Mrs. Romayne

“ Mrs. Romayne was still sitting with the letters in her hand, tapping one foot with{151} impatient vigour upon the grass, and there was the same eager intentness in her eyes, when from the house behind her the sound of a dinner-bell rang out. She started violently, and in the start something seemed to fall between her and the subject on which her thoughts had been busy. A curious shade of that new stillness replaced the energy on her face. It was the dressing-bell, and she rose mechanically; and as she turned towards the house her eyes fell upon the figure of Julian. ”

“ The trial and conviction of Julian Romayne were a nine days’ wonder in{272} society. The people who had most readily and carelessly received the widow and son of William Romayne, asked one another with the martyred air of those whose charity has been abused and their feelings for morality outraged, what was to be expected after all of the son of such a father? The people whose feelings for morality had been outraged at the outset by Mrs. Romayne’s reappearance in London, and soothed subsequently by the simplicity of the position, observed sagely that they had always said so. ”

“ Where there is money more money is always to be desired. Mrs. Romayne’s fortune was no longer absolutely necessary to him, but it had not ceased to be desirable, and her other advantages remained intact. She had received him with enthusiasm, she had cultivated him assiduously; she had absolutely led him on, as it seemed to Loring. He, in common with the rest of the world, regarded her relations with her son as the merest pose, and her appeal for his help with Julian had seemed to him simply the most transparent of subterfuges. ”

“ Romayne went on, ignoring Julian’s interjection:
“I don’t think you would have found it a very pleasant situation, to be engaged to Miss Newton with the prospect before you of keeping her waiting until you had made your fortune at the bar; and I’m sorry to say I don’t share your conviction of the moment, that she is the right young woman. She is very pretty, I allow, and a very nice girl, no doubt.” Mrs. Romayne’s voice grew a little hard as she said the last words. “But{260} she’s not at all the sort of girl that I should like you to marry. She has no money, in the first place.” ”

“ The cry arrested Clemence, moving towards Julian with shining eyes and white, parted lips. It arrested Falconer, who had drawn nearer to Mrs. Romayne, with a desperate impulse to end the struggle by throwing into the scale, against Mrs. Romayne, the weight of his opinion. “My boy, my boy! don’t talk like that, for Heaven’s sake! For Heaven’s sake! Julian, my darling, if not for yourself, for your mother! I have lived for you. I have had no thought in life but you—to save you, to protect you, to keep you from ruin such as this! ”

“ But before he arrived Miss Pomeroy had said good night to Mrs. Romayne with a neatly-turned and quite meaningless expression of the pleasure the evening had given her, and had retired to her room. Mrs. Romayne, looking haggard and worn, lingered until Julian came in, and went out to meet him. ”

“ He had no taste for young women. He admired Mrs. Romayne as much as it was possible to him to admire any one; she was “the kind of woman he could get on with,” he told himself. She possessed exceptional advantages in the matter of social standing, and she had money. ”

“ It was a very cosy little dinner that followed. Mrs. Romayne, as carefully dressed for her son as she could have been for the most critical stranger, was also at her brightest and most responsive. They talked for the most part of people and their doings; society gossip. Mrs. Romayne told Julian all about Mrs. Halse’s bazaar; deriding the whole affair as an excuse for deriding its promoter, but with no realisation of its innate absurdity; and giving Julian to understand, at the same time, that it was “the thing” to be in it ”

“ Mrs. Romayne was standing by his side, Julian’s letter held tightly in her hand, which trembled no longer. Her eyes were bright, almost hard in their determination, and every line and muscle of her face and figure was braced and set into a vivid strength and resolution.
“We must see this woman at once,” she said, and her voice was as strange in its desperate energy as was her face. Then, as Falconer only looked at her blankly, she added, in the same absorbed, concentrated way: “You will come with me?” ”

“ They went only half-a-dozen times round the room in spite of his protestations against stopping, but Mrs. Romayne was too excellent a dancer and too striking a figure for those turns to pass unnoticed. When she stopped and made him take her, flushed and laughing, out of the room, she was instantly surrounded by a group of men vehemently reproaching her for dancing with her son to the exclusion of so many would-be partners, and laughingly denouncing Julian. ”

“ Such a state of things is always more or less disturbing to the mental atmosphere; more or less according to the sensitiveness of the person upon whom it acts; and as Mrs. Romayne sat opposite Julian the furtive glances which she cast at his moody, preoccupied face became more and more anxious and restless. A tentative, uncertain tone in her manner of dealing with him, which had developed during the last month, increased moment by moment; and her voice and laugh as she chatted to him—ignoring his indifferent reception of her little bits of news—became moment by moment more forced and unreal. ”

“ 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{186} 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! ”

“ The very familiarity between them had a flavour of artificiality about it, and that flavour was mainly given, strangely enough, by Mrs. Romayne rather than by Julian. It was her manner, not his, that lacked ease and overdid the spontaneity. They chatted brightly about men and things, but she never asked him a single personal question, though at any incidental allusion let fall by him as to his doings a faint contraction of the muscles about her eyes gave her a hungry, concentrated look, as of a creature catching at a crumb. ”

“ To Falconer Mrs. Romayne’s whole attitude of mind, her whole personality, was simply and entirely antipathetic. That a woman under such circumstances should speak,{48} and act, and think as Mrs. Romayne spoke, and acted, and—as far as he could tell—thought; with so little sense of any but the social aspect of her husband’s crime; with so little realisation of the ruin that crime had brought to hundreds of innocent people ”

“ Mrs. Romayne had been gathering up some papers from the table with light, careless movements; she rose now rather suddenly but still carelessly. What seemed to him almost shameful callousness quickened Falconer into what he thought a righteous disregard for all conventionality. ”

“ Loring, old fellow, we shall meet again, of course? What are you going to do afterwards? We might go down to the club together? And he must come and dine with us, mustn’t he, mother? Suppose you arrange it!” And with a comprehensive gesture and another, “I’ll just say how do you do, I think!” he disappeared in the crowd.
Mrs. Romayne turned with a shrug of her shoulders and a pretty expressive grimace to the two men.
“Poor boy!” she laughed. “What a thing it is to be young! And what a tantalising spectacle a wedding must be under the circumstances! ”

“ He thought of his mother with a certain bitter triumph. “It’s not for long,” he said to himself, “not for long now.” His mind ran on over the details of the evening before him; the little dinner—“only ourselves,” Mrs. Romayne had said gaily; the artificialities that would pass between himself and his mother; the effective flirtation which he would have to keep up with Miss Pomeroy—the flirtation which in the excitement of the past month he had carried on recklessly. ”

“ Romayne.
“Abominable, isn’t it?” she said, pouring out her words as fast as they would come, and without waiting for any answers. “Such a trial! I suppose I shall have to go in for Turkish baths or something horrible of that sort. And how is everybody? How is that wicked young man of yours, Mrs. Romayne? I heard of his goings on at the Ponsonbys’! By-the-bye, do tell him that Hilda Newton is engaged to be married. So good for him! No doubt he thinks she is pining away. A very good match, too—young Compton; rich and good-looking; rather a fool, but don’t tell Master Julian that.” ”

“ Romayne should be informed of the birth of a son and heir. Mrs. Eyrecourt says, most truly, that the hateful old priest will get possession of Mr. Romayne’s property, to the prejudice of the child, unless steps are taken to shame him into doing justice to his own son. But Mrs. Romayne is as proud as Lucifer; she will not hear of making the first advances, as she calls it. ‘The man who has deserted me,’ she says, ‘has no heart to be touched either by wife or child.’ My mistress does not agree with her. ”

“ A long drive followed to a dingy, poverty-stricken neighbourhood, and then, in a dreary-looking little street, the cab stopped. Mrs. Romayne got out with the same rapid, concentrated movements, signing again, with a movement of her set lips, to Falconer that he should ring and make the necessary enquiries. The bell was answered, after an appreciable interval, by a slatternly-looking girl.
“A young woman lodges here, I believe,” said Falconer sternly—“a young married woman. Mrs.—Mrs. Roden, or Romayne?” ”

“ Romayne and Julian returned to town on that close September day had brought on winter, and had settled winter society fairly into its grooves; and on the previous evening Marston Loring and Mrs. Romayne had met at a dinner-party. Mrs. Romayne had been alone. To enquiries made{33} for her son, and regrets at his absence, she had replied, with a gaiety which became absolutely feverish as the evening wore on, that he was unfortunately engaged. ”

“ Romayne doesn’t distrust me.” She turned to Romayne with her most irresistible smile. “A gentleman always plays cards,” she resumed, “when he has a lady for a partner. Let us join our interests at the table—and, dear Mr. Romayne, don’t risk too much!” She put her pretty little purse into his hand, and looked as if she had been in love with him for half her lifetime.
The fatal influence of the sex, assisted by wine, produced the inevitable result. Romayne allowed himself to be led to the card table. ”

“ There was a little gesture, half-mocking, half involuntary, which accepted the words as a personal compliment, and Mrs. Romayne said with a smile:
“You are a curious pair of friends, too, are you not? Julian”—her voice in uttering the name seemed to have acquired a new tenderness in the past month, and lingered over it now, evidently unconsciously and involuntarily—“Julian is such a boy, and you are—a great deal older than you ought to be.”
She shook her head at him with a reproving laugh, and he answered in his most blasé manner:
“I’m a man of the world, you see. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But she had hoped always that the day might come when she would find herself in a position to take more active measures, and she felt, now, that even what she knew to be a slight breach of conjugal faith would be venial, if it would straighten what she would have called her “score” against Julian Romayne’s mother.
“Yes, it’s rather a bore!” she said. “City business, you know! Don’t you think it’s very foolish of men to speculate, Mrs. Romayne? Of course I haven’t a quarter of your experience, but I think so. They always seem to get into trouble of some sort! ”

“ Romayne prettily. “Are you thinking of going abroad again?”
“I am going out to Africa. I shall hardly be in England again for another five years.”
Mrs. Romayne had been looking vaguely about the room, evidently bestowing a modicum of her attention only on Falconer. But as he spoke the last words the slightest possible start passed through her frame and her wandering eyes suddenly ceased to wander. There was a moment’s pause, and then she turned them on Falconer’s face. ”

“ Romayne carelessly. It is never worth while, in the world in which Mrs. Romayne moved, to express{230} more 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. ”