I
The ostriches of northern Patagonia are said to indulge in co-operative
nesting: half a dozen hens one after another proceed to lay in a shallow
cavity numerous eggs, the incubation of which is left to a male bird.
Similarly, for the consummation of a musical comedy half a dozen
lyrists, librettists, and composers lay their heads together in a
shallow cavity and leave the result of their labor to be given life by a
producer. "Miss Elsie of Chelsea," not being an exceptional musical
comedy, will not repay a more thorough analysis. The first act developed
in a painter's studio; in the second act everybody from the models in
the chorus to the millionaire and his daughter whom the painter wanted
to marry were transported to Honolulu. It was produced at the Vanity
Theater under Mr. John Richards's management in the early autumn of the
year 1902, and for many seasons it attracted large audiences all over
the civilized world.
During the first fortnight of the tour, a fortnight of unending rain in
Manchester, Dorothy, as she must be called henceforth, was inclined to
think that life on the stage was not much more exciting than life in
West Kensington, and certainly twice as tiring. It was holiday time,
with two performances a day for eight days, and only in the second
week--or more strictly in the third week, for Boxing Day fell upon a
Friday that year--was she able to look about her in the small world
where she must spend the next six months of her existence. She soon came
to the conclusion that such an environment would not be tolerable for
longer, and she made up her mind to escape from touring as soon as
possible into a London engagement.
While she was still rehearsing in town she had paid one or two visits to
the Vanity Theater, partly because it pleased her to hand in a card
inscribed, "Miss Dorothy Lonsdale. Mr. Walter Keal's Miss Elsie of
Chelsea Co.," but chiefly with the object of studying the demeanor,
dress, appearance, and talents of the various members of the Vanity
chorus, especially of the show-girls. The result of her observations was
a strong belief that she was as graceful, as well able to set off
clothes, as beautiful, and as good an actress as any of them. At the
same time, she had begun to hear girls in the company talk about
"getting across the footlights" and had realized that her own
personality's powers of projection were still untested. If at the end of
the tour it was brought home to her that with all her qualities "off"
she lacked the most important one of all "on," she should immediately
retire from the stage forever. The life itself did not attract her, and
to spend years growing older and older in the environment of a
provincial company seemed to Dorothy wilful self-deception; liberty at
such a price would be worse than a comfortable servitude to suburban
convention.
When on that wet Christmas morning at Euston she had seen the companions
to close contact with whom she was bound for six months--a polychromatic
group of crude pink complexions, mauve veils, electric seal, and
exaggerated boots, looking in the mass like a shop-window in a
second-rate thoroughfare, the sort of shop-window that has bundles of
overcoats hanging outside the doorway, which indeed the men
resembled--she had felt a sudden revulsion from them all, which those
days in Manchester had done nothing to cure.
The first fortnight's bills for board and lodging had already shown
Dorothy that existence on a guinea a week was not going to be easy; if
she were ever engaged for London, she should require money to dress
herself well at the beginning of her career, and it was imperative to
save every penny she possibly could now in order to preserve intact the
L500 she had obtained from her mother. An immediate economy would be
effected in their weekly expenses if she and Lily could persuade another
girl to share lodgings with them, and Dorothy began to study the ranks
of the chorus for a suitable partner. Of course, from a social point of
view she would have preferred to live with one of the principals, but
the principals had not yet paid any attention to her, and she would not
risk making advances first; besides, their standard of living might be
too high for one who did not intend to waste money on the provinces. But
when she considered her companions of the chorus, the dreadful language
many of them used, the outrageous stories they told at the top of their
voices, and, worst of all, their cockney accents, Dorothy shrank from
extending the enforced intimacy of the dressing-room to her weekly home.
This problem had not been solved when on the third Sunday after
Christmas the company left Manchester for Birmingham, and by the newly
arranged order of traveling Miss Dorothy Lonsdale found herself allotted
to share a compartment with Miss Lily Haden, Miss Fay Onslow, and Miss
Sylvia Scarlett.
Miss Onslow was unmistakably the senior member of the chorus and had
reached the happy period of an actress's life when she has no more need
to bother about keeping her reminiscences too nicely in focus. She was,
in fact, as even she herself admitted, not far off forty; in a railway
train on a wet January afternoon the kindest observer would have assumed
that her next landmark was fifty. A month ago Dorothy would have
shuddered to find herself on an equality with such a person; but
asperous is the astral road, and she had to make the best of Miss Onslow
by treating her with at least as much cordiality as she would have shown
to a small dressmaker from whom she wanted a dress by the end of the
week. Gradually, as her new surroundings became familiar, Dorothy had
brought herself to call Miss Onslow "Onzie," and though the abbreviation
made her gorge rebel as from cod-liver oil, she bravely persevered.
Instinctively she knew that this was the only woman in the chorus whose
counsel she could trust, the only one who would honestly tell her if she
looked better with or without an artificial teardrop. The sum of Onzie's
experience was hers for the asking; the middle-aged actress was an
academician of grease-paint, serving alike as a warning and an example
to the student; while her knowledge of the various towns in which the
company had dates was evidently profound. Already she had provided
Dorothy with an address for Birmingham; but these rooms to be enjoyed
without the prickings of extravagance required a third partner. Dorothy,
anxious to profit still further by Onzie's experience, suggested that
she should join Lily and herself; but that very experience for which the
novice was greedy made the old professional shake her head:
"No, thank you, ducky," she said. "I always live alone nowadays. You
see, I've got my own little peculiarities. Besides, when my best boy
comes down to see me he likes to see me alone. When I was with the
'Geisha' crowd last year I obliged one of the girls by sharing rooms
with her in Middlesbrough, and as luck would have it George selected
Middlesbrough to pay me a little visit. He was really very aggravated
indeed, and he said to me, 'Fay,' he said, 'whatever's the use of me
coming all the way up to Middlesbrough if I can't ever see you?' So I
had to tell the other girl--Lexie Sharp her name was--that the
arrangement didn't work, and what do you think she did? Well, if you'll
believe me, she went about telling everybody that I was jealous of her
over George! Luckily for me she was a girl who was very well known for
her tongue and nobody paid any attention to her; still, it was
uncomfortable for me, though I deserved it for breaking one of my rules.
Who knows? George may come up to Birmingham. It's just the sort of place
he would select for a visit, because, being a London fellow, he feels
out of it in too small a town. Of course, he has nothing to do with the
stage himself. Oh dear me, no, nothing whatever! He lives at Tulse Hill
with two aunts, one of which has a growth in the throat and may go off
at any moment, which prevents George working, as she's so particular
about having him always close at hand. Well, any one ought to understand
an aunt's feelings--I'm sure I can--but some of the girls last year used
to criticize him something dreadful behind my back, until really I was
glad to say good-by to them all. But this seems a much nicer crowd we're
in now."
"We've only been in it a fortnight," said Miss Scarlett from the other
corner of the carriage.
Dorothy looked at the speaker curiously. She was a girl who had joined
the company for the last three rehearsals and during this first
fortnight in Manchester had kept herself apart. Lily had spoken to her
once or twice, but Dorothy, who was afraid there might be an unpleasant
reason for such deliberate seclusion, had begged Lily not to be in too
great a hurry to make friends with her. During Onzie's monologue Miss
Scarlett had apparently been unconscious of what was happening in the
compartment, and from the corner opposite Lily she had been staring out
at the landscape, that was scarred and grimed and misshapen by industry
like the hands of the toilers who lived in it. She was different from
all the other girls, Dorothy was thinking--rather foreign-looking with
her deep, brown, slanted eyes and mass of untidy brown hair, her wide
nose, high cheek-bones, and distinctly ugly mouth, the underlip of which
only just escaped protruding. She was dressed, too, in a style that was
quite unlike that of anybody else and without any regard for the
prevailing fashion. Dorothy remembered with a flickering smile that
when she had first seen her at rehearsals she had thought she was one of
the Hungarian artistes who had come to see why her club-room was being
used by a theatrical company. Now when in a deep voice she suddenly
turned round and commented on Fay Onslow's last remark Dorothy was
astonished to hear that she spoke the same kind of English as herself;
she indeed, in her surprise, almost gave utterance aloud to her thought
that this gipsy creature was a lady.
"Hell! I've left my cigarettes behind," the lady ejaculated.
"There now, what a nuisance for you!" said the good-natured Onzie. "Have
one of mine, dear."
"Which are they? Turks or Virgins?" asked Miss Scarlett, leaning over
and screwing up her eyes to see what Onzie was offering.
Dorothy corrected her opinion and decided that Miss Scarlett had been a
lady once upon a time; yet even while she was condemning her vulgarity
she was thinking that her ladyhood was not so far away in the past. Her
speech and manner had the assurance of age, but she could not be much
more than twenty-two or twenty-three, perhaps not even so much as that.
Presently the train stopped for a dreary Sunday wait, and while some of
the gentlemen of the company, with a view to future favors, were
scuttling about the platform in search of tea for the ladies from whom
they would demand them, Dorothy took this opportunity of asking Lily
what she thought about inviting Sylvia Scarlett to share their rooms at
Birmingham.
"She seems quite different from the other girls," Dorothy explained. "I
mean, she talked as if she was a lady. Don't you think so? And really,
you know, we can't afford these rooms unless we do get a third person."
Lily was quite ready to accept Miss Scarlett's company, though, as
Dorothy thought impatiently, she would have been equally willing to
accept the dresser's, if Dorothy had thought of inviting the dresser to
share rooms with them.
"Do you want a cup of tea, Lil?" a young man came along and asked at
this moment. When Lily declared that she should love a cup of tea, he
hurried off toward the buffet.
"Do you know him?" asked Dorothy, in surprise.
"Only since we joined the company."
"But he's one of the chorus-boys, isn't he?"
"Yes."
"And you let him call you Lily already?" Dorothy hoped it was no worse
than Lily; it had sounded dreadfully like Lil.
"Why shouldn't I?"
"Of course, it's your own business," said Dorothy, turning coldly away
to eye Sylvia Scarlett, who was striding up and down the platform with
both hands in the pockets of a frieze overcoat and looking so
independent of everybody in the world that she felt shy of interrupting
her. At that moment Lily was carried off by the chorus-boy for a cup of
tea, which, had it been arsenic, Dorothy could not have declined more
indignantly, and she found herself alone upon the platform and exposed
to the glances of the comedian, a debased sport from the famous Vanity
comedian whose mannerisms he had reproduced in the provinces as well as
he was able for fifteen years, and would probably continue to reproduce
for as many more. A small and ugly man, Joe Wiltshire had become so
hardened to women's snubs that by sheer recklessness and
indiscrimination he managed to fill his bag. If he was weak with
rocketing pheasants he never hesitated to pot a sitting rabbit; in other
words, he made love to every woman he met and found 5 per cent. of them
amenable. Now with a view to impressing the prettiest girl in the chorus
he was being funny with two bottles of stout and a corkscrew; but though
he managed to cheer up the porter on duty, he failed to amuse Dorothy,
who seized an opportunity of escaping from the performance by attaching
herself to Sylvia Scarlett on her return promenade.
"I say," she began, in her best West Kensington manner. "I hope you
won't think it awful cheek on my part, but my friend and I--you know,
that pretty, fair girl who was in our carriage--would be awfully glad if
you'd join us this week in our digs. Awfully nice rooms, but rather
expensive for two, though we ought to be able to manage quite reasonably
with three. Of course, if you're already fixed--"
"I've never been fixed in my life," said Miss Scarlett, sharply, "and I
certainly don't intend to be fixed in Birmingham."
"No, I say, shut up; don't laugh. Have you been on the stage long?"
"Two weeks and two days."
"Oh, I say, really, then this is your first shop?"
Dorothy felt more at ease now that she knew she had not got to deal with
a veteran of the profession; this new girl was obviously not one to be
patronized, but there was now no reason to anticipate patronage on her
side. With the removal of this danger Dorothy became more natural in her
manner, and by the time the line was cleared for the theatrical special
to proceed the bargain had been struck by which Sylvia Scarlett would
share rooms with herself and Lily.
"I say, I hope you don't mind my making personal remarks," said Dorothy,
"but you're looking most awfully tired."
She had intended this remark to effect a breach in the other girl's
reserve, but it apparently had the contrary effect of raising the
barrier still higher. She drew back slightly huffed, and Sylvia, leaning
over, with a quick expansive gesture put a hand on her arm and told her
not to be offended if she was not being confidential, but that she was
enjoying the luxury of complete privacy after a period of disagreeable
publicity. Dorothy would have preferred more exact information; even in
childhood she had always felt inclined to cry when people had asked her
riddles, and Roland's favorite way of teasing her had been to invent
riddles without answers; however, she comforted herself with the
reflection that Sylvia really was a lady, which at any rate ought to be
a guaranty that the answer to that conundrum was not vulgar like the
dreadful answers to dressing-room conundrums.
The train dragged on through the wet January dusk and into the dripping
night of blurred lamps and distant furnaces, of ghostly Sunday travelers
and long platforms like stagnant streams. Conversation in the
compartment hung heavily upon the air like the moist breath of the tired
women in the four corners of it. Dorothy, whose touchstone of behavior
was self-respect, asked herself why Fay Onslow should mind living with
other girls, such intimate revelations of her private habits was she
making in the course of this journey. If a woman as fat as she was did
not feel the loss of her dignity in searching for a flea like that, why
should she want to live alone? And that was by no means the least
dignified thing she had done. This ostentatious disregard of life's
little decencies was certainly a regrettable side of theatrical life.
However, the fact that she herself had gone on the stage prevented
Dorothy from betraying her disapproval of such behavior. It would have
been contrary to her method of dealing with life to admit that she could
even expose herself to anything unseemly, still less that she might
succumb to it. From the moment that Dorothy went on the stage the
profession became above criticism, and the sense of collective propriety
that she inherited as her father's daughter was no longer capable of
being shocked. She crucified her fastidiousness; she was persecutor and
martyr at the same time and derived an equal consciousness of
superiority from either aspect of herself; in fact, the only thing in
life that seriously troubled Dorothy was a minute bleb of skin on her
left eyelid, and even that could be removed by a beauty doctor.
It was raining harder than ever when the train reached Birmingham, and
the girls decided to indulge in the luxury of a cab. The rooms looked as
if they really would be very comfortable, and the landlady insisted
proudly that managers had been known to stay in them, not mere business
managers whose only aim in life seemed to be making fusses about the
starching of their white shirts, but acting managers, one of whom had
even brought his children, which, as she pointed out, proved that the
lodgings were homely.
Sylvia was some time getting ready for supper, and Dorothy, thinking it
would not be nice to begin without her, made Lily wait quite half an
hour. When Sylvia did come down at last, Dorothy was nearly sure that
she had been crying, and the mystery of her origin once more obtruded
itself. Dorothy wished now that she had arranged for Sylvia and herself
to share the second room instead of Lily and herself. This strange new
girl perplexed her self-assurance, and she proposed that if the new
association prospered--they drank to its success in the pale India ale
which the landlady provided--they should take it week about to sleep in
the single room. Dorothy tried to extract confidences from Sylvia by
confiding in her the history of Lily as far as she knew it; when that
did not elicit anything she offered a gilded version of her own prior
circumstances. The following week at Derby she shared the bedroom with
Sylvia and went so far as to give her an almost truthful account of the
Wilfred Curlew business, but nothing could she get from Sylvia in
return. Moreover, there was nothing in her belongings that afforded a
clue to her history; there was not a single photograph or initialed
ornament; all her possessions were left lying about the room, and her
trunk was never locked; and when every morning the girls called at the
stage door for their correspondence she only in the company never
received a letter, nor even bothered to look if there was one waiting
for her in the rack. But if Sylvia was mute about the past she was not
at all reserved about the present. There was nobody like her for seizing
upon the eccentricities of the various members of the company to make
merry with, and if sometimes Dorothy felt that she went too far in
laughing at herself, she could not be angry because she used to laugh as
much, indeed more, at Lily. She was a match, too, for any landlady; and
gradually, as the association begun at Birmingham hardened into
permanency, Dorothy and Lily left the entire management of their weekly
home to Sylvia: who had a delightful capacity for keeping the weekly
bills reasonable without ever seeming to be economical.
Dorothy was too firmly convinced of the reality of her own beauty to be
an idealist, but if in after life any portion of her early experience on
the stage seemed to her worthy of idealization these first weeks with
Sylvia and Lily seemed so. Partly this was due to her discovery that
touring was not so unpleasant when she did not have to bother about
anything except her own appearance; but chiefly it was due to her
growing conviction of ultimate success. There was beginning to be no
doubt that even from the chorus of a musical comedy company on tour her
personality was getting across the footlights. Even Sylvia, the
mercilessly critical Sylvia, had prophesied success for her, and
Dorothy's dreams went past to the music of approaching triumphs. Her
mind was all a pageant, and the commonplace of touring existence--the
aroma of the theater, the flight from the great manufacturing towns on
still Sabbath mornings of black frost, the kaleidoscopic mustering of
the company at railway stations, the emptiness of new rooms untouched as
yet by the transience of the three girls, the garish mirrors hung with
velvet that held her beauty, the undulating horsehair sofas, the
sea-shells on the mantelpiece, the fire glowing in the grate, the dim
gas when they came home from the performance, the smell of Cheddar
cheese in the little room, the bright gas shining on the three places
laid for supper, the petticoats hanging over the bed up-stairs, the
oil-cloth in the passages, the noise of the landlady's family in the
stuffy kitchen--all these and a hundred more externals of touring
existence were in the years to come regarded affectionately as winter is
beheld from the radiance of a summer afternoon.
So from Derby "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" went to Leeds, from Leeds to
Bradford, from Bradford to Liverpool, from Liverpool to Newcastle. Then
from Newcastle the company ascended into Scotland, where genial
landladies and cakes and enthusiastic audiences compensated for east
winds.
II
Gradually, under the pressure of Sylvia's teasing, Dorothy allowed
herself to make friends with the other girls and to be superficially
polite with the men. She was never popular in the company in the way
that for different reasons Sylvia and Lily were popular; but perhaps her
disdain and conceit were pardoned as tokens of future success, because
she was not ostracized as she certainly would have been ostracized
without the fascination that favorites of fortune always exert upon the
rest of mankind. Besides, people said such spiteful things behind her
back that they had to be fairly pleasant to her face. The men in the
chorus one after another tried in vain to attract her attention whenever
the requirements of the scene gave them an excuse for talking to her.
But Dorothy used to respond as if the dialogue could really be heard by
the audience, which may have been artistic, but did not allow her
admirers much opportunity of cultivating a friendship. Off the stage she
would have nothing to do with any of them. The comedian made one or two
more attempts to charm her with buffoonery, but she told him that he was
even less funny off the stage than on, upon which he lost his temper
and swore she was a stuck-up cow; an alleged lack of humor in Scotland
had recently deprived Mr. Wiltshire of some of his best laughs, and he
was in no mood to be criticized by a chorus-girl.
"If you speak to me again like that," said Dorothy, primly, "I shall
complain to Mr. Warren."
"Wow-wow-wow!" the comedian mimicked.
"Never mind, Joe," said Sylvia, who was standing close by in the wings.
"If you manage to break your leg with your next entrance you'll get a
laugh, all right."
"You think yourself very funny, don't you?" growled Mr. Wiltshire.
"Yes, but I haven't got to convince a Scotch audience that I am," said
Sylvia.
The comedian's cue came before he could retort, and, falling over his
feet in a way that would have made a more southerly audience rock with
mirth, he took the stage.
"Vulgar little beast!" said Dorothy.
Mr. Wiltshire never relaxed his efforts to charm the people of
Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen to laughter, but he gave up
trying to amuse Dorothy, and thenceforth devoted himself to girls with a
keener sense of humor.
Once when Dorothy had refused to go for a long walk in the country round
Aberdeen, the glittering of the granite buildings on a fine March
morning tempted her out too late, and she wandered by herself along the
sea-shore toward the mouth of the Don until she was able, so windless
was the day, so warm the sun against the low sandy cliffs, to sit down
on the beach. It happened that Mr. David Bligh, the tenor in "Miss Elsie
of Chelsea," passed that way, and, seeing Dorothy, took a seat beside
her. She had never intended her reserve with the other men in the
company to include David Bligh, and from having felt rather sad at being
left behind by Sylvia and Lily she now congratulated herself on her good
fortune.
"All alone?" asked the tenor, fluting with his voice, as he always did
when he was speaking to a woman.
"All alone," said Dorothy. "Isn't it too bad?"
They discussed loneliness with poetic similes harvested from the sea,
upon the horizon of which nothing but a solitary tramp, hull down, was
visible. So long as Mr. David Bligh's attention had been devoted to Miss
May Seymour, the leading lady, Dorothy had been inclined to think that
he was not very good-looking, that he did not possess a very good voice,
and that probably he was not quite a gentleman. Now that he was beside
her on this lonely beach she was inclined to modify all these judgments
in his favor, and when suddenly he burst forth into "_Che gelido
manino_," suiting the action to the word by simultaneously taking hold
of her hand, she decided that not merely was his voice rather good, but
that it was lovely.
"You really have a lovely voice," she told him.
He shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and with his stick drew some notes of
music in the sand.
"I wonder why you never took up opera," she inquired, in tender
astonishment.
"What's the good? The British public doesn't want British singers. Oh
no," he said, with a glance full of reproach for the indifference of the
sky, "I'm not fat enough for opera."
He went up the tonic scale to "la," frightening away some small
sea-birds that had just alighted on the gleaming sand by the tide's
edge.
"Let me hear your voice," he asked, abruptly.
Dorothy was gratified by this request. She had taken for granted the
tenor's interest in her appearance, but that this should extend to her
voice seemed to indicate something more profound than a casual
attraction. She assured him that she was too shy, but he continued to
persuade her, and at last she sang a part of one of the leading lady's
songs.
"Yes, it would be worth while taking some trouble with it," he judged.
"If you like I'll give you lessons. Have you got a piano in your rooms?"
"We have got a piano this week, as it happens," said Dorothy, "though I
should doubt if it had ever been played on. Come to tea this afternoon,
and we'll try it."
"You live with that Haden girl, don't you?"
"Do you think she's pretty?" Dorothy asked.
The tenor shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh yes, so-so. I really haven't noticed her much. She dyes her hair, I
suppose."
"No, it's natural," said Dorothy, resisting the temptation to insert a
qualifying, "I believe."
They discussed the varieties of feminine beauty; when the tenor had
managed to convey without direct compliments that Dorothy had every
feature a woman ought to have, she was convinced by his good taste that
her voice must be out of the ordinary.
"Good gracious! It's past two o'clock," she exclaimed, at last, when her
appetite began to assert itself in spite of ozone and flattery. "How
time flies!"
"_I_ dine at half past two. We'd better be strolling back."
It was after that hour when they reached Aberdeen, because David Bligh
was continually stopping on the desolate roads that led across the
low-lying lands between the city and the sea to illustrate with snatches
of song many episodes of his adventurous life as an actor in musical
comedy. Dorothy might have been bored by all this talk about himself if
he had not made it so clear that he really did admire her; as it was,
she assented warmly when he murmured, outside her lodgings:
"How quickly one can make friends sometimes!"
How quickly, indeed, when a man will show his admiration with his eyes
and a woman with her ears.
The others had not returned from their expedition along Deeside when tea
was finished, so Dorothy and the tenor took down the photographs and
china ornaments from the top of the piano, and presently an unfamiliar
sound brought in Mrs. Maclachlan, the landlady, to say that the piano
had not been used since her eldest daughter died ten years ago, and that
she would prefer that it was not used now. This was the kind of occasion
on which Dorothy missed Sylvia, who would have known how to deal with
the old woman; but David Bligh, without heeding her protests, continued
to strum. Mrs. Maclachlan at once put the bass clef out of action by
sitting down upon the notes, where, with arms akimbo, she maintained her
position and poured forth a torrent of unintelligible Scots labials.
Dorothy, horrified at the idea of a brawl with a woman who, even if she
did let rooms, obviously belonged to the servant class, begged the actor
not to play any more. In the end he agreed to resign from the contest
with Mrs. Maclachlan on condition that Dorothy would try her voice on
the piano in his rooms, where he was so encouraging about its quality
that she gave herself up to serious study, one result of which was that
henceforth she always had the second bedroom to herself, because her
voice seemed to require most exercise when Sylvia and Lily required most
sleep. The other girls in the company showed no inclination to believe
that Dorothy's friendship with David Bligh was founded upon his skill in
voice-production and they used to declare with conscious virtue that
such singing-lessons were merely an excuse for making love.
"Be careful, dear, with Bligh," Fay Onslow warned Dorothy. "He's known
all over the road for the way he treats girls. Look at May Seymour!
Really, I'm quite sorry for the poor thing. I'm sure she's beginning to
look her age."
This was good news about May Seymour, who had ignored her when she
joined the company; but though in other respects the leading lady's fate
might serve as a warning, Dorothy was much too secure of herself to
need any advice about David Bligh. To be sure, he had several times
seized the opportunity of examining his pupil's throat to kiss her, but
she had accepted the kisses with no more sense of their reality than if
they had been a doctor's bill, which in a way they were. However,
Dorothy was not accustomed to let herself be over-charged, and these
kisses were the only honorarium Mr. Bligh ever got. He was so much
piqued by her indifference that he mistook for a grand passion the
mortification set up by his failure to get her hopelessly in love with
him, and he made such a complete fool of himself over Dorothy that the
girls of the company were more annoyed than ever, and from having at
first been charitably anxious about her virtue they now became equally
severe upon her cruelty.
"The poor boy's getting quite thin," Fay Onslow declared. "You really
oughtn't to treat him like that. It's beginning to show in his acting."
Dorothy consulted Sylvia about David Bligh's decline, not because she
cared whether he was declining or not, but because it was an excuse to
talk about herself.
"Serve him right," said Sylvia.
"But I shouldn't like to think that he was really suffering on my
account."
"Lily and I are the only people who really suffer," said Sylvia.
"What do you mean?"
"My dear Dorothy, _we_ have to listen to the practising."
"You don't really mind my practising, do you?"
"I get rather bored with it sometimes."
"Yes, I suppose it is rather boring sometimes."
Dorothy decided that it was also rather boring of Sylvia to switch the
topic from her effect on David Bligh to the slight annoyance her
practising might sometimes cause her friends. However, she forgave her
by remembering that Sylvia had not the same inducement as herself to
study singing.
Meanwhile, Dorothy's occupation of the leading man left Lily free to
develop her deplorable taste for chorus-boys, and Dorothy found that her
own habit of practising scales in the morning and going out for walks
with David Bligh in the afternoon had resulted in continuous tea-parties
at their rooms, to which, whenever she wanted to stay at home in the
afternoon, she was most unfairly exposed. She might have put up with
Lily's behavior for the rest of the tour if at last a moment had not
come when it inconvenienced her personally. At Nottingham, which the
company reached in mid-April, the weather was so fine that Dorothy
accepted an invitation from an admirer in the front of the house to go
for a picnic on the river Trent. Until now she had discouraged all
introductions effected by the footlights, and she often marveled to
Sylvia at the way other girls accepted invitations to private houses
without knowing anything about their hosts. Perhaps she was already
beginning to feel that David Bligh had taught her all he knew about
voice-production, or perhaps the exceptionally smart automobile
grumbling outside the stage-door struck her as a proper credential, or
perhaps these April airs were irresistible.
"Really, you know, Sylvia," she said, "I think it would be rather fun to
go. But I'm shocked at myself for suddenly breaking my rules like this.
I wonder why I am breaking them. It must be the spring."
"The what?" repeated Sylvia.
"The spring," said Dorothy, hoping she did not look as affected as she
felt.
"If you had said the springs," said Sylvia, "I would have agreed
with you."
The owner of the car was the spoiled son of a rich lace manufacturer,
and, according to the stage-door keeper, famous in Nottingham for his
entertainment of actresses. What seemed more important to Dorothy was
that he had just arrived from Cambridge for the Easter vacation, which
decided her to accept his hospitality.
"You'll bring two friends?" suggested the young man.
"I'll bring the two girls with whom I share rooms."
"Topping!" he ejaculated, and with a sympathetic tootle of satisfaction
the champing car leaped forward into the night.
"You can't come to-morrow?" gasped Dorothy, when with much graciousness
she had advised Lily of the treat in store for her.
"No; I've promised to go with Tom to Sherwood Forest."
"Never mind, Maid Marian," said Sylvia. "We shall get along without you.
If you see the ghost of my namesake Will in the greenwood, give him my
love."
Dorothy was too angry to speak, and her resentment against Lily was
increased next morning when the big car arrived with three young men,
one of whom would have to spend an acrobatic day balancing himself on
tete-a-tetes. Nor was the picnic a great success; early in the afternoon
it came on to rain, and anything more dreary than the appearance of the
river Trent was unimaginable.
"Never mind," said the host, "you'll have to come up to Cambridge; we'll
entertain you properly there."
Apart from the rain which spoiled her hat, and the absence of Lily which
ruined any intimate conversation about herself, Dorothy was chiefly
upset by the contemptuous way in which these young Cambridge men
referred to the leading man.
"Why on earth do managers dress actors up in yachting costume?" asked
one of them. "I never saw such an ass as that man looked--David Blighter
or whatever he calls himself."
Dorothy could see Sylvia checking an impulse not to accentuate her
discomfiture by announcing her friendship with the despised tenor; but
she felt sufficiently humiliated without that, and when they got back to
their rooms she implored Sylvia to speak to Lily on the subject of
being too friendly with the men in the company.
"It makes us all so cheap," Dorothy pointed out. "Of course, we're on
tour and not likely to meet many friends who know us in London. Still,
it is unpleasant. You heard the way those boys talked about David? What
would they have said to Tom Hewitt? Besides, I get worried about Lily.
She _is_ very weak and she has been badly brought up. I'm awfully fond
of her, as you know, and I'd do anything for her; but really I cannot
stand that Hewitt creature, and I don't see why Lily should force him
upon us."
"I think it's rather foolish of her myself," agreed Sylvia. "At the same
time, I'm afraid that with Lily it's inevitable."
"Yes, but she lets him make love to her," protested Dorothy. "She
doesn't care a bit about him, really, but she's too lazy to say 'no'. I
came down the other day to find her sitting on his lap! Well, I think
that's disgusting. _You_ don't sit on people's laps; _I_ don't sit on
people's laps. Why should she? I know perfectly well what it is to be in
love; I've been in love lots of times. I don't want you to think I'm
setting out to make myself seem better than I am. As I told you, the
only reason I went on the stage was because I couldn't marry the man I
loved. So who more likely to have sympathy with people in love than
myself? What I object to is playing about with boys of the company. Look
at them! The most awful set of bounders imaginable. It's so bad for you
and me to have them coming in and out of our rooms at all hours. That
Hewitt creature actually proposed to come back to supper the other
night. However, I told Lily that if he did I should go to a hotel. After
all, we are a little different from the other girls of the company."
"I wonder if we are?" Sylvia queried.
"Of course we are," said Dorothy. "You surely don't consider yourself
on a level with Fay Onslow? Or with Sadie Moore and Clarice Beauchamp?
Those awful girls!"
"I think we're all about the same," said Sylvia. "Some of us drop our
aitches, some of us our p's and q's, some of us sing flat and the others
sing sharp; but alas! my dear Dorothy, we all look very much alike when
we're waiting for the train on Sunday morning."
"I sing perfectly in tune," said Dorothy, coldly.
"Please don't snub, me, Dorothy," Sylvia begged. "I can hardly bear it."
"There's no need for you to be sarcastic; you must admit I'm right about
Lily."
Sylvia suddenly produced an eye-glass and, fixing it in her eye, stared
mockingly at Dorothy.
"What about David?" she asked.
"You can't compare me with Lily."
"No, but I might compare David with Tom," she said, letting the
eye-glass drop in a way that Dorothy found extremely irritating.
After their host's remarks about the tenor Dorothy felt she could not
argue the point farther, and now in addition to her anger against Lily
she began to hate her singing-master. However, Sylvia must have felt
that she was right and have spoken to Lily, because the following week
at Leicester Lily, with most unwonted energy, attacked her on the
subject:
"I don't know why you should grumble to Sylvia about me. I don't grumble
to her about you. When have I ever grumbled about your practising? You
say the only reason you let yourself get talked about with David Bligh
is because he's useful to you. You say he's helping you with your voice.
Well, Tom helps me with my bag. What's the difference? It's only since
you were asked out by those men who had a car that you suddenly
discovered how impossible Tom was and began laughing at his waistcoats.
I didn't laugh at Cyril Vavasour's waistcoat, which was more
extraordinary than Tom's."
"I've never grumbled about Tom's carrying your bag," Dorothy explained,
patiently. "What I said to Sylvia was that I didn't think you ought to
let him kiss you. I don't think it's dignified."
"Well, as long as he doesn't want to kiss you, I don't see what you've
got to complain about."
The bare notion of Tom's wanting to kiss her was so unpleasant to
Dorothy that she had to withdraw from the conversation. Thenceforth the
breach between her and Lily began to widen; in fact, if it had not been
for Sylvia she would have told Lily that she could not share rooms with
her any longer. She was afraid, however, that Sylvia might be so sorry
for Lily that she would find herself left alone, which would put her in
an undignified position, because the other girls might say that it was
because she wanted to carry on, as they would vulgarly express it, with
Bligh; besides, living alone was too expensive.
Since Nottingham, Dorothy had been criticizing the tenor almost as
sharply as she criticized Tom Hewitt, and she was in no mood to
encourage the idea that there was anything between him and her; all her
lessons now were merely repetitions of what he had taught her already,
and it became obvious to Dorothy that he was what he was in the
profession simply because he was not good enough to be anything better.
He had so often bragged to her about his success with other girls that
he deserved to suffer on her account, and she felt quite like Nemesis
when soon after this, while they were walking in the town of Leicester,
she told him that this was to be their last walk together.
"Don't stand still in that theatrical way," she commanded. "Everybody's
looking at you."
The kidney-stones of the Leicester streets had been hurting her feet,
and she was in no mood for mercy.
"So this is the end," fluted David Bligh, with such emotion that the top
note narrowly escaped being falsetto. "After all these weeks you're
going to throw me away like an old chocolate-box."
He swished his cane with such demonstrative violence that, without
seeing what he was doing, he cut a passer-by hard on the knuckle and
thereby provoked a scene of humble apologies that made Dorothy more
furious than ever.
"At least you might not make me look a fool in a public thoroughfare,"
she told him.
"I'm awfully sorry, Dolly. I didn't know what I was doing for the
moment."
"Don't call me Dolly," she said. "You know how I hate abbreviations."
"I don't seem to be able to do anything right this morning."
"Look at the ridiculous walk you've brought me! Nothing but
cobble-stones, and passers-by bumping into one, and now we're getting
down among the factories. You know how I hate being stared at."
"You didn't mind being stared at in Nottingham the week before last."
"Oh God! aren't you impossible!" cried Dorothy, herself now dramatically
turning right round and leaving him undecided whether to follow her or
retire in the opposite direction.
Half a dozen factory-girls, arm in arm, who, with the horrible quickness
of their class for anything that causes discomfort to other people, had
noticed the quarrel, began to shout after Dorothy that her little boy
was crying for his mother; while she, in torments of rage and
humiliation, and of hatred for the man who was the cause of them,
hurried uphill toward a more civilized quarter of the town. Five minutes
later the tenor overtook Dorothy and begged pardon for losing her like
that; he explained that, having got involved in a crowd of
factory-girls, he could not hurry without making himself more
ridiculous.
"You don't mind making me ridiculous," she said, bitterly.
"My dear girl, it was you that turned away, not me."
"Oh, go to the devil!" she burst out. "I'll have nothing more to do with
you. You can console yourself with May Seymour."
The people who turned to stare after the lovely girl that seemed an
incarnation of this blue-and-white April day might have been as shocked
as Dorothy was at herself to think that she had just descended to the
level of an actor by telling him to go to the devil.
III
The month of May found the "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" company billed to
appear in the suburban theaters, and Dorothy was called upon to make up
her mind whether she should take rooms with Sylvia and Lily in the
center of London or economize for a few weeks by staying at home. Four
months of separation from her family had not made her particularly
anxious to return to them. At the same time, since she was not yet a
London actress, it might be more prudent to wait a little while before
she cut herself off too completely from Lonsdale Road. The only thing
that worried her about staying at home was the thought that all the
members of her family would inevitably insist on going to see her act
during the week that they were to play at the Grand Theater, Fulham.
Even if her father should be shy of patronizing a musical comedy so near
the Bishop of London's palace, she saw no way of preventing at any rate
Roland and her sister Dolly from going; since she had stolen her
sister's name, Dorothy, notwithstanding her dislike of abbreviations,
had always managed to think of her as Dolly. Yes; it was obvious that
whether she stayed up in town or stayed in West Kensington, she should
be unable to prevent some of the family from going to see her, and, as
they would not appreciate the fact that not even the greatest actresses
begin by playing Lady Macbeth, she must make the best of their
inspection.
So, one Sunday afternoon when the laburnum buds were yellowing in
Lonsdale Road, Dorothy drove back to No. 17. Everything was much the
same except that Dolly--Dorothy was firm from the moment she entered the
house about refusing to answer any more to Norah--had, presumably in
revenge for the loss of her name, taken her sister's bed. Mr. Caffyn was
glad to hear that the difficulties and dangers of stage life had been
exaggerated, and promised that he would warn the Bishop of Hampstead,
who was billed to preside at a forthcoming meeting of the Church and
Stage Society, not to make too much of them in his anxiety about
theatrical souls. Dorothy succeeded in deterring her relations from
going to the theater the first week at Camberwell; but the following
week, when the playbills of "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" flaunted themselves
in every shop-window of West Kensington, a large party, not merely of
the immediate family, but of uncles and aunts and cousins raked together
from every obscure suburb in London, swarmed for the Thursday matinee,
and, what was worse, insisted on buzzing round Dorothy outside the
stage-door in order to take her out to tea between the performances.
They alluded with some disappointment to the inconspicuousness of the
part she played, and they all agreed that the outstanding feature of the
performance was the comedian. They thought it must be very nice for
Dorothy to have such a splendid humorist perpetually at hand.
"But he's not funny off the stage," explained Dorothy, crossly.
This seemed greatly to surprise the aunts and uncles, who evidently did
not believe her. In the middle of tea the party was joined by Roland,
Cecil, and Vincent; not having been able to get away for the matinee,
they had arrived to swell the family reunion before going to the evening
performance, for which they had booked stalls in the very front row,
where, later on, to Dorothy's intense disgust, she saw Wilfred Curlew
sitting with them'. However, he did have the decency not to wait after
the play to accompany herself and her brothers back to West Kensington.
The next morning, before she was dressed, Dorothy was informed that a
young gentleman was waiting to see her in the drawing-room, and
discovered, when she got down, that a representative of a monthly
magazine called _The Boudoir_ had come to ask for an interview. The
young man, talking rather as if the magazine was a draper's shop, told
her that his paper was making a special feature of beautiful actresses.
He cannonaded Dorothy with all sorts of questions, and forced her to
surrender the information that her favorite parts were Lady Teazle,
Viola, Portia, and Beatrice.
"Comedy, in fact?" said the young man.
"Oh yes, comedy," Dorothy agreed, after a moment's hesitation to decide
whether Portia, whose speech about the quality of mercy she had once
declaimed at a school breaking-up, ought to be considered a comic
figure.
"You have no ambitions for tragedy?"
"No," she told him. "I think there's enough tragedy in ordinary life."
"Would you recommend the stage as a profession?" he inquired.
"Rather a difficult question. It depends so much on the girl."
"Quite," agreed the young man, wisely. "But have you any advice for
beginners?"
"My advice is to be natural," said Dorothy.
"Quite," agreed the young man again.
"Natural both on the stage and off," she added.
The young man, with an air of devout concentration, wrote down this
valuable maxim, while Dorothy, looking at herself in the mirror, allowed
various expressions of delicious naturalness to stand the test of her
own critical observation.
"With whom did you study?" the interviewer inquired next.
"Principally with the late Mrs. Haden," said Dorothy, feeling very
generous in mentioning Lily's mother after the way the daughter had
behaved with Tom Hewitt. "A delightful teacher of the old school, now,
alas! no longer with us."
The young man shook his head sadly.
"But my real lessons," Dorothy added, brightly, lest the loss of Mrs.
Haden to art might be too much for the interviewer's emotions--"my real
lessons were derived from watching famous actresses. No famous actress,
continental or English, ever came to London whom I did not go to see. I
often went without"--she paused to think what she could have gone
without, for it might sound absurd to say that she went without
clothes--"I often walked," she corrected herself, "in order to have the
necessary money to buy a seat."
"That'll interest our readers very much," said the young man. "Yes,
that's the personal note which always appeals to our readers." He sucked
his pencil with relish. "And who is your favorite actress?"
"In England or abroad?"
"Oh, in England," the young man hurriedly explained; probably he was
jibbing at the prospect of having to write a foreign name.
"In England, Ellen Terry, decidedly," Dorothy replied.
"Quite"; the young man sighed with relief. "Perhaps you would care to
give me a photograph of yourself," he suggested.
"With pleasure," she said, taking from the mantelpiece one that she had
sent her mother about a month ago.
"Of course," the interviewer hemmed, nervously, "that will be twelve and
sixpence for the cost of reproduction."
"Twelve and six?" repeated Dorothy.
"The block will cost twelve and sixpence, that is to say."
"Twelve and six?" she repeated once more.
But she gave him the money; controlling her annoyance at the idea that
this young man might be making a profit out of her innocence, she
conducted him cheerfully to the door and presented him with a tulip from
one of Dolly's flower-pots.
"You're fond of gardening?" he asked, with half-open note-book.
"I adore flowers," said Dorothy. "Good-by."
To her mother she explained the sad necessity she had been under of
having to give away her favorite photograph.
"But, mother, I'll write for another one," she promised.
"Oh, Norah dear, I hope you will," said Mrs. Caffyn, much distressed.
"Only, as they're rather expensive, you won't mind giving me a guinea,
will you?" Dorothy murmured, with a frown for the old "Norah."
"No, darling Norah--darling child, I mean, of course not. I'd no idea
you were spending your salary like that," said Mrs. Caffyn, searching in
her purse for the money.
That evening, during the first act a note was sent round to Dorothy from
Wilfred Curlew to say that he had been to see her every night this week,
and that he had persuaded a friend of his to give her some publicity in
a magazine with which he was connected.
"At a cost of twelve and six," Dorothy scoffed to herself.
She did not send a word of thanks to Wilfred, and being unable from the
stage to perceive his presence anywhere in the theater, she supposed
that, having been there every night this week, he must by now have
reached the gallery.
When the interview appeared the other girls were very jealous, and all
of them vowed that they had never heard of _The Boudoir_.
"With a blush Miss Lonsdale handed our interviewer an exquisite bunch of
flowers culled by the beautiful young actress from her garden, a 'thing
of beauty' in the dreary desert of London streets," read out one of the
girls.
"Good God, have mercy on us!" exclaimed Clarice Beauchamp, holding a
hairpin dipped in eye-black over the gas. "It's a wonder the editor
hasn't written before now to ask if he can't keep you."
The irritation in the dressing-room caused by the interview was allayed
by a rumor that John Richards would visit the Alexandra Theater, Stoke
Newington, where they were playing their last week in the suburbs, with
a view to choosing girls for the Vanity production in the autumn. No
confirmation could be obtained of this; but the chorus put on extra
make-up and acted with all its eyes and all its legs for a shadowy
figure at the back of one of the private boxes. After the first act the
business manager, who had come behind for some purpose, was surrounded
by all the girls, each of whom in turn begged him to tell her
confidentially what Mr. Richards had said about the show and if he had
had any criticisms to make about herself.
"Mr. Richards?" repeated the manager.
"Now, don't pretend you know nothing about it," they expostulated. "_We_
know he's in front."
"Well, you know more than I do," said the manager.
"Then who is it at the back of the box on the prompt side?"
"You silly girls! That's the late mayor of Hackney."
"Then why do they make such a fuss of him?" persisted the girl who had
started the rumor. "There was a carriage outside the box-office half an
hour before the overture, and people were all round it, staring as if it
was the king."
"It's a very sad story," the manager explained. "He's blind, poor
fellow, and now, whenever he goes to the theater, they watch him being
helped out of his brougham."
During the second act not an eye nor a leg was thrown in the direction
of the mysterious stranger, whose identity was a great disappointment to
the girls; they had counted on Mr. Richards visiting them in the course
of the tour, and here it was coming to an end without a sign of him.
However, they were consoled by being told at the last minute that they
were going to play three nights at Oxford before the tour came to a
definite conclusion. Everybody agreed that it would be a delightful way
to wind up, and when the company assembled at Paddington on a brilliant
morning in earliest June, they seemed, in the new clothes they had been
able to buy during the last month in London, more like a large
picnic-party going up to Maidenhead than a touring company.
Dorothy had decided that the visit to Oxford was an occasion to justify
breaking into the L500 she had got out of her mother, which was still
practically intact, owing to the economy exerted all these weeks. Her
new dresses and new hats, combined with that interview in _The Boudoir_,
gave the rest of the chorus an impression that there was somebody behind
Dorothy, and they regarded her with a jealous curiosity that was most
encouraging.
IV
The three girls had only just finished dinner at their lodgings in Eden
Square when Sylvia proposed a walk round Oxford. Dorothy agreed to go
out if she were allowed time to change her things; but Lily declared
that she was tired after the journey, and preferred to look at
illustrated papers in deshabille. Many undergraduates turned their heads
to stare at Dorothy's beauty or Sylvia's eye-glass when the two girls
were walking down the High toward St. Mary's College, through the gates
of which Sylvia calmly suggested that they should pass in order to
explore the gardens.
"But suppose they tell us that girls aren't allowed to go in," Dorothy
demanded, in a panic.
"We'll go out again."
"But we should look so foolish."
"We always look foolish," said Sylvia. "Anything more foolish than you
look at the present moment I can't imagine, except myself."
Before Dorothy could prevent her, Sylvia had asked a tall and haughty
undergraduate if there was any reason why they should not take a walk in
the college grounds. The young man blushed painfully, and Dorothy, who
could see that his embarrassment at being spoken to by an actress was
causing intense delight to a group of idlers in the college lodge, was
angry with Sylvia for exposing the two of them to a share in the
ridicule.
"All right, Dorothy," said Sylvia, cheerfully. "He says we can."
The tall and haughty undergraduate strode away up the High to escape
from his friends' chaff, and the two girls wandered about the college
until they found themselves in the famous St. Mary's Walks, where upon a
seat embowered in foliage they listened to the bells that were ringing
down the golden day and ringing in the unhastening Sabbath eve. Close at
hand, but hidden from view by leafy banks, the pleasurable traffic of
the Cherwell sounded continuously in a low murmur of talk that, blending
with the swish of paddles and comfortable sound of jostling punts,
seemed the very voice of indolent June. Dorothy supposed that she, like
nature, must be looking most beautiful in this bewitching light, and
regretted that the only passers-by should be ecclesiastical figures bent
in grave intercourse, or a few young men arguing in throaty voices about
topics she did not recognize.
"I don't think we've chosen a very good place," she complained, with a
discontented pout.
"We've chosen the place," said Sylvia, "where nearly four years ago, on
a Sunday afternoon in August, I agreed to get married."
"Married?" repeated Dorothy, in amazement. "Are you married?"
"Yes, I believe I'm married for the present; but I sha'n't be soon."
"Oh, Sylvia, do tell me about it! I won't say a word to anybody else."
But Sylvia, having said so much, would say no more; jumping up and
insisting that she was thirsty, she reminded Dorothy that they had
promised to help Charlie Clinton entertain his brother and some
undergraduate friends. Charlie Clinton was an obscure member of the
company who had suddenly sprung into considerable prominence by
revealing that he had a brother at Oxford and was himself the black
sheep of a respectable family. Dorothy, realizing that the blackest
sheep is better form than the whitest goat, had accepted the invitation,
but she was not much impressed by the collection of undergraduates
gathered in his rooms, and was vexed that she had wasted her most
becoming hat on young men who wanted to talk about nothing but music.
She was vexed, too, at finding that David Bligh had been invited, and
that he was talking affectedly about good music and sounding with his
fluty voice rather like an undergraduate himself. Lily came and danced a
classical dance which seemed to please everybody else, though Dorothy
could not see anything in it. Bligh sang German songs, and was so much
applauded that he condescendingly proposed that his pupil should sing,
who refused so angrily that none of the undergraduates dared approach
her. It was indeed a thoroughly boring evening, and she wondered if
Oxford was going to produce nothing better than this.
The theater on Monday night, notwithstanding the fine weather, was
packed; but the audience was noisy, and the men in the chorus who had
not been invited to Charlie Clinton's party severely condemned the bad
manners of undergraduates.
"They're a rowdy lot of bounders, that's what they are," Tom Hewitt
proclaimed, loosening the collar around his aggressive neck.
Dorothy, who had been looking forward to astonishing some of the girls
in the dressing-room with her news about Sylvia, forgot everything in a
delightful triumph she was able to enjoy at the expense of Clarice
Beauchamp. A note was brought round after the first act addressed:
To the fair artist's model in pink. Front row. O. P. side.
Clarice Beauchamp had the impudence to contest Dorothy's right to open
this note, and while some of the artist's models were rapidly
transforming themselves into Polynesian beauties and others as rapidly
assuming the aristocratic costumes of a millionaire's yachting-party,
Clarice and Dorothy, who belonged to the latter division, argued
heatedly. At last Fay Onslow, to whom the note could not possibly refer,
was allowed to open it and give her verdict:
Fair lady, my name is Lonsdale. On the Grampian hills my father
feeds his flock! In other words, will you and the lady with the
monocle who yesterday afternoon picked out quite the most
unattractive man in St. Mary's as your guide come and picnic with
me on the upper river to-morrow? A friend of mine at the House is
dying to meet you, but he is much too shy to write himself. If you
can come, just send back your address by bearer and I'll send my
tame cab to fetch you to-morrow at twelve o'clock.
Yours sincerely,
ARTHUR LONSDALE.
"I knew it was for me," said Dorothy. "Sylvia and I were in St. Mary's
College yesterday afternoon."
Clarice Beauchamp, much mortified, had to surrender her claim to the
note.
"But what a strange coincidence that he should be called Lonsdale!"
Onzie exclaimed. "Most extraordinary, I call it. Who knows? He might be
a relation."
"He might be," said Dorothy, calmly.
Lily looked up from her place as if she were going to speak, but, though
she said nothing, Dorothy was glad that the terms of the note gave her
no excuse for asking her to-morrow, even if Sylvia did maliciously
propose that Lily should go instead of herself.
"Oh, but they particularly want you," Dorothy protested.
"Anyway, I can't go," Lily said; "I've promised to go round some of the
colleges with Tom."
Dorothy winced at the threatened sacrilege.
Next morning a cab jingled up to the girls' lodgings, and they were
driven to the nearest point of embarkation for a picnic on the upper
river. Their host, a short young man with very fair hair and a round
pink face, introduced himself and led the way to the Rollers, over which
punts and canoes were dragged from the lower level of the Cherwell to
the wider sweeps of the Isis. A tall young man who was standing by a
couple of canoes moored to the bank came forward to greet them. His most
immediately conspicuous feature was a pair of white flannel trousers
down the seams of which ran stripes of vivid blue ribbon; but when he
was introduced to Dorothy as Lord Clarehaven she forgot about his
trousers in the more vivid blue of his name. All sorts of ideas rushed
through her mind--a sudden dread that he might think Sylvia more
attractive than herself, a sudden contempt for the party of the evening
before, a sudden rapture in which blue sky, blue blood, and the blue
stripes of the trousers merged exquisitely, and a sudden apprehension
created by her pleated reflection in the water that she was not looking
her best. After Lord Clarehaven she should not have been surprised if
the first young man had also had a title; but he was apparently only Mr.
Lonsdale, and, though entitled to respect as a friend of Lord
Clarehaven, would probably interest Sylvia more than herself.
Dorothy's dread that she and Lord Clarehaven might not find themselves
in the same canoe was soon dispelled, because Lord Clarehaven was
evidently as eager for her company as she was for his, and they were
soon leaving the others behind. There is no form of conveyance which
makes for so much intimacy of regard as a canoe, and Dorothy, when she
had once been able to reassure herself by means of a pocket-mirror that
she had not been ruffled by the cab-drive or by the nervous business of
getting gracefully into a wabbling canoe, settled herself down to be
admired at a distance of about four feet. Moreover, she indulged for the
first time in her life in the pleasure of admiring somebody else, a
state of mind which doubled her charm by taking away much of her
self-consciousness. If Lord Clarehaven was below the standard of
aristocracy set by our full-blooded lady novelists, he was equally far
removed from the chinless convention of banal caricature. He had the
long legs, the narrow hips and head, and the big teeth of the Norman;
but his fair hair was already thinning upon a high, retreating forehead,
his nose was small, and if the protuberant eyes that one sees in
Pekinese spaniels and other well-bred mammals were a faint intimation of
approaching degeneracy in the stock, Dorothy was not sufficiently versed
in physiognomy to recognize such symptoms; already fascinated by his
title and his trousers, she was quite ready to be fascinated by his
eyes.
"I was lunching in St. Mary's yesterday with Arthur Lonsdale," he was
explaining, "and I noticed you from the lodge. I should have come up and
spoken to you myself, but I was rather frightened by your friend's
eye-glass. In fact, I'm still not at all at ease with her. She looks
deuced clever, I mean, don't you think?"
"She is awfully clever."
"Poor girl, but I suppose it's not such a bore for a girl as it would
be for a man. I'm an awful ass myself, you know. I mean, I'm absolutely
incapable of doing anything."
"How did you know we belonged to the company?" asked Dorothy, implying
that with all his modesty he must possess acute powers of judgment
hidden away somewhere.
"Well, to tell you the truth, we didn't know. Somebody said your friend
was a medical student, only I wasn't going to have that, and some man
said he'd noticed you at the station, so Lonnie and I went to the
theater on the off-chance and tried to spot you."
"Which you did?"
"Oh, rather. Only, then we couldn't spot your name. I was all for
Clarice Beauchamp."
"She's an awfully horrid girl," said Dorothy, quickly.
"Is she? I'm sorry to hear that. And Lonnie betted you were Fay Onslow.
So we were quits. Funny thing you should have the same name as Lonnie.
No relation, I suppose?"
He was evidently so sure of this that Dorothy was rather piqued and
asked, loftily, which Lonsdale he was.
"Cleveden's son."
"Oh, then I am a relation," said Dorothy. "Though of course a very, very
distant one."
"By Jove! that's great!" said Clarehaven.
He seemed enthusiastic, but Dorothy could not make out whether he
believed her or not, and she rather wished she had kept the relationship
for the dressing-room. She hoped that Sylvia would not give Lonsdale an
impression that she claimed to be his first cousin; this abrupt plunge
into the whirlpool of society might make her act extravagantly. What a
pity that she had not known who he was before they met, and "Oh!" she
cried, aloud.
"What's the matter?" Clarehaven asked.
"Nothing. At least I think I touched a fish," said Dorothy.
But her exclamation was caused by dismay at recalling that she had
addressed him as "Arthur Lonsdale, Esquire," when for the first time in
her life she might have written "The Honorable Arthur Lonsdale," for
everybody to see. What must he have thought of her ignorance? And now
here in a canoe with her was Lord Clarehaven, but, owing to the foolish
modesty that English titles affect, she did not know if he was a
marquis, an earl, a viscount, or a mere baron. The prospect of the green
river was leaden with the thought of her stupidity.
"You're looking very sad," said Clarehaven. "What's the matter?"
"I was thinking how beautiful it was here," she sighed.
"Topping, isn't it?"
"Topping," she echoed, awarding to the utterance of the epithet as much
emotion as if it were robbed from Shakespeare's magic store. Amid a
sweet smell of grass and to the accompaniment of lapping water and a
small sibilant wind they lunched on the salmon and mayonnaise, the
prawns in aspic, the galantine and cold chicken, the meringues and
strawberries of how many Oxford picnics. Above them dreamed a huge sky;
elm-trees guarded the near horizon; wasps had not begun, nor did Sylvia
tease Dorothy about being related to Lonsdale when Clarehaven presented
them as long-lost cousins.
By the end of the afternoon Dorothy had sufficiently confirmed her
admirer's first impression to be invited to lunch with him at Christ
Church the following day, in which invitation Sylvia was of course
included. Then slowly they drifted back down the river, on the dimples
and eddies of which the overhanging trees cast a patina as upon the
muscles of an ancient bronze.
"How unreal the theater seems!" sighed Dorothy when they drove up to the
stage-door.
"Does it?" Sylvia laughed. "It seems to me much more real than our
pretty behavior this afternoon."
V
Dorothy slept badly that night. Her regret for the mistake she had made
in addressing Arthur Lonsdale as esquire magnified itself horribly in
the mean little bedroom of the lodgings in Eden Square. All night long
she was waking up to reproach herself for her stupidity in not taking
the trouble to make sure who he was before she sent back the note. Her
blunder was all the more unpardonable because she should have been
sufficiently interested in receiving a letter from a namesake to take
this trouble. And now suppose Lord Clarehaven were to put her under the
necessity of addressing him on the outside of an envelope? How was she
to know what to write? "Lord Clarehaven, Christ Church College"? It
sounded rather empty. In any case, she should have to ask for him at the
lodge to-morrow, and how the porter would sneer behind her back if she
should make a mistake! In despair Dorothy wandered into the next room
where Sylvia and Lily were sleeping tranquilly.
"Oh dear!" she lamented.
"What's the matter?" asked Sylvia, jumping up in bed.
"Sylvia, I can't sleep. I think there's a rat in my room. I suppose
Arthur Lonsdale didn't say if Lord Clarehaven was a marquis, did he?"
"Damn your eyes, Dorothy, did you wake me up to ask that? Go and get
hold of Debrett, if you want to know so badly."
Dorothy went back to her bedroom in peace of mind. Of course! How easy
it was, really, and she fell into a delicious sleep, from which,
notwithstanding her disturbed night, she was early awake to dress and be
out of the house by ten o'clock in order to search the Oxford bookshops
for a _Peerage_.
"We have a _Baronetage_" said one bookseller.
Dorothy shrugged her shoulders compassionately, and went from shop to
shop until she found the big red volume of her desire. She paid without
a moment's hesitation the price of it, called a cab, and drove back to
Eden Square, that she might have plenty of time to devour the contents
before going to Christ Church. Her breath came fast when she actually
read Clarehaven and began to absorb the wonderful information below:
CLAREHAVEN, EARL OF. (Clare) [Earl U.K. 1816. Bt. E. 1660.]
ANTHONY GILBERT CLARE, 5th Earl, and 10th Baronet; _b._ Oct. 15, 1882;
_s._ 1896; ed. at Eton and Christ Church; is 2d Lieut, in North Devon
Dragoons, and patron of one living.
_Arms_--Purpure, two flanches ermine, on a chief sable a moon in her
complement argent. _Crest_--A moon in her complement argent, arising
from a cloud proper. _Supporters_--Two angels vested purpure, winged and
crined or, each holding in the exterior hand a key or. _Motto_--_Claro
non clango_.
_Seat_--Clare Court, Devonshire. _Town residence_--129 Curzon Street, W.
_Club_--Bachelors'.
SISTERS LIVING
_Lady_ Arabella. b. 1885.
_Lady_ Constantia. b. 1887.
WIDOW LIVING OF FOURTH EARL
Augusta (Countess of Clarehaven) 2d dau. of 9th Earl of Chatfield: _m._
1880 the 4th Earl who _d._ 1896. _Residence_--Clare Court, Devonshire.
PREDECESSORS--[1] Anthony Clare, _M.P._ for Devon (a descendant of
Richard Fitzgilbert, Baron of Clare, a companion of the Conqueror, son
of Gilbert Crispin, Earl of Brione in Normandy, who was son of Geoffrey,
a natural son of Richard I. Duke of Normandy), was cr. a Bt. 1660; _d._
1674; _s._ by his son [2] _Sir_ Gilbert, 2d Bt.; _d._ 1710; _s._ by his
son [3] _Sir_ Anthony, 3d Bt.; _d._ 1747; _s._ by his nephew [4] _Sir_
William, 4th Bt.; _d._ 1764; _s._ by his cousin [5] _Sir_ Anthony, 5th
Bt.; cr. _Baron Clarehaven_ (peerage of Great Britain) 1796; _d._ 1802;
_s._ by his son [6] Gilbert, 2d Baron; cr. _Viscount Clare_ and _Earl of
Clarehaven_ (peerage of United Kingdom) 1816; _d._ 1826; _s._ by his son
[7] Richard Crispin, 2d Earl. _b._ 1788. _m._ 1818 Lady Caroline Lacey
who _d._ 1859, 2d dau. of 3d Marquess of Longlan; _d._ 1864; s. by his
son [8] Geoffrey William, _P.C._, 3d Earl. _b._ 1820; sometime Lord
Lieut. of Devon; M.P. for S. Devon (C); Vice-Chamberlain of H. M. Queen
Victoria's Household. _m._ 1845 the Hon. Louisa Travers, who _d._ 1890,
dau. of the 26th Baron Travers; _d._ 1867; _s._ by his son [9] Gilbert
Crispin, 4th Earl, _b._ 1845; Lieut. Royal Horse Guards, 1866-67: _m._
1880 Lady Augusta Fanhope, 2d dau. of 9th Earl of Chatfield; _d._ 1896;
_s._ by his son [10] Anthony Gilbert, 5th Earl and present peer; also
Viscount Clare and Baron Clarehaven.
Half a dozen times word for word she read through these magic pages,
until she felt that she simply could not make a mistake at lunch. Then a
page or two farther on, past Clarendon and Clarina, she came to:
CLEVEDEN, BARON. (Lonsdale) [Baron G.B. 1762.]
CHARLES ARTHUR BRABAZON LONSDALE. _G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E._ 5th Baron; _b._
Oct. 10, 1858; _s._ 1888; ed. at Eton and at Ch. Ch. Oxford. (B.A.
1880); is a J.P. and D.L. for Warwickshire and Verderer of the Forest of
Arden; Hon. Col. of Yeo.; sat as M.P. for West Warwick--(C) 1880-1884;
was Assist. Private Sec. to the Premier--(M. Salisbury) 1885-6; Gov. and
Com. in Ch. of E. Australia. 1893-99; and Gov. of Central India.
1899-1901; _K.C.M.G._ 1893; _G.C.M.G._ 1898; _G.C.I.E._ 1899: _m._ 1882
Lady Helen Druce (an Extra Woman of the Bed-chamber to H.M. Queen
Victoria), dau. of 10th Earl of Monteith and has issue.
_Arms_--Argent, an oak tree englante vert. _Crest_--A bugle horn or,
enguiche and stringed vert. _Supporters_--On either side a forester
sounding a horn proper. _Motto_--J'y serai.
_Seat_--Cressingham Hall, Warwick. _Clubs_--Carlton. Travellers'.
SON LIVING
_Hon._ ARTHUR GEORGE MORNINGTON. _b._ Feb. 24, 1883.
DAUGHTER LIVING
_Hon._ Sylvia May. _b._ 1885.
"Sylvia?" Dorothy said to herself. But she decided to stick to the name
Dorothy, and went on reading about her family.
BROTHER LIVING
_Rev_. the Hon. George, _b._ 1860; ed. at Eton, and at St. Mary's Coll.
Oxford. (B.A. 1883. M.A. 1886); is R. of Bingham-cum-Bingham Monachorum;
_m._ 1894 Mary Alice, dau. of the late Rev. Francis Greville, V. of St.
Wilfred's, Tilchester, and Hon. Canon of Tilchester, and has issue
living, Arthur Brabazon--_b._ 1896. Mary--_b._ 1898. Georgina Maud--_b._
1900. _Residence_--Bingham Rectory, Hants.
SISTERS LIVING
_Hon._ Frances Louisa, _b._ 1863. _m._ 1885 Sir William
Honeywood-Greene, 6th Bt. _Residence_--Arden Towers, Warwick.
_Hon._ Caroline, _b._ 1865. _m._ 1886 Sir Stanley Pinkerton, K.C.V.O.
Master of the King's Spaniels. _Residence_--210 Eaton Square, S.W.
_Hon._ Horatia. _b._ 1867.
There followed a couple of pages devoted to collateral branches of the
Lonsdales. These were something new: the Clares apparently lacked
collaterals. Presently it dawned on Dorothy that these collaterals
treated of the more distant relations of the family, and in a fever she
began to search for confirmation of the legend in Lonsdale Road that
through their grandmother, Mrs. Doyle, the Caffyns were connected with
Lord Cleveden. On and on she read through colonels and rectors with
their numerous offspring, through consuls and captains and judges and
doctors even; but there was no mention of Doyles, still less of Caffyns.
The connection must indeed be very remote: perhaps it was hidden among
the predecessors.
PREDECESSORS.--[1] George Lonsdale, Verderer of the Forest of Arden;
M.P. for Warwickshire 1740-62; cr. _Baron Cleveden_, of Cressingham, co.
Warwick (peerage of Great Britain) 1762; _d._ 1764; _s._ by his son [2]
Arthur, 2d Baron; _d._ 1822; _s._ by his son [3] Charles, 3d Baron; _b._
1790: _m._ 1830 the Hon. Horatia Brabazon, who _d._ 1851, dau. of 3d
Viscount Brabazon; _d._ 1840; _s._ by his son [4] George Brabazon, 4th
Baron; _b._ 1832; a Lord-in-Waiting to H. M. Queen Victoria 1858-64:
_m._ 1856 Lady May Mornington, who _d._ 1895, 3d dau. of 11th Earl of
Belgrove; _d._ 1888; _s._ by his son [5] Charles Arthur Brabazon, 5th
Baron and present peer.
Dorothy sighed her disappointment, but resolved that she would adopt the
family crest and motto as her own. _J'y serai_ underneath a bugle-horn:
how well it would look on her note-paper. Fired by its inspiration, she
began to dress herself for lunch with the Earl of Clarehaven, and when,
an hour later, she ushered Sylvia into the Christ Church lodge with a
hardihood that contrasted strongly with the reluctance she had shown
when Sylvia had dragged her into St. Mary's on Sunday, there was no need
to inquire for Lord Clarehaven by his correct title, because the host
was there himself to meet his guests and escort them across the
spaciousness of Tom Quad to his rooms in Peckwater. It appeared that at
the last minute an urgent summons to play cricket for the Eton Ramblers
had prevented Lonsdale from coming. Dorothy, notwithstanding her
knowledge of the Lonsdale collaterals, was not sorry, for she did not
wish to discuss the relationship with one of the family, especially
before Sylvia, to whom she now turned with a hint of patronage.
"My dear, you will be disappointed. Mr. Lonsdale is not coming to
lunch."
Sylvia said she would try to put up with the disappointment and hoped
that an equally entertaining substitute had been provided.
"I've asked a fellow called Tufton," said Clarehaven. "His father's a
sleeping partner or something of jolly old John Richards at the Vanity,
and I thought he might be useful. Besides, he's not at all a bad egg. We
elected him to the Bullingdon this term."
Dorothy looked at her host gratefully and admiringly.
"How awfully sweet of you!" she murmured, with the lightest, briefest
touch of her fingers on his wrist, and thinking how well the people who
mattered knew how to do things.
They had reached Peckwater by now, the architecture of which, brightened
by many window-boxes in full bloom, reminded Dorothy of streets in
Mayfair. Her morning with Debrett had in fact turned her head so
completely that she sought everywhere for illustrations of grandeur in
the life around her; in this regard Clarehaven's rooms, by conforming
perfectly to her notions of what they should be, made her want to kiss
herself with satisfaction. To begin with, the door of his bedroom,
slightly ajar, allowed a glimpse of numerous pairs of boots running up
the scale from brogues to waders, which somehow spoke more eloquently of
riches and leisure than if the luncheon-table had been laid with gold.
Dorothy was contemplating the tints of these boots like a poet in an
autumnal glade when Clarehaven presented Mr. Tufton, who, to do him
justice, looked as well turned out as one of his host's hunting-tops and
in a chestnut-colored suit with extravagantly rolled collar maintained
his personality against the boots and the cigars and the brown sherry
and the old paneling and the studies of grouse by Thorburn that gave
this room its air of mellow opulence.
Dorothy told Mr. Tufton brightly that he had missed a wonderful
afternoon yesterday.
"I was playing polo," he explained.
Dorothy, having an idea that polo was nearly as dangerous as
bull-fighting, shuddered.
"I say, do you feel a draught?" inquired the host, anxiously.
"Oh no, it's delicious here."
A voice from the quad was shouting "Tony," and Dorothy, remembering
Anthony from Debrett, could not resist telling Clarehaven that he was
being called. Clarehaven was moving over to the window to discourage
whoever was demanding his presence, when another voice came clearly up
through the June air.
"Shut up, Ridgway! Tony's lunching some does, you silly ass!"
Dorothy could not help thinking that Sylvia ought to have pretended not
to hear this allusion instead of bursting out into what was really a
vulgar peal of laughter.
"I think there _is_ a draught," said Mr. Tufton, closing the windows so
gravely that one felt much of his inmost meditation was devoted to the
tactful handling of moments like this.
"Are these your sisters?" Dorothy asked, picking up a photograph of two
girls, each holding a foxhound.
"Yes, those are my sisters Bella and Connie," Clarehaven replied.
"They're awful keen on puppy-walking."
Perhaps, after all, abbreviations were sometimes tolerable, and names
like Arabella and Constantia were rather long.
"Isn't your second name Gilbert?" she asked.
"Yes. Dreadful infliction, isn't it?"
Dorothy decided not to say that her father's name was Gilbert, to which
she had been leading up, and took her seat at table, noticing with
pleasure that the full moon of the house of Clare adorned the silver.
After lunch they looked at albums of snapshots, during the examination
of which Mr. Tufton was most useful, because he was continually saying:
"By Jove! Isn't that Lady Connie?" or: "By Gad! Isn't that the covert
where Lady Bella got her left and right last October?" or: "Hello! I see
Lady Clarehaven has followed my advice about the pergola." If Mr. Tufton
could advise countesses as stately as the Countess of Clarehaven and
refer to the daughters of an earl as Lady Bella and Lady Connie, what
might not Dorothy do with patience and discretion? Meanwhile she took no
risks, and if she had to mention the members of her host's family she
alluded to them as "your mother" or "your elder sister" or "your younger
sister."
"But what a glorious place Clare Court must be!" she exclaimed.
"Oh, I don't know," said the owner of it. "The train service is
absolutely rotten."
"You'll have your new car this vac.," Mr. Tufton reminded him. "I wrote
the firm a very strong letter yesterday." Then seeing that his friend
was growing gloomy at the prospect of Devonshire even with a new car, he
suggested a stroll round Meadows, and cleverly arranged to lag behind
with Sylvia.
Clarehaven when he was alone with Dorothy did not find much more to say,
but he was able to look at her with a more open admiration than when his
glances had been disconcerted by Sylvia's monocle.
"You know I'm tremendously quelled by your friend," he avowed. "By Jove!
you know, I feel she's always criticizing a fellow. Now with you I feel
absolutely at my ease."
"I'm glad," Dorothy murmured. Then for two full moments she let her deep
eyes flash into his.
"I say, when you look at me like that," said Clarehaven, solemnly, "you
absolutely bring my heart into my mouth. By Gad! I feel it being hooked
up like a trout."
"I'm afraid it's a very easy heart to hook," she laughed.
"Oh no, it's not! Oh no, really it's not! I can assure you that I'm not
in the least susceptible."
"Ah, you'll forget all about me to-morrow."
"My dear Dorothy! You don't object to my calling you Dorothy? My dear
Dorothy, if you knew how unlikely I am to forget all about you
to-morrow...."
"Well?"
"Well, I'm not going to forget about you, that's all."
"We shall see."
"Yes, we shall," said Clarehaven, fiercely.
Dorothy was anxious to add still a small touch to his obvious
appreciation, and she conceived the daring idea of inviting him back to
tea in the lodgings. She felt that there in the dingy little room her
grace and beauty would appear more desirable than ever, and if he
should fancy from her invitation that she intended to make herself cheap
he would soon perceive from her behavior how far removed she was from
the average chorus-girl. Clarehaven applauded the suggestion, and though
Sylvia looked rather bored by it, Tufton was enthusiastic; so they
visited a pastry-cook's and bought lots of expensive cakes and
chocolates, for which the guest of honor paid.
"How the poor live!" exclaimed Dorothy, pointing with a dramatic gesture
at the drab little houses of Eden Square as if she would comment upon an
aspect of Oxford that was hardly credible after Christ Church.
"Yes, this is our quad," chuckled Sylvia. "Old Tom!"
"I've never been here before," said Clarehaven, anxious to convince
Dorothy that really he was not susceptible. "I've heard of Eden Square,
of course, but this is my first visit. It's where all the theatrical
people stay, isn't it, Tuffers?"
"It may be," replied Mr. Tufton, who, having paid for everything he
possessed with money his father was making out of the theater, naturally
did not wish to show himself too familiar with its domestic life.
"Number ten," said Dorothy, gaily. "Here we are!"
She opened the front door and led the way along a narrow passage to the
sitting-room, and, flinging wide open the door, drew back for Clarehaven
to enter first.
"You'll have to excuse the general untidiness," she warned him.
The sentence was out before she had time to realize that the general
untidiness included a searing vision of Lily in an arm-chair,
imparadised upon the lap of the impossible Tom Hewitt. Sylvia dashed
forward to the rescue of Dorothy, who was standing speechless with
mortification, and began introducing everybody to one another as fast as
she could. Clarehaven's devotion to the stage did not seem impaired by
this abrupt manifestation of low life behind the scenes, and Tufton, who
in other company would probably have been as much outraged as Dorothy
herself by such a reflection upon the source of his wealth, copied his
friend's lead. Tom Hewitt with a mumbled excuse about having to see the
manager retired as soon as possible. Lily, notwithstanding that her left
cheek was flushed and that the hair on the left side of her head was
more conspicuously a part of the general untidiness than the hair on the
right, seemed utterly unconscious of having as good as torn up the
Debrett in which Dorothy had invested this morning, and actually talked
away in her languorous style to Clarehaven and Tufton as if Tom Hewitt's
lap was the natural place on which to pass a lovely summer afternoon.
For Dorothy that tea-party was a martyrdom from which she began to think
that she should never recover. Wherever she looked she saw that horrible
picture of Lily and Tom. Once Clarehaven asked for another lump of
sugar, and, tormented by the vision, she put two chocolates in his cup.
Tufton passed his cup for a little more milk, and she emptied it away
into the slop-bowl. Finally in an effort to restore her equanimity she
took a chocolate that concealed a sticky caramel within, and when her
mouth was all twisted and her teeth felt as if they were being pulled
out by the roots Clarehaven asked if she could not spare him a
photograph. He was being kind, thought Dorothy, miserably; the
Fitzgilberts and Crispins and Clares of all those generations were
gathering to help him hide the contempt he must feel for this tea-party;
Lacy and Travers and Fanhope were behind him, pleading the obligations
of nobility. And if he were not being kind she must suppose that he
rather liked Lily, which would be worst of all. But what a lesson she
had been given, what a lesson, indeed! If but once it might be granted
to her that a folly should be expiated in the pain of the moment, she
would never play tricks with fortune again.
When Clarehaven rose to make his farewells Dorothy did not attempt to
detain him, but with a sorrowful grace shook his hand and would not even
give him the photograph.
"No, no, I'd rather send you one from London."
"But you'll forget," he protested.
"No, I sha'n't. One hundred and twenty-nine Curzon Street. Or will you
be at Clare Court?"
"I'll write to you."
"No, no," said Dorothy. It would never do for him to write to Lonsdale
Road; besides, he might take it into his head to visit her there, which
might be more disastrous than this tea-party. What would he think, for
instance, of the misshapen boots that were usually waiting outside
Roland's room like two large black-beetles? No, when she had thought out
her campaign she would send him a photograph, and if, looking back on
this afternoon, he decided that she was not worth while--well, she must
put up with it. Dorothy was so sorry for herself that Clarehaven was
flattered by her melancholy countenance into supposing that he had made
a deep impression. In the narrow passage Tufton slipped behind and
whispered to her that she must look her best to-night.
"Why?"
"Stable information," he said, and hurried after his friend, Lord
Clarehaven.
When the three girls were alone together in the fatal sitting-room
Dorothy's repressed rage with Lily broke out uncontrollably.
"I hope you don't think I'll ever live with you again after that
disgusting exhibition. I suppose you think just because you went with me
to Walter Keal that you can do as you like. I don't know what Sylvia
thinks of you, but I can tell you what I think. You make me feel
absolutely sick. That beastly chorus-boy! The idea of letting anybody
like that even look at you! Thank Heaven, the tour's over. I'm going
down to the theater. I can't stay in this room. It makes me blush to
think of it. I'll take jolly good care who I live with in future."
Something in Lily's fragility, something in her still untidy hair and
uncomprehending muteness, inflamed Dorothy beyond the bounds of
toleration, and in despair of just words to humiliate her sufficiently
she slapped her face.
"Hit her back, my lass," cried Sylvia, putting up her eye-glass to watch
the fray; but Lily collapsed tearfully into the arm-chair, and Dorothy
rushed out of the room.
The sight of Debrett's scarlet and gold upon her dressing-table was
enough to reconjure all her mortification, and she was just going to
weep her heart out upon the bed as, no doubt, below Lily was weeping
hers out upon the shoulders of a ghostly Tom Hewitt, when Tufton's
parting advice recurred to her. She had to look her best to-night. Why?
He must have some reason to say that.
"_J'y serai_?" cried Dorothy, mustering all her family pride to keep
back her tears.
VI
Although fortified by the motto, Dorothy was still suffering from the
memory of that afternoon, and when she arrived at the theater to dress
and saw Tom Hewitt standing by the stage-door she tried to pass him
without acknowledging his salute.
"Mr. Richards will be in front to-night," he told her, portentously.
"Oh, we're always hearing that," said Dorothy. "I don't believe it."
"It's a fact. Warren told me so himself. And Mr. Keal's come down with
him."
So this was why Tufton had advised her to look her best to-night; the
visit could only mean that the great man wanted girls for the autumn
production at the Vanity. Dorothy began to cheer up. Even if Lily's
behavior had disgusted Lord Clarehaven irreparably, such behavior would
not spoil her own chance of being engaged by John Richards, and at the
Vanity there would be plenty of titled admirers. No doubt most of them
would be younger sons or elder sons who had not yet succeeded, but ...
"_j'y serai_," murmured Dorothy. "It's a good thing that I don't fall in
love very easily. And it's lucky I didn't let myself cry," she added,
congratulating her reflection in the dressing-room mirror.
Every girl was painting herself and powdering herself and pulling up her
stockings and patting her hair and, regardless of the undergraduates she
had met during the week, preparing to act as she had never acted before.
Dorothy took neither more nor less trouble with her appearance than she
took every night.
This time rumor was incarnate in fact, for the great Mr. Richards came
and stood in the wings during a large portion of the play, and Dorothy,
convinced that the one thing she ought not to do was to throw a single
glance in his direction, devoted all her attention to the front of the
house. There were lots of flowers; but nobody, neither principal nor
chorus-girl, was handed such a magnificent basket of pink roses as
herself, and nobody who had not suffered as she had suffered that
afternoon in the depths could have been so gloriously thrilled on the
heights as Dorothy was when the curtain fell at the close of the
performance amid the shouts and cheers of youthful art-loving England,
and she was stopped in the wings by Mr. Water Keal.
"Come here, dear," he said. "I want to introduce you to Mr. Richards."
The impresario was a large and melancholy man whose voice reverberated
in the back of a cavernous throat with so high a palate that consonants
were lost in its echoes and his speech seemed to consist entirely of
vowels.
"Who sent you the prehy flowers, dear?" he asked, lugubriously.
"The Earl of Clarehaven," said Dorothy, with a brilliant smile.
"Ha--ha, vehy 'ice, vehy 'ice," he muttered, fondling the card attached.
"Goo' gir'! Goo' gir'!"
The millionaire's yachting friends wore evening gowns for the latter
part of the second act, and Dorothy in old rose, with her basket of
flowers and exquisite neck and shoulders, was indeed looking her best.
"Goo' gir'!" Mr. Richards boomed once more; then as she passed from the
royal presence he patted her shoulder in congratulation, dusted the
powder from his fingers, lit an enormous cigar, and wandered away with
Mr. Keal.
When Dorothy reached the dressing-room every girl was speculating on the
depth of the impression she had made upon Mr. Richards, but not one of
them could claim that the great man had patted her on the back or
noticed her flowers. Presently the call-boy came with a message that
Miss Lonsdale was to be at the theater to-morrow morning at eleven
o'clock without fail, and it was obvious to the most jealous observer
that Dorothy's chance had come. She was so much elated by her good
fortune that she was reconciled to Lily, told everybody what a
delightful lunch she had had with Lord Clarehaven and what a delightful
picnic she had had with Lord Clarehaven and how she had met a cousin of
hers, Arthur Lonsdale, who was the only son of Lord Cleveden.
"You know, he was governor of Central India," Dorothy reminded the
dressing-room.
"India!" echoed Miss Onslow. "That sounds hot stuff, anyway."
Dorothy buried her face in the roses to get rid of the effluvium of such
vulgarity. And then in the middle of her success, just when her true
friends should have been most pleased, Sylvia, who had shared--well,
not shared, but had been allowed to assist at her triumph--Sylvia it
was who asked, in a voice audible to the whole dressing-room:
"On which side of the road are you related to young Lonsdale?"
Luckily the joke was too obscure to be generally understood; but Dorothy
decided to banish Sylvia from the list of her friends that in Lily's
company she might henceforth inhabit an outer darkness unlit by
Debrett's scarlet and gold.
"I expect I shall soon forget what an awful life touring is," said
Dorothy to herself that night, as she turned back the limp cotton sheets
and looked distastefully at the hummocky mattress. There was a trenchant
symbolism, too, in massacring a flea with Debrett; no other volume would
have been heavy enough.
The next morning Mr. Richards seemed to be inviting her--so gentle were
his accents, so soft his intonation--to join the Vanity company next
September at three pounds a week. Mr. Keal and his Jewish assistant, Mr.
Fitzmaurice, were present at her triumph; and when Dorothy was going
down-stairs from the manager's office, Mr. Fitzmaurice hurried after her
and begged her not to forget that it was he who had been the first to
recognize her talents.
"Well, call me a cab, there's a good boy," said Dorothy, to reward him;
and Mr. Fitzmaurice, who only six months ago had looked at her so
critically on that wet December morning in Leicester Square, now ran
hither and thither in the summer weather until he had found her a cab.
"What swank!" Dorothy heard Clarice Beauchamp say when, with a rattle
and a dash, she drove up to the station, where the company were
mustering for their last journey together. But she had only a gracious
smile for poor Clarice; and at Paddington, although she parted with
Sylvia and Lily cordially enough, she did not invite either of them to
come and see her in Lonsdale Road.