VI
But there was no uneasiness in Queen’s Road, Bayswater. John Breezy and his good wife were happy in the belief that their little girl was enjoying the air and scents of the country with her ladyship. They had neither the time nor the desire to dig deeply into the daily papers. To read of the weathercock policy of the overburdened Prime Minister, traditionally, nationally, and mentally unable to deal with the great problems that followed upon each other’s heels, made Breezy blasphemous and brought on an incapacity to sit still. And so he merely glanced at the front page, hoping against hope for a new government headed by such men as Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Lord Grey and Edmund Fallaray, and for the ignominious downfall of all professional scavengers, titled newspaper owners and mountebanks who were playing ducks and drakes with the honor and the traditions of Parliament. He had no wish to be under the despotism of a Labor Government, having seen that loyalty to leaders was unknown among Trades Unionists and that principles were things which they never had had and never would have the courage to avow.
As for Mrs. Breezy, she never had time for the papers. She didn’t know and didn’t care which party was in power, or the difference between them, and when she heard her husband discuss politics with his friends, burst into a tirade and get red in the face, as every self-respecting man has the right to do, she just folded her hands in her lap, smiled, and said to herself, “Dear old John, what would he do in the millennium, with no government to condemn!” Therefore, these people had not seen in the daily “Chit Chat about Society” the fact that Lady Feo had not left town. They never read those luscious morsels. Because Lady Feo had not left town Aunt Breezy had been too busy to come round on her usual evening, when she would have discovered immediately that Lola was up to something and put the fat in the fire. And so they were happy in their ignorance,—which is, pretty often, the only state in which it is achieved.
Over dinner that night—a scrappy meal, because whenever any one entered the shop Mrs. Breezy ran out to do her best to sell something—the conversation turned to the question of Lola’s marriage, as it frequently did. That public house on the river, with its kitchen garden, still rankled. “You know, John,” said Mrs. Breezy suddenly, “I’ve been thinking it all over. We were wrong to suppose that Lola would ever have married a man like Simpkins.”
“Why? He’s a good fellow, respectable, clean-minded, thinks a good deal of himself and has a nice bit of money stowed away. You don’t want her to become engaged to one of these young fly-by-nights round here, do you,—little clerks who spend all their spare money on clothes, have no ambition, no education and want to get as much as they can for nothing?”
“No,” said Mrs. Breezy. “I certainly do not, though I don’t think it matters what you and I want, my dear. I’ve come to the conclusion that Lola knows what she’s going to do, and we couldn’t make her alter her mind if we went down on our knees to her.”
Breezy was profoundly interested. Many times he had discovered that the little woman who professed to be nothing but a housewife, and very rarely gave forth any definite opinions of her own, said things from time to time which almost blew the roof off the shop. She was possessed of an uncanny intuition, what he regarded almost as second sight, and when she was in that mood he squashed his own egotism and listened to her with his mouth open.
So she went on undisturbed. “What I think is that Lola means to aim high. I’ve worked it out in my mind that she got into the house in Dover Street to learn enough to rise above such men as Simpkins and Ernest Treadwell, so that she could fit herself to marry a gentleman. And I think she’s right. Look at her. Look at those little ankles and wrists and the daintiness of her in every way. She’s not Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and never was. She’s Mayfair from head to foot, mind and body. We’re just accidents in her life, you and I, John, my dear. She will be a great lady, you mark my words.”
Breezy didn’t altogether like being called an accident. He took a good deal of credit for the fact that Lola was Mayfair, as Emily called it, rather well. And he said so, and added, “How about the old de Brézé blood? You forget that, my being a little jeweler in a small shop. She’s thrown back, that’s what she’s done, and I’ll tell you what it is, missus. She won’t be ashamed of us, whoever she marries. She doesn’t look upon us as accidents, whatever you may do, and if some man who’s A 1 at Lloyd’s falls in love with her and makes her his wife, her old father and mother will be drawn up the ladder after her, if I know anything about Lola. But it’s a dream, just a dream,” hoping that it wasn’t, and only saying so as a sort of insurance against bad luck. It was a new idea and an exciting one, which put that place on the Thames into the discard. Personally he had hitherto regarded the Simpkins proposal in a very favorable light. That little man had more money than he himself could ever make, and, after all, a highly respectable public house on the upper Thames, patronized by really nice people, had been, in his estimation, something not to be sneezed at, by any means.
“Well,” said Mrs. Breezy, “you may call it a dream. I don’t. Lola thinks things out. She’s always thought things out. She became a lady’s maid for a purpose. When she’s finished with that, she’ll move on to something else. I don’t know what, because she keeps things to herself. But she knows more than you and I will ever know. I’ve noticed that often. And when she was here on Sunday, and we walked about the streets, she was no more Lola Breezy than Lady Feo is, and there was something in the way she laid the dinner and insisted on waiting on us which showed me that she knew she wasn’t. She was what country people call ‘fey’ that night. Her body was with us, but her brain and heart and spirit were far out of our reach. I’m certain of that, John, and I’m certain of something else, too. She’s in love, and she knows her man, and he’s a big man, and very soon she’ll have a surprise for us, and it will be a surprise. You mark my words.”
A SCENE FROM THE PHOTOPLAY.
And when she got up to answer the tinkle of the bell on the shop door, she left the fat John Breezy quivering with excitement and a sort of awe. Emily was not much of a talker, but when she started she said more in two minutes than other women say in a week. And after he had told himself how good it would be for his little girl to win great happiness, he put both his pale hands on the table, and heaved a tremendous sigh. “Oh, my God,” he said. “And if she could help us to get out of this shop, never to see a watch again, to be no longer the slave of that damned little bell, to go away and live in the country, and grow things, and listen to the birds, and watch the sunsets.”