PART VII

I

Fallaray was to meet Lola at the gate in the wall at four o'clock. He wanted to show her how the vale looked in the light of the afternoon sun. But it was a long time to wait because, instead of going to bed after he had taken Lola to Lady Cheyne's cottage at the moment when a line in the sky behind it had been rubbed by a great white thumb, he had walked up and down the terrace and watched the dawn push the night away and break upon him with a message of freedom.

He paced up and down while the soft blur of the valley came out into the clear detail of corn fields, rolling acres of grass, sheep dotted, a long white ribbon of road twisting among villages, each one marked by the delicate spire of an old church, spinneys of young trees and clumps of old ones, gnarled and twisted and sometimes lonely, standing like the sentinels that receive "the secret whispers of each other's watch."

He stood up to the new day honestly and without shame. Like a man who suddenly breaks away from a Brotherhood with whose creeds he has found himself no longer in sympathy, he rejoiced in his release. Lola had come to him at the moment when he was lying on his oars at the entrance to a backwater. He had been in the main river too long, pulling his arms out against the stream. He was tired. It was utterly beyond argument that he had failed. He had nothing in him of the stuff that goes to the making of a pushing politician. He detested and despised the whole unholy game of politics. In addition, he had come to the dangerous age in the life of a man, especially the ascetic man. He was forty. He had never allowed himself to listen to the rustle of silk. He had kept his eyes doggedly on what he had conceived to be his job, wifeless. And when Lola came, the magnet of her sex drew him not only without a struggle but with an insatiable hunger into the side of life against which Feo had slammed the door, leaving him stultified and disgusted. He had welcomed in this girl what he now regarded as the unmet spirit of his adolescence, and he fell to her as only such a man can fall. The fact that she loved him and had told him of her love with the astounding simplicity of a child gave the whole thing a beauty, a depth and permanence that made him regard the future with wonder and delight, though not yet with any definite plan. At present this _volte face_ was too astonishing, too new in its happening, to be dissected and balanced up. For a few days at least he wanted irresponsibility, for a change. He wanted, like a man wrecked on the shore of Eden, to explore into beauty and dally, unseen, with love. The time was not yet for a decision as to which way he would go, when, as was certain, some one would discover the wreckage and send out a rescue party. He had promised himself a holiday and all the more now he would insist upon its enjoyment. Whether at the end of it he would refuse ever to go back into the main stream, or go back and take Lola with him, were questions that he was not yet formulating in his mind. But as to one thing he was certain, even then. Lola was his; she had brought back his youth like a miracle, and he would never let her out of his sight.

He breakfasted in his library, ignoring the papers. Their daily story of chaos made more chaotic by the lamentable blundering of fools and knaves, seemed to deal with a world out of which he had dropped, hanging to a parachute. He went smiling through the morning, watching the clock with an impatience that was itself a pleasure. He felt the strange exhilaration of having lived his future with all his past to spend, of returning as a student to a school in which he had performed the duties of a Master. And there were times when he drew up short and sent out a great boyish laugh that echoed through his house, at the paradox of it all. And once, but only once, he stood outside himself and saw that he was placing his usefulness upon the altar of passion. And before he leaped back into his skin and while yet he retained his sanity and cold logic, he saw that he loved Lola for her golden hair and wide-apart eyes, her red lips and tingling hand, her young sweet body,--but not her soul, not the intangible thing in a woman that keeps a man's love when passion passes. But to this he said, "I am young again. I have the need and the right. When I have had time to find her soul, she shall have my quiet love."

And finally, at three o'clock, with an hour still to drive away, he went down to the gate in the wall, eager and insatiable to wait for the rustle of silk.

II

Lady Cheyne had encouraged her flock to lateness in order that she might lock the door after Lola had come back. She was terrified of burglars, and although she had sold most of her pearls and diamonds to help her various proteges over rainy days, she shuddered at the thought of being disclosed by a flash light to a probably unshaven man. Nothing could shake her from her belief that a man who could go bearded after five o'clock in the afternoon must be a criminal,--and this in spite of the fact that she had lived among artists for years. But she was a woman who cultivated irrational idiosyncrasies as other women collect old fans or ancient snuffboxes. She would never live in a flat, for instance, because if she passed away in one it would be so dreadfully humiliating to be taken down to the street in a lift, head first.

Becoming irritable from want of sleep, she had kept everybody up until two in the morning, by which hour even Salo had ceased from Impfing and Willy could Pouff no more. Zalouhou, who was as natural as a dog, had yawned hugely. And then, sending her party up to bed, she had proved the sublimity of her kindness by doing something that she had never done before. She had left a lamp burning in the hall and the front door wide open.

It was four o'clock when, a very light sleeper, she woke at the sound of creaking stairs and went out, giving Lola time to arrive at her room, to peer over the banisters to see that the lamp was out and the front door closed. Then, returning to bed, she lay in great rotundity and with a wistful smile, to think back to the days when she had been as young and slim as Lola and just as much in love.

It was not until after breakfast, at which Lola did not appear, that she became aware of a curiosity that was like the bite of a mosquito. Where had that girl been all those hours and who was the man? But it was not a sinister curiosity, all alive to gather gossip and spread innuendoes, as women give so much to do. It was the desire to share, however distantly, in what she had at once imagined was a Great Romance. Age had turned sentiment into sentimentality in this kind fat lady and she thought of everything to do with the heart in capital letters. Lola's words in Mrs. Rumbold's parlor came back to her. "It's love and adoration and long-deferred hope," and she was stirred to a great sympathy. Shutting the drawing-room door upon the after-breakfast rush to music, she went upstairs to Lola's room in the newest wing, distressed at her inability to creep. The dear thing was in her care and must be looked after.

It was nearly midday and the house had echoed with scales and badinage, bursts of operatic laughter and paeans of soprano praise to the gift of life for an hour and more. And so, of course, she expected to find her young friend lying in a daydream, reluctantly awake. But when she opened the door of Lola's room as quietly as she could, it was to see the silver frock spilt upon the floor like a pool of moonlight and the girl lying under the bedclothes in the attitude of a child in irresistible sleep, breathing like a rose. Her golden hair was streaming on her pillow, the long, dark lashes of her wide-apart eyes seemed to be stuck to her cheeks. Her lips were slightly apart and one arm was stretched out, palm up, with fingers almost closed upon something that she had found at last and must never let go.

"Love and adoration and long-deferred hope,"--the words came back again and told their story to the woman of one great love, so that she was moved to renewed sympathy and re-thrilled. She stood over the slight form in its utter relax and saw the lips tremble into a smile and the fingers close a little more. She said to herself, little knowing how exact was the simile upon which she stumbled, "She has found the gate in the wall." But before leaving the room to keep her song birds as quiet as possible, in order that her friend might sleep her fill, she caught sight of a book that lay open on the dressing table, upon the inner cover of which was pasted the photograph of a familiar face. "Fallaray!"--She read the title: "Memoirs de Madame de Breze." And she looked again at the strong, ascetic face, with the lonely eyes, the unwarmed lips, the cold high brow. It might have been that of St. Anthony.

And she stood for a moment before going down to her children--her only children--and repeated to herself, with great excitement, her former thought. "A Great Romance, Love in High Places. How wonderful to be in, perhaps, on History."

III

If, during all their inarticulate talks, Fallaray had ever remembered to ask Lola about herself, she would have told him, with perfect truth, the little story of her life and love. She was now wholly without fear. She had found the gate in the wall and had entered to happiness. But Fallaray went through that week-end without thinking, accepting the union that she had brought about without question and with a joy and delight as youthful as her own. From the time that she had found him at four o'clock waiting for her, not caring where she came from so that she came, and saw that she had brushed the loneliness from his eyes and brought a smile to his mouth, all sense of being merely temporary lifted from her heart. In the eagerness of his welcome, in the hunger of his embrace, she saw that she belonged, was already as much a possession and a fact as the old house, hitherto his one treasure and refreshment.

They went hand in hand through those lovely days, like a boy and a girl. He led her from one pet place to another and lay at her feet, watching her with wonder, or going close to kiss her eyes and hair, to prove again and yet again that she was not a dream. And every moment smoothed a line from his face and pointed the way to his need of her in all the days to come. But while he showed that he had lived his future and had begun to spend his past, she, even then, forgot her past and turned her eyes to the future. Those holiday days which bound them together must come to an end, of course. And while she reveled in them as he did and avoided any mention of the work to which he must return, she had found herself in finding him, and becoming woman at last, saw her great responsibility and developed the sense of protection that grows with woman's love.

And this new sense was strengthened and made all the more necessary because his desire to make holiday had come about through her. And while she lay in his arms in all the ecstasy of love, she knew that she would fall far short of her achievement if she should become of more importance in his life than the work that he seemed to have utterly forgotten. It was for her, she began to see, to send him back with renewed energy and fire, and then, installed in a secret nest, to fulfil the part marked out for her as she conceived it and give him the rustle of silk.

If she had been the common schemer, using her sex magnetism to provide luxuries and security--the golden cage, as she had called it in her youth--the way was easy. But love and hero-worship had placed her on another level. Her cage was Fallaray's heart, in which she was imprisoned for life. Looking into the future with the suddenly awakened practicality that she had inherited from her mother, she began to lay out careful plans. She must find a girl to take her place with Lady Feo. Gratitude demanded that. She would go home until such time as she could take a furnished flat to which Fallaray could come without attracting attention. What her parents were to be told required much thinking. All her ideas of a Salon, of meeting political chiefs, of going into a certain set of society were foolish, she could see. The second of the most important of her new duties, she told herself, was to shield Fallaray from gossip which would be of use to his political enemies and so-called friends; the first to dedicate her life henceforward, by every gift that she possessed and could acquire, to the inspiration and the relaxation of the man who belonged more to his country than he did to her.

She knew from the observation of specific cases and from her study of the memoirs and the lives of famous courtesans that men were not held long by sex attraction alone, although by that, rather than by beauty and by wit, they were captured. She must, therefore, she owned, with her peculiar frankness, apprentice herself anew, this time to the cultivation of intelligence. She must be able, eventually, to talk Fallaray's language, if possible, and add brain to what she called her gift.

All these things worked in her mind, suddenly set into action like one of her father's doctored watches, while she wandered through the sunny hours with Fallaray. All that was French and thrifty and practical in her nature awoke with all that was passionate and love-giving. And when at night she had to leave him to return to the cottage of the sympathetic woman whose discretion deserved a monument, she lay awake for hours to think and plan. She was no longer the lady's maid, going with love and adoration and long-deferred hope from one failure to another, no longer the trembling girl egged forward to a forlorn hope. She had found the gate in the wall, entered into a golden responsibility and blossomed into a woman.

IV

Feo's new man, Clive Arrowsmith, had driven her down to the races at Windsor. Two of his horses, carrying colors new to the betting public, were entered. No one knew anything about them, so that if they won, and they were out to win, the odds would be good. There was a chance of making some money, always useful.

"I rather like this meeting," she said. "It's a sort of picnic peopled with caricatures," and sailed into the enclosure, elastically, in more than usually characteristic clothes. She had discarded the inevitable tam-o'-shanter for once in favor of a panama hat, which looked very cool and light and threw a soft shadow over her face. She was in what she called a soft mood,--meaning that she was playing a feminine role and leading up to a serious affair. Arrowsmith was obviously pucca and his height and slightness, well-shaped, close-cropped head, small straw-colored moustache, straight nose, strong chin with a deep cleft, and gray eyes which had a way, most attractive to women, of disbelieving everything they said had affected Feo and "really rather rattled" her, as she had confessed to Georgie Malwood late one night. After her recent bad picks, which had left a nasty taste of humiliation behind, she was very much in the mood for an old-fashioned sweep into sentiment. She had great hopes of Arrowsmith and had seen him every day since Sunday. He was not easy. He erected mental bunkers. He was plus two at the game, which was good for hers. Altogether he was very satisfactory, and his horses added to the fun, on the side.

"It's rather a pet of mine," he said, looking round with a sort of affectionate recognition, "because when I was at Eton I broke bounds once or twice and had the time of my life here. Everything tastes better when there's a law against drinking. But I never thought I should come here with you."

"Have you ever thought about it then?"

"Yes," he said, leaning on the rail and looking under her hat with what was only the third of his un-ironical examinations. She had memorized the other two. Was she approaching the veteran class? "The day you were married I happened to be passing St. Margaret's and the crowd of fluttering women held me up. I saw you leave the church and I said to myself, 'My God, if I ever know that girl, I'll have a try to put a different smile on her face,'"

"You interest me, Cupid," she said, giving him a nickname on the spur of the moment. "What sort of smile, if you please?"

"One that wouldn't make me want to hit you," he answered, still looking.

"You'll never achieve your object on the way out of church."

"No, that's dead certain."

And she wondered whether he had scored or she had. She would like to feel that he was hard hit enough to go through this affair hell for leather, into the Divorce Court and out into marriage. It came to her at that moment, for the first time, that she liked him,--more than liked him; that he appealed to her and did odd new things to her heart. She felt that she could make her exit from the gang with this man.

As for Arrowsmith, he was sufficiently hard hit to hate Feo for the record that she had made, sufficiently in love with her to resent her kite-tail of indiscriminations. He loved but didn't like her, and this meant that he would unmagnetize himself as soon as he could and bolt. The bunkers that she had found in his nature were those of fastidiousness, not often belonging to men. But for being the son of Arrowsmith, the iron founder, whose wealth had been quadrupled by the War, he would have been a poet, although he might never have written poetry. As it was, he considered that women should be chaste, and was the object of derision for so early-Victorian an opinion. The usual hobby thus failing, he raced, liking thoroughbreds who played the game. A queer fish, Arrowsmith.

Georgie Malwood came up. She was with her fourth mother-in-law, Mrs. Claude Malwood, whose back view was seventeen, but whose face was older than the Pyramids. And Arrowsmith drifted off to the paddock.

But they lunched and spent the day together and one of the horses, "Mince Pie," won the fourth race at six to one, beating the favorite by a short head. And so Feo had a good day. They got away ahead of the crowd, except for the people of the theater, who had to dine early and steady down before entering upon the arduous duties of the night, especially those of the chorus who, in these days of Reviews, are called upon to make so many changes of clothes. Art demands many sacrifices.--It had been decided that the Ritz would do for dinner and one of the dancing clubs afterwards. But on the way out Gilbert Macquarie pranced up to Feo, utterly inextinguishable, with a hatband of one club and a tie of another and clothes that would have frightened a steam roller. "Oh, hello, old thing," he cried, giving one of his choicest wriggles. "How goes it?"

To which Feo replied, with her most courteous insolence, "Out, Mr. Macquarie," touched Arrowsmith's arm and went.

But the nasty familiarity of that most poisonous bounder did something queer to Arrowsmith's physical sense, and he couldn't for the life of him play conversational ball with Feo on the road home. "To follow _that_," he thought, and was nauseated.

But Feo was in her softest, her most feminine mood. After dinner she was going to dance with this man and be held in his arms. It was a delightful surprise to discover that she possessed a heart. She had begun to doubt it. She had been an experimentalist hitherto. And so she didn't have much to say. And when they emerged from the squalor of Hammersmith and were passing Queen's Road, Bayswater, the picture of Lola came suddenly into her mind, the girl in love, and she wondered sympathetically how she was getting on. "What shall I wear to-night? I hate those new frocks.--I hope the band plays Boheme at the Ritz.--No diamonds, just pearls. He's a pearl man, I think. And I'll brush Peau d'Espagne through my hair. What a profile he has,--Cupid."

And she shuddered. She had married a profile, the fool. To be set free was impossible. The British public did not allow its Cabinet Ministers to be divorced.

At Dover Street Arrowsmith sprang from the car. He handed Feo out and rang the doorbell.

"You look white," she said. "What's the matter?"

He was grateful for the chance. "That old wound," he said. "It goes back on me from time to time."

"That doesn't mean that you'll have to chuck tonight?" She was aghast.

"I'm awfully afraid so, if you don't mind. It means bed, instantly, and a doctor. Do forgive me. I can't help myself. I wish to God I could."

She swallowed an indescribable disappointment and said "Good night, then. So sorry. Ring me up in the morning and let me know how you feel."

But she knew that he wouldn't. It was written round his mouth. And as she went upstairs she whipped herself and cursed Macquarie and looked back at her kite-tail of indiscriminations with overwhelming regret. Arrowsmith was a pucca man.

V

Ernest Treadwell watched the car come and go.

Lola had given out at home that she was to be away with Lady Feo, but that morning he had seen in the paper that her ladyship was in town. She had "been seen" dining at Hurlingham after the polo match with Major Clive Arrowsmith, D. S. O., late Grenadier Guards. Dying to see Lola, to break the wonderful news that his latest sonnet on Death had been printed by the _Westminster Gazette_, the first of his efforts to find acceptance in any publication, Treadwell had hurried to Dover Street, had ventured to present himself at the area door and had been told by Ellen that Lola was away on a holiday.

For half an hour he had been walking up and down the street, looking with puzzled and anxious eyes at the house which had always seemed to him to wear a sinister look. If she had not been going away with Lady Feo, why had she said that she was? A holiday,--alone, stolen from her people and from him to whom hitherto she had always told everything? What was the meaning of it?--She, Lola, had not told the truth. The thought blew him into the air, like an explosion. Considering himself, with the egotism of all half-baked socialists, an intellectual from the fact that he read Massingham and quoted Sidney Webb, he boasted of being without faith in God and constitution. He sneered at Patriotism now, and while he stood for Trades-Unionism remained, like all the rest of his kind, an individualist to the marrow. But he had believed in Lola because he loved her and she inspired him, and without her encouragement and praise he knew that he would let go and crash. Just as he had been printed in the _Westminster Gazette_!

And she had not told the truth, even to her people. Where was she? What was she doing? To whom could she go to spend a holiday? She had no other relation than her aunt and she also was in town. Ellen had told him so in answer to his question.--Back into a mind black with jealousy and suspicion--he was without the habit of faith--came the picture of Lola, dressed like a lady, getting out of a taxicab at the shady-looking house in Castleton Terrace. Had she lied to him then?

Dover Street was at the bottom of it all, and her leaving home to become a lady's maid to such a woman as Lady Feo. She must have caught some of the poison of that association, God knew what! In time of trouble it is always the atheist who is the first to call on God.

He was about to leave the street in which the Fallaray house had now assumed the appearance of a morgue to him when Simpkins came up from the area, with a dull face. After a moment of irresolution he followed and caught the valet up. "Where's Miss Breezy?" he asked abruptly.

Simpkins was all the more astonished at the question for the trouble on that young cub's face. He looked him over sharply,--the cheap cap, the too long hair, the big nose, the faulty teeth, the pasty face, the un-athletic body, the awkward feet. Lola was in love. He knew that well enough. But not with this lout, that was certain, poet or no poet. "I don't know as 'ow I've got to answer that question," he said, just to put him in his place.

"Yes, you have. Where is she?"

"You ought ter know." He himself knew and as there was no accounting for tastes and Lola had made a friend of this anaemic hooligan, why didn't _he_? He lived round the corner from the shop, anyhow.

"But I don't know. Neither do her father and mother."

"What's that?" Simpkins drew up short. "You don't know what you're talkin' about. She went 'ome last Thursday to get a little rest until to-morrer,--Tuesday."

Treadwell would have cried out, "It isn't true," but he loved Lola and was loyal. He had met Simpkins in Queen's Road, Bayswater, and had seen him on familiar terms with Mr. Breezy, but he was a member of the Fallaray household and as such was not to be let into this--_this_ trouble. Not even the Breezys must be told before Lola had been seen and had given an explanation. They didn't love her as much as he did,--nor any one else in the world. And so he said, loyalty overmastering his jealousy and fear, "Oh, is that so? I haven't had time to look in lately. I didn't know." And seeing a huge unbelief in Simpkins's pale eyes, he hurried on to explain. "Being in the neighborhood and having some personal news for Lola, I called at your house. Was surprised to hear that she was away. That's all. Good night." And away he went, head forward, left foot turning in, long arms swinging loose.

But he had touched the spring in Simpkins to a jealousy and a fear that were precisely similar to his own. Lola was _not_ at home. Treadwell knew it and had called at Dover Street, expecting to find her there. They had all been told lies because she was doing something of which she was ashamed. The night that she had come in, weeping, dressed like a lady.--The words that had burned into his soul the evening of his proposal,--"so awfully in love with somebody else and it's a difficult world.--Perhaps I shall never be married and that's the truth, Simpky. It's a difficult world."

"Hi," he called out. "Hi," and started after Treadwell, full stride.

But rather than face those searching eyes again, at the back of which there was a curious blaze, Treadwell took to his heels, and followed hard by Simpkins, whose fanatical spirit of protection was stirred to its depths, dodged from one street into another. The curious chase would have ended in Treadwell's escape but for the sudden intervention, in Vigo Street, of a policeman who slipped out of the entrance to the Albany and caught the boy in his arms.

"Now then, now then," he said. "What's all this 'ere?"

And up came Simpkins, blowing badly, with his tie under his left ear. "It's--it's alri, Saunders. A friendly race, that's all. He's--he's a paller mine. Well run, Ernie!" And he put his arm round Treadwell's shoulders, laughing.

And the policeman, whose wind was good, laughed, too, at the sight of those panting men. "Mind wot yer do, Mr. Simpkins," he said, to the nice little fellow with whom he sometimes took a drink at the bottom of the area steps. "Set up 'eart trouble if yer not careful."

Set up heart trouble? Simpkins looked with a sudden irony at the boy who also would give his life to Lola. And the look was met and understood. It put them on another footing, they could see.

After a few more words of badinage the policeman mooched off to finish his talk with the tall-hatted keeper of the Albany doorway. And Simpkins said gravely and quietly, "Treadwell, we've got to go into this, you and me. We're in the same boat and Lola's got ter be--looked after, by both of us."

Treadwell nodded. "I'm frightened," he said, without camouflage.

"So am I," said Simpkins.

And they went off together, slowly, brought into confidence by a mutual heart trouble that had already set up.

VI

But there was no uneasiness in Queen's Road, Bayswater. John Breezy and his good wife were happy in the belief that their little girl was enjoying the air and scents of the country with her ladyship. They had neither the time nor the desire to dig deeply into the daily papers. To read of the weathercock policy of the overburdened Prime Minister, traditionally, nationally, and mentally unable to deal with the great problems that followed upon each other's heels, made Breezy blasphemous and brought on an incapacity to sit still. And so he merely glanced at the front page, hoping against hope for a new government headed by such men as Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Derby, Lord Grey and Edmund Fallaray, and for the ignominious downfall of all professional scavengers, titled newspaper owners and mountebanks who were playing ducks and drakes with the honor and the traditions of Parliament. He had no wish to be under the despotism of a Labor Government, having seen that loyalty to leaders was unknown among Trades Unionists and that principles were things which they never had had and never would have the courage to avow.

As for Mrs. Breezy, she never had time for the papers. She didn't know and didn't care which party was in power, or the difference between them, and when she heard her husband discuss politics with his friends, burst into a tirade and get red in the face, as every self-respecting man has the right to do, she just folded her hands in her lap, smiled, and said to herself, "Dear old John, what would he do in the millennium, with no government to condemn!" Therefore, these people had not seen in the daily "Chit Chat about Society" the fact that Lady Feo had not left town. They never read those luscious morsels. Because Lady Feo had not left town Aunt Breezy had been too busy to come round on her usual evening, when she would have discovered immediately that Lola was up to something and put the fat in the fire. And so they were happy in their ignorance,--which is, pretty often, the only state in which it is achieved.

Over dinner that night--a scrappy meal, because whenever any one entered the shop Mrs. Breezy ran out to do her best to sell something--the conversation turned to the question of Lola's marriage, as it frequently