piece had already begun when the little partie carrée from Sherry's entered, and rustled to the large stage-box which Bilton had reserved for them. Mrs. Emsworth, in fact, was at the moment making her first entrance, and, as they took their places, was acknowledging the applause with which she was greeted. Naturally enough, her eye, as she bowed to the house, travelled over its occupants, and she saw the party arriving. This was made easy for her by Mrs. Palmer's voluble enthusiasm, which really for the moment divided the attention of the house between the stage and her box.
'I adore her, I just adore her!' she cried; 'and she promised to come down from Saturday till Monday to Long Island. You know her, of course, Lord Keynes? There's something magnetic to me about her. I told her so this afternoon. I think it's her neck. Look at her bending her head, Mrs. Massington. I really think that Mrs. Emsworth's neck is the most magnetic thing I ever saw. Reginald, isn't it magnetic?'
The magnetic lady proceeded. She acted with immense and frolicsome enjoyment, like some great good-humoured child bursting with animal spirits. To the rather tired and heated occupants of the stalls she came like a sudden breeze on a hot day, so infectious was her enjoyment, so natural and unaffected her pleasure in exhibiting her beauty and buoyant vitality. The critical element in the audience – in any case there was not much – she simply took by the scruff of the neck and turned out of the theatre. 'We are here to enjoy ourselves,' she seemed to say. 'Laugh, then; look at me, and you will.' And they looked and laughed. Whether she was an actress or not was really beside the point; there was in her, anyhow, something of the irrepressible gamin of the streets, and the gamin that there is in everybody hailed its glorious cousin. Long before the act was over her success was assured, and when Mr. Bilton came in to see them in the interval, it was no wonder that his mercantile delight was apparent in his face. Once more, for the fiftieth or the hundredth time, he had staked heavily and won heavily.
'I 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
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
