Uneasy Money | Page 4

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 touring 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 the mouth a bit
and stop giving you parts in his companies?'
'I'm sick of trying to please Maginnis. What's the good? He never gives
me a chance in London. I'm sick of being always on tour. I'm sick of
everything.'
'It's the heat,' said Lord Dawlish, most injudiciously.
'It isn't the heat. It's you!'
'Me? What have I done?'

'It's what you've not done. Why can't you exert yourself and make some
money?'
Lord Dawlish groaned a silent groan. By a devious route, but with
unfailing precision, they had come homing back to the same old
subject.
'We have been engaged for six months, and there seems about as much
chance of our ever getting married as of--I can't think of anything
unlikely enough. We shall go on like this till we're dead.'
'But, my dear girl!'
'I wish you wouldn't talk to me as if you were my grandfather. What
were you going to say?'
'Only that we can get married this afternoon if you'll say the word.'
'Oh, don't let us go into all that again! I'm not going to marry on four
hundred a year and spend the rest of my life in a pokey little flat on the
edge of London. Why can't you make more money?'
'I did have a dash at it, you know. I waylaid old Bodger--Colonel
Bodger, on the committee of the club, you know--and suggested over a
whisky-and-soda that the management of Brown's would be behaving
like sportsmen if they bumped my salary up a bit, and the old boy
nearly strangled himself trying to suck down Scotch and laugh at the
same time. I give you my word, he nearly expired on the smoking-room
floor. When he came to he said that he wished I wouldn't spring my
good things on him so suddenly, as he had a weak heart. He said they
were only paying me my present salary because they liked me so much.
You know, it was decent of the old boy to say that.'
'What is the good of being liked by the men in your club if you won't
make any use of it?'
'How do you mean?'
'There are endless things you could do. You could have got Mr
Breitstein elected at Brown's if you had liked. They wouldn't have
dreamed of blackballing any one proposed by a popular man like you,
and Mr Breitstein asked