Winding Paths Part 51

Don't mince matters at all, will you? Make her thoroughly understand she has got to give him up under any circ.u.mstances, or we shall, well - er - take proceedings if it is possible. Anyhow, Alymer must be guarded against himself, and his father is too unpractical to help, so we must do it alone."

"I quite agree. Alymer is an exceptionally fine fellow, with an exceptionally promising future; and if he cannot see for himself how foolish a scandal would be just at the outset, we must, as you say, save him on our own account. I am fond of Alymer, very fond, and very proud, and I will do all in my power over the matter. What is the actress's name, did you say?"

"I don't think I mentioned it; but Edith told me in her letter. I will look for it."

She went to a writing-table, and returned with the epistle in her hand, glancing through it until she came to the required information, when, without looking up, she read, "Lorraine Vivian."

At the same time a sudden, curious, startled expression crossed the faded eyes of the white-haired gallant, and he turned quicly aside, stroking his moustache with a slightly nervous air.

"Eh? Do you mean the well-known celebrity?" he asked. "Surely not Miss Vivian of the Queen's Theatre?"

"I suppose so. I never go to the theatre, so I never hear these names.

Edith certainly writes as if she were well known. Does it makes any difference?" she asked, as he was silent. "Don't you want to go? If you don't I must find some one else; that is all."

"But certainly I will go. I was only a little surprised. She must be a good deal older than Alymer."

"That only makes it worse. No doubt she is no longer pretty enough for older men, so she has to set her cap at young ones, who are flattered by her attention. I certainly thought Alymer had more sense - but there - one never knows, and these women are very clever, I believe."

"D - d - I mean - extraordinarily clever; but we can be clever too, and I dare say we can contrive to outwit her."

A little later he went away to catch a train back to town, leaving his sister rea.s.sured and hopeful; but as he went he repeated to himself in a low, incredulous voice: "Lorraine Vivian... Lorraine Vivian... How strange that I should be asked to undertake a mission that will cause us to meet again. I wonder if you will recognise me quickly? I flatter myself, even white hair has not destroyed my claims to a woman's favour."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Lorraine had not the smallest idea of what was coming upon her. She knew perfectly well herself that it would be most unwise for a rising young barrister to get talked about with an actress known to have a husband living, and it had made her a great deal more cautious than she would otherwise have bothered to be.

Moreover, Alymer, seeing nothing to gain by making known his mother's fears, preferred not to annoy her with any account of them. To say that he was wholly unaffected by it, however, would be to say too much.

He was, indeed, exceedingly and bitterly annoyed with his interfering aunt, who had obviously tried to make trouble for some petty motive of jealousy. He only hoped that his mother would take her line from him and his father, and maintain a dignified front, unmoved by his aunt's tale-bearing gossip.

He was slightly affected in another way also. It was almost the first time he had seriously considered what the world might say if their great friendship was known. He knew it well enough to believe it would be in haste to put the worst construction on it, though their own immediate friends might stand by them loyally.

It caused him to consider that construction in a light he had hitherto been protected from by circ.u.mstances, for it thrust forward an aspect they had successfully kept in the background. It made him ask the question, What was he prepared to do if his aunt continued her persecution, and some sort of change had to be made in the friendly, delightful intercourse?

He wondered a good deal what Lorraine's own att.i.tude would be. Would she, perhaps, now that she had given him his start, cut all the friendship off for his good, and return to her old friends and admirers? He shrank from the contemplation of such a solution undisguisedly, and meant to continue their pleasant relations if possible.

He certainly wished no change whatever, if it could be avoided.

Lorraine meant everything to him just then, and he could not but know how much his companionship and affection had come to mean to her.

So the next day he paid his customary visit, and talked as usual of many things, but said no word of what had pa.s.sed the previous night.

Lorraine's room was full of violets and snowdrops, cushions of them on every side, in lovely array. He moved about looking at them, and she watched him from a low chair by the fire, clad in some new spring gown of an exquisite mauve shade, that seemed to tone with the violet-bedecked room.

It gave her dark eyes something of a violet tint, and her hands looked as white and delicate as the snowdrops. Moving about from ma.s.s of blossoms, Alymer, glancing at her, thought she looked younger and lovelier than ever.

"You have a spring air about you," he said, "and all the room seems full of spring. There is something about it all I like better than the lilies and roses and malmaisons usually making a display."

"I sent them all to the dining-room," she told him. "Every spring is such a beautiful new thing, it has to be allowed to reign supreme for a little while in here. It gives me rather an ache to see them, all the same" - after a pause - "they make me dream of the smell of the new woodland, that delicious, damp, earthy smell of spring, and all the young, joyful bursting of buds and springing of seeds and the mating birds, and the showers that make the leaves glisten. I feel as if I should like to tramp out across the country in such a shower, and get healthily wet, and be a real bit of the spring for just one week."

"Why don't you go? You are not looking very well, and the country air would probably do you no end of good."

"I don't want to go alone, and I do not know who I could take. Hal is not able to leave, and mother would merely be bored to tears, and Flip Denton is at Monte Carlo. There is no one really but you and Hal and Flip who would fit in with my spring mood. Any one else would strike a discordant note."

"I wish I could come."

The wish escaped him almost involuntarily, as, with the sight of the spring flowers and the spring scent in his nostrils, he too felt the call of the fresh, wild, vigorous things in his blood.

Lorraine looked at him with a curious expression on her face. Why, she wondered, did he not seriously contemplate coming? Why did he so steadily pursue, as far as she was concerned, his serene and pa.s.sionless path? She believed he cared more for her than for any one else; and, if so, was it possible the ache sometimes in her heart for a closer bond and resolutely strangled, had no counterpart in his hot, vigorous youth?

Then he looked suddenly into her eyes, as if to see whether she had heard his wish, and what she thought of it. And as their gaze met, she saw the blood mantle to his face, and a half-shamed expression creep into it, as if he had been discovered in a thought that should never have been permitted.

He looked away again to the flowers, and Lorraine turned her eyes to the fire, with a swift wonder in her mind. She felt that something had transpired since they last parted - something she did not know of, and that was entirely different to anything that had crossed their path before. Some new thought had been put into his mind. Something that made him give her that half-shy, half-wondering look.

She gazed hard at the fire, and her pulses began to beat a little fitfully. She knew instinctively that something had come suddenly into being between them, which neither might name, and which was the oldest thing in the world.

And then across her mind, as once before, swept with swift pitilessness a vision of what might have been; of what life might have held for her had she been among the blessed - an aching, tearing longing for a youthful hour she had irretrievably missed. She drew her hand across her eyes, ignoring his presence, shutting him out, seeing only the heavenly joy she had missed.

Supposing such a moment had come to her with such a man, when she, like him, was in the first flush of youth and beauty; of dreams and hopes, and rich believing. What a knight for a lovely maid! What a lover to dream of bashfully and fearfully; and with all her soul one thought of him.

From her vantage ground of much doing and much knowing, she looked back yearningly to the bloom and springtide of life, when all splendid things are possible, and any day may bring the splendid knight.

And instead had come... ah, what?

Well! For her it had been the wolf in sheep's clothing, who, beside all he had robbed her of, had taken all her chance of the one great awakening to blinding joy. Now she could only look upon the joy from afar, seeing a barrier of fateful years, and, like a drawn sword at the gate of her dream, the stern, unyielding decree that has echoed unchanged down the long centuries: "Thou shalt not - "

Alymer was silent too, standing with the thoughtful expression on his face that was so attractive, probing a little nervously into that wish he had expressed, and wondering a little uncertainly just what it meant.

Then Lorraine got up.

"You are grave, _mon ami_; and it is the springtime. Grave thoughts are for the autumn of life - recklessness better becomes the joyful spring."

"Are you ever reckless nowadays?" he asked, watching her graceful movements as she bent down and buried her face in a cushion of violets.

"I am when I smell violets. They may be modest and retiring little flowers, but they hold spring rapture and spring lavishness and spring desiring in their scent all the same."

"Then you are reckless now?"

What was it made him dally thus upon dangerous ground? What was it made him speak to Lorraine as he had never spoken before, on the very day after his mother's admonition? Why did his immense height and strength and the young vigour in his blood suddenly blot out the years that lay between them, and sweep into his soul, the knowledge of his masculinity and might, which of its own nature possessively dominated her femininity?

They seemed all at once to have strayed into an atmosphere, born of that warning admonition, and of their talk, of the reckless, creative spring; and because, in spite of his youth, he was very much a man, and she was a dangerously attractive woman, his pulses leapt fitfully and eagerly with the swift ache that has existed ever since G.o.d made man and woman.

Without looking up, Lorraine felt this. The very air about them seemed charged with it, and she too, under some spell of springtime, moved into closer proximity to the splendid knight. She brushed against his arm unconsciously; and looking down on the top of her dark head, he said half-shyly:

"You somehow seem such a little thing to-day, Lorraine, I feel as if I could pick you up, as one does a small child."