The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
_Particulars of Offence_: Lucy Towers on the fifth day of July, in the
County of Middlesex, murdered her husband, William Towers, by shooting
him with a revolver.
Reading, an expression almost of mania flickered across Brunton's face.
Behind the words of the indictment, his mind visualized the actual
crime: the woman, some blowzy Messalina of the slums lusting horribly
for a mutilated lover: the lover, a puppet in her adulterous arms: the
husband, shot down in cold blood because he dared to come between the
woman and her desires.
A fitting client--thought Brunton--for this other adulterer, this Ronald
Cavendish with his gutter-press backing, to defend. But he would defend
her in vain!
The K.C.'s long fingers prodded among the papers. Ever since the Cairns
case, he had derived--subconsciously--a satisfaction, a secret
chop-licking satisfaction, from his title of "hanging prosecutor." It
was as though, harrying Mrs. Cairns to her death, he had taken his
revenge on all women. And he thought: "Hilda Cairns escaped my rope.
Lucy Towers shall not escape it."
Concentrating again, he reread the entire evidence. Outside it grew
darker--silent. He switched on the opal-shaded reading-lamp; and sent
David Patterson home. It was good--good to be alone with this chess-game
of death: Messalina for its queen, his brain the mover of those pawns
which would sweep her from the board.
Brunton's gray pupils shrank to pin-points. There were flaws, flaws in
the evidence. The chess-board, as prepared by the solicitors for the
Crown, lacked one pawn; the pawn of premeditation. Given himself, with
his gift of oratory, to defend her, Lucy Towers might escape the
black-cap sentence of the murderess.
Now the K. C.'s brain took the other side of the chess-board. He played
the queen against himself; played her to the stalemate of
"manslaughter." That would be Cavendish's gambit; a reduction of the
charge.
But could Cavendish succeed?
For a long time Hector Brunton sat motionless, brooding; a cruel figure
in the green glare of the desk-light. Then he drew the proof of Maggie
Peterson's evidence from the paper pile; and, recasting it word by word,
saw the rope tighten, tighten round his victim's neck, saw her drop feet
first through the sliding floor.
God! but it would be good--good to know Cavendish beaten; to know him as
incapable of defending this woman as of defending that other.
And at that, abruptly, the K.C.'s concentration snapped. The Furies were
on him again, lashing at his loins, lashing him to blood-frenzy. He
sprang to his feet; and his chair crashed backward as he sprang. This
woman, this Lucy Towers, must hang. Hang! Between him and his enemy,
between him and the man whose body possessed Aliette, she, the Messalina
of the slums, stood for a symbol. Destroying the one, he would destroy
all three. This was his chance; his chance for revenge.
Vengeance at last! Too long Aliette and Cavendish had eluded him--eluded
the torturer.
God! If only he could torture Aliette; torture her, not as he would
torture this other woman when she stood before him in the witness-box,
but physically. Of what avail was the law--the law that had reprieved
Hilda Cairns from the rope, that left Aliette to revel unpunished in the
arms of her paramour--the law that gave him, the wronged husband, no
remedy for his wrongs save to set the woman who had wronged him
free--free to marry her paramour, to flaunt herself as her paramour's
wife before an uncensorious world?
The Furies were howling at him: "Don't set her free, Hector Brunton.
Don't set her free! Get her back, Hector Brunton! Make her come back to
you! Make her submit--submit her cold unyielding body to your hot
desires. Make her your slave, your puppet--as the armless man was puppet
of the woman you have sworn to hang."
With a great shock of self-disgust, of self-realization, Aliette's
husband controlled his distraught brain. But his loins still quivered to
memory of the lash; sweat beaded his forehead; his hands, as he lifted
the overset chair, felt hot and clammy on the polished rail. For months
he had succeeded in forgetfulness; in chasing the Furies from his mind.
Work had helped him to forget--and Renée, Renée with her red and riotous
hair, her facile, faithless sensuality. Other women too--facile,
unfastidious.
Christ! but he was tired of it all. Tired! Work and women, women and
work--month after month, the same eternal treadmill! Now he was weary;
wearied alike of his work and his women. Remained in him only the one
desire; the desire for vengeance. That desire he would satisfy. And
after that?
What did it matter? He, Hector Brunton, knew the hollowness of all
desires. Even in success, even in hatred, even in vengeance, could be no
enduring satisfaction.
A great mood of self-pity submerged his mind. Fame, riches, every fruit
of his up-reaching--he had won. And the choicest fruits left only a
bitterness in his mouth. How could a man enjoy those fruits in
loneliness?
Christ! but he was lonely--lonely. He hadn't even a friend. Not one
single friend with whom to take counsel! Not one solitary being in all
the world who would listen--as a friend listens--to---to the still,
small scarce-articulate voice which had begun to whisper in Hector
Brunton's soul.
That voice, the still small voice of conscience, was whispering now.
"Cruel," it whispered; "cruel. Set her free. Set her free!"
Heavily Hector Brunton sat him down at his desk. His gray pupils stared
vacantly at the light. He saw two faces in the light: his wife's face,
torture-pale; and the face he imagined Lucy's, heavy-jowled, animal, yet
with a hint of soul behind the animal eyes.
The two faces seemed to be pleading with him, pleading for pity. "We
have known love," they pleaded, "but you--how should you understand?"
The faces vanished; and in their stead he saw Renée--insatiate,
submissive, her mouth still upcurled for his. "_I_ am love," said the
mouth of Renée.
But always the still small voice of conscience whispered in Hector's
soul. "Between love and lust," whispered the voice, "between the good
and the bad that is in you, between the cruelty that cries for vengeance
and the understanding which is pity--choose!"
CHAPTER XXX
1
For Ronald Cavendish, the fortnight which intervened between his
briefing and the Monday of the trial passed like an hour. All that he
had ever hoped for seemed at last within reach: and his mind,
concentrating, could spare no minute for introspection. Even the
personal factor, that Brunton would be his opponent, dwindled into
insignificance when compared with the supreme issue of winning; even his
belief in his client's spiritual guiltlessness seemed paltry before the
difficulties of proving her technically innocent. Yet the belief was
there, keying him to effort, making him utterly oblivious of his
every-day surroundings.
But all that fortnight Aliette scarcely slept. Dozing or waking, two
figures--the figures of Ronnie and of Hector--haunted her thoughts: she
saw them, gowned and wigged, fiercely terrible, at death-grips for the
soul of a woman--a woman whose face showed white and tormented in the
dock--a woman who was no longer Lucy Towers, but herself. Sometimes,
too, behind the woman in the dock, she saw Dennis--her dream-son--Dennis
whose eyes, Ronnie's own blue eyes, stared accusingly at the mother who
had born him to shame.
And all that fortnight, fearful only of interruption, Julia Cavendish
worked on. The leather manuscript-box was nearly full. Almost, the
weapon of her mind's conceiving had been forged sharp to the point. The
watchers at her bedside--even her own son--were no longer quite real.
She saw them as dream-folk; queer dear people who ministered to her
comforts in the hours when her brain, weary of word-fashioning, rested
awhile. Those dream-folk--she knew--all except Ronnie, were growing
anxious, doubtful of the part she played to them. They wanted her to
send for the "medicine-man." But the "medicine-man" could not help. His
part was done. Only courage could help her now--courage and the
certainty of that all-pervading Presence, of the Godhead who, watching
her as she ran her painful race with physical death, understood.
Vaguely--when her son came to bid her au revoir--Julia Cavendish
realized the Presence hovering about the familiar room. Distant
church-bells told her that it was a Sunday, that Ronnie must catch the
afternoon train for London within the hour.
"Just looked in to see if you were all right, before I toddled off,
mater," he said; and hearing his voice she yearned, with a
foreknowledged longing acuter than any physical pain, to abandon the
part she played for him, to tell him--for his own sake--the truth. But
the Presence sustained her; so that she fought back the betraying truth;
so that she answered him, gaily, casually, "I'm feeling like a
two-year-old, son"; so that she sat upright in her bed--oh, for the
comfort to have felt his arms about her shoulders!--and listened for
twenty agonized minutes to his talk of "the case."
"You must wish me luck, mater," he said, as he rose to go. "It'll be a
terrific fight; but I feel, somehow, that I'm going to win."
"You _will_ win," she answered. "Don't worry about me. I'll be all
right. And remember--if by any chance the verdict goes against you--that
no man can do more than his best."
Yet after he had kissed her good-by, after the door had closed gently
behind him, leaving her alone with her thoughts in the slanting sun-rays
of that quiet room, even the knowledge that _she_ had done her best,
even the conviction of Godhead, failed to comfort Julia Cavendish,
mother.
2
The Central Criminal Court of London, though still known as the "Old"
Bailey, is the modernest of modern edifices; domed stone without,
polished marble within. Were it not for the uniformed police on guard at
its narrow portal, and for the particular legal atmosphere which
pervades it even out of session-time, you might at first glance take the
place for a club-house or a bank building. From the tessellated
spaciousness of its ground floor, a central staircase, broad between
marble balusters, up-sweeps to an immense landing where witnesses,
constables, and barristers foregather outside the various oaken doors
which lead into the oak-paneled court-rooms. Below are the cells.
There is nothing theatrical about the Old Bailey. To the highly
sensitized mind its aura is the aura of a museum. The very statues which
garnish it seem aloof from actual life. Yes here London stages her
tensest human dramas; here England dispenses her ultimate justice.
But there was no sense of justice in the mind of Hector Brunton, K.C.,
as, scornful alike of the crowd and the cameramen, he strode bullheaded
through that narrow portal; acknowledged with perfunctory hand the
salutes of the constables; and pushed his way up the stairs, diagonally
across the landing to the robing-room.
Deliberately the man had made his choice. For the sake of his vengeance
on Cavendish, Lucy Towers must die the death. Righteous or unrighteous,
he, the "hanging prosecutor" whom no prisoner had yet eluded, meant to
secure his verdict. His mind, as he adjusted his robe, his wig and
tapes, was the actor's mind, resolute in illusion. Actor-like, his
thoughts discarded all truth that might tell in the victim's favor.
Actor-like, his thoughts clung to their part; the part which should
prove conclusively that this woman, this Lucy Towers, had shot her
husband of malice aforethought and for love of another man.
And yet, making his early way through the crowd towards the door of the