A Valiant Ignorance (Vol. 1-3). Victorian Romance
but his mother did not press the point. She turned away to replace the screen on the mantelpiece, and as she did so a thought seemed to strike her.
“Oh, Julian!” she said. “Did you go to Alexandria? What about those curtains you were to get me?”
Her back was towards Julian, and she did not notice the instant’s hesitation which preceded his reply. He was putting his cigar-case into his pocket, and the process seemed to demand all his attention.
“I didn’t go to Alexandria, unfortunately,” he said lightly. “The Fosters had been there, and didn’t care to go again.”
The clock struck twelve that night when Mrs. Romayne rose at last from the chair in front of her bedroom fireplace in which she had been sitting for more than an hour. The fire had gone out before her eyes unnoticed, and she shivered a little as she rose. Her face was strangely pale and haggard-looking, and the red-brown hair harmonised ill with the anxiety of its look.
“It begins from to-night!” she said to herself. “It is his man’s life that begins from to-night!”
CHAPTER IX
“Quite a presentable fellow!”
There was an unusual ring of excitement in Mrs. Romayne’s voice; it was about ten o’clock in the evening, and she was standing in the middle of her own drawing-room, looking up into Julian’s face, as he stood before her, having just come into the room, smiling back at her with a certain touch of excitement about his appearance also. He was in evening dress; he had evidently bestowed particular pains upon his attire, and the flower in his buttonhole was an exceptionally dainty one.
Mrs. Romayne was also in evening dress, and in evening dress of the most elaborate description. From the point of view of the fashion of the day, her appearance was absolutely perfect; no detail, from the arrangement of her hair to the point of the silk shoe just visible beneath her skirt, had been neglected; everything was in good taste and in the height of fashion, and the effect of the whole, heightened by the background afforded by the quiet little drawing-room with its softly shaded lamps, was almost startling in its suggestion of luxury and refinement. The fashion of the moment was peculiarly becoming to Mrs. Romayne, and evening dress, with its artificialities and its conventionalities, always enhanced her good points, strictly conventional as they were. With that light of excitement on her face, and a certain suggestion about her of verve and vivacity, she looked almost charming enough to justify the boyish exclamations of exaggerated admiration into which Julian had broken on entering the room.
There was an eager, restless happiness in her eyes, which leapt up into almost triumphant life as she gave a little touch to Julian’s buttonhole; and then pushed him a step or two further back, that she might look at him again, and repeated her commendatory words with a laugh. Then, on a little gesture from her, he picked up her cloak, which lay on a chair near, put it carefully about her, and, opening the door for her, followed her downstairs.
Nearly three weeks had elapsed since Julian’s arrival in London, and in that time, short as it was, his expression had changed somewhat. There was a quickened interest and alertness about it which detracted from his boyishness, inasmuch as it made him look as though life had actually begun for him. It would have been wholly untrue to say that any touch of responsibility or ambition had dawned upon his good-looking young face; but a subtle something had come to it which was, perhaps, a materialisation of a mental movement which did duty for those emotions. In the course of those three weeks he had had several interviews with the man with whom he was to read; all the preliminaries of his legal career had been settled; and in more than one half-laughing talk with his mother on the conclusion of some arrangement, the preliminaries had been far outstripped, and he had been conducted in triumph to the bench itself.
But in all these buildings of castles in the air, there was a factor in the foundations of his fortunes never allowed by his mother to drop out of sight; the main factor it became when she was the architect, relegating to a subordinate position even the hard work on which Julian was wont to expatiate with enthusiasm and energy. Sometimes as a means, sometimes as an end, sometimes as the sum total of all human ambition, social success, social position were woven into all his schemes for the future as they talked together; woven in with no direct statements or precepts; but with an insidious insistence, and a tacit assumption of their value in the scale of things as a truism in no need of formulation.
Society life had begun for him with the very day after his arrival in town, and had moved briskly with him through the following weeks; briskly, but in a small way. Easter had intervened, and no large entertainments had been given. To-night was to be, as Mrs. Romayne said gaily as she settled her train and her cloak in the brougham into which he had followed her, his first public appearance. They were on their way to the first “smart affair” of the coming season; a dance to be given at a house in Park Lane; not very large, but very desirable, at which—again on Mrs. Romayne’s authority—all the right people would be.
“You must dance, of course, but not all the evening, Julian!” his mother said, as their drive drew to an end. “I shall want to introduce you a good deal. And don’t engage yourself for supper if you can help it. I’m sorry to be so hard upon you!”
She finished with a laugh, light as her tone had been throughout. Then their carriage drew up suddenly, and her face, in shadow for the moment, changed strangely. For an instant all the happiness, all the excitement and superficiality died out of it, quenched in a kind of revelation of heartsick anxiety so utterly out of all proportion with the occasion, as to be absolutely ghastly; ghastly as only a momentary revelation of the cruel cross-purposes and incongruities of life can be. The next moment, as Julian sprang out of the carriage and turned to help her out, her expression changed again.
It took them some time to get up to the drawing-room, for though the party was by no means a crush, they had arrived at the most fashionable moment, and the staircase was crowded. Salutations, conveyed by graceful movements of the head, passed across an intervening barrier of gay dresses and black coats between Mrs. Romayne and numbers of acquaintances above her or below her on the stairs; and as she smiled and bowed she murmured comments to Julian—names or data, criticisms of dress or appearance—until at last patience, and the continual movement of the stream of which they made part, brought them face to face with their hostess. The conventional handshake, the conventional words of greeting passed between that lady and Mrs. Romayne, and then the latter indicated Julian with a smiling gesture.
“Let me introduce my boy, Lady Arden,” she said. “So glad to have the opportunity!”
She spoke with an accentuation of that self-conscious, self-deriding maternal pride which was her usual pose, setting, as it were, her tone for the night. And certainly Julian, as he bowed, and then shook the hand Lady Arden held out to him, was a legitimate subject for pride. His sense of the importance of the occasion had given to his manner and expression not only that touch of excitement which made him positively handsome, but a certain added readiness and assurance, by no means presuming and very attractive. Lady Arden’s eyes rested on him with obvious approval, as she said the few words the situation demanded with unusual graciousness, and a sign from her brought one of her daughters to her side. She introduced Julian to the girl.
“Take care of Mr. Romayne, Ida,” she said. “He has only lately come to London. Find him some nice partners.”
“And let me have him back by-and-by, please, Lady Ida!” laughed Mrs. Romayne, as they passed on with the girl into the room. “There are some friends of his mother’s to whom he must spare a little time to-night.”
The gay replies with which Julian and his guide—who after a comprehensive glance at him had shown considerable readiness to do her mother’s bidding—disappeared in the crowd were lost to Mrs. Romayne; her attention was claimed by a man at her elbow.
“May I have a dance, Mrs. Romayne?” he said.
Mrs. Romayne shook hands and laughed.