XI
AS luck would have it, Bus 56 came at last to a stop opposite a cinema in Camberwell Green. The posters outside were featuring the fratricidal conflict in which great-uncle Nel had borne a part. Indeed, there was a certain quaint old-timer who had a poster all to himself immediately under the booking office window who was General Sherman’s colleague to the very life. At the sight of this warrior something thrilled in Mame. She was not superstitious and she always made a point of believing as little as possible of what one had no means of proving; but that picture went some way to convince her that at this moment the occult was putting one over on her.
Promptly she got off the bus and made for the booking office. But a notice under the window said it was not open until two o’clock and that the show did not begin until half an hour later. As yet it was barely one o’clock, so there was nothing for it but to kill the time.
Mame took a walk up Denmark Hill. It was not a very inspiring altitude. Nor did a glass of milk and a bath bun at a dairyman’s near the tram terminus at East Dulwich station do much to raise her spirits.Never had she felt so intensely that she was nearing a crisis.
Back again at Camberwell Green she entered the cinema just as the orchestra was tuning up. It was an orchestra of two, a fiddle and a piano, and it seemed to add to her depression. Out of deference to the film, which was entitled “Scenes from the Great Civil War,” the fiddle and the piano discoursed those melodies with which Mame’s childhood had been most familiar.
They began with “Suwanee River” and kindred themes of de ole plantation and went on to “John Brown’s Body” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Mame soon wished that she had stayed outside. With all respect to great-uncle Nel she was not in a mood to enjoy thisréchaufféof her youth. For she could not forget that her youth had been hard and unhappy.
In the first place she had never known a mother’s love. At her birth her father had been left a widower. But when Mame, an only child, was five years old, he married a hard-natured, unsympathetic woman. Good had come, indirectly, of the stepmother’s rule. It had not made for joy; but those years had fanned a secret flame in Mame’s ambitious heart. Resentment took the form of a passion for self-improvement. With the help of the village schoolmarm, kindly Miss Jenkins, she studied so hard in the hours when minds less nimble were asleep, that on her eighteenth birthday she was able to fill a vacant stool in theIndependentoffice. Andon that red-letter day, life for Mame Durrance began.
The opening scenes of the film brought back the past vividly. A hundred details, half-forgotten, reminded her of the farm four miles from Cowbarn, where she had been brought up. She saw again, in the types thrown on the screen, the dour, lean, Middle Western farmer, her father. The sight of him was an intolerably painful memory. An embittered, unsuccessful man, who in his later days had often drunk more whiskey than was good for him, in Mame’s recollection, he had never been happy in his work or in his home. He had been years in his grave, yet time, the healer, did not allow his daughter to feel affection for him. Still perhaps she had a little pity. He was one of life’s miss-fires. Groping along from year to year in the old rut, without vision, without initiative, a weak man rather than a bad one, his sins mainly were the sins of omission. And the worst of them, in the eyes of his child who had paid for it, was that he had not been man enough to stand up to the selfish vixen he had taken for his second wife.
It was no use pretending that the film’s poignant reminders of her childhood were pleasant. The discomfort, the toil, the loneliness, all came back to her. How had it been possible for a creature like herself, with only a half-educated village dame to help her, to get away from it all? That was the question now in her mind. And the emotion aroused by these familiar scenes had little enough to do with the heroic figure of her real mother’s Uncle Nel, although the fine typeto which he belonged was also there. Uppermost in Mame were disgust and pity. But she had escaped. By some miracle she had escaped. And no matter what happened to her now, she knew that she could never go back to the drudgery and the boredom of the place whence she came.
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 ofreality. 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 lodgedher 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 theIndependent. 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. Evenif 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 Mamedid 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 crisplybrushed 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 sureit 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 attitudetowards 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 thequaint 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.