Until six months before, when he had become engaged to Claire Fenwick, he had found nothing to quarrel with in his lot. He was not the type to waste time in vain regrets. His tastes were simple. As long as he could afford to belong to one or two golf clubs and have something over for those small loans which, in certain of the numerous circles in which he moved, were the inevitable concomitant of popularity, he was satisfied. And this modest ambition had been realized for him by a group of what he was accustomed to refer to as decent old bucks, who had installed him as secretary of that aristocratic and exclusive club, Brown’s in St. James’s Street, at an annual salary of four hundred pounds. With that wealth, added to free lodging at one of the best clubs in London, perfect health, a steadily diminishing golf handicap and a host of friends in every walk of life, Bill had felt that it would be absurd not to be happy and contented.
But Claire had made a difference. There was no question of that. In the first place, she resolutely declined to marry him on four hundred pounds a year. She scoffed at four hundred pounds a year. To hear her talk, you would have supposed that she had been brought up from the cradle to look on four hundred pounds a year as small change to be disposed of in tips and cab fares. That in itself would have been enough to sow doubts in Bill’s mind as to whether he had really got all the money that a reasonable man needed; and Claire saw to it that these doubts sprouted, by confining her conversation on the occasions of their meeting almost entirely to the great theme of Money, with its minor subdivisions of How to Get It, Why Don’t You Get It? and I’m Sick and Tired of Not Having It.
She developed this theme today, not only on the stairs leading to the grillroom, but even after they had seated themselves at their table. It was a relief to Bill when the arrival of the waiter with food caused a break in the conversation and enabled him adroitly to change the subject.
“What have you been doing this morning?” he asked.
“I went to see Maginnis at the theater.”
“Oh!”
“I had a wire from him asking me to call. They want me to take up Claudia Winslow’s part in the number one company.”
“That’s good.”
“Why?”
“Well—er—what I mean—well; isn’t it? What I mean is, leading part, and so forth.”
“In a touring company?”
“Yes, I see what you mean,” said Lord Dawlish, who didn’t at all. He thought rather highly of the number one companies that hailed from the theater of which Mr. Maginnis was proprietor.
“And anyhow, I ought to have had the part in the first place instead of when the tour’s half over. They are at Southampton this week. He wants me to join them there and go on to Portsmouth with them.”
“You’ll like Portsmouth.”
“Why?”
“Well—er—good links quite near.”
“You know I don’t play golf.”
“Nor do you. I was forgetting. Still, it’s quite a jolly place.”
“It’s a horrible place. I loathe it. I’ve half a mind not to go.”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
Lord Dawlish was feeling a little sorry for himself. Whatever he said seemed to be the wrong thing. This evidently was one of the days on which Claire was not so sweet-tempered as on some other days. It crossed his mind that of late these irritable moods of hers had grown more frequent. It was not her fault, poor girl, he told himself. She had rather a rotten time.
It was always Lord Dawlish’s habit on these occasions to make this excuse for Claire. It was such a satisfactory excuse. It covered everything. But, as a matter of fact, the rather rotten time which she was having was not such a very rotten one. Reducing it to its simplest terms, and forgetting for the moment that she was an extraordinarily beautiful girl—which his lordship found it impossible to do—all that it amounted to was that, her mother having but a small income, and existence in the West Kensington flat being consequently a trifle dull for one with a taste for the luxuries of life, Claire had gone on the stage. By birth she belonged to a class of which the female members are seldom called upon to earn money at all, and that was one count of her grievance against Fate. Another was that she had not done as well on the stage as she had expected to do. When she became engaged to Bill she had reached a point where she could obtain without difficulty good parts in the road companies of London successes, but beyond that, it seemed, it was impossible for her to soar. It was not, perhaps, a very exhilarating life, but, except to the eyes of love, there was nothing tragic about it. It was the cumulative effect of having a mother in reduced circumstances and grumbling about it, of being compelled to work and grumbling about that, and of achieving in her work only a semi-success and grumbling about that also, that—backed by her looks—enabled Claire to give quite a number of people, and Bill Dawlish in particular, the impression that she was a modern martyr, only sustained by her indomitable courage.
So Bill, being requested in a peevish voice to explain what he meant by saying, “Oh, I don’t know,” condoned the peevishness. He then bent his mind to the task of trying to ascertain what he had meant.
“Well,” he said, “what I mean is, if you don’t show up won’t it be rather a jar for old friend Maginnis? Won’t he be apt to foam at
