Gilbert Frankau

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”