Part 17

There was really no reason, Mame argued with her somewhat fluttered self, why she should worry. It was not as if she had been guilty of anything dishonourable. Violet was not going to like it, of course. Beyond a doubt she had set her heart on Bill marrying Gwendolen Childwick. Still that was merely a question of Gwendolen’s dollars. Bill obviously did not want to marry mere dollars. So from that point of view it was doing him a simple kindness to save him from that fate. Dollars are not everything. Besides, as one of the johns in the office calendar had explicitly stated, In love and war all is fair. Even if Bill’s sister took it amiss, Mame felt she need not reproach herself.

Clucking away at the typewriter, she hardened her heart. The time was now. It was her duty to break the news before the world was a day older.

While she nursed this growing resolution she heard the front door open. And then came Violet’s light but decided step in the hall. A minute later when she came into the room she lacked nothing of that genial insouciance which Mame so much admired. But as Mame glanced up she was a little chilled by her eyes. The absence of real friendliness, which once had verged on affection, was now complete.

“Where have you been to, my pretty maid?” The question was humorously put. Had Violet been dying it would still have been a point of honour with her to put things humorously.

“Getting engaged to be mar-ri-ed, please m’m, she said.” The retort was quick. It was also bold. Mame was wise enough to appreciate that this particular bull would have to be taken by the horns.

Violet was startled. It was not a bit of use dissembling: she was really startled. Mame, besides, once she had begun upon the cold drawn truth was no believer in half measures. She lifted her left hand from the typewriter and flashed its new brilliancy before the astonished eyes of her questioner.

“How beautiful!” There was nothing in the gay voice to betray anxiety; all the same a slight change of colour rather gave Bill’s sister away. “My dear, you have told me nothing of this.” Mame could not help admiring her friend’s fortitude. “Tell me, who is the happy man?”

“Mean to say you can’t guess?” Each syllable expressed incredulity.

“How should one?”

Violet kept up the game pretty well, but the note of innocence was pitched just a shade high. Evidently she felt it necessary to play for time.

“Aw, shucks, honey. Cut it out.” In the stress of pure emotion Mame had a sudden relapse to the primitive manner of her fathers. “Who do you think it can be? The Prince of Wales?”

Violet’s heart was sinking, sinking, but she contrived to keep up the farce. “Not a ghost of an idea.”

“Take three guesses.”

But Violet only took one. “You don’t mean to say, you....”

All pretence was at an end. Bill’s sister spoke with a slow reproachfulness that caused Mame to feel decidedly uncomfortable. But she determined to put the best face she could on the matter. “Why not?” she laughed. “Do you blame me?”

“Blame you!” The note in the disciplined voice sounded odd. Violet’s face and tone hardened in a way that Mame found rather alarming. “What you really deserve is a thorough good beating.”

For one vital moment it looked as if this really was going to be a case of teeth and claws. But of a sudden Violet took herself strongly in hand.

Never in her life had it been so difficult for Violet to wear the mask of indifference. She would have liked to have killed this marauder. But in her heart she knew that she herself was almost wholly responsible for a tragic situation. She had been properly punished for the levity of her approach to certain conventions. How could she have been paid out better for playing the fool?

However, this was not a moment for self-castigation. She must act. The matter was so horribly serious that it hardly bore thinking about. All the tact, all the diplomacy she could muster had now to be brought into play.

A trying pause threatened to intensify the awkwardness of things. And then said Violet in a tone that would keep hardening in spite of herself: “Before you mention this to anyone, I hope you will see my mother. Will you promise that?”

Mame did not answer at once. Her instinct was to ask Bill. Perhaps Violet may have guessed as much. For she was not to be put off. She made her demand again and with an urgency quite new in Mame’s experience of her. This was a new Violet altogether.

“Please, you must promise.” The gay voice had grown coldly resolute. “Something is due to us, you know.”

There was cause to regret those words as soon as they were uttered. For their effect was to stiffen Mame’s feathers.

“We’ll leave that to him, I guess.” There was resentment in the answer.

Considerable strength of will was needed for Violet to withhold the remark that Bill was a perfect fool. But she was able to fight down the raging tempest. “I am going to telegraph for my mother to come up at once. And in the name of our friendship I ask you to keep the engagement a close secret until--until you have seen her.”

Mame was inclined to resent the tone. But lurking somewhere in her crude yet complex mind was that rather unfeminine sense, fair play. She could not quite forget, after all, how much she owed to Violet. In the circumstances she had a right to demand this of her.

“Well, honey, I’ll do what you say,” drawled Mame with light drollery. “But I can’t answer for that l’i’l bird.”

Lady Violet’s eyes sparkled rather grimly, but she managed to keep her voice under control. “No, you can’t, of course.” By a mighty effort she got back on to the plane she was determined to occupy. “But if you can persuade him to hold his tongue for a day or two you’ll be helping everybody--yourself not least of all.”

The depth of the argument was a point beyond Mame. She could not pretend to be versed in the ways of the hothouse world she was about to enter. But evidently her friend had powerful reasons. Even if she was cutting up pretty rough there would be no harm in humouring her. Nay, it would be wise. Besides, as Mame’s conscience was careful to insist, it was right to make this concession. No need to stand too much on dignity, particularly as she had a real regard for Violet and so must do nothing to embitter their relations.

“I’ll do all _I_ can anyway to keep it a secret until I’ve seen your Mommer,” said Mame generously.

XLIII

The next day, about six o’clock in the evening, Lady Violet was sitting alone with some very hard and rueful thoughts when Davis, with a face of doom, portentously announced the Marchioness of Kidderminster.

She had come up post haste from Shropshire. On the top of Violet’s urgent but cryptic telegram had arrived an amazing letter from Bill. Their mother, on the spur of the moment, had made up her mind to catch the 11:15 at Millfield, which in turn would pick up the express at Shrewsbury; and as she succeeded as a rule in doing the things upon which she set her mind, why here she was.

The greetings of mother and daughter were affectionate, but they were sorry. Both felt that a catastrophe had occurred; and it was of such magnitude that they were quite stunned by its force.

“A little American, you say, without any money?”

Lady Kidderminster quite correctly had the sense of what her daughter had said. Those, indeed, were her words. “It’s terrible,” said Lady Kidderminster piteously. From her point of view it was.

Both ladies were much inclined to blame themselves; and also to blame each other. Lady Kidderminster could not help reproaching Violet for turning loose such a dangerous creature upon a simple unprotected society. In future, perhaps, she would be more careful in her choice of friends. Violet retaliated by saying that her mother ought never to have let the summer go by without simply making Bill marry Gwendolen Childwick. Wretched boy, it was the only marriage he could make if he was to keep his head above water!

However, it was no use repining. There was no time for that. Mother and daughter were both people of resolution. And they had great common sense. Something would have to be done to stop this ruinous affair. But, they asked themselves, what? Already it had gone much too far. It would be impossible for Bill to back out now.

“Our only chance, my dear,” said Violet slowly and forcefully, “and I own it’s a very slender one, is to see what can be done with this Miss Du Rance.”

“But if she’s as horrid and as pushful as you say, she will be the last person in the world to give him up.”

“Horrid she is not.” Mame’s friend spoke judicially. “Quite a nice little thing in her way. Personally I like her very much, but as a wife for Bill she is unthinkable; particularly as she has to earn her own living.”

“All the less likely to give him up.” Lady Kidderminster was doleful indeed.

Still the only hope they had was to act as if that possibility still remained.

“It’s so slender that it seems pretty hopeless.” That was Lady Violet’s candid opinion. But they must try something. The thing was so tragic they could not possibly take it lying down.

They were discussing the catastrophe in all its painful bearings when Mame blundered into the hornets’ nest. She had been walking with Bill in the park; she was still feeling very happy if just a little anxious; and when she abruptly opened the door and came into the drawing room, her thoughts being elsewhere, it did not occur to her that she would find Lady Kidderminster seated in it.

Mame knew at a glance who she was. Bill was remarkably like his mother. This dame was quite handsome, even if her face was a bit worn. She was also stately; but as Mame immediately discovered, she was accessible, kindly, human.

She got up as soon as Mame entered. Before Mame had time to display embarrassment or shyness the good lady offered her hand. And then, as Mame was in the act of taking it, Bill’s mother gave her one quick but covert glance, which had not a trace of hostility.

Somewhere amid Mame’s infinite complexity was a longing for affection. But already she had steeled herself for a display of cattishness. However, there was nothing unkind about Bill’s mother, sharp though Mame’s instinct was to detect it. There was nothing unkind in Lady Violet either. Instinctively Mame knew that both these women must be hating her like poison and it was almost miraculous how they managed to cover up their feelings.

For five minutes or so Bill’s mother and sister talked about him, pleasantly and brightly and entertainingly. He was such a dear, dear fellow, his mother said. But he was quite irresponsible. Agreeably and rather wittily, she gave anecdotes of Bill’s childhood. She had quite a fund of these; and they were told so well, with such point and humour that Mame was really amused. The prospective daughter-in-law could not help admiring Lady Kidderminster. Her talk had much of Lady Violet’s charm, with a Victorian polish and correctness in the place of the modern slang whose abundance in the daughter old-fashioned people were apt to deplore. What the mother lacked in mordancy she made up for in kindliness and those manners of the heart which at all times are sure of their appeal.

Mame was quick to respond. She was grateful for the way in which this lady, with the most beguiling voice she had ever listened to, exercised these gifts for her benefit. This meeting might have been so awkward. Nay, it might have been downright unpleasant. But Bill’s mother carried things off in a style which Mame considered to be perfection.

For one thing Lady K. did not force the note. There was no welcoming her into the nest among her chickens. Mame was shrewdly waiting for that, because that was where this nice, good, clever dame would rather have fallen over the mat. But she was too genuine. There was a certain reserve, a certain dignity behind all that she said to Mame. Even if there was nothing constrained, still less was there anything effusive. It was the golden mean. Miss Du Rance was frankly accepted as Bill’s affianced, even if she was very far from being the particular girl his mother had chosen for him.

“But please, you will promise, will you not, to refrain from speaking of this matter to anyone until--until I have had an opportunity of discussing it fully with my son.” The careful phrases were so urgent that Mame, who did not want to give any such promise, felt the best she could do was to make it.

Lady K. thanked her gravely. “And I wonder, my dear”--it was the first time the stately dame had addressed Mame as “my dear”--“if you feel inclined to come down to Shropshire for a few days. It might interest you to see the sort of life we lead.”

Politely Mame was sure that it would.

“When can you come?”

Mame winged a glance to her partner in the newspaper world. The acceptance of the invitation chiefly depended upon the attitude of Celimene.

“No time like the present, is there?” was that attitude promptly and concisely expressed.

“But”--Mame’s quaint honesty raised a smile in both ladies--“’tisn’t fair, honey, to leave you here alone to do all the digging.”

“I can plough a lonely furrow for a week at any rate. And if I find I can’t I’ll get Gerty Smith to give me a hand. You must go back to Shropshire with my mother. We both so want to know what you think of the Towers.”

Mame was puzzled by this cordiality. But she was very keen to see Warlington Towers, that stately English home which for the future would be hers. There was nothing in the manner of mother and daughter to suggest that she would not be an immensely welcome guest.

Reassured, almost in spite of herself, by all this seeming friendliness, Mame asked when Lady Kidderminster proposed to return to her home.

“To-morrow, my dear, by the first train. I’m such a country mouse; and even one day in London makes a hole in one’s purse.”

“Well, I don’t think I can go to-morrow.”

“But of course you can.” Lady Violet was definite. “And you must. No scrimshanking. You must go down with my mother to-morrow morning by the 9:50 from Paddington, the best train of the day.”

Mame was still inclined to resist having her mind made up for her in this way, but Celimene was resolute. “My mother will be quite hurt if you back out now. Besides”--with a laugh--“it’ll be so much better to go and get it over.”

“But--” protested Mame.

However, it was not a bit of use. Lady Violet had such a powerful habit of making people’s minds up for them.

XLIV

It happened, therefore, that the very next morning Mame found herself travelling down to Shropshire in the company of Lady Kidderminster. Odd and unexpected as the journey was, she was a little inclined to be annoyed with herself for having allowed Mommer and Lady Violet to hustle her so peremptorily into undertaking it. There was weakness in such yielding. And to a practical go-getter who knew the value of the will, this was not a good sign. The first thing she would have to study as the wife of Bill must be the art of standing up to her in-laws.

These were clever women, not a doubt about it. Evidently they were versed in the most important of all problems, how to get your own way. They had force and they had skill had Mommer and Lady Violet; they didn’t let you see their hands, but just set quietly to work and made you do the things they wanted. She was a little simp to let them put one over on her like that.

Still, why worry? There was no reason why she should not be seated opposite Mommer in the darned old Great Western Pullman. She was real nice was Mommer. As easy as pie. All the same her daughter-in-law-to-be shrewdly guessed that she was not just the simple old shoe that she looked. Even before they had reached the first stop, which was Reading, Mame had made a private vow that as far as Mommer was concerned she would keep her eyes skinned and watch out.

The journey was quite pleasant. All the way from Paddington to Shrewsbury, where they left the express and took a local train to Millfield, the nearest station to Warlington Towers, the lady in whose charge Mame found herself persisted steadily in being charming. Mame could not help liking her. Seen as it were from a distance, Mommer’s stateliness was a little alarming; but at close range, in friendly and intimate talk all fear of it seemed to go.

There were no surprises. Everything went agreeably and well. It was when they got off the train finally at Millfield that the surprises began. There was a five-mile drive to the Towers, as Mame had been told; and she had rather confidently expected it to be performed in an elegant motor, with two servants. But nothing of the kind. In the Millfield station yard a one-horse brougham awaited them. It was decidedly well kept, but it looked out of date; and although the coachman wore a smart cockade and had the face of an ancestral portrait, no brisk footman shared the seat by his side.

An obsequious porter and a rural station master, who was even more obsequious, ushered them into the brougham’s rather stuffy interior. It was plain from the manner of these officials that even if Mommer did cling to the old modes of travel she was a power in this corner of the land. Still Mame continued to be a bit surprised by the one-horse brougham. Yet this was no more than a prelude to the far bigger surprise that was in store.

After the elderly horse had clip-clopped along the dusty by-roads for some little time, Mame caught a sudden glimpse of a noble set of towers “bosomed high in tufted trees” as a poetic john had expressed it in the office calendar. There was also a fine park full of deer with high stone walls around it.

“Warlington Towers, I guess.” There was a thrill in Mame’s voice as she pointed enthusiastically through the carriage window.

Lady Kidderminster said “yes.” The note in her voice sounded the reverse of enthusiastic.

At that moment they came upon some beautiful wrought iron gates with an ancient coat of arms in the middle, flanked by a pair of stone pillars, each with a fabulous winged monster upon the top. Beyond the gates was a porter’s lodge and then a vista of glorious trees in the form of a long avenue which led straight to the doors of the famous mansion.

“It’s just too lovely.” Mame clapped her hands.

She quite expected the one-horse brougham to stop at those magnificent gates, all picked out in black and gold, and turn into that wonderful avenue. But it did nothing of the kind. It went on and on by the side of the high stone walls which shut out the view of the Towers completely.

“Don’t you live there?” Mame was a little puzzled and perhaps a shade anxious.

Lady Kidderminster sighed gently. “We don’t live there now, my dear.”

“Oh,” breathed Mame. Somehow she felt rather let down.

The old horse clip-clopped along by the grassy marge of the interminable and forbidding stone walls until they reached a tiny village. In the middle was a neat public house, with a roof of straw thatch, and its ancient sign the Treherne Arms much stained by the weather. Past this the brougham went, a couple of hundred yards or so, and then turned in on the left, through a swing gate and along a carriage drive.

At the end of the drive was a house built of stone. It was a good, honest-looking place and by its style was old. But compared with the pomp and glory of the Towers it was quite small. Nay, as Mame was forced to view it, this house was a trifle poor. Here the brougham stopped. It was the end of their journey.

The place which Lady Kidderminster had occupied for the last five years was called the Dower House. It was comfortable enough and everything in it was in such perfect taste that it was only Mame’s lively anticipation of the Towers and their magnificence which lent it an aura of inferiority. Really the Dower House was charming. It had the loveliest things. There was a view of distant hills from its bedroom windows; and at the back of the house was an old-world garden, a rare pleasaunce of plants and shrubs and very ancient trees. If the Towers had not caught Mame’s imagination she would have considered the Dower House just elegant.

At dinner, which was at eight o’clock, and to Mame’s robust appetite was a meal at once meagre and inadequate, there was only one other besides the hostess. This was a Miss Carruthers, a young-old body, tall and faded and thin, who spoke in a slow, rather peeved voice which sounded frightfully aristocratic. She seemed kindly and well meaning, but she was dull, terribly dull. Even Lady Kidderminster seemed inclined to yield to the atmosphere of Miss Carruthers. Anyhow, by dinner time, a good deal of her metropolitan sparkle had fled.

Mame hoped, as she swallowed the thin soup and the minute portions of fish and chicken the regular old john of a butler, with wonderful manners and side whiskers, handed to her at carefully regulated intervals, that the absence of sparkle was only going to be temporary. But there was nothing on the table stronger than lemonade to excite it. And zip of some kind was certainly needed. However, it was not forthcoming at the table or in the drawing room afterwards, where no fire was in the rather cavernous grate, although mid-September evenings in Shropshire are apt to be chill.

There was neither electricity nor gas throughout the house, and when Mame, following the example of the other ladies, chose a candle from among a number laid out on a table in the hall, and ascended solemnly to her bed, she felt desolate. Somehow things were not as she had expected to find them. Just what those expectations had been she was unable to say. But they had certainly included the Towers.

All the same she slept. She was young and healthy and the pulse of life beat high. And she had a forward-looking mind. But in the present case the habitual hope of a morrow more alluring came to nought. The Dower House did not seem to improve on acquaintance. It was dull. No use mincing it--it was dull. Lady Kidderminster continued to be kindness itself; Miss Carruthers was also kind; but they seemed only to converse on formal subjects and in a rather perfunctory way. Then the food! It was beautifully cooked and served, and what there was of it was of the best quality, yet in Miss Du Rance it left a void.

A factor in their dulness, no doubt, was the absence of Lady Kidderminster’s family. Violet, of course, was in London; and of the two young ones, Doris was in her first year at Cambridge and Marjorie at school at Worthing. “When those two pickles come here for the holidays we are much more lively, aren’t we, Mildred?”

Mildred, Miss Carruthers, who agreed with Lady Kidderminster in most things, agreed in this.

After a rather dispiriting breakfast in which Mame had to be content with a boiled egg, some poor coffee, some thin toast and an elegant spoonful of jam, she took the air of the domain with Miss Carruthers. Like everything else about the place, the air of the domain was good in quality, yet it did not seem to be exhilarating. Mame felt inclined to fix some of the responsibility upon Miss Carruthers. She was as good as gold, but she wanted pep.

In the course of this ordeal in the garden, Mame’s great disappointment once more recurred. She could not forget the Towers; their absence filled her with a sense of grievance.

“Why don’t Lady K. live at the big house?” She put the question frankly. “Some place that. I guess I’d want to live there if I owned it.”

Miss Carruthers hesitated a moment and then said in that plaintive voice which already was beginning to get on Mame’s nerves. “Cousin Lucy can’t afford to do that. She’s been so hit by the War. The Towers eats money. One has to be rich to keep up a place of that kind.”

“She isn’t rich, then?”

“Dear, no.”

“What’ll she do with that old place?” There was keen disappointment in Mame’s tone.

“Cousin Lucy, I believe, has not decided yet. At present the Towers is let to some rich Americans.”