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                           The Love-Story of
                            Aliette Brunton

                           By Gilbert Frankau

                  *       *       *       *       *


                             [Illustration]


                  *       *       *       *       *

                            F. D. GOODCHILD
                                TORONTO
                                  1922




                          Copyright, 1922, by
                            THE CENTURY CO.


                          Printed in U. S. A.




                     TO MY WIFE AND LOYAL ASSOCIATE
                         AIMÉE DE BURGH FRANKAU
                   IN ALL LOVE AND A GREAT REVERENCE
                    THIS STORY OF A WOMAN'S COURAGE




    But woman's gamble (there's only one;
      And it takes some pluck to play,
    When the rules are broke ere the game's begun;
      When, lose _or_ win, you must pay!)
    Is a double wager on human kind,
      A limitless risk--and she goes it blind.

    For she stakes, at love, on a single throw,
      Pride, Honor, Scruples, and Fears,
    And dreams no lover can hope to know,
      And the gold of the after-years.
    (And all for a man; and there's no man lives
    Who is worth the odds that a woman gives.)

                            --From "The Judgment of Valhalla."




                           THE LOVE-STORY OF
                            ALIETTE BRUNTON




                   The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton




                                PREAMBLE


                                   1

In our heart of hearts--which we in England take almost as much pains to
hide from ourselves as from our fellow-creatures--most of us realize
that life without love is a weariness, a conflict bereft of hope, a
struggle for no victory. Yet Love, the Real Thing--whether it be love of
a god or love of our fellow-creatures, the love of a man for his mate,
of a mother for her son, of a friend for his friend or a girl for her
chosen--is not the law of the majority. Because Love, the Real Thing--as
all real things--demands infinite self-sacrifice: and infinite
self-sacrifice is too divine a code for the average imperfect human
being, who must needs make himself other codes or perish.

This, therefore, Aliette's love-story, deals of necessity with the
self-sacrifices endured not only by Aliette but by many of those who
came within the orbit of her personality.

Rightly to understand the people of this tale and the motives which
swayed them, it is vital that you should comprehend, at the very outset,
how essentially English they all were; how essentially old-fashioned, in
the best sense of that much misused word; and how difficult it was, even
for Aliette, to learn that Love, the Real Thing, had come into their
lives, making blind havoc of every unwritten rule and every written law
to which they owed allegiance.

For all these people, Bruntons, Fullerfords, Wilberforces, and
Cavendishes, were ordinary orderly English folk; trained in that school
of thought which prizes sheer character above mere intellect, which
teaches self-restraint and self-respect and self-reliance, and
believes--as an ultimate issue--in "playing the game."

It is no bad code, this old-fashioned English code of "playing the
game." Humanity owes it much, will owe it even more. But, like all forms
of discipline, it is apt to weigh heavily on individuals; and heaviest
on those who, believing in the code, must needs make choice between
playing the game according to the rules of love or playing the game
according to the rules of average imperfect human beings.

That Aliette Brunton and Ronald Cavendish played their game according to
the dictates of love and their own consciences, remains the sole
excuse--if excuse be needed--for the happiness to which, at long last,
they both won.


                                   2

Of the various English families here concerned, the Fullerfords of Clyst
Fullerford are at once the oldest and the least distinguished--according
to modern standards of "distinction." Yeomen by original birth, yeomen
at heart they have remained; content, in an age of ostentation, to serve
their country quietly, and retire--at the end of service--into the lush
obscurity of the Devon countryside, there maintaining modest state and
modest revenues until such time as a Church of England God is pleased to
summon them elsewhere.

Aliette's father, Andrew, born in the very early sixties, followed the
Fullerford tradition of service, and became puisne judge of an obscure
colonial law-court before retiring. His marriage, at the age of
twenty-four, to Marie Sheldon, caused--owing to Marie's abandonment of
the rigid Sheldon Catholicism for the scarcely less rigid Protestantism
of the Fullerfords--no small sensation.

This marriage, founded on a self-sacrifice of which only Aliette's
mother knew the full burden, yielded two sons, both of whom give their
lives for their country early in 1915, and three daughters: Eva, eldest
of the family, who married Captain Harold Martin of the Devonshire
Regiment in 1910, and became "colonel's lady"--a position she filled
most admirably; Aliette; and Mollie, youngest of the five.

It was not until her second daughter's birth in 1892 that the Sheldons
fully pardoned Marie Fullerford's infidelity to their religion--Aliette,
named after a remote French ancestress, becoming as it were the symbol
of family reunion, and inheriting, on the death of Grandmama Sheldon, a
little block of consolidated stock in further token of forgiveness.
Shortly after which inheritance, in December, 1912, she married--for
reasons which will be apparent in our story--Hector Brunton, barrister
of the Middle Temple, and no small gun in the legal world; while Mollie,
then a long-legged flapper of tomboy proclivities, reluctantly returned
from Wycombe Abbey School to "assist mother in looking after things."

Mollie "looked after things" until the boys were killed. Then she joined
the nursing service. To that service her body still bears witness in the
shape of three white scars--souvenirs of a bombed hospital.


                                   3

Although, socially speaking, there is little if any difference between
the Fullerfords and the Bruntons, the latter family shine considerably
the more effulgent in the public eye. One finds them in newspaper
paragraphs; one sees them at court, at the opera, at the Ritz. In fact,
wheresoever the ostentatious world of the nineteen-twenties foregathers,
the Bruntons forgather with it; not because they themselves are
ostentatious, but because, being of their period, they must needs follow
the tide--as Rear-Admiral Billy, in that bluff manner which fifteen
years' absence from the sea-service has scarcely impaired, is the first
to admit.

"Damn vulgar commercial age, but we can't put the clock back, worse
luck," says Rear-Admiral Billy Brunton to his brother, Sir Simeon
Brunton, K.C.V.O., recently retired with ambassadorial rank from the
diplomatic service. To which Sir Simeon, after three glasses of port,
has been known to retort with a suave: "It hasn't done us so badly."

And this is a fact! For the Bruntons, originally sea-folk, and as poor
as most of the senior service, have developed an uncanny instinct for
marrying money.

Rear-Admiral Billy, head of the clan and now rising seventy-five,
yielded to the instinct before the age of thirty; bringing home as
bride, from his first cruise to Australia, a distinguished daughter of
the Melbourne squatocracy, by whom he had two sons, Hector and Adrian;
and from whom, on her death in 1906, he received sufficient money to
make his declining years perfectly comfortable--though in a very modest
fashion when compared with his younger brother Simeon, whose first wife
was a Sturgis, of Sturgis, Campion & Sturgis, the high-speed steel
manufacturers, and whose second, an Anglo-Indian, still very much alive
at the time our story opens, inherited a largish slice of shares in her
father's main enterprise, "The Raneegunge Jute and Cotton Mills, Ltd."

"Still"--once again employing the language of Rear-Admiral
Billy--"Simeon's feeding a pretty long string of unmated fillies in his
stables; and I've only got a brace of colts who seem tolerably capable
of foraging for themselves in mine."

The "colts," Hector, born in '77, and Adrian two years later, certainly
foraged for themselves with considerable assiduity. Adrian entered the
church; and developed the Brunton instinct to such purpose that he
endowed himself with a bishop's daughter and a Mayfair congregation at
the early age of thirty-five--though it must be put to his credit that
he abandoned his Hill Street surplice for a chaplain's khaki tunic in
the Holy Land, and did not return to his bishop's daughter until early
in 1919, by which time she had manœuvered for him the comfortable
vicarage at High Moor, a prosperous Oxfordshire living, whose exact
center is Admiral Billy's Moor Park.

Meanwhile Aliette's husband--having persuaded himself that he was
indispensable to his country--became a king's counselor, dividing his
days between the common law courts, where emoluments were fat if
advertisement lean, and the criminal courts, wherein, as prosecuting
counsel for the crown, he on occasions glittered exceedingly.

A large and a successful family--they look--these Bruntons, when you
make their massed acquaintance in three pages of "Who's Who." But Julia
Cavendish, _née_Wixton, used to have a page to herself!


                                   4

You will find mention of the "four sisters Wixton," of their "charming"
mother and their "distinguished" father in most mid-Victorian memoirs.
Tennyson wrote a poem to the baby Clementina. Robert Browning is rumored
to have stopped May's perambulator on more than one occasion in
Kensington Gardens. Alice had an affair, very nebulous and of her
period, with one of the less celebrated Preraphaelite painters.

But on the demise of Josiah Wixton (his wife and book-publishing
business survived him a bare three years), all but one of his daughters
disappear from artistic history. May married a tea-broker named
Robinson, and was left a childless but affluent widow in 1908. Alice
vanished with John Edwards of the Indian civil service into the
Punjab--finally returning with a livery husband and one daughter, Lucy,
to settle down among the retired Anglo-Indians of Cheltenham. Clementina
allied herself--no less pompous phrase is adequate--with Sir John
Bentham of the Bank of England.

Remained, therefore, to carry on the literary tradition, only the eldest
of the Wixtons, who married Maurice Cavendish, the Oxford don, presented
him with a son, Ronald, and became "Julia Cavendish, the novelist."

It is a curious commentary on the ingratitude of our educated classes
that the Rutland Cavendishes, who are at least as distinguished
scholastically as the Bruntons in the social world, have to rely for
their public fame almost entirely on Julia.

"Because in Julia Cavendish," as wrote her one-time friend, "Dot"
Fancourt, "we have a really great Victorian. She stands for everything
that is best of that bygone school: for a technique, now, alas!
despised. Her novels are not perfect; they lack, perhaps, that warm
touch of humanity which one finds in Charles Dickens, in William
Makepeace Thackeray. But at least they are the novels of a true educated
Englishwoman, reflections of a fine, faithful spirit. Even apart from
her skill as a story-teller, Julia Cavendish, with her great belief in
the traditional decencies, with her reverence for the teachings of the
Protestant Church, for discipline and the subjugation of self to the
common weal, towers like a rock above the wish-wash flood of cheap sex
and cheaper psychoanalysis which obsess most young writers of this
self-conscious Georgian epoch."

And with that, to our story!




                               CHAPTER I


                                   1

Miracle, by St. Peter out of Three-to-a-Flush, a thoroughbred chestnut
not quite good enough for steeple-chasing but considerably too good for
that very quiet hunt, the Mid-Oxfordshire, was just out of his box, and
pretty fresh. Looking over the flint wall which separated the well-kept
gardens from the newly-swilled tiling of the stable-courtyard at Moor
Park, the horse's questing eyes could just see, between clipped
yew-trees, the red-brick façade of the modest Georgian house, its
windows glinting in the March sunlight. Miracle knew that a footpath led
straight across the gardens from the front door of the house to the
white gate in the wall of his stable-courtyard; and suddenly, hearing a
footfall on the path, he whinnied.

"All right, you," soothed Miracle's groom, a little lame man with
tattooed forearms and a wry smile. The white gate clicked open,
revealing Aliette.

Hector Brunton's wife had never accustomed herself to riding astride.
Her small figure, in its short black habit and loose-fitting coat,
looked modern enough. She wore the conventional bowler hat, white stock,
and patent-leather riding-boots. Yet there was something old-fashioned
about her, despite the fashionable get-up; something, to use an
old-fashioned word, distinguished.

She closed the gate, and came slowly across the courtyard. Her
yellow-gloved hands carried a thonged hunting-crop and a leather
sandwich-case.

"You might fasten this on for me, Jenkins," said Aliette. The voice, low
yet with each tone perfectly clear, held a hint of diffident shyness,
alluring in so poised a creature.

While Jenkins busied himself with the sandwich-case and girthed up,
Aliette held Miracle's head, gentling his nose with deft fingers, and
explaining--half to herself and half to the horse--why she had brought
no sugar for him.

"No sugar for gee-gees these days, Miracle. Not at the admiral's.
Billy's mean about his sugar. Pity you don't drink port, Miracle dear.
There's plenty of port."

She laughed at that; and it was as though you saw a woman transformed.
Her face, smooth in repose, almost colorless save for the scarlet lips
and the big wallflower-brown eyes under the dark lashes, broke into a
hundred dimples. There were dimples at the corners of her mouth, in the
cream of her oval cheeks, on the crinkled upper-lip under the small fine
nose; even--if you looked carefully enough--behind the close-set ears.

Miracle began fidgeting; and laughter went out of the face, leaving it
smooth, purposeful.

"Those girths are too tight, Jenkins."

"I don't think so, mum."

"Loosen them one hole, please. They can be tightened at the meet." Now
Aliette spoke with the quiet certainty of one who understands both
serving-men and horses; and with that same certainty--her orders
obeyed--bent down to insert a finger between clipped skin and taut
webbing. As the head under the hat-rim stooped to its task, her coiled
hair showed vividest brown, almost the color of flames in sunlight,
against the cream of her neck.

Miracle stood quietly enough while his mistress gathered up the reins;
put her unspurred left into Jenkins's hand; mounted; arranged her apron;
and thrust foot home into the stirrup. Then, for the sheer love of
hunting that was in him, he tossed at the snaffle, hogged his back, and
whisked round toward the big arched gateway which gave on to the
highroad.

"Steady, old chap," soothed Aliette. She looked too light a rider for
that raking horse; but her little hands settled him down easily enough.
"I'm in plenty of time, aren't I, Jenkins?"

"Yes, mum." The groom pulled a silver watch from his moleskin waistcoat.
"It hasn't gone nine yet, mum."

As she rode quietly on to the highroad Aliette saw, either side of her
under the archway, Rear-Admiral Billy's stables--empty save for the
admiral's black cob, a luggage pony, and a huge charger-like animal
which, on rare occasions, carried her husband. Horses are even more
expensive to keep than children nowadays!


                                   2

The little woman and the big thoroughbred danced left-handed down the
highroad; passed Admiral Billy's unpretentious lodge, half-hidden by
yew-hedges, clipped with nautical precision to turrets of dark-green
velvet; skirted Moor Pond; and took the bridle-path for Upper Moorsby.

It was a great morning of earliest March. The ground under hoof still
sparkled here and there with surface frost; but there was no "bone" in
it. Warmth softened the tang of the air. Above the bare tops of the
trees between which they trotted, Aliette saw a thin cloudless sky. In
the clearings, crisscrossed with uncarted larch-poles, primroses
sparkled softly. Almost it seemed as though a purple bloom already
showed on the young birches.

She pulled to a walk, thinking as she rode. Her thoughts came slowly,
precisely: Aliette was not the type of woman who liked rushing her
fences, either mentally or on horseback.

"Spring," she mused; "another spring! And hunting nearly over. Then
there'll be nothing but tennis till next winter. Except 'the season.'
How I dislike 'the season'! It wouldn't be so bad if one had children.
One could watch them riding in the park."

A little ripple of dissatisfaction submerged her mind. She leaned
forward and patted Miracle's arched neck. The clipped skin quivered in
response.

"What's the use of making one's self unhappy?" thought Aliette. "All
that's done with. Best forget."

She trotted on, rising squarely from the Mayhew saddle, hands like
velvet on Miracle's bridle-reins. The path rose through fragrant
woodlands; met the roadway. Now, at walk between leafless chestnuts,
thought troubled her once more.

This must be the third springtime since her discovery of Hector's
infidelity. She re-lived the scene: he, big and blustering, in the
paneled dining-room at Lancaster Gate: herself quiet, controlled, but
furious to the core. She heard herself saying to him: "You misunderstand
me, Hector. It isn't a question of jealousy. It's a question of loyalty,
and--cleanliness." That last word hurt the man. She had meant it to
hurt.

Three years! It seemed a long time. Since then--despite occasional
entreaty--she had withdrawn herself. She was too fastidious, perhaps.
Suddenly, she wished herself less fastidious. Her childlessness cried
out in her, "Condone!" But she knew she could never condone. The time
for that had gone by. Other infidelities, she knew, had followed the
first. Hector was not the man to restrain his natural impulses. His very
entreaties proved him more libertine than husband.

And Aliette rode on, through Upper Moorsby, red-cottaged behind
tumble-down palings, disused cycle-shop at one end, shut church at the
other; past Moorsby Place, ring-fenced and inhospitable; across the
common toward High Moor.

There was love of the countryside in her heart as she rode, love of
horse and love of hound, love for the quick scurry of hoofs on turf, for
the white scuttle of rabbits to bramble. But there was no love for any
man. That love she had never known. Marriage--as she still imagined
marriage--meant affection: mutual regard, mutual interests, children.
Especially children! If only she could have had children!

Putting thought away from her, Aliette let Miracle have his head, and
cantered on between the gorse and the brambles.

Cantering, her heart sang to her. "Fox-hunting! Fox-hunting!
Fox-hunting!" Padded Miracle's hoofs. She watched their shadow lolloping
the brambles; watched the track ahead. And suddenly, at the bend of the
track, she grew aware of a horse coming fast behind her. Miracle
gathered himself for a gallop. Checking him, she heard a man's voice:

"I say, I'm most awfully sorry; but can you tell me if I'm right for the
kennels?"

Man and beast, a great raw-boned, rat-tailed gray with a huge fiddle
head and enormous withers, which she knew belonged to Ross Titterton,
the horse-breaker at Key Hatch, hove fighting alongside. As though by
mutual consent, they eased to a bumpy walk.

"Yes. This is quite right," said Aliette.

Examining the man, she saw a serious, clean-shaven face, eyes of pale
clear blue, a broad forehead, a lean jowl, full lips, the nose prominent
and almost pure Greek in shape, the chin determined, and the hair a
curious goldy-gray as though bleached by the tropics.

"Thanks so much."

She judged him just over six feet and just under forty. He looked a
horseman in his high black boots, dark cord breeches, pepper-and-salt
cutaway coat, and buckskin gloves.

"I hope I didn't startle your horse. This brute of Ross's pulls like a
steam-engine," he apologized with an almost imperceptible drawl.

"I know." Aliette smiled. "Mr. Titterton tried to sell him to us last
year."

"Oh, I can't afford to keep horses," confessed the man. "This is only a
loan. Ross was sergeant-major of our yeomanry crowd in Palestine. He
offered me a ride once--and I've taken him at his word. You don't mind
my jogging along with you like this, do you?"

"Of course not. We turn off to the right here."

They rode down, chatting with the easy camaraderie of fox-hunting folk,
into sight of a village. It lay just below them, on a spur of the
common--pointed church-spire, gray vicarage crouching at foot, among a
blob of slate-roofed smoke-plumed cottages. Beyond it, the ground
unrolled to a brown and green checker-board of square hedged fields,
lozenged here and there with pale woodlands.

"That's High Moor Church," announced Aliette, pointing her whip at the
spire.

"High Moor!" The man cogitated. "Isn't a fellow named Brunton the
rector?"

"Yes. You speak as if you knew him."

"Only slightly. I see a good deal of his brother. The K.C., you know.
I'm at the bar."

"Oh!" Aliette hesitated a moment. "I'm his wife."

"Whose! The parson's?"

"No. The K.C.'s."

Both laughed, feeling the conventional ice broken.

"My name's Cavendish, Mrs. Brunton. Ronald Cavendish. You probably know
my mother--most people do."

"Julia Cavendish, the novelist. Of course I know of her; but we've never
met. What a wonderful woman she must be!"

"She is." Ronnie's serious face lit. Usually shy with women, he felt
quaintly at ease with this one. She seemed so sure of herself. And how
she rode! That horse must take some steering. He wanted, suddenly, to
see her across country; to send his gray pelting after her chestnut. Of
her peculiar beauty, except as a horsewoman, he was not yet conscious.

But Aliette, even in those first moments of their meeting, knew herself
stirred, ever so subtly, to interest. Julia Cavendish's son! Didn't she
remember something, something rather decent about Julia Cavendish's son?

It flashed into her memory just as they made the lich-gate of High Moor
Church. "Conspicuous gallantry . . . rallied his squadron under fire
. . . great personal risk."


                                   3

The sight of the Rev. Adrian disturbed further musing. He tittuped out
of the rectory drive as they came by--a little clean-shaven creature,
jovially wrinkled, his short legs in their canvas gaiters gripping the
flanks of a cock-throppled bay mare with a bobbed tail and a roving eye.
The Rev. Adrian on Thumbs Up contrived, somehow, to look far more like a
keeper than the proverbial hunting parson.

"Morning, Aliette," he greeted. Then, before she could introduce Ronnie,
"I say, didn't you and I meet at Jaffa?"

"We did." Ronnie laughed. "Delightful spot."

Explanations over, they rode three abreast past the slate-roofed
cottages, the Rev. Adrian acknowledging with perfunctory bridle-hand the
salutes of his parishioners; and veered left along a metaled road
between high telegraph-poles.

"Are you stopping at Titterton's?" asked the parson, eying Ronnie's
gray.

"No. He couldn't manage me a room. I'm putting up at the pub in Key
Hatch just for the week-end."

"Do they do you well at the Bull?"

"Not badly."

They jogged on, Adrian and Ronnie chatting. Aliette rather silent. An
open car, whose occupant waved greeting, purred past. Miracle shied,
bumping the gray.

"Dash that fellow Moss! Why can't he ride to the meet like a Christian?"
muttered the parson.

Ahead of them, on the straight white of the road, they could see various
other horsemen and horsewomen, a slow-moving dogcart, and two or three
figures a-wheel. They overhauled and passed a flaxen-haired young
farmer, very red of face and waistcoat, on an unclipped four-year-old;
they added to their cavalcade a surly-eyed woman with weatherbeaten
features who straddled a ewe-necked black, and answered to the
inappropriate name of "Lady Helen." They came upon the dogcart, and
Aliette reined alongside for a chat. The parson and Lady Helen jogged
on.

"Mr. Cavendish--Mrs. O'Riordan," introduced Aliette.

The lady in the dogcart appeared to fill it, dwarfing the man at her
side. She was a vast, voluptuous blond, full-nosed and full-lipped,
slightly too well tweeded for the country. Her blue eyes, as they
surveyed Aliette and Ronnie, held that peculiar twinkle common to all
over-sexed women; they seemed to be pondering the problem, "Has Aliette
at last found a lover?"

Mrs. O'Riordan herself, after a hectic but--with one
exception--camouflaged career, had recently settled down to her second
(and, she believed, final) adventure in matrimony. The "exception," a
semi-literary, semi-theatrical Irish land-owner who drove the dogcart,
had caused her considerable trouble to capture; trouble which involved
an elopement, a year of uncertainty, a brace of arranged divorces,
various columns of undesirable publicity in the Sunday papers, and the
loss of several influential acquaintances. During these troubles
Aliette, an old school-friend, had championed Mary O'Riordan's cause;
and earned, by so doing, if not gratitude at least a very tolerable
counterfeit thereof.

Ronnie's horse, bucking violently at a passing cyclist, interrupted
conversation. The riders trotted on.

"Nice man," commented Mary O'Riordan.

"Good-looking woman, Aliette," remarked her husband.

Mary O'Riordan eyed her new male possession jealously. He was very
attractive to the sex, this dark-haired, lantern-jowled Irishman she had
captured from his first wife. It displeased her to hear him admire other
women--especially women like Aliette, whose poised slimness set her own
hoydenish bulk at such disadvantage.


                                   4

It is a fifty-year-old custom of the Mid-Oxfordshire Hunt--the pack,
started by old Squire Petersfield of Great Petersfield just before
Waterloo, has changed hands many times but never failed its subscribers
of their two days a week, with one "bye" monthly--that the first meet in
March should be at the Kennels, an unpretentious building of sandstone
and concrete which shelters under the black slope of Petersfield Woods.

Already, half a mile away, Ronnie could see two blobs of pink, and
hounds--a runnel of moving white--pouring out of the gate their
kennelman held open. Hounds and pink disappeared from view as Aliette
led off the road up a sandy track between high blackthorns, and kicked
Miracle into a canter.

Following, Ronnie's pulses tingled. He hunted so rarely; but always,
hunting, this zest got into his blood. Only to-day, somehow, the zest
seemed heightened. It was as though the cantering figure ahead typified
the game. He felt drawn to her, drawn after her round the bends of the
track, drawn instinctively, drawn irresistibly.

All the last four miles of highroad they had been meeting people. Now,
just for a moment, they seemed utterly alone. And he knew, abruptly,
that he wanted to be alone with this woman; that he desired her
companionship.

They came to a locked gate. He dismounted, put his back against it, and
lifted it off the hinges for her. She smiled down at him, "Thank you,
Mr. Cavendish." He noticed, for the first time, how laughter dimpled the
cream of her cheeks. They could hear other people coming up the track.

The gray waltzed to Ronnie's remounting. Aliette watched him swing to
saddle, appraising--as she imagined--only his horsemanship. But now, in
her too, zest stirred, a strange new zest not entirely attributable to
the chase.

Three other riders trotted through the gateway, dispelling illusion.
"This way," said the wife of Hector Brunton, K.C.

They ambled, side by side, diagonally across rabbit-bitten pasture;
ambled, single-file, through a gap in the hedge-rows; struck an uphill
bridle-path; and arrived, almost last, at the meet.

On the flat strip of grass behind the kennels--the direct road to them
zigzags steeply down through Petersfield Woods--Will Oakley, the
huntsman, his crab-apple face a trifle less saturnine than usual under
its cap-peak, was just getting ready to throw off. Fifteen couple of
fairly level hounds desisted from their rolling and watched him eagerly.

Colonel Sanders, the M.F.H., a heavy old-fashioned soldier,
white-mustached, in a heavy old-fashioned hunting-kit (his special
low-crowned bell-toppers were the despair of a certain aristocratic
hatter in St. James's Street) had just finished his inevitable pow-wow
with the kennelman. Ross Titterton (the whippety ex-sergeant-major came
early, bent on a little profitable horse-copery) stood, bridle over arm,
by Sir Siegfried Moss, an immaculate scarlet-coated, black-mustached
young politician who rode, by horse-show standards, magnificently.

The Rev. Adrian, no thruster, was finishing an early cigar to be
followed by an early nip from his silver flask. Lady Helen had engaged
the whipper-in in a reluctant monosyllabic conversation--Jock Herbert
was a shy, moon-faced young man from the North--on the eternal question
of scent. The remainder of the field, about sixty in all, stood in
equine groups of threes and fours a little away from hounds.

Mrs. O'Riordan's dogcart, Sir Siegfried's car and second horseman ("Must
hunt in one's own constituency occasionally, even if it is a provincial
pack," pronounced that very astute young politician), three flappers and
a brace of young men on push-bikes, Mrs. Colonel Sanders and a trio of
hard-bitten daughters afoot, a farm hand or two, and the socialist
doctor of Key Hatch (who was on a walking-tour with his knapsacked wife
and had come quite by accident on this "parasitic sport-crazy gathering
of the capitalist class") completes the picture.

The M.F.H. greeted Mrs. Brunton, whom he secretly thought an adjectival
nice little woman, adjectivally too pretty for that dimmed husband of
hers, and gave orders to throw off.

Low ripple of black, white, and tan between high bobs of black and
scarlet, pack, whip, and huntsman circled the dark of Petersfield Woods
and headed down-hill in the March sunlight. Bay, black, and brown
against green turf, followed the field. Very last, fighting-mad for a
gallop, boring sideways along the slope, came the fiddle-headed gray.
And "Confound the brute!" muttered Ronald Cavendish, seeing, over one
shoulder, a slim black figure on a big chestnut; a slim black figure
which seemed suddenly more important than the business of the chase.

But Aliette, watching hounds ahead, had utterly forgotten that one
strange flash of premonition.


                                   5

"Not much luck so far, Mrs. Brunton."

They had been at it nearly two blank hours; trotting from covert to
tenantless covert; waiting vainly at covert-side for the "welcome
whimper" of hound to scent, for the full music which follows the
whimper, for the twang of the huntsman's horn and the "view-halloo" of
fox's departure.

"We ought to find here," said Aliette.

Ronnie's gray, at last mastered to good manners, stood quietly beside
her chestnut at the west corner of Parson's Copse. To the left of them a
ditch and an elder-hedge screened the wood. All along the ditch and the
elder-hedge other horsemen and horsewomen were waiting. Through the
hedge they caught glimpses of browned bracken, of dun tree-boles, of a
green ride here and a clump of dead bramble there. In front, the
mole-heaved turf crested in shadow to a clouding sky. To the right and
below them Parson's Hill sloped to an open valley country: first a strip
of ill-fenced waste-land, a white road; then hedged grass-fields, young
wheat, brown plows, a gleam of water; beyond, a church-tower, squat
among poplars; further still, rising turf and twin hills dark with
gorse.

Now, from the other side of the wood, they heard Will Oakley's voice:
"Leu in, Ranger! Leu in." A whip cracked. They caught the soft twang of
a horn.

Life stirred in the wood: a wary pigeon rose blue through branches;
bracken rustled as a bunny sprinted to hole; a blackbird popped out of
the hedge, popped in again. They were wise to hounds moving in covert;
saw white sterns waving through brown bracken; heard a whimper, another
whimper, the horn again. Dubiously, a hound gave tongue; then a second
hound. The horses under them twitched excitement. Something red and
furtive whisked across the ride. They heard Oakley's echoing voice:
"Yooi push him up, push him up"; heard a touch of his horn; caught the
flicker of his scarlet among tree-boles.

And suddenly, the pack crashed to deep-toned melody. The copse rang to
it. The horses under them began to dance. The whole copse was a crash of
hound-music, now drawing away, now nearing them.

"Fox all right this time," said Ronald Cavendish; and even as he spoke,
Aliette, watching the rise in front, saw a low shadow streak across the
shadows and disappear.

Then, simultaneously, Jock Herbert bellowed from the south corner of the
wood: "Tally-ho! Gone away, gone away, gone away"; a hound or two in
full cry leaped down out of covert fifty yards ahead; the colonel's
voice roared, "Keep back, gentlemen, keep back," behind them; fourteen
couple of crazy hounds streamed down after one; and Will Oakley's roan
came thundering up the ride, crashed through the hedge, over the ditch,
and up the crest after a pack you could have covered under the
"pocket-handkerchief," without which no reporter considers his account
of a run complete.

The rest was a mad scurry of eight hoofs to skyline, glimpse of a low
fence, flown without thought, of the hounds pouring down-hill, of Will
Oakley, horn still in hand, tally-hoing them on.

                  *       *       *       *       *

"Now where, in the name of all that's holy," mused the Rev. Adrian,
"will that fox make for?" Most of the field were already away: he could
see them galloping alongside the wood, topping the fence at crest-line.
To the Rev. Adrian's eyes it looked as though they were leaping into
eternity.

Himself and a few wise ones, Ross Titterton included, had waited; and so
waiting, they saw that the fox must have circled for the valley.

Hounds, going far faster than the parson approved, crossed the white
road below him. He put his cock-throppled nag to a cautious canter, and
bumped downwards across the wasteland. Ross Titterton passed him at a
furious gallop; Lady Helen gave him a lead through a gap in the
dilapidated fencing. He could see hounds beyond the road: the master and
Will Oakley were well up; close behind him rode his brother's wife, Jock
Herbert, and that "young Cavendish" whom he remembered at Jaffa.

                  *       *       *       *       *

So far, Aliette and Ronnie had scarcely spoken. The dog-fox had gone
away too suddenly, the ground beyond that first flown fence had been too
full of rabbit-holes, for anything except concentration on the immediate
job. But even in that first moment they had been aware of comradeship.
Their thoughts, if either could have uttered them, would have been: "I'm
glad we were together--just in that place, just at that moment."

Now, as they swept side by side across the twenty-acre grass--gray
pulling like mad; chestnut scarcely extended; wind of their going in
their faces; field behind and hounds in full cry ahead--the man spoke:

"We got away well."

"Rather." Aliette, drawing in front, smiled at him over her left
shoulder. He let the gray have his head. Hounds topped their hedge,
flashed on. They saw Will Oakley's roan fly over; saw the master's
scarlet back and bell-topper lift disappear; and cleared the
stake-and-bound side by side.

More grass. They grew aware of other riders behind them: Sir Siegfried,
very pleased with himself; Ross Titterton, riding jealous to be up; Lady
Helen.

The next fence was blackthorn, thick as night, not a gap in it. The
hounds, spreading out, scrambled through. Will Oakley's horse balanced
himself like a good hunter; jumped; and took it clean. Jock Herbert
followed him over. The colonel, hat crammed to pate, galloped at it;
blundered through somehow.

Sir Siegfried, on his bay, shot past Ronnie. Aliette, easing Miracle for
his leap, saw the self-satisfied smile wiped from the politician's face
as he took off; felt Miracle rise under her; landed safe on plow; turned
her head to glimpse a big gray horse in mid-air; and, turning, heard the
thud of a fall as Sir Siegfried's four-hundred-guinea bay pecked, slid,
and rolled over sideways, wrenched to disaster by clumsy hands.

"Good toss, that," laughed Ronald Cavendish as they cantered slow over
the heavy plow. "Who is he?"

"The member for Mid-Oxfordshire." Aliette, too, laughed: it had been a
great little burst from covert, and the heart in her--the heart that
loved hounds and horses--still beat to it.

"Good fox," said Ronnie.

"Isn't he!" said Aliette.

He was! By now four good fields separated its brushed quarry from the
loud pack that labored--sterns and heads level--across sliced loam.

"Devil take the stuff!" muttered Colonel Sanders, watching hounds draw
away from him. And "Thank God for a gate!" muttered Colonel Sanders as
he made for it.

Huntsman and whip, too, were making for that gate. Aliette and Ronnie
followed their lead, the gray plunging across the holding furrows like a
ship in a storm. Looking back, they saw the pink politician struggling
with his horse, half a dozen black-coats safely landed, Lady Helen
barging in their wake.

A bumpkin in corduroys at the open gate shouted the master to "mind they
wheatfields." The colonel damned his impertinence, and rode on after
Will Oakley. Aliette and Ronnie shot single file down the trodden path
between pricking corn, and flew the stile at end of it.

The pack, overrunning scent, had thrown up half-way across the next
wheatfield. Casting themselves to pick up the line, hounds--noses to
ground, sterns high--hunted on their own. Huntsman, whip and master,
motionless on their horses, glad of the breather, sat watching. Suddenly
Ranger feathered with eager stem, whimpered, and gave tongue. They were
off again--Ranger in front, Audacious at Ranger's flank, a quiet smile
on Will Oakley's face as he cantered after them.

"Pretty work," said Ronald Cavendish. He and Aliette still led the
field; but the moment's check had given Ross Titterton and half a dozen
others their chance. They came now, full split after gray and chestnut,
across the young wheat. Among them, though the wheat was his own,
galloped the red-faced, red-waistcoated farmer--and the Rev. Adrian,
whose eye for country had compensated for his dislike of jumping.

Something inside Aliette, some curious instinct, vague and
incomprehensible, seemed to resent those crowding horsemen. She was
aware, dimly, that she would rather be alone, alone with the man who
rode at her side. She wanted hounds to mend their pace, to run mute on a
breast-high scent, clean away from the field. She wanted to feel Miracle
extended under her, to hear the gray thudding after.

But now the hounds hunted slowly, puzzling out their line across a
sheep-fouled pasture. As Miracle sailed a low fence, Aliette saw Key
Hatch Church, squatting among poplars a mile to their right; a plowman,
hat off by halted team, pointing the line; some foot-followers in a lane
on the left; and in front, six fields away, the sudden gleam of water.

Then the pace mended. The pack raced in full cry to Parson's Brook;
plunged in, plunged through; and checked dead on the far side. Will
Oakley, putting spurs to his horse, got over. Jock Herbert just managed
it. Pulling up this side the brook, Aliette and the rest of the first
flighters watched the huntsman as he cast hounds forward.

"There's a ford half a mile down," spluttered the Rev. Adrian; and made
for it, followed by Lady Helen, Sir Siegfried, his hat dented, his pink
plow-plastered, who had at last managed to catch up, the red-waistcoated
farmer, and half a dozen others.

Ronnie glanced at Aliette. He had no idea if his horse would face water
or not. The brook, broadish under rotting banks, looked formidable; and
it was almost like taking it in cold blood--this waiting for hounds to
pick up the scent again. All the same, he knew that if Miracle went over
he would get the gray across if he had to swim for it.

"Better make for the ford, Mrs. Brunton," called the colonel. He and
Ross Titterton galloped off.

They were alone again: two ordinary orderly English people, a little
dumb in each other's presence, both moved by very extraordinary
thoughts, thoughts to which they were quite incapable of giving exact
expression.

Aliette's red lips had pursed to stubborn determination. "I hate funking
things," thought Aliette. To her, subconsciously, it was as though the
water typified something more than a mere obstacle encountered in the
day's hunting. She knew Miracle could jump it. Neither she nor Miracle
would "funk things." Then why the thought? "Because," some voice in her
gave clear answer, "_he_ might."

"It isn't as bad as it looks," said the voice of the man at her side.
"I'll give you a lead over."

And at that the voice in her began laughing. She felt unaccountably
comforted. "Why should I mind?" she thought.

Beyond the brook, at the big bullfinch on the far side of the meadow, a
hound feathered. "Yoi-doit, then. Yoi-doit," came Will Oakley's voice.
The hound gave tongue, owning to the line; Aliette saw Ronnie take his
gray short by the head, ram his spurs home, and ride straight at the
water.

Miracle raced after the gray, catching up with every stride. Side by
side, they galloped the fifty yards to the brook, rose at it, glimpsed
it deep under them, flew it, landed.

Landing, she knew him safely over. Racing on, she heard the thud of his
horse-hoofs behind. Her heart thrilled to the horse-hoofs; it seemed,
suddenly, as though some string had snapped in her heart. The pack in
front was utterly mad: she heard a burst of hound-music from beyond the
bullfinch, knew that they were running a breast-high scent, running
clean away from her. She gave Miracle his head, shielded her eyes with
her crop-arm, crashed through the hedge, heard the gray crash through
behind her.

Now she saw the hounds again, a close ripple of black, white, and tan,
eight hundred yards away across post-and-railed common land. Miracle
went after them, drawing up stride by stride, steeplechasing his fences.
But the man on the gray would not be denied. A rail smashed behind her.
He was following, following. He mustn't catch up with her--must never
catch up with her.

The ground rose. Not very far ahead she saw a dark-red dot making for
the gorse-clad hills. She heard Will Oakley's "Halloo! Halloo!" as he
capped hounds on. They ran nearly mute now, sterns straight, hackles up.
The fox vanished from view as they raced up-hill; reappeared again.

But Aliette was no longer aware of the chase. She could barely realize
that hounds were running into their fox, that the two pink coats twenty
yards ahead of her were whip and huntsman. All her conscious mind was at
her left shoulder, listening, listening to the horse-hoofs behind. Could
it be that she herself was the quarry of those thudding hoofs, quarry of
the man who drove those thudding hoof-beats onward? He mustn't catch up
with her! He must never catch up with her! And yet could it be that some
instinct in her, some instinct earth-old and primeval, wanted to be
caught?

That same instinct had been at work in the man on the fiddle-headed
horse, the man who rode with his hands low and his teeth clenched,
sitting down to his job as though he would go through Oxfordshire and
out the other side in pursuit of Aliette. He had been aware of it,
dimly, as they waited by the brook; aware of it, furiously, as he
jumped. But now, instinct was blurred by the actual chase. He had come
out for a "good gallop"; he was having his gallop. His feet were jammed
home to the hunting-heel, his hat rammed to his head. His eye took in
and loved the whole scene: the sky clouding blue-gray above them, the
shadows skimming green turf below, the speeding pink of the hunt-coats
behind the speeding black, white, and tan of the pack, the flame of
gorse on the crest-line ahead.

Yet always, as he galloped, the man knew an urge stronger than the mere
urge of the chase; knew that there was some dim reason why he had waited
at Parson's Brook on a strange horse instead of going full split for the
ford; why he must ride on--on and on--ride as he had never ridden
before--ride the gray's shoes off, rather than lose touch with that
black-habited figure in front. God! How well she went! How magnificently
she went!

Will Oakley was not worrying about either of them. For once in their
lives the Mid-Oxfordshire hounds were going like the Belvoir or the
Cottesmore. Their fox was sinking before them. Will Oakley knew, as his
roan topped the green bank which runs like an earthwork round the foot
of Gorse Hill, that he would view "the varmint" close; viewed him.

No need, now, to lift hounds from scent: they, too, saw that draggled
down-brushed shape, making its last effort; and crashed to fiercest
music. Will Oakley hallooed them on, and Jock Herbert. "Yooi to him,
Ranger," they hallooed, "Yooi to him, Audacious." Reynard swerved
snarling from Ranger's teeth; Audacious snapped, missed; Victory rolled
him over; massed pack were on him, mad for blood, as Will Oakley flung
himself to ground.

Aliette, pulling up by instinct, saw the huntsman's scarlet ringed with
leaping hounds; heard his joyful "Tear him and eat him, tear him and eat
him"; and came back to sanity as the gray galloped up, halted, and stood
with steaming flanks and steaming nostrils while his rider slid from
saddle.


                                   6

"By Jove, Mrs. Brunton, that was perfectly great!"

"Thanks to your lead over Parson's Brook."

They stood by their sweating horses, two perfectly normal people, rather
pleased with their prowess, quite childishly delighted with the brush
which Will Oakley held out to her.

"'T isn't often we gives you a run like that, ma'm," said the huntsman;
and his saturnine face might have been a boy's, as he produced a piece
of whipcord from his breeches pocket and began fastening the brush to
Aliette's saddle-ring.

Various belated riders, the wily parson, the panting colonel, and the
chagrined politician among them, came up and began congratulating.
Sandwich-boxes were produced, flasks, cigarettes. Sir Siegfried looked
at his watch; and started in to consider what degree of exaggeration
might be warranted in subsequent reports of their day. It was nearly
half-past two o'clock--call it three. They had begun to draw Parson's
Wood at about one--make it half-past twelve. It is to be feared that the
hour's run, by the time it was reported to Sir Siegfried's connubial
fireside, had suffered considerable extension.

But neither Aliette nor Ronnie, as they walked their horses side by side
into Key Hatch village (Gorse Hill is twelve miles from kennels, and the
colonel, well satisfied with his kill, had ordered the pack home), spoke
of the run.

Indeed, they hardly spoke at all. And when she said good-by to him at
the open posting-doorways of the Bull, neither remembered to ask the
other where or whether they should meet again. Which forgetfulness,
thought Aliette as she turned Miracle's head for home, was the strangest
part of a strangely joyous day.

But Ronald Cavendish, watching her mounted figure disappear down the
village street, thought only of their ride together.




                               CHAPTER II


                                   1

"You can't possibly want to brush it any more, Caroline." Aliette's
maid, a square-hipped, square-shouldered, square-faced woman who had
been in service with the Fullerford family ever since Judge Fullerford
came back from Trinidad, laid the ivory-backed hair-brushes on the
dressing-table, and began to twine the vivid coils round the small head.

There is neither gas nor electric light at Moor Park. In the slanted
oval of the old-fashioned mirror, Aliette could only see, either side of
her rather serious face, two primrose points of candle-flame. The long
low bedroom behind her--furnished in mid-Victorian mahogany,
Morris-papered with tiny roses on an exiguous trellis--was almost in
darkness, darkness against which the primrose candle-glow showed
Aliette's full beauty.

You saw her now--bathed after hunting, peacock-blue kimono round her
dimpled shoulders--as a creature of supreme health. Her arms were
smooth, lustrous; her wrists rounded; her hands small, a little broad in
the palm--resolute strong hands for all their smallness. Her neck was
smooth, full, lustrous as her arms; her bosoms low and firm; her feet
fine; her legs, under their black silk stockings, slim-ankled and
smooth-muscled--almost classic in their perfection.

Caroline Staley's mistress hardly moved while Caroline Staley completed
the simple hair-dressing. Her deliberate mind was busy with the past
day. She relived it--moment by moment,--loving it. The primeval instinct
which had momentarily and subconsciously troubled her was asleep again,
lulled to civilized quiescence by the air and the exercise. She
remembered her pursuer in the field only as a pleasant companionable
figure against the background of March sunlight and English countryside.
Nevertheless, she found herself wishing, vaguely, that he were coming to
dinner that night.

It would be a dullish dinner. Her husband had arrived by the afternoon
train, bringing the usual bagful of legal papers to assimilate over the
week-end, and her sister Mollie. Mollie and Hector always got on well
with each other. She had found them taking tea together when she arrived
home; and left them alone after a brief greeting. The Rev. Adrian was to
be there, with his bishop's daughter. "Billy" would want to know all
about the day's run. "Dear Billy!"

Hector Brunton's wife inspected her maid's handiwork, and rose to be
frocked. Mollie came in without knocking; lit another candle or so, and
helped with a hook or two.

"Nice frock," decided Mollie Fullerford, surveying Aliette's black lace
and silver tissue. Her voice resembled Aliette's; but there resemblance
ended. The girl stood half a head taller than the woman. She had violet
eyes, a broadish brow, and dark, almost black hair, bobbed during
convalescence. Her coloring was white in comparison with Aliette's
cream; but two patches of natural bloom glowed in her cheeks. She wore a
panniered dress of blue and mauve shot taffeta, wide over the hips,
tight round the ankles, short-sleeved, neck cut high to conceal one of
her wound-scars. Her arms, hands, and feet, well-shaped as her sister's,
looked more powerful. Altogether rather a hefty, healthy, happy young
creature--the sort of creature a decent hefty young man would single out
at a dance.

"No nicer than yours," retorted Aliette, slipping her rings on her
fingers, and adjusting the short single string of pearls round her
throat.

A knuckle rapped the door-panels; a loudish voice asked: "May I come in,
dear?"

"Yes. I'm just ready."

Hector entered--a big, over-big man, the glazed shirt-front already
bulging out of his black waistcoat. The K.C., shorn of legal wig and
trappings, did not look very dignified; nevertheless, he gave an
impression of force. The sandy hair was scant on his wide mottled
forehead; his eyes were a cold gray; his nose tended to the bulbous. The
clean-shaven lips appeared thin and a trifle cruel; his jowl was
heavy--almost the jowl of a mastiff. He had the hands of a gentleman,
the feet of a clodhopper.

"Is it time for dinner?" asked the wife. The husband drew from his
waistcoat pocket a heavy gold watch; consulted the hands of it; and
admitted the accuracy of her suggestion.

"Then we'd better be going down," decided Aliette.


                                   2

The dining-room at Moor Park possesses, or is possessed by, the largest
suite of mid-Victorian mahogany ever fashioned. The sideboard, gleaming
always with massive silver, occupies the entire east end of the
apartment, barely leaving room for a white-paneled Adams door. Either
side of the marble mantelpiece stand two colossal serving-tables.
Gigantic horsehair-seated armchairs, ranged between the long
red-curtained windows, spill a brood of slightly less gigantic offspring
round the mastodontic board.

The mulligatawny and the cod with oyster-sauce had already been served
by the two cap-and-aproned wenches, whom the rear-admiral declared to be
"a damned sight better than any heavy-handed son of a gun who smoked a
fellow's cigars, drank his port, and did as little work as the old
bumboat-woman of Portsmouth."

Rear-Admiral Billy was enjoying himself. His jovial eyes, a little
red-rimmed with age under the heavy brown thatch of his hair, kept
glancing round at "his two colts and their fillies" (one is, alas!
forced to modify a good many of the admiral's pet expressions) and at
that "jolly little piece in the No. 5 rig," Aliette's sister. His trim
beard, grayed only at the extremities, kept wagging accompaniment to
Aliette's account of the run; the course of which his hairy-backed hands
were trying to trace, in bread and salt, on the table-cloth.

"'Spose you funked as usual, Adrian," rumbled the old man across the
enormous table. "God knows what I've ever done to deserve a son in the
church."

The Rev. Adrian, in clerical evening dress, only laughed at his father's
criticism; but the Rev. Adrian's Margery fired up in defense of her
spouse.

"Adrian's seen more active service than most men of his cloth," began
the little aquiline, dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned, and darkly
determined woman, who dressed (when natural circumstances permitted
her--as they did not at the moment) with the severe precision of
unadorned royalty.

Aliette continued her low-voiced description of the day's run; Hector
tried explaining to an attentive Mollie the exact difference between a
disbarred barrister and a solicitor who has been struck off the rolls;
the cap-and-aproned wenches set an enormous joint of mutton before the
host, who always insisted on carving with his own hands; and dinner
proceeded.

To Hector Brunton's wife the dullish meal was less unpleasant than her
anticipation of it. She liked her father-in-law--though his occasional
coarseness always jarred her sensitive mind. She appreciated her
sister's week-end visit; and anticipated with some pleasure the family
talk which would precede their going to bed. But above all, she liked
being away from the constraining intimacy of her home with Hector.

Recently Hector had been growing more and more difficult to deny. She
caught him looking at her now, sideways across the vast white of the
table-cloth. Vaguely she felt sorry for him. His cold eyes almost held
an appeal. "Look round," they seemed to be saying, "it isn't so bad;
really it isn't so bad, this little family party. Can't we make it up,
you and I?"

"Poor Hector!" she thought. "He's a very simple person. He doesn't
understand"; and checked thought, not abruptly, but with the same quiet
firmness she had applied to Miracle that morning.

For Aliette never posed, even to herself. She was the very antithesis of
the usual misunderstood married woman; so far, the mere thought of a
compensating lover had never entered her head. All that happened
afterward--and sometimes, looking back, it seems to her as though it all
began from that chance remark of Adrian's--happened of its own volition.
At the moment Adrian spoke she was just an ordinary woman, who had
married an ordinary man in the expectation of a home and children, found
him out in various infidelities, and decided--after due thought--that
she could no longer pay his physical price for the dwindling possibility
of motherhood.

"We had young Cavendish out with us to-day," said the parson. "Julia
Cavendish's son. You know him, I suppose, Hector?"

"Yes. Clever fellow. No orator, but very sound on his law. He's doing
junior to me in the Ellerson case. Rather an interesting case----"

"He and Aliette gave us all a lead."

"Rides well, does he?"

"Rather. A fine horseman. Handsome looking chap, too." The parson
glanced at his sister-in-law, not maliciously, yet with a certain
puzzlement. Listening with half an ear to her description of the run, he
had wondered why she made no mention of the stranger. "Didn't you think
so, Aliette?" he went on.

"I can't say I noticed his looks. He certainly rides well." The
wallflower-brown eyes betrayed no startle, the pale, cream-tinged cheeks
did not blush. Nevertheless, deep down in the inmost recesses of her
nature, Aliette felt herself startle, not guiltily, but in wonderment at
her inexplicable omission. What possible reason could there be for not
mentioning the man?

Adrian continued to discuss Ronnie, and Ronnie's mother, and Maurice
Cavendish, whom he had encountered years since at Oxford.

"His son's rather like him; but of course he's got the Wixton chin,"
said Adrian.

All the time Adrian talked, Aliette was asking herself questions. Why
hadn't she even mentioned the man's name? Why? Why? Why? Harking back to
her conversation, she seemed to have made the omission deliberately.

She tried to laugh herself out of the absurd mood; to join in the
conversation. Deliberate? Ridiculous! She just hadn't thought about him.
And yet, subconsciously, the man's face rose up before her, serious and
strangely vivid against the glow of the table-candles. She could almost
hear his voice, "I'll give you a lead over, Mrs. Brunton."


                                   3

"Do you know, Alie, I've sometimes thought that you and Hector don't get
on very well together."

Mollie, in dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, sat on the edge of her
sister's bed. Margery Brunton, inclining to the aggressive about her
forthcoming infant, departed early; and the two Fullerfords had been
talking for nearly an hour, quite unsentimentally, about frocks,
parents, books, a theater or so.

"What makes you say that?" Aliette, shoulder-deep in bedclothes, looked
up from her pillow.

"Oh, I don't know." The girl blushed; and there fell a moment's awkward
silence, during which it flashed through Aliette's sleepy mind that
perhaps Hector had been confiding their matrimonial differences to his
sister-in-law. But she dismissed the thought: Hector's reticence, even
about small matters, was proverbial in the family. Besides, the reason
for Mollie's question was sufficiently obvious.

"We get on as well as most married people, I expect," protested Hector
Brunton's wife.

"I'm afraid I'm a terrible sentimentalist," went on Mollie. "Sometimes,"
she blushed again, "I think I'm even worse than that. I've never met a
man I liked well enough to marry. Though, of course, I've let two or
three men make love to me. It's rather nice to feel that a man's fond of
you." She hesitated, and broke off--Aliette being hardly the kind of
sister to whom one confided one's love-affairs.

"Most women are awful rotters," said the girl, after a long pause.
Aliette restrained the retort at her lips; and Mollie's naïve
revelations continued. "Most men aren't. They've got a higher sense of
honor than we have. I found that out while I was nursing. Reading the
women's letters to fellows who'd been gas-blinded. There was one, I
remember, who wanted a divorce. She wrote: 'I'm afraid I haven't been
playing the game while you've been away.' And she didn't seem a bit
ashamed of herself."

"Did you read him the letter?" interrupted Aliette.

"No. But I wrote to the woman; and she wrote back, thanking me.
_Thanking me!_" Mollie's voice rose. "She'd decided that 'after all, and
especially as he was so bad, it would be better not to tell him. Would I
burn her silly letter?' I think that's _beastly_." Her violet eyes
kindled. "I'm not a prig. I don't believe divorce is wrong. But I do
consider it dirty, when a woman or a man do--that sort of thing."

Aliette's face, smooth on its pillows between braided coils, gave no
hint of the thoughts in her mind. Vaguely she resented an unmarried
girl, or, in fact, any woman discussing "that sort of thing"; but her
resentment, she knew, would only make the younger generation laugh. The
younger generation of girls, as represented by Mollie, did not believe
in squeamishness. Perhaps--Aliette seemed to remember that Julia
Cavendish had touched on the subject in her last novel--the younger
generation were no less virtuous because they faced facts instead of
hiding their heads, ostrich-like, in the sands of innocence.

"I don't see," Mollie's decided voice closed the conversation, "why
being in love should prevent one from playing the game."

She rose, gathered her dressing-gown round her, asked if she should blow
out the candle, did so, and made for the door.

"By the way," said the figure silhouetted against the glow of the
corridor-lamp, "I suppose there's a service at Key Hatch to-morrow
afternoon. If there is, let's go. It's such a ripping little church; and
I can't bear being preached to by Adrian."

"If you like, dear," replied an unguarded Aliette. But when the door
closed and she lay alone in darkness, her mind reverted to its problem,
to that peculiar omission of Ronald Cavendish's name.


                                   4

Morning broke to gusts of rain. Hector locked himself in the library;
the admiral inspected his greenhouses; Mollie refused to get up; and
Aliette wrote letters.

Somehow, the letters took a long while to write. She found herself, pen
in raised hand, dreaming. In her day-dreams happiness and
dissatisfaction mingled incoherently, as the voices of two people heard
through a wall. She could not catch the words of the voices, only the
tones of them: one low-laughing, the other querulous. For the first time
since girlhood--and even in girlhood she had been deliberate--deliberate
thought abandoned her. She felt content that her mind should drift idly
through an idle day. Only when Mollie--appearing brogued and tweeded for
luncheon--reminded her of the agreed church-going, did her brain resume
its normal function.

"In all probability I shall see Ronald Cavendish"--the thought came
startlingly as Aliette watched Hector at work on the inevitable roast
beef and Yorkshire pudding of the admiral's Sabbath. "I hope I shall see
Ronald Cavendish"--so distinct were the words that they might have been
actually spoken.

"It's clearing up," announced her father-in-law. "You'll have a jolly
walk. Ought to start about half-past three. Better have some tea at the
Bull. Service is at half-past five."

"I don't think I'll go," said Aliette. "I've got rather a headache."

"Do your headache good," rumbled the admiral.

She pulled herself together. Why shouldn't she go to Key Hatch; why
shouldn't she meet Ronald Cavendish? Not, of course, that she really
_wanted_ to meet Ronald Cavendish. . . .


                                   5

"I wonder why on earth I invented that headache," thought Aliette, as
she and Mollie tramped down the drive. Hector had returned to work in
the library; he waved them au revoir from the desk by the window.

A fantasy came to her: "I shall never see Hector again." She said to
herself: "I hope _he_ hasn't gone back to town." She said to herself:
"Aliette, don't be an absolute idiot."

For, after all, could anything be more idiotic than that a woman of
nearly thirty--and that woman Mrs. Brunton, Mrs. Hector Brunton, wife of
Hector Brunton, K.C.--should feel like--like a schoolgirl going to meet
her first choir-boy?

And yet, instinctively, Aliette knew herself somehow caught, somehow
entangled. No escape from that knowledge! Ridiculous or not, this
stranger she was going to meet--of course they _would_ meet him; he
couldn't have gone back to town--interested her. Interested her
enormously. She saw him again in the eyes of her mind, his serious face,
his blue eyes, his hair--such curious hair, goldy-gray as though
bleached by the tropics,--all the while she swung, listening to Mollie's
chatter, along the familiar lanes.

A low sun, emerging from between gold-edged clouds, shone on them
walking. The hedges dripped cool sparkles. Cow-parsley pushed its
feathery green through the tangled grass of the ditches. They topped the
rise by Moor Farm, and saw Key Hatch below them. It lay in a cup of the
valley, gray and brown and slate-blue through leafless branches against
the concave jade of pasture-land. Half a mile on, midway between them
and the village, two figures strolled up-hill.

Social sense, banishing idiotic fantasies, reasserted itself in Hector
Brunton's wife; and, five minutes later, the four figures met.

"How do you do, Mrs. Brunton?"

"How do you do, Mr. Cavendish?"

Ronnie introduced his friend; Aliette introduced them both to Mollie.

The friend, James Wilberforce, carried his five feet eleven well. He had
broad shoulders and a rather clever face, aquiline of nose, brown-eyed,
high cheek-boned, full-lipped under a "toothbrushed" mustache. His
mustache and his hair only just escaped being carroty. His voice carried
a faint suggestion of superciliousness.

"An overworked solicitor," he told them with a humorous twinkle of his
brown eyes, "taking a day off in the country." He was "charmed" to meet
Mrs. Brunton. He had had the pleasure of knowing her husband for some
years. "A great man."

Mollie liked the way he spoke. She thought him much more agreeable than
Mr. Cavendish, who appeared to her rather a sobersides--almost ill at
ease, in fact.

"We were just having a stroll before tea," announced Wilberforce, after
about five minutes of uninspired conversation.

"And we are going to have tea at the Bull before church," retorted the
girl. "So we'd better all have tea together." She marched Wilberforce
off down the hill.

Her sister and Cavendish followed slowly. Now that they had actually
met, Aliette felt thoroughly ashamed of the mental fuss she had made
about him. He was a perfectly ordinary man, who happened to have given
her a lead over Parson's Brook. Rather a nice man, of course. She liked
the way he wore his clothes, his assumption that she did not require him
to chatter. He walked--she noticed in the gathering twilight--almost as
well as he rode, easily from the hips.

"You've let your pipe out," she told him.

He stopped to rekindle it; and she saw that his hand trembled ever so
slightly in the glow of the match. "Nervy," she thought. She did not
divine that the long scholarly fingers trembled because the man had
scarcely slept for overmuch thinking of the woman at his side; that he
had been saying to himself, ever since he espied her on the brow of the
hill, "Don't be a fool. Don't be a _damn_ fool. She's Hector Brunton's
wife."

That afternoon her sheer physical beauty thrilled him like fine poetry.
He had no idea how she was dressed. Her clothes seemed part of her--deep
wallflower brown, the color of her eyes. He wanted to acknowledge her
beauty, to say: "You're wonderful; too wonderful for any man's sight."
Actually, he opined that they had had a jolly run, and hoped he'd get
another day with the Mid-Oxfordshire some time or other.

On horseback he could thrust with the best of them, this long,
loose-limbed young man with the serious face above the Wixton chin; but
he was no thruster after women. Too much the poet for that--one of those
many dumb poets who have no desire to flaunt their emotions in cold
print.

The four came down the hill, Mollie and Wilberforce still leading, round
a whitewashed farmhouse, along a strip of wet road whereon a few
bowler-hatted chawbacons strolled arm-in-arm with their red-cheeked,
silent Dollies, under leafless elm branches, into the main--and
only--street of Key Hatch.

England's Sabbath brooded obviously over stone cottages, picturesquely
inefficient, flower-pots blocking their tiny windows, doors closed.
Already, here and there behind the flower-pots, an extravagant light
twinkled. Half-way down the street, its bow-windows inhospitably
blinded, stood the Bull, relic of posting-days, whose rusty signboard
had so far failed to attract the motorist. At street-end, dark against
the cold cloud-banks of declining day, loomed the square tower of Key
Hatch Church.

Mollie and Wilberforce waited at the side door of the inn till the
others joined them.

"You won't mind having tea in my sitting-room. I'm afraid there isn't a
fire anywhere else," said Cavendish; and led his three guests down a
narrow corridor--rigid fish in glass cases and an iron hatstand its only
decorations--into a parlor where firelight danced invitingly.

Wilberforce lit the lamp, revealing a five-legged tea-table set for two,
a hard sofa, three antimacassared chairs, a stuffed barn-owl between
Britannia-ware candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and the usual litter of
photographs in sea-shell frames without which no English inn considers
itself furnished.

Cavendish jerked the bell-tassel; Mrs. Wiggins, a pleasant-featured
young woman already attired for church-going, bustled in with the brown
teapot; nearly courtesied to Aliette; bustled out again, and reappeared
with the extra utensils.

"You'll pour out for us, won't you, Mrs. Brunton?" asked the host.

"If you like." Aliette spoke in her usual deliberate way. But now, for
the first time, she felt self-conscious. Was her hat on straight? Had
she remembered to powder her nose before starting?

Pouring tea, handing cups, busied with the most ordinary social duties,
there swept over her mind the most extraordinary fantasies. And quite
suddenly she wanted to take off her hat!

"But this is ridiculous," she said to herself. "I _can't_ take off my
hat." Nevertheless she wanted to. She must! This was _his_ room. His cap
lay on the sofa, his pipe on the mantelpiece. Therefore . . . She
realized with amazement that her hands were already raised to her head.

"Alie, you haven't given me any sugar." Her sister's irritated voice
dispelled the moment's illusion. One hand dropped to her lap, the other
to the sugar-tongs.

"Sorry, dear." She recognized the shyness in her own words, and covered
shyness with a conventional laugh, "I'm getting forgetful in my old
age."

Discussing ages with their bread and butter, they made the original
discovery that a woman is as old as she looks, et cetera. Over hunks of
Mrs. Wiggins's home-made cake, Ronald admitted to thirty-six,
Wilberforce to forty.

"You don't look forty," decided Mollie: and at that moment, just as she
was thinking she had never listened to a more artificial conversation,
Aliette trapped her host's blue eyes in a glance no woman could possibly
mistake.

In a way the glance, so momentary, so quickly veiled that only her heart
assured her that she had actually seen it, resembled the glance she had
trapped in her husband's eyes over dinner. And yet it was utterly
different. It held reverence, a resigned hopelessness, a devotional
quality of which Hector's cold gray pupils could never be capable.

Now, with amazement, she knew herself panicked. Panicked, not because of
the look in his eyes, but because she realized that, in another second,
her own would have responded to them. She was not "shocked" at his
daring; her inaccessible beauty had not passed through seven years of
married life in London without various similar experiences. But she was
"shocked" at her own impulse. Heretofore such glances, even the words
which on occasion accompanied them, had left her completely indifferent,
utterly uncaring, positively contemptuous. This--did not leave her
indifferent. This--this mattered. . . .

Subconsciously, she who never swore began swearing at herself. "You're a
fool, Aliette. A damn fool." Doubt nagged her. "You made a mistake. You
only imagined that glance." The code nagged her. "Even if you didn't
imagine it, he had no right----"

And all the time her outward self, the socially-trained Aliette, was
behaving as though nothing unusual had occurred, filling teacups,
nibbling cake, talking this or that triviality. No, she was not an
ardent church-goer. Yes, her brother-in-law preached splendidly. But she
objected to seeing him in the pulpit. Why? She didn't quite know why; it
seemed too intimate, somehow or other. Like being introduced to the
Deity as a relation by marriage.

Mollie and Wilberforce laughed at that. Their laughter disturbed
Aliette. She and Cavendish sat stupidly silent till church-bells began.

"You'd better come with us. It will do you both good," said Mollie to
the solicitor.

"I haven't been inside a church since I left the army," declared
Wilberforce.

"All the more reason to come with us," smiled Mollie, who liked this big
auburn man, had liked him more and more ever since he was first
introduced.

And to church, casually, those four went.


                                   6

As she knelt by the stone pillar on the thin hard hassock, it seemed to
Hector Brunton's wife that she had forgotten how to pray, that her eyes
were being drawn sideways through her fingers. Only by concentrating
could she achieve a moment's devotion. Settling herself back in the pew,
she was vividly aware of Cavendish's proximity.

By no means a fanatic, Aliette nevertheless accepted her father's
Protestantism. Religion formed part of the code, of those indubitable
laws on which one based existence. But on this particular evening
Protestantism seemed a farce. She could not imagine any god taking
pleasure in the gas-lit ceremonial, in the vacuous-eyed congregation, in
the artificial intonations of the parson or the hymn-numbers on the
board. All these seemed hugely distant from any concept of worship.
Somehow, she caught herself yearning for a richer ceremonial, for a
warmer faith. Somehow, she seemed to remember--dimly out of
childhood--her grandmother's voice:

"My dear, we've decided to forgive. But, O Marie! aren't you lonely?
Don't you feel as though God had gone out of your life?"

And her mother's voice seemed to answer: "Mother, can't you understand?
It's the same God. He hasn't gone out of my life just because I worship
Him differently. He couldn't abandon any woman who sacrificed herself
for love's sake."

The two voices faded into the past.

But now Aliette realized struggle in her soul. It was as though her soul
stood at bay, at bay with some terrible decision; as though her soul
were being swept toward some contest whose ending, whether victory or
defeat, only God could foresee. Once again she felt panic. Yet how
should there be panic here in Key Hatch Church?

Already they were singing the last hymn. This man, this man beside her
was called Cavendish. Ronald Cavendish! She could see his eyes, now
dropped to the hymn-book, now raised again. She could see his ungloved
hands on the pew-rail. She could hear his voice.

And abruptly, panic passed; abruptly, she felt the very spirit of her
a-thrill, a-thrill as though to fine music.


                                   7

Hector Brunton's wife and Julia Cavendish's son said good-by to each
other in the cottage-twinkling darkness at the foot of Key Hatch hill,
shaking hands coolly, impersonally--merest acquaintances. Indeed,
Aliette's "Good night, Mr. Cavendish" sounded a hundred times less
cordial than Mollie's "I hope we shall meet again, Mr. Wilberforce."

And yet forty-eight hours later Aliette bolted.

She bolted, neither with Cavendish nor from Cavendish. She merely bolted
to Devonshire.

To herself she succeeded in pretending that she was running away from
Hector, from the inevitable recurrence of his amorousness; to Hector,
that--hunting being almost over--Mollie's return to Clyst Fullerford
furnished an excellent opportunity for her to pay the annual visit to
her home.

Hector grumbled, but gave in; and the two sisters traveled back
together, Mollie chattering all the way down, Aliette silently
speculating whether "home" would cure the mental and spiritual unease of
which she now felt acutely conscious.

But the unease persisted. Either "home" had changed its attitude toward
her, or else she had changed her attitude toward "home." The little
wayside station with its one porter and its six milk-cans, the up-hill
drive in the twilight, the first sight of the pilastered lodge, meant
less than ever before. Her heart did not warm to anticipation at thought
of the lit drawing-room, of her mother's hair white in the lamp-glow.
Even when her father welcomed her in the antlered hall, she felt like a
visitor.

They seemed to her so old, so settled, so remote from the actuality of
life, these two: Andrew (Aliette was of that age when children think of
parents by their Christian names) with his veined hands, his tired eyes
and patient mouth, his slow voice and stooping shoulders; Marie, thin,
pleasantly querulous, all traces of beauty save the eyes,
wallflower-brown as her daughter's own, dead in the lined face.

The very house, long and low, browned by time, its mullioned windows dim
with staring down the vale, seemed uncaring of her presence. Even her
own room, the room always kept for Aliette, the white furniture bought
for Aliette when she came back from boarding-school in France, could not
give her the peace she sought. These things, and the things in the
gardens, the pink-hearted primulas and the sheathed daffodils, seemed
insentient of trouble, of the trouble in her mind.

It had not been thus when she returned after marriage. Then the place
had smiled its wanderer welcome. Now it was the wanderer who smiled;
wanly; conscious of chill response; conscious--daily and hourly more
conscious--of an issue she must face unaided.

People, people she had known since cradle-days, came and went, busied as
ever with the same pleasant trivial country round, keeping much to
themselves, a little resentful of the war-rich who were creeping into
Devonshire, ousting war-poor county-folk, transforming old places,
building themselves new.

"Dear Aliette," said the people she had known since cradle-days, "you're
looking younger than ever."

"Dear people," she used to answer, "how nice of you to say so." For
outwardly she remained the same calm Fullerford who had married a
Brunton. Nobody, not even Mollie, guessed the emotions that obsessed
her. To them she was Hector Brunton's wife; not a girl of twenty-seven,
dreaming herself in love, in love for the first time.

Outwardly, she remained so calm. Her eyes were unruffled pools; her
voice a mannered suavity. Even the Martins failed to irritate her.

And Eva Martin would have irritated most sisters. The dignity of
"colonel's lady" sat heavily on Eva's narrow shoulders. She resembled
Mollie in vivacity, Aliette in complexion; but her eyes were their own
cold blue, her hair its own fading gold, and her lips, which smiled
often, but never in affection, two thin lines of anemic red across her
undimpled cheeks.

Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Martin's husband--a tall, gaunt soldier-man,
uncompromising in speech, direct of dark eye, whom Aliette and Mollie
would have liked well enough had he not been Eva's--spent a full ten
days. They brought their children with them; and left them behind when
they departed: two well-drilled little girls, who gave no trouble to
anybody--and no enjoyment.

                  *       *       *       *       *

So, for Aliette, Devon March warmed toward Devon April, bringing neither
peace of mind nor solution of the issue; only the certainty that she who
thought herself invulnerable had succumbed within thirty-six hours of
making his acquaintance to the temporary attractions of a man.

"For, of course," she used to muse, "it was only temporary; a moment's
infatuation; the sort of thing I've always heard about and never
believed in. Curious, that I should still think so much about it! Am I
still thinking about _it_--or about _him_? I _am_ being funny. What's
the matter with me? Love at first sight? The _coup de foudre_? But
that's ludicrous; simply ludicrous. The sooner I get back to London and
leave off brooding, the better."

Nevertheless, as she ordered Caroline Staley to pack, Hector Brunton's
wife realized herself desperately grateful that her husband--as
announced by telegram--had been "called out of town."

Such wires, coinciding with vacation-times, usually signified that he
had grown weary of entreating her fastidiousness!




                              CHAPTER III


                                   1

If you, being a stranger to this London of ours, inquire after Temple
Bar, your inquiry will be fruitless.

Temple Bar was removed about forty years since; but if you traverse the
Strand, and, leaving the jostle of the Strand behind you, venture
on--past Mr. Gladstone's statue and the two churches which part the
streaming traffic as rocks part the waters of a river--you will become
suddenly aware of two pointed wings and a grotesque dragon-shaped head
showing black between high buildings against a narrow slip of sky.

This is the "Griffin." He stands where Temple Bar stood. Above him tower
the clock and gray pinnacles of the law courts. Westward, he looks
toward the seethe of near Aldwych, and far Trafalgar Square. Behind him
clang the news-presses of Fleet Street. At his right wing and his left
you will find the advocates of our law; "barristers," as we call them.

They are not quite of the every-day world, these barristers. Their
minds, even their bodies, seem to move more precisely. The past
influences them rather than the present. Sentimentality influences them
hardly at all. At home--even now very few of them live at the wings of
the Griffin--these men may be lovers, husbands, friends. Here they are
advocates of a code, a selected body, inheritors of a
six-hundred-year-old tradition. Very pleasant fellows on the whole: not
at all inhuman; only--as befits their calling--a little aloof.

It may perhaps help our stranger to understand this aloofness if,
turning southward from the Griffin down the clefts of Inner or Middle
Temple Lane, he will explore some of the "courts" where these barristers
of ours have their "chambers"--Hare Court, Pump Court, Fountain Court,
Miter Court, and the rest.

Here, not a newsboy's shout from Fleet Street, our exploring stranger
will find a veritable sanctum of time-defying quiet--red-brick and
gray-stone houses, paved or graveled walks, fountains, courtyards,
trees, gardens, cloisters, colonnades, and quadrangles; the whole set,
as though it were a symbol of tradition controlling progress, midway
between the moneyed "City" and the governing "West End."

But the quiet of the Temple--Gray's Inn and Clifford's Inn lie north of
the Griffin and beyond our story--is an illusive quiet; the quiet of
good manners concealing busyness. If you watch the faces of the men who
walk those graveled courtyards, you will see them as obsessed by thought
as the faces of any merchant in the moneyed City. If you climb the
uncarpeted stairs of those Georgian houses, and read the names painted
in block letters on the doors, you will find many whom the clanging
presses of Fleet Street have made familiar--and many, many more to whom
even the fame of Fleet Street has never come.

                  *       *       *       *       *

So far, Ronald Cavendish, who shared his chambers in Pump Court with
three other barristers and Benjamin Bunce, their communal clerk--a
little melancholy individual with a face like parchment, the clothes of
a waiter off duty, and watery blue eyes which perpetually craved
recognition--belonged to the latter category. "But the Ellerson case,"
thought Benjamin, "might easily bring 'us' into prominence."

It meant a good deal that "we," who had lost five years at the bar
through "our" going to the war, should be briefed by Wilberforce,
Wilberforce & Cartwright, that very solid firm of Society solicitors, as
junior to the great Brunton. "We," backed by our friendship with young
Mr. Wilberforce, "our" mother's name, and an undoubted grip of common
law problems, were certainly going to get on--an excellent circumstance
for Bunce.

"Ellerson _v._ Ellerson to-day, sir. King's Bench Seven. Mr. Justice
Mallory's court. I have put the papers on your desk." The little man
spoke as though "we" were so busy as to need reminding; and withdrew
into the anteroom.

Ronald Cavendish threw an amused "Thanks, Bunce," after the retreating
figure; and applied himself to study. Ellerson (Lady Hermione) _v._
Ellerson (Lord Arthur) presented features of intense legal interest.
Could a wife, actually but not yet judicially separated from her
husband, sue him for libel? If successful, could she obtain damages?
There were precedents, of course--Hill _v._ Hill and another, Rowland
_v._ Rowland. To say nothing of the celebrated Clitheroe decision!

Long ago the junior, acting on Brunton's instructions, had looked up
those precedents. Now another possible one crossed his mind. He rose
from the ink-stained table; searched among the bookshelves; found a
volume; and stood thumbing it. The precedent was useless: Brunton, as
usual, had drawn the covert like a pack of beagles--leaving not even a
rabbit unscented.

Brunton! Thinking of his "leader," professional instincts blurted in the
barrister's brain. The low, dingy, paneled room, the shaft of sunlight
on the worn carpet, the green of trees at his window, seemed to vanish
from view. He was on horseback again--fox-hunting--with Brunton's wife.

"March," he thought. "And now it's May. Why can't I forget?"

But he couldn't forget. The woman's face, flawless, almost colorless,
the vivid wallflower-brown of her eyes and hair, had haunted him for
nearly three months. He was "in love" with her. At least, he supposed he
must be "in love."

He had been "in love" before; with a girl in Hampshire (long ago,
that--he could scarcely remember her name--Prudence); with the usual
undesirable; with his cousin, Lucy Edwards, when he went to the front.
Remembering such milk-and-water affairs, it seemed impossible that this
new emotion could be love.

Was it perhaps passion! He began, standing there in the sunlight, to
consider passion--as dispassionately as Aliette herself might have tried
to consider it. (In deliberation of thought, they resembled each other,
these two.) Although by no means an ascetic, he hated the abstract idea
of passion, finding it rather indecent--like the letters not meant for
public eyes which, defying the vigilance of solicitors, occasionally
found their way into that stereotyped farce, the divorce court.

And yet this emotion could hardly be other than passion.

The blue eyes under the broad brow grew very serious. Inwardly Ronald
Cavendish, despite his outward poise--the result of training--had
remained extraordinarily young. "Passion," he thought; "how beastly."
And for another man's wife! That made it impossible. That was why the
emotion must be fought.

He had been fighting it ever since they parted. But the emotion would
not be conquered. At times it became an ache, a sheer physical ache.

At such times--and one of them, he knew, was on him now--Ronnie
conceived an amazing distrust of his own self-control; an amazing
gladness that they had not met in London: although he had seen her, at a
distance, more than once, walking across Hyde Park, a Great Dane dog at
her heels. They looked, to his imagination, the tiniest mite forlorn--a
little lonely woman (he always thought of her as little) with a big
lonely hound. Invariably, the sight of her dispelled mere passion,
melting it to a strange tenderness, akin to the tenderness he felt
toward his mother.

"Mr. James Wilberforce on the telephone, sir," announced Benjamin Bunce;
and shattered introspection. Ronnie went outside to the communal
telephone.

"Hello, Ronnie." The solicitor's voice sounded irascible over the wire.

"Hello, Jimmy; what's the trouble?"

"The Ellerson case. Lady H. has got the wind up. She's with the pater
now; wants to go and sit in court till the case comes on; wants a
conference with Brunton; wants anything and everything. Of course we
can't get hold of H. B. Can we bring her over to you?"

"Bring her along, by all means," said the barrister.


                                   2

The offices of Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, which occupy three
floors of a modern red-brick building at the foot of Norfolk Street,
fifty yards from the Thames Embankment and the Temple station of the
Underground, are rabbit-warrened by white-wood partitions and frosted
glass doors into a maze of conflicting passages.

On the top floor are the bookkeeping rooms, whence issue--still in
stately clerical handwritings--those red-taped folioed bills ("To long
and special interview when we informed you that we had taken counsel's
opinion and he was of the opinion that . . .") which are never disputed
though often delayed in payment by an aristocratic clientèle.

Below these, the Cartwrights--an old-fashioned firm of City solicitors
and commissioners for oaths, with a practice one third commercial (Mr.
Jacob Cartwright), one third admiralty (Mr. Hezekiah Cartwright), and
one third criminal (Mr. John Cartwright), who amalgamated with the
Wilberforces in 1918--hold undisputed sway.

On the ground floor, guarded by a bemedaled commissionaire, sit Sir
Peter Wilberforce and his son, surrounded by their secretaries, their
telephone-exchange, their notice-boards, and their waiting-rooms.

Jimmy Wilberforce finished his conversation on the private telephone;
left the box; gave a casual glance at two obviously seafaring gentlemen
who were importuning Sergeant Murphy to "hurry up Mr. Hezekiah"; and
went back to his father's office--a scrupulously tidy apartment, black
gold-lettered deed-boxes lining one of its walls, the rest pictureless
and painted palest écru in contrast with the mahogany furniture and the
tobacco-brown carpet on which Lady Hermione Ellerson's ermine muff now
sprawled like a huge white cat.

Jimmy's father--a white-haired, white-mustached old gentleman,
gold-eye-glassed, black-coated, a little bald of forehead but still
ruddy of cheek--sat in his favorite attitude, one fine hand on the
chair-arm, the other grasping an ivory paper-knife, at the
leather-topped desk by the big bright window. By his side drooped his
client.

"Well?" queried Sir Peter Wilberforce.

Jimmy turned to Lady Hermione. "I am afraid I can't get hold of Brunton
for you. But Cavendish can see us if we go over at once."

"Oh, that is kind of Mr. Cavendish!" purred Lady Hermione.


                                   3

"Lady Hermione Ellerson, Sir Peter Wilberforce, Mr. James Wilberforce,"
announced Benjamin Bunce.

Ronald, rising to receive his client, was met with an outstretched hand
and a torrent of words.

"Oh, Mr. Cavendish, you will help us, won't you? It's like this, you
see. Last night while I was playing bridge at the club, Mr.
Vereker--he's a barrister, you know--told me that I ought to settle. Of
course, as Sir Peter says, he _is_ in a kind of way a friend of my
husband's----"

The tall willowy creature--she had dark hair, dark eyes, long nervous
hands, and a long pearl necklace which bobbed nervously on her flat
young bosom--rattled away till Wilberforce senior stopped her. Then she
drooped to the offered chair, and sat interjecting staccato comments
while the three men did their best to reassure her.

"And still I think I'd rather settle," she ejaculated, after half an
hour's conference.

"My dear Lady Ellerson"--old Peter Wilberforce employed his softest
purr--"of course I'll settle if you want me to. But I _do_ ask you to
consider the effect on your reputation. And besides, we have an
excellent case. A really excellent case. Your husband's own admission,
in the interrogatories, that he had discussed the question of divorcing
you with other people besides his father. The fact that he never _did_
institute proceedings for a divorce, that he never had the slightest
grounds for instituting such proceedings----"

"Still, Mr. Vereker said----"

"Can't we forget Mr. Vereker? Mr. Cavendish has assured you that
legally----"

"Oh, I hate the law!" burst out Lady Hermione. "I wish that Arthur----"
She began to cry, in a ladylike lace-handkerchief way that made her
extraordinarily alluring; and Ronnie, who had only been giving his sober
opinion on the professional subtleties involved, without considering the
human aspect, felt suddenly sorry for her. Women, in matrimonial cases,
nearly always got the worst of it.

Besides, he knew the Ellersons socially, knew a little of their
history--war-marriage, quarrels about money, separation, and now this
curious case in which she was suing her husband for libel and slander.
It seemed a pity that they did not arrange a divorce and have done with
it.

The telephone rang. Benjamin Bunce came in to say that Sir Peter's
office wanted him, that Mr. Justice Mallory was already summing up the
preceding case, and that Ellerson _v_. Ellerson would come on
immediately after the adjournment. The conference broke up.


                                   4

"I'm afraid she won't fight it out," pronounced Wilberforce, snatching a
hasty meal, at Ronnie's invitation, in the somber paneled splendor of
Inner Temple Hall.

All up and down the long monastic tables, under the stained-glass
windows and dignified pictures, other barristers and their guests were
lunching, their low talk hardly reaching their neighbors' ears.

"Unless Brunton makes her," went on the solicitor.

They discussed their client with some frankness for another ten minutes,
consulted watches, and moved themselves to a second monastic apartment
for coffee and cigarettes.

"Talking of H. B.," said Wilberforce, "reminds me that I had a letter
from his wife's sister the other day. She's staying with the Bruntons at
Lancaster Gate, and wants me to call on her."

"Really?"

"You'd better come too. There's nothing like a bit of social work for
getting briefs. Besides, little Mrs. Brunton's charming. We'll go next
Sunday afternoon."

"Sorry, I'm going to play golf." Ronnie spoke calmly, his serious face
giving no hint of the emotions which his friend's suggestion had set
stirring. "What made Miss Fullerford write to you?"

"Oh, we've been corresponding for some time. I promised to help her
about--a legal matter." Wilberforce nearly blushed. "She's a nice girl,
isn't she?

"I'm getting on for forty, you know," he went on, getting no reply. "And
they'll make the pater a baronet one of these days. About time I got
married, don't you think, old man!" Then he consulted his watch again;
and hurried off to Norfolk Street.

Ronnie, having paid for their coffee, sauntered out through the
colonnades to his chambers, and back through Inner Temple Lane toward
the law courts. Sauntering, brief under arm, he thought of his friend.

So Jimmy intended proposing to Mollie Fullerford. She would accept him,
of course. Jimmy was a splendid match. Reticent devil--he hadn't even
mentioned the girl since their return from Key Hatch. Jimmy would be
Aliette's brother-in-law. Aliette! He had no right to think of her as
"Aliette." Jimmy to marry Aliette's sister--that would mean the end of
their friendship. How women complicated one's life! Why should he end
his friendship with Jimmy, his best pal, just because . . .

"Because of what?" asked the schoolmaster Cavendish in Ronnie's mind.

"Because you're in love with his future sister-in-law," answered the
imaginative Wixton.


                                   5

Passing up the broad steps into the law courts, Ronnie was aware of
unusual commotion. Society, mainly represented by the "Ritz crowd," had
decided to patronize the Ellerson case. Lady Cynthia Barberus and her
friend Miss Elizabeth Cattistock were posing to massed batteries of
press cameras. An aristocratic poetess with bobbed hair had draped
herself by the railings. Two actresses, so fashionable that they only
needed to act when off the stage, drove up with Lord Letchingbury, the
latest patron of the unpaying drama, in a Rolls-Royce limousine, causing
mild excitement among a crowd of collected loafers. The constable,
saluting Ronnie, positively beamed approval.

Ronnie, returning the salute a trifle grimly (like many of his kind, the
publicity side of the law always irritated him), entered the archway and
turned left-handed into the robing-rooms.

Here all was quiet again. Hugh Spillcroft, a rising young specialist in
commercial cases, spoke to him as he arranged the white bands round his
collar, tucked in the tapes and drew on his black "stuff" robe before
adjusting the light gray, horsehair wig.

"Going to win?"

"Settled out of court, I should say."

"Not if H. B. can help it," snapped Henry Smith-Assher, am enormous
Pickwickian fellow with a bull-neck and a bull-face. "That chap never
misses a chance of self-advertisement."

Two or three other men chimed in. Brunton, it appeared, was paying the
usual penalty of the successful--unpopularity. Ronnie put on his wig,
and passed out, a dignified legal figure, into the great hall of the
courts.

This place, so vast and bare that the largest cloud of witnesses would
leave it uncrowded, so high and dim that even at noon its vaulted roof
seems lost in a brown haze, exercised a peculiar fascination over Julia
Cavendish's only son. The Wixton in him saw it as the gigantic anteroom
of traditional justice, a symbol whose hugeness hushed even scoffers to
an awed silence.

For he loved his profession, this diffident, difficult young man; and,
loving it, held its code, despite all the imperfections he was first to
acknowledge, very high.

But this afternoon, somehow or other, the inhumanity of the place
depressed him. Outside, there was sunshine, traffic, life, even love;
here, only gloom and rules. As he strode diagonally across the
flagstones up the tortuous staircase to "king's bench division," he met
Thurston, the divorce specialist.

"Hello, Cavendish," greeted Thurston; "you've got the spicy case
to-day."

Lady Hermione was standing by the embrasure of the corridor-window,
talking to Sir Peter. Already a little crowd had foregathered round the
glass-paneled oak doors of the court-room. She smiled at Ronnie over
their heads. He smiled back at her reassuringly; caught Sir Peter's
conference-forbidding eye; and pushed his way through the swing-doors
and the red curtain into court.

The square, high apartment, paneled in dark oak as a church--judge's
daïs, jury-box, clerk's table, and pulpit-like witness-box dominating
its raked pews (above which the spectators' and judge's galleries
already rustled anticipatory silks and feathers),--was still half-empty.
Ronnie insinuated his long body into the junior's pew, which is behind
that reserved for king's counsel, and began turning over his brief.
Turning it, he could not help thinking of his "leader"--of
Brunton--Brunton whose "war service" had not cost him five years' loss
of briefs--Brunton, who had fame, and fat fees, and a house in Lancaster
Gate . . . and Aliette for wife. The court began to fill. Twelve
"special" jurymen, equally fed up with a bad lunch and the
disappointment at not having been dismissed after the last case,
clattered into their box. The clerk and the reporters took their places.
Barristers, some with applications to present before the opening of
Ellerson _v_. Ellerson, some mere spectators, pushed their way along the
front pews. In the back pews crowded various witnesses, solicitors'
clerks, and a favored few among the public who had bluffed or bribed
their way in.

Lord Arthur arrived with his solicitor. They stood talking for some
moments, and finally sat down. Ronnie, looking up from his brief, could
see their two heads, still conferring, below him to his left. The
opposing K.C., Sir Martin Duckworth, a smooth-faced, smooth-voiced
politician, arrived in a very new silk gown, and asked audibly of his
junior if he'd seen the plaintiff. The plaintiff and Sir Peter sidled to
their places in front of the clerk's table, turning courteous backs on
the defendant. Last of all, five seconds before the opening, Brunton
rushed in.

Aliette's husband, looking dignified enough in full legal trappings,
nodded at Ronnie; and leaned over to greet his client just as the
bewigged clerk announced "Silence"; and Mr. Justice Mallory, a
benevolent-looking old image--scarlet baldrick across his wide-sleeved
gown, winking spectacles across his creased forehead--appeared through
the curtain at the back of his daïs; was risen to by the court; and took
his seat.

Various barristers rose up; presented various applications; and sat down
again to hear "Ellerson _v._ Ellerson" or withdrew--according to the
degree of busyness they had attained.

For Ellerson _v._ Ellerson, as "opened" a moment later by Hector
Brunton, was more than a _cause célèbre_: it might, if fought to a
decision, go down to legal history as a "test" case, a precedent
established for all time. Wherefore the barristers--such as
could--stayed.

But the twelve men in the jury-box were not barristers. "His lordship,"
Brunton told them, "will direct you on the legal questions involved. All
_I_ ask you to consider is this. If I prove, as I shall prove to you by
the mouths of competent witnesses, that this unhappy, this innocent
lady, my client, has been slandered, and vilely slandered--for, mark my
words, there is no slander so vile as a slander on a woman's virtue--by
the man at whose hands she has the right most to expect protection--by
her husband: if I prove to you that, through this slander, she has
suffered damage, intellectual damage, social damage, damage to her
health and to her reputation: then, gentlemen, I hope you will
demonstrate by your verdict that, in England at any rate, a wife is not
her husband's property, his chattel to do with as he will, but a free
citizeness, as much entitled to be protected from the slanders of her
husband as from those of any other man or woman in this country."

Brunton boomed on--his appeal all to sentiment. The judge drowsed.
Ronnie, nonchalant behind his leader, could not help envying the even
flow of his oratory. "If only I could speak like that," thought Ronnie
vaguely.

But suddenly, as the K.C. neared his peroration, Ronnie's nonchalance
vanished. "Marriage," boomed Brunton, "is not slavery. A man, just
because he happens to marry a woman, does not own her."

"But he does," thought the junior; "in law he does own her. In law this
man owns Aliette."

And suddenly the broad black-silked back, the bulging neck under the
horsehair curls, the loud confident voice, and every gesture of the
gentlemanly hands grew hateful. He, Ronald Cavendish, the man and not
the lawyer in him, resented all these; and resented them all the more
furiously because he hated himself for the resentment.

At last Brunton sat down.

"Opened high enough, didn't he?" whispered Jimmy Wilberforce, who had
insinuated himself to the side of Ronnie's pew. "Wonder what he'll make
of her in the witness-box."

But now, before Brunton could call his witnesses, Sir Martin Duckworth
rose to address his lordship.

No case, submitted Sir Martin, had been made out for the jury. A
husband--in law--could not slander his wife; nor a wife her husband. In
law they were both one. Therefore, even if his learned friend succeeded
in obtaining a verdict, he could not succeed on the question of damages.
That had been laid down in . . . The politician produced authorities,
calf-bound volumes book-marked with strips of paper. He began quoting
them in his singsong sleepy voice. Lady Cynthia yawned audibly.

Brunton turned to Cavendish, as a sportsman to his loader; and, as a
well-trained loader, Cavendish supplied the legal weapons--books. The
flash of hatred against Brunton was forgotten in his eagerness to win.

The judge began arguing with the politician. "He, the judge, understood
that the parties in this case were not actually living together. Did not
that, in Sir Martin's opinion, make any difference?" In Sir Martin's
opinion, it did not. Brunton chipped in. The lawyers in court stiffened
to interest. Miss Elizabeth Cattistock blew an irritated nose.

The wrangle between bench and bar persisted: only Ronnie, who took no
part in it, saw Lady Hermione's black hat turn slowly from right to
left. It seemed to Ronnie's imagination that the invisible eyes under
the hat-brim were making some call to Lord Arthur. Then he saw Lord
Arthur's head turn, almost imperceptibly, from left to right; saw Lord
Arthur's eyes light with understanding, soften to that invisible appeal.
"She'll never go into the box," thought Ronnie. "She'll go back to her
husband." And despite his eagerness to win, he felt glad--glad that
humanity should triumph over the law.

But Brunton was not bothering about the humanities, Brunton protested
that Sir Martin had not made good his argument. Brunton pressed his
lordship to allow the case to go to the jury.

His lordship thought it quite possible there might be a case to go to
the jury. Nevertheless, his lordship felt it his duty to impress on both
parties the painfulness, the unnecessary painfulness, of such a case as
this. Would not the distinguished counsel on both sides consult with
their clients? Surely there must be some way by which--Mr. Justice
Mallory coughed judicially--a compromise, if necessary a financial
compromise, could be effected.

"Interfering old fool," whispered Brunton to his junior.

Ensued a further orgy of whispering: Lord Arthur, his solicitor and Sir
Martin on one side: Brunton, Lady Hermione and Sir Peter on the other.
Behind him, Ronnie heard Lady Cynthia's muffled staccato, "I say, she
isn't going to settle, is she?" and Miss Elizabeth Cattistock's "If she
does, I win my bet."

Now the K.C.'s withdrew from their clients; drew together, still
whispering; drew away from each other; whispered with their clients
again; and returned to conference.

"I'm afraid it's a wash-out, Cavendish," the leader managed to convey
behind his hand as Sir Martin Duckworth rose to address the court.

His lordship and the jury, announced Sir Martin, would not--he was
delighted to say--be further troubled with this--er--very painful case.
His client had agreed to terms, the financial aspect of which--with his
lordship's permission--Sir Martin did not think it necessary to
disclose.

Did he understand, interrupted Mr. Justice Malory, that the action would
be withdrawn?

Brunton took up the cue. "_My_ client," boomed Brunton, "has consented
to withdraw her action; not that she feels her case in any way weakened,
but because--acting on your Lordship's advice, and, if I may be allowed
to say so, on my own--she has, at the very earnest solicitation of her
husband, decided," the K.C.'s voice dropped to its point, "to return to
him."

Lady Cynthia's audible "Well, I'm damned!" a little rustle of mannerly
applause, and a beam from Mr. Justice Mallory marked the ending of
Ellerson _v._ Ellerson--a happy ending, as it seemed to Lady Hermione's
junior counsel.


                                   6

But Hector Brunton thought otherwise. Recently it had seemed to him as
though Aliette might relent. Ever since her return from Devonshire he
had been conscious of some subtle, incomprehensible change in her.
Therefore it piqued his pride to find her, on his return from court, not
even vaguely interested in the newspaper reports of his speech--more
especially as that speech was quoted almost verbatim under the heading:
"K.C. says woman is not man's property."

"We ought to have fought the thing out," he told her. "That's what I
said to Cavendish."

Aliette's face did not betray her, but her heart--the heart which had
almost persuaded itself of cure--dropped two telltale beats.

"Clever chap, young Cavendish," went on the K.C. "I'd like to have him
to dinner one evening."

With a thoughtful "Why not take him to the club, Hector?" the K.C.'s
wife went upstairs to dress.




                               CHAPTER IV


                                   1

Julia Cavendish was always at home on Saturday afternoons. You used to
meet nearly all social sorts and conditions of men and women in that
exquisitely tended Bruton Street house: literary folk, financial folk,
embassy folk, Anglican priests, politicians, schoolmasters with their
wives, young soldiers with their fiancées, old soldiers with their
grievances, the "Ritz crowd" (which thinks itself Society), and real
Society (which does not need to think about itself at all), intellectual
aristocrats and democratic intellectuals--the whole curious "London"
which an eclectic woman of means can, if she be so minded, gather about
herself by the time she reaches sixty.

But the house itself betrayed, to a trained observer, the fact that
Ronnie's mother really preferred things to people. Not necessarily
expensive things--only occasionally could she afford a real "piece": but
pleasant things; beautiful things that became, as it were, part of one's
life; things one could feel about the house as though they were people,
but people without too many claims on one.

Despite which, No. 67a was neither over-large nor over-crowded with
possessions. Old prints had space on its panels, old furniture on its
floors. Jade idols, Toby mugs, Dresden, Chelsea, and Japanese figures
did not jostle one another on its mantelpieces or in its cabinets.
Spanish velvets and Venetian brocades forbore to pose as "specimens,"
but were curtains, cushions, or chair-covers as use demanded. Georgian
silver employed itself in a hospitable capacity; Satsuma vases held
flowers; Bokhara rugs covered the parquet, not the walls.

"I'm a practical old woman," said Julia; and she looked it now, as she
lay reading on the sofa in the square bow-windowed drawing-room.

A rather stern face was Julia Cavendish's: the Wixton chin dimpled but
very determined; the eyes, under their tortoise-shell spectacles, bluer,
harder than the eyes of her son. The wrinkles in the scarcely powdered
cheeks and at the high temples, as well as the graying of the light
brown hair, not all her own, betrayed her age. But the hands which held
the novel still appeared the hands of a young woman; nor had the years
robbed her of her figure. Her dress--a black tea-gown, real lace at
bosom and wrist--was so unfashionable as to be almost smart. Black silk
stockings and black satin shoes--she had elegant feet--complete the
picture.

A bell rang below. Julia laid her novel on a little lacquered stand by
the sofa; took off her spectacles; and sat up to the maid's announcement
of "Mr. Fancourt."

Dot Fancourt, a sentimental, unhappy old man with over-red cheeks,
sunken eyes and beetling gray brows, his weak mouth hidden by a walrus
mustache, extended both dry hands in effusive salutation.

"My dear, how are you?"

"In the best of health, as usual." Julia Cavendish released her fingers
from the dry hands. "Tell me what Fleet Street thinks about the Ellerson
case."

The editor of "The Contemplatory Magazine" began to gossip; and she
listened to him. The pair had been friends for thirty years, the man's
weakness of character finding comfort in the woman's strength. "Poor
Dot!" thought Julia. His last illness, and the inevitable last
sentimental complication, had aged him. Probably he would go next of the
Victorians. That would leave only Harrison, Gosse, Hardy, and . . .

"Mr. Paul Flower, madam," announced the maid.

There entered a pale, hairless sexagenarian who resembled nothing so
much as a very large white slug. He greeted them both sluggishly; and
began to discuss, with an almost Biblical frankness, the psychology of
Lady Hermione Ellerson--whom he had never met.

"A passionate limpet," he pronounced her, pulverizing that imaginary
mollusc between thumb and forefinger. "The clinging type. I remember
when I was a young man in Paris----"

Paul Flower's conversation, unfortunately, will no more bear the ordeal
of cold print than Rear-Admiral Billy's. He continued holding forth on
the subject of his Parisian youth till interrupted by tea, and Lucien
Olphert--a bald-headed, under-sized creature whose real life was as mild
as his historical novels were heroic. Various other novelists--Jack
Coole, Robert Backwell, and John Binney with Mrs. Binney--dropped in.
Literary "shop," inanest of all "shops" to an outsider, was in full
blast when the maid ushered in Lady Simeon Brunton.

The ex-ambassadress swept across Julia's drawing-room like a well-bred
monsoon. Her Paquin confection--frailest gossamer black with gold
underskirt--rustled condescension. The ospreys in her Lewis hat waved
approving patronage to art and letters.

"You see that I took you at your word, Mrs. Cavendish."

The hostess, who had been introduced to Lady Simeon (and promptly
forgotten her) at a Foreign Office reception some weeks previously, said
the appropriate word and made the appropriate presentations.

"But this isn't a mere social call." explained the new-comer. "This is a
call with a purpose."

She accepted some tea; and subsided on to the sofa. Paul Flower judged
her a Philistine (i.e., a woman who did not regard Paul Flower as the
last living exponent of English literature), but decided her attractive.
He approved her age, about forty-five; her eyes, which were darkly
vivacious; her figure, which was inclined to the abundant; her hair and
complexion, which were both _soigné_, the one matching her eyes and the
other her pearls.

Jack Coole, the two Binneys, and Robert Backwell, his prominent teeth
parted in a valedictory grin, departed. Flower, Fancourt, and Olphert
continued to talk shop.

"A call with a purpose sounds very serious," prompted Julia.

Sir Simeon's wife smiled diplomatically. "The fact is, dear Mrs.
Cavendish, that I want you to dine with us. Next Thursday. You will,
won't you? Although it is such a short invitation. We shall be quite a
small party--not more than twenty at the outside. And will you bring
your son?"

"My son----" Julia, whose inclination was to decline--for some time now,
late nights had wearied her--became visibly more gracious.

"Yes. My cousin Hermione--poor dear, what a time she's been going
through--and all this publicity--so distressing for everybody--says he
was simply charming to her during the case. So wise! So calm! So
helpful! You must be very proud of your son, Mrs. Cavendish."

Not for nothing had the heiress of The Raneegunge Jute and Cotton Mills
married an ambassador!

"Ronnie's coming to dinner this evening," said Ronnie's mother. "If he's
free on Thursday we shall both be delighted. May I telephone you?"


                                   2

Ronnie, who had been watching the polo at Ranelagh, arrived ten minutes
late for dinner.

He came unannounced into the drawing-room; kissed his mother;
complimented her on her clothes (she had changed into a dinner-gown in
his honor); and inquired about the afternoon.

"Dullish," pronounced Julia--and broached the Brunton invitation.

"The Bruntons!" He seemed a little taken aback at the name. "I don't
think I care to go."

"Nonsense. Of course you must go. A barrister's career is mainly
social."

She prolonged the argument over dinner; she mentioned the Brunton
"influence," the Ellerson case: till eventually--somewhat against his
better judgment--she persuaded him to go.

A very different Julia this from the hostess of the afternoon! Always a
little constrained, a little too dignified in company; with her son, she
hid affection under a mask of brusquerie almost dictatorial. In boyhood
Ronnie had been frightened by the mask; even at thirty-six he was only
just beginning to realize the affection it concealed.

Only since his return from the war had full knowledge of this affection
come to him. He saw her now--sipping her coffee in the print-hung,
walnut-furnished dining-room--as a lonely old woman dependent on his
love. And the sight hurt, because his heart was already aware of the
possibility that one day there might be another woman, a younger woman,
in his life.

"I wish you'd let me make you a decent allowance," she said abruptly.
"You ought to be about everywhere. You ought to stand for Parliament.
Even if you don't get in, it's an advertisement."

"I thought you hated publicity, mater."

"So I do--for myself." She cogitated. "I could manage another eight
hundred a year."

"And deprive yourself of----"

"Of nothing. I don't want any money. I'm too old to know how to spend
it. You'll have it all when I'm dead," she added.

"Mater!"--he was the softer in many ways--"I wish you wouldn't talk like
that."

"Why not? Death's a fact. I've no patience with people who won't face
facts. Life isn't a kinema show."

Coffee finished, they removed themselves to Julia's work-room--a square
box of an apartment, book-lined, an Empire desk in its exact center
under the illuminated top-light. Julia sat down at the desk; opened a
drawer; and took out her check-book.

"Eight hundred a year," she said, writing. "That's two hundred a
quarter. I'd better cross the check."

"Don't be absurd, mater." Ronnie frowned.

"But I want you to have it."

"What for?"

"Oh, clothes. You ought to dress better. Club subscriptions.
Entertaining. Cigars. I don't know what men spend their money on. Women,
mostly, I suppose."

Blotting the check, she would have given anything in the world to say:
"Ronnie, darling, do take it. I can't slobber like other women. But I
love you--you're everything I have in the world. Please, please Ronnie,
don't refuse this. It's not money--it's just a token--a token of my love
for you."

Actually, she said: "If your father hadn't been such a fool about money
matters, he'd have left _you_ his estate. He knew that I could always
make all I wanted."

Ronnie frowned again. "You know perfectly well that I won't take it."

"Not even to oblige me? I--I want you to take it. It may cheer you up.
You've been looking depressed lately."

"Have I?"

They had played this comedy of the allowance more than once since his
father's death; but never before had he seen her so insistent.

"Yes." She stretched out the check to him, knowing her offer already
rebuffed. In a way, she was proud of his independence. All the same, it
hurt. One ought to be able to do more for one's child.

"I'm not depressed. And I'm not hard up. Really."

He smiled at her across the desk--one of those rare smiles which
reminded her of the boy she had tried to tip at Winchester. She seemed
to hear his boyish voice, "The pater gave me a fiver when he was down
last. I don't need any more. Honestly, mater."

"You're quite sure?"

"Quite." He watched her tear up the check; noticed a sheaf of proofs on
her desk; and questioned her about them. "Another short story!"

"No. It's an article on 'Easy Divorce' for next month's 'Contemplatory.'
These are the duplicate proofs."

"You're opposing it?"

"Of course."

"On moral grounds?"

"Not entirely. Listen!" She put on her spectacles, and read him the
opening paragraphs. "The woman of to-day is asking that divorce and
remarriage should be made easier. Why? Because the woman of to-day
refuses to face the simple fact that primarily she is her husband's
helpmate. Personally I am a Churchwoman; and therefore find it
impossible to believe the remarriage of divorced people justified. I am
willing to admit that, in a limited number of cases, divorce itself may
be expedient. But I feel that to make divorce easier would be a direct
encouragement of immorality. We have to face facts. Woman is not, never
has been, and never will be capable of resisting the sentimental
impulse."

"You're a real Puritan at heart, aren't you, mater?" he interrupted.

She put down the proofs, vaguely distressed that he should prefer her
conversation to her written word. For work, to Julia Cavendish, counted
more than anything in life--except this lean, clean, sober-minded son of
hers.

"It isn't a very good article, I'm afraid. Dot was in too much of a
hurry for it. I never could write quickly."

These last months she had discovered herself writing even less quickly
than usual. Once or twice, even, she had been forced to break off in the
middle of the morning by a strange fatigue--a pain in her back. She had
meant to consult a doctor; meant to ask Ronnie's advice. But she hated
fussing about herself, hated fussing Ronnie. And besides, Ronnie _was_
depressed--in some trouble or other. She could feel that trouble
instinctively.

"You're sure nothing's worrying you?" she asked him as they said good
night.

"Quite sure. Sleep well, mater."

He kissed her, and went.

"No," he thought, striding home to the rooms in Jermyn Street which she
had insisted on furnishing for him. "No! Nothing's wording me. In point
of sheer fact, I've never been so bucked in my life."

And he was "bucked," ludicrously so; "bucked" because he had yielded to
his mother's persuasions; ludicrously so because, just for the moment,
he had altogether forgotten Hector Brunton's existence.

Only when he awoke next morning did Ronald Cavendish remember that
Aliette was a married woman--and the possibility that, after all, she
might not be one of the guests at her uncle-in-law's dinner-party.


                                   3

The ambassadorial branch of the Brunton family occupies a palace of a
house in that palatial avenue, Kensington Palace Gardens.

Driving thither with his mother in the electric brougham with which she
compromised between the horseflesh of the Victorian past and the petrol
of the democratic present, Ronnie knew himself feverishly excited. All
the suppressed emotions of three months leaped to new anticipation as
they rolled away from Bruton Street, through Berkeley Square into the
park.

It was still daylight. Happy lower-middle-class folk crowded the seats
under the trees, the grass beyond. Here and there, lovers, splendidly
indifferent to the public eye, embraced one another with the frankness
of post-wartime. Subconsciously, the sight of these couples affected the
serious young man in the silk hat and stiff shirt of formal party-going.
Almost he envied them.

"The season has been the fiasco one expected," commented his mother.
"Decent people have no money to spend--the other sort don't know how to
spend it. I wish you'd order yourself a new dress-suit, Ronnie. And
those waistcoat buttons are very old-fashioned. I must get you some new
ones."

"Rather a contradictory sentence," he commented.

"Nothing of the kind. It's a man's duty to be well-groomed." She
sighed--it had been a tiring day, and she hated dinner-parties. "I often
wish you'd stayed on in the army."

"Why?"

"I think you were happier; and the army, in peace-time, is so healthy."

"You do worry about me, don't you?"

"Of course. That's what mothers are for."

The remark, coming from her, sounded curiously pathetic. For the moment,
Ronnie forgot his anticipations. He put a shy hand on his mother's arm.

"Cheer up, mater," he said, seeing her, once again, as a lonely old
woman--the intellect, the public fame of her, merest surface-stuff.

By now, they were through Hyde Park, and into Kensington Gardens. She
removed her arm; made her usual acrid comment on the Albert Memorial;
and the pair of them subsided into contemplation.

Contemplating, Ronald Cavendish realized for the first time exactly how
far he had already drifted toward violation of his mother's code. He
imagined himself saying to Julia, "Mater, I'm in love with Aliette
Brunton."

But he could not imagine Julia's reply. The old fear of her came back,
chilling him.

And yet, code or no code, mother or no mother, he had to admit himself
in love, passionately in love with Aliette Brunton. Even the possibility
of meeting her thrilled his whole being. Looking back now, he saw that
not for one hour since their ride together had she been entirely out of
his thoughts.

Their electric circled out of the gardens, climbed Palace Green, and
swung left between high lights, on to gravel, under an awning. A footman
opened the brougham-door. Ronnie, jumping out, helped his mother to
alight. "Thanks, dear. Tell him to be back by eleven," she said.

Obeying, Ronnie was conscious that he stood in the glare of impatient
headlights. Behind and above the glare, through the plate-glass front of
the approaching cabriolet, he saw two faces: one heavy-jowled above its
starched collar, the other--Aliette's.


                                   4

"That looked like young Cavendish. If it was, and you get an
opportunity, don't forget about asking him to dine with us," said Hector
Brunton.

Aliette did not answer; but her gloved hands, as she alighted from her
husband's car, trembled ever so slightly. She had seen _him_. He had
seen her. And the wound, the wound in her heart, was _not_ cured. She
could feel it throbbing, throbbing with sheer joy. "I'm glad I wore this
dress," she thought.

Her chinchilla cloak, ermine at neck and wrists, covered a gown of soft
grays and softer mauves, silver-girdled. Pearls gleamed at her lustrous
throat, in the tiny ears under her vivid hair. Crossing the
black-and-white tessellated hall to the ambassadorial cloak-room, she
looked a very picture of dignified composure.

But the composure was mainly superficial. Her heart throbbed and
throbbed. She forgot Hector, remembered only Ronnie. This stately old
lady, just being divested of her mandarin opera-cloak, must be his
mother. She resembled him, about the chin, about the eyes.

"What a charming woman!" thought Julia Cavendish. "I wonder if she's
Hector Brunton's wife. I wish I could find a wife like that for Ronnie."

"I'm afraid we're the last," smiled the elder woman, eying the
formidable collection of furs.

"I'm afraid so too," smiled back the younger. She took off her own
cloak; gave one swift glance at the mirror, and was ready.

"Practical, too. Makes no fuss about herself," thought Julia Cavendish,
as they reëntered the hall together.

Aliette could not think. The meeting, unanticipated, had taken her off
her guard. Delight, apprehension, sheer eagerness, and sheer diffidence
made her utterly the girl. It seemed as though, at the instant,
something tremendous must occur.

But nothing tremendous occurred! Or if it did, their social sense saw
them through it. Ronnie was talking to Hector in the hall. He shook
hands with Aliette. He introduced her to his mother. He introduced
Hector to his mother. The four of them went up the wide stairs together.
Aliette heard them announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Hector Brunton. Mrs. Julia
Cavendish. Mr. Ronald Cavendish."

How silly she had been about him. How calm he was! How calm they both
were! Naturally! He hardly knew her. They hardly knew one another.

Hector Brunton's wife realized suddenly that her left glove had split in
the clenched palm, that she had forgotten to take off her gloves before
entering the drawing-room.

"My dear child, how are you? _En beauté_, as always. A credit to the
family." She found herself, among a mob of people, shaking hands with
Simeon.


                                   5

The craftswoman in Julia Cavendish, the literary memory and sense of
"copy" which make her books such exact social pictures, functioned quite
independently from the rest of her personality. No one, watching her as
she talked international politics with her host, would have guessed
that, behind the calm, dignified face, the novelist's brain was busy.
Kodak-like, that brain registered its impressions, rolling them away for
development at leisure.

First impression: an oblong room--paneled--Venetian
bracket-lights--brocaded French windows either end--low scarlet flowers
on a long gold-decked table, narrowing as you looked down it--many faces
either side, two faces at each end--hum of subdued
conversation--servants' white-gloved hands and dark-coated arms
proffering bottles, plates, dishes.

The camera in the brain clicks, rolls away the picture.

Second impression: Sir Simeon, sixty-eight, a little man, white-haired,
blue-eyed, mustache floppy, charming, not very efficient, presumably the
weaker matrimonial vessel--his wife ought never to wear pink--Sir
Simeon's three daughters, obviously by his first marriage, two with
wedding-rings, thirty-eight, thirty-six, nonentities--their partners
ditto--an ugly one, younger, rather interesting.

"My sympathies are entirely with the Jugo-Slavs, Sir Simeon. Italy is
not entitled to a yard of territory more than we guaranteed her by the
Treaty of London," says Julia Cavendish, society-woman.

The camera continues its work.

Third impression: the secretary of the Spanish embassy would look
exactly like a bull-fighter if he wore the national costume instead of
civilized evening-dress--General Fellowes has aged since the War Office
inquiry--a fine type--the big woman he has taken in to dinner would look
like a cantaloup melon if you cut her in two--the pretty girl flirting
with the young soldier (Guards?) must be her daughter.

"Aren't you rather hard on our allies, Mrs. Cavendish?" chips in Hector
Brunton.

"I have no patience with d'Annunzio."

"But at least you will admit that he is a patriot," protests Sir Simeon.

"No bombastic person is really patriotic. Patriotism is a dumb virtue."

"But is patriotism a virtue?" asks the K.C.

"Almost the greatest."

Julia's mental camera snaps again.

Impression of Hector Brunton: a would-be cave-man--not as strong as he
imagines himself--putty in the hands of a sexful woman--rather a
difficult problem for a fastidious wife--obstinate--capable of cruelty.

At which precise moment, the mother ousted the craftswoman from Julia's
brain. She began to wonder if Ronnie were enjoying himself. If only he
weren't so shy with women! Women made men's careers. He had taken down
that charming Mrs. Brunton. She looked down the table and caught his
eyes across the scarlet flowers. He smiled at her. He must be enjoying
himself. She had done right, then, to make him accept the invitation.

"I gather you prefer patriotism to the League of Nations," remarked her
host.

"Your League of Nations," answered Julia, "is merely the sentimental
impulse translated into terms of international diplomacy. Every one
wants it to work--every one realizes it unworkable."

Answering, she thought that she had rarely seen Ronnie look so happy.

But not even the mother in Julia Cavendish knew the cause of Ronnie's
happiness; she was as blind to her son's infatuation as Hector Brunton
to his wife's. She could not divine that the pair of them had passed
beyond mere happiness into a little illusive world of their own making.

For the moment, Aliette and Ronnie dwelt in a rose-bubble of
enchantment. A frail bubble! Yet it cut them off, as surely as though it
had been opaque crystal, from their fellow-guests. Physical passion
found no place in that rose-bubble. Their bodies, the bodies which made
pretense of eating and drinking, which uttered the most absurdly
conventional sentiments, dwelt outside of its magic; while within, their
minds, their natures, their very souls, held secret commune--as two
friends so set in friendship that words have become unnecessary. Yet
actually, magic apart, they were merely a man and a woman, each lonely,
each too healthy for that loneliness which is the prerogative of the
sick and the abnormal.

They had been lonely; now they were no longer lonely. They had been
obsessed with visions of each other; now they no longer saw visions.
They saw each other; and their souls were satisfied.

But of all that their souls knew, their lips spoke no word.

"I've often thought about that run we had," said the man. "One doesn't
get a gallop like that every day of one's life. Did you have many other
good days?"

"I didn't go out again last season," said the woman.

"Really? How was that?"

"Oh, I went down to Devonshire with my sister."

"You didn't take Miracle?"

"No." It pleased her that he remembered Miracle's name. "By the way, I'm
quite angry with you, Mr. Cavendish. Mr. Wilberforce told us on Sunday
that you preferred golf to our society."

"Jimmy's a mischief-maker. Why isn't your sister here to-night, Mrs.
Brunton?" Man-like, he wondered--now--why he had refused to call on her.

"Mollie's at a dance. I believe Mr. Wilberforce will be there too."

"Jimmy's a great dancer." Did she know, he speculated, about Jimmy and
her sister? Probably. Women--according to Ronnie--always told one
another that sort of thing.

"And you?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm like the Tenth. I don't dance."

Aliette dimpled to laughter at the old jest. It mattered so little what
he said to her with his lips. His eyes gave her the answer to the one
question; the only question she had ever asked herself in vain. His eyes
said: "Yes. This is Love. This is the Real Thing." She wondered if his
brain knew the message of his eyes. She marveled at herself for not
having sooner known the message of her heart. "I'm in love with him,"
she thought. "I've been in love with him ever since that Sunday at Key
Hatch." All the gray unease of the past months, of the past years,
diffused to amber sunshine.

The Spanish secretary, sitting on her right, chimed in to their
conversation. "You do not dance, Cavendish. That is strange. I thought
all English people danced."

The rose-bubble of enchantment was broken. Talk grew general. Dinner
drew to its end.


                                   6

"You look a little tired, Mrs. Cavendish. Can't I get you some more
coffee? A cigarette, perhaps?"

"Thank you so much. I think I would like a cigarette."

Aliette and Julia sat together in a palm-screened corner of the vast
Louis Quinze drawing-room. The men were still downstairs. The younger
woman rose; and fetched a silver cigarette-box, matches.

Julia lit her cigarette. She felt very old, very weary, quite unlike
herself. The pain nagged at her back.

"I'm afraid I'm not a very gay companion for a beautiful young woman.
You mustn't mind my paying you compliments." Aliette had raised a
protesting hand at the word "beautiful." "When I was your age,
compliments were in vogue. Nowadays they're out of fashion--like good
manners."

"Surely good manners are never out of fashion," said Aliette.
"Only--like fashions--they change."

Lady Simeon veered toward them, but diverted her course. They talked on,
drawn to each other by a kindred obsession--Ronnie.

"I'd love to ask her what she thought of him," mused Julia Cavendish. "I
simply daren't mention her son," mused Aliette Brunton.

Thus the man found them when he came upstairs. They made an exquisite
picture, there, under the green--his mother, dignified, strong (not
wishing to let him guess her weariness, she had pulled herself together
at his approach), the halo of intellectual achievement setting her apart
from every other woman in the room; and the vivid, exquisite, but
equally dignified creature at his mother's side.

"You don't often smoke, mater." He felt consoled that these two should
be together. For the last twenty minutes the sight of Hector
Brunton--holding forth, loud-voiced, over a cigar--had made him feel a
little guilty.

"Mrs. Brunton insisted. Come and sit down, Ronnie. Unless"--servants
with card-tables made a belated appearance--"you want to play bridge."

"I'd just as soon talk."

They made place for him. He and his mother began to discuss their
fellow-guests, critically, but without malice. Listening, Aliette felt
like an interloper. Even if she had been unmarried, how could she
interpose her love--for it was love, she knew that now, knew it
irremediably--between these two? Her mind reacted from happiness to
depression.

He said to her, "You're looking very thoughtful."

She answered absent-mindedly, "Am I?"

He said: "Yes. Don't you want to play? They're making up tables."

She said: "No. I'd rather sit here and watch."

Sir Simeon drifted up to them, bringing the young Guardee and the pretty
girl he had taken down to dinner. The pair were still flirting,
butterfly-like. Their host had insisted on introducing them to Julia.
They suffered the introduction, and flitted away. "Who _is_ Julia
Cavendish?" asked the boy. "Silly! She writes poetry," answered the
girl. "Oh, I say, ought I to have read it?" "Of course you ought. I wish
we were going to dance, don't you?" "Rather."

The cantaloup lady rolled up to Sir Simeon, and dragged him away to show
her his pictures. Julia relapsed into mono-syllables. It must be nearly
half-past ten. Thank goodness! She could just manage another thirty
minutes. Meanwhile Ronnie could continue talking to this pretty woman.
Perhaps he would stay on. That would be best. She wanted to go home
alone. In the morning she could telephone Dot for the name of his
doctor.

And so, once again, the rose-bubble of enchantment formed itself about
those two lovers. But now both were conscious of the bubble's frailty.

And the man thought: "This cannot endure. I cannot endure this. To-night
must be the last time we meet." He saw her husband, pompous, considering
the call of a hand. He knew that he abhorred Brunton for the possession
of this exquisite woman. He loathed himself for abhorring Brunton.

The woman, too, saw her husband. But she could only feel sorrow for him.
Poor Hector, who would have been satisfied with so little of her; who
had never known how much she had to give. And now--now no man would ever
know. Unless----Her fastidiousness revolted abruptly from introspection.
She felt glad of Julia's:

"I think the brougham should be here by now, Ronnie. Do you mind finding
out? And don't worry to see me home. I'm sure Mrs. Brunton will never
forgive me if I drag you away."

"Don't be absurd, mater. Of course I sha'n't let you go home by
yourself." Ronnie rose, and made his way across the room.

"You'll persuade him to stop? I--I'd rather go home alone," said Julia.

"Because you're tired. Because you don't want him to see it." The words
escaped Aliette before she could control them. She covered herself
quickly. "I'm sure that must be the reason. I'm sure, if I had a son, I
should never want him to think that I was tired."

"You have children then--girls? You couldn't have known otherwise." The
novelist in Julia was asleep; she could see no other reason why this
"charming creature" should have divined her mentality.

"No. I have no children, worse luck!"

Ronnie came back to say that the brougham waited.

"You mustn't come with me, Ronnie." Julia got to her feet.

"Mater, I insist."

"Persuade him to stay, Mrs. Brunton."

Subconsciously, Aliette knew the incident momentous. His blue eyes were
looking down into hers. Behind them she read indecision. He wanted to
see his mother home: he wanted to stay with her. She could keep him at
her side. Only, if she did keep him--and it would take the littlest
look, the littlest gesture,--then she would be interloper indeed.

Consciously now, she made her first sacrifice.

"I think a son's first duty is to his mother," smiled Aliette Brunton.




                               CHAPTER V


                                   1

Ten days went by.

For Aliette, the trivial round of London continued.

She attended a terrific _tamasha_ of a wedding--all frocks and roses--at
St. George's, Hanover Square; she dined at the Carlton with Hector and a
sumptuous client from the money-making North; she walked the park with
Ponto, her harlequin Dane, who, as though he understood his mistress was
troubled, kept close at heel while she footed it, and thrust a
consolatory nose into her lap whenever she sat down; she played
lawn-tennis at Queen's; she did her household duties at Lancaster Gate,
fighting and defeating a miniature revolution among the female staff.
But her emotions she could neither fight nor defeat.

These emotions were all strange, sweet, disturbing. For the first time
in her life a man obscured the entire mental horizon. Constantly she
thought of Ronnie--imagining him her confidant, her friend, her lover.

Her mind took a whole week to formulate that last definite word; and
even then the word seemed inadequate.

Except for Mary O'Riordan and Mollie, Aliette possessed no intimates of
her own sex. Common gossip, however, credited various women of her
acquaintance with "lovers": some permanent, accepted as institutions by
every one except the husband; some transitory of the season; most merest
"tame-cats," fetch-and-carry men. Hector's wife wanted none of these.
She wanted Ronnie--not an occasional Ronnie, not a clandestine Ronnie,
neither a merely physical nor a merely platonic Ronnie: but Ronnie
himself--all of Ronnie--Ronnie for her very own.

Comprehension of this fact--it came to her with peculiar clarity one
late afternoon at a crowded tea-fight in Mary O'Riordan's house off Park
Lane--brought the woman up short by the head.

She realized herself wholly in love--dangerously, perilously,
passionately in love. And the realization frightened her. It meant the
abandoning of her own fixed point of view. It meant, actually, if not by
intention, sin. At least it ought to mean "sin"--only somehow she could
no longer regard it in that light. If she had not thought of Mary as
sinful, why should she apply a different standard to her own case?

If this immense new tenderness in her, this accentuation of all her
femininity, was "sin"--then nature's self must be sinful. If, by
religion, she belonged body and soul to Hector, forever and ever amen;
if, in the sight of God, his infidelities counted for nothing; if his
occasional desire to possess her (only the night before she had been
subtly aware of that desire's recrudescence) constituted a lifelong
claim--then religion, as she had so far understood religion, must be a
mere code designed in the interest of husbands, and God Himself a mere
male.


                                   2

Meanwhile, to Ronnie's mind, the problem presented itself differently.

Having no formal religion, the aspect of "sin" did not trouble him. He
came, as he imagined in those ten days, to regard the entire question
from a legal point of view. He wanted a woman who belonged to somebody
else; by no manner of means could he possess that woman unless the law
set her free. Her freedom being outside the sphere of practical
politics, one's duty was self-control, forgetfulness.

On the question of self-control there could be no compromise; but to
forget Aliette was a tough job. Mere passion--since their last
meeting--represented only the tiniest fraction of his feelings. Already
she had given him an entirely new outlook--the lover's outlook: so that
he caught himself regarding the faces of his fellows, faces in his club,
at the courts, in the streets, on tubes and in omnibuses, solely from
his own obsessed point of view. What secret, what _emotional_ secret,
concealed itself behind those unemotional English faces? What
sentimental impulse goaded them about town?

"The sentimental impulse" was his mother's favorite phrase. She had used
it no less than five times in her article for the "Contemplatory"--which
article, astutely boomed by Fancourt, had very nearly created a
first-class "stunt."

One paragraph of his mother's seemed peculiarly applicable to the
barrister's problem.

"If," wrote Julia Cavendish, "the Sentimental Impulse--for I will never
consent to regard the unlawful attraction between a married woman and a
man other than her husband as love, the very essence of which is
obedience and self-denial--once comes to be considered a palliation for
adultery, then the entire foundations of family life will be in
jeopardy."

Six months ago Ronnie would have been the first to uphold such a
doctrine. Now he could only find the flaw in it. The gospel according to
Julia Cavendish--argued her son's mind--amounted to this: If a married
woman loves her husband, she merely does her duty. If she doesn't love
him, she must do her duty just the same. Obedience, to a man; and
denial, of one's own inclinations, constitute the whole duty of woman.
In other words: A husband can do no wrong.

And at that precise point in his meditations Ronald Cavendish remembered
certain rumors--heard and forgotten three years since, on his one leave
from the East--about Hector Brunton and a certain red-headed lady of the
stage.

All the same, even admitting certain modifications--a wife's right to
fidelity, for instance,--did not his mother's code form the only
possible basis of society? What reasoning human could substitute the
sentimental impulse for the existing marriage laws? "Free love" would
only mean free license for the unbalanced, the over-sexed, the abnormal,
the womanizer, and the nymphomaniac. Matrimonial bolshevism, in fact!

"Matrimonial Bolshevism," he remembered, was to have been the title of
his mother's next article; but for the moment she had been forced to
give up work. Sir Heron Baynet, the specialist called in by Dot
Fancourt's puzzled doctor, had implored her--so she told Ronnie--to
rest.

"I've got to take care of myself," she said. "Sir Heron says I'm not
exactly ill, but that I'm disposed to illness."

Actually, Sir Heron's words had been far more disturbing; but Julia, who
had never consulted a medicine-man in her life, resented the little
man's seriousness, and pooh-poohed most of his advice.

"Don't worry about me," she went on. "Except for being a little tired, I
feel like a two-year-old."

Ronnie, obsessed with his own troubles, accepted her version of the
interview; and went off to play tennis. Despite all the hair-splitting
and all the self-analysis, despite all the resolves never to see Aliette
again, and all the attempts to bluff himself lawyer against himself man,
the sentimental impulse persisted. And hard physical exercise, he
thought, might help to cure that impulse!




                               CHAPTER VI


                                   1

"If Aliette hadn't given up the game to do war-work, and if I hadn't got
cut over by that bomb, we might have done some good together in the club
doubles," said Mollie Fullerford.

"Well, you're both of you too hot for me," protested Wilberforce.

He balanced a cup of tea on his white-flanneled leg, and surveyed his
companion admiringly. They were sitting in the sloped veranda of the
clubhouse at Queen's. Below them, on the oval of green turf between the
red West Kensington houses, a dozen marked courts hummed with the ping
of ball against racket-face, with the swish of running skirts and the
voices of the players scoring--"love fifteen," "fifteen all," "fifteen
thirty."

"Oh, well played!" ejaculated the girl. Aliette, practising with Mrs.
Needham on No. 2 court, had just banged a forehand drive down the
side-line. "She's getting it back. Don't you think so, Jimmy?"

Mollie spoke the last word with some hesitation; they had only just got
to the point of calling each other by their Christian names.

"Rather," agreed her companion, whose interest in Brunton's wife was of
the vaguest, but who knew that he must at least simulate it--because, to
Mollie, Aliette represented a good deal more than the average sister.

James Wilberforce did not possess a very emotional personality. He was
not at all the sort of person to be swept off his feet by any woman.
Marriage being "indicated," alike by parental desires, personal tastes,
and a growing income, he had cast about for a possible mate; found her
by accident; and was now "making the running" in the approved manner.

So far, the "running" had been rapid enough. Nevertheless, Sir Peter
Wilberforce's son and heir already understood that this calm young
creature of the broad forehead and the violet eyes would not yield
herself without a struggle. "Takes life rather seriously, does Mollie,"
he thought; and liked her none the less for that.

"Does Mr. Cavendish play?" she asked casually. "If so, you ought to
bring him one afternoon."

"He used to. But since he took to golf, 'patters' has lost its
attraction."

"Rotten game, golf," said Mollie. "Takes too long. I believe in getting
one's exercise over quickly."

They discussed the point for a second or two; and then veered, like most
people in their position, to the personal. Aliette, looking up at them
as she changed courts, knew a quick flash of envy. For those two, love
would run its legitimate course; whereas for her---- She put thought
away, and concentrated on the game.

"Two five, I lead," announced Mrs. Needham--a hard-featured,
soft-hearted woman with a mop of unruly black hair, an eye like a hawk,
and the hands of a mechanic. "Why don't you give up that overhand
service?"

"It'll come back in time."

Aliette went to her own base-line, and took two balls from the boy. Mrs.
Needham crouched in her favorite position on the other side of the net.
Aliette tossed up a ball, swung up her racket, served.

The service, railroading down the center-chalk, defeated Mrs. Needham.
The server crossed to the left-hand court; stood to serve--and saw
Ronnie.

For a fraction of a second they looked at each other through the high
side-netting. He plucked off his soft hat, and stood watching. Aliette
served; faulted; faulted again.

"Fifteen all," announced Mrs. Needham.

And suddenly, Aliette's game came back to her. Once more her first
service struck chalk from the center-line. But this time Mrs. Needham
got back a swingeing shot. Aliette ran--back-handed--flew to the net,
killed the return.

"Thirty fifteen," she announced.

She knew, as she crossed, that Ronnie was still watching; that she must
not look at him; that if she looked at him she would double-fault again;
that she mustn't double-fault; that she must win.

But now Mrs. Needham was all out for the set. Aliette's service came
back like white lightning down the side-line. She struck--ran for the
net--guessed Mrs. Needham's lob-stroke--got back to it--slammed it
across the court--got to the net again--won her point after a tremendous
rally.

"Forty fifteen," announced Aliette; and abruptly, preparing to serve,
she knew that Ronnie was no longer watching. Concentration failed her:
the game didn't seem to matter: the sooner she lost the game, the sooner
she would be able to talk with him.


                                   2

"Why, there _is_ Mr. Cavendish," said Mollie Fullerford. "And that's
Hugh Spillcroft with him. I haven't seen Hugh for years."

She ran down the steps; and Wilberforce followed--a little jealously.
The four stood chatting.

"Yes," said Ronnie. "Spillcroft had insisted on his playing 'patters.'
Spillcroft had promised to lend him a racket."

"Cavendish used to play a pretty fair game at the House," interjected
Hugh--a clean-shaven monocled young man, who looked, once divested of
wig and gown, a bit of a blood.

To Ronald the ensuing conversation was almost meaningless. He took part
in it automatically. He didn't want to talk with these people; he wanted
to watch that white embodiment of graceful strength, Aliette. He could
hear her voice, "Forty thirty," followed by the swish of two balls along
netting, and Mrs. Needham's "Deuce." She had lost two points since he
turned away.

The unexpected sight of her had paralyzed his self-control. He forgot
all the resolutions, all the ratiocinations of the last ten days. He
clean forgot Hector Brunton. His inward vision reveled in memories of
her beauty. How glorious she looked--on horseback, a-walking, in evening
dress, even on a tennis-court. Curious, that last! "Patters" women
nearly always looked disheveled--those of them who could play.

Aliette--her set thrown away--and Mrs. Needham joined the four of them.

"How do you do, Mr. Cavendish?"

"How do you do, Mrs. Brunton?"

They clasped hands.

"I had to go all out that last game," said Mrs. Needham.

Neither she nor Ronnie realized that Aliette had lost deliberately.
Aliette seemed so calm, so radiantly self-possessed. The vivid coils of
her hair shone smooth in the sunlight; her eyes, as they looked into
Ronnie's, were unruffled pools of dignity.

Yet inwardly Hector's wife shook like a ship in storm. The tempest of
feeling--released, as it were, by the touch of his fingers--swept her
through and through. To stand there, talking rubbish, undiluted "tennis"
rubbish, became sheer torment. Her heart ached for his to recognize it.

"Oh, but I'm a fool all right," said the new voice in her heart; the
voice she had been trying to stifle ever since March. "I've lost my head
for good this time. I wish I could run away from him. I wish he'd go and
change. What's the use of meeting him? Like this--with all these people.
Why aren't we ever alone? I wish he'd go."

But Ronald Cavendish could not tear himself away. He, too, stood there,
"like a perfect idiot," as he phrased it to his mind, saying anything
that came into his head; anything that would keep him for another
minute, and yet another minute, within the charmed circle of her
society.

"Mixed doubles seem distinctly indicated," broke in Spillcroft's voice.
"Come along, Cavendish, you and I had better change."

"But I shall be absolutely rotten," protested Ronnie, as he allowed
himself to be led off.

Mrs. Needham found another opponent, leaving the two sisters alone with
Wilberforce, who offered Aliette some tea. She accepted, and accompanied
them back to their table; where, after a few minutes, Cavendish and
Spillcroft joined them.

Sipping her tea, listening with half an ear to the conversations all
round her, Aliette Brunton was, for the first time, aware of social
danger. She felt a furious desire to talk with Ronnie, to look at him.
But to-day no frailest rose-bubble of enchantment isolated them from
their kind. To-day all the other instincts warned that she must avert
her eyes, avert her voice. Nobody--not even Mollie--must guess their
secret. Somehow she no longer doubted it _their_ secret. Her very fears
gave her the certainty of him. She stole a look, sideways under long
lashes, into his blue eyes; and knew--knew that he loved her.

Yes, he loved her. Not as Hector imagined love, solely in the
possessive. But in all ways; with passion, with tenderness with as much
regard for her as for himself.

Fleetingly, she marveled that this thing should have happened to her; to
both of them. How had it happened? Why? What did the why or the how of
the thing matter? Sufficed--for the ecstatic moment--the knowledge that
they loved one another.

But the man did not know. Certain of himself, he held no certainty of
her. Even his self-certainty seemed evanescent in her presence. Surely
he had not dared to let himself adore this radiant, perfect creature!
Surely, even daring to adore, he would never dare tell her of his
adoration! She was like the goddesses, utterly removed from the touch of
a man, utterly aloof from him. Then, fleetingly, he knew her no goddess,
but a wife--Hector Brunton's wife. And all the scruples of his code made
the knowledge bitter in his mouth.

"Cavendish hasn't got a word to say for himself," thought Mollie.
"Jimmy's ever so much better-looking--though Jimmy's tennis _is_ rotten.
I sha'n't let Jimmy play in this set." And she insisted, following the
high-handed method of the modern young, on playing with Spillcroft
against Cavendish and her sister.

Ronnie's patters proved somewhat less out of practice than he had
imagined.

"Thank you, partner," smiled Aliette, after the last stroke of the
third, and decisive, set. "Your volleying saved, the day."

"Oh, I didn't have much to do with it," he smiled back.

Since the beginning of the match, except for the necessities of the
strokes, they had hardly spoken to one another. But, for each, the forty
minutes of partnership, the mutual will to win, the clean struggle on
clean grass, the open air and the exercise had been one long delight.

Scruples, uncertainties, consciousness of danger, consciousness of
fear--these and all the inevitable soul-searchings of a love such as
theirs took wings and departed from them. Surrendering their bodies and
their minds to one another for the winning of a game; concentrating on
the vagaries of a white ball, a net, and a few square feet of turf; they
forgot their immediate selves, forgot that they were "Mr. Cavendish" and
"Mrs. Brunton"--two poor human beings poised at the edge of emotional
disaster, separated by law, by the church, by "honor," united only by
the "sentimental impulse," and became, for the forgetful moment, one
mind and one body.

But now, once more, they were twain. Now forgetfulness was over. Now
emotion poured back full-tide, submerging both their minds and their
bodies.

James Wilberforce lounged down from the clubhouse; drew Mollie away from
her partner, and began whispering. Mollie called across the court:

"I say, Alie, Mr. Wilberforce wants to drive me back in his car. You
won't mind coming home by yourself, will you? I don't think I ought to
play any more."

"No, dear, I sha'n't mind," called back Aliette; and her eyes as she
watched the two figures making towards the waiting cars; as she heard
the chug of Wilberforce's engine, and saw his two-seater swing through
the gates up the road toward Baron's Court, betrayed the truth of the
remark. But when she turned once more to the flanneled man at her side,
those eyes had regained their composure.

"Can't we find a fourth?" remarked Aliette.

"We'll get Mrs. Needham to make up," said Spillcroft. "She and I'll take
you two on."

And so, for one last crowded hour, those two played together--brains and
bodies attuned to the delight of working in unison.

The very cleanness of the game took all sense of guilt and all guilt of
sense from them. They might have been boy and girl, young husband and
younger wife, lovers whose love was sanctioned of the law--he and she,
sinews taut, eyes keen, all the health and all the youth of them
concentrated on rhythmic pastime.


                                   3

"You'e got your car, I suppose?"

"No. My--my husband's taken it out of town."

The rhythmic pastime was over. Nervously now they faced one another on
the empty court. Spillcroft had rushed away to change, Mrs. Needham to
the tube. From their kind, they could expect neither help nor hindrance.

Already the shadows of the red houses lengthened toward them across
green turf; already the bustle of the tennis-ground was hushed. Sparrow
twittered on the silence. In the radiance of that summer evening the
brown hair, the brown eyes of Aliette kindled to wallflower color
against the rose-flushed cream of her skin. The sight of her beauty, so
virginal in its white simplicity of attire, so alone with him in that
emptiness of green, struck Ronnie speechless. He stood enthralled--the
magic of her harping sheer music against the hush in his brain.

"I--I think I ought to be going home," said Aliette.

She, too, heard that sheer music which is love. Once more, tempest-wise,
emotion swept her through and through: sweeping away inhibition;
sweeping away all false fastidiousness; cleansing her soul of all
instincts save the instinct for loving, for being loved. In that one
magical, self-revealing moment, she was conscious solely of joy.

"I--mayn't I drive you----" stammered Ronnie. He hardly knew what he
said. All the suppressed vehemences, all the pent-up longings of the
past months craved utterance at his lips. Fear and love keyed him to any
daring. He had had such happiness of her that afternoon. It made him
fearful lest happiness should utterly escape.

"Thank you very much----" Once more she was aware of danger. Yet she
could not bring herself to say him "No."

He left her without another word. Her own heart, the very world, seemed
to have ceased pulsing as she awaited his return. She stood alone, woman
eternal, hearing very faintly across hushed spaces the beat of music,
the birth-cry of children.

Ten minutes later--looking, to other eyes, the most ordinary, most
orderly of citizens--Ronnie came back. But that sense of utter solitude
was still on Aliette. She could only smile her thanks as he led her to
the waiting taxi, handed her in, and closed the door.

She did not wish that he should speak with her. She was afraid lest even
his voice should irrupt upon this exquisite solitude wherein her soul
hung poised. And yet how good to know him beside her as London spun past
them in the twilight.

Was this London, the London she had so hated, this wonder-town through
which they sped together? Was this Aliette? This, Ronnie?

And suddenly, vividly, she desired to hear his voice. Solitude no longer
sufficed her. She had been so long solitary--solitary in unhappiness.
Now, in her new happiness, she craved companionship, the sound of a
voice, the touch of a hand. Why did he not dare speak with her?

Descending as from great heights, her soul knew him afraid lest,
speaking, he should destroy that rose-bubble of enchantment in which
they had their being; afraid, too, because he still thought of her as
another's. Yet she was no other's: she was his, his only. And he--hers.

How fast they sped through this miracle of London. Already, the trees of
its park were fleeting by.

Oh, why wouldn't Ronnie speak with her? Had he no word to say? In a
moment, in such a little moment, it would be too late.

Yet it was fine of him not to speak, fine that he should so steel
himself against her. His eyes were like sharp steel; his lips one tense
line above the determination of his chin. He had clenched his hand--his
right hand. Aliette could see it--close--so close to her own hand.

Then the car swerved, almost throwing them together; and Ronnie's
self-control snapped, as a violin-string snaps, to the touch of her.

Their hands met. She knew that he was raising her hand to his lips; she
felt the brush of his lips warm against her fingers; she heard his lips
whisper: "Aliette--Aliette--don't hate me for loving you."


                                   4

Hector Brunton's wife entered her husband's house like a girl in a
dream.




                              CHAPTER VII


                                   1

When Aliette looks back on the three days that followed her lover's
first avowal, she can only see herself moving in a strange, rapt
exhilaration from room to room of Hector's great house in Lancaster
Gate.

Hector, she realized thankfully, would be away till Monday evening: the
other inmates of the house--Mollie, Caroline Staley, Lennard the butler,
and his female satellites--seemed as though they had been screen-folk,
flat phantoms, alive only to the eye.

Vaguely, among those phantoms, she can remember Jimmy Wilberforce, very
correct in his evening-clothes, sitting between her and Mollie in the
big cream-paneled dining-room.

Dinner over--Aliette remembers--she invented some pretext to leave the
pair unchaperoned, and withdrew to the balcony.

It was good to be alone, alone with one's dreams--dreams that made even
Bayswater Road beautiful. The road seemed a pathway of radiance. High
silver edged it either side; between, the hasting car lights streamed
their fans of luminous crystal. Here and there among the trees beyond,
her eyes caught the orange flicker of matches, the red of kindled
cigarettes.

"Under those trees," she thought, "Ronnie whispered, 'Aliette, don't
hate me for loving you.'"

As though she could ever hate him!

A little breeze, blowing cool across London, ruffled her hair. Patting a
scarcely displaced curl, she thought: "He kissed these fingers of mine.
Another time he will kiss me on the lips. My lips shall answer his
kisses."

And all those three days and nights, thought went no further. For the
moment it sufficed to know one's self adored and adoring, to dream the
impossible, to vision oneself untrammeled as Mollie, a virgin in bridal
white standing meek-eyed before one's chosen.


                                   2

But Hyde Park, of a crowded Sunday morning, is no place for dreams:
rather is it an epitome of actual London. Here, all along with brown
men, yellow men, black men, swathed Arabs, Poles, Czecho-Slovakians,
Turks, Spaniards, 5 per cent. Americans, and even (such is the bland
insouciance of London) a Bolshevik or so, foregather representatives of
all the thousand castes between peer and proletarian which people
Democropolis.

Not that these castes commingle! Each, as though disciplined, has its
assembly-place. Aliette and Mollie, for instance, taking the diagonal
path from Victoria Gate, would no more have let themselves intrude upon
the communistic sanctum near Marble Arch, than the fulminating prophets
of social equality and unlimited class-warfare would have dared invade
the stretch of turf and gravel by the Achilles statue which custom
reserves for "church-parade."

"We really ought to have gone to church first," said Mollie.

"Ought we?" answered an absent-minded sister.

Aliette's thoughts were very far from church. That morning, alone in the
bow-windowed library among the heavy pictures and the heavier books, she
had tried to be her old self again, to reason out the whole issue
involved by Ronnie's declaration. But her reasoning had been all
confused, baffled, and confounded of the emotions.

One fact only, as she now saw, had emerged star-clear from her hour of
introspection: the fact that she loved Ronnie. And she had no right to
love Ronnie! She was a married woman. Socially, and in the eyes of the
law, she belonged to Hector.

Walking, she tried to delude herself. Perhaps the love was all on her
side; perhaps her dreams would endure, bringing no reality.

But even the momentary delusion did not endure. Peremptorily her heart
assured her of Ronnie's devotion, of its permanence. Irrevocably she
knew that, sooner or later, the whole issue would have to be faced.

The two sisters walked on, silent in the sunshine, till they came to the
assembly-place of their caste. There, still silent, they sat them down
under the trees.

All about them, some seated, some strolling, were other well-groomed
people. Beyond the low-railed turf, a compact, orderly crowd sauntered
four deep along the sidewalk. Beyond them, occasional cars, occasional
carriages drew up to disgorge fresh arrivals.

"Morning!" said a man's voice. Aliette, who had been entertaining a
stranger's Pekingese with the tip of her unfurled parasol, looked up;
and saw James Wilberforce.

James Wilberforce asked if he might sit with them, and took the answer
for granted. "Fine day for cutting church," he grinned, as he arranged
his hefty bulk, his striped trousers, his top-hat (which shone with a
positive mating splendor), his "partridge" cane, and his buckskin gloves
in the appropriate poses. "Been here long?"

"No," Mollie answered. "We've only just come."

"Seen anything of Cavendish?"

"Not so far, Jimmy."

"Expect he and his mater'll be along pretty soon. I'm lunching with them
at Bruton Street."

"Are you?"

And suddenly Aliette panicked. "I wish I could bolt," thought Aliette.
"I ought to bolt. He mustn't catch me here, in public, undecided. I wish
I hadn't come. I might have known he'd be here. Oh, why didn't I reason
things out to a finish this morning?"

                  *       *       *       *       *

Nor was Aliette Brunton the only one to panic! Ronald Cavendish, walking
with his mother from Down Street to Hyde Park Corner, felt equally
unsure of himself. He, too, after three days of rapt exhilaration, after
three nights during which the one predominant thought had been, "She
yielded her hand, she loves me," had tried to face the issue
deliberately.

But deliberation seemed utterly to have deserted him. Consecutive
thought was impossible. Between him and thought shimmered the radiant
face of Aliette, the wide, unstartled, tender eyes of Aliette, the
yielding fingers of Aliette as he raised them to his lips.

They turned out of Piccadilly into the park.

"A weak sermon," said his mother.

"I'm afraid I didn't listen very carefully."

"So I perceived." Julia, covertly examining her son, saw that he looked
pale, agitated. His dress, stereotyped enough in conception, betrayed a
certain carelessness: the tie had been hastily knotted, a button was
missing from one of the gloves. She felt, rather than knew, that he
resented her company.

Mother intuition alone made Julia conscious of that resentment. But
psychology, the long training of an astute mind, led her instinctively
to the root of it. "Some woman or other," she decided. "Nothing else
could make him resent _me_." And she remembered, with an acute pang of
jealousy, his affair with her sister's child, Lucy Edwards. Had it not
been for her, Ronnie would have married Lucy. She could not regret
having prevented the match--marriages between first cousins, whatever
the church might say about them, ought not to be encouraged.
Nevertheless, if Ronnie _had_ married Lucy, he would at least have
married a known quantity. Whereas now, for all Julia knew, he might have
fallen in love with a divorcée.

For undoubtedly love must be the cause of his mental trouble. No other
emotion had ever made him resentful of her company. Moreover, why should
he be troubled if the girl were eligible?

"I think we'll cross now," she said, trying not to feel hurt. "It may be
cooler under the trees."

He gave her his arm across the road; and as they threaded their way,
still arm in arm, through the saunterers, Julia Cavendish, bowing to
various acquaintances, forgot her hurt in sheer maternal pride--a pride
which had not diminished by the time that James Wilberforce came over to
detain them from strolling.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Watching those three make their way through the sunlit crowd, Hector
Brunton's wife felt the social sense desert her.

This creature, dressed so like its fellows that its fellows scarcely
turned to regard it, was her man, her Ronnie. He, and he alone among the
crowd, could move her to emotion. She could feel the limbs under her
silk frock trembling to his approach. And suddenly, desperately, she
hated the crowd; seeing it a living barrier between them. If only Ronnie
could take her up, there and then, in his arms; if only he could carry
her away, away from all these futile people. All the people about her
grew blurred, unreal. She could see clearly only one face, the serious
blue-eyed face of her man.

"How do you do?" said the voice of Julia Cavendish. And a moment
afterwards, as she and Ronnie shook hands, reality and social sense
alike came back to the mind of Aliette Brunton.

She found herself sitting pleasantly in the park, surrounded by pleasant
people. She knew a great many of these people: but best of all she knew
the man beside her. "Poor Ronnie!" she thought. "He doesn't know what to
say for himself. He feels awkward. It is rather an awkward moment. I'd
better make conversation." And she began to make conversation in her
calmest, most charming social manner, with Ronnie's mother, inquiring
about her health.

"Oh, but I'm really quite well," protested Julia. "A little overworked,
perhaps. At least, so the doctors say. Personally I haven't much faith
in doctors. But I'm taking their advice, and knocking off for a month or
so."

"Does that mean that we aren't to expect a novel this autumn?"

"I'm afraid so." The authoress laughed to herself. It was so like "the
public" to imagine that novels were written in a few months, between May
and July, for publication in the autumn.

But abruptly, even while she was still laughing to herself, Ronnie's
mother grew aware of trouble. Her mind sensed drama: a drama actually in
progress; here; close beside her. This "charming woman," this Mrs.
Brunton, radiated, despite her charm, an aura of tension, of the acutest
mental tension. Meanwhile Ronnie had hardly opened his mouth since they
sat down. For the next ten minutes Julia Cavendish also "made
conversation."

"Almost time we were getting a move on; it's past one o'clock,"
interrupted James Wilberforce--and precipitated crisis.

For that this was crisis, a definite thought-crisis, each of the
participants in it--Julia, Aliette, Ronnie--recognized as they rose to
their feet. Behind their conventionally smiling faces seethed minds so
violently perturbed that to each it seemed impossible for thought to
remain unbetrayed.

"This is the woman," thought Julia Cavendish. "This is the woman whom
Ronnie loves. Somehow I must save him from her. Somehow I must save them
both. Otherwise it means ruin, absolute ruin. Disgrace!"

But no thought of ruin troubled the lovers.

"I can't let him go like this," thought the woman. "I can't lose him. I
must speak. I must say, 'Ronnie, Ronnie, I don't hate you for loving
me.'"

And the man thought: "I wonder if she _is_ hating me. I wonder why she's
so reserved, so aloof. I must find out. I must have a word with her.
Just one word--alone."

And he had his word, the barest whisper as their hands clasped: "May I
telephone you to-night?"

Only the tiniest pressure of Aliette's gloved fingers gave consent.


                                   3

"It was the mater who insisted on my having a telephone," thought
Ronnie. "The mater who furnished this room for me."

He looked round the room--at the Chippendale settee, the bookcases, the
eighteenth-century engravings on the beige wall-paper. Looking, his
heart misgave him.

The mater! He owed her so much in life. And now--now he was
contemplating, more than contemplating, making definite, absolutely
definite, a decision of which she could never approve, which might even
cost him her love.

The mater! Ever since that moment of crisis in Hyde Park--through
luncheon, through the rainy afternoon which followed luncheon, over the
dinner she had insisted on his sharing--Ronnie had been watching her
face, speculating about her, wondering what she would say if she knew.
Now suddenly it seemed to him that she did know.

He tried to put the idea out of mind. But fragments of their
conversation--fragments which memory could only imagine to have been
hints--kept recurring to him. She had spoken--and this was rare with
her--about his father; about a recent matrimonial shipwreck; about her
article in the "Contemplatory." And not once, after Wilberforce left
them, had she mentioned--Aliette!

The Chippendale clock on the mantelpiece gave a preliminary wheeze, and
began chiming ten o'clock. At the sound, misgivings vanished. She--not
his mother, but Aliette, Aliette, the very thought of whose name made
the pulses hammer in his head--must no longer be kept waiting.

For a moment the shining black of the telephone fascinated Ronnie's
eyes; for a moment, as one meditating a great decision, he stood
stock-still. Then impulsively he lifted the receiver from its hook.

To his imaginative mind, the telephone became instrument of their fate.
Waiting for the call, he saw, as one mesmerized, all their past, all the
possibilities of their future; forgetting, in that mesmeric instant, his
mother, the law, Brunton, everything in the world except the vivid of
Aliette's hair, her deep brown eyes, the poised exquisite slenderness of
her.

And an instant later he heard her voice. It came to him, very clear,
very deliberate, across the wires:

"Is that you?"

"Yes."

"You're very late."

"I'm sorry. I didn't get away from Bruton Street till nearly ten. Are
you alone?" Ronnie hated himself for that question: it sounded almost
furtive. But Aliette's answer was the very spirit of frankness.

"Yes. I'm quite alone. In the library. Mollie's gone to bed. Why do you
ask?"

"Because--there's something I want to say to you--Aliette." He paused a
second, mastered by emotion; then again he said: "Aliette?"

"Yes--Ronnie."

"You're not angry with me--about Thursday?"

"No." It seemed to him that he could almost see her lips move. "No. I'm
not angry--with you: only with myself."

"You know----" He hesitated. "You know that I love you."

"Yes, I know that." A little laugh. "It doesn't make things any easier
for me, does it?"

"I want to see you again. Soon. May I?"

For a long time, the wire gave no answer. At last, very faintly, as
though she were thinking rather than speaking, Aliette whispered: "This
isn't playing the game."

"I know that. I've tried----" He could not bring himself to finish the
sentence.

"Oughtn't we to go on--trying?"

"No." Now the man could actually vision her. It was as though she were
in the room. Passion--banishing hesitancy--had its way with him.
"Aliette! I can't go on living if I don't see you again. I've got to see
you. Soon. To-morrow. You will meet me, to-morrow, won't you! I can't
bear the thought of another three days without you."

Hesitancy returned, banishing passion. "I've offended her," he thought.
"She's rung off." But after an interminable silence, Aliette answered:

"Where do you want me to meet you?" Then, faint again, and very shy:
"I've got--we've got--such a lot of things to say to one another. Hadn't
we--hadn't I--hadn't it better be in your rooms? I could come to you
to-morrow afternoon. At about five o'clock. Would that do?"

"Aliette--dear----"

Before Ronnie could collect his wits for a further reply, he heard a
whispered "Good night," and the click of a replaced receiver.




                              CHAPTER VIII


                                   1

To a certain type of mind, the woman who goes to a man's rooms is
already labeled. It seems therefore necessary to explain that
Aliette--when she suggested going to Ronnie's--acted on no passionate
impulse, but as the result of a whole afternoon's deliberation. It was,
she felt, vital that they should have speech together; and equally vital
that their speech should not be disturbed. Wherefore--fastidiousness
revolting alike from a clandestine appointment in Hyde Park or at her
husband's house--she chose the courageous alternative.

Now, however, as she strolled quietly down Bond Street at half-past four
of a sunlit Monday afternoon, Aliette did not altogether succeed in
bridling the fears with which both sex and training strove to stampede
her mentality.

She had to say to herself: "How absurd I am! These are the
nineteen-twenties; not the eighteen-sixties. Even discovered, I run no
risk of scandal." Yet scandal, she knew subconsciously, was the least of
the risks she ran in going to Ronnie.

Nevertheless, go she must: even if--worst risk of all--he had
misunderstood her motive. The issue between them could not be shirked
any longer. Rather a desperate issue it seemed as, at the corner of
Conduit Street, Aliette ran into Hector's father!

Rear-Admiral Billy, having arrived at his club two hours since, was
taking his first "cruise round." The old man looked the complete
Victorian in his white spats, his "Ascot" tie, his braided morning-coat
and weekday topper. But his "sponge-bag" trousers were Georgian enough.

"Well met, my dear." he greeted her. "Your old father-in-law's dying for
a pretty woman to pour out his tea."

She let him rumble on; accepted his compliments about her hat, her lace
frock, her parasol; but refused his offer of a taxi to Ranelagh.

"I'm so sorry, Billy. But I'm going--I'm going to tea with some one
else."

"That be blowed for a tale," laughed the admiral. "You're coming with
me. If Ranelagh's too far, we'll make it Rumpelmayer's."

He took her arm; and she began to panic. Billy, in his "on the spree"
mood, could be very persistent. A few yards on, however, they met
Hermione Ellerson. She too, declared the sailor, "must have a dish of
tea with an old man."

Aliette seized on the opportunity with a quick:

"Be a dear, Hermione. Take Billy to Rumpelmayer's for me."

"You'll give me strawberries and cream--whatever they cost?" pouted the
ex-plaintiff in Ellerson v. Ellerson.

"Give you anything you want," rumbled Rear-Admiral Billy. "Alie's going
to meet her best boy; so we'll leave her out of the party."

Aliette, on the pretext of shopping, managed an immediate riddance of
the pair. Watching them walk off together, she felt rather guilty. Yet
the guilt held a certain spice of pleasure, of pride. She was on a
dangerous errand, taking risks. She was going--in risk's despite--to
Ronnie.

Her heart began to throb in anticipation of Ronnie. Passing a mirrored
window, she glanced at her reflection, and saw herself well turned-out,
_en beauté_. The sight gave her keenest satisfaction. She walked on, no
longer fearful but excited--violently, tremulously excited--till she
came to Piccadilly; and turned right-handed toward St. James's Street.
But the clock of St. James's Palace told her that it still lacked more
than a quarter of an hour to their rendezvous.

She turned back again; stood a full minute in admiration of Rowland
Ward's trophies; debated with herself whether she should drop into
Fortnum & Mason's or dawdle at the book-counter in Hatchard's; decided
against both schemes; lingered to examine the Harrison Fisher drawings
in the display-window of "Nash's Magazine"; examined the diamond watch
at her wrist; and nearly bolted down the Little Arcade into the narrow
Londonishness of Jermyn Street.

Here again she felt the need for courage; felt as though the whole
place--the church under the tree, and the public-house at the corner,
the shops and the restaurants--held spies. The street, after broad
Piccadilly, seemed furtive, sunless, a street of danger. She wanted to
avert her head from the passers-by.


                                   2

By the time Hector Brunton's self-possessed wife reached the dark-green
Adams door of 127b Jermyn Street, she was as nervous as any other woman
in the same equivocal position.

But Ronnie's name-plate, the sedateness of the house, and above all the
trim gentleman--obviously a retired butler--who answered her tremulous
ringing, did more than a little to restore her confidence.

"Mr. Cavendish? Mr. Cavendish is at home, madam. He is expecting
guests." (Aliette could have blessed Moses Moffatt for that final "s.")
"Allow me to show you the way up, madam."

She followed the restorer of confidence up two dark flights of
well-carpeted stairs; and found herself on a half-landing. The white
door on the half-landing was just ajar.

"Whom shall I announce, madam?" asked the trim gentleman.

Aliette hesitated the fraction of a second before replying: "Mrs.
Brunton, Mrs. Hector Brunton."

Moses Moffatt opened the white door, and they passed into the hall of
Ronnie's flat. Automatically Aliette noticed--and admired--the black
grandfather's clock, the one engraving, the beige wall-paper. Then her
cicerone knocked on polished mahogany; and a voice, Ronnie's voice,
called, "Come in."

Moses Moffatt opened the second door; announced the visitor in his best
style; and withdrew. They heard the click of his final exit as they
faced one another--she still in the doorway, he at the tea-table by the
fireplace.

For a moment, social poise deserted them both; for a moment they could
only stare--brown eyes into blue, blue eyes into brown. Then, her sense
of humor conquering shyness, Aliette said: "You _were_ expecting me,
weren't you?"

"It seems too good to be true." Ronnie moved across the room towards
her; took the hand she proffered; and raised it to his lips. At that,
she felt shy again. Confidence deserted her. If he failed in this first
test; if, by one word, he betrayed misunderstanding; then, indeed, she
would have irretrievably demeaned herself. But Ronnie released her hand
after that one kiss; and said, very simply: "I oughtn't to have let you
come."

Relieved, and a little touched at his words, Aliette let him take her
bag and parasol.

"I didn't mean you to have tea for me," she said, pulling off her
gloves. "Shall I pour out?"

"I'll have to boil the kettle first," he stammered, fumbling in his
pocket for matches. "You'll sit here, won't you! I--I've so often
imagined you sitting here and pouring out tea for me--Aliette."

"Have you--Ronnie?" Laughter dimpled her cheeks. She let him lead her to
the settee by the tea-table; and sat watching his struggle with the
refractory wick. "Why don't you have an electric one? They're so much
easier."

"Are they?" How shy he seemed!

"Rather!" She imagined herself infinitely the more at ease. "I like this
room."

"I'm so glad. It isn't my taste, you know."

"Really?" As if she hadn't guessed whose taste had chosen that beige
paper, those _écru_ velvet curtains with their flimsy lace _brise-bise_,
the Aubusson carpet, and the plain silver tea-service on the Chippendale
tray!

He did not pursue the subject; and for that reticence her heart went out
in thankfulness to him. Yet, at best, his reticence could only be a
temporary respite: before she left this room which his mother had
furnished for him, the whole issue must be discussed. And the issue--as
Aliette well knew--depended, more than on any one else, on Julia
Cavendish.

Yes! The whole issue, not only as it affected themselves, but as it
might affect others, must be threshed out before she left him.
Only--only--this respite was very sweet. Why couldn't life be just one
long tea-time! She felt so unutterably happy. A sense, almost a
sensuousness, of well-being pervaded her. She wanted no more than this:
to be with Ronnie; to hear his voice; to watch his lips, his eyes, his
hands as they poured from silver kettle to silver pot; to answer,
quietly, impersonally, his quiet impersonal questions.

She thought how boyish he looked; how unlike Hector he was in his
courtesy, his delicacy. Till suddenly, watching him across the table,
she grew conscious of tension in him, of passion. And on that, this
business of pouring out his tea, of accepting his cakes, turned to
sorriest of farces. She wanted him beside her, close to her; she wanted
to hear him whisper, "Aliette, I love you"; she wanted to whisper back,
"And I love you, Ronnie. I've loved you ever since that first day."

All else she had meant to say seemed positively futile.

Meanwhile, to Ronnie, it seemed incredible that he should find the
courage to tell her his thoughts; incredible that this vivid, radiant
creature, alone with him in the intimacy of his own dwelling-place,
should be willing to listen to them. Then, without warning, thought
broke to words.

"All the same, I oughtn't to have let you come."

"Why not? I--I wanted to."

"Because----" The fire in his eyes blinded her. She heard, as through
the maze of sleep, steady tick-tick-tick of the clock on the
mantelpiece, sizzle of the kettle-flame, the hoot and drone of traffic
from the street below. She heard, as a sleeper awakened, the throb of
her own heart. She felt tears, tears of sheer joy, close to her eyes.

"Because?" she whispered back.

"Because I love you. Because I can't trust myself with you. Because
you're"--he was on his feet now--"because you're not mine. And I want
you to be mine."

"Ronnie! Ronnie!" Still mazed, she stretched out a hand to him. He
seized her hand; and pressed it to his lips, to his eyes.

"Aliette--my dearest--sweetest--I'm behaving like a cad to you. I----"

Speech died at his lips; he stood before her, tense, tongue-tied--her
hand held, like a shield against her beauty, before his eyes. She knew
passion kindling in her, kindling them both to madness; knew the flames
of desire a-leap between them; knew the overpowering impulse to immolate
herself in the flames of desire.

"My dear," he whispered, "my dear."

Then, as in a dream, she divined that the flames leaped no more, that he
had mastered passion, that he had fallen to his knees, that he was
covering her hand with kisses. "Forgive me," she heard, "forgive me. I'm
not that sort of cad. I didn't think, just because you came to my
rooms----"

"Don't, don't." Her free hand fondled his hair. "You mustn't kneel to
me. Please, please----"

He rose, her hand still in his; and she drew him down beside her.

"Ronnie----" She would have looked into his eyes, but his eyes avoided
her. "Ronnie, I don't want you to think, either now or ever, that it's
caddish of you to--to love me. I--I need your love. I need your love
more than I can ever tell you." His hand trembled at her words. "I'm
very lonely, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid that I'm very weak. You're the
only person in the world who can help----"

"Then----" His eyes turned to hers, and she saw hope light in them.
"Then, you _do_ love me."

"Yes. I love you." She laughed--a little strained laugh that was almost
a caress. "I oughtn't to say that, I suppose."

"Oh, my dear"--now he had prisoned both her hands--"why shouldn't you
say it? No--no harm shall ever come to you from me."

"I know that." Her voice grew almost inaudible. "Otherwise--I shouldn't
be here."

"No harm shall ever come to you from me," he repeated--and fell silent.

They sat for a while, hand in hand, taking quiet comfort from one
another, each knowing what must next be said, each fearful of being
first to speak. At last, releasing her hands, Aliette braced herself to
the ordeal.

"About"--fastidiousness almost overwhelmed her--"about my--my husband.
You understand, don't you, that he--that he isn't my husband any
more--that otherwise I would never have come to you--that, that it's
been all over between him and me--for, for ever so long."

"Yes, dear. I--I understand." Very slowly, he drew her toward him. His
eyes no longer blinded her; looking deep into the blue of them, she saw
only a great comprehension, a great reverence. "I should have
understood--even without your telling me." Very slowly, she yielded to
the pull of his hands; yielded him her lips. Very clearly she knew
herself--as they swayed to one another in that first kiss--his woman.

Again, it was a while before either spoke. Then Ronnie said, speaking as
simply as any boy:

"I wish I knew what was the right thing to be done. I can't give you up.
Not now! Tell me, if you were free--would you marry me?"

"You know that I would." She, too, spoke simply of the things in her
heart. "But I'm not free. We're neither of us free."

"You mean that--that I'll have to give you up?"

Again she braced herself. "I--I'm afraid so."

"Why?"

"Because of----" She could not yet bring herself to mention his mother.
"Because of your career."

"My career!" He laughed, holding her in his arms. "As if my career had
anything to do with it. I'm only a poor devil of a barrister, living on
the charitable briefs of Jimmy Wilberforce. It's you, your reputation
that counts, not mine."

"I can't let my love bring you harm." She withdrew from him--her eyes
still suffused with happiness; her lips still quivering from his caress.

"Never mind me. It's you we have to consider. In law you're--you're
still your husband's. Unless he lets you divorce him."

"He'd never do that."

"Why not? It's lawful. It's done every day."

"Even if he would--I couldn't. It wouldn't be playing the game."

"Aliette"--stubbornly, Ronnie rose to his feet,--"I--I want you so much
that nothing else seems to matter. But I can't--I won't ask you to--to
do the other thing. You talk about playing the game. What's the
alternative? If you divorce your--your husband, he won't suffer. Nobody
cares what a man does. But the other thing--the other thing's all
wrong----"

His words chilled her to fear. But she knew that she must master
fear--even as he had mastered passion.

"Are you--are you so sure?" said Aliette. "Can love, real love, ever be
wrong?"

He turned on her bluntly, almost rudely. "Yes, the whole thing's wrong.
It's wrong of me to let you come here. Wrong of me to love you." Then,
his reserve breaking down: "I've tried to reason this thing out till
I've grown nearly mad with it. I've always loved my profession; always
thought that a lawyer's first duty was to obey the law. But now, loving
you, the law doesn't seem to count. Only you count. You and your
happiness. It's only you I'm thinking of, not my--my rotten career."

Once again he fell on his knees to her, protesting, incoherent; once
again he took her in his arms; and kissed her, very tenderly, on her
eyes, on her half-closed lips. His kisses weakened her.

"Ronnie," she whispered. "My Ronnie, I love you so."

Her whisper kindled him again to passion.

"Aliette," he said hoarsely, "Aliette, I can't give you up. I can't live
without you."

For a moment she yielded herself; for a moment her lips, her hands, her
whole body clung to their happiness; for a moment all her fears, all her
self-torturings were stifled. Then she broke from him; and her eyes grew
resolute.

"Ronnie, there's some one whom neither of us has considered--your
mother."

"The old cannot stand between the young and their happiness." His eyes,
too, were resolute. "We're still young, you and I. We've all our lives
to live. And besides"--he weakened,--"the mater likes you."

"She'd hate me if I didn't make you give me up."

"You don't know her, dear."

"I do." It seemed to Aliette as though her lover were indeed only a boy.
"I know her a thousand times better than you ever will. Mostly because
I'm a woman; and a little, perhaps, because I love her son. She _would_
hate me. And--and she'd be right."

"Nobody could hate you," he broke in. "Nobody who knew the fineness of
you."

"I'm not fine." She put away the joy of his words. "I'm just a very
ordinary person. There's nothing fine in me--except perhaps my love for
you. And, for your sake, I mustn't let that love blind me to the truth.
Can't you see what my freedom--however I won it--would mean to your
mother?"

She waited for him to answer; but he sat obstinately silent--his hands
clasped about his knees, his eyes on her face. She went on:

"Your mother doesn't believe in divorce. It's against her principles,
her religion."

"But surely, if he lets you divorce him----"

"I could never do that. Not now. It would be just--just hypocrisy. And
we can't hurt your mother. We mustn't. I don't care about myself. If I
thought it were for your happiness, I'd run away with you to-night. But
I'm afraid for your career. And I do care, terribly, about making _her_
suffer. Think of the fight she's put up, all her life, against this very
thing; and then, try to think what it will mean to her, to both of you,
if _you_, her son, her only son----"

He interrupted violently.

"She would have no right, no earthly right to interfere."

"Oh, don't, don't speak like that about her." There were tears, tears of
real sorrow, in Aliette's eyes. "I can't bear it. I--I can't bear to
think of coming between you. It isn't fair. She's loved you all her
life. You're everything in the world to her. And then--then--oh! can't
you understand----"

He strove to kiss away the tears; but her hands covered her face from
his kisses. He knew himself all one weakness at thought of this hurt in
Aliette. And weakening, it seemed to him as though Julia Cavendish were
here in the room with them; as though he said to her: "Mater, this is my
one chance of happiness. I can't let even you take it from me."

The vision passed; and he knew himself strong again. His hands parted
Aliette's fingers; he kissed her on the closed eyelids, on the wet
cheeks. She clung to him, tearful still. Her lips murmured:

"Life is so difficult--so terribly difficult."

He said to her: "We mustn't make it more difficult. We love each other.
We must be true to love. Nothing else matters. As long as you are
mine----"

"I _am_ yours. Only yours. You don't doubt me?"

At that the last of Ronnie's scruples vanished. Fiercely, crudely, he
strained her to him. "Aliette, Aliette, my own darling, don't ask me to
give you up. I can't give you up! I couldn't endure life without you.
Come to me! We needn't do anything mean, anything underhand. It's for
your happiness--for my happiness----"

"Ronnie--Ronnie----"

Her lips were fire on his cheeks. The perfume of her was a fire in his
mind. Her arms were chains, chains of fire about his body. He crushed
her to him; crushed her mouth under his lips. Her whole body ached for
him, ached to surrender itself. A sharp pang as of hatred went through
her body: she hated him for the thing he would not do; hated herself for
the longings in her body.

"You hurt me, you hurt me." With a sharp cry she broke herself loose
from him. "I thought I was so strong. And I'm weak--clay in your hands."

She stood up, trembling; feeling herself all disheveled, abased.

The flame under the kettle had gone out. The tea had gone cold in their
half-empty cups. The street below still hooted and droned with traffic.
The clock still ticked from the mantelpiece.

"I ought to be going," she said, eying the clock.

"Yes." He, too, had risen: he, too, was trembling. "You ought to be
going. It's nearly half-past six. But you'll come to me again. You'll
come again--Aliette."

He found her gloves, her bag and parasol. Taking them, she knew that her
hands had lost their coolness; little pearls of emotion moistened either
palm. Her face, seen in the mirror over the mantelpiece, looked
strangely flushed--different. For the flash of a second, her
fastidiousness was in revulsion.

"You'll come again--soon?" he repeated.

"I don't know." Revulsion passed; but her hands, straightening her hat,
shook as though in self-disdain. "Somehow, it doesn't seem fair--on
either of us."

"But you must." His voice thrilled. "You must. We can't leave things
like this--undecided."

Self-possessed once more, she faced him. "Don't try to hurry me, Ronnie.
We've talked too much this afternoon. My brain's weary. I can't decide
anything. I thought that, being with you, things would be easier.
They're not. They're more difficult. You must give me time----"

"Then"--his voice saddened--"I haven't been any help to you?"

A laugh rose in her throat, dimpling it. "I'm afraid we're neither of us
very wise; but"--she offered him her ungloved hand--"it's been very
sweet, being with you. That's why--you haven't helped me very much."

Silently, hating that she must go, he released her fingers. She was all
a wonder to his eyes, all a riddle to his brain. He wanted to say: "But
you mustn't go. You're mine, mine. I don't care a damn for your husband,
for my career, for my mother, for the law. Stay with me. Stay with me
to-night."

Actually, he forebore even to kiss her good-by!


                                   3

Aliette had been gone an hour. . . .

Moses Moffatt came in. Moses Moffatt cleared away the tea-things. Moses
Moffatt asked: "Will you be dining at home, sir?" Some one answered,
"No!" Moses Moffatt went out.

Aliette had been gone two whole hours. The some one became Ronald
Cavendish.

He found that he must have been smoking cigarettes--one cigarette after
the other. Ash and paper smoldered on the silver tray at his side. The
room stank of tobacco. But tobacco could not drive away that other
perfume--the perfume of Aliette's womanhood.

She had been in this very room! The essence of her still pervaded every
nook of it. His imagination conjured up the image of her: Aliette
dimpling to laughter: Aliette's brown eyes, now bright with joy, now
dimmed with tears: the vivid of Aliette's hair: the little gestures of
Aliette's hands. All these he saw, and possessed again in memory.

Again she lay in his arms. Again she let him kiss the tears from her
eyes. Again she yielded him her hands, her hair. But she had yielded him
more than these; she had yielded him her very thoughts: she had said,
"I'm very weak; you're the only person who can help me."

Remembering those words, he grew ashamed. He must not think for himself:
he must think for her. She had said that she would marry him if she were
free. But there was only one way to freedom--unless Brunton let her
divorce him. And that alternative she had refused to contemplate.

No! There was only one path to her freedom, to their happiness--the path
of scandal. Dared he demand that sacrifice from her?

After all, why not? The scandal would be short-lived--the happiness
enduring. She was Brunton's merely in name. She had no children.
Legally, they might have to put themselves in the wrong; but morally
they would be justified. Between them and happiness stood only the
shibboleths.

Nevertheless, the shibboleths mattered. Shibboleths were the basis of
all society.

Certain people, too--people like his mother,--hated divorce, believed it
wicked. His mother still clung to the old faith. His mother would say:
"God joined Aliette and Hector in holy matrimony. You have no right to
sunder God's joining."

As though humanity were any deity's stud-farm!




                               CHAPTER IX


                                   1

By that strange perversity which is peculiar to loving womanhood,
Aliette's first thoughts--as the taxi rattled her away from Jermyn
Street--were for her husband.

For the second time in three years her mood relented. "Poor Hector!" she
thought. "He'll be home when I get back. It isn't much of a home for
him--ours."

Yet, even relenting, she knew that she could never forgive. The physical
Hector was dead, killed by her knowledge of his infidelities--as dead to
her as the physical Ronnie was alive.

Then she forgot Hector, remembered only Ronnie. Her memory thrilled to
his caresses. She began to yearn for him with a bodily yearning so acute
that--had he been beside her in the taxi--she would have thrown her arms
round his neck.

Her mind whirled. This way. That way. She, Aliette Brunton, who had
always thought "that sort of thing" the prerogative of shop-girls and
chorus-ladies, was yearning, physically, for a man. It was all wrong.
She should never have gone to his rooms. They must part. She would never
be parted from him. He ought never to have made love to her. She would
have died if he had not made love to her!

She tried to blame herself for her weakness; she tried to think: "I made
no struggle. I yielded everything. I virtually threw myself at his head.
I should have been strong. I should have denied him my hands, my lips."
But her heart refused to be blamed; her heart said: "He loves you. You
love him. Nothing else matters."

The taxi swung into Bayswater Road; and instinctively Aliette opened her
vanity-bag. Glancing at her face in the mirrored lid, she remembered
Hector again. Hector mustn't see her as Ronnie had seen her. Hector
mustn't find out!

Once more, she felt abased. Once more her fastidiousness revolted--this
time from concealment. The commonplace impulse--to confess--appeared,
disappeared. What was there to confess? Nothing!

Nevertheless, paying her driver, mounting the pillared door-step,
ringing as she let herself into the square tessellated hall, Aliette
felt guilty. In thought, if not in act, she was little better than the
husband whom Lennard, appearing from his lower regions, announced to be
in the library.

Caroline Staley joined Lennard in the hall. Aliette handed her gloves,
her bag and parasol to the maid; asked Lennard the time; heard it was a
quarter past seven; hesitated the fraction of a second; and pushed open
the library door.

Hector sat in his big leather armchair by the bow-window--the "Evening
Standard" on his knees, and a glass of whisky and water at his elbow.
His gray eyes lit pleasurably at sight of her. As he came across the
room with a smiled "My dear, how well you're looking," Aliette realized
with the shock of a sudden revelation the cruelty latent in those thin
lips.

(She _was_ looking well, thought Hector; her very best. This evening,
that subtle incomprehensible process, process alike mental and physical,
which he had divined at work in her for so long, seemed to have attained
its completion. Her very complexion showed it.)

"Am I?" she answered.

He gave her the cheek-kiss of connubial compromise; and she schooled
herself not to shudder. "This is the price I must pay," she thought,
"for those other kisses."

The front-door bell rang; and, a minute afterwards, Mollie rustled in.

"Hello, Hector," said Mollie. "So you've got back."

The girl's eyes were all luminous, subtly afire with happiness. Kissing
Aliette, she whispered, "I must talk to you."

To Brunton, watching the sisters go arm in arm through the door, came a
sharp pang of sex-consciousness. As Aliette, so Mollie: from each there
radiated that same incomprehensible aura of physical and mental
completion. The aura excited Brunton, stimulated him, roused his
imagination almost to mania. All the way home in the car--and usually
the car distracted him--he had been thinking of his wife, goading his
mind with the mirage of the past. Now the prongs of the goad penetrated
through the mind to the very flesh.

He poured himself another drink, and stood for a long while in
contemplation of a photograph on his desk; a photograph of Aliette,
taken just before they became engaged. He remembered how then, as
always, her fastidiousness had lured him; how then, as now, he had ached
to conquer her fastidiousness, to make her desires one with his own. And
always, from the very outset to this very day, he had failed. Against
the refinement in her, even when she yielded, his will to sex-mastery
beat in vain; till finally there came the break.

The break, as Hector saw it, had been of her making. The things he most
desired of her, the unfastidious intimacies, she either could not or
would not endure. Those intimacies she had driven him elsewhere to seek.
And he had sought them for three years; sought them, he now realized,
without assuaging his desire.

Dressing for dinner, he heard--from the room she had barred against
him--his wife's voice. His wife and her sister were talking, talking.
The incomprehensible talk maddened Hector, even as the incomprehensible
physical aura of them had maddened him. Surely--surely it was high time
to put an end to this--this nonsensical chastity.


                                   2

Her sister's dressing-hour confidences seemed to Aliette the final
complication. Mollie had met James Wilberforce, by accident, in Bond
Street. Although too late for tea, he had insisted on her eating an ice
at Rumpelmayer's. At Rumpelmayer's they ran into the admiral and
Hermione. The admiral had spoken of his meeting with Alie.

"Where did _you_ have tea?" asked the girl.

"Never mind about my tea," retorted her sister. "Tell me _your_ news."

Whereupon Mollie, not in the least hesitantly, told it. Jimmy had asked
her to marry him! That is to say, he had spoken about marriage in such a
way as to leave no doubt about his intention to propose. That was one of
the admirable things about Jimmy. He never beat around the bush. She, of
course, had "choked him off." Jimmy must be taught that these things
couldn't be fixed up over an ice in a tea-shop.

"Still," concluded the modern young, "I'm very fond of James. The
chances are that I shall marry him in the autumn."

"And James Wilberforce," thought Aliette, as she went down to dinner,
"is just _the_ person whose wife's family must be _sans reproche_!"

Dinner completed her mental _bouleversement_. Hector--she divined even
before they sat down--was in a difficult mood. Hector insisted on
champagne, insisted on their sharing it. He grew boisterous on the first
glass. "They would have a cheery evening," said Hector. "They would get
the car round after dinner, and drive to Roehampton." But on Aliette's
suggesting that he and Mollie should go alone, he dropped both the
scheme and his pose of boisterousness. Catching the look in his eyes,
she began to be frightened.

Only twice before--once after her first discovery of his infidelities,
and once a year later--had Aliette seen that particular look in Hector's
eyes. It betokened contest. Not the casual entreaties of recent months,
but contest--contest almost physical! Formerly, though resenting the
indignity of such a contest, she had never dreaded it. But
to-night--to-night was different.

When Lennard brought in the port, Hector refused to be left alone. They
stayed with him while he drank two glasses; and again, watching him,
Aliette's mood relented. The look in his eyes had grown soft, almost
pleading. "Poor old Hector," she thought; "so many women could have
given him all that he requires from a wife. Only I--I can't. I'm
Ronnie's--Ronnie's."

Once more her mind whirled. This way. That way. Guilt, fear, love,
uncertainty drove the wheels of her mind.

Yet both mind and body possessed one certainty: that the physical Hector
had died three years since.


                                   3

It was late, nearly midnight; but Mollie still sat strumming on the
piano in the big balconied drawing-room.

Ever since dinner began the girl had been conscious of domestic tension.
She could see, over the shining instrument, that neither husband nor
wife listened to the music. They sat, either side the fireplace,
avoiding speech, avoiding each other's eyes.

Occasionally, when he thought himself unobserved, Hector would glance at
Alie. Mollie knew, of course, that Alie didn't get on very well with
Hector. On more than one of her visits to them there had been such
periods of tension. But this--to the girl's intuition--seemed far more
serious, far nearer definite crisis than anything before. Somehow the
situation frightened her; somehow she felt averse to leaving Alie alone
with Hector. All the same, one couldn't go on playing ragtimes till
dawn.

Mollie fired a final rafale on the bass keys, and closed the piano.

"I'm going to bed," she announced. "You too, Alie?"

"Not just yet." Aliette kissed her sister good night. During the last
two hours her relenting mood had almost evaporated under the fire of
Hector's covert glances. Her mind no longer whirled. She knew
now--definitely--that contest between them was unavoidable; and, though
she still dreaded it, her courage refused to postpone the ordeal.

The door closed behind Mollie; and, after a moment's hesitancy, Hector
leaned forward from his chair. Aliette saw that there were pearls of
sweat on his forehead. His hands gripped the blue grapes of the cretonne
chair-cover as though he would squeeze them dry.

"I'm glad she's gone to bed," he said hoarsely.

"Are you? Why?"

"Because it's time that you and I had things out with one another."

"What things?" Her voice sounded a little shy, but she no longer averted
her eyes. They met his--brown cold and resolute, against gray kindling
to passion.

"Everything. Aliette," he began to plead with her, "we can't go on like
this for ever."

"Why not?"

"Because the whole position's intolerable. Either you're my wife, or
you're not. I--I can't stand this sort of life."

"What sort of life?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean. Aliette," he pleaded again, "can't
we make a fresh start--to-night?"

She felt her whole heart turning icy to him as she answered: "We
threshed that matter out a very long time ago. I can see no use in
referring to it again."

"Possibly you can't." Hector rose. Her very aloofness urged him, despite
better judgment, to immediate mastery. "But you're not the only one to
be considered. As your husband, I have certain rights."

"If you have, I shouldn't advise you to try and enforce them."

The words sounded calm enough; but there was no calm in Aliette's heart.
Suddenly she grew conscious that the sense of rectitude which had
sustained her for three years sustained her no longer. In thought she
had descended to her husband's level. Her cheeks flushed.

"Why shouldn't I enforce them?" The flush did not escape his eye.
Perhaps, after all, she was no different from other women, from the
women who liked one to be forceful. He made a movement towards her. "Why
shouldn't I enforce them?" he repeated.

"Because you have no rights." Even his blurred judgment knew better than
to touch her. "Because you forfeited them--three years ago."

"That old affair," he muttered sullenly; and drew away from where she
sat. Then, excusing himself, "Renée's in Australia. She's been in
Australia two years. I paid her passage----"

Proudly, coldly, Aliette answered him back: "I hope you do not discuss
your wife with your mistresses in the same way that you discuss your
mistresses with your wife."

The cold pride weakened him. "You're very harsh. I made a mistake--three
years ago. I admitted it at the time. I admit it once more. I've
made--other mistakes. But that's all over. You're a woman, a well-bred
woman. You can't understand these things."

Three days since she would not have understood; now, understanding a
little, she relented again.

"Hector--I'm very sorry. But it's--it's impossible."

He came toward her again; bent down, and tried to take her hand. She
drew it away from him. The overwhelming physical hunger of his eyes
worried her. His feet, on the white rug, showed suddenly enormous,
grotesque--grotesque as his affection.

"Why is it impossible?"

She thought how often she had asked herself that same question; knew
that--in Ronnie's arms--she had at last found the answer; knew that she
must lie. And she hated lying. Yet more than lying she hated the
knowledge that her body, which had lain in Ronnie's arms, should be
cause of that overwhelming hunger in Hector's eyes.

She said quietly, "Must we go over all this old ground again?" And since
he did not answer: "It does no good. I don't want to hurt you more than
I can help. Won't you just leave things as they are? Won't you believe
me when I tell you that it's just--impossible?"

His legal mind, suddenly active, caught at the pleading note in her
voice; fastened on it. "You're very solicitous, apparently, about my
feelings?"

For a second, wondering if he could suspect, she grew fearful. Then,
putting away fear, she rose and faced him. The flush had gone from her
cheeks; her eyes--aloof, impersonal--told him the utter hopelessness of
his cause. And with that knowledge came suspicion--a suspicion formless
as the first shadow-haze of storm in a brazen sky.

"I don't wish to hurt you," she reiterated. "But the thing you ask is
out of the question; and will always be out of the question. Even the
discussion of it offends me."

He took a step towards her; but she did not recoil.

"Aliette--do you realize the meaning of what you've just said?"

"Perfectly." Her eyes met his, beat them down.

"And what do you expect me to do under the circumstances?" Again
suspicion came to him; and with suspicion, anger at his own impotence.
"You're not a child. You know perfectly well what happens to a man whose
wife refuses to live with him. I've never pretended to be a saint: I've
left that to you."

"Hector!" Temper clenched her fingers. Her whole fastidiousness revolted
against the man, against the topic he would not relinquish.

"I'm sorry if you're shocked"--all his cruelty wanted to shock her, to
see her fastidiousness in degradation--"but I'm trying to tell you the
truth--just for a change. If you persist in your saintliness, there's
only one course open to me. Another Renée! A man can't live without a
woman. It isn't fair to his nature. It isn't healthy."

"Healthy!" she burst out.

"Yes. Healthy. Does that upset you?"

Her eyes blazed as she answered: "How dare you talk to me like that? How
dare you? Healthy! I suppose that was your idea when you married _me_.
You took me--medicinally."

"Aliette!" Her fury cowed the cruelty in him. "I married you because I
loved you. I love you still."

"Love!" Her cheeks kindled. Caution was ripped loose from her as a sail
is ripped loose by the wind. The shreds of it flapped against her mind,
infuriating her. That this man who might have been father of her
children should cloak his lusts with that divine word, seemed the
ultimate defilement. "Love!" Her breasts heaved. "Don't talk to me of
love. Talk of your rights, of your health, if you like; but spare me the
degradation of what it pleases you to call your love."

At that, definitely, the lawyer in Brunton suspected. Black thoughts
drove and drove, thunder-cloud-like, across the sky of his mind; and
through the rifts in those thunder-clouds his mind saw two visions--his
wife, infernally desirable, infernally distant from the reach of his
desires, and a woman to be probed, a hostile witness for
cross-examination.

"You speak as though you were an authority on the subject," he sneered;
and, as she deigned no answer, "a saintly authority."

"You're insolent." The last shred of her caution parted. "Insolent."

"Perhaps"--his voice dropped two full tones--"I have the right to be
insolent."

"Explain yourself, please."

He came so close to her that she could see every pore in the skin of his
face. "I should hardly have thought an explanation necessary. I said,
'Perhaps I have the right to be insolent.' It is for you to explain
why"--his lips worked--"you regard 'what I am pleased to call my love
for you' as a degradation."

"And if I refuse to explain?"

"There is only one conclusion to be drawn."

"And that is?" she dared him.

Abruptly, Brunton the lawyer became Brunton the husband. He no longer
wanted to cross-examine; he wanted to possess--to possess this woman.
Why should he not possess her? She was as much his as the furniture in
his home, the books in his chambers. By law and by religion, she owed
him her body. He had always been chivalrous to her; he had always tried
to fall in with her whimsies, to be kind. _She_ had never been kind. All
she had tried to do was to hurt him.

"And that conclusion is?" she flung at him.

God! How much she could hurt him. God! How he wished to spare himself.
He wanted her so; his whole body ached for her little hands, for her
lips, for the touch of her hair. Why should she thus goad him? Even
if--even if she had cared--virtuous women did care sometimes,
platonically of course--for somebody else, he could forgive her.

He did not want, even, to forgive. He only wanted to know nothing. He
only wanted her to be kind to him, to let him love her--in his own way.
Without all this--all this fuss.

But her eyes refused him kindness; her lips demanded their answer. She
maddened him with her rigid lips, with her blank unfriendly scrutiny.

"Your conclusion, please, Hector?"

"Since you insist," the words seemed torn from the man's throat, "the
conclusion I draw is that--you're in love with somebody else."

He had expected indignation, furious abuse, furious denial; anything but
the deadly calmness with which she answered: "And supposing there were
somebody else? What right would you have to object?"

Aliette saw Hector recoil as though she had struck him; saw rage,
incredulity, fear, apprehension, chase in scarlet chaos across his face.
His thin lips writhed--as though in torment. But she could feel no pity
for his torment. In her eyes, he was the beast, the defiling beast:
defeated, he yet stood, shifty on those great feet of his, between her
and happiness, between her and her chance of motherhood, between her
and--Ronnie.

"Well," she shot at him, "what right would you have to object?"

"I should have the right," he stammered, "the right that any husband
possesses. But you're not serious. For God's sake, tell me you're not
serious. I haven't been such a bad husband to you. I haven't deserved
this----"

Suddenly she remembered Ronnie's words: "Unless he lets you divorce him.
Why not? It's done every day." Suddenly she remembered Hector's own
words, the speech he had insisted she should read after the Ellerson
case.

"You're not serious," he challenged.

"I'm perfectly serious. Please answer my question. And before you answer
it, let me remind you of something you said in public not more than a
fortnight ago. You said: 'A woman on marriage does not become her
husband's property.' I want to know if you still abide by that
question."

"And I"--rage mastered the apprehension in him--"I want to know,
definitely, if there _is_ anybody else."

Her lips pursed to silence. She could almost see Ronnie--and her silence
was all for him. For herself she had no fear, only the violent instinct
to be free, to be free at any cost, from Hector Brunton.

"Answer me!" He almost shouted at her.

Quietly, she answered, "There is nobody else--in the way you mean."

"Will you swear?"

"You have my word. If that's not enough for you----"

The unfinished sentence tortured him. He saw himself alive, tormented;
her as a statue of fate, unmoving, cold by his cold fireside. If only
she would make some movement--not stand there like a statue: her lips
rigid, her hands taut, every line of her body tense under the frozen
draperies.

"I don't doubt your word," he said sullenly.

"Then answer my question. Do you regard me as your property or not? If I
asked you for my freedom, would you give it to me?"

"You mean--let you divorce me?"

For a moment, aware of hypocrisy, Aliette hesitated. Then she said,
"Yes."

"On what grounds?"

"Your infidelities."

"My infidelities!" He laughed, his legal mind seeing the whole strength
of his position. "You have no proof of them. And even if you had,
infidelity by itself is no ground for divorce. Besides"--his cruelty
could not forbear the blow--"you've condoned them."

"Condoned them! I?"

"Yes. You. By not leaving my house. By continuing to live with me."

"That's untrue. I've never lived with you, since--since I found out."

"You'll never make the world believe that."

"What do I care about the world?"

"Aliette"--for the last time he forced himself to plead with
her,--"think of my position, our position. Even if it were legally
possible, you wouldn't ask me----"

He continued to plead till he felt utterly worn out, utterly beaten;
till it seemed to him that he had been arguing with her--arguing
uselessly--for hours. And all the time he argued, one thought nagged at
him: "There _is_ somebody else. There must be somebody else. I must find
out who he is."

"Then you refuse," she was saying. "You refuse me my freedom. You go
back on your own words."

She, too, felt worn out. She could not even hate the man, because she
had no right to hate him. At least--Mollie's words about James
Wilberforce came into her weary mind--Hector had not beaten around the
bush. He had been straight-forward enough; whereas she--she was not
being straight-forward, was not playing the game. But the instinct to be
free did not abate its violence.

"Very well"--the cross-examiner in Brunton urged him to the playing of
his last card,--"I won't go back on my words. I'll admit the justice of
everything you've said. You shall have your freedom." Her eyes lit; and
his suspicion became certainty. "I'll arrange everything. There need be
very little scandal; only the usual fake--a suit for restitution of your
conjugal rights. You'll get an order of the court, an order for me to
return to you. You needn't worry, I sha'n't comply with it. After
that----"

He broke off, watching her. Her face had softened, renewed its coloring.
Yet she was nervous. She fidgeted ever so slightly, first on one
white-shod foot, than on the other.

"But before I consent, there's one condition I must make; one question I
must ask you." His voice grew stern, became the voice of the K.C.
"Before I take any steps in this matter, I must have your assurance,
your definite assurance, that you are not asking for your freedom with a
view--with a view"--he hesitated--"to marrying any one else."

The blood ebbed from Aliette's cheeks: it seemed to her that her heart
had stopped beating. This was the test! One downright lie--and she might
win to freedom. That issue she saw clearly. But she saw another
issue--the issue between herself and Ronnie. Even though Ronnie himself
had suggested that she should divorce Hector, his suggestion--she
knew--had implied telling Hector the truth. Surely Ronnie would be the
first to reject freedom won at such a price.

And, "I've got to play the game," cried the soul of Aliette; "otherwise,
even my love for Ronnie becomes a degradation." Yet, still, instinct
cried in her for freedom.

The decisive seconds lengthened; lengthened; stretched, taut as
piano-wire, into the eternities. The scene imprinted itself, sharper
than sharpest snapshot, on unfading memory. Always, burnt into memory,
would remain Hector, his sandy hair awry, his thin lips parted under the
bulbous nose, his jowl set; would remain herself, torture-pale on the
rack of indetermination; would remain the light white room, blazing with
electrics, the stripes of its wall-paper upright as prison bars. No
freedom from that prison--save at the price of truth!

But at last, truth spoke.

"I cannot give you that assurance, Hector," said Hector's wife.

About her, the snapshotted scene trembled, shivered and broke to
whirling fragments. She was conscious of Hector's hands, itching to take
her by the throat, of Hector's feet, of the red fury in Hector's eyes.
His hands itched to strike her. If he struck, she would strike
back--madly, through those whirling fragments.

But Brunton could not strike; he could not even speak. The insanity of
balked desire dumbed his mouth as it numbed his limbs. Nature, fighting
like a wild beast, wrenched at the cage of his self-control. He could
hear nature wrenching ape-like at his ribs, howling to him: "Kill! Kill
both! Kill both the man and the woman!" The blood-lust and the sex-lust
were knives in his loins.

"You!" he stammered. "You, you----" Then his hands ceased their itching,
and the red in his eyes flickered out, smoldering to gray.

                  *       *       *       *       *

She heard his great feet go creaking across the room, creaking through
the doorway, creaking up the staircase. She heard the slam of an
upstairs door. She heard herself whisper to the wide-eyed distraught
woman who peered out from the mirror over the mantelpiece: "That leaves
only one way--only one way to freedom."




                               CHAPTER X


                                   1

The "grand passion" (it is unfortunate that no single word in the
English language exactly pictures that emotional process) was a little
beyond Caroline Staley's philosophy.

Yet within twelve hours of Aliette's interview with Hector, even
Caroline Staley realized that "Miss Aliette was about through with that
husband of hers." Lennard and the rest of the staff--though Caroline
refused to gossip--were also aware, basement-wise, of the connubial
position. In fact, at Lancaster Gate, only Mollie remained in ignorance.

For, at the moment, Mollie Fullerford was far too absorbed to bother
herself overlong about either sister or brother-in-law; a sublime
selfishness held her aloof from both.

The girl's mind was concentrated on Jimmy. It had become a point of
honor with her not to think of anybody except Jimmy. Jimmy--for his own
sake--must be neither "fascinated" nor "put off." He must be given his
exact measure of attraction as of repulsion, his exact chance of finding
out her faults as well as her virtues. Then, when he had definitely
fallen in or out of love with the real her--_she_ would decide exactly
how much she could love the real him. "Marriage," the girl said to
herself, "is a pretty serious business. Jimmy and I mustn't make any
mistake about it."

Mollie Fullerford, you see, was of the modern young, who are trying,
vainly, to avoid the troubles of their romantic and unreasoning
elders--such troubles, for instance, as Hector's.

Hector, reticent always, confided his troubles to nobody. He spent the
first twelve hours after the quarrel in kicking himself for a fool and a
savage who had nearly thrashed his wife; the next twelve in cursing
himself for a fool and a softy who ought to have thrashed his wife--and
the rest of the week fighting against the impulse to apologize.

Meanwhile he was a stranger in his own house; excluded, as surely as
though he had been a servant under notice, from domestic conversation.
His wife had taken to breakfasting in bed (the rattle of the tray
infuriated him every morning), and refused to get up till he had left
the house: he, retorting in the only way open to him, dined at his
clubs. On the one occasion when they did meet, her manners were beyond
criticism--and her unattainable beauty a positive bar to any plans for
sex-consolation.

As a matter of psychological fact, both husband and wife were in a
momentary state of complete sex-revulsion. Hector, thwarted of his one
desire, seeing Aliette unobtainable as the only woman in the world; and
Aliette--love's dream obscured by thought of love's material
consequences--regarding herself, for the nonce, as the mere quarry of
two males, a quarry anxious only to escape both pursuers.

Twice, at least, Aliette's thoughts renounced womanhood completely. The
physical Hector, the Hector of the writhing lips, she hated; but when
her yearning for the physical Ronnie grew so desperately acute that she
had to rush out of the library lest she should telephone to him; when
every post which brought no letter seemed the last bodily hurt she could
endure: then, looking back on her lost virginity of temperament, she
could be amazingly sorry for, amazingly grateful to the abstemious
Hector of the last three years.

Yet all the time, she knew subconsciously that she loved Ronnie; that,
without him, life was one mazed loneliness.

Aliette, like Hector, kept her own counsel. Mary O'Riordan, to whom--as
in duty bound--she confided a hint of her distress, pumped her for full
confession, but pumped in vain. Only Ponto, the huge harlequin Dane with
the magpie coat and the princely manners, shared her mazed loneliness.
She used to fetch the dog, every after-lunch-time, from the garage in
Westbourne Street where he had his abode; and wander with him by the
hour together through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Ponto, unlike
her other pursuers, desired nothing but an occasional caress. He would
pad and pad after her, close to heel, disdainful of all distractions,
his eyes on the hem of her skirt, his stern slapping only the mildest
disapproval of an occasional fly. And when she sat her down to meditate,
the beast--as though conscious of the fret in his mistress--would
content affection with the rare up-thrust of an enormous consolatory
paw.

Vaguely during that week Ponto's mistress conceived the scheme of
sending to Moor Park for Miracle, of condescending to ride in the Row.
Dumb animals, of a sudden, seemed so much wiser, so much kinder than
men. But to ride in the Row would make one conspicuous, and instinct
warned her that the less conspicuous she made herself during the season,
the easier things might be--in the event of a social crash.


                                   2

One other woman in London--during the days which followed Aliette's
definite break with Hector--was meditating the probabilities of a social
crash.

"Julia," said Dot Fancourt, dropping in to lunch on Friday, "you're not
looking so well. You ought to see Baynet again. You've nothing on your
mind, have you?"

"My dear Dot," retorted the novelist, smiling, "I'm quite well, and I
have nothing on what you are pleased to call my mind--except the
vulgarity of your methods in booming my divorce article."

But after Dot had gone back to his office, Julia Cavendish's face lost
its smile.

Surveyed in cool retrospect, her momentary thought-panic in Hyde Park
appeared a mere firework of the literary imagination. Nevertheless, ever
since Sunday, when she had tried, over dinner, to let him inkle her
knowledge, to warn him, she had been reproaching herself about Ronnie.
Other mothers--her own sister Clementina among them--did not apparently
find it at all difficult to discuss sex matters with their sons. Yet
she, the celebrated psychologist, had found it impossible.

"If only I could have been open with him," she thought, "if only I could
have said: 'I'm afraid that you've fallen in love with that charming
Mrs. Brunton. You won't let it go too far--will you? Women's heads are
so easily turned.'"

She would not, of course, have said more than that. Ronnie was so
sensible, so straight and clean, that he would have needed no further
warning. Ronnie--her Ronnie--did not in the least resemble the heroes of
her novels, the passionate men with cleft chins who occasionally counted
the world well lost for love. Ronnie was the very spit of his father,
the Oxford don.

Still even dons were human. And Ronnie, unwarned, might have lost his
head.

As for the woman--women, according to Julia Cavendish, could always fall
prey to the sentimental impulse. If only a man were sufficiently ardent
the entire sex yielded to him. Why should this Mrs. Brunton be the
exception? Ronnie--her Ronnie--must be terribly attractive.
Therefore----

And quite suddenly, Julia panicked again. Her literary imagination saw
the worst; Aliette in Ronnie's arms, Ronnie in the divorce court. Her
heart went cold at the imaginary prospect. The mother, the religious
woman, and the Victorian in her were alike appalled.

Jealousy spread a yellow jaundice film over her intellect. Seen through
that film, the "charming Mrs. Brunton" became a harpy, an over-dressed,
over-scented, over-manicured harpy, her unguented claws sharp for an
innocent boy.

Whereupon Julia Cavendish--turning, as most literary people in a crisis,
to her pen--began the composition of a letter which should convey,
tactfully, of course, the picture of the harpy to the mind of the boy.
But the letter, completed, read so much more like a piece of fiction
than a statement of fact, that she tore it up; and contented herself
with the usual note ordering him to dinner on Saturday.


                                   3

The note itself contained nothing to alarm Ronnie; and yet, dressing to
obey its commands in his severe mannish bedroom, he felt nervous about
the coming interview. For five days now he had been on edge; sleepless,
unable to concentrate thought.

Every night he had expected that Aliette would telephone; every morning,
every evening, he had expected a letter from her. It never dawned on his
mind that she should be equally on edge, equally expectant. Since she
had admitted her love, asking only that he should not hurry her,
chivalry forbade the obvious course which his impatient manhood
dictated--attack. Chivalry, too, urged him not to make any final move
before weighing the uttermost consequences.

For himself, he had already weighed them; and they weighed light enough.
But for her, even though a man and a woman decided their love justified
before God and the law, remained always their justification before their
fellow-creatures. Under any circumstances, the consequences would
include a divorce. And even the farcical divorce of the period
carried--for a woman in Aliette's position--its stigma. Ronnie
remembered the Carrington case. Suppose Brunton cut up rough; perjured
himself in court as Carrington had done--purely for spite. In an
undefended divorce case, the man and woman cited could not defend
themselves against a perjurer without risking their freedom.

And then, then--there was Julia to consider.

The mind of the clean-shaven man who let himself out of the dark-green
door of 127b Jermyn Street, and strode rapidly across Piccadilly, may be
compared to the hair-trigger of a cocked pistol.


                                   4

"Your mother is already in the dining-room, Mr. Ronald," said the
uniformed parlormaid, who had valeted him while he was still at
Winchester.

"Thank you, Kate." Ronnie handed the woman his hat and strode in.

Julia stood by the be-ferned fireplace, inspecting a newly-acquired
print, only that afternoon hung. Kissing him, she called his attention
to the treasure.

"It's 'The Match-Seller'--a proof before letters. Only two more to find,
and my collection of 'The Cries of London' will be complete."

They talked prints, engravings and china throughout dinner. Julia,
acting on Sir Heron Baynet's advice, ate sparingly, and drank nothing
stronger than Evian water; but for her son she had ordered a miniature
feast--all the particular foods of his particular boyhood--and the last
bottle of his father's Chambertin.

Usually, when she prepared such a feast, Ronnie would compliment her on
her memory, her forethought; but to-night he seemed scarcely aware of
what he ate. She had to coax him: "Turbot, dear, your favorite fish,"
or, "I remembered the _sauce Béarnaise_, you see."

Coaxed, he complimented her; but without enthusiasm--so that, hurt, she
said to herself: "He's giving _me_ only half his mind. He's thinking of
that woman. I'm certain he'd rather be dining her at
Claridge's"--(Julia's heroes often "dined" their discreetly illicit
passions at the more expensive caravanserais)--"than sitting here with
his old mother."

Meanwhile he said to himself, "She's taken so much trouble over this
little dinner. I ought to be more grateful. Dash it, I _am_ grateful!
Good Lord, it's nearly nine o'clock! The last post will be in soon.
Perhaps there'll be a letter. Perhaps Aliette will telephone to-night. I
must get away by ten."

Resultantly, by the time Kate brought coffee and cigarettes, the moment
for confidences was as unpropitious as any Julia Cavendish could
possibly have chosen.

"Ronnie," she, began, as soon as they were alone, "I hope you won't be
angry at what I'm going to say."

The opening, so entirely foreign to her usual abruptness, made
Ronnie--on the instant--suspicious. The Wixton imagination in him said:
"Danger! She's found out. She knows something about Aliette. She may
know about Aliette's having been to your rooms." And immediately the
magisterial Cavendish in him decided: "I shall refuse to be drawn. It's
not her business. Even if she does know, she ought to have waited till
_I_ thought fit to broach the subject."

Nevertheless, the ghost of the schoolboy who had liked _sauce Béarnaise_
and been vaguely frightened of his mother was in a funk. The ghost of
the schoolboy, looking at his mother's determined chin, did not see the
unhappiness behind his mother's blue eyes.

After a second's hesitation, the magisterial Cavendish laughed.

"It depends on what you are going to say, mater."

"It isn't much." Julia braced herself to the unpleasant task. "Perhaps
it isn't anything at all. But I feel that you're keeping something from
me. Something rather--important. Something that's making you unhappy.
Can't you confide in me? I might be able to help. We've never had any
secrets from each other, you and I."

Kate, coming in to clear the table, was shooed away with a calm "We
haven't quite finished our coffee. I'll ring when I want you."

"We oughtn't to have secrets from one another," went on Julia
diffidently.

Her son, stiff-lipped, uncompromising, made no answer; and she
continued, a little afraid:

"You told me about Lucy. Can't you tell me about this--love affair?"

The tone irritated him.

"My dear mater, what love affair?"

"Flirtation, then?" Fleetingly, her suspicions lulled by his presence,
she thought how ridiculous it was of him to be so stubborn. Dot
Fancourt, Paul Flower, and many other of the literary among her
acquaintances rather liked talking about their flirtations. Then his
very stubbornness perturbed her.

"Ronnie," she said, "be open with me. You _are_ in love?"

"What if I am?" He had never lied to her, and had no intention of doing
so now. Apparently she did not know about Aliette's having been to
Jermyn Street; otherwise--reticence with him not being one of her
characteristics--she would have said so. Obviously, though, she
suspected quite enough!

"What if I am?" he repeated.

"You mean--it's not my business?" she faltered.

"Yes. I do mean that. I don't want to be unkind, or unfair. But you must
see that I can't discuss--that sort of thing with you."

"Why not?" Thoroughly alarmed now, she tried to hide alarm with a smile.
"Lots of people do confide in me. I--you know I wouldn't betray your
confidence."

"Is that quite the point?"

Julia Cavendish deigned to plead: "I've been so worried, Ronnie. I feel,
somehow, that you're in trouble. I feel I understand why. And I only
want you to let me help you."

His mood softened. "Poor old mater," he thought. But her next words
dispelled softness; irritated him again.

"You see," she said, "you're still so young. Only a boy really. You
don't know the world as I know it. You mustn't reject my advice."

"I'm thirty-six," he parried.

"And I'm over sixty."

"You don't look it, mater."

She felt herself being edged away from her topic. She saw a vision of
Aliette Brunton--standing palpably between herself and her son. Vague
jealousy clouded her love, her kindness.

"You don't deny the correctness of my statement," she shot at him. "You
admit that you are in love?"

"Suppose I admit that much----" His lean face flushed.

"Then the least you can do is to tell me with whom. You say you don't
want to be unkind or unfair. Is it fair, or kind, to let me"--Julia
hesitated over the word--"suspect things?"

He said bluntly, "There is nothing to suspect."

She said with equal bluntness, "Then why am I not to be told?"

Ronnie's temper rose. He, too, saw a vision of Aliette, palpably
demanding his protection.

"Because there's nothing to tell."

"Ronnie, that's not the truth." The words burst from her. "You've never
lied to me before. Why can't you tell me the truth now? Ever since
Sunday, I've known----"

"Known what?"

Her heart dropped a beat at his obvious anger. It was as though she
already knew the worst. Love and jealousy, strangely commingling in her
ego, ousted--for one flash of a second--all other emotions. So that it
might have been an adoring wife rather than a religious mother who
answered.

"That you and Mrs. Brunton were in love with each other."

"So she knew all the time," thought Ronnie. His first feeling was
relief. At least the mater knew nothing of what had happened since
Sunday. Only her uncanny intuition had led her to the truth. Then
fear--no longer fear for himself, but fear for Aliette--keyed his legal
brain to defense.

"You have no right to make that statement. Where's your proof, your
evidence?"

She looked him full in the face; noted the blood at his temples, the
working nostrils, the angry sparks in his light blue eyes. The effort to
stand up against his obstinacy wrenched her in pieces. Her knees, her
very stomach trembled. The known room, the beloved things, seemed
suddenly worthless. She felt self-reproachfully that she had loved
things too much, her son too little. She could have cried, then and
there--she who had never let the tears to her eyes.

"Ronnie," she pleaded, "why must you be so hard, so hostile? Mothers
don't need 'evidence.' At least, I don't. Not where you are concerned.
You said just now that this--this affair was none of my business. Isn't
it a mother's business to protect her child, to save him? Would it have
been fair for me not to have spoken? It isn't as if you couldn't trust
me----"

She broke off; and fear faded from the mind of her son. He was no longer
even angry. Once again he saw in Julia the "lonely old woman," dependent
solely on his affection; saw her--very radiant down the years--fetching
him, still a child, from his "Dame's School" in Welbeck Street; saw her
visiting him at Winchester, at the Varsity. Always, she had been the
confidante, the rather stern confidante, of his troubles. Surely, surely
when she knew the fineness of Aliette, when she knew how Aliette had
refused to let him hurt her, she would help him, help both of them?

"Of course I trust you. It isn't that. And if--if we'd decided anything
definitely, I'd tell you about it. But, as things are, I can't tell you
anything. You see that, don't you?"

"No. I don't," said Julia sternly--the mother, the religious woman and
the traditionalist in her alike roused to bay by the sudden frankness.
"It seems to me that, having admitted so much, you owe me the rest."

"But it wouldn't be fair----"

"I can't see why. Unless--unless there's something you--you're both
afraid of my knowing."

"Mater!" All the chivalry in him, revolting at the slur on Aliette,
urged full confession. "You've spoken with her. You can't possibly
imagine that she's the sort of woman who----"

Indignation dumbed him; and in his moment of dumbness the mother
realized her mistake, realized him in that hair-trigger state of emotion
when the slightest touch will loose the explosion; realized that he and
Aliette were on the verge of disaster, that Aliette was the wife of a
king's counselor, that she, Julia, must cut out her tongue rather than
say the word which would decide her son to wreck his career. But
realization came too late.

"You don't imagine that she--that we would do anything underhand," burst
out the boy in Ronnie.

"Of course not, dear." Almost Julia had it in her to hate the woman's
virtue. To love in secret was certainly a sin before God; but to commit
open adultery was a sin before both God and what remained of English
Society.

"And, mater," he bent forward boyishly, across the table, "I love her;
we love each other."

"Another man's wife?"

"Only in name." His teeth clenched. "Only in law."

She wanted to say, "You believe that?"; but instinct restrained her. She
grew frightened at the passion in Ronnie's eyes. He talked
on--vehemently. "I can't live without her. I won't. Why should I? What's
a divorce nowadays? Who cares? Except a few snuffy old priests. And half
of them don't know their own minds."

"Ronnie!" She conjured up every atom of force in her to wrestle with his
vehemence. "What's happened to you? divorce means scandal. It means sin.
But I won't talk about the religious part. One either believes or one
doesn't. I only beg of you, I implore you, to think of your career----"

"Who cares about my career----"

"I do."

"My career won't suffer----"

"It will. You'll be disbarred. Brunton's a power. You'll have him for
enemy instead of for friend. You'll make a thousand enemies. The snuffy
old priests, as you call them, aren't the only ones who care about
divorce. Half the houses I visit will be closed to you."

"For six months."

"No. For good. And you'll never be able to go into politics."

"Politics!" scornfully.

"People will cut you."

"Let them." Opposition, clarifying his mind, keyed him to fight. "Let
them! What do I care? We sha'n't have done anything wrong."

"It's always wrong to set ourselves up against the world."

"That's sheer cowardice. And it isn't true, either. What about Jesus
Christ?"

"That's sheer blasphemy."

One of the dinner-table candles guttered and went out. To Julia, it
seemed like an omen. She saw her son's career gutter out in that curling
smoke; saw him entrapped by the powers of darkness, prey to the personal
devil. Now no one except God, her own particular secular god, could
help. She prayed voicelessly to that particular secular god for words to
save the entrapped soul of her boy.

"Ronnie! You've always been so good, the best of sons. You've never
given me a moment's anxiety--never--since the day you were born. Until
now! And you've always trusted me. Won't you trust me in this? Won't you
believe me when I tell you that the thing you contemplate is a sin?"

Quietly, he answered, "If God is love, how can love be a sin?"

The phrase shot a tiny sliver of doubt through the armor of Julia
Cavendish's belief, pricking her unwisdom to retort:

"Love! Love isn't passion. Love is service. If you loved her, really and
truly loved her, you'd save this woman from herself. And if she loved
you, really and truly loved you, she'd be the last person in the
world----"

He wanted to argue: "You don't understand. You're too prejudiced to
understand." Instead, comprehending abruptly how far his confidences had
outrun actuality, he blustered:

"We won't discuss her motives, please. Or mine. Neither of us is a
child--as you seem to think. We're quite capable of deciding things for
ourselves. When we do----"

"She hasn't consented then?" Julia grasped at the life-buoy.

"No."

Another doubt entered like a dart into the mother's mind. Suppose Sir
Heron's warnings came true? Then soon there might be nobody to care for
Ronnie. Suppose, suppose this woman really did care--as she, Julia,
cared? A woman in Mrs. Brunton's position would hardly risk divorce for
a _béguin_.

Nervously she played with her favorite ring--a diamond-set miniature of
her son in earliest boyhood. Nervously she said: "You won't do things in
a hurry. Promise me that."

"I can't promise anything," He blustered again, feeling that she was
trying to fetter his independence. "I'd rather not discuss the subject
any more."

The bluster, so foreign to him, irritated her dignity.

"Very well. It shall be as you wish. We'll say no more about this
matter. It's been very painful to me, and I can only hope it won't be
still more painful--to both of us--before it's over."

His irritated dignity answered hers. "Why to both of us? It's entirely
my affair."

"Not entirely. I've tried to keep myself out of this question; but, as
your mother, I have certain claims. And you know, or at least you ought
to know, my feelings on the subject of divorce. I ask you to believe
that I'm trying to sympathize with you, to see your point of view. But I
can't. To me, any union, however legalized, between you and Hector
Brunton's wife, means deadly sin. You call this passion of yours love. I
don't. I call it by an uglier name." His eyes kindled. "That angers you.
I'm sorry. But I'm speaking the truth, as I see it. If you and she
decide to commit this deadly sin, don't come to me for forgiveness."

Julia rose, weary with words, to her feet. "Shall we go upstairs to the
drawing-room? Kate will be waiting to clear the table."

"Not for a moment." Ronnie, too, rose. "What do you mean, exactly, when
you say, 'Don't come to me for forgiveness'?"

"What do I mean?" Sheer physical fatigue unnerved Julia's mind.
Jealousy, the mad mother jealousy for the mate which her brain had been
holding in leash all evening, broke its bonds; so that she saw her only
son, the baby she had cherished from his cradle, lost to her in another
woman's arms. White arms--young and smooth and sinful! "What do I mean?
Only this--that you must choose between your mother and your--mistress."

Even as that last word escaped the barrier of her teeth, Julia Cavendish
knew the mistake irretrievable. Her dignity flickered out like a match
in a storm. She wanted to throw herself on his mercy, to beg his pardon
with bended knees. But the word, the unpardonable insult of a word, was
out. Slowly, she saw his mind grip its full significance. Then his face
paled to harsh granite; and his eyes, for once in their lives, grew
sterner than her own.

"I _have_ chosen," said Ronald Cavendish.




                               CHAPTER XI


                                   1

"Aliette dear: You asked me not to hurry you. I've tried to be patient;
but life without you has become impossible. I can't see what duty either
of us owes to anybody except each other. It isn't as though you had
children. It isn't as though you were really married. At worst, we only
risk a little scandal. I wouldn't ask you even to risk that, unless I
felt confident that I could make you happy. I _can_ make you happy.
Won't you come to me? We needn't do anything mean. We can play the game.
RONALD."

                  *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly one o'clock on Sunday morning. The torn sheets of at least
twenty letters in Ronnie's tiny legal handwriting littered his
sitting-room grate. He reread the last of them; and thinking how utterly
it failed to express his yearning, added as postscript, "I love you."
Then he addressed his envelope; folded the single sheet; thrust it in;
and gummed down the flap. The fragments in the fireplace he gathered up
very carefully, and kindled to ashes.

As yet no sorrow for his quarrel with Julia had entered into her son's
heart. He could see her only as an obstacle between himself and
happiness. Of her last word, he could not bring himself to think sanely.
That she, his own mother, the one person on whose help he ought to have
been able to rely, should be the first to cast a stone at the woman he
loved, seemed to him--in his bitterness--to make her his chiefest enemy;
no longer "the mater," no longer "the lonely old lady," but "Julia
Cavendish," publicly and in private the upholder of an effete religion,
the champion of fust-ridden prudery.

No longer could he sympathize with that religious prudery. Passion, not
the physical desires of a Brunton, but the grand passion, the passion of
the poets, blinded him--for the nonce--to every point of view except his
own. He and Aliette loved each other. To the torture, then, with
whosoever loved other gods!

Passing, on his way downstairs, the door of the bachelor-flat beneath
him, Ronnie heard, very low but quite distinct, a woman's laughter. "And
that sort of thing," he thought angrily, "is what one is allowed to do.
Moses Moffatt winks at it. The world winks at it. Meanwhile the women
who won't stoop to concealment foot the world's social bill."

But the woman's laughter still echoed in his ears as he slid his letter
into the mouth of the pillar-box.


                                   2

Caroline Staley brought Ronnie's letter, the only one of Monday's post,
on Aliette's breakfast-tray. The handwriting of the envelope was
strange; but instinct warned her from whom it came. Her heart
fluttered--breathlessly--under the satin bath-robe as she said, "I'll
ring when I'm ready to dress, Caroline."

But once alone, Aliette did not dare touch the envelope. Casting thought
back, she knew that she had loved Ronnie from first sight.
Suppose--suppose he had written to make an end?

The breakfast on the tabled tray cooled and cooled. Through the
curtained alcove came sound of a housemaid emptying her bath, polishing
at the taps. Aliette heard nothing, saw nothing. The cheerful
yellow-and-white of her bedchamber had gone dark about her, as though a
cloud obscured the sun outside.

At last she took the envelope in her hands. But her hands trembled. And
suddenly she saw her own face.

Her face, seen in the triptych mirror of the dressing-table, looked old,
haggard. "I _am_ old." she thought. "Nearly thirty. Too old for Ronnie.
He ought to have some girl, some quite young girl, for bride."

Then, still trembling, her hands slit the envelope; and hungrily, she
began to read.

Reading, joy flooded her face. He wanted her to come to him. He needed
her! The mazed loneliness of the last week was a vanished nightmare. She
would never be lonely any more. Love had come into her life, into their
lives, making them one life. At his postscript, the scarlet of her lips
crinkled to a smile.

No longer was the room dark about her. Sunlight flashed back into it,
flashed square shafts of gold on the rugs at her feet. A warmth, a rare
warmth compound of blood and sunshine, pervaded her body. She saw
herself, in the mirror, young again, fit to be his mate.

"I love you." She repeated the words under her breath. "I love you."
Rereading the letter, her eyes sparkled. Life was good--good.

But gradually the sparkle in her eyes dimmed; joy went out of her face.
"Julia Cavendish," she thought, "Julia Cavendish!" And again, "But
life's hard--hard."

Nevertheless life had to be faced.

She faced it, there and then, sitting tense and quiet in the sunlit
room. Ronnie was a man. To him, love once confessed must seem a bond, an
irrevocable troth. Ought she to take him at his word? Ought she not to
strive once again--as they had both so long and so uselessly striven--to
forget? Yet could she ever forget? Forgetting, would she not be false to
the best in her? To the best in both of them?

Suppose--suppose she ran away with Ronnie? What would be the
consequences? A divorce! She could face that, as Mary O'Riordan had
faced it. Mary, other friends, would stand by her. If only Ronnie's
mother were less the Puritan.

"I must go to Ronnie," she thought. "I must ask him if he has spoken
with his mother."

Yes! She must go to Ronnie. No other's counsel could avail her now. No
third party could help. They, and they alone, would bear the burden
if--if she decided to run away with him. And yet--and yet other people
would be affected by their action--his mother, her own family, Mollie.

Impulsively she decided to send for Mollie, to sound her. She rang the
bell for Caroline, but Caroline told her that "Miss Mollie" had gone
out.

"Will I dress you now, madam?" asked the maid. "The master's been gone
nearly an hour." It seemed impossible to find any excuse for remaining
longer alone.

Dressing, the unsolved problem still haunted her mind. But already one
aspect of the problem had solved itself--the aspect of Ronnie. Ronnie's
word was not to be doubted. He loved her, he needed her--as she him. For
themselves, they must no more funk the issue of Hector divorcing her
than they had funked Parson's Brook. "Parson's Brook," thought Aliette.
"Was it an omen?"

And at that, ominously, her imagination concentrated on the other aspect
of the problem, on the public aspect; till it seemed as though a whole
host of people, his mother, her own parents, Mollie, James Wilberforce,
and her husband among them, were actually visible in the bedchamber;
till it seemed as though Aliette could actually feel the eyes of the
host on her, appraising the curves of her figure, the vivid masses of
her hair.

Fastidiously she tried to avoid the eyes; but the eyes would not be
gainsaid; they turned to her breast, seeking out Ronnie's letter, his
love-letter, which she had hidden there. The eyes were not yet hostile,
only appraising; but behind them--imagination knew--lurked souls ready
to kindle into hostility. "They're waiting," thought Aliette, "waiting
to know my decision. Yet the decision is mine--mine only." Imagination
petered out, leaving her mind a blank.

Caroline asked a question; and she answered it automatically, "Yes; the
green hat, please."

Her maid brought the hat--and, in a second as it seemed, she was
standing before the long cheval-glass, completely dressed, completely
ready to--leave Hector's house.

Looking back, Aliette now realizes that moment to have been the
definitive crossing of her Rubicon. Subconsciously, in that one
particular instant of time, her decision crystallized. She, who had
always hated "funking things," would not funk love. Love was either
worth the leap, or worth nothing. If nothing, then life's self was not
worth while. And the risk was the leaper's, only the leaper's.
Considering others, she had forgotten to consider herself.

She looked at that self in the long mirror.

Surely those brown eyes, burning deep into their own semblance, were
never fashioned for long perplexity; surely, they had been given her so
that she might visualize truth. Surely, those scarlet lips were not made
for lying; nor those slim feet for running away.

And suddenly, subconsciously, Aliette knew that all her life hitherto
she had been lying to her own soul, running away from truth. Life,
woman's life at its highest, meant mating. Without matehood,
motherhood's self must be a failure. And she, she was neither mate nor
mother. Remaining with Hector, her very bodily beauty would
wither--wither unmated, sterile. For, to Hector--even if she yielded to
Hector--and how, loving Ronnie, could she yield herself to Hector?--she
would never be more than legal concubine. No matehood there, only
degradation. Better to kill one's self, better to smash the sacred
vessel in pieces, than allow it to be profaned--as profaned it must
be--by any man's touch save Ronnie's.

"And surely," said some dim voice in that soul which was Aliette,
"surely this is nature's verity: To each one of us, unhindered, our
mate- and mother-hood! Surely, in nature's eyes, our parents are but dry
and empty vessels, milkless gourds rattling on a dead tree."

                  *       *       *       *       *

_Her_ letter, sent "express" to Jermyn Street, read: "If you are quite,
quite sure of your own feelings, I will come to you to-morrow afternoon.
Whatever we decide best to do, must be done openly. I love you--perhaps
that is why I have been so afraid. I am not afraid any more. ALIETTE."


                                   3

This time, ringing the bell at 127b Jermyn Street, Hector Brunton's wife
was no more nervous than on the day she put Miracle at Parson's Brook.
In that last flash of understanding, it seemed as though even the Mollie
aspect of the problem were solved. Let Mollie, too, learn nature's
verity; learn that if Wilberforce's love-flame blew out at a breath of
scandal, she would do better to warm herself at some healthier fire.

The twenty-four hours which followed her decision had gone by like a
single minute, marked only by Ronnie's second letter, by those eight
sheets of tenderness, of passion, of high resolve and deep desire, which
Aliette held close to her heart as she followed Moses Moffatt up the
quiet stairs.

Ronnie met them in the tiny hall. The conventional smile assumed for
Moffatt's benefit was still on his lips as he relieved her of bag and
parasol, as he led her into the sitting-room. But so soon as the
sitting-room door closed, his arms went round her; and their lips met in
a long kiss. There was no passion in that kiss, only an overwhelming
tenderness; yet, yielding to it, letting herself sink into his arms,
Aliette knew that the die was cast, that she belonged to him, he to her,
so long as life lasted. And freeing herself, quaintly, irresistibly, the
impulse to laughter overwhelmed her mind.

"I'm going to take my hat off," laughed Aliette. "You won't object, will
you? Do you know, I wanted to take my hat off, that first afternoon--at
the Bull?"

He watched, dumb, while she ungloved her pale hands, while she lifted
them to her hat-pins. The curve of her raised arms fascinated his eyes.
Still laughing, she removed the hat; and stretched it out to him.

"You don't recognize this, I suppose?"

"No."

"Nor the dress? It's rather a funny dress for town--don't you think,
man? Do you like being called 'man'? I decided that should be my name
for you on my way here."

But he could not remember either the hat or the dress. "I like them
both," he said, "they're wallflower-brown--the same color as your eyes."

"It's a winter dress--a country dress," she prompted. "So hot--that I'll
have to take my coat off."

Recollection stirred in him. His mind went back to the winter. He saw
two figures, his and hers, strolling down-hill in the low March
sunlight.

"It's the dress you wore at Key Hatch."

"Man, you're getting quite clever. Now tell me why I put it on this
afternoon."

Standing before him, her coat over one arm, the vivid of her hair
uncovered, the brown silk of her blouse revealing the full throat, she
seemed like a young girl; more an affianced bride than a woman who
intended running away from her husband.

He took the coat from her, and their hands met. He raised her fingers to
his lips; and again she dimpled to laughter.

"Tell me," said Aliette, "or I sha'n't give you any tea, why I put on
this dress. Women, even when they're in love, don't wear their winter
tweeds in the middle of the season."

Instead, he kissed her--still tenderly.

"How should I know, Aliette? This afternoon you're all a mystery to me.
Tell me, why you are so different."

"Light the kettle; and I'll try to tell you." She balanced herself on
the edge of the settee. "You say I'm different this afternoon. I'm only
different because I'm happy. And I'm happy because of you, because of
us, because of everything. You, too?"

"Yes." Her spirits infected him: he, too, laughed.

"Happiness, you see, is our only justification," said the woman who
intended running away from her husband. "I've got to make you happy.
Otherwise, from the very outset, I fail. And if"--the tiniest note of
seriousness crept into her voice--"if I can't make you happy, not just
this afternoon, but always----"

"You will," he interrupted. "And I you."

Tea was rather a silent meal. They were content to sit through it, hand
touching hand occasionally, their eyes on each other. To each of them it
seemed as though, after long wandering, they had come home. For the
moment, passion hardly existed. Almost they might have been boy and
girl.

"Did you fall in love with me that day with the Mid-Oxfordshire?" she
asked.

"I've often wondered."

"It all seems so strange, Ronnie. Not like--like doing wrong."

"We're not going to do anything wrong."

"We are. That's the strangest part of it."

To the man, too, it was all strange, strange and fantastic beyond
belief. He could not imagine himself the same Cavendish who had so long
wrestled against the inculcated traditions of his upbringing, of his
profession; he could not visualize himself potential sinner against
society. Sin was a bodily thing; and he wanted no more of this radiant,
dimpling creature than to hear the happy laughter in her voice.

So, for a little while, those two remade their rose-bubble of
enchantment, forgetful alike of the problems put behind them and the
greater problems yet to be faced.

But at last Aliette said, "Let's be sensible."

"Not this afternoon." He tried to take both her hands, but her hands
eluded him.

"Don't!" Her eyes darkled. "We mustn't play any more." And after a
pause, she asked him: "I wonder exactly how much you really need me?"

"More than any man ever needed any woman."

"You're quite, quite sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Then," she laughed, a little low laugh deep in the throat; for she knew
that her elusion had thrilled him to passion, and the knowledge was very
sweet, "will you please tell me, man, what you're going to do about me?"

"Do about you?" His meditative drawl stimulated a newborn impishness in
her.

"Yes--do about me."

"Why--run away with you, if you'll let me."

"Where to?"

"Anywhere."

"Shall I be allowed to take any luggage?"

"Of course."

"Then we can't very well run away this afternoon."

"No. I suppose we can't," he muttered; and the impishness in her
chuckled to see the puzzled thoughts chase themselves across his
forehead.

How boyish he was--she thought--how utterly unlike the conventional
unconventional lover. The maternal instinct awakened in her heart, and
went out to the boy in him. She wanted to pat his head, to say: "Never
mind, Ronnie. I'll arrange everything. You sha'n't be worried." Then she
remembered that he wasn't a boy; that he was a man, her man.

The man in him burst out: "I wish to God that you needn't go back----"

"Go back?" His outburst frightened her.

"To his house----"

"But I must go back--for a day or two."

"Why should you?" His eyes were flame. "I hate it. I hate the idea of
your being under his roof."

"Jealous?" she soothed, still afraid.

"Yes. I suppose I am jealous."

"Is that fair? There isn't anything to be jealous about."

"Forgive me!" His hand gripped her knee. "But I can't bear his being
your husband even in name. Aliette, kiss me."

"No." She knew that she must not yield to him. "No. We've got to be
sensible. We've got to make plans."

"We can make plans to-morrow."

"We can't. Don't you see that when I go back to--to his house this
evening, I'll have to tell him? It wouldn't be straight if I didn't.
We've got to be straight, haven't we?"

"Yes." The flame went out of his eyes, leaving them cold and hard as
agate. "We've got to be straight. But--telling him isn't your job. It's
mine." He heaved himself up from the settee; and she had her first
glimpse of a different Ronnie--a fighting Ronnie, chin protruded, lips
set. "My job," he repeated.

"I'm not Andromeda. I don't want a Perseus to free me from the dragon."
She tried chaff; but chaff left him unmoved. She tried argument; but
argument only strengthened the resolve in him. Finally she said:

"There's no need to say much. Hector knows everything--except your
name."

"You told him?" There was no anger in the phrase.

"Everything except your name. We had a quarrel. After I got home last
Monday. He offered to let me divorce him if--if I'd promise there was no
one else." She, too, rose--her face, for all its fineness, obstinate as
her lover's. "Of course, I couldn't promise that. So to-night, I shall
just tell him--the rest."

The tall man and the little woman faced each other in silence: each
equally determined to carry, right from the beginning, the other's
burden.

"It doesn't seem right, somehow or other," Ronnie said at last. "He
might--might hurt you."

"Hurt me!" laughed Aliette. "Nothing, nobody in the world can hurt me
now. Except you. And you will hurt me if you insist. Don't insist,
Ronnie."

"Very well." His hands, thrilling to passion once again, clasped her
waist. He kissed her; and this time she did not seek to elude him. For
now she knew her power, the power which all women exercise over
imaginative lovers; knew that, at her least word, he would loose
her--fearful lest, by not loosing, he forfeit the greater gift.

And all through the half-hour which followed, that power, that fear was
on Ronnie. He was afraid of forfeiting this Aliette who had let him hold
her in his arms; who had let him press his lips to hers in passion; but
who, admitting her love for him, could yet sit aloof--a goddess with a
time-table.

"I shall take Caroline," she said. "You don't mind?"

He only wanted to take Aliette, there and then; to kiss those rounded
wrists, those arms bare to the elbow, that scarlet mouth, those cheeks
ivory as curds, the smooth forehead under its loops of shining hair.

"Kiss me!" he whispered. "Kiss me!"

"Ronnie!" She put down the time-table. "Don't let's do anything we
might--might regret. Remember that to-night, and perhaps for many
nights, I must sleep under his roof."

He yielded again; and a few minutes later she prepared to leave him. The
plans they had meant to make were still chaotic--chaotic as her mind.

She realized, as she pinned on her hat, as she let him help her into her
coat, that the sweet hour had been full of danger, that--had Ronnie been
less chivalrous, more the man and less the boy--she might have given way
to him. The realization made her very humble; and in her humility she
began to doubt herself.

"You--you've been very good to me," she said; and then, the vivid lashes
veiling her vivid eyes, her low voice trembling into shyness: "That's
why there's just one--one favor I must ask you."

"Favors! Between us!" He took her ungloved hands, and pressed them to
his lips.

"Yes, dear. It's about--about your mother."

"Julia!" His tone hardened. "But we discussed all that last time."

"We mustn't hurt her more than we can help. We must tell her the truth,
before--before we do anything. She's a woman, and perhaps--perhaps
she'll understand----"

"Aliette----" He hesitated; and her intuition leaped to the cause.

"You--you haven't quarreled with her?"

Her intuition startled him into reply: "Yes. We have quarreled. But I
can't tell you anything about it."

She drew away from him, and her eyes grew sorrowful. "Did you quarrel
because of anything she said to you about me?"

Again he hesitated; again her intuition leaped to the truth. "I've been
afraid you might. Something told me, that morning in the park, that she
must have guessed. I can't come between you and your mother. You mustn't
quarrel with her on my account. Whatever she may have said, you must go
to her, tell her everything, and ask her--if she can--to forgive----"

"Never!" The very humility angered him. "Never! It's not for her to
forgive, but for me----"

"Then it _was_ because of me that you quarreled?"

"Yes."

"Foolish man!" It hurt her desperately to think that his mother should
have understood so little; but she knew that she must conceal the hurt.
"As if I'd let you quarrel with any one, least of all your mother, on my
account. You'll go to her, won't you? You'll tell her that I--that I
don't ask for any recognition----"

Rudely, obstinately, he interrupted her: "Of course she must recognize
you. Either she's on our side or she's against us."

"Ronnie"--her eyes suffused with tears--"Ronnie, I told you we'd got to
be happy with one another. You make me unhappy--when you speak like
that. You make me feel like a thief. You do want me to be happy, don't
you?"

"Yes. Always." His anger vanished. Bending down, he tried to kiss the
tears from her eyes. "Always, darling."

"Then won't you"--she was in his arms now; the warmth, the perfume, the
very unhappiness of her a fresh thrill--"won't you grant me this one
favor? It's the only favor I'll ever ask."

"How can I?"

"So easily. Just go to her. She's your mother. She loves you, she
understands you. But she may not understand--about me. She may think
that I'm just--just a dissolute woman. That doesn't matter. Tell her
that it doesn't matter. Tell her that I don't want to keep you from her;
that until--until we're properly married, you'll be as free to go to her
as if"--he could hardly hear the last words--"as if you'd taken any--any
ordinary mistress."

"Don't, don't!" He strained her to him, fiercely protective. "You're not
to speak of yourself like that."

"Why not?" She lifted a face brave despite her tears. "It's true. Don't
let's funk things. From the day I come to you till the day Hector sets
me free I _shall_ be your mistress. You mustn't expect your mother or
any one else to take a different view. But I'll be so happy, man; so
much happier than I've ever been in my life before--if only you'll make
it up with your mother. You will, won't you? Promise me."

"Tell me," he whispered, and his lips trembled, "is this thing so vital
to your happiness?"

"Yes," she whispered back.

"Then--it shall be as you wish." His arms were still round her; and she
felt herself weakening--weakening. She felt herself all exhausted--all a
limpness in his arms.

"Sweetheart," his voice was hoarse in her ears, "don't go. I want you so
much. Every day, every night without you is misery."

"Ronnie--Ronnie! Don't tempt me----"

Feverishly her ungloved hands fondled him; feverishly her arms looped
his neck, drawing his face down to hers. She could see, under the
gray-gold of his hair, the great vein throbbing on his forehead, the
dart and pulse of passion in his eyes. His lips, trembling still,
fastened on her mouth. The kiss was torment. Feverishly her mouth clung
to his; feverishly, blent in ecstasy, fire feeding flame, they clung to
one another--till, at last, half fainting, she tore herself away.

"Don't!" she stammered. "Don't torture me, don't tempt me any more.
Don't let me think--either now or ever--that this love of ours is
only--only physical. Because, if I thought that, I'd kill myself."

And a moment afterwards, she was gone.




                              CHAPTER XII


                                   1

Ponto the Dane, a piebald hummock of utter contentment, slapped his vast
stern on the sands; woke; and rose to his haunches.

At gaze into the sun-dazzle, Ponto's slitty eyes could just discern the
twin rock buttresses of Chilworth Cove, the sea-water eddying
translucent between them, and, forging through the sea-water, a man's
head. White birds, which Ponto after one or two dignified experiments
had decided uncatchable, strutted the beach or circled lazily round the
buttresses. His mistress slept, sun-bonneted in her long deck-chair, a
smile on her lips.

"This," mused the great dog, "is a very pleasant place."

"This," dreamed the great dog's mistress, "is paradise."

Chilworth Cove lies far from the track of motor char-à-bancs in the
unspoiled West Country. Inshore from its tongue of hot gold sands, the
wild flowers riot; and back along the fritillary-haunted pathway through
the wild flowers, Chilworth Ghyll leads to Chilworth Port--a handful of
thatch-roofed, pink-washed cottages whereon the clematis spreads its
purple stars and the honeysuckle droops coral clusters for the
loudly-questing bee.

Once the sea filled the Ghyll; once, from the ancient well-head midway
of the streetless "port," men drew water for their ships; once seafarers
in hose and doublet with strange oaths and stranger tales on their lips
would sit drinking in the parlor of the ancient alehouse. But to-day
never a ship and hardly a "foreigner" comes where Chill Down upswells
warm-breasted as a woman to the blue and Chill Common sweeps wave on
wave of heathered ridges to a houseless horizon.

This summer, indeed, only three "foreigners"--the man forging overarm to
seaward, the drowsy dog, and the dreaming lady--had visited the port:
for the square-faced, square-hipped Devonian woman, busied at the moment
with the setting-out of curdled cream and other homely fare in their
pink-washed cottage, was no "foreigner"--but a port woman by birth, as
the alehouse well knew.

And if the alehouse sometimes speculated why "Martha Staley's daughter,
her who had the good place in Lunnon, should have brought her 'folk' to
the port"--who cared? Not Ronnie! Not Aliette! For them, London with all
its harassing memories had faded into that remote past before they
possessed one another, before flaming June and flaming love alike
combined to teach them a delight so exquisite that it seemed to both as
though paradise itself could hold no rarer in its offering.

They had been in paradise a full month; and never for a moment had
either of them regretted their hurried flight, their abandoned schemes.
The past was dead, the future still unborn; they lived only for the
all-sufficing present, two human beings fulfilling one another in
isolation from their kind.

"Ronnie is happy," dreamed Aliette. "Happy as I am."

Yet even dreaming, she knew her own happiness the greater. She, risking
most, gained the most from her risking; she--once that first inevitable
fear of revulsion which is the portion of every woman who, disappointed
in one man, seeks consolation with another, proved phantom--had been
content to surrender herself, body, brain, and soul, to the call of
matehood; to pour out all that was best hers, of beauty, of
selflessness, of tender thought and reckless caring, at Ronnie's feet;
knowing each gift a thousand times recompensed by the slightest touch of
his hand on her hair, the lightest brushing of his lips against her
cheeks--knowing herself no longer a woman, but very womanhood, eternal
essence distilled eternally from the fruit of Eden-tree for manhood's
completion.

And, "Poor Ronnie," she dreamed, "he can never be happy as I am. He
thinks I am the same Aliette--he does not realize the miracle."

For, of a surety, if ever love wrought a miracle, it was on this woman.
She who, in her mateless fastidiousness, had schooled herself to the
poise of a virgin Artemis, became, mated, the very Venus Anadyomene,
Venus of foam and of sun-glints, rose-flushed for adoration between the
roses and the sea. And in the hush of moon-pale midnights, when the
clematis-blossoms showed as black butterflies against their diamonded
window-panes, when the ripples beyond the Ghyll murmured like tired
children asleep, she--to whom, mateless, the nights had been emptier
even than the days--became night's own goddess-girl, subduing man's
passion to merest instrument of her love.

The dreaming lady stirred, murmuring through dreams; and the smile faded
from her lips.

Sometimes, even to paradise--as black ships seen through a golden haze
to seaward--came dark visions of the past. Of Julia Cavendish, her son's
unanswered letter crumpled in unrelenting fingers; of Mollie and her
James; of the mullioned house at Clyst Fullerford; of the stiff
bow-fronted library at Lancaster Gate; and of the man in that library,
the man whose thin lips muttered: "So it was that briefless fool
Cavendish you would have married, had I given you your freedom. Very
good! Go to him now, if you dare. You're not my property. I can't force
you to stop here. But if you leave this house, remember that you're
still Mrs. Hector Brunton, not Mrs. Ronald Cavendish. Remember that
you're taking a risk, a biggish risk."

That risk, all in a sweet madness, the dreaming lady and the man forging
back to her through the translucent water, had taken within twelve
hours; hurriedly; almost planlessly; instinctively as Ponto, who, let
loose by a mischievous boy from his kennel in Westbourne Street, nosed
his way to the door of Brunton's house just as Aliette and Caroline
Staley stepped into the loaded taxi, and, spying the portmanteau, set up
such a howl that in sheer self-defense they let him clamber in between
them.

"And that," thought Aliette, waking from dreams to find a huge wet nose
nuzzling her hand, "was the maddest thing I did in all that one mad
day."

Then she, too, sat at gaze into the sun-dazzle; till her lover's head
rounded the translucent pool below the buttresses; till he came up the
hot sands toward her--the sea-light in his hair, his browned shoulders
dripping from the sea.


                                   2

Meanwhile, five hours away along the shining track beyond Chill Common,
seven million exiles from paradise plied their harassed harassing
earth-days in London City.

Of all those seven millions only three people knew exactly what had
happened; and only two--Julia Cavendish and Benjamin Bunce--the
fugitives' address. Even Mollie, who had been overnighting with friends
at Richmond during those few hours when her sister decided on flight,
had been told--officially--nothing.

But Mollie, from the first moment when she glanced at the incoherent
scrawl Lennard handed her on her return, had suspected the worst. With
her, Hector's reassurances, given over the telephone from his chambers,
that "Alie had suddenly made up her mind to take a holiday," went for
nothing.

"Rather unexpected, wasn't it?" she said; and then, remembering the
scene in the drawing-room: "On the whole, Hector, I think I'd better
take a holiday, too."

Hector, with a terse, "Of course, you must do what you think best," rang
off; and the girl, now thoroughly perturbed, telephoned to Betty
Masterman, her oldest school-friend, demanding hospitality.

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" said Betty.

"No, dear. Nothing. Only Alie's had to go away, and I can't very well
stop here without a chaperon."

Betty Masterman was a comforting creature who neither asked nor demanded
confidences; but the interview with James Wilberforce hurt. It took
Mollie three days to summon up enough courage to notify him of her new
address; and when, throwing up his afternoon's work in Norfolk Street,
he came to call at the little conventionally-furnished flat, it seemed
to the girl as though they could never again be frank with one another;
as though her very greeting, "Hello, James! Rotten of Alie to take a
holiday, right in the middle of the season, isn't it?" were a deliberate
lie.

And his answer, "Oh, well, it's rather stuffy in town, these days," made
any discussion of the topic nearest her heart impossible. "For, of
course," thought the girl, "Jimmy knows that Aliette's run away from
Hector."

As a matter of fact, Jimmy had not previously suspected any connection
between Aliette Brunton's sudden departure from Lancaster Gate and the
news, previously imparted to him by Benjamin Bunce, that "Mr. Cavendish
had been called out of town and might not be back for some days." It
was, Jimmy said to himself, rather weird of old Ronnie to buzz off in
the middle of the sessions; but then old Ronnie always had been rather
weird, a peculiar kind of chap, pretty reticent about his private
affairs.

But subconsciously, the moment Mollie spoke of her sister, the
solicitor's mind connected the two disappearances. At first blush, the
connection seemed incredible. "Old Ronnie" was "as straight as they make
'em"; and "H. B.'s wife a regular Puritan."

All the same, James Wilberforce--just to reassure himself--would have
liked to ask a question or two, to take Mollie's summary of evidence. He
wanted, for instance, to ask her if she knew her sister's address.

Something restrained him from asking the question; but while he was
taking tea his brain suddenly remembered a little twist of Ronnie's
mouth when Julia Cavendish had mentioned Aliette's name during his lunch
at Bruton Street. Scarcely noticed at the time, that remembered twist of
the clean-shaven lips called up other memories; Ronald and Aliette at
Key Hatch, playing patters at Queen's, shaking hands in Hyde Park.

"But it's absurd," thought the big red solicitor, "absurd! I'd lay
twenty to one against it. A hundred to one!" And, looking at Mollie
across the tea-table, he forgot her sister.

That afternoon the girl seemed more than ever desirable, just the sort
of wife he was looking for. He liked the way she bobbed her dark hair,
the cotton frock she was wearing, her strong white hands and arms; he
liked being alone with her in this little room with its fumed oak
furniture, its red wall-paper, its general air of coziness. He would
have liked, very much, to kiss that full red mouth. But more than
anything else, he liked this new shyness, this very hopeful shyness,
which had replaced her old self-confidence.

"What's the matter with you this afternoon, Mollie?" he chaffed her.
"Got the hump about anything?"

"No. I'm a bit tired; that's all."

"Nothing worrying you?"

"Nothing much."

And again--vaguely--the solicitor in Wilberforce grew nervous.

"Damn it all," he thought, "supposing my suspicions _are_ right. Suppose
those two have gone off together. It's fifty to one against, but
still----"

The instinct to gamble on that fifty-to-one chance (it had been a
hundred to one half an hour since), to propose and have done with it,
came to him. But his caution subdued the instinct. The world, his world,
was a pretty censorious place; and if one's father were almost a cert.
for his baronetcy, if one were junior partner in a firm so entirely
_sans reproche_ with the king's proctor as Wilberforce, Wilberforce &
Cartwright--well, one just couldn't afford to take even thousand-to-one
gambles on one's future wife's social position.

The entrance of Betty, a thin golden-haired grass-widow, very much _à la
mode_ from her trim feet to her modulated voice, tided over the awkward
interview.

That night, however, Mollie Fullerford--least sentimental of the modern
young--cried herself to sleep.


                                   3

Tears are not fashionable in Pump Court; but that melancholy individual,
Benjamin Bunce, very nearly followed Mollie Fullerford's example, when
"young Mr. Wilberforce"--anxious only to allay his suspicions--called at
Ronnie's chambers next morning.

"I'm sure _I_ don't know what to do, sir," wailed Benjamin. "Here's a
couple of good briefs come in; and my instructions is not to send
anything on to him. No, sir, I'm afraid I can't give you his address.
I'm not allowed to give any one his address--except Mr. David Patterson.
And that only if Mr. David Patterson asks me for it."

"David Patterson!" exclaimed the solicitor.

"Yes, sir. Mr. Brunton's--Mr. Hector Brunton's--clerk."

"Good God!" said a young man whose ruddy complexion had gone suddenly
white. "Good God!" And he walked out of the door, as Benjamin
subsequently described it, "as though he'd been lifting the elbow ever
since breakfast."


                                   4

James Wilberforce did not gossip; nevertheless, within a week of the
flight for paradise, rumor--the amazing omniscient rumor of
London--began to weave, spider-like, her intangible filaments. As yet,
rumor was unconfirmed: only a vague web of talk, spun from boudoir to
drawing-room, from drawing-room to club, from club to Fleet Street, from
Fleet Street to the Griffin.

And in the center of the web, watching it a-weave, sat Aliette's
husband.

More than once, friends, those maddeningly tactful friends of the
successful, touched on rumor; but none of them, not even Hector's
father, succeeded in extracting a syllable. "My wife," said Hector
Brunton, K.C, to his friends, "has not been feeling very well lately.
I've sent her out of town for a bit of a holiday."

At first the mere mention of Aliette's name enraged him; aroused in him
a cruelty so melodramatic, so virulent that, for a full three days, he
went in fear of becoming a murderer. He knew that he could find "the
guilty pair" easily enough: Cavendish's clerk--Aliette's brief note told
him--would give his solicitors their address. But even without
Cavendish's clerk it would be simple to trace them. You couldn't lug a
twelve-stone dog round the London railway termini without attracting the
attention of at least half a hundred involuntary private detectives!

Somehow (comedy and tragedy blend strangely in the heart of a man!) the
idea of Ponto's accompanying his wife's elopement seemed in Brunton's
eyes the culminating insult, a last intolerable outrage on the domestic
decencies. He, Hector, had given Aliette that dog; and, though he hated
the beast himself, he grudged it to Cavendish. To his enraged mind, the
dog turned symbol of his betrayal. He had been betrayed by a dishonest
woman. If Aliette had possessed any sense of honesty, she would have
left Ponto behind: as she had left all his other gifts--the pearl
necklace, the jeweled wrist-watch, the gray ostrich-feather fan.

Then, hot on the heels of rage, came remorse--remorse, not for his
cruelty, not for his infidelities, but only for the crass stupidity with
which he believed himself to have handled the situation. He might have
known the woman better than to attempt bluff. He ought to have pleaded
with her. Or locked her in her bedroom. On no account ought he to have
gone down to the courts next morning. Why hadn't he telephoned Mollie to
return that very night? Why hadn't he wired to Clyst Fullerford for
Aliette's mother?

Self-pity succeeded. He pictured himself the injured husband; and, his
heart softening towards Aliette, vowed "that seducer Cavendish should
suffer."

But Cavendish's sufferings did not suffice his imagination. Why should
Cavendish alone suffer? Why should either the woman or the man get off
scotfree? Why shouldn't both of them be made to suffer--damnably--as
damnably as he himself was suffering?

For, surely as love made paradise of Chilworth Cove, so surely did lust
fashion hell at Lancaster Gate.

From this hell in which--as Brunton imagined--the loss of a woman, and
not the loss of his own self-esteem furnished the flame, Brunton's only
escape was work; and into work he flung himself, as a scalded child into
cold water, only to find the agony redoubled on emergence. For though
his work--eight, ten, and sometimes sixteen hours a day of the tensest
mental concentration--did momentarily banish introspection; always, his
work concluded, came the Furies.

In the night, they came--like evil old women--lashing him, sleepless,
from room to room of that huge silent house, mocking him, mocking him.
"Only wait," mocked the Furies. "She'll come back. Perhaps she's on her
way home at this very moment. She'll soon tire of Cavendish--of
Cavendish."

Brunton tried to scream back at them (he knew, even before they showed
him his face in the mirror of his dressing-room, that the scream could
not pass his lips), "I wouldn't have her back. I wouldn't, I tell you--I
wouldn't. She's a loose woman. An adulteress."

"Oh, yes, you would," answered the Furies. "Oh, yes, you would. If she
came into this house now--if she rang the front door-bell--listen!
listen hard! didn't you hear a bell, Brunton?--if she offered herself to
you, you'd take her. It's three years, Brunton. Three years since you
went into that room. Think of her, Brunton. Think of her--her hair
unbound--her arms open to receive--Cavendish!"

And by day, when the evil old women slept, men mocked at
him--voicelessly. All men--so it seemed to him--knew his shame. All men!
Lennard and the chauffeur, so smooth-faced, so efficient, grinning
behind smug hands: the acquaintances at his clubs: his co-barristers,
lunching either side of him at Middle Temple Hall: his subservient
clerk: his respectful clients--all these knew him for the deserted bull,
for the male incapable of authority, for the public cuckold. Even the
impassive pseudo-friendly judges who gave him his verdicts were wise to
his cuckoldry.

Curiously enough, in all that month of June, Brunton never lost a case.
Possible defeats, probable compromises, doubtful prosecution, or still
more doubtful defense--every legal battle he fought ended in sweeping
victory. Treasury briefs, consultations, and demands for his "opinion"
avalanched on his chambers in King's Bench Walk. Fleet Street echoed and
reëchoed his name; till it appeared as though the herd, the damned
hypocritical herd who fawned openly on his public success so that they
might gloat the more on his secret failure, twitted him in very malice
with the prospects of a knighthood, of a judgeship, of a safe seat at
the next election.

More and more, as the days went by, he saw himself as the deserted bull;
and, so seeing, swore that he would teach the whole herd a lesson. The
herd had its rules, its shibboleths; but he was above all rules, above
all shibboleths. Let the herd murmur if it dared. His wife and her lover
could rot in the mire they had pashed for themselves. The lone bull
would not even deign to horn their flanks.

So, arrogance and cruelty in his secret heart; lash-marks of the Furies
red across his secret loins; feigning himself unhurt, uncaring; feigning
himself ignorant; feigning even solicitude for the health of his absent
wife, Hector Brunton went his conquering conquered way.




                              CHAPTER XIII


                                   1

In the heart of Julia Cavendish--those earliest days--was neither hatred
nor cruelty; only a terrible numbness as from a blow.

Ronnie, her own son, had struck her! At first she could not bring
herself to believe the happening real. His letter, read and reread,
conveyed nothing.

But soon the letter grew real enough--so real that Julia's imagination,
peering between the lines, could actually see him with the woman who had
inspired it; with the woman who had ruined her boy's career.

Her first impulse was to go to them, to go swiftly; to say to the woman,
"It's not too late--even now. Return to your husband--give my son back
to me."

Yet every traditional instinct in Julia fought against that solution.
All her life she had schooled herself to the belief that adultery--in a
woman--was the unforgivable sin. Men, of course, were never guilty of
"adultery," only of "lapses." Modern society, so pitifully lax, so given
over to the sentimental impulse, might forgive both parties. Julia
Cavendish could not. She, in her eugenic wisdom, knew that individual
sin--in a woman--must earn individual punishment. Mrs. Brunton,
therefore, could not return to her husband. But if Mrs. Brunton did not
return, how could Mrs. Brunton give back Ronnie?

Mrs. Brunton probably took the ordinary tolerant view about divorce; the
view that she, Julia, had spent a lifetime in combating. Not that her
own public position on the divorce question counted! At any moment since
Ronnie's birth she would have sacrificed more than public position for
him. But this, this was a question of beliefs. Love might urge
forgiveness but how could love countenance sin--a deadly sin?

For a week that stubborn old doctrine of deadly sin, which Julia had
imbibed with a bookish Christianity--the same bookish "Christianity"
which still tolerates the ghastly word "heretic," continued to harden
her heart as it blinded her intellect; for a week she held on, with a
tenacity almost Hebraic, to the fixed idea of the _woman_ taken in
adultery.

Then, as the numbness of the blow warmed into pain, her heart softened,
and her intellect--momentarily freed by sorrow from the blindness of all
formal faiths--saw a ray of light.

Admit, just for argument's sake, that a husband was entitled to put away
his guilty wife; and suppose that the guilty man were willing to marry
her. What then? Could one doom the guilty parties to a perpetual living
in sin?

But the ray of light petered out, leaving her in even blacker darkness,
because--by the beam of it--she had seen herself already drifted so far
away from her old beliefs as to countenance not only divorce but the
remarriage of divorced parties.

All the same, mother-love still urged her to forgive: so that, for a
full week, she went about her house (a lonely house, it seemed now; all
the charm of the years gone out of it) in a positive stupor of
intellectual and religious bewilderment. She asked herself: "Does
anything matter except my boy's happiness, my boy's career? Does
anything really count except love? Isn't love--and love alone--the true
teaching of Christianity!" But she found no answer to her questions.
Honesty said: "It's a matter of principle; judge the case as though it
were a stranger's, not the case of your own son."

Nevertheless the argument of the individual case persisted. Memory
recalled her son's statement about Aliette's relationship to her
husband. If those two--the woman to whom she had taken such an
instinctive liking and the man she had deemed, at first sight, capable
of cruelty--were husband and wife only in name, didn't the case alter?
"No!" said formal religion. "Yes!" said the mother in Julia Cavendish.

She remembered a phrase of Aliette's: "I have no children, worse luck."
That was hardly the phrase of a loose woman, of a harpy. Suppose this
woman really loved Ronnie?

But that brought back the old jealousy. How could Aliette really love
Ronnie? She, his mother, would have held her right hand in the flames
rather than jeopardize her son's career--as Aliette had jeopardized it.

Whereupon the novelist's imagination in Julia started to activity. She
pictured--knowing little of the law--a crowd of clients besieging
Ronnie's chambers, only to be told that "the eminent Mr. Cavendish"
could not take their cases; and--thoroughly frightened at the heroic
version of Benjamin Bunce and those few dusty briefs which Ronald had
abandoned--sent for her secretary, the blank-faced Mrs. Sanderson, whom
she told to ring up Sir Peter Wilberforce.

But Sir Peter was in Paris; and James deputized in his stead.

"Do you know what she wants to see him about?" asked James's secretary
on the telephone.

"It's about her will, I think," answered Julia's.


                                   2

Jimmy Wilberforce, who had not seen Mollie since his talk with Bunce and
spent four sleepless nights in consequence, set out for that interview
with the uncomfortable foreboding that the "old lady's will" was only a
pretext for discussing the old lady's son. And the foreboding justified
itself before he had been with her ten minutes.

"I suppose," said Julia, eying him across the Empire desk of her
work-room, "that you, as Ronnie's best friend, are very much in his
confidence?"

"How do you mean?" prevaricated the big red lawyer. "About his financial
affairs?" He laughed, tapping the document between them. "Ronald isn't
the sort of chap who'd borrow on his--er--expectations."

"I was not referring to his financial affairs," retorted Julia stiffly.
"If you, as my son's best friend, and as the son of my own legal
adviser, do not understand the matter to which I allude, the
conversation need go no further."

Jimmy looked at his client, and noticed--for the first time since
entering the little box of a room--how she had aged, how ill, how ill at
ease, how unhappy she appeared. Jimmy, the man rather than the
solicitor, was feeling very far from happy himself; and unhappiness,
being a completely new experience, keyed him to unusual sympathy.

"We're in the same boat," he thought. "Poor old lady! I wonder how much
she knows. Ronnie had no right to run away with H. B.'s wife. The harm
it's done already! His mother looks quite broken up about it. And I--I
can't marry Mollie."

"Mrs. Cavendish," he said, "I don't pretend to be as fond of your son as
you are. I'm rather a selfish chap, I'm afraid. But if there's anything,
any affair in which I can be of assistance to you--you've only to ask
me."

She asked him, pointblank: "Do you know my son's where-abouts?"

He answered, "No. I didn't even know that he'd gone away, till his clerk
told me."

Julia hesitated. "I'm speaking to you in absolute confidence?"

"Of course."

"Then please tell me: Have you heard any--any rumors?"

Jimmy chewed the cud for ten full seconds before replying: "You
mean--about a certain lady?"

"I mean precisely that."

"So far, none." Now it was Jimmy's turn to hesitate. "But, speaking
entirely in confidence, there are bound to be rumors--if he stays away
much longer."

"You know nothing for certain then?"

"Officially--nothing." The solicitor inspected his finger nails. "But
I'm afraid that, unofficially, I know a good deal."

"Including the name of the lady?"

"Including the name of the lady!"

Julia's heart sank. Wilberforce could not be alone in his knowledge of
the truth. And that meant--publicity! "Tell me, Mr. Wilberforce," she
went on, "before we go any further: Is a barrister who has been
co-respondent in a divorce case disbarred from further practice?"

"So she knows everything," thought Jimmy, and discarded finesse. "On
that point I can reassure you. Even if the petitioner were himself a
barrister, it would make no difference."

"You made inquiries then?"

"Yes."

"May I ask why?" Julia's manner stiffened again. The conversation was
unutterably distasteful: but she had been alone with her thoughts so
long that even the most distasteful of conversations seemed preferable
to further silence.

"Because"--the man, moved by a similar impulse, laid all his cards,
faced, on the table--"because the sister of the certain lady is a--a
very great friend of mine."

"And if"--remembering the meeting in Hyde Park, the novelist's mind
jumped instanter to its conclusion--"if the divorce we mentioned were to
take place, it would make a difference to the outcome of that
friendship?"

"I"--Jimmy stammered--"I'm afraid so."

Remembering Ronnie's letter, Julia Cavendish felt aware of a new pride
in her son. Ronnie might have been guilty of a "lapse": but at least he
had not been weak. For it was weak, pitifully weak, almost caddishly
weak of a man even to contemplate ending his friendship with a girl
because of a scandal in her family.

"I'm sorry to tell you then," she said, "officially, that your
unofficial knowledge is perfectly correct. I have incontrovertible
proof--a letter from him--that my son has run away with Hector Brunton's
wife, and that they are now waiting for him to serve them with
divorce-papers."

Jimmy Wilberforce's brown eyes darkened with pain. It had been bad
enough to know the truth himself; but to hear it from some one else
seemed for the moment unbearable.

"That," went on his client, "is why I wanted to see your father. Perhaps
I'd better wait till he returns from Paris. You, obviously, will be a
little--shall we say prejudiced?"

There are certain instants in a man's life when he comprehends his own
character with revolting clarity. Such an instant those last words
brought to the solicitor. In the light of them he saw himself as poor
friend, as worse lover. He felt he could never again look Ronald or
Mollie in the face.

"I hope your father will be back soon." continued Julia. "Naturally I'm
rather anxious for his advice."

"Mrs. Cavendish"--Jimmy, contrary to her expectation, made no effort to
go--"if I gave you the impression of prejudice by what I said just now,
I'm sorry. My father will be away for at least another week. Meanwhile,
I beg you to forget my own--er--personal interest in this matter; and to
look upon me as--as a friend. You and Ronnie are in trouble; let me help
you both to the best of my ability. Do you, by any chance, know Ronnie's
address? If so, won't you, in strict confidence, let me have it?"

"I don't think I ought to do that without his permission," said Julia.
"But I shall be very grateful for your advice. Tell me--I'm afraid I'm
rather ignorant, wilfully ignorant perhaps, about these matters--how are
divorces"--she stumbled over the word--"arranged?"

And James Wilberforce told her, in exact legal parlance, the whole
nauseating procedure of the English courts. He spoke of orders for
restitution, of "hotel evidence," of letters written at the dictation of
solicitors, of damages and alimony, and of the king's proctor.
Finally--and at this the whole soul of Julia Cavendish sickened--to
illustrate a point, he told her the inside history of the Carrington
case; how Carrington, in order to blacken his wife's name, had committed
perjury in an undefended divorce-case, and how--for fear lest she should
forfeit her freedom to marry the man she loved--Carrington's wife had
been forced to endure the slander.

Jimmy's client sifted the whole information for some time.

"So you mean," she said at last, "that in this country any husband and
wife who--'know the ropes,' I think, was your phrase--and possess
sufficient money to fee a firm like your own, can secure a divorce with
almost as little trouble as they can secure a marriage-license."

"I mean precisely that," replied Jimmy Wilberforce. "Given the mutual
desire to undo their marriage, the law--properly worked--puts no
obstacle in the way."

"But if, as in this Carrington business, the desire is not mutual. What
then?"

"Then, of course, there are difficulties. Especially if it is the woman
who wants her freedom. In our courts, you see, a husband is still his
wife's legal owner; a woman merely her husband's chattel. A wife,
against a husband unwilling to be divorced, must prove not only
infidelity but cruelty--in the legal sense. And it has been held, over
and over again, that infidelities--on the husband's part--are not
cruelties. Cruelties--legally speaking--imply a damage to the wife's
health." Jimmy reverted, once more, to the inside history of the
Carrington case.

Julia Cavendish, too, thought of Carrington when she said:

"Mr. Wilberforce, let us be open with each other. My son's letter is
quite frank. He says that he and Mrs. Brunton have run away together;
that her husband knows all about it; that they are waiting for him to
'file his petition.' What happens if he refuses?"

"That," protested Wilberforce, "is hardly on the cards. A man of Hector
Brunton's social status would never behave like Carrington."

"I agree." Julia, who had been feeling for an idea, broached it very
tentatively. "All the same, Mr. Wilberforce, I flatter myself that my
knowledge of human nature is not often at fault. I met Hector Brunton
once; and I summed him up. Believe me, he's not quite--not quite normal
where the sex is concerned. And with abnormals, the normal course of
action can never be absolutely relied upon. You realize, of course,
my--shall we say difficulties?--in making up my mind. It would help me
considerably if I were certain of the course this man Brunton intended
to adopt. Could you--do you think--ascertain it for me?"

"I'm afraid"--all the legal caution in Wilberforce's nature repelled the
suggestion--"that with the best will in the world I couldn't do that.
Brunton is a K.C.--a very important K.C. If, by any chance, he decides
to wait a month or two----But really, Mrs. Cavendish, with all due
deference to your knowledge of human nature, I don't think we need
anticipate any trouble from Brunton. All we have to do--you and I--is to
await events; to minimize the scandal as far as we can; and to watch
over your son's interests until such time as he returns to London."

The solicitor excused himself, rose, and shook hands. "You can rely upon
me, you know," he smiled.

But, once more solitary, Julia Cavendish felt that neither on James
Wilberforce nor on any other lawyer could she place reliance. To
lawyers, matrimony was a contract; to her it was a holy sacrament.
Scandal, unpopularity, she could face; but not her own conscience. And
conscience already made her accessory to the sin of adultery!

All her prejudices against divorce returned fourfold, submerging her
intellect as in slime. After Wilberforce's revelations, the holy
institution of matrimony seemed the unholiest of legal farces.

She rang for Kate and ordered her to bring tea. "I'm at home to nobody,"
said Julia; and all afternoon she sat brooding, love and beliefs at war
in her mind. All afternoon, her mind pictured Ronnie; the happy babydom,
the fine youth, the clean manhood of him. All afternoon her love strove
to acquit him before the tribunal of her beliefs.

And as day waned the romantic in her began to see something splendid in
him, some courage akin to her own.

But in the woman she could, as yet, see no courage. The woman had
sinned, sinned the deadly sin. Her, one could never forgive!

And yet--and yet--how could a mother abandon her son?

Suppose her son married this sinner? Stubbornly her mind tried to
picture Aliette married to Ronnie. Stubbornly conscience repelled the
picture. "She is Aliette Brunton," said Julia's beliefs. "She can never
be Aliette Cavendish."

Then imagination put back the clock of her own years so that she saw
herself thirty again. At thirty one had illusions; one had one's
fastidiousnesses. And Brunton was no husband for a fastidious woman.
Brunton might easily be a man such as Wilberforce had hinted of; an
unfaithful husband against whom his wife possessed no legal remedy. What
then?

"Even then," said Julia's beliefs, "she should have endured--as you,
too, must endure."

"Yet how can you endure?" asked love. "How can you side with a stranger
against your own boy?"

"Soon," answered beliefs, "you must face your God. How splendid if, on
that day, you can declare to Him: 'I, like You, sacrificed my only
son.'"

But love said: "God and Love are one."

And in that one instant of thought Julia Cavendish crossed her mental
Rubicon. Formal religion went by the board. Be he saint or sinner,
sordid or splendid, she, Julia Cavendish, would stick by her boy.


                                   3

Now Julia was all impatience. Let the divorce-papers be served without
delay! Let Brunton do his worst!

But Wilberforce, summoned next morning, begged her not to be
precipitate. "Let us wait," said Wilberforce, "till Brunton shows his
hand. At least let us wait till public rumor confirms private
information."

Reluctantly Julia took his advice; and the slow days went by. Inaction
chafed her. She did not weaken, but she suffered. Love needed the spur
of service. Moreover, the old beliefs, scotched, were not yet slain.
Conscience whispered to her in the long wakeful nights: "This is
intellectual dishonesty. If it were any other than Ronnie, would you be
willing to forgive?"

Her son's letter she did not answer. Time and again she took pen in
hand; but always instinct, the instinct of parental dominance,
restrained her. She had held the reins of her son's life so long that
she still lusted to teach him a lesson. Since he had been a fool; since
he had allowed the sentimental impulse to unbalance him in his duty
toward her, let him write again. Besides, what could she say to him? It
was not in her to slobber. When she wrote, it must be with some definite
offer of help. To Julia, love without service always implied a certain
hypocrisy: and that one concept, though every other seemed to have
disintegrated under the stress of circumstance, her set mentality
refused to change.

So she waited--ailing, fearful, lonely in her crowded life; thinking
always of her son; blaming herself for their quarrel; blaming herself
for inaction; her heart humble; her head high among the herd of men.

For as yet rumor knew nothing certain. The herd still patronized Bruton
Street: you still met there, on a Saturday afternoon, the literary folk,
the financial folk, the clergy, the politicians, and the soldiers. To
the outward eye, no tiniest detail of social life in that exquisitely
tended house had altered. Friends, acquaintances, casual visitors--so
far, one hardly missed a face. Even the ambassadorial Bruntons came, in
semi-state, trailing with them the ugly unmarried daughter of Sir
Simeon's first marriage and the two blithe flappers of his second.

Nevertheless, Julia was conscious of a growing tension.

Already--or so it seemed to her watchful imagination--the herd sniffed a
taint. Dot Fancourt's eyes were an unspoken question. Lady Simeon
exaggerated, ever so slightly, her smile of greeting. Paul Flower's
inquiries after Ronnie--no one who knew Julia Cavendish ever forgot to
make that inquiry--held the semblance of a leer. Others of her circle,
saying: "And how's the son?" appeared as though they were anxious not to
be answered.

Here and there, too, a clergyman or a politician excused his spouse with
a strained, "My wife sends a thousand apologies. She wanted so much to
come with me; but her health has been rather troublesome this week. Oh,
no, dear lady! Nothing serious. Nothing serious, I assure you."


                                   4

On the first of July, Sir John and Lady Bentham (of the Bank of England)
gave a rather solemn family lunch-party, at which--rarest of
occasions!--the four sisters Wixton met under one roof.

Looking at her three juniors--at Clementina, ample of breast and bustle,
her chin duplicated and triplicated by age, her eyes piercing under
their polished crystal lenses; at May Robinson, whose scrawny widowhood
was alternately devoted to good works and the cultivation of her St.
John's Wood garden; at Alice Edwards, typically the Anglo-Indian woman,
her complexion faded but her joviality unimpaired, her blue-eyed
golden-haired Lucy in attendance, but her livery husband abandoned in
Cheltenham--it came to Julia, seated beside her gray-haired host at the
head of the table, that families were a curse. Never a united tribe,
to-day the Wixtons seemed more at variance than ever. Julia resented
May's pseudo-intimate chatter and the tactless pryings of Alice.
Clementina she had always abhorred. And when Lucy tried to question her
about Ronnie, her resentment reached fever-point.

For, of course--said Julia's imagination--when the family knew about
Ronnie, they would gloat. Clementina, always envious of her treasure,
would be in the seventh heaven at his downfall. May would weep a "Poor
Julia! I always told her that she spoiled that boy." And Alice would
chuckle: "It's just like Simla. Married women are always the worst."

How soon would the family know? Ronnie's secret had been well kept; but
it couldn't be kept a secret much longer. Had Sir John, perhaps, heard
something already?

Julia's mind wandered away from the family to Chilworth Cove. She had
never seen the place, but intuition told her that it must be beautiful;
and she found herself craving, suddenly, furiously, in that stuffy
Cromwell Road mansion, for beauty, for the sea and the sunlight.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps, though, it was Sir John's confidences about _his_ son which
impelled the homing mother to stop her electric brougham at the Cromwell
Road post-office; and write, with unsteady fingers, those six words:
"Would my presence be unwelcome? MATER."




                              CHAPTER XIV


                                   1

"Man--you're glad she's coming?"

"If her coming means that she is on our side; yes."

It was ten o'clock of a great July day. From outside, through the low
foliaged casement of Honeysuckle Cottage, sounded the drone of a bee,
the whine and splash of the well-bucket, and Caroline Staley's
loud-voiced chaffering with a fisherman. Within, the lovers faced each
other across the debris of a Gargantuan breakfast.

Seen, white-frocked, in the sun-moted coolth of that low whitewashed
room, Aliette looked utterly the girl. Happiness had wiped clean the
slate of her desolate years. Her cheeks, her eyes, her whole personality
glowed with the sheer joy of matehood. Sunlight and sea-light had
goldened--ever so faintly--the luster of her bared arms, the bared nape
under her vivid hair.

Ronnie, too, had youthened. Gone, or almost gone from his face, was the
semi-monastic seriousness. Constantly, now, smiles played about his full
lips; constantly, his light-blue eyes held the semblance of a twinkle.
One hardly noticed the gray in his hair for the tawn of it. Lean still,
to-day his leanness was that of an athlete in training. Under his
browned skin, when they bathed together, the muscles rippled like a
panther's. As he rose, flanneled, from the table, it seemed almost as
though happiness had added the proverbial cubit to his stature.

He came over to her and kissed the palm of her outstretched hand, her
wrist, the curls at her temple.

"This afternoon," he said, "our honeymoon ends."

She laughed--but there was something of sadness in the laughter. "Man,
don't be immoral. Honeymoons are legal. This hasn't been legal. It's
been----"

"Heaven," he suggested.

"Yes." She took his hand. "All that--and more. But all the same, we're
outcasts. We've got to realize that the world, our world, won't forgive
us for having been in heaven."

Sotto voce, he consigned the world to perdition. Aloud, he answered,
"They'll forgive us all right. As soon as H. B. makes up his mind to do
the right thing. I expect that's what's at the bottom of the mater's
wire."

"Do you?" Intimacy had made this great difference in their relationship:
that they could talk of Hector dispassionately enough. "Do you? I wish I
were sure. He's a peculiar man. Very obstinate and rather cruel. He may
make--difficulties."

"He'll make no difficulties."

Aliette changed the topic. For a week past, the vague possibility of
Hector's abiding by his threat had been frightening her. Once, even, she
had precisely perceived the social ostracism such a course might entail.
But in the sunshine and sea-shine of Chilworth Cove, social ostracism
seemed a very tiny price to pay for happiness so great as theirs.

The first fine madness, the glamor of the grand passion was still on
her, still on them both. Julia's telegram, which--cycle-forwarded across
eight miles of common-land from Chilton Junction--threw the tiny port
into a state of seething curiosity, excited its recipients hardly at
all. Selfish with the sublime selfishness of mating-time, they regarded
the threatened irruption of a mundane personality into paradise as the
merest episode.

Nevertheless, as she watched the innkeeper's pony-cart, Ronnie at its
reins, rattle away between the pink-washed cottages, slow to a walk up
the white road, and disappear among the heathery ridges at sky-line,
Aliette grew conscious of a deep abiding joy that--whatever else of harm
she might bring into her lover's life--at least she had not separated
him from his mother.

And all morning, all afternoon, busied with Caroline Staley in
preparation for their guest, that joy warded every apprehension from her
mind.


                                   2

But in the heart of Ronald Cavendish, setting out alone on his
eight-mile journey for the station, was no joy. To him, it seemed as
though he were definitely abandoning happiness, definitely leaving it
behind. Mentally and physically obsessed with Aliette, he could
anticipate no pleasure in again seeing his mother. Indeed, he could
hardly visualize his mother at all.

Gradually, though, as the brown pony ambled its uneager way along the
white and empty track among the heather, the image of Julia's face, the
sound of Julia's voice came back to him; and he, too, knew joy at the
prospect of reconciliation.

Looking back on their quarrel, it appeared to him that he had been
rather brutal. "After all," he thought, "one could hardly have expected
her to understand. I'm glad Alie insisted on my writing that letter. I
wonder if the mater'll be looking well. I hope she'll like Alie. She's
sure to like Alie."

Then, from thinking of his mother and the woman he loved, he glided into
thought of the world in which they must all three live till Brunton's
decree had been obtained and made absolute. It would be--he mused--a bit
difficult, rather a rough time.

Aliette's "funny idea" that Brunton might try "the dog-in-the-manger
trick," Aliette's lover dismissed--much in the way that Jimmy
Wilberforce had dismissed it--as "not on the cards." All the same, the
lawyer in him did begin to find it curious that Brunton's solicitors
should have dilly-dallied so long in communicating through Benjamin
Bunce that the citations were ready for service.

"The mater's sure to have some news," he thought; and by the time his
pony topped the ridge from which one sees, three miles away at the foot
of the slope, the red roofs and shining rails of Chilton Junction, he
felt quite excited about her arrival.

Always strong in the every-day relationship of man to man, but
never--until now--decisive in his dealings with woman, Ronnie knew
himself rather anxious for Julia's advice. Socially, the period between
divorce and remarriage must have many drawbacks. "The mater's" guidance,
at such a time, might be most useful.

Of the heart-searchings, of the contest between her love and her
beliefs, which even now (as the slow train jolted her, maidless,
uncomfortable, in her crowded first-class compartment, out of Andover)
still nagged at the intellect of Julia Cavendish, her son had never an
inkling. From his point of view, their quarrel--for his share in which
he had already apologized by letter--appeared infinitely more important
than "the mater's silly prejudice about divorce." Most important, of
course, would be "how the mater would hit it off with Aliette."

Ronnie drove on till he made the Chilton Arms; and there, stabling his
pony, ordered himself an early luncheon.

The luncheon--solitary cold beef and lukewarm beer--made him realize
that it was more than six weeks since he had mealed alone; and from that
realization thought traveled--almost automatically--to his rooms in
Jermyn Street, to Pump Court, to the past which had been London and the
future which must still be London. Smoking, he began to consider the
various problems of return.

Where, how, and on what were he and Aliette to live?

Of Aliette's finances, beyond one confided fact that "she had never
taken an allowance from "H.," her lover knew nothing whatever. She
might, for all he cared, possess five hundred a year or ten thousand.
But his own professional income, excluding the four hundred a year from
his mother, barely touched the former figure; and since he was by no
means the kind of creature who could consent to live on a woman's money,
however desperately he might be in love with her, the housing problem
alone--Moses Moffatt, officially, sheltered only bachelors--would need
more than a little solving.

Consideration of this, and other mundane factors in their somewhat
bizarre situation, fretted Ronnie's mind. He could not help feeling, as
he drove slowly to the station, how much wiser it would have been if he
and Alie had talked these things over before he started. His mother, who
liked practical women, might not understand that Alie and he had been
too madly happy to bother about every-day affairs. "But by Jove!" he
said to himself; "by Jove, we _have_ been happy."

He hitched the brown pony to the railings and strode through the
waiting-room. That afternoon Chilton Junction seemed less of a junction
than ever. A few rustics, a few milk-cans, two porters, and the
miniature of a bookstall occupied its "down" platform; its "up" showed
as a stretch of deserted gravel, from either end of which the hot rails
ran straight into pasture.

Looking Londonward along those narrowing rails, remembering how, six
weeks since, they had carried him into paradise, Ronald Cavendish
understood--for the merest fraction of a second--his mother's sacrifice.

"Damn decent of the old lady to come down," he thought, seeing, still
far away across the pastures, the leisured smoke-plume of her train.


                                   3

Julia Cavendish--having ascertained from her latest vis-à-vis, a burly
cattle-dealer in brown leggings and a black bowler hat, that her journey
at last neared its destination--closed the novel she had been pretending
to read, straightened her hat, and prepared to meet both culprits with
stern Victorian condescension.

That Aliette would not accompany Ronnie to the station did not cross his
mother's mind. All the way down from Waterloo she had been apprehensive,
doubtful of her own rectitude, conscious of a growing antagonism toward
"that woman." "That woman," of course, would be furious at the
interruption of her amour.

Even the prospect of seeing Ronnie once more could not lighten the cloud
of jealousy and self-distrust which Julia felt hovering--like evil
birds--about her head. Viewed in retrospect, the five hours of
journeying were a nightmare. Viewed prospectively, arrival would be the
ugliest of awakenings. She felt ill; ill and old and out-of-date.

But the first glimpse of her son sent all Julia's evil birds flying. As
the train steamed in, she saw him craning his eyes at its windows; saw
that he was alone, that he was sun-bronzed, flanneled like a schoolboy.
Her heart thumped--painfully, joyfully--at the knowledge that he had
espied her, that he was loping along after her carriage, just as she
remembered him loping along the platform at Winchester, in his
cricket-flannels, twenty years ago. Then the train stopped; and he swung
the carriage door open, handed her out.

"My luggage----" began Julia; but got no further with the sentence;
because Ronnie, her Ronnie, who had never, even as a boy, caressed his
mother in public, just put an arm round her shoulders and, kissing her,
whispered: "By jingo, mater, it is ripping to see you."

A porter got her trunk and her handbag out of the train. Another porter
put them into the pony-cart. Julia, for once in her life, forgot to
thank them. Tears, tears she dared not shed, twitched her wrinkled
eyelids; her mouth had dried up; her thin knees tottered. She could only
cling, cling with all the strength of one weak arm, to Ronnie. He was
her son, her only son--and she, in her stupid pride, had thought to let
prejudice come between them. Her jealousy of "that woman" disappeared.
The happiness, the health, the rejuvenation of Ronnie were sufficient
justification, in her eyes, for Aliette. No worthless woman could have
put those sunny words into her boy's mouth, that sun-bronze on his
cheeks!

Ronnie, too, was moved almost to tears. The first sight of his mother,
reacting on the emotions of the past weeks, struck him to consciousness
of his love for her. She needed his protection more than ever before.
She looked so frail, so suffering. She had suffered--because of him,
because of Aliette. His heart went out to both women--in pity, in
self-condemnation.

He helped her into the trap (it no longer surprised her to find they
were alone) and said: "I'm afraid it's not very comfortable. That
cushion's for your back. We'll have some tea at the Arms before we
start."

She managed to answer: "Yes, dear. I think I would like some tea." To
herself she said: "I wonder which of them thought about giving me tea,
about bringing this cushion."

Ronnie clambered up; took the reins; and tipped the porters. In silence,
they drove to the inn.

There the hot tea and the hot buttered toast, which he coaxed her to
eat, brought back a little of Julia's courage; but the waitress,
popping--eager-faced at sight of strangers--in and out of the
coffee-room, made free speech impossible. Perforce they confined
conversation to generalities. He, she said, "looked extraordinarily
well." She, he said, "looked the least bit tired." The lunch on the
train, she told him, had been "execrable." The drive to the Cove, he
told her, was a "good eight miles" and they would have to "take things
easy" because of the luggage. Ought they, he asked, to have ordered her
a car? Oh, no--she smiled, she preferred the trap: it would give them
more time to talk.

"I rather expected you'd bring Smithers," mentioned Ronnie.

"I didn't think a maid--advisable," declared Julia.

He paid for her tea, and they set off again--each silently uncertain of
the other, each silently and socially constrained. But at last, as they
drew clear of the town, Julia conquered constraint.

"And how is Aliette?" she asked quietly.

All the way down in the train she had intended to speak both to and of
"that woman" as "Mrs. Brunton"; but since seeing Ronnie she knew that
she could never even think in terms of "Mrs. Brunton" or of "that woman"
again. Sinner in the eyes of the world, in the eyes of the mother whose
boy she had made so happy, Hector Brunton's guilty wife was already a
saint.

"Quite well." His quietness matched her own.

"I'm glad."

And suddenly, impetuously, he burst out:

"Mater, she's so wonderful."

Now mother and son were alone in a world of sky and heather; and the
brown pony, as though aware of impending confidences, slowed to a walk.
She put a tremulous hand on his driving arm.

"Tell me--the whole story," said Julia.

His fingers loosed the reins; and that afternoon, as the brown pony
ambled toward the sea, he told her the full tale of his love for
Aliette, of his love for both of them: till, listening, it seemed to
Julia Cavendish as though never before had she understood the heart of
her son.

And that afternoon, for the first time in all her sixty years,
she--whose lifelong struggle had been to cramp life in the bonds of
formal religion--saw that formal religion at its very highest could only
be a code for slaves, for the weak and the ignorant. For the soul of a
free individual, for the strong and the wise of the earth, no
formalities--whether of religion, of law, or of social
observances--could exist.

The individual souls of the wise and the strong brooked no earthly
master. Lonely arbiters of heaven and of hell, their own gods, their own
priests and lawgivers, only love could control them, only conscience
guide.

Ignorantly, blindly, she, Julia Cavendish, had sought to fetter the free
souls, the wise and the strong. And behold! in the very person of her
own son they had broken loose from her fetters. Ronnie, her own
dearly-beloved son, was of the free! All that her formal religion had
preached him wrong, love had shown him to be right; and with love had
come both strength and wisdom, so that he had followed his conscience
into the freedom which her ignorance would have denied him.

For that Ronnie's conscience was as clear, as limpid-clear of sin as it
had been in boyhood, Julia--listening to him--could not doubt. Nor,
hugging that certainty, could she doubt Aliette. Love was justified of
both by the sheer test of happiness. As well accuse the birds of deadly
sin as these two who, moved by an impulse so overwhelming that to deny
it would have been a denial of their very natures, had--mated.


                                   4

Aliette, shading her eyes from the sun, watched the pony-cart top
sky-line, and crawl leisurely down-hill. At sight of it, her heart
misgave her. Every tradition in which she had been reared, all her
social sense and all her love for Ronnie warned her that the meeting
with Ronnie's mother would be, at its best, awkward--and its worst,
disastrous.

In Chilworth Cove, with only Caroline Staley for confidante of their
secret (and Caroline, from the first, had been definitely partizan,
loyalty itself), she had grown so accustomed to thinking of herself as
Ronnie's wife, that it was quite a shock to perceive, with the approach
of a being from her own world (a woman who, however much she might
pretend sympathy, must be, in her heart, hostile), their exact
relationship.

"I'm her son's mistress," thought Aliette; and suddenly seeing herself
and her lover through the eyes of the ordinary world, realized the
tragedy of those who, knowing themselves not guilty at the bar of their
own consciences, can nevertheless sympathize with the many who condemn
them. Which is perhaps the heaviest cross that any woman can be forced
to carry!

Ponto, darting hot-foot out of Honeysuckle Cottage at the sound of
wheels, banished further introspection. Aliette just had time to grab
the great hound by the collar as the brown pony, eager for his evening
hay, came trotting up; and was still holding him, her bared forearm
tense with the effort, when the trap drew to the door. So that--as it
happened--the exact greeting of the "harpy" to the mother whose boy she
had stolen was, "I do hope you're not frightened of dogs, Mrs.
Cavendish," and the mother's to the harpy, "Not in the very least.
That's Ponto, I presume. Ronnie's told me about him."

There is, after all, something to be said for a social code which
enables people to carry off difficult situations with an air of complete
insouciance! Julia Cavendish stepped down from the dilapidated
conveyance; shook hands; admitted that she would like to get tidy; and
followed her hostess's lithe figure down a whitewashed passage, up one
flight of rather crazy staircase, into a low-ceiled bedroom, obviously
scrubbed out that day. The room was very plainly furnished, yet it had
about it the particular atmosphere which indicates, as between one woman
and another: "We expected you. We made preparations for you."

"I'm afraid it isn't up to much," said Aliette shyly. "But we've put a
writing-table under the window--just in case."

Julia Cavendish looked at the table, at the pens and the ink-pot and the
jar of flowers on the table; Julia Cavendish looked at the little shy
woman, so gorgeous in her mating beauty, so socially correct in her
shyness; and the "Mrs. Brunton, this is a very serious position" with
which--ten hours since--she had firmly made up her mind to open their
conversation, vanished into the limbo of unuttered sentences.

"I'm afraid," said Julia Cavendish, "that this visit is rather--an
intrusion."

"It is I who am the intruder," answered Aliette simply; and then, seeing
that Julia, who had seated herself on the side of the bed, was fumbling
at the unaccustomed task of removing her own hat: "Can't I help?"

"Thank you, my dear," said Julia.

Caroline Staley, bringing hot water, knocked; deposited her copper jug
by the washhand-stand; and departed with the unspoken thought, "Better
leave they two alone for a while."

And, for a while, "they two" scrutinized one another in silence--the
elder woman still seated; the younger, diffident, very uncertain of what
next to say, upright beside her.

At last the younger woman said, "You must be tired after your journey.
You'd like to change into a tea-gown, wouldn't you? Caroline is quite a
good maid. I'll send her and your box up." She made a movement to go,
but the elder woman restrained her.

"I think I'd rather talk first. We've got a good many things to talk
about, haven't we? Won't you sit down?" Julia patted the clean
counterpane in further invitation.

"You're very kind, Mrs. Cavendish." Aliette, still standing, shook her
head ever so slightly, as one refusing a gift. "Too kind. And I'm glad
you've forgiven Ronnie. But you needn't, really you needn't forgive me.
You came to see your son, not your son's"--she hesitated--"lady-love.
I'm quite willing to--to efface myself as long as you're here." She
smiled proudly. "Though, as it's rather a tiny cottage, you mustn't mind
seeing me occasionally."

Her favorite word "Rubbish!" rose to Julia's lips; but was instantly
repressed. Proud herself, she could both respect and sympathize with the
pride in the other.

"I'm wondering," she said after a pause, "just how much my son's
lady-love loves my son."

At that, Aliette's eyes suffused. But she could make no reply, and Julia
went on:

"My dear, do you think I don't know how much you care for him? Do you
think I don't realize that you have made him happy? Happier than I ever
did. Won't you make me happy too? Won't you try and care, just a little,
for me--for Ronnie's mother?"

"Don't, please don't." The proud lips trembled. "It hurts me that
you--that you----" And suddenly, impulsively, Aliette was on her
knees--her head bowed, her shoulders shaking to the sobs that had broken
pride.

"I love him"--the words, tear-choked, were scarcely audible--"I adore
him. I'd kill myself to-morrow if I thought it would be for Ronnie's
good. I never meant, I never meant to come between you and him. I never
intended that you"--the brown head lifted, the brown eyes gazed up into
Julia's blue--"that you should have to know me until--until things were
put right. You needn't--after this. I'll be quite content--if you'll let
him come to me--sometimes--to take a little house--to wait for him. I
don't want you to be--mixed up in things you hate. I don't want to--to
flaunt myself with your son."

Said Julia Cavendish, speaking stiffly lest the tears blind her: "You
haven't answered my question, Aliette. I may call you Aliette, mayn't I?
You haven't yet told me whether you could care for--Ronnie's mother?"

For answer, Aliette took one of the old hands between her two youthful
ones; and, bowing her head again, kissed it.

"You oughtn't to forgive me. You oughtn't to call me Aliette," whispered
"that woman."

"Ronnie will be so furious with me if he thinks I've made you cry,"
whispered back Ronnie's mother; and leaning forward, took "that woman"
in her arms.

                  *       *       *       *       *

What those two said to one another, in the hushed half-hour while Ronnie
waited for them in the tiny garden and Caroline Staley busied herself
over the kitchen fire, only the bees, droning ceaselessly round the
clematis, overheard.


                                   5

It was very late for Chilworth Cove: past ten o'clock of a dull heavy
night: the stars veiled: the purr of a torpid sea coming faint down the
Ghyll. One by one the lights in the village windows had been
extinguished. But light still poured from the windows of Honeysuckle
Cottage; and through the light-motes, the smoke of a man's cigar
outcurled in blue seashell whorls that hung long-time--meditative as the
man--in the windless quiet.

Ronald Cavendish threw the butt of his cigar after the smoke-whorls, and
turned to the two women in the room.

"The mater's right," he said. "We must make some move. But it's no
earthly use writing to Jimmy. Jimmy can't help us. The only thing to be
done is for me to go up to town and see H. B. myself."

Ever since Caroline had cleared away dinner, they had been discussing
the problem of Brunton's inactivity. To Aliette, pride-bound, feeling
herself--despite the new alliance with Julia Cavendish--still guilty,
still the interloper, it seemed best that they should wait. Silently
resenting, yet chiding herself all the while for her resentment, the
whole discussion, she had held herself, whenever possible, aloof from
it.

But now she could hold aloof no longer. No coward in her own love;
willing, for herself, to take any and all risks; the suggested meeting
filled her with apprehension for Ronnie.

"I beg you not to do that," she said.

"Why not?" Ronnie laughed. "He can't eat me."

"I'd so much rather you didn't. Perhaps he's only waiting because of
some difficulty, some legal difficulty. Wouldn't it be better if I wrote
to him again, if we both wrote to him? After all, we mustn't forget
that"--she stumbled over the phrase--"we're in the wrong."

"Writing won't do any good," pronounced Julia. "Ninety-nine letters out
of every hundred are perfectly futile. The hundredth--is usually an
irrevocable mistake."

The novelist, rather pleased with the epigram, sat back in her
basketwork chair. For the first time since her quarrel with Ronnie, she
had regained that peculiar power of mental detachment--of seeing real
personalities, her own included, as characters in a book--which is the
exclusive property of the literary temperament.

"All the same," she went on, "I can't help feeling that a personal
interview would be risky. It might only exacerbate the position."

"Risky or not," said a determined Ronnie, "it's the only possible thing
to be done. Unless H. B. files his petition at once, we shall have to
wait the best part of a year before we can get married. And remember, we
haven't only ourselves to consider--there's Aliette's family. _They'll_
have to be told sooner or later. Think how much easier it would be if we
could tell them that everything was properly arranged."

Julia's newly-regained detachment deserted her. Turning to Aliette, she
asked nervously:

"But don't _your_ parents know? Haven't you written to them?"

"Not yet." Beyond the lamplight, the younger woman's face showed
scarcely an emotion. "It seemed so useless. You see, I'm not an only
child. There'll be no forgiveness--on their side. Mollie may stand by
me. But Eva won't. Mother and Andrew will take Eva's advice. They only
cared for my brothers. When my brothers were killed, it was just as if
everything had gone out of their lives." And she added--pathetically,
thought Julia Cavendish, who, loving her own son more than anything in
the world, always found difficulty in realizing how frail is the average
tie between parents and grown-up daughters: "Mother's rather fond of
Eva's children."

"Still, we have to consider them," interrupted Aliette's, lover. "We
don't want them to hear the news from--the other side. I think you
_should_ write to them, Alie. Mollie I'll go and see myself. Jimmy's
sure to know her address. I wonder if she and Jimmy are engaged----"

"Your friend Wilberforce," interrupted Julia, "may be an excellent
solicitor; but he's an extremely selfish young man."

"What makes you say that?" asked Aliette; and as Julia did not reply,
"Has he spoken to you--about my sister?"

"He has." Julia's voice was rather grim.

"And is--what we've done--going to make any difference?"

"I think not. But if it does," the suspicion of a twinkle gleamed in the
blue eyes, "if it does, my dear, your sister will owe you a great debt
of gratitude for--running away with my son. That kind of man,"
definitely, "is no use."

"I've been rather worried about Mollie," began Aliette, whose decision
not to await her sister's return had been the most difficult of all the
decisions she took in those few hours before she bolted from Lancaster
Gate. "That letter of mine----"

She broke off the sentence, divining nevertheless that her letter--meant
as a precise document--must have been incoherent to the last degree;
divining how impossible a situation her selfishness must have created
for Mollie. "I _am_ selfish," she said to herself. "Utterly selfish! I
deserve no consideration. And yet these two consider only me."

"Never mind about Mollie." Stubbornly--for now that his mother had
joined forces with them it seemed more than ever necessary that they
should bring Brunton swiftly to reason--Ronald Cavendish returned to his
point. "The question is: When do I go up to town? In my opinion, the
sooner the better. Once I _have_ seen H. B., we shall at least know
where we stand."

"And suppose," faltered Aliette, "suppose he refuses to see you?"

"He won't."

"Suppose he refuses to do anything?"

"You needn't be afraid of that. A man in his position is bound to take
action. If he doesn't----"

"If he doesn't," broke in Julia, "we must fight him. We three." She rose
from the creaky chair; and Aliette, seeing the determination, the
courage in those old eyes, felt suddenly ashamed of her own weakness.
"Meanwhile, I think I'll go to bed. Your maid promised to wait up for
me."

Kissing "that woman" good night, Ronnie's mother whispered: "Don't try
to overpersuade him. If he feels it is right--he must be allowed to go."


                                   6

Very early next morning, before dawn lightened to palest rose behind the
clematis blossoms, the woman who had left her husband, waking with her
lover's arms about her, prayed voicelessly to that God whose priests
would henceforth bar her from His communion, that Ronnie's love might
endure to the end.

For now, Aliette was afraid.




                               CHAPTER XV


                                   1

Two days subsequent to his mother's arrival at Chilworth Cove, Ronald
Cavendish set out for London.

Aliette, masking her anxiety, drove him to the station; and for nearly
an hour after the slow train left Chilton Junction he visualized nothing
except her pale, exquisite face and the wistful smile in her brown eyes.
Looking back, it seemed to him that those eyes had been very close to
tears. Thinking of her, imagination roused all the tenderness, all the
fighting instinct in him.

But gradually, as the lush countryside slid by, Ronnie's mind recovered
a little of its legal function; and he began to map out, as carefully as
he could, his plan of campaign.

The fear lest Brunton should refuse to take any action still hardly
troubled him. To one of his public school training, it appeared utterly
incredible that a man in Brunton's position, childless and without
religious scruples, should refuse to set free a wife who obviously did
not care for him, and for whom (equally obviously, as it seemed) he did
not himself care. Sheer caddishness of that description was the
prerogative of rank outsiders like Carrington.

Nevertheless, Ronnie's instinct dictated caution. It would he best, he
thought, to see Jimmy immediately on his arrival in London; and to
ascertain from Jimmy how far his flight with Aliette had become public
knowledge. Possibly, if there had been no open scandal, Brunton might
hold his hand till after the long vacation. Scandal, whether at the bar
or elsewhere, never did any one any good.

And at that, Ronald Cavendish knew apprehension. His brain, hitherto
blinded by the grand passion, began to see the ordinary point of view,
the point of view he himself might have adopted towards their case a
twelvemonth since. "Rather sordid," he would have considered the whole
business, "rather hard luck on the husband." And so thinking, he
imagined the bare legal tale as it might one day appear in the press.
Commonplace enough! Mrs. Smith had left Mr. Smith, and was living in
open adultery with Mr. Jones. Mr. Smith asked for a divorce; produced
the usual evidence; secured the usual decree.

He tried to put apprehension away from him. He said to himself, "As if a
little publicity mattered; as if anything mattered except her freedom."
All the same, he knew that publicity would matter, that publicity would
hurt Aliette and hurt his mother. "Damnable," he thought; "damnable that
the law should take so little cognizance of the personal equation!"

And London, seen in the hot sunlight of a July afternoon as his taxi
crawled over Waterloo Bridge, only intensified the unimportance of the
individual. The isolation of Chilworth, the paradise of enchantment
which love and Aliette had made for him at Chilworth, seemed a million
miles removed from this peopled city. He recognized himself one of the
herd again, forced to think as the herd, to act as the herd dictated.
Moses Moffatt's face, smiling most confidential of welcomes at the green
door in Jermyn Street, typified the herd point of view--the basement
point of view--the feeling that, potentially, one was a mere
co-respondent.

While the man was unpacking for him in the bare ascetic bedroom, Ronnie
rang up Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright; and got through to Jimmy.
Jimmy on the telephone sounded cold, serious, dignified. Only after some
persuasion would he consent to dine at the club.

"And by the way," asked Ronnie, "do you happen to know if Mollie
Fullerford's in town?"

"Why?"

"I've got a letter for her."

"From her sister?"

"Yes."

"I'll give you her address this evening," said James Wilberforce, and
replaced his receiver.


                                   2

The Lustrum is one of those semi-social, semi-political clubs which
combine sound cookery, a cellar beyond reproach, and a chairman of the
utmost distinction, with the architectural style of a Turkish bath and
the gloom of a family mausoleum. A tape-machine ticks by the
glass-doored porter's box in the hall; an enormous gold-framed oil of
Mr. Asquith stares down the red marble staircase; English waiters--last
of their breed--move in unhurried dignity through the vast dining-room;
while "members bringing guests" are subject to rules so complicated that
even the honorary secretary--who takes most of the credit for the paid
secretary's work when he appears before a somnolent committee--has been
known to infringe them.

The constraint of this atmosphere weighed so heavily on the friends as
to make immediate conversation impossible. Only after a bottle of the
Lustrum's pre-war Pommard, a glass apiece of the Lustrum's '68 port, and
the third of a cigar consumed over coffee in the stuffy guest-room, did
Jimmy Wilberforce manage:

"Old chap, I'm afraid this is a devil of a mess. You've seen your mater,
I suppose!"

"Seen her!" Ronnie smiled--and then, cautiously: "Didn't you know that
she was staying with us?"

"Us?" Wilberforce repeated the word. "You mean----"

"With myself and Aliette."

Wilberforce's eyes narrowed. He took the tawny cigar from under his
auburn mustache, and scrutinized it a longish while before saying:

"Tell me, then: why are you in town?"

"Primarily to see H. B. We've waited quite long enough for him to make a
move."

The matter-of-fact tone annoyed Wilberforce. Despite his resolves not to
let the personal issue between himself and Aliette's sister cloud
impersonal judgment, that issue had been recurring to his mind all
through the dreary bachelor dinner. For six weeks Mollie had been on the
defensive with him, unseizable if not unapproachable; for six weeks he
had been wavering between the strong desire to "go gently till this damn
mess was cleared up," and the fear of what "Society" would think about
the match. Therefore, it irritated him that Ronnie should speak about
the whole affair as though running away with another man's wife were an
every-day occurrence, as though he, Ronnie, were the injured party.

"Rather an unwise move, don't you think?" he said.

"Unwise! One can't let him go on shilly-shallying like this."

"If you've got it into your head that you're going to bully Hector
Brunton into giving Mrs. Brunton her freedom," retorted Jimmy, "I should
give up the idea"; and he added: "_I_ should have thought your best plan
would be to lie doggo. After all, you must remember that he's the
aggrieved party."

"If you feel that way about it," Ronnie's eyes kindled to anger, "we
won't discuss the matter further."

At that Wilberforce became the solicitor.

"My dear fellow," he began, assuming his father's blandness, "do be
reasonable. Don't think I fail to understand your feelings. I know you
well enough to realize that you wouldn't have acted as you have acted
without imagining yourself justified. Very possibly you are justified.
Very possibly there are circumstances--I hold no brief for H. B. All _I_
want to do is to help you and your mother. And so if you come to me for
advice, I am bound to tell you exactly what I think. It's for Brunton to
move, not you."

"He's had plenty of time. And I'm sick of waiting."

"Then why don't you get some mutual friend to see him? That's the usual
thing."

Ronnie rose from the deep saddle-bag chair. His instinct was all for a
row. Unreasonably, with the divine unreason of a lover, he had expected
sympathy; instead he had met a wall, a wall of misunderstanding between
himself and his best friend. "Damn Jimmy," he thought. "Jimmy's common
sense ought to tell him that this isn't the usual thing."

And suddenly Aliette's lover realized that Jimmy's common sense had told
him nothing, that Jimmy's very common sense prevented him from
understanding the peculiar relationship between Aliette and her legal
owner. He wanted to tell Jimmy the truth about that relationship; but
his training, the code of decent reticence, every tradition of public
schooldom restrained him. Decency suggested that neither then to James
Wilberforce, nor eventually in court, could he make public the
matrimonial position between Aliette and Hector. "Tongue-tied!" he
thought. "Even if I were an orator, in _her_ defense I should always be
tongue-tied."

Nevertheless, his anger relented.

"Except yourself, Jimmy," he went on, "there's no mutual friend who
could act for us; and I can't ask you to act because of your firm's
relations with him. Therefore, I'm going to do the job myself."

There was almost admiration in the other's "You always were a plucky
devil."

"Plucky! I don't see anything plucky in it."

"Supposing H. B. cuts up rough?"

"Why should he? He's in the wrong, and he knows it."

"All the more reason." Wilberforce, too, rose. Watching his friend
carefully, he saw that their conversation had aroused him to
fighting-pitch; and Ronnie at fighting-pitch--as Jimmy remembered from
their Oxford days--was capable of being a rather desperate person.

"Don't _you_ cut up rough, old man," he continued. "There'll be quite
enough trouble without a police-court case into the bargain."

"You needn't be afraid, Jimmy." Ronnie controlled himself. "I'll manage
to keep my temper with the fellow. By the way, you don't feel there's
any chance of his refusing to file his petition, do you?"

"Hardly. H. B. isn't a religious chap, or anything of that sort. He
might go for damages, of course."

"We could settle that before we went into court."

They simmered down; sat down; relit cigars; and began to discuss the
legal aspect of the case which each felt sure that Brunton must
eventually bring; finally deciding that Wilberforce, Wilberforce &
Cartwright could not, under the special circumstances, act for either
party.

"J. J. W. would be your best man," said James.

So interested did they become in the professional issue that it was
nearly midnight before Ronnie said, "By the way, I'd almost forgotten to
ask you for Mollie Fullerford's address"; and Wilberforce, "Do you
really think it's advisable for you to go and see her?"

"Advisable! How do you mean?"

The two friends faced one another in silence, each constrained by the
peculiar diffidence of their class, the diffidence which makes the
discussion of women, and especially of their own women, so terribly
difficult to decent Englishmen.

At last Wilberforce said: "You see, old chap, if this case comes on, I'm
afraid it will be a big shock to her. H. B. might call her as a witness.
Pretty rough on a girl, being dragged into"--he hesitated--"this sort of
thing."

"Yes, rotten. We'll have to keep her name out." Ronnie, too, hesitated.
"She hasn't said anything to you, I suppose?"

"No, but I feel she knows." The red man nearly blushed. "I say, you'll
be decent about breaking things, won't you? You'll let her down lightly.
Mollie's jolly fond of her sister, and--er--you mustn't mind my saying
it--her sister hasn't behaved over-well in this business--leaving her
all by herself at Brunton's."

"My fault, Jimmy. It was I who persuaded Aliette not to wait. But I
promise you, I'll see that Brunton keeps Mollie Fullerford's name out of
the affair.

"By the way," added Ronnie casually, "you remember something you said to
me just before we went into court in the Ellerson case?" A pause. "Does
that still hold good? What I mean is this. I should never forgive myself
if I thought that this--this trouble of mine----"

"I'm not that sort of cad," retorted James Wilberforce hotly. But all
the same, walking home through the night, he realized once more--with
revolting clarity--himself. Which self-knowledge is no bad discipline
for the James Wilberforces of this world!


                                   3

Ronnie, too, walked home from the Lustrum. The interview with
Wilberforce had clarified his mind; he foresaw now exactly how his world
would regard the case. The foreknowledge hardened his determination to
see Brunton. He _must_ see Brunton. Brunton _must_ be brought to
immediate action. Otherwise----

Resolutely the man strove to put that "otherwise" away from him. But the
"otherwise" kept on intruding. Suppose Aliette's legal owner refused to
take any action at all? Carrington had waited five years.

And that night, his first bereft of her, alone and sleepless at Jermyn
Street, Aliette's lover began to conceive a hatred of Aliette's legal
owner. The Wixton imagination, always most active in darkness, showed
him pictures of Brunton, of the sandy hair, the cold gray eyes, the feet
in their big boots. Tossing sleepless on his tumbled pillows,
imagination bade him remember that once--long ago though it must have
been--Brunton had actually----

Horrors, physical horrors, capered and sarabanded before his eyes,
rousing the blood-lust in him--the old blood-lust experienced four years
since. He remembered, just as sleep overtook him, the face of a Turk he
had killed. His squadron was charging. Behind him, he heard the
galloping stamp of shod hoofs on desert, the creak of saddlery, the
jingle of accoutrements, the curses of his men; in front of him rose a
face, the face of the Turk, bearded above dirty linen. The face was
afraid; he could see the face twitch as he fired. Only as he fired, the
face changed--became the face of Hector Brunton.


                                   4

"I'm afraid you didn't sleep very well last night, sir," said Moses
Moffatt, serving the usual faultless rashers in Ronnie's beige-papered
sitting-room.

"What makes you say that?" Ronnie, clear-eyed after his morning tub,
looked across the breakfast-table.

"Well, sir," Moses Moffatt smiled deprecatingly, "if you don't mind my
mentioning it, the missus and me heard you calling out in your sleep."

"Is that so? I'm sorry if I disturbed you."

Ronnie, remembering his dream only very vaguely, ate his breakfast;
skimmed through the "Morning Post"; took his top-hat, and sauntered
downstairs into Jermyn Street.

It had not yet struck ten. Fishmongers were still swilling down their
marbles. The usual early morning crowd had emerged into sunshine from
the Piccadilly Tube. Ronnie swung past them down the Haymarket.

The asphalt of London, the cars, the buses, and the taxicabs seemed more
than ever alien after the sea and the solitude of Chilworth Cove. He
felt like a stranger in a strange, hostile city. Only as he emerged
through Northumberland Avenue upon the Embankment did London seem home
again; only as he turned leftward from the river into the Temple did
there come over him the full realization of the issue at stake.

In his chambers at Pump Court nothing had altered. Tho other three
barristers were, as usual, away; Benjamin Bunce, as usual, pottering
among the foolscaps. The little clerk's watery eyes lit with curiosity
at sight of the returning wanderer.

"There were papers," hinted Benjamin, "there was correspondence."

Benjamin's employer glanced at the taped documents on the table, at the
unopened letters. "They can wait," he said. "Has Mr. Brunton's clerk
inquired for my address?"

"No, sir."

"You're sure?"

"Quite sure, sir."

"Very good. I'll ring when I want you."

The clerk--a thousand unanswered questions seething in his
soul--withdrew.

Ronnie hung his hat behind the door, and began striding up and down the
book-shelved room. Here, he remembered, he had first tried to reason out
his feelings for Aliette. Here, just before the Ellerson case, he had
almost decided it his duty to give her up. And now, now--in fact if not
in law--Aliette was actually his.

For a little while he dreamed of her, but soon the professional
atmosphere of Pump Court infected him; and he began to see their case
impersonally--as a "case." In law, unless Brunton acted, they had no
remedy. His whole career, Aliette's whole happiness, their whole future
lives depended on the clemency of Aliette's legal owner. Neither the old
divorce-laws nor the proposed divorce-reforms could help them. Whatever
wrongs Aliette might have suffered at her husband's hands in the past,
she had forfeited those rights by running away; and only her husband
could set her free. Would Brunton set her free? That was the whole
issue. Best face it out of hand!

Ronnie pressed the bell on his desk, and the clerk popped through the
door.

"Bunce, I want you to go over to Mr. Brunton's chambers. Ask Mr.
Brunton's clerk if he can see me before he goes into court. You can say
that it is on a private matter, and rather important."

Bunce--Ms curiosity satisfied--sidled out.

Waiting for Brunton's decision, Cavendish knew both curiosity and fear.
Suppose Brunton refused even to discuss the matter?

And Brunton did refuse. The message Benjamin brought back was perfectly
definite, perfectly courteous. He, Benjamin, had seen Mr. Brunton's
clerk, David Patterson, and Mr. Brunton had sent word by Mr. Patterson
to say that he was very sorry not to be able to see Mr. Cavendish, but
that he was extremely busy and would be busy all day.

"Funk!" thought Ronnie; and remembered suddenly how Brunton had avoided
the war. Brunton's refusal to see him was sheer cowardice. Rage kindled
in his mind. For the flash of a second, he saw red. He _would_ see
Brunton. Damn it all, he _would_ see him. How dared Brunton shelter
behind a clerk! But it would be no use trying to force his way into
Brunton's chambers. Brunton would be in court. Very well, then, he would
wait for him; wait till the court adjourned; wait, if necessary, all
day.

"Won't you look through your letters, sir?" reminded Bunce.

Ronnie tried to look through his letters; tried to examine the few
briefs which had come in during his absence. But his legal mind refused
to concentrate. Between his mind and his correspondence, between his
mind and his briefs, rage hung a scarlet and impenetrable curtain.


                                   5

That morning, yet another legal brain refused to concentrate on its
immediate business.

All through the long hours in the stuffy court-room, Hector Brunton,
K.C., was conscious of the Furies. "Cavendish," whispered the Furies,
"Cavendish has come back." He tried to dismiss the fellow from his mind,
to attack the case in hand. But again and again the witnesses under
cross-examination eluded him. Instead of the faces in the witness-box,
he saw Cavendish's face--the face of his wife. And when--his
cross-examinations concluded--the court adjourned for luncheon, those
two faces were still before his eyes, mocking him, mocking him.

"God's curse on them," he thought. "God's curse on both of them. I'll
not see Cavendish. Let them lie in the bed they made for themselves. Let
the adulterer and the adulteress rot together."

Angrily Brunton disrobed; angrily he left the law courts and made across
Fleet Street toward King's Bench Walk. Even David Patterson, dour,
heavy-jowled as the K.C. himself; who followed, brief-bag slung over his
shoulder, at a respectful distance; was awed at his employer's obvious
fury.

The K.C. strode rapidly, his hands behind his back, his head lowered,
down Middle Temple Lane, through Elm Court, through Fig Tree Court, into
the big graveled square of the Walk, and diagonally across the Walk to
his chambers.

Suddenly his head lifted. There, at the steps of his chambers, waiting
for him, obviously waiting for him, stood Cavendish. For the fraction of
a second Brunton, K.C., hesitated in his stride.

Ronnie, watching, saw that hesitation; saw his man come on again, head
low, eyes on the pavement; and knew instinctively that Brunton would
pretend not to recognize him, would try to push past him up the stone
stairway. Resolutely, he planted himself across the stairway; and in
that one second of time before they met face to face, the vision he had
seen in the darkness of overnight flashed through his mind. Then he had
his enemy in front of him, and was saying quietly:

"I'd like a word with you, Brunton."

The K.C. tried to pass; but Ronnie stood his ground.

"I'm afraid I'm too busy to see you to-day, Cavendish." The voice
sounded courteous enough; but a glance, a glance of insane rage, darted
snake-like from behind the gray pupils. Brunton's great jowl twitched;
the veins on his forehead were steel cords.

"The matter is rather urgent." Ronnie, watching the approach of David
Patterson, lowered his tone. "I sha'n't keep you a minute. Unless, of
course," the tone rose, "you prefer that our discussion should take
place in public."

The fire in his blue eyes beat down the snake in Brunton's gray; and,
without another word, Ronnie accompanied his man up the stairway, along
the corridor into his chambers.

David Patterson made as if to follow, but Brunton barked over one
shoulder, "I sha'n't need you," and the two of them were alone.

"And now," began the K.C., standing foursquare in front of his empty
fireplace, "I shall be glad to know the reason of this unwarrantable
intrusion."

"You know the reason as well as I do." The red mist still hung before
Ronnie's eyes. He had forgotten the "legal position": he wanted to
strike Brunton; to strike him across the sneering face. Only the code,
the public school code of restraint, held him back.

"I haven't the slightest idea why you should force your way into my
chambers. Perhaps you will condescend to explain." Brunton, too, felt
the code on him--heavy, like a net hampering his limbs. He wanted to
free himself from the net; wanted to lash out at the man who had stolen
Aliette, to destroy him.

"I came to ask you," Ronnie's lips hardly moved, "how much longer you
intend to delay."

"Delay what?"

"Your petition."

"What petition?"

"Your petition for divorce."

"That's my business." Brunton laughed--a harsh, bitter laugh, low in the
throat.

"And mine."

"I fail to see the connection."

Ronnie's fists clenched. "Apparently you take me for a fool."

Brunton laughed again. "No. Only for a thief."

With an effort, Ronnie thrust his hands into his pockets. "I didn't come
here to bandy words with you. All I want to know is how soon you intend
filing your petition."

"When I choose." Rage mastered Aliette's husband. "And if I don't
choose--never."

Now Ronnie laughed--contemptuously. "You may be able to browbeat a woman
in the box, but you can't browbeat me. I want an answer to my question.
How soon do you intend to file your petition? This isn't only your
business. It's mine--mine and----"

"Kindly keep my wife out of this discussion," snarled Brunton. "Your
question is a damned insult, and your presence here an infernal outrage.
Neither you nor God Almighty can make me file the petition you refer
to."

For a full minute the pair faced each other, tense, wordless,
self-control fighting against instincts, instincts fighting against
self-control. Then Brunton's nerve snapped.

"I hate the very sight of you," he shouted. "Will you get out? Or have I
got to throw you out?"

"Don't make a fool of yourself," said Ronnie; and his voice was ice. "If
it comes to violence I sha'n't be the one who'll get the worst of it."

He took a step forward, and the K.C. recoiled before him.

"Answer my question, Brunton."

"I'll see you to hell first, Cavendish."

And suddenly the red mist thickened to blood-color before Ronnie's eyes.
He wanted to kill Brunton. Killing would be the easiest way to deal with
Brunton--far the easiest way. His hands clenched in his trouser-pockets;
he itched to take his hands out of his pockets, to dash them in those
cold gray eyes, to seize that heavy jowl, to tear the life out of it.

And then, in a flash, his legal mind saw the consequences of that
killing. The blood-red mist vanished. Swiftly his mood changed. He began
to plead, to plead desperately, not for his own sake, but for Aliette's.
He said:

"We're being selfish. It isn't of ourselves we have to think. Think of
_her_ position if you don't take action."

"She should have thought of my position before she ran away with you,"
retorted the other. "I tell you, I'm not going to be hustled; and I'm
not going to be bullied. I'll take action when I choose; and not a
minute before. Nothing that you, nothing that she, nothing that anybody
else can do will persuade me to say one word further on this subject.
Now, will you go?"

And Ronnie went, realizing himself powerless. As he passed through the
doorway he gave one glance at his adversary. His adversary still stood,
like a bull at bay, against the empty grate; but the look in his
adversary's eyes--a look which Ronnie could not fathom--was not the
brave look of the bull; rather was it compound of fear and obstinacy, of
injured pride and of determination for revenge; the look of the weak man
who knows himself in the wrong, yet means to persist in his wrongdoing.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Surely as night follows day in the firmament, so surely does reaction
follow action in imaginative man. Ronald Cavendish's mind, as he crossed
King's Bench Walk after his interview with Hector Brunton, was almost a
blank. Reaction wiped out every detail of that interview. He remembered
only Brunton's words, "I'll take action when _I_ choose."

Twice--the mad purpose of killing Brunton mastering him once more--he
tried to turn back. But his feet carried him on, carried him away from
Brunton, across the Walk to his own chambers. There, at least, was
sanctuary--sanctuary from crime against the herd.

For the herd, even his dazed mind knew, would not countenance his
killing Brunton. Brunton was within his herd-rights, within the law;
while they, he and Aliette, having broken the herd-rights, were outlaws.
Still weak from reaction, he visioned the consequences of that outlawry;
visioned Brunton relentless, Aliette without a friend.

Till gradually, thinking of Aliette, his manhood came back to him. Let
Brunton do his damnedest. Let them be outlaws. Even in their outlawry
they would possess one another. Soon, Brunton would be brought to
reason. Meanwhile, even if he were not soon brought to reason, they, the
outlaws, would find people to stand by them; people like his mother. And
at that, abruptly, Ronnie remembered the letter Aliette had written to
her sister, the promise he had made to Jimmy.

Somehow it needed more courage than he had required in facing Aliette's
husband to lift the telephone and make his appointment with Mollie!


                                   6

Over a snack of luncheon--snatched late and hastily at a little
uncomfortable coffee-shop near the Griffin--Ronnie's usual calm
returned. He realized that he had made a fool of himself in going to see
Brunton; that Jimmy, after all, had been right. Confound Brunton!
Brunton's "dog-in-the-manger" attitude would not endure, could not
endure. Even Carrington had given way in the long run. It was only a
question of patience. Still, he would have to break things very gently
to Aliette's sister.

Betty Masterman was out; and Mollie received her sister's lover alone in
the little red-papered sitting-room which seemed so cozy to the
Philistine mind of James Wilberforce.

"It's nice of you to call," she said perfunctorily. The voice might have
been that of Aliette, of the socially poised Aliette as Ronnie first
remembered her: but the girl's violet eyes were stern with suspicion;
her red lips showed unsmiling, uncompromising.

"Won't you sit down?" she went on.

"Thanks. I sha'n't keep you very long." Always impossibly shy with
women, the man did not know how to begin.

"You've got some message for me," the girl prompted "Some message
from----"

"From your sister."

She seated herself, avoiding his eyes.

"Your sister and I," he began bruskly----

And in those four words--even without the halting explanation which
followed--it seemed to Mollie Fullerford that she knew the whole story.
But she was not going to help him out. Why should she? The
story--carefully though he told it--revolted her. She felt hot; hot and
dirty and ashamed. Hurt, too, as though the healed scars of her bodily
wounds were opening afresh. All the suspicions of the past weeks, all
her still-smoldering resentment that Aliette should have let her return
unwarned to Hector's house, all her balked love for James Wilberforce,
harshened Mollie's judgment. She saw Cavendish no longer a "sober-sides"
but a hypocrite; and so seeing, hated him for his imagined hypocrisy.

"You see," he concluded, "it wasn't Aliette's fault. I mean the running
away in a hurry. You mustn't condemn her. I was to blame for that. I was
to blame, from beginning to end."

"Of course," said that Mollie who had once thought "most women rotters."
"It's always the man who's to blame."

Nevertheless her judgment softened. "After all," she thought, "he isn't
beating about the bush. He's being perfectly straight with me." And she
discovered to her great surprise that it was not their having run away
together which had been hurting her, but their omission to take her into
their confidence.

Ronnie, trying to guess the verdict behind those averted eyes, drew
Aliette's letter from his pocket; and handed it over without another
word. Watching her open the envelope, watching her as she read, he saw
her fingers tremble, her violet eyes suffuse.

"And _have_ you seen Hector?" she asked at last.

"Yes. I saw him this morning."

"What did he say?"

Ronnie hesitated to tell the brutal truth; and the girl repeated her
question, adding:

"Of course he's going to divorce her."

"I'm afraid, Miss Fullerford, that it's not going to be quite so easy as
that."

"You don't mean to say that he isn't going to----?"

"He _says_ he hasn't made up his mind----"

"But"--the girl was stammering now--"that's absolutely caddish. Hector's
a gentleman. Alie's been perfectly straight with him. Besides, even if
he had been badly treated, he couldn't, couldn't possibly----"

And suddenly the full possibilities of Hector's persisting in a refusal
to take action grew visible to the girl's mind. She braced herself to
meet those possibilities; the personal consequences of them. She forced
herself to ask:

"Have you seen Mr. Wilberforce?"

"Yes. Last night."

"Did you ask his advice?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"To do nothing. To wait."

At that, thought of her own love affair obsessed the girl's mind. She
visualized James, there, in the very chair which Cavendish occupied.
Remembering a thousand unspoken hesitancies of James, she saw only too
clearly the reason of those hesitancies.

"How long has Mr. Wilberforce known about--about you and my sister?"

"Some weeks, I believe."

"You're sure?" The wounds hurt again, hurt desperately. James ought to
have told her. "He never said a word--to me." She could have borne it
better from James than from Cavendish.

"Of course he couldn't tell you anything about it, Miss Fullerford. It
was a secret, a professional secret. My mother told him----"

"Your mother?"

"Yes, my mother. She's with Aliette now." His voice softened. "She's on
our side. You'll be on our side, too? Won't you? You won't let
this--this contretemps come between you and your sister? I'm not asking
anything for myself--but it's pretty rough luck on Alie."

Mollie's decision crystallized. "I can't go back on Alie," she thought.
"Whatever happens I mustn't go back on Alie." She remembered their
conversation at Moor Park; remembered herself saying, "I don't believe
divorce is wrong."

"Yes," she said, and held out her hand. "I shall stand by Alie whatever
happens. Will you tell her that? And say I'll write in a day or two. I
don't feel like--like writing to her at the moment."

Ronnie clasped her hand, and rose to go. He would have liked to thank
her; he would have liked to say something more about Jimmy. But instinct
restrained him. Perhaps, after all, she didn't care for Jimmy; perhaps
the pallor of her cheeks, the drooped corners of her full red mouth were
all for Alie.


                                   7

And next day Ronald Cavendish went back to Chilworth Cove. All the long
train journey he was aware, growingly aware, of Aliette. Brunton and the
herd, Wilberforce and Mollie receded into the background of his
thoughts. He said to himself:

"Let Brunton do his worst. Aliette and I have our love, each other."

Love, all said and done, was the only issue. As for Brunton, they would
face him together, face him with courage high and hearts unflinching.
Courage! Courage and love! Weaponed with those two defenses, he and his
mate, his mother at their side, could battle down the onslaught of any
disaster.




                              CHAPTER XVI


                                   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 rôle 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 until such time as rumor's story should be substantiated by the
London papers, still they thought it "safer" not to mention Aliette when
they visited the long, low house of the mullioned windows.

Ever since the death of the Fullerford boys in France, the house with
the mullioned windows had been sad. But now it seemed more than sad--a
home of utter tragedy, despite its tended gardens and its deft servants.
The stags' heads and the foxes' masks on its walls only enhanced its
gloom. Its empty stables typified empty hearts; hearts of a man and a
woman whose sons might not inherit.

Mollie, in that long August and longer September, found the place
unbearable. Yet she was afraid to leave it; afraid to leave Andrew and
Marie alone. Her father aged hourly; his gray-lashed mouth used to
quiver with pain whenever he looked across the dinner-table at his wife.
To the girl, who did not understand that Aliette's abandonment of her
husband had evoked between these two the old specter of religious
differences, both parents appeared incredibly unforgiving, incredibly
out of their century.

Yet, had it not been for that specter, it is more than possible that the
puisne judge would have relented toward his "erring daughter." Under
certain circumstances he might even have helped her to secure her
freedom. For although Aliette had outraged both his legal sense and his
sense of propriety; although she had admittedly broken the oath sworn at
a Protestant altar; yet the lapse of the years had so softened Andrew's
Protestantism, left it so broadly tolerant, so much more of an ideal
than a religion, that he considered, as many latter-day Protestants do
consider, almost every tenet of his church open to the argument of the
individual case.

The judge, moreover, was instinctively aware that Aliette's relations to
Hector might furnish exactly that individual case necessary for her
justification. But in view of his wife's obvious misery, Andrew felt
himself incapable of forgiveness.

To Marie Fullerford--and this her husband realized--from that very first
moment when she opened Aliette's letter of confession, it had seemed as
though the Roman Catholic Church, the church from whose rigid discipline
she had revolted to marry Andrew, were taking its revenge for the
long-ago apostasy.

After one heartbroken conversation with her husband, she withdrew into
contemplation. Hour after hour she used to sit in her own little room,
remembering and regretting the faith of her childhood. Marie could no
more go back to that faith! The Church, the surely-disciplined
authoritative Church of Rome, would have none of her. And she would have
given so much in her present distress for the comfort of Rome!

The spiritual uncertainty of Protestantism frightened her with its
easy-going tolerance. She saw the doctrine of the English Church as a
broad-pathed quagmire, through which one trod with individual and
uncertain steps toward an individual and uncertain heaven; while Roman
Catholicism, knowing neither tolerance nor uncertainty, indicated the
only road, the safe and the narrow road to constitutional bliss.

Constantly Marie Fullerford tried to recall her old courage, the
individual fortitude which had broken her loose from Roman Catholicism.
But the old fortitude would not return. She yearned in her weakness for
the guidance of the priest, for the infallible laws, for the infallible
dogmas of an infallible hierarchy.

Her spiritual knees ached, and the hard hassock of Protestantism could
not rest them. Stumbling, she desired to cast the heavy pack of her
doubts at the feet of a father-confessor--of a father-confessor who
would give one orders, definite commands: "Let your daughter sin no
more. Let her return to her husband, expiate her offenses." No doubting
there! No leaving of the individual case to individual judgment!

And yet--and yet Aliette's mother could not bring herself to answer
Aliette's confession in the spirit of Rome. She herself had been so long
free, so long undisciplined, that she wanted, desperately, to find the
solution of this problem by the aid of that very love in which she had
given herself to Andrew.

At last, in her uncertainty, she consulted with her eldest daughter.

Eva, without the slightest hesitation, forbade any answer at all. The
colonel's lady, always adverse to her juniors, sided from the first
definitely with Hector. Aliette, opined Eva, had brought disgrace upon
the entire family. No fact that Mollie, no argument that her husband
could adduce in the culprit's favor, availed to bend Mrs. Harold
Martin's domestic rigidity; a rigidity socketed home on the two
unshifting rocks of personal dislike and personal rectitude.


                                   4

Meanwhile Moor Park, though spiritually less troubled than Clyst
Fullerford, failed egregiously in presenting a united front to its
domestic troubles. Hector, returning thither from a lonely holiday in
Scotland, found Rear-Admiral Billy in quarter-deck mood, and the Rev.
Adrian--invited for obvious reasons to dine without his
Margery--uncomfortably silent through an interminable meal.

Purposely the admiral had staved off discussion of the matter at heart
until the mastodontic dining-table should be cleared of its food.
Now--the port decanter being in its third circulation--he drew back his
chair from the board, screwed a cigar firmly between his bearded lips,
and began:

"Well, Hector, you've had a couple of months to make up your mind. What
are you going to do about Alie?"

The K.C. looked straight into his father's unjovial eyes and retorted:

"As I told you before I left, sir"--"sir" between the admiral and his
sons always betokened trouble,--"I'm not going to do anything."

"Dog-in-the-manger, eh?" rumbled the old man to his beard.

"You can take it that way if you like, sir."

"Pretty rough on your wife, ain't it? Adrian thinks----"

"Adrian is not his brother's keeper."

There intervened a considerable silence, during which the parson
scrutinized the lawyer. "Hector's nature," pondered the Rev. Adrian,
"has not altered much since he was a boy. He's a reticent fellow, is
Hector. Sullen, too. Resents any one interfering in his affairs--even if
it's for his own good."

But the parson could see that, in outward appearance, Hector _had_
altered. He looked less corpulent, less certain of himself, more
inclined to bluster. His sandy hair had thinned nearly to baldness.

"I haven't the slightest wish to interfere"--Adrian, except in his
episcopalian wife's presence, was a very human being,--"but really it
does seem to me that your duty is either to use every means in your
power to get your wife back, or else to set her free. You can't play the
matrimonial Micawber."

"I tell you," the K.C. fidgeted in his chair, "I don't want your advice.
This is my own affair and nobody else's."

"That be sugared for a tale." The admiral unscrewed his cigar from his
mouth, and waved it fiercely before his eldest son's eyes. "That be
sugared for a tale, Hector. A man's marriage concerns his whole family.
I was talking to Simeon only the other day, and he said it was perfectly
impossible for any one in your position----"

"I've heard that argument before," said Aliette's legal owner, "and I
can't say that it appeals to me. I fail to see why Uncle Simeon or his
wife should presume to pass judgment on what I choose or don't choose to
do." He made a movement to break off the discussion, refrained, and
continued. "Since you have reopened the subject, sir, I think it would
be as well if I explained _my_ views once and for all. My views are that
I fail to see any reason why I should take my wife back, or any
obligation to set her free to marry her lover. What he and she did, they
did with their eyes open. Let them abide by the consequences."

"But, blast it all!" broke in the admiral, "a fellow must behave like a
gentleman."

"I refuse to admit that a man must behave like a gentleman to a wife who
forgets to behave herself like a lady." The lawyer reached for the
cigar-box, and kindled a weed.

"Come, come, Hector." The parson, who had seen life, put his
professional prejudices on one side. "It really isn't as bad as that.
Mind you, I'm not making any excuses for Aliette. But, even admitting
that she's behaved badly to you, does that furnish you with any
justification for behaving badly to her?"

"And mind you, my boy," the father elaborated his younger son's
argument, "people aren't like they used to be about this sort of thing.
There's deuced little prejudice against divorce these days. We must go
with the times. We must go with the times. God knows I'm an intolerant
old devil; but, thank God, I can still take a broad-minded view where
the sex is concerned."

"It's easy enough for you to be broad-minded, sir," interpolated the
K.C.; "she's not _your_ wife."

"Fond of her still, eh?" rambled the old man shrewdly. Hector Brunton
kept silence, but his eyes showed that the shot had gone home.

"You've asked her to return to you, I suppose?" said the Rev. Adrian,
pouncing on this new hare like a religious beagle.

"Certainly not." The coincidence of the two ideas exasperated Hector.
For two months he had been hardening himself to meet this very ordeal;
and already, curse it! he felt himself growing soft. Dimly the voice of
conscience told him that his father and brother were in the right.
Socially he recognized that he was taking up an impossible position.
Nevertheless, as an individual, he intended sticking to that position.
All the obstinacy, all the weakness in him combined to reject the
obvious solution. Why the devil _should_ he divorce Aliette? _He_ still
wanted Aliette--wanted her physically--craved for her with a desire so
overpowering that, at times, it drove him almost mad.

"Quite apart from your wife's reputation, you know," the admiral
returned to his oratorial quarter-deck, "you've got to consider your
own. People don't look too kindly on a man who allows his missus to live
openly with some one else. And then, both you and he being in the same
profession! Take it from me, my boy, it won't do you any good."

"It won't do _him_ any good," said Hector viciously. "If I've any
influence with the benchers, I'll get the fellow disbarred before the
year's out; and if I can't get him disbarred at least I'll take"--he
snarled--"other steps."

At the snarl, Adrian lost his temper.

"I've been trying to talk to you like a brother, Hector," he rapped out,
"not like a parson. If you came to me as a parson, I should be bound to
tell you that your attitude isn't Christian at all. It's--damn it!--it's
Hebraic. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

The elder brother turned on his junior.

"Christianity," he sneered. "Is that your Christianity? Free love!"

The junior fidgeted with his white collar.

"We'll leave my Christianity out of the discussion, if you please."

The admiral, also a little hot under the shirt, intervened again.

"Christianity or no Christianity, I maintain that you're putting
yourself in the wrong. Alie's a decent enough little woman. She's always
played the game with you. Even when she ran away with this fellow, she
told you about it before she went. She _did_ tell you, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"What did _you_ say?"

"I told her she could go if she wanted to."

"You didn't try to restrain her?"

"No. I didn't."

"Why not? If you felt so strongly about her going off as you pretend to
now, why didn't you lock her up in her bedroom? Why didn't you go and
see this man Cavendish--knock his head off?"

Infuriated, Hector rose to his feet.

"I have no wish to be disrespectful, sir," he said to his father, "but
my decision is final. I refuse to discuss this matter a minute longer."
And to his brother, "As for you, Adrian, I'll thank you not to
interfere." Then he moved from the table, swung open the door, and
clumped heavily upstairs to his bedroom.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Left alone, the rear-admiral turned to his younger son.

"How's the new baby, Adrian?"

"Getting on splendidly, father."

"Good." The bearded lips chewed at their cigar for a full minute. "A
pity Hector's wife didn't have any kids."

"A great pity, father."




                              CHAPTER XVII


                                   1

Another month of outlawry went by.

The dahlias in Hyde Park died, cut down by the frost; and with the death
of them there came over Aliette that keen longing for the countryside in
winter-time which only English hunting people know. She used to dream
about hunting; about Miracle, striding full gallop across hedged fields,
steadying himself for his leap, flying his fence, landing, galloping on.

But Miracle--Hector's gift--was lost to her, as hunting was lost, and
nearly every social amenity which made up existence before she met
Ronnie. Between a hunting-season and a hunting-season, she had "dropped
out of things"; had become one of those illegally-mated women whom our
church neglects, our law despises, and our press dares only ignore.

The Aliettes of England! The women whose sole excuse for illegal
matehood is love! There are half a million such in Great Britain to-day:
women whose only crime is that, craving happiness, they have taken their
happiness in defiance of some male.

They are of all classes, our Aliettes. You will find them alike in our
West End and in our slums, in little lost cottages beneath whose windows
the sea moans all day long, and in prim suburban villas where the
milk-cart clatters on asphalt roads and cap-and-aproned servants gossip
of a morning under the peeky laburnum. You will find them--and always
with them, the one man, the mate they have chosen--in Chelsea studios,
on Cornish farms and Yorkshire moorlands, in Glasgow and in Ramsgate, in
a thousand stuffy apartments of Inner London, and in a hundred
unsuspicious boarding-houses of that middle fringe which is neither
Inner London nor Suburbia.

These women--who crave neither "free love" nor the "right to motherhood"
but only the right to married happiness--are the bond-slaves of our
national hypocrisy. Sometimes their own strength, sometimes death,
sometimes money, sometimes the clemency of their legal owners sets them
free. But, for the most part, they live, year after year, in outlawry;
live uncomplaining, faithful to that mate they have taken, bringing up
with loving care and a wise tenderness those children whom--even should
their parents ultimately marry--our law stamps "bastard" from birth to
death.

Meanwhile our priests, our politicians, our lawgivers, and all the
self-righteous Pharisees who have never known the hells of unhappy
marriage, harden their smug hearts; and neither man nor woman in England
may claim release from a drunkard, from a lunatic, from a criminal, or
from any of those thousand and one miseries which wreck the human soul.


                                   2

Powolney Mansions--four impossible Victorian dwelling-places, converted
into one impossible Georgian boarding-house of that middle fringe which
is neither Inner London nor Outer Suburbia--front a quiet road half-way
between the Baron's Court and West Kensington Stations.

"Queen's" being the limit of Aliette's London, it was natural enough
that her deliberate mind, casting about for some less expensive abode
than their hotel near the park, should remember the neighborhood, and
search it for a hiding-place.

Natural enough, too, was that instinct for a hiding-place, in a woman
who had no desire to parade her unmated self before the herd, and no
craving for unnecessary martyrdom.

At the Mansions, six guineas a week (and three extra for Caroline
Staley) provided a bed-sitting-room, complete with a double-bedstead of
squeaking brass, a hard sofa, two harder chairs, a so-called armchair, a
writing-table, three steel engravings of the eighteen-eighties, and a
shilling-in-the-slot gas-stove. The six guineas also provided meals,
served by dingily uniformed waitresses in a crowded communal
dining-room--and "congenial society."

This "congenial society" did not--as the society to which Aliette had
been accustomed--shift its habitat with the seasons; except for an
occasional fortnight in Margate or Clacton, it clung limpet-like to the
Mansions.

Moreover, as the pair discovered within three days, it was eclectic as
well as cliquey--containing gentlefolk and ungentle-folk; workers and
idlers; bounders and the unbounding. Of the first were two pathetic
spinsters who knitted all day before the untended fire in the vast
untended drawing-room, remembering, as lost souls might remember
paradise, the bygone millennium of cheap eggs and cheap income-tax. Of
the last were an Anglo-Indian family, looking for, and never finding, "a
nice easily-run flat." Item, were three foreigners, vague creatures from
vague places, who never seemed to have anything to do, and never seemed
to go to bed; one prosperous commercial traveler who "liked the
sociability"; one ruined squire who had furnished his own room and
hoarded the remnants of a pre-war cellar in its undusted cupboard; and
three mothers of no known social position, whose daughters, dingy at
breakfast, grew demure by lunch-time, and--communal tea
included--sallied forth with mysterious "dancing-partners" to return
mouse-footed in the early dawn. An understrapper from the Belgian
consulate, and a plantation overseer on leave from the Federated Malay
States completed the tally of "Monsieur Mayer's guests.

"A fine gossipy lot, Miss Aliette," judged Caroline Staley, her loyalty
a little strained by, though proof against, her surroundings. "While as
for they maids----"

But the "congenial society" of Powolney Mansions gossiped--the aloof
Aliette knew--neither more nor less than the society she had abandoned.
For--try as one would to hide one's self--awkward meetings were
inevitable.

Never a woman of easy friendships, Hector Brunton's wife before her
elopement had possessed three distinct sets of cordial
acquaintances--the "Moor Park lot," the "London lot," and the "Clyst
Fullerford lot," as she phrased them. Of these, the "Clyst Fullerford
lot" and the "Moor Park lot" (barring Colonel Sanders, the M.F.H., who,
apparently untouched by gossip, greeted her, at walk with Ronnie down
St. James's Street, in his cheeriest voice as "dear Mrs. Brunton")
might, except for an occasional letter forwarded from Lancaster Gate via
Mollie, have inhabited the moon.

And with the "London lot" one never quite knew how one stood. Bachelor
barristers inevitably lifted the hat and smiled. Hugh Spillcroft,
meeting one alone at Harrods, invited one to tea with him and proffered
a tentative sympathy which one gently but firmly rebuffed. Mrs. Needham,
also encountered on a shopping expedition, pretended the most tactful
ignorance, but forbore to inquire after one's husband. Sir Siegfried and
Lady Moss, passing in their Rolls-Royce, looked politically the other
way. Hector's particular friends one, of course, avoided; and, since she
made no overture, one also avoided--a little hurt, perhaps, at the
ingratitude--Mary O'Riordan.

Taking it all round--as Julia Cavendish put it on one of those frequent
afternoons when, always preannounced by telephone, the lovers came to
tea with her--the situation held "little hope and less comfort."

"And it'll get worse," said that indomitable old woman; "it's bound to
get worse if you persist in hiding yourselves, if you go on refusing to
meet anybody. Don't you see, my dear," she turned on Aliette with a
little of her former brusquerie, "that you're playing right into your
husband's hands? Don't make any mistake about _him_. He knows _exactly_
where you are; and, so long as there's no open scandal, so long as you
remain tucked away in that abominable boarding-house, he'll leave you
there. Whereas, if you'll only _make_ the scandal an open one, public
opinion will force him to act. Take it from me, the only thing to be
done is to flaunt yourselves."

"Flaunt?" said Aliette.

"Yes! Flaunt yourselves!" repeated Ronnie's mother, rather pleased with
the literary expression.

"I rather agree," said Ronnie. "That's the way Belfield broke
Carrington. Dash it, we can't go on lying doggo forever. It isn't fair
to Alie."

Since their move to Powolney Mansions, Ronnie had begun to realize the
exact difference in the world's treatment of a man's "lapse" and a
woman's "adultery"; to perceive that he apparently was to be allowed to
go on with his avocation, scanty though the emoluments of that avocation
were becoming, as though nothing had happened; that his clubs and almost
every house he had visited while a bachelor were still open to him as an
unmarried husband, so long as the world, officially, knew nothing of his
"unmarried wife."

"Never mind me, I'm quite"--Aliette glanced round the comfortable
drawing-room, so unlike the spinster-haunted wilderness of the
Mansions--"resigned to my temporary fate."

"Rubbish!" retorted Julia; and went on to elaborate the plan that they
should move from Baron's Court as soon as ever they could find some
residence, the more expensive the better, in Inner London.

"You must be seen everywhere," she went on. "You must entertain and be
entertained. In a word, Aliette--like Mrs. Carrington--must _afficher_
herself as Mrs. Cavendish. Never mind what it costs. I'll finance you."

But Aliette's whole nature recoiled from Julia's scheme.

She, had it not been for Ronnie's career, would have been more than
content to wait a year, two years, a whole lifetime for freedom. Her
idea--she told them--was to take some little cottage, not too far
removed from London; so that "Ronnie could come down every week-end."

Nevertheless, since any hope of freedom was tantalizing, because now,
always and always stronger, there mounted in her the conviction that one
day she would have a child by Ronnie, Aliette so far weakened from her
resolution against "the flaunting policy" as to accept Julia's
invitation, telephoned next day, to share her box for the first night of
Patrick O'Riordan's "Khorassan."


                                   3

Ronnie's "wife," though too proud to make the first move, often wondered
why Mary O'Riordan, eager enough to accept her championing in a similar
situation, should have taken so little trouble to reciprocate, now that
reciprocation was so obviously indicated: but, dressing for the theater
in the unkindly bedroom whose harsh lights made her needlessly afraid of
the mirror, she decided that sheer delicacy alone had restrained her old
school-friend from getting into touch; and anticipated their inevitable
meeting without a qualm. It would be nervous work, displaying one's self
in Julia Cavendish's box before a "first-night" audience (unwise work,
thought Aliette, unwise of Ronnie and his mother to have been so
persistent); but Mary's presence would at least furnish a guarantee
against complete ostracism. Whatever other people might do, she could
rely on Mary's visiting their box in the _entr'acte_, on Mary's going
out of her way to demonstrate sympathy.

"Looking forward to it, darling?" interrupted Ronnie, entering with the
usual perfunctory knock from the bathroom, where he had been doing his
best to shave, for the second time that day, in lukewarm water.

"Not exactly." Aliette dismissed her maid.

"Why not?"

"Oh, I don't know. It seems all wrong, somehow or other. And
suppose"--she hesitated--"suppose people are nasty?"

"They won't be," assured Ronnie, through the shirt into which he was
struggling. "You're too sensitive about the whole thing. One or two
people may snub us. But what's a snub or so, if only we can force H. B.
to move?"

"But"--she hesitated again--"snubs hurt, man." Thinking of various
slights already endured, her eyes suffused, and she had difficulty in
keeping back the tears.

"Nobody shall hurt _you_." He came quickly across the room; put his arms
round her; and kissed, very tenderly, the smooth skin behind her ears,
her bared shoulders.

"Oh, yes, they will. Not even you can prevent that. Women in my position
are bound to get hurt. All the time! But it doesn't hurt much"--she
looked up into his eyes, and smiled away the tears from her own;--"it
doesn't really hurt at all so long as I've got you."

Nevertheless, as they raced through their execrable meal in the empty
dining-room, Aliette knew herself face to face with an ordeal. And the
ordeal waxed more and more terrible in anticipation as the electric
brougham, which Julia had insisted on sending to Baron's Court for them,
rolled toward Bruton Street.

She sat wordlessly, her hand clasped in Ronnie's, staring wide-eyed at
the buses, the taxicabs, and the private cars which passed or overtook
them. It was as though every soul in London, all the people in those
buses, those taxicabs, and those private cars, were hostile to her; as
though she were a woman apart from all other women, outcast indeed. She
wanted to say to her man: "Must we do this unwise thing? Must we? Can't
we turn back? Can't we go on hiding ourselves?" But she said nothing,
only clung the closer to his responsive hand.


                                   4

Literary folk can be peculiarly childish; which is perhaps the reason
why great authors are usually little men.

One part of Julia's mind--as she waited for Ronnie and Aliette to fetch
her--positively grinned with mischief in anticipation of the new
adventure, "defying Society." That part of her felt very much the
heroine, a female knight-errant about to do lusty tilt against the
dragon "Convention." But, in the main, her mood was retrospective.

"Curious," she thought, looking back at her dead self; "curious how
entirely my views have changed." And she remembered the reactionary
stubbornness of her anti-divorce article for "The Contemplatory," her
delight at the stir which that article had created, her delusions that
it might "help to stem the flood of post-war immorality."

Now even the closing sentence, "Until humanity learns to discipline the
sentimental impulse, there can be no hope of matrimonial
reconstruction," rang false in the auditorium of experience. She yearned
suddenly to rewrite that sentence, to substitute "the lustful impulse"
for "the sentimental impulse." But the written word, alas, could not be
revoked.

Then, vaguely she visioned herself writing a new article--perhaps a new
book--some pronouncement, anyway, which should contradict and counteract
her old doctrine. And from that, her creative mind--as though linking
story to moral--started in to examine the individual case of her son and
Aliette.

The front door-bell rang; and Julia heard Ronnie's voice in the hall.

"Where's Aliette?" she asked, as he entered.

"Waiting in the brougham. By Jove, mater, you look like a stage
duchess."

"Do I?" She blushed a little at his chaff, knowing it merited by the
super-splendor of her attire; by the sable-and-brocade opera-cloak and
the black velvet thereunder, by the coronal of diamond wheat-ears which
banded her graying hair, and the Louis Seize buckles on her elegant
shoes. Once more the heroine of an adventure, she picked her long white
gloves and her bejeweled hand-bag from the dining-room table; and
followed her son, through the front door which Kate held open for them,
into the brougham.

Aliette, she greeted with a rare pressure of the hand and the still
rarer compliment, "You're looking radiant to-night, my dear."

Kate closed the door on the three of them; and the electric brougham
rolled off through Bruton Street into Bond Street; through Bond Street
into Piccadilly. Julia did not appear in the least nervous. She began to
talk of Patrick O'Riordan--a little contemptuously, as was her wont when
dealing with stage-folk, against whom she cherished a prejudice almost
puritanical.

"Patrick O'Riordan," opined Julia, "was a poorish play-wright; but of
course he had money to play with. Not his own money. Naturally. People
in the theater never did speculate with their own money. Lord
Letchingbury was behind the show. Dot said Letchingbury had put up ten
thousand." Followed a Rabelaisian reference to Letchingbury's penchant
for Mary O'Riordan, which horrified Aliette, who had always imagined
Mary, except for her one lapse, virtuous; and landed them in the queue
of vehicles making for the illuminated portico of the Capitol Theater.

As the brougham crawled near and nearer to the lights which blazed their
one word "Khorassan," it seemed to Aliette that she was about to plunge
into a stream of icy water. Her heart contracted at mere sight of the
furred opera-cloaks, of the smoothly-coiffured heads and the shiny
top-hats under the portico. For a moment, fear had its way with her; the
impulse to flight overwhelmed her courage. Then she looked at Ronnie;
and saw that his face was set, that his chin protruded ever so slightly
for sign of determination. Julia Cavendish, the wheat-ears glimmering
like a crown in her hair, sat bolt upright, unflinching.

All said and done--thought Aliette--the risk, the big social risk, was
Julia's. If, for her sake, Julia Cavendish could dare to jeopardize her
entire circle, she, Aliette, must not prove unworthy of the offering.
Her red lips pursed--even as they had pursed long ago when she and
Ronnie waited for hounds to give tongue beyond Parson's Brook; and, head
equally high, she followed the diamond wheat-ears out of the brougham,
through the crowd under the portico, and into the theater.

Passing the box-office, she saw Julia smile at an old man with drooping
gray mustaches and a reddish face, blue-lined above a bulging
shirt-front.

Dot Fancourt shambled hesitantly across the few feet of carpet; shook
hands; whispered "Surely this is very unwise"; and vanished downstairs
toward the stalls.

"Old coward!" thought Julia; and her thirty-year-old friendship for the
editor of "The Contemplatory" exploded in a red puff of rage.

Ronnie, noticing Dot's evasion, felt his color heighten. He handed their
ticket to an attendant, and took Aliette's arm protectively as the three
of them passed round the circular corridor into their box.

"You sit there, dear." Julia indicated the most conspicuous seat. "And
I'll sit beside you."

Aliette, throwing the opera-cloak back from her shoulders, looked down
across the house. To her imagination, the whole auditorium was a blur of
eyes; hostile eyes, thousands upon thousands of them, some furtively
upturned, some staring unabashed, some taking cover behind the gleam of
opera-glasses.

Julia, too, looked downward; but her eyes saw every face, every dress,
every gesture of every personage in the crowded stalls and in the
opposite boxes, clear-cut and sharp as a photograph. Obviously the
appearance of her party had created a sensation. Lady Cynthia Barberus
and Miss Elizabeth Cattistock, making a conspicuous and loud-voiced
entrance down the center gangway, stopped in mid-career blocking the
Ellersons, Paul Flower, and Sir Siegfried with his fat Lady Moss. Lady
Cynthia did not smile; Elizabeth Cattistock did--maliciously. Paul
Flower gave an astounded grin; and nudged Dot Fancourt, who was already
seated next to that inveterate first-nighter, Sir Peter Wilberforce. Dot
whispered something to Sir Peter, who kept his attention rigidly on the
curtain.

Various other people whom Julia knew more or less intimately, after one
swift glance at the box, also kept their attention on that curtain;
talking together, low-voiced.

And suddenly Julia grew aware that the white-gloved fingers of the woman
beside her were gripping the ledge of their box as though it had been
the arm of a dentist's chair, that the eyes of the woman beside her were
focused as the eyes of a sleep-walker on the third row of the stalls.
Instinctively, her own glance followed the line; and following,
envisaged Aliette's husband.

To Julia, the female knight-errant a-tilt against the dragon
"Convention," the presence of the Brunton family--for they were all
there, Sir Simeon with his ambassadress, Rear-Admiral Billy, two of Sir
Simeon's daughters by his first wife, and Hector--should have been the
crown of her adventure; but to Julia Cavendish, society-woman, the
happening was rather a shock. For the society-woman in her could not
quite prevent herself from sympathizing with the peculiar position of
Sir Simeon and Lady Brunton. Sympathy, however, turned to rage when they
deliberately looked up at the box, and, with equal deliberation, looked
away.

The two daughters did not look up; and the admiral gave no sign either
of recognition or of partizanship. But Hector, at a word from his uncle,
stared and continued to stare across the house.

Ronnie, perceiving the stare, deliberately drew his chair closer to
Aliette's; and the momentary panic stilled in her mind. Her fingers
loosened their grip on the velvet ledge; her eyes were no longer the
vacant eyes of a sleep-walker. Coolly now she faced her husband's
ill-mannered stare; coolly she forced a smile to her lips, and,
pretending to examine her program, managed an aimless remark.

The pretense of nonchalance deceived even Hector. Hector turned to his
cousin Moira and tried to talk with her. But hardly a word came to his
lips. His heart thudded under the stiff of his shirt-front. He felt
himself surrounded, pent in a cage, pent to sitting-posture. He wanted
to heave himself upright, to smash the cage, to scatter the people
surrounding him.

"Confound them!" he thought, "they all know. All these first-nighters
know. Of set purpose, she has done me this shame."

Once again he saw himself as the lone bull, the lone bull before the
scornful herd. He wanted to gore with his horns, to lash out with his
hoofs; for his eyes--averted from the box--still held their picture: the
two disdainful women, the tall disdainful man between them.

"Pretty bad form, _I_ think," said Moira sympathetically.

"Curse her sympathy!" thought Hector.


                                   5

The preliminary music neared its ending; and the first part of Aliette's
ordeal, even more terrible than she had anticipated, was almost over by
the time that Mary O'Riordan billowed her imposing way to the front of
the stage-box. Other people followed, but Mary's hoydenish bulk, draped
in the gold and scarlet of some super-Wagnerian goddess, dwarfed them to
the insignificance of pygmies.

Aliette's heart, still numb from its effort at self-control, gave one
pleasurable beat at sight of her friend. She smiled across the house at
Mary. Their eyes met, clashed. And in that moment, the house darkled.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The curtain had been up a full three minutes before Aliette realized
that those blue eyes of Mary's intended the cut direct. Realizing, every
nerve in her tense body throbbed with resentment at the ingratitude.
Mary to cut her! Mary of all people! Mary, by whose side she had stood
stanch through a year of trouble! Mary, whose affair with Letchingbury
provided the very money which sent up the curtain, which bought the
scenery and paid the actors of "Khorassan"!

Gradually, the first throbs of Aliette's resentment subsided, leaving
her every nerve a living pain. Mary's ingratitude hurt, hurt. "Most
women are awful rotters"; Mollie's words, uttered long ago at Moor Park,
came back to her.

She tried to distract her mind with the play; but O'Riordan's
play--poor, thinly-poetic stuff, indifferently mouthed by mummers whose
sole claim to their salary was their supping-acquaintance with the
fringe of Society--failed to hold her thoughts. Her thoughts hovered
between the enemy audience, blur of heads below, and the two friends,
her only friends in a hostile world, on either side.

Thinking of their loyalty, Aliette no longer shrank from her ordeal. Her
heart swelled, resolute against all hostility. It became two hearts: the
one, warm and throbbing with partizanship for the stark old lady beside
her, the old lady who had never turned a hair since they entered the
theater, and for the "old lady's" son, for the man whose love was a
rock: the other, icy-cold, almost beatless, frozen to contempt.

What a farce was this social game! As if the world's hostility mattered!
One played one's little part on the stage of life, played it as best one
might to the prompting of conscience, till the curtain fell, as it was
falling now to a subdued rattle of perfunctory applause and the usual
"snatched" calls.

Aliette felt Ronnie's fingers tighten on her own, relax. The house
lights went up.

"Letchingbury will lose his money," remarked Julia calmly. "O'Riordan's
poetic drama is merely an excuse for bad poetry and no drama. By the
way, that _is_ Letchingbury, isn't it?" She looked across at the
stage-box; and Ronnie, looking with her, saw a young man, blond, with a
receding chin and a receding forehead.

"Yes. That's Letchingbury all right," he said. "And, by the way, Alie,
isn't that your friend, Mrs. O'Riordan?"

"I should hardly call her my friend," answered Aliette, a little
bitterly; and steeled herself to look down at the stalls. Hector's was
already empty. The remainder of the Brunton party sat perfectly rigid.
Sir Peter Wilberforce, remembering himself one of Julia Cavendish's
executors, managed a surreptitious nod. Dot Fancourt, like Hector, had
escaped. Various dramatic critics, sidling their way out of the stalls
toward the bar, bowed to Julia as though nothing out of the ordinary had
occurred. Mary O'Riordan retired ostentatiously to the back of her box.

Aliette panicked again. Suppose Ronnie left her? Suppose Ronnie and
Hector met--in public? But Ronnie, for all his obtuser mind, divined
that his women-folk were under fire; and that duty forbade him to
desert. He whispered to her:

"Not so bad as you anticipated, eh? Of course one can't expect the
Bruntons to be exactly cordial."

"I wish they hadn't been here," whispered back Aliette. "It makes things
so much worse."

"Rubbish!" interrupted Julia. "It's the best thing that could possibly
have happened. He'll have to bring his action after this, or be the
laughing-stock of Mayfair."

While the auditorium emptied and filled again, Julia, her head erect,
her hands quiet, talked on--as though the lack of Dot's usual visit to
her box were of no moment. Ronnie, every fiber in him furious, played up
to her. But Aliette could not speak. In her, social instincts were at
war with conscience. Feeling herself definitely in the wrong toward
society, yet definitely in the right toward her own soul, feeling
terribly afraid, yet terribly courageous, striving desperately to wrench
out the iron of resentment from her mind, striving piteously to forget
the hurt of the wound which Mary O'Riordan had dealt her, she played her
game in dumb show. And furtively, fearfully, as the music for the second
act began, she watched for Hector's return.

But Hector did not return. Even when the house lights went out and the
curtain rose again, Aliette could see that his stall remained empty.
Subconsciously she knew that he had fled the theater.

The second act of "Khorassan" dragged to its undramatic climax. Once
again those three faced the eyes of the audience. Now, more than ever,
it seemed to Aliette, still sitting rigid in the forefront of Julia's
box, as though all eyes were hostile, as though the entire house, and
with it her entire social world, had decided to ostracize them.

All through that overlong _entr'acte_, she sat speechless; her brown
pupils hard and bright; her white shoulders squared above the black
sequined dress; her pale face, her red lips set to an almost sullen
determination. And, as the _entr'acte_ ended, those hard brown pupils
fell to devisaging Mary O'Riordan. Till, visibly ill at ease, the
cow-eyes under Mary's mop of gold hair turned away.

But it gave Aliette no pleasure to realize that, hurt, she had
retaliated.


                                   6

Everybody in front of the curtain and everybody behind the curtain
knew--as it fell--that Patrick O'Riordan's poetic drama, "Khorassan,"
was a proved failure. Nevertheless, the audience, as is the polite
custom of first-night audiences, applauded; and called on the author,
white-faced in the glare of the footlights, for a speech.

"And in the morning," thought Julia Cavendish satirically, "we shall
read of the great service rendered by Patrick O'Riordan via
Letchingbury's bank-account, to art; and of the pressing need for more
revivals of the poetic drama."

Julia could not help being a little pleased at the play's failure; in a
way it mitigated her own. For that _she_ had failed, lamentably, in her
adventure, Ronnie's mother realized even better than Aliette. Hold her
head high as she might, this consciousness of disaster persisted all
through O'Riordan's overlong speech. The literary childishness went out
of her, leaving the woman of the world conscious that she had done the
foolish thing, that she had flaunted her son and her son's mistress
before that little section of society which is a London first-night.
Society, of course, had averted its face! Remained, therefore, only the
assurance that Aliette's husband had seen the flaunting, and so must
surely be forced into action.

"Poor Aliette," thought Julia. "Poor Ronnie." Her mind was all a
weakness toward them, all a strength against the world. For herself, she
needed no comforting; but them she wanted to take in her arms, to
mother.

O'Riordan's speech ended. The house clapped, and emptied. The three left
their box; and Ronnie--reluctantly leaving Julia and Aliette in the
foyer--went off in search of the electric brougham.

Waiting in the crowd, both women knew themselves on show, the dual
cynosure of a hundred furtive glances. People seemed anxious to escape
without the need for recognizing them. The few smiles were frigid,
standoffish--all for Julia, none for her companion. Hector's aunt,
jostling by, cut the pair dead.

Aliette tried to think, "It doesn't matter; it doesn't matter a bit";
she tried to hold herself upright, to cut rather than be cut, to
preserve--outwardly at least--the semblance of a dignity. But inwardly
she knew herself all one tremble of undignified panic. If only one
person, just one person in that jostling mob, would be really decent! If
only Ronnie would be quicker with their carriage!

Then simultaneously both women grew aware that a face, one kindly face,
was smiling at them, was making its way toward them through the crowd.
Simultaneously they recognized the face--Hermione Ellerson's.

"My dear, I've been trying to catch your eye all the evening," called
Hermione to Aliette. "But you wouldn't look at me. Why don't you come
and see us? I want you to see our new house. Curzon Street, 24. In the
telephone-book."

Hermione was swept away before Aliette could collect her wits for reply:
and a moment afterward they saw, beyond the crowd, Ronnie signaling the
arrival of their brougham.


                                   7

"It _was_ decent of Hermione, frightfully decent, especially as she's a
kind of relation of Hector's. All the same, I don't think I'll go and
see her."

Aliette, disrobed, sat staring into the gas-fire of their Powolney
Mansions bedroom.

"Why not?" asked a shirt-sleeved Ronnie.

She turned to him, and her face showed very pale.

"Man, it's all so hopeless."

"It isn't. It isn't a bit hopeless. The mater's right. H. B. _must_ act
now."

"He won't, and even if he does--Oh, don't you see that I've--that I've
ruined you! I've ruined your career. I've ruined you both."

"Rubbish!" There was something of his mother's brusquerie in the man's
tone.

"It isn't rubbish." The woman was deadly in her calm. "It's the absolute
truth. Don't let us deceive ourselves."

He tried to take her in his arms; but she rose, eluding him. "Don't,
Ronnie! Let's be sensible; it's high time. We--you and I and your
mother--have made a mistake. A mistake that's almost irretrievable.
There's only one thing to be done now----"

"And that is?" He had never known her in this mood. She seemed utterly
different from the sensitive Aliette of a few hours since; almost
unloving, hard, purposeful, resolute.

"And that is?" he repeated.

"I must leave you."

At her words Ronnie's heart stopped beating as though some giant had put
a finger on it. For one fraction of a second, love vanished utterly;
almost, he hated her.

"Yes," went on Aliette, "I must leave you. It's the only way, I'll take
a little cottage. Somewhere not too far from London. And you--you must
go and live with your mother."

His heart began beating again, faintly.

"But why?" he managed. "Why?"

"Because that's the only way to stop people from talking. If they know
that you're at Bruton Street, that I'm not at Bruton Street, then," she
was faltering now, faltering in her firm purpose, and she knew that she
must not falter; "then they'll think that your mother didn't know
anything when she invited us to-night."

He came toward her: and she felt her momentary determination weaken;
felt herself powerless to do the right. He put his hands on her
shoulders, and looked her deep in the eyes. Then he smiled, the quaint,
whimsical smile she loved best.

"You're not serious, Alie?"

"I am," she faltered, "desperately serious. You'll let me have my
cottage, won't you?"

"You know I won't." He had her in his arms now. "You know that I won't
consent to anything so absurd." He bent to kiss her. "Darling, don't
let's lose our pluck. It's been a rotten evening for you. Rotten! I know
that."

"It's not of myself that I'm thinking."

"I know that, too. I'm not thinking for myself, either. I'm trying to
think for both of us, for all three of us. We've got to see this thing
through. Together."

"Together!" The word weakened her still further.

"Yes, together." He followed up his advantage. "Life's a fight. A hard
fight. You mustn't desert."

"And you"--her voice, as she lay motionless in his arms, was almost
inaudible--"you think I'm worth fighting for?"

"More than anything in the world. But I wish"--a little he, too,
faltered, his fears for her sake making him afraid--"I wish that people
didn't hurt you so."

She stirred in his arms; and her face upturned to his.

"Man," she said, her eyes shining, "I'm not afraid of anything people
can do to _me_. Nobody except you could ever _really_ hurt me. I--I
didn't mean to desert; only just to efface myself. Won't you let me
efface myself? Until--until Hector divorces me. It's the right
thing--the best thing. Really it is."

"Right or wrong," said Ronnie, "we'll see this business through--see it
through together--even if it lasts all our lives."

                  *       *       *       *       *

Aliette, seeing the fighting-fire in those blue eyes, seeing the
stubborn set of that protruded jaw, knew her momentary determination
beaten to the ground.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


                                   1

Within one week of its first launching, "Khorassan" sank, leaving hardly
a ripple, into the deep pool of theatrical failures. But for weeks and
weeks thereafter, that shallow pool which is West End society rippled
furiously to the stone which Julia Cavendish had thrown into it when she
attended Patrick O'Riordan's first-night accompanied by her son and
Aliette.

Some of the consequences of that stone-throwing were explained to
Ronnie's "wife" when--overpersuaded from her decision not to visit
Hermione--she called at the little black-carpeted, Chinese-papered,
orange-curtained box of a house in Curzon Street.

Hermione, her willowy figure supine on an enormous sofa, her dark eyes
glinting with a sympathetic curiosity not entirely bereft of humor,
extended one ringless hand with a laughed "Well, my dear, you really
have put your foot into it this time. Your in-laws are perfectly
furious."

Aliette laughed in reply (no one ever took Hermione quite seriously);
possessed herself of a luxurious chair before the luxurious fire, and
admitted:

"It was rather a faux pas, wasn't it?"

"I'm not so sure of that." Hermione's smooth brows crinkled in thought.
"I'm not at all so sure of that. It's quite on the cards, _I_ think,
that it'll lead to something. Sir Simeon told me, only last night, how
perfectly impossible it was for such a state of affairs to go on."

She rose from the sofa; and, coming over to the fire, took the vast
pouffe in front of it. "Poor darling! It's rotten for you."

Aliette stiffened at the suggestion of sympathy. "I'm quite happy, thank
you."

"Are you? I'm so glad." Hermione edged the pouffe closer. "My dear, you
have surprised the clan. None of us imagined _you_ capable of a
really-truly love-affair. Why, you're the last person in the world----"

"Please, Hermione, don't let's discuss me."

"But I want to discuss you. I think you're perfectly marvelous. How on
earth you ever had the nerve. And from a husband like Hector!"
Ellerson's wife paused to warm her expressive hands at the fire. "I
never did like Hector. Strong, silent men always bore me to distraction.
But Ronnie Cavendish is a perfect dear."

It was the first time that any one except his mother had been personal
about Ronnie, and Aliette felt herself blushing at the mere mention of
his name. She wanted to shoo Hermione away from the topic; but Hermione,
like some obstinate butterfly, returned always to the forbidden flower.
Hermione wanted "to know everything." Hermione hinted herself more than
ready to be profuse in sympathy--if only the other would be profuse in
confidences. Even the presence of an exiguous Belgian butler, carrying
exiguous French tea-cups on an exiguous Russian silver tray, failed to
distract Hermione from her purpose.

Ellerson's wife had been discussing _l'affaire Aliette_ with Lady
Cynthia Barberus, with Miss Elizabeth Cattistock, with many another
mannequin of the "Ritz crowd"; and they had jointly come to the
conclusion that it was abominable, "perfectly abominable," "a return to
feminine slavery" for any man to behave as Hector Brunton was behaving.
If only "dear Alie" would tell them how they could help her!

Aliette, however--who, in her safety, had always rather despised Lady
Cynthia and Lady Cynthia's associates,--could not bring herself to seek
alliance with them in her danger. Her fastidiousness resented the "Ritz
crowd's" partizanship. Trying her best to be grateful, she could not
stifle the instinct that Hermione's "sympathy" was the sympathy of an
idle, over-sexed woman, inspired rather by sensational and illicit
novelty than by reasoned understanding.

But even oversensitive Aliette could not misjudge the real
understanding, the real sympathy of Hermione's husband.

That tall, casually-groomed, blond-haired youth came in just as the
guest was perpending departure; offered her a large hand; and said
nothing whatever to complicate a difficult situation. My Lord Arthur
merely opined that he was sorry to be late for tea, that he hoped
Aliette would come and see them again, that she must dine and do a show
with them as soon as ever they got back from the Riviera, and that she
must bring--he said this with extraordinary tact--anybody she liked to
make a fourth at the party. Lord Arthur, in fact, without mentioning
Ronnie's name, made it quite clear on which side of the social fence
both he and his wife purposed to sit.

For by now the various sections of that complicated community which is
social London had grown conscious of the Cavendish-Brunton fence. People
had begun to comprehend that _l'affaire Aliette_ was serious, and that
one would have to sit either on Aliette's side, on Hector's side, or on
the fence itself. So that if Aliette had been less old-fashioned, in the
best sense of that much-abused word; if Aliette's lover had been less
shy, less reticent, less aloof from his kind; and if Julia Cavendish had
only been a little less certain, that victory was already won--there is
little doubt that other houses besides 24 Curzon Street would have
opened their doors.

Social London, you see, was in a state of moral flux. Cadogan Square,
Belgravia, and Knightsbridge still clung rigidly to the tenets of the
Victorian past. But for Mayfair, parts of Kensington, and the more
artistic suburbs, matrimonial issues had assumed a new aspect since the
war. Actually, a tide of freer thinking on the sex question had begun to
sweep over the whole of England. Happiness had not yet come to be
acknowledged the only possible basis of monogamy, but divorce reform was
no longer only in the air--it was more or less on the table of the
House.

And to divorce reformers Hector Brunton's attitude appeared almost as
indefensible as it did to those who, not yet in revolt against the old
tenets of indissoluble matrimony, found it hard to stomach a man's
permitting his wife to live unsued in open adultery.


                                   2

Julia Cavendish tried to explain these post-war matrimonial issues to
Dot Fancourt, when he called at Bruton Street to remonstrate with her
about "the very serious blunder" she had committed. But Dot, willing
enough to open his columns in "The Contemplatory" for an intellectual
threshing out of such issues, could not face them in real life. A social
cowardliness, essentially editorial, obsessed his failing mentality.

"My dear," he argued, "it isn't as if you were a nobody. Nobodies can
afford experiments. You can't. You're a Cavendish. You have a position,
an eminent position in the scholastic world, in the world of society,
and in the world of letters. Therefore you, of all people, have least
right, especially in times like the present, to countenance matrimonial
bolshevism."

Julia Cavendish put down her embroidery-frame, and faced her quondam
friend squarely. Ever since their meeting in the foyer of the Capitol
Theater, she had been seeing him with new eyes, seeing only his
weakness, the insufficiency and the inefficiency of him. That he meant
his advice kindly and for the best, she knew. Nevertheless, he had
wrecked their friendship; failed her when she most needed him. The
disloyalty stung her to bitterness.

"The fact that I married a Cavendish," she said, "is neither here nor
there. My position, such as it is, is one which I attained for myself.
If, by siding with my own son, I jeopardize it----"

"But, my dear, why jeopardize it at all? You're being so unwise. You
won't do your son any good by quarreling with your friends."

"Apparently I have no friends." The Biblical phrase about the broken
reed crossed Julia's mind. "If I had friends, they would stand by me and
mine; not try to avoid us in public."

"You're very unfair." Dot rose irritably, and began shambling up and
down the room. "Terribly unfair. Can't you understand how I hated seeing
you--messed up in this sort of thing?"

She fired up at that. "One defends one's own, Dot."

And for an hour after Dot had gone, the words rang in Julia's mind. "One
defends one's own--at all costs--however hard the battle."

For her, battle grew harder as the days went by. One by one she argued
out the issue with her protesting friends, convincing few, antagonizing
many. Her family, however--always a little jealous of "the immaculate
Ronald"--Julia met not with argument but with shock tactics.

Clementina, calling, breasted and bustled for fray, accompanied by Sir
John, in his best Bank of England blacks, who admitted that "they had
heard things" and pressed to know if there was any truth in "the things
they had heard," received a direct "My dear Clementina, if your husband
means that you've been informed of my son's running away with Hector
Brunton's wife, and that Hector Brunton is going to divorce her, you've
been informed correctly"; while Alice, writing a dutiful letter from
Cheltenham, received a typescript reply--to the same effect--which cut
her Anglo-Indian sense of etiquette to the quick.

As for May who, relinquishing the expensive good works and still more
expensive garden of her house in Abbey Road, called unattended and found
Julia alone; _she_ returned to St. John's Wood with the firm conviction
that her "poor dear sister" must have been "got at by some of those
dreadful writing people," and bombarded her, for nearly a week, with
pamphlets on "The Sin of Divorce."

Meanwhile, regular callers at Bruton Street grew rarer and rarer; until
Paul Flower, busy rewriting some of his earlier books for American
admirers and utterly unable to discuss anything else, almost monopolized
the once-crowded drawing-room. Paul, engrossed with pre-war literature,
became in those days Julia's best refuge from post-war life. He
succeeded--sometimes for hours together--in stimulating her creative
imagination.

And since, to a literary craftswoman, the creative imagination is only
as the first nip to a confirmed toper, Paul Flower soon succeeded in
more than this--in arousing the actual creative instinct: so that the
creative instinct awoke and demanded work.

Gradually Julia grew hungry for the pen, for the long and lonely hours
when the creative mind is as God, fashioning puppets for His pleasure.
But always, when Paul Flower had left her, her imagination switched back
from literature to life.

"The man Brunton," said imagination, "is _not_ beaten. He'll bring no
action. He is working, working secretly, to ruin your boy's career."


                                   3

And indeed, during those few days which preceded the close of the autumn
sessions, it did not require his mother's imagination to perceive that
some curious and sinister influence must be at work against Ronald
Cavendish in the quiet quadrangles and the gray-pinnacled courts either
side the Griffin.

From the unwigged Mr. Justice Mallory, sipping the port of midday
adjournment in his private room behind King's Bench Seven, to
melancholious Benjamin Bunce, perusing his "Law Times" at Groom's
coffee-shop in Fleet Street, the whole "legal world" was aware that "H.
B. meant to make trouble." Alike in Middle and in Inner Temple halls, in
robing-rooms, in chambers, in corridors, and in offices, wheresoever and
whensoever barristers or solicitors foregathered to talk "shop," one
heard the buzz of dignified curiosity, rumors of instant citation, of
citation delayed.

Meanwhile Ronnie, growing less and less inclined to intimacy with his
fellow-lawyers as he grew more and more conscious of their interest in
him, visited Pump Court with a regularity which held more of bravado
than of necessity. The flow of his briefs, never broad, had dwindled to
the tiniest trickle. Barring the work he still did for Wilberforce,
Wilberforce & Cartwright, he foresaw almost complete idleness at the
Hilary sessions.

The foresight, financially, frightened him. Never a spendthrift, his own
needs, small though they were, had to be met. His savings and the Jermyn
Street rent, paid six months in advance, were almost exhausted. The idea
of borrowing from his mother did not appeal; and to let Aliette bear her
part in the "family" expenses was unthinkable.

But even Ronnie failed to realize the full extent of his financial
shipwreck until that afternoon just before Christmas when James
Wilberforce, preannounced by telephone, strode into the duck's-egg-green
paneled chambers, and, having made certain that they could not be
overheard, plumped his long bulk into the dilapidated armchair with a
diffident, "Old chap, I've come on a devilish unpleasant mission."

The barrister did not answer; and after a constrained pause the
solicitor went on, picking each word as though fearful of its giving
offense: "Pater would have come and seen you himself. But he thought,
you and me being pals, that perhaps I'd better be the one. You see,
being your mother's executor, and, so to speak, a friend of the family,
pater's always tried to do everything he could for you----"

"You needn't say any more," interrupted Ronnie. "I quite understand.
You've come to tell me I'm not to expect any further briefs from
Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright."

"Hardly that," prevaricated Jimmy. "But the fact is--you know how I hate
beating about the bush--pater's afraid of offending Brunton. We've got
the big Furlmere divorce case coming on fairly soon. 'Bout the end of
January, I expect. We're pretty high up on the list. Furlmere insisted
on H. B. leading for us. We sent round the brief to him in the usual
way, and of course he had to accept it. But when he took our retainer,
his clerk, that fellow Patterson, hinted--mind you, he only hinted--that
if there were any question of 'a certain gentleman' acting as junior to
him, 'Mr. Brunton' would not appear in court when the case came on."

"But surely you had no idea----"

"Of briefing you as junior? Of course not. I shouldn't be such an
incredible ass. Still, straws show which way the wind blows. And we
simply can't afford to quarrel with H. B. Not till the Furlmere case is
over, anyway."

The friends looked at each other for one silent minute. Outside, a thin
rain had begun to patter on the flagstones. Within the room darkled.
Ronnie clicked on the table-lamp, and began to scrawl with vagrant
pencil on the blotting-paper.

"I'm not quarreling with your position, Jimmy," he said at last. "Tell
your pater I'd do the same if I were he."

Jimmy's voice softened. "Old man, I don't want to interfere. But I do
wish you'd arrange for some mutual friend to see Brunton. Take it from
me, he's going on playing dog-in-the-manger. And he can do you a hell of
a lot of harm."

"Let him!" Ronnie's jaw set. "If this is going to be a fight between us,
it may as well be a fight to a finish. I don't propose asking favors,
even by proxy. If he thinks he's going to succeed in driving me out of
the bar----"

"No one's suggested your leaving the bar. In fact"--Jimmy began to
stammer, as a man making offer of a gift which is almost certain to be
refused--"another thing I came round to see you about was----"

The sentence refused to complete itself: and Jimmy started a new one.
"As you know, our partners, the Cartwrights, do quite a lot of work that
never comes into the High Court at all; criminal stuff, county courts,
and all that sort of thing. If you'd care to accept their briefs----"

Again the sentence refused to complete itself; again the two friends
looked at one another in silence. Then the barrister said:

"A bit of a come-down, isn't it? Almost as bad as 'taking soup.'"

This allusion to the practice of young and briefless barristers, who sit
all day long in the criminal courts waiting their chance to defend any
prisoners that may be allotted to them, made Ronnie's friend squirm.

"Hang it all, it isn't as bad as that. John Cartwright's quite a good
sort. And a big criminal case brings other work. Anyway, think it over,
and let me know." Jimmy rose to go. "And by the way, will you give my
regards to the little lady? Tell her how sorry I am about the whole
thing and that I'm sure it'll all come out right in the long run."

At the door, James Wilberforce turned; and, coming back, extended a
hand. "Buck up, old boy," he mumbled rather shamefacedly.

Left alone, Ronnie sat for a long while, scrawling on the blotting-pad.

"After all," he thought, "it was pretty decent of Jimmy to send Alie
that message. I wonder why he did it. I wonder whether he's still keen
on Mollie. Jolly rough luck on him if he is. Curse that fellow Brunton!
He's stirred up a pretty kettle of fish."

And from that he fell to evil-tempered rumination--in which his
newly-aroused ambition for legal success played no small rôle--finally
deciding, _faute de mieux_, to accept the work offered.




                              CHAPTER XIX


                                   1

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 should _you_ worry 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 she _was_ in 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 Jimmy _would_ ask 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. "_I_
don't want to pry into your secrets. But"--she rustled up from her
chair, and made a movement to begin undressing--"if he _should_ write
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!"


                                   2

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. "_They_ aren'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 where _is_ Ronnie?" 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."


                                   3

"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 why
_should_ one 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 he
_would_ ask 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?"

"To _us_?" 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 something _has_
happened." 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.

"You _are_ beating 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. _I_ think 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 if _you_ married 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? She _is_ an 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 I _could_ manage 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.


                                   4

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.




                               CHAPTER XX


                                   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 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--that _I_ should 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 as _you_ wish."

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.


                                   4

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.




                              CHAPTER XXI


                                   1

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 3:30 P.M."


                                   2

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't _do_ anything, 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 has _your_
son 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, what _can_ I 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?"

"I _have_ told 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.


                                   3

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
take _me_ in there"; and, cutting short the old man's protests, she
bolted.


                                   4

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, he
_would_ tackle 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 does _he_ want?" 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't
_want_ to 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 doing _me_ any 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 tell _me_ I'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,--"you _are_ a 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 strumpet _you_ kept--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 garden _pimp_."

And the senior service, having said considerably more than it intended,
marched out of the door.


                                   5

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."


                                   6

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 she _has_ found
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! How _can_ I 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.




                              CHAPTER XXII


                                   1

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 that _Monsieur_ (who
before the war would have called himself _Herr_) 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.


                                   2

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 that _his_ son 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 you _are_ in 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."




                             CHAPTER XXIII


                                   1

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.


                                   2

Consciously and subconsciously, the success and the _réclame_ of 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, "what _are_ we 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.


                                   3

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.


                                   4

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.


                                   5

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."

"But _I_ love 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."




                              CHAPTER XXIV


                                   1

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.


                                   2

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."


                                   3

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."

"_Please_ don't talk, Mrs. Cavendish," interrupted the doctor's voice.

"You're all right now, mater." Ronnie grasped the situation. "Quite all
right. _I_ know exactly what you want done. _I'll_ tell 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.


                                   4

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. _I_ know. And Alie," a sob tore at his
diaphragm, "it's my fault."

"_Your_ fault?" 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 even _our_ fault.
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'll _make_ her get well."

And with those words, Aliette knew that she had paid a little of her
debt to them both.




                              CHAPTER XXV


                                   1

Miraculously, as it seemed to her comforted son, death stayed its hand
from Julia Cavendish.

For three days and nights of morphia she drowsed away the effects of
that first hemorrhage. Heron Baynet, returning hot-foot to Harley Street
on his secretary's telegram, insisted--despite the fact that he was a
consultant--on ousting Dr. Redbank; on taking over the entire conduct of
the case in person.

A year ago the little keen scientist of the lined face, the fine
forehead, and the shining eye-glasses had suspected, warned, begged his
distinguished patient to let him radiograph her lungs;--mentioned the
possibility of a diabetic complication--advised Switzerland. Now perhaps
his advice, and the one slender chance of life it offered, would be
taken.

"How she tricked me!" he used to ruminate, looking down at the tired
face on the smooth pillow. "How she fought me!" For although in his
heart Sir Heron both pitied and admired this woman whose stubbornness
and stamina had so long eluded his aid, it gave him a certain
satisfaction, not altogether professional, to feel that she would now be
completely in his power. Yet--would she be completely in his power?
Already, on the fourth day of her illness, he sensed the stubbornness
and the false stamina of stubbornness renewing themselves in her;
already he perceived that his medical fight would be two-fold--against
his patient as well as against her disease.

"I suppose you're pleased," she managed to stammer. "You warned me that
this might happen if I refused to take your advice." And after he had
given her the morphia injection, "The less I have of that stuff, the
better. If I'm going to die, I'd rather die with my brain clear."

"You're not going to die yet awhile," retorted the specialist. "Not if
you refrain from talking, lie perfectly still, and get away into the
country as soon as you're fit to be moved."

Julia smiled up at him without moving her head. "I congratulate you on
your bedside manner, Sir Heron, but you needn't be professional with me.
My case is hopeless. It always has been hopeless. You haven't forgotten
our compact, I hope? You won't tell my son or my son's wife more than is
absolutely necessary?"

"Of course I won't tell your son," he humored her; "not if you'll
consent to go to sleep."

"But I don't want to go to sleep."

"Oh yes, you do. Besides, if you go on talking, you'll have another
hemorrhage."

That seemed to frighten her. "Very well," she said, closing her eyes,
for already the morphia was pouring wave on wave of lassitude through
her body. "Very well, I won't talk. Do you think you can manage to keep
me alive for six months? It's rather important. I've got work to do."

Thinking her brain already under the influence of the drug, he humored
her again. "We'll see about that in the morning. Meanwhile I shouldn't
worry. Your daughter-in-law and your secretary between them will be able
to manage quite well until you're up and about again."

"It isn't that sort of work," began Julia Cavendish; and pretended to
fall asleep.

This pretense of falling asleep was a trick, learned from the drug. One
had only, Julia discovered, to pretend sleep, and nurse or doctor left
one entirely alone. Alone with one's dreams. Very curious, very pleasant
dreams hers were, too. All about a book. A book called--Now what had she
intended to call the book?--"Man's--Man's--Man's Law." Yes--that was the
title. If only--one took--enough morphia--one could write--like--like de
Quincey.

"I mustn't let them give me too much, though," thought Julia; and fell
really asleep.


                                   2

For Aliette those first four days of her "mother-in-law's" illness were
almost happy. At Julia's particular request, both lovers had abandoned
the "ridiculous flat," to take up their abode in Bruton Street; and the
sense of self-sacrifice--for it was a sacrifice to abandon the little
home where she had been so safe and face the inevitable difficulties of
her anomalous position in Julia's household--seemed yet another chance
of repaying her debt.

Work (she found enormously to do) saved her from overmuch introspection.
Julia, the feudalist, had never learned domestic decentralization; her
daily secretary, Mrs. Sanderson, a gray-haired gentlewoman with
tortoise-shell spectacles and a diffidence which only just avoided crass
stupidity, had become a typewriter-thumping automaton; her cook was a
mere obedient preparer of ordered meals, and even Kate seemed incapable
of performing the simplest household duty on her own initiative.
Resultantly there devolved on Aliette, seated of a morning in the
novelist's work-room, the manifold activities of a strenuous celebrity,
a housekeeper, a woman of property, and an information bureau. For, of
course, everybody wanted information about the celebrity's health.

The telephone and the telegrams were a curse. The press association
rang, apologetically, twice a day. The Northcliffe press, commandingly,
once. Julia's American publishers cabled almost hourly; and hourly,
scandal for the moment forgotten, one or other of her private
acquaintances quested for news of her. Even Dot Fancourt rallied
gallantly to the receiver. While as for the three other sisters Wixton
and their appanages, one would have imagined them afflicted to the verge
of suicide.

Of an evening, Ronnie helped Aliette to deal with the "family"; but by
day she had to cope with them single-handed. The "family" were never
satisfied with Mrs. Sanderson's report; the "family" demanded to speak
with the hospital nurse; the "family," barred by Sir Heron's
instructions from visiting, demanded to speak with Sir Heron himself.
Soon Aliette began to recognize their voices--Sir John Bentham,
courteous if a little aloof; Lady Clementina, full-throated and fussy;
May Robinson, piteous and protestant out of the depths of St. John's
Wood; Alice Edwards, distantly jovial on the trunk-line from Cheltenham.
"How they must be hating me," Aliette used to think.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Julia--having coaxed permission from
a reluctant nurse--sent down word that her "daughter-in-law" was to come
up.

"You won't stay with her long, will you, ma'am?" said Smithers,
permanently on guard at the bedroom door. (Mysteriously, since Aliette
had moved to Bruton Street, the social sense of the basement had
substituted "ma'am" for Mrs. Ronnie.) "The doctor says the less she
talks, the better."

Aliette passed into the bedroom; and heard a weak voice say, "Leave us
alone please, nurse."

Nurse--a pleasant-faced creature very much impressed at finding herself
in charge of so literary an invalid--made her exit to a stiff rustle of
starched linen. Aliette moved across to the bedside. Sunshine
illuminated the elegance of the room, slanting down in dust-motes from
the three open windows on to the _écru_ pile carpet. Among Julia's
cut-glass toilet-ware on the porphyry Empire wash-table showed none of
the paraphernalia of sickness. The pillow-propped figure on the low
mahogany and gold bedstead seemed, to the visitor, rather that of a
resting than of a dying woman. A frilled boudoir-cap hid Julia's hair; a
padded bed-jacket of crimson silk swathed her shoulders.

"I suppose I gave you all a rare fright," she said, thinking how well
she had staged the little scene.

"We _were_ rather frightened." Aliette took a chair, obviously arranged
for her, at the bedside; and began to talk aimlessly of this and that.

But Julia soon interrupted the aimless phrases. "Are my servants
behaving themselves?" she asked. "Are they making you and Ronnie really
comfortable? I told Smithers to maid you. I hope she's been doing it
properly."

"Beautifully," prevaricated Aliette.

"You're sure you wouldn't rather have your own maid? You could shut up
the flat easily enough. You don't mind coming to live with me, do you?
It's," the weak voice betrayed the first sign of emotion, "it's bound to
be a little difficult for you, but I'm not quite up to running things
myself yet. And Mrs. Sanderson is a fool."

"Of course I don't mind. It's wonderful to feel that I can be of some
use at last."

Aliette did her best to prevent the patient from talking; but Julia
Cavendish, feudalist, wanted to know a thousand domestic details.
Whether cook was being economical? Whether the new kitchen-maid promised
to be a success? If Mrs. Sanderson had remembered to take carbon-copies
of important correspondence? Whether the "family" had been very
troublesome?

"Families are bad enough when one's well. They're impossible in
illness," pronounced Julia. "I'm always glad my husband died abroad. One
day I must tell you about Ronnie's father." She relapsed into silence,
closing her eyes; and Aliette thought she had fallen asleep. But in a
moment the eyes opened again. "Talking of families, my dear, how is your
sister?"

"Mollie? Oh, Mollie's gone back to Devonshire."

"Is she engaged to young Wilberforce?"

"No. I don't think so."

"What a pity!"

The nurse, tapping discreetly, announced it "time for Mrs. Cavendish's
medicine"; and the invalid closed the interview with a weak, "If the
family call, for heaven's sake keep them out of my room."


                                   3

On the seventh day after the hemorrhage, Aliette's ordeal at the hands
of the Wixton family began.

Sir John and his lady, dissatisfied with the meager information afforded
them on the telephone, called in person to insist upon seeing "some one
in authority." But Julia's bell had rung four times during the night,
and nurse was lying down.

"Surely there's a day-nurse?" fussed Clementina.

"No, m'lady. Only Mrs. Ronnie, m'lady." Kate, erect and correct at the
front door, watched the pair of them whisper together; heard them decide
after some hesitation that they would like to see "Mrs. Ronald
Cavendish"; and showed them upstairs into the drawing-room.

Rising to receive her guests, Aliette was humorously aware of Sir John's
discomfort. She could almost read behind his keen brown eyes the
thought, "So this is the little lady there's been all the trouble about,
is it? Rather good-looking. I wonder what the deuce one ought to call
her, Mrs. Cavendish or Mrs. Brunton?"

"How do you do--er--how do you do?" he compromised. "And how is your
illustrious patient? I'm sure it's most kind of you to look after my
sister-in-law. Very kind indeed."

But there was little compromise about the breasted Clementina. _Her_
greeting, _her_ scrutiny, her omission to shake hands, were definitely
hostile. In attitude she resembled nothing so much as a virtuous English
lady visiting the questionable quarter of Cairo. Aliette, her sense of
humor fighting against her resentment, invited the pair of them to sit
down, and offered propitiatory tea.

"Please don't trouble," retorted the female of the species Bentham.
"We've had tea. And besides, we wouldn't think of disturbing you. As a
matter of fact, it was my husband's idea that we should look in for a
moment to get first-hand news about dear Julia. In a few days, I
presume, we shall be able to see her ourselves."

That "dear Julia" made Aliette wholly resentful. "Ronnie's mother," she
began stiffly, observing, not without a certain malicious satisfaction,
how Lady Bentham writhed at the phrase, "is going on as well as we can
possibly expect. But I'm afraid it will be some time before Sir Heron
will allow her to receive visitors."

"But surely her sister----" protested Sir John.

"Not even her sister, I'm afraid," decided Aliette; and Julia, informed
of the Bentham defeat, chuckled audibly.

But the interview, for all Julia's chuckles, left its scar on Aliette's
sensitive pride--as did her talk with May Robinson.

The tea-broker's scrawny widow called two days later in her 1908
Panhard; accepted tea, and stayed for a full three quarters of an hour
gossiping about her sister's symptoms. May, far from being outwardly
hostile, positively beamed with that particular brand of offensive
condescension which only those whose lives are devoted to good works
know how to assume toward "fallen sisters." With her every non-committal
word, the untempted widow contrived to suggest, "Considering what a
thoroughly bad woman you must be, I think it remarkable, entirely
remarkable and praiseworthy, not to say Christian of you, to have given
up your fast life so as to look after my poor dear sister in her
illness." Luckily for May, Paul Flower arrived just in time to prevent
Aliette from losing her temper!

Alice Edwards's visit, however--for reasons that can be imagined, she
did not bring her daughter with her--passed off easily enough. "I never
was any good in a sick-room," said the Anglo-Indian lady brightly.

Followed, to Aliette's surprise, the admiral, who, calling to leave
formal cards, heard that she was at home and insisted upon seeing her.
The sailor only stayed his Victorian quarter of an hour; managed,
however, although Aliette did her best to restrain him, to thrust a good
Georgian foot into the conversational plate with his "That boy of mine's
putting you in a rotten position, me dear. But it ain't my fault."

"Billy," Aliette, seeing his sorrowful face, could not refrain from
laughing, "you've got no tact. Of course I know it isn't your fault.
I've never really thanked you for what you tried to do for me."

"Me dear," retorted the admiral, "it's no laughing matter. Honestly, I'm
sorry I ever sired the fellow. But never you mind; just you keep your
courage up, and it'll all come out right in the long run."

"I'm keeping my courage up all right," said Aliette, still laughing;
for, somehow or other, Julia's illness had made her own affairs seem
rather petty.


                                   4

After ten days of bed, the patient insisted on seeing Mrs. Sanderson.

"Sir Heron advises a few months in the country," she told that
secretarial automaton. "I shall take a furnished house; the bigger the
better. You'd better write to Hampton's and ask for particulars. It
mustn't be more than forty miles from town, so that my son can run down
for week-ends. You'll have to come with me, and I shall take all the
servants."

"Sir Heron says we must humor her," said Aliette, consulting Ronnie over
dinner. "He says that if she wants a big house, she must have a big
house. Nurse seems to think Sussex would be the best place."

"But, Alie, is she really fit to be moved?"

"Sir Heron says he wouldn't risk it with any one else, but that with her
constitution it's the best thing we can do."

Ronnie agreed. His mother's recovery appeared so rapid, her good spirits
were so infectious, that he had already persuaded himself of her
ultimate cure. Of the diabetic complication, definitely diagnosed at
last, neither he nor Aliette was informed, nurse and specialist being
alike constrained to secrecy by a patient whose brain had begun to
function so masterfully, even under the reduced doses of morphia, that
they were afraid to cross her will.

For now that the hemorrhage had eliminated all possibility of
self-deception from her imagination; now that she realized--despite Sir
Heron's confident reassurances--how at the best she could only live two
years, at the worst a bare six months, the plan, the final plan for
Aliette's release, had taken concrete shape in Julia's brain.
Wilberforce's revelations about the Carrington case had stuck in her
memory. Carrington, according to Wilberforce, had been broken by the
press. She, Julia, wielded a more enduring weapon.

It was strange, very strange, to lie there, on one's own bed, surrounded
by one's own cherished furniture; and knowing one's self doomed, yet
know one's self capable of wielding a weapon--could one but forge
it--which would outlast death itself. Yet could she, an ill woman, a
woman who had never known the financial need for working swiftly, hope
to forge her weapon, her sword of the written word, within six months?
"Yes," she decided, ruminating one late afternoon behind the warm
darkness of closed eyelids, "yes, it can just be done."

There and then she wanted to begin. Then and there, opening her eyes,
she attempted to untuck the bedclothes. But her arms, weak, almost
powerless, refused their task. Even as she moved them, the ghost of a
remembered pain stabbed at her left lung; and, frightened by remembrance
of past agony, she desisted. "Not yet," she thought, "not yet. I must
rest for another week, perhaps for another fortnight. Fresh air might
cure these lungs of mine, and make me well again. What a fool I am to
deceive myself! That must be the consumption. Consumption always cheats
its victims with the hope of life."

And she fell to remembering Aubrey Beardsley, to comparing herself with
him, to conjuring up mental pictures of his "handkerchief-parties," as
he used to call them, when he would break off in the midst of some gay
anecdote, rush--silk pressed to mouth--from the room, and return, gayer
than ever, to carry on the game of make-believe with his cronies.
"Brave!" mused Julia, "but I mustn't be brave like that. For Ronnie's
sake I must husband every ounce of my strength. Above all, I must find a
house in the country."

The taking of that country-house, even though it had to be accomplished
by proxy, served in no small way to distract her mind from gloomier
thoughts. Mrs. Sanderson's inquiry had brought many answers, and Julia
used to sit up in bed of a morning, her secretary in attendance, buff
"particulars" from the house-agent's littered like cards on the heavily
embroidered eiderdown. These perused, she would send for Aliette. "Take
a car," she used to say. "Charge it to my account. The brougham's too
slow for long journeys. This lot," handing over a packet of slips, "look
as though they might do. All the rest are hopeless."

For the best part of a week, Aliette motored about the southern
counties. April was almost May; the blossomed countryside a dream of
green and white beauty. Rushing lonely through the sunlit air, hedges,
fields, and orchards streaming by, it seemed impossible that any
breathing creature should be near to death. Her mood expanded to the
expanding summer, so that she forgot her personal troubles, too, in the
sheer fun of her quest, and enjoyed every minute of it, from the
setting-out of midday to the evening consultations with her
"mother-in-law" and Ronnie about the places she had seen.

Finally, their choice narrowed itself down to two places--one, a modern
mansion perched high on the slopes that overlook Reigate and Dorking;
the other, an old-fashioned brown stone house roofed with great slabs of
Sussex slate, midway between Horsham and the sea.

"Let it be Sussex," decided Julia; and to Daffadillies, as the brown
stone house called itself, some fortnight later, they went.


                                   5

Even to die in, Daffadillies was marvelous. No roads, save the one road
through the woodlands by which the recumbent Julia and her nurse
motored, gave access to that great house set high above terraced
gardens. On three sides of it--east, west, and north--great oaks baffled
the winds; southward were no trees, only slope on slope of field and
farm-land, ramparted in middle distance by the bosoming downs.

Day-long, the wise brown southward-gazing face of Daffadillies trapped
the sunshine in its high gabled windows; day-long, whiffs of the
sparkling sea blew tempered across twenty miles of kindly earth into
that vast oak-floored room, with the four-poster bed and the Jacobean
furniture, which Aliette at her very first visit had mentally chosen for
the invalid.

In that Sussex home quiet reigned like a sleeping princess. The
balustered staircases gave back scarcely a sound to the sedulous feet of
Julia'a serving-women. Neither from the brown-paneled dining-room nor
from the book-lined library could any whisper of voice arise to where,
had she so willed it, the invalid might have dreamed away her summer in
country peace, hearing only the swish and click of the mower on the
tennis-lawn, the snap and cut of gardeners' shears among the
shrubberies.

But it was not for dreams, rather for their accomplishment, that Julia
had taken Daffadillies. Aliette, bringing Ponto on the evening train,
found her in the highest fettle, curiously awake.

"My dear," she smiled, "this place is ideal. Ideal! You've done
wonders."

"Then the journey didn't tire you?"

"Not a bit. I feel quite well. So well, in fact, that I've told nurse
she needn't sleep in my room to-night."

"But suppose you were taken ill?"

"I sha'n't be taken ill." Something of the old mastery was back in
Julia's voice. "If I am, I can always ring for Smithers." And she
touched the two electric pushes, one for the light and the other for the
bell, which nurse had arranged under her pillow; smiling at her own
astuteness when--her morphia refused--the watchers withdrew for the
night. Then she waited, ears tense, eyes wide open, heart throbbing in
anticipation of its deed.

Smithers, acting on instructions, had set out her writing-things on the
desk under the vast curtained window. A night-light burned on the
bed-table. Across the glow of the night-light she saw her traveling
ink-pot, the gold pen which Ronnie had given her for Christmas, the
leather manuscript-box with its store of foolscap and sharpened pencils.

"Was it safe to begin?" If only she could be certain that nurse and
Smithers were in bed.

At last she heard the pair of them whispering to one another in the
corridor; at last she heard them separate, heard their doors close; and
after yet another interminable quarter of an hour the house grew utterly
quiet.

"Now," she said to herself, "now"; and very carefully, very quietly,
very fearful of waking the woman in the next room, her wasted hands
untucked the bedclothes. Very quietly her wasted limbs released
themselves from the sheets; very quietly her feet touched the carpet.
Then, surreptitious as a schoolboy breaking bounds--a tottering figure
of courage in her cambric nightgown,--she stole toward her desk.

She could never reach that desk! She felt her legs, weak after their
unaccustomed effort, wobble under her like loose springs. The dim room
spun. A breeze rustled the cretonne curtains, chilling her to the bone,
terrifying her for her own frailty. Quivering, she reached the desk;
clung to it. The dim room ceased its spinning. Quivering still, she took
two blocks of manuscript-paper from the leather-lined basket; and
tottered back to the bed.

Pencils! She had forgotten to bring pencils. She must go back--all those
miles from her bed to her desk, from her desk to her bed. She tottered
to the desk. It seemed as though she would never win her way back to the
safety of those distant sheets, those distant pillows.

Somehow, the pencils clutched in her trembling fingers, she had reached
the bed. Faintness overwhelmed her. The weak wire springs that were her
limbs sank under the weight of her body. Her body was a flaccid torment,
sinking down by the bed. Her heart yearned to give up its struggle. Her
brain told her to ring for Smithers. Smithers would lift her gently, so
gently, put her to rest between those waiting sheets.

Somehow she had climbed into bed; somehow she had covered her aching
body. On the eiderdown, two oblong patches of white, lay the paper.

For a full five minutes, exhausted, fearful with a thousand fears, Julia
Cavendish watched those two white oblongs. But gradually her fears
subsided. Gradually her brain conquered the exhaustion of her body.

She began to think, as literary craftsfolk think, in words. "'Man's
Law,'" she thought; "'The story of a great wrong.' I wonder if I need
that second title."

The night-light sputtered, expired. Sleep began to beat, soft-winged, on
her eyelids. Her brain fought with sleep in the darkness, fought sleep
away from her.

Wide-eyed in the silent darkness she thought, "I must have light--light
for the forging of my weapon." Her hands groped for the two electric
pushes under her pillow; found them. Her hands panicked lest they should
press the bell-push in mistake, and so waken Smithers. Her hands
remembered the light-switch pear-shaped. She drew the light-switch from
under the pillow; pressed it.

Light glinted on Julia Cavendish's wasted hands, on the virgin
manuscript-blocks and the sharpened pencils, on the runkled bed and the
wadded jacket at bed-foot. Painfully she reached for the jacket;
painfully, afraid for her lung, she managed to drape it about her
shoulders; painfully she arranged a pillow to prop her back; painfully
she took paper, a pencil; and, drawing up her knees to support the
manuscript-block, began.

"God," she prayed, "give me strength for the forging of this last
weapon."

                  *       *       *       *       *

It seemed to Julia Cavendish that she had scarcely set pencil to paper
when the first bird-twitter from dewy lawns warned her to abandon work;
to make, once again, that supreme effort from bed to desk, from desk to
bed; to smooth away with trembling fingers all signs of her
surreptitious task, and lay herself down to get what sleep she might
before Smithers brought her morning medicine.




                              CHAPTER XXVI


                                   1

Only those who have tended their loved ones through long illnesses know
how at such times hour slides into hour, eventless save for the notches
on the temperature-chart, for the slight recoveries or the slight
relapses of the patient, for the doctor's cautious warnings or the
nurse's hopeful cheeriness; how wary nights are but the interludes
between weary days.

But night after night at Daffadillies, while her watchers slept,
unwearied and warier than they, Julia's brain clocked away its eventful
hours; and dawn after wakeful dawn her weary hands added their
carefully-hidden sheets to the pile of penciled manuscript in the
leather-lined basket.

"Nurse," she used to say of a morning, "I haven't slept quite as well as
usual. After I've had my breakfast I think a little doze would do me
good." After lunch, too, she liked to doze, and sometimes even after
tea. "It's the best thing for her," said nurse. "She's getting better.
Quite soon she'll be able to get up."

And indeed to all of them, not only to nurse, but to Smithers and Mrs.
Sanderson, to Aliette and to Ronnie, who came down every week-end with
better and better news of the work for which John Cartwright had briefed
him, it seemed as though eventually she must get well. Already she
talked of returning to Bruton Street for the autumn, of wintering on the
Riviera. "That hemorrhage," she pronounced, "was a blessing in disguise.
This rest is doing me the good in the world. I feel like a
two-year-old."

Her assumed high spirits deceived everybody. Even Sir Heron Baynet, who
motored down one evening, felt the slender chance possible. "Let her get
up," he told Aliette over dinner. "Let her come downstairs if she feels
like it."

But Julia, on that first visit, refused to get up. She and she alone at
Daffadillies knew, with that mysterious prescience of the doomed, that
death had only consented to stand off for a period; that only by
husbanding every ounce of her strength could she hope to run the full
race with him. So far, in that race, she was well ahead. But inevitably
there would be setbacks, stumbles and faintings, when death would close
up his distance.

It was a fascinating race, yet terrible--this secret course which she
and her pencil ran nightly, for her son's sake, against the ultimate
doom. Times came when she tasted the very foreknowledge of victory;
times when despondency took her by the shrunken throat, when it seemed
as though not even the supremest effort of her pencil could outrun those
cellules of consumption, those tiny implacable burrowers into the
shrinking lung-tissue, which spored with every breath she drew.

Once for twenty-four whole hours she relapsed into black despair. "Man's
Law"--so alive through so many wonderful nights--was dead in her brain.
Her body, too, was dying. She would perish, leaving her sword unforged,
Ronnie's Gordian knot unsevered.

Then, and then only, did Julia Cavendish decide to get up.

"I feel I need some distraction," she told Sir Heron on his next visit.
"A little literary work. It'll take my mind off things. Just a few rough
notes for a new book."

The physician, after much protest, yielded; and next afternoon Julia,
duly dressed by the adoring Smithers and helped to a cushioned chair at
the window by a proud nurse, sent for Aliette, who came bringing a great
armful of flowers from the garden, and--Aliette gone--for Mrs.
Sanderson, to whom, under pledge of secrecy and with the threat of
instant dismissal should the secret be revealed, she confided the
penciled contents of her manuscript-box.


                                   2

May drifted into June. Forty miles away London seethed with strikes,
with rumors of a general election, and with Hector Brunton's viciously
victorious prosecution of three fraudulent bank directors. At
Daffadillies brooded peace.

Once more, typed, "Man's Law" grew alive. Once more, by daylight now,
Julia ran her race with death. From half-past ten to half-past one she
would sit at her desk by the open window--resentful of the faintest
noise, of the slightest interruption, resentful even of the medicines
which kept those tiny cellules at bay. At half-past one would come Mrs.
Sanderson, her face an unhappy mask; then lunch; and, lunch over, sleep.
Every afternoon nurse and Smithers would carry the invalid down the wide
staircase to take tea with Aliette and Ponto, either in the book-shelved
morning-room, or under the big cedar, whose branches just shadowed the
base-line of the tennis-court.

At those tea-parties Julia was curiously inquisitive. Habitually she
would steer conversation into personal channels, putting question after
question to Aliette--about her marriage with Hector, about her family,
about her elopement; till it seemed to the younger woman, shrinking from
the frankness of those questions, as though the elder were striving to
probe every secret of her life. But the probing was never unkindly; and
after Julia had retired to her room, Aliette, lonely in the hush of
Sussex sunsets that splashed warm gold on the gabled brown of the great
house, mused much for love of this marvelously valiant old lady whose
very valiance had beaten down death.

For actually, listening to the courage in Julia's voice, it was
impossible to imagine that voice forever silent. Even the second
hemorrhage, so slight that only the patient divined its full
significance, failed to dissipate Aliette's confidence.

Those nights, Hector's wife dreamed no more of Hector. Her dreams were
all of Ronnie; of Ronnie, solitary from Monday night to Friday in the
ridiculous flat where Caroline Staley still tended his sparse
requirements; of Ronnie, very loving, very confident of ultimate
success.

Latterly more than one important case--cases that brought publicity
rather than fees--had been put in Ronnie's way; and Julia, reading his
name in the papers, would gloat a little, seeing him already famous.

With her son, too, whenever he visited them, Julia had grown curiously
inquisitive, cross-examining him by the hour together about the work he
had done during the week, about the intricacies of the law, about
various prominent members of his profession. But when he grew
inquisitive about her work, Ronnie's mother always pleaded tiredness.

"I'm only playing at things," she used to say. "Don't worry me to tell
you about my scribbling."


                                   3

The love of a man for a woman, and of a woman for her mate are very
blind, very selfish, when compared with the love of a mother for her
son. Every week, as June flamed into July, as her fears for Julia
subsided, as the fret of London dwindled into memory and the country
wove its soothing spells more and more surely about her consciousness;
every week-end when she drove to welcome her lover at the little wayside
station which served Daffadillies, Aliette grew more and more radiant,
more and more akin to the woman of a year ago, the woman whose kisses
had made paradise of Chilworth Cove.

Here, under the ramparting downs, even as then by the creaming beaches,
no harsh breeze from the outer world blew cold to wither the crimson
flowers of their lonely happiness. Even as at Chilworth, no strangers
came nigh them. Friends, acquaintances, her chagrined family--Julia
banned them all. The rare visitors from neighboring places had to
content their curiosity with leaving cards. The press, satisfied of
convalescence, left them undisturbed. Miraculously the telephone had
ceased to ring.

So while in the high rooms and on the smooth lawns of Daffadillies Julia
worked undistracted, glad that her loved ones, all unknowing what they
did, should make high holiday, Ronnie and Aliette, careless of Hector,
careless of scandal, careless of ostracism, played man and wife: until,
since no word, no thought, no living creature reminded them of reality,
their play grew truth and they forgot.

In this, their second honeymoon-time, their second oasis of make-believe
in the desert of unmarried life, Daffadillies became very "Joyous Gard,"
love's castle whence they rode out together--every week-end--on hired
nags--into fairyland. Southward to the downs or eastward into the weald
they rode; and wonderful it was once again to feel even hired horseflesh
under them, to recapture for ecstatic moments on swift scurries across
sheep-bitten turf the mad inexplicable bliss of their first meeting long
and long ago in the hunting-field.

"Man, if only hounds ran in summertime," Aliette would laugh, and crack
a playful whip at Ponto lolloping, stern high, beside them.

For if the man and the woman were happy, the huge hound was in his
seventh heaven. The great house suited him. His harlequin shape might
have been bred to match the gleam and shadows of those stone terraces
where--coat silken from the chamois-leather, slitty eyes somnolent yet
watchful--he basked in sunshine or bayed the moon till Aliette, fearful
for the invalid's comfort, drove him to the stables.

In "Joyous Gard" even Dennis and Etta were forgotten. How could Aliette
desire dream-children or any children so long as her present happiness
endured? To feel that Ronnie still cared, that the mere touch of her
hand could still kindle in him the flames of their early passion; to
realize herself responsible for his mother's comfort; to know that at
last she was being of real service to both of them--these things
sufficed the woman.

But the man, subconsciously, still yearned for material success, for the
prizes of his profession, for the fame and the emoluments of it. At the
woman's touch not only passion but ambition kindled him. If only once,
just once, he could meet and defeat, snatch a forensic victory from the
"hanging prosecutor."


                                   4

Once again, as July sped, Julia Cavendish stumbled in her race with
death. The sustained effort of the past weeks had exhausted her
vitality. Her brain wearied of its weapon-forging; and for a week she
stayed it from the anvil.

But her brain, once released from its secret task, felt the impulse--as
is the habit of creative brains--to burden itself with other tasks. The
imaginative power, no longer under definite control, grew fearful,
painting devils on every wall. She summoned Sir Heron Baynet from
London, questioned and cross-questioned him about her disease. "You're a
mind-specialist, _inter alia_?" was one of her questions. "Tell me, do
you believe that a healthy mind can triumph over an unhealthy body?"

"It depends on the quality of the mind," Sir Heron humored her. "In your
own case, I should say that the sheer will to be cured has done more
than all my drugs. But don't overdo the work."

That--since all she now lived for was to bring her work to its
conclusion--frightened her but the more. Torn between the desire for
work and the fear lest, overworking, she should too soon pay the
inevitable penalty, she drove her brain once more to the
anvil--hammering, hammering, hammering at her sword of the written word
till even Mrs. Sanderson dared to protest with her.

"Your business is to type, not to argue," said Julia grimly; and once
again, openly this time, she began to work o' nights--so that it was a
novelist nearer than she had ever been to a nervous breakdown who said
to her "daughter-in-law" one afternoon as they took their tea in the
book-shelved morning-room overlooking the rain-dripped magnificence of
the herbaceous borders: "I wonder if I ought to have my family down.
They'll be a frightful nuisance, and I sha'n't be able to scribble while
they're here. All the same, one has one's duties----"

"I think your first duty is to get quite well," smiled the
"daughter-in-law.''

"Perhaps you're right, child." Nervously Julia's tired mind broached
another of its secret anxieties. "And _your_ family? Don't you ever feel
the need of them?"

"Mollie wrote last week," answered Aliette, burking the main question.

"Yes, but your father, your mother, that other sister of yours? Don't
you ever wish that they'd see reason; that they knew the exact truth;
that somebody could tell them the inside story of your married life?"
The questions came abruptly from the shawled figure in the easy chair.

"Sometimes. Not that the truth would influence mother. Mother was a
Roman Catholic, you know, before she married."

"Ah! I'd nearly forgotten that. It's important, very important,
because----" Julia, as though she had said too much, checked herself,
leaving the other rather mystified. "Still," she went on, "your mother
isn't a Roman Catholic now. She'd forgive you if there were a divorce,
if you married my son?"

"Yes. I suppose so." The younger woman brushed away the topic. "But
mother and I never cared for one another as you and Ronnie care. Mollie
and I were the pals in our family."

"Quite so." A sudden plan formulated itself in Julia's troubled brain.
"It must be lonely for you down here," she said after a pause. "Wouldn't
you like to have your sister Mollie to stay for a week?"

"But wouldn't she be a nuisance?"

"No. I like having young people about me, and besides, I've a
reason----"

Again, as though fearful of betraying herself, Julia checked speech. But
the next day and the next, work finished, her mind reverted to its plan.

"We might invite young Wilberforce, too," she suggested when Ronnie came
down on the Saturday. "That would make you four for tennis."

"And two for match-making," retorted Ronnie, entirely unsuspicious of
his mother's real motive.




                             CHAPTER XXVII


                                   1

Jimmy's two-seater was suffering from one of its usual breakdowns. That
red-haired young man, instructing his porter to put his bag into a
first-class smoker, had no idea of the coil woven about his destiny.
Ronnie he had not seen for some weeks; Julia's letter to his firm
requesting that "Mr. Wilberforce, Jr., should, if possible, come down
and see me" conveyed an invitation to stay the Friday night, but no hint
of Mollie's presence at Daffadillies.

Nevertheless, as he watched Victoria Station slide past the lowered
windows, the solicitor's thoughts visualized a girl whose letters from
Clyst Fullerford showed all too plainly that she meant to insist,
despite her love for him, on Aliette's divorce preceding her own
marriage. Jimmy had written that girl only a week since, begging
her--"for the absolutely last time of asking"--to be reasonable. But the
veiled threat brought only the inevitable reply, "You mustn't ask me
that. It wouldn't be fair to Alie."

He had apologized for his veiled threat; but the reply to it still
rankled. "Really," thought the junior partner in Wilberforce,
Wilberforce & Cartwright, "it's getting a bit too thick. I've told her
over and over again that I don't care _what_ her sister does. As far as
I am concerned, she can go on living with Cavendish till the cows come
home. But when it comes to that dear little idiot insisting that I
should arrange my prospective sister-in-law's divorce before my own
marriage--well, it's enough to try the temper of the lord chief!"

Though temperamentally incapable of a grand passion, the solicitor had
long ceased to regard matrimony, in his own particular and individual
case, as an unsentimental contract. He wanted the girl; and "Dash it
all," he decided, "this thing's got to stop. If necessary, I'll have to
run down to Devonshire. I can't wait much longer. She's asking too much
of a chap. _I_ can't settle this affair of her sister's. Nobody _can_
settle it except H. B. And H. B.'s as obstinate as a mule. Bit of a cad
is H. B. Clever devil, though; I wish I had his income."

Ruminating thus, James Wilberforce made Horsham Junction; changed
trains; and arrived, still ruminating, at West Water.

"Here, you," he called to the solitary porter, "is there a conveyance of
any sort from Daffadillies?"

"Yes, sir. There's a motor; and two ladies, sir."

For a moment, Jimmy's eyes refused to recognize the two lone figures by
the ticket-collector's gate of the little wayside platform: Aliette in a
dove-gray coat and skirt, floppy straw shading her eyes; and Mollie,
hatless, gloveless, almost too obviously unperturbed at his approach.
Then, conquering surprise, he took off his hat; shook hands; and was
whisked into the tonneau of a dusty car before he could collect his
wits.

"Astonished, Jimmy?" smiled the girl, still outwardly unperturbed, as
Aliette, hardly restraining a sly chuckle of amusement, climbed up
beside the driver.

"I certainly didn't expect----"

"To find me here." Imperturbability gave place to diffidence. "I didn't
know _you_ were coming down till an hour ago. Perhaps, if I had known, I
shouldn't have come."

"That's a jolly remark to one's fiancé."

"I'm not your fiancée."

They were within two miles of Daffadillies before Jimmy ventured his
next remark. "Then you haven't changed your mind, dear?"

"Certainly not. And, Jimmy--please behave yourself."

The man--his slight caress eluded--fell into a sulky silence. "Devilish
awkward position," he decided--thought of his father's baronetcy, and of
the social responsibilities entailed on a family solicitor, weighing
heavily on his Philistine mind--"women _are_ the devil!" He felt that he
had been trapped; first, into foregathering with Aliette, a situation he
had done his best to avoid since the scandal; secondly, into a scene
with Mollie; and thirdly, into yet another discussion with that very
resolute old lady, Julia Cavendish, about her son's matrimonial
troubles.

Nevertheless, the drive soothed him; and by the time they made the stone
lodge and the eagle-crowned pillars of the great house, the
prospect--scene or no scene--of twenty-four hours in Mollie's company
outweighed all other considerations. Moreover, it seemed impossible to
associate the foursquare magnificence and tree-girt terraces of
Daffadillies with any form of scandal!

"And how _is_ Mrs. Cavendish?" he remembered to ask Aliette, as they
alighted. "Bucking up, one hears."

"She's ever so much better. She's in the garden to-day."


                                   2

It is one of the tragedies of a long illness that those who live in
daily contact with it fail to perceive the changes wrought in their
loved one.

James Wilberforce, as he made his way through the long hall and out of
the French windows, down the stone steps on to the south lawns, was
horrified at the first sight of his client. Only two days since he had
read of her, somewhere or other, as "well on her way to recovery."
Nearing the shawled figure in the long chair under the cedar-tree, he
knew the full inaccuracy of that bulletin. Julia Cavendish had shrunk to
a merest vestige of the woman he remembered. The hand she extended to
him seemed so frail that he hardly dared clasp it. The gray hair was
nearly white; the sunken cheeks hectic; the bloodless lips tremulous.
Only in her eyes shone the old dominance.

"Ronnie's coming down by the evening train," said the semblance of his
old client. "We're wondering if you'll stay the week-end." A servant
whom Jimmy remembered to have seen at Bruton Street brought silver
tea-things, a table, a cake-stand, and a hot-water-bottle for the
invalid's feet. "My daughter-in-law coddles me," she told him, as
Aliette arranged the hot-water-bottle on the foot-rest of the chair and
retucked an eiderdown round the thin knees. "But I don't grumble. It's
so splendid to feel one's getting well again."

The pathos of that last remark brought tears very close to Jimmy's eyes.

But once Julia had been carried into the house by nurse and Smithers,
the young man in the town clothes forgot all about her. He wanted to be
alone with Mollie--and the "Brunton woman," confound her, refused to
leave them alone.

That tea-time, James Wilberforce learned yet another lesson, to wit, the
exact meaning of our ancient saw, "one man's meat is another man's
poison." To him Aliette, the exquisite Aliette, was a bore, a nuisance,
an interloper. He had never pretended to like Mollie's sister. Now
positively he loathed her. Had it not been for the old lady's
"daughter-in-law"--Daughter-in-law, forsooth. Why, damn it all, the
position was a public disgrace!

Irritably surveying both sisters, Jimmy speculated why on earth Ronald
Cavendish should have jeopardized his career for any one so utterly
insipid as Aliette. She _was_ insipid, compared with Mollie. Except for
her hair. And that, in the sunlight, was red. A rotten red! (Jimmy, like
most red-haired people, could not bear the color in others.) As for the
pale complexion and the carefully modulated, rather shy voice, he,
personally, found them tiresome.

"If only she'd go," he thought; and, at last, making the excuse that it
was time for her to meet Ronnie's train, the "Brunton woman," still
chuckling, went.

"Isn't Alie a dear?" said Alie's sister, following her with her eyes
across the lawn. "Isn't Hector a beast?" And again James Wilberforce was
troublesomely aware of his own selfishness.

"What did you think of Mrs. Cavendish?" went on the girl after a pause.
"I've only met her once before. She seems rather--rather thin, don't you
think?"

"She _is_ rather thin," prevaricated Jimmy.

"But you do think she's going to get well, don't you?"

"Let's hope so."

For both the new-comers had seen, though neither of them could speak it,
the truth about Julia; and in the light of that truth, their own
troubles seemed petty. They didn't want even to speak of themselves.
With their eyes, they said to one another: "Not now. Not here. Not just
under her windows." With their lips, till Ronnie and Aliette arrived,
they made pretense. "She'll get well," they said, sheering away, by
mutual consent, from every personal topic.

And this game of make-believe--which only good breeding enabled them to
play--endured all through the dinner of which those four partook (Mrs.
Sanderson and the hospital-nurse mealed alone) in the paneled room whose
heavy gold-framed pictures looked down across vast spaces on the pale
oval pool of the candle-lit dining table.

But Ronnie, even taking part in the game, seemed distrait,
self-absorbed. Dinner finished and the sisters gone, he poured himself a
second glass of port; and, extracting a piece of carefully-clipped
newsprint from his waistcoat-pocket, handed it across the table.

"Tell me," he said, "of whom does this remind you?"

James Wilberforce took the proffered paper and scrutinized it carefully
before replying: "Well--it's a little like----"

"Like Aliette." Ronnie's self-absorption passed in a flash. "My dear
chap, it's the very image of her. Look at those eyes, that mouth. I tell
you I got the shock of my life when I opened the 'Evening News' on my
way down to-night."

"Really--and who is the lady? Lucy Towers, eh! Screen-star, I suppose."

"Screen-star, you blithering idiot; she's just been arrested for
murder."

"By Jove!" Jimmy, whose wits had been wool-gathering, skimmed through
the paragraph underneath the photo, and handed it back without further
comment. His friend's excitement over the vague resemblance to
Aliette--for that Ronnie was excited, quite uncontrollably excited, even
the love-lorn solicitor could now see--appeared, to say the least of it,
peculiar.

"Jimmy," went on the barrister, his eyes shining, "I'll swear that
woman's no murderess."

"You'd better offer to defend her then."

"Wouldn't I like the chance! Look here,"--another newspaper-cutting
emerged from Ronnie's pocket,--"that's the chap she's alleged to have
murdered. Her husband, apparently. A nice-looking blackguard, too. As
far as I can make out, there's another person under arrest for
complicity. A man----"

"_Crime passionel_, eh?"

"Possibly." Ronnie folded up both the cuttings and put them carefully
back into his pocket. "And from the look of the late Mr. Towers, I can't
say they're either of them much to blame." He relapsed into silence; and
James Wilberforce realized, in a rare flash of psychological
illumination, whither the chance remark had led his excited imagination.

"Talking of murder," he said suddenly. "What would happen if I were to
put a bullet into H. B.? There's been many a time when I've wanted to.
It makes me mad to feel that that man, or any man, has the power to deny
a woman her freedom. It's sheer slavery--our marriage system."

"What the dickens is the matter with you to-night?" James Wilberforce
had risen, and placed a restraining hand on his friend's shoulder.

"I'm bothered if I know. Seeing that photograph got on my nerves, I
suppose. Funny things--nerves. I never knew what they were till--Hello,
what the hell's that?" A bell shrilled loud and long above their heads.
"The mater's bell. I hope to Christ there's nothing wrong."

Ronnie sprang from his chair, and they waited a moment or so--as those
in invalids' houses do wait on sudden summonses.

But the bell did not ring again, and after a little while appeared
Smithers with the news that "Mrs. Cavendish would be very grateful if
Mr. Wilberforce would go up and see her, alone, for a few minutes."


                                   3

"I hope you've finished dinner?" Julia Cavendish lay, like a queen in
state, on the smoothed bed. To the eyes of James Wilberforce, puzzling
their way here and there about the subdued light of the room, she looked
almost herself again. "You didn't mind my sending for you?"

"Not in the very least. Isn't that what I came down for?" The solicitor,
unpleasantly self-conscious of his own physical bulk, sat down awkwardly
beside the weak form on the bed.

The invalid dismissed her nurse. She had intended to postpone
Wilberforce's interview till the next morning, to work an hour or so.
But her mind was in one of its peculiar turmoils. To any other listener,
the tremor in her voice alone would have betrayed the importance, to her
plans, of the forthcoming talk.

"I ought to have sent for your father, I suppose," she began. "Have you
brought the will with you?"

"Yes. It's in my room. Shall I go and get it?"

"No. There's a copy on my desk. Do you mind handing it to me?"

Obeying, James Wilberforce asked: "Is there anything you want altered?"

"Well--no--not exactly. But tell me, suppose I _did_ want to make
certain alterations, would it be necessary for you to draw up an
entirely new document, or would this one do?"

"If it was only a minor alteration," said Jimmy, quite unconscious of
the thought at the back of his client's head, "we could execute a
codicil."

"A codicil." She played with the word. "That's a kind of postscript,
isn't it?"

"More or less. But, of course, a codicil has to be properly witnessed."
Wilberforce went on to explain the law of last wills and testaments at
some length; and the invalid listened carefully. She appeared curiously
inquisitive on the subject. and he humored her inquisitiveness till
nurse, returning with medicine-glass and bottle, interrupted their
conversation.

"I'm sure you're tired," said nurse. "I'm sure you ought to let me
settle you down for the night."

"I sha'n't go to sleep for at least another hour. I've a great deal to
discuss."

The nurse, realizing the patient in her stubbornest mood, left them
alone again; and Julia, apparently satisfied on the subject of her will,
began to talk of Ronnie. What did Mr. Wilberforce think of her son's
chances at the criminal bar? What hopes were there, in Mr. Wilberforce's
opinion, of Brunton's being forced to take action? Would publicity, for
instance, the kind of publicity Belfield had used against Carrington,
help?

"I shouldn't worry about that till you're better." Jimmy strove to be
cheerful.

"But I do worry about it."

"Why? It's only a question of time. H.B.'s bound to come round in the
long run."

"I doubt that." Dropped lashes veiled the interest in Julia's eyes. "Not
without considerable pressure. He's a cruel man; and if he doesn't want
to marry again, I'm afraid there's very little hope. That's why----" She
grew thoughtful, silent. Then a new idea seemed to cross her mind. "If
he doesn't bring his divorce soon, he won't be able to bring one at all,
will he?"

"That depends." Wilberforce laughed. "Divorce judges don't want to know
too much in undefended cases."

"That's good." Julia, her mind now more or less at rest about its main
problem, lay back among her pillows. So far, apprehensive lest the
solicitor should discover her secret, she had gone subtly to work. But
there was no subtlety about her next speech:

"Mr. Wilberforce, I suppose you know I'm going to die?"

The directness of those words dumbed Jimmy. Only after the greatest
difficulty could he manage the conventional prevarication: "We all of us
have to die some day."

"I'm too tired for clichés." The woman on the bed smiled superciliously,
whimsically almost. "Death, in my case, is a very near certainty. That's
a privileged communication." She smiled again. "You won't tell my son or
my daughter-in-law, will you?"

Not knowing how to reply, the man held his peace; and after a little
while Julia Cavendish continued: "When the end comes, it will be your
father's duty as my executor to go through my papers. I'll telegraph for
him if my mind is still clear. But he may not arrive in time. I'd have
sent for him to-night instead of for you, if I hadn't been afraid of,"
she hesitated, "frightening people. I want you to give your father this
message. Memorize it carefully, please. Tell him that there will be a
letter for him--either for him or for you--I haven't yet made up my mind
which. It depends on--on certain circumstances."

With an effort, the frail form raised itself from the pillow and leaned
forward. Even in the subdued light, James Wilberforce could see the
pearls of sweat beading his client's forehead. Her hands showed
blue-white on the sheets. Her blue eyes were an imploring question. "The
instructions in that letter will be a sacred trust. Will you give me
your promise, your personal promise, that they shall be carried out?"

"Of course, Mrs. Cavendish." Jimmy, moved to a great compassion, took
one of the blue-white hands in his own strong clasp. "You can rely upon
me."

"Thank you. I can sleep now."

He released her hand; and Julia subsided, eyes closed, among her
pillows.

For a moment, Jimmy was terrified. "She's going to die," he thought.
"She's going to die to-night!"

But the eyes opened again; and it seemed to Jimmy that they read his
unspoken thought. "I'm not going to die yet awhile," said Julia
Cavendish. "I'm only sleepy. You might ring for nurse."

Just as the nurse came in, she said to him, "If I write that letter to
you instead of to your father, it will be because I feel that you owe me
a debt--a debt of gratitude. Scandal's a very small price to pay
for--love, Mr. Wilberforce."


                                   4

Once outside Julia's bedroom door, the solicitor took a silk
handkerchief from the pocket of his dinner-jacket and pretended to blow
his nose. He wanted, in his own elegant phraseology, "to blub like
anything." For the moment, his essentially legal mind was off its
balance. "I must control myself," he thought; "I mustn't let those
people downstairs see."

And perhaps, if Ronnie and Aliette had been in the drawing-room, James
Wilberforce might have succeeded in disciplining himself. But Mollie was
alone; had been alone for a whole anxious hour.

"Jimmy"--she rose from the sofa as he entered, and her eyes met his
across the sudden brightness of the room--"Jimmy, what's the matter? You
look as if you'd seen a ghost."

"Nothing's the matter," he said dully.

"You're sure?"

"Quite. She's asleep." He came across the room to her, and they faced
one another, all pretense wiped from their eyes.

"Tell me," said the girl at last. "Tell me, is it quite hopeless? Does
_she_--does _she_ know?"

"Yes. She knows."

"How terrible!" Mollie's voice trembled. "Jimmy, won't you tell me what
she said? There might be some way in which I could help----"

"There's only one way in which you can help me, Mollie."

"Don't! Please don't!" Her hands protested. "We mustn't think of
ourselves. Not here. Not now."

"Why not!" he said sullenly; and then, sinking heavily into a chair, "I
suppose you're right, dear. Life's a rotten mess----"

"Poor Jimmy!" Mollie's voice was very tender. "My poor Jimmy!" She put
her hand on his head. He grasped it feverishly; and quite suddenly she
knew that her James, her unemotional Philistine of a James, was crying.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Thought expired like a candle in the mind of Mollie Fullerford. She was
just conscious that Jimmy had risen from his chair--that his hand still
grasped hers--that he was leading her through the open windows--over a
lawn which felt damp to her thin-shod feet--under a moon-fretted
tree--toward the dark of shrubberies.

Somehow they were standing on a bridge; a little rustic bridge, mossy
banks and moss-green water below. Her hands on the bridge-rail quivered
like the hands of a 'cello player. She was quivering all over, quivering
like a restive horse. Jimmy's arm was round her shoulders. He was
speaking to her, hoarsely, hysterically, pleading with her; and she knew
that the resolution which had held her so long firm against his
importunities was weakening; weakening to every jerk of the Adam's apple
in his throat.

"Mollie," he pleaded, "I need you. I want you. I can't do without you. I
can't wait any longer for you. You must marry me. You must, I tell you,
you must."

"Jimmy," she stammered, "Jimmy--please."

"You little idiot!" Suddenly, she grew conscious of an immense anger in
him. "You dear, damned little idiot. What good do you think you're doing
by refusing to marry me? You're not doing yourself any good. You're not
doing me any good. You're not doing your sister any good." Words rushed
out of him--faster--faster--always less coherent. "Little fool. Selfish
little fool We sha'n't do anybody any good by waiting. Shall we? Answer
me, Mollie! Shall we? Shall we do anybody any good?"

Words petered out. He could only strain her to him, crudely, fiercely.
She felt her body weakening; felt the inhibitions of a year ebbing like
water from, the channels of her mind. His lips sought hers. She yielded
her lips to him--yielded herself beaten, to the fierceness of his arms.

"Little idiot, will you marry me?"

"Yes, Jimmy."

Triumphant, he released her; and in that moment his mind, still
quivering from the verity of death, knew the verity of love.




                             CHAPTER XXVIII


                                   1

Next morning, Saturday, after breakfast, a very subdued Jimmy and Mollie
broke the news of their formal engagement. To both of them the events of
overnight, remembered in the prosaic day, seemed curiously out of
perspective. They had, they decided, "gone off the deep end"; and, being
rather casual young people, left it at that, content to enjoy the
happiness which their emotional plunge had brought them.

Jimmy, of course, changed his original plan of returning to town by the
evening train. The usual notice for the "Daily Telegraph" was drafted,
Clyst Fullerford and the baronet communicated with in two conventional
letters, and the inevitable bottle of champagne broached for luncheon.

Though Julia did not share that bottle, the engagement was like a draft
of wine to her mentality. She felt that the alliance of the Wilberforces
with the Fullerfords could only benefit her secret schemes; and, strong
in that feeling, put all cerebral turmoils away. On Saturday afternoon,
quite undisturbed by the swish and pat from the tennis-court, she worked
two hours, and on Sunday morning, three.

Aliette, delighted though she was at her sister's obvious happiness (for
some time past she had guessed that only her own peculiar position could
be hindering Mollie's chance of matrimony), found it hard to restrain a
vague jealousy, a trace of petty resentment. Soon Mollie would be a
married woman. Whereas she----

And in Aliette's lover the resentment was tenfold stronger. The utter
legality and social correctness of the whole procedure infuriated him.
It took all his self-control to make semblance of congratulating the
"lucky couple." His overnight absorption in a "vulgar murder-case"
seemed absurd. Every time he looked at Aliette, graceful on the
tennis-court or dignified across the dinner-table, he said to himself:
"If only we could be 'engaged,' if only we could be legally married."

But Monday morning--the two men traveled to London together, leaving
Julia at her anvil and the sisters surreptitiously planning
trousseaux--brought back the nervous excitement of Friday night with a
rush. No sooner had Ronnie arrived at Pump Court than Benjamin Bunce--a
little soured by the setback suffered in the civil courts, yet tolerably
optimistic about the new criminal work--informed him that Mr. John
Cartwright had been on the telephone twice before ten o'clock and would
be glad of a conference as soon as possible.

"It's about this shooting case at Brixton. Perhaps you've read about it,
sir," confided Benjamin; and Ronnie's heart leaped at the confidence.

At twelve o'clock precisely the clerk announced the solicitor, who came
in clutching an armful of the Sunday papers, which he flung down on the
barrister's table with a curt "Here you are. Here's your murder at
last."

For John Cartwright, John Cartwright was phenomenally moved. A man of
five-and-fifty, domed of forehead, bald of pate, his black pupils--which
possessed the inclination to squint--prominent under rimless eye-glasses
of peculiar magnification, he had those thin, unemotional lips, those
bony, unemotional hands, which are so often found in the legal
profession. But to-day the unemotional lips twitched, and the bony hands
were almost feverish in their excitement as they drew a battered
pocket-book from the tail of a battered black coat, fumbled for an
envelope, and handed it over.

"Read what's in that," said John Cartwright, "and see if it isn't a
plum."

"That" turned out to be a letter from the millionaire editor of the
"Democratic News," a new Sunday illustrated paper devoted almost
exclusively to those readers whom unkind journalists describe, when they
foregather with one another, as "the father-of-the-family public."

Bertram Standon--he had so far refused two titles and owned one Derby
winner--was apparently much exercised over "this unfortunate woman, Mrs.
Towers." "I feel convinced," he wrote to his friend, Sir Peter
Wilberforce, Bart., who had turned the letter over to his partner, "that
she is more sinned against than sinning; and in the cause of honest
justice, no less than in the cause of honest journalism, I have decided
that--should the coroner's court bring in a verdict of wilful murder
against her or the ex-sailor, Fielding--I will put all my personal
resources, and all the resources of my paper, at their disposal. Will
you therefore have the case watched on my behalf, and, should the
verdict go as I am afraid it will, take any steps you consider
necessary."

"A stunt, I should imagine," decided Cartwright, "and not a very new
stunt at that. Bottomley, you may remember, once did the same thing.
Still, it may not be a stunt. Standon's a curious fellow. Sometimes his
heart gets away with his brain. It certainly has in this case."

"You think Lucy Towers and Fielding guilty then?"

"Not a doubt, I should say. Still, that's not our affair. Our job is to
give Standon as good a run as we can for his money. The inquest, I see,
has been adjourned for a week. When it comes on again you'll have to go
down."

"Can't I see the prisoners beforehand?"

"Better not, as I take our instructions."

"But we might get them off at the inquest."

"Where would Bertram Standon's stunt come in if we did?" said John
Cartwright satirically, and so closed the interview.


                                   2

During the week which preceded the adjourned inquest on William Towers,
Bertram Standon held his journalistic hand; and--Fleet Street being
momentarily occupied with the controversy of "Submarines _v._
Battleships"--no further details of the tragedy became available.

Reperusing the week-end papers of an evening, it seemed to Ronnie that
the case against the woman--whose likeness to Aliette waned and waned
the more one scrutinized her photograph--looked black enough. Apparently
she had shot her husband during an altercation in another man's room.
The other man, a sailor who had lost both his arms in the war, was her
cousin, and--the reports suggested--her lover.

All the same, the "vulgar murder-case" continued to excite both his
personalities: the magisterial Cavendish because of a curious inward
conviction--the conviction he had voiced to Wilberforce--that "the woman
was no murderess": and the imaginative Wixton because if the coroner's
jury found her guilty he might at last get his chance--slim though that
chance appeared--of a big forensic victory.

Night after night, therefore, Caroline Staley, who, in the absence of
her mistress, had relapsed into the perfect bachelor housekeeper,
completely idle from ten to four, and completely assiduous for the rest
of the time, left her master at work in the little sitting-room of the
"ridiculous flat," studying--with his mother's own concentration--first
in his red "Gibson and Weldon," and thereafter at length, the reports of
Rex _v._ Lesbini, of Rex _v._ Simpson, of Rex _v._ Greening (in which it
is definitely held that, though the sight of adultery committed with his
wife gives sufficient provocation for a husband to plead manslaughter,
the major accusation must hold good if the woman be only mistress of the
accused), and of any other case that might, by the vaguest possibility,
have some bearing on the problematic defense of Lucy Towers.


                                   3

On the Saturday, Ronnie, as usual, went down to Daffadillies. Mollie had
returned to Clyst Fullerford. Julia and Aliette, informed of the new
work, were enthusiastic.

"It'll be a public prosecution, I suppose?" asked Julia.

"Of course. All murder cases are conducted by the director of public
prosecutions. But I haven't got the brief yet."

"Not even a watching brief?" put in Aliette.

Ronnie laughed. "Where did you pick up that phrase?"

"In the newspapers, I suppose." Aliette, remembering from whose lips she
had last heard the expression, blushed faintly. And next morning,
Sunday, the front page of the "Democratic News" again reminded her of
Hector.

Standon, nervous lest some of his titled brethren in Fleet Street should
appropriate the stunt, devoted his Napoleonic leader-page to "The
Quality of Mercy."

Standon dared not, of course, comment on a case which was still "sub
judice," but Standon could and did dare to comment at great length on
"one-sided justice," on the delays demanded by the police at inquests,
on the hardships suffered by those who could not afford "our overpaid
silks," and on the crying need of a "public defender."

"Our 'hanging prosecutor,'" howled Standon, "is paid by the state. Who
pays for the defense of his victims? Why, even as I write, there lie in
Brixton Prison a man and a woman who--for all we know--may be as
innocent of the charge brought against them as I am. Next week they will
be haled before the coroner. The police will have sifted every vestige
of evidence against them. But who will have sifted the evidence in their
defense? No one! I ask the great-hearted British people, whose
generosity to the weak and unhappy never fails, whether this is justice
or a travesty of justice; whether, in any properly constituted
community, the very finest legal brains obtainable would not have been
placed immediately and without any fee whatsoever entirely at the
service of these two unfortunates, who now lie in a felon's cell, hoping
against hope, if they are innocent, as I believe them to be innocent,
that some public-spirited person will come forward and give them, out of
mere charity, money. Money! The shame of it!! The shame of it!!!"

The "silly season," when newsprint gasps for "copy" as a drowning man
for air, was already on Fleet Street; and Standon's article, duly
garnished with photographs of Lucy Towers, of Bob Fielding, the
ex-sailor, and of "Big Bill" Towers, started a controversy which
relegated both submarines and battleships to the editorial scrap-heap.

"Mark my words," said John Cartwright, calling for Ronnie on the Tuesday
morning, "the Cairns case will be nothing to this one. If by any chance
you were to get Lucy Towers off, you'd be a made man."

"But surely,"--for a moment the wild idea that by some amazing piece of
fortune Hector Brunton might be briefed for the prosecution crossed
Ronnie's mind--"surely, if Standon's out for publicity, he'll never let
you brief _me_ for the actual trial? He'll have one of the big guns,
Marshall Hall or somebody like that."

"No, he won't." John Cartwright chuckled slyly. "Oh no, he won't. He'll
make a discovery."

"A discovery?"

"Yes, a young man. 'A new light in the legal firmament--a David to slay
Goliath.' That'd look well in the Democratic News.' Besides," Cartwright
chuckled again, "Marshall Hall would cost them a week's advertising
revenue, and you're Julia Cavendish's son."

"I've no wish to trade on my mother's reputation," said Ronnie stiffly.
But, as Cartwright's car came nearer and nearer to the coroner's court,
he realized that if by any possible miracle Hector Brunton _were_
briefed for the prosecution, he, Ronald Cavendish, would trade on any
one's reputation rather than not be entrusted with the defense.


                                   4

By the peculiar processes of the English legal machine, a man or woman
on trial for murder may be required to undergo no less than three
ordeals: at the coroner's court, before the magistrate, and finally at
the assizes.

Even before Cartwright's car came to a standstill outside the modest
building of the coroner's court at Brixton, Ronald Cavendish could see
tangible effects of Bertram Standon's publicity. The two bemedaled
constables at the door were surrounded by a knot of people, well-dressed
for the most part, all equally anxious for admittance to the first
ordeal of Lucy Towers, and all equally ready to pay modest baksheesh for
the privilege. Various alert youngsters, whose living depended on the
news-pictures which their wits and their hand-cameras could snap,
hovered--eager for the face of a celebrity--on the pavement. A touch of
the theatrical was added to this scene by two sandwich-men, parading
boards with the latest slogan of the "Democratic News": "Why not a
Public Defender?"

Ronald and Cartwright pushed their way to the door; and--Cartwright
having shown his card--were conducted down a long passage into the
exiguous court-room. The jury, all males, had already taken their
chairs. The coroner, a meek, tubby mid-Victorian fellow with a rosy bald
head and a hint of port wine in his rosy cheeks--was just about to sit
down.

One of Cartwright's henchmen, sent on in advance, came up, whispering
that he had kept them seats at the back of the room. These,
unobtrusively, they took.

So far, apparently, the state--to use Standon's phraseology--had not
thought it worth while to brief counsel. At the table reserved for the
prosecution Ronnie saw only a black-mustached uninterested solicitor and
his clerk. The solicitor for the defense, a weak-kneed, unimposing
little man, sat at the table opposite, looking even more bored. Only the
reporters, bent over their note-books, and the few members of the public
who had by now bribed themselves into the room, seemed in any way alive
to the enacting of a human tragedy.

Then the coroner whispered something to his clerk, and the prisoners
were brought in.

In that moment--despite the photographs--Ronnie thought himself the
victim of hallucinations. "It's a dream," he thought; "a crazy
nightmare." For the accused woman, accompanied on the one side by a
hatchet-faced constable, and on the other by a tall prison-wardress in
the blue cloak and cap of her order, might--had it not been for the
work-reddened hands, the over-feathered hat and the rusty black coat and
skirt--have been Aliette's self. Complexion, figure, carriage,
personality, the very voice that answered to her name, showed Lucy
Towers the living, breathing double of Hector Brunton's wife. She had
the same auburn hair, the same vivid eyes, the identical nose, the
identical mouth. There was about her, even, that same shy dignity which,
in Ronnie's eyes, distinguished the woman he loved from all other women
in the world.

"Not a bad-looking wench," whispered Cartwright.

But the barrister could not answer. Sheer amazement held him speechless.
He had no eyes for the other guarded figure, for the pale unshaven young
man whose two coat-sleeves hung empty from his broad shoulders. As it
was to be throughout the case, so now at the very first glimpse of his
client, every instinct urged him to her defense. He forgot Standon,
Cartwright, his own career, everything. Seeing, not a woman of the lower
orders, presumably the mistress of a common sailor, but his own woman,
his Aliette, Aliette on trial for her life, lone save for his aid
against a hostile world, he no longer wanted even the coroner's jury to
convict her. He wanted her to be free. Free!

And suddenly, he hated the law. The law--policemen, wardress, coroner,
jury, the little black-haired Treasury solicitor--wanted to hang this
woman, to put a greasy rope round her throat, to let her body drop with
one jerk into eternity. Against her, even as against Aliette, the law
was hostile. And "They sha'n't hang her," swore Ronnie. "By God, they
sha'n't."

With a great effort he pulled his legal wits together and began to
follow the evidence. Deadly, damning evidence it was, too. The woman,
according to the police, had already confessed.

"Bob didn't do it. I did it," began the confession which a sergeant,
thumbing over his note-book, read out in a toneless voice. "Bob is my
cousin. He lived in the same house as me and my husband, Bill. Every
afternoon I used to go and clean Bob's room for him, because he couldn't
do it himself, having no arms. Bill, my husband, didn't like me going to
Bob's room. He was jealous of Bob. He didn't like me giving Bob money.
This morning Bill told me that if I went to Bob's room again, he would
do us both in. I told him I must go and help Bob, because he couldn't
feed himself proper. I went to Bob's room about half-past four. I told
Bob what my husband had said, and Bob laughed about it. He told me there
was an old pistol in the cupboard and that if my husband came, I could
pretend to shoot him. Of course Bob was joking. I got him a cup of tea.
I was helping him drink the tea when my husband came in. Bill was very
angry. He said he was going to thrash Bob, and then thrash me. I got
very frightened, and thought of the pistol. Bill had his stick in his
hand. I thought he was going to hit Bob with the stick, so I ran to the
cupboard. I found the pistol and pointed it at Bill. I told him not to
touch Bob. He said, 'That pistol's not loaded. You can't frighten me.'
Bob said, 'Don't be a fool, Bill; it is loaded.' I thought Bill was
going to strike Bob, so I pulled the trigger. I'm not sorry I killed
Bill because I thought he was going to do Bob in. I love Bob very much."

"I love Bob very much." As those last words fell, heavy for all their
tonelessness, on the hot hush of the crowded room, Ronald Cavendish
knew--with the instinct of the born criminal lawyer--that coroner, jury,
and public had already decided on their verdict. He could read
condemnation, abhorrence, fear, in every eye that stared and stared at
the pale forlorn creature seated motionless between her jailors. "The
sailor was her lover," said those condemning eyes. "That was why she
killed her rightly jealous husband." But for the armless man whose lips,
as he listened, writhed in pain, those eyes held only pity.

Cartwright's voice whispered to his clerk, "You'll get a copy of that,
of course," and the inquiry went on.

The police produced Bob Fielding's revolver, the blood-stained bullet,
the empty cartridge-case, a plan of the room where the crime had been
committed, Bob Fielding's navy record. The black-mustached solicitor
called witnesses who had heard the shot, witnesses who had seen the
body, one witness, even, who was prepared to swear the crime
premeditated.

"More than once I've heard her say," swore Maggie Peterson, a frowzy,
blowzy creature whose hands showed like collops of raw meat against her
blowzy skirt, "that she wished Bill was dead. And there's others as
heard her besides me."

In the case of Lucy Towers, the weak-kneed unimposing solicitor for the
defense reserved his cross-examination, but for Fielding, to Ronnie's
surprise, he put up a most spirited fight; and despite the prosecution's
every effort to implicate the sailor as accessory to the shooting, the
jury refused to give a verdict against him. "As if," decided the
unimaginative jury, "armless men could fire pistols."

But Lucy Towers they found guilty of murder. "And quite rightly," said
John Cartwright, as the woman--with a faint smile in the direction of
her released cousin--was led from the room.


                                   5

"All the same, mater, I'll swear that--in intention--Lucy Towers is
innocent."

It was Sunday afternoon at Daffadillies, and ever since his arrival
Ronnie had been harping on the same topic. But Ronnie found his
womenfolk hard to convince. In their eyes, as in the eyes of the public,
Fleet Street's report of the inquest, and more particularly Maggie
Peterson's evidence, branded Lucy Towers irrevocably murderess.

"Rubbish!" said Julia--it was one of her "good" days--"Rubbish! She's
guilty, and she'll either hang or go to jail for life."

"That would be an outrage," answered Ronnie gravely.

"Why?" The novelist laughed. "Lucy Towers shot her husband. She'll never
get over that point. Not in England, anyway. In France it's just
possible that a sentimental jury would give her their verdict. We, thank
heaven, do not indulge in that sort of perverted justice."

Aliette reluctantly sided with Julia.

"But, of course, man," said Aliette, "of course, I'm sorry for the poor
creature. Still, whatever her husband did, she had no right to shoot
him."

"Not even in self-defense?"

"No, not even in self-defense."

"In defense of an armless man, then?" countered Ronnie; and, so
countering, saw in one vivid flash of insight his one and only chance of
victory should Cartwright give him the brief.




                              CHAPTER XXIX


                                   1

"There is always," says Bertram Standon in his book "How I Fought Fleet
Street," "a psychological news-moment. To be premature with news is even
worse than to be dilatory with it. The editor who knows when _not_ to
publish is worth his weight in gold."

In the Towers-public defender stunt, the proprietor of the "Democratic
News" backed his maxim to the limit. Clean through a newsless August,
and well into a newsless September, he stirred the pool of the
controversy he had started; whipped up every ripple of public interest
to a wave of excitement over the guilt or innocence of Lucy Towers; but
gave no hint of the rope he, Standon the Magnificent, intended to pull
when finally the last act of the great drama should be launched upon
London.

Even Ronnie, chafing for his chance, could ascertain no detail of the
magnate's intention. Cartwright, pumped whenever etiquette allowed it,
only beamed, "Wait and see!" Jimmy, who must have known something, had
disappeared into Devonshire. At her second ordeal, the trial before the
magistrate, Lucy Towers--still represented by the same unimposing
solicitor--reserved her defense and was formally committed for trial at
the Old Bailey.

Meanwhile Julia Cavendish worked on.


                                   2

Physically and mentally, as day followed September day, Ronnie's mother
felt well--better, indeed, than at any other period of her illness. The
weapon of her forging grew sharp and sharper under her hand.

Despite the realization, every time she set pencil to paper, that the
candle of her life was burning remorselessly to its socket, that her
mind and her body must alike expire at task's completion, she
experienced no fear. Her brain, rapt in the creative ecstasy of Julia
Cavendish, living novelist, regarded Julia Cavendish, dying woman, from
a point of view of the coolest detachment.

Outwardly, to her watchers, to Ronnie, nurse, Aliette, and Mrs.
Sanderson, she played a part; the part of the convalescent. That they,
in their ignorance, should believe the part she played to be real, gave
to her detachment a whimsical and peculiar happiness.

And always in those days the illusion of immortality sustained her. She
used to think, lying weary of work on her great bed: "Like Horace, I
shall not utterly die. Dying, I shall leave my Ronnie this sword of the
written word. What greater proof of love and service could any son or
any god require?"

For now, almost at the end of her race with death, Julia Cavendish knew
the conviction of Godhead. The priest-hoisted sectarian idol of her
middle years lay shattered into a thousand fragments. In its stead was a
spiritual Presence, all-pervading, all-comprehending, all-pardoning: an
Individual of Individuals, to whom, freed from the slave-allegiance of
the formal churches, each unhampered soul must fight its own unhampered
way: a Soul of Souls who--despising no man-made creed--yet demanded more
than any creed made of man, even the courage to look on life and death
and Himself alike fearlessly.

But to that Godhead the soul of Aliette Brunton had not yet come. Her
second honeymoon-time was over; Daffadillies no longer "Joyous Gard";
Ronnie no more the single-minded lover of July. Between them, like a
wraith, hovered a man's ambition.

And, "If only--if only I could be with child," thought Aliette. "If only
there could be given me one tiny mite of love--one human atom to be
wholly mine." For always now--as it seemed--Ronnie and Ronnie's mother
grew less and less dependent on her affection. To each was their work:
to her only the waiting.

Ronnie's nerves, Ronnie's chafing after success, reminded her of Hector,
of the Hector she had married. Every Monday morning, as she drove with
him down the odorous country roads to West Water, his talk would be of
Lucy Towers: "She's innocent, Alie. I'll swear she's innocent"; "If only
I can get that brief, I'll be a made man"; "A made man, I tell you;
Cartwright said so."

Rushing back to Daffadillies she used to think: "I'm selfish, selfish. I
mustn't stand between him and his career. I must help him--help both of
them." But at Daffadillies, demanding no help, resolute over her desk,
sat Julia; and Aliette, looking up at the magnolia-sheathed window,
would feel lonely; lonelier than ever before; so lonely that not even
Ronnie's letters could console her through the desert week.

Yes! even his letters seemed less loving. Through every line of them she
could feel the pulse and surge of a new desire--of the desire for
success--which, if gratified, must leave her lonelier yet. Once she had
cherished his letters at her breasts. But now her very breasts were a
reproach; a reproach of childlessness. Once, laying her head among the
pillows, she had dreamed of him beside her. But now, every night, her
pillows were wet; wet with tears. Strange terrors tore her in the
nighttime. She dreamed herself utterly outcast--the woman reproached of
her own children--mother indeed, but mother-in-shame.


                                   3

And then suddenly, a bare fortnight before the reopening of the Central
Criminal Courts, Ronnie's dreams came true. John Cartwright himself
brought round the brief, the long taped document marked on the outside:

                CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT. Session October.

                REX _v._ TOWERS. Brief for the Defense.

            MR. RONALD CAVENDISH. 50 gns. Conference 5 gns.

         Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright, Norfolk Street.

"Standon jibbed a bit at that fifty," chuckled John. "He said you ought
to take the case for nothing, considering the publicity he's going to
give you."

"Oh, did he?" Ronnie laughed; but his nerves were quivering. "My whole
career," he thought. "Riches--success--fame. It's all in my own hands
now. Standon thinks he's overpaid me, does he? Perhaps he has. But I'll
give him a run for his money. Fight! By Jove, I'll fight every foot,
every inch of the way."

"I shall want an order to see the prisoner," he went on. "And, look
here, if Standon's people can find out----" The cautious voice dropped;
so that Benjamin Bunce, in the outer office, heard only a vague drone of
talk.

"That'll be all right," answered the solicitor; and two days later a
very different Ronnie caught the Saturday afternoon train to West Water.

"I'll get her off," he told Julia and Aliette, seated at tea under the
cedar. "I'll get her off--or die in the attempt. This is my chance, I
tell you. My big chance at last!"

"Optimist!" Julia laughed, a little wearily. "How can you 'get her off'?
As far as I can see there's nothing in the woman's favor except that
she's a little like our Aliette."

"A little like her! Mater, it's amazing. When I saw her yesterday, in
that wretched place at Brixton, I could have sworn it _was_ Alie." And
he went on talking, talking, talking of "his chance" till the sun sank
behind the cedar-tree; till--Julia, utterly tired out, having been
carried into the house--Aliette interrupted him with, "I've been rather
worried about her this week. Don't you think we might have Sir Heron
down again?"

"We might see what she's got to say about it in the morning," answered
Ronnie; but next morning, Sunday, the "Democratic News" drove all
thoughts save one from his mind.

At long last, Bertram Standon had launched his journalistic thunderbolt.
"Shall Lucy Towers hang?" howled Bertram Standon. "Never--if she be
innocent--while we can prevent it. Never--if she be innocent--while
there's a dollar in our purse or a sense of pity in our hearts. Let the
state pour out the taxpayers' money like water--let the bureaucrats
brief their 'hanging prosecutor' if they will. We, so far failing in our
efforts to secure the appointment of a public defender, have
briefed--out of our own pocket--a defender for Lucy Towers, a young man,
an untried man, but a man in whom both we and the unfortunate woman in
whose defense he will rise at the Old Bailey have the most unbounded
confidence. And who is this young man? He is Ronald Cavendish--son of a
woman who is known wherever the English language is spoken, of Julia
Cavendish, our greatest woman novelist."

And squeezed away in the "stop press," so inconspicuous that Julia, who
did not see the papers till tea-time, was the first of the three to
notice it, stood the news: "_Brixton Murder. Saturday night. The Crown
has briefed Mr. Hector Brunton, K.C., for the prosecution of Lucy
Towers._"


                                   4

Hector Brunton sat alone in his chambers at King's Bench Walk. Within
the dusty book-littered room brooded silence. From without, from under
trees already browning for a hint of autumn, sounded the occasional
tup-tup of feet on the flagstones, the occasional staccato of a raised
voice. The noises fretted Brunton, distracting his attention from the
multitudinous papers prepared by the director of public prosecutions in
the case of Rex _v._ Towers, which stood piled on his ink-stained desk.
"I'm getting jumpy," he thought, turning from the signed and sealed
findings of the coroner's jury, through the verbatim reports of the
proceedings before the magistrate, to the actual indictment.

Concentrating, the K.C. reread the words of that indictment.

                         CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT

                       THE KING _v._ LUCY TOWERS

Lucy Towers is charged with the following offense:

_Statement of Offense_: Homicide.

_Particulars of Offence_: Lucy Towers on the fifth day of July, in the
County of Middlesex, murdered her husband, William Towers, by shooting
him with a revolver.

Reading, an expression almost of mania flickered across Brunton's face.
Behind the words of the indictment, his mind visualized the actual
crime: the woman, some blowzy Messalina of the slums lusting horribly
for a mutilated lover: the lover, a puppet in her adulterous arms: the
husband, shot down in cold blood because he dared to come between the
woman and her desires.

A fitting client--thought Brunton--for this other adulterer, this Ronald
Cavendish with his gutter-press backing, to defend. But he would defend
her in vain!

The K.C.'s long fingers prodded among the papers. Ever since the Cairns
case, he had derived--subconsciously--a satisfaction, a secret
chop-licking satisfaction, from his title of "hanging prosecutor." It
was as though, harrying Mrs. Cairns to her death, he had taken his
revenge on all women. And he thought: "Hilda Cairns escaped my rope.
Lucy Towers shall not escape it."

Concentrating again, he reread the entire evidence. Outside it grew
darker--silent. He switched on the opal-shaded reading-lamp; and sent
David Patterson home. It was good--good to be alone with this chess-game
of death: Messalina for its queen, his brain the mover of those pawns
which would sweep her from the board.

Brunton's gray pupils shrank to pin-points. There were flaws, flaws in
the evidence. The chess-board, as prepared by the solicitors for the
Crown, lacked one pawn; the pawn of premeditation. Given himself, with
his gift of oratory, to defend her, Lucy Towers might escape the
black-cap sentence of the murderess.

Now the K. C.'s brain took the other side of the chess-board. He played
the queen against himself; played her to the stalemate of
"manslaughter." That would be Cavendish's gambit; a reduction of the
charge.

But could Cavendish succeed?

For a long time Hector Brunton sat motionless, brooding; a cruel figure
in the green glare of the desk-light. Then he drew the proof of Maggie
Peterson's evidence from the paper pile; and, recasting it word by word,
saw the rope tighten, tighten round his victim's neck, saw her drop feet
first through the sliding floor.

God! but it would be good--good to know Cavendish beaten; to know him as
incapable of defending this woman as of defending that other.

And at that, abruptly, the K.C.'s concentration snapped. The Furies were
on him again, lashing at his loins, lashing him to blood-frenzy. He
sprang to his feet; and his chair crashed backward as he sprang. This
woman, this Lucy Towers, must hang. Hang! Between him and his enemy,
between him and the man whose body possessed Aliette, she, the Messalina
of the slums, stood for a symbol. Destroying the one, he would destroy
all three. This was his chance; his chance for revenge.

Vengeance at last! Too long Aliette and Cavendish had eluded him--eluded
the torturer.

God! If only he could torture Aliette; torture her, not as he would
torture this other woman when she stood before him in the witness-box,
but physically. Of what avail was the law--the law that had reprieved
Hilda Cairns from the rope, that left Aliette to revel unpunished in the
arms of her paramour--the law that gave him, the wronged husband, no
remedy for his wrongs save to set the woman who had wronged him
free--free to marry her paramour, to flaunt herself as her paramour's
wife before an uncensorious world?

The Furies were howling at him: "Don't set her free, Hector Brunton.
Don't set her free! Get her back, Hector Brunton! Make her come back to
you! Make her submit--submit her cold unyielding body to your hot
desires. Make her your slave, your puppet--as the armless man was puppet
of the woman you have sworn to hang."

With a great shock of self-disgust, of self-realization, Aliette's
husband controlled his distraught brain. But his loins still quivered to
memory of the lash; sweat beaded his forehead; his hands, as he lifted
the overset chair, felt hot and clammy on the polished rail. For months
he had succeeded in forgetfulness; in chasing the Furies from his mind.
Work had helped him to forget--and Renée, Renée with her red and riotous
hair, her facile, faithless sensuality. Other women too--facile,
unfastidious.

Christ! but he was tired of it all. Tired! Work and women, women and
work--month after month, the same eternal treadmill! Now he was weary;
wearied alike of his work and his women. Remained in him only the one
desire; the desire for vengeance. That desire he would satisfy. And
after that?

What did it matter? He, Hector Brunton, knew the hollowness of all
desires. Even in success, even in hatred, even in vengeance, could be no
enduring satisfaction.

A great mood of self-pity submerged his mind. Fame, riches, every fruit
of his up-reaching--he had won. And the choicest fruits left only a
bitterness in his mouth. How could a man enjoy those fruits in
loneliness?

Christ! but he was lonely--lonely. He hadn't even a friend. Not one
single friend with whom to take counsel! Not one solitary being in all
the world who would listen--as a friend listens--to---to the still,
small scarce-articulate voice which had begun to whisper in Hector
Brunton's soul.

That voice, the still small voice of conscience, was whispering now.
"Cruel," it whispered; "cruel. Set her free. Set her free!"

Heavily Hector Brunton sat him down at his desk. His gray pupils stared
vacantly at the light. He saw two faces in the light: his wife's face,
torture-pale; and the face he imagined Lucy's, heavy-jowled, animal, yet
with a hint of soul behind the animal eyes.

The two faces seemed to be pleading with him, pleading for pity. "We
have known love," they pleaded, "but you--how should you understand?"

The faces vanished; and in their stead he saw Renée--insatiate,
submissive, her mouth still upcurled for his. "_I_ am love," said the
mouth of Renée.

But always the still small voice of conscience whispered in Hector's
soul. "Between love and lust," whispered the voice, "between the good
and the bad that is in you, between the cruelty that cries for vengeance
and the understanding which is pity--choose!"




                              CHAPTER XXX


                                   1

For Ronald Cavendish, the fortnight which intervened between his
briefing and the Monday of the trial passed like an hour. All that he
had ever hoped for seemed at last within reach: and his mind,
concentrating, could spare no minute for introspection. Even the
personal factor, that Brunton would be his opponent, dwindled into
insignificance when compared with the supreme issue of winning; even his
belief in his client's spiritual guiltlessness seemed paltry before the
difficulties of proving her technically innocent. Yet the belief was
there, keying him to effort, making him utterly oblivious of his
every-day surroundings.

But all that fortnight Aliette scarcely slept. Dozing or waking, two
figures--the figures of Ronnie and of Hector--haunted her thoughts: she
saw them, gowned and wigged, fiercely terrible, at death-grips for the
soul of a woman--a woman whose face showed white and tormented in the
dock--a woman who was no longer Lucy Towers, but herself. Sometimes,
too, behind the woman in the dock, she saw Dennis--her dream-son--Dennis
whose eyes, Ronnie's own blue eyes, stared accusingly at the mother who
had born him to shame.

And all that fortnight, fearful only of interruption, Julia Cavendish
worked on. The leather manuscript-box was nearly full. Almost, the
weapon of her mind's conceiving had been forged sharp to the point. The
watchers at her bedside--even her own son--were no longer quite real.
She saw them as dream-folk; queer dear people who ministered to her
comforts in the hours when her brain, weary of word-fashioning, rested
awhile. Those dream-folk--she knew--all except Ronnie, were growing
anxious, doubtful of the part she played to them. They wanted her to
send for the "medicine-man." But the "medicine-man" could not help. His
part was done. Only courage could help her now--courage and the
certainty of that all-pervading Presence, of the Godhead who, watching
her as she ran her painful race with physical death, understood.

Vaguely--when her son came to bid her au revoir--Julia Cavendish
realized the Presence hovering about the familiar room. Distant
church-bells told her that it was a Sunday, that Ronnie must catch the
afternoon train for London within the hour.

"Just looked in to see if you were all right, before I toddled off,
mater," he said; and hearing his voice she yearned, with a
foreknowledged longing acuter than any physical pain, to abandon the
part she played for him, to tell him--for his own sake--the truth. But
the Presence sustained her; so that she fought back the betraying truth;
so that she answered him, gaily, casually, "I'm feeling like a
two-year-old, son"; so that she sat upright in her bed--oh, for the
comfort to have felt his arms about her shoulders!--and listened for
twenty agonized minutes to his talk of "the case."

"You must wish me luck, mater," he said, as he rose to go. "It'll be a
terrific fight; but I feel, somehow, that I'm going to win."

"You _will_ win," she answered. "Don't worry about me. I'll be all
right. And remember--if by any chance the verdict goes against you--that
no man can do more than his best."

Yet after he had kissed her good-by, after the door had closed gently
behind him, leaving her alone with her thoughts in the slanting sun-rays
of that quiet room, even the knowledge that _she_ had done her best,
even the conviction of Godhead, failed to comfort Julia Cavendish,
mother.


                                   2

The Central Criminal Court of London, though still known as the "Old"
Bailey, is the modernest of modern edifices; domed stone without,
polished marble within. Were it not for the uniformed police on guard at
its narrow portal, and for the particular legal atmosphere which
pervades it even out of session-time, you might at first glance take the
place for a club-house or a bank building. From the tessellated
spaciousness of its ground floor, a central staircase, broad between
marble balusters, up-sweeps to an immense landing where witnesses,
constables, and barristers foregather outside the various oaken doors
which lead into the oak-paneled court-rooms. Below are the cells.

There is nothing theatrical about the Old Bailey. To the highly
sensitized mind its aura is the aura of a museum. The very statues which
garnish it seem aloof from actual life. Yes here London stages her
tensest human dramas; here England dispenses her ultimate justice.

But there was no sense of justice in the mind of Hector Brunton, K.C.,
as, scornful alike of the crowd and the cameramen, he strode bullheaded
through that narrow portal; acknowledged with perfunctory hand the
salutes of the constables; and pushed his way up the stairs, diagonally
across the landing to the robing-room.

Deliberately the man had made his choice. For the sake of his vengeance
on Cavendish, Lucy Towers must die the death. Righteous or unrighteous,
he, the "hanging prosecutor" whom no prisoner had yet eluded, meant to
secure his verdict. His mind, as he adjusted his robe, his wig and
tapes, was the actor's mind, resolute in illusion. Actor-like, his
thoughts discarded all truth that might tell in the victim's favor.
Actor-like, his thoughts clung to their part; the part which should
prove conclusively that this woman, this Lucy Towers, had shot her
husband of malice aforethought and for love of another man.

And yet, making his early way through the crowd towards the door of the
court--he had no wish to meet with Cavendish face to face in the
robing-rooms,--a vision of his wife flashed for one vivid instant
through the K.C.'s mind. In that vivid instant, conscience troubled him
again. "Was he being cruel to Aliette?" asked conscience. "Was he
planning yet another cruelty toward this woman he had never seen, this
Lucy Towers?"

"Cavendish defends them both," he thought; and stifled the voice of
conscience.


                                   3

Ronald, when Caroline Staley woke him on that first morning of the
trial, thought neither of Hector nor of Aliette. Hardly, he thought to
himself. To win--and, now that the contest so long anticipated was
actually at hand, he felt that not to win outright would be
disaster--seemed almost impossible, the forlornest of hopes.

Dressing, breakfasting, making his way to Putney Bridge Station, his
mind held only the picture of his client. Visited overnight, the
woman--whose likeness to his own woman never failed to strike a
responsive chord in Ronnie's heart--had afforded no help. Curiously
resigned to an adverse verdict, curiously incurious as to whether that
verdict should be murder or manslaughter, the tense clamor of the
newspapers and the tense pleading of her counsel left her alike unmoved.

"I'll go into the witness-box if you like, sir," she had consented. "But
I don't see what good it'll do. I can only tell them the truth. And I
told them that at the police-station. I never was a liar, sir. I did it
to save Bob."

"I did it to save Bob!" Those words still echoed in the barrister's ears
as he emerged from the gloom of Temple station into sunlight, and turned
down the Embankment toward his chambers, where--Bunce, brief and
witnesses for the defense being already on their way to the court--John
Cartwright alone awaited him.

The solicitor was in his gloomiest mood, thoroughly convinced of Lucy's
guilt.

"Unless Brunton fails on the issue of premeditation," he said, "we
haven't got a dog's chance. Even if he does fail on that point, she'll
get seven years."

At that, poignantly, the human element of the case came home to Ronnie.
It seemed to him as though he saw Aliette's self imprisoned, beating out
her heart--day after day, month after month, year after year--against
the cold walls and the cold bars of a prison-house.

"Not if I can help it," he said hotly.

"Have you decided to put her in the box? H. B.'s a holy terror for
cross-examination."

"Of course I shall put her in the box. I'm not afraid of H. B.! Let's be
off."

John Cartwright--thinking the tactics hopeless--would have protested;
but, realizing from the other's demeanor how much this case meant to
him, realizing (Ronnie's matrimonial position was common gossip in the
offices of Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright) more than a little of
the secret drama which underlay the public, he kept his own counsel all
the way to the Old Bailey. "At any rate," thought John Cartwright,
"Standon will get the show he's paying for."

It was fifteen minutes to ten by the time their car made Holborn; ten to
when it drew up at the door of the court. Already they could see the
forerunners of a crowd. Public sympathy, astutely roused by Standon, had
enlisted itself on the side of the accused and of her counsel. In any
other country, the little knot of people would have cheered. As it was,
they only stared sympathetically while the cameras clicked and the two
men disappeared from view.

"I'll see to the witnesses," said Cartwright, as the lift jerked them to
the first floor. "You go and get dressed."

In the robing-room Ronnie found Hugh Spillcroft.

"I'm at a loose end," said that genial youth, "so I've come to watch the
show. Going to win?"

"If I can," retorted Ronald grimly. "But it's going to be a devil of a
job."

They passed out of the robing-room, and threaded their way across the
crowded landing toward No. 2 court. By the outer door, its oak and glass
guarded by two enormous constables, stood Bob Fielding and various other
witnesses. The young sailor's face was gray. His whole body, even the
two empty sleeves of the shabby coat, twitched.

"You'll do your best for her, sir?" he stammered. "You'll do your best
for Lucy?"

"I'll do my utmost, Fielding," answered the tall, dignified man in the
wig and gown, the man who was no longer either Aliette Brunton's lover
or Julia Cavendish's son, but only an advocate whose brain, keyed to
contest-pitch, resented any and every unnecessary strain on its
concentration.

With the various other people who tried to detain him, more especially
with Benjamin Bunce and Bertram Standon's secretary, Ronnie's manner was
abrupt, irritable to the point of discourtesy. Knowing that he would
need it all, he husbanded his self-control against the inevitable
face-to-face meeting with Brunton.

"Time to toddle in," reminded Spillcroft.

One of the constables opened for them. Halting just inside the outer
door, Ronnie could see, through the glass panels of the inner, the back
of the great dock, light oak below, glass-and-iron paneled above; and
beyond the dock, on the left of it, the already-occupied jury-box and
the projecting canopy of the judge's dais. Then the outer door closed,
the inner door opened, and they made their way in.

The domed court was a sight, every seat taken. There were ten tiers of
curious heads behind the dock. On the low benches between dock and
witness-box; in the high gallery opposite; and even below the gallery,
among the bewigged counsel who crowded the benches reserved for the bar,
lay spectators packed and packed. At the press table, the reporters sat
so close to one another that their right arms could scarcely reach their
note-books. But Ronnie had no eyes for the crowd; his eyes were all for
his enemy.

Brunton sat very still, like a mastiff on watch, in the far corner of
the front bench just below the three unoccupied thrones of the judge's
dais. The gray eyes under the gray horsehair, fixed on the jury as
though to hypnotize them, did not deign to notice the entrance of
counsel for the defense. Nevertheless, Ronnie, taking his seat below the
dock at the opposite end of the bench, knew instinctively that Brunton
was aware of him.

Sitting, the barrister could no longer see his enemy. Henry
Smith-Assher's vast Pickwickian back blocked his view. But the mental
vision still remained; and with it, strengthening the will to win, came
the first fierce gush of personal hatred.

"His lordship's late," whispered Spillcroft.

Ronnie, controlling himself, settled his back comfortably against the
oak; glanced through his brief; and glanced up covertly from his brief
at the jury. There were nine men and three women in the box. The men
looked to be ordinary orderly citizens, apparently of the shop-keeping
class, their faces bovine, their eyes unimaginative. Of the women, two
were hard-featured, sour-faced spinsters whom he felt instinctively
would be difficult to convince, and the third a fat, good-natured matron
of five-and-forty, with a string of false pearls round her ample neck
and a feathered hat on her jaunty head. He decided not to challenge any
of them.

The click of an opening door disturbed further scrutiny; and a moment
later there appeared, on the right of the judge's dais, a man's figure
in full court dress--silk stockings on his legs, lace ruffle at his
throat, and sword at his side--who ushered in his lordship, robed in the
scarlet and ermine of full ceremonial, and, following his lordship, two
portly creatures in aldermanic robes, chains of office round their
necks.

"Silence!" called the crier of the court.

Rising to his feet, Ronnie felt the tense pull of the crowd. The crowd
expected him to speak; expected oratory of him. Supposing he were to
fail them! The tongue felt like leather in his mouth. His mind blurred.
He forgot every detail of the case. To sit down again, to fumble among
the papers on the desk in front of him, was positive relief.

The crier of the court began swearing in the jury. One by one the nine
men and the three women rose from their places, answering to their names
and to the quaint old formula: "You shall well and truly try, and true
deliverance make, between our sovereign lord the king and the prisoner
at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, and a true verdict give
according to the evidence." Last of all, from the back of the box,
answered the fat and friendly matron.

"_Quel chapeau!_" whispered Hugh Spillcroft from behind; and a second
later, as it seemed to Ronnie, he heard the sound of feet moving up the
steps below the dock; and caught sight of Lucy's face pale above the
pale oak.

Her gaze sought his trustfully; and at that precise moment Ronnie's
ears, nervously attuned, were aware of the faintest gasp behind him, of
the whistling breath-intake of a man shocked beyond self-control.
Turning his head, he saw Brunton; Brunton---gray eyes staring, jowl
a-twitch, teeth bit to the underlip.

To Brunton, startled almost out of his wits by the unexpected
apparition; to Brunton with his preconceived idea of the blowzy
slum-woman, it was as though Aliette herself stood before him; as though
the wraith of her had materialized, Banquo-like, to fight for Cavendish.
Then, as Lucy Towers, upright between wardress and constable, proud,
dignified, aloof with Aliette's own aloofness, her brown head bare, her
brown eyes unflinching, her hands--small as Aliette's own--gripping the
edge of the dock, smiled down at Ronnie, the last least whisper of
conscience was still in the K.C.'s soul; and he swore to himself that
the very likeness of this woman to the wife who had deserted him should
be her doom. "Vengeance," he thought. "Vengeance indeed!"

The crier of the court was reading the indictment. "Murdered her
husband--William Towers--by shooting him," read the crier; and Brunton,
watching his victim as a snake watches the bird, saw that her eyes,
Aliette's own vivid eyes, were still on Cavendish.

"Prisoner at the bar, do you plead guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty, my lord," came Aliette's own shy voice.

And a moment afterwards, cool, self-controlled, pitiless, deadly sure of
every deadly word, the "hanging prosecutor" rose to speak.

"My lord and members of the jury"--the man was all actor now, an actor
keyed to cold genius by the hot urge of suppressed rage,--"you have
already heard the indictment against this woman. It is an indictment on
the charge of murder, the penalty for which is death. The actual facts
of the case will not, I fancy, be disputed. Let me give them to you as
briefly as I can. At about six o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth of
July last, a police-constable on duty in Brixton heard the noise of a
revolver-shot from No. 25 Laburnum Grove, a block of working-class
flats.

"Entering these flats, the constable--as he will tell you in his
evidence--found, in a room on the third floor, the prisoner and a man, a
certain Robert Fielding, of whom the less said the better. At their
feet, a bullet-wound through his heart, lay the dead body of the
prisoner's husband, William Towers. In the woman's hand was a smoking
revolver, one cartridge of which--and one only--had been fired.

"The constable arrested both the man and the woman. He took them to
Brixton police-station. There, Lucy Towers, entirely on her own
initiative, made a clean breast of the whole business. Her confession,
which you will hear, is--I shall submit--even without the other evidence
in possession of the Crown, sufficient to merit the rope."

Now, pausing, Brunton grew aware of his enemy. His enemy was eying him,
quietly, dispassionately. For a second his concentration failed. Then,
pitiless, the deadly speech flowed on.

"Such, members of the jury, are the actual undeniable facts. The defense
has entered a plea of not guilty. After you have heard my
evidence--evidence which in my contention proves conclusively not only
the commission of this dreadful crime, but its dreadful motive--it will
be for you to decide, subject to his lordship's direction, the issue
between us.

"And at this point, before I go into the question of motive, I purpose,
with his lordship's permission, to give you a brief, a very brief
summary of the legal definition of homicide. Our English law divides the
crime of homicide into three classes: justifiable or excusable homicide,
manslaughter, and murder. It is of this last that I shall ask you, after
duly weighing my evidence, to convict Lucy Towers.

"Murder, let me tell you, has been very aptly defined in the few words,
'Murder is unlawful homicide with malice aforethought.' It is the
existence of malice which distinguishes this crime from justifiable or
excusable homicide and from manslaughter. In order, therefore, to prove
to you that this woman murdered her husband, I must demonstrate, as I
shall demonstrate, not only that she shot him down with a revolver--a
fact which I again remind you is not in dispute--but that she shot him
down in cold blood and with malice aforethought. That is to say, that
she had actually planned to kill him before--long before--the fifth of
July. On this point, quite apart from the point of motive, we have
incontrovertible evidence."

Again Brunton paused, conscious of his opponent; again, actor-like,
Brunton's part went on.

"Malice aforethought, as his lordship will direct you, entails motive.
Now, what was this woman's motive? Why did she kill her husband? Had
she, in killing him, some ulterior object? It is my contention," the
voice rose, "that she had such an object; that this woman," one
gentlemanly finger pointed accusingly at the dock, "when she killed
William Towers, her wedded husband, had one object, and one object only
in her mind--to free herself from him, to free herself at all and any
cost. Why?

"Members of the jury, it will be my duty, my very painful duty, to
answer that question by proving that this woman, this Lucy Towers, is
not only a murderess but an adulteress; that she had a lover, an illicit
lover--none other than Robert Fielding, the very man in whose room this
crime, this atrocious crime, was committed. I think"--Brunton's eyes
dropped to the brief in front of him, and he began turning over the
pages of it--"that after I have read to you the confession, the
voluntary confession of the prisoner, you will admit that not only the
crime but its motive stands proved, and proved up to the hilt, out of
her own mouth."

So far, Ronnie--chin propped on one hand, the other busy with his
notes--had listened, unmoved, to his enemy's opening. But now, suddenly,
as Brunton read out, emphasizing every word that might tell against her,
his client's confession; as he guessed from the very looks of the jury,
from the very way in which they craned forward from their box, how deep
an impression those words were creating in their minds; his heart
misgave him, and he glanced up, as though for confirmation of her
innocence, at Lucy.

Lucy Towers was eying Brunton, not as the fascinated bird eyes the
snake, but as the slandered eyes the slanderer. In the white of her
cheeks, color came and went by fitful flashes. Her mouth kept opening
and closing, as though to give Brunton the lie. Once, when the harsh
voice mouthed the end of her confession, "I love Bob very much," she
would have started to her feet had not the wardress placed a restraining
hand on her arm.

But in all that crowded court only Lucy's advocate and the wardress
noticed Lucy. Judge, jury, spectators--all watched the "hanging
prosecutor." He, and he alone, dominated the court by the sheer amazing
flow of his oratory. For now Brunton had thrown aside the legal mask;
now his every word came hot from his heart, from that heart which had
made its choice between mercy and vengeance.

"My lord," rang the harsh voice, "my lord, members of the jury, can any
statement be more damnable, more damning that those words which I have
just read to you? What need have I for eloquence, when this adulteress,
this fallen woman," again his hand shot out, pointing to the prisoner in
the dock, "whom my learned friend for the defense would have you find
not guilty, has proved herself, out of her own mouth, Robert Fielding's
strumpet? What need have I of witnesses to prove the malice, the
lecherous malice which inspired this crime? What mitigation can any
counsel put before you?

"Will he say that this crime was an accident? That it was an act of
self-defense? Accident! This was no accident. Self-defense! This was no
act of self-defense. It was murder, members of the jury, deliberate,
cold-blooded murder.

"What need have I of witnesses? Yet I have witnesses--not one witness,
but many witnesses--a witness who will prove to you that for weeks, for
months, nay, for years before the perpetration of this crime, Robert
Fielding had been amorous of his cousin--witnesses who will testify that
this woman, almost since the day of her marriage, had been on the worst
possible terms with her murdered husband--witnesses, unimpeachable,
independent witnesses to whom she has admitted, not once but a dozen
times, that she wished her husband dead.

"Members of the jury, we do not live in an age of miracles. When you
know, as you already do know, that those wishes came true, and came true
by her own hand--when you hear, as you will hear, of her clandestine
visits, at dead of night to her lover's room--you will say to yourself,
as I say to you now, 'This was no accident; no act of self-defense: this
was murder, murder premotived and premeditated, the murder which our
justice punishes with death.'

"A life for a life, your lordship. A life for a life, members of the
jury. That is the penalty which, on behalf of the Crown, I shall demand
against this woman whom counsel for the defense would have you find not
guilty of any crime whatsoever."

Slowly Hector Brunton's eyes turned from the woman in the dock toward
his enemy; till even Ronnie shrank before the vindictive fury in those
gray and glimmering pupils.

"This is the man," muttered the voiceless soul behind those grayly
glimmering eyes, "this is the man who stole your woman; the man who
dares defend this other adulteress against you." But the words, the
words planned overnight, never faltered on Brunton's lips. For all his
fury, his legal mind, functioning automatically, missed never a point.

The clock-hands crept on and on. In the packed courtroom was no sound
save the scratch of the shorthand-writers' fountain pens, the tap-tap of
the gentlemanly fingers on the oak, the harsh interminable harangue.
Till at last the harangue slowed to its peroration; and passion ebbed
from Brunton's voice, leaving it once more cool, deadly, pitiless.

"If I," rang the cool, deadly voice, "if I, the paid advocate of the
Crown, have spoken in anger, rarely it is just anger. Surely, in this
England of ours, adultery which leads to murder--as this woman's
adultery has led to murder--will find none to excuse, none to condone
it. Surely, the quality of mercy was overstrained when another court let
this woman's paramour go free.

"Members of the jury, that woman in the dock, that adulteress, shot her
husband. She shot him down in cold blood, of malice aforethought and
after due deliberation. It is for you, as just citizens, to see that she
does not escape the uttermost penalty of her guilt."

The harsh voice ceased.

Brunton, with one last glance at the woman in the dock, a glance
commingled of fear and triumph--for now, once again, he saw her as
Aliette, a ghost siding with the man who had betrayed him--sat down; and
Henry Smith-Assher, rising, began to call the stereotyped, commonplace
evidence entrusted to a junior counsel.

Ronnie hardly listened. The production of the revolver, the testimony of
the constable who had made the arrest, the plan of the room--none of
these mattered. Mattered only Brunton--Brunton whose eyes never left the
jury--Brunton whose deadly oratory had closed every loophole of escape
save one.

But just before the luncheon interval, when the sergeant who had taken
down Lucy's statement kissed the book and began his tale in the usual
toneless voice of the police, Cartwright--watching counsel for the
defense--saw his hands busy with the pencil; and knew that--luncheon
interval over--the real fight would begin.


                                   4

Usually barristers at the Old Bailey lunch communally in the mess-room;
sometimes in private, with the judge. But to-day no invitation came from
his tactful lordship; and, since Brunton might be in the mess-room,
Ronnie elected for the near-by "George."

Emerging disrobed from the court, Hugh Spillcroft on his one side and
Cartwright on his other, he was again aware of the crowd. The little
knot of idlers had increased. On the opposite side of the road,
newspaper placards--black on red of the "Evening Standard," black on
white of the "Evening News," black on green of the "Westminster
Gazette," already flaunted their slogans: "TOWERS CASE: SPEECH FOR THE
CROWN." "HANGING PROSECUTOR OPENS TOWERS CASE." "TRIAL OF LUCY TOWERS
BEGUN."

The placards worried Ronnie; they seemed to accentuate the forlornness
of his cause. All through their hasty meal, snatched at a corner-table
of the crowded chop-house, he felt himself growing more and more
nervous, less and less confident of success. Spillcroft's conversation
and Cartwright's irritated him. _Their_ interest was so coldly legal.
They spoke of Lucy Towers, of himself and Brunton, as men who have
betted well within their means speak of race-horses.

"H. B.'ll have you on toast if he proves adultery," decided Spillcroft.

"Do as you like, of course; but I shouldn't risk putting the woman in
the box," urged Cartwright. "I should plead 'manslaughter' and have done
with it."

"Thanks for the suggestion," fumed Ronnie. "I thought I was being paid
to _fight_."

"Good for you! Try one of these." Cartwright, laughing, offered him a
small cigar: "Nothing like tobacco for a fighting man."

Smoking, Ronnie visualized Brunton, gray eyes staring, jowl a-twitch,
teeth bit to the under lip; Brunton as he had seen him when Lucy Towers
first entered the dock. And visualizing, realizing the shock that
amazing likeness must have been, he could not help admiring the man.
Brunton, startled at the very moment of tensest concentration, had yet
managed to make the speech of his life, missing never a legal point in
two hours of impassioned argument. How could he, the poor orator,
compete with such a man; how prove any flaw in the "hanging
prosecutor's" thesis that Lucy Towers, adulteress, shot her husband so
that she might marry her paramour?

"Ten minutes to two," said Cartwright, paying the bill.


                                   5

Reëntering the crowded court, Ronnie saw that Brunton was already
seated. The K.C., turning from conference with his junior, darted one
look at his opponent; that same look, compound of fear and obstinacy, of
injured pride and determination for revenge, of the weak man who knows
himself in the wrong and means to persist in his wrong-doing, which
Ronnie had noted on the day when he pleaded for Aliette's freedom.

Forcibly the personal issue obtruded on Ronnie's mind; and he could not
help speculating, as Mr. Justice Heber took his seat, whether that
ermined figure, whose gleaming spectacles turned this way and that, to
the police-sergeant reëntering the box, to the jury, to Henry
Smith-Assher rising to continue his examination-in-chief, and lastly to
the motionless woman in the dock, knew anything of the fight for another
woman's freedom, of the private quarrel between counsel for the
prosecution and counsel for the defense.

"May we take it, then," Henry Smith-Assher fidgeted with the tapes round
his bull-neck, "that the accused's statement was entirely voluntary?"

"Entirely," answered the witness, obviously honest, and as obviously
convinced of the prisoner's guilt.

"Thank you, sergeant, that's all I have to ask you."

Henry Smith-Assher subsided; and Ronnie--his voice vibrating with
suppressed nerves, but all issues save the immediate driven from his
mind--rose to cross-examine.

"I want you to tell me, sergeant, whether the original suggestion that
the accused should make a statement came from you or from her?"

"From the accused."

"You cautioned her, of course?"

"Yes."

"Did she, at the time she made the statement, appear much upset?"

"Considerably, I should say."

"Ah." Ronnie---one hand spread-eagled on his brief, jingled with the
other at the coins in his trouser-pocket. "Then I should not, perhaps,
be putting it too strongly if I suggested that at the time she made this
so-called confession the accused was in a state of hysteria?"

"She was considerably upset," repeated the witness stolidly.

"Was she crying?"

"Well----"

"Answer the question, please."

"She might have been crying."

"H'm." Again the coins jingled in the trouser-pocket. "Did you gather
from her general demeanor that the accused was attempting to tell you
the exact truth?"

"Yes."

"And, coming to the last words of her statement, 'I love Bob very much,'
did you gather from the way accused made that statement that Robert
Fielding was her lover, in the accepted sense of the word?"

The uniformed witness hesitated; and Ronnie, his nerves for the moment
forgotten, took advantage of the hesitation. "I want you to tell his
lordship and the jury, sergeant, whether, when the accused volunteered
this statement to you, the impression made on your mind was the
impression that she had been guilty of adultery with her cousin, Robert
Fielding."

"I can't say I thought very much about it."

"You can't say you thought very much about it? Exactly. Didn't you
think, perhaps, as any reasoning man would think, that all the accused
meant to imply was that she was very fond of her cousin?"

"Yes. I suppose so."

"Thank you. I'll take that answer."

The next witnesses were the medical experts--Dr. Spilsbury and Dr.
Wilcox. Them Ronnie did not cross-examine. But as Maggie Peterson,
answering instantly to the call of her name, flounced through the glass
doors and made her defiant way past the reporters' table to the box,
John Cartwright--watching counsel for the defense as a trainer watches
his man in the ring--saw his mouth set, his chin protrude. And John
Cartwright thought, "I wonder if I was right about briefing Cavendish. I
wish I knew what he was driving at with that last cross-examination. I
wonder what he'll make of this witness. From the look in H. B.'s eyes,
she's the crux of his case."

Lucy Towers, too, seemed to realize the importance of Maggie Peterson's
evidence. Again, as during Brunton's opening, aloofness went from her.
She leaned forward from the dock.

"You're a married woman, Mrs. Peterson?" Hector Brunton in person rose
to examine the blowzy black-eyed creature who had just kissed the
well-thumbed book.

"I am."

"And at the time when Lucy Towers shot her husband you were living at 25
Laburnum Grove?"

"I was."

"Could you tell us the date of the shooting?"

"The fifth of July."

"Were you actually in the house when the crime took place?"

"I was not." The patness of the cockney woman's answers warned Ronnie
that she must have been coached in her part. It seemed to him, listening
to her every carefully-pronounced syllable, that a purpose, a definite,
a personal, and a premeditated purpose, underlay them.

"For how long before the fifth of July had you been living at Laburnum
Grove?" went on Brunton.

"Two years."

"Had you known Mr. and Mrs. Towers for some considerable time?"

"I had. And Bob Fielding."

"Confine yourself to answering my questions, please. For how long had
you know William Towers and his wife?"

"Eighteen months. Ever since they came to live at the Grove."

The K.C. paused, and looked warningly at the jury before putting his
next question. "Then can you tell us, of your own knowledge, whether,
during those eighteen months, the accused was on good terms with her
husband?"

The woman--purposely as it appeared to Ronnie--hesitated; and Brunton,
leaning forward, altered his formula. "Did they, as husband and wife,
get on well with one another?"

"Well, I shouldn't like to say they was on the best of terms."

"Were they on bad terms?"

"Yuss." The voice, hitherto so careful, lapsed into slum cockney. "Yuss.
She was a bad wife to Bill, was Lucy. Never did nothing for him."

At that his lordship made as though to put a question, and the examiner
changed his line. "Now I want to ask you: have you ever heard the dead
man complain about his wife?"

"Not till Bob Fielding came to live at the Grove."

"But after Robert Fielding came, he did complain about her?"

"Yuss, often."

"Can you tell us the sort of thing he used to say?"

"Yuss. He said that he could never get nothing done because she was
always muckin' about with Bob."

With any other examiner except Brunton, the coarse phrase would have
elicited laughter from the spectators. But Brunton was taking no
chances. Quickly he carried on his witness's story.

"You gathered then, I take it, that William Towers was not satisfied
with his wife's behavior?"

"Satisfied?" The black eyes under the feathered hat glinted. "Nah. He
wasn't never satisfied, with 'er. Not after Bob Fielding came to the
Grove."

"Would you describe William Towers as jealous of Robert Fielding?"

"Nah. Not jealous, but suspicious."

"Suspicious, eh? Had he, to your knowledge, any reasons for that
suspicion? Have you personally, for instance, ever seen any act on the
part of the accused which might give rise to suspicion in her husband's
mind?"

"Well----" Again it seemed to Ronnie, weighing every inflection of the
cockney voice, that both the hesitant monosyllable and the answer which
followed it were premeditated. "Well, I've seen her going to 'is room
often enough."

"Whose room?"

"Bob Fielding's."

Brunton paused to study his brief; and in that pause it came home to
Ronnie that the whole atmosphere of the court was hostile. The domed
place seemed charged with psychical electricity. He could actually feel
the currents of fear and prejudice tingling between the motionless jury
and the motionless figure in the dock. Looking at his client, he saw
that her lips moved, as though in dumb, unavailing protest.

"And these visits"--the "hanging prosecutor" did not even look up from
his brief,--"were they paid by night or by day?"

"She was alwus going to 'im."

"By night as well as by day?"

"Yuss. By night as well as by day."

"What time of the night?"

"All hours of the night."

"You're certain on that point?" Now Brunton looked at his witness.

"Yuss, certain."

"Then can you give us any particular date on which you actually saw the
accused woman go into Bob Fielding's room late at night?"

"She went there about half-past nine on the night of July 4th."

"And did you see her come out?"

"Nah. She hadn't come out by the time I went to bed."

"The night before the murder. Thank you, Mrs. Peterson." Brunton smiled
grimly. "And now, just one more question. Has the accused ever spoken to
you about her husband?"

"Yuss."

"When was the last time she spoke to you about him?"

"On the Sunday."

"What Sunday?"

"The Sunday"--Maggie Peterson's voice shrilled--"before she shot 'im."

"Please tell his lordship and the jury, to the best of your
recollection, what she said to you."

The hard eyes of the woman in the witness-box turned to the woman in the
dock. For a full second they looked at one another; and Ronnie,
watching, saw that it was Maggie Peterson who first turned away.

"Tell his lordship and the jury," prompted Brunton.

"Well"--a fraction of its certainty had gone out of the shrill
voice,--"it was like this. We meets in the passage, and she says to me:
'Bill ain't fit to be no woman's 'usband. I wish to Gawd 'e was dead. I
shan't never know a moment's 'appiness till he _is_ dead.'"

"And had the accused previously made, in your presence, similar
statements?"

"Yuss. Time and again."

"Thank you. That will be all."

Hector Brunton sat down; but before Ronnie could rise to cross-examine,
the judge had intervened.

"You say," said the judge, referring to his notes, "that on the night
before the crime was committed, at about half-past nine o'clock, you saw
the accused go into Robert Fielding's room. Was she--to your personal
knowledge--in the habit of making such visits?"

"Yuss, m'lord."

"You're prepared to swear that?"

"Yuss, m'lord."

"Very well." Deliberately, Mr. Justice Heber wrote down the answer.
"Now, on the night of July 4, you're prepared to swear that you actually
saw the accused"--the legal voice was stern--"go into Robert Fielding's
room; and you are also prepared to swear that by the time you went to
bed, she had not come out."

"Yes, m'lord."

"Where were you at the time you saw all this?"

"I was standing in the passage----"

"What passage?"

"The passage between her room and mine."

Mr. Justice Heber relapsed into a meditative silence; and Ronnie,
looking across the thirty feet of crowded space which separated him from
the hard defiant eyes of Maggie Peterson, rose nervously to his feet.

"You told my learned friend"--the suave tone betrayed no hint of
hostility--"that you are a married woman. Are we to understand from that
that you and your husband live together?"

"No."

"I take it, then, that you are legally separated----"

"My lord, I protest." Instantly Brunton, too, was on his feet. "My
learned friend is not entitled to cross-examine----"

"My lord, I submit," instantly, counsel for the defense took up the
challenge, "that on the question of credibility I am entitled----"

The judge allowed the question, and Brunton, muttering, subsided.

Yes, admitted Maggie Peterson, she was separated from her husband.

"And you told his lordship"--his first victory over the enemy made
Ronnie suaver than ever--"that you occupied the room opposite to that in
which the accused lived with her husband. Can I take it, from that, that
you were--and still are--on friendly terms with the accused?"

The witness faltered. "Well, she and me used to speak to one another
when we met."

"Then you neither were nor are on particularly good terms with the
accused. Now, were you on friendly terms with the accused's husband?"

Again the witness faltered, and Ronnie repeated his question. "I put it
to you that you were not on friendly terms with Lucy Towers, but that
you were very friendly with William Towers."

"Not very friendly. We were just neighbors."

"Just neighbors, eh?" For the first time since Maggie Peterson had
entered the witness-box, Ronnie felt the atmosphere of the court
favorable. The jury, and more especially the three women on the jury,
had obviously taken his lucky point. He pressed it home: "You say the
accused told you, some days before the crime, that she would never be
happy until her husband was dead. Why should she tell you that if you
and she were not on friendly terms?"

"I dunno," sulkily; "she just said it."

"Are you prepared to swear that those were the actual words she used?"

"Yuss," defiantly, "I am."

"Then if I put Mrs. Towers in the witness-box, if she denies on oath
that she made any such statement to you, she will be guilty of perjury?"

"Well----"

"I want an answer to my question. If Mrs. Towers denies, on oath, that
she made any such statement, will she or you be guilty of perjury?"

"Well," the red hands shifted on the rail of the witness-box, "I
wouldn't care to say she used those actual words. But that was what she
meant."

"You realize that what you are saying is of very grave importance?"

"Yuss."

"But you abide by what you have told us about the conversation between
you and the accused?"

"Yuss."

Question and answer went on; till Maggie Peterson, gazing angrily at her
interrogator, saw a black-coated figure move to his side.

"What the devil----" Ronnie, feeling a twitch at his gown, turned to see
Bunce, all agog with excitement.

"Chap at the back of the court, sir, says you're to look at this before
you ask any more questions."

Benjamin Bunce, having delivered himself of his message and a scrap of
soiled paper, slipped away. Ronnie, taking no further notice of the
interruption, continued his attempts to shake Maggie Peterson's
evidence. But the witness had grown sullen. His suavity elicited only
monosyllables. He felt the jury wearying, growing hostile once
more--felt himself outwitted--felt it useless to continue the struggle.

Then, just as he was preparing to sit down, his left hand, fidgeting
with his notes, touched the scrap of paper which Bunce had laid among
them; and glancing down, he saw: "M. P. is a bloody liar. I can tell you
something about what she was doing on the fourth of July."

Ronnie looked round for his clerk, but his clerk had disappeared. The
ermined figure on the bench was growing bored.

"If you have no further questions to ask this witness----" began the
ermined figure.

Maggie Peterson grinned. And suddenly Ronnie knew panic. Either he must
close his cross-examination; or risk a shot in the dark. For a second he
made as though to sit down; then, seeing some emotion almost akin to
reproach flit across the pale face of his client, he took his risk.

"You told both my learned friend and his lordship that at half-past nine
o'clock on the fourth of July--I want you to be very careful of the
date, please--you saw the accused go into Robert Fielding's room. You
are still prepared to swear, on your oath, that that statement is the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"Yuss"--shrilly, but there was a trace of fear in the shrill.

"And supposing--mind you, I'm only supposing--that a witness were to
come forward and say that, on the night in question, you could not
possibly have seen any such thing, that witness would not be telling the
truth?"

"What do yer mean?"

"I should have thought it was sufficiently obvious," said Ronnie
gravely; and repeating his question knew, by the very look on the
witness's face, that his shot in the dark had found its mark.

"I've told yer all I know," retorted Maggie Peterson stubbornly.

"Possibly more." Ronnie, warming to a subdued chuckle from Spillcroft,
ventured one more question. "Tell me, please, what you did _after_ you
had--as you say--watched the accused woman go into her cousin's room?"

"Went to bed, of course."

"Then you were in bed by a quarter to ten?"

"I suppose so."

"Not later than ten o'clock, anyway?"

"No."

"Thank you." Ronnie turned to the judge. "That is all I have to ask this
witness, m' lord."

To the woman in the box, it seemed that her ordeal was over; to the
jury, that the bulk of her evidence remained unshaken. But
Brunton--reëxamining at length--was obviously suspicious of a trap. He
kept on glancing at Ronnie as though to find out what had prompted those
last questions; and Ronnie, as though hiding some secret, kept on
refusing to meet the glance.

"I shall adjourn till ten o'clock to-morrow," said his
lord-ship--reëxamination concluded.

Sweeping his scornful way out of court, the "hanging prosecutor" deigned
yet another glance at his enemy. But his enemy's eyes did not look up:
they were still glued to that little scrap of paper which he had spread
out on his brief.




                              CHAPTER XXXI


                                   1

Walking back alone to the "ridiculous flat," Ronald Cavendish was
oppressed with a sense of his own inefficiency. Even though his
intuitive suspicions about Maggie Peterson's honesty had been to a very
large extent confirmed by that piece of paper, the author of that piece
of paper could not be found. Bunce, bullied to remember who had given
him the document, thought it was "a common-looking kind of fellow."
Cartwright, told, had said skeptically, "Those sort of things always
happen in murder-trials. I'd forget it if I were you." But Ronnie could
not forget.

Halting under the light of a street-lamp, he drew the paper from his
pocketbook and reread it for the twentieth time. If only he could
succeed in discrediting the Peterson woman. Yet, even if he did succeed
in discrediting Maggie Peterson, in nullifying her evidence as to
motive, Brunton--according to his opening--had other witnesses.

Walking on, he bought an evening paper. The paper reported Brunton's
speech verbatim. Curse Brunton! What an orator the man was. Listening to
him, one could hardly imagine Lucy Towers anything but the murderous
adulteress.


                                   2

Caroline Staley had prepared the usual faultless dinner; but her master
ate hardly anything. In his mind, he went over Maggie Peterson's
evidence, weighing it word by word. Obviously the woman hated Lucy
Towers; obviously, almost obviously, she had had some sort of relations,
probably immoral relations, with the dead man. But how the devil could
one prove that? Even proved, how did it advance matters? If only Bunce
hadn't been such an infernal fool. If only Brunton weren't such an
infernally fine orator. Curse Brunton!

Half a bottle of claret and a cigar only added to Ronnie's depression.
Alone in the drawing-room where he and Aliette had so often sat
together, he felt as though, failing Lucy Towers, he would fail his own
woman; as though the fate of Lucy and the fate of Aliette were one fate;
as though, by not saving the one from Brunton's hideous cleverness, he
would never rescue the other from Brunton's hideous obduracy.

Brunton! The man's face traced itself, bewigged, implacable, relentless,
in every up-curling puff of Ronnie's cigar-smoke. Behind that face
hovered the faces of the jury. And the jury stood for public opinion;
public opinion solid on Brunton's side. In his fight against Lucy
Towers, as in his fight against his wife, Brunton had the world's
judgment in his favor: yet both women--"_both_," repeated
conviction--were innocent, at least in intent, of anti-social crime.

A hell of a lot "intent" mattered to Hector Brunton!

If only Hector Brunton were dead! If only for Aliette's sake, for Lucy's
sake, he, Ronald Cavendish, could kill Brunton as William Towers had
been killed! Surely that killing would be not murder, but justice. For
more than a year Brunton, moved only by blind vanity, had been striving
to compass the ruin of a woman against whom his only grudge was that she
had denied herself to him. Now, moved by the same blind motive, he was
striving to compass the ruin and the death of Lucy Towers. Between those
two women and the tyrant who oppressed them stood but one man.
Himself--Ronald Cavendish. Surely the killing of Brunton would be no
murder!

The little mood of madness passed. Resolutely Ronnie put the personal
issue out of mind. Resolutely he fetched his papers from his
dressing-room and set himself to study the reports of the trial before
the magistrate. If only he could discredit Brunton's evidence on the
question of adultery, surely there was a chance, just the shadow of a
chance, to secure the coveted verdict, justifiable homicide.

"But I'd need to be an orator for that," he thought; and all night,
tossing sleepless, visions flickered across the taut screen-board of his
brain. Alternately he saw Aliette, Lucy, his mother--sad faces, each
oppressed, each pleading for deliverance.

Yet next morning, as he emerged from Temple Station and made his way
along the Embankment to his chambers, Ronald Cavendish's self-confidence
returned. And the self-confidence increased fourfold when Bunce, rather
shamefaced, handed him yet another scrap of paper.

"Found this in our letter-box, sir," said Bunce.

Deciphered, the sprawly disguised handwriting read: "I seed her in the
Red Lion, Hill Street, with Bill T. Time 10:15 pip emma. She's a bitch.
I ought to know. I married her."

This time even John Cartwright thought the information of value. "Though
I don't see how you can use it," he said dubiously. "Unless Standon's
people can find this fellow Peterson for us."

"I sha'n't need Peterson," decided Ronnie, as their car swung them down
Holborn. "He probably has his own reasons for keeping out of the way. A
witness from the public-house will be enough. Will you send some one
down at once? The fourth of July, luckily, is American Independence day.
Some one's sure to remember if Towers was there on that particular
night, and who was with him."

The solicitor, dropping his passenger at the Old Bailey, drove off
hurriedly.

Public interest in the case had not diminished overnight. Already the
early street crowd numbered hundreds. On the great staircase, on the
wide landing, folks seethed and jostled. The packed court-room
itself--as the dignified figures of Mr. Justice Heber and his
accompanying big-wigs took their seats---was a lake of straining faces.

Immediately Brunton rose to examine his next witness; a tall
black-mustached, black-haired type with flashy rings and a flashy
tie-pin, who answered to the name of John Hodges.

He was a book-maker, John Hodges told the court. He had known Bill
Towers for many years--long before he married. He had often heard the
dead man speak of his wife. The dead man had been very fond of his wife;
but the affection, according to Hodges, had not been reciprocated.

Question and answer flowed on. But to Ronnie, waiting anxiously for
Cartwright's return, it seemed as though Brunton must be ill. Twice the
harsh voice missed the sequence of its questions. Twice Henry
Smith-Assher had need to prompt his leader. And twice, as the
examination neared its ending, the gray eyes under the "hanging
prosecutor's" gray horsehair deserted their witness to stare,
fascinated, at the woman in the dock. Lucy Towers, it seemed to Brunton,
stared back at him with his wife's own brown unfathomable pupils.

"You've known the accused ever since she married the deceased?" he asked
his witness. "Has she ever spoken to you about her husband?"

"Only once."

"Can you remember what she said?"

"Yes. She said that she wished she'd never married him."

"When was that?"

"Some time in June."

"Can't you fix the exact date?"

"No, not the exact date. It was somewhere about the end of June, I
think."

"Thank you." Heavily Hector Brunton sat down. All night the face of the
woman in the dock had haunted him. And now, now the still, small voice
of conscience was whispering again. "Cruel," whispered the voice;
"cruel." But the sight of Cavendish, rising to cross-examine, silenced
the voice of conscience, brought back the suspicion that Cavendish held
some card, some trump-card, up his sleeve. And "Even if he gets the
charge reduced to manslaughter," thought Brunton, "she'll do time. She
won't be able to trouble me for years. Say seven years."

"Mr. Hodges"--Ronnie's voice recalled his enemy to the
actualities,--"when the accused made this statement to you, were there
any other people present?"

"Yes."

"Will you please tell his lordship and the jury who else was present."

"Bill Towers, of course."

"Why 'of course'?"

"Well, naturally he wouldn't leave another man alone with his wife."

"He was jealous of her, eh?"

"Jealous!" The rings flashed. "I should just about say he was jealous."

"Ah!"--Ronnie's coins jingled--"and did this jealous husband make any
comment on his wife's remark?"

"No."

"Wasn't that rather curious? Now tell me, did you gather, from the way
you allege the accused spoke, that she meant her statement seriously?"

"I thought she was serious."

"Oh, you did, did you? Please tell me something else. Are you prepared
to inform his lordship and the jury that your impression at the time was
that it was the accused's intention to kill her husband if ever she got
the chance?"

"Well, I shouldn't like to go so far as, to say that."

"Naturally not. Now listen." Ronnie leaned forward; and his gaze
traveled towards the jury. "I put it to you that the remark was meant as
a joke."

"Well, not exactly a joke."

"Come, come, Mr. Hodges," said Ronnie, and his tone was a shade less
suave than his words, "you're a man of the world. You must have realized
at the time whether the accused was speaking seriously or not.'

"I thought she was serious." The book-maker, though obviously flustered,
stuck to his guns.

"Very well. We'll leave it at that. The accused told you, in her
husband's presence, that she wished she'd never married him. Her
husband, apparently, didn't take any notice of the remark. But you
thought it was serious. Not very convincing--but still----"

Ronnie's question trailed off into a sarcastic silence. Looking sideways
at Brunton, he could see that Brunton was troubled; Brunton kept talking
to Smith-Assher, kept fidgeting with his gown and tapes, with the
pencils and paper in front of him. The sight gave Ronnie confidence. He
continued his cross-examination.

"You told my learned friend that, although William Towers was very fond
of his wife, his affection was not reciprocated. How did you know that?
Did _she_ tell you?"

"No."

"Did William Towers tell you?"

"No."

"Then who did tell you?"

"Well, it was common gossip."

"Gossip!" Ronnie jumped on the word. "Where?"

"Oh, all over the place."

"Ah!" Counsel for the defense jingled two thoughtful coins. "I'm afraid
I don't know Brixton very well, Mr. Hodges. Tell me, please, when you
say all over the place, do you include," more jingling in the
trouser-pocket, "a certain public-house called--'The Red Lion'?"

"Well----" the witness hesitated.

"Let me put my point clearly. Do you know, in Brixton, a public-house
called 'The Red Lion'?"

"Yes."

"How far is that public-house from 25 Laburnum Grove?"

"About half a mile."

"Shall we say about ten minutes' walk?"

"Yes. That's about it."

Obviously the judge was puzzled. "Mr. Cavendish," he intervened, "I'm
afraid I don't quite follow."

"M' lord," every syllable of Ronnie's fell with its distinct emphasis,
"the point is of vital importance in connection with the evidence of a
previous witness." And he went on swiftly to ask the book-maker, "Do you
know a woman called Maggie Peterson?"

"Oh, yes." The white teeth under the black mustache parted in a grin.
"Oh, yes, I know her quite well."

"Mrs. Peterson told us in her evidence that she was a friend of the
deceased. Is that true?"

"Oh, yes, they were quite friendly."

"Very friendly?"

"Yes."

"Ah!" Ronnie, glancing covertly at the jury, saw a little ripple of
excitement pass over the stolid faces of the men. Behind him, among the
barristers, he could hear excited breathing. "Now, just one more
question, Mr. Hodges, and then I have finished with you. Have you ever
seen Mrs. Peterson in company with William Towers at 'The Red Lion'?"

"M' lord"--Brunton, scruples and caution thrown to the winds, leaped
upright,--"I protest at this attempt to cast aspersions----" But Mr.
Justice Heber, who had now taken Ronnie's point, allowed the question;
and John Hodges, reluctantly, answered it with a "Yes."

The K.C.'s attempt, in reëxamination, to prove the disinterestedness of
the book-maker, added to Ronnie's elation. If only Cartwright succeeded
in securing that evidence----

But Brunton's examination of the next witness pricked the bubble of his
opponent's momentary elation. The "hanging prosecutor" was fighting
again, fighting as he had never battled in his life, for a conviction.
The gray eyes no longer dared look at the dock; the woman in the dock,
thought Brunton, was the woman who had wronged him, the creature he must
destroy.

"I swear to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth," said James Travers, a big blond seafaring man whose
square-shouldered bulk almost filled the witness-box. And he spoke the
truth according to his lights. A story deadly enough, even without
Brunton's prompting. He and Bob Fielding had been shipmates during the
war. Bob Fielding had often spoken to him about his cousin Lucy. Bob
Fielding made no secret of the fact that he was in love with his cousin;
"that he'd have cut off his right hand rather than that she should marry
Bill Towers." Further, James Travers had visited Bob Fielding about
three days before the commission of the crime.

"Did he, on that visit, speak to you about the deceased?" asked Brunton.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said that Bill Towers ought to be shot."

"Did he say anything about Mrs. Towers?"

"Yes, he said that she ought to have some one to look after her."

"Did he say she ought to have something to look after herself with?"

Despite Ronnie's protest at the leading question, his lordship allowed
it; and James Travers answered, "Yes."

"And what happened then?"

"He showed me a pistol."

"A pistol!" Brunton signaled to the clerk of the court, and the clerk
handed up a revolver to the witness. "Is that the pistol?"

"Yes."

"Was this weapon loaded when you last saw it?"

"It was."

"Did Fielding make any remark about it?"

"Yes. He said: 'That'll cook Bill's goose for him.'"

Once more the atmosphere of the court grew hostile. Watching the jury,
Bonnie could see that his enemy had almost turned them. Impassivity
settled like a mask on the faces of the nine men. The two spinsters
gazed awe-struck at the big weapon in the seafarer's big hand. Even the
red-hatted matron, whom he had decided a moment since definitely
favorable, shook her head twice as though in new doubt. Then, turning
from the jury-box to the dock, Ronnie was aware of his client's eyes.
The eyes--Aliette's very own---looked pitiful. Imagination told him that
they were afraid, that at last the woman realized her danger. He tried
to signal to her; but she took no notice of his signal.

"That will be enough, I think," gloated Brunton; and, nervously, Ronnie
started his task of cross-examination.

"You've known Robert Fielding for some time?"

"About seven years."

"Is he, in your opinion, a violent man? The kind of man who would commit
a murder?"

"No."

"Or," Ronnie's nervous voice dropped two full tones, "the sort of man
who would incite some one else to commit murder?"

"No."

"When Robert Fielding told you that he was in love with his cousin--that
was a good many years ago, wasn't it?--did you understand that there was
anything guilty in that love? That his cousin was his mistress?"

"No. I did not." The sailor's eyes--blue as the barrister's
own--kindled.

"As far as you know, had misconduct taken place between Robert Fielding
and his cousin?"

"I don't know anything about that."

"Was Lucy Towers in the room during any part of your conversation with
Robert Fielding?"

"No."

"Has Robert Fielding ever suggested to you, _since_ his cousin's
marriage, that he would like to get her away from her husband?"

"No." The witness hesitated. "Not exactly."

"What do you mean by 'not exactly'?"

"Well, it didn't seem to me that Bob'd be exactly sorry if anything
happened to Towers."

Brunton chuckled audibly. The chuckle enraged Ronnie. For a question or
two he fenced aimlessly with his witness's honesty. Then suddenly he
decided to try and turn that very honesty against his opponent.

"Tell me," he said suavely, "did you gather from the way in which Robert
Fielding habitually spoke of him that the dead man, William Towers, was
of a very violent disposition?"

"Well, more or less I suppose I did."

"And would it be too much if I suggested to you that it was solely
because of her husband's violent disposition that Robert Fielding
thought his cousin should have either some one to protect her, or some
means of protecting herself? That he had that particular thought in his
mind, and that thought only, when he showed you this revolver?"

The sailor seemed to find some difficulty in understanding the
suggestions; and even after Ronnie had repeated them piecemeal, he
refused, sailor-like, to commit himself.

Nervously, the cross-examination went on. "Now about this revolver: did
you gather that Robert Fielding had only just bought it, or that he had
had it in his possession for some considerable time? It's an
old-fashioned navy revolver, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"He must have had it some time--ever since he left the service,
probably?"

"Probably."

"He didn't, at any rate, tell you he'd just bought the weapon?"

"No."

"Coming back to the question of Towers, did Fielding tell you anything
about his habits?"

"Not that I remember."

"He didn't by any chance mention," Ronnie referred to a note at the back
of his brief, "that William Towers was addicted to drink?"

"No. He only said he ought to be shot."

Seating himself, Ronnie was conscious of partial failure. The
sailor-man's innate distrust of lawyers had taken the edge off his
questions. Brunton, infinitely experienced, limited his reëxamination to
the main points: Robert Fielding had admitted himself in love with his
cousin; Robert Fielding had said that William Towers ought to be shot.

Ronnie's hands, as he made his notes, trembled on the smooth foolscap.
The mute figure in the dock was a reproach. Cartwright had failed him.
Brunton's "That, members of the jury, is the case for the Crown," seemed
to carry the unworded sting, "And let my learned enemy refute it if he
can."

And then, just as Lucy Towers was being marched down to the cells, came
Cartwright, his eyes twinkling behind his rimless eye-glasses. "I've got
him outside," whispered Cartwright, "and I daren't leave him alone. It's
too damned important. Here's your proof." He disappeared through the
swing-doors with the crowd; and Ronnie, looking at the scribbled
document, read:

"Bert Bishop will state: I am the licensee of the Red Lion Tavern, Hill
Street, Brixton. I remember the fourth of July last year, because it was
American Independence day, and I have some American customers. On the
fourth of July I had difficulty in turning them out at closing-time. I
have known Maggie Peterson for two years. I knew the dead man, William
Towers. Maggie Peterson and William Towers were at the Red Lion that
night. They came in about eight o'clock, and did not leave till a
quarter past ten."




                             CHAPTER XXXII


                                   1

Ronnie, shaking off Spillcroft, spent the luncheon adjournment alone.
His bouts with the last witnesses, followed by the shock of Bert
Bishop's proof, had rattled him. As he was leaving the court, the
doorkeeper handed him another shock--a telegram. Opening it, he read, to
his relief: "All love and all success. JULIA." But the growing crowd in
the street, the multiplying posters, the comments which reached his ears
as he made his hasty way towards Holborn, rattled him still further.

His luck only added to his fears. Had it not been for the two anonymous
notes, Maggie Peterson's evidence would have stood unchallenged. Now he
could smash that evidence. But even now---even if the jury believed
_his_ side of the case sufficiently to discount Brunton's plea of
premeditation--even if Bob Fielding and Lucy came well through the
ordeal of Brunton's cross-questions--how, how the devil could he hope,
unless some miracle gave his halting oratory genius, to secure a
complete acquittal?

Lunching alone in the crowded grill-room of the South-Eastern & Chatham
Hotel, Ronnie's thoughts went back to other days. He saw himself soldier
again, and remembered the particular type of moral courage, of
self-control, necessary for the winning of battles. That moral courage,
that self-control must be his again if he would win this fight against
Brunton. "This is my chance," he thought. "My one chance of downing the
brute. I mustn't muff it."

Gradually solitude restored his balance. Gradually, his mind
reconcentrated. Weeks of thought crystallized to short sentences. Lucy,
Lucy Towers must be saved. Nothing but that mattered. The personal issue
dwindled to unimportance.

Walking back to the court, he found that he could think, even of his
enemy, logically.


                                   2

But when, a few minutes later, Ronald Cavendish, rising to open the
defense of Lucy Towers, saw Hector Brunton bowed over his brief, nothing
of him visible except a patch of gray wig, the hump of a black back, and
one gentlemanly hand clutched round the gold pencil-case--then, for a
moment, logic failed; and only the fear-stricken eyes of the woman in
the dock, only his personal enmity for the man keyed him to the
struggle.

"M' lord, members of the jury," he began, and there was no attempt at
oratory in his beginning, "it will be no part of my case to prove to you
that Lucy Towers did not shoot her husband. She did shoot him. She shot
him exactly as counsel for the Crown has proved to you. But when the
Crown asks you to find my client guilty of wilful murder, when my
learned friend brings what he is pleased to call evidence in support of
malice and of premeditation; then I join issue with him. My submission
to you is that there was, in what my client did, neither malice nor
premeditation.

"Yet even if my learned friend fails--as it seems to me he must fail--to
convince you of premeditation, that failure will not furnish me with
sufficient grounds on which to ask you for my client's complete
exoneration. Only on one ground can I ask you, as I intend to ask you,
for your verdict of not guilty; and that ground, members of the jury, is
justifiable or excusable homicide.

"Excusable homicide!" For a full ten minutes, the voice, grave, low,
meditative, calm as the voice of the judge himself, dealt with the legal
aspect of excusability; and all the while Hector Brunton listened,
motionless. But suddenly, as Ronnie's tone changed to the tone of the
pleader, the "hanging prosecutor" shifted on his seat; and savagely he
stared at his enemy.

"Those, members of the jury, are some of the grounds on which our law
excuses the killing of one human being by another. But there are other
grounds, grounds which not only excuse but justify. It is such
justification, the fullest possible justification, which I purpose to
plead. My learned friend, you may have noticed, was very careful to
avoid any reference to the character or disposition of my client's
husband. I, on the contrary, intend to deal with that point rather
fully."

Already the very quietness, the very certainty of that opening had
impressed the court; and as, still quietly, yet with a hint of mounting
passion behind it, the speech went on; as, point by point, counsel for
the defense traversed the statements of counsel for the Crown, it
seemed, even to the obtuse Spillcroft, as though the capital charge
against Lucy Towers might fail.

"While as for the minor charge," continued Ronnie, "the charge of
manslaughter--of which, as his lordship will tell you, even though it is
not pleaded on the indictment, it will be open to you to find my client
guilty--on that charge, too, I intend to ask you for the completest
acquittal."

Brunton's stare relaxed. He hunched himself once more over his notes.
And abruptly instinct, the instinct of the born advocate, warned Ronnie
that he had spoken long enough. He glanced at the clock, at the jury.
The jury--and especially the three women--were losing interest. Those
women wanted neither argument nor oratory. They wanted drama. They were
waiting, as spectators in a theater, for him to put Lucy Towers in the
witness-box. So, abruptly, he regalvanized their interest.

"Members of the jury, my learned friend who leads for the Crown has been
at great pains to convince you, out of the mouths of his witnesses, that
Lucy Towers is both murderess and adulteress. I propose to afford him
yet another opportunity of convincing you--by putting both my client and
her cousin in the witness-box."

At that, the whole court stiffened to attention, and even the judge, who
seemed to have been dozing throughout the speech, leaned forward. "Isn't
he even going to deal with the evidence for the prosecution?" thought
the judge.

But Ronnie purposely played his highest card last.

"Nevertheless, before you hear my client's story from her own lips, I
must ask you to weigh very carefully certain evidence which the Crown
has thought fit to call against her. With the testimony of John Hodges
and of James Travers, honest testimony, let us hope, I shall deal at a
later stage of these proceedings. But the evidence of Maggie Peterson
calls for different treatment. Because Maggie Peterson has lied--and
lied deliberately!

"Lied--and lied deliberately." Now, as passion mounted and mounted,
kindling the quiet voice to rage, Brunton's head twitched from his
brief, and his eyes, the cold gray eyes under the gray wig, glanced
fearfully about the packed court-room.

"Because, on the night of July 4, the night when Maggie Peterson swears
that she saw my client making her way to Robert Fielding's room, Maggie
Peterson was not at 25 Laburnum Grove at all."

Ronnie paused, letting his every word sink home. Rain, pattering
suddenly on the glass dome above, seemed to emphasize the silence below.
Then passionately the speech ended. "My lord, members of the jury, I ask
for no mercy. I ask only for justice. I ask you to remember, even while
you are listening to my client's testimony, that the main evidence
against her, the evidence of this woman Peterson is, from beginning to
end, one tissue of deliberate lies, of the most wilful and corrupt
perjury, as I shall prove to you out of the mouth of a competent
witness, the landlord of the Red Lion Tavern, who will testify to you
beyond the shadow of a doubt that from eight o'clock till after ten on
the night of July 4, Maggie Peterson never left his establishment; who
will testify, moreover, that Maggie Peterson's companion on the night in
question was none other than my unfortunate client's husband, William
Towers himself."

And on that, satisfied with the utter hush which followed, Ronald
Cavendish put his client in the box.


                                   3

There are seconds in every man's life when the conviction of his own
wrong-doing shatters the edifice of conceit and flings illusion
headlong.

Such a second came to Hector Brunton, K.C., as he watched Lucy Towers
step down from the side of the dock and make her way past the packed
benches to the witness-box. With her--he could feel--went a wave, a
great wave of human sympathy, the wave against which he, Hector Brunton,
had been swimming for more than a year.

Paralyzed he watched her--watched her take the oath, kiss the book. His
mind was a torment, a torment of conscience. Conscience howled: "You
knew! You knew all the time that your principal witness was lying. You
knew! You knew all the time that this woman was no adulteress. She's
innocent, innocent, Hector Brunton; as innocent in intention as that
other woman you've been hounding."

Cavendish's voice, the voice of his enemy, broke the spell.

"Mrs. Towers, while the oath you have just sworn is still fresh in your
mind, I want you to answer this question. Have you ever, at any time in
your life, been guilty of immorality with your cousin, Robert Fielding?"

"Never." The answer, so diffident yet so definite, might have been
Aliette's; and to Ronnie, his brain still throbbing from its own
unaccustomed eloquence, it seemed, just for a fraction of a second, as
though the woman he defended were indeed his own.

"Various witnesses for the Crown have stated that you were on bad terms
with your husband. Are those statements true?"

"I did my best to get on with him." The brown eyes never flinched. "But
he was a cruel man, especially when he was in drink."

"Nevertheless, you were faithful to him?"

"Yes. Always."

"You heard Mrs. Peterson's evidence? She said," Ronnie referred to his
notes, "that at half-past nine o'clock on the night of July 4, she saw
you go into Robert Fielding's room. Have you any comment to make on that
evidence?"

"It's a lie. I never visited him at night. Only by day."

"At half-past nine on the night of July 4, where were you?"

"I was in my own room, washing up the supper things."

"Was your husband with you?"

"No."

"Where was he?"

"I don't know."

"One other point about Mrs. Peterson's evidence. She told us, if you
remember, that you made a statement: that you said to her that you would
never be happy till your husband was dead. What have you to say about
that statement?"

"It's another lie." The lips pursed, stubbornly--it seemed to
Brunton--as his wife's own. "An absolute lie."

"One moment, please!" Mr. Justice Heber--every syllable of his question
audible as the tinkle of glass--intervened. "I should like to be clear
on this point, Mrs. Towers. The witness to whom your counsel refers made
the following statements: that at half-past nine o'clock on the night of
July 4 she saw you enter Robert Fielding's room; that you were in the
habit of making such visits, and that she was standing in the passage
between your room and hers when she saw you. Do I understand you
positively to deny all three of those statements?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"And the witness in question further stated that you said to her: 'Bill
isn't fit to be any woman's husband. I wish to God he was dead.' What
have you to say to that?"

The woman in the witness-box did not hesitate. Deliberately her eyes met
the judge's. Deliberately she answered his question: "My lord, I may
have said that Bill wasn't fit to be any woman's husband. But I never
said," the shy voice rose, "either to Maggie Peterson or to any one
else, that I wished he was dead."

"She never said"--word for word Mr. Justice Heber wrote down his
answer--"that she wished her husband was dead."

But Hector Brunton--bent over his brief--could not write. For now, not
only conscience, but all his years spent in separating truth from
falsehood, all the experience of a legal lifetime, told him of Lucy's
innocence.

Again his enemy's voice broke the spell: "You heard the evidence of John
Hodges. He said that you told him somewhere about the end of last June
that you wished you had never married your husband. Have you anything
you would like to say in answer to that?"

"Bill was there at the time. I only meant it for a joke."

"And now, before I ask you to tell his lordship and the jury, in your
own words, what happened on the afternoon of July 5, I want you, if you
can, to give me some idea of the feelings you entertained, before that
date, for your husband."

It was a daring, an unpremeditated, though not a leading question; and,
even as he put it, Ronnie perceived its danger. Suppose the woman in the
witness-box, the little dignified woman whose hands rested so quietly on
the rail, whose whole attitude indicated nothing but the intensest
desire to speak truth, should speak too much truth, should destroy--with
one fatal word--the house of protection he was building about her? But
neither the heart nor the truth in Lucy Towers failed.

"It wouldn't be right"--the hands on the rail did not move--"for me to
pretend that I cared for Bill. He made my life an absolute hell. He
drank and he used to knock me about. Many's the time I've wished he was
dead. But I never thought of killing him."

"Ah." Ronnie paused in his examination--one of those long, indefinable
pauses which have more value than speech. Now--feeling the jury with
him--he was no longer haunted by thought of his own inefficiency, no
longer afraid of Brunton. Not Brunton's self could shake such a witness.
Already, the first faint foretaste of victory quickened his pulse. His
questions grew more and more daring.

"You said, in your statement at the police-station: 'My husband didn't
like me going to Bob's room. He was jealous of Bob.' Can you give us any
further details about that?"

"Details!" Lucy, her eyes downcast, appeared to be considering the
question. She shot a glance at Brunton. Then, quietly, she said, "Bill
was always being jealous of some man or other--the same as Mr. Hodges
said. But he hadn't got any reason to be jealous. I told him so, when he
said I wasn't to go to Bob's room that afternoon. Me and Bob has always
been pals--since we were kiddies. But if it hadn't been for Bob having
no arms, I wouldn't have disobeyed Bill and gone to him.''

"I see. And can you tell me, coming to the afternoon of July 5, what
your husband said when you threatened to disobey him--when you told
him," Ronnie referred to his brief, "'I must go and help Bob because he
can't feed himself'?"

"Bill said," the words were tremulous: "'If you don't stop here I'll
come over and do in the pair of you.'"

"And what happened after that!"

"I just went to Bob's room."

"And did you say anything to your cousin about your husband's threats?"

"No."

"Can you tell me why you didn't?"

"Because"--unconsciously, the woman scored yet another point--"because I
didn't want Bob to see I was frightened."

"And now"--Ronnie craned forward in his mounting excitement--"and now,
Mrs. Towers, I want you to describe to his lordship and the jury, in
your own words, exactly what happened in Robert Fielding's room on the
afternoon of July 5."

"I made Bob his tea, and I was helping him eat it when Bill came in,"
began the woman.

No sounds save the scratch of reporters' pencils, the occasional tap of
a boot-sole on the bare floor-boards, and the suppressed breathing of
her tense audience interrupted the story Lucy Towers told her counsel
and the court--a story so utterly resembling, yet so utterly differing
from the toneless confession which the "hanging prosecutor" had read out
the day before, a story so redolent of life and truth and certainty
that, listening to it, it seemed as if one could actually see the dead
man standing at the doorway of that bare tenement room, see the lifted
stick in his hand, and hear his harsh, grim voice.

"Bill said, 'I'll do you in. I'll do you both in, damn you.' He had his
stick in Ms hand. He lifted his stick. I was frightened. I thought he
meant to kill Bob. I thought he meant to kill both of us. I remembered
the pistol. I ran to the cupboard. I pulled out the pistol. I pointed it
at him. Bob said, 'Look out, Bill. The gun's loaded.' Bill said, 'You
can't frighten me.' I thought he was going to kill Bob, so I fired.

"So I fired." The little story ended to the indescribable, unbearable
silence of men and women whose emotions are near to breaking-point.
Through that unbearable silence, Ronnie's next question cut like a razor
through taut string.

"You say that your husband carried a stick. Can you describe that
stick?"

"It was a heavy stick."

"Can't you tell me any more about it?"

"Yes; it had a bit of lead in the handle."

"Was he holding the stick by the handle?"

"No. By the other end."

"And you thought he meant to kill your cousin with that loaded stick?"

"Yes. I felt sure of it. That was why I shot him."

Ronnie paused again, making sure that his point should sink home in the
minds of the jury. Then, picking up his copy of the confession, he put
his last questions: "I have here the statement which you made at the
time of your arrest. You say, 'I'm not sorry I killed my husband.' Why
did you say that?"

"Because I wasn't sorry--then."

"But you are sorry now?"

"Yes. I didn't mean to kill him. I don't know why I said that. I didn't
quite know what I was saying."

"And there was one other thing you said. You said, 'I love Bob very
much.' Is that true?"

"Yes." Lucy Towers answered fearlessly. "I do love him, but not in the
way"--her eyes, which had scarcely left Ronnie's since the examination
began, turned for a moment to Hector Brunton, huddled in his seat--"not
in the way that _he_ tried to make out."

"Thank you, Mrs. Towers. That's all I have to ask," finished Ronald
Cavendish; and, seating himself, waited for Hector Brunton's onslaught.

But the onslaught tarried. Almost it seemed as if Hector Brunton were
going to leave that cross-examination, on which the whole case hung, to
his junior. For now Hector Brunton heard, louder than the whisper of
conscience, the very whisper of God. "Thou art the man," whispered God;
"_thou_ art the murderer."

                  *       *       *       *       *

The "hanging prosecutor" looked at the woman in the dock, and his
courage failed before the accusing glance of her. The "hanging
prosecutor" looked at the judge, at the massed spectators; and his heart
quailed before the doubting glances of them. Then the "hanging
prosecutor" looked at his enemy; and rage, the rage of the lusting male,
took him by the throat. God's whisper forgotten, man's duty forgotten,
all save this one last chance of vengeance forgotten; he rose, heavy as
the wounded bull, to his ungainly feet. His brain, the cold
sure-functioning legal brain, had not yet failed. He still knew his
strength. But a red mist blinded his eyes, and through that red mist he
saw, not Lucy Towers but Aliette; Aliette, whom every cheated fiber of
his body yearned to torture--and, torturing, possess.

"You admit that you shot your husband?" The words--grim, bitter,
devil-prompted--grated in Brunton's throat.

"Yes."

"You admit that you said, just after you had shot him, that you were not
sorry for the deed?"

"That's written down."

"Answer my question, please. Do you admit that you said, just after your
husband's death at your hands, that you were not sorry you had killed
him?"

"That's written down," repeated Lucy Towers stubbornly. And the
stubbornness sent a chill through the red mist; a chill that pierced to
Hector Brunton's very marrow. Thus--thus stubborn and unwrithing--thus
clear-eyed and contemptuous, had this same woman outfaced him, long and
long ago in the bright, miserable drawing-room at Lancaster Gate.

"You have admitted"--there was a singing in the K.C.'s ears; he could
hardly hear his own voice--"that you love your cousin, Robert Fielding.
I put it to you that you are Robert Fielding's mistress."

"No."

"I put it to you that you went to Robert Fielding's room nightly."

"It's a lie."

"I put it to you that ever since Robert Fielding came to live at 25
Laburnum Grove you have been in the habit of misconducting yourself with
him."

"It's a lie."

"I put it to you"--God! if only he could make her writhe; if only he
could see one stab of pain twitch those cheeks--"that you love Robert
Fielding."

"Not in the way you're trying to make out."

"I put it to you that it was because of your love for Robert Fielding
that you shot your husband."

"No."

"Then why did you shoot him?"

"My lord,"--Cavendish's voice--"I protest. This is outrageous."

"I'm afraid, Mr. Cavendish,"--Heber's voice--"I must allow the
question."

"Why did you shoot your husband?" Brunton heard his own voice, very
faint through the buzz at his ears.

"I have already told you"--he heard Aliette's voice--"I killed him
because I thought he was going to kill Bob."

"You meant to kill him, then?"

Again his enemy's protest. Again the judge's doubtful, "I feel I must
allow the question." Again Aliette's stubborn reply:

"No. I never meant to kill him. I didn't think about that. I only wanted
to save Bob."

Momentarily the red mist cleared from Brunton's sight. He knew this
woman for Lucy Towers--Lucy Towers against whom, despite the flaws in
the evidence, he had advised prosecution for wilful murder; knew himself
doomed to failure with her--as he had always been doomed to failure with
Aliette; knew that, against the sheer rock of truth in the one, as
against the rock of sheer truth in the other, the spray of his lawless
hate must beat in vain.

Then the red mist thickened, thickened and thickened, again before
Brunton's smarting eyes. Rage kindled in his bowels, kindled from bowels
to brain, burning away self-control. He was aware only of Cavendish--of
Cavendish, utterly cold, utterly legal--of Cavendish protesting for his
witness, protecting his witness--of Cavendish's will, thrusting bar
after cold steel bar between himself and the woman.

The singing was still in Brunton's ears; and now it grew dark in court,
so that the face of the woman faded from his sight; and now it grew
light in court, so that the face of the woman showed itself to him as a
white contemptuous sneer under the electrics; but still, blindly, he
tortured her with his questions.

At last he heard his own voice clearly once again, "You deny, then, that
you are an adulteress?"; heard her answer, "Yes. I deny that
absolutely"; heard, as a murderer hearing his own sentence, Mr. Justice
Heber's, "If that finishes your cross-examination, Mr. Brunton, I shall
adjourn until ten o'clock tomorrow"; heard, as a murderer hears the
tramp of feet outside his cell, Cavendish's quiet, "With your lordship's
permission, there is one witness, one most important witness, whom I
should like to call before the court adjourns"; listened, powerless to
cross-examine, while the witness of Cartwright's finding tore Maggie
Peterson's testimony in pieces.


                                   4

As Ronnie, striding solitary home, saw on the posters "TOWERS CASE
SENSATION; WITNESS ARRESTED FOR PERJURY." it seemed to him as though
victory had been already in his grasp.




                             CHAPTER XXXIII


                                   1

Hector Brunton tottered out of his car and up the steps into his
chambers like a man in a palsy. Three clients were waiting in the outer
office for consultations. He told Patterson: "Send them away. Get rid of
them. Say I'm too ill to see anybody." Then heavily he sat down at his
desk.

The shock of Maggie Peterson's arrest, climaxing emotion, was still on
him. Definitely his experience knew himself defeated. "God!" he
muttered, "another night--another night of the rack."

The previous night had been torment enough. Then he had thought: "I may
fail. Cavendish may have something up his sleeve"; then he had seen only
success in jeopardy; dreaded only the failure of his vengeance. But
now--now he was beaten--worse than beaten--delivered up, body and soul,
to the Furies.

The clerk came in to ask if he might go. "Yes," said Brunton; "go. Go as
soon as you like." The clerk went out, leaving him alone; alone with his
Furies.

The Furies showed him Aliette, infinitely fastidious, infinitely
desirable; they showed him Renée, Renée who would even now be awaiting
him; they showed Lucy, Lucy Towers, stubborn in her cell. "Don't let her
go free from her cell," whispered the Furies. "You're not beaten yet.
She did kill the man. Convict her, Hector Brunton. Convict her of
manslaughter."

They showed him Cavendish, Cavendish gloating at the prospect of
victory. "To be beaten," whispered the Furies, "to be beaten by
Cavendish, by the adulterer who stole away your wife!"

But all the time Hector Brunton knew in his inmost soul that he had
sought to compass the death of an innocent woman; that he had sinned
against his own code, against the holy ghost of justice.

And gradually, terrifyingly, the reason of that sinning was brought home
to him. He had sinned, not as a woman sins, lovingly, but for sheer
hate. Out of his hatred for Cavendish he had plotted--as surely as any
murderer--the death of Lucy Towers.

And suddenly, starkly, irresistibly, it was brought home to him
that--even as he had plotted the death of Lucy Towers--so, and for the
same hideous reason, he had plotted the social ruin of his own wife.

Till finally the ultimate pretext, the pretext of his love for Aliette,
was stripped from him, and he saw that love in all its hideous
nakedness, as lust--the savage sadic lust which had hounded him to
crime.

                  *       *       *       *       *

David Patterson had long gone home; but Brunton sat on--alone in his
chambers--alone with his conscience, naked before his God. His worldly
house, the sure material legal house of his own making, had crashed, in
that one second of time when he watched Lucy Towers step down from the
dock, to ruin. The law, basis of work and life, lay--a tablet shattered
to ten thousand fragments--at his feet. Ghosts--the palpable ghosts of
those two women for the compassing of whose ruin he had invoked the
law--sidled about the darkling room, terrifying him. He knew himself a
prisoner--prisoner in the invisible house of God.

Was there no way out? No escape from God's house of conscience? Had he,
abiding by the letter of man's law, forfeited--for all time--the
merciful spirit of the law of God?

"Yes," said conscience, "there is one way out. One way, and one way
only, of escape. Make reparation, Hector Brunton. Set both these women
free."

Must he, then, give up everything--wife, vengeance, victory--because of
this one damnable insistent whisper, this whisper of conscience that was
driving him to madness?

And now, again, he saw the phantoms--phantom of Aliette and phantom of
Lucy Towers. They were behind bars--bars--innocent women behind bars
which he, Hector Brunton, had socketed home with his own hands.

                  *       *       *       *       *

At last, thought of those bars drove him into the night. King's Bench
Walk lay deserted, chill-gleaming under autumnal trees. Leaves strewed
it, swishing against his boots as he strode. "Autumn," thought Brunton.
"Autumn! We've reached middle age, the year and I. And what have I
garnered? Nothing."

Suddenly he realized whither his feet were carrying him; suddenly he
found himself under the colonnade of Pump Court, at the door of his
rival's chambers. The door was shut, the court deserted. Yet for a long
time Brunton stood by the door; stood, as a man stands who waits for
some sign, for an opening window or the gleam of a light. But no window
opened, no light gleamed.

He came, hardly knowing how, out of the gloom of the Temple into the raw
glare of empty Fleet Street. In front of him uprose the long façade of
the high courts, the courts where he had won fame and money. What did
fame and money matter to him--to Hector Brunton, who, gaining the whole
legal world, had lost his own soul?


                                   2

Counsel for the defense, as he watched counsel for the prosecution make
his way into court next morning, could almost feel sorry for the man.
Brunton, the overbearing, overconfident Brunton, looked the veriest
wreck of his old self. He tottered rather than walked to his seat. His
eyes were dull, bloodshot; his hands trembled; his jowl twitched and
twitched.

The judge had not yet arrived; and Ronnie's eyes, switching here and
there about the packed court, suddenly envisaged, below the judge's
dais, the "exhibits" of the prosecution: among them the revolver which
had killed its man. More than once, in the last year, he, Ronald
Cavendish, had known the desire to kill his man. But now, looking on the
wreck which had been Brunton, he knew the desire dead. No longer could
he even hate Brunton. The man was beaten--beaten.

Bunce, approaching, handed up a telegram: "Congratulations. Masterly.
Feel confident of your success. BERTRAM STANDON."

Ronnie's heart glowed at the penciled words. Already he saw success,
fame, victory; already the sentences he would speak throbbed in his
brain. And then, abruptly, the sight of Lucy Towers entering the
witness-box for reëxamination recalled the fact that Brunton was still
undefeated. The alternative charge of manslaughter had yet to be fought
out between them!

The judge took his seat. The short reëxamination of Lucy Towers
began--ended. Quietly she went back to the dock; quietly she took her
seat by the blue-uniformed wardress.

"Robert Fielding!" called the constables on guard outside the doors.

The armless sailor, unskilled in law, had taken small comfort from the
morning's papers. His face, shaved clean, was gray with apprehension;
his whole body drooped as he made his way into the box. Ronnie could see
pity written clear on the faces of the jury. The fat matron--she still
wore her red hat--made a convulsive movement as if to assist, when the
crier of the court lifted the Bible to the kiss of that trembling mouth.
Even the two dour spinsters seemed moved.

Robert Fielding's tale of the happenings at Laburnum Grove on the
afternoon of July 5 corroborated his cousin's in almost every detail.
Yet he told it haltingly; only when Ronnie asked, "Have you any
knowledge of the relations between Mrs. Towers and her husband?" did any
certainty come into the low voice.

"Nobody except me," said Robert Fielding, "knows all that Lucy had to
put up with from that fellow. He was always a wrong 'un, was Bill
Towers. I looked after her all I could, but a cripple like me hasn't got
much chance."

"Did you ever make any secret of your affection for your cousin?"

"No, sir."

"When you told James Travers that your cousin's husband ought to be
shot, what did you mean to imply?"

The sailor hesitated; and Ronnie, nervous of the one weakness left in
his case, tried to prompt him. "When you told James Travers that Bill
Towers ought to be shot, did you have any intention----"

But at that, the judge intervened--leading questions being barred in
law; and Ronnie, a trifle annoyed with himself for the solecism,
repeated his former query.

Again Fielding hesitated; then he said, self-excusingly: "When I made
that remark, I made it as a good many of us who have been in the service
do make it--in a general sort of way, meaning that Bill Towers was a bad
lot, and that it wouldn't be any loss if somebody did shoot him."

"I see." Ronnie smiled; and a man on the jury, obviously an ex-service
man, smiled with him. "Now, about the pistol--or rather the revolver.
Can you tell us how long it had been in your possession?"

"Two years, I should say."

"Had it always been loaded?"

"Yes. Ever since I can remember."

"When did your cousin first know that you possessed this revolver?"

"Not until that afternoon."

"Which afternoon?"

"The afternoon she shot Bill Towers."

"One other point. James Travers told us that you said to him, 'I'd
rather cut off my right hand than that Lucy should marry Bill Towers.'
Did you ever make such a statement to James Travers?"

The sailor looked down, piteously, at his two empty sleeves. "I may
have," he said. "But if I did, it must have been a long time ago."

"Before she married?"

"Yes, before she married."

"James Travers also told us that you said to him, when you showed him
the revolver, 'This will cook Bill's goose for him.' Did you say that?"

"Yes." The answer was hardly audible. "He'd been knocking Lucy
about--and I was mad with him."

"Was there any other reason why you were mad with him?"

"Yes, there was." And the sailor--fears momentarily forgotten--rapped
out, so swiftly that even the judge could not stop him, "He drank, and
he was carrying on with another woman. Everybody in the house knew about
it."

On the hush which followed that statement--a statement confirmatory of
the point which Ronnie, without specifically alleging it, had been
trying to establish ever since his opening question to Maggie
Peterson--fell the last question of Mr. Justice Heber: "Do you know, of
your own knowledge, any woman other than his wife with whom the dead man
was on terms of sexual intimacy?"

And Robert Fielding, looking squarely into those gleaming spectacles,
answered, "Yes, my lord. With Maggie Peterson. Many's the time I've seen
the blackguard a-sneaking into her room."


                                   3

At two o'clock of the afternoon, in a court packed to suffocation point,
Ronald Cavendish rose to begin his final speech for the defense of Lucy
Towers.

Robert Fielding's testimony, unshaken in cross-examination, had been
followed by more evidence, collected by Standon's assiduous reporters,
as to the character of the dead man; and that evidence--Ronnie
felt,--coupled with the arrest of Maggie Peterson, made the main issue,
the issue of wilful murder, safe.

Nevertheless, the Wixton imagination in him was doubtful of the second
issue, the issue of manslaughter. In England, the unwritten law did not
run; and although, thanks to the press, the streets outside were black
with people, with a mob hungry for news of the verdict, determined on
his client's acquittal, Ronnie knew the difficulties of securing that
acquittal too well for overconfidence.

Again he had spent the luncheon interval alone;
praying--voicelessly--that his oratory might not fail; visualizing
always those two dour-faced spinsters on the jury, and Mr. Justice
Heber, having summed up in cold legal phraseology the bare facts of the
case, awarding, on the jury's recommendation, the lenient sentence of a
year's imprisonment.

In those few seconds of time before his speech began, Ronnie's
imagination could almost hear the murmur of the mob without. The murmur
flustered him. After all, Lucy _had_ shot her husband. Between her, pale
in the dock, and the dark cell of felony, stood only a dumb advocate, a
fencer unskilled with the sword of the spoken word.

Till suddenly, standing there silent before Lucy's peers, it seemed to
Ronnie as though all the emotions of the last year stirred in his heart,
as though all that pity for womankind which Aliette had engendered in
him fought for utterance at his lips. For one fleeting moment, his keen
gaze swept the court, envisaging judge, jury, the motionless figure of
his client, the constable and the wardress either side of her, the
spectators standing two-deep round the closed doors, Benjamin Bunce,
David Patterson, John Cartwright, Brunton. For one fleeting moment he
thought of Brunton, and of the wrong which Brunton had done to the woman
he loved. Then, gravely, quietly, feeling the sword of the spoken word
quiver like a live blade at his lips, he engaged his enemy.

Sentence by calm sentence, Julia Cavendish's son--making scarcely a
gesture, referring hardly to a note--traversed the statements of his
enemy and of the witnesses for his enemy; sentence by grave sentence, he
demonstrated to those twelve watchful faces, to the nine men and the
three women in the jury-box, that the crime---if crime it were--had been
committed on a sudden impulse, without motive, without malice, without
premeditation.

"Members of the jury, if we except the evidence of Maggie
Peterson--evidence which we now know to be one tissue of lies,--what
proof have we of motive or of malice aforethought? No proof, no proof
whatsoever. When counsel for the Crown dared to call my client an
adulteress, on what did he base his foul allegation? On the word of a
proved liar. I venture to tell him that, if any one fact has emerged
from the evidence which he has seen fit to put before you, it is the
fact of my client's fidelity to the blackguard whom she had the
misfortune to marry."

At that, fearfully, the "hanging prosecutor" craned forward in his seat;
and fearfully--as though it were of himself and not of the dead that
Ronnie spoke--his bloodshot eyes glanced up at the set, stern face of
counsel for the defense. But counsel for the defense deigned him never a
glance. Terribly, counsel for the defense went on:

"My lord, members of the jury, he, counsel for the Crown, is a
distinguished, perhaps our most distinguished advocate. Behind him are
all the resources of the public purse, of the public power. Yet I, the
humblest of pleaders, should not be doing my duty to my client did I not
tell him that this prosecution to which he has thought fit to add the
weight of his advocacy is a prosecution founded on false witness,
bolstered on perjury, a prosecution which no just advocate would have
dared to support."

With those words, unprofessional, unpremeditated--for now the sword of
oratory had outlunged Ronnie's self-control, so that he spoke from his
heart, careless of etiquette,--a shiver of excitement rippled the
gray-wigged heads behind. The wigged heads nodded toward one another,
whispering, "I say! Why the deuce don't Brunton protest!" But Brunton
did not protest. And counsel for the defense spoke on:

"Why he has so dared, is for my learned friend to explain. My learned
friend spoke of mercy. The poet tells us that the quality of mercy is
not strained. Did my learned friend ponder that saying when his hands
drew up the indictment against my client? Did any spirit of mercy move
him when his brain schemed the evidence which has been put before this
court? Is he merciful or merciless, truthful or truthless, when he asks
you to believe that this woman, this unfortunate Lucy Towers, is guilty
not only of murder but of adultery?"

Still Brunton did not protest. His eyes, the bloodshot eyes under the
wig awry, dared look no more upon his enemy. For now it seemed to Hector
Brunton as though Ronnie pleaded with him--as he had pleaded long
ago--not only for the freedom of the woman in the dock, but for the
freedom of Aliette.

"Adultery!" pleaded Ronnie. "Has my learned friend brought any proof of
that adultery? He has brought none. None. None. Has he brought any proof
of murder? Any proof of that malice aforethought without which--as he
himself has told you--there can be no murder? He has brought none. None.
None. Yet deliberately he has sought to twine"--one hand shot out,
pointing first at Brunton, then at the unmoving figure of Lucy
Towers--"the hangman's rope round the neck of this innocent woman. For
she is innocent! Innocent of murder as she is of adultery. Innocent--I
declare it to you in all solemnity!--innocent before the sight of man as
she is innocent before the sight of God--of any and of every charge that
counsel for the Crown has thought fit to bring against her. Of no
charge, not even of manslaughter, can she be found guilty! Is it
manslaughter to defend the defenseless? Is it manslaughter when a weak
woman protects the man she loves from the beast who makes her days and
her nights a living hell?

"A living hell!" For a second the flood of oratory ceased; for a second,
through the silence of bated breaths, it seemed to Ronald Cavendish as
though once again he caught the murmurs of the crowd without. But now
the crowd gave strength to his words.

"Members of the jury, _I_ do not ask for mercy. I ask only for justice.
I ask you, when you weigh your verdict, to remember what manner of man
was this William Towers. I ask you to look upon my client. I ask you to
think of this woman, faithful always, complaining never, enduring
always--year after hellish year--the bestial defilements of the drunken
reprobate into whose black heart, not of premeditation but in sheer and
sudden defense of a fellow-creature, she fired her fatal shot. Oh, yes,
Lucy Towers fired that shot. Lucy Towers and no other killed her
husband. That is the one truth in the tissue of lies which has been put
before you. But was that killing a crime? Is not the world well rid of
men like William Towers? Members of the jury, you, who have heard from
the lips of unbiased witnesses what were his cruelties, what his
drinkings and what his lecheries, will you not say to yourselves--as I
say to myself--when you come to consider your verdict: 'God save all
women from such a man.'"

And then, for the first time, Ronnie deigned one scornful look upon his
enemy.

"Yet, believe me, you men and you women on whose word depends life or
death for this woman I am defending, it is not on the ground of her
husband's cruelties that I ask you to let her go free. However degraded,
however debauched, however cruel; this man, this William Towers still
had the right to live. Neither by his lechery nor by his drunkenness did
he forfeit his life. Yet his life was forfeit. Why? Let me tell you why.
Let me tell you in one sentence. Because he sought to take the life of
another.

"Remember that. Never forget that. William Towers sought to take the
life of another!" Ronnie's voice slowed to emphasis. Subconsciously, he
knew himself at the very core of his defense. But consciously he knew
nothing. The faces of the judge, of the jury and the spectators--phantom
symbols whose intelligences his own intelligence must now
grapple--blurred to his sight. He swayed as he stood.

"Members of the jury, that is the issue; the whole simple issue before
this court. Dismiss from your minds all prejudice. That my learned
friend stooped to call false witnesses is for my learned friend's
conscience to excuse. You have not been summoned to decide the guilt of
Maggie Peterson. You are not here to weigh the sins of the dead. You
have been summoned to decide whether or no my client is guilty of any
crime. Judge--impartially yet compassionately--that single simple issue.
And, judging, keep before your minds this picture, the picture my client
herself painted for you in unshaken, unforgettable words, the picture of
the poor clean room in the tenement-house where Lucy Towers sits with
her cousin; with the armless man, whose arms (need I remind you?) were
sacrificed for your sake and for mine.

"Day by day Lucy Towers has visited that room; day by day her hands and
hers alone have ministered to its helpless, to its defenseless occupant.
Day by day she has brought him, despite her husband's threats, a little
money--food perhaps. Is that a crime? But to-day she has not even
brought money. She has only helped him--the piteousness of it!--to drink
his tea. They are cousins, these two. They are happy with one another;
not, as my learned friend would have you believe, guiltily happy, but
innocently happy. They love one another--as they themselves told you--in
the best, in the highest way, even as brother and sister love one
another.

"So, they are sitting. And then, without warning, comes the crash of a
stick-handle on the door. Startled, they look up. Startled, they see,
framed in the doorway, the cruel terrible face of a man, of this woman's
legal owner, of William Towers. In his hand this reprobate, this cruel
drunken reprobate, brandishes his stick. The stick is no ordinary
walking-stick. It is a weapon--a deadly weapon--a loaded stick. William
Towers grasps the loaded stick by the ferrule. He lifts it menacingly;
he makes as though to brain Robert Fielding--the armless, the helpless,
the defenseless man, Robert Fielding. Robert Fielding's cousin is
afraid; she fears this reprobate's violence, fears that he has been
drinking, fears his ungovernable temper. There is a revolver in the
cupboard. A revolver!

"A revolver!" Unconsciously, Ronnie's hand shot out, pointing at the
weapon.

"My client runs to the cupboard. She opens the cupboard. She sees the
revolver. Mad with fear, she grasps the revolver. She points it at
William Towers. And William Towers jeers at her, jeers at them both.
'I'll do you in. I'll do you both in, damn you!' shouts this madman,
this drunken madman who has made my client's life a living hell. And
again he brandishes his stick, threatening a defenseless man.

"And then? Even then, does Robert Fielding call upon his cousin to fire?
No. Remember that he knows himself in danger of his life; knows that one
pressure of his cousin's finger on the trigger will save his life. Yet
Robert Fielding does not call upon his cousin to fire. He warns the
man--the reprobate who is seeking to slay him; he cries, 'Look out,
Bill. The gun's loaded.' But William Towers only sneers. 'You can't
frighten me,' sneers William Towers, and once more he brandishes his
weapon, making as though to batter out Robert Fielding's life.

"To batter out Robert Fielding's life!" Now, irresistible, the sword of
the spoken word plunges to its peroration. "My lord, members of the
jury, was it murder, or a defense against murder, when my client, my
innocent client, maddened by fear--driven to desperation by the thought
of this foul crime which only she could prevent--pulled the trigger,
sped the bullet which sent William Towers to his account with God? My
lord, members of the jury, all you who listen to me in this court
to-day, is there any one of you who--fearful as my client was
fearful--provoked as my client was provoked--maddened as my client was
maddened, by the sight of an armless man, of the one creature she loved
in all the world, about to suffer death at the hands of a
reprobate--would not have done what Lucy Towers did, would not have torn
madly at the revolver trigger, would not have taken a life that a life
might live?

"Men and women in whose hands lies the fate of my client, it is on that
plea--on that plea alone--on the plea that the life she took was a life
already forfeit--that I ask you to set her free. Were I in France, were
I in America, I might plead the unwritten law. I do not plead it. By the
written statutes of England; by every precedent of British justice; by
the written law and by the written law alone; by that inalienable right
which every citizen of this country possesses, the right to kill in
another's defense, I ask you by your verdict to-day to manumit Lucy
Towers of all and every penalty, to let her go free from this court, to
acquit her at the hands of her fellow-men--as I, her advocate, am
convinced that she stands acquitted at the hands of God."


                                   4

To Ronald Cavendish, the actual world--the judge, the jury, the
spectators, the motionless woman in the dock--were still blurred, a blur
of many faces. He knew only that he had made his effort; that he was
still on his feet; that he was tottering on his feet. His hands still
gripped the lapels of his robe. He could feel the sweat of his hands as
they gripped the black stuff; feel the sweat pouring down his body. He
knew that his body was twitching; twitching in every nerve. But his
brain was a gutted mechanism, unfunctioning, telling neither success nor
failure. Of all the words his lips had spoken, no memory remained.

And then, sharply, the actual world came back. He saw the faces
distinctly; Heber's face, the faces of the jury. Followed tumult. Men,
men and women, were applauding; applauding him, Ronald Cavendish, who
could remember no word of all the words he had spoken. Had he succeeded?
Surely, he must have succeeded? Mr. Justice Heber was threatening to
have the court cleared; but the men, the men and the women in the well
of the court still applauded. Even Cartwright--"that old stick
Cartwright" was applauding. . . .

At last the tumult quelled; and Ronnie was conscious of a silence, the
silence of abashed English folk. Only one sound--the sound of a woman's
sobs--intruded upon that silence. And Ronnie knew that the woman in the
dock was crying; crying like a broken soul; crying to herself, faintly,
feebly, careless of the judge, careless of the spectators, careless of
the other woman, the woman in the blue prison-uniform, who bent over
her, patting her shoulder, striving to comfort.

Then even that sound ceased; and Ronnie, leaning back exhausted against
the oak, saw that his enemy had risen.

But no words came from Hector Brunton. Speechless, he eyed the jury. The
jury turned from him; turned their heads this way and that in
conference. The jury--men and women--shifted up and down on their
benches, taking counsel with one another. Whispers carried across from
the jury-box; tense shrill whispers: "It ought to stop." "I've heard
enough." "Too much." "Don't let _him_ say any more." And promptly, a
bearded man rose among the jury and turned to the judge.

"My lord," the man's lips trembled, "we have heard all we want to hear.
We are all of one opinion. We have made up our minds. We find the
prisoner not guilty."

Once again, tumult--the tumult of men and women applauding--broke upon
Ronnie's ears. Then he saw Mr. Justice Heber hold up his hand; heard the
crier calling for silence; heard his lordship's quiet "Prisoner at the
bar, the jury have found you not guilty. With that verdict I concur. You
are discharged"; and saw Hector Brunton collapse, as a stricken boxer
collapses to the knock-out.


                                   5

There followed, on that amazing and unprecedented verdict, the craziest
half-hour in Ronnie's life. Still stunned by the swiftness of his
victory, he heard--as a man battle-mazed hears gunfire--the plaudits in
the court, the plaudits on landing and staircase, the plaudits of the
mob without.

The plaudits of the mob deepened to a roar, to a great sullen roar of
cheers, till it seemed to Ronnie as though all England must have been
waiting in the street below. And within, all about him, were men; mad
excitable men. One of those men--Cartwright--was shouting in his ear,
"Bravo, my boy! Bravo!" A second--Spillcroft--kept on smiting him
between the shoulders. A third--the gigantic Henry Smith-Assher--had
grasped both his hands, whispering, "By God, you deserved to beat us,"
as another robed figure, a figure whom Ronnie remembered to have been
his one-time enemy, slunk off through the crowding people.

Then, for a second, the people parted; and his eyes--dazed as his
brain--saw Aliette. Aliette stood, high above him, ringed by people, in
the oak-paneled dock. A wardress, a blue-uniformed prison-wardress, was
kissing her; kissing his Aliette on the cheeks. Damn it, he had freed
Aliette, freed her from the dock! Why didn't the wardress release her?
Damn it, he'd release her himself.

"Come on, old man," said a voice; Spillcroft's voice; and suddenly
Ronnie felt himself impelled through the people, impelled toward the
dock.

And Aliette came down to him from the dock! Only now his brain, clearing
a little, knew that this was not Aliette, but Lucy, Lucy Towers whom he
had saved from the hangman's rope and the felon's cell.

She came toward him through the ringing, crowding people. He was looking
into her eyes; Aliette's eyes. The eyes were tear-stained; and he knew,
thrilling, that her reserve--the reserve stubborn as Aliette's own--had
been broken at last.

They had reached one another. Both her hands were outstretched. Her
hands grasped his. He knew that she was trying to raise his hands to her
lips. But people pressed on them. People--panting, emotional
people--pressed them apart. He heard some one say, "Let's chair them.
Let's chair them both." He felt himself lifted off his feet. He heard a
constable's voice: "Easy on, gentlemen. Easy on. This ain't a
bear-garden."

And suddenly he found himself in the street of Old Bailey. The street,
from wall to wall, was a river of upturned faces, laughing faces,
cheering faces, shouting faces.

For the London mob had gone mob-mad; and the police could not hold them,
hardly tried to hold them. "Good old Cavendish," howled the mob. "Good
old Cut Cavendish. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it!" And again:
"Luc-ee Towers. We want ter see Luc-ee. Where's Luc-ee? We want to see
Standon--Standon. Where's Bertram Standon?"


                                   6

Hector Brunton, K.C., hearing, alone in the deserted robing-room, the
hoarse cheering of the mob, seemed to hear in it his father's rumbling
voice: "The man who lets his wife live with somebody else is a common or
garden pimp."




                             CHAPTER XXXIV


                                   1

"I think I'll be going now, if you'll permit me, sir," said Benjamin
Bunce. "And, if I may be allowed to say so, sir, congratulations."

"Thanks, Bunce. Toddle off if you like."

It was past eight o'clock, and the Temple curiously quiet. Ronnie,
kindling himself a pipe and leaning back in his battered armchair, heard
his clerk's boot-soles hurrying through, the colonnade of Pump Court;
and after that, never a footfall.

Despite Spillcroft's invitation and Cartwright's, despite an imploring
wire from Bertram Standon to meet his entire staff at the Savoy, the
barrister had dined early and alone. His work had played him out.
Looking back, he could remember nothing of the case, except that last
frenzied scene outside the court, whence--the police good-temperedly
intervening--he and his client and the armless sailor had escaped in
John Cartwright's car. Trying to recapture the events of the last three
days, and more especially the words of his final speech, it seemed as
though he had been some one other than himself, as though the hand of
fate itself had steered him to victory. Perhaps that was why victory
seemed so valueless!

To sit there in the old chambers where he had dreamed so many dreams; to
watch the pipe-smoke curling round his head, and know Lucy Towers saved;
to imagine Lucy Towers and Bob Fielding happily married; even to realize
Brunton, his enemy Brunton, beaten--afforded no satisfaction. Curious,
he thought, how little his public triumph over Aliette's husband, his
public success, affected him! So often in the last fifteen months he had
thrilled to the vision of himself successful: yet now--now that success
had actually been accomplished--it held no joy.

Glooming, Ronnie's thoughts switched from the public issue to the
personal. What did it avail that he, Ronald Cavendish, should have
rolled the "hanging prosecutor" in the dust; that the press was already
blazing his fame from one end of England to another--so long as Brunton
remained, as Brunton would remain, the legal owner of Aliette? What did
it profit him to have saved the woman in the dock if he could not save
the woman in his own home?

The pipe went out, and his slack fingers could not be bothered to
rekindle it. Depression, the terrible depression of overstrain, settled
like a miasma-cloud on his brain. His triumph became a mockery, his fame
a whited sepulcher. Saving others, he could save neither himself nor the
woman he loved. Aliette was outcast, would remain outcast; and he with
her. All the pleasant things his success might have won for them
both--social position, companionship of friends, political
possibilities--were beyond their reach. To them, success could only
bring money.

Bitterly he fell to reproaching himself--as all the lovers of all the
Aliettes do reproach themselves in those hours when love comes not to
their aid--for ever having persuaded her to run away with him. What was
the use of blaming Brunton, of hating Brunton? He himself and no other
was responsible. He felt the flame of his old hatred against Brunton
blow back, scorching his own head. Truly loving Aliette, he should have
been satisfied--as Robert Fielding had been satisfied--with
renunciation.

"I've been selfish," he thought, "selfish"; and, so thinking, remembered
his mother.

Toward her, too, he had played the complete egoist; forgetful--in his
self-concentration, in the absorption of his work and the battle against
his enemy--of her need for him, of her illness.

And abruptly, luminous through the darkness which had settled on his
mind, Ronnie saw a picture of Daffadillies. The great house stood
foursquare under the moon. Trees spired sable from the gleam of its
lawns. Its roof glittered under a glittering sky. From its gabled
windows glowed the saffron welcome of lamp-light. Behind one of those
gabled windows, his mother, who had loved him all her life, who had
grudged him never a thought, never a sacrifice, lay ill; mortally ill
perhaps.

And suddenly it seemed to Julia's son as though the darkness of his own
mind came between the moon and Daffadillies. Black clouds, ragged and
menacing, drifted down from the glitter of the skies, blurring the
saffron window-gleams. Mists swirled about the spring trees, across the
gleam of the lawns. Watching the menace of those ragged clouds, the cold
swirl of the mists, he knew fear, the old battle-fear of death.

If only the clouds would break, the mists roll away from Daffadillies.
But there came no break in the ragged clouds. Black they banked, and
blacker, round the high moon; till the moon was no more, and only the
ghost of a ghostly house trembled--as smoke seen through smoked
glass--through the swirl of the mist.

Then even the ghost of Daffadillies vanished; and, sightless, he peered
at the void.

Till, out of the void, sound issued--the sound of a woman's voice--of
his mother's voice: "Ronnie! Ronnie! I am afraid. Come to me."


                                   2

With a start, Ronald Cavendish awoke.

The green-shaded lamp still burned at his head, showing up every stain
on the leather desk-top, every ink-spot on the pewter inkstand. There
were his quill pens; his thumb-soiled brief. There, on the shelves, were
his law-books. At his feet, its ashes spilled from cracked bowl to worn
carpet, lay the pipe he had been smoking. "I must have been dreaming,"
he thought.

But the dream and the fear of the dream still haunted his mind. Vainly,
rubbing his eyes, he strove for courage. Always, his imagination saw the
darkness gathering about Daffadillies; always, out of the gathering
darkness, he heard his mother's voice--calling--calling. Till,
fear-haunted, he sprang to his feet.

His feet moved under him. They moved very slowly, as the feet of a
sleep-walker. He said to his feet, "This is foolishness, foolishness."
He said to his feet, "Be still."

He found himself in the corridor. He found himself at the telephone. He
said to himself, "I might just make certain that she's all right."

Then, startlingly, the telephone-bell rang; and, startled, he picked the
receiver from the clip. Ages seemed to pass before he heard the
operator's: "City double-four two eight? Don't go away. I want you."

Followed, very distinct at that hour of the night, "Horsham, you're
through"; and after a pause, "Is that Mr. Cavendish? Mr. Ronald
Cavendish? This is Mrs. Sanderson speaking. I rang up Embankment House,
but the porter said you weren't back yet." Already Ronnie's ears, acute,
apprehensive, knew the worst. "Can you get through to Dr. Baynet? Can
you bring him down at once? Your mother has had another hemorrhage."

"A bad one?" Ronnie tried to smooth the fear from his voice.

"I'm afraid so. Your wife's upstairs with Dr. Thompson. Would you like
to speak to her?"

"No. Tell her that I'll get on to Sir Heron at once. Tell her, please,"
the words snapped decision, "that I'll bring him down to Daffadillies
to-night. Do you understand? To-night! Tell the lodge-keeper to wait up
for us, to have the gates open. Is that quite clear?"

"Quite clear." The automaton's answer sounded irritatingly calm. "Quite
clear, thank you."

"Then good night." With a click of decision, Ronnie replaced the
receiver. Danger, ousting fear, galvanized him to action. He looked at
the clock. The hands pointed to 9:15. The last train for West Water left
at nine! He snatched up the telephone-book; found the doctor's number;
called it.

A man-servant answered. "Sir Heron's engaged. Can I take any message?"

"No. I want to speak to him personally."

"Sir Heron is giving a dinner-party, sir."

"Tell him the matter is urgent ... Yes ... Cavendish ... Ronald
Cavendish."

The man left the instrument. Waiting, Ronnie grew apprehensive. Suppose
Sir Heron refused to come.... Then he heard, "Is that you, Cavendish? No
bad news, I hope?"

"Very bad, I'm afraid. I've just spoken to Daffadillies on the
telephone. My mother's had another hemorrhage. Can you come down
to-night?"

"To-night?"

"Yes. With me. The last train's gone. I'm going down by taxi."

Silence ... and again Ronnie grew apprehensive. Sir Heron was a
specialist--a great man. Absurd to ask such a favor of him!

Interrupted Sir Heron's decisive, "Very well. No need for a taxi. You
can come down in my car. Where are you telephoning from?"

"The Temple."

"Then be here in twenty minutes."


                                   3

Snatching his hat and his coat, clicking off the light, and slamming his
oak behind him, Ronnie darted downstairs into Pump Court, through Pump
Court and up Middle Temple Lane toward the barred gate which gives on to
Fleet Street. In seconds he was at the side door of the gate--through
it--and into a taxi. In seconds he was whirling away from the deserted
law courts, past the gleaming front of the Gaiety Theater, down the
Strand.

He wanted speed--speed. Not till they were out of the Strand and through
Trafalgar Square did thought oust action from his mind. And then thought
was fearful--terrifying. Again, as on that night when he and Aliette had
taxied from Embankment House to Bruton Street, he saw his mother dying.
But now he saw himself guilty of her death.

Harley Street reached, a long blue car purred past his taxi and pulled
up a hundred yards ahead. Reaching the car, the taxi stopped. Ronnie
leaped out; flung a couple of half-crowns to his driver; leaped up the
steps of the Georgian house; and rang. The door opened instantaneously;
revealing--behind the portly form of the butler--a long tessellated
hall. Down the staircase into the hall--his dinner-party abandoned--came
the punctual specialist.

"That you, Cavendish? I sha'n't be a moment." Sir Heron, already in his
fur coat, his slouch hat pulled on anyhow, disappeared round the newel
post of the staircase toward his consulting room; and reëmerged, with a
battered black medicine-case in his hand. "Come along. We can talk in
the car. In you go----"

The butler closed the door of the limousine behind them; and the
doctor's chauffeur, obviously preinstructed as to their destination,
turned the long Rolls-Royce bonnet south.

"Another hemorrhage, you say?" Sir Heron lit himself a cigarette; and in
the red spurt of the match, Ronnie could see that his face was troubled.
"I'm glad you telephoned."

"It's very good of you to come down at such short notice, Sir Heron.''

"Only my duty."

The great car swept down Portland Place, down Regent Street. At the
Circus, Heron Baynet picked up the speaking-tube, and called, "Take the
Bromley road, please."

"Wonderful woman, your mother," he said suddenly. "I wish I could have
done more for her."

"There's no chance, then?"

"None now, I'm afraid." The car purred on out of London, and after a
long time the specialist said: "Not that there ever was more than the
ghost of a chance."

"There was a chance then--once?" Ronnie's face, seen in the intermittent
light of the passing street-lamps, showed white with misery. Again he
was remembering that other night--the night when he had waited with
Smithers outside Julia's door.

"Meaning?" prevaricated the specialist.

"This." Bonnie's teeth clenched on the Bullet. "Suppose that my mother
had gone away to Switzerland or the south of France a year ago, she
might have been saved?"

"I doubt it."

"But you advised Switzerland, didn't you?"

"Admitted." Sir Heron looked shrewdly at his cross-examiner. "Blaming
yourself?" he asked bruskly.

"Yes."

"You needn't. Even if she had done what I told her, we couldn't have
cured the diabetes." He plunged into medical details.

"Nobody's to blame then?" The voice of Julia Cavendish's son embodied a
whole army of questions.

"No, nobody. Not even herself. If you blame any one, blame nature." And
Sir Heron, who knew more of Ronnie's story than Ronnie guessed, added
quietly: "Your wife has been a wonderful nurse, Cavendish."

"Thank you, Sir Heron." The men's thoughts, meeting, understood one
another. "You've taken rather a weight off my mind. Tell me one thing
more. This work she's been doing: has it been harmful?"

"Not as harmful as trying to prevent her from doing it."

"I see." Consoled, Ronnie fell silent.

But the consolation was short-lived. All said and done, what did it
matter at whose hand--his own or nature's--his mother lay stricken?
Remained always the bitter unescapable knowledge that the surest
consultant in England spoke of her as one already doomed. In a little
while there would be no Julia. Even now--impossible as it seemed,
driving thus down the living breathing streets into the living breathing
country--she might be already dead.


                                   4

"We've done it in well under two hours." Sir Heron, who had been dozing,
opened his eyes as the car-lights climbed West Water Hill and began to
thread their illuminated path through the woods which surround
Daffadillies.

The Rolls-Royce made the lodge-gates; found them swung back from their
stone pillars; swept through; and, rounding the drive, pulled up
noiselessly at the open door of the great house. In the glow of the
doorway stood Aliette. Ronnie hardly saw, as she came down the steps to
meet him, how lined and drawn was her face, how wide with anxiety her
brown eyes.

"Sir Heron"--her voice sounded calm, controlled; the hand on her lover's
arm did not tremble--"you'll go to her at once, won't you? I made the
local doctor give her morphia. That was right, wasn't it?"

"Quite right."

Kate, appearing through the baize door at the end of the hall, led the
doctor upstairs.

"I did what I could, dear," said Aliette hurriedly. "Nurse has been
splendid. Dr. Thompson came at once. But I'm afraid it isn't much good.
It was all so terribly sudden. She'd gone to bed quite comfortably.
Neither nurse nor I had the least idea. She only just managed to ring
her bell in time. Smithers said it was just the same that first time at
Bruton Street. She asked for you--twice."

"Is she in any pain?"

"No, darling, not now."

"You're sure?"

"Quite sure."

"But--that's all we can do for her?"

"I--I'm afraid so. Unless Sir Heron----" They spoke in whispers, like
people already in the presence of death. Kate, running downstairs,
disturbed them. Kate's eyes were swollen. Tears choked her voice.

"The doctor says, will you please come up, Mr. Ronnie."

Swiftly Ronnie passed up that gloomy balustered staircase. He couldn't
think. He couldn't feel. Pain numbed his limbs, numbed his brain. Just
outside his mother's room stood Smithers. She, too--he could see--had
been crying. He wanted to console her--but his lips found no word.

His mother's door was ajar. Pushing it open, he knew fear. In that room
waited Death--an impalpable figure--a figure of mist--icy-cold.

Entering the room, he was just aware of the local doctor's tweeded
figure stooped over his mother's bed, and of Sir Heron--hand on his
arm--whispering, "It's the end, I'm afraid, Cavendish."

Dr. Thompson made way; and, still incapable of thought, Ronnie moved
toward the bed. A light burned by the bed. In the ring of the light he
saw a face. The face, he knew, had been in pain, in terror. But now both
the terror and the pain were gone from it. Morphia--eons ago some one
must have told him about the morphia--had driven the terror and the pain
away.

Could this gray countenance--this mask of shrunken cheek-bones, of
closed eyes, and open mouth--be Julia's? If Julia, surely Julia was
already dead. Surely the last breath had already left that wasted body,
motionless under its bedclothes.

He became aware that his mother was not yet dead. Every now and then,
breath gurgled in her throat. The gurgle of her breath terrified him.
She was still in pain--in pain.

But she could not be in pain. No agony twitched that wasted body. The
fingers of that hand which lay, white and shrunken on the eiderdown, did
not move.

Surely he had been standing by his mother's bedside since the dawn of
time. Fatigue rocked his limbs. His eyelids smarted with unshed tears.
He wanted to kneel down, to press his lips in homage on those shrunken
fingers.

Surely, the fingers moved. Surely, even at the gates of death, his
mother was aware of him. Her eyes opened. The gurgling of her breath
ceased. And suddenly, desperately, he wanted to hear her voice, to hear
one last word from those bluing lips.

Then, in fear, Ronnie knew that the soul was passing. Then, in fear, he
saw the flutter of it at his mother's mouth; saw the hover of it--palest
tenuous flame--above her head. Despairingly, his soul called to hers:
"Mater! Mater!"

But the soul might not speak with him. The tenuous flame fled upwards;
and he knew that the body which had born his body was dead.


                                   5

Both doctors were gone. Already nurse busied herself in the
death-chamber.

But to Ronnie and Aliette, sitting side by side in the empty
drawing-room, it seemed as though Julia's spirit still haunted the
house, as though at any moment they might hear her fine courageous voice
and see her come in to them. Outside--weeping for her--rain fell. The
drip of it among the shrubberies, heard through closed curtains, was
like the patter of little unhappy feet. If only, like the voice of the
rain, their voices could weep for her! If only, like the feet of the
rain, their feet could busy themselves about some task in her service!

A faint diffident knocking startled them. Mrs. Sanderson came in.

The automaton's cheeks were swollen. The eyes under her tortoise-shell
spectacles showed red and heavy-lidded. "I'm sorry to disturb you," said
Mrs. Sanderson, "but it was her wish." She moved toward them across the
carpet; and Ronnie saw that she carried under her arm a thick wad of
papers.

"_She_ told me"--they hardly recognized the woman's voice--"to give you
this as soon as she died. She told me to telephone Mr. Wilberforce, Mr.
James Wilberforce. There's a letter for him, you know. I'm going to
telephone Mr. Wilberforce in the morning. But this--this is for you, Mr.
Ronnie. She said I was to give it to you as soon as I possibly could.
She said I was to tell you that you were not to show it to anybody else
until you had spoken to Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. James Wilberforce."

"Man," Aliette had risen; "what can it be?"

"It's a book." Ronnie spoke in a whisper. "The manuscript of a book. I
wonder if she finished it."

"Yes. She finished it." The automaton handed her burden, to Ronnie, and
disappeared.

"She"--Aliette moved away from the sofa where they had been
sitting--"she said you weren't to show it to any one else."

"But that couldn't have included you."

"I'd rather not see--not yet." She was at the door now; and Ronnie,
looking up at her--the parcel still in his hands--saw that she had gone
very pale.

"Darling," he asked, "you're not ill, are you?"

"Ill?" She laughed--unsteadily--her fingers on the door-handle. "Ill?
No, I'm not ill--only ... only----"

"But you are ill." He put the parcel down on the sofa and came across
the room toward her. "Why, you're shaking all over."

She laughed again, hysterically. "I'm not. I'm not. I'm only tired. Worn
out. I'm going to bed. Don't come up, Ronnie. Don't come up." And,
kissing him, she ran from the room.

"Poor Alie," thought the man, "it's been too much for her."


                                   6

Alone in the drawing-room, Ronnie sat staring at the thick wad of
papers, and at the envelope which topped them. "To my son," read the
writing on the envelope; the well-known handwriting with the little
loops at the top of the "o's" and the upright triangles of the "m's" and
"n's."

He took up and opened the envelope. Inside of it, folded, lay a single
sheet of note-paper: "Don't be unhappy, Ronnie. Don't blame yourself.
This book is my last effort for you and Aliette. I feel it is your way
to freedom. Use it as you and James Wilberforce think best. I have just
had news of your great success. It makes me very proud. YOUR MOTHER."

Ronnie's eyes blurred, as Julia's eyes had blurred when her weak hands
penciled the uneven lines. Puzzled and miserable--his heart choking in
his mouth--he turned from the letter to the papers. The papers were in
typescript; six pads, each holed and taped.

"'Man's Law,'" read the topmost paper of all; "'The Story of a Wrong,'
By Julia Cavendish: and by her dedicated to all those of her own sex who
have suffered and are suffering injustice."

Julia's son picked the top pad from the manuscript, turned over the
title-page, and began to read his mother's preface.

For a few lines he read aimlessly, as folk obsessed by grief read, their
thoughts wandering from the written word. Then, with one paragraph, the
words gripped him, so that he forgot even his grief.

"All my life," read the paragraph, "I have believed in the sanctity of
the Christian marriage tie. Believing that the oath taken by a man and a
woman before their God--'so long as ye both shall live'--might only be
set aside by death, I made the safeguarding of that oath a fetish and a
shibboleth. The purpose of this book is to undo, so far as in me lies,
the teachings of my former works on the marriage question; and I embrace
this purpose the more firmly because it has been brought home to me by
personal experience that there are and must always be many cases in
which the application of a rigid doctrine leads to misery. Therefore I
have felt it my duty--a duty not undertaken lightly--to combat that
rigid doctrine; and to plead, in substitution for a code which I now
believe un-Christian, the doctrine of 'The Right to Married Happiness.'"

Interested, Ronnie read on. Outside, rain fell and fell. Within was no
sound save the rustle of turned paper. The first chapter of "Man's
Law"--the second--the third raced through his brain, enthralling him,
holding him spellbound. The words became symbols of speech--speech
itself. It seemed to him as though Julia Cavendish were actually in the
room, as though actually he heard her voice. And the voice told him a
story similar to his own. The story of a Ronald Cavendish and an Aliette
Brunton!

But so grandly did the story draw him on, that only gradually--gradually
as a man sees dawn dissolving night---did Ronnie realize the personal
application of it; realize that here, in words of sheer genius, an
advocate not tonguetied--where he himself would always have been
tonguetied, in Aliette's defense--pleaded not so much the cause of all
the Aliettes in the world as, in sentences now so reasoned that they
convinced the very intellect, now so passionate that they wrung the very
heart, the cause of his own individual Aliette, the cause of Hector
Brunton's wife against her legal owner.

And at that, a little, the lawyer in Ronnie's mind ousted, the lover.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Half-way through the book, he put it down for a moment.
Sentences--certain sentences so venomous that he marveled his mother
could have written them--comments, certain comments all leveled against
one particular character, stuck like needles in his legal mind. His
legal mind said to him: "Slander. Those sentences, those comments, are
actionable."

Then he picked up the manuscript again, and read on--on and
on,--unconscious of the clock-tick from the mantelpiece, of the rain
ceasing without, of the day dawning wan across the Sussex Downs.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Till violently, with the ending of the tale, remembering his mother's
letter, he saw her purpose plain.

"Man's Law" represented Julia's "flaunting policy" carried to its
uttermost extreme! It wasn't fiction at all--it was his own story--his
story, and Aliette's and Hector's--scarcely disguised! He recollected
her interest in the Carrington case--recollected telling her how
Belfield had broken Carrington, at long last, by the aid of the press.

Julia, obviously, had planned to break Aliette's husband in much the
same way. This book once published, Hector Brunton would be compelled
(Julia's photographic memory had etched the husband of her tale so
accurately that no reader could mistake him for other than the "hanging
prosecutor") to bring an action for divorce. Brunton, even as
Carrington, could not permit the knowledge that his wife lived openly
with another man to become the public property of Julia Cavendish's
million readers.

"Yes!"--for a moment hope kindled in Ronnie's dazed mind--"'Man's Law'
would bring Aliette's husband to his senses! Publish the book; and
Brunton _must_ file his petition! Unless--unless he brought suit for
libel. But if he did that, surely he would have to admit that his wife
was living unsued in open adultery. Could a man make that admission--and
still wear silk?"

Ronnie's hope expired; violently reaction set in. His heart quaked. He
saw, in a flash, the thousand consequences which the publication of
"Man's Law"--if, indeed, any publisher would set his imprint on so
libelous a story--must entail. This, his mother's last effort to set
Aliette free, was a two-edged weapon. However wielded, it would have to
be wielded publicly. And publicity--even if it injured his enemy--could
help neither him nor Aliette.

Publish the book--and the whole world would know their story! Yes, but
who, in all the world, knowing their story, would sympathize with them?
Even sympathizing, who would take their side? It took more than a book
to turn public opinion. As far as decent people were concerned, the very
asking for sympathy would alienate it. Suppose Brunton risked the
scandal--sued for libel but not for divorce? Brunton couldn't very well
do that. Still----

Fearfully, clutching the letter and the manuscript, Ronnie stumbled up
the fast-lightening staircase. "Man's Law" seemed like a ton-weight of
social dynamite--of social dynamite he dared not use--in his arms.


                                   7

A night-light still burned on the landing. Still clutching "Man's Law,"
Ronnie stole toward the door of his mother's room. If only he could
speak with her, kneel by her bedside, ask her for counsel! But the door
was locked and he might not go in. Julia Cavendish on whom, lifelong, he
had relied for counsel, could counsel him no more. And fearfully,
doubtfully, dreading lest the weapon she had forged for him should
shiver in pieces if he dared draw it from its scabbard, Julia's son
crept to his dressing-room, and locked the weapon away.

"I'll ask Alie," he thought, "I'll ask Alie what she thinks about it."

But Aliette, when he went in to her, was fast asleep. She lay averted
from the window, her head on her right arm, the tumble of her hair vivid
among the pillows. Every now and then a little tormented moan came from
between her lips.

Listening to that moan, believing--in his ignorance--that Hector Brunton
was the sole cause of it, Ronald Cavendish made oath with himself,
whatever the personal consequences, to use the weapon of his mother's
forging.




                              CHAPTER XXXV


                                   1

They were burying that flesh which had been Julia Cavendish among the
cypresses of the South London cemetery whither she brought back the
flesh which had been Ronnie's father when Ronnie was still a lad.

To all save three of the mourners it appeared as though death had
conquered scandal, as though their every personal enmity were being laid
to rest. But to James Wilberforce, standing at the brink of the grave,
it appeared that he stood on the brink of a scandal so tremendous that
nothing except the combined brains of Wilberforce, Wilberforce &
Cartwright could prevent a social catastrophe, a regular holocaust of
public reputations; his own, possibly, and Mollie's of a certainty,
included.

Covertly, James Wilberforce looked at the semicircle of facts gathered
round the white-surpliced clergyman. All Julia's family--Benthams,
Edwardses, Robinsons; all her literary friends--Paul Flower, Dot
Fancourt, Jack Coole, Robert Backwell, the Binneys; most of her many
acquaintances among the various circles with which she had been
intimate, were there to do her the last honor.

A little aloof stood the reporters; and at them James Wilberforce
looked, too. "God knows what the newspapers won't say if this thing
isn't hushed up," thought Jimmy.

The letter of the dead, those four handwritten sheets in their bulky
envelope which Mrs. Sanderson had handed to him immediately on his
arrival at Daffadillies, burned the solicitor's pocket. He thought how
cleverly, yet how unwisely "the old lady's" plans had been laid; how, by
adding a certain codicil to her will, she had made it virtually
impossible for her executors to save the situation.

The clergyman was reading. "Man that is born of woman," read the
clergyman, "hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery." "O
holy and most merciful Savior, deliver us not into the bitter pains of
eternal death."

Jimmy's thoughts wandered. "I wonder if I ought to tell Mollie," he
thought. "I wonder if we ought to get married at once. I wonder how the
devil we're going to break things to Mollie's sister. I wonder Mollie's
sister didn't come to the funeral. Better not, I suppose."

The coffin on its canvas slings sank from sight into the moss-lined
grave. It touched the bottom of the grave; and the slings relaxed.

"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy," read the
clergyman, as Ronnie sprinkled a handful of earth on the coffin-lid.
"From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even so
saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labors."

James Wilberforce's mind came back to the ceremony. He looked at his
friend. "Poor Ronnie," he mused, "his labors are only just begun." And
so musing, Jimmy's gaze fell on a bearded man with an old-fashioned
top-hat in his hand, who held himself very erect and a little apart from
the remainder of the mourners.

"Rather sporting of Rear-Admiral Billy B. to turn up," thought James
Wilberforce.


                                   2

The funeral service was over. The clergyman, his surplice crinkling in
the October wind, had returned to the chapel. By twos and threes the
mourners were deserting the graveside. Ahead of them, unrecognized
except by Wilberforce, went Rear-Admiral Billy, his head high, his heart
troubled. Soon--felt the admiral--a parson and mourners would gather for
him, for an old man who would have to face his God with a promise
unfulfilled, with a duty unaccomplished.

The last of the mourners disappeared through the cemetery fates to their
conveyances, leaving only Ronnie, Sir Peter, James Wilberforce and the
sexton by the grave.

"We'd better take him back to Bruton Street with us," whispered Sir
Peter to his son. "The less we delay things, at the present
juncture----"

"Ronald, old chap"--Jimmy put a hand on his friend's shoulder,--"pater
says he'll drive you home in our car. We've got to get this matter
settled, and the sooner we come to some decision----"

"Very well." Ronnie, his face a purposeful mask, turned away from the
scarred earth. "The mater's dead," he thought. "Dead. It's my duty to do
as she would have done had she lived."

And while the three of them made their way slowly to Sir Peter's
Daimler, he fell to resenting that Aliette had effaced herself from
Julia's funeral. His mother had wished that he and Aliette should face
the world together. His mother's wishes must be carried out, carried out
faithfully.


                                   3

Arrived at Bruton Street, Ronnie led his self-invited guests into the
little box of a work-room; and, facing the pair of them from across his
mother's Empire desk, said provocatively: "Sir Peter, it's no use. I've
made up my mind. As I told Jimmy when he showed me the will, my mother's
wishes must be carried out."

"But what were your mother's wishes?" The white-haired, white-mustached
old gentleman who had steered so many social ships clear of the rocks,
smiled benignly. "What were your mother's real wishes? Naturally, both
my son and I recognize her _object_. But, much as we appreciate the
filial devotion which prompts you to carry out her exact wishes, we have
to consider the spirit of those wishes. Now suppose, mind you I'm only
supposing, that we publish this book. The publication, as you yourself
must be the first to admit, may defeat the very object your mother had
in mind when she wrote it. Moreover, quite apart from the expense to the
estate----"

"But the expense is provided for, pater," interrupted Jimmy. "And in
view of the testator's letter to me----"

"That letter leaves the ultimate decision with us." Sir Peter, who
loathed interruptions, shot an irritated glance at his son. "If we
decide that this book should not see the light of day----"

"I'll never consent to that." Ronnie's voice was the voice of a fanatic.
"And besides, even if the book were not published, there's always the
codicil."

"Admitted." Sir Peter frowned. "The codicil is the difficulty. I wonder
if you'd mind reading it to me again, Jimmy."

Jimmy got up, fumbled in the pocket of his overcoat, drew out a bulky
document, unfolded it, and began to read, very slowly, the paragraph
appended in Julia Cavendish's own handwriting to the last page:

    I empower and charge my executors, Ronald Cavendish and Sir
    Peter Wilberforce, to devote any sum they may think fit, up to
    ten thousand pounds, for the purpose of having published my book
    entitled, "Man's Law," and more particularly for indemnifying
    the publishers of the same against any libel action which may be
    brought against them by Hector Brunton, K.C. And I further
    instruct my executors to invest the sum of twenty thousand
    pounds for the benefit of Aliette, née Fullerford, at present
    the wife of Hector Brunton, K.C. The said sum to become the
    absolute property of Aliette Brunton so soon as her legal
    husband, either by his death or by the process of divorce, sets
    her free to marry my son, Ronald Cavendish.

"Rather vague," commented Sir Peter. "Is it properly witnessed?"

"Yes." James Wilberforce laid the will on the desk, and stared
ruminatively at his father. His father stared back at Jimmy. Both knew
how impossible it would be to contest that codicil without the publicity
of the courts. Both knew how fatal _any_ publicity would be to their
client.

But their client only laughed. "You see, Sir Peter, there's no way out.
Even if I consented not to publish the book, this will has to be
proved."

"But that means _immediate_ publicity."

"Exactly." Ronald's mouth shut like the teeth of a pike. His eyes, in
their resolution, were his mother's own. "Exactly."

Sir Peter, hitherto blandness itself, grew irritable. "You don't appear
to realize, Cavendish, that the proving of this will means a terrific
scandal."

"I realize that perfectly, Sir Peter. But scandal--as I see it--is the
only way to effect my mother's object."

"All the same, I should not be doing my duty, either as your mother's
friend or as your co-trustee, if I did not ask you before we come to any
decision, to consider, first, the effect such a scandal would have on
your career, and secondly, the effect it would have"--purposely the
baronet paused--"on the reputation of the lady in the case."

"As far as the lady in the case is concerned," Ronnie's fingers rapped
the desk-top, "her freedom is the paramount consideration."

"Is that the lady's view, or your own?" Sir Peter, seeing an ivory
paper-knife near at hand, drew it quietly toward him.

"My own."

At that, Jimmy, who had been watching his friend carefully, rose and
began to stride slowly up and down the little room. Quite apart from the
personal issue (if the worst came to the worst, he and Mollie would have
to be married by special license before the crash came!), it seemed to
Jimmy that his friend must be saved, somehow or other, from the
consequences of his own obstinacy. But how--how in the name of the
law--could that saving be accomplished?

"And if the lady disapproves?" said Sir Peter.

"She will _not_ disapprove," countered Ronnie.

In the pause which followed, Jimmy drew out Julia Cavendish's letter,
and read it for the tenth time.

    If I have brought any happiness into your life by bringing you
    and the woman you are going to marry together, help me to bring
    happiness into my son's life and into the life of the woman whom
    he _is not able to marry_. I feel that I have taken the best,
    the only way to put things right for Ronnie; but if there is any
    other method by which my main object, the object of forcing
    Hector Brunton to set his wife free, is possible of achievement,
    by all means explore it.

"Don't you think"--James Wilberforce put the letter back in his pocket
and turned to Ronnie, who was eying his father in positive
hostility--"that it might be advisable to discuss this matter
with--Hector Brunton?"

"I won't have that. I'll be damned if I'll have that."

Ronnie's answer was openly provocative; but Sir Peter apparently had
recovered his temper. "We mustn't be hasty," purred Sir Peter. "We
mustn't be overhasty. As Julia Cavendish's executors, we have to regard
the spirit rather than the letter of her instructions. Believe me, the
immediate publication of that codicil would be fatal to the plans which
your dear mother obviously had in mind. Fatal!"

And the baronet, lighting himself a cigarette, relapsed into thought.
Privately he considered that his old friend must have been mentally
deranged some time before her death. Yet he dared not say so to her son;
and, moreover, to prove mental derangement would entail more publicity
than to prove the will itself.

Various plans for the avoidance of publicity began to pass through Sir
Peter's mind. Brunton, faced with the alternative of the book's being
published, might consent to file his petition for divorce. Then, Julia's
main object accomplished, the book might be--accidentally destroyed.
Other methods, too--gentler methods--might be adopted with the book. But
what in Hades was one to do about the will? Unfortunately, tampering
with wills constituted a felony. Therefore, unless some one ("And whom
could I get to do it!" mused Sir Peter) risked going to jail, that will,
that deadly, damning, white-faced, blue-written testament on the desk
would have to be filed _in toto_ at Somerset House. Filed, every
pressman in England would seize upon it for a column.

A knock, followed by a voice asking, "May I come in, Ronnie?" brought
the three men to their feet; and, before any of them could answer, the
door opened, revealing "the lady in the case."

Aliette, her face pale above the high black mourning frock, stood
irresolute in the doorway.

"I'm so sorry if I'm interrupting," she said. "I thought you'd gone, Sir
Peter. I'll go away if you're talking business."

"We _are_ talking business, dear lady," purred the baronet, playing with
his acquired paper-knife. "Business which affects you more than
anybody." And he looked at Ronnie as though to say, "Surely you'll
consent to my consulting the person most concerned."

Ronnie signaled acquiescence; Jimmy closed the door; Aliette sat down;
and Sir Peter began to speak.

At first Aliette could not grasp what the baronet was talking about. For
three days now, her mind, still numb from the shock of Julia's sudden
passing, had been obsessed by its own problems. Ronnie, she knew, was
keeping some secret from her--as she from him. _His_ secret, she guessed
vaguely, must be in connection with his mother's book. Hers----

Gradually Sir Peter's words became comprehensible. He was reading Julia
Cavendish's will. In so far as Aliette could understand the peculiar
legal phraseology, Julia Cavendish had left everything to Ronnie. It
struck her as curious that Sir Peter should go to all that trouble.
Curious, too, that both Ronnie and his friend should look so worried!
Ronnie would be even more worried if he knew that----

"That is the will," Sir Peter's voice interrupted the disturbing
thought, "as my firm drafted it some years ago. But that will has been
altered. Perhaps, before I read the alteration, I'd better explain to
you about the book."

Now Aliette grew conscious of a question in her lover's eyes. The eyes
never left her face. James Wilberforce, too, was eying her in a way that
she could not understand. And suddenly Ronnie laid a hand upon her
shoulder.

Sir Peter went on; "As you probably know, Mrs. Cavendish finished a
novel just before she died. I have not yet read the manuscript of that
novel, but it appears, from what my son and your--er--husband, who have
read it, tell me, that the book is a _roman à clef_. A _roman à clef_,
as I need hardly explain to you, dealing, as it does, with living
people, sometimes results in a libel action. It is, among other things,
to provide against the possibility of such a libel action that Mrs.
Cavendish, without my firm's knowledge, altered her will."

"A libel action, Sir Peter?" Aliette's question was automatic.

"Yes. A libel action." The baronet picked his every word with care. "A
libel action which might be brought against Mrs. Cavendish's estate and
against the publishers of her book by your--er--former husband."

"Brought by Hector!" The exclamation, low and immediately suppressed,
barely escaped Aliette's lips. But her shoulder trembled under Ronnie's
hand; for now, in one inspired moment, she had grasped the secret of the
book. Memory, casting back, recalled and understood every personal
question put to her by the dead.

Sir Peter had stopped speaking. His eyes under the gold-rimmed glasses
were perturbed, yet kindly. Obviously he found the situation difficult.
She waited for Ronnie or James to intervene; but they, too, remained
dumb.

And, "Do I understand," asked Aliette, summoning up all her courage,
"that this novel is a personal story--the story of my"--her whole body
quivered--"matrimonial difficulties?"

Ronnie removed his hand from her shoulder. James nodded assent.
Admiration and gratitude mingled in Sir Peter's: "You've defined the
matter exactly. One of the questions on which I should like _your_ views
is," the careful words paused, "whether or no this book should be
published."

Fleetingly, Aliette thought, "Shall I tell them ... about myself? Does
it make any difference?" Her intuition, suddenly active, remembered two
hints dropped--purposefully perhaps--by Ronnie's mother. "Public
judgment is usually inaccurate because the public is not told the whole
truth"; "My dear, if only the whole world realized, as I realize, your
story, they would not misjudge you."

"My views----" she parried aloud, playing for time.

"Publicity," she thought. "The flaunting policy once more. Dear God,
that too." And, revisualizing the ordeal at Patrick O'Riordan's first
night, her nerve frayed. Why couldn't these three men leave her in
peace--in peace? Looking at Ronnie, she saw his eyes very resolute. He
said:

"My decision is that the book _must_ be published."

"Please let _me_ finish, Cavendish," broke in Sir Peter; and to Aliette:
"There are other points besides the publication of this book to be
decided." Then he read to her, always in the same soft purr, the
codicil; and explained, in tense, reasoned sentences, the consequences
of its publication in the press, ending: "It means, to use a rather
old-fashioned phrase, social ruin."

For a long while Aliette sat silent, her eyes wide, her pale hands
clutching the black folds of her dress. Womanlike, she tried to put
herself into the mind of the dead. Why had Julia Cavendish done this
thing? Why? Could Julia have guessed that---- Womanlike, Aliette looked
into the future, and her cheeks grew hot.

Ronnie said: "He can't bring an action for libel without bringing one
for divorce"; Sir Peter, "Let's stick to our point; the publication of
this codicil means disaster--for all three of you." "It means Aliette's
freedom," retorted Ronnie.

The words of the codicil stood out in fire on the screen of Aliette's
mind. She saw those words published, saw the book published, saw scandal
follow scandal. Sir Peter was right. This thing meant ruin, social ruin
for herself, for Ronnie, for Hector. And yet, and yet--it meant freedom.
But would freedom come in time?

She glanced at the three men: at Ronnie and James, on their feet,
motionless; at Sir Peter, seated at the desk, his hand fidgeting the
ivory paper-knife. Swiftly, as a shuttle through the warp, her mind
threaded the skeins of the future. The future would hold more than
Ronnie.

"Before you take any decision," Jimmy spoke, "read this." He laid a
letter before her. She read the letter through twice, her mind fighting
for self-control, before asking:

"And is there no other method by which Mrs. Cavendish's 'main object'
can be achieved, Sir Peter?"

Sir Peter's hand ceased fidgeting at the knife. "There may be a way," he
said doubtfully. "But whether we can take it or not depends on
your--er--former husband."

Blazing, Ronnie intervened. "Once and for all, I'll have no favors from
that--that blackguard. He's made his own bed. Let him lie in it. Who the
devil cares about scandal nowadays? I don't. And if Brunton does, so
much the worse for him."

But the baronet's next remark shattered heroics. "I think," said the
baronet sarcastically, "that as my co-executor is getting so very
excited, we had better adjourn our conference. Perhaps you'll let me
know what you both decide."


                                   4

Late that same evening, Aliette and her lover sat alone in the familiar
drawing-room among the familiar things--the jade idols, the Toby mugs,
the Spanish velvets, and the Venetian brocades which Julia Cavendish had
collected for her delight. Ever since their hasty dinner--most of the
staff were still at Daffadillies--Ronnie had been urging her decision.
Ever since dinner, haggard, she had been playing for time.

"It was my mother's wish," he said. "Let's prove the will; publish the
book; take the consequences. Anything's worth while--if only he'll
divorce you."

"Is it?" Dully, the woman's mind was looking for a loophole. "Is it
worth while to ruin three lives?"

"Three?"

"Yes, dear. Yours--and mine ... and--and Hector's,"

"Hector!" The rage in Ronnie's voice terrified her, as it had been
terrifying her all the evening. "We needn't consider him. He hasn't
considered us. There would have been no need for all this if he'd been
reasonable; if he'd brought his action for divorce when I asked him to."

"There are others we ought to consider, too." Aliette's hand, as she
fondled her lover's rigid arm, was tremulous. "Mollie, James, my
parents. They'll all suffer if you--if we carry this thing through."

"They must look after themselves. They've done nothing to help us. Don't
let's discuss the matter further. Believe me, it's the only way to get
what we want."

"But Sir Peter said----"

"Sir Peter's only a solicitor. Even if that blackguard did file his
petition, the will and the book would have to be published."

"Why are you so bitter, man?" Aliette's eyes suffused.

"I'm not bitter. Only just. He had no mercy on Lucy Towers. I'll have
none on him."

Aliette's hands ceased their fondling. For a little while she sat
silent, unmoving among the deep cushions. Her mind, busied so long,
could function no longer. She felt her womanliness naked--flesh
quivering under the lash. She wanted to say to him: 'Ronnie, there's
something--something you don't know.' But suddenly her courage--the
courage which had carried her, carried them both, through the hard-run
months--broke. She began to sob. Like a broken soul she sobbed--sobbed
to herself, faintly, feebly; careless--as Lucy Towers had been
careless--of the man who strove to comfort her. Words came, feebly,
through the sobs:

"Man, I meant to make you so happy. I meant to make everybody happy. But
I've failed--failed. I'm not blaming you. I'm not blaming your mother.
You and your mother have done everything. Everything. It's only I who
have been useless--useless. And I meant, heaven only knows how much I
meant, to be of use. Before I ran away with you I reasoned it all out. I
thought that I was doing right. There didn't seem to be any one else to
consider except you and me." She broke off. Then, almost fiercely, she
asked him: "Tell me I've been a little bit of use? Tell me I've made you
happy--just sometimes----"

"Of course you've made me happy." He tried to take her hands; but her
hands shrank from him.

"I don't believe it You're only saying that to comfort me."

"I'm not."

"You are." Hysteria took her by the throat. "You hate me. If you don't
hate me--you ought to. I killed your mother." She broke off again,
sobbing.

"Alie"--the tone told her that he thought her crazy--"what's the matter
with you? Nothing could have saved Julia. Sir Heron told me."

"Sir Heron wouldn't tell _you_. Nobody would tell you anything. You're
only a man. All men are the same. You're only thinking about yourself.
You're not thinking about me. You only want your revenge on--on Hector.
Why shouldn't you have your revenge?"

Suddenly, her sobbing ceased; and she faced him--this Aliette he could
not understand--dry-eyed and venomous.

"Have your revenge on him if you want to. But don't pretend you're being
just. Don't pretend you're being heroic. Don't pretend you're any better
than he is. You're not. He's a man, just the same as you are. You talk
about my freedom. You say scandal doesn't matter. Perhaps it doesn't--to
a man. Perhaps it oughtn't to matter to me, I've belonged to two----"

At that, for the first and last time in their lives, Aliette was
physically afraid of her lover. His arms, which had been seeking to
comfort, abandoned her. He sprang to his feet. Jealousy, a red and angry
aura of jealousy, exuded from him.

"Christ!" he burst out, "Christ! You needn't remind me of that."

Speech died at his lips. Furiously he strode from her--strode up and
down the familiar room, the room in which, months since, she had given
her unspoken promise to Julia Cavendish. The scene came back to her now.
She thought, "What have I been saying? Dear God, what have I been
saying?" Hysteria went out of her, as fever goes out, leaving her weak,
nerveless.

"Damn it!" he was muttering, "damn it! Do you think I ever forget that
once--once----"

She wanted to cry out to him, "I didn't mean to hurt you. You're hurting
me now, hurting me beyond all bearing." But she knew that, hurt, she
dared not cry out; knew that this was the hardest of the path, the full
price, the full torment exacted.

Sitting there, rigid, uncomplaining, teeth bit to the under lip lest the
mouth should cry out its torture, she remembered the long years with
Hector, the mornings and the evenings when, facing him over the
breakfast-table or the dinner-table, listening after dinner to his voice
in the library, tolerating--for the sake of the dream which this other
man had made true--the ungentle fury of his caresses, she had learned to
wear the mask which so many married women wear, the mask of compliance.

Must she, for Ronnie's sake, still wear the mask? Daren't she tell
him--the truth? Wouldn't he--knowing the truth--flinch from his purpose?
Wasn't it worth while, more than worth while, to keep silence till the
die was cast? Couldn't she still play for time? Time! There might be
some way--some other way to freedom. If only she weren't so afraid--so
strangely and newly afraid! If only Ronnie were not so angry!

And suddenly she knew that Ronnie's anger had left him. His feet stopped
in mid-stride. Slowly he came across the room toward her; and she could
see a little of the old understanding tenderness in his blue eyes.
"Alie," he said, "forgive me."

"What is there to forgive?" Her voice sounded listless, broken. "It was
my fault. I oughtn't to have spoken as I did. I called up the past. I
had no right to call up the past. The past's dead. There's only the
future----"

"Our future." He was on his knees to her now; and dumbly she put out her
hands to him; dumbly she fondled his temples. Once more she wanted to
cry; but no tears came. Her tongue felt parched, as though by some
bitter fruit. "It wasn't your fault, Alie. You're tired. And perhaps I'm
not being just. Perhaps I do want my revenge. But it's only for your
sake"--his hands sought her shoulders--"only for your sake that I hate
him. I think, I know, that if he'd made you happy, if he'd been kind to
you, I could bear the thought of him. But he made you miserable. He hurt
you. He's hurting you now. When I think of that, I go mad; mad with
hatred."

She leaned forward; and words came to her. "You mustn't hate him. We
mustn't either of us hate him. We're as much to blame as he is. At
least, I am. I'm a rotten woman. Rotten."

"You're not. You 're the best woman in the world." Still on his knees to
her by the sofa, he pressed her to him--gently, with that gentleness
which had first won her heart. And desperately her heart wanted to tell
him everything. But tears, tears of sheer weakness, choked her once
more.

"Don't cry, darling. Please don't cry." Conscience-wrung, Ronnie could
find no other words. The sense of his responsibility, of that awful
responsibility for another's happiness, which only illegal lovers know,
coiled--tighter than her arms; tighter than any hempen rope--round his
neck. Her tears on his cheeks were as warm rain conjuring up the
seedlings of remembrance. He recollected all the miracle of their early
love for one another, all their resistances and their yieldings, all the
weeks and all the months through which they had faced the herd's
hostility in mutual loyalty, setting love above the law, trusting in one
another--he in her as she in him--for faith. Always they had kept faith
with one another. Yet always she, the woman, had borne the heavier
burden. And in his ignorance he thought: "That's why I must
insist--insist on this thing going through."

Then a voice, as it were his mother's, whispered to the mind of Ronald
Cavendish: "Comfort her, Ronnie, comfort her. Before you ask this last
sacrifice, tell her that the past has not been in vain"; and then,
leaning on her lover, her eyes tear-blinded, her hands slack, her limbs
relaxed in misery, Aliette heard him whisper:

"Darling woman. Darling girl. You're not to think that I don't
understand. I do understand--everything." Like waves, the deeps of his
fondness poured from him, poured over her, healing her wounds; and for a
moment she thought that he had guessed the truth.

But his next words dispelled illusion. "I know all that you've given up
for my sake; all that I've made you give. The blame, if blame there be,
is mine. You've sacrificed yourself for me."

"It's no sacrifice." Hardly, she stirred in his arms. "I've never
regretted----"

"Nor I, dear. Nor I. I've never regretted for one single instant. I
never shall regret. Ever since that first day I saw you, you've been all
the world to me. All the world. That's why I want you to be strong, not
to be afraid of scandal, to let me do as my mother wished."

"Ronnie"--her eyes, wet with tears, sought his,--"have you counted the
cost?"

"Yes." He released her; and she saw, as he rose up, that he was still
resolute. "I've counted the cost. And it'll be heavy--heavier than
anything we've had to bear yet. But it'll be worth while, Alie.
Anything's worth while--if only I can win you your freedom."

"But your career----"

"My career doesn't matter any more. I've had success. I know how little
it's worth. Nothing matters to me now except your happiness."

"My happiness?" Wistfully she looked down at her pale hands.

"Yes, your happiness. Oh, my dear, don't think I haven't realized, all
these months, that you'll never be happy--really and truly happy--while
you belong, legally, to that man."

"Ronnie"--she was trying, trying to tell him--"I _have_ been happy.
Always. It isn't that----"

"Yes, it is." He was afraid lest, pleading again, she should weaken his
decision. "It's only that. Once you're my wife, you'll forget all the
unhappy times."

"Shall I?" she thought. "Will that little ceremony make me forget that
once, once I was Hector's?"

"That's why I want you to make up your mind," went on Ronnie. "Now.
To-night. That's why I didn't want you to listen to Sir Peter. Alie, it
isn't for my revenge I'm asking you to let me do this. It's for your own
sake. If you were a different sort of woman, a rotten woman, perhaps it
wouldn't matter so much--our not being married. But you--you can't go on
forever like this. Just think, darling, just think what it would mean if
we were to have children."

"Children," she repeated dully, "children." And then, his very vehemence
terrifying her again, "Oh, Ronnie, Ronnie--don't ask me to decide
to-night."




                             CHAPTER XXXVI


                                   1

Two more days, terrible days for them both, went by. To Aliette it
seemed as though all her courage, all her clear-visioning mentality, had
ebbed away. Everything terrified her; but most of all the thought of
precipitating crisis by telling Ronnie the truth.

Vainly he argued with her, pleaded with her. Vainly he assured her that
it was their duty to risk this last maddest hazard of the gamble; that
to jeopardize his newly-won success mattered not at all; that "social
ruin" existed only in Sir Peter's imagination; that not even "social
ruin" should deter them from achieving his mother's main object; that
there was only the one way of achieving that object; and that, matrimony
once achieved, they would be free to enjoy the riches Julia Cavendish
had left them--in some other country if scandal drove them from their
own. To all his arguments, Aliette had but one reply: the same reply she
had made to him long and long ago in his chambers in Jermyn Street:
"Don't try to hurry me, Ronnie. You must give me time----"

She hardly knew why she was playing for time. She hardly knew which she
could face best; suspense or certainty. She wanted, more than anything,
to run away. Her terrors, vague at first, grew definite. She saw
Ronnie's career smashed, Ronnie's child born out of wedlock. She saw
them both hounded from England. She asked herself, terror-stricken, if
it were better that the child should be born out of wedlock than born in
scandal. She told herself that wedlock, won as her lover pleaded with
her to win it, at the price of notoriety and exile, would be the blacker
stigma.

"We can go abroad," he said. How would that help the unborn? Hide
themselves wheresoever they might, their world would not forget. If she
gave way to Ronnie, then--for at least a generation--men and women of
their own class would remember, when they spoke of Julia Cavendish's
grandchild, how Julia Cavendish's son had ruined his career for the sake
of Hector Brunton's wife.

And yet, what else was there to do but yield to Ronnie's wishes? And
yet, even yielding, what would be gained? The divorce, if divorce came,
would come too late. Or would it be just in time? She didn't know. She
couldn't think. She could only reproach herself bitterly for the pride
which had so long prevented her from seeking out Hector.

But Julia, Aliette could not reproach. Even though Julia had carried her
vendetta beyond the grave, it was--Aliette knew--no selfish vendetta.
All that Ronnie's mother had tried to achieve had been planned
selflessly, out of love for them, and not out of hate for Hector.

If only Julia were alive! If only _her_ mother had been such as Julia!
If only she could have taken train to Clyst Fullerford! If only she
could lay the legal issue before the legal wisdom of Andrew! For there
must be (did not intuition warn her?), there was (had not Sir Peter
almost said so?) some way, legal or illegal, out of this coil, some
method by which all four of them--she, Ronnie, Ronnie's child,
Hector--could be saved.

Always, her distraught mind grew more lenient toward Hector. Ronnie, her
love and loyalty could console even for his lost career. The child (that
fear also she knew) might never be born. But Hector her love could not
console. He (had not Sir Peter said so?) would suffer as much as they.
He might have to leave the bar. Was that fair? Was anything fair?


                                   2

Those two days, Bruton Street seemed to run on oiled wheels. The
"ridiculous flat" was locked up. Once more, as she had maided her
through that other period of indecision at Hector's house in Lancaster
Gate, Caroline Staley maided her mistress. Now, as then, the routine of
life went on. Yet routine's self--Aliette felt--demanded decision.
Ronnie's mother had been a woman of possessions, of responsibilities.
The proving of her will pressed. She had been a woman of genius, too.
The publishing of her book was a duty one owed to the world.

The will and the book haunted Aliette. Ronnie had locked them both away
in a drawer of Julia's desk; but it seemed to her that their presence
pervaded all the house. She felt conscious of them, stalking her from
room to room. It was as though both demanded something of her; as though
her mind alone could decide their destiny. The will and the book were
children! Julia's brain-children! To destroy them would be murder. To
jeopardize her own chances of motherhood (that impulse, also, she knew)
would be murder.

What could one do? What could one do? Ronnie was adamant. Palpably the
mantle of his mother's resolution had fallen on Ronnie's shoulders.
Ronnie was no longer the boyish lover she remembered. Ronnie was a man;
a man bent on self-destruction, willing, for her sake, to sacrifice his
whole career.

What could one do? What could one do? If Ronnie knew about the child,
Ronnie might kill Hector. Ronnie hated Hector. Ronnie wouldn't mind the
consequences, so long as Hector suffered them equally.

What could one do? Only play for time! Time.

A third day went by. She must decide--decide! Ronnie said so: Sir Peter
had said so.

She must act--act. Better certain ruin than this suspense! She would run
away, renounce Ronnie forever, renounce her legacy. She would efface
herself from London, take that little cottage of her dreams; live there,
year in, year out, unknown and unknowing of the world, satisfied with a
clandestine Ronnie. There she would bring up Ronnie's child, his
manchild, her Dennis; bring him up in ignorance of the smirch on his
name, until such time as he grew old enough to judge for himself whether
she had done right or wrong. She would go to Hector for the last time,
implore him--for Ronnie's sake--to take pity on her. She would go to
Ronnie, implore him--for her own sake--to take pity on Hector.

Like a squirrel-cage, the future whirled under the crazed feet of
Aliette's thoughts. Like a squirrel, her crazed thoughts spun the cage
of the future. Was there no way, no way out of the cage? She _must_ find
the way, the way out.


                                   3

"It was very kind of you to make an appointment so quickly, Sir Peter."

"Not at all, dear lady, not at all."

Inspecting his client benignantly across the leather-topped desk by the
big window of his Norfolk Street office, Sir Peter Wilberforce could see
that Aliette's mental tether was stretched to its tautest. In the low
light of a waning autumn sun, the face under the black Russian hat
showed pale as thinnest ivory. The vivid eyes were pools of fear. Lines
of indecision penciled the temples. But the little black-gloved hand she
gave him had not trembled; nor had there been any fear, any indecision
in the shy, ladylike voice. And the baronet had thought, "Now, I wonder,
I wonder if _she'd_ have the nerve."

His eyes ceased their benignant inspection, and wandered--apparently
aimless--from the sunlight outside to the closed door, round the
pictureless walls, till finally they rested among the racks of black
deed-boxes. There were many titled names gold-lettered on those japanned
deed-boxes; but the two names which interested Sir Peter's eye bore no
titles. "And how is my co-executor," prompted his voice; "still heroic?"

"Worse than that." Aliette managed a smile.

"And you?"

"I'm afraid I'm not a bit heroic. Sir Peter, tell me; were you serious
when you said that the proving of this will, the publication of this
book, would mean--social ruin for--all three of us?"

"Perfectly serious, dear lady."

"And is there"--her heart sank----"no other method by which
we--Ronnie--can carry out his mother's wishes?"

"That"--Sir Peter's eyes left the deed-boxes, and resumed an inspection
suddenly more purposeful than benignant--"is precisely what I have been
considering for the last three days."

"You said there might be a way----"

"Did I?" The old gentleman took up his ivory paper-knife. "Did I,
though?"

"Yes. You said it depended on my--my former husband."

"Then I made a mistake." The Wilberforce purr, was sheerest
self-accusation. "It doesn't. As a matter of fact, the plan I had in
mind depends more on"--the paper-knife tapped slow Morse--"the lady in
the case than any one else. And even then----"

The paper-knife hung suspended. Although the founder of Wilberforce,
Wilberforce & Cartwright was celebrated for his handling of delicate
situations, he had never, in half a century of practice, encountered a
social situation as delicate as this one.

"Does my co-executor know of this visit?" he proceeded after a pause
which dropped Aliette's heart into the tips of her shoes.

"No. I--I wanted to consult you privately."

"And would you be bound to--er--tell him of any suggestion I might
make?"

"Well----" Again Aliette managed a smile. "That would rather depend on
the suggestion, wouldn't it?"

The baronet smiled confidentially in reply. "You see, the main point, as
I view it, is whether we have any means at our disposal by which we can
induce your--er--former husband to bring an action for divorce. My
co-executor, I gathered, was--shall we say--a trifle biased on the
subject. Now, in the first place, it appears to me that if
your--er--former husband knew about this codicil, he would
do--er--almost anything to avoid its publication. If, therefore, he were
told that by bringing his action immediately----"

"That"--Aliette leaned forward in her chair--"that wouldn't be fair."

"My dear lady," Sir Peter's paper-knife emphasized his disapproval of
the interruption, "this is a solicitor's office, not a court of morals."

"But"--a diffident tremor twitched the pallid features--"it would be
blackmail."

"Let us call it justifiable blackmail, performed with kid gloves for the
victim's benefit. The victim himself, remember, has hardly behaved
chivalrously."

"That's no reason why we should behave"--the pallid features
flamed--"caddishly."

A little taken aback--female clients with moral scruples being somewhat
rare at Norfolk Street--the baronet changed his tactics.

"If I follow you," he said quietly, "your objection is not so much to
the partial solution of our problem as to the method of attaining it.
Very well. Let us presume--mind you, it's only the merest
presumption--that the divorce question is arranged without even
justifiable--er--blackmail, and that the codicil to Mrs. Cavendish's
will had--shall we say?--never been penned. That would still leave us
faced with the question of the novel. My co-executor, I gather, still
insists on its being published? He wouldn't approve, for instance, if I
advised its total destruction?"

"Neither of us could bear that." Aliette's voice was unflinching.
"Ronnie's mother sacrificed six months of her life to finish that book.
To destroy it would be worse than blackmail, it would be----"

"Murder. Quite so." Once more, the purposeful eyes wandered from their
client's face to the deed-boxes against the wall. "MRS. JULIA
CAVENDISH," read the eyes among the deed-boxes; and, thereunder, "MR.
PAUL FLOWER." "Of course the novel must be published. But need it be
published _exactly_ in its present form? Now presuming--recollect this
is still only the merest presumption--that the--er--divorce were
arranged, and the--er--codicil off our minds, don't you think we
might--shall we say, alter the novel?"

"Alter it?" Aliette started. Here, at last, was a gleam of hope.

"You see," the purr grew pronounced, "this is not the first time, nor do
I expect it will be the last, that the work of a talented author has
required legal revision. As a matter of cold fact, most modern novels
_are_ more or less libelous. Publishers are constantly asking my advice
on the point. In the case of Mrs. Cavendish's work, curiously enough, it
was asked once before. I think I may say, without breaking confidence,
that I suggested to Sir Frederick then, as I am suggesting to you now,
that certain alterations should be made."

"And were they?" The gleam of hope brightened.

"After a great deal of protest, yes."

"But then"--the gleam flickered out--"Mrs. Cavendish was alive. She made
the alterations herself."

"Your pardon." Sir Peter almost permitted himself a wink. "She did
nothing of the sort. She told Sir Frederick and myself that we were
vandals; and went off to Italy vowing she'd never set pen to paper
again. However, she left the manuscript behind; and we--er--did what was
necessary."

"You mean to say that Ronnie's mother let some one else tamper with her
work?"

"Tamper!" This time the baronet actually did wink. "I wonder how my
friend and client, Mr. Paul Flower, who--to tell you the truth--made the
alterations on which I insisted, would like to hear himself described as
a tamperer."

"And you think that Mr. Flower would----"

The house-telephone buzzed, interrupting them. Sir Peter answered it: "I
told you I wasn't to be disturbed.... Oh, is that you James? Very
important, eh?... Well, let's hear what it is."

Aliette, her distraught mind clutching at the baronet's suggestions as a
drowning woman clutches her rescuer, hardly listened to the
conversation. Yet she was aware, dimly, that a mask had come over Sir
Peter's face; that his concentration had switched, as only the legal
brain can switch its concentration, without effort from her to the
instrument.

Woman-like, the switch irritated her. "Yes," she heard. "Yes. I'd better
see him myself.... No, I don't think a meeting would be advisable....
Tell him that at present there are certain difficulties, certain very
serious difficulties, in the way.... No. He'd better stop with you. I
shall be able to see him in about ten minutes--a quarter of an hour at
the outside."

Sir Peter hung up the house-telephone, and turned to Aliette. The legal
mask still covered his face. Behind it, he thought, "Poor little woman.
This _will_ cheer her up. I wonder if I ought to let that particular cat
out of the bag yet awhile? Better not. Much better not. It might upset
the whole apple-cart."

"Let me see," the mask changed, "what were we talking about? Oh, yes,
the book, of course. Now, what have you got to say to my suggestion?"

"I think it splendid." Aliette's irritation subsided. "But--even if Mr.
Flower consents to alter the book--there's always the will. We
couldn't"--hopefully--"we couldn't alter that, too, could we?"

"Hardly." Now, feeling himself at the very crux of their interview, Sir
Peter took up his paper-knife again. "Hardly. Quite apart from its being
a felony, it would be robbing you of twenty thousand pounds."

"But that wouldn't matter a bit."

"Seriously?"

"Quite seriously, Sir Peter." Strange that she had never even considered
that point!

"Even then"--still more taken aback, for female clients who disdained
fortunes were even rarer than moralists in Norfolk Street, the senior
partner in Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright tapped a frantic SOS on
the desk-top--"even then, I'm afraid, we couldn't _alter_ the will."

"Couldn't we keep it out of the newspapers?"

"I'm afraid not. Mrs. Cavendish, you see, was a very important
personage. The public will be interested, not only in the extent of her
fortune, but in how she has disposed of it."

"But surely, with your influence----" Once more Aliette felt hopeless.

"Even my influence"--Sir Peter leaned forward, pointing the paper-knife
at her--"even my influence cannot keep 'news' back. Therefore, I'm
afraid that" ("this is the moment," he thought, "the absolute and only
psychological moment") "unless some _accident_ were to happen--unless
the will were, shall we say, burnt--neither my first idea, which you
will remember was that we should approach your--er--former husband with
a view to his taking immediate action, nor my second suggestion, that we
should alter the book, could be of the slightest assistance."

There intervened a long and peculiar silence; during which, as
poker-players across a poker-table, the old man and the young woman
tried to fathom one another's minds.

At last the woman asked:

"Tell me, suppose this--this accident of which you have spoken were to
happen, what would be the consequences?"

"The consequences to whom?"

"To"--Aliette, her thoughts racing, fumbled at the phrase--"to the
person who might burn--who might be responsible for the accident."

"That would depend." Sir Peter's words started pat from under his
mustache. "If the person responsible for the accident were to benefit by
the destruction of the will, the consequences to that person, if
discovered, would be very serious. But if that person, instead of
benefiting, stood to lose twenty thousand pounds----" He broke off;
adding, rather gruffly, "You'll understand that if Mrs. Cavendish had
died without making a will, her son, as next of kin, would inherit the
entire estate?"

Ensued another momentous pause. Then quietly, Aliette said: "Sir Peter,
tell me one thing more. How soon--after a divorce-case--can a woman
re-marry?"

Startled--sensing, in one vivid flash, the reason of her question--the
baronet rose from his chair; and Aliette--her mind, for all the
quietness of her voice, in utter turmoil--rose with him.

"How soon?" she repeated.

"Not for six months," Sir Peter hesitated; "and we can't rely on less
than three between the filing of the petition and the decree nisi."

At that, his client's face went dead white, so that, for a moment, Sir
Peter thought she must faint. But she controlled herself. "And is there
no--no exception to that rule?"

"It has been varied--once."

"Is that"--desperately, despairingly, Aliette flung all her cards on the
table--"is that all the hope you can give me if--if I agree to every
suggestion you have made this afternoon?"

"Dear lady,"--the man rather than the lawyer spoke--"I daren't say more
than this: If _my_ influence counts for anything, every ounce of it is
on your side."

"Thank you, Sir Peter."

For a moment they faced one another in silence. Then, without another
word, Aliette proffered her hand.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Hardly had the door closed behind her when Sir Peter rushed to the
house-telephone. "James!" called Sir Peter. "James! Bring the admiral in
here at once."




                             CHAPTER XXXVII


                                   1

Dazed, hopeless, almost beaten, Aliette passed out of the offices of
Wilberforce, Wilberforce & Cartwright.

The sun had already set. The Embankment showed steel-gray and violet;
fantastic under a fantastic sky. Trams clanged by her. Taxis. Cars. She
did not see them. She did not see London. She saw the country, the
country under a March sunset. It seemed to her that she was riding;
riding alone; riding for defeat in a desperate race.

Automatically her feet turned away from the sunset--eastward from
Norfolk Street toward the Temple. Above her, the sky darkled. Lamps
gleamed along the Embankment. But no lamp of hope gleamed in her mind.
There was no way out of the cage. The book could be altered, the will
destroyed. Hector, blackmailed, might bring his action. What did that
matter? Freedom, even won, must come too late. Ronnie's child, the child
soon to stir in her womb, would be a bastard. A bastard!

She must go to Ronnie. She must tell him the truth. The awful truth.

And suddenly, her brain clearing a little, she knew that she was
standing at the gates of the Temple. Ronnie was in there--in
there--barely a hundred yards away--behind those railings--across that
misty lawn--among the lights and the pinnacles. Ronnie would help her.
The law would help. Surely, surely man's law was not so cruel to man's
women?

The gate of the Temple stood open. Slowly, she went toward the gate.
Behind her she heard the vague ripple of the river, of London's river.
The river called to her. "Come to me," rippled London's river, "I am the
way out--the one way out of the cage."

Swiftly she passed through the gate. Swiftly, a blind thing seeking its
mate, she passed up the lane. Figures hurried by her. She did not see
them. She saw Ronnie--Ronnie in wig-and-gown; Ronnie pleading her cause
before the law.

Swiftly she passed under the archway. Swiftly, unconscious of one
hurrying behind her, she made the tiled passage which leads to Pump
Court. Ronnie--Ronnie would not plead for her. Ronnie, knowing the
truth, would know her for what she was. For a woman who had belonged to
two men. On such, man's law had no mercy. She could go no further--no
further. Better the river! Better the river than man's law!

Slowly, she turned away--away from the vision of Ronnie. It was all
dark--dark. Darkness and the sound of feet. "Clop," went the feet, "clop
clop, clop clop." The feet stopped; and a voice--a known voice--hailed
her out of the darkness.

"Alie!" hailed the voice. "Alie! Is that you?"

Still dazed, she could not answer. The voice, close this time, hailed
her again. "Alie! Is that you, Alie?"

"Yes. Who is it?"

"Your father-in-law."

The feet clopped again; and now--her mind all confusion--she recognized,
within a yard of her, the trim, old-fashioned figure, the vast beard of
Rear-Admiral Billy.

"Good God!" panted the admiral. "Good God--I've never run so fast in me
life." And, without another word, he gripped her by the arm, steering
her rapidly through the dark passage into Pump Court, out of Pump Court,
past the Temple itself, and across King's Bench Walk.

"Billy!" she managed to gasp. "Billy, where are you taking me?"

"To my damn fool of a son."

She tried to free herself, but the grasp on her elbow tightened. For
Rear-Admiral Billy, rushing hot-foot out of Sir Peter's offices
and--directed by the commissionaire--down the Embankment in pursuit of
his son's wife, had determined to take no more advice from lawyers.

"My damn fool of a son's been asking to see you for days," he panted.
"Sir Peter--silly old codger--said it was not advisable."

It flashed through Aliette's distraught mind that she must be having a
nightmare. A nightmare! Billy's beard meshed his words. Billy would go
on walking, walking and talking and gripping her by the arm until she
woke up. But it couldn't be a nightmare. Billy was real--real. Billy was
dragging her away from Ronnie, dragging her back to Hector. They were
within ten yards of Hector's chambers. She recognized the stone stairs,
the lamp.

Stubbornly, then, she dug her heels into the gravel. Stubbornly--one
thought only in her mind--she faced her panting captor.

"Billy, I'm not going in there."

"Why on earth not? Hector won't eat you."

"Ronnie wouldn't like it."

"Can't help that. Hector's game to divorce you. That's enough for you."

"It isn't." Other thoughts, terrible thoughts, harried her. "It isn't.
Billy, you've just come from Sir Peter's. Did he tell you
anything--anything about the codicil--anything about _me_?"

And Rear-Admiral Billy, for the good of his soul, committed the double
perjury: "The only thing I know, me dear, is that my damn fool of a son
made up his mind to divorce you nearly a fortnight ago, and that I've
been trying to get Sir Peter to let the pair of you meet ever since.
Come on, now, don't be obstinate."

Almost forced up the stone stairs by the renewed grip on her arm,
Aliette was aware, dimly, of David Patterson's astonished countenance,
of the admiral swinging past David Patterson, of a chair against which
she leaned, of an opening door and a quick inaudible colloquy. Then the
admiral came back and said to her: "In we go."

Automatically in she went.

Hector stood, motionless, behind his littered desk. She saw him through
a glass, a glass of silence, not as the man she had feared and hated,
but as a stranger whose eyes were gentle, whose shoulders were bowed, a
complete stranger who proffered no hand. The glass of silence slid away;
and the stranger spoke to her.

"Won't you sit down?"

Exhausted, she obeyed. The stranger turned to Hector's father, and said,
pleadingly: "You'll leave us alone for five minutes, won't you, sir?"

The admiral went out without a word.

"I wanted to see you." The stranger, still on his feet, laughed--a
pitiful little laugh, high in the throat. And suddenly she knew him for
her legal owner.

"Why did you want to see me?" Could this be the man who had tortured her
so long; this broken, stammering creature whose eyes seemed afraid to
look into her eyes?

"I don't quite know. Shall we say that I just--just wanted to see you?
You mustn't stay more than five minutes, you know. It might--it might
invalidate the proceedings--the divorce proceedings. They're rather
technical. You see, dear,"--the word came clumsily from between the thin
lips--"as things have turned out, I'm afraid--I'm afraid that _I_ shall
have to divorce _you_. I've been trying to arrange things the other way.
But it can't be done. Too many people know. There's the king's proctor,
you see. But that wasn't why I wanted to talk to you."

Dumbly, realizing a little of the pain behind those gray unshifting
pupils, Aliette listened. Speak she could not. What did the divorce
matter? The divorce would come too late. Too late!

The man who had found his own soul went on: "What I wanted to tell you
was that everything will be done quietly. As quietly as possible. If
there's any publicity, you sha'n't suffer from it. I give you my word
about that."

She managed to say: "You're being very kind to me, Hector. Too kind."

"It's you who are kind"--the voice of the "hanging prosecutor" was the
voice of a schoolboy--"and I don't deserve kindness of you. I've behaved
like a cad right through the piece. But you'll shake hands with me,
won't you? You'll part friends? You'll say that you forgive?"

Automatically Aliette rose. "There's nothing to forgive," she said
dully. "Nothing."

Automatically she took off her glove, and offered him her right hand.

Holding his wife's fingers for one last fugitive second, Hector Brunton
was conscious that a shiver--the tiniest faintest shiver as of
revulsion--ran through her body. And Hector Brunton thought: "This is my
punishment, my supreme punishment. God, if there is a such a person, can
do no more to me."

Then, releasing her hand, he said to himself: "But I can't let her go. I
can't let her go out of my life like this. She's miserable, miserable."

His father's recent words flashed through his mind. Suppose--suppose
Aliette were to die, as Lucy Towers had so nearly died? Suppose that
Aliette, crazed and with child, were to kill herself. And he thought:
"I've got to say something, something that will give her hope."

He asked, gently, looking into her eyes for the last time: "I'll do my
best to get things through as quickly as possible, You'd like that,
wouldn't you?"

She stared at him, blankly. "Can these things be done--quickly, Hector?"

"They shall be," promised Hector Brunton, K.C.


                                   2

Somehow, she was in Julia's work-room. Somehow, she had reached home
before Ronnie. To get home before Ronnie! That had been her one panic
ever since leaving Hector.

Of her parting with Hector, with the admiral; of her scurry through the
Temple; of her taxi chugging, chugging, chugging down the Embankment,
chugging up Northumberland Avenue, chugging through Trafalgar Square, of
her taxi blocked in the Haymarket, of herself calling frantically
through the window, "Don't go up the Haymarket," of their sweep along
Pall Mall, up St. James's Street and along Piccadilly, Aliette
remembered nothing. She knew only that there was hope--a gleam of hope
for them all, for Ronnie's child, for Ronnie, for herself, for Hector;
knew only that she must act--act at once--before Ronnie came home.

Perhaps Ronnie was home already. Perhaps he had gone upstairs to dress.
Perhaps he had heard her let herself in with her latch-key.

A key! If only there were a key, so that she might lock herself in
Julia's work-room.

A key! If only there were a key, so that she might open Julia's desk.
How the fire glowed on the red mahogany, on the yellow brass of the
desk! How the fire crackled, crackled!

She must break open the desk. Break it open before Ronnie could stop
her. She must save Ronnie--save Hector. They were only men. Men of the
law--of man's law. Men only talked. She, the mother, must act--act!

Now, in the fraction of a second, Aliette was at the fireplace. Now she
had seized the bright steel poker in both hands. Now she was at the
desk. Now she had inserted the poker through the ormolu handle of the
drawer in the pedestal of the desk. Now--gingerly--she levered her poker
against the mahogany rim of the desk.

But the locked drawer would not open. Stubbornly its lock fought against
her lever. Panic gripped her by the throat. She must be quick--quick.
Suppose Ronnie were home, suppose Ronnie heard? Ronnie would hate
her--hate her for damaging his mother's desk. Julia's beautiful desk.
Never mind--never mind the desk.

Frantically, her hands dragged at the poker. The mahogany splintered and
splintered. God! what a noise she was making. Would the lock never
yield?

Her eyes blurred. Her breasts ached. Her wrists ached. She could feel
sweat under her armpits, feel the breath whistling through her lips. She
was beaten, beaten. She would not be beaten--she would conquer the
stubbornness of that lock. Conquer it.

Teeth set, little hands steel on steel, Aliette propped both feet
against the pedestal, and flung back her full weight from the lever.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The poker was bent in her hands, the mahogany desk-top splintered to
white slivers. But the lock had yielded, the drawer stood out open from
its pedestal. There--there lay the will, the will Sir Peter had told her
she must burn. Quickly, she snatched at it. Quickly, she dashed to the
fireplace, dashed it on the fire. Quickly, she snatched up the shovel,
pressed the will down among the flames.

But the flames would not kindle. The thick parchment would not take
fire. It would only curl--curl. The words on the curling parchment
hypnotized her. "Twenty thousand pounds for the benefit of Aliette, née
Fullerford, at present the wife of----"

Slowly, slowly, the parchment was kindling.

But even as Aliette's eyes saw the parchment blacken to the flames, her
ears caught the sound of a key in the lock of the front door, of the
door closing, of feet--Ronnie's feet--coming swiftly down the passage.

"Alie, Alie! I say, darling, are you in the library?"

And a second afterward he stood in the doorway. She knew that he was
eying the desk, eying her back as she stooped to hurry her work.

"What are you doing?"

Aliette neither looked up nor answered. Her thoughts were all for the
flames--for the blessed consuming flames.

"What are you burning?"

He sprang across the room at her; and the shovel dropped with a clatter
from her nerveless fingers.

Turning, she faced him. He put out an arm as though to fend her from the
fire. She seized his arm with both hands, crying, "You're not to. You're
not to."

He struggled with her; but she fought him, fought him away from the
fire. Behind her, in the flames, the last shred of parchment charred to
stiff black ashes.

"Alie"--the loved face was a blur before her eyes, the loved voice a
far-away whisper in her ear--"Alie--what have you done? You haven't
burnt it? You haven't burnt my mother's book?"

"No. Not the book. Sir Peter says we can alter the book. But we can't
alter the will. I had to burn the will, because--because of Dennis."

"Dennis?"

"Yes. Dennis. Our boy, Dennis." Suddenly, the loved face went black,
black as charred parchment before her eyes. "I only did it for the boy,
Ronnie. Can't you understand?"

                  *       *       *       *       *

Holding her, fainted, in his arms, Ronald Cavendish understood a little
of his own unworthiness.




                                EPILOGUE


                                   1

Windmill House, a modest broad-eaved, slant-gabled Tudor building, stone
below, brick and black oak above, the whole roofed with Colleyweston
slate-slabs which time had lichened to dark-green velvet, surveys the
Rutland hamlet of Little Overdine from the brow of Little Overdine Hill.
Beyond its walled gates the white road switches down between two files
of red cottages, past the Norman tower of Little Overdine Church, toward
Screever Castle and the distant Screever Vale. Behind it and about it
the shires sweep sheer fields of ridge-and-furrow to the far and the
clear horizons whither--all winter--high-mettled riders and high-mettled
horses pour at a gallop after the pouring hounds.

But now, all about Windmill House, the ridge-and-furrows stood knee-deep
in hay; and hounds pattered mute at early morning exercise along the
white road; and the high-mettled horses grazed leisurely in the shade of
the hawthorn hedges; and, in every covert from Lomondham Ruffs to
Highborough Gorse the red vixens suckled unmolested. For now, it was
spring in Rutland--spring in the little county of the big-bosoming
pastures and the big-bosomed women--spring, too, in the heart of Ronald
Cavendish!

Yet, for him, spring held its fear. "Your wife will be all right," Dr.
Hartley had assured. "Everything's going splendidly. Some time this
evening, I expect. About six o'clock if we're lucky. Why don't you go
out for a ride?"

And Aliette, smiling up at him through the increasing pangs, had said
almost the same thing: "Go away, man. Please go away."

As he went from her, out of the high cretonne-bright room down the
blue-carpeted stairs into a hall fragrant with white lilac, apprehension
tightened its grip on Ronnie. Suppose Hartley had lied to him--suppose
Hartley had made a mistake--suppose Aliette, his Aliette, were--were not
to "get over things"?

"But that's ridiculous," he said to himself, "quite ridiculous. Alie's
so strong. And besides, after all we've been through together, _that_
just couldn't happen."

He wandered into the low-ceiled library, picked a book at random, and
sat down to read. But the words of the book conveyed no meaning to his
brain. His brain was upstairs--with Alie. Kate came in to remind him of
lunch. He said to her, speaking softly as though he were in a sick-room:
"Oh, bring me something in here, will you?"

Kate brought some sandwiches, and a whisky-decanter. He ate a sandwich,
and drank a stiff peg. Then he crept quietly up the wide staircase and
listened outside Alie's door. But the closed mahogany let through no
sound; and after a little while he tiptoed downstairs again.

"If only," he thought, "it were all over. Safely over!" His heart ached
for the woman he loved, for the pangs which she must bear alone. Almost,
he hated the unborn cause of her sufferings. What need had he and Alie
of children? Was not their love for one another all-sufficing? Had they
not won enough from life already? Why tempt Providence with yet another
hazard?

Suppose--suppose Alie were to die?

Fretfully Ronnie wandered back to the library; fretfully he flung his
long length into a big saddle-bag chair. But he could not rest in the
chair. The Wixton imagination tore and tore at his brain. Windmill
House, last of Julia Cavendish's Little Overdine properties; Windmill
House, where his mother had honeymooned with his father; Windmill House,
whither he had brought Aliette for sanctuary while the law was
separating her from Hector--seemed sanctuary no longer. Death and life
hovered about the place, each contentious for mastery.

He looked at the Chippendale clock on the dark oak mantelpiece. The
clock-hands pointed two. "Another four hours," he thought. "Another four
eternities!"

How the minutes dragged as one watched them! How cruel, how desperately
cruel was time!

He looked out of the window, through the shining lattices to a shining
garden. Yesterday's gale no longer blew. It had pelted all morning; and
the tennis-lawn still glinted with raindrops. Thrushes hopped on it, and
blackbirds. Through the open pane in the lattices, from under the eaves
of the house, came faint eager twitterings. Out of doors, perhaps, one
would feel more hopeful, less--less infernally jumpy.

Ronnie, closing the library door behind him, stole quietly across the
square hall, and picked an old tweed cap from its peg in the cloakroom,
an ashplant from its corner in the porch. The front door of Windmill
House stood open. Through it he could see the flagstone path, bright
either side with vari-colored primulas; and at the end of the flags,
high-hung between brown stone walls, the wrought-iron gates that gave on
to the highroad.

For a long time, hands in his pockets, the ashplant dangling by its
crook from his forearm, Aliette Cavendish's husband stood ruminant under
the sloped porch. For a long time his memory, apprehension-prompted,
conjured up the past months.

He recollected how, by the sheerest luck, Windmill House had fallen
tenantless just when they most needed a refuge from London; how, at
first sight of the place, Alie, a white-cheeked pathetic Alie,
nerve-wracked and listless, had brightened to interest; and how, as
autumn deepened to winter, she had made the Tudor house a veritable
home. He recollected himself, Friday after Friday, driving his new car
down from London; finding her, week after week, braver, healthier,
better and better equipped for the ordeal to be faced. He recollected
their joyous Christmas together--and the black days which had followed
Christmas--the days when "the case" loomed near and nearer, frightening
her anew with the dread of "those awful newspapers."

Luckily, he had been able to keep most of "those awful newspapers" from
her; so that she had seen only three reports of "The Hanging
Prosecutor's Divorce-Suit."

Ronnie remembered, standing there motionless in the gabled doorway,
how--each helping each through the difficult days--they had made light
of that trouble, telling one another that it was "like having a tooth
out; soon over!" Nevertheless, the memory still ached at times--as a
broken bone aches to the cold long after the cure of the actual
fracture.

And, "I wonder," thought Ronald Cavendish, lover, "whether the people
who make their livings by it, the writing-folk, know how much the
written word can _hurt_? I wonder if Julia knew, when she wrote 'Man's
Law.'"

He began to think of Julia, tenderly, as the imaginative think of the
dead. Julia would be glad to know that the purpose of her book had been
accomplished before its publication; that, published, it would contain
no hurt. Julia, chivalrous, would not wish to injure a man who--at the
pinch of things--had behaved chivalrously.

For that in the end Hector Brunton had behaved well, even his enemy
admitted. Had it not been for Brunton, Brunton with his tremendous
influence, the six months between the granting of the divorce-decree and
the making of that decree absolute would never have been shortened to
three. Had it not been for Brunton, not even Sir Peter Wilberforce could
have succeeded in setting Aliette free to marry her lover before her
lover's child was born to her.

And on that, vividly, Ronnie's memory conjured up the scene of three
days ago: he and she, Roberts the chauffeur for witness, being legally
married in the dingy registrar's office of the near-by townlet. Driving
back to Windmill House, they had laughed together--a little
cynically--at the formality. Yet underneath their laughter had been
tears, tears of gratitude to the kindly Fates.

"Man," Aliette had smiled, "it feels so--so funny not to be an outcast
any more."


                                   2

Ponto's sleek head nuzzling his knees disturbed Ronnie's musing. He took
his hands out of his pockets and began fondling the dog's ears. But
Ponto wanted his mistress; restlessly he tried to push his way into the
house. His slitty eyes were a dumb miserable question; his great stern
stood out, rigid as a pointer's, from his huge body.

"Down, will you?" whispered Ronnie. "Down--you panicky old devil."

The black-and-white hound, still protesting, squatted on his haunches;
rose up again; and began to pad restlessly up and down the flagstones.
Every now and then he came sniffing toward the porch.

"She's all right, Ponto," Ronnie kept on saying. "She's quite all right,
old man." And somehow, soothing the animal, he succeeded in soothing
himself. What a fool he was to worry! Children were born every day,
every hour, every minute. And Alie was so strong. Besides, Alie wanted a
child; she wanted a child more than anything else in the world.

After a while Ponto ceased his padding, and subsided--still dubious--at
his master's feet. After a while Ronnie, consulting his watch, saw that
it was nearly three o'clock.

"Three more hours," he thought; "three more hours of suspense." He
wanted to go back into the house, to wait outside Alie's door. But
instinct, and her last words, restrained him. One could do no good by
one's presence; one could only hinder, flurry the nurse and the doctor
at their work.

Slowly, the great dog at his heels, Ronnie wandered down the flagstones
to the gate. Looking back, the house showed restful, a home of safety
under blue spring skies. The laburnums made curtains of yellow for its
latticed windows; the lilacs were cones of white and mauve to its
sloping eaves. Surely not death but life hovered over that lichened
roof, over those high stone chimney-stacks!

And life was good--good. Life had given to him, Ronald Cavendish, every
fine thing of a man's wishing; love, victory over his one-time enemy,
money, success in his profession. For him, life had been like some old
story-book; a story-book that ended happily.

But with that thought apprehension gripped him again. Life, perhaps, had
given him too much. Fate, perhaps--even now--meant to snatch the cup of
happiness from his lips.

He looked up at Aliette's window. The silk curtains were drawn; and
imagination shuddered at the task of visioning her behind them. She was
in pain, his Aliette, the one being in the world who made life glorious
to him. She was in pain. In danger. And he, her husband, could not help.

Slowly, unable longer to bear the sight of those drawn curtains,
Ronnie--the unhappy dog in his wake--turned away; slowly, the pair began
to wander about the gardens, round the house and round again, through
the shrubberies, past the garage and the stables, across the
tennis-lawn, up and down the rose-pergola. And, "I can't stand this,"
thought Ronald Cavendish; "I can't stand this another minute."

It seemed to him, in his agony, as though life must be planning revenge
on him; as though the ultimate penalty were now to be exacted. Alie
would die in child-birth; and all they had won together be lost
eternally.

Vainly, he strove to curb his imagination. Vainly he said to himself:
"It can't happen. It simply can't happen." Vainly he wished that Alie
had accepted her mother's offer to join them for their wedding-day. One
was so lonely, so infernally lonely. If only Mollie and James hadn't
been on their honeymoon! If only Julia were alive! But Julia was dead,
and James--selfish beast!--enjoying himself, and Aliette's parents
waiting for a telegram.

He looked at his watch again. Barely half-past three yet! And Hartley
had said, "Six o'clock." His hand, as he put the watch back in his
pocket, shook like an apple-tree-spur in a spring gale. He could feel
his brow damp with sweat under the cap-peak. Restlessly he resumed his
tramp; restlessly the dog followed him; round the house and round
again--till at last, to Ponto's delight, his master made his way out of
the gardens, through the stables, to the gate of the paddock.


                                   3

The paddock, a square two-acre of trampled grasses fenced with the high
white of blossoming hawthorn, shimmered in the afternoon sunshine; and
at far end of it, as he opened the gate, Ronnie saw Miracle. At the
click of the gate-latch, the big thoroughbred, golden as a guinea to the
rich light, lifted his head from the fragrant pasture; scrutinized his
visitors; and with a whinny of delight came cantering toward them. Ten
yards away, he stopped--his neck arched, his eyes wide in speculation.
Then, pace by balancing pace, muzzle outstretched, he came on; snuffled
down at the dog; snuffled up at the man.

Tactfully as Aliette's self Ronnie gentled the horse, caressing the
smooth muzzle, the sleek skin under the branches of the jaws. Somehow,
it seemed as though Miracle were aware of the fret in him, of the fret
in Ponto; as though Miracle, following the pair of them up and down the
paddock, were trying to say: "It's all right. It's quite all right."

And Ronnie thought, looking at Miracle's great shoulders, at the slope
of his pasterns and the sinuous strength of his hocks: "You carried her
over Parson's Brook, old boy. You'll carry her again, next winter, as
you carried me this, across a stiller country than Mid-Oxfordshire,
across the ridge-and-furrow and the cut-and-laids and the timber of the
shires."

Miracle followed the pair of them back to the gate, and stood looking
over it while they made their way to the stables. The big blue clock
under the old-fashioned hunting wind-vane (a metal man on a metal horse
capping on a metal hound) showed ten minutes to four. In the center of
the deserted courtyard--ominous--stood Hartley's car. Toward it, through
the archway, came the doctor himself.

Ronnie's heart sank at sight of the man. "Anything gone wrong?" he asked
curtly.

"On the contrary." Hartley, a big-shouldered fellow who rode like a
thruster and looked more like a vet. than a county practitioner, laughed
under his large mustache. "On the contrary. Everything's going
splendidly. If only we could get you husbands out of the way at these
times----"

"How much longer?" interrupted Ronnie.

"Two hours at the least." The doctor abstracted a small package from the
dickey of his car. "We can't rush our fences at this game, you know."

"Is my wife in pain?"

"Of course she's in pain."

"Bad pain?"

"Good Lord, no. Nothing out of the ordinary. She's a Trojan, is your
missus, Cavendish." And Hartley, stuffing the package into a capacious
pocket, added. "As a matter of fact, it seems to me that you're looking
a jolly sight worse than she is. Why don't you take my advice, and get
on a gee-gee for an hour or so? _We_ don't want you kicking about the
house, I can tell you."

The doctor hurried off through the archway toward the house, leaving
Ronnie a little ashamed of himself. Hartley, for all his coarseness,
knew his job. He began to wonder whether it wouldn't be a sound scheme
to follow Hartley's advice, and go out for a ride. Driver, the groom,
had asked for the Saturday afternoon off; but he could easily saddle up
one of the hacks in the loose-boxes, either the old brown mare, Daisy,
or the little bay horse which he had bought--a week since--as a surprise
for Aliette on her convalescence.

Ronnie, Ponto still at his heels, made his way into the unlocked
harness-room; picked a saddle from its rack, a snaffle bridle from its
peg; and emerged again into the courtyard.

"Which shall it be?" he thought, "Daisy or the bay?" And hesitating in
his choice, it came to him, quite suddenly, that if he really _were_
going to ride--if, despite the apprehensions which had once more started
nagging at his mind, he really meant to disregard the pull of that
invisible halter which bound him to the house where Aliette lay in
pain--then the only horse possible for him to ride was Miracle.

Why not? The thoroughbred had only been "lying out" a week. An hour's
exercise wouldn't do him any harm. He'd enjoy, perhaps, a little canter
across the grass to Spaxton's Covert.

Wonderingly, Ponto followed his master back to the paddock. Miracle
still had his head across the gate; nor, when he saw the saddle over
Ronnie's right arm, the bridle in his left hand, did he sulk away. The
big golden-gleaming horse seemed rather pleased than sulky to feel the
brow-band slipped up his forehead, the snaffle-bar slipped into his
mouth, the throat-lash of the bridle buckled loose, and the
saddle-girths gripping him. He tossed at his bit and hogged his back in
the old playful way as Ronnie--the ashplant in his left hand--put an
unhorsemanly-shod foot into the iron and swung an unhorsemanly-trousered
leg over the cantle.

As the three of them, horse and dog and man, set off across the paddock,
Ronnie knew the impulse to turn back, to off-saddle. It seemed heartless
that he should ride out across green fields while Alie--had not Hartley
himself admitted?--was in pain. But half-way across the two-acre the
impulse weakened; and by the time they made the far gate it had
altogether died away.

He unlatched the gate with his ashplant, and Miracle nipped through.
Before them, up-and-down emerald between rolling grasses, lay the
bridle-path to Spaxton's Covert. The horse, at a touch of the rein,
broke from walk to trot, from trot to a springy canter that traversed
the ridge-and-furrow without an effort. Southerly breezes blew across
the sixty-acre pasture. Two hares, mating, scurried from their approach.
The great horned beasts, white-faced Herefords and black Welsh steers,
watched them incuriously till--catching sight of Ponto--they, too, moved
lumbering away.

At the crest, Ronnie drew rein. Here, they were on the very spine of the
county. Looking back, he could still see the high chimney-stacks and the
stable-clock of Windmill House: but already Little Overdine had tucked
itself away into a cup of the vale; so that only its church-tower and
the motionless sails of the windmill betrayed it from the humpy fields
through which Little Overdine Brook serpentined like a gigantic green
caterpillar.

Mapwise, from that high eminence, the shires outspread their panorama,
pasture on rolling pasture, with here a bright square of young green
cornland, here a dark blob of covert, here a blue hill and there a vale,
here a great house nestling among trees, there a red farm, there a
church, and there a white railway-gate, but scarce a factory chimney
from horizon to horizon.

Not for nothing do men hark back to the place of their father's birth!
To Ronnie, ever since he had first set eyes on this panorama, it had
been home. Already he knew its every landmark; already it had power over
him, power to soothe, power to set him a-dream.

And to-day, more than ever before, the shires set their spell upon him,
so that he imagined--sitting there motionless on the motionless horse--a
son soon to be born, a son who would esteem the Tudor house on the brow
of Little Overdine Hill, and all this wide champaign, these counties
which were neither pretty-pretty as the garden South, nor rocked and
sea-girt as the West, nor grandly cragged and forested as the North, but
just--so Ronnie put it to himself that afternoon--just England, the old
England of bold horses and bold hounds and bolder men.


                                   4

The three, horse and dog and man, set off again. Down from the crest
they came at a canter, through fields ridged yellow with buttercups,
where the young lambs frisked bleating from their path, by blazing
hawthorn-hedges a-chatter with startled finches, through the
pasture-gates, to the little wooden bridge over the Brook. Now, on a
slope above them, they saw the bright new green of Spaxton's Covert;
five acres of blessed woodland whither, on some dark November afternoon,
a dog-fox hard-pressed from Lomondham Ruffs or Highborough Gorse might,
if only scent failed, perchance make safety from the beaten pack.

But to-day the dog-fox feared neither pack nor horseman. They saw him, a
red shape at covert's edge; saw him grin at them from fifty yards'
range, and lope disdainfully back through the wooden palings to his
mate!

Ronnie, laughing at the incident, halted Miracle, dismounted, and called
the rabbit-eager Ponto to heel. The half-hour or so of open air had
steadied his nerves. Lighting a cigarette, looking at his watch, he saw
that his hands no longer trembled. "Alie's all right," he said to
himself. "Everything's all right."

He mounted again, and headed away from the covert toward Lomondham. From
Lomondham to Little Overdine by the highroad is four good miles.
"That'll get me home comfortably by five," thought Ronnie. But just
before he made the Lomondham road, fear gripped him again. Suddenly some
instinct, an instinct so strong that he dared not even fight against it,
warned him that Alie was in danger.

And with fear came self-reproach. He had been away a whole hour, a whole
hour of life or death for the woman he loved. He had been enjoying
himself, _enjoying_ himself, dreaming of a son when perhaps--perhaps----

Miracle, trotting at ease, felt himself abruptly gathered together, felt
the ring of the snaffle hard against his off cheek, felt the grass at
roadside under his hoofs, broke to a canter and from a canter to a
gallop. Ponto, caught unawares fifty yards in rear, heard man and horse
disappear round a bend in the hawthorn hedges; Ponto, quickening his
lollop round the bend, saw the pair streak hell-for-leather up the hill;
Ponto, laboring desperately not to be left behind, saw them halt for a
moment at the gate of Lomondham Lane and knew that his master had taken
the short cut home. "He can't have forgotten _me_," thought Ponto
angrily.

But Ronnie, in that moment of fear, had forgotten everything except
Aliette. The lane saved a mile and a half, and the lane was all soft
turf--good going--the first five furlongs of it straight as a
race-course.

Down those first five furlongs Miracle went like a steed possessed. The
turf thudded under his hoofs. The hawthorn-hedges streaked past him like
snowbanks alongside a train. "Hope to God we don't meet any one at the
bend," thought Ronnie, his silk-socked ankles thrust home in the irons,
his trousered knees gripping the saddle-flaps, his hands low and his
body a little forward.

For now there was no controlling Miracle. The fear of the thoroughbred
man on his back had communicated itself in some mysterious way to the
thoroughbred horse. He, too, wanted to get home. Grandly he swept the
ground from under him. Scarcely, with voice and rein, Ronnie succeeded
in checking speed as they tore madly round the bend; scarcely, leaning
hard over, he succeeded in keeping his seat.

And then, abruptly, he remembered the tree!

The tree, a great elm, overturned by the gale, was a bare four hundred
yards on, just around the next bend, beyond the bridge that arched up
like the back of a big red hog from the green of the lane.

"Steady, Miracle," called Ronnie, "steady, you old fool. This isn't the
National." He was still terribly frightened about Alie; but for himself
he had no fear. Even when his horse, head down, neck-muscles arched
against the reins, took the red bridge as though it had been a
water-jump, it never struck Ronnie that he wouldn't be able to stop him.

Two hundred yards from the tree, he still intended to pull up. Miracle,
with no corn in him, couldn't hold that pace another furlong. Miracle,
when he caught sight of those jagged branches blocking the path, would
ease up of his own accord. Miracle had never bolted in his life. . . .

But Miracle came round that last bend as though it had been Tattenham
Corner; and Miracle's rider, peering between his ears at the forbidding
obstacle fifty yards ahead, knew that it would be fatal to try and stop
him. As a matter of cold fact, he didn't want to stop the horse. The
overturned tree, unlopped, five feet high and eight across, lay between
him and Aliette: once over it, five minutes would see them home!

Ronnie took one pull at the reins, sat down in his saddle, grasped
Miracle between his knees, sent up one voiceless prayer for safety,
flicked once with his ashplant, felt the great horse steady himself
hocks-under-body, felt his forehand lift, gave him his head--went up,
down and over, his shoulders almost touching the croup--and landed like
a steeple-chase jock to a crackle of twigs on the turf beyond.

Then, at long last, the tree fifty yards behind and the highroad half a
mile ahead, Miracle answered to the rein. Gradually his pace checked
from gallop to hand-canter; from hand-canter to a quick nervous trot
that sent the loose stones scudding from his hoofs.

"Good lad," said Ronnie, easing as they emerged from lane to highroad.
"Good lad," he repeated, as Miracle--scarcely sweating--clattered
swiftly through the stable-gateway and stood for dismounting.

For somehow, even as he swung-from saddle, Ronnie knew that Alie's
danger was over, so that it hardly needed the returned Driver's cheery
grin and cheery words, "It's a boy, sir. Kate's just come out and told
us," to reassure him.


                                   5

"Sorry I spoofed you about the time," said Hartley, some hour and a half
after. "But you were making such an ass of yourself that we all thought
you'd be better out of the way. You can go up now, if you like. Only
don't stay long."

Ronnie, one hand on the newel-post of the staircase, laughed as he
answered, "I'm afraid I was a wee bit rattled"; and went up the
blue-carpeted treads three at a time.

The door of Alie's room, as though expectant, stood a mite open. Through
the chink of it shone a primrose gleam of light. Alie's husband knocked
faintly; and nurse rustled to the doorway. "They're asleep," whispered
nurse. "You may look at them if you like."

The uniformed woman let him in, closing the door of the room. The
cretonne curtains were still drawn across the latticed windows. Candles
glowed on the mantelpiece and the dressing-table. But the big bed,
toward which Ronnie tiptoed, was in shadow; so that Aliette's hair,
braided down either shoulder, showed dark against white pillows and
whiter skin.

She slept--the child, his man-child, tiny in the crook of her arm--the
ghost of a smile on her breathing lips. Ronnie stood for a long while,
gazing down on the pair of them. His blue eyes were bright with
thankfulness. His heart thudded, pleasurably, against his ribs.

"She wouldn't let me take the baby from her," whispered nurse. "You'll
go away now, won't you? They mustn't be woken."

But at that, Aliette's eyes opened. Drowsily, she looked up at him;
drowsily, smiling still, she murmured:

"Kiss me before you go, man. I'm so happy, so wonderfully and gloriously
happy."

Bending, Ronald Cavendish kissed his wife's warm fluttering eyelids and
the soft downy head in the crook of her arm.

                  *       *       *       *       *

=Transcriber's notes:=

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Panoroma was changed to panorama on page 482 of the original.