All the 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 himself in 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 tale of 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 was her 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. They were 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
referring to 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 difficulty in 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, sorting the 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 always
hard 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 laugh always 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 to see 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 spoken
with 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 to get 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 a few 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 many people 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
for them 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.”