The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
who, admitting her love for him, could yet sit aloof--a goddess with a
time-table.
"I shall take Caroline," she said. "You don't mind?"
He only wanted to take Aliette, there and then; to kiss those rounded
wrists, those arms bare to the elbow, that scarlet mouth, those cheeks
ivory as curds, the smooth forehead under its loops of shining hair.
"Kiss me!" he whispered. "Kiss me!"
"Ronnie!" She put down the time-table. "Don't let's do anything we
might--might regret. Remember that to-night, and perhaps for many
nights, I must sleep under his roof."
He yielded again; and a few minutes later she prepared to leave him. The
plans they had meant to make were still chaotic--chaotic as her mind.
She realized, as she pinned on her hat, as she let him help her into her
coat, that the sweet hour had been full of danger, that--had Ronnie been
less chivalrous, more the man and less the boy--she might have given way
to him. The realization made her very humble; and in her humility she
began to doubt herself.
"You--you've been very good to me," she said; and then, the vivid lashes
veiling her vivid eyes, her low voice trembling into shyness: "That's
why there's just one--one favor I must ask you."
"Favors! Between us!" He took her ungloved hands, and pressed them to
his lips.
"Yes, dear. It's about--about your mother."
"Julia!" His tone hardened. "But we discussed all that last time."
"We mustn't hurt her more than we can help. We must tell her the truth,
before--before we do anything. She's a woman, and perhaps--perhaps
she'll understand----"
"Aliette----" He hesitated; and her intuition leaped to the cause.
"You--you haven't quarreled with her?"
Her intuition startled him into reply: "Yes. We have quarreled. But I
can't tell you anything about it."
She drew away from him, and her eyes grew sorrowful. "Did you quarrel
because of anything she said to you about me?"
Again he hesitated; again her intuition leaped to the truth. "I've been
afraid you might. Something told me, that morning in the park, that she
must have guessed. I can't come between you and your mother. You mustn't
quarrel with her on my account. Whatever she may have said, you must go
to her, tell her everything, and ask her--if she can--to forgive----"
"Never!" The very humility angered him. "Never! It's not for her to
forgive, but for me----"
"Then it _was_ because of me that you quarreled?"
"Yes."
"Foolish man!" It hurt her desperately to think that his mother should
have understood so little; but she knew that she must conceal the hurt.
"As if I'd let you quarrel with any one, least of all your mother, on my
account. You'll go to her, won't you? You'll tell her that I--that I
don't ask for any recognition----"
Rudely, obstinately, he interrupted her: "Of course she must recognize
you. Either she's on our side or she's against us."
"Ronnie"--her eyes suffused with tears--"Ronnie, I told you we'd got to
be happy with one another. You make me unhappy--when you speak like
that. You make me feel like a thief. You do want me to be happy, don't
you?"
"Yes. Always." His anger vanished. Bending down, he tried to kiss the
tears from her eyes. "Always, darling."
"Then won't you"--she was in his arms now; the warmth, the perfume, the
very unhappiness of her a fresh thrill--"won't you grant me this one
favor? It's the only favor I'll ever ask."
"How can I?"
"So easily. Just go to her. She's your mother. She loves you, she
understands you. But she may not understand--about me. She may think
that I'm just--just a dissolute woman. That doesn't matter. Tell her
that it doesn't matter. Tell her that I don't want to keep you from her;
that until--until we're properly married, you'll be as free to go to her
as if"--he could hardly hear the last words--"as if you'd taken any--any
ordinary mistress."
"Don't, don't!" He strained her to him, fiercely protective. "You're not
to speak of yourself like that."
"Why not?" She lifted a face brave despite her tears. "It's true. Don't
let's funk things. From the day I come to you till the day Hector sets
me free I _shall_ be your mistress. You mustn't expect your mother or
any one else to take a different view. But I'll be so happy, man; so
much happier than I've ever been in my life before--if only you'll make
it up with your mother. You will, won't you? Promise me."
"Tell me," he whispered, and his lips trembled, "is this thing so vital
to your happiness?"
"Yes," she whispered back.
"Then--it shall be as you wish." His arms were still round her; and she
felt herself weakening--weakening. She felt herself all exhausted--all a
limpness in his arms.
"Sweetheart," his voice was hoarse in her ears, "don't go. I want you so
much. Every day, every night without you is misery."
"Ronnie--Ronnie! Don't tempt me----"
Feverishly her ungloved hands fondled him; feverishly her arms looped
his neck, drawing his face down to hers. She could see, under the
gray-gold of his hair, the great vein throbbing on his forehead, the
dart and pulse of passion in his eyes. His lips, trembling still,
fastened on her mouth. The kiss was torment. Feverishly her mouth clung
to his; feverishly, blent in ecstasy, fire feeding flame, they clung to
one another--till, at last, half fainting, she tore herself away.
"Don't!" she stammered. "Don't torture me, don't tempt me any more.
Don't let me think--either now or ever--that this love of ours is
only--only physical. Because, if I thought that, I'd kill myself."
And a moment afterwards, she was gone.
CHAPTER XII
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Ponto the Dane, a piebald hummock of utter contentment, slapped his vast
stern on the sands; woke; and rose to his haunches.
At gaze into the sun-dazzle, Ponto's slitty eyes could just discern the
twin rock buttresses of Chilworth Cove, the sea-water eddying
translucent between them, and, forging through the sea-water, a man's
head. White birds, which Ponto after one or two dignified experiments
had decided uncatchable, strutted the beach or circled lazily round the
buttresses. His mistress slept, sun-bonneted in her long deck-chair, a
smile on her lips.
"This," mused the great dog, "is a very pleasant place."
"This," dreamed the great dog's mistress, "is paradise."
Chilworth Cove lies far from the track of motor char-à-bancs in the
unspoiled West Country. Inshore from its tongue of hot gold sands, the
wild flowers riot; and back along the fritillary-haunted pathway through
the wild flowers, Chilworth Ghyll leads to Chilworth Port--a handful of
thatch-roofed, pink-washed cottages whereon the clematis spreads its
purple stars and the honeysuckle droops coral clusters for the
loudly-questing bee.
Once the sea filled the Ghyll; once, from the ancient well-head midway
of the streetless "port," men drew water for their ships; once seafarers
in hose and doublet with strange oaths and stranger tales on their lips
would sit drinking in the parlor of the ancient alehouse. But to-day
never a ship and hardly a "foreigner" comes where Chill Down upswells
warm-breasted as a woman to the blue and Chill Common sweeps wave on
wave of heathered ridges to a houseless horizon.
This summer, indeed, only three "foreigners"--the man forging overarm to
seaward, the drowsy dog, and the dreaming lady--had visited the port:
for the square-faced, square-hipped Devonian woman, busied at the moment
with the setting-out of curdled cream and other homely fare in their
pink-washed cottage, was no "foreigner"--but a port woman by birth, as
the alehouse well knew.
And if the alehouse sometimes speculated why "Martha Staley's daughter,
her who had the good place in Lunnon, should have brought her 'folk' to
the port"--who cared? Not Ronnie! Not Aliette! For them, London with all
its harassing memories had faded into that remote past before they
possessed one another, before flaming June and flaming love alike
combined to teach them a delight so exquisite that it seemed to both as
though paradise itself could hold no rarer in its offering.
They had been in paradise a full month; and never for a moment had
either of them regretted their hurried flight, their abandoned schemes.
The past was dead, the future still unborn; they lived only for the
all-sufficing present, two human beings fulfilling one another in
isolation from their kind.
"Ronnie is happy," dreamed Aliette. "Happy as I am."
Yet even dreaming, she knew her own happiness the greater. She, risking
most, gained the most from her risking; she--once that first inevitable
fear of revulsion which is the portion of every woman who, disappointed
in one man, seeks consolation with another, proved phantom--had been
content to surrender herself, body, brain, and soul, to the call of
matehood; to pour out all that was best hers, of beauty, of
selflessness, of tender thought and reckless caring, at Ronnie's feet;
knowing each gift a thousand times recompensed by the slightest touch of
his hand on her hair, the lightest brushing of his lips against her
cheeks--knowing herself no longer a woman, but very womanhood, eternal
essence distilled eternally from the fruit of Eden-tree for manhood's
completion.
And, "Poor Ronnie," she dreamed, "he can never be happy as I am. He
thinks I am the same Aliette--he does not realize the miracle."
For, of a surety, if ever love wrought a miracle, it was on this woman.
She who, in her mateless fastidiousness, had schooled herself to the
poise of a virgin Artemis, became, mated, the very Venus Anadyomene,
Venus of foam and of sun-glints, rose-flushed for adoration between the
roses and the sea. And in the hush of moon-pale midnights, when the
clematis-blossoms showed as black butterflies against their diamonded
window-panes, when the ripples beyond the Ghyll murmured like tired
children asleep, she--to whom, mateless, the nights had been emptier
even than the days--became night's own goddess-girl, subduing man's
passion to merest instrument of her love.
The dreaming lady stirred, murmuring through dreams; and the smile faded
from her lips.
Sometimes, even to paradise--as black ships seen through a golden haze
to seaward--came dark visions of the past. Of Julia Cavendish, her son's
unanswered letter crumpled in unrelenting fingers; of Mollie and her
James; of the mullioned house at Clyst Fullerford; of the stiff
bow-fronted library at Lancaster Gate; and of the man in that library,
the man whose thin lips muttered: "So it was that briefless fool
Cavendish you would have married, had I given you your freedom. Very
good! Go to him now, if you dare. You're not my property. I can't force
you to stop here. But if you leave this house, remember that you're
still Mrs. Hector Brunton, not Mrs. Ronald Cavendish. Remember that
you're taking a risk, a biggish risk."
That risk, all in a sweet madness, the dreaming lady and the man forging
back to her through the translucent water, had taken within twelve
hours; hurriedly; almost planlessly; instinctively as Ponto, who, let
loose by a mischievous boy from his kennel in Westbourne Street, nosed
his way to the door of Brunton's house just as Aliette and Caroline
Staley stepped into the loaded taxi, and, spying the portmanteau, set up
such a howl that in sheer self-defense they let him clamber in between
them.
"And that," thought Aliette, waking from dreams to find a huge wet nose
nuzzling her hand, "was the maddest thing I did in all that one mad
day."
Then she, too, sat at gaze into the sun-dazzle; till her lover's head
rounded the translucent pool below the buttresses; till he came up the
hot sands toward her--the sea-light in his hair, his browned shoulders
dripping from the sea.
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