The Rustle of Silk
"What! Why not?"
"Because I want to better myself, as you once said that every girl
should do. I haven't forgotten. I remember everything that _you_ say,
Auntie."
"Oh, you do, do you? Well, go on with it." What a pretty thing she was
with her fine skin and red lips and disconcerting nostrils. Clever as a
monkey, too, my word. Amazing that Ellen should be her mother!
"And so I want to get away from Queen's Road, if I can. I want to take a
peep, just a peep for a little while into another world and learn how to
talk and think and hold myself. Other girls like me have become ladies
when they had the chance. I can't, I _know_ I can't, become a teacher as
Mother says I must. You know that, too, when you think about me. I
should teach the children everything they ought not to know, for one
thing, you know I should, and throw it all up in a week. I overheard you
say that to Mother the very last time you were here."
"My dear, your ears are too long. But you're right all the same. I can't
see _you_ in a school for the shabby genteel." A warm fierce kiss was
pressed suddenly to her lips. "But what can I do to help you out? I
don't know."
"But I do, Auntie. You're trying to find a personal maid for Lady Feo.
Engage me. I may work up to become a housekeeper like you some day even.
Who knows?"
So that was it.--Good heavens!
Miss Breezy unfolded herself from the girl's embrace and sat with her
back as stiff as a ramrod. "I couldn't think of such a thing," she said.
"You don't belong to the class that ladies' maids come from, nor does
your mother. A funny way to better yourself, that, I must say. Don't
mention it again, please." She got up and shook herself as though to
cast away both the girl's spell and her absurd request. Her
sister-in-law, after a long day's work, was impatient for bed and
yawning in a way which she hoped would convey a hint to her husband's
friends. She had already wound up the clock on the mantelpiece with
extreme deliberation. "I think my cab must be here," said Miss Breezy
loudly, in order to help her. "I ordered him to fetch me. Don't trouble
to come down but do take the trouble to find out what's the matter with
Lola. She's been reading too many novels or seeing too many moving
pictures. I don't know which it is."
To Mrs. Breezy's entire satisfaction, her sister-in-law's departure
broke up the party. There was always a new day to face and she needed
her eight hours' rest. Mr. Preedy, the butcher whose inflated body bore
a ludicrous resemblance to a punch ball and who smelt strongly of meat
fat, his hard-bosomed spouse and Ernest Treadwell, the young man from
the library who would have sold his soul for Lola, followed her down the
narrow staircase. But it was Lola who got the last word. She stood on
the step of the cab and put a soft hand against Miss Breezy's cheek. "Do
this for me, Auntie," she wheedled. "Please, please. If you don't----"
"Well?"
"There are other great ladies and very few ladies' maids, and if I go to
one of them, how will you be able to keep your eye on me,--and you ought
to keep your eye on me, you know."
"Well!" said Miss Breezy to herself, as the cab rattled home. "Did you
ever? What an extraordinary child! Nothing of John about her and just as
little of Ellen. Where does she get these strange things from?" It was
not until she arrived finally at Dover Street that she added two words
to her attempted diagnosis which came in the nature of an inspiration.
"_She's French!_"
V
It was a lukewarm night, without wind and without moon, starless.
Excited at having got in her request, which she knew from a close study
of her aunt's character was bound to be refused and after a process of
flattery eventually conceded, Lola waved her hand to the Preedys and
graciously consented to give a few minutes to Ernest Treadwell. The
butcher and his wife, after a lifetime of intimacy with animals, had
both taken on a marked resemblance to sheep. They walked away in the
direction of their large and prosperous corner shop with wide-apart legs
and short quick steps, as though expecting to be rounded up by a bored
but conscientious dog. As she leaned against the private door of her
father's shop, with the light of the lamp-post on hair that was the
color of buttercups, she did look French. If Miss Breezy were to take
the trouble to read a well-known book of memoirs published during the
reign of Louis XIV, it would dawn upon her that the little Lola of
Queen's Road, Bayswater, daughter of the cockney watchmaker and Ellen
who came from a flat market garden in Middlesex, threw back to a certain
Madame de Breze, the famous courtesan. Whether her respect for her
brother would become less or grow greater for this discovery it is not
easy to say. Probably, being a snob, it would increase.
"Don't stand there without a hat, Lola dear. You may catch cold."
"Mother always says that," said Lola, "even in the middle of the summer,
but she won't call again for ten minutes, so let's steal a little chat."
She put her hand on Treadwell's shoulder with a butterfly touch and held
him rooted and grateful. He had the pale skin that goes with red hair as
well as the pale eyes, but as he looked at this girl of whom he dreamed
by day and night, they flared as they had flared when he had seen her
first as a little girl with her hair in a queue at the other end of a
classroom. He stood with his foot on the step and his hands clasped
together, inarticulate. Behind his utter commonplaceness there was the
soul of Romeo, the passion of self-sacrifice that goes with great
lovers. He had been too young for gun fodder in the war but he had
served in spirit for Lola's sake and had performed a useful job in the
capacity of a boy scout messenger in the War Office. His bony knees and
awkward body had been the joke of many a ribald subaltern, mud-stained
from the trenches.
"What are you doing on Saturday afternoon?" asked Lola. "Shall we walk
to Hampton Court and see the crocuses? They're all up now like little
soldiers in a pantomime."
"I'll call for you at two o'clock," answered the boy, thrilling as
though he had been decorated. "We'll have tea there and come back on top
of a bus. I suppose your mother wouldn't let me take you to the theater?
There's a great piece at the Hammersmith,--Henry Ainley. He's fine."
Lola laughed softly. "Mother's a dear," she said. "She lets me do
everything I want to do after I've told her that I'm simply going to do
it. Besides, she likes you."
"Do _you_ like me, Lola?" The question came before the boy could be
seized with his usual timidity. It was followed by a rush of blood to
the head.
The girl's answer proved her possession of great kindness and an amazing
lack of coquetry. "You are one of my oldest friends, Ernest," she
replied, thereby giving the boy something to hope for but absolutely
nothing to grasp. He had never dared to go so far as this before and
like all the other boys who hung round Lola had never been able, by any
of his crude efforts, to get her to flirt. Friend was the only word that
any of them could apply to her. And yet even the least precocious of
these boys was convinced of the fact that she was not innocent of her
power.
"I love the spring,--just smell it in the air," said Lola, going off at
a tangent, "but I shall never live in the country--I mean all the time.
I shall go there and see things grow and get all the scent and the
whispers and the music of the stars and then rush back to town. Do you
believe in reincarnation, Ernest? I do. I was a canary once and lived in
a cage, a big golden cage, full of seeds and water and little bells that
jingled. It stood on the table in a room filled with tapestry and lovely
old furniture. Servants in livery gave me a saucer for a bath and
refilled my seed pans.--I feel like a canary now sometimes. I like to
fly out, perfectly tame, and with no cats about, sing a little and
imagine that I am perfectly free, and then flick back, stand on a perch
and do my best singing to the noise of traffic." And she laughed again
and added, "What rot we talk when we're young, don't we? I must go."
"No, not yet. Please not yet." And the boy put his hands out to touch
her and was afraid. He would gladly have died then and there in that
street just to be allowed to kiss her lips.
"It's late. I must go, Ernest. I have to get up so awfully early. I hate
getting up early. I would like breakfast in bed and a nice maid to bring
me my letters and the papers. Besides, I don't want to worry Mother. She
has all the worries of the shop. Good night and don't be late on
Saturday." She held out her hand.
The boy seized it and held it tight, his brain reeling, and his blood on
fire. He stood for an instant unable to give expression to the romance
that she stirred in him, with his mouth open and his rather faulty teeth
showing, and his big awkward nose very white. And when she had gone and
the door of her castle was closed, the poor knight, who had none of the
effrontery of the troubadour, paced up and down for an hour in front of
the shop, saying half aloud all the things from Shakespeare which alone
seemed fit for the ears of that princess,--princess of Queen's Road,
Bayswater!
VI
The room at the back of the house in which Lola had been installed since
she had been old enough to sleep alone had been her parents' bedroom and
was larger than the one to which they had retired. While Breezy had
argued that he damned well didn't intend to turn out for that kid, Mrs.
Breezy had moved the furniture. The best room only was good enough for
Lola. The window gave a sordid view of back yards filled with packing
cases, washing, empty bottles and one or two anaemic laburnum trees
which for a few days once a year burst into a sort of golden smile and
then became sullen again,--observation posts for the most corrupt of
animals, the London cat. It was in this room that Mrs. Breezy,
trespassing sometimes, stood for a few moments lost in amazement,
feeling more than ever the changeling sense that she did her best to
forget.
With the money that she had saved up--birthday money, Christmas money
and a small allowance made to her by her father--Lola had bought a rank
imitation of an old four-poster bed made probably in Birmingham. Over it
she had hung a canopy of chintz with a tapestry pattern on a black
background, copied from an illustration in the life of Du Barry. From
time to time pillows with lace covers had been added to the luxurious
pile, a little footstool placed at the side of the bed and--the latest
acquisition--an eiderdown now lent an air of swollen pomp to the whole
thing, which, to the puzzled and concerned mother, was immoral. Hers was
one of those still existing minds which read immorality into all
attempts to break away from her own strict set of conventions,
especially when it was in the direction of beautifying a bed, to her, of
course, an unmentionable thing. In America, without doubt, she would be
a cherished and respected member of the Board of Motion Picture Censors,
as well as--having a cellar--a militant prohibitionist.
For the rest, the room possessed a sofa which was an English cousin to
an Italian day bed and curtains of china silk in which there was a faint
tinge of pink. A small table on which there was a collection of dainty
things for writing, mementos of many Christmases and several lines of
shelves crammed with books gave the room something of the appearance of
a boudoir, and this was added to by half a dozen cheap French prints
framed in gold which looked rather well against a wall paper of tiny
bouquets tied up with blue ribbon. Lola's collection of books had
frequently sent John Breezy into gusts of mirth. There was nothing among