Mame’s hope of developments began to materialise about noon the next
day. At that hour Davis appeared with the silver tray whereon was a
cablegram addressed “Durrance.”
Cool on the surface, but with trembling fingers and beating heart, Mame
tore open the envelope and read:
Make no contracts with anybody until you know what I can do. Writing
this mail.
DOBREE.
Mame smiled sweetly upon Davis. “No answer.” Then still very calm on
the surface she pressed the cable into the hand of Lady Violet.
Her partner and friend put down the novel she was studying for review
purposes, and read the communication from New York through twice.
“I hope your friend Elmer P. Dobree isn’t pulling our legs,” she said
perplexedly.
“Shows how little you know that baby.” Mame tried her best to dissemble
a rising excitement. “Elmer P. takes life that serious he might be
Abraham Lincoln at the age of twenty-nine.”
“One wishes he would express himself less cryptically.”
“You’ll be wise in time, honey,” drawled Mame slowly. Wild horses were
inclined to tear her, but she had a will.
And a will was wanted, sure, to wait six long and weary days for the
promised letter of Elmer P.
* * * * *
The six days of waiting were not so long and weary as they might have
been. To begin with, they were full of the joys of anticipation.
The anticipation, moreover, took more forms than one. As if to show
how little Miss Du Rance and her sponsor had to fear in the way of
displeasure in high places, there came by post, within an hour of the
cable from New York, a real gilt-edged command to the second Royal
garden party to be held at Buckingham Palace on the fifth of July.
The “command” tried the democratic spirit of Miss Du Rance severely.
Even in the most vaulting moments of her optimism she had not seen
herself moving in Royal circles quite so soon as all that. She was
nearly betrayed into a whoop of elation. Cuckoo, yes, but somehow it
expressed her oddly democratic feeling. However, she was able to pull
herself up just in time. What were kings and queens, anyway? Still she
could not help giving her amused friend a tentative hug.
“Please don’t put the bear-cat act over on me,” expostulated Lady
Violet, who had devoted a good deal of the last four weeks to a study
of Mame’s idiom.
“It’s a long way to the fifth of July, any old how,” said Maine with
stern self-control. “And I’ll bet our noo ambassaderess don’t invite me
to the carol singing and the fireworks on the Fourth at the Embassy.
Even if good Queen Mary ain’t scared of me, _she_’ll be, I guess.”
“It ought to be easy to wangle a card for an American citizeness. How
much will you bet?”
“I don’t approve betting.” Mame had too much respect for her friend’s
astonishing powers of “wangling.” “But if you can get me an invite
for the Fourth among all the doughnuts and the high-fliers and the
hundred-per-cents I’ll be that set up I’ll not know where to hide my
simple face.”
Lady Violet promised modestly to see if anything could be done in the
matter.
One way and another Mame contrived to get through those intervening
days pretty well; yet it seemed that the eagerly awaited letter from
New York would never arrive. Her imagination could not help playing
around it. The cable had excited great hopes.
In such a world as the present, however, things seldom pan out as
they should. Mame had visions of a contract that would astonish Fleet
Street; but Elmer’s offer, when it came, was considerably less than she
expected. But in Lady Violet’s opinion it was distinctly good.
However, Lady Violet did not know the precise circumstances in which
the offer had been made. She was still in the dark as to the brilliant
coup Mame had illicitly brought off. Therefore Mame had no hesitation
in turning it down.
“No, honey, we are out for something bigger. I think I’ll cable Elmer
our rock-bottom terms.”
“Pray what do you consider they ought to be?”
“We must have a two-year contract to cable six columns every Friday at
six hundred dollars a week.”
Lady Violet was frankly astonished. “Surely, we can’t hope to get that?”
“Oh, we’ll get it, or I should worry.” Mame sounded wonderfully
cheerful. “I’ll go right along now and send that cable.”
“But suppose we kill the nice goose that is going to lay the golden
eggs?”
Mame was prepared to risk that. “We are worth every dime of the money.
And they know it just as well as we do.”
Her friend did a sum in her head. “Do you realise that you are
demanding thirty thousand dollars a year?”
“So much as all that,” laughed Mame. But she was not to be dissuaded.
“Audacity, audacity, always audacity,” had been among the mottoes of
the office calendar. Besides, had they not exclusive news to offer and
had not New York just had dramatic evidence of its value?
That, of course, was the crux of the whole matter. And it was a point
upon which Lady Violet was very much in the dark. In Mame’s judgment
the time had not yet come to enlighten her. She would have to know
presently, but this was not the moment for a certain rather awkward
disclosure.