Lord Loveland Discovers America Part 26

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"On a letter of credit?"

"Pa perfectly despises that word 'credit.'"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Pa's in one of his funny moods," she whispered. "Won't give me any satisfaction. But I know he'd take you if you'd let me tell him who you are. I mean, if you're willing, I'll say you're the man all that stuff was in the papers about, how you was at the Waldorf as the Markis of Loveland, and how it was you knocked that swell Mr. Milton down. n.o.body appreciates the value of advertising better than Pa (Bill can tell you that), and amatoor or no amatoor, you can be gettin' not only your two-fifty a week but twice that, and maybe more, out of Alexander the Great."

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

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

Alexander's is 'great,' but it ain't swell."

Loveland had shuddered at the thought of the steerage, when Bill suggested it a few moments ago, but now it seemed to him that the "horrors of the middle pa.s.sage" would be heaven to the humiliations he endured. For fifteen dollars, Bill said, he could get back to England.

If Alexander would give him five dollars a week, in three weeks he could be off--or say, four, having paid Bill what he owed. But, no, that was an eternity--not to be endured. At bay and desperate Val determined to strike high.

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

Isidora looked at him with respect, and dashed away behind the curtain.

Neither man spoke. The sound of her little high-heeled slippers, clicking on the uncarpeted stairs, was sharp in their ears. In three minutes--before Loveland had had time to repent--she was down again.

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

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

News From the Great World

"Lesley, wasn't Loveland the name of that Lord you knew on the boat?"

asked Lesley's Aunt Barbara, peering at her niece from behind an immense newspaper which hid all the upper part of her body as if with a screen.

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

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

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

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

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