It was a little over two years later that the crash came. There was
first a commonplace, sordid tale of bickering and quarrelling, with
passionate 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, 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 coarseness. 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, passionate assurances 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 passion 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 circumstances, 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
attitude, and merely waited for the sun to shine 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 repetition, 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 passing 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 friendship, 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
impressionable 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.
He tried to persuade her to make a friend of a certain Doris Hayward,
instead of Lorraine.
Doris’s brother had been Dudley’s great friend in the days when both
were articled to the same profession, but a terrible accident had later
lain him on an invalid couch for the rest of his life.
When clerk of the works of one of London’s great buildings, a heavy
crane had slipped and swung sideways, flinging him into the street
below. He was picked up and carried into the nearest hospital,
apparently dead, but he had presently come back, almost from the grave,
to drag out a weary life as an incurable on an invalid sofa.
Soon afterwards his father died, leaving Basil and his two sisters the
poor pittance of £50 a year between them.
Ethel, the elder, was already a Civil Service clerk at the General Post
Office, earning £110 a year, and on these two sums they had to subsist
as best they could.
Basil earned occasional guineas for copying work, when he was well
enough to stand the strain, and Doris remained at home with him in the
little Holloway flat, as nurse and housekeeper.
Dudley, with his usual lack of comprehension where women were
concerned, evolved what seemed to him an admirable plan, in which Hal
and Doris became great friends, thereby brightening poor Doris’s dull
existence, and weaning Hal from her allegiance to the unstatisfactory
Lorraine.
His plans, however, quickly met with the discouragement and downfall
inevitable from the beginning. At first he tried strategy, and Hal, in
a good-tempered, careless way, merely listened, while easily avoiding
any encounter.
Then Dudley went a step too far.
“I have to be out three evenings this week, so I asked Doris Hayward to
come and keep you company, as I thought you might be dull.”
“You asked Doris to come and keep _me_ company!” repeated Hal, quite
taken aback.
“Yes; why not? She is such a nice girl, and just your age. I can’t
think why you are not greater friends.”
“It’s pretty apparent,” with a little curl of her lips.
“We haven’t anything in common: that’s all.”
“But why haven’t you? You can’t possibly know if you never meet. She
seems such a far more sensible friend for you than Lorraine Vivian,”
with a shade of irritation.
“Probably that is exactly why I don’t want her friendship,” with a
light laugh.
“But you might try to be reasonable just once in a way. Try to be
friendly tomorrow evening.”
Hal, with her quick, light gracefulness, crossed to him, and playfully
gave him a little shake.
“Dudley, you dear old idiot. I don’t know about being reasonable, but I
can certainly be honest; and it’s honest I’m going to be now. I think
it is almost a slur on Lorraine to mention a little, silly,
dolly-faced, conceited creature like Doris in the same breath; and as
for being friendly to her tomorrow evening, that’s impossible, because
I shall not be here. I’m going to the Denisons, and I don’t intend to
postpone it. You will have to write and tell her I am engaged.”
Dudley’s mouth quickly assumed the rigidity which denoted he was
greatly displeased, and his voice was frigid as he replied:
“You are very injust to Doris. You scarcely know her, and yet you
condemn her offhand: the fault you are always finding in me. As for any
comparison between her and Miss Vivian, it is very certain she would
not sell herself to a man, and then run away from him because things
did not turn out as she wanted them.”
Hal turned away, with a slight shrug and a humorous expression as of
helplessness.
“We won’t argue, _mon frère_, because, since you always read books
instead of people, you are not very well up in the subject. To put it
both candidly and vulgarly, I haven’t any use for Doris Hayward at all.
Ethel I admire tremendously, though I don’t think she likes me; and
Basil is a saint straight out of heaven, suffering martyrdom for no
conceivable reason, but Doris is like a useless ornamental china
shepherdess, which ought to be put on a high shelf where it can’t get
itself nor any one else into trouble. I’m really dreadfully afraid if I
had to spend a whole evening alone with her, I should drop her and
break her to relieve my feelings.”
“Well, you needn’t worry”—moving coldly away. “I have far too much
respect for Doris to allow her to come here just to be criticised by
you. I will explain that you are unexpectedly engaged,” and he opened a
paper in a manner to close the conversation.
Hal made a little grimace at him behind it, and retired discreetly to
prepare for her daily sojourn in the City.
It happened, however, when, a year later, Lorraine came back to take up
her theatrical career again in England, there was some vague change in
her that made Dudley less severe in his criticisms. Trouble had not
hardened her, nor softened her, but it had made her a little less sure
of herself, and a little more willing to please.
Hitherto she had taken rather a pleasure in shocking Dudley, under the
impression that it would do him good and open his mind a little. Now
she had a greater respect for his sterling side, and could smile kindly
at his little foibles and fads. The result was that Dudley admitted, a
trifle grudgingly, she had changed for the better, and rather looked
forward to the occasional evenings she spent with Hal at their
Bloomsbury apartments.
He also had to admit that success had in no wise spoilt her, that it
probably never would. The year of absence, it was soon seen, had not
injured her reputation in the least. She came back to the stage renewed
and invigorated, and with still more of that depth of feeling and
atmosphere of soul which had so enriched her personations before.
She became, very speedily, without any question, one of the leading
actressess of the day; and the veil of mystery that hung over the
sudden termination of her short married life, if anything, enhanced her
charm to a mystery-loving public. And all the time, as Dudley could not
but see, she never changed to Hal.
From adulation and adoration, from triumphs that might easily turn any
head she always came quickly back to the little Bloomsbury sitting-room
when she could, to have one of their old gay gossips and merry laughs.
She seemed in some way to find a rest there that she could not get
elsewhere, in the company of people who expected her to live up to a
recognised standard of individuality.
And the change in Lorraine was a change for the better in Hal too, who
began now to tone down a little, and at the same time to strengthen and
deepen in character.
They were, in fact, a pair it was good to see and good to know. In the
first few years after the break-up of her home Lorraine was at her
handsomest. Her dark, thick hair had a gloss on it that in some lights
showed like a bronze glow, and she wore it in thick coils round her
small head, free from any exaggerated fashion, and yet with a
distinction all its own. Her dark eyes once more showed the roguish
lights of her schooldays, and her alluring red mouth twitched
mischievously when she was in a gay mood.
A little below the medium height, she was so perfectly built as to
escape any appearance of shortness, and carried herself so well, she
sometimes appeared almost tall.
Considering what her life had been, she looked strangely young for her
years, seeming to combine most alluringly the knowledge and sympathy of
a woman of thirty-five with the freshness and capacity for enjoyment of
twenty-five. The irrevocable tie so far had not clashed with any new
affection; her husband remained in America and made no sign; and her
art was all-sufficing.
Hal was built on quite different lines. Tall, and slender, and well
knit, she moved with the surging grace of the athlete, and looked out
upon the world with a joyfulness and humorous kindliness that won her
friends everywhere. She was not beautiful in any sense that could be
compared with Lorraine, but she had pretty brown hair, and fine eyes,
and a clear, warm skin that made up for other defects, and helped to
produce a very attractive whole.
Lorraine had taught her how to dress—an art of far deeper significance
than many women trouble to realise; and wherever Hal went, if she did
not create a sensation, at least she carried a distinction and
pleasingness that were rarely overlooked. Her daily sojourn in the
City, among the bread-winners, had made her large-hearted and
generously tolerant, without hurting in any degree her own innate
womanliness and charm.
She showed in her every gesture and action how it was possible to be of
those who must scramble for buses, and press for trams, and live daily
in the midst of panting, struggling, working, grasping humans, without
losing tone, or gentleness, or a radiant, fearless spritit.
At the office of the newspaper where she filled the post of secretary
and typist, she was a sort of cheerful institution to smooth worried
faces and call up a smile amidst the irritability and frowns.
Blunderers went to her with their troubles, and felt fairly secure if
she would break the news of the blunder or mistake to the irritable and
awe-inspiring chief. He, in his turn, would be irritable before her,
but never with her; and it was a recognised fact among the staff that
she was almost the only one who could make him laugh.
Thus a few intervening years passed happily enough, briging Lorraine to
her thirty-first birthday and Hal to her twenty-fifth, without any
further upheavals to strike a discordant note across the daily round,
except such inevitable trials as Lorraine continued to meet through her
mother, and Hal through her devotion to a non-comprehending brother.
Only, while they had each other and their work, such difficulties were
not hard to cope with; and life sang a gayer, happier song to them than
she usually sings to the mere pleasure-seekers.
For work in a wide interesting sphere is a priceless boon, and the men
who would condemn women solely to pleasure-seeking and the four walls
of their home are showing the very acme of selfishness, in that they
are endeavouring to keep solely and entirely for themselves one of the
best things life has to give.