1
In the heart of Julia Cavendish--those earliest days--was neither hatred
nor cruelty; only a terrible numbness as from a blow.
Ronnie, her own son, had struck her! At first she could not bring
herself to believe the happening real. His letter, read and reread,
conveyed nothing.
But soon the letter grew real enough--so real that Julia's imagination,
peering between the lines, could actually see him with the woman who had
inspired it; with the woman who had ruined her boy's career.
Her first impulse was to go to them, to go swiftly; to say to the woman,
"It's not too late--even now. Return to your husband--give my son back
to me."
Yet every traditional instinct in Julia fought against that solution.
All her life she had schooled herself to the belief that adultery--in a
woman--was the unforgivable sin. Men, of course, were never guilty of
"adultery," only of "lapses." Modern society, so pitifully lax, so given
over to the sentimental impulse, might forgive both parties. Julia
Cavendish could not. She, in her eugenic wisdom, knew that individual
sin--in a woman--must earn individual punishment. Mrs. Brunton,
therefore, could not return to her husband. But if Mrs. Brunton did not
return, how could Mrs. Brunton give back Ronnie?
Mrs. Brunton probably took the ordinary tolerant view about divorce; the
view that she, Julia, had spent a lifetime in combating. Not that her
own public position on the divorce question counted! At any moment since
Ronnie's birth she would have sacrificed more than public position for
him. But this, this was a question of beliefs. Love might urge
forgiveness but how could love countenance sin--a deadly sin?
For a week that stubborn old doctrine of deadly sin, which Julia had
imbibed with a bookish Christianity--the same bookish "Christianity"
which still tolerates the ghastly word "heretic," continued to harden
her heart as it blinded her intellect; for a week she held on, with a
tenacity almost Hebraic, to the fixed idea of the _woman_ taken in
adultery.
Then, as the numbness of the blow warmed into pain, her heart softened,
and her intellect--momentarily freed by sorrow from the blindness of all
formal faiths--saw a ray of light.
Admit, just for argument's sake, that a husband was entitled to put away
his guilty wife; and suppose that the guilty man were willing to marry
her. What then? Could one doom the guilty parties to a perpetual living
in sin?
But the ray of light petered out, leaving her in even blacker darkness,
because--by the beam of it--she had seen herself already drifted so far
away from her old beliefs as to countenance not only divorce but the
remarriage of divorced parties.
All the same, mother-love still urged her to forgive: so that, for a
full week, she went about her house (a lonely house, it seemed now; all
the charm of the years gone out of it) in a positive stupor of
intellectual and religious bewilderment. She asked herself: "Does
anything matter except my boy's happiness, my boy's career? Does
anything really count except love? Isn't love--and love alone--the true
teaching of Christianity!" But she found no answer to her questions.
Honesty said: "It's a matter of principle; judge the case as though it
were a stranger's, not the case of your own son."
Nevertheless the argument of the individual case persisted. Memory
recalled her son's statement about Aliette's relationship to her
husband. If those two--the woman to whom she had taken such an
instinctive liking and the man she had deemed, at first sight, capable
of cruelty--were husband and wife only in name, didn't the case alter?
"No!" said formal religion. "Yes!" said the mother in Julia Cavendish.
She remembered a phrase of Aliette's: "I have no children, worse luck."
That was hardly the phrase of a loose woman, of a harpy. Suppose this
woman really loved Ronnie?
But that brought back the old jealousy. How could Aliette really love
Ronnie? She, his mother, would have held her right hand in the flames
rather than jeopardize her son's career--as Aliette had jeopardized it.
Whereupon the novelist's imagination in Julia started to activity. She
pictured--knowing little of the law--a crowd of clients besieging
Ronnie's chambers, only to be told that "the eminent Mr. Cavendish"
could not take their cases; and--thoroughly frightened at the heroic
version of Benjamin Bunce and those few dusty briefs which Ronald had
abandoned--sent for her secretary, the blank-faced Mrs. Sanderson, whom
she told to ring up Sir Peter Wilberforce.
But Sir Peter was in Paris; and James deputized in his stead.
"Do you know what she wants to see him about?" asked James's secretary
on the telephone.
"It's about her will, I think," answered Julia's.
2
Jimmy Wilberforce, who had not seen Mollie since his talk with Bunce and
spent four sleepless nights in consequence, set out for that interview
with the uncomfortable foreboding that the "old lady's will" was only a
pretext for discussing the old lady's son. And the foreboding justified
itself before he had been with her ten minutes.
"I suppose," said Julia, eying him across the Empire desk of her
work-room, "that you, as Ronnie's best friend, are very much in his
confidence?"
"How do you mean?" prevaricated the big red lawyer. "About his financial
affairs?" He laughed, tapping the document between them. "Ronald isn't
the sort of chap who'd borrow on his--er--expectations."
"I was not referring to his financial affairs," retorted Julia stiffly.
"If you, as my son's best friend, and as the son of my own legal
adviser, do not understand the matter to which I allude, the
conversation need go no further."
Jimmy looked at his client, and noticed--for the first time since
entering the little box of a room--how she had aged, how ill, how ill at
ease, how unhappy she appeared. Jimmy, the man rather than the
solicitor, was feeling very far from happy himself; and unhappiness,
being a completely new experience, keyed him to unusual sympathy.
"We're in the same boat," he thought. "Poor old lady! I wonder how much
she knows. Ronnie had no right to run away with H. B.'s wife. The harm
it's done already! His mother looks quite broken up about it. And I--I
can't marry Mollie."
"Mrs. Cavendish," he said, "I don't pretend to be as fond of your son as
you are. I'm rather a selfish chap, I'm afraid. But if there's anything,
any affair in which I can be of assistance to you--you've only to ask
me."
She asked him, pointblank: "Do you know my son's where-abouts?"
He answered, "No. I didn't even know that he'd gone away, till his clerk
told me."
Julia hesitated. "I'm speaking to you in absolute confidence?"
"Of course."
"Then please tell me: Have you heard any--any rumors?"
Jimmy chewed the cud for ten full seconds before replying: "You
mean--about a certain lady?"
"I mean precisely that."
"So far, none." Now it was Jimmy's turn to hesitate. "But, speaking
entirely in confidence, there are bound to be rumors--if he stays away
much longer."
"You know nothing for certain then?"
"Officially--nothing." The solicitor inspected his finger nails. "But
I'm afraid that, unofficially, I know a good deal."
"Including the name of the lady?"
"Including the name of the lady!"
Julia's heart sank. Wilberforce could not be alone in his knowledge of
the truth. And that meant--publicity! "Tell me, Mr. Wilberforce," she
went on, "before we go any further: Is a barrister who has been
co-respondent in a divorce case disbarred from further practice?"
"So she knows everything," thought Jimmy, and discarded finesse. "On
that point I can reassure you. Even if the petitioner were himself a
barrister, it would make no difference."
"You made inquiries then?"
"Yes."
"May I ask why?" Julia's manner stiffened again. The conversation was
unutterably distasteful: but she had been alone with her thoughts so
long that even the most distasteful of conversations seemed preferable
to further silence.
"Because"--the man, moved by a similar impulse, laid all his cards,
faced, on the table--"because the sister of the certain lady is a--a
very great friend of mine."
"And if"--remembering the meeting in Hyde Park, the novelist's mind
jumped instanter to its conclusion--"if the divorce we mentioned were to
take place, it would make a difference to the outcome of that
friendship?"
"I"--Jimmy stammered--"I'm afraid so."
Remembering Ronnie's letter, Julia Cavendish felt aware of a new pride
in her son. Ronnie might have been guilty of a "lapse": but at least he
had not been weak. For it was weak, pitifully weak, almost caddishly
weak of a man even to contemplate ending his friendship with a girl
because of a scandal in her family.
"I'm sorry to tell you then," she said, "officially, that your
unofficial knowledge is perfectly correct. I have incontrovertible
proof--a letter from him--that my son has run away with Hector Brunton's
wife, and that they are now waiting for him to serve them with
divorce-papers."
Jimmy Wilberforce's brown eyes darkened with pain. It had been bad
enough to know the truth himself; but to hear it from some one else
seemed for the moment unbearable.
"That," went on his client, "is why I wanted to see your father. Perhaps
I'd better wait till he returns from Paris. You, obviously, will be a
little--shall we say prejudiced?"
There are certain instants in a man's life when he comprehends his own
character with revolting clarity. Such an instant those last words
brought to the solicitor. In the light of them he saw himself as poor
friend, as worse lover. He felt he could never again look Ronald or
Mollie in the face.
"I hope your father will be back soon." continued Julia. "Naturally I'm
rather anxious for his advice."
"Mrs. Cavendish"--Jimmy, contrary to her expectation, made no effort to
go--"if I gave you the impression of prejudice by what I said just now,
I'm sorry. My father will be away for at least another week. Meanwhile,
I beg you to forget my own--er--personal interest in this matter; and to
look upon me as--as a friend. You and Ronnie are in trouble; let me help
you both to the best of my ability. Do you, by any chance, know Ronnie's
address? If so, won't you, in strict confidence, let me have it?"
"I don't think I ought to do that without his permission," said Julia.
"But I shall be very grateful for your advice. Tell me--I'm afraid I'm
rather ignorant, wilfully ignorant perhaps, about these matters--how are
divorces"--she stumbled over the word--"arranged?"
And James Wilberforce told her, in exact legal parlance, the whole
nauseating procedure of the English courts. He spoke of orders for
restitution, of "hotel evidence," of letters written at the dictation of
solicitors, of damages and alimony, and of the king's proctor.
Finally--and at this the whole soul of Julia Cavendish sickened--to
illustrate a point, he told her the inside history of the Carrington
case; how Carrington, in order to blacken his wife's name, had committed
perjury in an undefended divorce-case, and how--for fear lest she should
forfeit her freedom to marry the man she loved--Carrington's wife had
been forced to endure the slander.
Jimmy's client sifted the whole information for some time.
"So you mean," she said at last, "that in this country any husband and
wife who--'know the ropes,' I think, was your phrase--and possess
sufficient money to fee a firm like your own, can secure a divorce with
almost as little trouble as they can secure a marriage-license."
"I mean precisely that," replied Jimmy Wilberforce. "Given the mutual
desire to undo their marriage, the law--properly worked--puts no
obstacle in the way."
"But if, as in this Carrington business, the desire is not mutual. What
then?"
"Then, of course, there are difficulties. Especially if it is the woman
who wants her freedom. In our courts, you see, a husband is still his
wife's legal owner; a woman merely her husband's chattel. A wife,
against a husband unwilling to be divorced, must prove not only
infidelity but cruelty--in the legal sense. And it has been held, over
and over again, that infidelities--on the husband's part--are not
cruelties. Cruelties--legally speaking--imply a damage to the wife's
health." Jimmy reverted, once more, to the inside history of the
Carrington case.
Julia Cavendish, too, thought of Carrington when she said:
"Mr. Wilberforce, let us be open with each other. My son's letter is
quite frank. He says that he and Mrs. Brunton have run away together;
that her husband knows all about it; that they are waiting for him to
'file his petition.' What happens if he refuses?"
"That," protested Wilberforce, "is hardly on the cards. A man of Hector
Brunton's social status would never behave like Carrington."
"I agree." Julia, who had been feeling for an idea, broached it very
tentatively. "All the same, Mr. Wilberforce, I flatter myself that my
knowledge of human nature is not often at fault. I met Hector Brunton
once; and I summed him up. Believe me, he's not quite--not quite normal
where the sex is concerned. And with abnormals, the normal course of
action can never be absolutely relied upon. You realize, of course,
my--shall we say difficulties?--in making up my mind. It would help me
considerably if I were certain of the course this man Brunton intended
to adopt. Could you--do you think--ascertain it for me?"
"I'm afraid"--all the legal caution in Wilberforce's nature repelled the
suggestion--"that with the best will in the world I couldn't do that.
Brunton is a K.C.--a very important K.C. If, by any chance, he decides
to wait a month or two----But really, Mrs. Cavendish, with all due
deference to your knowledge of human nature, I don't think we need
anticipate any trouble from Brunton. All we have to do--you and I--is to
await events; to minimize the scandal as far as we can; and to watch
over your son's interests until such time as he returns to London."
The solicitor excused himself, rose, and shook hands. "You can rely upon
me, you know," he smiled.
But, once more solitary, Julia Cavendish felt that neither on James
Wilberforce nor on any other lawyer could she place reliance. To
lawyers, matrimony was a contract; to her it was a holy sacrament.
Scandal, unpopularity, she could face; but not her own conscience. And
conscience already made her accessory to the sin of adultery!
All her prejudices against divorce returned fourfold, submerging her
intellect as in slime. After Wilberforce's revelations, the holy
institution of matrimony seemed the unholiest of legal farces.
She rang for Kate and ordered her to bring tea. "I'm at home to nobody,"
said Julia; and all afternoon she sat brooding, love and beliefs at war
in her mind. All afternoon, her mind pictured Ronnie; the happy babydom,
the fine youth, the clean manhood of him. All afternoon her love strove
to acquit him before the tribunal of her beliefs.
And as day waned the romantic in her began to see something splendid in
him, some courage akin to her own.
But in the woman she could, as yet, see no courage. The woman had
sinned, sinned the deadly sin. Her, one could never forgive!
And yet--and yet--how could a mother abandon her son?
Suppose her son married this sinner? Stubbornly her mind tried to
picture Aliette married to Ronnie. Stubbornly conscience repelled the
picture. "She is Aliette Brunton," said Julia's beliefs. "She can never
be Aliette Cavendish."
Then imagination put back the clock of her own years so that she saw
herself thirty again. At thirty one had illusions; one had one's
fastidiousnesses. And Brunton was no husband for a fastidious woman.
Brunton might easily be a man such as Wilberforce had hinted of; an
unfaithful husband against whom his wife possessed no legal remedy. What
then?
"Even then," said Julia's beliefs, "she should have endured--as you,
too, must endure."
"Yet how can you endure?" asked love. "How can you side with a stranger
against your own boy?"
"Soon," answered beliefs, "you must face your God. How splendid if, on
that day, you can declare to Him: 'I, like You, sacrificed my only
son.'"
But love said: "God and Love are one."
And in that one instant of thought Julia Cavendish crossed her mental
Rubicon. Formal religion went by the board. Be he saint or sinner,
sordid or splendid, she, Julia Cavendish, would stick by her boy.
3
Now Julia was all impatience. Let the divorce-papers be served without
delay! Let Brunton do his worst!
But Wilberforce, summoned next morning, begged her not to be
precipitate. "Let us wait," said Wilberforce, "till Brunton shows his
hand. At least let us wait till public rumor confirms private
information."
Reluctantly Julia took his advice; and the slow days went by. Inaction
chafed her. She did not weaken, but she suffered. Love needed the spur
of service. Moreover, the old beliefs, scotched, were not yet slain.
Conscience whispered to her in the long wakeful nights: "This is
intellectual dishonesty. If it were any other than Ronnie, would you be
willing to forgive?"
Her son's letter she did not answer. Time and again she took pen in
hand; but always instinct, the instinct of parental dominance,
restrained her. She had held the reins of her son's life so long that
she still lusted to teach him a lesson. Since he had been a fool; since
he had allowed the sentimental impulse to unbalance him in his duty
toward her, let him write again. Besides, what could she say to him? It
was not in her to slobber. When she wrote, it must be with some definite
offer of help. To Julia, love without service always implied a certain
hypocrisy: and that one concept, though every other seemed to have
disintegrated under the stress of circumstance, her set mentality
refused to change.
So she waited--ailing, fearful, lonely in her crowded life; thinking
always of her son; blaming herself for their quarrel; blaming herself
for inaction; her heart humble; her head high among the herd of men.
For as yet rumor knew nothing certain. The herd still patronized Bruton
Street: you still met there, on a Saturday afternoon, the literary folk,
the financial folk, the clergy, the politicians, and the soldiers. To
the outward eye, no tiniest detail of social life in that exquisitely
tended house had altered. Friends, acquaintances, casual visitors--so
far, one hardly missed a face. Even the ambassadorial Bruntons came, in
semi-state, trailing with them the ugly unmarried daughter of Sir
Simeon's first marriage and the two blithe flappers of his second.
Nevertheless, Julia was conscious of a growing tension.
Already--or so it seemed to her watchful imagination--the herd sniffed a
taint. Dot Fancourt's eyes were an unspoken question. Lady Simeon
exaggerated, ever so slightly, her smile of greeting. Paul Flower's
inquiries after Ronnie--no one who knew Julia Cavendish ever forgot to
make that inquiry--held the semblance of a leer. Others of her circle,
saying: "And how's the son?" appeared as though they were anxious not to
be answered.
Here and there, too, a clergyman or a politician excused his spouse with
a strained, "My wife sends a thousand apologies. She wanted so much to
come with me; but her health has been rather troublesome this week. Oh,
no, dear lady! Nothing serious. Nothing serious, I assure you."
4
On the first of July, Sir John and Lady Bentham (of the Bank of England)
gave a rather solemn family lunch-party, at which--rarest of
occasions!--the four sisters Wixton met under one roof.
Looking at her three juniors--at Clementina, ample of breast and bustle,
her chin duplicated and triplicated by age, her eyes piercing under
their polished crystal lenses; at May Robinson, whose scrawny widowhood
was alternately devoted to good works and the cultivation of her St.
John's Wood garden; at Alice Edwards, typically the Anglo-Indian woman,
her complexion faded but her joviality unimpaired, her blue-eyed
golden-haired Lucy in attendance, but her livery husband abandoned in
Cheltenham--it came to Julia, seated beside her gray-haired host at the
head of the table, that families were a curse. Never a united tribe,
to-day the Wixtons seemed more at variance than ever. Julia resented
May's pseudo-intimate chatter and the tactless pryings of Alice.
Clementina she had always abhorred. And when Lucy tried to question her
about Ronnie, her resentment reached fever-point.
For, of course--said Julia's imagination--when the family knew about
Ronnie, they would gloat. Clementina, always envious of her treasure,
would be in the seventh heaven at his downfall. May would weep a "Poor
Julia! I always told her that she spoiled that boy." And Alice would
chuckle: "It's just like Simla. Married women are always the worst."
How soon would the family know? Ronnie's secret had been well kept; but
it couldn't be kept a secret much longer. Had Sir John, perhaps, heard
something already?
Julia's mind wandered away from the family to Chilworth Cove. She had
never seen the place, but intuition told her that it must be beautiful;
and she found herself craving, suddenly, furiously, in that stuffy
Cromwell Road mansion, for beauty, for the sea and the sunlight.
* * * * *
Perhaps, though, it was Sir John's confidences about _his_ son which
impelled the homing mother to stop her electric brougham at the Cromwell
Road post-office; and write, with unsteady fingers, those six words:
"Would my presence be unwelcome? MATER."