Lord Loveland Discovers America

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 cañons 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 grass 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 prick 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 God'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 passed quickly before his eyes.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Shakespeare's Master

Lord Loveland's habit was to give a wide berth to common people, if Chance, the democrat, threw him near them, with the exception of "Tommies," who for him as a soldier were a class by themselves – a class in which he recognised humanity that touched his own. He did not love ugliness or shabbiness, which as like as not meant microbes; but he had come down so near to the depths of reality tonight, that he had no sense of his own superiority, or inclination to shrink away when the man's hands touched his as they took the rescued animal.

"I came along in the nick of time," said Loveland, "and I like dogs. I thought I could just do it, and I did."

"'Twas fine, all the same," repeated the dog's master. "I ain't much of a public speaker, but I guess you know how I feel, all right. 'Twould 'a pretty near put me out o' business if – " He did not finish his sentence, but the tenderness with which he tucked into his pocket the wretched little apology for a dog made further words superfluous.

Loveland, always polite to inferiors, unless overmastered by rage, looked at the bench as if it were the first comer's property.

"If you don't mind, I'll sit down," he said.

The shabby one laughed. "I ain't paid for my lodgings," said he, "and if I had, you'd be welcome – after what you done. You can have me for a doormat if you like."

"Thanks," said Loveland, laughing, too. "I don't need a doormat. If it was an overcoat, now – "

"You could have mine, if you weren't twice the size for it, and if Anthony Comstock wouldn't run me in if he saw what I've got on underneath. But I guess you wouldn't have to wish twice for a coat, if 'twas in your part."

"My part?" repeated Val.

"If the piece you're in called for it."

"I don't understand."

They were both sitting down now, filling the far corners of the bench, and talking across it.

"Well, 'tain't my show. I don't want to be fresh. But though I've seen a lot o' night-bloomin' plants growin' in this flower garden, I don't just recall seein' one like you take root."

"You wouldn't now, if I had anywhere else to go," returned Loveland, with his usual frankness.

"Gee! You take me for the fall guy. But say, do you want anything out o' me? 'Cause, if you do, you can have it. If you're a journalist out on a night stunt, and what you're fishin' for is the history o' my life, I'm on, for Shakespeare's sake. Any form you like, sad or gay, moral lesson or otherwise."

"Hang journalists!"

"Think so? Well, millionaire then, seein' how the poor live. You look the swell all right."

"Thank you. Wish I felt as I look, then."

"You'd make the Gould and Vanderbilt crowd look like visitors, if you hadn't forgot your overcoat."

"I left it at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel – "

"Sa – ay, if that ain't like me!" drawled the man, the twinkle of moonlight striking a humourous glint in his eye. "Kind of absent-minded. I left my Sunday suit just that way at the White House last week, where I'd been spending Saturday to Monday with my friend Willy T."

"You think I'm lying?" said Loveland, with curiosity rather than resentment.

"Just kiddin'."

"You're mistaken. They turned me out of the hotel – "

"Gee! But you was there?"

"Yes."

"If that ain't the swell thing! I wouldn't mind bein' turned out, if once they'd let me in. I should say to myself, 'Well, sir, you've lived.' That's what I never have done, but what I'm always meanin' to do, when my time comes. Say, would it be offensive if I asked why they – er – "

"Turned me out? I couldn't pay for my dinner."

"Had you eat it?"

"No. I wish now I had."

"I believe you. Whe – ew! Just to eat once at the Waldorf!"

"I had lunch there," said Val, beginning to be a little warmer, because he was amused.

"Bet it was bully."

"I wasn't hungry – then."

"Pity! Still," the man at the other end of the bench murmured reflectively, "you've got it to remember, and I guess a lot of other nice things."

"If that were any comfort!"