Some Short Stories

dream had been the fruit of her need; but, conscious that she was even yet unequipped for pressure, she felt, almost for the first time in her life, superficial and crude. She was to be paid—but with what was she, to that end, to pay? She had engaged to find an answer to this question, but the answer had not, according to her promise, “come.” And Lady Wantridge meanwhile massed herself, and there was no view of her that didn’t show her as verily, by some process too obscure to be traced, the hard depository of the social law. She was no younger, no fresher, no stronger, really, than any of them; she was only, with a kind of haggard fineness, a sharpened taste for life, and, with all sorts of things behind and beneath her, more abysmal and more immoral, more secure and more impertinent. The points she made were two in number. One was that she absolutely declined; the other was that she quite doubted if Mamie herself had measured the job. The thing couldn’t be done. But say it COULD be; was Mamie quite the person to do it? To this Miss Cutter, with a sweet smile, replied that she quite understood how little she might seem so. “I’m only one of the persons to whom it has appeared that YOU are.”

“Then who are the others?”

“Well, to begin with, Lady Edward, Lady Bellhouse and Mrs. Pouncer.”

“Do you mean that they’ll come to meet her?”

“I’ve seen them, and they’ve promised.”

“To come, of course,” Lady Wantridge said, “if I come.”

Her hostess cast about. “Oh of course you could prevent them. But I should take it as awfully kind of you not to. WON’T you do this for me?” Mamie pleaded.

Her friend looked over the room very much as Scott had done. “Do they really understand what it’s FOR?”

“Perfectly. So that she may call.”

“And what good will that do her?”

Miss Cutter faltered, but she presently brought it out. “Naturally what one hopes is that, you’ll ask her.”

“Ask her to call?”

“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 SHE might 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!”