Julia Cavendish was always at home on Saturday afternoons. You used to meet nearly all social sorts and conditions of men and women in that exquisitely tended Bruton Street house: literary folk, financial folk, embassy folk, Anglican priests, politicians, schoolmasters with their wives, young soldiers with their fiancées, old soldiers with their grievances, the "Ritz crowd" (which thinks itself Society), and real Society (which does not need to think about itself at all), intellectual aristocrats and democratic intellectuals--the whole curious "London" which an eclectic woman of means can, if she be so minded, gather about herself by the time she reaches sixty.
But the house itself betrayed, to a trained observer, the fact that Ronnie's mother really preferred things to people. Not necessarily expensive things--only occasionally could she afford a real "piece": but pleasant things; beautiful things that became, as it were, part of one's life; things one could feel about the house as though they were people, but people without too many claims on one.
Despite which, No. 67a was neither over-large nor over-crowded with possessions. Old prints had space on its panels, old furniture on its floors. Jade idols, Toby mugs, Dresden, Chelsea, and Japanese figures did not jostle one another on its mantelpieces or in its cabinets. Spanish velvets and Venetian brocades forbore to pose as "specimens," but were curtains, cushions, or chair-covers as use demanded. Georgian silver employed itself in a hospitable capacity; Satsuma vases held flowers; Bokhara rugs covered the parquet, not the walls.
"I'm a practical old woman," said Julia; and she looked it now, as she lay reading on the sofa in the square bow-windowed drawing-room.
A rather stern face was Julia Cavendish's: the Wixton chin dimpled but very determined; the eyes, under their tortoise-shell spectacles, bluer, harder than the eyes of her son. The wrinkles in the scarcely powdered cheeks and at the high temples, as well as the graying of the light brown hair, not all her own, betrayed her age. But the hands which held the novel still appeared the hands of a young woman; nor had the years robbed her of her figure. Her dress--a black tea-gown, real lace at bosom and wrist--was so unfashionable as to be almost smart. Black silk stockings and black satin shoes--she had elegant feet--complete the picture.
A bell rang below. Julia laid her novel on a little lacquered stand by the sofa; took off her spectacles; and sat up to the maid's announcement of "Mr. Fancourt."
Dot Fancourt, a sentimental, unhappy old man with over-red cheeks, sunken eyes and beetling gray brows, his weak mouth hidden by a walrus mustache, extended both dry hands in effusive salutation.
"My dear, how are you?"
"In the best of health, as usual." Julia Cavendish released her fingers from the dry hands. "Tell me what Fleet Street thinks about the Ellerson case."
The editor of "The Contemplatory Magazine" began to gossip; and she listened to him. The pair had been friends for thirty years, the man's weakness of character finding comfort in the woman's strength. "Poor Dot!" thought Julia. His last illness, and the inevitable last sentimental complication, had aged him. Probably he would go next of the Victorians. That would leave only Harrison, Gosse, Hardy, and . . .
"Mr. Paul Flower, madam," announced the maid.
There entered a pale, hairless sexagenarian who resembled nothing so much as a very large white slug. He greeted them both sluggishly; and began to discuss, with an almost Biblical frankness, the psychology of Lady Hermione Ellerson--whom he had never met.
"A passionate limpet," he pronounced her, pulverizing that imaginary mollusc between thumb and forefinger. "The clinging type. I remember when I was a young man in Paris----"
Paul Flower's conversation, unfortunately, will no more bear the ordeal of cold print than Rear-Admiral Billy's. He continued holding forth on the subject of his Parisian youth till interrupted by tea, and Lucien Olphert--a bald-headed, under-sized creature whose real life was as mild as his historical novels were heroic. Various other novelists--Jack Coole, Robert Backwell, and John Binney with Mrs. Binney--dropped in. Literary "shop," inanest of all "shops" to an outsider, was in full blast when the maid ushered in Lady Simeon Brunton.
The ex-ambassadress swept across Julia's drawing-room like a well-bred monsoon. Her Paquin confection--frailest gossamer black with gold underskirt--rustled condescension. The ospreys in her Lewis hat waved approving patronage to art and letters.
"You see that I took you at your word, Mrs. Cavendish."
The hostess, who had been introduced to Lady Simeon (and promptly forgotten her) at a Foreign Office reception some weeks previously, said the appropriate word and made the appropriate presentations.
"But this isn't a mere social call." explained the new-comer. "This is a call with a purpose."
She accepted some tea; and subsided on to the sofa. Paul Flower judged her a Philistine (i.e., a woman who did not regard Paul Flower as the last living exponent of English literature), but decided her attractive. He approved her age, about forty-five; her eyes, which were darkly vivacious; her figure, which was inclined to the abundant; her hair and complexion, which were bothsoigné, the one matching her eyes and the other her pearls.
Jack Coole, the two Binneys, and Robert Backwell, his prominent teeth parted in a valedictory grin, departed. Flower, Fancourt, and Olphert continued to talk shop.
"A call with a purpose sounds very serious," prompted Julia.
Sir Simeon's wife smiled diplomatically. "The fact is, dear Mrs. Cavendish, that I want you to dine with us. Next Thursday. You will, won't you? Although it is such a short invitation. We shall be quite a small party--not more than twenty at the outside. And will you bring your son?"
"My son----" Julia, whose inclination was to decline--for some time now, late nights had wearied her--became visibly more gracious.
"Yes. My cousin Hermione--poor dear, what a time she's been going through--and all this publicity--so distressing for everybody--says he was simply charming to her during the case. So wise! So calm! So helpful! You must be very proud of your son, Mrs. Cavendish."
Not for nothing had the heiress of The Raneegunge Jute and Cotton Mills married an ambassador!
"Ronnie's coming to dinner this evening," said Ronnie's mother. "If he's free on Thursday we shall both be delighted. May I telephone you?"
Ronnie, who had been watching the polo at Ranelagh, arrived ten minutes late for dinner.
He came unannounced into the drawing-room; kissed his mother; complimented her on her clothes (she had changed into a dinner-gown in his honor); and inquired about the afternoon.
"Dullish," pronounced Julia--and broached the Brunton invitation.
"The Bruntons!" He seemed a little taken aback at the name. "I don't think I care to go."
"Nonsense. Of course you must go. A barrister's career is mainly social."
She prolonged the argument over dinner; she mentioned the Brunton "influence," the Ellerson case: till eventually--somewhat against his better judgment--she persuaded him to go.
A very different Julia this from the hostess of the afternoon! Always a little constrained, a little too dignified in company; with her son, she hid affection under a mask of brusquerie almost dictatorial. In boyhood Ronnie had been frightened by the mask; even at thirty-six he was only just beginning to realize the affection it concealed.
Only since his return from the war had full knowledge of this affection come to him. He saw her now--sipping her coffee in the print-hung, walnut-furnished dining-room--as a lonely old woman dependent on his love. And the sight hurt, because his heart was already aware of the possibility that one day there might be another woman, a younger woman, in his life.
"I wish you'd let me make you a decent allowance," she said abruptly. "You ought to be about everywhere. You ought to stand for Parliament. Even if you don't get in, it's an advertisement."
"I thought you hated publicity, mater."
"So I do--for myself." She cogitated. "I could manage another eight hundred a year."
"And deprive yourself of----"
"Of nothing. I don't want any money. I'm too old to know how to spend it. You'll have it all when I'm dead," she added.
"Mater!"--he was the softer in many ways--"I wish you wouldn't talk like that."
"Why not? Death's a fact. I've no patience with people who won't face facts. Life isn't a kinema show."
Coffee finished, they removed themselves to Julia's work-room--a square box of an apartment, book-lined, an Empire desk in its exact center under the illuminated top-light. Julia sat down at the desk; opened a drawer; and took out her check-book.
"Eight hundred a year," she said, writing. "That's two hundred a quarter. I'd better cross the check."
"Don't be absurd, mater." Ronnie frowned.
"But I want you to have it."
"What for?"
"Oh, clothes. You ought to dress better. Club subscriptions. Entertaining. Cigars. I don't know what men spend their money on. Women, mostly, I suppose."
Blotting the check, she would have given anything in the world to say: "Ronnie, darling, do take it. I can't slobber like other women. But I love you--you're everything I have in the world. Please, please Ronnie, don't refuse this. It's not money--it's just a token--a token of my love for you."
Actually, she said: "If your father hadn't been such a fool about money matters, he'd have leftyouhis estate. He knew that I could always make all I wanted."
Ronnie frowned again. "You know perfectly well that I won't take it."
"Not even to oblige me? I--I want you to take it. It may cheer you up. You've been looking depressed lately."
"Have I?"
They had played this comedy of the allowance more than once since his father's death; but never before had he seen her so insistent.
"Yes." She stretched out the check to him, knowing her offer already rebuffed. In a way, she was proud of his independence. All the same, it hurt. One ought to be able to do more for one's child.
"I'm not depressed. And I'm not hard up. Really."
He smiled at her across the desk--one of those rare smiles which reminded her of the boy she had tried to tip at Winchester. She seemed to hear his boyish voice, "The pater gave me a fiver when he was down last. I don't need any more. Honestly, mater."
"You're quite sure?"
"Quite." He watched her tear up the check; noticed a sheaf of proofs on her desk; and questioned her about them. "Another short story!"
"No. It's an article on 'Easy Divorce' for next month's 'Contemplatory.' These are the duplicate proofs."
"You're opposing it?"
"Of course."
"On moral grounds?"
"Not entirely. Listen!" She put on her spectacles, and read him the opening paragraphs. "The woman of to-day is asking that divorce and remarriage should be made easier. Why? Because the woman of to-day refuses to face the simple fact that primarily she is her husband's helpmate. Personally I am a Churchwoman; and therefore find it impossible to believe the remarriage of divorced people justified. I am willing to admit that, in a limited number of cases, divorce itself may be expedient. But I feel that to make divorce easier would be a direct encouragement of immorality. We have to face facts. Woman is not, never has been, and never will be capable of resisting the sentimental impulse."
"You're a real Puritan at heart, aren't you, mater?" he interrupted.
She put down the proofs, vaguely distressed that he should prefer her conversation to her written word. For work, to Julia Cavendish, counted more than anything in life--except this lean, clean, sober-minded son of hers.
"It isn't a very good article, I'm afraid. Dot was in too much of a hurry for it. I never could write quickly."
These last months she had discovered herself writing even less quickly than usual. Once or twice, even, she had been forced to break off in the middle of the morning by a strange fatigue--a pain in her back. She had meant to consult a doctor; meant to ask Ronnie's advice. But she hated fussing about herself, hated fussing Ronnie. And besides, Ronniewasdepressed--in some trouble or other. She could feel that trouble instinctively.
"You're sure nothing's worrying you?" she asked him as they said good night.
"Quite sure. Sleep well, mater."
He kissed her, and went.
"No," he thought, striding home to the rooms in Jermyn Street which she had insisted on furnishing for him. "No! Nothing's wording me. In point of sheer fact, I've never been so bucked in my life."
And he was "bucked," ludicrously so; "bucked" because he had yielded to his mother's persuasions; ludicrously so because, just for the moment, he had altogether forgotten Hector Brunton's existence.
Only when he awoke next morning did Ronald Cavendish remember that Aliette was a married woman--and the possibility that, after all, she might not be one of the guests at her uncle-in-law's dinner-party.
The ambassadorial branch of the Brunton family occupies a palace of a house in that palatial avenue, Kensington Palace Gardens.
Driving thither with his mother in the electric brougham with which she compromised between the horseflesh of the Victorian past and the petrol of the democratic present, Ronnie knew himself feverishly excited. All the suppressed emotions of three months leaped to new anticipation as they rolled away from Bruton Street, through Berkeley Square into the park.
It was still daylight. Happy lower-middle-class folk crowded the seats under the trees, the grass beyond. Here and there, lovers, splendidly indifferent to the public eye, embraced one another with the frankness of post-wartime. Subconsciously, the sight of these couples affected the serious young man in the silk hat and stiff shirt of formal party-going. Almost he envied them.
"The season has been the fiasco one expected," commented his mother. "Decent people have no money to spend--the other sort don't know how to spend it. I wish you'd order yourself a new dress-suit, Ronnie. And those waistcoat buttons are very old-fashioned. I must get you some new ones."
"Rather a contradictory sentence," he commented.
"Nothing of the kind. It's a man's duty to be well-groomed." She sighed--it had been a tiring day, and she hated dinner-parties. "I often wish you'd stayed on in the army."
"Why?"
"I think you were happier; and the army, in peace-time, is so healthy."
"You do worry about me, don't you?"
"Of course. That's what mothers are for."
The remark, coming from her, sounded curiously pathetic. For the moment, Ronnie forgot his anticipations. He put a shy hand on his mother's arm.
"Cheer up, mater," he said, seeing her, once again, as a lonely old woman--the intellect, the public fame of her, merest surface-stuff.
By now, they were through Hyde Park, and into Kensington Gardens. She removed her arm; made her usual acrid comment on the Albert Memorial; and the pair of them subsided into contemplation.
Contemplating, Ronald Cavendish realized for the first time exactly how far he had already drifted toward violation of his mother's code. He imagined himself saying to Julia, "Mater, I'm in love with Aliette Brunton."
But he could not imagine Julia's reply. The old fear of her came back, chilling him.
And yet, code or no code, mother or no mother, he had to admit himself in love, passionately in love with Aliette Brunton. Even the possibility of meeting her thrilled his whole being. Looking back now, he saw that not for one hour since their ride together had she been entirely out of his thoughts.
Their electric circled out of the gardens, climbed Palace Green, and swung left between high lights, on to gravel, under an awning. A footman opened the brougham-door. Ronnie, jumping out, helped his mother to alight. "Thanks, dear. Tell him to be back by eleven," she said.
Obeying, Ronnie was conscious that he stood in the glare of impatient headlights. Behind and above the glare, through the plate-glass front of the approaching cabriolet, he saw two faces: one heavy-jowled above its starched collar, the other--Aliette's.
"That looked like young Cavendish. If it was, and you get an opportunity, don't forget about asking him to dine with us," said Hector Brunton.
Aliette did not answer; but her gloved hands, as she alighted from her husband's car, trembled ever so slightly. She had seenhim. He had seen her. And the wound, the wound in her heart, wasnotcured. She could feel it throbbing, throbbing with sheer joy. "I'm glad I wore this dress," she thought.
Her chinchilla cloak, ermine at neck and wrists, covered a gown of soft grays and softer mauves, silver-girdled. Pearls gleamed at her lustrous throat, in the tiny ears under her vivid hair. Crossing the black-and-white tessellated hall to the ambassadorial cloak-room, she looked a very picture of dignified composure.
But the composure was mainly superficial. Her heart throbbed and throbbed. She forgot Hector, remembered only Ronnie. This stately old lady, just being divested of her mandarin opera-cloak, must be his mother. She resembled him, about the chin, about the eyes.
"What a charming woman!" thought Julia Cavendish. "I wonder if she's Hector Brunton's wife. I wish I could find a wife like that for Ronnie."
"I'm afraid we're the last," smiled the elder woman, eying the formidable collection of furs.
"I'm afraid so too," smiled back the younger. She took off her own cloak; gave one swift glance at the mirror, and was ready.
"Practical, too. Makes no fuss about herself," thought Julia Cavendish, as they reëntered the hall together.
Aliette could not think. The meeting, unanticipated, had taken her off her guard. Delight, apprehension, sheer eagerness, and sheer diffidence made her utterly the girl. It seemed as though, at the instant, something tremendous must occur.
But nothing tremendous occurred! Or if it did, their social sense saw them through it. Ronnie was talking to Hector in the hall. He shook hands with Aliette. He introduced her to his mother. He introduced Hector to his mother. The four of them went up the wide stairs together. Aliette heard them announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Hector Brunton. Mrs. Julia Cavendish. Mr. Ronald Cavendish."
How silly she had been about him. How calm he was! How calm they both were! Naturally! He hardly knew her. They hardly knew one another.
Hector Brunton's wife realized suddenly that her left glove had split in the clenched palm, that she had forgotten to take off her gloves before entering the drawing-room.
"My dear child, how are you?En beauté, as always. A credit to the family." She found herself, among a mob of people, shaking hands with Simeon.
The craftswoman in Julia Cavendish, the literary memory and sense of "copy" which make her books such exact social pictures, functioned quite independently from the rest of her personality. No one, watching her as she talked international politics with her host, would have guessed that, behind the calm, dignified face, the novelist's brain was busy. Kodak-like, that brain registered its impressions, rolling them away for development at leisure.
First impression: an oblong room--paneled--Venetian bracket-lights--brocaded French windows either end--low scarlet flowers on a long gold-decked table, narrowing as you looked down it--many faces either side, two faces at each end--hum of subdued conversation--servants' white-gloved hands and dark-coated arms proffering bottles, plates, dishes.
The camera in the brain clicks, rolls away the picture.
Second impression: Sir Simeon, sixty-eight, a little man, white-haired, blue-eyed, mustache floppy, charming, not very efficient, presumably the weaker matrimonial vessel--his wife ought never to wear pink--Sir Simeon's three daughters, obviously by his first marriage, two with wedding-rings, thirty-eight, thirty-six, nonentities--their partners ditto--an ugly one, younger, rather interesting.
"My sympathies are entirely with the Jugo-Slavs, Sir Simeon. Italy is not entitled to a yard of territory more than we guaranteed her by the Treaty of London," says Julia Cavendish, society-woman.
The camera continues its work.
Third impression: the secretary of the Spanish embassy would look exactly like a bull-fighter if he wore the national costume instead of civilized evening-dress--General Fellowes has aged since the War Office inquiry--a fine type--the big woman he has taken in to dinner would look like a cantaloup melon if you cut her in two--the pretty girl flirting with the young soldier (Guards?) must be her daughter.
"Aren't you rather hard on our allies, Mrs. Cavendish?" chips in Hector Brunton.
"I have no patience with d'Annunzio."
"But at least you will admit that he is a patriot," protests Sir Simeon.
"No bombastic person is really patriotic. Patriotism is a dumb virtue."
"But is patriotism a virtue?" asks the K.C.
"Almost the greatest."
Julia's mental camera snaps again.
Impression of Hector Brunton: a would-be cave-man--not as strong as he imagines himself--putty in the hands of a sexful woman--rather a difficult problem for a fastidious wife--obstinate--capable of cruelty.
At which precise moment, the mother ousted the craftswoman from Julia's brain. She began to wonder if Ronnie were enjoying himself. If only he weren't so shy with women! Women made men's careers. He had taken down that charming Mrs. Brunton. She looked down the table and caught his eyes across the scarlet flowers. He smiled at her. He must be enjoying himself. She had done right, then, to make him accept the invitation.
"I gather you prefer patriotism to the League of Nations," remarked her host.
"Your League of Nations," answered Julia, "is merely the sentimental impulse translated into terms of international diplomacy. Every one wants it to work--every one realizes it unworkable."
Answering, she thought that she had rarely seen Ronnie look so happy.
But not even the mother in Julia Cavendish knew the cause of Ronnie's happiness; she was as blind to her son's infatuation as Hector Brunton to his wife's. She could not divine that the pair of them had passed beyond mere happiness into a little illusive world of their own making.
For the moment, Aliette and Ronnie dwelt in a rose-bubble of enchantment. A frail bubble! Yet it cut them off, as surely as though it had been opaque crystal, from their fellow-guests. Physical passion found no place in that rose-bubble. Their bodies, the bodies which made pretense of eating and drinking, which uttered the most absurdly conventional sentiments, dwelt outside of its magic; while within, their minds, their natures, their very souls, held secret commune--as two friends so set in friendship that words have become unnecessary. Yet actually, magic apart, they were merely a man and a woman, each lonely, each too healthy for that loneliness which is the prerogative of the sick and the abnormal.
They had been lonely; now they were no longer lonely. They had been obsessed with visions of each other; now they no longer saw visions. They saw each other; and their souls were satisfied.
But of all that their souls knew, their lips spoke no word.
"I've often thought about that run we had," said the man. "One doesn't get a gallop like that every day of one's life. Did you have many other good days?"
"I didn't go out again last season," said the woman.
"Really? How was that?"
"Oh, I went down to Devonshire with my sister."
"You didn't take Miracle?"
"No." It pleased her that he remembered Miracle's name. "By the way, I'm quite angry with you, Mr. Cavendish. Mr. Wilberforce told us on Sunday that you preferred golf to our society."
"Jimmy's a mischief-maker. Why isn't your sister here to-night, Mrs. Brunton?" Man-like, he wondered--now--why he had refused to call on her.
"Mollie's at a dance. I believe Mr. Wilberforce will be there too."
"Jimmy's a great dancer." Did she know, he speculated, about Jimmy and her sister? Probably. Women--according to Ronnie--always told one another that sort of thing.
"And you?" she asked.
"Oh, I'm like the Tenth. I don't dance."
Aliette dimpled to laughter at the old jest. It mattered so little what he said to her with his lips. His eyes gave her the answer to the one question; the only question she had ever asked herself in vain. His eyes said: "Yes. This is Love. This is the Real Thing." She wondered if his brain knew the message of his eyes. She marveled at herself for not having sooner known the message of her heart. "I'm in love with him," she thought. "I've been in love with him ever since that Sunday at Key Hatch." All the gray unease of the past months, of the past years, diffused to amber sunshine.
The Spanish secretary, sitting on her right, chimed in to their conversation. "You do not dance, Cavendish. That is strange. I thought all English people danced."
The rose-bubble of enchantment was broken. Talk grew general. Dinner drew to its end.
"You look a little tired, Mrs. Cavendish. Can't I get you some more coffee? A cigarette, perhaps?"
"Thank you so much. I think I would like a cigarette."
Aliette and Julia sat together in a palm-screened corner of the vast Louis Quinze drawing-room. The men were still downstairs. The younger woman rose; and fetched a silver cigarette-box, matches.
Julia lit her cigarette. She felt very old, very weary, quite unlike herself. The pain nagged at her back.
"I'm afraid I'm not a very gay companion for a beautiful young woman. You mustn't mind my paying you compliments." Aliette had raised a protesting hand at the word "beautiful." "When I was your age, compliments were in vogue. Nowadays they're out of fashion--like good manners."
"Surely good manners are never out of fashion," said Aliette. "Only--like fashions--they change."
Lady Simeon veered toward them, but diverted her course. They talked on, drawn to each other by a kindred obsession--Ronnie.
"I'd love to ask her what she thought of him," mused Julia Cavendish. "I simply daren't mention her son," mused Aliette Brunton.
Thus the man found them when he came upstairs. They made an exquisite picture, there, under the green--his mother, dignified, strong (not wishing to let him guess her weariness, she had pulled herself together at his approach), the halo of intellectual achievement setting her apart from every other woman in the room; and the vivid, exquisite, but equally dignified creature at his mother's side.
"You don't often smoke, mater." He felt consoled that these two should be together. For the last twenty minutes the sight of Hector Brunton--holding forth, loud-voiced, over a cigar--had made him feel a little guilty.
"Mrs. Brunton insisted. Come and sit down, Ronnie. Unless"--servants with card-tables made a belated appearance--"you want to play bridge."
"I'd just as soon talk."
They made place for him. He and his mother began to discuss their fellow-guests, critically, but without malice. Listening, Aliette felt like an interloper. Even if she had been unmarried, how could she interpose her love--for it was love, she knew that now, knew it irremediably--between these two? Her mind reacted from happiness to depression.
He said to her, "You're looking very thoughtful."
She answered absent-mindedly, "Am I?"
He said: "Yes. Don't you want to play? They're making up tables."
She said: "No. I'd rather sit here and watch."
Sir Simeon drifted up to them, bringing the young Guardee and the pretty girl he had taken down to dinner. The pair were still flirting, butterfly-like. Their host had insisted on introducing them to Julia. They suffered the introduction, and flitted away. "WhoisJulia Cavendish?" asked the boy. "Silly! She writes poetry," answered the girl. "Oh, I say, ought I to have read it?" "Of course you ought. I wish we were going to dance, don't you?" "Rather."
The cantaloup lady rolled up to Sir Simeon, and dragged him away to show her his pictures. Julia relapsed into mono-syllables. It must be nearly half-past ten. Thank goodness! She could just manage another thirty minutes. Meanwhile Ronnie could continue talking to this pretty woman. Perhaps he would stay on. That would be best. She wanted to go home alone. In the morning she could telephone Dot for the name of his doctor.
And so, once again, the rose-bubble of enchantment formed itself about those two lovers. But now both were conscious of the bubble's frailty.
And the man thought: "This cannot endure. I cannot endure this. To-night must be the last time we meet." He saw her husband, pompous, considering the call of a hand. He knew that he abhorred Brunton for the possession of this exquisite woman. He loathed himself for abhorring Brunton.
The woman, too, saw her husband. But she could only feel sorrow for him. Poor Hector, who would have been satisfied with so little of her; who had never known how much she had to give. And now--now no man would ever know. Unless----Her fastidiousness revolted abruptly from introspection. She felt glad of Julia's:
"I think the brougham should be here by now, Ronnie. Do you mind finding out? And don't worry to see me home. I'm sure Mrs. Brunton will never forgive me if I drag you away."
"Don't be absurd, mater. Of course I sha'n't let you go home by yourself." Ronnie rose, and made his way across the room.
"You'll persuade him to stop? I--I'd rather go home alone," said Julia.
"Because you're tired. Because you don't want him to see it." The words escaped Aliette before she could control them. She covered herself quickly. "I'm sure that must be the reason. I'm sure, if I had a son, I should never want him to think that I was tired."
"You have children then--girls? You couldn't have known otherwise." The novelist in Julia was asleep; she could see no other reason why this "charming creature" should have divined her mentality.
"No. I have no children, worse luck!"
Ronnie came back to say that the brougham waited.
"You mustn't come with me, Ronnie." Julia got to her feet.
"Mater, I insist."
"Persuade him to stay, Mrs. Brunton."
Subconsciously, Aliette knew the incident momentous. His blue eyes were looking down into hers. Behind them she read indecision. He wanted to see his mother home: he wanted to stay with her. She could keep him at her side. Only, if she did keep him--and it would take the littlest look, the littlest gesture,--then she would be interloper indeed.
Consciously now, she made her first sacrifice.
"I think a son's first duty is to his mother," smiled Aliette Brunton.
Ten days went by.
For Aliette, the trivial round of London continued.
She attended a terrifictamashaof a wedding--all frocks and roses--at St. George's, Hanover Square; she dined at the Carlton with Hector and a sumptuous client from the money-making North; she walked the park with Ponto, her harlequin Dane, who, as though he understood his mistress was troubled, kept close at heel while she footed it, and thrust a consolatory nose into her lap whenever she sat down; she played lawn-tennis at Queen's; she did her household duties at Lancaster Gate, fighting and defeating a miniature revolution among the female staff. But her emotions she could neither fight nor defeat.
These emotions were all strange, sweet, disturbing. For the first time in her life a man obscured the entire mental horizon. Constantly she thought of Ronnie--imagining him her confidant, her friend, her lover.
Her mind took a whole week to formulate that last definite word; and even then the word seemed inadequate.
Except for Mary O'Riordan and Mollie, Aliette possessed no intimates of her own sex. Common gossip, however, credited various women of her acquaintance with "lovers": some permanent, accepted as institutions by every one except the husband; some transitory of the season; most merest "tame-cats," fetch-and-carry men. Hector's wife wanted none of these. She wanted Ronnie--not an occasional Ronnie, not a clandestine Ronnie, neither a merely physical nor a merely platonic Ronnie: but Ronnie himself--all of Ronnie--Ronnie for her very own.
Comprehension of this fact--it came to her with peculiar clarity one late afternoon at a crowded tea-fight in Mary O'Riordan's house off Park Lane--brought the woman up short by the head.
She realized herself wholly in love--dangerously, perilously, passionately in love. And the realization frightened her. It meant the abandoning of her own fixed point of view. It meant, actually, if not by intention, sin. At least it ought to mean "sin"--only somehow she could no longer regard it in that light. If she had not thought of Mary as sinful, why should she apply a different standard to her own case?
If this immense new tenderness in her, this accentuation of all her femininity, was "sin"--then nature's self must be sinful. If, by religion, she belonged body and soul to Hector, forever and ever amen; if, in the sight of God, his infidelities counted for nothing; if his occasional desire to possess her (only the night before she had been subtly aware of that desire's recrudescence) constituted a lifelong claim--then religion, as she had so far understood religion, must be a mere code designed in the interest of husbands, and God Himself a mere male.
Meanwhile, to Ronnie's mind, the problem presented itself differently.
Having no formal religion, the aspect of "sin" did not trouble him. He came, as he imagined in those ten days, to regard the entire question from a legal point of view. He wanted a woman who belonged to somebody else; by no manner of means could he possess that woman unless the law set her free. Her freedom being outside the sphere of practical politics, one's duty was self-control, forgetfulness.
On the question of self-control there could be no compromise; but to forget Aliette was a tough job. Mere passion--since their last meeting--represented only the tiniest fraction of his feelings. Already she had given him an entirely new outlook--the lover's outlook: so that he caught himself regarding the faces of his fellows, faces in his club, at the courts, in the streets, on tubes and in omnibuses, solely from his own obsessed point of view. What secret, whatemotionalsecret, concealed itself behind those unemotional English faces? What sentimental impulse goaded them about town?
"The sentimental impulse" was his mother's favorite phrase. She had used it no less than five times in her article for the "Contemplatory"--which article, astutely boomed by Fancourt, had very nearly created a first-class "stunt."
One paragraph of his mother's seemed peculiarly applicable to the barrister's problem.
"If," wrote Julia Cavendish, "the Sentimental Impulse--for I will never consent to regard the unlawful attraction between a married woman and a man other than her husband as love, the very essence of which is obedience and self-denial--once comes to be considered a palliation for adultery, then the entire foundations of family life will be in jeopardy."
Six months ago Ronnie would have been the first to uphold such a doctrine. Now he could only find the flaw in it. The gospel according to Julia Cavendish--argued her son's mind--amounted to this: If a married woman loves her husband, she merely does her duty. If she doesn't love him, she must do her duty just the same. Obedience, to a man; and denial, of one's own inclinations, constitute the whole duty of woman. In other words: A husband can do no wrong.
And at that precise point in his meditations Ronald Cavendish remembered certain rumors--heard and forgotten three years since, on his one leave from the East--about Hector Brunton and a certain red-headed lady of the stage.
All the same, even admitting certain modifications--a wife's right to fidelity, for instance,--did not his mother's code form the only possible basis of society? What reasoning human could substitute the sentimental impulse for the existing marriage laws? "Free love" would only mean free license for the unbalanced, the over-sexed, the abnormal, the womanizer, and the nymphomaniac. Matrimonial bolshevism, in fact!
"Matrimonial Bolshevism," he remembered, was to have been the title of his mother's next article; but for the moment she had been forced to give up work. Sir Heron Baynet, the specialist called in by Dot Fancourt's puzzled doctor, had implored her--so she told Ronnie--to rest.
"I've got to take care of myself," she said. "Sir Heron says I'm not exactly ill, but that I'm disposed to illness."
Actually, Sir Heron's words had been far more disturbing; but Julia, who had never consulted a medicine-man in her life, resented the little man's seriousness, and pooh-poohed most of his advice.
"Don't worry about me," she went on. "Except for being a little tired, I feel like a two-year-old."
Ronnie, obsessed with his own troubles, accepted her version of the interview; and went off to play tennis. Despite all the hair-splitting and all the self-analysis, despite all the resolves never to see Aliette again, and all the attempts to bluff himself lawyer against himself man, the sentimental impulse persisted. And hard physical exercise, he thought, might help to cure that impulse!
"If Aliette hadn't given up the game to do war-work, and if I hadn't got cut over by that bomb, we might have done some good together in the club doubles," said Mollie Fullerford.
"Well, you're both of you too hot for me," protested Wilberforce.
He balanced a cup of tea on his white-flanneled leg, and surveyed his companion admiringly. They were sitting in the sloped veranda of the clubhouse at Queen's. Below them, on the oval of green turf between the red West Kensington houses, a dozen marked courts hummed with the ping of ball against racket-face, with the swish of running skirts and the voices of the players scoring--"love fifteen," "fifteen all," "fifteen thirty."
"Oh, well played!" ejaculated the girl. Aliette, practising with Mrs. Needham on No. 2 court, had just banged a forehand drive down the side-line. "She's getting it back. Don't you think so, Jimmy?"
Mollie spoke the last word with some hesitation; they had only just got to the point of calling each other by their Christian names.
"Rather," agreed her companion, whose interest in Brunton's wife was of the vaguest, but who knew that he must at least simulate it--because, to Mollie, Aliette represented a good deal more than the average sister.
James Wilberforce did not possess a very emotional personality. He was not at all the sort of person to be swept off his feet by any woman. Marriage being "indicated," alike by parental desires, personal tastes, and a growing income, he had cast about for a possible mate; found her by accident; and was now "making the running" in the approved manner.
So far, the "running" had been rapid enough. Nevertheless, Sir Peter Wilberforce's son and heir already understood that this calm young creature of the broad forehead and the violet eyes would not yield herself without a struggle. "Takes life rather seriously, does Mollie," he thought; and liked her none the less for that.
"Does Mr. Cavendish play?" she asked casually. "If so, you ought to bring him one afternoon."
"He used to. But since he took to golf, 'patters' has lost its attraction."
"Rotten game, golf," said Mollie. "Takes too long. I believe in getting one's exercise over quickly."
They discussed the point for a second or two; and then veered, like most people in their position, to the personal. Aliette, looking up at them as she changed courts, knew a quick flash of envy. For those two, love would run its legitimate course; whereas for her---- She put thought away, and concentrated on the game.
"Two five, I lead," announced Mrs. Needham--a hard-featured, soft-hearted woman with a mop of unruly black hair, an eye like a hawk, and the hands of a mechanic. "Why don't you give up that overhand service?"
"It'll come back in time."
Aliette went to her own base-line, and took two balls from the boy. Mrs. Needham crouched in her favorite position on the other side of the net. Aliette tossed up a ball, swung up her racket, served.
The service, railroading down the center-chalk, defeated Mrs. Needham. The server crossed to the left-hand court; stood to serve--and saw Ronnie.
For a fraction of a second they looked at each other through the high side-netting. He plucked off his soft hat, and stood watching. Aliette served; faulted; faulted again.
"Fifteen all," announced Mrs. Needham.
And suddenly, Aliette's game came back to her. Once more her first service struck chalk from the center-line. But this time Mrs. Needham got back a swingeing shot. Aliette ran--back-handed--flew to the net, killed the return.
"Thirty fifteen," she announced.
She knew, as she crossed, that Ronnie was still watching; that she must not look at him; that if she looked at him she would double-fault again; that she mustn't double-fault; that she must win.
But now Mrs. Needham was all out for the set. Aliette's service came back like white lightning down the side-line. She struck--ran for the net--guessed Mrs. Needham's lob-stroke--got back to it--slammed it across the court--got to the net again--won her point after a tremendous rally.
"Forty fifteen," announced Aliette; and abruptly, preparing to serve, she knew that Ronnie was no longer watching. Concentration failed her: the game didn't seem to matter: the sooner she lost the game, the sooner she would be able to talk with him.
"Why, thereisMr. Cavendish," said Mollie Fullerford. "And that's Hugh Spillcroft with him. I haven't seen Hugh for years."
She ran down the steps; and Wilberforce followed--a little jealously. The four stood chatting.
"Yes," said Ronnie. "Spillcroft had insisted on his playing 'patters.' Spillcroft had promised to lend him a racket."
"Cavendish used to play a pretty fair game at the House," interjected Hugh--a clean-shaven monocled young man, who looked, once divested of wig and gown, a bit of a blood.
To Ronald the ensuing conversation was almost meaningless. He took part in it automatically. He didn't want to talk with these people; he wanted to watch that white embodiment of graceful strength, Aliette. He could hear her voice, "Forty thirty," followed by the swish of two balls along netting, and Mrs. Needham's "Deuce." She had lost two points since he turned away.
The unexpected sight of her had paralyzed his self-control. He forgot all the resolutions, all the ratiocinations of the last ten days. He clean forgot Hector Brunton. His inward vision reveled in memories of her beauty. How glorious she looked--on horseback, a-walking, in evening dress, even on a tennis-court. Curious, that last! "Patters" women nearly always looked disheveled--those of them who could play.
Aliette--her set thrown away--and Mrs. Needham joined the four of them.
"How do you do, Mr. Cavendish?"
"How do you do, Mrs. Brunton?"
They clasped hands.
"I had to go all out that last game," said Mrs. Needham.
Neither she nor Ronnie realized that Aliette had lost deliberately. Aliette seemed so calm, so radiantly self-possessed. The vivid coils of her hair shone smooth in the sunlight; her eyes, as they looked into Ronnie's, were unruffled pools of dignity.
Yet inwardly Hector's wife shook like a ship in storm. The tempest of feeling--released, as it were, by the touch of his fingers--swept her through and through. To stand there, talking rubbish, undiluted "tennis" rubbish, became sheer torment. Her heart ached for his to recognize it.
"Oh, but I'm a fool all right," said the new voice in her heart; the voice she had been trying to stifle ever since March. "I've lost my head for good this time. I wish I could run away from him. I wish he'd go and change. What's the use of meeting him? Like this--with all these people. Why aren't we ever alone? I wish he'd go."
But Ronald Cavendish could not tear himself away. He, too, stood there, "like a perfect idiot," as he phrased it to his mind, saying anything that came into his head; anything that would keep him for another minute, and yet another minute, within the charmed circle of her society.
"Mixed doubles seem distinctly indicated," broke in Spillcroft's voice. "Come along, Cavendish, you and I had better change."
"But I shall be absolutely rotten," protested Ronnie, as he allowed himself to be led off.
Mrs. Needham found another opponent, leaving the two sisters alone with Wilberforce, who offered Aliette some tea. She accepted, and accompanied them back to their table; where, after a few minutes, Cavendish and Spillcroft joined them.
Sipping her tea, listening with half an ear to the conversations all round her, Aliette Brunton was, for the first time, aware of social danger. She felt a furious desire to talk with Ronnie, to look at him. But to-day no frailest rose-bubble of enchantment isolated them from their kind. To-day all the other instincts warned that she must avert her eyes, avert her voice. Nobody--not even Mollie--must guess their secret. Somehow she no longer doubted ittheirsecret. Her very fears gave her the certainty of him. She stole a look, sideways under long lashes, into his blue eyes; and knew--knew that he loved her.
Yes, he loved her. Not as Hector imagined love, solely in the possessive. But in all ways; with passion, with tenderness with as much regard for her as for himself.
Fleetingly, she marveled that this thing should have happened to her; to both of them. How had it happened? Why? What did the why or the how of the thing matter? Sufficed--for the ecstatic moment--the knowledge that they loved one another.
But the man did not know. Certain of himself, he held no certainty of her. Even his self-certainty seemed evanescent in her presence. Surely he had not dared to let himself adore this radiant, perfect creature! Surely, even daring to adore, he would never dare tell her of his adoration! She was like the goddesses, utterly removed from the touch of a man, utterly aloof from him. Then, fleetingly, he knew her no goddess, but a wife--Hector Brunton's wife. And all the scruples of his code made the knowledge bitter in his mouth.
"Cavendish hasn't got a word to say for himself," thought Mollie. "Jimmy's ever so much better-looking--though Jimmy's tennisisrotten. I sha'n't let Jimmy play in this set." And she insisted, following the high-handed method of the modern young, on playing with Spillcroft against Cavendish and her sister.
Ronnie's patters proved somewhat less out of practice than he had imagined.
"Thank you, partner," smiled Aliette, after the last stroke of the third, and decisive, set. "Your volleying saved, the day."
"Oh, I didn't have much to do with it," he smiled back.
Since the beginning of the match, except for the necessities of the strokes, they had hardly spoken to one another. But, for each, the forty minutes of partnership, the mutual will to win, the clean struggle on clean grass, the open air and the exercise had been one long delight.
Scruples, uncertainties, consciousness of danger, consciousness of fear--these and all the inevitable soul-searchings of a love such as theirs took wings and departed from them. Surrendering their bodies and their minds to one another for the winning of a game; concentrating on the vagaries of a white ball, a net, and a few square feet of turf; they forgot their immediate selves, forgot that they were "Mr. Cavendish" and "Mrs. Brunton"--two poor human beings poised at the edge of emotional disaster, separated by law, by the church, by "honor," united only by the "sentimental impulse," and became, for the forgetful moment, one mind and one body.
But now, once more, they were twain. Now forgetfulness was over. Now emotion poured back full-tide, submerging both their minds and their bodies.
James Wilberforce lounged down from the clubhouse; drew Mollie away from her partner, and began whispering. Mollie called across the court:
"I say, Alie, Mr. Wilberforce wants to drive me back in his car. You won't mind coming home by yourself, will you? I don't think I ought to play any more."
"No, dear, I sha'n't mind," called back Aliette; and her eyes as she watched the two figures making towards the waiting cars; as she heard the chug of Wilberforce's engine, and saw his two-seater swing through the gates up the road toward Baron's Court, betrayed the truth of the remark. But when she turned once more to the flanneled man at her side, those eyes had regained their composure.
"Can't we find a fourth?" remarked Aliette.
"We'll get Mrs. Needham to make up," said Spillcroft. "She and I'll take you two on."
And so, for one last crowded hour, those two played together--brains and bodies attuned to the delight of working in unison.
The very cleanness of the game took all sense of guilt and all guilt of sense from them. They might have been boy and girl, young husband and younger wife, lovers whose love was sanctioned of the law--he and she, sinews taut, eyes keen, all the health and all the youth of them concentrated on rhythmic pastime.
"You'e got your car, I suppose?"
"No. My--my husband's taken it out of town."
The rhythmic pastime was over. Nervously now they faced one another on the empty court. Spillcroft had rushed away to change, Mrs. Needham to the tube. From their kind, they could expect neither help nor hindrance.
Already the shadows of the red houses lengthened toward them across green turf; already the bustle of the tennis-ground was hushed. Sparrow twittered on the silence. In the radiance of that summer evening the brown hair, the brown eyes of Aliette kindled to wallflower color against the rose-flushed cream of her skin. The sight of her beauty, so virginal in its white simplicity of attire, so alone with him in that emptiness of green, struck Ronnie speechless. He stood enthralled--the magic of her harping sheer music against the hush in his brain.
"I--I think I ought to be going home," said Aliette.
She, too, heard that sheer music which is love. Once more, tempest-wise, emotion swept her through and through: sweeping away inhibition; sweeping away all false fastidiousness; cleansing her soul of all instincts save the instinct for loving, for being loved. In that one magical, self-revealing moment, she was conscious solely of joy.
"I--mayn't I drive you----" stammered Ronnie. He hardly knew what he said. All the suppressed vehemences, all the pent-up longings of the past months craved utterance at his lips. Fear and love keyed him to any daring. He had had such happiness of her that afternoon. It made him fearful lest happiness should utterly escape.
"Thank you very much----" Once more she was aware of danger. Yet she could not bring herself to say him "No."
He left her without another word. Her own heart, the very world, seemed to have ceased pulsing as she awaited his return. She stood alone, woman eternal, hearing very faintly across hushed spaces the beat of music, the birth-cry of children.
Ten minutes later--looking, to other eyes, the most ordinary, most orderly of citizens--Ronnie came back. But that sense of utter solitude was still on Aliette. She could only smile her thanks as he led her to the waiting taxi, handed her in, and closed the door.
She did not wish that he should speak with her. She was afraid lest even his voice should irrupt upon this exquisite solitude wherein her soul hung poised. And yet how good to know him beside her as London spun past them in the twilight.
Was this London, the London she had so hated, this wonder-town through which they sped together? Was this Aliette? This, Ronnie?
And suddenly, vividly, she desired to hear his voice. Solitude no longer sufficed her. She had been so long solitary--solitary in unhappiness. Now, in her new happiness, she craved companionship, the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand. Why did he not dare speak with her?
Descending as from great heights, her soul knew him afraid lest, speaking, he should destroy that rose-bubble of enchantment in which they had their being; afraid, too, because he still thought of her as another's. Yet she was no other's: she was his, his only. And he--hers.
How fast they sped through this miracle of London. Already, the trees of its park were fleeting by.
Oh, why wouldn't Ronnie speak with her? Had he no word to say? In a moment, in such a little moment, it would be too late.
Yet it was fine of him not to speak, fine that he should so steel himself against her. His eyes were like sharp steel; his lips one tense line above the determination of his chin. He had clenched his hand--his right hand. Aliette could see it--close--so close to her own hand.
Then the car swerved, almost throwing them together; and Ronnie's self-control snapped, as a violin-string snaps, to the touch of her.
Their hands met. She knew that he was raising her hand to his lips; she felt the brush of his lips warm against her fingers; she heard his lips whisper: "Aliette--Aliette--don't hate me for loving you."
Hector Brunton's wife entered her husband's house like a girl in a dream.