XVI
THERE was no need to hurry over the business of getting to Clanborough House. In fact, Mame had intended to walk, but the new shoes were so tight that she hailed the first taxi she saw. Instead, however, of giving the sublime address, she prudently said Selfridge’s. She had been over the line of route already. Clanborough House was an easy five minutes on foot from that famous store; it would cost less and consume a certain amount of time, of which there was more than enough, if she walked the remainder of the distance. A gentle stroll, moreover, would help her to get on terms with her fashionable self.
At Selfridge’s she discharged her taxi. Then growing more collected every yard, in spite of the pinching of her shoes, she quietly sauntered through a series of by-streets until she turned a corner and came upon the sign Clanborough Street W.1.
Here she was. At once she descried an awning in the middle distance. The awning was striped red and white. It stretched from the kerb, across the pavement, beyond the railings, along a kind of paved courtyard, and finally merged in the sombre stonework of a gloomy building, a sort of cross between a workhouse and apenitentiary, which since the year of grace 1709 had borne the name of Clanborough House.
Beneath the awning’s entire length ran a red carpet. Mame was so early, it was hardly likely that the first guests would be back from the church within the next half hour. That was her own calculation, which she was careful to verify by the watch on her wrist and also by the clock on the adjacent church tower of St. Sepulchre. But the wedding-going public had assembled already; not merely in twos and threes but in fair-sized battalions. The Metropolitan police had assembled also; not in twos and threes either, but a round thirty or so good-humoured and efficient men, who, subject to their own little vagaries, as Mame was in a position to bear witness, were yet past masters in handling clotted masses of the British cit.
This pleasant afternoon of early spring they were all out to do their job with grace and skill. They had drawn a cordon round Clanborough House and its environs. As Mame came up she observed that privileged beings armed with cameras were in the middle of the road. This caused her some slight regret that she had not driven up to the awning in style and had the door opened by a policeman. It was reasonably certain that she would have been the first guest to arrive and would therefore have been a good subject for the camera. With a bit of luck the new hat and fox might have found their way into the New York papers.
It seemed a pity to have missed that chance. Life,however, still held one or two agreeable things. One of these was the fact that the first policeman to challenge her progress, when in order to dissociate herself from the crowd she stepped off the sidewalk and took to the roadway, was no less than that identical young cop whom she had met the previous evening in Hyde Park.
Life is full of gay surprises. For Mame at this moment it was a delicious affair. To be stopped by that veritable baby in the broad light of day, to be accosted before the multitude, and to be politely requested not to walk in the road was about as good a thing as could have happened to her. The sight of the dour but well-cut features, of the sandy hair and the unsmiling face filled her at once with the joy that warriors feel.
Now that the big moment had come she was no longer cuckoo. Like any other American citizeness she was reacting just naturally to the occasion. The sight of that policeman, the sound of his voice, removed the last trace of stage fright.
“Ye can’t walk along hair, miss.”
“Why not?”
“Unless ye’ve a ticket for the r-r-reception.”
Torn between an ambition to behave like a peeress and a powerful desire to put one over on the constable, the wearer of the new hat and fox opened her vanity bag and haughtily produced her invite.
The young bobby, at the sight of that magic bit of pasteboard and with the eyes of many superior officersupon him, drew himself to his full height and saluted the new hat and fox as only a Scots policeman could have done.
Coolly and with fixity of mind, Mame went through some warlike evolutions with her tortoise-shell folders. A whole series of evolutions. She seemed to detect all about her a sudden joyous clicking of cameras. Her picture was going to be in the New York papers after all.
It was the proudest moment life so far had given her. But she was equal to it. Now that she was fairly in at the deep end, the springs of being seemed automatically to tighten up. She was going to swim. And she was going to swim all the better for having so recently distrusted the power of her breast stroke and the freedom of her leg action.
The eyes of the world were upon the tortoise-shell folders. In Paula Wyse Ling’s opinion there was nothing like them. Paula was right as usual. Mame was conscious of the gaze of theDaily Lyre-consuming public growing rounder and rounder. She could almost hear the suckers asking, Which Little Nob Is This?