Part 4 (2/2)

There was something in that large and airy bedroom which always did Mrs.

Malwood good. She liked its Spartan simplicity, its white walls, white furniture, white carpet and the curtains and cus.h.i.+ons which were of delicate water-color tones suggestive of sweet peas. It had once been wholly black as a background for Lady Feo's dead-white skin. But her friend had grown out of that, as she grew out of almost everything sooner or later.

”New, isn't she?” asked Mrs. Malwood without lowering her voice.

”A month old,” replied Lady Feo, ”and becoming more and more useful every moment. Aren't you, Lola?”

Lola bowed and smiled and once more put the hot tongs to the thick wiry hair which eventually would stand out around her mistress's head like that of some Hawaiian girl.

”Where did you pick her up?” asked Georgie.

”She fell into my lap like a ripe plum. She's a niece of my Breezy, the housekeeper. You'd never think it, would you? I'm more and more inclined to believe, as a matter of fact, that she escaped from a china cabinet from a collection of Dresden pieces.”

Mrs. Malwood perched herself upon an elbow and examined Lola languidly,-who was quite used to this sort of thing, having already been discussed openly before innumerable people as though she were a freak.

They little knew how closely Lola was studying them in turn,-their manner, their accent, their tricks of phrase and for what purpose she was undergoing this apprentices.h.i.+p. Out for sensation, they would certainly have attained a thrilling one could they have seen into the mind of this discreet and industrious girl who performed her duties with the deftest fingers and went about like a disembodied spirit.

”Where are you dining?”

”Here,” said Lady Feo. ”I've got half a dozen of Arthur's friendly enemies coming. It will be a sort of Cabinet meeting. They're all in a frightful stew about his att.i.tude on the Irish question. They know that he and I are not what the papers call 'in sympathy,' so why the d.i.c.kens they've invited themselves I don't know,-in the hope, I suppose, of my being able to work on his feelings and get him to climb down from his high horse. The little Welshman is the last man to cod himself that his position is anything but extremely rocky and he knows that he can't afford to lose the support of a man like Arthur, whose honesty is sworn to by every Tom, d.i.c.k and Harry in the land; this is in the way of a _dernier ressort_, I suppose. I shall be the only woman present. Pity me among this set of indecisive second-raters who are all in a dead funk and utterly unable to cope with the situation, either in Germany, France, Ireland, India or anywhere else and have messed up the whole show. If I had Margot's pen, just think what a ripping chapter I could write in my diary if I kept one, eh, Georgie?” She threw back her head and laughed.

As far as Fallaray's hard-and-fast stand against reprisals was concerned she cared nothing. In fact, Ireland was a word with which she was completely fed up. She had erased it from her dictionary. It meant nothing to her that British officers were being murdered in their beds and thrown at the feet of their wives or that the sc.u.m of the army had blacked and tanned their way through a country burning with pa.s.sion and completely mad. The evening was just one of a series of stunts to her out of which she would derive great amus.e.m.e.nt and be provided with enough chitchat to give her friends gusts of mirth for weeks.

”I saw Fallaray to-day,” said Georgie. ”He was walking in the Park. He only needs a suit of armor to look like Richard Cur de Lion. Is he really and honestly sincere, Feo, or is this a political trick to get the Welshman out of Downing Street? I ask because I don't believe that any man can have been in the House as long as he has and remain clean.”

”Don't you know,” said Lady Feo, with only the merest glint of smile, ”that Arthur has been divinely appointed to save civilization from chaos? Don't you know that?”

”Yes, but I know a good many of the others who have-when any one's looking. You really can't make me believe in these people, especially since the War. Such duds, my dear.”

”All the same, you can believe in Arthur.” She spoke seriously. ”He has no veneer, no dishonesty, no power of escape from his own standards of life. That's why he and I are like oil and water. We don't speak the same language. He reminds me always of an Evangelist at a fancy-dress ball, or Cromwell at a varsity binge. He's a wonderful dull dog, is Arthur, absolutely out of place in English politics and it's perfectly ridiculous that he should be married to me. G.o.d knows why I did it. His profile fascinated me, probably, and the way he played tennis. I was dippy about both those things at the time. I'm awfully sorry for him, too. He needs a wife,-a nice cowlike creature with no sense of humor who would lick his boots, put eau de cologne on his high forehead, run to meet him with a little cry of adoration and spring out of bed to turn on his bath when he came home in the middle of the night. All Cromwells do and don't they love the smell of powder!-Good for you, Lola. Don't you get frightfully fed up with this thick wiry hair of mine?”

Lola smiled and shook her head. It was only when she was alone with her mistress that she permitted herself to answer questions. But as she listened and with a burning heart heard her hero discussed and dismissed and knew, better and more certainly than ever, the things that he needed, one phrase ran like a recurring motif through her brain,-the rustle of silk, the rustle of silk.

II

Lola and Miss Breezy were not on speaking terms.

The elderly spinster considered that she had been used and flouted, treated as though she were in her dotage and had lost her authority to engage and dismiss the members of the Fallaray menage. She had nursed, therefore, a feeling of bitter antagonism against Lola during her three weeks under the same roof. She had not treated her niece to anything in the nature of an outburst on her return from Queen's Road to take up her duties. ”Dignity, dignity,” she repeated again and again and steeled herself with two other wonderful words that have helped so many similar women in the great crisis of wounded vanity,-”my position.” She had simply cut her dead. Since then they had, of course, met frequently and had even been obliged to speak to each other. They did so as though they were totally unrelated and had never met before.

All this led to a certain amount of comedy below stairs, it being perfectly well known to every one that Lola was the housekeeper's niece.

What Lola did when Miss Breezy entered the servants' sitting room the night of her arrival filled the maids with astonishment, resentment and admiration,-astonishment because of her extraordinary capacity of holding in her laughter, resentment because she treated Miss Breezy with the sort of respect which that good lady never got from them, and admiration because of the innate breeding which seemed to ooze from that child's finger tips. She had risen to her feet. And ever since she had continued to do so-a thing, the possibility of which the others had never conceived-and when spoken to had replied, ”Yes, Miss Breezy,” with a perfectly straight face and not one glint of humor in her eye. It was wonderful. It was like something in a book,-an old book by a man who wrote of times that were as dead as mutton. It was gorgeous. It gave the girls the st.i.tch from laughing. It became one of their standard jokes.

”Up for Miss Breezy,” the word went after that and there was a scramble out of chairs. All this made the elderly spinster angrier than ever. Not only had she been done by this girl but, my word, the child was rubbing it in.

It was curious to see the effect that Lola had upon the other servants.

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