I

To Ellingham’s entire satisfaction, Feo did not sit out the performance at the Adelphi. She left in the middle of the second act. It was not a piece demanding any sort of concentration. That was not its mÉtier. It was one of those rather pleasant, loosely made things, bordering here and there on burlesque, in which several comedians have been allotted gaps to fill between songs which, repeated again and again, give a large chorus of pretty girls an opportunity of wearing no dress longer than five minutes or lower than the knees. But Feo’s mind was wandering. The last twenty-four hours had been filled with disappointment. She agreed with the adage that if you can’t make a mistake you can’t make anything. But this last one, which had taken the Macquarie person into her circle of light, proved to her that she was losing not only her sense of perspective but her sense of humor. It rankled; and it continued to rankle all through the jokes and songs and horseplay of the company behind the footlights that Saturday night.

Then, too, she found herself becoming more and more disappointed in Ellingham. He had aged. Still just on the right side of forty, he seemed to her to have had all the youth knocked out of him. His resilience had gone—sapped by the War—and with it his danger, which had been so attractive. He was now a quiet, repressed, responsible, dull—yes, dull,—man; in a sort of way the father of a family. When he talked it was about his regiment in India, his officers, his quartermaster sergeant, the health of his men, the ugly look of things in the East. All this made it seem to Feo that Beetle Ellingham had pulled away from her, left her behind. She was still fooling, while he, once as irresponsible as herself and almost as mad, had found his feet and was standing firmly upon them. Disappointment, disappointment.

“What to do?” she asked, as they got into a taxicab. She rather hoped that he would say “Nothing. I’ll see you home and say good night.”

But he didn’t. “I’ll drive you home and talk for an hour, if you can stand such a thing. I’m going to see my old people in Leicestershire to-morrow, and I don’t suppose I shall be back in town for a month or two.”

She told him to make it Dover Street, and he did so, and there was silence until the cab drew up at the door of the house in which the man—whom she had for the first time seriously considered as the new Messiah—burnt himself up in the endeavor to find some solution to all the troubles of his country, and, like a squirrel in a cage, ran round and round and round.

Feo let herself in and led the way to what she called her den,—a long, low-ceilinged room, self-consciously decorated in what purported to be a futuristic manner, the effect of which, as though it had been designed by an untrained artist striving to disguise his ignorance behind a chaos of the grotesque, made sanity stagger. And here, full stretch on an octagonal divan, she mounted a cigarette in her long green holder and commenced to inhale hungrily.

Hating the room and all its fake, Ellingham, who more than ever justified the nickname of Beetle which had been given to him at Eton because of his over-hanging black eyebrows, prowled up and down with his hands in his pockets. He, too, was disappointed. It seemed to him that Feo had remained the hoyden, the overgrown, long-legged girl with boy’s shoulders and the sort of sex illusiveness which had so greatly attracted him in the old days, and had set him to work to eliminate and replace. But now she was thirty something, and although he hated to use the expression about her of all women, he told himself that she was mutton playing lamb, and a futile lamb at that. Perhaps it was because he had been all the way through the War and had come out with a series of unforgettable pictures stamped upon his brain that he had expected to find some sort of emergement on the part of Feo, who, although she had been spared the blood and muck of Flanders, was the sister of a flying man, the relation of innumerable gallant fellows who had been made the gun fodder of that easily preventable orgy, and the friend of many a young soldier whose bones now lay under the shallow surface of French earth. So far as she was concerned, he could see that the War might never have happened at all. It made him rather sick. Nevertheless he had loved her violently and had never married because of his remembrance of her and he wanted to find out how she stood. He was entirely in the dark. He had not been alone with her once since the end of July, 1914,—a night on the terrace of a house overlooking the Thames at Cookham, when all the world already knew that slaughter was in the air and the wings of the angel of death rustled overhead.

He stopped in front of her, all stretched out among cushions, her short and pleated frock making her appear to be in a kilt. “Well, how about it?” he asked.

And she shrugged her shoulders and tossed the ash of her cigarette at a small marble pot. “I dunno,” she said. “Pretty badly, one way and another.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh, I dunno,” she said again. “One gets nowhere and does really nothing and spends one’s life looking for something that never turns up,—the glamour of the impossible. Disappointment, disappointment.”

“H’m,” said Beetle. “Is there no chance of your getting on better with Fallaray? He seems to be the only live creature in politics, the one honest man.” He had never imagined that he would ever have put that question to her.

“That’s true,” said Feo. “He is. I have nothing but admiration for Edmund,—except dislike. Profiles and tennis are no longer my hobbies and there is no more hope of our getting on, as you call it, than of my becoming an earnest worker among the slums. Once Feo, always Feo, y’know. That’s the sentence I labor under, Beetle. As a rule, I’m perfectly satisfied and have no grumbles. I rot about and play the giddy ox, wear absurd clothes, do my best to give a jar to what remains of British smugdom and put in a good-enough time. You mustn’t judge me as you find me to-night. I have the megrims. Ghosts are walking and I’m out of form. To put it truthfully, I’m rather ashamed of myself. I’ve become a little too careless. I must relearn the art of drawing the line. That’s all. But, for the Lord’s sake, don’t let me depress you,—that is, if I have any longer the power of doing so.”

She hadn’t, he found, and it hurt. In the old days he would have said so and in a sort of way got even with her for turning him down and marrying Fallaray. He would have taken a certain amount of joy in hitting her as hard as he could. But he had altered. He was not the old Beetle, the violent, hot-tempered, rather cruel individualist. Men had died at his side,—officers and Tommies. And so his days of hurting women were over. He was rather a gentle Beetle now. Curious how things shaped themselves. And so he prowled up and down with his hands in his pockets, inarticulate, out of touch,—like a doctor in a lunatic asylum, or an Oxford man revisiting the scenes of his giddy youth in his very old age.

And Feo continued to smoke,—smarting. Not because she cared for Beetle or had ever given him a thought. But because everything was edgeways, like a picture puzzle that had fallen in a heap. She would have given a great deal to have had this man take his hands out of his pockets and stop prowling and become the old violent Beetle once again. She would have liked to have heard him curse Fallaray and accuse her of being a rotter. She would have liked to have seen the old hot look in his eyes and been compelled to laugh him off, using her old flippant words. Anything,—anything but the thing that was.

But even as he prowled—up round the wispy table and down in front of that damn-fool altar, or whatever it was—he became more and more the ancient friend, distantly related, who had little to talk about and little that he cared to hear. Once more he went over all the old India stuff, the regiment, the officers and men, their health, the underlying unrest of the East. Then he jerked, as a sudden glorious new thought, to his people and the place they lived in, but all the same this unsatisfactory reunion lasted twenty minutes less than the given hour.

Suddenly Ellingham stopped walking and stood in front of Feo and said, “Good-by. I don’t suppose I shall see you again.” And wheeled off and went, quickly, with relief.

And when Feo heard the front door bang, she remained where she was lying until the hour was fulfilled, with the hand that he had shaken all stiff, and with two tears running slowly down her face.

Disappointment.—Disappointment.

II

Lola woke early and went to the window and pulled up the blind. The sun was shining and half a dozen London sparrows were chirping and hopping about in the back yard of one of the houses in Bond Street. One poor anÆmic tree stood in the middle of it, and an optimist, condemned to live in the city, had worked on the small patch of earth and made a little garden where cats met at night and sang duets and swore, and talked over all the feline gossip of the neighborhood, fighting from time to time to keep their claws in, to the cruel derangement of the bed of geraniums, which looked that morning as though the Germans had passed over it.

All Lola’s dreams during the night had been filled with tragedies, but the effect of the one that was upon her still was that she had died, withered up, after having been left by Fallaray in the corridor where she had been caught by him in tears,—unable, because, for some reason, there had been a cold hand on her heart, to jump at the great and wonderful opportunity that had come to her and which she had worked so long to achieve. And in this last just waking dream, the reality of which still left her awed, she had stood, bewildered, on the unfamiliar side of a short wide bridge, to be faced suddenly by a scoffing and sarcastic woman who had taunted her for her impotence and lack of grit and called her middle class, without cunning and without the necessary strength to be unscrupulous, so vital to success.

And as she stood facing a new day with these words ringing in her ears, she told herself that she ought to have died, that she deserved death, for having lost her nerve and her courage. She accepted the biting criticism of the successful de BrÉzÉ and offered no excuses. This was far too big a thing to win by a series of easy steps. And up to that time they all had been easy and had led actually to Fallaray. Everything seemed to have played into her hands and it was she, Lola, who had failed. If she had possessed even half the cunning of which the de BrÉzÉ had spoken, with what avidity and delight she must have seized her opportunity when Fallaray had come suddenly upon her. But she had proved herself to be witless and without daring, a girl who had played at being a courtesan in a back room, who had sentiment and sympathy and emotion and whose heart, instead of being altogether set on the golden cage, had become soft with love and hero worship and the delay of hope,—just Lola Breezy, the watchmaker’s daughter, the little Queen’s Road girl suffering from the reaction of having set alight unwillingly all the wrong men, stirring, finally, her friend Chalfont, who had been so kind and good. So that when Fallaray had come to her at last, remembering her name, she had let him go unstirred, without an effort, because she was thinking of him and not of herself and her love and the passionate desire of her life. Yes, she deserved to be dead, because her courage had oozed out of her finger tips and left her trembling.

But what was she to do now? Give up? Devote herself to lady’s maiding and develop into an Ellen, or resign from this position and return home to help her mother in the shop and dwindle into love-sickness? Give up and shake herself back to a normal frame of mind in which, some day, she would walk to chapel with Ernest Treadwell,—or go to Chalfont and tell him the truth and put his love to the test? Or, refusing to own herself a weakling, a dreamer and a failure, begin all over again, this time with as much of cunning as she could find in her nature and all the disturbing influence of that too well-proved gift? Which?

And the answer came in a woman’s voice, ringing and strong. “Go on, go on, de BrÉzÉ. Begin all over again. You were born to be a canary, with the need of a golden cage. You inherit the courtesan nature; you must let it have its way. As such there’s a man you can rescue, lonely and starved of love. It is not as wife that he needs you, but as one with the rustle of silk——”

“I will go on,” said Lola. “I will begin again.” And with a high head once more and renewed hope and eagerness and courage, she set her brain to work. All the rungs of the ladder were without the marks of her feet. But she waved her hand to the pathetic patch of miniature garden with its anÆmic city tree, caught its optimism and began to think. Where was she to begin?

Into her mind came some of the gossip of the servants’ sitting room, to which as a rule she paid no attention. Ellen had given out that Simpkins had said that he was to have time off from the following Friday to Tuesday because Mr. Fallaray had made his plans to go down alone to Chilton Park for a short holiday. To Chilton Park for a short holiday! Ah! Here was a line to be followed up. Here was something which might enable her to pick up the thread again.

She began to walk up and down her little room, in a nightgown which certainly did not belong to a courtesan, repeating to herself again and again “Chilton Park, Chilton Park,” worrying the thing out like a schoolgirl with a difficult lesson. By some means, by hook or by crook, she also must get to Chilton Park during that time; that was certain, even if she had to ask Lady Feo to let her give up her position as lady’s maid. But following this thought came another, instantly,—that she would regret above all things to put her mistress to inconvenience, because she was grateful for many kindnesses and maids were scarce. And she was glad that the de BrÉzÉ could not hear her think and call out “weakness, weakness.” How to get there? How to be somewhere in the neighborhood so that she might be able to slip one night into the garden to be seen by Fallaray, and then, for the first time, prove to herself and to him that she was not any longer the Lola Breezy of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, the little middle-class girl, timid and afraid, but the reincarnation of her famous ancestress, as she had always supposed herself to be, and had played at being so often, and had tried to be during her brief escapes into life.

How?—How?

She might, of course, ask Lady Feo for a week’s leave—a large order—go to Whitecross and engage a room at the little inn that she had noticed at the corner of the road at the top of the hill. But what would be the use of that? How could she play Madame de BrÉzÉ in such a place, with one evening frock and her own plain everyday dress with two undistinguished hats and a piece of luggage that yelled of Queen’s Road, Bayswater? It was absurd, impossible. Brick wall number one. And so she tackled the task grimly, thinking hard, swinging from one possibility to another, but with no better luck. Everything came back to the fact that all her savings amounted to no more than ten pounds. How could she go forward, unaided, on that? And then in a flash she saw herself at the house in Kensington Gore with Chalfont and remembered the words of Lady Cheyne, who, in asking her to come down to her little place in the country, had said that the garden ran down to Chilton Park. It had been pigeonholed in her brain and she had found it! And with a little cry of delight she pounced upon it like a desert wanderer on water.

Lady Cheyne,—that kindly soul who was never so happy as when giving a hand to a stray dog. It might easily happen, the weather being so good, that she had already left town. That would be wonderful. But if not, if she were still busy with her musicians and their concerts, then she must be seen and influenced to leave town, or, better still, called up on the telephone at once. A tired little woman of the world needed a breath of fresh air and the peace of a country garden. Would Lady Cheyne take mercy on her, as she took mercy on so many people, and give her this peace and this quietude?—Yes, that was the way. It was a brain wave.

Filled with determination no longer to wait for an opportunity, but to make one, not to rely on fate, as she had been doing, but to treat fate as though it were something alive, a man—Simpkins, Treadwell or Chalfont—and cajole him, Lola proceeded to dress, with the blood tingling in her veins, and imbued with the feeling of one who faces a forlorn hope. But it was still too early to use the telephone to the elderly lady who, if she were in town, had probably listened to music into the small hours. She must wait and go on thinking. There were other things to overcome, even if this one came right. How to wheedle a holiday; to hint, if she dared, at her lack of clothes, a suit-case, shoes.

The servants’ sitting room was empty. On Sunday, the mÉnage, except for the cook, slept late. And so Lola marked time impatiently, achieving breakfast from the sulky woman by flattery. Lady Feo had given out that she was not to be disturbed until her bell rang. She would wake to find Sunday in London,—a detestable idea. There was nothing for which to get up.

Watching a clock that teased her with its sloth, Lola went over and over the sort of thing to say to Lady Cheyne, disturbed in her current of thought by the suddenly garrulous cook who insisted on telling the whole story of her life, during the course of which she had buried a drunkard and married a bigamist and lost her savings and acquired asthma,—a dramatic career, even for a cook. But at nine-thirty, unable to control herself any longer, she ran upstairs to Feo’s alarming den, hunted out Lady Cheyne’s number in the book and eventually got into communication with an operator who might, from her autocratic manner, very easily have been Mrs. Trotsky, or the wife of a labor leader, or a coal-miner’s daughter, or indeed a telephone operator of the most approved type.

A sleepy and rather irritable voice said, “Well?—but isn’t it a little early to ring any one up and on a Sunday morning too?”

Lola made a wry face. That was not a good beginning. And then, in her sweetest voice, “Am I speaking to dear Lady Cheyne?”

“Yes, it’s Fanny Cheyne, lying in bed with this diabolical instrument on her chest, but not feeling very dear, my dear, whoever you are, and I don’t know your voice.”

“It’s Madame de BrÈzÈ and I’m so very sorry to disturb you.”

“Why did you then, if I may say so,—de BrÉzÉ. I’m sorry too, but really I hear so many names, just as odd.—If it’s about being photographed, please no. I’m far too fat. Or if it’s about a subscription for the starving children of Cochin China, I have too many starving children of my own.”

Quick, de BrÉzÉ, quick, before the good old lady cuts off.

“The Savoy, the little widow, Sir Peter Chalfont, your wonderful house so full of genius, and what do you do, my dear.—Don’t you remember, dear Lady Cheyne?”

“Oh,—let me think now.” (The tone was brighter, interest was awakening! Good for you, de BrÉzÉ.) “My dear Peter with the comic-tragic leg—no, arm—the Savoy——”

“You were with Alton Cartridge and the disinfected Russian violinist, and you betted on my being French and invited me to Whitecross and when I went up to powder my nose——”

“You never came back! Golden hair like butter-cups, wide-apart eyes and fluttering nostrils, a mouth designed for kissing and all about you the rattle of sex. You dear thing! How sweet of you to ring me up and on a Sunday too. Where on earth did you go?”

Go on, de BrÉzÉ, go on! A little mystery, a touch of sadness, a hint of special confidence, flattery, flattery.

“Ah, if only I could see you. I dare not explain that sudden disappearance over the telephone,—which must have seemed so rude. You are the only woman in all the world who could keep an amazing secret and advise a troubled woman in a tangle of romance——”

“Secret, romance—who but Poppy for that!”

It worked, it worked! Lola could see the kind little lady struggle into a sitting posture, alert and keen, her vanity touched. Go on, de BrÉzÉ, go on.

“Ever since then I’ve been thinking of you, dear Lady Cheyne, and, at last, this morning, on the spur of the moment, longing for help, driven into a corner, remembering your kind invitation to Whitecross——”

“My dear, you excite me and I adore excitement. Of course you must see me, at once. But to-day’s impossible. I’ve a thousand things to do. And to-morrow—let me see now. How can I fit you in? Probably you don’t want to be seen at my house or the Savoy, you mysterious thing. So what can we arrange? I know. I have it. Quite French and appropriate. Meet me on the sly at a place where no one ever would dream of our being. Mrs. Rumbold’s, a jobbing dressmaker. I’m going to see her to-morrow to alter some clothes. Castleton Terrace, Bayswater, 22. She used to work for me. A poor half-starved soul, but so useful. Half-past eleven. And we’ll arrange for a week-end at my place, perhaps, or elsewhere, wherever you like.”

“Oh, Whitecross, Whitecross,—it sounds so right.”

“And, it is so right,—romance in every rose bowl. To-morrow then, and I shall love to see you, my dear, and thank you for thinking of Poppy. I’m so excited. Good-by.”

“Good-by, dearest Lady Cheyne,—a thousand thanks.”

Well played, de BrÉzÉ. That’s the way to do it. Keep on like that and prove your grit, my dear.

And presently for Lady Feo, who would certainly have something to say about the Carlton episode, and if all went well the frocks, the hats, the shoes,—but nothing yet about the holiday. That must wait until after the interview at Mrs. Rumbold’s to-morrow.

III

After all, then, Feo was to spend a dull and dreary Sunday in London; but she had slept endlessly, hour after hour, and when at last she woke at twelve o’clock, the sun was pouring into her room. Wonder of wonders, there was nothing dull about this Sunday! London lay under an utterly blue sky and those of its people who had not fled from its streets to the country, afraid of its dreariness, were out, finding unexpected touches of beauty in their old city and a lull of traffic that was restful.

The sight of Lola as she came into the room in the discreet garments of her servitude brought instant laughter back to Feo’s lips. Only a few hours ago she had been claimed as an intimate friend by the girl, with all the confidence and aplomb of a member of the enclosure. How perfectly delightful. She took her cup of tea and sat up in bed, forgetting everything except the backwash of her great amusement. Madame de BrÉzÉ.—By Jove, those quiet ones,—they knew their way about. When she had been undressed the night before, Feo had been in no mood to chaff her maid, then a mere human machine, about her general and her escapade. Depression, disappointment and humiliation had driven the Carlton incident out of the way. But now the sun was shining again and she had slept in a great chunk. What did Gilbert Macquarie count in the scheme of things now, or, for the matter of that, Ellingham? She thanked all her gods that she possessed the gift of quick recovery.

And now to pull the little devil’s leg. “Oh, hello, old girl,” she said, carrying on her attitude of the previous night, “how awfully nice of you to bring me my tea.” She expected utter embarrassment and confusion, and certainly an apology. Good Lord, the girl had pinched those stockings!

But the answer was quiet and perfectly natural. “That’s all right, Feo. Only too glad.”

After the first gasp of surprise there was a loud guffaw. Nothing in this world was more pleasing to Feo than the unexpected. “Sunday in London! But this is as good and a jolly sight better than Saturday night at the Adelphi. Bravo, Lola. The bitter bit. Keep it up. I love it.”

And with her black hair all tousled, her greenish eyes dancing with amusement, her large mouth wide open and the collar of her black silk pajamas gaping, she stirred her tea and waited for the fun.

And seeing that her mistress was all for laughing and that she had hit the right note, Lola kept it up. Witless and without daring, eh? Well, wait and see.

“I rather wish we’d gone on with you to the theater,” she said, lighting a cigarette and sitting on the arm of a chair in a Georgie Malwood pose. “It might have amused you to see something of Peter Chalfont, who has refused to join the gang.”

Feo was amazed at the perfection of what was, of course, an imitation of herself. Breezy’s niece was a very dark horse, it seemed.

“But where the deuce did you pick him up?” she asked, continuing the game.

“Oh, my dear, I’ve known him for years. He was an old pal of the man I married in my teens and was always hanging about the place. I call him the White Knight because he has such a charming way of rescuing women in distress. If you’re keen about getting to know him, I’ll work it for you, with all the pleasure in life.”

Back went that black head with hair like a young Hawaiian. Oh, but this was immense. A lady’s maid and a bedside jester, rolled into one. And how inimitably the girl had caught her intonation and manner of expression. A born actress, that was what she was.

“Don’t bother about me. What are you going to do with him? That’s what I want to know.”

Lola shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, I dunno,” she said, with a lifelike Feo drawl. “What can I do with him? Only trail him round.”

“Marry him, of course. That man’s a catch, you fool. Stacks of money, three show places in the country, a title as old as Rufus, and only one hand to hit you with.”

“But I’m not marrying,” said Lola.

And that was too much for Feo. She threw the clothes back and kicked up her heels like a schoolgirl. But before she could congratulate her lady’s maid on a delightful bit of acting and an egregious piece of impertinence that was worth all the Sundays in London to watch, the telephone bell rang and brought her back to facts.

“Just see who that is, will you? And before you say I’m here, find out who it is.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Lola. The little game was over. It hadn’t lasted long. But if it had put her ladyship into a generous mood——

It was Mrs. Winchfield, calling up from Aylesbury.

“Oh, well,” said Feo, with the remembrance of great dullness. “Give me the ’phone and get my bath ready. And tell them to let me have lots of breakfast in half an hour, here. I could eat a horse.”

“Very good, my lady.”

And when Lola returned, having carried out her orders and still tingling with the triumph of having proved her courage and her wit, she found Lady Feo lying in the middle of the room, on her back, doing exercises. “All the dullards have left the Winchfields’,” she said. “There’s to be a pucca man there this afternoon, one I’ve had my eye on for weeks. Quick’s the word, Lola. Get me dressed and into the car. This is Sunday and I’m in London. It’s perfectly absurd. I shall stay the night, of course, and I shan’t want you till to-morrow at six. What’ll you do? Lunch at the Carlton?”

“I shall go home, my lady.” But the twinkle returned.

“Oh, yes, of course. I spoilt your holiday, didn’t I? By the way, does your mother know that you’re in society now?”

And Lola replied, “The bath is ready, my lady.”

And once more Feo laughed, lit a cigarette and went towards the bathroom. Here she turned and looked at the now mouse-like Lola with a peculiarly mischievous glint in her eyes. “Wouldn’t it be a frightful spree if I went after Peter Chalfont and told him all I know about you?” Two minutes later she was singing in the bath.

Tell Peter Chalfont!—But Lola knew that this was an empty threat. Mr. Fallaray’s wife was a sportsman. Mr. Fallaray’s wife.

For the first time in all this business, these words stood out in ghastly clearness, with all that they meant to Lady Feo and her, who was “after” Mr. Fallaray. Was she, Lola, a sportsman too? The question came suddenly, like a bomb dropped from a Zeppelin, and drew the girl up short. But the answer followed quickly and it was Yes, yes, because this woman was not Fallaray’s wife and never had been.

But there was more than a little irony in the fact that she liked Lady Feo, was grateful to her, had seen many of her best points and so far as the Carlton episode went, recognized in her a most unusual creature, imbued with a spirit of mischief which was almost like that of a child. And yet for all that, she was Fallaray’s wife.—It was more than conceivable, as Lola could guess, that if the whole story were confided in detail, with the de BrÉzÉ background all brought out, Lady Feo would first of all laugh and then probably help her little lady’s maid for the fun of the thing, and to be able, impishly, one night when she met Fallaray coming back from the House worn and round-shouldered, to stand in front of him, jumping to conclusions, and say, “Ha, ha! Sooner or later you all come off your pedestal, don’t you? But look out, Master Messiah. If the world spots you in the first of your human games, pop goes the weasel, and you may as well take to growing roses.”

Still singing, and back again in the highest spirits, Feo breakfasted in her room and Lola dressed her for the country. Not once but many times during the hour that followed she endeavored to pump Lola about Chalfont and as to the number of times that she had gone out into “life.” But Lola was a match for her and evaded all questions; sometimes with a perfectly straight face, sometimes with an answering twinkle in her eye. Although she was piqued by the girl’s continued elusiveness, Feo was filled with admiration at her extraordinary self-control,—a thing that she respected, being without it herself. And then Lola, with a little sigh, and as though drawn at last, got to her point in this strange and intimate talk. “I’m afraid I shall never be able to see Sir Peter again,” she said sadly. “I have only one evening frock and he has seen it twice.”

At which Feo went to her wardrobe, flung open the doors, took down dress after dress, threw them on her bed and said, “Take your choice. Of course, you can’t always wear the same old frock. Sir Galahad has a quick eye. Take what stockings you need also and help yourself to my shoes. There are plenty more where these came from,—you little devil. If you catch that man, and I shan’t be a bit surprised if you do, you will have done something that nearly every girl in society has taken a shot at during the last five years. I make one bargain with you, Lola, in return for these things. Spend your honeymoon at Chilton Park and let me present you at Court.”

An icy hand had touched her heart again. A honeymoon at Chilton Park,—with Chalfont.

IV

And so Lola was free to go home again and spend the remainder of Sunday with her people, after all. But when, having tidied up and dressed herself, she ran downstairs into the servants’ sitting room on her way to the area steps, there sat Simpkins, a crestfallen and tragic figure, looking at a horizon which no longer contained the outline of his dream upon the banks of the Thames. He got up as Lola entered,—done for, but in the spirit of a protector, a Cromwellian spirit. “Where ’ad you bin last night?” he asked, “in them clothes?” He had not slept for thinking of it. His Lola, dressed like a lady, coming in with a tear-stained face, late at night, alone, from a devouring world. All his early chapel stuff had been revived at the sight. Disappointment had stirred it up.

Another cross-examination! Wasn’t the world large enough for so small a little figure to escape notice?

“Dear old Simpky,” she said, with that wide-eyed candor of hers, “I’m in such a hurry. With any luck I shall just be able to catch the bus that will take me home to lunch.”

But Simpkins put his back against the door. “No,” he said. “Not like that. Even if I’ve lost yer, I love yer, and it’s my job to see you don’t come to no ’arm. You’ve got to tell me what you’re doing.”

There was something in the man’s eyes and in the whiteness of his face that warned Lola immediately of the need to be careful. Her mother had said that Simpkins was a good man with something of ecstasy in his nature, and she guessed intuitively that the latter might take the form eventually, in his ignorance and his love, of a dangerous watchfulness. So she was very patient and quiet and commonplace, remembering a similar scene which had taken place with Treadwell outside Mrs. Rumbold’s battered house.

“I went to a concert with a married friend of mine. Lady Feo gave me the frock. It’s very kind of you to worry, Simpky. And now, please——”

And after a moment’s hesitation Simpkins opened the door and with a curious dignity gave the girl her freedom. He loved her and believed in her. She was Lola and she was good, and but for some catastrophic accident she might be engaged to be married to him.

But Lola didn’t go immediately. She turned round and put her hand on the valet’s arm. “What are you going to do?” she asked, affectionately concerned.

“There isn’t anything for me to do,” he said, “now.”

“Come home with me.”

But he shook his head. “I couldn’t,” he said. “Your father is a friend of mine and might slap me on the back and tell me to go on ’oping—and there isn’t any—is there?”

And she said, “No, Simpky dear. I’m sorry to say there isn’t. But you can’t sit here looking at the carpet with the sun shining and so much to see. Why not come on the bus as far as Queen’s Road and then go for a walk. It would do you good.”

And he said, “Nothing can do me good.”

And she could see that he had begun to revel in his pain, and nurse it, and elevate it to a great tragedy. And for the first time she recognized in this man a menace to her scheme. He loved her too well and she had made him a fanatic.

This scheme of hers, so like one of the Grimm’s fairy tales in which the woodcutter’s daughter dared to love the prince,—was it to get all over the town? Miss Breezy had a friend in Scotland Yard, a detective. Lady Feo was on the watch, and here was Simpkins turned into a protector. And all the while Prince Fallaray lived in the same house and did nothing more than just remember her name, thinking that she was a friend of the woman who called herself his wife.

Never mind; the sun was shining, tears had dried, courage had returned, frocks and shoes and stockings had come and the impossible was one of the things that nearly always happened.

An hour later the door of the watchmaker’s shop opened in answer to her knock. There stood the fat man with his beaming smile of welcome and surprise, and out of the little parlor came an enticing aroma of roast lamb and mint sauce.

V

That evening, controlling her excitement and anxious to make her people happy, Lola went to the family chapel with them,—the watchmaker in a gargantuan tail coat, a pair of pepper and salt trousers, and a bowler hat in which he might have been mistaken for the mayor of Caudebac-sur-Seine or a deputy representing one of the smaller manufacturing towns of France. Beside him his little wife stood bluntly for England. Everything that she wore told the story not only of her birth and tradition but of that of several grandmothers. There must have been at that moment hundreds of thousands of just such women, dressed in a precisely similar manner, on their way to answer the summons of a bell which was not very optimistic,—the Church having fallen rather low in popular favor. It had so many rivals and some of them were, it must be confessed, more in the mood of the times.

It was a sight worth seeing to watch these Breezys ambling up Queen’s Road, proudly, with their little girl. And it was because Lola knew that she was conferring a great treat upon her parents that she submitted herself to an hour and a half of something worse to her than boredom. Only a little while ago she had looked forward to the evening service on Sundays and had been gently moved by the hymns, by the reading from the Scripture and even by the illiterate impromptus of the minister; and she had found, in moments that were dull, the usual feminine pleasure in casting surreptitious glances about the small, plain unbeautiful building to see what Mrs. This wore or Mrs. That. But now she found herself going through it all like a fish out of water. As Ellingham had outgrown Lady Feo, so had she outgrown that flat, uninspired, and rather cruel service, in which the name of God was always mentioned as a monster of vengeance, without love and without forgiveness, and with a suspicious eye to the keyhole of every house. With a sort of shame she found herself finding fault with the rhymes of the hymns, which every now and then were dreadful, and were, oh, so badly sung; and when a smug-faced, uneducated man came forward, shut his eyes, placed himself in an attitude of elaborate piety and let himself go with terrible unction, treating God and death and life and joy and humanity as though they were butter, or worse still, margarine, goose flesh broke out upon her and a curious self-consciousness as though she were intruding upon a scene at which she had no right to be present. Away and away back, church had not been like this to her. Out of a dream she seemed to hear the deep reverberation of a great organ, the high sweet voices of unseen boys and the soft murmur of an old scholar retelling the simple story of Christ’s pathetic struggle, and of God’s mercy.—Oh, the commonplace, the misinterpretation, the hypocrisy, the ignorance. No wonder the busses were filled, she thought, the commons crowded on the outskirts of the city. To her there was more religion in one shaft of evening sun than in all those chapels put together.

It was with thankfulness and relief that Lola went back with her parents to the street and turned into Queen’s Road again, which wore a Sunday expression. Gone for a brief time were the itinerant musicians, the innumerable perambulators, the ogling flappers with their cheap silk stockings and misshapen legs, the retired colonels eking out a grumbling living on infinitesimal pensions.

“Let’s take a little walk,” said Mrs. Breezy. “It’s nice now. The Gardens look more like the country in the twilight.”

“Of course,” said Breezy, “walk. Best exercise in the world. Oils a man up.” But all the same he didn’t intend to go far. Athleticism was a pose with him. He had grown so fat sitting on that backless chair behind the glass screen, looking into the works of sick watches like a poor man’s doctor who treated a long line of ailing people. If it wasn’t the mainspring, then it was over-winding. Very simple.

But Lola steered them away from Kensington Gardens because soldiers were there under canvas, and Chalfont was in command of the London district, and it might happen easily that all of a sudden that purring car would draw up at the curb and her name be called by the man with the cork arm.

“Let’s go the other way,” she said, “for a change. I love to look at all the houses that are just the same and wonder what the people are like who live in them, and whether they’re just the same.”

It was her evening. She was no longer the little girl to be told to do this or that and taken here and there with or against her will. She had broken out of all that, rather strangely and quietly and suddenly; and in a sort of way her parents had become her children. It always happens. It is one of the privileges of parenthood eventually to obey. It is the subtle tribute paid by them to a son or daughter of whom they are proud, who is part of them and who has come through all the vicissitudes of childhood and adolescence under their care and guidance. It is one of the nicer forms of egotism.

And so these three little people, the Breezys, went into the labyrinths of villadom, up one street and down another. Some of the houses were smarter than the rest, with little trees in tubs, and Virginia creepers twined about their pillars, and perhaps a fat Cupid, weather-stained, standing in a little square of cat-fought garden, or with two small lions eying each other from opposite sides of the doorway with bitter antagonism. But the waning light of a glorious day still clung to the sky, in which an evening star had opened its eye, and even Bayswater, that valley of similitude, wore beauty of a sort. And all the way along, up and down and across, the high-sounding names of the various terraces ringing with sarcasm, they went together, these three little people, one far from little outwardly, in great affection. To Lola there was something unreal, almost uncanny about the whole thing. She had grown out of all these streets, all this commonplace, that entire world. She felt like some one who hears a very old tune played in a theater and looks down with surprise and a little thread of pain from a seat in a box,—a tune which seemed to take her back, away and away to far distant days, and stir dim memories.—Only last night she had been sitting in the Carlton with Chalfont as Madame de BrÉzÉ, and next Friday, if all went well——

With a sudden thrill of intense excitement and longing, she then and there made up her mind that some day it would be her privilege and joy to lift those two estimable people out of Queen’s Road and place them, not too old for enjoyment, among spreading trees and sloping lawns and all the color of an English garden,—away from watches and silver wedding presents, kodaks and ugly vases, from need of work, from clash of traffic and the inevitable voices of throaty baritones. Ah, that was what she wanted to do, so much, and if possible before it was too late. Time has an ugly way of slipping off the calendar.

And when, presently, they returned to the shop and let themselves in, it was Lola, with a curious emotion, because she might never see them again as she was that night, who got the supper, who placed them, arguing, in the stuffy drawing-room, and made many journeys up and down the narrow staircase to the kitchen. “Please,” she said. “Please. This is my evening. Even a lady’s maid can lay a supper if she tries hard enough.” And they did as they were told, reluctantly, but delighted,—and a little surprised. It was something of a change. And before the evening was over Treadwell came, wearing a flapping tie, the mark of the poet, and a suit of reach-me-downs egregiously cut but with something in his face that lived it down,—love. Poor boy, he had a long way to go alone.

When at last, having said good night, Lola went upstairs to the room in which she had played that little game of hers so often and sat in the dark as quiet as a mouse, holding her breath, not one, no, not a single one of all her old friends came in to see her,—not the ancient marquis with his long finger nails and curious rings and highly polished boots; not the gossipy old women in furbelows and dangling beads; not the gallant courtier with his innuendoes and high flow of compliments; and not the little lady’s maid who was wont to do her hair. They were dead. But in their place came Fallaray, stooping, pale and bewildered, hungry for love, hungry for comfort, dying for inspiration and the rustle of silk. And when he had sat down with his chin in his hand, she crept up to his chair and went on her knees and put her golden head against his heart, and said, “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I shall love you always. And if you never know it and never see me and miss me altogether in the crowd, I shall wait for you across the Bridge,—and you will see me then.”

But as she got up from her knees, blinded with tears, the voice came to her again, strong and full.

“Go on, go on, de BrÉzÉ,—courage, my girl, courage. You have not yet won the right to cry.”

VI

There were two reasons, then, for the visit to Castleton Terrace.

Feo’s handsome present to Lola reacted most favorably upon Mrs. Rumbold and came at a moment in that poor woman’s existence when cash was scarce and credit nil. Optimism also had been running a little low. But for this divine gift how many more suicides there would be every year.

Mrs. Rumbold was sitting in her workroom in the front of the house, waiting, like Sister Ann, for some one to turn up, when Lola’s taxi stopped at the door, and with a thrill of hope she saw the driver haul out a large dress case on which the initials F. F. were painted. This was followed by Lola, an hour early for her appointment with Lady Cheyne, and they were both met at the top step by the woman who saw manna.

“Well,” she cried, shabby and thin, with wisps of unruly hair. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, I will say. I knew I was in for a bitter luck to-day. I read it in the bottom of me cup. Come in, miss, and let’s have a look at what you’ve brought me.”

The case was deposited in the middle of the room in which half a dozen headless and legless trunks mounted on a sort of cage were ranged along one wall, out of work and gloomy. Because the driver had been batman to a blood in the 21st Lancers, the case was duly unfastened by him,—a courtesy totally unexpected and acknowledged by Mrs. Rumbold in astonished English.

“Thank you very much,” said Lola, with a rewarding smile. “It’s very kind of you.”

“Honored and delighted,” was the reply, added to by a full-dress parade salute with the most wonderful waggle before it finally reached the ear and was cut away.—And that meant sixpence extra. So every one was pleased.

And when Mrs. Rumbold, with expert fingers, drew out one frock after another, all of them nearly new and bearing the name of a dressmaker who hung to the edge of society by a hyphen, exclamation followed upon exclamation.

“Gorblime,” she cried out. “Where in the world did you get ’em? I never see anything like it. It’s a trousseau.”

And Lola laughed and said, “Not this time.”

And Mrs. Rumbold started again, putting Feo’s astonishing garments through a more detailed inspection. “Eccentric, of course,” she said. “But, my word, what material, and look at these ’ere linings. Pre-war stuff, my dear. Who’s your friend?”

And Lola told her. Why shouldn’t she? And extolled Lady Feo’s generosity, in which Mrs. Rumbold heartily concurred. “I know what you want,” she said. “What I did to the last one. Let ’em down at the bottom and put a bit of somethin’ on the top. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Lola. “That’s it. As quickly as you can, Mrs. Rumbold, especially with the day frocks.”

“Going away on a visit, dearie?”

“No—yes,” said Lola. “I don’t know—but, like you, I live a good deal on hope.”

The woman made a wry face. “Umm,” she said. “You can get awful scraggy on that diet. Keeps yer girlish, I tell yer.” And then she looked up into Lola’s face. It was such a kind face, with so sympathetic a mouth, that she had no hesitation in letting down her professional fourth wall. “I’d be thankful if you could let me have a bit on account, miss,” she added, with rather pathetic whimsicality. “Without any bloomin’ eyewash, not even Sherlock Holmes could find as much as a bob in this house, and I have a bill at the draper’s to be met before I can sail in and give ’em perciflage.”

“Nothing easier,” said Lola, who had come armed to meet this very request, having imagination. And out came her little purse and from it five nice pristine one-pound notes which she had most carefully hoarded up out of her wages.

And then for an hour and more Lola transferred herself, taking her time, from frock to frock, while Mrs. Rumbold did those intricate things with pins and a pair of scissors which only long practice can achieve. But Lady Cheyne failed to appear. Had she forgotten? Had some one steered her off? Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. Lola’s heart began to sink into her shoes. But just as she was about to lose hope, there was a loud and haughty ring at the bell which sent Mrs. Rumbold helter-skelter to the window, through which she peered eagerly. “Well, upon my word,” she cried in a hoarse whisper. “If you ain’t a bloomin’ mascot. It’s Lady Cheyne who used to be one of my best customers, and I haven’t seen ’er for a year.” And she ran out excitedly and opened the door and hoped her neighbors would be duly impressed by the rather dilapidated Mercedes which was drawn up in front of the house.

There was a burst of welcome, and then Lady Cheyne entered the workroom much in the same way as a broad-beamed cargo-boat floats into harbor. And then followed another surprise for Mrs. Rumbold, who was in for a day of surprises, it appeared. “Well, you dear thing, here you are. Punctual to the minute, as I always am. How are you, and where have you been, and why haven’t you run in to see me, and how sweet you look.” And the kind and exuberant little lady, whose amazing body seemed to require more than one dressmaker to cover it up, drew Lola warmly to her side and kissed her. It is true that she had forgotten her name again. She saw so many people so often who had such weird and unpronounceable names that she never even made an effort to remember any of them. But that golden head and those wide-apart eyes reminded her of the conversation over the telephone, brought back that evening at her house and linked them with the tall figure of the one-armed soldier,—her dear friend Peter something, so good looking, such a darling, but so unkind, never coming near her. “Extraordinary enough, I was thinking of you only a few nights ago. I was dining at the Savoy and the little crowd who were with me spoke of you. They had been with me the night I met you there and were so interested. One of the men said that if I could find you and take you to his concert he would try and draw your lips to his with the power of his art. He often says things like that. But he’s only an artist, so it doesn’t matter. Mrs. Rumstick, I want you to find something to do in the next room until I call you. No, leave my things alone. I’ll explain what has to be done to them in my own good time. That’s right.—We’re alone, my dear. Now tell me all about it.” She sat on a chair that had the right to groan and caught hold of Lola’s hand.

“It’s love,” said Lola.

“Ah!”

“It’s love and adoration and long-deferred hope.”

“Oh, my dear, how you excite me!”

“And it can’t come right without you.”

“Me! Good gracious, but what can I do?”

Lola leaned closer. The pathetic farcicality of the dear old lady’s wreaths and becks left the seriousness of all this untouched. She clasped the dimpled hand in both her own and set her will to work. “Bring us together,” she whispered, setting fire to romance, so that Lady Cheyne bobbed up and down. “Help us to meet where no one can see, quickly, quickly. The world is getting old.”

“Well, there’s the library at Number One Hundred! No one has ever been in there except me since Willy passed away. You can come there any time you like and not a soul will see you. And he, if he doesn’t mind his trousers, can climb over the back wall, so that he shan’t be seen going into the house. I wouldn’t do it for any one but you, my dear. That room has dear memories for me.”

Kind and sweet,—but what was the use? It must be Chilton, Chilton, or nothing at all. And so Lola kissed her gratitude upon the hot, rouged cheek, but shook her head and sighed. (Go on, de BrÉzÉ, go on.)

“He wouldn’t dare,” she said. “Nowhere in town; it’s far too dangerous. The least whisper, the merest hint of gossip——”

Lady Cheyne wobbled at the thought. There was more in this than met the eye,—a Great Romance, love in High Places. How wonderful to be in, perhaps, on History. “But at night,” she said. “Late, when every one’s in bed. I assure you that after twelve One Hundred might be in the country.”

“Ah,” said Lola, “the country. Isn’t there some place in the country, high up near the sky, with woods behind it where we can meet and speak——”

“Whitecross!” cried Lady Cheyne, brilliantly inspired. “Made for love and kisses, if ever there was a place. How dull of me only just to have thought of that.”

“Whitecross? What is that?” How eager the tone, how tremulous the voice.

“My darling nest on the Chilterns, where I’m so seldom able to live. If only I could get away,—but I’m tied to town.”

“Next Friday, perhaps,—that’s the last, the very last——”

“Well, then, it must be Friday. I can’t resist this thing, my dear, so I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll leave on Thursday. It will give a new bevy of my protÉgÉs a little rest and a quiet time for practise. And you can come down on Friday.”

“You darling!” (Good for you, de BrÉzÉ. Very well done, indeed.)

“Now get a pencil and a piece of paper and write everything down. The station is Princes Risborough.” (As if Lola didn’t know that!) “You go from Paddington and you catch the two-twenty arriving there just before four. I can’t send a car to meet you, because my poor old ten-year-old outside would drop to pieces going up to Whitecross. So you must take a station cab and be driven up in time for tea, and you will find one Russian, one Pole, two Austrians, one Dane and a dear friend of mine with a voice like velvet who was a Checko-Slovak during the War and German before and after. A very nice lot, full of talent. I don’t know where they’re all going to sleep and I’m sure they don’t care, so what’s it matter? They’ll give us music from morning to night and all sorts of fun in between. Killing two birds with one stone, eh?”

Was it the end of the rainbow at last? “Oh, dear Lady Cheyne, what can I say?”

“Nothing more, now, you dear little wide-eyed celandine; wait till we meet again. Run away and leave me to Mrs. Rumigig. It’s a case of old frocks on to new linings. Income tax drives us even to that. But I’m very glad, oh, so very glad you came to me, my dear!”

And Lola threw her arms round the collector of stray dogs and poured out her thanks, with tears. One rung nearer, two rungs nearer.—And in the next room, having heroically overcome an almost conquering desire to put her ear to the keyhole, stood Mrs. Rumbold, still suffering from the second of her surprises.

“Do your best to let me have two day frocks and an evening frock,” said Lola. “And I will come for them sometime Friday early. Don’t fail me, will you, Mrs. Rumbold? You can’t think and I couldn’t possibly explain to you how important it is.”

“Well, I should say not. I should think it is important, indeed! Little Lola Breezy’s doing herself well these days, staying with the nobility and gentry and all.”

The woman was amazed to the extent of indiscretion. How did a lady’s maid, daughter of the Breezys of Queen’s Road, Bayswater, perform such a miracle? They were certainly topsy-turvy times, these.

And then Lola turned quickly and caught Mrs. Rumbold’s arm. “You are on your honor to say nothing about me to Lady Cheyne, remember, and if, by any chance, you mention my name, bear in mind that it is Madame de BrÉzÉ. You understand?”

There was a moment’s hesitation followed by a little gasp and a bow. “I quite understand, Modum, and I thank you for your custom.”

But before Mrs. Rumbold returned to her workroom, in which the trunks looked more perky now, she remained where she stood for a moment and rolled her eyes.

“Well,” she asked herself, “did you ever? Modum de BrÉzÉ!—And she looks it too, and speaks it. My word, them orders! Blowed if the modern girl don’t cop the current bun. It isn’t for me to say anything, but for the sake of that nice little woman in the watchmaker’s shop, I hope it’s all right. That’s all.—And now, your ladyship, what can I have the pleasure of doing for you, if you please? And thank you for comin’, I’m sure. Times is that dull——”

VII

When Lola went into Feo’s room that evening it was with the intention of asking for her first holiday. It was a large order; she knew that, because her mistress had made innumerable engagements for the week. But this was to be another and most important rung in that ladder, which, if not achieved, rendered useless the others that she had climbed.

She was overjoyed to find Feo in an excellent mood. Things had been going well. The world had been full of amusement and a new man had turned up, a pucca man this time, discovered at the Winchfields’, constant in his attentions ever since. He owned a string of race horses and trained them at Dan Thirlwall’s old place behind Worthing, which made him all the more interesting. Feo adored the excitement of racing. And so it was easy for Lola to approach her subject and she did so at the moment when she had her ladyship in her power, the curling irons steaming. “If you please, my lady,” she said, in a perfectly even voice and with her eyes on the black bobbed hair, “would it be quite convenient for you if I had a week off from Thursday?”

“But what the devil does that matter?” said Feo. “If I don’t give you a week off, I suppose you’ll take it.”

Lola’s lips curled into a smile. It was impossible to resist this woman and her peculiar way of putting things. “But I think you know me better than that,” she said, twining that thick wiry hair round the tongs as an Italian twines spaghetti round a fork.

“What makes you think so? I don’t know you. I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re like. You never tell me anything. Ever since you’ve been with me you’ve never let me see under your skin once. I don’t even believe that you’re Breezy’s niece. I’ve only her word for it. After Sunday morning’s exhibition, I’m quite inclined to believe that you are Madame de BrÉzÉ masquerading as a lady’s maid. If the War was still going on, I might think that you were a spy. A great idea for you to get into this house and pinch the papers of a Cabinet Minister. Yes, of course you can have a week off. What are you going to do? Get married, after all?”

Lola shook her head and the curl went away from her lips. “I want to go down to the country for a little rest,” she said.

Something in the tone of Lola’s voice caught Feo’s ears. She looked sharply at her reflection in the glass and saw that the little face which had captured her fancy and become so familiar had suddenly taken on an expression of so deep a yearning as to make it almost unrecognizable. The wide-apart eyes burned with emotion, the red lips and those sensitive nostrils denoted a pent-up excitement that was startling. What was it that this strange, secretive child had made up her mind to do—to commit—to lose? “There is love at the bottom of this,” she said.

And Lola replied, “Yes, my lady,” simply and with a sort of pride. And then took hold of herself, tight. If there had been any one person in all the world to whom she could have poured out her little queer story of all-absorbing love and desire to serve and comfort and inspire and entertain and rejuvenate—— But there wasn’t one—and it was Mr. Fallaray’s wife who fished to know her secret. Was it one of the ordinary coincidences which had brought, them together—meaningless and accidental—or one of those studied ironies which fate, in its mischievous mood, indulges in so frequently?

“It wouldn’t have been any good to deny it. It’s all over you like a label. It’s an infernal nuisance, Lola, but I’ll try and get on without you. If you’re not going to get married, watch your step, as the Americans say. I don’t give you this tip on moral grounds but from the worldly point of view. You have your living to make and there’s Breezy to think about and your people.”

She put her hand up and grasped the one in which Lola held the tongs, and drew her round. Strangely enough, this contradictory creature was moved. Whether it was because she saw in Lola’s eyes something which no one had been able to bring into her own, who can say? “It’s a married man,” she told herself, “or it’s Chalfont who isn’t thinking of marriage.” “Go easy, my dear,” she added aloud. “Believe only half you hear and get that verified. Men are the most frightful liars. Almost as bad as women. And they have a most convenient knack of forgetting.”

And then she released the girl so that she might resume her job, as time was short, and she was dining rather early with the new man at Ranelegh where “Twelfth Night” was to be acted as a pastoral by Bernard Fagan’s players. All the same, her mind dwelt not so much with curiosity as with concern upon Lola’s leave of absence, because she liked the girl and had found her very loyal, consistently cheery and always ready to hand.

“Let me see,” she said, with an uncharacteristic touch of womanliness that must have been brought out by the flaming feminism of Lola. “Among the frocks that I hurled at you on Sunday there’s pretty certain to be something that you can wear. Help yourself to anything else that you need. You must look nice. I insist on that. And you’ll also want something to put these things in. Tucked away somewhere there are one or two dress cases without my initials. They’ve come in useful on other occasions. Rout them out. I can’t think of anything else, but probably you will.” And she waved her hand with those long thin capable fingers, as much as to say, “Don’t thank me. You’d do the same for me if I were in your shoes.”

But Lola did thank her and wound up an incoherent burst by saying, “You’re the most generous woman I’ve ever imagined.”

“Oh, well, I have my moments,” replied Feo, who liked it all the same. “Y’see, ‘The Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin.’” She was very generous and very much interested and if the truth were to be told a little worried too. For all her coolness at the Carlton, Lola seemed to her to be so young and so obviously virginal,—just the sort of girl who would make a great sacrifice, taking to it a pent-up ecstasy for which she might be asked to pay a pretty heavy price. And it was such a mistake to pay, according to Feo’s creed.

Finally, dressed and scented and wearing a pair of oddly shaped lapis earrings, she stood in front of a pier glass for a moment or two, looking herself over, finding under her eyes for the first time one or two disconcerting lines. What was she? Ten years older than this girl whose face was like an unplucked flower? Ten years certainly,—all packed with incidents, not one of which had been touched by ecstasy.

When she turned away it was with a short quick sigh. “Damn,” she said, off on one of her sudden tangents. “I can see myself developing into one of those women who join the Salvation Army because they’ve lost their looks, or get out of the limelight to read bitter verses about dead sea fruit, if I’m not precious careful.” And her mind turned back to the hour with Ellingham in that foolish futuristic room of hers and the way in which he had paced up and down, inarticulate, hands in pockets, and eventually been glad to go. Glad to go,—think of it.—Never mind, here was the man with the race horses. He might be a little medieval, perhaps. And on her way out she put her hand under Lola’s chin and tilted up her face. “Mf,” she said, “you have got it, badly, haven’t you?”

And Lola replied, “Yes, my lady,” and felt as though she had never left Queen’s Road, Bayswater.

“Well, good luck.” And Feo was gone.

VIII

So once again Lola stepped out on to the platform of Princes Risborough station to wait while a sulky porter, thoroughly trades-union in all his movements, made up his mind to carry Feo’s two cases out to a cab. He first of all read the name on the labels, pronouncing BrÉzÉ to himself as it was known to Queen’s Road, Bayswater. Then, with great deliberation and condescension, having placed a new quid in his mouth, he tilted them on to the barrow and wheeled them along the platform to the station yard, followed by Lola. “Want a cab?” he asked. To which Lola replied, “I don’t think I’m quite strong enough to carry them myself.”

And he gave her a quick look. “Cheeky,” he thought. “Knows enough English fer that, all right.” Whereupon he chi-iked the cab driver who was asleep on his box and yelled out, “Don’t yer want ter occupy yerself once in a way? Sittin’ up there orl day, doin’ nothin’! Do yer good to ’ave my job fer a bit. Come on darn. Give a hand with these ’ere. What d’yer think I’m paid fer?”

Lola opened the door of the rickety and rather smelly cab for herself. Neither of the men had thought of that. And then she handed the porter a shilling and looked him straight in the face with her most winning smile. “It doesn’t reward you for your great politeness,” she said. “But these are hard times.”

And as the cab drove slowly off, the porter spat upon the coin. What did he care for snubs? He was as good as anybody else and a damned sight better, he was, with his labor union and all. Politeness! Heh!—Missionaries have introduced the gin bottle to the native and completely undermined his sense of primitive honor while trades unions have injected the virus of discontent into the blood of the English workman and made him a savage.

And so once more the white cross seen above the village; once more the Tillage with its chapels and other public houses,—warm old buildings as yet untouched by the hand of progress, which generally means a cheap shop-front and goods made in Germany; once more the road leading up to the Chiltons, with the shadows of old trees cast across. Chilton Park was passed on the right, with its high wall, time-worn, behind which Fallaray might even then be walking among his gardens. And presently the cab turned in to the driveway of what had once been a farmhouse, to which, by an architect who was an artist and not a builder, wings had been added. The long uneven roof was thatched, the walls all creeper covered, the windows diamond paned, the door low, wide and welcoming. A smooth lawn was dignified with old oaks and beeches and ablaze with numerous beds of sweet Williams and pansies and all the rustic flowers. A charming little place, rather perhaps self-consciously pretty, like a set on the stage. But oh, how delightful after Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and the labyrinths of similitude.

Lady Cheyne was followed to the door by all her guests and for a moment Lola thought that she had stumbled on a place crowded with European refugees. A more eccentric collection of human various she had never seen, even during that epoch-making evening at Kensington Gore.

“Here you are, then, looking just as if you had stepped out of one of the pictures in the boudoir of the Duchess de Nantes.” Lola received a hearty kiss on both cheeks, and her hostess took the opportunity, while so close, of asking an important question in a whisper. “Your name, my dear. I’m too sorry, but really my capacity for remembering names has gone all loose like a piece of dead elastic.”

Lola laughed and told her, and then followed her introduction to the little group of hairy children who were all waiting on tenterhooks for a chance to act. It was a comical introduction, because by the time Lady Cheyne had said “Lola de BrÉzÉ” she had forgotten the names of all her other guests. And so, with a gurgle of laughter, she pointed to each one in turn,—and they stepped forward and spoke; first the women, “Anna Stezzel,” a bow and a flash of teeth, “Regina Spatz,” a bow and a gracious smile, and then the men, “Salo Impf,” “Valdemar Varvascho,” “Simon Zalouhou,” “Max Wachevsky,” “Willy Pouff,” fired in bass, baritone and tenor and accompanied by a kiss upon the little outstretched hand. It was all Lola could do to stop herself from peals of laughter.

Zalouhou, the violinist, was one of the biggest men Lola had ever seen. He stood six foot six in a pair of dilapidated boots and possessed a completely unathletic figure with hips like a woman, large soft hands with long loose fingers and a splendid leonine head with a mass of black hair streaked with white. He towered over the other little people like a modern Gulliver. His face was clean-shaven, with fine features and a noble forehead and a pair of eyes which had never failed to do more to attract crowded matinÉes of his country women in the old days than the beauty of his playing and the mastery of his technique. He had only just arrived in London, penniless, and in a suit of clothes in which he had slept on many waysides. He had fought for his country and against his country, never knowing why and never wanting to fight, and all the while he had clung desperately to his violin which he had played to ragamuffin troops in order to be supplied with an extra hunk of bread and a drink of coffee. The story of his five or six years of mental and physical chaos, every moment of which was abhorrent to his gentle spirit, was stamped deeply upon his face.

Even as Lola was being escorted upstairs to her room by a thrilled country maid, there was a crash upon the piano in the hall and an outburst of song. What that little house thought of all those extraordinary people who could not keep quiet under any circumstance would have filled a book. The ghosts of former residents, farming people, must have stood about in horror and surprise. And yet, as Lady Cheyne well knew, they were all simple souls ready to go into ecstasies at the sight of a daisy and imbued with genuine loyalty towards each other.

Lady Cheyne followed Lola up. She arrived in the tiny bedroom, whose ceiling sloped down to two small windows, breathless and laughing. “You can’t swing a cat in here,” she said. “But, after all, who ever does swing a cat? I hope you’ll be comfortable and I know you’ll be amused. I just want to tell you one thing, my dear. You are at perfect liberty to do whatever you like, to wander away out of range of the piano, with or without any of my dear delightful babies, or stay and listen to them and watch the fun. Until sleep overcomes them they will sing and play and applaud and have the time of their lives,—which is exactly what I’ve brought them here to do, poor things. All the men will fall in love with you, of course. But you’re perfectly used to that, aren’t you? You’ll look like a miniature among oleographs, but the change will do you good and show you another side of life. One thing I can guarantee. You won’t be disturbed in the morning before eleven o’clock. No one thinks of getting up until then. I’m particularly anxious for you to like Zalouhou. I predict that he will have an extraordinary success in London when he makes his appearance next week at Queen’s Hall. Did you ever see such a man? If I know anything about it at all, women will rush forward to the platform to kiss his feet,—not because he plays the violin like Kreisler but because of those magnetic eyes. Success in every walk of life is due entirely to eyes. You know that, my dear. And as to the Great Affair, I will ask no questions, see nothing and hear nothing, but rejoice in believing that I am being of use. It is exactly right, isn’t it, golden head? Ah, me, those dear dead days. Now come and have some tea and taste my strawberries. They’re wonderful this year.”

But before going down—and how kind everybody was—Lola stood at one of her windows from which she could see a corner of Chilton Park, and her heart went out to Fallaray like a white dove. It was in the air, in the cloudless sky, in the birds’ songs, in the rustle of the leaves, in the beauty and glory of the flowers that her time had come at last, that all her work and training were to be put to the supreme test. Success would mean the little gold cage of which she had heard again in her dream but which would be the merest lead without love. Failure——

Her appearance eventually in the hall, a long, many-windowed room, with great bowls of cut flowers on gate-legged tables and old dressers, was celebrated by Salo Impf with an improvisation on the piano that was filled with spring and received with noisy approval. Imbued with a certain amount of crude tact, the men of the party did nothing more than pay tribute to Lola with their eyes while they surrounded Lady Cheyne as though she were a queen, as indeed she was, having it in her power not only to provide them with bed and board but to bring them out and give them a chance in a country always ready to support talent. It was a funny sight to see this amazingly fat, kind woman pouring tea at a tiny table into tiny cups surrounded by people who seemed to be perpetually hungry, but who sang even while they ate, and laughed and jabbered in between.

“What would Simpkins say if he could see me here?” thought Lola. “And Mother and Ernest and Sir Peter Chalfont—and Lady Feo?”

But she felt happy and in a way comforted among these people. Like her, they were all struggling towards a goal, all striving after something for which they had served their apprenticeship. Not one of them had yet successfully emerged and they were living on what Mrs. Rumbold called, “the scraggy diet of hope.” It did her good to be among them at that moment, to hear their discussions in amazingly broken English of a dÉbut in London, to be aware of the extraordinary encouragement which they gave to each other, without jealousy,—which was so rare. She found herself listening enthralled to the arias sung by Anna Stezzel, and the Grieg songs which were so perfectly played by Impf. But it was when Zalouhou stood up with his violin and played some of the wistful folk songs of his country that she sat with her hands clasped together, leaning forward and moved to a deep emotion. Hunger, the daily wrestle with surly earth, illness, the subjection to a crushing autocracy, and beneath it self-preservation,—they were all in these sad, fierce songs, which sometimes burst into passionate resentment and at others laughed a little and jogged along. What a story they told,—so much rougher and so much sterner than her own. They gave her courage to go forward but they left her uncertain as to what was to be her next step.

When Zalouhou played, it was with his eyes on Lola. Her sympathy and understanding drew out his most delicate and imaginative skill and gave him inspiration; and when he had finished and laid aside his violin, he went to the sofa on which she was sitting and crouched hugely at her feet, and said something softly in his own tongue. He spoke no English, but she could guess his meaning because in his eyes there was the look with which she was familiar in the eyes of Treadwell, Simpkins and Chalfont. And she said to herself, “As there is something in me that stirs the hearts of men, give me the chance, O God, to let it be felt by the only man I shall ever love and who is all alone on earth!” And while the room rang with music, she went forward in spirit to the gate in the wall of Chilton Park, which she had seen from her window, opened it and went inside to look for Fallaray. The intuition which had been upon her so long that she might touch the heart of Fallaray in Chilton Park was strong upon her then, once more.

But she had to wait until after dinner before her opportunity came to slip away, and this she did when her fellow-workers had returned to the hall, drawn back to the piano as by a magnet. And then she escaped, in Feo’s silver frock, stole into the placid garden which was filled with the aroma of sweet peas and June roses, went down to the gate in the high wall, and stood there, trembling.

(Go on, de BrÉzÉ, go on!)

IX

Except for the servants, Fallaray was alone in his house.

He had slept late that morning, put newspapers aside, and allowed the telephone to ring unanswered. He was determined, at least for a few days, to cut himself off from London and especially from the new and futile turn that was taking place in politics. It didn’t seem to him to matter that, because his chief had boxed the political compass again and, like Gladstone, talked with furious earnestness on both sides of every question only to leave anger and stultification at every step, the papers were making a dead set at him, holding him up to ridicule and abuse and working with vitriolic energy against his government at every bi-election. If this man were dragged at last from the seat that he had won by a trick and held by trickery, another of the same kidney and possibly worse principles would be put into his place to build up another and a similar rampart about himself with bribes and honors. It was the system. Nothing could prevent it. Professional politicians had England by the throat and they were backed by underground money and supported by politically owned newspapers. What use to struggle against such odds? He wanted to forget Ireland for a little while, if it were possible to forget Ireland even for so short a space of time as his holiday would last. He wanted to put out of his mind, the horrible mess in Silesia which was straining the entente cordiale to the breaking point, and the bungling over the coal strike, and so he had been wandering among his rose gardens, hatless, with the breeze in his hair, and the scent of new-mown hay in his nostrils, listening to the piping of the thrush, to the passionate songs of larks, and watching bees busy themselves from flower to flower with a one-eyed industry and honesty which he did not meet in men.

He had lunched out on the terrace and looked down with a great refreshment upon the sweeping valley of Aylesbury, peaceful beneath the sun. He had slept again in the afternoon, out of doors, lulled by the orchestra of birds, and had then gone forth to walk behind those high walls into the forest of beech trees, the dead red leaves of innumerable summers at their roots, and to listen to the tramping feet of the ghosts of Roman armies whose triumphs had left no deeper mark on history than the feet of sea gulls on the sands. And as his brain became quiet and the load of political troubles fell from his shoulders, he began to imagine that he was a free man once more, and a young man, and the old aspirations of adolescence returned to him like the echo of a dream,—to love, to laugh, to build a nest, to wander hand in hand with some sweet thing who trusted him and was wholly his. O God, how good. That was life. That was truth. That was nature.

And when, after dinner, he strolled out once more to look at the sky patterned with stars, dominated by a moon in its cold elusive prime, he was no longer the London Fallaray, round-shouldered, anxious, overworked, immeshed like an impotent fly in the web of the bad old spiders. His chin was up, his shoulders back, a smile upon his lips. That gorgeous air filled his lungs and not even from the highest point of vantage could there be seen one glimpse of the little light burning in the tower of the House of Commons. He was nearer heaven than he had been for a very long time. Exquisite lines from the great poets floated through his mind and somewhere near a nightingale poured out a love song to its mate.

And when presently he took a stand on that corner of the terrace which overlooked the Italian garden, it seemed to him that the magic of the moonlight had stirred some of the stone figures to life. The arm of Cupid seemed to bend and send an arrow into the air and where it fell he saw a shimmer of silver and heard the rustle of silk. And he saw and heard it again and laughed a little at the pranks which imagination played, especially on such a night. And not believing his eyes or his ears, he saw this silver thing move again and come slowly up along the avenue of yews like a living star; and he watched it a little breathlessly and saw that it was a woman, a girl, timid, like a trespasser, but still coming on and on with her head up, and the moonlight in her hair,—golden hair wound round her head like an aureole. And when at last, born as it seemed of moonlight and poetry, she came to the edge of the terrace and stopped, he bent down with the blood tingling in his veins, hardly believing that she was there, still under the impression that he had brought her to that spot out of his never realized longing and desire, and saw that she was not a dream of adolescence but a little live thing with wide-apart eyes and red lips parted and the white halo of youth about her head.

X

A bat blundered in between them and broke the spell.

And Fallaray climbed over the parapet and dropped on his feet at Lola’s side. All that day, as indeed, briefly, in the House, at his desk, at night in dreams, ever since the introduction at the Savoy, the eyes of that girl and the thrill of her hand had come back to him like a song, to stir, like the urge of spring. And here, suddenly, she stood, moonlit, but very real, in answer to his subconscious call.

“This is wonderful,” he said, blurting out the truth like a naÏve boy. “I’ve been thinking of you all day. How did you get here?”

His eager clasp sent a rush of blood through Lola’s body. His alone among men’s, as she had always known, was the answering touch. “I’m staying with Lady Cheyne,” she said. “I saw the gate in the wall and it wasn’t locked and I tiptoed in.”

“You knew that I was here?”

“Yes, and I came to find you.” She blurted out the truth like an unsophisticated girl.

Was it moonlight, the magic of the night, the throbbing song of the nightingale that made him seem as young as she?—No. What then? And as he looked into the eyes of that girl and caught his breath at her disturbing femininity and disordering sense of sex and the sublime unself-consciousness of a child, without challenge and without coquetry, he knew that it was something to be summed up by the words “the rustle of silk,” which epitomized beauty and softness and scent, laughter, filmy things and love. And he thanked his gods that not even Feo and the wear and tear of politics had left him out of youth.

And he thanked her for coming to break his loneliness and led her through the sleeping flowers, and those figures which had died again since life had come amongst them, to the arbor made of yews where he had slept that afternoon. And there, high above the sweeping valley among whose villages little lights were blinking like far-off fireflies, they sat and talked and talked, at first like boy and girl, meeting after separation, telling everything but nothing, shirking the truth to save it for a time, and then, presently, with no lights left below and all the earth asleep, like man and woman, reading the truth in eyes that made no effort to disguise it; telling the truth, in broken words; learning the truth from heart that beat to heart until the moon had done her duty and stars had faded out and up over the ridge of hills, reluctantly, a new day came.