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 r?le--finally deciding, faute de mieux, to accept the work offered.
