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 ladyship 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 Massingham and quoted Sidney Webb, he boasted of being without faith in God and constitution. 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 association, God knew what! In time of trouble it is always the atheist who is the first to call on God.
He was about to leave the street in which the Fallaray house had now assumed the appearance of a morgue to him when Simpkins came up from the area, with a dull face. After a moment of irresolution he followed and caught the valet up. “Where’s Miss Breezy?” he asked abruptly.
Simpkins was all the more astonished at the question for the trouble on that young cub’s face. He looked him over sharply,—the cheap cap, the too long hair, the big nose, the faulty teeth, the pasty face, the un-athletic body, the awkward feet. Lola was in love. He knew that well enough. But not with this lout, that was certain, poet or no poet. “I don’t know as ’ow I’ve got to answer that question,” he said, just to put him in his place.
“Yes, you have. Where is she?”
“You ought ter know.” He himself knew and as there was no accounting for tastes and Lola had made a friend of this anæmic hooligan, why didn’t he? He lived round the corner from the shop, anyhow.
“But I don’t know. Neither do her father and mother.”
“What’s that?” Simpkins drew up short. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. She went ’ome last Thursday to get a little rest until to-morrer,—Tuesday.”
Treadwell would have cried out, “It isn’t true,” but he loved Lola and was loyal. He had met Simpkins in Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and had seen him on familiar terms with Mr. Breezy, but he was a member of the Fallaray household and as such was not to be let into this—this trouble. Not even the Breezys must be told before Lola had been seen and had given an explanation. They didn’t love her as much as he did,—nor any one else in the world. And so he said, loyalty overmastering his jealousy and fear, “Oh, is that so? I haven’t had time to look in lately. I didn’t know.” And seeing a huge unbelief in Simpkins’s pale eyes, he hurried on to explain. “Being in the neighborhood and having some personal news for Lola, I called at your house. Was surprised to hear that she was away. That’s all. Good night.” And away he went, head forward, left foot turning in, long arms swinging loose.
But he had touched the spring in Simpkins to a jealousy and a fear that were precisely similar to his own. Lola was not at home. Treadwell knew it and had called at Dover Street, expecting to find her there. They had all been told lies because she was doing something of which she was ashamed. The night that she had come in, weeping, dressed like a lady.—The words that had burned into his soul the evening of his proposal,—“so awfully in love with somebody else and it’s a difficult world.—Perhaps I shall never be married and that’s the truth, Simpky. It’s a difficult world.”
“Hi,” he called out. “Hi,” and started after Treadwell, full stride.
But rather than face those searching eyes again, at the back of which there was a curious blaze, Treadwell took to his heels, and followed hard by Simpkins, whose fanatical spirit of protection was stirred to its depths, dodged from one street into another. The curious chase would have ended in Treadwell’s escape but for the sudden intervention, in Vigo Street, of a policeman who slipped out of the entrance to the Albany and caught the boy in his arms.
“Now then, now then,” he said. “What’s all this ’ere?”
And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear. “It’s—it’s alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that’s all. He’s—he’s a paller mine. Well run, Ernie!” And he put his arm round Treadwell’s shoulders, laughing.
And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of those panting men. “Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins,” he said, to the nice little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the area steps. “Set up ’eart trouble if yer not careful.”
Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood. It put them on another footing, they could see.
After a few more words of badinage the policeman mooched off to finish his talk with the tall-hatted keeper of the Albany doorway. And Simpkins said gravely and quietly, “Treadwell, we’ve got to go into this, you and me. We’re in the same boat and Lola’s got ter be—looked after, by both of us.”
Treadwell nodded. “I’m frightened,” he said, without camouflage.
“So am I,” said Simpkins.
And they went off together, slowly, brought into confidence by a mutual heart trouble that had already set up.