Winding Paths Part 53

Lorraine had grown calmer, though the dangerous look was still in her eyes, and she moved away to the window, leaving a large s.p.a.ce between them, and half-turned her back to him.

"I have already burnt the epistle I received from Mrs. Hermon - its insults were too utterly foolish to notice. You may go back and tell her her son has never received any harm from me, and I absolutely decline to discuss the question any further. As for yourself - you will doubtless find a taxi on the rank, just outside."

"But, my dear lady, I cannot go back leaving the matter like that."

He grew emboldened again, now that he could not see her eyes.

"I am here to plead on Alymer's behalf. If you are fond of him, you must at least listen to reason for his sake."

"Not from you. And who are his people that they dare to treat me like this? . . . First an insulting letter, and then an emissary such as you - "

"Alymer is my nephew, and his mother is my sister, and therefore I am a most suitable emissary, except for a certain incident of long ago, which has long been consigned to oblivion by both of us, I am sure. The boy is young. He is on the threshold of life and a great career. What will be the result, do you think, if you refuse to listen, and perhaps ruin his prospects for your own pleasure ?"

She turned back to him a moment, and the smouldering fires leaped up.

"I was young. I was on the treshold of life. What did you care for my youth or my future? What do other men like you care? My mother was lax, and you knew it. I believe you gave her diamonds. And now you come to me and ask me to spare your nephew - _you_ come - _you!_..."

and the scorn in her voice lashed him like a stinging whip.

But lie tried valiantly to stand his ground, though all his fine attire and air of bravado could not save his visible shrinking into a faded, dissipated, worthless-looking old rogue.

"If you won't listen to any plea from me, will you permit me to make one from his mother, and appeal to the woman in you to realise her anxiety ?"

Lorraine turned again to the window and looked out upon the silver, s.h.i.+ning river. And suddenly it was as though all her soul rose up in arms. She felt with swift pa.s.sion that it seemed to matter so much in the world that a young man with a promising future should not run any risk of harm from an older woman.

But if it was a young woman, and an older man, what did it matter then ! Why, the very man who would have hurt her could allow himself to plead for another young thing, if that other were a man.

Doubtless he would argue, as all the rest of them, that years in men craved the freshness and revivifying of youth it was only natural, and a woman mattered so much less. But the mature woman herself, she has no right to indulge in any longing for that same freshness and revivifying.

Ten years ago this man had been l.u.s.t at the age, and with just the handsome, aristocratic appearance, in spite of iron-grey hair, that so often attracts a girl in the early twenties. She scorns boys at that age, and feels the compliment of being chosen by a man of the world before the many older women she cannot choose but see would gladly be in her place. That it is her youth and not herself that holds the attraction is unknown to her, and a clever man may often dupe her young affections.

Lorraine, with her romantic, imaginative temperament, had grown to believe herself in love with him, and then had followed the old, sordid story of insult and her consequent disillusionment. The memories stung her now with a bitter stinging heightened by the feeling that life cared so much more for Alymer's welfare than it had ever done for hers.

And then that appeal to her woman's feeling to sympathise with the perturbed mother.

Well, because she was his mother, surely she was blessed enough. What had she - Lorraines - to place against that great fact ? She felt painfully that in spite of her success her life was pitifully, hopelessly barren, scarred this way and that, torn and rent and damaged by mistake upon mistake which could never now be rectified.

A nausea of it all made her feel in those tense moments, gazing at the serenely flowing river, that had she a child she would be borne away on the smooth silver water with her little one, out of the fret and turmoil, to some quiet nest in the cliffs at its mouth ; and there for the years that were left her she would fill her days with the peaceful, homely joys that had never yet been hers.

But how could she go alone? Only in the uneventful days to find her loneness intensified a thousand times, and without escape.

No; the river would flow on to that serene haven; but never for ever would she and a little one of her own be borne on its motherly bosom to the country of little things and peacefulness.

And the thought only stung her afresh; driving the sting in deep and sharp while this man remained under her roof.

"Well," he said at last; and in the interval his voice seemed to have regained some of its polished, self-possessed satisfaction. "I see you are deep in thought. You were always tender-hearted, and I felt I should not appeal to your womans heart in vain."

Her face was turned away, so that he could not see her expression, nor read what was in her eyes, and purposely she let him go on.

"You will, I know, let me go back with the message Mrs. Hermon is waiting for so anxiously. It will be quite simple. No doubt you have countless admirers, and if you summon another, and let Alymer think he is replaced, after the first hot-headed wrath he will quickly become normal again, and apply all his faculties to his profession. I know you are too clever not too appreciate just everything involved, and too generous not to give the young man his best chance."

Then he cleared his throat, stroked his moustache, and waited, wondering a little why she did not speak. He squared his shoulders again, and glanced round to catch a reflection of himself in the overmantel, then once more stroked his moustache with a sleek air of growing satisfaction.

It had certainly been a most ticklish undertaking, and but for his diplomacy, he believed one foredoomed to failure. But of course Lorraine was a woman of the world, with a larger mixture of the other kind of womanliness, perhaps, than was usual, and he in his perspicacity had deftly appealed to both.

Then Lorraine turned round, and at the first glimpse of her face his own fell, and suddenly he seemed to be shrinking visibly; as if he would not ungladly have vanished through the floor.

She took a step or two forward, and stood in front of him with her head held high, and those same scorching fires in her eyes ; and there was something almost over-awing in the taut intensity of her whole att.i.tude, mental and physical.

"No," she said, in a cold, firm voice. "You may not go back and tell Alymer's mother that I agree to cease my friends.h.i.+p with him for you and for her. You may go back and tell her that because when I was young you had no thought of my future, and no consideration for my youth, I refuse absolutely to parley in the matter at all. I shall not change my course of action by one iota. I shall not take any single thought for the future. The future may take care of itself. If you can estrange Alymer from me, that is your affair. Rather than estrange him myself, I will bind him closer.

That is my answer to you, and to the _lady_," with fine scorn, " who sat down yesterday and penned that unheard-of letter to a fellow-woman she knew nothing whatever against. Yet I think I could have charged that to her evident ignorance concerning theatrical matters, and forgiven her, if a monstrous irony had not sent you to plead her cause - "

"My dear Lorraine," he interposed, but she stopped him with an imperious gesture and continued:

"There is nothing for you to say, nothing that I am in the least likely to listen to. You have evidently mis-understood my character from first to last. Probably you even credited me with wantonness in those far-off days when I was fool enough to believe all you swore to me of love and devotion. However that may be, you tried to set my feet in the wrong path, and when it suited you, gave me a push that further evil might conveniently widen the breach between us. Probably you have done much the same again since, and with as little compunction. What I have to say to you now is just this, once again. Your mission to-day is not merely useless; it has considerably aggravated any danger there may have been. Because of every girl a middle-aged man has treated as you sought to treat me I shall hold Alymer to his friends.h.i.+p if I can, and use any influence I may have to increase rather than decrease his visits.

"It may be fiendish of me. I don't know. I am no angel ; not even the obliging soft-hearted fool you and Alymer's mother seem to have concluded I might be. And what is more, if I had a vein of kindliness and unselfish consideration, you have done your utmost to stamp it out.

"Most of us are half good, and half bad. To-day, you have given the devil in me an impetus such as it has seldom had before. That is your affair. Go back and explain the real truth if you dare. Tell Mrs.

Hermon you found the low adventuress a devil, and one that you yourself had tried to help to make. Tell her " - again with that low, unpleasant laugh - "

that you fear the worst for Alymer.

That is all. Now you can go."

Once more he futilely tried to speak, but she only waved him aside, and walked with a haughty, scornful step ahead of him.

"Jean," she called to her maid, as she pa.s.sed through the little hall, "Will you open the door for this gentleman?"

In her own room, she slid down into a large cus.h.i.+oned chair and sobbed her heart out.

CHAPTER x.x.x

It was there Hal found her. By the merest chance she had run up to the flat at her midday hour, to ask a question about Sir Edwin Crathie. and a rumour concerning him that she felt an imperative need to have answered. When she saw Lorraine in tears the question was instantly banished for the moment.

Had Lorraine been in her normal condition, she could hardly have failed to notice that the "Hal" who came up in haste to ask this urgent question was not the "Hal" of a few months, a few weeks ago. She would probably have observed that the vague, indefinable change Alymer had seen in her had grown more marked anti more defined.

She seemed to have sprung suddenly into womanhood.

It was no light-hearted, careless, rather boisterous girl who appeared unexpectedly at the flat, to give her one or two eager hugs, tell her the latest news of her doings in gay, gossipy fas.h.i.+on, and eat an unconscionable amount of chocolates, usually kept for her special delectation.

The old, bright look was there on the surface, the ready, laughing speech, but there was also, with it, something that approached a dignified phase, and suggested a new reserve. She was also distinctly better-looking likewise, in some vague, incomprehensible way.

But Lorraine had not time to take any note of the change, for all her faculties were bent upon s.h.i.+elding herself.

Of course it was useless to hide that she had been crying, but at least Hal must not know that the crying had been soul-racking sobs.

With a look of consternation and dismay she, Hal, was across the room in a bound, kneeling beside the big chair.

"My dear old girl, what in the world is the matter ?"