When Hal came back from America and heard about Lorraine's marriage, it was a great shock to her. At first she could hardly bring herself to believe it at all. Nothing thoroughly convinced her until she stood in the pretty Kensington house and beheld Mrs. Vivian's pronounced air of triumph, and Lorraine's somewhat forced attempts at joyousness.
It was one of the few occasions in her life when Lorraine was nervous.
She did not want Hal to know the sordid facts; and she did not believe she would be able to hide them from her.
When Hal, from a mass of somewhat jerky, contradictory information, had gleaned that the new leading part at the London theatre had been gained through the middle-aged bridegroom's influence, her comment was sufficiently direct.
"Oh, that's why you did it, is it? Well, I only hope you don't hate the sight of him already."
"How absurd you are, Hal!... Of course I don't hate the sight of him.
He's a dear. He gives me everything in the world I want, if he possibly can."
"How dull. It's much more fun getting a few things for oneself. And when the only thing in al the world you want is your freedom, do you imagine he'll give you that?"
Lorraine got up suddenly, thrusting her hands out before her, as if to ward off some vague fear.
"Hal, you are brutal to-day. What is the use of talking like that now?... Why did you go to America?... Perhaps if you hadn't gone _"
"Give me a cigarette," said Hal, with a little catch in her voice, "I want soothing. At the present moment you're a greater strain than Dudley talking down at me from a pyramid of worn-out prejudices. I don't know why my two Best-Belovèds should both be cast in a mould to weigh so heavily on my shoulders."
Sitting on the table as usual, she puffed vigorously at her cigarette, blowing clouds of smoke, through which Lorraine could not see that her eyes were dim with tears. For Hal's unerring instinct told her that, at a critical moment, Lorraine had taken a wrong path.
Lorraine, however, was not looking in Hal's direction. She had moved to the window, and stood with her back to the room, gazing across the Park, hiding likewise misty, tel -tale eyes.
Suddenly, as Hal continued silent, she turned to her with a swift movement of half-expressed protest.
"Hal! you shan't condemn me, you shan't even judge me. Probably you can't understand, because your life is so different - always has been so different; but at least you can try to be the same. What difference has it made between you and me anyhow?... What difference need it make? I have got my chance now, and I am going to be a bril iant success, instead of a struggling beginner. What does the rest matter between you and me?"
"It doesn't matter between you and me. But it matters to you. I feel I'd give my right hand if you hadn't done it."
"How could I help doing it? Oh, I can't explain; it's no use. We all have to fight our own battles in the long run - friends or no friends.
Only the friends worth having stick to one, even when it has been a nasty, unpleasant sort of battle."
That hard look, with the hopelessness behind it, was coming back into Lorraine's eyes. She was too loyal to tell even Hal what her mother had been like the last few months before the critical moment came, and at the critical moment itself. She could not explain just how many difficulties her marriage had seemed a way out from.
There had been other men who had not proposed marriage. There had been insistent creditors - her mother's as wel as her own. There had been that deep hunger for something approaching a real home, and for a sense of security, in a life necessarily full of insecurities.
Obdurate, difficult theatre managers, powerful, jealous fel ow-actresses, ill health, bad luck! Behind the glamour and the glitter of the stage, what a world of carking care, of littleness, meanness, jealousy, and intrigue she had found herself cal ed upon to do battle with.
And now, if only her husband proved amenable, proved livable with, how different everything would be? But in any case Hal must be there.
Somehow nothing of al this showed in her face as she fronted the smoker, still blowing clouds of smoke before her eyes.
"What has become of Rod?" Hal asked suddenly.
Lorraine winced a little, but held her ground steadily.
"Rod had to go. What could Rod and I have done with £500 a year?"
"My own" - from the blunt-speaking one - "it surely seems as if you might have thought of that before you al owed Rod to run all over the country after you, and get 'gated', and very nearly 'sent down', and spend a year or two's income ahead in trying to give you pleasure."
Lorraine flung herself down on the sofa with a cal ous air, and beat her foot on the ground impatiently. The parting with Rod was another thing she did not propose to describe to Hal. It had hurt too badly, for one thing.
"When you moralise, Hal, you are detestable. Besides, it's so cheap.
Any one can sit on a table and hurl sarcasm about. I daresay in my place you would have married Rod, from a sense of duty or something, and ruined al the rest of his life. Or perhaps, after gently breaking the news, you'd have let him come dangling round to be 'mothered'.
Well, I don't say I haven't been a bit of a brute to him; but anyhow I tried to do the square thing in the end. I cut the whole affair dead off. I told him I would not see him nor write to him again. I've since sent two letters back unopened, and though you mightn't think it, I was just eating my heart out for a sight of him. But what's the good! He's got to follow in the footsteps of whole centuries of highly respectable, complacent, fat old bankers. His father and mother would have a fit if he didn't develop into the traditional fat old banker himself, and beget another of the same ilk to fol ow on.
"I daresay with me he would have developed a little more soul, and a little less stomach - but what of it? -" with a graceful shrug. "For the good of his country it is written that he shall acquire weight and stolidity, instead of an ideal soul, and for the benefit of posterity I sentenced him to speedy rotundity, and dull respectability, and the begetting of future bankers. He wil presently marry some one named Alice or Annie, and invite me to the first christening in a spirit of Christian forgiveness."
Hal smiled more soberly than was her wont.
"And what of you?"
"What of me?... Oh, I don't come into that sort of scheme. I never ought to have been there at al . Still, I'm glad I showed him he'd got something in himself beside the stale accumulations of many banker ancestors; if it's only for the sake of the next litte banker, who may want to lay claim to an individual soul."
"But it hurt, Lorraine?... don't tel me it didn't hurt after... after
- "
"Oh yes, it hurt," with a low, bitter laugh; "but what of that eiter?
It's general y the woman who gets hurt; but I suppose I knew I was riding for a fall."
"I don't suppose you are any more hurt than he is. You know he worshipped you."
"Yes; only presently it wil be easy for him to get back into the old, orthodox groove with 'Alice', and persuade himself that I was only a youthful infatuation, whereas I - Oh, what does it matter, Hal! Come out of that 'great-aunt' mood, and let's be joly while we can. I'll ring for coffee and liqueurs, and then we'll make lots of ripping plans to see everything in England worth seeing - until I can find time to go abroad."
Hal sprang off het table.
"Oh, very well," she rejoined, "Let's get rowdy and sing the song 'Love may go hang.' When I've got it over with Dudley, we'll just go straight on, keeping a good look out for the next fence. You'd better tel me something abouth this paternal husband of yours, just to prepare me for our meeting. He doesn't put his knife in his mouth, and that sort of thing, does he?"
"No; not quite so bad. His worst offence at present, I think, is to call me 'wifey'."
"Wifey!" in accents of horror. "Lorraine, how awful!"
"Yes; but I'm breaking him of it by degrees: that and his fondness for a soft felt hat."
They sat on chatting together with apparent gayness, but Hal's heart was no lighter after she had duly been presented to the paternal husband, as she called him, and she journeyed solemnly home on a bus, feeling rather as if she had been to a funeral. She tried at first to hide her feelings from Dudley - no difficult matter at al , since he usual y contributed little but a slightly absent "yes" and "no" to the conversation, and if the conversation languished he took small notice.
However, he had to be told, and Hal rarely troubled to do much beating about the bush, so, in order to rouse him speedily and thoroughly, just as he was settling down to his newspaper she hurled the news at his head without any preliminary preparation.
"What do you think Lorraine has done now? Been and gone and married a man old enough to be her father!"
"Married!... Lorraine Vivian married!"
Dudley's newspaper went down suddenly on to his knee.
Hal had squatted on the hearthrug, tailor fashion, before the fire, and she gave a little swaying movement backward and forward, to signify the affirmative. He looked at her a moment as if to make sure she was not joking, and then said, with sarcastic lips:
"A man old enough to be her father? ... then it isn't even Rod Burrell!"
"No; it isn't even Rod Burrel ."
"Some one with more money and influence, I suppose? Wel , I don't know that Burrell needs any one's condolences."
"He does, badly."
"He won't for long. The Burrells are a sensible lot, and no sensible man frets over a hearless woman."
"Lorraine is not a heartless woman. She has too much heart."
"She is certainly very generous with it."
"I don't know which is the more detestable, a sarcastic man or a sensible one." Hal shut her lips tightly, and stared at the fire.
"I imagine you hardly expect any sort of man to admire Miss Vivian's action."
"It doesn't matter in the least what 'any sort of man' thinks. I am only concerned with the possibility that she wil weary of matrimony quickly and be miserable. I told you, because I wanted you to hear it from me instead of from a newspaper."
Dudley suddenly grew more serious, as he realised how it must in a measure affect Hal also.
"Who is he?
"He is a stockbroker, named Frank Raynor, aged fifty."
"And of course she married him for his money ?
"I suppose so. Also he partly owns the Greenway Theatre."
"Pshaw . . . it's a mere bargain."
Hal was silent. She had rested her chin on her hands, and was now gazing steadily at the embers.
"Of course if he is not a gentleman, you will have to leave off seeing so much of her."
"Not at al . She would need me al the more.
"That is quite possible," drily; "but you owe something to yourself and me."
"I couldn't owe failing a friend to any one. But he is a gentleman almost - a self-made one, and he doesn't let you forget it."
"Then you've seen him?"
"Yes, to-day." Her lips suddenly twitched with irresistible humour. "He called me 'Hal' and Lorraine 'wifey' We bore it bravely."
"What business had he to cal you by your Christian name?"
"None. I suppose he just felt like it. He also alluded to my new hat as a bonnet. Also he used to be an office-boy or something. He seemed inordinately proud of it."
"I loathe a self-made man who is always cramming it down one's throat.
I don't see how you can have much in common with either of them any more."
Hal got up, as if she did not want to pursue the subject.
"It won't make the smallest difference to Lorraine and me," she said.
Dudley knit his forehead in vexation and perplexity, remarking:
"Of course you mean to be obstinate about it."
"No," with a little laugh; "only firm."
She came round to his chair and leant over the back it.
"Dear old long-face, don't look so worried. None of the dreadful things have happened yet that you expected to come of my friendship with Lorraine. The nearest approach to them was the celebrated young author I interviewed, who asked me to go to Paris with him for a fortnight, and he was a clergyman's son who hadn't even heard of Lorraine. Next, I think, was the old gentleman
who offered to take me to the White City. IL don't seem much the worse for either encounter, do I ? and it's silly to meet trouble half way.
She bent her head and kissed him on the forehead.
"Dudley," she finished mischievously, "what are you going to give Lorraine for a wedding-present?"
"I might buy her the book, 'Row to be Happy though Married,'" he said dil y, "or write her a new one and cal it 'Words of Warning for Wifey.'"
"We'll give her something together," Hal exclaimed triumphantly, knowing that, as usual, she had won the day.
Then she went off to bed, feigning a light-heartedness she was far from feeling, and dreading, with vague misgivings, what the future might bring forth.