Part 3 (1/2)
IX
”Well!” said Miss Breezy.
”I hope so,” said Lola, kissing the ear that was presented to her.
”I'm just rearranging my things. Her Ladys.h.i.+p's just given me some new pictures. They used to be in the morning room, but she got sick of them and handed 'em over to me. I'm going to hang them up.” She might have added that nearly everything that the room contained had been given to her by Lady Feo with a similar generosity but her sense of humor was not very keen or else her sense of loyalty was. At any rate, there she stood in the middle of a nice airy room with something around her head to keep the dust out of her hair, wearing a pair of gloves, a stepladder near at hand.
There were six fair-sized canvases in gold frames,-seascapes; bold, excellent work, with the wind blowing over them and spray coming out that made the lips all salty. They made you hear the mewing of sea gulls.
”Lady Feo bought them to help a young artist. He was killed in the War.
She hates the sea, it makes her sick, and doesn't want to be reminded of anything sad. I don't wonder, and anyway, they'll look very nice here.
Do you like them?”
Lola had sized them up in a glance. She too would have turned them out.
They seemed to her rough and draughty. ”Yes,” she said, ”they're very good, aren't they?” She mounted the ladder and held out her hands. She had come to ask a favor. She might as well make herself popular at once.
”Hand them up, Auntie, and I'll hang them for you.”
”Oh, well now, that's very nice. I get giddy on a ladder. You came just at the right moment. Can you manage it? It's very heavy. The first time I've ever seen you making yourself useful, my dear.”
This enabled Lola to get in her first point. ”Mother never allows me to be useful,” she said, ”and really doesn't understand the sort of thing that I can do best.” She stretched up, hung the cord over a bra.s.s bracket and straightened it.
”Well, you can certainly do this job! Go on and do the rest while you're at it. I was looking forward to a very tiring afternoon. I didn't want to have any of the maids to help me. They resent being asked to do anything that is outside their regular duty.”
And so Lola proceeded, hating to get her hands dirty and not very keen on indulging in athletics, but with a determination made doubly firm by the fleeting sight of Fallaray.
Miss Breezy was in an equable mood that afternoon,-less pompous than usual, less consumed with the importance of being the controlling brain in the management of the Fallaray ”establishment,” as she called it in the stilted language of the auctioneer. She became almost human as she watched Lola perform the task which would have put her to a considerable amount of physical inconvenience. When one is relieved of anything in the nature of work, equability is the cheapest form of grat.i.tude.
The room was a particularly nice one, large, with a low ceiling and two windows which overlooked Dover Street. It didn't in the least indicate the character of the housekeeper because not a single thing in it was her own except a few books. Everything else had been given to her by Lady Feo, and like the pictures, had been discarded from one or other of the rooms below. The Sheraton sofa had come from the drawing-room. A Dowager d.u.c.h.ess had sat on it one evening after dinner and let herself go on the question of the Feo gang. It had been thrown out the following morning. The armoire of ripe oak, made up of old French altarpieces-an exquisite thing worth its weight in gold-had suffered a similar fate.
Rappe the ubiquitous photographer had taken a picture of Lady Feo leaning against one of its doors. It turned out badly. In fact, the angel on the other door looked precisely as though it were growing on Lady Feo's nose. It might have been good art but it was bad salesmans.h.i.+p. Away went the armoire. The story of all the other things was the same so that the room had begun to a.s.sume the appearance of the den of a dealer in old furniture. There were even a couple of old masters on the walls,-a Reynolds and a Lely, portraits of the members of Lady Feo's family whose faces she objected to and whose admonis.h.i.+ng eyes she couldn't bear to have upon her when she came down to luncheon feeling a little chippy after a night out. These also were priceless. It had become indeed one of the nicest rooms in the house. Every day it added something to Miss Breezy's increasing air of dignity and beat.i.tude.
Lola did not fail to admire the way in which her aunt had arranged her wonderful presents and used all her arts of flattery before she came round to the reason of her visit. This she did as soon as Miss Breezy had prepared tea with something of the ceremony of the j.a.panese and arranged herself to be entertained by the child for whose temperament she had found some excuse by labelling it French. Going cunningly to work, she began by saying, ”What do you think? You remember Mother's friends, the Proutys, who were playing cards the other night?”
”Indeed I do,” replied Miss Breezy. ”Whenever I meet those people it takes me some time to get over the unpleasant smell of meat fat. What about them?”
”Cissie, the daughter, has gone into the chorus of the Gaiety, and is very happy there. She's going to be in the second row at first, but she's bound to be noticed, she says, because she has to pose as a statue in the second act covered all over with white stuff.”
”Nothing else?”
”No, but it will take an hour to put on every night. And before the end of the run she'll probably be married at St. Margaret's to an officer in the Guards, she says. She told me that she couldn't hope to become a lady in any other way. I was wondering what you would say if I did the same thing?”
Miss Breezy almost dropped her cup as Lola knew that she would. ”You don't mean to say you've come to tell me that you've got _that_ fearful scheme in the back of your head, you alarming child? A chorus girl?”
Lola laughed. ”You know _my_ way of improving myself: to serve an apprentices.h.i.+p as a lady's maid, a respectable way,-the way in which you're going to help me now that you've thought it all over.”
The answer came like the rapping of a machine gun. ”I've not thought it over and what's more, I'm not going to begin to think it over. I told you so.”
Without turning a hair Lola handed a plate of cakes. ”But you wouldn't like me to follow Cissie's example, would you,-and that's the alternative.” Poor dear old Aunt! What was the use of pretending to be firm. All the trumps were against her.
But for once Lola miscalculated her hand and the woman. ”If you must make a fool of yourself,” said Miss Breezy, ”you must. I'm not your mother and luckily you can't break my heart. I told you the other night and I tell you again that I do not intend to be a party to your lowering yourself by becoming a servant and there's an end of it.” And she waved her disengaged hand.