1
When Aliette looks back on the three days that followed her lover's
first avowal, she can only see herself moving in a strange, rapt
exhilaration from room to room of Hector's great house in Lancaster
Gate.
Hector, she realized thankfully, would be away till Monday evening: the
other inmates of the house--Mollie, Caroline Staley, Lennard the butler,
and his female satellites--seemed as though they had been screen-folk,
flat phantoms, alive only to the eye.
Vaguely, among those phantoms, she can remember Jimmy Wilberforce, very
correct in his evening-clothes, sitting between her and Mollie in the
big cream-paneled dining-room.
Dinner over--Aliette remembers--she invented some pretext to leave the
pair unchaperoned, and withdrew to the balcony.
It was good to be alone, alone with one's dreams--dreams that made even
Bayswater Road beautiful. The road seemed a pathway of radiance. High
silver edged it either side; between, the hasting car lights streamed
their fans of luminous crystal. Here and there among the trees beyond,
her eyes caught the orange flicker of matches, the red of kindled
cigarettes.
"Under those trees," she thought, "Ronnie whispered, 'Aliette, don't
hate me for loving you.'"
As though she could ever hate him!
A little breeze, blowing cool across London, ruffled her hair. Patting a
scarcely displaced curl, she thought: "He kissed these fingers of mine.
Another time he will kiss me on the lips. My lips shall answer his
kisses."
And all those three days and nights, thought went no further. For the
moment it sufficed to know one's self adored and adoring, to dream the
impossible, to vision oneself untrammeled as Mollie, a virgin in bridal
white standing meek-eyed before one's chosen.
2
But Hyde Park, of a crowded Sunday morning, is no place for dreams:
rather is it an epitome of actual London. Here, all along with brown
men, yellow men, black men, swathed Arabs, Poles, Czecho-Slovakians,
Turks, Spaniards, 5 per cent. Americans, and even (such is the bland
insouciance of London) a Bolshevik or so, foregather representatives of
all the thousand castes between peer and proletarian which people
Democropolis.
Not that these castes commingle! Each, as though disciplined, has its
assembly-place. Aliette and Mollie, for instance, taking the diagonal
path from Victoria Gate, would no more have let themselves intrude upon
the communistic sanctum near Marble Arch, than the fulminating prophets
of social equality and unlimited class-warfare would have dared invade
the stretch of turf and gravel by the Achilles statue which custom
reserves for "church-parade."
"We really ought to have gone to church first," said Mollie.
"Ought we?" answered an absent-minded sister.
Aliette's thoughts were very far from church. That morning, alone in the
bow-windowed library among the heavy pictures and the heavier books, she
had tried to be her old self again, to reason out the whole issue
involved by Ronnie's declaration. But her reasoning had been all
confused, baffled, and confounded of the emotions.
One fact only, as she now saw, had emerged star-clear from her hour of
introspection: the fact that she loved Ronnie. And she had no right to
love Ronnie! She was a married woman. Socially, and in the eyes of the
law, she belonged to Hector.
Walking, she tried to delude herself. Perhaps the love was all on her
side; perhaps her dreams would endure, bringing no reality.
But even the momentary delusion did not endure. Peremptorily her heart
assured her of Ronnie's devotion, of its permanence. Irrevocably she
knew that, sooner or later, the whole issue would have to be faced.
The two sisters walked on, silent in the sunshine, till they came to the
assembly-place of their caste. There, still silent, they sat them down
under the trees.
All about them, some seated, some strolling, were other well-groomed
people. Beyond the low-railed turf, a compact, orderly crowd sauntered
four deep along the sidewalk. Beyond them, occasional cars, occasional
carriages drew up to disgorge fresh arrivals.
"Morning!" said a man's voice. Aliette, who had been entertaining a
stranger's Pekingese with the tip of her unfurled parasol, looked up;
and saw James Wilberforce.
James Wilberforce asked if he might sit with them, and took the answer
for granted. "Fine day for cutting church," he grinned, as he arranged
his hefty bulk, his striped trousers, his top-hat (which shone with a
positive mating splendor), his "partridge" cane, and his buckskin gloves
in the appropriate poses. "Been here long?"
"No," Mollie answered. "We've only just come."
"Seen anything of Cavendish?"
"Not so far, Jimmy."
"Expect he and his mater'll be along pretty soon. I'm lunching with them
at Bruton Street."
"Are you?"
And suddenly Aliette panicked. "I wish I could bolt," thought Aliette.
"I ought to bolt. He mustn't catch me here, in public, undecided. I wish
I hadn't come. I might have known he'd be here. Oh, why didn't I reason
things out to a finish this morning?"
* * * * *
Nor was Aliette Brunton the only one to panic! Ronald Cavendish, walking
with his mother from Down Street to Hyde Park Corner, felt equally
unsure of himself. He, too, after three days of rapt exhilaration, after
three nights during which the one predominant thought had been, "She
yielded her hand, she loves me," had tried to face the issue
deliberately.
But deliberation seemed utterly to have deserted him. Consecutive
thought was impossible. Between him and thought shimmered the radiant
face of Aliette, the wide, unstartled, tender eyes of Aliette, the
yielding fingers of Aliette as he raised them to his lips.
They turned out of Piccadilly into the park.
"A weak sermon," said his mother.
"I'm afraid I didn't listen very carefully."
"So I perceived." Julia, covertly examining her son, saw that he looked
pale, agitated. His dress, stereotyped enough in conception, betrayed a
certain carelessness: the tie had been hastily knotted, a button was
missing from one of the gloves. She felt, rather than knew, that he
resented her company.
Mother intuition alone made Julia conscious of that resentment. But
psychology, the long training of an astute mind, led her instinctively
to the root of it. "Some woman or other," she decided. "Nothing else
could make him resent _me_." And she remembered, with an acute pang of
jealousy, his affair with her sister's child, Lucy Edwards. Had it not
been for her, Ronnie would have married Lucy. She could not regret
having prevented the match--marriages between first cousins, whatever
the church might say about them, ought not to be encouraged.
Nevertheless, if Ronnie _had_ married Lucy, he would at least have
married a known quantity. Whereas now, for all Julia knew, he might have
fallen in love with a divorcée.
For undoubtedly love must be the cause of his mental trouble. No other
emotion had ever made him resentful of her company. Moreover, why should
he be troubled if the girl were eligible?
"I think we'll cross now," she said, trying not to feel hurt. "It may be
cooler under the trees."
He gave her his arm across the road; and as they threaded their way,
still arm in arm, through the saunterers, Julia Cavendish, bowing to
various acquaintances, forgot her hurt in sheer maternal pride--a pride
which had not diminished by the time that James Wilberforce came over to
detain them from strolling.
* * * * *
Watching those three make their way through the sunlit crowd, Hector
Brunton's wife felt the social sense desert her.
This creature, dressed so like its fellows that its fellows scarcely
turned to regard it, was her man, her Ronnie. He, and he alone among the
crowd, could move her to emotion. She could feel the limbs under her
silk frock trembling to his approach. And suddenly, desperately, she
hated the crowd; seeing it a living barrier between them. If only Ronnie
could take her up, there and then, in his arms; if only he could carry
her away, away from all these futile people. All the people about her
grew blurred, unreal. She could see clearly only one face, the serious
blue-eyed face of her man.
"How do you do?" said the voice of Julia Cavendish. And a moment
afterwards, as she and Ronnie shook hands, reality and social sense
alike came back to the mind of Aliette Brunton.
She found herself sitting pleasantly in the park, surrounded by pleasant
people. She knew a great many of these people: but best of all she knew
the man beside her. "Poor Ronnie!" she thought. "He doesn't know what to
say for himself. He feels awkward. It is rather an awkward moment. I'd
better make conversation." And she began to make conversation in her
calmest, most charming social manner, with Ronnie's mother, inquiring
about her health.
"Oh, but I'm really quite well," protested Julia. "A little overworked,
perhaps. At least, so the doctors say. Personally I haven't much faith
in doctors. But I'm taking their advice, and knocking off for a month or
so."
"Does that mean that we aren't to expect a novel this autumn?"
"I'm afraid so." The authoress laughed to herself. It was so like "the
public" to imagine that novels were written in a few months, between May
and July, for publication in the autumn.
But abruptly, even while she was still laughing to herself, Ronnie's
mother grew aware of trouble. Her mind sensed drama: a drama actually in
progress; here; close beside her. This "charming woman," this Mrs.
Brunton, radiated, despite her charm, an aura of tension, of the acutest
mental tension. Meanwhile Ronnie had hardly opened his mouth since they
sat down. For the next ten minutes Julia Cavendish also "made
conversation."
"Almost time we were getting a move on; it's past one o'clock,"
interrupted James Wilberforce--and precipitated crisis.
For that this was crisis, a definite thought-crisis, each of the
participants in it--Julia, Aliette, Ronnie--recognized as they rose to
their feet. Behind their conventionally smiling faces seethed minds so
violently perturbed that to each it seemed impossible for thought to
remain unbetrayed.
"This is the woman," thought Julia Cavendish. "This is the woman whom
Ronnie loves. Somehow I must save him from her. Somehow I must save them
both. Otherwise it means ruin, absolute ruin. Disgrace!"
But no thought of ruin troubled the lovers.
"I can't let him go like this," thought the woman. "I can't lose him. I
must speak. I must say, 'Ronnie, Ronnie, I don't hate you for loving
me.'"
And the man thought: "I wonder if she _is_ hating me. I wonder why she's
so reserved, so aloof. I must find out. I must have a word with her.
Just one word--alone."
And he had his word, the barest whisper as their hands clasped: "May I
telephone you to-night?"
Only the tiniest pressure of Aliette's gloved fingers gave consent.
3
"It was the mater who insisted on my having a telephone," thought
Ronnie. "The mater who furnished this room for me."
He looked round the room--at the Chippendale settee, the bookcases, the
eighteenth-century engravings on the beige wall-paper. Looking, his
heart misgave him.
The mater! He owed her so much in life. And now--now he was
contemplating, more than contemplating, making definite, absolutely
definite, a decision of which she could never approve, which might even
cost him her love.
The mater! Ever since that moment of crisis in Hyde Park--through
luncheon, through the rainy afternoon which followed luncheon, over the
dinner she had insisted on his sharing--Ronnie had been watching her
face, speculating about her, wondering what she would say if she knew.
Now suddenly it seemed to him that she did know.
He tried to put the idea out of mind. But fragments of their
conversation--fragments which memory could only imagine to have been
hints--kept recurring to him. She had spoken--and this was rare with
her--about his father; about a recent matrimonial shipwreck; about her
article in the "Contemplatory." And not once, after Wilberforce left
them, had she mentioned--Aliette!
The Chippendale clock on the mantelpiece gave a preliminary wheeze, and
began chiming ten o'clock. At the sound, misgivings vanished. She--not
his mother, but Aliette, Aliette, the very thought of whose name made
the pulses hammer in his head--must no longer be kept waiting.
For a moment the shining black of the telephone fascinated Ronnie's
eyes; for a moment, as one meditating a great decision, he stood
stock-still. Then impulsively he lifted the receiver from its hook.
To his imaginative mind, the telephone became instrument of their fate.
Waiting for the call, he saw, as one mesmerized, all their past, all the
possibilities of their future; forgetting, in that mesmeric instant, his
mother, the law, Brunton, everything in the world except the vivid of
Aliette's hair, her deep brown eyes, the poised exquisite slenderness of
her.
And an instant later he heard her voice. It came to him, very clear,
very deliberate, across the wires:
"Is that you?"
"Yes."
"You're very late."
"I'm sorry. I didn't get away from Bruton Street till nearly ten. Are
you alone?" Ronnie hated himself for that question: it sounded almost
furtive. But Aliette's answer was the very spirit of frankness.
"Yes. I'm quite alone. In the library. Mollie's gone to bed. Why do you
ask?"
"Because--there's something I want to say to you--Aliette." He paused a
second, mastered by emotion; then again he said: "Aliette?"
"Yes--Ronnie."
"You're not angry with me--about Thursday?"
"No." It seemed to him that he could almost see her lips move. "No. I'm
not angry--with you: only with myself."
"You know----" He hesitated. "You know that I love you."
"Yes, I know that." A little laugh. "It doesn't make things any easier
for me, does it?"
"I want to see you again. Soon. May I?"
For a long time, the wire gave no answer. At last, very faintly, as
though she were thinking rather than speaking, Aliette whispered: "This
isn't playing the game."
"I know that. I've tried----" He could not bring himself to finish the
sentence.
"Oughtn't we to go on--trying?"
"No." Now the man could actually vision her. It was as though she were
in the room. Passion--banishing hesitancy--had its way with him.
"Aliette! I can't go on living if I don't see you again. I've got to see
you. Soon. To-morrow. You will meet me, to-morrow, won't you! I can't
bear the thought of another three days without you."
Hesitancy returned, banishing passion. "I've offended her," he thought.
"She's rung off." But after an interminable silence, Aliette answered:
"Where do you want me to meet you?" Then, faint again, and very shy:
"I've got--we've got--such a lot of things to say to one another. Hadn't
we--hadn't I--hadn't it better be in your rooms? I could come to you
to-morrow afternoon. At about five o'clock. Would that do?"
"Aliette--dear----"
Before Ronnie could collect his wits for a further reply, he heard a
whispered "Good night," and the click of a replaced receiver.