The Rustle of Silk Part 29

II

For the first time since Feo had lifted Georgie Malwood into her intimacy, in that half-careless, half-cautious way that belongs usually to the illegitimate offspring of kings, her small, unemotional friend was late for her appointment. Always before, like every other member of the gang, Georgie Malwood had reported on the early side of the prescribed moment and killed time without impatience until it had occurred to Feo to put in an appearance. That morning, which was without word from Arrowsmith, as she had predicted with the uncanny intuition that makes women suffer before as well as after they are hurt, Feo was punctual. She entered her den with the expectation of finding Georgie curled up on the sofa, halfway through a slim volume of new poems. The room was empty and there had been no message of apology, no hastily scribbled note of endearment and explanation.

During the longest forty-five minutes that she had ever spent, Feo pa.s.sed from astonishment to anger and finally into the chilly realization that her uncharacteristic behavior of the last few weeks had been discussed and criticized, and that the judgment of her friends was unmistakably reflected in the new att.i.tude of the hitherto faithful and obsequious Georgie,-always the first to catch the color of her surroundings. She, Feo, the Queen of Flippancy, the ringleader of eroticism, had had the temerity to play serious, an unforgivable crime in the estimation of the decadent set which had ignored the War and emerged triumphantly into the chaos of peace. Well, there it was. A long and successful innings was ended. She would be glad to withdraw from the field.

She waited in her favorite place with her beautiful straight back to the fireplace, both elbows on the low mantel board and one foot on the fender. Her face was as white as a candle, her large violet eyes were filled with grim amus.e.m.e.nt, and her wide, full-lipped mouth was a little twisted. She wore a frock that was the color of seaweed, cut almost up to her knees, with short sleeves, a loose belt, and a great blob of jade attached to a thin gold chain lying between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her thick, wiry hair was out of curl and fell straight, like that of a page in the Court of Cesare Borgia. For all her modernity there was something about her that was peculiarly medieval, masculinely girlish rather than effeminately boyish. She might have been the leading member of a famous troupe of Russian ballet dancers, ready at a moment's notice to slip out of her wrapper and spring with athletic grace high into the air.

Her first remark upon Georgie's lazy entrance was Feoistic and disconcerting.

"So I'm over, I see," she said, and waited ironically for its effect.

Not honest enough to say, "Yes, you are," Georgie hedged, with some little confusion.

"What makes you think so, Feo?"

"Your infernal rudeness, my dear, which you wouldn't have dared to indulge in a week ago. You've all sensed the fact that I'm sick to tears of the games I've led you into, and would gladly have gone in for babies if I'd had the luck to seem desirable to the right man." She made a long arm and rang the bell. "I am ripe for repentance, you see, or perhaps it might be more accurate, though less dramatic, to say eager for a new sensation. It isn't coming off, but you can all go and hang yourselves so far as I'm concerned. I'm out. I'm going to continue to be serious.

Bring lunch in here," she added, as a footman framed himself in the doorway, "quickly. I'm starving."

Almost any other girl who had been the favorite of such a woman as Feo would have found in this renunciation of leaders.h.i.+p something to cause emotion. Mere grat.i.tude for many favors and much kindness seemed to demand that. But this young phlegmatic thing was just as unmoved as she had been on receipt of the various war office telegrams officially regretting the deaths of Lord Clayburgh, Captain Graham Macoover, and Sir Harry Pytchley. She lit the inevitable cigarette, chose the much-cus.h.i.+oned divan, and stretched herself at full length.

"I can do with a little groundsel too," she said, as though the other subject had been threshed out.

And so it had, for the time being. Feo, oddly enough, had no bricks to throw. She could change her religion, it seemed, without pitching mud at the church of her recent beliefs. It was not until lunch was finished and the last trickle of resentment at Georgie's failure to apologize had gone out of her system that she returned to the matter and began, in a way, to think aloud. It was not as indiscreet as it might have been, because Georgie Malwood was completely self-contained and had developed concentration to such a degree, her first three husbands having been given to arguing, that she could lie and follow her own train of thought as easily in a room in which a ma.s.s of women were playing bridge as in a monkey house. Her interest in Feo was dead. She was over.

And so Feo gave herself away to a little person whose ears were closed.

"I don't know what exactly to do," she said. "At the moment, I feel like a fish out of water. If Arrowsmith had liked me and been ready to upset the conventional ideas of his exemplary family, I'd have eloped with him, however frightfully it would have put Edmund in the cart. I don't mind owning that Arrowsmith is the only man I've ever met who could have turned me into the Spartan mother and worthy _haus-frau_. I had dreams of living with him behind the high walls of a nice old house and making the place echo with the pattering feet of babes. It's the culminating disappointment of several months of 'em,-the bad streak which all of us have to go through at one time or another, I suppose. However, he doesn't like me, worse luck, and so there it is. So I think I'd better make the best of a bad job and cultivate Edmund. I think I'd better study the life of Lady Randolph Churchill and make myself useful to my husband. Politics are in a most interesting state just now, with Lloyd George on the verge of collapse at last, and the brainy dishonesty of a woman suddenly inspired with political ambition is exactly what Edmund needs to push him to the top. He has been too long without a woman's unscrupulous influence."

She began to pace the room with long swinging strides, eagerly, clutching at this new idea like a drowning man to a spar. Her eyes began to sparkle and the old ring came back to her voice. Here was a way to use her superabundant energy and build up a new hobby.

"I'm no longer a flapping girl with everything to discover," she went on, "I've had my share of love stuff. By Jove, I'll use my intelligence, for a change. I'll get into the fight and develop strategy. Every one's looking to Edmund as the one honest man in the political game, and I'll buckle to and help him. He's an amazing creature. I've always admired him, and there's something that suits my present state of mind in making up to him for my perfectly rotten treatment all these years. If I can't make a lover into a husband, by Jingo, I can set to work to make a husband into a lover. There's an idea for you, Feo, my pet! There's a mighty interesting scheme to dig your teeth into, my broad-shouldered friend!"

She sent out an excited laugh and flung up her hand as though to welcome a brain wave. Her amazing resilience stood her in good stead in this crisis of her life,-to say nothing of her courage and queer sense of humor. Her blood began to move again. Fed up with decadence, she would plump whole-heartedly for usefulness now, be normal, go to work, get into the good books of George Lytham and his party, surprise Fallaray by her sudden allegiance to his cause and to him, and gradually break down the door that she had slammed in his face.

"I'll let my hair grow," she continued gayly, working the vein that was to rescue her from despondency and failure with pathetic eagerness.

"I'll chuck eccentric clothes. I'll turn up slang and blasphemy. I'll teach myself manners and the language of old political hens. I'll keep brilliance within speed limits. Yes, I'll do all that if I have to work like a coolie. And I'll tell you what else I'll do. I'll bet you a thousand pounds to sixpence that before the end of the year I'll be the wife-I said the wife, Georgie-of the next Prime Minister. Will you take it?"

She drew up short, alight and excited, her foot already on the beginning of the new road, and paused for a reply.

Georgie stretched like a young Angora cat and yawned with perfect frankness.

"I'll take whatever I can get, Feo," she said. "But what the devil are you talking about? I haven't heard a blessed word."

And Feo's laugh must have carried into Bond Street.

III

And when Georgie had transferred herself from the many-cus.h.i.+oned divan to her extremely smart car, in which, with an expressionless face and a mind as calm as a cheese, she was going to drive to Hurlingham to be present at, rather than to watch, the polo, Feo went upstairs.

She felt that she must walk, and walk quickly, in an endeavor to keep up with her new line of thought, at the end of which she saw, more and more clearly, a most worth-while goal. Before she could arrive at this, she could see a vista of bunkers ahead of her to negotiate which all her gifts of intrigue would have, happily, to be exercised. To give interest and excitement to her plan of becoming Fallaray's wife in fact, as well as by law, she required bunkers and needed difficulties. The more the merrier. She knew that, at present, Fallaray was as far away from her as though he were at the North Pole,-and as cold. She was dead certain of the fact that she had been of no more account to him, from the first few hours of their outrageous honeymoon, than a piece of furniture in one of the rooms in his house of which he never made use. That being so, she could see the constant and cunning employment of the brains that she had allowed to lie fallow through all her rudimentary rioting,-brains that she possessed in abundance, far above the average. In the use of these lay her salvation, her one chance to swing herself out of the great disappointment and its subsequent loose-endedness which had been brought about by Arrowsmith's sudden deflection. Her pa.s.sionate desire for this man was not going easily to die. She knew that. Her dreams would be filled with him for a considerable time, of course. She realized, also, looking at that uncompleted episode with blunt honesty, that, but for him, she would still be playing the fool, giving herself and her gifts to the entertainment of all the half-witted members of the gang. To the fastidious Arrowsmith and her unrequited love she owed her sudden determination to make herself useful to Fallaray and finally to become, moving Heaven and earth in the process, his wife. This was the paradoxical way in which her curious mind worked. No tears and lamentations for her. She had no use for them. On the contrary, she had courage and pride, and by setting herself the most difficult task that she could possibly have chosen, two things would result,-her sense of adventure would be gratified to the hilt and Arrowsmith shown the stuff of which she was made.

But on her way to her room, which was to be without Lola until the following morning, she stopped in the corridor, turned and went to the door of Fallaray's den. After a moment's hesitation she entered, feeling that she was trespa.s.sing, never before having gone into it of her own volition. She could not be caught there because Fallaray had escaped to his beloved Chilton, she remembered. Her desire was to stand there alone for a few moments, to merge herself into its atmosphere; to get from its book-lined walls and faint odor of tobacco something of the sense of the man who had unconsciously become her partner.

The vibrations of the room as they came to her were those of one which had belonged to an ascetic, long dead and held in the sort of respect by his country that is shown by the preservation of his work place. It was museum-like and tidy, even prim. The desk was in perfect order and had the cold appearance of not having been used for a century. The fireplace was clean and empty. The waste-paper basket might never have been employed. There was nothing personal to give the place warmth and life.

No photographs of women or children. No old pipes. And even in the cold eyes of the bust of Dante that looked down upon her from the top of one of the bookcases there was no expression, either of surprise or resentment at her intrusion.

Most women would have been chilled, and a little frightened, there. It would have been natural for them, in Feo's circ.u.mstances, had they possessed imagination, to have been struck with a sense of remorse. It should have been their business, if nothing else, to see that this room lived and had personality, comfort and a little color,-flowers from time to time, and at least one charming picture of a youngster on the parental desk. And Feo did feel, as she looked about in her new mood, a little s.h.i.+ver of shame and the red-hot needle of repentance p.r.i.c.king her hitherto dormant conscience.

"Poor old Edmund," she said aloud, "what have I done to him? This place is dry, bloodless, like a mausoleum. Well, I'll alter it all. I have a job, thank G.o.d. Something to set my teeth into. Something to direct my energy at,-if it isn't too late."

And as this startling afterthought struck her, she wheeled round, darted across the room to the place where a narrow slip of looking-gla.s.s hung in an old gold frame, and put herself through a searching examination.

"Mf! Still attractive in your own peculiar way," she said finally, with relief. "The early bloom gone, of course; lines here and there, especially round the eyes. Ma.s.sage and the proper amount of sleep will probably rub those away. But there's distinction about you, Feo dear, and softness can be cultivated. You're as hard as an oil painting now, you priceless rotter. However, hope springs eternal, and where there's a will there's a way."

She laughed at herself for these nursery quotations and clenched her fists for the fray. But as she turned, fairly well satisfied with the result of her inspection, she heard steps in the corridor-Fallaray's steps-and the blood rushed into her face. By George, she was going to be caught, after all.

IV

Fallaray? This sun-tanned, smiling man with shoulders square, chin high, and a song in his eyes, who came into the room like a southwest gale?

If he felt surprise at the unfamiliar sight of Feo in his den, he allowed nothing of it to show. He held out a cordial hand and went to her eagerly.

"I've come up to town to see you," he said. "You must have got my S. O.

S."

The manner provided the second shock. But Feo returned the pressure of his hand and tried instantly to think of an answer that would be suitable to her new role.

"I think I must have done so," she said quietly, returning his smile.

"Your holiday has worked wonders, Edmund."

"A miracle, an absolute miracle!"

A nearer look proved that his word was the right one. Here was almost the young Fallaray of the tennis courts and the profile that she had set herself impishly to acquire in those old days. Good Heavens, could it be that she _was_ too late, and that another woman had brought about this amazing change? She refused to permit the thought to take root. She told herself that she had had her share of disappointments. He had needed rest and his beloved Chilton, bathed in the most un-English sunlight, had worked its magic. It must be so. Look at this friendliness. That wasn't consistent with the influence of another woman. And yet, as an expert in love, she recognized the unmistakable look.

"I'm only staying the night here," he said. "I'm off to Chilton again in the morning. So there's no time to lose. Can you give me ten minutes?"

"Of course," she said. "And as many more as you care to ask for. I'm out of the old game." She hurried to get that in, astonished at her uncharacteristic womanliness.

But he was one-eyed, like a boy. What at any other time would have brought an incredulous exclamation left him now incurious, without surprise. He was driving hard for his own goal. Anything that affected Feo, or any one else, except Lola, didn't matter. Her revolutionary statement pa.s.sed almost unheard. He pushed an armchair into place.