Romayne

“ 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. ”

“ The first article in the faith of the new Julian Romayne was the belief that he had been forced into his present position by his mother; that he had been parted from his wife by his mother; that he had been covered with humiliation by his mother. Every fresh stab, every movement of revolt, as that two-edged dart pressed itself deeper into his consciousness with every struggle he made for freedom, added something to the account he held against her; increased the bitterness of his resentment against her and brought it one degree nearer to hatred. ”

“ Romayne; then it turned and confronted him, and, meeting the eyes, he recognised, not the woman whom he had known during the past two years, but the woman into whose face{206} he had looked with so strange a shock of unfamiliarity, and for one moment only, as he and Dr. Aston had confronted it together twenty years ago in Nice. Every trace of the Mrs. Romayne of to-day seemed to have vanished, scorched away by the consuming fire which burnt in her blue eyes and seemed to be the only thing that lived behind that ghastly face; even her features were drawn and sunken almost beyond recognition. ”

“ Romayne beat her hands one against the other, as though her agony were indeed too great to be endured. Falconer, utterly confounded—more by her manner than by her tidings, which, indeed, in his slow and bewildered sense of the extraordinarily direct communication which her words had established between herself and him, he hardly grasped—echoed the one word which seemed to contain a definite statement. ”

“ Romayne advanced rapidly, every movement, every line of her face, every tone of her voice, claiming as an inalienable right her son’s attention. Her face was very hard, far harder than it had been before that spasm of pain had shaken it, and there was no touch of emotion in her hard, quick voice. She seemed to have put all sentiment deliberately aside.
“Julian,” she said, “you have made a terrible mistake! You are taking just the one false step that would be absolutely irretrievable. You must come back to town at once!” ”

“ Romayne started slightly. She glanced up at his face for an instant, unfurling her fan, and using it gently, as though the movement were an outlet for some sort of faint agitation. Loring was not looking at her, his eyes were fixed for the moment on the opposite wall, and his profile told her nothing. There was a hardly perceptible pause, and{104} then he went on, with an admirable mixture of deference, admiration—the depth of which seemed the greater in that it was rather suggested than expressed—and the practical confidence of a man of the world. ”

“ Romayne stood at the head of the great staircase, waving her hand in farewell as her visitors, with a last backward glance and parting smiles and gestures, disappeared from view. She stood a moment watching some people in the hall below, whose appearance had struck her at dinner on the previous evening, and as she looked idly at them she saw a man come in—an Englishman, evidently just off a journey, and “not a gentleman” as she decided absently—and go up to a waiter who was standing in the dining-room doorway. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Romayne and the one absorbing passion of her life had fallen that solemn shadow before which all earthly passions pale and fade away; that solemn shadow before whose creeping touch not strength of will, not love itself, can stand. As she fell to the ground before her son she had loosed her hold perforce on all the struggle and burning resolution which was life to her ”

“ 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. ”

“ Romayne’s agonised face, as she watched him, the life seemed arrested. It was as though he were groping and fighting among sensations and instincts so new to him that he had no words in his vocabulary in which to clothe them; and the effort to express them was instinct with the despair of conscious futility. He seemed to break away{252} at last and rush upon a wild, confused declaration which comprised all that he could grasp.
“Why should I fight for what I don’t want?” he cried hoarsely. “There’s nothing worth having now.” ”

“ Romayne. “When one has arrived violently at the foot of the precipice, it is of no particular moment how long one{64} has been living on the precipice’s edge. While nothing was known, Mr. Romayne was only on the precipice’s edge, and as no one knew of the precipice it was practically as though none existed. Directly one thing came out it was all over! He was over the edge. Nothing could make it either better or worse.”
She spoke almost carelessly, though very bitterly, as though she felt her words to be almost truisms, and Falconer stared at her for a moment in silence. ”

“ Romayne from the first; she was the kind of woman he greatly admired, and he was well aware that to be on terms of intimacy with such a social power was an excellent thing for a man in his position; a position which, as he was also well aware, was by no means so secure as most people supposed. It was from this point of view that he had cultivated Julian, and, at first, from this point of view only. The idea of Mrs. Romayne as a possible wife occurred to him later. ”

“ Romayne’s greeting. He looked ten years younger than he had been wont to look; the worn look of endurance had gone, and there was an air of strength and power about him which was very noticeable. Hardly less striking was the change in his expression. Much of the grim austerity of his demeanour during the previous summer had originated in the painful depression consequent on his state of health; much also in his realisation of his position as a man laid aside and solacing{75} himself as best he might. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Imagine any human being, out of a lunatic asylum, talking in this way. Shall I own to you, my reverend colleague, how this curious self-exposure struck me? As I listened to Romayne, I felt grateful to the famous Council which definitely forbade the priests of the Catholic Church to marry. We might otherwise have been morally enervated by the weakness which degrades Romayne—and priests might have become instruments in the hands of women. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Romayne.
{226}
“Good-bye!” she cried, as though appealing to some encircling environment of fate. “And she let him go! She let him go!” She stopped herself, forcing down her passion with an iron hand, and went on in a tone only colder and more decisive in its greater rapidity than before. “He has made a mistake; you cannot understand, of course. No doubt it seems to you that everything to be desired is comprised in the miserable subterfuge of flight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Romayne led the way to the almost deserted miniature room, and they began to walk slowly up and down, to all intents and purposes alone together. There seemed to be no particular point to Mrs. Romayne’s desire for a private conference with her fellow-conspirator. She talked about Julian; talked about him carelessly, artificially, but with a persistence which only another mother could have understood; slipping in little questions now and then on all sorts of details connected with that business side of a man’s life, as to which, she said, “women are always so in the dark;” ”

“ To the Secretary, Society of Jesus, Rome.
I inclose a receipt for the remittance which your last letter confides to my care. Some of the money has been already used in prosecuting inquiries, the result of which will, as I hope and believe, enable me to effectually protect Romayne from the advances of the woman who is bent on marrying him.
You tell me that our Reverend Fathers, lately sitting in council on the Vange Abbey affair, are anxious to hear if any positive steps have yet been taken toward the conversion of Romayne. I am happily able to gratify their wishes, as you shall now see. ”

“ Romayne. Facing Mrs. Romayne stood Clemence, paler now than before, and with her head bent a little lower. Falconer could see that she trembled slightly. Mrs. Romayne began to speak instantly, in the same hard, rapid tone.
“Where is my son?” she said. “You{225} have been told, perhaps, to say you do not know—to keep his plans secret. You must give them up instantly to me. He has made a mistake, and only prompt action can redeem it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ While this was being done, the advancing sea-fog so completely enveloped us that the duelists were unable to see each other. We were obliged to wait for the chance of a partial clearing in the atmosphere. Romayne’s temper had become calm again. The generosity of his nature spoke in the words which he now addressed to his seconds. “After all,” he said, “the young man is a good son—he is bent on redressing what he believes to be his father’s wrong. ”