1
Two days subsequent to his mother's arrival at Chilworth Cove, Ronald
Cavendish set out for London.
Aliette, masking her anxiety, drove him to the station; and for nearly
an hour after the slow train left Chilton Junction he visualized nothing
except her pale, exquisite face and the wistful smile in her brown eyes.
Looking back, it seemed to him that those eyes had been very close to
tears. Thinking of her, imagination roused all the tenderness, all the
fighting instinct in him.
But gradually, as the lush countryside slid by, Ronnie's mind recovered
a little of its legal function; and he began to map out, as carefully as
he could, his plan of campaign.
The fear lest Brunton should refuse to take any action still hardly
troubled him. To one of his public school training, it appeared utterly
incredible that a man in Brunton's position, childless and without
religious scruples, should refuse to set free a wife who obviously did
not care for him, and for whom (equally obviously, as it seemed) he did
not himself care. Sheer caddishness of that description was the
prerogative of rank outsiders like Carrington.
Nevertheless, Ronnie's instinct dictated caution. It would he best, he
thought, to see Jimmy immediately on his arrival in London; and to
ascertain from Jimmy how far his flight with Aliette had become public
knowledge. Possibly, if there had been no open scandal, Brunton might
hold his hand till after the long vacation. Scandal, whether at the bar
or elsewhere, never did any one any good.
And at that, Ronald Cavendish knew apprehension. His brain, hitherto
blinded by the grand passion, began to see the ordinary point of view,
the point of view he himself might have adopted towards their case a
twelvemonth since. "Rather sordid," he would have considered the whole
business, "rather hard luck on the husband." And so thinking, he
imagined the bare legal tale as it might one day appear in the press.
Commonplace enough! Mrs. Smith had left Mr. Smith, and was living in
open adultery with Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith asked for a divorce; produced
the usual evidence; secured the usual decree.
He tried to put apprehension away from him. He said to himself, "As if a
little publicity mattered; as if anything mattered except her freedom."
All the same, he knew that publicity would matter, that publicity would
hurt Aliette and hurt his mother. "Damnable," he thought; "damnable that
the law should take so little cognizance of the personal equation!"
And London, seen in the hot sunlight of a July afternoon as his taxi
crawled over Waterloo Bridge, only intensified the unimportance of the
individual. The isolation of Chilworth, the paradise of enchantment
which love and Aliette had made for him at Chilworth, seemed a million
miles removed from this peopled city. He recognized himself one of the
herd again, forced to think as the herd, to act as the herd dictated.
Moses Moffatt's face, smiling most confidential of welcomes at the green
door in Jermyn Street, typified the herd point of view--the basement
point of view--the feeling that, potentially, one was a mere
co-respondent.
While the man was unpacking for him in the bare ascetic bedroom, Ronnie
rang up Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright; and got through to Jimmy.
Jimmy on the telephone sounded cold, serious, dignified. Only after some
persuasion would he consent to dine at the club.
"And by the way," asked Ronnie, "do you happen to know if Mollie
Fullerford's in town?"
"Why?"
"I've got a letter for her."
"From her sister?"
"Yes."
"I'll give you her address this evening," said James Wilberforce, and
replaced his receiver.
2
The Lustrum is one of those semi-social, semi-political clubs which
combine sound cookery, a cellar beyond reproach, and a chairman of the
utmost distinction, with the architectural style of a Turkish bath and
the gloom of a family mausoleum. A tape-machine ticks by the
glass-doored porter's box in the hall; an enormous gold-framed oil of
Mr. Asquith stares down the red marble staircase; English waiters--last
of their breed--move in unhurried dignity through the vast dining-room;
while "members bringing guests" are subject to rules so complicated that
even the honorary secretary--who takes most of the credit for the paid
secretary's work when he appears before a somnolent committee--has been
known to infringe them.
The constraint of this atmosphere weighed so heavily on the friends as
to make immediate conversation impossible. Only after a bottle of the
Lustrum's pre-war Pommard, a glass apiece of the Lustrum's '68 port, and
the third of a cigar consumed over coffee in the stuffy guest-room, did
Jimmy Wilberforce manage:
"Old chap, I'm afraid this is a devil of a mess. You've seen your mater,
I suppose!"
"Seen her!" Ronnie smiled--and then, cautiously: "Didn't you know that
she was staying with us?"
"Us?" Wilberforce repeated the word. "You mean----"
"With myself and Aliette."
Wilberforce's eyes narrowed. He took the tawny cigar from under his
auburn mustache, and scrutinized it a longish while before saying:
"Tell me, then: why are you in town?"
"Primarily to see H. B. We've waited quite long enough for him to make a
move."
The matter-of-fact tone annoyed Wilberforce. Despite his resolves not to
let the personal issue between himself and Aliette's sister cloud
impersonal judgment, that issue had been recurring to his mind all
through the dreary bachelor dinner. For six weeks Mollie had been on the
defensive with him, unseizable if not unapproachable; for six weeks he
had been wavering between the strong desire to "go gently till this damn
mess was cleared up," and the fear of what "Society" would think about
the match. Therefore, it irritated him that Ronnie should speak about
the whole affair as though running away with another man's wife were an
every-day occurrence, as though he, Ronnie, were the injured party.
"Rather an unwise move, don't you think?" he said.
"Unwise! One can't let him go on shilly-shallying like this."
"If you've got it into your head that you're going to bully Hector
Brunton into giving Mrs. Brunton her freedom," retorted Jimmy, "I should
give up the idea"; and he added: "_I_ should have thought your best plan
would be to lie doggo. After all, you must remember that he's the
aggrieved party."
"If you feel that way about it," Ronnie's eyes kindled to anger, "we
won't discuss the matter further."
At that Wilberforce became the solicitor.
"My dear fellow," he began, assuming his father's blandness, "do be
reasonable. Don't think I fail to understand your feelings. I know you
well enough to realize that you wouldn't have acted as you have acted
without imagining yourself justified. Very possibly you are justified.
Very possibly there are circumstances--I hold no brief for H. B. All _I_
want to do is to help you and your mother. And so if you come to me for
advice, I am bound to tell you exactly what I think. It's for Brunton to
move, not you."
"He's had plenty of time. And I'm sick of waiting."
"Then why don't you get some mutual friend to see him? That's the usual
thing."
Ronnie rose from the deep saddle-bag chair. His instinct was all for a
row. Unreasonably, with the divine unreason of a lover, he had expected
sympathy; instead he had met a wall, a wall of misunderstanding between
himself and his best friend. "Damn Jimmy," he thought. "Jimmy's common
sense ought to tell him that this isn't the usual thing."
And suddenly Aliette's lover realized that Jimmy's common sense had told
him nothing, that Jimmy's very common sense prevented him from
understanding the peculiar relationship between Aliette and her legal
owner. He wanted to tell Jimmy the truth about that relationship; but
his training, the code of decent reticence, every tradition of public
schooldom restrained him. Decency suggested that neither then to James
Wilberforce, nor eventually in court, could he make public the
matrimonial position between Aliette and Hector. "Tongue-tied!" he
thought. "Even if I were an orator, in _her_ defense I should always be
tongue-tied."
Nevertheless, his anger relented.
"Except yourself, Jimmy," he went on, "there's no mutual friend who
could act for us; and I can't ask you to act because of your firm's
relations with him. Therefore, I'm going to do the job myself."
There was almost admiration in the other's "You always were a plucky
devil."
"Plucky! I don't see anything plucky in it."
"Supposing H. B. cuts up rough?"
"Why should he? He's in the wrong, and he knows it."
"All the more reason." Wilberforce, too, rose. Watching his friend
carefully, he saw that their conversation had aroused him to
fighting-pitch; and Ronnie at fighting-pitch--as Jimmy remembered from
their Oxford days--was capable of being a rather desperate person.
"Don't _you_ cut up rough, old man," he continued. "There'll be quite
enough trouble without a police-court case into the bargain."
"You needn't be afraid, Jimmy." Ronnie controlled himself. "I'll manage
to keep my temper with the fellow. By the way, you don't feel there's
any chance of his refusing to file his petition, do you?"
"Hardly. H. B. isn't a religious chap, or anything of that sort. He
might go for damages, of course."
"We could settle that before we went into court."
They simmered down; sat down; relit cigars; and began to discuss the
legal aspect of the case which each felt sure that Brunton must
eventually bring; finally deciding that Wilberforce, Wilberforce &
Cartwright could not, under the special circumstances, act for either
party.
"J. J. W. would be your best man," said James.
So interested did they become in the professional issue that it was
nearly midnight before Ronnie said, "By the way, I'd almost forgotten to
ask you for Mollie Fullerford's address"; and Wilberforce, "Do you
really think it's advisable for you to go and see her?"
"Advisable! How do you mean?"
The two friends faced one another in silence, each constrained by the
peculiar diffidence of their class, the diffidence which makes the
discussion of women, and especially of their own women, so terribly
difficult to decent Englishmen.
At last Wilberforce said: "You see, old chap, if this case comes on, I'm
afraid it will be a big shock to her. H. B. might call her as a witness.
Pretty rough on a girl, being dragged into"--he hesitated--"this sort of
thing."
"Yes, rotten. We'll have to keep her name out." Ronnie, too, hesitated.
"She hasn't said anything to you, I suppose?"
"No, but I feel she knows." The red man nearly blushed. "I say, you'll
be decent about breaking things, won't you? You'll let her down lightly.
Mollie's jolly fond of her sister, and--er--you mustn't mind my saying
it--her sister hasn't behaved over-well in this business--leaving her
all by herself at Brunton's."
"My fault, Jimmy. It was I who persuaded Aliette not to wait. But I
promise you, I'll see that Brunton keeps Mollie Fullerford's name out of
the affair.
"By the way," added Ronnie casually, "you remember something you said to
me just before we went into court in the Ellerson case?" A pause. "Does
that still hold good? What I mean is this. I should never forgive myself
if I thought that this--this trouble of mine----"
"I'm not that sort of cad," retorted James Wilberforce hotly. But all
the same, walking home through the night, he realized once more--with
revolting clarity--himself. Which self-knowledge is no bad discipline
for the James Wilberforces of this world!
3
Ronnie, too, walked home from the Lustrum. The interview with
Wilberforce had clarified his mind; he foresaw now exactly how his world
would regard the case. The foreknowledge hardened his determination to
see Brunton. He _must_ see Brunton. Brunton _must_ be brought to
immediate action. Otherwise----
Resolutely the man strove to put that "otherwise" away from him. But the
"otherwise" kept on intruding. Suppose Aliette's legal owner refused to
take any action at all? Carrington had waited five years.
And that night, his first bereft of her, alone and sleepless at Jermyn
Street, Aliette's lover began to conceive a hatred of Aliette's legal
owner. The Wixton imagination, always most active in darkness, showed
him pictures of Brunton, of the sandy hair, the cold gray eyes, the feet
in their big boots. Tossing sleepless on his tumbled pillows,
imagination bade him remember that once--long ago though it must have
been--Brunton had actually----
Horrors, physical horrors, capered and sarabanded before his eyes,
rousing the blood-lust in him--the old blood-lust experienced four years
since. He remembered, just as sleep overtook him, the face of a Turk he
had killed. His squadron was charging. Behind him, he heard the
galloping stamp of shod hoofs on desert, the creak of saddlery, the
jingle of accoutrements, the curses of his men; in front of him rose a
face, the face of the Turk, bearded above dirty linen. The face was
afraid; he could see the face twitch as he fired. Only as he fired, the
face changed--became the face of Hector Brunton.
4
"I'm afraid you didn't sleep very well last night, sir," said Moses
Moffatt, serving the usual faultless rashers in Ronnie's beige-papered
sitting-room.
"What makes you say that?" Ronnie, clear-eyed after his morning tub,
looked across the breakfast-table.
"Well, sir," Moses Moffatt smiled deprecatingly, "if you don't mind my
mentioning it, the missus and me heard you calling out in your sleep."
"Is that so? I'm sorry if I disturbed you."
Ronnie, remembering his dream only very vaguely, ate his breakfast;
skimmed through the "Morning Post"; took his top-hat, and sauntered
downstairs into Jermyn Street.
It had not yet struck ten. Fishmongers were still swilling down their
marbles. The usual early morning crowd had emerged into sunshine from
the Piccadilly Tube. Ronnie swung past them down the Haymarket.
The asphalt of London, the cars, the buses, and the taxicabs seemed more
than ever alien after the sea and the solitude of Chilworth Cove. He
felt like a stranger in a strange, hostile city. Only as he emerged
through Northumberland Avenue upon the Embankment did London seem home
again; only as he turned leftward from the river into the Temple did
there come over him the full realization of the issue at stake.
In his chambers at Pump Court nothing had altered. Tho other three
barristers were, as usual, away; Benjamin Bunce, as usual, pottering
among the foolscaps. The little clerk's watery eyes lit with curiosity
at sight of the returning wanderer.
"There were papers," hinted Benjamin, "there was correspondence."
Benjamin's employer glanced at the taped documents on the table, at the
unopened letters. "They can wait," he said. "Has Mr. Brunton's clerk
inquired for my address?"
"No, sir."
"You're sure?"
"Quite sure, sir."
"Very good. I'll ring when I want you."
The clerk--a thousand unanswered questions seething in his
soul--withdrew.
Ronnie hung his hat behind the door, and began striding up and down the
book-shelved room. Here, he remembered, he had first tried to reason out
his feelings for Aliette. Here, just before the Ellerson case, he had
almost decided it his duty to give her up. And now, now--in fact if not
in law--Aliette was actually his.
For a little while he dreamed of her, but soon the professional
atmosphere of Pump Court infected him; and he began to see their case
impersonally--as a "case." In law, unless Brunton acted, they had no
remedy. His whole career, Aliette's whole happiness, their whole future
lives depended on the clemency of Aliette's legal owner. Neither the old
divorce-laws nor the proposed divorce-reforms could help them. Whatever
wrongs Aliette might have suffered at her husband's hands in the past,
she had forfeited those rights by running away; and only her husband
could set her free. Would Brunton set her free? That was the whole
issue. Best face it out of hand!
Ronnie pressed the bell on his desk, and the clerk popped through the
door.
"Bunce, I want you to go over to Mr. Brunton's chambers. Ask Mr.
Brunton's clerk if he can see me before he goes into court. You can say
that it is on a private matter, and rather important."
Bunce--Ms curiosity satisfied--sidled out.
Waiting for Brunton's decision, Cavendish knew both curiosity and fear.
Suppose Brunton refused even to discuss the matter?
And Brunton did refuse. The message Benjamin brought back was perfectly
definite, perfectly courteous. He, Benjamin, had seen Mr. Brunton's
clerk, David Patterson, and Mr. Brunton had sent word by Mr. Patterson
to say that he was very sorry not to be able to see Mr. Cavendish, but
that he was extremely busy and would be busy all day.
"Funk!" thought Ronnie; and remembered suddenly how Brunton had avoided
the war. Brunton's refusal to see him was sheer cowardice. Rage kindled
in his mind. For the flash of a second, he saw red. He _would_ see
Brunton. Damn it all, he _would_ see him. How dared Brunton shelter
behind a clerk! But it would be no use trying to force his way into
Brunton's chambers. Brunton would be in court. Very well, then, he would
wait for him; wait till the court adjourned; wait, if necessary, all
day.
"Won't you look through your letters, sir?" reminded Bunce.
Ronnie tried to look through his letters; tried to examine the few
briefs which had come in during his absence. But his legal mind refused
to concentrate. Between his mind and his correspondence, between his
mind and his briefs, rage hung a scarlet and impenetrable curtain.
5
That morning, yet another legal brain refused to concentrate on its
immediate business.
All through the long hours in the stuffy court-room, Hector Brunton,
K.C., was conscious of the Furies. "Cavendish," whispered the Furies,
"Cavendish has come back." He tried to dismiss the fellow from his mind,
to attack the case in hand. But again and again the witnesses under
cross-examination eluded him. Instead of the faces in the witness-box,
he saw Cavendish's face--the face of his wife. And when--his
cross-examinations concluded--the court adjourned for luncheon, those
two faces were still before his eyes, mocking him, mocking him.
"God's curse on them," he thought. "God's curse on both of them. I'll
not see Cavendish. Let them lie in the bed they made for themselves. Let
the adulterer and the adulteress rot together."
Angrily Brunton disrobed; angrily he left the law courts and made across
Fleet Street toward King's Bench Walk. Even David Patterson, dour,
heavy-jowled as the K.C. himself; who followed, brief-bag slung over his
shoulder, at a respectful distance; was awed at his employer's obvious
fury.
The K.C. strode rapidly, his hands behind his back, his head lowered,
down Middle Temple Lane, through Elm Court, through Fig Tree Court, into
the big graveled square of the Walk, and diagonally across the Walk to
his chambers.
Suddenly his head lifted. There, at the steps of his chambers, waiting
for him, obviously waiting for him, stood Cavendish. For the fraction of
a second Brunton, K.C., hesitated in his stride.
Ronnie, watching, saw that hesitation; saw his man come on again, head
low, eyes on the pavement; and knew instinctively that Brunton would
pretend not to recognize him, would try to push past him up the stone
stairway. Resolutely, he planted himself across the stairway; and in
that one second of time before they met face to face, the vision he had
seen in the darkness of overnight flashed through his mind. Then he had
his enemy in front of him, and was saying quietly:
"I'd like a word with you, Brunton."
The K.C. tried to pass; but Ronnie stood his ground.
"I'm afraid I'm too busy to see you to-day, Cavendish." The voice
sounded courteous enough; but a glance, a glance of insane rage, darted
snake-like from behind the gray pupils. Brunton's great jowl twitched;
the veins on his forehead were steel cords.
"The matter is rather urgent." Ronnie, watching the approach of David
Patterson, lowered his tone. "I sha'n't keep you a minute. Unless, of
course," the tone rose, "you prefer that our discussion should take
place in public."
The fire in his blue eyes beat down the snake in Brunton's gray; and,
without another word, Ronnie accompanied his man up the stairway, along
the corridor into his chambers.
David Patterson made as if to follow, but Brunton barked over one
shoulder, "I sha'n't need you," and the two of them were alone.
"And now," began the K.C., standing foursquare in front of his empty
fireplace, "I shall be glad to know the reason of this unwarrantable
intrusion."
"You know the reason as well as I do." The red mist still hung before
Ronnie's eyes. He had forgotten the "legal position": he wanted to
strike Brunton; to strike him across the sneering face. Only the code,
the public school code of restraint, held him back.
"I haven't the slightest idea why you should force your way into my
chambers. Perhaps you will condescend to explain." Brunton, too, felt
the code on him--heavy, like a net hampering his limbs. He wanted to
free himself from the net; wanted to lash out at the man who had stolen
Aliette, to destroy him.
"I came to ask you," Ronnie's lips hardly moved, "how much longer you
intend to delay."
"Delay what?"
"Your petition."
"What petition?"
"Your petition for divorce."
"That's my business." Brunton laughed--a harsh, bitter laugh, low in the
throat.
"And mine."
"I fail to see the connection."
Ronnie's fists clenched. "Apparently you take me for a fool."
Brunton laughed again. "No. Only for a thief."
With an effort, Ronnie thrust his hands into his pockets. "I didn't come
here to bandy words with you. All I want to know is how soon you intend
filing your petition."
"When I choose." Rage mastered Aliette's husband. "And if I don't
choose--never."
Now Ronnie laughed--contemptuously. "You may be able to browbeat a woman
in the box, but you can't browbeat me. I want an answer to my question.
How soon do you intend to file your petition? This isn't only your
business. It's mine--mine and----"
"Kindly keep my wife out of this discussion," snarled Brunton. "Your
question is a damned insult, and your presence here an infernal outrage.
Neither you nor God Almighty can make me file the petition you refer
to."
For a full minute the pair faced each other, tense, wordless,
self-control fighting against instincts, instincts fighting against
self-control. Then Brunton's nerve snapped.
"I hate the very sight of you," he shouted. "Will you get out? Or have I
got to throw you out?"
"Don't make a fool of yourself," said Ronnie; and his voice was ice. "If
it comes to violence I sha'n't be the one who'll get the worst of it."
He took a step forward, and the K.C. recoiled before him.
"Answer my question, Brunton."
"I'll see you to hell first, Cavendish."
And suddenly the red mist thickened to blood-color before Ronnie's eyes.
He wanted to kill Brunton. Killing would be the easiest way to deal with
Brunton--far the easiest way. His hands clenched in his trouser-pockets;
he itched to take his hands out of his pockets, to dash them in those
cold gray eyes, to seize that heavy jowl, to tear the life out of it.
And then, in a flash, his legal mind saw the consequences of that
killing. The blood-red mist vanished. Swiftly his mood changed. He began
to plead, to plead desperately, not for his own sake, but for Aliette's.
He said:
"We're being selfish. It isn't of ourselves we have to think. Think of
_her_ position if you don't take action."
"She should have thought of my position before she ran away with you,"
retorted the other. "I tell you, I'm not going to be hustled; and I'm
not going to be bullied. I'll take action when I choose; and not a
minute before. Nothing that you, nothing that she, nothing that anybody
else can do will persuade me to say one word further on this subject.
Now, will you go?"
And Ronnie went, realizing himself powerless. As he passed through the
doorway he gave one glance at his adversary. His adversary still stood,
like a bull at bay, against the empty grate; but the look in his
adversary's eyes--a look which Ronnie could not fathom--was not the
brave look of the bull; rather was it compound of fear and obstinacy, of
injured pride and of determination for revenge; the look of the weak man
who knows himself in the wrong, yet means to persist in his wrongdoing.
* * * * *
Surely as night follows day in the firmament, so surely does reaction
follow action in imaginative man. Ronald Cavendish's mind, as he crossed
King's Bench Walk after his interview with Hector Brunton, was almost a
blank. Reaction wiped out every detail of that interview. He remembered
only Brunton's words, "I'll take action when _I_ choose."
Twice--the mad purpose of killing Brunton mastering him once more--he
tried to turn back. But his feet carried him on, carried him away from
Brunton, across the Walk to his own chambers. There, at least, was
sanctuary--sanctuary from crime against the herd.
For the herd, even his dazed mind knew, would not countenance his
killing Brunton. Brunton was within his herd-rights, within the law;
while they, he and Aliette, having broken the herd-rights, were outlaws.
Still weak from reaction, he visioned the consequences of that outlawry;
visioned Brunton relentless, Aliette without a friend.
Till gradually, thinking of Aliette, his manhood came back to him. Let
Brunton do his damnedest. Let them be outlaws. Even in their outlawry
they would possess one another. Soon, Brunton would be brought to
reason. Meanwhile, even if he were not soon brought to reason, they, the
outlaws, would find people to stand by them; people like his mother. And
at that, abruptly, Ronnie remembered the letter Aliette had written to
her sister, the promise he had made to Jimmy.
Somehow it needed more courage than he had required in facing Aliette's
husband to lift the telephone and make his appointment with Mollie!
6
Over a snack of luncheon--snatched late and hastily at a little
uncomfortable coffee-shop near the Griffin--Ronnie's usual calm
returned. He realized that he had made a fool of himself in going to see
Brunton; that Jimmy, after all, had been right. Confound Brunton!
Brunton's "dog-in-the-manger" attitude would not endure, could not
endure. Even Carrington had given way in the long run. It was only a
question of patience. Still, he would have to break things very gently
to Aliette's sister.
Betty Masterman was out; and Mollie received her sister's lover alone in
the little red-papered sitting-room which seemed so cozy to the
Philistine mind of James Wilberforce.
"It's nice of you to call," she said perfunctorily. The voice might have
been that of Aliette, of the socially poised Aliette as Ronnie first
remembered her: but the girl's violet eyes were stern with suspicion;
her red lips showed unsmiling, uncompromising.
"Won't you sit down?" she went on.
"Thanks. I sha'n't keep you very long." Always impossibly shy with
women, the man did not know how to begin.
"You've got some message for me," the girl prompted "Some message
from----"
"From your sister."
She seated herself, avoiding his eyes.
"Your sister and I," he began bruskly----
And in those four words--even without the halting explanation which
followed--it seemed to Mollie Fullerford that she knew the whole story.
But she was not going to help him out. Why should she? The
story--carefully though he told it--revolted her. She felt hot; hot and
dirty and ashamed. Hurt, too, as though the healed scars of her bodily
wounds were opening afresh. All the suspicions of the past weeks, all
her still-smoldering resentment that Aliette should have let her return
unwarned to Hector's house, all her balked love for James Wilberforce,
harshened Mollie's judgment. She saw Cavendish no longer a "sober-sides"
but a hypocrite; and so seeing, hated him for his imagined hypocrisy.
"You see," he concluded, "it wasn't Aliette's fault. I mean the running
away in a hurry. You mustn't condemn her. I was to blame for that. I was
to blame, from beginning to end."
"Of course," said that Mollie who had once thought "most women rotters."
"It's always the man who's to blame."
Nevertheless her judgment softened. "After all," she thought, "he isn't
beating about the bush. He's being perfectly straight with me." And she
discovered to her great surprise that it was not their having run away
together which had been hurting her, but their omission to take her into
their confidence.
Ronnie, trying to guess the verdict behind those averted eyes, drew
Aliette's letter from his pocket; and handed it over without another
word. Watching her open the envelope, watching her as she read, he saw
her fingers tremble, her violet eyes suffuse.
"And _have_ you seen Hector?" she asked at last.
"Yes. I saw him this morning."
"What did he say?"
Ronnie hesitated to tell the brutal truth; and the girl repeated her
question, adding:
"Of course he's going to divorce her."
"I'm afraid, Miss Fullerford, that it's not going to be quite so easy as
that."
"You don't mean to say that he isn't going to----?"
"He _says_ he hasn't made up his mind----"
"But"--the girl was stammering now--"that's absolutely caddish. Hector's
a gentleman. Alie's been perfectly straight with him. Besides, even if
he had been badly treated, he couldn't, couldn't possibly----"
And suddenly the full possibilities of Hector's persisting in a refusal
to take action grew visible to the girl's mind. She braced herself to
meet those possibilities; the personal consequences of them. She forced
herself to ask:
"Have you seen Mr. Wilberforce?"
"Yes. Last night."
"Did you ask his advice?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"To do nothing. To wait."
At that, thought of her own love affair obsessed the girl's mind. She
visualized James, there, in the very chair which Cavendish occupied.
Remembering a thousand unspoken hesitancies of James, she saw only too
clearly the reason of those hesitancies.
"How long has Mr. Wilberforce known about--about you and my sister?"
"Some weeks, I believe."
"You're sure?" The wounds hurt again, hurt desperately. James ought to
have told her. "He never said a word--to me." She could have borne it
better from James than from Cavendish.
"Of course he couldn't tell you anything about it, Miss Fullerford. It
was a secret, a professional secret. My mother told him----"
"Your mother?"
"Yes, my mother. She's with Aliette now." His voice softened. "She's on
our side. You'll be on our side, too? Won't you? You won't let
this--this contretemps come between you and your sister? I'm not asking
anything for myself--but it's pretty rough luck on Alie."
Mollie's decision crystallized. "I can't go back on Alie," she thought.
"Whatever happens I mustn't go back on Alie." She remembered their
conversation at Moor Park; remembered herself saying, "I don't believe
divorce is wrong."
"Yes," she said, and held out her hand. "I shall stand by Alie whatever
happens. Will you tell her that? And say I'll write in a day or two. I
don't feel like--like writing to her at the moment."
Ronnie clasped her hand, and rose to go. He would have liked to thank
her; he would have liked to say something more about Jimmy. But instinct
restrained him. Perhaps, after all, she didn't care for Jimmy; perhaps
the pallor of her cheeks, the drooped corners of her full red mouth were
all for Alie.
7
And next day Ronald Cavendish went back to Chilworth Cove. All the long
train journey he was aware, growingly aware, of Aliette. Brunton and the
herd, Wilberforce and Mollie receded into the background of his
thoughts. He said to himself:
"Let Brunton do his worst. Aliette and I have our love, each other."
Love, all said and done, was the only issue. As for Brunton, they would
face him together, face him with courage high and hearts unflinching.
Courage! Courage and love! Weaponed with those two defenses, he and his
mate, his mother at their side, could battle down the onslaught of any
disaster.