The Rustle of Silk
"No," said Lola. "Not in the least true. I discussed it with my aunt. In
fact, to be quite honest, I put it to her head like a pistol."
"Oh, I see." Simpkins heaved a sigh of relief. If Lola were to go on the
stage,--and all these young officers buzzing about, treating marriage as
though it were a betting transaction----
"I think," said Lola with naive gravity, "that it's better to play a
leading part in life than to be in the chorus on the stage. Cleverer
acting is required, too, don't you think so?"
A leading part in life? Simpkins was worried. Would she consider the
wife of a man who owned the "Black Bell" at Wargrave to be a leading
part? "You're not ambitious, are yer?" he asked, peering at her
patrician profile.
"Oh," she said, "Oh," and suddenly threw out her hands.
And then the lights went out and the buzz of talking ceased gradually as
though bees were retiring in platoons from a feeding place.
IV
They walked to Trafalgar Square. Lola was still in the old garden of
Miss Nell among the Creoles and the music of the Mardi Gras frolickers.
She had no ears for the expert criticisms of her escort. There were
plenty of unoccupied taxis scouting for fares but Lola pulled up under
the shadow of the National Gallery to watch the big play of life for a
moment or two. From force of a habit which she had not yet conquered,
she looked up at the sky, half expecting to see the great white beams of
searchlights swing and stammer until they focussed upon something that
looked like a silver fish, and then to twinge under the quick reports of
anti-aircraft guns. Twice during the War she had been caught on that
spot during a raid and had stood transfixed to the pavement between
fright and a keen desire to see the show. Memories of those
never-to-be-forgotten incidents, small as they were and of no
consequence in the story of the War--the loss of a few well-fed
noncombatants who made themselves targets for stray shrapnel because
they wouldn't dip like rabbits into funk holes--came back to her then,
as well they might. The War's evidences forced themselves every day upon
the notice even of those who desired to forget,--the processions of
unemployed with their rattling collection boxes among the ugliest of
them all.
Big Ben struck the quarter and Lola returned to earth. "Simpky," she
said, "cab, quick." And he called one and gave the address. And then she
began again to hear what the valet was saying. He had used up Miss Nell
o' New Orleans and had come to Miss Lola of Queen's Road, Bayswater.
"Look 'ere, can't we do this often, you and me? We can always sneak off
when there's a dinner on or Lady Feo's out in the push. It don't cost
much and I've got plenty of money."
"I should like to very much," said Lola. "Once a fortnight, say. You
see, I go home every Wednesday night. I don't think we ought to do it
more often than once a fortnight because, after all, I feel rather
responsible to Auntie and I don't want to set a bad example to the other
girls."
"Well, promise you won't go out with the other men. I let you into the
'ouse first, don't forget that, and that was a sort of omen to me and if
you could bring yourself to look upon me as--well----" He broke off
nervously and ran his hand over his forehead, which was damp with
excitement.
But Lola was not in the least nonplussed. She had had so much practice.
She was an expert in mentally making all sorts and conditions of men her
brothers. She said, "Simpky,"--although the man looked extremely
un-Russian,--"you mustn't spoil me. Also you must remember that Ellen
Glazeby has hopes. She's a friend of mine."
"Oh, my God," said Simpkins, with a touch of melodrama. "If I'd been
engaged to 'er and on the verge of marriage, and then 'ad seen you,--or
even if I'd been married for a couple of years and was 'appy and 'ad
seen you----Religious as I am----"
Lola turned to him with extreme simplicity. "But I'm a good girl,
Simpky," she said.
And he gave a funny throaty sound, like a frog at night with its feet in
water; and one of his hands fluttered out and caught hold of the end of
Lola's piece of fur, and this he pressed to his lips. "Oh, my God," he
said again, words failing.
And so Lola was rather glad when the cab drew up at the house in Dover
Street.
A car arrived at the same time and honked impatiently and imperiously.
Simpkins leapt from the taxi and said, "Pull out of the way, quick." It
did so. And as Lola descended and stood at the top of the area steps,
she saw Fallaray go slowly up to the front door with rounded shoulders,
as though he were Atlas with the weight of the world on his back. He was
followed by a man whose step was light and eager.
V
It was George Lytham.
The editor of a new weekly called _Reconstruction_ which had not as yet
done more than take its place among all those elder brothers on the
bookstalls which were suffering from a combination of hardening of the
arteries and shrinkage of the exchequer, Lytham was a live wire, a man
who could make mistakes, eat his own words, and having gone halfway up
the wrong road, turn around without giving a curse for what other men
would call dignity and retrace his steps at a run. Eton and Balliol, he
had been a wet-bob, had a chest like a prize fighter and a forearm as
hard as a cricket bat. The third son of old Lord Lockinge, he had sat in
the House as member for one of those agricultural constituencies which
are too dull and scattered to attract Radical propagandists and nearly
always plump for Unionism. He had quickly made his mark. _Punch_ drew
him in rowing shorts after his maiden speech and the Northcliff press
made a point of referring to him as Young Lochinvar. But he had chucked
the House in disgust after two years of it, one year of enormous
enthusiasm during which he had worked like a dog and another year of
sickly pessimism and disillusion brought about by contact with a set of
political crows who fluttered over the carcass of
England,--traditionless, illiterate, dishonest, of low minds and low
accents, led by the Old Bad Men who had inherited the right or tricked
their way to the front benches and had all died before the War but were
still living and still clinging to office. He owed allegiance to no
leader and had started _Reconstruction_, backed with the money of the
great mine owners and merchants who should have been members of the
Cabinet, for the purpose of cleaning out the Augean stables. He numbered
among his contributors every political free-thinker in
England,--ex-members of Parliament, ex-war correspondents who spoke with
horror of brass hats, and men who had served in all capacities in the
War and were, for that reason, determined to remove the frightful burden
of taxation caused by the maintenance of a great war machine for the
indulgence of escapades in Mesopotamia and Ireland.
Lytham was young,--not yet thirty-five; unmarried, so that his purpose
was single, his time his own. His paper was his wife and he was out for
blood,--not with a bludgeon, not with a gun, but with an intellect
which, supported by other intellects, alone provided some hope for the
future of England and the Human Family. He had fastened upon Fallaray
and dogged his heels. He regarded him as a brother, was ready to back
him through thick and thin and had come home with him that night to
discuss one or two of the great questions of the moment and to make
plans for quick functioning.
When Fallaray led the way into his den and turned up the lights--all of
them, so that there should be no shadows in the room and no
ghosts--Lytham took his place with his back to the fire, standing in the
frame of black oak like the picture of a crusader who had left his armor
at home; he liked that room for its size and simplicity and tradition,
its books and prints and unashamed early-Victorianism. He was as tall as
Fallaray but not as thin and did not look as though the fires of his
soul had burnt him down to the bone. His hair was brown and crisp and
short, his moustache small, his nose straight and his eyes large and
full of humor and irony. Except for his mouth there was nothing
sensitive in his face and the only sign of restlessness that he
permitted himself to show was in his habit of lighting one cigarette
from the butt of another just finished,--the cheapest stinkers that were
on the market and which had been smoked by the men of the regiment to
which he had been attached from the beginning to the end of the
War,--fags, in other words. His holder was far too long for the comfort
of people who stood too close.
"Now, Fallaray," he said, "let's get down to it."
Fallaray sat on the edge of his desk which he gripped tight with both
his hands. "I'm ready," he answered.
"The point is this. You have come out against reprisals, which means
that you have dared to voice the overwhelming sentiment of the country
at a moment when the Government has plumped for whole hoggism and given
Sinn Fein its finest advertisement. So far so good. But this is only the
beginning. To carry the thing on to its right conclusion, you must not
only resign from the Cabinet but you must lead us to an immediate
settlement of the Irish question. You must organize all that section of
British opinion and American opinion--which counts for so much--and work
for the overthrow of the coalition government. Will you do it?"
"Of course."
"Ah!"
"But wait a second. Here we are marching with France into Germany,
occupying towns for the purpose of wringing out of these whimpering
liars the fruits of victory which they say they cannot pay and which
they may not be able to pay. Already the fires of Bolshevism are
breaking out everywhere as a result. Are we to put the Irish question
before one that is surrounded with the most amazing threads of
difficulty and may lead to the death of Europe? In other words, my dear
Lytham, is murder and arson in one small island of greater importance to
the world at this moment than the possibility of a new and even more
terrible war in Europe, with disease and famine following at its heels?
The men I have served with during the last war say 'no.' They have even
gone so far as to dine here to-night with my wife to try and get her to
move me out of what they call my rut,--to persuade me, because they have
failed to do so, to shelve the Irish question and back up France in her
perfectly righteous demand for reparations. I can't make up my mind
whether I will see this German question through, or swing body and soul
to the Irish question and handicap them in this new crisis. If you've
got anything to say, for God's sake, say it."
For a moment Lytham had nothing to say. It did seem to him, as he stood
there in that quiet room with all its books and with hardly a sound
coming in from the street below, that the troubles of that green and
egotistical island melted away before those which did not affect merely
England and France and Germany, Austria, Russia, Poland, Belgium but
America also. It did seem to him that the murder of a few Britishers, a
handful of loyal Irishmen and the reprisals of the Black and Tans for
cowardly ambushes, brutally carried out, were in the nature of a side
show in a circus of shows, of a small family quarrel in a city of
families who were up against a frightful epidemic,--and he didn't know
what to say.
The two men looked into each other's eyes, searched each other's hearts
and waited, listening, for an inspiration,--from God probably, whose
children had become strangely out of hand.
Thus they stood, silent and without a sign, as others were
standing,--bewildered, embarrassed, groping.
And then the door was flung open.
VI
Feo Fallaray's ideas of evening clothes were curious. Her smock-frock,