The Vanity Girl Part 22

"Nothing whatever," Dorothy agreed.

Lonsdale retired with a shrug, and a day or two later Lord Clarehaven's departure for Mombasa was duly recorded in the _Morning Post_. Dorothy's self-importance had been so deeply wounded by the manner in which Lonsdale had commented upon her position in the world that for some time she could scarcely bear to meet people, and she even came near to relinquishing the publicity of the stage, because she began to feel that the nightly audience was sneering at her discomfiture. The gift of a set of Russian sables from Hausberg and the news that her investments were prospering failed to rouse her from the indifference with which she was regarding life. All that had seemed so rich in the flat now merely oppressed her with a sense of useless display. The continual a.s.surances she received that only the melodious trio had saved "The Duke and the Dairymaid" from being something like a failure gave her no elation. Her silks and sables were no more to her than rags; her crystal flasks of perfumes, and those odorous bath-salts, in which the lemon and the violet blended so exquisitely the sharp with the sweet, had lost their savor; even her new manicure set of ivory-and-gold did not pa.s.s the unprofitable hours so pleasantly as that old ebony set of which she had been so proud in West Kensington, it seemed a century ago. Lonsdale by his att.i.tude had made her feel that the luxury of her surroundings was not the natural expression of a personality predestined to find in rank its fit expression, but merely the stock-in-trade of a costly doll.

It was Tufton who provided Dorothy with a new elixir of life that was worth all the scent in Bond Street, and a restorative that made the most pungent toilet vinegar insipid as water.

"I don't think you ought to take it so badly," he said. "Shooting the rhino for the sake of a woman is better than throwing the other kind of rhino at her head. It shows that he's pretty badly hit."

"The rhino?" asked Dorothy, with a pale smile.

"No, no," protested Tufton, shocked at carrying a joke too far.

"Clarehaven. Wait till he comes back. If he comes back as much in love as he went away you'll hear nothing more about flats round the corner.

Curzon Street is also round the corner, don't forget, and my belief is that you'll move straight in from here."

"You're a good pal, Harry."

"Well, I don't think my worst enemy has ever accused me of not sticking to my friends."

This was true; but then Mr. Tufton did not make friends lightly. Old walls afford a better foothold to the climber than new ones.

When Dorothy pondered these words of encouragement she cheered up; and that night John Richards, who had watched her performance from the stage-box, told his sleeping partner that he intended to bring her along in the next Vanity production.

"She gets there," he boomed. "Goo' gir'! Goo' gir'!"

V

Dorothy indulged her own renewed _joie de vivre_ by investigating the glimpse of her father's private _joie de vivre_ vouchsafed to her that night in St. John's Wood, and without much difficulty she found out that for the last two years he had been maintaining there a second establishment, which at the very lowest calculation must be costing him 400 a year. It was not remarkable that he had wanted to obtain a higher rate of interest on his wife's capital. His daughter debated with herself how to play this unusual hand, and she decided not to lead these black trumps too soon, but to reserve them for the time when they might threaten her ace of hearts and that long suit of diamonds. At present she was not suffering the least inconvenience from her family, and since she went to live in Halfmoon Street it had not been her habit to visit Lonsdale Road more often than once a month. These visits, rare as winter sunshine in England, were not much warmer: the family basked for a while in the radiance of Dorothy's rich clothes, but they soon found that clothes only give heat to the person who wears them, and since Dorothy did not encourage them to follow the sun like visitors to the azure coast, they made the best of their own fireside and avoided any risk of taking cold by depending too much on her deceptive radiance.

Meanwhile, Hausberg had turned Dorothy's 250 into 500 by nothing more compromising than good advice; and by March, to celebrate her twenty-first birthday, the 500 had become 2,000. Not even then did Hausberg ask anything from her in return; occasionally a dim suspicion crossed her mind that a profound cause must lie underneath this display of good will, and she asked herself if he was patiently, very patiently, angling for her; but when time went by without his striking, the suspicions died away and did not recur. Moreover, her financial adviser was engaged in dazzling Queenie Molyneux with diamonds, to the manifest chagrin of Lonsdale, who had let the liaison between himself and Queenie come to mean much more to him than he had ever intended that evening at the Savoy. In the end his mistress was so much dazzled by the diamonds that she put on rose-colored spectacles to save her eyes and, looking through them at Hausberg, decided to accept his devotion. Lonsdale took the theft of his love hardly; whatever chance he might have had of entering the Foreign Office disappeared under an emotional strain that in so round and pink a young man was nearly grotesque. This seemed to Dorothy a suitable moment to repay evil with good, and when, shortly afterward, she saw the disconsolate lover gloomily contemplating a half-bottle of Pol Roger '98 on a solitary table at the Savoy she went over to him and offered to be reconciled.

He squeezed Dorothy's hand gratefully, sighed, and shook his head.

"I can't keep away from the old place. Every night we used to come here and--" The recollection was too much for him; he could do nothing but point mutely to the half-bottle.

"That makes you think," he said, at last. "After the dozens of bottles we've had together, to come down to that beastly little dwarf alone."

"And you've failed in your examination, too?" inquired Dorothy, tenderly rubbing it in.

"Just as well, Doodles, just as well. I should be afraid to attach myself even to an emba.s.sy at present."

The band struck up the music of the Pink Quartet.

"Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "This is too much. Here, Carlo, Ponto, Rover--What's your name?"

The waiter leaned over obsequiously.

"Here, take this fiver with my compliments to Herr Rumpelstiltzkin and ask him to cut out that tune and give us the 'Dead March' instead."

"Why not the 'Wedding March'?" asked Dorothy, maliciously.

"I give you my solemn word of honor," said Lonsdale, "that if only Queenie--well, I think I can get up this hill on the top speed--if I were the first, I _would_ marry Queenie. You know, I'm beginning to think Tony made rather an a.s.s of himself, buzzing off like that to Basutoland or wherever it is. By the way, has it ever struck you what an anomaly--that's a good word--I got that word out of a _precis_ at my crammer's. It's a splendid word and can be used in summer and winter with impunity, what? Has it ever struck you what an anomaly it is that you can get a license to shoot big game and drive a car, but that you can't get a license to shoot Hausbergs? Well, well, if Queenie had your past and your own future and could cut out some of the presents, by Jove! I would marry her. I really would."

Dorothy said to herself that she had always liked Arthur Lonsdale in spite of everything, and when he asked her now if her friends were not waiting for her she told him that they could wait and gratified the forsaken one by sitting down at his table.

"Of course, when Queenie and I parted," he went on, "she made it absolutely clear to me that this fellow Hausberg meant nothing to her; in fact, between ourselves, she rather gave me to understand that things might go on as they were. But you know, hang it! I can't very well do that sort of thing. The funny thing is that the more I refuse, the more keen she gets. I mean to say it is ridiculous, really, because of course she can't be very much in love with _me_. To begin with, well, she's about twice my height, what? No, I think I shall have to go in for motor-cars. They used to be nearly as difficult to manage as women not so long ago, but they seem to be answering to civilization much more rapidly. It's a pity somebody can't blow along with some invention to improve women. Skidding all over the place, don't you know, as they do now ... but I cannot understand why Hausberg should have fixed on Queenie. I always thought he was after you, and I'm not sure he isn't.

Did you turn him down?"

"He has only been helping me with some investments."

"I never heard of a Jew helping people with their investments just for the pleasure of helping."

"I had money of my own to invest," Dorothy explained. "Family money."

"Lonsdale money, in fact, eh?" laughed the heir of the house.

"Well, if you really want to know, it is Lonsdale money. Money left in trust for me by my grandmother, who was a Lonsdale. I know you laugh at this, but it's perfectly true."

"Oh no, I don't laugh at you," said Lonsdale. "I never thought you were a joke. In fact, I asked the governor if he could trace anything about your branch in the family history. But the trouble with him is that he's not very interested in anything except politics. Frightfully narrow-minded old boy. He's been abroad most of his life, poor devil.

He's out of touch with things."

Dorothy thought that if her Lonsdale ancestry could appear sufficiently genuine to induce the heir of the family to consult his father about it there was not much doubt of its impressing the rest of the world. It happened that among the party with which she was supposed to be supping that night was a young Frenchman with some invention that was going to revolutionize the manufacture of motor-cars. She decided to introduce him to Lonsdale, and a month or two later she had the gratification of hearing that Lord Cleveden had been persuaded to allow his son the capital necessary to begin a motor business in which the Frenchman, with his invention, was to be one of the partners, and a well-known professional racing-motorist another. The firm expressed their grat.i.tude to Dorothy not only by presenting her with a car, but also by paying her a percentage on orders that came through her discreet advertis.e.m.e.nt of their wares. If Clarehaven came back now and asked Lonsdale what she had been doing since he left England, surely he would no longer try to d.a.m.n the course of their true love.

Just after Dorothy and Olive had left town for their holiday in July the great man died suddenly, and, naturally, Olive was very much upset by the shock.

"Never mind," said Dorothy. "Luckily I've made some money, so we needn't leave the flat."

"I wasn't thinking of that point of view," Olive sobbed. "I was thinking how good he'd always been to me and how much I shall miss him."

"Well, now you can tell me who he was," Dorothy suggested, consolingly.

"No, darling, oh no; this is the very time of all others when I wouldn't have anybody know who he was."

Dorothy, however, searched the papers, and she soon came to the conclusion that the great man was none other than the Duke of Ayr. Such a discovery thrilled her with the majesty of her retrospect, and she fancied that even Clarehaven would be a little impressed if he knew who Olive's friend was:

John Charles Chisholm-Urquhart, K.T., 9th and last Duke of Ayr; also Marquess and Earl of Ayr, Marquess and Earl of Dumbarton, Earl of Kilmaurs and Kilwinning, Viscount Dalry and Dalgarven, Viscount of Brackenbrae, Lord Urquhart, Inverew, and Troon, Baron Chisholm, Earl Chisholm, Baron Hurst, Baron Urquhart of Coylton, Lord Urquhart of Dumbarton, and Baron Dalgarven.

The last Duke of Ayr! n.o.body in the world to inherit one of all those splendid t.i.tles! Not even a d.u.c.h.ess to survive him!

The press commented just as ruefully as Dorothy upon the extinction of another n.o.ble house. Dukes and dodos, great families and great auks, one felt that they would soon all be extinct together.

"It's a great responsibility to marry a peer," Dorothy thought.

She gently and tactfully let Olive know that she had found out the ident.i.ty of the great man, and they went together to stand for a minute or two outside Ayr House, where the hatchment, c.r.a.pe-hung, was all that was left of so much grandeur and of such high dignities and honors. Nor did Dorothy allude to the duke's omission to provide for Olive in his will, though, being a bachelor without an heir, he might easily have done so. No doubt death had found him unprepared; but the funeral must have been wonderful, with the pipers sounding "The Lament" for Chisholm when the coffin was lowered into the grave.

"I'm very glad they're closing 'The Duke and the Dairymaid' this week,"

said Dorothy. "I should hate to see that t.i.tle now on every 'bus and every h.o.a.rding."

The Vanity's last production had not been such a success as either of its two predecessors, and many people about town began to say that if John Richards was not careful the Frivolity was going to cut out the Vanity. Therefore in the autumn of 1905 a tremendous effort was made to eclipse all previous productions with "The Beauty Shop." Early in August John Richards sent for Dorothy, gave her a song to study, and told her to come again in a week's time to let him hear what she made of it. To print baldly the words of this great song without the melody, without the six beauties supporting it from the background, without the entranced scene-shifters and the bewitched audience, without even a barrel-organ to recall it, is something like sacrilege, but here is one verse: