And that afternoon, for the first time in all her sixty years, she--whose lifelong struggle had been to cramp life in the bonds of formal religion--saw that formal religion at its very highest could only be a code for slaves, for the weak and the ignorant. For the soul of a free individual, for the strong and the wise of the earth, no formalities--whether of religion, of law, or of social observances--could exist.
The individual souls of the wise and the strong brooked no earthly master. Lonely arbiters of heaven and of hell, their own gods, their own priests and lawgivers, only love could control them, only conscience guide.
Ignorantly, blindly, she, Julia Cavendish, had sought to fetter the free souls, the wise and the strong. And behold! in the very person of her own son they had broken loose from her fetters. Ronnie, her own dearly-beloved son, was of the free! All that her formal religion had preached him wrong, love had shown him to be right; and with love had come both strength and wisdom, so that he had followed his conscience into the freedom which her ignorance would have denied him.
For that Ronnie's conscience was as clear, as limpid-clear of sin as it had been in boyhood, Julia--listening to him--could not doubt. Nor, hugging that certainty, could she doubt Aliette. Love was justified of both by the sheer test of happiness. As well accuse the birds of deadly sin as these two who, moved by an impulse so overwhelming that to deny it would have been a denial of their very natures, had--mated.
4
Aliette, shading her eyes from the sun, watched the pony-cart top sky-line, and crawl leisurely down-hill. At sight of it, her heart misgave her. Every tradition in which she had been reared, all her social sense and all her love for Ronnie warned her that the meeting with Ronnie's mother would be, at its best, awkward--and its worst, disastrous.
In Chilworth Cove, with only Caroline Staley for confidante of their secret (and Caroline, from the first, had been definitely partizan, loyalty itself), she had grown so accustomed to thinking of herself as Ronnie's wife, that it was quite a shock to perceive, with the approach of a being from her own world (a woman who, however much she might pretend sympathy, must be, in her heart, hostile), their exact relationship.
"I'm her son's mistress," thought Aliette; and suddenly seeing herself and her lover through the eyes of the ordinary world, realized the tragedy of those who, knowing themselves not guilty at the bar of their own consciences, can nevertheless sympathize with the many who condemn them. Which is perhaps the heaviest cross that any woman can be forced to carry!
Ponto, darting hot-foot out of Honeysuckle Cottage at the sound of wheels, banished further introspection. Aliette just had time to grab the great hound by the collar as the brown pony, eager for his evening hay, came trotting up; and was still holding him, her bared forearm tense with the effort, when the trap drew to the door. So that--as it happened--the exact greeting of the "harpy" to the mother whose boy she had stolen was, "I do hope you're not frightened of dogs, Mrs. Cavendish," and the mother's to the harpy, "Not in the very least. That's Ponto, I presume. Ronnie's told me about him."
There is, after all, something to be said for a social code which enables people to carry off difficult situations with an air of complete insouciance! Julia Cavendish stepped down from the dilapidated conveyance; shook hands; admitted that she would like to get tidy; and followed her hostess's lithe figure down a whitewashed passage, up one flight of rather crazy staircase, into a low-ceiled bedroom, obviously scrubbed out that day. The room was very plainly furnished, yet it had about it the particular atmosphere which indicates, as between one woman and another: "We expected you. We made preparations for you."