A week passed. Miss Du Rance taxi’d again to Half Moon Street; this
time with a brand new pair of dancing slippers gracing her small but
lively feet. The paucity of her remaining dollars was beginning to
alarm her now. No further word had come from New York. But whatever
happened she was going to follow her luck.
She found Lady Violet seated before a typewriter, clucking away as if
for dear life. This was a form of effort with which Mame was only too
familiar.
“So sorry.” Lady Violet glanced up from her task. “Please excuse me
five minutes. I’m all behind as usual. This weekly syndicate letter is
such a bore. One tangled mass of detail.” She made a wry mouth. “Always
leave it to the last moment. How can one find anything new to say about
the high-class underwear at Peary’s and Hodnett’s Annual Spring Sale?
Help yourself to a gasper. The box on the table. And that’s the new
novel of Loti, by the side of it; the one with the paper cover. My
review for the _Courier_ has to be in to-morrow. Luckily one doesn’t
have to say anything new about Loti, does one?”
Mame did not smoke and she did not read French. But when in Rome, had
said Paula Ling; or was it the office calendar that had said it for
her? She left the silver box alone but took up the latest work of
Pierre Loti with the air of a connoisseur.
The book, however, did not claim much of her attention. She sat
watching Lady Violet work. In the sight of an expert she was by no
means skilful; it was rather pathetic to see her dabbing with one
uncertain finger of each hand. She also lent an ear to Lady Violet’s
stream of whimsical complaint and humorous apology. Plainly this
journalistic egg was bored by her luck. That old syndicate of hers was
surely worth good and regular money. If only--! But why indulge vain
thoughts?
In ten minutes, or less, Lady Violet was through. She shovelled her
copy, some twenty badly typed pages, into a large envelope; sealed
and addressed it; then with a comic sigh of relief she picked up the
meerschaum holder and had recourse to the silver box. “So sorry,” she
apologized for the _n_th time. “But we are not expected at the Orient
until five.”
She rang for Davis, that treasure among parlour maids, of whose
old-family-retainer air Mame was a shade in awe, and set down as
“sniffy.” To Davis the envelope was handed; she was told to send it at
once to Fleet Street by district messenger. And she was asked to get a
taxi.
In a time surprisingly short, as it seemed to Mame, the maid had
returned to say that the taxi awaited them. Lady Violet crammed on an
expensive hat without seeming to care, but Mame realised that she had
a marvellous knack of looking right in all circumstances. Paula Ling
would not have treated a hat that way, not on her life. As for Mame
herself, she had already taken a full twenty minutes to fix her own
before starting from Fotheringay House. But this skirt flopped it on
and there you were. Mame would have liked Paula to have seen her.
If Mame could have banished the feeling of being on such terribly thin
ice, she would have enjoyed herself immensely at the Orient Dance Club.
The floor was good; the band, although by no means equal to what New
York could do--in Mame’s opinion it was hardly at the Cowbarn level in
its interpretation of jazz music--was still well enough for London,
England. All the folks were real select, even if their dancing was
nothing to write home about. As for the soft drinks and the eats, they
were quite O. K. But these matters, grave in their way, were of minor
importance.
The really vital things, when all was said, were the lounge lizards
with whom Mame was privileged to take the floor. First of all there
was Bill. He was not as light in hand as Elmer P., to mention only one
of Cowbarn’s kernoozers. Even if he didn’t move just naturally to jazz
music he was a good trier. Mame was wise enough not to expect too much
of the bo in the matter of hitting the parquet. But even if he was no
star, and his stiff British joints would have been none the worse for a
little oil, he was well enough, he would serve.
Anyhow the young man appeared to enjoy himself. He was all smiles and
willingness and good humour. Mame felt quite proud of him as she guided
his somewhat errant steps amid the Chick if slightly immobile throng.
She also felt rather proud of herself. It was not a real top-notch
dancing as she understood the art, but she had a kind of hunch that she
was sort of cutting a shine.
Bill was only one among the lads of the village. There were others; to
the taste of Miss Du Rance perhaps not so choice as he; still she was
nowise ashamed to be seen with them in the centre of the floor. For the
most part they were Bill’s brother officers and school pals and so on.
And all were regular fellows even if they did not quite know how to
move to ragtime.
What struck Mame as the chief difference between this mild festivity
and a hop in her native land was the quietness of it all. The folks
were so much more solemn, so much more serious. There was no whirling
you off your feet, no shouting; compared with Cowbarn, Iowa, or even
New York, it was rather like a high-class funeral. Mame had a powerful
desire to let herself out a bit. However, she soon concluded that it
would not be wise to do so. When in Rome! ... particularly when Rome
has not even heard of the Monkey Clutch!
Still, these handsome, strapping, brown-faced, blue-eyed mothers’
boys were very friendly and very pleasant. Mame noticed that Lady
Violet took to them quite kindly. She was the best dancer there,
Mame considered, barring of course present company, and a couple of
professionals, who had New York written all over them, although said
to be French. But Lady Violet was a very good mover indeed, in an
amateurish way. She had evidently benefited by her American experience;
she got these lads around in proper style; and she seemed a great
favourite with them all. A real sport Mame considered her.
The same applied to Bill; also to his friends and brothers in arms. And
they had excellent taste in ices and cakes and in nice soft drinks;
although the best drink of all, that was called Cup, was not so soft
either. For a rather backward village like London things really went
pretty well. If Miss Du Rance could have forgotten for a single moment
that she was dancing on a full-sized volcano she would have thoroughly
enjoyed herself.
Apart from the uncomfortable feeling that she ought not to be there at
all, Mame was conscious of only one other blot on the proceedings. Not
so much a blot as a cloud. And yet cloud was hardly the word. Everybody
was so charming to everybody, so kind and so polite and yet so quietly
merry, that it was a hunch rather than a rock-bottom fact which ever so
slightly took the edge off Mame’s enjoyment.
The hunch assumed the form of a Miss Childwick. She was a hefty girl
of twenty-three, buxom, upstanding, and a looker as Mame was bound to
own. Lady Violet sought an early opportunity of telling her little
friend that this was a regular Crœsus of a girl, the sole heiress of
Childwick’s Three Ply Flannelette, whose singular merits were the theme
of every hoarding from Land’s End to Hong Kong.
Miss Childwick’s money would not have mattered so much, but where the
snag came, as it seemed to Miss Du Rance, was that its statuesque
owner, as Lady Violet also took an early opportunity of making known to
her, was very keen on Bill. In other words, although Lady Violet did
not put it quite so crudely, it was up to the little lady from Cowbarn,
Iowa, to keep off the grass.
Speaking strictly by the card, there was of course no particular reason
why Miss Du Rance should keep off the grass. Bill was fair game for any
little angler who really understood the use of a bug and pole. But Lady
Violet gave a sort of hint that it would hardly be cricket for Miss
Du Rance to butt in and spoil things. Miss Childwick was so rich that
everybody in London and Shropshire hoped very much that she and Bill
were going to make a match of it.
That’s all very well, thought Mame. Evidently she considers it will be
unsporting of me to dance more than twice with the dandiest bird on
the bough. At all events, if these were not exactly Lady Violet’s own
views, it was a fair presumption they were the views of Miss Childwick.
In fact the Celebrated Three Ply Flannelette had already given the
Funny Little American a once-over at pretty close range. Her fine eyes
seemed to glow out at the good grey ones of Miss Du Rance from every
quarter of the room. And each time they did so they seemed to glow
with the light of battle.
Mame did not blame Miss Childwick altogether. Human nature is just as
liable to be human nature at the Orient Dance Club, Knightsbridge,
London, England, as at the Temple of Terpsichore, Cowbarn, Iowa, or any
other dive you care to name.
No, Miss Du Rance did not really blame Miss Childwick for sending
a sort of general warning along the wires. But where she did blame
Miss Childwick was for trying to put one over on her. When she came
to think about it afterwards she was not exactly sure that the Three
Ply Flannelette had really meant to do that, but it certainly looked
uncommonly like it. When you are mozing around with the real nutty bits
of nougat in Knightsbridge, London, England, it is easier, no doubt, to
be mistaken than in a small burg in a Middle Western state.
What really happened was, that after Miss Du Rance had put Bill through
his paces the second time in three, and they had encored a vanilla ice
and cracker, and were just going to take the floor the third time in
four, up barges the Three Ply Flannelette, all smiles and politeness,
yet with an undercurrent of just owning the earth, though perhaps not
really meaning it. And Bill, for all his dyed-in-the-wool niceness, at
heart a simpleton, chose that identical moment to make his old friend
Miss Childwick known to his new friend, Miss Du Rance of Chicago.
If ever youth, since the world began, simply insisted on finding
trouble, it was the tactless Bill. Miss Childwick’s eyes snapped and
Miss Du Rance did not blame her. The eyes of Miss Du Rance snapped
back and it is to be hoped that Miss Childwick attached no blame to
her either. It was a mere temperamental action on the part of Miss
Du Rance. Honours were easy over that course. But immediately there
followed the passage, which, brief as it was, caused Mame seriously to
ask herself whether this girl was not trying to put one over on her.
Perhaps, after all, it did not amount to that. When, in cool blood, in
the seclusion of her chamber, Miss Du Rance pondered Miss Childwick,
quietly and sincerely, extenuating nought, yet attributing nothing to
her in malice, she reached the conclusion that she had no real ground
of complaint against the Three Ply Flannelette, beyond the fact that
it looked a little too superior. Perhaps it didn’t mean to really. But
she was one of those trained-to-the-minute girls whom Mame had glimpsed
from time to time taking the air on Riverside Drive, previous, as Paula
Ling declared, to their sailing for Europe in search of a stray Italian
prince or British earl.
Miss Childwick had just that air. You could not call it “lugs.”
It was something deeper, more full of meaning and less irritating
than the quality the Britishers speak of as “side.” She had an
I-mean-to-be-a-marchioness-if-it-kills-me look about her, which did not
accord with the democratic notions of Miss Du Rance. No, they could
never be real friends. And that was why, having been warned to keep
off the grass, little Miss Du Rance was not quite clear in her own
little mind whether she was going to obey the signal.
After all, a cat may look at a king even if it is not allowed to look
at a canary. What sport it would be to get into the cage when Miss
Three Ply was not about. Before now such things had happened. In fact
they were always happening. It would not be the first occasion by many
that a small outsider had made her way into a private aviary.
Still, at the moment such thoughts were far removed from the region of
the practical. Yet Bill was a marquis, so his sister said. Therefore
he was simply asking for trouble, from even the humblest of Columbia’s
daughters. If Miss Three Ply, who had kind of appointed herself to look
after the sweet rube, did not watch out, some other young skirt might
easily get away with his coronet.
However, these were vain thoughts. At the present time Miss Du Rance
had about fifty dollars between herself and bankruptcy. So really and
truly the ice was thin. But she was determined to yield to the passing
hour, even if she could never quite forget her nearness to unplumbed
fathoms of icy water.
If she could have laid that knowledge by, these two crowded hours at
the Orient Dance Club would have been the jolliest ever. This was a
real taste of life. All was harmony, gaiety, good-humoured fun. But the
clock struck seven, the band stopped playing, the dancers began to
collect their taxis. Then it was that a kind of Cinderella feeling came
upon Mame.
The ball was over. The dream was at an end. She would have to go
back to Montacute Square, to inferior food and inferior people, to
drudgery and grubbing, to the forming of plans for a mighty precarious
to-morrow. As she stood on the Club steps by the side of Lady Violet,
who was giving her friends a cheerful good-bye, Mame’s heart sank.
She had been lifted up only to be cast down. Life was pretty tough
for girls of her sort, with nothing between them and the weather.
She watched Bill hand Miss Childwick into the smartest limousine
imaginable, with chauffeur and footman complete in dark liveries faced
with buff; and a Robert-E.-Lee-at-Gettysburg feeling came upon her.
“Which way are you goin’?”
Lady Violet’s clear gay voice suddenly impinged upon the bitterness of
Mame’s reverie.
Mame hardly knew which way she was going. And at that moment she didn’t
care. The bottom seemed out of things. “Any old way, I guess, is good
enough for me,” she said despondently.
Lady Violet laughed. Mame had a great power of making this high-flyer
laugh, but why she should have she didn’t know. But the laugh was
friendly and kind; it implied no more than an unlimited capacity for
seeing the most human side of human nature.
“Will you come and take pot luck with me at my club?”
Nascent hope stirred in Mame. Life could not be altogether a washout
while twenty-two-carat fairy godmothers were out and about in it.
“I’d just love to do that.” There was no mistaking the note of
gratitude.
“Come along, then. But we shall probably get nothing to eat. Hen clubs
are hen clubs when it comes to fodder.”
“Anything in the way of a bone will fix me.” A blessed feeling of hope
had begun to stir in Mame quite strongly again.
The evening being fine and lit by British summer-time which puts the
clock back an hour, and as the club, by name the Ladies Imperium, was
only a few doors beyond Hamilton Place, there seemed no reason why they
should not walk.
Lady Violet said good-bye to her friends and several of them, including
Bill and one or two of his brother officers, said good-bye to Miss
Du Rance. And then these ladies strode off towards what the hostess
prophesied would be the worst dinner in Europe.
Privately Mame doubted that. What she called the “worst” dinner and
what Lady Violet called one were likely to come out of very different
casseroles. A fortnight ago Miss Amethyst Du Rance might have argued
the point, but in the past fourteen days a lot of water had flowed
between the arches of London Bridge. She was not so certain of the
things she knew and far more certain of the things she didn’t know.
Anyhow, she was much less free with her opinions than she had been a
fortnight ago.
They turned in at Albert Gate and took that pleasant path which the
Metropolitan Force had managed to close against the wiser members of
the public at nightfall. But night as yet had not fallen. None the less
Miss Du Rance was stirred by certain memories. She kept a shrewd eye
open for a certain dour-faced Scots constable.
There was not a sign of the young officer. Perhaps there was still a
little too much light in the sky, away beyond the statue of Achilles.
It might have been Mame’s idiom, her personal force, her gift of
mimicry, but all the way from the park gates to the marble portico of
the Ladies Imperium her friend was kept in a state of mirth. Even when
they had emerged from the cloak room and made their way up the fine
staircase as far as the _salle à manger_, the hostess of Miss Du Rance
was still inclined to smile. She was great fun, this girl.
The Club’s most popular member had no difficulty in choosing a table
for two, in a comfortable corner. As they sat down, she glanced at the
menu. “You mustn’t expect terrapin and canvasback here, you know,” she
said apologetically, handing the card to Mame.
Their first choice was plovers’ eggs, with cutlets and a charlotte
russe to follow; a light and eupeptic meal. Miss Du Rance was offered
a dry Sauterne to go with it. But the guest, in spite of agreeable
memories of a recent “cup,” was by way of being a pussyfoot. That
creed was good for the health, good for the purse, good for the moral
nature. Yet having no wish to cast a blight on Lady Violet’s ardour,
she saw no reason why her friend should not order something for herself.
Lady Violet said there was only one sort of wine she really liked
and “fizz” was the name of it. And it was so expensive since the War
that she only enjoyed drinking it when paid for by other people. But
the Club had rather a reputation for barley water. To prove its _bona
fides_ she asked the waitress to bring some.
Mame accepted the first beaker of that mild beverage and found it good.
The plovers’ eggs, too, were excellent. Still, a quaint combination,
as Lady Violet remarked. Yet could Cinderella have forgotten for one
moment the nature of the ice beneath her slippers she would have given
herself up to frank enjoyment of the nicest food she had had in years.
A spectre was there all the time. But Elmer P. on a Lodge night could
hardly have been more full of quip than Lady Violet. Not only was she
witty in herself, she seemed a cause of wit in others. First Family was
writ large upon her, yet she was everybody’s friend. She passed the
time of day with the majority of her fellow members; she had a gay word
or a bit of chaff for even the staidest of them; and in her frank and
genial fashion she introduced “my friend Miss Du Rance of Chicago” to a
discreetly chosen two or three.
As this delectable meal neared its end Mame was hard set to keep the
Cinderella feeling at bay. That forward-looking mind of hers could not
help contrasting the blithe evening so rapidly wearing thin, with the
endless procession of drab to-morrows which surely lay in wait for her.
She loathed the thought of the count-every-dollar existence to which
she was doomed to return. If only she had a couple of thousand or so
laid up in the bank! For a chance had come to enter the life that had
such a powerful knack of making every other seem not worth while.
In the midst of these prickly Cinderella thoughts, she woke with a
little start to the fact that her vis-à-vis was gazing at her over
the flowers in the centre of the table. That was an odd sort of look
Lady Violet sometimes had. Once or twice already Mame had surprised it
stealing across her face; and she couldn’t help wondering what it meant.
“You’ll have a cup of coffee, won’t you?”
Mame was glad to have a cup of coffee, yet she was sure the look on the
face of the fairy godmother had really nothing to do with that aromatic
berry.
A waitress came with the coffee.
“Noir? Or sugar and milk?”
Miss Du Rance took plenty of sugar and plenty of milk. They had
lingered over their meal. It had been very jolly; and although Mame
had been oppressed throughout by a sense of destiny she had managed
to keep up her end. Her free comments on men and women, on habits and
customs, on powers and principalities had delighted the hostess. This
quick-thinking child from the back of beyond was an Original. And so
plucky! And really pretty if she wouldn’t trick herself out in that
second-rate style!
The famous meerschaum holder was produced. Mame declined a _crème de
menthe_ and the mildest of all imaginable gaspers. Nay, she was in the
act of trying to drown her gloom in barley water; a pretty hopeless
task, for that beverage, sound as it may be, is no antidote for the
blues, when hey! presto! the fairy godmother came back into the
picture. And poor Cinderella suddenly began to sit up and take notice.
“Did I tell you that Cousin Edith is going abroad for the summer?”
Miss Du Rance had not been enlightened.
“Well, she is. Some friends of hers have a villa at Lausanne and next
week she is off to stay with them until September. I shall miss her
dreadfully. She is such a good sort. And of course she plays propriety
at Half Moon Street. Personally I don’t mind a row of beans, I defy
the breath of scandal to touch sweet innocents like Davis and me; but
my mother, you know, thinks it not quite nice. Anyhow, I am wondering
if you feel inclined to tolerate Cousin Edith’s room at the flat for a
month or two?”
Feel inclined to tolerate! Cinderella’s eyes began to glow, yet she
kept a rigid silence. For she was plunged in some deep and rapid
calculations.
“What do you say?”
“Glory, that’s what I’d say.” Mame could not dissemble her enthusiasm.
As well, no doubt; since it was the native force of that enthusiasm
which had such a tonic effect upon her rather _blasé_ friend.
“A firm offer if you care to take it.” The tone was amused and casual.
“Cousin Edith’s mattress is a hard beast, and Davis and I are a pair
of Bolshies before breakfast and a couple of bores after it, but we
shall be full of gratitude if you’ll come and stand between us and the
milkman, who, according to Davis, is a bit of a Don Juan.”
“Why of course I’ll come. I’ll simply love to. But--”
The meerschaum holder queried the weak word But.
“I’m kind of wondering about the dough.”
“The dough?” Lady Violet collected new idioms for their own sake, but
somehow this Americanism had eluded her.
“What you call ‘the dibs’ over here.”
“My dear child, it won’t cost you a sou. In fact, there’s no reason why
it shouldn’t be money in your purse.”
Mame’s heart gave a leap. A fairy godmother with a vengeance!
“I don’t get you.” Cinderella spoke half forlornly, half with joy.
“Your ways aren’t my ways. I’m not half the go-getter that you are.
Personally I have to look both sides of a dollar to see if it’s wearing
out in the middle.”
“That’ll be all right. If only you feel inclined to ease the white
man’s burden, in this case the white woman’s, you’ll not need to
trouble much about dollars.”
All this seemed too good to be true, but Cinderella gave the fairy
godmother a very respectful hearing.
“The fact is, at present I’ve more work than I can do. Or perhaps one
ought to say more than one cares to do. It’s the weekly letter to the
provincial papers that’s so troublesome. I don’t mind the books and the
plays and the harmless cackle about the inoffensive creatures with whom
one occasionally dines out. Most of ’em seem rather to like it, if you
go a bit careful with the trowel. But it’s having to write puffs for
tradesmen, boosting their white sales and their spring pyjamas, that
makes one want to tear the bedclothes.”
Mame listened with intensity, but she didn’t speak. Lady Violet went
on: “For weeks I’ve been thinking of advertising in the _Times_ for a
secretary. I don’t want to let the thing go; it pays like fun; and if I
can find some good sportsman who is not afraid of the donkey-work she
shall have a hundred pounds a year and her keep.”
Mame was a complex of emotions. But the one uppermost was joy. Miracles
are no longer in fashion, but just now they seemed to be happening at
the rate of three per ten days.
“What do you say?”
It was the kind of billet Mame had been praying for every night these
seven months past. But it was not until she had performed the operation
of pinching herself mentally to find out if she was truly awake, that
she quietly answered: “Search me. If I’m not a champ on a Remington
and don’t write as slick as you can shoot it, I’ll go back to Ioway by
the next boat.”
“A go then. Cousin Edith leaves Tuesday. When can you move in? But no
doubt you’ll like to think it over?”
Miss Du Rance, however, had done her thinking already. “Wednesday
morning, at ten, I’ll be around at Half Moon Street with my trunk--if
that’s agreeable.”
“The sooner the better.”
So there it was.
But what a funny world! Cinderella, secretly, was still in a maze. She
couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this new turn of the shuttle was a
bit uncanny.