“You like it, my lord?” she said. “My disgraceful extravagance is rewarded by your gracious approval? Then your ridiculous mother is silly enough to be pleased.” She gave him a little careless touch, half shake and half caress, and Julian threw his arm round her rapturously.
“I should think I did like it!” he said boyishly. “I say, shan’t I have to work hard here! Mother, what an awfully jolly smoking table!”
“Suppose you smoke here now,” suggested Mrs. Romayne, “by way of taking possession? Oh, yes! I’ll stay with you.”
She sat down, as she spoke, in one of the low basket-chairs by the fire, taking a little hand-screen from the mantelpiece as she did so. And Julian, with an exclamation of supreme satisfaction, threw himself into a long lounging-chair with an air of general proprietorship which sat oddly on his youthful figure; and proceeded to select and light a cigar.
A silence followed—rather a long silence. Julian lay back in his chair, and smoked in luxurious contentment. Mrs. Romayne sat with her dainty head, with its elaborate arrangement of red-brown hair, resting against a cushion, her face half hidden by the shade thrown by the fire-screen as she held it up in one slender, ringed hand. She seemed to be looking straight into the fire; as a matter of fact her eyes were fixed on the boyish face beside her. She was the first to break silence.
“It is two, nearly three, months since we were together,” she said.
The words might have been the merest comment in themselves; but there was something in the bright tone in which they werespoken, something—half suggestion, half invitation—which implied a desire to make them the opening of a conversation. Julian Romayne’s perceptions, however, were by no means of the acutest, and he detected no undertone.
“So it is!” he assented, with dreamy cheerfulness.
“How long did you spend in Cairo?”
The question, which came after a pause, was evidently another attempt on a new line. Again it failed.
“Didn’t I tell you? Ten days!” said Julian lazily.
Mrs. Romayne changed her position. She leant forward, her elbow on her knee, her cheek resting on her hand, the screen still shading her face.
“The catechism is going to begin,” she said gaily.
Julian’s cigar was finished. He roused himself, and dropped the end into the ash-tray by his side as he said with a smile:
“What catechism?”
“Your catechism, sir,” returned his mother. “Do you suppose I am going to letyou off without insisting on a full and particular account of all your doings during the last ten weeks?”
“A full and particular account of all my doings!” he said. “I say, that sounds formidable, doesn’t it? The only thing is, you’ve had it in my letters.”
“The fullest and most particular?” she laughed.
“The fullest and most particular!”
“Never mind,” she exclaimed, leaning back in her chair again with a restless movement, “I shall catechise all the same. My curiosity knows no limits, you see. Now, you are on your honour as a—as a spoilt boy, understand.”
“On my honour as a spoilt boy! All right. Fire away, mum!”
He pulled himself up, folding his hands with an assumption of “good little boy” demeanour, and laughing into her face. She also drew herself up, and laughed back at him.
“Question one: Have you lost your heart to any pretty girl in the past ten weeks?”
“No, mum.”
“Question two: Have you flirted—much—with any girl, pretty or plain?”
“No, mum.”
“Have you overdrawn your allowance?”
“No, mum. I’ve got such a jolly generous mother, mum!”
“Have you—— Oh! Have you any secrets from your mother?”
The question broke from her in a kind of cry, but she turned it before it was finished into burlesque, and Julian burst into a shout of laughter.
“Not a solitary secret! There, will that do?”
She was looking straight into his face—her own still in shadow—and there was a moment’s pause; almost a breathless pause on her part it seemed; then she broke into a laugh.
“That will do capitally,” she said. “The catechism is over.”
She rose as she spoke, and added a word or two about a note she had to write.
“We may as well go up into the drawing-room if you have finished smoking,” she said. “It is an invitation from some friends ofthe Pomeroys—a dinner. By-the-bye, don’t you think Miss Pomeroy a very pretty girl?”
Julian’s response was rather languid, but his mother did not press the point. She turned away to replace the screen on the mantelpiece, and as she did so a thought seemed to strike her.
“Oh, Julian!” she said. “Did you go to Alexandria? What about those curtains you were to get me?”
Her back was towards Julian, and she did not notice the instant’s hesitation which preceded his reply. He was putting his cigar-case into his pocket, and the process seemed to demand all his attention.
“I didn’t go to Alexandria, unfortunately,” he said lightly. “The Fosters had been there, and didn’t care to go again.”
The clock struck twelve that night when Mrs. Romayne rose at last from the chair in front of her bedroom fireplace in which she had been sitting for more than an hour. The fire had gone out before her eyes unnoticed, and she shivered a little as she rose. Her face was strangely paleand haggard-looking, and the red-brown hair harmonised ill with the anxiety of its look.
“It begins from to-night!” she said to herself. “It is his man’s life that begins from to-night!”
“Quitea presentable fellow!”
There was an unusual ring of excitement in Mrs. Romayne’s voice; it was about ten o’clock in the evening, and she was standing in the middle of her own drawing-room, looking up into Julian’s face, as he stood before her, having just come into the room, smiling back at her with a certain touch of excitement about his appearance also. He was in evening dress; he had evidently bestowed particular pains upon his attire, and the flower in his buttonhole was an exceptionally dainty one.
Mrs. Romayne was also in evening dress, and in evening dress of the most elaborate description. From the point of view of the fashion of the day, her appearance was absolutely perfect; no detail,from the arrangement of her hair to the point of the silk shoe just visible beneath her skirt, had been neglected; everything was in good taste and in the height of fashion, and the effect of the whole, heightened by the background afforded by the quiet little drawing-room with its softly shaded lamps, was almost startling in its suggestion of luxury and refinement. The fashion of the moment was peculiarly becoming to Mrs. Romayne, and evening dress, with its artificialities and its conventionalities, always enhanced her good points, strictly conventional as they were. With that light of excitement on her face, and a certain suggestion about her of verve and vivacity, she looked almost charming enough to justify the boyish exclamations of exaggerated admiration into which Julian had broken on entering the room.
There was an eager, restless happiness in her eyes, which leapt up into almost triumphant life as she gave a little touch to Julian’s buttonhole; and then pushed him a step or two further back, that she might look at him again, and repeated hercommendatory words with a laugh. Then, on a little gesture from her, he picked up her cloak, which lay on a chair near, put it carefully about her, and, opening the door for her, followed her downstairs.
Nearly three weeks had elapsed since Julian’s arrival in London, and in that time, short as it was, his expression had changed somewhat. There was a quickened interest and alertness about it which detracted from his boyishness, inasmuch as it made him look as though life had actually begun for him. It would have been wholly untrue to say that any touch of responsibility or ambition had dawned upon his good-looking young face; but a subtle something had come to it which was, perhaps, a materialisation of a mental movement which did duty for those emotions. In the course of those three weeks he had had several interviews with the man with whom he was to read; all the preliminaries of his legal career had been settled; and in more than one half-laughing talk with his mother on the conclusion of some arrangement, the preliminarieshad been far outstripped, and he had been conducted in triumph to the bench itself.
But in all these buildings of castles in the air, there was a factor in the foundations of his fortunes never allowed by his mother to drop out of sight; the main factor it became when she was the architect, relegating to a subordinate position even the hard work on which Julian was wont to expatiate with enthusiasm and energy. Sometimes as a means, sometimes as an end, sometimes as the sum total of all human ambition, social success, social position were woven into all his schemes for the future as they talked together; woven in with no direct statements or precepts; but with an insidious insistence, and a tacit assumption of their value in the scale of things as a truism in no need of formulation.
Society life had begun for him with the very day after his arrival in town, and had moved briskly with him through the following weeks; briskly, but in a small way. Easter had intervened, and no large entertainments had been given. To-night was to be, as Mrs. Romayne said gaily as shesettled her train and her cloak in the brougham into which he had followed her, his first public appearance. They were on their way to the first “smart affair” of the coming season; a dance to be given at a house in Park Lane; not very large, but very desirable, at which—again on Mrs. Romayne’s authority—all the right people would be.
“You must dance, of course, but not all the evening, Julian!” his mother said, as their drive drew to an end. “I shall want to introduce you a good deal. And don’t engage yourself for supper if you can help it. I’m sorry to be so hard upon you!”
She finished with a laugh, light as her tone had been throughout. Then their carriage drew up suddenly, and her face, in shadow for the moment, changed strangely. For an instant all the happiness, all the excitement and superficiality died out of it, quenched in a kind of revelation of heartsick anxiety so utterly out of all proportion with the occasion, as to be absolutely ghastly; ghastly as only a momentary revelation ofthe cruel cross-purposes and incongruities of life can be. The next moment, as Julian sprang out of the carriage and turned to help her out, her expression changed again.
It took them some time to get up to the drawing-room, for though the party was by no means a crush, they had arrived at the most fashionable moment, and the staircase was crowded. Salutations, conveyed by graceful movements of the head, passed across an intervening barrier of gay dresses and black coats between Mrs. Romayne and numbers of acquaintances above her or below her on the stairs; and as she smiled and bowed she murmured comments to Julian—names or data, criticisms of dress or appearance—until at last patience, and the continual movement of the stream of which they made part, brought them face to face with their hostess. The conventional handshake, the conventional words of greeting passed between that lady and Mrs. Romayne, and then the latter indicated Julian with a smiling gesture.
“Let me introduce my boy, LadyArden,” she said. “So glad to have the opportunity!”
She spoke with an accentuation of that self-conscious, self-deriding maternal pride which was her usual pose, setting, as it were, her tone for the night. And certainly Julian, as he bowed, and then shook the hand Lady Arden held out to him, was a legitimate subject for pride. His sense of the importance of the occasion had given to his manner and expression not only that touch of excitement which made him positively handsome, but a certain added readiness and assurance, by no means presuming and very attractive. Lady Arden’s eyes rested on him with obvious approval, as she said the few words the situation demanded with unusual graciousness, and a sign from her brought one of her daughters to her side. She introduced Julian to the girl.
“Take care of Mr. Romayne, Ida,” she said. “He has only lately come to London. Find him some nice partners.”
“And let me have him back by-and-by, please, Lady Ida!” laughed Mrs. Romayne, as they passed on with the girl into the room.“There are some friends of his mother’s to whom he must spare a little time to-night.”
The gay replies with which Julian and his guide—who after a comprehensive glance at him had shown considerable readiness to do her mother’s bidding—disappeared in the crowd were lost to Mrs. Romayne; her attention was claimed by a man at her elbow.
“May I have a dance, Mrs. Romayne?” he said.
Mrs. Romayne shook hands and laughed.
“Well, really I don’t know,” she said; “I think I must give up dancing from to-night. I’ve got a great grown-up son here, do you know. Look, there he is with Lady Ida Arden! Nice-looking boy, isn’t he? It doesn’t seem the right thing for his mother to be dancing about, now does it?”
She laughed again, a gay little laugh, well in the key she had set in her first introduction of Julian, and the man to whom she spoke protested vigorously.
“It seems to me exactly the right thing,” he said. “The idea of your having a grown-upson is the preposterous point, don’t you know. Come, I say, Mrs. Romayne, don’t be so horribly hard-hearted!”
“But I must introduce him, don’t you see. I must do my duty as a mother.”
“Lady Ida is introducing him! She has introduced him to half-a-dozen of the best girls in the room already.”
The colloquy, carried on on either side in the lightest of tones, finally ended in Mrs. Romayne’s promising a “turn by-and-by,” and the couple drifted apart; Mrs. Romayne to find acquaintances close at hand. Among the first she met was Lady Bracondale, condescendingly amiable, to whom she pointed out Julian, with laughing self-excuse. He was dancing now, and dancing extremely well.
“I am so absurdly proud of him!” she said. “I want to introduce him to you by-and-by, if I can catch him. But dancing men are so inconveniently useful.”
Some time had worn away, and she had repeated the substance of this speech in sundry forms to sundry persons, before Julian rejoined her. She had cast severalrather preoccupied glances in his direction, when she became aware of him on the opposite side of the room, threading his way through the intervening groups in her direction, just as she was accosted by a rather distinguished-looking, elderly man.
“How do you do, Mrs. Romayne? They tell me that you have a grown-up son here, and I decline to believe it.”
He spoke in a pleasant, refined voice, marred, however, by all the affectation of the day, and with a tone about it as of a man absolutely secure of position and used to some amount of homage. He was a certain Lord Garstin, a distinguished figure in London society, rich, well-bred, and idle. He was troubled with no ideals. Fashionable women, with all the weaknesses which he knew quite well, were quite as high a type of woman as he thought possible; or, at least, desirable; and he had a considerable admiration for Mrs. Romayne as a very highly-finished and attractive specimen of the type he preferred.
She shook hands with him with a laugh, and a gathering together of her social resources,so to speak, which suggested that in her scheme of things he was a power whose suffrage was eminently desirable.
“It is true, notwithstanding,” she said brightly. “I am the proud possessor of a grown-up son, Lord Garstin; a very dear boy, I assure you. We are settling down in London together.”
“Is it possible?” was the answer, uttered with exaggerated incredulity. “And what are you going to do with him, may I ask?”
“He is reading for the bar——” began Mrs. Romayne; and then becoming aware that the subject of her words had by this time reached her side, she turned slightly, and laid her hand on Julian’s arm with a pretty gesture. “Here he is,” she said. “Let me introduce him. Julian, this is Lord Garstin. He has been kindly asking me about you.”
Julian knew all about Lord Garstin, and his tone and manner as he responded to his mother’s words were touched with a deference which made them, as his mother said to herself, “just what they ought to be.” Theelder man looked him over with eyes which, as far as their vision extended, were as keen as eyes need be.
“A great many of your mother’s admirers will find it difficult to realise your existence,” he said pleasantly. “Though of course we have all heard of you. You are going to the bar, eh?”
Lord Garstin had a great following among smart young men, and the fact was rather a weakness of his. He liked to have young men about him; to be admired and imitated by them. His manner to Julian was characteristic of these tastes; free from condescension as superiority can only be when it is absolute and unassailable, and full of easy familiarity.
Mrs. Romayne, standing fanning herself between them, listened for Julian’s reply with a certain intent suspense beneath her smile; Lord Garstin’s approval was so important to him. The simple, unaffected frankness of the answer satisfied her ear, and Lord Garstin’s expression, as he listened to it, satisfied her eye; and with a laughing comment on Julian’s words, she allowedher attention to be drawn away for the moment by an acquaintance who claimed it in passing.
There was a slight flush of elation on her face when, a few moments later, the chat between Lord Garstin and Julian being broken off, the former moved away with a friendly nod to the young man, and a little gesture and smile to herself, significant of congratulation.
“Come and walk round the room,” she said gaily, slipping her hand through Julian’s arm. “There are hundreds of people you must be introduced to.”
During the half-hour that followed, Julian was introduced to a large proportion of those people in the room who were best worth knowing. Mrs. Romayne seemed to have wasted no time on the acquaintance of mediocrities.
His presentation to Lady Bracondale had just been accomplished, when Mrs. Halse appeared upon the scene and greeted Mrs. Romayne with stereotyped enthusiasm.
“Such a success!” she said in a loud whisper, as Julian talked to Lady Bracondale.“Everybody is quite taken by surprise. I don’t know why, I’m sure, but I don’t think any one was prepared for such a charming young man. I’ve been quite in love with him ever since I saw him first, you know, and we really must have him on the bazaar committee.” Mrs. Halse had been out of town for Easter, and the affairs of the bazaar had been somewhat in abeyance in consequence. “Mr. Romayne,” she continued, seizing upon Julian, “I want to talk to you. You really must help me——”
At this juncture the man who had pressed Mrs. Romayne to dance earlier in the evening came up to her and claimed the promise she had made him then. She cast a glance of laughing pity at Julian, intended for his eyes alone, and moved away.
“It was too bad, mother,” he declared, laughing, as he met her a little later coming out of the dancing-room. “Now, to make up you must have one turn with me—just one. We haven’t danced together for ages.”
He was full of eagerness, a little flushed with the excitement of the evening, andher laughing protestations, her ridicule of him for wanting to dance with his mother, went for nothing. They only let loose on her a torrent of boyish persuasion, and finally she hesitated, laughed undecidedly, and yielded. She, too, was a little flushed and elated, as though with triumph.
“One turn, then, you absurd boy!” she said; and she let him draw her hand through his arm and lead her back into the dancing-room. They went only half-a-dozen times round the room in spite of his protestations against stopping, but Mrs. Romayne was too excellent a dancer and too striking a figure for those turns to pass unnoticed. When she stopped and made him take her, flushed and laughing, out of the room, she was instantly surrounded by a group of men vehemently reproaching her for dancing with her son to the exclusion of so many would-be partners, and laughingly denouncing Julian.
“I couldn’t help it!” she protested gaily. “Yes, I know it’s a ridiculous sight, but we are rather ridiculous, we two, you know! Come, Julian, take me home thismoment! Let me disappear covered with confusion.”
She went swiftly downstairs as she spoke, laughing prettily, and a few minutes later Julian, with a good deal of extraneous and wholly unnecessary assistance, was putting her into her carriage.
The whole evening had gone off admirably, Mrs. Romayne said the next morning; repeating the dictum with which she had parted from Julian at night, with less excitement, but with undiminished satisfaction.
During the course of the next three or four weeks that satisfaction—a certain genuine and deliberate satisfaction which seemed to underlie the superficial gaiety and brightness of her manner—seemed to grow upon her. The season had begun early, and very gaily, and she and Julian were in great request. It was perhaps as well that little work was expected of the embryo barrister before the winter, for he and his mother were out night after night; welcomed and made much of wherever they went, as so attractive a pair—one of whom was steeped to the finger-tips in knowledge of her world—were sure to be. Mrs. Romayne arranged a series of weekly dinner-parties in the little house at Chelsea, which promised to be, in a small way, one of the features of the season. They were very small, very select, and very cheery; no better hostess was to be found in London, and there was a touch of sentiment about the relation between the hostess and the pleasant young host, which was by no means without charm for the guests.
Mrs. Halse’s bazaar, too, which was affording far more entertainment to its promoters than it seemed at all likely to afford to its supporters, served to bring Julian into special prominence. He was not clever, but there is a great deal to be done in connection with a bazaar on which intellect would be thrown away, and Julian proved himself what Mrs. Halse described effusively as “a most useful dear!” an expression by which she probably meant to convey the fact that he was always ready to toil for the ladies’ committee, without too close an investigation into the end to be attained by the said toiling. He was quite an important person at all the meetings connectedwith the bazaar, and the fact gave him a standing with the innumerable “smart” people concerned which he would otherwise hardly have attained so soon.
His introduction to Lord Garstin resulted, about a fortnight after it took place, in an invitation to a bachelor dinner. An invitation to one of Lord Garstin’s dinners was, in its way, about as desirable a thing as a young man “in Society” could receive; and the pleased, repressed importance on Julian’s face as he came into the drawing-room to his mother before he started to keep the engagement, was like a faint reflection of the satisfaction with which Mrs. Romayne’s expression was transfused.
“You’re going?” she said brightly. “Well, I shall be at the Ponsonbys’ by half-past eleven, and I shall expect you there some time before twelve. Enjoy yourself, sir!”
He kissed her with careless affection, and she patted him on the shoulder for a conceited boy as he hoped, lightly, that she would not find her solitary evening dull; she had refused to dine out withouthim, saying laughingly that she should enjoy a holiday; and then he went off, whistling gaily and arranging his buttonhole.
It wanted a few minutes only to the dinner-hour when he arrived at the club where the dinner was to be given. Three of his fellow guests were already assembled, and to two of these—well-known young men about town—he had already been introduced.
“You know these two fellows, I think,” said Lord Garstin lightly, “but”—turning to the third man—“Loring tells me that you and he have not yet been introduced. I’m delighted to perform the ceremony! Mr. Julian Romayne—Mr. Marston Loring!”
Julian held out his hand with a frank exclamation of pleasure. He had recognised in Mr. Marston Loring a young man whom he had seen about incessantly during the past month, and who had excited a good deal of secret and boyish admiration in him by reason of a certain assumption ofblasécynicism with which an excellent society manner was just sufficiently seasoned to give it character. It was conventionalcharacter enough, but it was not to be expected that Julian should understand that.
“I’m awfully glad to meet you,” he said pleasantly. “I’ve known you by sight for ages!”
“And I you!” was the answer, spoken with a slight smile and a touch of cordiality which delighted Julian. “The pleasure is distinctly mutual.”
Marston Loring was not a good-looking young man; his features, indeed, would have been insignificant but for the presence of that spurious air of refinement which life in society usually produces; and for something more genuine, namely, a strength and resolution about the mould of his chin and the set of his thin lips which had won him a reputation for being “clever-looking” among the superficial observers of the social world. He was nine-and-twenty, but his face might have been the face of a man twenty years older—so entirely destitute was it of any of the gracious possibilities which should characterise early manhood. It was pale and lined, and worn with very uglysuggestiveness; and there were stories told about him, whispered and laughed at in many of the houses where he was received, which accounted amply for those lines. The pose, too, which it pleased him to adopt was that of elderly superiority to all the illusions and credulities of youth. Marston Loring was a man of whom it was vaguely but universally said that he had “got on so well!” Reduced to facts, this statement meant, primarily, that with no particular rights in that direction he had gradually worked his way into a position in society—a position the insecurity and unreality of which was known only to himself; and, secondarily, that by dint of influence, hard work—hard work was also part of his pose—and a certain amount of unscrupulousness, he was making money at the bar when most men dependent on their profession would have starved at it.
He had brown eyes, dull and curiously shallow-looking, but very keen and calculating, and they were even keener than usual as they gave Julian one quick look.
“I think we belong to the same profession?” he said with easy friendliness.“You are reading with Allardyce, are you not? A good man, Allardyce.”
“So they tell me,” answered Julian, not a little impressed by the critical and experienced tone of the approbation. “I can’t say I’ve done much with him yet. One doesn’t do much at this time of year, you know.”
Loring smiled rather sardonically.
“That’s what it is to be a gentleman of independent fortune,” he said. “Some people have to burn the candle at both ends.”
The five minutes’ chat which ensued before the arrival of the fifth guest—a certain Lord Hesseltine, known only by sight to Julian—and the announcement of dinner, was just enough to create a regret in Julian’s mind when he found that he and his new acquaintance were seated on opposite sides of the table. Loring’s contribution to the general conversation throughout dinner, witty, cynical, and assured, completed his conquest, and when, on the subsequent adjournment of the party to the smoking-room, Loring strolled up to him, cigar in hand, the prospect of atête-à-têtewas greatly to Julian’s satisfaction.
“What an odd thing it is that we should never have been introduced before!” he began, lighting his own cigar and scanning the other man with youthful, admiring eyes.
“It is odd,” returned Loring placidly, throwing himself into an arm-chair as he spoke, and signing an invitation to Julian to establish himself in another. “Especially as, like every one else, I’ve been an immense admirer of your mother all this year. I wonder whether you recognise what a lucky fellow you are, Romayne?”
Julian’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the easy familiarity of the address, and he crossed his legs with careless self-importance, as he answered, with the lightness of youth:
“I ought to, oughtn’t I? I say, I know my mother would be awfully pleased to know you. You must let me introduce you to her. Are you coming on to the Ponsonbys’ to-night?”
“I shall be only too delighted,” answered Loring, watching the smoke from his cigarwith his dull, brown eyes, and answering the first part of Julian’s speech. “No, unfortunately I’ve got an affair in Chelsea to-night, and another in Kensington. But we shall meet to-morrow night at the Bracondales’, I suppose?”
“Of course,” assented Julian eagerly. “That will be capital!”
There was a moment’s pause, broken by Loring with a reference to a political opinion formulated by one of the other men at dinner; and a talk about politics ensued, eager on Julian’s part, cynical and effectively reserved on Loring’s. A political discussion, when the discussers hold the same political faith, has much the same effect in promoting rapid intimacy between men, granted a predisposition towards intimacy on either side, as a discussion of the reigning fashion in dress has with a certain class of women. When Lord Garstin’s dinner-party began to break up, and Loring and Julian rose to take their departure, they parted with a hand-clasp which would have befitted an acquaintanceship three months, rather than three hours old.
“Good night,” said Julian. “Awfullypleased to have met you, Loring. See you to-morrow night. My mother will be delighted.”
“I shall be delighted,” said Loring. “All right, then. To-morrow night we’ll arrange that look in at the House. Good night.”
A few minutes’ talk with Lord Garstin, who had taken a decided fancy to “that charming little woman’s boy,” and Julian was standing on the pavement of St. James’s Street, with that pleasant sense of exhilaration and warmth of heart, which is an attendant, in youth, on the inauguration of a new friendship.
It was a night in early May, and a fine, hot day had ended, as evening drew on, in sultry closeness. The clouds had been rolling up steadily, though not a breath of air seemed to be stirring now, and it was evident that a storm was inevitable before long. Julian was hot and excited; he had only a short distance to go; he looked up at the sky and decided—the wish being father to the thought—that it would “hold up for the present,” and that he would walk.
He set out up St. James’s Street and along Piccadilly, taking the right road by instinct, his busy thoughts divided between satisfaction at the idea of belonging to the “best” club in London, introduced thereinto by Lord Garstin; and Loring and his gifts and graces. He had just turned into Berkeley Street when a rattling peal of thunder roused him with a start, and the next instant the thunder was followed by a perfect deluge of rain.
It was so sudden and he was so entirely unprepared, that his only instinct for the moment was to step back hastily into the shelter of a portico in front of which he was just passing; and as he did so, he noticed a young woman who must have been following him up the street, a young woman in the shabby hat and jacket of a work-girl, take refuge, perforce, beneath the same shelter with a shrinking movement which was not undignified, though it seemed to imply that she was almost more afraid of him than of the drenching, bitter rain. Then, his reasoning powers reasserting themselves in the comparative security of the portico, he began to consider what he should do. He waswithin seven minutes’ walk of his destination, but seven minutes’ walk in such rain as was beating down on the pavement before him would render him wholly unfit to present himself at a party; and “of course,” as he said to himself, there was not a cab to be seen. A blinding flash of lightning cut across his reflections, and drove him back a step or two farther into shelter involuntarily. And as a terrific peal of thunder followed it instantaneously, he glanced almost unconsciously at the sharer of his shelter.
“By Jove!” he said to himself.
The girl had retreated, as he himself had done, and was standing close up against the door of the house to which the portico belonged, in the extreme corner from that which he himself occupied. But except for that tacit acknowledgement of his presence, she seemed no longer conscious of it. She was looking straight out at the storm, her head a little lifted as though to catch a glimpse of the sky; and her face, outlined by her dark clothes and the dark paint of the door behind her, stood out in great distinctness. It was rather thin and pale, and very tired-looking;the large brown eyes were heavy and haggard. It was not worthy of a second glance at that moment, according to any canon of the world in which Julian lived, and yet it drew from him that exclamation of startled admiration. He had never seen anything like it, he told himself vaguely.
Apparently the intent gaze, of which he himself was hardly conscious, affected its object. She moved uneasily, and turning as if involuntarily, met his eyes.
The next instant she was moving hastily from under the portico, when the driver of a hansom cab became aware of Julian’s existence, and pulled up suddenly.
“Hansom, sir?” he shouted.
“Yes!” answered Julian quickly, dashing across the drenched pavement. “A hundred and three, Berkeley Square!”
Allthe rooms in the house in Chelsea were bright and pretty, and by no means the least attractive was the dining-room. The late breakfast-hour fixed by Mrs. Romayne, “just for the season,” as she said, gave plenty of time for the sun to find its way in at the windows; and on the morning following Julian’s dinner with Lord Garstin the sunshine was dancing on the walls, and the soft, warm air floating in at the open windows, as though the thunderstorm of the previous evening had cleared the air to some purpose.
The two occupants of the room, as they faced one another across the dainty little breakfast-table, had been laughing and talking after their usual fashion ever since they sat down; talking of the party of the night before and of engagements in the future;and finally reverting to Lord Garstin’s dinner and Marston Loring, of whom Julian had already had a great deal to say.
“I have a kind of feeling that he and I are going to be chums, mother!” he said as he carried his coffee-cup round the table to her to be refilled. “I think he took to me rather, do you know!”
“That’s a very surprising thing, isn’t it?” returned his mother, laughing. “And you took to him? Well, if you must pick up a chum, you couldn’t do it under better auspices than Lord Garstin’s.”
“I took to him no end!” answered Julian eagerly. “I do hope you’ll like him.”
“I think I am pretty sure to like him,” said Mrs. Romayne graciously. “I remember hearing about him some time ago—that he was quite one of the rising young men of the day. He was to have been introduced to me then. I forget why it didn’t come off. There’s your coffee!”
Julian took his cup with a word of thanks and turned back to his chair; and his mother began again.
“Mr. Loring is a member of the Prince’s, I suppose?” she said. The “Prince’s” was the name of the club at which Lord Garstin’s dinner had been given. “I suppose you will want to be setting up a club in no time, sir?”
Julian laughed, and then replied somewhat eagerly and confidentially, as though in unconscious response to a certain invitation in his mother’s tone.
“Well, of course a fellow does want a club, mother,” he said. “One feels it more and more, don’t you know! Of course I should awfully like to belong to the Prince’s.”
“And why not?” responded his mother brightly, watching him rather narrowly as she spoke. “Lord Garstin would put you up, I’ve no doubt, if I asked him.”
Julian’s eyes sparkled.
“It would be first-rate!” he exclaimed. “Mother, it’s awfully jolly of you!” He paused a moment and then continued tentatively: “It would be rather expensive, you know. That’s the only thing!”
“So I suppose!” answered his mother,laughing. “Oh, you’re a very expensive luxury altogether! However, I imagine another hundred a year would do?” Then as he broke into vehement demonstrations of delight and gratitude, she added with another laugh which did not seem to ring quite true: “I don’t think you need ever run short of money!”
There was a moment’s pause as Julian, the picture of glowing satisfaction, finished his breakfast, and then Mrs. Romayne rose.
“What are you going to do this morning?” she said. “Read?”
Julian glanced out of the window.
“Well,” he said, “it’s an awfully jolly morning, isn’t it? I promised to see after some live-stock for Miss Pomeroy’s stall—puppies, and kittens, and canary birds. Rum idea, isn’t it? What are you doing this morning, dear?”
It turned out that Mrs. Romayne had nothing particular on her hands beyond a visit to a jeweller in Bond Street, and accepting very easily his substitution of Miss Pomeroy’s commission for the legal studies to which he was supposed to devote himselfin the mornings, she took up his reference to the weather, and suggested that they should drive together to execute first his business and then her own.
“It will be rather nice driving this morning,” she said. “And we can take a turn in the Park.”
Certainly there was a certain amount of excuse for those people who had already begun to say that Mrs. Romayne was never happy without her son by her side.
She spared no pains, however, to make him happy with her; and as they drove along there was probably no brighter or brisker talk than theirs in progress in all London. They drove through the West End streets and penetrated, in search of Miss Pomeroy’s requirements, into regions into which Mrs. Romayne had hardly ever penetrated before; regions which rather amused her to-day in their squalor. When Julian had done his commission in plenty of time to undo it and do it again before the bazaar came off, as he remarked with a laugh, they turned back again and went to Bond Street.
“I have a little private matter to attend to here,” said Julian, as he followed his mother into the jeweller’s shop. “You just have the kindness to stop at your end of the shop, will you, please, and leave me to mine?”
Mrs. Romayne laughed and shook her head at him. It was within a few days of her birthday, which was always demonstratively honoured by her son.
“Now, you are not to be extravagant,” she said, holding up a slender, threatening finger with mock severity. “Mind, I will not have it. I shall descend upon you unawares, and keep you in order.”
She let him leave her with another laugh, and he disappeared to the other end of the shop, while she followed a shopman to a counter near the door. Just turning away from it, she met Mrs. Pomeroy and her daughter.
“Now, this is really most delightful!” exclaimed Mrs. Pomeroy, if any speech so comfortable and so entirely unexcited may be described as an exclamation. “It is always charming to see you, dear Mrs.Romayne, of course; but it really is particularly charming this morning, isn’t it, Maud?”
“That’s very nice,” said Mrs. Romayne brightly, turning to Maud Pomeroy with a smile, and pressing the girl’s hand with an affectionate familiarity developed in her with regard to Miss Pomeroy by the last few weeks. A hardly perceptible touch of additional satisfaction had come to her face as she saw the mother and daughter. “Please tell me why?”
“Yes, of course,” said Mrs. Pomeroy placidly; she sat down as she spoke with that instinct for personal ease under all circumstances, which was her ruling characteristic. “That is just what I want to do. My dear Mrs. Romayne, it is the bazaar, of course. It really is a most awkward thing, isn’t it, Maud? It seems that we have asked twenty-one ladies—all most important—to become stall-holders, and we can’t possibly make room for more than eighteen stalls! Now, what would you—— Ah, Mr. Romayne, how do you do?”
Mrs. Pomeroy had broken off her taleof woe as placidly as she had begun it, and had greeted Julian with comfortable cordiality. He had come up hastily, not becoming aware of his mother’s companions until he was close to them.
“This is awfully lucky for me!” he exclaimed. “I want a lady desperately for half a minute, and my mother won’t do. Miss Pomeroy,” turning eagerly to the demure, correct-looking figure standing by Mrs. Pomeroy’s side, “will you come to the other end of the shop with me for half a minute? It would be awfully good of you.”
The words were spoken in a tone of fashionable good-fellowship—the pseudo good-fellowship which passes for the real thing in society—which, as addressed by Julian Romayne to Miss Pomeroy and her mother, was one of the results of his work in connection with the bazaar; and before Miss Pomeroy could answer, Mrs. Romayne interposed. Somebody very frequently did interpose when Miss Pomeroy was addressed. No one ever seemed to expect opinions or decisions from her; perhaps because she washer mother’s daughter; perhaps because of her curiously characterless exterior; while the fact that she had never been known to controvert a statement—in words—doubtless accentuated the tendency of her acquaintance to make statements for her.
“It will be awfully good of you,” Mrs. Romayne said to her now, laughing, “if you are kind enough to help this silly fellow, to insist on his remembering that his mother will be very angry indeed if he is extravagant. I shall have to give up having a birthday, I think.”
Then as Julian, with a gay gesture of repression to his mother, waited for Miss Pomeroy’s answer with another pleading, “It would be ever so good of you,” the girl, with a glance at her mother, said, with a conventional smile, “With pleasure,” and walked away by his side.
Mrs. Pomeroy looked after Julian with an approving smile. He was a favourite of hers.
“Such a nice fellow,” she murmured amiably; and Mrs. Romayne laughed her pretty, self-conscious laugh.
“So glad you find him so,” she said. “Oh, by-the-bye, dear Mrs. Pomeroy, can you tell me anything about a Mr. Marston Loring? He goes everywhere, doesn’t he? I think I have seen him at your house.”
“Oh, yes,” returned Mrs. Pomeroy, as placidly as ever, but with a decision which indicated that she was giving expression to a popular verdict, not merely to an opinion of her own. “He is quite a young man to know. Very clever, and rising. I don’t know what his people were; he has been so successful that it really doesn’t signify, you know. He lives in chambers—I don’t remember where, but it is a very good address.”
“Has he money?” asked Mrs. Romayne.
“I really don’t know,” said Mrs. Pomeroy. “He is doing extremely well at the bar. By the way, they say,” and herewith Mrs. Pomeroy lowered her voice and confided to her interlocutor two or three details in connection with Marston Loring’s private life—the life which in the world no one is supposed to recognise—which might have been considered by no means to his credit. Theywere not details which affected his society character in any way, however, and Mrs. Romayne only laughed with such slight affectation of reprobation as a woman of the world should show.
“Men are all alike, I suppose,” she said, with that fashionable indulgence which has probably done as much as anything else towards making men “all alike.” “By-the-bye, he was Lord Dunstan’s best man, wasn’t he?”
Mrs. Pomeroy was just confirming to Mr. Marston Loring what was evidently a certificate of social merit, when Julian and Miss Pomeroy reappeared, and Mrs. Romayne, with an exclamation at herself as a “frightful gossip,” turned to the shopman, who had been waiting her pleasure at a discreet distance, and transacted her business.
“We haven’t settled anything about this trying business of the twenty-one stall-holders,” said Mrs. Pomeroy plaintively, as she finished. “Now, I wonder—we were thinking of taking a turn in the Park, weren’t we, Maud?” Mrs. Pomeroy had a curious little habit of constantly referringto her daughter. “It would be so kind of you, dear Mrs. Romayne, if you would send your carriage home and take a turn with us, you and Mr. Romayne, and I would take you home, of course. I really am anxious to know what you advise, for there seems to be an idea that I am in some way responsible for the awkwardness. So absurd, you know. I am quite sure I have only done as I was told.”
Apparently it had not occurred to Mrs. Pomeroy that to do as you are told by four or five different people with totally different ends in view is apt to lead to confusion.
Mrs. Romayne fell in with the plan proposed, after an instant’s demur, with smiling alacrity, and the “turn in the Park” that followed was a very gay one. Miss Pomeroy and Julian laughed and talked together—that is to say, Julian laughed and talked in the best of good spirits, and Miss Pomeroy put in just the correct words and pretty smiles which were wanted to keep his conversation in full swing. Mrs. Romayne and Mrs. Pomeroy, facing them, disposed of the difficultyin connection with the bazaar, after a good deal of irrelevant discussion, by saying very often, and in a great many words, that three more stalls must be got in somewhere; a decision which seemed to Mrs. Pomeroy to make everything perfectly right, although she had had it elaborately demonstrated to her that such a course was absolutely impossible.
It was half-past one when Mrs. Romayne and Julian were put down at their own door, and the barouche drove off amid a chorus of light laughter and last words. The sunshine, the fresh air, the movement, or something less simple and less physical, seemed to have had a most exhilarating effect on Mrs. Romayne. Her face was almost as radiant in its curiously different fashion as Julian’s was radiant with the unreasoning good spirits of youth.
“Such nice people!” she said lightly. “I wonder whether lunch is ready? I’m quite starving! Oh, letters!” taking up three or four which lay on the hall-table. “Let us trust they are interesting!” She turned into the dining-room as she spoke, sortingthe envelopes in her hand. “One for you—your friend Von Mühler, isn’t it?” she said, tossing it to Julian carelessly. “One for me—an invitation obviously. One from Mrs. Ponsonby, about her stall, I suppose. And one from——”
She stopped suddenly. The last letter of the pile was contained in a small square envelope, and addressed in what was obviously a man’s handwriting—a good handwriting, clear and strong, but somewhat cramped and precise. “Mrs. William Romayne, 22, Queen Anne Street, Chelsea.” A curious stillness seemed to come over the little alert figure as the pale blue eyes caught sight of the writing, and then Mrs. Romayne moved and walked slowly away to the window, still with her eyes fixed on the envelope. She paused a moment, and then she opened it and drew out a sheet of note-paper bearing a few lines only in the same small, clear hand.
“Well, mother, and what have your correspondents got to say? I have had no end of a screed from Von Mühler.”
Nearly ten minutes had passed, and Mrs.Romayne started violently. She thrust the letter—still open in her hand, though she was looking fixedly out of the window—back into its envelope and turned. Her face had altered curiously and completely. All its colour, all the genuine animation which had pervaded it as she came into the room, had disappeared; it was pale and hard-looking, and the lines about the mouth and eyes were very visible.
“A dinner invitation from Lady Ashton,” she said, “and a long rigmarole from Mrs. Ponsonby to tell me that she is resigning her stall, and why she is doing it. Poor Mrs. Pomeroy should be grateful to her!”
Her tone was an exaggeration of her bright carelessness of ten minutes before, forced and unnatural; her back was towards the window, or even Julian’s boyish eyes might have noticed the stiff unreality of the smile with which she spoke.
They sat down to lunch together, but the strange change which had come to her did not pass away. Julian did most of the talking, though the readiness of her comments and her smiles—which left her lips alwayshard and set, and never seemed to touch her eyes—prevented his being in the least aware of the fact. Their afternoon was spent apart; but when they met again there was that about her face which made Julian say with some surprise:
“Are you tired, mother?”
They were going to a large dinner-party before the very smart “at home” to which Julian and Mr. Loring had referred on the previous evening as an opportunity for meeting, and Mrs. Romayne was magnificently dressed. There were diamonds round her throat and in her hair, and as they flashed and sparkled, seeming to lend glow and animation to her face as she laughed at him for a ridiculous boy, Julian thought carelessly that he must have imagined the drawn look which had struck him—though he had only recognised it as “tired-looking”—on his mother’s face. As though his words had startled or even annoyed her, she gave neither Julian nor any one else any further excuse for taxing her with fatigue. Throughout the long and rather dull dinner she was vivacity itself; her face always smiling, her laughalways ready. As the evening went on a flush made its appearance on her cheeks, as though the mental stimulus under which that gaiety was produced involved a veritable quickening of the pulses; and her son, when he met her in the hall after she had uncloaked for their second party, thought that he had never seen his mother look “jollier,” as he expressed it.
“We must look out for Loring,” he said eagerly. “Oh, there he is, mother, just inside the doorway! That clever-looking fellow, do you see, with a yellow buttonhole?”
It was easier to recognise an acquaintance than to approach within speaking distance of him; and some time elapsed, during which Mrs. Romayne and Julian exchanged greetings on all sides, and were received by Lady Bracondale, before they found themselves also just inside the doorway. Mrs. Romayne had given one quick, keen glance in the direction indicated by Julian, and then had become apparently oblivious of Mr. Marston Loring’s existence until Julian finally exclaimed:
“Well met, Loring! Awfully pleased tosee you! Mother, may I introduce Mr. Marston Loring?”
She turned her head then, and bent it very graciously, holding out her hand with her most charming smile.
“I have known you by sight for a long time, Mr. Loring!” she said. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance!”
“The delight is mine!” was the response, spoken with just that touch of well-bred deference which is never so attractive to a woman as when it is exhibited in conjunction with such a personality as Loring’s. “It is one for which I have wished for a long time!”
“Seen the papers to-night?” interposed Julian eagerly. “We’ve lost Nottingham, you see!”
He was alluding to a bye-election which had led to the political discussion of the evening before, and Loring nodded.
“I see,” said Loring. “Romayne has told you, no doubt,” he went on, turning to Mrs. Romayne, “that we foregathered to a considerable extent last night over politics—and other things.” The last words were spokenwith a glance at the younger man which seemed to ascribe to their acquaintance an altogether more personal and friendly footing than political discussion alone could have afforded it, and Mrs. Romayne laughed very graciously.
“Yes; he has told me!” she said. “I am rather thinking of getting a little jealous of you, Mr. Loring.”
A few minutes’ more talk followed—talk in which Loring bore himself with his usual cynical manner, just tempered into even unusual effectiveness—and then Mrs. Romayne prepared to move on.
“You must come and see us,” she said to Loring. “Julian will give you the address. I am at home on Fridays; and I hope you will dine with us before long!”
She gave him a pretty nod and an “au revoir,” and turned away.
“He’s awfully jolly, isn’t he, mother?” exclaimed Julian, as soon as they were out of earshot.
“Very good style,” returned Mrs. Romayne approvingly. “He is just the kind of man toget on. You have a good deal of discrimination, sir,” she added.
The mother and son were separated after that, and about half an hour later Mrs. Romayne caught sight of Julian disappearing with a very pretty girl, whose face she did not know, in the direction of the supper-room, just as she herself was greeted by Lord Garstin and pressed to repair thither.
“Thanks, no,” she said lightly. “There is such a crowd, and I really don’t want anything.”
She paused. That accentuated vivacity was still about her, as she looked up at Lord Garstin with a little smile and a gesture which he thought unusually charming.
“I want a little chat with you, though, very much,” she said with pretty confidence. “I’m going to ask you to give me some advice, do you know. Will it bore you frightfully?”
“On the contrary, it will delight me,” was the ready and by no means insincere response.
Mrs. Romayne made a gracious and grateful movement of her head.
“I would rather take your opinion than that of any other man I know,” she said confidentially. She stopped and laughed slightly. “It’s about my boy, of course!” she said. “I want to know what you think of a club for a young man in his position? Do you think, now, that it is a good thing?”
“Emphatically, yes,” returned Lord Garstin. “I consider a good club of the first importance to a young man. Your young man ought to be a member of the Prince’s.” He paused a moment, looking at her as she nodded her head softly, waiting as though for further words of wisdom from him, and thought what a delightful little woman she was. “Suppose I talk to him about it?” he said pleasantly. “I will see to it with pleasure if you would like it.”
Nothing, certainly, could have been more delightful than Mrs. Romayne’s manner, as she spoke just the right words of graceful acknowledgement and acceptance. Then she made a gaily disparaging comment on club life, and Lord Garstin’s advocacy of it, and afew minutes’ bantering, laughing repartee followed—that society repartee of which Mrs. Romayne was a mistress. From thence she drifted into talk about the party, and a complaint of the heat of the room.
“It is time we were going, I think!” she remarked, with a gay little laugh. “But a mother is a miserable slave, you see! I am ‘left until called for,’ I suppose!”
“If I were not absolutely obliged to go myself,” returned Lord Garstin, “I shouldn’t encourage such a suggestion on your part. But as that is the case, unfortunately, shall I find your boy first and send him to you?”
Mrs. Romayne shook her head with another laugh.
“I saw him retire to the supper-room a little while ago with a very pretty girl,” she said. “I make it a point never to hurry him under such circumstances! But if you should meet him you might tell him that I am quite ready when he is. Good night!”
The room was not by any means crowded now; it was getting late and a great manypeople were in the supper-room. The corner of the room in which Mrs. Romayne was standing happened to be nearly deserted; there was no one near her, and after Lord Garstin left her, she stood still, fanning herself and looking straight before her with her bright smile and animated expression rather stereotyped on her face. Suddenly, as if involuntarily, she turned her head; she looked across to the other side of the room and met the eyes of a man standing against the wall, who had been looking fixedly at her ever since Lord Garstin joined her. For an instant not the slightest perceptible change of expression touched her face; only the very absoluteness of its immobility suggested that that immobility was the result of a sudden and tremendous effort of self-control; then the colour faded slowly from her cheeks and from her lips; the smile did not disappear but it gradually assumed a ghastly appearance of being carved in marble; her eyes widened slightly and became strangely fixed. The man was Dennis Falconer, and he and she were looking at one another across the gulf of eighteen years.
It was only for a moment. Then Mrs. Romayne, still quite colourless, lifted her eyebrows prettily and made a gesture of amazed recognition, and Falconer moved and came slowly towards her.
“What a surprising thing!” she exclaimed, holding out her hand. “I had no idea you were here to-night! How do you do? Welcome home!”
Her tone was perfectly easy and gracious; so ultra-easy, indeed, that it deprived her words of any personal or emotional significance whatever, and relegated their meeting-place with subtle skill to the most conventional of society grounds. The rather distinguished-looking man with the good reserved manner who stood before her accepted the position with grave readiness.
“Thank you,” he said. He spoke with distant courtesy, about which there was not even the suggestion of that matter-of-course friendliness, as of distant kinship, which had made her reception of him nearly perfect as a work of art. “It is a great pleasure to me to be in England again.”
“You have been away—let me see—two years?” said Mrs. Romayne, with the vivacious assumption of intelligent interest which the social situation demanded. “Five, is it? Really? And you have done wonderful things, I hear. Funnily enough, I have been hearing about you only to-night. I must congratulate you.”
He bent his head with a courteous gesture of thanks.
“You have had my note, I hope?” he said. “You are settled in London now, Thomson tells me.”
Thomson was the family lawyer, and he and Dennis Falconer himself were Mrs. Romayne’s trustees under old Mr. Falconer’s will.
“Oh, yes!” she answered suavely. “I had it to-day, just before lunch. So nice of you to write to me. Yes, we are settled——”
She had been fanning herself carelessly throughout the short colloquy, glancing at Falconer or about the room with every appearance of perfect ease; but now, as her eyes wandered to the other end of the room something seemed to catch her attention.She hesitated, appeared to forget what she had intended to say, tried to recover herself, and failed.
Julian had come into the room, and was just parting gaily from some one in the doorway. Dennis Falconer did not take up her unfinished sentence; he followed the direction of her eyes across the room until his own rested upon Julian, and then he started slightly and glanced down at the woman by his side.
Mrs. Romayne laughed a rather high, unnatural laugh. She faced him with her eyes very hard and bright, and her lips smiling; and through all the artificiality of her face and manner there was something lurking in those hard, bright eyes as she did it, something not to be caught or defined, which made the movement almost heroic.
“You recognise him?” she said lightly. “Ridiculously like me, isn’t he?”
At that moment Julian started across the room, evidently to come to his mother. He came on, stopping incessantly to exchange good-nights, laughing, bowing, and smiling; and, as though there were a fascination forthem about his gay young figure, the man and woman standing together at the other end of the room watched him draw nearer and nearer. Words continued to come from Mrs. Romayne, a pretty, inconsequent flow of society chatter, but it no more tempered the strange gaze with which her eyes followed her son than did the unheeding silence with which Falconer received them as his grave eyes rested also on the young man. The whole thing was so incongruous; the expression of those two pair of eyes was so utterly out of harmony with their surroundings, and with the laughing, unconscious boy on whom they were fixed; that they seemed to draw him out from the brightly dressed, smiling groups through which he passed, and isolate him strangely in a weird atmosphere of his own.
“Here you are, sir!” cried his mother gaily, looking no longer at Julian as he stood close to her at last, but beyond him.
“Lord Garstin told me you were ready to go, dear,” said Julian pleasantly. “I hope I haven’t kept you?”
“There was no hurry,” she answered,smiling; her voice was a little thin and strained. “We will go now, I think, but I want to introduce you first to some one whose name you know. This is your cousin, Dennis Falconer.”