CHAPTER IX
The cottage which Mrs. Romayne had taken for August and September, on Julian’s refusal to go abroad, was situated a few miles above Henley. It was a very charming little house, to which the term “cottage” was applicable only in mock humility; and it was very charmingly situated. It had a delightful garden, not large, but full of “roses, and sunflowers, and all sorts of things,” as Mrs. Romayne explained to Julian after her visit of inspection. Its lawns sloped down to the river, and altogether, on the same authority, it was a wonderful chance to get hold of it.
The statement which Mrs. Romayne had made to Lady Bracondale on Julian’s authority, that there were “nice people about,” had originated, as a matter of fact, not with Julian, but with his mother herself. It was quite true, nevertheless; but apparently Julian’s sudden desire for quiet had proved infectious. The acquaintance between herself and her present neighbours being of the slightest, Mrs. Romayne made no such attempt as might have been expected of her to develope that acquaintance.
She seemed to be strangely without impetus in herself towards action of any kind. She was “resting,” some people might have said; she was pausing, certainly. But whether, as the days went on, her life did not signify rather temporary and enforced quiescence, than the peaceful and pleasant suspension of labour, might have been an open question.
It was a hot, bright August; day after day the sun shone steadily down, as Julian departed for town after an early breakfast, at which his mother never failed to appear. Day after day it shone through all the long, little-broken hours upon the quiet house and garden, about which the one woman’s figure moved in almost total solitude, until, with the evening, Julian returned again. Evening after evening the mother and son spent alone, but by no means always together. After their dinner, during which conversation seldom flagged between them, any more than it would have flagged between two friendly and well-bred acquaintances, Mrs. Romayne would sit in the drawing-room with a bit of fashionable fancy-work in her hand, into which she only occasionally put a stitch; and sometimes Julian would spend half an hour with her there, reading the newspaper and carrying on the talk of dinner; or sometimes he would stroll out into the garden at once, and come in only just before bed-time.
Mrs. Romayne never followed him and never questioned him. Perhaps it was the curiously still life she led which brought so strange and still an expression to her face; a stillness which suggested a slow, wearing waiting, and a mingled concentration, watchfulness, and patience.
It was an evening in the second week of September, and she was walking up and down the lawn in the fading sunset light. She was moving with slow, regular steps, with the monotonous motion of a woman to whom the even movement brought some sort of relief or soothing. There was an indescribable touch of desolateness about her lonely figure as she moved up and down before the empty house.
A servant came out to her by-and-by with some newly-arrived letters. She took them, and then, her monotonous motion being perforce suspended, a sense of physical fatigue seemed to assert itself, and she sat down on a low basket-chair.
A sigh came from her as she did so, one of those sighs which in their unconsciousness are so suggestive of habitual suffering. She paused a moment, looking away into space with absent eyes. Then she seemed to rouse herself, and took up one of the letters as if forcing herself to seek relief from the current of her monotonous thoughts. She had opened the envelope and read the letter half through in a mechanical, uninterested way, when its contents seemed suddenly to arrest her attention. A change came to her expression, a change which in its slight quickening and revival showed how dulled, almost numbed, it had been before.