Even average people, when obsessed by the grand passion--which is a far rarer passion among Anglo-Saxons than Anglo-Saxon novelists would have us believe--cannot be judged by average standards. Such are as surely bound to the wheels of terror as to the wheels of courage. In such, strength and weakness, misery and ecstasy, love's heaven and love's hell, mingle as wax and honey in the comb. For the grand passion is the sublime exaggerator of human emotion, the indefinable complex of the soul.
So, to Aliette, returning from her interview with Julia, it seemed as though London's self had altered its countenance, as though every face encountered on her homeward way spoke of her own newly-regained happiness. Her momentary change of feeling toward Ronnie had been trivial; an undercurrent of misunderstanding rather than an overt quarrel. Yet the relief of knowing it over was tremendous.
She found him huddled in the armchair before the gas-fire; Ponto, surreptitiously introduced into Powolney Mansions, couched at his feet. He rose as she entered; and the great dog, wagging a delighted stern, rose with him. In a flash of new insight, she saw how alike they were: the big man and the big dog--devoted both, both asking only kindness. And whimsically she thought: "I've been unkind to both of them. I ought to have gone to see Ponto when he was ill. I ought never to have let myself drift away, even in thought, from Ronnie."
As always, Ponto nuzzled his great head against her knee; Ronnie, as always, kissed her. But that night, as never since Chilworth nights, Aliette answered Ronnie's kisses, giving him all her confidence, all her tenderness.
"No more quarrels, man. No more secrets," she whispered drowsily, falling to sleep in his arms.
"Quarrels, darling?" he whispered back. "We couldn't really quarrel--you and I."
And after that, for many a day, their rose-bubble of enchantment--the frail yet impermeable magic of the grand passion--reblew itself about those twain, isolating them from their fellows, making even Powolney Mansions a paradise.
For many a day neither spiritual nor material troubles clouded the bright mirror of their joint happiness. Scarcely conscious of the discomforts in which they lived; utterly unconscious of the nascent hostility--a hostility based on some rumor which had arisen none knew whence and was tending none knew whither--among their fellow-boarders; careless alike of financial difficulties, of outlawry, and of ostracism, they went their way among their uncaring kind.
The high courts were closed; and so far, despite the promises of John Cartwright, neither county nor police courts afforded Ronnie a single brief. Wherefore he and Aliette made holiday together, with London for their playground. Wandering, Ponto at heel, her streets and her parks, her squares and her terraces, they knew the keen radium of London's morning, her smoke-gray half-lights, the red-gold radiance of her dimmed sunsets, the first out-twinkle of her street-lamps, faintly green against a faintly violet sky, her high evening arcs, and the long lit saffron parallels of her mysterious nights.
And one day, wandering casually beside London's river, wandering, to be exact, through Fulham and over Putney Bridge, they knew that, by sheerest accident, they had found them a home.
To a Lady Hermione or a Lady Cynthia, Embankment House, a great red building-block which overlooks the Thames, would have been the last word in discomfort. Except for the automatic lift (into which Ronnie, Aliette, Ponto, and the uniformed porter who showed them over, squeezed only as asparagus into a tin), and the gas-cooker left in the tiny top-floor kitchen by an absconding tenant, no luxuries whatsoever ameliorated the bareness of Flat 27, Block B. It was, in fact, hardly more than the model working-man's tenement of its original builder's dream. But since it possessed five tolerable rooms, the possibility of installing a geyser bath, and, above all things, its own front door, they decided instantaneously on its acquirement, seeking out the secretary of the house and paying the requisite deposit of a quarter's rent that very afternoon.
So excited were both at the prospect of domestic privacy, so engrossed with their plans for expending Julia's Christmas present to best advantage, that two incidents which--at any other time--would have been of immense importance, passed almost unnoticed. The first of these incidents was Rear-Admiral Billy's written confession of failure, and the second--"the scandal of Powolney Mansions." For the rumor which had arisen none knew whence, the rumor that "Mrs. Cavendish wasn't really Mrs. Cavendish at all, but the wife of a well-known society man who refused to divorce her," at last blew so strongly thatMonsieur(who before the war would have called himselfHerr) Mayer, proprietor of the Mansions, felt himself finally obliged to take notice of it.
"Of course, I ask you no questions, Mr. Cavendish," said Monsieur Mayer, seated undistinguished at the dusty desk in his private office. "Of course I ask you and your wife no questions. Your private affairs are your private affairs. But in a boarding-house it is not always possible to keep one's private affairs private; and there has been talk, much talk. That Miss Greenwell, she who have No. 26, and pay less than any one in the house, she gossip all the time. She gossip about you and Mrs. Cavendish. For my part," he waved a deprecatory hand, "I know it is only gossip. I make no suggestion. To me, so long as you pay your bill at the end of the week, it is all right."
To which Ronnie, in his most cautious legal manner, retorted:
"If Miss Greenwell or any of your other guests wish to make imputations against myself or my wife, I shall be glad if they will make them to me personally"--and promptly gave a fortnight's notice.
"Dash the fellow's impertinence." he laughed to Aliette, when he reported the interview. "There's no law in England to stop you from calling yourself Mrs. Cavendish." But Aliette, looking up from the wall-paper pattern-book she was studying, did not laugh; because intuitively she knew the power behind Miss Greenwell's throne.
"Hector's doing," she thought. "Somehow or other he must have put the tale about." And in that moment, for the first time, she began to despise her legal owner.
There was neither fear nor hate in her despising; only disdain and a crystallization of courage. That Hector should try to hurt her man financially seemed unsporting enough; but this latest secret effort to drive them shelterless into the streets of London put him, in her eyes, definitely beyond the pale.
All the same, for the last fortnight of their stay, "Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish" more than ever eschewed the public apartments and "congenial society" of Powolney Mansions.
Meanwhile, for the only character in our story who was not directly concerned with the feud of the Bruntons and the Cavendishes--to wit, Betty Masterman--the average metropolitan life went on. Betty Masterman, however, treating her self-invited guest with that lavish hospitality which provides bed and board without asking even companionship in exchange, lunching out, dining out, dancing and theatering, visiting and being visited by a horde of acquaintances, knew a good deal more about the progress of the feud than she confided to Mollie, and vastly more than Mollie confided to her.
Betty knew, for instance, that Hector Brunton, had it not been for the now full-blown scandal of his wife's desertion, would have been offered his knighthood; that Julia Cavendish, for the identical reason, had not been made a dame of the British Empire; that Dot Fancourt who, it was rumored, had been captured in betrothal by a middle-aged spinster of markedly reactionary views, never tired of lamenting "dear Julia's mistaken devotion to her son"; and that Sir Peter Wilberforce, whose baronetcy had been duly announced in the New Year's honors, was more than anxious thathisson should get married.
To the grass-widow, it must be confessed, the feud itself seemed as petty as its ramifications ludicrous. Her own affair--the affair of the known husband who wrote every month from Toowoomba, Queensland, and the unknown lover who wrote almost every day from Queen's Gate, London--had always been one of those semi-public secrets which leave no speck upon the escutcheon. Aliette's method, therefor, appeared in her estimation foolish--though not quite so unnecessarily foolish as the scruples which prevented Mollie Fullerford from accepting the obvious heart and equally obvious hand of her Jimmy.
"Sorry, dear," Betty used to say, "but I can't see it. Either you're in love with the man or you're not. If youarein love with him, why on earth don't you marry him? He's got plenty of money; you've got a little money; and until you're tired of one another it ought to be ideal."
"You needn't be so beastly cynical," Mollie, ignorant of Queen's Gate, used to protest. "Just because your own marriage wasn't a success, there's no reason why mine shouldn't be. But I'm not going to marry Jimmy until he's arranged things between Alie and her husband."
"Suppose he can't arrange them, my dear?"
"Of course he can arrange them if he really wants to. He's a lawyer."
"You absolutely refuse to marry him until he does?"
"Absolutely."
Despite which repeated assurance, Mollie Fullerford knew that her decision weakened daily. It was all very well to pretend to Jimmy when he called, as he constantly did call, that there could be no hope for him until her wishes had been carried out; all very well, for the moment, to be reluctant in hand-clasps, grudging with kisses. But "that sort of thing" couldn't go on. It wasn't--Aliette's phrase--"dignified."
And besides--she felt herself growing far too fond of Jimmy for half-love. She wanted Jimmy; wanted him very badly; wanted him worse than she had ever wanted anything in her life. In point of fact--it had come to that now--she couldn't "jolly well live without Jimmy"; and would undoubtedly have yielded to Jimmy's persistence before the spring, had it not been for Eva Martin's interference.
That resolute lady of the cold blue eyes, the fading gold hair, and the hard unpleasant hands came to London early in January with the avowed intention of "putting matters straight once and for all." With Aliette, invited to luncheon at the Ladies' Army and Navy Club (irreverently known as "Arms and Necks" to junior subalterns), she failed completely, Ronnie's "wife" refusing, tight-lipped, even to discuss the situation. But with Mollie the sisterly machinations attained, in some slight degree, their trouble-making objective.
"You see, my dear," said the colonel's lady, "you're such a child that one really oughtn't to take you into one's confidence at all. But unfortunately this sort of thing can't be glossed over. In a way, I need hardly tell you, I'm very sorry for poor Alie. When I compare my own Harold with her Hector, I realize Hector's inferiority. All the same,"--this last with both elbows firmly on the tea-table--"the only course to be pursued, believe me, is for Aliette to return to her husband."
"But that would be perfectly beastly," retorted Mollie, the mild antagonism she had always felt for Eva turning to intensest dislike.
"Beastly or not," decided the colonel's lady, with some asperity, "it's the only thing to be done." And she added, with that bitter-sweetness which made Colonel Harold Martin look back upon the western front during the great war as the only peaceful place he had ever known: "Let me remind you, dear child, that there isn't only Alie to be considered. There are your own chances. You'll want to be getting married one of these days, and naturally, no man in a good position----"
The sentence trailed off into a silence as suggestive as the atmosphere Eva left behind her when she trailed out of Betty Masterman's flat; so strengthening the girl's weakened decision that Jimmy Wilberforce, who dropped in half an hour later to plead his own and his baronet father's cause, found himself confronted with a white face, a pair of haggard eyes, and the tense ultimatum, "Jimmy, I'll marry you the day Hector sets Alie free, but not a day before."
England has not yet quite forgotten the "Bournemouth Tragedy" during which Hector Brunton, who led for the Crown, first became known to the public as the "hanging prosecutor."
The charge against Mrs. Cairns was murder; and for days no newspaper dared to omit a single comma from its reports of the case. For days Hector's bewigged photograph blazed on the back page of the "Daily Mail" and the front page of the "Sunday Pictorial"; for days England abandoned itself to the raptest scrutiny of Dr. Spilsbury's and other experts' evidence anent the poisonous properties of a certain arsenical face lotion with which--the "hanging prosecutor" alleged--Mrs. Cairns had doctored her dead husband's whisky; and to speculations, ruminations, discussions, and wagers as to the probable fate of Mrs. Cairns.
During those days, that epitome of England, Powolney Mansions, oblivious alike of reconstruction, strikes, German indemnities, the Irish question, and the "scandal of Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish," demanded only to know whether Mrs. Cairns would dare to face Hector Brunton's cross-examination; whether, cross-examination concluded, Hector Brunton would succeed in securing a verdict of "guilty" against Mrs. Cairns; and whether Mrs. Cairns, having been found guilty, would be hanged by the neck until she was dead or incarcerated for the period of her natural life--which period, Miss Greenwell informed Monsieur Mayer, was limited to twenty years with the remission of one quarter the sentence for good conduct.
"She'll be out in fifteen years," said Miss Greenwell, when, some ten days after the conclusion of the trial, the home secretary's remission of the death penalty was duly announced, "and she'll still be a young woman."
"I," retorted Monsieur Mayer, "do not believe that she was guilty at all. If it had not been for 'Ector Brunton----"
"And that reminds me," began Miss Greenwell--but by then the lovers were already away.
Consciously and subconsciously, the success and theréclameof the "hanging prosecutor" infuriated Ronnie. Always he hated the man, but now, every time he saw H. B.'s face staring at him from the newspapers, a new thought, the thought of his own meagerly employed talents, talents of which he had begun to feel more and more surely confident, rankled. Even in the "ridiculous flat" (he and Aliette christened it the "ridiculous flat" in the same way that Orientals always refer to their most cherished possessions as things of no account) he felt himself a failure.
Yet the flat's self was an indubitable success--a home of their own--very symbol of mated unity.
Julia Cavendish herself, too weak, with a curious lethargy of which Heron Baynet alone knew the exact cause, to pay more than one visit to Flat 27, Block B, Embankment House, admitted it "passable." At her suggestion Aliette had decided on using a beige wall-paper, almost identical with the one at Jermyn Street, throughout; on Ronnie's Chippendale and Ronnie's eighteenth century engravings (removed almost by force from Moses Moffatt's) for the tiny flame-curtained dining-room. Ronnie's ascetic bedroom furniture she relegated to Caroline Staley, providing him in its stead with hanging-cupboards craftily and cheaply contrived in the wall-spaces either side his dressing-room fireplace.
For the sitting-room (christened by Aliette the "parlor"), the tiniest box of French simplicity combined with English comfort; and for their communal chamber, with its tester bed and its short purple curtains, Julia's Christmas check provided the adornment. But it was only by adding some of her own income that Aliette, faced with and realizing for the first time the petty troubles of home-making with one servant, could install the electric kitchenette, the Canadian "cook's table," the gas-fires and the tiled hearths, the Califont hot-water system which functioned automatically as soon as one turned the taps, the Hoover vacuum-sweeper, and all those other labor-saving devices which people who really need them can never afford.
Despite all of which, the "ridiculous flat" had its discomforts, not least of them being the impossibility of sleeping Ponto on the exiguous premises.
"Man," asked Aliette dubiously, as they finally drove away, luggage on taxi, from a curiously incurious Powolney Mansions, "whatarewe going to do with him?"
"The Lord knows, my dear," laughed Ronnie. "People who elope have no right to take Great Danes with them."
"I suppose we ought to get rid of him. He's very expensive."
However, neither of them had the heart to part with the beast; and eventually they found quarters for him in a little side-street off the Hammersmith Road.
From their very first meal together, faultlessly cooked and faultlessly served by Caroline Staley--as glad as she to be free from boarding-housedom; all through February and well into March, Aliette's home-life was one long ecstasy, marred only by her growing anxiety about Julia's health and a vague suspicion that Ronnie "worried." Looking back from the safe coziness of the "ridiculous flat" on the long months they had wasted in Powolney Mansions, it seemed impossible that they should ever have been "boarding-house people," ever have tolerated the uncleanliness, the unhomeliness, the gossip, and the monotony of Monsieur Mayer's establishment.
And by the end of March even Ronnie's "worries" seemed to have disappeared. For John Cartwright's promises had more than materialized; and though the briefs were rarely marked higher than "Two guineas," the work they entailed kept Ronnie from brooding.
Despite his whimsical grumblings at being forced to leave her alone all day, Aliette knew that her man, growing hourly more ambitious for success, saw prospects of it in this strange employment. Coming back of a late afternoon, he would lounge into the parlor, kiss her, accept the tea Caroline Staley never failed to bring him, light his pipe, and talk at length about his petty triumphs at the Old Bailey or Brixton.
Once, even, he showed her his name in a press-report, with a smiled "I'm getting quite a reputation among the criminal classes. Soon there won't be a pickpocket within the metropolitan radius who doesn't regard me as his only hope of salvation. They call me 'Cut Cavendish,' I believe. Hope you haven't had too dull a day, darling."
But Aliette's days were never dull. The hours when Ronnie was away from her "defending his pickpockets" passed all too swiftly for accomplishment of the manifold trivialities which ministered to his comfort. Literally "she never had a moment to sit down."
So soon as he had left for his chambers (he hated seeing her do housework, and so she used to maintain the pretense of idleness until she heard the front door close, and the gate of the automatic lift clink to behind him), Caroline Staley--grown, as all servants, somewhat dictatorial in her old age--would demand help in the making of the bed, demand that her mistress sally forth to wrangle with the milkman or impress upon the butcher the alien origin of the previous day's joint.
These wrangles provided Aliette, hitherto immune from the petty worries of the average woman and now almost completely isolated from her kind, with a certain amusement. Returned from them, she helped lay her own table for luncheon; and, luncheon over, busied herself with the darning of stockings, with the cleaning of special pieces of silver, or with some other of the thousand and one tasks which your really class-conscious domestic, whose master is waited on hand and foot, always manages to leave to her master's wife. So that if, as at least once a week, Aliette felt it her duty to visit Julia Cavendish, it meant a rush for tube or omnibus, and a second rush homewards in time to dress for dinner--"dressing for dinner" being a shibboleth on which both lovers insisted as their "last relic of respectability."
And even if her days had been dull, the evenings would have made their dullness worth while. Those evenings! Their one servant abed. She and her man alone together, isolated high above London--solitary--safe--not even the telephone to connect them with their kind: Ronnie, pipe between his lips, his face tired yet happy in the glow of the fire, his long limbs outstretched, his lips moving rarely to speech; Aliette, some unread novel on her lap, the light of the reading-lamp a-shimmer on her dimpled shoulders, on the vivid of her hair and the vivid of her eyes; Aliette, pleasantly wearied of body, pleasantly vacuous of thought, speaking rarely as her mate, utterly happy in his silent company, so happy that all the terrors of her past life with Hector seemed like a nightmare dreamed long since in girlhood and remembered in maturity only as foolishness.
Nevertheless, as London March blew chilly toward London April, Aliette again grew fearful. Try as she would to elude them, moments came when she craved so desperately for maternity that Ronnie's very passion seemed a reproach. And in those moments her imagination fashioned itself children--a boy-child and a girl-child--Dennis and Etta--dream-babies who would bind her man to her forever and forever.
Ronnie, too, had his moments of fear, of hope, of dreamery. But for the most part they were a silent couple; and only once did either give voice to their secret thoughts. Then it was Ronnie, who said with one of his whimsical smiles:
"You've no idea, Alie, what an orator I'm getting to be. If only I could get one really big case. A murder trial, for instance. But one needs luck for that!"
So the equable days went by.
April came; and, to Aliette, the fret of spring. More and more with every opening bud, with every deepening of the green leaf-haze along the river-bank below her windows, she yearned for children--for Ronnie's children. Her body gave no sign; but already, as though for warning, her mind was pregnant with a new power, the power of prophetic imagination which comes only to the isolated.
Sometimes--as when, after one of Mollie's rare visits, it showed her sister married to Wilberforce--this new power pleased Aliette; sometimes, playing about Hector, it frightened her. But always it made her restless; so that, abandoning more and more of her household duties to Caroline Staley, she walked again with Ponto, as she had walked in the old days when Ronnie was not yet hers.
Fulham Park knew the pair of them--and Barnes Common--and Putney Heath. Down the myriad streets that lead away from the river to the unexplored south of London they wandered as far as Shadwell Wood and Coombe Wood and Richmond Park. And always, from those walks, Aliette returned thoughtful; for now, as imagination pictured more and more clearly the fate of Dennis and of Etta should those dream-children be at last made real, there waxed in her the determination to strike the one last possible blow for legal freedom.
Hitherto pride, and to a certain extent the fear of still further exasperating him, had prevented her from making any personal move in Hector's direction. Hitherto she had acquiesced in the policy that others--Ronnie, Julia, the admiral, James Wilberforce--should fight for her. But all these had failed!
And, "Surely," thought Aliette, "surely it is my duty to conquer this pride, to put aside these fears, to meet him face to face."
But, despite the assurances of the imaginative power--which showed her herself resolute against Hector, reasoning with Hector, remonstrating with Hector, finally shaming Hector into giving her her freedom--Aliette could not bring herself to ask even the favor of an interview. Three separate times she sat down to the little satin-wood desk in the parlor, three separate times she took pen in hand; but each time determination failed at mere sight of the first uncompromising "Dear" on the tinted note-paper. Pride and her disdain for the man, courage and fear alike forbade her to cross that Rubicon.
"I'm a fool," she said to herself, "a fool and a funk. For Ronnie's sake, for the sake of Ronnie's mother, even for my own sake I ought to write. But I can't--I just can't." And the pen would drop from her nerveless fingers, leaving her soul prey to that utter despondency which only the prophetically imaginative suffer.
Meanwhile, the imaginative powers of another woman--powers so infinitely better trained than Aliette's that their least effort could formulate the written word--were concentrating on Hector Brunton. To Julia Cavendish, ever since the Bournemouth Tragedy, the mere name had become an obsession. Despite her growing prescience of death, despite the lethargy which every day made more potent over her limbs, the old lady's mind throbbed with activity. That tiniest protoplasm of a plan which she had conceived on Christmas day spored under her thoughts as coral-blossoms spore under the sea; till her brain, mistress of the written word, saw itself join issue with the brain of Hector Brunton, master of the word spoken--and defeat it.
"There is one weapon," thought Julia Cavendish, "one sure weapon with which I can pierce his armor." Yet somehow her hand tarried in the forging of that weapon, as though the moment were not yet come.
The "ridiculous flat" held one supreme joy--the finest view which a Londoner may have of London. From its parlor window, of a day, one could survey all the city--from Putney Church to St. Paul's, from Chiswick Mall where once red-heeled gallants tripped it with the ladies of St. James's, to Keats's Hampstead and the dim blue of Highgate.
At that window, on an April evening, Aliette and her lover stood to contemplate the pageant which Thames and town proffered nightly for their delight. Dusk had fallen, masking the river-pageant with a cloak of indigo and silver. Northward, a saffron shimmer under murky skies, lay London. Westward, the river dwindled out between its fringing lamps to darkness and the misty fields.
"Time for bed," said Ronnie practically. He made to close the curtains, but Aliette restrained him.
"Not yet, man."
"Why? Aren't you sleepy?"
Aliette made no answer. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her eyes were all for the pageant below; her ears all for the faint hum of the city which mounted, drowsily murmurous, to their high apartment. And after a little while, knowing the need for solitude upon her, Ronnie tiptoed away.
Aliette was hardly conscious of his going. It seemed to her as though--in that moment--she were aloof from him, from all men; as though her soul, wandering free, mingled with myriads of other souls whom night had liberated from their earthly bodies to hover above the city.
The little French clock on the mantelpiece ticked and ticked. Hardly she heard it ticking. The earthly minutes passed and passed, flowing under her, flowing away into the ocean of time as the river-flood flows away into the oceans of the sea. From below came sound of London's clocks chiming the quarters.
Thought died in her brain. Only the imaginative power was alive. Imagination's self died. Only her soul was alive. And, with her soul, she dreamed a dream.
She dreamed that her letter to Hector had been written, that Hector had answered it. She saw herself setting out to meet him. He had sent his car to fetch her from Embankment House. She saw herself stepping into the car. It was their old car; but the man whose back she could see through the plate-glass of the cabriolet was not their old chauffeur. "I wonder what his name is," she thought.
The car set out, noiseless. It left Embankment House behind; it crossed Putney Bridge. It came, between miles and miles of utterly empty streets, into London. A peculiar grayness, neither of the night nor of the day, a peculiar silence, almost a silence of death, brooded over London. No lights gleamed from its ghostly houses; no feet, no wheels echoed on its ghostly paving.
The car spun on, noiseless--beyond the ghostly gray into ghostly green--and now it seemed to Aliette as though the time were twilight-time; as though she were in Hyde Park; as though in a few minutes she would make the remembered door in Lancaster Gate.
"Hector's house," she thought. And the thought frightened her. She wanted not to go to Hector. She wanted Ronnie--her Ronnie. But the car spun on.
Now, faltering and afraid, she stood before the door of her husband's house. Now the door opened; and Lennard, subservient as ever, led her into the recollected hall.
Lennard vanished; and suddenly Aliette's soul knew its dream for dream.
Then the dream grew real again. Fearful and alone she stood in the chill vastness of that shadowy hall among the recollected furniture. She felt her breasts throbbing under the thin frock, felt her knees tremble as she grasped the door-handle of Hector's study.
No lights burned in the study. It was all gray, gray as the streets without. Hector was not there--only a face--a huge, cruel, unrelenting face.
"So you've come back," it said.
She moved toward the face, across the gray carpet that gave back no sound to her feet. But she could not speak with the face. Between her and the face--as a great sheet of glass--slid silence, the interminable unbearable silence of dreams. Through the glass, Aliette could see every pore in the great face, every hair of its head; but she might not speak with it, nor it with her. Then a voice, a voice as of very conscience, cried out in her: "Your strength against its strength. Your will against its will."
She felt her will beat out from her as wings beat, beat and batter at the glass between them. The glass of silence slid away; and she knew the face for Hector's. She said to it:
"Hector, I haven't come back. I'm never coming back."
"You shall," said the face, Hector's face; and now, under the face, she knew feet, her husband's feet.
At that, terror, the hopeless panic of dreams, gripped her soul by the throat, choking down speech. It seemed to her that she stood naked in that gray and silent room.
But now, as a momentary beam through the grayness, another face--the face of her lover--was added to their silent company. And again, "Your will against its will," said the voice.
Terror's fingers unclutched from her throat, so that her will spoke, "I shall never come back, Hector."
The face writhed at the words as a face in pain; and suddenly, knowing herself its master, she knew pity for the face, pity for the thing she had done. Till once more she heard the inner voice whisper: "No pity. Your strength against its strength. Your will against its will."
"ButIlove you," pleaded Hector. "I need you."
She said to him, "My children need me, Hector. Set me free."
And once more the glass of the silences slid between them; once more the interminable, unbearable silence of dreams held her speechless.
Tap, tap, tap. Who was that knocking on Hector's door? It must be Ronnie. Tap, tap, tap. Ronnie mustn't come in. Ronnie mustn't find her and Hector alone together.
The glass darkled. Behind the glass Aliette could see Hector's face blur and blur. The face vanished. She was alone, alone in Hector's study. She was cold, desperately cold through all her limbs.
Tap, tap, tap. She heard a voice, a human voice: "Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Cavendish. Are you there, Mr. Cavendish? You're wanted on the 'phone, Mr. Cavendish."
Abruptly, as the strung ball snaps back to its wooden cup, Aliette's soul returned to its body.
Waking, she knew that she had fallen asleep by the open window; that somebody was knocking on the outer door of the flat, somebody who called insistently, "Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Cavendish. I've a message for you, Mr. Cavendish."
Her heart thumping, her head still muzzy with dreams, Aliette ran across the sitting-room, out into the hall; unchained, unlatched the door. The night-porter stood before her. His shirt was open at the neck; she could see the veins in his throat throb to his words: "Is your husband awake, madam? He's wanted on the telephone. His mother's house. It's very urgent."
"Mr. Cavendish is asleep." Aliette's heart still thumped, but she spoke quietly enough. "I'll go and wake him. Wait here, please."
She darted back to the door of their bedroom; knocked; opened. The light by the bed still burned, showing her lover's face just roused from the pillow.
"Am I wanted?" he asked.
"Yes, dear." Aliette controlled her nerves. "Bruton Street's asking for you on the telephone. I'm afraid your mother's been taken ill."
"I'll be down in a second." He was out of bed and into his dressing-gown before she could stop him. She thought, "If it's bad news, he'll have to go to Bruton Street. He'll have to get dressed." She said, "You'd better get some clothes on. I'll go down and find out exactly what's the matter."
After a second's hesitation, he decided, "You're right"; and made for his dressing-room. Aliette went back to the outer door. The night-porter still waited. She asked him, "Who telephoned?"
"A servant, I think."
"Did she say why she wanted to speak to my husband?"
"No. Only that it was very urgent."
"Is the lift still working?"
"Yes, madam."
"Then I'll come down immediately."
Aliette's mind, as she followed the slippered man along the cold stone corridor to the lift-shaft, worked rapidly. If Julia Cavendish had been taken ill--and obviously Julia Cavendish must have been taken ill--the sooner she and Ronnie got to Bruton Street the better.
She asked the porter, "What's the time?"
He told her, "Three o'clock."
"Can you get me a taxi?"
"I'll do my best, madam."
The lift was working badly. The slowness fretted her imagination. Suppose Julia Cavendish were--more than ill; suppose she were--dead?
At last they reached the ground-floor. The night porter, flinging back the iron gates, let her out and made for the street. Aliette, running to the telephone-box, picked up the receiver.
"I want to speak to Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Ronald Cavendish. Is that Mr. Cavendish?" Kate's voice sounded stupid, excitable, over the wire.
"No, it's Mrs. Cavendish. Is that Kate?"
"Yes, Mrs. Ronnie."
"Mr. Cavendish will be down in a minute. What's the matter?"
"Mrs. Cavendish has been taken ill. She's very bad indeed. She told us to telephone for Mr. Ronnie."
"You telephoned for a doctor?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Ronnie. We did that first thing. But Sir Heron's out of town."
"Then you should have telephoned to another doctor."
"We never thought of that." Obviously the maid had lost her head. "We thought we'd better telephone Mr. Ronnie first. That's what she said we was to do."
"Wait." Aliette thought swiftly. "Isn't there a doctor in Bruton Street?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Ronnie. Dr. Redbank."
"You'd better send for him immediately. Don't waste time telephoning. Go yourself. . . . And, Kate, you can tell Mrs. Cavendish that Mr. Ronald and myself will be round in less than half an hour. Can you give me any idea what's the matter with Mrs. Cavendish?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Ronnie, but Smithers says she's very bad indeed. Smithers says she woke up with her mouth full of blood. Smithers says she doesn't know how she managed to ring her bell----"
The parlor-maid would have gone on talking, but Aliette cut her short with a curt: "You're to go and fetch the doctor, Kate. You're to go and fetch him at once. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mrs. Ronnie."
Aliette hung up the receiver; turned to find Ronnie, apparently full dressed, at her side; explained things to him in three terse sentences; saw his face blanch; ran for the lift; swung-to the lift-gate; pressed the automatic button; reached her own floor, her own flat; twitched a fur coat from its peg; remembered something Mollie had once told her about hemorrhages; darted into the kitchen; snatched what she wanted from the refrigerator; wrapped a dish-cloth about it; darted back to the lift.
Downstairs, Ronnie waited impatiently. "The taxi's here," he said.
They leaped into the taxi.
The shock of unexpected ill-news held both lovers rigid, speechless, as their vehicle, an old one, rattled and bumped over Putney Bridge; and when at last Aliette spoke it was of those trivial things with which human beings console themselves against the threat of disaster. "How on earth did you manage to get dressed so quickly?"
"The old school trick." Ronnie masked his anxiety with the semblance of a laugh. "Trousers and an overcoat." But sheer anxiety forced the next words to his lips. "What do you think can have happened?"
"From what Kate said, it sounded as though your mother had had a hemorrhage."
"A hemorrhage," repeated Ronnie. And then, under his breath, as though trying to convince himself, "But she can't have had a hemorrhage."
The taxi rattled on down a gray and empty King's Road, bringing back to Aliette's mind the memory of that other drive she had taken in vision-land.
"What's that?" asked Ronnie suddenly, pointing to the dish-cloth at her feet.
"Ice. There's just a chance they won't have any."
They swung out of King's Road into Sloane Street. Under the lights of Knightsbridge, Ronnie, looking sideways at his mate, marveled at the composure of her face; marveled that her brain should have acted so swiftly in crisis. His own brain felt impotent, dumb. His heart hung like a nodule of ice in his breast. The nodule of ice sank into his bowels, turning his bowels to water. The Wixton imagination pictured his mother helpless, in agony. He thought, "Suppose we're too late. My God, suppose we're too late."
"I don't expect there's any immediate danger." Aliette, fighting for her own composure, guessed the unspoken thought in her lover's mind. "Servants always exaggerate."
Ronnie wrenched down the window, leaned out. "Hurry," he called to the driver, "hurry." The old taxi rattled to speed. Hyde Park corner flashed by--Piccadilly.
"Don't worry, dear," Aliette managed to whisper. "The doctor will be there by now."
Ronnie sat silent. It seemed as though, for the moment, he had forgotten her presence. Nor could she be angry with him for that forgetting. "His mother," she thought; "his mother!"
At last they made Bruton Street. Outside the open front door, waiting for them, stood Kate. Kate, the immaculate cap-and-aproned Kate, was in tears. "Oh, Mr. Ronnie," she sobbed, "I'm so glad you've come. I'm so glad you've come."
"Doctor here?" Julia Cavendish's son, usually so affable with servants, snapped out his question as though he had been speaking to a defaulter.
"Yes, Mr. Ronnie. I fetched him myself. He's with your mother now. He wants cook to go out and get some ice, but cook don't know," the domestically precise English vanished under stress of emergency, "where to get no ice."
"Lucky you thought of bringing some." Abruptly, rudely almost, Ronnie snatched the dish-cloth from Aliette's hand; and she watched him disappear, three at a bound, up the green-carpeted stairs.
"Kate," she said quietly, "tell the taxi-driver to stop his engine and wait. We may want him for something."
Ronnie, a little out of breath, found himself, on the second landing, confronted at the closed door of his mother's bedroom by his mother's woman, Smithers. Smithers was still in her dressing-gown--her hair disheveled, but her black eyes unpanicked.
"You can't go in, sir. The doctor's with her."
"I've got the ice." He made to push past the woman, but she put a hand on his arm.
"I'll take it to him, sir. Your mother said you wasn't to go in."
"Why not?"
"Because of the blood. After the doctor came, she said you wasn't to see her till I'd put clean sheets on the bed. It's a hemorrhage, sir."
"I know. Let me go in." Again Ronnie tried to push past the woman. Again she restrained him. Her black eyes seemed strangely hostile, resolute.
"It's a hemorrhage," she repeated fiercely, "and it's her own fault. Time and again I've told her she ought to heed what Sir Heron said. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't give in." Then, accusingly, "Because she didn't want you and Mrs. Ronnie to know."
"Know what?"
"That she had the consumption."
"Consumption!" The word struck Ronnie like the lash of a whip. He saw accusation--an accusation of selfishness--in the woman's hostile eyes. Those eyes knew his whole story. He wanted to say to them: "We hadn't an idea. Honestly, we hadn't the slightest idea." Sir Heron Baynet's reported diagnosis recurred to his mind. "She isn't ill, but she has a tendency to illness." Either the specialist had made a mistake, or else---- He realized, with a heart-rending clarity, that Julia must have purposely concealed her danger, because--because of his own troubles.
The bedroom door opened noiselessly, and a clean-shaven intellectual face inspected him through gold-rimmed glasses.
"Are you the patient's son?" asked Dr. Redbank; and then, seeing the dish-cloth in Ronnie's hand, "Is that the ice?"
"Yes. Can I come in?"
"If you like. But please understand she mustn't talk."
Ronnie followed the man into the bedroom, and closed the door quietly behind him.
Save for the glow of the bed-lamp, the room was in darkness. Making his way round the foot of the bed, Julia's son saw, in the light of that one lamp--the shade of it was crimson, crimson as those telltale marks on his mother's pillow--his mother's face.
The face lay on the stained pillow, pallid, motionless, the hair awry, the mouth half-open as though in pain. On the chin and on the half-open lips, blood clots showed like brown stains. But the blue eyes were wide open. Motionless in their sockets, they recognized him.
Stooping down, Ronnie saw that Julia would have spoken. Remembering the doctor's warning, he said: "You're not to talk, mater. I'm here. Aliette's here. It's quite all right." It seemed to him as though the blue eyes understood. They closed wearily; and a sigh, almost a sigh of relief, came through the half-opened lips. He thought, standing there by the bedside: "I am powerless. Powerless to help. I can do nothing. Nothing. Why doesn't the doctor do something? Why did he want that ice?"
Then, glancing toward the shadowy fireplace, Ronnie saw the doctor at work; heard the faint smash-smash of the poker handle on ice in a cloth. The doctor came to the bedside. He felt the doctor's hand on his arm; heard his authoritative whisper, "Hold this for me, please"; and found himself grasping a soap-basin.
The soap-basin was full of crushed ice, of the ice Aliette had remembered to bring. The doctor had been crushing the ice. Now he was feeding the ice to his patient. Piece by little piece he fed it--fed it between those half-open lips.
Through interminable minutes Ronnie, holding the soap-basin, watched. At last the doctor said: "One more piece, Mrs. Cavendish, just one more piece. It'll do you good." His mother tried to shake her head in refusal, but Dr. Redbank insisted. "There, that will do."
Somehow Julia's son knew her immediate danger over. For the first time he could hear her breathing. Faint, irregular breathing. "She's asleep, isn't she?" he whispered, looking down at the closed eyes.
But at that, the eyes opened again. His mother seemed to be searching--searching for him about the darkness of the room. He bent over her, and it appeared to him that her pupils moved. "Is there anything you want, mater?" he asked, forgetful of the doctor's warning. The eyes turned in their sockets.
Following their glance, Ronnie saw, beside the bed-lamp, a handkerchief--a stained handkerchief. Scarcely conscious of his action, he fumbled in the pocket of the overcoat he was still wearing, found his own handkerchief, dipped it in the soap-basin, and wiped the blood-clots from his mother's lips. Faintly, the lips murmured: "Smithers--want Smithers--want clean sheets."
"Pleasedon't talk, Mrs. Cavendish," interrupted the doctor's voice.
"You're all right now, mater." Ronnie grasped the situation. "Quite all right.Iknow exactly what you want done.I'lltell Smithers for you." "She'd like her maid," he whispered to the doctor. "She'd like clean pillow-cases."
"Of course she would." The answer sounded loud, almost cheerful. "Of course, she'd like clean pillow-cases. But not for another half-hour, Mrs. Cavendish. I want you to rest. I must insist on your resting."
Julia's eyes closed.
"We shall have to have a hospital-nurse," whispered Dr. Redbank. "If you'll stay with her I'll go and telephone for one." He tiptoed from the room, leaving mother and son alone.
For a long time, hours as it seemed, Ronnie stood watchful. His mother must be asleep--safe--out of pain. A great rush of gratitude, gratitude to some unknown deity, overwhelmed him. Quietly he drew a chair to the bedside. Quietly he sat down. But the faint noise disturbed the woman on the bed. Her eyelids fluttered; and she tried to speak--indistinctly, incoherently, choking on each word.
"Ronnie,"--her first thoughts, as always, were for him--"did I--frighten--you?"
"Mater," he implored, "please don't try and talk. If there's anything you want, just look at it, and I'll get it for you.''
"Ice," she choked, "more ice."
Every movement of her lips frightened him, but he managed to keep fear out of his voice.
"Good for you. I'll get it."
He took the basin of ice from the bed-table, and fed it to her bit by bit, slowly, as Dr. Redbank had done.
The touch of her lips on his fingers almost unnerved him. The lips were so weak, so loving, so piteously grateful as--piece by piece--they sucked down the melting pellets. Controlling himself for her sake, Ronnie realized a little of the self-control, of the unselfishness which had so long locked those weak lips from revealing their own danger. And again, at that realization, he felt his heart melting, even as the ice melted.
"Good man!" It was the doctor--whispering. "She can't have too much of that. I've sent your taxi for the nurse. It's her first hemorrhage, I suppose?"
"Yes--as far as I know."
"H'm. I thought so. Frightening things, hemorrhages. But there's no cause for immediate alarm. I'll wait till the nurse comes, and give her a second injection. You'd better go down and look after your wife."
On the landing, Smithers still waited. "Is she better, sir?" asked Smithers.
"Much better, Smithers. She's out of danger. But you can't go in yet."
Tiptoeing downstairs, Ronald Cavendish knew that the woman was watching him--blaming him. Half-way down, he hesitated. "I can't face Alie," he thought. "I can't face Alie." Then he turned, tiptoed upstairs again.
Together, in silence, the son and the servant waited outside the mother's door.
Aliette, too, waited--waited downstairs in the dining-room where Kate had insisted on lighting a fire for her--waited and waited while the slow half-hours went by. She felt weary; but there was no sleep in her weariness. Her ears, keyed to acutest tension, magnified every whisper in the house of illness; Dr. Redbank's feet in the hall, the jar of the front door, the taxi chugging away, the faint creak of carpeted stairs, the fainter clink of crockery in the basement.
At four o'clock Kate came in with a pot of coffee; at half-past, Smithers to ask if the nurse had arrived. Aliette suffered both maids to go without question. In that well-ordered home she felt herself the useless stranger. Her muscles yearned to be of use, to be doing something, anything, for Julia. "I owe her so much," she thought; "such a debt of gratitude."
The impotence of her muscles stung her mind. Her mind ached with memories, memories of Julia, of her brusk kindliness, of her courage. "I wonder if she knew," thought Aliette. And at that, painfully, her mind conjured up the "scene" she had made--Julia comforting her--Julia's unspoken challenge--her own promise. "She knew then," thought Aliette. "She must have known. That was why she wanted to be certain--of me."
At last the nurse arrived. At last Ronnie, tired out, white-faced, and unshaven, left his post on the landing and joined her.
She asked him, "How is she?"
"Better. Much better. She's asleep."
"Isn't there anything I can do?"
"No, dear, nothing." His voice seemed curiously toneless, and after two or three nervous puffs at a cigarette he again went upstairs.
Another half-hour went by. Already Aliette could see hints of dawn behind the dining-room curtains. Now, knowing danger averted, her mind reacted. She wanted desperately to sleep. Her eyes closed wearily. But her ears were still keen to sound. She heard the doctor's feet and Ronnie's creep cautiously downstairs, heard their whispered colloquy at the dining-room door, woke from her brief doze before they could open it.
"I do hope you haven't been frightened." Dr. Redbank smiled professionally at the pale pretty woman by the fireside. "I hear we have to thank your thoughtfulness for the ice. Most useful it was, too. I have assured your husband that there is no cause for immediate alarm."
"You're sure, doctor?"
"Quite sure. However, as I understand that your mother-in-law's regular attendant is away, I purpose looking in tomorrow, or rather this morning, at about half-past ten. Meanwhile, you must keep her quiet; and, of course, no solid food." He shook hands with her; and went out, accompanied by Ronnie. Aliette, still sleepy, heard the front door close gently behind him.
"Good man, that," said Ronnie, returning. He sat down heavily at the table, and tried to light himself another cigarette. But his hands trembled. The smoke seemed to stifle him.
"Won't you have some coffee?" she asked, suddenly wide awake, and as suddenly aware of the misery in his eyes.
"Thanks dear, not yet."
Rising, she laid a hand on his arm.
"Man," she ventured, "was it very terrible?"
"Dreadful." His voice, usually so controlled, shook on the word, jangling her overwrought nerves to breaking strain. "She's dying. Dying."
"But the doctor said----"
"Never mind the doctor.Iknow. And Alie," a sob tore at his diaphragm, "it's my fault."
"Yourfault?" Awfully, she guessed his meaning.
"Yes."
Her hand dropped from his arm, and they stared at one another in silence.
"Tell me," she said at last.
"No. Not now. Not yet." The remoteness of his eyes frightened her.
"I'd rather know," she pleaded; and again, "Why is it your fault? How can it be your fault?"
"I'd rather not tell you." Once more she caught that frightening remoteness in his eyes--in his very voice. Then, awfully, his reserve broke. "She knew all the time, Alie."
"Knew what?" There was no need for her question.
"That she had consumption. That her only hope was to go away. She only stayed on in London for--for," the words choked in his throat, "my sake."
Minutes passed. Through the chinks in the curtains Aliette could see dawn growing and growing. Her mouth ached to comfort him; but she dared not speak. Her eyes ached for tears; but she dared not shed a tear. Superstition tortured her mind--it seemed to her as though, Biblically, their sin had found them out. Then resolutely, remembering the promise sealed by her own lips to the dying, she put superstition from her.
"Not your fault," she said at last. "Not evenourfault. Ronnie--believe me--even if she did know that she--that she was very ill--she knew that you and I loved her, that we couldn't, either of us, do without her. She's--she's not going to die. Not with us, both of us, to nurse her--to look after her."
"Alie--you--you believe there's a chance?" He rose from the table; and she saw that the remoteness had gone from his eyes.
"Chance!" she smiled at him. "Chance! It's not a question of chance, man. We'llmakeher get well."
And with those words, Aliette knew that she had paid a little of her debt to them both.