1
By that strange perversity which is peculiar to loving womanhood,
Aliette's first thoughts--as the taxi rattled her away from Jermyn
Street--were for her husband.
For the second time in three years her mood relented. "Poor Hector!" she
thought. "He'll be home when I get back. It isn't much of a home for
him--ours."
Yet, even relenting, she knew that she could never forgive. The physical
Hector was dead, killed by her knowledge of his infidelities--as dead to
her as the physical Ronnie was alive.
Then she forgot Hector, remembered only Ronnie. Her memory thrilled to
his caresses. She began to yearn for him with a bodily yearning so acute
that--had he been beside her in the taxi--she would have thrown her arms
round his neck.
Her mind whirled. This way. That way. She, Aliette Brunton, who had
always thought "that sort of thing" the prerogative of shop-girls and
chorus-ladies, was yearning, physically, for a man. It was all wrong.
She should never have gone to his rooms. They must part. She would never
be parted from him. He ought never to have made love to her. She would
have died if he had not made love to her!
She tried to blame herself for her weakness; she tried to think: "I made
no struggle. I yielded everything. I virtually threw myself at his head.
I should have been strong. I should have denied him my hands, my lips."
But her heart refused to be blamed; her heart said: "He loves you. You
love him. Nothing else matters."
The taxi swung into Bayswater Road; and instinctively Aliette opened her
vanity-bag. Glancing at her face in the mirrored lid, she remembered
Hector again. Hector mustn't see her as Ronnie had seen her. Hector
mustn't find out!
Once more, she felt abased. Once more her fastidiousness revolted--this
time from concealment. The commonplace impulse--to confess--appeared,
disappeared. What was there to confess? Nothing!
Nevertheless, paying her driver, mounting the pillared door-step,
ringing as she let herself into the square tessellated hall, Aliette
felt guilty. In thought, if not in act, she was little better than the
husband whom Lennard, appearing from his lower regions, announced to be
in the library.
Caroline Staley joined Lennard in the hall. Aliette handed her gloves,
her bag and parasol to the maid; asked Lennard the time; heard it was a
quarter past seven; hesitated the fraction of a second; and pushed open
the library door.
Hector sat in his big leather armchair by the bow-window--the "Evening
Standard" on his knees, and a glass of whisky and water at his elbow.
His gray eyes lit pleasurably at sight of her. As he came across the
room with a smiled "My dear, how well you're looking," Aliette realized
with the shock of a sudden revelation the cruelty latent in those thin
lips.
(She _was_ looking well, thought Hector; her very best. This evening,
that subtle incomprehensible process, process alike mental and physical,
which he had divined at work in her for so long, seemed to have attained
its completion. Her very complexion showed it.)
"Am I?" she answered.
He gave her the cheek-kiss of connubial compromise; and she schooled
herself not to shudder. "This is the price I must pay," she thought,
"for those other kisses."
The front-door bell rang; and, a minute afterwards, Mollie rustled in.
"Hello, Hector," said Mollie. "So you've got back."
The girl's eyes were all luminous, subtly afire with happiness. Kissing
Aliette, she whispered, "I must talk to you."
To Brunton, watching the sisters go arm in arm through the door, came a
sharp pang of sex-consciousness. As Aliette, so Mollie: from each there
radiated that same incomprehensible aura of physical and mental
completion. The aura excited Brunton, stimulated him, roused his
imagination almost to mania. All the way home in the car--and usually
the car distracted him--he had been thinking of his wife, goading his
mind with the mirage of the past. Now the prongs of the goad penetrated
through the mind to the very flesh.
He poured himself another drink, and stood for a long while in
contemplation of a photograph on his desk; a photograph of Aliette,
taken just before they became engaged. He remembered how then, as
always, her fastidiousness had lured him; how then, as now, he had ached
to conquer her fastidiousness, to make her desires one with his own. And
always, from the very outset to this very day, he had failed. Against
the refinement in her, even when she yielded, his will to sex-mastery
beat in vain; till finally there came the break.
The break, as Hector saw it, had been of her making. The things he most
desired of her, the unfastidious intimacies, she either could not or
would not endure. Those intimacies she had driven him elsewhere to seek.
And he had sought them for three years; sought them, he now realized,
without assuaging his desire.
Dressing for dinner, he heard--from the room she had barred against
him--his wife's voice. His wife and her sister were talking, talking.
The incomprehensible talk maddened Hector, even as the incomprehensible
physical aura of them had maddened him. Surely--surely it was high time
to put an end to this--this nonsensical chastity.
2
Her sister's dressing-hour confidences seemed to Aliette the final
complication. Mollie had met James Wilberforce, by accident, in Bond
Street. Although too late for tea, he had insisted on her eating an ice
at Rumpelmayer's. At Rumpelmayer's they ran into the admiral and
Hermione. The admiral had spoken of his meeting with Alie.
"Where did _you_ have tea?" asked the girl.
"Never mind about my tea," retorted her sister. "Tell me _your_ news."
Whereupon Mollie, not in the least hesitantly, told it. Jimmy had asked
her to marry him! That is to say, he had spoken about marriage in such a
way as to leave no doubt about his intention to propose. That was one of
the admirable things about Jimmy. He never beat around the bush. She, of
course, had "choked him off." Jimmy must be taught that these things
couldn't be fixed up over an ice in a tea-shop.
"Still," concluded the modern young, "I'm very fond of James. The
chances are that I shall marry him in the autumn."
"And James Wilberforce," thought Aliette, as she went down to dinner,
"is just _the_ person whose wife's family must be _sans reproche_!"
Dinner completed her mental _bouleversement_. Hector--she divined even
before they sat down--was in a difficult mood. Hector insisted on
champagne, insisted on their sharing it. He grew boisterous on the first
glass. "They would have a cheery evening," said Hector. "They would get
the car round after dinner, and drive to Roehampton." But on Aliette's
suggesting that he and Mollie should go alone, he dropped both the
scheme and his pose of boisterousness. Catching the look in his eyes,
she began to be frightened.
Only twice before--once after her first discovery of his infidelities,
and once a year later--had Aliette seen that particular look in Hector's
eyes. It betokened contest. Not the casual entreaties of recent months,
but contest--contest almost physical! Formerly, though resenting the
indignity of such a contest, she had never dreaded it. But
to-night--to-night was different.
When Lennard brought in the port, Hector refused to be left alone. They
stayed with him while he drank two glasses; and again, watching him,
Aliette's mood relented. The look in his eyes had grown soft, almost
pleading. "Poor old Hector," she thought; "so many women could have
given him all that he requires from a wife. Only I--I can't. I'm
Ronnie's--Ronnie's."
Once more her mind whirled. This way. That way. Guilt, fear, love,
uncertainty drove the wheels of her mind.
Yet both mind and body possessed one certainty: that the physical Hector
had died three years since.
3
It was late, nearly midnight; but Mollie still sat strumming on the
piano in the big balconied drawing-room.
Ever since dinner began the girl had been conscious of domestic tension.
She could see, over the shining instrument, that neither husband nor
wife listened to the music. They sat, either side the fireplace,
avoiding speech, avoiding each other's eyes.
Occasionally, when he thought himself unobserved, Hector would glance at
Alie. Mollie knew, of course, that Alie didn't get on very well with
Hector. On more than one of her visits to them there had been such
periods of tension. But this--to the girl's intuition--seemed far more
serious, far nearer definite crisis than anything before. Somehow the
situation frightened her; somehow she felt averse to leaving Alie alone
with Hector. All the same, one couldn't go on playing ragtimes till
dawn.
Mollie fired a final rafale on the bass keys, and closed the piano.
"I'm going to bed," she announced. "You too, Alie?"
"Not just yet." Aliette kissed her sister good night. During the last
two hours her relenting mood had almost evaporated under the fire of
Hector's covert glances. Her mind no longer whirled. She knew
now--definitely--that contest between them was unavoidable; and, though
she still dreaded it, her courage refused to postpone the ordeal.
The door closed behind Mollie; and, after a moment's hesitancy, Hector
leaned forward from his chair. Aliette saw that there were pearls of
sweat on his forehead. His hands gripped the blue grapes of the cretonne
chair-cover as though he would squeeze them dry.
"I'm glad she's gone to bed," he said hoarsely.
"Are you? Why?"
"Because it's time that you and I had things out with one another."
"What things?" Her voice sounded a little shy, but she no longer averted
her eyes. They met his--brown cold and resolute, against gray kindling
to passion.
"Everything. Aliette," he began to plead with her, "we can't go on like
this for ever."
"Why not?"
"Because the whole position's intolerable. Either you're my wife, or
you're not. I--I can't stand this sort of life."
"What sort of life?"
"You know perfectly well what I mean. Aliette," he pleaded again, "can't
we make a fresh start--to-night?"
She felt her whole heart turning icy to him as she answered: "We
threshed that matter out a very long time ago. I can see no use in
referring to it again."
"Possibly you can't." Hector rose. Her very aloofness urged him, despite
better judgment, to immediate mastery. "But you're not the only one to
be considered. As your husband, I have certain rights."
"If you have, I shouldn't advise you to try and enforce them."
The words sounded calm enough; but there was no calm in Aliette's heart.
Suddenly she grew conscious that the sense of rectitude which had
sustained her for three years sustained her no longer. In thought she
had descended to her husband's level. Her cheeks flushed.
"Why shouldn't I enforce them?" The flush did not escape his eye.
Perhaps, after all, she was no different from other women, from the
women who liked one to be forceful. He made a movement towards her. "Why
shouldn't I enforce them?" he repeated.
"Because you have no rights." Even his blurred judgment knew better than
to touch her. "Because you forfeited them--three years ago."
"That old affair," he muttered sullenly; and drew away from where she
sat. Then, excusing himself, "Renée's in Australia. She's been in
Australia two years. I paid her passage----"
Proudly, coldly, Aliette answered him back: "I hope you do not discuss
your wife with your mistresses in the same way that you discuss your
mistresses with your wife."
The cold pride weakened him. "You're very harsh. I made a mistake--three
years ago. I admitted it at the time. I admit it once more. I've
made--other mistakes. But that's all over. You're a woman, a well-bred
woman. You can't understand these things."
Three days since she would not have understood; now, understanding a
little, she relented again.
"Hector--I'm very sorry. But it's--it's impossible."
He came toward her again; bent down, and tried to take her hand. She
drew it away from him. The overwhelming physical hunger of his eyes
worried her. His feet, on the white rug, showed suddenly enormous,
grotesque--grotesque as his affection.
"Why is it impossible?"
She thought how often she had asked herself that same question; knew
that--in Ronnie's arms--she had at last found the answer; knew that she
must lie. And she hated lying. Yet more than lying she hated the
knowledge that her body, which had lain in Ronnie's arms, should be
cause of that overwhelming hunger in Hector's eyes.
She said quietly, "Must we go over all this old ground again?" And since
he did not answer: "It does no good. I don't want to hurt you more than
I can help. Won't you just leave things as they are? Won't you believe
me when I tell you that it's just--impossible?"
His legal mind, suddenly active, caught at the pleading note in her
voice; fastened on it. "You're very solicitous, apparently, about my
feelings?"
For a second, wondering if he could suspect, she grew fearful. Then,
putting away fear, she rose and faced him. The flush had gone from her
cheeks; her eyes--aloof, impersonal--told him the utter hopelessness of
his cause. And with that knowledge came suspicion--a suspicion formless
as the first shadow-haze of storm in a brazen sky.
"I don't wish to hurt you," she reiterated. "But the thing you ask is
out of the question; and will always be out of the question. Even the
discussion of it offends me."
He took a step towards her; but she did not recoil.
"Aliette--do you realize the meaning of what you've just said?"
"Perfectly." Her eyes met his, beat them down.
"And what do you expect me to do under the circumstances?" Again
suspicion came to him; and with suspicion, anger at his own impotence.
"You're not a child. You know perfectly well what happens to a man whose
wife refuses to live with him. I've never pretended to be a saint: I've
left that to you."
"Hector!" Temper clenched her fingers. Her whole fastidiousness revolted
against the man, against the topic he would not relinquish.
"I'm sorry if you're shocked"--all his cruelty wanted to shock her, to
see her fastidiousness in degradation--"but I'm trying to tell you the
truth--just for a change. If you persist in your saintliness, there's
only one course open to me. Another Renée! A man can't live without a
woman. It isn't fair to his nature. It isn't healthy."
"Healthy!" she burst out.
"Yes. Healthy. Does that upset you?"
Her eyes blazed as she answered: "How dare you talk to me like that? How
dare you? Healthy! I suppose that was your idea when you married _me_.
You took me--medicinally."
"Aliette!" Her fury cowed the cruelty in him. "I married you because I
loved you. I love you still."
"Love!" Her cheeks kindled. Caution was ripped loose from her as a sail
is ripped loose by the wind. The shreds of it flapped against her mind,
infuriating her. That this man who might have been father of her
children should cloak his lusts with that divine word, seemed the
ultimate defilement. "Love!" Her breasts heaved. "Don't talk to me of
love. Talk of your rights, of your health, if you like; but spare me the
degradation of what it pleases you to call your love."
At that, definitely, the lawyer in Brunton suspected. Black thoughts
drove and drove, thunder-cloud-like, across the sky of his mind; and
through the rifts in those thunder-clouds his mind saw two visions--his
wife, infernally desirable, infernally distant from the reach of his
desires, and a woman to be probed, a hostile witness for
cross-examination.
"You speak as though you were an authority on the subject," he sneered;
and, as she deigned no answer, "a saintly authority."
"You're insolent." The last shred of her caution parted. "Insolent."
"Perhaps"--his voice dropped two full tones--"I have the right to be
insolent."
"Explain yourself, please."
He came so close to her that she could see every pore in the skin of his
face. "I should hardly have thought an explanation necessary. I said,
'Perhaps I have the right to be insolent.' It is for you to explain
why"--his lips worked--"you regard 'what I am pleased to call my love
for you' as a degradation."
"And if I refuse to explain?"
"There is only one conclusion to be drawn."
"And that is?" she dared him.
Abruptly, Brunton the lawyer became Brunton the husband. He no longer
wanted to cross-examine; he wanted to possess--to possess this woman.
Why should he not possess her? She was as much his as the furniture in
his home, the books in his chambers. By law and by religion, she owed
him her body. He had always been chivalrous to her; he had always tried
to fall in with her whimsies, to be kind. _She_ had never been kind. All
she had tried to do was to hurt him.
"And that conclusion is?" she flung at him.
God! How much she could hurt him. God! How he wished to spare himself.
He wanted her so; his whole body ached for her little hands, for her
lips, for the touch of her hair. Why should she thus goad him? Even
if--even if she had cared--virtuous women did care sometimes,
platonically of course--for somebody else, he could forgive her.
He did not want, even, to forgive. He only wanted to know nothing. He
only wanted her to be kind to him, to let him love her--in his own way.
Without all this--all this fuss.
But her eyes refused him kindness; her lips demanded their answer. She
maddened him with her rigid lips, with her blank unfriendly scrutiny.
"Your conclusion, please, Hector?"
"Since you insist," the words seemed torn from the man's throat, "the
conclusion I draw is that--you're in love with somebody else."
He had expected indignation, furious abuse, furious denial; anything but
the deadly calmness with which she answered: "And supposing there were
somebody else? What right would you have to object?"
Aliette saw Hector recoil as though she had struck him; saw rage,
incredulity, fear, apprehension, chase in scarlet chaos across his face.
His thin lips writhed--as though in torment. But she could feel no pity
for his torment. In her eyes, he was the beast, the defiling beast:
defeated, he yet stood, shifty on those great feet of his, between her
and happiness, between her and her chance of motherhood, between her
and--Ronnie.
"Well," she shot at him, "what right would you have to object?"
"I should have the right," he stammered, "the right that any husband
possesses. But you're not serious. For God's sake, tell me you're not
serious. I haven't been such a bad husband to you. I haven't deserved
this----"
Suddenly she remembered Ronnie's words: "Unless he lets you divorce him.
Why not? It's done every day." Suddenly she remembered Hector's own
words, the speech he had insisted she should read after the Ellerson
case.
"You're not serious," he challenged.
"I'm perfectly serious. Please answer my question. And before you answer
it, let me remind you of something you said in public not more than a
fortnight ago. You said: 'A woman on marriage does not become her
husband's property.' I want to know if you still abide by that
question."
"And I"--rage mastered the apprehension in him--"I want to know,
definitely, if there _is_ anybody else."
Her lips pursed to silence. She could almost see Ronnie--and her silence
was all for him. For herself she had no fear, only the violent instinct
to be free, to be free at any cost, from Hector Brunton.
"Answer me!" He almost shouted at her.
Quietly, she answered, "There is nobody else--in the way you mean."
"Will you swear?"
"You have my word. If that's not enough for you----"
The unfinished sentence tortured him. He saw himself alive, tormented;
her as a statue of fate, unmoving, cold by his cold fireside. If only
she would make some movement--not stand there like a statue: her lips
rigid, her hands taut, every line of her body tense under the frozen
draperies.
"I don't doubt your word," he said sullenly.
"Then answer my question. Do you regard me as your property or not? If I
asked you for my freedom, would you give it to me?"
"You mean--let you divorce me?"
For a moment, aware of hypocrisy, Aliette hesitated. Then she said,
"Yes."
"On what grounds?"
"Your infidelities."
"My infidelities!" He laughed, his legal mind seeing the whole strength
of his position. "You have no proof of them. And even if you had,
infidelity by itself is no ground for divorce. Besides"--his cruelty
could not forbear the blow--"you've condoned them."
"Condoned them! I?"
"Yes. You. By not leaving my house. By continuing to live with me."
"That's untrue. I've never lived with you, since--since I found out."
"You'll never make the world believe that."
"What do I care about the world?"
"Aliette"--for the last time he forced himself to plead with
her,--"think of my position, our position. Even if it were legally
possible, you wouldn't ask me----"
He continued to plead till he felt utterly worn out, utterly beaten;
till it seemed to him that he had been arguing with her--arguing
uselessly--for hours. And all the time he argued, one thought nagged at
him: "There _is_ somebody else. There must be somebody else. I must find
out who he is."
"Then you refuse," she was saying. "You refuse me my freedom. You go
back on your own words."
She, too, felt worn out. She could not even hate the man, because she
had no right to hate him. At least--Mollie's words about James
Wilberforce came into her weary mind--Hector had not beaten around the
bush. He had been straight-forward enough; whereas she--she was not
being straight-forward, was not playing the game. But the instinct to be
free did not abate its violence.
"Very well"--the cross-examiner in Brunton urged him to the playing of
his last card,--"I won't go back on my words. I'll admit the justice of
everything you've said. You shall have your freedom." Her eyes lit; and
his suspicion became certainty. "I'll arrange everything. There need be
very little scandal; only the usual fake--a suit for restitution of your
conjugal rights. You'll get an order of the court, an order for me to
return to you. You needn't worry, I sha'n't comply with it. After
that----"
He broke off, watching her. Her face had softened, renewed its coloring.
Yet she was nervous. She fidgeted ever so slightly, first on one
white-shod foot, than on the other.
"But before I consent, there's one condition I must make; one question I
must ask you." His voice grew stern, became the voice of the K.C.
"Before I take any steps in this matter, I must have your assurance,
your definite assurance, that you are not asking for your freedom with a
view--with a view"--he hesitated--"to marrying any one else."
The blood ebbed from Aliette's cheeks: it seemed to her that her heart
had stopped beating. This was the test! One downright lie--and she might
win to freedom. That issue she saw clearly. But she saw another
issue--the issue between herself and Ronnie. Even though Ronnie himself
had suggested that she should divorce Hector, his suggestion--she
knew--had implied telling Hector the truth. Surely Ronnie would be the
first to reject freedom won at such a price.
And, "I've got to play the game," cried the soul of Aliette; "otherwise,
even my love for Ronnie becomes a degradation." Yet, still, instinct
cried in her for freedom.
The decisive seconds lengthened; lengthened; stretched, taut as
piano-wire, into the eternities. The scene imprinted itself, sharper
than sharpest snapshot, on unfading memory. Always, burnt into memory,
would remain Hector, his sandy hair awry, his thin lips parted under the
bulbous nose, his jowl set; would remain herself, torture-pale on the
rack of indetermination; would remain the light white room, blazing with
electrics, the stripes of its wall-paper upright as prison bars. No
freedom from that prison--save at the price of truth!
But at last, truth spoke.
"I cannot give you that assurance, Hector," said Hector's wife.
About her, the snapshotted scene trembled, shivered and broke to
whirling fragments. She was conscious of Hector's hands, itching to take
her by the throat, of Hector's feet, of the red fury in Hector's eyes.
His hands itched to strike her. If he struck, she would strike
back--madly, through those whirling fragments.
But Brunton could not strike; he could not even speak. The insanity of
balked desire dumbed his mouth as it numbed his limbs. Nature, fighting
like a wild beast, wrenched at the cage of his self-control. He could
hear nature wrenching ape-like at his ribs, howling to him: "Kill! Kill
both! Kill both the man and the woman!" The blood-lust and the sex-lust
were knives in his loins.
"You!" he stammered. "You, you----" Then his hands ceased their itching,
and the red in his eyes flickered out, smoldering to gray.
* * * * *
She heard his great feet go creaking across the room, creaking through
the doorway, creaking up the staircase. She heard the slam of an
upstairs door. She heard herself whisper to the wide-eyed distraught
woman who peered out from the mirror over the mantelpiece: "That leaves
only one way--only one way to freedom."