The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton
hat." Nevertheless she wanted to. She must! This was _his_ room. His cap
lay on the sofa, his pipe on the mantelpiece. Therefore . . . She
realized with amazement that her hands were already raised to her head.
"Alie, you haven't given me any sugar." Her sister's irritated voice
dispelled the moment's illusion. One hand dropped to her lap, the other
to the sugar-tongs.
"Sorry, dear." She recognized the shyness in her own words, and covered
shyness with a conventional laugh, "I'm getting forgetful in my old
age."
Discussing ages with their bread and butter, they made the original
discovery that a woman is as old as she looks, et cetera. Over hunks of
Mrs. Wiggins's home-made cake, Ronald admitted to thirty-six,
Wilberforce to forty.
"You don't look forty," decided Mollie: and at that moment, just as she
was thinking she had never listened to a more artificial conversation,
Aliette trapped her host's blue eyes in a glance no woman could possibly
mistake.
In a way the glance, so momentary, so quickly veiled that only her heart
assured her that she had actually seen it, resembled the glance she had
trapped in her husband's eyes over dinner. And yet it was utterly
different. It held reverence, a resigned hopelessness, a devotional
quality of which Hector's cold gray pupils could never be capable.
Now, with amazement, she knew herself panicked. Panicked, not because of
the look in his eyes, but because she realized that, in another second,
her own would have responded to them. She was not "shocked" at his
daring; her inaccessible beauty had not passed through seven years of
married life in London without various similar experiences. But she was
"shocked" at her own impulse. Heretofore such glances, even the words
which on occasion accompanied them, had left her completely indifferent,
utterly uncaring, positively contemptuous. This--did not leave her
indifferent. This--this mattered. . . .
Subconsciously, she who never swore began swearing at herself. "You're a
fool, Aliette. A damn fool." Doubt nagged her. "You made a mistake. You
only imagined that glance." The code nagged her. "Even if you didn't
imagine it, he had no right----"
And all the time her outward self, the socially-trained Aliette, was
behaving as though nothing unusual had occurred, filling teacups,
nibbling cake, talking this or that triviality. No, she was not an
ardent church-goer. Yes, her brother-in-law preached splendidly. But she
objected to seeing him in the pulpit. Why? She didn't quite know why; it
seemed too intimate, somehow or other. Like being introduced to the
Deity as a relation by marriage.
Mollie and Wilberforce laughed at that. Their laughter disturbed
Aliette. She and Cavendish sat stupidly silent till church-bells began.
"You'd better come with us. It will do you both good," said Mollie to
the solicitor.
"I haven't been inside a church since I left the army," declared
Wilberforce.
"All the more reason to come with us," smiled Mollie, who liked this big
auburn man, had liked him more and more ever since he was first
introduced.
And to church, casually, those four went.
6
As she knelt by the stone pillar on the thin hard hassock, it seemed to
Hector Brunton's wife that she had forgotten how to pray, that her eyes
were being drawn sideways through her fingers. Only by concentrating
could she achieve a moment's devotion. Settling herself back in the pew,
she was vividly aware of Cavendish's proximity.
By no means a fanatic, Aliette nevertheless accepted her father's
Protestantism. Religion formed part of the code, of those indubitable
laws on which one based existence. But on this particular evening
Protestantism seemed a farce. She could not imagine any god taking
pleasure in the gas-lit ceremonial, in the vacuous-eyed congregation, in
the artificial intonations of the parson or the hymn-numbers on the
board. All these seemed hugely distant from any concept of worship.
Somehow, she caught herself yearning for a richer ceremonial, for a
warmer faith. Somehow, she seemed to remember--dimly out of
childhood--her grandmother's voice:
"My dear, we've decided to forgive. But, O Marie! aren't you lonely?
Don't you feel as though God had gone out of your life?"
And her mother's voice seemed to answer: "Mother, can't you understand?
It's the same God. He hasn't gone out of my life just because I worship
Him differently. He couldn't abandon any woman who sacrificed herself
for love's sake."
The two voices faded into the past.
But now Aliette realized struggle in her soul. It was as though her soul
stood at bay, at bay with some terrible decision; as though her soul
were being swept toward some contest whose ending, whether victory or
defeat, only God could foresee. Once again she felt panic. Yet how
should there be panic here in Key Hatch Church?
Already they were singing the last hymn. This man, this man beside her
was called Cavendish. Ronald Cavendish! She could see his eyes, now
dropped to the hymn-book, now raised again. She could see his ungloved
hands on the pew-rail. She could hear his voice.
And abruptly, panic passed; abruptly, she felt the very spirit of her
a-thrill, a-thrill as though to fine music.
7
Hector Brunton's wife and Julia Cavendish's son said good-by to each
other in the cottage-twinkling darkness at the foot of Key Hatch hill,
shaking hands coolly, impersonally--merest acquaintances. Indeed,
Aliette's "Good night, Mr. Cavendish" sounded a hundred times less
cordial than Mollie's "I hope we shall meet again, Mr. Wilberforce."
And yet forty-eight hours later Aliette bolted.
She bolted, neither with Cavendish nor from Cavendish. She merely bolted
to Devonshire.
To herself she succeeded in pretending that she was running away from
Hector, from the inevitable recurrence of his amorousness; to Hector,
that--hunting being almost over--Mollie's return to Clyst Fullerford
furnished an excellent opportunity for her to pay the annual visit to
her home.
Hector grumbled, but gave in; and the two sisters traveled back
together, Mollie chattering all the way down, Aliette silently
speculating whether "home" would cure the mental and spiritual unease of
which she now felt acutely conscious.
But the unease persisted. Either "home" had changed its attitude toward
her, or else she had changed her attitude toward "home." The little
wayside station with its one porter and its six milk-cans, the up-hill
drive in the twilight, the first sight of the pilastered lodge, meant
less than ever before. Her heart did not warm to anticipation at thought
of the lit drawing-room, of her mother's hair white in the lamp-glow.
Even when her father welcomed her in the antlered hall, she felt like a
visitor.
They seemed to her so old, so settled, so remote from the actuality of
life, these two: Andrew (Aliette was of that age when children think of
parents by their Christian names) with his veined hands, his tired eyes
and patient mouth, his slow voice and stooping shoulders; Marie, thin,
pleasantly querulous, all traces of beauty save the eyes,
wallflower-brown as her daughter's own, dead in the lined face.
The very house, long and low, browned by time, its mullioned windows dim
with staring down the vale, seemed uncaring of her presence. Even her
own room, the room always kept for Aliette, the white furniture bought
for Aliette when she came back from boarding-school in France, could not
give her the peace she sought. These things, and the things in the
gardens, the pink-hearted primulas and the sheathed daffodils, seemed
insentient of trouble, of the trouble in her mind.
It had not been thus when she returned after marriage. Then the place
had smiled its wanderer welcome. Now it was the wanderer who smiled;
wanly; conscious of chill response; conscious--daily and hourly more
conscious--of an issue she must face unaided.
People, people she had known since cradle-days, came and went, busied as
ever with the same pleasant trivial country round, keeping much to
themselves, a little resentful of the war-rich who were creeping into
Devonshire, ousting war-poor county-folk, transforming old places,
building themselves new.
"Dear Aliette," said the people she had known since cradle-days, "you're
looking younger than ever."
"Dear people," she used to answer, "how nice of you to say so." For
outwardly she remained the same calm Fullerford who had married a
Brunton. Nobody, not even Mollie, guessed the emotions that obsessed
her. To them she was Hector Brunton's wife; not a girl of twenty-seven,
dreaming herself in love, in love for the first time.
Outwardly, she remained so calm. Her eyes were unruffled pools; her
voice a mannered suavity. Even the Martins failed to irritate her.
And Eva Martin would have irritated most sisters. The dignity of
"colonel's lady" sat heavily on Eva's narrow shoulders. She resembled
Mollie in vivacity, Aliette in complexion; but her eyes were their own
cold blue, her hair its own fading gold, and her lips, which smiled
often, but never in affection, two thin lines of anemic red across her
undimpled cheeks.
Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Martin's husband--a tall, gaunt soldier-man,
uncompromising in speech, direct of dark eye, whom Aliette and Mollie
would have liked well enough had he not been Eva's--spent a full ten
days. They brought their children with them; and left them behind when
they departed: two well-drilled little girls, who gave no trouble to
anybody--and no enjoyment.
* * * * *
So, for Aliette, Devon March warmed toward Devon April, bringing neither
peace of mind nor solution of the issue; only the certainty that she who
thought herself invulnerable had succumbed within thirty-six hours of
making his acquaintance to the temporary attractions of a man.
"For, of course," she used to muse, "it was only temporary; a moment's
infatuation; the sort of thing I've always heard about and never
believed in. Curious, that I should still think so much about it! Am I
still thinking about _it_--or about _him_? I _am_ being funny. What's
the matter with me? Love at first sight? The _coup de foudre_? But
that's ludicrous; simply ludicrous. The sooner I get back to London and
leave off brooding, the better."
Nevertheless, as she ordered Caroline Staley to pack, Hector Brunton's
wife realized herself desperately grateful that her husband--as
announced by telegram--had been "called out of town."
Such wires, coinciding with vacation-times, usually signified that he
had grown weary of entreating her fastidiousness!
CHAPTER III
1
If you, being a stranger to this London of ours, inquire after Temple
Bar, your inquiry will be fruitless.
Temple Bar was removed about forty years since; but if you traverse the
Strand, and, leaving the jostle of the Strand behind you, venture
on--past Mr. Gladstone's statue and the two churches which part the
streaming traffic as rocks part the waters of a river--you will become
suddenly aware of two pointed wings and a grotesque dragon-shaped head
showing black between high buildings against a narrow slip of sky.
This is the "Griffin." He stands where Temple Bar stood. Above him tower
the clock and gray pinnacles of the law courts. Westward, he looks
toward the seethe of near Aldwych, and far Trafalgar Square. Behind him
clang the news-presses of Fleet Street. At his right wing and his left
you will find the advocates of our law; "barristers," as we call them.
They are not quite of the every-day world, these barristers. Their
minds, even their bodies, seem to move more precisely. The past