1
Dazed, hopeless, almost beaten, Aliette passed out of the offices of
Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright.
The sun had already set. The Embankment showed steel-gray and violet;
fantastic under a fantastic sky. Trams clanged by her. Taxis. Cars. She
did not see them. She did not see London. She saw the country, the
country under a March sunset. It seemed to her that she was riding;
riding alone; riding for defeat in a desperate race.
Automatically her feet turned away from the sunset--eastward from
Norfolk Street toward the Temple. Above her, the sky darkled. Lamps
gleamed along the Embankment. But no lamp of hope gleamed in her mind.
There was no way out of the cage. The book could be altered, the will
destroyed. Hector, blackmailed, might bring his action. What did that
matter? Freedom, even won, must come too late. Ronnie's child, the child
soon to stir in her womb, would be a bastard. A bastard!
She must go to Ronnie. She must tell him the truth. The awful truth.
And suddenly, her brain clearing a little, she knew that she was
standing at the gates of the Temple. Ronnie was in there--in
there--barely a hundred yards away--behind those railings--across that
misty lawn--among the lights and the pinnacles. Ronnie would help her.
The law would help. Surely, surely man's law was not so cruel to man's
women?
The gate of the Temple stood open. Slowly, she went toward the gate.
Behind her she heard the vague ripple of the river, of London's river.
The river called to her. "Come to me," rippled London's river, "I am the
way out--the one way out of the cage."
Swiftly she passed through the gate. Swiftly, a blind thing seeking its
mate, she passed up the lane. Figures hurried by her. She did not see
them. She saw Ronnie--Ronnie in wig-and-gown; Ronnie pleading her cause
before the law.
Swiftly she passed under the archway. Swiftly, unconscious of one
hurrying behind her, she made the tiled passage which leads to Pump
Court. Ronnie--Ronnie would not plead for her. Ronnie, knowing the
truth, would know her for what she was. For a woman who had belonged to
two men. On such, man's law had no mercy. She could go no further--no
further. Better the river! Better the river than man's law!
Slowly, she turned away--away from the vision of Ronnie. It was all
dark--dark. Darkness and the sound of feet. "Clop," went the feet, "clop
clop, clop clop." The feet stopped; and a voice--a known voice--hailed
her out of the darkness.
"Alie!" hailed the voice. "Alie! Is that you?"
Still dazed, she could not answer. The voice, close this time, hailed
her again. "Alie! Is that you, Alie?"
"Yes. Who is it?"
"Your father-in-law."
The feet clopped again; and now--her mind all confusion--she recognized,
within a yard of her, the trim, old-fashioned figure, the vast beard of
Rear-Admiral Billy.
"Good God!" panted the admiral. "Good God--I've never run so fast in me
life." And, without another word, he gripped her by the arm, steering
her rapidly through the dark passage into Pump Court, out of Pump Court,
past the Temple itself, and across King's Bench Walk.
"Billy!" she managed to gasp. "Billy, where are you taking me?"
"To my damn fool of a son."
She tried to free herself, but the grasp on her elbow tightened. For
Rear-Admiral Billy, rushing hot-foot out of Sir Peter's offices
and--directed by the commissionaire--down the Embankment in pursuit of
his son's wife, had determined to take no more advice from lawyers.
"My damn fool of a son's been asking to see you for days," he panted.
"Sir Peter--silly old codger--said it was not advisable."
It flashed through Aliette's distraught mind that she must be having a
nightmare. A nightmare! Billy's beard meshed his words. Billy would go
on walking, walking and talking and gripping her by the arm until she
woke up. But it couldn't be a nightmare. Billy was real--real. Billy was
dragging her away from Ronnie, dragging her back to Hector. They were
within ten yards of Hector's chambers. She recognized the stone stairs,
the lamp.
Stubbornly, then, she dug her heels into the gravel. Stubbornly--one
thought only in her mind--she faced her panting captor.
"Billy, I'm not going in there."
"Why on earth not? Hector won't eat you."
"Ronnie wouldn't like it."
"Can't help that. Hector's game to divorce you. That's enough for you."
"It isn't." Other thoughts, terrible thoughts, harried her. "It isn't.
Billy, you've just come from Sir Peter's. Did he tell you
anything--anything about the codicil--anything about _me_?"
And Rear-Admiral Billy, for the good of his soul, committed the double
perjury: "The only thing I know, me dear, is that my damn fool of a son
made up his mind to divorce you nearly a fortnight ago, and that I've
been trying to get Sir Peter to let the pair of you meet ever since.
Come on, now, don't be obstinate."
Almost forced up the stone stairs by the renewed grip on her arm,
Aliette was aware, dimly, of David Patterson's astonished countenance,
of the admiral swinging past David Patterson, of a chair against which
she leaned, of an opening door and a quick inaudible colloquy. Then the
admiral came back and said to her: "In we go."
Automatically in she went.
Hector stood, motionless, behind his littered desk. She saw him through
a glass, a glass of silence, not as the man she had feared and hated,
but as a stranger whose eyes were gentle, whose shoulders were bowed, a
complete stranger who proffered no hand. The glass of silence slid away;
and the stranger spoke to her.
"Won't you sit down?"
Exhausted, she obeyed. The stranger turned to Hector's father, and said,
pleadingly: "You'll leave us alone for five minutes, won't you, sir?"
The admiral went out without a word.
"I wanted to see you." The stranger, still on his feet, laughed--a
pitiful little laugh, high in the throat. And suddenly she knew him for
her legal owner.
"Why did you want to see me?" Could this be the man who had tortured her
so long; this broken, stammering creature whose eyes seemed afraid to
look into her eyes?
"I don't quite know. Shall we say that I just--just wanted to see you?
You mustn't stay more than five minutes, you know. It might--it might
invalidate the proceedings--the divorce proceedings. They're rather
technical. You see, dear,"--the word came clumsily from between the thin
lips--"as things have turned out, I'm afraid--I'm afraid that _I_ shall
have to divorce _you_. I've been trying to arrange things the other way.
But it can't be done. Too many people know. There's the king's proctor,
you see. But that wasn't why I wanted to talk to you."
Dumbly, realizing a little of the pain behind those gray unshifting
pupils, Aliette listened. Speak she could not. What did the divorce
matter? The divorce would come too late. Too late!
The man who had found his own soul went on: "What I wanted to tell you
was that everything will be done quietly. As quietly as possible. If
there's any publicity, you sha'n't suffer from it. I give you my word
about that."
She managed to say: "You're being very kind to me, Hector. Too kind."
"It's you who are kind"--the voice of the "hanging prosecutor" was the
voice of a schoolboy--"and I don't deserve kindness of you. I've behaved
like a cad right through the piece. But you'll shake hands with me,
won't you? You'll part friends? You'll say that you forgive?"
Automatically Aliette rose. "There's nothing to forgive," she said
dully. "Nothing."
Automatically she took off her glove, and offered him her right hand.
Holding his wife's fingers for one last fugitive second, Hector Brunton
was conscious that a shiver--the tiniest faintest shiver as of
revulsion--ran through her body. And Hector Brunton thought: "This is my
punishment, my supreme punishment. God, if there is a such a person, can
do no more to me."
Then, releasing her hand, he said to himself: "But I can't let her go. I
can't let her go out of my life like this. She's miserable, miserable."
His father's recent words flashed through his mind. Suppose--suppose
Aliette were to die, as Lucy Towers had so nearly died? Suppose that
Aliette, crazed and with child, were to kill herself. And he thought:
"I've got to say something, something that will give her hope."
He asked, gently, looking into her eyes for the last time: "I'll do my
best to get things through as quickly as possible, You'd like that,
wouldn't you?"
She stared at him, blankly. "Can these things be done--quickly, Hector?"
"They shall be," promised Hector Brunton, K.C.
2
Somehow, she was in Julia's work-room. Somehow, she had reached home
before Ronnie. To get home before Ronnie! That had been her one panic
ever since leaving Hector.
Of her parting with Hector, with the admiral; of her scurry through the
Temple; of her taxi chugging, chugging, chugging down the Embankment,
chugging up Northumberland Avenue, chugging through Trafalgar Square, of
her taxi blocked in the Haymarket, of herself calling frantically
through the window, "Don't go up the Haymarket," of their sweep along
Pall Mall, up St. James's Street and along Piccadilly, Aliette
remembered nothing. She knew only that there was hope--a gleam of hope
for them all, for Ronnie's child, for Ronnie, for herself, for Hector;
knew only that she must act--act at once--before Ronnie came home.
Perhaps Ronnie was home already. Perhaps he had gone upstairs to dress.
Perhaps he had heard her let herself in with her latch-key.
A key! If only there were a key, so that she might lock herself in
Julia's work-room.
A key! If only there were a key, so that she might open Julia's desk.
How the fire glowed on the red mahogany, on the yellow brass of the
desk! How the fire crackled, crackled!
She must break open the desk. Break it open before Ronnie could stop
her. She must save Ronnie--save Hector. They were only men. Men of the
law--of man's law. Men only talked. She, the mother, must act--act!
Now, in the fraction of a second, Aliette was at the fireplace. Now she
had seized the bright steel poker in both hands. Now she was at the
desk. Now she had inserted the poker through the ormolu handle of the
drawer in the pedestal of the desk. Now--gingerly--she levered her poker
against the mahogany rim of the desk.
But the locked drawer would not open. Stubbornly its lock fought against
her lever. Panic gripped her by the throat. She must be quick--quick.
Suppose Ronnie were home, suppose Ronnie heard? Ronnie would hate
her--hate her for damaging his mother's desk. Julia's beautiful desk.
Never mind--never mind the desk.
Frantically, her hands dragged at the poker. The mahogany splintered and
splintered. God! what a noise she was making. Would the lock never
yield?
Her eyes blurred. Her breasts ached. Her wrists ached. She could feel
sweat under her armpits, feel the breath whistling through her lips. She
was beaten, beaten. She would not be beaten--she would conquer the
stubbornness of that lock. Conquer it.
Teeth set, little hands steel on steel, Aliette propped both feet
against the pedestal, and flung back her full weight from the lever.
* * * * *
The poker was bent in her hands, the mahogany desk-top splintered to
white slivers. But the lock had yielded, the drawer stood out open from
its pedestal. There--there lay the will, the will Sir Peter had told her
she must burn. Quickly, she snatched at it. Quickly, she dashed to the
fireplace, dashed it on the fire. Quickly, she snatched up the shovel,
pressed the will down among the flames.
But the flames would not kindle. The thick parchment would not take
fire. It would only curl--curl. The words on the curling parchment
hypnotized her. "Twenty thousand pounds for the benefit of Aliette, née
Fullerford, at present the wife of----"
Slowly, slowly, the parchment was kindling.
But even as Aliette's eyes saw the parchment blacken to the flames, her
ears caught the sound of a key in the lock of the front door, of the
door closing, of feet--Ronnie's feet--coming swiftly down the passage.
"Alie, Alie! I say, darling, are you in the library?"
And a second afterward he stood in the doorway. She knew that he was
eying the desk, eying her back as she stooped to hurry her work.
"What are you doing?"
Aliette neither looked up nor answered. Her thoughts were all for the
flames--for the blessed consuming flames.
"What are you burning?"
He sprang across the room at her; and the shovel dropped with a clatter
from her nerveless fingers.
Turning, she faced him. He put out an arm as though to fend her from the
fire. She seized his arm with both hands, crying, "You're not to. You're
not to."
He struggled with her; but she fought him, fought him away from the
fire. Behind her, in the flames, the last shred of parchment charred to
stiff black ashes.
"Alie"--the loved face was a blur before her eyes, the loved voice a
far-away whisper in her ear--"Alie--what have you done? You haven't
burnt it? You haven't burnt my mother's book?"
"No. Not the book. Sir Peter says we can alter the book. But we can't
alter the will. I had to burn the will, because--because of Dennis."
"Dennis?"
"Yes. Dennis. Our boy, Dennis." Suddenly, the loved face went black,
black as charred parchment before her eyes. "I only did it for the boy,
Ronnie. Can't you understand?"
* * * * *
Holding her, fainted, in his arms, Ronald Cavendish understood a little
of his own unworthiness.
EPILOGUE
1
Windmill House, a modest broad-eaved, slant-gabled Tudor building, stone
below, brick and black oak above, the whole roofed with Colleyweston
slate-slabs which time had lichened to dark-green velvet, surveys the
Rutland hamlet of Little Overdine from the brow of Little Overdine Hill.
Beyond its walled gates the white road switches down between two files
of red cottages, past the Norman tower of Little Overdine Church, toward
Screever Castle and the distant Screever Vale. Behind it and about it
the shires sweep sheer fields of ridge-and-furrow to the far and the
clear horizons whither--all winter--high-mettled riders and high-mettled
horses pour at a gallop after the pouring hounds.
But now, all about Windmill House, the ridge-and-furrows stood knee-deep
in hay; and hounds pattered mute at early morning exercise along the
white road; and the high-mettled horses grazed leisurely in the shade of
the hawthorn hedges; and, in every covert from Lomondham Ruffs to
Highborough Gorse the red vixens suckled unmolested. For now, it was
spring in Rutland--spring in the little county of the big-bosoming
pastures and the big-bosomed women--spring, too, in the heart of Ronald
Cavendish!
Yet, for him, spring held its fear. "Your wife will be all right," Dr.
Hartley had assured. "Everything's going splendidly. Some time this
evening, I expect. About six o'clock if we're lucky. Why don't you go
out for a ride?"
And Aliette, smiling up at him through the increasing pangs, had said
almost the same thing: "Go away, man. Please go away."
As he went from her, out of the high cretonne-bright room down the
blue-carpeted stairs into a hall fragrant with white lilac, apprehension
tightened its grip on Ronnie. Suppose Hartley had lied to him--suppose
Hartley had made a mistake--suppose Aliette, his Aliette, were--were not
to "get over things"?
"But that's ridiculous," he said to himself, "quite ridiculous. Alie's
so strong. And besides, after all we've been through together, _that_
just couldn't happen."
He wandered into the low-ceiled library, picked a book at random, and
sat down to read. But the words of the book conveyed no meaning to his
brain. His brain was upstairs--with Alie. Kate came in to remind him of
lunch. He said to her, speaking softly as though he were in a sick-room:
"Oh, bring me something in here, will you?"
Kate brought some sandwiches, and a whisky-decanter. He ate a sandwich,
and drank a stiff peg. Then he crept quietly up the wide staircase and
listened outside Alie's door. But the closed mahogany let through no
sound; and after a little while he tiptoed downstairs again.
"If only," he thought, "it were all over. Safely over!" His heart ached
for the woman he loved, for the pangs which she must bear alone. Almost,
he hated the unborn cause of her sufferings. What need had he and Alie
of children? Was not their love for one another all-sufficing? Had they
not won enough from life already? Why tempt Providence with yet another
hazard?
Suppose--suppose Alie were to die?
Fretfully Ronnie wandered back to the library; fretfully he flung his
long length into a big saddle-bag chair. But he could not rest in the
chair. The Wixton imagination tore and tore at his brain. Windmill
House, last of Julia Cavendish's Little Overdine properties; Windmill
House, where his mother had honeymooned with his father; Windmill House,
whither he had brought Aliette for sanctuary while the law was
separating her from Hector--seemed sanctuary no longer. Death and life
hovered about the place, each contentious for mastery.
He looked at the Chippendale clock on the dark oak mantelpiece. The
clock-hands pointed two. "Another four hours," he thought. "Another four
eternities!"
How the minutes dragged as one watched them! How cruel, how desperately
cruel was time!
He looked out of the window, through the shining lattices to a shining
garden. Yesterday's gale no longer blew. It had pelted all morning; and
the tennis-lawn still glinted with raindrops. Thrushes hopped on it, and
blackbirds. Through the open pane in the lattices, from under the eaves
of the house, came faint eager twitterings. Out of doors, perhaps, one
would feel more hopeful, less--less infernally jumpy.
Ronnie, closing the library door behind him, stole quietly across the
square hall, and picked an old tweed cap from its peg in the cloakroom,
an ashplant from its corner in the porch. The front door of Windmill
House stood open. Through it he could see the flagstone path, bright
either side with vari-colored primulas; and at the end of the flags,
high-hung between brown stone walls, the wrought-iron gates that gave on
to the highroad.
For a long time, hands in his pockets, the ashplant dangling by its
crook from his forearm, Aliette Cavendish's husband stood ruminant under
the sloped porch. For a long time his memory, apprehension-prompted,
conjured up the past months.
He recollected how, by the sheerest luck, Windmill House had fallen
tenantless just when they most needed a refuge from London; how, at
first sight of the place, Alie, a white-cheeked pathetic Alie,
nerve-wracked and listless, had brightened to interest; and how, as
autumn deepened to winter, she had made the Tudor house a veritable
home. He recollected himself, Friday after Friday, driving his new car
down from London; finding her, week after week, braver, healthier,
better and better equipped for the ordeal to be faced. He recollected
their joyous Christmas together--and the black days which had followed
Christmas--the days when "the case" loomed near and nearer, frightening
her anew with the dread of "those awful newspapers."
Luckily, he had been able to keep most of "those awful newspapers" from
her; so that she had seen only three reports of "The Hanging
Prosecutor's Divorce-Suit."
Ronnie remembered, standing there motionless in the gabled doorway,
how--each helping each through the difficult days--they had made light
of that trouble, telling one another that it was "like having a tooth
out; soon over!" Nevertheless, the memory still ached at times--as a
broken bone aches to the cold long after the cure of the actual
fracture.
And, "I wonder," thought Ronald Cavendish, lover, "whether the people
who make their livings by it, the writing-folk, know how much the
written word can _hurt_? I wonder if Julia knew, when she wrote 'Man's
Law.'"
He began to think of Julia, tenderly, as the imaginative think of the
dead. Julia would be glad to know that the purpose of her book had been
accomplished before its publication; that, published, it would contain
no hurt. Julia, chivalrous, would not wish to injure a man who--at the
pinch of things--had behaved chivalrously.
For that in the end Hector Brunton had behaved well, even his enemy
admitted. Had it not been for Brunton, Brunton with his tremendous
influence, the six months between the granting of the divorce-decree and
the making of that decree absolute would never have been shortened to
three. Had it not been for Brunton, not even Sir Peter Wilberforce could
have succeeded in setting Aliette free to marry her lover before her
lover's child was born to her.
And on that, vividly, Ronnie's memory conjured up the scene of three
days ago: he and she, Roberts the chauffeur for witness, being legally
married in the dingy registrar's office of the near-by townlet. Driving
back to Windmill House, they had laughed together--a little
cynically--at the formality. Yet underneath their laughter had been
tears, tears of gratitude to the kindly Fates.
"Man," Aliette had smiled, "it feels so--so funny not to be an outcast
any more."
2
Ponto's sleek head nuzzling his knees disturbed Ronnie's musing. He took
his hands out of his pockets and began fondling the dog's ears. But
Ponto wanted his mistress; restlessly he tried to push his way into the
house. His slitty eyes were a dumb miserable question; his great stern
stood out, rigid as a pointer's, from his huge body.
"Down, will you?" whispered Ronnie. "Down--you panicky old devil."
The black-and-white hound, still protesting, squatted on his haunches;
rose up again; and began to pad restlessly up and down the flagstones.
Every now and then he came sniffing toward the porch.
"She's all right, Ponto," Ronnie kept on saying. "She's quite all right,
old man." And somehow, soothing the animal, he succeeded in soothing
himself. What a fool he was to worry! Children were born every day,
every hour, every minute. And Alie was so strong. Besides, Alie wanted a
child; she wanted a child more than anything else in the world.
After a while Ponto ceased his padding, and subsided--still dubious--at
his master's feet. After a while Ronnie, consulting his watch, saw that
it was nearly three o'clock.
"Three more hours," he thought; "three more hours of suspense." He
wanted to go back into the house, to wait outside Alie's door. But
instinct, and her last words, restrained him. One could do no good by
one's presence; one could only hinder, flurry the nurse and the doctor
at their work.
Slowly, the great dog at his heels, Ronnie wandered down the flagstones
to the gate. Looking back, the house showed restful, a home of safety
under blue spring skies. The laburnums made curtains of yellow for its
latticed windows; the lilacs were cones of white and mauve to its
sloping eaves. Surely not death but life hovered over that lichened
roof, over those high stone chimney-stacks!
And life was good--good. Life had given to him, Ronald Cavendish, every
fine thing of a man's wishing; love, victory over his one-time enemy,
money, success in his profession. For him, life had been like some old
story-book; a story-book that ended happily.
But with that thought apprehension gripped him again. Life, perhaps, had
given him too much. Fate, perhaps--even now--meant to snatch the cup of
happiness from his lips.
He looked up at Aliette's window. The silk curtains were drawn; and
imagination shuddered at the task of visioning her behind them. She was
in pain, his Aliette, the one being in the world who made life glorious
to him. She was in pain. In danger. And he, her husband, could not help.
Slowly, unable longer to bear the sight of those drawn curtains,
Ronnie--the unhappy dog in his wake--turned away; slowly, the pair began
to wander about the gardens, round the house and round again, through
the shrubberies, past the garage and the stables, across the
tennis-lawn, up and down the rose-pergola. And, "I can't stand this,"
thought Ronald Cavendish; "I can't stand this another minute."
It seemed to him, in his agony, as though life must be planning revenge
on him; as though the ultimate penalty were now to be exacted. Alie
would die in child-birth; and all they had won together be lost
eternally.
Vainly, he strove to curb his imagination. Vainly he said to himself:
"It can't happen. It simply can't happen." Vainly he wished that Alie
had accepted her mother's offer to join them for their wedding-day. One
was so lonely, so infernally lonely. If only Mollie and James hadn't
been on their honeymoon! If only Julia were alive! But Julia was dead,
and James--selfish beast!--enjoying himself, and Aliette's parents
waiting for a telegram.
He looked at his watch again. Barely half-past three yet! And Hartley
had said, "Six o'clock." His hand, as he put the watch back in his
pocket, shook like an apple-tree-spur in a spring gale. He could feel
his brow damp with sweat under the cap-peak. Restlessly he resumed his
tramp; restlessly the dog followed him; round the house and round
again--till at last, to Ponto's delight, his master made his way out of
the gardens, through the stables, to the gate of the paddock.
3
The paddock, a square two-acre of trampled grasses fenced with the high
white of blossoming hawthorn, shimmered in the afternoon sunshine; and
at far end of it, as he opened the gate, Ronnie saw Miracle. At the
click of the gate-latch, the big thoroughbred, golden as a guinea to the
rich light, lifted his head from the fragrant pasture; scrutinized his
visitors; and with a whinny of delight came cantering toward them. Ten
yards away, he stopped--his neck arched, his eyes wide in speculation.
Then, pace by balancing pace, muzzle outstretched, he came on; snuffled
down at the dog; snuffled up at the man.
Tactfully as Aliette's self Ronnie gentled the horse, caressing the
smooth muzzle, the sleek skin under the branches of the jaws. Somehow,
it seemed as though Miracle were aware of the fret in him, of the fret
in Ponto; as though Miracle, following the pair of them up and down the
paddock, were trying to say: "It's all right. It's quite all right."
And Ronnie thought, looking at Miracle's great shoulders, at the slope
of his pasterns and the sinuous strength of his hocks: "You carried her
over Parson's Brook, old boy. You'll carry her again, next winter, as
you carried me this, across a stiller country than Mid-Oxfordshire,
across the ridge-and-furrow and the cut-and-laids and the timber of the
shires."
Miracle followed the pair of them back to the gate, and stood looking
over it while they made their way to the stables. The big blue clock
under the old-fashioned hunting wind-vane (a metal man on a metal horse
capping on a metal hound) showed ten minutes to four. In the center of
the deserted courtyard--ominous--stood Hartley's car. Toward it, through
the archway, came the doctor himself.
Ronnie's heart sank at sight of the man. "Anything gone wrong?" he asked
curtly.
"On the contrary." Hartley, a big-shouldered fellow who rode like a
thruster and looked more like a vet. than a county practitioner, laughed
under his large mustache. "On the contrary. Everything's going
splendidly. If only we could get you husbands out of the way at these
times----"
"How much longer?" interrupted Ronnie.
"Two hours at the least." The doctor abstracted a small package from the
dickey of his car. "We can't rush our fences at this game, you know."
"Is my wife in pain?"
"Of course she's in pain."
"Bad pain?"
"Good Lord, no. Nothing out of the ordinary. She's a Trojan, is your
missus, Cavendish." And Hartley, stuffing the package into a capacious
pocket, added. "As a matter of fact, it seems to me that you're looking
a jolly sight worse than she is. Why don't you take my advice, and get
on a gee-gee for an hour or so? _We_ don't want you kicking about the
house, I can tell you."
The doctor hurried off through the archway toward the house, leaving
Ronnie a little ashamed of himself. Hartley, for all his coarseness,
knew his job. He began to wonder whether it wouldn't be a sound scheme
to follow Hartley's advice, and go out for a ride. Driver, the groom,
had asked for the Saturday afternoon off; but he could easily saddle up
one of the hacks in the loose-boxes, either the old brown mare, Daisy,
or the little bay horse which he had bought--a week since--as a surprise
for Aliette on her convalescence.
Ronnie, Ponto still at his heels, made his way into the unlocked
harness-room; picked a saddle from its rack, a snaffle bridle from its
peg; and emerged again into the courtyard.
"Which shall it be?" he thought, "Daisy or the bay?" And hesitating in
his choice, it came to him, quite suddenly, that if he really _were_
going to ride--if, despite the apprehensions which had once more started
nagging at his mind, he really meant to disregard the pull of that
invisible halter which bound him to the house where Aliette lay in
pain--then the only horse possible for him to ride was Miracle.
Why not? The thoroughbred had only been "lying out" a week. An hour's
exercise wouldn't do him any harm. He'd enjoy, perhaps, a little canter
across the grass to Spaxton's Covert.
Wonderingly, Ponto followed his master back to the paddock. Miracle
still had his head across the gate; nor, when he saw the saddle over
Ronnie's right arm, the bridle in his left hand, did he sulk away. The
big golden-gleaming horse seemed rather pleased than sulky to feel the
brow-band slipped up his forehead, the snaffle-bar slipped into his
mouth, the throat-lash of the bridle buckled loose, and the
saddle-girths gripping him. He tossed at his bit and hogged his back in
the old playful way as Ronnie--the ashplant in his left hand--put an
unhorsemanly-shod foot into the iron and swung an unhorsemanly-trousered
leg over the cantle.
As the three of them, horse and dog and man, set off across the paddock,
Ronnie knew the impulse to turn back, to off-saddle. It seemed heartless
that he should ride out across green fields while Alie--had not Hartley
himself admitted?--was in pain. But half-way across the two-acre the
impulse weakened; and by the time they made the far gate it had
altogether died away.
He unlatched the gate with his ashplant, and Miracle nipped through.
Before them, up-and-down emerald between rolling grasses, lay the
bridle-path to Spaxton's Covert. The horse, at a touch of the rein,
broke from walk to trot, from trot to a springy canter that traversed
the ridge-and-furrow without an effort. Southerly breezes blew across
the sixty-acre pasture. Two hares, mating, scurried from their approach.
The great horned beasts, white-faced Herefords and black Welsh steers,
watched them incuriously till--catching sight of Ponto--they, too, moved
lumbering away.
At the crest, Ronnie drew rein. Here, they were on the very spine of the
county. Looking back, he could still see the high chimney-stacks and the
stable-clock of Windmill House: but already Little Overdine had tucked
itself away into a cup of the vale; so that only its church-tower and
the motionless sails of the windmill betrayed it from the humpy fields
through which Little Overdine Brook serpentined like a gigantic green
caterpillar.
Mapwise, from that high eminence, the shires outspread their panorama,
pasture on rolling pasture, with here a bright square of young green
cornland, here a dark blob of covert, here a blue hill and there a vale,
here a great house nestling among trees, there a red farm, there a
church, and there a white railway-gate, but scarce a factory chimney
from horizon to horizon.
Not for nothing do men hark back to the place of their father's birth!
To Ronnie, ever since he had first set eyes on this panorama, it had
been home. Already he knew its every landmark; already it had power over
him, power to soothe, power to set him a-dream.
And to-day, more than ever before, the shires set their spell upon him,
so that he imagined--sitting there motionless on the motionless horse--a
son soon to be born, a son who would esteem the Tudor house on the brow
of Little Overdine Hill, and all this wide champaign, these counties
which were neither pretty-pretty as the garden South, nor rocked and
sea-girt as the West, nor grandly cragged and forested as the North, but
just--so Ronnie put it to himself that afternoon--just England, the old
England of bold horses and bold hounds and bolder men.
4
The three, horse and dog and man, set off again. Down from the crest
they came at a canter, through fields ridged yellow with buttercups,
where the young lambs frisked bleating from their path, by blazing
hawthorn-hedges a-chatter with startled finches, through the
pasture-gates, to the little wooden bridge over the Brook. Now, on a
slope above them, they saw the bright new green of Spaxton's Covert;
five acres of blessed woodland whither, on some dark November afternoon,
a dog-fox hard-pressed from Lomondham Ruffs or Highborough Gorse might,
if only scent failed, perchance make safety from the beaten pack.
But to-day the dog-fox feared neither pack nor horseman. They saw him, a
red shape at covert's edge; saw him grin at them from fifty yards'
range, and lope disdainfully back through the wooden palings to his
mate!
Ronnie, laughing at the incident, halted Miracle, dismounted, and called
the rabbit-eager Ponto to heel. The half-hour or so of open air had
steadied his nerves. Lighting a cigarette, looking at his watch, he saw
that his hands no longer trembled. "Alie's all right," he said to
himself. "Everything's all right."
He mounted again, and headed away from the covert toward Lomondham. From
Lomondham to Little Overdine by the highroad is four good miles.
"That'll get me home comfortably by five," thought Ronnie. But just
before he made the Lomondham road, fear gripped him again. Suddenly some
instinct, an instinct so strong that he dared not even fight against it,
warned him that Alie was in danger.
And with fear came self-reproach. He had been away a whole hour, a whole
hour of life or death for the woman he loved. He had been enjoying
himself, _enjoying_ himself, dreaming of a son when perhaps--perhaps----
Miracle, trotting at ease, felt himself abruptly gathered together, felt
the ring of the snaffle hard against his off cheek, felt the grass at
roadside under his hoofs, broke to a canter and from a canter to a
gallop. Ponto, caught unawares fifty yards in rear, heard man and horse
disappear round a bend in the hawthorn hedges; Ponto, quickening his
lollop round the bend, saw the pair streak hell-for-leather up the hill;
Ponto, laboring desperately not to be left behind, saw them halt for a
moment at the gate of Lomondham Lane and knew that his master had taken
the short cut home. "He can't have forgotten _me_," thought Ponto
angrily.
But Ronnie, in that moment of fear, had forgotten everything except
Aliette. The lane saved a mile and a half, and the lane was all soft
turf--good going--the first five furlongs of it straight as a
race-course.
Down those first five furlongs Miracle went like a steed possessed. The
turf thudded under his hoofs. The hawthorn-hedges streaked past him like
snowbanks alongside a train. "Hope to God we don't meet any one at the
bend," thought Ronnie, his silk-socked ankles thrust home in the irons,
his trousered knees gripping the saddle-flaps, his hands low and his
body a little forward.
For now there was no controlling Miracle. The fear of the thoroughbred
man on his back had communicated itself in some mysterious way to the
thoroughbred horse. He, too, wanted to get home. Grandly he swept the
ground from under him. Scarcely, with voice and rein, Ronnie succeeded
in checking speed as they tore madly round the bend; scarcely, leaning
hard over, he succeeded in keeping his seat.
And then, abruptly, he remembered the tree!
The tree, a great elm, overturned by the gale, was a bare four hundred
yards on, just around the next bend, beyond the bridge that arched up
like the back of a big red hog from the green of the lane.
"Steady, Miracle," called Ronnie, "steady, you old fool. This isn't the
National." He was still terribly frightened about Alie; but for himself
he had no fear. Even when his horse, head down, neck-muscles arched
against the reins, took the red bridge as though it had been a
water-jump, it never struck Ronnie that he wouldn't be able to stop him.
Two hundred yards from the tree, he still intended to pull up. Miracle,
with no corn in him, couldn't hold that pace another furlong. Miracle,
when he caught sight of those jagged branches blocking the path, would
ease up of his own accord. Miracle had never bolted in his life. . . .
But Miracle came round that last bend as though it had been Tattenham
Corner; and Miracle's rider, peering between his ears at the forbidding
obstacle fifty yards ahead, knew that it would be fatal to try and stop
him. As a matter of cold fact, he didn't want to stop the horse. The
overturned tree, unlopped, five feet high and eight across, lay between
him and Aliette: once over it, five minutes would see them home!
Ronnie took one pull at the reins, sat down in his saddle, grasped
Miracle between his knees, sent up one voiceless prayer for safety,
flicked once with his ashplant, felt the great horse steady himself
hocks-under-body, felt his forehand lift, gave him his head--went up,
down and over, his shoulders almost touching the croup--and landed like
a steeple-chase jock to a crackle of twigs on the turf beyond.
Then, at long last, the tree fifty yards behind and the highroad half a
mile ahead, Miracle answered to the rein. Gradually his pace checked
from gallop to hand-canter; from hand-canter to a quick nervous trot
that sent the loose stones scudding from his hoofs.
"Good lad," said Ronnie, easing as they emerged from lane to highroad.
"Good lad," he repeated, as Miracle--scarcely sweating--clattered
swiftly through the stable-gateway and stood for dismounting.
For somehow, even as he swung-from saddle, Ronnie knew that Alie's
danger was over, so that it hardly needed the returned Driver's cheery
grin and cheery words, "It's a boy, sir. Kate's just come out and told
us," to reassure him.
5
"Sorry I spoofed you about the time," said Hartley, some hour and a half
after. "But you were making such an ass of yourself that we all thought
you'd be better out of the way. You can go up now, if you like. Only
don't stay long."
Ronnie, one hand on the newel-post of the staircase, laughed as he
answered, "I'm afraid I was a wee bit rattled"; and went up the
blue-carpeted treads three at a time.
The door of Alie's room, as though expectant, stood a mite open. Through
the chink of it shone a primrose gleam of light. Alie's husband knocked
faintly; and nurse rustled to the doorway. "They're asleep," whispered
nurse. "You may look at them if you like."
The uniformed woman let him in, closing the door of the room. The
cretonne curtains were still drawn across the latticed windows. Candles
glowed on the mantelpiece and the dressing-table. But the big bed,
toward which Ronnie tiptoed, was in shadow; so that Aliette's hair,
braided down either shoulder, showed dark against white pillows and
whiter skin.
She slept--the child, his man-child, tiny in the crook of her arm--the
ghost of a smile on her breathing lips. Ronnie stood for a long while,
gazing down on the pair of them. His blue eyes were bright with
thankfulness. His heart thudded, pleasurably, against his ribs.
"She wouldn't let me take the baby from her," whispered nurse. "You'll
go away now, won't you? They mustn't be woken."
But at that, Aliette's eyes opened. Drowsily, she looked up at him;
drowsily, smiling still, she murmured:
"Kiss me before you go, man. I'm so happy, so wonderfully and gloriously
happy."
Bending, Ronald Cavendish kissed his wife's warm fluttering eyelids and
the soft downy head in the crook of her arm.
* * * * *
=Transcriber's notes:=
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Panoroma was changed to panorama on page 482 of the original.