The Vanity Girl Part 10

"You have no ambitions for tragedy?"

"No," she told him. "I think there's enough tragedy in ordinary life."

"Would you recommend the stage as a profession?" he inquired.

"Rather a difficult question. It depends so much on the girl."

"Quite," agreed the young man, wisely. "But have you any advice for beginners?"

"My advice is to be natural," said Dorothy.

"Quite," agreed the young man again.

"Natural both on the stage and off," she added.

The young man, with an air of devout concentration, wrote down this valuable maxim, while Dorothy, looking at herself in the mirror, allowed various expressions of delicious naturalness to stand the test of her own critical observation.

"With whom did you study?" the interviewer inquired next.

"Princ.i.p.ally with the late Mrs. Haden," said Dorothy, feeling very generous in mentioning Lily's mother after the way the daughter had behaved with Tom Hewitt. "A delightful teacher of the old school, now, alas! no longer with us."

The young man shook his head sadly.

"But my real lessons," Dorothy added, brightly, lest the loss of Mrs.

Haden to art might be too much for the interviewer's emotions--"my real lessons were derived from watching famous actresses. No famous actress, continental or English, ever came to London whom I did not go to see. I often went without"--she paused to think what she could have gone without, for it might sound absurd to say that she went without clothes--"I often walked," she corrected herself, "in order to have the necessary money to buy a seat."

"That'll interest our readers very much," said the young man. "Yes, that's the personal note which always appeals to our readers." He sucked his pencil with relish. "And who is your favorite actress?"

"In England or abroad?"

"Oh, in England," the young man hurriedly explained; probably he was jibbing at the prospect of having to write a foreign name.

"In England, Ellen Terry, decidedly," Dorothy replied.

"Quite"; the young man sighed with relief. "Perhaps you would care to give me a photograph of yourself," he suggested.

"With pleasure," she said, taking from the mantelpiece one that she had sent her mother about a month ago.

"Of course," the interviewer hemmed, nervously, "that will be twelve and sixpence for the cost of reproduction."

"Twelve and six?" repeated Dorothy.

"The block will cost twelve and sixpence, that is to say."

"Twelve and six?" she repeated once more.

But she gave him the money; controlling her annoyance at the idea that this young man might be making a profit out of her innocence, she conducted him cheerfully to the door and presented him with a tulip from one of Dolly's flower-pots.

"You're fond of gardening?" he asked, with half-open note-book.

"I adore flowers," said Dorothy. "Good-by."

To her mother she explained the sad necessity she had been under of having to give away her favorite photograph.

"But, mother, I'll write for another one," she promised.

"Oh, Norah dear, I hope you will," said Mrs. Caffyn, much distressed.

"Only, as they're rather expensive, you won't mind giving me a guinea, will you?" Dorothy murmured, with a frown for the old "Norah."

"No, darling Norah--darling child, I mean, of course not. I'd no idea you were spending your salary like that," said Mrs. Caffyn, searching in her purse for the money.

That evening, during the first act a note was sent round to Dorothy from Wilfred Curlew to say that he had been to see her every night this week, and that he had persuaded a friend of his to give her some publicity in a magazine with which he was connected.

"At a cost of twelve and six," Dorothy scoffed to herself.

She did not send a word of thanks to Wilfred, and being unable from the stage to perceive his presence anywhere in the theater, she supposed that, having been there every night this week, he must by now have reached the gallery.

When the interview appeared the other girls were very jealous, and all of them vowed that they had never heard of _The Boudoir_.

"With a blush Miss Lonsdale handed our interviewer an exquisite bunch of flowers culled by the beautiful young actress from her garden, a 'thing of beauty' in the dreary desert of London streets," read out one of the girls.

"Good G.o.d, have mercy on us!" exclaimed Clarice Beauchamp, holding a hairpin dipped in eye-black over the gas. "It's a wonder the editor hasn't written before now to ask if he can't keep you."

The irritation in the dressing-room caused by the interview was allayed by a rumor that John Richards would visit the Alexandra Theater, Stoke Newington, where they were playing their last week in the suburbs, with a view to choosing girls for the Vanity production in the autumn. No confirmation could be obtained of this; but the chorus put on extra make-up and acted with all its eyes and all its legs for a shadowy figure at the back of one of the private boxes. After the first act the business manager, who had come behind for some purpose, was surrounded by all the girls, each of whom in turn begged him to tell her confidentially what Mr. Richards had said about the show and if he had had any criticisms to make about herself.

"Mr. Richards?" repeated the manager.

"Now, don't pretend you know nothing about it," they expostulated. "_We_ know he's in front."

"Well, you know more than I do," said the manager.

"Then who is it at the back of the box on the prompt side?"

"You silly girls! That's the late mayor of Hackney."

"Then why do they make such a fuss of him?" persisted the girl who had started the rumor. "There was a carriage outside the box-office half an hour before the overture, and people were all round it, staring as if it was the king."

"It's a very sad story," the manager explained. "He's blind, poor fellow, and now, whenever he goes to the theater, they watch him being helped out of his brougham."

During the second act not an eye nor a leg was thrown in the direction of the mysterious stranger, whose ident.i.ty was a great disappointment to the girls; they had counted on Mr. Richards visiting them in the course of the tour, and here it was coming to an end without a sign of him.

However, they were consoled by being told at the last minute that they were going to play three nights at Oxford before the tour came to a definite conclusion. Everybody agreed that it would be a delightful way to wind up, and when the company a.s.sembled at Paddington on a brilliant morning in earliest June, they seemed, in the new clothes they had been able to buy during the last month in London, more like a large picnic-party going up to Maidenhead than a touring company.

Dorothy had decided that the visit to Oxford was an occasion to justify breaking into the 500 she had got out of her mother, which was still practically intact, owing to the economy exerted all these weeks. Her new dresses and new hats, combined with that interview in _The Boudoir_, gave the rest of the chorus an impression that there was somebody behind Dorothy, and they regarded her with a jealous curiosity that was most encouraging.

IV