With his evening clothes under his arm (the first time in his life, perhaps, that he had carried a parcel larger than a letter), Loveland found his way back to the Bowery, back to the Bat Hotel, back to his friend Bill, who was already in the reading room. And once again the name of "P. Gordon" figured humbly among the hundred and fifty lodgers for that night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Man Who Waits
There came no cablegram from Scotland next day. Loveland's mother did not answer his appeal. But Val tried to persuade himself that this was not strange. Perhaps she could not get together such a sum as he had asked for, without a little delay, but she would send as soon as possible. He was sure of that as he was sure that his present address ought to be First Circle, Hades.
The dollar which remained to him after sending his expensive cry across the sea, was gone. He borrowed of Bill Willing, who offered and was delighted to lend. In a day or two at most, Loveland said, he would repay, and planned to give Bill a handsome present as well. Meanwhile Loveland passed his time miserably between Alexander the Great's and the Bat Hotel, or walking the streets in the desperate hope of seeing some English face he knew. He saw many pleasant faces, to whom no appeal of sorrow would be made in vain. But they were strangers' faces, and he was not a beggar yet.
He had bought with Bill's money—an advance from Alexander—two or three collars, a change of linen, and a dark necktie, therefore he looked smart and prosperous enough in his tweed suit to pass muster in a crowd, the absence of an overcoat seeming a mere eccentricity. Perhaps there were men who envied the handsome young Englishman who strolled past them with a jaunty, leisured air, while they were forced to hurry. But he would have given a good deal for the need of hurry.
Four days dragged by, including one ghastly Sunday; and when there was still no word from Lady Loveland, Val began to feel the heavy conviction that none would ever come. Some awful spell had fallen upon him, it seemed, a curse which made him a pariah even for those who loved him best. It had begun with Foxham's treachery; and now it had come to his mother's neglect. What might follow, he could not guess; he would rather not try to guess.
He thought over his past, and realised that he had been selfish; but he did not feel that he had ever done anything which deserved such a punishment as this, if punishment it were—if there were a God who watched the children of the earth, and punished, or rewarded, their deeds. Never before had it occurred to him to pity others, beyond a "poor old chap, so sorry, don't you know," and a quick forgetting; but now he was filled with a dumb sympathy for everyone who suffered. Above this bright, gay city—the gayest and brightest Val had ever known—it seemed that his eyes had gained a magic keenness to see the smoke of human suffering rise like incense, to the clear remoteness of the sky.
Loveland did not always take his meals at Alexander's. Sometimes he let a meal-time pass, too deeply depressed to be hungry; or if Bill Willing insisted on food for both, there were places where it could be obtained even more cheaply than at Alexander the Great's—when Alexander himself, and not Isidora, was behind the counter.