The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton

"Because that's the only way to stop people from talking. If they know that you're at Bruton Street, that I'm not at Bruton Street, then," she was faltering now, faltering in her firm purpose, and she knew that she must not falter; "then they'll think that your mother didn't know anything when she invited us to-night." He came toward her: and she felt her momentary determination weaken; felt herself powerless to do the right. He put his hands on her shoulders, and looked her deep in the eyes. Then he smiled, the quaint, whimsical smile she loved best. "You're not serious, Alie?" "I am," she faltered, "desperately serious. You'll let me have my cottage, won't you?" "You know I won't." He had her in his arms now. "You know that I won't consent to anything so absurd." He bent to kiss her. "Darling, don't let's lose our pluck. It's been a rotten evening for you. Rotten! I know that." "It's not of myself that I'm thinking." "I know that, too. I'm not thinking for myself, either. I'm trying to think for both of us, for all three of us. We've got to see this thing through. Together." "Together!" The word weakened her still further. "Yes, together." He followed up his advantage. "Life's a fight. A hard fight. You mustn't desert." "And you"--her voice, as she lay motionless in his arms, was almost inaudible--"you think I'm worth fighting for?" "More than anything in the world. But I wish"--a little he, too, faltered, his fears for her sake making him afraid--"I wish that people didn't hurt you so." She stirred in his arms; and her face upturned to his. "Man," she said, her eyes shining, "I'm not afraid of anything people can do to _me_. Nobody except you could ever _really_ hurt me. I--I didn't mean to desert; only just to efface myself. Won't you let me efface myself? Until--until Hector divorces me. It's the right thing--the best thing. Really it is." "Right or wrong," said Ronnie, "we'll see this business through--see it through together--even if it lasts all our lives." * * * * * Aliette, seeing the fighting-fire in those blue eyes, seeing the stubborn set of that protruded jaw, knew her momentary determination beaten to the ground. CHAPTER XVIII 1 Within one week of its first launching, "Khorassan" sank, leaving hardly a ripple, into the deep pool of theatrical failures. But for weeks and weeks thereafter, that shallow pool which is West End society rippled furiously to the stone which Julia Cavendish had thrown into it when she attended Patrick O'Riordan's first-night accompanied by her son and Aliette. Some of the consequences of that stone-throwing were explained to Ronnie's "wife" when--overpersuaded from her decision not to visit Hermione--she called at the little black-carpeted, Chinese-papered, orange-curtained box of a house in Curzon Street. Hermione, her willowy figure supine on an enormous sofa, her dark eyes glinting with a sympathetic curiosity not entirely bereft of humor, extended one ringless hand with a laughed "Well, my dear, you really have put your foot into it this time. Your in-laws are perfectly furious." Aliette laughed in reply (no one ever took Hermione quite seriously); possessed herself of a luxurious chair before the luxurious fire, and admitted: "It was rather a faux pas, wasn't it?" "I'm not so sure of that." Hermione's smooth brows crinkled in thought. "I'm not at all so sure of that. It's quite on the cards, _I_ think, that it'll lead to something. Sir Simeon told me, only last night, how perfectly impossible it was for such a state of affairs to go on." She rose from the sofa; and, coming over to the fire, took the vast pouffe in front of it. "Poor darling! It's rotten for you." Aliette stiffened at the suggestion of sympathy. "I'm quite happy, thank you." "Are you? I'm so glad." Hermione edged the pouffe closer. "My dear, you have surprised the clan. None of us imagined _you_ capable of a really-truly love-affair. Why, you're the last person in the world----" "Please, Hermione, don't let's discuss me." "But I want to discuss you. I think you're perfectly marvelous. How on earth you ever had the nerve. And from a husband like Hector!" Ellerson's wife paused to warm her expressive hands at the fire. "I never did like Hector. Strong, silent men always bore me to distraction. But Ronnie Cavendish is a perfect dear." It was the first time that any one except his mother had been personal about Ronnie, and Aliette felt herself blushing at the mere mention of his name. She wanted to shoo Hermione away from the topic; but Hermione, like some obstinate butterfly, returned always to the forbidden flower. Hermione wanted "to know everything." Hermione hinted herself more than ready to be profuse in sympathy--if only the other would be profuse in confidences. Even the presence of an exiguous Belgian butler, carrying exiguous French tea-cups on an exiguous Russian silver tray, failed to distract Hermione from her purpose. Ellerson's wife had been discussing _l'affaire Aliette_ with Lady Cynthia Barberus, with Miss Elizabeth Cattistock, with many another mannequin of the "Ritz crowd"; and they had jointly come to the conclusion that it was abominable, "perfectly abominable," "a return to feminine slavery" for any man to behave as Hector Brunton was behaving. If only "dear Alie" would tell them how they could help her! Aliette, however--who, in her safety, had always rather despised Lady Cynthia and Lady Cynthia's associates,--could not bring herself to seek alliance with them in her danger. Her fastidiousness resented the "Ritz crowd's" partizanship. Trying her best to be grateful, she could not stifle the instinct that Hermione's "sympathy" was the sympathy of an idle, over-sexed woman, inspired rather by sensational and illicit novelty than by reasoned understanding. But even oversensitive Aliette could not misjudge the real understanding, the real sympathy of Hermione's husband. That tall, casually-groomed, blond-haired youth came in just as the guest was perpending departure; offered her a large hand; and said nothing whatever to complicate a difficult situation. My Lord Arthur merely opined that he was sorry to be late for tea, that he hoped Aliette would come and see them again, that she must dine and do a show with them as soon as ever they got back from the Riviera, and that she must bring--he said this with extraordinary tact--anybody she liked to make a fourth at the party. Lord Arthur, in fact, without mentioning Ronnie's name, made it quite clear on which side of the social fence both he and his wife purposed to sit. For by now the various sections of that complicated community which is social London had grown conscious of the Cavendish-Brunton fence. People had begun to comprehend that _l'affaire Aliette_ was serious, and that one would have to sit either on Aliette's side, on Hector's side, or on the fence itself. So that if Aliette had been less old-fashioned, in the best sense of that much-abused word; if Aliette's lover had been less shy, less reticent, less aloof from his kind; and if Julia Cavendish had only been a little less certain, that victory was already won--there is little doubt that other houses besides 24 Curzon Street would have opened their doors. Social London, you see, was in a state of moral flux. Cadogan Square, Belgravia, and Knightsbridge still clung rigidly to the tenets of the Victorian past. But for Mayfair, parts of Kensington, and the more artistic suburbs, matrimonial issues had assumed a new aspect since the war. Actually, a tide of freer thinking on the sex question had begun to sweep over the whole of England. Happiness had not yet come to be acknowledged the only possible basis of monogamy, but divorce reform was no longer only in the air--it was more or less on the table of the House. And to divorce reformers Hector Brunton's attitude appeared almost as indefensible as it did to those who, not yet in revolt against the old tenets of indissoluble matrimony, found it hard to stomach a man's permitting his wife to live unsued in open adultery. 2 Julia Cavendish tried to explain these post-war matrimonial issues to Dot Fancourt, when he called at Bruton Street to remonstrate with her about "the very serious blunder" she had committed. But Dot, willing enough to open his columns in "The Contemplatory" for an intellectual threshing out of such issues, could not face them in real life. A social cowardliness, essentially editorial, obsessed his failing mentality. "My dear," he argued, "it isn't as if you were a nobody. Nobodies can afford experiments. You can't. You're a Cavendish. You have a position, an eminent position in the scholastic world, in the world of society, and in the world of letters. Therefore you, of all people, have least right, especially in times like the present, to countenance matrimonial bolshevism." Julia Cavendish put down her embroidery-frame, and faced her quondam friend squarely. Ever since their meeting in the foyer of the Capitol Theater, she had been seeing him with new eyes, seeing only his weakness, the insufficiency and the inefficiency of him. That he meant his advice kindly and for the best, she knew. Nevertheless, he had wrecked their friendship; failed her when she most needed him. The disloyalty stung her to bitterness. "The fact that I married a Cavendish," she said, "is neither here nor there. My position, such as it is, is one which I attained for myself. If, by siding with my own son, I jeopardize it----" "But, my dear, why jeopardize it at all? You're being so unwise. You won't do your son any good by quarreling with your friends." "Apparently I have no friends." The Biblical phrase about the broken reed crossed Julia's mind. "If I had friends, they would stand by me and mine; not try to avoid us in public." "You're very unfair." Dot rose irritably, and began shambling up and down the room. "Terribly unfair. Can't you understand how I hated seeing you--messed up in this sort of thing?" She fired up at that. "One defends one's own, Dot." And for an hour after Dot had gone, the words rang in Julia's mind. "One defends one's own--at all costs--however hard the battle." For her, battle grew harder as the days went by. One by one she argued out the issue with her protesting friends, convincing few, antagonizing many. Her family, however--always a little jealous of "the immaculate Ronald"--Julia met not with argument but with shock tactics. Clementina, calling, breasted and bustled for fray, accompanied by Sir John, in his best Bank of England blacks, who admitted that "they had heard things" and pressed to know if there was any truth in "the things they had heard," received a direct "My dear Clementina, if your husband means that you've been informed of my son's running away with Hector Brunton's wife, and that Hector Brunton is going to divorce her, you've been informed correctly"; while Alice, writing a dutiful letter from Cheltenham, received a typescript reply--to the same effect--which cut her Anglo-Indian sense of etiquette to the quick. As for May who, relinquishing the expensive good works and still more expensive garden of her house in Abbey Road, called unattended and found Julia alone; _she_ returned to St. John's Wood with the firm conviction that her "poor dear sister" must have been "got at by some of those dreadful writing people," and bombarded her, for nearly a week, with pamphlets on "The Sin of Divorce." Meanwhile, regular callers at Bruton Street grew rarer and rarer; until