1 On a gray afternoon of October, Julia Cavendish sat alone in her drawing-room at Bruton Street.
She was often alone now. That curious "London" which an eclectic woman of means can gather about herself by the time she reaches sixty had begun to desert. Brunton had done nothing; but already scandal, "the scandal of Julia Cavendish's son and Hector Brunton's wife," was spreading: and although people were "very sorry for Mrs. Cavendish," still, "one had to be careful where one went," "one couldn't exactly countenance that sort of thing." So the clergymen and the politicians, the schoolmasters with their wives and the young soldiers with their fiancées came but sparingly, the embassy folk not at all. Only the "Ritz crowd," who thought the whole affair rather amusing; real Society, which could afford to ignore what it did not actually know; and, of course, the literary folk still visited.
Julia Cavendish treated the disaffections of her circle--scanty as yet, for the holidays scattered the scandalmongers--with contempt. In the months since her visit to Chilworth, much of her outlook on life had altered. The Victorian and the traditionalist in her were dead, the formally religious woman convert to a kindlier creed. Even literature slumbered. Literature, the sort of literature she had hitherto written, the stereotyped social romances of her earlier books, seemed so puny in comparison with the great tragedy of her son!
Seated there in the old familiar drawing-room, her embroidery-frame at her elbow, a clean fire at her feet, the light from the standard-lamp glowing on her worn features, Julia tried, as she was always trying now, to find some happy ending to the tragedy--peace for her son, reward for Aliette's courage.
For Aliette had been courageous--divinely courageous as it appeared to Julia--that afternoon at Chilworth Cove when Ronnie broke his bad news. Her own heart had failed a little; but not Aliette's. Aliette said--Julia could still remember the look in her eyes when she spoke: "You're not to worry for my sake, either of you. I shall be perfectly happy so long as you and Ronnie don't fret. If only Ronnie's career doesn't suffer----"
She, Ronnie's mother, had wanted to fight; had wanted the lovers to return to Bruton Street with her, to defy Brunton openly. After that one little failure of courage, her whole temperament cried out for combat. Fighting, she felt, was now the only course. But Aliette had counseled delay. Aliette had persuaded her to leave them at Chilworth, to go back alone to Bruton Street. And at Bruton Street she had stayed all summer.
It had been foolish to stay all summer at Bruton Street; she perceived that now. She ought to have taken her usual holiday. She ought to have listened to the advice of her "medicine-man," who, still maintaining the need for rest, was vague, unsatisfactory, disturbing.
The parlormaid, entering to make up the fire, startled her mistress.
"I wish you'd come in more quietly, Kate," said Julia irritably.
"I'm sorry, madam. Shall I bring your tea?"
"No, not yet."
Julia resumed her reverie. Was there no way by which the man whose obstinacy stood between her son and his happiness might be brought to bay? Apparently none. Sir Peter Wilberforce could only suggest that "the lady might pledge her husband's credit to such an extent that he had to take action"--and that Aliette refused to do.
Dot Fancourt, whom she had also consulted, finding him incredibly stupid, incredibly weak, was all for "letting sleeping dogs lie." He seemed to have no spirit; and she would have been grateful to him for spirit. She felt old; terribly old and weak; prescient, every now and then, of death.
This occasional prescience frightened her. The formal religion to which she had so long clung provided only a personal and a selfish consolation for death. She wanted an impersonal, an unselfish consolation; realizing that she would never be happy to leave this world unless she could leave Ronnie happy in it. Materially, of course, she had already provided for him: all her fortune would be his. But that did not suffice. Before death claimed her she must find some sword to sever his Gordian knot.
So Julia, alone in her quiet house; Julia, the literature all gone out of her, her mind busied with the actual happenings of life; while Brunton, lost in the holiday mists of the long vacation, gave never a sign; and rumor, spider-like, wove its intangible filaments to close and closer mesh.
2
That very afternoon--October 11 it was, the day before the autumn session of the law courts began--Aliette and her lover walked in Kensington Gardens. Even as Julia's, much of their attitude toward life had altered in the past months. The first grandly onrushing wave of the grand passion, the wave which swept them both from safe moorings into outlawry, had spent itself. They were still lovers; but now, with love, comradeship mingled. A comradeship of mutual suffering--knit closer as the days went by.
For, in love's despite, since training and inherited traditions alike unfitted them for the r?le they played, both suffered.
To Aliette, lonely no longer, Ronnie's comradeship compensated for so much that, as yet, the social disadvantages of their position hardly mattered. Only every now and then, in lonely-waking night-hours when full perception of the thing she had done shimmered black for a moment through the rosy veils of affection, did her heart grow faint at the thought of perpetual ostracism from her kind. At other times, her sufferings, her self-torturings were all for Ronnie.
Ronnie, she knew, chafed at his defeat. Ronnie had grown to hate Brunton. Ronnie--for her sake--wanted social position, success. Ronnie loathed the illegal fact that they had had to register as "Mr. and Mrs. Cavendish and maid" at the quiet Kensington hotel, whither Moses Moffatt's shibboleth of "bachelor chambers" drove them on their return from Chilworth.
But Ronnie had other frets--money-frets--on that October afternoon when they strolled under the browning trees.
They strolled lover-like, arm in arm; and Ponto the Dane, incongruous appanage of their elopement, followed leisurely. Aliette was all in furs, soft furs that cloaked her from the cream of her chin to the slimness of her ankles. Above the furs her face showed happy, glowing with a new youth, a new softness.
"Man," she said suddenly, "do you realize that we are two thoroughly unpractical people?"
"Are we?" He pressed her arm. "Does it matter very much?"
"Of course it matters." She paused, and went on shyly: "Don't you understand that I've been living with you for three months, and that so far I haven't contributed a single penny to the--to the establishment?"
"How absurd you are!" He tried to brush the matter aside; but that she refused to allow.
"I ought to contribute something, you know. I'm not quite penniless."
"You're not going to pay my hotel bill," he parried: a little stubbornly, she thought.
"Why not? What's mine is yours."
They walked on in silence for a minute or two. Then Ronnie said:
"I'm afraid I can't quite see things that way, Alie. I suppose I'm a bit old-fashioned in my ideas. But it does seem to me that the man's responsible----" He bit off the sentence.
"I hate you to talk like that." There was a little of the old temper in Aliette's voice. "We must be sensible about money."
"Oh, don't let's bother this afternoon," he coaxed.
"But we must bother. Ronnie, be frank with me. What are we living on?"
"Oh, all sorts of things. The Jermyn Street rent; my earnings, such as they are; a bit of money I'd got saved up."
"And," she added, "the allowance your mother makes you. I wonder if we ought to take that."
"I don't see why we shouldn't. She always has made me an allowance. But of course I shouldn't like to ask her for more."
"Naturally." Aliette's brow creased. "Let's think. I've got about three hundred and fifty a year of my own. Your allowance is four. That makes seven hundred and fifty. How much is that a week?"
"Fifteen pounds," laughed Ronnie, remembering a phrase of his mother's, "No woman's financial mind covers more than seven days."
"And our hotel bill last week was twenty."
At that, the man began to feel thoroughly uncomfortable. His mind shied away from the topic. But the woman pursued it resolutely.
"We'll have to find a cheaper hotel."
"It seems rotten luck on you; the present one is uncomfortable enough. Besides," he brightened visibly, "there ought to be briefs coming in now."
"Man, you're a great optimist." There was an undercurrent of criticism in Aliette's voice, of a criticism which Ronnie felt he could not fairly resent; because already he had begun to divine the professional consequences of Brunton's enmity. Only the day before, James Wilberforce had dropped a hint--the barest hint, but sufficient to indicate which way the financial wind might blow.
"I suppose I am rather an optimist," he admitted; and for the moment they dropped the subject, reverting, as they nearly always did in their walks together, to the main problem.
"H. B. ought to be back any day now," said Ronnie, "and when he does come back, he'll simply have to file his petition."
But to-day she would have none of the problem.
"Don't let us discuss that. After all, nothing that H. does or doesn't do can really hurt us." She looked up into his eyes. "We've got each other."
"I don't mind for myself, Alie. It's you I'm thinking of. Of course we won't talk about him if you don't want to."
By now they were through Kensington Gardens, and passing the herbaceous border at Victoria Gate. They stopped to inspect the flowers. Two gardeners were at work, clearing away the wreckage of summer. The climbing roses and the clematis had withered, but dahlias still flaunted scarlet and crimson against the high dark of the shrubbery.
They walked on, silent, the dog pottering at heel; and inclined half-right across Hyde Park.
"Do you remember----" began Aliette.
"What, dear?" he prompted.
"Oh, nothing. Only I was just thinking. Mollie and I came this way, that morning we met at church parade. It seems such a long time ago."
"Am I as dull as all that?" he chaffed her. "Are you getting bored with me?"
"Bored with you!" Her voice thrilled. "Oh, man, man, you don't understand a bit. You're everything in the world to me. The only thing that ever makes me really frightened is the thought of forfeiting your love. That's because I'm happy--happy. You don't know, no man ever does know, what happiness means to a woman; how utterly miserable she can be. I was miserable with H.--miserable. Luxuries don't help--when one's unhappy. When I look back on my life before I met you, I wonder I didn't"--she hesitated--"I didn't do something desperate. I suppose I didn't know how miserable I really was. I don't suppose any woman in my position ever does know, till some man teaches her----"
"And now?" he broke in.
"Now, I'm absolutely happy. Honestly, I don't care a bit about the legal position--as you call it. What does it matter whether we're legally married or not? What does it matter whether people want to know us or whether they don't? I don't care," she ended almost defiantly; "I don't care a bit so long as I've got you; so long as we're right with our own consciences."
And really, when Aliette looks back on those unsettled days, it astonishes her how little she did care for the rest of the world. Even her parents' attitude seemed of no importance.
3
For outwardly the Fullerfords had taken up a very determined attitude.
At Clyst Fullerford Aliette's name was scarcely mentioned. The people who had known Aliette since cradle-days, the pleasant Devonshire people busied with their pleasant trivial country round, still called neighborly as of yore; but they no longer inquired of Andrew Fullerford, nor of Andrew's wife, after the health of Mrs. Brunton. Somehow rumor, unconfirmed yet accurate in the main, had penetrated to every corner of the county; and though the pleasant people pretended to ignore rumor, at least unt............