"I have," said Val, coldly.
"That"s all right," returned the other. "Well, to get to business then.
You were on pretty friendly terms with Mrs. Milton on board ship?"
"She was very kind to me," replied Val, more sure than ever now that the proposal to come would be matrimonial.
"Good! You"ve heard, I expect, from Cadwallader Hunter, or some other general purveyor of gossip, that she and I aren"t on the best of terms--that we don"t get along like a pair of turtle doves?"
"I believe I did hear some hint of that sort, which went in at one ear and out at the other."
"You needn"t consider my feelings. My wife and I hate each other like poison. She"d have thrown me over long ago, if she didn"t want my money--all my money; not what she might get in alimony if we said "Goodbye; the parting words are spoken." Eh? Well, that"s just what I _do_ want to say to her. We"ve never had any open break, but the time"s come. That"s why I sent her to Europe, and sent for her to come back. I played my fish, and now I want to land it. A queer fish, Mrs. Milton is, too, bye the bye. I"m going to bring a case against her, and I want to use you for a trump card in it. You understand?"
A hot wave of rage swept over Loveland. He did understand, and never in his life had he been so angry. He had not known it was in him to be so angry at a thing which did not affect his own selfish interests; but he was not thinking of himself at all. A new or, at least, unknown self stirred faintly in the depths where all his life it had lain asleep, because, perhaps, it had never been called upon to wake. He was not angry because such a proposal had been made to him--Lord Loveland; he had not thought of that part yet. Disgust with the man who could make such a proposition was the one emotion which shook him.
"You beast!" he broke out, in his young, clear voice.
The other man looked up at the flushed, angry face in genuine surprise.
"Oh, I suppose I haven"t offered "your lordship" enough," he sneered, with a sarcastic emphasis on the t.i.tle. "Well, I"ll raise you----"
But something unexpected happened before the offer could be completed.
Furious, Loveland slapped him across the mouth, and in dodging the insult, Milton slipped on a morsel of thin ice which glazed the pavement. He staggered, tried to regain his balance, lost it finally, and fell flat upon his back.
Loveland felt suddenly as if he had been drenched with cold water. The man"s fall, the stillness of the limp form which lay grotesquely, like a dummy made of rags, was a sight to chill even righteous anger. Loveland hadn"t yet begun to think of himself or the danger he might be in. He thought of the man--who seemed to him hardly a man--and wondered if he were dead. Then, after a dazed instant, he bent down over the motionless form, and felt a great throb of relief when he saw no stain of oozing blood on the pavement. The fur lined collar of Milton"s coat had been pulled up behind his ears and had broken the force of the fall for the back of his head on which, otherwise, he must have struck with terrible force. Already his thick eyelids were twitching. In another moment or two he would open them. And realising this, Val at last turned to that thought which generally came first: Lord Loveland and Lord Loveland"s welfare.
He glanced hastily round, and a.s.sured himself that no one was near: no one could have seen the incident, which luckily for him had happened at some distance from a street lamp. He thought carefully but quickly. If anyone should come--if an alarm were given--if he should find himself in the hands of the police--that would be the worst thing that had happened yet.
This beast who lay there--this beast who had taken advantage of a stranger"s misfortunes to try and bribe him to the basest dishonour--wasn"t hurt half as badly as he deserved to be. Loveland was glad he had struck the wretch, and would do it again, if it had to be done again, pay for the satisfaction dearly as he might have to pay. But he did not see that there was need to pay at all. If the fellow complained to the police of his a.s.sault, Val couldn"t defend himself by telling the truth, because Mrs. Milton"s name must not be brought in. He did not admire her particularly, and he owed her no grat.i.tude, but she was a woman; and suddenly he knew of himself that he would bear the worst that might befall him, rather than drag Mrs. Milton into a scandal.
For as long as he might have taken to count twelve, perhaps, Lord Loveland stood making up his mind and staring at the man on the ground: then he walked away as quickly as he dared.
How interminable the length of this cross-street seemed! He did not even know what street it was into which he had turned almost mechanically with Milton, as they talked, nor did it matter, if only he could get out, and far enough away before Milton came to himself, to gabble some malicious lie about what had happened.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Introducing Shakespeare
The end of the street, and no pursuing steps, nor shouts of accusing voices!
Once round the corner, Loveland breathed more freely; but with the white glint of his uncovered evening shirt, he was a marked man among men whose overcoats acknowledged winter, and his one anxiety for the moment was to get on as far as possible in as short a time as possible.
He had two or three small pieces of American money in his pocket, rather more than equal to the value of an English shilling, and he thought of hurling himself into a tearing electric car, or rushing up the steps of an "L" station to board the first train that should come in. But he did not know what destination to name, and feared that, if he professed indifference as to the end of the journey, he might arouse suspicion. It was wiser, he decided, to go on foot, dodging from the brilliantly lighted avenues into the darker cross-streets, and so on, indefinitely, until it seemed safe to call a halt.
Before the unexpected climax of his interview with Mr. Milton Loveland had still hoped for ultimate shelter and dinner, but now he ceased to regard either as a likely goal of his adventure. The great thing was, not to be caught by the New York police, and "run in" for a.s.sault, clapped into prison, into print, and forever out of the matrimonial court. The present was very bad, but there was hope for the future, although Milton"s hints and strange manner had brought closer the cloud of dark presentiment until it pressed like a thick veil over Loveland"s eyes.
When he found himself in the Plaza, and saw the black forest of the park billowing away into distance like the gulf of night, he looked towards it as a refuge. If only it were still open at this hour! If only he could get in!
His doubt died at birth; for a big motor car whizzed by him and into the velvet gloom. Evidently Central Park was not shut to the public at night.
Loveland followed the car; and though moving ghostlike along a tree-walled road, he had not quite the wished-for sense of being blotted out by darkness, it was good to escape from glaring lights and staring people.
When Loveland became accustomed to the gloom, it took on colour to his eyes, and turned from black to a deep, transparent blue which shimmered round him like the shadows of spirit forms; and far away where flared the lights of the "Great White Way" the dusk was beaten into sparks of flame as if a dying torch had been shaken down the sky. The blazing eyes of motor lamps, and yellow-winking carriage-lights moved along the dim drives, and drew the night in after them like a folding curtain.
Val turned out of a broad thoroughfare of the park into a quieter road to avoid the procession of vehicles and the faces that peered from their windows. There were no faces in the world that he wanted to see now, save his mother"s--and Lesley Dearmer"s, and he was ashamed of the longing which ached in him for those two.
"Buck up, you blighter," he admonished himself. "Don"t be an a.s.s or a baby."
It was easy to lash his soul with sage advice. But he felt very small and pitiful in the vast, unfriendly city, where it seemed that there were warm overcoats and good dinners for everybody except the Marquis of Loveland.
He strayed aimlessly along a winding way haunted by a melancholy fragrance of dying leaves, and a silence that rustled with scurrying thoughts which could never embody themselves in words.
In the great illuminated canons of the New York streets electricity outshone the stars, and it was hard to tell whether the moon lived or died. But above the Park hung a sky like a bell, purple in its dome, and touched with metallic gleams at the rim where the earth-lights climbed.
And bye and bye that purple paled slowly with the moon-dawn that sifted down in silver dust over the black trees, whitening the autumn mists that clung close to the gra.s.s like a face-cloth on the dead.
Loveland was bitterly cold now--cold all the way through to his heart--but he flung himself down on a bench under a low-branching tree, and wondered desolately if he had found his quarters for the night.
For a moment he had sat there, trying to marshal the routed army of his thoughts, before he realised that he was not alone on the seat.
Something stirred at the far end where the shadow was deepest. There was a faint tinkle as of a fairy bell--a cracked fairy bell, and a tiny shape leaped from the bench. Loveland watched it flitting here and there, darting across the glimmering grey road, and then about to p.r.i.c.k daintily back again when a motor swung round the curving corner.
The fragile sound of the bell was drowned, and the little shape would have gone under the fat-tyred wheels, to be swept into nothingness like chaff by the wind, had not Val sprung forward, and dashed across the road in front of the car, catching up the morsel in his rush.
He risked his life, but the lights of the car had shown him in one blinding flash that the frisking thing was a miniature black dog, no bigger than his hand; and Val loved dogs big and little with all that was best and warmest in him. Nothing could have tempted him to hurt a dog, or indeed any animal save those it was the legitimate sport of Englishmen to kill; and he could imagine himself murdering a man guilty of cruelty to any helpless creature.
The motor horn gave a shriek, and there was a grinding of brakes, jammed on with savage suddenness, but the car could not have stopped in time.
It was only Loveland"s quickness which saved him, and scarcely beyond touch of the tyres he stumbled, drawing up his knees to keep from being run over; but he had the tiny, beating body in his hand, held up out of harm"s way.
"You fool! You"d have had yourself to thank if you"d been smashed!"
growled the chauffeur, who was alone in the car. "And it"s G.o.d"s wonder you didn"t make me skid smack into that bench."
Loveland, picking himself up, did not think it worth while to answer, and the chauffeur, who heard the arrival of a policeman unsympathetic to motor men, decided not to stop for further argument. With a parting grumble, he slipped away into the night; and Loveland, by this time on his feet, walked quietly across the road again with the cause of the disturbance quivering in his hand.
"That was a close shave for you, you little beggar," he said half aloud.
"Who are you, I wonder, and where did you spring from?"
"Answers to name o" Shakespeare, and dropped out o" my pocket while I snoozed, I guess," said a voice from the shadow. "You bet I"m obliged to you for what you done. "Twas fine."
Under the big tree that roofed the seat, moon rays dripped between branches like water that trickles slowly through holes in old netting. A man who had been huddled asleep on one corner of the bench was on his feet, holding out eager hands to take the dog from Loveland: a shabby figure even in the dim light, with a hatchet face thin as a new moon, that glimmered pale between the black blot of a frowsy hat and the inky blur of a turned-up coat collar. Val could make out the features but indistinctly, yet he caught the impression of a quaint, patient humourousness, as if a character sketch penned on white paper in three or four sharp black lines had been pa.s.sed quickly before his eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Shakespeare"s Master