1
"Man--you're glad she's coming?"
"If her coming means that she is on our side; yes."
It was ten o'clock of a great July day. From outside, through the low
foliaged casement of Honeysuckle Cottage, sounded the drone of a bee,
the whine and splash of the well-bucket, and Caroline Staley's
loud-voiced chaffering with a fisherman. Within, the lovers faced each
other across the debris of a Gargantuan breakfast.
Seen, white-frocked, in the sun-moted coolth of that low whitewashed
room, Aliette looked utterly the girl. Happiness had wiped clean the
slate of her desolate years. Her cheeks, her eyes, her whole personality
glowed with the sheer joy of matehood. Sunlight and sea-light had
goldened--ever so faintly--the luster of her bared arms, the bared nape
under her vivid hair.
Ronnie, too, had youthened. Gone, or almost gone from his face, was the
semi-monastic seriousness. Constantly, now, smiles played about his full
lips; constantly, his light-blue eyes held the semblance of a twinkle.
One hardly noticed the gray in his hair for the tawn of it. Lean still,
to-day his leanness was that of an athlete in training. Under his
browned skin, when they bathed together, the muscles rippled like a
panther's. As he rose, flanneled, from the table, it seemed almost as
though happiness had added the proverbial cubit to his stature.
He came over to her and kissed the palm of her outstretched hand, her
wrist, the curls at her temple.
"This afternoon," he said, "our honeymoon ends."
She laughed--but there was something of sadness in the laughter. "Man,
don't be immoral. Honeymoons are legal. This hasn't been legal. It's
been----"
"Heaven," he suggested.
"Yes." She took his hand. "All that--and more. But all the same, we're
outcasts. We've got to realize that the world, our world, won't forgive
us for having been in heaven."
Sotto voce, he consigned the world to perdition. Aloud, he answered,
"They'll forgive us all right. As soon as H. B. makes up his mind to do
the right thing. I expect that's what's at the bottom of the mater's
wire."
"Do you?" Intimacy had made this great difference in their relationship:
that they could talk of Hector dispassionately enough. "Do you? I wish I
were sure. He's a peculiar man. Very obstinate and rather cruel. He may
make--difficulties."
"He'll make no difficulties."
Aliette changed the topic. For a week past, the vague possibility of
Hector's abiding by his threat had been frightening her. Once, even, she
had precisely perceived the social ostracism such a course might entail.
But in the sunshine and sea-shine of Chilworth Cove, social ostracism
seemed a very tiny price to pay for happiness so great as theirs.
The first fine madness, the glamor of the grand passion was still on
her, still on them both. Julia's telegram, which--cycle-forwarded across
eight miles of common-land from Chilton Junction--threw the tiny port
into a state of seething curiosity, excited its recipients hardly at
all. Selfish with the sublime selfishness of mating-time, they regarded
the threatened irruption of a mundane personality into paradise as the
merest episode.
Nevertheless, as she watched the innkeeper's pony-cart, Ronnie at its
reins, rattle away between the pink-washed cottages, slow to a walk up
the white road, and disappear among the heathery ridges at sky-line,
Aliette grew conscious of a deep abiding joy that--whatever else of harm
she might bring into her lover's life--at least she had not separated
him from his mother.
And all morning, all afternoon, busied with Caroline Staley in
preparation for their guest, that joy warded every apprehension from her
mind.
2
But in the heart of Ronald Cavendish, setting out alone on his
eight-mile journey for the station, was no joy. To him, it seemed as
though he were definitely abandoning happiness, definitely leaving it
behind. Mentally and physically obsessed with Aliette, he could
anticipate no pleasure in again seeing his mother. Indeed, he could
hardly visualize his mother at all.
Gradually, though, as the brown pony ambled its uneager way along the
white and empty track among the heather, the image of Julia's face, the
sound of Julia's voice came back to him; and he, too, knew joy at the
prospect of reconciliation.
Looking back on their quarrel, it appeared to him that he had been
rather brutal. "After all," he thought, "one could hardly have expected
her to understand. I'm glad Alie insisted on my writing that letter. I
wonder if the mater'll be looking well. I hope she'll like Alie. She's
sure to like Alie."
Then, from thinking of his mother and the woman he loved, he glided into
thought of the world in which they must all three live till Brunton's
decree had been obtained and made absolute. It would be--he mused--a bit
difficult, rather a rough time.
Aliette's "funny idea" that Brunton might try "the dog-in-the-manger
trick," Aliette's lover dismissed--much in the way that Jimmy
Wilberforce had dismissed it--as "not on the cards." All the same, the
lawyer in him did begin to find it curious that Brunton's solicitors
should have dilly-dallied so long in communicating through Benjamin
Bunce that the citations were ready for service.
"The mater's sure to have some news," he thought; and by the time his
pony topped the ridge from which one sees, three miles away at the foot
of the slope, the red roofs and shining rails of Chilton Junction, he
felt quite excited about her arrival.
Always strong in the every-day relationship of man to man, but
never--until now--decisive in his dealings with woman, Ronnie knew
himself rather anxious for Julia's advice. Socially, the period between
divorce and remarriage must have many drawbacks. "The mater's" guidance,
at such a time, might be most useful.
Of the heart-searchings, of the contest between her love and her
beliefs, which even now (as the slow train jolted her, maidless,
uncomfortable, in her crowded first-class compartment, out of Andover)
still nagged at the intellect of Julia Cavendish, her son had never an
inkling. From his point of view, their quarrel--for his share in which
he had already apologized by letter--appeared infinitely more important
than "the mater's silly prejudice about divorce." Most important, of
course, would be "how the mater would hit it off with Aliette."
Ronnie drove on till he made the Chilton Arms; and there, stabling his
pony, ordered himself an early luncheon.
The luncheon--solitary cold beef and lukewarm beer--made him realize
that it was more than six weeks since he had mealed alone; and from that
realization thought traveled--almost automatically--to his rooms in
Jermyn Street, to Pump Court, to the past which had been London and the
future which must still be London. Smoking, he began to consider the
various problems of return.
Where, how, and on what were he and Aliette to live?
Of Aliette's finances, beyond one confided fact that "she had never
taken an allowance from "H.," her lover knew nothing whatever. She
might, for all he cared, possess five hundred a year or ten thousand.
But his own professional income, excluding the four hundred a year from
his mother, barely touched the former figure; and since he was by no
means the kind of creature who could consent to live on a woman's money,
however desperately he might be in love with her, the housing problem
alone--Moses Moffatt, officially, sheltered only bachelors--would need
more than a little solving.
Consideration of this, and other mundane factors in their somewhat
bizarre situation, fretted Ronnie's mind. He could not help feeling, as
he drove slowly to the station, how much wiser it would have been if he
and Alie had talked these things over before he started. His mother, who
liked practical women, might not understand that Alie and he had been
too madly happy to bother about every-day affairs. "But by Jove!" he
said to himself; "by Jove, we _have_ been happy."
He hitched the brown pony to the railings and strode through the
waiting-room. That afternoon Chilton Junction seemed less of a junction
than ever. A few rustics, a few milk-cans, two porters, and the
miniature of a bookstall occupied its "down" platform; its "up" showed
as a stretch of deserted gravel, from either end of which the hot rails
ran straight into pasture.
Looking Londonward along those narrowing rails, remembering how, six
weeks since, they had carried him into paradise, Ronald Cavendish
understood--for the merest fraction of a second--his mother's sacrifice.
"Damn decent of the old lady to come down," he thought, seeing, still
far away across the pastures, the leisured smoke-plume of her train.
3
Julia Cavendish--having ascertained from her latest vis-à-vis, a burly
cattle-dealer in brown leggings and a black bowler hat, that her journey
at last neared its destination--closed the novel she had been pretending
to read, straightened her hat, and prepared to meet both culprits with
stern Victorian condescension.
That Aliette would not accompany Ronnie to the station did not cross his
mother's mind. All the way down from Waterloo she had been apprehensive,
doubtful of her own rectitude, conscious of a growing antagonism toward
"that woman." "That woman," of course, would be furious at the
interruption of her amour.
Even the prospect of seeing Ronnie once more could not lighten the cloud
of jealousy and self-distrust which Julia felt hovering--like evil
birds--about her head. Viewed in retrospect, the five hours of
journeying were a nightmare. Viewed prospectively, arrival would be the
ugliest of awakenings. She felt ill; ill and old and out-of-date.
But the first glimpse of her son sent all Julia's evil birds flying. As
the train steamed in, she saw him craning his eyes at its windows; saw
that he was alone, that he was sun-bronzed, flanneled like a schoolboy.
Her heart thumped--painfully, joyfully--at the knowledge that he had
espied her, that he was loping along after her carriage, just as she
remembered him loping along the platform at Winchester, in his
cricket-flannels, twenty years ago. Then the train stopped; and he swung
the carriage door open, handed her out.
"My luggage----" began Julia; but got no further with the sentence;
because Ronnie, her Ronnie, who had never, even as a boy, caressed his
mother in public, just put an arm round her shoulders and, kissing her,
whispered: "By jingo, mater, it is ripping to see you."
A porter got her trunk and her handbag out of the train. Another porter
put them into the pony-cart. Julia, for once in her life, forgot to
thank them. Tears, tears she dared not shed, twitched her wrinkled
eyelids; her mouth had dried up; her thin knees tottered. She could only
cling, cling with all the strength of one weak arm, to Ronnie. He was
her son, her only son--and she, in her stupid pride, had thought to let
prejudice come between them. Her jealousy of "that woman" disappeared.
The happiness, the health, the rejuvenation of Ronnie were sufficient
justification, in her eyes, for Aliette. No worthless woman could have
put those sunny words into her boy's mouth, that sun-bronze on his
cheeks!
Ronnie, too, was moved almost to tears. The first sight of his mother,
reacting on the emotions of the past weeks, struck him to consciousness
of his love for her. She needed his protection more than ever before.
She looked so frail, so suffering. She had suffered--because of him,
because of Aliette. His heart went out to both women--in pity, in
self-condemnation.
He helped her into the trap (it no longer surprised her to find they
were alone) and said: "I'm afraid it's not very comfortable. That
cushion's for your back. We'll have some tea at the Arms before we
start."
She managed to answer: "Yes, dear. I think I would like some tea." To
herself she said: "I wonder which of them thought about giving me tea,
about bringing this cushion."
Ronnie clambered up; took the reins; and tipped the porters. In silence,
they drove to the inn.
There the hot tea and the hot buttered toast, which he coaxed her to
eat, brought back a little of Julia's courage; but the waitress,
popping--eager-faced at sight of strangers--in and out of the
coffee-room, made free speech impossible. Perforce they confined
conversation to generalities. He, she said, "looked extraordinarily
well." She, he said, "looked the least bit tired." The lunch on the
train, she told him, had been "execrable." The drive to the Cove, he
told her, was a "good eight miles" and they would have to "take things
easy" because of the luggage. Ought they, he asked, to have ordered her
a car? Oh, no--she smiled, she preferred the trap: it would give them
more time to talk.
"I rather expected you'd bring Smithers," mentioned Ronnie.
"I didn't think a maid--advisable," declared Julia.
He paid for her tea, and they set off again--each silently uncertain of
the other, each silently and socially constrained. But at last, as they
drew clear of the town, Julia conquered constraint.
"And how is Aliette?" she asked quietly.
All the way down in the train she had intended to speak both to and of
"that woman" as "Mrs. Brunton"; but since seeing Ronnie she knew that
she could never even think in terms of "Mrs. Brunton" or of "that woman"
again. Sinner in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the mother whose
boy she had made so happy, Hector Brunton's guilty wife was already a
saint.
"Quite well." His quietness matched her own.
"I'm glad."
And suddenly, impetuously, he burst out:
"Mater, she's so wonderful."
Now mother and son were alone in a world of sky and heather; and the
brown pony, as though aware of impending confidences, slowed to a walk.
She put a tremulous hand on his driving arm.
"Tell me--the whole story," said Julia.
His fingers loosed the reins; and that afternoon, as the brown pony
ambled toward the sea, he told her the full tale of his love for
Aliette, of his love for both of them: till, listening, it seemed to
Julia Cavendish as though never before had she understood the heart of
her son.
And that afternoon, for the first time in all her sixty years,
she--whose lifelong struggle had been to cramp life in the bonds of
formal religion--saw that formal religion at its very highest could only
be a code for slaves, for the weak and the ignorant. For the soul of a
free individual, for the strong and the wise of the earth, no
formalities--whether of religion, of law, or of social
observances--could exist.
The individual souls of the wise and the strong brooked no earthly
master. Lonely arbiters of heaven and of hell, their own gods, their own
priests and lawgivers, only love could control them, only conscience
guide.
Ignorantly, blindly, she, Julia Cavendish, had sought to fetter the free
souls, the wise and the strong. And behold! in the very person of her
own son they had broken loose from her fetters. Ronnie, her own
dearly-beloved son, was of the free! All that her formal religion had
preached him wrong, love had shown him to be right; and with love had
come both strength and wisdom, so that he had followed his conscience
into the freedom which her ignorance would have denied him.
For that Ronnie's conscience was as clear, as limpid-clear of sin as it
had been in boyhood, Julia--listening to him--could not doubt. Nor,
hugging that certainty, could she doubt Aliette. Love was justified of
both by the sheer test of happiness. As well accuse the birds of deadly
sin as these two who, moved by an impulse so overwhelming that to deny
it would have been a denial of their very natures, had--mated.
4
Aliette, shading her eyes from the sun, watched the pony-cart top
sky-line, and crawl leisurely down-hill. At sight of it, her heart
misgave her. Every tradition in which she had been reared, all her
social sense and all her love for Ronnie warned her that the meeting
with Ronnie's mother would be, at its best, awkward--and its worst,
disastrous.
In Chilworth Cove, with only Caroline Staley for confidante of their
secret (and Caroline, from the first, had been definitely partizan,
loyalty itself), she had grown so accustomed to thinking of herself as
Ronnie's wife, that it was quite a shock to perceive, with the approach
of a being from her own world (a woman who, however much she might
pretend sympathy, must be, in her heart, hostile), their exact
relationship.
"I'm her son's mistress," thought Aliette; and suddenly seeing herself
and her lover through the eyes of the ordinary world, realized the
tragedy of those who, knowing themselves not guilty at the bar of their
own consciences, can nevertheless sympathize with the many who condemn
them. Which is perhaps the heaviest cross that any woman can be forced
to carry!
Ponto, darting hot-foot out of Honeysuckle Cottage at the sound of
wheels, banished further introspection. Aliette just had time to grab
the great hound by the collar as the brown pony, eager for his evening
hay, came trotting up; and was still holding him, her bared forearm
tense with the effort, when the trap drew to the door. So that--as it
happened--the exact greeting of the "harpy" to the mother whose boy she
had stolen was, "I do hope you're not frightened of dogs, Mrs.
Cavendish," and the mother's to the harpy, "Not in the very least.
That's Ponto, I presume. Ronnie's told me about him."
There is, after all, something to be said for a social code which
enables people to carry off difficult situations with an air of complete
insouciance! Julia Cavendish stepped down from the dilapidated
conveyance; shook hands; admitted that she would like to get tidy; and
followed her hostess's lithe figure down a whitewashed passage, up one
flight of rather crazy staircase, into a low-ceiled bedroom, obviously
scrubbed out that day. The room was very plainly furnished, yet it had
about it the particular atmosphere which indicates, as between one woman
and another: "We expected you. We made preparations for you."
"I'm afraid it isn't up to much," said Aliette shyly. "But we've put a
writing-table under the window--just in case."
Julia Cavendish looked at the table, at the pens and the ink-pot and the
jar of flowers on the table; Julia Cavendish looked at the little shy
woman, so gorgeous in her mating beauty, so socially correct in her
shyness; and the "Mrs. Brunton, this is a very serious position" with
which--ten hours since--she had firmly made up her mind to open their
conversation, vanished into the limbo of unuttered sentences.
"I'm afraid," said Julia Cavendish, "that this visit is rather--an
intrusion."
"It is I who am the intruder," answered Aliette simply; and then, seeing
that Julia, who had seated herself on the side of the bed, was fumbling
at the unaccustomed task of removing her own hat: "Can't I help?"
"Thank you, my dear," said Julia.
Caroline Staley, bringing hot water, knocked; deposited her copper jug
by the washhand-stand; and departed with the unspoken thought, "Better
leave they two alone for a while."
And, for a while, "they two" scrutinized one another in silence--the
elder woman still seated; the younger, diffident, very uncertain of what
next to say, upright beside her.
At last the younger woman said, "You must be tired after your journey.
You'd like to change into a tea-gown, wouldn't you? Caroline is quite a
good maid. I'll send her and your box up." She made a movement to go,
but the elder woman restrained her.
"I think I'd rather talk first. We've got a good many things to talk
about, haven't we? Won't you sit down?" Julia patted the clean
counterpane in further invitation.
"You're very kind, Mrs. Cavendish." Aliette, still standing, shook her
head ever so slightly, as one refusing a gift. "Too kind. And I'm glad
you've forgiven Ronnie. But you needn't, really you needn't forgive me.
You came to see your son, not your son's"--she hesitated--"lady-love.
I'm quite willing to--to efface myself as long as you're here." She
smiled proudly. "Though, as it's rather a tiny cottage, you mustn't mind
seeing me occasionally."
Her favorite word "Rubbish!" rose to Julia's lips; but was instantly
repressed. Proud herself, she could both respect and sympathize with the
pride in the other.
"I'm wondering," she said after a pause, "just how much my son's
lady-love loves my son."
At that, Aliette's eyes suffused. But she could make no reply, and Julia
went on:
"My dear, do you think I don't know how much you care for him? Do you
think I don't realize that you have made him happy? Happier than I ever
did. Won't you make me happy too? Won't you try and care, just a little,
for me--for Ronnie's mother?"
"Don't, please don't." The proud lips trembled. "It hurts me that
you--that you----" And suddenly, impulsively, Aliette was on her
knees--her head bowed, her shoulders shaking to the sobs that had broken
pride.
"I love him"--the words, tear-choked, were scarcely audible--"I adore
him. I'd kill myself to-morrow if I thought it would be for Ronnie's
good. I never meant, I never meant to come between you and him. I never
intended that you"--the brown head lifted, the brown eyes gazed up into
Julia's blue--"that you should have to know me until--until things were
put right. You needn't--after this. I'll be quite content--if you'll let
him come to me--sometimes--to take a little house--to wait for him. I
don't want you to be--mixed up in things you hate. I don't want to--to
flaunt myself with your son."
Said Julia Cavendish, speaking stiffly lest the tears blind her: "You
haven't answered my question, Aliette. I may call you Aliette, mayn't I?
You haven't yet told me whether you could care for--Ronnie's mother?"
For answer, Aliette took one of the old hands between her two youthful
ones; and, bowing her head again, kissed it.
"You oughtn't to forgive me. You oughtn't to call me Aliette," whispered
"that woman."
"Ronnie will be so furious with me if he thinks I've made you cry,"
whispered back Ronnie's mother; and leaning forward, took "that woman"
in her arms.
* * * * *
What those two said to one another, in the hushed half-hour while Ronnie
waited for them in the tiny garden and Caroline Staley busied herself
over the kitchen fire, only the bees, droning ceaselessly round the
clematis, overheard.
5
It was very late for Chilworth Cove: past ten o'clock of a dull heavy
night: the stars veiled: the purr of a torpid sea coming faint down the
Ghyll. One by one the lights in the village windows had been
extinguished. But light still poured from the windows of Honeysuckle
Cottage; and through the light-motes, the smoke of a man's cigar
outcurled in blue seashell whorls that hung long-time--meditative as the
man--in the windless quiet.
Ronald Cavendish threw the butt of his cigar after the smoke-whorls, and
turned to the two women in the room.
"The mater's right," he said. "We must make some move. But it's no
earthly use writing to Jimmy. Jimmy can't help us. The only thing to be
done is for me to go up to town and see H. B. myself."
Ever since Caroline had cleared away dinner, they had been discussing
the problem of Brunton's inactivity. To Aliette, pride-bound, feeling
herself--despite the new alliance with Julia Cavendish--still guilty,
still the interloper, it seemed best that they should wait. Silently
resenting, yet chiding herself all the while for her resentment, the
whole discussion, she had held herself, whenever possible, aloof from
it.
But now she could hold aloof no longer. No coward in her own love;
willing, for herself, to take any and all risks; the suggested meeting
filled her with apprehension for Ronnie.
"I beg you not to do that," she said.
"Why not?" Ronnie laughed. "He can't eat me."
"I'd so much rather you didn't. Perhaps he's only waiting because of
some difficulty, some legal difficulty. Wouldn't it be better if I wrote
to him again, if we both wrote to him? After all, we mustn't forget
that"--she stumbled over the phrase--"we're in the wrong."
"Writing won't do any good," pronounced Julia. "Ninety-nine letters out
of every hundred are perfectly futile. The hundredth--is usually an
irrevocable mistake."
The novelist, rather pleased with the epigram, sat back in her
basketwork chair. For the first time since her quarrel with Ronnie, she
had regained that peculiar power of mental detachment--of seeing real
personalities, her own included, as characters in a book--which is the
exclusive property of the literary temperament.
"All the same," she went on, "I can't help feeling that a personal
interview would be risky. It might only exacerbate the position."
"Risky or not," said a determined Ronnie, "it's the only possible thing
to be done. Unless H. B. files his petition at once, we shall have to
wait the best part of a year before we can get married. And remember, we
haven't only ourselves to consider--there's Aliette's family. _They'll_
have to be told sooner or later. Think how much easier it would be if we
could tell them that everything was properly arranged."
Julia's newly-regained detachment deserted her. Turning to Aliette, she
asked nervously:
"But don't _your_ parents know? Haven't you written to them?"
"Not yet." Beyond the lamplight, the younger woman's face showed
scarcely an emotion. "It seemed so useless. You see, I'm not an only
child. There'll be no forgiveness--on their side. Mollie may stand by
me. But Eva won't. Mother and Andrew will take Eva's advice. They only
cared for my brothers. When my brothers were killed, it was just as if
everything had gone out of their lives." And she added--pathetically,
thought Julia Cavendish, who, loving her own son more than anything in
the world, always found difficulty in realizing how frail is the average
tie between parents and grown-up daughters: "Mother's rather fond of
Eva's children."
"Still, we have to consider them," interrupted Aliette's, lover. "We
don't want them to hear the news from--the other side. I think you
_should_ write to them, Alie. Mollie I'll go and see myself. Jimmy's
sure to know her address. I wonder if she and Jimmy are engaged----"
"Your friend Wilberforce," interrupted Julia, "may be an excellent
solicitor; but he's an extremely selfish young man."
"What makes you say that?" asked Aliette; and as Julia did not reply,
"Has he spoken to you--about my sister?"
"He has." Julia's voice was rather grim.
"And is--what we've done--going to make any difference?"
"I think not. But if it does," the suspicion of a twinkle gleamed in the
blue eyes, "if it does, my dear, your sister will owe you a great debt
of gratitude for--running away with my son. That kind of man,"
definitely, "is no use."
"I've been rather worried about Mollie," began Aliette, whose decision
not to await her sister's return had been the most difficult of all the
decisions she took in those few hours before she bolted from Lancaster
Gate. "That letter of mine----"
She broke off the sentence, divining nevertheless that her letter--meant
as a precise document--must have been incoherent to the last degree;
divining how impossible a situation her selfishness must have created
for Mollie. "I _am_ selfish," she said to herself. "Utterly selfish! I
deserve no consideration. And yet these two consider only me."
"Never mind about Mollie." Stubbornly--for now that his mother had
joined forces with them it seemed more than ever necessary that they
should bring Brunton swiftly to reason--Ronald Cavendish returned to his
point. "The question is: When do I go up to town? In my opinion, the
sooner the better. Once I _have_ seen H. B., we shall at least know
where we stand."
"And suppose," faltered Aliette, "suppose he refuses to see you?"
"He won't."
"Suppose he refuses to do anything?"
"You needn't be afraid of that. A man in his position is bound to take
action. If he doesn't----"
"If he doesn't," broke in Julia, "we must fight him. We three." She rose
from the creaky chair; and Aliette, seeing the determination, the
courage in those old eyes, felt suddenly ashamed of her own weakness.
"Meanwhile, I think I'll go to bed. Your maid promised to wait up for
me."
Kissing "that woman" good night, Ronnie's mother whispered: "Don't try
to overpersuade him. If he feels it is right--he must be allowed to go."
6
Very early next morning, before dawn lightened to palest rose behind the
clematis blossoms, the woman who had left her husband, waking with her
lover's arms about her, prayed voicelessly to that God whose priests
would henceforth bar her from His communion, that Ronnie's love might
endure to the end.
For now, Aliette was afraid.