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 wouldnever 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 CowbarnIndependent.
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 Astorswhen 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 orvice 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 somemansion 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 theTimesthis 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’sthroat 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 anunmistakable “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 themaître 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.