The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton

solicitors, of damages and alimony, and of the king's proctor. Finally--and at this the whole soul of Julia Cavendish sickened--to illustrate a point, he told her the inside history of the Carrington case; how Carrington, in order to blacken his wife's name, had committed perjury in an undefended divorce-case, and how--for fear lest she should forfeit her freedom to marry the man she loved--Carrington's wife had been forced to endure the slander. Jimmy's client sifted the whole information for some time. "So you mean," she said at last, "that in this country any husband and wife who--'know the ropes,' I think, was your phrase--and possess sufficient money to fee a firm like your own, can secure a divorce with almost as little trouble as they can secure a marriage-license." "I mean precisely that," replied Jimmy Wilberforce. "Given the mutual desire to undo their marriage, the law--properly worked--puts no obstacle in the way." "But if, as in this Carrington business, the desire is not mutual. What then?" "Then, of course, there are difficulties. Especially if it is the woman who wants her freedom. In our courts, you see, a husband is still his wife's legal owner; a woman merely her husband's chattel. A wife, against a husband unwilling to be divorced, must prove not only infidelity but cruelty--in the legal sense. And it has been held, over and over again, that infidelities--on the husband's part--are not cruelties. Cruelties--legally speaking--imply a damage to the wife's health." Jimmy reverted, once more, to the inside history of the Carrington case. Julia Cavendish, too, thought of Carrington when she said: "Mr. Wilberforce, let us be open with each other. My son's letter is quite frank. He says that he and Mrs. Brunton have run away together; that her husband knows all about it; that they are waiting for him to 'file his petition.' What happens if he refuses?" "That," protested Wilberforce, "is hardly on the cards. A man of Hector Brunton's social status would never behave like Carrington." "I agree." Julia, who had been feeling for an idea, broached it very tentatively. "All the same, Mr. Wilberforce, I flatter myself that my knowledge of human nature is not often at fault. I met Hector Brunton once; and I summed him up. Believe me, he's not quite--not quite normal where the sex is concerned. And with abnormals, the normal course of action can never be absolutely relied upon. You realize, of course, my--shall we say difficulties?--in making up my mind. It would help me considerably if I were certain of the course this man Brunton intended to adopt. Could you--do you think--ascertain it for me?" "I'm afraid"--all the legal caution in Wilberforce's nature repelled the suggestion--"that with the best will in the world I couldn't do that. Brunton is a K.C.--a very important K.C. If, by any chance, he decides to wait a month or two----But really, Mrs. Cavendish, with all due deference to your knowledge of human nature, I don't think we need anticipate any trouble from Brunton. All we have to do--you and I--is to await events; to minimize the scandal as far as we can; and to watch over your son's interests until such time as he returns to London." The solicitor excused himself, rose, and shook hands. "You can rely upon me, you know," he smiled. But, once more solitary, Julia Cavendish felt that neither on James Wilberforce nor on any other lawyer could she place reliance. To lawyers, matrimony was a contract; to her it was a holy sacrament. Scandal, unpopularity, she could face; but not her own conscience. And conscience already made her accessory to the sin of adultery! All her prejudices against divorce returned fourfold, submerging her intellect as in slime. After Wilberforce's revelations, the holy institution of matrimony seemed the unholiest of legal farces. She rang for Kate and ordered her to bring tea. "I'm at home to nobody," said Julia; and all afternoon she sat brooding, love and beliefs at war in her mind. All afternoon, her mind pictured Ronnie; the happy babydom, the fine youth, the clean manhood of him. All afternoon her love strove to acquit him before the tribunal of her beliefs. And as day waned the romantic in her began to see something splendid in him, some courage akin to her own. But in the woman she could, as yet, see no courage. The woman had sinned, sinned the deadly sin. Her, one could never forgive! And yet--and yet--how could a mother abandon her son? Suppose her son married this sinner? Stubbornly her mind tried to picture Aliette married to Ronnie. Stubbornly conscience repelled the picture. "She is Aliette Brunton," said Julia's beliefs. "She can never be Aliette Cavendish." Then imagination put back the clock of her own years so that she saw herself thirty again. At thirty one had illusions; one had one's fastidiousnesses. And Brunton was no husband for a fastidious woman. Brunton might easily be a man such as Wilberforce had hinted of; an unfaithful husband against whom his wife possessed no legal remedy. What then? "Even then," said Julia's beliefs, "she should have endured--as you, too, must endure." "Yet how can you endure?" asked love. "How can you side with a stranger against your own boy?" "Soon," answered beliefs, "you must face your God. How splendid if, on that day, you can declare to Him: 'I, like You, sacrificed my only son.'" But love said: "God and Love are one." And in that one instant of thought Julia Cavendish crossed her mental Rubicon. Formal religion went by the board. Be he saint or sinner, sordid or splendid, she, Julia Cavendish, would stick by her boy. 3 Now Julia was all impatience. Let the divorce-papers be served without delay! Let Brunton do his worst! But Wilberforce, summoned next morning, begged her not to be precipitate. "Let us wait," said Wilberforce, "till Brunton shows his hand. At least let us wait till public rumor confirms private information." Reluctantly Julia took his advice; and the slow days went by. Inaction chafed her. She did not weaken, but she suffered. Love needed the spur of service. Moreover, the old beliefs, scotched, were not yet slain. Conscience whispered to her in the long wakeful nights: "This is intellectual dishonesty. If it were any other than Ronnie, would you be willing to forgive?" Her son's letter she did not answer. Time and again she took pen in hand; but always instinct, the instinct of parental dominance, restrained her. She had held the reins of her son's life so long that she still lusted to teach him a lesson. Since he had been a fool; since he had allowed the sentimental impulse to unbalance him in his duty toward her, let him write again. Besides, what could she say to him? It was not in her to slobber. When she wrote, it must be with some definite offer of help. To Julia, love without service always implied a certain hypocrisy: and that one concept, though every other seemed to have disintegrated under the stress of circumstance, her set mentality refused to change. So she waited--ailing, fearful, lonely in her crowded life; thinking always of her son; blaming herself for their quarrel; blaming herself for inaction; her heart humble; her head high among the herd of men. For as yet rumor knew nothing certain. The herd still patronized Bruton Street: you still met there, on a Saturday afternoon, the literary folk, the financial folk, the clergy, the politicians, and the soldiers. To the outward eye, no tiniest detail of social life in that exquisitely tended house had altered. Friends, acquaintances, casual visitors--so far, one hardly missed a face. Even the ambassadorial Bruntons came, in semi-state, trailing with them the ugly unmarried daughter of Sir Simeon's first marriage and the two blithe flappers of his second. Nevertheless, Julia was conscious of a growing tension. Already--or so it seemed to her watchful imagination--the herd sniffed a taint. Dot Fancourt's eyes were an unspoken question. Lady Simeon exaggerated, ever so slightly, her smile of greeting. Paul Flower's inquiries after Ronnie--no one who knew Julia Cavendish ever forgot to make that inquiry--held the semblance of a leer. Others of her circle, saying: "And how's the son?" appeared as though they were anxious not to be answered. Here and there, too, a clergyman or a politician excused his spouse with a strained, "My wife sends a thousand apologies. She wanted so much to come with me; but her health has been rather troublesome this week. Oh, no, dear lady! Nothing serious. Nothing serious, I assure you." 4 On the first of July, Sir John and Lady Bentham (of the Bank of England) gave a rather solemn family lunch-party, at which--rarest of occasions!--the four sisters Wixton met under one roof. Looking at her three juniors--at Clementina, ample of breast and bustle, her chin duplicated and triplicated by age, her eyes piercing under their polished crystal lenses; at May Robinson, whose scrawny widowhood was alternately devoted to good works and the cultivation of her St. John's Wood garden; at Alice Edwards, typically the Anglo-Indian woman, her complexion faded but her joviality unimpaired, her blue-eyed golden-haired Lucy in attendance, but her livery husband abandoned in Cheltenham--it came to Julia, seated beside her gray-haired host at the head of the table, that families were a curse. Never a united tribe, to-day the Wixtons seemed more at variance than ever. Julia resented May's pseudo-intimate chatter and the tactless pryings of Alice. Clementina she had always abhorred. And when Lucy tried to question her about Ronnie, her resentment reached fever-point. For, of course--said Julia's imagination--when the family knew about Ronnie, they would gloat. Clementina, always envious of her treasure, would be in the seventh heaven at his downfall. May would weep a "Poor Julia! I always told her that she spoiled that boy." And Alice would chuckle: "It's just like Simla. Married women are always the worst." How soon would the family know? Ronnie's secret had been well kept; but it couldn't be kept a secret much longer. Had Sir John, perhaps, heard something already? Julia's mind wandered away from the family to Chilworth Cove. She had never seen the place, but intuition told her that it must be beautiful; and she found herself craving, suddenly, furiously, in that stuffy Cromwell Road mansion, for beauty, for the sea and the sunlight. * * * * * Perhaps, though, it was Sir John's confidences about _his_ son which impelled the homing mother to stop her electric brougham at the Cromwell Road post-office; and write, with unsteady fingers, those six words: "Would my presence be unwelcome? MATER." CHAPTER XIV 1 "Man--you're glad she's coming?" "If her coming means that she is on our side; yes." It was ten o'clock of a great July day. From outside, through the low foliaged casement of Honeysuckle Cottage, sounded the drone of a bee, the whine and splash of the well-bucket, and Caroline Staley's loud-voiced chaffering with a fisherman. Within, the lovers faced each other across the debris of a Gargantuan breakfast. Seen, white-frocked, in the sun-moted coolth of that low whitewashed room, Aliette looked utterly the girl. Happiness had wiped clean the slate of her desolate years. Her cheeks, her eyes, her whole personality glowed with the sheer joy of matehood. Sunlight and sea-light had goldened--ever so faintly--the luster of her bared arms, the bared nape under her vivid hair.