V
And then, with her nose in the air and her hands folded over her tummy, Miss Breezy marched into the dressing room. “Oh,” she said, which was quite enough.
And Lola sprang to her feet, caught in the act of using her mistress’s make-up. But it was so long, or it seemed to be so long, since she had held any conversation with her aunt that nearly all sense of relationship had faded out. This was Miss Breezy the housekeeper, natural enemy of servants and on the lookout especially to find something which would form the basis of an unfavorable report in regard to Lola.
“Good afternoon, Miss Breezy.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’m your aunt and there’s no getting away from it. This playing of parts makes me impatient.” Her tone was snappy but there was, oddly enough, nothing antagonistic in her expression. On the contrary—and this put Lola immediately on her guard—there was all about her a new air of armistice, an obvious desire to call off unfriendly relations and bury the hatchet.
The thought that ran through Lola’s head was, “What does she want to know?”
With a touch of the adventurous spirit for which Lola had not given her credit, the good lady, who had recently somewhat increased in bulk, clambered into Feo’s extraordinary chair, in which she looked exactly as if she were waiting to have a tooth filled. Her thinning hair, streaked with white, was scrupulously drawn away from her forehead. Her black shiny dress was self-consciously plain and prim, and she wore those very ugly elastic-sided boots with patent leather tips that are always somehow associated with Philistinism. She might have been the Chairwoman of a Committee of Motion Picture Censorship. “I spent Thursday evening with your mother and father,” she said. “I’m glad to hear business is improving. Young Treadwell was there,—a precocious sort of person, I thought.”
“A poet,” said Lola.
“Poet, eh? Yes, I thought he was something of that sort. If I were his mother I’d spank the poetry out of him. What do we want poets for? Might as well have fiddlers to imitate whatever the man’s name was who played frivolous tunes when some place or other was burning. Men should work these days, not write sloppy things about gravestones.”
“He’ll make his mark,” said Lola.
“You should say a scratch,” corrected Miss Breezy. “However, that isn’t the point. It appears that Simpkins has become a friend of the family.”
Ah, so that was it. She had heard the gossip about Simpky and it was curiosity, not kindness, which had brought her into the dressing room.
“Simpkins,” said Miss Breezy, “is a warm member. His father left him some money and he has saved. For Ellen, for Elizabeth or even for Annie, whose father is a Baptist minister, he would make a very desirable husband. I have nothing to say against him—for them,” and she looked Lola fully and firmly in the eyes.
And Lola nodded with entire agreement, adding, “Simpky is a good man.”
“So there’s nothing in that, then? Is that what you mean?”
“Nothing,” replied Lola.
And Miss Breezy gave a sigh of relief. It was bad enough for her niece to have become a lady’s maid.
Would she go now? Or was there something else at the back of her mind?
For several minutes Miss Breezy babbled rather garrulously about a number of quite extraneous things. She talked about the soldiers in the park, the coal strike, what was likely to happen during the summer, the effect of unemployment on prices, all obviously for the purpose of presently pouncing hawk-like on the unsuspecting Lola,—who, as a matter of fact, had no intention of falling into any trap. “In yesterday’s Daily Looking Glass,” she said suddenly, “there was a short paragraph that set me thinking. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was something like this. ‘A short time ago a beautiful young French woman, bearing a name which occupies several interesting chapters in the past history of her country, paid a brief visit to London, dined at the Savoy with one of our best known generals and disappeared as though she had melted with the morning dew. The said general, we hear on the best authority, was distraught and conducted several days’ search for his dinner companion. Inquiries were made at every hotel in town without success until the name of de Brézé became quite well known.”
Lola had caught her breath at the beginning of this quotation which Miss Breezy obviously knew by heart, and had metaphorically clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent herself from crying out. But knowing that her aunt would turn round and fix her analytical eye upon her, Lola immediately adopted an attitude of mild impersonal interest.
The eye duly came, in fact both eyes, and they found Lola polite and unconcerned, the well-trained lady’s maid who was forced to listen to the gossip of her overseer. So that was what it was! Good Heavens, how much did this woman know? And was she, acting on instinct, going to stay in that room until it would be too late for Lola to dress and keep her appointment “with one of our best known generals”? Never before had Lola hung so breathlessly on her aunt’s words.
“Did you read these lines by any chance?”
“No,” said Lola.
“I asked your father if there was anybody of the old name in France and he said he didn’t think so. He said he understood from his grandfather that the name would die with him. It had already become Breezy in England. Somehow or other, I think this is rather strange.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lola. “You see these famous names are never allowed to die right out. This Madame de Brézé is probably an actress who is just using the name to suit herself. It has a good ring to it.”
“That may be so, and it’s true that actresses help themselves to any name that takes their fancy. You, I remember, when you threatened to go into the chorus, talked about claiming relationship with Madame de Brézé.” And again she darted a sharp look at Lola.
“I have the right to do that,” said Lola quietly, but with a very rapid pulse.
“Well, sometimes I go out of my way to satisfy a whim. It so happens that I have a friend in the detective department at Scotland Yard. I’ve asked him to keep his eye open for me and let me know what he finds out. As soon as he comes to me with any definite information, I’ll share it with you, Lola, you may be sure.”
“Oh, thank you, Auntie. That’s very kind of you.”
But being unable to force back a tide of color that swept slowly over her, Lola opened a drawer in the dressing table and began to put back the various implements that she had used upon her mistress and herself. To think of it! It was likely, then, that she was to be watched in future and that presently, perhaps, the story of her harmless adventures would become the property of her aunt and her parents, of Treadwell and Simpkins, and that the detective, whom she could picture with a toothbrush moustache and flat feet, would one day march into the rooms of General Sir Peter Chalfont and say to him, “Do you know that your friend Madame de Brézé is a lady’s maid in the employment of the wife of Mr. Fallaray?”
With the peculiar satisfaction of one who has succeeded in making some one else extraordinarily uncomfortable, Miss Breezy gathered herself together, scrambled out of the chair which might have belonged to a dentist and left the room like an elderly peahen who had done her duty by the world.
And then, having locked the door, Lola returned to the dressing table. “Detective or no detective, I shall dine at the Carlton to-night,” she said to herself. “You see if I don’t.”