A Valiant Ignorance; vol. 3 of 3 / A Novel in Three Volumes

by Mary Angela Dickens

CHAPTER VI

If evil thoughts and evil passions could have a tangible effect upon the physical atmosphere, the air of Marston Loring’s room, an hour later, should have been thick and heavy. He was sitting thrown back in an easy-chair, his evening coat replaced by a smoking jacket, a glass of whisky and seltzer-water close to his hand. There were also cigars on the table, but he was not smoking. He was staring straight before him into vacancy. His face was pale and set with vindictive passion, to the existence of which in his nature the general callousness of his expression gave no clue.

It was many years since Marston Loring had felt as he felt to-night. It was many years since he had been foiled and thwarted—“made a fool of,” as he himself would have said; and all that was blackest and worst in the man was roused by the process. His life, ever since he had realised, at the age of twenty-five, that there were prizes in the world which some men obtained and other men failed to obtain, had been ruled by a series of carefully made and elaborately worked out calculations. Everything he had done, and everything he had not done, had been included in one or other of these calculations; carefully designed to meet certain ends, all of which met and culminated in the one great end of existence as he conceived it—material prosperity and position.

He had been, perhaps, as vicious a youth as could have been found in London, and he had not ceased to be vicious as a man. But he so managed his vices that even the reputation which clung to him had contributed to his success. The question of marriage he had discussed with himself on more than one occasion, always solely from the point of view of expediency. And just about the time when Mrs. Romayne made her appearance in London society he had come to the conclusion that, given the right sort of woman, the step might possibly prove advantageous. He had been considerably struck by Mrs. Romayne from the first; she was the kind of woman he greatly admired, and he was well aware that to be on terms of intimacy with such a social power was an excellent thing for a man in his position; a position which, as he was also well aware, was by no means so secure as most people supposed. It was from this point of view that he had cultivated Julian, and, at first, from this point of view only. The idea of Mrs. Romayne as a possible wife occurred to him later. But when it did occur, it developed into active intention with considerable rapidity.

He had looked at the question from every possible point of view, and decided that nothing could suit him better. He had no taste for young women. He admired Mrs. Romayne as much as it was possible to him to admire any one; she was “the kind of woman he could get on with,” he told himself. She possessed exceptional advantages in the matter of social standing, and she had money. Her eager cultivation of him during the autumn that followed her first season in town convinced him that with a little trouble she could be brought to forget the disadvantage of his comparative poverty; and he would have proposed to her in the ensuing winter had not his voyage to the Cape prevented. He had come back with the prospect of a fortune of his own. But the fact made no difference to his matrimonial plans. Where there is money more money is always to be desired. Mrs. Romayne’s fortune was no longer absolutely necessary to him, but it had not ceased to be desirable, and her other advantages remained intact. She had received him with enthusiasm, she had cultivated him assiduously; she had absolutely led him on, as it seemed to Loring. He, in common with the rest of the world, regarded her relations with her son as the merest pose, and her appeal for his help with Julian had seemed to him simply the most transparent of subterfuges. He had no more doubted that she would accept him than he had doubted his own existence. And now his plans were frustrated, his calculations were falsified, and his very practical and material castles in the air were laid in the dust. He was refused.

He roused himself at last, and the faintest suggestion of a cruel smile curved his thin lips. He lifted the glass by his side, drank off its contents, and then turned out the lamp and went into the inner room.

His face was quite itself the next morning; the scowl and the cruelty had alike disappeared; and it was with an even less cynical smile than usual that he looked up from his morning paper at a few minutes past ten o’clock, as the door opened with a hasty knock, and Julian Romayne appeared.

“Good morning, dear boy!” said Loring pleasantly.

“Morning, old man!” responded Julian.