Itwas a rather close afternoon in the third week of May. Fine weather had lasted without a break for more than a fortnight; for the last two or three days there had been little or no breeze; and the inevitable effect had been produced upon London. The streets were a combination of dust, which defied the water-carts; and glare, which seemed to radiate alike from the heavy, smoky-blue sky, the houses, and the pavements. It was only half-past three, and Piccadilly was as yet far from being crowded. The pavement was mainly occupied by the working population, which hurries to and fro along the London streets from morning to night regardless of fashionable hours; and the few representatives of the non-working class—smartly-dressed women and carefully got-up and saunteringmen—stood out with peculiar distinctness. But the figure of Dennis Falconer, as he walked westward along the north side of Piccadilly, was conspicuous not only on these rather unenviable terms.
At the first glance it would have seemed that the past eighteen years had altered him considerably, and altered him always for the better; analysed carefully, the alteration resolved itself into a very noticeable increase of maturity and of a certain kind of strength; and the improvement into the fact that his weak points were of a kind to be far less perceptible as such on a mature than on an immature face. His face was thin and very brown; there were worn lines about it which told of physical endurance; and in the sharper chiselling of the whole the thinness of the nose and the narrowness of the forehead were no longer striking. The somewhat self-conscious superiority of his younger days had disappeared under the hand of time, and a certain sternness which had replaced it seemed to give dignity to his expression. The keen steadiness of his eyes had strengthened, and, indeed, it was theirexpression which helped in a very great degree to make his face so noticeable. He no longer wore a beard, and the firm, square outline of his chin and jaw were visible, while his mouth was hidden by a moustache; iron-grey like his hair. He was very well dressed, but there was that about the simple conventionality of his attire which suggested that its correctness was rather a concession to exterior demands than the expression of personal weakness.
More than one of the people who turned their heads to look at him as he walked down Piccadilly were familiar with that grave, stern face; it had been reproduced lately in the pages of all the illustrated papers, and people glanced at it with the interest created by the appearance in the flesh of something of a celebrity. Falconer had done a great deal of good work for the Geographical Society in the course of the past eighteen years; work characterised by no brilliancy or originality of intellectual resource, but eminently persevering, conscientious, and patient. During the last year, however, a chapter of accidents had conspired to invest the expedition of which he was theleader with a touch of romance and excitement with which his personality would never have endued it. The achievement in which the expedition had resulted had been hailed in England as a national triumph, and Dennis Falconer found himself one of the lions of the moment.
But the position, especially for a man who believed himself to attach no value whatever to it, had been somewhat dearly bought. Falconer, as he walked the London streets on that May afternoon, was trying to realise himself as at home in them, settled among them, perhaps, for an indefinite period; and the effort brought an added shade of gravity to his face. The terrible physical strain of the last six months; a strain the severity of which he had hardly realised at the time, as he endured from day to day with the simple, unimaginative perseverance of a man for whom nerves have no existence; had told even upon his iron constitution; and a couple of great London doctors had condemned him to a year’s inactivity at least, under penalties too grave to be provoked.
He turned down Sloane Street, andanother quarter of an hour brought him to number twenty-two, Queen Anne Street. He rang, was admitted, and ushered upstairs into the drawing-room.
The room was empty, and Falconer walked across it, glancing about him with those keen, habitually observant eyes of his, and on his face there was something of the stiffness and reserve which had characterised his voice a minute earlier as he asked for Mrs. Romayne.
Until the night, now nearly a fortnight ago, when they had met in Lady Bracondale’s drawing-room, Dennis Falconer had seen Mrs. Romayne only once since their journey from Nice had ended in old Mr. Falconer’s house. That one occasion had been his visit to his uncle—so called—in his Swiss home in the second year of Mrs. Romayne’s widowhood.
He had been in Europe several times since then and had always made a point of visiting old Mr. Falconer, but on every subsequent occasion it had happened—rather strangely, as he had thought to himself once or twice—that Mrs. Romayne was away fromhome. After old Mr. Falconer’s death communication between them occurred only at the rarest intervals. Dennis Falconer was Mrs. Romayne’s only remaining relation, and in this capacity had been left by her uncle one of her trustees; but any necessary business was transacted by his fellow trustee—old Mr. Falconer’s lawyer. But the clan instinct was very strong in Falconer; it brought in its wake a whole set of duties and obligations which for most men are non-existent; and the sense of duty which had been characteristic of him in early manhood had only been more deeply—and narrowly—engraved by every succeeding year.
Arrived in London, and knowing Mrs. Romayne to be settled there, he had considered it incumbent on him to call on her, and had written the note which she had received nearly a fortnight ago. He had written it with much the same expression on his face—only a little less pronounced, perhaps—as rested on it now that he was waiting for Mrs. Romayne in her own drawing-room. Through all the changes brought about by the passing of eighteen years, the mental attitude produced in himtowards Mrs. Romayne during those weeks of dual solitude at Nice had remained almost untouched, except inasmuch as its disapproval had been accentuated by everything he had heard of her since. It had been vivified and rendered, as it were, tangible and definite by the short interview at Lady Bracondale’s party, which had made her a reality instead of a remembrance to him.
He was standing before a large and very admirable photograph of Julian—Julian at his very best and most attractive—contemplating it with a heavy frown, when the door behind him opened under a light, quick touch, and Mrs. Romayne came into the room.
“It is too shocking to have kept you waiting!” she said. “So glad to see you! I gave myself too much shopping to do, and I have had quite a fearful rush!”
Her voice and manner were very easy, very conventionally cordial; and, as it seemed to Falconer, there was not a natural tone or movement about her. It was her “at home” afternoon, and she was charmingly dressed insomething soft and pale-coloured; her eyes were very bright, and the play of expression on her face was even more vivacious and effective than usual—exaggeratedly so, even.
She shook hands and pointed him to a seat, sinking into a chair herself with an affectation of hard-won victory over the “fearful rush”; the subtle assumption of the most superficial society relation as alone existing between them was as insidious and as indefinable as it had been on their previous meeting, and seemed to set the key-note of the situation even before she spoke again.
“It is a frightful season!” she said. “Really horribly busy! They say it is to be a short one—I am sure I trust it is true, if we are any of us to be left alive at the end—and everything seems to be crammed into a few weeks. Don’t you think so? You are very lucky to have arrived half-way through.”
“London just now does not seem to be a particularly desirable place, certainly,” answered Falconer; his manner was veryformal and reserved, a great contrast to her apparent ease.
“No!” she said, lifting her eyebrows with a smile. “Now, that sounds rather ungrateful in you, do you know, for London finds you a very desirable visitor. One hears of you everywhere.”
“I am afraid I must confess that I take very little pleasure in going ‘everywhere,’”returned Falconer stiffly. “Social life in London seems to me to have altered for the worse in every direction, since I last took part in it.”
“And yet you go out a great deal!” with a laugh. “That sounds a trifle inconsistent!”
“I am not sufficiently egotistical to imagine that my individual refusal to countenance it would have any effect upon society,” answered Falconer, still more stiffly. “To tolerate is by no means to approve.”
Falconer’s reasons for the toleration in question—the real reasons, of which he himself was wholly unconscious—would have astonished him not a little, if he could have brought himself to realise them, in theirnarrow conventionality. Fortunately it did not occur to Mrs. Romayne to ask for them. With the ready tact of a woman of the world she turned the conversation with a gracefully worded question as to his recent expedition. He answered it with the courteous generality—only rather more gravely spoken—with which he had answered a great many similar questions put to him during the past week by ladies to whom he had been introduced in his capacity of momentary celebrity; and she passed on from one point to another with the superficial interest evoked by one of the topics of the hour. Her exaggerated comments and questions, more or less wide of the mark, were exhausted at length, and a moment’s pause followed; a fact that indicated, though Falconer did not know it, that the preceding conversation had involved some kind of strain on the bright little woman who had kept it up so vivaciously. The pause was broken by Falconer.
“You have heard,” he said, “of poor Thomson’s illness?”
It would hardly be true to say that Mrs. Romayne started—even slightly—but acurious kind of flush seemed to pass across her face. As she answered, both her voice and her manner seemed instinctively to increase and emphasize that distance which she had tacitly set between them; it was as though the introduction into the conversation of a name their mutual familiarity with which represented mutual interests and connections had created the instinct in her.
“Yes, poor man!” she said carelessly. “There has been a good deal of illness about this season, somehow.”
“I am afraid it is a bad business,” went on Falconer, with no comprehension of the turn she had given to the conversation, and with his mental condemnation of what seemed to him simple heartlessness on her part not wholly absent from his voice. “There was to be a consultation to-day; and I shall call this evening to hear the result. But I am afraid there is very slender hope.”
“How very sad!” said Mrs. Romayne with polite interest.
Falconer bent his head in grave assent, and then with a view to arousing in her shallow nature—as it seemed to him—someremembrance at least of the usefulness to her of the man whose probable death she contemplated so carelessly, he said with formal courtesy:
“Thomson has done all the work connected with our joint trusteeship so admirably hitherto that there has been no need for my services. But if, while he is ill, you should find yourself in want of his aid in that capacity, I need not say that I am entirely at your command.”
Again that curious flush passed across Mrs. Romayne’s face, leaving it rather pale this time.
“Thanks, so much!” she said quickly. “I really could not think of troubling you. I’ve no doubt I shall be able to hold on until Mr. Thomson is well again. Thanks immensely! You will not be within reach for very long, I suppose?”
“I shall be in London for a year, certainly,” answered Falconer, acknowledging her tacit refusal to recognise any claim on him in the formal directness of his reply. Then, as she uttered a sharp little exclamation of surprise, he added briefly; “I am in the doctors’hands, unfortunately. There is something wrong with me, they say.”
“I am very sorry——” she began prettily, though her eyes were rather hard and preoccupied. But at that moment the door opened to admit an influx of visitors, and Falconer rose to go.
“So glad to have seen you!” she said as she turned to him after welcoming the new-comers. “You won’t have a cup of tea? It is always rather crushing when a man refuses one’s tea, isn’t it, Mrs. Anson?” turning as she spoke to a lady sitting close by. Then as she gave him her hand, speaking in a tone which still included the other lady in the conversation, she alluded for the first time to Julian. The whole call had gone by without one of those references to “my boy” with which all Mrs. Romayne’s acquaintances were so familiar, that such an omission under the circumstances would have been hardly credible to any one of them.
“I’m so sorry you have missed my boy!” she said now with her apologetic laugh. “I’m afraid I am absurdly proud of him—isn’t that so, dear Mrs. Anson?—but he really is a dear fellow.”
“He is going to the bar, I believe?” said Falconer; his face and voice alike were uncompromisingly stern and unbending.
“Yes!” answered Julian’s mother. “He is not clever, dear boy, but I hope he may do fairly well. Good-bye! Shall you be at the Gordons’ to-night? We are going first to see the American actor they rave about so. A funny little domestic party—I and my son and my son’s new and particular ‘chum.’ Good-bye!”
Mrs. Romayne’s face did not regain its normal colour as she turned her attention to her other callers, nor did those faint lines about her mouth and eyes disappear. She was particularly charming that afternoon, but always, as she welcomed one set of visitors or parted from another, laughing, talking or listening so gaily, there was a faint, hardly definable air of preoccupation about her. She had a great many visitors, and the afternoon grew hotter as it wore on. When she dressed for dinner that night, finding herself strangely nervous, irritable with her maid, and “onedge altogether,” as she expressed it, she was very definite and distinct in her self-assurances that such an unusual state of things was owing solely to the heat and “those tiresome people”; rather unnecessarily distinct and explicit it would have seemed, since there was apparently no chance of contradiction.
The acquaintanceship between Julian and Marston Loring had developed during the past fortnight with surprising rapidity. They had dined together at the club, they had smoked together in Loring’s chambers, and they had met incessantly at dances, “at homes,” or dinners, on all of which occasions Mrs. Romayne had been uniformly gracious to her son’s friend.
At a garden-party a few miles out of London, admittedly the greatest failure of the season, when Loring and the Romaynes had walked about together all the afternoon with that carelessness of social obligations which a dull party is apt to engender, the scheme for the present evening had been arranged; Loring adding a preliminary dinner at a restaurant, with himself in the capacity of host to Mrs. Romayne and her son, tothe original suggestion that they should go together to the theatre.
Julian was in high spirits as they drove off to keep their engagement, but his mother’s responses to his chatter were neither so ready nor so bright as usual. He glanced at her once or twice and then said boyishly:
“You look awfully done up, mother!”
Mrs. Romayne turned to him quickly, her eyes sparkling angrily, her whole face looking irritable and annoyed.
“My dear Julian,” she said sharply, “it’s a very bad habit to be constantly commenting on people’s appearance; especially when your remarks are uncomplimentary. You told me I looked tired the other day. Please don’t do it again!”
Such an ebullition of temper was an almost unheard-of thing with Mrs. Romayne, and Julian could only stare at her in helpless astonishment—not hurt, but simply surprised, and inclined to be resentful. He could not realise as a woman might have done the jarred, quivering state of nerves implied in such an outbreak; and he simply thought his mother was rather odd, when a momentlater she stretched out her hand hastily, and laid it on his with a quick, tight squeeze.
“That was abominably cross, dear!” she said in a voice which shook. “Don’t mind! I am all right now.”
But she was not all right, and though she made a valiant effort to collect her forces and appear so, her gaiety throughout dinner was strained and forced. Loring’s quick perception realised instantly that something was wrong with her, and his demeanour under the circumstances was significant at once of the work of the past fortnight, and of his individual capacity for turning everything to his own ends. With a tacit assumption of a certain right to consider her, he evinced just such a delicate appreciation of her mood as gave her a sense of rest and soothing, without letting her feel for a moment that he found anything wanting in her. His pose was always that of a man to whom youth or even early manhood, with its follies and inexperiences, is a thing of the dim past, and he used that pose now to the utmost advantage; combining a mental equality withthe mother with an actual equality with the son as his contemporary in a manner which made him seem in a very subtle way equally the friend of each. He talked, of course, almost exclusively to Mrs. Romayne, never, however, failing to include Julian in the conversation; and he so managed the conversation as to take all its trouble on his own shoulders, and give Mrs. Romayne little to do but listen and be entertained.
He succeeded so well that the dinner-hour, by the time it was over, had done the work of many days in advancing his dawning intimacy with Mrs. Romayne.
She felt better, she told herself as they entered the theatre—told herself with rather excessive eagerness and satisfaction, perhaps because of something within, of which the quick, nervous movement of her hands as she unfastened her cloak was the outward and visible sign.
The curtain was just going up as they seated themselves, and during the first quarter of an hour the two seats to their left remained empty. Then Mrs. Romayne, whose attention was by no means chained to the stage, becameaware of the slow and difficult approach of a flow of loudly-whispered and apologetic conversation, combined with the large person of a lady; and a moment or two later she was being fallen over by Mrs. Halse, who was followed by a girl, and who continued to explain the situation fluently and audibly, until a distinct expression of the opinion of the pit caused her to subside temporarily.
She began to talk again before the applause on the fall of the curtain had died away, and her voice reached Mrs. Romayne, to whom her remarks were addressed, across the girl who was with her, and Julian, who was sitting on his mother’s left hand, with gradually increasing distinctness.
“So curious that our seats should be together!” were the first words Mrs. Romayne heard. “I have just been meeting a connection of yours. The explorer, you know—Dennis Falconer. So fascinating! Oh, by-the-bye—my cousin. I don’t think she has had the pleasure of being introduced to you, though she has met your son. Miss Hilda Newton—Mrs. Romayne.”
Miss Hilda Newton was a very pretty, dark girl of a somewhat pronounced type.She had large, perceptive, black eyes, singularly unabashed; a charming little turned-up nose; and a rather large mouth with a good deal of shrewd character about it. She was understood to be a country cousin of Mrs. Halse’s, with whom she had been staying for the last three weeks; but only a very critical and rather unkind eye could have traced the country cousin in her dress, which had a great deal of style and dash about it. She acknowledged Mrs. Halse’s introduction of her with rather excessive self-possession, and after a casual word or two to Mrs. Romayne, addressed herself to Julian; it was she with whom he had disappeared to supper at Lady Bracondale’s “at home,” and they had evidently seen a good deal of one another in the interval.
Mrs. Romayne had noticed them together more than once, and she had taken a dislike to Miss Newton’s pretty, independent face and manners. In her present mood it was an absolute relief to her to find in the girl a legitimate excuse for irritation, and a reason for the fact that Mrs. Halse’s speech had somehow undone all the work of the earlypart of the evening, and set her nerves on edge afresh.
“Detestably bad style!” she said to herself angrily, giving an unheeding ear to Mrs. Halse as she watched Miss Newton reply with a little twirl of her fan to an eager question of Julian’s. “Just what one would expect in a cousin of that woman.” Then she became aware that “that woman” was vociferously insisting on changing places with Julian, and that Julian was acceding to the proposition with considerable alacrity; and before she had well realised exactly what the change involved, Mrs. Halse, with much paraphernalia of smelling-bottle, fan, opera-glasses, and programme, was established at her side, and Julian and Miss Newton were seated together at the end of the row, practically isolated by the stream of Mrs. Halse’s conversation.
“So horrid to talk across people, isn’t it?” said that lady airily, though no crowd ever collected would have interfered with her flow of language. “This is much more comfortable. My dear Mrs. Romayne, I am simply dying to rave to somebody aboutyour cousin—he is your cousin, isn’t he?—Mr. Falconer, you know. What a splendid man! Of course all the accounts of his work have been most fascinating, but the man himself makes it all seem so much more real, don’t you know. Now, do tell me, is he your first cousin, and do you remember him when he was quite a little boy, and all that sort of thing?”
Mrs. Romayne took up her fan and unfurled it. She was looking past Mrs. Halse at Julian and Miss Newton, who were looking over the same programme with their heads rather close together. Her eyebrows were slightly contracted, and her eyes very bright, and the restless movements of the slender hand that held the fan seemed to be an expression of intense inward irritation.
“Oh dear, no; Dennis Falconer is not my first cousin, by any means!” she said carelessly, though her voice was a trifle sharp. “Third or fourth, or something of that kind.”
“He is quite a hero, isn’t he?” said Mrs. Halse, gushingly addressing Loring. “Have you met him?”
Loring, though his glance had every appearance of perfect carelessness, was watching Mrs. Romayne intently. He had noticed her access of nervous irritability, and he was curious as to the cause. Was it her son’s flirtation with Miss Newton? Was it dislike to Mrs. Halse? Or had it any connection with Dennis Falconer? He had his reasons for a study of Mrs. Romayne’s idiosyncrasies.
“Yes,” he said. “I met him the other night. A good sort of fellow he seemed.”
“He’s magnificent!” said Mrs. Halse enthusiastically. “We must have him at the bazaar, my dear Mrs. Romayne; that I am quite determined. If he would sell African trophies for us, you know—a native’s tooth, or poppy-heads—oh, arrow-heads, is it?—well anything of that sort—it would be a fortune to us! Have you seen a great deal of him? Cousins are so often just like brothers and sisters, are they not?”
A low laugh and a toss of her head from Miss Newton at this moment closed the perusal of the programme, and Julian turned his attention to perusing the pretty black eyes instead. Mrs. Romayne’s lips seemedto tighten and whiten, and the fingers which held the fan were tightly clenched as she answered in a voice which rang hard in spite of her efforts:
“Sometimes they are, of course. But it depends so much on circumstances. Dennis Falconer and I had not met for years until the other day.”
At that moment the curtain went up, leaving Mrs. Halse literally with her mouth open, and the instant it fell Mrs. Romayne leant across to Miss Newton with a comment on the performance, spoken in a rather thin, tense voice, and with eyes that glittered as though the nervous strain under which the speaker was labouring was becoming almost insupportable. Apparently something in her face repelled the girl, for her answer was of the briefest, and Julian throwing himself into the breach, he and Miss Newton were instantly absorbed in an animated discussion. It was a long wait, and Loring, noting every one of the restless movements of the woman by his side as she talked and laughed so sharply, understood that to Mrs. Romayneevery moment meant nervous torture. The instant the green curtain fell on the third act she rose, and Loring followed her example, and wrapped her quickly and deftly in her cloak.
“I can’t say I think much of your American prodigy,” she said to him with a forced laugh. “I must confess that he has bored me to such an extent that I really can’t stand any more boredom, and shall go straight home. Julian!”
She glanced round for him as she spoke, but he was escorting Mrs. Halse and her cousin, and she was waiting for him in her brougham before he joined her.
“Suppose you come to the club with me?” suggested Loring carelessly, as Julian received his mother’s announcement of her intentions rather blankly. “What do you say to a game of billiards?”
“All right,” responded Julian. “Thanks, old fellow. It was only that I told Miss Newton we were coming on. Isn’t she a jolly girl, mother?”
Mrs. Romayne smiled.
“Very pretty indeed,” she said lightly. “It’s a sad pity you’re such an ineligible fellow, isn’t it?”
And Loring, as the carriage drove off, said to himself admiringly: “What a wonderfully clever woman!”
Reaction from a heavy strain—even, apparently, if it is only the strain of combating exhaustion engendered by heat—is a terrible thing. When Mrs. Romayne got out of her carriage after her long drive, her face was haggard and drawn. She passed into the house, gathered up mechanically, and without a glance, two letters waiting for her on the hall-table; told the maid who was waiting for her that she might go to bed, and went up into the drawing-room.
There was a low chair by a little table covered with dainty, useless paraphernalia, which she particularly affected. She sat down in it now, almost unconsciously as it seemed, without even loosening her cloak, and with a long, low sigh; the moments passed, and still she sat there, a curious grey pallor about her face, her eyes gazing straight before her as though they were looking into the future orthe past. At last, as if by a sudden fierce effort of will, she roused herself and began to tear open the letters still in her hand as if with a desperate instinct towards occupying her thoughts.
Her eyes fell on the letter by this time open in her hand, and she read it almost unconsciously, taking in the sense gradually as she read:
“Dear Cousin Hermia,“I have just heard to my great sorrow of the death of our old friend Thomson, and I think it right to let you know of it. I believe I need not remind you that on any future occasion on which the help of your now, unfortunately, sole trustee may be necessary, you will find me entirely at your service.“Faithfully yours,“Dennis Falconer.”
“Dear Cousin Hermia,
“I have just heard to my great sorrow of the death of our old friend Thomson, and I think it right to let you know of it. I believe I need not remind you that on any future occasion on which the help of your now, unfortunately, sole trustee may be necessary, you will find me entirely at your service.
“Faithfully yours,“Dennis Falconer.”
With a sudden fierce gesture, of which her small white fingers looked hardly capable, Mrs. Romayne crushed the letter in her hand and lifted her head.
“To be thrown upon him!” she said in a curious, breathless tone. “To have to come into contact—close contact, personal contact—with him!”
Theseason, as Mrs. Romayne had told Dennis Falconer, was to be a short one, and its proceedings were apparently to be regulated on the old principle of a short life and a merry one. Gaieties overtook one another in too rapid succession, and an unusually sunny and breezy May and June, with the inevitable action of such weather on human beings, even under the most artificial conditions, rendered these gaieties a shade more really gay than usual.
The atmosphere was not, again, so close as it had been on the afternoon when Dennis Falconer called on Mrs. Romayne, and it is presumable that the weather must have been responsible for her general unusualness of mood on the evening of that day; for if she was not quite herself on the following morning,the touch of self-compulsion in her brightness was so slight as to be hardly perceptible, and a day or two later it had entirely disappeared.
Certainly if constant stir and movement are conducive to good spirits, there was nothing wonderful in Mrs. Romayne’s satisfaction with life. For she had not, as she complained laughingly, a single moment to herself.
“It’s a regular treadmill!” she exclaimed gaily one day to Lord Garstin. “I had really forgotten what a terrible thing a London season was!”
“It seems to agree with you,” was the answer. “There is one lady of my acquaintance, and only one, who seems to grow younger every day!”
“You can’t mean me,” she laughed. “I assure you, I am growing grey with incessantly running after that boy of mine! He is as difficult to catch as any lion of the season. I never see him except at parties!”
Julian’s intimacy with Marston Loring had grown apace, and it had led to sundry social consequences which were, his mother said, “so good for him.” Little dinners atthe club, to which he had been duly elected; dinners at which he was now guest, now host; jovial little bachelor suppers made up among the very best “sets.” Loring himself was very careful—though he knew better than to make his care perceptible, except in its results—never to allow himself to be placed in the position of a rival to Mrs. Romayne for her son’s time and company. He lost no opportunity of making himself useful and agreeable to Mrs. Romayne; now using pleasantly arrogated rights as Julian’s friend; now his superior brain-power and knowledge of the world; until he gradually assumed the position of friend of the house. But club life necessarily created in Julian interests apart from his mother—interests which she was apparently well content that he should have, so long as his ever-ready chatter to her on the subject revealed that they were all connected with good “sets.”
It was furthermore a season of very prettydébutantes, a large majority of whom elected to look upon Mr. Romayne as “such a nice boy,” and to exact—or permit—any amount of slavery from him in the matters of fetchingand carrying and general attendance. “You’re known to be so profoundly ineligible, you see!” his mother would say to him, laughing. “Nobody is in the least afraid of you, poor boy!” And she looked on with perfect calmness as he danced, and rode, and did church parade; looked on with a calmness which might have been mistaken for indifference, but for the significant fact that she always knew which of his “jolly girls” was in the ascendant for the moment.
Miss Newton had gone home on the day following the meeting at the theatre.
Falconer was to be seen about throughout the season, making his grave concession to the weaknesses of society. Mrs. Romayne and Julian met him constantly, and he was asked to, and attended, the most formal of the dinners given at Queen Anne Street. But the intercourse between him and his “connection,” as Mrs. Romayne called herself, was of the most distant and non-progressive type. Julian did not take to him at all. “He is such a solemn fellow, mother!” he said. “He seems to think that I’m doing something wrong all the time.” An observation to which Mrs.Romayne replied by laughing a rather forced laugh and changing the conversation.
The last event of the season, as it became evident as the weeks ran on, would be the bazaar in aid of Mrs. Halse’s discovery among charities. It was, perhaps, as well that the institution in question was by no means in such urgent need of patronage as might have been argued from Mrs. Halse’s demeanour towards it earlier in the proceedings; for that lady’s enthusiasm on the subject had suffered severely in the contest with the numerous other enthusiasms which had succeeded it, and the affairs of the bazaar had been pursued by all its supporters with energy which is most charitably to be described as intermittent. Three separate dates had been fixed for the opening day; and, after a great deal of money had been spent in printing and advertising, each of these in succession had had to be abandoned owing to the singular incompleteness of every fundamental arrangement—though, as Mrs. Halse observed impatiently, after the third postponement, there were “heaps and heaps of Chinese lanterns.” Finally it was announced for the fifth andsixth of July; and owing to herculean efforts on the part of half-a-dozen unfortunate men enlisted in the cause; who apparently braced themselves to the task with a desperate sense that if the affair was not somehow or another carried through now, by fair means or foul, they were doomed to struggle in a tumultuous sea of fashionable feminine futility for the remainder of their miserable lives; on the fifth the bazaar was actually opened.
It was late in the evening of that eventful day, and in various fashionable drawing-rooms exhausted ladies stretched on sofas were recruiting their forces after their severe labours. It had been the fashion for the last week or more among the prospective stall-holders to allude to the fatigue before them with resigned and heroic sighs of awful import; consequently they were now convinced to a woman that they were in the last stages of exhaustion. As a matter of fact it is doubtful whether out of the sensations of all the “smart” helpers concerned—with the exception of the devoted half-dozen before mentioned, who had retired to various clubs in a state of collapse—a decent state of fatiguecould have been constructed; and the reason for this was threefold. In the first place, so much money had been spent in announcing the dates when the bazaar did not take place, that there was exceedingly little forthcoming to announce the date when it did take place; consequently its attractive existence remained almost unknown to the general public, and the services of the sellers were in very slight demand. In the second place, the greater part of the work which could not be done by proxy was left undone. And in the third place, each lady had been throughout the day so deeply convinced of the “frightfully tiring” nature of her occupation, that she thought it only her duty to “save herself” whenever that course was open to her—which was almost always.
In the drawing-room at Chelsea, very cool and pretty with its open windows and its plentiful supply of flowers and ferns, Mrs. Romayne was lying on the sofa, as the exigencies of the moment, socially speaking, demanded of her, in an attitude of graceful weariness; an attitude which was rather belied by the alert expression of her contented face.She had dined at home—“just a quiet little dinner, you know—cold, because goodness knows when we shall get it!”—with Julian and Loring at half-past seven. The bazaar did not close until nine, but all the principal stall-holders had thought it their duty to the following day not to wear themselves quite out, and had left the last two hours to the care of one or other of the hangers-on, of whom “smart” women may usually have a supply if they choose; and Mrs. Romayne’s quiet little dinner was only one of a score of similar functions, very dainty and luxurious in view of the tremendous exertions which had preceded them, which were being held in various fashionable parts of London. At ten o’clock Loring had taken his leave, declaring sympathetically that Mrs. Romayne must long for perfect quiet after her exertions. It was then that Mrs. Romayne had betaken herself to her sofa and her papers.
“What an immense time it is since we have had such a domesticated hour!”
Mrs. Romayne had laid down her literature some moments before, and had been lying looking at Julian with that curiousexpression in her eyes which would creep into them now and again when they rested on the good-looking young figure, and which harmonised so ill with the shallow, vivacious prettiness of the rest of her face. She spoke, however, with her usual light laugh at herself, and Julian laughed too as he threw down his magazine and turned towards her.
“It is an age, isn’t it?” he said.
During the final agony of preparation for the bazaar, Julian had been in immense request. Not that he was one of the devoted half-dozen, or that he did much definite work; but he was always ready to discuss any lady’s private fad with her for any length of time, and to rush all over London about nothing. His exertions, and the exhaustion engendered thereby, had rendered necessary a great deal of recreation at the club. He had repaired thither very frequently of late, instead of escorting his mother home on the conclusion of their tale of parties for the night.
“It is a comfort to think that it is so nearly over!” observed Mrs. Romayne carelessly. It is never worth while, in the world in which Mrs. Romayne moved, to expressmore than half your meaning in words, and Julian quite understood that she alluded, not to the domestic hour, but to the season. Her words were not prompted by any actual weariness of the round of life she characterised as “it,” but the sentiment was in the air—the fashionable air, that is to say. She and Julian, in common with the greater part of their world, were leaving London at the end of the week.
“It has been awfully jolly!” said Julian, leaning back in his chair and resting his head against his loosely locked hands. “I had no idea that life was such a first-rate business!”
His mother smiled, and there was a strange touch of triumph in her smile.
“It is a first-rate business,” she assented, “if one lives it among the right people and in the right position. I imagine you see by this time that it isn’t much use otherwise!”
He laughed as though his appreciation of her words rendered them almost a truism to him, and there was a moment’s silence. It was broken by Julian.
“It costs a lot of money,” he said, in acasual, indefinite way, but with a quick glance at his mother.
“Well, it isn’t cheap, certainly,” was the laughing answer: “but I think we shall manage.” Then noticing something a little deprecating about his pose and expression, Mrs. Romayne added, with mock reprehension, “You’re not going to ask me to raise your allowance, you extravagant boy?”
Julian moved, and leaning forward, clasped his hands round one knee as if the uncomfortable and transitory pose assisted explanation. He laughed back at her, but he was looking nevertheless somewhat ashamed of himself.
“No, it’s not that—exactly,” he began rather lamely. “It’s a splendid allowance, mother dear, and I’m no end grateful; but the fact is, there has been a good deal of card-playing lately at the club. I don’t care for cards, you know, but one must play a bit, and I have been rather a fool. Look here, dear, I suppose—I suppose you couldn’t let me have two hundred, could you—before we go away, you know?”
“Two hundred, Julian! My dear boy!”
There was a strong tone of surprise and remonstrance in Mrs. Romayne’s voice, and there was also a very distinct note of annoyance; but all these sentiments seemed rather to apply to the demand, which was apparently unseasonable, than to the desirability of the transaction. She was neither startled nor distressed.
“It is young Fordyce, mother,” continued her son deprecatingly. “It was awfully foolish to play with him, he’s so beastly lucky. And you see I must settle it before I go away.”
“And have you none of your own?” demanded his mother, with some asperity in her tone. Julian’s creditor was a young man who had the reputation of being a “very good sort of fellow,” who would never “do” in society.
“I’m awfully sorry to say I haven’t!” returned Julian meekly.
There was a moment’s pause, and Mrs. Romayne tapped impatiently on the papers lying by her.
“It is such an inconvenient moment,” she said at last. “I have just made all myarrangements for the quarter—I don’t mean that you can’t have it, of course you can, dear—but it is difficult to lay my hand on it at this moment.”
“Falconer could arrange it for you,” suggested Julian, alluding to Falconer in his capacity of trustee for the first time, as it happened.
Mrs. Romayne started violently, and a sharp exclamation of dissent rose to her lips. She stopped it half uttered, and paused a moment, controlling herself with difficulty.
“No,” she said at last, in rather a hard tone. “I would rather not do that. I will think it over and see what can be done. We must raise your allowance, sir. I can’t have mines sprung on me like this!”
She had risen as she spoke, and as he followed her example she lifted her face towards him for the good-night kiss which always passed between them.
“I will sleep upon it,” she said. “Good night, extravagant boy.”
Thestall-holders presented a singularly fresh and unworn appearance, considering how much they had undergone, as they gradually put in an appearance at their stall on the following day, and gathered together in little knots to compare notes as to their sufferings, and here and there to allude incidentally to their takings—which certainly seemed disproportionate to the exertions of which they were the result. The fancy dress idea on which Mrs. Halse’s whole soul had been set in March had been abandoned when Mrs. Halse found a fresh hobby in April; and each lady wore that variety of the fashion of the day which seemed most desirable in her eyes. All the dresses were very “smart,” and as their wearers moved about, visiting one another’s stalls, exchanging greetings, and inspectingone another’s wares with critical eyes, they showed to conspicuous advantage. For, during the first hour at least, the stall-holders and their satellites, male and female—a mere handful of people in the great hall—had the entire place with all its decorations to themselves.
It was the cheap day, however, and as the afternoon wore on the hall gradually filled with that curious class of person which is always craving for any link, however “sham,” with the fashionable world, and makes it a point of self-respect to attend all public functions in which “society” chances to be engaged. These far-off votaries of fashion walked about, looking not at the stalls, but at the ladies in attendance on them, turning away as a rule in stolid silence when invited in mellifluous tones to buy; or perhaps investing a shilling when long search had resulted in the discovery of a twopenny article to be had for that sum, for the sake of making a purchase from one of the leaders of fashion; some of them, with a vague notion that it was fashionable to “know every one,” kept up a great show of talk and laughter, and wereconstantly seeing acquaintances on the other side of the hall—with whom they never by any chance came in contact. But no one spent more than five shillings, and the stall-holders began to find the position pall.
“I call this deadly!” said Mrs. Halse, subsiding into a chair, and looking up pathetically at Julian Romayne, who stood by. Julian should have been in attendance at the stall next but one, where Mrs. Pomeroy and his mother reigned, but Mrs. Halse, in view of the exertions before her, had summoned to her aid, about a week before, Miss Hilda Newton; and Miss Hilda Newton was looking irresistibly bewitching to-day in a big yellow hat. Her spirits, also, bore the strain of the proceedings better than did those of the other young ladies.
“Suppose we pick out some things—cheap things”—with a little grimace—“and go about among the people and try and sell them,” she said now adventurously, looking up into Julian’s face, with her pretty black eyes dancing. “I’ve done it heaps of times at bazaars, and it always goes well. Let us try, Mr. Romayne.”
Mr. Romayne was by no means loath, and a few minutes later his mother, whose eyes had been covering Mrs. Halse’s stall all the time she tried to persuade into a purchase a sharp-faced girl, whose sole object was a sufficiently prolonged inspection of Mrs. Romayne’s dress to enable her to find out how “that body was made,” saw them sally forth together laughing and talking in low, confidential tones. Her lips tightened slightly; the reappearance of Miss Newton had found Mrs. Romayne’s dislike to the pretty, opinionated, self-reliant girl as active and apparently unreasoning as it had been on her previous visit.
“What a very good idea!” she said now suavely, turning to Mrs. Pomeroy who sat by, a picture of placid content, and indicating the adventurous pair as they disappeared among the people. “We must try something of the sort, I think. Maud, dear”—Miss Pomeroy had recently become Maud to Mrs. Romayne—“do you see? I really think something might be done in that way.”
Miss Pomeroy, who was standing in frontof the stall, a charming and apparently quite inanimate figure in white, assented demurely, and Mrs. Romayne, looking round for a man, caught the eye of Loring. He came to her instantly.
“You’ll do capitally,” she said brightly, and Miss Pomeroy, making no objection to the proceeding, was started forth with Loring, the latter carrying a small stock-in-trade, to emulate Miss Newton and Julian. That stock-in-trade was quite untouched, however, when about a quarter of an hour later they returned to the stall a little hot and discomfited.
“We haven’t made a success,” said Loring with a rather sardonic smile; “Miss Pomeroy says I’m no good! Now, there’s that fellow Julian doing a roaring trade!”
Julian and Miss Newton, in point of fact, were at that moment visible returning to Mrs. Halse’s stall, evidently in high feather, all their stock sold out. Mrs. Romayne watched Julian counting his gains into Mrs. Halse’s hand, saying laughingly to Loring as she did so:
“You are not boy enough for this kind of thing, I’m afraid!” And then Julian,with a final laughing nod, turned away from Mrs. Halse, and came hastily towards his mother’s stall.
“That’s right!” said Mrs. Romayne gaily, ignoring the fact that he had evidently not come to stay. “I was just wanting you, sir, to go round with Miss Pomeroy, if she will kindly go with you, and get rid of some of our odds and ends!”
Julian stopped short and flushed a little.
“I’m awfully sorry!” he said. “I’ll come back and do it with pleasure! But I have just promised to go round again with Miss Newton. I came to see if you could give us some change.”
His mother supplied his wants smilingly, and he was gone. She had turned away with rather compressed lips when a voice behind her said half hesitatingly, half gushingly, and with a strong German accent:
“We are surely unmistaken! It is—yes, it must be, the much-honoured Mrs. Romayne!”
Mrs. Romayne turned quickly and gazed at the speaker obviously unrecognisingly. Nordid the two figures with whom she was confronted look in the least like acquaintances of hers. They were young women of the plainest and most angular German type, shabbily dressed according to the canons of middle-class German taste.
“She remembers us not, Gretchen!” began the younger of the two. And then a sudden light of recollection broke over Mrs. Romayne. They were two girls who had been training for a musical career at Leipsic, whom it had been the fashion to patronise; they had not developed as had been expected, however, and she had entirely forgotten their existence.
“Fräulein Schmitz!” she said now with distant brightness. “Ah, of course! How stupid of me! How do you do?”
They were very loquacious. Mrs. Romayne had heard all about their careers; all the reasons that had led to their spending a fortnight in London; and was beginning to think that the moment had come for getting rid of them, when, having exhausted themselves in compliments on her appearance, they enquired after Julian.
“Though we have seen Mr. Romayne,” said the elder, “since, ah, but much since we had the pleasure to see his mother. It was in Alexandria in the winter past—we hoped that some concerts there might be possible, but there is so much jealousy and favouritism—it was in Alexandria that we met him. He was travelling in Egypt, he told to us.”
“Yes!” said Mrs. Romayne, smothering a yawn. “He was in Egypt——” she stopped suddenly, and her eyes seemed to contract strangely. “Where did you say you saw him?” she said.
“It was in Alexandria! He was there for the day only, and he was to us most kind. He arrived in the morning early by the same train, and he showed us much until at night he left.”
“At Alexandria?”
“Surely! At Alexandria!”
“You must have made a mistake. It was some other place.”
Mrs. Romayne’s tone was curiously unlike that in which she had conducted the early part of the conversation. It was sharp anddirect. Fräulein Schmitz seemed to notice and resent the change.
“But we have not made a mistake, I must assure you!” she said stiffly. “It was at Alexandria. We saw him go away in the train.”
There was a moment’s pause. Mrs. Romayne was looking straight before her with those strangely contracted eyes; her lips a thin, pale line. The sisters waited a moment, evidently affronted. Then, finding that Mrs. Romayne took no notice whatever of them, they exchanged resentful glances, and the elder spoke.
“We will say good-bye!” she said formally. “It is time that we were going!”
Mrs. Romayne seemed to remember their presence—gradually only. Then she said quickly, and in a voice that sounded as though her throat were dry:
“You are going at once? Right out of the hall at once?”
“At once we are going, yes!” was the reply, and with a stiff inclination of their heads they moved away.
Mrs. Romayne followed the two angularforms with her eyes until they reached the entrance and disappeared. Then she swept a quick glance round the hall. Julian was at the further end deeply absorbed in his proceedings with Miss Newton. The Fräulein Schmitz had evidently been unseen by him.
His mother looked at him for a moment with a strange, fixed gaze, and then she turned her eyes away mechanically, and moved her mouth with a little twitch as though she felt the muscles stiffening and knew that they must not take the lines they would; there was a deadly pallor about her mouth. At that instant Loring came up to her with a witty satirical comment on the scene at which she was apparently gazing, and for the next few minutes she stood there exchanging gay little observations with him, the pallor never altering, her eyes never moving. Then quite suddenly she turned towards him.
“I want some tea!” she said. “Take me to the refreshment place, Mr. Loring!”
Julian was threading his way to where she stood, and though she turned instantlyin the direction of the refreshment stall, followed perforce by Loring, she passed close to him. He stopped and said something, but she only nodded to him and went rapidly on.
A great many other stall-holders were recruiting themselves with tea and ices, and they were all more or less in spirits, real or affected, at the approaching prospect of the end of their labours. Mrs. Romayne was instantly hailed as one of a very smart group, and took her place with eager, high-pitched gaiety. She did not go back to her stall, tea being over, but moved about the bazaar, always with a little party in attendance, laughing and talking. She and Julian were dining with a large party of stall-holders at Mrs. Pomeroy’s; they were all to repair thither direct from the bazaar, and Mrs. Romayne took a detachment in her carriage. Only one instant of solitude came to her before the luxurious, hilarious meal; only one instant, when the stream of descending ladies left her behind on an upper landing. In that instant, as if involuntarily and unconsciously to herself, the gaiety fell fromher face like a mask, leaving it haggard and ghastly. She put her hand—it was icy cold—up to her head.
“He told me a lie!” she said to herself. “A lie! Oh, my boy!”
She was very bright and witty as she and Julian drove home together, and the greyish whiteness which was stealing over her face was unnoticed by her son’s careless eyes even when they stood in the well-lighted hall.
“Are you going straight up, mother?” he said. “If so, I’ll say good night. I want a cigar.”
She paused a moment and looked at him with that indescribable tenderness which haunted her eyes at times as they rested on him, intensified a thousandfold.
“I’ll come and sit with you for a little while if you will have me,” she said.
She tried evidently for her usual manner, and succeeded inasmuch as Julian noticed nothing beyond. But beneath the surface there was something not wholly to be suppressed—something which looked out of her eyes, trembled in her voice, lingered in hertouch as she laid her hand on his arm; something which, taken in conjunction with the shreds of affectation with which she strove to cover it, and with the boy’s profound unconsciousness, was as pathetic as it was beautiful and strange.
She drew him into his own little room, and then with a forced laugh at herself she pushed him gently into a chair, and insisted on waiting upon him—bringing him cigar, matches, ash-tray—anything she could think of to add to his comfort, laughing all the time at him and at herself, and hugging those shreds of affectation close. But there was that about her, if there had been any one to see and understand, which made her one with all the many mothers since the world began who, with their hearts aching and bleeding with impotent pity and love, have tried to find some outlet for their yearning in the strange instinct for service which goes always hand in hand with mother love as with no other love on earth.
She lit his match at last, and then knelt down beside his chair.
“My dearest,” she said, “my dearest,you shall have that two hundred—to-morrow if you like! You did not think me vexed about it, did you? You know I only want you to be happy, Julian, don’t you?”
Julian laid down his cigar with a merry laugh. “I should be a fool if I didn’t!” he answered, patting her hand with boyish affection. “It’s awfully good of you, dear, and I’m frightfully grateful. I won’t make such a fool of myself again.”
Mrs. Romayne put up her hand quickly. “Don’t promise, Julian!” she said in a strange breathless way, “you might—you might forget, you know, and then perhaps you wouldn’t like to tell me! And I want to know! I always want to know!” She stopped abruptly, an almost agonised appeal in her eyes.
She was still kneeling at his side, with her eyes fixed on his face; and suddenly, abruptly, almost as though the words forced themselves from her against her will, she said, with a slight catch in her voice:
“Julian, I met Fräulein Schmitz to-day!”
He met her eyes for a moment, his own questioning and uncomprehending; thengradually there stole over his face recollection, vague at first, which became as it grew definite rather shamefaced, rather annoyed, and rather amused.
“Oh!” he said; his tone was light and daring enough, though a touch of genuine shame and embarrassment lurked in it. “Oh, I call that hard lines!”
He was smiling daringly into her face with an acceptance of the situation that was perfectly frank. His mother’s hands, as they rested on the arm of his chair, were tightly wrung together, and her eyes never stirred from his face.
“Why?” she said rather hoarsely, “why did you?”
He laughed, shrugging his shoulders and throwing out his hands with a graceful foreign movement.
“I was rather a culprit, you see,” he said. “I only spent those few hours in Alexandria, and I never gave a thought to your commission. And I felt such a brute about it that I wasn’t up to confessing!”
It was the truth and the whole truth, and it conveyed itself as such. Mrs. Romayneknelt there for a moment more, looking into his eyes, her own wide and strained; and then she rose heavily and slowly to her feet. There was a pause.
The silence was broken by Julian, evidently with a view to changing a subject on which he could hardly be said to show to conspicuous advantage.
“You’re going to write to Falconer, I suppose? You wouldn’t like to do it to-night, dear, would you? He would get the letter in better time if it was posted the first thing. You could do it at my table there!”
Mrs. Romayne did not speak. Julian could not see her face.
“Yes!” she said at last, and her voice sounded rather hollow and far away, “I will do it to-night if you like.” She bent down and kissed him. “Good night!” she said.
“Won’t you write here?” said Julian in some surprise.
“No, I’ll go upstairs!” she answered, and went out of the room.
She went upstairs, moving slowly andheavily, straight to her dainty little writing-table, and sat down, drawing out a sheet of paper. She wrote the conventional words of address to Dennis Falconer, and then she stopped suddenly and lifted her face. It was ghastly. The eyes, sunken and dim, seemed to be confronting the very irony of fate.