It was not difficult for Alymer to persuade himself that a little
diplomacy on his part would probably assuage his aunt’s wish to upset
his friendship, and incidentally allay his mother’s fears; but, as it
happened no one having his welfare so exceedingly at heart over this
matter with the actress was in any degree as amenable or as quietly
pacified as he imagined.
Another interview took place between his mother and his aunt, in which
the latter advised writing to Miss Vivian direct to tell her what his
father and mother thought of the friendship, and that an uncle of his
would call upon her at once.
To say that the letter was an insult is to put it mildly, though at the
same time it was not so much through intention as ignorance.
Lorraine read it with silent amazement, and thought the writer must be
mad. It seemed quite incredible that any lady in the twentieth century
should apparently be so ignorant concerning the status of a celebrated
actress. It was evidently taken for granted that she was an adventuress
of the worst type.
She was naturally somewhat angry and indignant, but decided it was not
worth while to take any notice, and merely awaited with some curiosity
the visit of the uncle who was to expostulate with her, and,
practically, offer her terms.
He came at about twelve o’clock, and he did not give his name, merely
asking to see Miss Vivian on a matter of business.
Lorraine dressed with special care, and looked her best when she
quietly entered the drawing-room. She gave an order to her maid with
the door half opened, in the most casual and imperturbed of voices,
then she came slowly in, closed the door behind her, and advanced
towards the figure standing on the hearth.
When she had taken two steps she stood still suddenly, and in a voice
that was rasping and harsh, exclaimed:
“_You_!—” Alymer’s uncle squared his shoulders, stroked his white
moustache with a gallant air, and replied:
“Yes—er—Lorraine. We meet again, you see. I may say—er—I am very glad
indeed that it is so,” and he advanced a step with outstretched hand.
But Lorraine was rooted to the spot where she stood, and a sudden,
sharp fierceness seemed to burn in her eyes.
“Have—_you_—come—about—Alymer—Hermon?” she asked in slow, cutting
tones, as if each word was hammered out of a seething whirlpool of
suppressed emotions.
“Alymer is my nephew, and his mother asked me to come and—er—talk to
you about him. She is a good deal perturbed on his behalf—er—because—”
“I do not want to know any more than I am able to gather from the
extraordinary epistle I received from her this morning. What I should
like to know is, did you agree to come here on this errand, knowing who
I was?”
The faded blue eyes of the carefully dressed old roué began to look
uncomfortably from one object to another; anywhere, indeed, but into
those scorching orbs, with their suppressed fires.
Then he took his courage in his hands, and tried again.
“My dear Lorraine, you seem to be taking rather a theatrical view of a
very commonplace matter. Of course it is bad for the boy to get mixed
up in a scandal, just at the beginning of his career, or, for the
matter of that, talked about with a celebrated actress whose husband is
known to be living somewhere. I have come to you as a man of the world,
to ask you as a woman of the world to be generous in the matter, and
help me to set the minds of his parents at rest at once—”
“Ah! It was as a man of the world you came to me before; but then
I—I”—she gave a low, unpleasant laugh—“I wasn’t a woman of the world,
you see, until you had taught me, and left me.”
He did not quite know what the laugh meant, but now his old eyes were
roaming over the beauty that was yet hers, and memory was stirring, and
something made him reckless.
“Don’t speak of it like that,” he pleaded drawing a little nearer. “I
know I didn’t perhaps treat you quite well; but if there are any amends
I can make now?—If you will let us be friends again?—”
“Amends—amends. What do I want with amends from such as you?” And her
eyes flashed dangerously. He retreated quickly, with a hurt, rather
cowed expression.
“Well, Fate has thrown us together again and I am still a bachelor—and
I have money—”
“Do please try not to insult me any further.”
Lorraine had grown calmer, though the dangerous look was still in her
eyes, and she moved away to the window, leaving a large space 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 threshold 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 he 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, shining river. And suddenly it was as though all her soul rose
up in arms. She felt with swift passion 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 just 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 to 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
attitude, 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 friendship 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 misunderstood 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 today 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 friendship 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. Today, 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 passed through the little hall,
“Will you open the door for this gentleman?”
In her own room, she slid down into a large cushioned chair and sobbed
her heart out.