The Rustle of Silk
found out, isn't it the unwritten law to protect the reputations of
public men so long as there is no irate husband to stir up our
hypocritical moral sense by bringing the thing into the open?"
But neither spoke. There was something in the way in which Lola stood,
brave but trembling, that kept them silent; something in Fallaray's
expression of adoration and respect that made them feel ashamed of their
materialism. They were ignorant of all that had gone to the making of
Lola's apprenticeship to give that lonely man the rustle of silk, and of
the fact that he had grown to love this girl not as a mistress, but as a
wife.
And after a silence that held them breathless, Fallaray spoke again. "I
must be worthy of you, my little Lola," he said, "and not desert. I will
go on with the glory of your love as a banner--and if I die first, I
will wait for you on the other side of the Bridge."
"I will be faithful," she said.
He held out his arms, and she rushed into them with a great cry, pressed
herself to his heart, and took her last living kiss.
"Till then," said Fallaray finally, letting her go.
But nothing more came from Lola except a groping movement of her hands.
At the door, square of shoulder, Fallaray beckoned to Lytham and went
out and up to his room.
It was Feo who wept.
VI
Leaving his cubby-hole behind the screen and taking the inevitable glass
out of his eye, John Breezy waddled through the shop to the parlor to
enjoy a cup of tea. It was good to see the new brightness and daintiness
assumed by the whole of that little place since Lola had come back and
put her touch upon everything. It was good also to break away from the
mechanism of unhealthy watches for a quarter of an hour and get into
contact with humanity that was cheerful and well.
"Hurray!" he said, "what should I do without my cupper tea?"
With one eye on the shop door and the other on the teapot, Mrs. Breezy
presided at the chaotic table. The tea tray had cleared an opening among
the heterogeneous mass of accumulation. It was the ritual of week-day
afternoons, faithfully performed year in and year out,--and of late,
since Lola had been helping in the shop, more frequently interrupted
than ever before. Now that she had fallen into the steady habit of
sitting behind the counter near the window, business had perked up
noticeably and it was astonishing how many young men were discovering
the need of safety-razor blades, Waterman's fountain pens, silver
cigarette cases, and the like. Was it astonishing?
"Nice weather for Lola's afternoon off," said Breezy, emptying his cup
into his saucer, cabman's fashion. Tea cooled the sooner like that and
went down with a more succulent sound. "Hampton Court again?"
"Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Breezy, "with Ernest. Wonderful how much
better he looks since Lola came back,--cleaner, more self-respecting. He
had another poem in the paper yesterday. Did you read it?"
"Um. I scanned it over. Pretty good coming from behind a face like that.
Somehow, I always think of a poet as a man with big eyes, a velvet coat,
hair all over his face, who was born with a dictionary in his hand.
Funny thing, breaking out in a lad like Ernest. Caused by the War,
p'raps. It's left a lot of queer things behind it. He'd make more money
if he tried to turn out stories like Garvice wrote. I think I shall
speak to him about it and get him to be practical."
"No, don't," said Mrs. Breezy, "you'd upset Lola. She believes in Ernest
and wants him to make a name."
"What's the good of a name without money? However, I won't interfere.
You--you don't suppose that Lola's thinking of marrying that boy some
day, do you?" It was a most uncomfortable thought. His little girl must
do better than that.
Mrs. Breezy was silent for a moment and her face wore a look of the most
curious puzzlement.
"I don't know what she thinks, John. To tell you the truth, dear, I
don't know anything about her, and I never did. I don't know why she
went to Dover Street or why she came back. She's never told me and I've
never asked her. When I catch her face sometimes, I can see in it
something that makes my heart miss a beat. I can't describe it. It may
be pain, it may be joy,--I don't know. I can't tell. But it isn't regret
and it isn't sorrow. It lights her up like, as though there was
something burning in her heart. John, our little girl's miles away from
us, although she's never been nearer. She dreams, I think, and walks in
another world with some one. We've got to be very kind to her, old man.
She's--she's a strange, strange child."
Breezy pushed himself out of the sofa as a rather heavily laden boat is
oozed out of mud. He was irritable and perhaps a little frightened.
"I don't find her strange," he said. "Strange! What a word! She's a good
girl, that's what she is,--as open as a book, with nothing to hide. And
she's our girl, and she's doing her job without grumbling, and she's
doubling the business. And what's more, she's cheerful and happy and
loving. I'm damned if I can see anything strange about her. You
certainly have a knack of saying queer things about Lola, one way 'n'
another, you have!" And he marched out of the parlor in a kind of fat
huff, only to march back again immediately to put his arm round the
little woman's neck and give her an apologetic kiss. He was one of these
men who loved peace at any price and erected high barriers round himself
in order that he shouldn't see anything to disturb his ease of mind. It
was the same form of brain anaemia, the same lack of moral courage from
which the Liberal Government had suffered in the face of the warning of
Lord Roberts. In other words, the policy of the ostrich. Knowing very
well that his wife had all the brains of the partnership and never said
anything for the mere sake of saying it, he was quite sure that she was
right as to Lola, and he had himself almost swallowed one of the little
screws that played so large a part in the interior of his watches on
seeing the look that Mrs. Breezy had described on the face of his little
girl as she sat perched up on a high stool waiting for the next
customer, with her eyes on something very far away. And because this
gave him a jar and frightened him a little, he persuaded himself that
what he had seen he had not seen, because it was uncomfortable to see
it. It is a form of mental dope and it suits all sorts of
constitutions,--like religion.
And so, blotting out of his mind the little conversation which had taken
place over the teapot, Breezy returned to his job, his fat hands working
on the intricate mechanisms of his Swiss and American invalids with
astonishing delicacy of touch; and all the while he whistled softly
through his teeth. He was never at a loss for a tune because the flotsam
and jetsam that came in and went out of Queen's Road, Bayswater, with
their tired pianos, their squeaky fiddles, and their throaty baritones
provided him with all the sentimental ballads of yesterday and to-day.
It was seven o'clock when he looked up and saw Lola enter with Ernest
Treadwell,--the girl with a reflection of all the flowers of Hampton
Court in her eyes and the boy with love and adoration in his. It was
true that all about him there was a great improvement, a more healthy
appearance, a look of honest sleep and clean thinking. But he was still
the same ugly duckling with obstreperous hair and unfortunate teeth and
a half-precocious, half-timid manner. All the same, the fairies had
touched him at his birth and endowed him with that strange thing that is
called genius. He had the soul of a poet.
"Come up," said Lola, "you're not doing anything to-night, so you may as
well stay to dinner. I've found something I want to read to you."
She waved her hand to her father, smiled at her mother who was selling
note-paper to a housemaid from Inverness Terrace for love letters--and
so the paper was pink--and led the way upstairs to the drawing-room
which had been opened up and put in daily use. Its Sabbath look and
Sabbath smell, its antimacassars had disappeared. There were books
about, many books; sevenpenny editions of novels that hadn't fallen
quite stillborn from the press, and one or two by Wells and Lawrence and
Somerset Maugham.
"Sit down for a moment, Ernie," she said, "and make yourself happy. I'll
be with you again in five minutes." And he looked after her with a dog's
eyes and sat down to watch the door with a dog's patience.
In her own room she went to her desk, unlocked a drawer and took out a
page cut from _The Tatler_ on which was reproduced a photograph of
Fallaray. She had framed it and kept it hidden away under lock and key,
and always when she came home from her walks, and several times a day
when she could slip up and shut herself in for a moment or two, she took
it out to gaze at it and press it to her breast. It was her last link,
her last and everlasting link with the foolish dreams with which that
room was so intimately associated,--a room no longer made up to
represent that of a courtesan; a normal room now, suitable to the
daughter of a watchmaker in Queen's Road, Bayswater.
The evening sun gilded the commonplace line of the roofs opposite as she
stood in the window with Fallaray's face against her heart.
"I love you," she said, "I love you. I shall always love you, and if I
die first, I shall wait for you on the other side of the Bridge."
She returned it to its hiding place, took off her hat, tidied her hair,
picked up a little book and went back to the drawing-room.
"Listen," she said, "this is for you.
"'I shall see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive,--what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send His hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet or stifling snow,
In some time, His good time, I shall arrive;
He guides me and the bird. In His good time.'"
And as the boy watched her and saw her light up as though there were
something burning in her heart, he knew that those lines were as much
for herself as for him.
THE END
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