The stall-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 inspecting one 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 were
constantly 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 front of 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. Nor did 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 and direct. 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 angular forms 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
instantly in 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 from
her 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 her touch 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;
then gradually 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. Romayne knelt 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 and heavily, 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.