The Rustle of Silk
and forget the falsity and the appalling ineptitude of his brother
Ministers. The photographs had indicated very well the beauty of this
scene but the sight of it in the life, all green in the first flush of
spring, brought a sob to Lola's throat. Once more the feeling came all
over her that it would be at Chilton Park that she would meet Fallaray
at last alone and discover her love to him,--not as lady's maid but as
the little human thing, the Eve.
She sat shoulder to shoulder with the groom opposite to Mrs. Malwood's
maid,--Dowth, Macquarie and Mrs. Malwood in close juxtaposition. But she
had no ears for their conversation. As the village approached, not one
single feature of it escaped her eager eyes,--its wide cobbled street,
its warm Queen Anne houses, its old-fashioned shops, its Red Lion and
Royal George and Black Bull, its funny little post office up three
stairs, its doctor's house all covered with creeper, its ancient church
sitting hen-wise among her children. It seemed to her that all these
things, old and quiet and honest, had gone to the making of Fallaray's
character; that he belonged to them and was part of them and represented
them; and it gave her a curious feeling of being let into Fallaray's
secrets as she went along.
From time to time people hatted Lady Feo and one or two old women,
riddled with rheumatism, bobbed--not because of any sense of serfdom,
but because they liked to do so--a pleasant though inverted sense of
egotism which is at the bottom of all tradition. Rip Van Winkle saluted
every one with his whip; the butchers--and there were several, although
meat was still one of the luxuries--the landlords of the public houses
who were not so fat as they used to be before the War, the vicar, a high
churchman with an astonishingly low collar, and the usual comic person
who invariably retires to such villages, lives in a workman's cottage
among the remnants of passed glory and talks to any one who will listen
to him of the good old days when he tooled his team of spanking bays and
hobnobbed in London, when society really _was_ society, with men of
famous names and ladies of well-known frailty. This particular
gentleman, Augustus Warburgh, pronounced Warborough, made himself up to
look like Whistler and wore the sort of clothes which would have
appealed greatly to a character actor. What he lived on no one knew. One
or two people with nasty minds were convinced that his small income was
derived from blackmail,--probably a most pernicious piece of libel. On
his few pounds a week, however, he did himself extremely well and lived
alone in a four-room cottage as antediluvian as himself, in which there
were some very charming pieces of Jacobean furniture, a collection of
excellent sporting prints and numerous books all well-thumbed, "Barry
Lyndon" being the most favored.
In this little place, with its old beams and uneven floors of oak,
Augustus Warburgh "did" for himself, cooking his own meals, making his
own bed and bringing home from his occasional trips to London mysterious
bottles filled with delicatessen from Appenrodts, amazing pickles and an
occasional case of unblended Balblair which he got from a relative of
his who owned half of the isle of Skye. Nips of this glorious but
dangerous juice he offered to his cronies in his expansive moods and
delighted in seeing them immediately slide under his table with the
expression worn by Charlie Chaplin after he has been plumped on the head
with a meat axe. Needless to say that he and Rip Van Winkle got along
together like a house on fire. They talked the same language, enjoyed
the same highly spiced food, dipped back into the same period and had
inevitably done the same people. The Warburgh bow as the brake passed in
the High Street was not Albertian but Elizabethan.
Feo laughed as she waved her hand. "When he dies," she said, "and I
don't think he ever will, Princes Risborough will lose one of its most
beautiful notes,--like London when they did away with Jimmies. Not that
I remember Jimmies, except from what you've told me about it. Let's have
him up to dinner one night and make him drunk."
"You can't," said Lord Amesbury. "It's impossible. There is a hole in
every one of the soles of his shoes through which all the fumes of
alcohol leak. You can stew him, you can pickle him, you can float him,
but you cannot sink him. When everybody else is down and out, that is
the time when Augustus takes the floor and rises to the eloquence and
vitriolic power of Dr. Johnson.--Tell me, Feo, who is that remarkable
child that you have got in tow?"
"My maid, you mean? She's the niece of my old Breezy. Isn't she
charming? Such an honest little soul too. Does her job with the most
utter neatness and nicety of touch and listens excellently. I rescued
her from the stage,--I mean, of course, the chorus. A good deed in a
naughty world." That's how she liked to put it, her memory being a
little hazy. "I don't know what will become of her. Of course, she can't
be my maid forever. Judging from the way in which my male friends look
at her whenever they get the chance, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if
one of these days she eloped with a duke. It would fill me with joy to
meet her in her husband's ancestral home all covered with the family
jewels and do my best to win a gracious smile. Or else she'll marry
Simpkins, who is, I hear, frightfully mashed on her, and retire to a
village pub, there to imitate the domestic cat and litter the world with
kittens. I dunno. Anything may happen to a girl like that. But whatever
it is, it will be one of these two extremes. I hate to think about it
because I like her. It's very nice to have her about me."
Rip Van Winkle smiled. "To parody a joke in last week's _La Vie
Parisienne_, I am not so old as I look, my dear."
"You dare," said Feo. But she laughed too. "Good Lord, Father, don't go
and do a thing like that. If I had to call that girl Mother, I think
that even my sense of humor would crack."
"A little joke, Feo," said Rip. "Nothing more. I can't even keep myself,
you see."
Whereupon, having left the village, the brake turned into the road that
ran up to Whitecross at an angle of forty-five. The old man slowed the
horses down to a walk and waved his whip towards the screen of trees
which hid Chilton Park from the public gaze. "It's been a wonderful
spring," he said. "I have watched it with infinite pleasure. It has
filled my old brain with poetry and very possibly with regrets. All the
same, I'm glad you have come down. I've been rather lonely here. The
evenings are long and ghosts have a knack of coming out and standing
round my chair.--How is Edmund? I regret that I have forgotten to ask
you about him before. One somehow always forgets to ask about Edmund,
although I see that he is regarded by George Lytham and his crowd as the
new Messiah."
Feo laughed again, showing all her wonderful teeth. "I had a quaint few
minutes with Edmund the other night on the steps of Langham Hall. He had
taken his mother and Aunt Betsy to a symphony concert. Do you know, I
rather think that George is right about Edmund? He has all the makings
of a Messiah and of course all the opportunities. I shouldn't be a bit
surprised if he emerged from the present generation of second-raters and
led England out of its morass. But he'll only achieve this if he
continues to remain untouched by any feminine hand. Of course, he's
absolutely safe so far as I'm concerned, but there was a most peculiar
look in his face the other night which startled me somewhat. I thought
he'd fallen in love with me,--which would have been most inconvenient.
But I was wrong.--Well, here we are at the old homestead. How it reeks
of Fallaray and worthiness."
III
But the party was not a success. Very shortly after lunch, during which
Feo and Mrs. Malwood had put in good work in an unprecedented attempt to
charm their new acquisitions, they all adjourned to the terrace,--that
wonderful old terrace of weather-beaten stone giving on to a wide view
of an Italian garden backed by a panorama of rolling hills and of the
famous beech forest ten miles deep, under which, in certain parts,
especially in the Icknield Way through which the Romans had passed, the
leaves of immemorial summers, all red and dry, lay twenty feet deep.
Gilbert Jermyn, Feo's brother, had dashed over on his motor bicycle from
Great Marlow where he was staying with several friends, ex-flying men
like himself and equally devoid of cash, trying to formulate some scheme
whereby they might get back into adventure once more. Lord Amesbury had
gone down to a pet place of his own to take a nap in the long grass with
the sun on his face. Feo, who had been dancing until five o'clock that
morning, was lying full stretch on a dozen cushions in the shadow of the
house, Macquarie in attendance. Mrs. Malwood, petulant and disgruntled,
was sitting near by with David Dowth. Gilbert Jermyn, who could see that
he was superfluous, sat by himself on the balustrade gazing into the
distance. His clean-cut face was heavy with despondency. He had
forgotten to light his cigarette.
"You're about the liveliest undertaker I've ever struck," said Feo.
"What the deuce is the matter with you?"
Macquarie shrugged his shoulders,--his girlishly cut coat with its tight
waist and tight sleeves crinkling as he did so. "Oh, my dear," he said,
"it's no good your expecting anything from me to-day. Under the
circumstances it's impossible for me to scintillate."
"What do you mean?" asked Feo roughly. She had ordered this man down in
her royal way, being rather taken with his tallness, youngness and
smoothness, and demanded scintillation.
"But look at the position! I hate to be mercenary and talk about money,
but you know, my dear thing, almost every bob I've got is invested in
the three musical comedies now running, and if things go on as they are,
every one of them will be shut down because of the coal strike. That's a
jolly nice lookout. I'm no Spartan, and I confess that I find it very
difficult to be merry and bright among the gravestones of my hopes."
And while he went on like that, dropping in many "my dears" and "you
dear things" as though he had known Feo all his life, instead of more or
less for twenty minutes, making gestures in imitation of those of the
spoilt small-part lady, Lord Amesbury's daughter and Fallaray's wife
became gradually more and more aware of the fact that she had made a
fool of herself. There was something broadly declasse about this man
which, even to one of her homogeneous nature, became a reproach. She was
getting, she could see, a little careless in her choice of friends and
for this one, whom she had picked out of semi-society and the musical
comedy night life of London--so dull, so naked, so hungry and thirsty
and so diamond seeking--to play the yellow dog and find excuses for his
lack of entertainment left her, she found with astonishment, wholly
without adjectives. It was indeed altogether beyond words. And she sat
watching and listening to this vain and brainless person with a sort of
admiration for his audacity.
As for Dowth and Mrs. Malwood they, too, were not hitting it off, and in
reply to Mrs. Malwood's impatient question the young Welshman's answer
had many points of excuse. "Three of my mines have been flooded," he
said gravely, "which knocks my future income all cock-eyed. God knows
how I shall emerge from this frightful business. A week ago I was one of
the richest men in England. To-day I face pauperism. It's appalling. You
expect me to sit at your feet and make love to you with the sword of
Damocles hanging over my head. It can't be done, Mrs. Malwood. And, mind
you, even if the remainder of my mines escape ruin, I go under. That's