The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton

"You must be seen everywhere," she went on. "You must entertain and be entertained. In a word, Aliette--like Mrs. Carrington--must _afficher_ herself as Mrs. Cavendish. Never mind what it costs. I'll finance you." But Aliette's whole nature recoiled from Julia's scheme. She, had it not been for Ronnie's career, would have been more than content to wait a year, two years, a whole lifetime for freedom. Her idea--she told them--was to take some little cottage, not too far removed from London; so that "Ronnie could come down every week-end." Nevertheless, since any hope of freedom was tantalizing, because now, always and always stronger, there mounted in her the conviction that one day she would have a child by Ronnie, Aliette so far weakened from her resolution against "the flaunting policy" as to accept Julia's invitation, telephoned next day, to share her box for the first night of Patrick O'Riordan's "Khorassan." 3 Ronnie's "wife," though too proud to make the first move, often wondered why Mary O'Riordan, eager enough to accept her championing in a similar situation, should have taken so little trouble to reciprocate, now that reciprocation was so obviously indicated: but, dressing for the theater in the unkindly bedroom whose harsh lights made her needlessly afraid of the mirror, she decided that sheer delicacy alone had restrained her old school-friend from getting into touch; and anticipated their inevitable meeting without a qualm. It would be nervous work, displaying one's self in Julia Cavendish's box before a "first-night" audience (unwise work, thought Aliette, unwise of Ronnie and his mother to have been so persistent); but Mary's presence would at least furnish a guarantee against complete ostracism. Whatever other people might do, she could rely on Mary's visiting their box in the _entr'acte_, on Mary's going out of her way to demonstrate sympathy. "Looking forward to it, darling?" interrupted Ronnie, entering with the usual perfunctory knock from the bathroom, where he had been doing his best to shave, for the second time that day, in lukewarm water. "Not exactly." Aliette dismissed her maid. "Why not?" "Oh, I don't know. It seems all wrong, somehow or other. And suppose"--she hesitated--"suppose people are nasty?" "They won't be," assured Ronnie, through the shirt into which he was struggling. "You're too sensitive about the whole thing. One or two people may snub us. But what's a snub or so, if only we can force H. B. to move?" "But"--she hesitated again--"snubs hurt, man." Thinking of various slights already endured, her eyes suffused, and she had difficulty in keeping back the tears. "Nobody shall hurt _you_." He came quickly across the room; put his arms round her; and kissed, very tenderly, the smooth skin behind her ears, her bared shoulders. "Oh, yes, they will. Not even you can prevent that. Women in my position are bound to get hurt. All the time! But it doesn't hurt much"--she looked up into his eyes, and smiled away the tears from her own;--"it doesn't really hurt at all so long as I've got you." Nevertheless, as they raced through their execrable meal in the empty dining-room, Aliette knew herself face to face with an ordeal. And the ordeal waxed more and more terrible in anticipation as the electric brougham, which Julia had insisted on sending to Baron's Court for them, rolled toward Bruton Street. She sat wordlessly, her hand clasped in Ronnie's, staring wide-eyed at the buses, the taxicabs, and the private cars which passed or overtook them. It was as though every soul in London, all the people in those buses, those taxicabs, and those private cars, were hostile to her; as though she were a woman apart from all other women, outcast indeed. She wanted to say to her man: "Must we do this unwise thing? Must we? Can't we turn back? Can't we go on hiding ourselves?" But she said nothing, only clung the closer to his responsive hand. 4 Literary folk can be peculiarly childish; which is perhaps the reason why great authors are usually little men. One part of Julia's mind--as she waited for Ronnie and Aliette to fetch her--positively grinned with mischief in anticipation of the new adventure, "defying Society." That part of her felt very much the heroine, a female knight-errant about to do lusty tilt against the dragon "Convention." But, in the main, her mood was retrospective. "Curious," she thought, looking back at her dead self; "curious how entirely my views have changed." And she remembered the reactionary stubbornness of her anti-divorce article for "The Contemplatory," her delight at the stir which that article had created, her delusions that it might "help to stem the flood of post-war immorality." Now even the closing sentence, "Until humanity learns to discipline the sentimental impulse, there can be no hope of matrimonial reconstruction," rang false in the auditorium of experience. She yearned suddenly to rewrite that sentence, to substitute "the lustful impulse" for "the sentimental impulse." But the written word, alas, could not be revoked. Then, vaguely she visioned herself writing a new article--perhaps a new book--some pronouncement, anyway, which should contradict and counteract her old doctrine. And from that, her creative mind--as though linking story to moral--started in to examine the individual case of her son and Aliette. The front door-bell rang; and Julia heard Ronnie's voice in the hall. "Where's Aliette?" she asked, as he entered. "Waiting in the brougham. By Jove, mater, you look like a stage duchess." "Do I?" She blushed a little at his chaff, knowing it merited by the super-splendor of her attire; by the sable-and-brocade opera-cloak and the black velvet thereunder, by the coronal of diamond wheat-ears which banded her graying hair, and the Louis Seize buckles on her elegant shoes. Once more the heroine of an adventure, she picked her long white gloves and her bejeweled hand-bag from the dining-room table; and followed her son, through the front door which Kate held open for them, into the brougham. Aliette, she greeted with a rare pressure of the hand and the still rarer compliment, "You're looking radiant to-night, my dear." Kate closed the door on the three of them; and the electric brougham rolled off through Bruton Street into Bond Street; through Bond Street into Piccadilly. Julia did not appear in the least nervous. She began to talk of Patrick O'Riordan--a little contemptuously, as was her wont when dealing with stage-folk, against whom she cherished a prejudice almost puritanical. "Patrick O'Riordan," opined Julia, "was a poorish play-wright; but of course he had money to play with. Not his own money. Naturally. People in the theater never did speculate with their own money. Lord Letchingbury was behind the show. Dot said Letchingbury had put up ten thousand." Followed a Rabelaisian reference to Letchingbury's penchant for Mary O'Riordan, which horrified Aliette, who had always imagined Mary, except for her one lapse, virtuous; and landed them in the queue of vehicles making for the illuminated portico of the Capitol Theater. As the brougham crawled near and nearer to the lights which blazed their one word "Khorassan," it seemed to Aliette that she was about to plunge into a stream of icy water. Her heart contracted at mere sight of the furred opera-cloaks, of the smoothly-coiffured heads and the shiny top-hats under the portico. For a moment, fear had its way with her; the impulse to flight overwhelmed her courage. Then she looked at Ronnie; and saw that his face was set, that his chin protruded ever so slightly for sign of determination. Julia Cavendish, the wheat-ears glimmering like a crown in her hair, sat bolt upright, unflinching. All said and done--thought Aliette--the risk, the big social risk, was Julia's. If, for her sake, Julia Cavendish could dare to jeopardize her entire circle, she, Aliette, must not prove unworthy of the offering. Her red lips pursed--even as they had pursed long ago when she and Ronnie waited for hounds to give tongue beyond Parson's Brook; and, head equally high, she followed the diamond wheat-ears out of the brougham, through the crowd under the portico, and into the theater. Passing the box-office, she saw Julia smile at an old man with drooping gray mustaches and a reddish face, blue-lined above a bulging shirt-front. Dot Fancourt shambled hesitantly across the few feet of carpet; shook hands; whispered "Surely this is very unwise"; and vanished downstairs toward the stalls. "Old coward!" thought Julia; and her thirty-year-old friendship for the editor of "The Contemplatory" exploded in a red puff of rage. Ronnie, noticing Dot's evasion, felt his color heighten. He handed their ticket to an attendant, and took Aliette's arm protectively as the three of them passed round the circular corridor into their box. "You sit there, dear." Julia indicated the most conspicuous seat. "And I'll sit beside you." Aliette, throwing the opera-cloak back from her shoulders, looked down across the house. To her imagination, the whole auditorium was a blur of eyes; hostile eyes, thousands upon thousands of them, some furtively upturned, some staring unabashed, some taking cover behind the gleam of opera-glasses. Julia, too, looked downward; but her eyes saw every face, every dress, every gesture of every personage in the crowded stalls and in the opposite boxes, clear-cut and sharp as a photograph. Obviously the appearance of her party had created a sensation. Lady Cynthia Barberus and Miss Elizabeth Cattistock, making a conspicuous and loud-voiced entrance down the center gangway, stopped in mid-career blocking the Ellersons, Paul Flower, and Sir Siegfried with his fat Lady Moss. Lady Cynthia did not smile; Elizabeth Cattistock did--maliciously. Paul Flower gave an astounded grin; and nudged Dot Fancourt, who was already seated next to that inveterate first-nighter, Sir Peter Wilberforce. Dot whispered something to Sir Peter, who kept his attention rigidly on the curtain. Various other people whom Julia knew more or less intimately, after one swift glance at the box, also kept their attention on that curtain; talking together, low-voiced. And suddenly Julia grew aware that the white-gloved fingers of the woman beside her were gripping the ledge of their box as though it had been the arm of a dentist's chair, that the eyes of the woman beside her were focused as the eyes of a sleep-walker on the third row of the stalls. Instinctively, her own glance followed the line; and following, envisaged Aliette's husband. To Julia, the female knight-errant a-tilt against the dragon "Convention," the presence of the Brunton family--for they were all there, Sir Simeon with his ambassadress, Rear-Admiral Billy, two of Sir Simeon's daughters by his first wife, and Hector--should have been the crown of her adventure; but to Julia Cavendish, society-woman, the happening was rather a shock. For the society-woman in her could not quite prevent herself from sympathizing with the peculiar position of Sir Simeon and Lady Brunton. Sympathy, however, turned to rage when they deliberately looked up at the box, and, with equal deliberation, looked away. The two daughters did not look up; and the admiral gave no sign either of recognition or of partizanship. But Hector, at a word from his uncle, stared and continued to stare across the house. Ronnie, perceiving the stare, deliberately drew his chair closer to Aliette's; and the momentary panic stilled in her mind. Her fingers loosened their grip on the velvet ledge; her eyes were no longer the