Dinner had been at twelve, because of the matinée which would begin at two o'clock. Now it was already after one, and everybody had started for the theatre, except himself, the Jacobuses, and Ed Binney, who was ill with a racking cough, and keeping his room till the last minute.
Loveland went upstairs to see how Ed was feeling, found him ready though coughing hard, and they walked to the Ashville Opera House together.
After all, salaries were not paid that night. J. J. informed the expectant members of the company that business hadn't "run to it." They must wait for their money till next week. Bonnerstown was a bigger place than Ashville, and there was every prospect of better things for the future. Two or three of the actors and actresses wheedled a few dollars out of the manager, to "go on" with; but they were "old fakirs," as they would have said themselves, and knew how to manage such matters. Loveland, however, took the news quietly, as he had begun to take the various blows which fortune successively dealt him.
In these small towns, the hotel breakfast was from seven till eight, or until eight-thirty by favour; and on Sundays, if one were a quarter of an hour later in coming down, nothing actively unpleasant was said aloud, though there might be mumblings and dark looks. On this Sunday morning Loveland availed himself of the last amount of grace, hurrying down at a quarter to nine lest he should be told, grumpily, that breakfast was cleared away.
Ed Binney was in bed, for his room-mate had volunteered to carry something up, but Lillie de Lisle, "Pa and Ma Winter," and Miss St. Clare were still at the table.
"Have the others finished and gone already?" asked Loveland, for the two Eccles were usually the last to appear, unless it were "J. J.," who invariably took his wife's breakfast upstairs before beginning his own.
"No. It's queer, none of them have been down yet," replied Mrs. Winter. "They wrote cards on their doors, saying they weren't to be disturbed or their fires to be made, and didn't want breakfast. The cards are up yet. It's the first time they've ever done such a thing since I knew 'em; and that's two years."
"I do hope they haven't committed suicide," whispered Miss St. Clare, who battened on detective stories.
Loveland did not offer any opinion, but he flushed slightly on hearing the news, and went on eating his lukewarm breakfast, with eyebrows drawn together in an anxious frown. Could there be any connection between this mysterious and unprecedented conduct on the part of the manager, his wife, and his wife's family, and the secret proposal made yesterday to the juvenile lead?
Loveland had told himself then that the threatening storm would not break until the following week at earliest, but now a disquieting idea had jumped into his head. So disquieting was it, that when he had finished his breakfast he paused before the door of the room occupied by the Eccles brothers, and disregarding the card conspicuously pinned on the panel, knocked very hard.
No answer came, and he knocked again, still harder. Then a third time, so violently that no natural sleep could have resisted the clamour.
By this time the landlord, the landlord's son, the landlord's wife and niece, and several commercial travellers were in the passage or on the stairs.
"They're dead drunk, or else they've hooked it," suggested one of the latter.
"Scott! Jacobus ain't paid for his week yet!" exclaimed the landlord, his thin yellow face turning a shade yellower. He rushed to the closed door on the floor below, and pounded furiously with no result.
"The snides! I'm hanged if they ain't gallivanted with my money, and made me the expense of bustin' in my doors and gettin' 'em mended!" wailed the proprietor of the hotel.
Luckily for his feeling and pocket, one of the commercial travellers was an amateur locksmith, and the door, which hid the secret of the Jacobus family, was soon opened. The bed had not been slept in. The room was clear of all Jacobus's belongings; and the landlord reproached himself for not being "fly enough" to suspect treachery earlier. He had actually seen, with his own eyes, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus carrying bundles to the theatre, when starting for the matinée, and again before the evening performance, but had thought nothing of it, because his acquaintance with Jacobus had extended over several years.
"I was a crazy loon to think he was all right," the defrauded man groaned. "And then, business was A 1 the whole week, so I wasn't keepin' my eyes peeled for any larks. I'm big enough, and old enough, and ought to o' known better. But the rest o' ye ain't goin' to take a shine out o' me like that. I keep your hotel luggage till you hand over every red cent of your board, and I wish to goodness the law wasn't too cranky to give me holt o' your theatre trunks, too."
"I can't believe they've really gone and left us like this," pleaded the little Star, wide-eyed and pale, though unnaturally composed. "Let's wait and see, before we think the worst. Somebody'd better run over to the Opera House and find out if their things are there. If they've sneaked them away in the night, why—then I'llhaveto believe; but I won't before."
"I guess my son's there and half-way back by this time," growled the landlord. "Meanwhile, I'll just have a go at t' other lock."
He had the go, and by the time the opening door had revealed emptiness, bad news had come back from the theatre. The worst had happened. With incredible stealth and cunning, the manager and his family had slipped away in the night, leaving nothing behind them but a stranded, broken, and penniless company.
After consultation in the room of the Star, it appeared that the funds of the deserted six amounted to exactly six dollars, or, if equally divided, one dollar apiece.
Lillie, who had been—more or less regularly—in the enjoyment of thirteen dollars a week, was in the habit of sending all she could spare out of her salary to a bedridden sister in a semi-charitable institution. Pa and Mrs. Winter were suspected of having "something up their sleeves," but they produced only two dollars to match Lillie's two—and after all, their joint earnings were but ten dollars a week. As for Ed Binney, he supported parents, one of whom was almost blind, the other nearly crippled with rheumatism. Besides this regular call upon his purse, he was obliged reluctantly, from time to time, to buy a tonic which might keep his delicate chest in working order. Miss St. Clare was chronically penniless; and everybody knew that Gordon had received no salary yet.
The landlord, disappointed at finding very little of value in the rooms of the actors (with whom it was a cautious habit to safeguard their most cherished possessions in their theatre trunks), had threatened in the first outburst of anger to turn them all into the street; but Loveland and Lillie de Lisle argued that he would lose nothing by waiting an hour or two, until matters had been discussed and something of advantage to everybody perhaps arranged.
But, at the end of a long and gloomy talk, nobody had found anything brilliant to suggest. There was too little money to be of any use, said Pa Winter, who was by nature a pessimist; and for his part he didn't see what was to become of them all, unless they went to the poor-house, and waited for something to turn up, or induced the town authorities to organise a subscription.
"I won't go to the poor-house, and I won't be an object of charity," exclaimed Lillie, pluckily. "I've been in bad scrapes before, and got out of 'em somehow, and I bet we all have, unless it's Gordon—so I guess we can again."
Relieved by Mr. Jacobus's treachery, of his obligation to be silent, Val repeated his conversation with Mrs. Jacobus yesterday, adding that he had been very far from suspecting her real intention.
"That's because you're an amatoor, dear boy," said Binney, coughing harshly. "If they'd let out as much to one ofus—but they'd have had too much gumption. If only you could have put us wise we'd o' been on the watch; but don't think we're blamin' you, for we ain't. You did the straight thing, accordin' to your lights. Full Moon was always green jealous of Miss de Lisle, but after you joined the show, if she'd been a cat with four legs instead of two, she'd o' spit and scratched. As it was, she did the next best thing—tried to take you away under her arm, and spite Lillie. For the rest of us she didn't care a tinker's dash, one way or another. Then, when you turned on her, and blurted out just what you thought of her and her schemes, and how you meant to stand by Miss de Lisle, she was as sour on you as she had been sweet. I bet she's chucklin' this minute, thinkin' of our plight. It'll be nuts to her."
"Can't we get at them and punish them somehow?" Loveland wanted to know.
"Takes money to do that sort of thing, even if we could. It would cost the boss of the hotel more than Jacobus owes him for us all, to go to law, now they've vamoosed, out of the state, too. As for us, we're notinit—except the soup. They had plenty of money, too, the beasts, for Full Moon's a regular oof bird, with 'most a thousand dollars of her own over and above what J. J. has 'blowed,' and the Ashville businesshasbeen jolly good, I don't care how they tried to stuff you up. They must have lit out with a pretty penny—to say nothing of all the company's scenery, paper, and MS. plays. We're stripped clear of everything but our theatre trunks, and they'd have taken them if they'd dared."
But Loveland had not even a theatre trunk.
"If we could get up some kind of a benefit performance, those that are left of us," he suggested, after thinking very hard for a few heavy minutes, "we might make enough to go—somewhere."
"Good idea, if we had a play," said Eddy. "But we—no, by Jinks, wehavegot one!"
"What one?" asked Lillie de Lisle, clasping her hands.
"Sidney Cremer's 'Lord Bob.' Old J. J. gave me the MS. to copy into parts only three days ago, and I was too seedy to hustle much with it. He said if the parts were ready to distribute Monday it would do, and I was going to finish by then, sure. I suppose he dasn't ask me for the MS. back, for fear I'd smell a rat—or else he forgot. Anyhow, I've got the play, and half the parts are done."
"A new play by Sidney Cremer ought to be a draw even here," said Lillie, "and 'Lord Bob' isbrannew—as new as tomorrow's bread."
"Lord Bob," by Sidney Cremer: Loveland remembered seeing the posters up in New York, and for the last year or two the young American playwright's name had been well known even in London. This piece Loveland believed had been produced for the very first time on his first night in New York. Yet these barn-stormers had got hold of it!
He made some remark that showed surprise, and Lillie, laughing rather sadly, replied that a New York man with whom J. J. was in touch had offered to give him the play cheap. "We don't pay the author anything," she said. "Seems mean, doesn't it?—and I suppose it's a kind of stealing. But I've been brought up to it, ever since I was a 'pro'; and we don't hurt the playwright much by producing his pieces in places like our week stands. No company that pays author's fees comes here once in a blue moon. The question is, could we put the play on, and could we get the Opera House for any nights this week? It was Jacobus who knew all those things, not me. I was in his hands, and I just let myself drift."
"There are only three women—two girls, and an old lady in the play. That would suit all right," said Eddy, eagerly. "As for the men, it isn't quite so easy—never is; but there are only five. One's a servant, another a policeman; and there's no scenery to speak of. I guess we could fake. I don't feel very grand, but I'll try and write out the rest of the parts by tonight, in case we can get the theatre, and bring the stunt off."
"I'll write out the parts you haven't done," said Loveland. "I'll find the manager of the alleged Opera House, too, and have a talk with him."
"Do. A real heart to heart talk," urged Lillie. "Tell him we mean sharing terms, of course. If it really can be fixed up, it's pretty sure the landlord'll keep us all on spec."
Loveland, who was now the only able-bodied young man of the party, and whose idea it had been to get up the entertainment, went out at once, luckily catching the local manager of the grandiloquently named Opera House, just as he was virtuously setting forth to church.
Jacobus, it seemed, had "settled up all right" with him the night before, and he was surprised to hear of the flight. But he had his bride—a third bride—with him, and feared that she would not consider it decorous to discuss theatrical business in the street, on Sunday, on the way to church. He would have sent the "show man" away rather cavalierly without any definite answer if the bride, who, like an intelligent baby, was already beginning to "take notice," had not put in a word for the handsome young Englishman.
"I don't care if we are five minutes late," said she, conscious of a hat which would receive the more appreciation if all the other hats were already in their pews.
So the manager relented, and admitted to Loveland that the "house" was "open" for three nights. After that, the Dandy Lady Minstrels were coming to finish out the week. Their advance agent would arrive on Monday, without doubt, and "bill the town," so that a makeshift show wouldn't stand much chance. As the Opera House was free, however, the marooned actors might have their chance, but it was a "spec" for him—the manager—and ordinary sharing terms weren't good enough. He stipulated for two thirds of the profits, if any, above expenses, and would not unbend, though the bride motioned her compassion for the actors, with lifted eyebrows.
All the rest of the day, Loveland was busy. He finished copying the parts, which must be learned and rehearsed, so that the play might be produced tomorrow night.
There was a newspaper in Ashville, which came out once a week; and the company decided, after a stormy debate, to spend one of the six dollars in buying from the office large sheets or rolls of the coarse white paper on which this weekly publication was printed. Having secured a good supply, and obtained black paint and a big brush from a sympathetic sign-painter, who was a customer of the hotel, Loveland set to work, with Binney's aid and direction, to manufacture some crude posters.
He announced in black letters, so gigantic as to be almost convincing, that the principal members of the Little Human Flower's All Star Company had been persuaded to remain for a special three nights' engagement, in order to produce the sparkling comedy, "Lord Bob," New York's Latest and Biggest Success, by the popular playwright, Sidney Cremer.
At least a dozen duplicates of this announcement he produced, after hours of painstaking labour, which cost him a cramp in his right hand, if not in his temper.
It really was nervous work for an amateur, drawing out and spacing the huge letters with pencil, then filling them in with thick splashes of black paint—especially as the paper was thin, sometimes letting the big brush break through, and costing another sheet, another hour's toil. But it was extraordinary how much interest Loveland took in his self-appointed task, how easily controlled was his impulse to be cross when Ed Binney or "Pa" Winter interrupted him with a suggestion.
He felt that the company's present plight had been brought about partly by him; through his friendship with Lillie (how could Miss Moon guess it was for Bill's sake?) and his thoughtless promise of secrecy. Therefore he was inclined to do his best to atone; and theblaséyoung soldier who once had thought all work and most pleasures a bore, toiled like a slave through a whole day and half a night to save Ed Binney fatigue.
After midnight, when the impromptu posters were ready, Loveland and "Pa" Winter went out together with big rolls of paper under their arms, and a huge pot of flour paste, stirred up (for the sake of Gordon'sbeaux yeux) by the hand of the landlord's niece, over the kitchen fire.
They had no right to "grab spaces," Pa Winter pointed out; and if they put up the new paper on top of the old the agent of the "Dandy Lady Minstrels" would ruthlessly cause it to be covered over with his own bills. Still, despite these pessimistic prophecies, Loveland distributed the advertisements of "Lord Bob" as well as he could, hoping for the mercy or the negligence of the coming rival.
What remained of the night he spent in committing to memory the part of "Lord Bob," for which, without a dissenting voice, the five other members of the company had cast him.
It was a part which a London or New York leading man would have studied for two weeks, rehearsed for three, and finally played with joy mingled with misgiving. But Loveland could not afford artistic scruples. The play was the thing, and the acting must take care of itself.
They went out to rehearsal early next morning, and were thankful that there had been neither rain nor snow to destroy the fragile posters. In front of one which Loveland had put up on the face of the Opera House, stood a girl and an old man, talking in low voices.
"They're reading about the play and making up their minds to come," muttered Loveland to Lillie de Lisle, with whom he had walked to the theatre. As he spoke, the pair turned and stared sharply for an instant at the actor and actress. Loveland was disappointed. After all, they did not look like the sort of persons who would care to attend a performance given by barn-stormers. The girl was a lady, the man a gentleman. They were well dressed, their faces had a cultivated expression, indescribable yet unmistakable. Altogether, they were of a different order from the people who had composed the audiences at the Opera House during the past week.
"I shall certainly write and tell them what's going on," remarked the girl to her companion, who was probably her father. "It's a shame. Something ought to be done."
"We might telegraph, if you think it would be worth while," replied the old man.
Loveland heard the words, spoken as the pair turned away to walk down the street, towards the residence part of the town, but he attached no importance to the disjointed sentences. The affairs of the Human Flower Company were occupying his mind for the moment, to the exclusion of all else. He was not even thinking of lost Lesley Dearmer, or wondering whether there would be a letter from his mother forwarded by Bill to Bonnerstown this week.
Everybody was in deadly earnest, and the rehearsal went off very well, considering all its disadvantages. They had another in the afternoon; and by that time, they learned joyfully, a few seats had actually been booked in advance.
Ed Binney's cough had not improved, but he was kept up on strong, hot coffee, and they got through the performance that night, two men short, almost without a hitch. Nevertheless, though "Lord Bob" was a great New York success, as Sidney Cremer's comedies always were, and bristled with brilliant scenes and bright dialogue, it was a little above the heads of an average Ashville audience.
A few well, though plainly, dressed ladies and gentlemen were in the front seats, and all seemed to know each other, laughing and talking together between the acts; and among them, through a peephole in the curtain, Loveland recognised the nice-looking girl and old man he had seen staring at his home-made poster in the morning. The rest of the audience, however, were of the usual sort, and preferred wild melodrama to sparkling light comedy.
The profits of the first performance, and the next, were not what Val had expected, though the acting of the company improved; but on the last night Loveland tried to hope that Ashville would turn out in full force.
Having set the first scene himself, in default of a stage manager or competent stage hands, he applied an anxious eye to a small "spy-hole" in the curtain, and peeped out.
His heart sank. The house was half empty. But it was early still. There was hope yet. People were coming in. There was the old gentleman and the girl he had seen before, finding their way once more to the front seats. Someone was with them; they were bringing guests. That looked encouraging!
Val lingered at the "spy-hole."
The girl and her father sat down.
With them were Lesley Dearmer and her aunt, Mrs. Loveland.
For an instant Val thought of nothing but the heavenly surprise of seeing the girl he loved.
Recognition brought a shock of joy, and a wave of love which had been held in check for a time by the weight of misfortune, as the waters of a stormy river in flood are held back by the shut gates of a lock. He had known that he loved her, too well for peace of mind, more passionately and purely than he had thought it was in him to love. But until he saw her face looking up, as if at him, yet unconscious of his gaze—the dear, charming face he had longed for through all his miseries, scarcely dreaming ever to see her again—he had not realised how utterly precious it was, how entirely indispensable in his life.
A wild impulse rushed over him to call her name—"Lesley—Lesley!" and spring from behind the curtain, as if they two were alone together in a world of their own. But after the first luminous instant, the joy of her presence was blotted out in darkness.
He remembered everything; remembered that he was Perceval Gordon, an actor of the submerged tenth, a wretched, penniless barn-stormer, who for the moment came near to being an object of charity.
When he had bidden Lesley goodbye, he was a splendid being who looked down from his heights, and, though loving her, saw her impossible as a wife. Their friendship had begun by being somewhat of a condescension on his part—from his own point of view, at least; and she, half amused, half angry, had seen that point of view quite clearly, nor had she ever attempted to change it, to the last.
At the thought that the curtain would ring up and show him as he was now, to the astonished eyes of Lesley Dearmer, he could have run away, out of the theatre, anywhere—it mattered not where—if only she need not see him, need not know that the magnificent Lord Loveland and the miserable P. Gordon were one.
His blood surged up to his head, throbbing in his temples, and tingling in his ears, but through the confusion of his senses penetrated the knowledge that he could not go.
This trial of endurance—it seemed to him the hardest of all the ordeals he had been forced to face during that fortnight which was a decade—he would have to go through, as he had gone through the others; because, to evade it, he must be worse than a coward. He would be coward and traitor as well; and under all his faults there was something which would not let him be traitor or coward.
Selfish he had been, but the shell of his selfishness had been broken by many hard knocks, and the real self, once so comfortably housed within, was finding itself, though all a-shiver still with the cold.
Let him suffer as he might and must, he couldn't desert these people whom he had undertaken to help out of the trouble in which by his inexperience he had landed them.
He was responsible for putting on "Lord Bob," and his was the principal part. Crudely as he knew that he played it, the performance could not go on without him. If he refused to act the curtain could not ring up, and the money in the theatre would have to be refunded to the disappointed audience. There were not many dollars there—at all events not many would remain for the company after the local manager had taken out his share, but there would be enough with what had come in on the two previous nights, to pay the ever-growing bill at the hotel.
Loveland felt that it would have been almost easier to shoot himself than to give the signal for the curtain to ring up; yet the moment came when he could delay no longer. He was not actor enough to forget in his acting the world beyond the stage. He did not lose his lines; but, conscious of Lesley's eyes upon him, he felt as stiff, as jerky in every movement, as a mechanical doll.
It was worse between acts than when he was on the stage, for he pictured Lesley's head and her aunt's bent near to one another, while he and his affairs were discussed in whispers, perhaps with stifled laughter. It seemed to him that the evening would never end; but at last the curtain went down on the third act, and Loveland was making a "bolt" for his dressing room when one of the stage hands intercepted him, holding out an envelope.
"Say, you're the manager of this show, ain't you?" asked the man.
"I suppose I am at present," said Loveland, not attempting to evade responsibility.
"Well, then, this is for you," and the letter was in his hand.
"To the Manager of the Company producing 'Lord Bob,'" was the address pencilled in an attractive handwriting, which might be that of a man or a woman.
Val hesitated for an instant, and then tore open the envelope. On a sheet of the Ashville theatre paper were written the words, "A friend and agent of Sidney Cremer will be obliged by a few words with the Manager of the Company, in the private room of the Manager of the Opera House, kindly lent for the occasion."
Loveland read the communication, and handed it to Ed Binney, who was passing. Ed gave a long, low whistle, which set him coughing again, and said, "Whew! This is the last straw, isn't it?"
"Why?" asked Loveland.
"Don't you see? Someone's put the author on to us. You know we're pirates—regular play-snatchers, don't you?"
"Yes," replied Val. "Jacobus initiated me into the mysteries. But what can they do to us?"
"There's a big fine for the offence."
Loveland laughed. "I wish Mr. Cremer joy of it."
"Oh, that's all very well, but if he cuts up rough, he can make us a lot of trouble, I'm afraid, though I don't know much about such things. I only know we were always running the risk; but in these small towns there ain't much danger, as the shows don't get noticed by the dramatic papers. I believe Jacobus was never caught. But we're copped this time, sure enough. I wouldn't go into the lion's den, if I was you. Let the lion come to us, at the hotel—if he doesn't find out beforehand that we wouldn't make a meal worth eating."
"Meanwhile, perhaps, he'll have the police 'attach' the luggage or something," argued Loveland. "Heaven knows, I haven't got much; but the rest of you have, and you can't afford to lose it. No, I'll go and face the music. Perhaps when Cremer's agent understands the fix we're in, he'll let us down easy."
"Well, maybe you're right," Binney agreed. "But it seems a shame you should have to stand up and be shot at alone."
Loveland laughed dubiously. "I'm riddled with bullets already. I'll wipe the paint off my face, and go tell the fellow to aim straight and have done with it."
"I'd see you through, if I wasn't such a crock," said poor Ed, coughing.
"Go and tell the others what's up," Val advised him. "They may be able to strike camp and get away with the supply wagons while I engage the enemy."
Three minutes later, Loveland was at the door of the local manager's room. He opened it, and found himself face to face with Lesley Dearmer, who was standing there, alone.
"Miss Dearmer!" he stammered.
"Mr. Gordon, I believe?" she said primly.
She wore a simple grey dress, which he remembered to have seen and liked on the ship. How sweet, how dear she was, with her soft, bright eyes, and long curled eyelashes!
Involuntarily he put out his hand, but she seemed not to see the gesture, and the hand dropped.
"I used the name. I—thought it was better," he explained, trying to keep his head.
"Yes. No doubt it was better," she answered.
"And it reallyismy name," he went on. "One of my names."
"You have so many?"
"My sponsors in baptism——"
"The newspapers accused you of being your own sponsor."
"The newspapers accused me—what do you mean?"
"Surely you know. I told you I should read about you, but I expected to read very different things. However, we won't talk of that now——"
"But we must." For a moment he was the old, masterful Loveland. "We must. I want to know what you mean."
"That can wait awhile. I came to ask whatyoumean. Though I did read the newspapers, I was surprised to find you here. I'm acting for my friend, Sidney Cremer. A cousin of Sidney's and mine, who lives a few miles out of Ashville, saw 'Lord Bob' advertised for performance, and telegraphed. Sidney couldn't come, but my aunt brought me tonight, as Sidney Cremer's interests and mine are rather closely allied. And you know, nobody has a right to produce the play without the author's permission."
"Yes, I know," answered Loveland dejectedly. But his depression arose, not so much from the consciousness of wrongdoing, as from the suspicion engendered by the girl's tone in speaking of Sidney Cremer. Cremer's interests and hers were "closely allied"! She had blushed and even faltered a little, as she made the statement, and Val sprang instantly to the conclusion that she was engaged to marry Cremer.
It had never occurred to him, when they played at platonic friendship on board theMauretania, that Lesley Dearmer might be engaged. She had never said in so many words that she was not, but she hadn't at all the manner of a girl who had disposed of her future. In any case, however, whether the affair were new or of old standing, Loveland felt miserably certain that she was engaged now. And he stood convicted of defrauding the man whom she intended to marry. Was there any depth of wretchedness or of humiliation which the thirteenth Marquis of Loveland had not plumbed at last?
"You admit that you knew, and yet you produced and played in the piece?"
"I did. But——" he hesitated. Should he attempt to excuse himself, to disclaim responsibility, or would that only seem cowardly in her eyes?
"But—what? You see, I'm bound to report to my friend."
"Your friend!" broke out Loveland, losing his head. "You are going to marry him!"
"Sidney Cremer?"
"Yes. You don't deny it."
She laughed gently. "Why should I deny it—to you? Have you any right to question me, or bring me to book—about anything, Mr. Gordon?"
"I know I have no right," he admitted. "Forgive me." He guessed that her emphasis, and her frequent repetition of the name "Gordon" meant that she wished him to understand the change in their relationship. To her he was now only Gordon the actor, who had stolen Sidney Cremer's play. The past was to be forgotten.
"I must remind you again," Lesley went on, in a cool, businesslike manner, though her eyes were starry, "that I have come twenty miles to question you. And my aunt is waiting for you with the cousins who telegraphed about 'Lord Bob.' You know, you mustn't go on using Sidney Cremer's play."
"We have no intention of doing so," said Loveland. And then, in as few words as possible, without any attempt at defending himself for his part in the transaction, he explained baldly that the manager had deserted the company, and that they had only one piece, "Lord Bob." They had produced it for three nights, in the hope of making money enough to get away, but the result had proved disappointing.
"My affairs are rather in a muddle just now," Loveland finished; "but as soon as I get them straightened out again, which I expect to do shortly, I will myself pay Mr. Cremer's fee for these performances, if you'll let me know what they are."
"Oh, Sidney wouldn't want you to do that," the girl explained. "I—neither of us knew that the company was in trouble. My cousins here didn't tell us that—I suppose they didn't know, either. We thought it was simply an ordinary case of piracy. But I can answer for Sidney, as if it were for myself. He wouldn't want fees, and he wouldn't take any severe measures in such a case as this. If only you give me your word, Lord Lo—, I mean, Mr. Gordon, that these people won't go about the country playing this piece, I'll ask nothing more."
"You may set Mr. Cremer's mind at rest about that," Loveland answered bitterly. "They aren't likely to go about the country playing any piece."
"You mean, they—you—are stranded here?" enquired Lesley.
"Oh, I'm all right," Loveland said hurriedly, far from wishing to pose as an object of pity. "It's the others I'm thinking of."
She gave him a quick, clear look. "Would you go away and leave them here, in trouble?" she asked.
"No, I won't do that," replied Val. "I mean to do something for them."
"What can you do, if your affairs are in such a muddle as you say?"
"I don't know yet. I'm trying hard to think."
"Won't there be money enough from these three performances of 'Lord Bob' to pay their railway fares somewhere?"
"I'm afraid not. Hardly enough to settle with the landlord and get him to release their luggage, which he's keeping till last week's board bills are paid."
"Your luggage, too?"
Loveland grew red. "I haven't any."
"Oh!" the colour flew to her cheeks, as if in sympathy with the flush she could not help seeing on his. "No trunks?"
"You say you read the newspapers," said Loveland. "If you did, you perhaps saw that the hotel people in New York treated me rather curiously. I didn't read the stuff myself. I really couldn't bring myself to do it. But I gathered from hints given me here and there that the journalists had a pretty rough game with me."
"You had a game with them, to begin with," said Lesley.
"I shut my door in the face of one, on my first day in New York," Loveland admitted. "Next day I hadn't a door to shut. America hasn't been very hospitable to me."
"What could you expect?" asked Lesley, defending her countrymen. Her face was grave, but there was an odd sparkle in her eyes. "Americans don't like having tricks played on them."
"I played no trick."
"You played a part—the part of Lord Loveland."
Val stared. "How can a man play that he's himself?"
"Do you deny the newspaper accusations, then?"
"What accusations? I did knock a man down in the street, and he gave his own version of the story."
"Oh, I don't mean that story, but quite another. The story he said you knocked him down for alluding to—when——"
"We're talking at cross purposes," broke in Loveland, bewildered. "For the sake of any friendship you may ever have had for me—though I'm not asking you to continue it in future—explain what you mean."
"But, doyoumean that you read nothing, heard nothing, of what they were saying about you in New York?"
"I told you I wouldn't look at the papers. What I heard I of course took for granted was in connection with the hotel affair and the row in the street."
Lesley thought for a minute, with an expression on her face which Loveland could not understand, though he did not take his eyes from her fallen lashes, the beautiful lashes which had fascinated him at first sight of her on theMauretania.
Presently an idea seemed to commend itself to the girl. On her arm, a little gold and platinum bag hung from its chain. Loveland had often seen this bag, on shipboard, and had even frequently picked it up from the floor, where the girl dropped it half a dozen times each day, when she slipped out from under the rugs of her deck chair. Well did he know the two compartments in this favourite little receptacle of Lesley's treasures! He knew in which one she kept the handkerchief which smelt like fresh violets; in which her money, her cardcase, her stylographic pen, and a letter or two; and now he watched her, with eyes homesick for past days, as she took out the remembered cardcase, and from an inner pocket of that cardcase, a folded newspaper cutting.
"It's quite time you did read for yourself," she said. "This will make you understand better than I can tell you. Fanny Milton cut it out of 'New York Light,' and posted it to me. I've kept it here—I hardly know why, but now I'm glad I did."
It was Tony Kidd's first article that Loveland read with a shock of surprise, which, at the very beginning, set the blood humming in his ears like the sound of the sea in a shell.
Tony had told his story spicily, in a way to make his readers laugh. But Loveland did not laugh. He read on and on, dazed at first, then with a burst of enlightenment which made clear many mysteries.
"The Difficult Young Man to Approach" had come to New York to see Heiresses and conquer Papas, said Tony. He had begun the conquering process on board ship, being a youth of a thrifty turn of mind, who believed in taking time by the forelock. He had made friends; he had even, perhaps, made love. Soon, no doubt, he would have made a match; but the schemes of mice, men, and even marquises have a way of going wrong, especially when—and that "when" reminded Tony to pause and ask a conundrum. "When is a Marquis not a Marquis?" The writer invited the public to guess. "Why, when he's a Valet, of course." And then Tony went on to protest gaily, that neither he nor his paper was responsible for the assertion that this Marquis was not a Marquis. They merely put the question, and gave the answer for what it was worth, on the strength of certain sensational news just received from the land where Marquises grew on blackberry bushes for heiresses to cull.
A number of people prominent in New York society had received cablegrams from London, informing them that the valet of the Marquis of Loveland had absconded with his lordship's jewellery, and other belongings; that the fugitive was known to have impersonated his master in London, obtaining goods from tradesmen, and running up bills at hotels, in Lord Loveland's name. If a person calling himself the Marquis of Loveland should appear in New York presenting letters of introduction to the said Prominent People earlier than the arrival of the White Star LinerBaltic, they were to beware of him, as the real Lord Loveland expected to sail on that ship.
On the very day when these cablegrams were received—Tony Kidd went on to state—there arrived by a strange (?) coincidence an attractive looking and haughty young gentleman, known among acquaintances collected on theMauretaniaas Lord Loveland. This alleged nobleman had gone to the Waldorf-Astoria, where, through a servant of the hotel, it was soon discovered that his pretentious trunks were practically empty. He had (perhaps naturally) refused to be interviewed by a representative of "Light"; and the manner of his refusal was somewhat graphically described.
Act 2 was a round of calls with letters of introduction to all the Prominent People warned by a friend (also prominent) in England.
Act 3: A scene in the Waldorf Restaurant, where some shipboard acquaintances, dining with one of the Prominent People, had heard from him of the cablegram, and of course refused to acknowledge acquaintance with the attractive nobleman when he appeared in the room, ready to greet the whole party with effusion.
Act 4: The Hotel authorities being informed, request "Lord Loveland" to find other accommodation.
Act 5: The husband and father of the two ladies, whom "Lord Loveland" met on theMauretania, attacked and knocked down in the street, by the "Difficult Young Man to Approach."
Now, at last, Loveland understood everything that had happened to him in New York, even to the mystery of the bank. Again he seemed to see Cadwallader Hunter bending to talk with the good-looking, dark young man who had dined with the Coolidges. Mr. van Cotter had doubtless been one of those who had received the warning cablegrams, and naturally he had passed on the interesting news to the Coolidges and Miltons. Cadwallader Hunter, who had stopped to chat with the party, had been just in time to glean the information, and had taken revenge for the Englishman's rudeness of the morning by advising the hotel people to get rid of an undesirable client.
Oh, yes, it was easy enough to see it all now, even the reason why his mother and the London bankers had failed to answer his appeals for money. They had thought that Foxham was cabling, and had accordingly refused to be taken in. Apparently Foxham had absconded—somewhere—and his misdoings had been discovered on the other side before his late master had found him out. Perhaps Foxham had taken the ticket for theBalticwhich he—Val—had instructed him to sell, and used it for himself, booking as a passenger for America in the name of Lord Loveland.
In that case the fellow had doubtless arrived in New York by this time, on theBaltic—the ship on which his master had originally intended to sail; and Heaven alone knew what new mischief he might have been working on this side of the water.
The thought of what might have happened was almost as infuriating as the knowledge of what certainly had happened. It all came from accepting the chance offered by Jim Harborough to sail on theMauretania; but in spite of everything he had suffered, Loveland told himself that he would not have it different. If he had come over on theBaltiche would probably by this time be engaged to some American heiress, and would never have met Lesley Dearmer.
Just now, his acquaintance with her, combined with all the other extraordinary results of his sailing on theMauretania, was putting him to the torture; and he was gloomily convinced that nothing would ever make things come right; nevertheless, he was dimly, subconsciously aware even in this bitter moment that he wouldn't choose release from torture at the price of not knowing the girl.
"All this is a surprise to you, then?" her voice broke into the midst of his reflections over the newspaper cutting.
"Completely."
"How very odd that you didn't read the papers," exclaimed Lesley.
"I was so disgusted with the way New York was treating me that I wasn't very keen to see what it was saying of me. Besides, as I told you, I thought Ididknow. I supposed it was all about the hotel fuss, and my knocking down that man Milton."
"Whydidyou knock him down?"
"I slapped him in the face, and he fell down."
"But why did you slap him in the face?"
"I can't tell you that, Miss Dearmer."
"Well," said Lesley, looking at him always from under her lashes to see how he was taking her words, "you've been dreadfully punished, at all events."
"I don't think I deserved punishment for that."
"Don't you? Of course I don't know anything aboutthat, but you used to be—well, rather arrogant."
"I'm not arrogant now." Loveland smiled faintly. "I'm almost inclined to think I never shall be again."
"If you're not really Lord Loveland——"
"Not really——" He almost gasped, as he would have repeated her words. It had not occurred to him, even while he read the cutting, that Lesley Dearmer could possibly think him a fraud. "What—you—you—don't believe in me?" he stammered. "You?"
Apparently she was untouched by the reproach, the actual consternation in his voice.
"Why shouldIbelieve, more than anyone else?" she asked with a little dainty, sidewise turn of her head. "I was only a ship acquaintance, you know—like the others."
"Like the others who threw me over," he said.
"Yes, like the others. There was no difference—was there?" she challenged him.
But Loveland was in no mood to take up the gauntlet, if it were a gauntlet that she threw down.
"I suppose not," he answered from the depths.
"You valued almost all your other acquaintances on board more than you did me," the girl went on. "You were quite frank about that. By your own admission, you were a bit of an adventurer, coming over to my country to see what you could devour. I used to hate that in you—all the more because I thought you atitledadventurer. There was less excuse for a well brought up man, with every advantage of birth and education, than for——"
"Say it, Miss Dearmer. Say what you really think of me."
"I don't say I do think it. I say only, why shouldIbelieve in you, when other people don't?"
"I see now, there'snoreason. And I'm not going to ask you to believe."
"You're not going to assure me that you are the real Lord Loveland?"
"No, I'm not. I'm not going to assert myself, or defend myself in any way—to you. I want you to draw your own conclusions."
"Very well," said Lesley, with sparkling eyes. "I do draw them."
"May I ask what they are?"
"You may ask, but I'm not going to answer your question just now. There are other questions to attend to, which we've dropped for this subject. About 'Lord Bob,' for instance."
"I've no excuse to offer, even for stealing your friend's play, except that—we were hard up, and we saw nothing else to do."
"Your people in England, if——"
"I've had no answer to my cablegrams. There's no time for answers to have come to letters, yet."
"I see. Meanwhile?——"
"Meanwhile, we're on our beam ends."
"You say 'we.' You identify yourself with these people—these poor little stranded actors?"
"Oh, yes, I'm one of them. A poor little stranded actor, too."
"You're not going to desert them?"
"No. We'll sink or swim together. You see, I've got rather fond of two of the 'poor little stranded actors'—my companions in misery; Ed Binney, who's very ill, really, and oughtn't to be acting—a good fellow, if ever there was one; and Miss de Lisle, the star——"
Lesley's face changed slightly, and her lips opened, but she did not speak.
"Who will perhaps some day marry a great friend of mine in New York."
"Oh! So you have a friend in New York?"
"Yes, one. He paints menus in the Twelfth Street Restaurant where I was a waiter."
"How you have changed!" exclaimed Lesley. "But perhaps it's only circumstances?"
"Perhaps," said Loveland.
"If I knew a way in which you could help your actor friends to escape from here and go—wherever they want to go, would you take it, I wonder?" asked the girl.
"I don't wonder. I'm sure," Loveland answered, thinking of poor little Lillie, "Bill's gal," and Ed Binney.
"It's a way that would be very 'infra dig,'" Lesley hesitated.
Loveland laughed. "What is 'infra dig'? I've forgotten."
"Oh, if you have, I'll tell you the way at once, and perhaps that will bring it back to your memory. Would you care to take a position in somebody's house as—as—well, a paid position with an advance on your salary, by which you could send all your friends happily away?"
"I'd do it like a shot—if anyone would have me," Loveland said quickly.
"Someonewillhave you—shall we say, as secretary? Do you know typewriting or shorthand?"
Loveland reluctantly answered that he did not.
"Dear me! The secretaryship won't answer then, I'm afraid. Are you anything of a linguist?"
"Can't speak a word of any language but my own—except a hotch potch of French. The little Latin I ever had is practically gone."
"What a pity! Are you good at mathematics?"
"I generally add up on my fingers. Never could remember the multiplication table."
"History, then? Could you help a friend of mine who's writing a novel on the fifteenth century?"
"All I know about the fifteenth century, that I can think of at this moment, is that it wasn't the fourteenth—or the sixteenth. Oh, I'm afraid I'm no good, after all, Miss Dearmer. You'll have to give me up as a bad job, and chuck me into gaol for the theft of Cremer's play. I've never had any proper education."
"Haven't you? I'm not so sure about that," said Lesley, with an inflection in her voice that Val couldn't quite understand. "And I'm not sure you haven't learnt your lesson rather well."
"Which one?" enquired Loveland, ruefully; but she could not have understood the question, for she went on talking as if it had not been asked.
"You must be able to dosomething," she said, her dimples well in control.
"You've seen that I can't act, but—well, I can shoot pretty straight."
"Ah, I don't know anyone who keeps a shooting gallery."
"And ride decently."
"Nor anyone who wants a riding master. Oh, but—now can you drive a motor-car?"
"Yes," said Loveland.
"Good. Do you understand the mechanism of cars?"
"Of two or three. As well as—or better than most chauffeurs, I think, if that isn't being conceited again."
"I'm not finding fault with you tonight for conceit. Would you take quite a temporary job as chauffeur, in—in a private family, with a sal—oh, I might as well say wages! of $25 a week and your board and lodging besides?"
"If I could get the first week in advance, I might send everybody to Chicago—with what we've got out of the stolen play," Loveland said.
"Never mind the stolen play. In Sidney Cremer's name, I forgive you all, now I know the circumstances. No more to be said about that."
"You must know him very well indeed, to speak for him so positively," broke in Loveland, gloomily.
"I do," said Lesley. "You can have the first week's wages in advance, and the second, too. The car's a Gloria."
"My last was a Gloria."
"You mean—Lord Loveland's?"
"Oh, yes, I mean Lord Loveland's. Some men do make chauffeurs of their valets and vice versa. And you know, the real Loveland was hard up—or thought he was. I begin to see now, that he didn't know what being hard up meant."
"Even English peers can live and learn—while they're young, I suppose," said Lesley, meditatively. "But we were talking about you, weren't we? Do you accept the situation I offer you?"
"Youoffer?"
"Well, for my friend, Sidney Cremer. Sidney has just bought a new car, and sent it to us. I'm allowed to use it for awhile, as much as I like."
"He's coming, then?"
"We expect Sidney to be with us for some time—with my aunt and me."
"I'm hanged if I'll be his servant!" Val exclaimed, with something of his old vehemence.
"Oh! Very well, Mr. Gordon. I thought you were really in earnest, or I wouldn't have made the suggestion."
"So I am. But——"
"There's often a 'but' in such cases, isn't there? I admit it wouldn't be a particularly agreeable position for a man who has—er—"
"Posed as a peer," Loveland finished for her, bitterly.
"You put the words into my mouth. I was going to say—you seemed so anxious to do something to help the others, and this is the only thing I can think of by which you could make money quickly and——"
Ed Binney's pale face and Lillie's wistful eyes seemed to float in the air before the unhappy Loveland. "Very well," he said, "I will be Mr. Cremer's chauffeur. I've taken his play. I'll take his money; I'll take his food; I'll live under his roof, and I'll serve him as well as I can. And I'll only ask you to believe one decent thing of me, Miss Dearmer: that it isn't for my own sake."
"It will be my food you eat," said Lesley, sweetly. "And my roof which will give you shelter."
Loveland drew in his breath hard, as they looked at each other. Yes, it would be her roof, and her food. That was the worse for him, because it made it more and more plain that Sidney Cremer must be very near and dear to her.
"It's quite settled, then?" she asked pleasantly.
"It's quite settled," he echoed. "For a fortnight."
There were no dimples at play in Lesley's cheeks; but one might almost have said that her eyes laughed.
Lesley Dearmer and her aunt were staying that night at Ashville with their friends, and next morning everything was arranged. Loveland explained that, in a fortnight, at latest, he would certainly be released from the bondage of his embarrassments, therefore he would take service as Mr. Cremer's chauffeur only for that length of time, thus giving his employers a chance to find a good man for a permanent engagement. He received from Lesley the two weeks' wages in advance, and the fifty dollars—a far larger amount than he had touched since landing—seemed to him a respectable sum. Ten dollars he kept for his own necessities, and the rest he divided among the members of the broken company.
The profits from the three performances of "Lord Bob" paid the hotel bills for all, and left a few dollars over. Lumped together, there was enough to take Lillie de Lisle, Ed Binney, Miss St. Clare, and the Winters to Chicago, leaving something to tide each one through a week or two of idleness.
Lillie, Ed, and Miss St. Clare could hardly express their gratitude to Loveland, and the words they said to him warmed his heart as it had never been warmed before. There was a queer kind of happiness in sacrificing himself for others that came as an absolutely new sensation to Val. He wondered at it, feeling the glow of it, and was dimly conscious that the hardships he endured had unexpected compensations.
As for Pa and Ma Winter, they were less openly grateful, seeming to take what was done for them more or less as a right; and they would assuredly have protested vigorously had Loveland favoured his friends, Miss de Lisle and Ed Binney, beyond what they—the Winters—had received. Their attitude, however, mattered little to Val. They were old and unfortunate, and he was sorry for them, as he was learning to be sorry for those upon whom the world was hard: besides, Lillie and Ed, and perhaps Miss St. Clare, would have refused to accept anything beyond what the Winters shared; and both assured Val that one day, before long, they would repay him all.
Lillie was in touch with Bill again; therefore, in spite of the uncertain future, she was not unhappy. She had written to Bill the day after Loveland joined the company, had sent him a photograph of herself, and a collar for Shakespeare, the best that could be bought for fifty cents in Modunk. Bill had answered to Ashville, and though neither had any prospects, both had unlimited hope, now that they were sure of the love and loyalty which had outlived discouragements, absence, and unprosperous years. Lillie was going to Chicago, and Chicago might have something to offer. Bye and bye—who could tell?—she and Bill, "the best man she ever knew," might come together. Meanwhile, they could go on loving each other.
The girl went off buoyed up with hope; and Ed Binney had friends in Chicago. He would rest a little, and be "all right," he said to Val, shaking hands over and over again in the moment of goodbye.
To reach Lesley Dearmer's home it was necessary to travel for an hour in a slow local train which lingered lovingly at each tiny station by the way, and then to drive for six miles in a carriage. This last stage of the journey ended at the Hill Farm, as Mrs. Loveland's place was called; and the Hill Farm lay in charming country not far from Louisville.
Loveland was instructed to meet the two ladies at the train, and receive his railway ticket, having seen his friends off for Chicago; and at noon of the day after her surprise visit to the theatre, Miss Dearmer's newly appointed chauffeur was waiting for his employer at the Ashville station.
In his hand was the battered bag which had called forth the contempt of Jack Jacobus, and in his heart were shame, rebellion, jealousy, and joy, mingled with several other emotions, none of which he could have defined—least of all the joy.
He reminded himself that there could now be no possible satisfaction in his nearness to Lesley. She did not like him enough to believe in him. She had practically admitted that she accepted the estimate of strangers, and the circumstantial evidence which made him seem a fraud. She had not denied her engagement to Sidney Cremer, whose servant Loveland had pledged himself to be, and she even showed—or Val imagined it—a mischievous pleasure in the situation. She had not had the grace to say, "I know this is all horrid, and humiliating to you. I'm sorry, and will try to help you make the best of it."
Why should she say so, indeed, when she believed him to be no better than an adventurer, punished for a mean attempt at deceiving? Regarded from that point of view, he ought to be grateful to Miss Dearmer for trusting him far enough to take him on as a chauffeur. But he was not grateful. He thought that, on the contrary, he was very angry; yet he was not quite sure. And if he were angry, it was a strange kind of anger that he felt.
He had to wait for some time on the platform before Miss Dearmer appeared, and then she came towards him alone.
"Auntie is saying goodbye to our Ashville friends," she explained. "I—they're not going to stop with us till the train goes. I thought for several reasons it would be better not, and they quite understand. Before you meet my aunt, I want a little talk with you. I haven't told her, or the others, that you—that there's any connection between you and the newspaper story about—the Marquis and his adventures."
"Thank you. That was considerate," said Val, somewhat sarcastically. "What have you told Mrs. Loveland, then?"
"That's what I want to talk with you about. I said I'd met you before, and was sorry to find now that you'd had misfortunes, losing your money, and other things that had put you into an uncomfortable position. Auntie was in her stateroom on board ship till the last morning, and then I didn't point you out to her. If she saw you at all, she didn't notice you particularly, and besides she's very near sighted. If there'd been any danger of her recognising you, she would have done so at the theatre last night, when you were playing 'Lord Bob.' She knows only that you're Mr. Gordon, and that to help you a little, I've asked you to act as chauffeur for a short time, till you can get something better."
"And till Mr. Cremer can get someone better," Loveland capped her words.
"You have to be tried first," smiled the girl, "before we can tell whether you're good, better—or best. Meanwhile Aunt Barbara's just trusting me. She always does, for she's used to what she calls my funny ways, and she's found out that there's some sense in them. My experiments generally turn out successes."
"Then I'm to consider myself one of your experiments?"
"Decidedly," laughed Lesley. "And I mean you to be a success—a great success. Now I'm going to Auntie. I think we'd better travel in different cars, for she hasn't quite got used yet to the idea of a gentleman chauffeur. I've told her that they're the fashion, and she's prepared to take you on faith. But the first time she travels in your company you had better be in the motor."
With that, the girl pressed a railway ticket into his hand, and he was left not knowing whether he were more inclined to laughter or to cursing. But the train came at this moment, and he had no time to analyse his mood.
At Louisville a carriage was waiting for Mrs. Loveland and Miss Dearmer. It was a brougham, and there was room in it only for themselves and their handbags. The chauffeur was told off to a hired vehicle, for which his employers would pay.
Once outside the suburbs of the big town, the country was pretty, and reminded Val so strongly of England that it brought on an attack of homesickness.
The Hill Farm might almost have been an English farm, with its rambling, red-brick house, apparently of the Georgian period, its square-paned windows and its pillared porch draped with a tangle of grapevine and Virginia creeper. Val had seen farm-houses at home, converted by the younger sons of gentlemen into pleasant if modest mansions; and the gracious elms, the sturdy old oaks and generous apple trees might all have been transplanted from an English landscape.
Val arrived only a few minutes later than Lesley and Mrs. Loveland; and the girl was waiting for him in the open door-way when his hack drove up.
"This is a big, old house," said Lesley, coming out into the porch—"at least, it's old for America. It's stood for about a hundred and fifty years, and there's lots of room in it. You will live in the west wing. In a few minutes Uncle Wally will show you where to go. Already we've given directions to have your quarters got ready, but while the servants are busy there you may as well come out with me, and have a look at—at—Sidney's new car. I hope you'll like it. Here, Uncle Wally, take Mr. Gordon's bag."
This order was a surprise to Loveland. He had supposed that the "Uncle Wally," who was presently to be his guide, would turn out to be a relative of Miss Dearmer's, perhaps the master of the house; but it was a very ancient and very black darkey, dressed in a sombre old-fashioned livery, who came forward, all white grin and low bows.
The knuckly black hand relieved Loveland of the shabby bag, but there was no contempt either for the bag or its owner on the mild old face of the grey-headed negro, who was as perfect and well trained a servant in his way as any butler in an English country house. Evidently he, too, had been told that this was a "gentleman chauffeur," to be treated like a gentleman; and Loveland was grateful to his hostess, feeling a sudden impulse towards happiness, until with a shock, he remembered Sidney Cremer.
"When will Mr. Cremer arrive?" he asked Lesley, as they walked together across a sloping lawn, towards the stables.
"Oh, Sidney's very much at home here," she answered lightly, "you may see him at any time. Meanwhile, you won't mind driving the car for me, will you?"
"I think you know whether I'll mind that or not," said Loveland, almost more to himself than to the girl. "If only there were no Sidney Cremer——"
"I have an idea you won't dislike Sidney when you meet him," Lesley said, kindly.
"A man's chauffeur has no right to an opinion about him—at least, that's what I used to think myself," said Val.
"And now—and now are your ideas changing? Do you begin to feel just a tiny bit, that 'rank's but the guinea stamp,' and 'a man's a man for a' that'? For if you do, after all it won't have done you any harm to come to America," said Lesley.
"It's riches here, not rank, which counts apparently," Loveland retorted. "And that's just as bad."
"Riches don't count with me," said Lesley.
"Cremer must be very rich," grumbled Loveland, apparently apropos of nothing.
"Sidney makes a good deal of money out of novels and plays—at least, it seems a good deal to me, but maybe it wouldn't to you. Perhaps Sidney's earnings amount to about twelve or fifteen thousand of your English pounds a year—and he's saved quite a lot, too, for he's been popular as a playwright and novelist in America and England for several years now."
"By Jove!" exclaimed Loveland. "What a lucky beggar!"
"That just expresses it—a 'lucky beggar'—for he was almost a beggar at the time he made his first success. He was dependent on his relations when a child, for his father and mother died when he was a baby, leaving him not a penny, and he was brought up with the idea of being a school teacher, which he would have hated."
"Success like that often spoils people," said Val, frankly ungracious in his jealousy.
"I don't think it's spoiled Sidney," replied the girl. "He has heaps of faults, but I shouldn't call him conceited or vain."
"Shall you be married soon?"
Lesley smiled, and her dimples twinkled. "It isn't decided yet. But I daresay it will be soon. Now, I suppose with the grand ideas you used to talk to me about, twelve or fifteen thousand pounds a year, and a few loose thousands lying around would seem like shabby genteel poverty to you."
"Don't hit a man when he's down," said Loveland. "If I had only half as much as Mr. Cremer, I could do the things I want most to do."
"What are they?" asked Lesley. For it was still some distance to the stable which was also, for the present, garage as well, and she walked slowly on the moist grass, picking her way, step by step, with leisurely daintiness.
"Nowadays, the things I feel I should like most to do are to restore our poor old tumbled-down home, and get rid of my debts."
"You say 'nowadays.' Have you changed your mind lately?"
"I've changed almost everything—except these everlasting tweeds! I know, of course, that my affairs will come right inoneway, presently. I shall get back to England before my leave's up: but I shan't go back the same man. The things that pleased me most before, won't be the things to please me most in future. I feel that, somehow."
"Things will come right only inoneway, for you?" she echoed.
"Only in one way. I've lost the chance of all that's the best worth having—if I ever could have had such a chance."
"You're too young to give up hope. Almost as young as Sidney Cremer."
"What?—he's younger than I am?"
"Sidney is twenty-three."
"And has been a successful novelist and playwright for three years? He's a sort of infant phenomenon."
"Think of Pitt," Lesley reminded him, smiling.
"Once you said you didn't like men under twenty-six—they seemed so raw."
"I ought to be flattered that you should remember my sayings of 'once.' You see, though, Sidney's quite different from—other men, especially to me. But here we are at the stables. We'll talk about Sidney's car, instead of Sidney."
"Just one question first!" exclaimed Loveland, stopping short in front of the old-fashioned but neatly kept stables, and spacious Southern barn. "I know I haven't any right to ask it, but—were you engaged to Cremer when we crossed together on theMauretania?"
"My relations with Sidney were then exactly what they are now," replied the girl, with a pretty primness that made her mouth look as if she had just said, "prunes, prisms, propriety."
His last hope gone—since Lesley had not accepted Cremer out of pique—Loveland was silenced.
A darkey groom, who came forward grinning, opened the doors of an inverted loose-box, and showed a fine black and scarlet motor-car, glittering with varnish, brass, and newness.
Deeply interested, or feigning interest, Lesley made Loveland lift the shining bonnet and explain detail after detail of the mechanism.
"It sounds fascinating!" she said at last. "The monster only arrived three days ago, though it—or ought I to say 'she'?—was on order months and months ago. Two or three chauffeurs have come in from Louisville to be interviewed (you see, Sidney trusts my judgment just as Auntie does!) but I wasn't satisfied with them."
"Perhaps you won't be satisfied with me?" suggested Val.
"Oh, you're only a temporary chauffeur," she answered. And though it was rather cruel to remind the lonely young man in a strange land how soon he was to lose his only friend, the girl smiled as she spoke. "I must just put up with you as you are. You've quite impressed me with what you know about the machine part. I daresay you can drive. Your manner and appearance arequitenice; and besides——"