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On a west-bound omnibus Claire Fenwick sat and raged silently in theJune sunshine. She was furious. What right had Lord Dawlish to lookdown his nose and murmur '_Noblesse oblige_' when she asked him aquestion, as if she had suggested that he should commit some crime?It was the patronizing way he had said it that infuriated her, as ifhe were a superior being of some kind, governed by codes which shecould not be expected to understand. Everybody nowadays did the sortof things she suggested, so what was the good of looking shocked andsaying '_Noblesse oblige_'?
The omnibus rolled on towards West Kensington. Claire hated theplace with the bitter hate of one who had read society novels, andyearned for Grosvenor Square and butlers and a general atmosphereof soft cushions and pink-shaded lights and maids to do one'shair. She hated the cheap furniture of the little parlour, thepenetrating contralto of the cook singing hymns in the kitchen,and the ubiquitousness of her small brother. He was only ten, andsmall for his age, yet he appeared to have the power of being intwo rooms at the same time while making a nerve-racking noise inanother.
It was Percy who greeted her to-day as she entered the flat.
'Halloa, Claire! I say, Claire, there's a letter for you. It cameby the second post. I say, Claire, it's got an American stamp onit. Can I have it, Claire? I haven't got one in my collection.'
His sister regarded him broodingly. 'For goodness' sake don'tbellow like that!' she said. 'Of course, you can have the stamp. Idon't want it. Where is the letter?'
Claire took the envelope from him, extracted the letter, andhanded back the envelope. Percy vanished into the dining-room witha shattering squeal of pleasure.
A voice spoke from behind a half-opened door--
'Is that you, Claire?'
'Yes, mother; I've come back to pack. They want me to go toSouthampton to-night to take up Claudia Winslow's part.'
'What train are you catching?'
'The three-fifteen.'
'You will have to hurry.'
'I'm going to hurry,' said Claire, clenching her fists as twosimultaneous bursts of song, in different keys and varying tempos,proceeded from the dining-room and kitchen. A girl has to be in asunnier mood than she was to bear up without wincing under theinfliction of a duet consisting of the Rock of Ages and Waitingfor the Robert E. Lee. Assuredly Claire proposed to hurry. Shemeant to get her packing done in record time and escape from thisplace. She went into her bedroom and began to throw thingsuntidily into her trunk. She had put the letter in her pocketagainst a more favourable time for perusal. A glance had told herthat it was from her friend Polly, Countess of Wetherby: thatPolly Davis of whom she had spoken to Lord Dawlish. Polly Davis,now married for better or for worse to that curious invertebrateperson, Algie Wetherby, was the only real friend Claire had madeon the stage. A sort of shivering gentility had kept her alooffrom the rest of her fellow-workers, but it took more than ashivering gentility to stave off Polly.
Claire had passed through the various stages of intimacy with her,until on the occasion of Polly's marriage she had acted as herbridesmaid.
It was a long letter, too long to be read until she was atleisure, and written in a straggling hand that made readingdifficult. She was mildly surprised that Polly should have writtenher, for she had been back in America a year or more now, and thiswas her first letter. Polly had a warm heart and did not forgether friends, but she was not a good correspondent.
The need of getting her things ready at once drove the letter fromClaire's mind. She was in the train on her way to Southamptonbefore she remembered its existence.
It was dated from New York.
MY DEAR OLD CLAIRE,--Is this really my first letter to you? Isn'tthat awful! Gee! A lot's happened since I saw you last. I musttell you first about my hit. Some hit! Claire, old girl, I own NewYork. I daren't tell you what my salary is. You'd faint.
I'm doing barefoot dancing. You know the sort of stuff. I startedit in vaudeville, and went so big that my agent shifted me to therestaurants, and they have to call out the police reserves tohandle the crowd. You can't get a table at Reigelheimer's, whichis my pitch, unless you tip the head waiter a small fortune andpromise to mail him your clothes when you get home. I dance duringsupper with nothing on my feet and not much anywhere else, and ittakes three vans to carry my salary to the bank.
Of course, it's the title that does it: 'Lady Pauline Wetherby!'Algie says it oughtn't to be that, because I'm not the daughter ofa duke, but I don't worry about that. It looks good, and that'sall that matters. You can't get away from the title. I was born inCarbondale, Illinois, but that doesn't matter--I'm an Englishcountess, doing barefoot dancing to work off the mortgage on theancestral castle, and they eat me. Take it from me, Claire, I'm ariot.
Well, that's that. What I am really writing about is to tell youthat you have got to come over here. I've taken a house atBrookport, on Long Island, for the summer. You can stay with metill the fall, and then I can easily get you a good job in NewYork. I have some pull these days, believe me. Not that you'llneed my help. The managers have only got to see you and they'llall want you. I showed one of them that photograph you gave me,and he went up in the air. They pay twice as big salaries overhere, you know, as in England, so come by the next boat.
Claire, darling, you must come. I'm wretched. Algie has got mygoat the worst way. If you don't know what that means it meansthat he's behaving like a perfect pig. I hardly know where tobegin. Well, it was this way: directly I made my hit my pressagent, a real bright man named Sherriff, got busy, of course.Interviews, you know, and Advice to Young Girls in the eveningpapers, and How I Preserve My Beauty, and all that sort of thing.Well, one thing he made me do was to buy a snake and a monkey.Roscoe Sherriff is crazy about animals as aids to advertisement.He says an animal story is the thing he does best. So I boughtthem.
Algie kicked from the first. I ought to tell you that since weleft England he has taken up painting footling little pictures,and has got the artistic temperament badly. All his life he's beenstarting some new fool thing. When I first met him he pridedhimself on having the finest collection of photographs ofrace-horses in England. Then he got a craze for model engines.After that he used to work the piano player till I nearly wentcrazy. And now it's pictures.
I don't mind his painting. It gives him something to do and keepshim out of mischief. He has a studio down in Washington Square,and is perfectly happy messing about there all day.
Everything would be fine if he didn't think it necessary to tackon the artistic temperament to his painting. He's developed theidea that he has nerves and everything upsets them.
Things came to a head this morning at breakfast. Clarence, mysnake, has the cutest way of climbing up the leg of the table andlooking at you pleadingly in the hope that you will give himsoft-boiled egg, which he adores. He did it this morning, and nosooner had his head appeared above the table than Algie, with a kindof sharp wail, struck him a violent blow on the nose with a teaspoon.Then he turned to me, very pale, and said: 'Pauline, this mustend! The time has come to speak up. A nervous, highly-strung manlike myself should not, and must not, be called upon to live in ahouse where he is constantly meeting snakes and monkeys withoutwarning. Choose between me and--'
We had got as far as this when Eustace, the monkey, who I didn'tknow was in the room at all, suddenly sprang on to his back. He isvery fond of Algie.
Would you believe it? Algie walked straight out of the house, stillholding the teaspoon, and has not returned. Later in the day hecalled me up on the phone and said that, though he realized that aman's place was the home, he declined to cross the threshold againuntil I had got rid of Eustace and Clarence. I tried to reason withhim. I told him that he ought to think himself lucky it wasn'tanything worse than a monkey and a snake, for the last person RoscoeSherriff handled, an emotional actress named Devenish, had to keep ayoung puma. But he wouldn't listen, and the end of it was that herang off and I have not seen or heard of him since.
I am broken-hearted. I won
't give in, but I am having an awful time.So, dearest Claire, do come over and help me. If you could possiblysail by the _Atlantic_, leaving Southampton on the twenty-fourth ofthis month, you would meet a friend of mine whom I think you wouldlike. His name is Dudley Pickering, and he made a fortune inautomobiles. I expect you have heard of the Pickering automobiles?
Darling Claire, do come, or I know I shall weaken and yield toAlgie's outrageous demands, for, though I would like to hit himwith a brick, I love him dearly.
Your affectionate POLLY WETHERBY
Claire sank back against the cushioned seat and her eyes filledwith tears of disappointment. Of all the things which would havechimed in with her discontented mood at that moment a suddenflight to America was the most alluring. Only one considerationheld her back--she had not the money for her fare.
Polly might have thought of that, she reflected, bitterly. Shetook the letter up again and saw that on the last page there was apostscript--
PS.--I don't know how you are fixed for money, old girl, but ifthings are the same with you as in the old days you can't berolling. So I have paid for a passage for you with the linerpeople this side, and they have cabled their English office, soyou can sail whenever you want to. Come right over.
An hour later the manager of the Southampton branch of the WhiteStar Line was dazzled by an apparition, a beautiful girl who burstin upon him with flushed face and shining eyes, demanding a berth onthe steamship _Atlantic_ and talking about a Lady Wetherby. Tenminutes later, her passage secured, Claire was walking to the localtheatre to inform those in charge of the destinies of The Girl andthe Artist number one company that they must look elsewhere for asubstitute for Miss Claudia Winslow. Then she went back to her hotelto write a letter home, notifying her mother of her plans.
She looked at her watch. It was six o'clock. Back in WestKensington a rich smell of dinner would be floating through theflat; the cook, watching the boiling cabbage, would be singing "AFew More Years Shall Roll"; her mother would be sighing; and herlittle brother Percy would be employed upon some juveniledeviltry, the exact nature of which it was not possible toconjecture, though one could be certain that it would be somethinginvolving a deafening noise.
Claire smiled a happy smile.
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