Part 24 (2/2)

Georgie Malwood came up. She was with her fourth mother-in-law, Mrs.

Claude Malwood, whose back view was seventeen, but whose face was older than the Pyramids. And Arrowsmith drifted off to the paddock.

But they lunched and spent the day together and one of the horses, ”Mince Pie,” won the fourth race at six to one, beating the favorite by a short head. And so Feo had a good day. They got away ahead of the crowd, except for the people of the theater, who had to dine early and steady down before entering upon the arduous duties of the night, especially those of the chorus who, in these days of Reviews, are called upon to make so many changes of clothes. Art demands many sacrifices.-It had been decided that the Ritz would do for dinner and one of the dancing clubs afterwards. But on the way out Gilbert Macquarie pranced up to Feo, utterly inextinguishable, with a hatband of one club and a tie of another and clothes that would have frightened a steam roller.

”Oh, h.e.l.lo, old thing,” he cried, giving one of his choicest wriggles.

”How goes it?”

To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, ”Out, Mr.

Macquarie,” touched Arrowsmith's arm and went.

But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something queer to Arrowsmith's physical sense, and he couldn't for the life of him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. ”To follow _that_,” he thought, and was nauseated.

But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she didn't have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of Hammersmith and were pa.s.sing Queen's Road, Bayswater, the picture of Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered sympathetically how she was getting on. ”What shall I wear to-night? I hate those new frocks.-I hope the band plays Boheme at the Ritz.-No diamonds, just pearls. He's a pearl man, I think. And I'll brush Peau d'Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,-Cupid.”

And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers to be divorced.

At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and rang the doorbell.

”You look white,” she said. ”What's the matter?”

He was grateful for the chance. ”That old wound,” he said. ”It goes back on me from time to time.”

”That doesn't mean that you'll have to chuck tonight?” She was aghast.

”I'm awfully afraid so, if you don't mind. It means bed, instantly, and a doctor. Do forgive me. I can't help myself. I wish to G.o.d I could.”

She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said ”Good night, then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel.”

But she knew that he wouldn't. It was written round his mouth. And as she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret.

Arrowsmith was a pucca man.

V

Ernest Treadwell watched the car come and go.

Lola had given out at home that she was to be away with Lady Feo, but that morning he had seen in the paper that her ladys.h.i.+p was in town. She had ”been seen” dining at Hurlingham after the polo match with Major Clive Arrowsmith, D. S. O., late Grenadier Guards. Dying to see Lola, to break the wonderful news that his latest sonnet on Death had been printed by the _Westminster Gazette_, the first of his efforts to find acceptance in any publication, Treadwell had hurried to Dover Street, had ventured to present himself at the area door and had been told by Ellen that Lola was away on a holiday.

For half an hour he had been walking up and down the street, looking with puzzled and anxious eyes at the house which had always seemed to him to wear a sinister look. If she had not been going away with Lady Feo, why had she said that she was? A holiday,-alone, stolen from her people and from him to whom hitherto she had always told everything?

What was the meaning of it?-She, Lola, had not told the truth. The thought blew him into the air, like an explosion. Considering himself, with the egotism of all half-baked socialists, an intellectual from the fact that he read Ma.s.singham and quoted Sidney Webb, he boasted of being without faith in G.o.d and const.i.tution. He sneered at Patriotism now, and while he stood for Trades-Unionism remained, like all the rest of his kind, an individualist to the marrow. But he had believed in Lola because he loved her and she inspired him, and without her encouragement and praise he knew that he would let go and crash. Just as he had been printed in the _Westminster Gazette_!

And she had not told the truth, even to her people. Where was she? What was she doing? To whom could she go to spend a holiday? She had no other relation than her aunt and she also was in town. Ellen had told him so in answer to his question.-Back into a mind black with jealousy and suspicion-he was without the habit of faith-came the picture of Lola, dressed like a lady, getting out of a taxicab at the shady-looking house in Castleton Terrace. Had she lied to him then?

Dover Street was at the bottom of it all, and her leaving home to become a lady's maid to such a woman as Lady Feo. She must have caught some of the poison of that a.s.sociation, G.o.d knew what! In time of trouble it is always the atheist who is the first to call on G.o.d.

<script>