The Rustle of Silk
seen, even during that epoch-making evening at Kensington Gore.
"Here you are, then, looking just as if you had stepped out of one of
the pictures in the boudoir of the Duchess de Nantes." Lola received a
hearty kiss on both cheeks, and her hostess took the opportunity, while
so close, of asking an important question in a whisper. "Your name, my
dear. I'm too sorry, but really my capacity for remembering names has
gone all loose like a piece of dead elastic."
Lola laughed and told her, and then followed her introduction to the
little group of hairy children who were all waiting on tenterhooks for a
chance to act. It was a comical introduction, because by the time Lady
Cheyne had said "Lola de Breze" she had forgotten the names of all her
other guests. And so, with a gurgle of laughter, she pointed to each one
in turn,--and they stepped forward and spoke; first the women, "Anna
Stezzel," a bow and a flash of teeth, "Regina Spatz," a bow and a
gracious smile, and then the men, "Salo Impf," "Valdemar Varvascho,"
"Simon Zalouhou," "Max Wachevsky," "Willy Pouff," fired in bass,
baritone and tenor and accompanied by a kiss upon the little
outstretched hand. It was all Lola could do to stop herself from peals
of laughter.
Zalouhou, the violinist, was one of the biggest men Lola had ever seen.
He stood six foot six in a pair of dilapidated boots and possessed a
completely unathletic figure with hips like a woman, large soft hands
with long loose fingers and a splendid leonine head with a mass of black
hair streaked with white. He towered over the other little people like a
modern Gulliver. His face was clean-shaven, with fine features and a
noble forehead and a pair of eyes which had never failed to do more to
attract crowded matinees of his country women in the old days than the
beauty of his playing and the mastery of his technique. He had only just
arrived in London, penniless, and in a suit of clothes in which he had
slept on many waysides. He had fought for his country and against his
country, never knowing why and never wanting to fight, and all the while
he had clung desperately to his violin which he had played to ragamuffin
troops in order to be supplied with an extra hunk of bread and a drink
of coffee. The story of his five or six years of mental and physical
chaos, every moment of which was abhorrent to his gentle spirit, was
stamped deeply upon his face.
Even as Lola was being escorted upstairs to her room by a thrilled
country maid, there was a crash upon the piano in the hall and an
outburst of song. What that little house thought of all those
extraordinary people who could not keep quiet under any circumstance
would have filled a book. The ghosts of former residents, farming
people, must have stood about in horror and surprise. And yet, as Lady
Cheyne well knew, they were all simple souls ready to go into ecstasies
at the sight of a daisy and imbued with genuine loyalty towards each
other.
Lady Cheyne followed Lola up. She arrived in the tiny bedroom, whose
ceiling sloped down to two small windows, breathless and laughing. "You
can't swing a cat in here," she said. "But, after all, who ever does
swing a cat? I hope you'll be comfortable and I know you'll be amused. I
just want to tell you one thing, my dear. You are at perfect liberty to
do whatever you like, to wander away out of range of the piano, with or
without any of my dear delightful babies, or stay and listen to them and
watch the fun. Until sleep overcomes them they will sing and play and
applaud and have the time of their lives,--which is exactly what I've
brought them here to do, poor things. All the men will fall in love with
you, of course. But you're perfectly used to that, aren't you? You'll
look like a miniature among oleographs, but the change will do you good
and show you another side of life. One thing I can guarantee. You won't
be disturbed in the morning before eleven o'clock. No one thinks of
getting up until then. I'm particularly anxious for you to like
Zalouhou. I predict that he will have an extraordinary success in London
when he makes his appearance next week at Queen's Hall. Did you ever see
such a man? If I know anything about it at all, women will rush forward
to the platform to kiss his feet,--not because he plays the violin like
Kreisler but because of those magnetic eyes. Success in every walk of
life is due entirely to eyes. You know that, my dear. And as to the
Great Affair, I will ask no questions, see nothing and hear nothing, but
rejoice in believing that I am being of use. It is exactly right, isn't
it, golden head? Ah, me, those dear dead days. Now come and have some
tea and taste my strawberries. They're wonderful this year."
But before going down--and how kind everybody was--Lola stood at one of
her windows from which she could see a corner of Chilton Park, and her
heart went out to Fallaray like a white dove. It was in the air, in the
cloudless sky, in the birds' songs, in the rustle of the leaves, in the
beauty and glory of the flowers that her time had come at last, that all
her work and training were to be put to the supreme test. Success would
mean the little gold cage of which she had heard again in her dream but
which would be the merest lead without love. Failure----
Her appearance eventually in the hall, a long, many-windowed room, with
great bowls of cut flowers on gate-legged tables and old dressers, was
celebrated by Salo Impf with an improvisation on the piano that was
filled with spring and received with noisy approval. Imbued with a
certain amount of crude tact, the men of the party did nothing more than
pay tribute to Lola with their eyes while they surrounded Lady Cheyne as
though she were a queen, as indeed she was, having it in her power not
only to provide them with bed and board but to bring them out and give
them a chance in a country always ready to support talent. It was a
funny sight to see this amazingly fat, kind woman pouring tea at a tiny
table into tiny cups surrounded by people who seemed to be perpetually
hungry, but who sang even while they ate, and laughed and jabbered in
between.
"What would Simpkins say if he could see me here?" thought Lola. "And
Mother and Ernest and Sir Peter Chalfont--and Lady Feo?"
But she felt happy and in a way comforted among these people. Like her,
they were all struggling towards a goal, all striving after something
for which they had served their apprenticeship. Not one of them had yet
successfully emerged and they were living on what Mrs. Rumbold called,
"the scraggy diet of hope." It did her good to be among them at that
moment, to hear their discussions in amazingly broken English of a debut
in London, to be aware of the extraordinary encouragement which they
gave to each other, without jealousy,--which was so rare. She found
herself listening enthralled to the arias sung by Anna Stezzel, and the
Grieg songs which were so perfectly played by Impf. But it was when
Zalouhou stood up with his violin and played some of the wistful folk
songs of his country that she sat with her hands clasped together,
leaning forward and moved to a deep emotion. Hunger, the daily wrestle
with surly earth, illness, the subjection to a crushing autocracy, and
beneath it self-preservation,--they were all in these sad, fierce songs,
which sometimes burst into passionate resentment and at others laughed a
little and jogged along. What a story they told,--so much rougher and so
much sterner than her own. They gave her courage to go forward but they
left her uncertain as to what was to be her next step.
When Zalouhou played, it was with his eyes on Lola. Her sympathy and
understanding drew out his most delicate and imaginative skill and gave
him inspiration; and when he had finished and laid aside his violin, he
went to the sofa on which she was sitting and crouched hugely at her
feet, and said something softly in his own tongue. He spoke no English,
but she could guess his meaning because in his eyes there was the look
with which she was familiar in the eyes of Treadwell, Simpkins and
Chalfont. And she said to herself, "As there is something in me that
stirs the hearts of men, give me the chance, O God, to let it be felt by
the only man I shall ever love and who is all alone on earth!" And while
the room rang with music, she went forward in spirit to the gate in the
wall of Chilton Park, which she had seen from her window, opened it and
went inside to look for Fallaray. The intuition which had been upon her
so long that she might touch the heart of Fallaray in Chilton Park was
strong upon her then, once more.
But she had to wait until after dinner before her opportunity came to
slip away, and this she did when her fellow-workers had returned to the
hall, drawn back to the piano as by a magnet. And then she escaped, in
Feo's silver frock, stole into the placid garden which was filled with
the aroma of sweet peas and June roses, went down to the gate in the
high wall, and stood there, trembling.
(Go on, de Breze, go on!)
IX
Except for the servants, Fallaray was alone in his house.
He had slept late that morning, put newspapers aside, and allowed the
telephone to ring unanswered. He was determined, at least for a few
days, to cut himself off from London and especially from the new and
futile turn that was taking place in politics. It didn't seem to him to
matter that, because his chief had boxed the political compass again
and, like Gladstone, talked with furious earnestness on both sides of
every question only to leave anger and stultification at every step, the
papers were making a dead set at him, holding him up to ridicule and
abuse and working with vitriolic energy against his government at every
bi-election. If this man were dragged at last from the seat that he had
won by a trick and held by trickery, another of the same kidney and
possibly worse principles would be put into his place to build up
another and a similar rampart about himself with bribes and honors. It
was the system. Nothing could prevent it. Professional politicians had
England by the throat and they were backed by underground money and
supported by politically owned newspapers. What use to struggle against
such odds? He wanted to forget Ireland for a little while, if it were
possible to forget Ireland even for so short a space of time as his
holiday would last. He wanted to put out of his mind, the horrible mess
in Silesia which was straining the _entente cordiale_ to the breaking
point, and the bungling over the coal strike, and so he had been
wandering among his rose gardens, hatless, with the breeze in his hair,
and the scent of new-mown hay in his nostrils, listening to the piping
of the thrush, to the passionate songs of larks, and watching bees busy
themselves from flower to flower with a one-eyed industry and honesty
which he did not meet in men.
He had lunched out on the terrace and looked down with a great
refreshment upon the sweeping valley of Aylesbury, peaceful beneath the
sun. He had slept again in the afternoon, out of doors, lulled by the
orchestra of birds, and had then gone forth to walk behind those high
walls into the forest of beech trees, the dead red leaves of innumerable
summers at their roots, and to listen to the tramping feet of the ghosts
of Roman armies whose triumphs had left no deeper mark on history than
the feet of sea gulls on the sands. And as his brain became quiet and
the load of political troubles fell from his shoulders, he began to
imagine that he was a free man once more, and a young man, and the old
aspirations of adolescence returned to him like the echo of a dream,--to
love, to laugh, to build a nest, to wander hand in hand with some sweet
thing who trusted him and was wholly his. O God, how good. That was