Uneasy Money | Page 9

her trunk. She had put the letter
in her pocket against a more favourable 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.
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 crowd. You
can't get a table at Reigelheimer's, which is my pitch, unless you tip the
head waiter a small fortune 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 don't
worry about that. It looks good, and that's all that matters. 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, 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
behaving like a perfect pig. 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 is crazy about animals as aids to
advertisement. 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 has taken up painting footling little pictures, and has got the
artistic temperament badly. All his life he's been starting some new fool
thing. When I first met him he prided himself on having the finest
collection of photographs of race-horses in England. Then he got a
craze for model engines. After that he used to work the piano player till
I nearly went crazy. And now it's pictures.
I don't mind his painting. It gives him something to do and keeps him

out of mischief.