The Rustle of Silk
life. That was truth. That was nature.
And when, after dinner, he strolled out once more to look at the sky
patterned with stars, dominated by a moon in its cold elusive prime, he
was no longer the London Fallaray, round-shouldered, anxious,
overworked, immeshed like an impotent fly in the web of the bad old
spiders. His chin was up, his shoulders back, a smile upon his lips.
That gorgeous air filled his lungs and not even from the highest point
of vantage could there be seen one glimpse of the little light burning
in the tower of the House of Commons. He was nearer heaven than he had
been for a very long time. Exquisite lines from the great poets floated
through his mind and somewhere near a nightingale poured out a love song
to its mate.
And when presently he took a stand on that corner of the terrace which
overlooked the Italian garden, it seemed to him that the magic of the
moonlight had stirred some of the stone figures to life. The arm of
Cupid seemed to bend and send an arrow into the air and where it fell he
saw a shimmer of silver and heard the rustle of silk. And he saw and
heard it again and laughed a little at the pranks which imagination
played, especially on such a night. And not believing his eyes or his
ears, he saw this silver thing move again and come slowly up along the
avenue of yews like a living star; and he watched it a little
breathlessly and saw that it was a woman, a girl, timid, like a
trespasser, but still coming on and on with her head up, and the
moonlight in her hair,--golden hair wound round her head like an
aureole. And when at last, born as it seemed of moonlight and poetry,
she came to the edge of the terrace and stopped, he bent down with the
blood tingling in his veins, hardly believing that she was there, still
under the impression that he had brought her to that spot out of his
never realized longing and desire, and saw that she was not a dream of
adolescence but a little live thing with wide-apart eyes and red lips
parted and the white halo of youth about her head.
X
A bat blundered in between them and broke the spell.
And Fallaray climbed over the parapet and dropped on his feet at Lola's
side. All that day, as indeed, briefly, in the House, at his desk, at
night in dreams, ever since the introduction at the Savoy, the eyes of
that girl and the thrill of her hand had come back to him like a song,
to stir, like the urge of spring. And here, suddenly, she stood,
moonlit, but very real, in answer to his subconscious call.
"This is wonderful," he said, blurting out the truth like a naive boy.
"I've been thinking of you all day. How did you get here?"
His eager clasp sent a rush of blood through Lola's body. His alone
among men's, as she had always known, was the answering touch. "I'm
staying with Lady Cheyne," she said. "I saw the gate in the wall and it
wasn't locked and I tiptoed in."
"You knew that I was here?"
"Yes, and I came to find you." She blurted out the truth like an
unsophisticated girl.
Was it moonlight, the magic of the night, the throbbing song of the
nightingale that made him seem as young as she?--No. What then? And as
he looked into the eyes of that girl and caught his breath at her
disturbing femininity and disordering sense of sex and the sublime
unself-consciousness of a child, without challenge and without coquetry,
he knew that it was something to be summed up by the words "the rustle
of silk," which epitomized beauty and softness and scent, laughter,
filmy things and love. And he thanked his gods that not even Feo and the
wear and tear of politics had left him out of youth.
And he thanked her for coming to break his loneliness and led her
through the sleeping flowers, and those figures which had died again
since life had come amongst them, to the arbor made of yews where he had
slept that afternoon. And there, high above the sweeping valley among
whose villages little lights were blinking like far-off fireflies, they
sat and talked and talked, at first like boy and girl, meeting after
separation, telling everything but nothing, shirking the truth to save
it for a time, and then, presently, with no lights left below and all
the earth asleep, like man and woman, reading the truth in eyes that
made no effort to disguise it; telling the truth, in broken words;
learning the truth from heart that beat to heart until the moon had done
her duty and stars had faded out and up over the ridge of hills,
reluctantly, a new day came.
PART VII
I
Fallaray was to meet Lola at the gate in the wall at four o'clock. He
wanted to show her how the vale looked in the light of the afternoon
sun. But it was a long time to wait because, instead of going to bed
after he had taken Lola to Lady Cheyne's cottage at the moment when a
line in the sky behind it had been rubbed by a great white thumb, he had
walked up and down the terrace and watched the dawn push the night away
and break upon him with a message of freedom.
He paced up and down while the soft blur of the valley came out into the
clear detail of corn fields, rolling acres of grass, sheep dotted, a
long white ribbon of road twisting among villages, each one marked by
the delicate spire of an old church, spinneys of young trees and clumps
of old ones, gnarled and twisted and sometimes lonely, standing like the
sentinels that receive "the secret whispers of each other's watch."
He stood up to the new day honestly and without shame. Like a man who
suddenly breaks away from a Brotherhood with whose creeds he has found
himself no longer in sympathy, he rejoiced in his release. Lola had come
to him at the moment when he was lying on his oars at the entrance to a
backwater. He had been in the main river too long, pulling his arms out
against the stream. He was tired. It was utterly beyond argument that he
had failed. He had nothing in him of the stuff that goes to the making
of a pushing politician. He detested and despised the whole unholy game
of politics. In addition, he had come to the dangerous age in the life
of a man, especially the ascetic man. He was forty. He had never allowed
himself to listen to the rustle of silk. He had kept his eyes doggedly
on what he had conceived to be his job, wifeless. And when Lola came,
the magnet of her sex drew him not only without a struggle but with an
insatiable hunger into the side of life against which Feo had slammed
the door, leaving him stultified and disgusted. He had welcomed in this
girl what he now regarded as the unmet spirit of his adolescence, and he
fell to her as only such a man can fall. The fact that she loved him and
had told him of her love with the astounding simplicity of a child gave
the whole thing a beauty, a depth and permanence that made him regard
the future with wonder and delight, though not yet with any definite
plan. At present this _volte face_ was too astonishing, too new in its
happening, to be dissected and balanced up. For a few days at least he
wanted irresponsibility, for a change. He wanted, like a man wrecked on
the shore of Eden, to explore into beauty and dally, unseen, with love.
The time was not yet for a decision as to which way he would go, when,
as was certain, some one would discover the wreckage and send out a
rescue party. He had promised himself a holiday and all the more now he
would insist upon its enjoyment. Whether at the end of it he would
refuse ever to go back into the main stream, or go back and take Lola
with him, were questions that he was not yet formulating in his mind.
But as to one thing he was certain, even then. Lola was his; she had
brought back his youth like a miracle, and he would never let her out of
his sight.
He breakfasted in his library, ignoring the papers. Their daily story of
chaos made more chaotic by the lamentable blundering of fools and
knaves, seemed to deal with a world out of which he had dropped, hanging
to a parachute. He went smiling through the morning, watching the clock
with an impatience that was itself a pleasure. He felt the strange
exhilaration of having lived his future with all his past to spend, of
returning as a student to a school in which he had performed the duties
of a Master. And there were times when he drew up short and sent out a
great boyish laugh that echoed through his house, at the paradox of it
all. And once, but only once, he stood outside himself and saw that he
was placing his usefulness upon the altar of passion. And before he
leaped back into his skin and while yet he retained his sanity and cold
logic, he saw that he loved Lola for her golden hair and wide-apart
eyes, her red lips and tingling hand, her young sweet body,--but not her
soul, not the intangible thing in a woman that keeps a man's love when
passion passes. But to this he said, "I am young again. I have the need
and the right. When I have had time to find her soul, she shall have my
quiet love."
And finally, at three o'clock, with an hour still to drive away, he went
down to the gate in the wall, eager and insatiable to wait for the
rustle of silk.
II
Lady Cheyne had encouraged her flock to lateness in order that she might
lock the door after Lola had come back. She was terrified of burglars,
and although she had sold most of her pearls and diamonds to help her
various proteges over rainy days, she shuddered at the thought of being
disclosed by a flash light to a probably unshaven man. Nothing could
shake her from her belief that a man who could go bearded after five
o'clock in the afternoon must be a criminal,--and this in spite of the
fact that she had lived among artists for years. But she was a woman who
cultivated irrational idiosyncrasies as other women collect old fans or
ancient snuffboxes. She would never live in a flat, for instance,
because if she passed away in one it would be so dreadfully humiliating
to be taken down to the street in a lift, head first.
Becoming irritable from want of sleep, she had kept everybody up until
two in the morning, by which hour even Salo had ceased from Impfing and
Willy could Pouff no more. Zalouhou, who was as natural as a dog, had
yawned hugely. And then, sending her party up to bed, she had proved the
sublimity of her kindness by doing something that she had never done
before. She had left a lamp burning in the hall and the front door wide
open.
It was four o'clock when, a very light sleeper, she woke at the sound of
creaking stairs and went out, giving Lola time to arrive at her room, to
peer over the banisters to see that the lamp was out and the front door
closed. Then, returning to bed, she lay in great rotundity and with a
wistful smile, to think back to the days when she had been as young and
slim as Lola and just as much in love.
It was not until after breakfast, at which Lola did not appear, that she
became aware of a curiosity that was like the bite of a mosquito. Where
had that girl been all those hours and who was the man? But it was not a
sinister curiosity, all alive to gather gossip and spread innuendoes, as
women give so much to do. It was the desire to share, however distantly,
in what she had at once imagined was a Great Romance. Age had turned
sentiment into sentimentality in this kind fat lady and she thought of
everything to do with the heart in capital letters. Lola's words in Mrs.
Rumbold's parlor came back to her. "It's love and adoration and
long-deferred hope," and she was stirred to a great sympathy. Shutting
the drawing-room door upon the after-breakfast rush to music, she went
upstairs to Lola's room in the newest wing, distressed at her inability
to creep. The dear thing was in her care and must be looked after.
It was nearly midday and the house had echoed with scales and badinage,