Part 7

Mame had quite made up her mind that she would not receive an invitation to the wedding reception at Clanborough House. Why should she? That the girl would prove as good as her word was not on the cards. Such a promise was no more than a slick Londoner’s way of showing how much she was in it, without really being quite so much in it as she showed.

After all, however, it is a funny world. And this was Mame’s reflection, when rather late the following afternoon, the little maid, whose name was Janet, handed her a large, square, important-looking envelope that had just come by post. At the sight of the coronet on the back and the general air of quality Mame’s heart gave a jump.

The unexpected had happened. Her Grace the Duchess of Clanborough requested the honour--requested the honour, mark you!--of the company of Miss Amethyst Du Rance at the marriage of the Marquis of Belfield with her niece Miss Van Alsten at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, at three o’clock on Thursday, April 6, and afterwards at Clanborough House, Mayfair.

It was very odd. But it was distinctly thrilling. There was no need to be so humble after all. The girl evidently was interested in Miss Du Rance and had gone out of her way to do her a service. And Miss Du Rance did not mind owning that she had been a little too ready to suspect her of not being on the level.

With a sensation of deep but quiet triumph Mame listened now to the tabbies faintly purring over their teacups. It called for self-control not to ask the arch-puss, who gave herself out a bishop’s niece, upon whom Mame had an especial down, whether she was going to the ceremony at St. Margaret’s or to the reception at Clanborough House, or whether she meant to do both?--although privately quite sure that the old stiff was going to do neither. Happily she remembered a text of the village preacher in the grim days when she had to endure him every Sunday: “Be not exalted lest ye be cast down.”

In spite of a glow in the centre of her being, the warning in those words could not have been more salutary. So fully had Clanborough House been dismissed from Mame’s thoughts that she had already made up her mind to quit London as soon as possible. In fact, she had just informed Mrs. Toogood that she would not require a room beyond Saturday; and she had decided to go immediately after breakfast to-morrow morning, Wednesday, to book a second-class berth in the _Vittoria_, which was to sail three days later for New York.

The invitation to Clanborough House looked like changing all that. It rather set Mame on the horns of a dilemma. A girl truly wise would stick to the plan she had made, the voice of prudence told her. Clanborough House would probably mean another fortnight in London; it would involve her in a new hat and other expense; and if she was not careful such a hole would be cut in her purse that alarmingly few dollars would remain in it by the time she found herself back on Broadway.

These reflections gave Mame a jolt. A lot of use an invite to Clanborough House, if the price of it brought you to your uppers. Aunt Lou’s legacy would be gone, along with the hundred and ten dollars she had been able to save. Her job would be lost. And in a place like New York it was no certainty that she would get another at short notice. She had heard it described by those who should know as the cruelest place on earth for persons who were up against it.

These were problems. Invitation in hand, Mame fiercely considered them. Should she? Or should she not? The famous highbrow William Shakespeare, according to the office calendar whose mottoes she had by heart, the famous highbrow William Shakespeare had made the statement that “there is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

It might be so. That was true, no doubt, for some. But again, for others it was quite likely not to be true. Circumstances alter cases. William Shakespeare was writing in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth when there were not so darn many go-getters around. In his time there were not more people than jobs and all the seats in the public parks of the big cities were not overflowing with those who couldn’t raise the price of a meal.

A problem, sure. On the one hand, prudence, foresight, a looking-before-and-after; on the other, ambition, hope, adventure, all the worth-while things. Such a chance would never recur. And if she had brain enough to use it in the right way, there was no saying where it might lead.

Mame spent a very restless night. But somewhere in the small hours, when her mind was at its most lucid, she took the momentous decision to follow her star.

If she turned back now, with the gates of her kingdom opening wide, she never deserved to see them again. “Stick it, Mame.” That had always been her slogan, even in the cold hour of sun-up before the day’s work began or over a guttering candle after it was done, when secretly she gave her whole mind to the hard and dry study of stenography.

It was that power of giving her whole mind to things that in the end had won freedom. If she had taken a line of least resistance or been afraid to go all out for the things she wanted, she would still have been doing chores upon the farm. No, she must stand up to her luck. And if the worst came she could go home steerage.

Full of new resolve, Mame’s first act was to inform Mrs. Toogood that she proposed to stay on at least another week. Then, after an elaborate calculation of ways and means, she set out on a tour of Oxford Street. A new hat she must have. When in Rome, etc. No use looking a frump at Clanborough House. She would be mixing with class. And if she was careful how she dressed and she watched her step all the time, the folks might not be able to tell her from real.

A quiet mode was best suited to Miss Amethyst Du Rance. After much observation of herself and other people, that was her conclusion. Like most of her countrywomen she had a flair in the matter of clothes. New York and London had taught her their value. Already she was getting to know the worth of the mysterious attribute, style.

The girl she had met at the Carlton was a revelation of what style could do. It was a far better thing than mere looks. But Mame’s ambition was to have both. And if she could only fulfil it, there was no reason, so far as she could see, why she should not unlock the most exclusive doors in Britain.

At all events, it should not be for want of trying. If the invite to Clanborough House meant anything it was that she had found a bonanza. The girl must be a regular high-flyer, and for some mysterious reason, which Mame could not fathom, she was willing to be a fairy godmother. It was up to Mame to prove her own mettle. Here, at last, was a chance to pull the big stuff.

Many hours in Oxford Street were necessary before Mame’s prudence could decide just how much to be bled. She had to get home, if, in spite of Clanborough House, the stars in their courses played her false. After she had duly paid for the hat on which she had set her heart, and a captivating fox so near real that she fell for it at the last moment, she was quite alarmed by the narrow margin of safety.

At the end of the day she wrote an urgent letter to the editor of the Cowbarn _Independent_. She told him how disappointed she was not to have had a line all the time she had been in Europe. And she hinted that a few dollars in exchange for the fifteen columns she had already sent him would be welcome.

But what was the _Independent_ anyway? At best a fourth-rate sheet, a small-town rag. She would forget it. The time had surely come to fly at higher game.

She tore up the letter to Elmer Dobree. His treatment was so mean he was not worth a twopenny stamp. Let her get into touch with the big live papers of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago. Yes, the idea was good. She was full of good ideas, yet they didn’t seem to click.

What was wrong? Her stuff was O. K., she was sure. Full of jazz, unlike what other columnists were pulling. Yet editors didn’t fall. In New York she had not been able to get them so much as to look at what she wrote; it was the same in London. Influence was what she needed. Paula Ling was a one for influence. She believed in it all the time. But it had a mystic quality. Nobody knew just what it was or how you came by it.

Personality was the key. Modern journalising was like being in vaudeville or in the movies. You had to do stunts; you had to be a good mixer; able if necessary to jolly an editor into taking an interest in you; above all, you had to be up in the art of what in London they called dressing the shop window.

As slowly she tore up the letter to Elmer P. she sighed deeply. Even he had deserted her. Well, never say die, that was still her motto. She must hang on by the eyelids to the bitter end. But she felt so sore with one whose friendship she had built on that she snatched his photograph from her bedroom chimneypiece and consigned it to her trunk. The stronger for the deed, she then resumed that optimistic pen which had yet to earn a dime in Europe and began a carefully diplomatic letter to Paula Wyse Ling.

Out and out go-getter though Paula was, Mame valued her friendship. To be sure, it had only been manifested in small and considered ways. Paula was essentially a girl who didn’t give without taking; if she shared her bread with you, she would expect you to share your jam with her. But Mame didn’t blame her for that. Paula, too, had had a long way to go. She had started out at sixteen without a buck from what she alluded to as “a comic village in the State of Maine.” By sheer grit and the power of sticking it she had earned enough by her pen to spend two years in Europe. And now since her return home she was pulling five hundred a month, with every prospect of going bigger.

Diplomacy was needed to handle the Paula Lings of the world. Mame kept this truth before her as her pen drove steadily on. She painted a rosy picture of her life in London. If not exactly what these Cockneys themselves would call “a Brock’s Benefit,” in other words, a firework display, she was already beginning to fix the half-nelson on various editors of distinction who paid a fair price per col. Also she was getting around a good deal with the worth-while folks. Her friend the Duchess of Clanborough had just sent her a special invite to a wedding ceremony and to the reception afterwards, which the King and Queen had promised to attend. Some marquis or other was going to marry a Miss Van Alsten; but Paula was likely to know as much about it as she did, as the Miss Van Alsten in question belonged to New York.

Here it was that diplomacy entered with both feet. New York being just naturally interested in the marriage of one of its queens with a British blood-peer, Mame would be glad to do the show from the inside, with a full description of who was there, how they looked, what they wore, and so on; and if Paula could fix it her end with some editor or some syndicate of editors, she would be happy to divide the cheque. Time being money, she hoped Paula would save on it by promptly cabling terms.

As Mame cast an eye over this letter, it seemed an inspiration to write Paula Ling and offer her fifty-fifty of the dough. If Paula couldn’t place the first-hand account of next week’s marriage, it was not likely there was one alive who could. With a sly smile Mame addressed the envelope to Paula’s apartment on Sixty-seventh Street. Then she slipped out and placed it carefully in the little red pillar box at the British Museum end of Montacute Square.

XIV

Thursday was to be the day of days. But the evening of Wednesday after a week of east winds, having settled into reasonably spring-like weather, Mame decided to give her new hat and fox an airing. It would take off a little of the shine; besides, she was burning to know how she looked and felt in things that had taxed her purse to capacity.

Distinction, personality, taste, style, were the watch-words humming in her rather excited brain as she posed before the cracked mirror in her bedroom. This hat and fox had cost thirty-five berries in hard cold cash. And there was nothing much to show. Yet the fox looked so nearly like a fox for the money as it adorned her slim neck and the hat set off her shapely little head so well, that they gave her quite a tone. She would have to travel steerage now, but it was worth it. Thirty-five dollars’ worth of hat and fur did give you a feeling of Class.

Lured by the fineness of the evening Mame went as far as Hyde Park. When Bus 29 set her down at the Marble Arch the clock upon it said twenty minutes past five. The promise of night was in the sky already. There were few people to observe Mame’s tasteful finery as she sauntered past the long line of empty chairs which ran the entire length of Park Lane as far as Apsley House.

Hard by a statue whose naïveté gave Mame a jolt, she turned off to the right and crossed the forsaken tan of Rotten Row. And in so doing her movements, unknown to herself, attracted the notice of two policemen, who were standing on duty in the shadow of the trees.

She took a seat, one of the many provided gratis by a paternal County Council for the worthy citizens of London, England. No one else was sitting around. There was excellent reason for their absence, although Mame did not know it. But she was about to be put wise.

The path by whose edge Mame innocently sat was the most charming in London. It ran from Piccadilly to Kensington Gore and there was a time, not so long ago, when it was much frequented by people who knew what was what. _Autres temps, autres mœurs._ People who knew what was what were particularly careful now to keep the other side the park railings. Better be splashed from head to heel by the bounding taxi or the plebeian bus, better be jostled by a heedless mob, than to take a chance of being run in.

The zealots of the Metropolitan Force had closed London’s most alluring path to all people of sense, but Mame did not know that. And she was not to blame. But just one other there was among all the millions of Cockaigne who at that moment appeared to share her ignorance. Blame in his case is a delicate question.

Truly a rather wonderful old bird. He was of the sort to be seen only in cathedral cities, and then but one at a time; always providing that some many-and-portentous-syllabled conference is not in session when this rare bird may be seen in his battalions.

In this case he was solus. Far wiser he, had his lady wife or some authentic church-worker accompanied him from St. James’s Vicarage, where he had been to call upon the incumbent, to the chapter house at Knightsbridge. His like are the natural prey of those who lurk at dusk in the shrubberies of Hyde Park. There was something in his shovel hat, all rosetted and beribanded, in his decent black apron, in the neat many-buttoned gaiters which set off his comely legs that no self-respecting London policeman could resist. He did not seem to know that, this adventurous old boy. Or perhaps feeling himself to be like Cæsar’s wife he was so foolhardy as not to worry.

Mame had just taken her seat under the trees which grace the Forbidden Path. She was wondering how awfully well she must look in her new hat and fox, how full of lugs and yet of quietness, in a word, how exceedingly Class; she was wondering, too, how she could best develop her personality, so that London, England, should know her for what she was--one of the bright intellects of the U. S.--when cheu! this perfectly amazing old lady of the village came into her ken.

He did more than come into her ken; he filled the entire range of her vision. Fully absorbed in his recent heart-to-heart talk with the liberal-minded friends he had left at the Vicarage, he was not conscious that Mame was there. As for Mame, the mere contiguity of this old john charmed her to a smile.

That smile was Mame’s undoing. Thoughts on style and personality banished for the nonce, her eyes were fixed on the slowly receding form of the Moderator of the Metropolitan First Church of London, England, or its equivalent, when two policemen, young, rampant, red-haired, sprang from the bushes. They lacked the irresponsibility of the glad Irish peelers who lend such zip to New York. These charming fellows happened to be Scots. But they had their way to make in the wicked Saxon world. Here was their chance.

“Did he speak to ye?” demanded the First Cop in a hoarse, stern tone.

The sudden onset of the police brought up Mame with a round turn. She had read that the homely London bobby was the admiration of the civilised world. So far, she was bound to own, she liked him. He was human and kindly, simple and bland. But to have the wind put up in this manner by a brace of raw Scots was a bit too much. For the moment she felt quite flustered.

“Come again.” Her drawl was rather startled. “I don’t get you.”

“Why was ye giving him the glad eye?” Thus the Second Cop. And he seemed to add to Mame’s perplexity.

A moment’s thought was fuel for a growing indignation. Dating from Detective Addelsee’s bad break she was going to have a down on cops of all nationalities for the rest of her days. In spite of their air of fanaticism, which was more than a little dangerous, this pair of boobs was unmistakably “for it”--as the English say.

“I’m a very respectable girl.”

Both constables had a sneer for Mame’s respectability.

“Oh, run away and play,” she advised. “Run away to Mamma.”

It may have been Mame’s coolness, the growing truculence of her eyes, the scorn of her lips, or her choice of words, but the two zealots began sensibly to draw in their horns.

Personality, no doubt. For as soon as the owner of the new hat and fox could bring her guns into action the Force had an attack of pause.

“Beat it. Hop it.” The grey eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare get gay with me.”

Z 9 and Z 23 retired a few paces and conferred. A moment later they were fading discreetly away in the twilight.

Mame was left mistress of the field. But the incident rankled. Why could not a peaceful American citizeness enjoy the beauty of the evening and develop her personality without being shoved around in this way?

She heard the clocks of the neighbourhood chime six. And then, still ruffled, she left her seat and slowly made her way across the park towards bus Route 29. Alas! she had not gone far when she overtook a couple of elegant tunics. They were strolling twenty yards or so ahead, but even at this distance they were familiar.

On the inspiration of the moment she quickened her pace. Hearing a scrunch of footsteps on the gravel path, one of the cops half turned to look at her as she came up.

“Say, officer!” Mame’s gasp was all excitement: she would have known that sandy-haired, sharp-nosed rube among ten thousand of his kind. “Say, listen, officer!” An imperative hand was laid on an immaculate sleeve. “I seena mutt without his jeans.”

The words were intended to convey an impression of rusticity which, if anything, was overdone. Both bobbies turned as one towards her. Upon their faces was incomprehension grave and dour.

For the credit of the Metropolitan Force, however, the Second Cop was a young man of ripe experience. In fact, he was wearing the Zeebrugge Medal. At the end of 1919 he had been paid off from the Navy, after a brief but honourable career; in the spring of 1921 he had first donned the elegant tunic with belt and whistle complete whose accomplished wearers are the admiration of the world. There was a hiatus of sixteen months in his record which had been filled by slinging hash in a Chicago eating joint. Just as soon as he was able to hitch back his mind to that glad time, and with Mame’s intonation to help him, the process took rather less than thirty seconds, he knew where he was.

Emotion flamed suddenly in the eye of the Second Cop. He turned to the First Cop and spoke urgent words. Both zealots squared their shoulders and tightened their belts.

“Whaur did ye see him?” The demand of Z 9 was tense and stern.

Mame laid a finger to her lip. “Mind you don’t scare the guy.”

It was a superfluous caution. Both constables looked ready to creep through an alderman’s thumb ring without making a sound.

Mame turned left. Her escort followed. The ground was admirably chosen. Immediately in front was a small newspaper kiosk, now padlocked for the night; and just beyond was that work of art, in all its naïveté, which had lately administered a shock to Mame’s moral nature.

Her forefinger drew a bead on the guilty object. “You better take that bo and put him in the pen.”

The boobs did not muster half a smile between them.

“Don’t be silly!” Z 9 spoke severely. “Don’t ye knaw that’s the Ache-iles Statcher?”

“Can that!” Mame looked from one dour face to the other; her lip took its most expressive curl. “Tell King George from me I _am_ surprised. Ache-iles Statcher! I’ll write straight home to our Purity League.”

XV

The next morning, when Mame drew up her blind, there was abundant promise of royal weather. The great day was ushered in by one of those light mists which mask a sky of flawless blue. In London, England, this phenomenon is rarely seen before noon. But when it does appear the whole of that world which lies between the White Stone Pond at Hampstead and Sydenham Hill, with its weird crown, the Crystal Palace, may be said to raise a pæan.