CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A Proposition
Naturally it occurred to Val that the trail of Cadwallader Hunter must have reached as far as the Beverly household; and almost he found it in his heart to respect a man with executive ability to accomplish so swift, so sweeping, so secret a revenge.
"The old fellow must have had a busy day," Loveland thought, half amused on top of hunger and discouragement. He pictured the Major running lithely about since the snub at lunchtime, up to the last moment before dressing for dinner, prejudicing all the friends made on board the Mauretania against the Englishman to whom he had proudly introduced them.
And besides, one must grant a certain cleverness to a brain able to weave grounds of prejudice against a person – nay, a personage – important and unimpeachable, as Loveland considered himself to be. How Cadwallader Hunter had done it, Val could not imagine; but that the mysterious thing which had been done was the Major's work, he did not doubt. As for the bother with the bank, of course that was another matter, a coincidence unconnected with the annoyances which had followed, for Cadwallader Hunter could not have known anything about the letter of credit, or where it was to be presented. And though the spiteful old thing was apparently acquainted with Mr. van Cotter, who had been one of the Coolidge party, he could scarcely have read clairvoyantly all the names on the letters of introduction, even if he knew the people.
As Val asked himself forlornly what was left for him to do next, this last argument brought consolation, and a welcome new idea at the same time. As the Major had "got hold of" the Coolidges, the Miltons and Beverlys, why not go and throw himself on the mercy of some of Jim Harborough's friends?
Loveland had conscientiously distributed all the letters in the afternoon, and had put the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as a New York address on his visiting cards. Now, owing to unforeseen circumstances (another name for the Major's vindictiveness) that address was his no longer. When people called, as no doubt they would do tomorrow, they were likely to find that he had vanished into space. Yes, without doubt the best thing he could do was to call tonight at one of the houses where he had alighted in the afternoon. He would walk to the nearest one; but – now he came to think of it, which was the nearest, and of which was he certain that he could remember the street and number?
Val had not charged his mind with the addresses on the letters, so sure had he been that the recipients would lose no time in calling. Now, he went over the eight or nine names in his head, and thought that he had kept them all straight; but to save his life he could not say which number, which street, appertained to which person.
This was a dilemma, almost a calamity. But one address seemed to stand out before his eyes – a number in Fifth Avenue; and he thought it was a Mrs. Anson who lived there. The house was a handsome one, at a corner. He had admired it; and as it was not far uptown he would not have more than a mile to travel. He could still make his visit, and tell his pitiful tale, before ten o'clock.
He walked fast, and it was by an effort that the man of the shadows kept him in sight; for Val's legs were long, and his were not. But he did contrive to cling close enough to see a tall figure slowly descend a flight of stone steps climbed with alert hopefulness a few moments earlier.
This time there was a discouraged droop of the head and shoulders and a dragging hesitation in the gait which seemed to show that the wanderer did not know what his next move ought to be.
At last the watcher decided that he had waited long enough. The Englishman had come to the end of his tether. He was tired out and sick at heart; in fact, precisely in the mood which the other had been patiently expecting.
Loveland walked away from the house where Mrs. Anson was "giving a dinner party and regretted that she was unable to receive visitors." Jim Harborough's friend! Could it be that Cadwallader Hunter's tentacles had wormed themselves round this lady's sympathies also, or was the dismissal another coincidence, like that of the bank? Loveland did not know, but he did know that the sole possessions left him were a great hunger which he might not satisfy, and a great longing to have somewhere to lay his head.
"Good evening," said the man who had caught up with him, speaking somewhat breathlessly, but in a friendly voice.
Loveland turned with a slight start, and looked at the other's face, which at that moment could be plainly seen by the light of a street lamp.
There was a vague familiarity in the stranger's appearance, but Val had come into contact with so many new people lately, that he could attach no label to these features.
"I was dining near you at the Waldorf-Astoria," explained the unknown.
"Oh!" exclaimed Loveland, instantly adjusting the label. "You were with the Coolidges, I remember." The tips of his ears began to tingle. This fellow must have seen him walk out of the restaurant where he'd been denied his dinner – probably knew that he had been practically turned away from the hotel, because he hadn't the money to pay his bill.
"My name's Milton," the short, dark man introduced himself. "I've been trying to catch you up for some time."
"Why?" abruptly asked Loveland, suspicious of everybody and everything now.
"Why? Oh, well, I wanted the pleasure of a conversation with you."
"You know who I am?" Loveland enquired.
"Yes, I know who you are." Mr. Milton emphasised each word separately, as if with a tap of a miniature hammer. There was an intentional significance in his way of speaking, but the meaning was obscure to Loveland.
Val could not guess what the other's object was in following him, and in his smarting sensitiveness was on guard against some new indignity.
"I met Mrs. Milton and – your daughter, on the Mauretania," he ventured, by way of keeping on neutral ground until he should learn where to take his stand. And truth to tell, he had been so miserable in his homesickness, his sense of desertion and humiliation, that any friendly-seeming companionship was pitifully welcome. A few hours ago he would have quickly decided that he did not like the man's face or manner, and would have made no bones about snubbing him; but there was a high barrier between "then" and "now," and Lord Loveland almost clung to Mr. Milton.
"I know you met my wife and daughter on the Mauretania," said the watcher. "That's why I was anxious to make your acquaintance."
Loveland laughed. "You're the first person since I left the ship, who has wanted to make it," he retorted. "And it struck me this evening that neither Mrs. nor Miss Milton was keen on keeping it."
"Miss Milton is a child," answered Miss Milton's father. "She daren't say her soul's her own, if her mother says it isn't; and Mrs. Milton has reasons over and above what anyone else may have, for not wanting to know you, in front of me."
"Over and above what anyone else may have?" Val repeated, lost in surprise at this turning. "Why should she or anyone have reasons for not wanting to know me? That's the thing I should like to find out. Perhaps you'll be good enough to explain the mystery – if you can? What has Major Cadwallader Hunter been doing to put all New York against me?"
"So far as I can see, it wasn't the Major who set the ball rolling, though of course he'd like people to think he was on to it from the first. And it seems he heard you give yourself away a bit to a girl one day, on shipboard – or says he did. But let's not discuss that now. What you are, or what you did before you stepped on board the Mauretania's nothing to me. The game you and I are in together (as it's up to me to show you) is this. You're in a pretty bad scrape, and you want to get out of it. Is that true or isn't it?"
"Yes, it's true enough," admitted Val. "But that's not the question. I – "
"Excuse me, it is the question, where I'm concerned. I don't go back on that. I don't want to know anything, or be in anything, else. I can help you out of your fix. That's what I'm here to do."
"Thank you," said Val, drily. "But why?" He half expected that Mr. Milton's quid pro quo would be a promise in advance to make Fanny the Marchioness of Loveland.
"Well, I'm coming to that, in one minute and a half. First and foremost let's chat about what I can do for you. Then we'll get to what you can do for me. I guess a thousand dollars would come handy to you, wouldn't it, especially if you could see half in hard cash tonight?"
"If I saw any 'hard cash,' as you call it, lying in the street, and nobody claimed it, I confess I might find a temporary use for the money," said Loveland. "The trouble is, my letter of credit – "
"I know all about that letter of credit, just as well as if you'd told me," broke in Mr. Milton, with a queer mingling of tolerant good-nature and roughness which puzzled Loveland so much that he almost forgot to be annoyed.
"Tomorrow it will be all right," Val went on.
"I wouldn't bet on its being all right tomorrow," said Milton. "But we can wait to talk business till the day after, if you like. That'll suit me just as well; for I stand to make better terms. It's for you to say where. I can give you my card, and you can drop round at my club – I don't ask you to write, for by that time it might happen you wouldn't have a stamp, or a sheet of paper handy. You can call day after tomorrow, and we'll have our talk then. So long as we've established communication, there isn't much danger of your losing touch with me till we've fixed something up."
"I don't like your manner or your innuendoes," said Loveland, stiffening.
"Oh, I don't mean any innuendoes," protested Mr. Milton, apologetically. "Let's keep friends. I want to help you. You had a little trouble with them at the hotel, didn't you?"
"I was abominably insulted, and I'll make them regret it."
"The best way to do that is to pay the bill right off. There's five hundred dollars in my pocket that's just crying to be in yours. And five hundred more – "
"What do you want me to do?" sharply asked Loveland.
"You'd like to know whether the candle's worth the game, eh? Well, I'm no Shylock. But see here, shall we come to terms over a drink? We're not far off the best bar in New York, and – "
"No, thank you," Val cut in decidedly, though he was cold enough, and hollow enough within to be tempted by the thought of warmth, and refreshment of any sort. "Tell me now what possible motive you, a stranger, can have in offering to lend me two hundred pounds."
"I said nothing about lending," insinuated Mr. Milton. "But if you like to call it a loan, you can. You've got your 'family traditions' to keep up, I suppose?" And he laughed in high good humour.
"I have," said Val, coldly.
"That's all right," returned the other. "Well, to get to business then. You were on pretty friendly terms with Mrs. Milton on board ship?"
"She was very kind to me," replied Val, more sure than ever now that the proposal to come would be matrimonial.
"Good! You've heard, I expect, from Cadwallader Hunter, or some other general purveyor of gossip, that she and I aren't on the best of terms – that we don't get along like a pair of turtle doves?"
"I believe I did hear some hint of that sort, which went in at one ear and out at the other."
"You needn't consider my feelings. My wife and I hate each other like poison. She'd have thrown me over long ago, if she didn't want my money – all my money; not what she might get in alimony if we said 'Goodbye; the parting words are spoken.' Eh? Well, that's just what I do want to say to her. We've never had any open break, but the time's come. That's why I sent her to Europe, and sent for her to come back. I played my fish, and now I want to land it. A queer fish, Mrs. Milton is, too, bye the bye. I'm going to bring a case against her, and I want to use you for a trump card in it. You understand?"
A hot wave of rage swept over Loveland. He did understand, and never in his life had he been so angry. He had not known it was in him to be so angry at a thing which did not affect his own selfish interests; but he was not thinking of himself at all. A new or, at least, unknown self stirred faintly in the depths where all his life it had lain asleep, because, perhaps, it had never been called upon to wake. He was not angry because such a proposal had been made to him – Lord Loveland; he had not thought of that part yet. Disgust with the man who could make such a proposition was the one emotion which shook him.
"You beast!" he broke out, in his young, clear voice.
The other man looked up at the flushed, angry face in genuine surprise.
"Oh, I suppose I haven't offered 'your lordship' enough," he sneered, with a sarcastic emphasis on the title. "Well, I'll raise you – "
But something unexpected happened before the offer could be completed. Furious, Loveland slapped him across the mouth, and in dodging the insult, Milton slipped on a morsel of thin ice which glazed the pavement. He staggered, tried to regain his balance, lost it finally, and fell flat upon his back.
Loveland felt suddenly as if he had been drenched with cold water. The man's fall, the stillness of the limp form which lay grotesquely, like a dummy made of rags, was a sight to chill even righteous anger. Loveland hadn't yet begun to think of himself or the danger he might be in. He thought of the man – who seemed to him hardly a man – and wondered if he were dead. Then, after a dazed instant, he bent down over the motionless form, and felt a great throb of relief when he saw no stain of oozing blood on the pavement. The fur lined collar of Milton's coat had been pulled up behind his ears and had broken the force of the fall for the back of his head on which, otherwise, he must have struck with terrible force. Already his thick eyelids were twitching. In another moment or two he would open them. And realising this, Val at last turned to that thought which generally came first: Lord Loveland and Lord Loveland's welfare.
He glanced hastily round, and assured himself that no one was near: no one could have seen the incident, which luckily for him had happened at some distance from a street lamp. He thought carefully but quickly. If anyone should come – if an alarm were given – if he should find himself in the hands of the police – that would be the worst thing that had happened yet.
This beast who lay there – this beast who had taken advantage of a stranger's misfortunes to try and bribe him to the basest dishonour – wasn't hurt half as badly as he deserved to be. Loveland was glad he had struck the wretch, and would do it again, if it had to be done again, pay for the satisfaction dearly as he might have to pay. But he did not see that there was need to pay at all. If the fellow complained to the police of his assault, Val couldn't defend himself by telling the truth, because Mrs. Milton's name must not be brought in. He did not admire her particularly, and he owed her no gratitude, but she was a woman; and suddenly he knew of himself that he would bear the worst that might befall him, rather than drag Mrs. Milton into a scandal.
For as long as he might have taken to count twelve, perhaps, Lord Loveland stood making up his mind and staring at the man on the ground: then he walked away as quickly as he dared.
How interminable the length of this cross-street seemed! He did not even know what street it was into which he had turned almost mechanically with Milton, as they talked, nor did it matter, if only he could get out, and far enough away before Milton came to himself, to gabble some malicious lie about what had happened.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Introducing Shakespeare
The end of the street, and no pursuing steps, nor shouts of accusing voices!
Once round the corner, Loveland breathed more freely; but with the white glint of his uncovered evening shirt, he was a marked man among men whose overcoats acknowledged winter, and his one anxiety for the moment was to get on as far as possible in as short a time as possible.
He had two or three small pieces of American money in his pocket, rather more than equal to the value of an English shilling, and he thought of hurling himself into a tearing electric car, or rushing up the steps of an "L" station to board the first train that should come in. But he did not know what destination to name, and feared that, if he professed indifference as to the end of the journey, he might arouse suspicion. It was wiser, he decided, to go on foot, dodging from the brilliantly lighted avenues into the darker cross-streets, and so on, indefinitely, until it seemed safe to call a halt.
Before the unexpected climax of his interview with Mr. Milton Loveland had still hoped for ultimate shelter and dinner, but now he ceased to regard either as a likely goal of his adventure. The great thing was, not to be caught by the New York police, and "run in" for assault, clapped into prison, into print, and forever out of the matrimonial court. The present was very bad, but there was hope for the future, although Milton's hints and strange manner had brought closer the cloud of dark presentiment until it pressed like a thick veil over Loveland's eyes.
When he found himself in the Plaza, and saw the black forest of the park billowing away into distance like the gulf of night, he looked towards it as a refuge. If only it were still open at this hour! If only he could get in!
His doubt died at birth; for a big motor car whizzed by him and into the velvet gloom. Evidently Central Park was not shut to the public at night.
Loveland followed the car; and though moving ghostlike along a tree-walled road, he had not quite the wished-for sense of being blotted out by darkness, it was good to escape from glaring lights and staring people.
When Loveland became accustomed to the gloom, it took on colour to his eyes, and turned from black to a deep, transparent blue which shimmered round him like the shadows of spirit forms; and far away where flared the lights of the "Great White Way" the dusk was beaten into sparks of flame as if a dying torch had been shaken down the sky. The blazing eyes of motor lamps, and yellow-winking carriage-lights moved along the dim drives, and drew the night in after them like a folding curtain.
Val turned out of a broad thoroughfare of the park into a quieter road to avoid the procession of vehicles and the faces that peered from their windows. There were no faces in the world that he wanted to see now, save his mother's – and Lesley Dearmer's, and he was ashamed of the longing which ached in him for those two.
"Buck up, you blighter," he admonished himself. "Don't be an ass or a baby."
It was easy to lash his soul with sage advice. But he felt very small and pitiful in the vast, unfriendly city, where it seemed that there were warm overcoats and good dinners for everybody except the Marquis of Loveland.
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.