The Rustle of Silk Part 28

"Thank you." But now that he was there, after all his strategy, after saying good-by to Fallaray, driving all the way down the hill from Whitecross and up again into that side road, he didn't know how to begin, or where. This girl! G.o.d,-how disordering a quality of s.e.x! No wonder she had shattered poor old Fallaray.

"Shall we walk along the lane? It turns a little way up and you can see the cross cut in the hill."

"Yes," he said. "But there are so many crosses, aren't there, and they're all cut on somebody's hill." He saw that she looked at him sharply and was glad. Quick to take points, evidently. This interview would not be quite so difficult, after all.

"You came down from town to see Edmund?" She called him by his Christian name to show this man where he stood.

"On the most urgent business," he said, "I saw you sitting at the side of the fountain. It's a dear old place."

She was not beautiful, and she was not sophisticated. That way of dragging in Fallaray's Christian name was childish in its navete. But all about her there was something so fresh and young, so sublimely unselfconscious, so disturbingly feminine, so appealing in its essence of womanhood that he had to pay her tribute and measure his words. He would hate to hurt this girl. De Breze-Madame de Breze-how was it that he hadn't heard of her before? She knew Chalfont. She was staying with Poppy Cheyne. Fallaray had met her somewhere. Odd that he had missed her in the crowd.

"I'll come to the point, if I may," he said. "And I must bore you a little with a disquisition on the state of affairs."

"I'm interested in politics," she said, with a forlorn attempt to keep a high head.

"Then perhaps you know what's happened, to a certain extent, although probably not as much as those of us who stand in the wings of the political stage and see the actors without their make-up,-not a pretty sight, sometimes."

"Well?" But the cloud had returned and blotted out the evening star, and there was the shudder of distant thunder again.

"Well, the people are turning against the old gang, at last. The Prime Minister has only his favorites and parasites and newspapers left with him. The Unionists are scared stiff by the sudden uprising of the Anti-waste Party and Labor has been drained of its fighting funds. The Liberals have withered. There is one great cry for honest government, relief from crus.h.i.+ng taxation, a fair reward for hard work, and new leaders.h.i.+p that will make the future safe from new wars. We must have Fallaray. He's the only man. I came here this evening to fetch him. He refuses to come because of you. What are you going to do?"

As he drew up short and faced her, she looked like a deer surrounded by dogs. He was sorry, but this was no time for fooling. What stuff was this girl made of? Had she the gift of self-sacrifice as well as the magnetism of s.e.x? Or was she just a female, who would cling to what she had won, self before everything?

"I love him," she said.

Well, it was good to know that, but was that an answer? "Yes," he said.

"Well?" He would like to have added "But does he love you and can you keep him after pa.s.sion is dead,-a man like Fallaray, who, after all, is forty." But he hadn't the courage or the desire to hurt.

"And because I love him he must go," she said.

He leaned forward and seized her hand. He was surprised, delighted, and a little awed. She had gone as white as a lily. "You will see to that?

You will use all your influence to give him back to us?" He could hardly believe his ears and his eyes.

"All my influence," she said, standing very straight.

He bent down and touched her hand with his lips.

They were at the gate. They heard steps on the other side of the wall.

"Go," she said, "quickly."

But before he went he bowed, as to a queen.

And then Lola heard the voice again, harshly. "Go on, de Breze, go on.

Don't be weak. Stick to your guns. You have him in the palm of your hand."

But she shook her head. "But I'm not de Breze. I've only tried to be.

I'm Lola Breezy of Queen's Road, Bayswater, and this is love."

She opened the gate and went in to Fallaray.

PART VIII

I

There was a hooligan knock on Georgie Malwood's bedroom door.

Saying "Aubrey" to herself without any sign either of irritation or petulance, she put down her book, gathered herself together, and slid off the bed. In a suit of boy's pajamas she looked as young and undeveloped as when, at seventeen, she had married Clayburgh in the first week of the War. Her bobbed hair went into points over her ears like horns, and added to her juvenile appearance. She might have been a schoolgirl peeping at life through the keyhole, instead of a woman of twenty-four, older than Methuselah.

She unlocked the door. "Barge in," she said, standing clear.

And Aubrey Malwood, with his six foot two of brawn and muscle, his yellow Viking hair, eyebrows and moustache, barged, as he always did.

"I've just dropped in to tell you," he said, going straight to the looking-gla.s.s, "that Feo rang up an hour ago. She wants you to lunch with her in Dover Street."

Perching herself on the window seat, like a pillow girl in Peter Pan, Georgie gazed uninterestedly at that portion of the Park at Knightsbridge which is between the barracks and the Hotel.

"Oh, d.a.m.n," she said, "I wish she'd leave me alone." Young Malwood was so astonished at this sentiment that he was drawn away from self-admiration. He liked his type immensely.

"I never expected to hear you say that! What's the notion?"

His much-married wife's doglike wors.h.i.+p of Feo Fallaray had, as a matter of fact, immediately eliminated him from her daily pursuits and long ago sent him after another form of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Oh, I dunno," said Georgie. "She's been different lately; lost her sense of humor, and become serious and sentimental,-the very things she's always hated in other people. You're so fond of yourself that I don't suppose you've ever noticed the shattering effect of having the teacher you imitated go back suddenly to the sloppy state you were in at the beginning of your lessons. I'll go this time and then fall away.

Feo's over."

Malwood went back to the gla.s.s and posed as a gladiator with an imaginary sword and s.h.i.+eld. His magnificent height and breadth and bone made him capable of any gladiatorial effort. Only as to brain was he a case of arrested development. At twenty-eight he was still only just fit for Oxford. In any case, as things were, this desertion from her leader would leave Georgie exactly what she was,-someone who had the legal right to provide him with funds.

"Well," he said, "it's your funeral," and let it go. The fact that the elaborate dressing table was covered with framed photographs of his three equally young predecessors, as well as toilet things bearing their crests and initials, left this perpetual undergraduate unmoved. He had never been in love with Georgie. He had been somewhat attracted by her tinyness and imperturbability, but what had made him ask her to be his wife was the fact that everybody was talking about her as a creator of a record,-three times a widow in five years,-and he was one of those men, who, being unable to attract attention by anything that he could do, felt the need of basking in reflected glory. He had been fatuously satisfied to follow her into a public place and see people nudge each other as she pa.s.sed. It was a thousand to one that if he had not married Georgie, he would have hunted London to find a girl who had won her way into the _Tatler_ as a high diver or a swallower of knives. Why Georgie had married him was the mystery. Having acquired the married habit, it was probable that she had accepted him before she had had time to discover that beneath his astonis.h.i.+ng good looks and magnificent physique there was the mind of a potato. He had turned out to be an expensive hobby because when his father's business had been ruined by the War, he possessed nothing but his pay as a second lieutenant. Peace had removed even that and left him in her little house in Knightsbridge with eight pairs of perfect riding boots, a collection of old civvies, and an absolute incapability of earning a legitimate s.h.i.+lling. With characteristic cold-bloodedness she had, however, immediately advertised that she would not be responsible for his debts, and made him an allowance of ten pounds a week, a fourth of her income after the depredation of income tax. An invulnerable sponge, with a contagious chuckle, a fairly good eye for tennis, and a h.o.m.ogeneous nature, he managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth and was perfectly happy and satisfied. But for Georgie, he must have been a farm laborer in Canada or a salesman in a motor-car shop on the strength of his appearance. Or he might have gone to Ireland in the Black and Tans.

"Well," he said, having delivered his message, "cheerio. I'm going to Datchet for a week to stay on the Mullets' houseboat."

Georgie looked round at him, stirred to a slight curiosity.

"Mullet? New friends?"

"Yes. War profiteers. Rolling in the stuff. Great fun. Know everybody.

Champagne and diamonds for breakfast. Haven't got a loose fiver about you, I suppose?"

With a faint smile Georgie pointed to her cigarette case on the dressing table. And without a qualm Malwood opened it, removed his wife's last night's bridge winnings, murmured, "Thanks most awfully," and barged out, whistling a tune from "The League of Notions."

"All right, then. For the last time, lunch with Feo," thought Georgie, moving from the window seat lazily. "She's over."