When Hal first saw her old friend she was almost too shocked for words
at the swift change in her. Lorraine tried hard to smile cheerfully,
but she could not hide any longer from herself how seriously ill she
had grown, and she felt it useless to try and hide it from Hal.
Jean had not told her of the letter, and she knew nothing of Hal’s
coming until she was actually in the house. When she saw her, she could
have cried for gladness.
“How good of you, Hal… how good of you!” she breathed, and Hal, on her
knees by the couch, in an unsteady voice replied:
“Oh, why didn’t you send for me sooner? Why didn’t you let me come here
instead of going to Norway?”
An hour later she went out to the little post office, and wired to
London to know if she might remain away for a week.
It was evident Lorraine was very ill indeed and needing the utmost
care.
During the day she seemed to grow steadily worse, and she could not
bear Hal out of her sight.
“I don’t know whether you are shocked or not,” she said to her once,
“but if everything goes all right I shall not regret what I have done
for one moment. I wanted something more real for the rest of my life
than I have had in its beginning.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I
wanted his child to live for.”
With a caressing hand on the sick woman’s, Hal asked in a low voice:
“Why isn’t he here taking care of you now? Where is your child’s
father?”
A swift surprise passed through Lorraine’s eyes, as if it had not
occured to her Hal would not know the truth. Then she said, very
softly, “Alymer.”
“Ah!”
The exclamation seemed wrung from Hal unconsciously, and after it her
lips grew strangely rigid.
“Hal,” Lorraine said weakly, “I’ve loved Alymer almost ever since I
first saw him. I swore I would not harm his career, and I have not. I
will not in future. But the child is his, and I thank God for it. I do
not believe an illegitimate child with a devoted mother is any worse
off than the legitimate child with a selfish, unloving one. That there
is love enough matters the most. What can any child have better than a
life’s devotion?”
Later on she said:
“This is his great week, Hal. In his last letter he tells me his big
chance has come at last through Sir Philip Hall. We always hoped it
would. It is the big libel case, and if Sir Philip chooses he can let
him take a very prominent part. He will, I am sure of it. He is very
interested in him, and he has given him this chance on purpose. Flip
thinks it will lead to a great deal; and of course if so it is splendid
for him.”
Hal said very little. She was overcome at the revelation Lorraine had
made, and seemed quite unable to grasp it.
Meanwhile she waited fearfully for the crisis the doctor had told her
was impending. She was expecting him to call again, and was relieved
when at last he arrived bringing a pleasant-faced French nurse with
him.
She relinquished her post then, and waited for him anxiously
downstairs. When he came he told her he must have another opinion at
once, and Hal knew that something serious was wrong, and that he feared
the worst.
The next morning, when she saw Lorraine again, she understood that they
had saved her life, but probably only for a few days at the most.
Lorraine was almost too weak to speak, but she looked into Hal’s eyes,
and in her own there was a dumb imploring. Hal leant down and murmured:
“What is it, Lorry?… Do you want Alymer?”
“Yes,” was the faint whisper. “I feel it is the end. I want so much to
see him once more.”
“I will go to London myself, and fetch him,” Hal said, and a look of
rest crept into the dying woman’s eyes.
So it happened that the day before the great libel case Hal stood in
Hermon’s chambers, and delivered her message.
It was a tense moment—a moment of warring instincts, warring
inclinations, conflicting fates. It was surely the very irony of
ironies, that within sight of his goal, with all this woman had
manoeuvred to give him almost in his hands, she should be the one to
step suddenly between him and the realisation of everything his life
had striven for.
To fail Sir Philip Hall at the eleventh hour, under such circumstance,
could only mean an irreparable disaster. He would lose, as far as his
profession was concerned, in every single way. It would strike a blow
at his progress, from which it might never wholly recover.
No wonder, confronted with the sudden demand life had flung at him, he
stood stock still, with rigid face, almost overcome by the swift
sword-thrust of fate, and made no reply.
Since Hal told him, in a few, rather abrupt words, her story, he had
scarcely looked at her. When she first entered his room so
unexpectedly, his eyes had searched her face as if he would read
instantly what she had come for?… what she had learnt?… Before hers,
his gaze fell.
“I have come from Lorraine,” she said, and he understood that she knew
all.
A dull red crept over his face and neck, and then died away, leaving
him of an ashy paleness. He was standing by his desk, and he reached
out one hand and rested it on some books, gripping the backs of them
with a grip that made his knuckles stand out like white knots. He did
not ask Hal to sit down. Commonplace amenities died in the stress of
the moment.
She stood in the middle of the room, very straight and very still. In a
close-fitting travelling-dress she looked unusually slim, almost
boyish, and something about her attitude rather suggested a youthful
knight, sword in hand, come with vengeance to the Transgressor. Yet,
even in his shame and stunned perplexity, Hermon lost no shred of
dignity.
He towered above her, with bend head, rigid, white face, grave,
downcast eyes, and in spite of every reproach her attitude seemed to
hurl at him, he yet wore the look of nobility that was his birthright.
“When do you think I should go?” he asked at last, with difficulty.
“We ought to cross tonight.”
“Tonight!—I—I—have a very important case tomorrow. It will not last
long. It matters a great deal.”
“I know,” was the short, uncompromising answer.
He looked up with a swift glance of inquiry. Then he said quietly:
“Do you know that it may wreck my future to leave London tonight?”
“Yes,” said Hal. “I know.”
“And after all Lorraine did not help me to this hour of success, am I
to throw away my chance?”
“Lorraine is dying. Her dying wish is to see you once more. Is it
necessary to discuss anything else?”
Again there was silence between them—silence so intense, so poignant,
it was like a live thing present in the room. Through the double
windows came a far-off, muffled sound of the traffic in the Strand, but
it seemed to have nothing whatever to do with the life of that quiet
room. It did not disturb the silence, in which one could almost hear
pulse beats. It belonged to another world.
Once Alymer raised his head and looked hard into her face. In his eyes
there was an expression of utter hopelessness. She had not spoken any
word of reproach or scorn, yet everything about her as she stood there
erect and passionless, and without one grain of sympathy for his
struggle, told him that, just as far as her natural broadness allowed
her to condemn any one, she condemned him.
For a moment a sort of savage recklessness seized him. He felt suddenly
he was stranded high-and-dry on a barren rock, with nothing at all any
more in his world but his profession. He had lost all hope of ever
winning Hal, which seemed to be all hope of anything worth having.
Nothing remained but the hollow interest of a great name, and the lust
of power. He had it in his mind for those brief, passionate moments,
because he had lost all else, to insist upon taking his chance.
Even one day’s grace might save him. The trial would perhaps last not
more than two, but in any case, a wire reaching him in the middle,
which he could show to Sir Philip, might mean all the difference
between success and failure. The wire could be worded to hide what was
truly involved, and the plea of a life-and-death urgency would set him
free without any awkward questioning.
He glanced up to speak, and once again Hal’s attitude arrested him. She
looked so young, so fresh, so true, so vaguely splendid, in spite of
the rigid lips that seemed to have closed down tightly upon all she
must have suffered in the last forty-eight hours.
She was not looking at him now, but, with her head thrown back a
little, she gazed silently and fatefully at the clock on his
mantelpiece.
And something about her called to him, with the calling of the great,
mysterious things, a calling that shamed and scorned that spirit of
savage recklessness; that swift, relentless lust of power.
“What is anything in the world,” it seemed to cry, “compared to being
true to one’s friend; true to one’s word; true to one’s love?”
He saw suddenly that in any case success and triumph would bring him
little enough to gladden his heart; that whichever way he turned was
gloom and darkness; that in that gloom a possible ray of light might
still linger, if he could keep always the consciousness that, at the
most critical hour of his life, he had rung true.
He raised his eyes suddenly, and straightened himself.
“What time does the next train leave?” he said. “I am coming.”