V
Queen’s Road, Bayswater, so far as the jeweler’s little shop was concerned, was in for a surprise that evening. Just as Lola’s mother was about to close up after a rather depressing day which had brought very little business—a few wrist watches to be attended to, nothing more—a car drove up, and from it descended Lola, carrying a handbag and smiling like a girl let out of school.
“Why, my dear,” cried Mrs. Breezy, “what does this mean? I thought you were going to Chilton Park.” But she held her ewe lamb warmly and gladly in her arms, while a shout of welcome came from behind the glass screen where the fat man sat with the microscope in his eye.
Lola laughed. “I went there,” she said, “but something happened. I’ll tell you about that later. And then Lady Feo altered her plans, drove over to Aylesbury and told me I might do anything I liked until Monday night, as there was no room for me in Mrs. Winchfield’s house. And so, of course, I came home. How are you, Mummy darling? Oh, I’m so glad to see you.” And she kissed the little woman again with a touch of exuberance and ran into the shop to pounce upon her father, all among his watches. It was good to see the way in which that man caught his little girl in his arms and held her tight.—A good girl, Lola, a good affectionate girl, working hard when there was no need for her to do so and improving herself. Good Lord, she had begun to talk like a lady and think like a lady, but she would never be too grand to come into the little old shop in Queen’s Road, Bayswater,—not Lola.
He said all that rather emotionally and this too. “It isn’t as if we hadn’t seen yer for such a long time. You’ve never missed droppin’ in upon us whenever you could get away, but this’s like a sunny day when the papers said it was goin’ to be wet,—like finding a real good tot of cognac in a bottle yer thought was empty.” And he kissed her again on both cheeks and held her away from him, the Frenchman in him coming out in his utter lack of self-consciousness. He looked her all over with a great smile on his fat face and stroked the sleeve of her blue serge coat, touched the white thing at her throat and finally pinched the lobe of one of her tiny ears.
“It isn’t that yer clothes are smarter, or that yer’ve grown older or anything like that. It’s that you seem to have pulled yer feet out of this place, me girl. It doesn’t seem to be your place now.—It’s manner. It’s the way yer hold yer head, tilt yer chin up.—It’s accent. It’s the way you end yer sentences. When a woman comes into the shop and speaks to me as you do, I know that she won’t pay her bills but that her name’s in the Red Book.—You little monkey, yer’ve picked up all the tricks and manners of her ladyship. You’ll be saying ‘My God’ soon, as yer aunt tells us Lady Feo does! Well, well, well.” And he hugged her again, laughed, and then, finding that he showed certain points of his French antecedents, began to exaggerate them as he had seen Robert Nainby do at the Gaiety. He was a consummate actor and a very honest person. The two don’t always go together.
And then Mrs. Breezy, who in the meantime had been practical and shut the shop, followed them into the parlor, which seemed to Lola to be shrinking every time she saw it and more crowded with cardboard boxes, account books, alarm clocks and the surplus from the shop, and sprang a little surprise. “Who do you think’s coming to dinner to-night?” she asked.
“Is anybody coming to dinner? What a nuisance,” said Lola, who had looked forward to enjoying the company of her father and mother uninterrupted.
John Breezy gave a roguish glance at his wife and winked. “Give yer ten guesses,” he said.
“Ernest Treadwell.”
“No,” said Mrs. Breezy, “Albert Simpkins.”
“Simpky? How funny. Did you ask him or did he ask himself?”
“He asked himself,” said John Breezy.
“I asked him,” said Mrs. Breezy.
“I see. The true Simpky way. He suggested that he would like to have dinner with you and you caught the suggestion. He comes of such a long line of men who have worn their masters’ clothes that he is now a sort of second-hand edition of them all, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if, when he falls in love, he goes to the parents first and asks their permission to propose to the daughter; and he’ll probably ask not for the daughter herself but for her hand,—which never seems to me to be much of a compliment to the daughter.”
Mrs. Breezy and her husband exchanged a quick glance. Either there was something uncanny about Lola or she knew that this very respectable man was madly in love with her. During his numerous visits to the jeweler’s shop Simpkins had invariably led the conversation round to Lola, finding a thousand phases of her character which he adored. But the last time he had been with them there was something in his manner and voice which made it easy to guess that his visit that evening was for the purpose of asking them whether they considered him worthy of becoming their son-in-law. It may be said that they considered that he was, especially after he had told them about the money inherited from his father and his own savings and confided in them his scheme of buying that very desirable inn at Wargrave, in which they could, of course, frequently spend very pleasant week-ends during the summer months. They had before this recognized in him a man of great depth of feeling, of excellent principles and a certain strange ecstasy,—somewhat paradoxical in one who nearly always appeared in a swallow-tail coat, dark trousers and a black tie.
Seeing that this was an occasion of considerable importance, Mrs. Breezy had arranged to dine in the drawing-room. It now behooved her to hurry up to her room and change her clothes and lay an extra place for Lola. The dinner itself was being cooked at that moment by the baker next door,—duck, new peas and potatoes and apple pie with a nice piece of Gruyère cheese, which, with two bottles of Beaujolais from the Breezy cellar, would be worthy of Mr. Simpkins’s attention even though he did come from Dover Street, Mayfair.
As a matter of fact, Lola’s remark about the daughter’s hand was merely an arrow fired into the air. She had been encouraging Simpkins to look with favor upon the lovesick girl who sat so frequently upon her bed and poured out her heart. She never conceived the possibility of being herself asked for by good old Simpky, who had been so kind to her and was such a knowledgable companion at the theater. The idea of becoming his wife was grotesque, ridiculous, pathetic, hugely remote from her definite plan of life. She considered that the girl Ellen was exactly suited to him. Had she not inherited all the attributes of an innkeeper’s wife from her worthy parents who had kept the Golden Sheaf at Shepperton since away back before the great wind? So she ran up to her room to tidy herself, with her soul full of Chilton Park and Fallaray.
Simpkins arrived precisely on time, smelling of Windsor soap and brilliantine. He had indulged in a tie which had white spots upon it, discreet white spots, and into this he had stuck a golden pin,—a horse-shoe for luck. He was welcomed by Mr. Breezy in the drawing-room and immediately twigged the fact that there were four places laid.
Mr. Breezy was waggish. It is the way of a parent in all such circumstances. “My boy, who do you think?”
“I dunno. Who?” His tone was anxious and his brows were flustered.
“Lola,” said Mr. Breezy.
“Lola!—I thought she was at Chilton Park with ’er ladyship. I chose this evening because of that. This’ll make me very—well——”
“Not you,” said John Breezy. “You’re all right, me boy. We like you. That inn down at Wargrave sounds good. I can see a nice kitchen garden. I shall love to wander in it in the early morning and pull up spring onions. I’m French enough for them still. You can take it that the missus and I are all in your favor,—formalities waived. We’ll slip away after dinner, go for a little walk and you can plump the question. The betting is you’ll win.” And he clapped the disconcerted valet heartily on the back,—the rather narrow back.
“I’m very much obliged, Mr. Breezy,” said Simpkins, who had gone white to the lips, “and also to Mrs. Breezy. It’s nice to be trusted like this, and all that. But I must say, in all honesty, I wanted to take this affair step by step, so to speak. If I’d ’ad the good fortune to be encouraged by you in my desire to ask for Lola’s ’and,”—there it came,—“I should ’ave taken a week at least to ’ave thought out the proper things to say to Lola ’erself. Sometimes there’s a little laugh in the back of ’er eyes which throws a man off his words. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed that. But this is very sudden and I shall ’ave to do a lot of thinking during the meal.”
“Oh, you English,” said John Breezy and roared with laughter. “Mong Doo!”
One of Simpkins’s hands fidgeted with his tie while the other straightened the feathers on the top of his head. Jumping Joseph, he was fairly up against it! How he wished he was a daring man who had traveled a little and read some of the modern novels. It was a frightful handicap to be so old-fashioned.
And then the ladies arrived,—Mrs. Breezy in a white fichu which looked like an antimacassar, a thing usually kept for Christmas day and wedding anniversaries; Lola in a neat blue suit and the highest spirits,—a charming costume.
“Hello, Simpky.”
“Good evening, Mr. Simpkins.”
Simpkins bowed. He certainly had the Grandison manner. And while Lola brought him up to date with the state of affairs, so far as she knew them, Mrs. Breezy disappeared, stood on a chair against the fence in the back yard and received the hot dishes which were handed over to her by the baker’s wife. A couple of scrawny cats, with tails erect, attracted by the aroma of hot duck, followed her to the back door,—but got no farther. “You shall have the bones,” said Mrs. Breezy, and they were duly encouraged.
The dinner was a success, even although Simpkins sat through it in one long trance. He ate well to fortify himself and it was obvious to John Breezy, sympathetic soul that he was, that his guest was rehearsing a flowery speech of proposal. The unconscious Lola kept up a merry rattle of conversation and gave them a vivid description of the village through which she had passed that afternoon and of her drive back to town alone from Aylesbury. Of Chilton Park she said nothing. It was too sacred. And when presently John Breezy’s programme was carried out, the table cleared, the two cats rewarded for their patience and Simpkins left alone with Lola, there was a moment of shattering silence. But even then Lola was unsuspecting, and it was not until the valet unbuttoned his coat to free his swelling chest and placed himself in a supplicating attitude on the sofa at her side, that she tumbled to the situation.
“Oh, Simpky,” she said, “what are you going to do?”
It was a wonderful cue. It helped him to take the first ditch without touching either of the banks. The poor wretch slipped down upon his knees, all his pre-arranged words scattered like a load of bricks. “Ask you to marry me, Lola,” he said. “Lola, darling, I love you. I loved you the very minute you came down the area steps, which was all wrong because I thought you’d come from heaven and therefore your place was the front door. I love you and I want you to marry me, and I’ll buy the inn and work like a dog and we’ll send the boy to Lansing or the City of London School and make a gentleman of ’im.”
Not resentment, not amusement, but a great pity swept over Lola. This was a good, kind, generous man and his emotion was so simple and so genuine. And she must hurt him because it was impossible, absurd.
And so for a moment she sat very still and erect, looking exactly like a daffodil with the light on her yellow head, and her eyes shut, because there might be in them that twinkle which Simpkins had noticed and which he must not see. And presently she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, “Oh, Simpky, dear old Simpky, why couldn’t you have loved Ellen? What a difficult world it is.”
“Ellen,” he said. “Oh.”
“I can’t, Simpky. I simply can’t.”
And he sat on his heels and looked like a pricked balloon. “Ain’t I good enough, Lola?”
“Yes, quite good enough. Perhaps too good. But, oh, Simpky, I’m so awfully in love with some one else and it’s a difficult world. That’s the truth. I have to tell it to you. I can never, never marry you, never. Please accept this. Whatever happens to me, and I don’t know whatever will happen to me, I shall always remember how good you were and how proud you made me feel. But I’m so awfully in love with some one else. Awfully. And perhaps I shall never be married. That’s the truth, Simpky.”
And she bent down and kissed him on the forehead, and then got up quickly and raised the kneeling man to his feet. And he stood there, shattered, empty and wordless, with the blow that she had given him ever so softly marking his face, marking his soul.
And Lola was very, very sorry. Poor old Simpky. Poor little Ellen. It was indeed a difficult world.