The Marriage of William Ashe Part 49

At dinner Kitty was in her wildest spirits--a sparkling vision of diamonds and lace, much beyond--so it seemed to Lord Grosville--what the occasion required. "Dressed out like a comedy queen at a fair!" was his inward comment, and he already rolled the phrases in which he should describe the whole party to his wife. Like the expected Lord Parham, he was there in sign of semi-reconciliation. Nothing would have induced Kitty to invite her aunt; the memory of a certain Sunday was too strong.

On her side, Lady Grosville averred that nothing would have induced her to sit at Kitty's board. As to this, her husband cherished a certain scepticism. However, her resolution was not tried. It was Ashe, in fact, who had invited Lord Grosville, and Lord Grosville, who was master in his own house, and had no mind to break with William Ashe just as that gentleman's company became even better worth having than usual, had accepted the invitation.

But his patience was sorely tried by Kitty. After dinner she insisted on table-turning, and Lord Grosville was dragged breathless through the drawing-room window, in pursuit of a table that broke a chair and finally danced upon a flower-bed. His theology was hara.s.sed by these proceedings and his digestion upset. The Dean took it with smiles; but then the Dean was a Lat.i.tudinarian.

Afterwards Kitty and the Cambridge boy--Eddie Helston--performed a duologue in French for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the company. Whatever could be understood in it had better not have been understood--such at least was Lord Grosville's impression. He wondered how Ashe--who laughed immoderately--could allow his wife to do such things; and his only consolation was that, for once, the Dean--whose fancy for Kitty was ridiculous!--seemed to be disturbed. He had at any rate walked away to the library in the middle of the piece. Kitty was, of course, making a fool of the boy all through. Any one could see that he was head over ears in love with her. And she seemed to have all sorts of mysterious understandings with him. Lord Grosville was certain they pa.s.sed each other notes, and made a.s.signations. And one night, on going up himself to bed very late, he had actually come upon the pair pacing up and down the long pa.s.sage after midnight!--Kitty in such a _negligee_ as only an actress should wear, with her hair about her ears--and the boy out of his wits and off his balance, as any one could see. Kitty, indeed, had been quite unabashed--trying even to draw _him_ into their unseemly talk about some theatrical nonsense or other; and such blushes as there were had been entirely left to the boy.

He supposed there was no harm in it. The lad was not a Geoffrey Cliffe, and it was no doubt Kitty's mad love of excitement which impelled her to these defiances of convention. But Ashe should put his foot down; there was no knowing with a creature so wild and so lovely where these things might end. And after the scandal of last year--

As to that scandal, Lord Grosville, as a man of the world, by no means endorsed the lurid imaginations of his wife. Kitty and Cliffe had certainly behaved badly at Grosville Park--that is to say, judged by any ordinary standards. And the gossip of the season had apparently gathered and culminated round some incident of a graver character than the rest--though n.o.body precisely knew what it might be. But it seemed that Ashe had at last a.s.serted himself; and if in Kitty's abrupt departure to the country, and the sudden dissolution of the intimacy between herself and Cliffe, those who loved her not had read what dark things they pleased, her uncle by marriage was quite content to see in it a mere disciplinary act on the part of the husband.

Lord Grosville believed that some rumors as to Cliffe's private character had entered into the decisive defeat--in a const.i.tuency largely Nonconformist--which had befallen that gentleman at the polls.

Poor Lady Tranmore! He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly sorry for her. At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he regarded her with a kind of hunger. If she only _would_ talk things over with him! So far, however, she had given him very little opening. If she ever did, he would certainly advise her to press something like a temporary separation on her son. Why should not Lady Kitty be left at Haggart when the next session began? Lord Grosville, who had been a friend of Melbourne's, recalled the early history of that great man.

When Lady Caroline Lamb had become too troublesome to a political husband, she had been sent to Brocket. And then Mr. Lamb was only Irish Secretary--without a seat in the cabinet. How was it possible to take an important share in steering the s.h.i.+p of state, and to look after a giddy wife at the same time?

Ashe and his guests lingered late below-stairs. When, somewhere about one o'clock, he entered his dressing-room, he was suddenly alarmed by a smell of burning. It seemed to come from Kitty's room. He knocked hastily at her door.

"Kitty!"

No answer. He opened the door, and stood arrested.

The room was in complete darkness save for some weird object in the centre of it, on which a fire was burning, sending up a smoke which hung about the room. Ashe recognized an old Spanish brazier of beaten copper, standing on iron feet, which had been a purchase of his own in days when he trifled with _bric-a-brac_. Upon it, a heap of some light material, which fluttered and crackled as it burned, was blazing and smoking away, while beside it--her profile set and waxen amid the drifts of smoke, her fair hair blanched to whiteness by the strange illumination from below, and all her slight form, checkered with the light and shade of the fire, drawn into a curve of watchfulness, vindictive and intent--stood Kitty.

"What in the name of fortune are you doing, Kitty?" cried Ashe.

She made no answer, and he approached. Then he saw that in the centre of the pile, and propped up against some small pieces of wood, a photograph of Geoffrey Cliffe was consuming slow and dismally. The fire had just sent a line across his cheek. The lower limbs were already charred, and the right hand was shrivelling.

All around were letters, mostly consumed; while at the top of the pile above the culprit's head, stuck in a cleft stick, and just beginning to be licked by the flames, was what seemed to be a leaf torn out of a book. The book from which it had apparently been wrenched lay open on a chair near.

Kitty drew a long breath as Ashe came near her.

"Keep off!" she said--"don't touch it!"

"You little goose!" cried Ashe--"what are you about?"

"Burning a coward in effigy," said Kitty, between her teeth.

Ashe thrust his hands into his pockets.

"I wish to G.o.d you'd forget the creature, instead of flattering him with these attentions!"

Kitty made no reply, but as she drew the fire together Ashe captured her hand.

"What's he been doing now, Kitty?"

"There are his poems," said Kitty, pointing to the chair. "The last one is about me."

"May I be allowed to see it?"

"It isn't there."

"Ah! I see. You've topped the pile with it. With your leave, I'll delay its doom." He s.n.a.t.c.hed the leaf from its stick, and bending down read it by the light of the burning paper. Kitty watched him, frowning, her hand on her hip, the white wrap she wore over her night-dress twining round her in close folds a slender, brooding sorceress, some Canidia or Simaetha, interrupted in her ritual of hate.

But Ashe was in no mood for literary reminiscence. His lip was contemptuous, his brow angry as he replaced the leaf in its cleft stick, whither the flames immediately pursued it.

"Wretched stuff, and d.a.m.ned impertinence!--that's all there is to say.

For Heaven's sake, Kitty, don't let any one suppose you mind the thing--for an instant!"

She looked at him with strange eyes. "But if I do mind it?"

His face darkened to the shade of hers. "Does that mean--that you still think of him--still wish to see him?"

"I don't know," said Kitty, slowly. The fire had died away. Nothing but a few charred remnants remained in the brazier. Ashe lit the gas, and disclosed a tragic Kitty, flushed by the audacity of her last remark. He took her masterfully in his arms.

"That was bravado," he said, kissing her. "You love _me_! And I may be a poor stick, but I'm worth a good many Cliffes. Defy me--and I'll write you a better poem, too!"

The color leaped afresh in Kitty's cheek. She pushed him away, and, holding him, perused his handsome, scornful face, and all the manly strength of form and att.i.tude. Her own lids wavered.

"What a silly scene!" she said, and fell--a little, soft, yielding form--into his arms.

XV

The church clock of Haggart village had just struck half-past six. A white, sunny mist enwrapped the park and garden. Voices and shouts rang through the mist; little could yet be seen, but the lawns and the park seemed to be pervaded with bustle and preparation, and every now and then as the mist drifted groups of workmen could be distinguished, marquees emerged, flags floated, and carts laden with benches and trestle-tables rumbled slowly over the roads and tracks of the park.

The house itself was full of gardeners, arranging banks of magnificent flowers in the hall and drawing-rooms, and superintended by the head gardener, a person of much greater dignity than Ashe himself, who swore at any underling making a noise, as though the slumbers of the "quality"

in the big house overhead and the danger of disturbing them were the dearest interests of a burdened life.

As to the mistress of the house, at any rate, there was no need for caution. The clocks of the house had barely followed the church clock in striking the half-hour when the workmen on the ground floor saw Lady Kitty come down-stairs and go through the drawing-room window into the garden. There she gave her opinion on the preparations, pus.h.i.+ng on afterwards into the park, where she astounded the various contractors and their workmen by her appearance at such an hour, and by the vigor and decision of her orders. Finally she left the park behind, just as its broad, scorched surfaces began everywhere to shake off the mist, and entered one of the bordering woods.

She had a basket on her arm, and, when she had found for herself a mossy seat amid the roots of a great oak, she unpacked it. It contained a ma.s.s of written pages, some fresh scribbling-paper, ink and pens, and a small portfolio. When they were all lying on the moss beside her, Kitty turned over the sheets with a loving hand, reading here and there.

"It is good!" she said to herself. "I vow it is!"

Dipping her pen in the ink, she began upon corrections. The sun filtered through the thick leaf.a.ge overhead, touching her white dress, her small shoes, and the ma.s.ses of her hair. She wore a Leghorn garden-hat, tied with pink ribbons under her chin, and in her morning freshness and daintiness she looked about seventeen. The hours of sleep had calmed the restlessness of the wide, brown eyes; they were full now of gentleness and mirth.

"I wonder if he'll come?"

She looked up and listened. And as she did so, her eyes and sense were seized with the beauty of the wood. The mystery of early solitary hours seemed to be still upon it; both in the sunlight and the shadow there was a magic unknown to the later day. In a clearing before her spread a lake of willow-herb, of a pure bright pink, hemmed in by a golden sh.o.r.e of ragwort. The splash of color gave Kitty a pa.s.sionate delight.

"Dear, dear world!" She stretched out her hands to it in a childish greeting.