The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
her hair shone smooth in the sunlight; her eyes, as they looked into
Ronnie's, were unruffled pools of dignity.
Yet inwardly Hector's wife shook like a ship in storm. The tempest of
feeling--released, as it were, by the touch of his fingers--swept her
through and through. To stand there, talking rubbish, undiluted "tennis"
rubbish, became sheer torment. Her heart ached for his to recognize it.
"Oh, but I'm a fool all right," said the new voice in her heart; the
voice she had been trying to stifle ever since March. "I've lost my head
for good this time. I wish I could run away from him. I wish he'd go and
change. What's the use of meeting him? Like this--with all these people.
Why aren't we ever alone? I wish he'd go."
But Ronald Cavendish could not tear himself away. He, too, stood there,
"like a perfect idiot," as he phrased it to his mind, saying anything
that came into his head; anything that would keep him for another
minute, and yet another minute, within the charmed circle of her
society.
"Mixed doubles seem distinctly indicated," broke in Spillcroft's voice.
"Come along, Cavendish, you and I had better change."
"But I shall be absolutely rotten," protested Ronnie, as he allowed
himself to be led off.
Mrs. Needham found another opponent, leaving the two sisters alone with
Wilberforce, who offered Aliette some tea. She accepted, and accompanied
them back to their table; where, after a few minutes, Cavendish and
Spillcroft joined them.
Sipping her tea, listening with half an ear to the conversations all
round her, Aliette Brunton was, for the first time, aware of social
danger. She felt a furious desire to talk with Ronnie, to look at him.
But to-day no frailest rose-bubble of enchantment isolated them from
their kind. To-day all the other instincts warned that she must avert
her eyes, avert her voice. Nobody--not even Mollie--must guess their
secret. Somehow she no longer doubted it _their_ secret. Her very fears
gave her the certainty of him. She stole a look, sideways under long
lashes, into his blue eyes; and knew--knew that he loved her.
Yes, he loved her. Not as Hector imagined love, solely in the
possessive. But in all ways; with passion, with tenderness with as much
regard for her as for himself.
Fleetingly, she marveled that this thing should have happened to her; to
both of them. How had it happened? Why? What did the why or the how of
the thing matter? Sufficed--for the ecstatic moment--the knowledge that
they loved one another.
But the man did not know. Certain of himself, he held no certainty of
her. Even his self-certainty seemed evanescent in her presence. Surely
he had not dared to let himself adore this radiant, perfect creature!
Surely, even daring to adore, he would never dare tell her of his
adoration! She was like the goddesses, utterly removed from the touch of
a man, utterly aloof from him. Then, fleetingly, he knew her no goddess,
but a wife--Hector Brunton's wife. And all the scruples of his code made
the knowledge bitter in his mouth.
"Cavendish hasn't got a word to say for himself," thought Mollie.
"Jimmy's ever so much better-looking--though Jimmy's tennis _is_ rotten.
I sha'n't let Jimmy play in this set." And she insisted, following the
high-handed method of the modern young, on playing with Spillcroft
against Cavendish and her sister.
Ronnie's patters proved somewhat less out of practice than he had
imagined.
"Thank you, partner," smiled Aliette, after the last stroke of the
third, and decisive, set. "Your volleying saved, the day."
"Oh, I didn't have much to do with it," he smiled back.
Since the beginning of the match, except for the necessities of the
strokes, they had hardly spoken to one another. But, for each, the forty
minutes of partnership, the mutual will to win, the clean struggle on
clean grass, the open air and the exercise had been one long delight.
Scruples, uncertainties, consciousness of danger, consciousness of
fear--these and all the inevitable soul-searchings of a love such as
theirs took wings and departed from them. Surrendering their bodies and
their minds to one another for the winning of a game; concentrating on
the vagaries of a white ball, a net, and a few square feet of turf; they
forgot their immediate selves, forgot that they were "Mr. Cavendish" and
"Mrs. Brunton"--two poor human beings poised at the edge of emotional
disaster, separated by law, by the church, by "honor," united only by
the "sentimental impulse," and became, for the forgetful moment, one
mind and one body.
But now, once more, they were twain. Now forgetfulness was over. Now
emotion poured back full-tide, submerging both their minds and their
bodies.
James Wilberforce lounged down from the clubhouse; drew Mollie away from
her partner, and began whispering. Mollie called across the court:
"I say, Alie, Mr. Wilberforce wants to drive me back in his car. You
won't mind coming home by yourself, will you? I don't think I ought to
play any more."
"No, dear, I sha'n't mind," called back Aliette; and her eyes as she
watched the two figures making towards the waiting cars; as she heard
the chug of Wilberforce's engine, and saw his two-seater swing through
the gates up the road toward Baron's Court, betrayed the truth of the
remark. But when she turned once more to the flanneled man at her side,
those eyes had regained their composure.
"Can't we find a fourth?" remarked Aliette.
"We'll get Mrs. Needham to make up," said Spillcroft. "She and I'll take
you two on."
And so, for one last crowded hour, those two played together--brains and
bodies attuned to the delight of working in unison.
The very cleanness of the game took all sense of guilt and all guilt of
sense from them. They might have been boy and girl, young husband and
younger wife, lovers whose love was sanctioned of the law--he and she,
sinews taut, eyes keen, all the health and all the youth of them
concentrated on rhythmic pastime.
3
"You'e got your car, I suppose?"
"No. My--my husband's taken it out of town."
The rhythmic pastime was over. Nervously now they faced one another on
the empty court. Spillcroft had rushed away to change, Mrs. Needham to
the tube. From their kind, they could expect neither help nor hindrance.
Already the shadows of the red houses lengthened toward them across
green turf; already the bustle of the tennis-ground was hushed. Sparrow
twittered on the silence. In the radiance of that summer evening the
brown hair, the brown eyes of Aliette kindled to wallflower color
against the rose-flushed cream of her skin. The sight of her beauty, so
virginal in its white simplicity of attire, so alone with him in that
emptiness of green, struck Ronnie speechless. He stood enthralled--the
magic of her harping sheer music against the hush in his brain.
"I--I think I ought to be going home," said Aliette.
She, too, heard that sheer music which is love. Once more, tempest-wise,
emotion swept her through and through: sweeping away inhibition;
sweeping away all false fastidiousness; cleansing her soul of all
instincts save the instinct for loving, for being loved. In that one
magical, self-revealing moment, she was conscious solely of joy.
"I--mayn't I drive you----" stammered Ronnie. He hardly knew what he
said. All the suppressed vehemences, all the pent-up longings of the
past months craved utterance at his lips. Fear and love keyed him to any
daring. He had had such happiness of her that afternoon. It made him
fearful lest happiness should utterly escape.
"Thank you very much----" Once more she was aware of danger. Yet she
could not bring herself to say him "No."
He left her without another word. Her own heart, the very world, seemed
to have ceased pulsing as she awaited his return. She stood alone, woman
eternal, hearing very faintly across hushed spaces the beat of music,
the birth-cry of children.
Ten minutes later--looking, to other eyes, the most ordinary, most
orderly of citizens--Ronnie came back. But that sense of utter solitude
was still on Aliette. She could only smile her thanks as he led her to
the waiting taxi, handed her in, and closed the door.
She did not wish that he should speak with her. She was afraid lest even
his voice should irrupt upon this exquisite solitude wherein her soul
hung poised. And yet how good to know him beside her as London spun past
them in the twilight.
Was this London, the London she had so hated, this wonder-town through
which they sped together? Was this Aliette? This, Ronnie?
And suddenly, vividly, she desired to hear his voice. Solitude no longer
sufficed her. She had been so long solitary--solitary in unhappiness.
Now, in her new happiness, she craved companionship, the sound of a
voice, the touch of a hand. Why did he not dare speak with her?
Descending as from great heights, her soul knew him afraid lest,
speaking, he should destroy that rose-bubble of enchantment in which
they had their being; afraid, too, because he still thought of her as
another's. Yet she was no other's: she was his, his only. And he--hers.
How fast they sped through this miracle of London. Already, the trees of
its park were fleeting by.
Oh, why wouldn't Ronnie speak with her? Had he no word to say? In a
moment, in such a little moment, it would be too late.
Yet it was fine of him not to speak, fine that he should so steel
himself against her. His eyes were like sharp steel; his lips one tense
line above the determination of his chin. He had clenched his hand--his
right hand. Aliette could see it--close--so close to her own hand.
Then the car swerved, almost throwing them together; and Ronnie's
self-control snapped, as a violin-string snaps, to the touch of her.
Their hands met. She knew that he was raising her hand to his lips; she
felt the brush of his lips warm against her fingers; she heard his lips
whisper: "Aliette--Aliette--don't hate me for loving you."
4
Hector Brunton's wife entered her husband's house like a girl in a
dream.
CHAPTER VII
1
When Aliette looks back on the three days that followed her lover's
first avowal, she can only see herself moving in a strange, rapt
exhilaration from room to room of Hector's great house in Lancaster
Gate.
Hector, she realized thankfully, would be away till Monday evening: the
other inmates of the house--Mollie, Caroline Staley, Lennard the butler,
and his female satellites--seemed as though they had been screen-folk,
flat phantoms, alive only to the eye.
Vaguely, among those phantoms, she can remember Jimmy Wilberforce, very
correct in his evening-clothes, sitting between her and Mollie in the
big cream-paneled dining-room.
Dinner over--Aliette remembers--she invented some pretext to leave the
pair unchaperoned, and withdrew to the balcony.
It was good to be alone, alone with one's dreams--dreams that made even
Bayswater Road beautiful. The road seemed a pathway of radiance. High
silver edged it either side; between, the hasting car lights streamed
their fans of luminous crystal. Here and there among the trees beyond,
her eyes caught the orange flicker of matches, the red of kindled
cigarettes.
"Under those trees," she thought, "Ronnie whispered, 'Aliette, don't
hate me for loving you.'"
As though she could ever hate him!
A little breeze, blowing cool across London, ruffled her hair. Patting a
scarcely displaced curl, she thought: "He kissed these fingers of mine.
Another time he will kiss me on the lips. My lips shall answer his
kisses."
And all those three days and nights, thought went no further. For the