Part 4 (1/2)
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 well 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 fellow-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 called 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 all 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 allowed 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 callous 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 all 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 follow 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 will 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 all. Still, I'm glad I showed him he'd got something in himself beside the stale acc.u.mulations 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 tell me it didn't hurt after... after - ”
”Oh yes, it hurt,” with a low, bitter laugh; ”but what of that eiter?
It's generally 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 wors.h.i.+pped you.”
”Yes; only presently it will 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 tell 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.”