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   :PG.Id: 35079
   :PG.Title: The Rustle of Silk
   :PG.Released: 2011-01-25
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Roger Frank
   :PG.Producer: the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
   :DC.Creator: Cosmo Hamilton
   :DC.Title: The Rustle of Silk
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1922
   :coverpage: images/cover.jpg
   
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The Rustle of Silk
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      Title: The Rustle of Silk
      
      Author: Cosmo Hamilton
      
      Release Date: January 25, 2011 [EBook #35079]
      
      Language: English
      
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   Betty Compson and Conway Tearle
    
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   :xl:`THE RUSTLE OF SILK`

   BY

   :l:`COSMO HAMILTON`
   
   |

   Author of `Scandal`, Etc.
   
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   |
   |

   GROSSET & DUNLAP

   Made in the United States of America

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   |
   |
   | Copyright, 1922,
   | By Cosmo Hamilton.
   | All rights reserved
   |
   | Published April, 1922
   | Reprinted April, 1922 (twice)
   | Reprinted June, 1922
   | Reprinted July, 1922
   |
   | :s:`Printed in the United States of America`

.. contents:: Contents
   :backlinks: entry
   :depth: 1

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.

.. figure:: images/illus-268.jpg
   :align: center

   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.

.. figure:: images/illus-076.jpg
   :align: center

   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.”

.. figure:: images/illus-204.jpg
   :align: center

   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,
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.. vspace:: 5

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