Personality was the key. Modern journalising was like being in vaudeville or in the movies. You had to do stunts; you had to be a good mixer; able if necessary to jolly an editor into taking an interest in you; above all, you had to be up in the art of what in London they called dressing the shop window.
As slowly she tore up the letter to Elmer P. she sighed deeply. Even he had deserted her. Well, never say die, that was still her motto. She must hang on by the eyelids to the bitter end. But she felt so sore with one whose friendship she had built on that she snatched his photograph from her bedroom chimneypiece and consigned it to her trunk. The stronger for the deed, she then resumed that optimistic pen which had yet to earn a dime in Europe and began a carefully diplomatic letter to Paula Wyse Ling.
Out and out go-getter though Paula was, Mame valued her friendship. To be sure, it had only been manifested in small and considered ways. Paula was essentially a girl who didn’t give without taking; if she shared her bread with you, she would expect you to share your jam with her. But Mame didn’t blame her for that. Paula, too, had had a long way to go. She had started out at sixteen without a buck from what she alluded to as “a comic village in the State of Maine.” By sheer grit and the power of sticking it she had earned enough by her pen to spend two years in Europe. And now since her return home she was pulling five hundred a month, with every prospect of going bigger.
Diplomacy was needed to handle the Paula Lings of the world. Mame kept this truth before her as her pen drove steadily on. She painted a rosy picture of her life in London. If not exactly what these Cockneys themselves would call “a Brock’s Benefit,” in other words, a firework display, she was already beginning to fix the half-nelson on various editors of distinction who paid a fair price per col. Also she was getting around a good deal with the worth-while folks. Her friend the Duchess of Clanborough had just sent her a special invite to a wedding ceremony and to the reception afterwards, which the King and Queen had promised to attend. Some marquis or other was going to marry a Miss Van Alsten; but Paula was likely to know as much about it as she did, as the Miss Van Alsten in question belonged to New York.
Here it was that diplomacy entered with both feet. New York being just naturally interested in the marriage of one of its queens with a British blood-peer, Mame would be glad to do the show from the inside, with a full description of who was there, how they looked, what they wore, and so on; and if Paula could fix it her end with some editor or some syndicate of editors, she would be happy to divide the cheque. Time being money, she hoped Paula would save on it by promptly cabling terms.
As Mame cast an eye over this letter, it seemed an inspiration to write Paula Ling and offer her fifty-fifty of the dough. If Paula couldn’t place the first-hand account of next week’s marriage, it was not likely there was one alive who could. With a sly smile Mame addressed the envelope to Paula’s apartment on Sixty-seventh Street. Then she slipped out and placed it carefully in the little red pillar box at the British Museum end of Montacute Square.
XIV
THURSDAY was to be the day of days. But the evening of Wednesday after a week of east winds, having settled into reasonably spring-like weather, Mame decided to give her new hat and fox an airing. It would take off a little of the shine; besides, she was burning to know how she looked and felt in things that had taxed her purse to capacity.
Distinction, personality, taste, style, were the watch-words humming in her rather excited brain as she posed before the cracked mirror in her bedroom. This hat and fox had cost thirty-five berries in hard cold cash. And there was nothing much to show. Yet the fox looked so nearly like a fox for the money as it adorned her slim neck and the hat set off her shapely little head so well, that they gave her quite a tone. She would have to travel steerage now, but it was worth it. Thirty-five dollars’ worth of hat and fur did give you a feeling of Class.
Lured by the fineness of the evening Mame went as far as Hyde Park. When Bus 29 set her down at the Marble Arch the clock upon it said twenty minutes past five. The promise of night was in the sky already. There were few people to observe Mame’s tasteful finery as she sauntered past the long line of empty chairs which ran the entire length of Park Lane as far as Apsley House.