1
England has not yet quite forgotten the "Bournemouth Tragedy" during
which Hector Brunton, who led for the Crown, first became known to the
public as the "hanging prosecutor."
The charge against Mrs. Cairns was murder; and for days no newspaper
dared to omit a single comma from its reports of the case. For days
Hector's bewigged photograph blazed on the back page of the "Daily Mail"
and the front page of the "Sunday Pictorial"; for days England abandoned
itself to the raptest scrutiny of Dr. Spilsbury's and other experts'
evidence anent the poisonous properties of a certain arsenical face
lotion with which--the "hanging prosecutor" alleged--Mrs. Cairns had
doctored her dead husband's whisky; and to speculations, ruminations,
discussions, and wagers as to the probable fate of Mrs. Cairns.
During those days, that epitome of England, Powolney Mansions, oblivious
alike of reconstruction, strikes, German indemnities, the Irish
question, and the "scandal of Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish," demanded only to
know whether Mrs. Cairns would dare to face Hector Brunton's
cross-examination; whether, cross-examination concluded, Hector Brunton
would succeed in securing a verdict of "guilty" against Mrs. Cairns; and
whether Mrs. Cairns, having been found guilty, would be hanged by the
neck until she was dead or incarcerated for the period of her natural
life--which period, Miss Greenwell informed Monsieur Mayer, was limited
to twenty years with the remission of one quarter the sentence for good
conduct.
"She'll be out in fifteen years," said Miss Greenwell, when, some ten
days after the conclusion of the trial, the home secretary's remission
of the death penalty was duly announced, "and she'll still be a young
woman."
"I," retorted Monsieur Mayer, "do not believe that she was guilty at
all. If it had not been for 'Ector Brunton----"
"And that reminds me," began Miss Greenwell--but by then the lovers were
already away.
2
Consciously and subconsciously, the success and the _réclame_ of the
"hanging prosecutor" infuriated Ronnie. Always he hated the man, but
now, every time he saw H. B.'s face staring at him from the newspapers,
a new thought, the thought of his own meagerly employed talents, talents
of which he had begun to feel more and more surely confident, rankled.
Even in the "ridiculous flat" (he and Aliette christened it the
"ridiculous flat" in the same way that Orientals always refer to their
most cherished possessions as things of no account) he felt himself a
failure.
Yet the flat's self was an indubitable success--a home of their
own--very symbol of mated unity.
Julia Cavendish herself, too weak, with a curious lethargy of which
Heron Baynet alone knew the exact cause, to pay more than one visit to
Flat 27, Block B, Embankment House, admitted it "passable." At her
suggestion Aliette had decided on using a beige wall-paper, almost
identical with the one at Jermyn Street, throughout; on Ronnie's
Chippendale and Ronnie's eighteenth century engravings (removed almost
by force from Moses Moffatt's) for the tiny flame-curtained dining-room.
Ronnie's ascetic bedroom furniture she relegated to Caroline Staley,
providing him in its stead with hanging-cupboards craftily and cheaply
contrived in the wall-spaces either side his dressing-room fireplace.
For the sitting-room (christened by Aliette the "parlor"), the tiniest
box of French simplicity combined with English comfort; and for their
communal chamber, with its tester bed and its short purple curtains,
Julia's Christmas check provided the adornment. But it was only by
adding some of her own income that Aliette, faced with and realizing for
the first time the petty troubles of home-making with one servant, could
install the electric kitchenette, the Canadian "cook's table," the
gas-fires and the tiled hearths, the Califont hot-water system which
functioned automatically as soon as one turned the taps, the Hoover
vacuum-sweeper, and all those other labor-saving devices which people
who really need them can never afford.
Despite all of which, the "ridiculous flat" had its discomforts, not
least of them being the impossibility of sleeping Ponto on the exiguous
premises.
"Man," asked Aliette dubiously, as they finally drove away, luggage on
taxi, from a curiously incurious Powolney Mansions, "what _are_ we going
to do with him?"
"The Lord knows, my dear," laughed Ronnie. "People who elope have no
right to take Great Danes with them."
"I suppose we ought to get rid of him. He's very expensive."
However, neither of them had the heart to part with the beast; and
eventually they found quarters for him in a little side-street off the
Hammersmith Road.
3
From their very first meal together, faultlessly cooked and faultlessly
served by Caroline Staley--as glad as she to be free from
boarding-housedom; all through February and well into March, Aliette's
home-life was one long ecstasy, marred only by her growing anxiety about
Julia's health and a vague suspicion that Ronnie "worried." Looking back
from the safe coziness of the "ridiculous flat" on the long months they
had wasted in Powolney Mansions, it seemed impossible that they should
ever have been "boarding-house people," ever have tolerated the
uncleanliness, the unhomeliness, the gossip, and the monotony of
Monsieur Mayer's establishment.
And by the end of March even Ronnie's "worries" seemed to have
disappeared. For John Cartwright's promises had more than materialized;
and though the briefs were rarely marked higher than "Two guineas," the
work they entailed kept Ronnie from brooding.
Despite his whimsical grumblings at being forced to leave her alone all
day, Aliette knew that her man, growing hourly more ambitious for
success, saw prospects of it in this strange employment. Coming back of
a late afternoon, he would lounge into the parlor, kiss her, accept the
tea Caroline Staley never failed to bring him, light his pipe, and talk
at length about his petty triumphs at the Old Bailey or Brixton.
Once, even, he showed her his name in a press-report, with a smiled "I'm
getting quite a reputation among the criminal classes. Soon there won't
be a pickpocket within the metropolitan radius who doesn't regard me as
his only hope of salvation. They call me 'Cut Cavendish,' I believe.
Hope you haven't had too dull a day, darling."
But Aliette's days were never dull. The hours when Ronnie was away from
her "defending his pickpockets" passed all too swiftly for
accomplishment of the manifold trivialities which ministered to his
comfort. Literally "she never had a moment to sit down."
So soon as he had left for his chambers (he hated seeing her do
housework, and so she used to maintain the pretense of idleness until
she heard the front door close, and the gate of the automatic lift clink
to behind him), Caroline Staley--grown, as all servants, somewhat
dictatorial in her old age--would demand help in the making of the bed,
demand that her mistress sally forth to wrangle with the milkman or
impress upon the butcher the alien origin of the previous day's joint.
These wrangles provided Aliette, hitherto immune from the petty worries
of the average woman and now almost completely isolated from her kind,
with a certain amusement. Returned from them, she helped lay her own
table for luncheon; and, luncheon over, busied herself with the darning
of stockings, with the cleaning of special pieces of silver, or with
some other of the thousand and one tasks which your really
class-conscious domestic, whose master is waited on hand and foot,
always manages to leave to her master's wife. So that if, as at least
once a week, Aliette felt it her duty to visit Julia Cavendish, it meant
a rush for tube or omnibus, and a second rush homewards in time to dress
for dinner--"dressing for dinner" being a shibboleth on which both
lovers insisted as their "last relic of respectability."
And even if her days had been dull, the evenings would have made their
dullness worth while. Those evenings! Their one servant abed. She and
her man alone together, isolated high above London--solitary--safe--not
even the telephone to connect them with their kind: Ronnie, pipe between
his lips, his face tired yet happy in the glow of the fire, his long
limbs outstretched, his lips moving rarely to speech; Aliette, some
unread novel on her lap, the light of the reading-lamp a-shimmer on her
dimpled shoulders, on the vivid of her hair and the vivid of her eyes;
Aliette, pleasantly wearied of body, pleasantly vacuous of thought,
speaking rarely as her mate, utterly happy in his silent company, so
happy that all the terrors of her past life with Hector seemed like a
nightmare dreamed long since in girlhood and remembered in maturity only
as foolishness.
Nevertheless, as London March blew chilly toward London April, Aliette
again grew fearful. Try as she would to elude them, moments came when
she craved so desperately for maternity that Ronnie's very passion
seemed a reproach. And in those moments her imagination fashioned itself
children--a boy-child and a girl-child--Dennis and Etta--dream-babies
who would bind her man to her forever and forever.
Ronnie, too, had his moments of fear, of hope, of dreamery. But for the
most part they were a silent couple; and only once did either give voice
to their secret thoughts. Then it was Ronnie, who said with one of his
whimsical smiles:
"You've no idea, Alie, what an orator I'm getting to be. If only I could
get one really big case. A murder trial, for instance. But one needs
luck for that!"
So the equable days went by.
4
April came; and, to Aliette, the fret of spring. More and more with
every opening bud, with every deepening of the green leaf-haze along the
river-bank below her windows, she yearned for children--for Ronnie's
children. Her body gave no sign; but already, as though for warning, her
mind was pregnant with a new power, the power of prophetic imagination
which comes only to the isolated.
Sometimes--as when, after one of Mollie's rare visits, it showed her
sister married to Wilberforce--this new power pleased Aliette;
sometimes, playing about Hector, it frightened her. But always it made
her restless; so that, abandoning more and more of her household duties
to Caroline Staley, she walked again with Ponto, as she had walked in
the old days when Ronnie was not yet hers.
Fulham Park knew the pair of them--and Barnes Common--and Putney Heath.
Down the myriad streets that lead away from the river to the unexplored
south of London they wandered as far as Shadwell Wood and Coombe Wood
and Richmond Park. And always, from those walks, Aliette returned
thoughtful; for now, as imagination pictured more and more clearly the
fate of Dennis and of Etta should those dream-children be at last made
real, there waxed in her the determination to strike the one last
possible blow for legal freedom.
Hitherto pride, and to a certain extent the fear of still further
exasperating him, had prevented her from making any personal move in
Hector's direction. Hitherto she had acquiesced in the policy that
others--Ronnie, Julia, the admiral, James Wilberforce--should fight for
her. But all these had failed!
And, "Surely," thought Aliette, "surely it is my duty to conquer this
pride, to put aside these fears, to meet him face to face."
But, despite the assurances of the imaginative power--which showed her
herself resolute against Hector, reasoning with Hector, remonstrating
with Hector, finally shaming Hector into giving her her freedom--Aliette
could not bring herself to ask even the favor of an interview. Three
separate times she sat down to the little satin-wood desk in the parlor,
three separate times she took pen in hand; but each time determination
failed at mere sight of the first uncompromising "Dear" on the tinted
note-paper. Pride and her disdain for the man, courage and fear alike
forbade her to cross that Rubicon.
"I'm a fool," she said to herself, "a fool and a funk. For Ronnie's
sake, for the sake of Ronnie's mother, even for my own sake I ought to
write. But I can't--I just can't." And the pen would drop from her
nerveless fingers, leaving her soul prey to that utter despondency which
only the prophetically imaginative suffer.
Meanwhile, the imaginative powers of another woman--powers so infinitely
better trained than Aliette's that their least effort could formulate
the written word--were concentrating on Hector Brunton. To Julia
Cavendish, ever since the Bournemouth Tragedy, the mere name had become
an obsession. Despite her growing prescience of death, despite the
lethargy which every day made more potent over her limbs, the old lady's
mind throbbed with activity. That tiniest protoplasm of a plan which she
had conceived on Christmas day spored under her thoughts as
coral-blossoms spore under the sea; till her brain, mistress of the
written word, saw itself join issue with the brain of Hector Brunton,
master of the word spoken--and defeat it.
"There is one weapon," thought Julia Cavendish, "one sure weapon with
which I can pierce his armor." Yet somehow her hand tarried in the
forging of that weapon, as though the moment were not yet come.
5
The "ridiculous flat" held one supreme joy--the finest view which a
Londoner may have of London. From its parlor window, of a day, one could
survey all the city--from Putney Church to St. Paul's, from Chiswick
Mall where once red-heeled gallants tripped it with the ladies of St.
James's, to Keats's Hampstead and the dim blue of Highgate.
At that window, on an April evening, Aliette and her lover stood to
contemplate the pageant which Thames and town proffered nightly for
their delight. Dusk had fallen, masking the river-pageant with a cloak
of indigo and silver. Northward, a saffron shimmer under murky skies,
lay London. Westward, the river dwindled out between its fringing lamps
to darkness and the misty fields.
"Time for bed," said Ronnie practically. He made to close the curtains,
but Aliette restrained him.
"Not yet, man."
"Why? Aren't you sleepy?"
Aliette made no answer. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her
eyes were all for the pageant below; her ears all for the faint hum of
the city which mounted, drowsily murmurous, to their high apartment. And
after a little while, knowing the need for solitude upon her, Ronnie
tiptoed away.
Aliette was hardly conscious of his going. It seemed to her as
though--in that moment--she were aloof from him, from all men; as though
her soul, wandering free, mingled with myriads of other souls whom night
had liberated from their earthly bodies to hover above the city.
The little French clock on the mantelpiece ticked and ticked. Hardly she
heard it ticking. The earthly minutes passed and passed, flowing under
her, flowing away into the ocean of time as the river-flood flows away
into the oceans of the sea. From below came sound of London's clocks
chiming the quarters.
Thought died in her brain. Only the imaginative power was alive.
Imagination's self died. Only her soul was alive. And, with her soul,
she dreamed a dream.
She dreamed that her letter to Hector had been written, that Hector had
answered it. She saw herself setting out to meet him. He had sent his
car to fetch her from Embankment House. She saw herself stepping into
the car. It was their old car; but the man whose back she could see
through the plate-glass of the cabriolet was not their old chauffeur. "I
wonder what his name is," she thought.
The car set out, noiseless. It left Embankment House behind; it crossed
Putney Bridge. It came, between miles and miles of utterly empty
streets, into London. A peculiar grayness, neither of the night nor of
the day, a peculiar silence, almost a silence of death, brooded over
London. No lights gleamed from its ghostly houses; no feet, no wheels
echoed on its ghostly paving.
The car spun on, noiseless--beyond the ghostly gray into ghostly
green--and now it seemed to Aliette as though the time were
twilight-time; as though she were in Hyde Park; as though in a few
minutes she would make the remembered door in Lancaster Gate.
"Hector's house," she thought. And the thought frightened her. She
wanted not to go to Hector. She wanted Ronnie--her Ronnie. But the car
spun on.
Now, faltering and afraid, she stood before the door of her husband's
house. Now the door opened; and Lennard, subservient as ever, led her
into the recollected hall.
Lennard vanished; and suddenly Aliette's soul knew its dream for dream.
Then the dream grew real again. Fearful and alone she stood in the chill
vastness of that shadowy hall among the recollected furniture. She felt
her breasts throbbing under the thin frock, felt her knees tremble as
she grasped the door-handle of Hector's study.
No lights burned in the study. It was all gray, gray as the streets
without. Hector was not there--only a face--a huge, cruel, unrelenting
face.
"So you've come back," it said.
She moved toward the face, across the gray carpet that gave back no
sound to her feet. But she could not speak with the face. Between her
and the face--as a great sheet of glass--slid silence, the interminable
unbearable silence of dreams. Through the glass, Aliette could see every
pore in the great face, every hair of its head; but she might not speak
with it, nor it with her. Then a voice, a voice as of very conscience,
cried out in her: "Your strength against its strength. Your will against
its will."
She felt her will beat out from her as wings beat, beat and batter at
the glass between them. The glass of silence slid away; and she knew the
face for Hector's. She said to it:
"Hector, I haven't come back. I'm never coming back."
"You shall," said the face, Hector's face; and now, under the face, she
knew feet, her husband's feet.
At that, terror, the hopeless panic of dreams, gripped her soul by the
throat, choking down speech. It seemed to her that she stood naked in
that gray and silent room.
But now, as a momentary beam through the grayness, another face--the
face of her lover--was added to their silent company. And again, "Your
will against its will," said the voice.
Terror's fingers unclutched from her throat, so that her will spoke, "I
shall never come back, Hector."
The face writhed at the words as a face in pain; and suddenly, knowing
herself its master, she knew pity for the face, pity for the thing she
had done. Till once more she heard the inner voice whisper: "No pity.
Your strength against its strength. Your will against its will."
"But _I_ love you," pleaded Hector. "I need you."
She said to him, "My children need me, Hector. Set me free."
And once more the glass of the silences slid between them; once more the
interminable, unbearable silence of dreams held her speechless.
* * * * *
Tap, tap, tap. Who was that knocking on Hector's door? It must be
Ronnie. Tap, tap, tap. Ronnie mustn't come in. Ronnie mustn't find her
and Hector alone together.
The glass darkled. Behind the glass Aliette could see Hector's face blur
and blur. The face vanished. She was alone, alone in Hector's study. She
was cold, desperately cold through all her limbs.
Tap, tap, tap. She heard a voice, a human voice: "Mr. Cavendish, Mr.
Cavendish. Are you there, Mr. Cavendish? You're wanted on the 'phone,
Mr. Cavendish."