Lorraine had not the smallest idea of what was coming upon her. She
knew perfectly well herself that it would be most unwise for a rising
young barrister to get talked about with an actress known to have a
husband living, and it had made her a great deal more cautious than she
would otherwise have bothered to be.
Moreover, Alymer, seeing nothing to gain by making known his mother’s
fears, preferred not to annoy her with any account of them. To say that
he was wholly unaffected by it, however, would be to say too much. He
was, indeed, exceedingly and bitterly annoyed with his interfering
aunt, who had obviously tried to make trouble for some petty motive of
jealousy. He only hoped that his mother would take her line from him
and his father, and maintain a dignified front, unmoved by his aunt’s
tale-bearing gossip.
He was slightly affected in another way also. It was almost the first
time he had seriously considered what the world might say if their
great friendship was known. He knew it well enough to believe it would
be in haste to put the worst construction on it, though their own
immediate friends might stand by them loyally.
It caused him to consider that construction in a light he had hitherto
been protected from by circumstances, for it thrust forward an aspect
they had successfully kept in the background. It made him ask the
question, What was he prepared to do if his aunt continued her
persecution, and some sort of change had to be made in the friendly,
delightful intercourse?
He wondered a good deal what Lorraine’s own attitude would be. Would
she, perhaps, now that she had given him his start, cut all the
friendship off for his good, and return to her old friends and
admirers? He shrank from the contemplation of such a solution
undisguisedly, and meant to continue their pleasant relations if
possible.
He certainly wished no change whatever, if it could be avoided.
Lorraine meant everything to him just then, and he could not but know
how much his companionship and affection had come to mean to her.
So the next day he paid his customary visit, and talked as usual of
many things, but said no word of what had passed the previous night.
Lorraine’s room was full of violets and snowdrops, cushions of them on
every side, in lovely array. He moved about looking at them, and she
watched him from a low chair by the fire, clad in some new spring gown
of an exquisite mauve shade, that seemed to tone with the
violet-bedecked room.
It gave her dark eyes something of a violet tint, and her hands looked
as white and delicate as the snowdrops. Moving about from mass of
blossoms, Alymer, glancing at her, thought she looked younger and
lovelier than ever.
“You have a spring air about you,” he said, “and all the room seems
full of spring. There is something about it all I like better than the
lilies and roses and malmaisons usually making a display.”
“I sent them all to the dining-room,” she told him. “Every spring is
such a beautiful new thing, it has to be allowed to reign supreme for a
little while in here. It gives me rather an ache to see them, all the
same”—after a pause—“they make me dream of the smell of the new
woodland, that delicious, damp, earthy smell of spring, and all the
young, joyful bursting of buds and springing of seeds and the mating
birds, and the showers that make the leaves glisten. I feel as if I
should like to tramp out across the country in such a shower, and get
healthily wet, and be a real bit of the spring for just one week.”
“Why don’t you go? You are not looking very well, and the country air
would probably do you no end of good.”
“I don’t want to go alone, and I do not know who I could take. Hal is
not able to leave, and mother would merely be bored to tears, and Flip
Denton is at Monte Carlo. There is no one really but you and Hal and
Flip who would fit in with my spring mood. Any one else would strike a
discordant note.”
“I wish I could come.”
The wish escaped him almost involuntarily, as, with the sight of the
spring flowers and the spring scent in his nostrils, he too felt the
call of the fresh, wild, vigorous things in his blood.
Lorraine looked at him with a curious expression on her face. Why, she
wondered, did he not seriously contemplate coming? Why did he so
steadily pursue, as far as she was concerned, his serene and
passionless path? She believed he cared more for her than for any one
else; and, if so, was it possible the ache sometimes in her heart for a
closer bond and resolutely strangled, had no counterpart in his hot,
vigorous youth?
Then he looked suddenly into her eyes, as if to see whether she had
heard his wish, and what she thought of it. And as their gaze met, she
saw the blood mantle to his face, and a half-shamed expression creep
into it, as if he had been discovered in a thought that should never
have been permitted.
He looked away again to the flowers, and Lorraine turned her eyes to
the fire, with a swift wonder in her mind. She felt that something had
transpired since they last parted—something she did not know of, and
that was entirely different to anything that had crossed their path
before. Some new thought had been put into his mind. Something that
made him give her that half-shy, half-wondering look.
She gazed hard at the fire, and her pulses began to beat a little
fitfully. She knew instinctively that something had come suddenly into
being between them, which neither might name, and which was the oldest
thing in the world.
And then across her mind, as once before, swept with swift pitilessness
a vision of what might have been; of what life might have held for her
had she been among the blessed—an aching, tearing longing for a
youthful hour she had irretrievably missed. She drew her hand across
her eyes, ignoring his presence, shutting him out, seeing only the
heavenly joy she had missed.
Supposing such a moment had come to her with such a man, when she, like
him, was in the first flush of youth and beauty; of dreams and hopes,
and rich believing. What a knight for a lovely maid! What a lover to
dream of bashfully and fearfully; and with all her soul one thought of
him.
From her vantage ground of much doing and much knowing, she looked back
yearningly to the bloom and springtide of life, when all splendid
things are possible, and any day may bring the splendid knight.
And instead had come... ah, what?
Well! For her it had been the wolf in sheep’s clothing, who, beside all
he had robbed her of, had taken all her chance of the one great
awakening to blinding joy. Now she could only look upon the joy from
afar, seeing a barrier of fateful years, and, like a drawn sword at the
gate of her dream, the stern, unyielding decree that has echoed
unchanged down the long centuries: “Thou shalt not—”
Alymer was silent too, standing with the thoughtful expression on his
face that was so attractive, probing a little nervously into that wish
he had expressed, and wondering a little uncertainly just what it
meant.
Then Lorraine got up.
“You are grave, _mon ami_; and it is the springtime. Grave thoughts are
for the autumn of life—recklessness better becomes the joyful spring.”
“Are you ever reckless nowadays?” he asked, watching her graceful
movements as she bent down and buried her face in a cushion of violets.
“I am when I smell violets. They may be modest and retiring little
flowers, but they hold spring rapture and spring lavishness and spring
desiring in their scent all the same.”
“Then you are reckless now?”
What was it made him dally thus upon dangerous ground? What was it made
him speak to Lorraine as he had never spoken before, on the very day
after his mother’s admonition? Why did his immense height and strength
and the young vigour in his blood suddenly blot out the years that lay
between them, and sweep into his soul, the knowledge of his masculinity
and might, which of its own nature possessively dominated her
femininity?
They seemed all at once to have strayed into an atmosphere, born of
that warning admonition, and of their talk, of the reckless, creative
spring; and because, in spite of his youth, he was very much a man, and
she was a dangerously attractive woman, his pulses leapt fitfully and
eagerly with the swift ache that has existed ever since God made man
and woman.
Without looking up, Lorraine felt this. The very air about them seemed
charged with it, and she too, under some spell of springtime, moved
into closer proximity to the splendid knight. She brushed against his
arm unconsciously; and looking down on the top of her dark head, he
said half-shyly:
“You somehow seem such a little thing today, Lorraine, I feel as if I
could pick you up, as one does a small child.”
“Please don’t,” with a low laugh—“just think of my dignity.”
“But you are not dignified today. You seem as young and light-hearted
as the springtime. I feel as if I must be years older than you.”
She raised her face suddenly, with yearning eyes:
“Oh, let us emulate the spring this once—let us both be young and
foolish and real, and pretend there isn’t any one else in the world.”
For one second he looked at her with wondering incredulity, then, with
a tender little laugh he suddenly bent down and folded his arms round
her till she seemed to vanish altogether into his embrace, and kissed
her on the lips.
“The scent of violets has intoxicated us,” he said, and kissed her
again.
Then he gently pushed her into her big, deep chair.
“I’m going now. I only ran in to see how you were after that bad
headache. You must bring the lilies and malmaisons back tomorrow, or I
shall be offending so grievously you will forbid me the flat.
Good-bye!” And without another word he went away out of the room.
Lorraine sat quite still, and let the spell wrap her round for the
precious moments that she could yet hold it. Of course it could not
stay. In an hour at most she would be her old, brain-weary self again,
with the best of her youth behind her; while he was still there on the
threshold, young and strong and free. But even this one short hour was
good. Life had not given her many such. She would fence it round with
silence, and solitude, and the scent of violets.
Alymer went out into the streets wondering at himself vaguely, and yet
with a pleasant glow of memory. He felt it bewildering that Lorraine
Vivian, whose favours were so eagerly sought by men, should have
allowed him to kiss her.
It seemed something apart altogether from her generous friendship and
helpful influence. It made him pleased with himself, and filled his
mind with a yet greater tenderness to her. He knew so much now of her
early difficulties and following troubles—of the frivolous,
unprincipled mother, and the long, uphill fight. She had honoured him
with her confidence in spite of his youth, and now—
He quickened his steps, and his pulses leapt yet more fitfully. Spring
was in the air and in his blood, and one of the recognised beauties of
London had been gracious to him beyond all dreaming.
It was enough for the present hour. Why ask any inconvenient questions
and spoil it all? Let the future look after itself.
Only one thought for a moment cast a little shadow upon his ardour. It
crossed his mind, for no accountable reason, to wonder what Hal would
think. He was a little afraid she would strongly disapprove.
But, after all, if she did, what matter? He owed nothing to Hal, and
there was no reason why her views should disturb him in the least. Of
course it did not… and yet… Hal’s good opinion was a thing worth
having; and, in short, he hoped she would not know.
It was not that she was straight-laced. She was too near the heart of
humanity through her daily toil to be other than a generous judge; but
she was also a creature of ideals for herself and for those who would
be among her best friends; and she would have known unerringly that no
great, consuming love had drowned his reason and filled his senses.
It was for that she would have judged him; and for that he would have
stood before her direct gaze ashamed. One might be gay and
irresponsible and merry, but there were just one or two things which
must not be allowed in that category. Instinctively, he knew that in
Hal’s view he would have transgressed—not because he felt too much, but
because he felt too little to be justified.
But why need she know? Why need any one know? He did not think his
mother would follow up any further the story she had been told, and he
would see his aunt about it personally. It was better to have it out
with her, lest she took upon herself to interview Lorraine, and make
more trouble still.
He ran up the stairs to the flat, two steps at a time; and scrambled to
get changed for the dinner to which he was going, still feeling a
pulsing thrill that, among all men, he was Lorraine Vivian’s chosen
friend.
In another flat—a bachelor one in Ryder Street—an elderly beau,
likewise dressed for a dinner-party, though with the utmost care and
precision, instead of a scramble. And to himself he said, as he took a
long, last look at the image he loved:
“I must go tomorrow morning and settle this little matter about Alymer.
No doubt Lorraine will be amazed to see how well-preserved I am. She
cannot have any real feeling for such a boy, and, after all, a
good-looking man of the world—”
He smiled to himself as over a thought that pleased him, and rang for
his servant to go out and hail a taxi.