The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
Ronnie. She said I was to give it to you as soon as I possibly could.
She said I was to tell you that you were not to show it to anybody else
until you had spoken to Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. James Wilberforce."
"Man," Aliette had risen; "what can it be?"
"It's a book." Ronnie spoke in a whisper. "The manuscript of a book. I
wonder if she finished it."
"Yes. She finished it." The automaton handed her burden, to Ronnie, and
disappeared.
"She"--Aliette moved away from the sofa where they had been
sitting--"she said you weren't to show it to any one else."
"But that couldn't have included you."
"I'd rather not see--not yet." She was at the door now; and Ronnie,
looking up at her--the parcel still in his hands--saw that she had gone
very pale.
"Darling," he asked, "you're not ill, are you?"
"Ill?" She laughed--unsteadily--her fingers on the door-handle. "Ill?
No, I'm not ill--only ... only----"
"But you are ill." He put the parcel down on the sofa and came across
the room toward her. "Why, you're shaking all over."
She laughed again, hysterically. "I'm not. I'm not. I'm only tired. Worn
out. I'm going to bed. Don't come up, Ronnie. Don't come up." And,
kissing him, she ran from the room.
"Poor Alie," thought the man, "it's been too much for her."
6
Alone in the drawing-room, Ronnie sat staring at the thick wad of
papers, and at the envelope which topped them. "To my son," read the
writing on the envelope; the well-known handwriting with the little
loops at the top of the "o's" and the upright triangles of the "m's" and
"n's."
He took up and opened the envelope. Inside of it, folded, lay a single
sheet of note-paper: "Don't be unhappy, Ronnie. Don't blame yourself.
This book is my last effort for you and Aliette. I feel it is your way
to freedom. Use it as you and James Wilberforce think best. I have just
had news of your great success. It makes me very proud. YOUR MOTHER."
Ronnie's eyes blurred, as Julia's eyes had blurred when her weak hands
penciled the uneven lines. Puzzled and miserable--his heart choking in
his mouth--he turned from the letter to the papers. The papers were in
typescript; six pads, each holed and taped.
"'Man's Law,'" read the topmost paper of all; "'The Story of a Wrong,'
By Julia Cavendish: and by her dedicated to all those of her own sex who
have suffered and are suffering injustice."
Julia's son picked the top pad from the manuscript, turned over the
title-page, and began to read his mother's preface.
For a few lines he read aimlessly, as folk obsessed by grief read, their
thoughts wandering from the written word. Then, with one paragraph, the
words gripped him, so that he forgot even his grief.
"All my life," read the paragraph, "I have believed in the sanctity of
the Christian marriage tie. Believing that the oath taken by a man and a
woman before their God--'so long as ye both shall live'--might only be
set aside by death, I made the safeguarding of that oath a fetish and a
shibboleth. The purpose of this book is to undo, so far as in me lies,
the teachings of my former works on the marriage question; and I embrace
this purpose the more firmly because it has been brought home to me by
personal experience that there are and must always be many cases in
which the application of a rigid doctrine leads to misery. Therefore I
have felt it my duty--a duty not undertaken lightly--to combat that
rigid doctrine; and to plead, in substitution for a code which I now
believe un-Christian, the doctrine of 'The Right to Married Happiness.'"
Interested, Ronnie read on. Outside, rain fell and fell. Within was no
sound save the rustle of turned paper. The first chapter of "Man's
Law"--the second--the third raced through his brain, enthralling him,
holding him spellbound. The words became symbols of speech--speech
itself. It seemed to him as though Julia Cavendish were actually in the
room, as though actually he heard her voice. And the voice told him a
story similar to his own. The story of a Ronald Cavendish and an Aliette
Brunton!
But so grandly did the story draw him on, that only gradually--gradually
as a man sees dawn dissolving night---did Ronnie realize the personal
application of it; realize that here, in words of sheer genius, an
advocate not tonguetied--where he himself would always have been
tonguetied, in Aliette's defense--pleaded not so much the cause of all
the Aliettes in the world as, in sentences now so reasoned that they
convinced the very intellect, now so passionate that they wrung the very
heart, the cause of his own individual Aliette, the cause of Hector
Brunton's wife against her legal owner.
And at that, a little, the lawyer in Ronnie's mind ousted, the lover.
* * * * *
Half-way through the book, he put it down for a moment.
Sentences--certain sentences so venomous that he marveled his mother
could have written them--comments, certain comments all leveled against
one particular character, stuck like needles in his legal mind. His
legal mind said to him: "Slander. Those sentences, those comments, are
actionable."
Then he picked up the manuscript again, and read on--on and
on,--unconscious of the clock-tick from the mantelpiece, of the rain
ceasing without, of the day dawning wan across the Sussex Downs.
* * * * *
Till violently, with the ending of the tale, remembering his mother's
letter, he saw her purpose plain.
"Man's Law" represented Julia's "flaunting policy" carried to its
uttermost extreme! It wasn't fiction at all--it was his own story--his
story, and Aliette's and Hector's--scarcely disguised! He recollected
her interest in the Carrington case--recollected telling her how
Belfield had broken Carrington, at long last, by the aid of the press.
Julia, obviously, had planned to break Aliette's husband in much the
same way. This book once published, Hector Brunton would be compelled
(Julia's photographic memory had etched the husband of her tale so
accurately that no reader could mistake him for other than the "hanging
prosecutor") to bring an action for divorce. Brunton, even as
Carrington, could not permit the knowledge that his wife lived openly
with another man to become the public property of Julia Cavendish's
million readers.
"Yes!"--for a moment hope kindled in Ronnie's dazed mind--"'Man's Law'
would bring Aliette's husband to his senses! Publish the book; and
Brunton _must_ file his petition! Unless--unless he brought suit for
libel. But if he did that, surely he would have to admit that his wife
was living unsued in open adultery. Could a man make that admission--and
still wear silk?"
Ronnie's hope expired; violently reaction set in. His heart quaked. He
saw, in a flash, the thousand consequences which the publication of
"Man's Law"--if, indeed, any publisher would set his imprint on so
libelous a story--must entail. This, his mother's last effort to set
Aliette free, was a two-edged weapon. However wielded, it would have to
be wielded publicly. And publicity--even if it injured his enemy--could
help neither him nor Aliette.
Publish the book--and the whole world would know their story! Yes, but
who, in all the world, knowing their story, would sympathize with them?
Even sympathizing, who would take their side? It took more than a book
to turn public opinion. As far as decent people were concerned, the very
asking for sympathy would alienate it. Suppose Brunton risked the
scandal--sued for libel but not for divorce? Brunton couldn't very well
do that. Still----
Fearfully, clutching the letter and the manuscript, Ronnie stumbled up
the fast-lightening staircase. "Man's Law" seemed like a ton-weight of
social dynamite--of social dynamite he dared not use--in his arms.
7
A night-light still burned on the landing. Still clutching "Man's Law,"
Ronnie stole toward the door of his mother's room. If only he could
speak with her, kneel by her bedside, ask her for counsel! But the door
was locked and he might not go in. Julia Cavendish on whom, lifelong, he
had relied for counsel, could counsel him no more. And fearfully,
doubtfully, dreading lest the weapon she had forged for him should
shiver in pieces if he dared draw it from its scabbard, Julia's son
crept to his dressing-room, and locked the weapon away.
"I'll ask Alie," he thought, "I'll ask Alie what she thinks about it."
But Aliette, when he went in to her, was fast asleep. She lay averted
from the window, her head on her right arm, the tumble of her hair vivid
among the pillows. Every now and then a little tormented moan came from
between her lips.
Listening to that moan, believing--in his ignorance--that Hector Brunton
was the sole cause of it, Ronald Cavendish made oath with himself,
whatever the personal consequences, to use the weapon of his mother's
forging.
CHAPTER XXXV
1
They were burying that flesh which had been Julia Cavendish among the
cypresses of the South London cemetery whither she brought back the
flesh which had been Ronnie's father when Ronnie was still a lad.
To all save three of the mourners it appeared as though death had
conquered scandal, as though their every personal enmity were being laid
to rest. But to James Wilberforce, standing at the brink of the grave,
it appeared that he stood on the brink of a scandal so tremendous that
nothing except the combined brains of Wilberforce, Wilberforce &
Cartwright could prevent a social catastrophe, a regular holocaust of
public reputations; his own, possibly, and Mollie's of a certainty,
included.
Covertly, James Wilberforce looked at the semicircle of facts gathered
round the white-surpliced clergyman. All Julia's family--Benthams,
Edwardses, Robinsons; all her literary friends--Paul Flower, Dot
Fancourt, Jack Coole, Robert Backwell, the Binneys; most of her many
acquaintances among the various circles with which she had been
intimate, were there to do her the last honor.
A little aloof stood the reporters; and at them James Wilberforce
looked, too. "God knows what the newspapers won't say if this thing
isn't hushed up," thought Jimmy.
The letter of the dead, those four handwritten sheets in their bulky
envelope which Mrs. Sanderson had handed to him immediately on his
arrival at Daffadillies, burned the solicitor's pocket. He thought how
cleverly, yet how unwisely "the old lady's" plans had been laid; how, by
adding a certain codicil to her will, she had made it virtually
impossible for her executors to save the situation.
The clergyman was reading. "Man that is born of woman," read the
clergyman, "hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery." "O
holy and most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of
eternal death."
Jimmy's thoughts wandered. "I wonder if I ought to tell Mollie," he
thought. "I wonder if we ought to get married at once. I wonder how the
devil we're going to break things to Mollie's sister. I wonder Mollie's
sister didn't come to the funeral. Better not, I suppose."
The coffin on its canvas slings sank from sight into the moss-lined
grave. It touched the bottom of the grave; and the slings relaxed.
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy," read the
clergyman, as Ronnie sprinkled a handful of earth on the coffin-lid.
"From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even so
saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labors."
James Wilberforce's mind came back to the ceremony. He looked at his
friend. "Poor Ronnie," he mused, "his labors are only just begun." And
so musing, Jimmy's gaze fell on a bearded man with an old-fashioned