“Do you remember Victoria Deane?” Sylvia asked.
“Of course I do. She made a big hit and then got married and left the stage. A sweetly pretty little thing, she was. But, as I was saying, dear, in all my experience I never knew two fair girls get through a tour together without falling out, two girls naturally fair, that is, and you mark my words, Lily Haden and Dolly Lonsdale will have a row.”
Sylvia was anxious to avert this, because she would have found it hard to choose between their rival claims upon her. She was fonder of Lily, but she was very fond of Dorothy, and she believed that Dorothy might attain real success in her profession. It seemed more worth while to take trouble over Dorothy; yet something warned her that an expense of devotion in that direction would ultimately be, from a selfish point of view, wasted. Dorothy would never consider affection where advancement was concerned; yet was it not just this quality in her that she admired? There would certainly be an unusual exhilaration in standing behind Dorothy and helping her to rise and rise, whereas with Lily the best that could be expected was to prevent her falling infinitely low.
“How I’ve changed since I left Philip,” she said to herself. “I seem to have lost myself somehow and to have transferred all my interest in life to other people. I suppose it won’t last. God forbid I should become a problem to myself like a woman in a damned novel. Down with introspection, though, Heaven knows, observation in ‘Miss Elsie of Chelsea’ is not a profitable pastime.”
Sylvia bought an eye-glass next day, and though all agreed with one another in private that it was an affectation, everybody assured her that she was a girl who could wear an eye-glass with advantage. Lily thought the cord must be rather a bore.
“It’s symbolic,” Sylvia declared to the dressing-room.
“I think I’ll have my eyes looked at in Sheffield,” said Onzie. “There’s a doctor there who’s very good to pros. I often feel my eyes are getting a bit funny. It may be the same as Sylvia’s got.”
The tour was coming to an end; the last three nights would be played at Oxford, to which everybody looked forward. All the girls who had been to Oxford before told wonderful tales of the pleasures that might be anticipated. Even some of the men were heard to speculate if such or such a friend were still there, which annoyed those who could not even boast of having had a friend there two years ago. The jealous ones revenged themselves by criticizing the theatrical manners of the undergraduate, especially upon the last night of a musical comedy. One heard a great deal of talk, they said, about a college career, but personally and without offense to anybody present who had friends at college, they considered that a college career in nine cases out of ten meant rowdiness and a habit of thinking oneself better than other people.
Sylvia, Lily, and Dorothy had rooms in Eden Square, which was the recognized domain of theatrical companies playing in Oxford. Numerous invitations to lunch and tea were received, and Sylvia, who had formed a preconceived idea of Oxford based upon Philip, was astonished how little the undergraduates she met resembled him. Dorothy managed with her usual instinct for the best to secure as an admirer Lord Clarehaven, or, as the other girls preferred to call him with a nicer formality, the Earl of Clarehaven. He invited her with a friend to lunch at Christ Church on the last day. Dorothy naturally chose Sylvia, and, as Lily was already engaged elsewhere, Sylvia accepted. Later in the afternoon Dorothy proposed that the young men should come back and have tea in Eden Square, and Sylvia divined Dorothy’s intention of proving to these young men that the actress in her own home would be as capable of maintaining propriety as she had been at lunch.
“We’ll buy the cakes on the way,” said Dorothy, which was another example of her infallible instinct for the best and the most economical.