The Rustle of Silk
little that he cared to hear. Once more he went over all the old India
stuff, the regiment, the officers and men, their health, the underlying
unrest of the East. Then he jerked, as a sudden glorious new thought, to
his people and the place they lived in, but all the same this
unsatisfactory reunion lasted twenty minutes less than the given hour.
Suddenly Ellingham stopped walking and stood in front of Feo and said,
"Good-by. I don't suppose I shall see you again." And wheeled off and
went, quickly, with relief.
And when Feo heard the front door bang, she remained where she was lying
until the hour was fulfilled, with the hand that he had shaken all
stiff, and with two tears running slowly down her face.
Disappointment.--Disappointment.
II
Lola woke early and went to the window and pulled up the blind. The sun
was shining and half a dozen London sparrows were chirping and hopping
about in the back yard of one of the houses in Bond Street. One poor
anaemic tree stood in the middle of it, and an optimist, condemned to
live in the city, had worked on the small patch of earth and made a
little garden where cats met at night and sang duets and swore, and
talked over all the feline gossip of the neighborhood, fighting from
time to time to keep their claws in, to the cruel derangement of the bed
of geraniums, which looked that morning as though the Germans had passed
over it.
All Lola's dreams during the night had been filled with tragedies, but
the effect of the one that was upon her still was that she had died,
withered up, after having been left by Fallaray in the corridor where
she had been caught by him in tears,--unable, because, for some reason,
there had been a cold hand on her heart, to jump at the great and
wonderful opportunity that had come to her and which she had worked so
long to achieve. And in this last just waking dream, the reality of
which still left her awed, she had stood, bewildered, on the unfamiliar
side of a short wide bridge, to be faced suddenly by a scoffing and
sarcastic woman who had taunted her for her impotence and lack of grit
and called her middle class, without cunning and without the necessary
strength to be unscrupulous, so vital to success.
And as she stood facing a new day with these words ringing in her ears,
she told herself that she ought to have died, that she deserved death,
for having lost her nerve and her courage. She accepted the biting
criticism of the successful de Breze and offered no excuses. This was
far too big a thing to win by a series of easy steps. And up to that
time they all had been easy and had led actually to Fallaray. Everything
seemed to have played into her hands and it was she, Lola, who had
failed. If she had possessed even half the cunning of which the de Breze
had spoken, with what avidity and delight she must have seized her
opportunity when Fallaray had come suddenly upon her. But she had proved
herself to be witless and without daring, a girl who had played at being
a courtesan in a back room, who had sentiment and sympathy and emotion
and whose heart, instead of being altogether set on the golden cage, had
become soft with love and hero worship and the delay of hope,--just Lola
Breezy, the watchmaker's daughter, the little Queen's Road girl
suffering from the reaction of having set alight unwillingly all the
wrong men, stirring, finally, her friend Chalfont, who had been so kind
and good. So that when Fallaray had come to her at last, remembering her
name, she had let him go unstirred, without an effort, because she was
thinking of him and not of herself and her love and the passionate
desire of her life. Yes, she deserved to be dead, because her courage
had oozed out of her finger tips and left her trembling.
But what was she to do now? Give up? Devote herself to lady's maiding
and develop into an Ellen, or resign from this position and return home
to help her mother in the shop and dwindle into love-sickness? Give up
and shake herself back to a normal frame of mind in which, some day, she
would walk to chapel with Ernest Treadwell,--or go to Chalfont and tell
him the truth and put his love to the test? Or, refusing to own herself
a weakling, a dreamer and a failure, begin all over again, this time
with as much of cunning as she could find in her nature and all the
disturbing influence of that too well-proved gift? Which?
And the answer came in a woman's voice, ringing and strong. "Go on, go
on, de Breze. Begin all over again. You were born to be a canary, with
the need of a golden cage. You inherit the courtesan nature; you must
let it have its way. As such there's a man you can rescue, lonely and
starved of love. It is not as wife that he needs you, but as one with
the rustle of silk----"
"I will go on," said Lola. "I will begin again." And with a high head
once more and renewed hope and eagerness and courage, she set her brain
to work. All the rungs of the ladder were without the marks of her feet.
But she waved her hand to the pathetic patch of miniature garden with
its anaemic city tree, caught its optimism and began to think. Where was
she to begin?
Into her mind came some of the gossip of the servants' sitting room, to
which as a rule she paid no attention. Ellen had given out that Simpkins
had said that he was to have time off from the following Friday to
Tuesday because Mr. Fallaray had made his plans to go down alone to
Chilton Park for a short holiday. To Chilton Park for a short holiday!
Ah! Here was a line to be followed up. Here was something which might
enable her to pick up the thread again.
She began to walk up and down her little room, in a nightgown which
certainly did not belong to a courtesan, repeating to herself again and
again "Chilton Park, Chilton Park," worrying the thing out like a
schoolgirl with a difficult lesson. By some means, by hook or by crook,
she also must get to Chilton Park during that time; that was certain,
even if she had to ask Lady Feo to let her give up her position as
lady's maid. But following this thought came another, instantly,--that
she would regret above all things to put her mistress to inconvenience,
because she was grateful for many kindnesses and maids were scarce. And
she was glad that the de Breze could not hear her think and call out
"weakness, weakness." How to get there? How to be somewhere in the
neighborhood so that she might be able to slip one night into the garden
to be seen by Fallaray, and then, for the first time, prove to herself
and to him that she was not any longer the Lola Breezy of Queen's Road,
Bayswater, the little middle-class girl, timid and afraid, but the
reincarnation of her famous ancestress, as she had always supposed
herself to be, and had played at being so often, and had tried to be
during her brief escapes into life.
How?--How?
She might, of course, ask Lady Feo for a week's leave--a large order--go
to Whitecross and engage a room at the little inn that she had noticed
at the corner of the road at the top of the hill. But what would be the
use of that? How could she play Madame de Breze in such a place, with
one evening frock and her own plain everyday dress with two
undistinguished hats and a piece of luggage that yelled of Queen's Road,
Bayswater? It was absurd, impossible. Brick wall number one. And so she
tackled the task grimly, thinking hard, swinging from one possibility to
another, but with no better luck. Everything came back to the fact that
all her savings amounted to no more than ten pounds. How could she go
forward, unaided, on that? And then in a flash she saw herself at the
house in Kensington Gore with Chalfont and remembered the words of Lady
Cheyne, who, in asking her to come down to her little place in the
country, had said that the garden ran down to Chilton Park. It had been
pigeonholed in her brain and she had found it! And with a little cry of
delight she pounced upon it like a desert wanderer on water.
Lady Cheyne,--that kindly soul who was never so happy as when giving a
hand to a stray dog. It might easily happen, the weather being so good,
that she had already left town. That would be wonderful. But if not, if
she were still busy with her musicians and their concerts, then she must
be seen and influenced to leave town, or, better still, called up on the
telephone at once. A tired little woman of the world needed a breath of
fresh air and the peace of a country garden. Would Lady Cheyne take
mercy on her, as she took mercy on so many people, and give her this
peace and this quietude?--Yes, that was the way. It was a brain wave.
Filled with determination no longer to wait for an opportunity, but to
make one, not to rely on fate, as she had been doing, but to treat fate
as though it were something alive, a man--Simpkins, Treadwell or
Chalfont--and cajole him, Lola proceeded to dress, with the blood
tingling in her veins, and imbued with the feeling of one who faces a
forlorn hope. But it was still too early to use the telephone to the
elderly lady who, if she were in town, had probably listened to music
into the small hours. She must wait and go on thinking. There were other
things to overcome, even if this one came right. How to wheedle a
holiday; to hint, if she dared, at her lack of clothes, a suit-case,
shoes.
The servants' sitting room was empty. On Sunday, the menage, except for
the cook, slept late. And so Lola marked time impatiently, achieving
breakfast from the sulky woman by flattery. Lady Feo had given out that
she was not to be disturbed until her bell rang. She would wake to find
Sunday in London,--a detestable idea. There was nothing for which to get
up.
Watching a clock that teased her with its sloth, Lola went over and over
the sort of thing to say to Lady Cheyne, disturbed in her current of
thought by the suddenly garrulous cook who insisted on telling the whole
story of her life, during the course of which she had buried a drunkard
and married a bigamist and lost her savings and acquired asthma,--a
dramatic career, even for a cook. But at nine-thirty, unable to control
herself any longer, she ran upstairs to Feo's alarming den, hunted out
Lady Cheyne's number in the book and eventually got into communication
with an operator who might, from her autocratic manner, very easily have
been Mrs. Trotsky, or the wife of a labor leader, or a coal-miner's
daughter, or indeed a telephone operator of the most approved type.
A sleepy and rather irritable voice said, "Well?--but isn't it a little
early to ring any one up and on a Sunday morning too?"
Lola made a wry face. That was not a good beginning. And then, in her
sweetest voice, "Am I speaking to dear Lady Cheyne?"
"Yes, it's Fanny Cheyne, lying in bed with this diabolical instrument on
her chest, but not feeling very dear, my dear, whoever you are, and I
don't know your voice."
"It's Madame de Breze and I'm so very sorry to disturb you."
"Why did you then, if I may say so,--de Breze. I'm sorry too, but really
I hear so many names, just as odd.--If it's about being photographed,
please no. I'm far too fat. Or if it's about a subscription for the
starving children of Cochin China, I have too many starving children of
my own."
Quick, de Breze, quick, before the good old lady cuts off.
"The Savoy, the little widow, Sir Peter Chalfont, your wonderful house
so full of genius, and what do you do, my dear.--Don't you remember,
dear Lady Cheyne?"
"Oh,--let me think now." (The tone was brighter, interest was awakening!
Good for you, de Breze.) "My dear Peter with the comic-tragic leg--no,
arm--the Savoy----"
"You were with Alton Cartridge and the disinfected Russian violinist,
and you betted on my being French and invited me to Whitecross and when