Part 15 (2/2)
All through the War, Fallaray had been a thorn in the side of his chief.
His honesty and his continual ”why” were a source of irritation and sometimes of anger. He had no patience whatever with s.h.i.+ftiness, intrigue and favoritism, the appointment of mere duffers to positions of high responsibility. He made no bones whatever about expressing his opinion as to the frivolity that prevailed in certain quarters, together with the habit of dodging every grave issue. On the question of the League of Nations too, he was in close accord with Lord Robert Cecil and often made drastic criticisms of the frequent somersaults of his chief.
His definite stand on the Irish question was extremely annoying to the bra.s.s-hat brigade and to the master-flounderer and weatherc.o.c.k, who showed himself more and more to be a mixture of Billy Sunday and Mark Anthony, crying out that black was white at one end of the town and ten minutes later that white was black at the other end. And yet, when it came to results, Fallaray might almost as well have been on the town council of Lower Muddleton as in the Cabinet of the British Government.
Respected for his faithfulness to duty, he was disliked for his honesty and feared for his utter disregard for personal aggrandizement and the salary that went with it.
No wonder, therefore, that he was tired. He had been under a long and continual strain. In Parliament he found himself still dealing with the men who had suffered from brain anaemia before the War and had, therefore, been unable ever to believe, in spite of Lord Roberts, that war was possible,-that same body of professional politicians who were mentally and physically incapable of looking at the numerous problems of the hour, the day and the week with sanity and with courage. At home-if such a word could be used for Dover Street-there was Feo, who had no more right to be under his roof than any one of the women that pa.s.sed him in the street. He was a tired and lonely man on the verge of complete disillusionment, disappointed with his fellow Ministers and deeply disappointed with the suspicion and jealousy which had grown up between England and her allies. It seemed to him, also, that the blank refusal of the United States to have anything to do with the League of Nations, even as revised from the original draft of President Wilson, the Messiah who had failed to function mainly because of the personal spite of the Republican leaders, jeopardized the future of the world and gave Germany a springboard which one of these days she would not fail to use. In spite of her reluctantly made promises, she was very busy inventing new and diabolical weapons of war and taking out patents for them in Was.h.i.+ngton, while pretending to observe the laws laid down by the Allies as to her disarmament and the manufacture of war materials under her treaty obligations. Krupps had designed new methods of artillery fire control, new fuses for projectiles, new gas engines, new naval fire-control devices, new parts for airplanes, new chemicals and new radio apparatuses. To what end? In the face of these facts he could perfectly well understand the French att.i.tude, hysterical as it seemed to be. They knew her for a liar, a cheat and an everlasting enemy and whenever Fallaray returned from those interminable conferences in Paris, he did so with the recollection upon him of something in the eyes of Foch and other Frenchmen whose love of country was a religion that put a touch of fear into his soul. What were they all doing, these politicians of England, of the United States, of Italy? Were they not those very same ostriches who during all the years that led up to the War had hidden their heads in the sand,-the same heads, precisely the same sand?
As he entered the House that afternoon to be heckled with questions which he dared not answer truthfully, he wished that he had been born not to politics but to sportsmans.h.i.+p. He wished that he had carried on his undergraduate love of games, had kept himself fit, had joined the army as a subaltern in August, '14, and had found the German bullet upon which his name had been written. In such a way, at any rate, he could better have served his country than by being at that grave moment an impotent piece on the political chessboard. Both publically and privately this man felt himself to be a failure. In the House of Commons he was more or less friendless, regarded as an unreliable party man. In his home he was a lodger, ignored by the woman who ran his house. He was without love, joy, kindness, the interest and devotion of any one sweet person who could put her soft fingers on his forehead and give him back his optimism. He was like Samson shackled to the windla.s.s which he pushed round and round with gradually diminis.h.i.+ng strength.
III
Lola spent the afternoon with Ernest Treadwell. Loyalty to her old friend took her to the public library on her way back to lunch to ask him to fetch her for a little walk in the afternoon. The flash of joy that came into that boy's eyes at the sight of her rewarded her well and sufficiently. To tell the truth, she would much have preferred to devote the whole of that afternoon to daydreams, but she knew, no one better, the peculiar temperament of young Treadwell and his hungry need of the inspiration which she alone could give him. But just as the boy arrived, a telegram was handed in addressed abruptly to ”Breezy, 77 Queen's Road, Bayswater.” It was opened, naturally enough, by John, who, to the astonishment of half a dozen customers, emitted a howl of rage. Getting up from his chair behind the gla.s.s screen, he wobbled into the back parlor where Lola was seated with Ernest, deciding as to whether they should take the motor bus to Wimbleton Common or the train to Windsor.
With an air of comic drama, though he did not intend it to be comic, the watchmaker flung the telegram upon the crowded table. The remains of lunch hobn.o.bbed with kodaks, tissue paper, b.a.l.l.s of string and empty cardboard boxes. The telegram fell on a pat of b.u.t.ter and to Ernest Treadwell's imaginative eye it looked like a hand grenade stuck into a blob of clay. To him, somehow, there was always something sinister about a telegram. Was this one going to ruin the brief happiness of his afternoon?
It was from Feo and ran like this. ”I shall need you at six o'clock.
Sorry. You had better be at Dover Street at five-thirty. Am dining in town.”
Lola read these words over again and again. Windsor was impossible. Even the trip to Wimbleton Common could not be made. But how was this going to affect the Carlton at seven-thirty? She longed above all things once more to get into the clothes and the proper social surroundings of Madame de Breze, and hear people talking what had become her own language and listen to the music of a good orchestra. She felt that she deserved another adventure with Chalfont. This erratic twist by Lady Feo, whose movements seemed that week-end to resemble those of the woodc.o.c.k, shattered all these plans. At least,-did they? Not if she knew it.
”Well, there it is,” she said and gave the telegram to Ernest Treadwell, who had been watching her face with the most painful anxiety. ”She who must be obeyed. I'm afraid this means that all we can do is to wander about for a couple of hours and that our little jaunt to Windsor must be postponed. And we never went to Hampton Court to see the crocuses, did we? Bad luck.”
But while she was speaking, her brain was. .h.i.tting all its cylinders and racing ahead. She would go to the Carlton, Lady Feo or no Lady Feo. She would get her dress from Mrs. Rumbold, with her shoes and stockings, and take them to Dover Street. She would have to dress at Dover Street, bribe Ellen to get her a taxicab and slip down at twelve o'clock to let her in to the area door. That must be the plan of action, whatever the risks might be.
She sprang to her feet and flung an arm round her father's neck,-her disappointed, affectionate father who had looked forward to a merry evening at the local music hall and to one of the old-time Sundays when he could march out in his best clothes and show off Lola to the neighbors. ”It's life, Daddy,” she said. ”It can't be helped. You have your wrist watches. I have Lady Feo. What's the good of grumbling? Tell Mother when you get the chance. At the moment she is busy and mustn't be disturbed. Come on, Ernest, let's go.”
But Ernest had other views, now that the country was impossible. ”I've got something in my pocket I want to read to you,” he said. ”Might we go up to the drawing-room, do you think?”
That was excellent. That made things ever so much easier. She could give Ernest until four o'clock or a little after and then get rid of him, go round to Mrs. Rumbold and get eventually to Dover Street in time to have everything ready for Lady Feo on her arrival.
And so they went upstairs and opened up the aloof room, with its persistent and insular odor of the Sabbath and antimaca.s.sars, and drew up chairs to the window. The row of houses opposite, which had been converted into shops, was bathed in the afternoon sun. A florist's windows alight with flowers looked like a line from Tennyson in the middle of a financial article in a newspaper. Traffic roared in the street below but did not quite succeed in drowning a weather-beaten piano accompanying a throaty baritone singing, ”She dwelt amid the untrodden wiys.-And h'oh the differ-rence ter me.”
With a thoughtfulness that seemed to Ernest Treadwell to be exquisite, Lola shut the window so that she might not miss a single word that she was about to hear. Without any preliminaries and with the colossal egotism that is part and parcel of all writing, the young librarian took from his pocket a wad of ma.n.u.script, and in a deadly monotone commenced to read his epic. It was in blank verse and ran to about sixteen pages.
It retold the old story of Paola and Francesca, not in the manner of Stephen Phillips and not in imitation of Masefield or any of the younger poets, but in the Treadwell way,-jerky, explosive and here and there out of key; but for all that filled with a rough picturesqueness and pa.s.sion, with a quite extraordinary sense of color and feeling which held Lola breathless from beginning to end. It was this boy's greatest effort, on which he had been working for innumerable months, burning the midnight oil with the influence of Lola upon him, and his great love which lifted him into ecstasy.-And when he had finished and ventured to look into her face, he saw there something that crowned his head with laurels and filled his heart with tears.
”Oh,” she said. ”Oh.-Ernie, you've done it. It's beautiful. You are a poet. However far behind them all, you are in the line of great singers.” And she reached out for the ma.n.u.script and saw that on the first page, in angular boyish writing, were the words, ”To Lola,-of whom I dream.”
Simpkins, Treadwell, Chalfont,-but, oh, where was Fallaray, her hero, the man who needed love?
IV
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