The Rustle of Silk
she did things on the spur of an impulse, by inspiration, or she dropped
them, like the shells of nuts.
In spite of this uncanny idea, Mrs. Breezy loved her little girl,
adopted though she seemed to be, and constant anxiety ran through her
heart like a thread behind a needle. If any man had spoken to _her_ on
the street, she would have screamed or called a policeman. She certainly
would have been immediately covered with goose flesh. Beyond that, if
she had ever discovered that she had been born with the power to stir
the feelings of men at first sight, as music stirs the emotions of an
audience or wind the surface of water, she would have been tempted to
have turned Catholic and taken the veil.
Not an evening went by, therefore, that did not find Mrs. Breezy on the
step of the shop in Queen's Road, Bayswater, looking anxiously up and
down for the appearance of Lola among the heterogeneous crowd which
infested that street. Always she expected to see at her side a man,
perhaps _the_ man who would take her child away. She had her worries,
poor little woman, more perhaps than most mothers.
That evening, the light reluctant to leave the sky, Spring's hand upon
the city trees, Lola did bring some one home,--a woman.
III
Miss Breezy, sister of John, made a point of spending every Thursday
evening at the neat and gleaming shop in Queen's Road. It was her night
off. Sometimes she turned up with tickets for the theater given to her
by the great lady to whom she acted as housekeeper, sometimes to a
concert and once or twice during the season for the opera. If there were
only two tickets, it was always Lola who enjoyed the other. Mr. and Mrs.
Breezy were contented to hear the child's account of what they gladly
missed on her behalf. Frequently they got more from the girl's
description than they would have received had they used the tickets
themselves.
It was this woman who unconsciously had made Fallaray the hero of Lola's
dreams. She had brought all the latest gossip from the Fallaray house in
which she had served since that strange wedding ten years before, when
the son of the Minister for Education, himself in the House of Commons,
had gone in a sort of trance to St. Margaret's, Westminster, and come
out of it surprised to find himself married to the eldest daughter of
the Marquis of Amesbury,--the brilliant, beautiful, harum-scarum member
of a pre-war set that had given England many rude shocks, stepped over
all the conventions of an already careless age and done "stunts" which
sent a thrill of horror and amazement all through the body of the old
British Lion; a set whose cynicism, egotism, perversion, hobnobbing with
political enemies, manufacture of erotic poetry and ribald jests had
spread like an epidemic.
Miss Breezy, whose Christian name was Hannah, as well it might be,
entered in great excitement. "Have you seen the paper?" she asked,
giving her sister-in-law peck to the watchmaker's wife. "Mr. Fallaray's
declared himself against reprisals. He's condemned the methods of the
Black and Tans. They yelled at him in the House this afternoon and
called him Sinn Feiner. Just think of that! If any other man had done
it, I mean any other Minister, Lloyd George could have afforded to
smile. But Mr. Fallaray! It may kill the coalition government, and then
what will happen?"
All this was given out in the shop itself, luckily empty of customers.
"Woo," said John. "Good gracious me," said Mrs. Breezy. "Just as I
expected," said Lola, and she entered the parlor and threw her books
into a corner and perched herself on the table, swinging her legs.
"'Just as you expected?' What do you know about it all, pray?" Miss
Breezy regarded the girl with the irritation that goes with those who
forget that little pitchers have ears. She also forgot that the question
of Ireland, of little real importance among all the world's troubles,
was being forced into daily and even hourly notice by brutal murders and
by equally brutal reprisals and that England was, at that moment, racked
from end to end with passionate resentment and anger with which even
children were tainted.
And Lola laughed,--that ripple of laughter which had made so many men
stand rooted to their shoes after having had the temerity to speak to
her on the spur of the moment, or after many manoeuverings. "What I know
of Mr. Fallaray," she said, "you've taught me. I read the papers for the
rest." And she heaved an enormous sigh and seemed to leave her body and
fly out like a homing pigeon.
"Don't say anything more until I come back," cried Mrs. Breezy, rapping
her energetic heels on the floor on the way out to close the shop.
Beamingly important, the bearer of back-stairs gossip, Miss Breezy
removed her coat,--one of those curious garments which seem to be made
especially for elderly spinsters and are worn by them proudly as a
uniform and with the certain knowledge that everybody can see that they
have gone through life in single blessedness, dependent neither for
happiness nor livelihood on a mere man.
John Breezy, who had lost all suggestion of his French ancestry and
spoke English with the ripest Bayswater, removed his apron. He liked, it
is true, to remember his Huguenot grandfather and from time to time
indulged in Latin gestures, but when he ventured into a few words of
French his accent was atrocious. "Mong Doo," he said, therefore, and
shrugged his fat shoulders almost up to his ears. He had no sympathy
with the Irish. He considered that they were screaming fanatics,
handicapped by a form of diseased egotism and colossal ignorance which
could not be dealt with in any reasonable manner. He belonged to the
school of thought, led by the _Morning Post_, which would dearly like to
put an enormous charge of T. N. T. under the whole island and blow it
sky high. "Of course you buck a good deal about your Fallaray," he said
to his sister, "that's natural. You take his money and you live on his
food. But I think he's a weakling. He's only making things more
difficult. I wish to God I was in the House of Commons. I'd show 'em
what to do to Ireland."
There was a burst of laughter from Lola who jumped off the table and
threw her arms around her father's neck. "How wonderful you are, Daddy,"
she said. "A regular old John Bull!"
Returning before anything further could be said, Mrs. Breezy shut the
parlor door and made herself extremely comfortable to hear the latest
from behind the scenes. It was very wonderful to possess a sister-in-law
who regularly, once a week, came into that dull backwater with the sort
of thing that never got into the papers and who was able to bandy great
names about without turning a hair. "Now, then, Hannah, let's have it
all from the beginning and please, John, don't interrupt." She would
have liked to have added, "Please, Lola," too, but knew better.
Then it was that Miss Breezy settled henwise among the cushions on the
sofa and let herself go. It was a good thing for her that her family was
unacquainted with any of those unscrupulous illiterates who wrote the
chit-chat in the _Daily Mirror_.
"It was last night that I knew about all this," she said. "I went in to
see Lady Feo about engaging a new personal maid. Her great friend was
there,--Mrs. Malwood, who was Lady Glayburgh in the first year of the
War, Lady Pytchley in the second, Mrs. Graham Macoover in the third,
married Mr. Aubrey Malwood in the fourth and still has him on her hands.
I was kept waiting while they finished their talk. Mrs. Malwood had to
hurry home because she was taking part in the theatricals at the
Eastminsters. I heard Lady Feo say that Mr. Fallaray had decided to
throw his bomb in the House this afternoon. She was frightfully excited.
She said she didn't give a damn about the Irish question--and I wish she
didn't speak like that--but that it would be great fun to have a general
election to brighten things up and give her a chance to win some money.
I don't know how Lady Feo knew that her husband had decided to take this
step, because they never meet and I don't believe he ever tells her
anything that he has on his mind. I shouldn't be surprised if she got it
from Mr. Fallaray's secretary. I've seen them whispering in corners
lately and once she starts her tricks on any man, good-by loyalty. My
word, but she's a wonderful woman. A perfect devil but very kind to me.
I've no grumbles. If we do have a general election, and I hope to
goodness we don't, there's only one man to be Prime Minister, and that's
Mr. Fallaray. But there's no chance of it. All the Prime Minister's
newspapers are against him, and all his jackals, and he has more enemies
than any man in the Cabinet, and not a soul to back him up. Office means
too much to them all and they're all in terror of being defeated in the
country. He's the loneliest man in the whole of London and one of the
greatest. That's what I say. I've been with the family ten years and
there are things I like about Lady Feo, for all her rottenness. But I
know this. If she'd been a good wife to that man and had given him a
home to come back to and the love that he needs and two or three
children to romp with even for half an hour a day, there'd be a very
much better chance for England in this mess than there is at present."
Stopping for breath, she looked up and caught the eyes of the girl whose
face had flushed at the sight of the picture on the cover of the
magazine. They were filled with something that startled her, something
in which there was so great a passion that it threw a hot dart at her
spinsterhood and left her rattled and confused.
IV
Miss Breezy was to receive another shock that evening.
It happened that several neighbors came in unexpectedly and stayed to
play cards. It was necessary, therefore, to adjourn from the cosy little
parlor behind the shop and go up to the drawing-room on the second
floor,--a stiff uncomfortable room used only on Sundays and when the
family definitely entertained. It smelt of furniture polish, cake and
antimacassars. Lola had no patience with cards and helped her mother to
make coffee and sandwiches. Miss Breezy, who clung to certain old
shibboleths with the pathetic persistence of a limpet, regarded a pack
of cards as the instrument of the devil. Besides, she resented the
intrusion of every one who put her out of the limelight. Her weekly orgy
of talk emptied the cistern of her brain.
She suspected something out of the way when Lola suddenly jumped on the
sofa like an Angora kitten, snuggled up and began to purr at her side,
saying how nice it was to see her, how terribly they would miss her
visits, and how well-informed she was. The little head pressed against
her bosom was not uncomforting to the childless woman. The warm arm
clasped about her shoulder flattered her vanity. But this display of
affection was unusual. It drew from her a rather shrewd question. "Well,
my dear, and what do you want to get out of me? I know you. This is
cupboard love."
She won a gleam of teeth and a twinkle of congratulation from those
wide-apart eyes. "How clever you are, Auntie. But it isn't cupboard
love, at least not quite. I want to consult you about my future because
you're so sensible and wise."
"Your future.--Your future is to get married and have babies. That was
marked out for you before you began to talk. I never saw such a
collection of dolls in a little girl's room in all my life. A born
mother, my dear, that's what you are. I hope to goodness you have the
luck to find the right sort of man in your own walk of life."
Lola shook her head and snuggled a little closer, putting her lips to
the spinster's ear. "There's plenty of time for that," she said. "And,
anyway, the right man for me won't be in my own walk of life, as you
call it."