Filled with determination no longer to wait for an opportunity, but to make one, not to rely on fate, as she had been doing, but to treat fate as though it were something alive, a man—Simpkins, Treadwell or Chalfont—and cajole him, Lola proceeded to dress, with the blood tingling in her veins, and imbued with the feeling of one who faces a forlorn hope. But it was still too early to use the telephone to the elderly lady who, if she were in town, had probably listened to music into the small hours. She must wait and go on thinking. There were other things to overcome, even if this one came right. How to wheedle a holiday; to hint, if she dared, at her lack of clothes, a suit-case, shoes.
The servants’ sitting room was empty. On Sunday, the ménage, except for the cook, slept late. And so Lola marked time impatiently, achieving breakfast from the sulky woman by flattery. Lady Feo had given out that she was not to be disturbed until her bell rang. She would wake to find Sunday in London,—a detestable idea. There was nothing for which to get up.
Watching a clock that teased her with its sloth, Lola went over and over the sort of thing to say to Lady Cheyne, disturbed in her current of thought by the suddenly garrulous cook who insisted on telling the whole story of her life, during the course of which she had buried a drunkard and married a bigamist and lost her savings and acquired asthma,—a dramatic career, even for a cook. But at nine-thirty, unable to control herself any longer, she ran upstairs to Feo’s alarming den, hunted out Lady Cheyne’s number in the book and eventually got into communication with an operator who might, from her autocratic manner, very easily have been Mrs. Trotsky, or the wife of a labor leader, or a coal-miner’s daughter, or indeed a telephone operator of the most approved type.
A sleepy and rather irritable voice said, “Well?—but isn’t it a little early to ring any one up and on a Sunday morning too?”
Lola made a wry face. That was not a good beginning. And then, in her sweetest voice, “Am I speaking to dear Lady Cheyne?”
“Yes, it’s Fanny Cheyne, lying in bed with this diabolical instrument on her chest, but not feeling very dear, my dear, whoever you are, and I don’t know your voice.”
“It’s Madame de Brèzè and I’m so very sorry to disturb you.”
“Why did you then, if I may say so,—de Brézé. I’m sorry too, but really I hear so many names, just as odd.—If it’s about being photographed, please no. I’m far too fat. Or if it’s about a subscription for the starving children of Cochin China, I have too many starving children of my own.”
Quick, de Brézé, quick, before the good old lady cuts off.
“The Savoy, the little widow, Sir Peter Chalfont, your wonderful house so full of genius, and what do you do, my dear.—Don’t you remember, dear Lady Cheyne?”