第44章

"Ask her to dine.Ask her, if you'd be so truly sweet, for a Sunday; or something of that sort, and even if only in one of your MOST mixed parties, to Catchmore."Miss Cutter felt the less hopeful after this effort in that her companion only showed a strange good nature.And it wasn't a satiric amiability, though it WAS amusement."Take Mrs.Medwin into my family?""Some day when you're taking forty others.""Ah but what I don't see is what it does for YOU.You're already so welcome among us that you can scarcely improve your position even by forming for us the most delightful relation.""Well, I know how dear you are," Mamie Cutter replied; "but one has after all more than one side and more than one sympathy.I like her, you know." And even at this Lady Wantridge wasn't shocked;she showed that ease and blandness which were her way, unfortunately, of being most impossible.She remarked that SHEmight listen to such things, because she was clever enough for them not to matter; only Mamie should take care how she went about saying them at large.When she became definite however, in a minute, on the subject of the public facts, Miss Cutter soon found herself ready to make her own concession.Of course she didn't dispute THEM: there they were; they were unfortunately on record, and, nothing was to be done about them but to--Mamie found it in truth at this point a little difficult.

"Well, what? Pretend already to have forgotten them?""Why not, when you've done it in so many other cases?""There ARE no other cases so bad.One meets them at any rate as they come.Some you can manage, others you can't.It's no use, you must give them up.They're past patching; there's nothing to be done with them.There's nothing accordingly to be done with Mrs.Medwin but to put her off." And Lady Wantridge rose to her height.

"Well, you know, I DO do things," Mamie quavered with a smile so strained that it partook of exaltation.

"You help people? Oh yes, I've known you to do wonders.But stick," said Lady Wantridge with strong and cheerful emphasis, "to your Americans!"Miss Cutter, gazing, got up."You don't do justice, Lady Wantridge, to your own compatriots.Some of them are really charming.Besides," said Mamie, "working for mine often strikes me, so far as the interest--the inspiration and excitement, don't you know?--go, as rather too easy.You all, as I constantly have occasion to say, like us so!"Her companion frankly weighed it."Yes; it takes that to account for your position.I've always thought of you nevertheless as keeping for their benefit a regular working agency.They come to you, and you place them.There remains, I confess," her ladyship went on in the same free spirit, "the great wonder--""Of how I first placed my poor little self? Yes," Mamie bravely conceded, "when _I_ began there was no agency.I just worked my passage.I didn't even come to YOU, did I? You never noticed me till, as Mrs.Short Stokes says, 'I was 'way, 'way up!' Mrs.

Medwin," she threw in, "can't get over it." Then, as her friend looked vague: "Over my social situation.""Well, it's no great flattery to you to say," Lady Wantridge good-humouredly returned, "that she certainly can't hope for one resembling it." Yet it really seemed to spread there before them.

"You simply MADE Mrs.Short Stokes."

"In spite of her name!" Mamie smiled.

"Oh your 'names'--! In spite of everything.""Ah I'm something of an artist." With which, and a relapse marked by her wistful eyes into the gravity of the matter, she supremely fixed her friend.She felt how little she minded betraying at last the extremity of her need, and it was out of this extremity that her appeal proceeded."Have I really had your last word? It means so much to me."Lady Wantridge came straight to the point."You mean you depend on it?""Awfully!"

"Is it all you have?"

"All.Now."

"But Mrs.Short Stokes and the others--'rolling,' aren't they?

Don't they pay up?"

"Ah," sighed Mamie, "if it wasn't for THEM--!"Lady Wantridge perceived."You've had so much?""I couldn't have gone on."

"Then what do you do with it all?"

"Oh most of it goes back to them.There are all sorts, and it's all help.Some of them have nothing.""Oh if you feed the hungry," Lady Wantridge laughed, "you're indeed in a great way of business.Is Mrs.Medwin"--her transition was immediate--"really rich?""Really.He left her everything."

"So that if I do say 'yes'--"

"It will quite set me up."

"I see--and how much more responsible it makes one! But I'd rather myself give you the money.""Oh!" Mamie coldly murmured.

"You mean I mayn't suspect your prices? Well, I daresay I don't!

But I'd rather give you ten pounds."

"Oh!" Mamie repeated in a tone that sufficiently covered her prices.The question was in every way larger."Do you never forgive?" she reproachfully inquired.The door opened however at the moment she spoke and Scott Homer presented himself.