Part 49 (1/2)
”It's a little fad of his to lecture. I rather like it; but I wonder he had the temerity to lecture you.”
”Unfortunately, lecturing doesn't instil common sense,” put in Hermon, ”and it only requires common sense to understand Sir Edwin Crathie isn't very likely to prove a satisfactory friend.”
”You mean it only requires dense, narrow-minded self-satisfaction.
Really, Baby, if you are so good to look at, there is surely a limit even to your permissible airs and graces”; and Hal tossed her head.
”Now come, you two,” interposed Lorraine; ”I don't want quarreling over my tea. Give her some of that sticky pink-and-white cake, Alymer, and have some yourself, and you will soon both grow amiable again.”
”He hasn't got his bibliotheek,” Hal snapped, ”and he knows his mother told him he was to have bread-and-b.u.t.ter first. You are not to spoil him, Lorry. Spoilt children are odious.”
”So are conceited women,” he retorted. ”It's only that new hat that is making you so pleased with yourself.”
”It's a dear hat,” she commented. ”You have to pin a curl on with it, else there's a gap. I'm in mortal dread I shall lose the curl, or find it hanging down my back.”
No more was said on the subject of Sir Edwin, but when Hal was about to leave, and found that Hermon was staying on, she pursed up her lips with an air of sanctimonious disapproval and said:
”I don't want to hurt any one's feelings, but I'm not at all sure _Mr._ Hermont is quite a nice friend for you, Lorraine. His conversation is neither elevating nor improving, and I hardly like to go off now and leave you alone with him.”
”Don't worry,” Lorraine laughed. ”He is improving every day under my tuition. I hope you can say as much for Sir Edwin.”
”I can,” she answered frankly. ”He has learnt quite a lot since I took him in hand; especially about women and the vote. He has positively made the discovery that they don't all want it just for notoriety, and novelty; but I'm afraid he won't succeed in convincing the other dense old gentlemen in the Cabinet. Good-bye!”
”Be circ.u.mspect, O Youth and Beauty. And don't let him over-eat himself, Lorry,” she finished, as she departed.
CHAPTER XXVI
When Hermon was finding fault with Hal's friends.h.i.+p for Sir Edwin Crathie, it had not apparently occured to him that his own friends and relations were likely enough to take precisely the same view of his friends.h.i.+p with Lorraine Vivian. He did not want to think it, any more than Hal had done, and therefore he conveniently ignored the probability, and indulged in the reflection that any how they were never likely to hear of it.
Yet it was through them, and their ill-chosen mode of interference, that the first trouble arose, when that quiet, peaceful winter was over, and the spring arrived with renewing and vigour, and with new happenings in other beside the natural world.
It was as though the one gladsome winter of pleasant companions.h.i.+p and firesides was given to them all - Dudley and Hal, Ethel and Basil, Lorraine and Hermon - before the wider issues of the future stepped in and claimed their toll of sorrow before they gave the deeper joys.
Alymer Hermon's father and mother were at this time living in a charming house at Sevenoaks, whither he went at least once a week to see them.
His father had become more or less of a recluse, enjoying a quiet old age with his books; but his mother was an energetic, bigoted lady of the old school, who had allowed much natural kindliness to become absorbed in her devotion to church precepts and church works.
When it first reached her ears that her only son, of boundless hopes and dreams, was continually with the actress Lorraine Vivian, she was horrified beyond words.
Undoubtedly the story had been much magnified and embroidered, and accepted as a scandalous liaison or entanglement without any inquiry.
To make matters worse, Mrs. Hermon belonged so thouroughly to the old school that she could not even distinguish between a clever celebrated actress and a chorus girl.
The stage, to her, was a synonym which included all things theatrical in one comprehensive ban of immorality and vice, with degrees, of course, but in no case without deserving censure from the eminently respectable, well-born British matron. She could not have been more upset had the heroine of the story been the under housemaid; and indeed she placed actressess and housemaids in much the same category.
Of course the friends.h.i.+p must be stopped, and stopped instantly. What a mercy of mercies she had discovered it so soon, and that now it might be nipped in the bud. Just at the very outset of his career, too, which had so astonis.h.i.+ngly developed of late, and caused her such proud delight.
That that surprising development, both in the career and the beloved son, might have anything to do with this dreadful entanglement was not to be thought of for a moment; and when Alymer's father ventured to suggest thoughtfully and a little wonderingly that the friends.h.i.+p had certainly not harmed the boy, she turned on him with bitterness, ending up with the dictum that men were all alike when there was a woman in the case, and could not possibly form an unbia.s.sed opinion.