CHAPTER TEN · Part 4

With the feigned indifference of a caged white bear for a bank holiday crush, the new waiter performed his duties during the day. If the restaurant were crammed throughout the afternoon, by six o'clock there was a mob. By seven, however, the place began to clear and Alexander rejoiced, because there was much work for his staff to do before eight. Dishes must be washed and special food cooked, and a dozen tables prepared for two "crowds" who had engaged accommodation in advance.

One was a wedding party of Italians, numbering fifteen. The other was something more exciting: a party of "swells" who had telephoned for dinner at eight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Fire!

Laughing and talking they all trouped into the restaurant. Elinor Coolidge and Comte de Rocheverte; Eva Tanner and Kate Wood, with the handsome Hungarian twins, who were rather sought after in New York just then; Baron Ludovic Zsencha and his brother Paul; last Mrs. Milton and Tony Kidd.

Tony had intended to drop in at Alexander's in any case, to have a look at the Marquis of Twelfth Street, who had been "discovered" by that morning's "Light"; but he would have come on directly after returning from a second out of town expedition if a telegram had not been forwarded to the country, asking him to be Mrs. Milton's escort.

This invitation Tony accepted with pleasure, not only because it tickled his sense of humour to go to Alexander's as a member of a "slumming party," but because he hoped to see Fanny Milton, whom he thought the sweetest girl in New York. Last year Mrs. Milton would hardly have considered him "good enough" socially to select as companion, but there were people who looked at her a little askance now, and she could not pick and choose as she had done. Tony knew very well to what he owed his promotion, but that did not affect him in the least if it gave him a chance of seeing Fanny.

He was disappointed to find that she was not going, and his spirits were dashed by the news that she disapproved of the "Loveland sensation," for which he knew himself to be largely responsible. Nevertheless, in manner he was as gay as the others, when the party of eight made its merry raid upon Alexander's.

The Italian marriage feast was already in full swing; but neither the bridal party nor any of the thirty or forty other occupants of the restaurant were too deeply absorbed in their own affairs to notice the arrival of the "swells."

Not a soul in the room but instantly recognised the fact that they _were_ "swells," for though the ladies had put on their plainest gowns for the expedition, and the men had been forbidden to appear in evening dress, there was a marked difference between Alexander's eight latest guests and all the others already assembled.

"Hullo! I suppose we ought to feel honoured!" muttered Mr. Leo Cohen, who had just arrived from the West, and was paying a surprise visit to the establishment of his future father-in-law. He had demanded fried oysters and coffee, and had greatly enjoyed giving the order to the handsome new member of Alexander's staff.

"Get a move on, _if_ you please," he finished, pointing his black moustache, and prodding his white teeth with a gold toothpick, as he stared at the man made notorious by today's newspapers. Pressing his lips tightly together Loveland turned away to pass the order to Black Dick, the cook.

It was at this moment that Mrs. Milton's party entered the restaurant, and Mr. Cohen murmured his comment to Isidora who, at her father's urgent suggestion, was hovering about that young gentleman's table, looking her prettiest.

Tony Kidd, at Mrs. Milton's request, had telephoned for a table for eight, to be withdrawn as far as possible from the big front window, that dinner and diners need not be criticised by the man in the street. Alexander had, therefore, caused Blinkey to drag the largest table in the room close to the curtained door at the back. At this table--by the time Loveland had given Cohen's order to Black Dick, and returned across the corridor which divided the restaurant from the kitchen--the four pretty women and their escorts had taken their seats.

The door behind the curtain was never shut in business hours; and as Loveland pushed back the red drapery, carrying a tray loaded with ice cream for the Italians, he looked straight into the eyes of Elinor Coolidge, Mrs. Milton, and the newspaper man, Tony Kidd.

They and their companions had already been searching the room for him, but their presence took him completely by surprise.

Not since early morning had he found a moment's rest. He had had no appetite, and would have had little time to eat even if he had been hungry. The day's work had irritated and unnerved him up to the last notch of his endurance. No battle of his brief but lively South African experience had cost him physically or mentally as much as these thirteen hours of waiting on Alexander's customers, and the sudden sight of those familiar faces, smiling coolly on his shame, came upon him like a volley of bullets from a quick-firing gun.

Involuntarily he took a step back, knocked the edge of the tray against the door-post, and dropped it with a crash of breaking crockery. Plates smashed, spoons flew, and ice-cream gushed among the ruins. Blinkey and the Polish waiter sprang to their colleague's assistance, not displeased, however, that he should be disgraced. Alexander scolded, the Italian bride screamed, and had to be reassured by the bridegroom. Leo Cohen laughed disagreeably; Isidora jumped; and Mrs. Milton's party looked at each other from under lifted eyebrows.

[Illustration: "_Involuntary he took a step back, ... and dropped the tray with a crash of breaking crockery_"]

In the confusion of the breakage Loveland found himself again. Pride came to his rescue--not mere hurt vanity, but a truer pride than had ever made his heart beat high.

As he bent down to pick up the broken plates, he told himself that these people, who had come to plunge him still deeper in humiliating depths, were not worth a pang, and should not see that they had power to inflict it. They had caught him unawares, but he knew the worst now, and would bear it without letting those laughing, curious eyes see how their glances made him suffer.

For one short instant, he detested Mrs. Milton so intensely that he half regretted his vow to spare her name at all hazards; but by the time he had picked up the last piece of broken crockery he knew that, if everything were to come over again, he would do as he had done.

"I take dat out of your wages," said Alexander, loudly enough to be heard by those who sat round the table near to the curtained door.

"Of course," replied Loveland, his voice steady.

"I shouldn't have thought the British aristocracy would have such clumsy ways," Leo Cohen remarked audibly to Isidora. Then, calling jocularly across the room, "Say Alexander, got any mock turtle soup tonight?"

"No," growled Alexander.

"Thought you might be makin' a speciality of it this week," went on Cohen.

"Why?"

"Oh, cute idea for an advertisement: 'Mock Turtle served by Mock Marquis.'"

A titter went round the room among those who had enough English to understand the joke, and there was even a faint, suppressed sound of laughter at Mrs. Milton's table.

Loveland turned white. He had an impulse to hurl the broken dishes, now collected on the tray, straight at Cohen's oiled black head; and a week ago he would have done so without stopping to reflect. But he had lived longer in six days since landing in New York than in as many years before; and he was learning a lesson which no one had even tried to teach him in the past; mastery of himself.

He knew that if he took violent revenge upon the insolent young Jew, his late shipmates and their friends would delight in the exhibition. They would think that they were getting their money's worth out of the show, and Loveland determined not to play mountebank for their entertainment.

Pale, but perfectly composed in appearance, he did not even look towards Cohen, and seemed to take no more notice of the young man's impertinence than of the barking of some mongrel dog, too feeble to be kicked.

Ardently Loveland longed to get out of the room and to stay out, but though he could have escaped by carrying the broken dishes into the kitchen, he would not deign to turn his back on the enemy. He gave the tray to Blinkey and obeyed a gesture of Alexander's which sent him to take a new order from the Italians.

"I don't believe he'll come to wait on us," whispered Mrs. Milton to Tony Kidd. "If he doesn't, it will have been hardly worth the fag of coming all this way downtown. His handing us our things would have been the best fun of all."

"I think you'll get your fun," mumbled Tony. But he was not enjoying himself.

"Of course the man's a fraud, and deserves all he's got," the journalist thought. "But I'm hanged if I like seeing him take his medicine. He's a good plucked one, anyhow."

Never glancing at the eight faces, which watched his every movement with sixteen brilliant eyes, Loveland passed their table and went to tell the cook that the Italian party would have a rum omelet in place of the lost ice-cream. Cohen's fried oysters were ready, the Pole having just served them, and now the second course of the dinner--begun already with Blue Points--was waiting for the "swells." It was soup, and Loveland had either to carry it in, and serve it himself, or else to show that the torture of the lash was beyond his endurance.

"They shall see that I'm not ashamed for myself or afraid of them," he resolved, returning to the restaurant with a steaming tureen and eight hot plates on a tray. Without a change of expression he laid those eight plates, one by one, in their places on the table; and then, with a hand which he forced to be steady, he ladled out the soup. The ladies drew back, as if uneasy lest he might seek some small revenge; but he was careful not to spill a drop.

"_Les biscuits, s'il vous plait_," said Comte de Rocheverte, looking Loveland straight and superciliously in the eyes; but the English waiter did not flinch from the stare of the French nobleman. He walked quietly to the counter, took some biscuits (which Isidora called "crackers") from a glass jar, put them on a platter, and handed them to each member of Mrs. Milton's party.

"He understands French," murmured de Rocheverte to Miss Coolidge. "He must have had some education."

Loveland heard, and swallowed a lump in his throat. He knew that the young man and the girl were looking at him, talking of him; and that if he were visibly distressed by the knowledge they would be the more amused. But he snatched a moment's respite in waiting upon a seedy, bearded stranger, who had just come in and taken an isolated table--a stranger who looked like a foreigner, a person who would not be interested in a marquis born of any nation. In a moment, however, came a summons from Alexander. "You attend to the ladies and gents," was the Boss's order; "Blinkey can see to that feller. What does he want?"

"A ham-sandwich and black coffee," said Loveland.

"Oh, Pa, don't send Mr. Gordon to wait on the swells again," softly pleaded Isidora, flitting up uneasily. "They're trying to take a rise out of him. It's crool. I----"

"Thank you, but I don't mind, Miss Alexander," said Loveland, with a grateful look, which went so straight to Isidora's heart that tears started to her eyes.

Val took away the eight soup plates, and would not see the amused glances of the good-looking Hungarians, or Elinor Coolidge's French Count. Rocheverte was not cruel at heart, but he did not like Englishmen at best, and Elinor Coolidge, having told him the story of Lord Loveland, as she knew it, had said: "We girls want to punish him not only for the way he would have deceived us all if he could, but for his perfectly horrid, supercilious airs when we used to know him on board ship; so please help us by sneering and staring as much as you can without making a scene."

She had looked so handsome when she made this request, that de Rocheverte had told her he would grant it with pleasure, and he was doing his best to keep his word.

They had got as far in the dinner as chicken fried with cream gravy, for which Black Dick was renowned, when the restaurant door opened, and Mr. Milton walked in, accompanied by another man.

Mrs. Milton flushed with vexation, for she was sure that he had come back to town thus unexpectedly with the idea of surprising her; that he must have gone home and questioned Fanny as to her mother's whereabouts, and then have followed to Alexander's solely for the satisfaction of spoiling her pleasure--unless a little for the sake of seeing his late antagonist figuring as a waiter.

Milton sauntered over to the table and spoke to everyone civilly, darting only one covert, ugly glance at his wife, when her fascinated gaze rested upon the fading bruise which discoloured his square jaw.

"Read 'Light' this morning, Tony, and the afternoon papers copying it," he said. "Thought I'd drop in at the cockfight and see the fun. Great stunt, isn't it?" He eyed Loveland up and down, as if the Englishman were a freak at a museum. "Of course the story was yours?"

For the first time Val's eyes and Tony's met, only for an instant, but there was something like reproach in Loveland's. A trapped hare might have thrown a look like that at the keeper who trapped him.

"I suppose he thinks it was revenge for the slammed door," the young newspaperman said to himself. "But it wasn't. I'm not that kind of chap. I'd like him to know I'm not. But I expect it'll have to go at that."

"Well, ta ta!" said Milton, "and I'll order something for the good of the house, now we're here. We're not obliged to eat it, thank Heaven."

He turned away, and was drawing out a chair for himself near one upon which the seedy, bearded stranger had placed a small leather handbag, when suddenly the whole restaurant seemed alive with dry, crackling explosions, and in the same instant the electric lamps went out. The room, a moment ago brilliantly lighted, was black as a vault, save for a glimmer from the street that shone through the window. Then, as everyone jumped up, overturning chairs or breaking glasses in their hurry and the shrieks of the Italian women mingled with the strange crackling sounds, there came from somewhere at the back a loud detonation, followed by a hoarse roaring like a blast furnace. Men cried out in amazed alarm, and the dark room lit up ominously with a crimson glare that turned the curtain through which it leaked the colour of blood.

In rushed Black Dick and his assistant, with Blinkey, who had been busy in the kitchen, and all three shouted wildly: "Fire! Fire!"

The restaurant was in a state of chaos. A long jet of flame, sweeping out from the kitchen and across the narrow passage, caught the curtain in the door-way, up which little serpents of fire began to crawl. Every woman was screaming now, in a panic of fear whipped to horror by the red darkness, and the crackling explosions which snapped and spluttered on every side. The excitable Italians chattered and struggled with one another in the dark, the new Polish waiter ran here and there like a frightened chicken that sees the axe; the two negroes were almost in convulsions, and Tony Kidd called vainly on the Hungarian brothers and de Rocheverte for help in bringing order out of confusion.

The thought that flashed through the minds of all was an anarchist plot--a dynamite bomb. For one terrible second everybody remembered the bearded stranger with the little bag, and debited him with the deadly mischief--everyone, perhaps, except Loveland and Tony Kidd.

Into their heads the same thought sprang at the same moment, for each, it happened, had in his memory some such scene as this.

At the time of the first explosion Loveland had been quietly setting a plate of fried chicken before Tony, and as the journalist leaped from his seat, the two young men were close together.

"Short circuiting--escape from a fused gas pipe," Loveland yelled through the noise.

"Yes, that's it," the reporter shouted back mechanically, as if to a friend.

Then, for a few seconds, Tony was overwhelmed by a wild rush of frightened women. In the red light that streamed through the burning curtain he saw a crowd fighting to reach the window and the closed front door of the restaurant.

Upon his incredulous eyes flashed a horrid tableau of de Rocheverte throwing off Elinor Coolidge, who clung to him, crying, "Save me--save me!" As the Frenchman blindly flung her away and dashed towards the door, the girl would have fallen on her knees, to be trampled under foot by the two Hungarians, had not Loveland pushed the men violently aside, and caught Elinor in his arms.

"Keep her--keep all the ladies in this corner out of the crush," he cried to Tony. "I'm going to turn off the gas at the main." Then he gave Elinor, half fainting, to Tony Kidd, who firmly called Mrs. Milton, Miss Turner, and Miss Wood by name. The sound of the two calm voices in the midst of shouts, smashing glass, falling chairs, and foreign exclamations, rallied the women's courage. As Tony held Elinor the three others passed near him, deserted by the foreigners of their party; and in the bloodshot haze all saw Loveland's tall figure apparently plunge into the flame. He made a dash through the door-way, his arms thrown across his eyes, to shield them from the fire; and ten seconds later the loud roaring ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The cracklings had ceased, too, for the short circuiting was over, and the stream of gas burnt itself out an instant after Loveland seized the handle of the main. But the curtain still blazed; the stairway in the passage, the door frames in the kitchen and restaurant were on fire, and the panic raged as wildly as ever among the fallen chairs and tables.

The doorhandle had been broken by Leo Cohen as he fiercely disputed with Milton the right to get out first, and none could now escape that way, although men battered the panels, and strove to break them in. Someone had smashed a hole in the thick plate glass window, big enough to create a dangerous draught, but not large enough to give a means of retreat for any of the men and women who, with cut and bleeding hands, struggled to squeeze through the jagged opening.

One hand badly burnt, face and hair singed, Loveland was back in a minute from his errand at the gas main. He had snatched up a huge kettle of water from the stove, and dashed it onto the stairs, quenching the small flames which had begun to curl and writhe. Then, tearing down the curtain, he trampled out the fire, and as the flames died into shooting sparks and feebly puffing smoke, he urged Tony to bring the ladies that way. "Upstairs--we'll get them upstairs, out of the crowd," he shouted; but instantly the whole throng would have turned to stream in that direction, had not Tony Kidd kept the way clear by making an obstacle of his own broad shoulders.

He got a fierce blow or two, but held the pass until the four ladies of his party, and Isidora, had reached shelter with Loveland.

The women safe, Tony tore off his coat and began beating down the fiery snakes which crawled up the door frame towards the ceiling. Loveland, meanwhile, having refuged the four ladies with Isidora, hurried back to stand by Tony Kidd. Together they collected all the Italian women, whom they lifted bodily over a barricade of tables, and grouped in a corner beyond the reach of fire or crowd.

It was left for Blinkey to give the alarm. Being the thinnest and smallest, he contrived to squeeze his lean body through the broken window, and shout for the police. Three minutes later two big men in blue sent the door crashing off its hinges into the restaurant, and by the time the fire engines swept clanging and snorting into the street the flames were stifled, and Alexander had found a few candles to light up the smoky darkness.

The whole drama in one act had played itself out from beginning to end in less than ten minutes; but it had come close to tragedy, as none realised more fully than the two whom it had very strangely brought together: Lord Loveland and Tony Kidd.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"You're a Man"

No one was killed or seriously injured, fortunately for Alexander the Great's popularity. Many hands and faces were cut with window-glass; two or three women had bruises or sprained wrists, and the Italian bride and groom were objects for compassion.

Loveland and Tony Kidd had saved the situation. Nobody else seemed to have accomplished anything deserving praise; but, when calm followed storm, de Rocheverte, Milton, his friend Mason, and the two Hungarians vied with one another in volubly explaining each act and failure to act. They had wanted to make a way out for the ladies; that was why they had tried to get to the door, but they had been caught and overwhelmed in the crowd. They all talked fast and eagerly, almost convincingly; but the ladies, pale and shattered, listened without answering. And when they thanked Tony Kidd for "saving them from being burnt alive," they were careful neither to contradict nor assent when he assured them that it was "our brave pretender who did everything."

As for Loveland, he was no longer to be seen. While the police asked questions, the firemen examined dark corners, and the battered crowd trailed gloomily away, Tony looked in vain for his comrade in battle.

Milton, for appearance sake, was compelled to offer escort to his wife, who cried and laughed hysterically, when she did not show symptoms of fainting. The husband's presence relieved Tony from guard duty, and he alleged as an excuse for staying behind the necessity to make a "story" out of the business. His party left the restaurant in carriages and motors, sadder and perhaps wiser; but no one asked for Loveland. Even if they thought of him, the women who had come to see him play the rôle of waiter could hardly acclaim him in the part of hero; while as for the men, if they realised what he and Tony Kidd had done, it was not to their interest or credit to acknowledge it.

Loveland had not, however, mysteriously disappeared. He was only keeping himself in the background; and the one background available at Alexander's was the kitchen.

It was now a smoky and dismal kitchen, with a wild litter of pots and pans, a table overturned, broken dishes, eggs, oysters, and raw batter strewing the floor; nevertheless, it seemed a haven of refuge to Loveland, after what he had suffered.

His dash through the flames to find the gas main had been a deed more gallant perhaps than the impulsive rescue on the battlefield which won him his D. S. O. Tonight, he had deliberately counted the cost, whereas in South Africa he had acted first, and thought afterwards. He was not excited now; that was all over, and there was time to think; yet he was conscious that he had conducted himself not unworthily.

"Funny thing," he thought, as he looked at his burnt left hand, and his singed coat; "funny thing! I suppose I behaved fairly decently, because I had to do it, and there was no other way. But I've fancied myself a lot more, before this, for a grand slam at bridge, or a right and left shot at a couple of birds."

There was no need to prove his courage further by reappearing in the restaurant. If he went back, it would look as if he were bidding for compliments from his late tormentors, and Heaven knew that he wanted nothing of the sort. He wanted only to be let alone. So he lurked in the kitchen, and looked on while Black Dick and Dick's still blacker aide-de-camp calculated and repaired the damage to their supplies. He even condescended to set the fallen table on its legs again, and in return for this service Dick was binding up his injured hand when the sound of a voice behind his back made him turn quickly.

"See here," said Tony Kidd, "I've been looking for you, because I want to tell you something. Whatever else you may or may not be, you're a man, anyhow."

As he delivered himself of this speech, Tony's pleasant, clever face lost the quizzical expression it was wont to wear, and looked very attractive in its earnestness.

"Thank you," answered Loveland, rather stiffly. Then, melting as his blue eyes and Tony's brown ones held each other, he added, smiling: "So are you."

"If I've made things any worse for you, I'm sorry," went on Tony. "It's all been in the way of business, you know."

Milton's words to the young journalist had cleared the mystery of the crowd who had glanced up from their newspapers to stare at the English waiter, and gone back to their newspapers again; Tony's veiled allusion brought no surprise to Loveland, therefore, and he answered without heat. "It doesn't matter," he said, quietly, in a tired voice which made good-natured Tony wince.

"You're in pain, aren't you?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing to speak of," said Val. "Burnt my hand and wrist a little, that's all."

"It was a narrow shave," said Tony. "By Jove, a 'shave' literally, for you've pretty well made a clearance of hair on one side of your head."

"I must look like a convict," returned Loveland. And considering everything, it struck Tony Kidd as odd that the Englishman should make that particular remark about himself.

"You've been having a mighty hard time of it since--er--since I saw you last," the journalist observed.

"It has been an experience," said Loveland.

"I'd like to show my appreciation of the way you've acted tonight," said Tony. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

The thought flashed through Loveland's mind that he might tell this newspaper man the whole story of his extraordinary adventures since coming to New York--the trouble with the bank; the mysterious silence which alone had answered his two cablegrams; the unaccountable attitude of the Waldorf management; and the rudeness of his shipboard acquaintances in the restaurant. Tony Kidd had certainly "written up," or caused to be written up, his quarrel with Milton, from Milton's point of view; and now he had evidently drawn public attention to Loveland's affairs again by some further article. But if the journalist had cherished a desire for revenge, apparently he felt it no longer. Now he was hinting that he wished to make atonement, and Val believed that he meant what he said. If he would advance money on the letter of credit--but no; after a moment's reflection, Loveland made up his mind not to ask. He had had so many snubs already, he would prefer not to risk another, he told himself. Besides, after all that had happened, he could not ask a favour of this man, no matter how pleasantly it had been offered.

"Thank you very much, but I think there's nothing you can do," Loveland answered.

Tony knew of one thing that he could do, and had already decided to do it: to turn the tide of public opinion as far as possible by a graphic description of the fire at Alexander's in tomorrow morning's "Light." But, after all, that would not accomplish much, if any, material good. A wave of sympathy would only send more curiosity-seekers to Alexander's, and Tony's keen eyes had seen, through Loveland's mask of indifference, how he writhed under his punishment.

"Say, you can't stay on here," the American explained impulsively. "It's a dog's life--and whatever you are, whatever you've been, you're too much of a gentleman by breeding and education to stand it. You'll have to quit; and perhaps I could think of some way out, if you----"

"I'll thank you not to try and take my waiter away from me, Mr. Kidd," broke in Alexander the Great, speaking so suddenly behind the two young men that both started "like guilty things upon a fearful summons."

"This isn't the right place for him, Alexander, and you know it," retorted Tony.

"It's the place he's engaged to stay in, until he leaves the country," Alexander persisted. "And I mean to hold him to his word, or know the reason why."

"So said another gentleman of your race once," remarked Tony Kidd. "He did business in Venice, but in the end a lady got the better of him."

"Ladies don't interfere in my concerns," grumbled Alexander, who had not a prophetic soul, and did not guess what the next few hours might have in store for him. "If Gordon leaves me without a week's notice I'll make him sorry for himself."

"He saved your place tonight, and Lord knows how many lives," said Tony.

"Dat ain't got nothing to do with the case," insisted Alexander.

"Don't bother, thanks," Loveland said hastily to Tony. "Things can't be worse than they've been tonight. Perhaps they'll be better. I shall try and fight it out here--till I can see my way."

"Pay my way," he might have said; but he did not wish to bring up the question of money between himself and Tony Kidd.

"It's bad enough for me to have my place upset," went on Alexander, "without having my people enticed to leave me in de lurch. 'Tain't a friendly act, Mr. Kidd. I shall be days makin' up my loss, what wid tings busted and burnt, and I shall need all the help I can get to put the restaurant in shape again."

Tony turned impatiently from the man's grumbling. "Well, if you won't let me do anything for you, you won't," he said to Loveland. "All the same, I shan't forget, and the time may come. Now I must be off, and write my story."

He put out a hand, and Val responded with his unbandaged one.

If any one had told Tony Kidd a few hours before that he would yield to an irresistible impulse impelling him to shake hands heartily with the notorious "Marquis of Twelfth Street," he would not have believed it possible.

If any one had told Loveland that he would feel pleased, even complimented, by the offer of a handshake from the journalist who had made a target of him in black and white, he would have said, "it could not happen." Yet neither thought it strange when it did happen.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

A Proposal of Marriage

After the restaurant was cleared and all outsiders gone, Alexander remained, wandering dolefully about the room and discussing with Leo Cohen the sum he hoped to get from the company in which he was insured against fire.

The conversation ought to have been of absorbing interest to Cohen, as eventually Alexander's business would be his, provided there were no hitch in the marriage negotiations; nevertheless, he was absent-minded, for the new waiter had not yet left the premises, and--the watchful Cohen had noticed a peculiar light in Isidora's eye when her father had brusquely ordered her upstairs, "out of the way."

She had offered no objection to going, and had bidden Leo good-night, very prettily. But before tripping away, she paused for an instant in the corridor, her face turned towards the kitchen in which P. Gordon was helping Black Dick put things to rights.

Cohen noticed this turn of the head, this fluttering hesitation, standing as he did near the door-way now stripped of the red curtain. But when Isidora had vanished above, Alexander dismissed Blinkey and the Pole, shutting the door which usually stood open, because of the draught from the broken window.

"Why don't you send that man Gordon away, too?" Cohen asked.

"Because I'm payin' him big money, and he's got to earn it," explained Alexander. "He can stay and help Dick tidy up, if it takes till twelve o'clock. It ain't hurting us. Why should you care?"

Even Cohen, who seldom erred on the side of timidity in speech, scarcely ventured to put into words the reason why he did "care." Alexander was a good friend of his, and desired warmly to welcome him as a member of the family, but he worshipped his daughter Izzie; and as he had a violent, uncertain temper, he might resent a suggestion that she could be interested in Gordon.

Cohen had a rooted objection to draughts, or fresh air in any form, except in the warmest weather; still he would have preferred a draught to the shut door behind which the girl might steal downstairs to gossip with the Englishman in the kitchen. Of course Dick was there, but he was a slave to Isidora's fascinations, and the coal-black youth who was his adjutant had now gone home to patch up burnt hands and head. Cohen hardly heard what Alexander said, so keenly was he pricking his ears for a footfall on the stairs, behind the closed door; and he answered at random while his intended father-in-law demonstrated the prospects of opening the restaurant as usual in the morning.

"See here, are you sick, or what's the matter?" snapped Alexander at last.

"Oh, I'm all right," said Cohen, "only the smoke's got into my eyes. They smart so, I can see no more'n a bat. If it hadn't been for the smoke, which always makes me blind and dizzy, I'd have been more use in the panic."

Alexander laughed. "Well, you weren't no hero. Never mind, though, most of us was put out of business. And nobody had time to see what anybody else was at. But you do seem dicky. Mebbe you'd better be gettin' home. I don't want to keep you up."

"Oh, I'm not all in yet," Cohen hastened to protest. "But can't you leave me to watch that winder, while you see after Izzie? She was lookin' white and scared. Maybe she don't like bein' left alone. Or I could go up myself, and sit by her awhile. 'Tain't late."

Alexander chuckled. "Say, you're mighty thoughtful, ain't you? But you let Izzie alone tonight. I know dat girl, and de best ting for her is to go to bed."

"It ain't much past nine," said Cohen. "I don't guess she'll go to bed yet."

"Well, she's got the hired gel to chat with--unless it's her evenin' out. Now, don't you look so glum, Leo. Izzie ain't mashed on you yet, and if you was to go stir her up when she's all on the jump, you'd do for yourself with her. I tell you dat straight. And dat ain't what you want, huh?"

Cohen admitted that it was not, and gloomily allowed his services to be enlisted by Alexander in the way of examining the furniture for damage, piling broken chairs in a corner, and sorting out those in a fit condition to be used tomorrow.

Meantime Isidora had been busy justifying her lover's worst fears.

As she reached the top of the staircase, she heard the loud slamming of the door which had been warped and blistered by the heat. Her heart gave a little jump of excitement. Already she was keyed to a highly emotional state, and in her longing for a talk with Loveland, alone, she was ready to run almost any risk. The thought that he was still in the house, so near yet so far, had been almost insupportable, and she had fully intended to have a "good cry" the moment she arrived in the sitting-room upstairs. But the unexpected shutting of the restaurant door caused her a tremor of delight. She tip-toed down again, with her heart loud as a hammer in her breast, and flitted softly into the kitchen, not daring to speak till she had quietly closed the door also, lest the sound of her voice should carry across the passage.

"Oh, Mr. Gordon," she breathed. "I'm so sorry about your poor hand; and your face is scorched, too. I do wish you'd let me do something for you."

Loveland thanked her, but said that Dick had bandaged up his hand and wrist very nicely, with a soothing application of lard on an old rag.

Isidora gave a little sniff of scorn for the negro's ministrations.

"A pretty bandage!" she sneered. "A nasty torn bit of coarse towel; and lard ain't the right thing, either. I've taken lessons in First Aid. All the girls in my school did, and I ain't forgot what I learnt. Please come with me, and I'll do you up all right. Now, don't say no, or you'll hurt my feelings. I feel ready to cry anyway, and I sure will, if you ain't kind."

Loveland disavowed all intention of being unkind, but assured the girl that he was in very little pain, and need not put her to trouble. He would soon be ready to go away, and really thought it would be better. But when he had got so far in his rather straggling argument, two tears splashed over Izzie's cheeks. More threatened to follow, and Loveland yielded incontinently. It would hardly have been human not to feel some stirrings of gratitude, and besides, Loveland hated to see a woman cry.

"Oh, I'll come," he said desperately, and followed Isidora into the passage. Her finger on her lip told him that his visit to the family sitting-room was to be a secret, but even if prudence would have turned him back at the last moment, he was committed to the adventure and could not escape.

The parlour, which also served as dining-room, was appalling in its bravery of old gold plush, and portraits of defunct Hebrew ladies and gentlemen on a claret-coloured wall paper. There was an upright piano with the latest thing in coon songs upon it; there were wax flowers under glass cases; there were terra-cotta statuettes of incredible ugliness; there were crocheted "tidies" on the sofas and chairs. On the centre table, which was covered with a blue cloth, stood a lamp that had been lighted when the electricity failed, and in its rays, filtering softly through a shade composed of pink paper roses, Isidora looked even prettier than usual--perhaps partly in contrast with her hideous surroundings.

She made Loveland sit down in a leather armchair which smelled of the tobacco her father affected; and then, kneeling on a low footstool beside him, she began to unfasten Black Dick's clumsy bandage.

"I don't like to have you wait on me," said Loveland, who, a few weeks ago, took the most exaggerated petting for granted, from pretty women.

"Well, I like to _do_ it, anyhow," replied the girl, with a lingering, liquid glance. "You're so brave, I'm proud to be waitin' on you. I never knew anybody just like you, before."

Loveland thought this very probable, but merely remarked, with becoming modesty, that he had done very little.

"You were a real hero," said Isidora. "Oh! o--oh!" and she breathed little cooing sighs of pity at sight of the hero's burns. "I could cry over your poor hand. It's a shame----"

"Please don't!" exclaimed Loveland, laughing. "I can't stand any more tears."

"Did you mind when I cried?" asked Izzie.

"Awfully," said Loveland. As he spoke he smiled down at her in a friendly way; and the kindness in the blue, black-lashed eyes made the girl's heart flutter like an imprisoned bird. She had been in love with him since the first day, a little; then more and more. Now her love overflowed. It was too much for her emotional nature. She could not keep it back. And why should she try to keep it back, she asked herself, since her love must be considered an honour by this unsuccessful foreign adventurer? She felt that she was like a queen, laying down her crown at the feet of a handsome beggar--she, Alexander the Great's only daughter and heiress. There was no question in her mind but that her love would be welcomed.

"I'm glad," she almost sobbed. "Oh, you're worth more to me than anything in the world. I won't cry again if you ask me not. I'll do whatever you want me to. Pa'd 'most kill me if he knew I was talking like this. But I don't care--I don't care for anybody but you--no one else. Oh, suppose I'd let Pa make me marry Leo Cohen before I'd met you!"

Loveland was dumbfounded. "My dear girl!" he exclaimed. "You don't know what you are saying. You----"

"I do know," Isidora broke in. "I know you are poor, and in a lot of trouble, and you might have gone to prison. But you're a gentleman, all right. You're You, and that's enough. If you care about me same as I do about you, why, all the rest----"

"But I--I mean, I'm sure you--don't really care," stammered Val, checking himself on the verge of saying something rude.

It would have simplified matters if he had said it, for Isidora's opinion of her own high value as Alexander's rich, desirable daughter made it too easy for her to misunderstand.

"I do care. You needn't be afraid," she assured him. "I wouldn't have said a word--I'd o' waited for you to speak if things had been different, but I saw how you felt by the way your eyes looked a minute ago, and I wouldn't stop for manners, because, I says to myself, he's too much of a gentleman to tell a girl he loves her, when he's got nothing and she everything."

"I hope I am too much of a gentleman to----" Val began desperately, but she cut him short, with one little plump, Patchouli-scented hand over his mouth.

"I know it! That's what I said. You don't need to tell me," she hurried on. "We'll have to run away and get married. Then Pa'll forgive me. I'm all he's got. He couldn't bear me to want for anything. But it's no use asking him first. He----"

"Dear girl, I have no idea of asking him----"

"No, of course. You ain't so silly. His heart's set on my taking Leo, but I wouldn't touch him with a ten-foot pole, now. My hero! I'll marry you tomorrow."

"The devil you will!" said Alexander.

They stood together at the door, he and Leo Cohen, who had persuaded the old man at last, on one excuse or another, to invite him upstairs. Neither Loveland nor Isidora had heard the door open; neither knew how long the eavesdroppers had listened outside.

The girl struggled up from her knees, and as Loveland bounded out of the big chair she caught his arm, nestling against him.

"You villain, stealin' my gal's love, behind my back, and enticin' her to run off with you!" stuttered Alexander, purple with fury.

"I didn't----" began Val, indignantly.

"What, you didn't?" roared the Jew. "You want me to believe my gal asked you to marry her?"

Loveland started as if Alexander had struck him, and flushed to the forehead. Involuntarily he glanced at Isidora, who looked up at him beseechingly. "Spare me!" the almond eyes implored.

"No. I don't want you to believe that," he said. And how hugely he would have laughed had he been told a few weeks ago that he would let himself be misunderstood and shamed for the sake of a girl like Isidora! But now he did not feel it strange that he should make this sacrifice for her. And curiously enough, it seemed to be Lesley Dearmer's voice, Lesley Dearmer's eyes, which--haunting him always--bade him spare this common little Jewess, at any cost.

"You're a d----d sneak," said Alexander. "Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

"No," answered Loveland.

"Shows what you are, den. You're a tief. You try to steal my daughter, because you tink you get her money."

"Oh, Pa, he loves me! It's me he wants!" wailed Isidora, weeping, yet not daring to defend her lover at the expense of womanly self-respect. What good would it do him, she thought, for her to confess who had proposed a runaway marriage? Her father would be no less angry with Gordon, and he would be a great deal more angry with her--so angry that he would watch her always, perhaps insist on an immediate wedding with Leo Cohen. No, she could not speak; and besides, it would be too humiliating, before Leo. So she only sobbed, and sobbed the louder, when Loveland gently but firmly unlinked her arm from his.

"You're a little fool, Izzie, or you wouldn't believe any such a ting," Alexander scolded her, somewhat softened by her tears. "A feller like dat--a fraud, a liar----"

"If you were a younger man you wouldn't dare to say that," Loveland cut him short. "It's you who are lying."

"What--you call me a liar? You--you cheat, you convict!" sputtered Alexander. "Take dat for your impudence!" And rushing at Loveland like an angry bull, he struck him with both podgy fists.

Isidora screamed, and seized her father's arms, struggling with him, crying out that he was wicked, cruel, ungrateful to the man who had saved his house from burning.

"Don't be afraid, I'm not going to strike back," Loveland reassured her. "He knows that."

"Yes, he knows dat, because he knows youse a coward," Alexander sneered, wheezing asthmatically. "You come over here to cheat Noo York, but you ain't done it, not much. Lucky for you you ain't in prison. Now you get out of my house, quick--see? You just git."

"That's exactly what I'm anxious to do," said Loveland. "Goodbye, Miss Alexander."

"Oh, you ain't leavin' me forever?" cried the girl. "Pa, don't send him away like this. He--he ain't to blame." She hesitated, stammering: then a wild longing to keep her lover at all hazards overcame fear and scruples. "It was me who----"

"Don't," said Loveland. "You can do no good. I shan't forget your kindness. We won't see each other again, but you must forget tonight, and marry some man who can make you happy. Goodbye once more." And pushing regardlessly past Cohen, who hovered near the door, he sent the commercial traveller sprawling as he walked out of the room.

Black Dick, who had been told to guard the broken window of the restaurant, in the master's absence, had heard all or most of the disturbance, from the foot of the stairs, and he ran after Loveland to suggest the wisdom of getting money from Alexander.

"He am a mighty wicked ole man," whispered the Negro. "You done a lot fur him, an' now he kick you out o' de house widout wages."

"I shall never get a penny from the old beast. It's useless to try," said Loveland, heavily, seeing a vision of homeward-bound ships sailing away without him on board. "Goodbye, Dick. I wish I had something to give you to remember me by, but I haven't."

"Lawd, why I'm a rich man, wid money in de bank," protested Dick. "Do you tink because I got a black face, I take suffin' off'n you? No; on de odder hand I lend you what you like, sah, and you pay me back when you like. You've tret me like a gemman."

Loveland thanked him, curiously touched; and as he refused the loan he found himself, somewhat to his own surprise, shaking hands warmly with the coloured cook.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

"Wanted: Juvenile Leading Man"

Bill Willing sat reading in the coldest corner of the writing-room, in the Bat Hotel. Somehow, when he had not denuded himself of his last nickel, and could afford to pay for a corner anywhere, it was always the coldest corner, because he blithely sacrificed his chances of the warmer ones to others. But he was not conscious that his corner was cold tonight. There was that in his heart which would have made the edge of an iceberg seem a comfortable resting-place; and he was so deeply absorbed in his paper (which was one devoted to the interests of the stage) that Loveland had to speak to him twice before he heard and looked up.

At any other time he would have started, stared, and wanted to know whether Loveland's battered appearance was due to a fight or a fire; but now in self-absorption unusual for him, he noticed nothing strange. "Just look at this, my boy," he exclaimed, his eye sparkling with excitement, as he pointed to a paragraph which he had marked with red ink from a bottle on the table. The paragraph was an advertisement, in the midst of a column of other advertisements, apparently all of the same nature, and that column was one of five or six on a page entirely devoted to such advertisements. Still, the few lines were evidently of the most vital importance to Bill, and Loveland supposed he had hit on the offer of some wonderful situation, such as he had been looking for all his life.

"Wanted," was the attractive word which headed the paragraph: and that was what Val had expected; but as he read on, he grew puzzled. "Wanted--For Repertoire Work, Juvenile Leading Man. Must be tall; good looker, not over thirty; gentlemanly manners and appearance, slim figure, fashionable wardrobe on and off stage. No boozers or loafers need apply. Write at once enclosing photo, and stating experience, age, weight, and lowest salary, to Jack Jacobus, Managing Star Tour for Lillie de Lisle, the Little Human Flower; Modunk, Ohio."

Loveland read the advertisement over, half aloud, his friend following every word with the keenest interest and delight.

"Great Scott, ain't it the grandest ever?" Bill demanded, with a beaming smile.

"I don't understand," said Val. "Are you going to try for the engagement?"

"I?" echoed Bill. "Lord, no."

"Well, then what are you so excited about?" Loveland wanted to know.

"Why, that she should be a star--a real live star. My little gal, Lillie de Lisle. It's her--it's _her_! There can't be two Lillie de Lisles. Praise be, I've heard of her again. And she's way up top. She's a star."

"Oh, the girl you used to be in love with at the theatre?" asked Loveland.

"Used to be? Was, am, and will be till I end my days. Gee! Every week, whenever there was a spare dime, I've always bought this paper, to see if I could run acrost her name, and know where she was or what she's doing. Once, I seen a letter advertised for her, but that was all, till now. And here she is, a star, on a tour of her own, doin' business as a Little Human Flower. Great, ain't it?"

"Modunk, Ohio," Loveland read again. "Is that much of a place?"

"Never heard of it," admitted Bill. "But geography ain't been my speciality."

"It doesn't sound like a big town," said Val.

"No, that's so. But it's a lucky town, because the Little Human Flower's bloomin' there."

"Why don't you write, and say you'd like to have this engagement?"

"Me? Oh, Jiminy, am _I_ a good looker, am _I_ under thirty with a fashionable wardrobe on and off? Huh! Mine's mostly _off_." Bill laughed, and then sighed. "The good Lord didn't make me for no juvenile lead."

"But if she still likes you, she'd stretch a point in your favour," Loveland suggested.

"Jacobus wouldn't. He was the property man I told you about, that got me the sack on account of Lillie."

"By Jove," exclaimed Val, forgetting his own troubles enough to be genuinely interested in the dramatic development of Bill's love episode. "I say, you don't suppose he's married her since?"

"Can't have; at least, not unless his wife's gone off the hooks," said Bill. "I heard of him not a year ago from one of the boys who used to supe with me. Said Jacobus had married an actress named Thora Moon, a big dark woman, in the heavy line."

"The heavy line?" asked Loveland.

"Yes. Does heavies, don't you know? But you never can tell with pros. It's married one year and a bachelor the next."

"Widower, you mean," said Val.

"No, I don't, unless it's grass, and grass don't count. I should feel mighty bad if I thought Lillie'd married Jack Jacobus. He ain't the right sort. Jinks, I wish they was advertising for a scene painter, instead of juvenile lead. Wouldn't I just whizz out to Modunk like a shot. Say, Gordon, you wouldn't like the job, would you? Great idea! Why, you're made for it. And you could give the Little Human Flower old Bill's never failin' love."

"I couldn't get them to take me, I'm afraid," said Loveland. "I'm not an actor."

"An actor!" repeated Bill, with inexpressible scorn. "As if they wanted an _actor_ in a show like that, or would know one if they saw him! You're a good looker, you're young, with a tall, slim figure, and all the other qualifications named."

"Except the experience--and the wardrobe."

"Pooh!" said Bill. "Ain't you ever played as an amateur?"

"Yes, once or twice. They roped me in," said Loveland, recalling a brilliant scene in the country-house of a Duchess, and another for the success of which some of the young officers of his battalion had been responsible.

"Well, then, there you are with your experience. And as for the wardrobe--my goodness, lad, what do you want more than those swell tweeds of yours, and the dress suit you've got on? If it comes to costoom parts, why, the management will just have to fit you out with some of their own glad rags--or make the ghost walk your way in advance."

"You don't seem to think much of your star's company, if you believe a raw amateur, with hardly a stitch to his back, would be good enough for them," Loveland said.

"I don't claim it's a Noo York Company," explained Bill. "I guess they're doin' the barn-storming act. Perhaps I've been kind of carried away, thinkin' of Lillie, and what it would be to get the news of her from a chum. I don't suppose there's much in this for you. Maybe you'll do better at Alexander's, now you're a kind of star yourself----"

"A fallen star," laughed Loveland. "Look at me, and see the marks I got sliding down the sky."

Then, for the first time, Bill noticed that his friend's hair was singed and his face reddened on one side, his white shirt covered with black spots, and his left hand partly in, partly out of, a clumsily made bandage.

"Moses! But you have been through the wars!" exclaimed Bill. And he listened with growing excitement to Loveland's version of the fire.

"Alexander ought to give you a partnership," he commented at last, though Val had made no boast of his own part in the affair.

"He's chucked me," said Loveland.

"Je--_ru_salem! Why, in the name of all that's decent?"

"It was in the name of everything indecent--'villain, cheat, liar, coward'--that he did it. According to him I was all those, and ought to be in prison; though what he meant by his weird accusations, I can't imagine, unless he just hit on whatever came first. I suppose it must have been that. He thought I'd been making love to his daughter."

"Gee! And had you?"

"No. It was a misunderstanding. But I couldn't explain. And the long and short of it is that I crawled in the dust for a few wretched dollars, which it seems I've got to lose, after all. I don't know how I'm to touch any more--unless I do as you say, and get this place with your friend, the Human Flower."

"You'll go?" asked Bill, brightening.

"Rather. If they'll have me. But I haven't even a photograph----"

"Come out with me," said Bill, seizing him by his sound arm. "I know a place where they do you a tin-type by flashlight for ten cents, and finish while you wait. I'll stand the racket. You can turn your good side to the machine; by the time the answer comes, your hair'll have grown out and you'll be looking A 1. Hurrah! Three cheers for Lillie de Lisle, the Little Human Flower, and her new Juvenile Lead!"

CHAPTER THIRTY

Show Folks

"Mo--dunk!" shouted a brakeman, slamming the door of the day coach in which Loveland had traveled since some vaguely remembered hour in the night, when he had changed trains.

He had dozed, sitting on the hard red seat, his head leaning wearily against the window-frame; and he started up at the yell which for an instant seemed part of his dream.

But then, everything lately had been a dream. His weird experiences in New York; the absence of replies from his mother and the London Bank, in answer to his cabled appeals; the coming of the telegram from Jack Jacobus, accepting the very modest terms named at Bill's suggestion; his start from the magnificent Grand Central Station in New York, where the new "juvenile lead" had found his ticket awaiting him. And now, as he bundled half dazed out of the local train he had boarded some hours ago, the dream suddenly grew more bewildering than ever.

What a contrast was this little country "depot" with the splendours of the Grand Central in New York! The rough frame building was little better than an exaggerated shed, and no town was to be seen, across the desolate waste of brown fields which billowed round the railway shelter and its high platform, like a wintry sea round a small, bleak island.

Through an open door of the passengers' waiting-room Loveland caught a glimpse of a squat stove, rising like a fat-bodied grey dwarf from a big box of sawdust, and a man who had been warming his hands came out of the room as the train stopped. There were also three or four other men, lolling on a bench outside the window, but they were long-bearded, soft-hatted, tobacco-chewing individuals who had evidently dragged themselves hither through the mud for the excitement of seeing a train come in, and took no interest beyond that of curiosity in the passengers.

The man who came out of the waiting-room was a very different order of being, and almost offensively conscious of the difference. He was fifty, perhaps, and tall, with a swaggering walk, which caused the shabby fur-lined coat he wore to swing like the skirt of a woman's dress as he moved forward. He had on patent-leather boots, cracked with old age and caked with new mud. His rather long, straight hair and the heavy double curve of his moustache clearly owed their raven tint to artificial means, but his big chin was blue, and the thick brows over a pair of light grey eyes were still black. The nose and mouth, though ineffectively cut, contrived to express cruelty and an insolence which was accentuated by the upward tilt of a cigar between the strong yellowish teeth and the downward tilt of his badly kept silk hat.

Every line of the face and figure, every article of clothing, bespoke the fifth rate, seedy actor who has parted in his time with most things, except his self-conceit.

The idlers on the bench stared at him, then at the newcomer, and regarded with lazy curiosity the meeting between the two: for this gentleman in the tall silk hat and fur overcoat was Mr. Jack Jacobus, come to claim Mr. P. Gordon, the new member of his company.

If it had been possible for Loveland's heart to sink lower--which at the moment he did not believe--it would have sunk at sight of Miss de Lisle's manager. But, he asked himself, what else had he a right to expect from the advertisement, and Bill's assurance that it would be useless to demand a higher weekly screw than ten dollars, the management paying board?

One quick glance, and the glass-grey eyes had taken in each detail of Loveland's appearance, from the smartly made travelling cap, which still kept its shape, down to the neat brown boots. He approved all, it was evident, except the battered gladstone bag which Bill Willing had bought extraordinarily cheap at a pawnbroker's sale, as a gift for his friend Gordon. This Loveland carried in his hand, and he saw the actor-manager's gaze rest sardonically upon it.

In a deep, measured voice, as theatrical as the rest of his personality, Mr. Jacobus enquired if he had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Perceval Gordon. Then when answered in the affirmative, he delivered himself of a few polite words of greeting.

"Glad you got here all right. Don't know what we should have done if you hadn't turned up. Our juvenile lead came down with typhoid at our last week's stand, and we've been fakin' our best ever since--any old play we could, that had the fewest men, and the lot of us doublin' parts till we was ready to drop on the stage with the curtain. Got the checks handy for your big baggage?"

Loveland had to explain that he had no big baggage, and under the changing, freezing eyes of Jacobus felt as insignificant as a crushed worm. Until very lately he had not known the meaning of this sensation; now, he was becoming accustomed to it as to a daily worn coat; but never perhaps had his pride been more flatly ironed out than in this brief instant.

"What--no wardrobe?" demanded the manager; his tone of friendly condescension to a new member of his company altered to one of bullying suspicion.

"My wardrobe is here," said Loveland, holding out Bill's present.

"Sorry I forgot to bring a magnifying glass," sneered Jacobus. "But see here, I call this false pertences. How are you going to play a new part every night of the week, some of 'em costoom ones, all out of a grip no bigger than your pocket? You ought to have told me what you _didn't_ have--if it wouldn't have taken you too long."

"_You_ ought to have told me I had to play a new part every night," said Loveland, and the young man and the middle-aged one, looking each other straight in the eyes, conceived for one another an intense dislike. "I was given to understand by a person of experience, that I should have enough to get on with until I could buy something--if necessary."

"Well, that depends on how soon you buy," returned Jacobus, less bitterly. "You knew very well that you'd have me on the leg, once you got out here at this Godforsaken place, with your ticket paid. Our show ain't made of money, especially the past two weeks. Heavens! What a frost! We've been livin' on our gleanings from last month (when we were going like smoke) and countin' on the new juvenile lead to help work up better business. That's why I'm so sore at your cheek, Mr. Gordon, shootin' yourself out West with what you stand up in. But as you _are_ here, we must make the best of a bad business. The girls may like you even with whiskers on your shirtcuffs, and I suppose among us, we'll rig you up somehow, out of our theatre trunks. That's what you were layin' for, eh?"

"Look here, if you're going to insult me much more, I shall turn round and go back, if I have to walk," said Loveland, cold, hungry, tired and miserable, but with just spirit enough left in him to be furious.

Jacobus saw that he had gone too far, if the juvenile lead were not to slip through his fingers. He did not want that to happen, though he already had an uneasy jealousy of P. Gordon. So used was he to bullying the members of his company, male and female, that he had hardly realised what was likely to be the effect of his sarcasm, until he saw the expression of the newcomer's face.

"Pshaw!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Don't you know a joke from an insult in your part of the country? It give me a start to see you land without a wardrobe, and I have a right to be mad; but I've just said we'd make the best of it, and help you out all we can. What can we do more? I suppose you don't grudge me a bit of fun? Come along to the great and glorious city of Modunk, which must have as many as one thousand inhabitants. Hope you don't mind goin' on Shanks's Mare? It's the only kind we'd get in this town--even if we ran to something better; but it ain't far--about a mile and a half; and your grip can't weigh much."

Loveland wished that he had no heavier burden to carry than his bag, but he kept the thought to himself, and trudged off with the arbiter of his destiny. The loungers on the bench, too far away to overhear the conversation, guessed that it was not altogether of a friendly nature, and transferred their quids of tobacco to their cheeks, in order to discuss the situation with a new, if fleeting, animation. As he passed them to descend the platform steps to the muddy country road, Loveland caught the words, "Show folks."

"Show folks!" Yes, he was one of the show folks.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The Dignity and Delight of Being a Juvenile Lead

"Show folks--show folks! Say, come look at the show men!" Impish little boys and girls yelled to each other, taking up the refrain from cottage to cottage along the roadside, on that Via Dolorosa which led to the town of Modunk.

Loveland pricked all over, as if with a million stabs of tiny pins, but Jacobus only laughed, and said that it was a good advertisement. Business had been bad during the week at Modunk which would come to an end that night--Saturday; but he attributed this ill luck to the fact that the company had been forced, for lack of a juvenile lead, to choose plays which were not the most popular in their repertoire. Things would be different next week, he hoped, when they were going across the river into Kentucky, to a small but lively show town, whence the advance-agent sent encouraging accounts.

He questioned Loveland sharply concerning his theatrical experience, seeming to incline towards distrust since the incident of the travelling bag. Very soon he found out, in all its nakedness, the truth which had been veiled in the letter dictated by Bill; that Mr. Perceval Gordon's experience had all been as an amateur, and not very extensive at that. However, as Bill had prophesied, he did not appear to think it mattered much, though he sniffed and "hum'd" a little, by way of curbing the new man's self-esteem. "You've got a good stage presence and voice," said he, "though I don't know what the folks here will think of that English accent of yours. Pity you can't talk United States. They're mighty sharp at guying anything foreign or affected, so don't be knocked silly if the little boys in the dime seats mock you a bit. Just keep your hair on, and go along as if nothing had happened, and they'll shut up in a minute or so, when they've got used to you."

This was--as Bill would have said--a new "proposition" to Loveland; that he had an "English accent," which might be objected to on the ground of affectation. He had heard a good deal in England about the American accent, and had chaffed Jim Harborough because of it, but as after all the English nation had more or less invented the language current on both sides of the water, he had supposed that theirs was, without question, the only right way of using it. However, opinion seemed to differ over here, and he did not choose to argue with Mr. Jacobus.

The actor-manager watched his new acquisition furtively as he plowed through the mud, and at last interrupted himself in describing with some acerbity the absent members of the company, to remark suddenly: "You look like a soldier."

"I am a soldier," Loveland replied before he stopped to think.

"Oh!" said Jacobus, regarding him keenly. "English army, of course?"

"Yes," answered Val shortly, regretting his frankness.

"H'm! What were you--sergeant?"

Loveland could have broken out into savage laughter. He, a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, asked by this seedy theatrical man if he were a sergeant! But he kept his countenance, for fear of committing himself unwittingly under the catechismal fire.

"No. I wasn't a sergeant," he replied.

"H'm! See here. I hope you didn't leave the army--er--on short notice, eh? You know what I mean?"

"Do you mean, am I a deserter?" Loveland flashed out, turning red.

"Well, excuse me if I'm offensive. But the arm of Edward is supposed to be a long one, if any of his red coats take a vacation without permission, and _I_ don't want to get into no trouble with kings. We may not be Noo York stars, but we're a pretty respectable crowd, take us all round."

"Well, set your mind at rest," said Loveland, swallowing his wrath. "I'm not a deserter, and I shan't bring disgrace upon your company."

"All right, all right. I'll take your word for it. I guess there's nothing else to do, as you're the only man on the spot. But say, the more I look at you, the more I have a kind of sneaking idea I've seen your picture lately. Did you get your photo stuck in any of the theatrical papers, since you landed?"

"No," Loveland replied; but flushed again, instantly guessing where and in what connection Jacobus must have seen his portrait--a sketch, or some snapshot, perhaps. Evidently the man did not yet associate him with anything in particular, but the connection between the new juvenile lead and a certain Englishman made notorious by one or two New York papers might at any instant link itself in Mr. Jacobus's head. This Loveland was far from desiring: not that he thought his value to the management would be decreased by the discovery--rather the contrary, judging by his experience with Alexander--but because he could not bear to repeat that experience.

Luckily, Jacobus did not pursue the subject, which apparently interested him less than others. When he had described the members of his company according to his own conception of their characters and social status, he went on to tell the new recruit something about the parts he would be required to play. Then it was that Loveland learned the esoteric difference between being a leading man, and a "juvenile lead."

Jack Jacobus was himself, it seemed, leading man for Miss Lillie de Lisle, the Little Human Flower: "Heavy Lead" he called it, but to the Heavy Lead apparently belonged all the really good parts in the company's repertoire. Their productions struck Loveland as being wonderfully good for a strolling troupe, playing week by week in extremely small towns, but Jacobus laughed when he remarked that it must be expensive to obtain the rights of such popular pieces as Sidney Cremer's, for instance, and to put them on the stage properly.

"Properly!" he echoed, grinning. "Well, that depends. Folks here ain't perticular about scenery. They don't travel, and don't have no chance to see anything better than we give 'em. I guess I may as well let you into the secrets of the prison-house, for you're one of us now, and you'll soon find out for yourself, anyhow, what we are, for good and bad. We carry six men in our show, counting me and you, and there ain't many pieces we put on, except Sidney Cremer's comedies, where there's less than a dozen or fifteen male characters, sometimes more. We all double; sometimes each one of us--even me--the leading man, because I ain't proud, and needs must when somebody drives--manages to do two or three small parts besides his own. It takes it out of us, but it's all in the night's work. What characters we can't double we leave out. Same with the women. We carry four of them, counting Lillie herself, and they earn their money. You see, we _must_ bill popular pieces, melodramas and comedies mostly, or we shouldn't get no houses; so we can't choose plays with few characters to please lazy actors.

As for the rights to produce--why, we don't trouble ourselves about them, any more than we do about the pasts of our juvenile leading gentlemen. It simply don't run to it. What we want we take. Good motto in this life, eh? There are fellows make their livin' by writin' down the words and biz of successful plays, in shorthand, copyin' 'em out at home, and then sellin' 'em on the sly to poor but honest show folks like us, who must live but can't afford luxuries. It's quite an industry. 'Pirates,' the Puritans call our sort, but it don't kill us--or our business. And as we always work only the smallest towns, which the stage papers don't touch, it ain't as risky as you'd think, though once in a way the police do shove their noses in where nobody wants them, and I confess I'm a bit scared about Sidney Cremer's new piece, which we're just puttin' up. Say, you're lookin' kind o' sick. I hope _you_ ain't one of the Puritans, are you? Don't they have shows of our sort in your country?"

Loveland said he really didn't know; but as he hastened to add he was not a Puritan, and anyhow, Mr. Jacobus's business was his own, that gentleman did not feel called upon to translate into words the thoughts his eyes had begun to express.

Mr. Perceval Gordon, it appeared, was expected to play seven parts, at the least, during the season, and must be "letter-perfect" in the first one by that very night. It was, however, but a small rôle; that of an old man, who conveniently expired at the end of the first act in great agony. It was, the manager explained, a "fat acting part," though there weren't many lines to speak; and--yes, certainly, a juvenile lead was occasionally expected to play old men or, indeed, to do anything he was asked to do; and an amateur like Mr. Gordon might think himself jolly lucky to get varied experience under such stage management as he would find in the Human Flower's company. This particular piece, a melodrama called "The Dead Hand," had been chosen for the closing night of the engagement at Modunk because the part for the juvenile lead wasn't too long or difficult to "get up in" with one rehearsal, which they would have after noon; and indeed the Dead Hand was to be that of Mr. Gordon himself. He would appear as a ghost near the end of the last act, and wave the said hand behind a gauze, with strong lime-light turned upon it; which was the scene which made the part so "fat." Also, incidentally, at a ball, he would be asked to "walk on" as a young gentleman of fashion. Could he waltz? Good! Then he should have Mrs. Jacobus for his partner, as she liked a decent dancer in that scene, where she had experienced considerable trouble with awkward brutes who stepped on her "party dress." Mrs. Jacobus--known professionally as Miss Thora Moon, was--her husband went on to state--Miss de Lisle's leading lady, who played adventuresses, villainesses, and important parts of that ilk, to the Human Flower's soubrettes and ingenues.

"My wife had some money--when I married her," he mentioned, with an introspective look, accompanied by a faint sigh. Thus Loveland was enabled to guess how it was that Mr. Jacobus might have been induced to forget his early _penchant_ for Miss de Lisle, Bill's "little gal."

A bitter wind was blowing, but exercise kept Loveland warm, and he did not envy Jacobus the overcoat, which the actor was obliged to hold together with one cold, red hand (as several buttons were missing) while he frantically seized the brim of his silk hat with the other, each time they turned a corner. At last they came into the town of Modunk, which consisted of one long business thoroughfare, named, of course, Main Street, and various other avenues sacred to the home, branching off from it at right angles and regular intervals.

Main Street was paved with red brick, and most of the residence streets were content with a coating of tar, or else they wallowed in their native mud. The shops, or "stores," as Jacobus called them, appeared depressingly unattractive to Loveland, though they were not inferior to those in villages of the same size in England or Scotland. Millinery, "dry goods," and groceries were sold in the same establishments, and seemed to the uninitiated eye to be hopelessly mixed in some of the show windows. Most of the private houses were built of wood, painted white, brown, grey or pale green. They had outside shutters to the windows, such as Loveland associated with Southern France, and stood surrounded with neat little "yards" fenced off from each other and publicity by painted or whitewashed palings. There were, however, a few more pretentious houses, rising from among less important neighbours, with the air of being mansions. They were of brick, or stone, but Loveland liked the little frame houses best, and was hoping he might be lodged in one of them, when Jacobus stopped in Main Street, in front of an ugly, new building constructed of wood and brick. There was a kind of veranda, above which appeared a large signboard with the words "Smith's Hotel" in green and gold letters.

"Here we are," said Jacobus, sighing as he looked at his mud-encrusted patent leathers. "The whole crowd's here. I'll show you to your room, and by the time you've had a wash, if you want it, dinner'll be ready. I guess you'll be ready for _it_, too!"

"What--dinner at half-past twelve?" asked Loveland.

"You bet. They'd like to give it to us with our breakfast if they could, so as to get the work out of the way. You'll find the crowd in the dining-room, and I'll introduce you. After dinner you can have a look through your part in "The Dead Hand" if you get through in time; everybody who's on in your scenes has a call at the theatre for rehearsal. That's for half-past one, sharp."

Loveland made no comment on these announcements. He walked into the hotel behind Jacobus, who, being manager of the company, heavy lead, and stage-manager combined, naturally marched in front of the insignificant "juvenile," who carried his wardrobe in his hand.

There was a narrow, uncarpeted passage, with an uncarpeted and still narrower stairway leading steeply up to regions above. Also there was a strong, nay, over-developed smell of dinner, which could be all too easily divided into its component parts: corned beef and cabbage, with perhaps a bodyguard of onions. As they went upstairs the smell followed, but on the next story began to mingle with a suggestion of hot iron, coal-smoke, and unopened windows.

"One more flight for you," explained Jacobus. "They ain't got too much accommodation here; and Miss de Lisle, me and my wife, and the other ladies are on this floor; gentlemen above."

They continued to ascend, and the actor-manager stopped before the first door at the head of the second stairway which led to the top story of the hotel.

"Here you are," he said, and with a light knock which was a notification, not a request, he flung the door open.

On a narrow bed visible from the threshold a young man, hardly more than a boy, was stretched, reading something that looked like MSS. He glanced round, but did not move, on seeing Mr. Jacobus and a stranger.

"I thought you said this was my room?" exclaimed Loveland, startled.

"So it is, and there's your room-mate. Didn't know whether you'd be in, Ed. I can introduce you to each other, right now. Mr. Ed Binney, our property man, prompter, and second villain. Mr. Perceval Gordon, of England, our new juvenile. Now you know each other; and I guess, Eddy, you can put Mr. Gordon up to all he needs to know."

This was worse than the Bat Hotel, where each man who earned twenty-five cents could have his own cubicle. But, now, Loveland was not paying his own way. The "management" was to do that; and feed him, too. As he had but a quarter in the world, thrust upon him as a loan or gift by generous Bill, Loveland was not in a position to be critical. Here he was, and here he would have to stay, till he heard from home, or something "turned up."

As for hearing from home, he had begun almost to despair, for his two cables had remained unanswered now these many dreary days. Still, after an interval of more waiting for a telegram from his mother, he had written to her and to Betty Harborough, ashamed to take outsiders into the deepest secrets of his humiliating adventures. But at best, it would be a fortnight before Bill Willing could forward to some address yet to be given, a letter from across the sea; and meanwhile Loveland was a slave of necessity--if not of Jack Jacobus.