Lord Loveland Discovers America.
by C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson.
CHAPTER ONE
The Discovery of America by Lord Loveland
"Even the Last Resort has refused me." Loveland broke the news to his mother when he had kissed her.
"Miss Mecklenburg?"
"Yes. I begin to realise that I"m a sinking ship. The early rats are deserting me--or declining to come on board. Clever little animals!"
"You _shan"t_ sink," protested Lady Loveland, clasping the pretty hands whence all save the wedding ring and its guard had gone to pay a visit of indefinite length to Messrs. Battenborough. "The idiot, to refuse you--with her _nose_, too."
"She didn"t do it with her nose, Mater."
"Val, you know what I mean. And after you"d overlooked her being a Jewess!"
"Yes, it was kind of me, wasn"t it? An Italian Prince has just overlooked it, too. Her engagement to Doriana was announced the morning after she"d offered to be a sister to me. It was the size of her purse, not her nose, which caught his eye. But sooner or later he"ll beat her."
"I hope so. She deserves it for taking him instead of you. Oh, Val, what a world!"
"Don"t grouse, Mater. _I_ might have beaten her if I"d got her, and then there"d have been a scandal. I can"t stand women with important looking teeth, and noses which throw their other features into perspective. Besides, Lillah Mecklenburg isn"t as young as she"s painted."
"So few women are nowadays, dearest," sighed Lady Loveland, who, in living for her handsome son, did not trouble to live up to the past of her complexion, and whose way of doing her hair was alone enough to show that though lenient to Val"s weaknesses, she would not condone those of her sister women. "Oh, Val, it"s hard you should have to think of such creatures. But what are we to do?"
"That"s just where I want your advice," said Loveland, who had come a long way to get it. For the distance from London to the north of Scotland is formidable when birds are out of season.
Lady Loveland was flattered that Val should ask for her advice which, when offered gratuitously, he had never been known to take.
"My advice!" she echoed sadly. "That"s all I can give you now! Although I did hope, dear Boy, I must confess. I--I have been trying for Limericks. It was for your sake, and I hoped to win large sums. I thought of lines all night long, and I did send in some splendid ones, a thousand times better than those for which other people (dreadful people, my dear, with names like Hogson, and Dobbs) have won hundreds of pounds. I gave the editors permission to _use my name_, too; one would have thought, a valuable advertis.e.m.e.nt for their papers. But all I"ve won after the greatest efforts has been fifteen and six--an insult--while these Dobbs and Hogsons--I believe the editors must be _Socialists_. And--the shillings for the postal orders have counted up into pounds. I am crushed with remorse."
"Never mind, dear, you meant it for the best," said Val, who cared more for his mother than for anyone else in the world--except himself. And that he made this exception was largely Lady Loveland"s fault, for she had brought him up to believe in but one person of paramount importance, adorning the universe: Perceval George Victor Edward Gordon, thirteenth Marquis of Loveland. "What would a few pounds matter--or a few hundreds even, if you"d won them? The ship"s too far under water to be raised with Limericks."
"Dearest--is it as bad as that?"
"It"s as bad as anything can be. Look out of your window at the snow falling. Well, that"s nothing to the way it"s snowing bills outside my window. If you and I can"t think of something to clear the weather, I shall have to chuck the army. And even if I do, the bills will still keep on snowing."
"What horrible creatures tradesmen must be," said Lady Loveland, whose opinions had come down to her crusted and spider-webbed from the cellars of the Stone Age. "To think that we"d have had power of life and death over them if we"d lived a few hundred years ago. I wish those times could come back."
"The world at large doesn"t agree with you."
"It oughtn"t to be at large," replied Lady Loveland, without the smallest idea of a joke. "It"s reached a pretty pa.s.s when Worms who make boots and uniforms and----"
"And sell wine----"
"Oh, if you like----"
"And jewellery----"
"Very well. Admit the jewellery----"
"And motors. I"ve wasted a good deal of substance in riotous motor-cars, Mater."
"Oh, I suppose men of your position have some right to enjoy their lives? As I was saying, it"s come to a pretty pa.s.s when Worms who make or sell what every gentleman _must_ have--things that ought simply to come, like the air you breathe--can turn and rend an officer of the Guards, a peer of the realm, without fear of being crushed."
"If I"d chosen to be a kind of secret advertising agent for tradespeople, I might have been dressed and wined for nothing, motor-carred too, perhaps," said Loveland. "I know some fellows who do go in for that sort of thing. But I"m hanged if I could. I"d rather blow out my brains decently."
"Oh, my darling, don"t speak so wildly," implored his mother. "There must be resources we can call upon--if we could only think of them."
"I have called on several people"s resources, without any good coming of it." Loveland grinned faintly, though he was in the depths of depression, and had suffered from insomnia for at least a week, between eight and ten in the morning, when so popular a young man should (in his own opinion) have been dreaming of last night"s pleasures, instead of worrying how to pay for them.
"There is surely a last resort," went on Lady Loveland.
"Miss Mecklenburg was mine--and she"s failed me--thank Heaven!"
"There must be something else."
"Something still worse?"
"Don"t be flippant, dearest. I can"t concentrate my thoughts when you are. Ah, if we could have let Loveland Castle as well as we did twelve years ago!"
"It"s crumbled a lot since. And we"re too poor to repair ourselves, let alone our castles."
"You at least don"t need repairing," said his mother, gazing at her son with admiration. "You"re the handsomest young man in the Kingdom."
Loveland laughed, though he believed her. As a child he had been kissed by all his mother"s prettiest friends, because he was so absurdly beautiful, and so precocious. If he had been a plain or stupid boy he might have grown up to be an estimable young man, as Marquises go. "Why don"t you say, "in the world"?" he asked.
"I"m not a woman to _exaggerate_, dearest. All the Lovelands have been good-looking. One has only to go into the picture gallery at the Castle to see that----"
"Yes. As we can"t sell their portraits."
"If we could, your father would have done it when he sold the Town house. But you will be so confusing, Val. My argument is, that as you"re the best looking and the cleverest----"
"I don"t know a blessed thing, my dear ladyship. Never had any education. You ought to have sent me to Eton, instead of coddling me up with tutors and----"
"You didn"t think so then. I remember well when it was proposed, you flung yourself on the floor and howled."
"So of course that settled it."
"Why, yes. You generally settled things like that. You had such a determined way, dear. But you were _born_ knowing more than many studious, uninteresting young men have forgotten. Then, your South African career! It was like a romance. You, who had been crammed, oh, ever so little, for Sandhurst, and then left there to go to the war when you were a mere child, hardly nineteen--so brave! And then, the Thing you did on the battlefield! Of course you ought to have had the Victoria Cross, but as it was, the newspapers rang with your praises, and I was besieged for your photographs to publish. That deed alone would have made you a personage of consideration, even without your rank."
"I"ve told you lots of times, Mater, the whole thing was a sort of accident. I couldn"t bear the chap. If I"d stopped to think, I don"t believe I"d have run back a step to drag him out from under fire. But I was there, hauling him away, before I knew what I was doing."
"Yes, you have told me--and other people. But no one believes you. How could they? They see it"s your modesty." (Lord Loveland"s mother was perhaps the one person on earth who would have attributed to him this quality.) "And as for disliking the young man whose life you saved at the risk of your own, of course that proves you all the more n.o.ble.