A Valiant Ignorance (Vol. 1-3). Victorian Romance
a decided fancy to “that charming little woman’s boy,” and Julian was standing on the pavement of St. James’s Street, with that pleasant sense of exhilaration and warmth of heart, which is an attendant, in youth, on the inauguration of a new friendship.
It was a night in early May, and a fine, hot day had ended, as evening drew on, in sultry closeness. The clouds had been rolling up steadily, though not a breath of air seemed to be stirring now, and it was evident that a storm was inevitable before long. Julian was hot and excited; he had only a short distance to go; he looked up at the sky and decided—the wish being father to the thought—that it would “hold up for the present,” and that he would walk.
He set out up St. James’s Street and along Piccadilly, taking the right road by instinct, his busy thoughts divided between satisfaction at the idea of belonging to the “best” club in London, introduced thereinto by Lord Garstin; and Loring and his gifts and graces. He had just turned into Berkeley Street when a rattling peal of thunder roused him with a start, and the next instant the thunder was followed by a perfect deluge of rain.
It was so sudden and he was so entirely unprepared, that his only instinct for the moment was to step back hastily into the shelter of a portico in front of which he was just passing; and as he did so, he noticed a young woman who must have been following him up the street, a young woman in the shabby hat and jacket of a work-girl, take refuge, perforce, beneath the same shelter with a shrinking movement which was not undignified, though it seemed to imply that she was almost more afraid of him than of the drenching, bitter rain. Then, his reasoning powers reasserting themselves in the comparative security of the portico, he began to consider what he should do. He was within seven minutes’ walk of his destination, but seven minutes’ walk in such rain as was beating down on the pavement before him would render him wholly unfit to present himself at a party; and “of course,” as he said to himself, there was not a cab to be seen. A blinding flash of lightning cut across his reflections, and drove him back a step or two farther into shelter involuntarily. And as a terrific peal of thunder followed it instantaneously, he glanced almost unconsciously at the sharer of his shelter.
“By Jove!” he said to himself.
The girl had retreated, as he himself had done, and was standing close up against the door of the house to which the portico belonged, in the extreme corner from that which he himself occupied. But except for that tacit acknowledgement of his presence, she seemed no longer conscious of it. She was looking straight out at the storm, her head a little lifted as though to catch a glimpse of the sky; and her face, outlined by her dark clothes and the dark paint of the door behind her, stood out in great distinctness. It was rather thin and pale, and very tired-looking; the large brown eyes were heavy and haggard. It was not worthy of a second glance at that moment, according to any canon of the world in which Julian lived, and yet it drew from him that exclamation of startled admiration. He had never seen anything like it, he told himself vaguely.
Apparently the intent gaze, of which he himself was hardly conscious, affected its object. She moved uneasily, and turning as if involuntarily, met his eyes.
The next instant she was moving hastily from under the portico, when the driver of a hansom cab became aware of Julian’s existence, and pulled up suddenly.
“Hansom, sir?” he shouted.
“Yes!” answered Julian quickly, dashing across the drenched pavement. “A hundred and three, Berkeley Square!”
CHAPTER X
All the rooms in the house in Chelsea were bright and pretty, and by no means the least attractive was the dining-room. The late breakfast-hour fixed by Mrs. Romayne, “just for the season,” as she said, gave plenty of time for the sun to find its way in at the windows; and on the morning following Julian’s dinner with Lord Garstin the sunshine was dancing on the walls, and the soft, warm air floating in at the open windows, as though the thunderstorm of the previous evening had cleared the air to some purpose.
The two occupants of the room, as they faced one another across the dainty little breakfast-table, had been laughing and talking after their usual fashion ever since they sat down; talking of the party of the night before and of engagements in the future; and finally reverting to Lord Garstin’s dinner and Marston Loring, of whom Julian had already had a great deal to say.
“I have a kind of feeling that he and I are going to be chums, mother!” he said as he carried his coffee-cup round the table to her to be refilled. “I think he took to me rather, do you know!”
“That’s a very surprising thing, isn’t it?” returned his mother, laughing. “And you took to him? Well, if you must pick up a chum, you couldn’t do it under better auspices than Lord Garstin’s.”
“I took to him no end!” answered Julian eagerly. “I do hope you’ll like him.”
“I think I am pretty sure to like him,” said Mrs. Romayne graciously. “I remember hearing about him some time ago—that he was quite one of the rising young men of the day. He was to have been introduced to me then. I forget why it didn’t come off. There’s your coffee!”
Julian took his cup with a word of thanks and turned back to his chair; and his mother began again.
“Mr. Loring is a member of the Prince’s, I suppose?” she said. The “Prince’s” was the name of the club at which Lord Garstin’s dinner had been given. “I suppose you will want to be setting up a club in no time, sir?”
Julian laughed, and then replied somewhat eagerly and confidentially, as though in unconscious response to a certain invitation in his mother’s tone.
“Well, of course a fellow does want a club, mother,” he said. “One feels it more and more, don’t you know! Of course I should awfully like to belong to the Prince’s.”
“And why not?” responded his mother brightly, watching him rather narrowly as she spoke. “Lord Garstin would put you up, I’ve no doubt, if I asked him.”
Julian’s eyes sparkled.
“It would be first-rate!” he exclaimed. “Mother, it’s awfully jolly of you!” He paused a moment and then continued tentatively: “It would be rather expensive, you know. That’s the only thing!”
“So I suppose!” answered his mother, laughing. “Oh, you’re a very expensive luxury altogether! However, I imagine another hundred a year would do?” Then as he broke into vehement demonstrations of delight and gratitude, she added with another laugh which did not seem to ring quite true: “I don’t think you need ever run short of money!”
There was a moment’s pause as Julian, the picture of glowing satisfaction, finished his breakfast, and then Mrs. Romayne rose.
“What are you going to do this morning?” she said. “Read?”
Julian glanced out of the window.
“Well,” he said, “it’s an awfully jolly morning, isn’t it? I promised to see after some live-stock for Miss Pomeroy’s stall—puppies, and kittens, and canary birds. Rum idea, isn’t it? What are you doing this morning, dear?”
It turned out that Mrs. Romayne had nothing particular on her hands beyond a visit to a jeweller in Bond Street, and accepting very easily his substitution of Miss Pomeroy’s commission for the legal studies to which he was supposed to devote himself in the mornings, she took up his reference to the weather, and suggested that they should drive together to execute first his business and then her own.
“It will be rather nice driving this morning,” she said. “And we can take a turn in the Park.”
Certainly there was a certain amount of excuse for those people who had already begun to say that Mrs. Romayne was never happy without her son by her side.
She spared no pains, however,