For once, in a way, fortune favored Dora. She managed to catch the
connecting train at Morecome Junction, and, as a consequence, arrived
at Crumplesea--tired and dusty, but still full of enthusiasm--at a
quarter to seven that same evening.
It was the night of the opening of the Crumplesea Opera House, and
she found the whole town placarded with gaudy posters of “The Beauty
of Gotham”--glaring, highly colored things, depicting women with
impossible tresses of an impossible shade of yellow, frisking about in
skirts above their knees.
But in that first glance she had seen the name, “Miss Rosalind
Montague-Vance,” emblazoned over the boldest and the most conspicuous
of them all, and she had felt an added shame because of that.
Not that she had any idea that the bearer of it could be in any way,
even the remotest, connected with herself--for there were hundreds of
“Vances” in the world; even Miss Skimmers having had more than one of
them enrolled among her pupils in Dora’s time--but that the knowledge
of there being a woman bearing a name the same as her own, who could
let her pictures be shown in public, made the shame of it seem a
personal matter.
“How it must shock poor little mother, if she has seen it, too,” she
said to herself. “Fancy having one’s name flaunted about by a creature
like that, and in the very town where one lives! It must be awful.”
The change of the five-pound note that had been sent her was still in
her pocket--there had not been time to stop anywhere and buy the new
frock she had been told to do--and hastily summoning a cabman to her
aid, she gave him the necessary directions, and was soon speeding away
to Minorca Villa with her shabby old valise on the top of the vehicle.
Her destination was a rather shabby little brick house in a side
street--there were such things as “apartments” to be had in Crumplesea,
and all the available ones were engaged for Mr. Milton Dante’s
company--and here at this flat-fronted, dejected-looking little
building, Dora’s long journey from Miss Skimmers’ seat of learning came
to an end.
“Come in, miss,” said the landlady--who opened the door in person.
“The maid, she’s away--’aving been sent a’ errand by your sweet ma.
You’re Miss Montague-Vance’s daughter, of course; anybody could see
that at a glance, for you’re the livin’ image of ’er. ’Ere, Sarah! come
and take the young lady’s luggage and carry it up to the room Miss
Montague-Vance selected for ’er. Come in, miss; your sweet ma, she’s
awaitin’ of yer--’aving but recent come back from a drive round the
town with Mr. Bodwin, as owns the opera ’ouse, and Mr. Dante, as runs
the company.”
All this was Greek to Dora. As a matter of fact, she hardly heard
it, for her mind was in a whirl between settling with the cabman and
realizing that she was now under the same roof with her unknown mother.
She scarcely knew what was said or done, until she was led down a short
and narrow passage, and the woman beside her was knocking at the door
before which they both stood.
“The young lady, mum,” said the woman, as, in answer to a nonchalant,
“Come in,” she turned the knob, and, letting a strong odor of Turkish
cigarettes stream out into the passage, thrust open the door, “the
young lady, mum, and I’m a-showin’ of ’er straight in like you asked.”
Dora waited for nothing more.
“Mother!” she said, with a little throb in her voice as she pressed
past the landlady and entered the room, shutting the door behind her.
It seemed so holy, this meeting for the first time since infancy with
the mother who had borne her! “It is I; it is Dora; it is----”
Here she stopped. The room was full of smoke, and through the dense
aromatic cloud, she saw a figure curled up in a deep armchair beside a
table littered with papers, magazines, and cigarette ashes--a figure
clad in a beautiful lace tea gown, and with a lovely, alluring face
framed in a loose mass of disheveled wine-gold hair.
“Oh! I beg your pardon,” said Dora, coloring and instinctively fumbling
for the knob of the door. “Such an absurd mistake. Pray forgive me; the
fault was not mine. I expected to find my mother here.”
“Well, so you have done. If you are Dora--and what an absurdly big
creature you have grown! I am your mother.”
“You? Absurd! Oh, pardon me, I don’t mean to be rude, but really this
is too silly. You can’t be more than a year or two older than I am
myself--and I am nearly eighteen years of age.”
“Nearly sixteen, please; I’ve told Dante that, and we may as well stick
to it. It’s bad enough to have to confess that I’m old enough to have a
daughter nearly sixteen, without adding two years to it, for the sake
of truth. What in the world has made you grow like this? Of course,
I know that your father was tall, but if I had thought that you were
as big and as old-looking as you are, I don’t believe I should had
have courage enough to send to that Skimmers woman for you--although I
don’t know; it’s worth something to have a dig at your aunt! What are
you staring at me like this for? For pity’s sake, sit down. Why didn’t
you get a new dress? I sent money for you to do so. But perhaps the
Skimmers woman didn’t give it to you? Did she? Why don’t you answer?
I hate people who stare and say nothing. Sit down and talk to me, for
goodness’ sake. I haven’t much time to waste with you, anyway; I’ve got
to be off to the theater in a few minutes. I’m opening the new opera
house to-night, you know--or, perhaps, you don’t know! But the town is
well billed, and if you have any eyes at all you must have seen my name
on the boardings.”
Dora drew back with a sudden influx of memory and with a shuddering
sense of repulsion. “Oh, you don’t mean--you can’t mean that you--you
are that woman? And that you are my mother as well?”
“Why can’t I mean it? Look here! that Skimmers woman hasn’t raised you
like some Puritanical old granny, has she? I’m going to put you on the
stage, you know, and have a ‘go’ at your spiteful aunt, in that way.
She always treated her brother and me very shabbily. I don’t suppose
you ever heard much about your father? Well, he was the unfortunate
stepbrother to the richest woman in this part of the country: Mrs.
Charles Bonair. He’s dead, by the way, so you won’t be worried by him.
Although I wrote her, she wouldn’t give a farthing to me. Stingy old
cat! I told her about you--oh, make no mistake about that--and I’ll
make her pay dear for what she has tried to do against me in this town.
She would not let sleeping dogs lie, and now that she has waked ’em up,
she’ll have to pay the price for it, if I know myself.”
Something that was like the pressure of a strong hand gripped Dora’s
throat. She did not speak; she could not--all strength, mental as
well as physical, seemed somehow to have died within her, and, in a
sort of collapse, she sank down on the edge of a convenient seat, and
stared dumbly at the shining figure before her; a sense of shuddering
repulsion biting into her soul and mirroring itself, in spite of her,
in her fixed eyes. For, somehow, this woman, her newly found mother,
reminded her of a snake curled up in rose leaves.
“Don’t stare at me like that or I shall throw something at you, in a
minute!” blazed wrathfully the object of her attention, reading that
look and starting suddenly up in a temper. “I can see how it is: you
hate me. No; don’t trouble yourself to tell a polite lie--that sort
of thing is wasted on me--and besides, the sentiment is reciprocated.
I think I never saw a more ill-favored, unlovable creature in my life!
It positively makes me ill to look at you, with your way of looking
at people as though they were dirt beneath your feet. Upon my soul,
I’m half inclined to send you back to where you came from and to have
nothing more to do with you.”
“I wish you would,” said Dora impulsively. “It was a hard life at Miss
Skimmers’ but--I wish you would.”
“Oh, do you? Well, I won’t, then! I’m not the kind of person to invest
in stocks and then tear up the certificates. I may be like a hen who
has hatched out an eagle’s egg, but--the eagle is of some use to me at
present, and I’m not going to have it kicked out of the nest, simply
because it desires that sort of thing. I’ve made all my arrangements
with Milt Dante, and I’m going to put you on the stage.”
“No, never!” said Dora, finding her voice suddenly. “I don’t want to go
on the stage; I prefer to be as I am.”
“Oh, do you? Well, perhaps you haven’t any voice in the matter. You are
under age, and I am your legal guardian, and it strikes me that you
are going to do as you are bid, whether it meets with your approval
or not. I’ve made all arrangements with Mr. Dante, and you are going
to appear here--in this very town--to-morrow night, and are going to
be ‘featured’ on the bill as ‘Miss Vance, the niece of Mrs. Charles
Bonair, of Thetford Towers,’ and you are going, in that character, to
lead the March of the Amazons and to wear as little as the law allows
in the way of dress.”
“I will never do it!” said Dora, starting to her feet, her whole body
shaking and her cheeks aflame, as she thought of the “ladies” she had
seen on the posters. “I don’t know whether you have told the truth or
not about my being the daughter of a gentleman, but--I will never do a
thing like that. I will run away first.”
The figure in the chair rose unsteadily, in a froth of lace and a
billow of roseate silk, and laughingly drained out the last drop from a
champagne bottle on the table and drank it.
“You won’t get the chance to run away,” she said, “I shall keep you
under my own eye until then. You will go with me to the theater
to-night, and I will put you under Milt Dante’s care whenever I am
obliged to leave you. As for your appearing on the stage to-morrow
night, you’ll do that if I have to chloroform you and have you carried
on. I’ll pay that woman for trying to shut me out of Crumplesea, make
no mistake about that. Now, come and help me dress; it’s time I was off
to the theater, and that fool of a Bodwin will be round here with his
carriage presently, to drive me there.”