II
Lola woke early and went to the window and pulled up the blind. The sun was shining 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 anæmic 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 passed 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 class, 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 Brézé 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 Brézé 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 worship 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 passionate 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 Brézé. 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 anæmic 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 Brézé 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-class 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.
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 Brézé 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 ménage, 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 Fanny 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 Brèzè and I’m so very sorry to disturb you.”
“Why did you then, if I may say so,—de Brézé. 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 Brézé, 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 Brézé.) “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 butter-cups, wide-apart eyes and fluttering nostrils, a mouth designed for kissing and all about you the rattle of sex. 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 Brézé, 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 Brézé, 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.”
“Oh, Whitecross, Whitecross,—it sounds so right.”
“And, it is so right,—romance in every rose bowl. To-morrow then, and I shall love to see you, my dear, and thank you for thinking of Poppy. I’m so excited. Good-by.”
“Good-by, dearest Lady Cheyne,—a thousand thanks.”
Well played, de Brézé. That’s the way to do it. Keep on like that and prove your grit, my dear.
And presently for Lady Feo, who would certainly have something to say about the Carlton episode, and if all went well the frocks, the hats, the shoes,—but nothing yet about the holiday. That must wait until after the interview at Mrs. Rumbold’s to-morrow.