IX

"Well!" said Miss Breezy.

"I hope so," said Lola, kissing the ear that was presented to her.

"I'm just rearranging my things. Her Ladyship's just given me some new pictures. They used to be in the morning room, but she got sick of them and handed 'em over to me. I'm going to hang them up." She might have added that nearly everything that the room contained had been given to her by Lady Feo with a similar generosity but her sense of humor was not very keen or else her sense of loyalty was. At any rate, there she stood in the middle of a nice airy room with something around her head to keep the dust out of her hair, wearing a pair of gloves, a stepladder near at hand.

There were six fair-sized canvases in gold frames,-seascapes; bold, excellent work, with the wind blowing over them and spray coming out that made the lips all salty. They made you hear the mewing of sea gulls.

"Lady Feo bought them to help a young artist. He was killed in the War.

She hates the sea, it makes her sick, and doesn't want to be reminded of anything sad. I don't wonder, and anyway, they'll look very nice here.

Do you like them?"

Lola had sized them up in a glance. She too would have turned them out.

They seemed to her rough and draughty. "Yes," she said, "they're very good, aren't they?" She mounted the ladder and held out her hands. She had come to ask a favor. She might as well make herself popular at once.

"Hand them up, Auntie, and I'll hang them for you."

"Oh, well now, that's very nice. I get giddy on a ladder. You came just at the right moment. Can you manage it? It's very heavy. The first time I've ever seen you making yourself useful, my dear."

This enabled Lola to get in her first point. "Mother never allows me to be useful," she said, "and really doesn't understand the sort of thing that I can do best." She stretched up, hung the cord over a bra.s.s bracket and straightened it.

"Well, you can certainly do this job! Go on and do the rest while you're at it. I was looking forward to a very tiring afternoon. I didn't want to have any of the maids to help me. They resent being asked to do anything that is outside their regular duty."

And so Lola proceeded, hating to get her hands dirty and not very keen on indulging in athletics, but with a determination made doubly firm by the fleeting sight of Fallaray.

Miss Breezy was in an equable mood that afternoon,-less pompous than usual, less consumed with the importance of being the controlling brain in the management of the Fallaray "establishment," as she called it in the stilted language of the auctioneer. She became almost human as she watched Lola perform the task which would have put her to a considerable amount of physical inconvenience. When one is relieved of anything in the nature of work, equability is the cheapest form of grat.i.tude.

The room was a particularly nice one, large, with a low ceiling and two windows which overlooked Dover Street. It didn't in the least indicate the character of the housekeeper because not a single thing in it was her own except a few books. Everything else had been given to her by Lady Feo, and like the pictures, had been discarded from one or other of the rooms below. The Sheraton sofa had come from the drawing-room. A Dowager d.u.c.h.ess had sat on it one evening after dinner and let herself go on the question of the Feo gang. It had been thrown out the following morning. The armoire of ripe oak, made up of old French altarpieces-an exquisite thing worth its weight in gold-had suffered a similar fate.

Rappe the ubiquitous photographer had taken a picture of Lady Feo leaning against one of its doors. It turned out badly. In fact, the angel on the other door looked precisely as though it were growing on Lady Feo's nose. It might have been good art but it was bad salesmanship. Away went the armoire. The story of all the other things was the same so that the room had begun to a.s.sume the appearance of the den of a dealer in old furniture. There were even a couple of old masters on the walls,-a Reynolds and a Lely, portraits of the members of Lady Feo's family whose faces she objected to and whose admonishing eyes she couldn't bear to have upon her when she came down to luncheon feeling a little chippy after a night out. These also were priceless. It had become indeed one of the nicest rooms in the house. Every day it added something to Miss Breezy's increasing air of dignity and beat.i.tude.

Lola did not fail to admire the way in which her aunt had arranged her wonderful presents and used all her arts of flattery before she came round to the reason of her visit. This she did as soon as Miss Breezy had prepared tea with something of the ceremony of the j.a.panese and arranged herself to be entertained by the child for whose temperament she had found some excuse by labelling it French. Going cunningly to work, she began by saying, "What do you think? You remember Mother's friends, the Proutys, who were playing cards the other night?"

"Indeed I do," replied Miss Breezy. "Whenever I meet those people it takes me some time to get over the unpleasant smell of meat fat. What about them?"

"Cissie, the daughter, has gone into the chorus of the Gaiety, and is very happy there. She's going to be in the second row at first, but she's bound to be noticed, she says, because she has to pose as a statue in the second act covered all over with white stuff."

"Nothing else?"

"No, but it will take an hour to put on every night. And before the end of the run she'll probably be married at St. Margaret's to an officer in the Guards, she says. She told me that she couldn't hope to become a lady in any other way. I was wondering what you would say if I did the same thing?"

Miss Breezy almost dropped her cup as Lola knew that she would. "You don't mean to say you've come to tell me that you've got _that_ fearful scheme in the back of your head, you alarming child? A chorus girl?"

Lola laughed. "You know _my_ way of improving myself: to serve an apprenticeship as a lady's maid, a respectable way,-the way in which you're going to help me now that you've thought it all over."

The answer came like the rapping of a machine gun. "I've not thought it over and what's more, I'm not going to begin to think it over. I told you so."

Without turning a hair Lola handed a plate of cakes. "But you wouldn't like me to follow Cissie's example, would you,-and that's the alternative." Poor dear old Aunt! What was the use of pretending to be firm. All the trumps were against her.

But for once Lola miscalculated her hand and the woman. "If you must make a fool of yourself," said Miss Breezy, "you must. I'm not your mother and luckily you can't break my heart. I told you the other night and I tell you again that I do not intend to be a party to your lowering yourself by becoming a servant and there's an end of it." And she waved her disengaged hand.

It was almost a minute before Lola recovered her breath. She sat back, then, and put her head on one side. "In that case," she said in a perfectly even voice, "I must try to get used to the other idea. I think I might look rather well in tights and Cissie tells me that if I were to join her at the Gaiety I should be put into a number in which five other girls will come on in underclothes in a bedroom scene. Of course I should keep my own name and before long you'd see my photograph in the _Tatler_ as 'the latest recruit to the footlights,-the great-great-granddaughter of the famous Madame de Breze.' I should tell the first reporter that, of course, to make it interesting."

Miss Breezy rocked to and fro, gripping her cup. How often had she shuddered at the sight of scantily dressed precocious girls sitting in alarming att.i.tudes on the shiny paper of the _Tatler_. To think of Lola in underclothes, debasing a highly respectable name! Nevertheless, "I am not to be bullied," she said, wobbling like a turkey. "I have always given way to you before, Lola, but in this case my mind is made up.

Can't you understand how awkward it would be to have you in the house on a level with servants who have to be kept in order by me? It would undermine my authority." That was the point, and it was a good one. And then her starchiness left her under the horror of the alternative. "As for that other thing,-well, you couldn't go a better way to kill your poor mother and surely you don't want to do that?"

"Of course I don't, Auntie."

"There's no call for you to think about any way of earning a living, Lola. Your parents don't want to get rid of you, Heaven knows, and even in these bad times they can get along very nicely and keep you too. You know that."

Lola had never dreamed of this adamantine att.i.tude. Her aunt had been so easy to manage before. What was she to do?

Thinking that she was winning, Miss Breezy went at it again. "Come, now.

Be a good child and forget both these schemes. Go on with your cla.s.ses and it won't be long before a suitable person will turn up and ask you to marry him. Your type marries young. Now, will you promise me to think no more about it all?"

But this was Lola's only chance to enter the first stage of her crusade.

She would fight for it to the last gasp. "The chorus, yes," she said.

"As for the other thing, no, Auntie. If you won't help me I must get the paper in the morning and search through the advertis.e.m.e.nts. I'm sure to come across some one who wants a lady's maid and after all, it won't very much matter who it is. You see, I want to earn my living, and I have made up my mind to do it in this way. There's good pay, a beautiful house to live in, no early trains to catch, no bad weather to go through, holidays in the country and with any luck foreign travel. I can't understand why many more girls like me don't go in for this sort of life. I only thought, of course, it would be so nice to be under your eye and guidance. Mother would much prefer it to be that way, I'm sure."

But even this practical argument had no effect except to rouse the good lady's dander. "You are a very nagging girl," she cried. "I can see perfectly well what you're driving at but you won't undermine my decision, I can tell you that. I will not have you in this house and that's final."

Lola was beaten. To her astonishment and chagrin she found that her nail was not to be hammered in. There was steel in the old lady's composition, after all. But there was steel in her own and she quickly decided to leave things as they stood and think out another line of attack before the following Thursday. And then, remembering Ernest Treadwell, who was living up to his name from one end of the street to the other and back, she rose to tear herself away with an air of great patience and affection. Just as she was about to bend down and touch the usual ear with her lips, the door suddenly swung open and a woman with bobbed hair, wearing a red velvet tam-o'-shanter and a curious one-piece garment of brown velvet which disclosed a pair of very admirable legs, stood smiling in the doorway. Her face was as white as the petals of a white rose. Her large violet eyes had lashes as black as her eyebrows and her wanton mouth showed a set of teeth as white and strong as a negro's. "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Breezy," she cried out, her voice round and ringing. "Excuse my barging in like this. I want to know what you've done about the table decorations for to-morrow night."

Miss Breezy rose hurriedly to her feet, and Lola, although she had never seen this woman before, followed her example, sensing the fact that here was the famous Lady Feo.

"I sent Mr. Biddle round to Lee and Higgins in Bond Street, my lady. You need have no anxiety about it."

"That's all right but I've altered my mind. I don't want flowers. I've bought a set of caricatures and I'm going to put one in front of every place. If it's too late to cancel the order, telephone to Lee and Higgins and tell them to send the flowers to any old hospital that occurs to them." Lady Feo had spotted Lola immediately and during all this time had never taken her eyes away from the girl's face and figure, which she looked over with frank and unabashed curiosity and admiration.

With characteristic effrontery she made her examination as thorough as she would have done if she had been sizing up a horse with a view to purchase. "Attractive little person," she said to herself. "As dainty as a piece of Sevres. What the devil's she doing here?" Making conversation with a view to discover who Lola was, she added aloud, "I see you've hung the pictures, Breezy.-Breezy and seascapes; they go well together, don't they?" And she laughed at the little joke,-a gay and boyish laugh.

With her heart thumping and a ray of hope in front of her, Lola marked her appreciation of the joke with her most delighted smile.

And Miss Breezy indulged in a diplomatic t.i.tter.

"Isn't it a little remiss of you, Breezy, not to introduce me to your friend?"

"Oh, I beg your ladyship's pardon, I'm sure. This is my niece Lola." She wished the child in the middle of next week and dreaded the result of this most unfortunate interruption.

Lady Feo stretched out her hand,-a long-fingered able hand, born for the violin. "How do you do," she said, as though to an equal. "How is it that I haven't seen you before? Breezy and I are such old friends. I call her Breezy in that rather abrupt manner-forgive me, won't you?-because I'm both rude and affectionate. I hope I didn't cut in on a family consultation?"

Lola braced herself. Here was her opportunity indeed! "Oh, no, my lady.

It _was_ a sort of consultation, because I came to talk to Aunt about my future. It's time I earned my own living and as she doesn't want me to go on the stage, she's going to be kind enough to help me in another way." She got all this in a little breathlessly, with charming navete.

"What way?" asked Lady Feo bluntly. "I should think you'd make a great success on the stage."

Lola took no notice of her aunt's angry and frantic signs. She stood demure and modest under the searching gaze of Lady Feo and with a sense of extreme triumph took the jump. "The way I most wanted to begin," she said, "was to be your ladyship's maid. That's my great ambition."