Compton MacKenzie

“ Her daughters Arabella and Constantia argued that this Dorothy must be a "top-holer" to make their brother so desperate. Last month he had taken them for several long walks and waxed so eloquent over her beauty and charm and virtue that they had accepted his point of view; with less to lose than their mother and unaware of their father's weakness, they saw no reason why an actress should not make Tony as good a wife as anybody.
"But love is blind," said the dowager. None knew the truth of this better than she. "And in any case, dear children, beauty is only skin-deep." ”

“ A week or so after this Queenie Molyneux asked Dorothy one day how long it was since she had heard from Clarehaven, and when Dorothy countered the awkward question by asking, rather bitterly, how long it was since she had heard from Lonsdale, Queenie admitted that he, too, had been silent for some time.
"I'm afraid I'm too expensive for Lonnie," she laughed, lightly. "He's a nice boy, but love in a cottage would never suit me, and love anywhere else wouldn't suit him. So that's that."
"You don't know what it is to be in love," said Dorothy. ”

“ People had misjudged Olive and herself so much in the past that she did not intend to let them misjudge her in future. She was making money at the Vanity now, and she begged Lord Clarehaven, if he had ever felt any affection for her, to go away again and shoot more wild animals. Cupid himself would have had to use dum-dum darts to make any impression on Dorothy in her present mood.
Such nobility of bearing, such wounded beauty, such weary grace, could only have one effect on a man who had spent so many months among hippos and black women, and without hesitation Clarehaven proposed marriage. ”

“ Gradually from the glances of those tranquil dames, some of whom for more than two centuries had gazed seaward through the panes of those high narrow windows mistily iridescent from a thousand salt gales, Dorothy caught an attitude toward life; from their no longer perturbable expressions, from their silent testimony to the insignificance of everything in the backward of time, she acquired confidence in herself. What was old Lady Chatfield except a picture, and how could she harm an interloper even more vulnerable than an actress? ”

“ Dorothy began to be afraid that those two days at Oxford had vanished from Clarehaven's memory; so, lacking as yet any great incentive to make the best of herself off the stage, she decided not to waste money either on a flat or on winter clothes. No address out of Mayfair would suit her, and no furs less expensive than sables would become her fair beauty. At nineteen she need not be in too much of a hurry, and she should certainly be wise to wait until the springtime would provide her with the prettiest frocks for much less outlay. ”

“ Agnes had enjoyed a great success on the island, where she had taught the young men and maidens to dance whatever ragtime was then the mode in West Kensington; where with them, when the dancing was done, she had climbed to the ruined temple of Aphrodite on the heights above the town and sat beneath a waning semilune that emptied her silver upon the bare and rounded hills, upon the sea, and upon a necklace of sapphire islands, past which the troopship now winking in the harbor below would sail at dawn. Like father, like son, even love shoots more arrows than usual in time of war. ”

“ It was after that hour when they reached Aberdeen, because David Bligh was continually stopping on the desolate roads that led across the low-lying lands between the city and the sea to illustrate with snatches of song many episodes of his adventurous life as an actor in musical comedy. Dorothy might have been bored by all this talk about himself if he had not made it so clear that he really did admire her; as it was, she assented warmly when he murmured, outside her lodgings:
"How quickly one can make friends sometimes!" ”

“ 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? ”

“ It was strange that the first girl to express in words the thought that was haunting the undiscovered country at the back of Dorothy's mind should be the one girl at the Vanity to whom marriage probably meant less than to any other.
"But why not?" thought Dorothy, in bed that night. "He's independent. Nobody can stop him. Countess of Clarehaven," she murmured. The title took away her breath for a moment, and it seemed as if the very traffic of Piccadilly paused in the presence of a solemn mystery. "Countess of Clarehaven!" ”

“ I don't choose that people should say: 'There goes that ass 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 God 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. ”

“ It was Tony who broke the spell by getting up and announcing business with somebody somewhere.
Dorothy, left alone on the seat, watched his form recede along the pergola, and asked herself in perplexity what she wanted as a substitute for that well-groomed, easy, and assured piece of manhood. If she was trying to tell herself that she pined to love a man without thought of children or considerations of rank and fortune, she could always elope with the first philanderer that presented himself. But she could not imagine any man for whose sake she would sacrifice as much. ”

“ Was not Sylvia right to despise her for encouraging Mrs. Mainwaring and Captain Keith and Mrs. Foster-ffrench and half a dozen others like them? Was not Sylvia right to despise her for setting out as a countess so haughtily and coming down to this? How she must have laughed when Olive told her about the parting in Brighton, and how little she would believe her tales of rural triumphs like the meet at Five Tree Farm. Sylvia probably considered that she had found her true level in seeing that her gambling guests were kept well supplied with refreshments. ”

“ I'm the last person to do anything in the least disloyal."
"Really?" sneered Dorothy.
"Clarehaven simply came down to Brighton to talk about you. He's suffering from the moth and star disease. Though you won't believe me, I was very fond of you, Dorothy dear; I am still, really," she added, with a little movement of affection that Dorothy refused to notice. "But I do think you're turning into a shocking little snob. That's the Vanity galère. No girl there could help being a snob unless she were as simple and sweet as Olive." ”

“ She should try this afternoon to think of the super-dowager as one of the long row of noble dames and console herself with the thought that in another hundred years the fifth Countess of Clarehaven would be accounted the loveliest of all the ladies in this gallery. Who was there to outmatch her? Even the first countess, with all Romney had yielded from his magic store of roses, would have to admit she was surpassed by her successor.
"But who shall paint my portrait?" Dorothy asked herself. "Romney should be alive now. There's no painter as good as he for my style of beauty. ”

“ Dorothy dressed herself very simply for the neighborly little dinner-party. She decided that white would be the best sedative for any tremors felt by the neighbors at the prospect of finding their society led by an actress; and she made up her mind to cast a special spell upon the M. F. H. and so guard herself from the consequences of any mistake she might make at the meet. There was nothing about Mr. Kingdon that diverged the least from the typical fox-hunting squire that for two hundred years has been familiar to the people of Great Britain. ”

“ Fame may have its degrees; but when Dorothy, traveling in her car, heard errand-boys upon the pavement whistling "Dolly and her Collie" she had at least as much right to feel proud of herself as some wretched novelist traveling by tube who sees a young woman reading a sixpenny edition of one of his works, or a mother whose dribbling baby is prodded by a lean spinster in a tram, or a hen who lays a perfectly ordinary egg and makes as much fuss over it as if it were oblong. ”

“ Dorothy thought the primroses were very pretty and stood up to nod her thanks; she did not realize that even an earl's estate in Devonshire might find it hard to produce so many primroses in the month of January; but she looked so beautiful standing up in the car that Mrs. Crawley felt the exertions of her large and ubiquitous family were well rewarded. The car leaped forward again, followed by shrill cheers that lingered upon the evening air and echoed many times in Dorothy's heart. The spellbound hush of landed property held earth in thrall, and the countess wished to enjoy it. ”

“ Nothing is more richly transfigured by unfamiliarity than the empty streets of a London suburb in mid-August, when their sun-dyed silence quivers upon the air like noon in Italy. At such a season the sorceress Calypso might not have disdained West Kensington for her spells; Dorothy, dream-haunted and with nothing more strenuous than singing-lessons and fashion papers to impinge upon the drowsy days, lived on self-enchantment. She never sent Lord Clarehaven the promised photograph, not did she even write him a letter ”

“ Poor ugly man, with all his wealth he was a pathetic figure. He would suffer when he saw how devoted she was to Tony; she had made up her mind to charm Tony back to his old adoration of herself; this cruise might be her last opportunity.
Then why not ask one of her sisters? Such a sister, reflecting if somewhat faintly her own glories, might console Houston for an eternal impossibility. In that case she must invite the eldest now at home, and with her roses and rich brown hair might serve as a substitute for herself.
"Of course she hasn't my personality," Dorothy admitted. ”

“ Dorothy's dread that she and Lord Clarehaven might not find themselves in the same canoe was soon dispelled, because Lord Clarehaven was evidently as eager for her company as she was for his, and they were soon leaving the others behind. There is no form of conveyance which makes for so much intimacy of regard as a canoe, and Dorothy, when she had once been able to reassure herself by means of a pocket-mirror that she had not been ruffled by the cab-drive or by the nervous business of getting gracefully into a wabbling canoe, settled herself down to be admired at a distance of about four feet. ”

“ 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 balls 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!" ”

“ Hausberg demanded of the porter, who replied in a humble negative.
"What are you talking about?" Dorothy asked, and then with authentic suddenness she felt the authentic nameless dread clutching authentically at her heart. Why, it must be a dead body; grasping Hausberg's arm and turning pale, she asked if Lily had killed herself.
"Killed herself?" echoed Hausberg. "Not she. I'm talking about this damned monkey that your confounded friends have left in my flat." ”

“ Nevertheless, Dorothy was sincerely grateful for her kindly welcome, and took the first opportunity of whispering some of her hopes and fears for the future to her mother-in-law, who invited her, after tea, to come up-stairs to her den and have a little talk. When they entered the small square room in an angle of the house twilight was still sapphire upon the window-panes, one of which looked out over the park and the other mysteriously down into the grove of pines. Fussing about with matches, the dowager explained apologetically that she preferred always to trim and light her own lamp. ”

“ Dorothy slept badly that night. Her regret for the mistake she had made in addressing Arthur Lonsdale as esquire magnified itself horribly in the mean little bedroom of the lodgings in Eden Square. All night long she was waking up to reproach herself for her stupidity in not taking the trouble to make sure who he was before she sent back the note. Her blunder was all the more unpardonable because she should have been sufficiently interested in receiving a letter from a namesake to take this trouble. ”

“ Dorothy thoroughly enjoyed the winter that followed the purchase of the colt. As soon as Moonbeam—of course he was given the name at once—was safe in William Cobbett's stable the trainer admitted that there was not another yearling to touch him. In the two colts which he himself had advised his patron to buy he could hardly bring himself to take the least interest, and in fact both of them afterward did turn out disappointments, one bursting blood-vessels when called upon for the least effort, and the other a duck-hearted beast that for all his fine appearance never ran out a race. ”

“ In early spring Tony suggested that it would be a good idea to go up to town for the season.
"A very good idea," she agreed. "Bella and Connie ought to be presented." Dorothy spoke as calmly as if she had been presented herself. "It's a pity I can't present them," she added, "but I should not like to be presented myself. I don't think that actresses ought to be presented, even if they do retire from the stage when they marry. Sometimes an individual suffers unjustly; but it's better that one person should suffer than that all sorts of precedents should be started. ”

“ The only way to stop Mr. Caffyn and restore Cecil to the algebraical problem from which he had been raped by the noise outside his room seemed to be for everybody to go to bed. Agnes and Edna, their heads stuffed full of new ideas, went giggling up-stairs, whither Dorothy, yawning very elaborately, followed them. Roland decided that Cecil groaning over an algebra problem would be more endurable than having to listen to a renewal of the argument between Norah and his father, and he, too, retired. ”

“ About a week later Olive Fanshawe took her aside and asked if she was serious about moving into a flat at last; and, upon Dorothy's assuring her that she was, Olive divulged under the seal of great secrecy that a friend of hers, a man of high rank with much power and influence in the country, was anxious to do something for her.
"He's a strange man," she told Dorothy, "and though I know you'll think it's impossible for anybody to want to look after a girl in a flat without other things in return, he really doesn't make love to me at all. ”