Every year, toward the end of November, Betty Masterman had been accustomed to receive an invitation to spend Christmas at Clyst Fullerford. This year, to her surprise, she received a long, carefully-worded letter in Mollie's childish handwriting: a letter which contained the unusual suggestion that Mollie should spend Christmas with her. "My dear," wrote the girl, "I simply daren't ask you down here. It's too utterly dull for words."
Betty, nothing if not extravagant, wired back an immediate answer; and met her friend, two days before Christmas eve, in the holiday bustle at Waterloo station.
"Mollie," greeted the grass-widow, "you look like a ghost. What on earth's happened to you since the summer?"
But it was not until Betty's "daily woman" had completed her hasty washing up of the dinner things, and they sat alone in front of the gas-fire in the little red-papered sitting-room, that Mollie answered the question.
"Betty dear," she said, puffing a vague cigarette. "I'm feeling too rotten for words. Nothing seems to go right with me these days."
Betty's experienced eyes sparkled with laughter. "Give sorrow words," she quoted chaffingly; and then, a note of seriousness in her voice, "What's the trouble? The sister or the Wilberforce man?"
"You've heard something then?"
"Only gossip." The other trod carefully. "But of course I'm not quite a fool. I thought when you came rushing round here from Lancaster Gate that something must have gone pretty wrong."
"Everything's gone wrong." Mollie repeated the inevitable slogan, of post-war youth, "Everything. You remember Ronald Cavendish----"
"I've met him once or twice."
"Well, Alie's run away from Hector----"
"And run away to Cavendish."
"You did know then?"
"My dear, everybody knows." Betty considered the position. "Still, that's their affair, isn't it? Why shouldyouworry about it? There'll be a divorce, I suppose, and after that they'll get married."
"That's just the trouble."
"How do you mean?"
"Apparently, Hector's refused to divorce Alie."
"Oh!"
The pair inspected one another across the mellow firelight. After a long pause, the elder said:
"You're not much of a pal, Mollie. You've only told me half the story."
Mollie Fullerford blushed. Her reticent virginity revolted from the idea of confessing herself, to Betty, in love with James Wilberforce. Yet that shewasin love with the man, most uncomfortably in love with him, Mollie knew. Despite all her efforts to maintain the pose of the modern young, the pose of cold-blooded mate-selection, she had failed as lamentably as most others of her kind to control nature. Nature and the modern creed refused to be reconciled. She realized now that she wanted--exclusively--James. She wanted to belong to him; she wanted him to belong to her; she wanted him--and no other--to father her children.
That last thought rekindled Mollie's blushes. Succeed as she might in curbing her tongue, she could not curb her feelings. She fell to wondering if Jimmywouldask her to marry him, to speculating whether, even if their friendship so abruptly broken off should be renewed (as she had subconsciously hoped it would be renewed when she invited herself to London), whether, even if Jimmy did ask her to marry him, she would be capable of sacrificing Aliette. Would she not be forced to make conditions--conditions that no man in Jimmy's position could possibly accept? Would she not be forced to say: "If I marry you, you'll have to let me receive my sister and my sister's lover"?
"How about the Wilberforce man?" Betty's words interrupted reverie. "Does he know you're in town?"
"Yes," admitted Mollie.
"You still write to each other then?"
"Only occasionally."
"My dear, how exciting! When did you hear from him last?"
But at that Aliette's sister broke off the conversation with a wry "Betty, I simply won't be cross-examined."
"You needn't get ratty, dear thing," retorted the grass-widow. "Idon't want to pry into your secrets. But"--she rustled up from her chair, and made a movement to begin undressing--"if heshouldwrite that he's coming to see you, for goodness' sake try and make yourself look a little less of a 'patient Griselda.' What about face-massage? I know a man in Sloane Street who's simply wonderful!"
Aliette, whom Mollie visited next day, was even more shocked than Betty Masterman at the change in her sister's appearance. The girl seemed utterly altered, utterly different from the fancy-free maiden of Moor Park. She came into the connubial room nervously; almost forgot to kiss; entirely forgot to inquire after Ronnie; refused to take off her hat, and sat down on the edge of the hard sofa gingerly as though it had been an omnibus seat.
"Rather awful, isn't it?" Aliette, with a comprehensive glance at her surroundings, broke the social ice. "You mustn't mind."
"I don't mind. But it is rather awful." A pause. "I suppose you had to do it, Alie?"
"Do what? Come and live here?"
"No. The whole thing." Aliette did not answer, and her sister went on. "I wish you hadn't had to. It's been simply rotten at home. Mother and dad----" She broke off, biting her lip. "Theyaren't so bad really; it's Eva who's putrid."
"Eva never did like either of us."
For the first time in their lives, the sisters felt shy with one another. Caroline Staley, entering, broad-hipped, a smile on her full lips and a tea-tray in her large hands, noticed the tension.
"My, Miss Mollie!" ejaculated the tactful Caroline, "but you aren't looking yourself at all. You ought to take that hat off and lie down awhile."
Tea relaxed the tension; but made intimate conversation no easier. Between them and their old intimacy rose--as it seemed--insurmountable barriers. It was Mollie who, involuntarily, pulled those barriers down.
"I say," she asked abruptly, "isn't Hector going to do anything?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Doesn't it make you frightfully unhappy?"
"Only for Ronnie's sake."
Mollie did her best to restrain indignation. Woman-like, she could not help blaming Ronnie for the whole occurrence. Girl-like, she could not quite divine the immensity of passion behind her sister's steady eyes; till, somehow infected by that passion, her thoughts veered to James. Suppose James had been married. Married to a lunatic, say, or a drunkard? Tied to some rotten wife, for instance, a wife who made him unhappy? Suppose that James had said to her, "Mollie, let's cut the painter"?
And suddenly Mollie's indignation passed, leaving her contrite.
"Alie," she said, "I ought to have come up to town before. I oughtn't to have left you alone all this time. I'm afraid I've been"--she faltered--"rather a beast about the whole thing."
"You haven't." Aliette came across to the sofa, and took her sister's hand. "It's been simply wonderful of you to forgive our thoughtlessness, our lack of consideration----"
"Oh, that!" interrupted Mollie. "I wasn't thinking about that." She fell silent; and again, to her contrite mind, the romance of Aliette and Ronnie assumed a personal significance.
So this was love--thought the girl--the real thing! Love without orange-blossom, without wedding-presents. Love so gloriously reckless of material considerations that it could exist in and defy the most sordid surroundings, the completest ostracism from one's kind.
"It's you who are wonderful," said Mollie.
And all that afternoon, as conversation grew easier between them, as she learned from a hesitant Aliette of the real Hector and the real Ronnie, of the snubs one had to put up with, and of the sympathy which was even harder than the snubs to bear, of the petty, almost indecent economies to be anticipated now that Ronnie's professional income looked like failing (soon it might be necessary to sacrifice Ponto, whose board and lodging at a near-by stable cost fifteen shillings a week), the girl, continually testing her own affection for James on the touchstone of Aliette's love for Ronnie, could not but find it a little lacking in that spirit of service which is truest comradeship.
"But whereisRonnie?" she asked, as they kissed au revoir.
"With his mother, I expect," smiled Aliette. "He said, when you phoned last night, that we'd probably like to be alone."
"Rather decent of Cavendish, leaving us alone like that," thought Mollie, waiting--befurred to the eyes--on the drafty platform at Baron's Court station.
Strangely affected by her sister's revelations, she found herself as the train got under way--comparing Ronnie with James; not, she had to admit, entirely to James's advantage.
It was all very well--went on thought--being in love with James, but whyshouldone be in love with James? One ought to be jolly angry with the man. Taking it all round, he had behaved disgracefully. James had "shied off" because he couldn't face a little scandal; had written the coldest, unfriendliest letters.
"James, in fact," decided the girl, "doesn't care a button for me, and I'm a little fool to let myself care for him."
But when, arrived at the flat, Betty Masterman, with a malicious pout of her red lips, imparted the news that "the Wilberforce man" had rung up to suggest himself for tea on the following afternoon, Mollie Fullerford's mental dignity gave way to an ardor of anticipation which made her feel--as she expressed it to herself just before falling asleep--"a perfect little idiot"; and when, next afternoon--to all outward appearances his undisturbed self--Jimmy was heralded into the sitting-room, the girl felt extraordinarily grateful to the "man in Sloane Street" under whose ministrations she had spent the morning.
All the same, she felt uncommonly nervous. Watching her James as he arranged his long bulk in the most comfortable of the three chairs, handing him his tea, listening to the easy flow of small talk between him and Betty, Mollie found it impossible to realize that this could be the creature about whose physical and mental qualities her imagination had woven its tissue of dreams. That he and she were participators in a tragic romance; that if he asked her to marry him (and she knew subconsciously, even though consciously denying the possibility, that hewouldask her) she would have to refuse--seemed possibilities connected rather with the heroine of some magazine story than with her own demure self.
Tea finished, Betty made the telephone in her bedroom an excuse to leave the pair alone; clicked the door on them; and pattered away in her high-heeled shoes.
"You're not looking as well as you were when I saw you last," managed Wilberforce, after a minute's self-conscious silence.
"Aren't I?" Mollie would have given a good deal to run away from him, to run after Betty.
"No. You haven't been ill or anything, have you?"
"Ill!" She forced a smile to her lips. "Rather not. I've been quite all right."
They gazed at each other. Then, abruptly, Jimmy said:
"Mollie, what's happened to us?"
"Tous?" she queried shyly.
"Yes; to you and me." The man paused, plunged in. "We were such frightfully good pals last summer, and now it seems as though"--another pause--"we don't hit things off a bit."
"Is that my fault or yours?" There was scarcely a hint of their old camaraderie in the girl's sulky voice.
"Mine, I suppose," he sulked back.
"Well, isn't it?" she shot at him; and at that all the self-realizations, all the heart-searchings and heart-burnings in James Wilberforce blew to one bright point of clear flame, melting his reserve as the blow-pipe melts cast iron.
"Mollie," he blurted out, "you know how I hate beating about the bush. Let's be open with one another. Let's admit that somethinghashappened." He leaned forward in his chair, both hands on his knees. "But you aren't going to let that something make any difference, are you?"
His method irritated her to abruptness.
"Youarebeating about the bush, Jimmy. Why not be straight?"
"I'm trying to be straight." His hands clenched. "But it's jolly difficult. You see, there are some things that--well, that one doesn't discuss with girls."
"Isn't that rather rot nowadays?" retorted Mollie, hating herself for the slang.
"I don't think it's rot. I think there are a good many subjects a man doesn't want to discuss with--with a girl he--er--cares about."
"Then he does care," thought Mollie; and felt her heart leap to the thought. Outwardly she made pretense of considering his sentence; her brows crinkled. Inwardly she pretended herself still vexed with him. She said to herself, "He mustn't see that I care. He must be taught his lesson."
"You're a bit old-fashioned, aren't you, Jimmy?" she prevaricated at last.
"Perhaps I am." Affection made him suddenly the schoolboy. "But it's devilish awkward, isn't it; this--this business about your sister?"
"Awkward!" Mollie's loyalty stiffened her to discard prevarication. "I don't think it's awkward.Ithink it's jolly rough luck on Aliette and Mr. Cavendish. Hector knows perfectly well they'd get married if he'd only set her free. I think Hector's a cad. Alie told him everything before she went. He knows jolly well she'll never go back to him. Why should she? A man doesn't own a woman for ever and ever just because he happens to marry her."
The speech roused Jimmy to an unwonted height of imagination. He saw himself marrying Mollie, quarreling with Mollie; saw Mollie running away from him, as Aliette had run away from Hector.
"So ifyoumarried a man, you wouldn't consider yourself tied to him for life?"
"Certainly not. Not if he didn't behave decently."
The girl's eyes were brave enough, but a shiver of apprehension ran through her body. She thought: "He couldn't care for anybody who said that sort of thing to him." Jimmy seemed to be considering her statement, weighing it up. It came to her instinctively that they were at the crisis of their lives.
"And if he behaved well to you?" The words seemed fraught with meaning.
"Why, then"--she could feel herself shivering, shivering from the soles of her feet to the roots of her bobbed hair--"then--there wouldn't be any need for me to run away from him."
Their eyes met; brown eyes searching violet. Their eyes lit with mutual understanding. Self-consciousness deserted her; deserted them both. She was conscious of him--close to her--seizing her hands--speaking rapidly, unrestrainedly:
"I've been a rotter--an absolute rotter, darling. I ought to have warned you the moment I found out. I ought to have told you that it didn't make any difference. It hasn't, it can't make any difference, not the slightest difference. Nothing that your sister may have done, may do, can affect us one way or the other. It's you I want to marry, not your sister."
"Jimmy!"
He was conscious of his arms round her--of his lips on hers--of her yielding to his kisses--returning them.
The gush of Jimmy's passion, of her own, frightened the girl. Somehow she freed herself from his kisses; and stood upright, tremulous, blushing a little, stammering a little, altogether incoherent.
"Jimmy, you mustn't, you oughtn't to. It isn't fair to me. It's not fair to Alie."
"What's she got to do with it?" Mollie could see the big vein on her lover's forehead throb to each syllable. "What's she got to do with us?"
"Everything." For a moment the girl felt herself the stronger. "Everything. It isn't fair. Can't you see why it isn't fair? How can I marry you?" Her voice broke. "How can I take my happiness while Alie's an outcast? Sheisan outcast. You wouldn't, you couldn't let her come to our wedding."
"Then you care for your sister more than you care for me?" interrupted Wilberforce, shirking the issue.
"I don't! I don't!" Strength had gone out of Mollie; she felt herself weak, incapable. "It isn't that. It isn't that a bit. Only I can't take my happiness while Alie's miserable. She is miserable, though she won't admit it. Don't you see how rotten it would be of me if I married you--with things as they are?"
"No, I don't." Her recalcitrance angered him.
"You must. Jimmy," softly, "you do want me to be happy with you, don't you?"
"Of course I want you to be happy with me." His anger relented. "I'd do anything in the world to make you happy."
"Would you, dear?"
"Rather. Only tell me what it is."
"It's only Alie." Loyalty strung her to the sacrifice. "Only Alie. Can't you do something for her? You're a lawyer; you know how these things are managed. Oh, do, please do something to help her, to help"--the young voice dwindled to a whisper--"to help both of us. Jimmy, I do want to marry you. I want to marry you most awfully. But I simply can't even promise to marry you with things as they are. It wouldn't be decent of me. Honestly it wouldn't. It wouldn't be decent of either of us. It wouldn't be playing the game."
They faced each other, half in love and half in hostility.
"You really mean that, Mollie?"
"Yes, I really mean it."
"And if Icouldmanage to do anything?"
"If you only could"--she smiled into his eyes--"there wouldn't be a thing in the world to keep us apart."
Jimmy took the girl in his arms; and again she let herself answer his kisses. "I'll move heaven and earth and the lord chancellor," vowed James Wilberforce to that sleek bobbed head.
Betty Masterman, returning, dressed for some mysterious dinner, on the stroke of seven, found a Mollie who could not decide herself happy or unhappy; a Mollie whose lips still tingled from her lover's kisses--but whose eyes still shone with the tears shed in loyalty to her sister.
Before, and even during the war, Christmas day at Bruton Street used to be rather a function. On that day, Julia, still the feudalist in her domestic policy, was wont to rise earlier than usual, to distribute gifts among her servants, to proceed to church, lunch in some state, and during the afternoon receive such of her friends as had not left town.
This Christmas, Brunton's continued obduracy made functions impossible. Waking late to the subdued glimmer of the bed-lamp, to the presence of her maid and the tea-tray, Julia was conscious of depression. Her night had been restless, haunted by the specter of defeat. The "flaunting policy" had failed! Depression grew. The idea of distributing presents, of her servants' formal thanks, fretted her. Fretted her, too, the thought that this would be the first Nativity on which she had ever missed going to church.
But gradually, as she bathed, as her maid swathed her in a long purple velvet tea-gown, Julia's vitality began to revive. A little of the Christmas spirit entered into her. She recognized for how much she had to be thankful; for ample means, for well-trained servants, for a well-tended house, for a mind still confident of its powers, for a conscience assured in its right-doing, for a son who adored her and whom she adored, and, lastly but not least, for work still to be accomplished.
This certainty of work to come, of a creative task dim-visualized as yet, but already quickening in the womb of her mentality, had been newly-vivid during the restless night; so that she was now assured--with that assurance which only the craftswoman possesses--of another book shortly to be born from her pen. "My last book, perhaps!" she thought; and dreaded, in anticipation, the labor of that book-bearing.
The distribution of the presents tired her. Depression returned with the physical fatigue of being gracious. But, once the little ceremony was over and she sat waiting for Ronnie and Aliette in the square box of a work-room, the old lady grew almost fey with the prescience of coming triumph. She, Julia Cavendish, might die, but even in her dying she would not be defeated. By her own unaided strength, by the very steel of her spirit, she would beat down all obstacles--the labors of book-bearing, the obduracy of Aliette's husband, the defections of their friends.
And--in that moment of feyness--Julia knew that the unwritten book, her own death, and her son's future were mysteriously intertwined; that the only sword which could sever the Gordian knot of Hector Brunton's obduracy was the sword of the written word. But as yet her knowledge was all nebulous, the merest protoplasm of a plan.
Aliette, that Christmas morning, had not even the semblance of a plan. Ever since her visit to Hermione she had been growingly aware of strain, of a strange morbidity. Increasingly she felt resentful of her position. Increasingly she reproached herself for theimpassein Ronnie's career.
The lack of a real home affected her almost to breaking-point. In her hyper-sensitive mind, Powolney Mansions had become symbolical of their joint lives. They were "boarding-house people"; and even that only under false pretenses.
So far, she had managed to conceal her mental state from Ronnie. Yet she was aware, dimly, of occasional unkindnesses to him, of a tiny retrogression from the standard of happiness which she had laid down for them both. "I'm failing him," she used to think; "I'm failing him--dragging him down."
London in holiday-time accentuated this feeling of failure. Caroline Staley had departed to Devonshire for a week; and a slatternly maid brought them their tea, their lukewarm "hot water." Ronnie, kept waiting half an hour for his bath, gashed his chin with his razor, and soothed the resultant ill-temper with one of the cheap cigarettes to which he had lately taken. Breakfast, in the stuffy communal dining-room, was as cold as the perfunctory Christmas wishes of their fellow-boarders.
Ponto, developing a cough, had been sent to the vet's. Ronnie, kindling his pipe, suggested that they should "look up the hound." Aliette refused and he went off by himself.
Aliette returned to their room, and surveyed its untidiness with a shudder.
"I'm the wrong sort of woman for Ronnie," she said to herself. "I'm not a bit domesticated." And from that, thought switched automatically to the other side of domesticity. Imagination pictured some old-fashioned Christmas in some old-fashioned country cottage; herself mistress of a real home; Ronnie a father; he and she and "they" church-going along snow-powdered roads; their return to a board loaded with goodies. Almost, in that moment, imagination heard the laughter of unborn children.
But the moment passed, and she knew herself still childless. "Better childless," she thought bitterly; and tried, for a whole wretched hour, to bring order into the chaos of their unfriendly room; dusting and redusting the melancholy furniture; hanging and rehanging hats and dresses; finally, in sheer desperate need of distraction, plying Caroline Staley's little wire brush on a pair of white suède shoes she found hidden away in a corner of the wardrobe.
There was dust on the shoes; and, here and there under the dust, a speck of mud. A wire brush--thought Aliette--could cleanse dust and mud from shoes. But no brush could cleanse the mud and the dust from one's mind. Mind--what was mind? Her very soul felt itself besmirched. A Hermione's curiosity, a Mary O'Riordan's ingratitude, the snubs of a Lady Siegfried Moss--all these were flecks, undeserved yet ineradicable, upon the white surface of one's purity.
She finished cleaning the shoes, and put them aside. Yet the symbolism of them remained with her. It seemed a bitter and a cruel thing that she must drag her feet through so much mire, that the wheels of all the world's traffic must bespatter her because--because she had gone to her mate openly and not in secret.
"Not for our sin," she thought, "the penalty; but for the candor of our sinning"; and so fell to resenting the hypocrisy of a country which winks tolerant eyes at "dancing-partners," "tame cats," "best boys," "fancy-men," and all the ragtag and bobtail of clandestine lovers whom England excuses, tolerates, and even finds romantic. "Only for women such as I am," thought Aliette, "for those of us who go openly to our one lover, can England find neither excuse nor toleration."
"Nothing much wrong with the hound," pronounced a returning Ronnie; and then, noticing the unhappiness in his lady's eyes, "Anything the matter, darling?"
"No. Nothing in particular."
Silently Aliette changed her gown, pinned on her hat, and let him help her with her furs. Silently they made their way downstairs. Outside it was foggy. From the hideous hall-lamp, still illuminated, hung a sprig of grimy mistletoe. Aliette looked up at the thing. "I hate Christmas in London," she said.
As they waited for their train in the chill West Kensington station, Ronnie, too, grew unhappy.
"Poor darling! I wish I could afford taxis," he said; and throughout the journey to Bruton Street--thinking of their long-ago taxi-ride from "Queen's"--a depression almost physical constrained both to silence.
The arrival at Bruton Street minimized a little of the morning's depression. Julia was in her old form, jovially dictatorial. They had brought presents for her: from Ronnie, a plain gold penholder, such as she always used; from Aliette, a trifle of embroidery.Herpresent, newly-written, lay in an envelope on her writing-desk. She gave it to Aliette with the command, "Don't open it till we've had lunch," just as Kate came in to ask if she should bring in the meal.
The "lunch," laid--Aliette noticed--for five, consisted of grilled soles, turkey with cranberry sauce, plum-pudding with cream and brandy, mince-pies, and the whole old-fashioned indigestible paraphernalia. Holly decked the Venetian wall-lights; mistletoe hung from the chandelier. But there were ghosts at the feast. Try as they three might to be cheerful, each felt conscious of awkwardness.
After the servants had left the room, Julia, breaking the rules of her "medicine-man," took a glass of brandy and a cigarette.
"You haven't even looked at my Christmas present," she said to Aliette; and she would have liked to add, if the words had not seemed so ill-omened, "I sha'n't give you one at all next year, if you don't take more interest in it."
Aliette reached for her hand-bag (which she had hung, a habit of hers, on the back of her chair) and took out the envelope Julia had given her before luncheon. Throughout the meal she had been dreading this moment, because, obviously, the envelope contained a check--and she hated the idea of accepting a check from Ronnie's mother. Slitting the flap with her fruit-knife, picking out the stamped paper, she saw at a glance that the check was for five hundred pounds. Her heart leaped. Five hundred pounds meant freedom from Powolney Mansions, the possibility of taking some little abode where she and Ronnie could be happy. Then reluctance overwhelmed her.
"It's too good of you," she protested. "But I can't, really I can't take all this money."
"Rubbish!" snapped Julia in her bruskest manner. "Why shouldn't you take money from me? All my money really belongs to Ronnie. If his father had had any sense he'd have left it to him. Besides, you need it. You can't go on staying at that appalling boarding-house for ever."
"But we can't take it! Can we, man?" Aliette's eyes appealed to Ronnie; who said, trying to be gay: "You mustn't rob yourself for us, mater."
"I'm not robbing myself. Sir Peter sold three of the Little Overdine properties a fortnight ago."
"Did he, though? Whom to?"
"The tenants."
"Really!"
Ensued an awkward silence, during which Ronnie stared at the check, Julia at her "daughter-in-law," and Aliette at the pair of them.
"You need it more than I do," reiterated Julia at last.
"But don't you see," Aliette's voice was very gentle, "It's just because we do need this money that we oughtn't to take it?"
"You're two very stubborn young people," said Julia, half in anger and half good-humoredly. "But as it's Christmas day, and as I'm nearly old enough to be Aliette's grand-mother, you'll have to humor me." She took the check in her own hands, and returned it to Aliette's bag, which she closed with a little snap of decision--at the precise moment when Kate announced "Mr. Paul Flower."
The distinguished litterateur entered languidly; extended both flabby hands to his hostess; and allowed himself to be persuaded into drinking a glass of port.
"My dear Paul," remonstrated Julia, glad of the interruption, "you were invited for luncheon, and it's now nearly half-past three."
"My dear Julia,"--the new-comer raised his glass to the light, and inspected the ruby glow of the wine with some care--"after all these years you ought to know that I never take luncheon."
"Not even on Christmas day?" put in Aliette.
"No, dear lady, not even on Christmas day." Paul began to be epigrammatic; striving to convince them that Christmas was an essentially pagan function, and that paganism was the fount of all true art. "More especially of my own art," he went on, pulverizing an imaginary object between thumb and forefinger; and immediately became so Rabelaisian that it needed all Julia's tact to prevent him from narrating his pet story of the American lady who had visited him in Mount Street, "because Texas, Mr. Flower, has no literature."
"These literary people," thought Aliette, listening to him, "are all peculiar." Yet undoubtedly Paul Flower's harmless egotism had relieved an awkward situation.
It was nearly a quarter past four by the time that the party eventually moved upstairs to the drawing-room; nearly five before Julia Cavendish, whose brain had been singularly active since Paul's arrival, succeeded in leaving him alone with Aliette while she and Ronnie "went off to the library for a little chat."
"Ronnie," she said to him as soon as they were alone, "you won't let her send back that check, will you?"
"Not if you're bent on our keeping it. But I say," his eyes were troubled, "are you sure it's the right time to sell out the Rutland farms?"
"I'm positive. And Ronnie," she rose from her desk and laid a hand on his arm, "you'll let me make that allowance eight hundred now, won't you?"
"I'd rather not, somehow."
"Why not?"
"Oh, I don't know. Alie wouldn't like it."
"You needn't tell her."
"We haven't got any secrets from each other."
"H'm." Julia spoke slowly. "That may make things rather difficult." She sat down again, and began to fidget with the gold pen he had given her. "Young Wilberforce came to see me yesterday," she said abruptly.
"Jimmy? What did he have to say?"
"A great deal." Julia laughed nervously. "It appears that he's sounded Brunton."
"The dickens he has!" Ronnie's brain leaped to the inevitable conclusion. "I suppose that's the result of Mollie's arrival in London."
"Probably." The mother eyed her son. "'Cherchez la femme' is not a bad rule when one sits in judgment on the Jimmy Wilberforces of this world. However, we can't afford to leave any stone unturned."
"No, I suppose not. Still, I hate people going behind my back. Alie would be furious if she knew."
"Then don't tell her. Not that there's anything to tell. Brunton refused to discuss the matter. But"--again Julia fell to playing with the penholder--"Wilberforce made the suggestion--mind you, it's only a suggestion--thatIshould try to get into touch with the admiral."
"I don't see how that could do any good." Ronnie's forehead wrinkled with thought. "Besides, Aliette would never consent. She'd think it undignified."
"Need we consult her?" Now Julia trod very gingerly. "Need we tell her anything about it until I've either failed or succeeded?"
Her son rose from his chair, and took two strides up and down the little room. "Aliette wouldn't like it," he repeated stubbornly.
"But it's for her good."
"I don't see that the admiral could do anything."
"He might have some influence with his son."
Ronald sat down again. All the literary Wixton in him urged acceptance of the plan. All the schoolmaster Cavendish urged refusal. "It would be going behind her back," he said at last. "It wouldn't be fair. She ought to be consulted first."
"And suppose she refuses?" A little of the old dominance crept into Julia's voice. "Suppose she refuses? What are we to do then? Ronnie," the tone rose, "don't you see that it's our duty, our absolute duty? I don't want to be unkind, but the social position gets more impossible every day. Unless something is done, and done quickly, it'll take the pair of you all your lives to live down the scandal."
"I know." His blue eyes saddened. "But there are worse things than scandal. There's," he seemed to be searching in his mind for a word, "there's disloyalty."
"Don't be obstinate." She summoned up all her strength to beat down his opposition. "Do trust me. Do let me write to the admiral. I used to know him years ago. That might help."
"Yes. But suppose it doesn't! Suppose you fail? Suppose Alie finds out?"
"If I fail, we shall be no worse off than when I started. As for Aliette finding out, you can tell her if you like. Only don't tell her till afterwards."
"You're sure it can't do any harm?"
"Quite sure. You won't tell her?"
"All right, mater. But don't ask me to take the extra allowance."
"Very well. That shall be asyouwish."
They came back, a little guilty, to the drawing-room. Aliette was laughing. Hearing her laugh, it seemed to Ronnie as though the tension of the morning had relaxed.
But the tension between them did not relax; rather, in those few days which followed Christmas, they came nearer to quarreling than ever before. The paying in of Julia's check raised the money question again. Ronnie wanted Aliette to use it immediately, to buy herself some clothes, to take a holiday. Aliette demurred.
"We can't stay here forever," she protested, eying the scratched wall-paper of their bedroom.
"I know, darling. But a boarding-house has its advantages. If we were to take a flat, who'd do the housework?"
"Caroline and I could manage that easily between us."
"I'd hate to see you doing housework."
"I might be some use scrubbing floors. I'm none at the moment."
"You are."
"I'm not. I'm only a drag on you."
So the game went on--the fact of their not being legally married and the sense of isolated responsibility which each felt for the other's happiness, making mountains out of every molehill.
Ever since the contretemps at Patrick O'Riordan's first-night--although his sense of family solidarity would have given much to admit his eldest son entirely in the right--Rear-Admiral Billy's sense of chivalry had been troubling him. From whatever angle he considered Hector's conduct, the cruelty of it was apparent. Moreover, he and Aliette had always been "jolly good pals," and he hated "parting brass-rags with the little woman" who, all said and done, had been perfectly "aboveboard."
Nor was it only this "aboveboardness" on the part of his daughter-in-law which worried the admiral, but the knowledge, acquired quite fortuitously, and therefore relegated to the background of his memory, of his son's first infidelity to her.
Always a religious man, though never a formal religionist, Rear-Admiral Billy worshiped a god of his own in his own way. But this god--a peculiar combination of the laws of cricket, navy discipline, family feeling, and sheer sentimentalism--found in Julia Cavendish's short, carefully worded note so insoluble a problem that within half an hour of its arrival the admiral sent his stable-boy on a bicycle to summon Adrian.
Adrian mounted his cock-throppled nag and rode over to Moor Park. Said Adrian, who knew his father better than most sons: "Naturally, sir, you won't go?"
Whereupon Adrian's father, after damning the episcopalian eyes for narrow-minded bigotry, dashed off a characteristic scrawl to say that, he "would take pleasure in calling on Mrs. Cavendish on the following Monday, December 30, at 3:30P.M."
It was exactly twenty-five years since "the young Mrs. Cavendish," whose second novel had already laid the foundation-stone of her literary reputation, danced the old-fashioned waltz with Commander Brunton of her Majesty's China Squadron, newly returned from foreign service; but the pleasant bygone meeting came back clearly to Julia's mind as she rose from her sofa to welcome the bearded figure in the cutaway coat and sponge-bag trousers.
This present meeting, both felt, was not going to be pleasant. On the contrary, it was going to be very awkward: its purpose presenting a social stile over which even their good breeding and the similarity of their castes must inevitably stumble.
However, after a good deal of finesse on Julia's part, and various high-falutin compliments from her visitor, the admiral managed to stumble over it first, with a gallant:
"Mrs. Cavendish, I fancy I've a pretty shrewd idea why you sent for me."
"It's nice of you to come to the point, admiral," said an equally gallant Julia; and then, taking opportunity by the forelock, "Your son isn't behaving very well, is he?"
The father in Rear-Admiral Billy bristled. "He's behaving within his rights. Your son hasn't behaved over-well, either."
"If you think that," the mother in Julia met brusquerie with brusquerie, "why did you come and see me?"
The sailor in Rear-Admiral Billy cuddled his beard. "Damned if I know why I came," he ejaculated. "We can'tdoanything, either of us. Young people are the very deuce. I don't know what your son's like, but mine's as obstinate as a mule."
"You've spoken to your son then?" The novelist in Julia could not restrain a smile at her opponent's incapacity as a diplomat.
"Spoken to him? Of course I've spoken to him. I've done nothing else but speak to him." The sailor waxed confidential. "But what's the use? Sons don't care a cuss about their fathers nowadays, nor about their mothers, either."
"I'm sure mine does."
"Don't you believe it. None of 'em care about their parents. They call us 'Victorians'--whatever that may mean. Ungrateful young puppies!"
Seeing her man mollified and disposed for confidences, Julia thought it best to let him "return to his muttons" in his own way.
"Nice little woman, Aliette," he said, apropos of nothing in particular. "Not like these up-to-date hussies."
"A charming woman, I call her."
"Pity her kicking over the traces like this."
"You're sorry for her, then?"
"Sorry for her? Of course I'm sorry for her. I'm sorry for any woman who makes a hash of things. But that"--the disciplinarian, finding that the luxurious room and the pleasant creature on the sofa were both affecting his judgment, momentarily revolted--"that don't alter facts. Marriage is marriage; and if your son runs away with my son's wife, you can't expect me to sympathize with either of 'em."
"But surely," Julia nearly purred, "surely, my dear admiral--sympathy apart--your son doesn't intend----"
"My dear lady,"--the disciplinarian in Billy subsided--"if I only knew what my son did intend, I might be able to help you. Whenever I try to talk to him about this business, he just shuts me up. What hasyourson got to say?"
And suddenly both of them began to laugh. Old age, the greatest tie in the world, made them for the moment peculiarly comrades. In the light of that comradeship, the young, even their own young, seemed less pathetic than to be envied. "After all," they thought, "it's all very sad; but it's worse for us than for them. They do get some fun out of these affairs. We don't. We only get the trouble; and we're too old for troubles."
"It isn't so much the scandal I mind," broke in the admiral, voicing their mutual idea; "it's the damned upset of the whole business. I like a quiet life, you know. And that seems the one thing one simply can't get nowadays. Not for love nor money."
For fully ten minutes they wandered away from the purpose in hand; discussing first their own era, then his profession, then her profession.
"Talking about books," said the admiral, "give me Surtees."
Truth to tell, the pair were rather enjoying themselves. Both belonged to the conversational school of an earlier day; and the flow of conversation was so satisfactory that--finally--it needed all Julia's strength of will, all her love for her son, to interpolate a crisp, "We don't seem to have come to any decision. You will try and do something, won't you, admiral?"
The sailor interrupted himself sufficiently to manage a courteous, "But, my dear lady, whatcanI do?"
"Couldn't you talk to your son again? Couldn't you tell him that he's doing himself just as much harm as he's doing his wife?"
"Ihavetold him that. He says he doesn't care."
"And your other son? You have another son, haven't you, a clergyman?"
"Oh, Adrian! Adrian's no good to us. Hector doesn't like him. Still,"--after all, thought the admiral, one really ought to do something for a woman who lived in Bruton Street--"I might get him to talk to Hector. I might even have another talk with Hector myself. But I'm afraid it'll be quite useless. You see, Mrs. Cavendish, neither of my sons is a man of the world. That's the whole trouble. Alie isn't a woman of the world, either. Between men and women of the world, these situations don't occur. At least, they didn't in our day. Not often."
"I rather agree with you. Still, we have to take life as we find it."
"Exactly, exactly." The old man waved a hairy-backed hand. "Nobody can say that I'm old-fashioned. Divorce don't mean what it did in my young days. And besides--I'm devilish fond of little Alie."
"Then I can rely upon your help?" smiled Ronnie's mother.
"Absolutely, dear lady, absolutely."
Ringing the bell for Kate to see her guest out, Julia Cavendish felt that she had at last found an ally; but the feeling was tinged with apprehension--reticence, she gathered, not being the admiral's strong point.
The admiral, making his way up Bruton Street, and along Berkeley Street toward his club, felt not only apprehensive but a trifle foolish. He had intended to be so very much on his dignity, so very much on his guard. Instead of which----
"That's a damn clever woman," he said to himself, half in admiration, half in annoyance. "An infernally clever woman. Wormed everything out of me, she did, just as if I'd been an innocent snotty. Not that I ever met an innocent snotty. Confound it, I've let myself in for something this trip. Have another talk with Hector! Made me promise that, she did."
For frankly, the admiral funked the idea of having another talk with Hector. One never knew how to tackle Hector. "Hector was such a damned unreasonable dumb-faced puppy!"
Cruising along Piccadilly, a mid-Victorian figure in the inevitable top-hat, with the inevitable white spats and the inevitable malacca cane, the admiral wondered whether he hadn't better get Simeon to tackle Hector, Adrian to tackle Hector, any one other than himself to tackle Hector--and so wondering, nearly rammed Hector's wife.
The meeting, completely unexpected, entirely unavoidable, flurried the parties. But the sailor recovered his wits first; and Aliette, wavering between the impulse to pass on without bowing and the desire to smile and fly, knew herself cornered. Automatically she extended a hand, which her father-in-law squeezed in a firm clasp.
"Hello, my dear, whither away?" he asked in his bluffest, heartiest manner.
"Nowhere in particular," answered Aliette shyly.
"Then you can walk me as far as the club." He took her arm and steered her masterfully along the pavement. It flashed across his mind, "Bless her heart, she didn't want to recognize me. After all, she is a lady. She is one of us."
"Quaint--our meeting this afternoon," he volunteered aloud.
"Why this afternoon, Billy?"
Billy thought, guiltily, "Perhaps I oughtn't to tell her," but the words were out of his mouth before thought could restrain them: "Because I've just come from Bruton Street."
"Bruton Street!" She panicked at that; and tried to release her arm. "Billy, I'm sure you oughtn't to be seen walking with me."
"Stuff and nonsense, my dear! Stuff and nonsense!" The old man, gripping her arm all the tighter, lowered his voice in conspiratorial sympathy. "We ain't either of us criminals. Why shouldn't we be seen walking together? Besides, you and I've got to have a little chat. Between you and me and the gatepost, Mrs. Cavendish has been asking my advice about things. Naturally, I had to tell her that I thought you'd behaved pretty badly to Hector. Still," he patted her arm blatantly, "that's no reason why Hector should behave badly to you, is it?"
And for a full five minutes--all the way from Devonshire House to the door of his club--chivalry had its way with Rear-Admiral Billy Brunton. He called her his "dear Alie," he assured her that he'd "fix up the whole business," and that she was to "rely upon him." He even managed to remember that she would like news of Miracle, and to inquire after Ponto.
Listening, Aliette's heart warmed. Billy seemed so hopeful, so sympathetic. And she needed both hope and sympathy that afternoon: for latterly the tension between her and Ronnie had become almost unbearable, vitiating every hour, accentuating the loneliness of outlawry, till outlawry--in comparison with retrogression from their standard of happiness--appeared only a trivial sorrow.
They arrived at the club. "Tell you what you'd better do," said Billy, "you'd better come in and drink a dish of tea. We've got a ladies room at the Jag-and-Bottle these days. Too early for a cocktail, I'm afraid. That's what you need. You're looking peaky."
"You're a dear, Billy," retorted Aliette, at last disengaging her arm. "But you mustn't be a silly dear. You know perfectly well that you can't takemein there"; and, cutting short the old man's protests, she bolted.
As he watched his daughter-in-law's fur-coated figure, the little shoes thereunder and the little hat a-top, recede from view up Piccadilly, chivalry still had its way with the sailor's sentimental soul. He had promised Julia Cavendish that he would tackle Hector--and, by jingo, hewouldtackle Hector.
So, navy discipline and the laws of cricket alike allotting him the role of knight-errant, he drew a fat watch from his fob-pocket, consulted it, waved the malacca at a crawling taxi-driver, ordered him peremptorily: "The Temple, Embankment entrance," and stepped aboard.
The admiral anchored his taxi on the Embankment; strode through the gates, up Middle Temple Lane, and across King's Bench Walk. David Patterson, rising superciliously from the desk in the outer office of Brunton's chambers to inquire a stranger's business in vacation-time, encountered a curt, "Tell my son that his father wants to see him," and disappeared within.
"What the devil doeshewant?" Hector Brunton looked up from a letter he was studying; rose to his big feet, and straddled himself before the fire as his subdued clerk ushered his father through the doorway.
"This is an unexpected honor, sir," said Hector Brunton, K.C.
The old man took off his top-hat, laid it among the papers on the desk; retained his malacca; and sat himself down pompously on an imitation mahogany chair.
"I've come to talk to you about your wife," he began tactlessly; and without more ado plunged into a recital of his interview with Julia Cavendish and his chance meeting with Aliette, concluding: "And if you take my advice, the best thing you can do is to start an action for divorce."
"As I told you before, sir," broke in the K.C., who had listened with restrained anger to his father's recital, "I regret I cannot take that advice." The hands trembled behind his back. "If I may say so, I consider that you've put me entirely in the wrong by calling on Mrs. Cavendish."
"Oh, you do, do you?" The old man, already sufficiently excited for one afternoon by his interview with the two ladies, felt his temper getting the better of him. "You do, do you? Well, I don't. Mrs. Cavendish is a very delightful woman. A woman of the world."
"Is that all you came to tell me, sir?" Hector's gray eyes smoldered.
"No, sir." The senior service beard bristled. "I came to have this matter out once and for all. I came to tell you that you're not behaving like a gentleman."
"So you said before, sir. And I repeat the answer I gave you then. I see no reason why I should behave like a gentleman to a wife who hasn't behaved like a lady."
"Two blacks don't make a white, Hector."
"Possibly." The K.C. gathered up the tails of his morning-coat, and sat down, as though to terminate the discussion.
But the old man, gloved hands glued on the handle of the malacca, stuck to his guns. "Black's black and white's white," he rumbled dogmatically. "You won't whitewash yourself by throwing mud at your wife. I didn'twantto go and see the Cavendish woman. I've always stood by my own and I always shall, so long as they stand by me. A man's first duty is to his family."
"Exactly my opinion, sir."
"Then why not act on it?" The admiral fumed. "D'you think this business is doingmeany good? D'you think it's nice for Adrian, or Simeon, or Simeon's wife, to hear you talked about all over London----"
"A man has his rights and I mean to assert mine. Let London talk if it likes." Aliette's husband spoke resolutely enough, yet he was conscious of a tremor in his voice. More and more now the thought of Aliette made him feel uncertain of himself. "Let London talk!" he repeated. "My wife's made a fool of me. She and young Cavendish between them have dragged my name in the dirt. May I remind you, sir, that it's your name, too----"
"All the more reason, then, to drag it out of the dirt. You won't do that by continuing to behave"--the sailor's rage got the better of him--"like a cad."
At that, Hector Brunton forgot himself. His left hand thumped furiously on the desk. "You tellmeI'm behaving like a cad, sir. What about this bastard Cavendish! What about the man who seduced my wife from her allegiance? He's the gentleman, I presume. Well--let the gentleman keep his strumpet----"
"By God, Hector"--the old man's eyes blazed,--"youarea cad."
The K.C. quaked at the red fury in his father's look. Weakly he tried to take refuge in silence; but the next words--words uttered almost of their own volition--stung him out of silence.
"Who are you to talk of keeping strumpets?"
"Sir----"
"Be quiet, sir. D'you take me for a fool? D'you think I don't know--d'you think London doesn't know"--the admiral's gall mastered him completely--"about the strumpetyoukept--kept without your wife's knowledge--kept in luxury for two years while other men were being killed----"
"Really, sir, I protest----"
"Protest then, and be damned to you. That's all you lawyers are fit for--protesting. Christ Almighty, you're worse than parsons. Talk of your rights, would you? Precious good care you took not to fight for other people's rights when you had a chance. Why, even Adrian----"
"I fail to see, sir----" Hector Brunton's face whitened, as the face of a man hit by a bullet whitens, at the taunt.
"You fail to see a good many things, sir." The admiral reached for his hat. "Allow me to tell you one of them--that the man who permits his wife to live with somebody else without taking any steps to get rid of her, is a common or gardenpimp."
And the senior service, having said considerably more than it intended, marched out of the door.
Left alone, the K.C.'s first feeling was relief. During the last weeks he had grown more and more resentful of his father's interference. And now he had finished with his father for good.
Nevertheless, the taunt about his war-service rankled. Rankled, too, the admiral's last sentence, "Get rid of her." "God, if only I could get her back," thought Hector; and so thinking, remembered, as born orators will remember past speeches, his opening in the Ellerson case, his impassioned defense of woman's right to free citizenship.
Then he remembered Renée. Renée had returned to England. How the devil had his father found out about Renée? Aliette, of course! Aliette must have told his father about Renée.
Hector's gorge rose. He took a cigar from the box on his desk, lit it, and began to stride slowly up and down the book-lined room. Alternatively he visioned Renée, greedy, compliant, satisfying to nausea, and Aliette--Aliette the ultra-fastidious, infinitely unsatisfying. His marriage to a woman of Aliette's temperament had been a mistake. A mistake! Best cut one's loss--best get rid of her. Best comply with his father's wishes. And yet--how desirable, how infernally and eternally desirable was Aliette.
The mood passed, leaving only rage in its wake. Curse Aliette! Curse his father! Curse the Cavendishes! How they would laugh if he yielded. They were all persecuting him, trying to break him. And "They sha'n't break me," he muttered; his teeth biting on the cigar till they met through the sodden leaf. "They sha'n't break me."
Hector returned to his desk, and tried to absorb himself once more in study. But his mind refused its office. It seemed to him as though there were a ghost in the room, the ghost of his wife. "I wonder if she ever thinks of me. I wonder if she ever sees me--as I see her," he thought. "As I am seeing her now."
That afternoon, however, there was no picture of her legal owner in Aliette's mind. For months he had been receding further and further into the background of her thoughts, till now he had become more a menace than a man. It surprised her, as she walked slowly up Piccadilly after her meeting with Hector's father, to realize how little Hector had ever mattered, how much--always--Ronnie. Ronnie would be glad perhaps, to hear of her meeting with the admiral.
"Dear old Billy!" she thought, "dear old Billy!" And thinking about him, a rare tinge of selfishness streaked her altruism. Suppose Billy succeeded! Suppose Hector really did set her free! How wonderful to be "respectable" again--to be done with the make-believe "Mrs. Cavendish" of Powolney Mansions, to be really and truly and legally Ronnie's! Always Ronnie had been splendid, loyalest of lovers; and yet--and yet--even in the shelter of a lover's arms one was conscious of outlawry, of the world's ostracism. What if, soon perhaps, the lover's arms were to be a husband's?
But at that, illusions burst as bubbles in the breeze. Once more the tension of the past days strung Aliette's mind to misery. She was an outlaw, a woman apart--a woman ostracized--worse, a woman who had failed her mate. Memory, killing illusions, cast itself back, remembering and exaggerating her every little unloving word, her every little unloving gesture, blaming her for them. "My fault," thought Aliette, "mine and mine only. I have been selfish to him. Utterly selfish. I've been--like I used to be with Hector."
Thought threw up its line, horrified at the comparison; and, abruptly conscious of every-day life, Aliette found herself in Berkeley Square. Automatically she turned down Bruton Street.
The mere name of the street--newly-painted in black block letters on gray stone--reminded her again of Billy, of Billy's visit to Julia Cavendish. At whose instigation, his own or hers, had the admiral visited Ronnie's mother? Hope rose again; but now, with hope, mingled despair. Had she so far failed Ronnie as to have forfeited his confidence?
Still walking automatically, Aliette found herself facing the mahogany door of Julia's house, and rang the bell.
"Yes," said Kate, "Mrs. Cavendish was at home, and alone. Would Mrs. Ronnie" (it was an understood thing in the basement of Bruton Street that Aliette should be referred to as "Mrs. Ronnie") "like some tea?"
"Thank you, Kate. That would be very nice." Aliette, unannounced, went slowly up the print-hung staircase; tapped on the drawing-room door; heard a faint "Come in"; and turned the handle.
Ronnie's mother lay on the sofa. She looked white, exhausted; but her lips framed themselves to a smile.
"I may come in, mayn't I?" Aliette's misery increased at the sight of her hostess's pallor. "Kate's promised to bring me some tea. I'm not disturbing you, am I?"
"My dear, you're always welcome. Come and sit here by me." Julia made place on the sofa, and Aliette sat down.
"I wonder why she came this afternoon," mused the elder woman. "I wonder if, by any chance, she can have found out. Awkward, if shehasfound it. Very awkward." But there was no tremor of guilt in her, "How's Ronnie?"
"Quite well, thank you."
"And you?"
"Oh, I'm all right. A little worried, that's all."
"Worried? What about?"
"Oh, various things."
Kate, bringing the tea, interrupted their conversation. Watching Aliette as she drank, Julia saw that the hands, usually so steady, trembled. "Can't you tell me about the worries?" she said kindly.
"There's nothing--really." Aliette's voice trembled as her hands. "Only I--I--met Hector's father just now. And somehow--it rather made me realize--my position."
"Did he tell you," Julia's courage fought with her fatigue, "that he'd been to see me?"
"He did." Aliette put down her tea-cup on the little mahogany stand. "May I know--did you send for him?"
"Yes. I sent for him." A smile. "You mustn't be angry with me."
"But why--why wasn't I told about it?"
"Then you are angry?" Another smile.
"Not angry. Only a little hurt."
"Hurt! Why? It was done in your interests." The old eyes looked into the young. "We thought that, if we consulted you, you mightn't allow it."
"We! Then Ronnie"--the young eyes looked into the old--"Ronnie knew. And he never told me--he never told me."
"It wasn't Ronnie's fault." Julia laid a hand on Aliette's shoulder.
At the touch, it seemed to the younger woman as though all the misery of the past days stabbed to one dagger-point of pain. Jealousy wrenched at her tongue. She wanted to cry out, "Oh, you're cruel, cruel. Why can't you tell me the truth, the truth?" But the pain stabbed her dumb; stabbed and stabbed till her mind was one unbearable tension of self-torture. Ronnie no longer loved her. Ronnie only wanted to do his duty by her. And it was her own fault, her very own, ownest fault, for not having loved him enough.
And then, suddenly, the tension snapped--leaving her weak, defenseless.
"You're so good--so much too good to me," faltered Aliette. "So infinitely better than I deserve. If only--if only I hadn't brought all this trouble into your life."
"Nonsense, child," said Julia bruskly--for, despite her own weariness, she recognized hysterics in the other's voice.
"It isn't nonsense. I've brought you only troubles--troubles."
"Don't be foolish. The troubles, as you call them, are nothing. Nothing at all in comparison with Ronnie's happiness."
"Happiness!" Now hysteria was blatant in the other's every word. "Happiness! HowcanI make him happy? I can't--can't even make a home for him. All I've done is to--to let him keep me--in a--in a boarding-house."
"You're overtired, child. Overwrought. Otherwise you wouldn't talk like that." The brusquerie had given place to a quiet understanding tenderness; the hand tightened on Aliette's shoulder. "I tell you, you have brought happiness into our lives. Into Ronnie's life and into mine. Nothing that either of us could ever do----"
"But I'm not worth it. I'm not worth it." Tear-choked, Aliette seized Julia's hand and pressed it to her lips. "I've been rotten--rotten to your son. That's why he didn't tell me about Billy."
"Rubbish!" Resolutely the elder woman withdrew her hand. "Utter rubbish! It was entirely my fault that you weren't told about the admiral."
"Your fault?" A ray of hope illumined the brown eyes.
"Yes. Ronnie wanted you to know. But I overpersuaded him."
Silently the blue eyes held the brown, till--gradually--self-control came back to Aliette; till--gradually--she realized the tension gone from her brain.
"I'm sorry," she began. "I don't often make scenes."
"My dear"--exhausted, Julia lay back on the cushions--"you needn't apologize. No one understands better than I that life isn't altogether easy for you. But don't lose your pluck. Believe me, it'll all come out right now that we have the admiral on our side."
"Billy hasn't much influence over Hector." There was no fear, only certainty in the statement. "Hector's so vain. It's his vanity, only his vanity that prevents him from giving me my freedom."
"One day he'll be forced to give you your freedom. But," of a sudden, anxiety crept into Julia's tired voice, "if he doesn't? What if he doesn't give you your freedom, child?"
"Even if he doesn't,"--proudly, all the misery of the past days forgotten, Aliette took up the unspoken challenge--"even if he never does,"--proudly, all her being resuffused with happy courage, she rose to her feet--"it will make no difference. Whatever happens, I shall always be your son's--I shall always be Ronnie's."
And bending down, she sealed the promise with a farewell kiss--a kiss whose memory lingered with Julia long after Aliette had gone, comforting her against the prescience which had prompted that unspoken challenge, even against the prescience of death.