The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
"No, I don't." Her recalcitrance angered him.
"You must. Jimmy," softly, "you do want me to be happy with you, don't
you?"
"Of course I want you to be happy with me." His anger relented. "I'd do
anything in the world to make you happy."
"Would you, dear?"
"Rather. Only tell me what it is."
"It's only Alie." Loyalty strung her to the sacrifice. "Only Alie. Can't
you do something for her? You're a lawyer; you know how these things are
managed. Oh, do, please do something to help her, to help"--the young
voice dwindled to a whisper--"to help both of us. Jimmy, I do want to
marry you. I want to marry you most awfully. But I simply can't even
promise to marry you with things as they are. It wouldn't be decent of
me. Honestly it wouldn't. It wouldn't be decent of either of us. It
wouldn't be playing the game."
They faced each other, half in love and half in hostility.
"You really mean that, Mollie?"
"Yes, I really mean it."
"And if I _could_ manage to do anything?"
"If you only could"--she smiled into his eyes--"there wouldn't be a
thing in the world to keep us apart."
Jimmy took the girl in his arms; and again she let herself answer his
kisses. "I'll move heaven and earth and the lord chancellor," vowed
James Wilberforce to that sleek bobbed head.
4
Betty Masterman, returning, dressed for some mysterious dinner, on the
stroke of seven, found a Mollie who could not decide herself happy or
unhappy; a Mollie whose lips still tingled from her lover's kisses--but
whose eyes still shone with the tears shed in loyalty to her sister.
CHAPTER XX
1
Before, and even during the war, Christmas day at Bruton Street used to
be rather a function. On that day, Julia, still the feudalist in her
domestic policy, was wont to rise earlier than usual, to distribute
gifts among her servants, to proceed to church, lunch in some state, and
during the afternoon receive such of her friends as had not left town.
This Christmas, Brunton's continued obduracy made functions impossible.
Waking late to the subdued glimmer of the bed-lamp, to the presence of
her maid and the tea-tray, Julia was conscious of depression. Her night
had been restless, haunted by the specter of defeat. The "flaunting
policy" had failed! Depression grew. The idea of distributing presents,
of her servants' formal thanks, fretted her. Fretted her, too, the
thought that this would be the first Nativity on which she had ever
missed going to church.
But gradually, as she bathed, as her maid swathed her in a long purple
velvet tea-gown, Julia's vitality began to revive. A little of the
Christmas spirit entered into her. She recognized for how much she had
to be thankful; for ample means, for well-trained servants, for a
well-tended house, for a mind still confident of its powers, for a
conscience assured in its right-doing, for a son who adored her and whom
she adored, and, lastly but not least, for work still to be
accomplished.
This certainty of work to come, of a creative task dim-visualized as
yet, but already quickening in the womb of her mentality, had been
newly-vivid during the restless night; so that she was now assured--with
that assurance which only the craftswoman possesses--of another book
shortly to be born from her pen. "My last book, perhaps!" she thought;
and dreaded, in anticipation, the labor of that book-bearing.
The distribution of the presents tired her. Depression returned with the
physical fatigue of being gracious. But, once the little ceremony was
over and she sat waiting for Ronnie and Aliette in the square box of a
work-room, the old lady grew almost fey with the prescience of coming
triumph. She, Julia Cavendish, might die, but even in her dying she
would not be defeated. By her own unaided strength, by the very steel of
her spirit, she would beat down all obstacles--the labors of
book-bearing, the obduracy of Aliette's husband, the defections of their
friends.
And--in that moment of feyness--Julia knew that the unwritten book, her
own death, and her son's future were mysteriously intertwined; that the
only sword which could sever the Gordian knot of Hector Brunton's
obduracy was the sword of the written word. But as yet her knowledge was
all nebulous, the merest protoplasm of a plan.
2
Aliette, that Christmas morning, had not even the semblance of a plan.
Ever since her visit to Hermione she had been growingly aware of strain,
of a strange morbidity. Increasingly she felt resentful of her position.
Increasingly she reproached herself for the _impasse_ in Ronnie's
career.
The lack of a real home affected her almost to breaking-point. In her
hyper-sensitive mind, Powolney Mansions had become symbolical of their
joint lives. They were "boarding-house people"; and even that only under
false pretenses.
So far, she had managed to conceal her mental state from Ronnie. Yet she
was aware, dimly, of occasional unkindnesses to him, of a tiny
retrogression from the standard of happiness which she had laid down for
them both. "I'm failing him," she used to think; "I'm failing
him--dragging him down."
London in holiday-time accentuated this feeling of failure. Caroline
Staley had departed to Devonshire for a week; and a slatternly maid
brought them their tea, their lukewarm "hot water." Ronnie, kept waiting
half an hour for his bath, gashed his chin with his razor, and soothed
the resultant ill-temper with one of the cheap cigarettes to which he
had lately taken. Breakfast, in the stuffy communal dining-room, was as
cold as the perfunctory Christmas wishes of their fellow-boarders.
Ponto, developing a cough, had been sent to the vet's. Ronnie, kindling
his pipe, suggested that they should "look up the hound." Aliette
refused and he went off by himself.
Aliette returned to their room, and surveyed its untidiness with a
shudder.
"I'm the wrong sort of woman for Ronnie," she said to herself. "I'm not
a bit domesticated." And from that, thought switched automatically to
the other side of domesticity. Imagination pictured some old-fashioned
Christmas in some old-fashioned country cottage; herself mistress of a
real home; Ronnie a father; he and she and "they" church-going along
snow-powdered roads; their return to a board loaded with goodies.
Almost, in that moment, imagination heard the laughter of unborn
children.
But the moment passed, and she knew herself still childless. "Better
childless," she thought bitterly; and tried, for a whole wretched hour,
to bring order into the chaos of their unfriendly room; dusting and
redusting the melancholy furniture; hanging and rehanging hats and
dresses; finally, in sheer desperate need of distraction, plying
Caroline Staley's little wire brush on a pair of white suède shoes she
found hidden away in a corner of the wardrobe.
There was dust on the shoes; and, here and there under the dust, a speck
of mud. A wire brush--thought Aliette--could cleanse dust and mud from
shoes. But no brush could cleanse the mud and the dust from one's mind.
Mind--what was mind? Her very soul felt itself besmirched. A Hermione's
curiosity, a Mary O'Riordan's ingratitude, the snubs of a Lady Siegfried
Moss--all these were flecks, undeserved yet ineradicable, upon the white
surface of one's purity.
She finished cleaning the shoes, and put them aside. Yet the symbolism
of them remained with her. It seemed a bitter and a cruel thing that she
must drag her feet through so much mire, that the wheels of all the
world's traffic must bespatter her because--because she had gone to her
mate openly and not in secret.
"Not for our sin," she thought, "the penalty; but for the candor of our
sinning"; and so fell to resenting the hypocrisy of a country which
winks tolerant eyes at "dancing-partners," "tame cats," "best boys,"
"fancy-men," and all the ragtag and bobtail of clandestine lovers whom
England excuses, tolerates, and even finds romantic. "Only for women
such as I am," thought Aliette, "for those of us who go openly to our
one lover, can England find neither excuse nor toleration."
"Nothing much wrong with the hound," pronounced a returning Ronnie; and
then, noticing the unhappiness in his lady's eyes, "Anything the matter,
darling?"
"No. Nothing in particular."
Silently Aliette changed her gown, pinned on her hat, and let him help
her with her furs. Silently they made their way downstairs. Outside it
was foggy. From the hideous hall-lamp, still illuminated, hung a sprig
of grimy mistletoe. Aliette looked up at the thing. "I hate Christmas in
London," she said.
As they waited for their train in the chill West Kensington station,
Ronnie, too, grew unhappy.
"Poor darling! I wish I could afford taxis," he said; and throughout the
journey to Bruton Street--thinking of their long-ago taxi-ride from
"Queen's"--a depression almost physical constrained both to silence.
The arrival at Bruton Street minimized a little of the morning's
depression. Julia was in her old form, jovially dictatorial. They had
brought presents for her: from Ronnie, a plain gold penholder, such as
she always used; from Aliette, a trifle of embroidery. _Her_ present,
newly-written, lay in an envelope on her writing-desk. She gave it to
Aliette with the command, "Don't open it till we've had lunch," just as
Kate came in to ask if she should bring in the meal.
3
The "lunch," laid--Aliette noticed--for five, consisted of grilled
soles, turkey with cranberry sauce, plum-pudding with cream and brandy,
mince-pies, and the whole old-fashioned indigestible paraphernalia.
Holly decked the Venetian wall-lights; mistletoe hung from the
chandelier. But there were ghosts at the feast. Try as they three might
to be cheerful, each felt conscious of awkwardness.
After the servants had left the room, Julia, breaking the rules of her
"medicine-man," took a glass of brandy and a cigarette.
"You haven't even looked at my Christmas present," she said to Aliette;
and she would have liked to add, if the words had not seemed so
ill-omened, "I sha'n't give you one at all next year, if you don't take
more interest in it."
Aliette reached for her hand-bag (which she had hung, a habit of hers,
on the back of her chair) and took out the envelope Julia had given her
before luncheon. Throughout the meal she had been dreading this moment,
because, obviously, the envelope contained a check--and she hated the
idea of accepting a check from Ronnie's mother. Slitting the flap with
her fruit-knife, picking out the stamped paper, she saw at a glance that
the check was for five hundred pounds. Her heart leaped. Five hundred
pounds meant freedom from Powolney Mansions, the possibility of taking
some little abode where she and Ronnie could be happy. Then reluctance
overwhelmed her.
"It's too good of you," she protested. "But I can't, really I can't take
all this money."
"Rubbish!" snapped Julia in her bruskest manner. "Why shouldn't you take
money from me? All my money really belongs to Ronnie. If his father had
had any sense he'd have left it to him. Besides, you need it. You can't
go on staying at that appalling boarding-house for ever."
"But we can't take it! Can we, man?" Aliette's eyes appealed to Ronnie;
who said, trying to be gay: "You mustn't rob yourself for us, mater."
"I'm not robbing myself. Sir Peter sold three of the Little Overdine
properties a fortnight ago."
"Did he, though? Whom to?"
"The tenants."
"Really!"
Ensued an awkward silence, during which Ronnie stared at the check,
Julia at her "daughter-in-law," and Aliette at the pair of them.
"You need it more than I do," reiterated Julia at last.