Shadows
The night was warm for November in New York; still, there was a decided crispness in the air which Loveland felt as he went out.
The streets were brilliant with light, and half New York appeared to be abroad, although the theatres had been in full swing for nearly an hour. But all the women wore cloaks, and the men overcoats. Loveland, in his dinner jacket and wide expanse of shirt front, his pumps and silk stockings, his cloth travelling cap pulled over his eyes, would have been noticeable even if his height and good looks had not made him a marked figure. Everybody who passed stared, and more than a few glanced back at him. Here and there some pretty woman laughed at a joking comment whispered by her escort; and when his first hot rage began to cool, it was uncomfortably borne in upon Loveland that he was the observed of many observers.
Like most Englishmen, he loathed being conspicuous, and in his present plight it was especially hateful, since being conspicuous meant also to be ridiculous.
His ears, shut by anger, were opened by vanity, and he heard a woman say to a man that he "looked as if he'd just been turned down by his best girl." "And kicked out by Pa," added her companion; at which they both giggled, and the tingling in Loveland's veins drove out the chill which had begun to creep in.
He longed to call a cab, and hide himself from staring eyes, but he had scarcely a shilling left. There was nothing to do but walk on, until he found some hotel which would take him in on trust. As his brain cooled, he began to realise that it might be difficult to find any such hotel.
Here he was, on a winter's night, a foreigner in a strange city, walking the streets without an overcoat, and with only a coin or two in his pocket. He remembered that, in the afternoon, when dealing out visiting cards and letters of introduction, he had slipped his cardcase into a pocket of his overcoat, where it still remained. That overcoat remained in one of the rooms lately his at the Waldorf-Astoria. What a fool he had been after all to leave it behind. The watcher could hardly have torn it off his back. As it was, a whim of silly pride had deprived him of a means of identification, as well as a decent protection for his body.
Why should a hotel-keeper consent to take him in, without luggage, and with nothing save his bare word—not even a bit of engraved pasteboard—to prove that he was the Marquis of Loveland? He had never put himself mentally in the place of anything so low down in the social scale as the keeper of a hotel; yet instinctively he performed the feat now, and judged the case against his own interests.
Nevertheless, as he did not wish to prowl about New York all night, he could but try his luck. Meeting a policeman, he enquired for a respectable, inexpensive hotel in a quiet street, not too far away; and did his best to look unconscious of the big man's concentrated gaze fixed on the large white oval of his shirt front.
"Yez might try the New House, on Toyty Thoyd Street," was the advice that followed upon reflection; and Loveland was obliged to ask three times before he was able to translate "Toyty Thoyd" into Thirty-third Street. Then, he had to turn and retrace his steps, for he had been wandering uptown, and must have covered some distance, as he guessed by the length of time it took him to reach the Waldorf-Astoria again. Coming near, so that the huge building loomed above him like a mountain flaming on all its heights, he was tempted to cross to the other side of the street; but, ashamed of the impulse as childish, he marched stolidly ahead, and even forced himself to turn his face towards the brilliant square of the door-way. As the light caught and photographed him in passing, a man who had been standing in front of the hotel under the iron canopy, with the air of waiting for someone, started after Loveland, walking just fast enough to keep him well in sight.