Part 27

VII

ABOUT SKY-SCRAPERS AND BEAUTIFUL LADIES

In the afternoon Mrs. Ess Kay and I in our thinnest muslins went out in the motor. We whizzed up Fifth Avenue for several "blocks" (as she called them), turned into an expensive-looking side street and stopped before one of the most enormous buildings I ever saw in my life. It seemed only half finished, for the steel columns of its skeleton were still visible around the ground floor and the street before it was still cluttered with bricks and boards and rubbish. In the hallway men were working like active animals in an immense cage. Suddenly from amongst them I saw emerge a beautifully dressed little girl foaming with lace frills, led by a trained nurse in a grey and white uniform. They were actually being let out of the lift, which had swooped down with appalling swiftness, by a man in livery.

"Good Heavens," I exclaimed, "what a queer place for a child and its nurse to be in."

"My dear girl, they live there," said Mrs. Ess Kay rather scornfully. "That is Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour's little Rosemary with her nurse."

"People live on top of those poles like Jack in a beanstalk!" I exclaimed. "How appalling."

As I looked through the hallway up sprang the lift once more, fierce and swift as one of the rockets which I used as a child to be afraid might strike the angels. A minute of suspense and it swooped down again with two girls in it. I felt as if it were a thing I oughtn't to be seeing somehow; it was so much like spying on the digestive apparatus of a skeleton.

"You see," explained Mrs. Ess Kay, "the Taylours and other people were frightfully anxious to get in. The rest of the building will be finished soon, and this is going to be one of the swellest apartment houses in New York."

"This an apartment house!" cried I, thinking of the dull streets in London, where almost every door has "Apartments" printed over it in gilt letters, or else hanging crooked and dejected on a card. "But, oh--perhaps you mean it's flats."

"For goodness sake, don't say 'flats' to Margaret Taylour," exclaimed Mrs. Ess Kay, marshalling me into the mammoth skeleton. "Over here, only common people live in flats; our sort have 'apartments.'"

"It's just the other way round with us," I explained. "Those who have flats would be furious if you said they lived in apartments."

"You English are so quaint in some ways," remarked Mrs. Ess Kay, and though I didn't answer, I was surprised. It's all well enough for us to think Americans odd, and we are accustomed to that, for everybody says they are; but that they should think our ways comic does seem extraordinary, almost improper.

By this time we were in the lift, which shut upon us with a vicious snap, and then tossed us up towards the roof of the world. I do hope one doesn't experience the same sensation in dying; though in that case it would be worse going down than up.

Before I had time to do more than gasp, we were at the top; and as we waited for an instant outside Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour's door, I should have liked to pinch my cheeks lest my fright had left me pale.

Vic has a friend who lives in a flat near the Park for the Season, and once I was taken there. I thought it quite beautiful, but though the friend's a Countess and very rich, the flat is poor compared with this topheavy nest of Mrs. Taylour's.

In a white drawing-room where the only spots of colour were the roses--masses of pink roses in gold bowls--a Madonna-like being was reclining in a green and white billow of a lace tea gown, on a white sofa. She held out both hands to Mrs. Ess Kay, and looked at me, apologising for not getting up.

When you come to examine her, the only thing really Madonna-like about Mrs. Harvey Richmount Taylour is her way of doing her hair. It's parted in the middle, and folds softly down in brown wings on either side of rather a high forehead, white enough to match her drawing-room. She has gently curved eyebrows, too; but under them her dark eyes are as bright and sharp as a fox-terrier's. She has pale skin, red lips, and thin features, with a stick-out chin, cut on the same pattern as Mrs. Ess Kay's though it isn't as square yet, because she is years younger--perhaps not more than twenty-eight.

Mrs. Ess Kay introduced us, in a more precise way than we have at home, and Mrs. Taylour said that she was very happy to meet me, which I should have thought particularly kind, if I hadn't found out that it's a sort of formula which Americans think it polite to use.

She talked to me a good deal, and wanted to know how I liked America, of course; I was sure she would do that.

Then Mrs. Ess Kay explained that I was interested in her apartment being up so high, and thought her plucky to live in it before the house was finished. This amused Mrs. Taylour very much.

"We are just thankful to be in it," she said. "I was tired out with housekeeping, the servant question is too awful."

"I see you've a trained nurse-maid for Rosemary," said Mrs. Ess Kay. "We met them going out."

"Isn't Rosemary a pet?" Mrs. Taylour asked me, as if she were speaking of somebody else's little girl.

"Sweet," I said. "Has she been ill?"

"No. Do you think she looks delicate?"

"It was the hospital nurse----" I began; but Mrs. Taylour laughed.

"Oh, I suppose that would strike you as funny. But we often have them for our children. We poor New York women have so much to do socially, we have to be relieved of all feeling of responsibility, if we don't want to come down with nervous prostration. I shall hang onto this same nurse for years if she'll stay; she's so good, and only ten dollars a week. When Rosemary grows up and comes out, she will be her maid, you know, Lady Betty. Do you ever have trained nurse-maids in England?"

"No," I said. "Fancy!"