Lord Loveland Discovers America

There came no cablegram from Scotland next day. Loveland's mother did not answer his appeal. But Val tried to persuade himself that this was not strange. Perhaps she could not get together such a sum as he had asked for, without a little delay, but she would send as soon as possible. He was sure of that as he was sure that his present address ought to be First Circle, Hades.

The dollar which remained to him after sending his expensive cry across the sea, was gone. He borrowed of Bill Willing, who offered and was delighted to lend. In a day or two at most, Loveland said, he would repay, and planned to give Bill a handsome present as well. Meanwhile Loveland passed his time miserably between Alexander the Great's and the Bat Hotel, or walking the streets in the desperate hope of seeing some English face he knew. He saw many pleasant faces, to whom no appeal of sorrow would be made in vain. But they were strangers' faces, and he was not a beggar yet.

He had bought with Bill's money – an advance from Alexander – two or three collars, a change of linen, and a dark necktie, therefore he looked smart and prosperous enough in his tweed suit to pass muster in a crowd, the absence of an overcoat seeming a mere eccentricity. Perhaps there were men who envied the handsome young Englishman who strolled past them with a jaunty, leisured air, while they were forced to hurry. But he would have given a good deal for the need of hurry.

Four days dragged by, including one ghastly Sunday; and when there was still no word from Lady Loveland, Val began to feel the heavy conviction that none would ever come. Some awful spell had fallen upon him, it seemed, a curse which made him a pariah even for those who loved him best. It had begun with Foxham's treachery; and now it had come to his mother's neglect. What might follow, he could not guess; he would rather not try to guess.

He thought over his past, and realised that he had been selfish; but he did not feel that he had ever done anything which deserved such a punishment as this, if punishment it were – if there were a God who watched the children of the earth, and punished, or rewarded, their deeds. Never before had it occurred to him to pity others, beyond a "poor old chap, so sorry, don't you know," and a quick forgetting; but now he was filled with a dumb sympathy for everyone who suffered. Above this bright, gay city – the gayest and brightest Val had ever known – it seemed that his eyes had gained a magic keenness to see the smoke of human suffering rise like incense, to the clear remoteness of the sky.

Loveland did not always take his meals at Alexander's. Sometimes he let a meal-time pass, too deeply depressed to be hungry; or if Bill Willing insisted on food for both, there were places where it could be obtained even more cheaply than at Alexander the Great's – when Alexander himself, and not Isidora, was behind the counter.

Val had met the "Boss" now, though not officially. While he had a few dimes and nickels in his pocket, he patronised the restaurant, glad to have a glimpse of Isidora's friendly, pretty face, and a chance to warm himself at the glowing stove. The "Boss" regarded him as a client – a "queer cuss," down on his luck, but worth being civil to, for in New York you never knew how men's fortunes might change.

Nevertheless, Loveland realised that Alexander had as much real kindness of heart for the world in general as Shylock, or a tiger. He had his friends, perhaps – for tigers may have friends, in their native jungle, if there be no question of a carcass to divide; but when most sleek and smiling, there was something vaguely terrible about the fat Jew. Wake the tiger in him from its sleep of purring prosperity, and it would spring, tearing and rending with unsheathed claws the creature who had roused it.

Isidora, thought Loveland, must resemble her mother, who, it appeared, was long ago dead; and maybe that was one reason why the fierce-eyed Jew loved the girl so jealously, as a tiger loves its young, or as Shylock loved Jessica. She had something of his Hebraic cast of feature, although he had taken a Christian wife; but nothing could be less like the hawk-eye, with its fierce glance suddenly unveiled, the cruel nose, and the big rapacious mouth of the gross, elderly man, than the langourous beauty of the young girl.

His father had been a German Jew, but he – once Isaac Solomon, now Alexander the Great – had been born in the slums of New York, and had fought his way up, biting, clawing, or fawning, whichever seemed the wisest course. Now he was growing rich. He was proud of his own portrait on the walls, in the battle-paintings, proud of the queer pictorial menus and smart advertising cards which helped to make the success of the venture in which he had risked his capital; but he acknowledged no debt of gratitude to Bill Willing's ingenuity, and would have sacked the artist the moment he ceased to be useful. He decried the value of Bill's work; he bullied his two black cooks and his ill-paid waiters; nor had his prosperity given him any fellow feeling for others, who, like himself, were struggling to reach the top.

If you deserved to get on, you got on, and devil take the hindmost, was Alexander's motto. But he loved and admired Isidora, and though he grumbled when she asked for money, secretly his chief joy in piling up a fortune was for her future, that she might marry well and hand his name on, for posthumous honours. He had already picked out the bridegroom, a young Jew with goggle eyes, a turned up moustache, and glittering black hair; a fondness for celluloid collars and red neckties; a smooth manner with his prospective father-in-law, and a truculent front for his inferiors. The young man was making "good money" as a "drummer" for a firm of Jewish tobacco merchants, but there was a slight "tache" upon his parentage, and he would be willing to take Alexander's name, on marrying Alexander's daughter. Bye-and-bye, when years from now Alexander might wish to retire on his pies and fried oysters, as other heroes had retired on their laurels, Leo Cohen would, with Isidora, carry on the restaurant and its glory from generation to generation.

This was Alexander's dream, and woe unto him who should try to interfere with its fulfilment! But he had no fear of any such dangerous person, even when Leo was away drumming up interest for a certain firm in the West, and a tall, handsome, sulky-looking young Englishman was dropping in every day for cheap food and a smile from Isidora.

If Loveland had had money, he would have sent off other cablegrams, but he soon came down to his last copper; and Bill, though willing by nature as by name, seldom had in his best days more to lend him than fifteen cents at a time.

On the fifth day the situation passed beyond bearing. Not only was Loveland penniless, but he could not bring himself to borrow more of Bill's pitiful nickels and hard-earned dimes. Each one of those coins was more to Bill than a sovereign (usually someone else's sovereign) had been to Lord Loveland in his palmy days. The thing couldn't go on; and so Val was saying to Bill as the two drank hot coffee (at Bill's expense) standing up before the counter at Alexander the Great's on the fifth morning after Loveland's arrival in New York.

It was not quite seven o'clock, but Bill had finished his work on the "meenoos," and had invited P. Gordon to "stoke his furnace" at an expenditure of two cents.

Alexander, who had presided at a political ward meeting the night before, had not yet come down to growl at his man-servant, his maid-servant, and all within his gates. "Dutchy" had been discharged with violence the night before, because he had drowned his vast homesickness in unlimited beer, and "Blinkey" was the only member of the household on view except the black cook Dick and Dick's assistant.

"Bill, I can't stand this any longer. I shall have to work or steal – anything but borrow more – until I can touch my money," Loveland broke out, when Blinkey had disappeared behind the red curtain and was being harangued in the distance by big Dick.

"It ain't easy to do either in New York," said Bill, mildly.

"To think of my being practically reduced to starvation and nakedness, with a letter of credit for a hundred and fifty pounds in my pocket!" groaned Val. "Do you think old Alexander would advance me anything if I told him my whole story?"

"Oh, I guess I wouldn't tell him the story," Bill advised, hastily.

"Why not?"

"Well, he's got a sharp tongue, Alexander has."

"In England such a fellow could only get at me at all through my servants."

"I – suppose so," agreed Bill, gently. "But this ain't England."

"I should think it wasn't, worse luck."

"You do have bad luck," said Bill. "But 'twouldn't change it if you asked Alexander for a loan on that letter of credit. If he said anything fit for publication, he'd only say, if the bank wouldn't accommodate you, he wouldn't; and what the dickens did you take him for? When I want a quarter before it's due, it's like gettin' milk out of a corkscrew; and the one thing he thinks of, is whether I shall get run over by an automobile before I work out the money next morning. Oh, I know Alexander."

"What's Pa been up to now?" pertly demanded the voice of Pa's fair daughter.

Isidora had come in while the two were so deeply occupied in conversation and the dregs in their coffee cups, that they had not seen her lift the curtain.

Since the day of her first introduction to P. Gordon, she had not appeared at this early hour of the morning. Her father was generally at his post, and when he was there, Isidora was supposed to exist not for use, but for ornament. However, she knew that Alexander was now reposing after last night's eloquence, and she had taken advantage of his absence. This time she was not in wrapper and curling pins. She had dressed herself with great care for the day, having learned from the "hired girl" that Bill Willing's "swell friend" had come in with him.

"What's Pa been up to now, I say?" she asked again, before the startled and mortified Bill could answer.

"Oh, nothing," replied the artist, apologetically. "We was just talkin'."

"I was wondering if he would advance me anything, enough to get back to England with – on my letter of credit?" Loveland frankly explained.

Isidora's eyes dilated at Val's suggestion of going back to England. It had not occurred to her, facts being as stated in the newspapers, that he would wish to return to his own country; and as fortunately, after the first sensational paragraphs, his affairs had been crowded out of public interest by various startling events of far greater importance, she had thought that he would be thankful to "worry along" as he was.

"Get back to England!" she echoed, blankly.

"It seems the one thing to do now, if I weren't kept here by the lack of a few wretched sovereigns," said Loveland. "If your father would trust me – "

"Oh, he wouldn't!" Isidora hastened to put that idea out of P. Gordon's mind, once and for ever. "He never trusted anybody yet, and he wouldn't begin with you. Why, he says his success in life comes from never believin' anybody but himself. If a man tells him it's a nice day, he goes to the window and peeks out before takin' a walk without his umbrella. And he'd think 'twas like takin' a walk in his best clothes when it rained cats and dogs, to lend a furriner money."

"On a letter of credit?"

"Pa perfectly despises that word 'credit.'"

Loveland gave up hope of winning confidence and obtaining dollars from Alexander the Great. "This state of things is enough to make a man blow his brains out!" he exclaimed.

"I guess you need your brains now more than you ever did," suggested Bill. "And you couldn't git 'em put back where they belonged, if everything come right directly they was out. What I think of, when them ideas get to workin' in my head, is the awful long time you have to stay dead, whether you're suited or not. It's a lot easier to pawn your dress clothes, and see what turns up."

Before Loveland could answer Isidora clapped her pretty hands, which were much cleaner than usual since P. Gordon had come into her daily life.

"Don't pawn 'em!" she cried. "That's made me think of something. Pa's always talkin' about visible assets, or somethin' like that. Well, your dress suit might be a visible asset if – if you're really sick of life when you can't pay your way. But are you dead sure you are sick of it?"

"Dead sure!" echoed Loveland. "What have you thought of for me to do?"

"You won't be mad if I tell you?"

"What nonsense! Am I in a position to be 'mad'? – in the sense you mean – though it's a wonder I'm not mad in another sense. I'd sweep crossings if I could get the job – or break stones – if anyone wanted them broken. But I suppose you're not going to suggest one of these employments, as evening clothes wouldn't be suitable to either."

"I was thinking," said Isidora, "that – I might tease Pa to take you in – in Dutchy's place, if – you'd care about it?"

"Good Heavens! Be a waiter?" stammered Loveland. He had felt ready for any ignominious, if paying, work when in the abstract; but as soon as it took definite form – and such a form as this —

"Oh! I knew you'd be cross!" Isidora pouted.

Loveland was silent; and as his dark eyebrows – so like his cousin Betty's – were drawn together in a frown, the girl supposed that he was sulking.

"I only thought it'd be better than nothing," she explained hurriedly, "if Pa'd let you; but perhaps he wouldn't. He'd think he was doin' a favour – see? He wouldn't understand how you felt about it. I'd have to explain you was temp'rily embarrassed; and my, what a howling swell of a waiter you'd look. You'd get two dollars fifty a week, to begin, and your food. That's what Dutchy did. And now and then folks give a nickel to the waiter, even in a place like this, which I suppose you turn your nose up at, after the Waldorf-Astoria. But I shan't say any more, you needn't be afraid – "