The Rustle of Silk
But Lola could hear herself think, for all that. She sat smiling and
nodding. Her body went through the proper mechanics, but her spirit was
outside the gate in the wall, trembling. There was a cloud in the sky,
already. Fallaray was going to make her more important than his work,
and she had not come to him for that. Her metier was to bring into his
loveless life the rustle of silk,--love, tenderness, flattery,
refreshment, softness, beauty, laughter, adoration, which would send him
out of her secret nest strengthened, humanized, eager, optimistic. She
must fail lamentably if the effect of her absorbed him to the
elimination of everything that made him necessary to the man who had
come from London and to all that he represented. George Lytham, of
_Reconstruction_, the organizer of the Anti-waste Party,--she had heard
him discussed by Lady Feo. Without Fallaray he might be left
leaderless,--because of her.
She went upstairs as soon as she could to put on the silver frock. There
had been no time to change before dinner. Fallaray had kissed her so
often that she had been late. She was joined immediately by Lady,
Cheyne, who was anxious. She had seen something in Lola's eyes.
"What is it, my dear?" she asked. "I'm worried about you."
And Lola went to her, as to a mother, and shut her eyes and gave a
little cry that seemed to come from her soul.
"There's something wrong!--Has he hurt you? Tell me."
And Lola said, "Oh, no. He would never hurt me, never. He loves me. But
I may be hurting him, and that's so very much worse."
"I don't understand. You mean--his reputation? But what if you are?
We're all too precious careful to guard the reputations of our
politicians, to help them along in their petty careers."
"But he isn't a politician, and he isn't working for a career." She drew
away sharply. No one must have a word against Fallaray.
"Well, what is it then? I want you to be happy. I want this to be a
Great Romance. And, good Heavens, my darling, it's only three days old."
Lola spoke through tears. Yes, it was only three days old. "He may love
me too much," she said. "I may become more important than his work."
Lady Cheyne's anxiety left her, like smoke. And she gave a laugh and
drew what she called that old-fashioned child into her arms again. "My
dear," she said, "don't let _that_ distress you. Make yourself more
important than his work. Encourage him to love you more than himself.
He'll be different from most men if he is capable of that! But perhaps
happiness is something new in his life, and I shouldn't wonder, with
Lady Feo for a wife."
It never occurred to Lola to ask her friend how she had discovered the
secret. She listened eagerly to her sophistries, trying to persuade
herself that they were true.
"Get him to take you away. There are beautiful places to go to, and he
never will be missed. There'll be a paragraph,--'ill-health causes the
resignation of Mr. Fallaray'; the clubs will talk, but the people will
believe the papers, and presently Lady Feo will sue for divorce,
desertion. A nice thing,--she being the deserter! And you and he,--what
do you care? Is happiness so cheap that you can throw it away, either of
you? If he loves you, _that's_ his career, and a very much better one
than leading parties and making empty promises and becoming Prime
Minister. If he loves you well enough to sacrifice all that, for the
sake of womanhood see that he does it, and you will build a bigger
statue for him than any that he could win."
And she kissed her little de Breze, who seemed to have undergone a
perfectly natural _crise de neuf_, being so much in love, and patted her
on the shoulder. "Take an old woman's advice, my pet. If you've won that
man, keep him. He'll live to thank you for it one of these days."
And finally, when Lola slipped into the twilight in her silver frock,
there didn't seem to be a single cloud in the sky. Only an evening star.
What Lady Cheyne had said she believed because she wanted to believe it,
because this Great Romance was only three days old and hope had been so
long deferred.--She stopped in the old garden and picked a rose and
pulled its thorns off so that she might give it to Fallaray, and she
lingered for a moment taking in the scents and the quiet sounds of that
most lovely evening,--more lovely and more unclouded even than that
other one, which was locked in her memory. And then she went along the
path through the corner of a wood. A rabbit disappeared into the
undergrowth, but the fairies were not out yet, and there was no one to
spy. Was happiness so cheap that she could throw it away,--his and her
own? "If you've won that man, keep him." She danced all the rest of the
way and over the side road to the gate in the wall,--early, after all,
by half an hour. She would wait outside until she heard Fallaray's quick
step and watch the star. "I'll get him to take me away," she thought.
"There are beautiful places to go to, and he never will be missed."
She turned quickly, hearing some one on the road. She saw a car drawn up
a little distance away, and a man come swinging towards her.
It was young Lochinvar.
X
"Madame de Breze," he said, standing bareheaded, "my name is Lytham. May
I ask you to be so kind as to give me ten minutes?"
"Twenty," she answered, with the smile that she had flashed at Chalfont
that night at the Savoy. "I have just that much to spare."
"Thank you." But now that he was there, after all his strategy, after
saying good-by to Fallaray, driving all the way down the hill from
Whitecross and up again into that side road, he didn't know how to
begin, or where. This girl! God,--how disordering a quality of sex! No
wonder she had shattered poor old Fallaray.
"Shall we walk along the lane? It turns a little way up and you can see
the cross cut in the hill."
"Yes," he said. "But there are so many crosses, aren't there, and
they're all cut on somebody's hill." He saw that she looked at him
sharply and was glad. Quick to take points, evidently. This interview
would not be quite so difficult, after all.
"You came down from town to see Edmund?" She called him by his Christian
name to show this man where he stood.
"On the most urgent business," he said, "I saw you sitting at the side
of the fountain. It's a dear old place."
She was not beautiful, and she was not sophisticated. That way of
dragging in Fallaray's Christian name was childish in its naivete. But
all about her there was something so fresh and young, so sublimely
unselfconscious, so disturbingly feminine, so appealing in its essence
of womanhood that he had to pay her tribute and measure his words. He
would hate to hurt this girl. De Breze--Madame de Breze--how was it that
he hadn't heard of her before? She knew Chalfont. She was staying with
Poppy Cheyne. Fallaray had met her somewhere. Odd that he had missed her
in the crowd.
"I'll come to the point, if I may," he said. "And I must bore you a
little with a disquisition on the state of affairs."
"I'm interested in politics," she said, with a forlorn attempt to keep a
high head.
"Then perhaps you know what's happened, to a certain extent, although
probably not as much as those of us who stand in the wings of the
political stage and see the actors without their make-up,--not a pretty
sight, sometimes."
"Well?" But the cloud had returned and blotted out the evening star, and
there was the shudder of distant thunder again.
"Well, the people are turning against the old gang, at last. The Prime
Minister has only his favorites and parasites and newspapers left with
him. The Unionists are scared stiff by the sudden uprising of the
Anti-waste Party and Labor has been drained of its fighting funds. The
Liberals have withered. There is one great cry for honest government,
relief from crushing taxation, a fair reward for hard work, and new
leadership that will make the future safe from new wars. We must have
Fallaray. He's the only man. I came here this evening to fetch him. He
refuses to come because of you. What are you going to do?"
As he drew up short and faced her, she looked like a deer surrounded by
dogs. He was sorry, but this was no time for fooling. What stuff was
this girl made of? Had she the gift of self-sacrifice as well as the
magnetism of sex? Or was she just a female, who would cling to what she
had won, self before everything?
"I love him," she said.
Well, it was good to know that, but was that an answer? "Yes," he said.
"Well?" He would like to have added "But does he love you and can you
keep him after passion is dead,--a man like Fallaray, who, after all, is
forty." But he hadn't the courage or the desire to hurt.
"And because I love him he must go," she said.
He leaned forward and seized her hand. He was surprised, delighted, and
a little awed. She had gone as white as a lily. "You will see to that?
You will use all your influence to give him back to us?" He could hardly
believe his ears and his eyes.
"All my influence," she said, standing very straight.
He bent down and touched her hand with his lips.
They were at the gate. They heard steps on the other side of the wall.
"Go," she said, "quickly."
But before he went he bowed, as to a queen.
And then Lola heard the voice again, harshly. "Go on, de Breze, go on.
Don't be weak. Stick to your guns. You have him in the palm of your
hand."
But she shook her head. "But I'm not de Breze. I've only tried to be.
I'm Lola Breezy of Queen's Road, Bayswater, and this is love."
She opened the gate and went in to Fallaray.
PART VIII
I
There was a hooligan knock on Georgie Malwood's bedroom door.
Saying "Aubrey" to herself without any sign either of irritation or
petulance, she put down her book, gathered herself together, and slid
off the bed. In a suit of boy's pajamas she looked as young and
undeveloped as when, at seventeen, she had married Clayburgh in the
first week of the War. Her bobbed hair went into points over her ears
like horns, and added to her juvenile appearance. She might have been a
schoolgirl peeping at life through the keyhole, instead of a woman of
twenty-four, older than Methuselah.
She unlocked the door. "Barge in," she said, standing clear.
And Aubrey Malwood, with his six foot two of brawn and muscle, his
yellow Viking hair, eyebrows and moustache, barged, as he always did.
"I've just dropped in to tell you," he said, going straight to the
looking-glass, "that Feo rang up an hour ago. She wants you to lunch
with her in Dover Street."
Perching herself on the window seat, like a pillow girl in Peter Pan,
Georgie gazed uninterestedly at that portion of the Park at
Knightsbridge which is between the barracks and the Hotel.
"Oh, damn," she said, "I wish she'd leave me alone." Young Malwood was
so astonished at this sentiment that he was drawn away from
self-admiration. He liked his type immensely.
"I never expected to hear you say that! What's the notion?"
His much-married wife's doglike worship of Feo Fallaray had, as a matter
of fact, immediately eliminated him from her daily pursuits and long ago
sent him after another form of amusement.
"Oh, I dunno," said Georgie. "She's been different lately; lost her
sense of humor, and become serious and sentimental,--the very things
she's always hated in other people. You're so fond of yourself that I
don't suppose you've ever noticed the shattering effect of having the
teacher you imitated go back suddenly to the sloppy state you were in at
the beginning of your lessons. I'll go this time and then fall away.
Feo's over."
Malwood went back to the glass and posed as a gladiator with an
imaginary sword and shield. His magnificent height and breadth and bone