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 re?merged, 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.
