Lord Loveland Discovers America

"I beg your pardon," said Loveland. "If your father'll take me, I'll do it. When he comes – "

"Oh, you mustn't ask him yourself! You'd spoil the whole thing," Isidora broke in. "You must let me get at him. Two or three raw Germans and Swedes are bein' sent round this mornin' to look at; but while Pa's dressin' I'll talk you up, and you can be on hand when he gets downstairs. I'll go this minute, and Blinkey can see to anybody that comes in. You call him, Bill."

She darted off, all excitement; and Loveland sat waiting for the great man's verdict, feeling as if he had laid down his soul for sale with the pumpkin-pie and pork and beans.

Bill tried to cheer him. He would have practically no expenses, and being such a "good looker" would be sure to pick up a lot of nickels and even dimes. Why, he might save three dollars a week, and as for that trifling debt to him – Bill – they would wipe it off the slate and consider it paid; or, if Gordon wouldn't consent to do that, he might send the money from England when he'd got home – if he really did think it best to go home. At three dollars a week it wouldn't be long before a chap could lay up enough to cross in the steerage, the way those big ships were fighting each other for rates. For fifteen dollars you could do it, on some boats; and at three dollars a week —

But before Bill could finish his calculation – a rather intricate one for him – Isidora had flown in, her cheeks as red as her poppy-coloured blouse.

"Pa's in one of his funny moods," she whispered. "Won't give me any satisfaction. But I know he'd take you if you'd let me tell him who you are. I mean, if you're willing, I'll say you're the man all that stuff was in the papers about, how you was at the Waldorf as the Markis of Loveland, and how it was you knocked that swell Mr. Milton down. Nobody appreciates the value of advertising better than Pa (Bill can tell you that), and amatoor or no amatoor, you can be gettin' not only your two-fifty a week but twice that, and maybe more, out of Alexander the Great."

"I'd rather starve or drown myself," said Loveland, turning red, and then white.

"It's nasty, starving," ventured Bill. "And folks are that interfering, they're always fishing you out of the water and puttin' you into the newspapers as a Case. Besides, what's the odds? If you've got any swagger friends, they ain't likely to come nosin' round here. Alexander's is 'great,' but it ain't swell."

Loveland had shuddered at the thought of the steerage, when Bill suggested it a few moments ago, but now it seemed to him that the "horrors of the middle passage" would be heaven to the humiliations he endured. For fifteen dollars, Bill said, he could get back to England. If Alexander would give him five dollars a week, in three weeks he could be off – or say, four, having paid Bill what he owed. But, no, that was an eternity – not to be endured. At bay and desperate Val determined to strike high.

"Tell your father who I am, then," he exclaimed, "but say he can't have me for any beggarly two-fifty, or even five dollars a week. I'll have ten, or nothing."

Isidora looked at him with respect, and dashed away behind the curtain. Neither man spoke. The sound of her little high-heeled slippers, clicking on the uncarpeted stairs, was sharp in their ears. In three minutes – before Loveland had had time to repent – she was down again.

"Pa says 'Done,'" she panted. "He's going to use you for all you're worth."

"I bet he will," murmured Bill, sotto voce. But neither he nor Loveland guessed in what way Alexander the Great meant to make the "swell waiter" worth his wage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

News From the Great World

"Lesley, wasn't Loveland the name of that Lord you knew on the boat?" asked Lesley's Aunt Barbara, peering at her niece from behind an immense newspaper which hid all the upper part of her body as if with a screen.

Lesley was curled up on a sofa at the other end of the room, which had for some reason or other, more or less appropriate, been called "the library" for several generations. The girl was writing a story, which was promised for a certain time, but her heart was not in her work, and she welcomed interruptions, instead of discouraging them, as usual.

If it had been her habit to shut herself up alone for several hours a day, or if she had sat bolt upright at a desk, Mrs. Loveland would have taken Lesley's work more seriously; but when a pretty girl, looking scarcely more than a child – a girl you have seen grow up from babyhood – nestles cosily in a bank of ruffly silk cushions, with a frivolous "scribbling pad" on her knee, and a pencil in her hand, how can one realise that she is gravely pursuing literature as a profession, and must not be addressed even if one has the most exciting things to say?

Lesley did not answer at first, for she was composing her voice, that Aunt Barbara might not guess she had been taken by surprise; therefore Mrs. Loveland asked the same question over again in a louder tone.

"Yes," said Lesley. "Don't you remember my telling you his name was the same as yours?"

"There! I thought so!" exclaimed the little dovelike lady. "Only I wasn't quite sure whether you said the name was exactly the same, or rather like mine. You didn't talk as if you took much interest in him, and it seemed as though you would, if we'd been namesakes. I don't think you spoke of him more than once, did you?"

"I don't remember, I'm sure," replied Lesley, beginning to scrawl the name of "Loveland" aimlessly across the top of the page which ought by this time to have been covered with brilliant conversation between her hero and heroine. She answered in an indifferent tone, almost as if she were thinking of something else; but if her mind had indeed been properly bent on the story, she would have said: "Auntie, darling, I'm a thousand miles away, please, with Dick and Susanne. Don't bring me back, there's a dear!"

"Well, I'm glad you didn't take much interest in him," went on Mrs. Loveland, in a tone pregnant with mystery and importance. "I know I oughtn't to be talking to you when you're at work, and I don't often, do I?"

"Not very often," smiled Lesley, her dimples softening the gentle little reproach, if it were a reproach. But she didn't look up at her aunt. She pretended to be writing on; and so she was. But it was only one word, over and over again, that she wrote: "Loveland – Loveland." And her heart had begun to beat in a hurried, warning way, as often it had on shipboard when she heard Loveland's voice, and wondered if he were coming to talk to her – or to some other girl.

"But this is something really very special," Aunt Barbara apologised. "It's quite exciting. Only fancy having known him! I almost wish you'd pointed him out to me that last morning on board, when I was up on deck. It would be interesting to remember what he was like."

"Is there something about him in the paper?" asked Lesley, who had been expecting news, but would have preferred to read it herself, if she could have chosen.

"I should think there was!" exclaimed her aunt, screened behind the great printed sheets again.

"Is he engaged already?" Lesley enquired, making a sketch of Lord Loveland's profile in the midst of a speech of Dick's, though Dick was a very different sort of young man from Loveland, a very different sort indeed. How many times she had caught herself tracing the outline of those features – so clear, so straight, so perfect an outline, that it was as easy to draw as to copy a Greek statue. She knew every line, and often the little profile-portrait was there before her eyes on the paper before she knew what she had been doing. She was almost perfectly certain what Aunt Barbara's answer to her question would be. Of course he was engaged. He had hardly had time to make the acquaintance of any new girls in New York, and propose marriage, so it must be Elinor Coolidge – or Fanny Milton.

"Engaged!" echoed the elder. "No, indeed. What a mercy he's been found out before some nice girl was mixed up in the scandal. Of course he wanted – "

"A scandal!" Now at last Lesley did lift her head, quickly, and the last profile-sketch looked as if it had been struck by lightning.

"Shocking," answered Mrs. Loveland. "What a dreadful thing that our country should be looked upon as a sort of gold mine by these foreign birds of prey."

Lesley's little ears burned pink as if her aunt had boxed them. Her eyes sent out a spark, but its fire was quenched in a sudden trickle of nervous laughter. "Dear Aunt Barb! Would 'birds of prey' make successful miners?"

Aunt Barbara laughed, too. "You're always catching me up for my similes," she said. "But luckily I don't write stories, so it doesn't matter. And anyway that's what they are; birds of prey. As for what they do, they marry our girls, who find them out too late, and then try to get divorces. What an escape for some poor little heiress, that this creature is hoist with his own petard in the very midst of baiting his wicked trap! You needn't look at me like that, child. I don't care how mixed up I am. Did this man look like a gentleman?"

"Yes," said Lesley. "Naturally, because he is a gentleman."

"My dear! he must have been clever to hoodwink an observant little thing like you, who can see right down into people's hearts, even when you hardly seem to be noticing how they do their hair, or the colour of their neckties. This man is nothing but his own valet."

"So am I my own maid," said Lesley. "He never said he was rich, or – "

"I mean he isn't a Marquis."

The soft outline of the girl's figure stiffened, and she sat up very straight on the sofa.

"Who says he isn't a Marquis?" she asked sharply.

"Everybody. The newspaper."

"Oh – the newspaper!"

"But it's true. He's been turned out of his hotel. I'll read you the – "

"Please, I think I'll read it myself, if you don't mind, dear," said Lesley. "That is – when you've finished. I can wait."

"I have finished, all I care about reading," Mrs. Loveland hastened to assure her, for she invariably discovered that she has ceased to want anything which Lesley could even be suspected of wishing for.

"Take the paper, dear. Don't get up. I'll bring it to you."

But Lesley did get up, and stood with her back to her aunt as she read the Louisville version of Tony Kidd's sensational "story." She took a long time to read it, and when she had come to the end, she laid the paper on her aunt's lap without saying a word.

"Well – has it struck you dumb?" exclaimed Mrs. Loveland, disappointed: for if she spoiled Lesley with petting, Lesley spoiled her with responsiveness.

"I am rather horrified," said the girl.

"No wonder. You actually knew him – or thought you did."

"I think so still."