1
Another month of outlawry went by.
The dahlias in Hyde Park died, cut down by the frost; and with the death
of them there came over Aliette that keen longing for the countryside in
winter-time which only English hunting people know. She used to dream
about hunting; about Miracle, striding full gallop across hedged fields,
steadying himself for his leap, flying his fence, landing, galloping on.
But Miracle--Hector's gift--was lost to her, as hunting was lost, and
nearly every social amenity which made up existence before she met
Ronnie. Between a hunting-season and a hunting-season, she had "dropped
out of things"; had become one of those illegally-mated women whom our
church neglects, our law despises, and our press dares only ignore.
The Aliettes of England! The women whose sole excuse for illegal
matehood is love! There are half a million such in Great Britain to-day:
women whose only crime is that, craving happiness, they have taken their
happiness in defiance of some male.
They are of all classes, our Aliettes. You will find them alike in our
West End and in our slums, in little lost cottages beneath whose windows
the sea moans all day long, and in prim suburban villas where the
milk-cart clatters on asphalt roads and cap-and-aproned servants gossip
of a morning under the peeky laburnum. You will find them--and always
with them, the one man, the mate they have chosen--in Chelsea studios,
on Cornish farms and Yorkshire moorlands, in Glasgow and in Ramsgate, in
a thousand stuffy apartments of Inner London, and in a hundred
unsuspicious boarding-houses of that middle fringe which is neither
Inner London nor Suburbia.
These women--who crave neither "free love" nor the "right to motherhood"
but only the right to married happiness--are the bond-slaves of our
national hypocrisy. Sometimes their own strength, sometimes death,
sometimes money, sometimes the clemency of their legal owners sets them
free. But, for the most part, they live, year after year, in outlawry;
live uncomplaining, faithful to that mate they have taken, bringing up
with loving care and a wise tenderness those children whom--even should
their parents ultimately marry--our law stamps "bastard" from birth to
death.
Meanwhile our priests, our politicians, our lawgivers, and all the
self-righteous Pharisees who have never known the hells of unhappy
marriage, harden their smug hearts; and neither man nor woman in England
may claim release from a drunkard, from a lunatic, from a criminal, or
from any of those thousand and one miseries which wreck the human soul.
2
Powolney Mansions--four impossible Victorian dwelling-places, converted
into one impossible Georgian boarding-house of that middle fringe which
is neither Inner London nor Outer Suburbia--front a quiet road half-way
between the Baron's Court and West Kensington Stations.
"Queen's" being the limit of Aliette's London, it was natural enough
that her deliberate mind, casting about for some less expensive abode
than their hotel near the park, should remember the neighborhood, and
search it for a hiding-place.
Natural enough, too, was that instinct for a hiding-place, in a woman
who had no desire to parade her unmated self before the herd, and no
craving for unnecessary martyrdom.
At the Mansions, six guineas a week (and three extra for Caroline
Staley) provided a bed-sitting-room, complete with a double-bedstead of
squeaking brass, a hard sofa, two harder chairs, a so-called armchair, a
writing-table, three steel engravings of the eighteen-eighties, and a
shilling-in-the-slot gas-stove. The six guineas also provided meals,
served by dingily uniformed waitresses in a crowded communal
dining-room--and "congenial society."
This "congenial society" did not--as the society to which Aliette had
been accustomed--shift its habitat with the seasons; except for an
occasional fortnight in Margate or Clacton, it clung limpet-like to the
Mansions.
Moreover, as the pair discovered within three days, it was eclectic as
well as cliquey--containing gentlefolk and ungentle-folk; workers and
idlers; bounders and the unbounding. Of the first were two pathetic
spinsters who knitted all day before the untended fire in the vast
untended drawing-room, remembering, as lost souls might remember
paradise, the bygone millennium of cheap eggs and cheap income-tax. Of
the last were an Anglo-Indian family, looking for, and never finding, "a
nice easily-run flat." Item, were three foreigners, vague creatures from
vague places, who never seemed to have anything to do, and never seemed
to go to bed; one prosperous commercial traveler who "liked the
sociability"; one ruined squire who had furnished his own room and
hoarded the remnants of a pre-war cellar in its undusted cupboard; and
three mothers of no known social position, whose daughters, dingy at
breakfast, grew demure by lunch-time, and--communal tea
included--sallied forth with mysterious "dancing-partners" to return
mouse-footed in the early dawn. An understrapper from the Belgian
consulate, and a plantation overseer on leave from the Federated Malay
States completed the tally of "Monsieur Mayer's guests.
"A fine gossipy lot, Miss Aliette," judged Caroline Staley, her loyalty
a little strained by, though proof against, her surroundings. "While as
for they maids----"
But the "congenial society" of Powolney Mansions gossiped--the aloof
Aliette knew--neither more nor less than the society she had abandoned.
For--try as one would to hide one's self--awkward meetings were
inevitable.
Never a woman of easy friendships, Hector Brunton's wife before her
elopement had possessed three distinct sets of cordial
acquaintances--the "Moor Park lot," the "London lot," and the "Clyst
Fullerford lot," as she phrased them. Of these, the "Clyst Fullerford
lot" and the "Moor Park lot" (barring Colonel Sanders, the M.F.H., who,
apparently untouched by gossip, greeted her, at walk with Ronnie down
St. James's Street, in his cheeriest voice as "dear Mrs. Brunton")
might, except for an occasional letter forwarded from Lancaster Gate via
Mollie, have inhabited the moon.
And with the "London lot" one never quite knew how one stood. Bachelor
barristers inevitably lifted the hat and smiled. Hugh Spillcroft,
meeting one alone at Harrods, invited one to tea with him and proffered
a tentative sympathy which one gently but firmly rebuffed. Mrs. Needham,
also encountered on a shopping expedition, pretended the most tactful
ignorance, but forbore to inquire after one's husband. Sir Siegfried and
Lady Moss, passing in their Rolls-Royce, looked politically the other
way. Hector's particular friends one, of course, avoided; and, since she
made no overture, one also avoided--a little hurt, perhaps, at the
ingratitude--Mary O'Riordan.
Taking it all round--as Julia Cavendish put it on one of those frequent
afternoons when, always preannounced by telephone, the lovers came to
tea with her--the situation held "little hope and less comfort."
"And it'll get worse," said that indomitable old woman; "it's bound to
get worse if you persist in hiding yourselves, if you go on refusing to
meet anybody. Don't you see, my dear," she turned on Aliette with a
little of her former brusquerie, "that you're playing right into your
husband's hands? Don't make any mistake about _him_. He knows _exactly_
where you are; and, so long as there's no open scandal, so long as you
remain tucked away in that abominable boarding-house, he'll leave you
there. Whereas, if you'll only _make_ the scandal an open one, public
opinion will force him to act. Take it from me, the only thing to be
done is to flaunt yourselves."
"Flaunt?" said Aliette.
"Yes! Flaunt yourselves!" repeated Ronnie's mother, rather pleased with
the literary expression.
"I rather agree," said Ronnie. "That's the way Belfield broke
Carrington. Dash it, we can't go on lying doggo forever. It isn't fair
to Alie."
Since their move to Powolney Mansions, Ronnie had begun to realize the
exact difference in the world's treatment of a man's "lapse" and a
woman's "adultery"; to perceive that he apparently was to be allowed to
go on with his avocation, scanty though the emoluments of that avocation
were becoming, as though nothing had happened; that his clubs and almost
every house he had visited while a bachelor were still open to him as an
unmarried husband, so long as the world, officially, knew nothing of his
"unmarried wife."
"Never mind me, I'm quite"--Aliette glanced round the comfortable
drawing-room, so unlike the spinster-haunted wilderness of the
Mansions--"resigned to my temporary fate."
"Rubbish!" retorted Julia; and went on to elaborate the plan that they
should move from Baron's Court as soon as ever they could find some
residence, the more expensive the better, in Inner London.
"You must be seen everywhere," she went on. "You must entertain and be
entertained. In a word, Aliette--like Mrs. Carrington--must _afficher_
herself as Mrs. Cavendish. Never mind what it costs. I'll finance you."
But Aliette's whole nature recoiled from Julia's scheme.
She, had it not been for Ronnie's career, would have been more than
content to wait a year, two years, a whole lifetime for freedom. Her
idea--she told them--was to take some little cottage, not too far
removed from London; so that "Ronnie could come down every week-end."
Nevertheless, since any hope of freedom was tantalizing, because now,
always and always stronger, there mounted in her the conviction that one
day she would have a child by Ronnie, Aliette so far weakened from her
resolution against "the flaunting policy" as to accept Julia's
invitation, telephoned next day, to share her box for the first night of
Patrick O'Riordan's "Khorassan."
3
Ronnie's "wife," though too proud to make the first move, often wondered
why Mary O'Riordan, eager enough to accept her championing in a similar
situation, should have taken so little trouble to reciprocate, now that
reciprocation was so obviously indicated: but, dressing for the theater
in the unkindly bedroom whose harsh lights made her needlessly afraid of
the mirror, she decided that sheer delicacy alone had restrained her old
school-friend from getting into touch; and anticipated their inevitable
meeting without a qualm. It would be nervous work, displaying one's self
in Julia Cavendish's box before a "first-night" audience (unwise work,
thought Aliette, unwise of Ronnie and his mother to have been so
persistent); but Mary's presence would at least furnish a guarantee
against complete ostracism. Whatever other people might do, she could
rely on Mary's visiting their box in the _entr'acte_, on Mary's going
out of her way to demonstrate sympathy.
"Looking forward to it, darling?" interrupted Ronnie, entering with the
usual perfunctory knock from the bathroom, where he had been doing his
best to shave, for the second time that day, in lukewarm water.
"Not exactly." Aliette dismissed her maid.
"Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know. It seems all wrong, somehow or other. And
suppose"--she hesitated--"suppose people are nasty?"
"They won't be," assured Ronnie, through the shirt into which he was
struggling. "You're too sensitive about the whole thing. One or two
people may snub us. But what's a snub or so, if only we can force H. B.
to move?"
"But"--she hesitated again--"snubs hurt, man." Thinking of various
slights already endured, her eyes suffused, and she had difficulty in
keeping back the tears.
"Nobody shall hurt _you_." He came quickly across the room; put his arms
round her; and kissed, very tenderly, the smooth skin behind her ears,
her bared shoulders.
"Oh, yes, they will. Not even you can prevent that. Women in my position
are bound to get hurt. All the time! But it doesn't hurt much"--she
looked up into his eyes, and smiled away the tears from her own;--"it
doesn't really hurt at all so long as I've got you."
Nevertheless, as they raced through their execrable meal in the empty
dining-room, Aliette knew herself face to face with an ordeal. And the
ordeal waxed more and more terrible in anticipation as the electric
brougham, which Julia had insisted on sending to Baron's Court for them,
rolled toward Bruton Street.
She sat wordlessly, her hand clasped in Ronnie's, staring wide-eyed at
the buses, the taxicabs, and the private cars which passed or overtook
them. It was as though every soul in London, all the people in those
buses, those taxicabs, and those private cars, were hostile to her; as
though she were a woman apart from all other women, outcast indeed. She
wanted to say to her man: "Must we do this unwise thing? Must we? Can't
we turn back? Can't we go on hiding ourselves?" But she said nothing,
only clung the closer to his responsive hand.
4
Literary folk can be peculiarly childish; which is perhaps the reason
why great authors are usually little men.
One part of Julia's mind--as she waited for Ronnie and Aliette to fetch
her--positively grinned with mischief in anticipation of the new
adventure, "defying Society." That part of her felt very much the
heroine, a female knight-errant about to do lusty tilt against the
dragon "Convention." But, in the main, her mood was retrospective.
"Curious," she thought, looking back at her dead self; "curious how
entirely my views have changed." And she remembered the reactionary
stubbornness of her anti-divorce article for "The Contemplatory," her
delight at the stir which that article had created, her delusions that
it might "help to stem the flood of post-war immorality."
Now even the closing sentence, "Until humanity learns to discipline the
sentimental impulse, there can be no hope of matrimonial
reconstruction," rang false in the auditorium of experience. She yearned
suddenly to rewrite that sentence, to substitute "the lustful impulse"
for "the sentimental impulse." But the written word, alas, could not be
revoked.
Then, vaguely she visioned herself writing a new article--perhaps a new
book--some pronouncement, anyway, which should contradict and counteract
her old doctrine. And from that, her creative mind--as though linking
story to moral--started in to examine the individual case of her son and
Aliette.
The front door-bell rang; and Julia heard Ronnie's voice in the hall.
"Where's Aliette?" she asked, as he entered.
"Waiting in the brougham. By Jove, mater, you look like a stage
duchess."
"Do I?" She blushed a little at his chaff, knowing it merited by the
super-splendor of her attire; by the sable-and-brocade opera-cloak and
the black velvet thereunder, by the coronal of diamond wheat-ears which
banded her graying hair, and the Louis Seize buckles on her elegant
shoes. Once more the heroine of an adventure, she picked her long white
gloves and her bejeweled hand-bag from the dining-room table; and
followed her son, through the front door which Kate held open for them,
into the brougham.
Aliette, she greeted with a rare pressure of the hand and the still
rarer compliment, "You're looking radiant to-night, my dear."
Kate closed the door on the three of them; and the electric brougham
rolled off through Bruton Street into Bond Street; through Bond Street
into Piccadilly. Julia did not appear in the least nervous. She began to
talk of Patrick O'Riordan--a little contemptuously, as was her wont when
dealing with stage-folk, against whom she cherished a prejudice almost
puritanical.
"Patrick O'Riordan," opined Julia, "was a poorish play-wright; but of
course he had money to play with. Not his own money. Naturally. People
in the theater never did speculate with their own money. Lord
Letchingbury was behind the show. Dot said Letchingbury had put up ten
thousand." Followed a Rabelaisian reference to Letchingbury's penchant
for Mary O'Riordan, which horrified Aliette, who had always imagined
Mary, except for her one lapse, virtuous; and landed them in the queue
of vehicles making for the illuminated portico of the Capitol Theater.
As the brougham crawled near and nearer to the lights which blazed their
one word "Khorassan," it seemed to Aliette that she was about to plunge
into a stream of icy water. Her heart contracted at mere sight of the
furred opera-cloaks, of the smoothly-coiffured heads and the shiny
top-hats under the portico. For a moment, fear had its way with her; the
impulse to flight overwhelmed her courage. Then she looked at Ronnie;
and saw that his face was set, that his chin protruded ever so slightly
for sign of determination. Julia Cavendish, the wheat-ears glimmering
like a crown in her hair, sat bolt upright, unflinching.
All said and done--thought Aliette--the risk, the big social risk, was
Julia's. If, for her sake, Julia Cavendish could dare to jeopardize her
entire circle, she, Aliette, must not prove unworthy of the offering.
Her red lips pursed--even as they had pursed long ago when she and
Ronnie waited for hounds to give tongue beyond Parson's Brook; and, head
equally high, she followed the diamond wheat-ears out of the brougham,
through the crowd under the portico, and into the theater.
Passing the box-office, she saw Julia smile at an old man with drooping
gray mustaches and a reddish face, blue-lined above a bulging
shirt-front.
Dot Fancourt shambled hesitantly across the few feet of carpet; shook
hands; whispered "Surely this is very unwise"; and vanished downstairs
toward the stalls.
"Old coward!" thought Julia; and her thirty-year-old friendship for the
editor of "The Contemplatory" exploded in a red puff of rage.
Ronnie, noticing Dot's evasion, felt his color heighten. He handed their
ticket to an attendant, and took Aliette's arm protectively as the three
of them passed round the circular corridor into their box.
"You sit there, dear." Julia indicated the most conspicuous seat. "And
I'll sit beside you."
Aliette, throwing the opera-cloak back from her shoulders, looked down
across the house. To her imagination, the whole auditorium was a blur of
eyes; hostile eyes, thousands upon thousands of them, some furtively
upturned, some staring unabashed, some taking cover behind the gleam of
opera-glasses.
Julia, too, looked downward; but her eyes saw every face, every dress,
every gesture of every personage in the crowded stalls and in the
opposite boxes, clear-cut and sharp as a photograph. Obviously the
appearance of her party had created a sensation. Lady Cynthia Barberus
and Miss Elizabeth Cattistock, making a conspicuous and loud-voiced
entrance down the center gangway, stopped in mid-career blocking the
Ellersons, Paul Flower, and Sir Siegfried with his fat Lady Moss. Lady
Cynthia did not smile; Elizabeth Cattistock did--maliciously. Paul
Flower gave an astounded grin; and nudged Dot Fancourt, who was already
seated next to that inveterate first-nighter, Sir Peter Wilberforce. Dot
whispered something to Sir Peter, who kept his attention rigidly on the
curtain.
Various other people whom Julia knew more or less intimately, after one
swift glance at the box, also kept their attention on that curtain;
talking together, low-voiced.
And suddenly Julia grew aware that the white-gloved fingers of the woman
beside her were gripping the ledge of their box as though it had been
the arm of a dentist's chair, that the eyes of the woman beside her were
focused as the eyes of a sleep-walker on the third row of the stalls.
Instinctively, her own glance followed the line; and following,
envisaged Aliette's husband.
To Julia, the female knight-errant a-tilt against the dragon
"Convention," the presence of the Brunton family--for they were all
there, Sir Simeon with his ambassadress, Rear-Admiral Billy, two of Sir
Simeon's daughters by his first wife, and Hector--should have been the
crown of her adventure; but to Julia Cavendish, society-woman, the
happening was rather a shock. For the society-woman in her could not
quite prevent herself from sympathizing with the peculiar position of
Sir Simeon and Lady Brunton. Sympathy, however, turned to rage when they
deliberately looked up at the box, and, with equal deliberation, looked
away.
The two daughters did not look up; and the admiral gave no sign either
of recognition or of partizanship. But Hector, at a word from his uncle,
stared and continued to stare across the house.
Ronnie, perceiving the stare, deliberately drew his chair closer to
Aliette's; and the momentary panic stilled in her mind. Her fingers
loosened their grip on the velvet ledge; her eyes were no longer the
vacant eyes of a sleep-walker. Coolly now she faced her husband's
ill-mannered stare; coolly she forced a smile to her lips, and,
pretending to examine her program, managed an aimless remark.
The pretense of nonchalance deceived even Hector. Hector turned to his
cousin Moira and tried to talk with her. But hardly a word came to his
lips. His heart thudded under the stiff of his shirt-front. He felt
himself surrounded, pent in a cage, pent to sitting-posture. He wanted
to heave himself upright, to smash the cage, to scatter the people
surrounding him.
"Confound them!" he thought, "they all know. All these first-nighters
know. Of set purpose, she has done me this shame."
Once again he saw himself as the lone bull, the lone bull before the
scornful herd. He wanted to gore with his horns, to lash out with his
hoofs; for his eyes--averted from the box--still held their picture: the
two disdainful women, the tall disdainful man between them.
"Pretty bad form, _I_ think," said Moira sympathetically.
"Curse her sympathy!" thought Hector.
5
The preliminary music neared its ending; and the first part of Aliette's
ordeal, even more terrible than she had anticipated, was almost over by
the time that Mary O'Riordan billowed her imposing way to the front of
the stage-box. Other people followed, but Mary's hoydenish bulk, draped
in the gold and scarlet of some super-Wagnerian goddess, dwarfed them to
the insignificance of pygmies.
Aliette's heart, still numb from its effort at self-control, gave one
pleasurable beat at sight of her friend. She smiled across the house at
Mary. Their eyes met, clashed. And in that moment, the house darkled.
* * * * *
The curtain had been up a full three minutes before Aliette realized
that those blue eyes of Mary's intended the cut direct. Realizing, every
nerve in her tense body throbbed with resentment at the ingratitude.
Mary to cut her! Mary of all people! Mary, by whose side she had stood
stanch through a year of trouble! Mary, whose affair with Letchingbury
provided the very money which sent up the curtain, which bought the
scenery and paid the actors of "Khorassan"!
Gradually, the first throbs of Aliette's resentment subsided, leaving
her every nerve a living pain. Mary's ingratitude hurt, hurt. "Most
women are awful rotters"; Mollie's words, uttered long ago at Moor Park,
came back to her.
She tried to distract her mind with the play; but O'Riordan's
play--poor, thinly-poetic stuff, indifferently mouthed by mummers whose
sole claim to their salary was their supping-acquaintance with the
fringe of Society--failed to hold her thoughts. Her thoughts hovered
between the enemy audience, blur of heads below, and the two friends,
her only friends in a hostile world, on either side.
Thinking of their loyalty, Aliette no longer shrank from her ordeal. Her
heart swelled, resolute against all hostility. It became two hearts: the
one, warm and throbbing with partizanship for the stark old lady beside
her, the old lady who had never turned a hair since they entered the
theater, and for the "old lady's" son, for the man whose love was a
rock: the other, icy-cold, almost beatless, frozen to contempt.
What a farce was this social game! As if the world's hostility mattered!
One played one's little part on the stage of life, played it as best one
might to the prompting of conscience, till the curtain fell, as it was
falling now to a subdued rattle of perfunctory applause and the usual
"snatched" calls.
Aliette felt Ronnie's fingers tighten on her own, relax. The house
lights went up.
"Letchingbury will lose his money," remarked Julia calmly. "O'Riordan's
poetic drama is merely an excuse for bad poetry and no drama. By the
way, that _is_ Letchingbury, isn't it?" She looked across at the
stage-box; and Ronnie, looking with her, saw a young man, blond, with a
receding chin and a receding forehead.
"Yes. That's Letchingbury all right," he said. "And, by the way, Alie,
isn't that your friend, Mrs. O'Riordan?"
"I should hardly call her my friend," answered Aliette, a little
bitterly; and steeled herself to look down at the stalls. Hector's was
already empty. The remainder of the Brunton party sat perfectly rigid.
Sir Peter Wilberforce, remembering himself one of Julia Cavendish's
executors, managed a surreptitious nod. Dot Fancourt, like Hector, had
escaped. Various dramatic critics, sidling their way out of the stalls
toward the bar, bowed to Julia as though nothing out of the ordinary had
occurred. Mary O'Riordan retired ostentatiously to the back of her box.
Aliette panicked again. Suppose Ronnie left her? Suppose Ronnie and
Hector met--in public? But Ronnie, for all his obtuser mind, divined
that his women-folk were under fire; and that duty forbade him to
desert. He whispered to her:
"Not so bad as you anticipated, eh? Of course one can't expect the
Bruntons to be exactly cordial."
"I wish they hadn't been here," whispered back Aliette. "It makes things
so much worse."
"Rubbish!" interrupted Julia. "It's the best thing that could possibly
have happened. He'll have to bring his action after this, or be the
laughing-stock of Mayfair."
While the auditorium emptied and filled again, Julia, her head erect,
her hands quiet, talked on--as though the lack of Dot's usual visit to
her box were of no moment. Ronnie, every fiber in him furious, played up
to her. But Aliette could not speak. In her, social instincts were at
war with conscience. Feeling herself definitely in the wrong toward
society, yet definitely in the right toward her own soul, feeling
terribly afraid, yet terribly courageous, striving desperately to wrench
out the iron of resentment from her mind, striving piteously to forget
the hurt of the wound which Mary O'Riordan had dealt her, she played her
game in dumb show. And furtively, fearfully, as the music for the second
act began, she watched for Hector's return.
But Hector did not return. Even when the house lights went out and the
curtain rose again, Aliette could see that his stall remained empty.
Subconsciously she knew that he had fled the theater.
The second act of "Khorassan" dragged to its undramatic climax. Once
again those three faced the eyes of the audience. Now, more than ever,
it seemed to Aliette, still sitting rigid in the forefront of Julia's
box, as though all eyes were hostile, as though the entire house, and
with it her entire social world, had decided to ostracize them.
All through that overlong _entr'acte_, she sat speechless; her brown
pupils hard and bright; her white shoulders squared above the black
sequined dress; her pale face, her red lips set to an almost sullen
determination. And, as the _entr'acte_ ended, those hard brown pupils
fell to devisaging Mary O'Riordan. Till, visibly ill at ease, the
cow-eyes under Mary's mop of gold hair turned away.
But it gave Aliette no pleasure to realize that, hurt, she had
retaliated.
6
Everybody in front of the curtain and everybody behind the curtain
knew--as it fell--that Patrick O'Riordan's poetic drama, "Khorassan,"
was a proved failure. Nevertheless, the audience, as is the polite
custom of first-night audiences, applauded; and called on the author,
white-faced in the glare of the footlights, for a speech.
"And in the morning," thought Julia Cavendish satirically, "we shall
read of the great service rendered by Patrick O'Riordan via
Letchingbury's bank-account, to art; and of the pressing need for more
revivals of the poetic drama."
Julia could not help being a little pleased at the play's failure; in a
way it mitigated her own. For that _she_ had failed, lamentably, in her
adventure, Ronnie's mother realized even better than Aliette. Hold her
head high as she might, this consciousness of disaster persisted all
through O'Riordan's overlong speech. The literary childishness went out
of her, leaving the woman of the world conscious that she had done the
foolish thing, that she had flaunted her son and her son's mistress
before that little section of society which is a London first-night.
Society, of course, had averted its face! Remained, therefore, only the
assurance that Aliette's husband had seen the flaunting, and so must
surely be forced into action.
"Poor Aliette," thought Julia. "Poor Ronnie." Her mind was all a
weakness toward them, all a strength against the world. For herself, she
needed no comforting; but them she wanted to take in her arms, to
mother.
O'Riordan's speech ended. The house clapped, and emptied. The three left
their box; and Ronnie--reluctantly leaving Julia and Aliette in the
foyer--went off in search of the electric brougham.
Waiting in the crowd, both women knew themselves on show, the dual
cynosure of a hundred furtive glances. People seemed anxious to escape
without the need for recognizing them. The few smiles were frigid,
standoffish--all for Julia, none for her companion. Hector's aunt,
jostling by, cut the pair dead.
Aliette tried to think, "It doesn't matter; it doesn't matter a bit";
she tried to hold herself upright, to cut rather than be cut, to
preserve--outwardly at least--the semblance of a dignity. But inwardly
she knew herself all one tremble of undignified panic. If only one
person, just one person in that jostling mob, would be really decent! If
only Ronnie would be quicker with their carriage!
Then simultaneously both women grew aware that a face, one kindly face,
was smiling at them, was making its way toward them through the crowd.
Simultaneously they recognized the face--Hermione Ellerson's.
"My dear, I've been trying to catch your eye all the evening," called
Hermione to Aliette. "But you wouldn't look at me. Why don't you come
and see us? I want you to see our new house. Curzon Street, 24. In the
telephone-book."
Hermione was swept away before Aliette could collect her wits for reply:
and a moment afterward they saw, beyond the crowd, Ronnie signaling the
arrival of their brougham.
7
"It _was_ decent of Hermione, frightfully decent, especially as she's a
kind of relation of Hector's. All the same, I don't think I'll go and
see her."
Aliette, disrobed, sat staring into the gas-fire of their Powolney
Mansions bedroom.
"Why not?" asked a shirt-sleeved Ronnie.
She turned to him, and her face showed very pale.
"Man, it's all so hopeless."
"It isn't. It isn't a bit hopeless. The mater's right. H. B. _must_ act
now."
"He won't, and even if he does--Oh, don't you see that I've--that I've
ruined you! I've ruined your career. I've ruined you both."
"Rubbish!" There was something of his mother's brusquerie in the man's
tone.
"It isn't rubbish." The woman was deadly in her calm. "It's the absolute
truth. Don't let us deceive ourselves."
He tried to take her in his arms; but she rose, eluding him. "Don't,
Ronnie! Let's be sensible; it's high time. We--you and I and your
mother--have made a mistake. A mistake that's almost irretrievable.
There's only one thing to be done now----"
"And that is?" He had never known her in this mood. She seemed utterly
different from the sensitive Aliette of a few hours since; almost
unloving, hard, purposeful, resolute.
"And that is?" he repeated.
"I must leave you."
At her words Ronnie's heart stopped beating as though some giant had put
a finger on it. For one fraction of a second, love vanished utterly;
almost, he hated her.
"Yes," went on Aliette, "I must leave you. It's the only way, I'll take
a little cottage. Somewhere not too far from London. And you--you must
go and live with your mother."
His heart began beating again, faintly.
"But why?" he managed. "Why?"
"Because that's the only way to stop people from talking. If they know
that you're at Bruton Street, that I'm not at Bruton Street, then," she
was faltering now, faltering in her firm purpose, and she knew that she
must not falter; "then they'll think that your mother didn't know
anything when she invited us to-night."
He came toward her: and she felt her momentary determination weaken;
felt herself powerless to do the right. He put his hands on her
shoulders, and looked her deep in the eyes. Then he smiled, the quaint,
whimsical smile she loved best.
"You're not serious, Alie?"
"I am," she faltered, "desperately serious. You'll let me have my
cottage, won't you?"
"You know I won't." He had her in his arms now. "You know that I won't
consent to anything so absurd." He bent to kiss her. "Darling, don't
let's lose our pluck. It's been a rotten evening for you. Rotten! I know
that."
"It's not of myself that I'm thinking."
"I know that, too. I'm not thinking for myself, either. I'm trying to
think for both of us, for all three of us. We've got to see this thing
through. Together."
"Together!" The word weakened her still further.
"Yes, together." He followed up his advantage. "Life's a fight. A hard
fight. You mustn't desert."
"And you"--her voice, as she lay motionless in his arms, was almost
inaudible--"you think I'm worth fighting for?"
"More than anything in the world. But I wish"--a little he, too,
faltered, his fears for her sake making him afraid--"I wish that people
didn't hurt you so."
She stirred in his arms; and her face upturned to his.
"Man," she said, her eyes shining, "I'm not afraid of anything people
can do to _me_. Nobody except you could ever _really_ hurt me. I--I
didn't mean to desert; only just to efface myself. Won't you let me
efface myself? Until--until Hector divorces me. It's the right
thing--the best thing. Really it is."
"Right or wrong," said Ronnie, "we'll see this business through--see it
through together--even if it lasts all our lives."
* * * * *
Aliette, seeing the fighting-fire in those blue eyes, seeing the
stubborn set of that protruded jaw, knew her momentary determination
beaten to the ground.