Part 11 (1/2)
”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 dreadfully 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 d.i.c.k, and I shall insist upon staying out until ten or eleven. I always try and fill my Sundays full of fresh air. ”Where are you going to-night, Baby?” she added, with a charmingly impudent smile.
”The Albert Hall, with Lady Selon”; and a twinkle shone in his eyes.
”Goodness gracious! What in the world are you going to the Albert Hall 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. Well, skip along. Tell d.i.c.k 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 fas.h.i.+on.
”I wish you'd teach him to shake hands, Lorry. It feels like shaking a blind cord and ta.s.sel. Are you going to mother him? What an odd idea for you to bother with a boy! You surely don't mean to tell 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 tete-a-tete 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 specially; 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 well-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 all he said, and looked, and did, somehow seemed ba.n.a.l and irritating to-night.
He was so sure of himself, so fas.h.i.+onably blase, so carelessly clever, so daringly frank, with all the finished air of the modern smart man, basking callously in the a.s.sured fact of his own brilliance 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, all those who would presently succeed her, and she was conscious of an impatient disgust of all the shallowness and insincerety of the fas.h.i.+nable, successful man.