The death of Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, was the sensation of Paris in
the spring of the year 1924. Who Mr. Amp was, it appeared, no one knew
for certain. But it was said that he had fallen in love with a
photograph of an English gentlewoman in Arab costume, had plunged into
the desert to commune with his passion and had been kidnapped by a
sheikess in plus-fours who had a fancy for bald Americans with bulging
eyes. However....
Mrs. Amp, said Dwight-Rankin, died suddenly and terribly; and her
mangled remains were the subject of discussion in society for many a
day. It was a Friday evening, and all Paris was dressing itself to be
present at a dinner-party that Mrs. Amp was to give that evening at the
Ritz Hotel. “Just here, where we are sitting now,” said Dwight-Rankin,
turning a glassy eye about the restaurant and accepting an invitation
hurled at him by the Duchess of Putney to dine next Thursday to meet the
Shah of Pongistan on the occasion of his having lost his job.
On that Friday evening, said Dwight-Rankin, there was only one person of
note in Paris who was not dressing to be present at Mrs. Amp’s
dinner-party. That, said Dwight-Rankin, was Lady Surplice. Mrs. Amp and
Lady Surplice did not speak. That is to say, said Dwight-Rankin, they
spoke to everyone about each other; but when they met, had you dropped a
pin between them it would have made a noise like a bomb, and had you lit
a match there would have been a cascade of water from the melting ice.
Lady Surplice, said Dwight-Rankin, had been the greatest hostess in
Europe for twenty years. London dined with her when she was in London,
Paris dined with her when she was in Paris, Mussolini met her at the
station when she went to Rome, New York hailed her as the Duchess of
Mayfair, while Palm Beach was her rouge-pot and over Ascot she cast her
lorgnette. Naturally all this was very encouraging for Lady Surplice,
and she bitterly resented any interference with her habits. However....
Lord Surplice--only technically known, said Dwight-Rankin severely, as
“the Earl of”--did not assist at his wife’s entertainments. He was
understood to be taking the waters for diabetes at a hydropathic
establishment near Woodhall Spa. Or maybe, said Dwight-Rankin, it was
liver trouble and Tunbridge Wells, but one can’t know everything.
Then one day, when Lady Surplice was at the height of her success, Mrs.
Amp fell on Europe. Nay, said Dwight-Rankin, Mrs. Amp obliterated
Europe. Without Mr. Amp, but with Mr. Amp’s millions. Mrs. Amp, said
Dwight-Rankin, was a large woman: a very large woman: and hearty. Her
face was not that of Aphrodite: her figure not that of Mrs. Vernon
Castle: but she had, said Dwight-Rankin, a certain Charm. Her descent on
Europe was catastrophic. She enveloped Europe. And Europe loved it. She
laid one hand on London and one on Paris, threw Venice over one shoulder
and hung Deauville about her neck, and people just fell on to her lap.
And what a lap, said Dwight-Rankin. However....
For days and days people went about saying: “I say, what’s all this
about a Mrs. Amp? Who is Mrs. Amp? What?” Then for days and days people
went about saying: “Have you met Mrs. Amp? The devil, what a woman!
These Americans! What?” Then for days and days people went about saying:
“Are you dining with Mrs. Amp to-night? Am I? Good Lord, no! Why should
one dine with Mrs. Amp? What?” Then for ever and ever people went about
saying: “I’m sorry, but I must be going now. I am dining with Mrs. Amp
to-night. What? Oh, you are too! Good, we’ll meet over dinner.”
Lady Surplice, however, stood firm. She wouldn’t, said Dwight-Rankin,
accept Mrs. Amp. “Mrs. Amp,” said Lady Surplice, “is a Low woman. One
does not know Mrs. Amp.” But thousands did, said Dwight-Rankin. So Lady
Surplice tore between London and Paris, giving luncheons, dinners,
dances and receptions right and left in the hope that no one would have
time to go to any of Mrs. Amp’s parties. But people always had time,
said Dwight-Rankin, to go to Mrs. Amp’s parties. Mrs. Amp’s parties were
like that. Unavoidable, inevitable, eternal. And, said Dwight-Rankin,
uncommonly amusing. One met all one’s friends at them, and the champagne
was always dry.
Mrs. Amp was American, and Lady Surplice was born in Notting Hill of
Nonconformist parents. And so, said Dwight-Rankin, they carried the same
weights in the blue-blood stakes. But Mrs. Amp was the larger woman, the
larger personality. Lady Surplice was very tall, very thin, dark,
brittle, brilliant. Mrs. Amp enveloped, and could touch the ceiling of a
sleeping-car with her hips when she lay on her side. Lady Surplice was
relentless in her generosity and indomitable in her indiscretion. Mrs.
Amp was as mean with money as a temperance hotel with matches; but even
so she could stay the stars in their courses, anyhow for at least five
courses and then make them sing and dance to her guests on top of it.
Lady Surplice was very tall. But Mrs. Amp stood six-feet-two in her
tiara. Lady Surplice undoubtedly put up a gallant fight. But Mrs. Amp
undoubtedly won. Lady Surplice said: “That low, beastly woman!” Mrs. Amp
said: “Muriel Surplice is proud of having discovered Europe. I am amused
at having discovered Muriel Surplice.”
It gradually dawned on people, said Dwight-Rankin, that this between
Mrs. Amp and Lady Surplice was not an affair which could be settled by a
duel at Mah Jongg, that this was a case of war to the death. Mrs. Amp
died first.
On that Friday evening, Mrs. Amp was dressing for dinner in her house
near the Champs Élysées. She sat at her toilet-table, and whilst her
maid did this and that to her hair, which, said Dwight-Rankin, aspired
doggedly rather than beautifully to the mode, Mrs. Amp passed the time
by looking out of the windows upon the noble trees of the Champs
Élysées; and presently drew her maid’s attention to the fact that a
circus was at that moment taking its station beneath them. “I want to
tell you,” said Mrs. Amp to her maid, “that I am just crazy about
circuses. Don’t forget to remind me to engage one the next time I pull a
party.”
Those, her maid later told Dwight-Rankin, were almost the last words
Mrs. Amp spoke in this world. For even as she uttered them an uproar
became audible from without: the air was filled with screams, yells and
curses: while the roars of savage beasts struck terror into the most
stable heart and convinced the maid, she told Dwight-Rankin, that the
end of the world was at hand.
With a cry to Mrs. Amp, who sat staring out of the window as though
transfixed, the maid fled; for the uproar from the circus was caused by
nothing less than the escape of the lions from their cages; and these,
their maddened nostrils attracted by Heaven knows what odour, were
rushing furiously on Mrs. Amp’s house, vainly pursued by their keepers.
For the keepers, said Dwight-Rankin, appeared to be quite helpless:
their whips lashed the air with inconceivable energy, but there seemed
to be a grave lack of _entente_ between their commands and the lions’
movements; which was later only half-explained by the fact that they
were Italian keepers in charge of French lions.
The lions, with a bound, with a series of bounds, passed the
_concierge’s_ lodge, wherein the _concierge_ was clinging to an
excrescence from the ceiling; and when the mangled corpse of poor Mrs.
Amp was later found, it was recognisable, said Dwight-Rankin, only by
the perfume which the poor lady was used to affect and which gave proof
of its quality by rising superior even to the lively odour of the lions.
However....
In such manner, said Dwight-Rankin, did Mrs. Amp give up the spirit. Nor
was the sensation caused by her nasty death at all soothed by the
evidence of her trembling _concierge_, who, before the Conference of
Ambassadors that sat to enquire on the great hostess’s death, gave
testimony to the effect that as the lions rushed into her bedroom Mrs.
Amp was distinctly heard to cry: “This is the doing of Muriel Surplice!
I will be revenged, if I roast in hell-fire for it!”
The _concierge_, of course, said Dwight-Rankin, gave his evidence in
French; and when the interpreters had translated it for the benefit of
the Conference of Ambassadors, those distinguished gentlemen were not a
little disturbed by the ominous, if extravagant, burden of Mrs. Amp’s
dying words. And, said Dwight-Rankin, rightly.