The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
Protestant Church, for discipline and the subjugation of self to the
common weal, towers like a rock above the wish-wash flood of cheap sex
and cheaper psychoanalysis which obsess most young writers of this
self-conscious Georgian epoch."
And with that, to our story!
CHAPTER I
1
Miracle, by St. Peter out of Three-to-a-Flush, a thoroughbred chestnut
not quite good enough for steeple-chasing but considerably too good for
that very quiet hunt, the Mid-Oxfordshire, was just out of his box, and
pretty fresh. Looking over the flint wall which separated the well-kept
gardens from the newly-swilled tiling of the stable-courtyard at Moor
Park, the horse's questing eyes could just see, between clipped
yew-trees, the red-brick façade of the modest Georgian house, its
windows glinting in the March sunlight. Miracle knew that a footpath led
straight across the gardens from the front door of the house to the
white gate in the wall of his stable-courtyard; and suddenly, hearing a
footfall on the path, he whinnied.
"All right, you," soothed Miracle's groom, a little lame man with
tattooed forearms and a wry smile. The white gate clicked open,
revealing Aliette.
Hector Brunton's wife had never accustomed herself to riding astride.
Her small figure, in its short black habit and loose-fitting coat,
looked modern enough. She wore the conventional bowler hat, white stock,
and patent-leather riding-boots. Yet there was something old-fashioned
about her, despite the fashionable get-up; something, to use an
old-fashioned word, distinguished.
She closed the gate, and came slowly across the courtyard. Her
yellow-gloved hands carried a thonged hunting-crop and a leather
sandwich-case.
"You might fasten this on for me, Jenkins," said Aliette. The voice, low
yet with each tone perfectly clear, held a hint of diffident shyness,
alluring in so poised a creature.
While Jenkins busied himself with the sandwich-case and girthed up,
Aliette held Miracle's head, gentling his nose with deft fingers, and
explaining--half to herself and half to the horse--why she had brought
no sugar for him.
"No sugar for gee-gees these days, Miracle. Not at the admiral's.
Billy's mean about his sugar. Pity you don't drink port, Miracle dear.
There's plenty of port."
She laughed at that; and it was as though you saw a woman transformed.
Her face, smooth in repose, almost colorless save for the scarlet lips
and the big wallflower-brown eyes under the dark lashes, broke into a
hundred dimples. There were dimples at the corners of her mouth, in the
cream of her oval cheeks, on the crinkled upper-lip under the small fine
nose; even--if you looked carefully enough--behind the close-set ears.
Miracle began fidgeting; and laughter went out of the face, leaving it
smooth, purposeful.
"Those girths are too tight, Jenkins."
"I don't think so, mum."
"Loosen them one hole, please. They can be tightened at the meet." Now
Aliette spoke with the quiet certainty of one who understands both
serving-men and horses; and with that same certainty--her orders
obeyed--bent down to insert a finger between clipped skin and taut
webbing. As the head under the hat-rim stooped to its task, her coiled
hair showed vividest brown, almost the color of flames in sunlight,
against the cream of her neck.
Miracle stood quietly enough while his mistress gathered up the reins;
put her unspurred left into Jenkins's hand; mounted; arranged her apron;
and thrust foot home into the stirrup. Then, for the sheer love of
hunting that was in him, he tossed at the snaffle, hogged his back, and
whisked round toward the big arched gateway which gave on to the
highroad.
"Steady, old chap," soothed Aliette. She looked too light a rider for
that raking horse; but her little hands settled him down easily enough.
"I'm in plenty of time, aren't I, Jenkins?"
"Yes, mum." The groom pulled a silver watch from his moleskin waistcoat.
"It hasn't gone nine yet, mum."
As she rode quietly on to the highroad Aliette saw, either side of her
under the archway, Rear-Admiral Billy's stables--empty save for the
admiral's black cob, a luggage pony, and a huge charger-like animal
which, on rare occasions, carried her husband. Horses are even more
expensive to keep than children nowadays!
2
The little woman and the big thoroughbred danced left-handed down the
highroad; passed Admiral Billy's unpretentious lodge, half-hidden by
yew-hedges, clipped with nautical precision to turrets of dark-green
velvet; skirted Moor Pond; and took the bridle-path for Upper Moorsby.
It was a great morning of earliest March. The ground under hoof still
sparkled here and there with surface frost; but there was no "bone" in
it. Warmth softened the tang of the air. Above the bare tops of the
trees between which they trotted, Aliette saw a thin cloudless sky. In
the clearings, crisscrossed with uncarted larch-poles, primroses
sparkled softly. Almost it seemed as though a purple bloom already
showed on the young birches.
She pulled to a walk, thinking as she rode. Her thoughts came slowly,
precisely: Aliette was not the type of woman who liked rushing her
fences, either mentally or on horseback.
"Spring," she mused; "another spring! And hunting nearly over. Then
there'll be nothing but tennis till next winter. Except 'the season.'
How I dislike 'the season'! It wouldn't be so bad if one had children.
One could watch them riding in the park."
A little ripple of dissatisfaction submerged her mind. She leaned
forward and patted Miracle's arched neck. The clipped skin quivered in
response.
"What's the use of making one's self unhappy?" thought Aliette. "All
that's done with. Best forget."
She trotted on, rising squarely from the Mayhew saddle, hands like
velvet on Miracle's bridle-reins. The path rose through fragrant
woodlands; met the roadway. Now, at walk between leafless chestnuts,
thought troubled her once more.
This must be the third springtime since her discovery of Hector's
infidelity. She re-lived the scene: he, big and blustering, in the
paneled dining-room at Lancaster Gate: herself quiet, controlled, but
furious to the core. She heard herself saying to him: "You misunderstand
me, Hector. It isn't a question of jealousy. It's a question of loyalty,
and--cleanliness." That last word hurt the man. She had meant it to
hurt.
Three years! It seemed a long time. Since then--despite occasional
entreaty--she had withdrawn herself. She was too fastidious, perhaps.
Suddenly, she wished herself less fastidious. Her childlessness cried
out in her, "Condone!" But she knew she could never condone. The time
for that had gone by. Other infidelities, she knew, had followed the
first. Hector was not the man to restrain his natural impulses. His very
entreaties proved him more libertine than husband.
And Aliette rode on, through Upper Moorsby, red-cottaged behind
tumble-down palings, disused cycle-shop at one end, shut church at the
other; past Moorsby Place, ring-fenced and inhospitable; across the
common toward High Moor.
There was love of the countryside in her heart as she rode, love of
horse and love of hound, love for the quick scurry of hoofs on turf, for
the white scuttle of rabbits to bramble. But there was no love for any
man. That love she had never known. Marriage--as she still imagined
marriage--meant affection: mutual regard, mutual interests, children.
Especially children! If only she could have had children!
Putting thought away from her, Aliette let Miracle have his head, and
cantered on between the gorse and the brambles.
Cantering, her heart sang to her. "Fox-hunting! Fox-hunting!
Fox-hunting!" Padded Miracle's hoofs. She watched their shadow lolloping
the brambles; watched the track ahead. And suddenly, at the bend of the
track, she grew aware of a horse coming fast behind her. Miracle
gathered himself for a gallop. Checking him, she heard a man's voice:
"I say, I'm most awfully sorry; but can you tell me if I'm right for the
kennels?"
Man and beast, a great raw-boned, rat-tailed gray with a huge fiddle
head and enormous withers, which she knew belonged to Ross Titterton,
the horse-breaker at Key Hatch, hove fighting alongside. As though by
mutual consent, they eased to a bumpy walk.
"Yes. This is quite right," said Aliette.
Examining the man, she saw a serious, clean-shaven face, eyes of pale
clear blue, a broad forehead, a lean jowl, full lips, the nose prominent
and almost pure Greek in shape, the chin determined, and the hair a
curious goldy-gray as though bleached by the tropics.
"Thanks so much."
She judged him just over six feet and just under forty. He looked a
horseman in his high black boots, dark cord breeches, pepper-and-salt
cutaway coat, and buckskin gloves.
"I hope I didn't startle your horse. This brute of Ross's pulls like a
steam-engine," he apologized with an almost imperceptible drawl.
"I know." Aliette smiled. "Mr. Titterton tried to sell him to us last
year."
"Oh, I can't afford to keep horses," confessed the man. "This is only a
loan. Ross was sergeant-major of our yeomanry crowd in Palestine. He
offered me a ride once--and I've taken him at his word. You don't mind
my jogging along with you like this, do you?"
"Of course not. We turn off to the right here."
They rode down, chatting with the easy camaraderie of fox-hunting folk,
into sight of a village. It lay just below them, on a spur of the
common--pointed church-spire, gray vicarage crouching at foot, among a
blob of slate-roofed smoke-plumed cottages. Beyond it, the ground
unrolled to a brown and green checker-board of square hedged fields,
lozenged here and there with pale woodlands.
"That's High Moor Church," announced Aliette, pointing her whip at the
spire.
"High Moor!" The man cogitated. "Isn't a fellow named Brunton the
rector?"
"Yes. You speak as if you knew him."
"Only slightly. I see a good deal of his brother. The K.C., you know.
I'm at the bar."
"Oh!" Aliette hesitated a moment. "I'm his wife."
"Whose! The parson's?"
"No. The K.C.'s."
Both laughed, feeling the conventional ice broken.
"My name's Cavendish, Mrs. Brunton. Ronald Cavendish. You probably know
my mother--most people do."
"Julia Cavendish, the novelist. Of course I know of her; but we've never
met. What a wonderful woman she must be!"
"She is." Ronnie's serious face lit. Usually shy with women, he felt
quaintly at ease with this one. She seemed so sure of herself. And how
she rode! That horse must take some steering. He wanted, suddenly, to
see her across country; to send his gray pelting after her chestnut. Of
her peculiar beauty, except as a horsewoman, he was not yet conscious.
But Aliette, even in those first moments of their meeting, knew herself
stirred, ever so subtly, to interest. Julia Cavendish's son! Didn't she
remember something, something rather decent about Julia Cavendish's son?
It flashed into her memory just as they made the lich-gate of High Moor
Church. "Conspicuous gallantry . . . rallied his squadron under fire
. . . great personal risk."
3
The sight of the Rev. Adrian disturbed further musing. He tittuped out
of the rectory drive as they came by--a little clean-shaven creature,
jovially wrinkled, his short legs in their canvas gaiters gripping the
flanks of a cock-throppled bay mare with a bobbed tail and a roving eye.
The Rev. Adrian on Thumbs Up contrived, somehow, to look far more like a
keeper than the proverbial hunting parson.
"Morning, Aliette," he greeted. Then, before she could introduce Ronnie,
"I say, didn't you and I meet at Jaffa?"