The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
told her, was a "good eight miles" and they would have to "take things
easy" because of the luggage. Ought they, he asked, to have ordered her
a car? Oh, no--she smiled, she preferred the trap: it would give them
more time to talk.
"I rather expected you'd bring Smithers," mentioned Ronnie.
"I didn't think a maid--advisable," declared Julia.
He paid for her tea, and they set off again--each silently uncertain of
the other, each silently and socially constrained. But at last, as they
drew clear of the town, Julia conquered constraint.
"And how is Aliette?" she asked quietly.
All the way down in the train she had intended to speak both to and of
"that woman" as "Mrs. Brunton"; but since seeing Ronnie she knew that
she could never even think in terms of "Mrs. Brunton" or of "that woman"
again. Sinner in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the mother whose
boy she had made so happy, Hector Brunton's guilty wife was already a
saint.
"Quite well." His quietness matched her own.
"I'm glad."
And suddenly, impetuously, he burst out:
"Mater, she's so wonderful."
Now mother and son were alone in a world of sky and heather; and the
brown pony, as though aware of impending confidences, slowed to a walk.
She put a tremulous hand on his driving arm.
"Tell me--the whole story," said Julia.
His fingers loosed the reins; and that afternoon, as the brown pony
ambled toward the sea, he told her the full tale of his love for
Aliette, of his love for both of them: till, listening, it seemed to
Julia Cavendish as though never before had she understood the heart of
her son.
And that afternoon, for the first time in all her sixty years,
she--whose lifelong struggle had been to cramp life in the bonds of
formal religion--saw that formal religion at its very highest could only
be a code for slaves, for the weak and the ignorant. For the soul of a
free individual, for the strong and the wise of the earth, no
formalities--whether of religion, of law, or of social
observances--could exist.
The individual souls of the wise and the strong brooked no earthly
master. Lonely arbiters of heaven and of hell, their own gods, their own
priests and lawgivers, only love could control them, only conscience
guide.
Ignorantly, blindly, she, Julia Cavendish, had sought to fetter the free
souls, the wise and the strong. And behold! in the very person of her
own son they had broken loose from her fetters. Ronnie, her own
dearly-beloved son, was of the free! All that her formal religion had
preached him wrong, love had shown him to be right; and with love had
come both strength and wisdom, so that he had followed his conscience
into the freedom which her ignorance would have denied him.
For that Ronnie's conscience was as clear, as limpid-clear of sin as it
had been in boyhood, Julia--listening to him--could not doubt. Nor,
hugging that certainty, could she doubt Aliette. Love was justified of
both by the sheer test of happiness. As well accuse the birds of deadly
sin as these two who, moved by an impulse so overwhelming that to deny
it would have been a denial of their very natures, had--mated.
4
Aliette, shading her eyes from the sun, watched the pony-cart top
sky-line, and crawl leisurely down-hill. At sight of it, her heart
misgave her. Every tradition in which she had been reared, all her
social sense and all her love for Ronnie warned her that the meeting
with Ronnie's mother would be, at its best, awkward--and its worst,
disastrous.
In Chilworth Cove, with only Caroline Staley for confidante of their
secret (and Caroline, from the first, had been definitely partizan,
loyalty itself), she had grown so accustomed to thinking of herself as
Ronnie's wife, that it was quite a shock to perceive, with the approach
of a being from her own world (a woman who, however much she might
pretend sympathy, must be, in her heart, hostile), their exact
relationship.
"I'm her son's mistress," thought Aliette; and suddenly seeing herself
and her lover through the eyes of the ordinary world, realized the
tragedy of those who, knowing themselves not guilty at the bar of their
own consciences, can nevertheless sympathize with the many who condemn
them. Which is perhaps the heaviest cross that any woman can be forced
to carry!
Ponto, darting hot-foot out of Honeysuckle Cottage at the sound of
wheels, banished further introspection. Aliette just had time to grab
the great hound by the collar as the brown pony, eager for his evening
hay, came trotting up; and was still holding him, her bared forearm
tense with the effort, when the trap drew to the door. So that--as it
happened--the exact greeting of the "harpy" to the mother whose boy she
had stolen was, "I do hope you're not frightened of dogs, Mrs.
Cavendish," and the mother's to the harpy, "Not in the very least.
That's Ponto, I presume. Ronnie's told me about him."
There is, after all, something to be said for a social code which
enables people to carry off difficult situations with an air of complete
insouciance! Julia Cavendish stepped down from the dilapidated
conveyance; shook hands; admitted that she would like to get tidy; and
followed her hostess's lithe figure down a whitewashed passage, up one
flight of rather crazy staircase, into a low-ceiled bedroom, obviously
scrubbed out that day. The room was very plainly furnished, yet it had
about it the particular atmosphere which indicates, as between one woman
and another: "We expected you. We made preparations for you."
"I'm afraid it isn't up to much," said Aliette shyly. "But we've put a
writing-table under the window--just in case."
Julia Cavendish looked at the table, at the pens and the ink-pot and the
jar of flowers on the table; Julia Cavendish looked at the little shy
woman, so gorgeous in her mating beauty, so socially correct in her
shyness; and the "Mrs. Brunton, this is a very serious position" with
which--ten hours since--she had firmly made up her mind to open their
conversation, vanished into the limbo of unuttered sentences.
"I'm afraid," said Julia Cavendish, "that this visit is rather--an
intrusion."
"It is I who am the intruder," answered Aliette simply; and then, seeing
that Julia, who had seated herself on the side of the bed, was fumbling
at the unaccustomed task of removing her own hat: "Can't I help?"
"Thank you, my dear," said Julia.
Caroline Staley, bringing hot water, knocked; deposited her copper jug
by the washhand-stand; and departed with the unspoken thought, "Better
leave they two alone for a while."
And, for a while, "they two" scrutinized one another in silence--the
elder woman still seated; the younger, diffident, very uncertain of what
next to say, upright beside her.
At last the younger woman said, "You must be tired after your journey.
You'd like to change into a tea-gown, wouldn't you? Caroline is quite a
good maid. I'll send her and your box up." She made a movement to go,
but the elder woman restrained her.
"I think I'd rather talk first. We've got a good many things to talk
about, haven't we? Won't you sit down?" Julia patted the clean
counterpane in further invitation.
"You're very kind, Mrs. Cavendish." Aliette, still standing, shook her
head ever so slightly, as one refusing a gift. "Too kind. And I'm glad
you've forgiven Ronnie. But you needn't, really you needn't forgive me.
You came to see your son, not your son's"--she hesitated--"lady-love.
I'm quite willing to--to efface myself as long as you're here." She
smiled proudly. "Though, as it's rather a tiny cottage, you mustn't mind
seeing me occasionally."
Her favorite word "Rubbish!" rose to Julia's lips; but was instantly
repressed. Proud herself, she could both respect and sympathize with the
pride in the other.
"I'm wondering," she said after a pause, "just how much my son's
lady-love loves my son."
At that, Aliette's eyes suffused. But she could make no reply, and Julia
went on:
"My dear, do you think I don't know how much you care for him? Do you
think I don't realize that you have made him happy? Happier than I ever
did. Won't you make me happy too? Won't you try and care, just a little,
for me--for Ronnie's mother?"
"Don't, please don't." The proud lips trembled. "It hurts me that
you--that you----" And suddenly, impulsively, Aliette was on her
knees--her head bowed, her shoulders shaking to the sobs that had broken
pride.
"I love him"--the words, tear-choked, were scarcely audible--"I adore
him. I'd kill myself to-morrow if I thought it would be for Ronnie's
good. I never meant, I never meant to come between you and him. I never
intended that you"--the brown head lifted, the brown eyes gazed up into
Julia's blue--"that you should have to know me until--until things were
put right. You needn't--after this. I'll be quite content--if you'll let
him come to me--sometimes--to take a little house--to wait for him. I
don't want you to be--mixed up in things you hate. I don't want to--to
flaunt myself with your son."
Said Julia Cavendish, speaking stiffly lest the tears blind her: "You
haven't answered my question, Aliette. I may call you Aliette, mayn't I?
You haven't yet told me whether you could care for--Ronnie's mother?"
For answer, Aliette took one of the old hands between her two youthful
ones; and, bowing her head again, kissed it.
"You oughtn't to forgive me. You oughtn't to call me Aliette," whispered
"that woman."
"Ronnie will be so furious with me if he thinks I've made you cry,"
whispered back Ronnie's mother; and leaning forward, took "that woman"
in her arms.
* * * * *
What those two said to one another, in the hushed half-hour while Ronnie
waited for them in the tiny garden and Caroline Staley busied herself
over the kitchen fire, only the bees, droning ceaselessly round the
clematis, overheard.
5
It was very late for Chilworth Cove: past ten o'clock of a dull heavy
night: the stars veiled: the purr of a torpid sea coming faint down the
Ghyll. One by one the lights in the village windows had been
extinguished. But light still poured from the windows of Honeysuckle
Cottage; and through the light-motes, the smoke of a man's cigar
outcurled in blue seashell whorls that hung long-time--meditative as the
man--in the windless quiet.
Ronald Cavendish threw the butt of his cigar after the smoke-whorls, and
turned to the two women in the room.
"The mater's right," he said. "We must make some move. But it's no
earthly use writing to Jimmy. Jimmy can't help us. The only thing to be
done is for me to go up to town and see H. B. myself."
Ever since Caroline had cleared away dinner, they had been discussing
the problem of Brunton's inactivity. To Aliette, pride-bound, feeling
herself--despite the new alliance with Julia Cavendish--still guilty,
still the interloper, it seemed best that they should wait. Silently
resenting, yet chiding herself all the while for her resentment, the
whole discussion, she had held herself, whenever possible, aloof from
it.
But now she could hold aloof no longer. No coward in her own love;
willing, for herself, to take any and all risks; the suggested meeting
filled her with apprehension for Ronnie.
"I beg you not to do that," she said.
"Why not?" Ronnie laughed. "He can't eat me."
"I'd so much rather you didn't. Perhaps he's only waiting because of
some difficulty, some legal difficulty. Wouldn't it be better if I wrote
to him again, if we both wrote to him? After all, we mustn't forget
that"--she stumbled over the phrase--"we're in the wrong."
"Writing won't do any good," pronounced Julia. "Ninety-nine letters out
of every hundred are perfectly futile. The hundredth--is usually an