Mrs. Cricklander made no mysteries about what she required Miss Clinker's companionship for. She explained minutely that should any special dinner-party or rencontre with any great person be in view, Miss Clinker must do a sort of preparatory cramming for her, as boys are prepared for examinations.
"You must make it your business, when I give you the names of the people I am to meet, to post me up in what they are likely to talk about. You must read all the papers in the morning with the political speeches in them, and then give me a quick résumé; if it should be any diplomat or great artist or one of those delightful Englishmen who knows everything, then you must suggest some suitable authors to speak of that they will like, and I have quite enough sense myself to turn the conversation off any that I should not know about. In this way you will soon learn what I require of you, and I shall learn a great deal and gradually can launch out into much more difficult things."
Arabella Clinker had a sense of humor, and she adored her mother and wished to give her a comfortable old age. Mrs. Cricklander's terms for this unique position were according to her accustomed liberality.
"I like to give splendid prices for things, and then I expect them to be splendidly done," she said.
Miss Clinker had promised to do her best, and their partnership had lasted for nearly three years with the most satisfactory results to both of them. Their only difficulty was Mrs. Cricklander's defective memory. She could not learn anything by heart, and if she were at all tired had to keep herself tremendously in hand to make no mistakes. But the three years of constant trying had enabled her to talk upon most subjects in a shibboleth of the world which imposed upon everyone. Her real talent which called for the greatest admiration was the way in which she manipulated what she knew, and skimmed a fresh subject. She would do so with such admirable skill and wording as to give the impression that she was acquainted with its profoundest depths; and then when she was safely over the chasm the first moment she was free she would rush to Arabella for the salient points, doggedly repeat them over and over, and on the next occasion come out with them to the same person, convincing him more than ever of her thorough knowledge of the subject. But her memory was her misfortune, for if Miss Clinker instructed her, for instance, in all the different peculiarities of the styles of Keats and Shelley, a week after she would have forgotten which was which—because both bored her to distraction—and she would have to be reminded again. One awful moment came when, rhapsodizing upon the sensibility of Keats' character, she said to Sir Tedbury Delvine, the finest litterateur of his time, that there must have come moments during Keats' latter years when he must have felt as his own "Prometheus Unbound"! But, seeing her mistake immediately by her listener's blank face, she regained her ground with a skill and a flow of words which made Sir Tedbury Delvine doubt whether his own ears had heard aright.
"Arabella," Mrs. Cricklander said when next morning she lay smoking in her old-rose silk bed, while she went through her usual lessons for the day, "you must give me just a point each about those wretched old two, so that I will remember them again. I must have a sort of keynote. Shelley's would do with that horrible statue of him drowned, at Oxford, that would connect his chain—but what for Keats?"
So at last Miss Clinker invented a plan, almost Pythagorean in its way, and it proved very helpful to her patroness.
When she went on light, amusing excursions to Egypt and such places, she allowed Arabella to remain with her mother, and these were months of pure happiness to Miss Clinker.
It had not taken Mrs. Cricklander long to conquer London with her money, and her looks, and her triumphant belief in herself. At the end of two years, when John Derringham was first presented to her, she had almost reached the summit of her ambitions. To become his wife she had decided would place her there. For was he not certain to climb to the top of the tree, as well as being the most brilliant and most sought after young man in all England. Of love—the love that recks not of place or gain but just gives its being to the loved one—to such emotion she was happily a complete stranger. John Derringham attracted her greatly, and until now had successfully evaded all her snares and had remained beyond the thrall of her will. To have got him to come for this whole week of Easter was a triumph and exulted her accordingly. She particularly affected politicians, and her house in Grosvenor Square was a meeting-place for both parties, provided the members of each were of the most distinguished type. And there were not more than two or three people out of all her acquaintances, besides Arabella, who smiled a little over her brilliant culture.
By all this it can be seen that Mrs. Cricklander was a wonderful character—tenacious, indomitable, full of nerve and deserving of the greatest respect in consequence.