"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 Breze 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 Breze-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 G.o.ds!" 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 d.a.m.ned," 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 st.i.tch. 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 G.o.d!
But to Lytham, who knew Lola as Madame de Breze, 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 att.i.tude of Lola"s was all nonsense, of course. She had caught Fallaray with her extraordinary s.e.xiness 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 surrept.i.tious 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 Breze, 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.