The Major was standing almost in Loveland"s path, speaking with a lady whose name had been on one of Jim Harborough"s envelopes, and as the tall Englishman came towards him, he deliberately turned his back.
"Sic semper milordibus," he said half aloud. Which far-fetched witticism made the lady laugh.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Shadows
The night was warm for November in New York; still, there was a decided crispness in the air which Loveland felt as he went out.
The streets were brilliant with light, and half New York appeared to be abroad, although the theatres had been in full swing for nearly an hour.
But all the women wore cloaks, and the men overcoats. Loveland, in his dinner jacket and wide expanse of shirt front, his pumps and silk stockings, his cloth travelling cap pulled over his eyes, would have been noticeable even if his height and good looks had not made him a marked figure. Everybody who pa.s.sed stared, and more than a few glanced back at him. Here and there some pretty woman laughed at a joking comment whispered by her escort; and when his first hot rage began to cool, it was uncomfortably borne in upon Loveland that he was the observed of many observers.
Like most Englishmen, he loathed being conspicuous, and in his present plight it was especially hateful, since being conspicuous meant also to be ridiculous.
His ears, shut by anger, were opened by vanity, and he heard a woman say to a man that he "looked as if he"d just been turned down by his best girl." "And kicked out by Pa," added her companion; at which they both giggled, and the tingling in Loveland"s veins drove out the chill which had begun to creep in.
He longed to call a cab, and hide himself from staring eyes, but he had scarcely a shilling left. There was nothing to do but walk on, until he found some hotel which would take him in on trust. As his brain cooled, he began to realise that it might be difficult to find any such hotel.
Here he was, on a winter"s night, a foreigner in a strange city, walking the streets without an overcoat, and with only a coin or two in his pocket. He remembered that, in the afternoon, when dealing out visiting cards and letters of introduction, he had slipped his cardcase into a pocket of his overcoat, where it still remained. That overcoat remained in one of the rooms lately his at the Waldorf-Astoria. What a fool he had been after all to leave it behind. The watcher could hardly have torn it off his back. As it was, a whim of silly pride had deprived him of a means of identification, as well as a decent protection for his body.
Why should a hotel-keeper consent to take him in, without luggage, and with nothing save his bare word--not even a bit of engraved pasteboard--to prove that he was the Marquis of Loveland? He had never put himself mentally in the place of anything so low down in the social scale as the keeper of a hotel; yet instinctively he performed the feat now, and judged the case against his own interests.
Nevertheless, as he did not wish to prowl about New York all night, he could but try his luck. Meeting a policeman, he enquired for a respectable, inexpensive hotel in a quiet street, not too far away; and did his best to look unconscious of the big man"s concentrated gaze fixed on the large white oval of his shirt front.
"Yez might try the New House, on Toyty Thoyd Street," was the advice that followed upon reflection; and Loveland was obliged to ask three times before he was able to translate "Toyty Thoyd" into Thirty-third Street. Then, he had to turn and retrace his steps, for he had been wandering uptown, and must have covered some distance, as he guessed by the length of time it took him to reach the Waldorf-Astoria again.
Coming near, so that the huge building loomed above him like a mountain flaming on all its heights, he was tempted to cross to the other side of the street; but, ashamed of the impulse as childish, he marched stolidly ahead, and even forced himself to turn his face towards the brilliant square of the door-way. As the light caught and photographed him in pa.s.sing, a man who had been standing in front of the hotel under the iron canopy, with the air of waiting for someone, started after Loveland, walking just fast enough to keep him well in sight.
Val turned into Thirty-third Street, and stopped before the New House, which advertised itself in a blaze of starry electric letters. The man on his trail smiled as he saw the tall figure in evening dress hesitate for an instant, and then hurl himself at a revolving door. He himself strolled on, but he did not go far. When he had taken a dozen steps he wheeled, pa.s.sed the hotel again, took a dozen more steps, and again came back.
He was a short man, with square shoulders, a large, close-cropped black head set on a short neck into which a double chin bulged, as if he had swallowed a sponge, and it had stuck in his throat as it expanded. His hair glittered like a thick coat of black varnish, and his black eyes glittered also. They looked out from under heavy lids which pouched underneath, and were set too close on either side of a well-cut nose. He was clean shaven, thus making the most of his best feature, a mouth which was handsome despite the hard lines that deep draughts from the cup of life had traced round it. The man was well dressed, with a white silk scarf protecting his evening shirt from the sealskin lining of his overcoat, and he looked not only successful but confident of success.
Yet there was anxiety and nervous excitement in the flash of his eyes towards the door of the hotel, each time he pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed.
It was when he had just taken his sixth turn that Loveland shot out through the revolving door even more suddenly than he had shot in. The watcher was near enough to see the look on his face--the tenseness of the lips and drawing together of the eyebrows--and his own expression said "I thought so!" as plainly as words--if there had been anyone there to read it. But Loveland was entirely absorbed in himself, and in bitter thoughts of the hateful experience he had just gone through. He did not notice the man who lingered not far away, and the few people pa.s.sing had no idea that a little drama was being enacted in pantomime under their eyes. They all looked at the tall young Englishman without an overcoat, but they did not connect the other man with him.
It was hardly to be hoped that there would be a room disengaged in a hotel for a nervous young gentleman with an exposed white shirt-front, no luggage, and a missing cardcase. When Val had explained that he was Lord Loveland, just landed from England, the hotel clerk turned away to hide either a yawn or a grin, and seemed no more inclined to remember the existence of an unoccupied bedroom than if his client had been plain Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones.
"We had a gentleman from England here last week," he said, pleasantly.
"His name was Walker, London. Sorry we can"t accommodate your lordship."
Then Loveland had squared his shoulders and marched out into the night, which seemed by now grimly cold and unfriendly. The very stars had a sarcastic twinkle, as if they glimmered down from their safe, comfortable heights and laughed.
Val was not inclined to try any more hotels. He felt very young in his loneliness and humiliation, and his heart yearned wistfully for the shabby Scotch shooting-box where his mother lived and thought long thoughts of her. The snow that had fallen so coldly outside her windows seemed warmer than these stars that with their sparkling embroidery canopied a strange land; and the spa.r.s.ely furnished rooms of the lodge were more beautiful in his remembrance than the gorgeous suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.
His mother grudged herself comforts for his sake, yet she had a fire.
Val generally pictured her in autumn and winter, bending towards the glow of the rosy flames, holding out her beautifully shaped hands to their kisses. He would be thankful to share the warmth of that fire now; and the faint scent of burning peat--cheapest fuel!--as it stole fragrantly into his memory, gave him a horrid twinge of homesickness such as he had never felt, even in South Africa; for he had had friends around him in the war days.
When he had been in Scotland last--on that flying visit which began with good advice and ended with pink pearls--he had complained of the cooking.
He thought of that, too, at this moment, and laughed a little to himself. He would have been very glad of a chance to taste some of that Scotch broth which he had discarded because it was too thick and too salt. He was sharply hungry; and this hunger gnawed with a wicked persistence it had lacked in South Africa, because in those stirring times it had been shared by all alike, merrily, with jokes.
Yes, he was hungry, sickeningly hungry; and he did not see any prospect of satisfying his appet.i.te that night, unless he should tear the gold sleeve-links out of his shirtcuffs to offer humbly in some cheap restaurant in exchange for a meal. They were not worth much intrinsically; but the thought of the cuffs denuded, ignominious, and the picture of himself--metaphorically--swallowing the b.u.t.tons like a conjurer, so revolted his fastidious imagination, that he s.n.a.t.c.hed at an alternative, almost any alternative. So it was that, when something which his mother would have called an inspiration floated nebulously through his head, Loveland welcomed it as an astronomer welcomes a new star.
He remembered hearing Betty or Jim Harborough say that in American towns a man might call upon a family he knew well, up to the hour of ten in the evening. It was not nearly ten yet, and though there was no family in New York whom Val knew well, it was a case of any port in a storm.
The Coolidges were now out of the running, and the Miltons; but a Mr.
and Mrs. Beverly, with a daughter, had (half apologetically) invited him to visit at their house in Park Avenue. They were rich or richish, though with a trail of trade behind them, and the girl was pretty or prettyish. She seemed positively beautiful to the hungry and homeless Loveland, as the vision of her face lightened the cloud of his misery, and he would have been almost ready to pledge his future to Miss Beverly for a mess of pottage in the way of a kindly welcome, a dinner, a bed, and money in hand for the letter of credit.
He had cannily refused the invitation, pleading many engagements difficult to keep if visiting (the same formula had answered several hospitable offers), but he could easily explain the late call, by lightly recounting the story of his misfortune, making a jest of it, and throwing himself on the family"s mercy. He hoped and believed that they would insist upon his staying all night in their house, also that a loan sufficient to pay his hotel bill and redeem his luggage might be suggested.
The prospect of release from all his woes was so soothing, and apparently so easy to compa.s.s, that the mere thought was a warming cordial. Val walked briskly back into Fifth Avenue, and asked the way of the first man he met.
The man was amiable, and Loveland felt an impulse of grat.i.tude towards him for lucid and fluent explanations. After all, some of these Americans had very agreeable manners!
Val found Park Avenue a dignified street, and with the pleasantest antic.i.p.ations ran up the steps of the Beverlys" house, the number of which had fortunately stuck in his memory. There were lights in all the windows of the two lower floors, and as he pressed the electric bell, he saw a shadow flit across the half transparent silk curtains--a shadow which was like a faint silhouette of plump little Madge Beverly.
"It"s all right--they"re at home, thank goodness!" he said to himself, as he waited for the door to open; and a sense of calm well-being fell upon him, with the a.s.surance that his troubles were over at last. It was like the joy of a bad sailor when the bell of the Channel boat clangs at Calais after a hideous welter of seas in crossing.
A neat servant was soon framed against a yellow background of cheerful light; and at some distance, screened in shadow, the man who had followed Loveland waited once more with a certain anxiety in his eyes.
Val enquired for Mr. and Mrs. Beverly. They were at home, said the servant, in the "living room," with a party of relations who had come to welcome them back after their visit to Europe. If the gentleman would step into the reception room and send up his card, Mr. and Mrs. Beverly would no doubt be down in a minute.
"But when people are at home one doesn"t send in one"s card," said Loveland, arguing according to English ways.
The servant, trained to American fashions and knowing no others, looked surprised at this statement. He thought the tall gentleman without an overcoat must be a peculiar person, and he had been taught to distrust peculiar persons.
"Tell your master and mistress that Lord Loveland has called, but will not keep them long from their friends," said Val, growing impatient under the man"s narrow look.
The servant resented the suggestion that, as a free man, in a free country, he could have a master and mistress. And a Lord Anybody sounded like a practical joke to him; for though he had begun by being a Swede, he had been an American since he was short-coated. However, he was well trained, according to his lights and the family traditions of the Beverlys. He ushered the Practical Joker into a handsome drawing-room, and vanished upstairs to explain the odd young gentleman who never announced himself with cards.
The parlour was a very nice parlour, tastefully furnished. There were portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Beverly, facing each other upon the walls; and the lady"s picture, evidently painted many years ago, so poignantly suggested what Madge would be at her age, that Loveland was alarmed.
"I"ll do anything else to show my grat.i.tude except marry the daughter,"
he was making up his mind in advance, when the servant returned, with a grave face. Indeed, it could not have been more solemn if he had come to break the news that all Lord Loveland"s surviving relatives had perished together in a holocaust.
"Mr. and Mrs. Beverly are very sorry, sir," said the man, "but they are too much engaged to see anybody tonight."
Val rose, haughtily. His pride and his hopes had both received another severe rap, all the sharper because unexpected, but his face did not show his mortification.
"I"ll trouble you to open the door," he said, as the servant stood petrified. And so once more Lord Loveland was thrown upon the hospitality of the streets. The flitting shadows were gone from the windows, which still gleamed cheerily; but they were dark to the outcast"s heart.
"I needn"t have bothered about how to show my grat.i.tude," he reminded himself. "I don"t think they"re exactly going to make a point of my marrying their girl, after all."
He was able to smile at this thought, but it was a very faint, chill smile. And his amazement at the treatment he was receiving everywhere, in place of the flattering attention he had been led to expect, was blank and blind as a high stone wall without doors or windows.