The second interview, however, by a mere coincidence, took place at Lorraine's flat. She was walking leisurely down Sloane Street one afternoon, after visiting hermil iners, when she ran into the young giant going in the opposite direction.
"How so?..." she asked gaily, as is face lit up with a pleased smile, and he stopped in front of her. "Whither away at this hour? Are you chasing a brief?"
"Much too brief," he told her. "I had to carry some important papers to a certain wel -known Cabinet Minister; and he did not even vouchsafe me a glance of his countenance. I was given an acknowledgment of them by the footman, as if I had been a messenger boy."
"Too bad. I think you deserve that another celebrity should give you a cup of tea, to redeem your opinion of the immortals. My flat is quite near, and I am now returning. Wil you come?"
"Oh, won't I?" he said boyishly, and turned back.
It was the fashionable hour in Sloane Street, when many wel -dressed, wel -known people are often seen walking, and when the road is ful of private motors and carriages. Lorraine found herself moving still more slowly. She was accustomed to being gazed at herself, had in fact grown a little blasé of it, but the frank admiration bestowed on her giant amused and pleased her.
Covertly she watched, as she chatted up to him, for the tel -tale consciousness and perhaps heightened colour. But when he was looking back into her face he looked straight before him, over the heads of the admiring eyes, and paid no smal est heed to them. Neither was he in the least self-conscious with her. She wondered if he even realised that the tête-à-tête he accepted so simply would have been a joy of heaven to many. Anyhow, far from resenting his seeming want of due appreciation, she found it made him more interesting.
She spoke of Hal, and he immediately exclaimed: "Hal is a ripper, isn't she? I can't help teasing her, you know; it's the best fun in the world."
"Do you usual y tease your feminine friends?" she asked. "I've no doubt you have a great many."
"Oh, no, I haven't. Men pals are far jol ier."
"Stil , I expect your inches bring you many fair admirers."
He shrugged his shoulders slightly, and looked a trifle bored, and she divined that he disliked flattery and probably the subject of his appearance. She adroitly turned the conversation back to Hal, and spoke of her until they reached the block of flats.
"Is this where you live? What a ripping situation!" he exclaimed. "I would sooner be near the river than near Knightsbridge, even if it is not so classy."
He followed her into the lift, and then into her charming home, full of enthusiasm, and still without exhibiting a shade of self-consciousness.
Lorraine found her interest growing momentarily, as he took up his stand on her hearth and gazed frankly around, with undisguised pleasure.
"What a jol y nice room. It's one of the prettiest I've seen. You have the same color-scheme as the Duchess of Medstone in het boudoir, but I like your furniture better."
Lorraine glanced up a little surprised.
"Do you know the Duchess of Medstone?"
"Well, yes" - a trifle bashful y. "You see, those sort of people ask me to their houses because of my cricket. Private cricket weeks are rather fashionable, and I get invitations as the late Oxford captain."
"And do you go to people you don't know?"
"Yes, rather, if I can raise the funds. The nuisance is the tipping.
There's always such a rotten lot of servants; and I'm too much afraid of them to give anything but gold."
The tea came in, and she saw him glance round for the chair best suited to his bulk.
"My chairs were not designed for giants," she told him laughingly; "you wil have to come and sit on the settee."
He came at once, stretching his long legs out before him, with lazy ease, and then drawing his knees up sharply, as if in sudden remembrance that he was a guest and they were comparative strangers.
Lorraine liked him, both for the moment's forgetfulness and the sudden remembrance, and as she glanced again at his beautiful head and splendid shoulders, she was conscious of a sudden thril of appreciative admiration.
Hal was right in naming him Apol o. The Sun God might have been fashioned just so, when first he ravished the eyes of Venus.
"And so the duchess took you into her boudoir?" she asked, with an unaccountable twinge of jealousy. "I do not know her. I'm afraid my friends are not so aristocratic as yours. But I believe she is considered very handsome."
"Hard," he said, with an old-fashioned air. "Handsome enough, but very hard. I did not like her nearly so much as Lady Moir, her sister."
"Stil no doubt she was very nice to you?"
Lorraine rather hated herself for the question. The ways of aristocratic ladies, whose idle hours often supply a field of labour for the Evil One, were perfectly well known to her; and she wondered a little sharply how far he was stil unspoilt. The majority of big, strong, ful -blooded young men in his place would assuredly have sipped the cup of pleasure pretty deeply by now, even at his years, but with that fine, strong face, and the clear, frank eyes was he of these? She believed not, and was glad.
He did not treat her question as if it implied any special favours, and merely replied jocularly:
"Well, I suppose, since her blood is very blue and mine merely tinged, she was rather gracious, but of course the really 'blue' people general y are."
"Tel me who you happen to be?" Lorraine leant back against her cushions, with her slow, easy grace, asking the question with a lightness that robbed it of all pointedness or snobbery.
He seemed amused, for he smiled as he answered frankly:
"I happen to be Alymer Hadstock Hermon, one fo _the_ Hermons all right, but not the drawing-room end, so to speak; at the same time tinged with her family shadiness - 'blue' of course I mean - though no doubt it applies in other ways as well. Does that satisfy your curiosity, or do you want to know more?"
She loved looking at him, particularly with that humorous little smile on his lips, so she said:
"Not half. I want to know al the rest."
"Very wel . It's quite an open book. I was born twenty-four years ago. I am an only child, and, as usula, the apple of my mother's eye and the terror of my father's pocket. He, my father, is not much else just now except a recluse. He was recently a member of parliament, a Liberal member, and, God knows, that's little enough. I believe he even climbed in by a Chinese pigtail.
"My grandfather was a Judge in the Divorce Court, which doesn't somehow sound quite respectable, and my great-grandfather was a writer of law books, for which, personal y, I think he ought to have been hanged. I can't go any farther back; at any rate I don't want to, because I'm certain it's al so correct and dull there isn't even a family skeleton."
"Is it the women or the men of the family that are beautiful?"
"Oh, both," with humorous eagerness. "Skeletons and ghosts we sought, and clamoured for, but ugliness, never."
"Well, it's a pity you were not a woman. Looks are wasted in a man.
Give a man a ready tongue and a taking manner, and he can usual y get what he wants, if he's as ugly as a frog. With you, on the other hand, things will come too easily. You will miss al the fun of the chase.
On my soul I'm sorry for you."
"The briefs don't come anyway, nor the 'oof': that's al I can see to be sorry for."
"You don't want them badly enough, that's all. If you want the one, you'll make love to an influential woman who can get them, and if you want the other, you'll marry an heiress."
"I say, you're giving me rather a rotten character, aren't you?"
He faced her suddenly, and a new expression dawned in his eyes, as if he were only just awakening to the fact that she was beautiful.
"Do you really think I'm such a rotter as al that?"
She glanced away, lowering her eyelids, so that her long lashes swept the warm olive cheeks, and with a little cal ous shrug answered:
"Why should you be a rotter for doing what all the rest of the world does? Four-fifths of mankind would give anything for your chances."
"But you just said you were sorry for me?"
"So I am. So I should be for the four-fifths of mankind, if they got all they wanted just for the asking."
He smiled with a sudden, charming whimsicality.
"I don't feel much in need of sympathy, you know. It's a ripping old world, as long as you can indulge a few mild fancies, and be left alone."
"Mild fancies!"
She turned on him suddenly.
"What have you to do with mild fancies? Why, you can have the world at your feet with a little exertion. Haven't you any ambition? Don't you even want to plead in the greatest law court in the world as one of the first barristers in Europe?"
"Not particularly. Why should I? It would be no end of a fag. I'd far rather be left alone."
"You... you... sluggard,' breaking into a laugh. "If I were Fate, I'd just take you by the shoulders and shake you till you woke up. Then I'd go on shaking to keep you awake. You shouldn't be wasted on mere nonentity if I held the threads."
But his blue eyes only smiled whimsical y back at her.
"I'm jol y glad you haven't a say in the matter. Why, I should have to give up cricket, and take to working! You're as bad as Quin with his slumming, and Dick with his rotten verses."
"You don't know yet that I haven't a say in the matter," she remarked daringly. "Have a cigarette. I'm awful y sorry I didn't remember sooner."
"Indeed, you ought to be," was the gay rejoinder. "I've been just dying for the moment when you would remember."
An electric bel rang out as they were lighting their cigarettes, and a moment later Hal danced into the room with shining eyes and glowing cheeks. A few paces from the door she stopped suddenly.
"Hul o, Baby," she said, addressing Hermon, "where have you sprung from?"
"I found it wandering alone in Sloane Street," Lorraine remarked, "and now we've been teaing together."
Alymer did not look any too pleased at Hal's frank appellation, but former remonstrance had only been met with derision, and he knew he had no choice but to submit with a good grace.
"I might ask the same question, Lady-Clerk," he replied.
"Don't call me a lady-clerk - I hate the term. I'm a typist, secretary, bachelor-girl, city-worker, anything you like, not a lady-clerk - bah!..."
"Then don't call me Baby."
Hal's face broke into the most attractive of smiles.
"I can't help it. Everything about you, your size, your face, your ways just clamour to be cal ed 'Baby'. Of course if you'd rather be Apol o - "
"Good Lord, no: is that the only alternative?"
"I'm afraid so; you needn't go if you don't want to," as he prepared to depart. "We are not going to talk grown-up secrets."
"If I were Mr. Hermon, I'd give you one good shaking, Hal," put Lorraine. "I'm sure you deserve it."
"Not a bit. Nothing could do him more good than regular interviews with me, to undo all the harm he has received in between from silly, idiotic women, who make him think he is something out of the ordinary.
Isn't that so, Baby? Aren't you labouring under the delusion that you're a remarkable fine specimen of humanity? And al the time, Heaven knows, you've about as much honest purpose and brains as a big over-grown school-boy."
"I hope you are not intending to imply he is more richly endowed with dishonest purpose?" said Lorraine.
"Oh, I wouldn't mind that," Hal declared, "so long as it was energy and purpose of some kind."
"Even to giving you that good shaking," he asked, coming forward a step menacingly.
"Not in here," in alarm; "you and I scrapping in Lorraine's drawing-room would cost a hundred pounds or so in valuables. I'll cry
'pax'," as he still advanced. "Of course you are rather a fine boy really, I was only pul ing your leg."
Hermon subsided with a laugh, and Hal proceeded to explain that she had come on business, having been asked by the editor of one of their small magazines to write up an interview with the actress for him.
"I shal say I found you having a cosy tête-à-tête with a young barrister of many inches and little brains," she laughed. "Come, Lorraine, spout away. What is your favourite hors d'oeuvre? Did you feel like a boiled owl at your first appearance? And which horse do you back for next year's Derby?"
She started scribbling, to the amusement of the other two, carrying on a desultory conversation meanwhile.
"This isn't anything to do with my department, but I like Mr. Hadley, and he was keen about it, and offered me three guineas, so I said I'do do it... Are your eyes yellow or green? For the life of me, I don't know. Which would you rather I cal ed them? ... I've got to go to Marlboro' House to-morrow to get up a short and vivid account of a garden party, because Miss Alton, who generally does it, is down with
'flu'. Were you a prodigal as a kid? no; I mean a prodigy... Fancy me at Marlboro' House! Awful thought, isn't it? How they dare?
"What is your favourite pastime? Shal I put down shooting? I know you don't know one end of a gun from the other, but it doesn't matter; and it reads rather well - something unique about it in an actress."
"Why not put angling, and give some of my dear enemies a chance to ask what for?"
"Or jam-making," suggested Alymer, "and redeem the stage in the eyes of the British matron."
"Oh, don't talk... how can I write? Shal I bring myself in, and dig up the dear old chestnut of David and Jonathan?... or shal I describe Dudley's disapproval melting into undisguised worship," she rippled with laughter as she scribbled on. "Oh dear, think if Dudley were to find it, and read it, because he hasn't even discovered yet that he has ceased to disapprove.
"Who's your favourite poet? I might say Dick Bruce; he would write a book of poems at once. And Quin might be your hero in real life. Do you know where you were born? Up in the Himalayas sounds nice and airy, and it might as well have been there as anywhere."
"If you want anymore you must get it while I eat my dinner," said Lorraine, rising. "I have to try and be at the theatre at seven just now. You may as wel both dine with me, and you can come to my dressing-room afterwards if you like, Hal."
"No, thank you"; and Hal pulled a wry face. "I've seen quite enough of the wings, and the green-room, and al the rest of it. You might take Baby, just to show him the real thing, and put him off it once for al ."
She turned to Hermon.
"Have you ever been behind the scenes? I used to go sometimes, just for the fun of it, while it was a novelty; but it quite cured me of any possible taste of the stage. Most of the performers were so nervous they could hardly speak, their teeth just chattered with cold and fright mingled, and the gloom of it was like a vault. And then all the gaping, staring faces in rows, looking out of the darkness. You can't think how idiotic people look seen like that. It always suggested to me that both stage and stalls were like children playing at being lunatics."
"That's only your dreadful y prosaic, unromantic mind, Hal. You just like to write newspaper articles, and type letters, and smother your imagination under dry-and-dust facts."
"Smother my imagination," echoed Hal, with a laugh. "Why, it would take the imaginations of fifty ordinary people to concoct some of the paragraphs we fix up during the week. My imagination is a positive goldmine at the office, at least it would be if they dare print all that I suggest."
"You should run a paper yourself," suggested Hermon; "a few libel actions would made it pay like anything."
"Ah, you haven't seen Dudley," with a little grimace. "Dudley would have a fit and die before the first action had had time to reach its interesting stage. I'd take you home to see him now, but he happens to have gone up to Holloway to dinner."
"I'm dinning out myself, so I must fly." He turned to Lorraine, with a gay smile. "I say, may I come and dine with you some other time?"
"Come to the Carlton on Sunday, will you?"
Lorraine hardly knew why she made the sudden decision; she only knew perfectly well she would have to break another engagement to keep it, and that she was foolishly gland when he accepted.
"It's all right; you needn't ask me," volunteered Hal, as her friend glanced at her. "I'm going motoring with Dick, and I shall insist upon staying out until ten or eleven. I always try and fil my Sundays ful of fresh air. "Where are you going to-night, Baby?" she added, with a charmingly impudent smile.
"The Albert Hal , with Lady Selon"; and a twinkle shone in his eyes.
"Goodness gracious! What in the world are you going to the Albert Hal for? and who is Lady Selon?"
"She is Soccer Selon's sister-in-law, and she asked me to take her to a concert. Is there anything else you would like to know?"
"Her age?" archly.
"Somewhere about thirty-five, I should imagine."
"Oh! your grandmother, or thereabouts. Wel , skip along. Tell Dick to call for me early on Sunday."
When he had said good-bye to Lorraine and departed, Hal held up her hand, hanging in a limp fashion.
"I wish you'd teach him to shake hands, Lorry. It feels like shaking a blind cord and tassel. Are you going to mother him? What an odd idea for you to bother with a boy! You surely don't mean to tel me he interests you?"
"I like to look at him. He's such a splendid young animal. I feel -
oh, I don't know what I feel."
"Lots of London policemen are splendid young animals, but you don't want tête-à-tête teas with them if they are."
"You absurd child! Is there any reason why I shouldn't have tea with Mr. Hermon, if it amuses me?"
"None special y; but if it's just a splendid young animal to look at, you want, I daresay it would be safer to import a polar bear from the Zoo."
Lorraine felt a spot of colour burn in het cheeks, but she only laughed the subject aside, and alluded to it no more before they parted at the theatre door.
Only at a late supper-party that night she was quieter than was her wont; and, contrary to her habit, one of the first to leave. A wel -known rising politician, who had been paying her much attention of late, prepared, as usual, to escort her home. She wished he would have stayed behind, but had no sufficient reason for refusing his company.
He taxed her with silence as they spun westwards, and she pleaded a headache, wondering a little why al he said, and looked, and did, somehow seemed banal and irritating to-night.
He was so sure of himself, so fashionably blasé, so carelessly clever, so daringly frank, with al the finished air of the modern smart man, basking callously in the assured fact of his own bril iance and superiority. She knew that most women would envy her the attentions of such a one, and that his interest was undoubtedly a great compliment, as such compliments go; but to-night she found herself remembering all the other women who had reigned before her, al those who would presently succeed her, and she was conscious of an impatient disgust of all the shal owness and insincerety of the fashinable, successful man.
"May I come in?" he asked, when they reached the flat, looking rather as if he were conferring a favour than soliciting one.
"No; it is too late. Good-night."
"Too late!... " he laughed a little, and Lorraine felt her temper rising. "It is not exceptional y late, a little earlier than usual in fact. Why mayn't I come in?"
"Because I don't want you," she said coldly, and she saw him bite his lip in swift vexation.
"I shal certainly not press you," he retorted, and turned away.
At the window of her drawing-room Lorraine lingered a few moments, gazin with a half-longing expression at the gleam of the lights on the dark flowing river. What was it that gave her that strange sense of heartache to-night? Why had her usual companions bored and irritated her? Why did Alymer Hermon's fine, boyish, refreshing face come so often to her mind?
She was certainly not in love with him. The mere idea was ridiculous, but it was equally certain that something about him had given rise to this vague unrest and longing. Was it perhaps that he called to her mind the youth she had never known, the young splendid, whole-hearted years, when it was so easy to believe and hope and enjoy that which life had never given her time for?
True, the world was at her feet now, just as much as it would ever be at his, but with what a difference? For her, with the work and stain of the knowledge of much evil, and little good. For him, at present, with aal the glorious freshness of the morning.
She glanced back into the dim room, and among the shadows she saw him standing there again, towering up upon her hearthrug, before her hearth, with that youthful, frank assurance that was so attractive. Of a truth he was unspoilt yet, unspoilt and splendid as the dawn of the morning - but for how long?
What would they make of him presently, the women of the world, who must needs worship such a man, and strew their charms before him. How was he to keep his freshness, when temptation hemmed him in on every side?
She felt a sudden yearning as of hungry mother-love towards him. If he had been her son, her very own son, how she would have fought the whole world to help him keep his armour bright, and his colours flying high.
And instead?...
The wave of hungry mother-love was followed by one as of swift and angry protest. Who had ever cared whether she kept her armour bright and her colours flying high? Had not life itself mocked at her early aspirations, and trampled jeeringly on her untutored, unformed high desires? What chance had she ever had, long as she might, to keep the morning freshness?
Well, what of it? She had sought and striven for fame, and fame had come; she was a poor creature if she could not look life in the face now, and laugh above her wounds.
And in the meantime perhaps she could help him fight some of those other women stil ; the women who would drag him down for their own satisfaction, and care nothing for the hurt to him.
Anyhow, she would try to be good pal to him, and not a temptress. For once she would fight for some one else's hand instead of her own, and gain what satisfaction she could in feeling herself a true friend.