It was this woman who unconsciously had made Fallaray the hero of Lola’s dreams. She had brought all the latest gossip from the Fallaray house in which she had served since that strange wedding ten years before, when the son of the Minister for Education, himself in the House of Commons, had gone in a sort of trance to St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and come out of it surprised to find himself married to the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Amesbury,—the brilliant, beautiful, harum-scarum member of a pre-war set that had given England many rude shocks, stepped over all the conventions of an already careless age and done “stunts” which sent a thrill of horror and amazement all through the body of the old British Lion; a set whose cynicism, egotism, perversion, hobnobbing with political enemies, manufacture of erotic poetry and ribald jests had spread like an epidemic.
Miss Breezy, whose Christian name was Hannah, as well it might be, entered in great excitement. “Have you seen the paper?” she asked, giving her sister-in-law peck to the watchmaker’s wife. “Mr. Fallaray’s declared himself against reprisals. He’s condemned the methods of the Black and Tans. They yelled at him in the House this afternoon and called him Sinn Feiner. Just think of that! If any other man had done it, I mean any other Minister, Lloyd George could have afforded to smile. But Mr. Fallaray! It may kill the coalition government, and then what will happen?”
All this was given out in the shop itself, luckily empty of customers. “Woo,” said John. “Good gracious me,” said Mrs. Breezy. “Just as I expected,” said Lola, and she entered the parlor and threw her books into a corner and perched herself on the table, swinging her legs.
“‘Just as you expected?’ What do you know about it all, pray?” Miss Breezy regarded the girl with the irritation that goes with those who forget that little pitchers have ears. She also forgot that the question of Ireland, of little real importance among all the world’s troubles, was being forced into daily and even hourly notice by brutal murders and by equally brutal reprisals and that England was, at that moment, racked from end to end with passionate resentment and anger with which even children were tainted.
And Lola laughed,—that ripple of laughter which had made so many men stand rooted to their shoes after having had the temerity to speak to her on the spur of the moment, or after many manœuverings. “What I know of Mr. Fallaray,” she said, “you’ve taught me. I read the papers for the rest.” And she heaved an enormous sigh and seemed to leave her body and fly out like a homing pigeon.
“Don’t say anything more until I come back,” cried Mrs. Breezy, rapping her energetic heels on the floor on the way out to close the shop.
Beamingly important, the bearer of back-stairs gossip, Miss Breezy removed her coat,—one of those curious garments which seem to be made especially for elderly spinsters and are worn by them proudly as a uniform and with the certain knowledge that everybody can see that they have gone through life in single blessedness, dependent neither for happiness nor livelihood on a mere man.
John Breezy, who had lost all suggestion of his French ancestry and spoke English with the ripest Bayswater, removed his apron. He liked, it is true, to remember his Huguenot grandfather and from time to time indulged in Latin gestures, but when he ventured into a few words of French his accent was atrocious. “Mong Doo,” he said, therefore, and shrugged his fat shoulders almost up to his ears. He had no sympathy with the Irish. He considered that they were screaming fanatics, handicapped by a form of diseased egotism and colossal ignorance which could not be dealt with in any reasonable manner. He belonged to the school of thought, led by the Morning Post, which would dearly like to put an enormous charge of T. N. T. under the whole island and blow it sky high. “Of course you buck a good deal about your Fallaray,” he said to his sister, “that’s natural. You take his money and you live on his food. But I think he’s a weakling. He’s only making things more difficult. I wish to God I was in the House of Commons. I’d show ’em what to do to Ireland.”
There was a burst of laughter from Lola who jumped off the table and threw her arms around her father’s neck. “How wonderful you are, Daddy,” she said. “A regular old John Bull!”
Returning before anything further could be said, Mrs. Breezy shut the parlor door and made herself extremely comfortable to hear the latest from behind the scenes. It was very wonderful to possess a sister-in-law who regularly, once a week, came into that dull backwater with the sort of thing that never got into the papers and who was able to bandy great names about without turning a hair. “Now, then, Hannah, let’s have it all from the beginning and please, John, don’t interrupt.” She would have liked to have added, “Please, Lola,” too, but knew better.