"I'd have sooner _begged_ with him than be a queen with a crown on my head, if he wasn't the king!" sighed Miss de Lisle. "Don't _you_ feel that way, too, about love?"

"Yes," Loveland answered. "I didn't always: but then I used not to understand."

"It's too late now," Bill's Star went on. "We shall never see each other again."

The words echoed in Loveland's head. "Too late now; we shall never see each other again."

The Human Flower's thoughts were far away with Bill Willing. But at least she knew where he was, and was sure that he loved her, while Val did not even know the name of the place near Louisville where Lesley Dearmer lived, and he was sure that she did not love him. Yes, he was sure of that, though perhaps there was a time, he told himself, when he might have made her care.

Instead of trying to win her when he had the chance, he had asked her advice about the best way of making love to other girls. Oh, he deserved all he had got, he thought with sudden fury--all--even to being a waiter at Alexander's, and a leading juvenile under the management of "J. J."

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

A Mysterious Disappearance

"Gordon, come to our room directly after dinner. I want to talk to you,"

said Miss Moon. "Not a word to anyone, mind."

She spoke in a low voice, with an air of mystery, stopping Loveland on the stairs, and then pa.s.sing with a significant look and a finger on her lips, as a door shut sharply somewhere above.

Of course she took it for granted that he would accept the Royal invitation which was a command, and did not need an answer. Equally of course Loveland knew that he would be knocking at the door, at the moment desired, though he was puzzled by the request and the secretive way in which it was made.

It was only a week that day since he had joined the company, but the longest week of his life, save one. Already the time when he had not been a barn-storming country actor seemed distant. He was "old man" or "dear boy," with all the men except Jacobus, and "Gordon" with the actresses. He had heard the life-story of almost everyone among his comrades, male and female; knew why, by evil fate or mere fluke, they had lost splendid and well-deserved chances of gracing Metropolitan theatres; had grown to look upon them all, even Buddha, as fellow beings, and was doing his worried, wearied best with seven new parts committed to memory in as many days.

If Lesley Dearmer were an actress, and it were her company instead of Lillie de Lisle's, he said to himself, how happy he could be in spite of all hardships; for the longing to see Lesley was never absent. He regretted her desperately, and the chance he might have had with her--the chance he had thrown away. He dreamed of her at night, instead of living his troubles over again, and in involved fancies often saw her acting with him on the stage, in the place of Bill's "little gal."

Always she seemed near; always she was in his thoughts; but perhaps this was partly because someone had mentioned incidentally that Ashville--where the company was playing now--lay only about thirty miles from Louisville.

Somewhere near Louisville she lived, and if he were Lord Loveland, with money in his pocket--even a little money--instead of being just a strolling actor named Gordon, with two suits of clothes to his back, he would have tried his hardest to find her. He no longer regretted the hopelessness of finding favour in the eyes of American heiresses, because he was homesick for the light in Lesley's sweet eyes, the only woman's eyes that had ever mattered seriously to him--except his mother's. Nothing had happened, really, to make money of less importance to him; rather the other way, yet money did not seem as important as it had, and he told himself that he was well punished for not asking Lesley to marry him. But now he had let her learn to despise him. And being Gordon, the barn-stormer, instead of Lord Loveland, he would have avoided a meeting with the girl if it had come in his way. He could not have endured to be seen by her as he was now, and even should his luck change--as it must before long--with news from home--there would still remain between them as a barrier Lesley's scorn of him which he had taught her to feel, and her knowledge of all his ridiculous adventures.

What a contrast to the pictures he had painted for her of his reception in America! With her impish sense of fun, the humorous side of his welcome by New Yorkers must have appealed to her intensely, he was sure, and he did not think that even when he ceased to be P. Gordon, Lesley Dearmer would ever care to think of him seriously again.

She had been very frank that last morning on the _Mauretania_; and many times since, he had recalled every word she had said to him as they leaned on the rail watching the ship draw into the New York dock. Lesley would feel, as he began to, but even more, that everything which had happened "served him right." He could almost hear her p.r.o.nouncing sentence, smiling, yet in earnest. How she must have laughed at his fallen pride, and the wildly farcical things such merry humourists as Tony Kidd had doubtless put into the papers! He had become a mere figure of fun for America, and therefore, for Lesley Dearmer, who had never been a respecter of persons; and the fear that the Human Flower's Company might play at Louisville had been hot in his mind, until Ed Binney rea.s.sured him. Louisville was not for the "likes of them," and they would never get nearer such an important town than they were now.

Soon, they would be out of Kentucky, and in Missouri: indeed, the "date"

following Ashville, was in the latter state, and Loveland had been advised that his forthcoming address would be Bonnerstown. Only the day before his meeting with Miss Moon on the stairs he had written to Bill Willing, asking him to send on any mail to Bonnerstown, Missouri; and now the lady's mysterious summons gave him an uneasy moment.

He had supposed that his acting was satisfactory, and had worked hard over the learning and rehearsing of his parts, seldom getting to sleep before five in the morning, then dropping off with a MS. in his hand as well as in his head. But what if Miss Moon meant to break the news that "J. J." thought he could not act well enough, and that he must expect his discharge?

Loveland had little appet.i.te for dinner, though the hotel at Ashville was better than at Modunk, and the cooking was good Southern cooking.

Immediately after the meal he went upstairs and knocked at the door of Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus's room, with no feeling of strangeness in doing so, because he had learned, since joining Miss de Lisle's company, that for "pros" bedroom was another word for parlour.

The stage manager and his wife were both there, Jacobus smoking, in sulky silence which he broke only with a grunt by way of greeting for the "juvenile lead." But Miss Moon made up in cordiality for her husband's coldness.

"Mr. Jacobus is cross with me," she announced coquettishly, "about you."

"About me?" Loveland repeated, puzzled and vaguely uncomfortable.

"Yes. There's an idea of mine I want to talk to you about, and he says you'll blab it to the others. But _I_ say you won't if you promise you won't. That's so, isn't it?"

"Of course," answered Loveland.

"And you do promise, don't you--and that you won't say a word to a living soul, if I tell you a thing in strict confidence?"

"I promise," Loveland returned imprudently, impressed with the idea that he was to hear some comment on his own acting.

"There! That's all right, then, I trust you. Yes, I just _will_, J. J., so there! I guess I have a right to my say in this show, haven't I?"

J. J. answered by a shrug of the shoulders, but it was a shrug of resentful acquiescence, and showed that he acknowledged his wife's supremacy--the eternal supremacy of the Golden Calf.

"Sit down, and make yourself at home," went on Miss Moon, smiling on the handsome young man, who was not much older than her sons. "Full Moon"

was her nickname in the company, and Loveland thought, as she cordially indicated a chair by the stove, that her figure merited the _sobriquet_.

"I know you're a great friend of _Lillie's_," the lady slily began again, when she and Loveland were seated near the fire, and J. J. had drowned himself in a theatrical paper. "But all the same, you must admit that her acting gets worse every day. She's so awful careless! And she's failed to go down with audiences here. We've done rotten business."

"The house has seemed good every night," said Loveland.

"Ah, it's _seemed_ all right; but it's been half paper. It's mighty discouragin', for me and Mr. Jacobus, I can tell you, after the money _I've_ put into the show, and the work _he's_ put in. The fact is, it's so discouragin' we're thinkin' of makin' a change; breakin' up the company, in a way, and then startin' again, with only the ones we _really_ want in a new crowd. Would you like to join?"

Loveland looked her straight in the face, with almost brutally frank disapproval on his. The extra touches she had given to her hair, and eyelashes, and complexion for his benefit, were all in vain. She might have been a block of painted wood, for any admiration in his eyes.

"You mean, you're going to send Miss de Lisle away?" he asked.

"We're going to send ourselves away from _her_," Miss Moon corrected him.

"Leaving her in the lurch!" exclaimed Loveland; with that uncompromising truthfulness of his which was a virtue or a vice, according as one had reason to regard it.

The big woman flushed darkly through her powder. "There's no 'lurch'

about it!" she defended herself with a new sharpness in her tone. "I don't intend to sh.e.l.l out any more of my good money carting Lillie de Lisle around the country as a star, that's all. I suppose I have a right to do as I choose with my own? _You_ oughtn't to complain. I'm offering you a chance that lots of real actors would grab. You can go with the new company, and have better parts, and better pay, than what you're getting now. But you'll have to choose, right away, between me--between us and Lillie de Lisle. Well, what do you say?"

"I say that I choose Miss de Lisle," said Loveland.

Miss Moon burst out laughing, hysterically.

"There, I told you what you'd get!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her husband. But she shook her shoulders angrily, seeming to transfer to him all the resentment Loveland had roused.

"Let things alone, can't you?" she snapped. "Gordon's only guying, ain't you, Gordon? Or anyhow, you don't understand. When I said 'choose between us' there's nothing _to_ choose, for Lillie de Lisle hasn't got a thing to offer you, and we have a lot. We can bust her up and when she's bust, she is bust. Why, she hasn't a dime to bless herself with, I shouldn't think. She ain't the savin' kind, and she won't even have any advertisin' paper to go along with, if she wanted to go along on her own. Her name ain't printed on any of the posters; I took care of that, starting out. The slips with 'Lillie de Lisle' are all separate, joined on to the posters with paste--and as for her litho, she's welcome to _that_. She looks a fright, bad enough to scare crows. The pictorial paper's _ours_, every sheet of it, and we can start another show inside two days. All we've got to do, is to wire a Chicago agent for a new star, if I don't choose to do the starring myself, and as many folks as we want. Now, you see how things stand, don't you?"

"I think I do," said Loveland.

"Well, what do you decide?"

"The same that I decided before."

"Oh, you do, do you? Ain't you silly! You won't take a good thing when it's offered you?"

"I won't take the thing you've offered me."