The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton 33 – Frankau · Verses Across
Literature · Romance
The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton 33Part 7 · Chapter 2
18
Literature · Romance
The Love-Story of Aliette Brunton 33
Part 7 · Chapter 2
FrankauEnglish
"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.
