The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
enemy instead of for friend. You'll make a thousand enemies. The snuffy
old priests, as you call them, aren't the only ones who care about
divorce. Half the houses I visit will be closed to you."
"For six months."
"No. For good. And you'll never be able to go into politics."
"Politics!" scornfully.
"People will cut you."
"Let them." Opposition, clarifying his mind, keyed him to fight. "Let
them! What do I care? We sha'n't have done anything wrong."
"It's always wrong to set ourselves up against the world."
"That's sheer cowardice. And it isn't true, either. What about Jesus
Christ?"
"That's sheer blasphemy."
One of the dinner-table candles guttered and went out. To Julia, it
seemed like an omen. She saw her son's career gutter out in that curling
smoke; saw him entrapped by the powers of darkness, prey to the personal
devil. Now no one except God, her own particular secular god, could
help. She prayed voicelessly to that particular secular god for words to
save the entrapped soul of her boy.
"Ronnie! You've always been so good, the best of sons. You've never
given me a moment's anxiety--never--since the day you were born. Until
now! And you've always trusted me. Won't you trust me in this? Won't you
believe me when I tell you that the thing you contemplate is a sin?"
Quietly, he answered, "If God is love, how can love be a sin?"
The phrase shot a tiny sliver of doubt through the armor of Julia
Cavendish's belief, pricking her unwisdom to retort:
"Love! Love isn't passion. Love is service. If you loved her, really and
truly loved her, you'd save this woman from herself. And if she loved
you, really and truly loved you, she'd be the last person in the
world----"
He wanted to argue: "You don't understand. You're too prejudiced to
understand." Instead, comprehending abruptly how far his confidences had
outrun actuality, he blustered:
"We won't discuss her motives, please. Or mine. Neither of us is a
child--as you seem to think. We're quite capable of deciding things for
ourselves. When we do----"
"She hasn't consented then?" Julia grasped at the life-buoy.
"No."
Another doubt entered like a dart into the mother's mind. Suppose Sir
Heron's warnings came true? Then soon there might be nobody to care for
Ronnie. Suppose, suppose this woman really did care--as she, Julia,
cared? A woman in Mrs. Brunton's position would hardly risk divorce for
a _béguin_.
Nervously she played with her favorite ring--a diamond-set miniature of
her son in earliest boyhood. Nervously she said: "You won't do things in
a hurry. Promise me that."
"I can't promise anything," He blustered again, feeling that she was
trying to fetter his independence. "I'd rather not discuss the subject
any more."
The bluster, so foreign to him, irritated her dignity.
"Very well. It shall be as you wish. We'll say no more about this
matter. It's been very painful to me, and I can only hope it won't be
still more painful--to both of us--before it's over."
His irritated dignity answered hers. "Why to both of us? It's entirely
my affair."
"Not entirely. I've tried to keep myself out of this question; but, as
your mother, I have certain claims. And you know, or at least you ought
to know, my feelings on the subject of divorce. I ask you to believe
that I'm trying to sympathize with you, to see your point of view. But I
can't. To me, any union, however legalized, between you and Hector
Brunton's wife, means deadly sin. You call this passion of yours love. I
don't. I call it by an uglier name." His eyes kindled. "That angers you.
I'm sorry. But I'm speaking the truth, as I see it. If you and she
decide to commit this deadly sin, don't come to me for forgiveness."
Julia rose, weary with words, to her feet. "Shall we go upstairs to the
drawing-room? Kate will be waiting to clear the table."
"Not for a moment." Ronnie, too, rose. "What do you mean, exactly, when
you say, 'Don't come to me for forgiveness'?"
"What do I mean?" Sheer physical fatigue unnerved Julia's mind.
Jealousy, the mad mother jealousy for the mate which her brain had been
holding in leash all evening, broke its bonds; so that she saw her only
son, the baby she had cherished from his cradle, lost to her in another
woman's arms. White arms--young and smooth and sinful! "What do I mean?
Only this--that you must choose between your mother and your--mistress."
Even as that last word escaped the barrier of her teeth, Julia Cavendish
knew the mistake irretrievable. Her dignity flickered out like a match
in a storm. She wanted to throw herself on his mercy, to beg his pardon
with bended knees. But the word, the unpardonable insult of a word, was
out. Slowly, she saw his mind grip its full significance. Then his face
paled to harsh granite; and his eyes, for once in their lives, grew
sterner than her own.
"I _have_ chosen," said Ronald Cavendish.
CHAPTER XI
1
"Aliette dear: You asked me not to hurry you. I've tried to be patient;
but life without you has become impossible. I can't see what duty either
of us owes to anybody except each other. It isn't as though you had
children. It isn't as though you were really married. At worst, we only
risk a little scandal. I wouldn't ask you even to risk that, unless I
felt confident that I could make you happy. I _can_ make you happy.
Won't you come to me? We needn't do anything mean. We can play the game.
RONALD."
* * * * *
It was nearly one o'clock on Sunday morning. The torn sheets of at least
twenty letters in Ronnie's tiny legal handwriting littered his
sitting-room grate. He reread the last of them; and thinking how utterly
it failed to express his yearning, added as postscript, "I love you."
Then he addressed his envelope; folded the single sheet; thrust it in;
and gummed down the flap. The fragments in the fireplace he gathered up
very carefully, and kindled to ashes.
As yet no sorrow for his quarrel with Julia had entered into her son's
heart. He could see her only as an obstacle between himself and
happiness. Of her last word, he could not bring himself to think sanely.
That she, his own mother, the one person on whose help he ought to have
been able to rely, should be the first to cast a stone at the woman he
loved, seemed to him--in his bitterness--to make her his chiefest enemy;
no longer "the mater," no longer "the lonely old lady," but "Julia
Cavendish," publicly and in private the upholder of an effete religion,
the champion of fust-ridden prudery.
No longer could he sympathize with that religious prudery. Passion, not
the physical desires of a Brunton, but the grand passion, the passion of
the poets, blinded him--for the nonce--to every point of view except his
own. He and Aliette loved each other. To the torture, then, with
whosoever loved other gods!
Passing, on his way downstairs, the door of the bachelor-flat beneath
him, Ronnie heard, very low but quite distinct, a woman's laughter. "And
that sort of thing," he thought angrily, "is what one is allowed to do.
Moses Moffatt winks at it. The world winks at it. Meanwhile the women
who won't stoop to concealment foot the world's social bill."
But the woman's laughter still echoed in his ears as he slid his letter
into the mouth of the pillar-box.
2
Caroline Staley brought Ronnie's letter, the only one of Monday's post,
on Aliette's breakfast-tray. The handwriting of the envelope was
strange; but instinct warned her from whom it came. Her heart
fluttered--breathlessly--under the satin bath-robe as she said, "I'll
ring when I'm ready to dress, Caroline."
But once alone, Aliette did not dare touch the envelope. Casting thought
back, she knew that she had loved Ronnie from first sight.
Suppose--suppose he had written to make an end?
The breakfast on the tabled tray cooled and cooled. Through the
curtained alcove came sound of a housemaid emptying her bath, polishing
at the taps. Aliette heard nothing, saw nothing. The cheerful
yellow-and-white of her bedchamber had gone dark about her, as though a
cloud obscured the sun outside.
At last she took the envelope in her hands. But her hands trembled. And
suddenly she saw her own face.
Her face, seen in the triptych mirror of the dressing-table, looked old,
haggard. "I _am_ old." she thought. "Nearly thirty. Too old for Ronnie.
He ought to have some girl, some quite young girl, for bride."
Then, still trembling, her hands slit the envelope; and hungrily, she
began to read.
Reading, joy flooded her face. He wanted her to come to him. He needed
her! The mazed loneliness of the last week was a vanished nightmare. She
would never be lonely any more. Love had come into her life, into their
lives, making them one life. At his postscript, the scarlet of her lips
crinkled to a smile.
No longer was the room dark about her. Sunlight flashed back into it,
flashed square shafts of gold on the rugs at her feet. A warmth, a rare
warmth compound of blood and sunshine, pervaded her body. She saw
herself, in the mirror, young again, fit to be his mate.
"I love you." She repeated the words under her breath. "I love you."
Rereading the letter, her eyes sparkled. Life was good--good.
But gradually the sparkle in her eyes dimmed; joy went out of her face.
"Julia Cavendish," she thought, "Julia Cavendish!" And again, "But
life's hard--hard."
Nevertheless life had to be faced.
She faced it, there and then, sitting tense and quiet in the sunlit
room. Ronnie was a man. To him, love once confessed must seem a bond, an
irrevocable troth. Ought she to take him at his word? Ought she not to
strive once again--as they had both so long and so uselessly striven--to
forget? Yet could she ever forget? Forgetting, would she not be false to
the best in her? To the best in both of them?
Suppose--suppose she ran away with Ronnie? What would be the
consequences? A divorce! She could face that, as Mary O'Riordan had
faced it. Mary, other friends, would stand by her. If only Ronnie's
mother were less the Puritan.
"I must go to Ronnie," she thought. "I must ask him if he has spoken
with his mother."
Yes! She must go to Ronnie. No other's counsel could avail her now. No
third party could help. They, and they alone, would bear the burden
if--if she decided to run away with him. And yet--and yet other people
would be affected by their action--his mother, her own family, Mollie.
Impulsively she decided to send for Mollie, to sound her. She rang the
bell for Caroline, but Caroline told her that "Miss Mollie" had gone
out.
"Will I dress you now, madam?" asked the maid. "The master's been gone
nearly an hour." It seemed impossible to find any excuse for remaining
longer alone.
Dressing, the unsolved problem still haunted her mind. But already one
aspect of the problem had solved itself--the aspect of Ronnie. Ronnie's
word was not to be doubted. He loved her, he needed her--as she him. For
themselves, they must no more funk the issue of Hector divorcing her
than they had funked Parson's Brook. "Parson's Brook," thought Aliette.
"Was it an omen?"
And at that, ominously, her imagination concentrated on the other aspect
of the problem, on the public aspect; till it seemed as though a whole
host of people, his mother, her own parents, Mollie, James Wilberforce,
and her husband among them, were actually visible in the bedchamber;
till it seemed as though Aliette could actually feel the eyes of the
host on her, appraising the curves of her figure, the vivid masses of
her hair.
Fastidiously she tried to avoid the eyes; but the eyes would not be
gainsaid; they turned to her breast, seeking out Ronnie's letter, his