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 pa.s.sion 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 Breze and myself," said Lytham.
"What! You ask me to believe that Madame de Breze 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 G.o.d 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 un.o.btrusive, 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 d.a.m.nable 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 ma.s.s of acc.u.mulation. 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.