Kitabı oku: «Lord Loveland Discovers America», sayfa 7

CHAPTER TWELVE
Exit Lord Loveland

Loveland walked out of the dining-room of the Waldorf-Astoria hardly knowing what he meant to do.

His wish was to punish those who had insulted him; but how? – was the question ringing in his brain. A gentleman could not knock down a management, or punch its head. "A Management" seemed intangible, out of reach.

Val's first thought was to march up to the desk, and "have a row" with somebody, but an instant's reflection showed him that it would be more in accordance with dignity to go to his own quarters and command a representative of the "Management" to come to him.

This resolve he carried out. Having reached his room, and called down through the telephone for the manager, he was not kept waiting long before a gentlemanly, middle-aged person appeared at his sitting-room door.

"Are you the manager of this hotel?" Loveland enquired brusquely.

"I represent the manager," the newcomer returned.

"Very well, then," said Loveland. "I want you to tell me the meaning of this." And he indicated the typewritten letter and the two bills, which he had laid conspicuously on the table.

The man scarcely glanced at the papers, about which he was evidently well informed already. "The meaning is, that unfortunately we're obliged to request that you vacate this suite immediately," he replied.

"Then, this notice is actually intended for me?"

"It certainly is."

"Why were the rooms let to me this morning if they were wanted tonight?"

"That I can't say. I only know they are wanted."

"Suppose I refuse to go?"

"Oh, I guess you won't do that."

"You're right," said Val. "I wouldn't stop here now if you paid me twelve times as much as you want me to pay you. And, by the way – I can't pay tonight. You'll have to wait till tomorrow, when I can get to the – er – bank."

"I'm afraid we can't wait," the other answered quickly. "If you aren't able to pay we shall have to keep your baggage till you do."

Loveland stared. "That's a little too steep, isn't it?" he sneered. "You turn me out of your hotel in the most insulting and unprovoked manner, and then expect me to go somewhere else without my luggage. Are these American manners with foreigners?"

"They have to be, with some foreigners," returned the other, smiling mysteriously.

"I intend to go now, whether you like or not," said Val, "and take my luggage with me."

"You can't take it unless you pay your bill. That's the law, and our police know how to enforce it. If I were you I wouldn't do anything to make it necessary to call the police. Once in their hands, you might be quite a while getting out, you know."

Loveland clenched his hands, to keep from striking this mouth-piece of the "Management." He would not be drawn into a vulgar brawl, as a preface to his New York campaign in search of an heiress. Things had begun badly enough, as they were, but nothing had happened yet at which he might not be able to laugh – rather bitterly perhaps – tomorrow. He had heard of horrors in connection with the New York police; innocent British visitors arrested and kept for days in gaol, for some offence never committed; the newspapers printing lies about them, to be copied in London, and read by their shocked acquaintances. Such things he had been told, and though they mightn't be true, Loveland could not afford to risk any such incident for himself. He was far too important.

It seemed to him that there was a peculiar significance, almost a menace, in the hint he had just been given. If he were a criminal escaping from justice, instead of a British peer with a proud name which he would willingly bestow on a daughter of America, just such an emphasis might have been used to warn him that he had better bear the ills he knew, if he did not want to incur worse evils.

Val believed that Cadwallader Hunter had somehow contrived to bring about this hideous state of affairs; though he could not imagine how, unless all Americans were ready to band together and avenge one another's fancied wrongs against a stranger. On the face of it, nothing could be more ridiculous than to suppose that an Englishman of title was being asked to leave a New York hotel in the evening, because he had been a little rude to a retired Major and a newspaper man, in the morning. Yet, for his life, Loveland could think of no other reason; and his polite but cold companion did not seem inclined to explain, unless in answer to undignified entreaties.

"My luggage is worth a lot more than what I owe you here," he said.

"We have heard all about that luggage," was the meaning reply.

Val bit his lip. For the moment he had forgotten Foxham's treachery, but he remembered it now with recurring rage. Evidently the valet had poured forth the history of the great unpacking episode.

Lord Loveland made no retort to the innuendo, for he was busy with a mental calculation. His sole worldly possessions in America consisted of the things he had had in use on board ship. The luggage itself was old, though good of its kind; and the silver fittings in his suit-case would not fetch much if sold. As for his watch, it was a mere cheap, stop-gap affair of gun-metal, bought to tide over the interval until he could redeem the gold repeater he had rashly pawned in London. The studs and sleeve-links that he was wearing were the poorest in his collection. They had been Foxham's choice for the voyage, not his; and now he understood Foxham's underlying motive.

"In my opinion we shall be lucky if the sale of your effects covers the bill," calmly went on the representative of the "Management."

"I wouldn't advise your people to try and sell my things!" exclaimed Loveland.

"They will wait the customary length of time."

"They'd better be jolly careful what they do," Loveland broke out. "Anyhow, I'm much mistaken if I haven't a case in law against the hotel already. If I have – and in justice I ought to have – I shall proceed."

The other smiled for the first time. "I don't expect that any of us will lie awake nights worrying," said he.

Loveland tried to crush the man with a look, but he was not to be so easily abashed. "I've said all I want to say now," Val informed him icily. "You can go, and I will give up the rooms when I'm ready."

"That's all right, as long as it's inside half an hour," returned the other, still with unruffled politeness. "But I have to stay till you do give them up."

"Why this fondness for my society?" enquired Loveland, with raised eyebrows.

The man smiled with a certain good-natured perception of the humour in the situation. "It's duty keeps me as much as pleasure," said he.

"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest, eh? This hotel seems to follow that rule with a vengeance. But I'll take the will for the deed. Strange as it may seem" (Loveland was enjoying his own sarcasm) "I want you to go."

"Very sorry I can't oblige you."

"Confound you, do you think I'll set the place on fire the minute your back is turned?"

"Not so much that as – there are other things you might do."

"What other things? Really I should like to know, for the sake of curiosity."

"Well, if you're bound to get it out of me, I've got to stay and see you don't remove any articles of value."

"By Jove! So that's it? My own, or yours?"

"What's yours is ours at present, and what's ours is our own – as the bride said to the bridegroom."

Val could almost have laughed, though not at the joke. He – the Marquis of Loveland, an officer in the Grenadier Guards – was to be watched lest he should steal the hotel soap, or sneak off with his own toothbrush!

He went white and red, and white again. If by a word he could have tumbled the whole hotel down in an earthquake, he would have been willing to be caught under the ruins. He had a wild, boyish conviction that by subjecting himself now to the extremest inconvenience, he could by and by cause the hotel management poignant remorse. Yes, he would take them at their word. He would walk out of the house just as he was, leaving everything he had behind him. This would make their guilt the blacker when it came to be brought up against them, as it would be very soon, probably as soon as tomorrow. Then they would seek him out, and crawl in apology, begging him to come back at any price, or at no price. But nothing would induce him to cross the threshold of the Waldorf-Astoria again, no, not even if every member of the staff grovelled at his feet. He would not even take his overcoat, and if he were struck down with pneumonia, so much the worse for these insolent people. As for himself, he did not care what happened. He felt as he had when a little boy, and some tutor of unusual firmness had dared to reproach him or attempt punishment. At such times he had wished that he might instantly die, or at the least, fall in a fit, for the sake of frightening his cruel persecutor.

His cap (his only head-covering, as he had forgotten a bowler on board ship) lay on a table, and he held it out for the enemy's inspection. "You say all that is mine is yours," he sneered. "This may have cost six or seven shillings when it was new. Now it would fetch two at most. I will pay you for it. Half a crown is the least I have. Pray, keep the change."

He laid a coin – his last large coin – down on the table where the cap had been, and without another word walked nonchalantly out of the room.

The gentlemanly man did not follow to protest, or to offer the overcoat, as Val half fancied he would do. And without stopping to think coherently, Loveland passed by the lift, scorning to take advantage of its convenience, and ran down flight after flight of stairs, his blood drumming in his ears.

A red cloud before his eyes seemed to screen him from the world. Below, in the great hall through which he had to pass on his way out of the hotel, lights glared and dazzled, and the talk and laughter of many persons sounded in his ears like the evil voices of the Black Stones that beset Arabian Nights' travellers on their way to the Singing Tree and the Golden Water.

Loveland pushed on, blindly, conscious of himself as the one real entity in a crowd of Will o' the Wisps, and wicked lure-lights. His sole concern with the people in the hateful, glaring picture, was that they should suspect nothing of his feelings. He walked with his head up and something that he meant for a smile on his lips; nor was it an affectation that he appeared to recognize no one, though Cadwallader Hunter – who had been waiting to see this exit – believed it to be.

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 passed 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 passing, 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, passed 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 passed and repassed.

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 passing 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 sparsely 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 appetite 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 buttons like a conjurer, so revolted his fastidious imagination, that he snatched 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 compass, 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 gratitude 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 anticipations 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 assurance 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 gratitude 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 gratitude," 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.