They left Allardyce, Inc., balanced on the extreme edge of the kerb of Henrietta Street, staring after their departing chariot. As they drove off to luncheon at the Ladies Imperium, Lady Violet said, “My child, I rather think you’ve clicked.”
Mame felt rather that she had. The happy feeling was confirmed, moreover, a little later in the week when a second letter from Elmer P. was delivered in Half Moon Street. In it, that now famous man positively undertook to be at the Savoy Hotel on February 10, always providing the Olympic in which he had booked a passage came in on time. He hoped to stay a fortnight in London. But that, he feared, must be his limit. For just now he was living a forty-eight-hour day in New York.
“You can bet your life that’s so,” was Mame’s approving comment.
LIII
ELMER came and saw London, England. And the ancient burg gave him a real good time. He went here, there and everywhere; his photograph was in all the papers; columns were written about his book. There was a brilliant luncheon at the Savoy. Lady Violet kept her promise. Big-wigs attended it, including her father’s old friend the Prime Minister, who seized the occasion to deliver a most significant address on the Value, Etc., which was cabled verbatim all over the English-speaking world.
No young author, since the art of writing was invented, ever had a more generous reception in the great metropolis. A modest, rather shy, young man, he was inclined at first to be overwhelmed by it. But the undefeated Mame, who met him at Euston, who took him to his hotel, who gave him continual advice, saw to it that he wasn’t. For the honour of Cowbarn, Iowa, he must stand right up to his job. It was her task to see that he did so without flinching and she duly performed it. She mothered him through receptions and tea parties; she toted him around; and the bewildered and breathless Elmer hardly knew whether to be more impressed by the storm his coming had aroused or by the manner in which Mame rode it.
Nothing in the whole of London astonished him quite so much as Mame’s transformation from her chrysalis Cowbarn period. Her clothes, her style, her English accent fairly tickled him to death. Then the friends she had made! She appeared to hob-nob with half the swells in Britain and to have them feeding from the hand.
Elmer had many surprises in these crowded and glorious days. But, shrewd and cool American citizen that he was, he managed to keep a perfectly level head. For the life of him he couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about; or at least if he had an inkling of the reason for it, he could not understand how Mame had contrived it all. She had evidently had the luck to strike some very powerful backers.
Even before landing in England, he had surmised that such was the case. The mysterious Celimene, of the weekly news-letter, had proved to be so highly informed in social matters that her value had been clearly demonstrated in New York. Her name had been given him in confidence before he came over; and he was mighty keen to meet her.