The Relentless City. Эдвард Бенсон

knew she would take,' he said. 'We Americans, Mrs. Massington, are the most serious people on the face of the earth, and there is nothing we adore so much as the entire absence of seriousness. Mrs. Emsworth is like Puck in the "Midsummer Night's Dream." They'll be calling her Mrs. Puck before the week's out. And she's playing up well. There is a crowd of a hundred reporters behind the scenes now, and she's interviewing them ten at a time, and making her dog give audience to those she hasn't time for. Do you know her dog? I thought it would knock the scenery down when it wagged its tail.'

      Armstrong in the meantime was regaling Bertie with more details of the equestrian party, and the justice of Bilton's remarks about seriousness was evident from his conversation.

      'It was all most carefully thought out,' he was saying, 'for one mustn't have any weak point in an idea of that sort. I don't think you go in for that sort of social entertainments in London, do you?'

      'No; we are much more haphazard, I think,' said Bertie.

      'Well, it's not so here—anyhow, in our set. If you want to keep in the swim you must entertain people now and then in some novel and highly original manner. Mrs. Lewis S. Palmer there is the centre, the very centre, of our American social life. You'll see things at her home done just properly. Last year she gave a farm-party that we talked about, I assure you, for a month. You probably heard of it.'

      'I don't remember it, I'm afraid.'

      'Well, you surprise me. All the men wore real smock-frocks and carried shepherd's crooks or cart-whips or flails, and all the women were dressed as milkmaids. It was the drollest thing you ever saw. And not a detail was wrong. All the grounds down at Mon Repos—that's her house, you know—were covered with cattle-sheds and poultry-houses and pig-sties, and the cows and sheep were driven around and milked and shorn just as they do on real farms. And inside the walls of her ballroom were even boarded up, and it was turned into a dairy. She's one of our very brightest women.'

      'And next week there is to be a new surprise, is there not?' asked Bertie.

      'Yes, indeed, and I think it will top everything she has done yet. What she has spent on it I couldn't tell you. Why, even Lewis S. Palmer got a bit restive about it, and when Lewis S. gets restive about what Mrs. Palmer is spending, you may bet that anyone else would have been broke over it. Why, she spent nearly thirty thousand dollars the other day over the funeral of her dog.'

      'Did Mr. Palmer get restive over that?' asked Bertie.

      'Well, I guess it would have been pretty mean of him if he had, and Lewis, he isn't mean. He's a strenuous man, you know, and he likes to see his wife strenuous as a leader of society. He'd be terribly mortified if she didn't give the time to American society. And he knows perfectly well that she has to keep firing away if she's to keep her place, just as he's got to in his. Why, what would happen to American finance if Lewis realized all his fortune, and put it in a box and sat on the top twiddling his thumbs? Why, it would just crumble—go to pieces. Same with American society, if Mrs. Palmer didn't keep on. She's just got to.'

      'Then what happened to you all when she came to London?' asked Bertie, rather pertinently.

      'Why, that was in the nature of extending her business. That was all right,' said Armstrong. 'And here's some of the returns coming in right along,' he added felicitously—' Mrs. Massington and you have come to America.' At this point Bilton interrupted.

      'Mrs. Emsworth saw you to-night, Lord Keynes,' he said, 6 and hopes you will go to see her to-morrow morning. No. 127, West Twenty-sixth Street. Easier than your Park Squares and Park Places and Park Streets? isn't it?'

      'Much easier,' said Bertie. 'Pray give my compliments to Mrs. Emsworth, and say I regret so much I am leaving New York to-morrow with Mrs. Palmer.'

      'Ah, you couldn't have a better excuse,' said Bilton; 'but no excuse does for Mrs. Emsworth. You'd better find half an hour, Lord Keynes.'

      Chapter V

       Table of Contents

      Mrs. Emsworth's little flat in Twenty-sixth Street certainly reflected great credit on its furnisher, who was her impresario. She had explained her requirements to him briefly but completely before she signed her contract.

      'I want a room to eat my chop in,' she said; 'I want a room to digest my chop in; I want a room to sleep in; and I want somebody to cook my chop, and somebody to make my bed. All that I leave to you; you know my taste. If the room doesn't suit me, I shall fly into a violent rage, and probably refuse to act at all. You will take all the trouble of furnishing and engaging servants off my hands, won't you? How dear of you! Now, please go away; I'm busy. Au revoir, till New York.'

      Now, Bilton, as has been mentioned, was an excellent man of business, and, knowing perfectly well that Mrs. Emsworth was not only capable of carrying her threat into action, but was extremely likely to do so—a course which would have seriously embarrassed his plans—he really had taken considerable pains with her flat. Consequently, on her arrival, after she had thrown a sham Empire clock out of the window, which in its fall narrowly missed braining a passing millionaire, she expressed herself much pleased with what he had done, and gave a standing order to a very expensive florist to supply her with large quantities of fresh flowers every day, and send the account to Bilton.

      The room in which she digested her chop especially pleased her. Carpet, curtains, and upholstery were rose-coloured, the walls were green satin, with half a dozen excellent prints on them, and by the window was an immense Louis XV. couch covered in brocade, with a mass of pillows on it. Here, the morning after her opening night in New York, she was lying and basking like a cat in the heat, smoking tiny rose-scented Russian cigarettes, and expecting with some anticipation of amusement the arrival of Bertie Keynes. Round her lay piles of press notices, which stripped the American variety of the English language bare of epithets. She was deeply absorbed in these, and immense smiles of amusement from time to time crossed her face. On the floor lay her huge mastiff, which, with the true time-serving spirit, rightly calculated to be thoroughly popular, she had rechristened Teddy Roosevelt. Her great coils of auburn hair were loosely done up, and her face, a full, sensuous oval, was of that brilliant warm-blooded colouring which testified to the authenticity of the smouldering gold of her hair. Lying there in the hot room, brilliant with colour and fragrant with the scent of innumerable flowers (the account for which was sent in to Mr. Bilton), she seemed the embodiment of vitality and serene Paganism. Not even her friends—and they were many—ever accused her of morality, but, on the other hand, all children adored her. That is an item not to be disregarded when the moralist adds up the balance-sheet.

      In spite of his excuse of the night before, Bertie Keynes had taken Bilton's advice, and before long he was announced.

      'Bertie, Bertie!' she cried as he came in, 'I wake up to find myself famous. I am magnetic, it appears, beyond all powers of comprehension. I am vimmy—am I really vimmy, do you think, and what does it mean? I am a soulful incarnation of adorable——Oh no; it's Teddy Roosevelt who is the adorable incarnation. Yes, that dear angel lying there is Teddy Roosevelt and an adorable incarnation, which would never have happened if we hadn't come to America, would it, darling? Not you, Bertie. I christened him on the way over, and you shall be godfather, because he wants a new collar. Let me see, where was I? Bertie, I was a success last night. Enormous. I knew I should be. Now sit down, and try to get a word in edge-ways, if you can.'

      'I congratulate you, Dorothy,' he said—'I congratulate you most heartily.'

      'Thanks. I say, Teddy Roosevelt, the kind young gentleman congratulates us. Now, what are you doing on these opulent shores? Looking out for opulence, I guess. Going to be married, are we? Well, Teddy is too, if we can find a suitable young lady; and so am I. Oh, such fun! and we'll tear up all our past histories, and put them in the fire.'

      She sat half up on her couch, and looked at him.

      'It's two years since we met last, Bertie,' she said; 'and you—why, you've become a man. You always were a pretty boy, and you don't