The Vanity Girl Part 7

Instinctively she knew that this was the only woman in the chorus whose counsel she could trust, the only one who would honestly tell her if she looked better with or without an artificial teardrop. The sum of Onzie's experience was hers for the asking; the middle-aged actress was an academician of grease-paint, serving alike as a warning and an example to the student; while her knowledge of the various towns in which the company had dates was evidently profound. Already she had provided Dorothy with an address for Birmingham; but these rooms to be enjoyed without the p.r.i.c.kings of extravagance required a third partner. Dorothy, anxious to profit still further by Onzie's experience, suggested that she should join Lily and herself; but that very experience for which the novice was greedy made the old professional shake her head:

"No, thank you, ducky," she said. "I always live alone nowadays. You see, I've got my own little peculiarities. Besides, when my best boy comes down to see me he likes to see me alone. When I was with the 'Geisha' crowd last year I obliged one of the girls by sharing rooms with her in Middlesbrough, and as luck would have it George selected Middlesbrough to pay me a little visit. He was really very aggravated indeed, and he said to me, 'Fay,' he said, 'whatever's the use of me coming all the way up to Middlesbrough if I can't ever see you?' So I had to tell the other girl--Lexie Sharp her name was--that the arrangement didn't work, and what do you think she did? Well, if you'll believe me, she went about telling everybody that I was jealous of her over George! Luckily for me she was a girl who was very well known for her tongue and n.o.body paid any attention to her; still, it was uncomfortable for me, though I deserved it for breaking one of my rules.

Who knows? George may come up to Birmingham. It's just the sort of place he would select for a visit, because, being a London fellow, he feels out of it in too small a town. Of course, he has nothing to do with the stage himself. Oh dear me, no, nothing whatever! He lives at Tulse Hill with two aunts, one of which has a growth in the throat and may go off at any moment, which prevents George working, as she's so particular about having him always close at hand. Well, any one ought to understand an aunt's feelings--I'm sure I can--but some of the girls last year used to criticize him something dreadful behind my back, until really I was glad to say good-by to them all. But this seems a much nicer crowd we're in now."

"We've only been in it a fortnight," said Miss Scarlett from the other corner of the carriage.

Dorothy looked at the speaker curiously. She was a girl who had joined the company for the last three rehearsals and during this first fortnight in Manchester had kept herself apart. Lily had spoken to her once or twice, but Dorothy, who was afraid there might be an unpleasant reason for such deliberate seclusion, had begged Lily not to be in too great a hurry to make friends with her. During Onzie's monologue Miss Scarlett had apparently been unconscious of what was happening in the compartment, and from the corner opposite Lily she had been staring out at the landscape, that was scarred and grimed and misshapen by industry like the hands of the toilers who lived in it. She was different from all the other girls, Dorothy was thinking--rather foreign-looking with her deep, brown, slanted eyes and ma.s.s of untidy brown hair, her wide nose, high cheek-bones, and distinctly ugly mouth, the underlip of which only just escaped protruding. She was dressed, too, in a style that was quite unlike that of anybody else and without any regard for the prevailing fashion. Dorothy remembered with a flickering smile that when she had first seen her at rehearsals she had thought she was one of the Hungarian artistes who had come to see why her club-room was being used by a theatrical company. Now when in a deep voice she suddenly turned round and commented on Fay Onslow's last remark Dorothy was astonished to hear that she spoke the same kind of English as herself; she indeed, in her surprise, almost gave utterance aloud to her thought that this gipsy creature was a lady.

"h.e.l.l! I've left my cigarettes behind," the lady e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"There now, what a nuisance for you!" said the good-natured Onzie. "Have one of mine, dear."

"Which are they? Turks or Virgins?" asked Miss Scarlett, leaning over and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her eyes to see what Onzie was offering.

Dorothy corrected her opinion and decided that Miss Scarlett had been a lady once upon a time; yet even while she was condemning her vulgarity she was thinking that her ladyhood was not so far away in the past. Her speech and manner had the a.s.surance of age, but she could not be much more than twenty-two or twenty-three, perhaps not even so much as that.

Presently the train stopped for a dreary Sunday wait, and while some of the gentlemen of the company, with a view to future favors, were scuttling about the platform in search of tea for the ladies from whom they would demand them, Dorothy took this opportunity of asking Lily what she thought about inviting Sylvia Scarlett to share their rooms at Birmingham.

"She seems quite different from the other girls," Dorothy explained. "I mean, she talked as if she was a lady. Don't you think so? And really, you know, we can't afford these rooms unless we do get a third person."

Lily was quite ready to accept Miss Scarlett's company, though, as Dorothy thought impatiently, she would have been equally willing to accept the dresser's, if Dorothy had thought of inviting the dresser to share rooms with them.

"Do you want a cup of tea, Lil?" a young man came along and asked at this moment. When Lily declared that she should love a cup of tea, he hurried off toward the buffet.

"Do you know him?" asked Dorothy, in surprise.

"Only since we joined the company."

"But he's one of the chorus-boys, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"And you let him call you Lily already?" Dorothy hoped it was no worse than Lily; it had sounded dreadfully like Lil.

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Of course, it's your own business," said Dorothy, turning coldly away to eye Sylvia Scarlett, who was striding up and down the platform with both hands in the pockets of a frieze overcoat and looking so independent of everybody in the world that she felt shy of interrupting her. At that moment Lily was carried off by the chorus-boy for a cup of tea, which, had it been a.r.s.enic, Dorothy could not have declined more indignantly, and she found herself alone upon the platform and exposed to the glances of the comedian, a debased sport from the famous Vanity comedian whose mannerisms he had reproduced in the provinces as well as he was able for fifteen years, and would probably continue to reproduce for as many more. A small and ugly man, Joe Wiltshire had become so hardened to women's snubs that by sheer recklessness and indiscrimination he managed to fill his bag. If he was weak with rocketing pheasants he never hesitated to pot a sitting rabbit; in other words, he made love to every woman he met and found 5 per cent. of them amenable. Now with a view to impressing the prettiest girl in the chorus he was being funny with two bottles of stout and a corkscrew; but though he managed to cheer up the porter on duty, he failed to amuse Dorothy, who seized an opportunity of escaping from the performance by attaching herself to Sylvia Scarlett on her return promenade.

"I say," she began, in her best West Kensington manner. "I hope you won't think it awful cheek on my part, but my friend and I--you know, that pretty, fair girl who was in our carriage--would be awfully glad if you'd join us this week in our digs. Awfully nice rooms, but rather expensive for two, though we ought to be able to manage quite reasonably with three. Of course, if you're already fixed--"

"I've never been fixed in my life," said Miss Scarlett, sharply, "and I certainly don't intend to be fixed in Birmingham."

"No, I say, shut up; don't laugh. Have you been on the stage long?"

"Two weeks and two days."

"Oh, I say, really, then this is your first shop?"

Dorothy felt more at ease now that she knew she had not got to deal with a veteran of the profession; this new girl was obviously not one to be patronized, but there was now no reason to antic.i.p.ate patronage on her side. With the removal of this danger Dorothy became more natural in her manner, and by the time the line was cleared for the theatrical special to proceed the bargain had been struck by which Sylvia Scarlett would share rooms with herself and Lily.

"I say, I hope you don't mind my making personal remarks," said Dorothy, "but you're looking most awfully tired."

She had intended this remark to effect a breach in the other girl's reserve, but it apparently had the contrary effect of raising the barrier still higher. She drew back slightly huffed, and Sylvia, leaning over, with a quick expansive gesture put a hand on her arm and told her not to be offended if she was not being confidential, but that she was enjoying the luxury of complete privacy after a period of disagreeable publicity. Dorothy would have preferred more exact information; even in childhood she had always felt inclined to cry when people had asked her riddles, and Roland's favorite way of teasing her had been to invent riddles without answers; however, she comforted herself with the reflection that Sylvia really was a lady, which at any rate ought to be a guaranty that the answer to that conundrum was not vulgar like the dreadful answers to dressing-room conundrums.

The train dragged on through the wet January dusk and into the dripping night of blurred lamps and distant furnaces, of ghostly Sunday travelers and long platforms like stagnant streams. Conversation in the compartment hung heavily upon the air like the moist breath of the tired women in the four corners of it. Dorothy, whose touchstone of behavior was self-respect, asked herself why Fay Onslow should mind living with other girls, such intimate revelations of her private habits was she making in the course of this journey. If a woman as fat as she was did not feel the loss of her dignity in searching for a flea like that, why should she want to live alone? And that was by no means the least dignified thing she had done. This ostentatious disregard of life's little decencies was certainly a regrettable side of theatrical life.

However, the fact that she herself had gone on the stage prevented Dorothy from betraying her disapproval of such behavior. It would have been contrary to her method of dealing with life to admit that she could even expose herself to anything unseemly, still less that she might succ.u.mb to it. From the moment that Dorothy went on the stage the profession became above criticism, and the sense of collective propriety that she inherited as her father's daughter was no longer capable of being shocked. She crucified her fastidiousness; she was persecutor and martyr at the same time and derived an equal consciousness of superiority from either aspect of herself; in fact, the only thing in life that seriously troubled Dorothy was a minute bleb of skin on her left eyelid, and even that could be removed by a beauty doctor.

It was raining harder than ever when the train reached Birmingham, and the girls decided to indulge in the luxury of a cab. The rooms looked as if they really would be very comfortable, and the landlady insisted proudly that managers had been known to stay in them, not mere business managers whose only aim in life seemed to be making fusses about the starching of their white shirts, but acting managers, one of whom had even brought his children, which, as she pointed out, proved that the lodgings were homely.

Sylvia was some time getting ready for supper, and Dorothy, thinking it would not be nice to begin without her, made Lily wait quite half an hour. When Sylvia did come down at last, Dorothy was nearly sure that she had been crying, and the mystery of her origin once more obtruded itself. Dorothy wished now that she had arranged for Sylvia and herself to share the second room instead of Lily and herself. This strange new girl perplexed her self-a.s.surance, and she proposed that if the new a.s.sociation prospered--they drank to its success in the pale India ale which the landlady provided--they should take it week about to sleep in the single room. Dorothy tried to extract confidences from Sylvia by confiding in her the history of Lily as far as she knew it; when that did not elicit anything she offered a gilded version of her own prior circ.u.mstances. The following week at Derby she shared the bedroom with Sylvia and went so far as to give her an almost truthful account of the Wilfred Curlew business, but nothing could she get from Sylvia in return. Moreover, there was nothing in her belongings that afforded a clue to her history; there was not a single photograph or initialed ornament; all her possessions were left lying about the room, and her trunk was never locked; and when every morning the girls called at the stage door for their correspondence she only in the company never received a letter, nor even bothered to look if there was one waiting for her in the rack. But if Sylvia was mute about the past she was not at all reserved about the present. There was n.o.body like her for seizing upon the eccentricities of the various members of the company to make merry with, and if sometimes Dorothy felt that she went too far in laughing at herself, she could not be angry because she used to laugh as much, indeed more, at Lily. She was a match, too, for any landlady; and gradually, as the a.s.sociation begun at Birmingham hardened into permanency, Dorothy and Lily left the entire management of their weekly home to Sylvia: who had a delightful capacity for keeping the weekly bills reasonable without ever seeming to be economical.

Dorothy was too firmly convinced of the reality of her own beauty to be an idealist, but if in after life any portion of her early experience on the stage seemed to her worthy of idealization these first weeks with Sylvia and Lily seemed so. Partly this was due to her discovery that touring was not so unpleasant when she did not have to bother about anything except her own appearance; but chiefly it was due to her growing conviction of ultimate success. There was beginning to be no doubt that even from the chorus of a musical comedy company on tour her personality was getting across the footlights. Even Sylvia, the mercilessly critical Sylvia, had prophesied success for her, and Dorothy's dreams went past to the music of approaching triumphs. Her mind was all a pageant, and the commonplace of touring existence--the aroma of the theater, the flight from the great manufacturing towns on still Sabbath mornings of black frost, the kaleidoscopic mustering of the company at railway stations, the emptiness of new rooms untouched as yet by the transience of the three girls, the garish mirrors hung with velvet that held her beauty, the undulating horsehair sofas, the sea-sh.e.l.ls on the mantelpiece, the fire glowing in the grate, the dim gas when they came home from the performance, the smell of Cheddar cheese in the little room, the bright gas shining on the three places laid for supper, the petticoats hanging over the bed up-stairs, the oil-cloth in the pa.s.sages, the noise of the landlady's family in the stuffy kitchen--all these and a hundred more externals of touring existence were in the years to come regarded affectionately as winter is beheld from the radiance of a summer afternoon.

So from Derby "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" went to Leeds, from Leeds to Bradford, from Bradford to Liverpool, from Liverpool to Newcastle. Then from Newcastle the company ascended into Scotland, where genial landladies and cakes and enthusiastic audiences compensated for east winds.

II

Gradually, under the pressure of Sylvia's teasing, Dorothy allowed herself to make friends with the other girls and to be superficially polite with the men. She was never popular in the company in the way that for different reasons Sylvia and Lily were popular; but perhaps her disdain and conceit were pardoned as tokens of future success, because she was not ostracized as she certainly would have been ostracized without the fascination that favorites of fortune always exert upon the rest of mankind. Besides, people said such spiteful things behind her back that they had to be fairly pleasant to her face. The men in the chorus one after another tried in vain to attract her attention whenever the requirements of the scene gave them an excuse for talking to her.

But Dorothy used to respond as if the dialogue could really be heard by the audience, which may have been artistic, but did not allow her admirers much opportunity of cultivating a friendship. Off the stage she would have nothing to do with any of them. The comedian made one or two more attempts to charm her with buffoonery, but she told him that he was even less funny off the stage than on, upon which he lost his temper and swore she was a stuck-up cow; an alleged lack of humor in Scotland had recently deprived Mr. Wiltshire of some of his best laughs, and he was in no mood to be criticized by a chorus-girl.

"If you speak to me again like that," said Dorothy, primly, "I shall complain to Mr. Warren."

"Wow-wow-wow!" the comedian mimicked.

"Never mind, Joe," said Sylvia, who was standing close by in the wings.

"If you manage to break your leg with your next entrance you'll get a laugh, all right."

"You think yourself very funny, don't you?" growled Mr. Wiltshire.

"Yes, but I haven't got to convince a Scotch audience that I am," said Sylvia.

The comedian's cue came before he could retort, and, falling over his feet in a way that would have made a more southerly audience rock with mirth, he took the stage.

"Vulgar little beast!" said Dorothy.

Mr. Wiltshire never relaxed his efforts to charm the people of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen to laughter, but he gave up trying to amuse Dorothy, and thenceforth devoted himself to girls with a keener sense of humor.

Once when Dorothy had refused to go for a long walk in the country round Aberdeen, the glittering of the granite buildings on a fine March morning tempted her out too late, and she wandered by herself along the sea-sh.o.r.e toward the mouth of the Don until she was able, so windless was the day, so warm the sun against the low sandy cliffs, to sit down on the beach. It happened that Mr. David Bligh, the tenor in "Miss Elsie of Chelsea," pa.s.sed that way, and, seeing Dorothy, took a seat beside her. She had never intended her reserve with the other men in the company to include David Bligh, and from having felt rather sad at being left behind by Sylvia and Lily she now congratulated herself on her good fortune.

"All alone?" asked the tenor, fluting with his voice, as he always did when he was speaking to a woman.

"All alone," said Dorothy. "Isn't it too bad?"

They discussed loneliness with poetic similes harvested from the sea, upon the horizon of which nothing but a solitary tramp, hull down, was visible. So long as Mr. David Bligh's attention had been devoted to Miss May Seymour, the leading lady, Dorothy had been inclined to think that he was not very good-looking, that he did not possess a very good voice, and that probably he was not quite a gentleman. Now that he was beside her on this lonely beach she was inclined to modify all these judgments in his favor, and when suddenly he burst forth into "_Che gelido manino_," suiting the action to the word by simultaneously taking hold of her hand, she decided that not merely was his voice rather good, but that it was lovely.

"You really have a lovely voice," she told him.

He shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and with his stick drew some notes of music in the sand.