The Rustle of Silk
Lola held out her hand. "Nowhere else. I'm walking. A thousand thanks.
Seven-thirty, the Carlton then."
And once more Chalfont saluted, not as though to a company of boy scouts
but to a queen.
And when he had gone, Lola heaved a great big sigh and put the roses to
her heart. If they had come from Chilton Park--if Fallaray had cut them
for her--If.
PART V
I
Fallaray had been lunching with George Lytham at his rooms in the
Albany. There had been half a dozen of the men who backed
_Reconstruction_ to meet him. From one o'clock until three every one of
the numerous troubles which affected England had been discussed and
argued about,--disarmament, unemployment, the triple alliance,
Mesopotamia, Indian unrest, the inevitable Ireland, the German chicanery
and the hot-tempered attitude of France in the matter of Ruhr; and, as
though with an impish desire to invent new troubles, George Lytham had
brought up the subject of Bolshevism in the universities. Every one of
the men present had, of course, his own pet solution to these questions,
and as usual, argument had run about like a terrier out for a
walk,--backwards and forwards and in circles. Finally, with his head in
a whirl, Fallaray had broken up the party to go along to the House. He
was down to answer questions from the critics of the Government, and,
according to his custom, to dodge the truth as far as he could. He
walked out into Piccadilly with his host and together these two tall
men, who were giving themselves up to an apparently abortive attempt to
put together again the peace of the world--deliberately and ruthlessly
smashed by the country which now whined and squealed and cried out
excuses while it hid money and machine guns in secret places--made for
Westminster arm in arm.
"Where's your car?" asked young Lochinvar.
"I gave it up," said Fallaray. "The sight of our unemployed going about
in processions made the keeping of a car grotesque. I've tried to cut
down in every other way too. If I were a bachelor, I would let the house
in Dover Street, go and live in two rooms and give the money I thus
saved to the fund for out-of-work soldiers. I can't do that. There's
Feo."
Lytham nodded and said to himself, "Yes, there's Feo and her old scamp
of a father and Gilbert Jermyn,--with nothing back from any of them, not
even gratitude." If he had stood in Fallaray's shoes he would long since
have brought an action for divorce against that woman and gone in quest
of a girl who understood the rudimentary rules of sportsmanship and the
art of give and take. He held in utter contempt the old adage that
having made your bed it is necessary to lie upon it. What bosh that was.
Wasn't the town full of beds of every size and price? Sometimes, when he
thought of the way in which Fallaray permitted himself to be run and
worked and milked and used by his so-called wife and her family, by the
Government, by all sorts of societies and even by himself, a huge
impatience swept over him and he wanted to cry out, "Fallaray, for God's
sake, kick somebody. Don't be so damned fair. Give a little
consideration to yourself. Don't always look at everything from
everybody else's point of view. Be selfish for a change."
And yet, all the while, different as he was from Fallaray in nature and
character--with that strong streak of ruthlessness which permitted him
to climb over the bodies of his opponents--Lytham loved Fallaray and
would willingly have blacked his boots. There were moments when, looking
into the eyes of his friend, he saw behind them a spirit as pure, as
unselfish and as merciful as that of Christ, and he stood back, almost
in awe. It was all the more galling, therefore, to see his friend hipped
and hedged in by the rotten tricks of his party, by the quick shifting
changes of his chief and by the heavy blundering of the other old bad
men. How could he stand it? Why didn't he give it all up, get out, try
and find a corner of the earth where people didn't quarrel and
cheat,--and fall in love. He needed, no man more so, the "rustle of
silk."
Fallaray was on his own chain of thought. "Hookwood's line about the
Irish leaders," he said suddenly, "if based on any truth, makes
negotiations with them futile. They have got a great deal of American
money in their possession,--every Irish servant girl in the United
States has been forced by the priests to subscribe to the Sinn Fein
funds. We know that. But if, as Hookwood says, the Irish Republican
leaders are afraid of an inquiry as to how they have spent or misspent
these funds, it stands to reason that they will continue to fight tooth
and nail for something which they know they can never get. It's the only
way in which they can maintain a barrier between themselves and disgrace
and that brings us back to the beginning. Robert Cecil, Lord Derby,
Horace Plunkett, Philip Gibbs and all the rest of us may just as well
toss up the sponge. Don't you think so, Lytham?"
"Oh, God," said Lytham, "I'm sick of the Irish. The mere mention of the
name gives me jaundice. A rabble of egomaniacs led by a set of crooks
and gunmen who are no longer blessed by the Roman Catholic Church."
After which, as this was certainly a conversation stop, there was
silence. They walked down St. James's Street into the Mall, through the
Horse Guard's parade to Parliament Street and so to the courtyard of the
House of Commons. The undercurrent of excitement and activity brought
about by the strike was noticeable everywhere. Military lorries carrying
men and kit moved about. St. George's barracks was alive with recruits
and old soldiers going back. In and out of the Horse Guards ex-officers
in mufti came and went. The girls who had served in the W. A. A. C.'s
streamed back again to enroll, and through it all, sarcastic emblems of
a peace that did not exist, sat the two figures on horseback in their
plumes and brass.
"London enjoying itself," said Fallaray ironically. "There is the taste
of blood in the mouths of all our people. Fighting has become a habit,
almost a hobby."
And young Lochinvar nodded. Would he ever forget the similar scenes that
had taken place away back in that August of '14?
"I'm tired," said Fallaray, with a groan. "I'm dog-tired. If Feo were
not at Chilton Park this weekend, I would escape after question time and
go down and lie on the earth and sleep.--Well, good by, my dear lad.
Don't be impatient with me. Bring out your numbers of _Reconstruction_,
hit hard and truly from the shoulder and see what you can do, you young
hot-heads. As for me----!"
They stood on the edge of the courtyard with all its indifferent pigeons
struggling for a living, oblivious to the intricacies, secrecies and
colossal egotisms of the men who passed into the House. But before they
separated something happened which made both their hearts beat faster.
A tall, primly dressed elderly man, who had apparently been waiting,
sprang forward, a glint of great anger in his eyes and two spots of
color on his pale cheeks. He said, "Mr. Fallaray, a word with you, Sir."
And Fallaray turned with his usual courtesy and consideration. "What can
I do?" he asked.
"I'll tell you what you can do. You can stop showing sympathy for the
Irish murderers and assassins. You can stop pussyfooting. You can
withdraw all your remarks about reprisals. That's what you can do. And
if you're interested, I'll tell you why I say so." His voice shook and
blood seemed to suffuse his pale eyes.
"My only son went all through the War from the beginning to the end. He
joined as a Tommy because, as an insignificant doctor, I had no pull. He
was promoted to a commission for gallantry and decorated with the M. C.
for distinguished work in the field. He was wounded three times--once so
severely that his life was given up--but he returned to his regiment and
finally marched with it into Germany. He was almost the last officer to
be demobbed. After which, failing to get employment because patriots are
not required in the city, he volunteered for the Black and Tans. Last
Friday afternoon, in the course of carrying out orders, he was set upon
in the streets of Cork by a dozen men in masks, foully murdered and
hideously desecrated. My God, Mr. Fallaray, do you wonder that my blood
boils when I hear of your weak-kneed treatment of these dirty dogs?"
He stood for a moment shaking, his refined face distorted, his gentle
unathletic figure quivering with rage and indignation. Then he turned on
his heel and went away, walking like a drunkard.
Fallaray and George Lytham looked at each other and both of them made
the same gesture of impotence.
It was a difficult world.
II
Fallaray's position in the Cabinet was a peculiar one. It was rather
like that of a disconcerting child in the house of orthodox church
people who insisted on asking direct and pertinent questions on the
Bible story, especially after having read Wells's first volume of the
"Outline of History." How did Adam and Eve get into Eden? If God never
sleeps, isn't he very cross in the morning? And so on.
All through the War, Fallaray had been a thorn in the side of his chief.
His honesty and his continual "why" were a source of irritation and
sometimes of anger. He had no patience whatever with shiftiness,
intrigue and favoritism, the appointment of mere duffers to positions of
high responsibility. He made no bones whatever about expressing his
opinion as to the frivolity that prevailed in certain quarters, together
with the habit of dodging every grave issue. On the question of the
League of Nations too, he was in close accord with Lord Robert Cecil and
often made drastic criticisms of the frequent somersaults of his chief.
His definite stand on the Irish question was extremely annoying to the
brass-hat brigade and to the master-flounderer and weathercock, who
showed himself more and more to be a mixture of Billy Sunday and Mark
Anthony, crying out that black was white at one end of the town and ten
minutes later that white was black at the other end. And yet, when it
came to results, Fallaray might almost as well have been on the town
council of Lower Muddleton as in the Cabinet of the British Government.
Respected for his faithfulness to duty, he was disliked for his honesty
and feared for his utter disregard for personal aggrandizement and the
salary that went with it.
No wonder, therefore, that he was tired. He had been under a long and
continual strain. In Parliament he found himself still dealing with the
men who had suffered from brain anaemia before the War and had,
therefore, been unable ever to believe, in spite of Lord Roberts, that
war was possible,--that same body of professional politicians who were
mentally and physically incapable of looking at the numerous problems of
the hour, the day and the week with sanity and with courage. At home--if
such a word could be used for Dover Street--there was Feo, who had no
more right to be under his roof than any one of the women that passed
him in the street. He was a tired and lonely man on the verge of
complete disillusionment, disappointed with his fellow Ministers and
deeply disappointed with the suspicion and jealousy which had grown up
between England and her allies. It seemed to him, also, that the blank
refusal of the United States to have anything to do with the League of
Nations, even as revised from the original draft of President Wilson,
the Messiah who had failed to function mainly because of the personal
spite of the Republican leaders, jeopardized the future of the world and
gave Germany a springboard which one of these days she would not fail to
use. In spite of her reluctantly made promises, she was very busy
inventing new and diabolical weapons of war and taking out patents for