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A Valiant Ignorance (Vol. 1-3). Victorian Romance
as Mr. Allan, and who evidently occupied the position of mutual acquaintance between herself and her other visitors. He was answering her in the affirmative when Lord Cloughton struck in with a cheery laugh.
“He’s been here two days, and he has come to the conclusion that Nice is a beastly hole, Mrs. Romayne!” he said. “This afternoon’s expedition is really a device on our part for cheering him up. He let himself be persuaded into putting some money into a new bank, and the new bank has smashed. Have you seen the papers? Now, Allan hasn’t lost much, fortunately; it isn’t that that weighs upon him. But he is oppressed by a sense of his own imbecility, aren’t you, old fellow?”
The young man laughed, freely enough.
“Perhaps I am,” he said. “So would you be, Cloughton, wouldn’t he, Mrs. Romayne? And don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same, because any fellow would, in my place. However, if Mrs. Romayne is more likely to join us this afternoon if the proceedings are presented to her in the light of a charity, I’m quite willing to pose as an object! Take pity on me, Mrs. Romayne, do!”
“I shan’t pity you,” answered Mrs. Romayne lightly. “You don’t seem to me to be much depressed, and your misfortunes appear to be of your own making. But I shall be delighted to go with you this afternoon,” she continued, turning to Lady Cloughton. “And I feel sure that Mr. Romayne will also be delighted.”
“That is quite charming of you!” exclaimed Lady Cloughton, rising as she spoke. “Well, then, I think if we were to call for you—yes, we will call for you in two hours from now. So glad you can come! The little boy quite well? So glad. In two hours, then! Au revoir.”
There was a flutter of departure, a chorus of bright, meaningless, last words, and Mrs. 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. The Englishman evidently asked a question and then another and another, and finally the waiter glanced up the stairs to where Mrs. Romayne stood carelessly watching, and obviously pointed her out to his interlocutor, asking a question in his turn. The Englishman, after looking quickly in Mrs. Romayne’s direction, shook his head in answer and walked into the dining-room.
With a vague feeling of surprise and curiosity Mrs. Romayne turned and moved away. She retraced her steps, evidently intending to go upstairs, but as she passed the open door of the drawing-room she hesitated; her eyes caught by the bright prospect visible through the open windows which looked out over the public gardens and the blue Mediterranean; her ears caught by the sounds from the band still playing outside. She re-entered the room, crossed to the window and stood there, looking out with inattentive pleasure, the dialogue she had witnessed in the hall quite forgotten as she thought of her own affairs. She thought of the immediate prospects of the next few weeks; wholly satisfactory prospects they were, to judge from her expression. She thought of the letters she had received that morning, mentally answering the invitations she had received. She thought of the acquaintances who had just left her, and of the engagement she had made for that afternoon; and then, as if the necessity for seeing her husband on the subject had by this means become freshly present to her, she turned away from the window and went out of the room and up the staircase. On her way she chanced to glance down into the hall and noticed the Englishman to whom the waiter had pointed her out, leaning in a reposeful and eminently stationary attitude against the entrance. She would ask who he was, she resolved idly. She went on until she came to a door at the end of a long corridor, outside which stood a dainty little pair of walking shoes and a pair of man’s boots. She glanced at them and lifted her eyebrows slightly—a characteristic gesture—and then opened the door.
It led into a little dressing-room, from which another doorway on the left led, evidently, into a larger room beyond. The glimpse of the latter afforded by the partly open door showed it dim and dark by contrast with the light outside; apparently the blind was but slightly raised. There was no sunshine in the dressing-room, either, though it was light enough; and as Mrs. Romayne went in and shut the door she seemed to pass into a silence that was almost oppressive. The band, the strains of which had reached her at the very threshold, was not audible in the room; in shutting the door she seemed to shut out all external sounds, and within the room was absolute stillness.
The contrast, however, made no impression whatever upon Mrs. Romayne. She was by no means sensitive, evidently, to such subtle influence. She glanced carelessly through the doorway into the dim vista of the bedroom beyond, and going to the other end of the dressing-room knelt down by a portmanteau, and began to search in it with the uncertainty of a woman whose packing is done for her by a maid. She found what she wanted; sundry dainty adjuncts to out-of-door attire, one of which, a large lace sunshade, required a little attention. She took up an elaborate little case for work implements that lay on the table, and selected a needle and thread, and a thimble; and perhaps the dead silence about her oppressed her a little, unconsciously to herself, for she hummed as she did so a bar or two of the waltz she had shut out as she shut the door. Then with the needle moving deftly to and fro in her white, well-shaped hands, she moved down the dressing-room, and standing in the light for the sake of her work, she spoke through the doorway into the still, dark bedroom.
“The Cloughtons have been here, William,” she said. “The people I met in Rome this winter; I think I told you, didn’t I? They wanted us to go to La Turbie with them this afternoon, and I said we would. That is to say, I only answered conditionally for you, of course. Will you go?”
There was no answer, no sound of any kind. Not so much as a stir or a rustle to indicate that the sleep of the man hidden in the dimness beyond—and only sleep surely could account for his silence—was even broken by the words addressed to him. Yet the voice which proceeded from the serene, well-appointed little figure standing in the sombre light of the dressing-room, with its attention more or less given to the trivial work in its hands, was penetrating in its quality, though not loud.
Mrs. Romayne paused a moment, listening. Then, with that expressive movement of her eyebrows, she went back again to the dressing-table she had left, took up a little pair of scissors which were necessary to give the finishing touch to her work, gave that finishing touch with careless deliberation, studied the effect with satisfaction, and then laid down the sunshade, and returned to the doorway into the bedroom. She stood on the threshold this time, and the darkness before her and the sombre light behind her seemed to meet upon her figure; the silence and stillness all about her seemed to claim even the space she occupied.
“William!” she said crisply. “William!”
Again there was no answer; no sound or stir of any sort or kind. And for the first time the silence seemed to strike her. She moved quickly forward into the dimness.
“William! Are you asleep——”
Her eyes had fallen on the bed, and she stopped suddenly. For it was empty. She paused an instant, and in that instant the silence seemed to rise and dominate the atmosphere as with a grim and mighty presence, before which everything shallow or superficial sank into insignificance. All that was typical and conventional about the woman standing in the midst of the stillness, arrested by she knew not what, suddenly seemed to stand out jarring and incongruous, as though unreality had been met and touched into self-revelation by a great reality. Then it subsided altogether, and only the simplest elements of womanhood were left—the womanhood common to the peasant and the princess—as the wife took two or three quick steps forward. She turned the corner of the bed that hid the greater part of the room from her, and then staggered back with a sharp cry. At her feet, partly dressed, there lay the figure of the man to whom she had been talking; his right hand, dropped straight by his side, clenched a revolver; his face—a handsome face probably an hour ago—was white and fixed; his eyes were glassy. On the floor beside him lay an open letter—a letter written on blue paper.
William Romayne was asleep indeed. His wife might tear at the bell-rope;