There is a tide

by J. C. Snaith

That accounted for Miss Du Rance. Five years had passed since the Armistice, but the Hogs, all frozen and pickled, that Britons of every rank and class had been compelled to digest and the prices they had had to pay for the privilege during the years of famine had crystallised already into one of the permanent traditions of the race.

Seeing is believing. The same applies to eating. “Hogs, my dear. Poppa was hogs.” It seemed to follow, as night follows day, that little Miss Chicago simply could not help being the richest thing that ever happened. And it was wonderful how the rumour spread. Sophisticated souls looked upon Miss Du Rance with awe.

Mame, at first, was not aware of this interesting fact. Even she, cute as she was, did not immediately strike to the root of Lady Violet’s subtlety. That little event was to come later. But even while Mame dwelt in a state of innocence, her uncanny sharpness gave her a perception of the rôle to play.

As far as Mayfair was concerned Miss Du Rance was the only one of her kind. She was something new. And the society in which she began to move had a love of novelty. Behind little Miss Chicago, however, was something more substantial than mere novelty. So cunningly did Lady Violet handle the rumour of her dollars that it seemed not only to vindicate Miss Du Rance, it also served to explain her. Great wealth was needed to carry off such naïveté. Did not the one connote the other? Unless in a literal sense she was the richest thing that ever happened she could never have penetrated so far into the arcana of London’s exclusiveness. And without a colossal fortune how could she afford to be the child of nature that she was?

It was whispered that Pop had begun the War a simple farmer of hogs and had ended by cornering them. The rapidity of his rise into one of the great magnates of the Middle West explained his early decease. It also explained his daughter. Dear Violet was receiving a pretty penny for towing her round, it was said. Everybody, of her own sex, envied and admired the courage of that lady. But the more sporting members were laying rather long odds that her protégée would not be presented at any one of the Season’s drawing rooms; while the most speculatively inclined were ready to lay rather shorter odds that la belle Américaine would not even be seen at one of the minor Buck House garden parties.

Beyond a hint from Lady Violet, at the beginning of this odyssey in her young life, Mame had nothing to go on; but it was wonderful how soon she saw what was expected of her. There was, her sponsor had laughingly said, a far better chance of Miss Du Rance of Chicago receiving a ticket for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot from the Lord Chamberlain if she “stood,” as it were, upon Pop’s mythical wealth, than if she took the humbler rôle of weekly correspondent of the New York Monitor. Nay, to be frank, and Lady Violet generally was in her arch way, journalism cut no ice in the circles in which Mame was ambitious to move. Those circles were rippling with inside information; the value of the entrée, journalistically speaking, could hardly be exaggerated; but Mame should remember that the key was wrought of dollars rather than of sensitive grey matter.

A nod is as good as a wink sometimes. Mame promptly took the hint. She was beginning to set her heart on big things. These ambitions would mean a considerable increase of expenditure, because even the appearance of money cannot altogether be counterfeited. But every nickel spent now would be a means to a definite end. Yet there were anxious moments to begin with; and it was well that she had a solid rock upon which to lean.

Financially Mame’s burdens had been much lightened by the generosity of her friend. She had no house-room to pay for; Cousin Edith’s vacant bed was at her disposal gratis. Then, too, she was very well paid for her labours upon the weekly syndicate letter.

Quite at the outset of what by all the omens should have been a smooth and prosperous voyage there came a threat of shipwreck. It so happened that when the specimen letter to New York, which finally they decided to sign with the nom de plume Clio, had been carefully pondered and copied and sealed ready for dispatch, Mame suddenly went back on her too hasty decision to let Lady Violet have things all her own way. In deference to her scruples the most valuable of their assets had been scrapped; the rumour of a Royal duke’s engagement to one of America’s queens had been cut out.

At the last moment, however, such a piece of quixotism was a little too much for Mame’s news sense. She realised the enormous value of this item. They were playing for a high stake and yet they were deliberately throwing away the ace of trumps. Surely it was worth taking a risk. Principles are good things, no doubt, but in up-to-date press work they can be overdone.