“Wait for me here, Ernest,” she said. “I don’t think I shall be very long. If I’m more than half an hour, give me up and we’ll have another afternoon later on.”
She waved her hand, went down the area steps and rang the bell. Ernest Treadwell, to whom the house had taken on a sinister appearance, sloped off with rounded shoulders and a tight mouth. They might have been in Hampton Court looking at the crocuses.—Lola,—a servant. Good God!
It wasn’t his job to open doors, because he was a valet. But it so happened that he was the only person in the servants’ quarters who was not either dressing, lying down after a heavy lunch or out to enjoy an hour’s fresh air.
Simpkins gasped. If he had been passing through the hall and a footman had opened the front door to this girl he would have slipped into a dark corner to watch her enter, believing that she had come to visit Lady Feo. He knew a thoroughbred when he saw one. That she should have come to the area of all places seemed to him to be irregular, not in conformity with the rules of social rectitude which were his religion. All the same he thrilled, and like every other man who caught sight of Lola and stood near enough to catch the indefinable scent of her hair, stumbled over his words.
Lola repeated her remark and gave him a vivid friendly smile. If she carried her point with her aunt presently, this man would certainly be useful. “If you will please come in,” said Simpkins, “I’ll go and see if Miss Breezy’s upstairs. What name shall I say?”
“Miss Lola Breezy. Thank you.” He paused for a moment to bask, and then with a little bow in which he acknowledged her irresistible and astonishing effect, disappeared,—valet stamped upon his respectability like a Cunard label on a suit case.
Lola chuckled and remained standing in the middle of what was used by the servants as a sitting room. How easy it was, with her gift, to shatter men’s few senses. She knew the place well,—its pictures of Queen Victoria and of famous race horses cut from illustrated papers cheaply framed and its snapshots of the gardens of Chilton Park, Whitecross, Bucks. Discarded books of all sorts were piled up on various tables. _The Spectator_ and _The New Statesman_, Massingham’s peevish weekly, _Punch_, _The Sketch_ and _The Tatler_, _Eve_ and the _Bystander_, which had come downstairs from the higher regions, were scattered here and there. They had been read and commented upon first by the butler and then downwards through all the gradations of servants to the girl who played galley slave to the cook. Lola wondered how long it would be before she also would be spending her spare time in that room, hobnobbing with the various members of the family below stairs. A few days, perhaps, not more,—now that she had fastened on this plan.