Part 16 (1/2)

When Feo bounced into her room a little after five-thirty she found a perfectly composed and efficient Lola who had laid out a selection of her mistress's most recent frocks with the accompanying shoes and stockings. There was nothing about the girl to indicate her latent excitement and her determination under any circ.u.mstances to keep her appointment at the Carlton. The cardboard box from Mrs. Rumbold's was up in her room. Ellen had been interviewed and had promised to slip down and open the area door at twelve o'clock.

Feo nodded and gave one of her widest smiles. ”Good for you, Lola,” she said. ”If you had been out for the day or something, I should, of course, have been able to do my hair, dress and get off,-but not so well as when you're here. If it came to a push I suppose I could do everything for myself, even cook my breakfast; but I should hate it and it wouldn't give me any pleasure.-That one,” she said, and pointed to a most peculiar frock that looked like the effort of that overconscientious chameleon when it endeavored to imitate the tartan of the Gordon Highlanders. It was a very chaos of colors, but she was in the highest spirits and evidently felt in a riotous mood. And while she gave herself up to Lola, in order to have a few deep waves put in her wiry bobbed hair, she babbled as though she were talking to Mrs. Malwood or one of her other particular friends.

”I don't know what the devil's happened to this week-end,” she said.

”Every blessed thing's gone wrong. That glossy scoundrel at Chilton,-good Lord, I must be more careful,-and all those dullards at Aylesbury! We played bridge nearly all night and no one ever doubled. It was like going to a race meeting and finding the anti-vice brigade where the bookies ought to be. I simply couldn't stay there another night, so I slept until four o'clock this afternoon, had a cup of tea in my room and dashed up. To-night I hope for better things. An old friend of mine-and really old friends have their points-got back from India yesterday. I saw his name in the paper and rang him up at the Rag. We're going to dine and dance and so forth, quite like old times; so do your best with me, Lola. I haven't seen this man for five years.-Don't allow any of them to remain round my eyes.-Oh, by the way, I'm really awfully sorry to have smashed up your plans and I don't see how you can go back to your father and mother to-morrow because I shall want to be dressed about ten o'clock and I shall be home again to sleep. So it pretty well rots your day, Lola. Never mind, I'll see that you have a little holiday before long.”

And she smiled up into Lola's face and for the moment looked very womanly and charming and perfectly sincere. For all her curious tangents and unexpected twists and the peculiar hardness and unscrupulous selfishness that she brought into her dealings with every one, this woman had good points; and even when she hurt her friends deeply she had an unexplainable knack of retaining their loyalty. She really liked Lola and admired her and would have gone very far out of her way to look after her.-The pity of it was that she had not been born a man.

She babbled on while Lola polished her up and did all those quite unnecessary things which modern life has invented for women before they will show themselves to the public. In the frankest possible way and without the least reserve she roughed out the history of the man who had come back,-a pucca soldier who had been in India since the War and was one of Feo's earliest friends. He had loved her violently, been turned down for Fallaray and had never married. It so happened that he had not seen Feo during his periods of leave while the War was on and had told her over the telephone that if he didn't see her then, at once, he'd either have apoplexy or be taken to Bow Street for smas.h.i.+ng the town.

Feo laughed when she repeated this.

”And he would too,” she said. ”He's just that sort. Those tall, dark men with a dash of the Oriental in them somewhere go through life with the apparent indifference of a greyhound until the bursting point comes, and when they give way,-whew, look out for the splinters.”

She was excited,-almost as excited as Lola was. And finally, dressed and scented, with her nails pink and her full lips reddened, she had never looked more characteristically Feo, more virile, more audacious, more thoroughbred and at the same time more bizarre. ”Now for the Ritz,” she said (Ah, then the Carlton was safe), turned at the door and in a moment of impulse took a diamond bracelet from her wrist and pitched it at Lola as though it were a tennis ball. ”You're a jolly good sportsman, child,”

she added, with her widest smile.

All the way downstairs she sang an aria from ”Le Coq d'Or,”-a strange, wistful, moonlit thing.-And hardly had she gone before Lola seated herself at the dressing table, where she commenced those operations which would transform her also into a woman of the world.

V

And then, with her nose in the air and her hands folded over her tummy, Miss Breezy marched into the dressing room. ”Oh,” she said, which was quite enough.

And Lola sprang to her feet, caught in the act of using her mistress's make-up. But it was so long, or it seemed to be so long, since she had held any conversation with her aunt that nearly all sense of relations.h.i.+p had faded out. This was Miss Breezy the housekeeper, natural enemy of servants and on the lookout especially to find something which would form the basis of an unfavorable report in regard to Lola.

”Good afternoon, Miss Breezy.”

”Oh, don't be absurd. I'm your aunt and there's no getting away from it.

This playing of parts makes me impatient.” Her tone was snappy but there was, oddly enough, nothing antagonistic in her expression. On the contrary-and this put Lola immediately on her guard-there was all about her a new air of armistice, an obvious desire to call off unfriendly relations and bury the hatchet.

The thought that ran through Lola's head was, ”What does she want to know?”

With a touch of the adventurous spirit for which Lola had not given her credit, the good lady, who had recently somewhat increased in bulk, clambered into Feo's extraordinary chair, in which she looked exactly as if she were waiting to have a tooth filled. Her thinning hair, streaked with white, was scrupulously drawn away from her forehead. Her black s.h.i.+ny dress was self-consciously plain and prim, and she wore those very ugly elastic-sided boots with patent leather tips that are always somehow a.s.sociated with Philistinism. She might have been the Chairwoman of a Committee of Motion Picture Censors.h.i.+p. ”I spent Thursday evening with your mother and father,” she said. ”I'm glad to hear business is improving. Young Treadwell was there,-a precocious sort of person, I thought.”

”A poet,” said Lola.

”Poet, eh? Yes, I thought he was something of that sort. If I were his mother I'd spank the poetry out of him. What do we want poets for? Might as well have fiddlers to imitate whatever the man's name was who played frivolous tunes when some place or other was burning. Men should work these days, not write sloppy things about gravestones.”

”He'll make his mark,” said Lola.

”You should say a scratch,” corrected Miss Breezy. ”However, that isn't the point. It appears that Simpkins has become a friend of the family.”

Ah, so that was it. She had heard the gossip about Simpky and it was curiosity, not kindness, which had brought her into the dressing room.

”Simpkins,” said Miss Breezy, ”is a warm member. His father left him some money and he has saved. For Ellen, for Elizabeth or even for Annie, whose father is a Baptist minister, he would make a very desirable husband. I have nothing to say against him-for them,” and she looked Lola fully and firmly in the eyes.

And Lola nodded with entire agreement, adding, ”Simpky is a good man.”