"How kind of you, dear," she murmured, in an attempt to propitiate him before it was too late.
"Yes," Mr. Caffyn went on, apparently not in the least softened by the compliment. "In your interest I abandon for a whole hour my own work—the work of the society I represent, although, mark you, I knew full well that by so doing I should be kept in the office another whole hour after my usual time."
Dorothy looked sarcastically at her wrist-watch, and her father bellowed like a bull on the banks of that stream in midsummer.
"Silence, Norah!"
"Are you speaking to me?" she inquired. "Because if you are, I'd rather, firstly, that you spoke to me without shouting; secondly, that you didn't call me Norah; and thirdly, that you didn't say I was talking when I was only looking at my watch."
Mr. Caffyn, throwing up his head in a mute appeal for Heaven to note his daughter's unnatural behavior, swallowed a crumb the wrong way, the noisy attempts to rescue which allowed his wife a moment's grace to dab her forehead with a handkerchief; her tears, like thecrumb, had chosen another route, and the fresh tea was excessively hot.
"Where was I?" Mr. Caffyn demanded, indignantly, when he had disposed of the crumb.
"I think you'd just got to my bank, dear," his wife suggested, timidly.
"Ah yes! Well, Jones and I were going into the details of your investments, and I was just calculating what would be the amount of your extra income should I consent to your investing your capital in accordance with the advice of the Archdeacon of Brismouth, when Jones, who I may remarken passanthas been a friend of mine for twenty years and should know better, calmly informs me that without consulting your husband you have withdrawn five hundred pounds from your capital in order to fling it away upon your daughter. I thought he was perpetrating a stupid joke; but he actually showed me a record of this abominable transaction, and I had no alternative but to accept his word. I need hardly say that any chance I might have had of finishing off my work at the society vanished as far as this afternoon was concerned, and so"—here Mr. Caffyn became bitterly ironical—"I ventured to permit myself the luxury of a hansom-cab from the offices of your bank to the corner of Carlington Road, where the four-mile circle of fares terminates, and now, if you please, I should like an explanation of this outrage."
"The explanation is perfectly simple," Dorothy began.
"I was speaking to your mother, not to you. The money is hers."
"Precisely," said his daughter, "and that is the explanation."
"Dearest child," Mrs. Caffyn implored her, "don't aggravate dear father. We must admit that we were both very much in the wrong, particularly myself."
"Not at all," said Dorothy, quickly cutting short her father's sigh of satisfaction at the admission. "Not atall. We were both absolutely in the right. The transaction was a purely business one. Mother has allowed me twenty-five pounds a year since my seventeenth birthday."
"Mother has allowed you?" echoed Mr. Caffyn. "Even if we grant that this sum was technically paid out of your mother's income, you must understand that it should be considered as coming from me—from me, your father."
"You and mother can settle that afterward. It doesn't invalidate my argument, which is that such a lump sum is likely to be more useful to me at the beginning of my career on the stage than an annual pittance—"
"Pittance?" repeated Mr. Caffyn, aghast. "Do you call twenty-five pounds a pittance?"
"Please don't go on interrupting me," said Dorothy, coldly. "I'm now doing a calculation in my head. Twenty-five pounds a year is five per cent.—"
"Five per cent.!" shouted Mr. Caffyn. "Your mother was only getting three and a half per cent."
"Oh, please don't interrupt," Dorothy begged, "because this is getting very complicated. In that case mother owes me, roughly, about another two hundred and fifty pounds. However, we'll let that pass. You are both released from all responsibility for me, and if you both live more than twenty years longer you will actually be making twenty-five pounds a year out of this arrangement. In twenty years you'll be sixty-eight, won't you? Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't live to seventy-two, and if you do you'll make one hundred pounds out of me. So I don't think you can grumble."
"Dear child," sobbed Mrs. Caffyn, "I don't think it's very polite, and it certainly isn't kind, to talk about poor father's age like that. Let's admit we both did wrong and ask him to forgive us."
"I am not going into the question of right and wrong," replied Dorothy, loftily. "It's quite obvious to me that you have a perfect right to do what you like with yourown money and that I have a perfect right to avail myself of your kindness. Father's extraordinary behavior has made it equally clear to me that I can't possibly stay on in this house; in any case, the noise the children make in the morning will end by driving me away, and the sooner I go the better."
"I forbid you to speak to your parents like that," said Mr. Caffyn.
Dorothy could not help laughing at his authority, and he played his last card:
"Do you realize that you are not yet of age and that if I choose I can compel you to remain at home?"
"I don't think it would be worth your while," she told him, "for the sake of five hundred pounds, which in that case you'd certainly never see again. I don't want to break with my family completely, but if I find that your prehistoric way of behaving is liable to spoil my career, I sha'n't hesitate to do so."
Dorothy guessed that she had defeated her father; Mrs. Caffyn, too, must have guessed it, for she suddenly gasped:
"I think I must be going to faint."
And by summoning the memories of a mid-Victorian childhood she actually succeeded. Luckily her husband had eaten most of the cakes; so that when she was rescued from the wreck of the tea-table and helped up to her room only one sandwich was adhering to her best gown.
It is hardly necessary to say that Dorothy did not confide in the girls at the theater what had happened at home, but she let it be generally understood that she was now looking out for rooms, and she talked a good deal of where one could and where one could not live in a flat. About a week later Olive Fanshawe took her aside and asked if she was serious about moving into a flat at last;and, upon Dorothy's assuring her that she was, Olive divulged under the seal of great secrecy that a friend of hers, a man of high rank with much power and influence in the country, was anxious to do something for her.
"He's a strange man," she told Dorothy, "and though I know you'll think it's impossible for anybody to want to look after a girl in a flat without other things in return, he really doesn't make love to me at all. He gets tired of society and political dinners and the Palace."
"The Palace?" Dorothy repeated.
"Buckingham Palace. You didn't think I meant the Crystal Palace?" said Olive, with a laugh.
Dorothy, with Debrett for a footstool, when she chose to treat the volume thus, was offended by this raillery, and explained that she had only wished to know whether she meant St. James's Palace or Buckingham Palace.
"Darling, I was only teasing you.... Well, my friend wants to have a place where he can lunch quietly sometimes or have tea and forget about the cares of grandeur. You won't mind if I don't tell you his name, will you?"
Dorothy did mind extremely, but inasmuch as she had affected an air of mystery about herself and her origin, she felt she could not reasonably object to Olive's secrecy.
"He told me to find another girl to live with me," Olive continued, "and he said he would pay the rent of the flat and find all that's necessary in the way of decorations and furniture. I've been waiting such a long time for the right girl; I thought you didn't want to live up in town or I should have suggested it sooner. He's seen you from the front, and he admired you very much and couldn't understand why I didn't ask you at once."
Dorothy was struck by Olive's frankness and still more was she struck by her incapacity for jealousy. She could not think of any other girl who would have been so obviously pleased as Olive was to hear a friend admired by their own man. Three months at the Vanity had made Dorothy chary of believing the assertion that therewas nothing more between her and the mysterious great one than good-fellowship, because she was quite sure by now that all men expected more, and her judgment of Olive's character led her to suppose that Olive would be too kind to refuse him more. However, that was her business, and since there was evidently going to be a simulation of complete innocence about the transaction, no offer could have suited her better.
"My dear Olive," she said, "nothing could be nicer for me, and of course I happen to be one of the few girls who would or could understand that there is nothing in it. What a pity the weather's so wet for house-hunting."
"That's what the great man said, and he told me to hire an electric brougham until I've found the place I want."
"Of course," said Dorothy, as if the idea of searching for a flat outside an electric brougham, a rare luxury in those days, was inconceivable.
For a fortnight she and Olive glided here and there along the dim, wintry streets, until at last they noticed that the stiff Georgian houses at the far end of Halfmoon Street bulged out into an efflorescence of bright new flats, which on inspection seemed to provide exactly the address and the comfort they required.
"It's an awfully good address," said Dorothy. "Clarges Street would have been a little nearer to Berkeley Square, but...." She forgave the extra block or two with a gesture.
"It's so quiet," added Olive.
"And really not far from Devonshire House, though from Stratton Street we should have overlooked the garden."
"But we can take San Toy for her walks in Green Park." San Toy was Olive's Pekinese spaniel.
"I shall have my bedroom in apple green," Dorothy announced. "Apple green with rose-du-barri curtains; and you'd better have cream with café-au-lait in yours,unless you have eau-de-nil and sage.... I think the fourth-story flat was the nicest."
"Yes, it's more romantic to be high up," Olive agreed.
"And the light is better for one's dressing-table," Dorothy added.
In dread of a maternal attempt to bring about a reconciliation between herself and her father, Dorothy had hoped to avoid spending Christmas at home. But the flat could not be ready until February; so, partly to keep her mother quiet, partly because she was a little apprehensive of the paternal prerogative with which Mr. Caffyn had threatened her minority, she consented on Christmas morning to be kissed by his mustache. Perhaps he was more willing to forgive her owing to his wife's conduct of her financial affairs having provided an excuse to transfer them into his own hands.
Dorothy's absence from the last Christmas gathering at home had not sharpened her appetite for this kind of celebration, and she did not at all like the sensation of being in the bosom of her family; Gulliver was scarcely more disgusted by the Brobdingnagian maids of honor. Seizing the occasion to impress upon her younger brothers and sisters her disapproval of any inclination to boast about having a famously beautiful sister at the Vanity, she was mortified to learn that her career was regarded by the juniors as a slur upon their social standing. Cecil informed her bluntly that in his society—the society of industrious scholars at St. James's—actresses were regarded with horror, and that though an unpleasant rumor had pervaded the school of Caffyn's having a sister on the stage, he had managed to stifle such deleterious gossip. It seemed that the traditions of the preparatory school responsible for Vincent's budding social sense strictly forbade any allusion to family life in any form whatsoever; at Randell'sallrelatives were regarded as a disgrace, and only last term a boy had been called upon to apologize for the extraordinary appearance his motherhad presented at the prize-giving. Another boy, whose father was reputed to belong to the Royal Academy, had been forced to allay with largess of tuck the hostile criticism leveled against a flowing cravat his parent had worn at the school sports. As for sisters, Vincent affirmed, their very existence was regarded as a shameful secret; but a sister on the stage ... he turned away in despair of words to express what a humiliation that would bring upon him were it known. Agnes and Edna assured Dorothy they had far too many enthralling topics of conversation already to bother about her; but when one or two of the mistresses had inquired how she was getting on and had regretted that she was not acting in Shakespeare, they had certainly not revealed that she was now called Dorothy Lonsdale, because the real Dorothy was also an old girl; so that even if one of the mistresses in an unbridled moment should visit the Vanity, she would search for Miss Norah Caffyn upon the program and come away no wiser than she went.
Meanwhile, the decoration and furnishing of the flat went on in strict accordance with Dorothy's ideas, since she had better taste than Olive, who, besides, was too much afraid of spending another person's money. Dorothy had not yet been introduced to the great man, but she was sure that he would like Olive to have all she wanted, or, in other words, all she herself wanted. They moved in during February, and it was arranged that the first Sunday evening should be dedicated to the entertainment of their benefactor, who had returned to town for the opening of Parliament. About six o'clock on the evening in question Dorothy rose from a deliciously deep and comfortable Chesterfield sofa, looked round her affectionately at her own drawing-room aglow with chintz and daffodils, and in her bedroom, when she sat down in front of a triple mirror to do her light-brown hair before dressing for dinner, apostrophized her good fortune aloud, and admired herself more than ever.
Dorothy acknowledged to herself that Olive's great man surpassed her preconception of him kindled by dressing-room legends; at first she had been inclined to criticize her friend's occasional ventures into political prophecy as self-importance or girlish credulity; but as soon as she saw the source of them she admitted that this time Olive's romanticism was justified. Their guest was a tall, grizzled man, more military to the outward eye than political, and he treated Olive with just the god-fatherly manner she had led Dorothy to expect. She made a good deal of fuss over him in the way of finding cushions for his head and mixing his cocktail with extra care; but nothing in her obviously sincere affection conveyed a hint of cloaking another kind of emotion. Although the great man preserved his own anonymity, he talked so freely about people of whom Dorothy had often read in the papers that his absorbing conversation soon made her forget the strain upon her curiosity to know who he was. He approved of the way the flat had been decorated and complimented the two girls on their good taste, all the credit of which Olive at once ascribed to her companion. About eleven o'clock the great man passed his hand over his eyes in a way that seemed to hint at a deep-seated, perhaps an incurable, fatigue, and announced that he must be going to bed.
"Though, unfortunately," he added, "I must write one or two letters first at my club. Happy children," he said, turning to them in the hall and holding a hand of each. "We must try to meet next Sunday evening; but I'm dreadfully busy, and I may not be able to get away."
Turning up the collar of his fur coat, he told Olive not to ring for the lift and walked very wearily, it seemed to Dorothy, down the stairs of the flats.
"I don't want to be inquisitive," she said, when they were back in the drawing-room still haunted by the ghost of an excellent cigar. "But I should like to know who he really is."
"Dorothy," her friend begged, "it's the only stipulation he's made, and I don't think it would be fair to break it."
"You don't trust me," Dorothy complained.
"My dear, it isn't that; but I certainly should have to tell him that I told you, and I'm sure he wouldn't like it. After all, we ought to be very grateful for this jolly flat where we're perfectly free and have nothing to bother about. Remember what happened to Psyche."
Dorothy was inclined to add "and also to Fatima"; but since she could not pretend that the great man did in any way remind her of Bluebeard and since the flat undoubtedly was delightful, she did her best to restrain her curiosity, even though sometimes it irritated her like prickly heat.
"It's a pity he had to go away to write his letters at a club," she said.
"But he couldn't write from this address."
"No, but we could keep some plain paper for him," said Dorothy. "And that reminds me, what is your crest?"
Olive looked alarmed.
"I don't think I've got a crest," she said. "My father's a solicitor in Warwickshire."
"Warwickshire?" repeated Dorothy. "That's an odd coincidence. I wonder if he knows Lord Cleveden."
Olive shook her head vaguely.
"He knows a good deal about Warwickshire; in fact, he's writing a book calledWarwickshire Worthies. He's been writing it for years. Does Lord Cleveden come from Warwickshire?"
"Of course," said Dorothy, and then after a minute with a far-away look she added, "So do I."
"Oh, Dorothy, then there really is a mystery? I thought it was only dressing-room gossip."
"You have your secrets, Olive. Mayn't I be allowed mine? Though I suppose I haven't any legal right to it,I am going to put my crest on my note-paper, because I like the motto. It's a bugle-horn, and the motto isJ'y serai. I needn't translate it for you, as you went to a convent in Belgium."
Olive laughed affectionately at her friend's little joke, and they decided to reap the full advantage of a quiet Sunday by going to bed early.
"He's a great dear, isn't he?" said Olive by the door of her room.
"Oh, a great dear. How horrid it is that a man like that would be so misjudged by the world that he has to keep his name a secret. But, of course, I understand his point of view. I've had some experience of family pride, and it's a tremendous thing to be up against. However, it will be all the same a hundred years hence. Good night, darling. Your great man is a great, great success."
"I'm so glad you like him, Dorothy dear."
"I like him immensely."
Just before Dorothy got into bed she called out to her friend, who in a dressing-gown of amber silk hurried to know what she wanted.
"I only wanted to tell you that you simply must get this new tooth-paste. I like it immensely."
"Oh, I'm glad it's a success," Olive exclaimed.
"It's a great, great success."
Dorothy wondered when she was fading into sleep how long it would be before she should be able to recommend a tooth-paste to the world at large, recommend it in glowing words with a photograph of herself smiling at the delicious tube.
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 Vanitygirls 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 onlyhope 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 calledespièglerie. 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 inespièglerieher 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 hopedthat 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 RidgemountMansions 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 verytraffic 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 worldlycontempt 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 fineweather 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 doyousee attractive inher?"
"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. "Butif I avoid her, she'll despise me; and Idohate 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.
MULBERRYCOTTAGE,TINDERBOXLANE, W.DEARDOROTHY,—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.
MULBERRYCOTTAGE,TINDERBOXLANE, W.
DEARDOROTHY,—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 wasmuch 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 calledThe Point of Viewwith 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 inThe 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'lladd 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?"
"Youaresuccessful. In confidence, you'll be encouraged to hear that Richards expects a lot from you. Yes, he told my father. You've not seen Clarehavenlately?" 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 fromsinging 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.
The departure of Queenie Molyneux to the Frivolity had a more intimate bearing on Dorothy's future than the mere removal of a rival of the footlights to a safe distance: it gave her back Clarehaven.
That Savoy supper-party last Easter had not seemed likely at the time to lead to a situation even as much complicated as Dorothy's ambition to marry an earl. When Arthur Lonsdale escorted Queenie home afterward, he had probably counted upon such a climax to the entertainment; but he must have been astonished to hear from his friend next morning that Dorothy was not to be won lightly by a Savoy supper nor kept with the help even of the tolerably large income that friend enjoyed. From the moment that the immediate gratification of Clarehaven's passion was denied him, Lonsdale must have divined a danger of the affair's turning out serious, and he had obviously done all he could to discourage him from frequenting Dorothy's unresponsive company; she learned, indeed, from various sources that he was devoting his leisure to curing Clarehaven. Then suddenly the melody of Queenie's Pink Quartet enchained him, and he was always to be seen at the Frivolity. Long days cramming for the Foreign Office were followed by long evenings at the Frivolity and ... anyway, Queenie seemed to have decided she liked Lonsdale better than wealth. But if the melody of the Pink Quartet in "My Mistake" was an eternal joy, so, too, was the melody of the trio in "The Duke and the Dairymaid"; henceforth Clarehaven from his stall could nightly feed his passion for Dorothy without being subjected to the mockery and tutelage of his former companion. What between lunches at Verrey's and suppers at the Savoy it was not surprising that beforethe leaves had fallen from the London plane-trees he should have hung a necklace of pearls round her neck. Unfortunately, though Clarehaven showed his appreciation of Dorothy by figuratively robbing his coronet of its pearls, he did not go so far as to offer her the coronet itself; and when he suggested that she should leave Halfmoon Street for an equally pleasant flat round the corner, she was naturally very indignant and asked him what kind of a girl he thought she was.
"You don't care twopence about me," he said, woefully.
"How can I let myself care about you?" she countered. "You ought to know me well enough by this time to be sure that I would never accept such an offer as you've just made me. I know that you can't marry me. I know that you have your family to consider. In the circumstances, isn't it better, my dear Tony, that we should part? I'm dreadfully sorry that our parting should come after your proposal rather than before it. But horribly as you've misjudged me, somehow I can't bear you any ill will, and in token of my forgiveness I shall always wear these pearls. Pearls for tears, they say. I'm afraid that sometimes these old sayings come only too true."
"Yes, but I can't get along without you," protested Clarehaven.
She smiled sadly.
"I'm afraid you can get along without me in every way except one, only too easily."
"Why did you lead me on, if you weren't in earnest?"
"Lead you on?"
"You asked me back to the flat. You gave me every encouragement. Obviously somebody is paying for this flat, so why shouldn't I?"
"Lord Clarehaven!" exclaimed Dorothy, with the stern grandeur of an Atlantic cliff rebuffing a wave. "You have said enough."
She rang the bell and asked Effie, the maid whose attentions she shared with Olive, to show his lordshipthe door. His poor lordship left Halfmoon Mansions in such perturbation that he forgot to slip the usual sovereign into Effie's hand, and she cordially agreed with her mistress when he was gone that kind hearts are indeed more than coronets. Dorothy's simple faith in her own abilities had received such a shock that she began to cry; but it was restored by a sudden suspicion that she possessed a latent power for tragedy that might take her out of the squalid world of the Vanity into the ether of the legitimate drama. She had never suspected this inner fountain that grief had thus unsealed, and she let her tears go trickling down her cheeks with as much pleasure as a small boy who has found a watering-can on a secluded garden path.
"Don't carry on so, miss," Effie begged. "Men are brutes, and that's what all us poor women have to learn sooner or later. Don't take on about his lordship. A fine lordship, I'm sure. Give me plain Smith, if that's a lordship. Look at your poor eyes, miss, and don't cry any more."
Dorothy did look at her poor eyes, and immediately compromised with her emotions by going out and ordering a new dress. When she came back Olive, who had been given a heightened account of the scene by Effie, was exquisitely sympathetic; and the great man, when he was informed of Clarehaven's disgraceful offer, was full of good worldly advice and consolation.
"I think you can rely upon your powers of catalysis, Dorothy," he said.
She did not think her failure to understand such a strange word reflected upon her education, and asked him what it meant.
"In unchemical English, as unchemical as your own nice light-brown hair,youwon't change; but if I'm not much mistaken you'll play the very deuce with Master Clarehaven's mental constitution."
This was encouraging; if Dorothy's faith in her beautyand abilities had been slightly shaken by Clarehaven's omission to marry her, the loss was more than made up for by an added belief in her own importance and in the beauty of her character.
Among the men who sometimes came to the flat was a certain Leopold Hausberg, a financier reputed to be already fabulously rich at the age of thirty-five, but endowed with an unfortunately simian countenance by the wicked fairy not invited to his circumcision. He possessed in addition to his wealth the superficial geniality and humor of his race, and was not accustomed to find that Englishwomen were better able than any others to resist Oriental domination. Hausberg had not concealed his partiality for Lily, and Dorothy, in her desire to accentuate her own virtue, told Sylvia, soon after Clarehaven's proposal, that it would be useful for Lily to have a rich friend like that. Sylvia flashed at her some objectionable word out of Shakespeare and would not be mollified by Dorothy's exposition of the difference between her character and Lily's, although Dorothy took care to remind her of a remark she had once made when they were on tour together about the inevitableness of Lily's decline.
Dorothy had good reason, therefore, to feel annoyed with Sylvia when she found out presently that Sylvia was apparently working on Leopold Hausberg to do exactly what she herself had been so rudely scolded for suggesting. As much fuss was being made about Lily's behavior as if she had refused the dishonorable attentions of an earl; yet with all this ridiculous pretense Sylvia was taking care to do for Lily what she was either too stupid or too hypocritical to do for herself. If Lily's happiness lay in the devotion of vulgar young men, she might at least get the money she wanted for them out of Hausberg without letting a friend do her dirty work. When the continually cheated suitor approached Dorothy with complaints about the way Sylvia was managing the business she listened sympathetically to his hint thatSylvia was trying to keep Lily from him until she had made enough money for herself, and she took the first opportunity of being revenged upon Sylvia for the horrid Shakespearian epithet by telling her what Hausberg had said.
One Saturday night in November Olive and Dorothy came home immediately after the performance to rest themselves in preparation for a long drive in the country with the great man, who seldom had an opportunity for motoring and had made a great point of the enjoyment he was expecting to-morrow. They had not long finished supper when there was a furious ringing at the bell, and Hausberg, in a state of blind anger, was admitted to the flat by the frightened maid.
"By God!" he shouted to Dorothy. "Come with me!"
She naturally demurred to going out at this time of night, but Hausberg insisted that she was deeply involved in whatever it was that had put him in this rage, and in the end, partly from curiosity, partly from fear, she consented to accompany him. While they were driving along, Hausberg explained that he had at last persuaded Lily to abandon Sylvia and accept an establishment in Lauriston Mansions, St. John's Wood. He had furnished the flat regardless of expense, and this afternoon, when Lily was supposed to have been moving in, he had been sent the latch-key and bidden to present himself at midnight.
"Very well," said Hausberg between his teeth. "Wait until you see what.... You wait...." he became inarticulate with rage.
They had reached Lauriston Mansions and, though it was nearly one o'clock in the morning, a group of figures could be seen in silhouette against the lighted entrance, among which the helmets of a couple of policemen supplied the traditional touch of the sinister.
"Haven't you got it out yet?" Hausberg demanded of the porter, who replied in a humble negative.
"Whatareyou talking about?" Dorothy asked, and then with authentic suddenness she felt the authentic nameless dread clutching authentically at her heart. Why,itmust be a dead body; grasping Hausberg's arm and turning pale, she asked if Lily had killed herself.
"Killed herself?" echoed Hausberg. "Not she. I'm talking about this damned monkey that your confounded friends have left in my flat."
The porter came forward to say that there was a gentleman present who had a friend who he thought knew the address of one of the keepers of the monkey-house at the Zoo, and that if Mr. Hausberg would give orders for this gentleman to be driven in the car to his friend's address no doubt something could be done about expelling the monkey. The gentleman in question, a battered and crapulous cab-tout, presented himself for inspection, and one of the policemen offered to accompany him and impress the reported keeper with the urgency of the situation. While everybody was waiting for the car to return, the lobby of the flat became like the smoking-room of a great transatlantic steamer where travelers' tales are told, such horrible speculations were indulged in about the fierceness of the monkey.
"So long as it ain't a yourang-gatang," said one, "we haven't got nothing to be afraid of. But a yourang-gatang's something chronic if you can believe all they say."
"A griller's worse," said another.
"Is it? Who says so?"
"Why, any one knows there ain't nothing worse than a griller," declared the champion of that variety. "A griller 'll bite a baby's head off the same as any one else might look at you. A griller's worse than chronic; it's ferocious."
"Would it bite the head off of an yourang-gatang?" demanded the first theorist, truculently.
"Certainly it would; so when he's let out you'd better get behind George here so as to hide your ugly mug."
This caused a general laugh, and the upholder of the orang-utan seemed inclined to back his favorite with an appeal to force, until the porter interposed to prevent a squabble.
"Now, what's the good in arguing if it's a griller or a yourang-gatang?" he demanded, in a nasal whine. "All I know is it got my poor trouser leg into a rare old yourang-atangle when I was 'oppin it out of the front hall."
"Is there much damage done?" Hausberg asked.
"Damage?" repeated the porter. "Damage ain't the word. It looks as if there'd been a young volcano turned loose in the flat."
"But what I don't understand," Dorothy began, primly, "is why I have been brought into this."
Various ladies in light attire from the upper flats were beginning to peer over into the well of the staircase, and Dorothy was wondering if she were not being compromised by this midnight adventure.
"Let's get the monkey out first," said Hausberg, "and then I'll tell you why."
After listening for another three-quarters of an hour to disputes between the various supporters of the gorilla and the orang-utan, which extended to a heated argument about the comparative merits of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain, the car came back, and the intruder, which was announced to be a chimpanzee, was ejected by the keeper, and, after an attempt to hand it over to the police, shut up till morning in a boot-hole.
The flat presented a desolate spectacle when Dorothy and Hausberg entered it; the chimpanzee had smashed the ornaments, ripped up the curtains, tore the paper from the walls, and wrenched off all the lamp-brackets; he had then apparently been seized with a revulsion against the bananas and nuts strewn about the passage for his supper and had gnawed the porter's hat.
"Now," said Hausberg, sternly, to the owner of the hat, who was tenderly nursing it, "just tell this lady exactly what has happened here."
"Well, sir, about twelve o'clock this morning a gentleman drove up to the mansions with a crate and said he was a friend of Mr. Hausberg's and had brought him a marble Venus for a present, and I was to put it in the hall of the flat. I particularly remember he said a Venus, because I thought he said a green'ouse, which surprised me for the moment, and I asked him if he didn't, mean a portable aquarium, which is what my wife's brother has in the window of his best parlor."
"Go on, you fool!" Hausberg commanded. "We don't want to hear about your wife's brother."
"Well, I accepted delivery of this Venus and between us we got this Venus—"
"Don't go on rhyming like that," said Hausberg. "Tell the story properly in plain prose."
"Between us—I mean to say me and the lift-boy together—we deposited in the hall this crate which had a tin lining for the chim-pansy to breathe with according to instructions duly received. When I turned up my nose at this Venus, which smelled very heavy, the gentleman, who didn't give his name, explained that you was intending to use it for a hat-stand, and told us not to wait, as he'd unpack the crate hisself. I looked at him a bit hard, but he give me something for me and the boy between us before we come down-stairs again, and I thought no more about it. The gentleman drove off about ten minutes afterward with a friendly nod, and I was just sitting down to my dinner in the domestic office on the ground floor when the people underneath—of course you'll understand I'm referring to the flat now—the people underneath came down and complained that something must have happened over their heads, as the noise was something shocking and bits of the ceiling was coming down, or they said it would be coming down intwo two's if the noise wasn't stopped. Well, of course up I went to investigate, and when I opened the door and seed all the wall-paper hanging in strips I thought something funny must have occurred, and I felt a bit nervous and began swallering. Then all of a sudding, before I knew where I was, something had me by the trouser leg, and if I'd of been a religious man I'd of said right out it was the devil himself; but when I seed it was a great hairy animal I run for the front door and slammed it to behind me, it being on the jar for a piece of luck, because if it hadn't of been on the jar my calf was a goner."
"Why didn't you send for me at once?"
"Well, sir, how was I to know you hadn't put the chim-pansy there for the purpose?"
"Do you think I take flats for chimpanzees?" demanded Hausberg.
"No, sir, I don't, but if you'll pardon me, there's a lot of queer things goes on in these mansions, and I've learned not to interfere before I'm asked to, and sometimes not then. Only last week Number Fourteen got the D. T.'s on him and threw a sewing-machine at me when his young lady called me up to see what could be done about quieting him down. And now this here monkey has cost me a pair of trousers and a new hat with the name of the mansions worked on the front which I shall have to replace, and I only hope I sha'n't be the loser by it."
"Get out," snarled Hausberg.
He was in such a rage that he looked more like a large monkey than ever while he was striding in and out of every dismantled room; and Dorothy realized the extreme malice of the joke that had been played upon him.
"You know who did this?" he said to her, wrathfully.
She shook her head.
"Do you mean to tell me you don't know that it was your friend Lord Clarehaven?"
"Rubbish!" said Dorothy. "Why should he shut a chimpanzee inyourflat?"
"Your friend Clarehaven," Hausberg went on, "and that little swine Lonsdale are responsible for this; but when I tell you that they drove down this afternoon to Brighton with Lily and that cursed friend of hers—"
"How do you know?" she interrupted, with some emotion.
"You don't suppose I set a girl up in a flat without having her watched first, do you? When I buy," said Hausberg, "I buy in the best market. Here's the detective's report."
He handed her a half-sheet of note-paper written in a copperplate hand with a record of Lily's day, ending up with the information that she and her friend Sylvia Scarlett, accompanied by the Earl of Clarehaven and the Honorable Arthur Lonsdale, had driven down to Brighton immediately after lunch and reached the Britannia Hotel at five o'clock, "as confirmed per telephone."
"Well," said Hausberg, grimly, "Lily has been paid out by losing my protection, but, by God! I'll get even with the rest of them soon or late."
"You don't really think that I had anything to do with this?" asked Dorothy. "Why, I haven't seen either Clarehaven or Lonsdale for a month! I didn't even know that they had met Sylvia and Lily. They didn't meet them in Halfmoon Street. Why do you drag me here at this hour of the night?"
Hausberg seemed convinced by her denials, and his manner changed abruptly.
"I'm sorry I suspected you as well. I might have known better. I see now that we've both been made to look foolish. What can I do to show you I'm sorry for behaving like this? We're old pals, Dorothy. I was off my head when I came round here and they told me the trick that had been played on me. Damn them! Damnthem! I'll—But what can I do to show you I'm sorry?"
"You'd better invest some money for me," said Dorothy, severely.
"How much do you want?"
"No, no," she said. "I've got two hundred and fifty pounds that I want to invest; only, of course, I must have a really good investment."
"That's all right," he promised. "I'll do a bit of gambling for you."
They had left the flat behind them and were walking slowly down-stairs when suddenly from one of the doors on the landing immediately below a man slipped out, paused for a moment when he heard their footsteps descending, thought better of his timidity, hurried on down, and was out of sight before they reached the landing.
"Good Heavens!" Dorothy ejaculated, seizing her companion's arm.
"I'm afraid I've made you jumpy," he said. "Poor old Dorothy, I shall have to find a jolly good investment to make up for it."
Hausberg was quite his old suave self again; it was Dorothy who was pale and agitated now.
"It was nothing," she murmured; but it was really a great deal, because the man she had seen was Mr. Gilbert Caffyn, the secretary of the Church of England Purity Society.
Dorothy did not enjoy her motor drive that Sunday. It was pale-blue November weather with the sun like a topaz hanging low in the haze above the Surrey hills, but the knowledge that Clarehaven all this month, perhaps even for longer, had been carrying on with Lily and Sylvia when she had taken such care to keep them apart tormented her beyond any capacity to enjoy the landscape or the weather. Heartless treachery, then, was the result of being kind to old friends—and oh, what an odious world it was! There would have to be a grand breaking of friendships presently—yes, and a grand dissolutionof family ties as well, for, at any rate, in the midst of this miserable and humiliating affair she had at least been granted the consolation of catching out her father, which might be useful one day. Olive wondered, when the great man left them after supper, why Dorothy had been so gloomy on the drive. She had told the story of the chimpanzee so well, and the great man had laughed more heartily over it than over anything she could remember. Why was Dorothy so sad? Was there something she had left out? Surely on Hausberg's mere word she was not thinking anything horrid about Sylvia's going for a drive with Clarehaven? They had probably just driven down to Brighton for dinner to laugh over the chimpanzee.
"I shall see Sylvia once more," said Dorothy, "and that will be for the last time."
"But I'm sure you'll find Hausberg has made everything appear in the worst light," Olive protested. "I'm sure Sylvia would never snatch a man away from any girl."
"I don't understand how you can go on being friends with me and yet defend her," said Dorothy.
Olive begged her dearest Dorothy to wait for Sylvia's explanation before she got angry with herself, and on Monday afternoon Sylvia of her own accord came to the flat.
"I know everything," said Dorothy, frigidly.
"Then for Heaven's sake tell me what Hausberg said when he opened the door and saw the chimpanzee. Did he say, 'Are you there, Lily?' and did the chimpanzee answer with a cocoanut?"
"Chimpanzee," repeated Dorothy, wrathfully. "You who call yourself my friend deliberately set out to ruin my whole life, and when I reproach you with it you talk about chimpanzees!"