Students of sociology have of recent years made great strides in their alleviation of the conditions prevailing among the poor; but is it not a fact that, as a notorious daily paper lately asked, the study of those conditions appears to attract the interest of only the lighter sort of society people and the pens of only the most ambitious novelists? And that the benefits of this study, at least to novelists, are not mean, was proved beyond all doubt only the other day, when perhaps the wealthiest of contemporary writers increased his fortune by writing a tale about a miser in a slum. No one, on the other hand, will deny that the achievements of sociologists among the poor are as nothing compared with those of students of hospitality who, poor and unrewarded though they remain, have of late years done yeoman work in alleviating the conditions prevailing among the rich. It is to the generous spadework of men such as these that American hostesses in Europe owe the betterment of their lot; and it is by the support of their merciful hands that ladies burdened with great wealth are prevented from sinking down in the rarefied atmosphere to which they have been called.
Mere students of hospitality had not, however, been strong enough to support the ailing burden of Mrs. Omroy Pont when that lady had first come over from America at the call of certain voices that had advised her that her mission lay in European society. It had needed graduates of that brotherhood, lean with endeavour in ball-rooms and browned with the suns of the Riviera, to prevent that ample lady from succumbing to the exhaustion of carrying her wealth through the halls of her houses in London and Paris among guests who had failed to catch her name on being introduced. But the Good Samaritans had worked unceasingly on her behalf, and since Mrs. Omroy Pont had both great wealth and infinite insensibility she was soon in a position to give a ball at which quite half the guests knew her by sight.
The morning after the Duke’s arrival in Paris there was this notice in the Continental Daily Mail: “The Duke of Mall has arrived at his residence in the Avenue du Bois, and will spend the spring in Paris.” And presently the good Mrs. Omroy Pont was on the telephone, first here, then there and finally to the Duke himself, saying: “My dear Duke, how do you do, how do you do? I am so glad you are in Paris just now, Paris is so attractive in the spring. You mustn’t fail to see the tulips in the Tuileries, they are as beautiful as débutantes. My dear Duke, I am giving a party to-morrow night, you must come, you really must come, now don’t say you won’t because I can’t bear that, and really I must say, my dear Duke, that your unfortunate inability to accept any of my invitations so far has seemed almost marked, whereas——”
“I am afraid,” began the Duke, who had not the faintest intention of going anywhere near one of Mrs. Omroy Pont’s parties, for she bored him and life is short.
“But you mustn’t be afraid!” cried Mrs. Omroy Pont. “Now, my dear Duke, I want you particularly to come to this party because there is someone who wants to meet you, someone very lovely, positively I am not pulling your leg——”
“Really this is too much!” the Duke muttered, coldly saying out aloud: “Dear Mrs. Omroy Pont, you do me great honour but I am afraid that an extremely previous and decidedly prior engagement——”
“It is Miss Ava Lamb who wants to meet you, my dear Duke. She has just come over to Paris. Dinner is at nine. Thank you, thank you. It will be such fun. You will not have to talk unless you want to and you may go to sleep just when you like as I have engaged Mr. Cherry-Marvel to conduct the conversation over dinner. At nine then, my dear Duke.”
V
The Duke, as he fairly acknowledged to himself the morning after Mrs. Omroy Pont’s party, had been diverted beyond all expectation by his meeting with Miss Lamb. While she, candour compelled him to admit, hadn’t seemed any less sensible to the pleasant quality of their companionship. A beautiful girl, a sensible girl, with a lively interest in the passing moment and a delicious capacity for deriving pleasure from the twists in conversation which came so naturally to the Duke but were become, it has to be confessed, a shade familiar to his friends. She hadn’t, he reflected over his morning coffee, said anything throughout the evening that didn’t interest and entertain; and, since she had come to Europe for the first time but the other day, had amused him vastly with her impressions, which weren’t by any means all favourable, since Miss Lamb confessed to a taste for simplicity; which was very agreeable to the Duke, who was also wealthy.
All this made very pleasant thinking for the Duke over his morning coffee; but had he consulted his memory more carefully, it might have emerged that Miss Lamb had listened with pretty attention the while he had talked, the matter of his talk seldom being so abstract in nature that she couldn’t entirely grasp it by just looking at him.