with Olive, to show his lordship the door. His poor lordship left
Halfmoon Mansions in such perturbation that he forgot to slip the usual
sovereign into Effie's hand, and she cordially agreed with her mistress
when he was gone that kind hearts are indeed more than coronets.
Dorothy's simple faith in her own abilities had received such a shock
that she began to cry; but it was restored by a sudden suspicion that
she possessed a latent power for tragedy that might take her out of the
squalid world of the Vanity into the ether of the legitimate drama. She
had never suspected this inner fountain that grief had thus unsealed,
and she let her tears go trickling down her cheeks with as much pleasure
as a small boy who has found a watering-can on a secluded garden path.
"Don't carry on so, miss," Effie begged. "Men are brutes, and that's
what all us poor women have to learn sooner or later. Don't take on
about his lordship. A fine lordship, I'm sure. Give me plain Smith, if
that's a lordship. Look at your poor eyes, miss, and don't cry any
more."
Dorothy did look at her poor eyes, and immediately compromised with her
emotions by going out and ordering a new dress. When she came back
Olive, who had been given a heightened account of the scene by Effie,
was exquisitely sympathetic; and the great man, when he was informed of
Clarehaven's disgraceful offer, was full of good worldly advice and
consolation.
"I think you can rely upon your powers of catalysis, Dorothy," he said.
She did not think her failure to understand such a strange word
reflected upon her education, and asked him what it meant.
"In unchemical English, as unchemical as your own nice light-brown hair,
_you_ won't change; but if I'm not much mistaken you'll play the very
deuce with Master Clarehaven's mental constitution."
This was encouraging; if Dorothy's faith in her beauty and abilities
had been slightly shaken by Clarehaven's omission to marry her, the loss
was more than made up for by an added belief in her own importance and
in the beauty of her character.
Among the men who sometimes came to the flat was a certain Leopold
Hausberg, a financier reputed to be already fabulously rich at the age
of thirty-five, but endowed with an unfortunately simian countenance by
the wicked fairy not invited to his circumcision. He possessed in
addition to his wealth the superficial geniality and humor of his race,
and was not accustomed to find that Englishwomen were better able than
any others to resist Oriental domination. Hausberg had not concealed his
partiality for Lily, and Dorothy, in her desire to accentuate her own
virtue, told Sylvia, soon after Clarehaven's proposal, that it would be
useful for Lily to have a rich friend like that. Sylvia flashed at her
some objectionable word out of Shakespeare and would not be mollified by
Dorothy's exposition of the difference between her character and Lily's,
although Dorothy took care to remind her of a remark she had once made
when they were on tour together about the inevitableness of Lily's
decline.
Dorothy had good reason, therefore, to feel annoyed with Sylvia when she
found out presently that Sylvia was apparently working on Leopold
Hausberg to do exactly what she herself had been so rudely scolded for
suggesting. As much fuss was being made about Lily's behavior as if she
had refused the dishonorable attentions of an earl; yet with all this
ridiculous pretense Sylvia was taking care to do for Lily what she was
either too stupid or too hypocritical to do for herself. If Lily's
happiness lay in the devotion of vulgar young men, she might at least
get the money she wanted for them out of Hausberg without letting a
friend do her dirty work. When the continually cheated suitor approached
Dorothy with complaints about the way Sylvia was managing the business
she listened sympathetically to his hint that Sylvia was trying to keep
Lily from him until she had made enough money for herself, and she took
the first opportunity of being revenged upon Sylvia for the horrid
Shakespearian epithet by telling her what Hausberg had said.
One Saturday night in November Olive and Dorothy came home immediately
after the performance to rest themselves in preparation for a long drive
in the country with the great man, who seldom had an opportunity for
motoring and had made a great point of the enjoyment he was expecting
to-morrow. They had not long finished supper when there was a furious
ringing at the bell, and Hausberg, in a state of blind anger, was
admitted to the flat by the frightened maid.
"By God!" he shouted to Dorothy. "Come with me!"
She naturally demurred to going out at this time of night, but Hausberg
insisted that she was deeply involved in whatever it was that had put
him in this rage, and in the end, partly from curiosity, partly from
fear, she consented to accompany him. While they were driving along,
Hausberg explained that he had at last persuaded Lily to abandon Sylvia
and accept an establishment in Lauriston Mansions, St. John's Wood. He
had furnished the flat regardless of expense, and this afternoon, when
Lily was supposed to have been moving in, he had been sent the latch-key
and bidden to present himself at midnight.
"Very well," said Hausberg between his teeth. "Wait until you see
what.... You wait...." he became inarticulate with rage.
They had reached Lauriston Mansions and, though it was nearly one
o'clock in the morning, a group of figures could be seen in silhouette
against the lighted entrance, among which the helmets of a couple of
policemen supplied the traditional touch of the sinister.
"Haven't you got it out yet?" Hausberg demanded of the porter, who
replied in a humble negative.
"What _are_ you talking about?" Dorothy asked, and then with authentic
suddenness she felt the authentic nameless dread clutching authentically
at her heart. Why, _it_ must be a dead body; grasping Hausberg's arm and
turning pale, she asked if Lily had killed herself.
"Killed herself?" echoed Hausberg. "Not she. I'm talking about this
damned monkey that your confounded friends have left in my flat."
The porter came forward to say that there was a gentleman present who
had a friend who he thought knew the address of one of the keepers of
the monkey-house at the Zoo, and that if Mr. Hausberg would give orders
for this gentleman to be driven in the car to his friend's address no
doubt something could be done about expelling the monkey. The gentleman
in question, a battered and crapulous cab-tout, presented himself for
inspection, and one of the policemen offered to accompany him and
impress the reported keeper with the urgency of the situation. While
everybody was waiting for the car to return, the lobby of the flat
became like the smoking-room of a great transatlantic steamer where
travelers' tales are told, such horrible speculations were indulged in
about the fierceness of the monkey.
"So long as it ain't a yourang-gatang," said one, "we haven't got
nothing to be afraid of. But a yourang-gatang's something chronic if you
can believe all they say."
"A griller's worse," said another.
"Is it? Who says so?"
"Why, any one knows there ain't nothing worse than a griller," declared
the champion of that variety. "A griller 'll bite a baby's head off the
same as any one else might look at you. A griller's worse than chronic;
it's ferocious."
"Would it bite the head off of an yourang-gatang?" demanded the first
theorist, truculently.
"Certainly it would; so when he's let out you'd better get behind George
here so as to hide your ugly mug."
This caused a general laugh, and the upholder of the orang-utan seemed
inclined to back his favorite with an appeal to force, until the porter
interposed to prevent a squabble.
"Now, what's the good in arguing if it's a griller or a yourang-gatang?"
he demanded, in a nasal whine. "All I know is it got my poor trouser leg
into a rare old yourang-atangle when I was 'oppin it out of the front
hall."
"Is there much damage done?" Hausberg asked.
"Damage?" repeated the porter. "Damage ain't the word. It looks as if
there'd been a young volcano turned loose in the flat."
"But what I don't understand," Dorothy began, primly, "is why I have
been brought into this."
Various ladies in light attire from the upper flats were beginning to
peer over into the well of the staircase, and Dorothy was wondering if
she were not being compromised by this midnight adventure.
"Let's get the monkey out first," said Hausberg, "and then I'll tell you
why."
After listening for another three-quarters of an hour to disputes
between the various supporters of the gorilla and the orang-utan, which
extended to a heated argument about the comparative merits of Mr.
Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, the car came back, and the intruder, which
was announced to be a chimpanzee, was ejected by the keeper, and, after
an attempt to hand it over to the police, shut up till morning in a
boot-hole.
The flat presented a desolate spectacle when Dorothy and Hausberg
entered it; the chimpanzee had smashed the ornaments, ripped up the
curtains, tore the paper from the walls, and wrenched off all the
lamp-brackets; he had then apparently been seized with a revulsion
against the bananas and nuts strewn about the passage for his supper and
had gnawed the porter's hat.
"Now," said Hausberg, sternly, to the owner of the hat, who was tenderly
nursing it, "just tell this lady exactly what has happened here."
"Well, sir, about twelve o'clock this morning a gentleman drove up to
the mansions with a crate and said he was a friend of Mr. Hausberg's and
had brought him a marble Venus for a present, and I was to put it in the
hall of the flat. I particularly remember he said a Venus, because I
thought he said a green'ouse, which surprised me for the moment, and I
asked him if he didn't, mean a portable aquarium, which is what my
wife's brother has in the window of his best parlor."
"Go on, you fool!" Hausberg commanded. "We don't want to hear about your
wife's brother."
"Well, I accepted delivery of this Venus and between us we got this
Venus--"
"Don't go on rhyming like that," said Hausberg. "Tell the story properly
in plain prose."
"Between us--I mean to say me and the lift-boy together--we deposited in
the hall this crate which had a tin lining for the chim-pansy to breathe
with according to instructions duly received. When I turned up my nose
at this Venus, which smelled very heavy, the gentleman, who didn't give
his name, explained that you was intending to use it for a hat-stand,
and told us not to wait, as he'd unpack the crate hisself. I looked at
him a bit hard, but he give me something for me and the boy between us
before we come down-stairs again, and I thought no more about it. The
gentleman drove off about ten minutes afterward with a friendly nod, and
I was just sitting down to my dinner in the domestic office on the
ground floor when the people underneath--of course you'll understand I'm
referring to the flat now--the people underneath came down and
complained that something must have happened over their heads, as the
noise was something shocking and bits of the ceiling was coming down, or
they said it would be coming down in two two's if the noise wasn't
stopped. Well, of course up I went to investigate, and when I opened the
door and seed all the wall-paper hanging in strips I thought something
funny must have occurred, and I felt a bit nervous and began swallering.
Then all of a sudding, before I knew where I was, something had me by
the trouser leg, and if I'd of been a religious man I'd of said right
out it was the devil himself; but when I seed it was a great hairy
animal I run for the front door and slammed it to behind me, it being on
the jar for a piece of luck, because if it hadn't of been on the jar my
calf was a goner."
"Why didn't you send for me at once?"
"Well, sir, how was I to know you hadn't put the chim-pansy there for
the purpose?"
"Do you think I take flats for chimpanzees?" demanded Hausberg.
"No, sir, I don't, but if you'll pardon me, there's a lot of queer
things goes on in these mansions, and I've learned not to interfere
before I'm asked to, and sometimes not then. Only last week Number
Fourteen got the D. T.'s on him and threw a sewing-machine at me when
his young lady called me up to see what could be done about quieting him
down. And now this here monkey has cost me a pair of trousers and a new
hat with the name of the mansions worked on the front which I shall have
to replace, and I only hope I sha'n't be the loser by it."
"Get out," snarled Hausberg.
He was in such a rage that he looked more like a large monkey than ever
while he was striding in and out of every dismantled room; and Dorothy
realized the extreme malice of the joke that had been played upon him.
"You know who did this?" he said to her, wrathfully.
She shook her head.
"Do you mean to tell me you don't know that it was your friend Lord
Clarehaven?"
"Rubbish!" said Dorothy. "Why should he shut a chimpanzee in _your_
flat?"
"Your friend Clarehaven," Hausberg went on, "and that little swine
Lonsdale are responsible for this; but when I tell you that they drove
down this afternoon to Brighton with Lily and that cursed friend of
hers--"
"How do you know?" she interrupted, with some emotion.
"You don't suppose I set a girl up in a flat without having her watched
first, do you? When I buy," said Hausberg, "I buy in the best market.
Here's the detective's report."
He handed her a half-sheet of note-paper written in a copperplate hand
with a record of Lily's day, ending up with the information that she and
her friend Sylvia Scarlett, accompanied by the Earl of Clarehaven and
the Honorable Arthur Lonsdale, had driven down to Brighton immediately
after lunch and reached the Britannia Hotel at five o'clock, "as
confirmed per telephone."
"Well," said Hausberg, grimly, "Lily has been paid out by losing my
protection, but, by God! I'll get even with the rest of them soon or
late."
"You don't really think that I had anything to do with this?" asked
Dorothy. "Why, I haven't seen either Clarehaven or Lonsdale for a month!
I didn't even know that they had met Sylvia and Lily. They didn't meet
them in Halfmoon Street. Why do you drag me here at this hour of the
night?"
Hausberg seemed convinced by her denials, and his manner changed
abruptly.
"I'm sorry I suspected you as well. I might have known better. I see now
that we've both been made to look foolish. What can I do to show you I'm
sorry for behaving like this? We're old pals, Dorothy. I was off my head
when I came round here and they told me the trick that had been played
on me. Damn them! Damn them! I'll--But what can I do to show you I'm
sorry?"
"You'd better invest some money for me," said Dorothy, severely.
"How much do you want?"
"No, no," she said. "I've got two hundred and fifty pounds that I want
to invest; only, of course, I must have a really good investment."
"That's all right," he promised. "I'll do a bit of gambling for you."
They had left the flat behind them and were walking slowly down-stairs
when suddenly from one of the doors on the landing immediately below a
man slipped out, paused for a moment when he heard their footsteps
descending, thought better of his timidity, hurried on down, and was out
of sight before they reached the landing.
"Good Heavens!" Dorothy ejaculated, seizing her companion's arm.
"I'm afraid I've made you jumpy," he said. "Poor old Dorothy, I shall
have to find a jolly good investment to make up for it."
Hausberg was quite his old suave self again; it was Dorothy who was pale
and agitated now.
"It was nothing," she murmured; but it was really a great deal, because
the man she had seen was Mr. Gilbert Caffyn, the secretary of the Church
of England Purity Society.
Dorothy did not enjoy her motor drive that Sunday. It was pale-blue
November weather with the sun like a topaz hanging low in the haze above
the Surrey hills, but the knowledge that Clarehaven all this month,
perhaps even for longer, had been carrying on with Lily and Sylvia when
she had taken such care to keep them apart tormented her beyond any
capacity to enjoy the landscape or the weather. Heartless treachery,
then, was the result of being kind to old friends--and oh, what an
odious world it was! There would have to be a grand breaking of
friendships presently--yes, and a grand dissolution of family ties as
well, for, at any rate, in the midst of this miserable and humiliating
affair she had at least been granted the consolation of catching out her
father, which might be useful one day. Olive wondered, when the great
man left them after supper, why Dorothy had been so gloomy on the drive.
She had told the story of the chimpanzee so well, and the great man had
laughed more heartily over it than over anything she could remember. Why
was Dorothy so sad? Was there something she had left out? Surely on
Hausberg's mere word she was not thinking anything horrid about Sylvia's
going for a drive with Clarehaven? They had probably just driven down to
Brighton for dinner to laugh over the chimpanzee.
"I shall see Sylvia once more," said Dorothy, "and that will be for the
last time."
"But I'm sure you'll find Hausberg has made everything appear in the
worst light," Olive protested. "I'm sure Sylvia would never snatch a man
away from any girl."
"I don't understand how you can go on being friends with me and yet
defend her," said Dorothy.
Olive begged her dearest Dorothy to wait for Sylvia's explanation before
she got angry with herself, and on Monday afternoon Sylvia of her own
accord came to the flat.
"I know everything," said Dorothy, frigidly.
"Then for Heaven's sake tell me what Hausberg said when he opened the
door and saw the chimpanzee. Did he say, 'Are you there, Lily?' and did
the chimpanzee answer with a cocoanut?"
"Chimpanzee," repeated Dorothy, wrathfully. "You who call yourself my
friend deliberately set out to ruin my whole life, and when I reproach
you with it you talk about chimpanzees!"
"Don't be silly, Dorothy," Sylvia scoffed. "Hausberg wanted a lesson for
saying I was living on Lily, and with Arthur Lonsdale's help I gave him
one."
"And what about Clarehaven?" asked Dorothy. "Did he help you?"
"Oh, that foolish fellow wanted a lesson, too. So I took him down to
Brighton and gave him a jolly good one, though it wasn't so brutal as
Hausberg's."
"Thanks very much," said Dorothy, sarcastically. "In future when
my--my--"
"Your man. Say it out," Sylvia advised.
"When a friend of mine requires a lesson I prefer to give it him
myself."
"My dear Dorothy," exclaimed Sylvia, with a laugh, "you're not upsetting
yourself by getting any ridiculous ideas into your head about Clarehaven
and myself? I assure you that--"
"I don't want your assurances," Dorothy interrupted. "It doesn't matter
to me what you do with Clarehaven, except that as a friend of mine I
think you might have been more loyal."
"Don't be foolish. I'm the last person to do anything in the least
disloyal."
"Really?" sneered Dorothy.
"Clarehaven simply came down to Brighton to talk about you. He's
suffering from the moth and star disease. Though you won't believe me, I
was very fond of you, Dorothy dear; I am still, really," she added, with
a little movement of affection that Dorothy refused to notice. "But I do
think you're turning into a shocking little snob. That's the Vanity
_galere_. No girl there could help being a snob unless she were as
simple and sweet as Olive."
"Perhaps you'd like to steal Olive from me, too?" Dorothy asked,
bitterly.
"I tell you," the other answered, "it's not a question of stealing
anybody. I kept Clarehaven up all night drinking whiskies-and-sodas
while I lectured him on his behavior to you. We sat in the sitting-room.
If you want a witness, ask the waiter, who has varicose veins and didn't
forget to remind us of the fact."
"I suppose Lonsdale and Lily were sitting up with you at this
conference? Do you think I was born yesterday? Well, I warn you that I
shall tell Queenie Molyneux what's happened."
"If you do," said Sylvia, "I've an idea that Lonsdale will be only too
delighted. I fancy that's exactly what he wanted."
"This is all very sordid," said Dorothy, loftily. Then she told Sylvia
that she never wished to see her again, and they parted.
Dorothy insisted that Olive ought also to quarrel with Sylvia, but, much
to her annoyance, Olive dissented. She said that in any case the dispute
had nothing to do with her, and actually added that in her opinion
Sylvia had behaved rather well.
"I'm sure she's speaking the truth," she said.
Dorothy thought how false all friends were, and promised that henceforth
she would think about no one except her own much-injured self.
"One starts with good resolutions not to be selfish," she told Olive,
"and then one is driven into it by one's friends."
Sylvia's story seemed contradicted next day by the arrival of Clarehaven
in a most complacent mood, for when Dorothy asked how he had enjoyed his
week-end he did not seem at all taken aback and hoped that her Jew
friend had enjoyed his.
"I wish I could make you understand just how little you mean to me," she
raged. "How dare you come here and brag about your--your-- Oh, I wish I'd
never met you."
"If you don't care anything about me," he said, "I can't understand why
you should be annoyed at my taking Sylvia Scarlett down to Brighton. I
don't pretend to be in love with her. I'm in love with you."
Dorothy interrupted him with a contemptuous gesture.
"But it's true, Dorothy. I'm no good at explaining what I feel, don't
you know; but ever since that day I first saw you in St. Mary's I've
been terrifically keen on you. You drove me into taking up Sylvia. I
don't care anything about Sylvia. Why, great Scot! she bores me to
death. She talks forever until I don't know where I am. But I must do
something. I can't just mope round London like an ass. You know, you're
breaking my heart, that's what you're doing."
"You'd better go abroad," said Dorothy. "They mend hearts very well
there."
"If you're not jolly careful I shall go abroad."
"Then go," she said, "but don't talk about it. I hate people who talk,
just as much as you do."
Within a week Lord Clarehaven had equipped himself like the hero of a
late nineteenth-century novel to shoot big game in Somaliland, and on
the vigil of his departure Arthur Lonsdale came round to see Dorothy.
"Look here. You know," he began, "I'm the cause of all this.
Hard-hearted little girls and all that who require a lesson."
"Yes, it's evident you've been spending a good deal of time lately with
Sylvia," said Dorothy.
"Now don't start backfiring, Doodles. I've come here as a friend of the
family and I don't want to sprain my tongue at the start. Poor old Tony
came weeping round to me and asked what was to be done about it."
"It?" asked Dorothy, angrily. "What is _it_? The chimpanzee?"
"No, no, no. _It_ is you and Tony. If you go on interrupting like this
you'll puncture my whole speech. When Tony skidded over that rope of
pearls and you froze him with a look, he came and asked my advice about
what to do next. So I loosened my collar like Charles Wyndham and said:
'Make her jealous, old thing. There's only one way with women, which is
to make them jealous. I'm going to make the Molyneux jealous. If you
follow my advice, you'll do the same with the Lonsdale.'"
Dorothy nearly put her fingers in her ears to shut out any more horrible
comparisons between herself and Queenie, but she assumed, instead, a
martyred air and submitted to the gratification of her curiosity.
"Well, just about that fatal time," Lonsdale continued, "Tony and I went
for a jolly little bump round at Covent Garden and bumped into Sylvia
and Lily _en pierrette_, as they say at my crammer's, where they're
teaching me enough French to administer the destinies of Europe for ten
years to come. Where were we? Oh yes, _en pierrette_. 'Hello, hello' I
said. 'Two jolly little girls _en pierrette_, and what about it? Well,
we had two or three more bumps round, and Tony was getting more and more
depressed about himself, and so I said, 'Why don't we go down to
Brighton and cheer ourselves up?' 'That's all right,' said Sylvia, 'if
you'll help me put a jolly old chimpanzee in a fellow's flat.' I said,
I'll put a jolly old elephant, if you like.' You see, the notion was
that when Hausberg opened the door of the flat he should say, 'Are you
there, Lily?' It was all to be very amusing and jolly."
"And what has this to do with Clarehaven?" asked Dorothy.
"Wait a bit. Wait a bit. I'm changing gears at this moment, and if you
interrupt I shall jam. You see, my notion was that Tony should buzz down
to Brighton with us and ... well ... there's a nasty corner here.... I
told you, didn't I, that the only way with hard-hearted little girls is
to make them jealous? And the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in
the eating, what? Anyway, no sooner did Queenie hear I'd eloped with an
amorous blonde than we made it up. Look here, the road's clear now, so
let's be serious. Tony's madly in love with you. It's no use telling me
you're a good little girl, because look round you. Where's the evidence?
I mean to say, your salary's six pounds a week. So, I repeat, where's
the evidence? You may dream that you dwell in marble halls on six pounds
a week, but you can't really do it."
"If Lord Clarehaven has sent you here to insult me," said Dorothy, "he
might at least have had the courage to come and do it himself."
"You're taking this very unkindly. On my word of honor I assure you,
Doodles, that Tony's trip to Brighton ended in talk. I know this,
because I heard them. In fact, I summoned the night porter and asked him
to stop the beehive next door."
"This conversation is not merely insulting," said Dorothy, "it's very
coarse."
"I see you're prejudiced, Doodles. Now Queenie was also prejudiced; in
fact, at one point she was so prejudiced that she jabbed me with a comb.
But I calmed her down and she gradually began to appreciate the fact
that not only is there a silver lining to every cloud, but that there is
also a cloud to most silver linings. Bored with mere luxury, she
realized that a good man's love--soft music, please--should not be
lightly thrown away; and now, to be absolutely serious for one moment,
what about commissioning me to buzz down to Devonshire and tell Tony
that there's no need for him to go chasing the okapi through equatorial
Africa?"
"All this levity may be very amusing to you, Mr. Lonsdale, but to me it
is only painful."
"Well, of course, if you're going to take my friendly little run round
the situation like that, there's nothing more to be said."
"Nothing whatever," Dorothy agreed.
Lonsdale retired with a shrug, and a day or two later Lord Clarehaven's
departure for Mombasa was duly recorded in the _Morning Post_. Dorothy's
self-importance had been so deeply wounded by the manner in which
Lonsdale had commented upon her position in the world that for some time
she could scarcely bear to meet people, and she even came near to
relinquishing the publicity of the stage, because she began to feel that
the nightly audience was sneering at her discomfiture. The gift of a
set of Russian sables from Hausberg and the news that her investments
were prospering failed to rouse her from the indifference with which she
was regarding life. All that had seemed so rich in the flat now merely
oppressed her with a sense of useless display. The continual assurances
she received that only the melodious trio had saved "The Duke and the
Dairymaid" from being something like a failure gave her no elation. Her
silks and sables were no more to her than rags; her crystal flasks of
perfumes, and those odorous bath-salts, in which the lemon and the
violet blended so exquisitely the sharp with the sweet, had lost their
savor; even her new manicure set of ivory-and-gold did not pass the
unprofitable hours so pleasantly as that old ebony set of which she had
been so proud in West Kensington, it seemed a century ago. Lonsdale by
his attitude had made her feel that the luxury of her surroundings was
not the natural expression of a personality predestined to find in rank
its fit expression, but merely the stock-in-trade of a costly doll.
It was Tufton who provided Dorothy with a new elixir of life that was
worth all the scent in Bond Street, and a restorative that made the most
pungent toilet vinegar insipid as water.
"I don't think you ought to take it so badly," he said. "Shooting the
rhino for the sake of a woman is better than throwing the other kind of
rhino at her head. It shows that he's pretty badly hit."
"The rhino?" asked Dorothy, with a pale smile.
"No, no," protested Tufton, shocked at carrying a joke too far.
"Clarehaven. Wait till he comes back. If he comes back as much in love
as he went away you'll hear nothing more about flats round the corner.
Curzon Street is also round the corner, don't forget, and my belief is
that you'll move straight in from here."
"You're a good pal, Harry."
"Well, I don't think my worst enemy has ever accused me of not sticking
to my friends."
This was true; but then Mr. Tufton did not make friends lightly. Old
walls afford a better foothold to the climber than new ones.
When Dorothy pondered these words of encouragement she cheered up; and
that night John Richards, who had watched her performance from the
stage-box, told his sleeping partner that he intended to bring her along
in the next Vanity production.
"She gets there," he boomed. "Goo' gir'! Goo' gir'!"
V
Dorothy indulged her own renewed _joie de vivre_ by investigating the
glimpse of her father's private _joie de vivre_ vouchsafed to her that
night in St. John's Wood, and without much difficulty she found out that
for the last two years he had been maintaining there a second
establishment, which at the very lowest calculation must be costing him
L400 a year. It was not remarkable that he had wanted to obtain a higher
rate of interest on his wife's capital. His daughter debated with
herself how to play this unusual hand, and she decided not to lead these
black trumps too soon, but to reserve them for the time when they might
threaten her ace of hearts and that long suit of diamonds. At present
she was not suffering the least inconvenience from her family, and since
she went to live in Halfmoon Street it had not been her habit to visit
Lonsdale Road more often than once a month. These visits, rare as winter
sunshine in England, were not much warmer: the family basked for a while
in the radiance of Dorothy's rich clothes, but they soon found that
clothes only give heat to the person who wears them, and since Dorothy
did not encourage them to follow the sun like visitors to the azure
coast, they made the best of their own fireside and avoided any risk of
taking cold by depending too much on her deceptive radiance.
Meanwhile, Hausberg had turned Dorothy's L250 into L500 by nothing more
compromising than good advice; and by March, to celebrate her
twenty-first birthday, the L500 had become L2,000. Not even then did
Hausberg ask anything from her in return; occasionally a dim suspicion
crossed her mind that a profound cause must lie underneath this display
of good will, and she asked herself if he was patiently, very patiently,
angling for her; but when time went by without his striking, the
suspicions died away and did not recur. Moreover, her financial adviser
was engaged in dazzling Queenie Molyneux with diamonds, to the manifest
chagrin of Lonsdale, who had let the liaison between himself and Queenie
come to mean much more to him than he had ever intended that evening at
the Savoy. In the end his mistress was so much dazzled by the diamonds
that she put on rose-colored spectacles to save her eyes and, looking
through them at Hausberg, decided to accept his devotion. Lonsdale took
the theft of his love hardly; whatever chance he might have had of
entering the Foreign Office disappeared under an emotional strain that
in so round and pink a young man was nearly grotesque. This seemed to
Dorothy a suitable moment to repay evil with good, and when, shortly
afterward, she saw the disconsolate lover gloomily contemplating a
half-bottle of Pol Roger '98 on a solitary table at the Savoy she went
over to him and offered to be reconciled.
He squeezed Dorothy's hand gratefully, sighed, and shook his head.
"I can't keep away from the old place. Every night we used to come here
and--" The recollection was too much for him; he could do nothing but
point mutely to the half-bottle.
"That makes you think," he said, at last. "After the dozens of bottles
we've had together, to come down to that beastly little dwarf alone."
"And you've failed in your examination, too?" inquired Dorothy, tenderly
rubbing it in.
"Just as well, Doodles, just as well. I should be afraid to attach
myself even to an embassy at present."
The band struck up the music of the Pink Quartet.
"Good God!" he exclaimed. "This is too much. Here, Carlo, Ponto,
Rover--What's your name?"
The waiter leaned over obsequiously.
"Here, take this fiver with my compliments to Herr Rumpelstiltzkin and
ask him to cut out that tune and give us the 'Dead March' instead."
"Why not the 'Wedding March'?" asked Dorothy, maliciously.
"I give you my solemn word of honor," said Lonsdale, "that if only
Queenie--well, I think I can get up this hill on the top speed--if I
were the first, I _would_ marry Queenie. You know, I'm beginning to
think Tony made rather an ass of himself, buzzing off like that to
Basutoland or wherever it is. By the way, has it ever struck you what an
anomaly--that's a good word--I got that word out of a _precis_ at my
crammer's. It's a splendid word and can be used in summer and winter
with impunity, what? Has it ever struck you what an anomaly it is that
you can get a license to shoot big game and drive a car, but that you
can't get a license to shoot Hausbergs? Well, well, if Queenie had your
past and your own future and could cut out some of the presents, by
Jove! I would marry her. I really would."
Dorothy said to herself that she had always liked Arthur Lonsdale in
spite of everything, and when he asked her now if her friends were not
waiting for her she told him that they could wait and gratified the
forsaken one by sitting down at his table.
"Of course, when Queenie and I parted," he went on, "she made it
absolutely clear to me that this fellow Hausberg meant nothing to her;
in fact, between ourselves, she rather gave me to understand that things
might go on as they were. But you know, hang it! I can't very well do
that sort of thing. The funny thing is that the more I refuse, the more
keen she gets. I mean to say it is ridiculous, really, because of course
she can't be very much in love with _me_. To begin with, well, she's
about twice my height, what? No, I think I shall have to go in for
motor-cars. They used to be nearly as difficult to manage as women not
so long ago, but they seem to be answering to civilization much more
rapidly. It's a pity somebody can't blow along with some invention to
improve women. Skidding all over the place, don't you know, as they do
now ... but I cannot understand why Hausberg should have fixed on
Queenie. I always thought he was after you, and I'm not sure he isn't.
Did you turn him down?"
"He has only been helping me with some investments."
"I never heard of a Jew helping people with their investments just for
the pleasure of helping."
"I had money of my own to invest," Dorothy explained. "Family money."
"Lonsdale money, in fact, eh?" laughed the heir of the house.
"Well, if you really want to know, it is Lonsdale money. Money left in
trust for me by my grandmother, who was a Lonsdale. I know you laugh at
this, but it's perfectly true."
"Oh no, I don't laugh at you," said Lonsdale. "I never thought you were
a joke. In fact, I asked the governor if he could trace anything about
your branch in the family history. But the trouble with him is that he's
not very interested in anything except politics. Frightfully
narrow-minded old boy. He's been abroad most of his life, poor devil.
He's out of touch with things."
Dorothy thought that if her Lonsdale ancestry could appear sufficiently
genuine to induce the heir of the family to consult his father about it
there was not much doubt of its impressing the rest of the world. It
happened that among the party with which she was supposed to be supping
that night was a young Frenchman with some invention that was going to
revolutionize the manufacture of motor-cars. She decided to introduce
him to Lonsdale, and a month or two later she had the gratification of
hearing that Lord Cleveden had been persuaded to allow his son the
capital necessary to begin a motor business in which the Frenchman, with
his invention, was to be one of the partners, and a well-known
professional racing-motorist another. The firm expressed their gratitude
to Dorothy not only by presenting her with a car, but also by paying her
a percentage on orders that came through her discreet advertisement of
their wares. If Clarehaven came back now and asked Lonsdale what she had
been doing since he left England, surely he would no longer try to damn
the course of their true love.
Just after Dorothy and Olive had left town for their holiday in July the
great man died suddenly, and, naturally, Olive was very much upset by
the shock.
"Never mind," said Dorothy. "Luckily I've made some money, so we needn't
leave the flat."
"I wasn't thinking of that point of view," Olive sobbed. "I was thinking
how good he'd always been to me and how much I shall miss him."
"Well, now you can tell me who he was," Dorothy suggested, consolingly.
"No, darling, oh no; this is the very time of all others when I wouldn't
have anybody know who he was."
Dorothy, however, searched the papers, and she soon came to the
conclusion that the great man was none other than the Duke of Ayr. Such
a discovery thrilled her with the majesty of her retrospect, and she
fancied that even Clarehaven would be a little impressed if he knew who
Olive's friend was:
John Charles Chisholm-Urquhart, K.T., 9th and last Duke of Ayr; also
Marquess and Earl of Ayr, Marquess and Earl of Dumbarton, Earl of
Kilmaurs and Kilwinning, Viscount Dalry and Dalgarven, Viscount of
Brackenbrae, Lord Urquhart, Inverew, and Troon, Baron Chisholm, Earl
Chisholm, Baron Hurst, Baron Urquhart of Coylton, Lord Urquhart of
Dumbarton, and Baron Dalgarven.
The last Duke of Ayr! Nobody in the world to inherit one of all those
splendid titles! Not even a duchess to survive him!
The press commented just as ruefully as Dorothy upon the extinction of
another noble house. Dukes and dodos, great families and great auks, one
felt that they would soon all be extinct together.
"It's a great responsibility to marry a peer," Dorothy thought.
She gently and tactfully let Olive know that she had found out the
identity of the great man, and they went together to stand for a minute
or two outside Ayr House, where the hatchment, crape-hung, was all that
was left of so much grandeur and of such high dignities and honors. Nor
did Dorothy allude to the duke's omission to provide for Olive in his
will, though, being a bachelor without an heir, he might easily have
done so. No doubt death had found him unprepared; but the funeral must
have been wonderful, with the pipers sounding "The Lament" for Chisholm
when the coffin was lowered into the grave.
"I'm very glad they're closing 'The Duke and the Dairymaid' this week,"
said Dorothy. "I should hate to see that title now on every 'bus and
every hoarding."
The Vanity's last production had not been such a success as either of
its two predecessors, and many people about town began to say that if
John Richards was not careful the Frivolity was going to cut out the
Vanity. Therefore in the autumn of 1905 a tremendous effort was made to
eclipse all previous productions with "The Beauty Shop." Early in August
John Richards sent for Dorothy, gave her a song to study, and told her
to come again in a week's time to let him hear what she made of it. To
print baldly the words of this great song without the melody, without
the six beauties supporting it from the background, without the
entranced scene-shifters and the bewitched audience, without even a
barrel-organ to recall it, is something like sacrilege, but here is one
verse:
When your head is in a whirl.
And your hair won't curl,
And you feel such a very, very ill-used girl.
_Chorus._ Little girl!
Then that is the time--
_Chorus._ Every time! Every time!
To visit a Bond Street Beauty Shop.
_Chorus._ To visit our Bond Street Beauty Shop.
And when you come out,
And you're seen about
In the places you formerly frequented--
_Chorus._ On the arm of her late-lamented.
Why every one will cry,
Oh dear, oh lord, oh my!
There's Dolly with her collie!
All scented and contented!
_Chorus._ She's forgotten the late-lamented.
For Dolly's out and about again,
She doesn't give a damn for a shower of rain.
Here's Dolly with her collie!
And London! _Chorus._ Dear old London!
London is itself again!
"Goo' gir' said Mr. Richards when Dorothy had finished and the dust in
his little office in the cupola of the Vanity had subsided. "Goo' gir'.
I thi' you'll ma' a 'ice 'ihel hit in that song."
The impresario was right: Dorothy did make a resounding hit; and a more
welcome token of it than her picture among the letterpress and
advertisements of every illustrated paper, the dedication of a new
face-cream, and the christening of a brand of cigarettes in her honor,
was the reappearance of Clarehaven with character and complexion much
matured by the sun of Africa, so ripe, indeed, that he was ready to fall
at her feet. She received him gently and kindly, but without
encouragement; he was given to understand that his treatment had driven
her to take refuge in art, the result of which he had just been
witnessing from the front of the house. Besides, she told him, now that
Olive's friend was dead, she must stay and look after her. People had
misjudged Olive and herself so much in the past that she did not intend
to let them misjudge her in future. She was making money at the Vanity
now, and she begged Lord Clarehaven, if he had ever felt any affection
for her, to go away again and shoot more wild animals. Cupid himself
would have had to use dum-dum darts to make any impression on Dorothy in
her present mood.
Such nobility of bearing, such wounded beauty, such weary grace, could
only have one effect on a man who had spent so many months among hippos
and black women, and without hesitation Clarehaven proposed marriage.
Dorothy's heart leaped within her; but she preserved a calm exterior,
and a sad smile expressed her disbelief in his seriousness. He
protested; almost he declaimed. She merely shook her head, and the
desperate suitor hurried down to Devonshire in order to convince his
mother that he must marry Dorothy at once, and that she must
demonstrate, either by visit or by letter, what a welcome his bride
would receive from the family. Clarehaven lacked eloquence, and the
dowager was appalled. Lonsdale was telegraphed for, and presently he
came up to town to act as her emissary to beg Dorothy to refuse her son.
"It'll kill the poor lady," he prophesied. "I know you're not wildly
keen on Tony, so let him go, there's a dear girl."
"I never had the slightest intention of doing anything else. You don't
suppose that just when I've made my first success I'm going to throw
myself away on marriage. You ought to know me better, Lonnie."
Lonsdale was frankly astonished at Dorothy's attitude; but he was glad
to be excused from having to argue with her about the unsuitableness of
the match, because he did sincerely admire her, and, moreover, had some
reason to be grateful for her practical sympathy at the time of his
break with Queenie Molyneux. He went away from Halfmoon Street with
reassurances for the countess.
It was at this momentous stage in Dorothy's career that Mr. Caffyn, awed
by the evidence of his daughter's fame he beheld on every side, chose to
call for her one evening at the stage-door with a box of chocolates, in
which was inclosed a short note of congratulation and an affectionately
worded request that she would pay the visit to her family that was now
long overdue. Dorothy pondered for a minute her line of action before
sending down word that she would soon be dressed and that the gentleman
was to wait in her car. When she came out of the theater and told the
chauffeur to drive her to West Kensington, Mr. Caffyn expressed his
pleasure at her quick response to his appeal. They drove along, talking
of matters trivial enough, until in the silence of the suburban night
the car stopped before 17 Lonsdale Road.
"Good-by," said Dorothy.
"You'll come in for a bit?" asked her father, in surprise.
"Oh no; you'll be wanting to get to bed," she said.
"Well, it's very kind of you to drive me back," Mr. Caffyn told her,
humbly. "Very kind indeed. You'll be interested to know that this is a
much nicer motor than the Bishop of Chelsea's. He was kind enough to
drive me back from the congress of Melanesian Missions the other day,
and so I'm acquainted with his motor."
"He didn't drive you to Lauriston Mansions, did he?" Dorothy asked.
The sensitive springs of the car quivered for a moment in response to
Mr. Caffyn's jump.
"What do you mean?" he stammered.
"Oh, I know all about it," his daughter began, with cold severity. "It's
all very sordid, and I don't intend to go into details; but I want you
quite clearly to understand once and for all that communication between
you and me must henceforth cease until I wish to reopen it. It's
extremely possible, in fact it's probable, in fact I may say it's
certain that I'm shortly going to marry the Earl of Clarehaven, and
inasmuch as one of the charms of my present position is the fact that I
have no family, I want you all quite clearly to understand that after my
marriage any recognition will have to come from me first."
Mr. Caffyn was too much crushed at being found out in his folly and
hypocrisy to plead his own case, but he ventured to put in a word for
his wife's feelings and begged Dorothy not to be too hard on her.
"You're the last person who has any right to talk about my mother. Come
along, jump out, father. I must be getting back. I've a busy day
to-morrow, with two performances."
The sound of Mr. Caffyn's pecking with his latch-key at the lock was
drowned in the noise of the car's backing out of Lonsdale Road. Dorothy
laughed lightly to herself when she compared this interview with the one
she had had not so many months ago about the L500, which, by the way,
she must send back to her mother if Hausberg advised her to sell out
those shares. No doubt, such a sum would be most useful to her father
with his numerous responsibilities.
"And now," she murmured to herself, "I see no reason why I shouldn't
meet Tony's mother."
VI
Dorothy had not been entirely insincere with Lonsdale in comparing
marriage with success to the detriment of marriage. Success is a
wonderful experience for the young, in spite of the way those who obtain
it too late condemn it as a delusion; few girls of twenty-one,
luxuriously independent and universally flattered, within two years of
going on the stage would have seen marriage even with an earl in quite
such wonderful colors as formerly. Fame may have its degrees; but when
Dorothy, traveling in her car, heard errand-boys upon the pavement
whistling "Dolly and her Collie" she had at least as much right to feel
proud of herself as some wretched novelist traveling by tube who sees a
young woman reading a sixpenny edition of one of his works, or a mother
whose dribbling baby is prodded by a lean spinster in a tram, or a hen
who lays a perfectly ordinary egg and makes as much fuss over it as if
it were oblong.
It was certain that if Dorothy chose she could have one of the two
principal parts in the next Vanity production and be earning in another
couple of years at least L60 a week. There was no reason why she should
remain in musical comedy; there was no reason why she should not take to
serious comedy with atmosphere and surreptitious curtains at the close
of indefinite acts; there was no reason why some great dramatist should
not fall in love with her and invert the usual method of sexual
procedure by laying upon her desk the offspring of their spiritual
union. The possibilities of the future in every direction were
boundless.
At the same time even as a countess her starry beams would not
necessarily be obscured. As Countess of Clarehaven she might have as
many pictures of herself in the illustrated papers as now; she could not
give her name to face-creams, but she might give it to girls' clubs: one
countess had even founded a religious sect, and another countess had ...
but when one examined the history of countesses there was as much
variety as in the history of actresses. And yet as a Vanity countess
would it not be most distinguished of all not to appear in the
illustrated papers, not to found sects and dress extravagantly at
Goodwood? Would it not be more distinguished to live quietly down in
Devonshire and make no more startling public appearances than by
sometimes opening a bazaar or judging a collection of vegetables? Would
it not be more distinguished to be the mother of young Lord Clare and
Lady Dorothy Clare, and Lady Cynthia Clare, and the Honorable Arthur
Clare.... Dorothy paused; she was thinking how improper it was that the
younger sons of an earl should be accorded no greater courtesy than
those of a viscount or a baron, when his daughters were entitled to as
much as the daughters of a duke or a marquess. And after all, why
shouldn't Tony be created a marquess? That was another career for a
countess she had omitted to consider--the political hostess, the
inspiration and amanuensis of her husband's speeches to the House of
Lords. Some infant now squalling in his perambulator would write his
reminiscences of a great lady's _salon_ in the early years of the
twentieth century, when the famous Dorothy Lonsdale stepped out of the
public eye, but kept her hold upon the public pulse as the wise and
beautiful Marchioness of Clarehaven. The second Marquess of Clarehaven,
she dreamed; and beneath this heading in a future Debrett she read
below, "Wife Living of the First Marquess. Dorothy (Marchioness of
Clarehaven)"; if Arthur Lonsdale married well, that marchioness might
not object to one of her younger daughters marrying his eldest son.
Dorothy started. How should she herself be recorded in Debrett?
"Dorothy, daughter of Gilbert Caffyn"? Even that would involve a mild
falsification of her birth certificate, and if her sister Dorothy
married that budding young solicitor from Norbiton they might take
action against her. She hurriedly looked up in Debrett and _Who's Who_
all the other actresses who had married into the peerage. In Debrett
their original names in their stark and brutal ugliness were immortally
inscribed; but in _Who's Who_ their stage names were usually added
between brackets. "The Earl of Clarehaven, _m._ 1905 Norah _d._ of G.
Caffyn (known on the stage as Dorothy Lonsdale)." Ugh! At least she
would not advertise the obvious horror of her own name so blatantly. She
would not be more conspicuous than "Norah (Dorothy) _d._ of G. Caffyn."
But how the girls at the theater would laugh! The girls at the theater?
Why should the girls at the theater be allowed any opportunity of
laughter--at any rate in her hearing? No, if she decided to accept Tony
she should obliterate the theater. There should be no parade about her
marriage; she would be married simply, quietly, and ruthlessly.
At the Vanity, Dorothy and her collie were a ravishing success; but she
was a better actress off the stage than she was on, and she had soon
persuaded herself that she really was still uncertain whether to accept
Clarehaven's hand or not. The minor perplexities of stage name and real
name, of town and country life, of publicity and privacy as a countess,
magnified themselves into serious doubts about the prudence of marrying
at all, and by the month of December Clarehaven was nearly distracted by
her continuous refusals of him. The greater favorite she became with the
public the more he desired her; and she would have found it hard to
invent any condition, however flagrantly harsh, that would have deterred
him from the match. Tufton almost went down on his knees to implore her
to marry the lovesick young earl, his greatest friend; and even Lonsdale
talked to Dorothy about her cruelty, and from having been equipped a
month ago with invincible arguments against the match, now told her that
in spite of everything, he thought she really ought to make the poor lad
happy.
"He's as pale as a fellow I bumped in the back last Thursday, cutting
round Woburn Square on the wrong side," he declared.
"No, he's not so sunburnt as he was," Dorothy agreed.
"Sunburnt? He's moonburnt--half-moonburnt--starburnt! But sunburnt! My
dear Doodles, you're indulging in irony. That's what you're doing."
"I don't see why I should marry him when his mother hasn't even written
me a letter. I don't want his family to feel that he's disgracing them
by marrying me. If Lady Clarehaven will tell me with her own lips that
she'll be proud for her son to marry me, why, then I'll think about it."
"No, really, dash it, my dear girl," Lonsdale expostulated. "You're
being unreasonable. You're worse than a Surrey magistrate. Let the old
lady alone until you're married and she has to make the best of a bad
bargain."
"Thanks very much," Dorothy said. "That's precisely the attitude I wish
to guard myself against."
Lonsdale's failure to soften Dorothy's heart made Clarehaven hopeless;
he reached Devonshire to spend Christmas with his family in a mood so
desperate that his mother began to be nervous. The head-keeper at Clare
Court spoke with alarm of the way his lordship held his gun while
getting over stiles.
"Maybe, my lady, that after lions our pheasants seem a bit tame to his
lordship, though I disremember as I ever saw them wilder than what they
be this year--but if you'll forgive the liberty, my lady, a gun do be as
dangerous in Devonshire as in Africa, and 'tis my belief that his
lordship has summat on his mind, as they say."
A shooting accident upon a neighboring estate the very day after this
warning from the keeper determined Lady Clarehaven to put her pride in
her pocket and write to Dorothy.
CLARE COURT, DEVON,
_January 2, 1906_.
DEAR MISS LONSDALE,--I fear you must have thought me most remiss in
not writing to you before, but you will, perhaps, understand that
down here in the country the notion of marrying an actress presents
itself as a somewhat alarming contingency, and I was anxious to
assure myself that my son's future happiness was so completely
bound up in such a match that any further opposition on my part
would be useless and unkind. Our friend Arthur Lonsdale spoke so
highly of you and of the dignity of your attitude that I was much
touched, and I must ask you to forgive my lack of generosity in not
writing before to tell you how deeply I appreciated your refusal to
marry my son. I understand now that his departure from England a
year ago was due to this very cause, and I can only bow before the
strength of such an affection and withdraw my opposition to the
marriage. I am assuming, perhaps unjustifiably, that you love Tony
as much as he loves you. Of course, if this is not so, it would be
an impertinence on my part to interfere in your private affairs,
and if you write and tell me that you cannot love Tony I must do my
best as a mother to console him. But if you do love him, as I can't
help feeling that you must, and if you will write to me and say
that no barrier exists between you and him except the old-fashioned
prejudice against what would no doubt be merely superficially an
ill-assorted union, I shall welcome you as my daughter-in-law and
pray for your happiness. I must, indeed, admit to being grievously
worried about Tony. He has not even bothered to keep up the
shooting-book, and such extraordinary indifference fills me with
alarm.
Yours sincerely,
AUGUSTA CLAREHAVEN.
Dorothy debated many things before she answered this letter; but she
debated longest of all the question of whether she should write back on
crested note-paper or simple note-paper. Finally she chose the latter.
7 HALFMOON MANSIONS,
HALFMOON STREET, W
_January 6, 1906._
DEAR LADY CLAREHAVEN,--Your letter came as a great joy to me. I
don't think I have ever pretended that I did not love Tony with all
my heart, and it was just because I did love him so much that I
would not marry him without his mother's consent.
My own Puritan family disowned me when I went on the stage, and I
said to myself then that I would never again do anything to bring
unhappiness into a family. I should prefer that if I marry Tony the
wedding should be strictly quiet. I cannot bear the way the papers
advertise such sacred things nowadays. Having had no communication
with my own family for more than two years, I do not want to reopen
the painful memories of our quarrel. My only ambition is to lead a
quiet, uneventful life in the depths of the country, and I hope you
will do all you can to persuade Tony to remain in Devonshire. You
will not think me rude if I do make one condition beforehand. I
will marry him if you will promise to remain at Clare Court and
help me through the difficult first years of my new position.
Please write and let me have your promise to do this. You don't
know how much it would help me to think that you and his sisters
will be at my side. Perhaps you will think that I am assuming too
much in asking this. I need not say that if you find me personally
unsympathetic I shall not bear any resentment, and in that case
Tony and I can always live in Curzon Street. But I do so deeply
pray that you will like me and that his sisters will like me. Your
letter has given me much joy, and I only wait for your answer to
leave the stage (which I hate) forever.
Yours sincerely,
DOROTHY LONSDALE.
The dowager was won. By return of post she wrote:
MY DEAR DOROTHY,--Thank you extremely for your very nice letter.
Please do exactly as you think best about the details of your
wedding. You will receive a warm welcome from us all.
Yours affectionately,
AUGUSTA CLAREHAVEN.
During these negotiations Olive had been away at Brighton getting over
influenza, and Dorothy decided to join her down there and be married out
of town to avoid public curiosity. She had telegraphed to Clarehaven to
leave Devonshire, and Mr. Tufton was enraptured by being called in to
help with advice about the special license.
"My dear Dorothy," he assured her, enthusiastically, "you deserve the
best--the very best."
"I don't want any one at the Vanity to know what's going to happen."
Tufton waved his hands to emphasize how right she was.
"It'll be a terrible blow to the public," he said, "and also to John
Richards. You were his favorite, you know. Yes. And think of the
beautiful women he has known! But you're right, you mustn't consider
anybody except yourself."
"It's rather difficult for me to do that," Dorothy sighed.
"I know. I know. But you must do it. Clarehaven and I will come down
with the license, and then ... my dear Dorothy, I really can't tell you
how pleased I am. Do, do beg the dowager not to change that pergola. But
I shall be down, I hope, some time in the spring."
"Of course."
"And what about Olive?" he asked.
"Poor Olive," she sighed. "And only last week she lost dear little San
Toy. Yes, she'll miss me, I'm afraid, but she'll be glad I'm going to be
so happy."
"All your friends will be glad."
"And now, Harry, please get me a really nice hansom, because I must
simply tear round hard for frocks and frills."
Dorothy spent most of the money that Hausberg had made for her on old
pieces of family jewelry; she also ordered numerous country tweeds; of
frills she had enough.
A few days later Clarehaven, accompanied by Tufton and the special
license, reached Brighton, where he and Dorothy were quietly married in
the Church of the Ascension. Lady Clarehaven thought, when she drove
back to the rooms to break the news to Olive, how few of the passers-by
would think that she had just been married. She commented upon this to
Tony, who replied with a laugh that Brighton was the last place in
England where passers-by stopped to inquire if people were married.
"Tony," she said, with a pout, "I don't like that sort of joke, you
know."
"Sorry, Doodles."
"And don't call me Doodles any more. Call me Dorothy."
Olive was, of course, tremendously surprised by her friend's
announcement; but she tried not to show how much hurt she was by not
having been taken into her confidence beforehand.
"I wanted it to be a complete secret," Dorothy explained. "And I didn't
want all the papers in London to write a lot of rubbish about me."
"Darling, you can count on me as a pal to help you all I know. You've
only got to tell me what you want."
Dorothy pulled herself together to do something of which she was rather
ashamed, but for which she could perceive no alternative.
"Olive, I hate having to say what I'm going to say, and you must try to
understand my point of view. I never intend to go near the stage-door of
a theater again. I don't want to know any of my friends on the stage any
more. If you want to help me, the best way you can help me is not to see
me any more."
Clarehaven came into the room at this moment, and Dorothy rose to make
her farewells.
"Good-by, Olive," she said. "We're going down to Clare Court to-morrow,
and I don't expect we shall see each other again for a long time."
"I say," Clarehaven protested. "What rot, you know! Of course you'll
meet again. Why, Olive must come down and recover from her next illness
in Devonshire. We shall be pining for news of town by the spring, and--"
Lady Clarehaven looked at her husband, who was silent.
"Have you wired to your mother when we arrive to-morrow?" she asked.
"You're sure you won't drive down?"
"In January?" Dorothy exclaimed.
"Well, I've told the car to meet us at Exeter. That will only mean a
seventy-mile drive--you won't mind that--and we'll get to Clare before
dark."
"Forgive these family discussions in front of you," said Dorothy to her
friend. Then shaking her hand formally, she went out of the room.
During the drive up to town, while Clarehaven was sitting back playing
with his wife's wrist and looking fatuously content, he turned to her
once and said:
"Dorothy, you _were_ rather brutal with poor old Olive."
She withdrew her hand from his grasp, and not until he ceased condoling
with Olive did she let him pick it up again.
"And oh dear, oh lord, oh my!" he exclaimed, "we must have the jolly old
collie down at Clare."
"The collie?" she repeated. "What collie?"
"Your collie." He began to whistle the bewitching tune.
"Please don't. One hears it everywhere," she said, fretfully. "Olive
will look after the dog. She's just lost her Pekinese."