15th March.
[CHAPTER VIII]
VERREY'S (REGENT STREET)
The little curly-headed, light-haired page, who is the modern Mercury, in that he gives warning when one is rung up at the telephone in the club, came to me in the reading-room and told me that a lady at the Hotel Cecil wished to speak to me.
"Hullo! Are you there?" was answered by a "Yes" in a lady's voice, and in a few seconds I was informed that Myra Washington was in London, that she would like to see me, that she would be busy all the afternoon shopping, but that if I was not otherwise engaged I might take her out to dinner and to a show afterwards.
Mrs. Washington is a lady whom it is a liberal education to have the honour of being acquainted with, for she knows most people who are worth knowing in Europe, has been to most places worth seeing, and is in every way cosmopolitan. She is generally taken for a Russian, until she speaks, chiefly, I think, because of her hair, which is so light that it is almost white, and because she smokes cigarettes at every possible moment. She is to be found in Paris, where she has a flat in one of the avenues branching from the Arc de Triomphe, and where she is kind enough, most years, to give me déjeuner on the morning of the Grand Prix. But her movements are always erratic. I first made her acquaintance at Suez, where I had the honour to be recorded on the tablets of her memory as having delivered her from some impertinent Arab hawkers, and she showed me what American hospitality is during the exhibition at Chicago, in which city her husband, John P. Washington, is always making or losing fortunes in the wheat pit.
I was glad, therefore, to hear the pretty lady's voice again, even though filtered through a telephone, and I proposed innumerable plans to her. She had come to London from Cannes to meet John, who was running over from America for a couple of days on business, and wanted to do as much as possible in the shortest time. She had been to the Gaiety after dining at the Savoy her first night in London, had lunched at Willis's and seen a matinée at Daly's, dined at the Princes' Hall and spent the evening at the Palace on the second, and now I was to be responsible for her evening's amusement on the third evening.
Did she know Verrey's? And as a reply I was asked whether I thought she knew her own name. Then would she dine with me at the restaurant in Regent Street, and I would have a box for her at the Empire afterwards? and Mrs. Washington said she would. "If I may, I will come and call for you at a little before eight," I said promptly, and Mrs. Washington wanted to know whether there were bandits in Regent Street. Eventually, I was told that if I was cooling my feet in the entrance at 8 to a second I should have the felicity of helping her out of her cab.