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 circ.u.mstances.
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 pa.s.sion 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, G.o.d, 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 rea.s.suring 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 pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s 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 sh.e.l.l; 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 pa.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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-gla.s.s and cuts his own hair with a pair of gra.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 n.o.ble Lord, had done good and bad things too, like the rest of us,-good because his heart was kind, and bad from force of circ.u.mstances. 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 gla.s.ses 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."