A Valiant Ignorance (Vol. 1-3). Victorian Romance
on the other side of the room, and as her eye fell upon the pair, a curious little flash, as of an idea or a revelation, leaped for an instant into Mrs. Romayne’s eye.
Julian moved and transferred his attention to Mrs. Halse, with an easy courtesy which was a curiously natural reproduction of his mother’s more artificial manner, and which was at the same time very young and unassuming. He laughed lightly.
“I shall be delighted to be a steward,” he said, “or to be useful in any way. But the idea of a ladies’ committee is awe-inspiring.”
“You would make great fun of us at your horrid clubs, no doubt,” retorted Mrs. Halse. “Oh, I know what you young men are! But you can be rather useful in these cases sometimes, though, of course, it doesn’t do to tell you so.”
She laughed loudly, and then rose with a sudden access of haste.
“We must really go!” she said. “Maud”—Mrs. Halse had innumerable girl friends, all of whom she was wont to address by their Christian names—“Maud, we are behaving abominably. We mustn’t stay another moment, not another second.”
But they did stay a great many other seconds, while Mrs. Halse pressed Julian into the service of the bazaar in all sorts and kinds of capacities, and managed to find out a great deal about his past life in the process. When at last she swooped down upon Maud Pomeroy, metaphorically speaking, as though that eminently decorous young lady had been responsible for the delay, and carried her off in a very tornado of protestation, attended to the front door, as in courtesy bound, by Julian, Mrs. Romayne, left alone in the drawing-room, let her face relax suddenly from its responsive brightness into an unmistakeable expression of feminine irritation and dislike.
“Horrid woman!” she said to herself. “Patronises me! Well, she will talk about nothing but Julian all this evening, wherever she may be—and she goes everywhere—so perhaps it has been worth while to endure her.” Then, as Julian appeared again, she said gaily: “My dear boy, they’ve been here an hour, and we shall both be late for dinner! Be off with you and dress!”
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; an idea which he was evidently quite capable of appreciating. Dinner over, she drew his arm playfully through hers and took him all over the house.
“Let me see that you approve!” she said with a laughing assumption of burlesque suspense.
The last room into which she took him was the little room at the back of the dining-room; and as his previous tone of appreciation and pleasure developed into genuine boyish exclamations of delight at the sight of it, the instant’s intense satisfaction in her face struck oddly on her manner.
“You like it, my lord?” she said. “My disgraceful extravagance is rewarded by your gracious approval? Then your ridiculous mother is silly enough to be pleased.” She gave him a little careless touch, half shake and half caress, and Julian threw his arm round her rapturously.
“I should think I did like it!” he said boyishly. “I say, shan’t I have to work hard here! Mother, what an awfully jolly smoking table!”
“Suppose you smoke here now,” suggested Mrs. Romayne, “by way of taking possession? Oh, yes! I’ll stay with you.”
She sat down, as she spoke, in one of the low basket-chairs by the fire, taking a little hand-screen from the mantelpiece as she did so. And Julian, with an exclamation of supreme satisfaction, threw himself into a long lounging-chair with an air of general proprietorship which sat oddly on his youthful figure; and proceeded to select and light a cigar.
A silence followed—rather a long silence. Julian lay back in his chair, and smoked in luxurious contentment. Mrs. Romayne sat with her dainty head, with its elaborate arrangement of red-brown hair, resting against a cushion, her face half hidden by the shade thrown by the fire-screen as she held it up in one slender, ringed hand. She seemed to be looking straight into the fire; as a matter of fact her eyes were fixed on the boyish face beside her. She was the first to break silence.
“It is two, nearly three, months since we were together,” she said.
The words might have been the merest comment in themselves; but there was something in the bright tone in which they were spoken, something—half suggestion, half invitation—which implied a desire to make them the opening of a conversation. Julian Romayne’s perceptions, however, were by no means of the acutest, and he detected no undertone.
“So it is!” he assented, with dreamy cheerfulness.
“How long did you spend in Cairo?”
The question, which came after a pause, was evidently another attempt on a new line. Again it failed.
“Didn’t I tell you? Ten days!” said Julian lazily.
Mrs. Romayne changed her position. She leant forward, her elbow on her knee, her cheek resting on her hand, the screen still shading her face.
“The catechism is going to begin,” she said gaily.
Julian’s cigar was finished. He roused himself, and dropped the end into the ash-tray by his side as he said with a smile:
“What catechism?”
“Your catechism, sir,” returned his mother. “Do you suppose I am going to let you off without insisting on a full and particular account of all your doings during the last ten weeks?”
“A full and particular account of all my doings!” he said. “I say, that sounds formidable, doesn’t it? The only thing is, you’ve had it in my letters.”
“The fullest and most particular?” she laughed.
“The fullest and most particular!”
“Never mind,” she exclaimed, leaning back in her chair again with a restless movement, “I shall catechise all the same. My curiosity knows no limits, you see. Now, you are on your honour as a—as a spoilt boy, understand.”
“On my honour as a spoilt boy! All right. Fire away, mum!”
He pulled himself up, folding his hands with an assumption of “good little boy” demeanour, and laughing into her face. She also drew herself up, and laughed back at him.
“Question one: Have you lost your heart to any pretty girl in the past ten weeks?”
“No, mum.”
“Question two: Have you flirted—much—with any girl, pretty or plain?”
“No, mum.”
“Have you overdrawn your allowance?”
“No, mum. I’ve got such a jolly generous mother, mum!”
“Have you—— Oh! Have you any secrets from your mother?”
The question broke from her in a kind of cry, but she turned it before it was finished into burlesque, and Julian burst into a shout of laughter.
“Not a solitary secret! There, will that do?”
She was looking straight into his face—her own still in shadow—and there was a moment’s pause; almost a breathless pause on her part it seemed; then she broke into a laugh.
“That will do capitally,” she said. “The catechism is over.”
She rose as she spoke, and added a word or two about a note she had to write.
“We may as well go up into the drawing-room if you have finished smoking,” she said. “It is an invitation from some friends of the Pomeroys—a dinner. By-the-bye, don’t you think