The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
"What sort of life?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. Aliette," he pleaded again, "can't
we make a fresh start--to-night?"
She felt her whole heart turning icy to him as she answered: "We
threshed that matter out a very long time ago. I can see no use in
referring to it again."
"Possibly you can't." Hector rose. Her very aloofness urged him, despite
better judgment, to immediate mastery. "But you're not the only one to
be considered. As your husband, I have certain rights."
"If you have, I shouldn't advise you to try and enforce them."
The words sounded calm enough; but there was no calm in Aliette's heart.
Suddenly she grew conscious that the sense of rectitude which had
sustained her for three years sustained her no longer. In thought she
had descended to her husband's level. Her cheeks flushed.
"Why shouldn't I enforce them?" The flush did not escape his eye.
Perhaps, after all, she was no different from other women, from the
women who liked one to be forceful. He made a movement towards her. "Why
shouldn't I enforce them?" he repeated.
"Because you have no rights." Even his blurred judgment knew better than
to touch her. "Because you forfeited them--three years ago."
"That old affair," he muttered sullenly; and drew away from where she
sat. Then, excusing himself, "Renée's in Australia. She's been in
Australia two years. I paid her passage----"
Proudly, coldly, Aliette answered him back: "I hope you do not discuss
your wife with your mistresses in the same way that you discuss your
mistresses with your wife."
The cold pride weakened him. "You're very harsh. I made a mistake--three
years ago. I admitted it at the time. I admit it once more. I've
made--other mistakes. But that's all over. You're a woman, a well-bred
woman. You can't understand these things."
Three days since she would not have understood; now, understanding a
little, she relented again.
"Hector--I'm very sorry. But it's--it's impossible."
He came toward her again; bent down, and tried to take her hand. She
drew it away from him. The overwhelming physical hunger of his eyes
worried her. His feet, on the white rug, showed suddenly enormous,
grotesque--grotesque as his affection.
"Why is it impossible?"
She thought how often she had asked herself that same question; knew
that--in Ronnie's arms--she had at last found the answer; knew that she
must lie. And she hated lying. Yet more than lying she hated the
knowledge that her body, which had lain in Ronnie's arms, should be
cause of that overwhelming hunger in Hector's eyes.
She said quietly, "Must we go over all this old ground again?" And since
he did not answer: "It does no good. I don't want to hurt you more than
I can help. Won't you just leave things as they are? Won't you believe
me when I tell you that it's just--impossible?"
His legal mind, suddenly active, caught at the pleading note in her
voice; fastened on it. "You're very solicitous, apparently, about my
feelings?"
For a second, wondering if he could suspect, she grew fearful. Then,
putting away fear, she rose and faced him. The flush had gone from her
cheeks; her eyes--aloof, impersonal--told him the utter hopelessness of
his cause. And with that knowledge came suspicion--a suspicion formless
as the first shadow-haze of storm in a brazen sky.
"I don't wish to hurt you," she reiterated. "But the thing you ask is
out of the question; and will always be out of the question. Even the
discussion of it offends me."
He took a step towards her; but she did not recoil.
"Aliette--do you realize the meaning of what you've just said?"
"Perfectly." Her eyes met his, beat them down.
"And what do you expect me to do under the circumstances?" Again
suspicion came to him; and with suspicion, anger at his own impotence.
"You're not a child. You know perfectly well what happens to a man whose
wife refuses to live with him. I've never pretended to be a saint: I've
left that to you."
"Hector!" Temper clenched her fingers. Her whole fastidiousness revolted
against the man, against the topic he would not relinquish.
"I'm sorry if you're shocked"--all his cruelty wanted to shock her, to
see her fastidiousness in degradation--"but I'm trying to tell you the
truth--just for a change. If you persist in your saintliness, there's
only one course open to me. Another Renée! A man can't live without a
woman. It isn't fair to his nature. It isn't healthy."
"Healthy!" she burst out.
"Yes. Healthy. Does that upset you?"
Her eyes blazed as she answered: "How dare you talk to me like that? How
dare you? Healthy! I suppose that was your idea when you married _me_.
You took me--medicinally."
"Aliette!" Her fury cowed the cruelty in him. "I married you because I
loved you. I love you still."
"Love!" Her cheeks kindled. Caution was ripped loose from her as a sail
is ripped loose by the wind. The shreds of it flapped against her mind,
infuriating her. That this man who might have been father of her
children should cloak his lusts with that divine word, seemed the
ultimate defilement. "Love!" Her breasts heaved. "Don't talk to me of
love. Talk of your rights, of your health, if you like; but spare me the
degradation of what it pleases you to call your love."
At that, definitely, the lawyer in Brunton suspected. Black thoughts
drove and drove, thunder-cloud-like, across the sky of his mind; and
through the rifts in those thunder-clouds his mind saw two visions--his
wife, infernally desirable, infernally distant from the reach of his
desires, and a woman to be probed, a hostile witness for
cross-examination.
"You speak as though you were an authority on the subject," he sneered;
and, as she deigned no answer, "a saintly authority."
"You're insolent." The last shred of her caution parted. "Insolent."
"Perhaps"--his voice dropped two full tones--"I have the right to be
insolent."
"Explain yourself, please."
He came so close to her that she could see every pore in the skin of his
face. "I should hardly have thought an explanation necessary. I said,
'Perhaps I have the right to be insolent.' It is for you to explain
why"--his lips worked--"you regard 'what I am pleased to call my love
for you' as a degradation."
"And if I refuse to explain?"
"There is only one conclusion to be drawn."
"And that is?" she dared him.
Abruptly, Brunton the lawyer became Brunton the husband. He no longer
wanted to cross-examine; he wanted to possess--to possess this woman.
Why should he not possess her? She was as much his as the furniture in
his home, the books in his chambers. By law and by religion, she owed
him her body. He had always been chivalrous to her; he had always tried
to fall in with her whimsies, to be kind. _She_ had never been kind. All
she had tried to do was to hurt him.
"And that conclusion is?" she flung at him.
God! How much she could hurt him. God! How he wished to spare himself.
He wanted her so; his whole body ached for her little hands, for her
lips, for the touch of her hair. Why should she thus goad him? Even
if--even if she had cared--virtuous women did care sometimes,
platonically of course--for somebody else, he could forgive her.
He did not want, even, to forgive. He only wanted to know nothing. He
only wanted her to be kind to him, to let him love her--in his own way.
Without all this--all this fuss.
But her eyes refused him kindness; her lips demanded their answer. She
maddened him with her rigid lips, with her blank unfriendly scrutiny.
"Your conclusion, please, Hector?"
"Since you insist," the words seemed torn from the man's throat, "the
conclusion I draw is that--you're in love with somebody else."
He had expected indignation, furious abuse, furious denial; anything but
the deadly calmness with which she answered: "And supposing there were
somebody else? What right would you have to object?"
Aliette saw Hector recoil as though she had struck him; saw rage,
incredulity, fear, apprehension, chase in scarlet chaos across his face.
His thin lips writhed--as though in torment. But she could feel no pity
for his torment. In her eyes, he was the beast, the defiling beast:
defeated, he yet stood, shifty on those great feet of his, between her
and happiness, between her and her chance of motherhood, between her
and--Ronnie.
"Well," she shot at him, "what right would you have to object?"
"I should have the right," he stammered, "the right that any husband
possesses. But you're not serious. For God's sake, tell me you're not
serious. I haven't been such a bad husband to you. I haven't deserved
this----"
Suddenly she remembered Ronnie's words: "Unless he lets you divorce him.
Why not? It's done every day." Suddenly she remembered Hector's own
words, the speech he had insisted she should read after the Ellerson
case.
"You're not serious," he challenged.
"I'm perfectly serious. Please answer my question. And before you answer
it, let me remind you of something you said in public not more than a
fortnight ago. You said: 'A woman on marriage does not become her
husband's property.' I want to know if you still abide by that
question."
"And I"--rage mastered the apprehension in him--"I want to know,
definitely, if there _is_ anybody else."
Her lips pursed to silence. She could almost see Ronnie--and her silence
was all for him. For herself she had no fear, only the violent instinct
to be free, to be free at any cost, from Hector Brunton.
"Answer me!" He almost shouted at her.
Quietly, she answered, "There is nobody else--in the way you mean."
"Will you swear?"
"You have my word. If that's not enough for you----"
The unfinished sentence tortured him. He saw himself alive, tormented;
her as a statue of fate, unmoving, cold by his cold fireside. If only
she would make some movement--not stand there like a statue: her lips
rigid, her hands taut, every line of her body tense under the frozen
draperies.
"I don't doubt your word," he said sullenly.
"Then answer my question. Do you regard me as your property or not? If I
asked you for my freedom, would you give it to me?"
"You mean--let you divorce me?"
For a moment, aware of hypocrisy, Aliette hesitated. Then she said,
"Yes."
"On what grounds?"
"Your infidelities."
"My infidelities!" He laughed, his legal mind seeing the whole strength
of his position. "You have no proof of them. And even if you had,
infidelity by itself is no ground for divorce. Besides"--his cruelty
could not forbear the blow--"you've condoned them."
"Condoned them! I?"
"Yes. You. By not leaving my house. By continuing to live with me."
"That's untrue. I've never lived with you, since--since I found out."
"You'll never make the world believe that."
"What do I care about the world?"
"Aliette"--for the last time he forced himself to plead with
her,--"think of my position, our position. Even if it were legally
possible, you wouldn't ask me----"
He continued to plead till he felt utterly worn out, utterly beaten;
till it seemed to him that he had been arguing with her--arguing
uselessly--for hours. And all the time he argued, one thought nagged at
him: "There _is_ somebody else. There must be somebody else. I must find
out who he is."
"Then you refuse," she was saying. "You refuse me my freedom. You go
back on your own words."
She, too, felt worn out. She could not even hate the man, because she
had no right to hate him. At least--Mollie's words about James
Wilberforce came into her weary mind--Hector had not beaten around the
bush. He had been straight-forward enough; whereas she--she was not
being straight-forward, was not playing the game. But the instinct to be
free did not abate its violence.
"Very well"--the cross-examiner in Brunton urged him to the playing of