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Title: The Rustle of Silk

Author: Cosmo Hamilton

Release date: January 25, 2011 [eBook #35079]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RUSTLE OF SILK ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net.

[Illustration: Betty Compson and Conway Tearle]

                           THE RUSTLE OF SILK

                                   BY

                             COSMO HAMILTON

                       Author of _Scandal_, Etc.



                            GROSSET & DUNLAP

                  Made in the United States of America


Copyright, 1922,
By Cosmo Hamilton.
All rights reserved

Published April, 1922
Reprinted April, 1922 (twice)
Reprinted June, 1922
Reprinted July, 1922

Printed in the United States of America




Contents


    PART I
    PART II
    PART III
    PART IV
    PART V
    PART VI
    PART VII
    PART VIII




PART I



I


The man had followed her from Marble Arch,—not a mackerel-eyed old man,
sensual and without respect, but one who responded to emotions as an
artist and was still young and still interested. He had seen her descend
from a motor omnibus, had caught his breath at her disturbing
femininity, had watched her pass like a sunbeam on the garden side of
the road, and in the spirit of a man who sees the materialization of the
very essence of woman, turned and followed.

All the way along, under branches of trees that were newly peppered with
early green, he watched her and saw other men’s heads turn as she
passed,—on busses, in taxicabs, in cars and in the infrequent
horse-drawn carriage that was like a Chaucerian noun dropped into the
pages of a modern book. He saw men stop as he had stopped and catch
their breath and then pursue their way reluctantly. He noticed that
women, especially passée, tired women, paid her tribute by a flash of
smile or a sudden brightness of the eye. There was no conscious effort
to attract in the girl’s manner, nothing bizarre or even smart in her
clothing. Her young figure, the perfection of form, was plainly dressed.
She wore the clothes of a student of the lower middle class, of the
small shopkeeping class, and probably either made them herself or bought
them off the peg. There was no startling beauty in her face or anything
wonderful in her eyes, and certainly nothing of challenge, of
coquetry,—nothing but the sublime unself-consciousness of a child. And
yet there was so definite and disordering a sense of sex about her that
she passed through a very procession of tribute.

The man was a dramatist whose business was to play upon the emotions of
sex, and to watch this child and the stir she made seemed to him to
refute once more the ludicrous attempts of would-be reformers to remold
humanity and prohibit the greatest of the urges of nature, and made him
laugh. He wondered all the way along not who she was, because that
didn’t matter, but what she would do and become,—this girl with her
wide-apart eyes, oval face and full red lips, with the nose of a
patrician and the sensitive nostrils of a horse,—if she would quickly
marry in her own class and drift from early motherhood into a
discontented drabness, or burst the bonds and be transferred from her
probable back yard into a great conservatory.

He marveled at her astonishing detachment and was amused to discover
that she was playing at some sort of game all by herself. From time to
time, as she danced along, she assumed suddenly a dignified and gracious
personality, walking slowly, with a high chin, bowing to imaginary
acquaintances and looking through the railings of Kensington Gardens
with an air of proprietorship. Then she as quickly returned to her own
obviously normal self and hurried a little, conscious of approaching
dusk. Finally, with the cunning of city breeding, she nicked across the
road, and he saw her stop outside the tube station at Bayswater,
arrested by the bill of an evening paper,—“Fallaray against reprisals.
New crisis in the Irish Question. Notable defection from Lloyd-George
forces.”

He watched the girl stand in front of these glaring words and read them
over and over with extraordinary interest. Standing at her elbow, he
heard her heave a quick excited sigh. He imagined that she must be Irish
and watched her enter the station, linger about the bookstall and fasten
eagerly upon a magazine,—so eagerly that he slipped again to her elbow
and looked to see why. On the cover of this fiction monthly was the
photograph of the man whose name was set forth on the poster,—the Right
Hon. Arthur Napier Fallaray, Home Secretary. He knew the face well. It
was one of the few arresting faces in public life; one in which there
was something medieval, something also of Savonarola, Manning, and, in
the eyes, of Christ,—a clean-shaven face, thin and hawk-like, with a
hatchet jaw line, a sad and sensitive mouth and thick brown hair that
went into one or two deep kinks. It might have been the face of a
hunchback or one who had been inflicted from babyhood with paralysis,
obliged to stand aloof from the rush and tear of other children. Only
the head was shown on the cover, not the body that stood six foot one,
the broad shoulders and the long arms suggestive of the latent strength
of a wrestler.

The flush that suffused the girl’s face surprised the watcher and piqued
his curiosity. Fallaray, the ascetic, the married bachelor who lived in
one wing of his house while Lady Feodorowna entertained the resuscitated
Souls in the other,—and this young girl of the lower middle class,
worshiping at his shrine! He would have followed her for the rest of the
afternoon with no other purpose than to study her moods and watch her
stir the passers-by like the whir of an aeroplane or the sudden scent of
lilac. But the arrival of a train swept a crowd between them and he lost
her. He took a ticket to see if she were on one or other of the
platforms, returned to the street and searched up and down. She had
gone. Before he left, another bill was posted upon the board of the
_Evening Standard_. “Fallaray sees Prime Minister. May resign from
cabinet. Uneasiness in Downing Street,” and as he walked away, no longer
interested in the psychology of crowds, but with his imagination all
eager and alight, the playwright in him had grasped at the germ of a
dramatic experiment.—Take the man Fallaray, a true and sensitive
patriot, working for no rewards; humanitarian, scholar, untouched by
romance, deaf to the rustle of silk—and that girl, woman to the tips of
her ears, Eve in every movement of her body——



II


“Lola’s late,” said Mrs. Breezy. “She ought to have been home half an
hour ago.”

Without taking from his eye the magnifying glass through which he was
peering into the entrails of a watch, John Breezy gave a fat man’s
chuckle. “Don’t you worry about Lola. She’s the original good girl and
has more friends among strangers than the pigeons in Kensington Gardens.
She’s all right, old dear.”

But Mrs. Breezy never gave more than one ear to her husband. She was not
satisfied. She left her place behind the glistening counter of the
little jewelry shop in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and went out into the
street to see if she could see anything of her ewe lamb,—the one child
of her busy and thrifty married life. On a rain-washed board above her
head was painted “John Breezy, Watchmaker and Jeweler, Founded in 1760
by Armand de Brézé.” The name had been Bowdlerized as a concession to
the careless English ear.

On the curb a legless man was seated in a sort of perambulator with
double wheels, playing a concertina and accompanying another man with no
arms and a glass eye who sang with a gorgeous cockney accent, “Come
hout, Come hout, the Spring is ’ere.” A few yards farther down a girl
with the remains of prettiness was playing the violin at the side of an
elderly woman with the smile of professional supplication who held a
small tin cup. The incessant crowd which passed up and down Queen’s Road
paid little attention either to these stray dogs or to those who
occupied other competitive positions in this street of constant noises.
Flappers with very short skirts and every known specimen of leg added to
the tragic-comedy of a thoroughfare in which provincialism and
sophistication were like oil and water. Here was drawn the outside line
of polite pretence. The tide of _hoi polloi_ washed up to it and over.
Ex-governors of Indian provinces, utterly unrecognized, ex-officers and
men of gallant British regiments, mostly out of employment, nurse girls
with children, and women of semi-society who lived in those dull barrack
houses of Inverness Terrace, where cats squabbled and tradesmen’s boys
fought, passed the anxious mother.

Not a day went by that she did not hear from Lola of one or perhaps a
series of attempts, in the street, in the Tube, in busses and in the
Park, to win her into conversation. The horror stirred by these accounts
in the heart of the little woman, to say nothing of the terror, seemed
oddly exaggerated to the daughter, who, with her eyes large and gleaming
with fun, described the manner in which she left her unrestrained
admirers flat and inarticulate. There was nothing vain in this
acceptance of male admiration, the mother knew. It was something of
which the child had been aware ever since she could remember; had
accepted without regret; had hitherto put to no use; but which, deep
down in her soul, was recognized as the all-powerful asset of a woman,
not to be bought with money, achieved by art or simulated by acting.

Not in so many words had this “gift,” as Lola called it, been
interpreted and discussed by Mrs. Breezy. On the contrary, she tried to
ignore and hide it away as a dangerous thing which she would have been
ashamed to possess. In the full flower of her own youth there had been
nothing in herself, she thanked God, to lift her out of the great ruck
of women except, as Breezy had discovered, a shrewd head, a tactful
tongue and the infinite capacity for taking pains. And she was ashamed
of it in Lola. It gave her incessant and painful uneasiness and fright
and made her feel, in sleepless hours and while in church, that she had
done some wicked thing before her marriage that must be punished. With
unusual fairness she accepted all the blame but never had had the
courage to tell the truth, either to herself or her husband, as to her
true feelings towards this uncanny child, as she sometimes inwardly
called her. Had she done so, she must have confessed that Lola was the
only human being with whom she had come into touch that remained a total
stranger; she must have owned to having been divided from her child
almost always by a sort of wall, a division of class over which it was
increasingly impossible to cross.

There were times, indeed, when the little woman had gone down to the
overcrowded parlor behind the shop so consumed with the idea that she
had brought into the world the offspring of another woman that she had
sat down cold and puzzled and with an aching heart. It had seemed to her
then, as now, that something queer and eerie had happened. At the back
of her mind there had been and was still a sort of superstition that
Lola was a changeling, that the fairies or the devil or some imp of
mischief had taken her own baby away at the moment of her birth and
replaced it with an exquisite little creature stolen from the house of
an aristocrat. How else could she account for the tiny wrists, small
delicate hands, those wide blue eyes, those sensitive nostrils and above
all that extraordinary capacity for passing with superb unconsciousness
and yet with supreme sophistication through everyday crowds.

There was nothing of John in this girl, of that fat Tomcat-like man,
with no more brain than was necessary to peer into watches and repair
jewelry, to look with half an eye at current events and grow into
increasing content on the same small patch of earth. Neither was there
anything of herself, nothing so vulgar as shrewdness, nothing so
commonplace as tact and nothing so legitimate as taking pains. Either
she did things on the spur of an impulse, by inspiration, or she dropped
them, like the shells of nuts.

In spite of this uncanny idea, Mrs. Breezy loved her little girl,
adopted though she seemed to be, and constant anxiety ran through her
heart like a thread behind a needle. If any man had spoken to _her_ on
the street, she would have screamed or called a policeman. She certainly
would have been immediately covered with goose flesh. Beyond that, if
she had ever discovered that she had been born with the power to stir
the feelings of men at first sight, as music stirs the emotions of an
audience or wind the surface of water, she would have been tempted to
have turned Catholic and taken the veil.

Not an evening went by, therefore, that did not find Mrs. Breezy on the
step of the shop in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, looking anxiously up and
down for the appearance of Lola among the heterogeneous crowd which
infested that street. Always she expected to see at her side a man,
perhaps _the_ man who would take her child away. She had her worries,
poor little woman, more perhaps than most mothers.

That evening, the light reluctant to leave the sky, Spring’s hand upon
the city trees, Lola did bring some one home,—a woman.



III


Miss Breezy, sister of John, made a point of spending every Thursday
evening at the neat and gleaming shop in Queen’s Road. It was her night
off. Sometimes she turned up with tickets for the theater given to her
by the great lady to whom she acted as housekeeper, sometimes to a
concert and once or twice during the season for the opera. If there were
only two tickets, it was always Lola who enjoyed the other. Mr. and Mrs.
Breezy were contented to hear the child’s account of what they gladly
missed on her behalf. Frequently they got more from the girl’s
description than they would have received had they used the tickets
themselves.

It was this woman who unconsciously had made Fallaray the hero of Lola’s
dreams. She had brought all the latest gossip from the Fallaray house in
which she had served since that strange wedding ten years before, when
the son of the Minister for Education, himself in the House of Commons,
had gone in a sort of trance to St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and come
out of it surprised to find himself married to the eldest daughter of
the Marquis of Amesbury,—the brilliant, beautiful, harum-scarum member
of a pre-war set that had given England many rude shocks, stepped over
all the conventions of an already careless age and done “stunts” which
sent a thrill of horror and amazement all through the body of the old
British Lion; a set whose cynicism, egotism, perversion, hobnobbing with
political enemies, manufacture of erotic poetry and ribald jests had
spread like an epidemic.

Miss Breezy, whose Christian name was Hannah, as well it might be,
entered in great excitement. “Have you seen the paper?” she asked,
giving her sister-in-law peck to the watchmaker’s wife. “Mr. Fallaray’s
declared himself against reprisals. He’s condemned the methods of the
Black and Tans. They yelled at him in the House this afternoon and
called him Sinn Feiner. Just think of that! If any other man had done
it, I mean any other Minister, Lloyd George could have afforded to
smile. But Mr. Fallaray! It may kill the coalition government, and then
what will happen?”

All this was given out in the shop itself, luckily empty of customers.
“Woo,” said John. “Good gracious me,” said Mrs. Breezy. “Just as I
expected,” said Lola, and she entered the parlor and threw her books
into a corner and perched herself on the table, swinging her legs.

“‘Just as you expected?’ What do you know about it all, pray?” Miss
Breezy regarded the girl with the irritation that goes with those who
forget that little pitchers have ears. She also forgot that the question
of Ireland, of little real importance among all the world’s troubles,
was being forced into daily and even hourly notice by brutal murders and
by equally brutal reprisals and that England was, at that moment, racked
from end to end with passionate resentment and anger with which even
children were tainted.

And Lola laughed,—that ripple of laughter which had made so many men
stand rooted to their shoes after having had the temerity to speak to
her on the spur of the moment, or after many manœuverings. “What I know
of Mr. Fallaray,” she said, “you’ve taught me. I read the papers for the
rest.” And she heaved an enormous sigh and seemed to leave her body and
fly out like a homing pigeon.

“Don’t say anything more until I come back,” cried Mrs. Breezy, rapping
her energetic heels on the floor on the way out to close the shop.

Beamingly important, the bearer of back-stairs gossip, Miss Breezy
removed her coat,—one of those curious garments which seem to be made
especially for elderly spinsters and are worn by them proudly as a
uniform and with the certain knowledge that everybody can see that they
have gone through life in single blessedness, dependent neither for
happiness nor livelihood on a mere man.

John Breezy, who had lost all suggestion of his French ancestry and
spoke English with the ripest Bayswater, removed his apron. He liked, it
is true, to remember his Huguenot grandfather and from time to time
indulged in Latin gestures, but when he ventured into a few words of
French his accent was atrocious. “Mong Doo,” he said, therefore, and
shrugged his fat shoulders almost up to his ears. He had no sympathy
with the Irish. He considered that they were screaming fanatics,
handicapped by a form of diseased egotism and colossal ignorance which
could not be dealt with in any reasonable manner. He belonged to the
school of thought, led by the _Morning Post_, which would dearly like to
put an enormous charge of T. N. T. under the whole island and blow it
sky high. “Of course you buck a good deal about your Fallaray,” he said
to his sister, “that’s natural. You take his money and you live on his
food. But I think he’s a weakling. He’s only making things more
difficult. I wish to God I was in the House of Commons. I’d show ’em
what to do to Ireland.”

There was a burst of laughter from Lola who jumped off the table and
threw her arms around her father’s neck. “How wonderful you are, Daddy,”
she said. “A regular old John Bull!”

Returning before anything further could be said, Mrs. Breezy shut the
parlor door and made herself extremely comfortable to hear the latest
from behind the scenes. It was very wonderful to possess a sister-in-law
who regularly, once a week, came into that dull backwater with the sort
of thing that never got into the papers and who was able to bandy great
names about without turning a hair. “Now, then, Hannah, let’s have it
all from the beginning and please, John, don’t interrupt.” She would
have liked to have added, “Please, Lola,” too, but knew better.

Then it was that Miss Breezy settled henwise among the cushions on the
sofa and let herself go. It was a good thing for her that her family was
unacquainted with any of those unscrupulous illiterates who wrote the
chit-chat in the _Daily Mirror_.

“It was last night that I knew about all this,” she said. “I went in to
see Lady Feo about engaging a new personal maid. Her great friend was
there,—Mrs. Malwood, who was Lady Glayburgh in the first year of the
War, Lady Pytchley in the second, Mrs. Graham Macoover in the third,
married Mr. Aubrey Malwood in the fourth and still has him on her hands.
I was kept waiting while they finished their talk. Mrs. Malwood had to
hurry home because she was taking part in the theatricals at the
Eastminsters. I heard Lady Feo say that Mr. Fallaray had decided to
throw his bomb in the House this afternoon. She was frightfully excited.
She said she didn’t give a damn about the Irish question—and I wish she
didn’t speak like that—but that it would be great fun to have a general
election to brighten things up and give her a chance to win some money.
I don’t know how Lady Feo knew that her husband had decided to take this
step, because they never meet and I don’t believe he ever tells her
anything that he has on his mind. I shouldn’t be surprised if she got it
from Mr. Fallaray’s secretary. I’ve seen them whispering in corners
lately and once she starts her tricks on any man, good-by loyalty. My
word, but she’s a wonderful woman. A perfect devil but very kind to me.
I’ve no grumbles. If we do have a general election, and I hope to
goodness we don’t, there’s only one man to be Prime Minister, and that’s
Mr. Fallaray. But there’s no chance of it. All the Prime Minister’s
newspapers are against him, and all his jackals, and he has more enemies
than any man in the Cabinet, and not a soul to back him up. Office means
too much to them all and they’re all in terror of being defeated in the
country. He’s the loneliest man in the whole of London and one of the
greatest. That’s what I say. I’ve been with the family ten years and
there are things I like about Lady Feo, for all her rottenness. But I
know this. If she’d been a good wife to that man and had given him a
home to come back to and the love that he needs and two or three
children to romp with even for half an hour a day, there’d be a very
much better chance for England in this mess than there is at present.”

Stopping for breath, she looked up and caught the eyes of the girl whose
face had flushed at the sight of the picture on the cover of the
magazine. They were filled with something that startled her, something
in which there was so great a passion that it threw a hot dart at her
spinsterhood and left her rattled and confused.



IV


Miss Breezy was to receive another shock that evening.

It happened that several neighbors came in unexpectedly and stayed to
play cards. It was necessary, therefore, to adjourn from the cosy little
parlor behind the shop and go up to the drawing-room on the second
floor,—a stiff uncomfortable room used only on Sundays and when the
family definitely entertained. It smelt of furniture polish, cake and
antimacassars. Lola had no patience with cards and helped her mother to
make coffee and sandwiches. Miss Breezy, who clung to certain old
shibboleths with the pathetic persistence of a limpet, regarded a pack
of cards as the instrument of the devil. Besides, she resented the
intrusion of every one who put her out of the limelight. Her weekly orgy
of talk emptied the cistern of her brain.

She suspected something out of the way when Lola suddenly jumped on the
sofa like an Angora kitten, snuggled up and began to purr at her side,
saying how nice it was to see her, how terribly they would miss her
visits, and how well-informed she was. The little head pressed against
her bosom was not uncomforting to the childless woman. The warm arm
clasped about her shoulder flattered her vanity. But this display of
affection was unusual. It drew from her a rather shrewd question. “Well,
my dear, and what do you want to get out of me? I know you. This is
cupboard love.”

She won a gleam of teeth and a twinkle of congratulation from those
wide-apart eyes. “How clever you are, Auntie. But it isn’t cupboard
love, at least not quite. I want to consult you about my future because
you’re so sensible and wise.”

“Your future.—Your future is to get married and have babies. That was
marked out for you before you began to talk. I never saw such a
collection of dolls in a little girl’s room in all my life. A born
mother, my dear, that’s what you are. I hope to goodness you have the
luck to find the right sort of man in your own walk of life.”

Lola shook her head and snuggled a little closer, putting her lips to
the spinster’s ear. “There’s plenty of time for that,” she said. “And,
anyway, the right man for me won’t be in my own walk of life, as you
call it.”

“What! Why not?”

“Because I want to better myself, as you once said that every girl
should do. I haven’t forgotten. I remember everything that _you_ say,
Auntie.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Well, go on with it.” What a pretty thing she was
with her fine skin and red lips and disconcerting nostrils. Clever as a
monkey, too, my word. Amazing that Ellen should be her mother!

“And so I want to get away from Queen’s Road, if I can. I want to take a
peep, just a peep for a little while into another world and learn how to
talk and think and hold myself. Other girls like me have become ladies
when they had the chance. I can’t, I _know_ I can’t, become a teacher as
Mother says I must. You know that, too, when you think about me. I
should teach the children everything they ought not to know, for one
thing, you know I should, and throw it all up in a week. I overheard you
say that to Mother the very last time you were here.”

“My dear, your ears are too long. But you’re right all the same. I can’t
see _you_ in a school for the shabby genteel.” A warm fierce kiss was
pressed suddenly to her lips. “But what can I do to help you out? I
don’t know.”

“But I do, Auntie. You’re trying to find a personal maid for Lady Feo.
Engage me. I may work up to become a housekeeper like you some day even.
Who knows?”

So that was it.—Good heavens!

Miss Breezy unfolded herself from the girl’s embrace and sat with her
back as stiff as a ramrod. “I couldn’t think of such a thing,” she said.
“You don’t belong to the class that ladies’ maids come from, nor does
your mother. A funny way to better yourself, that, I must say. Don’t
mention it again, please.” She got up and shook herself as though to
cast away both the girl’s spell and her absurd request. Her
sister-in-law, after a long day’s work, was impatient for bed and
yawning in a way which she hoped would convey a hint to her husband’s
friends. She had already wound up the clock on the mantelpiece with
extreme deliberation. “I think my cab must be here,” said Miss Breezy
loudly, in order to help her. “I ordered him to fetch me. Don’t trouble
to come down but do take the trouble to find out what’s the matter with
Lola. She’s been reading too many novels or seeing too many moving
pictures. I don’t know which it is.”

To Mrs. Breezy’s entire satisfaction, her sister-in-law’s departure
broke up the party. There was always a new day to face and she needed
her eight hours’ rest. Mr. Preedy, the butcher whose inflated body bore
a ludicrous resemblance to a punch ball and who smelt strongly of meat
fat, his hard-bosomed spouse and Ernest Treadwell, the young man from
the library who would have sold his soul for Lola, followed her down the
narrow staircase. But it was Lola who got the last word. She stood on
the step of the cab and put a soft hand against Miss Breezy’s cheek. “Do
this for me, Auntie,” she wheedled. “Please, please. If you don’t——”

“Well?”

“There are other great ladies and very few ladies’ maids, and if I go to
one of them, how will you be able to keep your eye on me,—and you ought
to keep your eye on me, you know.”

“Well!” said Miss Breezy to herself, as the cab rattled home. “Did you
ever? What an extraordinary child! Nothing of John about her and just as
little of Ellen. Where does she get these strange things from?” It was
not until she arrived finally at Dover Street that she added two words
to her attempted diagnosis which came in the nature of an inspiration.
“_She’s French!_”



V


It was a lukewarm night, without wind and without moon, starless.
Excited at having got in her request, which she knew from a close study
of her aunt’s character was bound to be refused and after a process of
flattery eventually conceded, Lola waved her hand to the Preedys and
graciously consented to give a few minutes to Ernest Treadwell. The
butcher and his wife, after a lifetime of intimacy with animals, had
both taken on a marked resemblance to sheep. They walked away in the
direction of their large and prosperous corner shop with wide-apart legs
and short quick steps, as though expecting to be rounded up by a bored
but conscientious dog. As she leaned against the private door of her
father’s shop, with the light of the lamp-post on hair that was the
color of buttercups, she did look French. If Miss Breezy were to take
the trouble to read a well-known book of memoirs published during the
reign of Louis XIV, it would dawn upon her that the little Lola of
Queen’s Road, Bayswater, daughter of the cockney watchmaker and Ellen
who came from a flat market garden in Middlesex, threw back to a certain
Madame de Brézé, the famous courtesan. Whether her respect for her
brother would become less or grow greater for this discovery it is not
easy to say. Probably, being a snob, it would increase.

“Don’t stand there without a hat, Lola dear. You may catch cold.”

“Mother always says that,” said Lola, “even in the middle of the summer,
but she won’t call again for ten minutes, so let’s steal a little chat.”
She put her hand on Treadwell’s shoulder with a butterfly touch and held
him rooted and grateful. He had the pale skin that goes with red hair as
well as the pale eyes, but as he looked at this girl of whom he dreamed
by day and night, they flared as they had flared when he had seen her
first as a little girl with her hair in a queue at the other end of a
classroom. He stood with his foot on the step and his hands clasped
together, inarticulate. Behind his utter commonplaceness there was the
soul of Romeo, the passion of self-sacrifice that goes with great
lovers. He had been too young for gun fodder in the war but he had
served in spirit for Lola’s sake and had performed a useful job in the
capacity of a boy scout messenger in the War Office. His bony knees and
awkward body had been the joke of many a ribald subaltern, mud-stained
from the trenches.

“What are you doing on Saturday afternoon?” asked Lola. “Shall we walk
to Hampton Court and see the crocuses? They’re all up now like little
soldiers in a pantomime.”

“I’ll call for you at two o’clock,” answered the boy, thrilling as
though he had been decorated. “We’ll have tea there and come back on top
of a bus. I suppose your mother wouldn’t let me take you to the theater?
There’s a great piece at the Hammersmith,—Henry Ainley. He’s fine.”

Lola laughed softly. “Mother’s a dear,” she said. “She lets me do
everything I want to do after I’ve told her that I’m simply going to do
it. Besides, she likes you.”

“Do _you_ like me, Lola?” The question came before the boy could be
seized with his usual timidity. It was followed by a rush of blood to
the head.

The girl’s answer proved her possession of great kindness and an amazing
lack of coquetry. “You are one of my oldest friends, Ernest,” she
replied, thereby giving the boy something to hope for but absolutely
nothing to grasp. He had never dared to go so far as this before and
like all the other boys who hung round Lola had never been able, by any
of his crude efforts, to get her to flirt. Friend was the only word that
any of them could apply to her. And yet even the least precocious of
these boys was convinced of the fact that she was not innocent of her
power.

“I love the spring,—just smell it in the air,” said Lola, going off at a
tangent, “but I shall never live in the country—I mean all the time. I
shall go there and see things grow and get all the scent and the
whispers and the music of the stars and then rush back to town. Do you
believe in reincarnation, Ernest? I do. I was a canary once and lived in
a cage, a big golden cage, full of seeds and water and little bells that
jingled. It stood on the table in a room filled with tapestry and lovely
old furniture. Servants in livery gave me a saucer for a bath and
refilled my seed pans.—I feel like a canary now sometimes. I like to fly
out, perfectly tame, and with no cats about, sing a little and imagine
that I am perfectly free, and then flick back, stand on a perch and do
my best singing to the noise of traffic.” And she laughed again and
added, “What rot we talk when we’re young, don’t we? I must go.”

“No, not yet. Please not yet.” And the boy put his hands out to touch
her and was afraid. He would gladly have died then and there in that
street just to be allowed to kiss her lips.

“It’s late. I must go, Ernest. I have to get up so awfully early. I hate
getting up early. I would like breakfast in bed and a nice maid to bring
me my letters and the papers. Besides, I don’t want to worry Mother. She
has all the worries of the shop. Good night and don’t be late on
Saturday.” She held out her hand.

The boy seized it and held it tight, his brain reeling, and his blood on
fire. He stood for an instant unable to give expression to the romance
that she stirred in him, with his mouth open and his rather faulty teeth
showing, and his big awkward nose very white. And when she had gone and
the door of her castle was closed, the poor knight, who had none of the
effrontery of the troubadour, paced up and down for an hour in front of
the shop, saying half aloud all the things from Shakespeare which alone
seemed fit for the ears of that princess,—princess of Queen’s Road,
Bayswater!



VI


The room at the back of the house in which Lola had been installed since
she had been old enough to sleep alone had been her parents’ bedroom and
was larger than the one to which they had retired. While Breezy had
argued that he damned well didn’t intend to turn out for that kid, Mrs.
Breezy had moved the furniture. The best room only was good enough for
Lola. The window gave a sordid view of back yards filled with packing
cases, washing, empty bottles and one or two anæmic laburnum trees which
for a few days once a year burst into a sort of golden smile and then
became sullen again,—observation posts for the most corrupt of animals,
the London cat. It was in this room that Mrs. Breezy, trespassing
sometimes, stood for a few moments lost in amazement, feeling more than
ever the changeling sense that she did her best to forget.

With the money that she had saved up—birthday money, Christmas money and
a small allowance made to her by her father—Lola had bought a rank
imitation of an old four-poster bed made probably in Birmingham. Over it
she had hung a canopy of chintz with a tapestry pattern on a black
background, copied from an illustration in the life of Du Barry. From
time to time pillows with lace covers had been added to the luxurious
pile, a little footstool placed at the side of the bed and—the latest
acquisition—an eiderdown now lent an air of swollen pomp to the whole
thing, which, to the puzzled and concerned mother, was immoral. Hers was
one of those still existing minds which read immorality into all
attempts to break away from her own strict set of conventions,
especially when it was in the direction of beautifying a bed, to her, of
course, an unmentionable thing. In America, without doubt, she would be
a cherished and respected member of the Board of Motion Picture Censors,
as well as—having a cellar—a militant prohibitionist.

For the rest, the room possessed a sofa which was an English cousin to
an Italian day bed and curtains of china silk in which there was a faint
tinge of pink. A small table on which there was a collection of dainty
things for writing, mementos of many Christmases and several lines of
shelves crammed with books gave the room something of the appearance of
a boudoir, and this was added to by half a dozen cheap French prints
framed in gold which looked rather well against a wall paper of tiny
bouquets tied up with blue ribbon. Lola’s collection of books had
frequently sent John Breezy into gusts of mirth. There was nothing among
them that he could read. Very few of them were in English and those were
of French history. The rest were the lives and memoirs of famous
courtesans, including those of the Madame de Brézé, to whom the
watchmaker always referred with a mixture of pride and levity,—but not
when his wife was in hearing. A bulky French dictionary, old and
dog-eared, stood in solitude upon the writing table.

It was to this room that Lola withdrew as often as possible to cut
herself off from every suggestion of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and the
shop below, and to forget her daily journeys to and from the Polytechnic
where she was supposed to be taking a commercial course in bookkeeping
and shorthand with a view either to going into an office or becoming a
teacher in one of the many small schools which endeavored to keep their
heads up in and about that portion of London.

The game of make-believe, which the dramatist who followed Lola from
Hyde Park corner that afternoon had watched her play, had been carried
on in this bed-sitting room ever since she had fallen under the spell of
the de Brézé memoirs. It was here, especially on Sunday mornings, that
this young thing let her imagination have full play while her father and
mother, dressed in their Sabbath best, attended the Methodist Church
near-by. Then, playing the part of her celebrated ancestress, she put on
a little lace cap and a _peignoir_ over her nightgown and sat up in bed
to receive the imaginary friends, admirers and sycophants who came to
her with the latest gossip, with rare and beautiful gifts and with the
flattery of their kind, which, while it pleased her very much, failed to
turn her head, because, after all, she had inherited much of her
mother’s shrewdness. With her door locked, her nose powdered and her
lips the color of a cherry, Lola conducted, for her own amusement, a
brilliant series of monologues which, if given on the stage in a setting
a little more elaborate, would have set all London laughing.

The girl’s mimicry of the people whom she brought to life from the pages
of those French books was perfectly delightful. She brought her master
to life. With a keen sense of characterization she built him
up—unconsciously assisted by Aunt Hannah—into as close a resemblance to
Fallaray as she could,—a tired, world-worn man, starving for love and
adoration, weighed down by the problems of a civilization in chaos,
distrait and sometimes almost brusque, but always chivalrous and kind,
who came to her for refreshment and inspiration and left her with a
lighter tread and renewed optimism. Ancient dames whose days were over
came to her with envy in their hearts and the hope of charity in their
withered souls to tell her of their triumphs and the scandals of their
time. But the character upon whom she concentrated all her humor and
sarcasm was the friend of her master, an unscrupulous person who loved
her and never could resist the opportunity of pressing his suit in
flowery but passionate terms and with an accent which, elaborately
Parisian, was reproduced from that of the French journalist who had
taught Lola his language in a class that she had attended for several
years. These word fencings had begun, of course, as a child would
naturally have begun them, with the stilted sentences and high-flown
remarks which she had lifted from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. They had become
more and more sophisticated as the years had passed and were now full of
subtleties and insinuations against which, egging the man on, Lola
defended herself with what she took to be great wit and cleverness.

If her little mother had ever gone so far as to put her ear to the
keyhole of that bedroom, she would have listened to something which
would probably have sent her to a doctor to consult him as to her
daughter’s mental condition. She would have heard, for instance, the
well-modulated voice of that practised lovemaker and the laughing
high-pitched replies of a girl not unpleased with his attentions but
adamant to his pleadings and perfectly sure of herself. It is true that
Mrs. Breezy would not have understood one word that was spoken because
it was all in French, but the mere act of conducting long conversations
with imaginary characters as a hobby would have struck deep at her sense
of the fitness of things, especially as Sunday was the day chosen for
such a game. The Methodist mind is strangely inelastic.

What would have been said to all this by a disciple of Freud it is easy
to conceive. He would have read into it the existence of a complex
proving a suppressed desire which must have landed Lola in a lunatic
asylum. Common sense and a rudimentary knowledge of heredity might,
however, have given to the mother and the psychoanalyst the key to all
this. The fact was that Lola threw back to her French ancestress who,
like herself, was the daughter of humble, honest people, and the glamor
of the de Brézé memoirs had not only caught and colored her imagination,
which was her strongest trait, but had shown her how to exploit the gift
of sex appeal in a way that would make her essential to a man who had it
in him to become a great political figure, the only way in which she,
like the de Brézé, could be placed in a golden cage with all the
luxuries, share in the secrets of government, meet the men who counted,
bask in the reflected glory of power, and give in return so
whole-hearted a love, devotion, encouragement and refreshment that her
“master” would go out to the affairs of his country grateful and
humanized. She could not, of course, ever hope to achieve this ambition
by marriage. No such man would marry the daughter of a watchmaker. It
was that the spirit of this woman lived again in the Breezys’ little
daughter; that in her there had been revived the same desire to force a
place for herself in a world to which she had not been born, and that
she had been endowed with the same feminine qualities that were
necessary to such a scheme. In the knowledge of this and pinning her
faith to a similar cause—the word was hers—Lola Breezy had gone through
those curious years of double life more and more determined to perform
this kind of courtesanship, believing that she had inherited the voice
with which to sing the little songs of a canary in the secret cage of no
less a man than one of proved ability and idealism, who was within an
ace of premiership, and—so that her vanity might be satisfied in the
proof of her own ability to help him—against whom was pitted all that
was mean, ignorant, jealous and reactionary in a bad political system.

What more natural, therefore, than that the man who fulfilled all these
requirements and whom she would give her life to serve was Fallaray. He
had been brought home to her every Thursday evening by her aunt for ten
years. She had read in the papers every word that he had spoken; had
followed his course of action through all the years of the War which he
had done his best to prevent; had watched his lonely struggle to
substantiate a League of Nations free from blood lust and territorial
greed; had seen him pelted with lies and calumny when he had cried out
that Germany must be allowed to live if Europe were to live; and that
very day had stood trembling in front of the billboard which announced
that he would not stand for the bloody and disastrous reprisals in
Ireland that were backed by the Prime Minister. He was the one honest
man, the one idealist in English politics; the one great humanitarian
who possessed that strength and fairness of mind which permitted him to
see both sides of a question; to belong to a party without being a slave
to its shibboleths; to commit the sudden volt-faces so impossible to
brass hats and to the Junkers of all nationality; the one man in the
House of Commons who didn’t give a damn for limelight,
self-aggrandizement, titles, graft and all the rest of the things which
have been brought into that low and unclean business by men who would
sell the country for a drink. And above all he was unhappy with his
wife.

The housekeeper aunt had built up for this girl a hero who fitted
exactly into the niche in her heart and ambitions. All the stories and
backstairs gossip about him had excited her desire to become a second
Madame de Brézé in his life and bring the rustle of silk to this Eveless
man. Never once did there enter into her game of make-believe or her
dreams of achievement the idea of becoming Fallaray’s wife, even if, at
any time, he should be free to marry again. She had too keen a sense of
psychology for that. She saw the need to Fallaray, as to other such men
in his position, of a secret romance,—stolen meetings, brief escapes,
entrancing interludes, and the desire—the paradox of asceticism—for
feminine charms. She had read the story of Parnell and understood it; of
Nelson and sympathized with it. She knew the history of other men of
absorbing patriotism and great intellect who had kept their optimism and
their humanity because of a woman’s tenderness and flattery, and
whenever she looked at the picture of Fallaray, in whom she recognized a
modern Quixote tilting at windmills, she saw that he stood in urgent
need of a woman who could do for him what Madame de Brézé had done for
that minister of Louis XIV. During all her intelligent years, therefore,
she had conducted herself in the hope, vague and futile as it seemed, of
some day being discovered to Fallaray, and in her heart there had grown
up a love and a hero worship so strong and so passionate that it could
never be transferred to any other man.

The reason, then, why Lola had turned the whole force of her
concentration upon entering the house in Dover Street as lady’s maid
becomes clear. Here, suddenly, was her chance. Once in this house, in
attendance upon Lady Feo, it would be possible for her not only to learn
the manners and the language of the only women who were known to
Fallaray, but eventually, with luck and strategy, to exercise her gift,
as she called it, upon Fallaray himself. What did she care whether, as
her aunt had said, she went down a peg in the social scale by becoming a
lady’s maid? She would willingly become a crossing sweeper or a beggar
girl.

If it were true that Fallaray never went into the side of the house that
was occupied by his wife, then she would eventually, when she felt that
her apprenticeship had been served, slip into the other side. Like all
women she had cunning and like very few courage. Opportunity comes to
those who make it and she was ready and eager to undergo any humiliation
to try herself, so to speak, on Fallaray. Ernest Treadwell loved her and
would, she knew, die for her willingly. There was the hero stuff in him.
Other boys, too numerous to mention, would go through fire and water for
her kisses. Life was punctuated with turned heads, sudden flashes of eye
and everyday attempts to win her favor. Once in that house in Dover
Street——



VII


Saturday came. Ernest Treadwell arrived early, his face shining with
Windsor soap. He had bought a spring tie at Hope Brothers, the name and
the season going well with his mood. It was a ghastly affair,—yellow
with blobs of red. It was indeed much more suited to Mr. Prouty, the
butcher. It illustrated something at which he frequently looked,—animal
blood on a sawdust floor. But Ernest Treadwell was one of those men who
could always be persuaded into wearing anything that was offered to him.
He was a dreamer, the stuff that poets are made of, impractical,
embarrassed. He went about with his young and incoherent brain seething
with the tail end of big thoughts. If he had not been watched by a fond
mother, he would probably have left the house with his trousers around
his neck and his legs thrust through the sleeves of his coat. He walked
up and down the street for half an hour with his cap on the back of his
head and a tuft of hair sticking out in front of it,—an earnest,
ungainly, intelligent, heroic person who might one day become a second
Wells and write a Joan and Peter about the children of Joan and Peter.

Saturday was a good day for the Breezys and much of Friday night had
been spent cleaning and rearranging the cheap and alluring
silverware—birthday presents, wedding presents, lovers’ presents—which
invariably filled the windows. Twice Lola had looked down and watched
her young friend as he marched up and down beneath, with an ecstatic
smile on his face. It was after her second look that she made up her
mind to desert the crocuses in Hampton Court and make that boy escort
her to Dover Street. Acting under a sudden inspiration she determined to
go and see her aunt. She knew perfectly well that Miss Breezy had had
time to think over the point which had been suggested to her and was by
now probably quite ready to accept it. That was the woman’s character.
She began by saying no to everything and ended, of course, by saying yes
to most of them, and the more emphatic she was in the beginning the more
easily she caved in finally. After all, she was very fond of her niece
and would welcome the opportunity of having the girl’s company at night
and during the hours when Lady Feo was out. Lola knew all that and her
entrance into Dover Street had become an obsession, a fixed idea, and if
her aunt should develop a hitherto undemonstrated stiff back,—well then
her hand must be forced, that’s all, either by hook or by crook. Dressed
as simply as usual but wearing her Sunday hat, Lola passed through the
shop, dropped a kiss on her father’s head, twiddled her fingers at her
mother, who was “getting off” a perfectly hideous vase stuck into a
filigree silver support and must not, therefore, be interrupted in her
diplomatic flow of persuasion. She was met at the door by Ernest
Treadwell, who sheepishly removed his cap. He would have given ten years
of his life to have been able to doff it in the manner of Sir Walter
Raleigh and utter a string of highly polished phrases suitable to that
epoch-making occasion. Instead of which he said, “’Ello,” and dropped
his “h” at her feet.

Queen’s Road wore its usual Saturday afternoon appearance and its narrow
pavement was filled with people shopping for Sunday,—the tide of
semi-society clashing with that of mere respectability. “Hampton
Court’ll look great to-day,” said Ernest, who felt that with the
assistance of the crocuses he might be able to stammer a few words of
love and admiration.

Lola glanced up at the clear sky and the April sun which was in a very
kindly mood. “I’m sure it will,” she said, “but I’m afraid I’ve got a
disappointment for Ernie. I want you to be a dear and take me to see my
aunt in Dover Street. It’s—it’s awfully important.”

The boy’s eyes flicked and a curious whiteness settled about his nose.
But he played the knight. “Whatever you say, Lola,” he said, and forced
himself to smile. Poor boy, it was a sad blow. He had gone to bed the
night before, dreaming of this little adventure. It would have been the
first time that he had ever spent an afternoon and evening alone with
the girl who occupied the throne of his heart.

Lola knew this. She could see the whole story behind the boy’s smile. So
she took his arm to compensate him,—knowing how well it would. “There
are crocuses in Kensington Garden,” she said. “We’ll have a look at
those as we pass.”

Every head that turned and every eye that flared made Ernest Treadwell
swell with pride as well as resentment. A policeman held up the traffic
for Lola at the top of the road and one of the keepers of the Gardens,
an old soldier, saluted her as she went through the gates. She rewarded
these attentions with what she called her best de Brézé smile. Some day
other and vastly more important men should gladly show her deference.
They followed the broad path which led to Marble Arch, raising their
voices in order to overcome the incessant roar of traffic in the
Bayswater Road. Lola did most of the talking that afternoon and it was
all inspirational, to fire the boy into greater ambition and effort. She
had read some of his poetry,—strange stuff that showed the influence of
Masefield, crude and half-baked but not untouched with imagery. She
believed in Ernest Treadwell and took a very real delight in his
improvement. But for her encouragement it might have been some years
before he broke out of hobble-de-hoydom and the semi-vicious ineptitude
that goes with it. He was very happy as he went along with the warm hand
on his arm. His vanity glowed under her friendship, as she intended that
it should.

The old Gardens were green and fresh, gay with new leaves and daffodils.
Only the presence of smashed men made it look different from the good
days before the War. Would all those children who played under the eyes
of mothers and nurses be laid presently in sacrifice upon the altars of
the old Bad Men of politics who had done nothing to avert the recent
cataclysm?

Lola was excited and on her mettle. She was nearing the crossroads. On
the one that she had marked out stood Fallaray,—the merest speck.
Success with Aunt Hannah meant the first rung of her ladder. Oxford
Street was like a once smart woman who had become _déclassé_. It seemed
to be competing with High Street, Putney. There was something
pathetically blatant in the shop window arrangements, a strained effort
to catch what little money was left to the public after the struggle to
make both ends meet and pay the overwhelming taxation. The two young
people were unconscious of the change. Lola babbled incessantly. Among
other things she said, “I suppose you’re a socialist, aren’t you,
Ernest? You’ve never discussed it with me, but I think you must be
because you write poetry, and somehow all poets seem to be socialists. I
suppose it’s because poetry’s so badly paid.”

“I dunno about that. I’ve never tried to sell my stuff. I’m against
everything and everybody, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t know
whether it’s true to call it Socialism. There’s a new word for it which
suits me,—intelligensia. I don’t think that’s the way to pronounce it
but it’s near enough. It’s in all the weekly papers now and stands for
anarchy with hair oil on the bombs. Why do you ask me?”

Lola still had her hand on his arm. “Well, I’m afraid I’m going to give
you a shock soon. I’m going to be a servant.”

“Good God,” said Ernest. His grandfather had been a valet, his father a
piano tuner, he himself had risen to the heights of assistant librarian
in a public library, and if his ambition to become a Labor member ever
was realized he might very easily wind up as a peer. His children would
then belong to the new aristocracy with Lola as Lady Treadwell. He
gasped under the blow. “What will your mother say?”

“I’m afraid Mother will hang her head in shame until she gets my angle
of it. Luckily I can always point to Aunt. She’s a housekeeper, you see,
and after all that’s only a sort of upper servant, isn’t it?”

“But,—what’s the idea?”

This was not a question to which Lola had any intention of giving an
answer. It was a perfectly private affair. She went off at one of her
inevitable tangents so useful in order to dodge issues. She pointed to
an enormous Rolls-Royce which stood outside Selfridge’s. On the panel
was painted a coat of arms as big as a soup tureen. She held Ernest back
to watch the peculiar people who descended from it,—the man small and
fat, with bandy legs and a great moustache waxed into points; the woman
bulbous and wobbly, cluttered up with diamonds, made pathetic by a skirt
that was almost up to her knees. What an excellent thing the War had
been for them.

“New rich,” said Lola. “I saw them the other day coming out of a house
at the top of Park Lane which Father told me used to belong to a Duke.
Good Lord, why shouldn’t I be a servant without causing a crack in the
constitution of the country?”

Fundamentally snobbish as all socialists are, the boy shook his head.
“You should lead, not serve,” he said, quoting from one of his masters.
And that was all he could manage. Lola,—a servant! They turned into Bond
Street in which all the suburban ladies who were not enjoying the
matinées were gluing their noses to the shop windows. Ernest Treadwell
was unfamiliar with this part of London. He preferred the democratic
Strand when he could get away from his duties. He felt more and more
sheepish and self-conscious as Lola drew up instinctively at every shop
in which corsets were displayed and diaphanous underwear spread out. The
silk stockings on extremely well-shaped wooden legs she admired
extremely and desired above all things. The bootmakers’ shops also came
in for her close attention. The little French shoes with high vamps and
stubby noses drew exclamations of delight and envy. Several spots on the
window of Aspray’s bore the impression of her nose before she could tear
herself away. A set of dressing-table things made of gold and
tortoiseshell made her eyes widen and her lips part. Ernest Treadwell
would willingly have sacrificed all his half-baked socialism to be able
to buy any one of those things for Lola.

Finally they came to Dover Street, that oasis in the heart of Mayfair
where even yet certain houses remain untouched by the hand of trade. The
Fallaray house was on the sunny side, where it stood gloomily with
frowning windows and an uninviting door. It was the oldest house in the
street and wore its octogenarian appearance without camouflage. It had
belonged originally to the Throgmorton family upon whom Fate had laid a
hoodoo. The last of the line was glad to sell it to Fallaray’s
grandfather, the cotton man. What he would have said if he could have
returned to his old haunts, opened his door with his latch key and
walked in to find Lady Feo and her gang God only knows.

It was well known to Lola. Many times she had walked up and down Dover
Street in order to gaze at the windows behind which she thought that
Fallaray might be sitting, and several times she had been into her
aunt’s rooms which overlooked the narrow yards of Bond Street.

“Wait for me here, Ernest,” she said. “I don’t think I shall be very
long. If I’m more than half an hour, give me up and we’ll have another
afternoon later on.”

She waved her hand, went down the area steps and rang the bell. Ernest
Treadwell, to whom the house had taken on a sinister appearance, sloped
off with rounded shoulders and a tight mouth. They might have been in
Hampton Court looking at the crocuses.—Lola,—a servant. Good God!



VIII


Albert Simpkins opened the door.

It wasn’t his job to open doors, because he was a valet. But it so
happened that he was the only person in the servants’ quarters who was
not either dressing, lying down after a heavy lunch or out to enjoy an
hour’s fresh air.

“Miss Breezy, please,” said Lola.

Simpkins gasped. If he had been passing through the hall and a footman
had opened the front door to this girl he would have slipped into a dark
corner to watch her enter, believing that she had come to visit Lady
Feo. He knew a thoroughbred when he saw one. That she should have come
to the area of all places seemed to him to be irregular, not in
conformity with the rules of social rectitude which were his religion.
All the same he thrilled, and like every other man who caught sight of
Lola and stood near enough to catch the indefinable scent of her hair,
stumbled over his words.

Lola repeated her remark and gave him a vivid friendly smile. If she
carried her point with her aunt presently, this man would certainly be
useful. “If you will please come in,” said Simpkins, “I’ll go and see if
Miss Breezy’s upstairs. What name shall I say?”

“Lola Breezy.”

“Miss Lola Breezy. Thank you.” He paused for a moment to bask, and then
with a little bow in which he acknowledged her irresistible and
astonishing effect, disappeared,—valet stamped upon his respectability
like a Cunard label on a suit case.

Lola chuckled and remained standing in the middle of what was used by
the servants as a sitting room. How easy it was, with her gift, to
shatter men’s few senses. She knew the place well,—its pictures of Queen
Victoria and of famous race horses cut from illustrated papers cheaply
framed and its snapshots of the gardens of Chilton Park, Whitecross,
Bucks. Discarded books of all sorts were piled up on various tables.
_The Spectator_ and _The New Statesman_, Massingham’s peevish weekly,
_Punch_, _The Sketch_ and _The Tatler_, _Eve_ and the _Bystander_, which
had come downstairs from the higher regions, were scattered here and
there. They had been read and commented upon first by the butler and
then downwards through all the gradations of servants to the girl who
played galley slave to the cook. Lola wondered how long it would be
before she also would be spending her spare time in that room,
hobnobbing with the various members of the family below stairs. A few
days, perhaps, not more,—now that she had fastened on this plan.

Simpkins returned almost immediately. “If you will follow me,” he said,
and gave her an alluring smile which disclosed a row of teeth that were
peculiarly English. He led the way along a narrow passage up the back
staircase and out upon a wide and imposing corridor, hung with Flemish
tapestry and old portraits, which appealed to Lola’s sense of the
decorative and sent her head up with a tilt of proprietorship. This was
her atmosphere. This was the corridor along which her imaginary
sycophants had passed so often to her room in Queen’s Road, Bayswater.
“We’re not supposed to go through here,” said Simpkins, eager to talk,
“except on duty. But it’s a short cut to the housekeeper’s quarters and
there’s no one in to catch us. You look well against that hanging,” he
added. “Like a picture in the Academy,”—which to him was the Temple of
Art.

A door opened and there were heavy footsteps.

“Look out. The governor.” He seized Lola’s arm and in a panic drew her
into the shadow of a large armoire.

Her heart jumped into her mouth!—It was her hero in the flesh, the man
at whose feet she had worshipped,—within a few inches of her, walking
slowly, with his hands behind his back, his mouth compressed and a sort
of hit-me-why-don’t-you in his eye. Still with Simpkins’s hand upon her
arm she slipped out,—not to be seen, not with any thought of herself,
but to watch Fallaray stride along the corridor; and get the wonder of a
first look.

A door banged and he was gone.

“A pretty near thing,” said Simpkins. “It always happens like that. I
don’t suppose he would have noticed us. Mostly he sees nothing but his
thoughts,—looks inwards, I mean. But rules is rules. He lives in that
wing of the ’ouse,—has a library and a bedroom there and another room
fitted up as a gym where he goes through exercises to keep hisself fit.
Give ’im enough in the House to keep ’im fit, you’d think, wouldn’t yer?
A wonderful man.—Come on, Miss, nick through here.” He opened a door,
ran lightly up a short flight of stairs and came back again into the
servant’s passage. “’Ere you are,” he said and smiled brilliantly,
putting in, as he thought, good work. This girl——! “I’ll be glad to see
you ’ome,” he added anxiously.

Lola said, “Thank you, but I have some one waiting for me,” and entered.



IX


“Well!” said Miss Breezy.

“I hope so,” said Lola, kissing the ear that was presented to her.

“I’m just rearranging my things. Her Ladyship’s just given me some new
pictures. They used to be in the morning room, but she got sick of them
and handed ’em over to me. I’m going to hang them up.” She might have
added that nearly everything that the room contained had been given to
her by Lady Feo with a similar generosity but her sense of humor was not
very keen or else her sense of loyalty was. At any rate, there she stood
in the middle of a nice airy room with something around her head to keep
the dust out of her hair, wearing a pair of gloves, a stepladder near at
hand.

There were six fair-sized canvases in gold frames,—seascapes; bold,
excellent work, with the wind blowing over them and spray coming out
that made the lips all salty. They made you hear the mewing of sea
gulls.

“Lady Feo bought them to help a young artist. He was killed in the War.
She hates the sea, it makes her sick, and doesn’t want to be reminded of
anything sad. I don’t wonder, and anyway, they’ll look very nice here.
Do you like them?”

Lola had sized them up in a glance. She too would have turned them out.
They seemed to her rough and draughty. “Yes,” she said, “they’re very
good, aren’t they?” She mounted the ladder and held out her hands. She
had come to ask a favor. She might as well make herself popular at once.
“Hand them up, Auntie, and I’ll hang them for you.”

“Oh, well now, that’s very nice. I get giddy on a ladder. You came just
at the right moment. Can you manage it? It’s very heavy. The first time
I’ve ever seen you making yourself useful, my dear.”

This enabled Lola to get in her first point. “Mother never allows me to
be useful,” she said, “and really doesn’t understand the sort of thing
that I can do best.” She stretched up, hung the cord over a brass
bracket and straightened it.

“Well, you can certainly do this job! Go on and do the rest while you’re
at it. I was looking forward to a very tiring afternoon. I didn’t want
to have any of the maids to help me. They resent being asked to do
anything that is outside their regular duty.”

And so Lola proceeded, hating to get her hands dirty and not very keen
on indulging in athletics, but with a determination made doubly firm by
the fleeting sight of Fallaray.

Miss Breezy was in an equable mood that afternoon,—less pompous than
usual, less consumed with the importance of being the controlling brain
in the management of the Fallaray “establishment,” as she called it in
the stilted language of the auctioneer. She became almost human as she
watched Lola perform the task which would have put her to a considerable
amount of physical inconvenience. When one is relieved of anything in
the nature of work, equability is the cheapest form of gratitude.

The room was a particularly nice one, large, with a low ceiling and two
windows which overlooked Dover Street. It didn’t in the least indicate
the character of the housekeeper because not a single thing in it was
her own except a few books. Everything else had been given to her by
Lady Feo, and like the pictures, had been discarded from one or other of
the rooms below. The Sheraton sofa had come from the drawing-room. A
Dowager Duchess had sat on it one evening after dinner and let herself
go on the question of the Feo gang. It had been thrown out the following
morning. The armoire of ripe oak, made up of old French altarpieces—an
exquisite thing worth its weight in gold—had suffered a similar fate.
Rappé the ubiquitous photographer had taken a picture of Lady Feo
leaning against one of its doors. It turned out badly. In fact, the
angel on the other door looked precisely as though it were growing on
Lady Feo’s nose. It might have been good art but it was bad
salesmanship. Away went the armoire. The story of all the other things
was the same so that the room had begun to assume the appearance of the
den of a dealer in old furniture. There were even a couple of old
masters on the walls,—a Reynolds and a Lely, portraits of the members of
Lady Feo’s family whose faces she objected to and whose admonishing eyes
she couldn’t bear to have upon her when she came down to luncheon
feeling a little chippy after a night out. These also were priceless. It
had become indeed one of the nicest rooms in the house. Every day it
added something to Miss Breezy’s increasing air of dignity and
beatitude.

Lola did not fail to admire the way in which her aunt had arranged her
wonderful presents and used all her arts of flattery before she came
round to the reason of her visit. This she did as soon as Miss Breezy
had prepared tea with something of the ceremony of the Japanese and
arranged herself to be entertained by the child for whose temperament
she had found some excuse by labelling it French. Going cunningly to
work, she began by saying, “What do you think? You remember Mother’s
friends, the Proutys, who were playing cards the other night?”

“Indeed I do,” replied Miss Breezy. “Whenever I meet those people it
takes me some time to get over the unpleasant smell of meat fat. What
about them?”

“Cissie, the daughter, has gone into the chorus of the Gaiety, and is
very happy there. She’s going to be in the second row at first, but
she’s bound to be noticed, she says, because she has to pose as a statue
in the second act covered all over with white stuff.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, but it will take an hour to put on every night. And before the end
of the run she’ll probably be married at St. Margaret’s to an officer in
the Guards, she says. She told me that she couldn’t hope to become a
lady in any other way. I was wondering what you would say if I did the
same thing?”

Miss Breezy almost dropped her cup as Lola knew that she would. “You
don’t mean to say you’ve come to tell me that you’ve got _that_ fearful
scheme in the back of your head, you alarming child? A chorus girl?”

Lola laughed. “You know _my_ way of improving myself: to serve an
apprenticeship as a lady’s maid, a respectable way,—the way in which
you’re going to help me now that you’ve thought it all over.”

The answer came like the rapping of a machine gun. “I’ve not thought it
over and what’s more, I’m not going to begin to think it over. I told
you so.”

Without turning a hair Lola handed a plate of cakes. “But you wouldn’t
like me to follow Cissie’s example, would you,—and that’s the
alternative.” Poor dear old Aunt! What was the use of pretending to be
firm. All the trumps were against her.

But for once Lola miscalculated her hand and the woman. “If you must
make a fool of yourself,” said Miss Breezy, “you must. I’m not your
mother and luckily you can’t break my heart. I told you the other night
and I tell you again that I do not intend to be a party to your lowering
yourself by becoming a servant and there’s an end of it.” And she waved
her disengaged hand.

It was almost a minute before Lola recovered her breath. She sat back,
then, and put her head on one side. “In that case,” she said in a
perfectly even voice, “I must try to get used to the other idea. I think
I might look rather well in tights and Cissie tells me that if I were to
join her at the Gaiety I should be put into a number in which five other
girls will come on in underclothes in a bedroom scene. Of course I
should keep my own name and before long you’d see my photograph in the
_Tatler_ as ‘the latest recruit to the footlights,—the
great-great-granddaughter of the famous Madame de Brézé.’ I should tell
the first reporter that, of course, to make it interesting.”

Miss Breezy rocked to and fro, gripping her cup. How often had she
shuddered at the sight of scantily dressed precocious girls sitting in
alarming attitudes on the shiny paper of the _Tatler_. To think of Lola
in underclothes, debasing a highly respectable name! Nevertheless, “I am
not to be bullied,” she said, wobbling like a turkey. “I have always
given way to you before, Lola, but in this case my mind is made up.
Can’t you understand how awkward it would be to have you in the house on
a level with servants who have to be kept in order by me? It would
undermine my authority.” That was the point, and it was a good one. And
then her starchiness left her under the horror of the alternative. “As
for that other thing,—well, you couldn’t go a better way to kill your
poor mother and surely you don’t want to do that?”

“Of course I don’t, Auntie.”

“There’s no call for you to think about any way of earning a living,
Lola. Your parents don’t want to get rid of you, Heaven knows, and even
in these bad times they can get along very nicely and keep you too. You
know that.”

Lola had never dreamed of this adamantine attitude. Her aunt had been so
easy to manage before. What was she to do?

Thinking that she was winning, Miss Breezy went at it again. “Come, now.
Be a good child and forget both these schemes. Go on with your classes
and it won’t be long before a suitable person will turn up and ask you
to marry him. Your type marries young. Now, will you promise me to think
no more about it all?”

But this was Lola’s only chance to enter the first stage of her crusade.
She would fight for it to the last gasp. “The chorus, yes,” she said.
“As for the other thing, no, Auntie. If you won’t help me I must get the
paper in the morning and search through the advertisements. I’m sure to
come across some one who wants a lady’s maid and after all, it won’t
very much matter who it is. You see, I want to earn my living, and I
have made up my mind to do it in this way. There’s good pay, a beautiful
house to live in, no early trains to catch, no bad weather to go
through, holidays in the country and with any luck foreign travel. I
can’t understand why many more girls like me don’t go in for this sort
of life. I only thought, of course, it would be so nice to be under your
eye and guidance. Mother would much prefer it to be that way, I’m sure.”

But even this practical argument had no effect except to rouse the good
lady’s dander. “You are a very nagging girl,” she cried. “I can see
perfectly well what you’re driving at but you won’t undermine my
decision, I can tell you that. I will not have you in this house and
that’s final.”

Lola was beaten. To her astonishment and chagrin she found that her nail
was not to be hammered in. There was steel in the old lady’s
composition, after all. But there was steel in her own and she quickly
decided to leave things as they stood and think out another line of
attack before the following Thursday. And then, remembering Ernest
Treadwell, who was living up to his name from one end of the street to
the other and back, she rose to tear herself away with an air of great
patience and affection. Just as she was about to bend down and touch the
usual ear with her lips, the door suddenly swung open and a woman with
bobbed hair, wearing a red velvet tam-o’-shanter and a curious one-piece
garment of brown velvet which disclosed a pair of very admirable legs,
stood smiling in the doorway. Her face was as white as the petals of a
white rose. Her large violet eyes had lashes as black as her eyebrows
and her wanton mouth showed a set of teeth as white and strong as a
negro’s. “Oh, hello, Breezy,” she cried out, her voice round and
ringing. “Excuse my barging in like this. I want to know what you’ve
done about the table decorations for to-morrow night.”

Miss Breezy rose hurriedly to her feet, and Lola, although she had never
seen this woman before, followed her example, sensing the fact that here
was the famous Lady Feo.

“I sent Mr. Biddle round to Lee and Higgins in Bond Street, my lady. You
need have no anxiety about it.”

“That’s all right but I’ve altered my mind. I don’t want flowers. I’ve
bought a set of caricatures and I’m going to put one in front of every
place. If it’s too late to cancel the order, telephone to Lee and
Higgins and tell them to send the flowers to any old hospital that
occurs to them.” Lady Feo had spotted Lola immediately and during all
this time had never taken her eyes away from the girl’s face and figure,
which she looked over with frank and unabashed curiosity and admiration.
With characteristic effrontery she made her examination as thorough as
she would have done if she had been sizing up a horse with a view to
purchase. “Attractive little person,” she said to herself. “As dainty as
a piece of Sèvres. What the devil’s she doing here?” Making conversation
with a view to discover who Lola was, she added aloud, “I see you’ve
hung the pictures, Breezy.—Breezy and seascapes; they go well together,
don’t they?” And she laughed at the little joke,—a gay and boyish laugh.

With her heart thumping and a ray of hope in front of her, Lola marked
her appreciation of the joke with her most delighted smile.

And Miss Breezy indulged in a diplomatic titter.

“Isn’t it a little remiss of you, Breezy, not to introduce me to your
friend?”

“Oh, I beg your ladyship’s pardon, I’m sure. This is my niece Lola.” She
wished the child in the middle of next week and dreaded the result of
this most unfortunate interruption.

Lady Feo stretched out her hand,—a long-fingered able hand, born for the
violin. “How do you do,” she said, as though to an equal. “How is it
that I haven’t seen you before? Breezy and I are such old friends. I
call her Breezy in that rather abrupt manner—forgive me, won’t
you?—because I’m both rude and affectionate. I hope I didn’t cut in on a
family consultation?”

Lola braced herself. Here was her opportunity indeed! “Oh, no, my lady.
It _was_ a sort of consultation, because I came to talk to Aunt about my
future. It’s time I earned my own living and as she doesn’t want me to
go on the stage, she’s going to be kind enough to help me in another
way.” She got all this in a little breathlessly, with charming naïveté.

“What way?” asked Lady Feo bluntly. “I should think you’d make a great
success on the stage.”

Lola took no notice of her aunt’s angry and frantic signs. She stood
demure and modest under the searching gaze of Lady Feo and with a sense
of extreme triumph took the jump. “The way I most wanted to begin,” she
said, “was to be your ladyship’s maid. That’s my great ambition.”

“And for the love of heaven, why not? Breezy, why the deuce haven’t you
told me about this girl? I would like to have her about me. She’s
decorative. I wouldn’t mind being touched by her and I’m sure she’d look
after my things. Look how neat she is. She might have come out of a
bandbox.”

Miss Breezy bit her lip. She was bitterly annoyed. She was unaware of
the expression but she felt that Lola had double-crossed her,—as indeed
she had. “Well, my lady,” she said, “to tell you the truth, I didn’t
think that you would care to have two people of the same family in your
house. It always leads to trouble.”

“Oh, rot,” said Lady Feo, “I loathe those old shibboleths. They’re so
silly.” She turned to Lola. “Look here, do you really mean to say that
you’d rather be a lady’s maid than kick your heels about in the chorus?”

“If you please, my lady,” said Lola.

“Well, I think you’ll miss a lot of fun, but as far as I’m concerned,
you’re an absolute Godsend. The girl I’ve had for two years is going to
be married. Of course, I can’t stop that, as much as I shall miss her.
The earth needs repeopling, so I must let her go. The question has been
where to get another. With all the unemployment no one seems very keen
on doing anything but work in factories. I’d love to have you. Come by
all means. Breezy, engage her. I hope we shall rub along very nicely
together.”

As much to hide the gleam in her eyes from her aunt as to show deference
to her new mistress, Lola bowed. “I thank you, my lady,” she said.

“Fine,” said Lady Feo, “fine. That’s great. Saves me a world of trouble.
Pretty lucky thing that I looked in here, wasn’t it?” She went to the
door and turned. “When can you come, Lola?”

“To-morrow.—To-night.”

“To-night. I will let Emily off at once. She’ll be glad enough. I’ll
send you home in the car. You can pack your things and get back in time
to brush my hair. I suppose you know something about your job?”

Miss Breezy broke in hurriedly. Even now perhaps it might not be too
late to beat this girl at her own game. “That’s it, my lady,” she said,
tumbling over her words. “She doesn’t know anything about it. I’m afraid
I ought to say——”

“Oh, well, Breezy, that’s nothing new. They none of ’em know anything.
I’ll teach her. I don’t want a sham expert with her nose in the air. All
I need is a girl with quick fingers, nippy on her feet, good to look at,
who will laugh at my jokes. You promise to do that, Lola?”

A most delicious smile curled all about Lola’s mouth. “I promise, my
lady,” she said.

Lady Feo nodded at her. “She’ll make a sensation,” she thought. “How
jealous they’ll all be.—Righto, then. Seven o’clock. Don’t be late. So
long.” And off she went, slamming the door behind her.

“You little devil,” said Miss Breezy, her dignity in great slabs at her
feet.

But Lola had won. And the amazing part of it was that the door of the
house in Dover Street had been opened to her by Fallaray’s wife.




PART II



I


Mrs. Malwood was hipped. She had been losing heavily at bridge, her
Pomeranian had been run over in Berkeley Square and taken to the dog’s
hospital, her most recent flame had just been married to his colonel’s
daughter, and her fourth husband was still alive. Poor little soul, she
had lots to grumble about. So she had come round to be cheered up by Feo
Fallaray who always managed to laugh through deaths and epidemics to
find her friend in the first stages of being dressed for dinner. She had
explained her mental attitude, received a hearty kiss and been told to
lie down and make herself comfortable. There she was, at the moment, in
one of the peculiar frocks which had become almost like the uniform of
Feo’s “gang.” She was not old, except in experience. In fact, she was
not more than twenty-three. But as she lay on the sofa with her eyes
closed and her lashes like black fans on her cheeks, a little pout on
her pretty mouth and her bobbed head resting upon a brilliant cushion,
she looked, in those clothes of hers, like a school girl whose
headmistress was a woman of an aesthetic turn of mind but with a curious
penchant for athleticism. Underneath her smock of duvetyn, the color of
a ripe horse-chestnut, she wore bloomers and stockings rolled down under
her knees,—as everybody could see. She might have been a rather swagger
girl scout who never scouted, and there was just a touch of masculinity
about her without anything muscular. She was, otherwise, so tiny a thing
that any sort of a man could have taken her up in one hand and held her
above his head. Very different from Lady Feo, whose shoulders were
broad, whose bones were large, who stood five foot ten without her
shoes, who could hand back anything that was given to her and swing a
golf club like a man.

“I’ve just been dipping into Margot’s Diary, Georgie. Topping stuff. I
wish to God she were young again,—one of us. She’d make things hum. I
can’t understand why the critics have all thrown so many vitriolic fits
about her book and called her the master egotist. Don’t they know the
meaning of words and isn’t this an autobiography? Good Lord, if any
woman has a right to be egotistical it’s Margot. She did everything well
and to my way of thinking she writes better than all the novelists
alive. She can sum up a character as well in ten lines as all our
verbose young men in ten chapters. In her next book I hope to heaven
she’ll get her second wind and put a searchlight into Downing Street.
Her poor old bird utterly lost his tail but the public ought to know to
what depths of trickery and meanness politics can be carried.—You can
make that iron a bit hotter if you like, Lola. Don’t be afraid of it.”

Lola gave her a glint of smile and laid the iron back on its stand.

During the process of being dressed, Lady Feo reclined in a sort of
barber’s chair—not covered with a _peignoir_ or a filmy dressing jacket
but in what is called in America a union suit—a one-piece thing of silk
with no sleeves and cut like rowing shorts. It became her tremendously
well,—cool and calm and perfectly satisfied with herself. She glanced at
Lola, who stood quiet and efficient in a neat frock of black alpaca,
with her golden hair done closely to her small head, and then winked at
Georgie and gave a hitch to her elbow to call attention to the new maid
whom she had already broken in and regarded as the latest actor in her
private theatricals. Her whole life was a sort of play in which she took
the leading part.

There was something in that large and airy bedroom which always did Mrs.
Malwood good. She liked its Spartan simplicity, its white walls, white
furniture, white carpet and the curtains and cushions which were of
delicate water-color tones suggestive of sweet peas. It had once been
wholly black as a background for Lady Feo’s dead-white skin. But her
friend had grown out of that, as she grew out of almost everything
sooner or later.

“New, isn’t she?” asked Mrs. Malwood without lowering her voice.

“A month old,” replied Lady Feo, “and becoming more and more useful
every moment. Aren’t you, Lola?”

Lola bowed and smiled and once more put the hot tongs to the thick wiry
hair which eventually would stand out around her mistress’s head like
that of some Hawaiian girl.

“Where did you pick her up?” asked Georgie.

“She fell into my lap like a ripe plum. She’s a niece of my Breezy, the
housekeeper. You’d never think it, would you? I’m more and more inclined
to believe, as a matter of fact, that she escaped from a china cabinet
from a collection of Dresden pieces.”

Mrs. Malwood perched herself upon an elbow and examined Lola
languidly,—who was quite used to this sort of thing, having already been
discussed openly before innumerable people as though she were a freak.

They little knew how closely Lola was studying them in turn,—their
manner, their accent, their tricks of phrase and for what purpose she
was undergoing this apprenticeship. Out for sensation, they would
certainly have attained a thrilling one could they have seen into the
mind of this discreet and industrious girl who performed her duties with
the deftest fingers and went about like a disembodied spirit.

“Where are you dining?”

“Here,” said Lady Feo. “I’ve got half a dozen of Arthur’s friendly
enemies coming. It will be a sort of Cabinet meeting. They’re all in a
frightful stew about his attitude on the Irish question. They know that
he and I are not what the papers call ‘in sympathy,’ so why the dickens
they’ve invited themselves I don’t know,—in the hope, I suppose, of my
being able to work on his feelings and get him to climb down from his
high horse. The little Welshman is the last man to cod himself that his
position is anything but extremely rocky and he knows that he can’t
afford to lose the support of a man like Arthur, whose honesty is sworn
to by every Tom, Dick and Harry in the land; this is in the way of a
_dernier ressort_, I suppose. I shall be the only woman present. Pity me
among this set of indecisive second-raters who are all in a dead funk
and utterly unable to cope with the situation, either in Germany,
France, Ireland, India or anywhere else and have messed up the whole
show. If I had Margot’s pen, just think what a ripping chapter I could
write in my diary if I kept one, eh, Georgie?” She threw back her head
and laughed.

As far as Fallaray’s hard-and-fast stand against reprisals was concerned
she cared nothing. In fact, Ireland was a word with which she was
completely fed up. She had erased it from her dictionary. It meant
nothing to her that British officers were being murdered in their beds
and thrown at the feet of their wives or that the scum of the army had
blacked and tanned their way through a country burning with passion and
completely mad. The evening was just one of a series of stunts to her
out of which she would derive great amusement and be provided with
enough chitchat to give her friends gusts of mirth for weeks.

“I saw Fallaray to-day,” said Georgie. “He was walking in the Park. He
only needs a suit of armor to look like Richard Cœur de Lion. Is he
really and honestly sincere, Feo, or is this a political trick to get
the Welshman out of Downing Street? I ask because I don’t believe that
any man can have been in the House as long as he has and remain clean.”

“Don’t you know,” said Lady Feo, with only the merest glint of smile,
“that Arthur has been divinely appointed to save civilization from
chaos? Don’t you know that?”

“Yes, but I know a good many of the others who have—when any one’s
looking. You really can’t make me believe in these people, especially
since the War. Such duds, my dear.”

“All the same, you can believe in Arthur.” She spoke seriously. “He has
no veneer, no dishonesty, no power of escape from his own standards of
life. That’s why he and I are like oil and water. We don’t speak the
same language. He reminds me always of an Evangelist at a fancy-dress
ball, or Cromwell at a varsity binge. He’s a wonderful dull dog, is
Arthur, absolutely out of place in English politics and it’s perfectly
ridiculous that he should be married to me. God knows why I did it. His
profile fascinated me, probably, and the way he played tennis. I was
dippy about both those things at the time. I’m awfully sorry for him,
too. He needs a wife,—a nice cowlike creature with no sense of humor who
would lick his boots, put eau de cologne on his high forehead, run to
meet him with a little cry of adoration and spring out of bed to turn on
his bath when he came home in the middle of the night. All Cromwells do
and don’t they love the smell of powder!—Good for you, Lola. Don’t you
get frightfully fed up with this thick wiry hair of mine?”

Lola smiled and shook her head. It was only when she was alone with her
mistress that she permitted herself to answer questions. But as she
listened and with a burning heart heard her hero discussed and dismissed
and knew, better and more certainly than ever, the things that he
needed, one phrase ran like a recurring motif through her brain,—the
rustle of silk, the rustle of silk.



II


Lola and Miss Breezy were not on speaking terms.

The elderly spinster considered that she had been used and flouted,
treated as though she were in her dotage and had lost her authority to
engage and dismiss the members of the Fallaray ménage. She had nursed,
therefore, a feeling of bitter antagonism against Lola during her three
weeks under the same roof. She had not treated her niece to anything in
the nature of an outburst on her return from Queen’s Road to take up her
duties. “Dignity, dignity,” she repeated again and again and steeled
herself with two other wonderful words that have helped so many similar
women in the great crisis of wounded vanity,—“my position.” She had
simply cut her dead. Since then they had, of course, met frequently and
had even been obliged to speak to each other. They did so as though they
were totally unrelated and had never met before.

All this led to a certain amount of comedy below stairs, it being
perfectly well known to every one that Lola was the housekeeper’s niece.
What Lola did when Miss Breezy entered the servants’ sitting room the
night of her arrival filled the maids with astonishment, resentment and
admiration,—astonishment because of her extraordinary capacity of
holding in her laughter, resentment because she treated Miss Breezy with
the sort of respect which that good lady never got from them, and
admiration because of the innate breeding which seemed to ooze from that
child’s finger tips. She had risen to her feet. And ever since she had
continued to do so—a thing, the possibility of which the others had
never conceived—and when spoken to had replied, “Yes, Miss Breezy,” with
a perfectly straight face and not one glint of humor in her eye. It was
wonderful. It was like something in a book,—an old book by a man who
wrote of times that were as dead as mutton. It was gorgeous. It gave the
girls the stitch from laughing. It became one of their standard jokes.
“Up for Miss Breezy,” the word went after that and there was a scramble
out of chairs. All this made the elderly spinster angrier than ever. Not
only had she been done by this girl but, my word, the child was rubbing
it in.

It was curious to see the effect that Lola had upon the other servants.
They were all tainted with the Bolshevism that has followed in the wake
of the War. They drew their wages and grumbled, slurred their duties,
ate everything that they could lay their hands on, thought nothing of
destroying the utensils of the kitchen and the various things which they
used in the course of work, went out as often as they could and stayed
out much later than the rules of the house permitted. But under the
subtle influence of this always smiling, always good-tempered girl who
seemed to have come from another planet, ribaldry and coarse jokes and
the rather loose larking with the footmen began gradually to disappear.
Without resentment, because Lola was so companionable and fitted into
her new surroundings like a key into a lock, they toned themselves down
in her presence, and finding her absolutely without “side,” hurried to
win her friendship, went into her room at night, singly, to confide in
her,—were not in the least jealous because Albert Simpkins, the butler
and the two footmen competed with one another to grovel at her feet. In
a word, Lola was as great a favorite below stairs as she was above. She
had realized that the ultimate success of her plan depended on her
popularity in the servants’ sitting room and in winning these people to
her side had used all her homogeneous sense, even, perhaps, with greater
care and thoughtfulness than she had applied to her task of ingratiating
herself with Lady Feo. She knew very well that if the servants didn’t
get on with her she would never be able to stay. They would make it
impossible.

How Madame de Brézé would have chuckled had she been able to see her
little imitator sitting on the sofa at night, beneath an oleograph of
Queen Victoria, going through the current _Tatler_ in the midst of a
group of maids, with a butler and two footmen hanging over her shoulders
and a perfect valet dreaming of matrimony sitting astride a chair as
near as he could get. How she would have laughed at her descendant’s
small quips and touches of wit and irony as she discussed the people who
were known to her companions by sight and by name and seemed to belong
to a sort of menagerie, separated from them by the iron bars of class
distinction through which they could be seen moving about,—well fed and
well groomed and performing for the public.

It was no trouble to Lola to do all this. She had done it almost all her
life with the gradations of children with whom she had been at
school,—admired by the girls, keeping the boys at arms’ length and yet
retaining their friendship. It was perfectly easy. Lady Feo had liked
her instantly and so no effort was necessary. Tactfulness alone was
required,—to be silent when her mistress obviously required silence, to
be merry and bright when her mood was expansive and to anticipate her
wishes whenever in attendance. All Lola’s period of make-believe, during
which she had played the celebrated courtesan in her little back
bedroom, had taught her precisely how to conduct herself in her new
surroundings. Had not she herself been in the hands of just such a
lady’s maid as she had now become and seen her laugh when she had
laughed, remain quiet when she had demanded quietude? It merely meant
that she had exchanged roles with Lady Feo for a time and was playing
the servant’s part instead of that of the leading lady. She reveled in
the whole thing. It gave her constant delight and pleasure. Above all,
she was under the same roof as her hero, of whom she caught a momentary
glimpse from time to time,—from the window as he got into his car, from
the gallery above the hall as he came back from the House of Commons, or
late at night when he passed along the corridor to his lonely rooms,
sometimes tired and with dragging feet, sometimes scornful and
impatient, and once or twice so blazing with anger that it was a wonder
that the things he touched did not burst into flames.



III


The only one of the servants who took the remotest interest in the
arrival of those members of the Cabinet who were to dine with Lady Feo
was Lola. With the butler’s connivance she stood inside the hat room in
the hall and peeped through the door. To her there was something not
only indescribably interesting in the sight at close quarters of men of
whom she had read daily for years and who were admired or loathed by her
father and his friends, but something moving, because they had it in
their power to help or hinder the work of Fallaray. She found them to be
a curiously smug and well-fed lot, undistinguished, badly dressed and
not very different from the ordinary run of Queen’s Road tradesmen. She
thought that they looked like piano tuners and was astonished and
disappointed.

The most important person, who arrived late and whose face was of course
familiar to her from caricatures, made up for all the rest. He stood in
the full light for a moment while he gave his coat and hat to a
footman,—a soft dump hat and a coat lined with very shiny black satin.
He looked more than ever like a quack doctor, one who was a cross
between a comedian and a revivalist. His uncut hair, very white now,
flopped over the back of his collar in a most uncivilized manner and his
little moustache of the walrus type was quite out of keeping with it. If
he had been clean-shaven he could have passed for a poet, or a dramatist
who desired to advertise the fact, as some of them do who flourished in
the Victorian period. His short plebeian figure, with legs far too small
and apparently too frail to carry his fat little trunk, gave him a
gnome-like appearance, but in his eyes, which were very wonderful, there
was a gleam of humor and resourcefulness which stamped him as a
consummate leader of men, while his forehead denoted imagination and
keen intelligence. It made Lola laugh to see the way in which he tried
to win the callous footman with a cheery word, never losing an
opportunity of making a client, and to watch his rabbit-like way of
going upstairs to the drawing-room.

She was met by Simpkins, who darted quickly and eagerly to her side.
“Look ’ere,” he said in a whisper. “You’re free for the evening. How
about doing a show with me? I can get you back before Lady Feo’ll want
you again. What d’yer say?”

“Yes,” said Lola, “I should love it. What shall we see?”

Simpkins was a gallery first nighter and an ardent patron of the drama.
Whatever he recommended, therefore, was sure to be worth seeing. “Well,”
he said, “there’s Irene Vanbrugh in a new American play,—‘Miss Nell o’
New Orleans.’ I couldn’t get to see it but I read old man Walkley and I
saw what Punch said. I don’t think the play’s much, but Irene is
orlright. Nip up and get your things on. Let’s go and test it.”

Lola nipped. Her little bedroom was in the servants’ corridor. She was
lucky that it wasn’t, like most servants’ bedrooms, in the basement,
cheek by jowl with the coal cellar. She changed quickly, excited at the
prospect of stealing a few hours away from the house in Dover Street.
She had been home twice on her nights off, there to be gazed at in
silent wonder by the little mother who seemed to know her even less than
ever and to be put through an exhaustive cross-examination by her
father, whose mind ran to small details, as was natural in one who wore
a magnifying glass perpetually in his eye. She met Simpkins in the
servants’ sitting room,—very spruce in a tail coat and a bowler with his
black tie ingeniously pulled through a gold ring in which there was a
most depressed diamond.

She was received with a chorus of inquiries from the maids. “Hello,
Lola,” “On the loose with Simpky?” “This is something new, ain’t it?”
“Going to do the shimmy in ’Ammersmith?” and so forth. To all of which
she replied in one sentence. “Mr. Simpkins is taking me to an organ
recital,” and won a scream of mirth.

Simpkins was ecstatic. He had made a bet with himself that his appeal
would be refused. Always before Lola had turned him down and he knew
that the frequent pestering of the butler and the two footmen had been
unable to move her to adventure. “We’ve just time to do it,” he said,
put two fingers into his mouth and sent a piercing whistle into the
muggy April evening. A prowling taxi drew up short and quivered, and a
well-shaped head looked round to see from whom this urgent call had
issued. Taking Lola’s hand, Simpkins ran her across the street and
opened the door. “The Dooker York’s.”

“Righto, Sir,” said the driver, giving a quick and appreciative glance
at his customer’s companion. Exactly three years ago the owner of that
particularly nice voice, straight nose and small moustache had commanded
a battery of the R. F. A. and fired with open sights at the advancing
enemy. With nothing to eat except apples plucked from the orchards
through which he had retired with his ragged and weakening men, he had
fought coolly and cheerily for many days and nights, utterly out of
touch with the main army and eventually, looking like a scarecrow, had
removed his guns from impossible positions and fallen on his face in
Amiens. Thus does a grateful Parliament reward its saviors.

Simpkins slipped his hand through Lola’s arm. “I’ve been looking forward
to this,” he said. “You don’t know what you’ve done for me. I’m a
different man since I saw you first.”

“I,” said Lola quickly, “am precisely the same girl,” and very kindly
and definitely gave him back his hand and drew a little farther into her
corner of the cab. But Simpkins wasn’t hurt. On the contrary he esteemed
her the more highly for this action. She proved herself so to be
different from the girls with whom he was acquainted and thus lived up
to his preconceived idea of her. “Sorry,” he said, “thank you,” and
glowed with love.

It was perfectly true that Simpkins was a different man since he had
seen Lola. She had revolutionized his life and his thoughts and
strengthened his ambitions. He was a good fellow, clean-minded, with one
or two ideals to which he had clung faithfully and well through the many
temptations which were provided by his like below stairs. He had
character. He was illiterate but not unintelligent. He had something
that the human sensibility is frequently without,—a soul, and because of
that he had imagination and a sense of worship. He was the sort of man
of whom fanatics are made under a crisis of deep emotion. As a
gentleman’s gentleman he regarded himself as having a sort of mission in
life. He must be honest, always ready for his master’s call; spruce,
cheerful and discreet. When tempted to make himself acquainted with the
contents of private letters he must never give anything away. He had
held himself in waiting, so to speak, for a great love affair and had
built up in his mind a good and wholesome picture of home and wife and
children. Lola fitted into this picture and dominated it as no other
girl had ever done, and he had fallen actually and metaphorically before
her like a shack before a hurricane. At any time now he could leave
service and branch out for himself, because he had inherited from his
father a sum of money which would enable him to buy a public house
somewhere in the country—preferably on the upper Thames—and let rooms to
nice people,—they would have to be nice people. He was a man in the
middle thirties with plenty of time to add to his good nest egg, bring
up a little family with great care and put his son in a good school with
a view to making him a gentleman,—a dentist perhaps, or a clerk in
Coutts’s bank. He could see only Lola as the mother of this boy and the
fact that she had accepted his invitation to go to the theater filled
him with a great hopefulness; he rejoiced in her having disallowed his
familiarity.

To Lola, Simpkins was less than the dust. She had already sized him up
as a rather curious character to be respected and even liked but not, of
course, to be considered as anything but an infrequent escort into the
theater life of London.

She placed him among the Treadwells,—though not so high up in the list
as Ernest. One of these fine days she hoped to be able to lift the
Bayswater poet out of the public library into the public gaze, to do for
him what Madame de Brézé had done for Paul Brissac.

They arrived at the theater in good time. With a curious touch of
embarrassment, because he had seen at once that the cab was being driven
by a gentleman, Simpkins handed over half a crown and said, “That’s all
right, you can keep the change.” He received a crisp and unabashed
“Thank you” and a little bow from the waist down which was a cross
between extreme politeness and ineffable cheek, and before Lola turned
to go into the theater she was given a pucka salute with the hand almost
flat upon the ear. She returned a smile that was like one of those
electric advertisements which flick in and out of the sky in all really
progressive American cities. It nearly knocked the man over and almost
caused him to collide with a policeman.

Simpkins was tempted to buy two seats in the stalls and could have done
so without question in these after-war times when almost the only people
who have enough money for their laundresses are the profiteers. But
tradition prevailed and he took her up to the dress circle,—where nobody
dressed. The people were coming reluctantly into the theater in the
usual manner of Londoners. English people are not ardent theater goers
and have to be dragged in to see a play almost in the same manner as in
the old days of barnstorming, when the manager beat a drum on the
threshold of the tent, the hero and the heroine stood at his elbow and
made pathetic appeals to passers-by, and the villain, lurking in the
background, grimaced at all the girls.

The orchestra had just begun to tune up and the scraping of fiddles sent
a tingle through Lola’s veins. It put her in the mood, as it always did,
to forget life, her own personality and the presence of Simpkins, and
place herself into the character of the play’s heroine. From an
unexpected pocket Simpkins brought out a small box of chocolates. He was
one of those strange people who, although they have just risen from a
hearty meal, cannot go through an evening at the theater without
munching something. “’Ave one,” he said. “They’re nice.”

“You think of everything,” said Lola, and in order not to hurt his
feelings, took one and dropped it under the seat. “There’s going to be a
good house,” she added.

“Irene always draws ’em in. By Gum, she’s given me some good evenings in
her time. She’s what I call safe. You can bank on her. She dresses like
a lady, too, and that gets me. Good old Irene.” And then he put his face
rather close to Lola’s. “Some one said you thought of going on the stage
before you joined us. That’s not true, is it?”

“No,” said Lola. “Not in the least true. I discussed it with my aunt. In
fact, to be quite honest, I put it to her head like a pistol.”

“Oh, I see.” Simpkins heaved a sigh of relief. If Lola were to go on the
stage,—and all these young officers buzzing about, treating marriage as
though it were a betting transaction——

“I think,” said Lola with naïve gravity, “that it’s better to play a
leading part in life than to be in the chorus on the stage. Cleverer
acting is required, too, don’t you think so?”

A leading part in life? Simpkins was worried. Would she consider the
wife of a man who owned the “Black Bell” at Wargrave to be a leading
part? “You’re not ambitious, are yer?” he asked, peering at her
patrician profile.

“Oh,” she said, “Oh,” and suddenly threw out her hands.

And then the lights went out and the buzz of talking ceased gradually as
though bees were retiring in platoons from a feeding place.



IV


They walked to Trafalgar Square. Lola was still in the old garden of
Miss Nell among the Creoles and the music of the Mardi Gras frolickers.
She had no ears for the expert criticisms of her escort. There were
plenty of unoccupied taxis scouting for fares but Lola pulled up under
the shadow of the National Gallery to watch the big play of life for a
moment or two. From force of a habit which she had not yet conquered,
she looked up at the sky, half expecting to see the great white beams of
searchlights swing and stammer until they focussed upon something that
looked like a silver fish, and then to twinge under the quick reports of
anti-aircraft guns. Twice during the War she had been caught on that
spot during a raid and had stood transfixed to the pavement between
fright and a keen desire to see the show. Memories of those
never-to-be-forgotten incidents, small as they were and of no
consequence in the story of the War—the loss of a few well-fed
noncombatants who made themselves targets for stray shrapnel because
they wouldn’t dip like rabbits into funk holes—came back to her then, as
well they might. The War’s evidences forced themselves every day upon
the notice even of those who desired to forget,—the processions of
unemployed with their rattling collection boxes among the ugliest of
them all.

Big Ben struck the quarter and Lola returned to earth. “Simpky,” she
said, “cab, quick.” And he called one and gave the address. And then she
began again to hear what the valet was saying. He had used up Miss Nell
o’ New Orleans and had come to Miss Lola of Queen’s Road, Bayswater.
“Look ’ere, can’t we do this often, you and me? We can always sneak off
when there’s a dinner on or Lady Feo’s out in the push. It don’t cost
much and I’ve got plenty of money.”

“I should like to very much,” said Lola. “Once a fortnight, say. You
see, I go home every Wednesday night. I don’t think we ought to do it
more often than once a fortnight because, after all, I feel rather
responsible to Auntie and I don’t want to set a bad example to the other
girls.”

“Well, promise you won’t go out with the other men. I let you into the
’ouse first, don’t forget that, and that was a sort of omen to me and if
you could bring yourself to look upon me as—well——” He broke off
nervously and ran his hand over his forehead, which was damp with
excitement.

But Lola was not in the least nonplussed. She had had so much practice.
She was an expert in mentally making all sorts and conditions of men her
brothers. She said, “Simpky,”—although the man looked extremely
un-Russian,—“you mustn’t spoil me. Also you must remember that Ellen
Glazeby has hopes. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Oh, my God,” said Simpkins, with a touch of melodrama. “If I’d been
engaged to ’er and on the verge of marriage, and then ’ad seen you,—or
even if I’d been married for a couple of years and was ’appy and ’ad
seen you——Religious as I am——”

Lola turned to him with extreme simplicity. “But I’m a good girl,
Simpky,” she said.

And he gave a funny throaty sound, like a frog at night with its feet in
water; and one of his hands fluttered out and caught hold of the end of
Lola’s piece of fur, and this he pressed to his lips. “Oh, my God,” he
said again, words failing.

And so Lola was rather glad when the cab drew up at the house in Dover
Street.

A car arrived at the same time and honked impatiently and imperiously.
Simpkins leapt from the taxi and said, “Pull out of the way, quick.” It
did so. And as Lola descended and stood at the top of the area steps,
she saw Fallaray go slowly up to the front door with rounded shoulders,
as though he were Atlas with the weight of the world on his back. He was
followed by a man whose step was light and eager.



V


It was George Lytham.

The editor of a new weekly called _Reconstruction_ which had not as yet
done more than take its place among all those elder brothers on the
bookstalls which were suffering from a combination of hardening of the
arteries and shrinkage of the exchequer, Lytham was a live wire, a man
who could make mistakes, eat his own words, and having gone halfway up
the wrong road, turn around without giving a curse for what other men
would call dignity and retrace his steps at a run. Eton and Balliol, he
had been a wet-bob, had a chest like a prize fighter and a forearm as
hard as a cricket bat. The third son of old Lord Lockinge, he had sat in
the House as member for one of those agricultural constituencies which
are too dull and scattered to attract Radical propagandists and nearly
always plump for Unionism. He had quickly made his mark. _Punch_ drew
him in rowing shorts after his maiden speech and the Northcliff press
made a point of referring to him as Young Lochinvar. But he had chucked
the House in disgust after two years of it, one year of enormous
enthusiasm during which he had worked like a dog and another year of
sickly pessimism and disillusion brought about by contact with a set of
political crows who fluttered over the carcass of
England,—traditionless, illiterate, dishonest, of low minds and low
accents, led by the Old Bad Men who had inherited the right or tricked
their way to the front benches and had all died before the War but were
still living and still clinging to office. He owed allegiance to no
leader and had started _Reconstruction_, backed with the money of the
great mine owners and merchants who should have been members of the
Cabinet, for the purpose of cleaning out the Augean stables. He numbered
among his contributors every political free-thinker in
England,—ex-members of Parliament, ex-war correspondents who spoke with
horror of brass hats, and men who had served in all capacities in the
War and were, for that reason, determined to remove the frightful burden
of taxation caused by the maintenance of a great war machine for the
indulgence of escapades in Mesopotamia and Ireland.

Lytham was young,—not yet thirty-five; unmarried, so that his purpose
was single, his time his own. His paper was his wife and he was out for
blood,—not with a bludgeon, not with a gun, but with an intellect which,
supported by other intellects, alone provided some hope for the future
of England and the Human Family. He had fastened upon Fallaray and
dogged his heels. He regarded him as a brother, was ready to back him
through thick and thin and had come home with him that night to discuss
one or two of the great questions of the moment and to make plans for
quick functioning.

When Fallaray led the way into his den and turned up the lights—all of
them, so that there should be no shadows in the room and no
ghosts—Lytham took his place with his back to the fire, standing in the
frame of black oak like the picture of a crusader who had left his armor
at home; he liked that room for its size and simplicity and tradition,
its books and prints and unashamed early-Victorianism. He was as tall as
Fallaray but not as thin and did not look as though the fires of his
soul had burnt him down to the bone. His hair was brown and crisp and
short, his moustache small, his nose straight and his eyes large and
full of humor and irony. Except for his mouth there was nothing
sensitive in his face and the only sign of restlessness that he
permitted himself to show was in his habit of lighting one cigarette
from the butt of another just finished,—the cheapest stinkers that were
on the market and which had been smoked by the men of the regiment to
which he had been attached from the beginning to the end of the
War,—fags, in other words. His holder was far too long for the comfort
of people who stood too close.

“Now, Fallaray,” he said, “let’s get down to it.”

Fallaray sat on the edge of his desk which he gripped tight with both
his hands. “I’m ready,” he answered.

“The point is this. You have come out against reprisals, which means
that you have dared to voice the overwhelming sentiment of the country
at a moment when the Government has plumped for whole hoggism and given
Sinn Fein its finest advertisement. So far so good. But this is only the
beginning. To carry the thing on to its right conclusion, you must not
only resign from the Cabinet but you must lead us to an immediate
settlement of the Irish question. You must organize all that section of
British opinion and American opinion—which counts for so much—and work
for the overthrow of the coalition government. Will you do it?”

“Of course.”

“Ah!”

“But wait a second. Here we are marching with France into Germany,
occupying towns for the purpose of wringing out of these whimpering
liars the fruits of victory which they say they cannot pay and which
they may not be able to pay. Already the fires of Bolshevism are
breaking out everywhere as a result. Are we to put the Irish question
before one that is surrounded with the most amazing threads of
difficulty and may lead to the death of Europe? In other words, my dear
Lytham, is murder and arson in one small island of greater importance to
the world at this moment than the possibility of a new and even more
terrible war in Europe, with disease and famine following at its heels?
The men I have served with during the last war say ‘no.’ They have even
gone so far as to dine here to-night with my wife to try and get her to
move me out of what they call my rut,—to persuade me, because they have
failed to do so, to shelve the Irish question and back up France in her
perfectly righteous demand for reparations. I can’t make up my mind
whether I will see this German question through, or swing body and soul
to the Irish question and handicap them in this new crisis. If you’ve
got anything to say, for God’s sake, say it.”

For a moment Lytham had nothing to say. It did seem to him, as he stood
there in that quiet room with all its books and with hardly a sound
coming in from the street below, that the troubles of that green and
egotistical island melted away before those which did not affect merely
England and France and Germany, Austria, Russia, Poland, Belgium but
America also. It did seem to him that the murder of a few Britishers, a
handful of loyal Irishmen and the reprisals of the Black and Tans for
cowardly ambushes, brutally carried out, were in the nature of a side
show in a circus of shows, of a small family quarrel in a city of
families who were up against a frightful epidemic,—and he didn’t know
what to say.

The two men looked into each other’s eyes, searched each other’s hearts
and waited, listening, for an inspiration,—from God probably, whose
children had become strangely out of hand.

Thus they stood, silent and without a sign, as others were
standing,—bewildered, embarrassed, groping.

And then the door was flung open.



VI


Feo Fallaray’s ideas of evening clothes were curious. Her smock-frock,
or wrapper, or whatever she called the thing, had a shimmer of green
about it. Her stockings were green and she wore round her head a circlet
of the most marvelous pieces of jade. The result was bizarre and made
her look as though she were in fancy dress. She might have been an
English Polaire ready to enter the smarter Bohemian circles of a London
Montmartre. Or, to quote the remark of a woman in the opposite set, “a
pre-Raphaelite flapper.”

She drew up short on seeing Lytham. He was no friend of hers. He was far
too normal, far too earnest, and both his hands were on the wheel. But
with all the audacity of which she was past mistress, she gave him one
of her widest smiles. “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “They told me some one
was with my beloved husband. Well, how’s young Lochinvar?”

Lytham bowed profoundly and touched her hand with the tips of his
fingers. “Very well, thank you,” he said. How he detested green. If he
had been married and his wife had dared to appear in such a frock, he
would have returned her to her mother for good.

Fallaray rose from the desk on which he was sitting and walked to the
farthest end of the room. There was no one in the world who gave him
such a sense of irritation as this woman did.

“I’m not welcome, I know,” said Feo, “but I thought you might like me to
come and tell you what happened to-night, Arthur.”

Fallaray turned, but did not look at her. “Thanks so much,” he said.
“Yes. You’re very kind. I’m afraid you’ve been pretty badly bored.”

She echoed the word, giving it all its dictionary interpretations and
some which are certainly not in any dictionary.

“When I see those people,” she said, “I marvel at our ever having got
through the War. Well, the end of it is that I am to ask you to
reconsider your attitude. The argument is that your secession puts them
into the cart just at a moment when they think, rightly or wrongly, that
they are forcing the fear of God into the Sinn Feiners. They can’t
imagine that my influence with you is absolutely nil, because they have
the bourgeois idea of marriage and think that because two people are
tied together by Church and law they must of necessity be in full
sympathy. So all I can do is to make my report and add on my own account
that I never saw such a set of petty opportunists in all my career.”

Lytham gave her a match for the cigarette that she had put into a black
holder with a narrow band of diamonds. “Did you give them any views of
your own?” he asked.

[Illustration: A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

“Rather,” she said, the light on her hair like moonlight on black water.
“I held forth at length with my back to the fireplace. As a matter of
fact, quite on the spur of the moment, I handed them a very brilliant
idea.”

“Yes?” It was a little incredulous.

“Yes, odd as it very obviously seems to you, Lochinvar. I said that I
thought that this was the psychological moment for a nice piece of
theatricality. I said that some one, probably Kipling, should draft a
letter for the King, in which he should set forth the fact that he was
going to withdraw every one of his soldiers and all his officials from
Ireland at once and leave the Irish to run themselves, giving them the
same kind of dominion government that they have in Australia and Canada,
wishing them Godspeed and a happy Easter,—a manly, colloquial letter,
very simple and direct, and ending with a touch of real emotion, the
sort of thing that the King would write on his own, better than any
one.”

There was a moment’s pause, during which Lytham darted a quick look at
Fallaray. A gleam came into the eyes of both men.

“What did they say to that?” he asked.

“My dear man, what do you suppose they said? Having no imagination and
precious little knowledge of the facts of the case, they dragged in
Ulster and talked about civil war, which I think is absurd, because
already, as Arthur knows perfectly well, Ulster is feeling the pinch of
the boycott and has deserted Carson to a man. They’re longing for a
settlement and only anxious to go on making bawbees in the good old
Scotch Presbyterian manner.—They couldn’t see, and I don’t suppose they
will ever be made to see, this lot, that a letter from the King would
immediately have the effect of withdrawing all the sympathy from the
Irish and reduce them from martyrs to the level of ordinary human
beings. They couldn’t see that every Irish grievance would be taken away
in one fell swoop, that the priests would be left without a leg to stand
on and that above all America would be the first to say ‘Now show us.’
It would be a frightful blow to Collins and de Valera and also to the
Germans and the Sinn Feiners in the United States, and make all the
world admire the British sense of sportsmanship,—which we have almost
lost by everything that has been done during and since the War by our
people in Ireland.—What do _you_ think of it,—both of you?”

She threw her head back and waited for a scoffing laugh from Lytham and
a look from her husband that would move her to ribaldry. Her long white
neck rose out of her queer gown like a pillar, the pieces of jade in her
hair shimmered oddly and there was the gleam of undergraduate ragging in
her eyes.

Fallaray looked at his wife for the first time. “It was an inspiration,”
he said. “I confess that I have never thought of this solution.”

Feo was amazed but bowed ironically. “Very generous, Arthur, very
generous. I couldn’t have been married to you all this time without
having acquired a certain amount of intelligence, though, could I?” Even
at such a moment she could not remain serious, although she was
perfectly ready to confess to a considerable flutter of vanity at
Fallaray’s favorable comment.

“My God,” said George Lytham, “it takes a woman to think of a thing like
this.”

“You’ll make me swollen-headed in a moment, you two.”

Lytham took no further notice of her. He strode over to Fallaray. “Could
this be done? I quite agree with your wife in her interpretation of the
effect of such a letter and of course it could be made the sort of human
document which would electrify the world. I agree, too, that once our
soldiers were withdrawn with all the brass hats from the castle, the
huge majority of reasonable Irishmen would insist on taking hold of
things against the very small minority of Republicans who have merely
used Ireland as a means of feathering their own nests, and be obliged to
prove that they are fit to run their own country without bloody
squabbles, cat-calling, filthy recriminations and all the other things
for which they have earned a historical reputation. But—can it be done?”

Fallaray paced up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his
back and his great shoulders rounded. Lytham and Lady Feo watched him.
It was a peculiar moment. They both saw in it the test of Fallaray’s
imagination and, in a way, humor. They could see that he was looking at
this thing from every possible angle, dissecting it as a chemist would
dissect bad water. At last he gave a groan and stopped and faced them.

“Not with these men,” he said. “Not with this political system, not in
these times. Do you imagine for a moment that the present Cabinet holds
a single man big enough, humble enough, patriotic enough to permit even
the King to step on the stage and absorb the limelight? No. Not one.
There is some microbe in the House of Commons, some atrocious cootie
which gets under the skin of its members and poisons them so that they
become the victims of a form of egomania of which they never can be
cured. Then, too, my dear Lytham, we must get it into our heads that the
Irish trouble is like a cancer in the body of the Constitution. We may
hit upon a medicine that seems likely to give temporary relief—the
withdrawal of the troops, the appointment of a new Lord Lieutenant, even
the establishment of a Dominion Government—but we have got to remember
that the hatred of the Irish for the English is fundamental and
permanent. What may seem to us to-day to offer a solution to this
age-old problem becomes futile and unworkable to-morrow. In our efforts
to deal with the question we must not allow ourselves to be influenced
by the quick transitory events that chase each other across the front
pages of the paper. We must, if we can, go to the root of the
malady,—the deep human emotion that burns in the hearts and souls of the
Irish and endeavor to understand. Otherwise we are as children making
foolish marks on shifting sand. What we write to-day is obliterated
to-morrow.”

He turned about, walked slowly over to the chair at his desk and dropped
into it heavily, rising again immediately because Feo was standing.

Seeing which, and having an engagement to join Mrs. Malwood and several
others at a private dance club, she made for the door. “Well,” she said,
“there it is. I did my best for you.”

“An excellent best,” said Fallaray. “Thank you again. Are you leaving
us?”

She waved her hand, that long able hand which might have achieved good
things but for that fatal kink in her,—and went.

“Brilliant woman,” said Fallaray. It was on the tip of Lytham’s tongue
to say “Brilliant what?” but he swallowed the remark.

And presently they heard Feo’s high-pitched voice in the street below,
giving an order to her chauffeur.

And they resumed the discussion, coming back always to the point from
which they started. The Old Bad Man, shuffling, juggling, lying to
others as well as themselves, without the sense to realize that
something far worse than the War was coming hourly to a head, blocked
every avenue of escape.



VII


Lytham walked home in the small hours of that morning. He had the luck
to live in the Albany, at the Piccadilly end. The streets, but for a
silent-footed Bobby or two, were deserted. Even the night birds had
given up hope and withdrawn to their various nests.

He wondered once more, as he went along, what on earth had made Fallaray
marry Feo, of all women. It was one of his favorite forms of mental
pastime to try and discover the reason of ninety-nine per cent, of the
marriages which had come under his fairly intimate observation. It
seemed to him, in reviewing the whole body of his friends, not only that
every man had married the wrong woman but that every woman had married
the wrong man.

There was his brother, for instance,—Charlie Lytham, master of foxhounds
and one of the most good-natured creatures to be found on earth,—hearty,
honest, charitable, full of laughter, a superb horseman, everybody’s
friend. For some unexplained and astounding reason he hadn’t married one
of the nice healthy English girls who rode and golfed and stumped about
the countryside, perfectly content to live out of town for ten months of
the year and enjoy a brief bust in London. He had been dragged to the
altar by a woman who looked like a turkey and gobbled like one when she
spoke, who wore the most impossible clothes with waggling feathers and
rattling beads, spoke in a loud raucous voice and was as great a form of
irritation to every one who came in contact with her as the siren of a
factory. What was the idea?—Poor devil. He had condemned himself to
penal servitude.

Then there was his sister, Helena Lytham, a beautiful decorative person
born to play the queen in pageants and stand about as in a fresco in a
rather thick nightgown which clung decorously to her Leightonian
figure,—respectable but airy. On Lytham’s return from Coblenz after the
Armistice she had presented him to a little dapper person who barely
came up to her shoulder, who smoked a perpetual cigar out of the corner
of his mouth, wore a waistcoat with a linoleum pattern, skin-tight
trousers and boots with brown leather uppers. He realized George’s idea
of the riding master of a Margate livery stable. And so it went on all
the way through.—And here was Fallaray.

The truth of the thing was that Fallaray had not married Lady Feo. Lady
Feo had married Fallaray. What she had said to Mrs. Malwood was
perfectly true. At eighteen her hobbies were profiles and tennis. At
twenty-four Fallaray’s profile was at its best. He looked like a Greek
god, especially when he was playing tennis with a shirt open at the
neck, and she had met him during the year that he had put up that superb
fight against Wilding in the good old days. The fact that he was Arthur
Fallaray, the son of a distinguished father, born and bred for a place
on the front bench, a marked man already because of his speeches in the
Oxford Union, didn’t matter. His profile was the finest that she had
seen and his tennis was in the championship class, and so she had
deliberately gone for him, followed him from house party to house party
with the sole intention of acquiring and possessing. At the end of six
weeks she had got him. He had been obliged to kiss her. Her face had
been purposely held in place to receive it. The rest was easy.
Whereupon, she had immediately advertised the engagement broadcast,
brought her relations down upon Fallaray in a swarm, sent paragraphs to
the papers and made it literally impossible for the unfortunate man to
do anything but go through with the damned thing like a gentleman,—dazed
by the turn of events and totally unacquainted with the galloping
creature who had seemed to him to resemble a thoroughbred but untrained
yearling, kicking its heels about in a paddock. It had all been just a
lark to her,—no more serious than collecting postage stamps, which
eventually she could sell or give away. If ever she were to fall really
in love, it would be perfectly simple, she had argued, either to be
divorced or to juggle affairs so that she might divorce Fallaray. Any
man who played tennis as well as he had done could do a little thing
like that for her. The result was well known. A man of high ideals,
Fallaray had gone through with this staggering marriage with every
intention of making it work. Being in love with no other girl, he had
determined to do his utmost to play the game and presently stand proudly
among a little family of Fallarays. But he had found in Feo some one who
had no standards, no sense of right and wrong, give and take; a girl who
was a confirmed anarchist, who cared no more for law and order, Church
and State or the fundamentals of _life_, _tradition_, _honor_, womanhood
than an animal, a beautiful orang-outang, if there is such a thing, who
or which delighted in hanging to branches by its tail and making weird
grimaces at passers-by. The thing had been a tragedy, so far as Fallaray
was concerned, an uncanny and terrible event in his life, almost in the
nature of an incurable illness. The so-called honeymoon to which he
never looked back, had been a nightmare filled with scoffing laughter,
brilliant and amazing remarks, out of which he had emerged in a state of
mental chaos to plunge into work as an antidote. They had always lived
under the same roof because it was necessary for a man who goes into
politics to truckle to that curious form of hypocrisy which will never
be eradicated from the British system. Her people and his people had
demanded this, and his first constituency had made it a _sine qua non_.
Not requiring much money, he had been and continued to be very generous
in his allowance to his wife, who did not possess a cent of her own. On
the contrary, it was frequently necessary for her to settle her
brother’s debts and even to pay her father’s bills from time to time.
The gallant old Marquis was without anything so bourgeois as the money
sense and couldn’t possibly play bridge under five pounds a thousand.
There was also the system with which he had many times attempted to
break the bank at Monte Carlo.

To-day, never interfering with her way of life and living in his own
wing like a bachelor, he knew less of Feo’s character than he did when
she had caught him first. What he knew of her friendships and her
peregrinations he got from the newspapers. When it was necessary to dine
at his own table, he treated her as though she were one of his guests,
or rather as though he were one of hers. There was no scandal attaching
to his name, because women played absolutely no part in his life; and
there was no actual scandal attaching to hers. Only notoriety. She had
come to be looked upon by society and by the vast middle class who
discussed society as a beautiful freak, an audacious strange creature
who frittered away her gifts, who was the leader of a set of women of
all ages, married and unmarried, who took an impish delight in flouting
the conventions and believed that they established the proof of unusual
intelligence by a self-conscious display of eccentricity.



VIII


And in the meantime Lola continued to be an apt little pupil. Her quick
ear had already enabled her to pick up the round crisp intonation of
Lady Feo and her friends and at any moment of the day she could now give
an exact imitation of their walk, manner of shaking hands and those
characteristic tricks which made them different from all the women who
had had the ill fortune to come into the world in the small streets.

Up in the servant’s bedroom in Dover Street, before a square of mirror,
Lola practised and rehearsed for her eventual debut,—the form of which
was on the knees of the gods. She had entered her term of apprenticeship
quite prepared to serve conscientiously for at least a year,—a long
probation for one so young and eager. Probably she would have continued
to study and listen and watch, with gathering impatience, but for a
sudden hurrying forward of the clock brought about by the gift of a
frock,—rustling with silk. A failure, because the dressmaker, with the
ineffable cheek of these people, had entirely departed from Feo’s rigid
requirements, it provided Lola with the key to life. Giving one yell at
the sight of it, Feo was just about to rip it in pieces when she caught
the longing eyes of her maid. Whereupon, with the generosity which is so
easy when it is done with other people’s money, she said, “Coming over,”
rolled it into a ball and threw it at Lola. It was, as may be imagined,
a very charming and reasonable garment such as might have been worn by a
perfectly respectable person.

On her way home that night, Lola dropped in to her own little dressmaker
who lived in one of the numerous dismal villas off Queen’s Road, for the
purpose of having it altered to fit her. It was miles too large. She had
eventually brought it back to Dover Street and hidden it away behind one
of her day frocks in her only cupboard, and every time that she took a
peep at it, her eyes sparkled and her breath came short and she wondered
when and how she could possibly wear it.

Filled with a great longing to try her wings and fly out of the cage
like the canary of which she had spoken to Ernest Treadwell, there were
moments in her life now when she was consumed with impatience. The poet
of the public library, the illiterate and ecstatic valet, the pompous
butler and the two cockney footmen,—she had grown beyond all these. She
was absolutely sure of herself as an honorary member of the Feo “gang.”
She felt that she could hold her own now with the men of their class. If
she were right, her apprenticeship would be over. Fully fledged, she
could proceed with her great scheme. The chance came as chances always
do come, and as usual she took it.

Several days after Lytham’s talk with Fallaray—which had left them both
in that state of irresolution which seemed to have infected every
one—Lady Feo went off for the week-end, leaving Lola behind. The party
had been arranged on the spur of the moment and was to take place in a
cottage with a limited number of bedrooms. If Lady Feo had given the
thing a moment’s thought, she would have told Lola to take three days
holiday. But this she had forgotten to do. And so there was Lola in
Dover Street with idle hands. The devil finds some mischief still——

At four o’clock that evening Simpkins entered the servants’ sitting
room. Lola happened to be alone, surrounded by _Tatlers_, _Punches_ and
_Bystanders_, fretting a little and longing to try her paces. “Good
old,” he said, “Mr. Fallaray has got to dine at the Savoy to-night with
his Ma and Auntie from the country. One of them family affairs which,
not coming too frequently, does him good. And you’re free. How about
another show, Princess?” He had recently taken to calling her princess.
“There’s another American play on which ain’t bad, I hear. Let’s sample
it. What do you say?”

Mr. Fallaray.—The Savoy——

Without giving the matter an instant’s thought, Lola shook her head.
“_Too bad, Simpky,_” she said, “I promised Mother to go home to-night.
She has some friends coming and I am going to help her.”

“Oh,” said Simpkins, extremely disappointed. “Well, then, I’ll take you
’ome and if I’m very good and put on a new tie I may be asked,—I say I
may——” He paused, having dropped what he considered to be a delicate
hint.

This was a most awkward moment. Mr. Fallaray—The Savoy—That new frock.
And here was Simpkins butting in and standing with his head craned
forward as if to meet the invitation halfway. So she said, as cool as a
cucumber, “Mother will be very disappointed not to be able to ask you,
Simpky, because she likes you so much. She enjoyed both times you came
home with me. So did Father. But, you see, our drawing-room is very
small and Mother has asked too many people as it is. Get tickets for
tomorrow night and I shall be very glad to go with you.”

There was no guile in Lola’s eye and not the smallest hesitation in her
speech. Simpkins bore up bravely. He knew these parties and the way in
which some hostesses allowed their rooms to brim over. And, anyway, it
was much better to have Lola all to himself. He could live for Saturday.
“Righto,” he said. “Let me know when you’re ready to go and if you feel
like a taxicab——”

“I couldn’t think of it,” said Lola. “You spend much too much money,
Simpky. You’re an absolute profiteer. I shall go by Tube and this time a
friend of mine is fetching me.”

“Treadwell?” She nodded and calmly examined a picture of Lopodoski in
one of her latest contortions.

There was a black cloud on Simpkins’s face. He had met Ernest at the
Breezys’ house. He had seen the way in which this boy gazed at
Lola,—lanky, uncouth, socialistic young cub. He was not jealous, good
Lord, no. That would be absurd. A junior librarian with a salary that
was far less than any plumber got, and him a man of means with the
“Black Bull” at Wargrave on the horizon. All the same, if he heard that
Ernest Treadwell had suddenly been run over by a pantechnicon and
flattened out like a frog——

And that was why he sat down on the sofa a little too close to Lola and
dared to possess himself of her hand. “Princess,—you know ’ow I feel.
You know what you’ve done to me.”

Lola patted his hand and gave it back and rewarded him with a smile
which she considered to be matronly. “Nice Simpky,” she said. “Very nice
Simpky,” as though he were a rather faulty terrier a little too keen on
the thrown stick. “I must go now,” she added and rose. “I have some
sewing to do for Lady Feo.”

And as Simpkins watched her go, his whole heart swelled, and something
went to his head that blurred everything for a moment. He would sell his
soul for that girl. For her sake he would even set light to the “Black
Bull” and watch it burn, if that would give her a moment’s amusement.

Mr. Fallaray.—The Savoy——

What Lola did in Lady Feo’s room was not to sew but to seat herself at
the dressing table, do her hair with the greatest care and practise with
the make-up sticks,—rouge, and the brush of water colors with which she
emphasized her eyebrows. Finally, time having flown, she borrowed a pair
of lace stockings, some shoes and gloves, made her way stealthily along
the servants’ corridor to her own room, and packed them, with the new
frock, into a cardboard box. Dressed and hatted for the street, she
carried the magic costume in which she was going to transplant herself
from Cinderella’s kitchen to the palace of the Prince and went down to
the servants’ sitting room through which it was necessary for her to go
in order to escape.

Miss Breezy was there, issuing, as she would have said, orders to one of
the housemaids. That was lucky. It saved Lola from answering an outburst
of questions. As it was, she gave a little bow to her aunt, said “Good
evening, Miss Breezy,” opened the door and nipped up the area steps into
the street. A little involuntary laugh floated behind her like the
petals of a rose. A prowling taxi caught her eye. She nodded and was in
before any one could say Jack Robinson,—if any one now remembers the
name of that mystic early Victorian.

The address she gave was 22 Castleton Terrace, Bayswater.

Mr. Fallaray.—The Savoy!



IX


“My word,” said Mrs. Rumbold, getting up from her knees and taking a pin
out of her mouth. “I never see anything like it before. It’s my opinion
that you could ’old your own in that frock with any of the best, my
dear. It’s so quiet—yet so compelling. The best of taste. If I see you
coming down the steps of the Ritz, I should nudge the person I was with
and say, ‘Duke’s daughter. French mother probably.’”

“Thank you,” said Lola. And that was exactly how she felt. Carried
forward on the current of her impatience, she didn’t stop to ask herself
what was the use of going to the Savoy, of all places, alone,—the
danger, the absurdity. “I wonder if you’ll be so kind as to fold up my
day dress, put it in the box and string it up. You’re sure you’ll be up
as late as half-past eleven? If so, it won’t take me a moment to change
and I’ll leave the evening dress here.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right,” said Mrs. Rumbold. “I shall be up, my dear.
The old man’s going to a dinner and will come staggering back later than
that. He’ll be a regular Mason to-night, bless him.” And she stood back,
looked Lola all over with the greatest admiration and a certain amount
of personal pride. She was a good dressmaker, no doubt about it. An
awful lot of stuff had had to be taken out of that frock. It must have
been made for a woman with the shoulders of a rowing man. It wasn’t for
her to ask what the little game was, to inquire why a lady’s maid was
going out on the sly, looking like her mistress. She had her living to
make and dressmaking was a precarious livelihood in these times. “Have a
good evening, my dear,” she said; “enjoy yourself. Only live once, yer
know.” And added inwardly, “And I’ll lay you’ll manage to do yourself
pretty well,—a lot better than most, with that face and figure and the
style and all. Lord, but how you’ve come on since I see yer last. All
the zwar-zwar of the reg’ler thing, sweep-me-bob.”

The taxi was still waiting at the door, ticking up sixpences, but in
Lola’s pocket was a little purse bulging with her savings. She turned at
the door. “Mrs. Rumbold,” she said, and it might have been Lady Feo who
was speaking, “you certainly are one in a million.”

There was a sudden cry of despair.

“Lord ’a’ mercy, what’s the trouble?”

Lola had become herself again, a tragic, large-eyed self. “I can’t go
like this,” she said. “I have no evening cloak.” The whole framework of
her adventure flapped like the sides of a tent in a high wind.

“My dear!” cried Mrs. Rumbold. “Well, there’s a nice lookout. What in
the world’s to be done?”

Fallaray.—The Savoy——

“Wait a second. I’ve got an idea.” The woman with tousled hair made a
dart at a curtain which was stretched across one of the corners of her
workroom. She emerged immediately with something thin and black which
gleamed here and there with silver. “Put that on,” she said. “I’ve just
made it for Mrs. Wimpole in Inverness Terrace. She won’t be calling for
it until to-morrer. If you’ll promise to bring it back safe——”

All Lola’s confidence returned and a smile of triumph came into her
face. “That will do nicely,” she said, and placed herself to receive the
borrowed garment. A quick glance in the mirror showed her that if it
wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that she would have chosen, it passed.

“You’re a brick, Mrs. Rumbold, a perfect brick. I can’t tell you how
grateful I am.” And she bent forward and touched the withered cheek with
her lips. One of these days she would do something for this hard-working
woman whose eldest boy sat legless in the back parlor,—something which
would relieve the great and persistent strain which followed her from
one plucky day to another.

And then, pausing for a moment on the top of the steps in order to make
sure that there was no one in the street who could recognize her—Queen’s
Road was only just round the corner—Lola ran down and put her hand on
the door of the taxi cab.

“The Savoy,” she said.




PART III



I


Sir Peter Chalfont’s cork arm had become one of the institutions of the
town. Long ago the grimness had gone out of everybody’s laughter at the
tricks he played with it,—presenting it with the palm the wrong way,
making it squeak suddenly and wagging it about from the wrist as a
greeting to his friends. Every one had grown accustomed to his frequent
changes of gloves and his habit of appearing at dinner with those
dreadful stiff fingers in white buckskin. He had indeed trained the
thing to perform as though it were an animal and he could do almost
anything with it except tie a dress tie. That was beyond him.

At quarter to eight on the evening of Lola’s first dip into life, he
turned away from the telephone and presented himself to the man who had
been his batman during the last year of the War. He had had three since
the miracle of the Marne. He was rather bored because he had just been
told by the girl who had promised to dine with him that she didn’t feel
like eating and he knew that meant that some one else had cropped up who
was more amusing than himself. He had a great mind to give the Savoy a
wide berth and walk round to Boodles and have dinner with the _Pall Mall
Gazette_. But on second thoughts the idea of accompanying his cold
salmon and cucumber with the accumulating mass of depressing evidence of
the world’s unrest, as set forth in the evening paper, appalled him.
Charles was trying to edge his way back into Hungary. The Russian Reds
were emptying their poison all over the map. English miners had gone out
on strike and with a callousness altogether criminal had left the pumps
unmanned. Viviani had landed in the United States to endeavor to prove
to the new President that if he did not jerk the Senate out of Main
Street he would inevitably sentence Europe to death. And Lloyd George,
even to the amazement of those who knew him best, was continuing his
game of poker with Lenin and Trotsky.

It couldn’t be done. And so, his tie duly tied by the clumsy-fingered
man who had received lessons from a shop in the Burlington Arcade, the
gallant Peter left his rooms in Park Place and stood on the curb in St.
James’s Street. Should he walk or drive? Should he try to raise a friend
equally at a loose end, or carry on alone? How he missed his dear old
father, who, until the day of his peaceful death, was always ready to
join him in a cheery dinner at the Marlborough or the Orleans or at one
of the hotels where he could see the pretty girls. After all, dining at
the Savoy was not such a lonely proceeding as it seemed. Among the
profiteers and the new rich there might be a familiar face. And there
was at any rate an orchestra. With a dump hat at an angle of forty-five
and a light overcoat over his dinner jacket, he was a mark for all the
prowling cabs which found business worse than usual. Two or three of
them knew this tall wiry man and had served in his Division. One of the
youngest of the Brigadier Generals in the British Army, he had worn his
brass hat as though it were the cap of a man with one pip; they loved
him for that and any day and any night would cheerfully have followed
him to hell. Many of them had called him “Beauty Chalfont,” which had
made him uncomfortable. It was better than “Bloody” Chalfont or
“Butcher” Chalfont,—adjectives that had been rather too freely applied
to some of his brother Brigadiers. So far as the majority of passers-by
were concerned, this man to whom willing hands had gone up in salute and
who had turned out to be a born soldier was, like so many demobilized
officers all over the country, of no account, a nobody, his name and his
services forgotten.

The pre-war cheeriness which had belonged to the Savoy was absent now.
Chorus ladies and Guards officers, baby-faced foreign office clerks and
members of the Bachelors, famous artists and dramatists and the
ubiquitous creatures who put together the musical potpourris of the
town, beautiful ladies of doubtful reputation and highly respectable
ones without quite so much beauty no longer jostled the traveling
Americans, tennis-playing Greeks and Indian rajahs in the foyer.
Chalfont marched in to find the place filled with wrongly dressed men
with plebeian legs and strange women who seemed to have been dug out of
the residential end of factory cities. Their pearls and diamonds were
almost enough to stir Bolshevism in the souls of curates.

Shedding his coat and hat and taking a ticket from a flunkey, on whose
chest there was a line of ribbons, he looked across the long vista of
intervening space to the dining room. The band was playing “Avalon” and
a buzz of conversation went up in the tobacco smoke. What was the name
of that cheery little soul who had dined with him in March, 1914? March,
1914. He had been a happy-go-lucky Captain in the 21st Lancers in those
days, drawing a generous allowance from the old man and squeezing every
ounce of fun out of life. The years between had brought him up against
the sort of realities that he did not care to think about when left
without companionship and occupation. Two younger brothers dead and
nearly all his pals.—Just as he was about to go down the stairs and be
conducted to one of the small tables in the draught he saw a girl in a
black cloak with touches of silver on it standing alone, large-eyed, her
butter-colored hair gleaming in the light, and caught his breath.
“Jumping Joseph,” he said to himself, “look at that,” and was rooted to
the floor.

It was Lola, as scared as a child in the middle of traffic, a rabbit
among a pack of hounds, asking herself, cold and hot by turns, what she
had done—oh, what—by coming to that place with no one to look after her,
wishing and wishing that the floor would open up and let her into a
tunnel which would lead her out to the back room of the nerve-wrung
dressmaker. Every passing man who looked her up and down and every woman
who turned her head over her shoulder added stone after stone to the
pile of her folly, so childish, so laughable, so stupendous. How could
she have been such a fool,—the canary so far away from the safety of its
cage.

Chalfont looked again. “She’s been let down by somebody,” he thought.
“What sort of blighter is it who wouldn’t break his neck to be on the
steps to meet such a—perfectly——All these cursed eyes, greedily
signaling. What’s to be done?”

And as he stood there, turning it all over, his chivalry stirred, Lola
came slowly out of her panic. If only Mrs. Rumbold had asked her with
whom she was going, if only she had had, somewhere in all the world, one
sophisticated friend to tell her that such a step as this was false and
might be fatal. The way out was to stand for one more moment and look as
though her escort were late, or had been obliged to go to the telephone,
and then face the fact that in her utter and appalling ignorance she had
made a mistake, slip away, drive back to that dismal Terrace and change
into her Cinderella clothes. Ecstasy approaching madness must have made
her suppose that all she had to do was to sail in to this hotel in Lady
Feo’s frock and all the rest would follow,—that looking, as well as
feeling “a lady” now and loving like a woman, something would go out
from her soul—a little call—and Fallaray would rise and come to her. Mr.
Fallaray. The Savoy. They were far, far out of her reach. Her heart was
in her borrowed shoes. And then she became aware of Chalfont, met his
eyes and saw in them sympathy and concern and understanding. And what
was more, she knew this man. Yes, she did. He was no stranger; she had
seen him often,—that very day. It was a rescue! A friendly smile curled
up her lips.

Chalfont maintained his balance. Training told. He gave it fifty
seconds—fifty extraordinary seconds—during which he asked himself, “Is
she—or not?” Deciding not by a unanimous vote, he went across to her and
bowed. “I’m awfully afraid that something must have happened. Can I be
of use to you?”

“I’m longing for asparagus,” said Lola in the manner of an old friend.

“That’s perfectly simple,” said Chalfont, blinking just once. “I’m
alone, you’re alone, and asparagus ought to be good just now.”

“Suppose we go in then,” said Lola, buying the hotel, her blood dancing,
her eyes all free from fright. She was perfectly happy in the presence
of this man because she recognized in him immediately a modern version
of the Chevalier who had so frequently brought her bonbons to her room
at Versailles which overlooked the back yard of Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

“My name’s Chalfont, Peter Chalfont.” A rigid conventionality sat on his
shoulders.

“I know,” she said, and added without a moment’s hesitation, “I am
Madame de Brézé.” And then she knew how she knew. How useful was the
Tatler. Before the War, during the War, after the War, the eyes of this
man had stared at her from its pages in the same spirit of protection.
That very afternoon she had paused at his photograph taken in hunting
kit, sitting on his horse beside the Prince of Wales, underneath which
was printed, “Sir Peter Chalfont, Bart. V. C. Late Brigadier
General,”—and somewhere among that crowd was Fallaray.



II


As they went down the red-carpeted stairs and passed through what Peter
called “the monkey house,” the people who had dined at a cheap
restaurant and now at the cost of a cup of coffee were there to watch
the menagerie followed Lola with eager eyes. Some of them recognized
Chalfont. But who was she? A chorus girl? No. A sister? He was certainly
not wearing a brotherly expression. A lady? Obviously, and one who could
afford not to wear a single jewel. What a refreshing contrast to the
wives of profiteers. And she was so young, so finished,—a Personality.
Even Grosvenor Bones, the man who made it his duty to know everybody and
supplied the _Daily Looking Glass_ with illiterate little paragraphs,
was puzzled and, like a dramatic critic who sees something really
original and faultless, startled, disconcerted.

Feeling her own pulse as she passed through the avenue of stares, Lola
was amazed to find that her heart-beats were normal, that she was not in
the least excited or frightened or uncertain of herself any longer. She
felt, indeed—and commented inwardly on the fact—as though dinner at the
Savoy were part of her usual routine, and that Peter Chalfont was merely
Albert Simpkins or Ernest Treadwell in a better coat and cast in a rarer
mold. How Chalfont would have laughed if she had told him this. She
felt, as a matter of fact, like a girl who was playing a leading part on
the London stage as a dark horse, but who had in reality gained enormous
experience in a repertory company in the Provinces. She thanked her
stars that she had indulged in her private game for so long a time.

The bandmaster, a glossy person with a roving and precocious eye, bent
double, violin and all, and signaled congratulations to Chalfont with
ears and eyes, eyebrows and mouth. He had the impertinence of a
successful jockey. A head waiter came to the entrance of the dining room
and washed his hands,—his face wearing his best bedside manner. “For
two, Sir Peter?” he asked, as though he were not quite sure that some
miracle might not break them into three. And Peter nodded. But Lola was
not to be hurried off to the first of the disengaged tables. Fallaray
was somewhere in the room and her scheme was, if possible, to sit at a
table well within his line of vision. She laid the tips of her fingers
on Chalfont’s arm and inspected the room.—There was Fallaray, as
noticeable in that heterogeneous crowd as a Rodin figure among the
efforts of amateur sculptors. “That table,” she said to the head waiter
and indicated one placed against a pillar. One or two of Chalfont’s
friends S. O. S.’d to him as he followed the young, slim erect figure
across the maze. Luck with her once more, Lola found herself face to
face with Fallaray, only two tables intervening. She decided that the
charming old lady was his mother. The other had no interest for her.

A thousand questions ran through Chalfont’s head. Madame de Brézé.—Widow
of one of the gallant Frenchmen who had been killed in the War, or the
wife, let down by her lover, of an elderly Parisian blood? He would bet
his life against the latter conjecture, and the first did not seem to be
possible because he had never seen any face so free from grief, pain or
suffering. De Brézé. The name conveyed nothing. He had never heard it
before. It had a good ring about it. But how was it that this girl
talked English as well as his sister? She looked French. She wore her
dress like a Frenchwoman. There was something about the neatness of her
hair which Frenchwomen alone achieve. Probably educated in England. He
was delighted with her acceptance of the situation. That was decidedly
French. An English girl, even in these days, would either have frozen
him to his shoes or lent to the episode a forced note of irregularity
which would have made it tiresome and tasteless.

It was not until after the asparagus had arrived that Lola succeeded in
catching Fallaray’s eyes. They looked at her for a moment as though she
were merely a necessary piece of hotel decoration and wandered off. But
to her intense and indescribable joy, they returned and remained and
something came into them which showed her that he had focused them upon
her as a human being and a woman. She saw that he wore the expression of
a man who had suddenly heard the loud ringing of a bell, an alarm bell.
And then, having seen that his stare had been noticed, he never looked
again.

The rustle of silk!—The rustle of silk!

And presently, Chalfont being silent, she leant forward and spoke in a
low voice. Luckily the band was not playing a jazz tune but at the
request of some old-fashioned person Massenet’s “Elegy.” She said, “Sir
Peter, will you do something for me?” And he replied, “Anything under
the sun.” “Well, then, will you introduce me to Mr. Fallaray before he
leaves the room? He’s at a table just behind you. I admire him so much.
It would be a great—the greatest——”

Her voice broke and a flush ran up to her hair, and something came into
her eyes that made them look like stars.

Luckily Chalfont was not looking at her face. Her request was a large
order, and as usual when puzzled,—he was never disconcerted—he began
twisting about his comic cork hand. “Fallaray?” he said, and raised his
eyebrows. “Of course, I’d love to do it for you. I know him as well as
anybody else does, I suppose—I mean ordinary people. But he doesn’t
remember me from Adam. He passed me to-night in the foyer, for instance,
and looked clean through my head. I had to put up my hand to see that I
hadn’t left it at home. He’s the only man, except the sweep who used to
come to our house when I was a kid, of whom I’ve ever been afraid.
However—you wish it and the thing must be done.” And he gave her a
little bow.

Lola could see that she had given her new friend a task from which he
would do almost anything to escape. After all, there was not much in
common between Fallaray, whose nose was at the grindstone, and Peter
Chalfont, who had nothing to do but kill time. But she must meet
Fallaray that night. It was written. Every man was a stepping-stone to
this one man who needed her so, but did not know her yet. Therefore,
with a touch of ruthlessness that came to her directly from her famous
ancestress, she thanked him and added, “It can be managed near the place
where you put your hat and coat.”

Chalfont was amused and interested and even perhaps a little astonished
at this pretty young thing who had the ways of a woman of the world. “I
agree with you,” he said, “but——” and looked at the menu.

Lola shook her head. “I hate buts. They are at the meat course and we’ve
only just begun. Dinner doesn’t really interest you and I’m a mere
canary. The moment they rise from the table we can make a quick exit.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to quote Simpkins and say “nick out.”

Chalfont grinned, pounced upon his roll and started to eat. “After all,”
he said, “it will give me an admirable opportunity of inviting you to
supper. Keep an eye on the old birds and as soon as they show a
disposition to evacuate the situation we’ll limber up and wait for them
in the foyer. He’s a hero of yours. Is that the idea?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Do you happen to know Lady Feo?”

“Very well, indeed. She has been very kind to me. I like her.”

Chalfont shifted his shoulders. That was quite enough. “Are you going to
give me the whole of the evening?” he asked. “Or will that escort of
yours show up sooner or later and claim you?”

“He’s as good as dead, as far as I’m concerned. What do you suggest?”

He bent forward eagerly. “I dunno. A show of sorts. Not the theater. I
can’t stand that. We might drop into one of the Reviews or see what they
are doing at the Coliseum. I love the red-nosed comedian who falls over
a pin and breaks a million plates in an agony of economical terror. Do
you like that sort of thing?”

Lola’s experience of Reviews and Variety entertainments was limited to
Hammersmith and the suburbs. “You’re going to do something for me,” she
said, “so I am perfectly ready to do something for you. I’m rather keen
about give and take.”

Which was good hearing for Chalfont. He hadn’t met many women who
understood that golden rule. He could see even then that the little de
Brézé was going to play ducks and drakes with his future plans, put him
to a considerable amount of inconvenience and probably keep him hanging
about town,—for which he had very little use now that the sun was
shining. Already Lola’s attraction had begun its disturbing effect. He
was on the verge of becoming brother of a valet, a butler, two footmen
and the Lord knew how many of the hobble-de-hoys of Queen’s Road,
Bayswater.

The fish came and they both fell to,—Lola watching Fallaray’s table
keenly. “I saw a rather decent photograph of you in the _Tatler_
to-day,” she said. It might have been Feo who spoke. “You won the point
to point, didn’t you?”

“I did,” said Chalfont. “But I should have been beaten by the Boy if I
hadn’t had a better horse. He rode like the devil.”

“You don’t think that point to points are rather playing the fool just
now, then?” The question came quietly but had the effect of making
Chalfont suspend his fork in mid-air.

“Yes. I do. But under the present system what is the ordinary plain man
to do but stand aside and watch our political muddlers mess everything
up? I was asked to rejoin and take over a district in Ireland. Not me. I
could see myself raising Cain in about ten minutes and washed out at the
end of a week. Soldiers aren’t required in Ireland.”

“No?”

“No. Nor policemen, nor machine guns. Ireland stands in need of a little
man with an Irish accent and the soul of Christ.”

Lola rose to her feet. Fallaray had done the same thing and was bending
over his mother.

And so Chalfont with, it must be confessed, a slightly rueful glance at
his plate, told the waiter to give his bill to his chief, and followed
Madame de Brézé along the lane between the tables and up the long path
of the “monkey house.” And presently, when Fallaray gave his number to
the flunkey and waited for his coat and hat, Chalfont carried out his
orders. He went forward. “How do you do?” he said. “Wonderful weather.”
It was a little lame.

Fallaray did not recognize the speaker except as a man who obviously had
been a soldier. A left hand had been presented. The other was eloquent
enough. “How are you?” he replied. “Yes, it _is_ wonderful weather.”

And then Chalfont made the plunge. “I want to introduce you, if I may,
to one of our Allies who admires you very much, Madame de Brézé—Mr.
Fallaray.”

Fallaray turned. From the little eager hand that nestled into his own
Lola sent a message of all the hero-worship and adoration that possessed
her soul and all the desire to serve and love that had become the one
overwhelming passion of her life. But neither spoke.

A moment later she was standing with Peter Chalfont, watching Fallaray
on his way out with the two little ladies.—Her heart was fluttering like
the wings of a bird.

But half-way through the evening, after having been swept away by
Tschaikowsky’s “Francesca da Rimini” and the Fantasy from “Romeo and
Juliet” and stirred deeply by Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” Fallaray
underwent a strange and disconcerting experience. Leaving his place
between his mother and old Lady Ladbroke, he went to smoke a cigarette
in the foyer of the hall during the intermission. The music had gone to
his brain and driven out of it for the moment the anxieties that beset
him. All the vibrations of that wonderful orchestra flew about him like
a million birds and the sense of sex that he had got from Lola’s touch
ran through his veins.

He went through the swing-doors and out onto the steps of the building.
It was one of those wonderful nights which come sometimes in April and
touch the city with magic. It was like the advance guard of June
bringing with it the warmth and the scents of that exquisite month. The
sky was clear and almost Italian, and the moonlight lay like snow on the
roofs. It cast long shadows across the street. Fallaray looked up at the
stars and a new and curious thrill of youth ran through him and a sort
of impatience at having missed something—he hardly knew what. Wherever
he looked he seemed to see two wide-apart eyes filled with adoration and
longing and a little red mouth half open. “De Brézé,” he said to
himself. “De Brézé.” And the name seemed to hold romance and to carry
his thoughts out of London, out of the present and back to the times of
beflowered garments and powdered heads, of minuets and high red heels.

And as he stood there, far away from the bewilderment and futility of
Parliament, a car drove up to the hall and two women got out. They were
Mrs. Malwood and Feo and they were dressed in country clothes—the
curious country clothes affected by them both. Mrs. Malwood, who was
laughing and excited, passed Fallaray without noticing him and entered
the building. But Feo drew up short in front of him, amazed at his
expression. “Good Lord, Arthur,” she said, “what are you doing here and
what on earth are you thinking about?”

Music and the stars and Lola were in his eyes as he looked at her. “I
thought you were in the country,” he said.

“I was. I shall be again in an hour or two. In the middle of dinner I
suddenly remembered that a protégé of mine, Leo Kirosch, was to sing
here to-night. So I dashed up. He’s in the second part of the program,
so I shall be in time to hear him. It entirely rotted the party, but
that couldn’t be helped.”

She had never seen that look in Fallaray’s eyes before and was
intrigued. It had never been brought to life by her. Could it be
possible that this Quixote, this St. Anthony, had looked at last upon
the flesh pots? What fun if he had! How delicious was the mere vague
idea of Fallaray, of all men, being touched by anything so ordinary and
human as love, and how vastly amusing that she, who had worked herself
into a sort of half belief that she was attracted by this young Polish
singer, should now stand face to face with the man to whom she was tied
by law, though by no other bonds. The dash up from the country was worth
it even though she had risen unsatisfied from dinner and missed her
coffee and cognac.... Or was it that she herself, having dropped from
the clouds, and looking as she knew she did, more beautiful and fresh
than usual because of her imaginary love affair with this long-haired
youth who sang like a thrush, had brought this unaccustomed look into
her husband’s eyes?... How very amusing!

“Do you mean to say that having only driven down this afternoon to the
country, you’ve come all the way up again just to hear two or three
songs?”

“I do,” she said. “Mad, isn’t it? ‘That crazy woman Feo on the rampage
again.’ Is that what you’re thinking?”

“Something like that,” he answered, and smiled at her. He felt queerly
and charmingly young that night and lenient and rather in sympathy with
madness. The Cromwellianism in which he had wrapped himself had fallen
temporarily from his shoulders. He put his hand under her elbow and
brought her up to the top step on a level with himself.

“My God,” thought Lady Feo, “the man’s alive for once. He tingles. I
_must_ be looking well.” What did it matter if Leo Kirosch was singing
and she would miss his songs? It was much better sport to stand on the
steps of that old building and flirt with her husband. She took his arm
and stood close against him and looked up into his face with her most
winning smile. “It gave me the shock of my life to see you here,” she
said. “I didn’t know that you had a penchant for these suburban orgies.
Who are you with?”

“My mother and Aunt Betsy.”

Under any other circumstances Feo would have thrown back her head and
laughed derisively. Those two old birds. Instead of which she snuggled a
little closer just to see the effect. It was ages since she had treated
this man to anything in the nature of familiarity, in fact it was the
first time since that night when she had made him kiss her because his
profile and his tennis playing had obsessed her.

“After you’ve taken them home,” she said, “why not motor back with us?
It’s a gorgeous night, and the Eliots’ cottage is high up on a range of
hills almost within reaching distance of the stars.”

Her grotesque sense of humor carried her away. How immense it would be
to tempt this man out of the stony path of duty and see what he would
do. What a story for her little friends! What screams of mirth she could
evoke in her recital of so amazing an event, especially as she could
dress it all up as she alone knew so well how to do! And then to be able
to add to it all the indignant broken English of Kirosch at finding
himself deserted. He had promised to sing to her that night. What a
frightfully funny story.

For a moment or two, with the intoxication of music and of those
wide-apart eyes still upon him, Fallaray stood closer to his wife than
he had ever been. It seemed to him that she had grown softer and sweeter
and he was surprised and full of wonder, until he remembered that she
had come to see Kirosch, whom she called her protégé—and then he
understood.

Mrs. Malwood came out and luckily broke things up. “He’s singing,” she
said. “Aren’t you coming in? Good heavens, Feo, what the deuce are you
playing at? You’ve dragged me up and ruined everything, only to miss the
very thing you seemed so keen to hear. What is the idea?” She recognized
Fallaray and said, “Oh, it’s you.”

And he bowed and got away—that kink in Feo’s nature was all across her
face like a birthmark.

And when Feo looked again, she saw in Fallaray’s eyes once more the old
aloofness, the old dislike. And she laughed and threw back her head.
“_Cherchez la femme_,” she said. “One of these days I’ll get you to tell
me why you looked like that.” And she disappeared with Mrs. Malwood to
smile down on Kirosch from her seat near the platform.

And Fallaray remained out under the stars, his intoxication all gone.
Nowhere could he see and nowhere did he wish to see those wide-apart
eyes with their adoration. The tingle of that little hand had left him.
And just as he turned to go back into the building a newspaper boy
darted out to a side street with a shrill raucous cry, “Speshall. Mines
Floodin’. Riots in Wales. Speshall.”



III


The tears that blinded her eyes had gone when Chalfont came back from
the cloakroom. He saw on Lola’s face a smile that made him think of
sunlight on a bank of primroses.

But they didn’t go to the Coliseum, after all. It so happened that just
as they were about to leave the Savoy, Chalfont was pounced upon by a
little woman, the sight of whom made Lola long to burst into a laugh.
She was amazingly fat, almost as fat indeed as one of those pathetic
women who go round with circuses and sit in a tent all by themselves
dressed in tinsel and present an unbelievable leg to gaping yokels and
say, “Pinch it, dearie, and see for yourself.” Her good-natured face,
with eyes as blue as birds’ eggs, ran down into three double chins. It
was crowned with a mass of hair dyed a brilliant yellow, the roots of
which grew blackly like last year’s leaves under spring’s carpet. With
an inconceivable lack of humor she was dressed like a flapper. She was a
comic note in a tragic world. “Oh, hello, Peter,” she said. “You bad
boy, you’ve deserted me,” and then she looked at Lola with a beaming
smile of appreciation and added, “No wonder.”

More than a little annoyed, because the one thing that he most wanted
was to keep Lola to himself, Peter presented his cork hand. “I’ve been
in the country,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry I had to miss your party.
Lady Cheyne—Madame de Brézé.”

“There, I knew you were French. I’ve been betting on it ever since you
came in. We could see you two from our table.” She waved her hand
towards a group of six or seven people who were standing at the top of
the stairs. “Come along home with me now,” she said. “We’re going to
have some music. I’ve got a new Russian violinist—you needn’t be afraid,
he’s been thoroughly disinfected—and a dear thing who sings the roof
off. I can’t pronounce her name. It’s a cross between a sneeze and an
oath. I believe she comes from Czecho-Slovakia. Also I’ve got Alton
Cartridge, the poet. He’s going to read one of his latest effusions.
He’s the great futurist, you know. That is, he doesn’t bother himself
about rhymes and not very much about reason. Why don’t you both come?”

Chalfont looked quickly at Lola and signaled, “For God’s sake, no.”

So she said, “I should love to.” The name and fame of Lady Cheyne was
well known to her through the medium of the “Letters of Evelyn.”

“That’s very sweet of you, my dear. One hundred Kensington Gore.
Memorize it, because I know that Peter will forget. He always does. We
can’t raise a car between us so we’re all going in taxis. See you later
then.”

She squeezed Lola’s hand, nodded roguishly at Peter and bounced away to
join her friends, watched hypnotically by people on their way out who,
although she was one of London’s landmarks, had never seen her before.

Chalfont was abominably disappointed. It would have been so jolly to
have had Lola all to himself. “Wasn’t that rather unkind of you?” he
asked.

“Yes,” said Lola, “it was, but I couldn’t resist the chance to see Lady
Cheyne at home and discover if all the stories about her are true. I’m
so sorry, but after all we can do the Coliseum another night.”

“Oh, well, then, that’s all right.” He brightened up considerably.
“Probably you will be more amused at number One Hundred than you would
have been at the Coliseum. Poppy manages to surround herself with all
the latest freaks.” He led her out, captured a cab and gave the man the
address.

“Tell me about her,” said Lola. “You know her very well, it seems.”

“No, I don’t. I’ve only met her twice. She arrives at Christian names
within half an hour. She calls herself the mother of thousands, and is,
although she’s never had a child of her own. Nobody knows who she was
before she married Sir William Cheyne, the contractor, but it’s
generally believed that she’s the daughter of a country parson brought
up between the Bible and the kitchen garden. She tells everybody that
she was very pretty as a girl. It’s her horticultural training that
makes her look like a cauliflower. The old man died about ten years ago
and left her very well off. She’s really a remarkable little soul,
greatly to be respected. Every struggling artist who has ever found his
way into London has been financed by her. She has a heart of gold and
during the War she was the chairman of one of the soldiers’
entertainment committees. I shall never forget seeing her behind the
lines, surrounded by muddy Tommies just relieved. She was a prime
favorite out there and was known as Poppy throughout the British Army.
How long are you going to be in London?” He switched suddenly to
personalities.

“For the rest of the season,” said Lola, “and then my plans are
uncertain. I may go down to Buckinghamshire or I may spend July at
Dinard. It isn’t settled yet.” She had heard Lady Feo talk over both
places with Mrs. Malwood.

“I wonder if I’ve met your husband about London?”

“I am a widow,” said Lola. Her tone was a little sad but, at the same
time, it was filled with resignation.

That was something to know. There was no further information
forthcoming, however, and as Peter was one of those men who had a great
respect for fourth walls, he left it at that.

They were the last to arrive. Their cab had stalled three times in
Piccadilly and coughed badly through Knightsbridge. Every window of
number One Hundred was alight and as they entered the hall a high
soprano voice was sending piercing vibrations all through the house. A
long oak settle in the hall was covered with strange coats and stranger
hats and there were queer people sitting on the stairs. The drawing-room
was obviously overflowing.

Lola picked her way upstairs, Chalfont following closely. Among these
people who conveyed the impression of having slept in their clothes—Art
is always a little shy of cold water—Lola felt a sense of distress.
Democratic in her ability to make friends with all honest members of the
proletariat, like those in the servants’ sitting room in Dover Street,
she felt hopelessly aristocratic when it came to affection with dandruff
on its velvet collar.

The drawing-room, wide and lofty, was one great square of bad taste,
filled, overfilled, with what America aptly calls “junk.” Spurious
Italian furniture jostled with imitation English oak. Huge pieces of
fake tapestry hung on the walls side by side with canvases of extremely
self-conscious nudes. Early Victorian whatnots covered with silver
apostle spoons jostled with Tottenham Court Road antiques. All the lamp
shades on the numerous electric lamps were red and heavy, so that the
light crept through. To add to the conglomeration of absurdities the
whole place reeked with burning josh sticks. A woman who dyes her hair a
brilliant yellow invariably burns something on the altar of renewed
optimism. The only thing that rang true in the room was the grand piano
and that was kept in tune.

Sprawling on divans which were ranged around the walls Lola could make
out the forms of men and women of all sizes, ages and nationalities. The
men had more hair than the women. There must have been at least sixty
people present, among whom Peter Chalfont looked like a greyhound and
Lola like an advertisement of somebody’s soap. A tremendous woman,
standing with her feet wide apart like a sea captain in a gale, or a
self-conscious golfer on the first tee, was singing Carmen’s most
flamboyant song. She was accompanied by a little person of the male
gender whose lank black locks flapped over his eyes. They seemed to be
competing in making the most noise because when the pianist attempted to
overwhelm the voice with all the strength that he possessed, the singer
filled herself with breath, gripped the floor with her well-trained
feet, and sent forth sounds that must have been excessively trying to
the Albert Memorial.

At the end of this shattering event Lady Cheyne bubbled forward and took
Lola’s hand. “What do you do, my dear?” she asked, as though she were a
performing dog to be put through her tricks. To which Lola replied,
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” with rock-like firmness.

So the exhibitor of human vanities turned persuasively to Peter. “But
you whistle, don’t you?” she asked. And Peter with a stiffening spine
replied, “Yes, but only for taxis.”

“In that case,” said Lady Cheyne, genuinely astonished that neither of
the new arrivals showed any eagerness to jump at her suggestion to
advertise, “find a corner somewhere. A little protégée of mine is going
to dance for us. She is an interpreter of soul moods. So wonderful and
inspiring. You’ll love it, I’m sure.”

Obeying orders, Peter led Lola into a distant corner, eyed by various
artists who labeled him “Soldier” and dismissed him loftily. The passing
of Lola sent a quiver through them and they were ready for the first
available opportunity to attitudinize about her chair. At a sign from
Lady Cheyne the little pianist commenced to play one of Heller’s
“Sleepless Nights” and a very thin girl, wrapped in a small piece of
chiffon, dropped into the middle of the room like a beam of moonlight.

“A spring onion,” said Chalfont, in a whisper, “newly plucked from the
warm earth.” The burst of applause drowned Lola’s flutter of laughter.
The interpretation of soul moods resolved itself, of course, into the
usual series of prancings and high jumps, scuttlings round and roguish
bendings, a final leap into the air and a collapse upon the floor.

And so the evening unwound itself. There were violin solos by men in a
frenzy of false ecstasy, piano solos by women who put that
long-suffering instrument through every conceivable form of torture,
readings of nebulous drivel by the poet Cartridge in a high-pitched
minor-canon voice, and recitations by women without restraint or
humor,—disciples of the new poetry, which Chalfont, quoting from one of
the precocious members of the Bachelors’ Club, called “Loose Verse.”

And then came supper, a welcome event for which all those sixty people
had been waiting. This was served in the dining room, another large and
eccentric apartment where an embittered man manipulated the punch bowl
and was in great request. As soon as she had seen all her guests fully
occupied with chicken salad and fish croquettes, Lady Cheyne returned to
the deserted drawing-room where she found Chalfont and Lola in deep
conversation. She burst upon them like a hand grenade, crying, “Aren’t
they darlings? Every one a genius and all of them hungry. They come to
me like homing pigeons and I do my best to get them placed. Always I
have here one or two of the great impressarios,—agents, you know, and
sometimes I achieve the presence of an actor-manager. But Shakespeare is
out of fashion now and so all my Romeos and Juliets stand a poor chance.
I often sigh for dear Sir Herbert who came here for what he called
‘atmosphere and local color.’ You must come again, my dear. Peter will
be very glad to bring you, I’m sure, and I shall be delighted to have
you for my week-end parties. I have a place at Whitecross, Bucks. The
garden runs down to the Fallaray place, you know.”

From that point on, that big point, Lola ceased to listen.

The whole evening had been filled with amazing sensations. Panic, the
sudden switch to reassurance, the excitement of meeting Chalfont, the
sweeping joy of touching Fallaray’s hand and the knowledge that having
broken through the hoop she could now continue to emerge from Dover
Street with her new and eager companion to serve an apprenticeship for
her final rôle. She had lived a year in an evening. But there was still
another sensation lying in wait for her. The moment had come when she
must return unseen to Castleton Terrace and get back to Dover Street in
good time to reassume the part of lady’s maid so that she might not be
caught by the housekeeper and reported,—a chance for which Miss Breezy
was eagerly waiting. And as she sat unconscious of Lady Cheyne’s babble
and the buzz of conversation which drifted in from the dining room, she
switched on her brain.

How, in the name of all that was wonderful, was she to give Chalfont the
slip. That was the new problem to solve; because, of course, he would
naturally insist on seeing her home in the ordinary course of events. If
he had thought about it at all, she knew that he must have imagined that
she was staying either at the Ritz, the Carlton or the Berkeley, or that
she was living in one of the smaller houses in Curzon Street, Half Moon
Street or Norfolk Street, Park Lane. The jagged end of panic settled
upon her once more and her hands grew icy. It was utterly essential to
her future plans that Chalfont should remain in complete ignorance of
her identity. He must be used by her during the remainder of the season.
He must bring her again to this house. Lady Cheyne had become an
important factor in her scheme because the garden of her country house
ran down to Chilton Park. It was to Chilton Park that Fallaray loved to
go alone for the week-end and wander about, gaining refreshment for his
tired brain; and always it had seemed to Lola, when she had dared to
look into the future, that this place, standing high up on the ridge of
hills above the vale of Aylesbury, backed by a great beech forest and
landmarked by the white cross that had been cut by the Romans, was the
first milestone on her road to love and to the fulfillment of the dream
which had held her all those years.

The problem of her escape and her Cinderella flight became more and more
pressing. What fib could she invent to tell Chalfont? Without any doubt
he would ask her for permission to call. He would want to know her
telephone number and her address. In his eye already there was the
Simpkins look, the Ernest Treadwell expression and, but for his innate
chivalry and breeding, she knew that he would have given tongue to some
of the things which she could see at the back of his eyes. It was past
eleven. She had heard the clock in the hall strike just now.

She began to rehearse a series of scenes. She saw herself rise and say,
“I must go now. A thousand thanks for all that you have done for me this
evening. Will you please ask Lady Cheyne if I may have a taxi?” She saw
herself standing on the doorstep, the taxi waiting, with Chalfont
assuming that he was to play the cavalier and eventually stand
bareheaded, holding her hand, opposite the shabby little villa in
Castleton Terrace. Which would never do. Madame de Brézé did not live
anywhere near Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

She saw herself driven by Chalfont to the Ritz or the Carlton, escorted
by him to the lift where he would wait to see the last of her as she was
taken up to the rooms that she did not possess. That also was
impossible. Great heavens, what was she to do? Trying again, her hands
icier than ever, she saw Chalfont with growing incredulity listening to
cock-and-bull stories which ran like this:

“I don’t want you to see me home. As a matter of fact I’m very
old-fashioned.” Or, “We must say good night here. I’m staying with a
puritanical aunt who will be sure to ask me who brought me home and when
I say, ‘Sir Peter Chalfont’ her answer will be ‘I didn’t know you knew
Sir Peter Chalfont. Where did you meet him?’ And then I shall have to
tell the story of how you picked me up. Can you imagine the result?”—And
this was hopeless because, of course, Peter would say, “How in the name
of all that’s marvelous will your good old aunt know who brings you
home? Good old aunts haven’t got to know the truth. Besides, if it comes
to that, you can drop me about ten doors from the house and then go on
alone. It’s perfectly easy, and it’s done every day.” And who, after
all, was this aunt? Miss Breezy, the housekeeper.

Phew!

And then came an inspiration. “I’m very hungry,” she said aloud. “I
begin to remember that dinner was a little unsatisfactory.” She laughed
and Peter laughed. “But I must go and powder my nose. Please don’t
bother, Lady Cheyne. I’ll find my way and rejoin you in a moment.”

She picked up the cloak which she had brought into the drawing-room,
threw at Chalfont a smile of the most charming camaraderie, touched Lady
Cheyne’s arm in a way that asked for friendship and left the
drawing-room. With one quick look at the deserted hall with all its
strange coats and stranger hats, she made for the front door, opened it,
closed it behind her stealthily and ran down the stone path which led to
the street. The theater traffic was all headed towards High Street,
Kensington. There was not a vacant taxi to be seen. It would not do to
stand about in front of the house, so the little Cinderella who had not
waited for the magic hour of twelve and had taken good care not to leave
her crystal slipper behind her ran up the street to the first turning
and stood quivering with excitement and glee beneath a friendly lamp
post. A little laugh floated into the muggy air.

“Yes, it’s a funny world, ain’t it?”

It was a Bobby who had sidled up from the shadow of a wall and towered
above her, with a sceptical grin about his mouth.

Instantly a new thought came into Lola’s head. “What would Lady Feo do?”
She gave it five seconds and turned coolly, calmly and graciously to the
arm of the law,—a strong and obviously would-be familiar arm. This
girl—running about alone in evening dress—at that time of night.

“I told my car to wait here,” she said. “Evidently there has been some
mistake. Will you be good enough to call me a cab?”

A hand swept up to the peak of the helmet. “Nothing simpler, Madam.”

By the grace of God and the luck that follows drunkards, a taxi was
discharging a fare halfway down the road. The ex-sergeant of the Sussex
regiment put two fingers into his mouth. With a new interest in life the
cab made a wide turn and came up not without style, but with a certain
amount of discretion, because of the uniform which could be seen beneath
the lamp post.

The Bobby opened the door. There was admiration in his eyes. “A good
fairy, ma’am,” he said.

And Lola paused and looked up into his face,—a man face, with a big
moustache and rather bristling eyebrows, a dent in a firm chin and the
mark of shrapnel on the left cheek bone. “A very good fairy,” she said.
“You’ll never know how good. Thanks, most awfully.”

And once more the hand flicked to the brim of the helmet as Lola in an
undertone gave her address to the driver. Not even the Bobby must see
the anti-climax which would be brought about by such an address as
Castleton Terrace.

                                  ――――

A scrawny black cat rose and arched its back as Lola, telling the taxi
man to wait, ran up the steps. One of those loose bells that jangle
indiscreetly woke the echoes in the sleeping street, and the door was
opened by the invincible Mrs. Rumbold, tired-eyed, with yawn marks all
over her face. “Well, here you are, dearie,” she said, as cheerful as
usual, “absobally-lootely to the minute. The old man ain’t turned up
yet. But you’re not going to keep the taxi waiting, are you?”

“Yes,” said Lola.

“Gor blimey.” The comment was a perfectly natural one under the
circumstances.

And while Lola changed back again into the day clothes of the lady’s
maid, Mrs. Rumbold lent a willing hand and babbled freely. It was good
to have some one to speak to. Her legless son had been put to bed two
hours before, asking himself, “Have they forgotten?”

Finally the inevitable question, which Mrs. Rumbold, for all her lessons
in discretion, simply could not resist. “Where have yer bin, dearie?”

And Lola said, “The Savoy. I dined with a knight in shining armor with a
white cross on his chest.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Rumbold, “he was going on to a fancy ball, I suppose.
Lord, how these boys love to dress themselves up.” But a lurking
suspicion of something that was not quite right edged its way into that
good woman’s thoughts. What was little Lola Breezy from the shop round
the corner doing with a gent as ’ad enough money to dine at the Savoy
and sport about in old-time costumes? “Well, of course, as I said
before, you can only live once. But watch your step, dearie. Lots of
banana skins about.”

And Lola threw her arms round the woman’s neck and kissed her warmly.
“Fate has swept the pavement for me,” she said, once more as Feo would
have spoken. “I shall not make any slip.”



IV


Ernest Treadwell faced her at the bottom of the steps, and beneath the
peak of his flabby cap his eyes were filled with fright.

“Is anything the matter with Father or Mother?”

“No,” he said.

“Why do you look like that, then?” Her hand fell away from his coat. If
there was nothing wrong with her parents——

He edged her away from the cab and spoke quickly, without the usual
stammer and timidity. He was laboring under a passion of apprehension.
It made him almost rude. “I came this way round from the Tube and saw
you get out of this cab dressed up like a—a lady. What are you doing?
Where’ve you been?” He caught her by the wrist, excited by a sense of
impending evil. Oh, God, how he loved this girl!

And Lola remembered this, although her brain was filled with pictures of
the Savoy, of Chalfont and of Fallaray. Irritation, in which was mingled
a certain degree of haughtiness, was dropped immediately. She knew that
she had always been enthroned in this boy’s heart. She must respect his
emotion.

“Don’t worry about me, Ernie,” she said, soothingly. “Lady Feo gave me
the dress. I changed into it at Mrs. Rumbold’s and brought it back for
her to work on again. It isn’t quite right.”

“But where could you go to wear a thing like that—and the cloak? You
looked so—so unlike——” He could only see her as she used to be behind
the shop counter and out for walks with him.

And Lola gave a little reassuring laugh because an answer was not ready.
If instead of Ernest Treadwell the man who held her up had been
Simpkins! “One of the girls had two stalls for the St. James’s—her
brother’s in the box office—and so we both dressed up and went. It was
great fun.” Why did these men force her into lying? She took her hand
away.

“Oh,” he said, “I see,” his fear rising like a crow and taking wings.

“And now if you’ve finished playing the glaring inquisitor, I’ll say
good night.” She gave him her hand again.

Covered with the old timidity, he remained where he stood and gazed.
There was something all about her, a glow, a light; a look in her eyes
that he had put there in his dreams. “Can’t I go with you to Dover
Street?”

Why not? Yes, that might be good, in case Simpkins should be waiting.
“Come along then. You’ve made me late. Tell him where to go.”

The cab turned into Queen’s Road and as it passed the narrow house with
the jeweler’s shop below—all in darkness now—Lola leaned forward and
kissed her hand to it. Her father with the glass in his eyes, the ready
laugh, the easy-going way, the confidence in her; her capable mother, a
little difficult to kiss, peeping out of a shell; her own old room so
full of memories, the ground in which she grew. They were slipping
behind. They had almost been specks on the horizon during all that
eventful night, during which she had found her wings. And this Treadwell
boy, his feet in a public library, his soul among the stars, such
clothes and such an accent.—And now there were Chalfont and Lady Cheyne
and—Fallaray? No, not yet. But he had touched her hand and heard the
songs of birds.

“Lola, it hurts me now you’ve gone. I hate to pass the shop. There’s
nothing to do but”—he knew the word and tumbled it out—“yearn.” If only
he might have held her hand, say halfway to the house that he hated.

“Is that a new cap, Ernie? Take it off. You don’t look like a poet.
Nothing to do? Have you forgotten your promise to read and learn? You
can’t become a Masefield in a day!”

He put his hands up to his face and spoke through sudden sobs. “With you
away I shall never become anything, any time. Come back, Lola. Nothing’s
the same now you’re away.”

And she gave him her hand, poor boy. And he held it all too tight, like
a drowning man, as indeed he felt that he was. Since Dover Street had
come into life he hadn’t written a line. The urge had gone. Ambition, so
high before, had fallen like an empty rocket. Lola,—it was for her that
he had worked his eyes to sightlessness far into all those nights.

“This will never do,” she said. Inspiration—she could give him that,
though nothing else—was almost as golden as love. He was to be Some
One,—a modern Paul Brissac. She needed that. And she refired him as the
cab ran on, rekindled the cold stove and set the logs ablaze. Work,
work, study, feel, express, eliminate, temper down. Genius could be
crowded out by weeds like other flowering things.

And as the cab drew up the hand was raised to burning lips. But the
shame of standing aside while the driver was paid—that added a very big
log.

“Good night, Poet.”

“Good night, Princess.” (Oh-h, that was Simpkins’s word.)

Dover Street—and the area steps.




PART IV



I


For a Marquis he was disconcertingly hairy. So much so that even those
fast diminishing people who still force themselves to believe that a
title necessarily places men on a high and ethereal plane were obliged
to confess that Feo’s father might have been any one,—a mere
entomologist for instance, bland, concentrated and careless of
appearance, who pottered about in the open after perfectly superfluous
insects and forgot that such a thing as civilization existed. He had the
appearance indeed of a man who sleeps in tents, scorns to consult a
looking-glass and cuts his own hair with a pair of grass clippers at
long intervals. On a handsome and humorous face, always somehow
sun-tanned, white wiry hairs sprouted everywhere. A tremendous
moustache, all akimbo, completely covered his mouth and spread along
each cheek almost to his ears, from which white tufts protruded. The
clean-cut jaw was shaved as high as the cheek bones, which were left,
like a lawn at the roots of a tree, to run wild. Deep-set blue eyes were
overhung by larky bushes and the large fine head exuded a thick thatch
of obstreperous white stuff that was unmastered by a brush. And as if
all this were not enough, there was a small cascade under the middle of
the lower lip kept just long enough to bend up and bite in moments of
deep calculation. There may have been hairs upon his conscience too,
judging by his exquisite lack of memory.

His was, nevertheless, a very old title and a long line of buried
Marquises had all done something, good and bad, to place the name of
Amesbury in the pages of history. Rip Van Winkle, as most people called
the present noble Lord, had done good and bad things too, like the rest
of us,—good because his heart was kind, and bad from force of
circumstances. If he had inherited a fine fortune with his father’s
shoes instead of bricks and mortar mortgaged from cellar to ceiling, his
might have been a different story and not one unfortunately linked up
with several rather shady transactions. At fifty-five, however, life
found him still abounding in optimism on the nice allowance granted to
him by Fallaray, and always on the lookout, like all Micawbers, for
something to turn up.

He had driven the large brake to the station to meet Feo and her party
who were on their way down for the week-end. His temporary exile at
Chilton Park, brought about by a universal disinclination to honor his
checks, had been a little dull. He was delighted at the prospect of
seeing people again, especially Mrs. Malwood. He was fond of Angoras and
liked to hear them purr. So with a rather seedy square felt hat over one
eye and a loose overcoat of Irish homespun over his riding kit, he
clambered down from the high box, saw that the groom was at the horses’
heads and strolled into the station to talk over the impending strike of
the Triple Alliance with the station master,—the parlor Bolshevist of
Princes Risborough. An express swooped through the station as he stood
on the platform and made a parachute of his overcoat. The London train
was not due for fifteen minutes.

Tapping on the door of Mr. Sparrow’s room, he entered to find that
worthy exulting over the morning paper, his pale, tubercular face
flushed with excitement. The headlines announced that “England faces
revolution. Mines flood as miners steal coal and await with confidence
the entire support of allied unions. Great Britain on the edge of a
precipice.”

“All wrong,” said Rip Van Winkle quietly. “Panicky misinterpretation of
the situation, Sparrow,—much as you desire the opposite.”

The station master whipped round, his fish-like eyes strangely magnified
by the strong glasses in his spectacles. “What makes yer say that, m’
Lord?” he asked, even at that moment flattered at the presence of a
Marquis in his office. “Labor has England by the throat.”

“England has Labor by the seat of the pants, you should say, Sparrow.
Take my word for it, the strike is not only doomed to eventual failure,
however the fluctuations go, but the Labor movement will grow less and
less terrorist in its methods from this day onwards.”

Mr. Sparrow threw back his head and laughed loudly,—showing an
incomplete collection of very disastrous teeth. “Well, there won’t be a
damned train running by this time Monday,” he said.

“I’ll bet you a thousand oak apples to one there will,” replied Lord
Amesbury, “and I’ll tell you why. Every sane and law-abiding Englishman,
from the small clerk to the most doddering duke, has begun to organize
and this mighty revolution of yours is already as dead as mutton.”

“Oh, is that so?” Mr. Sparrow laughed again.

“That is so. You see, Sparrow, you Labor gentlemen, talking
paradoxically, have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, not merely
in this country but all over the world. You have been the bullies of the
school and for a considerable number of years you have made our
politicians stiff with fright. They have licked your boots and given way
to you whenever you demanded higher wages. They pampered and petted you
all through the War, from which you emerged with swollen heads and far
too many pianos. When history turns its cold eye upon you, you will be
summed up as a set of pretty dirty blackguards who did less to win the
War than all the dud shells piled into a heap. You slacked, grumbled,
threatened and held up governments for wages out of all proportion to
your work. You proved the possession of criminal as well as unpatriotic
instincts and you finally showed yourselves up in your true light when
you deserted the mines and took the pumpers away. There isn’t any word
in any dictionary to define the sort of indignation which that dastardly
and wanton action has caused. The result of it has been to put the first
big nail in the coffin of Labor unions. You have been discovered as men
with a yellow streak. Governments now see, what they have never been
able to recognize before, that labor does not form the most important
section of the three sections of society, the other two being capital
and the purchasing power. You have made clear to them, Master Sparrow,
that labor and capital are at the mercy of the third element,—the great
middle class, the people who buy from capital, pay your wages and who
can at any moment, by not buying, reduce both capital and labor to
nothingness. The new strike, the epoch-making strike, is of this middle
class, and they haven’t struck against you but against strikes. At last
the worm has turned and I venture to prophesy, foolish as it is, that
after a series of damaging and expensive kicks, labor will descend to
its proper place, with a just share in profits that will enable it to
get a little joy out of life, freed from the tyrannical hand of unions,
and with more spare time than is at present enjoyed by the members of
the middle class who will continue to take the rough with the smooth,
without squealing, as heretofore. In fact, I look upon this strike of
miners as one of the best things that has ever happened in history and
nothing gives me greater joy and greater satisfaction than to watch, as
I shall do from to-day onwards, the gradual diminishing of the excessive
size of the labor head.—How are your potatoes coming along?”

Without waiting for an answer, the tall old man turned quietly and left
the room; while the parlor Bolshevist, stuffed with the pamphlets of
Hyndman and Marks, Lenin and Trotsky, gave a vicious kick to the leg of
the table and eyed the receding figure with venom.

The train was late and so Rip Van Winkle killed time by studying the
contents of the bookstall, looking with a sort of incredulity at the
stuff on which the public is fed,—illiterate fiction with glaring covers
and cheap weeklies filled with egregious gossip and suggestive drawings.
The extra fifteen minutes of waiting was passed very pleasantly by his
Lordship because many of his old friends from the village came up to him
and talked. The chemist, who had driven down personally to collect his
monthly box of drugs from London, was very affable. So also was the
blacksmith who had known Lord Amesbury for many years and treated him
with _bonhomie_. They talked racing with great earnestness. The postman,
the gardener from the house of the war profiteer, and the village
policeman, all of them very good friends of the man upon whom they
looked as representing the good old days, livened things up. With the
real democracy that belongs solely to the aristocrat, Rip Van Winkle
knew all about the ailments of their wives, the prospects of their
children, the number of their hens and pigs and their different forms of
religious worship, which he duly respected, whether they were Little
Baptists, Big Baptists or Middle-sized Baptists, Minor Methodists or
Major Methodists, Independent Churchmen or Dependent Churchmen, Roman
Catholics or Anglicans whose Catholicism is interpreted intelligently.
The village consisted perhaps of twenty-five hundred souls, but they all
had their different cures, and there were as many churches and chapels
in and off the High Street as there were public houses. It had always
seemed to Feo’s father that honest beer is infinitely preferable to the
various sorts of religion which were to be obtained in those other
public houses in their various bottles, all labeled differently, and he
hoped that the prohibition which had been the means of developing among
the people of the United States so many drinks far more injurious than
those in which alcohol prevailed would never be forced by graft and
hypocrisy, self-seeking and salary-making upon the tight little
island,—not always so tight as prohibitionists supposed.

Lady Feo bounded out of the train, followed by Mrs. Malwood and their
two new friends recently picked up,—Feo’s latest fancy, Gordon
Macquarie, a glossy young man who backed musical plays in order that he
might dally with the pretty members of his choruses, and Mrs. Malwood’s
most recent time-killer whose name was Dowth,—David Dowth, the Welsh
mine owner, who had just succeeded to his father’s property and had
invaded London to see life. Cambridge was still upon the latter’s face
and very obviously upon his waistcoat. He was a green youth who would
learn about women from Mrs. Malwood. They were both new to Rip Van
Winkle and for that reason all the more interesting. Lola, carrying a
jewel case, emerged from a compartment at the back of the train with
Mrs. Malwood’s maid, similarly burdened, and it was at Lola that Lord
Amesbury threw his most appreciative glance.

“French,” he said to himself. “The reincarnation of those pretty little
people made immortal by Fragonard.”

Feo threw her arms round her father’s neck and kissed him on those
places of his cheeks which were clear of undergrowth. “Good old Rip,”
she said. “Always on the spot. Been bored, old boy?”

Lord Amesbury laughed. “To be perfectly frank, yes,” he said. “I have
missed my race meetings and my bridge at Boodles, but I have been
studying the awakening of spring and the psychology of bird life, all
very delightful. Also I have been watching the daily changes among the
trees in the beech forest. Amazingly dramatic, my dear. But it’s good to
see you again and I hope your two friends are gamblers. Possibly I can
make a bit out of them.”

He patted her on the shoulder and looked her up and down with admiration
not unmixed with astonishment. Among the many riddles which he had never
been able to solve he placed the fact that he of all men was Feo’s
father. What extraordinary twist had nature performed in making his only
daughter a girl instead of a boy? Standing there in her short skirt and
manly looking golf shoes with lopping tongues, her beautiful square
shoulders lightly covered with a coarsely knitted sweater of chestnut
brown and a sort of Tyrolean hat drawn down over her ears, she looked
like a young officer in the First Life Guards masquerading in women’s
clothes.



II


When Lord Amesbury mounted the box with Feo at his side and turned out
of the station yard into the long road which led to the old village of
Princes Risborough, the first thing that caught Lola’s eyes was the
white cross cut by the Romans in the chalk of the hill, on the top of
which sat Chilton Park. Again and again she had stood in front of
photographs of this very view. They hung in Miss Breezy’s room, neatly
framed. Many times Miss Breezy herself had explained to Lola the meaning
of that cross, so far as its historical significance went, and Lola had
been duly impressed. The Romans,—how long ago they must have lived. But
to her, more and more as her love and adoration grew, that white cross
stood as a mark for the place to which Fallaray went from time to time
for peace, to listen to the wind among the beech trees, to watch the
sheep on the distant hills, to wander among the gardens of his old house
and forget the falsity and the appalling ineptitude of his brother
Ministers. The photographs had indicated very well the beauty of this
scene but the sight of it in the life, all green in the first flush of
spring, brought a sob to Lola’s throat. Once more the feeling came all
over her that it would be at Chilton Park that she would meet Fallaray
at last alone and discover her love to him,—not as lady’s maid but as
the little human thing, the Eve.

She sat shoulder to shoulder with the groom opposite to Mrs. Malwood’s
maid,—Dowth, Macquarie and Mrs. Malwood in close juxtaposition. But she
had no ears for their conversation. As the village approached, not one
single feature of it escaped her eager eyes,—its wide cobbled street,
its warm Queen Anne houses, its old-fashioned shops, its Red Lion and
Royal George and Black Bull, its funny little post office up three
stairs, its doctor’s house all covered with creeper, its ancient church
sitting hen-wise among her children. It seemed to her that all these
things, old and quiet and honest, had gone to the making of Fallaray’s
character; that he belonged to them and was part of them and represented
them; and it gave her a curious feeling of being let into Fallaray’s
secrets as she went along.

From time to time people hatted Lady Feo and one or two old women,
riddled with rheumatism, bobbed—not because of any sense of serfdom, but
because they liked to do so—a pleasant though inverted sense of egotism
which is at the bottom of all tradition. Rip Van Winkle saluted every
one with his whip; the butchers—and there were several, although meat
was still one of the luxuries—the landlords of the public houses who
were not so fat as they used to be before the War, the vicar, a high
churchman with an astonishingly low collar, and the usual comic person
who invariably retires to such villages, lives in a workman’s cottage
among the remnants of passed glory and talks to any one who will listen
to him of the good old days when he tooled his team of spanking bays and
hobnobbed in London, when society really _was_ society, with men of
famous names and ladies of well-known frailty. This particular
gentleman, Augustus Warburgh, pronounced Warborough, made himself up to
look like Whistler and wore the sort of clothes which would have
appealed greatly to a character actor. What he lived on no one knew. One
or two people with nasty minds were convinced that his small income was
derived from blackmail,—probably a most pernicious piece of libel. On
his few pounds a week, however, he did himself extremely well and lived
alone in a four-room cottage as antediluvian as himself, in which there
were some very charming pieces of Jacobean furniture, a collection of
excellent sporting prints and numerous books all well-thumbed, “Barry
Lyndon” being the most favored.

In this little place, with its old beams and uneven floors of oak,
Augustus Warburgh “did” for himself, cooking his own meals, making his
own bed and bringing home from his occasional trips to London mysterious
bottles filled with delicatessen from Appenrodts, amazing pickles and an
occasional case of unblended Balblair which he got from a relative of
his who owned half of the isle of Skye. Nips of this glorious but
dangerous juice he offered to his cronies in his expansive moods and
delighted in seeing them immediately slide under his table with the
expression worn by Charlie Chaplin after he has been plumped on the head
with a meat axe. Needless to say that he and Rip Van Winkle got along
together like a house on fire. They talked the same language, enjoyed
the same highly spiced food, dipped back into the same period and had
inevitably done the same people. The Warburgh bow as the brake passed in
the High Street was not Albertian but Elizabethan.

Feo laughed as she waved her hand. “When he dies,” she said, “and I
don’t think he ever will, Princes Risborough will lose one of its most
beautiful notes,—like London when they did away with Jimmies. Not that I
remember Jimmies, except from what you’ve told me about it. Let’s have
him up to dinner one night and make him drunk.”

“You can’t,” said Lord Amesbury. “It’s impossible. There is a hole in
every one of the soles of his shoes through which all the fumes of
alcohol leak. You can stew him, you can pickle him, you can float him,
but you cannot sink him. When everybody else is down and out, that is
the time when Augustus takes the floor and rises to the eloquence and
vitriolic power of Dr. Johnson.—Tell me, Feo, who is that remarkable
child that you have got in tow?”

“My maid, you mean? She’s the niece of my old Breezy. Isn’t she
charming? Such an honest little soul too. Does her job with the most
utter neatness and nicety of touch and listens excellently. I rescued
her from the stage,—I mean, of course, the chorus. A good deed in a
naughty world.” That’s how she liked to put it, her memory being a
little hazy. “I don’t know what will become of her. Of course, she can’t
be my maid forever. Judging from the way in which my male friends look
at her whenever they get the chance, I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if
one of these days she eloped with a duke. It would fill me with joy to
meet her in her husband’s ancestral home all covered with the family
jewels and do my best to win a gracious smile. Or else she’ll marry
Simpkins, who is, I hear, frightfully mashed on her, and retire to a
village pub, there to imitate the domestic cat and litter the world with
kittens. I dunno. Anything may happen to a girl like that. But whatever
it is, it will be one of these two extremes. I hate to think about it
because I like her. It’s very nice to have her about me.”

Rip Van Winkle smiled. “To parody a joke in last week’s _La Vie
Parisienne_, I am not so old as I look, my dear.”

“You dare,” said Feo. But she laughed too. “Good Lord, Father, don’t go
and do a thing like that. If I had to call that girl Mother, I think
that even my sense of humor would crack.”

“A little joke, Feo,” said Rip. “Nothing more. I can’t even keep myself,
you see.”

Whereupon, having left the village, the brake turned into the road that
ran up to Whitecross at an angle of forty-five. The old man slowed the
horses down to a walk and waved his whip towards the screen of trees
which hid Chilton Park from the public gaze. “It’s been a wonderful
spring,” he said. “I have watched it with infinite pleasure. It has
filled my old brain with poetry and very possibly with regrets. All the
same, I’m glad you have come down. I’ve been rather lonely here. The
evenings are long and ghosts have a knack of coming out and standing
round my chair.—How is Edmund? I regret that I have forgotten to ask you
about him before. One somehow always forgets to ask about Edmund,
although I see that he is regarded by George Lytham and his crowd as the
new Messiah.”

Feo laughed again, showing all her wonderful teeth. “I had a quaint few
minutes with Edmund the other night on the steps of Langham Hall. He had
taken his mother and Aunt Betsy to a symphony concert. Do you know, I
rather think that George is right about Edmund? He has all the makings
of a Messiah and of course all the opportunities. I shouldn’t be a bit
surprised if he emerged from the present generation of second-raters and
led England out of its morass. But he’ll only achieve this if he
continues to remain untouched by any feminine hand. Of course, he’s
absolutely safe so far as I’m concerned, but there was a most peculiar
look in his face the other night which startled me somewhat. I thought
he’d fallen in love with me,—which would have been most inconvenient.
But I was wrong.—Well, here we are at the old homestead. How it reeks of
Fallaray and worthiness.”



III


But the party was not a success. Very shortly after lunch, during which
Feo and Mrs. Malwood had put in good work in an unprecedented attempt to
charm their new acquisitions, they all adjourned to the terrace,—that
wonderful old terrace of weather-beaten stone giving on to a wide view
of an Italian garden backed by a panorama of rolling hills and of the
famous beech forest ten miles deep, under which, in certain parts,
especially in the Icknield Way through which the Romans had passed, the
leaves of immemorial summers, all red and dry, lay twenty feet deep.

Gilbert Jermyn, Feo’s brother, had dashed over on his motor bicycle from
Great Marlow where he was staying with several friends, ex-flying men
like himself and equally devoid of cash, trying to formulate some scheme
whereby they might get back into adventure once more. Lord Amesbury had
gone down to a pet place of his own to take a nap in the long grass with
the sun on his face. Feo, who had been dancing until five o’clock that
morning, was lying full stretch on a dozen cushions in the shadow of the
house, Macquarie in attendance. Mrs. Malwood, petulant and disgruntled,
was sitting near by with David Dowth. Gilbert Jermyn, who could see that
he was superfluous, sat by himself on the balustrade gazing into the
distance. His clean-cut face was heavy with despondency. He had
forgotten to light his cigarette.

“You’re about the liveliest undertaker I’ve ever struck,” said Feo.
“What the deuce is the matter with you?”

Macquarie shrugged his shoulders,—his girlishly cut coat with its tight
waist and tight sleeves crinkling as he did so. “Oh, my dear,” he said,
“it’s no good your expecting anything from me to-day. Under the
circumstances it’s impossible for me to scintillate.”

“What do you mean?” asked Feo roughly. She had ordered this man down in
her royal way, being rather taken with his tallness, youngness and
smoothness, and demanded scintillation.

“But look at the position! I hate to be mercenary and talk about money,
but you know, my dear thing, almost every bob I’ve got is invested in
the three musical comedies now running, and if things go on as they are,
every one of them will be shut down because of the coal strike. That’s a
jolly nice lookout. I’m no Spartan, and I confess that I find it very
difficult to be merry and bright among the gravestones of my hopes.”

And while he went on like that, dropping in many “my dears” and “you
dear things” as though he had known Feo all his life, instead of more or
less for twenty minutes, making gestures in imitation of those of the
spoilt small-part lady, Lord Amesbury’s daughter and Fallaray’s wife
became gradually more and more aware of the fact that she had made a
fool of herself. There was something broadly déclassé about this man
which, even to one of her homogeneous nature, became a reproach. She was
getting, she could see, a little careless in her choice of friends and
for this one, whom she had picked out of semi-society and the musical
comedy night life of London—so dull, so naked, so hungry and thirsty and
so diamond seeking—to play the yellow dog and find excuses for his lack
of entertainment left her, she found with astonishment, wholly without
adjectives. It was indeed altogether beyond words. And she sat watching
and listening to this vain and brainless person with a sort of
admiration for his audacity.

As for Dowth and Mrs. Malwood they, too, were not hitting it off, and in
reply to Mrs. Malwood’s impatient question the young Welshman’s answer
had many points of excuse. “Three of my mines have been flooded,” he
said gravely, “which knocks my future income all cock-eyed. God knows
how I shall emerge from this frightful business. A week ago I was one of
the richest men in England. To-day I face pauperism. It’s appalling. You
expect me to sit at your feet and make love to you with the sword of
Damocles hanging over my head. It can’t be done, Mrs. Malwood. And, mind
you, even if the remainder of my mines escape ruin, I go under. That’s
as plain as the nose on my face. The Government, always in terror of
labor, has been amazingly supported in this business by the whole sanity
of England, but the end of it will be that the miners will be given less
wages but large shares in the profits of the coal owners. I shall
probably be able to make a better living by becoming a miner myself. You
sit there petulant and annoyed because I am in the depths of
despondency. You’ll cry out for cake when bread has run out, like all
the women of your kind, but you see in me a doomed man unable to raise a
finger to save property which has been in my family for several
generations. I simply can’t jibber and giggle and crack jokes with you
and talk innuendoes. I was a fool to come down at all.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Malwood aghast. “Oh—I suppose you think that I ought to
amuse _you_?”

“Yes, I do,” said Dowth.

And Mrs. Malwood also was at a loss for adjectives.

And when, presently, Rip Van Winkle appeared, smiling and sun-tanned to
join what he expected to be a jovial group, he found a strange silence
and a most uncomfortable air of jarring temperaments. He was well
accustomed to these little parties of Feo’s and to watch her at work
with new men whom she collected on her way through life. Usually they
were rather riotous affairs, filled with mirth and daring. What in the
name of all that was wonderful had happened to this one? He joined his
son and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Gibbie,” he said, “enlighten me.”

But he got no explanation from this young man, who seemed to be like a
bird whose wings had been cut. “My dear Father,” he said, “I’ve no
sympathy with Feo’s little pranks. She and the Malwood girl seem to have
picked up a bounder and a shivering Welsh terrier this time, and even
they probably regret it. I ran over this afternoon to yarn with you, as
a matter of fact. Come on, let’s get out of this. Let’s go down to the
stream and sit under the trees and have it out.”

And so they left together, unnoticed by that disconcerted foursome with
whose little games fate had had the impudence to interfere. And
presently, seated on the bank of the brook which ran through the lower
part of the park, Lord Gilbert Jermyn, ex-major Royal Air Force, D. S.
O., M. C., got it off his chest. “O God,” he began, “how fed up I am
with this infernal peace.”

The old man gazed at his son with amazement. “I don’t follow you,” he
said. “Peace? My dear lad, we have all been praying for it and we
haven’t got it yet.”

The boy, and he was nothing more than that, sat with rounded shoulders
and a deep frown on his face, hunched up, flicking pieces of earth into
the bubbling water.

“I know all about that,” he went on. “Of course you’ve prayed for peace.
So did everybody over twenty-four. But what about us,—we who were caught
as kids, before we knew anything, and taught the art of flying and sent
up at any old time, careless of death, the eyes of the artillery, the
protectors of the artillery, the supermen with beardless faces. What
about us in this so-called peace of yours? Here we are at a loose end,
with no education, because that was utterly interrupted, able to do
absolutely nothing for a living,—let down, let out, looked on rather as
though we were brigands because we have grown into the habit of breaking
records, smashing conventions and killing as a pastime. Do you see my
point, old boy? We herd together in civics when we’re not in the police
courts for bashing bobbies and not in the divorce courts for running off
with other people’s wives, and we ask ourselves, in pretty direct
English, what the hell is going to become of us,—and echo answers what.
But I can tell you this. What we want is war, perpetual bloody war,
never mind who’s the enemy. You made us want it, you fitted us for it
and for nothing else. We’re all pretty excellent in the air and in
consequence utterly useless on earth. And when I read the papers, and I
never read more than the headlines anyway, I long to see that Germany is
going to take advantage of the damned stupidity of all the Allied
governments, including that of America, gather up the weapons that she
hasn’t returned and the men who are going to refuse to pay reparations
and start the whole business over again. My God, how eagerly I’d get
back into my uniform, polish up my buttons, stop drinking and smoking
and get fit for flying once more. I’d sing like Caruso up there among
the clouds and empty my machine gun at the first Boche who came along
with a thrill of joy. That’s my job. I know no other.”

The old man’s hair stood on end,—all of it, like a white bush.



IV


Something happened that afternoon which might have swung Lola’s life on
to an entirely different set of rails and put Fallaray even farther out
of her reach. The unrest which had followed the War had made the
acquisition of servants very difficult. The young country girls who had
been glad enough to go into service in the large houses now preferred to
stick to their factories, because they were able to have free evenings.
The housekeeper at Chilton Park was very short-handed and in consequence
asked Lola and Mrs. Malwood’s maid if they would make themselves useful.
Mrs. Malwood’s didn’t see it. She had been well bitten by the
trades-union bug and, therefore, was not going to do anything of any
sort except her specific duties, and those as carelessly as she could.
The housekeeper could go and hang herself. Violet, the girl in question,
intended to lie on her bed and read _Scarlet Bits_ until she was needed
by her mistress. Lola, whose blood was good, was very glad to lend a
hand. With perfect willingness she committed an offence against lady’s
maids which shocked Violet to the very roots of her system. She donned a
little cap and apron and turned herself into a parlor maid, a creature,
as all the world knows, many pegs of the ladder beneath her own position
as a lady’s maid. When, therefore, tea was served on the terrace, Lola
assisted the butler, looking daintier than ever, and so utterly free
from coquetry, because there was no man in the world except Fallaray for
her, that she might have been a little ghost.

But the trained eye of Gordon Macquarie looked her over immediately. He
turned to Lady Feo, to whom he had not addressed a word for twenty
minutes, and said with a sudden flash of enthusiasm, “Ye gods and little
fishes, what a picture of a girl! Wouldn’t she look perfectly wonderful
in the front line of the chorus on the O. P. side! An actress too, I bet
you. Look at the way she’s pretending not to be alive. Of course she
knows how perfectly sweet she looks in that saucy make-up.”

If Mr. Gordon Macquarie had deliberately gone out of his way to discover
the most brilliant method of sentencing himself to the lethal chamber he
could not have been more successful than by using that outpouring of
gushing words. Feo had fully realized, from the moment that she had left
the dining room, that in acquiring Gordon Macquarie she had committed
the gravest _faux pas_ of her life. Not only was he a bounder but he did
not possess the imagination and the sense of proportion to know that in
being invited down to Chilton Park by Lady Feo he had metaphorically
been decorated with a much coverted order. His egotism and his whining
fright had made him unable to maintain his fourth wall and at least
imitate the ways of a gentleman. Never before in her history had Feo
spent an afternoon so unpleasant and so humiliating, and now, to be
obliged to listen to a pæan of praise about her maid, if you please, was
the last straw. Any other woman would probably have risen from her place
among her cushions, followed Lola into the house and either boxed her
ears or ordered her back to town.

But Feo had humor, and although her pride was wounded and she would
willingly have given orders for Macquarie to be shot through the head,
she pursued a slightly different method. She rose, gave Macquarie a most
curious smile, waited until Lola had retired from the terrace, followed
her and called her back just as she was about to disappear into the
servants’ quarters. “Lola,” she said, “run up at once and pack my
things. We are going back to town. Say nothing to anybody. Be nippy,”
the word was Simpkins’s, “and in the meantime I will telephone for a
car. Do you understand?”

“Yes, my lady.” In Lola’s voice there must have been something of the
tremendous disappointment that swept over her. But it was ignored or
unnoticed by her mistress. To leave Chilton Park almost as soon as she
had seen it,—not to be able to creep secretly into Fallaray’s room and
stand there all alone and get from it the feeling of the man, the
vibrations of his thoughts,—not to be able to steal out in the moonlight
and wander among the Italian gardens made magic by the white light and
picture to herself the tall ascetic lonely figure in front of whom some
night she intended to move Heaven and earth to stand.

But she turned away quickly, obeyed orders without a single question and
ran up the wide staircase blindly, because, for the moment, her eyes
were filled with tears. But only for the moment. After all, there was
nothing in this visit that could help her scheme along. She must keep
her courage and her nerve, continue her course of study, watch her
opportunities and be ready to seize the real chance when it presented
itself. Lady Feo was bored,—which, of course, was a crime. Macquarie was
a false coin. Lola could have told her that. How many exactly similar
men had ogled her in the street and attempted to capture her attention.
She had been amazed to see him join Lady Feo at Paddington station that
morning. She instantly put him down as a counter jumper from a
second-rate linen draper’s in the upper reaches of Oxford Street.—She
was ready for Feo when she came up to put on her hat. Her deft fingers
had worked quickly, and she was alert and bright, in spite of her huge
disappointment.

It was characteristic of Feo to break up her houseparty with the most
unscrupulous disregard for the convenience of the other members of it,
and to care nothing for the fact that she would spoil the pleasure of
her father. He and her brother, her little friend, Mrs. Malwood, and the
two disappointing men must pay her bill. She never paid. It was
characteristic of her, also, to turn her mind quickly, before leaving,
upon some other way of obtaining amusement, as she dreaded to face a
dull and barren Sunday in London. She remembered suddenly that Penelope
Winchfield, one of the “gang,” had opened her house near Aylesbury,
which was only a short drive from Princes Risborough. It was a brain
wave. So she went to the telephone and rang up, invited herself for the
week-end and went finally into the car and slipped away with Lola
without saying good-by to a single person. “How I hate this place,” she
said. “Something always goes wrong here.” And she turned and made a face
at the old building like a naughty child.

Any other woman—at any rate, any other woman whose upbringing had been
as harum-scarum as Feo’s—would have given Lola her notice and dropped
her like an old shoe. But she had humor.



V


Queen’s Road, Bayswater, so far as the jeweler’s little shop was
concerned, was in for a surprise that evening. Just as Lola’s mother was
about to close up after a rather depressing day which had brought very
little business—a few wrist watches to be attended to, nothing more—a
car drove up, and from it descended Lola, carrying a handbag and smiling
like a girl let out of school.

“Why, my dear,” cried Mrs. Breezy, “what does this mean? I thought you
were going to Chilton Park.” But she held her ewe lamb warmly and gladly
in her arms, while a shout of welcome came from behind the glass screen
where the fat man sat with the microscope in his eye.

Lola laughed. “I went there,” she said, “but something happened. I’ll
tell you about that later. And then Lady Feo altered her plans, drove
over to Aylesbury and told me I might do anything I liked until Monday
night, as there was no room for me in Mrs. Winchfield’s house. And so,
of course, I came home. How are you, Mummy darling? Oh, I’m so glad to
see you.” And she kissed the little woman again with a touch of
exuberance and ran into the shop to pounce upon her father, all among
his watches. It was good to see the way in which that man caught his
little girl in his arms and held her tight.—A good girl, Lola, a good
affectionate girl, working hard when there was no need for her to do so
and improving herself. Good Lord, she had begun to talk like a lady and
think like a lady, but she would never be too grand to come into the
little old shop in Queen’s Road, Bayswater,—not Lola.

He said all that rather emotionally and this too. “It isn’t as if we
hadn’t seen yer for such a long time. You’ve never missed droppin’ in
upon us whenever you could get away, but this’s like a sunny day when
the papers said it was goin’ to be wet,—like finding a real good tot of
cognac in a bottle yer thought was empty.” And he kissed her again on
both cheeks and held her away from him, the Frenchman in him coming out
in his utter lack of self-consciousness. He looked her all over with a
great smile on his fat face and stroked the sleeve of her blue serge
coat, touched the white thing at her throat and finally pinched the lobe
of one of her tiny ears.

“It isn’t that yer clothes are smarter, or that yer’ve grown older or
anything like that. It’s that you seem to have pulled yer feet out of
this place, me girl. It doesn’t seem to be your place now.—It’s manner.
It’s the way yer hold yer head, tilt yer chin up.—It’s accent. It’s the
way you end yer sentences. When a woman comes into the shop and speaks
to me as you do, I know that she won’t pay her bills but that her name’s
in the Red Book.—You little monkey, yer’ve picked up all the tricks and
manners of her ladyship. You’ll be saying ‘My God’ soon, as yer aunt
tells us Lady Feo does! Well, well, well.” And he hugged her again,
laughed, and then, finding that he showed certain points of his French
antecedents, began to exaggerate them as he had seen Robert Nainby do at
the Gaiety. He was a consummate actor and a very honest person. The two
don’t always go together.

And then Mrs. Breezy, who in the meantime had been practical and shut
the shop, followed them into the parlor, which seemed to Lola to be
shrinking every time she saw it and more crowded with cardboard boxes,
account books, alarm clocks and the surplus from the shop, and sprang a
little surprise. “Who do you think’s coming to dinner to-night?” she
asked.

“Is anybody coming to dinner? What a nuisance,” said Lola, who had
looked forward to enjoying the company of her father and mother
uninterrupted.

John Breezy gave a roguish glance at his wife and winked. “Give yer ten
guesses,” he said.

“Ernest Treadwell.”

“No,” said Mrs. Breezy, “Albert Simpkins.”

“Simpky? How funny. Did you ask him or did he ask himself?”

“He asked himself,” said John Breezy.

“I asked him,” said Mrs. Breezy.

“I see. The true Simpky way. He suggested that he would like to have
dinner with you and you caught the suggestion. He comes of such a long
line of men who have worn their masters’ clothes that he is now a sort
of second-hand edition of them all, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised
if, when he falls in love, he goes to the parents first and asks their
permission to propose to the daughter; and he’ll probably ask not for
the daughter herself but for her hand,—which never seems to me to be
much of a compliment to the daughter.”

Mrs. Breezy and her husband exchanged a quick glance. Either there was
something uncanny about Lola or she knew that this very respectable man
was madly in love with her. During his numerous visits to the jeweler’s
shop Simpkins had invariably led the conversation round to Lola, finding
a thousand phases of her character which he adored. But the last time he
had been with them there was something in his manner and voice which
made it easy to guess that his visit that evening was for the purpose of
asking them whether they considered him worthy of becoming their
son-in-law. It may be said that they considered that he was, especially
after he had told them about the money inherited from his father and his
own savings and confided in them his scheme of buying that very
desirable inn at Wargrave, in which they could, of course, frequently
spend very pleasant week-ends during the summer months. They had before
this recognized in him a man of great depth of feeling, of excellent
principles and a certain strange ecstasy,—somewhat paradoxical in one
who nearly always appeared in a swallow-tail coat, dark trousers and a
black tie.

Seeing that this was an occasion of considerable importance, Mrs. Breezy
had arranged to dine in the drawing-room. It now behooved her to hurry
up to her room and change her clothes and lay an extra place for Lola.
The dinner itself was being cooked at that moment by the baker next
door,—duck, new peas and potatoes and apple pie with a nice piece of
Gruyère cheese, which, with two bottles of Beaujolais from the Breezy
cellar, would be worthy of Mr. Simpkins’s attention even though he did
come from Dover Street, Mayfair.

As a matter of fact, Lola’s remark about the daughter’s hand was merely
an arrow fired into the air. She had been encouraging Simpkins to look
with favor upon the lovesick girl who sat so frequently upon her bed and
poured out her heart. She never conceived the possibility of being
herself asked for by good old Simpky, who had been so kind to her and
was such a knowledgable companion at the theater. The idea of becoming
his wife was grotesque, ridiculous, pathetic, hugely remote from her
definite plan of life. She considered that the girl Ellen was exactly
suited to him. Had she not inherited all the attributes of an
innkeeper’s wife from her worthy parents who had kept the Golden Sheaf
at Shepperton since away back before the great wind? So she ran up to
her room to tidy herself, with her soul full of Chilton Park and
Fallaray.

Simpkins arrived precisely on time, smelling of Windsor soap and
brilliantine. He had indulged in a tie which had white spots upon it,
discreet white spots, and into this he had stuck a golden pin,—a
horse-shoe for luck. He was welcomed by Mr. Breezy in the drawing-room
and immediately twigged the fact that there were four places laid.

Mr. Breezy was waggish. It is the way of a parent in all such
circumstances. “My boy, who do you think?”

“I dunno. Who?” His tone was anxious and his brows were flustered.

“Lola,” said Mr. Breezy.

“Lola!—I thought she was at Chilton Park with ’er ladyship. I chose this
evening because of that. This’ll make me very—well——”

“Not you,” said John Breezy. “You’re all right, me boy. We like you.
That inn down at Wargrave sounds good. I can see a nice kitchen garden.
I shall love to wander in it in the early morning and pull up spring
onions. I’m French enough for them still. You can take it that the
missus and I are all in your favor,—formalities waived. We’ll slip away
after dinner, go for a little walk and you can plump the question. The
betting is you’ll win.” And he clapped the disconcerted valet heartily
on the back,—the rather narrow back.

“I’m very much obliged, Mr. Breezy,” said Simpkins, who had gone white
to the lips, “and also to Mrs. Breezy. It’s nice to be trusted like
this, and all that. But I must say, in all honesty, I wanted to take
this affair step by step, so to speak. If I’d ’ad the good fortune to be
encouraged by you in my desire to ask for Lola’s ’and,”—there it
came,—“I should ’ave taken a week at least to ’ave thought out the
proper things to say to Lola ’erself. Sometimes there’s a little laugh
in the back of ’er eyes which throws a man off his words. I don’t know
whether you’ve noticed that. But this is very sudden and I shall ’ave to
do a lot of thinking during the meal.”

“Oh, you English,” said John Breezy and roared with laughter. “Mong
Doo!”

One of Simpkins’s hands fidgeted with his tie while the other
straightened the feathers on the top of his head. Jumping Joseph, he was
fairly up against it! How he wished he was a daring man who had traveled
a little and read some of the modern novels. It was a frightful handicap
to be so old-fashioned.

And then the ladies arrived,—Mrs. Breezy in a white fichu which looked
like an antimacassar, a thing usually kept for Christmas day and wedding
anniversaries; Lola in a neat blue suit and the highest spirits,—a
charming costume.

“Hello, Simpky.”

“Good evening, Mr. Simpkins.”

Simpkins bowed. He certainly had the Grandison manner. And while Lola
brought him up to date with the state of affairs, so far as she knew
them, Mrs. Breezy disappeared, stood on a chair against the fence in the
back yard and received the hot dishes which were handed over to her by
the baker’s wife. A couple of scrawny cats, with tails erect, attracted
by the aroma of hot duck, followed her to the back door,—but got no
farther. “You shall have the bones,” said Mrs. Breezy, and they were
duly encouraged.

The dinner was a success, even although Simpkins sat through it in one
long trance. He ate well to fortify himself and it was obvious to John
Breezy, sympathetic soul that he was, that his guest was rehearsing a
flowery speech of proposal. The unconscious Lola kept up a merry rattle
of conversation and gave them a vivid description of the village through
which she had passed that afternoon and of her drive back to town alone
from Aylesbury. Of Chilton Park she said nothing. It was too sacred. And
when presently John Breezy’s programme was carried out, the table
cleared, the two cats rewarded for their patience and Simpkins left
alone with Lola, there was a moment of shattering silence. But even then
Lola was unsuspecting, and it was not until the valet unbuttoned his
coat to free his swelling chest and placed himself in a supplicating
attitude on the sofa at her side, that she tumbled to the situation.

“Oh, Simpky,” she said, “what _are_ you going to do?”

It was a wonderful cue. It helped him to take the first ditch without
touching either of the banks. The poor wretch slipped down upon his
knees, all his pre-arranged words scattered like a load of bricks. “Ask
you to marry me, Lola,” he said. “Lola, darling, I love you. I loved you
the very minute you came down the area steps, which was all wrong
because I thought you’d come from heaven and therefore your place was
the front door. I love you and I want you to marry me, and I’ll buy the
inn and work like a dog and we’ll send the boy to Lansing or the City of
London School and make a gentleman of ’im.”

Not resentment, not amusement, but a great pity swept over Lola. This
was a good, kind, generous man and his emotion was so simple and so
genuine. And she must hurt him because it was impossible, absurd.

And so for a moment she sat very still and erect, looking exactly like a
daffodil with the light on her yellow head, and her eyes shut, because
there might be in them that twinkle which Simpkins had noticed and which
he must not see. And presently she said, putting her hand on his
shoulder, “Oh, Simpky, dear old Simpky, why couldn’t you have loved
Ellen? What a difficult world it is.”

“Ellen,” he said. “Oh.”

“I can’t, Simpky. I simply can’t.”

And he sat on his heels and looked like a pricked balloon. “Ain’t I good
enough, Lola?”

“Yes, quite good enough. Perhaps too good. But, oh, Simpky, I’m so
awfully in love with some one else and it’s a difficult world. That’s
the truth. I have to tell it to you. I can never, never marry you,
never. Please accept this. Whatever happens to me, and I don’t know
whatever _will_ happen to me, I shall always remember how good you were
and how proud you made me feel. But I’m so awfully in love with some one
else. Awfully. And perhaps I shall never be married. That’s the truth,
Simpky.”

And she bent down and kissed him on the forehead, and then got up
quickly and raised the kneeling man to his feet. And he stood there,
shattered, empty and wordless, with the blow that she had given him ever
so softly marking his face, marking his soul.

And Lola was very, very sorry. Poor old Simpky. Poor little Ellen. It
was indeed a difficult world.



VI


The next day was Saturday,—a busy day for the Breezys, the one day in
the week upon which they pinned their faith to make up for slack
business during the remainder of it. In the morning Lola helped her
mother to make an enticing display in the windows and along the counter
in the shop itself. Mrs. Breezy had recently broadened out a little and
now endeavored to sell kodaks and photographic materials, self-filling
pens and stationery for ladies, which is tantamount to saying that it
was stationery unfit for men. During this busy and early hour, while
John Breezy, one-eyed, was looking into the complaints of wrist watches,
most of which were suffering from having been taken into the bath, Lola
answered her mother’s silent inquiry as to what had happened the
previous evening. With a duster in one hand and a silver sugar basin in
the other, she looked up suddenly and said, “No, Mother, it wasn’t and
will never be possible. Poor old Simpky.”

And Mrs. Breezy nodded and shrugged her shoulders. And Lola hoped that
that would be the end of it. But why should she have hoped so, knowing
women? A few minutes later Mrs. Breezy began.

“The inn at Wargrave would have been so nice. He said that it had an
orchard on one side and a large lawn running down to the river on the
other, shaded with old trees,—little tables underneath and lovers’ nooks
and sweet peas growing in tubs. Ah, how nice after Queen’s Road,
Bayswater. And your father could have fished for hours and I could have
rearranged the furniture—and very good furniture too, he said—and made
things look spick and span. And he’s a good man, is Albert Simpkins, a
very unusual man, educated, religious, honest, with a sort of white
flame burning in him somewhere. He would have made a good husband,
dearie.—However, I suppose you know best.” And she threw an anxious
glance at her little girl who had become, if anything, more of an enigma
to her than ever. It didn’t matter about the apron that she wore; nor
did the fact that she was very efficiently cleaning that silver thing
detract from the new and subtle dignity and poise that she had acquired.
And her accent, and her choice of words,—they were those of Mrs.
Breezy’s favorite actress who played fashionable women. It was very
extraordinary. What a good ear the child must have and what a very
observant eye,—rather like her father’s, although he had to be assisted
by a microscope. “You won’t think it over, I suppose?” she asked
finally, long after Lola had believed the subject to be closed. Mothers
have an amazing way of recurring to old arguments. But Lola shook her
head again and gave a little gesture that was peculiarly French, as who
should say, “My dear! Marriage!”

As soon as the shop was opened and Mrs. Breezy was on duty and John
Breezy was humming softly over his most monotonous job, Lola went
upstairs to the little bedroom which she had completely outgrown now,
put on her hat and presently slipped out of the house. All the usual
musicians were already at work on the curbstone of Queen’s Road. The
strains of “Annie Laurie” were mixed with those of “Son o’ Mine” and
there was one daring creature with a concertina who was desecrating
Gounod’s “Ave Maria.” Perambulators cluttered the pavements and eager
housewives were in earnest conversation with butchers and greengrocers
who had arranged their wares temptingly outside their shops so that they
could be handled and considered and sampled. Lola made her way to
Kensington Gardens filled with a desire which had been growing upon her
ever since she woke up to make another Cinderella dash into the great
world. She was seized with another overpowering eagerness to meet
Fallaray on his own level. He was to be in town over the week-end. She
knew that. The Government, as though it had not already enough troubles
to contend with—Germany haggling and France ready to fly at her throat
and America hiding her head in the sand of dead shibboleths like an
ostrich—was in the throes of the big strike and its members were
hurrying from one conference to another with the labor leaders. Lady Feo
away, she had a wonderful chance to use that night and nothing would be
easier than to dress once more at Mrs. Rumbold’s and slip into her
mother’s house with a latchkey. But she was not able to go into the
Gardens because they had been closed to the public. They had been turned
over to the military to be used as a center for the mobilization of
supplies. She could see men in khaki everywhere, going about their work
with a sort of merry energy. “Back to the army agin, Sergeant, back to
the army agin.” Unconcerned by the crisis which had fallen upon England
and unable to wander along her favorite paths, she turned away just at
the moment when a large car, followed by a line of motor busses and
heterogeneous traffic, was being held up by a policeman to enable a
company of boy scouts to cross the high road. She heard a shout. She saw
a man in khaki with a red band round his cap and much brass on its peak
and two long lines of ribbons on his chest become suddenly athletic
under the stress of great excitement. The next instant her hand was
seized and she looked up. It was Chalfont.

“I was just going to think about you,” she said.

“I’ve never stopped thinking of you,” said Chalfont. “What became of
you? Where did you go? Where have you been? I searched every hotel in
the town. I’ve been almost through every street, like Gilbert à Beckett,
calling your name. Good God, why have you played with me like this?”

Somehow, for all his height and finish, in spite of his uniform and his
big car and his obvious importance, he reminded her of Simpkins. (“Lola,
I love you.”) The same emotion was in the voice, the same desire in the
eyes. What _was_ there in her that made her do this thing to men,—while
the one man was unattainable, unapproachable? It was a difficult world.

“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I had to go away that night. But I was just
on the verge of thinking about you again. You can’t think how glad I am
to see you.”

Still holding her hand as though he would never let her escape, Chalfont
mastered his voice. “You little lovely de Brézé,” he said, not choosing
his words. “You strange little bird. I’ve caught you again and I’ve a
damned good mind to clip your wings and put you in a cage.”

And Lola laughed. “I’ve always been a canary,” she said, “and some day
you may find me in a cage.” But she didn’t add, “not your cage, however
golden.” Fallaray’s was the only cage and if that were made of bits of
stick it would be golden to her.

“Well, you’re back in town. That’s the chief thing. Get into my car and
I’ll drive you home and let’s do something to-night. Let’s dine at the
Savoy or the Carlton. I don’t care. Or don’t let’s dine. Anything you
like, so long as you’re with me. I’ve got to go along to the War Office
now, but I have my evening off, like any factory hand.” And he drew her
towards the car, which was waiting by the curb.

“You can drive me as far as Marble Arch,” said Lola. “I must leave you
there because I want to buy something in Bond Street.”

“All right, Bond Street then. I want to buy something there too.” He
helped her in and said to his man, “Masterman’s, quick.”

The scout master who had drawn his company up against the railings gave
a command as Chalfont helped Lola in. The boys presented arms and
Chalfont returned their salute with extreme gravity. “The future
strike-breakers of the country,” he said. “The best institution we’ve
got.—How well you look. Don’t you think you might have sent me a line? I
felt like a man in a parachute dropping from twenty-two thousand feet in
the dark when I found that you had left me. It was rather a rotten trick
of yours.”

“It was very rotten,” said Lola, “but it couldn’t be helped, and I may
have to do it again. I don’t want you to ask me why. I don’t want you to
ask me anything. There’s a wee mystery about me which I must ask you to
respect. Don’t think about it. Don’t let it worry you, but whenever we
go out again just let me disappear. One of these days I’ll tell you all
about it, General, and probably you will be very much amused.” She ran
her finger along his ribbons and gave him a little smile of respect and
admiration which almost made him blush. “Well, then,” she added, “what
about to-night? I’m free. That’s why I was just going to think of you
and really wasn’t a bit surprised when you suddenly pounced upon me.
Things happen like that, don’t they? I can meet you at the Savoy or the
Carlton or anywhere else you like. Personally, I’m all for the Carlton.”

“The Carlton then,” he said. “Seven-thirty, and after that,—what?”

“Let’s leave it,” said Lola. “I love doing things on the spur of the
moment.”

“You swear you’ll come?”

And Lola made a little cross over her heart.

Chalfont heaved a sigh and settled back and looked at her, longing to
touch her, longing, in front of all the world, to draw her into his arms
and kiss her lips. God, if only this girl knew what she had done to
him.—And all the while the car bowled along, competing with every other
type of car for precedence, all selfish and many badly driven. Lola had
no eyes for the undercurrent of excitement that gave the crowds the look
that they had worn in the first days of the War or for the outbreak of
khaki that lent the streets their old familiar appearance. She was
thinking ahead and making plans and tingling at the idea of dipping once
more into the current of life.

Masterman’s, it turned out, was a florist’s shop, filled attractively
with lovely blossoms. Chalfont sprang out and gave Lola his hand. “Come
in,” he said, “and tell them where to send enough flowers to make a
garden of your house. Please,—to celebrate my having found you at last.”
He wished to Heaven that he might have taken her to Aspray’s and covered
her with diamonds. He would willingly have gone broke to do her honor.

And one of the men came forward to offer his eager services to one who
certainly must be of great importance to appear so plainly dressed.

“How kind of you,” said Lola. “Those, then,” and she pointed to a bunch
of proud red roses that were standing in a vase.

“Is that all?”

“I want to carry them,” she said.

Chalfont was almost boyishly disappointed. He would like to have
pictured her among a riot of color. He had not brought her there with a
Machiavelian desire to hear her give her address. He was not that kind
of man. “Won’t you have some more?”

But somehow—what was it in her that did these things to men—Lola could
see the inn at Wargrave, its orchard and its smooth lawn with little
tables under the trees and the silver stream near by, and hear the
words, “I love you, Lola; am I good enough——” And she shook her head.
“No more,” she said. “They’re lovely,” took them from the man and put
them to her lips.

Chalfont gave his name and followed her to the street. “Now where?” he
asked.

Lola held out her hand. “Nowhere else. I’m walking. A thousand thanks.
Seven-thirty, the Carlton then.”

And once more Chalfont saluted, not as though to a company of boy scouts
but to a queen.

And when he had gone, Lola heaved a great big sigh and put the roses to
her heart. If they had come from Chilton Park—if Fallaray had cut them
for her—If.




PART V



I


Fallaray had been lunching with George Lytham at his rooms in the
Albany. There had been half a dozen of the men who backed
_Reconstruction_ to meet him. From one o’clock until three every one of
the numerous troubles which affected England had been discussed and
argued about,—disarmament, unemployment, the triple alliance,
Mesopotamia, Indian unrest, the inevitable Ireland, the German chicanery
and the hot-tempered attitude of France in the matter of Ruhr; and, as
though with an impish desire to invent new troubles, George Lytham had
brought up the subject of Bolshevism in the universities. Every one of
the men present had, of course, his own pet solution to these questions,
and as usual, argument had run about like a terrier out for a
walk,—backwards and forwards and in circles. Finally, with his head in a
whirl, Fallaray had broken up the party to go along to the House. He was
down to answer questions from the critics of the Government, and,
according to his custom, to dodge the truth as far as he could. He
walked out into Piccadilly with his host and together these two tall
men, who were giving themselves up to an apparently abortive attempt to
put together again the peace of the world—deliberately and ruthlessly
smashed by the country which now whined and squealed and cried out
excuses while it hid money and machine guns in secret places—made for
Westminster arm in arm.

“Where’s your car?” asked young Lochinvar.

“I gave it up,” said Fallaray. “The sight of our unemployed going about
in processions made the keeping of a car grotesque. I’ve tried to cut
down in every other way too. If I were a bachelor, I would let the house
in Dover Street, go and live in two rooms and give the money I thus
saved to the fund for out-of-work soldiers. I can’t do that. There’s
Feo.”

Lytham nodded and said to himself, “Yes, there’s Feo and her old scamp
of a father and Gilbert Jermyn,—with nothing back from any of them, not
even gratitude.” If he had stood in Fallaray’s shoes he would long since
have brought an action for divorce against that woman and gone in quest
of a girl who understood the rudimentary rules of sportsmanship and the
art of give and take. He held in utter contempt the old adage that
having made your bed it is necessary to lie upon it. What bosh that was.
Wasn’t the town full of beds of every size and price? Sometimes, when he
thought of the way in which Fallaray permitted himself to be run and
worked and milked and used by his so-called wife and her family, by the
Government, by all sorts of societies and even by himself, a huge
impatience swept over him and he wanted to cry out, “Fallaray, for God’s
sake, kick somebody. Don’t be so damned fair. Give a little
consideration to yourself. Don’t always look at everything from
everybody else’s point of view. Be selfish for a change.”

And yet, all the while, different as he was from Fallaray in nature and
character—with that strong streak of ruthlessness which permitted him to
climb over the bodies of his opponents—Lytham loved Fallaray and would
willingly have blacked his boots. There were moments when, looking into
the eyes of his friend, he saw behind them a spirit as pure, as
unselfish and as merciful as that of Christ, and he stood back, almost
in awe. It was all the more galling, therefore, to see his friend hipped
and hedged in by the rotten tricks of his party, by the quick shifting
changes of his chief and by the heavy blundering of the other old bad
men. How could he stand it? Why didn’t he give it all up, get out, try
and find a corner of the earth where people didn’t quarrel and
cheat,—and fall in love. He needed, no man more so, the “rustle of
silk.”

Fallaray was on his own chain of thought. “Hookwood’s line about the
Irish leaders,” he said suddenly, “if based on any truth, makes
negotiations with them futile. They have got a great deal of American
money in their possession,—every Irish servant girl in the United States
has been forced by the priests to subscribe to the Sinn Fein funds. We
know that. But if, as Hookwood says, the Irish Republican leaders are
afraid of an inquiry as to how they have spent or misspent these funds,
it stands to reason that they will continue to fight tooth and nail for
something which they know they can never get. It’s the only way in which
they can maintain a barrier between themselves and disgrace and that
brings us back to the beginning. Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Horace
Plunkett, Philip Gibbs and all the rest of us may just as well toss up
the sponge. Don’t you think so, Lytham?”

“Oh, God,” said Lytham, “I’m sick of the Irish. The mere mention of the
name gives me jaundice. A rabble of egomaniacs led by a set of crooks
and gunmen who are no longer blessed by the Roman Catholic Church.”

After which, as this was certainly a conversation stop, there was
silence. They walked down St. James’s Street into the Mall, through the
Horse Guard’s parade to Parliament Street and so to the courtyard of the
House of Commons. The undercurrent of excitement and activity brought
about by the strike was noticeable everywhere. Military lorries carrying
men and kit moved about. St. George’s barracks was alive with recruits
and old soldiers going back. In and out of the Horse Guards ex-officers
in mufti came and went. The girls who had served in the W. A. A. C.’s
streamed back again to enroll, and through it all, sarcastic emblems of
a peace that did not exist, sat the two figures on horseback in their
plumes and brass.

“London enjoying itself,” said Fallaray ironically. “There is the taste
of blood in the mouths of all our people. Fighting has become a habit,
almost a hobby.”

And young Lochinvar nodded. Would he ever forget the similar scenes that
had taken place away back in that August of ’14?

“I’m tired,” said Fallaray, with a groan. “I’m dog-tired. If Feo were
not at Chilton Park this weekend, I would escape after question time and
go down and lie on the earth and sleep.—Well, good by, my dear lad.
Don’t be impatient with me. Bring out your numbers of _Reconstruction_,
hit hard and truly from the shoulder and see what you can do, you young
hot-heads. As for me——!”

They stood on the edge of the courtyard with all its indifferent pigeons
struggling for a living, oblivious to the intricacies, secrecies and
colossal egotisms of the men who passed into the House. But before they
separated something happened which made both their hearts beat faster.

A tall, primly dressed elderly man, who had apparently been waiting,
sprang forward, a glint of great anger in his eyes and two spots of
color on his pale cheeks. He said, “Mr. Fallaray, a word with you, Sir.”

And Fallaray turned with his usual courtesy and consideration. “What can
I do?” he asked.

“I’ll tell you what you can do. You can stop showing sympathy for the
Irish murderers and assassins. You can stop pussyfooting. You can
withdraw all your remarks about reprisals. That’s what you can do. And
if you’re interested, I’ll tell you why I say so.” His voice shook and
blood seemed to suffuse his pale eyes.

“My only son went all through the War from the beginning to the end. He
joined as a Tommy because, as an insignificant doctor, I had no pull. He
was promoted to a commission for gallantry and decorated with the M. C.
for distinguished work in the field. He was wounded three times—once so
severely that his life was given up—but he returned to his regiment and
finally marched with it into Germany. He was almost the last officer to
be demobbed. After which, failing to get employment because patriots are
not required in the city, he volunteered for the Black and Tans. Last
Friday afternoon, in the course of carrying out orders, he was set upon
in the streets of Cork by a dozen men in masks, foully murdered and
hideously desecrated. My God, Mr. Fallaray, do you wonder that my blood
boils when I hear of your weak-kneed treatment of these dirty dogs?”

He stood for a moment shaking, his refined face distorted, his gentle
unathletic figure quivering with rage and indignation. Then he turned on
his heel and went away, walking like a drunkard.

Fallaray and George Lytham looked at each other and both of them made
the same gesture of impotence.

It was a difficult world.



II


Fallaray’s position in the Cabinet was a peculiar one. It was rather
like that of a disconcerting child in the house of orthodox church
people who insisted on asking direct and pertinent questions on the
Bible story, especially after having read Wells’s first volume of the
“Outline of History.” How did Adam and Eve get into Eden? If God never
sleeps, isn’t he very cross in the morning? And so on.

All through the War, Fallaray had been a thorn in the side of his chief.
His honesty and his continual “why” were a source of irritation and
sometimes of anger. He had no patience whatever with shiftiness,
intrigue and favoritism, the appointment of mere duffers to positions of
high responsibility. He made no bones whatever about expressing his
opinion as to the frivolity that prevailed in certain quarters, together
with the habit of dodging every grave issue. On the question of the
League of Nations too, he was in close accord with Lord Robert Cecil and
often made drastic criticisms of the frequent somersaults of his chief.
His definite stand on the Irish question was extremely annoying to the
brass-hat brigade and to the master-flounderer and weathercock, who
showed himself more and more to be a mixture of Billy Sunday and Mark
Anthony, crying out that black was white at one end of the town and ten
minutes later that white was black at the other end. And yet, when it
came to results, Fallaray might almost as well have been on the town
council of Lower Muddleton as in the Cabinet of the British Government.
Respected for his faithfulness to duty, he was disliked for his honesty
and feared for his utter disregard for personal aggrandizement and the
salary that went with it.

No wonder, therefore, that he was tired. He had been under a long and
continual strain. In Parliament he found himself still dealing with the
men who had suffered from brain anæmia before the War and had,
therefore, been unable ever to believe, in spite of Lord Roberts, that
war was possible,—that same body of professional politicians who were
mentally and physically incapable of looking at the numerous problems of
the hour, the day and the week with sanity and with courage. At home—if
such a word could be used for Dover Street—there was Feo, who had no
more right to be under his roof than any one of the women that passed
him in the street. He was a tired and lonely man on the verge of
complete disillusionment, disappointed with his fellow Ministers and
deeply disappointed with the suspicion and jealousy which had grown up
between England and her allies. It seemed to him, also, that the blank
refusal of the United States to have anything to do with the League of
Nations, even as revised from the original draft of President Wilson,
the Messiah who had failed to function mainly because of the personal
spite of the Republican leaders, jeopardized the future of the world and
gave Germany a springboard which one of these days she would not fail to
use. In spite of her reluctantly made promises, she was very busy
inventing new and diabolical weapons of war and taking out patents for
them in Washington, while pretending to observe the laws laid down by
the Allies as to her disarmament and the manufacture of war materials
under her treaty obligations. Krupps had designed new methods of
artillery fire control, new fuses for projectiles, new gas engines, new
naval fire-control devices, new parts for airplanes, new chemicals and
new radio apparatuses. To what end? In the face of these facts he could
perfectly well understand the French attitude, hysterical as it seemed
to be. They knew her for a liar, a cheat and an everlasting enemy and
whenever Fallaray returned from those interminable conferences in Paris,
he did so with the recollection upon him of something in the eyes of
Foch and other Frenchmen whose love of country was a religion that put a
touch of fear into his soul. What were they all doing, these politicians
of England, of the United States, of Italy? Were they not those very
same ostriches who during all the years that led up to the War had
hidden their heads in the sand,—the same heads, precisely the same sand?

As he entered the House that afternoon to be heckled with questions
which he dared not answer truthfully, he wished that he had been born
not to politics but to sportsmanship. He wished that he had carried on
his undergraduate love of games, had kept himself fit, had joined the
army as a subaltern in August, ’14, and had found the German bullet upon
which his name had been written. In such a way, at any rate, he could
better have served his country than by being at that grave moment an
impotent piece on the political chessboard. Both publically and
privately this man felt himself to be a failure. In the House of Commons
he was more or less friendless, regarded as an unreliable party man. In
his home he was a lodger, ignored by the woman who ran his house. He was
without love, joy, kindness, the interest and devotion of any one sweet
person who could put her soft fingers on his forehead and give him back
his optimism. He was like Samson shackled to the windlass which he
pushed round and round with gradually diminishing strength.



III


Lola spent the afternoon with Ernest Treadwell. Loyalty to her old
friend took her to the public library on her way back to lunch to ask
him to fetch her for a little walk in the afternoon. The flash of joy
that came into that boy’s eyes at the sight of her rewarded her well and
sufficiently. To tell the truth, she would much have preferred to devote
the whole of that afternoon to daydreams, but she knew, no one better,
the peculiar temperament of young Treadwell and his hungry need of the
inspiration which she alone could give him. But just as the boy arrived,
a telegram was handed in addressed abruptly to “Breezy, 77 Queen’s Road,
Bayswater.” It was opened, naturally enough, by John, who, to the
astonishment of half a dozen customers, emitted a howl of rage. Getting
up from his chair behind the glass screen, he wobbled into the back
parlor where Lola was seated with Ernest, deciding as to whether they
should take the motor bus to Wimbleton Common or the train to Windsor.
With an air of comic drama, though he did not intend it to be comic, the
watchmaker flung the telegram upon the crowded table. The remains of
lunch hobnobbed with kodaks, tissue paper, balls of string and empty
cardboard boxes. The telegram fell on a pat of butter and to Ernest
Treadwell’s imaginative eye it looked like a hand grenade stuck into a
blob of clay. To him, somehow, there was always something sinister about
a telegram. Was this one going to ruin the brief happiness of his
afternoon?

It was from Feo and ran like this. “I shall need you at six o’clock.
Sorry. You had better be at Dover Street at five-thirty. Am dining in
town.”

Lola read these words over again and again. Windsor was impossible. Even
the trip to Wimbleton Common could not be made. But how was this going
to affect the Carlton at seven-thirty? She longed above all things once
more to get into the clothes and the proper social surroundings of
Madame de Brézé, and hear people talking what had become her own
language and listen to the music of a good orchestra. She felt that she
deserved another adventure with Chalfont. This erratic twist by Lady
Feo, whose movements seemed that week-end to resemble those of the
woodcock, shattered all these plans. At least,—did they? Not if she knew
it.

“Well, there it is,” she said and gave the telegram to Ernest Treadwell,
who had been watching her face with the most painful anxiety. “She who
must be obeyed. I’m afraid this means that all we can do is to wander
about for a couple of hours and that our little jaunt to Windsor must be
postponed. And we never went to Hampton Court to see the crocuses, did
we? Bad luck.”

But while she was speaking, her brain was hitting all its cylinders and
racing ahead. She would go to the Carlton, Lady Feo or no Lady Feo. She
would get her dress from Mrs. Rumbold, with her shoes and stockings, and
take them to Dover Street. She would have to dress at Dover Street,
bribe Ellen to get her a taxicab and slip down at twelve o’clock to let
her in to the area door. That must be the plan of action, whatever the
risks might be.

She sprang to her feet and flung an arm round her father’s neck,—her
disappointed, affectionate father who had looked forward to a merry
evening at the local music hall and to one of the old-time Sundays when
he could march out in his best clothes and show off Lola to the
neighbors. “It’s life, Daddy,” she said. “It can’t be helped. You have
your wrist watches. I have Lady Feo. What’s the good of grumbling? Tell
Mother when you get the chance. At the moment she is busy and mustn’t be
disturbed. Come on, Ernest, let’s go.”

But Ernest had other views, now that the country was impossible. “I’ve
got something in my pocket I want to read to you,” he said. “Might we go
up to the drawing-room, do you think?”

That was excellent. That made things ever so much easier. She could give
Ernest until four o’clock or a little after and then get rid of him, go
round to Mrs. Rumbold and get eventually to Dover Street in time to have
everything ready for Lady Feo on her arrival.

And so they went upstairs and opened up the aloof room, with its
persistent and insular odor of the Sabbath and antimacassars, and drew
up chairs to the window. The row of houses opposite, which had been
converted into shops, was bathed in the afternoon sun. A florist’s
windows alight with flowers looked like a line from Tennyson in the
middle of a financial article in a newspaper. Traffic roared in the
street below but did not quite succeed in drowning a weather-beaten
piano accompanying a throaty baritone singing, “She dwelt amid the
untrodden wiys.—And h’oh the differ-rence ter me.”

With a thoughtfulness that seemed to Ernest Treadwell to be exquisite,
Lola shut the window so that she might not miss a single word that she
was about to hear. Without any preliminaries and with the colossal
egotism that is part and parcel of all writing, the young librarian took
from his pocket a wad of manuscript, and in a deadly monotone commenced
to read his epic. It was in blank verse and ran to about sixteen pages.
It retold the old story of Paola and Francesca, not in the manner of
Stephen Phillips and not in imitation of Masefield or any of the younger
poets, but in the Treadwell way,—jerky, explosive and here and there out
of key; but for all that filled with a rough picturesqueness and
passion, with a quite extraordinary sense of color and feeling which
held Lola breathless from beginning to end. It was this boy’s greatest
effort, on which he had been working for innumerable months, burning the
midnight oil with the influence of Lola upon him, and his great love
which lifted him into ecstasy.—And when he had finished and ventured to
look into her face, he saw there something that crowned his head with
laurels and filled his heart with tears.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.—Ernie, you’ve done it. It’s beautiful. You are a
poet. However far behind them all, you are in the line of great
singers.” And she reached out for the manuscript and saw that on the
first page, in angular boyish writing, were the words, “To Lola,—of whom
I dream.”

Simpkins, Treadwell, Chalfont,—but, oh, where was Fallaray, her hero,
the man who needed love?



IV


When Feo bounced into her room a little after five-thirty she found a
perfectly composed and efficient Lola who had laid out a selection of
her mistress’s most recent frocks with the accompanying shoes and
stockings. There was nothing about the girl to indicate her latent
excitement and her determination under any circumstances to keep her
appointment at the Carlton. The cardboard box from Mrs. Rumbold’s was up
in her room. Ellen had been interviewed and had promised to slip down
and open the area door at twelve o’clock.

Feo nodded and gave one of her widest smiles. “Good for you, Lola,” she
said. “If you had been out for the day or something, I should, of
course, have been able to do my hair, dress and get off,—but not so well
as when you’re here. If it came to a push I suppose I could do
everything for myself, even cook my breakfast; but I should hate it and
it wouldn’t give me any pleasure.—That one,” she said, and pointed to a
most peculiar frock that looked like the effort of that
overconscientious chameleon when it endeavored to imitate the tartan of
the Gordon Highlanders. It was a very chaos of colors, but she was in
the highest spirits and evidently felt in a riotous mood. And while she
gave herself up to Lola, in order to have a few deep waves put in her
wiry bobbed hair, she babbled as though she were talking to Mrs. Malwood
or one of her other particular friends.

“I don’t know what the devil’s happened to this week-end,” she said.
“Every blessed thing’s gone wrong. That glossy scoundrel at
Chilton,—good Lord, I must be more careful,—and all those dullards at
Aylesbury! We played bridge nearly all night and no one ever doubled. It
was like going to a race meeting and finding the anti-vice brigade where
the bookies ought to be. I simply couldn’t stay there another night, so
I slept until four o’clock this afternoon, had a cup of tea in my room
and dashed up. To-night I hope for better things. An old friend of
mine—and really old friends have their points—got back from India
yesterday. I saw his name in the paper and rang him up at the Rag. We’re
going to dine and dance and so forth, quite like old times; so do your
best with me, Lola. I haven’t seen this man for five years.—Don’t allow
any of them to remain round my eyes.—Oh, by the way, I’m really awfully
sorry to have smashed up your plans and I don’t see how you can go back
to your father and mother to-morrow because I shall want to be dressed
about ten o’clock and I shall be home again to sleep. So it pretty well
rots your day, Lola. Never mind, I’ll see that you have a little holiday
before long.”

And she smiled up into Lola’s face and for the moment looked very
womanly and charming and perfectly sincere. For all her curious tangents
and unexpected twists and the peculiar hardness and unscrupulous
selfishness that she brought into her dealings with every one, this
woman had good points; and even when she hurt her friends deeply she had
an unexplainable knack of retaining their loyalty. She really liked Lola
and admired her and would have gone very far out of her way to look
after her.—The pity of it was that she had not been born a man.

She babbled on while Lola polished her up and did all those quite
unnecessary things which modern life has invented for women before they
will show themselves to the public. In the frankest possible way and
without the least reserve she roughed out the history of the man who had
come back,—a pucca soldier who had been in India since the War and was
one of Feo’s earliest friends. He had loved her violently, been turned
down for Fallaray and had never married. It so happened that he had not
seen Feo during his periods of leave while the War was on and had told
her over the telephone that if he didn’t see her then, at once, he’d
either have apoplexy or be taken to Bow Street for smashing the town.
Feo laughed when she repeated this.

“And he would too,” she said. “He’s just that sort. Those tall, dark men
with a dash of the Oriental in them somewhere go through life with the
apparent indifference of a greyhound until the bursting point comes, and
when they give way,—whew, look out for the splinters.”

She was excited,—almost as excited as Lola was. And finally, dressed and
scented, with her nails pink and her full lips reddened, she had never
looked more characteristically Feo, more virile, more audacious, more
thoroughbred and at the same time more bizarre. “Now for the Ritz,” she
said (Ah, then the Carlton was safe), turned at the door and in a moment
of impulse took a diamond bracelet from her wrist and pitched it at Lola
as though it were a tennis ball. “You’re a jolly good sportsman, child,”
she added, with her widest smile.

All the way downstairs she sang an aria from “Le Coq d’Or,”—a strange,
wistful, moonlit thing.—And hardly had she gone before Lola seated
herself at the dressing table, where she commenced those operations
which would transform her also into a woman of the world.



V


And then, with her nose in the air and her hands folded over her tummy,
Miss Breezy marched into the dressing room. “Oh,” she said, which was
quite enough.

And Lola sprang to her feet, caught in the act of using her mistress’s
make-up. But it was so long, or it seemed to be so long, since she had
held any conversation with her aunt that nearly all sense of
relationship had faded out. This was Miss Breezy the housekeeper,
natural enemy of servants and on the lookout especially to find
something which would form the basis of an unfavorable report in regard
to Lola.

“Good afternoon, Miss Breezy.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’m your aunt and there’s no getting away from it.
This playing of parts makes me impatient.” Her tone was snappy but there
was, oddly enough, nothing antagonistic in her expression. On the
contrary—and this put Lola immediately on her guard—there was all about
her a new air of armistice, an obvious desire to call off unfriendly
relations and bury the hatchet.

The thought that ran through Lola’s head was, “What does she want to
know?”

With a touch of the adventurous spirit for which Lola had not given her
credit, the good lady, who had recently somewhat increased in bulk,
clambered into Feo’s extraordinary chair, in which she looked exactly as
if she were waiting to have a tooth filled. Her thinning hair, streaked
with white, was scrupulously drawn away from her forehead. Her black
shiny dress was self-consciously plain and prim, and she wore those very
ugly elastic-sided boots with patent leather tips that are always
somehow associated with Philistinism. She might have been the Chairwoman
of a Committee of Motion Picture Censorship. “I spent Thursday evening
with your mother and father,” she said. “I’m glad to hear business is
improving. Young Treadwell was there,—a precocious sort of person, I
thought.”

“A poet,” said Lola.

“Poet, eh? Yes, I thought he was something of that sort. If I were his
mother I’d spank the poetry out of him. What do we want poets for? Might
as well have fiddlers to imitate whatever the man’s name was who played
frivolous tunes when some place or other was burning. Men should work
these days, not write sloppy things about gravestones.”

“He’ll make his mark,” said Lola.

“You should say a scratch,” corrected Miss Breezy. “However, that isn’t
the point. It appears that Simpkins has become a friend of the family.”

Ah, so that was it. She had heard the gossip about Simpky and it was
curiosity, not kindness, which had brought her into the dressing room.

“Simpkins,” said Miss Breezy, “is a warm member. His father left him
some money and he has saved. For Ellen, for Elizabeth or even for Annie,
whose father is a Baptist minister, he would make a very desirable
husband. I have nothing to say against him—for them,” and she looked
Lola fully and firmly in the eyes.

And Lola nodded with entire agreement, adding, “Simpky is a good man.”

“So there’s nothing in that, then? Is that what you mean?”

“Nothing,” replied Lola.

And Miss Breezy gave a sigh of relief. It was bad enough for her niece
to have become a lady’s maid.

Would she go now? Or was there something else at the back of her mind?

For several minutes Miss Breezy babbled rather garrulously about a
number of quite extraneous things. She talked about the soldiers in the
park, the coal strike, what was likely to happen during the summer, the
effect of unemployment on prices, all obviously for the purpose of
presently pouncing hawk-like on the unsuspecting Lola,—who, as a matter
of fact, had no intention of falling into any trap. “In yesterday’s
_Daily Looking Glass_,” she said suddenly, “there was a short paragraph
that set me thinking. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was
something like this. ‘A short time ago a beautiful young French woman,
bearing a name which occupies several interesting chapters in the past
history of her country, paid a brief visit to London, dined at the Savoy
with one of our best known generals and disappeared as though she had
melted with the morning dew. The said general, we hear on the best
authority, was distraught and conducted several days’ search for his
dinner companion. Inquiries were made at every hotel in town without
success until the name of de Brézé became quite well known.”

Lola had caught her breath at the beginning of this quotation which Miss
Breezy obviously knew by heart, and had metaphorically clapped her hand
over her mouth to prevent herself from crying out. But knowing that her
aunt would turn round and fix her analytical eye upon her, Lola
immediately adopted an attitude of mild impersonal interest.

The eye duly came, in fact both eyes, and they found Lola polite and
unconcerned, the well-trained lady’s maid who was forced to listen to
the gossip of her overseer. So that was what it was! Good Heavens, how
much did this woman know? And was she, acting on instinct, going to stay
in that room until it would be too late for Lola to dress and keep her
appointment “with one of our best known generals”? Never before had Lola
hung so breathlessly on her aunt’s words.

“Did _you_ read these lines by any chance?”

“No,” said Lola.

“I asked your father if there was anybody of the old name in France and
he said he didn’t think so. He said he understood from his grandfather
that the name would die with him. It had already become Breezy in
England. Somehow or other, I think this is rather strange.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lola. “You see these famous names are never
allowed to die right out. This Madame de Brézé is probably an actress
who is just using the name to suit herself. It has a good ring to it.”

“That may be so, and it’s true that actresses help themselves to any
name that takes their fancy. You, I remember, when you threatened to go
into the chorus, talked about claiming relationship with Madame de
Brézé.” And again she darted a sharp look at Lola.

“I have the right to do that,” said Lola quietly, but with a very rapid
pulse.

“Well, sometimes I go out of my way to satisfy a whim. It so happens
that I have a friend in the detective department at Scotland Yard. I’ve
asked him to keep his eye open for me and let me know what he finds out.
As soon as he comes to me with any definite information, I’ll share it
with you, Lola, you may be sure.”

“Oh, thank you, Auntie. That’s very kind of you.”

But being unable to force back a tide of color that swept slowly over
her, Lola opened a drawer in the dressing table and began to put back
the various implements that she had used upon her mistress and herself.
To think of it! It was likely, then, that she was to be watched in
future and that presently, perhaps, the story of her harmless adventures
would become the property of her aunt and her parents, of Treadwell and
Simpkins, and that the detective, whom she could picture with a
toothbrush moustache and flat feet, would one day march into the rooms
of General Sir Peter Chalfont and say to him, “Do you know that your
friend Madame de Brézé is a lady’s maid in the employment of the wife of
Mr. Fallaray?”

With the peculiar satisfaction of one who has succeeded in making some
one else extraordinarily uncomfortable, Miss Breezy gathered herself
together, scrambled out of the chair which might have belonged to a
dentist and left the room like an elderly peahen who had done her duty
by the world.

And then, having locked the door, Lola returned to the dressing table.
“Detective or no detective, I shall dine at the Carlton to-night,” she
said to herself. “You see if I don’t.”



VI


“I want you to meet my sister, one day soon,” said Chalfont. “She’s a
good sort. You’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I shall,” said Lola. “Will she like _me_?”

Chalfont laughed and answered the question with a look of complete
admiration. Who could help liking a girl so charming, so frank, so cool,
whose love of life was so young and so peculiarly unspoilt? “You would
do her good,” he said. “Her husband was killed a week before the
armistice. She adored him and is a lonely soul. No children, and will
never marry again. She’s looking after my place in Devonshire, buried
alive. But I’ve persuaded her to come to London and hook on to things a
bit and I’ll bring you together one day next week,—if you’re not going
to disappear again. Are you?”

Lola shrugged her shoulders. “So far as I know at present, my plans will
keep me in town until the end of June.” How could she be more definite
than that?

So Chalfont had to be satisfied and hope for the best. It was not his
habit to drive people into a corner and force confidences. He had told
Lola where he was to be found and she had promised to keep in touch with
him. That, at any rate, was good. “We haven’t decided where to go
to-night,” he said. “Don’t you think we’d better make up our minds?”

Lola rose from the table. The pleasant dining room at the Carlton was
still well-filled, and the band was playing one of those French things
with an irresistible march time which carry the mind immediately to the
Alcazar and conjure up a picture of an outdoor stage crowded with
dancing figures seen through a trickle of cigarette smoke and gently
moving branches of young leaves. “Don’t let’s make up our minds what
we’ll do till we get to the very doors. Then probably one or other of us
will have a brain wave. In any case I’m very happy. I’ve loved every
minute of this evening and it’s so nice to be with you again.”

Chalfont touched her arm. He could not resist the temptation. “I’d sell
my soul in return for a dozen such nights,” he said, and there was a
Simpkins quiver in his voice and a Treadwell look of adoration in his
eyes. He was in uniform, having later to return to the Guards encampment
in Kensington Gardens. They passed through the almost empty lounge into
the hall with its cases of discreet, ruinous jewelry on the walls under
gleaming lights, and there a man in plain clothes drew himself up as
Chalfont approached and clicked his heels.

“Oh, hello, Ellingham,” said Chalfont. “How are you, my dear chap?
Thought you were in India.”

“I was, Sir. Got back yesterday. Curious place, London, by Jove.”

Chalfont turned to Lola. “Madame de Brézé, may I introduce my friend
Colonel Ellingham?”

Those tall dark men with a touch of the Oriental in them somewhere—Lola
caught her breath, but managed to smile and say the conventional thing.

But at the sound of her voice, the woman who had been standing with her
back to them, talking to the obsequious _maître d’hôtel_, whirled round.
It was Feo—Feo with her eyes wide and round and full of the most
astonishing mischief and amusement—Feo with her mouth half open as
though she were on the point of bursting into a huge laugh. Lola, that
discreet little Lola, that little London mouse, niece of the stiff old
Breezy, daughter of those little people in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, with
a brigadier general, if you please, the famous Sir Peter Chalfont with a
comic cork arm to catch whom every match-making mother had spread her
net for years!

Without turning a hair, Lola held out her hand impulsively. “My dear,”
she said in a ringing voice, “I thought you said that you were going to
the Ritz.”

Her own words as she had left her dressing room came back into Feo’s
mind. “You’re a jolly good sportsman, child.”—Well, although she could
hardly believe her eyes and the incident opened up the widest range of
incredulity, she would show this astonishing girl that there were other
sportsmen about. “We went to the Ritz,” she replied, as though to one of
her “gang,” “but it looked hideously depressing and so we came on here.”
And she went forward and put her arm around Lola’s shoulder in her most
affectionate way. How well her old frock came out on that charming
figure. She suspected the shoes and stockings. “So this is what you do,
Lola, when the cat’s away!”

And Lola laughed and said, “Oh, but doesn’t one deserve a little holiday
from time to time?”

“Of course,—and you who are so devoted to good causes.”

“The best of causes and the most beautiful.” Lola would return the ball
until she dropped.

Feo knew this and had mercy, but there was an amazing glint in her eyes.
The little monkey!

It was obvious to Lola that Feo had not met Chalfont or else that she
had met him and was not on speaking terms. Either way how could she
resist the chance that had been brought about by this extraordinary
contretemps. So she said, “Lady Feo, may I introduce my old friend, Sir
Peter Chalfont,—Lady Feodorowna Fallaray.”

It so happened that these two had not met,—although Feo’s was not the
fault. It was that Chalfont disliked the lady and had gone deliberately
out of his way to avoid her acquaintance. He bowed profoundly.—Lola, her
name was Lola. What a dear little name.

“We’ve got a box at the Adelphi,” said Feo. “Berry’s funny and
Grossmith’s always good. There’s room for four. Won’t you come?” What
did she care at the moment whether this invitation made Ellingham’s eyes
flick with anger or not. All this was too funny for words.—That little
monkey!

“Thanks so much,” said Lola, with a slight drawl, “but it so happens
that we’re going round to the House of Commons to hear a debate. Perhaps
we can foregather some other night.” And she looked Feo full in the
face, as cool as a fish.

It didn’t matter what was said after that. There was a murmur from the
other three and a separation, Ellingham marching the laughing Feo away,
Chalfont crossing over to the hatroom, greatly relieved. Lola, alone for
a moment, stood in the middle of what seemed to be an ocean of carpet
under hundreds of thousands of lights, with her heart playing ducks and
drakes, but with a sense of thrill and exultation that were
untranslatable. “What a sportsman,” she thought.—“But of course she
noticed her stockings.”

And when Chalfont returned to her side he said, “I don’t like your
knowing that woman. You seem frightfully pally. You didn’t tell me that
she was a great friend of yours.”

“Well,” said Lola, “I haven’t told you very much of anything, have I?
That’s because I like to hear you talk, I suppose.”

“You draw me out,” said Chalfont apologetically. “But what’s all this
about the House of Commons? First I’ve heard of it.”

“Oh, just an idea,” said Lola lightly. “Couldn’t you wangle it?” She had
caught the word from him.

“I don’t know a blessed soul in that monkey shop, except Fallaray.”

“Who better?” asked Lola. “Let’s go round, send in your name and ask Mr.
Fallaray for a card.”

“My dear Lola—I beg your pardon, I mean, my dear Madame de Brézé—if you
remember, Fallaray didn’t know me from Adam that night at the Savoy. I
really don’t think I can push myself in like that, if you’ll forgive me.
Let’s take a chance at the Gaiety. No one’s going to the theater just
now. There’s sure to be plenty of room.”

By this time they were in the street, with a huge commissionaire waiting
for a glance from Chalfont to bring up a taxi with his silver whistle.
It was another lovely night, clear and warm and windless,—a night that
would have been admirable for Zeppelins. Lola went over to the curb and
looked up at all the stars and at the middle-aged moon. Think of that
light so white and soft on the old gardens of Chilton Park.—“Don’t let’s
go in to a fuggy building,” she said. “Let’s walk. London’s very
beautiful at night. If you won’t take me to the House of Commons, at any
rate walk as far as the Embankment. I want to see the river. I want to
see the little light gleaming over Parliament. It’s just a whim.”

“Anything you say,” said Chalfont. What did it matter where they went,
so long as they were together? Lola,—so that was her name.



VII


They crossed to Trafalgar Square, the figure of Nelson silhouetted
against the sky. They went down Northumberland Avenue to the Embankment
and crossed the road to the river side. The tide was high but the old
river was deserted and sullen. Westminster Bridge faced them, alive with
little lights, and on the opposite bank the dark buildings ran along
until they joined the more cheerful looking St. Thomas’s Hospital, whose
every window was alight. Pre-war derelicts who were wont to clutter the
numerous seats were back again in their old places, their dirty ranks
swelled by members of the great new army of unemployed. Many of these
had borne arms for England and wore service ribbons on their greasy
waistcoats. Two or three of them, either from force of habit or in a
spirit of irony and burlesque, sprang up as Chalfont approached and
saluted. It threw a chill through his veins as they did so,—those
gallant men who had come to such a pass. The House of Commons and the
Victoria Tower loomed ahead of them.

To Chalfont, Parliament stood as a mere talking shop in which a number
of uninspired egotists schemed and struggled in order to cling to office
and salaries while the rest answered to the crack of the party whip and
used whatever influence they had for self-advertisement,—commercializing
the letters which they had bought the right to place against their
names. He detested the place and the people it sheltered and regarded it
as a great sham, a sepulchre of misplaced hopes and broken promises. But
to Lola, who walked silently at his side, it symbolized the struggles of
Fallaray, stood dignified and with a beautiful sky line as the building
in which that man might some day take his place as the inspired leader
of a bewildered and a patient country. And as she walked along on the
pavement which had been worn by the passing of many feet, glancing from
time to time at the water over which a pageant of history had passed,
her heart swelled and her love seemed to throw a little white light
round her head. Was it so absurd, so grotesque, that she should have in
a sort of way grown up for and given herself to this man who had only
seen her once and probably forgotten her existence? Sometimes it seemed
to her not only to be absurd and grotesque but impudent,—she, the
daughter of the Breezys of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the maid who put
waves into the wiry bobbed hair of an irresponsible lady of fashion, and
who, from time to time, masqueraded in the great city under the name of
a relative long since dead and forgotten. Nevertheless, a tiny figure at
the side of Chalfont, her soul flowered at that moment and she knew that
she would very willingly be burnt at the stake like Joan of Arc if, by
so doing, she could rub away from Fallaray’s face even one or two of the
lines of loneliness which life had put upon it.

Chalfont was silent, because he was wondering how far he dared to go
with this girl who had talked about a “wee mystery” and who did not hold
him in sufficient confidence to tell him where she lived or let him see
her home. This was only the second time that he had met her and he asked
himself with amazement whether it could be true that he was ready to
sacrifice career, position and everything else for her sake. There were
other women who had flitted across his line of vision and with whom he
had passed the time. They had left him untouched, unmoved, a confirmed
bachelor. But during the days that he had spent in an eager search for
Lola he knew that this child had conquered him and brought him down with
a crash. He didn’t give a single curse who she was, where she came from
or what was this mystery to which she referred. He loved her. He wanted
her, and he would go through fire and water to make her his wife. And
having come to that conclusion, he broke the silence hitherto disturbed
only by the odd wailing of machinery on the other side of the river and
by the traffic passing over Westminster Bridge like fireflies. He put
his hand under Lola’s elbow, stopped her and drew her to the stonework
of the embankment. “In an hour or two,” he said, “I suppose you will
disappear again and not give me another thought until you cry out,
‘Horse, horse, play with me,’ and there isn’t a horse. I can’t let that
happen.”

Instinct and the subconscious inheritance of a knowledge of men kept
Lola from asking why not. The question would obviously provide Chalfont
with a dangerous cue.

So Chalfont went on unhelped. He said, “Look here, let’s have all this
out. I want you to marry me. I want you to be perfectly frank and treat
me fairly. You’re a widow and you appear to be alone. I don’t want to
force your hand or ask you to haul down your fourth wall. Nor do I hope
that you will care more about me than any girl after two meetings. I
just want to know this. Are there any complications? Is there anything
in the way of my seeing you day after day and doing my utmost to show
you that I love you more than anything on earth?”

Simpkins, Treadwell, Chalfont. But where, oh, where was Fallaray?

Lola didn’t know what to say. What was there in her that did these
things to men? She looked up into Chalfont’s face and shook her head.
“You’re a knight,” she said. “You stand in silver armor with a
crusader’s cross on your chest. You came to my rescue and proved that
there are good men in this world. You have made an everlasting friend of
me but,—I love some one else. Oh, Sir Peter Chalfont, I love some one
else. He doesn’t know it. He may never know it. I may never see him
again. I may die of love like a field daisy put in a dry vase, but when
I cross the Bridge I shall wait until he comes, loving him still.”

Leaning on the parapet side by side they watched the waters go by, dark
and solemn, undisturbed even by the passing of a barge, licking the
stonework away below. And as they stood there, moved to great emotion,
Big Ben sang the hour. It was ten o’clock. On a seat behind them four
men were grouped in attitudes of depression,—hungry, angry. A little way
to their right stood that place in which the so-called leaders sat up to
their necks in the problems of the world, impotent, bewildered.

And finally Chalfont said, “I see. Well, I wish you luck, little Lola,
and I congratulate you on loving like that. Oddly enough, we both love
like that. I wish to God——”

And as Lola moved away she put her hand through his arm as a sister
might have done, which was better than nothing; and they walked back
along that avenue of broken men, that street of weary feet, up
Northumberland Avenue and back into the lights and the whirl. “I think
I’ll leave you now,” said Lola. “There’s a cold hand on my heart. I want
to be alone.”

And so, without a word, Chalfont hailed a passing taxi, opened the door,
handed Lola in, and stood back, very erect, very simple, with his cork
arm most uncomic. And before the cab started he flung up his left hand
to the peak of his cap, not as though saluting a company of boy scouts
or a queen, but the woman he loved, the woman he would always love, the
woman for whom he would wait on the other side of the Bridge.

And all the way to Dover Street Lola wept.



VIII


In the servants’ sitting room Simpkins was sitting alone, not reading,
not smoking; thinking of Lola and of the inn at Wargrave which had
become so detestable,—a dead ambition, the ghost of a dream. And when
the door opened and Lola let herself in, tear-stained, he sprang to his
feet, gazing in amazement. Lola—dressed like a lady—crying.—But she held
up her hand, went swiftly across the room and out, upstairs. She was
back an hour and a half too soon. There was no need for Ellen to slip
down and open the door. The evening had been a dismal failure. It would
be a long time before she would play Cinderella again,—although the
Prince loved her and had told her so.

But instead of going through the door which led to the servants’
quarters, she stood for a moment in the corridor through which Simpkins
had taken her when she had first become an inmate of that house and once
more she stayed there against the tapestry with a cold hand on her
heart. Simpkins loved her. Treadwell loved her. Chalfont loved her, but
oh, where was Fallaray? What a little fool she had been ever to suppose,
in her wildest dreams, that Fallaray, Fallaray would see her and stop to
speak, set alight by the love in her eyes! What a silly little fool.

A door opened and Fallaray came out,—his shoulders rounded, his
Savonarola face pale and lined with sleeplessness. At the sight of the
charming little figure in evening dress he drew up. Mrs. Malwood
perhaps, or another of Feo’s friends. She was entertaining again, of
course.

And Lola trembled like a frightened bird, with great tears welling from
her eyes.

Fallaray was puzzled. This child did not look like one of Feo’s
friends,—and why was she crying? He knew the face, he remembered those
wide-apart eyes. They had followed him into his work, into his
dreams,—de Brézé, de Brézé,—the Savoy, the Concert.

He held out his hand. “Madame de Brézé,” he said, “what have they done
to you?”

And she shook her head again, trembling violently.

And Fallaray, with the old curious tingle running through his veins, was
helpless. If she wouldn’t tell him what was the matter, what was he to
do? He imagined that some flippancy or some sarcasm had wounded this
astonishing girl and she had fled from the drawing-room and lost her
way. But women were unknown to him, utter strangers, and he was called
to work. He said, “My wife’s room is there,” stood irresolute for a
moment, although his brain was filled with the songs of birds, and bowed
and went away.

And when Lola heard the street door close, she moved like a bird shot
through the wings, fumbled her way to the passage which led to her
servant’s bedroom and flung herself face downwards upon her bed. What
was it in her that did these things to every man,—except Fallaray?




PART VI



I


To Ellingham’s entire satisfaction, Feo did not sit out the performance
at the Adelphi. She left in the middle of the second act. It was not a
piece demanding any sort of concentration. That was not its métier. It
was one of those rather pleasant, loosely made things, bordering here
and there on burlesque, in which several comedians have been allotted
gaps to fill between songs which, repeated again and again, give a large
chorus of pretty girls an opportunity of wearing no dress longer than
five minutes or lower than the knees. But Feo’s mind was wandering. The
last twenty-four hours had been filled with disappointment. She agreed
with the adage that if you can’t make a mistake you can’t make anything.
But this last one, which had taken the Macquarie person into her circle
of light, proved to her that she was losing not only her sense of
perspective but her sense of humor. It rankled; and it continued to
rankle all through the jokes and songs and horseplay of the company
behind the footlights that Saturday night.

Then, too, she found herself becoming more and more disappointed in
Ellingham. He had aged. Still just on the right side of forty, he seemed
to her to have had all the youth knocked out of him. His resilience had
gone—sapped by the War—and with it his danger, which had been so
attractive. He was now a quiet, repressed, responsible, dull—yes,
dull,—man; in a sort of way the father of a family. When he talked it
was about his regiment in India, his officers, his quartermaster
sergeant, the health of his men, the ugly look of things in the East.
All this made it seem to Feo that Beetle Ellingham had pulled away from
her, left her behind. She was still fooling, while he, once as
irresponsible as herself and almost as mad, had found his feet and was
standing firmly upon them. Disappointment, disappointment.

“What to do?” she asked, as they got into a taxicab. She rather hoped
that he would say “Nothing. I’ll see you home and say good night.”

But he didn’t. “I’ll drive you home and talk for an hour, if you can
stand such a thing. I’m going to see my old people in Leicestershire
to-morrow, and I don’t suppose I shall be back in town for a month or
two.”

She told him to make it Dover Street, and he did so, and there was
silence until the cab drew up at the door of the house in which the
man—whom she had for the first time seriously considered as the new
Messiah—burnt himself up in the endeavor to find some solution to all
the troubles of his country, and, like a squirrel in a cage, ran round
and round and round.

Feo let herself in and led the way to what she called her den,—a long,
low-ceilinged room, self-consciously decorated in what purported to be a
futuristic manner, the effect of which, as though it had been designed
by an untrained artist striving to disguise his ignorance behind a chaos
of the grotesque, made sanity stagger. And here, full stretch on an
octagonal divan, she mounted a cigarette in her long green holder and
commenced to inhale hungrily.

Hating the room and all its fake, Ellingham, who more than ever
justified the nickname of Beetle which had been given to him at Eton
because of his over-hanging black eyebrows, prowled up and down with his
hands in his pockets. He, too, was disappointed. It seemed to him that
Feo had remained the hoyden, the overgrown, long-legged girl with boy’s
shoulders and the sort of sex illusiveness which had so greatly
attracted him in the old days, and had set him to work to eliminate and
replace. But now she was thirty something, and although he hated to use
the expression about her of all women, he told himself that she was
mutton playing lamb, and a futile lamb at that. Perhaps it was because
he had been all the way through the War and had come out with a series
of unforgettable pictures stamped upon his brain that he had expected to
find some sort of emergement on the part of Feo, who, although she had
been spared the blood and muck of Flanders, was the sister of a flying
man, the relation of innumerable gallant fellows who had been made the
gun fodder of that easily preventable orgy, and the friend of many a
young soldier whose bones now lay under the shallow surface of French
earth. So far as she was concerned, he could see that the War might
never have happened at all. It made him rather sick. Nevertheless he had
loved her violently and had never married because of his remembrance of
her and he wanted to find out how she stood. He was entirely in the
dark. He had not been alone with her once since the end of July, 1914,—a
night on the terrace of a house overlooking the Thames at Cookham, when
all the world already knew that slaughter was in the air and the wings
of the angel of death rustled overhead.

He stopped in front of her, all stretched out among cushions, her short
and pleated frock making her appear to be in a kilt. “Well, how about
it?” he asked.

And she shrugged her shoulders and tossed the ash of her cigarette at a
small marble pot. “I dunno,” she said. “Pretty badly, one way and
another.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh, I dunno,” she said again. “One gets nowhere and does really nothing
and spends one’s life looking for something that never turns up,—the
glamour of the impossible. Disappointment, disappointment.”

“H’m,” said Beetle. “Is there no chance of your getting on better with
Fallaray? He seems to be the only live creature in politics, the one
honest man.” He had never imagined that he would ever have put that
question to her.

“That’s true,” said Feo. “He is. I have nothing but admiration for
Edmund,—except dislike. Profiles and tennis are no longer my hobbies and
there is no more hope of our getting on, as you call it, than of my
becoming an earnest worker among the slums. Once Feo, always Feo,
y’know. That’s the sentence I labor under, Beetle. As a rule, I’m
perfectly satisfied and have no grumbles. I rot about and play the giddy
ox, wear absurd clothes, do my best to give a jar to what remains of
British smugdom and put in a good-enough time. You mustn’t judge me as
you find me to-night. I have the megrims. Ghosts are walking and I’m out
of form. To put it truthfully, I’m rather ashamed of myself. I’ve become
a little too careless. I must relearn the art of drawing the line.
That’s all. But, for the Lord’s sake, don’t let me depress _you_,—that
is, if I have any longer the power of doing so.”

She hadn’t, he found, and it hurt. In the old days he would have said so
and in a sort of way got even with her for turning him down and marrying
Fallaray. He would have taken a certain amount of joy in hitting her as
hard as he could. But he had altered. He was not the old Beetle, the
violent, hot-tempered, rather cruel individualist. Men had died at his
side,—officers and Tommies. And so his days of hurting women were over.
He was rather a gentle Beetle now. Curious how things shaped themselves.
And so he prowled up and down with his hands in his pockets,
inarticulate, out of touch,—like a doctor in a lunatic asylum, or an
Oxford man revisiting the scenes of his giddy youth in his very old age.

And Feo continued to smoke,—smarting. Not because she cared for Beetle
or had ever given him a thought. But because everything was edgeways,
like a picture puzzle that had fallen in a heap. She would have given a
great deal to have had this man take his hands out of his pockets and
stop prowling and become the old violent Beetle once again. She would
have liked to have heard him curse Fallaray and accuse her of being a
rotter. She would have liked to have seen the old hot look in his eyes
and been compelled to laugh him off, using her old flippant words.
Anything,—anything but the thing that was.

But even as he prowled—up round the wispy table and down in front of
that damn-fool altar, or whatever it was—he became more and more the
ancient friend, distantly related, who had little to talk about and
little that he cared to hear. Once more he went over all the old India
stuff, the regiment, the officers and men, their health, the underlying
unrest of the East. Then he jerked, as a sudden glorious new thought, to
his people and the place they lived in, but all the same this
unsatisfactory reunion lasted twenty minutes less than the given hour.

Suddenly Ellingham stopped walking and stood in front of Feo and said,
“Good-by. I don’t suppose I shall see you again.” And wheeled off and
went, quickly, with relief.

And when Feo heard the front door bang, she remained where she was lying
until the hour was fulfilled, with the hand that he had shaken all
stiff, and with two tears running slowly down her face.

Disappointment.—Disappointment.



II


Lola woke early and went to the window and pulled up the blind. The sun
was shining and half a dozen London sparrows were chirping and hopping
about in the back yard of one of the houses in Bond Street. One poor
anæmic tree stood in the middle of it, and an optimist, condemned to
live in the city, had worked on the small patch of earth and made a
little garden where cats met at night and sang duets and swore, and
talked over all the feline gossip of the neighborhood, fighting from
time to time to keep their claws in, to the cruel derangement of the bed
of geraniums, which looked that morning as though the Germans had passed
over it.

All Lola’s dreams during the night had been filled with tragedies, but
the effect of the one that was upon her still was that she had died,
withered up, after having been left by Fallaray in the corridor where
she had been caught by him in tears,—unable, because, for some reason,
there had been a cold hand on her heart, to jump at the great and
wonderful opportunity that had come to her and which she had worked so
long to achieve. And in this last just waking dream, the reality of
which still left her awed, she had stood, bewildered, on the unfamiliar
side of a short wide bridge, to be faced suddenly by a scoffing and
sarcastic woman who had taunted her for her impotence and lack of grit
and called her middle class, without cunning and without the necessary
strength to be unscrupulous, so vital to success.

And as she stood facing a new day with these words ringing in her ears,
she told herself that she ought to have died, that she deserved death,
for having lost her nerve and her courage. She accepted the biting
criticism of the successful de Brézé and offered no excuses. This was
far too big a thing to win by a series of easy steps. And up to that
time they all had been easy and had led actually to Fallaray. Everything
seemed to have played into her hands and it was she, Lola, who had
failed. If she had possessed even half the cunning of which the de Brézé
had spoken, with what avidity and delight she must have seized her
opportunity when Fallaray had come suddenly upon her. But she had proved
herself to be witless and without daring, a girl who had played at being
a courtesan in a back room, who had sentiment and sympathy and emotion
and whose heart, instead of being altogether set on the golden cage, had
become soft with love and hero worship and the delay of hope,—just Lola
Breezy, the watchmaker’s daughter, the little Queen’s Road girl
suffering from the reaction of having set alight unwillingly all the
wrong men, stirring, finally, her friend Chalfont, who had been so kind
and good. So that when Fallaray had come to her at last, remembering her
name, she had let him go unstirred, without an effort, because she was
thinking of him and not of herself and her love and the passionate
desire of her life. Yes, she deserved to be dead, because her courage
had oozed out of her finger tips and left her trembling.

But what was she to do now? Give up? Devote herself to lady’s maiding
and develop into an Ellen, or resign from this position and return home
to help her mother in the shop and dwindle into love-sickness? Give up
and shake herself back to a normal frame of mind in which, some day, she
would walk to chapel with Ernest Treadwell,—or go to Chalfont and tell
him the truth and put his love to the test? Or, refusing to own herself
a weakling, a dreamer and a failure, begin all over again, this time
with as much of cunning as she could find in her nature and all the
disturbing influence of that too well-proved gift? Which?

And the answer came in a woman’s voice, ringing and strong. “Go on, go
on, de Brézé. Begin all over again. You were born to be a canary, with
the need of a golden cage. You inherit the courtesan nature; you must
let it have its way. As such there’s a man you can rescue, lonely and
starved of love. It is not as wife that he needs you, but as one with
the rustle of silk——”

“I will go on,” said Lola. “I will begin again.” And with a high head
once more and renewed hope and eagerness and courage, she set her brain
to work. All the rungs of the ladder were without the marks of her feet.
But she waved her hand to the pathetic patch of miniature garden with
its anæmic city tree, caught its optimism and began to think. Where was
she to begin?

Into her mind came some of the gossip of the servants’ sitting room, to
which as a rule she paid no attention. Ellen had given out that Simpkins
had said that he was to have time off from the following Friday to
Tuesday because Mr. Fallaray had made his plans to go down alone to
Chilton Park for a short holiday. To Chilton Park for a short holiday!
Ah! Here was a line to be followed up. Here was something which might
enable her to pick up the thread again.

She began to walk up and down her little room, in a nightgown which
certainly did not belong to a courtesan, repeating to herself again and
again “Chilton Park, Chilton Park,” worrying the thing out like a
schoolgirl with a difficult lesson. By some means, by hook or by crook,
she also must get to Chilton Park during that time; that was certain,
even if she had to ask Lady Feo to let her give up her position as
lady’s maid. But following this thought came another, instantly,—that
she would regret above all things to put her mistress to inconvenience,
because she was grateful for many kindnesses and maids were scarce. And
she was glad that the de Brézé could not hear her think and call out
“weakness, weakness.” How to get there? How to be somewhere in the
neighborhood so that she might be able to slip one night into the garden
to be seen by Fallaray, and then, for the first time, prove to herself
and to him that she was not any longer the Lola Breezy of Queen’s Road,
Bayswater, the little middle-class girl, timid and afraid, but the
reincarnation of her famous ancestress, as she had always supposed
herself to be, and had played at being so often, and had tried to be
during her brief escapes into life.

[Illustration: A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

How?—How?

She might, of course, ask Lady Feo for a week’s leave—a large order—go
to Whitecross and engage a room at the little inn that she had noticed
at the corner of the road at the top of the hill. But what would be the
use of that? How could she play Madame de Brézé in such a place, with
one evening frock and her own plain everyday dress with two
undistinguished hats and a piece of luggage that yelled of Queen’s Road,
Bayswater? It was absurd, impossible. Brick wall number one. And so she
tackled the task grimly, thinking hard, swinging from one possibility to
another, but with no better luck. Everything came back to the fact that
all her savings amounted to no more than ten pounds. How could she go
forward, unaided, on that? And then in a flash she saw herself at the
house in Kensington Gore with Chalfont and remembered the words of Lady
Cheyne, who, in asking her to come down to her little place in the
country, had said that the garden ran down to Chilton Park. It had been
pigeonholed in her brain and she had found it! And with a little cry of
delight she pounced upon it like a desert wanderer on water.

Lady Cheyne,—that kindly soul who was never so happy as when giving a
hand to a stray dog. It might easily happen, the weather being so good,
that she had already left town. That would be wonderful. But if not, if
she were still busy with her musicians and their concerts, then she must
be seen and influenced to leave town, or, better still, called up on the
telephone at once. A tired little woman of the world needed a breath of
fresh air and the peace of a country garden. Would Lady Cheyne take
mercy on her, as she took mercy on so many people, and give her this
peace and this quietude?—Yes, that was the way. It was a brain wave.

Filled with determination no longer to wait for an opportunity, but to
make one, not to rely on fate, as she had been doing, but to treat fate
as though it were something alive, a man—Simpkins, Treadwell or
Chalfont—and cajole him, Lola proceeded to dress, with the blood
tingling in her veins, and imbued with the feeling of one who faces a
forlorn hope. But it was still too early to use the telephone to the
elderly lady who, if she were in town, had probably listened to music
into the small hours. She must wait and go on thinking. There were other
things to overcome, even if this one came right. How to wheedle a
holiday; to hint, if she dared, at her lack of clothes, a suit-case,
shoes.

The servants’ sitting room was empty. On Sunday, the ménage, except for
the cook, slept late. And so Lola marked time impatiently, achieving
breakfast from the sulky woman by flattery. Lady Feo had given out that
she was not to be disturbed until her bell rang. She would wake to find
Sunday in London,—a detestable idea. There was nothing for which to get
up.

Watching a clock that teased her with its sloth, Lola went over and over
the sort of thing to say to Lady Cheyne, disturbed in her current of
thought by the suddenly garrulous cook who insisted on telling the whole
story of her life, during the course of which she had buried a drunkard
and married a bigamist and lost her savings and acquired asthma,—a
dramatic career, even for a cook. But at nine-thirty, unable to control
herself any longer, she ran upstairs to Feo’s alarming den, hunted out
Lady Cheyne’s number in the book and eventually got into communication
with an operator who might, from her autocratic manner, very easily have
been Mrs. Trotsky, or the wife of a labor leader, or a coal-miner’s
daughter, or indeed a telephone operator of the most approved type.

A sleepy and rather irritable voice said, “Well?—but isn’t it a little
early to ring any one up and on a Sunday morning too?”

Lola made a wry face. That was not a good beginning. And then, in her
sweetest voice, “Am I speaking to dear Lady Cheyne?”

“Yes, it’s Fanny Cheyne, lying in bed with this diabolical instrument on
her chest, but not feeling very dear, my dear, whoever you are, and I
don’t know your voice.”

“It’s Madame de Brèzè and I’m so very sorry to disturb you.”

“Why did you then, if I may say so,—de Brézé. I’m sorry too, but really
I hear so many names, just as odd.—If it’s about being photographed,
please no. I’m far too fat. Or if it’s about a subscription for the
starving children of Cochin China, I have too many starving children of
my own.”

Quick, de Brézé, quick, before the good old lady cuts off.

“The Savoy, the little widow, Sir Peter Chalfont, your wonderful house
so full of genius, and what do you do, my dear.—Don’t you remember, dear
Lady Cheyne?”

“Oh,—let me think now.” (The tone was brighter, interest was awakening!
Good for you, de Brézé.) “My dear Peter with the comic-tragic leg—no,
arm—the Savoy——”

“You were with Alton Cartridge and the disinfected Russian violinist,
and you betted on my being French and invited me to Whitecross and when
I went up to powder my nose——”

“You never came back! Golden hair like butter-cups, wide-apart eyes and
fluttering nostrils, a mouth designed for kissing and all about you the
rattle of sex. You dear thing! How sweet of you to ring me up and on a
Sunday too. Where on earth did you go?”

Go on, de Brézé, go on! A little mystery, a touch of sadness, a hint of
special confidence, flattery, flattery.

“Ah, if only I could see you. I dare not explain that sudden
disappearance over the telephone,—which must have seemed so rude. You
are the only woman in all the world who could keep an amazing secret and
advise a troubled woman in a tangle of romance——”

“Secret, romance—who but Poppy for that!”

It worked, it worked! Lola could _see_ the kind little lady struggle
into a sitting posture, alert and keen, her vanity touched. Go on, de
Brézé, go on.

“Ever since then I’ve been thinking of you, dear Lady Cheyne, and, at
last, this morning, on the spur of the moment, longing for help, driven
into a corner, remembering your kind invitation to Whitecross——”

“My dear, you excite me and I adore excitement. Of course you must see
me, at once. But to-day’s impossible. I’ve a thousand things to do. And
to-morrow—let me see now. How can I fit you in? Probably you don’t want
to be seen at my house or the Savoy, you mysterious thing. So what can
we arrange? I know. I have it. Quite French and appropriate. Meet me on
the sly at a place where no one ever would dream of our being. Mrs.
Rumbold’s, a jobbing dressmaker. I’m going to see her to-morrow to alter
some clothes. Castleton Terrace, Bayswater, 22. She used to work for me.
A poor half-starved soul, but so useful. Half-past eleven. And we’ll
arrange for a week-end at my place, perhaps, or elsewhere, wherever you
like.”

“Oh, Whitecross, Whitecross,—it sounds so right.”

“And, it is so right,—romance in every rose bowl. To-morrow then, and I
shall love to see you, my dear, and thank you for thinking of Poppy. I’m
so excited. Good-by.”

“Good-by, dearest Lady Cheyne,—a thousand thanks.”

Well played, de Brézé. That’s the way to do it. Keep on like that and
prove your grit, my dear.

And presently for Lady Feo, who would certainly have something to say
about the Carlton episode, and if all went well the frocks, the hats,
the shoes,—but nothing yet about the holiday. That must wait until after
the interview at Mrs. Rumbold’s to-morrow.



III


After all, then, Feo was to spend a dull and dreary Sunday in London;
but she had slept endlessly, hour after hour, and when at last she woke
at twelve o’clock, the sun was pouring into her room. Wonder of wonders,
there was nothing dull about this Sunday! London lay under an utterly
blue sky and those of its people who had not fled from its streets to
the country, afraid of its dreariness, were out, finding unexpected
touches of beauty in their old city and a lull of traffic that was
restful.

The sight of Lola as she came into the room in the discreet garments of
her servitude brought instant laughter back to Feo’s lips. Only a few
hours ago she had been claimed as an intimate friend by the girl, with
all the confidence and aplomb of a member of the enclosure. How
perfectly delightful. She took her cup of tea and sat up in bed,
forgetting everything except the backwash of her great amusement. Madame
de Brézé.—By Jove, those quiet ones,—they knew their way about. When she
had been undressed the night before, Feo had been in no mood to chaff
her maid, then a mere human machine, about her general and her escapade.
Depression, disappointment and humiliation had driven the Carlton
incident out of the way. But now the sun was shining again and she had
slept in a great chunk. What did Gilbert Macquarie count in the scheme
of things now, or, for the matter of that, Ellingham? She thanked all
her gods that she possessed the gift of quick recovery.

And now to pull the little devil’s leg. “Oh, hello, old girl,” she said,
carrying on her attitude of the previous night, “how awfully nice of you
to bring me my tea.” She expected utter embarrassment and confusion, and
certainly an apology. Good Lord, the girl had pinched those stockings!

But the answer was quiet and perfectly natural. “That’s all right, Feo.
Only too glad.”

After the first gasp of surprise there was a loud guffaw. Nothing in
this world was more pleasing to Feo than the unexpected. “Sunday in
London! But this is as good and a jolly sight better than Saturday night
at the Adelphi. Bravo, Lola. The bitter bit. Keep it up. I love it.”

And with her black hair all tousled, her greenish eyes dancing with
amusement, her large mouth wide open and the collar of her black silk
pajamas gaping, she stirred her tea and waited for the fun.

And seeing that her mistress was all for laughing and that she had hit
the right note, Lola kept it up. Witless and without daring, eh? Well,
wait and see.

“I rather wish we’d gone on with you to the theater,” she said, lighting
a cigarette and sitting on the arm of a chair in a Georgie Malwood pose.
“It might have amused you to see something of Peter Chalfont, who has
refused to join the gang.”

Feo was amazed at the perfection of what was, of course, an imitation of
herself. Breezy’s niece was a very dark horse, it seemed.

“But where the deuce did you pick him up?” she asked, continuing the
game.

“Oh, my dear, I’ve known him for years. He was an old pal of the man I
married in my teens and was always hanging about the place. I call him
the White Knight because he has such a charming way of rescuing women in
distress. If you’re keen about getting to know him, I’ll work it for
you, with all the pleasure in life.”

Back went that black head with hair like a young Hawaiian. Oh, but this
was immense. A lady’s maid and a bedside jester, rolled into one. And
how inimitably the girl had caught her intonation and manner of
expression. A born actress, that was what she was.

“Don’t bother about me. What are you going to do with him? That’s what I
want to know.”

Lola shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I dunno,” she said, with a lifelike
Feo drawl. “What can I do with him? Only trail him round.”

“Marry him, of course. That man’s a catch, you fool. Stacks of money,
three show places in the country, a title as old as Rufus, and only one
hand to hit you with.”

“But I’m not marrying,” said Lola.

And that was too much for Feo. She threw the clothes back and kicked up
her heels like a schoolgirl. But before she could congratulate her
lady’s maid on a delightful bit of acting and an egregious piece of
impertinence that was worth all the Sundays in London to watch, the
telephone bell rang and brought her back to facts.

“Just see who that is, will you? And before you say I’m here, find out
who it is.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Lola. The little game was over. It hadn’t lasted
long. But if it had put her ladyship into a generous mood——

It was Mrs. Winchfield, calling up from Aylesbury.

“Oh, well,” said Feo, with the remembrance of great dullness. “Give me
the ’phone and get my bath ready. And tell them to let me have lots of
breakfast in half an hour, here. I could eat a horse.”

“Very good, my lady.”

And when Lola returned, having carried out her orders and still tingling
with the triumph of having proved her courage and her wit, she found
Lady Feo lying in the middle of the room, on her back, doing exercises.
“All the dullards have left the Winchfields’,” she said. “There’s to be
a pucca man there this afternoon, one I’ve had my eye on for weeks.
Quick’s the word, Lola. Get me dressed and into the car. This is Sunday
and I’m in London. It’s perfectly absurd. I shall stay the night, of
course, and I shan’t want you till to-morrow at six. What’ll you do?
Lunch at the Carlton?”

“I shall go home, my lady.” But the twinkle returned.

“Oh, yes, of course. I spoilt your holiday, didn’t I? By the way, does
your mother know that you’re in society now?”

And Lola replied, “The bath is ready, my lady.”

And once more Feo laughed, lit a cigarette and went towards the
bathroom. Here she turned and looked at the now mouse-like Lola with a
peculiarly mischievous glint in her eyes. “Wouldn’t it be a frightful
spree if I went after Peter Chalfont and told him all I know about you?”
Two minutes later she was singing in the bath.

Tell Peter Chalfont!—But Lola knew that this was an empty threat. Mr.
Fallaray’s wife was a sportsman. _Mr. Fallaray’s wife_.

For the first time in all this business, these words stood out in
ghastly clearness, with all that they meant to Lady Feo and her, who was
“after” Mr. Fallaray. Was she, Lola, a sportsman too? The question came
suddenly, like a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin, and drew the girl up
short. But the answer followed quickly and it was Yes, yes, because this
woman was _not_ Fallaray’s wife and never had been.

But there was more than a little irony in the fact that she liked Lady
Feo, was grateful to her, had seen many of her best points and so far as
the Carlton episode went, recognized in her a most unusual creature,
imbued with a spirit of mischief which was almost like that of a child.
And yet for all that, she _was_ Fallaray’s wife.—It was more than
conceivable, as Lola could guess, that if the whole story were confided
in detail, with the de Brézé background all brought out, Lady Feo would
first of all laugh and then probably help her little lady’s maid for the
fun of the thing, and to be able, impishly, one night when she met
Fallaray coming back from the House worn and round-shouldered, to stand
in front of him, jumping to conclusions, and say, “Ha, ha! Sooner or
later you _all_ come off your pedestal, don’t you? But look out, Master
Messiah. If the world spots you in the first of your human games, pop
goes the weasel, and you may as well take to growing roses.”

Still singing, and back again in the highest spirits, Feo breakfasted in
her room and Lola dressed her for the country. Not once but many times
during the hour that followed she endeavored to pump Lola about Chalfont
and as to the number of times that she had gone out into “life.” But
Lola was a match for her and evaded all questions; sometimes with a
perfectly straight face, sometimes with an answering twinkle in her eye.
Although she was piqued by the girl’s continued elusiveness, Feo was
filled with admiration at her extraordinary self-control,—a thing that
she respected, being without it herself. And then Lola, with a little
sigh, and as though drawn at last, got to _her_ point in this strange
and intimate talk. “I’m afraid I shall never be able to see Sir Peter
again,” she said sadly. “I have only one evening frock and he has seen
it twice.”

At which Feo went to her wardrobe, flung open the doors, took down dress
after dress, threw them on her bed and said, “Take your choice. Of
course, you can’t always wear the same old frock. Sir Galahad has a
quick eye. Take what stockings you need also and help yourself to my
shoes. There are plenty more where these came from,—you little devil. If
you catch that man, and I shan’t be a bit surprised if you do, you will
have done something that nearly every girl in society has taken a shot
at during the last five years. I make one bargain with you, Lola, in
return for these things. Spend your honeymoon at Chilton Park and let me
present you at Court.”

An icy hand had touched her heart again. A honeymoon at Chilton
Park,—with Chalfont.



IV


And so Lola was free to go home again and spend the remainder of Sunday
with her people, after all. But when, having tidied up and dressed
herself, she ran downstairs into the servants’ sitting room on her way
to the area steps, there sat Simpkins, a crestfallen and tragic figure,
looking at a horizon which no longer contained the outline of his dream
upon the banks of the Thames. He got up as Lola entered,—done for, but
in the spirit of a protector, a Cromwellian spirit. “Where ’ad you bin
last night?” he asked, “in them clothes?” He had not slept for thinking
of it. His Lola, dressed like a lady, coming in with a tear-stained
face, late at night, alone, from a devouring world. All his early chapel
stuff had been revived at the sight. Disappointment had stirred it up.

Another cross-examination! Wasn’t the world large enough for so small a
little figure to escape notice?

“Dear old Simpky,” she said, with that wide-eyed candor of hers, “I’m in
such a hurry. With any luck I shall just be able to catch the bus that
will take me home to lunch.”

But Simpkins put his back against the door. “No,” he said. “Not like
that. Even if I’ve lost yer, I love yer, and it’s my job to see you
don’t come to no ’arm. You’ve got to tell me what you’re doing.”

There was something in the man’s eyes and in the whiteness of his face
that warned Lola immediately of the need to be careful. Her mother had
said that Simpkins was a good man with something of ecstasy in his
nature, and she guessed intuitively that the latter might take the form
eventually, in his ignorance and his love, of a dangerous watchfulness.
So she was very patient and quiet and commonplace, remembering a similar
scene which had taken place with Treadwell outside Mrs. Rumbold’s
battered house.

“I went to a concert with a married friend of mine. Lady Feo gave me the
frock. It’s very kind of you to worry, Simpky. And now, please——”

And after a moment’s hesitation Simpkins opened the door and with a
curious dignity gave the girl her freedom. He loved her and believed in
her. She was Lola and she was good, and but for some catastrophic
accident she might be engaged to be married to him.

But Lola didn’t go immediately. She turned round and put her hand on the
valet’s arm. “What are you going to do?” she asked, affectionately
concerned.

“There isn’t anything for me to do,” he said, “now.”

“Come home with me.”

But he shook his head. “I couldn’t,” he said. “Your father is a friend
of mine and might slap me on the back and tell me to go on ’oping—and
there isn’t any—_is_ there?”

And she said, “No, Simpky dear. I’m sorry to say there isn’t. But you
can’t sit here looking at the carpet with the sun shining and so much to
see. Why not come on the bus as far as Queen’s Road and then go for a
walk. It would do you good.”

And he said, “Nothing can do me good.”

And she could see that he had begun to revel in his pain, and nurse it,
and elevate it to a great tragedy. And for the first time she recognized
in this man a menace to her scheme. He loved her too well and she had
made him a fanatic.

This scheme of hers, so like one of the Grimm’s fairy tales in which the
woodcutter’s daughter dared to love the prince,—was it to get all over
the town? Miss Breezy had a friend in Scotland Yard, a detective. Lady
Feo was on the watch, and here was Simpkins turned into a protector. And
all the while Prince Fallaray lived in the same house and did nothing
more than just remember her name, thinking that she was a friend of the
woman who called herself his wife.

Never mind; the sun was shining, tears had dried, courage had returned,
frocks and shoes and stockings had come and the impossible was one of
the things that nearly always happened.

An hour later the door of the watchmaker’s shop opened in answer to her
knock. There stood the fat man with his beaming smile of welcome and
surprise, and out of the little parlor came an enticing aroma of roast
lamb and mint sauce.



V


That evening, controlling her excitement and anxious to make her people
happy, Lola went to the family chapel with them,—the watchmaker in a
gargantuan tail coat, a pair of pepper and salt trousers, and a bowler
hat in which he might have been mistaken for the mayor of
Caudebac-sur-Seine or a deputy representing one of the smaller
manufacturing towns of France. Beside him his little wife stood bluntly
for England. Everything that she wore told the story not only of her
birth and tradition but of that of several grandmothers. There must have
been at that moment hundreds of thousands of just such women, dressed in
a precisely similar manner, on their way to answer the summons of a bell
which was not very optimistic,—the Church having fallen rather low in
popular favor. It had so many rivals and some of them were, it must be
confessed, more in the mood of the times.

It was a sight worth seeing to watch these Breezys ambling up Queen’s
Road, proudly, with their little girl. And it was because Lola knew that
she was conferring a great treat upon her parents that she submitted
herself to an hour and a half of something worse to her than boredom.
Only a little while ago she had looked forward to the evening service on
Sundays and had been gently moved by the hymns, by the reading from the
Scripture and even by the illiterate impromptus of the minister; and she
had found, in moments that were dull, the usual feminine pleasure in
casting surreptitious glances about the small, plain unbeautiful
building to see what Mrs. This wore or Mrs. That. But now she found
herself going through it all like a fish out of water. As Ellingham had
outgrown Lady Feo, so had she outgrown that flat, uninspired, and rather
cruel service, in which the name of God was always mentioned as a
monster of vengeance, without love and without forgiveness, and with a
suspicious eye to the keyhole of every house. With a sort of shame she
found herself finding fault with the rhymes of the hymns, which every
now and then were dreadful, and were, oh, so badly sung; and when a
smug-faced, uneducated man came forward, shut his eyes, placed himself
in an attitude of elaborate piety and let himself go with terrible
unction, treating God and death and life and joy and humanity as though
they were butter, or worse still, margarine, goose flesh broke out upon
her and a curious self-consciousness as though she were intruding upon a
scene at which she had no right to be present. Away and away back,
church had not been like this to her. Out of a dream she seemed to hear
the deep reverberation of a great organ, the high sweet voices of unseen
boys and the soft murmur of an old scholar retelling the simple story of
Christ’s pathetic struggle, and of God’s mercy.—Oh, the commonplace, the
misinterpretation, the hypocrisy, the ignorance. No wonder the busses
were filled, she thought, the commons crowded on the outskirts of the
city. To her there was more religion in one shaft of evening sun than in
all those chapels put together.

It was with thankfulness and relief that Lola went back with her parents
to the street and turned into Queen’s Road again, which wore a Sunday
expression. Gone for a brief time were the itinerant musicians, the
innumerable perambulators, the ogling flappers with their cheap silk
stockings and misshapen legs, the retired colonels eking out a grumbling
living on infinitesimal pensions.

“Let’s take a little walk,” said Mrs. Breezy. “It’s nice now. The
Gardens look more like the country in the twilight.”

“Of course,” said Breezy, “walk. Best exercise in the world. Oils a man
up.” But all the same he didn’t intend to go far. Athleticism was a pose
with him. He had grown so fat sitting on that backless chair behind the
glass screen, looking into the works of sick watches like a poor man’s
doctor who treated a long line of ailing people. If it wasn’t the
mainspring, then it was over-winding. Very simple.

But Lola steered them away from Kensington Gardens because soldiers were
there under canvas, and Chalfont was in command of the London district,
and it might happen easily that all of a sudden that purring car would
draw up at the curb and her name be called by the man with the cork arm.

“Let’s go the other way,” she said, “for a change. I love to look at all
the houses that are just the same and wonder what the people are like
who live in them, and whether they’re just the same.”

It was her evening. She was no longer the little girl to be told to do
this or that and taken here and there with or against her will. She had
broken out of all that, rather strangely and quietly and suddenly; and
in a sort of way her parents had become her children. It always happens.
It is one of the privileges of parenthood eventually to obey. It is the
subtle tribute paid by them to a son or daughter of whom they are proud,
who is part of them and who has come through all the vicissitudes of
childhood and adolescence under their care and guidance. It is one of
the nicer forms of egotism.

And so these three little people, the Breezys, went into the labyrinths
of villadom, up one street and down another. Some of the houses were
smarter than the rest, with little trees in tubs, and Virginia creepers
twined about their pillars, and perhaps a fat Cupid, weather-stained,
standing in a little square of cat-fought garden, or with two small
lions eying each other from opposite sides of the doorway with bitter
antagonism. But the waning light of a glorious day still clung to the
sky, in which an evening star had opened its eye, and even Bayswater,
that valley of similitude, wore beauty of a sort. And all the way along,
up and down and across, the high-sounding names of the various terraces
ringing with sarcasm, they went together, these three little people, one
far from little outwardly, in great affection. To Lola there was
something unreal, almost uncanny about the whole thing. She had grown
out of all these streets, all this commonplace, that entire world. She
felt like some one who hears a very old tune played in a theater and
looks down with surprise and a little thread of pain from a seat in a
box,—a tune which seemed to take her back, away and away to far distant
days, and stir dim memories.—Only last night she had been sitting in the
Carlton with Chalfont as Madame de Brézé, and next Friday, if all went
well——

With a sudden thrill of intense excitement and longing, she then and
there made up her mind that some day it would be her privilege and joy
to lift those two estimable people out of Queen’s Road and place them,
not too old for enjoyment, among spreading trees and sloping lawns and
all the color of an English garden,—away from watches and silver wedding
presents, kodaks and ugly vases, from need of work, from clash of
traffic and the inevitable voices of throaty baritones. Ah, that was
what she wanted to do, so much, and if possible before it was too late.
Time has an ugly way of slipping off the calendar.

And when, presently, they returned to the shop and let themselves in, it
was Lola, with a curious emotion, because she might never see them again
as she was that night, who got the supper, who placed them, arguing, in
the stuffy drawing-room, and made many journeys up and down the narrow
staircase to the kitchen. “Please,” she said. “Please. This is my
evening. Even a lady’s maid can lay a supper if she tries hard enough.”
And they did as they were told, reluctantly, but delighted,—and a little
surprised. It was something of a change. And before the evening was over
Treadwell came, wearing a flapping tie, the mark of the poet, and a suit
of reach-me-downs egregiously cut but with something in his face that
lived it down,—love. Poor boy, he had a long way to go alone.

When at last, having said good night, Lola went upstairs to the room in
which she had played that little game of hers so often and sat in the
dark as quiet as a mouse, holding her breath, not one, no, not a single
one of all her old friends came in to see her,—not the ancient marquis
with his long finger nails and curious rings and highly polished boots;
not the gossipy old women in furbelows and dangling beads; not the
gallant courtier with his innuendoes and high flow of compliments; and
not the little lady’s maid who was wont to do her hair. They were dead.
But in their place came Fallaray, stooping, pale and bewildered, hungry
for love, hungry for comfort, dying for inspiration and the rustle of
silk. And when he had sat down with his chin in his hand, she crept up
to his chair and went on her knees and put her golden head against his
heart, and said, “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I shall
love you always. And if you never know it and never see me and miss me
altogether in the crowd, I shall wait for you across the Bridge,—and you
will see me then.”

But as she got up from her knees, blinded with tears, the voice came to
her again, strong and full.

“Go on, go on, de Brézé,—courage, my girl, courage. You have not yet won
the right to cry.”



VI


There were two reasons, then, for the visit to Castleton Terrace.

Feo’s handsome present to Lola reacted most favorably upon Mrs. Rumbold
and came at a moment in that poor woman’s existence when cash was scarce
and credit nil. Optimism also had been running a little low. But for
this divine gift how many more suicides there would be every year.

Mrs. Rumbold was sitting in her workroom in the front of the house,
waiting, like Sister Ann, for some one to turn up, when Lola’s taxi
stopped at the door, and with a thrill of hope she saw the driver haul
out a large dress case on which the initials F. F. were painted. This
was followed by Lola, an hour early for her appointment with Lady
Cheyne, and they were both met at the top step by the woman who saw
manna.

“Well,” she cried, shabby and thin, with wisps of unruly hair. “You’re a
sight for sore eyes, I will say. I knew I was in for a bitter luck
to-day. I read it in the bottom of me cup. Come in, miss, and let’s have
a look at what you’ve brought me.”

The case was deposited in the middle of the room in which half a dozen
headless and legless trunks mounted on a sort of cage were ranged along
one wall, out of work and gloomy. Because the driver had been batman to
a blood in the 21st Lancers, the case was duly unfastened by him,—a
courtesy totally unexpected and acknowledged by Mrs. Rumbold in
astonished English.

“Thank you very much,” said Lola, with a rewarding smile. “It’s very
kind of you.”

“Honored and delighted,” was the reply, added to by a full-dress parade
salute with the most wonderful waggle before it finally reached the ear
and was cut away.—And that meant sixpence extra. So every one was
pleased.

And when Mrs. Rumbold, with expert fingers, drew out one frock after
another, all of them nearly new and bearing the name of a dressmaker who
hung to the edge of society by a hyphen, exclamation followed upon
exclamation.

“Gorblime,” she cried out. “Where in the world did you get ’em? I never
see anything like it. It’s a trousseau.”

And Lola laughed and said, “Not this time.”

And Mrs. Rumbold started again, putting Feo’s astonishing garments
through a more detailed inspection. “Eccentric, of course,” she said.
“But, my word, what material, and look at these ’ere linings. Pre-war
stuff, my dear. Who’s your friend?”

And Lola told her. Why shouldn’t she? And extolled Lady Feo’s
generosity, in which Mrs. Rumbold heartily concurred. “I know what you
want,” she said. “What I did to the last one. Let ’em down at the bottom
and put a bit of somethin’ on the top. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Lola. “That’s it. As quickly as you can, Mrs. Rumbold,
especially with the day frocks.”

“Going away on a visit, dearie?”

“No—yes,” said Lola. “I don’t know—but, like you, I live a good deal on
hope.”

The woman made a wry face. “Umm,” she said. “You can get awful scraggy
on that diet. Keeps yer girlish, I tell yer.” And then she looked up
into Lola’s face. It was such a kind face, with so sympathetic a mouth,
that she had no hesitation in letting down her professional fourth wall.
“I’d be thankful if you could let me have a bit on account, miss,” she
added, with rather pathetic whimsicality. “Without any bloomin’ eyewash,
not even Sherlock Holmes could find as much as a bob in this house, and
I have a bill at the draper’s to be met before I can sail in and give
’em perciflage.”

“Nothing easier,” said Lola, who had come armed to meet this very
request, having imagination. And out came her little purse and from it
five nice pristine one-pound notes which she had most carefully hoarded
up out of her wages.

And then for an hour and more Lola transferred herself, taking her time,
from frock to frock, while Mrs. Rumbold did those intricate things with
pins and a pair of scissors which only long practice can achieve. But
Lady Cheyne failed to appear. Had she forgotten? Had some one steered
her off? Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes.
Lola’s heart began to sink into her shoes. But just as she was about to
lose hope, there was a loud and haughty ring at the bell which sent Mrs.
Rumbold helter-skelter to the window, through which she peered eagerly.
“Well, upon my word,” she cried in a hoarse whisper. “If you ain’t a
bloomin’ mascot. It’s Lady Cheyne who used to be one of my best
customers, and I haven’t seen ’er for a year.” And she ran out excitedly
and opened the door and hoped her neighbors would be duly impressed by
the rather dilapidated Mercedes which was drawn up in front of the
house.

There was a burst of welcome, and then Lady Cheyne entered the workroom
much in the same way as a broad-beamed cargo-boat floats into harbor.
And then followed another surprise for Mrs. Rumbold, who was in for a
day of surprises, it appeared. “Well, you dear thing, here you are.
Punctual to the minute, as I always am. How are you, and where have you
been, and why haven’t you run in to see me, and how sweet you look.” And
the kind and exuberant little lady, whose amazing body seemed to require
more than one dressmaker to cover it up, drew Lola warmly to her side
and kissed her. It is true that she had forgotten her name again. She
saw so many people so often who had such weird and unpronounceable names
that she never even made an effort to remember any of them. But that
golden head and those wide-apart eyes reminded her of the conversation
over the telephone, brought back that evening at her house and linked
them with the tall figure of the one-armed soldier,—her dear friend
Peter something, so good looking, _such_ a darling, but _so_ unkind,
never coming near her. “Extraordinary enough, I was thinking of you only
a few nights ago. I was dining at the Savoy and the little crowd who
were with me spoke of you. They had been with me the night I met you
there and were _so_ interested. One of the men said that if I could find
you and take you to his concert he would try and draw your lips to his
with the power of his art. He often says things like that. But he’s only
an artist, so it doesn’t matter. Mrs. Rumstick, I want you to find
something to do in the next room until I call you. No, leave my things
alone. I’ll explain what has to be done to them in my own good time.
That’s right.—We’re alone, my dear. Now tell me all about it.” She sat
on a chair that had the right to groan and caught hold of Lola’s hand.

“It’s love,” said Lola.

“Ah!”

“It’s love and adoration and long-deferred hope.”

“Oh, my dear, how you excite me!”

“And it can’t come right without you.”

“Me! Good gracious, but what can I do?”

Lola leaned closer. The pathetic farcicality of the dear old lady’s
wreaths and becks left the seriousness of all this untouched. She
clasped the dimpled hand in both her own and set her will to work.
“Bring us together,” she whispered, setting fire to romance, so that
Lady Cheyne bobbed up and down. “Help us to meet where no one can see,
quickly, quickly. The world is getting old.”

“Well, there’s the library at Number One Hundred! No one has ever been
in there except me since Willy passed away. You can come there any time
you like and not a soul will see you. And he, if he doesn’t mind his
trousers, can climb over the back wall, so that he shan’t be seen going
into the house. I wouldn’t do it for any one but you, my dear. That room
has dear memories for me.”

Kind and sweet,—but what was the use? It must be Chilton, Chilton, or
nothing at all. And so Lola kissed her gratitude upon the hot, rouged
cheek, but shook her head and sighed. (Go on, de Brézé, go on.)

“He wouldn’t dare,” she said. “Nowhere in town; it’s far too dangerous.
The least whisper, the merest hint of gossip——”

Lady Cheyne wobbled at the thought. There was more in this than met the
eye,—a Great Romance, love in High Places. How wonderful to be in,
perhaps, on History. “But at night,” she said. “Late, when every one’s
in bed. I assure you that after twelve One Hundred might be in the
country.”

“Ah,” said Lola, “the country. Isn’t there some place in the country,
high up near the sky, with woods behind it where we can meet and
speak——”

“Whitecross!” cried Lady Cheyne, brilliantly inspired. “Made for love
and kisses, if ever there was a place. How dull of me only just to have
thought of that.”

“Whitecross? What is that?” How eager the tone, how tremulous the voice.

“My darling nest on the Chilterns, where I’m so seldom able to live. If
only I could get away,—but I’m tied to town.”

“Next Friday, perhaps,—that’s the last, the very last——”

“Well, then, it must be Friday. I can’t resist this thing, my dear, so
I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll leave on Thursday. It will give a new
bevy of my protégés a little rest and a quiet time for practise. And you
can come down on Friday.”

“You darling!” (Good for you, de Brézé. Very well done, indeed.)

“Now get a pencil and a piece of paper and write everything down. The
station is Princes Risborough.” (As if Lola didn’t know that!) “You go
from Paddington and you catch the two-twenty arriving there just before
four. I can’t send a car to meet you, because my poor old ten-year-old
outside would drop to pieces going up to Whitecross. So you must take a
station cab and be driven up in time for tea, and you will find one
Russian, one Pole, two Austrians, one Dane and a dear friend of mine
with a voice like velvet who was a Checko-Slovak during the War and
German before and after. A very nice lot, full of talent. I don’t know
where they’re all going to sleep and I’m sure they don’t care, so what’s
it matter? They’ll give us music from morning to night and all sorts of
fun in between. Killing two birds with one stone, eh?”

Was it the end of the rainbow at last? “Oh, dear Lady Cheyne, what can I
say?”

“Nothing more, now, you dear little wide-eyed celandine; wait till we
meet again. Run away and leave me to Mrs. Rumigig. It’s a case of old
frocks on to new linings. Income tax drives us even to that. But I’m
very glad, oh, so very glad you came to me, my dear!”

And Lola threw her arms round the collector of stray dogs and poured out
her thanks, with tears. One rung nearer, two rungs nearer.—And in the
next room, having heroically overcome an almost conquering desire to put
her ear to the keyhole, stood Mrs. Rumbold, still suffering from the
second of her surprises.

“Do your best to let me have two day frocks and an evening frock,” said
Lola. “And I will come for them sometime Friday early. Don’t fail me,
will you, Mrs. Rumbold? You can’t think and I couldn’t possibly explain
to you how important it is.”

“Well, I should say not. I should think it is important, indeed! Little
Lola Breezy’s doing herself well these days, staying with the nobility
and gentry and all.”

The woman was amazed to the extent of indiscretion. How did a lady’s
maid, daughter of the Breezys of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, perform such a
miracle? They were certainly topsy-turvy times, these.

And then Lola turned quickly and caught Mrs. Rumbold’s arm. “You are on
your honor to say nothing about me to Lady Cheyne, remember, and if, by
any chance, you mention my name, bear in mind that it is Madame de
Brézé. You understand?”

There was a moment’s hesitation followed by a little gasp and a bow. “I
quite understand, Modum, and I thank you for your custom.”

But before Mrs. Rumbold returned to her workroom, in which the trunks
looked more perky now, she remained where she stood for a moment and
rolled her eyes.

“Well,” she asked herself, “did you _ever_? Modum de Brézé!—And she
looks it too, and speaks it. My word, them orders! Blowed if the modern
girl don’t cop the current bun. It isn’t for me to say anything, but for
the sake of that nice little woman in the watchmaker’s shop, I hope it’s
all right. That’s all.—And now, your ladyship, what can I have the
pleasure of doing for you, if you please? And thank you for comin’, I’m
sure. Times is that dull——”



VII


When Lola went into Feo’s room that evening it was with the intention of
asking for her first holiday. It was a large order; she knew that,
because her mistress had made innumerable engagements for the week. But
this was to be another and most important rung in that ladder, which, if
not achieved, rendered useless the others that she had climbed.

She was overjoyed to find Feo in an excellent mood. Things had been
going well. The world had been full of amusement and a new man had
turned up, a pucca man this time, discovered at the Winchfields’,
constant in his attentions ever since. He owned a string of race horses
and trained them at Dan Thirlwall’s old place behind Worthing, which
made him all the more interesting. Feo adored the excitement of racing.
And so it was easy for Lola to approach her subject and she did so at
the moment when she had her ladyship in her power, the curling irons
steaming. “If you please, my lady,” she said, in a perfectly even voice
and with her eyes on the black bobbed hair, “would it be quite
convenient for you if I had a week off from Thursday?”

“But what the devil does that matter?” said Feo. “If I don’t give you a
week off, I suppose you’ll take it.”

Lola’s lips curled into a smile. It was impossible to resist this woman
and her peculiar way of putting things. “But I think you know me better
than that,” she said, twining that thick wiry hair round the tongs as an
Italian twines spaghetti round a fork.

“What makes you think so? I don’t know you. I haven’t the remotest idea
what you’re like. You never tell me anything. Ever since you’ve been
with me you’ve never let me see under your skin once. I don’t even
believe that you’re Breezy’s niece. I’ve only her word for it. After
Sunday morning’s exhibition, I’m quite inclined to believe that you
_are_ Madame de Brézé masquerading as a lady’s maid. If the War was
still going on, I might think that you were a spy. A great idea for you
to get into this house and pinch the papers of a Cabinet Minister. Yes,
of course you can have a week off. What are you going to do? Get
married, after all?”

Lola shook her head and the curl went away from her lips. “I want to go
down to the country for a little rest,” she said.

Something in the tone of Lola’s voice caught Feo’s ears. She looked
sharply at her reflection in the glass and saw that the little face
which had captured her fancy and become so familiar had suddenly taken
on an expression of so deep a yearning as to make it almost
unrecognizable. The wide-apart eyes burned with emotion, the red lips
and those sensitive nostrils denoted a pent-up excitement that was
startling. What was it that this strange, secretive child had made up
her mind to do—to commit—to lose? “There is love at the bottom of this,”
she said.

And Lola replied, “Yes, my lady,” simply and with a sort of pride. And
then took hold of herself, tight. If there had been any one person in
all the world to whom she could have poured out her little queer story
of all-absorbing love and desire to serve and comfort and inspire and
entertain and rejuvenate—— But there wasn’t one—and it was Mr.
Fallaray’s wife who fished to know her secret. Was it one of the
ordinary coincidences which had brought, them together—meaningless and
accidental—or one of those studied ironies which fate, in its
mischievous mood, indulges in so frequently?

“It wouldn’t have been any good to deny it. It’s all over you like a
label. It’s an infernal nuisance, Lola, but I’ll try and get on without
you. If you’re not going to get married, watch your step, as the
Americans say. I don’t give you this tip on moral grounds but from the
worldly point of view. You have your living to make and there’s Breezy
to think about and your people.”

She put her hand up and grasped the one in which Lola held the tongs,
and drew her round. Strangely enough, this contradictory creature was
moved. Whether it was because she saw in Lola’s eyes something which no
one had been able to bring into her own, who can say? “It’s a married
man,” she told herself, “or it’s Chalfont who isn’t thinking of
marriage.” “Go easy, my dear,” she added aloud. “Believe only half you
hear and get that verified. Men are the most frightful liars. Almost as
bad as women. And they have a most convenient knack of forgetting.”

And then she released the girl so that she might resume her job, as time
was short, and she was dining rather early with the new man at Ranelegh
where “Twelfth Night” was to be acted as a pastoral by Bernard Fagan’s
players. All the same, her mind dwelt not so much with curiosity as with
concern upon Lola’s leave of absence, because she liked the girl and had
found her very loyal, consistently cheery and always ready to hand.

“Let me see,” she said, with an uncharacteristic touch of womanliness
that must have been brought out by the flaming feminism of Lola. “Among
the frocks that I hurled at you on Sunday there’s pretty certain to be
something that you can wear. Help yourself to anything else that you
need. You must look nice. I insist on that. And you’ll also want
something to put these things in. Tucked away somewhere there are one or
two dress cases without my initials. They’ve come in useful on other
occasions. Rout them out. I can’t think of anything else, but probably
you will.” And she waved her hand with those long thin capable fingers,
as much as to say, “Don’t thank me. You’d do the same for me if I were
in your shoes.”

But Lola did thank her and wound up an incoherent burst by saying,
“You’re the most generous woman I’ve ever imagined.”

“Oh, well, I have my moments,” replied Feo, who liked it all the same.
“Y’see, ‘The Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the
skin.’” She was very generous and very much interested and if the truth
were to be told a little worried too. For all her coolness at the
Carlton, Lola seemed to her to be so young and so obviously
virginal,—just the sort of girl who would make a great sacrifice, taking
to it a pent-up ecstasy for which she might be asked to pay a pretty
heavy price. And it was such a mistake to pay, according to Feo’s creed.

Finally, dressed and scented and wearing a pair of oddly shaped lapis
earrings, she stood in front of a pier glass for a moment or two,
looking herself over, finding under her eyes for the first time one or
two disconcerting lines. What was she? Ten years older than this girl
whose face was like an unplucked flower? Ten years certainly,—all packed
with incidents, not one of which had been touched by ecstasy.

When she turned away it was with a short quick sigh. “Damn,” she said,
off on one of her sudden tangents. “I can see myself developing into one
of those women who join the Salvation Army because they’ve lost their
looks, or get out of the limelight to read bitter verses about dead sea
fruit, if I’m not precious careful.” And her mind turned back to the
hour with Ellingham in that foolish futuristic room of hers and the way
in which he had paced up and down, inarticulate, hands in pockets, and
eventually been glad to go. Glad to go,—think of it.—Never mind, here
was the man with the race horses. He might be a little medieval,
perhaps. And on her way out she put her hand under Lola’s chin and
tilted up her face. “Mf,” she said, “you _have_ got it, badly, haven’t
you?”

And Lola replied, “Yes, my lady,” and felt as though she had never left
Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

“Well, good luck.” And Feo was gone.



VIII


So once again Lola stepped out on to the platform of Princes Risborough
station to wait while a sulky porter, thoroughly trades-union in all his
movements, made up his mind to carry Feo’s two cases out to a cab. He
first of all read the name on the labels, pronouncing Brézé to himself
as it was known to Queen’s Road, Bayswater. Then, with great
deliberation and condescension, having placed a new quid in his mouth,
he tilted them on to the barrow and wheeled them along the platform to
the station yard, followed by Lola. “Want a cab?” he asked. To which
Lola replied, “I don’t think I’m quite strong enough to carry them
myself.”

And he gave her a quick look. “Cheeky,” he thought. “Knows enough
English fer that, all right.” Whereupon he chi-iked the cab driver who
was asleep on his box and yelled out, “Don’t yer want ter occupy yerself
once in a way? Sittin’ up there orl day, doin’ nothin’! Do yer good to
’ave my job fer a bit. Come on darn. Give a hand with these ’ere. What
d’yer think I’m paid fer?”

Lola opened the door of the rickety and rather smelly cab for herself.
Neither of the men had thought of that. And then she handed the porter a
shilling and looked him straight in the face with her most winning
smile. “It doesn’t reward you for your great politeness,” she said. “But
these are hard times.”

And as the cab drove slowly off, the porter spat upon the coin. What did
he care for snubs? He was as good as anybody else and a damned sight
better, he was, with his labor union and all. Politeness!
Heh!—Missionaries have introduced the gin bottle to the native and
completely undermined his sense of primitive honor while trades unions
have injected the virus of discontent into the blood of the English
workman and made him a savage.

And so once more the white cross seen above the village; once more the
Tillage with its chapels and other public houses,—warm old buildings as
yet untouched by the hand of progress, which generally means a cheap
shop-front and goods made in Germany; once more the road leading up to
the Chiltons, with the shadows of old trees cast across. Chilton Park
was passed on the right, with its high wall, time-worn, behind which
Fallaray might even then be walking among his gardens. And presently the
cab turned in to the driveway of what had once been a farmhouse, to
which, by an architect who was an artist and not a builder, wings had
been added. The long uneven roof was thatched, the walls all creeper
covered, the windows diamond paned, the door low, wide and welcoming. A
smooth lawn was dignified with old oaks and beeches and ablaze with
numerous beds of sweet Williams and pansies and all the rustic flowers.
A charming little place, rather perhaps self-consciously pretty, like a
set on the stage. But oh, how delightful after Queen’s Road, Bayswater,
and the labyrinths of similitude.

Lady Cheyne was followed to the door by all her guests and for a moment
Lola thought that she had stumbled on a place crowded with European
refugees. A more eccentric collection of human various she had never
seen, even during that epoch-making evening at Kensington Gore.

“Here you are, then, looking just as if you had stepped out of one of
the pictures in the boudoir of the Duchess de Nantes.” Lola received a
hearty kiss on both cheeks, and her hostess took the opportunity, while
so close, of asking an important question in a whisper. “Your name, my
dear. I’m too sorry, but really my capacity for remembering names has
gone all loose like a piece of dead elastic.”

Lola laughed and told her, and then followed her introduction to the
little group of hairy children who were all waiting on tenterhooks for a
chance to act. It was a comical introduction, because by the time Lady
Cheyne had said “Lola de Brézé” she had forgotten the names of all her
other guests. And so, with a gurgle of laughter, she pointed to each one
in turn,—and they stepped forward and spoke; first the women, “Anna
Stezzel,” a bow and a flash of teeth, “Regina Spatz,” a bow and a
gracious smile, and then the men, “Salo Impf,” “Valdemar Varvascho,”
“Simon Zalouhou,” “Max Wachevsky,” “Willy Pouff,” fired in bass,
baritone and tenor and accompanied by a kiss upon the little
outstretched hand. It was all Lola could do to stop herself from peals
of laughter.

Zalouhou, the violinist, was one of the biggest men Lola had ever seen.
He stood six foot six in a pair of dilapidated boots and possessed a
completely unathletic figure with hips like a woman, large soft hands
with long loose fingers and a splendid leonine head with a mass of black
hair streaked with white. He towered over the other little people like a
modern Gulliver. His face was clean-shaven, with fine features and a
noble forehead and a pair of eyes which had never failed to do more to
attract crowded matinées of his country women in the old days than the
beauty of his playing and the mastery of his technique. He had only just
arrived in London, penniless, and in a suit of clothes in which he had
slept on many waysides. He had fought for his country and against his
country, never knowing why and never wanting to fight, and all the while
he had clung desperately to his violin which he had played to ragamuffin
troops in order to be supplied with an extra hunk of bread and a drink
of coffee. The story of his five or six years of mental and physical
chaos, every moment of which was abhorrent to his gentle spirit, was
stamped deeply upon his face.

Even as Lola was being escorted upstairs to her room by a thrilled
country maid, there was a crash upon the piano in the hall and an
outburst of song. What that little house thought of all those
extraordinary people who could not keep quiet under any circumstance
would have filled a book. The ghosts of former residents, farming
people, must have stood about in horror and surprise. And yet, as Lady
Cheyne well knew, they were all simple souls ready to go into ecstasies
at the sight of a daisy and imbued with genuine loyalty towards each
other.

Lady Cheyne followed Lola up. She arrived in the tiny bedroom, whose
ceiling sloped down to two small windows, breathless and laughing. “You
can’t swing a cat in here,” she said. “But, after all, who ever does
swing a cat? I hope you’ll be comfortable and I know you’ll be amused. I
just want to tell you one thing, my dear. You are at perfect liberty to
do whatever you like, to wander away out of range of the piano, with or
without any of my dear delightful babies, or stay and listen to them and
watch the fun. Until sleep overcomes them they will sing and play and
applaud and have the time of their lives,—which is exactly what I’ve
brought them here to do, poor things. All the men will fall in love with
you, of course. But you’re perfectly used to that, aren’t you? You’ll
look like a miniature among oleographs, but the change will do you good
and show you another side of life. One thing I can guarantee. You won’t
be disturbed in the morning before eleven o’clock. No one thinks of
getting up until then. I’m particularly anxious for you to like
Zalouhou. I predict that he will have an extraordinary success in London
when he makes his appearance next week at Queen’s Hall. Did you ever see
such a man? If I know anything about it at all, women will rush forward
to the platform to kiss his feet,—not because he plays the violin like
Kreisler but because of those magnetic eyes. Success in every walk of
life is due entirely to eyes. You know that, my dear. And as to the
Great Affair, I will ask no questions, see nothing and hear nothing, but
rejoice in believing that I am being of use. It is exactly right, isn’t
it, golden head? Ah, me, those dear dead days. Now come and have some
tea and taste my strawberries. They’re wonderful this year.”

But before going down—and how kind everybody was—Lola stood at one of
her windows from which she could see a corner of Chilton Park, and her
heart went out to Fallaray like a white dove. It was in the air, in the
cloudless sky, in the birds’ songs, in the rustle of the leaves, in the
beauty and glory of the flowers that her time had come at last, that all
her work and training were to be put to the supreme test. Success would
mean the little gold cage of which she had heard again in her dream but
which would be the merest lead without love. Failure——

Her appearance eventually in the hall, a long, many-windowed room, with
great bowls of cut flowers on gate-legged tables and old dressers, was
celebrated by Salo Impf with an improvisation on the piano that was
filled with spring and received with noisy approval. Imbued with a
certain amount of crude tact, the men of the party did nothing more than
pay tribute to Lola with their eyes while they surrounded Lady Cheyne as
though she were a queen, as indeed she was, having it in her power not
only to provide them with bed and board but to bring them out and give
them a chance in a country always ready to support talent. It was a
funny sight to see this amazingly fat, kind woman pouring tea at a tiny
table into tiny cups surrounded by people who seemed to be perpetually
hungry, but who sang even while they ate, and laughed and jabbered in
between.

“What would Simpkins say if he could see me here?” thought Lola. “And
Mother and Ernest and Sir Peter Chalfont—and Lady Feo?”

But she felt happy and in a way comforted among these people. Like her,
they were all struggling towards a goal, all striving after something
for which they had served their apprenticeship. Not one of them had yet
successfully emerged and they were living on what Mrs. Rumbold called,
“the scraggy diet of hope.” It did her good to be among them at that
moment, to hear their discussions in amazingly broken English of a début
in London, to be aware of the extraordinary encouragement which they
gave to each other, without jealousy,—which was so rare. She found
herself listening enthralled to the arias sung by Anna Stezzel, and the
Grieg songs which were so perfectly played by Impf. But it was when
Zalouhou stood up with his violin and played some of the wistful folk
songs of his country that she sat with her hands clasped together,
leaning forward and moved to a deep emotion. Hunger, the daily wrestle
with surly earth, illness, the subjection to a crushing autocracy, and
beneath it self-preservation,—they were all in these sad, fierce songs,
which sometimes burst into passionate resentment and at others laughed a
little and jogged along. What a story they told,—so much rougher and so
much sterner than her own. They gave her courage to go forward but they
left her uncertain as to what was to be her next step.

When Zalouhou played, it was with his eyes on Lola. Her sympathy and
understanding drew out his most delicate and imaginative skill and gave
him inspiration; and when he had finished and laid aside his violin, he
went to the sofa on which she was sitting and crouched hugely at her
feet, and said something softly in his own tongue. He spoke no English,
but she could guess his meaning because in his eyes there was the look
with which she was familiar in the eyes of Treadwell, Simpkins and
Chalfont. And she said to herself, “As there is something in me that
stirs the hearts of men, give me the chance, O God, to let it be felt by
the only man I shall ever love and who is all alone on earth!” And while
the room rang with music, she went forward in spirit to the gate in the
wall of Chilton Park, which she had seen from her window, opened it and
went inside to look for Fallaray. The intuition which had been upon her
so long that she might touch the heart of Fallaray in Chilton Park was
strong upon her then, once more.

But she had to wait until after dinner before her opportunity came to
slip away, and this she did when her fellow-workers had returned to the
hall, drawn back to the piano as by a magnet. And then she escaped, in
Feo’s silver frock, stole into the placid garden which was filled with
the aroma of sweet peas and June roses, went down to the gate in the
high wall, and stood there, trembling.

(Go on, de Brézé, go on!)



IX


Except for the servants, Fallaray was alone in his house.

He had slept late that morning, put newspapers aside, and allowed the
telephone to ring unanswered. He was determined, at least for a few
days, to cut himself off from London and especially from the new and
futile turn that was taking place in politics. It didn’t seem to him to
matter that, because his chief had boxed the political compass again
and, like Gladstone, talked with furious earnestness on both sides of
every question only to leave anger and stultification at every step, the
papers were making a dead set at him, holding him up to ridicule and
abuse and working with vitriolic energy against his government at every
bi-election. If this man were dragged at last from the seat that he had
won by a trick and held by trickery, another of the same kidney and
possibly worse principles would be put into his place to build up
another and a similar rampart about himself with bribes and honors. It
was the system. Nothing could prevent it. Professional politicians had
England by the throat and they were backed by underground money and
supported by politically owned newspapers. What use to struggle against
such odds? He wanted to forget Ireland for a little while, if it were
possible to forget Ireland even for so short a space of time as his
holiday would last. He wanted to put out of his mind, the horrible mess
in Silesia which was straining the _entente cordiale_ to the breaking
point, and the bungling over the coal strike, and so he had been
wandering among his rose gardens, hatless, with the breeze in his hair,
and the scent of new-mown hay in his nostrils, listening to the piping
of the thrush, to the passionate songs of larks, and watching bees busy
themselves from flower to flower with a one-eyed industry and honesty
which he did not meet in men.

He had lunched out on the terrace and looked down with a great
refreshment upon the sweeping valley of Aylesbury, peaceful beneath the
sun. He had slept again in the afternoon, out of doors, lulled by the
orchestra of birds, and had then gone forth to walk behind those high
walls into the forest of beech trees, the dead red leaves of innumerable
summers at their roots, and to listen to the tramping feet of the ghosts
of Roman armies whose triumphs had left no deeper mark on history than
the feet of sea gulls on the sands. And as his brain became quiet and
the load of political troubles fell from his shoulders, he began to
imagine that he was a free man once more, and a young man, and the old
aspirations of adolescence returned to him like the echo of a dream,—to
love, to laugh, to build a nest, to wander hand in hand with some sweet
thing who trusted him and was wholly his. O God, how good. That was
life. That was truth. That was nature.

And when, after dinner, he strolled out once more to look at the sky
patterned with stars, dominated by a moon in its cold elusive prime, he
was no longer the London Fallaray, round-shouldered, anxious,
overworked, immeshed like an impotent fly in the web of the bad old
spiders. His chin was up, his shoulders back, a smile upon his lips.
That gorgeous air filled his lungs and not even from the highest point
of vantage could there be seen one glimpse of the little light burning
in the tower of the House of Commons. He was nearer heaven than he had
been for a very long time. Exquisite lines from the great poets floated
through his mind and somewhere near a nightingale poured out a love song
to its mate.

And when presently he took a stand on that corner of the terrace which
overlooked the Italian garden, it seemed to him that the magic of the
moonlight had stirred some of the stone figures to life. The arm of
Cupid seemed to bend and send an arrow into the air and where it fell he
saw a shimmer of silver and heard the rustle of silk. And he saw and
heard it again and laughed a little at the pranks which imagination
played, especially on such a night. And not believing his eyes or his
ears, he saw this silver thing move again and come slowly up along the
avenue of yews like a living star; and he watched it a little
breathlessly and saw that it was a woman, a girl, timid, like a
trespasser, but still coming on and on with her head up, and the
moonlight in her hair,—golden hair wound round her head like an aureole.
And when at last, born as it seemed of moonlight and poetry, she came to
the edge of the terrace and stopped, he bent down with the blood
tingling in his veins, hardly believing that she was there, still under
the impression that he had brought her to that spot out of his never
realized longing and desire, and saw that she was not a dream of
adolescence but a little live thing with wide-apart eyes and red lips
parted and the white halo of youth about her head.



X


A bat blundered in between them and broke the spell.

And Fallaray climbed over the parapet and dropped on his feet at Lola’s
side. All that day, as indeed, briefly, in the House, at his desk, at
night in dreams, ever since the introduction at the Savoy, the eyes of
that girl and the thrill of her hand had come back to him like a song,
to stir, like the urge of spring. And here, suddenly, she stood,
moonlit, but very real, in answer to his subconscious call.

“This is wonderful,” he said, blurting out the truth like a naïve boy.
“I’ve been thinking of you all day. How did you get here?”

His eager clasp sent a rush of blood through Lola’s body. His alone
among men’s, as she had always known, was the answering touch. “I’m
staying with Lady Cheyne,” she said. “I saw the gate in the wall and it
wasn’t locked and I tiptoed in.”

“You knew that I was here?”

“Yes, and I came to find you.” She blurted out the truth like an
unsophisticated girl.

Was it moonlight, the magic of the night, the throbbing song of the
nightingale that made him seem as young as she?—No. What then? And as he
looked into the eyes of that girl and caught his breath at her
disturbing femininity and disordering sense of sex and the sublime
unself-consciousness of a child, without challenge and without coquetry,
he knew that it was something to be summed up by the words “the rustle
of silk,” which epitomized beauty and softness and scent, laughter,
filmy things and love. And he thanked his gods that not even Feo and the
wear and tear of politics had left him out of youth.

And he thanked her for coming to break his loneliness and led her
through the sleeping flowers, and those figures which had died again
since life had come amongst them, to the arbor made of yews where he had
slept that afternoon. And there, high above the sweeping valley among
whose villages little lights were blinking like far-off fireflies, they
sat and talked and talked, at first like boy and girl, meeting after
separation, telling everything but nothing, shirking the truth to save
it for a time, and then, presently, with no lights left below and all
the earth asleep, like man and woman, reading the truth in eyes that
made no effort to disguise it; telling the truth, in broken words;
learning the truth from heart that beat to heart until the moon had done
her duty and stars had faded out and up over the ridge of hills,
reluctantly, a new day came.




PART VII



I


Fallaray was to meet Lola at the gate in the wall at four o’clock. He
wanted to show her how the vale looked in the light of the afternoon
sun. But it was a long time to wait because, instead of going to bed
after he had taken Lola to Lady Cheyne’s cottage at the moment when a
line in the sky behind it had been rubbed by a great white thumb, he had
walked up and down the terrace and watched the dawn push the night away
and break upon him with a message of freedom.

He paced up and down while the soft blur of the valley came out into the
clear detail of corn fields, rolling acres of grass, sheep dotted, a
long white ribbon of road twisting among villages, each one marked by
the delicate spire of an old church, spinneys of young trees and clumps
of old ones, gnarled and twisted and sometimes lonely, standing like the
sentinels that receive “the secret whispers of each other’s watch.”

He stood up to the new day honestly and without shame. Like a man who
suddenly breaks away from a Brotherhood with whose creeds he has found
himself no longer in sympathy, he rejoiced in his release. Lola had come
to him at the moment when he was lying on his oars at the entrance to a
backwater. He had been in the main river too long, pulling his arms out
against the stream. He was tired. It was utterly beyond argument that he
had failed. He had nothing in him of the stuff that goes to the making
of a pushing politician. He detested and despised the whole unholy game
of politics. In addition, he had come to the dangerous age in the life
of a man, especially the ascetic man. He was forty. He had never allowed
himself to listen to the rustle of silk. He had kept his eyes doggedly
on what he had conceived to be his job, wifeless. And when Lola came,
the magnet of her sex drew him not only without a struggle but with an
insatiable hunger into the side of life against which Feo had slammed
the door, leaving him stultified and disgusted. He had welcomed in this
girl what he now regarded as the unmet spirit of his adolescence, and he
fell to her as only such a man can fall. The fact that she loved him and
had told him of her love with the astounding simplicity of a child gave
the whole thing a beauty, a depth and permanence that made him regard
the future with wonder and delight, though not yet with any definite
plan. At present this _volte face_ was too astonishing, too new in its
happening, to be dissected and balanced up. For a few days at least he
wanted irresponsibility, for a change. He wanted, like a man wrecked on
the shore of Eden, to explore into beauty and dally, unseen, with love.
The time was not yet for a decision as to which way he would go, when,
as was certain, some one would discover the wreckage and send out a
rescue party. He had promised himself a holiday and all the more now he
would insist upon its enjoyment. Whether at the end of it he would
refuse ever to go back into the main stream, or go back and take Lola
with him, were questions that he was not yet formulating in his mind.
But as to one thing he was certain, even then. Lola was his; she had
brought back his youth like a miracle, and he would never let her out of
his sight.

He breakfasted in his library, ignoring the papers. Their daily story of
chaos made more chaotic by the lamentable blundering of fools and
knaves, seemed to deal with a world out of which he had dropped, hanging
to a parachute. He went smiling through the morning, watching the clock
with an impatience that was itself a pleasure. He felt the strange
exhilaration of having lived his future with all his past to spend, of
returning as a student to a school in which he had performed the duties
of a Master. And there were times when he drew up short and sent out a
great boyish laugh that echoed through his house, at the paradox of it
all. And once, but only once, he stood outside himself and saw that he
was placing his usefulness upon the altar of passion. And before he
leaped back into his skin and while yet he retained his sanity and cold
logic, he saw that he loved Lola for her golden hair and wide-apart
eyes, her red lips and tingling hand, her young sweet body,—but not her
soul, not the intangible thing in a woman that keeps a man’s love when
passion passes. But to this he said, “I am young again. I have the need
and the right. When I have had time to find her soul, she shall have my
quiet love.”

And finally, at three o’clock, with an hour still to drive away, he went
down to the gate in the wall, eager and insatiable to wait for the
rustle of silk.



II


Lady Cheyne had encouraged her flock to lateness in order that she might
lock the door after Lola had come back. She was terrified of burglars,
and although she had sold most of her pearls and diamonds to help her
various protégés over rainy days, she shuddered at the thought of being
disclosed by a flash light to a probably unshaven man. Nothing could
shake her from her belief that a man who could go bearded after five
o’clock in the afternoon must be a criminal,—and this in spite of the
fact that she had lived among artists for years. But she was a woman who
cultivated irrational idiosyncrasies as other women collect old fans or
ancient snuffboxes. She would never live in a flat, for instance,
because if she passed away in one it would be so dreadfully humiliating
to be taken down to the street in a lift, head first.

Becoming irritable from want of sleep, she had kept everybody up until
two in the morning, by which hour even Salo had ceased from Impfing and
Willy could Pouff no more. Zalouhou, who was as natural as a dog, had
yawned hugely. And then, sending her party up to bed, she had proved the
sublimity of her kindness by doing something that she had never done
before. She had left a lamp burning in the hall and the front door wide
open.

It was four o’clock when, a very light sleeper, she woke at the sound of
creaking stairs and went out, giving Lola time to arrive at her room, to
peer over the banisters to see that the lamp was out and the front door
closed. Then, returning to bed, she lay in great rotundity and with a
wistful smile, to think back to the days when she had been as young and
slim as Lola and just as much in love.

It was not until after breakfast, at which Lola did not appear, that she
became aware of a curiosity that was like the bite of a mosquito. Where
had that girl been all those hours and who was the man? But it was not a
sinister curiosity, all alive to gather gossip and spread innuendoes, as
women give so much to do. It was the desire to share, however distantly,
in what she had at once imagined was a Great Romance. Age had turned
sentiment into sentimentality in this kind fat lady and she thought of
everything to do with the heart in capital letters. Lola’s words in Mrs.
Rumbold’s parlor came back to her. “It’s love and adoration and
long-deferred hope,” and she was stirred to a great sympathy. Shutting
the drawing-room door upon the after-breakfast rush to music, she went
upstairs to Lola’s room in the newest wing, distressed at her inability
to creep. The dear thing was in her care and must be looked after.

It was nearly midday and the house had echoed with scales and badinage,
bursts of operatic laughter and pæans of soprano praise to the gift of
life for an hour and more. And so, of course, she expected to find her
young friend lying in a daydream, reluctantly awake. But when she opened
the door of Lola’s room as quietly as she could, it was to see the
silver frock spilt upon the floor like a pool of moonlight and the girl
lying under the bedclothes in the attitude of a child in irresistible
sleep, breathing like a rose. Her golden hair was streaming on her
pillow, the long, dark lashes of her wide-apart eyes seemed to be stuck
to her cheeks. Her lips were slightly apart and one arm was stretched
out, palm up, with fingers almost closed upon something that she had
found at last and must never let go.

“Love and adoration and long-deferred hope,”—the words came back again
and told their story to the woman of one great love, so that she was
moved to renewed sympathy and re-thrilled. She stood over the slight
form in its utter relax and saw the lips tremble into a smile and the
fingers close a little more. She said to herself, little knowing how
exact was the simile upon which she stumbled, “She has found the gate in
the wall.” But before leaving the room to keep her song birds as quiet
as possible, in order that her friend might sleep her fill, she caught
sight of a book that lay open on the dressing table, upon the inner
cover of which was pasted the photograph of a familiar face.
“Fallaray!”—She read the title: “Memoirs de Madame de Brézé.” And she
looked again at the strong, ascetic face, with the lonely eyes, the
unwarmed lips, the cold high brow. It might have been that of St.
Anthony.

And she stood for a moment before going down to her children—her only
children—and repeated to herself, with great excitement, her former
thought. “A Great Romance, Love in High Places. How wonderful to be in,
perhaps, on History.”



III


If, during all their inarticulate talks, Fallaray had ever remembered to
ask Lola about herself, she would have told him, with perfect truth, the
little story of her life and love. She was now wholly without fear. She
had found the gate in the wall and had entered to happiness. But
Fallaray went through that week-end without thinking, accepting the
union that she had brought about without question and with a joy and
delight as youthful as her own. From the time that she had found him at
four o’clock waiting for her, not caring where she came from so that she
came, and saw that she had brushed the loneliness from his eyes and
brought a smile to his mouth, all sense of being merely temporary lifted
from her heart. In the eagerness of his welcome, in the hunger of his
embrace, she saw that she belonged, was already as much a possession and
a fact as the old house, hitherto his one treasure and refreshment.

They went hand in hand through those lovely days, like a boy and a girl.
He led her from one pet place to another and lay at her feet, watching
her with wonder, or going close to kiss her eyes and hair, to prove
again and yet again that she was not a dream. And every moment smoothed
a line from his face and pointed the way to his need of her in all the
days to come. But while he showed that he had lived his future and had
begun to spend his past, she, even then, forgot her past and turned her
eyes to the future. Those holiday days which bound them together must
come to an end, of course. And while she reveled in them as he did and
avoided any mention of the work to which he must return, she had found
herself in finding him, and becoming woman at last, saw her great
responsibility and developed the sense of protection that grows with
woman’s love.

And this new sense was strengthened and made all the more necessary
because his desire to make holiday had come about through her. And while
she lay in his arms in all the ecstasy of love, she knew that she would
fall far short of her achievement if she should become of more
importance in his life than the work that he seemed to have utterly
forgotten. It was for her, she began to see, to send him back with
renewed energy and fire, and then, installed in a secret nest, to fulfil
the part marked out for her as she conceived it and give him the rustle
of silk.

If she had been the common schemer, using her sex magnetism to provide
luxuries and security—the golden cage, as she had called it in her
youth—the way was easy. But love and hero-worship had placed her on
another level. Her cage was Fallaray’s heart, in which she was
imprisoned for life. Looking into the future with the suddenly awakened
practicality that she had inherited from her mother, she began to lay
out careful plans. She must find a girl to take her place with Lady Feo.
Gratitude demanded that. She would go home until such time as she could
take a furnished flat to which Fallaray could come without attracting
attention. What her parents were to be told required much thinking. All
her ideas of a Salon, of meeting political chiefs, of going into a
certain set of society were foolish, she could see. The second of the
most important of her new duties, she told herself, was to shield
Fallaray from gossip which would be of use to his political enemies and
so-called friends; the first to dedicate her life henceforward, by every
gift that she possessed and could acquire, to the inspiration and the
relaxation of the man who belonged more to his country than he did to
her.

She knew from the observation of specific cases and from her study of
the memoirs and the lives of famous courtesans that men were not held
long by sex attraction alone, although by that, rather than by beauty
and by wit, they were captured. She must, therefore, she owned, with her
peculiar frankness, apprentice herself anew, this time to the
cultivation of intelligence. She must be able, eventually, to talk
Fallaray’s language, if possible, and add brain to what she called her
gift.

All these things worked in her mind, suddenly set into action like one
of her father’s doctored watches, while she wandered through the sunny
hours with Fallaray. All that was French and thrifty and practical in
her nature awoke with all that was passionate and love-giving. And when
at night she had to leave him to return to the cottage of the
sympathetic woman whose discretion deserved a monument, she lay awake
for hours to think and plan. She was no longer the lady’s maid, going
with love and adoration and long-deferred hope from one failure to
another, no longer the trembling girl egged forward to a forlorn hope.
She had found the gate in the wall, entered into a golden responsibility
and blossomed into a woman.



IV


Feo’s new man, Clive Arrowsmith, had driven her down to the races at
Windsor. Two of his horses, carrying colors new to the betting public,
were entered. No one knew anything about them, so that if they won, and
they were out to win, the odds would be good. There was a chance of
making some money, always useful.

“I rather like this meeting,” she said. “It’s a sort of picnic peopled
with caricatures,” and sailed into the enclosure, elastically, in more
than usually characteristic clothes. She had discarded the inevitable
tam-o’-shanter for once in favor of a panama hat, which looked very cool
and light and threw a soft shadow over her face. She was in what she
called a soft mood,—meaning that she was playing a feminine role and
leading up to a serious affair. Arrowsmith was obviously pucca and his
height and slightness, well-shaped, close-cropped head, small
straw-colored moustache, straight nose, strong chin with a deep cleft,
and gray eyes which had a way, most attractive to women, of disbelieving
everything they said had affected Feo and “really rather rattled” her,
as she had confessed to Georgie Malwood late one night. After her recent
bad picks, which had left a nasty taste of humiliation behind, she was
very much in the mood for an old-fashioned sweep into sentiment. She had
great hopes of Arrowsmith and had seen him every day since Sunday. He
was not easy. He erected mental bunkers. He was plus two at the game,
which was good for hers. Altogether he was very satisfactory, and his
horses added to the fun, on the side.

“It’s rather a pet of mine,” he said, looking round with a sort of
affectionate recognition, “because when I was at Eton I broke bounds
once or twice and had the time of my life here. Everything tastes better
when there’s a law against drinking. But I never thought I should come
here with you.”

“Have you ever thought about it then?”

“Yes,” he said, leaning on the rail and looking under her hat with what
was only the third of his un-ironical examinations. She had memorized
the other two. Was she approaching the veteran class? “The day you were
married I happened to be passing St. Margaret’s and the crowd of
fluttering women held me up. I saw you leave the church and I said to
myself, ‘My God, if I ever know that girl, I’ll have a try to put a
different smile on her face,’”

“You interest me, Cupid,” she said, giving him a nickname on the spur of
the moment. “What sort of smile, if you please?”

“One that wouldn’t make me want to hit you,” he answered, still looking.

“You’ll never achieve your object on the way out of church.”

“No, that’s dead certain.”

And she wondered whether he had scored or she had. She would like to
feel that he was hard hit enough to go through this affair hell for
leather, into the Divorce Court and out into marriage. It came to her at
that moment, for the first time, that she liked him,—more than liked
him; that he appealed to her and did odd new things to her heart. She
felt that she could make her exit from the gang with this man.

As for Arrowsmith, he was sufficiently hard hit to hate Feo for the
record that she had made, sufficiently in love with her to resent her
kite-tail of indiscriminations. He loved but didn’t like her, and this
meant that he would unmagnetize himself as soon as he could and bolt.
The bunkers that she had found in his nature were those of
fastidiousness, not often belonging to men. But for being the son of
Arrowsmith, the iron founder, whose wealth had been quadrupled by the
War, he would have been a poet, although he might never have written
poetry. As it was, he considered that women should be chaste, and was
the object of derision for so early-Victorian an opinion. The usual
hobby thus failing, he raced, liking thoroughbreds who played the game.
A queer fish, Arrowsmith.

Georgie Malwood came up. She was with her fourth mother-in-law, Mrs.
Claude Malwood, whose back view was seventeen, but whose face was older
than the Pyramids. And Arrowsmith drifted off to the paddock.

But they lunched and spent the day together and one of the horses,
“Mince Pie,” won the fourth race at six to one, beating the favorite by
a short head. And so Feo had a good day. They got away ahead of the
crowd, except for the people of the theater, who had to dine early and
steady down before entering upon the arduous duties of the night,
especially those of the chorus who, in these days of Reviews, are called
upon to make so many changes of clothes. Art demands many sacrifices.—It
had been decided that the Ritz would do for dinner and one of the
dancing clubs afterwards. But on the way out Gilbert Macquarie pranced
up to Feo, utterly inextinguishable, with a hatband of one club and a
tie of another and clothes that would have frightened a steam roller.
“Oh, hello, old thing,” he cried, giving one of his choicest wriggles.
“How goes it?”

To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, “Out, Mr.
Macquarie,” touched Arrowsmith’s arm and went.

But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something
queer to Arrowsmith’s physical sense, and he couldn’t for the life of
him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. “To follow
_that_,” he thought, and was nauseated.

But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was
going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a
delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had
begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she
didn’t have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of
Hammersmith and were passing Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the picture of
Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered
sympathetically how she was getting on. “What shall I wear to-night? I
hate those new frocks.—I hope the band plays Bohème at the Ritz.—No
diamonds, just pearls. He’s a pearl man, I think. And I’ll brush Peau
d’Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,—Cupid.”

And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free
was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers
to be divorced.

At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and
rang the doorbell.

“You look white,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

He was grateful for the chance. “That old wound,” he said. “It goes back
on me from time to time.”

“That doesn’t mean that you’ll have to chuck tonight?” She was aghast.

“I’m awfully afraid so, if you don’t mind. It means bed, instantly, and
a doctor. Do forgive me. I can’t help myself. I wish to God I could.”

She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said “Good night,
then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel.”

But she knew that he wouldn’t. It was written round his mouth. And as
she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked
back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret.
Arrowsmith was a pucca man.



V


Ernest Treadwell watched the car come and go.

Lola had given out at home that she was to be away with Lady Feo, but
that morning he had seen in the paper that her ladyship was in town. She
had “been seen” dining at Hurlingham after the polo match with Major
Clive Arrowsmith, D. S. O., late Grenadier Guards. Dying to see Lola, to
break the wonderful news that his latest sonnet on Death had been
printed by the _Westminster Gazette_, the first of his efforts to find
acceptance in any publication, Treadwell had hurried to Dover Street,
had ventured to present himself at the area door and had been told by
Ellen that Lola was away on a holiday.

For half an hour he had been walking up and down the street, looking
with puzzled and anxious eyes at the house which had always seemed to
him to wear a sinister look. If she had not been going away with Lady
Feo, why had she said that she was? A holiday,—alone, stolen from her
people and from him to whom hitherto she had always told everything?
What was the meaning of it?—She, Lola, had not told the truth. The
thought blew him into the air, like an explosion. Considering himself,
with the egotism of all half-baked socialists, an intellectual from the
fact that he read Massingham and quoted Sidney Webb, he boasted of being
without faith in God and constitution. He sneered at Patriotism now, and
while he stood for Trades-Unionism remained, like all the rest of his
kind, an individualist to the marrow. But he had believed in Lola
because he loved her and she inspired him, and without her encouragement
and praise he knew that he would let go and crash. Just as he had been
printed in the _Westminster Gazette_!

And she had not told the truth, even to her people. Where was she? What
was she doing? To whom could she go to spend a holiday? She had no other
relation than her aunt and she also was in town. Ellen had told him so
in answer to his question.—Back into a mind black with jealousy and
suspicion—he was without the habit of faith—came the picture of Lola,
dressed like a lady, getting out of a taxicab at the shady-looking house
in Castleton Terrace. Had she lied to him then?

Dover Street was at the bottom of it all, and her leaving home to become
a lady’s maid to such a woman as Lady Feo. She must have caught some of
the poison of that association, God knew what! In time of trouble it is
always the atheist who is the first to call on God.

He was about to leave the street in which the Fallaray house had now
assumed the appearance of a morgue to him when Simpkins came up from the
area, with a dull face. After a moment of irresolution he followed and
caught the valet up. “Where’s Miss Breezy?” he asked abruptly.

Simpkins was all the more astonished at the question for the trouble on
that young cub’s face. He looked him over sharply,—the cheap cap, the
too long hair, the big nose, the faulty teeth, the pasty face, the
un-athletic body, the awkward feet. Lola was in love. He knew that well
enough. But not with this lout, that was certain, poet or no poet. “I
don’t know as ’ow I’ve got to answer that question,” he said, just to
put him in his place.

“Yes, you have. Where is she?”

“You ought ter know.” He himself knew and as there was no accounting for
tastes and Lola had made a friend of this anæmic hooligan, why didn’t
_he_? He lived round the corner from the shop, anyhow.

“But I don’t know. Neither do her father and mother.”

“What’s that?” Simpkins drew up short. “You don’t know what you’re
talkin’ about. She went ’ome last Thursday to get a little rest until
to-morrer,—Tuesday.”

Treadwell would have cried out, “It isn’t true,” but he loved Lola and
was loyal. He had met Simpkins in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and had seen
him on familiar terms with Mr. Breezy, but he was a member of the
Fallaray household and as such was not to be let into this—_this_
trouble. Not even the Breezys must be told before Lola had been seen and
had given an explanation. They didn’t love her as much as he did,—nor
any one else in the world. And so he said, loyalty overmastering his
jealousy and fear, “Oh, is that so? I haven’t had time to look in
lately. I didn’t know.” And seeing a huge unbelief in Simpkins’s pale
eyes, he hurried on to explain. “Being in the neighborhood and having
some personal news for Lola, I called at your house. Was surprised to
hear that she was away. That’s all. Good night.” And away he went, head
forward, left foot turning in, long arms swinging loose.

But he had touched the spring in Simpkins to a jealousy and a fear that
were precisely similar to his own. Lola was _not_ at home. Treadwell
knew it and had called at Dover Street, expecting to find her there.
They had all been told lies because she was doing something of which she
was ashamed. The night that she had come in, weeping, dressed like a
lady.—The words that had burned into his soul the evening of his
proposal,—“so awfully in love with somebody else and it’s a difficult
world.—Perhaps I shall never be married and that’s the truth, Simpky.
It’s a difficult world.”

“Hi,” he called out. “Hi,” and started after Treadwell, full stride.

But rather than face those searching eyes again, at the back of which
there was a curious blaze, Treadwell took to his heels, and followed
hard by Simpkins, whose fanatical spirit of protection was stirred to
its depths, dodged from one street into another. The curious chase would
have ended in Treadwell’s escape but for the sudden intervention, in
Vigo Street, of a policeman who slipped out of the entrance to the
Albany and caught the boy in his arms.

“Now then, now then,” he said. “What’s all this ’ere?”

And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear.
“It’s—it’s alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that’s all. He’s—he’s a
paller mine. Well run, Ernie!” And he put his arm round Treadwell’s
shoulders, laughing.

And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of
those panting men. “Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins,” he said, to the nice
little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the
area steps. “Set up ’eart trouble if yer not careful.”

Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who
also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood.
It put them on another footing, they could see.

After a few more words of badinage the policeman mooched off to finish
his talk with the tall-hatted keeper of the Albany doorway. And Simpkins
said gravely and quietly, “Treadwell, we’ve got to go into this, you and
me. We’re in the same boat and Lola’s got ter be—looked after, by both
of us.”

Treadwell nodded. “I’m frightened,” he said, without camouflage.

“So am I,” said Simpkins.

And they went off together, slowly, brought into confidence by a mutual
heart trouble that had already set up.



VI


But there was no uneasiness in Queen’s Road, Bayswater. John Breezy and
his good wife were happy in the belief that their little girl was
enjoying the air and scents of the country with her ladyship. They had
neither the time nor the desire to dig deeply into the daily papers. To
read of the weathercock policy of the overburdened Prime Minister,
traditionally, nationally, and mentally unable to deal with the great
problems that followed upon each other’s heels, made Breezy blasphemous
and brought on an incapacity to sit still. And so he merely glanced at
the front page, hoping against hope for a new government headed by such
men as Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Lord Grey and Edmund Fallaray, and
for the ignominious downfall of all professional scavengers, titled
newspaper owners and mountebanks who were playing ducks and drakes with
the honor and the traditions of Parliament. He had no wish to be under
the despotism of a Labor Government, having seen that loyalty to leaders
was unknown among Trades Unionists and that principles were things which
they never had had and never would have the courage to avow.

As for Mrs. Breezy, she never had time for the papers. She didn’t know
and didn’t care which party was in power, or the difference between
them, and when she heard her husband discuss politics with his friends,
burst into a tirade and get red in the face, as every self-respecting
man has the right to do, she just folded her hands in her lap, smiled,
and said to herself, “Dear old John, what would he do in the millennium,
with no government to condemn!” Therefore, these people had not seen in
the daily “Chit Chat about Society” the fact that Lady Feo had not left
town. They never read those luscious morsels. Because Lady Feo had not
left town Aunt Breezy had been too busy to come round on her usual
evening, when she would have discovered immediately that Lola was up to
something and put the fat in the fire. And so they were happy in their
ignorance,—which is, pretty often, the only state in which it is
achieved.

Over dinner that night—a scrappy meal, because whenever any one entered
the shop Mrs. Breezy ran out to do her best to sell something—the
conversation turned to the question of Lola’s marriage, as it frequently
did. That public house on the river, with its kitchen garden, still
rankled. “You know, John,” said Mrs. Breezy suddenly, “I’ve been
thinking it all over. We were wrong to suppose that Lola would ever have
married a man like Simpkins.”

“Why? He’s a good fellow, respectable, clean-minded, thinks a good deal
of himself and has a nice bit of money stowed away. You don’t want her
to become engaged to one of these young fly-by-nights round here, do
you,—little clerks who spend all their spare money on clothes, have no
ambition, no education and want to get as much as they can for nothing?”

“No,” said Mrs. Breezy. “I certainly do not, though I don’t think it
matters what you and I want, my dear. I’ve come to the conclusion that
Lola knows what she’s going to do, and we couldn’t make her alter her
mind if we went down on our knees to her.”

Breezy was profoundly interested. Many times he had discovered that the
little woman who professed to be nothing but a housewife, and very
rarely gave forth any definite opinions of her own, said things from
time to time which almost blew the roof off the shop. She was possessed
of an uncanny intuition, what he regarded almost as second sight, and
when she was in that mood he squashed his own egotism and listened to
her with his mouth open.

So she went on undisturbed. “What I think is that Lola means to aim
high. I’ve worked it out in my mind that she got into the house in Dover
Street to learn enough to rise above such men as Simpkins and Ernest
Treadwell, so that she could fit herself to marry a gentleman. And I
think she’s right. Look at her. Look at those little ankles and wrists
and the daintiness of her in every way. She’s not Queen’s Road,
Bayswater, and never was. She’s Mayfair from head to foot, mind and
body. We’re just accidents in her life, you and I, John, my dear. She
will be a great lady, you mark my words.”

Breezy didn’t altogether like being called an accident. He took a good
deal of credit for the fact that Lola was Mayfair, as Emily called it,
rather well. And he said so, and added, “How about the old de Brézé
blood? You forget that, my being a little jeweler in a small shop. She’s
thrown back, that’s what she’s done, and I’ll tell you what it is,
missus. She won’t be ashamed of us, whoever she marries. _She_ doesn’t
look upon us as accidents, whatever you may do, and if some man who’s A
1 at Lloyd’s falls in love with her and makes her his wife, her old
father and mother will be drawn up the ladder after her, if I know
anything about Lola. But it’s a dream, just a dream,” hoping that it
wasn’t, and only saying so as a sort of insurance against bad luck. It
was a new idea and an exciting one, which put that place on the Thames
into the discard. Personally he had hitherto regarded the Simpkins
proposal in a very favorable light. That little man had more money than
he himself could ever make, and, after all, a highly respectable public
house on the upper Thames, patronized by really nice people, had been,
in his estimation, something not to be sneezed at, by any means.

“Well,” said Mrs. Breezy, “you may call it a dream. I don’t. Lola thinks
things out. She’s always thought things out. She became a lady’s maid
for a purpose. When she’s finished with that, she’ll move on to
something else. I don’t know what, because she keeps things to herself.
But she knows more than you and I will ever know. I’ve noticed that
often. And when she was here on Sunday, and we walked about the streets,
she was no more Lola Breezy than Lady Feo is, and there was something in
the way she laid the dinner and insisted on waiting on us which showed
me that she knew she wasn’t. She was what country people call ‘fey’ that
night. Her body was with us, but her brain and heart and spirit were far
out of our reach. I’m certain of that, John, and I’m certain of
something else, too. She’s in love, and she knows her man, and he’s a
big man, and very soon she’ll have a surprise for us, and it will _be_ a
surprise. You mark my words.”

[Illustration: A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]

And when she got up to answer the tinkle of the bell on the shop door,
she left the fat John Breezy quivering with excitement and a sort of
awe. Emily was not much of a talker, but when she started she said more
in two minutes than other women say in a week. And after he had told
himself how good it would be for his little girl to win great happiness,
he put both his pale hands on the table, and heaved a tremendous sigh.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “And if she could help us to get out of this
shop, never to see a watch again, to be no longer the slave of that
damned little bell, to go away and live in the country, and grow things,
and listen to the birds, and watch the sunsets.”



VII


At that moment George Lytham drove his car through the gates of Chilton
Park and up to the old house. He asked for Mr. Fallaray, was shown into
the library and paced up and down the room with his hands deep in his
pockets, but with his chin high, his eyes gleaming and a curious smile
about his mouth.

The moment had come for which he had been waiting since the Armistice,
for which he had been working with all his energy since he had got back
into civilian clothes. He had left London and driven down to Whitecross
on a wave of exhilaration. There had been a meeting at his office at
which all the men of his party had been present,—young men, ex-soldiers
and sailors temporarily commissioned, who had come out of the great
catastrophe to look things straight in the face. “Fallaray is our man,”
they had all said unanimously. “Where is he?” And Lytham, who was his
friend, had been sent to fetch him and bring him back to London that
night. The time was ripe for action.

But when the door opened and Fallaray strolled in—he had never seen him
stroll before—George drew up short, amazed.—But this was not Fallaray.
This was not the man he had seen the previous Friday with rounded
shoulders, haggard face and eyes in the back of his head. Here was one
who looked like a younger brother of Fallaray, a care-free younger
brother, sun-tanned, irresponsible, playing with life.

“My dear Fallaray,” he said, hardly knowing what to say, “what have you
done to yourself?”

And Fallaray sent out a ringing laugh and clapped young Lochinvar on the
shoulder. “You notice the change, eh? It’s wonderful, wonderful. I say
to myself all day long how wonderful it is.” And he flung his hands up
and laughed again and threw himself into a chair and stuck his long legs
out. “But what the devil do you want?” he asked lightly, enjoying the
opportunity of showing the serious man who came out of a future that he
himself had forgotten that he was beginning to revel in his past. “I
said that some one would jolly soon see the wreckage on the shore of my
Eden and send out a rescue party, and here you are.”

Lytham didn’t understand. The words were Greek to him and the attitude
so surprising that it awakened in him a sort of irritation. Good God,
hadn’t this man, who meant so much to them, read the papers? Wasn’t he
aware of the fact that the time had arrived in the history of politics
when a strong concerted effort might put a new face upon everything?
“Look here, Fallaray,” he said, “let’s talk sense.”

“My dear chap,” said Fallaray, “you’ve come to the wrong man for that. I
know nothing about sense, and what’s more, I don’t want to. Talk romance
to me, quote poetry, tell me your dreams, turn somersaults, but don’t
come here and expect any sense from me. I’ve given it up.”

But Lytham was not to be put off. He said to himself, “The air of this
place has gone to Fallaray’s head. He needed a holiday. The reaction has
played a trick upon him. He’s pulling my leg.” He drew up a chair and
leaned forward eagerly and put his hand on Fallaray’s knee. “All right,
old boy,” he said. “Have your joke, but come down from the ether in
which you’re floating and listen to facts. The wily little P. M. who’s
been between the devil and the deep sea for a couple of years is getting
rattled. With the capitalists pushing him one way and the labor leaders
shouldering him the other, he’s losing his feet. The by-elections show
the way the wind’s blowing in the country and they’ve made a draught in
Downing Street. Trust a Celt as a political barometer.”

“There’s been no wind here, George,” said Fallaray, putting his hands
behind his head. “Golden days, my dear fellow, golden days, with the
gentlest of breezes.”

But Lytham ignored the interruption. In five minutes, if he knew his
man, he would have Fallaray sitting up straight. “Our anti-waste men are
winning every seat they stand for,” he went on, “and this means the
nucleus of a new party, our party. The country is behind us, Fallaray,
and if we keep our heads and get down to work, the next general election
will not be a walk-over for the labor men but for us. Lloyd George is on
his last legs, in spite of his newspapers, and with him the
Coalitionists disappear to a man. As for Trades-Unionism, the coal
strike has proved that it oscillates between communism and socialism,
the nationalizing of everything—mines, railways, land, capital—and the
country doesn’t like it and isn’t ready for it. The way, therefore, is
easy if we organize at once under a leader who has won the reputation
for honesty, and that leader is yourself. But there is not a moment to
waste. My car is outside. Drive up with me now and meet us to-morrow
morning. Unanimously we look to you.” He sprang to his feet and made a
gesture towards the door.

But Fallaray settled more comfortably into his chair and crossed one
long leg over the other. “Do you know your Hood?” he asked.

“Hood?—Why?”

“Listen to this:

    “‘Peace and rest at length have come,
    All the day’s long toil is past,
    And each heart is whispering Home,
    Home at last.’”

“But what has that got to do with it?”

“That’s my answer to you, George.” And Fallaray waved his hand, as
though the question was settled.

If Lytham had been older or younger, and if his admiration and esteem
for Fallaray had not become so deep-rooted, he must have broken out into
a torrent of incredulity and impatience. What he did, instead,
persuading himself, easily enough, that his friend had not recovered
from his recent disappointments, although he had obviously benefited in
health, was to go over the whole ground again, more quietly and in
greater detail, and to wind up with the assertion that Fallaray was
essential to the cause.

To all of which Fallaray listened with a sort of respectful interest but
without the slightest enthusiasm, and remained lolling in his chair. He
might have been a Buckinghamshire Squire who knew no language but his
own, hearing a Frenchman holding forth for no apparent reason on
Napoleon. He watched his friend’s mouth, appraised his occasional
gestures, ran his eyes with liking over his well-knit body and found his
voice pleasant to the ear. Beyond that, nothing.

Lytham began to feel like a man who throws stones into a lake. All his
points seemed to disappear into an unruffled and indifferent surface of
water. It was incomprehensible. It was also indescribably baffling. What
on earth had come over this man who, until a few days before, had been
burning with a desire to reconstruct and working himself into a
condition of nervous exhaustion in an endeavor to pull his country out
of chaos?

“Well,” he said, after an extraordinary pause, during which everything
seemed to have fallen flat. “What are you going to do?”

“But I’ve told you, my dear George,” said Fallaray, with a long sigh of
happiness. “I have found a home, at last.”

“You mean that you are going to let us down?”

“I mean that I am going to live my own life.”

“That you’re out of politics?”

“Yes. My resignation goes in to-morrow.”

“My God! Why?”

Fallaray got up and went to the window. He stood for a moment looking
out at a corner of the terrace where several steps led down to a
fountain in which, out of an urn held in the hands of a weather-worn
boy, water was flowing, colored like a rainbow by the evening sun.

And Lytham followed him, wondering whether he had gone off his head,
become feeble-minded as the result of overstrain. And then he saw Lola
sitting on the edge of the fountain, with her face tilted up, her hands
clasped round one of her knees and her golden hair gleaming.

And there both men remained, gazing,—Fallaray with a smile of
possession, of infinite pride and pleasure; Lytham with an expression of
profound amazement and quick understanding.

“So it’s a woman,” he thought. And as he continued to look, another
picture of that girl came back into his mind. He had seen her before. He
had turned as she had passed him somewhere and caught his breath. He
remembered to have said to himself as she had walked away, “Eve, come to
life! Some poor devil of an Adam will go to hell for her.”—The
Carlton—Chalfont—the foyer with its little cases of glittering jewels,
the long strip of carpet leading to the stairs of the dining room—the
palms—the orchestra. It all came back.—Well, this might be a form of
madness in a man of Fallaray’s age and womanless life, but, thank God,
it was one with which he could deal. It was physical, not mental, as he
had feared. Fallaray might very well play Adam without going into hell.

“Can’t you combine the two,” he said. “Politics and that girl? It’s been
done before. It’s being done every day. The one is helped by the other.”

But Fallaray shook his head. “I am not going to do it,” he said. “I have
had a surfeit of one and nothing of the other. Take it from me finally,
George,—I am out of the political game. I think I should have been out
of it in any case, because I came here acknowledging failure, fed up,
nauseated. I am not the man to juggle with intrigues, to say one thing
to placate the capitalists to-day and another to fool labor to-morrow.
It isn’t my way and I shall not be missed. On the contrary, my
resignation will be accepted with eagerness. I am going to begin all
over again, free, perfectly firm in my belief that there are better men
to do my job. I was a bull in a china shop, and it will remain a china
shop, whether it’s run by one party or another. It’s the system. Nothing
can alter it. I couldn’t, you and your party won’t be able to. It’s gone
too far. It’s a cancer. It will kill the country. And so I’m out. I
consider that I have earned the right to love and make a home. Row off
from my Eden, my dear fellow, and leave me in peace. I am not going to
be rescued.”

“We’ll see about that,” thought Lytham. “This is not Fallaray who
speaks. It’s the man of forty suddenly hit by passion. I’ll fight that
girl to the last gasp. We must have this man, we _must_.”

He turned away, deeply disappointed at the queer tangent at which his
chief had gone off, bitterly annoyed to find that here was a fight
within a fight at a time when unity was vital. He was himself a
perfectly normal creature who regarded the rustle of silk as one of the
necessities, like golf and tobacco, but to sacrifice a career or let
down a cause for the sake of a woman was to him an act of unimaginable
weakness and folly. If only Fallaray had been younger or older, or,
better still, had been contentedly married to Feo! Cursed bad luck that
he had been caught at forty.—But, struck with an idea in which he could
see immediate possibilities, he stopped on his way to the door and went
back to Fallaray. To work it out in his usual energetic way he must use
strategy and appear to accept his friend’s decision as irreparable. “All
right,” he said. “You know best. I’ll argue no more. But as there’s no
need now for me to dash back to town, mayn’t I linger with you in
Arcadia for a couple of hours?”

Fallaray was delighted. Lola was to dine at Lady Cheyne’s, and he would
be alone. It would be very jolly to have George to dinner, especially as
he saw the futility of argument and recognized an ultimatum. “Stay and
have some food,” he said. “I’ve much to tell you. But will you let me
leave you for ten minutes?”

That was precisely what young Lochinvar intended to do before he drove
away,—speak to that woman.

He watched Fallaray join Lola at the fountain, give her his hand and
wander off among the rose trees, wearing what he called the fatuous
smile of the middle-aged man in love. And then, so that he might obtain
a point or two for future use, he rang the bell for Elmer. The butler
and he had known each other for years. He would answer a few nonchalant
questions without reserve. “Good afternoon, Elmer,” he said, when the
old man came in.

“Good afternoon to you, Sir.” He might have been an actor who in palmy
days had played Hamlet at Bristol.

“I’m staying to an early dinner with Mr. Fallaray. A whiskey and soda
would go down rather well in the meantime.”

“Certainly, Sir.”

“Oh, and Elmer.”

“Sir?” His turn and the respectful familiar angle of his head were only
possible to actors of the good old school.

“The name of the charming lady who has so kindly helped to brighten up
Mr. Fallaray’s week-end.”

“Madame de Brézé, Sir.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” He had never heard it before. Married then, or a
widow. French. ’Um. “And she is staying with——”

“Lady Cheyne, Sir.”

“Oh, yes,—that house——”

“A stone’s throw from the gate in the wall, Sir. You can see the roof
from this window.”

“Thanks very much, Elmer. How’s your son getting on now?”

“Very well indeed, Sir, thank you, owing to your kindness.”

“A very good fellow,—a first-rate soldier. One of our best junior
officers. Not too much soda, then.”

“No, Sir.” He left the room like an elderly sun-beam.

“Good!” said George Lytham. “Get off early, hang about by the gate,
intercept this young woman on her way back to Fallaray and see what her
game is. That’s the idea.”

And he sat down, lit a cigarette and picked up a copy of Hood that lay
open on the table. His eyes fell on some marked lines.

    “Peace and rest at length have come,
    All the day’s long toil is past,
    And each heart is whispering Home,
    Home at last.”

And he thought of Feo whom he had seen several nights running with
Arrowsmith and before that, for a series of years, with Dick, Tom and
Harry. Never with Fallaray.

“Poor devil,” he thought. “He’s been too long without it. It won’t be
easy to rescue him now.”



VIII


And at the gate in the wall Fallaray held Lola close in his arms and
kissed her, again and again.

“My little Lola,” he said softly, “how wonderful you are,—how wonderful
all this is. You had been in the air all round me for weeks. I used to
see your eyes among the stars looking down at me when I left the House.
I used to wake at night and feel them upon me all warm about my heart.
Lots of times, like the wings of a bird, they flashed between me and my
work. And the tingle of your hand that never left me ran through my
veins like fire. I could have stopped dead that night at the Savoy and
followed you away. And when I found you weeping in the corridor in Dover
Street I was confused and bewildered because then I was old and I was
fighting against you for the cause. De Brézé, de Brézé,—the name used to
come to me, suddenly, like the forerunner of rain to a dried-up plant.
And at last I got away and came down here, as I know now, to throw off
my useless years and go back, past all the milestones on a long road,
and wait for you. And then you heard my cry and opened the gate and
walked among those stone figures of my life and gave me back my youth.”

“With love and adoration and long-deferred hope,” she said and crept
closer to his heart. “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. And
if I’d never found you, I should have waited for you on the other side
of the Bridge,—loving you still.”

“My dear—who am I to deserve this?”

“You are Fallaray. Who else?”

And he laughed at that and held up her face and kissed her lips and
said, “No. I’m no longer Fallaray, that husk of a man, emptying his
energy on the ribs of chaos. I’m Edmund the boy, transformed to
adolescence. I’m Any Man in love.”

And again she went closer, feeling the far-off shudder of thunder, with
a new-born fear of opening the gate in the wall. “Who was that man who
came to see you?”

“Young Lochinvar,—Lytham. He’s interested in politics.”

“What did he want to see you about?”

“Nothing.” And he brushed away the lingering recollection with his hand.

“No. Tell me. I want to know.”

“I forget.” And he laughed and kissed her once again.

“But in any case you have to go back to-morrow?”

He shook his head and ran his fingers over her hair.

“But you said you’d have to,—that night.”

“Did I? I forget.” And he put his hand over her heart and held it there.

And again there came that thunder shudder, and she eyed the gate with
fear. “Did he want you to go back to-night? Tell me; I’ve _got_ to
know.” And she drew away a little—a very little—in order to force her
point.

But he drew her back and kissed her eyes. “Don’t look like that,” he
said. “What’s it matter? Let him want. I’m not going back. I’m never
going back. If George Lytham were multiplied by a hundred thousand and
they all landed on my island with grappling irons, I’d laugh them back
to sea. They shan’t have me. I’ve given them all I had. I’ve found my
youth and I’ll enjoy it, here, anywhere, with you.” He stretched out and
opened the gate. “And now, I must let you go, my sweet. But don’t be
longer than you can help. Get dinner over quickly and come back to me
again. Wear that silver frock and I’ll wait for you on the terrace, as I
did before. I want to be surprised again as you shimmer among those cold
stones.” He let her go.

And she went through the gate and stood irresolute, as the shudder came
again. With a little cry she turned and flung her arms round his neck as
though she were saying, “Good-by.”

And yet there was only a cloud as big as a man’s hand in that clear sky.



IX


No one, it might be thought, could hear to think at the narrow table in
Lady Cheyne’s house. Those natural, childlike creatures who, if they had
ever learned the artificialities forget them, talked, argued, sang and
screamed each other down all at the same time. They could not really be
musicians if they didn’t.

Zalouhou, whose only preparations for dinner consisted in bushing out
his tie and hair, sat at his hostess’ left; Willy Pouff, in an evening
suit borrowed from a waiter friend who had gone to a hospital with a
poisoned hand, on her right. Lola, at the end of the table, sat between
Valdemar Varvascho and Max Wachevsky, who had remembered, oddly enough,
to wash their faces, though Varvascho’s beard had grown darkly during
the day. Both the women had changed and made up for artificial light.
The result of Anna Stezzel’s hour was remarkable, as well, perhaps, as
somewhat disconcerting. A voluptuous person, with hair as black as a wet
starling, she had plastered her face with a thick coating of white stuff
on which her lips resembled blood stains in the snow. Her beaded evening
gown saved the company from panic merely by an accident and disclosed
also the whole wide expanse of a rather yellow back. Regina Spatz was
built on Zuluesque lines, too, but more by luck than judgment a white
blouse tempered her amazing ampleness. She had used henna on her hair so
that it might have been fungus in a tropic sea and sat in a perpetual
blush of indiscriminate rouge. Salo Impf was wedged against her side and
looked like a Hudson River tugboat under the lee of the _Aquitania_.

Like all fat women, Lady Cheyne was devoted to eating and had long since
decided to let herself go. “One can only live once,” she said, in
self-defense; “and how does one know that there’ll be peas and potatoes
in the next world.” The dinner, to the loudly expressed satisfaction of
the musicians, was substantial and excellent. Each course was received
with a volley of welcome, expressed in several languages. The hard
exercise of singing, playing, gesticulating, praising and breathing
deeply gave these children of the exuberant Muse the best of appetites.
It was a shattering meal.

But Lola could hear herself think, for all that. She sat smiling and
nodding. Her body went through the proper mechanics, but her spirit was
outside the gate in the wall, trembling. There was a cloud in the sky,
already. Fallaray was going to make her more important than his work,
and she had not come to him for that. Her métier was to bring into his
loveless life the rustle of silk,—love, tenderness, flattery,
refreshment, softness, beauty, laughter, adoration, which would send him
out of her secret nest strengthened, humanized, eager, optimistic. She
must fail lamentably if the effect of her absorbed him to the
elimination of everything that made him necessary to the man who had
come from London and to all that he represented. George Lytham, of
_Reconstruction_, the organizer of the Anti-waste Party,—she had heard
him discussed by Lady Feo. Without Fallaray he might be left
leaderless,—because of her.

She went upstairs as soon as she could to put on the silver frock. There
had been no time to change before dinner. Fallaray had kissed her so
often that she had been late. She was joined immediately by Lady,
Cheyne, who was anxious. She had seen something in Lola’s eyes.

“What is it, my dear?” she asked. “I’m worried about you.”

And Lola went to her, as to a mother, and shut her eyes and gave a
little cry that seemed to come from her soul.

“There’s something wrong!—Has he hurt you? Tell me.”

And Lola said, “Oh, no. He would never hurt me, never. He loves me. But
I may be hurting him, and that’s so very much worse.”

“I don’t understand. You mean—his reputation? But what if you are? We’re
all too precious careful to guard the reputations of our politicians, to
help them along in their petty careers.”

“But he isn’t a politician, and he isn’t working for a career.” She drew
away sharply. No one must have a word against Fallaray.

“Well, what is it then? I want you to be happy. I want this to be a
Great Romance. And, good Heavens, my darling, it’s only three days old.”

Lola spoke through tears. Yes, it was only three days old. “He may love
me too much,” she said. “I may become more important than his work.”

Lady Cheyne’s anxiety left her, like smoke. And she gave a laugh and
drew what she called that old-fashioned child into her arms again. “My
dear,” she said, “don’t let _that_ distress you. Make yourself more
important than his work. Encourage him to love you more than himself.
He’ll be different from most men if he is capable of that! But perhaps
happiness is something new in his life, and I shouldn’t wonder, with
Lady Feo for a wife.”

It never occurred to Lola to ask her friend how she had discovered the
secret. She listened eagerly to her sophistries, trying to persuade
herself that they were true.

“Get him to take you away. There are beautiful places to go to, and he
never will be missed. There’ll be a paragraph,—‘ill-health causes the
resignation of Mr. Fallaray’; the clubs will talk, but the people will
believe the papers, and presently Lady Feo will sue for divorce,
desertion. A nice thing,—she being the deserter! And you and he,—what do
you care? Is happiness so cheap that you can throw it away, either of
you? If he loves you, _that’s_ his career, and a very much better one
than leading parties and making empty promises and becoming Prime
Minister. If he loves you well enough to sacrifice all that, for the
sake of womanhood see that he does it, and you will build a bigger
statue for him than any that he could win.”

And she kissed her little de Brézé, who seemed to have undergone a
perfectly natural _crise de neuf_, being so much in love, and patted her
on the shoulder. “Take an old woman’s advice, my pet. If you’ve won that
man, keep him. He’ll live to thank you for it one of these days.”

And finally, when Lola slipped into the twilight in her silver frock,
there didn’t seem to be a single cloud in the sky. Only an evening star.
What Lady Cheyne had said she believed because she wanted to believe it,
because this Great Romance was only three days old and hope had been so
long deferred.—She stopped in the old garden and picked a rose and
pulled its thorns off so that she might give it to Fallaray, and she
lingered for a moment taking in the scents and the quiet sounds of that
most lovely evening,—more lovely and more unclouded even than that other
one, which was locked in her memory. And then she went along the path
through the corner of a wood. A rabbit disappeared into the undergrowth,
but the fairies were not out yet, and there was no one to spy. Was
happiness so cheap that she could throw it away,—his and her own? “If
you’ve won that man, keep him.” She danced all the rest of the way and
over the side road to the gate in the wall,—early, after all, by half an
hour. She would wait outside until she heard Fallaray’s quick step and
watch the star. “I’ll get him to take me away,” she thought. “There are
beautiful places to go to, and he never will be missed.”

She turned quickly, hearing some one on the road. She saw a car drawn up
a little distance away, and a man come swinging towards her.

It was young Lochinvar.



X


“Madame de Brézé,” he said, standing bareheaded, “my name is Lytham. May
I ask you to be so kind as to give me ten minutes?”

“Twenty,” she answered, with the smile that she had flashed at Chalfont
that night at the Savoy. “I have just that much to spare.”

“Thank you.” But now that he was there, after all his strategy, after
saying good-by to Fallaray, driving all the way down the hill from
Whitecross and up again into that side road, he didn’t know how to
begin, or where. This girl! God,—how disordering a quality of sex! No
wonder she had shattered poor old Fallaray.

“Shall we walk along the lane? It turns a little way up and you can see
the cross cut in the hill.”

“Yes,” he said. “But there are so many crosses, aren’t there, and
they’re all cut on somebody’s hill.” He saw that she looked at him
sharply and was glad. Quick to take points, evidently. This interview
would not be quite so difficult, after all.

“You came down from town to see Edmund?” She called him by his Christian
name to show this man where he stood.

“On the most urgent business,” he said, “I saw you sitting at the side
of the fountain. It’s a dear old place.”

She was not beautiful, and she was not sophisticated. That way of
dragging in Fallaray’s Christian name was childish in its naïveté. But
all about her there was something so fresh and young, so sublimely
unselfconscious, so disturbingly feminine, so appealing in its essence
of womanhood that he had to pay her tribute and measure his words. He
would hate to hurt this girl. De Brézé—Madame de Brézé—how was it that
he hadn’t heard of her before? She knew Chalfont. She was staying with
Poppy Cheyne. Fallaray had met her somewhere. Odd that he had missed her
in the crowd.

“I’ll come to the point, if I may,” he said. “And I must bore you a
little with a disquisition on the state of affairs.”

“I’m interested in politics,” she said, with a forlorn attempt to keep a
high head.

“Then perhaps you know what’s happened, to a certain extent, although
probably not as much as those of us who stand in the wings of the
political stage and see the actors without their make-up,—not a pretty
sight, sometimes.”

“Well?” But the cloud had returned and blotted out the evening star, and
there was the shudder of distant thunder again.

“Well, the people are turning against the old gang, at last. The Prime
Minister has only his favorites and parasites and newspapers left with
him. The Unionists are scared stiff by the sudden uprising of the
Anti-waste Party and Labor has been drained of its fighting funds. The
Liberals have withered. There is one great cry for honest government,
relief from crushing taxation, a fair reward for hard work, and new
leadership that will make the future safe from new wars. We must have
Fallaray. He’s the only man. I came here this evening to fetch him. He
refuses to come because of you. What are you going to do?”

As he drew up short and faced her, she looked like a deer surrounded by
dogs. He was sorry, but this was no time for fooling. What stuff was
this girl made of? Had she the gift of self-sacrifice as well as the
magnetism of sex? Or was she just a female, who would cling to what she
had won, self before everything?

“I love him,” she said.

Well, it was good to know that, but was that an answer? “Yes,” he said.
“Well?” He would like to have added “But does he love you and can you
keep him after passion is dead,—a man like Fallaray, who, after all, is
forty.” But he hadn’t the courage or the desire to hurt.

“And because I love him he must go,” she said.

He leaned forward and seized her hand. He was surprised, delighted, and
a little awed. She had gone as white as a lily. “You will see to that?
You will use all your influence to give him back to us?” He could hardly
believe his ears and his eyes.

“All my influence,” she said, standing very straight.

He bent down and touched her hand with his lips.

They were at the gate. They heard steps on the other side of the wall.

“Go,” she said, “quickly.”

But before he went he bowed, as to a queen.

And then Lola heard the voice again, harshly. “Go on, de Brézé, go on.
Don’t be weak. Stick to your guns. You have him in the palm of your
hand.”

But she shook her head. “But I’m not de Brézé. I’ve only tried to be.
I’m Lola Breezy of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and this is love.”

She opened the gate and went in to Fallaray.




PART VIII



I


There was a hooligan knock on Georgie Malwood’s bedroom door.

Saying “Aubrey” to herself without any sign either of irritation or
petulance, she put down her book, gathered herself together, and slid
off the bed. In a suit of boy’s pajamas she looked as young and
undeveloped as when, at seventeen, she had married Clayburgh in the
first week of the War. Her bobbed hair went into points over her ears
like horns, and added to her juvenile appearance. She might have been a
schoolgirl peeping at life through the keyhole, instead of a woman of
twenty-four, older than Methuselah.

She unlocked the door. “Barge in,” she said, standing clear.

And Aubrey Malwood, with his six foot two of brawn and muscle, his
yellow Viking hair, eyebrows and moustache, barged, as he always did.

“I’ve just dropped in to tell you,” he said, going straight to the
looking-glass, “that Feo rang up an hour ago. She wants you to lunch
with her in Dover Street.”

Perching herself on the window seat, like a pillow girl in Peter Pan,
Georgie gazed uninterestedly at that portion of the Park at
Knightsbridge which is between the barracks and the Hotel.

“Oh, damn,” she said, “I wish she’d leave me alone.” Young Malwood was
so astonished at this sentiment that he was drawn away from
self-admiration. He liked his type immensely.

“I never expected to hear you say that! What’s the notion?”

His much-married wife’s doglike worship of Feo Fallaray had, as a matter
of fact, immediately eliminated him from her daily pursuits and long ago
sent him after another form of amusement.

“Oh, I dunno,” said Georgie. “She’s been different lately; lost her
sense of humor, and become serious and sentimental,—the very things
she’s always hated in other people. You’re so fond of yourself that I
don’t suppose you’ve ever noticed the shattering effect of having the
teacher you imitated go back suddenly to the sloppy state you were in at
the beginning of your lessons. I’ll go this time and then fall away.
Feo’s over.”

Malwood went back to the glass and posed as a gladiator with an
imaginary sword and shield. His magnificent height and breadth and bone
made him capable of any gladiatorial effort. Only as to brain was he a
case of arrested development. At twenty-eight he was still only just fit
for Oxford. In any case, as things were, this desertion from her leader
would leave Georgie exactly what she was,—someone who had the legal
right to provide him with funds.

“Well,” he said, “it’s your funeral,” and let it go. The fact that the
elaborate dressing table was covered with framed photographs of his
three equally young predecessors, as well as toilet things bearing their
crests and initials, left this perpetual undergraduate unmoved. He had
never been in love with Georgie. He had been somewhat attracted by her
tinyness and imperturbability, but what had made him ask her to be his
wife was the fact that everybody was talking about her as a creator of a
record,—three times a widow in five years,—and he was one of those men,
who, being unable to attract attention by anything that he could do,
felt the need of basking in reflected glory. He had been fatuously
satisfied to follow her into a public place and see people nudge each
other as she passed. It was a thousand to one that if he had not married
Georgie, he would have hunted London to find a girl who had won her way
into the _Tatler_ as a high diver or a swallower of knives. Why Georgie
had married him was the mystery. Having acquired the married habit, it
was probable that she had accepted him before she had had time to
discover that beneath his astonishing good looks and magnificent
physique there was the mind of a potato. He had turned out to be an
expensive hobby because when his father’s business had been ruined by
the War, he possessed nothing but his pay as a second lieutenant. Peace
had removed even that and left him in her little house in Knightsbridge
with eight pairs of perfect riding boots, a collection of old civvies,
and an absolute incapability of earning a legitimate shilling. With
characteristic cold-bloodedness she had, however, immediately advertised
that she would not be responsible for his debts, and made him an
allowance of ten pounds a week, a fourth of her income after the
depredation of income tax. An invulnerable sponge, with a contagious
chuckle, a fairly good eye for tennis, and a homogeneous nature, he
managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth and was perfectly happy and
satisfied. But for Georgie, he must have been a farm laborer in Canada
or a salesman in a motor-car shop on the strength of his appearance. Or
he might have gone to Ireland in the Black and Tans.

“Well,” he said, having delivered his message, “cheerio. I’m going to
Datchet for a week to stay on the Mullets’ houseboat.”

Georgie looked round at him, stirred to a slight curiosity.

“Mullet? New friends?”

“Yes. War profiteers. Rolling in the stuff. Great fun. Know everybody.
Champagne and diamonds for breakfast. Haven’t got a loose fiver about
you, I suppose?”

With a faint smile Georgie pointed to her cigarette case on the dressing
table. And without a qualm Malwood opened it, removed his wife’s last
night’s bridge winnings, murmured, “Thanks most awfully,” and barged
out, whistling a tune from “The League of Notions.”

“All right, then. For the last time, lunch with Feo,” thought Georgie,
moving from the window seat lazily. “She’s over.”



II


For the first time since Feo had lifted Georgie Malwood into her
intimacy, in that half-careless, half-cautious way that belongs usually
to the illegitimate offspring of kings, her small, unemotional friend
was late for her appointment. Always before, like every other member of
the gang, Georgie Malwood had reported on the early side of the
prescribed moment and killed time without impatience until it had
occurred to Feo to put in an appearance. That morning, which was without
word from Arrowsmith, as she had predicted with the uncanny intuition
that makes women suffer before as well as after they are hurt, Feo was
punctual. She entered her den with the expectation of finding Georgie
curled up on the sofa, halfway through a slim volume of new poems. The
room was empty and there had been no message of apology, no hastily
scribbled note of endearment and explanation.

During the longest forty-five minutes that she had ever spent, Feo
passed from astonishment to anger and finally into the chilly
realization that her uncharacteristic behavior of the last few weeks had
been discussed and criticized, and that the judgment of her friends was
unmistakably reflected in the new attitude of the hitherto faithful and
obsequious Georgie,—always the first to catch the color of her
surroundings. She, Feo, the Queen of Flippancy, the ringleader of
eroticism, had had the temerity to play serious, an unforgivable crime
in the estimation of the decadent set which had ignored the War and
emerged triumphantly into the chaos of peace. Well, there it was. A long
and successful innings was ended. She would be glad to withdraw from the
field.

She waited in her favorite place with her beautiful straight back to the
fireplace, both elbows on the low mantel board and one foot on the
fender. Her face was as white as a candle, her large violet eyes were
filled with grim amusement, and her wide, full-lipped mouth was a little
twisted. She wore a frock that was the color of seaweed, cut almost up
to her knees, with short sleeves, a loose belt, and a great blob of jade
attached to a thin gold chain lying between her breasts. Her thick, wiry
hair was out of curl and fell straight, like that of a page in the Court
of Cesare Borgia. For all her modernity there was something about her
that was peculiarly medieval, masculinely girlish rather than
effeminately boyish. She might have been the leading member of a famous
troupe of Russian ballet dancers, ready at a moment’s notice to slip out
of her wrapper and spring with athletic grace high into the air.

Her first remark upon Georgie’s lazy entrance was Feoistic and
disconcerting.

“So I’m over, I see,” she said, and waited ironically for its effect.

Not honest enough to say, “Yes, you are,” Georgie hedged, with some
little confusion.

“What makes you think so, Feo?”

“Your infernal rudeness, my dear, which you wouldn’t have dared to
indulge in a week ago. You’ve all sensed the fact that I’m sick to tears
of the games I’ve led you into, and would gladly have gone in for babies
if I’d had the luck to seem desirable to the right man.” She made a long
arm and rang the bell. “I am ripe for repentance, you see, or perhaps it
might be more accurate, though less dramatic, to say eager for a new
sensation. It isn’t coming off, but you can all go and hang yourselves
so far as I’m concerned. I’m out. I’m going to continue to be serious.
Bring lunch in here,” she added, as a footman framed himself in the
doorway, “quickly. I’m starving.”

Almost any other girl who had been the favorite of such a woman as Feo
would have found in this renunciation of leadership something to cause
emotion. Mere gratitude for many favors and much kindness seemed to
demand that. But this young phlegmatic thing was just as unmoved as she
had been on receipt of the various war office telegrams officially
regretting the deaths of Lord Clayburgh, Captain Graham Macoover, and
Sir Harry Pytchley. She lit the inevitable cigarette, chose the
much-cushioned divan, and stretched herself at full length.

“I can do with a little groundsel too,” she said, as though the other
subject had been threshed out.

And so it had, for the time being. Feo, oddly enough, had no bricks to
throw. She could change her religion, it seemed, without pitching mud at
the church of her recent beliefs. It was not until lunch was finished
and the last trickle of resentment at Georgie’s failure to apologize had
gone out of her system that she returned to the matter and began, in a
way, to think aloud. It was not as indiscreet as it might have been,
because Georgie Malwood was completely self-contained and had developed
concentration to such a degree, her first three husbands having been
given to arguing, that she could lie and follow her own train of thought
as easily in a room in which a mass of women were playing bridge as in a
monkey house. Her interest in Feo was dead. She was over.

And so Feo gave herself away to a little person whose ears were closed.

“I don’t know what exactly to do,” she said. “At the moment, I feel like
a fish out of water. If Arrowsmith had liked me and been ready to upset
the conventional ideas of his exemplary family, I’d have eloped with
him, however frightfully it would have put Edmund in the cart. I don’t
mind owning that Arrowsmith is the only man I’ve ever met who could have
turned me into the Spartan mother and worthy _haus-frau_. I had dreams
of living with him behind the high walls of a nice old house and making
the place echo with the pattering feet of babes. It’s the culminating
disappointment of several months of ’em,—the bad streak which all of us
have to go through at one time or another, I suppose. However, he
doesn’t like me, worse luck, and so there it is. So I think I’d better
make the best of a bad job and cultivate Edmund. I think I’d better
study the life of Lady Randolph Churchill and make myself useful to my
husband. Politics are in a most interesting state just now, with Lloyd
George on the verge of collapse at last, and the brainy dishonesty of a
woman suddenly inspired with political ambition is exactly what Edmund
needs to push him to the top. He has been too long without a woman’s
unscrupulous influence.”

She began to pace the room with long swinging strides, eagerly,
clutching at this new idea like a drowning man to a spar. Her eyes began
to sparkle and the old ring came back to her voice. Here was a way to
use her superabundant energy and build up a new hobby.

“I’m no longer a flapping girl with everything to discover,” she went
on, “I’ve had my share of love stuff. By Jove, I’ll use my intelligence,
for a change. I’ll get into the fight and develop strategy. Every one’s
looking to Edmund as the one honest man in the political game, and I’ll
buckle to and help him. He’s an amazing creature. I’ve always admired
him, and there’s something that suits my present state of mind in making
up to him for my perfectly rotten treatment all these years. If I can’t
make a lover into a husband, by Jingo, I can set to work to make a
husband into a lover. There’s an idea for you, Feo, my pet! There’s a
mighty interesting scheme to dig your teeth into, my broad-shouldered
friend!”

She sent out an excited laugh and flung up her hand as though to welcome
a brain wave. Her amazing resilience stood her in good stead in this
crisis of her life,—to say nothing of her courage and queer sense of
humor. Her blood began to move again. Fed up with decadence, she would
plump whole-heartedly for usefulness now, be normal, go to work, get
into the good books of George Lytham and his party, surprise Fallaray by
her sudden allegiance to his cause and to him, and gradually break down
the door that she had slammed in his face.

“I’ll let my hair grow,” she continued gayly, working the vein that was
to rescue her from despondency and failure with pathetic eagerness.

“I’ll chuck eccentric clothes. I’ll turn up slang and blasphemy. I’ll
teach myself manners and the language of old political hens. I’ll keep
brilliance within speed limits. Yes, I’ll do all that if I have to work
like a coolie. And I’ll tell you what else I’ll do. I’ll bet you a
thousand pounds to sixpence that before the end of the year I’ll be the
wife—I said the wife, Georgie—of the next Prime Minister. Will you take
it?”

She drew up short, alight and excited, her foot already on the beginning
of the new road, and paused for a reply.

Georgie stretched like a young Angora cat and yawned with perfect
frankness.

“I’ll take whatever I can get, Feo,” she said. “But what the devil are
you talking about? I haven’t heard a blessed word.”

And Feo’s laugh must have carried into Bond Street.



III


And when Georgie had transferred herself from the many-cushioned divan
to her extremely smart car, in which, with an expressionless face and a
mind as calm as a cheese, she was going to drive to Hurlingham to be
present at, rather than to watch, the polo, Feo went upstairs.

She felt that she must walk, and walk quickly, in an endeavor to keep up
with her new line of thought, at the end of which she saw, more and more
clearly, a most worth-while goal. Before she could arrive at this, she
could see a vista of bunkers ahead of her to negotiate which all her
gifts of intrigue would have, happily, to be exercised. To give interest
and excitement to her plan of becoming Fallaray’s wife in fact, as well
as by law, she required bunkers and needed difficulties. The more the
merrier. She knew that, at present, Fallaray was as far away from her as
though he were at the North Pole,—and as cold. She was dead certain of
the fact that she had been of no more account to him, from the first few
hours of their outrageous honeymoon, than a piece of furniture in one of
the rooms in his house of which he never made use. That being so, she
could see the constant and cunning employment of the brains that she had
allowed to lie fallow through all her rudimentary rioting,—brains that
she possessed in abundance, far above the average. In the use of these
lay her salvation, her one chance to swing herself out of the great
disappointment and its subsequent loose-endedness which had been brought
about by Arrowsmith’s sudden deflection. Her passionate desire for this
man was not going easily to die. She knew that. Her dreams would be
filled with him for a considerable time, of course. She realized, also,
looking at that uncompleted episode with blunt honesty, that, but for
him, she would still be playing the fool, giving herself and her gifts
to the entertainment of all the half-witted members of the gang. To the
fastidious Arrowsmith and her unrequited love she owed her sudden
determination to make herself useful to Fallaray and finally to become,
moving Heaven and earth in the process, his wife. This was the
paradoxical way in which her curious mind worked. No tears and
lamentations for her. She had no use for them. On the contrary, she had
courage and pride, and by setting herself the most difficult task that
she could possibly have chosen, two things would result,—her sense of
adventure would be gratified to the hilt and Arrowsmith shown the stuff
of which she was made.

But on her way to her room, which was to be without Lola until the
following morning, she stopped in the corridor, turned and went to the
door of Fallaray’s den. After a moment’s hesitation she entered, feeling
that she was trespassing, never before having gone into it of her own
volition. She could not be caught there because Fallaray had escaped to
his beloved Chilton, she remembered. Her desire was to stand there alone
for a few moments, to merge herself into its atmosphere; to get from its
book-lined walls and faint odor of tobacco something of the sense of the
man who had unconsciously become her partner.

The vibrations of the room as they came to her were those of one which
had belonged to an ascetic, long dead and held in the sort of respect by
his country that is shown by the preservation of his work place. It was
museum-like and tidy, even prim. The desk was in perfect order and had
the cold appearance of not having been used for a century. The fireplace
was clean and empty. The waste-paper basket might never have been
employed. There was nothing personal to give the place warmth and life.
No photographs of women or children. No old pipes. And even in the cold
eyes of the bust of Dante that looked down upon her from the top of one
of the bookcases there was no expression, either of surprise or
resentment at her intrusion.

Most women would have been chilled, and a little frightened, there. It
would have been natural for them, in Feo’s circumstances, had they
possessed imagination, to have been struck with a sense of remorse. It
should have been their business, if nothing else, to see that this room
lived and had personality, comfort and a little color,—flowers from time
to time, and at least one charming picture of a youngster on the
parental desk. And Feo did feel, as she looked about in her new mood, a
little shiver of shame and the red-hot needle of repentance pricking her
hitherto dormant conscience.

“Poor old Edmund,” she said aloud, “what have I done to him? This place
is dry, bloodless, like a mausoleum. Well, I’ll alter it all. I have a
job, thank God. Something to set my teeth into. Something to direct my
energy at,—if it isn’t too late.”

And as this startling afterthought struck her, she wheeled round, darted
across the room to the place where a narrow slip of looking-glass hung
in an old gold frame, and put herself through a searching examination.

“Mf! Still attractive in your own peculiar way,” she said finally, with
relief. “The early bloom gone, of course; lines here and there,
especially round the eyes. Massage and the proper amount of sleep will
probably rub those away. But there’s distinction about you, Feo dear,
and softness can be cultivated. You’re as hard as an oil painting now,
you priceless rotter. However, hope springs eternal, and where there’s a
will there’s a way.”

She laughed at herself for these nursery quotations and clenched her
fists for the fray. But as she turned, fairly well satisfied with the
result of her inspection, she heard steps in the corridor—Fallaray’s
steps—and the blood rushed into her face. By George, she was going to be
caught, after all.



IV


Fallaray? This sun-tanned, smiling man with shoulders square, chin high,
and a song in his eyes, who came into the room like a southwest gale?

If he felt surprise at the unfamiliar sight of Feo in his den, he
allowed nothing of it to show. He held out a cordial hand and went to
her eagerly.

“I’ve come up to town to see you,” he said. “You must have got my S. O.
S.”

The manner provided the second shock. But Feo returned the pressure of
his hand and tried instantly to think of an answer that would be
suitable to her new rôle.

“I think I must have done so,” she said quietly, returning his smile.
“Your holiday has worked wonders, Edmund.”

“A miracle, an absolute miracle!”

A nearer look proved that his word was the right one. Here was almost
the young Fallaray of the tennis courts and the profile that she had set
herself impishly to acquire in those old days. Good Heavens, could it be
that she _was_ too late, and that another woman had brought about this
amazing change? She refused to permit the thought to take root. She told
herself that she had had her share of disappointments. He had needed
rest and his beloved Chilton, bathed in the most un-English sunlight,
had worked its magic. It must be so. Look at this friendliness. That
wasn’t consistent with the influence of another woman. And yet, as an
expert in love, she recognized the unmistakable look.

“I’m only staying the night here,” he said. “I’m off to Chilton again in
the morning. So there’s no time to lose. Can you give me ten minutes?”

“Of course,” she said. “And as many more as you care to ask for. I’m out
of the old game.” She hurried to get that in, astonished at her
uncharacteristic womanliness.

But he was one-eyed, like a boy. What at any other time would have
brought an incredulous exclamation left him now incurious, without
surprise. He was driving hard for his own goal. Anything that affected
Feo, or any one else, except Lola, didn’t matter. Her revolutionary
statement passed almost unheard. He pushed an armchair into place.

“Sit down,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”

And as she sat down it was with a sudden sense of fatalism. There was
something in all this that was predetermined, inevitable. That flame had
been set alight in him by love, and nothing else. She felt, sitting
there, like that most feeble of all figures, Canute. What was the use in
trying to persuade herself that what she dreaded to hear was not going
to be said? She was too late. She had let this man go.

He walked up and down for a moment, restless and wound up, passing and
repassing the white-faced woman who could have told him precisely what
he was about to say.

“I want to be set free,” he said, with almost as little emotion as would
have been called up by the discussion of a change of butchers. “I want
you to let me arrange to be divorced. Something has happened that has
altered my entire scheme of life. I want to begin all over again. I have
come back this afternoon to put this to you and to ask you to help me. I
think I know that many times since we’ve been married you would have
asked me to do this, if I hadn’t been in politics. I’m grateful to you,
as I’m sure you know, for having respected what was my career to that
extent. I am going out. My resignation is in my pocket. It is to be sent
to the P. M. to-night. When I go back to-morrow, it will be as a free
man, so far as Westminster is concerned. I want to return to Chilton,
having left instructions with your lawyers, with your permission, to
proceed with the action. The evidence necessary will be provided and the
case will be undefended. I shall try to have it brought forward at the
earliest possible moment. May I ask you to be kind enough to meet me in
this matter?”

He drew up in front of her and waited, with as little impatience as
breeding would permit.

If this question had been put to her a week ago, or yesterday, she would
have cried out, “Yes,” with joy and seen herself able to face a future
with Arrowsmith, such as she had pictured in her dreams. It came upon
her now, on top of her determination to turn over a new leaf, like a
breaker, notwithstanding the fact that she had seen it coming. But she
got up, pride and courage and tradition in every line of her
eccentrically dressed body, and faced him.

“You may,” she replied. “And I will help you in every possible way. It’s
the least that I can do.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I am deeply grateful. I knew that you would say
just that.” And he bowed before turning to go to his desk. “Who _are_
your lawyers?”

She hadn’t any lawyers, but she remembered the name of the firm in which
one of the partners was the husband of a woman in the gang, and she gave
it to him.

He wrote it down eagerly. “I’m afraid it will be necessary for you to
see these people in the morning. Is that perfectly convenient?”

“Perfectly,” she said. “I have no engagements, as it happens.”

“Then I will write a statement of the facts,” he said, “at once. The
papers can be served upon me at Chilton.”

It was easy to get out of marriage as it had been to get into it.

“Is that all?” she asked, with a touch of her old lightness.

He rose. “Yes, thank you,” he said, and went to the door to open it for
her. There were youth and elasticity and happiness all about him.

But as she watched him cross the room, something flashed in front of her
eyes, a vivid ball of foolish years which broke into a thousand pieces
at her feet, among the jagged ends of which she could see the ruins of a
great career, the broken figure of a St. Anthony, with roses pinned to
the cross upon his chest.

He stopped her as she was going and held out his hand again.

“I am very grateful, Feo.”

And she smiled and returned his grasp. “The best of luck,” she said. “I
hope you’ll be very happy, for a change.”



V


Having now no incentive to go either to her room or anywhere else, her
new plan dying at its birth, Feo remained in the corridor, standing with
her back against one of the pieces of Flemish tapestry which Simpkins
had pointed out to Lola. She folded her arms, crossed one foot over the
other, and dipped her chin, not frowning, not with any sort of
self-pity, but with elevated eyebrows and her mouth half open,
incredulous.

“Of course I’m not surprised at Edmund’s being smashed on a girl,” she
told herself. “How the Dickens he’s gone on so long is beyond belief. I
hope she’s a nice child,—she must be young; he’s forty; I hope he’s not
been bird-limed by one of the afterwar virgins who are prowling the
earth for prey. I’m very ready to make way gracefully and have a dash at
something else, probably hospital work, sitting on charity boards with
the dowagers who wish to goodness they had dared to be as loose as I’ve
been. But—but what I want to know is, who’s shuffling the cards? Why the
devil am I getting this long run of Yarboroughs? I can’t hold
anything,—anything at all, except an occasional knave like Macquarie.
Why this run of bad luck now? Why not last year, next year, next week?
Why should Edmund deliberately choose to-day, of all days, to come back,
with no warning, and put a heavy foot bang in the middle of my scheme of
retribution? Is it—meant? I mean it’s too beautifully neat to be an
accident. Is it the good old upper cut one always gets for playing the
giddy ox, I wonder?—Mf! Interesting. Very. More to come, too, probably,
seeing that I’m still on my feet. I’ve got to get it in the solar plexus
and slide under the ropes, I suppose, now they’re after me. ‘Every
guilty deed holds in itself the seed of retribution and undying pain.’
Well, I’m a little nervous, like some poor creature on the way to the
operating table; and—and I’ll tell you what else I am, by George! I’m
eaten up with curiosity to know who the girl is, and how she managed to
get into the line of vision of this girl-blind man,—and I don’t quite
know how I shall be able to contain myself until I satisfy this
longing.—Oh, hullo, Lola. This is good. I didn’t expect you till the
morning. But I don’t mind saying that I’ve never been so pleased to see
anybody as you, my dear. Had a good time?”

She went to the top of the stairs and waited for Lola to come up,
smiling and very friendly. She was fond of this girl. She had missed her
beyond words,—not only for her services, which were so deft, so
sure-fingered, but also for her smile, her admiration. Good little Lola;
clever little Lola too, by George. That Carlton episode,—most amusing.
And this recent business, which, she remembered, was touched with a sort
of—what? Was ecstasy the word? Good fun to know what had happened. Thank
the Lord there was going to be a pause between knock-outs, after all.

Dressed in her perfectly plain ready-made walking frock, her own shoes
and a neat little hat that she had bought in Queen’s Road, Bayswater,
Lola came upstairs quickly with her eyes on Feo’s face. She seemed
hardly to be able to hold back the words that were trembling on her
lips. It was obvious that she had been crying; her lids were red and
swollen. But she didn’t look unhappy or miserable, as a girl might if
everything had gone wrong; nor in the least self-conscious. She wore
neither her expression as lady’s maid, nor that of the young widow to
whom some one had given London; but of a mother whose boy was in trouble
and must be got out of it, at once, _please_, and helped back to his
place among other good boys.

“Will you come down to your room, Lady Feo?” she asked. “Mr. Lytham will
be here in a few minutes and I want you to see him.”

Lytham—young Lochinvar! How priceless if he were the man for whom she
had dressed this child up.

“Why, of course. But what’s the matter, Lola? You’ve been crying. You
look fey.”

Lola put her hand on Feo’s arm, urgently. “Please come down,” she said.
“I want to tell you something before Mr. Lytham comes.”

Well, this seemed to be her favor-granting day, as well as one of those
during which Fate had recognized her as being on his book. First Edmund
and then Lola,—there was not much to choose between their undisguised
egotism. And the lady’s maid business,—that was all over, plainly.
George Lytham,—who’d have thought it? If Lola were in trouble, she had a
friend in that house.

And so, without any more questions, she went back to her futuristic den
which, after her brief talk with Fallaray, seemed to belong to a very
distant past. But before Lola could begin to tell her story, a footman
made his appearance and said that Mr. Lytham was in the hall.

“Show him in here,” said Feo and turned to watch the door.

She wondered if she would be able to tell from his expression what was
the meaning of her being brought into this,—a disinclination on his part
to take the blame, or an earnest desire to do what was right under the
circumstances? She never imagined the possibility of his not knowing
that Lola was a lady’s maid dressed in the feathers of the jay. Unlike
Peter Chalfont, who accepted without question, Lytham held things up to
the light and examined their marks.

There was, however, nothing uncomfortable in his eyes. On the contrary,
he looked more than ever like the captain, Feo thought, of a County
Cricket Club, healthy, confident and fully alive to his enormous
responsibility. He wore a suit of thin blue flannels, the M. C. C. tie
under a soft low collar, and brown shoes that had become almost red from
long and expert treatment. He didn’t shake hands like a German, with a
stiff deference contradicted by a mackerel eye, or with the tender
effusion of an actor who imagines that women have only to come under his
magnetism to offer themselves in sacrifice. Bolt upright, with his head
thrown back, he shook hands with an honest grip, without deference and
without familiarity, like a good cricketer.

“How do you do, Lady Feo,” he said, in his most masculine voice. “It’s
kind of you to see us.” Then he turned to Lola with a friendly smile.
“Your telephone message caught me just as I was going to dash off for a
game of tennis after a hard day, Madame de Brézé,” he added.

Oh, so this was another of the de Brézé episodes, was it, like the one
with Beauty Chalfont. Curiosity came hugely to Feo’s rescue. Here, at
any rate, was a break in her run of bad luck, very welcome. What on
earth could be the meaning of this quaint meeting,—George Lytham, the
earnest worker pledged to reconstruction, and this enigmatic child, who
might have stood for Joan of Arc? If Lola had caught Lytham and brought
him to Dover Street to receive substantiation, Feo was quite prepared to
lie on her behalf. What a joke to palm off the daughter of a Queen’s
Road jeweler on the early-Victorian mother of the worthy George!

“Well?” she said, looking from one to the other with a return of her
impish delight in human experimentation.

“Mr. Lytham can explain this better than I can,” said Lola quietly.

“I’m not so sure about that, but I’ll do my best.”

He drew a chair forward and sat down. Under ordinary circumstances,
where there was the normal amount of happiness, or even the mutual
agreement to give and take that goes with the average marriage, his task
would have been a difficult one. But in the case of Feo and his chief he
felt able to deal with the matter entirely without self-consciousness,
or delicacy in the choice of words.

“I needn’t worry you with any of the details of the new political
situation, Lady Feo. You know them, probably, as well as I do. But what
you don’t know, because the moment isn’t yet ripe for the publication of
our plans, is that Mr. Fallaray has been chosen to lead the Anti-waste
Party, which is concentrating its forces to rout the old gang out of
politics at the next General Election, give Parliament back its lost
prestige, and do away with the pernicious influence of the Press Lords.
A big job, by Jove, which Fallaray alone can achieve.”

“Well?” repeated Feo, wondering what in the world this preamble had to
do with the case in question.

“Well, at the end of the meeting of my party yesterday, I was sent down
to Chilton Park to tell Mr. Fallaray our plans. I was stultified to be
told that he had decided to chuck politics.”

“And go in for love. Yes, I know. But what has this got to do with
Lola,—with Madame de Brézé?”

That was the point that beat Feo, the thing that filled her with a sort
of impatient astonishment. Was this uncommunicative girl, who seemed to
her to be so essentially feminine, whose métier in life was obviously to
purr under the touch of a masculine hand, who had been given a holiday
to go on a love chase with Chalfont, presumably, somehow connected with
politics? It was incredible.

“Oh, you’ve seen Fallaray.”

“Yes, my dear man, yes! He broke the news to me the moment he came in,”

“Did he ask you to give him a divorce?”

“He did, without a single stutter.”

“And you said——”

“But—my dear young Lochinvar, may I make so bold as to ask why this
perfectly personal matter has to be discussed in the open, so to speak?”
She made her meaning unmistakably clear. This girl was not so close a
friend as he might have been led to suppose.

“What did you say to Mr. Fallaray?” asked Lola, leaning forward eagerly.

And Lytham waited with equal anxiety for an answer.

It did not come for an extraordinary moment and only then in the form of
a tangent. Feo turned slowly round to the girl who was in the habit of
dressing her and putting her to bed. With raised eyebrows and an air of
amused amazement, she ran her eyes over every inch of her, as though
trying very hard to find something to palliate the insufferable cheek
that she was apparently expected to swallow.

“My good Lola,” she said finally, “what the devil has this got to do
with you?”

“Madame de Brézé is the _dea ex machina_,” said Lytham, evenly.

It didn’t seem to him to be necessary to lead up to this announcement
like a cat on hot bricks, considering that Lady Feo had openly flouted
his chief from the first. She had no feelings to respect.

“_What did you say?_”

He repeated his remark, a little surprised at the gaping astonishment
which was caused by it.

“Madame de Brézé—Lola—the woman for whom I am to be asked to step
aside?—Is this a joke?”

“No,” he said. “Far from a joke.”

“Ye Gods!” said Feo. And she sat for a moment, holding her breath, with
her large intelligent mouth open, her dark Italian eyes fixed on
Lytham’s face, and one of her long thin capable hands suspended in
mid-air. She might have been struck by lightning, or turned into salt
like Lot’s inquisitive wife.

It was plain enough to Lola that her mistress was reviewing in her mind
all the small points of their connection,—the engagement in the
housekeeper’s room, the knowledge of her parentage, the generous
presents of those clothes for her beautification, the half-jealous,
half-sympathetic interest that had been shown in her love affair with
Chalfont, as she had allowed Lady Feo to imagine. She had come to Dover
Street, not to take this woman’s husband away, but to give him back, to
beg that he should be retained by all the hollow ties of Church and law;
bound, held, controlled, rendered completely unable to break away,—not
for Feo’s sake, and not for his, but for his country’s. And so, having
committed no theft because Fallaray was morally free, and being
unashamed of her scheme which had been merely to give a lonely man the
rustle of silk, she hung upon an answer to her question.

Once more Feo turned to look at Lola, leaning forward, and for a moment
something flooded her eyes that was like blood, and a rush of unformed
words of blasphemous anger crowded to her lips. With distended nostrils
and widening fingers, she took on the appearance, briefly, of a figure,
half man, half woman, stirred to its vitals with a desire to kill in
punishment of treachery, suffering under the sort of humiliation that
makes pride collapse like a toy balloon. And then a sense of humor came
to the rescue. She sprang to her feet and burst into peal after peal of
laughter so loud and irresistible and prolonged, that it brought on
physical weakness and streaming tears. Finally, standing in her favorite
place with her back to the fireplace, dabbing her eyes and steadying her
voice, she began to talk huskily, with anger, and sarcasm, and
looseness, puncturing her sometimes pedantic choice of words with one
that was appropriate to a cab driver.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” she said, “Lola—purring little Lola, and in
those clothes, too! I don’t mind confessing that I would never have
believed it possible. I mean for you to have had the courage to aim so
high. It’s easy to understand _his_ end of it. The greater the ascetic,
the smaller the distance to fall. Ha!—And you, you busy patriot, you
earnest, self-confident young Lochinvar, if only I could make clear to
you the whole ludicrous aspect of this bitter farce, this mordant slice
of satire. You wouldn’t enjoy it, because you’re a hero-worshipper, with
one foot in the Albert period. And in any case I can’t let you into it
because my inherited instinct of sportsmanship is with me still, even in
this. And so you’ll miss the point of the orgy of laughter that gave me
the stitch. But I don’t mind telling you that it’s a scream, and would
make a lovely chapter in the history of statesmen’s love affairs.”

That Fallaray should have turned from her to pick up this bourgeois
little person, a servant in his house,—that was what rankled, in spite
of her saying that she understood his end of it. Good God!

But to Lytham, who knew Lola as Madame de Brézé, and had found her to be
willing to make a great sacrifice for love, the inner meaning of Feo’s
outburst was lost. He told himself, as he had often done before, that
Feo was an extraordinary creature, queer and erotic, and came back to
the main road bluntly.

“May I ask you to be so kind as to tell me,” he said, “what answer you
gave to Mr. Fallaray when he asked you to give him a divorce? A great
deal depends upon that.”

“You mean because of his career and the success of your political
plans?”

“Yes.”

“And why do you want to know, pray?” Feo shot the question at Lola.

“Because of Mr. Fallaray’s career,” Lola replied simply, “and the
success of these political plans.”

But this was something much too large to be swallowed, much too good to
be true. Regarding Lola as a deceitful minx, a most cunning little
schemer, Feo took the liberty to disbelieve this statement utterly,
although on the face of it Lola appeared to have thrown in her lot with
Lytham. Why?—What was she up to now?—An impish desire to keep these two
on tenterhooks and get a little fun out of all this—it was the only
thing that she could get—suddenly seized Feo strongly. Here was a
gorgeous chance for drama. Here was an epoch-making opportunity
unexpectedly to force Lytham and the young vamp, as she called her, to
ask Fallaray himself for an answer to this question, and watch the
scene. It was probably the only opportunity to satisfy an avid curiosity
to see how Fallaray would behave when faced with his “affinity,” and
find out what game the girl who had been her servant was playing. This
high-faluting attitude of Lola’s was all nonsense, of course. She had
caught Fallaray with her extraordinary sexiness and meant to cling to
him like a limpet. To become the second Mrs. Fallaray was naturally the
acme of her ambition, even although she succeeded to a man who must
place himself on the shelf in order to indulge in an amorous adventure.
A great idea! But it would have to be carried out carefully, so that no
inkling of it might escape.

“Excuse me for a moment,” said Feo, and marched out of the room with a
perfectly expressionless face.

Shutting the door behind her, she caught the eye of a man servant who
was on duty in the hall. He came smartly forward.

“Go up to Mr. Fallaray and say that I shall be greatly obliged if he
will come to my den at once on an important matter.” And then, having
taken two or three excited turns up and down the hall, she controlled
her face and went back into the room.

“Saint Anthony, Young Lochinvar, the lady’s maid,” she said to herself,
“and the ex-leader of the erotics. A heterogeneous company, if ever
there was one.”

Once more, standing with her back to the fireplace, her elbows on the
low mantel board, Feo looked down at Lola, whose eyes were very large
and like those of a child who had cried herself out of tears.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“At Whitecross, with Lady Cheyne,” replied Lola.

“Oh!—The little fat woman who has the house near the gate in the wall? I
see. And you came back this afternoon?”

“Yes,” said Lola.

“With my husband?”

“No,” said Lola.

“Does he know that you intended to give me the pleasure of seeing you
here with our mutual friend?”

“No,” said Lola.

Was that a lie or not? The girl had been crying, that was obvious.
Something had evidently gone wrong with her scheme. But why this
surreptitious meeting, this bringing in of Lytham? It was easy, of
course, to appreciate _his_ anxiety. He needed an impeccable Fallaray.
He was working for his party, his political campaign, and in the long
run, being an earnest patriot, for his country.—She had a few questions
to put to him too.

“Where did you meet Lola de Brézé, Young Lochinvar?” she asked.

“At Chilton Park,” said Lytham, who had begun to be somewhat mystified
at the way in which things were going; and, if the truth were told,
impatient. All he had come to know was whether he had an ally in Lady
Feo or an enemy, and make his plans accordingly. He could see no reason
for her to dodge the issue. His game of tennis looked hopeless. What
curious creatures women were.

“When?”

There was the sound of quick steps in the hall.

“Last night.”

The door opened and Fallaray walked in.

With a gleeful smile Feo spoke through his exclamation of surprise.
“Edmund, I would like you to tell your friends what my answer was to
your request for a divorce.”

Hating to be caught in what was obviously an endeavor to influence his
chief’s wife against a decision to unhitch himself from marriage and
politics, Lytham sprang to his feet, feeling as disconcerted as he
looked.

Lola made no movement except to stiffen in her chair.

Watching Fallaray closely, Feo saw first a flare of passion light up his
eyes at the sight of Lola, and then an expression of resentment come
into them at not being able, others being present, to catch her in his
arms. An impetuous movement had taken him to the middle of the room,
where he drew up short and stood irresolute and self-conscious and
looking rather absurd under the gaze of Lytham and his wife.

“What is all this?” he asked, after an awkward pause, during which he
began to suspect that he had been tricked by Feo and was faced by a
combination of objection.

“Don’t ask me,” said Feo, waving her hand towards Lytham and Lola.

“Then I must ask you, George,” said Fallaray, making an effort to
disguise his anger. He could see that he had been made the subject of
discussion, as if he were some one to be coerced and who did not know
his own business.

“This is not quite fair,” said Lytham. “Our intention was to see Lady
Feo, get her views and cooperation, and then, to-night or to-morrow,
come to you and beg you to do the sane thing in this affair. We had no
hand in your being dragged into this private meeting.”

He too was angry. Feo had cheated and brought about the sort of crisis
that should have been avoided. Any one who knew Fallaray’s detestation
of personalities must have seen what this breaking down of his fourth
wall would bring about.

“Who do you mean by ‘we’?” demanded Fallaray.

“Madame de Brézé and myself,” said Lytham.

“What! You ask me to believe that Madame de Brézé has come here with you
to persuade my wife to go back on her promise to set me free? What do
you take me for?” He laughed at the utter absurdity of the idea and in
doing so, broke the tension and the stiltedness of the scene, as he
realized that Feo had deliberately intended it to become. And then, with
a certain boyishness that went oddly with his monk-like face, he went
over to Lola and put his hand on her shoulder.

“All right,” he added. “Let’s have this out and come to a final
understanding. It will save all further arguments. Just before you
brought Lola here, having, as I can see, worked on her feelings by
talking about your party and telling her that her coming into my life
would ruin my career—I know your dogged enthusiasm, George—I saw my
wife. I put my case to her at once and she agreed very generously to
release me. A messenger will be here in ten minutes to take my statement
to her lawyers and my resignation to the Prime Minister. I shall return
to Chilton to-morrow to wait there, or wherever else it may suit me,
until the end of the divorce proceedings. You won’t agree with me, but
that is what I call doing the sane thing. Finally, all going well, as
please God it may, this lady and I will get married and live happily
ever after.”

He spoke lightly, even jauntily, but with an undercurrent of emotion
that it was impossible for him to disguise.

And then, to Feo’s complete amazement, Lola, who had been so quiet and
unobtrusive, rose and backed away from Fallaray, her face as white as
the stone figures at Chilton under moonlight, her hands clasped together
to give her strength, her eyes as dry as an empty well. She was bereft
of tears.

“But I am not going to marry you,” she said, “because if I do everything
will go badly.”

Fallaray sprang forward to take her in his arms and kiss her into love
and life and acquiescence, as he had done before,—once at the gate and
once again last night under the stars.

But she backed away and ranged herself with Lytham.

“I love Fallaray,” she said. “Fallaray the leader, the man who is
needed, the man who has made himself necessary. If I were to marry
Fallaray the deserter, there would be no such thing as happiness for me
or for him.”

Fallaray’s eager hands fell suddenly to his sides. The word that had
come to Lola as an inspiration, though it broke her heart to use it, hit
him like a well-aimed stone. Deserter!—A man who turned and ran, who
slunk away from the fight at its moment of crisis, who absconded from
duty in violation of all traditions of service, thinking of no one but
himself. Deserter! It was the right word, the damnable right word that
rears itself up for every man to read at the crossroads of life.—And he
stood looking at this girl who had brought him back to a momentary youth
through a glamor that gave way to the cold light of duty. His was a
pitiful figure, middle-aged, love-hungry, doomed to be sacrificed upon
the altar of public service.

Lytham didn’t rejoice at the sight, having sympathy and imagination.
Neither did Feo, who had just lost her own grasp upon a dream.

“Is it possible that you love me so much?” he asked.

And Lola said, “Yes, yes!”

It was on Lytham’s tongue to say, “My dear man, don’t you gather what I
mean by the ‘sane thing’? There’s no need to take this in the spirit of
a Knight Crusader. A little nest somewhere, discreetly guarded.”

And it was on Feo’s tongue to add, also completely modern, “Of course.
Why not? Isn’t it done every day? No one need know, and if it’s ever
found out, isn’t it the unwritten law to protect the reputations of
public men so long as there is no irate husband to stir up our
hypocritical moral sense by bringing the thing into the open?”

But neither spoke. There was something in the way in which Lola stood,
brave but trembling, that kept them silent; something in Fallaray’s
expression of adoration and respect that made them feel ashamed of their
materialism. They were ignorant of all that had gone to the making of
Lola’s apprenticeship to give that lonely man the rustle of silk, and of
the fact that he had grown to love this girl not as a mistress, but as a
wife.

And after a silence that held them breathless, Fallaray spoke again. “I
must be worthy of you, my little Lola,” he said, “and not desert. I will
go on with the glory of your love as a banner—and if I die first, I will
wait for you on the other side of the Bridge.”

“I will be faithful,” she said.

He held out his arms, and she rushed into them with a great cry, pressed
herself to his heart, and took her last living kiss.

“Till then,” said Fallaray finally, letting her go.

But nothing more came from Lola except a groping movement of her hands.

At the door, square of shoulder, Fallaray beckoned to Lytham and went
out and up to his room.

It was Feo who wept.



VI


Leaving his cubby-hole behind the screen and taking the inevitable glass
out of his eye, John Breezy waddled through the shop to the parlor to
enjoy a cup of tea. It was good to see the new brightness and daintiness
assumed by the whole of that little place since Lola had come back and
put her touch upon everything. It was good also to break away from the
mechanism of unhealthy watches for a quarter of an hour and get into
contact with humanity that was cheerful and well.

“Hurray!” he said, “what should I do without my cupper tea?”

With one eye on the shop door and the other on the teapot, Mrs. Breezy
presided at the chaotic table. The tea tray had cleared an opening among
the heterogeneous mass of accumulation. It was the ritual of week-day
afternoons, faithfully performed year in and year out,—and of late,
since Lola had been helping in the shop, more frequently interrupted
than ever before. Now that she had fallen into the steady habit of
sitting behind the counter near the window, business had perked up
noticeably and it was astonishing how many young men were discovering
the need of safety-razor blades, Waterman’s fountain pens, silver
cigarette cases, and the like. Was it astonishing?

“Nice weather for Lola’s afternoon off,” said Breezy, emptying his cup
into his saucer, cabman’s fashion. Tea cooled the sooner like that and
went down with a more succulent sound. “Hampton Court again?”

“Yes, dear,” replied Mrs. Breezy, “with Ernest. Wonderful how much
better he looks since Lola came back,—cleaner, more self-respecting. He
had another poem in the paper yesterday. Did you read it?”

“Um. I scanned it over. Pretty good coming from behind a face like that.
Somehow, I always think of a poet as a man with big eyes, a velvet coat,
hair all over his face, who was born with a dictionary in his hand.
Funny thing, breaking out in a lad like Ernest. Caused by the War,
p’raps. It’s left a lot of queer things behind it. He’d make more money
if he tried to turn out stories like Garvice wrote. I think I shall
speak to him about it and get him to be practical.”

“No, don’t,” said Mrs. Breezy, “you’d upset Lola. She believes in Ernest
and wants him to make a name.”

“What’s the good of a name without money? However, I won’t interfere.
You—you don’t suppose that Lola’s thinking of marrying that boy some
day, do you?” It was a most uncomfortable thought. His little girl must
do better than that.

Mrs. Breezy was silent for a moment and her face wore a look of the most
curious puzzlement.

“I don’t know what she thinks, John. To tell you the truth, dear, I
don’t know anything about her, and I never did. I don’t know why she
went to Dover Street or why she came back. She’s never told me and I’ve
never asked her. When I catch her face sometimes, I can see in it
something that makes my heart miss a beat. I can’t describe it. It may
be pain, it may be joy,—I don’t know. I can’t tell. But it isn’t regret
and it isn’t sorrow. It lights her up like, as though there was
something burning in her heart. John, our little girl’s miles away from
us, although she’s never been nearer. She dreams, I think, and walks in
another world with some one. We’ve got to be very kind to her, old man.
She’s—she’s a strange, strange child.”

Breezy pushed himself out of the sofa as a rather heavily laden boat is
oozed out of mud. He was irritable and perhaps a little frightened.

“I don’t find her strange,” he said. “Strange! What a word! She’s a good
girl, that’s what she is,—as open as a book, with nothing to hide. And
she’s our girl, and she’s doing her job without grumbling, and she’s
doubling the business. And what’s more, she’s cheerful and happy and
loving. I’m damned if I can see anything strange about her. You
certainly have a knack of saying queer things about Lola, one way ’n’
another, you have!” And he marched out of the parlor in a kind of fat
huff, only to march back again immediately to put his arm round the
little woman’s neck and give her an apologetic kiss. He was one of these
men who loved peace at any price and erected high barriers round himself
in order that he shouldn’t see anything to disturb his ease of mind. It
was the same form of brain anæmia, the same lack of moral courage from
which the Liberal Government had suffered in the face of the warning of
Lord Roberts. In other words, the policy of the ostrich. Knowing very
well that his wife had all the brains of the partnership and never said
anything for the mere sake of saying it, he was quite sure that she was
right as to Lola, and he had himself almost swallowed one of the little
screws that played so large a part in the interior of his watches on
seeing the look that Mrs. Breezy had described on the face of his little
girl as she sat perched up on a high stool waiting for the next
customer, with her eyes on something very far away. And because this
gave him a jar and frightened him a little, he persuaded himself that
what he had seen he had not seen, because it was uncomfortable to see
it. It is a form of mental dope and it suits all sorts of
constitutions,—like religion.

And so, blotting out of his mind the little conversation which had taken
place over the teapot, Breezy returned to his job, his fat hands working
on the intricate mechanisms of his Swiss and American invalids with
astonishing delicacy of touch; and all the while he whistled softly
through his teeth. He was never at a loss for a tune because the flotsam
and jetsam that came in and went out of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, with
their tired pianos, their squeaky fiddles, and their throaty baritones
provided him with all the sentimental ballads of yesterday and to-day.

It was seven o’clock when he looked up and saw Lola enter with Ernest
Treadwell,—the girl with a reflection of all the flowers of Hampton
Court in her eyes and the boy with love and adoration in his. It was
true that all about him there was a great improvement, a more healthy
appearance, a look of honest sleep and clean thinking. But he was still
the same ugly duckling with obstreperous hair and unfortunate teeth and
a half-precocious, half-timid manner. All the same, the fairies had
touched him at his birth and endowed him with that strange thing that is
called genius. He had the soul of a poet.

“Come up,” said Lola, “you’re not doing anything to-night, so you may as
well stay to dinner. I’ve found something I want to read to you.”

She waved her hand to her father, smiled at her mother who was selling
note-paper to a housemaid from Inverness Terrace for love letters—and so
the paper was pink—and led the way upstairs to the drawing-room which
had been opened up and put in daily use. Its Sabbath look and Sabbath
smell, its antimacassars had disappeared. There were books about, many
books; sevenpenny editions of novels that hadn’t fallen quite stillborn
from the press, and one or two by Wells and Lawrence and Somerset
Maugham.

“Sit down for a moment, Ernie,” she said, “and make yourself happy. I’ll
be with you again in five minutes.” And he looked after her with a dog’s
eyes and sat down to watch the door with a dog’s patience.

In her own room she went to her desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a
page cut from _The Tatler_ on which was reproduced a photograph of
Fallaray. She had framed it and kept it hidden away under lock and key,
and always when she came home from her walks, and several times a day
when she could slip up and shut herself in for a moment or two, she took
it out to gaze at it and press it to her breast. It was her last link,
her last and everlasting link with the foolish dreams with which that
room was so intimately associated,—a room no longer made up to represent
that of a courtesan; a normal room now, suitable to the daughter of a
watchmaker in Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

The evening sun gilded the commonplace line of the roofs opposite as she
stood in the window with Fallaray’s face against her heart.

“I love you,” she said, “I love you. I shall always love you, and if I
die first, I shall wait for you on the other side of the Bridge.”

She returned it to its hiding place, took off her hat, tidied her hair,
picked up a little book and went back to the drawing-room.

“Listen,” she said, “this is for you.

    “‘I shall see my way as birds their trackless way.
    I shall arrive,—what time, what circuit first,
    I ask not; but unless God send His hail
    Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
    In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;
    He guides me and the bird. In His good time.’”

And as the boy watched her and saw her light up as though there were
something burning in her heart, he knew that those lines were as much
for herself as for him.

THE END


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