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 espièglerie. 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 espièglerie 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.