Like a good old pal, look after my gal—
An’ Gawd bless ye wheerever I go!”
Having got thus far, Mrs. Arteroyd paused and considered. She looked at the clock and saw that its hands pointed to five, nearly the time for afternoon tea. And she had been “making verses” ever since mid-day with only a brief interval for lunch! Her face was hot and feverish, her lips dry,—her brain—her brain?—yes, her brain was actually getting “fagged.” She knew now what literary geniuses suffered when they overtaxed their nervous forces.
“Positively I look quite tired!” she said, gazing at herself in the convenient mirror to which she always turned in moments of harassment. “I have worked hard! I don’t think I’ll do any more Tommy-poetry now,—I can finish it to-morrow. I’d better go and see Mrs. Long-Adder at once. She’s ‘off work,’ and as sick as she can be of not showing herself. I’m sure she’ll be glad of a chance to come forward with ‘Tommy’s Gal.’ ‘Tommy’s Gal!’—that must be the title of the thing, of course! That, and no other!” She wrote it down and smiled at it admiringly. “Isn’t it splendid! ‘Tommy’s Gal!’ Won’t it just ‘draw’! All the horrid men who have their own ‘gals’ on the sly will cough with emotion over it,—and all the idiotic women who have managed to get ‘left’ by Tommies, civil and military, will cry,—that is, if Mrs. Long-Adder can be persuaded to recite it. Oh, she must do it! With that long peaky face of hers, and monstrous Chinese eyes, and thick wedges of all-coloured hair coming over her ears, and her wibbly-wobbly way of swinging her hips about, she will be a succès d’enthousiasme! And so shall I!”
Her smile widened into an open dazzle of white teeth which irritable and unimpressionable persons might have called a triumphant grin,—and enveloping herself in a mysterious and wonderful cloak, all frills, old lace, sable-tails and musk-rat odour, she drove off in a quick hansom to a certain dubious little “flat” somewhere about Victoria Street, which for the moment was the residence of the heart-enslaving, eye-fascinating, purse-emptying, cheque-demanding “caprice” of the stage, Mrs. Long-Adder. Much of the charm of this lady consisted in the delicious vagueness and mystery of her surroundings. She came “from America.” What part of America she came from did not transpire. She had a husband,—somewhere,—but who he was, and how he “fixed up” things for himself, also did not transpire. Suffice it to say of him that he was never seen with his wife. Much may be comprehended in that brief statement. Mrs. Long-Adder was by way of being an actress,—that is to say she could not act. She wore gowns and glided about on the stage in them. London went mad over her. The Spread Eagle Conqueror, a society journal published in New York, called her “our matchless American beauty,” like a new sort of cigarette. And she who was “not received” in the intelligent circles of American culture, had a distinctly “good time” of it in England. Mrs. Arteroyd found her reclining in a long sofa-chair or chair-sofa, whatever the piece of “Art” furniture may be called, arrayed in a serpentine tea-gown of “diamanté” lace over satin “rayonnant,”—and if Mrs. Arteroyd smelt like one musk-rat, Mrs. Long-Adder smelt like two. The celebrated stage-siren rose as her visitor entered, and extended a white hand, admirably manicured, and loaded with sparkling rings, the offerings of “homage” from various adorers. And then both perfumed ladies embraced,—that sisterly embrace of social feeling, in which the one woman looks gracefully over the shoulder of the other and breathes a gentle “Cat!” to the neutral air.
“How sweet of you to come!” murmured Mrs. Long-Adder cooingly,—“I have been so dull! Alone all day! Such an unusual thing for me!”
And her sinuous form vibrated with a tremor of triumphant coquetry.
Mrs. Arteroyd smiled discreetly, but said nothing. Sitting down by the chair-sofa she critically studied the woman, who was reported in club parlance to “have old Dummer-Esel under her thumb.”
“Not a bit good-looking really,” she commented inwardly—“It’s all her get-up. Put her hair quite plain and dress her like an ordinary respectable matron and she’ll be downright ugly. Two of her front teeth are false, I see—and her skin is simply covered,—covered with that new Paris mixture which “defies detection.” Her hair is certainly quite wonderful—she must have tried all the new tints on it in turn. I suppose it’s the Chinese eyes that “take”—horrid Mongolian things! They work long-wise into slits,—and that corner-look always fetches the men. Anyway, she’s the only person possible for my business.”
And, forthwith, putting on all her own airs and graces, and talking in softly confidential tones, she “plucked out the heart of her mystery” at once, and asked Mrs. Long-Adder to recite publicly the “poem” she had written on “Tommy’s Gal.”