Eighteen years lay between the events which Lady Bracondale recalled so
hazily and the Mrs. Romayne who crossed the threshold of Mrs. Pomeroy’s
drawing-room as the footman spoke her name. Those eighteen years had
changed her at once curiously more and curiously less than the years
between six-and-twenty and four-and-forty usually change a woman. She
looked at the first glance very little older than she had done eighteen
years ago; younger, indeed, than she had looked during those early days
of her widowhood. Such changes as time had made in her appearance seemed
mainly due to the immense difference in the styles of dress now
obtaining. The dainty colouring, the cut of her frock, the pose of her
bonnet, the arrangement of her hair, with its fluffy curls, all seemed
to accentuate her prettiness and to bring out the youthfulness which a
little woman without strongly marked features may keep for so long. The
fluffy hair was a red-brown now, instead of a pale yellow, and the
change was becoming, although it helped greatly, though very subtly, to
alter the character of her face. The outline of her features was perhaps
a trifle sharper than it had been, and there were sundry lines about the
mouth and eyes when it was in repose. But these were obliterated, as a
rule, by a characteristic to which all the minor changes in her seemed
to have more or less direct reference; a characteristic which seemed to
make the very similarity between the woman of to-day and the woman of
eighteen years before, seem unreal; the singular brightness and vivacity
of her expression. Her features were animated, eager, almost restless;
her gestures and movements were alert and quick; her voice, as she spoke
to an acquaintance here and there, as she moved up Mrs. Pomeroy’s
drawing-room, was brisk and laughing. Her dress and demeanour were the
dress and demeanour of the day to the subtlest shade; she had been a
typical woman of the world eighteen years before; she was a typical
woman of the world now. But in the old days the personality of the woman
had been dominated by and merged in the type. Now the type seemed to be
penetrated by something from within, which was not to be wholly
suppressed.
She came quickly down the long drawing-room, smiling and nodding as she
came, and greeted Mrs. Pomeroy with a little exaggerated gesture of
despair and apology.
“Have you really finished?” she cried. “Is everything settled? How
shocking of me!” Then, as she shook hands with Mrs. Halse, she added,
with a sweetness of tone which seemed to cover an underlying tendency
which was not sweet: “However, we have such a host in our secretary that
really one voice more or less makes very little difference.”
“Well, really, I don’t know that we have settled anything!” said Mrs.
Pomeroy. “We have talked things over, you know. It is such a mistake to
be in a hurry! Don’t you think so?”
“I’ve not a doubt of it,” was the answer, given with a laugh. “My dear
Mrs. Pomeroy, I have been in a hurry for the last six weeks, and it’s a
frightful state of things. You’ve had a capital meeting, though. Why, I
believe I am actually the only defaulter!”
The hard blue eyes were moving rapidly over the room as Mrs. Romayne
spoke; there was an eager comprehensive glance in them as though the
survey taken was in some sense a survey of material or--at one
instant--of a battle-ground; and it gave a certain unreality to their
carelessness.
“The only defaulter. Yes,” agreed Mrs. Pomeroy comfortably. “And now,
Mrs. Romayne, you must let me introduce you to a new member of our
committee; quite an acquisition! Why, where--oh!” and serenely oblivious
of the stony stare with which Lady Bracondale, a few paces off, was
regarding the opposite wall of the room just over the newcomer’s bonnet,
Mrs. Pomeroy, with her kind fat hand on Mrs. Romayne’s arm, approached
the exclusive acquisition. “Let me introduce Mrs. Romayne, dear Lady
Bracondale!” she said with unimpaired placidity.
The stony stare was lowered an inch or two until it was about on a level
with Mrs. Romayne’s eyebrows, and Lady Bracondale bowed icily; but at
the same moment Mrs. Romayne held out her hand with a graceful little
exclamation of surprise. It was not genuine, though it sounded so; those
keen, quick, blue eyes had seen Lady Bracondale and recognised her in
the course of their owner’s progress up the room, and had observed her
withdrawal of herself those two or three paces from Mrs. Pomeroy’s
vicinity; and it was as they rested for an instant only on her in their
subsequent survey of the room that that subtle change suggestive of a
sense of coming battle had come to them. They looked full into Lady
Bracondale’s face now with a smiling ease, which was just touched with a
suggestion of pleasure in the meeting.
“I hardly know whether we require an introduction,” said Mrs. Romayne;
she spoke with cordiality which was just sufficiently careless to be
thoroughly “good form.” “It is so many years since we met, though, that
perhaps our former acquaintanceship must be considered to have died a
natural death. I am very pleased that it should have a resurrection!”
She finished with a little light laugh, and Lady Bracondale found,
almost to her own surprise, that they were shaking hands. If she had
been able to analyse cause and effect--which she was not--she would have
known that it was that carelessness in Mrs. Romayne’s manner that
influenced her. A powerful prompter to a freezing demeanour is withdrawn
when the other party is obviously insensible to cold.
“It is really too bad of me to be so late!” continued Mrs. Romayne,
proceeding to pass over their past acquaintance as a half forgotten
recollection to which they were both indifferent, and taking up matters
as they stood with the easy unconcern and casual conversationalism of a
society woman. “At least it would be if my time were my own just now.
But as a matter of fact my sole _raison d’être_ for the moment is the
getting ready of our little place for my boy. I ought to have shut
myself up with carpenters and upholsterers until it was done! I assure
you I can’t even dine out without a guilty feeling that I ought to be
seeing after something or other connected with chairs and tables!”
She finished with a laugh about which there was a touch of
artificiality, as there had been about her tone as she alluded to her
“boy.” Perhaps the only thoroughly genuine point about her, at that
moment, was a certain intent watchfulness, strongly repressed, in the
eyes with which she met Lady Bracondale’s gorgon-like stare; and
something about the spirited pose of her head and the lines of her face,
always recalling, vaguely and indefinitely, that idea of single combat.
Lady Bracondale, however, was not a judge of artificiality, and Mrs.
Romayne’s manner, with its perfect assurance and careless assumption of
a position and a footing in society, affected her in spite of herself.
The stony stare relaxed perceptibly as she said, stiffly enough, but
with condescending interest:
“You are expecting your son in town?”
“I am expecting him every day, I am delighted to say!” answered Mrs.
Romayne, with a little conventional gush of superficial enthusiasm.
“Really, you have no idea how forlorn I am without him! We are quite
absurdly devoted to one another, as I often tell him, stupid fellow. But
I always think--don’t you?--that a man is much better out of the way
during the agonies of furnishing, so I insisted on his making a little
tour while I plunged into the fray. He was very anxious to help, of
course, dear fellow. But I told him frankly that he would be more
hindrance than help, and packed him off--and made a great baby of myself
when he was gone. Of course I have had to console myself by making our
little place as perfect as possible, as a surprise for him! You know how
these things grow! One little surprise after another comes into one’s
head, and one excuses oneself for one’s extravagance when it’s for one’s
boy.”
“Are you thinking of settling in London?” enquired Lady Bracondale.
She was unbending moment by moment in direct contradiction of her
preconceived determination. Mrs. Romayne was so bright and so
unconscious. She ran off her pretty maternal platitudes with such
careless confidence, that iciness on Lady Bracondale’s part would have
assumed a futile and even ridiculous appearance.
“Yes!” was the answer. “We are going to settle down a regular cosy
couple. It has been our castle in the air all the time his education has
been going on. He is to read for the bar, and I tell him that he will
value a holiday more in another year or two, poor fellow. But I’m afraid
I bore about him frightfully!” she added, with another laugh. “And it is
rather hard on him, poor boy, for he really is not a bore! I think you
will like him, Lady Bracondale. I remember young men always adored you!”
Lady Bracondale smiled, absolutely smiled, and said
graciously--graciously for her, that is to say:
“You must bring him to see me! I should like to call upon you if you
will give me your card.”
Mrs. Romayne was in the act of complying--complying with smiling
indifference, which was the very perfection of society manner--when Mrs.
Pomeroy, evidently moved solely by the impetus of the excited group of
ladies of which she was the serenely smiling centre, bore cheerfully
down upon them.
“Perhaps we ought to vote about the fancy dress before we separate this
afternoon,” she suggested, “or shall we talk it over a little more at
the next meeting? Perhaps that would be wiser. Mrs. Romayne----”
She looked invitingly at Mrs. Romayne as if for her opinion on the
subject, and the invitation was responded to with that ever-ready little
laugh.
“Oh, let us put it off until the next meeting,” she said. “I am ashamed
to say that I really must run away now. But at the next meeting I
promise faithfully to be here at the beginning and stay until the very
end.”
Whereupon it became evident that the greater part of the committee was
anxious to postpone the decision on the knotty point in question, and
was conscious of more or less pressing engagements. A general exodus
ensued, Mrs. Halse alone remaining to expound her views to Mrs. Pomeroy
all by herself and in a higher and more conclusive tone than before.
A neat little coupé was waiting for Mrs. Romayne. She gave the coachman
the order “home” at first, and then paused and told him to go to a
famous cigar merchant’s. She got into the carriage with a smiling
gesture of farewell to Lady Bracondale, whose brougham passed her at the
moment; but as she leant back against the cushions the smile died from
her lips with singular suddenness. It left her face very intent; the
eyes very bright and hard, the lips set and a little compressed. The
lines about them and about her eyes showed out faintly under this new
aspect of her face in spite of the eager satisfaction which was its
dominant expression. The battle had evidently been fought and won and
the victor was ready and braced for the next.
She got out at the cigar merchant’s, and when she returned to her
carriage there was that expression of elation about her which often
attends the perpetration of a piece of extravagance. But as she was
driven through the fading sunlight of the March afternoon towards
Chelsea, her face settled once more into that intent reflection and
satisfaction.
It was a narrow slip of a house at which her coupé eventually stopped,
wedged in among much more imposing-looking mansions in the most
fashionable part of Chelsea. But what it lacked in size it made up in
brightness and general smartness. It had evidently been recently done up
with all the latest improvements in paint, window-boxes, and fittings
generally, and it presented a very attractive appearance indeed.
Mrs. Romayne let herself in with a latch-key, and went quickly across
the prettily decorated hall into a room at the back of what was
evidently the dining-room. She opened the door, and then stood still
upon the threshold.
The light of the setting sun was stealing in at the window, the lower
half of which was filled in with Indian blinds; and as it fell in long
slanting rays across the silent room, it seemed to emphasize and, at the
same time, to soften and beautify an impression of waiting and of
expectancy that seemed to emanate from everything that room contained.
It was furnished--it was not large--as a compromise between a
smoking-room and a study, and its every item, from the bookcases and
the writing-table to the bronzes on the mantelpiece, was in the most
approved and latest style, and of the very best kind. Every conceivable
detail had evidently been thought out and attended to; the room was
obviously absolutely complete and perfect--only on the writing-table
something seemed lacking, and some brown paper parcels lay there waiting
to be unfastened--and it had as obviously never been lived in. It was
like a body without a soul.
The lingering light stole along the wall, touching here and there those
unused objects waiting, characterless, for that strange character which
the personality of a man impresses always on the room in which he lives,
and its last touch fell upon the face of the woman standing in the
doorway. The artificiality of its expression was standing out in strong
relief as if in half conscious, half instinctive struggle with something
that lay behind, something which the aspect of that empty room had
developed out of its previous intentness and excitement. With a little
affected laugh, as though some one else had been present--or as though
affectation were indeed second nature to her--Mrs. Romayne went up to
the writing-table and began to undo the parcels lying there. They
contained a very handsome set of fittings for a man’s writing-table, and
she arranged them in their places, clearing away the paper with
scrupulous care, and with another little laugh.
“What a ridiculous woman!” she said half aloud, with just the intonation
she had used in speaking to Lady Bracondale of her “little surprises”
for “her boy.” “And what a spoilt fellow!”
She turned away, went out of the room, with one backward glance as she
closed the door, and upstairs to the drawing-room. She had just entered
the room when a thought seemed to strike her.
“How utterly ridiculous!” she said to herself. “I quite forgot to notice
whether there were any letters!”
She was just crossing the room to ring for a servant when the front-door
bell rang vigorously and she stopped short. With an exclamation of
surprise she went to the door and stood there listening, that she might
prepare herself beforehand for the possible visitor, for whom she
evidently had no desire. “How tiresome!” she said to herself. “Who is
it, I wonder?” She heard the parlourmaid go down the hall and open the
door.
“Mrs. Romayne at home?”
With a shock and convulsion, which only the wildest leap of the heart
can produce, the listening face in the drawing-room doorway, with the
conventional smile which might momently be called for just quivering on
it, half in abeyance, half in evidence, was suddenly transformed. Every
trace of artificiality fell away, blotted out utterly before the swift,
involuntary flash of mother love and longing with which those hard blue
eyes, those pretty, superficial little features were, in that instant,
transfigured. The elaborately dressed figure caught at the door-post, as
any homely drudge might have done; the woman of the world, startled out
of--or into--herself, forgot the world.
“It’s Julian!” the white, trembling lips murmured. “Julian!”
As she spoke the word, up the stairs two steps at a time, there dashed a
tall, fair-haired young man who caught her in his arms with a delighted
laugh--her own laugh, but with a boyish ring of sincerity in it.
“I’ve taken you by surprise, mother!” he cried. “You’ve never opened my
telegram!”