Chapter D: Appleton and Company (3)

Memories of the past grew too painful to bear. Mame did not wait for the battle pieces. Even great-uncle Nel’s General Sherman, who had a picture all to himself, and the soldierly groups, in any one of whom might be the rare old man she remembered so clearly, had not the power to stay the panic rising in her heart. It was weak, this sense of tumult; it was foolish and worse than foolish, it was cowardly; but quite suddenly Mame cast all thought from her of great-uncle Nel. She got up and fled from the cinema.

Outside, amid the dismal waste of bricks and mortar, which ironically called itself Camberwell Green, a rather frosty March sun was waning. Mame stood a few moments under the awning of the cinema in a state of irresolution, not knowing what to do next. It was as if she had become hypnotised by a sense of life’s vastness and complexity. The world was far beyond all calculation; yet now she felt just the meanest thing in it.

However, she caught sight of Bus 56, wheeling round to the opposite kerb. It was about to return to Charing Cross. Mame lost no time in climbing to a seat on the roof. Bus 56, at that moment, was the one thing in her life that held the core and semblance of reality. All the rest was chaos and old night. But this prosaic vehicle meant something. Panic-stricken as Mame now was, it stood for will, volition, force.

Yes, she was panic-stricken. It was very absurd. In the most illogical and unexpected way, a subtle demon had sprung upon her for the second time. The first had been in that epic moment when she had driven in a cab to the police office in New York with the horrid Detective Addelsee sitting by her side. But on that occasion there had been some excuse for this feeling of dull and helpless terror. On the present occasion there was none.

The shrewd air of the bus top revived her a bit. Her fighting spirit began to rally. If once it deserted her she was done. Why this attack of cold feet? There was nothing to be afraid of. She still had money enough to get home. It would not be the Iowa farmhouse to which she knew now she could never return. Home, for her, must be one of the big and friendly cities of that republic of which she was proud to be a daughter.

Big indeed were those cities. But were they so very friendly? Mame had begun to ask herself that by the time Bus 56 had reached the Elephant and Castle. Frankly, in her experience of them, they were not. To a little hick, as raw as herself, New York, for example, had been quite the reverse. Apart from Aunt Lou’s dollars, it had no use for her. It had swallowed nine hundred of those dollars and lodged her in jail before you could say knife. No, friendly was not quite the word for New York.

Still, in this bleakly inhospitable island, which was gulping her dollars just as quickly, even if it had refrained from putting her in jail, it would not do to knock New York. It was where she belonged. America had treated her pretty rough but it was the land she loved and admired. She might hate her stepmother and deplore her father, yet after all it was the home of her mother’s memory. No, in spite of failures and bad breaks, it would not do to knock little old New York.

This sentiment, which she knew to be no more logical than the others, was so vividly upon her by the time she left the bus at Charing Cross, that she crossed at once to the office of the shipping company in Cockspur Street. If a boat, by which she could afford to travel, was leaving at the end of the week, she would book a passage. Better say good-bye to London a week too soon, than stay a week too long and find yourself stranded.

When, however, she reached the offices of the shipping company she felt bound to pause before she went in. Was it wise to act so precipitately? Why surrender to wild impulses? It was a big decision to make on the spur of the moment. What she did now could not be undone later. She had figured on staying another week in London. Every day’s experience was valuable. Any day she might hear from Elmer Dobree, telling her that her stuff was O.K., asking for more, enforcing his demands with a cheque.

Unreasoningly as her cinema panic, an odd wave of optimism flowed over Mame as she stood gazing into the shipping company’s window. She had always yielded to this recurring wave that seemed to spring from her higher nature. Had she not done so from the beginning she would still be eating out her heart on her father’s farm. What could have seemed more hopeless than for Mame Durrance to thirst after Culture? Yet that craving, in the end, had taken her to the county town, to the office of the _Independent_. And this simple faith in the future had carried her to New York and finally three thousand miles across the Atlantic as far as Europe. Was this the hour to go back on the urge of nature?

“If only you can stick it, the clouds will lift.” She didn’t know where the voice came from, but those familiar words sounded clear as a bell. Yes, she must stick it. That was what life was for: to keep a stiff upper lip; to face your luck; to go down fighting.

While she stood gazing at a model of a Cunarder in the window of the shipping company, she was quickened by new power. Whence it came there was no means of knowing; but just behind her was Trafalgar Square, and the lions, and the mighty column a grateful nation had raised to the memory of a Nelson even more remarkable than the brother of her grandmother. Sure, it must have been from the top of that monument the thought wave had come.

She appeared to be borne on the wings of inspiration. The time was not yet to give in. She would stay another week. But an effort of the will was needed to leave that too-enticing window. She crossed the road as leisurely as the taxis and the buses would permit; yet brain and heart were in conflict as she entered Pall Mall.

Outside the Carlton she paused. A line of smart cars was disgorging brilliant occupants. Mame stood wistfully in the shadow of the portico, observing, as she had done so many times in the last seven months, the life of ease, luxury and wealth from the outside. She felt like a peri at the gates of Paradise. If once she could gain a footing within those charméd portals, the capacity was surely hers to enjoy their delights.

This evening her thoughts seemed to make her desperate. Never had the spirit of adventure burned so high. It was her duty to count every dime, but this day, take it altogether, was the worst she had met since landing in England. She was fed to the teeth with disappointment and the sense of just being out of things. There had been too much cold shoulder. But there was money still in her purse.

Before she realized what she was doing, she was mingling with the smart mob and passing through the revolving doors. As the delicate strains of an orchestra caught her ear, her little head went up and she began to move more freely. She considered herself to be very well dressed, if a little “tossed” from a series of rides on the roof of divers plebeian buses. Even if she was down on her luck she was free, white and twenty-one. And she could pay her shot; therefore she had a right to show her nose among the plutes.

The large room, on whose threshold Mame found herself, without quite knowing how she got there, seemed to be full already. Very distinguished-looking females and equally distinguished-looking males were standing around, in twos and threes. They were scanning, as it were, the far horizon for vacant tables.

Vacant tables, however, there were none. It was the hour when the theatre matinées yield up their tea-thirsty patrons. Standing room only appeared to be the order of the moment. And truth to tell, Mame did not feel altogether displeased. If she found a seat at one of those seductive little tables, it would mean half a crown at the very least. And in the present state of Wall Street half a crown was money.

This was pusillanimity. She was out for adventure. And she really wanted tea. Something in the much-abused British climate seems to call for tea at five o’clock. Therefore Mame’s slim little body began to insinuate itself nearer the cups and saucers and the elegant confectionery; whereas bodies less slim and not so little remained outside the sphere of their influence.

Gazing around on the crowded scene, Mame awoke to the fact that an extremely smart-looking girl, seated alone some two tables off, and smoking a cigarette in a long meerschaum holder, had fixed a demure eye upon her. Some little time it had been there, but Mame did not know that. Every detail was taken in already by a glance candid yet wary. Clothes, hat, eyes, chin, the face of wistful emotion: Mame was a rare butterfly with quaint markings, a new specimen for the net of a collector. Suddenly the girl’s eye caught Mame’s. She coolly signalled with the meerschaum holder that there was room at her table.

As Mame moved towards it she was ready to believe, such was this smart girl’s easy air, that she had been mistaken for one of her friends. Mame felt that she must bear a likeness to somebody else. But no, this was not the case. The girl at once began to treat her choice “find” with the off-hand courtesy which seemed to be her attitude towards the world at large.

She lifted a muff, a real sable affair, from a seat near by in order to free a chair. As Mame subsided into it with her politest thanks, the girl looked at her shrewdly and then said in a casual voice, “You want a waiter.”

Before Mame could take steps to get a waiter, her new friend, who was full of cheery competence, had attracted one. Her manner of doing so was in nowise aggressive, yet it was quite successful. The last word in waiters, all smiles and all ears, soon materialised at Mame’s elbows.

“I can recommend the crumpets. They’re very good to-day.” The girl followed her genial information with something in Italian or French to the waiter which Mame did not understand. It was probably Italian, for the waiter was an undoubted Wop. He crisply brushed the tablecloth with his napkin, arranged cup and saucer, knife and plate upon it, and then went smilingly off to execute Mame’s order.

“Some folks around,” said Mame conversationally.

“A regular beehive.” The girl had a slow, deep smile which at the sound of Mame’s voice began to grow.

“All the old-timers, I’ll say, from way back.”

At that remark the girl laughed outright, but in a way that was friendly. Mame felt encouraged to let her tongue run.

“Say, listen, who is the dame with the auburn wig and the Roman nose?”

“Ah, you mean the old dreadnought.” The meerschaum holder tactfully indicated the next table but one where the personage in question sat in state. “Eighty-five if an hour. Blind as a bat, deaf as a mole, but worth looking at, I always think.”

Mame’s laugh chimed with the girl’s. The old dreadnought, in a Victorian bonnet and mantle, with a nose standing off from a craggy face like a handle from a door, was a type. Mame was so much interested that she repeated her question.

“Old Duchess Hattie,” said the girl lightly. “Everybody in England knows her. Among other things she’s my godmother.”

“Oh!” said Mame. Warily and at once she withdrew her gaze from the ancient duchess to this new friend who claimed her for a godmother. Involuntarily her fingers clutched her vanity bag to make sure it was still on her wrist. London as well as New York had its four-flushers. Mame looked at the girl opposite with a new curiosity.

Was she the real thing? Or was she merely putting one over on an obvious simp? Certainly she was smart. And if not exactly a looker, she had heaps of style. Besides she had these high-grade waiters feeding from the hand. The Wop had already interrupted these deep reflections with Bohea in a china pot and crumpets fairly sizzling in butter.

Followed more conversation in Italian. The girl then fitted an eyeglass, very neat and inconspicuous, into her right eye and glanced at the programme of music. “Don’t you think we might have the Rosencavalier instead of this thing of Massenet’s for number seven?” She looked at Mame. But Mame, out of her depth, merely looked at the waiter. “Yes, I think so.” The girl provided the answer for herself. “Give my compliments to M’sieu.” She turned quietly to the Wop as if she owned him and continued her speech in Italian.

Virgilio bowed gracefully and made his way up the room towards the band.

Mame, under cover of a bold attack on a crumpet, furtively watched her new friend. She was puzzled and fascinated by her. This bird was something new. Her clothes were of the best yet they were not startling. Even her eyeglass and her meerschaum cigarette holder, remarkable in anyone else, did not seem out of the picture. Her talk was lively and clever; her attitude towards that world which ordinary people only read about in the newspapers was one of an amused familiarity; yet her manners were neither boastful nor loud. If four-flusher she was, and Mame felt she must be, it was a more subtle breed than any which had crossed her path up to now.

For the pleasure of drawing the girl out and perhaps in the hope that she would give herself away in a handful large enough to set all doubts at rest, Mame tentatively said over the edge of a teacup, while marking the new acquaintance very closely indeed: “I s’pose you know all the folks.”

“More or less.”

Somehow it was not the answer Mame expected. A real four-flusher would have posed a bit in making it. She would have struck something of an attitude, and tried to look like an oil painting of a First Family. But this girl didn’t. Paula Wyse Ling, who had spent two whole years studying European society and was now beginning to get her stuff into some of the best journals in America, would never have answered such a question in that casual style. Paula would have preened her feathers and with her voice right up would have looked down her long nose and said: “Oh, yes, I have had the privilege of meeting some quite good people.”

Suddenly Mame’s eye lit on one other appurtenance of this new friend which hitherto had escaped it. Peeping in the oddest way out of a fashionable sleeve was the tiniest imaginable Pekingese. The sight of the quaint creature was so unexpected and its air of dignified aloofness so entirely charming that Mame could not repress her delight.

“Ain’t he just cute!” She proceeded to offer sugar.

The small beast gazed haughtily at Mame. And then disdaining the sugar in a most aloof manner, retired at least six inches further into the sleeve of his mistress.

“Rather nice, isn’t he? But always apt to be stiff and formal unless he feels he’s been properly introduced. You see he’s a Chinese emperor’s sleeve-dog and his pedigree goes right back with a click to the First Ming Dynasty.”

“What’s his name?” asked Mame partly for the sake of conversation, partly to show that she was impressed.

“Fu Ching Wei. He was given me by the Emperor of Manchuria when I attended his coronation last year at Mukden.”

In the opinion of Mame this was overdoing it. This girl was certainly trying to put one over on her. And Mame had already come to like her so much, although to be sure she had only known her five minutes, that she felt sorry. If one must pull that sort of guff, one might at least take pains and do it with art. Among “all the folks” whom Mame had supposed this girl knew, emperors had not been included.

XII

“You ain’t a newspaper girl, I’ll say?” Mame opened cautiously.

“Yes.” The new acquaintance replenished casually the meerschaum holder.

She wrote for the papers. It was by way of being a solution of the mystery. What these Britishers called a journalist. But a four-flusher all the same. Yet Mame could not help liking her. There was something so forthcoming, something so unstudied. She was so much more natural than Paula Ling. You felt with Paula that if you knew her a hundred years she would never let you catch her with her hair down or without her pinko. But this girl was different.

“What journals you write for?”

“For a syndicate mostly.”

“A syndicate.” Mame blinked. Her strong financial instinct automatically got busy. “Then you pull the big stuff, I guess?”

“Bread and butter.” As the bloated pluralist spoke she took a piece from the plate in front of her and offered it delicately to Fu Ching Wei.

The haughty animal suspiciously curled a lip and then condescended to eat. “Nice, isn’t he?” His mistress tickled gently the top of his head.

“Describe coronations for Reuter’s Agency?” Mame threw out a feeler. The subject fascinated her. And though the mistress of Fu Ching Wei might be a palpable bluffer, there was still a chance that she was one of the mandarins of the profession into which Mame herself was dying to force an entrance.

Awe was in Mame’s voice as she asked the question. Awe there was none in the careless voice that answered it. “Describe any old toomarsh from a dog fight to a royal marriage. Not that one does those stunts often, although one gets about the world sometimes.”

“What’s your line, then?” Mame tried hard to mask her curiosity. But rather conspicuously she failed.

“As a rule I write up the tea shops and hat shops and the restaurants and the big stores. And I do the books and plays for the women’s illustrateds.”

“But you do the big marriages too, I guess?” Mame’s voice throbbed.

“Not often. All marriages are so much alike they bore one.”

Mame’s expressive countenance showed that she could not imagine herself being bored by doing marriages. “I’d just love that.”

“Love what?” The girl tickled the ear of Fu Ching Wei with the meerschaum holder.

“I’d love to do the real class marriages for real class papers.”

The girl gave a shrug that Paula Wyse Ling would never have permitted herself. But natural elegance carried it off.

Was she still putting it over on her? Or was she just trying to cheek her? Not that it mattered. Even if she was a regular queen of bluffers, she was also by a long sight the most interesting creature Mame had yet found in London.

So far the girl had left to Mame the business of asking questions. But in spite of an air of nonchalance, which Mame rather admired, she was not above putting one or two questions of her own.

“Are you a writing person?” she said, offering Fu Ching Wei a little milk in a saucer.

“You said it.” Of all the reams Mame had written since trekking east hardly a line had found its way into print; but that did not prevent her taking pride in the fact that the pen was her vocation. She hesitated a moment. Then she opened her bag and produced a card.

By now she knew enough of the newspaper walks of Britain to doubt the worth of this bit of pasteboard. At first it had given her real pleasure to display it. But she had now reached the phase when she was not sure that her card was not where she got off.

Still, there was nothing to lose by shooting it upon this girl. It would be trying it, as it were, upon the dog. This smart skirt was the top of her class. No matter what she might be, she was just as full of style as she could hold. It would be worth while to note the effect of a rather doubtful talisman upon her.

She did not say so, nor did her manner betray the fact, but it was a sure thing that she had never heard of Cowbarn or its leading newspaper. But Mame liked the kind and friendly way she handed back the card with the remark: “You’re in journalism too, I see.”

No lugs. No frills. By her own account she was a he-one at the game. It had been Mame’s instinct to doubt that, but this tone of pleasant quietness, this we’re-all-friends-round-the-darned-old-inkpot style was something new. This bird who was dressed to the nines, and who behaved as if she just naturally owned London, seemed to be quite disarmed by the European Correspondent of the Cowbarn _Independent_.

Without getting gay or in any wise familiar, she became as chatty as if she and Mame had begun their young lives together at the same convent school. It was clear that Mame had aroused her interest. The questions she put were shrewd and the answers she received amused her.

Mame asked if she knew the States.

She got over there sometimes. “Great fun, the U. S., I always think. Don’t you?”

Mame had never found the land of her fathers great fun, but she had far too much pride in it to say so.

“The U. S. is so progressive.”

“You said it.”

The girl had a lot to say of America. And every word was well disposed, without any touch of condescension.

“Stay, I guess, with the Vanderbilts and the Astors when you visit New York?” Mame threw a plummet to bring her down to cases.

“The MacFarlanes are my particular friends.” She spoke off-handedly. “And they always give one such a good time.”

“I’ll say, yes,” Mame remarked drily. She was not quite clear in her mind whether the madam could be allowed to get away with that. She would be saying next that in London her headquarters were Buckingham Palace.

The girl produced a cigarette case. It was a wonderful piece of chinoiserie in flowered purple silk. “Have a gasper?”

Mame had yet to acquire the habit of smoking gaspers. She declined with thanks. But the girl fitted an amber-scented one to the meerschaum holder so elegantly, that Mame decided to practise the art at the first opportunity. Paula Ling had said that it was even more chic in Europe than it was on Long Island. As usual Paula Ling was right.

While Mame, out of the corners of a pair of very seeing eyes, marked all that the smart piece did, she took a resolve to start in at once to develop her own personality. Here was terrific personality. It did not in any sense obtrude; it did not sort of hit you right in the middle of the eye, as Paula’s did, but it was there all the time. Moreover, it was earning dividends for its owner. This skirt was not in the true sense of the word a looker, but there was jazz in her talk, in her actions, in all her ways. She did not paint her face, use lip-stick or bead her eyes; in clothes, although Mame guessed they were as good as could be got for money, she was quiet; but her general effect was as salt as a breeze from the sea. Mame could but envy and admire and wonder how the trick was done.

“Staying long in England?”

“I’ll have to get off this side of the world pretty soon now.” Mame spoke a little wistfully.

Without seeming to look at Mame, the girl, from behind the rampart of the meerschaum holder, must somehow have read the true index to her feelings. That index was Mame’s eyes. Very good eyes they were; and, unknown to their owner, singularly expressive. Grey eyes, large, serious, open, full of trouble. For all the orbs behind the meerschaum holder were so impersonal, when as now they were three-quarters lidded, they had a power of seeing into things that might have astonished Mame considerably had she known the full extent of their faculty.

“Anything I can do for you?”

It was one British journalist to one American or _vice versa_: a bit of international courtesy. But to Mame it was more. There was a genuine ring of kindness, as pure a note of music as Mame had yet heard.

Her practical mind at once got busy. This might be a chance. Bluffer as this girl most likely was, there could yet be no harm in trying her out.

“Before I go back home,” said Mame, tentative as a kitten treading on ice; “I’d like an invite to some mansion of real class. I’d like to do a big wedding for my paper.”

“Do you mean this function next week at Clanborough House?” The girl was journalist enough to own a mind which could move with uncommon nimbleness.

“You’ve made it in one.” Quick in the uptake, this bird. Mame was moved to say so.

“My dear Watson, really quite simple.” The meerschaum holder received a Sherlock Holmes tilt. “George Rex and Consort are going to honour the occasion. You saw it in the _Times_ this morning.”

Mame breathed hard. This girl was no slouch. A four-flusher, yet she might have strings to pull. And it would be one over on Paula Ling if a little hick from Cowbarn, Iowa, got playing around among the royalties; not to mention the Fleet Street gentleman who had said the only way she would get to Clanborough House would be as a hired girl. The insult still rankled.

“A dull affair!” The new friend butted pleasantly into a rather tense pause. “But I ought to have a card somewhere that may get you in, if you care to come.”

Mame’s heart seemed to miss a beat when the girl began a search for an invitation to the terribly beparagraphed wedding the following week at Clanborough House.

“Should be one here.” Calmly she produced the beautiful cigarette case. Something leapt in Mame’s throat as the entire contents of the case were toppled out on to the tablecloth. There were half a dozen cigarettes and twice that number of cards of various shapes and sizes.

“Private view Black-and-white Exhibition, Burlington House.” Mame was seething with suspense, but the girl went calmly and leisurely through the cards. “Arts and Handicrafts Exhibition. Admit Bearer. British and Foreign Bible Society. Randal Cantuar in the Chair. Opening of Royal School of Cookery, New Wandsworth. Annual Meeting Dumb Friends’ League. Reception for Dr. Hyam Baines Pennefather, Baltimore Third Church, Hotel Cecil. No--yes--no. It almost looks as if we’ve drawn zero.”

Mame’s heart sank. It was no more than was to be expected of a tinhorn, but it would have been cracker-jack to have sailed into Clanborough House by the main entrance, along with the King and Queen and half the real doughnuts in the island.

She bit her lip with disappointment, yet at the back of her mind was the knowledge that these things did not happen. They were too good to be true. But the melancholy privilege still remained to one who aspired to close and accurate observation of the human comedy of seeing what the four-flusher would do next.

The girl coolly returned the contents to the lovely silk case. And then she said in that casual tone which Mame was now beginning to resent rather more than she admired: “Give me your address.”

Part of her bluff, of course. Still Mame saw no reason why her address should not be given. Truth to tell, she was just a little proud of it. Like many things in this queer city, it sounded better than it was. She promptly took from her bag a decidedly professional-looking reporter’s note-book, tore out a leaf, and then wrote carefully with an equally professional-looking fountain pen: Miss Amethyst Du Rance, Fotheringay House, Montacute Square, Bloomsbury.

“Thanks,” said the smart skirt. Then she gave a glance, cool and impassive, at what Mame had written; and, then, with a lurking smile, which Mame was quick to detect, she added this memento to the others which adorned her case.

“I’ll be glad of an invite for Clanborough House,” said Mame with irony.

“Right-o. You shall have one in the course of post.”

“I don’t think,” Mame confided mutely to the dregs of her teacup. And then she said with a demure mockery that was rooted in the heart’s bitterness, “I reckon you’ll be there.”

The answer was “Sure” in the way it is given in New York. Perhaps the high-flyer guessed that Mame was trying to call her bluff. Yet beyond a doubt she carried it off royally. “I suppose I’ll have to be.”

“To write a report for your syndicate.” Mame’s voice had something terribly like a sneer in it.

The girl laughed and shook her head. “This binge is a bit too much of a family affair.”

“Oh!” said Mame inadequately. It was not easy to call the bluff of this girl.

While Mame, who had now begun to feel vindictive, was seriously considering the best means of letting this short-sport know that she was not quite such a sucker as she seemed, a young man who had just risen from an adjacent table came stalking her stealthily from behind. He patted her on the shoulder.

“Hulloa, Bill!” The tone was very light and whimsical. “I didn’t see the cat bring you in.”

Mame listened keenly for Bill’s answer. But it amounted to nothing beyond a cheery laugh. All the same, she was mightily interested in Bill.

He was dressed to beat the band: braided morning coat, white spats, the last word in neckties. Evidently a regular fellow. He was one of those upstanding, handsome boys in which the West End of London seems to abound. Perhaps he was twenty-seven, or a little less, with a skin naturally fair burnt to a most attractive shade of copper by the suns of foreign climes. There was something so wholesome and clean, so manly and trim about Bill, that even a girl of sense might be expected to fall in love with him on sight. Mame was not in a position to think of love. But he looked such a white man, and so faultless in his grace that even as it was she could not repress a little sigh of envy. Some girls didn’t appreciate their luck in having boys of that sort feeding from the hand.

“Going?” Mame heard him say.

The queen of the four-flushers answered with an unmistakable “Yep” which might have come from the Bowery. She went on to discard her cigarette, to put away her meerschaum holder and then to examine the inside of her purse. “Dammitall!” she said. “No change and I must leave a shilling under the plate for the waiter. Have you one about you, Bill?”

Bill obliged. The girl laid the shilling under her plate and got up from the table. As she did so she turned abruptly to Mame and held out her hand in a most winning manner. “A-rivederci. I have your address. I won’t forget that card. So glad to have met you.”

While Mame returned doubtful thanks for a favour she did not expect to receive, the girl and her escort were already under way. With mingled feelings Mame watched them pass along the line of tables. She saw the girl blow a kiss to the old woman with the Roman nose, who in return offered a most truculent scowl. But this was effaced by the homage of the _maître d’hôtel_, who bestowed upon the girl an exaggerated bow. Moreover, as she made a smiling progress down the long room, many eyes seemed to follow her; or, as Mame was inclined to think, the eyes of the feminine section of the tea-drinking public were drawn by the escort Bill.

Indeed, as a pair they were distinctly “it” as they went along to the door. The girl stopped at several tables just to pass the time of day, while Bill stood by like a big and amiable Newfoundland dog.

Mame sighed again. Yes, some skirts had luck! Up till that moment she had not realised the possibilities in writing for the newspapers. She would get no card, of course, for Clanborough House. But she was already resigned to that. Birds of that sort were much too busy paddling their private canoes. And why not? You simply got nowhere if you didn’t.

When the girl finally went out through the doors at the end of the room Mame was sure that she had seen and heard the last of her. That was the way of the world as already she had come to understand it. The big cities were chock-full of interesting folks, but unless you were just-so it was not worth while to take you up.

To be worth while, that was the open sesame to New York and London. Paula Ling had grasped that truth. That was why she was a mass of paint and powder and patchouli; that was why she screwed herself like a manikin, into tight smart clothes. But this skirt left Paula standing. The Paulas of life, for all their brains and their will-power, could not live five minutes with this sort of girl, who had every new trick, and who, like Cinquevalli the famous conjurer, was so expert she could almost do them shut-eye.

So much was Mame occupied with these thoughts that it was not until she had paid her bill and was out once more upon the cold pavement of Pall Mall that she gave herself a mental shake. She was a fool. Had she kept her wits about her she would at least have asked the waiter the name of this queen among four-flushers.

XIII

Mame had quite made up her mind that she would not receive an invitation to the wedding reception at Clanborough House. Why should she? That the girl would prove as good as her word was not on the cards. Such a promise was no more than a slick Londoner’s way of showing how much she was in it, without really being quite so much in it as she showed.

After all, however, it is a funny world. And this was Mame’s reflection, when rather late the following afternoon, the little maid, whose name was Janet, handed her a large, square, important-looking envelope that had just come by post. At the sight of the coronet on the back and the general air of quality Mame’s heart gave a jump.

The unexpected had happened. Her Grace the Duchess of Clanborough requested the honour--requested the honour, mark you!--of the company of Miss Amethyst Du Rance at the marriage of the Marquis of Belfield with her niece Miss Van Alsten at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, at three o’clock on Thursday, April 6, and afterwards at Clanborough House, Mayfair.

It was very odd. But it was distinctly thrilling. There was no need to be so humble after all. The girl evidently was interested in Miss Du Rance and had gone out of her way to do her a service. And Miss Du Rance did not mind owning that she had been a little too ready to suspect her of not being on the level.

With a sensation of deep but quiet triumph Mame listened now to the tabbies faintly purring over their teacups. It called for self-control not to ask the arch-puss, who gave herself out a bishop’s niece, upon whom Mame had an especial down, whether she was going to the ceremony at St. Margaret’s or to the reception at Clanborough House, or whether she meant to do both?--although privately quite sure that the old stiff was going to do neither. Happily she remembered a text of the village preacher in the grim days when she had to endure him every Sunday: “Be not exalted lest ye be cast down.”

In spite of a glow in the centre of her being, the warning in those words could not have been more salutary. So fully had Clanborough House been dismissed from Mame’s thoughts that she had already made up her mind to quit London as soon as possible. In fact, she had just informed Mrs. Toogood that she would not require a room beyond Saturday; and she had decided to go immediately after breakfast to-morrow morning, Wednesday, to book a second-class berth in the _Vittoria_, which was to sail three days later for New York.

The invitation to Clanborough House looked like changing all that. It rather set Mame on the horns of a dilemma. A girl truly wise would stick to the plan she had made, the voice of prudence told her. Clanborough House would probably mean another fortnight in London; it would involve her in a new hat and other expense; and if she was not careful such a hole would be cut in her purse that alarmingly few dollars would remain in it by the time she found herself back on Broadway.

These reflections gave Mame a jolt. A lot of use an invite to Clanborough House, if the price of it brought you to your uppers. Aunt Lou’s legacy would be gone, along with the hundred and ten dollars she had been able to save. Her job would be lost. And in a place like New York it was no certainty that she would get another at short notice. She had heard it described by those who should know as the cruelest place on earth for persons who were up against it.

These were problems. Invitation in hand, Mame fiercely considered them. Should she? Or should she not? The famous highbrow William Shakespeare, according to the office calendar whose mottoes she had by heart, the famous highbrow William Shakespeare had made the statement that “there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

It might be so. That was true, no doubt, for some. But again, for others it was quite likely not to be true. Circumstances alter cases. William Shakespeare was writing in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth when there were not so darn many go-getters around. In his time there were not more people than jobs and all the seats in the public parks of the big cities were not overflowing with those who couldn’t raise the price of a meal.

A problem, sure. On the one hand, prudence, foresight, a looking-before-and-after; on the other, ambition, hope, adventure, all the worth-while things. Such a chance would never recur. And if she had brain enough to use it in the right way, there was no saying where it might lead.

Mame spent a very restless night. But somewhere in the small hours, when her mind was at its most lucid, she took the momentous decision to follow her star.

If she turned back now, with the gates of her kingdom opening wide, she never deserved to see them again. “Stick it, Mame.” That had always been her slogan, even in the cold hour of sun-up before the day’s work began or over a guttering candle after it was done, when secretly she gave her whole mind to the hard and dry study of stenography.

It was that power of giving her whole mind to things that in the end had won freedom. If she had taken a line of least resistance or been afraid to go all out for the things she wanted, she would still have been doing chores upon the farm. No, she must stand up to her luck. And if the worst came she could go home steerage.

Full of new resolve, Mame’s first act was to inform Mrs. Toogood that she proposed to stay on at least another week. Then, after an elaborate calculation of ways and means, she set out on a tour of Oxford Street. A new hat she must have. When in Rome, etc. No use looking a frump at Clanborough House. She would be mixing with class. And if she was careful how she dressed and she watched her step all the time, the folks might not be able to tell her from real.

A quiet mode was best suited to Miss Amethyst Du Rance. After much observation of herself and other people, that was her conclusion. Like most of her countrywomen she had a flair in the matter of clothes. New York and London had taught her their value. Already she was getting to know the worth of the mysterious attribute, style.

The girl she had met at the Carlton was a revelation of what style could do. It was a far better thing than mere looks. But Mame’s ambition was to have both. And if she could only fulfil it, there was no reason, so far as she could see, why she should not unlock the most exclusive doors in Britain.

At all events, it should not be for want of trying. If the invite to Clanborough House meant anything it was that she had found a bonanza. The girl must be a regular high-flyer, and for some mysterious reason, which Mame could not fathom, she was willing to be a fairy godmother. It was up to Mame to prove her own mettle. Here, at last, was a chance to pull the big stuff.

Many hours in Oxford Street were necessary before Mame’s prudence could decide just how much to be bled. She had to get home, if, in spite of Clanborough House, the stars in their courses played her false. After she had duly paid for the hat on which she had set her heart, and a captivating fox so near real that she fell for it at the last moment, she was quite alarmed by the narrow margin of safety.

At the end of the day she wrote an urgent letter to the editor of the Cowbarn _Independent_. She told him how disappointed she was not to have had a line all the time she had been in Europe. And she hinted that a few dollars in exchange for the fifteen columns she had already sent him would be welcome.

But what was the _Independent_ anyway? At best a fourth-rate sheet, a small-town rag. She would forget it. The time had surely come to fly at higher game.

She tore up the letter to Elmer Dobree. His treatment was so mean he was not worth a twopenny stamp. Let her get into touch with the big live papers of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. Yes, the idea was good. She was full of good ideas, yet they didn’t seem to click.

What was wrong? Her stuff was O. K., she was sure. Full of jazz, unlike what other columnists were pulling. Yet editors didn’t fall. In New York she had not been able to get them so much as to look at what she wrote; it was the same in London. Influence was what she needed. Paula Ling was a one for influence. She believed in it all the time. But it had a mystic quality. Nobody knew just what it was or how you came by it.

Personality was the key. Modern journalising was like being in vaudeville or in the movies. You had to do stunts; you had to be a good mixer; able if necessary to jolly an editor into taking an interest in you; above all, you had to be up in the art of what in London they called dressing the shop window.

As slowly she tore up the letter to Elmer P. she sighed deeply. Even he had deserted her. Well, never say die, that was still her motto. She must hang on by the eyelids to the bitter end. But she felt so sore with one whose friendship she had built on that she snatched his photograph from her bedroom chimneypiece and consigned it to her trunk. The stronger for the deed, she then resumed that optimistic pen which had yet to earn a dime in Europe and began a carefully diplomatic letter to Paula Wyse Ling.

Out and out go-getter though Paula was, Mame valued her friendship. To be sure, it had only been manifested in small and considered ways. Paula was essentially a girl who didn’t give without taking; if she shared her bread with you, she would expect you to share your jam with her. But Mame didn’t blame her for that. Paula, too, had had a long way to go. She had started out at sixteen without a buck from what she alluded to as “a comic village in the State of Maine.” By sheer grit and the power of sticking it she had earned enough by her pen to spend two years in Europe. And now since her return home she was pulling five hundred a month, with every prospect of going bigger.

Diplomacy was needed to handle the Paula Lings of the world. Mame kept this truth before her as her pen drove steadily on. She painted a rosy picture of her life in London. If not exactly what these Cockneys themselves would call “a Brock’s Benefit,” in other words, a firework display, she was already beginning to fix the half-nelson on various editors of distinction who paid a fair price per col. Also she was getting around a good deal with the worth-while folks. Her friend the Duchess of Clanborough had just sent her a special invite to a wedding ceremony and to the reception afterwards, which the King and Queen had promised to attend. Some marquis or other was going to marry a Miss Van Alsten; but Paula was likely to know as much about it as she did, as the Miss Van Alsten in question belonged to New York.

Here it was that diplomacy entered with both feet. New York being just naturally interested in the marriage of one of its queens with a British blood-peer, Mame would be glad to do the show from the inside, with a full description of who was there, how they looked, what they wore, and so on; and if Paula could fix it her end with some editor or some syndicate of editors, she would be happy to divide the cheque. Time being money, she hoped Paula would save on it by promptly cabling terms.

As Mame cast an eye over this letter, it seemed an inspiration to write Paula Ling and offer her fifty-fifty of the dough. If Paula couldn’t place the first-hand account of next week’s marriage, it was not likely there was one alive who could. With a sly smile Mame addressed the envelope to Paula’s apartment on Sixty-seventh Street. Then she slipped out and placed it carefully in the little red pillar box at the British Museum end of Montacute Square.

XIV

Thursday was to be the day of days. But the evening of Wednesday after a week of east winds, having settled into reasonably spring-like weather, Mame decided to give her new hat and fox an airing. It would take off a little of the shine; besides, she was burning to know how she looked and felt in things that had taxed her purse to capacity.

Distinction, personality, taste, style, were the watch-words humming in her rather excited brain as she posed before the cracked mirror in her bedroom. This hat and fox had cost thirty-five berries in hard cold cash. And there was nothing much to show. Yet the fox looked so nearly like a fox for the money as it adorned her slim neck and the hat set off her shapely little head so well, that they gave her quite a tone. She would have to travel steerage now, but it was worth it. Thirty-five dollars’ worth of hat and fur did give you a feeling of Class.

Lured by the fineness of the evening Mame went as far as Hyde Park. When Bus 29 set her down at the Marble Arch the clock upon it said twenty minutes past five. The promise of night was in the sky already. There were few people to observe Mame’s tasteful finery as she sauntered past the long line of empty chairs which ran the entire length of Park Lane as far as Apsley House.

Hard by a statue whose naïveté gave Mame a jolt, she turned off to the right and crossed the forsaken tan of Rotten Row. And in so doing her movements, unknown to herself, attracted the notice of two policemen, who were standing on duty in the shadow of the trees.

She took a seat, one of the many provided gratis by a paternal County Council for the worthy citizens of London, England. No one else was sitting around. There was excellent reason for their absence, although Mame did not know it. But she was about to be put wise.

The path by whose edge Mame innocently sat was the most charming in London. It ran from Piccadilly to Kensington Gore and there was a time, not so long ago, when it was much frequented by people who knew what was what. _Autres temps, autres mœurs._ People who knew what was what were particularly careful now to keep the other side the park railings. Better be splashed from head to heel by the bounding taxi or the plebeian bus, better be jostled by a heedless mob, than to take a chance of being run in.

The zealots of the Metropolitan Force had closed London’s most alluring path to all people of sense, but Mame did not know that. And she was not to blame. But just one other there was among all the millions of Cockaigne who at that moment appeared to share her ignorance. Blame in his case is a delicate question.

Truly a rather wonderful old bird. He was of the sort to be seen only in cathedral cities, and then but one at a time; always providing that some many-and-portentous-syllabled conference is not in session when this rare bird may be seen in his battalions.

In this case he was solus. Far wiser he, had his lady wife or some authentic church-worker accompanied him from St. James’s Vicarage, where he had been to call upon the incumbent, to the chapter house at Knightsbridge. His like are the natural prey of those who lurk at dusk in the shrubberies of Hyde Park. There was something in his shovel hat, all rosetted and beribanded, in his decent black apron, in the neat many-buttoned gaiters which set off his comely legs that no self-respecting London policeman could resist. He did not seem to know that, this adventurous old boy. Or perhaps feeling himself to be like Cæsar’s wife he was so foolhardy as not to worry.

Mame had just taken her seat under the trees which grace the Forbidden Path. She was wondering how awfully well she must look in her new hat and fox, how full of lugs and yet of quietness, in a word, how exceedingly Class; she was wondering, too, how she could best develop her personality, so that London, England, should know her for what she was--one of the bright intellects of the U. S.--when cheu! this perfectly amazing old lady of the village came into her ken.

He did more than come into her ken; he filled the entire range of her vision. Fully absorbed in his recent heart-to-heart talk with the liberal-minded friends he had left at the Vicarage, he was not conscious that Mame was there. As for Mame, the mere contiguity of this old john charmed her to a smile.

That smile was Mame’s undoing. Thoughts on style and personality banished for the nonce, her eyes were fixed on the slowly receding form of the Moderator of the Metropolitan First Church of London, England, or its equivalent, when two policemen, young, rampant, red-haired, sprang from the bushes. They lacked the irresponsibility of the glad Irish peelers who lend such zip to New York. These charming fellows happened to be Scots. But they had their way to make in the wicked Saxon world. Here was their chance.

“Did he speak to ye?” demanded the First Cop in a hoarse, stern tone.

The sudden onset of the police brought up Mame with a round turn. She had read that the homely London bobby was the admiration of the civilised world. So far, she was bound to own, she liked him. He was human and kindly, simple and bland. But to have the wind put up in this manner by a brace of raw Scots was a bit too much. For the moment she felt quite flustered.

“Come again.” Her drawl was rather startled. “I don’t get you.”

“Why was ye giving him the glad eye?” Thus the Second Cop. And he seemed to add to Mame’s perplexity.