“Well, I am sorry to have to tell you that there will have to be a post mortem. Mr. Falkland Vavasour has all the appearance of having died of starvation.”
Mame waited to hear no more. She was deeply grieved. And she was rather shocked. Yet she was not so shocked as she would have been had not her swift mind leaped forward to the doctor’s verdict, even before the worthy man had arrived to give it. Yes, the grisly truth was plain for any who had eyes to see. Grand seigneur to the end, too proud to eat a crust he could not pay for, his only means of livelihood vanished long ago, he had passed out as he had lived, a prince among four-flushers.
Upstairs, in the privacy of her dismal room, Mame wept. Something had gone from Fotheringay House, something that could never return. Among all the millions of people seething around, this dear old man had been her only friend.
Shivering on the edge of her bed in that chill attic, she felt horribly lonely now. Nostalgia came upon her, a longing for home. She did not understand these people. A powerful craving for the hearty, simple folks she knew and loved crept over her while she fought to control her tears.
X
SUCH havoc had been played in a short time with Mame’s cash balance by the life of London, England, that already the margin of safety was nearly reached. By the end of that week—it was Tuesday now—she would be compelled to take a bus to Cockspur Street and see about a passage home.
The thought was not pleasant. A second failure, if hardly so painful as the one in New York, was even more dire. For by the time she looked again on the Statue of Liberty very nearly all the munitions of war would have vanished. And what would remain to show?
Mame needed all her grit to bear up. The tragic end of Mr. Falkland Vavasour was the writing on the wall. Did it not prove how fatally easy it was for people, even of a certain position, to fall out of the ranks?
The clouds were gathering. Since landing in England she had not earned a dime. She had called on many editors and found them inaccessible; she had mailed them her stuff; but there was nothing doing. Her style was not what they were used to; and this nation of snails prided itself on being conservative. But the worst blow of all was the silence of Elmer P. Dobree.
Swift time flowed on. But the much-looked-for envelope, bearing the magic postmark “Cowbarn, Iowa,” did not come. Friday by Friday, with the super-optimism her high-spirited countrywomen have elevated to a religion, the dauntless Mame mailed two columns to the editor of the Cowbarn Independent. Each week as she registered the packet and slipped the chit into her handbag she was as sure that Elmer P. would fall as she was convinced she could turn off that sort of junk until the cows came home. The stuff was good. Even a simp with half an eye could see that. Not highbrow, but better; the newspapers wanted things homely and plain. And there was any amount of pep in it. Every word was hot from the mint of experience.