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, néeWixton, 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!

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."