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 to Southampton tonight to take up Claudia Winslow’s part.”
A sigh greeted this remark. This did not mean that it had hurt or displeased Mrs. Fenwick. She sighed because she always sighed when spoken to. It was an unconscious and extremely irritating habit of hers.
“What train are you catching?”
“The three-fifteen.”
“You will have to hurry.”
“I’m going to hurry,” said Claire, clenching her fists as two simultaneous bursts of song, in different keys and varying tempos, proceeded from the dining room and kitchen. A girl has to be in a sunnier mood than she was to bear up without wincing under the infliction of a duet consisting of “Rock of Ages” and “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee.” Assuredly Claire proposed to hurry. She meant to get her packing done in record time and escape from this place. She went into her bedroom and began to throw things untidily into her trunk. She had put the letter in her pocket against a more favorable time for perusal. A glance had told her that it was from her friend Polly, Countess of Wetherby, that Polly Davis of whom she had spoken to Lord Dawlish. Polly Davis, now married for better or for worse to that curious invertebrate person, Algie Wetherby, was the only real friend Claire had made on the stage. A sort of shivering gentility had kept her aloof from the rest of her fellow workers, but it took more than a shivering gentility to stave off Polly. Besides, Polly was an American, and even when the American girl is vulgar she is so with a difference. Polly had never jarred upon Claire. She was a friendly, kindly, goodhearted creature, with the face and figure of a Greek goddess and the mental outlook of Broadway and Forty-second Street, who had taken a violent fancy to Claire which no haughtiness could have chilled.
Claire had passed through the various stages of intimacy with her, until on the occasion of Polly’s marriage she had acted as her bridesmaid.
It was a long letter, too long to be read until she was at leisure, and written in a straggling hand that made reading difficult. She was mildly surprised that Polly should have written her, for she had been back in America a year or more now and this was her first letter. Polly had a warm heart and did not forget her friends, but she was not a good correspondent.
The need of getting her things ready at once drove the letter from Claire’s mind. She was in the train on her way to Southampton before she remembered its existence.
It was dated from New York.
My dear old Claire: Is this really my first letter to you? Isn’t that awful! Gee! A lot’s happened since I saw you last. I must tell you first about my hit. Some hit! Claire, old girl, I own New York. I daren’t tell you what my salary is. You’d faint.
I’m doing barefoot dancing. You know the sort of stuff. I started it in vaudeville, and went so big that my agent shifted me to the restaurants, and they have to call out the police reserves to handle the crowds. You can’t get a table at Riegelheimer’s, which is my pitch, unless you slip the headwaiter your whole roll and promise to mail him your clothes when you get home. I dance during supper with nothing on my feet and not much anywhere else, and it takes 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 of a duke, but I should worry about that. It looks good, and that’s all that matters. I should be in the merry-merry still at twenty-five per if it wasn’t for the good old moniker. You can’t get away from the title. I was born in Carbondale, Illinois, but that doesn’t matter—I’m an English countess, doing barefoot dancing to work off the mortgage on the ancestral castle (press stuff: it went big), and they eat me. Take it from me, Claire, I’m a riot.
Well, that’s that. What I am really writing about is to tell you that you have got to come over here. I’ve taken a house at Brookport, on Long Island, for the summer. You can stay with me till the fall, and then I can easily get you a good job in New York. I have some pull these days, believe me. Not that you’ll need my help. The managers have only got to see you and they’ll all 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 over here, you know, as in England, so come by the next boat.
Claire, darling, you must come. I’m wretched. Algie has got my goat the worst way. If you don’t know what that means it means that he’s been behaving like a perfect pig. I sometimes used to read pieces in the paper and novels panning the English husband and, believe me, Algie is that sort of husband and then some. I hardly know where to begin. Well, it was this way. Directly I made my hit my press agent, a real bright man named Sherriff, got busy, of course. Interviews, you know, and Advice to Young Girls in the evening papers, 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 has a bug about animals as aids to publicity stuff. He says an animal story is the thing he does best. So I bought them.
Algie kicked from the first. I ought to tell you that since we left England he
