Winding Paths Part 5

"That is quite possible," drily; "but you owe something to yourself and me."

"I couldn't owe failing a friend to any one. But he is a gentleman almost - a self-made one, and he doesn't let you forget it."

"Then you've seen him?"

"Yes, to-day." Her lips suddenly twitched with irresistible humour. "He called me 'Hal' and Lorraine 'wifey' We bore it bravely."

"What business had he to call you by your Christian name?"

"None. I suppose he just felt like it. He also alluded to my new hat as a bonnet. Also he used to be an office-boy or something. He seemed inordinately proud of it."

"I loathe a self-made man who is always cramming it down one's throat.

I don't see how you can have much in common with either of them any more."

Hal got up, as if she did not want to pursue the subject.

"It won't make the smallest difference to Lorraine and me," she said.

Dudley knit his forehead in vexation and perplexity, remarking:

"Of course you mean to be obstinate about it."

"No," with a little laugh; "only firm."

She came round to his chair and leant over the back it.

"Dear old long-face, don't look so worried. None of the dreadful things have happened yet that you expected to come of my friends.h.i.+p with Lorraine. The nearest approach to them was the celebrated young author I interviewed, who asked me to go to Paris with him for a fortnight, and he was a clergyman's son who hadn't even heard of Lorraine. Next, I think, was the old gentleman who offered to take me to the White City. IL don't seem much the worse for either encounter, do I ? and it's silly to meet trouble half way.

She bent her head and kissed him on the forehead.

"Dudley," she finished mischievously, "what are you going to give Lorraine for a wedding-present?"

"I might buy her the book, 'Row to be Happy though Married,'" he said dilly, "or write her a new one and call it 'Words of Warning for Wifey.'"

"We'll give her something together," Hal exclaimed triumphantly, knowing that, as usual, she had won the day.

Then she went off to bed, feigning a light-heartedness she was far from feeling, and dreading, with vague misgivings, what the future might bring forth.

CHAPTER V

It was a little over two years later that the crash came. There was first a commonplace, sordid tale of bickering and quarrelling, with pa.s.sionate jealousy on the part of the middle-aged husband, and callous, maddening indifference on the part of the now successful and brilliant actress

To do Lorraine justice, she was not actively at fault. Her sense of fair play made her try sincerely to make the best of what had all along been an inevitable fiasco. She did not sin in deed against the man to whom she had sold herself, but in thought it was hardly possible for her to give him anything but tolerance, or to feel much beyond the callous indifference she purposely cultivated, to make their life together endurable. The things that at first only irritated her grew almost unbearable afterwards.

Lorraine's father had been a gentleman by birth, breeding, and nature.

If she inherited from her mother an ambitious, calculating spirit, she also inherited from her father refinement, and tone, and a certain fineness character, that showed itself chiefly in unorthodox ways, of for the simple reason that her life and conditions were entirely removed from a conventional atmosphere.

As a man she might merely have lived a double life, conforming to the conventions when advisable, and following her own ambitions and bent in secret, without ever apparently stepping over the line.

As a woman she could but cultivate callous indifference to a great deal, and satisfy her soul by "playing fair" according to her lights, in the path before her, but nothing could save her from a mental nausea of the things in her husband which belonged to his plebeian origin and nature, and which crossed with a shrivelling, searing touch her own inherent refinement and high-born spirit.

The objectionable friends he brought to the house she found it easier to bear than the things he said about them behind their backs; neither, again, was his addiction to drink so trying as his mental coa.r.s.eness. A man who had drank too much could be avoided, but the lowness of Frank Raynor's mind seemed to follow and drag hers down.

Yet for two years she held bravely on, cultivating a hard spirit, and throwing herself heart and soul into the first delicious joy of success. This last surprised even her friends and admirers. A moderate hit was quite expected, but not a triumph which placed her almost in the first rank, and was due not merely to her acting, but to a bigness of spirit and comprehension she had never before had an opporturnty to reveal.

It was, indeed, the justification of Hal's devotion. Hal, by her very nature, could not love a small-minded woman. What she so unceasingly loved and admired in Lorraine was a hidden something she alone had had the perspicacity to perceive, and could so instinctively rely upon. It was the something which, given once a fair opening, carried her quickly through the company of the lesser successes, and placed her on that high plane which demands soul as well as skill.

Then came the dreadful climax. In a drunken, mad moment her husband hurled at her that he had been her mother's lover, and proposed to return to his old allegiance - had, in fact, already done so.

Lorraine immediately packed up her own special belongings and left his roof for ever.

Expostulations, promises, threats, pa.s.sionate a.s.surances that he had not been responsible for what he said failed alike to move her. She knew that whether responsible or not he had spoken the truth, and that everything else either he or her mother could say was false.

Finding her obdurate, he swore to ruin them both; but she told him she would sing for bread in the streets before she would go back to him; and he knew she meant it.

Fearing his influence against her and his sworn revenge, she went to Italy for a year, and hid in quiet villages until his pa.s.sion should somewhat have died, finding herself in the dreadful position, not only of being betrayed by her mother, but quite unable to obtain any sort of freedom without revealing the black stain upon her only near relation.

She could not seek a divorce under the terrible circ.u.mstances, and she was far too proud and spirited to touch a farthing of her husband's money. It was like a dreadful chapter in her life, of which she could only turn down the page; never, never, obliterate nor escape from.

In the black days and weeks of despair which followed, she often felt she must have lost her reason without Hal, and even to her she could not tell the actual truth. Hal asked once, and then no more. Afterwards it was like a secret, unnamed horror between them, from which the curtain must not be raised.

For the rest there was the usual but intenser scene of remonstrance between Dudley and Hal with the usual resentful and obdurate termination. This time Dudley even got seriously angry, unable to see anything but a foolish, unprincipled woman reaping a just reward of her own sowing; and for nearly a week his displeasure was such that he addressed no single word to Hal if he could help it.

Hal, for once, was too wretched about everything to resent his att.i.tude, and merely waited for the sun to s.h.i.+ne again and the black, enveloping clouds to roll away.

She saw Lorraine everyday, in the apartments whence she had fled, and helped her to make the necessary arrangements to cancel the short remainder of an engagement and get away. She even had one interview with the irate husband, but no one ever knew what took place, except that Raynor sought no repet.i.tion, and seemed afterwards to have a respectful awe of Hal's name which spoke volumes.

Accustomed to intimidating women with a curse and an oath, he had found himself unexpectedly dealing with two who could scorch him with a scorn and contempt far more withering than a vulgar tirade of blasphemous language.

Finally the break was made complete. Lorraine got safely away to Italy, her mother retired to an English village, and Raynor departed to America for good.

For him it was merely a case of fresh pastures for fresh money-making and fresh intrigues.

For Mrs. Vivian only a pa.s.sing exile from the gaieties and extravagance she loved.

For Lorraine it meant a hideous memory, a hideous, overwhelming catastrophe, and a hideous tie from which she could not hope to free herself.

She went away in a state of nervous prostration that was an illness, feeling the horror of it all in her very bones, and clinging with a silent hopelessness to Hal in a way that was more heart-rending than any hysterical outburst.

Yet that Hal was there was good indeed. Hal, who, though only twenty-one, could look out on an ugly world with those clear eyes of hers, and while seeing the ugliness undisguised, see always as it were beside it the ultimate good, the ultimate hope, the silver lining behind the blackest cloud. Hal, who could criticise unerringly, with direct, outspoken humour,and yet scorn to judge; who had learnt, by some strange instinct, the precious art of holding out a friendly hand and generous friends.h.i.+p, even to those condemned of the orthodox, sufferers probably through their own wild and foolish actions, without in any way becoming besmirched herself, or losing her own inherent freshness and purity.

It was not in the least surprising that a man as wedded to his books and profession as Dudley should fail to realise what was, in a measure, phenomenal. By the simple rule of A B C, he argued that ill necessarily contaminates, if the one to come in contact is of young and impression- able years. There might of course be exceptions, but hardly among those as frivolous and obstinate as Hal.

He worried himself almost ill about it all, until Lorraine was safely out of England, adding seriously to poor Hal's troubled mind, seeing she must stand by the one while longing to soothe and please the other, and fretting silently over his anxious expression. But once back in their old groove, he quickly recovered his spirits, and even tried to make up to Hal a little for what she had lost. Unfortunately, however, he hit upon an unhappy expedient.