Part 7

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.

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.