Part 11

The folks began to get a bit thinner, to diminish by twos and threes. Mame, having had a most entertaining afternoon, decided not to outstay her welcome. She rose and crossed to Lady Violet, who was talking very quick French to a foreign-looking bozo, with an imperial and a braided jacket, who stood peering over his teacup into her eyes.

“Can I come and see you again?” Mame offered a white glove, in which she took considerable pride, at the precise angle she had discovered to be fashionable.

“Oh, please, please!” Lady Violet spoke as if she really meant it. “And quite soon, you know.”

The cheery warmth of the words left Mame with a feeling that she was taking leave of a real friend.

XXII

When Mame had stepped into the lift outside the door of 16b, by pure coincidence she found it occupied already by the tall, immaculate top-hatted form of Bill. It was a piece of luck. She had taken quite a fancy to this young man and was ready to seize a chance of improving the acquaintance.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” he said, with hearty and cheerful politeness.

Miss Du Rance left him no sort of doubt upon that point. “Lady Violet’s your sister, ain’t she?”

Bill said she was. Further he remarked in genial brotherly fashion: “A good sort, old Vi! And clever as blazes, you know. Got clean away with all the brains of our family.”

Mame offered no comment, but she felt somehow that it was highly probable. Bill, with all his charm and manliness, made no pretence at intellect. But in the opinion of Miss Du Rance he had better things to show.

When they reached the ground floor and found themselves in the vestibule, Bill said, “Can I get you a taxi or anything?”

“Are you taxi-ing yourself?” inquired the judicious Mame.

“No, I’m hitting the pike.” Bill was proud of his American.

“Same here. Which way you going?”

“Along Piccadilly as far as St. James’s Street.”

Mame was going along Piccadilly as far as the Circus. They might walk together if he didn’t mind.

Bill said he was enchanted. Perhaps he was. There was nothing in his manner to suggest the contrary. An amusing little puss. She seemed different from all the other girls he knew. He must ask Vi what part of the States she came from. Perhaps he might have asked the amusing little puss herself had he not been kept so busy answering the questions she put to him.

The number of questions Bill had to answer in their pleasant saunter up the street, and across the road, and by the Green Park railings was astonishing. But he didn’t mind at all. In fact he rather liked it. She was as fresh as paint. And simply rippling with intelligence. No end of punch in her, too. Yes, she was altogether different from the other girls he knew. As for her comically expressive phrases, she sort of fired them off, a hundred to the minute, like some jolly old Maxim gun.

At the top of Saint James’s Street, they came to a stop and Bill remarked: “I get off here.”

Miss Du Rance looked a trifle disappointed.

“Goin’ into my pothouse to play a game at snooker. Into that funny old box, yonder, with the bow window.” Bill’s hand indicated Ward’s Club just opposite.

Somehow, yet without saying so, little Miss Du Rance, the quaint and charming American, was able to convey that to her mind for such an upstanding young fellow to spend a fair spring evening in that way was a pity.

“Daresay she’s right,” mused Bill. A bit of a thought reader, Bill.

“_I’m_ going as far as the Circus,” said the droll minx.

It really was such a fine evening that Bill suddenly decided that he might walk as far as the Circus for the good of his health.

When the young man had been steered in safety past the dangerous corner, the ply of questions began again.

Did he like living in London? What was his favourite flower? Did he care for jazz music? Who was his favourite author? Wasn’t it just a bore to be a blood-peer? Did he like fishing better than gunning? Or did he like gunning better than fishing? He played polo of course? How did he like the Prince of Wales? What did he think of soldiering? By the way, what was the name of his regiment? She had heard, but had forgotten.

“The Pinks.”

“Why were they called the Pinks?”

“A sort of rival show to the Blues.”

“But why the Blues?”

Bill shook his head and laughed. “Why anything?”

“Yes--why anything?”

“Had he got a decoration?”

As a matter of fact he had several. And a little shamefacedly he admitted it.

Then why didn’t he wear them?

People didn’t wear their decorations except on full-dress occasions.

“If I had a V. C.,” said Miss Du Rance, “I should just wear it any old time. And King George himself wouldn’t stop me.”

Without going so far as to offer contradiction, Bill seemed a little inclined to doubt it.

Howbeit that was neither here nor there. And their walk was most enjoyable. Bill was kept in a ripple of amusement. This little Miss Du Rance was the livest thing out. As for her ply of questions it was so unexpected that it never became tiresome. Perhaps it was because she was so nailingly pretty. Those serious grey eyes were as good as anything he had seen in a month of Sundays.

When they got to the Tube in Piccadilly Circus said Miss Du Rance, in whose voice was regret: “I must leave you now. You can go back to your snooker. But I am just awfully pleased and proud to have met you.” She held forth a neat white glove. “I do hope we shall meet again.”

Bill said, as he grasped the white glove fervently: “We must--if you _do_ think so.”

“I don’t say what I don’t think.” The sternness of Miss Du Rance was perfectly killing.

Bill, who was still enjoying every moment of her, ventured to hope that she didn’t. And as an earnest of that he went on to ask, tentatively, whether she cared for dancing.

“I’ll say yes.”

“That’s splendid! We must get Vi to arrange a party one afternoon for the Orient Dance Club.”

“When?”

Bill was hardly prepared to be picked up in that way. Such businesslike promptitude was a threat to his gravity. “One day next week if it can be managed and it’ll be convenient to you.”

Next week, any old day, would be quite convenient to Miss Du Rance. At that they left it.

XXIII

Ways and means were still a problem for Mame. The one hundred and fifty dollars, which had dropped like manna from the sky, were not going to carry her far. One cannot live on the air of London, England, solid though it may be compared with the champagne of New York. Even in that exhilarating climate one needs plenty of “dough” to carry on from day to day.

Miss Du Rance was by way of having quite a lot of success. Socially she had gone much further than she could have dared to hope in so short a time. Her foot was now planted well on the ladder, but she must take care lest she climb to an altitude a little too dizzy. It is so easy to lose one’s head.

Shrewd to the bone, a true daughter of the Middle West, she felt she had better call a halt and look around. It had been a rare bit of luck to strike these friends, but the margin of her resources was so narrow that unless she could add to it pretty soon, and also find other means of income, she would not be able to stay the course.

The situation was again growing serious. Those few providential dollars were already melting like snow. True, she now felt entitled to count on another draft from Elmer P. at an early date, but precisely when it would come she didn’t know. Besides even when it arrived it was not going to last very long. No, it would be wrong to shirk the fact that the margin upon which she was working was uncomfortably small.

This fact came directly home to her, when, about three days after her walk with Bill along Piccadilly, she received a hurried line from Lady Violet, suggesting that on that day week they should make up a party for tea and dancing at the Orient Club, Knightsbridge. If Miss Du Rance cared for that sort of thing she might find it rather amusing.

As it happened few girls cared more for it than Mame. Even in her primitive Cowbarn epoch, an occasional dance with the best and brightest of the boys had been her favourite, indeed her only, means of recreation. Moreover, in New York a certain amount of time had been given to the cultivation of the art. She had always felt it to be within the range of her lightly tripping toes to tread a measure in the best company. Dancing harmonised with her vitality and her love of movement. Had she not seriously considered having herself trained for vaudeville?

Keen as she was to fall in with Lady Violet’s suggestion, she was also wise enough to scent the peril. One way or another it would mean further expenditure that she really could not afford. The position was rather maddening. Her future, as she saw it, as she had planned it, as she had fully determined that it should be, lay with these influential and attractive folks. Perhaps she was a little snob, but this sort of life quite spoiled one for any other.

Still, money was needed to live it. Money was needed all the time. Unless one knew how to get it regularly and in good sums one would surely be wise to turn aside from the lures of English society.

Instinctively Mame felt that she ought not to accept Lady Violet’s invitation. She would be getting into deeper water than she cared about. Delightful as the sun and the ripples were upon the waves, she was nothing like a strong enough swimmer at present to trust herself to that treacherous sea. Yet, alas, there was a second instinct, equally powerful, which recalled a favourite text in the office calendar: There is a Tide.

That fly-marked old calendar had a wonderful knack of turning out to be true. There was a Tide, not a doubt of it. And Mame Durrance was poised upon the top, but so precariously that if she didn’t watch out she would find herself in difficulties; for at present she had not learned to swim beyond a very few strokes. But she was there all right, on the crest of the wave. And somehow she felt the power rising within her to breast those waters. She would sure be the worst fool alive if now she went back on her chances.

XXIV

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.