VII
WHEN Mame returned to the drawing room she was dressed for the evening meal. It was only seven o’clock and she counted on having the place to herself, since at that hour the tabbies would be occupied with their own preparations. But as it happened the room was not quite empty. There was just one person in it.
The old elegant, who had already excited Mame’s curiosity, stood before the meagre fire warming his thin hands. As soon as she came in he turned towards her with a little bow of rare politeness.
“I am told,” he said in the deepest, most measured tone Mame had ever heard, “you are an American.”
Mame owned to that in the half-humorous manner she had already adopted for the benefit of these islanders. Some folks might have been abashed by this obvious grandee. Not so Miss Amethyst Du Rance. She was as good as the best and she was in business to prove it. These bums were not to be taken at their own valuation. Back of everything her faith in her own shrewd wits was unshakable.
“I have a very warm corner in my heart for all Americans.”
“Have you so?” said Mame.
There was not a hint of patronage in the old buck’s manner, yet in spite of his air of simple kindness, Mame somehow felt the King-of-England-with-his-beard-off feeling creeping upon her. He was the goods all right, this old john, but she was determined to take him in her stride as she would have taken President Harding or any other regular fellow.
“Won’t you tell me your name?”
Mame opened the small bag which she never parted with, even at meal times, and took out her card. The old man fixed his eyeglass and scanned it with prodigious solemnity. “Cowbarn.” A bland pause. “Now tell me, what state is that in? It’s very ignorant not to know,” he apologetically added.
“No, it ain’t.” Mame was captivated by the air of humility, although not sure that it was real. “Cowbarn’s in the state of Iowa. On’y a one-horse burg.”
“Ah, yes, to be sure, Iowa.” The grandee made play with his eyeglass. “I remember touring the Middle West with Henry Irving in ’89.”
So long was ’89 before Mame was born that she was a trifle vague upon the subject of Henry Irving. But she knew all about Lloyd George, Arthur, Earl of Balfour, and even Old Man Gladstone of an earlier day. She surmised that Henry was one of these.
“A senator, I guess?”
“My dear young lady, no.” The tone of surprise was comically tragic. “Henry Irving was the greatest ac-torr Eng-laand ever produced.”
“You don’t say!” The awe in Mame’s voice was anautomatic concession to the awe in the voice of the speaker.
“Yes, Eng-laand’s greatest ac-torr.” There was a note of religious exaltation in the old grandee. “I toured the United States three times with Henry Irving.”
“Did you visit Cowbarn?” Mame asked for politeness’ sake. To the best of her information, Cowbarn, like herself, had not been invented in ’89.
“I seem to remember playing the Duke there to Henry Irving’s Shylock at a one-night stand,” said the grandee also for politeness’ sake. He had never heard of Cowbarn, he had never been to Iowa, and in ’89 Henry the August had given up the practice of playing one-night stands. But the higher amenities of the drawing room are not always served by a conservative handling of raw fact.
Mame, with that sharp instinct of hers, knew the old chap was lying. But it didn’t lessen her respect. He had an overwhelming manner and when he gave the miserable fire a simple poke he used the large gesture of one who feels that the eyes of the universe are upon him. Still, with every deduction made, and a homely daughter of a republic felt bound to make many, he was the most human thing she had met so far in her travels.
His name was Falkland Vavasour. And in confiding to Mame this bright jewel of the English theatre, which his pronunciation of it led her to think it must be, he yet modestly said that its lustre was nought compared with the blinding effulgence of the divine Henry.
“Some ac-torr, old man Henry Irv,” Mame was careful to pronounce the sacred word “actor” in the manner of this old-timer.
“My de-ah young lady, Henry Irving was a swell. Never again shall we look upon his like.”
“I’ll say not.” And then with an instinct to hold the conversation at the level to which it had now risen Mame opened the door of fancy. “Come to think of it, I’ve heard my great-uncle Nel speak of Henry Irving. You’ve heard, I guess, of Nelson E. Grice, the Federal general, one of the signatures to the peace of Appomattox. He was the brother of my mother’s mother. Many’s the time I’ve set on Great-uncle’s knee and played with the gold watch and chain that his old friend General Sherman give him the day after the battle of Gettysburg.”
Great-uncle Nel had really nothing to do with the case, but Mame felt he was a sure card to play in this high-class conversation. The old Horse had not been a general, he had not signed the peace of Appomattox, and there was a doubt whether General Sherman, whose friend he certainly was, had ever given him a gold watch and chain; but he was a real asset in the Durrance family. Apart from this hero there was nothing to lift it out of the rut of mediocrity. Quite early in life Mame had realized the worth of great-uncle Nel.
Mr. Falkland Vavasour had the historical sense. He rose to General Nelson E. Grice like a trout to a may fly. The old buck refixed his eyeglass and recalled the Sixties. He was playing junior lead at the LiverpoolRotunda when the news came of President Lincoln’s assassination. He remembered— But what did he not remember? Yes, great-uncle Nel was going to be a sure card in London, England.
Mame was getting on with the old beau like a house on fire when the clock on the chimneypiece struck half-past seven. Mr. Falkland Vavasour gave a little sigh and said he must go. Mame, quickened already by a regard for this charming old man, who lit the gloom of Fotheringay House, expressed sorrow that he was not dining in.
But it seemed that Mr. Falkland Vavasour never did dine in. This applied, in fact, to all his meals. All his meals were taken out.
“But why?” asked Mame disappointedly.
“My dear young lady”—the old-timer’s shrug was so whimsical yet so elegant it sure would have made Henry Irving jealous—“one has nothing against the cook of our hostess— But!”
Until that moment Mame had not realized what a world of meaning a simple word can hold.
She was keenly disappointed. As the first tabby invaded the drawing room Mr. Falkland Vavasour passed out. A glamour, a warmth, passed out with him. Everything grew different. It was a change from light to darkness; it was like a swift cloud across the sun.