A Valiant Ignorance (Vol. 1-3). Victorian Romance
tone, and the gesture with which she laid her hand on his arm to draw him into the drawing-room was one of her usual pretty, affected gestures—as sharp a contrast as possible to the first clinging, unconscious touch.
“Let me look at you,” she said gaily, “and make sure that I have got my own bad penny back from Africa, and not somebody else’s!”
She drew him laughingly into the fullest light the fading day afforded, and proceeded to “inspect” him, as she said, her face full of a superficial vivacity, which seemed to be doing battle all the time with something behind—something which looked out of her hard, bright eyes, eager and insistent.
Julian Romayne was a tall, well-made young man—taller by a head than the mother smiling up at him; he was well developed for his twenty-three years, slight and athletic-looking, and carrying himself more gracefully than most young Englishmen. But except in this particular, and in a slight tendency towards the use of more gesture than is common in England, his foreign training was in no wise perceptible in his appearance. The first impression he made on people who knew them both was that he was exactly like his mother, and that his mother’s features touched into manliness were a very desirable inheritance for her son; for he was distinctly good-looking. But as a matter of fact, only the upper part of his face, and his colouring, were Mrs. Romayne’s. He had the fair hair which had been hers eighteen years ago; he had her blue eyes and her pale complexion, and his nose and the shape of his brow were hers. But his mouth was larger and rather fuller-lipped than his mother’s, and the line of the chin and jaw was totally different. No strongly-marked characteristics, either intellectual or moral, were to be read in his face; his expression was simply bright and good-tempered with the good temper which has never been tried, and is the result rather of circumstances than of principle.
That strange something in Mrs. Romayne’s face seemed to retreat into the depths from which it had come as she looked at him. She finished her inspection with a gay tirade against the coat which he was wearing, and Julian replied with a boyish laugh.
“I knew you’d be down upon it!” he said. “I say, does it look so very bad? I’ll get a new fit out to-morrow—two or three, in fact! Mother, what an awfully pretty little drawing-room! What an awfully clever little mother you are!”
He flung his arm round her again with the careless, affectionate demonstrativeness which her manner seemed to produce in him, and looked round the room with admiring eyes. They were the eyes of a young man who knew better than some men twice his age how a room should look, and whose appreciation was better worth having than it seemed.
“You’re quite ready for me, you see!” he declared delightedly. “What did you mean, I should like to know, by wanting to keep me away for another fortnight?”
There was a moment’s pause before Mrs. Romayne spoke. She looked up into his face with a rather strange expression in her eyes, and then looked away across the room to where a little pile of accepted invitations lay on her writing-table. That curious light at once of battle and of triumph was strong upon her face as it had not been yet.
“Yes,” she said at last, and there was an unusual ring about her voice. “I am quite ready for you!”
Something more than the furnishing of a house had gone to the preparation of a place in society for the widow and son of William Romayne, and only the woman who had effected that preparation knew how, and how completely it had been achieved.
A moment later Mrs. Romayne’s face had changed again, and she was laughing lightly at Julian’s comments as she disengaged herself from his hold, and went towards the bell.
“Foolish boy!” she said as she rang. “I’m glad you think it’s nice. We’ll have some tea.”
She had just poured him out a cup of tea, and quick, easy question and answer as to his crossing were passing between them, when the front-door bell rang, and she broke off suddenly in her speech.
“Who can that be?” she said. “Hardly a caller; it must be six o’clock! Now, I wonder whether, if it should be a caller, Dawson will have the sense to say not at home? Perhaps I had better——” she rose as she spoke, and moved quickly across the room to the door. But she was too late! As she opened the drawing-room door she heard the street door open below, and heard the words, “At home, ma’am.” With the softest possible ejaculation of annoyance she closed the door stealthily.
“Such a nuisance!” she said rapidly. “What a time to call! I trust they won’t——” And thereupon her face changed suddenly and completely into her usual society smile as the door opened again, and she rose to receive her visitors. “My dear Mrs. Halse!” she exclaimed, “why, what a delightful surprise! Now, don’t say that you have come to tell me that anything has gone wrong about the bazaar?” she continued agitatedly. “Don’t tell me that, Miss Pomeroy!”
She was shaking hands with her younger visitor as she spoke, a girl of apparently about twenty, very correctly dressed, as pretty as a girl can be with neither colour, expression, nor startlingly correct features, whose eyes are for the most part fastened on the ground. She was Mrs. Pomeroy’s only child. She did not deal Mrs. Romayne the blow which the latter appeared to anticipate, but reassured her in a neatly constructed sentence uttered in a rather demure but perfectly self-possessed voice.
Mrs. Halse had been prevented for the moment from monopolising the conversation by reason of her keen interest in the good-looking young man standing by the fireplace; but Miss Pomeroy’s words were hardly uttered before she turned excitedly to Mrs. Romayne. If she was going to make a mistake the disagreeables of the position would be with her hostess, she had decided.
“It’s your son, Mrs. Romayne?” she cried. “It must be, surely! Such a wonderful likeness! Only, really, I can hardly believe that your son—I was ridiculous enough to expect quite a boy! Oh, don’t say that he has just arrived and we are interrupting your first tête-à-tête! How truly frightful! Let me tell you this moment what I came for and fly!”
Mrs. Romayne answered her with a suave smile.
“I am going to introduce my boy first, if you don’t mind,” she said, and then as Julian, in obedience to her look, came forward, with the easy alacrity of a young man whose social instincts are of the highly civilised kind, she laid her hand on his arm with an artificial air of affectionate pride, and continued lightly: “Your first London introduction, Julian. Mrs. Ralph Halse, Miss Pomeroy! He has only just arrived, as you guessed,” she added in an aside to Mrs. Halse, “and no doubt he is furiously angry with me for allowing him to be caught with the dust of his journey on him.”
But Julian’s anger was not perceptible in his face, or in his manner, which was very pleasant and ready. Even after he had handed tea and cake and subsided into conversation with Miss Pomeroy, Mrs. Halse found it difficult to concentrate herself on the business which had brought her to Chelsea. Her speech to Mrs. Romayne, as to the brilliant idea which had struck her just after the committee broke up, was as voluble as usual, certainly, but less connected than it might have been.
“That’s all right, then. Such a weight off my mind!” she said, as she copied an address into her note-book with a circumstance and importance which would have befitted the settlement of the fate of nations. “It is so important to get things settled at once, don’t you think so? The moment it occurred to me I saw how important it was that there should not be a moment’s delay, and I said to Maud Pomeroy: ‘Let us go at once to Mrs. Romayne, and she will give us the address, and then dear Mrs. Pomeroy can write the letter to-night.’” Here Mrs. Halse’s breath gave out for the moment, and she let her eyes, which had strayed constantly in the direction of Julian and Miss Pomeroy, rest on the young man’s good-looking, well-bred face. “We must have your son among the stewards, Mrs. Romayne,” she said. “So important! Now, I wonder whether it has occurred to you, as it has occurred to me, that a man or two—just a man or two”—with an impressive emphasis on the last word, as though three men would be altogether beside the mark—“would be rather an advantage on the ladies’ committee? Now, what is your opinion, Mr. Romayne? Don’t you think you could be very useful to us?”
She