V
That evening, controlling her excitement and anxious to make her people happy, Lola went to the family chapel with them,—the watchmaker in a gargantuan tail coat, a pair of pepper and salt trousers, and a bowler hat in which he might have been mistaken for the mayor of Caudebac-sur-Seine or a deputy representing one of the smaller manufacturing towns of France. Beside him his little wife stood bluntly for England. Everything that she wore told the story not only of her birth and tradition but of that of several grandmothers. There must have been at that moment hundreds of thousands of just such women, dressed in a precisely similar manner, on their way to answer the summons of a bell which was not very optimistic,—the Church having fallen rather low in popular favor. It had so many rivals and some of them were, it must be confessed, more in the mood of the times.
It was a sight worth seeing to watch these Breezys ambling up Queen’s Road, proudly, with their little girl. And it was because Lola knew that she was conferring a great treat upon her parents that she submitted herself to an hour and a half of something worse to her than boredom. Only a little while ago she had looked forward to the evening service on Sundays and had been gently moved by the hymns, by the reading from the Scripture and even by the illiterate impromptus of the minister; and she had found, in moments that were dull, the usual feminine pleasure in casting surreptitious glances about the small, plain unbeautiful building to see what Mrs. This wore or Mrs. That. But now she found herself going through it all like a fish out of water. As Ellingham had outgrown Lady Feo, so had she outgrown that flat, uninspired, and rather cruel service, in which the name of God was always mentioned as a monster of vengeance, without love and without forgiveness, and with a suspicious eye to the keyhole of every house. With a sort of shame she found herself finding fault with the rhymes of the hymns, which every now and then were dreadful, and were, oh, so badly sung; and when a smug-faced, uneducated man came forward, shut his eyes, placed himself in an attitude of elaborate piety and let himself go with terrible unction, treating God and death and life and joy and humanity as though they were butter, or worse still, margarine, goose flesh broke out upon her and a curious self-consciousness as though she were intruding upon a scene at which she had no right to be present. Away and away back, church had not been like this to her. Out of a dream she seemed to hear the deep reverberation of a great organ, the high sweet voices of unseen boys and the soft murmur of an old scholar retelling the simple story of Christ’s pathetic struggle, and of God’s mercy.—Oh, the commonplace, the misinterpretation, the hypocrisy, the ignorance. No wonder the busses were filled, she thought, the commons crowded on the outskirts of the city. To her there was more religion in one shaft of evening sun than in all those chapels put together.
It was with thankfulness and relief that Lola went back with her parents to the street and turned into Queen’s Road again, which wore a Sunday expression. Gone for a brief time were the itinerant musicians, the innumerable perambulators, the ogling flappers with their cheap silk stockings and misshapen legs, the retired colonels eking out a grumbling living on infinitesimal pensions.
“Let’s take a little walk,” said Mrs. Breezy. “It’s nice now. The Gardens look more like the country in the twilight.”
“Of course,” said Breezy, “walk. Best exercise in the world. Oils a man up.” But all the same he didn’t intend to go far. Athleticism was a pose with him. He had grown so fat sitting on that backless chair behind the glass screen, looking into the works of sick watches like a poor man’s doctor who treated a long line of ailing people. If it wasn’t the mainspring, then it was over-winding. Very simple.
But Lola steered them away from Kensington Gardens because soldiers were there under canvas, and Chalfont was in command of the London district, and it might happen easily that all of a sudden that purring car would draw up at the curb and her name be called by the man with the cork arm.
“Let’s go the other way,” she said, “for a change. I love to look at all the houses that are just the same and wonder what the people are like who live in them, and whether they’re just the same.”
It was her evening. She was no longer the little girl to be told to do this or that and taken here and there with or against her will. She had broken out of all that, rather strangely and quietly and suddenly; and in a sort of way her parents had become her children. It always happens. It is one of the privileges of parenthood eventually to obey. It is the subtle tribute paid by them to a son or daughter of whom they are proud, who is part of them and who has come through all the vicissitudes of childhood and adolescence under their care and guidance. It is one of the nicer forms of egotism.
And so these three little people, the Breezys, went into the labyrinths of villadom, up one street and down another. Some of the houses were smarter than the rest, with little trees in tubs, and Virginia creepers twined about their pillars, and perhaps a fat Cupid, weather-stained, standing in a little square of cat-fought garden, or with two small lions eying each other from opposite sides of the doorway with bitter antagonism. But the waning light of a glorious day still clung to the sky, in which an evening star had opened its eye, and even Bayswater, that valley of similitude, wore beauty of a sort. And all the way along, up and down and across, the high-sounding names of the various terraces ringing with sarcasm, they went together, these three little people, one far from little outwardly, in great affection. To Lola there was something unreal, almost uncanny about the whole thing. She had grown out of all these streets, all this commonplace, that entire world. She felt like some one who hears a very old tune played in a theater and looks down with surprise and a little thread of pain from a seat in a box,—a tune which seemed to take her back, away and away to far distant days, and stir dim memories.—Only last night she had been sitting in the Carlton with Chalfont as Madame de Brézé, and next Friday, if all went well——
With a sudden thrill of intense excitement and longing, she then and there made up her mind that some day it would be her privilege and joy to lift those two estimable people out of Queen’s Road and place them, not too old for enjoyment, among spreading trees and sloping lawns and all the color of an English garden,—away from watches and silver wedding presents, kodaks and ugly vases, from need of work, from clash of traffic and the inevitable voices of throaty baritones. Ah, that was what she wanted to do, so much, and if possible before it was too late. Time has an ugly way of slipping off the calendar.
And when, presently, they returned to the shop and let themselves in, it was Lola, with a curious emotion, because she might never see them again as she was that night, who got the supper, who placed them, arguing, in the stuffy drawing-room, and made many journeys up and down the narrow staircase to the kitchen. “Please,” she said. “Please. This is my evening. Even a lady’s maid can lay a supper if she tries hard enough.” And they did as they were told, reluctantly, but delighted,—and a little surprised. It was something of a change. And before the evening was over Treadwell came, wearing a flapping tie, the mark of the poet, and a suit of reach-me-downs egregiously cut but with something in his face that lived it down,—love. Poor boy, he had a long way to go alone.
When at last, having said good night, Lola went upstairs to the room in which she had played that little game of hers so often and sat in the dark as quiet as a mouse, holding her breath, not one, no, not a single one of all her old friends came in to see her,—not the ancient marquis with his long finger nails and curious rings and highly polished boots; not the gossipy old women in furbelows and dangling beads; not the gallant courtier with his innuendoes and high flow of compliments; and not the little lady’s maid who was wont to do her hair. They were dead. But in their place came Fallaray, stooping, pale and bewildered, hungry for love, hungry for comfort, dying for inspiration and the rustle of silk. And when he had sat down with his chin in his hand, she crept up to his chair and went on her knees and put her golden head against his heart, and said, “I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I shall love you always. And if you never know it and never see me and miss me altogether in the crowd, I shall wait for you across the Bridge,—and you will see me then.”
But as she got up from her knees, blinded with tears, the voice came to her again, strong and full.
“Go on, go on, de Brézé,—courage, my girl, courage. You have not yet won the right to cry.”