Part 8

This morning as Mame dealt faithfully with her matutinal kipper and coffee and marmalade, she felt inclined to raise a pæan also. She had slept well in spite of a growing pressure of deep anxieties. Never had she felt more full of zip. To-day was to offer the chance of her life.

The firmness of the barometer and the optimism of the _Daily Mail_ so fully confirmed the prospect from her bedroom window, that a second consecutive day of fine weather was almost a certainty. She would be able to do the function of the afternoon under the best possible conditions.

For nearly a fortnight the wedding had been sedulously boomed by the newspapers. Mame was willing to take their word for it that the celebration of the nuptials of the Marquis of Belfield and Miss Van Alsten of New York was one of the events of the social year. Also she was ready to accept their prediction of an immense gathering at the Church of Saint Margaret, Westminster, and around the railings of Clanborough House, Mayfair.

She decided to forego the ceremony and to concentrate on the reception. By this means she would save the expense of a taxi; and perhaps of fighting her way through the mob. New York had taught her what that meant at a really smart wedding. Besides, having had such luck, she was sure of seeing the second part of the show at close range. If she got to Clanborough House early, she would be able to choose a good position. She wanted to rub shoulders with Royalty and the grandees. It was not so much she was a little snob, although she dared say that really and truly she was, as that she was out to hear and to see, to mark and to learn.

She didn’t take much luncheon. A sort of excitement had been gnawing at her all the morning, and the nearer the time approached to set out for Mayfair, the worse it became. She would have despised herself for lack of coolness had she been equal just then to despising herself for anything. What was there to fuss over? Had it been her fool self that was going to marry the Marquis of Belfield she could not have felt more completely cuckoo.

“Pull your doggone self together, Mame Durrance,” something whispered to her as she shook a little Worcester sauce over the mid-day hash.

Sound advice, but not easy to follow. Even when she put down the bottle of Worcester sauce her hand continued to shake. Yes, she was cuckoo. A highbrow had declared in the office calendar for 1921 that he was the captain of his soul. His exact words should have been easy to remember, for they had been learned sedulously by heart; but the poor old think-box seemed out of business just now. And that was a pity, for that highbrow might have been helpful.

Lack of appetite seemed to add to a feeling of “nerves.” It was absurd. Her job would not be a whit more difficult than a visit to the movies or the play. But she was in a regular twitter. Luncheon hardly touched, she got up from the table and went to her room. The business of dressing took a full hour. Never in her life had she taken such pains with her appearance. She arched her eyebrows with a pencil, she dabbed her face with cream and rose and she artfully brushed her hair, a pretty burnished brown, over what she considered her weakest feature, a pair of slightly nondescript ears.

At last she stood in her camisole to receive her best afternoon frock of blue marocain. Then she slipped about her slender neck a string of pearls even slenderer, whose make-believe, she hoped, would not be visible to the naked eye. Silk stockings, very choice and gossamer, and a cunning pair of shoes with high heels and large buckles completed the picture.

As she gazed at herself in the wretched lodging-house mirror, she wondered why she was taking these pains. Not a soul in the smart mob was likely to glance at her twice. But she looked so pale that she could not tear herself away from the glass without one extra touch of rose. That accomplished, she had recourse to a neat oblong box, which since yesterday morning had graced the top of the chest of drawers. With a little nervous, thrill she produced a pair of folding eyeglasses, the cutest thing out, which with the help of a long tortoise-shell handle you held up to your nose.

The only drawback to this slick contrivance was that for seeing purposes she simply did not need it. Her eyes were like a goshawk’s. The problem was to hold the tortoise-shell folders so as to peer over the top without detracting from their effect.

Conscious that she was a veritable Paula Wyse Ling in action, she moved slowly forth from her room and down the stairs. The tightness of the new shoes required caution. It was a mistake to have them fit so close; a pity, too, that the heels were so horribly high. She had to be careful also with the tortoise-shell folders. If they were not kept at just the right angle going down those dark stairs she might miss a step, pitch down the lot and fetch up with a crash against the drawing room door.

Fashionable life is not all chocolate éclairs and ice-cream sodas. Mame nearly tripped over herself twice in the course of the perilous descent to the first-floor landing. She had just achieved it with a thankful heart, when the door of the drawing room opened, and lo! who should emerge like some old cat from a wicker basket but the queen of the tabbies, the bishop’s niece.

No love was lost between Mame and this lady. She was a species of four-flusher, Mame was sure. Very set up with herself, yet without so much as one shilling to rub against another. To judge by the novels Mame had been reading, to get to know as it were the lie of this comic land, she was convinced that in the cathedral towns and the inland spas the nieces of bishops were three a penny.

She had dignity of a sort, this dame, but when she came full upon Mame, who seemed at the point of falling on to her tortoise-shell folders, she almost let a whoop.

Howbeit, the fact that she was a bishop’s niece had the power to save her. Suddenly she gazed over Mame’s head and then muttered how glad she was that it was such a fine day. But Mame, in spite of tight shoes and a general _malaise_, felt the cold and stern joy of battle.

By a discreet use of the tortoise-shell folders she was able to peer not so much through the middle as over the top. Then she lifted her good chin, which she knew to be one hundred per cent American, and said in that clear high voice which she had practised in secret from the hour she had first heard poor Mr. Falkland Vavasour put it over, “I’ll give your mother-love to King George.”

XVI

There was no need to hurry over the business of getting to Clanborough House. In fact, Mame had intended to walk, but the new shoes were so tight that she hailed the first taxi she saw. Instead, however, of giving the sublime address, she prudently said Selfridge’s. She had been over the line of route already. Clanborough House was an easy five minutes on foot from that famous store; it would cost less and consume a certain amount of time, of which there was more than enough, if she walked the remainder of the distance. A gentle stroll, moreover, would help her to get on terms with her fashionable self.

At Selfridge’s she discharged her taxi. Then growing more collected every yard, in spite of the pinching of her shoes, she quietly sauntered through a series of by-streets until she turned a corner and came upon the sign Clanborough Street W.1.

Here she was. At once she descried an awning in the middle distance. The awning was striped red and white. It stretched from the kerb, across the pavement, beyond the railings, along a kind of paved courtyard, and finally merged in the sombre stonework of a gloomy building, a sort of cross between a workhouse and a penitentiary, which since the year of grace 1709 had borne the name of Clanborough House.

Beneath the awning’s entire length ran a red carpet. Mame was so early, it was hardly likely that the first guests would be back from the church within the next half hour. That was her own calculation, which she was careful to verify by the watch on her wrist and also by the clock on the adjacent church tower of St. Sepulchre. But the wedding-going public had assembled already; not merely in twos and threes but in fair-sized battalions. The Metropolitan police had assembled also; not in twos and threes either, but a round thirty or so good-humoured and efficient men, who, subject to their own little vagaries, as Mame was in a position to bear witness, were yet past masters in handling clotted masses of the British cit.

This pleasant afternoon of early spring they were all out to do their job with grace and skill. They had drawn a cordon round Clanborough House and its environs. As Mame came up she observed that privileged beings armed with cameras were in the middle of the road. This caused her some slight regret that she had not driven up to the awning in style and had the door opened by a policeman. It was reasonably certain that she would have been the first guest to arrive and would therefore have been a good subject for the camera. With a bit of luck the new hat and fox might have found their way into the New York papers.

It seemed a pity to have missed that chance. Life, however, still held one or two agreeable things. One of these was the fact that the first policeman to challenge her progress, when in order to dissociate herself from the crowd she stepped off the sidewalk and took to the roadway, was no less than that identical young cop whom she had met the previous evening in Hyde Park.

Life is full of gay surprises. For Mame at this moment it was a delicious affair. To be stopped by that veritable baby in the broad light of day, to be accosted before the multitude, and to be politely requested not to walk in the road was about as good a thing as could have happened to her. The sight of the dour but well-cut features, of the sandy hair and the unsmiling face filled her at once with the joy that warriors feel.

Now that the big moment had come she was no longer cuckoo. Like any other American citizeness she was reacting just naturally to the occasion. The sight of that policeman, the sound of his voice, removed the last trace of stage fright.

“Ye can’t walk along hair, miss.”

“Why not?”

“Unless ye’ve a ticket for the r-r-reception.”

Torn between an ambition to behave like a peeress and a powerful desire to put one over on the constable, the wearer of the new hat and fox opened her vanity bag and haughtily produced her invite.

The young bobby, at the sight of that magic bit of pasteboard and with the eyes of many superior officers upon him, drew himself to his full height and saluted the new hat and fox as only a Scots policeman could have done.

Coolly and with fixity of mind, Mame went through some warlike evolutions with her tortoise-shell folders. A whole series of evolutions. She seemed to detect all about her a sudden joyous clicking of cameras. Her picture was going to be in the New York papers after all.

It was the proudest moment life so far had given her. But she was equal to it. Now that she was fairly in at the deep end, the springs of being seemed automatically to tighten up. She was going to swim. And she was going to swim all the better for having so recently distrusted the power of her breast stroke and the freedom of her leg action.

The eyes of the world were upon the tortoise-shell folders. In Paula Wyse Ling’s opinion there was nothing like them. Paula was right as usual. Mame was conscious of the gaze of the _Daily Lyre_-consuming public growing rounder and rounder. She could almost hear the suckers asking, Which Little Nob Is This?

XVII

Mame’s progress to the awning was a triumph. Bobby after bobby passed her along. Once she was fairly under it and she felt the red carpet beneath her high-heeled shoes, of whose perils she was still aware, she bent her mind to the serious business of being Lady Clara de Vere.

Everything seemed to make that business easy. From admiring public and saluting cops in the street, to groom of the chambers, major domo, butlers, footmen and what not in the mansion itself, all were careful to see that she didn’t step out of the picture. Never in her life had she felt so exhilarated as she walked on very slowly towards the white marble staircase.

There was plenty of time to look at the Lawrences and the Romneys. She was the first guest to arrive. The others, who were evidently a most distinguished crowd, were all at the church. Except for the servants she seemed to have the whole place to herself.

If she had not had a good nerve those jolly old hirelings might have put one over on her. They were all male; very numerous, very starched, very stand-off; in fact, they were reeking with Class. She had not seen any hired men to compare with these.

The house was exactly like those fake interiors you see on the movies, except that this one was real. It might have been a royal palace. She had never been anywhere like it. As she walked alone and delicately up that wonderful staircase she could hardly believe in her surroundings. Equally hard to believe in herself. Mame Durrance must be dreaming.

In a sense she was dreaming. Halfway up the stairs she paused to drive home to herself that she was the Lady Clara de Vere and must behave “as sich.” The truth about her was that like so many of her countrywomen she had a remarkable faculty of seeing herself in pictures. She kept a mirror at the back of her brain. You glanced within and were able to adjust yourself to your environment. In the middle of those stairs the little hick from Cowbarn, Iowa, took a formal oath to be cool, to be collected, to watch her step, and, above all, to see that nobody called her bluff.

Everything so far was easy. There was not a soul on the stairs. But no, she was wrong. When she reached the head of them she came upon a rare old top in livery who bowed as they do in the theatre. He asked for her card. She handed it to him and he bayed out in a deep voice that went echoing all over the landing: “Miss Amethyst Du Rance.”

Mame was quite startled by the sound of her name. Somehow it didn’t seem to belong to her, any more than this ducal mansion seemed to belong to her life. She was dreaming, sure. The echoing “Miss Amethyst Du Rance” seemed to prove it. However, she decided to keep moving, just as if she were broad awake.

The landing gave on to an enormous room, whose massive double doors were thrown right back. And standing in the doorway was a tall, silver-haired dame, dressed in black and white satin, with that particular kind of fagged look which Mame had first observed in the bishop’s niece and was no doubt indigenous to the upper strata of Britain.

As soon as she saw Mame, her tired features lit up in a smile.

“How do you do, Miss Du Rance?” She spoke in a fatigued voice and held out a flabby hand. “The Duchess should be here in a few minutes. You will find some of the presents in there. It may interest you to look at them.”

“Sure,” was Mame’s answer. It was not too ready or too cordial, but rather in the dry tone that Paula Ling called _blasé_, which in Europe was always reckoned good style. Lady Clara de Vere was on in this scene, and if the skirt was to act her part her words must be few and chosen with discretion.

Lady C. de V. gave her tortoise-shell folders a shake and then passed on into the room. It was immense, and this was a happy dispensation, since it was encumbered with tables on which hundreds of presents were elaborately laid out.

Such things, however, had no particular interest for Mame. They could be seen any old day. It was the house itself and the people in it that were best worth looking at. Here was such a chance of observing the great world from the inside as might never happen again. She must learn as much as she possibly could in the short time at her disposal.

A cursory glance at the presents was all she gave. Then she wandered away through a suite of smaller rooms, all of which were unoccupied. But they were very interesting with their richly patterned carpets wonderful to the tread; glorious tapestries upon the walls, candelabra which reminded her of certain photographs she had seen of Versailles; mirrors, pictures, bric-à-brac in rare profusion. It was freely said in England that the aristocracy had been killed by the war, but from what she saw of Clanborough House there was life in the old dog yet.

However, these things did not greatly matter. The folks were what she was really wishful to see. Therefore she soon returned to the big room. After a careful survey she fixed herself in a strategic corner which partly concealed her yet also commanded a fair view of the open doors and the broad landing and staircase beyond.

In a very few minutes the first of the folks came into view. Even without the guidance of their costumes Mame would have had no difficulty in identifying them from their pictures in the papers as the bride and bridegroom. They made a young and handsome and jolly-looking pair. Any girl might have been envious; but Mame was far too busy to indulge that mean passion.

For the folks began to pour in now with a vengeance. Among the first arrivals was a bunch of Royalties. It was easy to tell these were the Real Cream, by the care with which they were herded into a distant corner of the room. Here they stood apart, surrounded by dames-in-waiting and sconce-bearers. From time to time some old grandee was brought up to speak to them. Almost the first of these was the old duchess with the Wellington nose whom Mame’s unknown friend had claimed for a godmother. She came up leaning on a black cane and was soon in deep conversation with a particularly upstanding dame whom Mame guessed by the look of her to be the Queen of England.

Democrat though Mame was proud to consider herself, she took an undemocratic interest in all that went on. The look of the Royalties and the detached way in which they bore themselves interested her enormously. But she was not able to give them undivided attention. From her point of view other important things were beginning to happen.

By now the folks were simply swarming up the stairs. There was a loud hum of voices; a mighty lot of hand-shaking; considerable laughter; and as a mob of guests began to percolate into the room and to circulate around the tables Mame was confronted with the difficult task of picking out those who were most worth while. Plutes were so thick on the ground that it called for more than her knowledge to say who were not worth while.

Suddenly her eye was caught by a braided morning coat which somehow had a remarkably familiar look. Where had she seen it? Which Prince was in that morning’s _Daily Lyre_? Why, to be sure, it was the young fellow Bill! Which Prince was Bill? A fascinating inquiry. Before it could be answered, so swiftly swirled this human vortex, the drama became immensely more complicated. For, coming in through the door, looking just as gay, just as cool, just as chic as ever, was her chance acquaintance of the Carlton who had turned out to be a fairy godmother.

Mame’s excitement mounted so oddly at the sight of this girl, whom she hardly expected to see again, that she had to restrain a shout of welcome. This dump, she reminded herself, was not the cafeteria on Second Street, Cowbarn, Iowa, but Clanborough House, Mayfair, London, England. In the words of the song the Colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady might be sisters under their skins, but if Miss Du Rance--the fool puss!--didn’t watch out, she would be tearing a large hole in the manners of Lady Clara de Vere.

Was the girl going to look towards her corner? Or was she not? It was no cert. The folks were still pouring in; royalties, senators, professional beauts. It was no snap. The girl, who was showing some fine teeth and chattering like a good one, seemed to have a word for them all.

These were anxious moments. It would be just too bad if Mame didn’t catch the eye of the unknown friend. The entire future might turn upon it. She must thank her for the invitation. And this time she must see that the fairy godmother did not get away without revealing who she was.

It began to seem, however, as if Mame would have to leave her nice, comfortable corner and go and chase her. Each moment the place was getting fuller; each moment more of the folks intervened between Mame and the quarry. The human tide surging around was slowly but surely carrying her the other way.

Mame did not want, all the same, to quit a post which so finely commanded the main doorway. But she must keep the unknown in the middle of her eye or she would lose her. However, Mame’s luck was in. The girl was hustled to the right of the big table, instead of to the left, as Mame had feared that she would be.

This made all the difference. She came back on her tracks. All kinds of whales were still hanging around her. But Mame could not help that. It was now or it was never. Still, the Lady Clara de Vere did not let a whoop or a coo-ee or anything in the nature of a view holloa. Preserving a ladylike calm, that would have had no success at Cowbarn, she waved her white-gloved hands and then clapped them together, one, two, three!

The girl was so engaged with her friends that the first time failed to do the trick. Repeating the performance, she clapped still louder, one, two, three! Then the fairy godmother suddenly looked Mame full in the eye. For one brief instant a kind of mild surprise shone over her and then she said quite cheerily; “It _is_ sporting of you to show up here.”