Lord Loveland Discovers America

"Well, as long as you don't make yourself too interesting, so I miss my cue! J. J. will be cross if he sees us whispering here, but he's too taken up with himself and his wife in this scene to notice much."

"That's lucky, because I have a message for you from an old friend of yours, that I've been wanting to tell you all day," Loveland began hastily, not to waste one of the four minutes. "I wonder if you remember him? Bill Willing?"

"Bill Willing! – a friend of yours?" the girl spoke sharply, in her surprise.

"Then you haven't forgotten him."

"Forgotten him? I never will, to my dying day."

Her voice quivered a little, for, like most actresses of her type, her emotions were as easily played upon as harp-strings.

"Those are almost the words he used about you," said Loveland, interested in Lillie's part of the broken love melody, as he had been in Bill's. "Only – his were stronger."

"What were they – exactly?"

"Shall I tell you, really?"

"Yes, quick – quick."

"He said he always had loved you, and always would love you till his dying day."

"Oh!" Lillie de Lisle gulped down a small sob. "I thought he'd forgotten all about me – long, long ago. He never wrote."

"No. He told me he didn't dare, or something like that, but he couldn't resist sending a message by me."

"If you knew what it is to me to hear from him again! How in the world did you meet him?"

But that was a long story, and before Loveland could begin to sketch it, the Human Flower heard her cue. With professional instinct she darted out of the entrance on to the stage, and took up her part, as if she had thought of nothing else since she laid it down.

It was not until the end of the third act that there was the smallest chance to continue the talk so suddenly broken short. Loveland had to change back again into the beard, wig, and bloodstained clothes of murdered Dave Dreadnought in order to appear as a ghost, and wave his Dead Hand under the remorseful villain's nose. But this act of retribution was reserved for the end of the play; therefore, encouraged by Lillie, Val stood half concealed in the shadow of some disused scenery, talking of Bill to Bill's Star.

He told her of Bill's dog, Shakespeare, the tiny creature "who made up a bit for the lost 'little gal.'" He told her how Bill generally contrived to put aside a dime each week, to buy a stage paper, solely in the hope of finding news of her. He described Bill's delight at hearing that she had become a "Star," with her own company, and explained how it was by Bill's wish and advice that he had written to ask for his present engagement.

"If only it was my company, really," sighed the poor little Star, "wouldn't I just send for Bill to come out? But I haven't got any more say than the property man, and J. J. used to hate Bill, because – because he was jealous. You see, that was before Jacobus married. Oh, since you're a friend of Bill's and he told you he cared about me, I can talk to you as if I'd known you for ever. If Bill had asked me to marry him, I would, in a minute. But he never did. I wasn't sure he ever really cared, till what you said tonight. He was the best man I ever knew."

"I'm not sure he isn't the best I ever knew, too," said Loveland.

"I'd have sooner begged with him than be a queen with a crown on my head, if he wasn't the king!" sighed Miss de Lisle. "Don't you feel that way, too, about love?"

"Yes," Loveland answered. "I didn't always: but then I used not to understand."

"It's too late now," Bill's Star went on. "We shall never see each other again."

The words echoed in Loveland's head. "Too late now; we shall never see each other again."

The Human Flower's thoughts were far away with Bill Willing. But at least she knew where he was, and was sure that he loved her, while Val did not even know the name of the place near Louisville where Lesley Dearmer lived, and he was sure that she did not love him. Yes, he was sure of that, though perhaps there was a time, he told himself, when he might have made her care.

Instead of trying to win her when he had the chance, he had asked her advice about the best way of making love to other girls. Oh, he deserved all he had got, he thought with sudden fury – all – even to being a waiter at Alexander's, and a leading juvenile under the management of "J. J."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A Mysterious Disappearance

"Gordon, come to our room directly after dinner. I want to talk to you," said Miss Moon. "Not a word to anyone, mind."

She spoke in a low voice, with an air of mystery, stopping Loveland on the stairs, and then passing with a significant look and a finger on her lips, as a door shut sharply somewhere above.

Of course she took it for granted that he would accept the Royal invitation which was a command, and did not need an answer. Equally of course Loveland knew that he would be knocking at the door, at the moment desired, though he was puzzled by the request and the secretive way in which it was made.

It was only a week that day since he had joined the company, but the longest week of his life, save one. Already the time when he had not been a barn-storming country actor seemed distant. He was "old man" or "dear boy," with all the men except Jacobus, and "Gordon" with the actresses. He had heard the life-story of almost everyone among his comrades, male and female; knew why, by evil fate or mere fluke, they had lost splendid and well-deserved chances of gracing Metropolitan theatres; had grown to look upon them all, even Buddha, as fellow beings, and was doing his worried, wearied best with seven new parts committed to memory in as many days.

If Lesley Dearmer were an actress, and it were her company instead of Lillie de Lisle's, he said to himself, how happy he could be in spite of all hardships; for the longing to see Lesley was never absent. He regretted her desperately, and the chance he might have had with her – the chance he had thrown away. He dreamed of her at night, instead of living his troubles over again, and in involved fancies often saw her acting with him on the stage, in the place of Bill's "little gal." Always she seemed near; always she was in his thoughts; but perhaps this was partly because someone had mentioned incidentally that Ashville – where the company was playing now – lay only about thirty miles from Louisville.

Somewhere near Louisville she lived, and if he were Lord Loveland, with money in his pocket – even a little money – instead of being just a strolling actor named Gordon, with two suits of clothes to his back, he would have tried his hardest to find her. He no longer regretted the hopelessness of finding favour in the eyes of American heiresses, because he was homesick for the light in Lesley's sweet eyes, the only woman's eyes that had ever mattered seriously to him – except his mother's. Nothing had happened, really, to make money of less importance to him; rather the other way, yet money did not seem as important as it had, and he told himself that he was well punished for not asking Lesley to marry him. But now he had let her learn to despise him. And being Gordon, the barn-stormer, instead of Lord Loveland, he would have avoided a meeting with the girl if it had come in his way. He could not have endured to be seen by her as he was now, and even should his luck change – as it must before long – with news from home – there would still remain between them as a barrier Lesley's scorn of him which he had taught her to feel, and her knowledge of all his ridiculous adventures. What a contrast to the pictures he had painted for her of his reception in America! With her impish sense of fun, the humorous side of his welcome by New Yorkers must have appealed to her intensely, he was sure, and he did not think that even when he ceased to be P. Gordon, Lesley Dearmer would ever care to think of him seriously again.

She had been very frank that last morning on the Mauretania; and many times since, he had recalled every word she had said to him as they leaned on the rail watching the ship draw into the New York dock. Lesley would feel, as he began to, but even more, that everything which had happened "served him right." He could almost hear her pronouncing sentence, smiling, yet in earnest. How she must have laughed at his fallen pride, and the wildly farcical things such merry humourists as Tony Kidd had doubtless put into the papers! He had become a mere figure of fun for America, and therefore, for Lesley Dearmer, who had never been a respecter of persons; and the fear that the Human Flower's Company might play at Louisville had been hot in his mind, until Ed Binney reassured him. Louisville was not for the "likes of them," and they would never get nearer such an important town than they were now. Soon, they would be out of Kentucky, and in Missouri: indeed, the "date" following Ashville, was in the latter state, and Loveland had been advised that his forthcoming address would be Bonnerstown. Only the day before his meeting with Miss Moon on the stairs he had written to Bill Willing, asking him to send on any mail to Bonnerstown, Missouri; and now the lady's mysterious summons gave him an uneasy moment.

He had supposed that his acting was satisfactory, and had worked hard over the learning and rehearsing of his parts, seldom getting to sleep before five in the morning, then dropping off with a MS. in his hand as well as in his head. But what if Miss Moon meant to break the news that "J. J." thought he could not act well enough, and that he must expect his discharge?

Loveland had little appetite for dinner, though the hotel at Ashville was better than at Modunk, and the cooking was good Southern cooking. Immediately after the meal he went upstairs and knocked at the door of Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus's room, with no feeling of strangeness in doing so, because he had learned, since joining Miss de Lisle's company, that for "pros" bedroom was another word for parlour.

The stage manager and his wife were both there, Jacobus smoking, in sulky silence which he broke only with a grunt by way of greeting for the "juvenile lead." But Miss Moon made up in cordiality for her husband's coldness.

"Mr. Jacobus is cross with me," she announced coquettishly, "about you."

"About me?" Loveland repeated, puzzled and vaguely uncomfortable.

"Yes. There's an idea of mine I want to talk to you about, and he says you'll blab it to the others. But I say you won't if you promise you won't. That's so, isn't it?"

"Of course," answered Loveland.

"And you do promise, don't you – and that you won't say a word to a living soul, if I tell you a thing in strict confidence?"

"I promise," Loveland returned imprudently, impressed with the idea that he was to hear some comment on his own acting.

"There! That's all right, then, I trust you. Yes, I just will, J. J., so there! I guess I have a right to my say in this show, haven't I?"

J. J. answered by a shrug of the shoulders, but it was a shrug of resentful acquiescence, and showed that he acknowledged his wife's supremacy – the eternal supremacy of the Golden Calf.

"Sit down, and make yourself at home," went on Miss Moon, smiling on the handsome young man, who was not much older than her sons. "Full Moon" was her nickname in the company, and Loveland thought, as she cordially indicated a chair by the stove, that her figure merited the sobriquet.

"I know you're a great friend of Lillie's," the lady slily began again, when she and Loveland were seated near the fire, and J. J. had drowned himself in a theatrical paper. "But all the same, you must admit that her acting gets worse every day. She's so awful careless! And she's failed to go down with audiences here. We've done rotten business."

"The house has seemed good every night," said Loveland.

"Ah, it's seemed all right; but it's been half paper. It's mighty discouragin', for me and Mr. Jacobus, I can tell you, after the money I've put into the show, and the work he's put in. The fact is, it's so discouragin' we're thinkin' of makin' a change; breakin' up the company, in a way, and then startin' again, with only the ones we really want in a new crowd. Would you like to join?"

Loveland looked her straight in the face, with almost brutally frank disapproval on his. The extra touches she had given to her hair, and eyelashes, and complexion for his benefit, were all in vain. She might have been a block of painted wood, for any admiration in his eyes.