The Vanity Girl Part 27

"One gets these little fads living in the depths of the country."

"Of course," Dorothy agreed, planning with herself some similar fad for the near future.

The lamp was lighted; the windows changed from sapphire to indigo as the jewel changes when it is no longer held against the light; in the golden glow the walls of the room broke into blossom, it seemed. Dorothy, reacting from Mr. and Mrs. Caffyn's taste in domestic decoration, had supposed that all well-bred and artistic people devoted themselves to plain color schemes such as she had elaborated in the Halfmoon Street flat; but here was a kind of decoration that, though she knew instinctively it could not be impeached on the ground of bad taste, did astonish her by its gaudiness. Such a prodigality of brilliant red-and-blue macaws, of claret-winged pompadouras and birds of paradise swooping from bough to bough of such brilliant foliage; such sprawling purple convolvuluses and cleft crimson pomegranates on the trellised screen; such quaint old china groups on the mantelpiece; such tumble-down chairs and faded holland covers; and everywhere, like fruit fallen from those tropic boughs, such vividly colored b.a.l.l.s of wool.

"Oh," exclaimed Dorothy, divining in a flash of inspiration how to make the most of her totem, "it's exactly like my grandmother's room!"

"I am fond of my little den," said the dowager, "and as long as you so kindly want me to stay on at Clare I hope you won't turn me out of it."

Dorothy expostulated with a gesture; she would have liked to show her appreciation of the room in some perfect compliment, but she could think of nothing better than to suggest sharing it, a prospect that she did not suppose would attract her mother-in-law.

"I feel a dreadful intruder," she sighed.

"My dear child, please. I might have known that Tony would have chosen well for himself, and I do hope you understand--I tried to explain to you in my letter--how old-fashioned and out of the world we are down here. My husband was a very quiet man, and for the last ten years of his life a great invalid. The result was that I scarcely appreciated how things had changed in the world, and I foolishly fancied that Tony was just as much of a country cousin as myself. His sudden departure to Africa like that came as a great shock to me. One scarcely realizes down here that there is such a place as Africa." Heaven and her wall-paper were the only scenes of tropical luxuriance in the imagination of which the dowager indulged herself. "And, of course, my mother was very much upset at the idea of the marriage."

Dorothy started. Was there, then, a super-dowager to be encountered?

"I see that Tony has not told you about her. Chatfield Hall, where my brother lives, whom you will learn to know and love as Uncle Chat, is only fifteen miles from Clare."

Dorothy did not know how to prevent her mother-in-law's perceiving her mortification; to think that in her long study of Debrett she had omitted to make herself acquainted with what was therein recorded of the family of Fanhope! Really she did not deserve to be a countess!

"My mother," went on the dowager, "who as you've no doubt guessed is now an extremely old lady, was inclined to blame me for Tony's choice. She has always been accustomed to expect a good deal from her children. Even Uncle Chat has never yet ventured to introduce a motor-car to Chatfield.

So you must not be disappointed if at first she's a little brusk. Poor old darling, she's almost blind, but her hearing is as acute as ever, and oh dear, I am so glad you have a pretty voice."

"Did you think I should have a c.o.c.kney accent?" Dorothy asked.

"Well, to be frank, the contingency had presented itself," the dowager admitted. "And I am so glad you don't use too much scent. I know everybody uses scent nowadays, but my mother, whose sense of smell is even more acute than her hearing, abominates scent. It does seem so ironical that she should have kept her sense of smell and almost lost her sight. You mustn't be frightened by her; but if you are you must remember that we're all frightened by her, which ought to be a great consolation. I thought we would drive over and see her to-morrow. It would be nice to feel that the ice was broken."

"Even if I do get rather wet," Dorothy laughed.

The dowager smiled anxiously; she was not used to extensions of familiar phrases, and her daughter-in-law's remark made her sharply aware that a stranger was in the house.

"You think you'd rather wait a day or two before you go?" she suggested.

"Oh no, I think we ought to go and see Lady Chatfield as soon as possible," said Dorothy.

"I'm so glad you agree with me."

"I'm rather sensitive where mothers are concerned," said Dorothy.

She felt that now was her moment to win the dowager immovably to her side. There was something in the atmosphere of this gay little room, some intimacy as of a garden long tended by a gentle and lonely soul, that invited a contribution from one who was privileged to enter it like this. Dorothy felt that the room needed "playing up to." The medium that tempted her was the fairy-tale; a room like this was meant for fairy-tales.

"I told you, didn't I, that this room reminded me of my grandmother's room, and what you tell me about Lady Chatfield reminds me a little of her character. My grandmother was a Lonsdale, a descendant of a younger branch of the Cleveden Lonsdales. Her husband was an Irish landowner called Doyle who was involved somehow with political troubles. I don't quite know what happened, but he lost most of his money and died quite suddenly soon after my mother was born. My grandmother came back to England with her little daughter and settled down in Warwickshire, her native county. When my mother was quite young--about twenty--she fell in love with my father, who was reading for Holy Orders in the neighborhood. My grandmother opposed the match, but my mother ran away, and my father, instead of becoming a clergyman, took up rescue work in the slums."

"A fine thing to do," the dowager commented, approvingly.

"Yes, but unfortunately my grandmother was very proud and very unreasonable. She never forgave my mother, although she had me to live with her until I was eleven, when she died. I was brought up in the depths of the country and ever since I have always longed to get back to it. I used to ride with friends of my grandmother. One of them was the Duke of Ayr. Did you ever meet him? He died the other day, but of course I hadn't seen him for many years."

"I did meet him long ago," said the dowager. "He was a great influence for good in the country."

"Oh, a wonderful man," Dorothy agreed. "Well, the few family heirlooms my grandmother still possessed were left to me, together with a small sum of money, which I'm sorry to say my father spent. That was my excuse for going on the stage. I told him that it was his fault and his fault only that I had to earn my own living. But the rescue work had affected his common sense. He turned me out of the house. I lived for a whole year on fifty pounds. But I was determined to succeed, and when I met Tony and he asked me to marry him I refused, because I had grown proud.

You can understand that, can't you? Tell me, dear Lady Clarehaven, that you can understand my anxiety to prove that I could be a success.

Besides, when I was a child the estrangement between my mother and my grandmother had greatly affected my imagination. I didn't want to find myself the cause of estranging another mother from her son. Have you forgiven me? Do you think that you will ever love me?"

The dowager wept and declared that as soon as her own mother was pacified she should make it her business to reconcile Dorothy with hers.

"Oh no," cried Dorothy, "that's impossible. My father must learn a little humility first. When he has learned his lesson I will be reconciled with my family, but meanwhile haven't you a place in your heart for me?"

The dowager, so far as it was possible for a small woman to perform the action with one so much taller than herself, clasped Dorothy to her heart.

"How I wish my husband were alive to be with us this evening," she exclaimed.

It was probably as well that he was not; if he had been, neither age nor decency would have intervened to prevent the fourth earl from making love to his daughter-in-law. The fifth earl interrupted any further exchanges of confidences by bursting into the room to protest against his wife's desertion.

"Your mother has been so sweet to me, Tony," she said.

"Of course she has," he answered. "She knows what I've had to go through to bring off this coup."

"Indeed," the dowager confessed, "I never suspected he had such determination. Dear old boy, it only seems yesterday that he was such a little boy, and now--" She broke off with a sigh and patted him on the shoulder.

"Your mother and I have just decided that it would be best if I am presented to Lady Chatfield to-morrow," Dorothy announced.

"What?" cried Clarehaven. "No. Look here! Steady, mother! I'm absolutely against that. I'm sorry to appear the undutiful grandson and all that, but really, don't you know, I must discourage her a bit. I didn't bring Dorothy down to Clare to be buzzing over to Chatfield all the time.

We'll get Uncle Chat over here to dinner one night, and that'll be quite enough."

The dowager looked appealingly at her daughter-in-law, who at once took matters into her own hands.

"Don't be absurd, Tony. Of course we shall go to-morrow."

He would have continued to protest, but his wife fixed him with those deep-brown eyes of hers.

"Now, don't go on arguing, there's a dear boy, or your mother will think we do nothing but quarrel."

Tony was silent, and the dowager regarded her daughter-in-law with open admiration. She had never seen one of the males of Clare or Fanhope quelled so completely since the days when she was a little girl and saw her own fierce old mother quell her husband.

That night in the bridal chamber of Clare the fifth earl chose a not altogether suitable costume of pink-silk pajamas in which to give utterance to his plans for the future. If Dorothy had been beautiful in the dowager's bower, she was much more fatally beautiful now in a dishabille of peach bloom and with her fawn-colored hair glinting in the candle-light against the dark panels of this ancient and somber room.

When Clarehaven began to walk up and down in the excitement of his projects she went slowly across to a Caroline chair with high wicker back, sitting down in which she waited severely and serenely until he had finished. Tony might prance about in his pajamas, but he was no more free than a colt which a horse-breaker holds in tether to be jerked down upon his four legs when he has kicked his heels long enough.

"I didn't marry you," her husband was protesting, "to come and live down here and be ruled by Grandmother Chatfield. I don't give a d.a.m.n for my grandmother; she's a meddlesome old woman who ought to have been dead ten years ago. As for Uncle Chat, he bores me to death. He can only talk about cigars and pigs. Look here, Doodles, we're going to stay here three or four more days, and then we're off to the Riviera. We'll make Lonnie come with us and drive down through France--topping roads--and I want to try the pigeons at Monte. After that I thought we'd go to Cairo, or perhaps we might go to Cairo first and take Monte on the way back.

Anyway, Curzon Street will be ready by the beginning of May. I'm having it devilishly comfortably done up. I didn't tell you about that; it's going to be the most comfortable house in London. I tried every chair myself in Waring's. I'm sorry I had to bore you at all with my family, but I'm awfully fond of my mother, and I knew she wouldn't be happy till she'd seen you, and all that. Well, now it's done, and we can buzz on again as soon as possible."

"Any more plans?" asked Dorothy.

"No, I thought we'd go up to Scotland for August, and after that I don't see why we shouldn't have a good shoot here in September. But I haven't thought much about next autumn."

"That's where I'm cleverer than you," said his wife. "I've not only thought about next autumn, but about next week, and about next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, too. Listen, old thing.

When you first met me you wanted to put me in a little flat round the corner, didn't you? Please don't interrupt me. You couldn't understand then why I wouldn't accept your offer; I don't think you really understand very much better even now. London for me doesn't exist any longer. How you can possibly expect me to go away from this glorious place, which I already love as if I'd lived here all my life, to tear about the Continent with you as if I wasn't your wife at all, I don't know. If you don't realize what you owe to your name, I realize it. I don't choose that people should say: 'There goes that a.s.s Clarehaven who married a girl from the Vanity. Look at him!' I don't choose that people should point you out as my husband. I choose to be your wife, and I intend that all your family--and when I say your family I mean your mother's family, too--shall go down on their knees and thank G.o.d that you did marry a Vanity girl, and that a Vanity girl knew what she owed to her country in these dreadful days when common Radicals are trying to destroy all that we hold most sacred. I want you to take your place in the House of Lords, when you've lost that trick of talking to everybody as if they were waiters at the Savoy. Why, you don't deserve to be an earl!"

"My dear thing, you mustn't attach too much importance to a t.i.tle. You must remember...."