Part 24 (1/2)

He kissed Polly, waved to Marie Louise, stepped into his car, and shot away.

Polly watched him with devout eyes and said:

”Poor boy! he's dying to get across into the trenches, but they won't take him because he's a little near-sighted, thank G.o.d! And he works like a dog, day and night.” Then she returned to the rites of hospitality. ”Had your breakfast?”

”At the station.” The truth for once coincided very pleasantly with convenience.

”Then I know what you want,” said Polly, ”a bath and a nap. After that all-night train-trip you ought to be a wreck.”

”I am.”

Polly led her to a welcoming room that would have been quite pretty enough if it had had only a bed and a chair. Marie Louise felt as if she had come out of the wilderness into a city of refuge. Polly had an engagement, a committee meeting of women war-workers, and would not be back until luncheon-time. Marie Louise steeped herself in a hot tub, then in a long sweet sleep in a real bed. She was wakened by the voices of children, and looked out from her window to see the Widdicombe tots drilling in a company of three with a drum, a flag, and a wooden gun. The American army was not much bigger compared with the European nations in arms, but it would grow.

Polly came home well charged with electricity, the new-woman idea that was claiming half of the war, the true squaw-spirit that takes up the drudgery at home while the braves go out to swap missiles with the enemy. When Marie Louise said that she, too, had come to Was.h.i.+ngton to get into harness somewhere, Polly promised her a plethora of opportunities.

At luncheon Polly was reminded of the fact that a photographer was coming over from Was.h.i.+ngton. He had asked for sittings, and she had acceded to his request.

”I never can get photographs enough of my homely self,” said Polly.

”I'm always hoping that by some accident the next one will make me look as I want to look--make ithers see me as I see mysel'!”

When the camera-man arrived Polly insisted that Marie Louise must pose, too, and grew so urgent that she consented at last, to quiet her. They spent a harrowing afternoon striking att.i.tudes all over the place, indoors and out, standing, sitting, heads and half-lengths, profile and three-quarters and full face. Their muscles ached with the struggle to a.s.sume and retain beatific expressions on an empty soul.

The consequences of that afternoon of self-impersonation were far-reaching for Marie Louise.

According to the Was.h.i.+ngtonian custom, one of the new photographs appeared the following Sunday in each of the four newspapers. The Sunday after that Marie Louise's likeness appeared with ”Dolly Madison's” and Jean Elliott's syndicated letters on ”The Week in Was.h.i.+ngton” in Sunday supplements throughout the country. Every now and then her likeness popped out at her from _Town and Country_, _Vogue_, _Harper's Bazaar_, _The Spur_, what not?

One of those countless images fell into the hands of Jake Nuddle, who had been keeping an incongruous eye on the Sunday supplements for some time. This time the double of Mamise was not posed as a farmerette in an English landscape, but as a woman of fas.h.i.+on in a Colonial drawing-room.

He hurried to his wife with the picture, and she called it ”Mamise”

with a recrudescent anguish of doubt.

”She's in this country now, the paper says,” said Jake. ”She's in Was.h.i.+ngton, and if I was you I'd write her a little letter astin' her is she our sister.”

Mrs. Nuddle was crying too loosely to note that ”our.” The more Jake considered the matter the less he liked the thought of waiting for a letter to go and an answer to come.

”Meet 'em face to face; that's me!” he declared at last. ”I think I'll just take a trip to the little old capital m'self. I can tell the rest the c'mittee I'm goin' to put a few things up to some them Senators and Congersmen. That'll get my expenses paid for me.”

There simply was n.o.body that Jake Nuddle would not cheat, if he could.

His always depressing wife suggested: ”Supposin' the lady says she ain't Mamise, how you goin' to prove she is? You never seen her.”

Jake snarled at her for a fool, but he knew that she was right. He resisted the dismal necessity as long as he could, and then extended one of his most cordial invitations:

”Aw, h.e.l.l! I reckon I'll have to drag you along.”

He grumbled and cursed his fate and resolved to make Mamise pay double for ruining his excursion.

CHAPTER V