It was very late for Chilworth Cove: past ten o'clock of a dull heavy night: the stars veiled: the purr of a torpid sea coming faint down the Ghyll. One by one the lights in the village windows had been extinguished. But light still poured from the windows of Honeysuckle Cottage; and through the light-motes, the smoke of a man's cigar outcurled in blue seashell whorls that hung long-time--meditative as the man--in the windless quiet.
Ronald Cavendish threw the butt of his cigar after the smoke-whorls, and turned to the two women in the room.
"The mater's right," he said. "We must make some move. But it's no earthly use writing to Jimmy. Jimmy can't help us. The only thing to be done is for me to go up to town and see H. B. myself."
Ever since Caroline had cleared away dinner, they had been discussing the problem of Brunton's inactivity. To Aliette, pride-bound, feeling herself--despite the new alliance with Julia Cavendish--still guilty, still the interloper, it seemed best that they should wait. Silently resenting, yet chiding herself all the while for her resentment, the whole discussion, she had held herself, whenever possible, aloof from it.
But now she could hold aloof no longer. No coward in her own love; willing, for herself, to take any and all risks; the suggested meeting filled her with apprehension for Ronnie.
"I beg you not to do that," she said.
"Why not?" Ronnie laughed. "He can't eat me."
"I'd so much rather you didn't. Perhaps he's only waiting because of some difficulty, some legal difficulty. Wouldn't it be better if I wrote to him again, if we both wrote to him? After all, we mustn't forget that"--she stumbled over the phrase--"we're in the wrong."
"Writing won't do any good," pronounced Julia. "Ninety-nine letters out of every hundred are perfectly futile. The hundredth--is usually an irrevocable mistake."
The novelist, rather pleased with the epigram, sat back in her basketwork chair. For the first time since her quarrel with Ronnie, she had regained that peculiar power of mental detachment--of seeing real personalities, her own included, as characters in a book--which is the exclusive property of the literary temperament.
"All the same," she went on, "I can't help feeling that a personal interview would be risky. It might only exacerbate the position."
"Risky or not," said a determined Ronnie, "it's the only possible thing to be done. Unless H. B. files his petition at once, we shall have to wait the best part of a year before we can get married. And remember, we haven't only ourselves to consider--there's Aliette's family.They'llhave to be told sooner or later. Think how much easier it would be if we could tell them that everything was properly arranged."
Julia's newly-regained detachment deserted her. Turning to Aliette, she asked nervously:
"But don'tyourparents know? Haven't you written to them?"
"Not yet." Beyond the lamplight, the younger woman's face showed scarcely an emotion. "It seemed so useless. You see, I'm not an only child. There'll be no forgiveness--on their side. Mollie may stand by me. But Eva won't. Mother and Andrew will take Eva's advice. They only cared for my brothers. When my brothers were killed, it was just as if everything had gone out of their lives." And she added--pathetically, thought Julia Cavendish, who, loving her own son more than anything in the world, always found difficulty in realizing how frail is the average tie between parents and grown-up daughters: "Mother's rather fond of Eva's children."
"Still, we have to consider them," interrupted Aliette's, lover. "We don't want them to hear the news from--the other side. I think youshouldwrite to them, Alie. Mollie I'll go and see myself. Jimmy's sure to know her address. I wonder if she and Jimmy are engaged----"
"Your friend Wilberforce," interrupted Julia, "may be an excellent solicitor; but he's an extremely selfish young man."
"What makes you say that?" asked Aliette; and as Julia did not reply, "Has he spoken to you--about my sister?"
"He has." Julia's voice was rather grim.
"And is--what we've done--going to make any difference?"
"I think not. But if it does," the suspicion of a twinkle gleamed in the blue eyes, "if it does, my dear, your sister will owe you a great debt of gratitude for--running away with my son. That kind of man," definitely, "is no use."
"I've been rather worried about Mollie," began Aliette, whose decision not to await her sister's return had been the most difficult of all the decisions she took in those few hours before she bolted from Lancaster Gate. "That letter of mine----"
She broke off the sentence, divining nevertheless that her letter--meant as a precise document--must have been incoherent to the last degree; divining how impossible a situation her selfishness must have created for Mollie. "Iamselfish," she said to herself. "Utterly selfish! I deserve no consideration. And yet these two consider only me."
"Never mind about Mollie." Stubbornly--for now that his mother had joined forces with them it seemed more than ever necessary that they should bring Brunton swiftly to reason--Ronald Cavendish returned to his point. "The question is: When do I go up to town? In my opinion, the sooner the better. Once Ihaveseen H. B., we shall at least know where we stand."
"And suppose," faltered Aliette, "suppose he refuses to see you?"
"He won't."
"Suppose he refuses to do anything?"
"You needn't be afraid of that. A man in his position is bound to take action. If he doesn't----"
"If he doesn't," broke in Julia, "we must fight him. We three." She rose from the creaky chair; and Aliette, seeing the determination, the courage in those old eyes, felt suddenly ashamed of her own weakness. "Meanwhile, I think I'll go to bed. Your maid promised to wait up for me."
Kissing "that woman" good night, Ronnie's mother whispered: "Don't try to overpersuade him. If he feels it is right--he must be allowed to go."
Very early next morning, before dawn lightened to palest rose behind the clematis blossoms, the woman who had left her husband, waking with her lover's arms about her, prayed voicelessly to that God whose priests would henceforth bar her from His communion, that Ronnie's love might endure to the end.
For now, Aliette was afraid.
Two days subsequent to his mother's arrival at Chilworth Cove, Ronald Cavendish set out for London.
Aliette, masking her anxiety, drove him to the station; and for nearly an hour after the slow train left Chilton Junction he visualized nothing except her pale, exquisite face and the wistful smile in her brown eyes. Looking back, it seemed to him that those eyes had been very close to tears. Thinking of her, imagination roused all the tenderness, all the fighting instinct in him.
But gradually, as the lush countryside slid by, Ronnie's mind recovered a little of its legal function; and he began to map out, as carefully as he could, his plan of campaign.
The fear lest Brunton should refuse to take any action still hardly troubled him. To one of his public school training, it appeared utterly incredible that a man in Brunton's position, childless and without religious scruples, should refuse to set free a wife who obviously did not care for him, and for whom (equally obviously, as it seemed) he did not himself care. Sheer caddishness of that description was the prerogative of rank outsiders like Carrington.
Nevertheless, Ronnie's instinct dictated caution. It would he best, he thought, to see Jimmy immediately on his arrival in London; and to ascertain from Jimmy how far his flight with Aliette had become public knowledge. Possibly, if there had been no open scandal, Brunton might hold his hand till after the long vacation. Scandal, whether at the bar or elsewhere, never did any one any good.
And at that, Ronald Cavendish knew apprehension. His brain, hitherto blinded by the grand passion, began to see the ordinary point of view, the point of view he himself might have adopted towards their case a twelvemonth since. "Rather sordid," he would have considered the whole business, "rather hard luck on the husband." And so thinking, he imagined the bare legal tale as it might one day appear in the press. Commonplace enough! Mrs. Smith had left Mr. Smith, and was living in open adultery with Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith asked for a divorce; produced the usual evidence; secured the usual decree.
He tried to put apprehension away from him. He said to himself, "As if a little publicity mattered; as if anything mattered except her freedom." All the same, he knew that publicity would matter, that publicity would hurt Aliette and hurt his mother. "Damnable," he thought; "damnable that the law should take so little cognizance of the personal equation!"
And London, seen in the hot sunlight of a July afternoon as his taxi crawled over Waterloo Bridge, only intensified the unimportance of the individual. The isolation of Chilworth, the paradise of enchantment which love and Aliette had made for him at Chilworth, seemed a million miles removed from this peopled city. He recognized himself one of the herd again, forced to think as the herd, to act as the herd dictated. Moses Moffatt's face, smiling most confidential of welcomes at the green door in Jermyn Street, typified the herd point of view--the basement point of view--the feeling that, potentially, one was a mere co-respondent.
While the man was unpacking for him in the bare ascetic bedroom, Ronnie rang up Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright; and got through to Jimmy. Jimmy on the telephone sounded cold, serious, dignified. Only after some persuasion would he consent to dine at the club.
"And by the way," asked Ronnie, "do you happen to know if Mollie Fullerford's in town?"
"Why?"
"I've got a letter for her."
"From her sister?"
"Yes."
"I'll give you her address this evening," said James Wilberforce, and replaced his receiver.
The Lustrum is one of those semi-social, semi-political clubs which combine sound cookery, a cellar beyond reproach, and a chairman of the utmost distinction, with the architectural style of a Turkish bath and the gloom of a family mausoleum. A tape-machine ticks by the glass-doored porter's box in the hall; an enormous gold-framed oil of Mr. Asquith stares down the red marble staircase; English waiters--last of their breed--move in unhurried dignity through the vast dining-room; while "members bringing guests" are subject to rules so complicated that even the honorary secretary--who takes most of the credit for the paid secretary's work when he appears before a somnolent committee--has been known to infringe them.
The constraint of this atmosphere weighed so heavily on the friends as to make immediate conversation impossible. Only after a bottle of the Lustrum's pre-war Pommard, a glass apiece of the Lustrum's '68 port, and the third of a cigar consumed over coffee in the stuffy guest-room, did Jimmy Wilberforce manage:
"Old chap, I'm afraid this is a devil of a mess. You've seen your mater, I suppose!"
"Seen her!" Ronnie smiled--and then, cautiously: "Didn't you know that she was staying with us?"
"Us?" Wilberforce repeated the word. "You mean----"
"With myself and Aliette."
Wilberforce's eyes narrowed. He took the tawny cigar from under his auburn mustache, and scrutinized it a longish while before saying:
"Tell me, then: why are you in town?"
"Primarily to see H. B. We've waited quite long enough for him to make a move."
The matter-of-fact tone annoyed Wilberforce. Despite his resolves not to let the personal issue between himself and Aliette's sister cloud impersonal judgment, that issue had been recurring to his mind all through the dreary bachelor dinner. For six weeks Mollie had been on the defensive with him, unseizable if not unapproachable; for six weeks he had been wavering between the strong desire to "go gently till this damn mess was cleared up," and the fear of what "Society" would think about the match. Therefore, it irritated him that Ronnie should speak about the whole affair as though running away with another man's wife were an every-day occurrence, as though he, Ronnie, were the injured party.
"Rather an unwise move, don't you think?" he said.
"Unwise! One can't let him go on shilly-shallying like this."
"If you've got it into your head that you're going to bully Hector Brunton into giving Mrs. Brunton her freedom," retorted Jimmy, "I should give up the idea"; and he added: "Ishould have thought your best plan would be to lie doggo. After all, you must remember that he's the aggrieved party."
"If you feel that way about it," Ronnie's eyes kindled to anger, "we won't discuss the matter further."
At that Wilberforce became the solicitor.
"My dear fellow," he began, assuming his father's blandness, "do be reasonable. Don't think I fail to understand your feelings. I know you well enough to realize that you wouldn't have acted as you have acted without imagining yourself justified. Very possibly you are justified. Very possibly there are circumstances--I hold no brief for H. B. AllIwant to do is to help you and your mother. And so if you come to me for advice, I am bound to tell you exactly what I think. It's for Brunton to move, not you."
"He's had plenty of time. And I'm sick of waiting."
"Then why don't you get some mutual friend to see him? That's the usual thing."
Ronnie rose from the deep saddle-bag chair. His instinct was all for a row. Unreasonably, with the divine unreason of a lover, he had expected sympathy; instead he had met a wall, a wall of misunderstanding between himself and his best friend. "Damn Jimmy," he thought. "Jimmy's common sense ought to tell him that this isn't the usual thing."
And suddenly Aliette's lover realized that Jimmy's common sense had told him nothing, that Jimmy's very common sense prevented him from understanding the peculiar relationship between Aliette and her legal owner. He wanted to tell Jimmy the truth about that relationship; but his training, the code of decent reticence, every tradition of public schooldom restrained him. Decency suggested that neither then to James Wilberforce, nor eventually in court, could he make public the matrimonial position between Aliette and Hector. "Tongue-tied!" he thought. "Even if I were an orator, inherdefense I should always be tongue-tied."
Nevertheless, his anger relented.
"Except yourself, Jimmy," he went on, "there's no mutual friend who could act for us; and I can't ask you to act because of your firm's relations with him. Therefore, I'm going to do the job myself."
There was almost admiration in the other's "You always were a plucky devil."
"Plucky! I don't see anything plucky in it."
"Supposing H. B. cuts up rough?"
"Why should he? He's in the wrong, and he knows it."
"All the more reason." Wilberforce, too, rose. Watching his friend carefully, he saw that their conversation had aroused him to fighting-pitch; and Ronnie at fighting-pitch--as Jimmy remembered from their Oxford days--was capable of being a rather desperate person.
"Don'tyoucut up rough, old man," he continued. "There'll be quite enough trouble without a police-court case into the bargain."
"You needn't be afraid, Jimmy." Ronnie controlled himself. "I'll manage to keep my temper with the fellow. By the way, you don't feel there's any chance of his refusing to file his petition, do you?"
"Hardly. H. B. isn't a religious chap, or anything of that sort. He might go for damages, of course."
"We could settle that before we went into court."
They simmered down; sat down; relit cigars; and began to discuss the legal aspect of the case which each felt sure that Brunton must eventually bring; finally deciding that Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright could not, under the special circumstances, act for either party.
"J. J. W. would be your best man," said James.
So interested did they become in the professional issue that it was nearly midnight before Ronnie said, "By the way, I'd almost forgotten to ask you for Mollie Fullerford's address"; and Wilberforce, "Do you really think it's advisable for you to go and see her?"
"Advisable! How do you mean?"
The two friends faced one another in silence, each constrained by the peculiar diffidence of their class, the diffidence which makes the discussion of women, and especially of their own women, so terribly difficult to decent Englishmen.
At last Wilberforce said: "You see, old chap, if this case comes on, I'm afraid it will be a big shock to her. H. B. might call her as a witness. Pretty rough on a girl, being dragged into"--he hesitated--"this sort of thing."
"Yes, rotten. We'll have to keep her name out." Ronnie, too, hesitated. "She hasn't said anything to you, I suppose?"
"No, but I feel she knows." The red man nearly blushed. "I say, you'll be decent about breaking things, won't you? You'll let her down lightly. Mollie's jolly fond of her sister, and--er--you mustn't mind my saying it--her sister hasn't behaved over-well in this business--leaving her all by herself at Brunton's."
"My fault, Jimmy. It was I who persuaded Aliette not to wait. But I promise you, I'll see that Brunton keeps Mollie Fullerford's name out of the affair.
"By the way," added Ronnie casually, "you remember something you said to me just before we went into court in the Ellerson case?" A pause. "Does that still hold good? What I mean is this. I should never forgive myself if I thought that this--this trouble of mine----"
"I'm not that sort of cad," retorted James Wilberforce hotly. But all the same, walking home through the night, he realized once more--with revolting clarity--himself. Which self-knowledge is no bad discipline for the James Wilberforces of this world!
Ronnie, too, walked home from the Lustrum. The interview with Wilberforce had clarified his mind; he foresaw now exactly how his world would regard the case. The foreknowledge hardened his determination to see Brunton. Hemustsee Brunton. Bruntonmustbe brought to immediate action. Otherwise----
Resolutely the man strove to put that "otherwise" away from him. But the "otherwise" kept on intruding. Suppose Aliette's legal owner refused to take any action at all? Carrington had waited five years.
And that night, his first bereft of her, alone and sleepless at Jermyn Street, Aliette's lover began to conceive a hatred of Aliette's legal owner. The Wixton imagination, always most active in darkness, showed him pictures of Brunton, of the sandy hair, the cold gray eyes, the feet in their big boots. Tossing sleepless on his tumbled pillows, imagination bade him remember that once--long ago though it must have been--Brunton had actually----
Horrors, physical horrors, capered and sarabanded before his eyes, rousing the blood-lust in him--the old blood-lust experienced four years since. He remembered, just as sleep overtook him, the face of a Turk he had killed. His squadron was charging. Behind him, he heard the galloping stamp of shod hoofs on desert, the creak of saddlery, the jingle of accoutrements, the curses of his men; in front of him rose a face, the face of the Turk, bearded above dirty linen. The face was afraid; he could see the face twitch as he fired. Only as he fired, the face changed--became the face of Hector Brunton.
"I'm afraid you didn't sleep very well last night, sir," said Moses Moffatt, serving the usual faultless rashers in Ronnie's beige-papered sitting-room.
"What makes you say that?" Ronnie, clear-eyed after his morning tub, looked across the breakfast-table.
"Well, sir," Moses Moffatt smiled deprecatingly, "if you don't mind my mentioning it, the missus and me heard you calling out in your sleep."
"Is that so? I'm sorry if I disturbed you."
Ronnie, remembering his dream only very vaguely, ate his breakfast; skimmed through the "Morning Post"; took his top-hat, and sauntered downstairs into Jermyn Street.
It had not yet struck ten. Fishmongers were still swilling down their marbles. The usual early morning crowd had emerged into sunshine from the Piccadilly Tube. Ronnie swung past them down the Haymarket.
The asphalt of London, the cars, the buses, and the taxicabs seemed more than ever alien after the sea and the solitude of Chilworth Cove. He felt like a stranger in a strange, hostile city. Only as he emerged through Northumberland Avenue upon the Embankment did London seem home again; only as he turned leftward from the river into the Temple did there come over him the full realization of the issue at stake.
In his chambers at Pump Court nothing had altered. Tho other three barristers were, as usual, away; Benjamin Bunce, as usual, pottering among the foolscaps. The little clerk's watery eyes lit with curiosity at sight of the returning wanderer.
"There were papers," hinted Benjamin, "there was correspondence."
Benjamin's employer glanced at the taped documents on the table, at the unopened letters. "They can wait," he said. "Has Mr. Brunton's clerk inquired for my address?"
"No, sir."
"You're sure?"
"Quite sure, sir."
"Very good. I'll ring when I want you."
The clerk--a thousand unanswered questions seething in his soul--withdrew.
Ronnie hung his hat behind the door, and began striding up and down the book-shelved room. Here, he remembered, he had first tried to reason out his feelings for Aliette. Here, just before the Ellerson case, he had almost decided it his duty to give her up. And now, now--in fact if not in law--Aliette was actually his.
For a little while he dreamed of her, but soon the professional atmosphere of Pump Court infected him; and he began to see their case impersonally--as a "case." In law, unless Brunton acted, they had no remedy. His whole career, Aliette's whole happiness, their whole future lives depended on the clemency of Aliette's legal owner. Neither the old divorce-laws nor the proposed divorce-reforms could help them. Whatever wrongs Aliette might have suffered at her husband's hands in the past, she had forfeited those rights by running away; and only her husband could set her free. Would Brunton set her free? That was the whole issue. Best face it out of hand!
Ronnie pressed the bell on his desk, and the clerk popped through the door.
"Bunce, I want you to go over to Mr. Brunton's chambers. Ask Mr. Brunton's clerk if he can see me before he goes into court. You can say that it is on a private matter, and rather important."
Bunce--Ms curiosity satisfied--sidled out.
Waiting for Brunton's decision, Cavendish knew both curiosity and fear. Suppose Brunton refused even to discuss the matter?
And Brunton did refuse. The message Benjamin brought back was perfectly definite, perfectly courteous. He, Benjamin, had seen Mr. Brunton's clerk, David Patterson, and Mr. Brunton had sent word by Mr. Patterson to say that he was very sorry not to be able to see Mr. Cavendish, but that he was extremely busy and would be busy all day.
"Funk!" thought Ronnie; and remembered suddenly how Brunton had avoided the war. Brunton's refusal to see him was sheer cowardice. Rage kindled in his mind. For the flash of a second, he saw red. Hewouldsee Brunton. Damn it all, hewouldsee him. How dared Brunton shelter behind a clerk! But it would be no use trying to force his way into Brunton's chambers. Brunton would be in court. Very well, then, he would wait for him; wait till the court adjourned; wait, if necessary, all day.
"Won't you look through your letters, sir?" reminded Bunce.
Ronnie tried to look through his letters; tried to examine the few briefs which had come in during his absence. But his legal mind refused to concentrate. Between his mind and his correspondence, between his mind and his briefs, rage hung a scarlet and impenetrable curtain.
That morning, yet another legal brain refused to concentrate on its immediate business.
All through the long hours in the stuffy court-room, Hector Brunton, K.C., was conscious of the Furies. "Cavendish," whispered the Furies, "Cavendish has come back." He tried to dismiss the fellow from his mind, to attack the case in hand. But again and again the witnesses under cross-examination eluded him. Instead of the faces in the witness-box, he saw Cavendish's face--the face of his wife. And when--his cross-examinations concluded--the court adjourned for luncheon, those two faces were still before his eyes, mocking him, mocking him.
"God's curse on them," he thought. "God's curse on both of them. I'll not see Cavendish. Let them lie in the bed they made for themselves. Let the adulterer and the adulteress rot together."
Angrily Brunton disrobed; angrily he left the law courts and made across Fleet Street toward King's Bench Walk. Even David Patterson, dour, heavy-jowled as the K.C. himself; who followed, brief-bag slung over his shoulder, at a respectful distance; was awed at his employer's obvious fury.
The K.C. strode rapidly, his hands behind his back, his head lowered, down Middle Temple Lane, through Elm Court, through Fig Tree Court, into the big graveled square of the Walk, and diagonally across the Walk to his chambers.
Suddenly his head lifted. There, at the steps of his chambers, waiting for him, obviously waiting for him, stood Cavendish. For the fraction of a second Brunton, K.C., hesitated in his stride.
Ronnie, watching, saw that hesitation; saw his man come on again, head low, eyes on the pavement; and knew instinctively that Brunton would pretend not to recognize him, would try to push past him up the stone stairway. Resolutely, he planted himself across the stairway; and in that one second of time before they met face to face, the vision he had seen in the darkness of overnight flashed through his mind. Then he had his enemy in front of him, and was saying quietly:
"I'd like a word with you, Brunton."
The K.C. tried to pass; but Ronnie stood his ground.
"I'm afraid I'm too busy to see you to-day, Cavendish." The voice sounded courteous enough; but a glance, a glance of insane rage, darted snake-like from behind the gray pupils. Brunton's great jowl twitched; the veins on his forehead were steel cords.
"The matter is rather urgent." Ronnie, watching the approach of David Patterson, lowered his tone. "I sha'n't keep you a minute. Unless, of course," the tone rose, "you prefer that our discussion should take place in public."
The fire in his blue eyes beat down the snake in Brunton's gray; and, without another word, Ronnie accompanied his man up the stairway, along the corridor into his chambers.
David Patterson made as if to follow, but Brunton barked over one shoulder, "I sha'n't need you," and the two of them were alone.
"And now," began the K.C., standing foursquare in front of his empty fireplace, "I shall be glad to know the reason of this unwarrantable intrusion."
"You know the reason as well as I do." The red mist still hung before Ronnie's eyes. He had forgotten the "legal position": he wanted to strike Brunton; to strike him across the sneering face. Only the code, the public school code of restraint, held him back.
"I haven't the slightest idea why you should force your way into my chambers. Perhaps you will condescend to explain." Brunton, too, felt the code on him--heavy, like a net hampering his limbs. He wanted to free himself from the net; wanted to lash out at the man who had stolen Aliette, to destroy him.
"I came to ask you," Ronnie's lips hardly moved, "how much longer you intend to delay."
"Delay what?"
"Your petition."
"What petition?"
"Your petition for divorce."
"That's my business." Brunton laughed--a harsh, bitter laugh, low in the throat.
"And mine."
"I fail to see the connection."
Ronnie's fists clenched. "Apparently you take me for a fool."
Brunton laughed again. "No. Only for a thief."
With an effort, Ronnie thrust his hands into his pockets. "I didn't come here to bandy words with you. All I want to know is how soon you intend filing your petition."
"When I choose." Rage mastered Aliette's husband. "And if I don't choose--never."
Now Ronnie laughed--contemptuously. "You may be able to browbeat a woman in the box, but you can't browbeat me. I want an answer to my question. How soon do you intend to file your petition? This isn't only your business. It's mine--mine and----"
"Kindly keep my wife out of this discussion," snarled Brunton. "Your question is a damned insult, and your presence here an infernal outrage. Neither you nor God Almighty can make me file the petition you refer to."
For a full minute the pair faced each other, tense, wordless, self-control fighting against instincts, instincts fighting against self-control. Then Brunton's nerve snapped.
"I hate the very sight of you," he shouted. "Will you get out? Or have I got to throw you out?"
"Don't make a fool of yourself," said Ronnie; and his voice was ice. "If it comes to violence I sha'n't be the one who'll get the worst of it."
He took a step forward, and the K.C. recoiled before him.
"Answer my question, Brunton."
"I'll see you to hell first, Cavendish."
And suddenly the red mist thickened to blood-color before Ronnie's eyes. He wanted to kill Brunton. Killing would be the easiest way to deal with Brunton--far the easiest way. His hands clenched in his trouser-pockets; he itched to take his hands out of his pockets, to dash them in those cold gray eyes, to seize that heavy jowl, to tear the life out of it.
And then, in a flash, his legal mind saw the consequences of that killing. The blood-red mist vanished. Swiftly his mood changed. He began to plead, to plead desperately, not for his own sake, but for Aliette's. He said:
"We're being selfish. It isn't of ourselves we have to think. Think ofherposition if you don't take action."
"She should have thought of my position before she ran away with you," retorted the other. "I tell you, I'm not going to be hustled; and I'm not going to be bullied. I'll take action when I choose; and not a minute before. Nothing that you, nothing that she, nothing that anybody else can do will persuade me to say one word further on this subject. Now, will you go?"
And Ronnie went, realizing himself powerless. As he passed through the doorway he gave one glance at his adversary. His adversary still stood, like a bull at bay, against the empty grate; but the look in his adversary's eyes--a look which Ronnie could not fathom--was not the brave look of the bull; rather was it compound of fear and obstinacy, of injured pride and of determination for revenge; the look of the weak man who knows himself in the wrong, yet means to persist in his wrongdoing.
Surely as night follows day in the firmament, so surely does reaction follow action in imaginative man. Ronald Cavendish's mind, as he crossed King's Bench Walk after his interview with Hector Brunton, was almost a blank. Reaction wiped out every detail of that interview. He remembered only Brunton's words, "I'll take action whenIchoose."
Twice--the mad purpose of killing Brunton mastering him once more--he tried to turn back. But his feet carried him on, carried him away from Brunton, across the Walk to his own chambers. There, at least, was sanctuary--sanctuary from crime against the herd.
For the herd, even his dazed mind knew, would not countenance his killing Brunton. Brunton was within his herd-rights, within the law; while they, he and Aliette, having broken the herd-rights, were outlaws. Still weak from reaction, he visioned the consequences of that outlawry; visioned Brunton relentless, Aliette without a friend.
Till gradually, thinking of Aliette, his manhood came back to him. Let Brunton do his damnedest. Let them be outlaws. Even in their outlawry they would possess one another. Soon, Brunton would be brought to reason. Meanwhile, even if he were not soon brought to reason, they, the outlaws, would find people to stand by them; people like his mother. And at that, abruptly, Ronnie remembered the letter Aliette had written to her sister, the promise he had made to Jimmy.
Somehow it needed more courage than he had required in facing Aliette's husband to lift the telephone and make his appointment with Mollie!
Over a snack of luncheon--snatched late and hastily at a little uncomfortable coffee-shop near the Griffin--Ronnie's usual calm returned. He realized that he had made a fool of himself in going to see Brunton; that Jimmy, after all, had been right. Confound Brunton! Brunton's "dog-in-the-manger" attitude would not endure, could not endure. Even Carrington had given way in the long run. It was only a question of patience. Still, he would have to break things very gently to Aliette's sister.
Betty Masterman was out; and Mollie received her sister's lover alone in the little red-papered sitting-room which seemed so cozy to the Philistine mind of James Wilberforce.
"It's nice of you to call," she said perfunctorily. The voice might have been that of Aliette, of the socially poised Aliette as Ronnie first remembered her: but the girl's violet eyes were stern with suspicion; her red lips showed unsmiling, uncompromising.
"Won't you sit down?" she went on.
"Thanks. I sha'n't keep you very long." Always impossibly shy with women, the man did not know how to begin.
"You've got some message for me," the girl prompted "Some message from----"
"From your sister."
She seated herself, avoiding his eyes.
"Your sister and I," he began bruskly----
And in those four words--even without the halting explanation which followed--it seemed to Mollie Fullerford that she knew the whole story. But she was not going to help him out. Why should she? The story--carefully though he told it--revolted her. She felt hot; hot and dirty and ashamed. Hurt, too, as though the healed scars of her bodily wounds were opening afresh. All the suspicions of the past weeks, all her still-smoldering resentment that Aliette should have let her return unwarned to Hector's house, all her balked love for James Wilberforce, harshened Mollie's judgment. She saw Cavendish no longer a "sober-sides" but a hypocrite; and so seeing, hated him for his imagined hypocrisy.
"You see," he concluded, "it wasn't Aliette's fault. I mean the running away in a hurry. You mustn't condemn her. I was to blame for that. I was to blame, from beginning to end."
"Of course," said that Mollie who had once thought "most women rotters." "It's always the man who's to blame."
Nevertheless her judgment softened. "After all," she thought, "he isn't beating about the bush. He's being perfectly straight with me." And she discovered to her great surprise that it was not their having run away together which had been hurting her, but their omission to take her into their confidence.
Ronnie, trying to guess the verdict behind those averted eyes, drew Aliette's letter from his pocket; and handed it over without another word. Watching her open the envelope, watching her as she read, he saw her fingers tremble, her violet eyes suffuse.
"Andhaveyou seen Hector?" she asked at last.
"Yes. I saw him this morning."
"What did he say?"
Ronnie hesitated to tell the brutal truth; and the girl repeated her question, adding:
"Of course he's going to divorce her."
"I'm afraid, Miss Fullerford, that it's not going to be quite so easy as that."
"You don't mean to say that he isn't going to----?"
"Hesayshe hasn't made up his mind----"
"But"--the girl was stammering now--"that's absolutely caddish. Hector's a gentleman. Alie's been perfectly straight with him. Besides, even if he had been badly treated, he couldn't, couldn't possibly----"
And suddenly the full possibilities of Hector's persisting in a refusal to take action grew visible to the girl's mind. She braced herself to meet those possibilities; the personal consequences of them. She forced herself to ask:
"Have you seen Mr. Wilberforce?"
"Yes. Last night."
"Did you ask his advice?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"To do nothing. To wait."
At that, thought of her own love affair obsessed the girl's mind. She visualized James, there, in the very chair which Cavendish occupied. Remembering a thousand unspoken hesitancies of James, she saw only too clearly the reason of those hesitancies.
"How long has Mr. Wilberforce known about--about you and my sister?"
"Some weeks, I believe."
"You're sure?" The wounds hurt again, hurt desperately. James ought to have told her. "He never said a word--to me." She could have borne it better from James than from Cavendish.
"Of course he couldn't tell you anything about it, Miss Fullerford. It was a secret, a professional secret. My mother told him----"
"Your mother?"
"Yes, my mother. She's with Aliette now." His voice softened. "She's on our side. You'll be on our side, too? Won't you? You won't let this--this contretemps come between you and your sister? I'm not asking anything for myself--but it's pretty rough luck on Alie."
Mollie's decision crystallized. "I can't go back on Alie," she thought. "Whatever happens I mustn't go back on Alie." She remembered their conversation at Moor Park; remembered herself saying, "I don't believe divorce is wrong."
"Yes," she said, and held out her hand. "I shall stand by Alie whatever happens. Will you tell her that? And say I'll write in a day or two. I don't feel like--like writing to her at the moment."
Ronnie clasped her hand, and rose to go. He would have liked to thank her; he would have liked to say something more about Jimmy. But instinct restrained him. Perhaps, after all, she didn't care for Jimmy; perhaps the pallor of her cheeks, the drooped corners of her full red mouth were all for Alie.
And next day Ronald Cavendish went back to Chilworth Cove. All the long train journey he was aware, growingly aware, of Aliette. Brunton and the herd, Wilberforce and Mollie receded into the background of his thoughts. He said to himself:
"Let Brunton do his worst. Aliette and I have our love, each other."
Love, all said and done, was the only issue. As for Brunton, they would face him together, face him with courage high and hearts unflinching. Courage! Courage and love! Weaponed with those two defenses, he and his mate, his mother at their side, could battle down the onslaught of any disaster.
On a gray afternoon of October, Julia Cavendish sat alone in her drawing-room at Bruton Street.
She was often alone now. That curious "London" which an eclectic woman of means can gather about herself by the time she reaches sixty had begun to desert. Brunton had done nothing; but already scandal, "the scandal of Julia Cavendish's son and Hector Brunton's wife," was spreading: and although people were "very sorry for Mrs. Cavendish," still, "one had to be careful where one went," "one couldn't exactly countenance that sort of thing." So the clergymen and the politicians, the schoolmasters with their wives and the young soldiers with their fiancées came but sparingly, the embassy folk not at all. Only the "Ritz crowd," who thought the whole affair rather amusing; real Society, which could afford to ignore what it did not actually know; and, of course, the literary folk still visited.
Julia Cavendish treated the disaffections of her circle--scanty as yet, for the holidays scattered the scandalmongers--with contempt. In the months since her visit to Chilworth, much of her outlook on life had altered. The Victorian and the traditionalist in her were dead, the formally religious woman convert to a kindlier creed. Even literature slumbered. Literature, the sort of literature she had hitherto written, the stereotyped social romances of her earlier books, seemed so puny in comparison with the great tragedy of her son!
Seated there in the old familiar drawing-room, her embroidery-frame at her elbow, a clean fire at her feet, the light from the standard-lamp glowing on her worn features, Julia tried, as she was always trying now, to find some happy ending to the tragedy--peace for her son, reward for Aliette's courage.
For Aliettehadbeen courageous--divinely courageous as it appeared to Julia--that afternoon at Chilworth Cove when Ronnie broke his bad news. Her own heart had failed a little; but not Aliette's. Aliette said--Julia could still remember the look in her eyes when she spoke: "You're not to worry for my sake, either of you. I shall be perfectly happy so long as you and Ronnie don't fret. If only Ronnie's career doesn't suffer----"
She, Ronnie's mother, had wanted to fight; had wanted the lovers to return to Bruton Street with her, to defy Brunton openly. After that one little failure of courage, her whole temperament cried out for combat. Fighting, she felt, was now the only course. But Aliette had counseled delay. Aliette had persuaded her to leave them at Chilworth, to go back alone to Bruton Street. And at Bruton Street she had stayed all summer.
It had been foolish to stay all summer at Bruton Street; she perceived that now. She ought to have taken her usual holiday. She ought to have listened to the advice of her "medicine-man," who, still maintaining the need for rest, was vague, unsatisfactory, disturbing.
The parlormaid, entering to make up the fire, startled her mistress.
"I wish you'd come in more quietly, Kate," said Julia irritably.
"I'm sorry, madam. Shall I bring your tea?"
"No, not yet."
Julia resumed her reverie. Was there no way by which the man whose obstinacy stood between her son and his happiness might be brought to bay? Apparently none. Sir Peter Wilberforce could only suggest that "the lady might pledge her husband's credit to such an extent that he had to take action"--and that Aliette refused to do.
Dot Fancourt, whom she had also consulted, finding him incredibly stupid, incredibly weak, was all for "letting sleeping dogs lie."Heseemed to have no spirit; and she would have been grateful to him for spirit. She felt old; terribly old and weak; prescient, every now and then, of death.
This occasional prescience frightened her. The formal religion to which she had so long clung provided only a personal and a selfish consolation for death. She wanted an impersonal, an unselfish consolation; realizing that she would never be happy to leave this world unless she could leave Ronnie happy in it. Materially, of course, she had already provided for him: all her fortune would be his. But that did not suffice. Before death claimed her she must find some sword to sever his Gordian knot.
So Julia, alone in her quiet house; Julia, the literature all gone out of her, her mind busied with the actual happenings of life; while Brunton, lost in the holiday mists of the long vacation, gave never a sign; and rumor, spider-like, wove its intangible filaments to close and closer mesh.
That very afternoon--October 11 it was, the day before the autumn session of the law courts began--Aliette and her lover walked in Kensington Gardens. Even as Julia's, much of their attitude toward life had altered in the past months. The first grandly onrushing wave of the grand passion, the wave which swept them both from safe moorings into outlawry, had spent itself. They were still lovers; but now, with love, comradeship mingled. A comradeship of mutual suffering--knit closer as the days went by.
For, in love's despite, since training and inherited traditions alike unfitted them for the rôle they played, both suffered.
To Aliette, lonely no longer, Ronnie's comradeship compensated for so much that, as yet, the social disadvantages of their position hardly mattered. Only every now and then, in lonely-waking night-hours when full perception of the thing she had done shimmered black for a moment through the rosy veils of affection, did her heart grow faint at the thought of perpetual ostracism from her kind. At other times, her sufferings, her self-torturings were all for Ronnie.
Ronnie, she knew, chafed at his defeat. Ronnie had grown to hate Brunton. Ronnie--for her sake--wanted social position, success. Ronnie loathed the illegal fact that they had had to register as "Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish and maid" at the quiet Kensington hotel, whither Moses Moffatt's shibboleth of "bachelor chambers" drove them on their return from Chilworth.
But Ronnie had other frets--money-frets--on that October afternoon when they strolled under the browning trees.
They strolled lover-like, arm in arm; and Ponto the Dane, incongruous appanage of their elopement, followed leisurely. Aliette was all in furs, soft furs that cloaked her from the cream of her chin to the slimness of her ankles. Above the furs her face showed happy, glowing with a new youth, a new softness.
"Man," she said suddenly, "do you realize that we are two thoroughly unpractical people?"
"Are we?" He pressed her arm. "Does it matter very much?"
"Of course it matters." She paused, and went on shyly: "Don't you understand that I've been living with you for three months, and that so far I haven't contributed a single penny to the--to the establishment?"
"How absurd you are!" He tried to brush the matter aside; but that she refused to allow.
"I ought to contribute something, you know. I'm not quite penniless."
"You're not going to pay my hotel bill," he parried: a little stubbornly, she thought.
"Why not? What's mine is yours."
They walked on in silence for a minute or two. Then Ronnie said:
"I'm afraid I can't quite see things that way, Alie. I suppose I'm a bit old-fashioned in my ideas. But it does seem to me that the man's responsible----" He bit off the sentence.
"I hate you to talk like that." There was a little of the old temper in Aliette's voice. "Wemustbe sensible about money."
"Oh, don't let's bother this afternoon," he coaxed.
"But wemustbother. Ronnie, be frank with me. Whatarewe living on?"
"Oh, all sorts of things. The Jermyn Street rent; my earnings, such as they are; a bit of money I'd got saved up."
"And," she added, "the allowance your mother makes you. I wonder if we ought to take that."
"I don't see why we shouldn't. She always has made me an allowance. But of course I shouldn't like to ask her for more."
"Naturally." Aliette's brow creased. "Let's think. I've got about three hundred and fifty a year of my own. Your allowance is four. That makes seven hundred and fifty. How much is that a week?"
"Fifteen pounds," laughed Ronnie, remembering a phrase of his mother's, "No woman's financial mind covers more than seven days."
"And our hotel bill last week was twenty."
At that, the man began to feel thoroughly uncomfortable. His mind shied away from the topic. But the woman pursued it resolutely.
"We'll have to find a cheaper hotel."
"It seems rotten luck on you; the present one is uncomfortable enough. Besides," he brightened visibly, "there ought to be briefs coming in now."
"Man, you're a great optimist." There was an undercurrent of criticism in Aliette's voice, of a criticism which Ronnie felt he could not fairly resent; because already he had begun to divine the professional consequences of Brunton's enmity. Only the day before, James Wilberforce had dropped a hint--the barest hint, but sufficient to indicate which way the financial wind might blow.
"I suppose I am rather an optimist," he admitted; and for the moment they dropped the subject, reverting, as they nearly always did in their walks together, to the main problem.
"H. B. ought to be back any day now," said Ronnie, "and when he does come back, he'll simplyhaveto file his petition."
But to-day she would have none of the problem.
"Don't let us discuss that. After all, nothing that H. does or doesn't do can really hurt us." She looked up into his eyes. "We've got each other."
"I don't mind for myself, Alie. It's you I'm thinking of. Of course we won't talk about him if you don't want to."
By now they were through Kensington Gardens, and passing the herbaceous border at Victoria Gate. They stopped to inspect the flowers. Two gardeners were at work, clearing away the wreckage of summer. The climbing roses and the clematis had withered, but dahlias still flaunted scarlet and crimson against the high dark of the shrubbery.
They walked on, silent, the dog pottering at heel; and inclined half-right across Hyde Park.
"Do you remember----" began Aliette.
"What, dear?" he prompted.
"Oh, nothing. Only I was just thinking. Mollie and I came this way, that morning we met at church parade. It seems such a long time ago."
"Am I as dull as all that?" he chaffed her. "Are you getting bored with me?"
"Bored with you!" Her voice thrilled. "Oh, man, man, you don't understand a bit. You're everything in the world to me. The only thing that ever makes me really frightened is the thought of forfeiting your love. That's because I'm happy--happy. You don't know, no man ever does know, what happiness means to a woman; how utterly miserable shecanbe. I was miserable with H.--miserable. Luxuries don't help--when one's unhappy. When I look back on my life before I met you, I wonder I didn't"--she hesitated--"I didn't do something desperate. I suppose I didn't know how miserable I really was. I don't suppose any woman in my position ever does know, till some man teaches her----"
"And now?" he broke in.
"Now, I'm absolutely happy. Honestly, I don't care a bit about the legal position--as you call it. What does it matter whether we're legally married or not? What does it matter whether people want to know us or whether they don't? I don't care," she ended almost defiantly; "I don't care a bit so long as I've got you; so long as we're right with our own consciences."
And really, when Aliette looks back on those unsettled days, it astonishes her how little she did care for the rest of the world. Even her parents' attitude seemed of no importance.
For outwardly the Fullerfords had taken up a very determined attitude.
At Clyst Fullerford Aliette's name was scarcely mentioned. The people who had known Aliette since cradle-days, the pleasant Devonshire people busied with their pleasant trivial country round, still called neighborly as of yore; but they no longer inquired of Andrew Fullerford, nor of Andrew's wife, after the health of Mrs. Brunton. Somehow rumor, unconfirmed yet accurate in the main, had penetrated to every corner of the county; and though the pleasant people pretended to ignore rumor, at least until such time as rumor's story should be substantiated by the London papers, still they thought it "safer" not to mention Aliette when they visited the long, low house of the mullioned windows.
Ever since the death of the Fullerford boys in France, the house with the mullioned windows had been sad. But now it seemed more than sad--a home of utter tragedy, despite its tended gardens and its deft servants. The stags' heads and the foxes' masks on its walls only enhanced its gloom. Its empty stables typified empty hearts; hearts of a man and a woman whose sons might not inherit.
Mollie, in that long August and longer September, found the place unbearable. Yet she was afraid to leave it; afraid to leave Andrew and Marie alone. Her father aged hourly; his gray-lashed mouth used to quiver with pain whenever he looked across the dinner-table at his wife. To the girl, who did not understand that Aliette's abandonment of her husband had evoked between these two the old specter of religious differences, both parents appeared incredibly unforgiving, incredibly out of their century.
Yet, had it not been for that specter, it is more than possible that the puisne judge would have relented toward his "erring daughter." Under certain circumstances he might even have helped her to secure her freedom. For although Aliette had outraged both his legal sense and his sense of propriety; although she had admittedly broken the oath sworn at a Protestant altar; yet the lapse of the years had so softened Andrew's Protestantism, left it so broadly tolerant, so much more of an ideal than a religion, that he considered, as many latter-day Protestants do consider, almost every tenet of his church open to the argument of the individual case.
The judge, moreover, was instinctively aware that Aliette's relations to Hector might furnish exactly that individual case necessary for her justification. But in view of his wife's obvious misery, Andrew felt himself incapable of forgiveness.
To Marie Fullerford--and this her husband realized--from that very first moment when she opened Aliette's letter of confession, it had seemed as though the Roman Catholic Church, the church from whose rigid discipline she had revolted to marry Andrew, were taking its revenge for the long-ago apostasy.
After one heartbroken conversation with her husband, she withdrew into contemplation. Hour after hour she used to sit in her own little room, remembering and regretting the faith of her childhood. Marie could no more go back to that faith! The Church, the surely-disciplined authoritative Church of Rome, would have none of her. And she would have given so much in her present distress for the comfort of Rome!
The spiritual uncertainty of Protestantism frightened her with its easy-going tolerance. She saw the doctrine of the English Church as a broad-pathed quagmire, through which one trod with individual and uncertain steps toward an individual and uncertain heaven; while Roman Catholicism, knowing neither tolerance nor uncertainty, indicated the only road, the safe and the narrow road to constitutional bliss.
Constantly Marie Fullerford tried to recall her old courage, the individual fortitude which had broken her loose from Roman Catholicism. But the old fortitude would not return. She yearned in her weakness for the guidance of the priest, for the infallible laws, for the infallible dogmas of an infallible hierarchy.
Her spiritual knees ached, and the hard hassock of Protestantism could not rest them. Stumbling, she desired to cast the heavy pack of her doubts at the feet of a father-confessor--of a father-confessor who would give one orders, definite commands: "Let your daughter sin no more. Let her return to her husband, expiate her offenses." No doubting there! No leaving of the individual case to individual judgment!
And yet--and yet Aliette's mother could not bring herself to answer Aliette's confession in the spirit of Rome. She herself had been so long free, so long undisciplined, that she wanted, desperately, to find the solution of this problem by the aid of that very love in which she had given herself to Andrew.
At last, in her uncertainty, she consulted with her eldest daughter.
Eva, without the slightest hesitation, forbade any answer at all. The colonel's lady, always adverse to her juniors, sided from the first definitely with Hector. Aliette, opined Eva, had brought disgrace upon the entire family. No fact that Mollie, no argument that her husband could adduce in the culprit's favor, availed to bend Mrs. Harold Martin's domestic rigidity; a rigidity socketed home on the two unshifting rocks of personal dislike and personal rectitude.
Meanwhile Moor Park, though spiritually less troubled than Clyst Fullerford, failed egregiously in presenting a united front to its domestic troubles. Hector, returning thither from a lonely holiday in Scotland, found Rear-Admiral Billy in quarter-deck mood, and the Rev. Adrian--invited for obvious reasons to dine without his Margery--uncomfortably silent through an interminable meal.
Purposely the admiral had staved off discussion of the matter at heart until the mastodontic dining-table should be cleared of its food. Now--the port decanter being in its third circulation--he drew back his chair from the board, screwed a cigar firmly between his bearded lips, and began:
"Well, Hector, you've had a couple of months to make up your mind. What are you going to do about Alie?"
The K.C. looked straight into his father's unjovial eyes and retorted:
"As I told you before I left, sir"--"sir" between the admiral and his sons always betokened trouble,--"I'm not going to do anything."
"Dog-in-the-manger, eh?" rumbled the old man to his beard.
"You can take it that way if you like, sir."
"Pretty rough on your wife, ain't it? Adrian thinks----"
"Adrian is not his brother's keeper."
There intervened a considerable silence, during which the parson scrutinized the lawyer. "Hector's nature," pondered the Rev. Adrian, "has not altered much since he was a boy. He's a reticent fellow, is Hector. Sullen, too. Resents any one interfering in his affairs--even if it's for his own good."
But the parson could see that, in outward appearance, Hectorhadaltered. He looked less corpulent, less certain of himself, more inclined to bluster. His sandy hair had thinned nearly to baldness.
"I haven't the slightest wish to interfere"--Adrian, except in his episcopalian wife's presence, was a very human being,--"but really it does seem to me that your duty is either to use every means in your power to get your wife back, or else to set her free. You can't play the matrimonial Micawber."
"I tell you," the K.C. fidgeted in his chair, "I don't want your advice. This is my own affair and nobody else's."
"That be sugared for a tale." The admiral unscrewed his cigar from his mouth, and waved it fiercely before his eldest son's eyes. "That be sugared for a tale, Hector. A man's marriage concerns his whole family. I was talking to Simeon only the other day, and he said it was perfectly impossible for any one in your position----"
"I've heard that argument before," said Aliette's legal owner, "and I can't say that it appeals to me. I fail to see why Uncle Simeon or his wife should presume to pass judgment on what I choose or don't choose to do." He made a movement to break off the discussion, refrained, and continued. "Since you have reopened the subject, sir, I think it would be as well if I explainedmyviews once and for all. My views are that I fail to see any reason why I should take my wife back, or any obligation to set her free to marry her lover. What he and she did, they did with their eyes open. Let them abide by the consequences."
"But, blast it all!" broke in the admiral, "a fellow must behave like a gentleman."
"I refuse to admit that a man must behave like a gentleman to a wife who forgets to behave herself like a lady." The lawyer reached for the cigar-box, and kindled a weed.
"Come, come, Hector." The parson, who had seen life, put his professional prejudices on one side. "It really isn't as bad as that. Mind you, I'm not making any excuses for Aliette. But, even admitting that she's behaved badly to you, does that furnish you with any justification for behaving badly to her?"
"And mind you, my boy," the father elaborated his younger son's argument, "people aren't like they used to be about this sort of thing. There's deuced little prejudice against divorce these days. We must go with the times. We must go with the times. God knows I'm an intolerant old devil; but, thank God, I can still take a broad-minded view where the sex is concerned."
"It's easy enough for you to be broad-minded, sir," interpolated the K.C.; "she's notyourwife."
"Fond of her still, eh?" rambled the old man shrewdly. Hector Brunton kept silence, but his eyes showed that the shot had gone home.
"You've asked her to return to you, I suppose?" said the Rev. Adrian, pouncing on this new hare like a religious beagle.
"Certainly not." The coincidence of the two ideas exasperated Hector. For two months he had been hardening himself to meet this very ordeal; and already, curse it! he felt himself growing soft. Dimly the voice of conscience told him that his father and brother were in the right. Socially he recognized that he was taking up an impossible position. Nevertheless, as an individual, he intended sticking to that position. All the obstinacy, all the weakness in him combined to reject the obvious solution. Why the devilshouldhe divorce Aliette?Hestill wanted Aliette--wanted her physically--craved for her with a desire so overpowering that, at times, it drove him almost mad.
"Quite apart from your wife's reputation, you know," the admiral returned to his oratorial quarter-deck, "you've got to consider your own. People don't look too kindly on a man who allows his missus to live openly with some one else. And then, both you and he being in the same profession! Take it from me, my boy, it won't do you any good."
"It won't dohimany good," said Hector viciously. "If I've any influence with the benchers, I'll get the fellow disbarred before the year's out; and if I can't get him disbarred at least I'll take"--he snarled--"other steps."
At the snarl, Adrian lost his temper.
"I've been trying to talk to you like a brother, Hector," he rapped out, "not like a parson. If you came to me as a parson, I should be bound to tell you that your attitude isn't Christian at all. It's--damn it!--it's Hebraic. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."
The elder brother turned on his junior.
"Christianity," he sneered. "Is that your Christianity? Free love!"
The junior fidgeted with his white collar.
"We'll leave my Christianity out of the discussion, if you please."
The admiral, also a little hot under the shirt, intervened again.
"Christianity or no Christianity, I maintain that you're putting yourself in the wrong. Alie's a decent enough little woman. She's always played the game with you. Even when she ran away with this fellow, she told you about it before she went. Shedidtell you, didn't she?"
"Yes."
"What didyousay?"
"I told her she could go if she wanted to."
"You didn't try to restrain her?"
"No. I didn't."
"Why not? If you felt so strongly about her going off as you pretend to now, why didn't you lock her up in her bedroom? Why didn't you go and see this man Cavendish--knock his head off?"
Infuriated, Hector rose to his feet.
"I have no wish to be disrespectful, sir," he said to his father, "but my decision is final. I refuse to discuss this matter a minute longer." And to his brother, "As for you, Adrian, I'll thank you not to interfere." Then he moved from the table, swung open the door, and clumped heavily upstairs to his bedroom.
Left alone, the rear-admiral turned to his younger son.
"How's the new baby, Adrian?"
"Getting on splendidly, father."
"Good." The bearded lips chewed at their cigar for a full minute. "A pity Hector's wife didn't have any kids."
"A great pity, father."