The Rustle of Silk
Having now no incentive to go either to her room or anywhere else, her
new plan dying at its birth, Feo remained in the corridor, standing with
her back against one of the pieces of Flemish tapestry which Simpkins
had pointed out to Lola. She folded her arms, crossed one foot over the
other, and dipped her chin, not frowning, not with any sort of
self-pity, but with elevated eyebrows and her mouth half open,
incredulous.
"Of course I'm not surprised at Edmund's being smashed on a girl," she
told herself. "How the Dickens he's gone on so long is beyond belief. I
hope she's a nice child,--she must be young; he's forty; I hope he's not
been bird-limed by one of the afterwar virgins who are prowling the
earth for prey. I'm very ready to make way gracefully and have a dash at
something else, probably hospital work, sitting on charity boards with
the dowagers who wish to goodness they had dared to be as loose as I've
been. But--but what I want to know is, who's shuffling the cards? Why
the devil am I getting this long run of Yarboroughs? I can't hold
anything,--anything at all, except an occasional knave like Macquarie.
Why this run of bad luck now? Why not last year, next year, next week?
Why should Edmund deliberately choose to-day, of all days, to come back,
with no warning, and put a heavy foot bang in the middle of my scheme of
retribution? Is it--meant? I mean it's too beautifully neat to be an
accident. Is it the good old upper cut one always gets for playing the
giddy ox, I wonder?--Mf! Interesting. Very. More to come, too, probably,
seeing that I'm still on my feet. I've got to get it in the solar plexus
and slide under the ropes, I suppose, now they're after me. 'Every
guilty deed holds in itself the seed of retribution and undying pain.'
Well, I'm a little nervous, like some poor creature on the way to the
operating table; and--and I'll tell you what else I am, by George! I'm
eaten up with curiosity to know who the girl is, and how she managed to
get into the line of vision of this girl-blind man,--and I don't quite
know how I shall be able to contain myself until I satisfy this
longing.--Oh, hullo, Lola. This is good. I didn't expect you till the
morning. But I don't mind saying that I've never been so pleased to see
anybody as you, my dear. Had a good time?"
She went to the top of the stairs and waited for Lola to come up,
smiling and very friendly. She was fond of this girl. She had missed her
beyond words,--not only for her services, which were so deft, so
sure-fingered, but also for her smile, her admiration. Good little Lola;
clever little Lola too, by George. That Carlton episode,--most amusing.
And this recent business, which, she remembered, was touched with a sort
of--what? Was ecstasy the word? Good fun to know what had happened.
Thank the Lord there was going to be a pause between knock-outs, after
all.
Dressed in her perfectly plain ready-made walking frock, her own shoes
and a neat little hat that she had bought in Queen's Road, Bayswater,
Lola came upstairs quickly with her eyes on Feo's face. She seemed
hardly to be able to hold back the words that were trembling on her
lips. It was obvious that she had been crying; her lids were red and
swollen. But she didn't look unhappy or miserable, as a girl might if
everything had gone wrong; nor in the least self-conscious. She wore
neither her expression as lady's maid, nor that of the young widow to
whom some one had given London; but of a mother whose boy was in trouble
and must be got out of it, at once, _please_, and helped back to his
place among other good boys.
"Will you come down to your room, Lady Feo?" she asked. "Mr. Lytham will
be here in a few minutes and I want you to see him."
Lytham--young Lochinvar! How priceless if he were the man for whom she
had dressed this child up.
"Why, of course. But what's the matter, Lola? You've been crying. You
look fey."
Lola put her hand on Feo's arm, urgently. "Please come down," she said.
"I want to tell you something before Mr. Lytham comes."
Well, this seemed to be her favor-granting day, as well as one of those
during which Fate had recognized her as being on his book. First Edmund
and then Lola,--there was not much to choose between their undisguised
egotism. And the lady's maid business,--that was all over, plainly.
George Lytham,--who'd have thought it? If Lola were in trouble, she had
a friend in that house.
And so, without any more questions, she went back to her futuristic den
which, after her brief talk with Fallaray, seemed to belong to a very
distant past. But before Lola could begin to tell her story, a footman
made his appearance and said that Mr. Lytham was in the hall.
"Show him in here," said Feo and turned to watch the door.
She wondered if she would be able to tell from his expression what was
the meaning of her being brought into this,--a disinclination on his
part to take the blame, or an earnest desire to do what was right under
the circumstances? She never imagined the possibility of his not knowing
that Lola was a lady's maid dressed in the feathers of the jay. Unlike
Peter Chalfont, who accepted without question, Lytham held things up to
the light and examined their marks.
There was, however, nothing uncomfortable in his eyes. On the contrary,
he looked more than ever like the captain, Feo thought, of a County
Cricket Club, healthy, confident and fully alive to his enormous
responsibility. He wore a suit of thin blue flannels, the M. C. C. tie
under a soft low collar, and brown shoes that had become almost red from
long and expert treatment. He didn't shake hands like a German, with a
stiff deference contradicted by a mackerel eye, or with the tender
effusion of an actor who imagines that women have only to come under his
magnetism to offer themselves in sacrifice. Bolt upright, with his head
thrown back, he shook hands with an honest grip, without deference and
without familiarity, like a good cricketer.
"How do you do, Lady Feo," he said, in his most masculine voice. "It's
kind of you to see us." Then he turned to Lola with a friendly smile.
"Your telephone message caught me just as I was going to dash off for a
game of tennis after a hard day, Madame de Breze," he added.
Oh, so this was another of the de Breze episodes, was it, like the one
with Beauty Chalfont. Curiosity came hugely to Feo's rescue. Here, at
any rate, was a break in her run of bad luck, very welcome. What on
earth could be the meaning of this quaint meeting,--George Lytham, the
earnest worker pledged to reconstruction, and this enigmatic child, who
might have stood for Joan of Arc? If Lola had caught Lytham and brought
him to Dover Street to receive substantiation, Feo was quite prepared to
lie on her behalf. What a joke to palm off the daughter of a Queen's
Road jeweler on the early-Victorian mother of the worthy George!
"Well?" she said, looking from one to the other with a return of her
impish delight in human experimentation.
"Mr. Lytham can explain this better than I can," said Lola quietly.
"I'm not so sure about that, but I'll do my best."
He drew a chair forward and sat down. Under ordinary circumstances,
where there was the normal amount of happiness, or even the mutual
agreement to give and take that goes with the average marriage, his task
would have been a difficult one. But in the case of Feo and his chief he
felt able to deal with the matter entirely without self-consciousness,
or delicacy in the choice of words.
"I needn't worry you with any of the details of the new political
situation, Lady Feo. You know them, probably, as well as I do. But what
you don't know, because the moment isn't yet ripe for the publication of
our plans, is that Mr. Fallaray has been chosen to lead the Anti-waste
Party, which is concentrating its forces to rout the old gang out of
politics at the next General Election, give Parliament back its lost
prestige, and do away with the pernicious influence of the Press Lords.
A big job, by Jove, which Fallaray alone can achieve."
"Well?" repeated Feo, wondering what in the world this preamble had to
do with the case in question.
"Well, at the end of the meeting of my party yesterday, I was sent down
to Chilton Park to tell Mr. Fallaray our plans. I was stultified to be
told that he had decided to chuck politics."
"And go in for love. Yes, I know. But what has this got to do with
Lola,--with Madame de Breze?"
That was the point that beat Feo, the thing that filled her with a sort
of impatient astonishment. Was this uncommunicative girl, who seemed to
her to be so essentially feminine, whose metier in life was obviously to
purr under the touch of a masculine hand, who had been given a holiday
to go on a love chase with Chalfont, presumably, somehow connected with
politics? It was incredible.
"Oh, you've seen Fallaray."
"Yes, my dear man, yes! He broke the news to me the moment he came in,"
"Did he ask you to give him a divorce?"
"He did, without a single stutter."
"And you said----"
"But--my dear young Lochinvar, may I make so bold as to ask why this
perfectly personal matter has to be discussed in the open, so to speak?"
She made her meaning unmistakably clear. This girl was not so close a
friend as he might have been led to suppose.
"What did you say to Mr. Fallaray?" asked Lola, leaning forward eagerly.
And Lytham waited with equal anxiety for an answer.
It did not come for an extraordinary moment and only then in the form of
a tangent. Feo turned slowly round to the girl who was in the habit of
dressing her and putting her to bed. With raised eyebrows and an air of
amused amazement, she ran her eyes over every inch of her, as though
trying very hard to find something to palliate the insufferable cheek
that she was apparently expected to swallow.
"My good Lola," she said finally, "what the devil has this got to do
with you?"
"Madame de Breze is the _dea ex machina_," said Lytham, evenly.
It didn't seem to him to be necessary to lead up to this announcement
like a cat on hot bricks, considering that Lady Feo had openly flouted
his chief from the first. She had no feelings to respect.
"_What did you say?_"
He repeated his remark, a little surprised at the gaping astonishment
which was caused by it.
"Madame de Breze--Lola--the woman for whom I am to be asked to step
aside?--Is this a joke?"
"No," he said. "Far from a joke."
"Ye Gods!" said Feo. And she sat for a moment, holding her breath, with
her large intelligent mouth open, her dark Italian eyes fixed on
Lytham's face, and one of her long thin capable hands suspended in
mid-air. She might have been struck by lightning, or turned into salt
like Lot's inquisitive wife.
It was plain enough to Lola that her mistress was reviewing in her mind
all the small points of their connection,--the engagement in the
housekeeper's room, the knowledge of her parentage, the generous
presents of those clothes for her beautification, the half-jealous,
half-sympathetic interest that had been shown in her love affair with
Chalfont, as she had allowed Lady Feo to imagine. She had come to Dover
Street, not to take this woman's husband away, but to give him back, to
beg that he should be retained by all the hollow ties of Church and law;
bound, held, controlled, rendered completely unable to break away,--not
for Feo's sake, and not for his, but for his country's. And so, having
committed no theft because Fallaray was morally free, and being
unashamed of her scheme which had been merely to give a lonely man the
rustle of silk, she hung upon an answer to her question.
Once more Feo turned to look at Lola, leaning forward, and for a moment
something flooded her eyes that was like blood, and a rush of unformed