The Vanity Girl Part 23

When your head is in a whirl.

And your hair won't curl, And you feel such a very, very ill-used girl.

_Chorus._ Little girl!

Then that is the time-- _Chorus._ Every time! Every time!

To visit a Bond Street Beauty Shop.

_Chorus._ To visit our Bond Street Beauty Shop.

And when you come out, And you're seen about In the places you formerly frequented-- _Chorus._ On the arm of her late-lamented.

Why every one will cry, Oh dear, oh lord, oh my!

There's Dolly with her collie!

All scented and contented!

_Chorus._ She's forgotten the late-lamented.

For Dolly's out and about again, She doesn't give a d.a.m.n for a shower of rain.

Here's Dolly with her collie!

And London! _Chorus._ Dear old London!

London is itself again!

"Goo' gir' said Mr. Richards when Dorothy had finished and the dust in his little office in the cupola of the Vanity had subsided. "Goo' gir'.

I thi' you'll ma' a 'ice 'ihel hit in that song."

The impresario was right: Dorothy did make a resounding hit; and a more welcome token of it than her picture among the letterpress and advertis.e.m.e.nts of every ill.u.s.trated paper, the dedication of a new face-cream, and the christening of a brand of cigarettes in her honor, was the reappearance of Clarehaven with character and complexion much matured by the sun of Africa, so ripe, indeed, that he was ready to fall at her feet. She received him gently and kindly, but without encouragement; he was given to understand that his treatment had driven her to take refuge in art, the result of which he had just been witnessing from the front of the house. Besides, she told him, now that Olive's friend was dead, she must stay and look after her. People had misjudged Olive and herself so much in the past that she did not intend to let them misjudge her in future. She was making money at the Vanity now, and she begged Lord Clarehaven, if he had ever felt any affection for her, to go away again and shoot more wild animals. Cupid himself would have had to use dum-dum darts to make any impression on Dorothy in her present mood.

Such n.o.bility of bearing, such wounded beauty, such weary grace, could only have one effect on a man who had spent so many months among hippos and black women, and without hesitation Clarehaven proposed marriage.

Dorothy's heart leaped within her; but she preserved a calm exterior, and a sad smile expressed her disbelief in his seriousness. He protested; almost he declaimed. She merely shook her head, and the desperate suitor hurried down to Devons.h.i.+re in order to convince his mother that he must marry Dorothy at once, and that she must demonstrate, either by visit or by letter, what a welcome his bride would receive from the family. Clarehaven lacked eloquence, and the dowager was appalled. Lonsdale was telegraphed for, and presently he came up to town to act as her emissary to beg Dorothy to refuse her son.

"It'll kill the poor lady," he prophesied. "I know you're not wildly keen on Tony, so let him go, there's a dear girl."

"I never had the slightest intention of doing anything else. You don't suppose that just when I've made my first success I'm going to throw myself away on marriage. You ought to know me better, Lonnie."

Lonsdale was frankly astonished at Dorothy's att.i.tude; but he was glad to be excused from having to argue with her about the unsuitableness of the match, because he did sincerely admire her, and, moreover, had some reason to be grateful for her practical sympathy at the time of his break with Queenie Molyneux. He went away from Halfmoon Street with rea.s.surances for the countess.

It was at this momentous stage in Dorothy's career that Mr. Caffyn, awed by the evidence of his daughter's fame he beheld on every side, chose to call for her one evening at the stage-door with a box of chocolates, in which was inclosed a short note of congratulation and an affectionately worded request that she would pay the visit to her family that was now long overdue. Dorothy pondered for a minute her line of action before sending down word that she would soon be dressed and that the gentleman was to wait in her car. When she came out of the theater and told the chauffeur to drive her to West Kensington, Mr. Caffyn expressed his pleasure at her quick response to his appeal. They drove along, talking of matters trivial enough, until in the silence of the suburban night the car stopped before 17 Lonsdale Road.

"Good-by," said Dorothy.

"You'll come in for a bit?" asked her father, in surprise.

"Oh no; you'll be wanting to get to bed," she said.

"Well, it's very kind of you to drive me back," Mr. Caffyn told her, humbly. "Very kind indeed. You'll be interested to know that this is a much nicer motor than the Bishop of Chelsea's. He was kind enough to drive me back from the congress of Melanesian Missions the other day, and so I'm acquainted with his motor."

"He didn't drive you to Lauriston Mansions, did he?" Dorothy asked.

The sensitive springs of the car quivered for a moment in response to Mr. Caffyn's jump.

"What do you mean?" he stammered.

"Oh, I know all about it," his daughter began, with cold severity. "It's all very sordid, and I don't intend to go into details; but I want you quite clearly to understand once and for all that communication between you and me must henceforth cease until I wish to reopen it. It's extremely possible, in fact it's probable, in fact I may say it's certain that I'm shortly going to marry the Earl of Clarehaven, and inasmuch as one of the charms of my present position is the fact that I have no family, I want you all quite clearly to understand that after my marriage any recognition will have to come from me first."

Mr. Caffyn was too much crushed at being found out in his folly and hypocrisy to plead his own case, but he ventured to put in a word for his wife's feelings and begged Dorothy not to be too hard on her.

"You're the last person who has any right to talk about my mother. Come along, jump out, father. I must be getting back. I've a busy day to-morrow, with two performances."

The sound of Mr. Caffyn's pecking with his latch-key at the lock was drowned in the noise of the car's backing out of Lonsdale Road. Dorothy laughed lightly to herself when she compared this interview with the one she had had not so many months ago about the 500, which, by the way, she must send back to her mother if Hausberg advised her to sell out those shares. No doubt, such a sum would be most useful to her father with his numerous responsibilities.

"And now," she murmured to herself, "I see no reason why I shouldn't meet Tony's mother."

VI

Dorothy had not been entirely insincere with Lonsdale in comparing marriage with success to the detriment of marriage. Success is a wonderful experience for the young, in spite of the way those who obtain it too late condemn it as a delusion; few girls of twenty-one, luxuriously independent and universally flattered, within two years of going on the stage would have seen marriage even with an earl in quite such wonderful colors as formerly. Fame may have its degrees; but when Dorothy, traveling in her car, heard errand-boys upon the pavement whistling "Dolly and her Collie" she had at least as much right to feel proud of herself as some wretched novelist traveling by tube who sees a young woman reading a sixpenny edition of one of his works, or a mother whose dribbling baby is prodded by a lean spinster in a tram, or a hen who lays a perfectly ordinary egg and makes as much fuss over it as if it were oblong.

It was certain that if Dorothy chose she could have one of the two princ.i.p.al parts in the next Vanity production and be earning in another couple of years at least 60 a week. There was no reason why she should remain in musical comedy; there was no reason why she should not take to serious comedy with atmosphere and surrept.i.tious curtains at the close of indefinite acts; there was no reason why some great dramatist should not fall in love with her and invert the usual method of s.e.xual procedure by laying upon her desk the offspring of their spiritual union. The possibilities of the future in every direction were boundless.

At the same time even as a countess her starry beams would not necessarily be obscured. As Countess of Clarehaven she might have as many pictures of herself in the ill.u.s.trated papers as now; she could not give her name to face-creams, but she might give it to girls' clubs: one countess had even founded a religious sect, and another countess had ...

but when one examined the history of countesses there was as much variety as in the history of actresses. And yet as a Vanity countess would it not be most distinguished of all not to appear in the ill.u.s.trated papers, not to found sects and dress extravagantly at Goodwood? Would it not be more distinguished to live quietly down in Devons.h.i.+re and make no more startling public appearances than by sometimes opening a bazaar or judging a collection of vegetables? Would it not be more distinguished to be the mother of young Lord Clare and Lady Dorothy Clare, and Lady Cynthia Clare, and the Honorable Arthur Clare.... Dorothy paused; she was thinking how improper it was that the younger sons of an earl should be accorded no greater courtesy than those of a viscount or a baron, when his daughters were ent.i.tled to as much as the daughters of a duke or a marquess. And after all, why shouldn't Tony be created a marquess? That was another career for a countess she had omitted to consider--the political hostess, the inspiration and amanuensis of her husband's speeches to the House of Lords. Some infant now squalling in his perambulator would write his reminiscences of a great lady's _salon_ in the early years of the twentieth century, when the famous Dorothy Lonsdale stepped out of the public eye, but kept her hold upon the public pulse as the wise and beautiful Marchioness of Clarehaven. The second Marquess of Clarehaven, she dreamed; and beneath this heading in a future Debrett she read below, "Wife Living of the First Marquess. Dorothy (Marchioness of Clarehaven)"; if Arthur Lonsdale married well, that marchioness might not object to one of her younger daughters marrying his eldest son.

Dorothy started. How should she herself be recorded in Debrett?

"Dorothy, daughter of Gilbert Caffyn"? Even that would involve a mild falsification of her birth certificate, and if her sister Dorothy married that budding young solicitor from Norbiton they might take action against her. She hurriedly looked up in Debrett and _Who's Who_ all the other actresses who had married into the peerage. In Debrett their original names in their stark and brutal ugliness were immortally inscribed; but in _Who's Who_ their stage names were usually added between brackets. "The Earl of Clarehaven, _m._ 1905 Norah _d._ of G.

Caffyn (known on the stage as Dorothy Lonsdale)." Ugh! At least she would not advertise the obvious horror of her own name so blatantly. She would not be more conspicuous than "Norah (Dorothy) _d._ of G. Caffyn."

But how the girls at the theater would laugh! The girls at the theater?

Why should the girls at the theater be allowed any opportunity of laughter--at any rate in her hearing? No, if she decided to accept Tony she should obliterate the theater. There should be no parade about her marriage; she would be married simply, quietly, and ruthlessly.

At the Vanity, Dorothy and her collie were a ravis.h.i.+ng success; but she was a better actress off the stage than she was on, and she had soon persuaded herself that she really was still uncertain whether to accept Clarehaven's hand or not. The minor perplexities of stage name and real name, of town and country life, of publicity and privacy as a countess, magnified themselves into serious doubts about the prudence of marrying at all, and by the month of December Clarehaven was nearly distracted by her continuous refusals of him. The greater favorite she became with the public the more he desired her; and she would have found it hard to invent any condition, however flagrantly harsh, that would have deterred him from the match. Tufton almost went down on his knees to implore her to marry the lovesick young earl, his greatest friend; and even Lonsdale talked to Dorothy about her cruelty, and from having been equipped a month ago with invincible arguments against the match, now told her that in spite of everything, he thought she really ought to make the poor lad happy.

"He's as pale as a fellow I b.u.mped in the back last Thursday, cutting round Woburn Square on the wrong side," he declared.

"No, he's not so sunburnt as he was," Dorothy agreed.

"Sunburnt? He's moonburnt--half-moonburnt--starburnt! But sunburnt! My dear Doodles, you're indulging in irony. That's what you're doing."

"I don't see why I should marry him when his mother hasn't even written me a letter. I don't want his family to feel that he's disgracing them by marrying me. If Lady Clarehaven will tell me with her own lips that she'll be proud for her son to marry me, why, then I'll think about it."

"No, really, dash it, my dear girl," Lonsdale expostulated. "You're being unreasonable. You're worse than a Surrey magistrate. Let the old lady alone until you're married and she has to make the best of a bad bargain."

"Thanks very much," Dorothy said. "That's precisely the att.i.tude I wish to guard myself against."

Lonsdale's failure to soften Dorothy's heart made Clarehaven hopeless; he reached Devons.h.i.+re to spend Christmas with his family in a mood so desperate that his mother began to be nervous. The head-keeper at Clare Court spoke with alarm of the way his lords.h.i.+p held his gun while getting over stiles.

"Maybe, my lady, that after lions our pheasants seem a bit tame to his lords.h.i.+p, though I disremember as I ever saw them wilder than what they be this year--but if you'll forgive the liberty, my lady, a gun do be as dangerous in Devons.h.i.+re as in Africa, and 'tis my belief that his lords.h.i.+p has summat on his mind, as they say."

A shooting accident upon a neighboring estate the very day after this warning from the keeper determined Lady Clarehaven to put her pride in her pocket and write to Dorothy.

CLARE COURT, DEVON,

_January 2, 1906_.