1 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.
2
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 the impasse in 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. Her present, 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.
3
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 m............