The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
"Of course he couldn't tell you anything about it, Miss Fullerford. It
was a secret, a professional secret. My mother told him----"
"Your mother?"
"Yes, my mother. She's with Aliette now." His voice softened. "She's on
our side. You'll be on our side, too? Won't you? You won't let
this--this contretemps come between you and your sister? I'm not asking
anything for myself--but it's pretty rough luck on Alie."
Mollie's decision crystallized. "I can't go back on Alie," she thought.
"Whatever happens I mustn't go back on Alie." She remembered their
conversation at Moor Park; remembered herself saying, "I don't believe
divorce is wrong."
"Yes," she said, and held out her hand. "I shall stand by Alie whatever
happens. Will you tell her that? And say I'll write in a day or two. I
don't feel like--like writing to her at the moment."
Ronnie clasped her hand, and rose to go. He would have liked to thank
her; he would have liked to say something more about Jimmy. But instinct
restrained him. Perhaps, after all, she didn't care for Jimmy; perhaps
the pallor of her cheeks, the drooped corners of her full red mouth were
all for Alie.
7
And next day Ronald Cavendish went back to Chilworth Cove. All the long
train journey he was aware, growingly aware, of Aliette. Brunton and the
herd, Wilberforce and Mollie receded into the background of his
thoughts. He said to himself:
"Let Brunton do his worst. Aliette and I have our love, each other."
Love, all said and done, was the only issue. As for Brunton, they would
face him together, face him with courage high and hearts unflinching.
Courage! Courage and love! Weaponed with those two defenses, he and his
mate, his mother at their side, could battle down the onslaught of any
disaster.
CHAPTER XVI
1
On a gray afternoon of October, Julia Cavendish sat alone in her
drawing-room at Bruton Street.
She was often alone now. That curious "London" which an eclectic woman
of means can gather about herself by the time she reaches sixty had
begun to desert. Brunton had done nothing; but already scandal, "the
scandal of Julia Cavendish's son and Hector Brunton's wife," was
spreading: and although people were "very sorry for Mrs. Cavendish,"
still, "one had to be careful where one went," "one couldn't exactly
countenance that sort of thing." So the clergymen and the politicians,
the schoolmasters with their wives and the young soldiers with their
fiancées came but sparingly, the embassy folk not at all. Only the "Ritz
crowd," who thought the whole affair rather amusing; real Society, which
could afford to ignore what it did not actually know; and, of course,
the literary folk still visited.
Julia Cavendish treated the disaffections of her circle--scanty as yet,
for the holidays scattered the scandalmongers--with contempt. In the
months since her visit to Chilworth, much of her outlook on life had
altered. The Victorian and the traditionalist in her were dead, the
formally religious woman convert to a kindlier creed. Even literature
slumbered. Literature, the sort of literature she had hitherto written,
the stereotyped social romances of her earlier books, seemed so puny in
comparison with the great tragedy of her son!
Seated there in the old familiar drawing-room, her embroidery-frame at
her elbow, a clean fire at her feet, the light from the standard-lamp
glowing on her worn features, Julia tried, as she was always trying now,
to find some happy ending to the tragedy--peace for her son, reward for
Aliette's courage.
For Aliette _had_ been courageous--divinely courageous as it appeared to
Julia--that afternoon at Chilworth Cove when Ronnie broke his bad news.
Her own heart had failed a little; but not Aliette's. Aliette
said--Julia could still remember the look in her eyes when she spoke:
"You're not to worry for my sake, either of you. I shall be perfectly
happy so long as you and Ronnie don't fret. If only Ronnie's career
doesn't suffer----"
She, Ronnie's mother, had wanted to fight; had wanted the lovers to
return to Bruton Street with her, to defy Brunton openly. After that one
little failure of courage, her whole temperament cried out for combat.
Fighting, she felt, was now the only course. But Aliette had counseled
delay. Aliette had persuaded her to leave them at Chilworth, to go back
alone to Bruton Street. And at Bruton Street she had stayed all summer.
It had been foolish to stay all summer at Bruton Street; she perceived
that now. She ought to have taken her usual holiday. She ought to have
listened to the advice of her "medicine-man," who, still maintaining the
need for rest, was vague, unsatisfactory, disturbing.
The parlormaid, entering to make up the fire, startled her mistress.
"I wish you'd come in more quietly, Kate," said Julia irritably.
"I'm sorry, madam. Shall I bring your tea?"
"No, not yet."
Julia resumed her reverie. Was there no way by which the man whose
obstinacy stood between her son and his happiness might be brought to
bay? Apparently none. Sir Peter Wilberforce could only suggest that "the
lady might pledge her husband's credit to such an extent that he had to
take action"--and that Aliette refused to do.
Dot Fancourt, whom she had also consulted, finding him incredibly
stupid, incredibly weak, was all for "letting sleeping dogs lie." _He_
seemed to have no spirit; and she would have been grateful to him for
spirit. She felt old; terribly old and weak; prescient, every now and
then, of death.
This occasional prescience frightened her. The formal religion to which
she had so long clung provided only a personal and a selfish consolation
for death. She wanted an impersonal, an unselfish consolation; realizing
that she would never be happy to leave this world unless she could leave
Ronnie happy in it. Materially, of course, she had already provided for
him: all her fortune would be his. But that did not suffice. Before
death claimed her she must find some sword to sever his Gordian knot.
So Julia, alone in her quiet house; Julia, the literature all gone out
of her, her mind busied with the actual happenings of life; while
Brunton, lost in the holiday mists of the long vacation, gave never a
sign; and rumor, spider-like, wove its intangible filaments to close and
closer mesh.
2
That very afternoon--October 11 it was, the day before the autumn
session of the law courts began--Aliette and her lover walked in
Kensington Gardens. Even as Julia's, much of their attitude toward life
had altered in the past months. The first grandly onrushing wave of the
grand passion, the wave which swept them both from safe moorings into
outlawry, had spent itself. They were still lovers; but now, with love,
comradeship mingled. A comradeship of mutual suffering--knit closer as
the days went by.
For, in love's despite, since training and inherited traditions alike
unfitted them for the rôle they played, both suffered.
To Aliette, lonely no longer, Ronnie's comradeship compensated for so
much that, as yet, the social disadvantages of their position hardly
mattered. Only every now and then, in lonely-waking night-hours when
full perception of the thing she had done shimmered black for a moment
through the rosy veils of affection, did her heart grow faint at the
thought of perpetual ostracism from her kind. At other times, her
sufferings, her self-torturings were all for Ronnie.
Ronnie, she knew, chafed at his defeat. Ronnie had grown to hate
Brunton. Ronnie--for her sake--wanted social position, success. Ronnie
loathed the illegal fact that they had had to register as "Mr. and Mrs.
Cavendish and maid" at the quiet Kensington hotel, whither Moses
Moffatt's shibboleth of "bachelor chambers" drove them on their return
from Chilworth.
But Ronnie had other frets--money-frets--on that October afternoon when
they strolled under the browning trees.
They strolled lover-like, arm in arm; and Ponto the Dane, incongruous
appanage of their elopement, followed leisurely. Aliette was all in
furs, soft furs that cloaked her from the cream of her chin to the
slimness of her ankles. Above the furs her face showed happy, glowing
with a new youth, a new softness.
"Man," she said suddenly, "do you realize that we are two thoroughly
unpractical people?"
"Are we?" He pressed her arm. "Does it matter very much?"
"Of course it matters." She paused, and went on shyly: "Don't you
understand that I've been living with you for three months, and that so
far I haven't contributed a single penny to the--to the establishment?"
"How absurd you are!" He tried to brush the matter aside; but that she
refused to allow.
"I ought to contribute something, you know. I'm not quite penniless."
"You're not going to pay my hotel bill," he parried: a little
stubbornly, she thought.
"Why not? What's mine is yours."
They walked on in silence for a minute or two. Then Ronnie said:
"I'm afraid I can't quite see things that way, Alie. I suppose I'm a bit
old-fashioned in my ideas. But it does seem to me that the man's
responsible----" He bit off the sentence.
"I hate you to talk like that." There was a little of the old temper in
Aliette's voice. "We _must_ be sensible about money."
"Oh, don't let's bother this afternoon," he coaxed.
"But we _must_ bother. Ronnie, be frank with me. What _are_ we living
on?"
"Oh, all sorts of things. The Jermyn Street rent; my earnings, such as
they are; a bit of money I'd got saved up."
"And," she added, "the allowance your mother makes you. I wonder if we
ought to take that."
"I don't see why we shouldn't. She always has made me an allowance. But
of course I shouldn't like to ask her for more."
"Naturally." Aliette's brow creased. "Let's think. I've got about three
hundred and fifty a year of my own. Your allowance is four. That makes
seven hundred and fifty. How much is that a week?"
"Fifteen pounds," laughed Ronnie, remembering a phrase of his mother's,
"No woman's financial mind covers more than seven days."
"And our hotel bill last week was twenty."
At that, the man began to feel thoroughly uncomfortable. His mind shied
away from the topic. But the woman pursued it resolutely.
"We'll have to find a cheaper hotel."
"It seems rotten luck on you; the present one is uncomfortable enough.
Besides," he brightened visibly, "there ought to be briefs coming in
now."
"Man, you're a great optimist." There was an undercurrent of criticism
in Aliette's voice, of a criticism which Ronnie felt he could not fairly
resent; because already he had begun to divine the professional
consequences of Brunton's enmity. Only the day before, James Wilberforce
had dropped a hint--the barest hint, but sufficient to indicate which
way the financial wind might blow.
"I suppose I am rather an optimist," he admitted; and for the moment
they dropped the subject, reverting, as they nearly always did in their
walks together, to the main problem.
"H. B. ought to be back any day now," said Ronnie, "and when he does
come back, he'll simply _have_ to file his petition."
But to-day she would have none of the problem.
"Don't let us discuss that. After all, nothing that H. does or doesn't
do can really hurt us." She looked up into his eyes. "We've got each
other."
"I don't mind for myself, Alie. It's you I'm thinking of. Of course we
won't talk about him if you don't want to."
By now they were through Kensington Gardens, and passing the herbaceous
border at Victoria Gate. They stopped to inspect the flowers. Two
gardeners were at work, clearing away the wreckage of summer. The
climbing roses and the clematis had withered, but dahlias still flaunted