It wil be remembered, perhaps, that an occasion has already occured when Hal had cause to congratulate herself upon the possession of a cousin, named Dick, who acted as an antidote to a brother who sometimes resembled a great-aunt.
Dick, or to give him his full name, Richard Alastair Bruce, was indeed her best friend and boon companion next to Lorraine. He was her earliest playmate, and likewise her latest. For many months together they had been companions in the wildest of wild escapades as children, at Dick's country home; and now that they were both responsible members of the community, in the world's greatest city, they were equally attached.
If Hal was down on her luck, she telephoned Dick to come instantly to the rescue, and if it was humanly possible he came. If Dick wanted a sympathetic or gay companion, either to go out with him or to listen to his latest inspirations, he telephoned to Hal, and little short of an urgent, important engagement would delay her.
At the time he become of any importance in this narrative he was established in a flat in the Cromwel Road, as one of a trio sometimes known as the Three Graces. The other two were Harold St. Quintin and Alymer Hermon.
The appel ation was first given to them when they were freshmen at New Col ege, Oxford; partly because they were inseparable, partly because they were a particularly good-looking trio, and partly because they al three came up from Winchester with great cricket reputations. Within two years they were all playing for the 'Varsity' and one of them was made captain.
Three years from the term of their leaving, after each had gone his own way for a season, they gravitated together again, and final y became established in the Cromwel Road flat, once more on the old affectionate terms.
Dick Bruce was following a literary career, of a somewhat ambiguous nature. He wrote weird articles for weird papers, under weird pseudonyms, verses, under a woman's name, for women's papers, usual y of the _Home Dressmaker_ type; occasional lines to advertise some patent medicine or soap; one or two Salvation Army hymns of a particularly rousing nature: and sometimes a weighty, bril iant article for a first-class paper, duly signed in his own name.
Besides all this he visited a publisher's office most days, where he was supposed to be meditating the acquirement of a partnership. Hal was very apt at terse, concise definitions, and she was quite up to her best form when she described him as "the maddest of a mad clan run amok."
Harold St. Quintin, or Quin, as every one cal ed him, was idealist, etherealist, and dreamer. His original intention had been to enter the Church, but having gone down into East London to give six months to slum work, he had remained two years without showing any inclination to give it up. Sometimes he lived at the flat, and sometimes he was lost for a week at a time somewhere east of St. Paul's, where one might as wel have looked for him as for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Alymer Hermon, after a sojourn on the continent to study languages, was now established with a barrister, waiting, it must be confessed, without much concern, for his first brief.
Of the three he was the most striking. Dick Bruce was only ordinarily good-looking, with a very white skin, a fine forehead, and an arresting pair of eyes - eyes that were like an index to a brain that held volumes of original observations and whimsicalities, and revealed only just as much or little as the author chose.
Harold St. Quintin was small and rather delicate, with never-failing cheerfulness on his lips, and eyes that seemed always to have behind them the recollection of the pitiful scenes among which he voluntarily moved.
Alymer Hermon was Adonis returned to earth. He stood six foot five and a half inches in his socks, and was as perfectly proportioned as a man may be; with a head and face any sculptor might have been proud to copy line by line for a statue of masculine beauty.
When he was captain of the Oxford Eleven, people spoke of his beauty more than his cricket, although the latter was quite sufficiently striking in itself. There were others who had sweepstakes on his height, before the score he would make, or the men he would bowl.
The 'Varsity' was proud of him, as they had never been proud of a captain before, because he upheld every tradition of manliness and manhood at its best. And they only liked him the better that so far his attitude to his own comeliness was rather that of boredom than anything else. Certainly it weighed as nothing in the balance against the joy of scoring a century and achieving a good average with his bowling.
He was equally bored with the young girls who gazed at him in adoration, and the women who petted him, and it was a considerable source of worry to him that he might appear effeminate, because of his blue eyes and golden hair, and fresh, clear complexion, when in reality he was as manly as the plainest of hard-sinewed warriors, though the indulgence of a slightly aesthetic manner and way of speech, learnt at het University, increased rather than counteracted the suggestion of effeminacy.
But, taking al things into consideration, he was singularly unspoilt and unassuming; and sometimes blended with an old-fashioned, paternal air a boyishness and power of enjoyment that could not fail to charm.
The first time that Lorraine met the trio was when Hal took her to spend the evening at the flat one Sunday, by arrangement with her cousin. She herself knew all three wel , having been to the flat many times, but it had taken some little persuasion to get Lorraine to go with her.
"Of course they are just boys," said grandiloquent twenty-five, "but they are quite amusing, and they wil be proud of it all their lives if they can say they once had Lorraine Vivian at the flat as a guest."
"What do you cal boys?" asked Lorraine, looking amused; "I thought you said they had all left college,"
"So they have, but that's nothing. Dick is only twenty-five, and the others are about twenty-four."
"A much more irritating age than mere boyhood as a rule."
"Decidedly; but they really are a little exceptional. Dick, of course, is quite mad - that's what makes him interesting. Alymer Hermon is a giant with a great cricket reputation, and Harold St. Quintin is a sort of modern Francis Assisi with a sense of humour."
"The giant sounds the dul est. I hope he doesn't want to talk cricket all the time, because I don't know anything about it, except that if a man stands before the wicket he is out, and if he stands behind it he is not in."
"Oh no; he doesn't talk cricket. He mostly talks drivel with Dick, and St. Quintin laughs."
"Dick sounds quite the best, in spite of his madness. A cricketer who talks drivel, and a future clergyman working in the East End, don't suggest anything that appeals to me in the least."
Nevertheless, when Lorraine, looking very lovely, entered the small sitting-room of her three hosts, her second glance, in spite of herself, strayed back to the young giant on the hearth-rug. He was looking at Hal sideways, with a quizzical air; and she heard him say:
"It may be new, but it's not the very latest fashion, because it doesn't stick out far enough at the back, and it doesn't cover up enough of your face."
"Oh well!" said Hal jauntily, "if I had as much time as you to study the fashions, I daresay I should know as much about them. But I have to _work_ for my living," with satirical emphasis.
"What a nuisance for you," with a delightful smile. "I only pretend to work for mine."
"We al know that. You sit on a stool, and look nice, and wait for a brief to come along and beg to be taken up."
"It's a chair. I'm not one of the clerks. And I shouldn't get a brief any quicker if I went and shouted on the housetops that I wanted one."
"Besides, you don't want one. You know you wouldn't know what to do with it if you got it. Wel , how's East London?... "and Hall crossed to the slum-worker, with a show of interest she evidently did not feel for the embryo barrister. Lorraine smiled at him, however, and he moved leisurely forward to take the vacant seat beside her on the sofa.
"Is Hal trying to sharpen her wit at your expense?" she asked him, in a friendly, natural way.
"Yes; but it's a very blunt weapon at the best. People who always think they are the only ones to work are very tiring; don't you think so?"
"Decidedly; and I don't suppose she does half s much as you and I in reality."
"Oh well, I could hardly belie myself so far as to assert that. You see, it takes a long time to make people understand what a good barrister you would be if you got the chance to prove it."
Hald could not resist a timely shot.
"Personal y, I shoud advise you to try and prove it without the chance.
The chance might undo the proving, you see."
"What a rotten, mixed-up, meaningless remark!" he retorted. "Is it because you find I am so dull, you still have to talk to me?"
"Quin is never dull, he is only depressing. Dick, do hurry up and begin supper. I always feel horribly hungry here, because I know Quin has just come away from some starving family or other, and I have to try and eat to forget."
Lorraine leant across to the dreamy-eyed first-class circketer, voluntarily giving his life to the slums.
"Why do you do it?" she asked with sudden interest. "It seems, somehow, unnatural in a ... " she hesitated, then finished a little lamely, "a man like you."
"Oh no, not at all," he hastened to assure her. "It's the most fascinating work in the world. It's full of novelty and surprises for one thing."
She shuddered a little.
"But the misery and want and starvation. The ... the... utter hopelessness of it al ."
"But it isn't hopeless at al . Nothing is hopeless. And then, knowing the misery is there, and doing nothing, is far worse than seeing it and doing what one can."
"Oh no, because one can forget so often."
"Some can. I can't. Therefore I can only choose to go and wrestle with it."
"Of course it is heroic of you, but stil ! - "
Harold St. Quintin gave a gay laugh.
"It is not a bit more heroic than your work on the stage to give people pleasure. I get as much satisfaction in return as you do; and that is the main point. Slum humanity is seething with interest, and it is by no means all sad, nor al discouraging. There is probably more humour and heroism there per square mile than anywhere else."
"And no doubt more animal life also," put in Dick Bruce. "It's the superfluous things that put me off, not the want of anything."
"It's feeling such an ass puts me off," added Hermon; "they're al so busy and alert about one thing or another down there, they make me feel a mere cumberer of the earth. A woman manages a husband, and a family, and some sort of a home, and does the breadwinning as well. The children try to earn pennies in their playtime; and the men work at trying to get work.""
"Whereas you? ..." suggested Hal with a twinkle, "work at trying not to get work."
"Come to supper, and don't be so personal, Hal," said her cousin. "I wrote a poem on you last week, and called it 'Why Men Die Young.' It is in a rag cal ed _The Woman's Own Newspaper_. It is also in _The Youth's Journal_, with the pronouns altered, and a different title; but I forget what."
"What a waste of time - writing such drivel," Hal flung at him. "Why don't you compose a masterpiece, and scale Olympus?"
"Too commonplace. Lots of men have done that. Very few are positive geniuses at writing drivel. I claim to be in the front rank."
They sat down to a lively repast, and Lorraine found herself, instead of an awe-inspiring, distinguished guest, treated with a frank camaraderie that was both amusing and refreshing. They al made a butt of Hal, who was quite equal to the three of them; and when the giant paraphrased one of her (Lorraine's) most tragic utterances on the stage into a serio-comic dissertation on a fruit salad they were eating, lacking in wine, she laughed as gaily as any, and felt she had known them of years.
Then Hal insisted upon playing a game she had that moment invented, which consisted of each one confessing his or her greatest failing, and the gaiety grew.
She led off by informing them that she found she always jumped eagerly at any excuse to avoid her morning bath. Dick Bruce fol owed it up with a confession that he found he was never satisfied with fewer than four "best girls", because he liked to compare notes between them, and write silly verses on his observations; while Harold St. Quintin owned to an objectionable fancy for bull's-eye peppermints and blowing eggs.
Alymer Hermon confessed that he loved giving advice to people years older than himself, concerning things he knew nothing whatever about.
Lorraine tried to cry off, but, hard pressed, she admitted that she liked the excitement of spending money she had not got, and then having to pawn something to satisfy her creditors. "Spending money you will not miss," she finished, "is very dull beside spending money you do not possess."
Alymer Hermon then suggested they should tel each other of besetting faults, and at once informed Hal her colossal opinion of herself and all she did was only equalled by its entire lack of foundation.
Hal hurled back at him that every inch in height after six feet absorbed vitality from the brain, and that, though his dense stupidity was most trying, the reason for it claimed their compassion.
"You pride yourself beyond al reason on your stature," she said, "and are too dense to perceive it is your undoing."
Lorraine leant towards him and said:
"Inches give magnanimity: big men are always big-hearted; you can afford to forgive her, and retaliate that too much brain-power sinks individuality into mere machinery. I should say Hal's besetting fault was rapping every one on the knuckles, as if they were the keys of a typewriting machine."
"And yours, my dear Lorraine, is smiling into every one's eyes, as if the world held no others for you. Were I a man, and you smiled at me so, I would strangle you before you had time to repeat the glance on some one else."
"And Dick's besetting sin," murmured St. Quintin plaintively, "is a persistent fancy for other people's ties and other people's boots. I have cause to bless the benign and other people's boots. I have cause to bless the benign providence who fashioned my shoulders sufficiently smaller than his to prevent his wearing my coats."
"And yours, Quin," broke in Hermon, "is a fond and loathsome affection for pipes so seasoned that the Board of Trade ought to prohibit their use."
"After all," Hal rapped out at him, "that's not so bad as love of a looking-glass."
"And love of a looking-glass is no worse than love of throwing stones from glass houses," he retorted.
"Of course it isn't, Hal," broke in her cousin, "and probably if you had anything nice to look at in your glass - "
Hal stood up.
"The meeting is adjourned," she announced solemnly, "and the honourable member who was just spoken has the president's leave to absent himself on the occasion of the next gathering."
"Excel ent," cried Quin, while Hermon in great glee rapped the table with his knife handle and exclaimed, "Capital, Dick!... That drew her... I think you might say it took the middle stump."
"Oh, thank goodness he's got on to cricket," breathed Hal. "He does know a little about that, and may possibly talk sense for ten minutes.
Come along, Lorraine, and don't address Baby at present, for fear you distract him from his game and start him off struggling to be clever again. As it is Sunday night, perhaps Dick would like to read us his latest effusions in the way of boisterous hymns!"
She led the way back to the bachelor sitting-room, and for some little time Dick amused them greatly with his experiences over editors and magazines, and then the two went off together to Lorraine's flat.
At this time she was living at the bottom of Lower Sloane Street, with windows looking over the river, and it was general y supposed that her mother lived with her.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Vivian only occupied the ground floor flat in company with a friend. Lorraine give her an income on condition she should live there, and so, in a sense, act as a sort of chaperone to silence the tongues ever ready to find food for scandal in the fact of bril iance and beauty living alone; but mother and daughter had never again been on terms of cordiality.
So Hal was often Lorraine's companion for several nights, coming and going as she fancied, always sure of a welcome. To her the flat was a constant delight, and in the evening she loved to sit on the verandah and watch the gliding river - not to sentimentalise and dream, but because she loved London with al her heart and soul and strenght, and to her the river was as the city's pulsing heart.
The moist freshness of the air coming across from Battersea Park was only the more refreshing after Bloomsbury, and the vicinity of several wel -known names in the world of art and letters appealed porwerfully to her imagination. Lorraine usually sat just inside the long French window, taking care of her voice, and listening contentedly to Hal's chatter.
They sat thus for a little while after their return from Cromwel Road, and it was noticeable that Lorraine was even more silent than usual.
Hald told her something about each of their three hosts in turn, while showing an unmistakable preference for the slum-worker and her cousin.
At last Lorraine interrupted her.
"Why do you say so little about Mr. Hermon?... you merely told me he was a cricketer,which doesn't, as a matter of fact, describe him at all."
Hal shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose he doesn't interest me except in that way."
"But it is a mere side issue. If he weren't a cricketer he would be just as remarkable."
"But he isn't remarkable. He's only exceptionally big."
"He's one of the most remarkable men I've ever seen, anyway."
"Oh, nonsense, Lorraine. Besides, he is hardly a man yet. He's only twenty-four."
"I can't help that," with a little laugh. "I've seen a great many men in my life, but I've never seen any one before like Alymer Hermon."
"Why in the world not? What do you mean?"
"Well, to begin with, he's the most perfect specimen of manhood I've ever beheld. He's abnormally big without the slightest suggestion of being either too big or awkward. He's simply magnificent. Most men of that size are just leggy and gawky: he is neither. Again, other men built as he, are usual y rather brainless and weak, or probably made so much of by women that they become wrapped up in themselves, and are always expecting admiration. Alymer Hermon has the freshness of a delightful boy, with the fine face and courtly manners of a charming man. If you can't see this, it's because you don't know men as well as I do."
Hal stepped over the window sill into the room.
"Pooh!" she said impatiently. "What in the world has happened to you?
He's just a stuffed blue-and-gold Apol o."
Lorraine got up also.
"He's more than that. Some day you wil see; unless... unles..."
"Well, unless what?"
"Oh, nothing, only a man like that can't expect to escape being spoilt.
A certain type of woman will inevitably mark him down for her prey, and ruin al his freshness."
"Then you had better take him under your wing," Hal laughed. "It would be a pity for such a paragon to be lost to society. Personal y, stuffed blue-and-gold Apol os don't interest me in the least. Come along to bed. I'm dead tired," and she dragged Lorraine away.
But instead of sleeping, the acress lay silently watching a star that shone in at her window, and thinking a little sadly about the man nature had chosen to endow so bountifully. In a few weeks she would be thirty-two and he was twenty-four.
Supposing it had been twenty-two instead of thirty-two, and out of his splendour he had given his heart to her dark beauty, what a tale it might have been - what a fairy-tale of sweet, impossible things, with a golden-haired prince and a dark-eyed princess.
She awoke from her day-dream with a touch of impatience, apostrophising herself for her folly. After al , what had a beautiful, successful woman at her prime to do with a youth of twenty-four, who played foolish games at a supper-table, and was only just beginning to know his world? Of course he would bore her intolerably at a second interview, and, closing her eyes resolutely, she drove his image from her mind.