The Rustle of Silk
bursts of operatic laughter and paeans of soprano praise to the gift of
life for an hour and more. And so, of course, she expected to find her
young friend lying in a daydream, reluctantly awake. But when she opened
the door of Lola's room as quietly as she could, it was to see the
silver frock spilt upon the floor like a pool of moonlight and the girl
lying under the bedclothes in the attitude of a child in irresistible
sleep, breathing like a rose. Her golden hair was streaming on her
pillow, the long, dark lashes of her wide-apart eyes seemed to be stuck
to her cheeks. Her lips were slightly apart and one arm was stretched
out, palm up, with fingers almost closed upon something that she had
found at last and must never let go.
"Love and adoration and long-deferred hope,"--the words came back again
and told their story to the woman of one great love, so that she was
moved to renewed sympathy and re-thrilled. She stood over the slight
form in its utter relax and saw the lips tremble into a smile and the
fingers close a little more. She said to herself, little knowing how
exact was the simile upon which she stumbled, "She has found the gate in
the wall." But before leaving the room to keep her song birds as quiet
as possible, in order that her friend might sleep her fill, she caught
sight of a book that lay open on the dressing table, upon the inner
cover of which was pasted the photograph of a familiar face.
"Fallaray!"--She read the title: "Memoirs de Madame de Breze." And she
looked again at the strong, ascetic face, with the lonely eyes, the
unwarmed lips, the cold high brow. It might have been that of St.
Anthony.
And she stood for a moment before going down to her children--her only
children--and repeated to herself, with great excitement, her former
thought. "A Great Romance, Love in High Places. How wonderful to be in,
perhaps, on History."
III
If, during all their inarticulate talks, Fallaray had ever remembered to
ask Lola about herself, she would have told him, with perfect truth, the
little story of her life and love. She was now wholly without fear. She
had found the gate in the wall and had entered to happiness. But
Fallaray went through that week-end without thinking, accepting the
union that she had brought about without question and with a joy and
delight as youthful as her own. From the time that she had found him at
four o'clock waiting for her, not caring where she came from so that she
came, and saw that she had brushed the loneliness from his eyes and
brought a smile to his mouth, all sense of being merely temporary lifted
from her heart. In the eagerness of his welcome, in the hunger of his
embrace, she saw that she belonged, was already as much a possession and
a fact as the old house, hitherto his one treasure and refreshment.
They went hand in hand through those lovely days, like a boy and a girl.
He led her from one pet place to another and lay at her feet, watching
her with wonder, or going close to kiss her eyes and hair, to prove
again and yet again that she was not a dream. And every moment smoothed
a line from his face and pointed the way to his need of her in all the
days to come. But while he showed that he had lived his future and had
begun to spend his past, she, even then, forgot her past and turned her
eyes to the future. Those holiday days which bound them together must
come to an end, of course. And while she reveled in them as he did and
avoided any mention of the work to which he must return, she had found
herself in finding him, and becoming woman at last, saw her great
responsibility and developed the sense of protection that grows with
woman's love.
And this new sense was strengthened and made all the more necessary
because his desire to make holiday had come about through her. And while
she lay in his arms in all the ecstasy of love, she knew that she would
fall far short of her achievement if she should become of more
importance in his life than the work that he seemed to have utterly
forgotten. It was for her, she began to see, to send him back with
renewed energy and fire, and then, installed in a secret nest, to fulfil
the part marked out for her as she conceived it and give him the rustle
of silk.
If she had been the common schemer, using her sex magnetism to provide
luxuries and security--the golden cage, as she had called it in her
youth--the way was easy. But love and hero-worship had placed her on
another level. Her cage was Fallaray's heart, in which she was
imprisoned for life. Looking into the future with the suddenly awakened
practicality that she had inherited from her mother, she began to lay
out careful plans. She must find a girl to take her place with Lady Feo.
Gratitude demanded that. She would go home until such time as she could
take a furnished flat to which Fallaray could come without attracting
attention. What her parents were to be told required much thinking. All
her ideas of a Salon, of meeting political chiefs, of going into a
certain set of society were foolish, she could see. The second of the
most important of her new duties, she told herself, was to shield
Fallaray from gossip which would be of use to his political enemies and
so-called friends; the first to dedicate her life henceforward, by every
gift that she possessed and could acquire, to the inspiration and the
relaxation of the man who belonged more to his country than he did to
her.
She knew from the observation of specific cases and from her study of
the memoirs and the lives of famous courtesans that men were not held
long by sex attraction alone, although by that, rather than by beauty
and by wit, they were captured. She must, therefore, she owned, with her
peculiar frankness, apprentice herself anew, this time to the
cultivation of intelligence. She must be able, eventually, to talk
Fallaray's language, if possible, and add brain to what she called her
gift.
All these things worked in her mind, suddenly set into action like one
of her father's doctored watches, while she wandered through the sunny
hours with Fallaray. All that was French and thrifty and practical in
her nature awoke with all that was passionate and love-giving. And when
at night she had to leave him to return to the cottage of the
sympathetic woman whose discretion deserved a monument, she lay awake
for hours to think and plan. She was no longer the lady's maid, going
with love and adoration and long-deferred hope from one failure to
another, no longer the trembling girl egged forward to a forlorn hope.
She had found the gate in the wall, entered into a golden responsibility
and blossomed into a woman.
IV
Feo's new man, Clive Arrowsmith, had driven her down to the races at
Windsor. Two of his horses, carrying colors new to the betting public,
were entered. No one knew anything about them, so that if they won, and
they were out to win, the odds would be good. There was a chance of
making some money, always useful.
"I rather like this meeting," she said. "It's a sort of picnic peopled
with caricatures," and sailed into the enclosure, elastically, in more
than usually characteristic clothes. She had discarded the inevitable
tam-o'-shanter for once in favor of a panama hat, which looked very cool
and light and threw a soft shadow over her face. She was in what she
called a soft mood,--meaning that she was playing a feminine role and
leading up to a serious affair. Arrowsmith was obviously pucca and his
height and slightness, well-shaped, close-cropped head, small
straw-colored moustache, straight nose, strong chin with a deep cleft,
and gray eyes which had a way, most attractive to women, of disbelieving
everything they said had affected Feo and "really rather rattled" her,
as she had confessed to Georgie Malwood late one night. After her recent
bad picks, which had left a nasty taste of humiliation behind, she was
very much in the mood for an old-fashioned sweep into sentiment. She had
great hopes of Arrowsmith and had seen him every day since Sunday. He
was not easy. He erected mental bunkers. He was plus two at the game,
which was good for hers. Altogether he was very satisfactory, and his
horses added to the fun, on the side.
"It's rather a pet of mine," he said, looking round with a sort of
affectionate recognition, "because when I was at Eton I broke bounds
once or twice and had the time of my life here. Everything tastes better
when there's a law against drinking. But I never thought I should come
here with you."
"Have you ever thought about it then?"
"Yes," he said, leaning on the rail and looking under her hat with what
was only the third of his un-ironical examinations. She had memorized
the other two. Was she approaching the veteran class? "The day you were
married I happened to be passing St. Margaret's and the crowd of
fluttering women held me up. I saw you leave the church and I said to
myself, 'My God, if I ever know that girl, I'll have a try to put a
different smile on her face,'"
"You interest me, Cupid," she said, giving him a nickname on the spur of
the moment. "What sort of smile, if you please?"
"One that wouldn't make me want to hit you," he answered, still looking.
"You'll never achieve your object on the way out of church."
"No, that's dead certain."
And she wondered whether he had scored or she had. She would like to
feel that he was hard hit enough to go through this affair hell for
leather, into the Divorce Court and out into marriage. It came to her at
that moment, for the first time, that she liked him,--more than liked
him; that he appealed to her and did odd new things to her heart. She
felt that she could make her exit from the gang with this man.
As for Arrowsmith, he was sufficiently hard hit to hate Feo for the
record that she had made, sufficiently in love with her to resent her
kite-tail of indiscriminations. He loved but didn't like her, and this
meant that he would unmagnetize himself as soon as he could and bolt.
The bunkers that she had found in his nature were those of
fastidiousness, not often belonging to men. But for being the son of
Arrowsmith, the iron founder, whose wealth had been quadrupled by the
War, he would have been a poet, although he might never have written
poetry. As it was, he considered that women should be chaste, and was
the object of derision for so early-Victorian an opinion. The usual
hobby thus failing, he raced, liking thoroughbreds who played the game.
A queer fish, Arrowsmith.
Georgie Malwood came up. She was with her fourth mother-in-law, Mrs.
Claude Malwood, whose back view was seventeen, but whose face was older
than the Pyramids. And Arrowsmith drifted off to the paddock.
But they lunched and spent the day together and one of the horses,
"Mince Pie," won the fourth race at six to one, beating the favorite by
a short head. And so Feo had a good day. They got away ahead of the
crowd, except for the people of the theater, who had to dine early and
steady down before entering upon the arduous duties of the night,
especially those of the chorus who, in these days of Reviews, are called
upon to make so many changes of clothes. Art demands many
sacrifices.--It had been decided that the Ritz would do for dinner and
one of the dancing clubs afterwards. But on the way out Gilbert
Macquarie pranced up to Feo, utterly inextinguishable, with a hatband of
one club and a tie of another and clothes that would have frightened a
steam roller. "Oh, hello, old thing," he cried, giving one of his
choicest wriggles. "How goes it?"
To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, "Out, Mr.
Macquarie," touched Arrowsmith's arm and went.
But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something