"I do think it's mean of you," expostulated the real Dorothy, bursting into tears.
Norah would not allow anybody to come and see her off at Euston on Christmas morning, and Mr. Caffyn, who did not at all like the idea of a four-wheeler's waiting outside his house on such a day, helped his daughter's plans by marshaling the whole family for church half an hour earlier than usual, so that the farewells were said indoors. Lily had left the flat a fortnight ago and, having been staying in some Bloomsbury lodgings recommended by her sister, was to meet her friend at the station. At a quarter to eleven, amid the clangor of church bells, the cab of Norah Caffyn turned out of Lonsdale Road into the main street of West Kensington, and at noon on the platform at Euston Miss Lily Haden wished a Merry Christmas to Miss Dorothy Lonsdale.
CHAPTER II
I
THE ostriches of northern Patagonia are said to indulge in co-operative nesting: half a dozen hens one after another proceed to lay in a shallow cavity numerous eggs, the incubation of which is left to a male bird. Similarly, for the consummation of a musical comedy half a dozen lyrists, librettists, and composers lay their heads together in a shallow cavity and leave the result of their labor to be given life by a producer. "Miss Elsie of Chelsea," not being an exceptional musical comedy, will not repay a more thorough analysis. The first act developed in a painter's studio; in the second act everybody from the models in the chorus to the millionaire and his daughter whom the painter wanted to marry were transported to Honolulu. It was produced at the Vanity Theater under Mr. John Richards's management in the early autumn of the year 1902, and for many seasons it attracted large audiences all over the civilized world.
During the first fortnight of the tour, a fortnight of unending rain in Manchester, Dorothy, as she must be called henceforth, was inclined to think that life on the stage was not much more exciting than life in West Kensington, and certainly twice as tiring. It was holiday time, with two performances a day for eight days, and only in the second week—or more strictly in the third week, for Boxing Day fell upon a Friday that year—was she able to look about her in the small world where she must spend the next six months of her existence. She soon came to the conclusion that such an environment would not be tolerable for longer, and she made up her mind to escape from touring as soon as possible into a London engagement.
While she was still rehearsing in town she had paid one or two visits to the Vanity Theater, partly because it pleased her to hand in a card inscribed, "Miss Dorothy Lonsdale. Mr. Walter Keal's Miss Elsie of Chelsea Co.," but chiefly with the object of studying the demeanor, dress, appearance, and talents of the various members of the Vanity chorus, especially of the show-girls. The result of her observations was a strong belief that she was as graceful, as well able to set off clothes, as beautiful, and as good an actress as any of them. At the same time, she had begun to hear girls in the company talk about "getting across the footlights" and had realized that her own personality's powers of projection were still untested. If at the end of the tour it was brought home to her that with all her qualities "off" she lacked the most important one of all "on," she should immediately retire from the stage forever. The life itself did not attract her, and to spend years growing older and older in the environment of a provincial company seemed to Dorothy wilful self-deception; liberty at such a price would be worse than a comfortable servitude to suburban convention.
When on that wet Christmas morning at Euston she had seen the companions to close contact with whom she was bound for six months—a polychromatic group of crude pink complexions, mauve veils, electric seal, and exaggerated boots, looking in the mass like a shop-window in a second-rate thoroughfare, the sort of shop-window that has bundles of overcoats hanging outside the doorway, which indeed the men resembled—she had felt a sudden revulsion from them all, which those days in Manchester had done nothing to cure.
The first fortnight's bills for board and lodging had already shown Dorothy that existence on a guinea a week was not going to be easy; if she were ever engaged for London, she should require money to dress herself well at the beginning of her career, and it was imperative to save every penny she possibly could now in order to preserve intact the £500 she had obtained from her mother. An immediate economy would be effected in their weekly expenses if she and Lily could persuade another girl to share lodgings with them, and Dorothy began to study the ranks of the chorus for a suitable partner. Of course, from a social point of view she would have preferred to live with one of the principals, but the principals had not yet paid any attention to her, and she would not risk making advances first; besides, their standard of living might be too high for one who did not intend to waste money on the provinces. But when she considered her companions of the chorus, the dreadful language many of them used, the outrageous stories they told at the top of their voices, and, worst of all, their cockney accents, Dorothy shrank from extending the enforced intimacy of the dressing-room to her weekly home. This problem had not been solved when on the third Sunday after Christmas the company left Manchester for Birmingham, and by the newly arranged order of traveling Miss Dorothy Lonsdale found herself allotted to share a compartment with Miss Lily Haden, Miss Fay Onslow, and Miss Sylvia Scarlett.
Miss Onslow was unmistakably the senior member of the chorus and had reached the happy period of an actress's life when she has no more need to bother about keeping her reminiscences too nicely in focus. She was, in fact, as even she herself admitted, not far off forty; in a railway train on a wet January afternoon the kindest observer would have assumed that her next landmark was fifty. A month ago Dorothy would have shuddered to find herself on an equality with such a person; but asperous is the astral road, and she had to make the best of Miss Onslow by treating her with at least as much cordiality as she would have shown to a small dressmaker from whom she wanted a dress by the end of the week. Gradually, as her new surroundings became familiar, Dorothy had brought herself to call Miss Onslow "Onzie," and though the abbreviation made her gorge rebel as from cod-liver oil, she bravely persevered. Instinctively she knew that this was the only woman in the chorus whose counsel she could trust, the only one who would honestly tell her if she looked better with or without an artificial teardrop. The sum of Onzie's experience was hers for the asking; the middle-aged actress was an academician of grease-paint, serving alike as a warning and an example to the student; while her knowledge of the various towns in which the company had dates was evidently profound. Already she had provided Dorothy with an address for Birmingham; but these rooms to be enjoyed without the prickings of extravagance required a third partner. Dorothy, anxious to profit still further by Onzie's experience, suggested that she should join Lily and herself; but that very experience for which the novice was greedy made the old professional shake her head: