XXI
TUESDAY afternoon saw Miss Amethyst Du Rance armedcap-à-piefor a second descent upon London society.
Since the opportune arrival of Elmer P.’s letter the invitation to Half Moon Street had been much in her thoughts. It opened up new possibilities. And the friend she had so providentially found was likely to prove of great value in the life she aspired to lead.
Having received her baptism of fire at Clanborough House, Mame had none of the qualms which, on that occasion, had assailed her. Within her now was a happy feeling of success. Moreover, a black cloud had been lifted from her mind. Elmer P.’s letter had changed everything.
By nature adventurous, she was stimulated by the prospect of big things. To begin with, she bestowed great pains upon her appearance. She had lately discovered that she paid for dressing; and it gave her real pleasure to linger over the last touches to her small but attractive self.
She had, too, an instinct for doing things well. The afternoon was fine, there was spring in the air, but she could afford a taxi to Half Moon Street. Thereforeshe taxi’d. It gave her a sense of being in the picture to drive up in state to Lady Violet’s flat.
It was about a quarter to four when she found herself going up in the lift—a handier word than elevator—to 16b on the second floor. She pressed a neat button and a dinky maid, who was much too smart for a hired girl, in snowy cap and apron and with a prim English look, ushered the visitor across a tiny entrance hall into a singularly cosy and artistically furnished drawing room. To Mame it was quite the last word in feminine elegance.
It was a little early for callers and she had the good luck to find Lady Violet alone. As soon as the visitor was announced the hostess laid aside the novel she was reading, got up cheerily and welcomed her with that forthcomingness which from the first had taken Mame.
There was great charm in this girl and Mame reacted to it. Here were a big outlook and first-hand knowledge of the great world. To Lady Violet life was a game; human nature an amusing spectacle, a kind of comedy farce; men and women, no matter how highly placed, were merely players. But she had not a spark of ill nature; at least Mame as yet had not detected one. Nor, as far as Mame could tell, was she grinding her own axe. The top-notchers Mame had been privileged to look on in New York from a respectful distance were not folks of this kidney. They were mighty careful to keep you at arm’s length, unless you could make them feel that you had something substantial to givethem in return for any interest they condescended to take in a person as raw as yourself.
This afternoon, however, Mame was not feeling quite so raw as she had done. Clanborough House combined with the letter from New York had somehow given her a more substantial basis. It is wonderful what a feeling of success can do. Besides, Lady Violet, as usual, was just as easy as pie.
She told the visitor how pleased she was to see her and fixed her snugly in a chair.
“When are you thinking of going home?”
“I expect I’ll stay on through the summer now.” Mame had a slight air of importance. “I like the life here and I’ve just had a commission to report it for the New YorkMonitor.”
“That’ll be interesting.”
Mame hoped it would be. If she was careful how she played her cards it might be very interesting indeed, but the problem of the moment was the exact order in which to do so.
She was a creature of quick intuitions. And she promptly decided that the perfect frankness which up till now had served her so well was decidedly the card to bank on.
To go around, to see things from the inside, to get into the swim was Mame’s ambition and she naïvely confessed it to Lady Violet. This new friend did not discourage it. She did, indeed, seem a little amused, but not in the way of patronage or ill nature. Perhaps it was because this quaint thing from a land whereLady Violet herself had enjoyed jolly times was so liberally endowed with the quality that most appealed to her in man or woman, horse or hound. It was the quality best summed up by the good word “pluck,” which from their first chance meeting had inspired her with an honest desire to help this little American.
Something about Miss Amethyst De Rance had certainly touched Lady Violet. This girl was as different from the run of Americans with whom she occasionally rubbed shoulders on their native continent as chalk is different from cheese. And among her compatriots whom Lady Violet knew in London, not one in the least resembled her.
Obviously her general education was limited, but this girl was as live as a fire. She was very original; and her decidedly pretty head was full of ideas. Even if in the main they were directed to her own advancement, why blame her? But it was her way of saying things that appealed most strongly to this amateur of the human comedy. Lady Violet was a connoisseur, who in her spare time collected odd types of her fellow creatures, as other people collect postage stamps, foreign coins, pewter or old Sheffield. Moreover, having a keen, if rather freakish sense of fun, it pleased her sometimes to play one “type” off against another.
All the same, there was no young woman in London society more genuinely popular. If she could be, and frequently was, mischievous in a subtle way, she had a knack of helping lame dogs over stiles. Providing she liked a person, and she sometimes liked them for theoddest reasons, such as the shape of their ears, or because their toes turned in, she would take quite a lot of trouble over them.
This afternoon the funny little American she had met at the Carlton ten days ago, and who now graced her “collection” as if she had been a scarce butterfly with rare and attractive markings, was sending up a rather pathetic social S. O. S. Miss Du Rance, who was really pretty if she wouldn’t “make up” and wear the wrong sort of clothes, had already let her in on the ground floor in the matter of confidences. The girl had, it seemed, ambitions, which she had precious little chance of being able to gratify.
Lady Violet, however, did not tell her so. She was much too good-hearted for that. From the first she had been attracted by the child. Something looked out of those good grey eyes. Already this new friend’s worldly wise brain was at work.
Mame was encouraged to prattle artlessly on. There was no display of vulgar curiosity; but in the most natural way Lady Violet probed the secrets of her past. The life on the farm, four miles from Cowbarn, Iowa; the burning of the midnight candle to fit herself for the larger life; the good Miss Jenkins; the secret study of stenography; the escape to theIndependentoffice; the arrival of Aunt Lou’s legacy; the flight to New York; the police raid; the trip to Europe—warmed by sympathy, Mame told the story of her life. And as told in the vivid native idiom, which, to the dweller inanother world, had all the charm of novelty, the story almost became an epic.
Yes, she was worth helping, this rather pathetic child. Lady Violet fixed on her again that masked look which had a strange power of seeing through the most complex people. But this little go-getter—her own priceless word—was not complex at all. She was perfectly easy to read. And yet so interesting. In fact she was something new.
Miss Du Rance had just told the story of her life, when a tall, slightly faded-looking woman of forty came into the room.
The first thing Mame noted about this lady was the way in which her hair was done. She must have a peach of a maid. It was turning a most becoming shade of grey; it was abundant and it had an air of great elegance. That indeed was the quality which dominated the lady herself; an air of great elegance. She was subdued in dress and in manner; she moved like some extremely dignified and well-nurtured cat; yet there was nothing about her of that passive hostility which caused Mame so actively to dislike the Tabbies of Fotheringay House.
Lady Violet addressed this rather formal yet most agreeable dame as Cousin Edith. “Let me introduce Miss Du Rance of Chicago,” she said to Cousin Edith with a pensive smile.
Mame returned vigorously Cousin Edith’s bow and then offered an equally vigorous hand. “Very pleased to meet you, ma’am,” said Mame cordially. Her democraticspirit was a little doubtful of the “ma’am” but she was using company manners, so it seemed all right.
“Of Chicago,” however, troubled her. “Cowbarn, Iowa.” She hastened with a frank smile to correct Lady Violet.
“Near Chicago,” said the hostesssotto voceto Cousin Edith. For some reason, which was not at all clear, she seemed determined to locate Mame in a region wherein Mame had no desire to be located. Iowa was good enough for her, but evidently in London society Illinois was considered more Chick.
She took quite a liking to Cousin Edith. That lady had a nice flow of talk that was very amiable and kindly. Unlike Lady Violet’s it was not syncopated nor was it full of slang; it had no witty twists and turns, but it was well worth listening to. Cousin Edith appeared to have seen and known quite a lot, but she lacked Lady Violet’s force and humour and her modern touch. All the same she was light in hand and had the happy knack of meeting people a little more than half way, which could not be said for most Britishers.
Mame was getting on famously with Cousin Edith when a Mrs. Creber Newsum was announced. Mrs. Creber Newsum was tall, blonde, very blue-eyed, very fragile. Distinction seemed to stand off from her manner in festoons. Like her fair hair and her fine chin her fluting voice seemed to be raised a shade too high.
The moment Mrs. Creber Newsum entered the room, and even before being introduced to her, which she almost immediately was, Mame instinctively knew thiswas a kind of dame of whom she would do well to be careful. She had a subtle feeling before a word had passed between them that the newcomer was one of her own countrywomen. And in that case she shrewdly suspected that as far as Mrs. Creber Newsum was concerned she had better go slow. By now Miss Amethyst Du Rance knew enough of Europe to be aware that in the eyes of a Mrs. Creber Newsum, with her Fifth Avenue, Long Island, flat-in-Paris, villa-in-Italy style, she was very much, at present, “the wrong kind of American.”
However, she was not always going to be the wrong kind of American. But for the moment, knowing as much as she did, and being able to guess at what she didn’t, she intended to imitate the motions of a character famous in the Bible. She would walk delicately.
Miss Du Rance was not flustered at all. She had been through the fire at Clanborough House, she had learned a few things and she had the moral support of an influential and an able friend. Just how able that friend was she discovered within the next two minutes.
“Mrs. Creber Newsum,” said Lady Violet, in a voice that sounded quite impressive, “this is my friend Miss Du Rance of Chicago.”
It was odd, but Mame perceived in a flash the tactical value of the “Chicago.” Somehow it seemed to account for her in a general way, whereas the Iowa, let alone the Cowbarn, might have accounted for her much too definitely, at any rate in the eyes of Mrs.Creber Newsum. Beyond a doubt, Lady Violet was clever.
Mrs. Creber Newsum glanced at Mame, more in sorrow than in anger. Then she offered her hand as if it rather hurt her to do so; and then she withdrew it as if the touch of Mame’s fingers was a shade more than her spotless gloves could bear. Mame felt that her compatriot—she couldn’t tell exactly how she knew Mrs. Creber Newsum was an American, but she would have bet a hundred and fifty dollars that she was—was slightly overdoing the aristocracy racket. On Fifth Avenue it might have seemed all right; but it was so consciously “high-grade,” that it had a tendency to get on the nerves of common folks.
The introduction had just been got over with real queenliness on the one side—Mrs. Creber Newsum simply couldn’t help being queenly—and real discretion on the other, when Mame surprised the broadest smile she had yet seen on the averted face of Lady Violet. Plainly her friend was enjoying the moment hugely. What there was to be secretly so amused about, Mame couldn’t guess. But the smile of Lady Violet set her thinking.
Mrs. Creber Newsum sat slowly on an ottoman, about as far from her small compatriot as she could conveniently get. And then she said in a rather high but agreeable voice, although much troubled with culture, “Have you been in England long, Miss Du Rance?”
“Five weeks and four days,” said Mame.
“Five weeks and four days,” Mrs. Creber Newsum repeated softly. “An interesting experience for you, is it not?”
Mame was not to be drawn. The conversation as far as it touched Mrs. Creber Newsum and herself seemed to languish. But neither Cousin Edith nor Lady Violet was the kind of person who would permit it to languish generally. They had it well in hand. It could be wound up and set going just as soon as they chose, but Lady Violet, at least, wanted to see what the two Americans would make of each other.
As a matter of fact she knew. And there was no need to wait for her prescience to be demonstrated. But for some reason, these differing types greatly amused her. Perhaps she rather wanted to see what the homely little barnyard chick would make of the superlative cosmopolitan peacock. She knew exactly what the peacock had made already of the little chick.
Mame’s quick brain was busy even if her tongue was inert. She would get no good of Mrs. Creber Newsum and she must be particularly careful that the high-flyer did not call her bluff. As she sat listening to the light and clever talk of these new friends she determined from now on to watch her step with unceasing vigilance. The chances that were coming her way must be stepping stones to her great ambition; but she must expect no help and no mercy from the Mrs. Creber Newsums of the earth.
Cousin Edith soon began to address mild and non-committal nothings to Miss Du Rance, to ease, as itwere, Chicago’s burden in the presence of Cosmopolis. Mame felt humbly grateful. Cousin Edith was a kind of natural dear. And Mame was sure she had as much culture as Mrs. Creber Newsum, but that she preferred to conceal it rather than to cut a dash. But what really interested Miss Du Rance was not the talk of Cousin Edith. She was responsive and polite, but one ear was kept open for the cavortings of Mrs. Creber Newsum and Lady Violet.
It was wonderful, the assurance and the calm with which Lady Violet lit on highbrow subjects. Duse, Cæsar Franck, Tchehov, Marcel Proust, all that kind of dope; she could take Mrs. Creber Newsum over the course without putting a foot wrong. She had no airs about it either. But she could ladle out highbrow eyewash till the cows came home, merely as a matter of course. Mrs. Creber Newsum, however, seemed to inflate. Mame resolved to study this kind of cross talk. A useful trick to learn.
Pretty soon other folks began to pile in and, from Mame’s viewpoint, things grew still more entertaining. Lady So-and-So; Mrs. This; Miss That. She did not always catch their names, or at least her memory, usually so good, was not always able to retain them. Some she was introduced to; some she was not; but no matter whom she found herself up against, she was careful to maintain a Biblical style of progress.
Most of these dashers thought her dull, no doubt. Let them. She must play for safety. Some of them eyed her curiously; they couldn’t quite conceal a“Hulloa-what-are-you-doing-here?” sort of look. But the fairly large room began to fill. And the fuller it became the more at ease grew Mame. There was a better chance to take cover.
This crowd was worth observing at close range. Mame did not let the opportunity slip. The proper study of mankind is man. According to the office calendar some wise guy had pulled that in the reign of Queen Anne. Mame had already developed considerable powers in that direction. She was getting quite expert at sizing folks up.
Socially speaking, she now divided her fellow creatures into two classes. Class A, on the level. Class B, four-flushers. Nothing had surprised her more in New York than the prevalence of Class B. They were everywhere. And, as far as she was concerned, they were highly dangerous people. One of their chief delights was to call the bluff of their competitors.
London also suffered from Class B. It was less dominant, however, than on the other side of the Atlantic. And for the most part, in London they were four-flushers with a difference. They saw bigger, they carried more sail; perhaps they were older hands at the game.
Even Lady Violet’s smart drawing room was not wholly free of Class B. As the place got fuller and fuller and the tea and cake began to circulate, the other sex made a bit of a show. Mame welcomed them as a pleasing diversion. She gave far less thought to menas a rule than she gave to women. Somehow she felt that she had so much less to fear from them.
London, she had heard, was rather famous for its men. They were said to wear their clothes better than any in the world. That might be so. But among those who blew in upon 16b Half Moon Street this afternoon were one or two whose clothes ought not to have been worn by anybody. Artistic johns, no doubt. One in particular, large, shambling, big-kneed, loud-voiced, had a regular Fifth of November appearance.
Mame was so struck by him that she asked her right-hand neighbour, a very knowledgeable girl who unmistakably belonged to Class A and who was full of natural elegance, who he was.
“Shelton France Mackelland, the Canadian poet,” the girl informed her.
“A Canuck, is he?” She wondered how he dared.
“Don’t you know his famous volume of poems,The Old Shack?”
Mame confessed that she did not.
“I adore them myself.” The girl, who was very pretty and quite simple, spoke with an unpremeditated innocence that Mame liked but deplored. Class A girls of this sort made it altogether too easy for Class B people to get away with it.
“No use for Canucks.” Mame looked towards Shelton France Mackelland with open hostility. “They are the worst kind of tinhorns mostly.”
Sweetly and gravely the girl begged Mame’s pardon.This odd, fierce, untamed little American was using what to her was a foreign language.
Before Mame could fully expound what her attitude was towards the Canucks of the earth, a young man of a different sort bore down upon her with a plate of cakes. He was the identical Bill whom Mame had admired so much when she had first seen him two weeks ago. This afternoon he was looking nicer than ever. A picture of health and comeliness, he was doing enormous credit to his tailor. And his manners were most engagingly frank. Even in the eyes of an observer severely democratic they hadn’t a suspicion of “lugs.”
“I like that one,” said Mame, after the bearer of the cakes had passed on. She bit a piece out of her recently acquired bun and found brandy in the heart of it. “If I was falling in love I’ll say he’d be the baby for me.”
The friendly neighbour glanced at her in mild but furtive wonder.
“I didn’t get his name?” said Mame interrogatively.
“That’s my cousin Kidderminster.”
“Kidderminster, is it?” In what connection had she heard the name? She suddenly remembered. “I guess he’s some relation of Lady Violet’s.”
“Her brother.”
For a reason Mame could not have explained her heart gave a little jump. “That’s bully,” she murmured. And then she went on, less perhaps from adesire for information than to divert attention from her own enthusiasm. “Then you, I s’pose, are Lady Violet’s cousin?”
“One of many,” said the girl. “Violet has any amount of cousins. Simply heaps and heaps of relations.”
“Plenty of influence?” The true meaning of that mystic word was now being revealed to Mame.
“Yes, in a way, one would say she had. But she’s got any amount of brains, as well, you know.”
Mame was quite sure that Lady Violet had.
“Everybody thinks her so clever.”
“Earns a big income, I guess.”
“I believe so. And perfectly wonderful how she gets about. Goes everywhere. Knows everybody.”
“Pulls the big stuff.”
“I beg your pardon.” A simple sort of tulip, this girl.
“Kinda got all the strings in her hand,” said Mame, trying to be lucid.
“Most of them, I think. Anyway she has a tremendously good time.”
The folks began to get a bit thinner, to diminish by twos and threes. Mame, having had a most entertaining afternoon, decided not to outstay her welcome. She rose and crossed to Lady Violet, who was talking very quick French to a foreign-looking bozo, with an imperial and a braided jacket, who stood peering over his teacup into her eyes.
“Can I come and see you again?” Mame offered a white glove, in which she took considerable pride, at the precise angle she had discovered to be fashionable.
“Oh, please, please!” Lady Violet spoke as if she really meant it. “And quite soon, you know.”
The cheery warmth of the words left Mame with a feeling that she was taking leave of a real friend.