The Rustle of Silk
bedroom, had taught her precisely how to conduct herself in her new
surroundings. Had not she herself been in the hands of just such a
lady's maid as she had now become and seen her laugh when she had
laughed, remain quiet when she had demanded quietude? It merely meant
that she had exchanged roles with Lady Feo for a time and was playing
the servant's part instead of that of the leading lady. She reveled in
the whole thing. It gave her constant delight and pleasure. Above all,
she was under the same roof as her hero, of whom she caught a momentary
glimpse from time to time,--from the window as he got into his car, from
the gallery above the hall as he came back from the House of Commons, or
late at night when he passed along the corridor to his lonely rooms,
sometimes tired and with dragging feet, sometimes scornful and
impatient, and once or twice so blazing with anger that it was a wonder
that the things he touched did not burst into flames.
III
The only one of the servants who took the remotest interest in the
arrival of those members of the Cabinet who were to dine with Lady Feo
was Lola. With the butler's connivance she stood inside the hat room in
the hall and peeped through the door. To her there was something not
only indescribably interesting in the sight at close quarters of men of
whom she had read daily for years and who were admired or loathed by her
father and his friends, but something moving, because they had it in
their power to help or hinder the work of Fallaray. She found them to be
a curiously smug and well-fed lot, undistinguished, badly dressed and
not very different from the ordinary run of Queen's Road tradesmen. She
thought that they looked like piano tuners and was astonished and
disappointed.
The most important person, who arrived late and whose face was of course
familiar to her from caricatures, made up for all the rest. He stood in
the full light for a moment while he gave his coat and hat to a
footman,--a soft dump hat and a coat lined with very shiny black satin.
He looked more than ever like a quack doctor, one who was a cross
between a comedian and a revivalist. His uncut hair, very white now,
flopped over the back of his collar in a most uncivilized manner and his
little moustache of the walrus type was quite out of keeping with it. If
he had been clean-shaven he could have passed for a poet, or a dramatist
who desired to advertise the fact, as some of them do who flourished in
the Victorian period. His short plebeian figure, with legs far too small
and apparently too frail to carry his fat little trunk, gave him a
gnome-like appearance, but in his eyes, which were very wonderful, there
was a gleam of humor and resourcefulness which stamped him as a
consummate leader of men, while his forehead denoted imagination and
keen intelligence. It made Lola laugh to see the way in which he tried
to win the callous footman with a cheery word, never losing an
opportunity of making a client, and to watch his rabbit-like way of
going upstairs to the drawing-room.
She was met by Simpkins, who darted quickly and eagerly to her side.
"Look 'ere," he said in a whisper. "You're free for the evening. How
about doing a show with me? I can get you back before Lady Feo'll want
you again. What d'yer say?"
"Yes," said Lola, "I should love it. What shall we see?"
Simpkins was a gallery first nighter and an ardent patron of the drama.
Whatever he recommended, therefore, was sure to be worth seeing. "Well,"
he said, "there's Irene Vanbrugh in a new American play,--'Miss Nell o'
New Orleans.' I couldn't get to see it but I read old man Walkley and I
saw what Punch said. I don't think the play's much, but Irene is
orlright. Nip up and get your things on. Let's go and test it."
Lola nipped. Her little bedroom was in the servants' corridor. She was
lucky that it wasn't, like most servants' bedrooms, in the basement,
cheek by jowl with the coal cellar. She changed quickly, excited at the
prospect of stealing a few hours away from the house in Dover Street.
She had been home twice on her nights off, there to be gazed at in
silent wonder by the little mother who seemed to know her even less than
ever and to be put through an exhaustive cross-examination by her
father, whose mind ran to small details, as was natural in one who wore
a magnifying glass perpetually in his eye. She met Simpkins in the
servants' sitting room,--very spruce in a tail coat and a bowler with
his black tie ingeniously pulled through a gold ring in which there was
a most depressed diamond.
She was received with a chorus of inquiries from the maids. "Hello,
Lola," "On the loose with Simpky?" "This is something new, ain't it?"
"Going to do the shimmy in 'Ammersmith?" and so forth. To all of which
she replied in one sentence. "Mr. Simpkins is taking me to an organ
recital," and won a scream of mirth.
Simpkins was ecstatic. He had made a bet with himself that his appeal
would be refused. Always before Lola had turned him down and he knew
that the frequent pestering of the butler and the two footmen had been
unable to move her to adventure. "We've just time to do it," he said,
put two fingers into his mouth and sent a piercing whistle into the
muggy April evening. A prowling taxi drew up short and quivered, and a
well-shaped head looked round to see from whom this urgent call had
issued. Taking Lola's hand, Simpkins ran her across the street and
opened the door. "The Dooker York's."
"Righto, Sir," said the driver, giving a quick and appreciative glance
at his customer's companion. Exactly three years ago the owner of that
particularly nice voice, straight nose and small moustache had commanded
a battery of the R. F. A. and fired with open sights at the advancing
enemy. With nothing to eat except apples plucked from the orchards
through which he had retired with his ragged and weakening men, he had
fought coolly and cheerily for many days and nights, utterly out of
touch with the main army and eventually, looking like a scarecrow, had
removed his guns from impossible positions and fallen on his face in
Amiens. Thus does a grateful Parliament reward its saviors.
Simpkins slipped his hand through Lola's arm. "I've been looking forward
to this," he said. "You don't know what you've done for me. I'm a
different man since I saw you first."
"I," said Lola quickly, "am precisely the same girl," and very kindly
and definitely gave him back his hand and drew a little farther into her
corner of the cab. But Simpkins wasn't hurt. On the contrary he esteemed
her the more highly for this action. She proved herself so to be
different from the girls with whom he was acquainted and thus lived up
to his preconceived idea of her. "Sorry," he said, "thank you," and
glowed with love.
It was perfectly true that Simpkins was a different man since he had
seen Lola. She had revolutionized his life and his thoughts and
strengthened his ambitions. He was a good fellow, clean-minded, with one
or two ideals to which he had clung faithfully and well through the many
temptations which were provided by his like below stairs. He had
character. He was illiterate but not unintelligent. He had something
that the human sensibility is frequently without,--a soul, and because
of that he had imagination and a sense of worship. He was the sort of
man of whom fanatics are made under a crisis of deep emotion. As a
gentleman's gentleman he regarded himself as having a sort of mission in
life. He must be honest, always ready for his master's call; spruce,
cheerful and discreet. When tempted to make himself acquainted with the
contents of private letters he must never give anything away. He had
held himself in waiting, so to speak, for a great love affair and had
built up in his mind a good and wholesome picture of home and wife and
children. Lola fitted into this picture and dominated it as no other
girl had ever done, and he had fallen actually and metaphorically before
her like a shack before a hurricane. At any time now he could leave
service and branch out for himself, because he had inherited from his
father a sum of money which would enable him to buy a public house
somewhere in the country--preferably on the upper Thames--and let rooms
to nice people,--they would have to be nice people. He was a man in the
middle thirties with plenty of time to add to his good nest egg, bring
up a little family with great care and put his son in a good school with
a view to making him a gentleman,--a dentist perhaps, or a clerk in
Coutts's bank. He could see only Lola as the mother of this boy and the
fact that she had accepted his invitation to go to the theater filled
him with a great hopefulness; he rejoiced in her having disallowed his
familiarity.
To Lola, Simpkins was less than the dust. She had already sized him up
as a rather curious character to be respected and even liked but not, of
course, to be considered as anything but an infrequent escort into the
theater life of London.
She placed him among the Treadwells,--though not so high up in the list
as Ernest. One of these fine days she hoped to be able to lift the
Bayswater poet out of the public library into the public gaze, to do for
him what Madame de Breze had done for Paul Brissac.
They arrived at the theater in good time. With a curious touch of
embarrassment, because he had seen at once that the cab was being driven
by a gentleman, Simpkins handed over half a crown and said, "That's all
right, you can keep the change." He received a crisp and unabashed
"Thank you" and a little bow from the waist down which was a cross
between extreme politeness and ineffable cheek, and before Lola turned
to go into the theater she was given a pucka salute with the hand almost
flat upon the ear. She returned a smile that was like one of those
electric advertisements which flick in and out of the sky in all really
progressive American cities. It nearly knocked the man over and almost
caused him to collide with a policeman.
Simpkins was tempted to buy two seats in the stalls and could have done
so without question in these after-war times when almost the only people
who have enough money for their laundresses are the profiteers. But
tradition prevailed and he took her up to the dress circle,--where
nobody dressed. The people were coming reluctantly into the theater in
the usual manner of Londoners. English people are not ardent theater
goers and have to be dragged in to see a play almost in the same manner
as in the old days of barnstorming, when the manager beat a drum on the
threshold of the tent, the hero and the heroine stood at his elbow and
made pathetic appeals to passers-by, and the villain, lurking in the
background, grimaced at all the girls.
The orchestra had just begun to tune up and the scraping of fiddles sent
a tingle through Lola's veins. It put her in the mood, as it always did,
to forget life, her own personality and the presence of Simpkins, and
place herself into the character of the play's heroine. From an
unexpected pocket Simpkins brought out a small box of chocolates. He was
one of those strange people who, although they have just risen from a
hearty meal, cannot go through an evening at the theater without
munching something. "'Ave one," he said. "They're nice."
"You think of everything," said Lola, and in order not to hurt his
feelings, took one and dropped it under the seat. "There's going to be a
good house," she added.
"Irene always draws 'em in. By Gum, she's given me some good evenings in
her time. She's what I call safe. You can bank on her. She dresses like
a lady, too, and that gets me. Good old Irene." And then he put his face
rather close to Lola's. "Some one said you thought of going on the stage
before you joined us. That's not true, is it?"