What Lorraine exactly meant by full armour she did not quite know, but
it might very well have been taken to mean the shining armour of her
own best loveliness. Certainly after no small consideration she chose
what she believed to be her most becoming gown, and she was unusually
critical about the dressing of her hair.
All the same, at 7.45 she was ready, and her cavalier had not yet
arrived. She waited five minutes until he came, and then it was
necessary to wait another five minutes that he might not know she had
been more up to time than he. Then she entered the drawing-room in a
little bit of a hurry, and cut short his simple, direct apologies by
regretting her own tardiness, and saying she had been out motoring
until late.
But she had time to note quickly that he also had dressed himself with
special care, plastering down resolutely the unruly determination of
his fair hair to curl. That was good. Any suggestion of a curl must
have produced an effect of effeminacy, whereas that neat, plastered
wave showed the shapeliness of his head, and gave him a touch of manly
decision. Her electric brougham was at the door, but she kept it
waiting a few minutes, that they might be later than the majority of
diners, and pass up a well-filled room.
In the end their arrival was equal to her best expectations. She led
the way slowly, with a queenly grace that was one of her best
attributes; but as she nodded casually to an acquaintance here and
there, she had plenty of time to observe the curious eyes from all
around, looking with undisguised admiration, not so much at her
faultless appearance, which was more or less known, but at her striking
cavalier.
She had engaged a small table at one of the top corners and arranged
the seats sideways, so that both could look over the room if they
wanted to, and at the same time be easily seen by others. She did this
because it amused her to see people gazing at him, and to watch his
quiet self-possession. She almost wondered if he even realised how much
attention he attracted, but perceived that he could hardly help doing
so, though he took it all with so simple and unabashed an air.
She watched also to see if, as most of the strikingly handsome men she
had known, he courted tell-tale glances from other eyes, and sipped
honey from any flower within reach, as well as from his own particular
flower. And when she found that his absolute and undivided attention
was given to her, and that all the power of entertaining he could
muster was called into her service, she felt a glow of gratitude to him
that he had not disappointed her, but proved himself the simple,
high-bred gentleman she longed to find him.
It made her show herself to him at her very best. Not showily witty,
nor callously gay, nor fashionably original, but just her own self of
light humour and dainty speech and kindly sympathy, the true, best self
that held Hal’s unswerving devotion through good account and ill.
Unconsciously she left the time-worn paths of beauty and success, and
became young, and fresh, and whole-hearted as he; tackling abstruse
problems with a childlike, vigorous air; holding him spell-bound with
her own charm of conversation one moment, and leading him on to talk
with ease and frankness the next.
The other diners got up and retired to the lounge, and still they sat
on; no hint of boredom, no note of disparity, no need of other
companionship. As they were preparing to rise, she told him lightly
that he talked amazingly well for his tender years.
“Only twenty-four,” he answered; “it does seem a kiddish age, doesn’t
it!”
“Dreadfully kiddish. It makes me feel old enough to be your
grandmother.”
He glanced up, half-questioning, half-deprecating.
“That would be the oddest thing of all, unless I really appear to be
about twenty years before my time.”
For a reason she could not have fathomed, she looked into his eyes with
a sudden seriousness and said:
“I was thirty-two last week.”
She saw a quick look of surprise he did not attempt to hide, followed
by a very charming smile, as he asserted:
“It is impossible. You could not sit there and look like that if you
were thirty-two.”
“The impossible is so often the true. I’m glad you don’t think I seem
old. It is nice to believe one can keep young at heart, in spite of the
years. Shall we go to the lounge?”
Again they moved through the admiring crowd, but this time Lorraine
felt less idle interest and more inward wonder; and without any
misgiving she steered to a quiet alcove, where they could talk without
again being the cynosure of many eyes.
Here, in a pleasant, friendly way, she led him once again to talk of
the future, and was glad to find, in answering sincerity with
sincerity, he was ready to admit that he was a little sorry about his
own lack of ambition and want of application. He did not pretend now
that it was of no moment. He told her he would like to achieve, only
somehow he always found his attention wander to other things, and his
desire grow slack after a week of rigid application.
She recognised that the motive-power was missing, and that unless
something deeper than mere desire of achievement stirred him, he would
probably never attain. He needed a goal that should make everything
else in the world pale before it, and something that seemed almost as
life and death to hang on his success. But how get it for him? If he
loved, and was bidden wait until he had prospered, the end was all too
sure and the love too easy.
It was something different that was needed; something that would bring
him up with dead abruptness against a blank wall, and leave him with a
taste of life that was dust and ashes unless he found a way through.
Either that or some sweet, wild, unattainable desire, that might drive
him to work and ambition by way of escape.
And there again, where should he encounter such a desire? One had only
to look into his calm, fine face to feel that the unattainable in the
form of love, barred by marriage vows as lightly made as broken, would
never stir the depths of his heart, nor appeal to his real self in any
way whatever.
He would not love such a woman, however for a time she might fascinate
him; and afterwards there would only be the nausea and the memory that
was like an unpleasant taste. Such a woman might teach him many things
it is no harm for a man to know; but she would never call to the best
in him, nor help him to realise himself.
“Have you seen your friend the duchess lately?” she asked, with a
disarming smile, not wishing to appear merely curious.
“Yes; I saw her on Friday, at a ball. She was in great form.”
“You danced with her?”
“Yes. She’s not a good dancer.”
“Then you only had one, I suppose?”
“No, three.” He smiled a little. “We sat out two.”
“You ought to have felt highly honoured.”
“Oh, I don’t know. She is very amusing. A very funny thing happened
last week. Out of sheer devilry, she and a friend and two men went to
the Covent Garden Fancy Dress Ball, disguised of course, and just for
an hour or two. To their horror, after the procession, the friend was
handed a large glass-and-silver salad bowl, as a prize for being the
best ‘twostep’ dancer in the room. Of course she had to go off with the
beastly thing; but she was so proud of winning it, she couldn’t resist
giving their escapade away, and it got round everywhere.”
“I wonder if our escapade with Lady Bounce is out yet? I haven’t seen
Hal since Thursday.”
“Oh yes, it is,” eagerly; “the duchess had heard about it. She was
pumping me to know who was in the joke. We are longing to see Quin and
hear the latest, but he is down east.”
“What an oddity he is!” thoughtfully. “I liked him so much: but it is
difficult to reconcile him with slumming.”
“He’s one of the best. Every one loves him. And he does his slumming in
quite a way of his own. I’ve been with him sometimes, and he just goes
among the rough characters down there as if he hated being a swell and
wanted to be one of them. He positively asks them for sympathy, and of
course it takes their fancy and he is friends with them all.”
“I think you are a remarkable trio altogether. Hal’s cousin Dick is
just as original in his way as St. Quintin. And you, of course, are
somehow different to the majority. I wonder how you will each end? St.
Quintin will perhaps become a bishop. Dick Bruce will write an
astounding, weird novel, and bound into fame. And you? …”
He flushed a little. “I shall be left far behind by both of them,
futilely wishing to catch up.”
“I hope not. Your chance is just as good as theirs, if you choose to
make it so,”
“I fail to see that I have any chance at all.”
“Most chances rest chiefly with ourselves. It’s a great thing to be
ready for them if they come. I hope you’ll be that.”
“I hope so too, but it would be easier if one were more sure they were
coming,” and he laughed with a lightness that jarred a little.
She rose to go, as it was getting late, feeling slightly disappointed
in some vague way; and when they parted she noticed that his handshake
was slightly limp, as of one who would not grasp life tightly enough to
compel it to surrender its good things to him.
But in her own sanctum she rallied herself, and hardened her heart,
asking what had it to do with her after all, and how could his success
or non-success in any way concern her.
Doubtless in the end he would share the fate of the great majority and
attain only mediocrity; having missed that one great blinding shaft of
pain or joy that might have stabbed him into tense, pulsing life, and
spurred him up the heights of fame and glory.
She let her evening-cloak slide to a chair, turning to glance at a
calling card on the table, with a renewal of the old, callous, cynical
air. The practical force of Flip Denton’s conversation was making
itself felt. Of course it was an absurdity for her to imagine herself
in love with a youth of twenty-four—almost the dullest of all ages—be
he never so good to look at. She might very well keep a motherly eye on
him, and show him a side of life he might perhaps not see otherwise,
but it must end there.
No doubt a certain novelty had made the evening unusually pleasant:
after two or three more they would certainly pall, and then she would
go back to her old chums; the men of the world who had paid their
footing and won their experience, and come through, careless enough
devils at best in their own phraseology, but non the worse for a fall
or two, and a win or two, and a self-taught hardihood for most things
life was likely any more to send.
She smiled a little as she remembered how calmly he had thanked her and
said good-night. Of a surety he took his fruits quietly and
unconcernedly enough. She wondered if he were secretly in love with
some pink-and-white débutante, who flushed and smiled when he spoke,
and gazed up at him with fond, adoring eyes. It was likely enough.
No doubt he would tell her all about it soon, as a very young man tells
a favourite sister, or a jolly, not too elderly aunt. She rather hoped
he would. It would be an anti-climax humorous enough to cure her all in
a moment of seeming anything to him other than that jolly, not too
elderly aunt. Then she would invite Flip to dinner, and they would be
gay together—she could imagine the tone in which he would call her
“aunty”—and her folly would fall from her like an outgrown chrysalis,
leaving her sane, and cynical, and wordly, and whole again.
The train of thought pleased her, and soothed in some way an
indefinable rasping sense of the general futility of all feeling and
all striving. Surely she, with her young-old heart, her world-worn
memories, and her youth that never was, should know that worldly-wise
dictum full well.
Of course she kew it.
The things that mattered were beauty and brilliance and success; and
these she had in good measure, brimming over. Her mood made her cross
suddenly to the many-sided mirror, and switch on a blaze of light that
would brook no feigning.
In its searching gleams she looked at herself with clear, fearless
eyes. Yes; it was all there still, untouched and unimpaired by those
thirty-two years: the colouring, the skin, the rounded, supple
figure—all the things for which men loved her and the world gave her
fame.
She gave herself a little mocking salute, and then turned away to hurry
into her pretty, cosy bed.
But what the blaze of light had not seen the mothering darkness hid
tenderly. Two bright tear-drops, filling tired eyes that had tried so
often to fool themselves into blind and callous content.