The Rustle of Silk
useful. "If you will please come in," said Simpkins, "I'll go and see if
Miss Breezy's upstairs. What name shall I say?"
"Lola Breezy."
"Miss Lola Breezy. Thank you." He paused for a moment to bask, and then
with a little bow in which he acknowledged her irresistible and
astonishing effect, disappeared,--valet stamped upon his respectability
like a Cunard label on a suit case.
Lola chuckled and remained standing in the middle of what was used by
the servants as a sitting room. How easy it was, with her gift, to
shatter men's few senses. She knew the place well,--its pictures of
Queen Victoria and of famous race horses cut from illustrated papers
cheaply framed and its snapshots of the gardens of Chilton Park,
Whitecross, Bucks. Discarded books of all sorts were piled up on various
tables. _The Spectator_ and _The New Statesman_, Massingham's peevish
weekly, _Punch_, _The Sketch_ and _The Tatler_, _Eve_ and the
_Bystander_, which had come downstairs from the higher regions, were
scattered here and there. They had been read and commented upon first by
the butler and then downwards through all the gradations of servants to
the girl who played galley slave to the cook. Lola wondered how long it
would be before she also would be spending her spare time in that room,
hobnobbing with the various members of the family below stairs. A few
days, perhaps, not more,--now that she had fastened on this plan.
Simpkins returned almost immediately. "If you will follow me," he said,
and gave her an alluring smile which disclosed a row of teeth that were
peculiarly English. He led the way along a narrow passage up the back
staircase and out upon a wide and imposing corridor, hung with Flemish
tapestry and old portraits, which appealed to Lola's sense of the
decorative and sent her head up with a tilt of proprietorship. This was
her atmosphere. This was the corridor along which her imaginary
sycophants had passed so often to her room in Queen's Road, Bayswater.
"We're not supposed to go through here," said Simpkins, eager to talk,
"except on duty. But it's a short cut to the housekeeper's quarters and
there's no one in to catch us. You look well against that hanging," he
added. "Like a picture in the Academy,"--which to him was the Temple of
Art.
A door opened and there were heavy footsteps.
"Look out. The governor." He seized Lola's arm and in a panic drew her
into the shadow of a large armoire.
Her heart jumped into her mouth!--It was her hero in the flesh, the man
at whose feet she had worshipped,--within a few inches of her, walking
slowly, with his hands behind his back, his mouth compressed and a sort
of hit-me-why-don't-you in his eye. Still with Simpkins's hand upon her
arm she slipped out,--not to be seen, not with any thought of herself,
but to watch Fallaray stride along the corridor; and get the wonder of a
first look.
A door banged and he was gone.
"A pretty near thing," said Simpkins. "It always happens like that. I
don't suppose he would have noticed us. Mostly he sees nothing but his
thoughts,--looks inwards, I mean. But rules is rules. He lives in that
wing of the 'ouse,--has a library and a bedroom there and another room
fitted up as a gym where he goes through exercises to keep hisself fit.
Give 'im enough in the House to keep 'im fit, you'd think, wouldn't yer?
A wonderful man.--Come on, Miss, nick through here." He opened a door,
ran lightly up a short flight of stairs and came back again into the
servant's passage. "'Ere you are," he said and smiled brilliantly,
putting in, as he thought, good work. This girl----! "I'll be glad to
see you 'ome," he added anxiously.
Lola said, "Thank you, but I have some one waiting for me," and entered.
IX
"Well!" said Miss Breezy.
"I hope so," said Lola, kissing the ear that was presented to her.
"I'm just rearranging my things. Her Ladyship's just given me some new
pictures. They used to be in the morning room, but she got sick of them
and handed 'em over to me. I'm going to hang them up." She might have
added that nearly everything that the room contained had been given to
her by Lady Feo with a similar generosity but her sense of humor was not
very keen or else her sense of loyalty was. At any rate, there she stood
in the middle of a nice airy room with something around her head to keep
the dust out of her hair, wearing a pair of gloves, a stepladder near at
hand.
There were six fair-sized canvases in gold frames,--seascapes; bold,
excellent work, with the wind blowing over them and spray coming out
that made the lips all salty. They made you hear the mewing of sea
gulls.
"Lady Feo bought them to help a young artist. He was killed in the War.
She hates the sea, it makes her sick, and doesn't want to be reminded of
anything sad. I don't wonder, and anyway, they'll look very nice here.
Do you like them?"
Lola had sized them up in a glance. She too would have turned them out.
They seemed to her rough and draughty. "Yes," she said, "they're very
good, aren't they?" She mounted the ladder and held out her hands. She
had come to ask a favor. She might as well make herself popular at once.
"Hand them up, Auntie, and I'll hang them for you."
"Oh, well now, that's very nice. I get giddy on a ladder. You came just
at the right moment. Can you manage it? It's very heavy. The first time
I've ever seen you making yourself useful, my dear."
This enabled Lola to get in her first point. "Mother never allows me to
be useful," she said, "and really doesn't understand the sort of thing
that I can do best." She stretched up, hung the cord over a brass
bracket and straightened it.
"Well, you can certainly do this job! Go on and do the rest while you're
at it. I was looking forward to a very tiring afternoon. I didn't want
to have any of the maids to help me. They resent being asked to do
anything that is outside their regular duty."
And so Lola proceeded, hating to get her hands dirty and not very keen
on indulging in athletics, but with a determination made doubly firm by
the fleeting sight of Fallaray.
Miss Breezy was in an equable mood that afternoon,--less pompous than
usual, less consumed with the importance of being the controlling brain
in the management of the Fallaray "establishment," as she called it in
the stilted language of the auctioneer. She became almost human as she
watched Lola perform the task which would have put her to a considerable
amount of physical inconvenience. When one is relieved of anything in
the nature of work, equability is the cheapest form of gratitude.
The room was a particularly nice one, large, with a low ceiling and two
windows which overlooked Dover Street. It didn't in the least indicate
the character of the housekeeper because not a single thing in it was
her own except a few books. Everything else had been given to her by
Lady Feo, and like the pictures, had been discarded from one or other of
the rooms below. The Sheraton sofa had come from the drawing-room. A
Dowager Duchess had sat on it one evening after dinner and let herself
go on the question of the Feo gang. It had been thrown out the following
morning. The armoire of ripe oak, made up of old French altarpieces--an
exquisite thing worth its weight in gold--had suffered a similar fate.
Rappe the ubiquitous photographer had taken a picture of Lady Feo
leaning against one of its doors. It turned out badly. In fact, the
angel on the other door looked precisely as though it were growing on
Lady Feo's nose. It might have been good art but it was bad
salesmanship. Away went the armoire. The story of all the other things
was the same so that the room had begun to assume the appearance of the
den of a dealer in old furniture. There were even a couple of old
masters on the walls,--a Reynolds and a Lely, portraits of the members
of Lady Feo's family whose faces she objected to and whose admonishing
eyes she couldn't bear to have upon her when she came down to luncheon
feeling a little chippy after a night out. These also were priceless. It
had become indeed one of the nicest rooms in the house. Every day it
added something to Miss Breezy's increasing air of dignity and
beatitude.
Lola did not fail to admire the way in which her aunt had arranged her
wonderful presents and used all her arts of flattery before she came
round to the reason of her visit. This she did as soon as Miss Breezy
had prepared tea with something of the ceremony of the Japanese and
arranged herself to be entertained by the child for whose temperament
she had found some excuse by labelling it French. Going cunningly to
work, she began by saying, "What do you think? You remember Mother's
friends, the Proutys, who were playing cards the other night?"
"Indeed I do," replied Miss Breezy. "Whenever I meet those people it
takes me some time to get over the unpleasant smell of meat fat. What
about them?"
"Cissie, the daughter, has gone into the chorus of the Gaiety, and is
very happy there. She's going to be in the second row at first, but
she's bound to be noticed, she says, because she has to pose as a statue
in the second act covered all over with white stuff."
"Nothing else?"
"No, but it will take an hour to put on every night. And before the end
of the run she'll probably be married at St. Margaret's to an officer in
the Guards, she says. She told me that she couldn't hope to become a
lady in any other way. I was wondering what you would say if I did the
same thing?"
Miss Breezy almost dropped her cup as Lola knew that she would. "You
don't mean to say you've come to tell me that you've got _that_ fearful
scheme in the back of your head, you alarming child? A chorus girl?"
Lola laughed. "You know _my_ way of improving myself: to serve an
apprenticeship as a lady's maid, a respectable way,--the way in which
you're going to help me now that you've thought it all over."
The answer came like the rapping of a machine gun. "I've not thought it
over and what's more, I'm not going to begin to think it over. I told
you so."
Without turning a hair Lola handed a plate of cakes. "But you wouldn't
like me to follow Cissie's example, would you,--and that's the
alternative." Poor dear old Aunt! What was the use of pretending to be
firm. All the trumps were against her.
But for once Lola miscalculated her hand and the woman. "If you must
make a fool of yourself," said Miss Breezy, "you must. I'm not your
mother and luckily you can't break my heart. I told you the other night
and I tell you again that I do not intend to be a party to your lowering
yourself by becoming a servant and there's an end of it." And she waved
her disengaged hand.
It was almost a minute before Lola recovered her breath. She sat back,
then, and put her head on one side. "In that case," she said in a
perfectly even voice, "I must try to get used to the other idea. I think
I might look rather well in tights and Cissie tells me that if I were to
join her at the Gaiety I should be put into a number in which five other
girls will come on in underclothes in a bedroom scene. Of course I
should keep my own name and before long you'd see my photograph in the
_Tatler_ as 'the latest recruit to the footlights,--the
great-great-granddaughter of the famous Madame de Breze.' I should tell
the first reporter that, of course, to make it interesting."
Miss Breezy rocked to and fro, gripping her cup. How often had she
shuddered at the sight of scantily dressed precocious girls sitting in
alarming attitudes on the shiny paper of the _Tatler_. To think of Lola
in underclothes, debasing a highly respectable name! Nevertheless, "I am
not to be bullied," she said, wobbling like a turkey. "I have always
given way to you before, Lola, but in this case my mind is made up.