Mame returned to London after an absence of exactly one week. Seldom
had she been more eager for anything than to exchange the rather dreary
stuffiness of the Dower House for the life and bustle of the town. Yet
the Mame Durrance who had left Paddington a week ago was not the same
person who came back to that terminus. Something had happened to her in
the meantime. As yet she did not quite know what the something was. But
there were the beginnings of a new habit of introspection in her; and
from this she learned that she was in the throes of change.
Life, somehow, was not quite as she had left it. She seemed to see
it with new eyes. Even the buses and the taxis and the faces of the
passers-by were different from what they had been a week ago. They
seemed to strike her in a new way. It was as if the rather trite and
funny old world she had always lived in had become suddenly enlarged.
Everything had grown more complex. The inner nature of things, about
which she was troubling for the first time, was full of deep and
mysterious meaning.
This state of mind did not make for happiness, as Mame soon discovered.
For one thing it was out of harmony with the mentality of a practical
go-getter. But as she expressed the phenomenon to herself, that old
house had put one over on her. It was absurd that a mere inanimate
collection of sticks and stones should have the power to do anything
of the kind, yet it was not a bit of use shirking the fact that it had
done so.
There were two Mame Durrances now. Perhaps there always had been, but
the one the old house in Shropshire had evoked had lain dormant. And
now that it was aroused it promised to become a mighty inconvenient
yoke fellow. Hitherto it had been the go-getter who had held command
of the ship; a common-sensible, up-and-coming, two-and-two-makes-four
sort of unit, who saw its duty a dead sure thing and went and did it.
But the sleeper, whom one week of Shropshire had awakened, was a very
different kind of bird.
No doubt, the new and tiresome entity that had sprung to birth was
what the world meant by an idealist. It appeared to judge by another
standard. There were the things you could do and the things you
couldn’t do. The business part of Mame knew nothing of this. It only
did the things it wanted to do.
A week of the Dower House had rather handed a haymaker to Mame’s
utilitarian world. To such an extent had it mixed its values that
she did not quite know where she stood in it. Yet amid the chaos she
retained in a high degree her natural clearness of vision.
It was nearing the dinner hour when Mame’s taxi deposited her and
her neat luggage at 16b Half Moon Street. Lady Violet, wearing her
smartest evening frock, was on the point of going out. She greeted Mame
with the air of bright cheerfulness that never seemed to desert her.
But the returned traveller had only to glance at the eyes of her friend
to learn that she was not feeling so very bright or so very cheerful.
She surprised that look of never-say-die she had seen in the eyes of
Lady Kidderminster. It was impossible not to respect the pluck of these
women.
“Had a good time?”
“Ye-es.” Mame’s answer was a trifle dubious even if she did her best
not to make it so.
“What did you think of the Towers?”
“Bully!” said Mame. And then she asked, less out of a sense of duty
than from a desire to change the subject, “How’s the work been getting
on?”
“Gerty Smith is splendid. She’s such a worker.” Lady Violet sighed
humorously. “Oh, how I hate work!”
Mame fully believed her. Girls of her special type must long ago have
overlaid the habit. The conviction in Celimene’s voice did not lessen
Mame’s respect for her. She had real grit, this girl, to be able to
buckle to in the way she did.
“There’s a letter for you from New York.” Lady Violet pointed to the
table. “I hope there’s no complaint of the firm. We’ve not been sending
many _bonnes bouches_ in the way of news lately.”
“No, we haven’t,” agreed Mame, as she opened the letter. It merely
contained the monthly cheque.
“That’ll come in very useful.”
“I’ll say yes, honey,” was Mame’s comment to herself.
Lady Violet then went off. She was dining with the Childwicks and
going on with them to Covent Garden to the Russian ballet, and so did
not expect to be home till rather late. Mame was left to a lonely
meal round the corner at the Ladies Imperium. She had made a certain
number of friends there, but she was not in a mood for promiscuous
conversation; therefore she returned to an early bed.
She was very tired, bodily and mentally, but she had a restless and
wakeful night. The go-getter and the idealist seemed to be quarrelling
like fury all through the small hours. If there just wasn’t the money
to keep things going and she really cared for Bill, wasn’t it her duty
to stand aside?
Never heard such bunkum in my life, said the Go-getter.
Depends on how much you care for the boy, said the Idealist.
The Go-getter snorted.
You may snort, said the Idealist. But that’s the case as I see it.