Part 5 (1/2)
”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 call 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 dilly, ”or write her a new one and call 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.
CHAPTER V
It was a little over two years later that the crash came. There was first a commonplace, sordid tale of bickering and quarrelling, with pa.s.sionate jealousy on the part of the middle-aged husband, and callous, maddening indifference on the part of the now successful and brilliant actress
To do Lorraine justice, she was not actively at fault. Her sense of fair play made her try sincerely to make the best of what had all along been an inevitable fiasco. She did not sin in deed against the man to whom she had sold herself, but in thought it was hardly possible for her to give him anything but tolerance, or to feel much beyond the callous indifference she purposely cultivated, to make their life together endurable. The things that at first only irritated her grew almost unbearable afterwards.
Lorraine's father had been a gentleman by birth, breeding, and nature.
If she inherited from her mother an ambitious, calculating spirit, she also inherited from her father refinement, and tone, and a certain fineness character, that showed itself chiefly in unorthodox ways, of for the simple reason that her life and conditions were entirely removed from a conventional atmosphere.