“It’s very likely,” she said. “I don’t want to argue the principle with you. Young men have their own ideas, I know; but how many young men—drop out? How many young men, with good positions, good chances, somehow or other get into bad odour; get to be not received—or, if they are received, it is with certain reservations—through this kind of thing? Oh, of course I don’t say it’s inevitable. There are lots of men about, as you say! But it’s an awful risk. In the case of a young man like you, with no title to the position you hold in society but your—your personality, don’t you see, it is a double and treble risk. It is playing with edged tools; it is holding a knife to your own throat. You would go under so horribly easily.”
She paused abruptly, as though the image before her eyes were too terrible to her to be pursued further, and tried to moisten her dry lips, on which the touch of paint had cracked now, showing how white they were beneath. The ghastliness of the incongruity between her manner and the superficialities of which she spoke was indescribable. Julian did not speak; he was moving one foot to and fro slowly over the carpet, at which he gazed immovably, and his mother went on almost immediately:
“You must give it up, Julian,” she said incisively. “I will do anything that is necessary in the way of money; I don’t want to be hard upon you. Anything the girl wants you shall have; but you must break with her at once.”
She paused again, but still Julian did not speak; still he did not raise his eyes. She went on with a growing insistence in her voice which went hand in hand with a growing agony of appeal:
“If you don’t see the necessity now, you must believe me when I tell you that you will—you will. Look, dear! your life is surely not so dull that you need run after such distraction as that! You shall marry if you want to. You shall marry any one you like. But you must—you must give this up. Julian——” She stopped for a moment, and her voice grew thin, almost faint, as she pressed so heavily on the carving by which she held that her hand was bruised and blackened. “Julian, I am not telling you what it has been to me to know that you have deceived me. I am not going to try and make you feel—I don’t want you to feel it, dear—what it has been to me to go over your home-life of the last few weeks and know that you have lied to me at every turn—to me, who have only wanted to make you happy. I won’t reproach you. Perhaps young men think it a kind of right—a kind of right——” She repeated the sentence, unfinished as it was, as though it contained an idea to which she clung. “It is not for my sake—to spare my feelings, that I tell you you must give it up. It is for your own. Julian, my boy, you must believe me.”
Her words, quivering with entreaty, died away; her eyes, full of supplication, were fixed on his; and Julian spoke—spoke without lifting his eyes from the ground.
“Suppose I married her?” he said in a low, shamefaced voice.
“What!” The monosyllable rang out sharp and vibrating, and Mrs. Romayne, all softness or relaxation struck from her face and figure in one sudden bracing of every muscle, stood staring at him out of eyes alive with horror.
“Suppose—I married—her!”
“Supposing that—I will tell you! You would have to keep her and yourself! You would have no more of my money, and you would never be acknowledged in my house again!” Her low voice was like fine, cold steel, and she paused. Then quite suddenly, as though the horror kept at bay in her eyes had leapt up and mastered her in an instant, she flung out her hands wildly, crying: “Julian, Julian! You are not married? Tell me, tell me you are not married?”