Part 18 (2/2)

”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 d.a.m.n-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 s.h.i.+ning 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 anaemic 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s, 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 Breze 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 Breze 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate 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 Breze. 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 anaemic 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 Breze 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-cla.s.s 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.

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