She was, by now, the leading musical comedy exponent of demureness, with Chown as her undroppable pilot; and Pate, Darley and a procession of stage managers who had steered less ably than that devoted pair were forgotten’ rungs on the ladder she had climbed. She kept her head about things more yeasty, in her microcosm more demoralizing, than the war; she kept her head about success and kept it about men. She rode vanity on the snaffle because she was herself ridden by ambition.
Once the ambition had been trivial, once she had aimed no higher than a house in Staithley as big as Walter Pate’s, but she had grown since then and, with her, ambition grew, rooted in something older than her vanity or than herself, rooted in the Bradshaw hatred of the Hepplestalls. Secretly she nursed her ambition to possess a great house on Staithley Edge, high, dominating the town of the Hepplestalls, a house to make the old Hall look like a cottage, a house where she would live, resuming her name of Bradshaw, eclipsing the Hepplestalls in Staithley.
In eyes accustomed to the London she had conquered, the Hepplestalls dwindled while Mary Arden, star, looked very big. There was veritable conspiracy to augment her sense of self-importance and even the newspapers, as the war degenerated into routine, gave of their restricted space to say, repeatedly, that Mary Arden was a “person.” To such an one, her ambition seemed no foolishness, but it wasn’t to be done just yet—nor by practicing such crude economies as those of her first cheese-paring tour. Dress mattered to her now; it belonged with her position like other sumptuosities inseparable from a position which was itself a symbol of extravagance. She rode the whirlwind of the war, a goddess of the Leave Front, dressing daintily as men would have her dress, but if there was lavishness at all it was for professional purposes only. It was lavishness corrected by prudence, lavishness calculated to maintain a position which was to lead her to a house in Staithley Edge. She was a careful spendthrift, and she was careful, too, in other ways. The dancing and the dining, the being seen with the right man at the right places—these were not so much the by-products of success as its buttresses; and to be expert in musical comedy acting implies expertness in the technique of being a gay companion. She exercised fastidious selectiveness, but, having chosen, gave her company at costly meals to young officers who returned to France swaggering in soul, mentioning aloud with infinite casualness that they had lunched with Mary Arden. It was tremendously the thing to do: one might be a lieutenant in France but one had carried a baton in London: and one didn’t, even when the sense of triumph led one to the mood of after-dinner boasting, hint that there was anything but her company at meals or at a dance to be had from Mary Arden. The Hepplestalls were going to find no chink in her immaculate armor when she queened it over them from her great house on the hill, but to suggest that mere pride was the motive of her continence is to do her an injustice.
Socially as well as theatrically, then, she had her vogue and nothing seemed to threaten it; yet Mr. Rossiter had the strange caprice to be not wholly satisfied with Mary Arden. As a captain of the light entertainment industry, he was doing exceedingly well out of the war; he had a high opinion of the Colonial soldiery; the young British officer was hardly behind the Colonial private in his eagerness to occupy Mr. Rossiter’s stalls, and at times when leave was suspended the civilian population filled the breach in its very natural desire for an antidote to anxiety. Surely he was captious to be finding fault anywhere, last of all with Mary Arden? But Hubert Rossiter did not hold his position by taking short views or by seeing only the obvious, and he sent for Mr. Chown to discuss with him the shortcomings of his client, Miss Arden.
“Sit down, Lexley,” he said. “Have you read that script I sent you?”
Mr. Chown produced from a neat attaché-case the typescript of Mr. Rossiter’s next play, with a nod which managed to convey, besides mere affirmation, his deep admiration of the inspired managerial judgment.
“Well, now,” said Rossiter briskly, “about Mary Arden. There’s, every musical reason why I should cast her for Teresa in this piece. She can sing the music. Leslie’s the alternative and Leslie can’t sing it. The question is, can Mary act it?”
Mr. Chown’s geese were not swans: he knew that his clients, even if they were his clients, had limitations. “I saw her in the other part as I read it, Hubert,” he fenced.
“The flapper part isn’t worth Mary’s salary. Now, is it? Seriously, I’m troubled about Mary.”
“What’s the matter with her?”