It was Isidora who found out first what was in her father's mind, because she saw the advertisement which Alexander the Great had written for the papers. It lay on the parlour table, in clear black and white for any eye to read, when Isidora came to clear away the litter of odds and ends that Emmie the "hired girl" might lay the dinner things.
"Oh, Pa!" she gasped. "Isthatwhat you're going to do?"
"Of course," said Alexander the Great, staring at her over his spectacles, as he wiped his pen and pushed his chair from the table. "Tell that gel to hurry up. Don't she know by dis dat I've got just twenty minutes for dinner? I'll have to go before dessert, if she don't get busy."
"You want to change the subject, Pa," said Isidora.
"No, I don't. Why for? 'Tain't your business."
"'Twas me had the idea. He won't stand bein' advertised."
"Pooh!" said Alexander.
"I tell you he won't. He'll quit. He's afraid the police are onto him, anyhow."
"Milton ain't lodged no complaint. Nobody has, or I'd have kicked de feller out, first thing, when you tol' me who he was. Nobody ain't goin' to touch him."
"And nobody ain't goin' to keep him, when he seesthat," added Isidora, pointing to the paragraph written in Alexander the Great's clearest handwriting.
"He needn't see it, unless you blab, silly gel," said her father. "What for should he read newspaper advertisements? I guess he got somet'in' else to do."
"Somebody'll tell him."
"People come here to eat, not talk. Anyhow, dis goes."
And it went.
It went to several papers; and though Alexander the Great paid only for the insertion of small paragraphs in the columns of the journals, he chuckled to himself in anticipation of receiving far more valuable advertisements, gratis; nor was he wrong. In matters of business within the scope of his capabilities Alexander was seldom wrong. That was why he was great. True it might be that "Lord Loveland of the Waldorf-Astoria" (as Tony Kidd had dubbed him) was a back number, and had been superseded in public esteem by at least two promising murderers, and one lively divorcée; nevertheless, even small crimes were thankfully received by newspaper men and women, as Alexander had reason to know. Did he not owe part of his present success to a dearth of sea-serpents, just about the time when Bill Willing had begun to decorate the walls of the new red restaurant in Twelfth Street? Alexander had spent a little money then in sprinkling a few paragraphs over dull columns that set forth the advantages of pale pills, or bath chairs. Reporters on the prowl had happened to read, happened to laugh, and eventually happened to pass through Twelfth Street.
So now Alexander hoped again for something to happen, and did not hope in vain. Journalists were not needing sea-serpents at this season, which was rosy with debutantes, pearly with brides, and sparkling with balls and dinner parties, as well as lurid with exciting murders. But Tony Kidd's enterprising eye lit on Alexander's inspiration, while it was still as fresh as tomorrow's bread, in the issue of "New York Light" which was in the making.
He considered Loveland still his own—though Tony had passed on to better "scoops" since the night when he had changed his first sketchy impressions of the "Difficult Young Man to Approach" into a "story" far more entertaining. He was greatly amused at the latest development of "l'affaire Loveland," and thought that even a preoccupied public would be amused, too, especially as Alexander's own paragraph was quaintly quotable.
"Lost at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the Marquis of Loveland. Found, Ditto, at Alexander the Great's in Twelfth Street. If you want to be served by a Lord, dine at Alexander's for 25C, Marquis included. You eat your dinner; Waiter Loveland does the rest."
Tony was very busy just then, having an important errand out of town by the first train in the morning, but he secretly commissioned an understudy to be at Alexander's when the red restaurant should open its doors; to order breakfast, and, while seeming to eat, to sketch the new English waiter. The understudy was not to question Loveland himself, but, if possible, Alexander, and was not to let the waiter see that he was under fire of attention. Notes of Loveland's appearance, as well as a drawing, must be made for Mr. Kidd's benefit, because the sharp young journalist was not going to let himself be "spoofed." It was quite on the cards that some other enterprising person might have taken a fancy to call himself a Marquis, in order to attract customers to Alexander's; and if so, Tony's little story would have to differ slightly from the original design.
When he came back from the country, late in the afternoon, however, Mr. Kidd at once recognised the cleverly executed sketch. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that the young man who had slammed the door in his face at the Waldorf-Astoria was now "pie slinger" in a cheap downtown restaurant.
Tony questioned his understudy as to what he had found out, and learned that Alexander himself had been privately interviewed. The great man had discouraged the artist-reporter from talking with the "Marquis," who, it seemed, was ignorant that he had begun to figure again in the newspapers. The fellow had been starving, said Alexander, and permitted the use of his name to a limited extent, but "might kick" if he heard of the advertisements. Alexander wished him to "kind of get used to things" before people noticed him much, for he was a queer fish, close-mouthed, inclined to hold onto the ragged edges of dignity in spite of his fall. The idea was to let it leak out very gradually that "Lord Loveland" was being "worked to draw a crowd"; and thus admonished, Tony Kidd's understudy had let the new waiter alone.
Tony Kidd himself, however, only laughed, because he understood Alexander's little ways, and guessed how he expected to get his money's worth out of the newspapers. The journalist wrote his story, which he fancied exceedingly, and his editor was pleased with it, too, although it was sure to give Alexander a tremendous free boom. Next morning there was half a column on a good page of "Light" (including space for the understudy's line portrait of a tall young man in evening dress, with a coffee pot in one hand and a milk-jug in the other); and even the printers grinned at the heading: "The Marquis of Twelfth Street: Newly Acquired Title."
A persistent ringing of the telephone in Fanny Milton's bedroom waked her out of a delightful dream.
She was on shipboard again. It was moonlight, and Lord Loveland was telling her that he really cared a great deal more for her than for Lesley Dearmer. She confessed that she liked him, too; and he was just asking her to come and reign over Loveland Castle as well as his heart, when the distant, though disturbing, notes of an amateur concert in the music room of theMauretaniaturned definitely into the shrill bur—r of that wretched telephone. The dream broke like a rainbow bubble, and Fanny sat up in bed, disappointed with life.
It was past ten o'clock, but she had been at a ball the night before, and had not meant to wake till eleven. After the dream realities seemed flat and unprofitable for a minute, and she was angry with the telephone, so angry that she was tempted to spite it by turning over and trying to sleep again. But the hateful thing went on bumbling like a distracted bee; and after all, the simplest way to get rid of the pest was to see what it wanted.
Fanny got up, looking like a cross, pretty child of twelve, with her hanging hair, and the delicate, fluffy nightgown in which she was not cold, because the temperature of her room would have been considered warm for summer.
She seated herself by the telephone and snatched up the receiver as if she were going to shake it. But she soon settled down to an absorbing interest in the give and take of conversation with the instrument.
"Hello!" she said. "Who are you? Oh, Elinor Coolidge—what?—I was in bed. You waked me up. Never mind. It doesn't matter.... Yes, it was a nice enough ball. Were you.... Oh, at Mrs. VanderPot's. How swagger! No, we weren't invited. I didn't care. But Mamma was mad. I don't know what's the matter with Mamma since we got back. She's got a 'chip on her shoulder,' for nearly everyone.... No. Of course we haven't seen the paper. I just told you, you waked me up.... What?... Lord Love—oh, don't call himthat! It sounds so cruel. I shall never forget his face at the Wal——Why, Elinor Coolidge, you don't mean it! Waiting in a cheap restaurant.... I don't believe it's true.... In the paper? Well, there's nothing inthat.... I know a newspaper man myself.... What? Oh, his name's Tony Kidd. He's great fun. He says he lies all night thinking of lies for all day. Says a pressman must lie all in all, or not at all. If it's his paper.... Yes: 'Light.' Oh, then it's sure to be a joke.... No, I would not like to go and find out for myself. It was bad enough at the Waldorf that night. It just about gave me nervous prostration, and I didn't see how you could take it so coolly as you did, or Mamma either.... No. She likes you. She hasn't a good word for him, now. Says she suspected from the first, and was always trying to pump him and find out things.... Oh, that horrid affair about him and Papa? I don't think she cares much. She says Papa oughtn't to have spoken to him, and then it wouldn't have happened.... Yes, Papa went off to Old Point with that sneery Mr. Mason Mamma detests so.... It was the very next day, I believe.... Who says Papa's back in New York?... Well, if he is, he must be going to surprise Mamma and me. We haven't seen him yet.
"Oh, Elinor, I think it would behorridto make up a party and go to that restaurant.... Yes, I like slumming and seeing Bohemian places pretty well, at least I think I do.... I haven't done much yet. Mamma has, but she hardly ever took me out with her anywhere, you know, till we went to Europe.... Yes, in Paris.... But here it's different.... Well, I don't believe we'd find him there if we went, but all the same, I don't want to.... Why, I can't help it if you ask Mamma to chaperon a party....Iwon't go. Nothing will make me.... I can't answer for her.... I don't know whether she's engaged this evening or not. She hasn't been going out so very much since we came home.... Oh, yes. She's sure not to have left the house yet. She's never out till eleven.... Who? The Comte de Rocheverte?... I met him at the ball last night.... What?... He was at Mrs. VanderPot's dinner first?... Took you in?... Yes, he did speak to me of you, when I danced with him.... Oh, it was only one waltz, but I tore my frock, so we sat out the last part. I can't dance with Frenchmen: they hop so—and twirl you about.... It was only that he asked me if I knew you.... Of course he said he thought you beautiful. Everyone thinks so. He told me he met you at Major Cadwallader Hunter's lunch at Sherry's, two days after we got home.... No, the Major didn't ask us. Mamma says he's turned the cold shoulder to her lately. I don't know why.... Yes, the Countisrather good-looking. As handsome as ... oh, nothing to compare! Youknowhe isn't.... Pooh, I don't think so much of French titles, as all that.... I suppose people will be nice to him.... Yes, quite good enough for a flirtation, but.... You're welcome to your old Comte.... It's no inducement tome, if he joins the party. It may be to Mamma.... You can ask her.... Well, I think it would be jolly bad form of you all to go to such a place and stare at him, if it could be true that he ... yes, perhaps 'jolly bad form' was an expression of his. I don't care if it was.... Oh, I suppose all the horrid things about him must be true, because the news wouldn't have come the way it did, if they weren't. But Ididlike him, and I won't say I didn't now, just because he's down in the world.... Lucky not to go to prison? Why, he didn't defraud anybody, exactly. He came over here to ... well, perhaps he did. But he didn't do it, anyhow.... I don't believe he stayed in New York after what happened. Everyone who knew anything about it, said he probably slipped out of town that same night, for fear of trouble.... Why, abroad somewhere, I should think.... I would, if I had been in his place.... Not money enough to go away anywhere? Oh, he must have had some.... How too awful if it should be true!... No, I wouldn't see him again for anything—not if you'd give me your diamond dog-collar to do it.... I think if you and Mamma and your Comte de Rocheverte go you'll be just like ancient Romans watching the martyrs eaten up by lions.... Not much like a Christian martyr? Well, no, perhaps not. Like going to see gladiators fight and kill each other, then.... Elinor Coolidge, hearing you talk that way makes me just see how you'd look dressed like a Roman lady, sitting on a marble seat beside Nero or some other wicked old horror, and putting your thumb down when it meant a man's death. Yes, you would.... I believe you were a Roman woman in another state of existence.... I won't talk about it any more.... You can ring up Mamma, if you like.... Goodbye!"
Down went the receiver, and back scrambled little Fanny Milton into her lavender-scented bed, shivering, not with cold, but with emotion. Her telephone was silent at last, but she could not find her way into the dream again. The door of that dream was shut forever; and Fanny was not jealous even of Lesley Dearmer now.
"I wonder if she knows—if he ever wrote to her?—they were such friends," the girl said to herself, with the cover pulled up to her small chin, and the big eyes that had overflowed for Loveland, staring through the pink twilight of her curtained room. What if it's true about that restaurant—if he were starving?
After all, it was no use to try and sleep again. Fanny rang for the prim maid her mother had imported for her from England, and demanded the tea and toast which that maid said all well-regulated English ladies took on waking. Then, as if on a second thought, she added: "Oh, you may bring me the morning paper. It must be "New York Light." If it isn't in the house, please tell them to send out for it."
But it was in the house. Mrs. Milton had been absorbing "Light" with her tea and toast; and when her telephone bell rang for the unfolding of Miss Coolidge's amusing plan, she said she would have a great deal of pleasure in chaperoning a "slumming party" to Alexander the Great's. She had an engagement for the evening, but she would break it in order to go. She quite understood that Elinor did not care to mention the expedition to Mr. Coolidge. Men had such funny ideas about things, and he mightn't approve, but it would be all right if he didn't know, and a great lark. Elinor was to ask the Comte de Rocheverte, of course, and tell him that Mrs. Milton had consented to be the chaperon.
Elinor Coolidge's first thought after reading Tony Kidd's very entertaining "story" in "New York Light," went no further than the fun of paying a visit to Alexander the Great's, and being waited upon by the man whose supercilious airs on theMauretaniahad made her feel "ready to burst with spontaneous combustion." She had hurried to telephone Fanny Milton, because a chaperon was necessary, and Fanny's mother was one of the few women she knew who would not care whether Mr. Coolidge's consent had been asked or not. Then she had thought that it would be nice to go with some particularly good-looking and distinguished young man, whose presence with her would prick the unfortunate Englishman to jealousy, and give him the sensations of an outcast dog, who sees another animal pampered with choice morsels, and collared with gold.
When Mrs. Milton consented to be the chaperon, it no longer mattered to Elinor that Fanny refused to join the party. Fanny was a silly, sentimental child, anyway, thought Miss Coolidge, who had asked the girl only for the sake of obtaining the mother. But, having got so far, Elinor's plan began to grow and take ambitious form. It occurred to her that it would be dramatic to collect the whole circle of girls (excepting little spoil-sport Fanny) to whom Lord Loveland had been attentive on board theMauretania. Each girl must, if possible, bring a man, Elinor naturally picking out the best for herself; and the most desirable seemed to be Comte de Rocheverte, a new arrival in America, whom she had met for the first time a night or two after returning to New York.
Of course he wasn't nearly as splendid a person as a real Marquis of Loveland would have been, but (though conservative girls who preferred home products, and jealous girls whom titled foreigners didn't cultivate, called French counts "thick as blackberries and nearly as common") Elinor had a weakness for old aristocracies. Besides, de Rocheverte seemed to her of that dashing type which prides itself on doing anything to please a woman. If she asked him to play a certain part in her little comedy, she thought that he would carry it off gaily, whereas the rôle might not be to the taste of her American friends.
She sent a note by messenger to a club of which the Comte had been made an honorary member, to make certain of securing him. Then, his answer having assured her that Raoul de Rocheverte was "entirely and devotedly at her service when, where, and how she liked," she telephoned to the four girls she wanted for the adventure. Of these, one could not come; another could, but wouldn't, for the same reason as Fanny's (this was Madge Beverly); and the remaining two thought it would be "more fun than a wedding." Each would bring a man (Mrs. Milton also could be trusted to find one), and the party would therefore consist of eight.
Never since Bill Willing had first made the fame of Alexander the Great had there been such a busy day in the red restaurant as the day when Tony's story and sketch of "The Marquis of Twelfth Street" appeared in "New York Light."
Breakfast was almost normal; but an unusual number of people strolled in between nine and eleven—"pie and milk" hours—and nearly all had newspapers in their hands. As they sat at the red-legged tables, sipping a two-cent glass of milk, they glanced at something in the paper, and stared at the tall young man in evening clothes who moved about solemnly with a tray of plates or cups and saucers.
By noon there was a rush of customers; the crowd increased rather than diminished up to half-past one, and throughout the afternoon the place was crammed.
Luckily, foreseeing that the new waiter would be awkward, more valuable for ornament than for use, Alexander had accepted the services of a young Pole in Dutchy's place. There was also Blinkey; but Blinkey was deep in the agony of hopeless love for the Boss's beautiful daughter, and was not to be counted on with any confidence, owing to his habit of gazing at Isidora when she was in sight, and pouring hot liquids down clients' necks if she suddenly disappeared.
There was more work than Alexander, Loveland, and the two others could do; therefore soon after twelve the aid of "Miss Izzie" had to be called in. The coloured cook and the cook's assistant worked until their brains were as nearly addled as any egg ever employed in their most economical moments; and to several members of the staff the reason for the rush remained a mystery. Alexander knew and smiled in his sleeve. Isidora knew, and cast reproachful, "I told you so!" glances at her father, as she heard the rustle of opening newspapers. But the Pole did not understand the curious questions people whispered to him; Blinkey was stupid as well as sullen; while as for Loveland himself, none dared to catechise him, so set were his lips, so threatening his brows.
Of course he suspected that it was he who brought the crowd, and raged in the shame of his burning martyrdom. Alexander had said that he was to be "used for all he was worth" and he was sure that, already, he was in some way being used. But he did not know how, or guess the worst.
At first, when the place began to fill, and eyes regarded him with interest, there was a hot instant when he asked himself if a new card had been hung in the window, offering a British Lord as an attraction—a kind of side dish, with sauce piquante. But he had slept at the Bat Hotel the night before, and in coming "on duty" had seen the cards as usual. There had been no sensational addition to the number, and no opportunity for anybody to have made one since, unseen by him. Bill had received no orders for any secret new design, Loveland was sure; for Bill was loyal and would certainly have warned him. Val supposed, therefore, that Alexander must have told people that the Marquis of Loveland would act as a waiter in the restaurant; that such people had passed the news to others, and so on, working upon the snowball system; this great increase of visitors being the result.
Loveland hated his notoriety with hatred inexpressible, though it was, in a way, a ghastly sort of tribute to the importance of the British aristocracy. It was not, however, the sort of tribute his vanity craved, and his one consolation was that the crowd Alexander had drawn to gaze at the tame Marquis was a common crowd. Indeed, he thought there was no danger that the red restaurant would be invaded by the upper classes. He would not see or be seen by the sort of people he would have met if he had not stumbled into this obscure pitfall of misfortune. Soon, too, he should have earned enough money to climb out of it, and leave the country.
With the feigned indifference of a caged white bear for a bank holiday crush, the new waiter performed his duties during the day. If the restaurant were crammed throughout the afternoon, by six o'clock there was a mob. By seven, however, the place began to clear and Alexander rejoiced, because there was much work for his staff to do before eight. Dishes must be washed and special food cooked, and a dozen tables prepared for two "crowds" who had engaged accommodation in advance.
One was a wedding party of Italians, numbering fifteen. The other was something more exciting: a party of "swells" who had telephoned for dinner at eight.
Laughing and talking they all trouped into the restaurant. Elinor Coolidge and Comte de Rocheverte; Eva Tanner and Kate Wood, with the handsome Hungarian twins, who were rather sought after in New York just then; Baron Ludovic Zsencha and his brother Paul; last Mrs. Milton and Tony Kidd.
Tony had intended to drop in at Alexander's in any case, to have a look at the Marquis of Twelfth Street, who had been "discovered" by that morning's "Light"; but he would have come on directly after returning from a second out of town expedition if a telegram had not been forwarded to the country, asking him to be Mrs. Milton's escort.
This invitation Tony accepted with pleasure, not only because it tickled his sense of humour to go to Alexander's as a member of a "slumming party," but because he hoped to see Fanny Milton, whom he thought the sweetest girl in New York. Last year Mrs. Milton would hardly have considered him "good enough" socially to select as companion, but there were people who looked at her a little askance now, and she could not pick and choose as she had done. Tony knew very well to what he owed his promotion, but that did not affect him in the least if it gave him a chance of seeing Fanny.
He was disappointed to find that she was not going, and his spirits were dashed by the news that she disapproved of the "Loveland sensation," for which he knew himself to be largely responsible. Nevertheless, in manner he was as gay as the others, when the party of eight made its merry raid upon Alexander's.
The Italian marriage feast was already in full swing; but neither the bridal party nor any of the thirty or forty other occupants of the restaurant were too deeply absorbed in their own affairs to notice the arrival of the "swells."
Not a soul in the room but instantly recognised the fact that theywere"swells," for though the ladies had put on their plainest gowns for the expedition, and the men had been forbidden to appear in evening dress, there was a marked difference between Alexander's eight latest guests and all the others already assembled.
"Hullo! I suppose we ought to feel honoured!" muttered Mr. Leo Cohen, who had just arrived from the West, and was paying a surprise visit to the establishment of his future father-in-law. He had demanded fried oysters and coffee, and had greatly enjoyed giving the order to the handsome new member of Alexander's staff.
"Get a move on,ifyou please," he finished, pointing his black moustache, and prodding his white teeth with a gold toothpick, as he stared at the man made notorious by today's newspapers. Pressing his lips tightly together Loveland turned away to pass the order to Black Dick, the cook.
It was at this moment that Mrs. Milton's party entered the restaurant, and Mr. Cohen murmured his comment to Isidora who, at her father's urgent suggestion, was hovering about that young gentleman's table, looking her prettiest.
Tony Kidd, at Mrs. Milton's request, had telephoned for a table for eight, to be withdrawn as far as possible from the big front window, that dinner and diners need not be criticised by the man in the street. Alexander had, therefore, caused Blinkey to drag the largest table in the room close to the curtained door at the back. At this table—by the time Loveland had given Cohen's order to Black Dick, and returned across the corridor which divided the restaurant from the kitchen—the four pretty women and their escorts had taken their seats.
The door behind the curtain was never shut in business hours; and as Loveland pushed back the red drapery, carrying a tray loaded with ice cream for the Italians, he looked straight into the eyes of Elinor Coolidge, Mrs. Milton, and the newspaper man, Tony Kidd.
They and their companions had already been searching the room for him, but their presence took him completely by surprise.
Not since early morning had he found a moment's rest. He had had no appetite, and would have had little time to eat even if he had been hungry. The day's work had irritated and unnerved him up to the last notch of his endurance. No battle of his brief but lively South African experience had cost him physically or mentally as much as these thirteen hours of waiting on Alexander's customers, and the sudden sight of those familiar faces, smiling coolly on his shame, came upon him like a volley of bullets from a quick-firing gun.
Involuntarily he took a step back, knocked the edge of the tray against the door-post, and dropped it with a crash of breaking crockery. Plates smashed, spoons flew, and ice-cream gushed among the ruins. Blinkey and the Polish waiter sprang to their colleague's assistance, not displeased, however, that he should be disgraced. Alexander scolded, the Italian bride screamed, and had to be reassured by the bridegroom. Leo Cohen laughed disagreeably; Isidora jumped; and Mrs. Milton's party looked at each other from under lifted eyebrows.
In the confusion of the breakage Loveland found himself again. Pride came to his rescue—not mere hurt vanity, but a truer pride than had ever made his heart beat high.
As he bent down to pick up the broken plates, he told himself that these people, who had come to plunge him still deeper in humiliating depths, were not worth a pang, and should not see that they had power to inflict it. They had caught him unawares, but he knew the worst now, and would bear it without letting those laughing, curious eyes see how their glances made him suffer.
For one short instant, he detested Mrs. Milton so intensely that he half regretted his vow to spare her name at all hazards; but by the time he had picked up the last piece of broken crockery he knew that, if everything were to come over again, he would do as he had done.
"I take dat out of your wages," said Alexander, loudly enough to be heard by those who sat round the table near to the curtained door.
"Of course," replied Loveland, his voice steady.
"I shouldn't have thought the British aristocracy would have such clumsy ways," Leo Cohen remarked audibly to Isidora. Then, calling jocularly across the room, "Say Alexander, got any mock turtle soup tonight?"
"No," growled Alexander.
"Thought you might be makin' a speciality of it this week," went on Cohen.
"Why?"
"Oh, cute idea for an advertisement: 'Mock Turtle served by Mock Marquis.'"
A titter went round the room among those who had enough English to understand the joke, and there was even a faint, suppressed sound of laughter at Mrs. Milton's table.
Loveland turned white. He had an impulse to hurl the broken dishes, now collected on the tray, straight at Cohen's oiled black head; and a week ago he would have done so without stopping to reflect. But he had lived longer in six days since landing in New York than in as many years before; and he was learning a lesson which no one had even tried to teach him in the past; mastery of himself.
He knew that if he took violent revenge upon the insolent young Jew, his late shipmates and their friends would delight in the exhibition. They would think that they were getting their money's worth out of the show, and Loveland determined not to play mountebank for their entertainment.
Pale, but perfectly composed in appearance, he did not even look towards Cohen, and seemed to take no more notice of the young man's impertinence than of the barking of some mongrel dog, too feeble to be kicked.
Ardently Loveland longed to get out of the room and to stay out, but though he could have escaped by carrying the broken dishes into the kitchen, he would not deign to turn his back on the enemy. He gave the tray to Blinkey and obeyed a gesture of Alexander's which sent him to take a new order from the Italians.
"I don't believe he'll come to wait on us," whispered Mrs. Milton to Tony Kidd. "If he doesn't, it will have been hardly worth the fag of coming all this way downtown. His handing us our things would have been the best fun of all."
"I think you'll get your fun," mumbled Tony. But he was not enjoying himself.
"Of course the man's a fraud, and deserves all he's got," the journalist thought. "But I'm hanged if I like seeing him take his medicine. He's a good plucked one, anyhow."
Never glancing at the eight faces, which watched his every movement with sixteen brilliant eyes, Loveland passed their table and went to tell the cook that the Italian party would have a rum omelet in place of the lost ice-cream. Cohen's fried oysters were ready, the Pole having just served them, and now the second course of the dinner—begun already with Blue Points—was waiting for the "swells." It was soup, and Loveland had either to carry it in, and serve it himself, or else to show that the torture of the lash was beyond his endurance.
"They shall see that I'm not ashamed for myself or afraid of them," he resolved, returning to the restaurant with a steaming tureen and eight hot plates on a tray. Without a change of expression he laid those eight plates, one by one, in their places on the table; and then, with a hand which he forced to be steady, he ladled out the soup. The ladies drew back, as if uneasy lest he might seek some small revenge; but he was careful not to spill a drop.
"Les biscuits, s'il vous plait," said Comte de Rocheverte, looking Loveland straight and superciliously in the eyes; but the English waiter did not flinch from the stare of the French nobleman. He walked quietly to the counter, took some biscuits (which Isidora called "crackers") from a glass jar, put them on a platter, and handed them to each member of Mrs. Milton's party.
"He understands French," murmured de Rocheverte to Miss Coolidge. "He must have had some education."
Loveland heard, and swallowed a lump in his throat. He knew that the young man and the girl were looking at him, talking of him; and that if he were visibly distressed by the knowledge they would be the more amused. But he snatched a moment's respite in waiting upon a seedy, bearded stranger, who had just come in and taken an isolated table—a stranger who looked like a foreigner, a person who would not be interested in a marquis born of any nation. In a moment, however, came a summons from Alexander. "You attend to the ladies and gents," was the Boss's order; "Blinkey can see to that feller. What does he want?"
"A ham-sandwich and black coffee," said Loveland.
"Oh, Pa, don't send Mr. Gordon to wait on the swells again," softly pleaded Isidora, flitting up uneasily. "They're trying to take a rise out of him. It's crool. I——"
"Thank you, but I don't mind, Miss Alexander," said Loveland, with a grateful look, which went so straight to Isidora's heart that tears started to her eyes.
Val took away the eight soup plates, and would not see the amused glances of the good-looking Hungarians, or Elinor Coolidge's French Count. Rocheverte was not cruel at heart, but he did not like Englishmen at best, and Elinor Coolidge, having told him the story of Lord Loveland, as she knew it, had said: "We girls want to punish him not only for the way he would have deceived us all if he could, but for his perfectly horrid, supercilious airs when we used to know him on board ship; so please help us by sneering and staring as much as you can without making a scene."
She had looked so handsome when she made this request, that de Rocheverte had told her he would grant it with pleasure, and he was doing his best to keep his word.
They had got as far in the dinner as chicken fried with cream gravy, for which Black Dick was renowned, when the restaurant door opened, and Mr. Milton walked in, accompanied by another man.
Mrs. Milton flushed with vexation, for she was sure that he had come back to town thus unexpectedly with the idea of surprising her; that he must have gone home and questioned Fanny as to her mother's whereabouts, and then have followed to Alexander's solely for the satisfaction of spoiling her pleasure—unless a little for the sake of seeing his late antagonist figuring as a waiter.
Milton sauntered over to the table and spoke to everyone civilly, darting only one covert, ugly glance at his wife, when her fascinated gaze rested upon the fading bruise which discoloured his square jaw.
"Read 'Light' this morning, Tony, and the afternoon papers copying it," he said. "Thought I'd drop in at the cockfight and see the fun. Great stunt, isn't it?" He eyed Loveland up and down, as if the Englishman were a freak at a museum. "Of course the story was yours?"
For the first time Val's eyes and Tony's met, only for an instant, but there was something like reproach in Loveland's. A trapped hare might have thrown a look like that at the keeper who trapped him.
"I suppose he thinks it was revenge for the slammed door," the young newspaperman said to himself. "But it wasn't. I'm not that kind of chap. I'd like him to know I'm not. But I expect it'll have to go at that."
"Well, ta ta!" said Milton, "and I'll order something for the good of the house, now we're here. We're not obliged to eat it, thank Heaven."
He turned away, and was drawing out a chair for himself near one upon which the seedy, bearded stranger had placed a small leather handbag, when suddenly the whole restaurant seemed alive with dry, crackling explosions, and in the same instant the electric lamps went out. The room, a moment ago brilliantly lighted, was black as a vault, save for a glimmer from the street that shone through the window. Then, as everyone jumped up, overturning chairs or breaking glasses in their hurry and the shrieks of the Italian women mingled with the strange crackling sounds, there came from somewhere at the back a loud detonation, followed by a hoarse roaring like a blast furnace. Men cried out in amazed alarm, and the dark room lit up ominously with a crimson glare that turned the curtain through which it leaked the colour of blood.
In rushed Black Dick and his assistant, with Blinkey, who had been busy in the kitchen, and all three shouted wildly: "Fire! Fire!"
The restaurant was in a state of chaos. A long jet of flame, sweeping out from the kitchen and across the narrow passage, caught the curtain in the door-way, up which little serpents of fire began to crawl. Every woman was screaming now, in a panic of fear whipped to horror by the red darkness, and the crackling explosions which snapped and spluttered on every side. The excitable Italians chattered and struggled with one another in the dark, the new Polish waiter ran here and there like a frightened chicken that sees the axe; the two negroes were almost in convulsions, and Tony Kidd called vainly on the Hungarian brothers and de Rocheverte for help in bringing order out of confusion.
The thought that flashed through the minds of all was an anarchist plot—a dynamite bomb. For one terrible second everybody remembered the bearded stranger with the little bag, and debited him with the deadly mischief—everyone, perhaps, except Loveland and Tony Kidd.
Into their heads the same thought sprang at the same moment, for each, it happened, had in his memory some such scene as this.
At the time of the first explosion Loveland had been quietly setting a plate of fried chicken before Tony, and as the journalist leaped from his seat, the two young men were close together.
"Short circuiting—escape from a fused gas pipe," Loveland yelled through the noise.
"Yes, that's it," the reporter shouted back mechanically, as if to a friend.
Then, for a few seconds, Tony was overwhelmed by a wild rush of frightened women. In the red light that streamed through the burning curtain he saw a crowd fighting to reach the window and the closed front door of the restaurant.
Upon his incredulous eyes flashed a horrid tableau of de Rocheverte throwing off Elinor Coolidge, who clung to him, crying, "Save me—save me!" As the Frenchman blindly flung her away and dashed towards the door, the girl would have fallen on her knees, to be trampled under foot by the two Hungarians, had not Loveland pushed the men violently aside, and caught Elinor in his arms.
"Keep her—keep all the ladies in this corner out of the crush," he cried to Tony. "I'm going to turn off the gas at the main." Then he gave Elinor, half fainting, to Tony Kidd, who firmly called Mrs. Milton, Miss Turner, and Miss Wood by name. The sound of the two calm voices in the midst of shouts, smashing glass, falling chairs, and foreign exclamations, rallied the women's courage. As Tony held Elinor the three others passed near him, deserted by the foreigners of their party; and in the bloodshot haze all saw Loveland's tall figure apparently plunge into the flame. He made a dash through the door-way, his arms thrown across his eyes, to shield them from the fire; and ten seconds later the loud roaring ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The cracklings had ceased, too, for the short circuiting was over, and the stream of gas burnt itself out an instant after Loveland seized the handle of the main. But the curtain still blazed; the stairway in the passage, the door frames in the kitchen and restaurant were on fire, and the panic raged as wildly as ever among the fallen chairs and tables.
The doorhandle had been broken by Leo Cohen as he fiercely disputed with Milton the right to get out first, and none could now escape that way, although men battered the panels, and strove to break them in. Someone had smashed a hole in the thick plate glass window, big enough to create a dangerous draught, but not large enough to give a means of retreat for any of the men and women who, with cut and bleeding hands, struggled to squeeze through the jagged opening.
One hand badly burnt, face and hair singed, Loveland was back in a minute from his errand at the gas main. He had snatched up a huge kettle of water from the stove, and dashed it onto the stairs, quenching the small flames which had begun to curl and writhe. Then, tearing down the curtain, he trampled out the fire, and as the flames died into shooting sparks and feebly puffing smoke, he urged Tony to bring the ladies that way. "Upstairs—we'll get them upstairs, out of the crowd," he shouted; but instantly the whole throng would have turned to stream in that direction, had not Tony Kidd kept the way clear by making an obstacle of his own broad shoulders.
He got a fierce blow or two, but held the pass until the four ladies of his party, and Isidora, had reached shelter with Loveland.
The women safe, Tony tore off his coat and began beating down the fiery snakes which crawled up the door frame towards the ceiling. Loveland, meanwhile, having refuged the four ladies with Isidora, hurried back to stand by Tony Kidd. Together they collected all the Italian women, whom they lifted bodily over a barricade of tables, and grouped in a corner beyond the reach of fire or crowd.
It was left for Blinkey to give the alarm. Being the thinnest and smallest, he contrived to squeeze his lean body through the broken window, and shout for the police. Three minutes later two big men in blue sent the door crashing off its hinges into the restaurant, and by the time the fire engines swept clanging and snorting into the street the flames were stifled, and Alexander had found a few candles to light up the smoky darkness.
The whole drama in one act had played itself out from beginning to end in less than ten minutes; but it had come close to tragedy, as none realised more fully than the two whom it had very strangely brought together: Lord Loveland and Tony Kidd.
No one was killed or seriously injured, fortunately for Alexander the Great's popularity. Many hands and faces were cut with window-glass; two or three women had bruises or sprained wrists, and the Italian bride and groom were objects for compassion.
Loveland and Tony Kidd had saved the situation. Nobody else seemed to have accomplished anything deserving praise; but, when calm followed storm, de Rocheverte, Milton, his friend Mason, and the two Hungarians vied with one another in volubly explaining each act and failure to act. They had wanted to make a way out for the ladies; that was why they had tried to get to the door, but they had been caught and overwhelmed in the crowd. They all talked fast and eagerly, almost convincingly; but the ladies, pale and shattered, listened without answering. And when they thanked Tony Kidd for "saving them from being burnt alive," they were careful neither to contradict nor assent when he assured them that it was "our brave pretender who did everything."
As for Loveland, he was no longer to be seen. While the police asked questions, the firemen examined dark corners, and the battered crowd trailed gloomily away, Tony looked in vain for his comrade in battle.
Milton, for appearance sake, was compelled to offer escort to his wife, who cried and laughed hysterically, when she did not show symptoms of fainting. The husband's presence relieved Tony from guard duty, and he alleged as an excuse for staying behind the necessity to make a "story" out of the business. His party left the restaurant in carriages and motors, sadder and perhaps wiser; but no one asked for Loveland. Even if they thought of him, the women who had come to see him play the rôle of waiter could hardly acclaim him in the part of hero; while as for the men, if they realised what he and Tony Kidd had done, it was not to their interest or credit to acknowledge it.
Loveland had not, however, mysteriously disappeared. He was only keeping himself in the background; and the one background available at Alexander's was the kitchen.
It was now a smoky and dismal kitchen, with a wild litter of pots and pans, a table overturned, broken dishes, eggs, oysters, and raw batter strewing the floor; nevertheless, it seemed a haven of refuge to Loveland, after what he had suffered.
His dash through the flames to find the gas main had been a deed more gallant perhaps than the impulsive rescue on the battlefield which won him his D. S. O. Tonight, he had deliberately counted the cost, whereas in South Africa he had acted first, and thought afterwards. He was not excited now; that was all over, and there was time to think; yet he was conscious that he had conducted himself not unworthily.
"Funny thing," he thought, as he looked at his burnt left hand, and his singed coat; "funny thing! I suppose I behaved fairly decently, because I had to do it, and there was no other way. But I've fancied myself a lot more, before this, for a grand slam at bridge, or a right and left shot at a couple of birds."
There was no need to prove his courage further by reappearing in the restaurant. If he went back, it would look as if he were bidding for compliments from his late tormentors, and Heaven knew that he wanted nothing of the sort. He wanted only to be let alone. So he lurked in the kitchen, and looked on while Black Dick and Dick's still blacker aide-de-camp calculated and repaired the damage to their supplies. He even condescended to set the fallen table on its legs again, and in return for this service Dick was binding up his injured hand when the sound of a voice behind his back made him turn quickly.
"See here," said Tony Kidd, "I've been looking for you, because I want to tell you something. Whatever else you may or may not be, you're a man, anyhow."
As he delivered himself of this speech, Tony's pleasant, clever face lost the quizzical expression it was wont to wear, and looked very attractive in its earnestness.
"Thank you," answered Loveland, rather stiffly. Then, melting as his blue eyes and Tony's brown ones held each other, he added, smiling: "So are you."
"If I've made things any worse for you, I'm sorry," went on Tony. "It's all been in the way of business, you know."
Milton's words to the young journalist had cleared the mystery of the crowd who had glanced up from their newspapers to stare at the English waiter, and gone back to their newspapers again; Tony's veiled allusion brought no surprise to Loveland, therefore, and he answered without heat. "It doesn't matter," he said, quietly, in a tired voice which made good-natured Tony wince.
"You're in pain, aren't you?" he asked.
"Oh, nothing to speak of," said Val. "Burnt my hand and wrist a little, that's all."
"It was a narrow shave," said Tony. "By Jove, a 'shave' literally, for you've pretty well made a clearance of hair on one side of your head."
"I must look like a convict," returned Loveland. And considering everything, it struck Tony Kidd as odd that the Englishman should make that particular remark about himself.
"You've been having a mighty hard time of it since—er—since I saw you last," the journalist observed.
"It has been an experience," said Loveland.
"I'd like to show my appreciation of the way you've acted tonight," said Tony. "Is there anything I can do for you?"
The thought flashed through Loveland's mind that he might tell this newspaper man the whole story of his extraordinary adventures since coming to New York—the trouble with the bank; the mysterious silence which alone had answered his two cablegrams; the unaccountable attitude of the Waldorf management; and the rudeness of his shipboard acquaintances in the restaurant. Tony Kidd had certainly "written up," or caused to be written up, his quarrel with Milton, from Milton's point of view; and now he had evidently drawn public attention to Loveland's affairs again by some further article. But if the journalist had cherished a desire for revenge, apparently he felt it no longer. Now he was hinting that he wished to make atonement, and Val believed that he meant what he said. If he would advance money on the letter of credit—but no; after a moment's reflection, Loveland made up his mind not to ask. He had had so many snubs already, he would prefer not to risk another, he told himself. Besides, after all that had happened, he could not ask a favour of this man, no matter how pleasantly it had been offered.
"Thank you very much, but I think there's nothing you can do," Loveland answered.
Tony knew of one thing that he could do, and had already decided to do it: to turn the tide of public opinion as far as possible by a graphic description of the fire at Alexander's in tomorrow morning's "Light." But, after all, that would not accomplish much, if any, material good. A wave of sympathy would only send more curiosity-seekers to Alexander's, and Tony's keen eyes had seen, through Loveland's mask of indifference, how he writhed under his punishment.
"Say, you can't stay on here," the American explained impulsively. "It's a dog's life—and whatever you are, whatever you've been, you're too much of a gentleman by breeding and education to stand it. You'll have to quit; and perhaps I could think of some way out, if you——"
"I'll thank you not to try and take my waiter away from me, Mr. Kidd," broke in Alexander the Great, speaking so suddenly behind the two young men that both started "like guilty things upon a fearful summons."
"This isn't the right place for him, Alexander, and you know it," retorted Tony.
"It's the place he's engaged to stay in, until he leaves the country," Alexander persisted. "And I mean to hold him to his word, or know the reason why."
"So said another gentleman of your race once," remarked Tony Kidd. "He did business in Venice, but in the end a lady got the better of him."
"Ladies don't interfere in my concerns," grumbled Alexander, who had not a prophetic soul, and did not guess what the next few hours might have in store for him. "If Gordon leaves me without a week's notice I'll make him sorry for himself."
"He saved your place tonight, and Lord knows how many lives," said Tony.
"Dat ain't got nothing to do with the case," insisted Alexander.
"Don't bother, thanks," Loveland said hastily to Tony. "Things can't be worse than they've been tonight. Perhaps they'll be better. I shall try and fight it out here—till I can see my way."
"Pay my way," he might have said; but he did not wish to bring up the question of money between himself and Tony Kidd.
"It's bad enough for me to have my place upset," went on Alexander, "without having my people enticed to leave me in de lurch. 'Tain't a friendly act, Mr. Kidd. I shall be days makin' up my loss, what wid tings busted and burnt, and I shall need all the help I can get to put the restaurant in shape again."
Tony turned impatiently from the man's grumbling. "Well, if you won't let me do anything for you, you won't," he said to Loveland. "All the same, I shan't forget, and the time may come. Now I must be off, and write my story."
He put out a hand, and Val responded with his unbandaged one.
If any one had told Tony Kidd a few hours before that he would yield to an irresistible impulse impelling him to shake hands heartily with the notorious "Marquis of Twelfth Street," he would not have believed it possible.
If any one had told Loveland that he would feel pleased, even complimented, by the offer of a handshake from the journalist who had made a target of him in black and white, he would have said, "it could not happen." Yet neither thought it strange when it did happen.
After the restaurant was cleared and all outsiders gone, Alexander remained, wandering dolefully about the room and discussing with Leo Cohen the sum he hoped to get from the company in which he was insured against fire.
The conversation ought to have been of absorbing interest to Cohen, as eventually Alexander's business would be his, provided there were no hitch in the marriage negotiations; nevertheless, he was absent-minded, for the new waiter had not yet left the premises, and—the watchful Cohen had noticed a peculiar light in Isidora's eye when her father had brusquely ordered her upstairs, "out of the way."
She had offered no objection to going, and had bidden Leo good-night, very prettily. But before tripping away, she paused for an instant in the corridor, her face turned towards the kitchen in which P. Gordon was helping Black Dick put things to rights.
Cohen noticed this turn of the head, this fluttering hesitation, standing as he did near the door-way now stripped of the red curtain. But when Isidora had vanished above, Alexander dismissed Blinkey and the Pole, shutting the door which usually stood open, because of the draught from the broken window.
"Why don't you send that man Gordon away, too?" Cohen asked.
"Because I'm payin' him big money, and he's got to earn it," explained Alexander. "He can stay and help Dick tidy up, if it takes till twelve o'clock. It ain't hurting us. Why should you care?"
Even Cohen, who seldom erred on the side of timidity in speech, scarcely ventured to put into words the reason why he did "care." Alexander was a good friend of his, and desired warmly to welcome him as a member of the family, but he worshipped his daughter Izzie; and as he had a violent, uncertain temper, he might resent a suggestion that she could be interested in Gordon.
Cohen had a rooted objection to draughts, or fresh air in any form, except in the warmest weather; still he would have preferred a draught to the shut door behind which the girl might steal downstairs to gossip with the Englishman in the kitchen. Of course Dick was there, but he was a slave to Isidora's fascinations, and the coal-black youth who was his adjutant had now gone home to patch up burnt hands and head. Cohen hardly heard what Alexander said, so keenly was he pricking his ears for a footfall on the stairs, behind the closed door; and he answered at random while his intended father-in-law demonstrated the prospects of opening the restaurant as usual in the morning.
"See here, are you sick, or what's the matter?" snapped Alexander at last.
"Oh, I'm all right," said Cohen, "only the smoke's got into my eyes. They smart so, I can see no more'n a bat. If it hadn't been for the smoke, which always makes me blind and dizzy, I'd have been more use in the panic."
Alexander laughed. "Well, you weren't no hero. Never mind, though, most of us was put out of business. And nobody had time to see what anybody else was at. But you do seem dicky. Mebbe you'd better be gettin' home. I don't want to keep you up."
"Oh, I'm not all in yet," Cohen hastened to protest. "But can't you leave me to watch that winder, while you see after Izzie? She was lookin' white and scared. Maybe she don't like bein' left alone. Or I could go up myself, and sit by her awhile. 'Tain't late."
Alexander chuckled. "Say, you're mighty thoughtful, ain't you? But you let Izzie alone tonight. I know dat girl, and de best ting for her is to go to bed."
"It ain't much past nine," said Cohen. "I don't guess she'll go to bed yet."
"Well, she's got the hired gel to chat with—unless it's her evenin' out. Now, don't you look so glum, Leo. Izzie ain't mashed on you yet, and if you was to go stir her up when she's all on the jump, you'd do for yourself with her. I tell you dat straight. And dat ain't what you want, huh?"
Cohen admitted that it was not, and gloomily allowed his services to be enlisted by Alexander in the way of examining the furniture for damage, piling broken chairs in a corner, and sorting out those in a fit condition to be used tomorrow.
Meantime Isidora had been busy justifying her lover's worst fears.
As she reached the top of the staircase, she heard the loud slamming of the door which had been warped and blistered by the heat. Her heart gave a little jump of excitement. Already she was keyed to a highly emotional state, and in her longing for a talk with Loveland, alone, she was ready to run almost any risk. The thought that he was still in the house, so near yet so far, had been almost insupportable, and she had fully intended to have a "good cry" the moment she arrived in the sitting-room upstairs. But the unexpected shutting of the restaurant door caused her a tremor of delight. She tip-toed down again, with her heart loud as a hammer in her breast, and flitted softly into the kitchen, not daring to speak till she had quietly closed the door also, lest the sound of her voice should carry across the passage.
"Oh, Mr. Gordon," she breathed. "I'm so sorry about your poor hand; and your face is scorched, too. I do wish you'd let me do something for you."
Loveland thanked her, but said that Dick had bandaged up his hand and wrist very nicely, with a soothing application of lard on an old rag.
Isidora gave a little sniff of scorn for the negro's ministrations.
"A pretty bandage!" she sneered. "A nasty torn bit of coarse towel; and lard ain't the right thing, either. I've taken lessons in First Aid. All the girls in my school did, and I ain't forgot what I learnt. Please come with me, and I'll do you up all right. Now, don't say no, or you'll hurt my feelings. I feel ready to cry anyway, and I sure will, if you ain't kind."
Loveland disavowed all intention of being unkind, but assured the girl that he was in very little pain, and need not put her to trouble. He would soon be ready to go away, and really thought it would be better. But when he had got so far in his rather straggling argument, two tears splashed over Izzie's cheeks. More threatened to follow, and Loveland yielded incontinently. It would hardly have been human not to feel some stirrings of gratitude, and besides, Loveland hated to see a woman cry.
"Oh, I'll come," he said desperately, and followed Isidora into the passage. Her finger on her lip told him that his visit to the family sitting-room was to be a secret, but even if prudence would have turned him back at the last moment, he was committed to the adventure and could not escape.
The parlour, which also served as dining-room, was appalling in its bravery of old gold plush, and portraits of defunct Hebrew ladies and gentlemen on a claret-coloured wall paper. There was an upright piano with the latest thing in coon songs upon it; there were wax flowers under glass cases; there were terra-cotta statuettes of incredible ugliness; there were crocheted "tidies" on the sofas and chairs. On the centre table, which was covered with a blue cloth, stood a lamp that had been lighted when the electricity failed, and in its rays, filtering softly through a shade composed of pink paper roses, Isidora looked even prettier than usual—perhaps partly in contrast with her hideous surroundings.
She made Loveland sit down in a leather armchair which smelled of the tobacco her father affected; and then, kneeling on a low footstool beside him, she began to unfasten Black Dick's clumsy bandage.
"I don't like to have you wait on me," said Loveland, who, a few weeks ago, took the most exaggerated petting for granted, from pretty women.
"Well, I like todoit, anyhow," replied the girl, with a lingering, liquid glance. "You're so brave, I'm proud to be waitin' on you. I never knew anybody just like you, before."
Loveland thought this very probable, but merely remarked, with becoming modesty, that he had done very little.
"You were a real hero," said Isidora. "Oh! o—oh!" and she breathed little cooing sighs of pity at sight of the hero's burns. "I could cry over your poor hand. It's a shame——"
"Please don't!" exclaimed Loveland, laughing. "I can't stand any more tears."
"Did you mind when I cried?" asked Izzie.
"Awfully," said Loveland. As he spoke he smiled down at her in a friendly way; and the kindness in the blue, black-lashed eyes made the girl's heart flutter like an imprisoned bird. She had been in love with him since the first day, a little; then more and more. Now her love overflowed. It was too much for her emotional nature. She could not keep it back. And why should she try to keep it back, she asked herself, since her love must be considered an honour by this unsuccessful foreign adventurer? She felt that she was like a queen, laying down her crown at the feet of a handsome beggar—she, Alexander the Great's only daughter and heiress. There was no question in her mind but that her love would be welcomed.
"I'm glad," she almost sobbed. "Oh, you're worth more to me than anything in the world. I won't cry again if you ask me not. I'll do whatever you want me to. Pa'd 'most kill me if he knew I was talking like this. But I don't care—I don't care for anybody but you—no one else. Oh, suppose I'd let Pa make me marry Leo Cohen before I'd met you!"
Loveland was dumbfounded. "My dear girl!" he exclaimed. "You don't know what you are saying. You——"
"I do know," Isidora broke in. "I know you are poor, and in a lot of trouble, and you might have gone to prison. But you're a gentleman, all right. You're You, and that's enough. If you care about me same as I do about you, why, all the rest——"
"But I—I mean, I'm sure you—don't really care," stammered Val, checking himself on the verge of saying something rude.
It would have simplified matters if he had said it, for Isidora's opinion of her own high value as Alexander's rich, desirable daughter made it too easy for her to misunderstand.
"I do care. You needn't be afraid," she assured him. "I wouldn't have said a word—I'd o' waited for you to speak if things had been different, but I saw how you felt by the way your eyes looked a minute ago, and I wouldn't stop for manners, because, I says to myself, he's too much of a gentleman to tell a girl he loves her, when he's got nothing and she everything."
"I hope I am too much of a gentleman to——" Val began desperately, but she cut him short, with one little plump, Patchouli-scented hand over his mouth.
"I know it! That's what I said. You don't need to tell me," she hurried on. "We'll have to run away and get married. Then Pa'll forgive me. I'm all he's got. He couldn't bear me to want for anything. But it's no use asking him first. He——"
"Dear girl, I have no idea of asking him——"
"No, of course. You ain't so silly. His heart's set on my taking Leo, but I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, now. My hero! I'll marry you tomorrow."
"The devil you will!" said Alexander.
They stood together at the door, he and Leo Cohen, who had persuaded the old man at last, on one excuse or another, to invite him upstairs. Neither Loveland nor Isidora had heard the door open; neither knew how long the eavesdroppers had listened outside.
The girl struggled up from her knees, and as Loveland bounded out of the big chair she caught his arm, nestling against him.
"You villain, stealin' my gal's love, behind my back, and enticin' her to run off with you!" stuttered Alexander, purple with fury.
"I didn't——" began Val, indignantly.
"What, you didn't?" roared the Jew. "You want me to believe my gal asked you to marry her?"
Loveland started as if Alexander had struck him, and flushed to the forehead. Involuntarily he glanced at Isidora, who looked up at him beseechingly. "Spare me!" the almond eyes implored.
"No. I don't want you to believe that," he said. And how hugely he would have laughed had he been told a few weeks ago that he would let himself be misunderstood and shamed for the sake of a girl like Isidora! But now he did not feel it strange that he should make this sacrifice for her. And curiously enough, it seemed to be Lesley Dearmer's voice, Lesley Dearmer's eyes, which—haunting him always—bade him spare this common little Jewess, at any cost.
"You're a d——d sneak," said Alexander. "Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"
"No," answered Loveland.
"Shows what you are, den. You're a tief. You try to steal my daughter, because you tink you get her money."
"Oh, Pa, he loves me! It's me he wants!" wailed Isidora, weeping, yet not daring to defend her lover at the expense of womanly self-respect. What good would it do him, she thought, for her to confess who had proposed a runaway marriage? Her father would be no less angry with Gordon, and he would be a great deal more angry with her—so angry that he would watch her always, perhaps insist on an immediate wedding with Leo Cohen. No, she could not speak; and besides, it would be too humiliating, before Leo. So she only sobbed, and sobbed the louder, when Loveland gently but firmly unlinked her arm from his.
"You're a little fool, Izzie, or you wouldn't believe any such a ting," Alexander scolded her, somewhat softened by her tears. "A feller like dat—a fraud, a liar——"
"If you were a younger man you wouldn't dare to say that," Loveland cut him short. "It's you who are lying."
"What—you call me a liar? You—you cheat, you convict!" sputtered Alexander. "Take dat for your impudence!" And rushing at Loveland like an angry bull, he struck him with both podgy fists.
Isidora screamed, and seized her father's arms, struggling with him, crying out that he was wicked, cruel, ungrateful to the man who had saved his house from burning.
"Don't be afraid, I'm not going to strike back," Loveland reassured her. "He knows that."
"Yes, he knows dat, because he knows youse a coward," Alexander sneered, wheezing asthmatically. "You come over here to cheat Noo York, but you ain't done it, not much. Lucky for you you ain't in prison. Now you get out of my house, quick—see? You just git."
"That's exactly what I'm anxious to do," said Loveland. "Goodbye, Miss Alexander."
"Oh, you ain't leavin' me forever?" cried the girl. "Pa, don't send him away like this. He—he ain't to blame." She hesitated, stammering: then a wild longing to keep her lover at all hazards overcame fear and scruples. "It was me who——"
"Don't," said Loveland. "You can do no good. I shan't forget your kindness. We won't see each other again, but you must forget tonight, and marry some man who can make you happy. Goodbye once more." And pushing regardlessly past Cohen, who hovered near the door, he sent the commercial traveller sprawling as he walked out of the room.
Black Dick, who had been told to guard the broken window of the restaurant, in the master's absence, had heard all or most of the disturbance, from the foot of the stairs, and he ran after Loveland to suggest the wisdom of getting money from Alexander.
"He am a mighty wicked ole man," whispered the Negro. "You done a lot fur him, an' now he kick you out o' de house widout wages."
"I shall never get a penny from the old beast. It's useless to try," said Loveland, heavily, seeing a vision of homeward-bound ships sailing away without him on board. "Goodbye, Dick. I wish I had something to give you to remember me by, but I haven't."
"Lawd, why I'm a rich man, wid money in de bank," protested Dick. "Do you tink because I got a black face, I take suffin' off'n you? No; on de odder hand I lend you what you like, sah, and you pay me back when you like. You've tret me like a gemman."
Loveland thanked him, curiously touched; and as he refused the loan he found himself, somewhat to his own surprise, shaking hands warmly with the coloured cook.