1
The "grand passion" (it is unfortunate that no single word in the
English language exactly pictures that emotional process) was a little
beyond Caroline Staley's philosophy.
Yet within twelve hours of Aliette's interview with Hector, even
Caroline Staley realized that "Miss Aliette was about through with that
husband of hers." Lennard and the rest of the staff--though Caroline
refused to gossip--were also aware, basement-wise, of the connubial
position. In fact, at Lancaster Gate, only Mollie remained in ignorance.
For, at the moment, Mollie Fullerford was far too absorbed to bother
herself overlong about either sister or brother-in-law; a sublime
selfishness held her aloof from both.
The girl's mind was concentrated on Jimmy. It had become a point of
honor with her not to think of anybody except Jimmy. Jimmy--for his own
sake--must be neither "fascinated" nor "put off." He must be given his
exact measure of attraction as of repulsion, his exact chance of finding
out her faults as well as her virtues. Then, when he had definitely
fallen in or out of love with the real her--_she_ would decide exactly
how much she could love the real him. "Marriage," the girl said to
herself, "is a pretty serious business. Jimmy and I mustn't make any
mistake about it."
Mollie Fullerford, you see, was of the modern young, who are trying,
vainly, to avoid the troubles of their romantic and unreasoning
elders--such troubles, for instance, as Hector's.
Hector, reticent always, confided his troubles to nobody. He spent the
first twelve hours after the quarrel in kicking himself for a fool and a
savage who had nearly thrashed his wife; the next twelve in cursing
himself for a fool and a softy who ought to have thrashed his wife--and
the rest of the week fighting against the impulse to apologize.
Meanwhile he was a stranger in his own house; excluded, as surely as
though he had been a servant under notice, from domestic conversation.
His wife had taken to breakfasting in bed (the rattle of the tray
infuriated him every morning), and refused to get up till he had left
the house: he, retorting in the only way open to him, dined at his
clubs. On the one occasion when they did meet, her manners were beyond
criticism--and her unattainable beauty a positive bar to any plans for
sex-consolation.
As a matter of psychological fact, both husband and wife were in a
momentary state of complete sex-revulsion. Hector, thwarted of his one
desire, seeing Aliette unobtainable as the only woman in the world; and
Aliette--love's dream obscured by thought of love's material
consequences--regarding herself, for the nonce, as the mere quarry of
two males, a quarry anxious only to escape both pursuers.
Twice, at least, Aliette's thoughts renounced womanhood completely. The
physical Hector, the Hector of the writhing lips, she hated; but when
her yearning for the physical Ronnie grew so desperately acute that she
had to rush out of the library lest she should telephone to him; when
every post which brought no letter seemed the last bodily hurt she could
endure: then, looking back on her lost virginity of temperament, she
could be amazingly sorry for, amazingly grateful to the abstemious
Hector of the last three years.
Yet all the time, she knew subconsciously that she loved Ronnie; that,
without him, life was one mazed loneliness.
Aliette, like Hector, kept her own counsel. Mary O'Riordan, to whom--as
in duty bound--she confided a hint of her distress, pumped her for full
confession, but pumped in vain. Only Ponto, the huge harlequin Dane with
the magpie coat and the princely manners, shared her mazed loneliness.
She used to fetch the dog, every after-lunch-time, from the garage in
Westbourne Street where he had his abode; and wander with him by the
hour together through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Ponto, unlike
her other pursuers, desired nothing but an occasional caress. He would
pad and pad after her, close to heel, disdainful of all distractions,
his eyes on the hem of her skirt, his stern slapping only the mildest
disapproval of an occasional fly. And when she sat her down to meditate,
the beast--as though conscious of the fret in his mistress--would
content affection with the rare up-thrust of an enormous consolatory
paw.
Vaguely during that week Ponto's mistress conceived the scheme of
sending to Moor Park for Miracle, of condescending to ride in the Row.
Dumb animals, of a sudden, seemed so much wiser, so much kinder than
men. But to ride in the Row would make one conspicuous, and instinct
warned her that the less conspicuous she made herself during the season,
the easier things might be--in the event of a social crash.
2
One other woman in London--during the days which followed Aliette's
definite break with Hector--was meditating the probabilities of a social
crash.
"Julia," said Dot Fancourt, dropping in to lunch on Friday, "you're not
looking so well. You ought to see Baynet again. You've nothing on your
mind, have you?"
"My dear Dot," retorted the novelist, smiling, "I'm quite well, and I
have nothing on what you are pleased to call my mind--except the
vulgarity of your methods in booming my divorce article."
But after Dot had gone back to his office, Julia Cavendish's face lost
its smile.
Surveyed in cool retrospect, her momentary thought-panic in Hyde Park
appeared a mere firework of the literary imagination. Nevertheless, ever
since Sunday, when she had tried, over dinner, to let him inkle her
knowledge, to warn him, she had been reproaching herself about Ronnie.
Other mothers--her own sister Clementina among them--did not apparently
find it at all difficult to discuss sex matters with their sons. Yet
she, the celebrated psychologist, had found it impossible.
"If only I could have been open with him," she thought, "if only I could
have said: 'I'm afraid that you've fallen in love with that charming
Mrs. Brunton. You won't let it go too far--will you? Women's heads are
so easily turned.'"
She would not, of course, have said more than that. Ronnie was so
sensible, so straight and clean, that he would have needed no further
warning. Ronnie--her Ronnie--did not in the least resemble the heroes of
her novels, the passionate men with cleft chins who occasionally counted
the world well lost for love. Ronnie was the very spit of his father,
the Oxford don.
Still even dons were human. And Ronnie, unwarned, might have lost his
head.
As for the woman--women, according to Julia Cavendish, could always fall
prey to the sentimental impulse. If only a man were sufficiently ardent
the entire sex yielded to him. Why should this Mrs. Brunton be the
exception? Ronnie--her Ronnie--must be terribly attractive.
Therefore----
And quite suddenly, Julia panicked again. Her literary imagination saw
the worst; Aliette in Ronnie's arms, Ronnie in the divorce court. Her
heart went cold at the imaginary prospect. The mother, the religious
woman, and the Victorian in her were alike appalled.
Jealousy spread a yellow jaundice film over her intellect. Seen through
that film, the "charming Mrs. Brunton" became a harpy, an over-dressed,
over-scented, over-manicured harpy, her unguented claws sharp for an
innocent boy.
Whereupon Julia Cavendish--turning, as most literary people in a crisis,
to her pen--began the composition of a letter which should convey,
tactfully, of course, the picture of the harpy to the mind of the boy.
But the letter, completed, read so much more like a piece of fiction
than a statement of fact, that she tore it up; and contented herself
with the usual note ordering him to dinner on Saturday.
3
The note itself contained nothing to alarm Ronnie; and yet, dressing to
obey its commands in his severe mannish bedroom, he felt nervous about
the coming interview. For five days now he had been on edge; sleepless,
unable to concentrate thought.
Every night he had expected that Aliette would telephone; every morning,
every evening, he had expected a letter from her. It never dawned on his
mind that she should be equally on edge, equally expectant. Since she
had admitted her love, asking only that he should not hurry her,
chivalry forbade the obvious course which his impatient manhood
dictated--attack. Chivalry, too, urged him not to make any final move
before weighing the uttermost consequences.
For himself, he had already weighed them; and they weighed light enough.
But for her, even though a man and a woman decided their love justified
before God and the law, remained always their justification before their
fellow-creatures. Under any circumstances, the consequences would
include a divorce. And even the farcical divorce of the period
carried--for a woman in Aliette's position--its stigma. Ronnie
remembered the Carrington case. Suppose Brunton cut up rough; perjured
himself in court as Carrington had done--purely for spite. In an
undefended divorce case, the man and woman cited could not defend
themselves against a perjurer without risking their freedom.
And then, then--there was Julia to consider.
The mind of the clean-shaven man who let himself out of the dark-green
door of 127b Jermyn Street, and strode rapidly across Piccadilly, may be
compared to the hair-trigger of a cocked pistol.
4
"Your mother is already in the dining-room, Mr. Ronald," said the
uniformed parlormaid, who had valeted him while he was still at
Winchester.
"Thank you, Kate." Ronnie handed the woman his hat and strode in.
Julia stood by the be-ferned fireplace, inspecting a newly-acquired
print, only that afternoon hung. Kissing him, she called his attention
to the treasure.
"It's 'The Match-Seller'--a proof before letters. Only two more to find,
and my collection of 'The Cries of London' will be complete."
They talked prints, engravings and china throughout dinner. Julia,
acting on Sir Heron Baynet's advice, ate sparingly, and drank nothing
stronger than Evian water; but for her son she had ordered a miniature
feast--all the particular foods of his particular boyhood--and the last
bottle of his father's Chambertin.
Usually, when she prepared such a feast, Ronnie would compliment her on
her memory, her forethought; but to-night he seemed scarcely aware of
what he ate. She had to coax him: "Turbot, dear, your favorite fish,"
or, "I remembered the _sauce Béarnaise_, you see."
Coaxed, he complimented her; but without enthusiasm--so that, hurt, she
said to herself: "He's giving _me_ only half his mind. He's thinking of
that woman. I'm certain he'd rather be dining her at
Claridge's"--(Julia's heroes often "dined" their discreetly illicit
passions at the more expensive caravanserais)--"than sitting here with
his old mother."
Meanwhile he said to himself, "She's taken so much trouble over this
little dinner. I ought to be more grateful. Dash it, I _am_ grateful!
Good Lord, it's nearly nine o'clock! The last post will be in soon.
Perhaps there'll be a letter. Perhaps Aliette will telephone to-night. I
must get away by ten."
Resultantly, by the time Kate brought coffee and cigarettes, the moment
for confidences was as unpropitious as any Julia Cavendish could
possibly have chosen.
"Ronnie," she, began, as soon as they were alone, "I hope you won't be
angry at what I'm going to say."
The opening, so entirely foreign to her usual abruptness, made
Ronnie--on the instant--suspicious. The Wixton imagination in him said:
"Danger! She's found out. She knows something about Aliette. She may
know about Aliette's having been to your rooms." And immediately the
magisterial Cavendish in him decided: "I shall refuse to be drawn. It's
not her business. Even if she does know, she ought to have waited till
_I_ thought fit to broach the subject."
Nevertheless, the ghost of the schoolboy who had liked _sauce Béarnaise_
and been vaguely frightened of his mother was in a funk. The ghost of
the schoolboy, looking at his mother's determined chin, did not see the
unhappiness behind his mother's blue eyes.
After a second's hesitation, the magisterial Cavendish laughed.
"It depends on what you are going to say, mater."
"It isn't much." Julia braced herself to the unpleasant task. "Perhaps
it isn't anything at all. But I feel that you're keeping something from
me. Something rather--important. Something that's making you unhappy.
Can't you confide in me? I might be able to help. We've never had any
secrets from each other, you and I."
Kate, coming in to clear the table, was shooed away with a calm "We
haven't quite finished our coffee. I'll ring when I want you."
"We oughtn't to have secrets from one another," went on Julia
diffidently.
Her son, stiff-lipped, uncompromising, made no answer; and she
continued, a little afraid:
"You told me about Lucy. Can't you tell me about this--love affair?"
The tone irritated him.
"My dear mater, what love affair?"
"Flirtation, then?" Fleetingly, her suspicions lulled by his presence,
she thought how ridiculous it was of him to be so stubborn. Dot
Fancourt, Paul Flower, and many other of the literary among her
acquaintances rather liked talking about their flirtations. Then his
very stubbornness perturbed her.
"Ronnie," she said, "be open with me. You _are_ in love?"
"What if I am?" He had never lied to her, and had no intention of doing
so now. Apparently she did not know about Aliette's having been to
Jermyn Street; otherwise--reticence with him not being one of her
characteristics--she would have said so. Obviously, though, she
suspected quite enough!
"What if I am?" he repeated.
"You mean--it's not my business?" she faltered.
"Yes. I do mean that. I don't want to be unkind, or unfair. But you must
see that I can't discuss--that sort of thing with you."
"Why not?" Thoroughly alarmed now, she tried to hide alarm with a smile.
"Lots of people do confide in me. I--you know I wouldn't betray your
confidence."
"Is that quite the point?"
Julia Cavendish deigned to plead: "I've been so worried, Ronnie. I feel,
somehow, that you're in trouble. I feel I understand why. And I only
want you to let me help you."
His mood softened. "Poor old mater," he thought. But her next words
dispelled softness; irritated him again.
"You see," she said, "you're still so young. Only a boy really. You
don't know the world as I know it. You mustn't reject my advice."
"I'm thirty-six," he parried.
"And I'm over sixty."
"You don't look it, mater."
She felt herself being edged away from her topic. She saw a vision of
Aliette Brunton--standing palpably between herself and her son. Vague
jealousy clouded her love, her kindness.
"You don't deny the correctness of my statement," she shot at him. "You
admit that you are in love?"
"Suppose I admit that much----" His lean face flushed.
"Then the least you can do is to tell me with whom. You say you don't
want to be unkind or unfair. Is it fair, or kind, to let me"--Julia
hesitated over the word--"suspect things?"
He said bluntly, "There is nothing to suspect."
She said with equal bluntness, "Then why am I not to be told?"
Ronnie's temper rose. He, too, saw a vision of Aliette, palpably
demanding his protection.
"Because there's nothing to tell."
"Ronnie, that's not the truth." The words burst from her. "You've never
lied to me before. Why can't you tell me the truth now? Ever since
Sunday, I've known----"
"Known what?"
Her heart dropped a beat at his obvious anger. It was as though she
already knew the worst. Love and jealousy, strangely commingling in her
ego, ousted--for one flash of a second--all other emotions. So that it
might have been an adoring wife rather than a religious mother who
answered.
"That you and Mrs. Brunton were in love with each other."
"So she knew all the time," thought Ronnie. His first feeling was
relief. At least the mater knew nothing of what had happened since
Sunday. Only her uncanny intuition had led her to the truth. Then
fear--no longer fear for himself, but fear for Aliette--keyed his legal
brain to defense.
"You have no right to make that statement. Where's your proof, your
evidence?"
She looked him full in the face; noted the blood at his temples, the
working nostrils, the angry sparks in his light blue eyes. The effort to
stand up against his obstinacy wrenched her in pieces. Her knees, her
very stomach trembled. The known room, the beloved things, seemed
suddenly worthless. She felt self-reproachfully that she had loved
things too much, her son too little. She could have cried, then and
there--she who had never let the tears to her eyes.
"Ronnie," she pleaded, "why must you be so hard, so hostile? Mothers
don't need 'evidence.' At least, I don't. Not where you are concerned.
You said just now that this--this affair was none of my business. Isn't
it a mother's business to protect her child, to save him? Would it have
been fair for me not to have spoken? It isn't as if you couldn't trust
me----"
She broke off; and fear faded from the mind of her son. He was no longer
even angry. Once again he saw in Julia the "lonely old woman," dependent
solely on his affection; saw her--very radiant down the years--fetching
him, still a child, from his "Dame's School" in Welbeck Street; saw her
visiting him at Winchester, at the Varsity. Always, she had been the
confidante, the rather stern confidante, of his troubles. Surely, surely
when she knew the fineness of Aliette, when she knew how Aliette had
refused to let him hurt her, she would help him, help both of them?
"Of course I trust you. It isn't that. And if--if we'd decided anything
definitely, I'd tell you about it. But, as things are, I can't tell you
anything. You see that, don't you?"
"No. I don't," said Julia sternly--the mother, the religious woman and
the traditionalist in her alike roused to bay by the sudden frankness.
"It seems to me that, having admitted so much, you owe me the rest."
"But it wouldn't be fair----"
"I can't see why. Unless--unless there's something you--you're both
afraid of my knowing."
"Mater!" All the chivalry in him, revolting at the slur on Aliette,
urged full confession. "You've spoken with her. You can't possibly
imagine that she's the sort of woman who----"
Indignation dumbed him; and in his moment of dumbness the mother
realized her mistake, realized him in that hair-trigger state of emotion
when the slightest touch will loose the explosion; realized that he and
Aliette were on the verge of disaster, that Aliette was the wife of a
king's counselor, that she, Julia, must cut out her tongue rather than
say the word which would decide her son to wreck his career. But
realization came too late.
"You don't imagine that she--that we would do anything underhand," burst
out the boy in Ronnie.
"Of course not, dear." Almost Julia had it in her to hate the woman's
virtue. To love in secret was certainly a sin before God; but to commit
open adultery was a sin before both God and what remained of English
Society.
"And, mater," he bent forward boyishly, across the table, "I love her;
we love each other."
"Another man's wife?"
"Only in name." His teeth clenched. "Only in law."
She wanted to say, "You believe that?"; but instinct restrained her. She
grew frightened at the passion in Ronnie's eyes. He talked
on--vehemently. "I can't live without her. I won't. Why should I? What's
a divorce nowadays? Who cares? Except a few snuffy old priests. And half
of them don't know their own minds."
"Ronnie!" She conjured up every atom of force in her to wrestle with his
vehemence. "What's happened to you? divorce means scandal. It means sin.
But I won't talk about the religious part. One either believes or one
doesn't. I only beg of you, I implore you, to think of your career----"
"Who cares about my career----"
"I do."
"My career won't suffer----"
"It will. You'll be disbarred. Brunton's a power. You'll have him for
enemy instead of for friend. You'll make a thousand enemies. The snuffy
old priests, as you call them, aren't the only ones who care about
divorce. Half the houses I visit will be closed to you."
"For six months."
"No. For good. And you'll never be able to go into politics."
"Politics!" scornfully.
"People will cut you."
"Let them." Opposition, clarifying his mind, keyed him to fight. "Let
them! What do I care? We sha'n't have done anything wrong."
"It's always wrong to set ourselves up against the world."
"That's sheer cowardice. And it isn't true, either. What about Jesus
Christ?"
"That's sheer blasphemy."
One of the dinner-table candles guttered and went out. To Julia, it
seemed like an omen. She saw her son's career gutter out in that curling
smoke; saw him entrapped by the powers of darkness, prey to the personal
devil. Now no one except God, her own particular secular god, could
help. She prayed voicelessly to that particular secular god for words to
save the entrapped soul of her boy.
"Ronnie! You've always been so good, the best of sons. You've never
given me a moment's anxiety--never--since the day you were born. Until
now! And you've always trusted me. Won't you trust me in this? Won't you
believe me when I tell you that the thing you contemplate is a sin?"
Quietly, he answered, "If God is love, how can love be a sin?"
The phrase shot a tiny sliver of doubt through the armor of Julia
Cavendish's belief, pricking her unwisdom to retort:
"Love! Love isn't passion. Love is service. If you loved her, really and
truly loved her, you'd save this woman from herself. And if she loved
you, really and truly loved you, she'd be the last person in the
world----"
He wanted to argue: "You don't understand. You're too prejudiced to
understand." Instead, comprehending abruptly how far his confidences had
outrun actuality, he blustered:
"We won't discuss her motives, please. Or mine. Neither of us is a
child--as you seem to think. We're quite capable of deciding things for
ourselves. When we do----"
"She hasn't consented then?" Julia grasped at the life-buoy.
"No."
Another doubt entered like a dart into the mother's mind. Suppose Sir
Heron's warnings came true? Then soon there might be nobody to care for
Ronnie. Suppose, suppose this woman really did care--as she, Julia,
cared? A woman in Mrs. Brunton's position would hardly risk divorce for
a _béguin_.
Nervously she played with her favorite ring--a diamond-set miniature of
her son in earliest boyhood. Nervously she said: "You won't do things in
a hurry. Promise me that."
"I can't promise anything," He blustered again, feeling that she was
trying to fetter his independence. "I'd rather not discuss the subject
any more."
The bluster, so foreign to him, irritated her dignity.
"Very well. It shall be as you wish. We'll say no more about this
matter. It's been very painful to me, and I can only hope it won't be
still more painful--to both of us--before it's over."
His irritated dignity answered hers. "Why to both of us? It's entirely
my affair."
"Not entirely. I've tried to keep myself out of this question; but, as
your mother, I have certain claims. And you know, or at least you ought
to know, my feelings on the subject of divorce. I ask you to believe
that I'm trying to sympathize with you, to see your point of view. But I
can't. To me, any union, however legalized, between you and Hector
Brunton's wife, means deadly sin. You call this passion of yours love. I
don't. I call it by an uglier name." His eyes kindled. "That angers you.
I'm sorry. But I'm speaking the truth, as I see it. If you and she
decide to commit this deadly sin, don't come to me for forgiveness."
Julia rose, weary with words, to her feet. "Shall we go upstairs to the
drawing-room? Kate will be waiting to clear the table."
"Not for a moment." Ronnie, too, rose. "What do you mean, exactly, when
you say, 'Don't come to me for forgiveness'?"
"What do I mean?" Sheer physical fatigue unnerved Julia's mind.
Jealousy, the mad mother jealousy for the mate which her brain had been
holding in leash all evening, broke its bonds; so that she saw her only
son, the baby she had cherished from his cradle, lost to her in another
woman's arms. White arms--young and smooth and sinful! "What do I mean?
Only this--that you must choose between your mother and your--mistress."
Even as that last word escaped the barrier of her teeth, Julia Cavendish
knew the mistake irretrievable. Her dignity flickered out like a match
in a storm. She wanted to throw herself on his mercy, to beg his pardon
with bended knees. But the word, the unpardonable insult of a word, was
out. Slowly, she saw his mind grip its full significance. Then his face
paled to harsh granite; and his eyes, for once in their lives, grew
sterner than her own.
"I _have_ chosen," said Ronald Cavendish.