The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
vacant eyes of a sleep-walker. Coolly now she faced her husband's
ill-mannered stare; coolly she forced a smile to her lips, and,
pretending to examine her program, managed an aimless remark.
The pretense of nonchalance deceived even Hector. Hector turned to his
cousin Moira and tried to talk with her. But hardly a word came to his
lips. His heart thudded under the stiff of his shirt-front. He felt
himself surrounded, pent in a cage, pent to sitting-posture. He wanted
to heave himself upright, to smash the cage, to scatter the people
surrounding him.
"Confound them!" he thought, "they all know. All these first-nighters
know. Of set purpose, she has done me this shame."
Once again he saw himself as the lone bull, the lone bull before the
scornful herd. He wanted to gore with his horns, to lash out with his
hoofs; for his eyes--averted from the box--still held their picture: the
two disdainful women, the tall disdainful man between them.
"Pretty bad form, _I_ think," said Moira sympathetically.
"Curse her sympathy!" thought Hector.
5
The preliminary music neared its ending; and the first part of Aliette's
ordeal, even more terrible than she had anticipated, was almost over by
the time that Mary O'Riordan billowed her imposing way to the front of
the stage-box. Other people followed, but Mary's hoydenish bulk, draped
in the gold and scarlet of some super-Wagnerian goddess, dwarfed them to
the insignificance of pygmies.
Aliette's heart, still numb from its effort at self-control, gave one
pleasurable beat at sight of her friend. She smiled across the house at
Mary. Their eyes met, clashed. And in that moment, the house darkled.
* * * * *
The curtain had been up a full three minutes before Aliette realized
that those blue eyes of Mary's intended the cut direct. Realizing, every
nerve in her tense body throbbed with resentment at the ingratitude.
Mary to cut her! Mary of all people! Mary, by whose side she had stood
stanch through a year of trouble! Mary, whose affair with Letchingbury
provided the very money which sent up the curtain, which bought the
scenery and paid the actors of "Khorassan"!
Gradually, the first throbs of Aliette's resentment subsided, leaving
her every nerve a living pain. Mary's ingratitude hurt, hurt. "Most
women are awful rotters"; Mollie's words, uttered long ago at Moor Park,
came back to her.
She tried to distract her mind with the play; but O'Riordan's
play--poor, thinly-poetic stuff, indifferently mouthed by mummers whose
sole claim to their salary was their supping-acquaintance with the
fringe of Society--failed to hold her thoughts. Her thoughts hovered
between the enemy audience, blur of heads below, and the two friends,
her only friends in a hostile world, on either side.
Thinking of their loyalty, Aliette no longer shrank from her ordeal. Her
heart swelled, resolute against all hostility. It became two hearts: the
one, warm and throbbing with partizanship for the stark old lady beside
her, the old lady who had never turned a hair since they entered the
theater, and for the "old lady's" son, for the man whose love was a
rock: the other, icy-cold, almost beatless, frozen to contempt.
What a farce was this social game! As if the world's hostility mattered!
One played one's little part on the stage of life, played it as best one
might to the prompting of conscience, till the curtain fell, as it was
falling now to a subdued rattle of perfunctory applause and the usual
"snatched" calls.
Aliette felt Ronnie's fingers tighten on her own, relax. The house
lights went up.
"Letchingbury will lose his money," remarked Julia calmly. "O'Riordan's
poetic drama is merely an excuse for bad poetry and no drama. By the
way, that _is_ Letchingbury, isn't it?" She looked across at the
stage-box; and Ronnie, looking with her, saw a young man, blond, with a
receding chin and a receding forehead.
"Yes. That's Letchingbury all right," he said. "And, by the way, Alie,
isn't that your friend, Mrs. O'Riordan?"
"I should hardly call her my friend," answered Aliette, a little
bitterly; and steeled herself to look down at the stalls. Hector's was
already empty. The remainder of the Brunton party sat perfectly rigid.
Sir Peter Wilberforce, remembering himself one of Julia Cavendish's
executors, managed a surreptitious nod. Dot Fancourt, like Hector, had
escaped. Various dramatic critics, sidling their way out of the stalls
toward the bar, bowed to Julia as though nothing out of the ordinary had
occurred. Mary O'Riordan retired ostentatiously to the back of her box.
Aliette panicked again. Suppose Ronnie left her? Suppose Ronnie and
Hector met--in public? But Ronnie, for all his obtuser mind, divined
that his women-folk were under fire; and that duty forbade him to
desert. He whispered to her:
"Not so bad as you anticipated, eh? Of course one can't expect the
Bruntons to be exactly cordial."
"I wish they hadn't been here," whispered back Aliette. "It makes things
so much worse."
"Rubbish!" interrupted Julia. "It's the best thing that could possibly
have happened. He'll have to bring his action after this, or be the
laughing-stock of Mayfair."
While the auditorium emptied and filled again, Julia, her head erect,
her hands quiet, talked on--as though the lack of Dot's usual visit to
her box were of no moment. Ronnie, every fiber in him furious, played up
to her. But Aliette could not speak. In her, social instincts were at
war with conscience. Feeling herself definitely in the wrong toward
society, yet definitely in the right toward her own soul, feeling
terribly afraid, yet terribly courageous, striving desperately to wrench
out the iron of resentment from her mind, striving piteously to forget
the hurt of the wound which Mary O'Riordan had dealt her, she played her
game in dumb show. And furtively, fearfully, as the music for the second
act began, she watched for Hector's return.
But Hector did not return. Even when the house lights went out and the
curtain rose again, Aliette could see that his stall remained empty.
Subconsciously she knew that he had fled the theater.
The second act of "Khorassan" dragged to its undramatic climax. Once
again those three faced the eyes of the audience. Now, more than ever,
it seemed to Aliette, still sitting rigid in the forefront of Julia's
box, as though all eyes were hostile, as though the entire house, and
with it her entire social world, had decided to ostracize them.
All through that overlong _entr'acte_, she sat speechless; her brown
pupils hard and bright; her white shoulders squared above the black
sequined dress; her pale face, her red lips set to an almost sullen
determination. And, as the _entr'acte_ ended, those hard brown pupils
fell to devisaging Mary O'Riordan. Till, visibly ill at ease, the
cow-eyes under Mary's mop of gold hair turned away.
But it gave Aliette no pleasure to realize that, hurt, she had
retaliated.
6
Everybody in front of the curtain and everybody behind the curtain
knew--as it fell--that Patrick O'Riordan's poetic drama, "Khorassan,"
was a proved failure. Nevertheless, the audience, as is the polite
custom of first-night audiences, applauded; and called on the author,
white-faced in the glare of the footlights, for a speech.
"And in the morning," thought Julia Cavendish satirically, "we shall
read of the great service rendered by Patrick O'Riordan via
Letchingbury's bank-account, to art; and of the pressing need for more
revivals of the poetic drama."
Julia could not help being a little pleased at the play's failure; in a
way it mitigated her own. For that _she_ had failed, lamentably, in her
adventure, Ronnie's mother realized even better than Aliette. Hold her
head high as she might, this consciousness of disaster persisted all
through O'Riordan's overlong speech. The literary childishness went out
of her, leaving the woman of the world conscious that she had done the
foolish thing, that she had flaunted her son and her son's mistress
before that little section of society which is a London first-night.
Society, of course, had averted its face! Remained, therefore, only the
assurance that Aliette's husband had seen the flaunting, and so must
surely be forced into action.
"Poor Aliette," thought Julia. "Poor Ronnie." Her mind was all a
weakness toward them, all a strength against the world. For herself, she
needed no comforting; but them she wanted to take in her arms, to
mother.
O'Riordan's speech ended. The house clapped, and emptied. The three left
their box; and Ronnie--reluctantly leaving Julia and Aliette in the
foyer--went off in search of the electric brougham.
Waiting in the crowd, both women knew themselves on show, the dual
cynosure of a hundred furtive glances. People seemed anxious to escape
without the need for recognizing them. The few smiles were frigid,
standoffish--all for Julia, none for her companion. Hector's aunt,
jostling by, cut the pair dead.
Aliette tried to think, "It doesn't matter; it doesn't matter a bit";
she tried to hold herself upright, to cut rather than be cut, to
preserve--outwardly at least--the semblance of a dignity. But inwardly
she knew herself all one tremble of undignified panic. If only one
person, just one person in that jostling mob, would be really decent! If
only Ronnie would be quicker with their carriage!
Then simultaneously both women grew aware that a face, one kindly face,
was smiling at them, was making its way toward them through the crowd.
Simultaneously they recognized the face--Hermione Ellerson's.
"My dear, I've been trying to catch your eye all the evening," called
Hermione to Aliette. "But you wouldn't look at me. Why don't you come
and see us? I want you to see our new house. Curzon Street, 24. In the
telephone-book."
Hermione was swept away before Aliette could collect her wits for reply:
and a moment afterward they saw, beyond the crowd, Ronnie signaling the
arrival of their brougham.
7
"It _was_ decent of Hermione, frightfully decent, especially as she's a
kind of relation of Hector's. All the same, I don't think I'll go and
see her."
Aliette, disrobed, sat staring into the gas-fire of their Powolney
Mansions bedroom.
"Why not?" asked a shirt-sleeved Ronnie.
She turned to him, and her face showed very pale.
"Man, it's all so hopeless."
"It isn't. It isn't a bit hopeless. The mater's right. H. B. _must_ act
now."
"He won't, and even if he does--Oh, don't you see that I've--that I've
ruined you! I've ruined your career. I've ruined you both."
"Rubbish!" There was something of his mother's brusquerie in the man's
tone.
"It isn't rubbish." The woman was deadly in her calm. "It's the absolute
truth. Don't let us deceive ourselves."
He tried to take her in his arms; but she rose, eluding him. "Don't,
Ronnie! Let's be sensible; it's high time. We--you and I and your
mother--have made a mistake. A mistake that's almost irretrievable.
There's only one thing to be done now----"
"And that is?" He had never known her in this mood. She seemed utterly
different from the sensitive Aliette of a few hours since; almost
unloving, hard, purposeful, resolute.
"And that is?" he repeated.
"I must leave you."
At her words Ronnie's heart stopped beating as though some giant had put
a finger on it. For one fraction of a second, love vanished utterly;
almost, he hated her.
"Yes," went on Aliette, "I must leave you. It's the only way, I'll take
a little cottage. Somewhere not too far from London. And you--you must
go and live with your mother."
His heart began beating again, faintly.
"But why?" he managed. "Why?"