"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 Breze, de Breze,-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; w.i.l.l.y 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 appet.i.tes.
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 metier 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 Breze, 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 Breze," 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."