All the same the weeks went and not so much as a line of acknowledgment came from the man on whose friendship she had counted. This silence was mysterious and exasperating. However, she would not let herself be cast down. She went freely about this comic town of London. There was more to it than at first she had supposed. Her first impression had been of a slower New York; a New York with a certain amount of moss on it. But when she had spent a few weeks noting and recording the ways of this queer burg, she began to see that it had its own standards, its own way of doing things and that it would repay study.
She had really come to Europe to improve her knowledge of the world. Once properly grounded in what to Mame’s mind was the first of all sciences, she would return to New York, that city of four-flushers which had mocked and derided her, with the ace of trumps concealed up a fashionable sleeve.
To this end she must get around; and, if she could, contrive to see the life of London from the inside. Among such self-contained and stand-off folks this was not easy. That was why she had stayed on at Fotheringay House. It was the best address she could afford. Nay, as things went with her, it was a better address than she could afford. But its portentous air of propriety was worth paying for. New York had taught her that propriety, an elusive soulless thing, was indispensable for a girl who had to play a lone hand.
She was living far beyond her means, but she managed to see just a little of smart restaurants at luncheon and at tea time. Picture galleries bored her, but she conscientiously did them. Culture was always worth while; another card to keep up your sleeve. At concerts and theatres she occupied a cheap seat; she saw all the sights of the town. And now, at a tragic moment, came the knowledge that she must pack up and go home.
Moving about the streets, she felt this day to be the worst she had yet known. Even the humiliation put on her by the New York police had not yielded a sensation of being so truly up against it. Not a chance did there seem of making good. She would give herself till Saturday and then arrange to quit.
For the first time since her arrival in London she perceived a touch of spring in the air. Emboldened, she climbed on to the roof of Bus 56 and let it take her where it would. The line of route was along the Embankment, past the Houses of Parliament, across Westminster Bridge. Old Father Thames was lovely this morning, with a hint of blue sky furtively peeping through soft grey mist.
As Mame looked back and saw the line of great hotels towering up and dominating the river with their haughty façades, never to her had they appeared so aloof, so magnetic, so inaccessible. Her desire had been to storm those cosmopolitan portals, but moving now towards the humbler purlieus of the southeast, she could not help reflecting bitterly how ill-founded was that ambition.
Still she was a fighter. The trick was in her blood. And never had the sense of her inheritance been more insurgent than on the top of Bus 56 this rare March morning, when for Mame Durrance the bottom seemed out of things. She could not bear the thought of giving in. Memories of great-uncle Nel rose in her heart. She could remember that fine old warrior having said that when things looked blackest for the Union in the Civil War, his chief, the famous General Sherman, had declared, “If only we can stick it the clouds will lift.”
These words, of late, had been much with her. Since she had started out to see the world and had known what it was to lie worried, sleepless, heavy eyed, in an airless attic, she had often recalled just how great-uncle Nel turned a thin but strong cigar over in his teeth as he made his contribution to history.
Yes, all came back to the power of sticking it. As Bus 56 trundled on, Mame kept repeating to herself that memorable phrase. If only she could stick it! That odd faculty was the measure of her worth, as it had been that of folks whose shoes she was not fit to tie.