VII
When Lola went into Feo’s room that evening it was with the intention of asking for her first holiday. It was a large order; she knew that, because her mistress had made innumerable engagements for the week. But this was to be another and most important rung in that ladder, which, if not achieved, rendered useless the others that she had climbed.
She was overjoyed to find Feo in an excellent mood. Things had been going well. The world had been full of amusement and a new man had turned up, a pucca man this time, discovered at the Winchfields’, constant in his attentions ever since. He owned a string of race horses and trained them at Dan Thirlwall’s old place behind Worthing, which made him all the more interesting. Feo adored the excitement of racing. And so it was easy for Lola to approach her subject and she did so at the moment when she had her ladyship in her power, the curling irons steaming. “If you please, my lady,” she said, in a perfectly even voice and with her eyes on the black bobbed hair, “would it be quite convenient for you if I had a week off from Thursday?”
“But what the devil does that matter?” said Feo. “If I don’t give you a week off, I suppose you’ll take it.”
Lola’s lips curled into a smile. It was impossible to resist this woman and her peculiar way of putting things. “But I think you know me better than that,” she said, twining that thick wiry hair round the tongs as an Italian twines spaghetti round a fork.
“What makes you think so? I don’t know you. I haven’t the remotest idea what you’re like. You never tell me anything. Ever since you’ve been with me you’ve never let me see under your skin once. I don’t even believe that you’re Breezy’s niece. I’ve only her word for it. After Sunday morning’s exhibition, I’m quite inclined to believe that you are Madame de Brézé masquerading as a lady’s maid. If the War was still going on, I might think that you were a spy. A great idea for you to get into this house and pinch the papers of a Cabinet Minister. Yes, of course you can have a week off. What are you going to do? Get married, after all?”
Lola shook her head and the curl went away from her lips. “I want to go down to the country for a little rest,” she said.
Something in the tone of Lola’s voice caught Feo’s ears. She looked sharply at her reflection in the glass and saw that the little face which had captured her fancy and become so familiar had suddenly taken on an expression of so deep a yearning as to make it almost unrecognizable. The wide-apart eyes burned with emotion, the red lips and those sensitive nostrils denoted a pent-up excitement that was startling. What was it that this strange, secretive child had made up her mind to do—to commit—to lose? “There is love at the bottom of this,” she said.
And Lola replied, “Yes, my lady,” simply and with a sort of pride. And then took hold of herself, tight. If there had been any one person in all the world to whom she could have poured out her little queer story of all-absorbing love and desire to serve and comfort and inspire and entertain and rejuvenate—— But there wasn’t one—and it was Mr. Fallaray’s wife who fished to know her secret. Was it one of the ordinary coincidences which had brought, them together—meaningless and accidental—or one of those studied ironies which fate, in its mischievous mood, indulges in so frequently?
“It wouldn’t have been any good to deny it. It’s all over you like a label. It’s an infernal nuisance, Lola, but I’ll try and get on without you. If you’re not going to get married, watch your step, as the Americans say. I don’t give you this tip on moral grounds but from the worldly point of view. You have your living to make and there’s Breezy to think about and your people.”
She put her hand up and grasped the one in which Lola held the tongs, and drew her round. Strangely enough, this contradictory creature was moved. Whether it was because she saw in Lola’s eyes something which no one had been able to bring into her own, who can say? “It’s a married man,” she told herself, “or it’s Chalfont who isn’t thinking of marriage.” “Go easy, my dear,” she added aloud. “Believe only half you hear and get that verified. Men are the most frightful liars. Almost as bad as women. And they have a most convenient knack of forgetting.”
And then she released the girl so that she might resume her job, as time was short, and she was dining rather early with the new man at Ranelegh where “Twelfth Night” was to be acted as a pastoral by Bernard Fagan’s players. All the same, her mind dwelt not so much with curiosity as with concern upon Lola’s leave of absence, because she liked the girl and had found her very loyal, consistently cheery and always ready to hand.
“Let me see,” she said, with an uncharacteristic touch of womanliness that must have been brought out by the flaming feminism of Lola. “Among the frocks that I hurled at you on Sunday there’s pretty certain to be something that you can wear. Help yourself to anything else that you need. You must look nice. I insist on that. And you’ll also want something to put these things in. Tucked away somewhere there are one or two dress cases without my initials. They’ve come in useful on other occasions. Rout them out. I can’t think of anything else, but probably you will.” And she waved her hand with those long thin capable fingers, as much as to say, “Don’t thank me. You’d do the same for me if I were in your shoes.”
But Lola did thank her and wound up an incoherent burst by saying, “You’re the most generous woman I’ve ever imagined.”
“Oh, well, I have my moments,” replied Feo, who liked it all the same. “Y’see, ‘The Colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady are sisters under the skin.’” She was very generous and very much interested and if the truth were to be told a little worried too. For all her coolness at the Carlton, Lola seemed to her to be so young and so obviously virginal,—just the sort of girl who would make a great sacrifice, taking to it a pent-up ecstasy for which she might be asked to pay a pretty heavy price. And it was such a mistake to pay, according to Feo’s creed.
Finally, dressed and scented and wearing a pair of oddly shaped lapis earrings, she stood in front of a pier glass for a moment or two, looking herself over, finding under her eyes for the first time one or two disconcerting lines. What was she? Ten years older than this girl whose face was like an unplucked flower? Ten years certainly,—all packed with incidents, not one of which had been touched by ecstasy.
When she turned away it was with a short quick sigh. “Damn,” she said, off on one of her sudden tangents. “I can see myself developing into one of those women who join the Salvation Army because they’ve lost their looks, or get out of the limelight to read bitter verses about dead sea fruit, if I’m not precious careful.” And her mind turned back to the hour with Ellingham in that foolish futuristic room of hers and the way in which he had paced up and down, inarticulate, hands in pockets, and eventually been glad to go. Glad to go,—think of it.—Never mind, here was the man with the race horses. He might be a little medieval, perhaps. And on her way out she put her hand under Lola’s chin and tilted up her face. “Mf,” she said, “you have got it, badly, haven’t you?”
And Lola replied, “Yes, my lady,” and felt as though she had never left Queen’s Road, Bayswater.
“Well, good luck.” And Feo was gone.