The Marriage of William Ashe Part 35

"Can't Lady Tranmore do anything?"

"I don't know. They say she is very unhappy about it. Certainly she looks ill and depressed."

"And Ashe?"

His companion hesitated. "I don't like to say it, but, of course, you know there are many people who will tell you that Ashe doesn't care twopence what his wife does so long as she is nice to him, and he can read his books and carry on his politics as he pleases!"

"Ashe always strikes me as the soul of honor," said the other, indignantly.

"Of course--for himself. But a more fatalist believer in liberty than Ashe doesn't exist--liberty especially to d.a.m.n yourself--if you must and will."

"It would be hard to extend that doctrine to a wife," said the other, with a grave, uncomfortable laugh.

Meanwhile the man whose affairs they had been discussing walked home, wrapped in solitary and disagreeable thought. As he neared the Marlborough House corner a carriage pa.s.sed him. It was delayed a moment by other carriages, and as it halted beside him Ashe recognized Lady M----, the hostess of the fancy ball, and a very old friend of his parents. He took off his hat. The lady within recognized him and inclined slightly--very slightly and stiffly. Ashe started a little and walked on.

The meeting vividly recalled the ball, the _terminus a quo_ indeed from which the meditation in which he had been plunged since entering the park had started. Between six and seven weeks ago, was it? It might have been a century. He thought of Kitty as she was that night--Kitty pirouetting in her glittering dress, or bending over the boy, or holding her face to his as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself what it might be.

Why, at any rate, was _he_ in this chafing irritation and discomfort?

Why could he not deal with that fellow Cliffe as he deserved? And what in Heaven's name was the reason why old friends like Lady M---- were beginning to look at him coldly, and avoid his conversation?

His mother, too! He gathered that quite lately there had been some disagreeable scene between her and Kitty. Kitty had resented some remonstrance of hers, and for some days now they had not met. Nor had Ashe seen his mother alone. Did she also avoid him, shrink from speaking out her real mind to him?

Well, it was all monstrously absurd!--a great coil about nothing, as far as the main facts were concerned, although the annoyance and worry of the thing were indeed becoming serious. Kitty had no doubt taken a wild liking to Geoffrey Cliffe--

"And, by George!" said Ashe, pausing in his walk, "she warned me."

And there rose in his memory the formal garden at Grosville Park, the little figure at his side, and Kitty's franknesses--"I shall take mad fancies for people. I sha'n't be able to help it. I have one now, for Geoffrey Cliffe."

He smiled. There was the difficulty! If only the people whose envious tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman, there would be an end of this silly, ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the earth earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such incalculable creatures. The men and women--women especially--who gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to scurrilous papers--he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at the House from an anonymous correspondent--spoke out of their own vile experience, judged her by their own standards. His mother, at any rate--he proudly thought--ought to know better than to be misled by them for a moment.

At the same time, something must be done. It could not be denied that Kitty had been behaving like a romantic, excitable child with this unscrupulous man, whose record with regard to women was probably wholly unknown to her, however foolishly she might idealize the _liaison_ commemorated in his poems. What had Kitty, indeed, been doing with herself this six weeks? Ashe tried to recall them in detail. Ascot, Lord's, innumerable parties in London and in the country, to some of which he had not been able to accompany her, owing to the stress of Parliamentary and official work. Grosville Park, for instance--he had been stopped at the last moment from going down there by the arrival of some important foreign news, and Kitty had gone alone. She had reappeared on the Monday, pale and furious, saying that she and her aunt had quarrelled, and that she would never go near the Grosvilles either in town or country again. She had not volunteered any further explanation, and Ashe had refrained from inquiry. There were in him certain disgusts and disdains, belonging to his general epicurean conception of existence, which not even his love for Kitty could overcome. One was a disdain for the quarrels of women. He supposed they were inevitable; he saw, by-the-way, that Kitty and Lady Parham were once more at daggers drawn; and Kitty seemed to enjoy it. Well, it was her own affair; but while there was a Greek play, or a Shakespeare sonnet, or even a Blue Book to read, who could expect him to listen?

What had old Lady Grosville been about? He understood that Cliffe had been of the party. And Kitty must have done something to bring down upon her the wrath of the Puritanical mistress of the house.

Well, what was he to do? It was now July. The session would last certainly till the middle of August, and though the American business would be disposed of directly, there was fresh trouble in the Balkan Peninsula, and an anxious situation in Egypt. Impossible that he should think of leaving his post. And as for the chance of a dissolution, the government was now a good deal stronger than it had been before Easter--worse luck!

Of course he ought to take Kitty away. But short of resignation how was it to be done? And what, even, would resignation do--supposing, _per impossibile_, it could be thought of--but give to gnawing gossip a bigger bone, and probably irritate Kitty to the point of rebellion? Yet how induce her to go with any one else? Lady Tranmore was out of the question. Margaret French, perhaps?

Then, suddenly, Ashe was a.s.sailed by an inner laughter, hollow and discomfortable. Things were come to a pretty pa.s.s when he must even dream of resigning because a man whom he despised would haunt his house, and absorb the company of his wife; when, moreover, he could not even think of a remedy for such a state of things without falling back dismayed from the certainty of Kitty's temper--Kitty's wild and furious temper.

For during the last fortnight, as it seemed to Ashe, all the winds of tempest had been blowing through his house. Himself, the servants, even Margaret, even the child, had all suffered. He also had lost his temper several times--such a thing had scarcely happened to him since his childhood. He thought of it as of a kind of physical stain or weakness.

To keep an even and stoical mind, to laugh where one could not conquer--this had always seemed to him the first condition of decent existence. And now to be wrangling over an expenditure, an engagement, a letter, the merest nothing--whether it was a fine day or it wasn't--could anything be more petty, degrading, intolerable?

He vowed that this should stop. Whatever happened, he and Kitty should not degenerate into a pair of scolds--besmirch their life with quarrels as ugly as they were silly. He would wrestle with her, his beloved, unreasonable, foolish Kitty; he ought, of course, to have done so before. But it was only within the last week or so that the horizon had suddenly darkened--the thing grown serious. And now this beastly paragraph! But, after all, what did such garbage matter? It would of course be a comfort to thrash the editor. But our modern life breeds such creatures, and they have to be borne.

He let himself into a silent house. His letters lay on the hall-table.

Among them was a handwriting which arrested him. He remembered, yet could not put a name to it. Then he turned the envelope. "H'm. Lady Grosville!" He read it, standing there, then thrust it into his pocket, thinking angrily that there seemed to be a good many fools in this world who occupied themselves with other people's business. Exaggeration, of course, d.a.m.nable _parti pris_! When did she ever see Kitty except with a jaundiced eye? "I wonder Kitty condescends to go to the woman's house!

She must know that everything she does is seen there _en noir_.

Pharisaical, narrow-minded Philistines!"

The letter acted as a tonic. Ashe was positively grateful to the "old gorgon" who wrote it. He ran up-stairs, his pulses tingling in defence of Kitty. He would show Lady Grosville that she could not write to him, at any rate, in that strain, with impunity.

He took a candle from the landing, and opened his wife's door in order to pa.s.s through her room to his own. As he did so, he ran against Kitty's maid, Blanche, who was coming out. She shrank back as she saw him, but not before the light of his candle had shone full upon her. Her face was disfigured with tears, which were, indeed, still running down her cheeks.

"Why, Blanche!" he said, standing still--then in the kind voice which endeared him to the servants--"I am afraid your brother is worse?"

For the poor brother in hospital had pa.s.sed through many vicissitudes since his operation, and the little maid's spirits had fluctuated accordingly.

"Oh no, sir--no, sir!" said Blanche, drying her eyes and retreating into the shadows of the room, where only a faint flame of gas was burning.

"It's not that, sir, thank you. I was just putting away her ladys.h.i.+p's things," she said, inconsequently, looking round the room.

"That was hardly what caused the tears, was it?" said Ashe, smiling. "Is there anything in which Lady Kitty or I could help you?"

The girl, who had always seemed to him on excellent terms with Kitty, gave a sudden sob.

"Thank you, sir; I've just given her ladys.h.i.+p warning."

"Indeed!" said Ashe, gravely. "I'm sorry for that. I thought you got on here very well."

"I used to, sir, but this last few weeks there's nothing pleases her ladys.h.i.+p; you can't do anything right. I'm sure I've worked my hands off. But I can't do any more. Perhaps her ladys.h.i.+p will find some one else to suit her better."

"Didn't her ladys.h.i.+p try to persuade you to stay?"

"Yes--but--I gave warning once before, and then I stayed. And it's no good. It seems as if you must do wrong. And I don't sleep, sir. It gets on your nerves so. But I didn't mean to complain. Good-night, sir."

"Good-night. Don't sit up for your mistress. You look tired out. I'll help her."

"Thank you, sir," said the maid, in a depressed voice, and went.

Half an hour later, Ashe mounted the staircase of a well-known house in Piccadilly. The evening party was beginning to thin, but in a side drawing-room a fine Austrian band was playing Strauss, and some of the intimates of the house were dancing.

Ashe at once perceived his wife. She was dancing with a clever Cambridge lad, a cousin of Madeleine Alcot's, who had long been one of her adorers. And so charming was the spectacle, so exhilarating were the youth and beauty of the pair, that Ashe presently suspected what was indeed the truth, that most of the persons gathering in the room were there to watch Kitty dance, rather than to dance themselves. He himself watched her, though he professed to be talking to his hostess, a woman of middle age, with honest eyes and a brow of command.

"It is a delight to see Lady Kitty dance," she said to him, smiling.

"But she is tired. I am sure she wants the country."

"Like my boy," said Ashe. "I wish to goodness they'd both go."

"Oh, I know it's hard to leave the husband toiling in town!" said his companion, who, as the daughter, wife, and mother of politicians, had had a long experience of official life.

Ashe glanced at her--at her face moulded by kind and scrupulous living--with a sudden relief from tension. Clearly no gossip had reached her. He lingered beside her, for the sheer pleasure of talking to her.

But their _tete-a-tete_ was soon interrupted by the approach of Lady Parham, with a daughter--a slim and silent girl, to whom, it was whispered, her mother was giving "a last chance" this season, before sending her into the country as a failure, and bringing out her younger sister.