Reports followed over several months. Things were going well; the Baron had dropped a word to a Secretary. Things were hanging fire: the Baron hoped to meet the Secretary at his club, and would jog his memory. Things were rather clouded, for the Secretary said there were people with prior claims, and the list of debutantes must not be too long. A stroke of luck: a New Zealand magnate had choked to death on a fishbone and his daughter had reluctantly been forced into mourning. The thing was virtually assured, but it would be premature to make any moves until official invitations had been received; meanwhile Lady Strathcona was doing some backstairs haggling, for which, as the daughter of a former Hudson’s Bay official, she had an inherited aptitude.
At last, in December of 1902, the impressive cards arrived, and the Senator, who had bottled the matter up inside himself for more than a year, was able to reveal his triumph to Marie-Louise and Mary-Jim. Their response was not entirely what he had foreseen. Marie-Louise was in an immediate fuss about clothes, and Mary-Jim thought it nice, but did not seem greatly impressed. Neither understood the immensity of his triumph.
As letters began to arrive from Lady Strathcona, they learned better. The matter of clothes was carefully explained, and as these included garments not only for the Court Ball, but for the London Season it initiated, mother and daughter should lose no time in getting to London and into the dressmakers’ salons. A suitable place to live would have to be found, and already the rentable houses in appropriate parts of London were being snapped up. What jewels had Marie-Louise? Mary-Jacobine must undergo a rigorous training in Court etiquette, and Lady Strathcona had booked her into a class being conducted by a decayed Countess who would, for a substantial fee, explain these rites. The curtsy was all-important. There must be no toppling.
Lord Strathcona was even more direct. Bring a large cheque-book and get here in time to have some knee-breeches made, were his principal pieces of advice to the Senator.
The McRorys did as they were bid, and set out for London early in January with a mass of luggage, including two of those huge trunks with rounded lids that used to be called Noah’s Arks.
It had been impossible to get them a London house of the right kind, and a house outside the West End was unthinkable, so Lord Strathcona had booked them into the best suite at the Cecil Hotel, in the Strand. If the Court were grander than the Cecil, the McRorys wondered if they would be worthy of it. At the time the hotel outfitted its male staff with three liveries: sleeve-waistcoats and white stocks for morning, blue liveries with brass buttons and white ties for afternoon, and in the evening the full grandeur of plush breeches, plum-coloured coats with cut-steel buttons, and powdered wigs. It was sumptuous in a manner undreamed of in Blairlogie, where a housemaid marked the pinnacle of domestic service; but the McRorys, being naturally thrivers and intelligent, determined not to play the farcical role of colonial cousins any more than they could help, and behaved themselves unassumingly, until they got the hang of things.
The sessions with the decayed Countess presented some difficulty at the beginning, for she showed a tendency to behave as if Mary-Jim’s inelegant Canadian speech gave her pain. Snotty old bitch, thought Mary-Jim, who was a convent girl and knew how to deal with tedious instructresses. “Would you prefer that I speak in French, Your Grace?” she asked, and continued for some time, very rapidly, in that language, which the decayed Countess spoke slowly and indifferently. The decayed Countess understood that she had a Tartar in the McRory child, and mended her ways. When she had recovered herself she dropped a remark about the difficulty of understanding a patois, but nobody was deceived.
At last, in May of 1903, the great night came. Marie-Louise, still a pretty woman, was resplendent in pale-blue chiffon and cloth of silver, embroidered with stripes of brilliants, the swathed bodice (over a repressive new corset) fastened with diamonds, which had been hired from a discreet jeweller, who did a large trade in such rentals. Mary-Jim was modestly done up in tulle and mousseline-de-soie. The Senator wore his accustomed tailcoat and white waistcoat above, and his unaccustomed corded-silk knee-breeches and double black-silk stockings below. They were photographed in the drawing-room of their suite at four o’clock in the afternoon, in their grandeur; the ladies had been put to rights by the hairdresser between one and half past two, and had then been forced to bathe with the uttermost care, so as not to wet or tumble their careful head-arrangements. An expert maid from the hotel had encased them in their splendid gowns. After the photographer had gone they ate a light meal in their suite, and then had nothing to do but sit and fret inwardly until half past nine, when the carriage arrived to take them to the Palace. They could have walked there in fifteen minutes, but with the crush of people going to Court, it took a full three-quarters of an hour to make the journey, during which they were inspected, at every stop, by crowds who had gathered to have a look at the toffs.
They had been fretting because they were sure they would know no one at Court—how could they? They would hang dejectedly around the walls, pretending that they were solitary from choice. In their panicky moments they were sure they would bump into things, break ornaments, spill food. The Lord Chamberlain would strike the floor with his wand, crying, “Throw those colonial rubes out!” But that was not the way the King-Emperor entertained.
As soon as they had arrived, and given up their cloaks, a smiling aide swooped upon them, saying, “Ah, there you are, Senator! Madame! Mademoiselle! The High Commissioner and Lady Strathcona are upstairs; I’ll take you to them at once. Awful crush, isn’t it”—and much more genial, meaningless, but reassuring chatter until they were safe under the wing of the Strathconas, and Mary-Jim had been hived off into a group, not too obviously defined, of the girls who were to be presented.
There were thrones on a dais at the end of the room but—what, no trumpets? No, just a quiet entry—or as quiet as a royal entry can ever be—of a very stout, shortish man in uniform and a blaze of orders, and a lady of great beauty, wearing enough jewels, thought the Senator, to finance a railway. Ladies curtsied; gentlemen bowed. The King and Queen were seated.
Without preamble the ladies in the special group began to lead forward their protégées. An aide with a list in his hand murmured to the blue-eyed man and the smiling, beautiful, deaf woman. The moment came: taking Mary-Jim’s hand, Lady Strathcona led her forward to the steps of the dais, and together they curtsied; the aide murmured, “Miss Mary-Jacobine McRory.” It was over. The campaign which had taken twenty-two months was complete.
The Senator, from the crowd, had watched intently. Had the royal eyes lightened at Mary-Jim’s beauty? This was a king who admired beauty—had he been impressed? Impossible to tell, but at least the prominent blue eyes had not been veiled. The child looked so lovely it gripped his heart. Dark, high-coloured from her Highland ancestry, Mary-Jim was unquestionably a beauty.
The presentations were quickly over, and the royal couple left their thrones. The aide swooped upon the McRorys again.
“Must introduce you to some people. May I present Major Francis Cornish? He’s going to help me in seeing that you get everything you want.”
Major Francis Cornish was not very young, not very old. Not very handsome, but not precisely plain. If he were called distinguished, it would be because of the eyeglass he wore in his right eye, and his fine moustache, which defied all laws of facial hair by growing sidewise instead of straight down, and turning up at the ends. He wore the dress uniform of an excellent regiment, but not a Guards regiment. He bowed to the ladies, extended the forefinger of his right hand to the Senator, and said, almost inaudibly, “Howjahdo”? But he stayed with the McRorys, whereas the other aide, murmuring that he had some people to see to, vanished.