Bitterly disappointed, Mame promptly found her way back into Fleet
Street. The beginning was bad and there was no disguising it. Her New
York experience had prepared her for difficulties further east; but she
had not reckoned to bite granite so soon or quite so hard. If she put a
crimp in her style she might take a situation as a housemaid!
Moving towards the Strand she had now a feeling of hostility towards
the people around her. These mossbacks who crowded the sidewalks had
some conceit of themselves. But who were they? Mame asked herself that.
Who were they, anyway?
Luncheon at a cheap restaurant hardly improved Mame’s temper. The
“eats” seemed queer. But at any rate they appeared to stimulate the
mind. In the course of the meal, with the help of a newspaper propped
against the cruet, she did a lot of thinking.
To begin with, she must not look for too much success in London. As
these Cockneys had it, Mame Durrance was not going to set the Thames on
fire. The same applied with equal force to Miss Amethyst Du Rance. She
must watch her step. Aunt Lou’s legacy had now dwindled to something
under five hundred dollars. That plain fact was the writing on the
wall.
Mame foresaw that her trip to Europe was not likely to prove a long
one, unless by some happy chance she struck oil. But of this there was
no sign. Since coming east she had met nothing but bad luck. And her
reception in Tun Court that morning told her to expect no immediate
change. Such being the case, she must put by half the money she still
had, for a passage home across the Atlantic.
By counting every dime she might carry on in London six weeks. Within
that time she hoped, of course, to find a means of adding to her
slender store. But at the moment she could not say that things looked
rosy. The folks here did not cotton to her, still less did she cotton
to them.
After a slice of ham and a cup of coffee she ordered a piece of pumpkin
pie. It was as if she had ordered the moon. The waitress had not even
heard of the national delicacy.
Mame sighed. “Not heard of pumpkin pie!” This was a backward land.
There was a lot of spadework to be done in it. A suspicion was growing
that she would have done better to stay in New York. She had to be
content with custard and stewed figs, upon which poor substitute she
walked slowly along the Strand to Trafalgar Square. Here she turned
into the National Gallery. As she ascended the many steps of the
building she tried to raise a feeling of awe. Even if she was a little
hick she knew that a true American citizeness mentally takes off her
shoes when she enters a dome of Culture.
The feeling of awe was not very powerful. But she was a sane and cool
observer of things and people; and if she was too honest to pretend to
emotions she didn’t possess there was no reason why those walls should
not be a mental stimulus.
She took a seat on a comfortable divan, before a large and lurid
Turner, all raging sea and angry sky. This picture impressed Mame
Durrance considerably less than it had impressed Ruskin. But a hush of
culture all around enabled her to sit two good hours putting her ideas
in order. A plan of some sort was necessary if she was going to make
good. When she set out from Cowbarn, six months back, she felt that her
natural abilities would carry her through anything. Now, she was not so
sure. Things were no longer rose colour. There was a terrible lot of
leeway to make up. She just had not guessed that she was so far behind
the game. Perhaps it had been wiser to stay at home and put herself
through college.
Chastened by the buffets of the day she returned to Montacute Square
about five. When she entered the gloomy drawing room the tabbies
received her icily. Not a sign of success on the horizon so far. The
tea drinking was as depressing as ever. Nobody took any notice of her.
The aloofness of these frumps was as hard to bear as the insolence of
the editor of _High Life_. Mame’s resentment grew. Presently she rose
and went up to her cold bedroom. She got out her writing case. Perched
with knees crossed, on the end of her bed, she spent a prosperous hour
jotting down her first day’s impressions of London, England.
Vigorous mental exercise seemed to take a load off her spirit. What she
had written ought to raise a smile in Elmer P. To-morrow she would go
at it again; then it should be typed and mailed. If the boob fell for
it, and born optimist that Mame Durrance was, she felt he sure would,
where that stuff came from there was good and plenty more to pull.