I
Not even the Irishman's passion for originality is strong enough to
resist the common impulse of human nature to follow the course of the
sun; he must migrate westward like the Saxon before him, and it is
surely remarkable to find a theater holding out against a social
tendency to which an Irishman succumbs. When a flood of new
thoroughfares submerged old theatrical London in the last years of the
nineteenth century and created a new theaterdom farther west; when the
barbarous hoardings of the Strand Improvement obliterated so many
resorts of leisure, and, like the people of Croton, the London County
Council diverted a stream of traffic to flow where once was the Sybaris
of Holywell Street and the Opera Comique; when the Lyceum and the
Adelphi changed the quality of their wares; when Terry's became a cinema
palace and His Grace of Bedford sold Drury Lane overnight--the Vanity
was almost the only theater that preserved its position and its
character. The peak of Ararat was not more welcome to the water-weary
eyes of Noah than to patrons of a theater as old-fashioned as the Ark
was the sight of that little island upon which the Vanity maintained
itself amid the wrecks and ruins of the engulfed Strand. Close by, as if
to commemorate the friendly rivalry of Church and Stage, upon another
island St. Clement Dane's cleft the traffic of Fleet Street long after
Temple Bar had been swept away; and it was agreeably appropriate that
the church where Doctor Johnson, our greatest conservative, was wont to
bow his head before the slow grinding of God's mills should have for
company in a visible protest against the illusion of progress that
monument of English conservatism, the Vanity Theater. More secure upon
its island in the Strand than the Eddystone Lighthouse upon its rock in
the Channel, the illuminated portico of the Vanity blazed away as
brightly as it ever did before the destruction of the mean streets that
used to obscure its glory. Not far off, the Savoy Hotel served as
prologue and epilogue to its entertainments; and no alliance between one
of the new theaters in Piccadilly and the Ritz or Carlton could yet
claim to have superseded that time-honored alliance between the Vanity
and the Savoy.
In the early 'seventies the sacred lamp of burlesque, as journalists
moved to poesy by their theme have it, was lighted at the Vanity, and in
the waning 'eighties the gas-lamp of burlesque, with nothing but an
added brightness to mark the change, became the electric bulb of musical
comedy. Time moved slowly at the Vanity; tenors grew hoarse and
comedians grew stiff, but they were not easily superseded; many ladies
grew stout, but the boards of the Vanity were strong, and even the
places of those dearly loved by the gods who married young were only
taken by others equally beloved and exactly like their predecessors;
puns disappeared gradually from the librettos; the frocks of the chorus
exaggerated the fashion of the hour; very seldom a melody was
sufficiently novel to escape being whistled by the town; but in the
opening years of the twentieth century the Vanity was intrinsically what
the Vanity had been thirty years before and what no doubt it would be
thirty years thence. The modish young men who applauded "Miss Elsie of
Chelsea" sat in the stalls where their fathers and in some cases their
grandfathers had applauded "Hamlet Up to Date." The fathers vowed that
the Vanity had deteriorated since the days when mutton-chop whiskers
were cultivated and the ladies of the chorus flirted bustles on the
outside of a coach-and-four; but the sons were quite content with the
present regime and considered jolly old John Richards as good as any
impresario of the 'eighties. Unless the standard of beauty had
universally declined at the dawn of the new century, that opinion of
youth must be indorsed; it is doubtful if twenty more beautiful girls
than the Vanity chorus contained in the autumn of 1903 could have been
found in any other city or in any other country, and certainly not in
any other theater. When a few years after this date John Richards was
knighted for his services to human nature and applied to the College of
Heralds for a grant of arms, a friend with a taste for Latin robbed
Propertius for the motto and gave him _Tot milia formosarum_, which,
though lending itself to a ribald translation of "The foremost harem of
smiling Totties," was not less well deserved by John Richards than by
Pluto, to whom the poet addressed the original observation.
Dorothy, by spending in complete seclusion the two months before
rehearsals began, prepared herself to shimmer as clearly as she could in
the shimmering galaxy that was to make "The River Girl" as big a hit as
"Miss Elsie of Chelsea." She declined to accompany her family to the
seaside in August, being sure that August at Eastbourne would be bad for
her complexion; therefore she remained behind in Lonsdale Road with the
cook, who by the time Dorothy had finished with her began to have
ambitions to be a lady's maid. Nothing is more richly transfigured by
unfamiliarity than the empty streets of a London suburb in mid-August,
when their sun-dyed silence quivers upon the air like noon in Italy. At
such a season the sorceress Calypso might not have disdained West
Kensington for her spells; Dorothy, dream-haunted and with nothing more
strenuous than singing-lessons and fashion papers to impinge upon the
drowsy days, lived on self-enchantment. She never sent Lord Clarehaven
the promised photograph, not did she even write him a letter; after
deliberation she had decided that it would be more effective to appear
upon his next horizon like a new planet rather than to wane slowly from
his recollection like a summer moon. To write from an address at which
it would be impossible to renew their acquaintance would be foolish.
Besides, with such a future as hers at the Vanity was surely bound to
be, did one Clarehaven more or less matter? He had served his purpose in
demonstrating the ease with which she could reach beyond other girls;
but, as Mary, the cook, had observed last night in recounting her
rupture with the milkman, "plenty more mothers had sons," and if
Clarehaven arrived impatiently at the same conclusion about the supply
of daughters, that was better than exposing herself to the greater
humiliation of being taken up in an idle moment and as readily dropped
again. Dorothy's imagination had been touched by reading of three Vanity
marriages that were now sharing the attention of the holiday press with
giant gooseberries and vegetable marrows of mortal seeming. The younger
son of a duke, the eldest son of a viscount, a Welsh baronet had, one
after another, made those gaps in the Vanity chorus, to fill one of
which Dorothy had been chosen by the provident Mr. Richards; she
accepted the omen, and made up her mind that for her it should always be
marriage or nothing.
It would be unfair at this stage in Dorothy's career to accuse her of
formulating any definite plan to win a coronet, still less of casting
her eye upon Lord Clarehaven's coronet in particular; but during these
sun-drenched August days she did resolve to do nothing that might spoil
the fulfilment of the augury. Left to herself, and free from the
criticism of friends or relations, it would have been strange if
Dorothy's estimate of her own powers had not been rather heightened by
so much lazy self-contemplation. One day she had met an acquaintance
marooned like herself upon this desert isle of holidays, and on being
asked what she was doing in London at such a season, had replied
truthfully enough that she was just looking round; but she did not add
that she was looking round at herself in a mirror. This cloistral
felicity lasted as long as the lime-trees in West Kensington kept their
summer greenery; at the end of August the leaves began to wither, the
rumble of returning cabs was heard more often every day, and the first
rehearsal of "The River Girl" was called. Dorothy's seclusion was over;
of the girls who passed through the Vanity stage-door that August
morning there was none so fresh as she.
"How odd," she thought, "that only this time last year the notion of
going on the stage had never even entered my head."
Dorothy had paused for a moment on the threshold of the theater, and was
listening while the door swung to and fro behind her and syncopated the
dull beat of the traffic in the Strand to a sort of ragtime tune. How
different these rehearsals were going to be from those of last year in
the Lisle Street club-room, and how right she had been to escape from
the provinces so quickly.
From the first moment Dorothy felt more herself in the Vanity than she
had felt all those six months of touring. She was, of course, stared at
and criticized, but she was never acutely conscious of the jealousy that
had glared from the eyes of her companions in the provinces. The beauty
of her rivals in this metropolitan chorus only made her own beauty more
remarkable; she, being the first to recognize this, accorded to her
associates such a frank and such an obviously sincere admiration that
she gained a reputation for simplicity, which the other girls ascribed
to innocence. From innocence to mystery is but a short step in an
ambient like the Vanity, and without a Lily or a Sylvia to tell the
other girls too much about her, Dorothy developed the mysterious aspect
of herself and left her innocence undefined. At the Vanity there was
none of the destructive intimacy of touring life. Nobody ever saw the
ladies of this chorus in polychrome on the wet platform of a Yorkshire
railway station; nobody ever saw the ladies of this chorus tilting with
a hatpin at pickled onions; nobody, in fact, had any excuse for being
disillusioned by the ladies of the Vanity, because, being individually
and collectively aware of their national importance, they were never
really off the stage; indeed, except occasionally in their bedrooms,
perhaps, they were never really behind the scenes. The fancy of a casual
observer, who lingered for a moment at the stage-door to watch the
ladies of the Vanity tripping out of their hansoms, was as much
stimulated by the sight as the fancy of the regular patron who from the
front of the house was privileged to observe them tripping on to the
stage. They were brilliant butterflies by day and gorgeous moths by
night; though nature forbids us to suppose that they never were
caterpillars, their larval state is as unimaginable as the touch of time
that worked the metamorphosis.
Dorothy did not allude to the chrysalis of West Kensington from which
she had just emerged, nor did she mention more than she could help the
caterpillar existence of touring. True to her native caution, she
avoided committing herself to any sudden friendships that might
afterward be regretted, but she fluttered round all the girls in turn,
and with Miss Birdie Underhill and Miss Maisie Yorke, two members of the
sextet sung from punts in the first act, she made a tolerably high
excursion into the empyrean. Birdie and Maisie were tall blondes of the
same type as herself, but, being some years older, they were beginning
to think that, inasmuch as they had not been able to find even the
younger son of a baron whose attentions conformed to his title, they
ought to accept the hands of two devoted and moderately rich
stock-brokers who had long and patiently admired them. Perhaps it was
the first faint intimations of maternity demanding expression that led
these two queens of the chorus to hint so graciously to Dorothy at the
inheritance they designed for her. To pass from butterflies to bees for
a metaphor, they fed her with queens' food (prepared by Romano's) and
taught her that the drones must either be married or massacred--even
both if necessary. Dorothy was too wise to think she knew everything,
and, being acquisitive rather than mimetic, she gained from the two
queens the cynicism of a wide experience without subjecting herself to
the wear and tear of the process.
Lest a too exclusive attention to Miss Underhill and Miss Yorke should
leave her stranded when they quitted the chorus, Dorothy frequented
equally the company of a very lovely brunette called Olive Fanshawe, who
was certainly the most popular girl in the dressing-room and of a sweet
and gentle disposition, without either affectation or duplicity. Apart
from the advantage of being friends with a girl so genuinely beloved,
Dorothy was attracted to Olive Fanshawe's ivory skin and lustrous dark
hair; that would set off her own roses and mignonette to perfection, and
she was glad when Olive proposed that perhaps later on they might share
a flat. She decided, however, to stay at home during the winter, or at
any rate until she should have obtained a more prominent place in the
chorus and be justified in launching out on her own with some prospect
of practical homage in return.
Dorothy's early confidence in herself had been slightly shaken in the
first six weeks of "The River Girl," because Clarehaven had not once
been to see her, or, if he had, had never written to tell her how lovely
she looked on the banks of a scene-painter's Thames. If he still took
the least interest in her, he could easily have found out where she was,
and it was significant that she had seen nothing of Tufton, either.
Dorothy began to be afraid that those two days at Oxford had vanished
from Clarehaven's memory; so, lacking as yet any great incentive to make
the best of herself off the stage, she decided not to waste money
either on a flat or on winter clothes. No address out of Mayfair would
suit her, and no furs less expensive than sables would become her fair
beauty. At nineteen she need not be in too much of a hurry, and she
should certainly be wise to wait until the springtime would provide her
with the prettiest frocks for much less outlay. As for taking a flat,
why, anything might have happened by the spring.
Dorothy's plans, however, were precipitated by the behavior of her
father. It appeared that a friendly archdeacon had warned Mr. Caffyn
privately of the forthcoming sale of some church schools in the center
of a large maritime town in the west of England in order that a cinema
theater might be erected on their site to the glory of God, the profit
of His Church, and the convenience of His little ones. The archdeacon
drew Mr. Caffyn's attention to the clause in the contract by which the
morality of every performance was secured, and strongly advised him to
follow his own example and invest in the theater. Mr. Caffyn, who was
not of a speculative temperament, felt that, though he should be unwise
to risk brewery stock profitable enough at a date when the Liberal party
had scarcely yet swelled the womb of politics, he was being offered an
excellent opportunity to add to his wife's income, which was not
yielding more than three and a half per cent. upon her capital. It was
on top of this important decision that Dorothy came back from the
theater one foggy November night to be met by her mother in the dim hall
of No. 17.
"A most terrible thing has occurred," Mrs. Caffyn whispered. "Hush!
Don't disturb Cecil. Tread quietly. The poor boy is tired out with
working for his Christmas examinations, and father might hear us."
To Mrs. Caffyn the drawing-room seemed the only fit environment for an
appalling problem the day had brought her, the only atmosphere that
could brace her to confront its solution, but Dorothy, who was cold
after her nerves by drinking the fresh tea brought in for a late
arrival. Dorothy came down-stairs, rather cross at having been disturbed
from her afternoon nap, and Mr. Caffyn, a Cenci of suburban prose,
confronted his wife and daughter.
"I have seldom felt such a fool," he began upon a note of pompous
reminiscence that whistled in his mustache like a wind through withered
sedge on the margin of a December stream. "I have _never_ felt such a
fool," he corrected himself, "as I was made to feel this afternoon by my
own wife and my own daughter. I go to your bank," he proclaimed, fixing
his wife's wavering eye--"I go to your bank, and there, in the presence
of my eldest son, I ask to see Mr. Jones, the manager, with a view to
improving your financial position."
"How kind of you, dear," she murmured, in an attempt to propitiate him
before it was too late.
"Yes," Mr. Caffyn went on, apparently not in the least softened by the
compliment. "In your interest I abandon for a whole hour my own
work--the work of the society I represent, although, mark you, I knew
full well that by so doing I should be kept in the office another whole
hour after my usual time."
Dorothy looked sarcastically at her wrist-watch, and her father bellowed
like a bull on the banks of that stream in midsummer.
"Silence, Norah!"
"Are you speaking to me?" she inquired. "Because if you are, I'd rather,
firstly, that you spoke to me without shouting; secondly, that you
didn't call me Norah; and thirdly, that you didn't say I was talking
when I was only looking at my watch."
Mr. Caffyn, throwing up his head in a mute appeal for Heaven to note his
daughter's unnatural behavior, swallowed a crumb the wrong way, the
noisy attempts to rescue which allowed his wife a moment's grace to dab
her forehead with a handkerchief; her tears, like the crumb, had chosen
another route, and the fresh tea was excessively hot.
"Where was I?" Mr. Caffyn demanded, indignantly, when he had disposed of
the crumb.
"I think you'd just got to my bank, dear," his wife suggested, timidly.
"Ah yes! Well, Jones and I were going into the details of your
investments, and I was just calculating what would be the amount of your
extra income should I consent to your investing your capital in
accordance with the advice of the Archdeacon of Brismouth, when Jones,
who I may remark _en passant_ has been a friend of mine for twenty years
and should know better, calmly informs me that without consulting your
husband you have withdrawn five hundred pounds from your capital in
order to fling it away upon your daughter. I thought he was perpetrating
a stupid joke; but he actually showed me a record of this abominable
transaction, and I had no alternative but to accept his word. I need
hardly say that any chance I might have had of finishing off my work at
the society vanished as far as this afternoon was concerned, and
so"--here Mr. Caffyn became bitterly ironical--"I ventured to permit
myself the luxury of a hansom-cab from the offices of your bank to the
corner of Carlington Road, where the four-mile circle of fares
terminates, and now, if you please, I should like an explanation of this
outrage."
"The explanation is perfectly simple," Dorothy began.
"I was speaking to your mother, not to you. The money is hers."
"Precisely," said his daughter, "and that is the explanation."
"Dearest child," Mrs. Caffyn implored her, "don't aggravate dear father.
We must admit that we were both very much in the wrong, particularly
myself."
"Not at all," said Dorothy, quickly cutting short her father's sigh of
satisfaction at the admission. "Not at all. We were both absolutely in
the right. The transaction was a purely business one. Mother has allowed
me twenty-five pounds a year since my seventeenth birthday."
"Mother has allowed you?" echoed Mr. Caffyn. "Even if we grant that this
sum was technically paid out of your mother's income, you must
understand that it should be considered as coming from me--from me, your
father."
"You and mother can settle that afterward. It doesn't invalidate my
argument, which is that such a lump sum is likely to be more useful to
me at the beginning of my career on the stage than an annual pittance--"
"Pittance?" repeated Mr. Caffyn, aghast. "Do you call twenty-five pounds
a pittance?"
"Please don't go on interrupting me," said Dorothy, coldly. "I'm now
doing a calculation in my head. Twenty-five pounds a year is five per
cent.--"
"Five per cent.!" shouted Mr. Caffyn. "Your mother was only getting
three and a half per cent."
"Oh, please don't interrupt," Dorothy begged, "because this is getting
very complicated. In that case mother owes me, roughly, about another
two hundred and fifty pounds. However, we'll let that pass. You are both
released from all responsibility for me, and if you both live more than
twenty years longer you will actually be making twenty-five pounds a
year out of this arrangement. In twenty years you'll be sixty-eight,
won't you? Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't live to
seventy-two, and if you do you'll make one hundred pounds out of me. So
I don't think you can grumble."
"Dear child," sobbed Mrs. Caffyn, "I don't think it's very polite, and
it certainly isn't kind, to talk about poor father's age like that.
Let's admit we both did wrong and ask him to forgive us."
"I am not going into the question of right and wrong," replied Dorothy,
loftily. "It's quite obvious to me that you have a perfect right to do
what you like with your own money and that I have a perfect right to
avail myself of your kindness. Father's extraordinary behavior has made
it equally clear to me that I can't possibly stay on in this house; in
any case, the noise the children make in the morning will end by driving
me away, and the sooner I go the better."
"I forbid you to speak to your parents like that," said Mr. Caffyn.
Dorothy could not help laughing at his authority, and he played his last
card:
"Do you realize that you are not yet of age and that if I choose I can
compel you to remain at home?"
"I don't think it would be worth your while," she told him, "for the
sake of five hundred pounds, which in that case you'd certainly never
see again. I don't want to break with my family completely, but if I
find that your prehistoric way of behaving is liable to spoil my career,
I sha'n't hesitate to do so."
Dorothy guessed that she had defeated her father; Mrs. Caffyn, too, must
have guessed it, for she suddenly gasped:
"I think I must be going to faint."
And by summoning the memories of a mid-Victorian childhood she actually
succeeded. Luckily her husband had eaten most of the cakes; so that when
she was rescued from the wreck of the tea-table and helped up to her
room only one sandwich was adhering to her best gown.
II
It is hardly necessary to say that Dorothy did not confide in the girls
at the theater what had happened at home, but she let it be generally
understood that she was now looking out for rooms, and she talked a good
deal of where one could and where one could not live in a flat. About a
week later Olive Fanshawe took her aside and asked if she was serious
about moving into a flat at last; and, upon Dorothy's assuring her that
she was, Olive divulged under the seal of great secrecy that a friend of
hers, a man of high rank with much power and influence in the country,
was anxious to do something for her.
"He's a strange man," she told Dorothy, "and though I know you'll think
it's impossible for anybody to want to look after a girl in a flat
without other things in return, he really doesn't make love to me at
all. He gets tired of society and political dinners and the Palace."
"The Palace?" Dorothy repeated.
"Buckingham Palace. You didn't think I meant the Crystal Palace?" said
Olive, with a laugh.
Dorothy, with Debrett for a footstool, when she chose to treat the
volume thus, was offended by this raillery, and explained that she had
only wished to know whether she meant St. James's Palace or Buckingham
Palace.
"Darling, I was only teasing you.... Well, my friend wants to have a
place where he can lunch quietly sometimes or have tea and forget about
the cares of grandeur. You won't mind if I don't tell you his name, will
you?"
Dorothy did mind extremely, but inasmuch as she had affected an air of
mystery about herself and her origin, she felt she could not reasonably
object to Olive's secrecy.
"He told me to find another girl to live with me," Olive continued, "and
he said he would pay the rent of the flat and find all that's necessary
in the way of decorations and furniture. I've been waiting such a long
time for the right girl; I thought you didn't want to live up in town or
I should have suggested it sooner. He's seen you from the front, and he
admired you very much and couldn't understand why I didn't ask you at
once."
Dorothy was struck by Olive's frankness and still more was she struck by
her incapacity for jealousy. She could not think of any other girl who
would have been so obviously pleased as Olive was to hear a friend
admired by their own man. Three months at the Vanity had made Dorothy
chary of believing the assertion that there was nothing more between
her and the mysterious great one than good-fellowship, because she was
quite sure by now that all men expected more, and her judgment of
Olive's character led her to suppose that Olive would be too kind to
refuse him more. However, that was her business, and since there was
evidently going to be a simulation of complete innocence about the
transaction, no offer could have suited her better.
"My dear Olive," she said, "nothing could be nicer for me, and of course
I happen to be one of the few girls who would or could understand that
there is nothing in it. What a pity the weather's so wet for
house-hunting."
"That's what the great man said, and he told me to hire an electric
brougham until I've found the place I want."
"Of course," said Dorothy, as if the idea of searching for a flat
outside an electric brougham, a rare luxury in those days, was
inconceivable.
For a fortnight she and Olive glided here and there along the dim,
wintry streets, until at last they noticed that the stiff Georgian
houses at the far end of Halfmoon Street bulged out into an
efflorescence of bright new flats, which on inspection seemed to provide
exactly the address and the comfort they required.
"It's an awfully good address," said Dorothy. "Clarges Street would have
been a little nearer to Berkeley Square, but...." She forgave the extra
block or two with a gesture.
"It's so quiet," added Olive.
"And really not far from Devonshire House, though from Stratton Street
we should have overlooked the garden."
"But we can take San Toy for her walks in Green Park." San Toy was
Olive's Pekinese spaniel.
"I shall have my bedroom in apple green," Dorothy announced. "Apple
green with rose-du-barri curtains; and you'd better have cream with
cafe-au-lait in yours, unless you have eau-de-nil and sage.... I think
the fourth-story flat was the nicest."
"Yes, it's more romantic to be high up," Olive agreed.
"And the light is better for one's dressing-table," Dorothy added.
In dread of a maternal attempt to bring about a reconciliation between
herself and her father, Dorothy had hoped to avoid spending Christmas at
home. But the flat could not be ready until February; so, partly to keep
her mother quiet, partly because she was a little apprehensive of the
paternal prerogative with which Mr. Caffyn had threatened her minority,
she consented on Christmas morning to be kissed by his mustache. Perhaps
he was more willing to forgive her owing to his wife's conduct of her
financial affairs having provided an excuse to transfer them into his
own hands.
Dorothy's absence from the last Christmas gathering at home had not
sharpened her appetite for this kind of celebration, and she did not at
all like the sensation of being in the bosom of her family; Gulliver was
scarcely more disgusted by the Brobdingnagian maids of honor. Seizing
the occasion to impress upon her younger brothers and sisters her
disapproval of any inclination to boast about having a famously
beautiful sister at the Vanity, she was mortified to learn that her
career was regarded by the juniors as a slur upon their social standing.
Cecil informed her bluntly that in his society--the society of
industrious scholars at St. James's--actresses were regarded with
horror, and that though an unpleasant rumor had pervaded the school of
Caffyn's having a sister on the stage, he had managed to stifle such
deleterious gossip. It seemed that the traditions of the preparatory
school responsible for Vincent's budding social sense strictly forbade
any allusion to family life in any form whatsoever; at Randell's _all_
relatives were regarded as a disgrace, and only last term a boy had been
called upon to apologize for the extraordinary appearance his mother
had presented at the prize-giving. Another boy, whose father was reputed
to belong to the Royal Academy, had been forced to allay with largess of
tuck the hostile criticism leveled against a flowing cravat his parent
had worn at the school sports. As for sisters, Vincent affirmed, their
very existence was regarded as a shameful secret; but a sister on the
stage ... he turned away in despair of words to express what a
humiliation that would bring upon him were it known. Agnes and Edna
assured Dorothy they had far too many enthralling topics of conversation
already to bother about her; but when one or two of the mistresses had
inquired how she was getting on and had regretted that she was not
acting in Shakespeare, they had certainly not revealed that she was now
called Dorothy Lonsdale, because the real Dorothy was also an old girl;
so that even if one of the mistresses in an unbridled moment should
visit the Vanity, she would search for Miss Norah Caffyn upon the
program and come away no wiser than she went.
Meanwhile, the decoration and furnishing of the flat went on in strict
accordance with Dorothy's ideas, since she had better taste than Olive,
who, besides, was too much afraid of spending another person's money.
Dorothy had not yet been introduced to the great man, but she was sure
that he would like Olive to have all she wanted, or, in other words, all
she herself wanted. They moved in during February, and it was arranged
that the first Sunday evening should be dedicated to the entertainment
of their benefactor, who had returned to town for the opening of
Parliament. About six o'clock on the evening in question Dorothy rose
from a deliciously deep and comfortable Chesterfield sofa, looked round
her affectionately at her own drawing-room aglow with chintz and
daffodils, and in her bedroom, when she sat down in front of a triple
mirror to do her light-brown hair before dressing for dinner,
apostrophized her good fortune aloud, and admired herself more than
ever.
Dorothy acknowledged to herself that Olive's great man surpassed her
preconception of him kindled by dressing-room legends; at first she had
been inclined to criticize her friend's occasional ventures into
political prophecy as self-importance or girlish credulity; but as soon
as she saw the source of them she admitted that this time Olive's
romanticism was justified. Their guest was a tall, grizzled man, more
military to the outward eye than political, and he treated Olive with
just the god-fatherly manner she had led Dorothy to expect. She made a
good deal of fuss over him in the way of finding cushions for his head
and mixing his cocktail with extra care; but nothing in her obviously
sincere affection conveyed a hint of cloaking another kind of emotion.
Although the great man preserved his own anonymity, he talked so freely
about people of whom Dorothy had often read in the papers that his
absorbing conversation soon made her forget the strain upon her
curiosity to know who he was. He approved of the way the flat had been
decorated and complimented the two girls on their good taste, all the
credit of which Olive at once ascribed to her companion. About eleven
o'clock the great man passed his hand over his eyes in a way that seemed
to hint at a deep-seated, perhaps an incurable, fatigue, and announced
that he must be going to bed.
"Though, unfortunately," he added, "I must write one or two letters
first at my club. Happy children," he said, turning to them in the hall
and holding a hand of each. "We must try to meet next Sunday evening;
but I'm dreadfully busy, and I may not be able to get away."
Turning up the collar of his fur coat, he told Olive not to ring for the
lift and walked very wearily, it seemed to Dorothy, down the stairs of
the flats.
"I don't want to be inquisitive," she said, when they were back in the
drawing-room still haunted by the ghost of an excellent cigar. "But I
should like to know who he really is."
"Dorothy," her friend begged, "it's the only stipulation he's made, and
I don't think it would be fair to break it."
"You don't trust me," Dorothy complained.
"My dear, it isn't that; but I certainly should have to tell him that I
told you, and I'm sure he wouldn't like it. After all, we ought to be
very grateful for this jolly flat where we're perfectly free and have
nothing to bother about. Remember what happened to Psyche."
Dorothy was inclined to add "and also to Fatima"; but since she could
not pretend that the great man did in any way remind her of Bluebeard
and since the flat undoubtedly was delightful, she did her best to
restrain her curiosity, even though sometimes it irritated her like
prickly heat.
"It's a pity he had to go away to write his letters at a club," she
said.
"But he couldn't write from this address."
"No, but we could keep some plain paper for him," said Dorothy. "And
that reminds me, what is your crest?"
Olive looked alarmed.
"I don't think I've got a crest," she said. "My father's a solicitor in
Warwickshire."
"Warwickshire?" repeated Dorothy. "That's an odd coincidence. I wonder
if he knows Lord Cleveden."
Olive shook her head vaguely.
"He knows a good deal about Warwickshire; in fact, he's writing a book
called _Warwickshire Worthies_. He's been writing it for years. Does
Lord Cleveden come from Warwickshire?"
"Of course," said Dorothy, and then after a minute with a far-away look
she added, "So do I."
"Oh, Dorothy, then there really is a mystery? I thought it was only
dressing-room gossip."
"You have your secrets, Olive. Mayn't I be allowed mine? Though I
suppose I haven't any legal right to it, I am going to put my crest on
my note-paper, because I like the motto. It's a bugle-horn, and the
motto is _J'y serai_. I needn't translate it for you, as you went to a
convent in Belgium."
Olive laughed affectionately at her friend's little joke, and they
decided to reap the full advantage of a quiet Sunday by going to bed
early.
"He's a great dear, isn't he?" said Olive by the door of her room.
"Oh, a great dear. How horrid it is that a man like that would be so
misjudged by the world that he has to keep his name a secret. But, of
course, I understand his point of view. I've had some experience of
family pride, and it's a tremendous thing to be up against. However, it
will be all the same a hundred years hence. Good night, darling. Your
great man is a great, great success."
"I'm so glad you like him, Dorothy dear."
"I like him immensely."
Just before Dorothy got into bed she called out to her friend, who in a
dressing-gown of amber silk hurried to know what she wanted.
"I only wanted to tell you that you simply must get this new
tooth-paste. I like it immensely."
"Oh, I'm glad it's a success," Olive exclaimed.
"It's a great, great success."
Dorothy wondered when she was fading into sleep how long it would be
before she should be able to recommend a tooth-paste to the world at
large, recommend it in glowing words with a photograph of herself
smiling at the delicious tube.
III
Soon after Dorothy and Olive were established in Halfmoon Street Birdie
Underhill and Maisie Yorke, by getting married on the same day at the
same church to bridegrooms in the same profession, obtained as much
publicity in the newspapers as was possible for two Vanity girls who
had failed to acquire a title on abandoning the stage. The service in a
double sense was fully choral, and the two queens had a train of
bridesmaids from the Vanity, all looking as demure as Quakeresses in
their dove-gray frocks, and certainly holding their own in the mere
externals of maidenhood with the sisters of the bridegrooms, who were as
fresh and rural as if Bayswater, their home, was in the Lake district
and had been immortalized by Wordsworth in a sonnet. One reporter was so
much impressed by the ceremony that his account of it was headed
"Dignified Wedding of Two Vanity Girls."
"Yes," said Dorothy, when with Olive she was driving away from the
reception, "it was charmingly done, of course; but, poor dears, it is
rather a come-down."
"But I thought their men were awfully twee," said Olive.
"Twee" was society's attempt at this date to voice the ineffable, in
which respect it was at least as successful as the terminology of most
mystics and philosophers: yet although Plotinus might have been glad of
it in the sunset-stained fog of neo-Platonism, the practical Dorothy
considered that this was too transcendental for stock-brokers.
"After all," she said, poised serenely above the abyss of reality, "what
is a stock-broker?"
"They'll be fairly well off, and they'll have nice houses, and children
perhaps," Olive argued. "And I expect they're tired of the theater by
now. I don't think either of them would ever have got anything better
than the Punt Sextet; and Maisie told me when I was kissing her good-by
and wishing her all happiness that she was twenty-seven. Isn't it
terrible to think of?"
"Twenty-seven!" Dorothy echoed. She would have been less shocked if the
sum had referred to Maisie's lovers rather than to her years. "Well, of
course, she admitted once to me that she was twenty-four. I only hope
that when I'm twenty-seven I sha'n't be singing with five other girls in
punts."
"You won't be, darling. You'll either be a great star or you'll be
brilliantly and happily married."
Olive was really a very easy girl to live with; and the former of these
predictions seemed likely to come true when Dorothy was actually
promoted to occupy one of the punts after the girl first selected had
proved a failure in such a conspicuous position; the other vacant punt
had been successfully filled by Queenie Molyneux. This girl, though she
was not nearly so beautiful as Dorothy, had a good deal of talent, which
gave even the two solo lines she was allowed in the sextet what any
serious dramatic critic who had learned French at school would have
called _espieglerie_. Miss Molyneux had reason to hope that such a
phrase would one day be applied to her acting, because people whose
judgment was to be trusted went about saying that she had a career
before her, not merely in musical comedy, but perhaps even in real
comedy, where she would be written about by critics who were not afraid
to use foreign words at what they would call the "psychological moment."
In view of the fact that Miss Molyneux might henceforth be considered a
rival, Dorothy took care to be very friendly with her, and to be seen
fairly often lunching with her at Romano's or supping at the Savoy,
although she was a girl whose reputation even at the Vanity was
whispered about, and whose private life far exceeded in _espieglerie_
her two lines in the sextet. Notwithstanding this, it was Queenie
Molyneux whom Dorothy chose to be her companion at a supper-party given
by Lord Clarehaven soon after the beginning of the Easter holidays,
seven months after the production of "The River Girl."
Clarehaven had reappeared without a word of warning, and in a note that
he sent round to invite Dorothy and a friend to supper he seemed quite
unconscious that there was anything in his behavior to be excused. He
hoped that she had not forgotten him, as if his silence of nearly a
year was perfectly natural; he mentioned that Lonsdale was with him,
congratulated her upon her singing in the sextet, and begged for an
answer to be sent down to the stage-door. Somehow it was not very
difficult for Dorothy to forgive him, and she accepted the invitation.
The obvious friend to have taken out with her would have been Olive
Fanshawe, because Olive was a brunette and Queenie was not. However, if
Clarehaven was capable of being even temporarily fascinated by another
girl's outward charms, Dorothy felt that she might as well give him up
at once; she did not intend her life to be spoiled by beauty
competitions. Dorothy wanted to impress Clarehaven more deeply than with
the skin-deep loveliness that belonged in her own style as much to Olive
as to herself, and in order to impress him she felt that a moral
contrast would be more effective than the hackneyed contrast between
brunette and blonde. Of course, she did not mean the kind of moral
contrast that Lily had provided on that dreadful afternoon in Oxford;
that had been merely a painful exhibition of vulgarity. Olive was so
sweet and good and well behaved that between them they might achieve the
insipid, to obviate which Dorothy chose Queenie, who would set off, if
not her complexion, at any rate her point of view.
At the end of the evening, when Clarehaven, hesitating for a barely
perceptible moment, had said good-by to Dorothy outside Halfmoon
Mansions and stepped reproachfully back into his hansom, she decided on
her way up-stairs that the supper-party might be considered a success.
To begin with, all the other people supping at the Savoy had stared at
their table more than at any other. Then, Arthur Lonsdale had evidently
taken a fancy to Queenie Molyneux, and if Dorothy was not mistaken
Queenie had taken a fancy to him. His way of talking had been just the
foil she required for her own, and when they drove away together to
Ridgemount Mansions there was no doubt in Dorothy's mind that Lonsdale
would tell the cab not to wait and end by missing that last train at
Goodge Street. However, what happened to the cab or, for that matter, to
Lonsdale and Queenie Molyneux was of slight importance beside the fact
that Clarehaven had evidently lost nothing of his admiration for
herself, or, if he had lost it, had regained it all and more this
evening. When he and his friend compared notes to-morrow how sharply the
difference between herself and some other Vanity girls would be brought
home to him.
Yet, successful as the supper-party had been, it remained for the time
another isolated event in the relations between herself and Clarehaven,
from whom she had not heard another word during the vacation.
"He's frightened of you, that's what it is," said Miss Molyneux, whose
friendship with Lonsdale, begun that night, was being hotly kept up,
though she was running no risks by inviting Dorothy to be a spectator of
it.
"Frightened of what?"
"Oh, he thinks you're too good to be amusing and not good enough for
anything else. Arthur told me so. Not in so many words, but his lordship
found the drive home rather lonely."
"Anything else?" repeated Dorothy. "What do you mean by anything else?"
"Why, to marry, of course," replied her friend.
It was strange that the first girl to express in words the thought that
was haunting the undiscovered country at the back of Dorothy's mind
should be the one girl at the Vanity to whom marriage probably meant
less than to any other.
"But why not?" thought Dorothy, in bed that night. "He's independent.
Nobody can stop him. Countess of Clarehaven," she murmured. The title
took away her breath for a moment, and it seemed as if the very traffic
of Piccadilly paused in the presence of a solemn mystery. "Countess of
Clarehaven!"
The omnibuses rolled on their way again, and the idea took its place in
the natural scheme of things. Queenie little thought that her scoffing
allusion to the state of affairs between Clarehaven and herself would
have such a contrary effect to what she intended. Queenie had meant to
crow over her, but she had made a slip when she had let out that
Clarehaven was frightened. It was not Clarehaven who was frightened; it
was his friend Lonsdale. No doubt, Clarehaven had not yet whispered of
marriage even to himself; no doubt he was merely thinking at present
what a much luckier chap Lonsdale was than himself. But Lonsdale was
frightened....
"And he has reason to be," said Dorothy, turning on the light and
picking up Debrett.
It happened that the great man telephoned next morning to say that he
was coming to lunch that day, and after lunch Dorothy alluded lightly to
Lord Clarehaven.
"I believe I once met his mother," said the great man. "Wasn't she a
daughter of Chatfield?"
Dorothy nodded.
"Yes, I remember the story now," he went on. "She had a good deal of
trouble with her husband. But he's been dead some years, eh?"
"Eighteen ninety-six," said Dorothy.
"Yes, I thought so. I don't know anything about the son; he sounds, from
your description, rather a young ass."
However deeply Dorothy would have resented such a comment from any one
else, she accepted it from the great man as merited; she was even
grateful to him for it; from the instant that Clarehaven presented
himself to her vision as rather a young ass, it did not seem so
impossible that she should one day marry him. These months at the Vanity
had already considerably cheapened the peerage in Dorothy's estimation,
and intercourse with the great man had imparted to her some of his own
worldly contempt for inconspicuous young peers. Dorothy began to ponder
the likelihood of being able to elevate Clarehaven from single "young
assishness" to the dignity of the great man himself; a clever wife could
do much, a beautiful wife more. She was so serenely confident of herself
that when, a few days after this conversation, the subject of it
telegraphed from Oxford to say he should call for her the following day
to take her out to lunch, she was neither astonished nor at all unduly
elated.
"You wouldn't mind his lunching here?" she asked Olive. "He's quite a
nice boy. Rather young, of course, after the great man; but he'll
improve."
Olive was delighted to welcome Clarehaven, and Dorothy was glad of an
opportunity to display her independence and pleasant surroundings. She
had warned Olive not to leave her alone with their guest after lunch,
because she was anxious to avoid discouraging him too much by positively
refusing to let him make love to her, although she wished him to go away
with the impression that only luck had been against him.
"You seem very comfortable here," he commented, suspiciously, when, on
his departure, Dorothy escorted him to the door of the flat.
"I am very comfortable," she admitted.
"Is it your flat or Miss Fanshawe's?"
"Both."
He looked round at the paneled hall and frowned.
"I can't make you out," he confessed.
"Isn't mystery woman's prerogative?" she asked, and then in case she had
frightened him with such a long word she let him kiss her hand before he
went away.
Certainly for a girl who was not much over twenty Dorothy could not be
accused of clumsiness. Her admirer had gone away piqued by the richness
of her surroundings, the correctness of her demeanor, most of all by the
touch of her hand upon his lips. Yes, she might congratulate herself.
"Rather a dear!" said Olive.
"Yes," Dorothy agreed. "Rather--but dreadfully young. Though his title
only dates back to the eighteenth century, the baronetcy is older, and
his ancestors really did come over with the Conqueror."
And one felt that such antiquity compensated Dorothy for some of that
youthfulness she deplored.
During the next fortnight Clarehaven paid several visits to town, but
Dorothy was steadily unwilling to be much alone with him, and, finally,
one hot afternoon in mid-May, exasperated by her indifference and
caution, he went back to Oxford in a fit of petulance (temper would have
been too strong a word to describe his behavior, which was like a
spoiled child's) and relapsed into another spell of silence. A week or
so after this Queenie Molyneux asked Dorothy one day how long it was
since she had heard from Clarehaven, and when Dorothy countered the
awkward question by asking, rather bitterly, how long it was since she
had heard from Lonsdale, Queenie admitted that he, too, had been silent
for some time.
"I'm afraid I'm too expensive for Lonnie," she laughed, lightly. "He's a
nice boy, but love in a cottage would never suit me, and love anywhere
else wouldn't suit him. So that's that."
"You don't know what it is to be in love," said Dorothy.
"Cut it out!" said Miss Molyneux. "I'd rather not learn."
Dorothy would have liked to cut her own tongue out for playing her false
by uttering such a sentiment to a girl like Queenie. However, she had no
wish to seem a whit less hard than her rival--Dorothy was beginning to
achieve such a projection of her personality across the footlights that
Queenie really had become a rival, though Queenie might have put it the
other way round--and she consoled herself for Clarehaven's absence by
giving a great deal of attention to the new frocks that the fine
weather demanded; also in consequence of a suggestion by the great man
she began to take riding-lessons, with which she made as rapid progress
as with her dancing, to which she had already been devoting herself for
some time.
Toward the end of the month Dorothy and Olive were criticizing the
fashions in the windows of Bond Street when somebody slapped her on the
back and, turning round with half a thought that she was being called
upon to reply to a novel method of attack by Clarehaven, she perceived
Sylvia Scarlett. It was typical of Sylvia to greet her like this on
meeting her again for the first time after a year, but the old awe of
Sylvia prevented her from expressing her dislike of such horseplay in
Bond Street, and a sudden shyness drove her into self-assertion. She
began to talk about lunching at Romano's and supping at the Savoy and of
the success she had made in "The River Girl" sextet, to all of which
Sylvia listened with a smile until she broke abruptly into her discourse
with:
"Look here! A little less of the Queen of Sheba, if you don't mind.
Don't forget I'm one of the blokes as is glad to smell the gratings
outside a baker's."
Dorothy did not think this remark particularly amusing; there was quite
enough genuine cockney to be endured on the stage without having to
listen to an exaggerated imitation of it in Bond Street. Olive, however,
was laughing, and Dorothy decided to take Sylvia down a peg by asking
what she was doing now.
"Resting, Dolly, but always open to a good offer. Same old firm. Lily
and Skinner. The original firm makes boots; we mar them. The trouble is
that I can't find anything to skin; I tried Rabbit's, the rival
boot-shop, but even they wanted cash. However, Lily's quite content to
go on resting, so that's all right."
"My dear," exclaimed Dorothy, in affected dismay, "you're not still
living with that dreadful girl?"
"Oh, go to hell!" said Sylvia, sharply, and strode off down Bond Street.
"What an attractive girl!" Olive exclaimed.
Dorothy stared at her in bewilderment.
"What do _you_ see attractive in _her_?"
"She's just the sort of person who would amuse the great man," Olive
declared.
"I'm sorry that I bore him so much."
Olive seized her hand.
"Dorothy," she murmured, reproachfully, "you know you don't bore him. He
was only saying yesterday that he wished he could ride with you in the
Row."
"You'd better get Sylvia Scarlett to share the flat with you," went on
Dorothy.
"How can you say things like that? You know I love you better than
anybody in the world. You know how beautiful I think you, how clever,
Dorothy; it's really unkind to suggest that any other girl could take
your place."
"If you're so anxious to know her," Dorothy continued, "I'll write and
ask her to come and see us."
"Dorothy, you quite misunderstand me."
"I shouldn't like you to think I would stand in the way of your meeting
anybody you took a fancy to, man or woman."
Olive protested again and again that Dorothy had utterly misjudged her
and that she never wished to see Sylvia Scarlett again. The argument
lasted so long and the whole question of whether or not Sylvia should be
invited to Halfmoon Mansions assumed such importance that after lunch
Dorothy wrote and invited Sylvia, and not merely Sylvia, but Lily as
well, to come and have tea with them the next day. She told herself when
she had posted the letter that she was probably committing a great folly
by introducing to her friends two people who knew so much about her, and
she asked herself in amazement what mad obstinacy had led her into such
a course of action.
"Most girls would avoid her," she thought. "But if I avoid her, she'll
despise me; and I _do_ hate the way she can make people look idiotic."
Dorothy was not accustomed to analyze her emotions much; she was usually
too fully occupied with the analysis of her features; but before she
went to sleep that night she had admitted to herself that she was
thoroughly frightened of Sylvia.
In the morning a messenger-boy brought the answer.
MULBERRY COTTAGE,
TINDERBOX LANE, W.
DEAR DOROTHY,--Rudeness evidently pays, and as Lily is bursting
with curiosity to see you, we'll come to tea to-morrow. I'm
tremendously impressed by your note-paper. Is the trumpet hanging
in the corner a crest or a trade-mark? I thought when I first
opened your letter that you had gone into the motor business. "_J'y
serai_" is good, but I suggest "I blow my own trumpet" would be
better, or, if you must have a French motto, you could change your
crest to a whip and put underneath "_Je fais claquer mon fouet_."
But perhaps this would suit me better than you. Lily has buried at
least half a dozen Tom Hewitts since last June, so we'll come
unaccompanied by any skeletons to your feast. Don't mind my teasing
you. I believe you wish me well. I much look forward to hearing
your Abyssinian friend singing of Mount Abora. Forgive my allusions
to literature and display of idiomatic French. They're the only
things I can set off against Romano's and the Savoy.
Yours ever,
SYLVIA.
P.S.--It was decent of you to apologize for what you said about
Lily, and perhaps you were right to be a little haughty with me
after that remark of mine in the dressing-room at Oxford. I'll try
to keep a check on myself in future if you'll be as charming as you
know how to be when you choose.
"I'm afraid," said Dorothy, when she read this letter, "that Sylvia has
grown rather affected. Poor girl, it will be good for her to meet some
nice people again."
She did not read the postscript to Olive, but she was much relieved by
it, and she showed her relief by praising Lily's beauty and telling
Olive that in taking a fancy to Sylvia she had once more evinced her
good taste.
"If one could only cure her of her affectations she would be a charming
companion for the great man, but as it is.... We must get some people
for this afternoon," she broke off, going to the telephone.
Dorothy took more trouble over Sylvia's party than over anything since
she chose the decorations of the flat; difficult though it was, she
managed to collect several men whom she supposed to be intelligent,
chiefly because they had less money than her other friends. It was like
looking for gold in an alms-bag to find in their circle enough men to
whose intelligence even Dorothy could subscribe, and she asked herself
doubtfully what the great man would have thought of the result. Well,
well--Sylvia might be critical, but she had no right to be as critical
as that, and perhaps one or two of them were more intelligent than she
thought.
Among the men invited that afternoon was Harry Tufton, who had just been
sent down from Oxford. Anxious to show himself worthy of his election to
the Bullingdon, he had let himself be driven from his wonted gravity and
discretion by some ambitious demon, and, after mixing his wine with this
fiery spirit, had painted either the dean's nose or the dean's door
red--the story varied with his listeners' credulity. Hence his arrival
in London, where he had made haste to invite Dorothy out to supper and
give her some news of his friend Lord Clarehaven. She had been engaged
that evening, and now she bethought herself of asking him to tea. It was
a daring move, but somehow she believed that Tufton would appreciate it,
and perhaps be impressed by her ability to keep friends with girls like
Sylvia and Lily. Nevertheless, it certainly was daring to invite the
very person who had seen with his own eyes of what Lily was capable; it
was also a temptation to Sylvia's tongue.
Dorothy considered that her party was a success, and she was pleased to
observe that Sylvia was evidently struck by the intelligence of a young
Liberal journalist called Vernon Townsend. This young man, lately down
from Oxford, was delighting the select minority who read a brilliant
weekly called _The Point of View_ with his hebdomadal destructiveness as
a critic of the drama. The Aristotelian way in which he used to prove in
two thousand words winged with scorn that "The River Girl" was not so
good a play as "John Gabriel Borkmann" was a great consolation to his
readers, who were mostly unacted playwrights. After a column of
Townsend's smoke they were sure that they were in the van of progress,
riding, one might say, in the engine-driver's cab upon a mighty express
that was thundering away from mediocrity. If sometimes in the course of
their journey the coal-dust of realism made them look a little dirty,
that was a small penalty to pay for riding in front of the common herd.
"It must be jolly to run the funicular up Parnassus," said Sylvia to
this young man. "And jolly to drink of the Pierian spring or from the
well of truth without either of them leaving a nasty taste in the
mouth."
"Very good," he allowed, and laughed with the serious attention that
critics give to jokes. "But you must take in _The Point of View_."
"I will. From your description it must have all the feverish brilliance
of a young consumptive. I suppose the air on the top of Parnassus is
good for this Keats of weekly reviews?"
"That's an extremely intelligent girl," said Mr. Townsend to his
hostess. "Why haven't I ever noticed her on the stage?"
Mr. Townsend went often to the Vanity because he was searching for
talent; he had a theory that all good actresses and all good plays were
born to blush unseen.
"It's a good theory," said Sylvia, "and of course you'll add the
audience. One might extract a moral from the fact that they're much more
careless about turning down the lights during the performance of a play
in Paris than they are in London. Dorothy, Mr. Townsend assures me that
I ought to be a great actress."
Dorothy smiled encouragingly and passed on to see that her guests were
well supplied with cakes. Yes, the party was going well. Sylvia was
entertaining other people and herself being entertained. Lily was
sitting languorously back in a deep chair, listening to a young
candidate for Parliament whose father had so successfully imposed a
patent medicine upon his contemporaries that there seemed no reason why
his son should not as successfully cure the body politic. Dorothy
frankly admitted Lily's beauty when Olive commented upon it.
"She's like a lovely spray of flowers," said Olive.
Dorothy thought that this was rather an exaggerated simile, and she
could not help adding that she hoped Lily would not fade as quickly.
Presently Tufton came up to his hostess and begged her to do him the
honor of a little talk.
"Everybody is very happy. Charming little party. Yes," he assured her.
"But you mustn't tire yourself. Let me get you an ice."
Dorothy was flattered by this almost obsequious manner, and it flashed
upon her that he was trying to get in with her, not, as the girls at the
theater would have put it, "get off" like most men.
"Your two friends from Oxford are much improved," he began. "Do you
remember our little scene after lunch? I felt for you tremendously. It's
good of you to carry your old friends along with you on the path to
success."
"You think I'm going to be successful?"
"You _are_ successful. In confidence, you'll be encouraged to hear that
Richards expects a lot from you. Yes, he told my father. You've not seen
Clarehaven lately?" Dorothy shook her head, and Mr. Tufton nodded
gravely; behind those solemn indications of cerebral activity two twin
souls rubbed noses.
"Of course I haven't seen him just lately. You heard of my little joke?
It had quite a 'varsity success. Yes, I painted the dean's door. Well,
somebody had to pull the evening together, and I tossed up with
Ulster--the Duke of Ulster--you haven't run across him? No? Awful good
chap. Yes. 'Look here, Harry,' he said to me, 'something's got to be
done. Which of us two is going to paint Dickie's door vermilion?' Dickie
is the dean. 'Toss you,' said I. 'Right, said he. 'Woman,' said I, and
lost. So I got a bucket of paint and splashed it around, don't you know.
Everybody shouted, 'Jolly old Tuffers,' and the authorities handed me my
passports. But, after all, what earthly use is a degree to me?"
Dorothy looked a wise negative and brought the conversation back to
Clarehaven.
"I suppose you'll be seeing him again very soon now?"
Mr. Tufton nodded. "And I can prophesy that you'll be seeing him again
very soon."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"You mustn't be cynical," he warned her.
"Can one help it?"
"You've no reason to be cynical. I suppose Clarehaven is almost my most
intimate friend, and I can assure you that you have no reason to be
cynical. Difficulties there have been, difficulties there will be, but
always remember that I'm your friend whatever happens."
And most of all her friend, Dorothy thought, if she happened to become a
countess.
After this tea-party Sylvia and Lily often came to Halfmoon Mansions;
when in July Dorothy and Olive took a cottage at Sonning they were often
invited down there for picnics on the Thames. The other girls at the
theater could not understand why it was necessary to look beyond
Maidenhead for repose and refreshment from singing in a punt every
night; and although such of them as were invited to Sonning enjoyed
themselves, they always went back to town more firmly convinced than
ever that Dolly Lonsdale was a most mysterious girl. Yet it ought not to
have been impossible to understand the pleasure of hurrying away from
the Vanity to catch the eleven forty-five at Paddington, and of
alighting from the hot train about a quarter to one of a warm summer
night to be met by a scent of honeysuckle in the station road, to see
the white flowers in their garden and the thatched roof of their cottage
against the faintly luminous sky, and, while they paused for a moment to
fumble in their bags among the powder-puffs and pocket-mirrors for the
big key of their door, to listen to the train's murmur still audible far
away in the stillness of the level country beyond.
"I ought always to live in the country," said Dorothy, gravely.
But in August rehearsals for "The Duke and the Dairymaid" began, and the
cottage at Sonning had to be given up. The new production at the Vanity
included a trio between the ducal tenor and two subsidiary dairymaids,
to be one of whom Dorothy was chosen by the management. She might fairly
consider that her new part was exactly three times as good as that she
had played in the sextet; moreover, her salary was doubled, and by what
could only be considered a stroke of genuine luck Queenie Molyneux, who
would certainly have been chosen for the other dairymaid, was lured away
to the rival production of "My Mistake" at the Frivolity Theater. Millie
Cunliffe, who took her place, had a finer mouth than Queenie's, which
was too large and expressive for anything except lines like those with
which she led the Pink Quartet at the Frivolity; but Millie had not such
a beautiful mouth as Dorothy, and it was not nearly so apt at singing or
speaking; her ankles, too, were not so slim and shapely as Dorothy's,
nor were they made for dancing like hers. So Dorothy enjoyed a vogue
with gods and mortals, and was now plainly visible to the naked eye in
the constellation of musical comedy.
IV
The departure of Queenie Molyneux to the Frivolity had a more intimate
bearing on Dorothy's future than the mere removal of a rival of the
footlights to a safe distance: it gave her back Clarehaven.
That Savoy supper-party last Easter had not seemed likely at the time to
lead to a situation even as much complicated as Dorothy's ambition to
marry an earl. When Arthur Lonsdale escorted Queenie home afterward, he
had probably counted upon such a climax to the entertainment; but he
must have been astonished to hear from his friend next morning that
Dorothy was not to be won lightly by a Savoy supper nor kept with the
help even of the tolerably large income that friend enjoyed. From the
moment that the immediate gratification of Clarehaven's passion was
denied him, Lonsdale must have divined a danger of the affair's turning
out serious, and he had obviously done all he could to discourage him
from frequenting Dorothy's unresponsive company; she learned, indeed,
from various sources that he was devoting his leisure to curing
Clarehaven. Then suddenly the melody of Queenie's Pink Quartet enchained
him, and he was always to be seen at the Frivolity. Long days cramming
for the Foreign Office were followed by long evenings at the Frivolity
and ... anyway, Queenie seemed to have decided she liked Lonsdale better
than wealth. But if the melody of the Pink Quartet in "My Mistake" was
an eternal joy, so, too, was the melody of the trio in "The Duke and the
Dairymaid"; henceforth Clarehaven from his stall could nightly feed his
passion for Dorothy without being subjected to the mockery and tutelage
of his former companion. What between lunches at Verrey's and suppers at
the Savoy it was not surprising that before the leaves had fallen from
the London plane-trees he should have hung a necklace of pearls round
her neck. Unfortunately, though Clarehaven showed his appreciation of
Dorothy by figuratively robbing his coronet of its pearls, he did not go
so far as to offer her the coronet itself; and when he suggested that
she should leave Halfmoon Street for an equally pleasant flat round the
corner, she was naturally very indignant and asked him what kind of a
girl he thought she was.
"You don't care twopence about me," he said, woefully.
"How can I let myself care about you?" she countered. "You ought to know
me well enough by this time to be sure that I would never accept such an
offer as you've just made me. I know that you can't marry me. I know
that you have your family to consider. In the circumstances, isn't it
better, my dear Tony, that we should part? I'm dreadfully sorry that our
parting should come after your proposal rather than before it. But
horribly as you've misjudged me, somehow I can't bear you any ill will,
and in token of my forgiveness I shall always wear these pearls. Pearls
for tears, they say. I'm afraid that sometimes these old sayings come
only too true."
"Yes, but I can't get along without you," protested Clarehaven.
She smiled sadly.
"I'm afraid you can get along without me in every way except one, only
too easily."
"Why did you lead me on, if you weren't in earnest?"
"Lead you on?"
"You asked me back to the flat. You gave me every encouragement.
Obviously somebody is paying for this flat, so why shouldn't I?"
"Lord Clarehaven!" exclaimed Dorothy, with the stern grandeur of an
Atlantic cliff rebuffing a wave. "You have said enough."