The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
your rights, would you? Precious good care you took not to fight for
other people's rights when you had a chance. Why, even Adrian----"
"I fail to see, sir----" Hector Brunton's face whitened, as the face of
a man hit by a bullet whitens, at the taunt.
"You fail to see a good many things, sir." The admiral reached for his
hat. "Allow me to tell you one of them--that the man who permits his
wife to live with somebody else without taking any steps to get rid of
her, is a common or garden _pimp_."
And the senior service, having said considerably more than it intended,
marched out of the door.
5
Left alone, the K.C.'s first feeling was relief. During the last weeks
he had grown more and more resentful of his father's interference. And
now he had finished with his father for good.
Nevertheless, the taunt about his war-service rankled. Rankled, too, the
admiral's last sentence, "Get rid of her." "God, if only I could get her
back," thought Hector; and so thinking, remembered, as born orators will
remember past speeches, his opening in the Ellerson case, his
impassioned defense of woman's right to free citizenship.
Then he remembered Renée. Renée had returned to England. How the devil
had his father found out about Renée? Aliette, of course! Aliette must
have told his father about Renée.
Hector's gorge rose. He took a cigar from the box on his desk, lit it,
and began to stride slowly up and down the book-lined room.
Alternatively he visioned Renée, greedy, compliant, satisfying to
nausea, and Aliette--Aliette the ultra-fastidious, infinitely
unsatisfying. His marriage to a woman of Aliette's temperament had been
a mistake. A mistake! Best cut one's loss--best get rid of her. Best
comply with his father's wishes. And yet--how desirable, how infernally
and eternally desirable was Aliette.
The mood passed, leaving only rage in its wake. Curse Aliette! Curse his
father! Curse the Cavendishes! How they would laugh if he yielded. They
were all persecuting him, trying to break him. And "They sha'n't break
me," he muttered; his teeth biting on the cigar till they met through
the sodden leaf. "They sha'n't break me."
Hector returned to his desk, and tried to absorb himself once more in
study. But his mind refused its office. It seemed to him as though there
were a ghost in the room, the ghost of his wife. "I wonder if she ever
thinks of me. I wonder if she ever sees me--as I see her," he thought.
"As I am seeing her now."
6
That afternoon, however, there was no picture of her legal owner in
Aliette's mind. For months he had been receding further and further into
the background of her thoughts, till now he had become more a menace
than a man. It surprised her, as she walked slowly up Piccadilly after
her meeting with Hector's father, to realize how little Hector had ever
mattered, how much--always--Ronnie. Ronnie would be glad perhaps, to
hear of her meeting with the admiral.
"Dear old Billy!" she thought, "dear old Billy!" And thinking about him,
a rare tinge of selfishness streaked her altruism. Suppose Billy
succeeded! Suppose Hector really did set her free! How wonderful to be
"respectable" again--to be done with the make-believe "Mrs. Cavendish"
of Powolney Mansions, to be really and truly and legally Ronnie's!
Always Ronnie had been splendid, loyalest of lovers; and yet--and
yet--even in the shelter of a lover's arms one was conscious of
outlawry, of the world's ostracism. What if, soon perhaps, the lover's
arms were to be a husband's?
But at that, illusions burst as bubbles in the breeze. Once more the
tension of the past days strung Aliette's mind to misery. She was an
outlaw, a woman apart--a woman ostracized--worse, a woman who had failed
her mate. Memory, killing illusions, cast itself back, remembering and
exaggerating her every little unloving word, her every little unloving
gesture, blaming her for them. "My fault," thought Aliette, "mine and
mine only. I have been selfish to him. Utterly selfish. I've been--like
I used to be with Hector."
Thought threw up its line, horrified at the comparison; and, abruptly
conscious of every-day life, Aliette found herself in Berkeley Square.
Automatically she turned down Bruton Street.
The mere name of the street--newly-painted in black block letters on
gray stone--reminded her again of Billy, of Billy's visit to Julia
Cavendish. At whose instigation, his own or hers, had the admiral
visited Ronnie's mother? Hope rose again; but now, with hope, mingled
despair. Had she so far failed Ronnie as to have forfeited his
confidence?
Still walking automatically, Aliette found herself facing the mahogany
door of Julia's house, and rang the bell.
"Yes," said Kate, "Mrs. Cavendish was at home, and alone. Would Mrs.
Ronnie" (it was an understood thing in the basement of Bruton Street
that Aliette should be referred to as "Mrs. Ronnie") "like some tea?"
"Thank you, Kate. That would be very nice." Aliette, unannounced, went
slowly up the print-hung staircase; tapped on the drawing-room door;
heard a faint "Come in"; and turned the handle.
Ronnie's mother lay on the sofa. She looked white, exhausted; but her
lips framed themselves to a smile.
"I may come in, mayn't I?" Aliette's misery increased at the sight of
her hostess's pallor. "Kate's promised to bring me some tea. I'm not
disturbing you, am I?"
"My dear, you're always welcome. Come and sit here by me." Julia made
place on the sofa, and Aliette sat down.
"I wonder why she came this afternoon," mused the elder woman. "I wonder
if, by any chance, she can have found out. Awkward, if she _has_ found
it. Very awkward." But there was no tremor of guilt in her, "How's
Ronnie?"
"Quite well, thank you."
"And you?"
"Oh, I'm all right. A little worried, that's all."
"Worried? What about?"
"Oh, various things."
Kate, bringing the tea, interrupted their conversation. Watching Aliette
as she drank, Julia saw that the hands, usually so steady, trembled.
"Can't you tell me about the worries?" she said kindly.
"There's nothing--really." Aliette's voice trembled as her hands. "Only
I--I--met Hector's father just now. And somehow--it rather made me
realize--my position."
"Did he tell you," Julia's courage fought with her fatigue, "that he'd
been to see me?"
"He did." Aliette put down her tea-cup on the little mahogany stand.
"May I know--did you send for him?"
"Yes. I sent for him." A smile. "You mustn't be angry with me."
"But why--why wasn't I told about it?"
"Then you are angry?" Another smile.
"Not angry. Only a little hurt."
"Hurt! Why? It was done in your interests." The old eyes looked into the
young. "We thought that, if we consulted you, you mightn't allow it."
"We! Then Ronnie"--the young eyes looked into the old--"Ronnie knew. And
he never told me--he never told me."
"It wasn't Ronnie's fault." Julia laid a hand on Aliette's shoulder.
At the touch, it seemed to the younger woman as though all the misery of
the past days stabbed to one dagger-point of pain. Jealousy wrenched at
her tongue. She wanted to cry out, "Oh, you're cruel, cruel. Why can't
you tell me the truth, the truth?" But the pain stabbed her dumb;
stabbed and stabbed till her mind was one unbearable tension of
self-torture. Ronnie no longer loved her. Ronnie only wanted to do his
duty by her. And it was her own fault, her very own, ownest fault, for
not having loved him enough.
And then, suddenly, the tension snapped--leaving her weak, defenseless.
"You're so good--so much too good to me," faltered Aliette. "So
infinitely better than I deserve. If only--if only I hadn't brought all
this trouble into your life."
"Nonsense, child," said Julia bruskly--for, despite her own weariness,
she recognized hysterics in the other's voice.
"It isn't nonsense. I've brought you only troubles--troubles."
"Don't be foolish. The troubles, as you call them, are nothing. Nothing
at all in comparison with Ronnie's happiness."
"Happiness!" Now hysteria was blatant in the other's every word.
"Happiness! How _can_ I make him happy? I can't--can't even make a home
for him. All I've done is to--to let him keep me--in a--in a
boarding-house."
"You're overtired, child. Overwrought. Otherwise you wouldn't talk like
that." The brusquerie had given place to a quiet understanding
tenderness; the hand tightened on Aliette's shoulder. "I tell you, you
have brought happiness into our lives. Into Ronnie's life and into mine.
Nothing that either of us could ever do----"
"But I'm not worth it. I'm not worth it." Tear-choked, Aliette seized
Julia's hand and pressed it to her lips. "I've been rotten--rotten to
your son. That's why he didn't tell me about Billy."
"Rubbish!" Resolutely the elder woman withdrew her hand. "Utter rubbish!
It was entirely my fault that you weren't told about the admiral."
"Your fault?" A ray of hope illumined the brown eyes.
"Yes. Ronnie wanted you to know. But I overpersuaded him."
Silently the blue eyes held the brown, till--gradually--self-control
came back to Aliette; till--gradually--she realized the tension gone
from her brain.
"I'm sorry," she began. "I don't often make scenes."
"My dear"--exhausted, Julia lay back on the cushions--"you needn't
apologize. No one understands better than I that life isn't altogether
easy for you. But don't lose your pluck. Believe me, it'll all come out
right now that we have the admiral on our side."
"Billy hasn't much influence over Hector." There was no fear, only
certainty in the statement. "Hector's so vain. It's his vanity, only his
vanity that prevents him from giving me my freedom."
"One day he'll be forced to give you your freedom. But," of a sudden,
anxiety crept into Julia's tired voice, "if he doesn't? What if he
doesn't give you your freedom, child?"
"Even if he doesn't,"--proudly, all the misery of the past days
forgotten, Aliette took up the unspoken challenge--"even if he never
does,"--proudly, all her being resuffused with happy courage, she rose
to her feet--"it will make no difference. Whatever happens, I shall
always be your son's--I shall always be Ronnie's."
And bending down, she sealed the promise with a farewell kiss--a kiss
whose memory lingered with Julia long after Aliette had gone, comforting
her against the prescience which had prompted that unspoken challenge,
even against the prescience of death.
CHAPTER XXII
1
Even average people, when obsessed by the grand passion--which is a far
rarer passion among Anglo-Saxons than Anglo-Saxon novelists would have
us believe--cannot be judged by average standards. Such are as surely
bound to the wheels of terror as to the wheels of courage. In such,
strength and weakness, misery and ecstasy, love's heaven and love's
hell, mingle as wax and honey in the comb. For the grand passion is the
sublime exaggerator of human emotion, the indefinable complex of the
soul.
So, to Aliette, returning from her interview with Julia, it seemed as
though London's self had altered its countenance, as though every face
encountered on her homeward way spoke of her own newly-regained
happiness. Her momentary change of feeling toward Ronnie had been
trivial; an undercurrent of misunderstanding rather than an overt
quarrel. Yet the relief of knowing it over was tremendous.
She found him huddled in the armchair before the gas-fire; Ponto,
surreptitiously introduced into Powolney Mansions, couched at his feet.
He rose as she entered; and the great dog, wagging a delighted stern,
rose with him. In a flash of new insight, she saw how alike they were: