Part 19 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.]
How?-How?
She might, of course, ask Lady Feo for a week's leave-a large order-go to Whitecross and engage a room at the little inn that she had noticed at the corner of the road at the top of the hill. But what would be the use of that? How could she play Madame de Breze in such a place, with one evening frock and her own plain everyday dress with two undistinguished hats and a piece of luggage that yelled of Queen's Road, Bayswater? It was absurd, impossible. Brick wall number one. And so she tackled the task grimly, thinking hard, swinging from one possibility to another, but with no better luck. Everything came back to the fact that all her savings amounted to no more than ten pounds. How could she go forward, unaided, on that? And then in a flash she saw herself at the house in Kensington Gore with Chalfont and remembered the words of Lady Cheyne, who, in asking her to come down to her little place in the country, had said that the garden ran down to Chilton Park. It had been pigeonholed in her brain and she had found it! And with a little cry of delight she pounced upon it like a desert wanderer on water.
Lady Cheyne,-that kindly soul who was never so happy as when giving a hand to a stray dog. It might easily happen, the weather being so good, that she had already left town. That would be wonderful. But if not, if she were still busy with her musicians and their concerts, then she must be seen and influenced to leave town, or, better still, called up on the telephone at once. A tired little woman of the world needed a breath of fresh air and the peace of a country garden. Would Lady Cheyne take mercy on her, as she took mercy on so many people, and give her this peace and this quietude?-Yes, that was the way. It was a brain wave.
Filled with determination no longer to wait for an opportunity, but to make one, not to rely on fate, as she had been doing, but to treat fate as though it were something alive, a man-Simpkins, Treadwell or Chalfont-and cajole him, Lola proceeded to dress, with the blood tingling in her veins, and imbued with the feeling of one who faces a forlorn hope. But it was still too early to use the telephone to the elderly lady who, if she were in town, had probably listened to music into the small hours. She must wait and go on thinking. There were other things to overcome, even if this one came right. How to wheedle a holiday; to hint, if she dared, at her lack of clothes, a suit-case, shoes.
The servants' sitting room was empty. On Sunday, the menage, except for the cook, slept late. And so Lola marked time impatiently, achieving breakfast from the sulky woman by flattery. Lady Feo had given out that she was not to be disturbed until her bell rang. She would wake to find Sunday in London,-a detestable idea. There was nothing for which to get up.
Watching a clock that teased her with its sloth, Lola went over and over the sort of thing to say to Lady Cheyne, disturbed in her current of thought by the suddenly garrulous cook who insisted on telling the whole story of her life, during the course of which she had buried a drunkard and married a bigamist and lost her savings and acquired asthma,-a dramatic career, even for a cook. But at nine-thirty, unable to control herself any longer, she ran upstairs to Feo's alarming den, hunted out Lady Cheyne's number in the book and eventually got into communication with an operator who might, from her autocratic manner, very easily have been Mrs. Trotsky, or the wife of a labor leader, or a coal-miner's daughter, or indeed a telephone operator of the most approved type.
A sleepy and rather irritable voice said, ”Well?-but isn't it a little early to ring any one up and on a Sunday morning too?”
Lola made a wry face. That was not a good beginning. And then, in her sweetest voice, ”Am I speaking to dear Lady Cheyne?”
”Yes, it's f.a.n.n.y Cheyne, lying in bed with this diabolical instrument on her chest, but not feeling very dear, my dear, whoever you are, and I don't know your voice.”
”It's Madame de Breze and I'm so very sorry to disturb you.”
”Why did you then, if I may say so,-de Breze. I'm sorry too, but really I hear so many names, just as odd.-If it's about being photographed, please no. I'm far too fat. Or if it's about a subscription for the starving children of Cochin China, I have too many starving children of my own.”
Quick, de Breze, quick, before the good old lady cuts off.
”The Savoy, the little widow, Sir Peter Chalfont, your wonderful house so full of genius, and what do you do, my dear.-Don't you remember, dear Lady Cheyne?”
”Oh,-let me think now.” (The tone was brighter, interest was awakening!
Good for you, de Breze.) ”My dear Peter with the comic-tragic leg-no, arm-the Savoy--”
”You were with Alton Cartridge and the disinfected Russian violinist, and you betted on my being French and invited me to Whitecross and when I went up to powder my nose--”
”You never came back! Golden hair like b.u.t.ter-cups, wide-apart eyes and fluttering nostrils, a mouth designed for kissing and all about you the rattle of s.e.x. You dear thing! How sweet of you to ring me up and on a Sunday too. Where on earth did you go?”
Go on, de Breze, go on! A little mystery, a touch of sadness, a hint of special confidence, flattery, flattery.
”Ah, if only I could see you. I dare not explain that sudden disappearance over the telephone,-which must have seemed so rude. You are the only woman in all the world who could keep an amazing secret and advise a troubled woman in a tangle of romance--”
”Secret, romance-who but Poppy for that!”
It worked, it worked! Lola could _see_ the kind little lady struggle into a sitting posture, alert and keen, her vanity touched. Go on, de Breze, go on.
”Ever since then I've been thinking of you, dear Lady Cheyne, and, at last, this morning, on the spur of the moment, longing for help, driven into a corner, remembering your kind invitation to Whitecross--”
”My dear, you excite me and I adore excitement. Of course you must see me, at once. But to-day's impossible. I've a thousand things to do. And to-morrow-let me see now. How can I fit you in? Probably you don't want to be seen at my house or the Savoy, you mysterious thing. So what can we arrange? I know. I have it. Quite French and appropriate. Meet me on the sly at a place where no one ever would dream of our being. Mrs.
Rumbold's, a jobbing dressmaker. I'm going to see her to-morrow to alter some clothes. Castleton Terrace, Bayswater, 22. She used to work for me.
A poor half-starved soul, but so useful. Half-past eleven. And we'll arrange for a week-end at my place, perhaps, or elsewhere, wherever you like.”