Ambition was the Lorelei’s song. It piped the reason out of you. One extravagance led to another. Like swimming on a summer morning in a treacherous sea, the play of sunlight on the waves lured you on. And when at last you turned for home you found it was too late.
When Mame emerged from the bathroom her feeling of elation had gone. She felt strangely like that symbolical swimmer. Not now would she be able to get back to the shore. She had dipped so deeply these last days that even if she booked steerage she would land in New York with an empty purse. What a reckless little fool! Yet, it was life after all. From that point of view it was worth it. Certain lines of the office calendar sprang to her memory.
One crowded hour of glorious life
Is worth an age without a name.
That baby was right. The pity was that the glorious hour lasted so short a time. And when it came to paying the bill you had to take a pretty tight hold on yourself. Three weeks more at her present rate of living and she would be cleaned right out. The thought made her shiver. If she didn’t find a way in the meantime of gathering honey she would be up against big trouble. Things looked bad. Still she could last three weeks; and though in seven months she had earned hardly a dime, if she kept a stiff lip there was still hope.
She made a fair breakfast, in spite of many and growing fears; and then went to her favourite nook in the sitting room, whose embrasure caught any early sun that was around. Writing pad on knee, she proceeded to jot down in what she had christened her “best Mamese” an account of the doings at Clanborough House.
It was not a conventional account. She told in the rather hybrid style which best suited her whimsical pen of the folks who were there, of how they bore themselves, of what they wore and so on. Even while her quaint words flowed over the paper she understood the folly of it all. Who would fall for her sort of guff? Now that Elmer P. had failed her the sheet anchor was gone. There was perhaps one chance in a thousand that Paula Ling or Lady Violet might be able to plant it for her, but even to a nature as full of hope as a young choir boy’s, the odds seemed long.
All morning she wrote steadily, covering more pages than were ever likely to be read. She was pleased with her facility of expression, although it had a tendency to get gay. But persons no brighter than herself were always pulling worse junk than that on some dub of an editor.
She would have fair copies made. One she would mail to Paula Ling and tell her for the love of Mike to place it, as unless she found a bonanza she would not be able to continue going around in London society. A second copy should accompany her on Tuesday to 16b Half Moon Street; and she would beg her new friend to do what she could with it.
Somehow the second part of the programme struck Mame as a prospect. Lady Violet, in her way, was a bit of a sorceress. She had birds of all sorts feeding from the hand. If a lone child could fix it in that good and clever head how much depended on her friendship, all was not yet lost.