"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 Even the night birds had given up hope and withdrawn to their various nests.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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.s, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sers-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 const.i.tuency 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 cla.s.s 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 rehea.r.s.ed for her eventual debut,-the form of which was on the knees of the G.o.ds. 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 c.o.c.kney 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 cla.s.s. 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 b.u.t.ting in and standing with his head craned forward as if to meet the invitation halfway. So she said, as cool as a cuc.u.mber, "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 Sat.u.r.day.
"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 amus.e.m.e.nt.
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.