Lord Loveland Discovers America

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 Milton's request, had telephoned for a table for eight, to be withdrawn as far as possible from the big front window, that dinner and diners need not be criticised by the man in the street.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.

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.