If Dudley Pritchard’s imagination did not actually picture the lurid
and violent descent Hal suggested, it certainly did view with the
utmost alarm his lively young sister’s friendship with a fully fledged
actress.
As a matter of fact, Miss Walton’s prognostications concerning his
attitude to Lorraine Vivian, even as a schoolgirl, had been instantly
confirmed upon their first meeting.
For no particular reason he disapproved of her. That was rather typical
of Dudley. He disapproved of a good many things without quite knowing
why, or being at any particular pains to find out.
Not that it made him bigoted. He could in fact be fairly tolerant; but
as Hal affectionately observed, Dudley was so apt to pat himself on the
back for his toleration towards things that it would never have occured
to most persons needed tolerating.
She knew perfectly well that he considered himself very tolerant
towards much that was to be deprecated in her, but, far from resenting
his attitude, she saw chiefly the humorous side, and managed to glean a
good deal of quiet amusement from it.
Considering the fifteen years’ difference in their ages, and the fact
that Dudley was a hard-working architect in London, seeing life on all
sides, while Hal was still a hoydenish schoolgirl, it was really
remarkable how thoroughly she grasped and understood his character, and
a great deal concerning the world in general, while he seemed to remain
at his first decisions concerning her and most things.
It was just perhaps the difference between the book-student and the
life-student. Dudley had always had a passion for books and for his
profession. His clever brain was a well of knowledge concerning ancient
architectures and relics of antiquity. He studied them because he loved
them, and, before all things else, to him they seemed worth while.
He loved his sister also—he loved her better than any one, but it would
never have occured to him that she should be studied, or that there was
anything in her to study. To him she was quite an ordinary girl, rather
nice-looking when she was neat, but with a most unfortunate lack of the
sedate dignity and discretion that he considered essential to the
typically admirable woman.
That there might be other traits in their place, equally admirable, did
not occur to him. They ware not at any rate the traits he most admired.
Hal, on the other hand, was different in every respect. She loathed
books, and learning, and what she called “dead old bones and rubbish.”
But she loved human nature, and studied it in every phase she could.
Left at a very tender age to Dudley’s sole care and protection, she had
to grow up without the enfolding, sympathetic love of a mother, or the
gay companionship of brothers and sisters. Not in the least depressed,
she started off at an early age in quest of adventure to see what the
world was like outside the four walls of their home.
Brought back, sometimes by a policeman, with whom she had already
become on the friendliest terms, sometimes in a cab in which some one
else had placed her, sometimes by a kindly stranger, she would yet slip
away again on the first opportunity, into the crush of mankind.
Punishment and expostulation were alike useless; Hal was just as
fascinated with people as Dudley was with books, and where her nature
called she fearlessly followed.
Through this roving trait she picked up an amount of commonplace,
everyday knowledge that would have dumbfoundered the clever young
architect, had he been in the least able to comprehend it. But while he
dipped enthusiastically into bygone ages, and won letters and honours
in his profession, she asked questions about life in the present, and
grappled with the problem of everyday existence and the peculiarities
of human nature, in a way that made her largely his superior, despite
his letters and honours.
And best of all was her complete understanding of him. Dudley fondly
imagined he was fulfilling to the best possible endeavours his
obligations of love and guardianship to his young sister. The young
sister, with her tender, quizzical understanding, regarded him as a
mere child, with a deliciously humorous way of always taking himself
very seriously; a brilliant brain, an irritating fund of superiority,
and something altogether apart that made him dearer than heaven and
earth and all things therein to her.
Hal might be dearer than all else to Dudley, without finding herself
loved in any way out of the ordinary, seeing how little he cared much
about except his profession; but to be the beloved of all, to an eager,
passionate, intense nature like hers, meant that in her heart she had
placed him upon a pedestal, and, while fondly having her little smile
over his shortcomings, yet loved him with an all-embracing love. He did
not suspect it, and he would not have understood it if he had; being
rather of the opinion that, considering all he had tried to be to her,
she might have loved him enough in return to make a greater effort to
please him.
Her obdurate resistance during the first stage of his disapproval of
Lorraine Vivian increased this feeling considerably. He felt that if
she really cared for him she should be willing to be guided by his
judgment; and while perceiving, just as Miss Walton had done, that she
meant to have her own way, he had less perspicacity to perceive also
that nameless trait which, for want of a better word, we sometimes call
grit, and which dimly proclaimed she might be trusted to follow her own
strength of character.
When, later, his attitude of displeasure increased a thousandfold.
He was not told of it just at first. Hal was then in the throes of
convincing him that her particular talents lay in the direction of
secretarial work and journalism, rather than governessing or idleness,
and persuading him to make arrangements at once for her to learn
shorthand and typewriting with a view to becoming the private secretary
of a well-known editor of one of the leading newspapers.
The editor in question was a distant connection, and quite willing to
take her if she proved herself capable, recognising, through his skill
at reading character, that she might eventually prove invaluable in
other ways than mere letter-writing.
Dudley, seeing no farther than the fact of the City office, set his
face resolutely against it as long as he could; but, of course, in the
end Hal carried the day. Then came the shock of the knowledge that
Lorraine had gone on the stage; and if, as had been said before, he did
not actually picture the lurid exit to the lower regions Hal gave him
credit for, he was sufficiently upset to have wakeful nights and many
anxious, worried hours.
And to make it worse, Hal would not even be serious.
“Oh, don’t look like that, Dudley!” she cried; “we really are not in
any immediate danger of selling our souls to the Prince of Darkness.
You dear old solemnsides! Just because Lorraine is going on the stage,
I believe you already see me in spangles, jumping through a hoop. Or
rather ‘trying to’, because it is a dead cert. I should miss the hoop,
and do a sort of double somersault over the horse’s tail.”
Dudley shut his firm lips a little more tightly, and looked hard at his
boots, without vouchsafing a reply.
“As a matter of fact,” continued the incorrigible, “you ought to
perceive how beautifully life balances things, by giving a dangerously
attractive person like Lorraine a matter-of-fact, commonplace pal like
myself to restrain her, and at the same time ward off possible dangers
from various unoffending humans, who might fall hurtfully under her
spell.”
“It is only the danger to you that I have anything to do with.”
“Oh fie, Dudley! as if I mattered half as much as Humanity with a
capital H.”
“To me, personally, you matter far more in this particular case.”
“And yet, really, the chief danger to me is that I might unconsciously
catch some reflection of Lorraine’s charm and become dangerously
attractive myself, instead of just an outspoken hobbledehoy no one
takes seriously.”
“I am not afraid of that,” he said, evoking a peal of laughter of which
he could not even see the point; “but since you are quite determined to
go into the City as a secretary, instead of procuring a nice
comfortable home as a companion, or staying quietly here to improve
your mind, I naturally feel you will encounter quite enough dangers
without getting mixed up in a theatrical set. Though, really,” in a
grumbling voice, “I can’t see why you don’t stay at home like any
sensible girl. If I am not rich, I have at least enough for two.”
“But if I stayed at home, and lived on you, Dudley, I should feel I had
to improve my mind by way of making you some return; and you can’t
think how dreadfully my mind hates the idea of being improved. And if I
went to some dear old lady as companion, she would be sure to die in an
apoplectic fit in a month, and I should be charged with manslaughter.
And I can’t teach, because I don’t know anything. The only serious
danger I shall run as Mr. Elliott’s secretary will be putting an
occasional addition of my own to his letters, in a fit of exasperation,
or driving his sub-editor mad; and he seems willing to risk that.”
“You are likely to run greater dangers than that if you allow yourself
to be drawn into a theatrical circle.”
“What sort of dangers?… Oh, my dear, saintly episcopal architect, what
foundations of darkness are you building upon now, out of a little
old-fashioned, out-of-date prejudice which you might have dug up from
some of your studies in antiquity books? There are just as many dangers
outside the theatrical world as in it, for the sort of woman dangers
are attractive to; and little Sunday-school teachers have come to
grief, while famous actresses have won through unscathed.”
Dudley’s face expressed both surprise and distaste.
“I wonder what you know about it anyway. I think you are talking at
random. Certainly no dangers would come near you if you listened to my
wishes and settled down quietly at home. If you don’t care about living
in Bloomsbury, I will take a small house in the suburbs, and you can
amuse yourself with the housekeeping, and tennis, and that sort of
thing.”
“And when you want to marry?”
“I shall not want to marry. I am wedded to my profession.”
“O Dudley!… Dudley!…” She slipped off the table where she had been
jauntily seated, and came and stood beside him, passing her arm through
his. “Can’t you see I’d just die of a little house in the suburbs,
looking after the housekeeping: it’s the most dreadful and awful thing
on the face of the earth. I’m not a bit sorry for slaves, and
prisoners, and shipwrecked sailors, and East-end starvelings; every bit
of sympathy I’ve got is used up for the girls who’ve got to stay in
hundrum homes, and be nothing, and do nothing, but just finished young
ladies. Work is the finest thing in the world. It’s just splendid to
have something real to do, and be paid for it. Why, they can’t even go
to prison, or be hungry, or anything except possible wives for possible
men who may or may not happen to want them.”
“Of course you are talking arrant nonsense,” Dudley replied frigidly.
“I don’t know where in the world you get all your queer ideas. Woman’s
sphere is most decidedly the home; you seem to—” but a small hand was
clapped vigorously over his mouth, and eyes of feigned horror searching
his.
“Do you know, I’m half afraid you’ve lived in your musty old books so
long, Dudley,” with mock seriousness, “that you’ve lost all count of
time. It is about a thousand years since sane and sensible men believed
all that drivel about women’s only sphere being the home, and since
women were content to be mere chattels, stuck in with the rest of the
furniture, to look after the children. Nowadays the jolly, sensible
woman that a man likes for wife or pal, is very often a busy worker.”
“Let her work busily at home, then!”
“Why, you’ll want me to crochet antimacassars next, or cross-stitch a
sampler! Just imagine the thing if I tried! It would have dreadful
results, because I should be sure to use bad language—I couldn’t help
it; and the article I should concoct would make people faint, or turn
cross-eyed or colour-blind. I shan’t do nearly so much harm in the end
as a City secretary with an actress pal.”
“One thing is quite certain: you mean, as usual, to have your own way,
and my feelings go for nothing at all.”
He turned away from her, and took up his hat to go out.
“Your protestations of affection, Hal, are apt to seem both insincere
and out of place.”
The tears came swiftly to her eyes, and she took a quick step towards
him, but he had gone, and closed the door after him before she could
speak. She watched his retreating figure, with the tears still
lingering, and then suddenly she smiled.
“Anyhow, I haven’t got to be sweet and gentle and housekeepy,” was her
comforting reflection. “I’m going to be a real worker, earning real
money, and have Lorraine for my pal as well. Some day Dudley will see
it is all right, and I’m only about half as black as he supposes, and
that I love him better than anything else at heart. In the meantime, as
I’m likely to get a biggish dose of dignified disapproval over this
theatre business, I’d better ask Dick to come out to tea this afternoon
to buck me up for what lies ahead. Goodness! what a boon a jolly cousin
is when you happen to have been mated with your great-aunt for a
brother.”