So once again Lola stepped out on to the platform of Princes Risborough station to wait while a sulky porter, thoroughly trades-union in all his movements, made up his mind to carry Feo’s two cases out to a cab. He first of all read the name on the labels, pronouncing Brézé to himself as it was known to Queen’s Road, Bayswater. Then, with great deliberation and condescension, having placed a new quid in his mouth, he tilted them on to the barrow and wheeled them along the platform to the station yard, followed by Lola. “Want a cab?” he asked. To which Lola replied, “I don’t think I’m quite strong enough to carry them myself.”
And he gave her a quick look. “Cheeky,” he thought. “Knows enough English fer that, all right.” Whereupon he chi-iked the cab driver who was asleep on his box and yelled out, “Don’t yer want ter occupy yerself once in a way? Sittin’ up there orl day, doin’ nothin’! Do yer good to ’ave my job fer a bit. Come on darn. Give a hand with these ’ere. What d’yer think I’m paid fer?”
Lola opened the door of the rickety and rather smelly cab for herself. Neither of the men had thought of that. And then she handed the porter a shilling and looked him straight in the face with her most winning smile. “It doesn’t reward you for your great politeness,” she said. “But these are hard times.”
And as the cab drove slowly off, the porter spat upon the coin. What did he care for snubs? He was as good as anybody else and a damned sight better, he was, with his labor union and all. Politeness! Heh!—Missionaries have introduced the gin bottle to the native and completely undermined his sense of primitive honor while trades unions have injected the virus of discontent into the blood of the English workman and made him a savage.
And so once more the white cross seen above the village; once more the Tillage with its chapels and other public houses,—warm old buildings as yet untouched by the hand of progress, which generally means a cheap shop-front and goods made in Germany; once more the road leading up to the Chiltons, with the shadows of old trees cast across. Chilton Park was passed on the right, with its high wall, time-worn, behind which Fallaray might even then be walking among his gardens. And presently the cab turned in to the driveway of what had once been a farmhouse, to which, by an architect who was an artist and not a builder, wings had been added. The long uneven roof was thatched, the walls all creeper covered, the windows diamond paned, the door low, wide and welcoming. A smooth lawn was dignified with old oaks and beeches and ablaze with numerous beds of sweet Williams and pansies and all the rustic flowers. A charming little place, rather perhaps self-consciously pretty, like a set on the stage. But oh, how delightful after Queen’s Road, Bayswater, and the labyrinths of similitude.
Lady Cheyne was followed to the door by all her guests and for a moment Lola thought that she had stumbled on a place crowded with European refugees. A more eccentric collection of human various she had never seen, even during that epoch-making evening at Kensington Gore.
“Here you are, then, looking just as if you had stepped out of one of the pictures in the boudoir of the Duchess de Nantes.” Lola received a hearty kiss on both cheeks, and her hostess took the opportunity, while so close, of asking an important question in a whisper. “Your name, my dear. I’m too sorry, but really my capacity for remembering names has gone all loose like a piece of dead elastic.”
Lola laughed and told her, and then followed her introduction to the little group of hairy children who were all waiting on tenterhooks for a chance to act. It was a comical introduction, because by the time Lady Cheyne had said “Lola de Brézé” she had forgotten the names of all her other guests. And so, with a gurgle of laughter, she pointed to each one in turn,—and they stepped forward and spoke; first the women, “Anna Stezzel,” a bow and a flash of teeth, “Regina Spatz,” a bow and a gracious smile, and then the men, “Salo Impf,” “Valdemar Varvascho,” “Simon Zalouhou,” “Max Wachevsky,” “Willy Pouff,” fired in bass, baritone and tenor and accompanied by a kiss upon the little outstretched hand. It was all Lola could do to stop herself from peals of laughter.
Zalouhou, the violinist, was one of the biggest men Lola had ever seen. He stood six foot six in a pair of dilapidated boots and possessed a completely unathletic figure with hips like a woman, large soft hands with long loose fingers and a splendid leonine head with a mass of black hair streaked with white. He towered over the other little people like a modern Gulliver. His face was clean-shaven, with fine features and a noble forehead and a pair of eyes which had never failed to do more to attract crowded matinées of his country women in the old days than the beauty of his playing and the mastery of his technique. He had only just arrived in London, penniless, and in a suit of clothes in which he had slept on many waysides. He had fought for his country and against his country, never knowing why and never wanting to fight, and all the while he had clung desperately to his violin which he had played to ragamuffin troops in order to be supplied with an extra hunk of bread and a drink of coffee. The story of his five or six years of mental and physical chaos, every moment of which was abhorrent to his gentle spirit, was stamped deeply upon his face.
Even as Lola was being escorted upstairs to her room by a thrilled country maid, there was a crash upon the piano in the hall and an outburst of song. What that little house thought of all those extraordinary people who could not keep quiet under any circumstance would have filled a book. The ghosts of former residents, farming people, must have stood about in horror and surprise. And yet, as Lady Cheyne well knew, they were all simple souls ready to go into ecstasies at the sight of a daisy and imbued with genuine loyalty towards each other.