Lord Loveland Discovers America

"'Twould be to me. Say, I don't throw myself out much to strangers, but you saved my dog for me, while I was snoozin' like a sick dormouse, and there's somethin' about you kind o' gets me. Suppose we swop stories, – if you really ain't on in this act. If you're not kiddin' – playin' some game – if you're here because you're stumped, why maybe I might put you up to somethin' – see? Wasn't there a verse in the Bible about a lion and a mouse?"

"I think the lion and the mouse were Æsop," said Val.

"Never heard of the gent. But anyhow, I caught on to it in Sunday School – when I was a kid, I'm dead sure of that, and I always was a quoter. You ain't a New Yorker, are you?"

"No. I'm an Englishman," Loveland answered quickly.

"Gee, but you're a swell-lookin' emigrant! I ain't a New Yorker myself – not by birth. I was a hayseed till I turned nineteen; workin' on my stepfather's farm – mean old skinflint, but I couldn't see my way to cuttin' till my mother was gone. Then I footed it to New York – sixty mile – chuck full of hope, and nothin' else, unless beans."

"A regular Mark Tapley," said Val.

"Never played the part. In private life my name's Bill Willing: some switches it round to Willing Bill, because I generally do my day's work without howlin'; I blew into New York without attractin' much notice, and that's nineteen years ago, and I haven't attracted much since, that's a fact. But you may do better. Don't be discouraged by a setback, if your game's square, and I bet it is, or you wouldn't be in the dog savin' business. What is your lay, anyhow? – excuse the liberty."

"Retrieving my fortune," said Val, after a moment's reflection.

"You can see me one better. Mine's to make yet, and I'm no kid – like you. I won't see thirty-eight again. I'm an artist. But New York ain't woke up to my talent. Maybe I've been too versatile. That never did pay. The line I'd mapped out was paintin' pictures, but my chance was slow comin'. Had to take what I could get on the way along: supin', sandwichin', barkin' – "

"Eh, what?" broke in Loveland.

"You don't savvy? Oh, supin' in theatres. There's several, specially one in the Bowery, wouldn't 'a been complete without me for years, till I got the chuck like you did at the Waldorf. Sandwichin' – why, you know what that is, sure? You wouldn't think how you get the cramps shut up between the boards? The sandwichin' was generally in the theatrical line, too, so I've always kind of hovered around the profession, though I don't say I'm proud of my career as a barker in the dimes – museums, you know. There was money in the business, though, if the freaks hadn't caught on that I had the heart of a soft boiled egg – always ready to part if they worked the aged mother dodge, or the baby brother who threw fits. I ain't no penny-in-the-slot savings bank. Wish I was. I should be better off now. Besides, my voice ain't an automobile horn, and barkin' for a couple of seasons stove a hole in my top note. After that, no manager would take me with a pound of tea and a chromo, but one of my old govs switched me onto a job paintin' freak showboards, and I'd 'a been at it yet if freaks didn't last too long. Once you've put them on the boards, there they are. At present my speciality's meenoos."

Val looked blank, thinking of emus.

"French for grub cards. A swell like you ought to be on to that. But I'm just thinkin' what there is for you. This stunt of mine I dropped into by luck. 'Twas Shakespeare introduced me – like he did to you tonight."

"Why Shakespeare?" Loveland cut in.

"Oh, there's a – a girl in that story: actress in the theatre where I suped – a real actress, mind you, a Fascinator from Fascinatorville. Why Lil so much as looked at me, I don't know – but she did. I was near twice her age, and 'twould have been playin' the game too low down to try and hook onto her, though I was tempted – she was so pretty, so good to me. I don't know what would 'a been the upshot, if the property man, who had his eye on the gal, hadn't got me the sack, and Lil an engagement on the road. She and I drifted apart. I never wrote, though she asked me to; I knew 'twas better not, for her. But you see why I'm nuts on the dog. He was hers, and Shakespeare was her name for him. She loved Shakespeare's plays, and her ambition was to act in 'em. But all that's somethin' I wouldn't 'a mentioned – if you hadn't kind of earned the right to Shake's history. I was tellin' you about my speciality, and how Shake introduced me to it. We was on our beam ends, Shake and me, our ribs showin' through the silk. One mornin' after a night out – like this, only in a square downtown, I was circulatin' around till I blew into Twelfth Street, and dropped my eyes onto a new restaurant, with a good fried smell, and an idea hit my brain like a hammer. In I walks and offers to swop it with the boss for a dinner. He wasn't takin' any just then, but I talked till I waked him up, showed him what I could do in the art line, and began to work on the spot with a grand new thing in meenoos. I've been at it ever since, and though the pay don't go up by leaps and bounds, the house has, and lots o' the eaters say it's my work's made it what it is – brought in the public like a flock of sheep. I get two meals and three dimes a day out of the job, and I wouldn't be sleepin' in my country house tonight, if I hadn't run acrost a guy who needed my money more than I did. Well, it's all in the day's work; and I guess there ain't many swells have got a finer palace than this, though it's kind of draughty. Your castle across the pond ain't got a finer park, I bet?"

"My castle's full of draughts, too," Loveland humoured him.

"So you came over here to get out of 'em?"

"Exactly."

"And that fortune you want to retrace, or retrieve. Wisht I could help."

"I'm expecting a cablegram in the morning, that will put me all right, thank you," said Loveland. "You're a good chap, and I'm glad to have met you, for you've – er – broadened my outlook, as well as passed the time. I've only to worry through till tomorrow."

"That's some hours off," said Bill Willing. "Wisht I could invite you to my hotel where I hang out when I'm not at my country place, but the trouble is to see the colour of your money, or you don't see the colour of their beds."

"How much is it for a room?" asked Loveland.

"Oh, a room! I don't run to a room. A bed in a vast wilderness is good enough for me. But a quarter'll get you one. Three nickels for a bed."

Loveland searched his pockets, and dubiously exhibited two silver coins mixed democratically with a few nickels and impotent looking little coppers. The prospect appeared hopeless to him, but Willing exclaimed with delight.

"Gee! Forty-five cents! You're a bloated millionaire. You might be asleep in two beds at the Bat Hotel, instead of cooling in this ice-cream freezer."

"If there's the price of two beds, you must have one," said Loveland.

"Thank you. You're the real stuff," returned Bill, gratitude in his voice. "But I'm O. K. where I am. You stick to your stamps. I know just how you feel. I'm always chuckin' my last cent away on some poor dickybird, thinkin' 'twill be all right tomorrow and what's the odds."

"There are no odds against me this time," Val assured him. "You've cheered me up no end, and you must share what I have. But about the hotel?"

"It's clean all right. Mayn't be the Plaza or the Waldorf, but no dive. It's warm, and the rooms are real natty."

"What about food?" asked Loveland. "Can we run to it?" and he glanced at the coins in his hand.

"Keep the change. We'll eat for nothing. Now's our time to join the Bread Line."

Again Val looked blank, and again it was necessary for Bill Willing – guide, philosopher and friend – to explain. There were, said he, two very important lines drawn every night in New York for the benefit of the poor: the Bread Line and the Bed Line. Each was drawn in a public square; the former in Herald, the latter in Madison; and both were traced by the finger of Charity.

The Bed Line, Bill did not often patronize, because he could generally pay for his own sleeping accommodation, and if he couldn't, there were always the Parks. Besides, the parson chap who spoke in Madison Square every night for the benefit of the poor, could collect only money enough to supply a limited number of men with beds. There was such a long line waiting, always, and the unlucky ones went away into the night looking so disappointed. Bill couldn't bear that, or the thought that one more must go bedless because he had got in ahead. As for the Bread Line, that was different. There was usually enough to feed the whole line, with coffee thrown in. It was a good show, too, and sometimes when Bill had separated himself from his last coin, and wanted a little cheerful company, he linked onto the Bread Line. Tonight they would both go. "Unless," added Mr. Willing, "you're afraid some o' your swell friends may spot you?"

Even if Loveland had been afraid, he would have denied the imputation. "You're the only friend, swell or otherwise, that I have in New York," said he.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Lights of New York

It seemed to Lord Loveland that he had never known how dazzling light could be, till the night-lights of New York flung their diamonds into his eyes.

Though it was nearly midnight when he emerged from behind the purple bed-curtains of the sleeping Park, there was no sign that less secluded quarters of the city thought of sleep.

The amazing jewels of the city still scintillated against the sky, flashing coloured fire. The Great White Way still blazed with brightness brighter than day: the huge plate-glass windows of shops closed to customers, advertised attractions for tomorrow. Electric cars were still crowded, going up and down. Overhead was a ceaseless rush and roar of elevated trains: and Herald Square, which the comrades reached by short cuts and devious ways known to the initiated, seemed the beating heart of the big, vital body whose diamond-crowned head was in the sky.

In the glass-sided palace of the "Herald," tomorrow morning's paper was visibly going to press. There was a chewing rumble of huge printing machines, and from somewhere out of sight of the bronze owls' staring, electric eyes sprang covered wagons loaded with "up-state" editions, which must catch early trains. Newsboys were yelling extras, trying to howl each other down above the confused storm of sound; and as "Willing Bill" towed his convoy into the Square, Minerva lifted her noble bronze arm to give the midnight signal. Her pair of obedient blacksmiths swung their hammers lustily, and struck the bell twelve times.

Val and his companion were nearly the last in a long procession of applicants for newspaper hospitality, and for the first time in his life Lord Loveland found himself among the dregs of humanity, learning what it might be to suffer as they suffered, they who seethed in the cauldron of the world's misery.

He had known that this sort of thing existed; that there were men and women who went hungry and thirsty, who slept out of doors, and who had no place on earth's surface which even for a night they might call their own; but he had been wont to skip paragraphs about them in the papers, and had always avoided brushing against a shabby person in a crowded street. He had never felt any tie of blood between himself and common men, except the Tommy Atkins who fought and died round him in South Africa. Yet these weary ones on whom the light of Herald Square blazed down, these men of hopeless, concave faces, beaten in by sin or sorrow, pressed near to Loveland's soul and waked some feeling in it which he had never known. It was as if his friend of the Park had initiated him into some strange, secret society, in joining which the bare fact of membership gave at once a mysterious sense of brotherhood. Val was surprised that he felt no repulsion against the ragged wretches who crowded round him. He did not draw himself away from them, or resent their lack of respect for him as a superior being. He was sorry for them all, with a consciousness of kinship, which, he thought, he would probably remember with amusement tomorrow.

"They think you're some fly reporter, takin' notes; or a swell doin' the night sights," said Bill. "They don't like you much. But they won't bother you neither, only some chap may say 'What queer things you see, when you haven't got your gun.' If he does, don't you take notice, that's all."

Loveland promised forbearance, but his patience was not tried. In his turn (which came when his nose had turned a pale lilac with cold, and the silk-clad insteps above his pumps were slowly congealing) he received a tin of hot coffee, and a roll. Food and drink were so good, and, as Bill said, "filled such a long-felt want," that Val bolted them greedily, only to yearn for more when both were gone. But etiquette was strictly preserved in Herald Square. No one asked for a second helping, and each applicant, when he had drained his coffee to the last drop, walked away without a word unless it were a "thank you."

"Now, ho for the Bat Hotel," exclaimed Bill cheerfully. "It's a goodish step; but as for me, after that grub, I feel like I could do a sprint round the world."

Loveland was refreshed, too, and more than ever inclined to look on the experience as an adventure over which he would laugh tomorrow night. But he did not intend to forget Bill Willing when he forgot the troubles through which Bill was his pilot. He must do something for the poor chap, he said to himself, and glowed with hot coffee and a sense of warm generosity.

Bill's hotel, it appeared, was situated in the Bowery. There were others more or less of the same sort, dotted about in various streets of far eastern and far western New York, but Bill would not guarantee these. "I ain't a top wave swell myself – yet," he said, "but dirt and I ain't friends, and I won't risk no menagerie for neither of us, nor Shakespeare either. I've raised him to be particular. He's that sad when he's made a public thoroughfare of by one or two o' them critters as boarded the ark in disguise, that he won't look me in the face."

Shakespeare, who had shared his master's roll, and lapped the last spoonful of coffee, was an incredibly small, black animal of somewhat moth-eaten texture, who in form rather resembled a grasshopper. He had a little sharp nose, which might have been whittled into shape with a penknife; his legs were too long for his tiny body, and not much thicker than a pencil; but his gentle eyes, curiously like his master's, beamed with affection, and he was turning grey in the flower of his youth, owing to the lava heat of his boiling emotions.

Loveland had visions of buying Shakespeare a red collar when he had cashed his letter of credit tomorrow; but with a sudden pang, he remembered a difficulty concerning that letter of credit which had not occurred to him before. He had wired to the bank in London in the afternoon, and given as his address the Waldorf-Astoria. After the way in which he had been treated, and the manner of his exit, it would be beneath his dignity to go back, on any errand whatever. He must send to the hotel for the cablegram which, it seemed certain, would arrive during the morning; also for the visiting cards which some of Jim and Betty Harborough's friends were sure to leave after calling and finding him gone. Perhaps some of these cards would make the hotel people regret the error of their ways. But apologies would be in vain. He would go to the Plaza, or the Belmont —

"We approach the castle doors, me lord," grandiloquently announced Bill, little guessing that his jesting way of address was that to which Loveland was accustomed from his inferiors.