It was force of habit chiefly that caused Lorraine, as a rule, to sleep long and late on Sunday mornings; and it was greatly to her advantage that for so many months, and even years, no mental anxiety had robbed her of a splendid capacity to rest. She seemed to have a faculty for limiting her worrying hours to the daylight, and being able to lay them aside, like her correspondence, at night.
Yet on the fol owing Sunday morning she found herself early awake, with a brain only too ready to begin probing restlessly, and having little of the calm friendliness she intended it should have towards her guest of the evening.
To add to her unrest, her mother paid her an early visit, of a sort that had been growing too frequent of late. It was not enough that Lorraine paid her rent, and gave her a handsome allowance; when there chanced to be no one else to pay her debts, these came upon Lorraine's shoulders also.
T-day it was a long, rambling tale of a hard-hearted dressmaker who, having had a new frock back for alteration, had taken upon herself to return the skirt, without the bodice, with an intimation that she was retaining the delayed portion until her long account was settled.
Hence Mrs. Vivian found herself with what she cal ed a most important engagement, without the equally important new frock to go in.
Lorraine lay under the bedclothes, with only her head showing, and watched her a little coldly, as she moved restlessly about the room airing her woes. She had promised Madame Luce, over and over again, to settle in a week or two; and who would have believed the odious woman would serve her such a trick?
Never again, if she had to go naked, would she order a garment from her of any description whatever. And the friends she had sent to her as customers! Why, half the woman's trade was owing to her introduction.
"Perhaps the friends don't pay their bil s," Lorraine suggested in a tired voice.
Mrs. Vivian drew herself up a little haughtily.
"I do not think there is any occasion to cast reflections on my friends, even if you do not choose to be sociable to them," which remark was intended as a dignified hit at Lorraine's invincible determination to maintain friendly relations with her mother, without having anything whatever to do with her mother's friends.
As many previous hits, it fel quite harmlessly; it was doubtful if Lorraine even heard it, half hidden there in the bedclothes with her tired eyes.
"I suppose it isn't any use reminding you that your personal expenditure exceeds mine?" she hinted, "and that you have already far overstepped the al owance we stipulated?"
"You do not have time to go about as much as I do, and it makes a great difference not having hosts of friends."
"You don't seem to get much pleasure out of them," Lorraine could not resist saying, knowing as she did how much of her salary went into the pockets of these so-cal ed friends, in order to buy their adherence.
"Do I get much pleasure out of anything?" irritably. "My only child is one of the first actresses in London, and what is it to me? Do I have the pleasure of going abouth with her? or living with her? or taking any part in her success?"
"I suppose it isn't such a smal thing to live by her. If I were not successful, we could certainly not live here. It might have been Islington and omnibuses," and she smiled.
"As if that were al . Probably, as real companions we might have been even happier in Islington."
Lorraine stiffened. "Companions!... Ah, I, with whom else ever dancing attendance, and changing in identity every few months?"
But she made no comment, for the days of her hot-headed, deep-hearted judging were over; and from behind inscrutable eyes she looked upon the things that one sees without seeming to see them, and accepted facts that hurt her very soul, with a callous, cynical air that defied the keenest shafts of probing.
It was her armour in an envious, merciless world, that would have rejoiced before her eyes if it could have driven in a barbed arrow even through her mother.
More than once a jealous enemy had tried and failed, routed utterly by Lorraine's cynical, cool treatment of a fact that she knew no persuasion nor arguing could have helped her to refute. She did not even weep about it now in secret.
It was as though she had shed all the tears she had to shed during that year of utter revulsion spent in the Italian Riviera, companied by the passionless solitudes of snowtopped mountains. Something of a great patience and a great gentleness had come to her then, helping her to hide the loathing she could not crush, and place the fact of motherhood first of al .
As her mother, she had taken Mrs. Vivian back into her heart, and given her generously of what worldly possessions she had. And she had done it with a wondrous quiet and absence of all ostentation either outwardly or inwardly. It had never occured to Lorraine that, whether it was a duty or not, after what had passed it was certainly a fine act upon her part.
She had not questioned about it at al . To her mother's apologetic gush she had merely turned calm eyes and a strong face.
"It isn't worth while to remember the past at al ," she had said; "we wil just begin again on rather different lines. I'll always let you have as much money as I can spare."
Mrs. Vivian had been a little taken aback by the new Lorraine who returned from Italy; and not a little afraid before the calm, inscrutable eyes; so that she had secretly rejoiced at the arrangement which gave her a separate establishment of her own; but none the less, in bursts of righteous indignation supposed to emanate from her outraged feelings as a mother, she usually chose to make it her pet grievance.
And stil Lorraine only smiled the tired smile, and glanced carelessly aside with the inscrutable eyes until the tirade was over, the coveted cheque made out, and her own little sanctum once again in peaceful possession.
Only just occasional y, if the interview had been special y trying, she might have been seen afterwards to glance whimsical y across to the picture, recently enlarged from an old photograph, of a fine-looking man in ful hunting-rig standing beside a favourite hunter.
"Poor old dad," she murmured once; "I don't wonder you couldn't keep up the old place. I don't know how you got along at al without my salary."
Once when she was feeling the drag of it all a little keenly she told the man in the picture: "Mother is splendidly handsome, and I daresay I owe her a good deal; but thank God you were there with your fine old name and family to give me the things that matter most. It sometimes seems as if we had got each other still, dad, and, for the rest, some are frail in one way and some another, and fretting doesn't help any one." The fine eyes had grown more whimsically wistful looking into the face of the huntsman as she finished: "Anyhow, the last favourite is second cousin to a duke, and she pointed out to me, he might have been only a butcher."
How much Hal knew of her mother's life Lorraine had never been able to gauge, but she had reason to think she knew something and was sporting enough to pretend otherwise. If so, she blessed her for it, feeling that by that generous non-acknowledgment she rendered a service both to her and her dead father.
Yet it seemed strange that any one so young and fresh as Hal should be able to act thus, instead of suffering a violent repulsion. Was it the depth of her splendid friendship; or was it a naturally adaptable, common-sense nature; or was it non-comprehension?
As time passed and she grew to know Hal yet better, she felt instinctively it was the first of these, coupled with that true sportsman-spirit which was one of her strongest attributes.
Lorraine was not the only one who felt that whether Hal had any religion or not, or any faith, through good and il , by easy paths and difficult, one might be absolutely sure that she would "play the game."
It made her feel herself richer with her one friend than with her mother's admitted hosts, and though she seemed to hesitate and reason on that Sunday morning, both knew the cheque would final y be written, and the coveted garment rescued in time for the important lunch.
Only, afterwards, a shadow seemed to linger to-day that heretofore would have vanished with the departing figure. The sunshine crept through the drawn curtains, lying like a shaft of hope across the gloom, but it brought no answering gleam into the beautiful eyes, with their tired, far-off gaze.
It was all very wel for Hal to be a main feature in her life, blessing it with her friendship, while she turned kindly, unseeing eyes away from the corners where the murky shadows lay: Hal, who knew about the mad, discreditable marriage and its violent termination, and probably also of her mother's insatiable thirst for admiration and excitement at any cost.
There was something about Hal in herself that was as a shining armour, against which unkind barbs fell harmlessly, and enabled her to go on her serene and joyful way in blissful non-attention.
But could it be the same with this treasured only son, who was doubtless destined for a hight place in the world by doting parents, and other proud bearers of the same old name? Of course he might sup and trifle with certain denizens of the theatrical world galore; it would only be part of his education, and a thing to wink at, but she already doubted whether such a slight companionship would have any attraction.
In spite of his youthfulness, there was something in him that would naturally and quickly respond to the fine shades in herself, and grow into a friendship that had no part with the casual, gay acquaintanceships of the theatre and the world.
In a sense he was like Hal, and she knew that just as she attracted Hal's devotion in spite of al disparity of years and circumstances, so, if she chose, she could make this young giant more or less her slave.
But was it worht it?
What did she, on her high pedestal, want with his young admiration?
What did she want with a companion so undeveloped that she herself must awaken his strongest forces?
Through the gloom, unheeding the shaft of sunlight, she saw him again, towering up there on her hearth, with his young splendour, so extraordinarily unspoilt as yet; and she knew that, reasonable or unreasonable, she was attracted far beyond her wont.
And then she thought of his easy-going temperament, his lack of ambition, his half-sleepy attitude towards life.
What if the wheels ran so smoothly for him that the latent forces were never aroused, and little achieved of all that might be?
If love came at his asking, and a sufficiency of success to satisfy an easy-going nature, what would there ever be to stir depths which she truly believed were worth stiring? Was it so smal a thing to help a fine soul forward to its best attainment?... was such an aim not worth some going aside for both?
She felt there were things she could teach him, which without her he might entirely miss; and if without her he were the better according to a conventional standard, he might yet be far the poorer in the big, deep things of life.
Well, no doubt circumstances would end by suiting themselves, with or without her agency. In the meantime why worry, in a world that it would seem worked out its own ends, sublimely indifferent to the individual?
They were going to dine together to-night anyhow; their first tête-à-tête dinner and evening: time enough to probe and worry when she was more sure a mutual attraction existed; wiser at present to seek a counter attraction for her own sake, that she might not uselessly build a castle without foundations.
Prompt as ever, she reached out for the receiver beside her bed and rang up the Albany to know if Lord Denton were awake yet.
"I'm not awake," came back a sleepy answer. "I am asleep, and dreaming of Lorraine Vivian. If my man wakes me now, I shal curse him solidly for half an hour."
"Well, wil you dream you are going to take her for a spin into the country shortly? I happen to know she is fainting for the longing to breathe country air."
"In my dream I am already waiting at her door, with the Yel ow Peril spluttering its heart out with delight, and eagerness to be off. I have even dreamt she managed to put a motor bonnet on in half-an-hour -
is it conceivable - or should it be half a day?"
"No, your dream is right. Be outside the door in half an hour, and you wil see."
An hour later they were spinning out into Surrey at an alarming pace, both silently revel ing in the freshness and motion and the fact that they were too old friends to need to trouble about conversation. When they dived into the lanes he slowed down, remarking:
"I suppose we mustn't risk scrunching any one up."
Lorraine only smiled, remaining silent a little longer, and then she suddenly asked him:
"When you feel yourself inclined to fall in love foolishly what do you do?"
"Well... as a rule..." he began slowly and humorously, "I either cut and run, or I hurry to see so much of her that I am bound to get bored."
"The first plan sounds the safest, but would often be the most difficult of execution. Supposing the second miscarries and you don't get bored?"
"Well, then I think - usual y - there is an awful moment when I have to tel her I can't afford both a motor and a wife; and to be motorless would kil me."
A sudden little twitching at the corners made Lorraine's mouth dangerously fascinating.
"Evidently you have never fallen in love with me," she said, "for you have not been driven to either way of escape."
He looked into her face with an answering humour, and a twinkle in his eyes as alluring as her smil ing lips.
"Because when I fell in love with you I did it sensibly, and not foolishly," was his answer; "instinct told me I couldn't have you for my wife however much I wished it, so I said myself: 'Flip, old boy, she'll make a thundering good pal, you close with it,' and I did."
She made no comment, and he went on more seriously:
"You see, even if you became marriageable and I cut out the motor, you wouldn't be attracted to an ordinary sort of cove like me. I suit you down to the ground as a pal, but it wouldn't go any farther."
"I wonder why you think that?"
"I don't exactly _think_ it - thinking is too much bother - but it's just there, like a commonplace fact. You are al temperament, and high-strung nerves, and soul, and enthusiasm, and that sort of thing, which makes you a great actress. I'm just a two-legged, superior sort of animal, who hasn't much brain, but knows what he likes, and usual y does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day's work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most devout of all the nuns."
"What an odd idea! Why a nunnery?"
"Oh, because it's an extreme of one sort or another, and you are made for extremes. You'll perhaps be very wicked first" - he smiled delightfully - "after which, of course, you'd have to be very good.
It's the way you're made. I'm cut out on quite a different plan. I can't be 'very' anything, unless it's very drunk after the Oxford and Cambridge at Lord's."
"Do you think I could be very wicked?" She asked the question with a thoughtfulness that amused him greatly, and he answered at once:
"I haven't a doubt of it. You are probably plotting the particular form of wickedness at this very moment."
She laughed, and he went on in the same serio-comic mood:
"I quite envy you. It mus be very thril ing to think to oneself, 'I've dared to be desperately wicked.' You cease to be a nonentity at once and become a force. You get right to hand-grips with the big elemental things. Of course that is interesting, but it usually means a confounded lot of bother."
"You are as bad as Hal Pritchard. She announced the other day she would rather have a dishonest purpose than no purpose at al ."
"It's the same idea, only Miss Pritchard lives up to her creed by being ful of energy and purpose; whereas I can't be anything but a mediocre waster. I've neither the pluck to be wicked, not the energy to be good, nor enough purpose to regret it. I believe I'm best described as an aristocratic 'stiff', a 'stiff' being a person who spends his life trying to avoid having to do things.
"I fil a niche all the same," he finished, "because I make such an excellent foil for the other chaps, who like to pride themselves on their superiority and hard work. It's nice for them to be able to say contemptuously, 'Look at Denton,' and it's nice for me to be able to feel I'm of some use, without the bother of making an effort."
"You are certainly quite incorrigible as an idler, if that can be called a purpose, and, Flip, don't change; I love you for it; you are one of the most restful things I have ever known."
He glanced into her face with a keenness that somewhat belied his professed incapacity to be in earnest, and remarked with seeming lightness:
"Feeling a bit down on your luck, eh? Are you thinking of fal ing in love foolishly?"
"I'm thinking of trying to guard against doing so."
"You ought not to find it difficult. Crowd him out with other admirers."
"It seems as if he were going to do the crowding out."
"Why, is he so big?" jocularly.
"There's six foot five-and-a-half of him."
"Whew! And thin as a lathe, I suppose; a sort of animated telegraph pole."
"No; broad in proportion, cut to measure absolutely."
"Then he is a fine fel ow," with conviction.
Lorraine felt a swift glow of pride, and then inwardly admonished herself for being silly. What, after all, was size? As Hal had trenchantly remarked, plenty of London policemen were just as big and fine. Half in self-defence she added:
"He has brains as wel , and he is as handsome as Apollo."
"Then run," was the laconic response; "don't stop to buy a ticket; pay the other end."
She smiled, but grew suddenly serious. Leaning forward with eyes straining hard to the horizon, she said: "Flip, I've had a hard life, in spite of the success. Shal I run?... or... shall I stay, and snatch joy, while there is stil time?"
He looked at her with a growing interest.
"If I were you I should run," he said; "but, all the same, I think you'll stay."
"No; I don't think I shall. There are other reasons. He is a good deal younger than I - and - wel , I've a fair amount on my soul already."
The tired shadow was coming back to her eyes, but she laughed suddenly with an attempt at gaiety.
"You ought to have heard Hal Pritchard on the subject. She remarked there were plenty of London policemen just as big, and suggested if I wanted a fine young animal to play with, I should be safer with a polar bear from the Zoo."
"Well done, Hal. We ought to have brought her. Where is she to-day?"
"Careering across England in a haphazard fashion with her cousin Dick Bruce. Do you mind turning towards home now? I'm dinning out, and have some letters to write."
"Who's the happy man to-night? ... I thought of course I was to have the whole day."
"With a view to getting wholesomely bored! No, Flip, I don't propose to let you find that way out just yet."
"I should have found it for myself long ago if it were possible. As it is, I have grown resigned, and accept what crumbs fal to my portion."
He paused a moment and then asked, "Is it Goliath to-night?"
"It is."
"Rash woman; and just when I have advised you to run."
"But it is not in the least serious yet. I only asked you in view of it becoming so."
"Which means you wil try and start to run, _after_ you are firmly in the trap."
"Not at al . I won't go near the trap. I'll tell him I'm old enough to be his mother, and talk down to him from years of detestable common sense and sagacity."
"Which sounds as if it would be even dul er than dining with me."
"Oh no. It holds novelty anyway. You are never dull, but likewise you are no longer novel."
They made for the high roads again, and spun along mostly in silence until the car once more came to a standstil at Lorraine's door.
"Come in," she said, "I've lots of time."
"No,' with a little smile. "I've had my crumbs for the day. I'm going to have a good solid crust now to keep the balance. Do you know Lottie Bird?... Fourteen stone, if she's an ounce, and a tongue like a sixty-horse-power motor. There are times when she's so damned practical and overpowering she does me good. This is one of them.
Good-bye. Don't kill the giant with a glance; and don't be sil y enough to get hurt yourself."
"Al right. I'll go in ful armour," and she nodded gaily enough as he moved off down the street.