CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The Whole Truth

"Miss Dearmer!" he stammered.

"Mr. Gordon, I believe?" she said primly.

She wore a simple grey dress, which he remembered to have seen and liked on the ship. How sweet, how dear she was, with her soft, bright eyes, and long curled eyelashes!

Involuntarily he put out his hand, but she seemed not to see the gesture, and the hand dropped.

"I used the name. I--thought it was better," he explained, trying to keep his head.

"Yes. No doubt it was better," she answered.

"And it really _is_ my name," he went on. "One of my names."

"You have so many?"

"My sponsors in baptism----"

"The newspapers accused you of being your own sponsor."

"The newspapers accused me--what do you mean?"

"Surely you know. I told you I should read about you, but I expected to read very different things. However, we won't talk of that now----"

"But we must." For a moment he was the old, masterful Loveland. "We must. I want to know what you mean."

"That can wait awhile. I came to ask what _you_ mean. Though I did read the newspapers, I was surprised to find you here. I'm acting for my friend, Sidney Cremer. A cousin of Sidney's and mine, who lives a few miles out of Ashville, saw 'Lord Bob' advertised for performance, and telegraphed. Sidney couldn't come, but my aunt brought me tonight, as Sidney Cremer's interests and mine are rather closely allied. And you know, nobody has a right to produce the play without the author's permission."

"Yes, I know," answered Loveland dejectedly. But his depression arose, not so much from the consciousness of wrongdoing, as from the suspicion engendered by the girl's tone in speaking of Sidney Cremer. Cremer's interests and hers were "closely allied"! She had blushed and even faltered a little, as she made the statement, and Val sprang instantly to the conclusion that she was engaged to marry Cremer.

It had never occurred to him, when they played at platonic friendship on board the _Mauretania_, that Lesley Dearmer might be engaged. She had never said in so many words that she was not, but she hadn't at all the manner of a girl who had disposed of her future. In any case, however, whether the affair were new or of old standing, Loveland felt miserably certain that she was engaged now. And he stood convicted of defrauding the man whom she intended to marry. Was there any depth of wretchedness or of humiliation which the thirteenth Marquis of Loveland had not plumbed at last?

"You admit that you knew, and yet you produced and played in the piece?"

"I did. But----" he hesitated. Should he attempt to excuse himself, to disclaim responsibility, or would that only seem cowardly in her eyes?

"But--what? You see, I'm bound to report to my friend."

"Your friend!" broke out Loveland, losing his head. "You are going to marry him!"

"Sidney Cremer?"

"Yes. You don't deny it."

She laughed gently. "Why should I deny it--to you? Have you any right to question me, or bring me to book--about anything, Mr. Gordon?"

"I know I have no right," he admitted. "Forgive me." He guessed that her emphasis, and her frequent repetition of the name "Gordon" meant that she wished him to understand the change in their relationship. To her he was now only Gordon the actor, who had stolen Sidney Cremer's play. The past was to be forgotten.

"I must remind you again," Lesley went on, in a cool, businesslike manner, though her eyes were starry, "that I have come twenty miles to question you. And my aunt is waiting for you with the cousins who telegraphed about 'Lord Bob.' You know, you mustn't go on using Sidney Cremer's play."

"We have no intention of doing so," said Loveland. And then, in as few words as possible, without any attempt at defending himself for his part in the transaction, he explained baldly that the manager had deserted the company, and that they had only one piece, "Lord Bob." They had produced it for three nights, in the hope of making money enough to get away, but the result had proved disappointing.

"My affairs are rather in a muddle just now," Loveland finished; "but as soon as I get them straightened out again, which I expect to do shortly, I will myself pay Mr. Cremer's fee for these performances, if you'll let me know what they are."

"Oh, Sidney wouldn't want you to do that," the girl explained. "I--neither of us knew that the company was in trouble. My cousins here didn't tell us that--I suppose they didn't know, either. We thought it was simply an ordinary case of piracy. But I can answer for Sidney, as if it were for myself. He wouldn't want fees, and he wouldn't take any severe measures in such a case as this. If only you give me your word, Lord Lo--, I mean, Mr. Gordon, that these people won't go about the country playing this piece, I'll ask nothing more."

"You may set Mr. Cremer's mind at rest about that," Loveland answered bitterly. "They aren't likely to go about the country playing any piece."

"You mean, they--you--are stranded here?" enquired Lesley.

"Oh, I'm all right," Loveland said hurriedly, far from wishing to pose as an object of pity. "It's the others I'm thinking of."

She gave him a quick, clear look. "Would you go away and leave them here, in trouble?" she asked.

"No, I won't do that," replied Val. "I mean to do something for them."

"What can you do, if your affairs are in such a muddle as you say?"

"I don't know yet. I'm trying hard to think."

"Won't there be money enough from these three performances of 'Lord Bob' to pay their railway fares somewhere?"

"I'm afraid not. Hardly enough to settle with the landlord and get him to release their luggage, which he's keeping till last week's board bills are paid."

"Your luggage, too?"

Loveland grew red. "I haven't any."

"Oh!" the colour flew to her cheeks, as if in sympathy with the flush she could not help seeing on his. "No trunks?"

"You say you read the newspapers," said Loveland. "If you did, you perhaps saw that the hotel people in New York treated me rather curiously. I didn't read the stuff myself. I really couldn't bring myself to do it. But I gathered from hints given me here and there that the journalists had a pretty rough game with me."

"You had a game with them, to begin with," said Lesley.

"I shut my door in the face of one, on my first day in New York," Loveland admitted. "Next day I hadn't a door to shut. America hasn't been very hospitable to me."

"What could you expect?" asked Lesley, defending her countrymen. Her face was grave, but there was an odd sparkle in her eyes. "Americans don't like having tricks played on them."

"I played no trick."

"You played a part--the part of Lord Loveland."

Val stared. "How can a man play that he's himself?"

"Do you deny the newspaper accusations, then?"

"What accusations? I did knock a man down in the street, and he gave his own version of the story."

"Oh, I don't mean that story, but quite another. The story he said you knocked him down for alluding to--when----"

"We're talking at cross purposes," broke in Loveland, bewildered. "For the sake of any friendship you may ever have had for me--though I'm not asking you to continue it in future--explain what you mean."

"But, do _you_ mean that you read nothing, heard nothing, of what they were saying about you in New York?"

"I told you I wouldn't look at the papers. What I heard I of course took for granted was in connection with the hotel affair and the row in the street."

Lesley thought for a minute, with an expression on her face which Loveland could not understand, though he did not take his eyes from her fallen lashes, the beautiful lashes which had fascinated him at first sight of her on the _Mauretania_.

Presently an idea seemed to commend itself to the girl. On her arm, a little gold and platinum bag hung from its chain. Loveland had often seen this bag, on shipboard, and had even frequently picked it up from the floor, where the girl dropped it half a dozen times each day, when she slipped out from under the rugs of her deck chair. Well did he know the two compartments in this favourite little receptacle of Lesley's treasures! He knew in which one she kept the handkerchief which smelt like fresh violets; in which her money, her cardcase, her stylographic pen, and a letter or two; and now he watched her, with eyes homesick for past days, as she took out the remembered cardcase, and from an inner pocket of that cardcase, a folded newspaper cutting.

"It's quite time you did read for yourself," she said. "This will make you understand better than I can tell you. Fanny Milton cut it out of 'New York Light,' and posted it to me. I've kept it here--I hardly know why, but now I'm glad I did."

It was Tony Kidd's first article that Loveland read with a shock of surprise, which, at the very beginning, set the blood humming in his ears like the sound of the sea in a shell.

Tony had told his story spicily, in a way to make his readers laugh. But Loveland did not laugh. He read on and on, dazed at first, then with a burst of enlightenment which made clear many mysteries.

"The Difficult Young Man to Approach" had come to New York to see Heiresses and conquer Papas, said Tony. He had begun the conquering process on board ship, being a youth of a thrifty turn of mind, who believed in taking time by the forelock. He had made friends; he had even, perhaps, made love. Soon, no doubt, he would have made a match; but the schemes of mice, men, and even marquises have a way of going wrong, especially when--and that "when" reminded Tony to pause and ask a conundrum. "When is a Marquis not a Marquis?" The writer invited the public to guess. "Why, when he's a Valet, of course." And then Tony went on to protest gaily, that neither he nor his paper was responsible for the assertion that this Marquis was not a Marquis. They merely put the question, and gave the answer for what it was worth, on the strength of certain sensational news just received from the land where Marquises grew on blackberry bushes for heiresses to cull.

A number of people prominent in New York society had received cablegrams from London, informing them that the valet of the Marquis of Loveland had absconded with his lordship's jewellery, and other belongings; that the fugitive was known to have impersonated his master in London, obtaining goods from tradesmen, and running up bills at hotels, in Lord Loveland's name. If a person calling himself the Marquis of Loveland should appear in New York presenting letters of introduction to the said Prominent People earlier than the arrival of the White Star Liner _Baltic_, they were to beware of him, as the real Lord Loveland expected to sail on that ship.

On the very day when these cablegrams were received--Tony Kidd went on to state--there arrived by a strange (?) coincidence an attractive looking and haughty young gentleman, known among acquaintances collected on the _Mauretania_ as Lord Loveland. This alleged nobleman had gone to the Waldorf-Astoria, where, through a servant of the hotel, it was soon discovered that his pretentious trunks were practically empty. He had (perhaps naturally) refused to be interviewed by a representative of "Light"; and the manner of his refusal was somewhat graphically described.