The Rustle of Silk Part 30

"Sit down," he said, "I want to talk to you."

And as she sat down it was with a sudden sense of fatalism. There was something in all this that was predetermined, inevitable. That flame had been set alight in him by love, and nothing else. She felt, sitting there, like that most feeble of all figures, Canute. What was the use in trying to persuade herself that what she dreaded to hear was not going to be said? She was too late. She had let this man go.

He walked up and down for a moment, restless and wound up, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing the white-faced woman who could have told him precisely what he was about to say.

"I want to be set free," he said, with almost as little emotion as would have been called up by the discussion of a change of butchers. "I want you to let me arrange to be divorced. Something has happened that has altered my entire scheme of life. I want to begin all over again. I have come back this afternoon to put this to you and to ask you to help me. I think I know that many times since we've been married you would have asked me to do this, if I hadn't been in politics. I'm grateful to you, as I'm sure you know, for having respected what was my career to that extent. I am going out. My resignation is in my pocket. It is to be sent to the P. M. to-night. When I go back to-morrow, it will be as a free man, so far as Westminster is concerned. I want to return to Chilton, having left instructions with your lawyers, with your permission, to proceed with the action. The evidence necessary will be provided and the case will be undefended. I shall try to have it brought forward at the earliest possible moment. May I ask you to be kind enough to meet me in this matter?"

He drew up in front of her and waited, with as little impatience as breeding would permit.

If this question had been put to her a week ago, or yesterday, she would have cried out, "Yes," with joy and seen herself able to face a future with Arrowsmith, such as she had pictured in her dreams. It came upon her now, on top of her determination to turn over a new leaf, like a breaker, notwithstanding the fact that she had seen it coming. But she got up, pride and courage and tradition in every line of her eccentrically dressed body, and faced him.

"You may," she replied. "And I will help you in every possible way. It's the least that I can do."

"Thank you," he said. "I am deeply grateful. I knew that you would say just that." And he bowed before turning to go to his desk. "Who _are_ your lawyers?"

She hadn't any lawyers, but she remembered the name of the firm in which one of the partners was the husband of a woman in the gang, and she gave it to him.

He wrote it down eagerly. "I'm afraid it will be necessary for you to see these people in the morning. Is that perfectly convenient?"

"Perfectly," she said. "I have no engagements, as it happens."

"Then I will write a statement of the facts," he said, "at once. The papers can be served upon me at Chilton."

It was easy to get out of marriage as it had been to get into it.

"Is that all?" she asked, with a touch of her old lightness.

He rose. "Yes, thank you," he said, and went to the door to open it for her. There were youth and elasticity and happiness all about him.

But as she watched him cross the room, something flashed in front of her eyes, a vivid ball of foolish years which broke into a thousand pieces at her feet, among the jagged ends of which she could see the ruins of a great career, the broken figure of a St. Anthony, with roses pinned to the cross upon his chest.

He stopped her as she was going and held out his hand again.

"I am very grateful, Feo."

And she smiled and returned his grasp. "The best of luck," she said. "I hope you'll be very happy, for a change."

V

Having now no incentive to go either to her room or anywhere else, her new plan dying at its birth, Feo remained in the corridor, standing with her back against one of the pieces of Flemish tapestry which Simpkins had pointed out to Lola. She folded her arms, crossed one foot over the other, and dipped her chin, not frowning, not with any sort of self-pity, but with elevated eyebrows and her mouth half open, incredulous.

"Of course I'm not surprised at Edmund's being smashed on a girl," she told herself. "How the d.i.c.kens he's gone on so long is beyond belief. I hope she's a nice child,-she must be young; he's forty; I hope he's not been bird-limed by one of the afterwar virgins who are prowling the earth for prey. I'm very ready to make way gracefully and have a dash at something else, probably hospital work, sitting on charity boards with the dowagers who wish to goodness they had dared to be as loose as I've been. But-but what I want to know is, who's shuffling the cards? Why the devil am I getting this long run of Yarboroughs? I can't hold anything,-anything at all, except an occasional knave like Macquarie.

Why this run of bad luck now? Why not last year, next year, next week?

Why should Edmund deliberately choose to-day, of all days, to come back, with no warning, and put a heavy foot bang in the middle of my scheme of retribution? Is it-meant? I mean it's too beautifully neat to be an accident. Is it the good old upper cut one always gets for playing the giddy ox, I wonder?-Mf! Interesting. Very. More to come, too, probably, seeing that I'm still on my feet. I've got to get it in the solar plexus and slide under the ropes, I suppose, now they're after me. 'Every guilty deed holds in itself the seed of retribution and undying pain.'

Well, I'm a little nervous, like some poor creature on the way to the operating table; and-and I'll tell you what else I am, by George! I'm eaten up with curiosity to know who the girl is, and how she managed to get into the line of vision of this girl-blind man,-and I don't quite know how I shall be able to contain myself until I satisfy this longing.-Oh, hullo, Lola. This is good. I didn't expect you till the morning. But I don't mind saying that I've never been so pleased to see anybody as you, my dear. Had a good time?"

She went to the top of the stairs and waited for Lola to come up, smiling and very friendly. She was fond of this girl. She had missed her beyond words,-not only for her services, which were so deft, so sure-fingered, but also for her smile, her admiration. Good little Lola; clever little Lola too, by George. That Carlton episode,-most amusing.

And this recent business, which, she remembered, was touched with a sort of-what? Was ecstasy the word? Good fun to know what had happened. Thank the Lord there was going to be a pause between knock-outs, after all.

Dressed in her perfectly plain ready-made walking frock, her own shoes and a neat little hat that she had bought in Queen's Road, Bayswater, Lola came upstairs quickly with her eyes on Feo's face. She seemed hardly to be able to hold back the words that were trembling on her lips. It was obvious that she had been crying; her lids were red and swollen. But she didn't look unhappy or miserable, as a girl might if everything had gone wrong; nor in the least self-conscious. She wore neither her expression as lady's maid, nor that of the young widow to whom some one had given London; but of a mother whose boy was in trouble and must be got out of it, at once, _please_, and helped back to his place among other good boys.

"Will you come down to your room, Lady Feo?" she asked. "Mr. Lytham will be here in a few minutes and I want you to see him."

Lytham-young Lochinvar! How priceless if he were the man for whom she had dressed this child up.

"Why, of course. But what's the matter, Lola? You've been crying. You look fey."

Lola put her hand on Feo's arm, urgently. "Please come down," she said.

"I want to tell you something before Mr. Lytham comes."

Well, this seemed to be her favor-granting day, as well as one of those during which Fate had recognized her as being on his book. First Edmund and then Lola,-there was not much to choose between their undisguised egotism. And the lady's maid business,-that was all over, plainly.

George Lytham,-who'd have thought it? If Lola were in trouble, she had a friend in that house.

And so, without any more questions, she went back to her futuristic den which, after her brief talk with Fallaray, seemed to belong to a very distant past. But before Lola could begin to tell her story, a footman made his appearance and said that Mr. Lytham was in the hall.

"Show him in here," said Feo and turned to watch the door.

She wondered if she would be able to tell from his expression what was the meaning of her being brought into this,-a disinclination on his part to take the blame, or an earnest desire to do what was right under the circ.u.mstances? She never imagined the possibility of his not knowing that Lola was a lady's maid dressed in the feathers of the jay. Unlike Peter Chalfont, who accepted without question, Lytham held things up to the light and examined their marks.

There was, however, nothing uncomfortable in his eyes. On the contrary, he looked more than ever like the captain, Feo thought, of a County Cricket Club, healthy, confident and fully alive to his enormous responsibility. He wore a suit of thin blue flannels, the M. C. C. tie under a soft low collar, and brown shoes that had become almost red from long and expert treatment. He didn't shake hands like a German, with a stiff deference contradicted by a mackerel eye, or with the tender effusion of an actor who imagines that women have only to come under his magnetism to offer themselves in sacrifice. Bolt upright, with his head thrown back, he shook hands with an honest grip, without deference and without familiarity, like a good cricketer.

"How do you do, Lady Feo," he said, in his most masculine voice. "It's kind of you to see us." Then he turned to Lola with a friendly smile.

"Your telephone message caught me just as I was going to dash off for a game of tennis after a hard day, Madame de Breze," he added.

Oh, so this was another of the de Breze episodes, was it, like the one with Beauty Chalfont. Curiosity came hugely to Feo's rescue. Here, at any rate, was a break in her run of bad luck, very welcome. What on earth could be the meaning of this quaint meeting,-George Lytham, the earnest worker pledged to reconstruction, and this enigmatic child, who might have stood for Joan of Arc? If Lola had caught Lytham and brought him to Dover Street to receive substantiation, Feo was quite prepared to lie on her behalf. What a joke to palm off the daughter of a Queen's Road jeweler on the early-Victorian mother of the worthy George!

"Well?" she said, looking from one to the other with a return of her impish delight in human experimentation.

"Mr. Lytham can explain this better than I can," said Lola quietly.

"I'm not so sure about that, but I'll do my best."

He drew a chair forward and sat down. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, where there was the normal amount of happiness, or even the mutual agreement to give and take that goes with the average marriage, his task would have been a difficult one. But in the case of Feo and his chief he felt able to deal with the matter entirely without self-consciousness, or delicacy in the choice of words.

"I needn't worry you with any of the details of the new political situation, Lady Feo. You know them, probably, as well as I do. But what you don't know, because the moment isn't yet ripe for the publication of our plans, is that Mr. Fallaray has been chosen to lead the Anti-waste Party, which is concentrating its forces to rout the old gang out of politics at the next General Election, give Parliament back its lost prestige, and do away with the pernicious influence of the Press Lords.

A big job, by Jove, which Fallaray alone can achieve."

"Well?" repeated Feo, wondering what in the world this preamble had to do with the case in question.

"Well, at the end of the meeting of my party yesterday, I was sent down to Chilton Park to tell Mr. Fallaray our plans. I was stultified to be told that he had decided to chuck politics."

"And go in for love. Yes, I know. But what has this got to do with Lola,-with Madame de Breze?"

That was the point that beat Feo, the thing that filled her with a sort of impatient astonishment. Was this uncommunicative girl, who seemed to her to be so essentially feminine, whose metier in life was obviously to purr under the touch of a masculine hand, who had been given a holiday to go on a love chase with Chalfont, presumably, somehow connected with politics? It was incredible.