The Marriage of William Ashe Part 75

All this Kitty read or guessed from William's letters. After all, then, the harm had not been so great! Why such a panic!--such a hurry to leave her!--when she was ill--and sorry? And now how curtly, how measuredly he wrote! Behind the hopefulness of his tone she read the humiliation and soreness of his mind--and said to herself, with a more headlong conviction than ever, that he would never forgive her.

No, _never!_--and especially now that she had added a thousandfold to the original offence. She had never written to him since his departure.

Margaret French, too, was angry with her--had almost broken with her.

They left their boat on the Riva, and walked to the _Piazza_, through the now starry dusk. As they pa.s.sed the great door of St. Mark's, two persons came out of the church. Kitty recognized Mary Lyster and Sir Richard. She bowed slightly; Sir Richard put his hand to his hat in a flurried way; but Mary, looking them both in the face, pa.s.sed without the smallest sign, unless the scorn in face and bearing might pa.s.s for recognition.

Kitty gasped.

"She cut me!" she said, in a shaking voice.

"Oh no!" said Cliffe. "She didn't see you in the dark."

Kitty made no reply. She hurried along the northern side of the Piazza, avoiding the groups which were gathered in the sunset light round the flocks of feeding pigeons, brus.h.i.+ng past the tables in front of the cafe's, still well filled on this mild evening.

"Take care!" said Cliffe, suddenly, in a low, imperative voice.

Kitty looked up. In her abstraction she saw that she had nearly come into collision with a woman sitting at a cafe table and surrounded by a noisy group of men.

With a painful start Kitty perceived the mocking eyes of Mademoiselle Ricci. The Ricci said something in Italian, staring the while at the English lady; and the men near her laughed, some furtively, some loudly.

Cliffe's face set. "Walk quickly!" he said in her ear, hurrying her past.

When they had reached one of the narrow streets behind the Piazza, Kitty looked at him--white and haughtily tremulous. "What did that mean?"

"Why should you deign to ask?" was Cliffe's impatient reply. "I have ceased to go and see her. I suppose she guesses why."

"I will have no rivalry with Mademoiselle Ricci!" cried Kitty.

"You can't help it," said Cliffe, calmly. "The powers of light are always in rivalry with the powers of darkness."

And without further pleading or excuse he stalked on, his gaunt form and striking head towering above the crowded pavement. Kitty followed him with difficulty, conscious of a magnetism and a force against which she struggled in vain.

About a week afterwards Kitty shut herself up one evening in her room to write to Ashe. She had just pa.s.sed through an agitating conversation with Margaret French, who had announced her intention of returning to England at once, alone, if Kitty would not accompany her. Kitty's hands were trembling as she began to write.

"I am glad--oh! so glad, William--that you _have_ withdrawn your resignation--that people have come forward so splendidly, and _made_ you withdraw it--that Lord Parham is behaving decently--and that you have been able to get hold of all those copies of the book. I always hoped it would not be quite so bad as you thought. But I know you must have gone through an awful time--and I'm _sorry_.

"William, I want to tell you something--for I can't go on lying to you--or even just hiding the truth. I met Geoffrey Cliffe here--before you left--and I never told you. I saw him first in a gondola the night of the serenata--and then at the Armenian convent. Do you remember my hurrying you and Margaret into the garden? That was to escape meeting him. And that same afternoon when I was in the unused rooms of the Palazzo Vercelli--the rooms they show to tourists--he suddenly appeared--and somehow I spoke to him, though I had never meant to do so again.

"Then when you left me I met him again--that afternoon--and he found out I was very miserable and made me tell him everything. I know I had no right to do so--they were your secrets as well as mine. But you know how little I can control myself--it's wretched, but it's true.

"William, I don't know what will happen. I can't make out from Margaret whether she has written to you or not--she won't tell me. If she has, this letter will not be much news to you. But, mind, I write it of my own free will, and not because Margaret may have forced my hand. I should have written it anyway. Poor old darling!--she thinks me mad and bad, and to-night she tells me she can't take the responsibility of looking after me any longer. Women like her can never understand creatures like me--and I don't want her to. She's a dear saint, and as true as steel--not like your Mary Lysters! I could go on my knees to her. But she can't control or save me. Not even you could, William.

You've tried your best, and in spite of you I'm going to perdition, and I can't stop myself.

"For, William, there's something broken forever between you and me. I know it was I who did the wrong, and that you had no choice but to leave me when you did. But yet you _did_ leave me, though I implored you not.

And I know very well that you don't love me as you used to--why should you?--and that you never can love me in the same way again. Every letter you write tells me that. And though I have deserved it all, I can't bear it. When I think of coming home to England, and how you would try to be nice to me--how good and dear and magnanimous you would be, and what a beast I should feel--I want to drown myself and have done.

"It all seems to me so hopeless. It is my own nature--- the stuff out of which I am cut--that's all wrong. I may promise my breath away that I will be discreet and gentle and well behaved, that I'll behave properly to people like Lady Parham, that I'll keep secrets, and not make absurd friends.h.i.+ps with absurd people, that I'll try and keep out of debt, and so on. But what's the use? It's the _will_ in me--the something that drives, or ought to drive--that won't work. And n.o.body ever taught me or showed me, that I can remember, till I met you. In Paris at the Place Vendome, half the time I used to live with maman and papa, be hideously spoiled, dressed absurdly, eat off silver plate, and make myself sick with rich things--and then for days together maman would go out or away, forget all about me, and I used to storm the kitchen for food. She either neglected me or made a show of me; she was my worst enemy, and I hated and fought her--till I went to the convent at ten. When I was fourteen maman asked a doctor about me. He said I should probably go mad--and at the convent they thought the same. Maman used to throw this at me when she was cross with me.

"Well, I don't repeat this to make you excuse me and think better of me--- it's all too late for that--but because I am such a puzzle to myself, and I try to explain things. I _did_ love you, William--I believe I do still--but when I think of our living together again, my arms drop by my side and I feel like a dead creature. Your life is too great a thing for me. Why should I spoil or hamper it? If you loved me, as you did once--if you still thought _everything_ worth while, then, if I had a spark of decency left, I might kill myself to free you, but I should never do--what I may do now. But, William, you'll forget me soon.

You'll pa.s.s great laws, and make great speeches, and the years when I tormented you--and all my wretched ways--will seem such a small, small thing.

"Geoffrey says he loves me. And I think he does, though how long it will last, or may be worth, no one can tell. As for me, I don't know whether I love him. I have no illusion about him. But there are moments when he absolutely holds me--when my will is like wax in his hands. It is because, I think, of a certain grandness--_grandeur_ seems too strong--in his character. It was always there; because no one could write such poems as his without it. But now it's more marked, though I don't know that it makes him a better man. He thinks it does; but we all deceive ourselves. At any rate, he is often superb, and I feel that I could die, if not for him, at least with him. And he is not unlikely to die in some heroic way. He went out as you know simply as correspondent and to distribute relief, but lately he has been fighting for these people--of course he has!--and when he goes back he is to be one of their regular leaders. When he talks of it he is n.o.ble, transformed. It reminds me of Byron--his wicked life here--and then his death at Missolonghi. Geoffrey can do such base, cruel things--and yet--

"But I haven't yet told you. He asks me to go with him, back to the fighting-lines in upper Bosnia. There seems to be a great deal that women can do. I shall wear a nurse's uniform, and probably nurse at a little hospital he founded--high up in one of the mountain valleys. I know this will almost make you laugh. You will think of me, not knowing how to put on a b.u.t.ton without Blanche--and wanting to be waited on every moment. But you'll see; there'll be nothing of that sort. I wonder whether it's hards.h.i.+p I've been thirsting for all my life--even when I seemed such a selfish, luxurious little ape?

"At the same time, I think it will kill me--and that would be the best end of all. To have some great, heroic experience, and then--'cease upon the midnight with no pain!...'

"Oh, if I thought you'd care very, _very_ much, I should have pain--horrible pain. But I know you won't. Politics have taken my place.

Think of me sometimes, as I was when we were first married--and of Harry--my little, little fellow!

"--Maman and I have had a ghastly scene. She came to scold me for my behavior--to say I was the talk of Venice. _She!_ Of course I know what she means. She thinks if I am divorced she will lose her allowance--and she can't bear the thought of that, though Markham Warington is quite rich. My heart just _boiled_ within me. I told her it is the poison of her life that works in me, and that whatever I do, _she_ has no right to reproach me. Then she cried--and I was like ice--and at last she went.

Warington, good fellow, has written to me, and asked to see me. But what is the use?

"I know you'll leave me the 500 a year that was settled on me. It'll be so good for me to be poor--and dressed in serge--and trying to do something else with these useless hands than writing books that break your heart. I am giving away all my smart clothes. Blanche is going home. Oh, William, William! I'm going to shut this, and it's like the good-bye of death--a mean and ugly--_death_.

"... Later. They have just brought me a note from Danieli's. So Margaret did write to you, and your mother has come. Why did you send her, William? She doesn't love me--and I shall only stab and hurt her. Though I'll try not--for your sake."

Two days later Ashe received almost by the same post which brought him the letter from Kitty, just quoted, the following letter from his mother:

"My DEAREST WILLIAM,--I have seen Kitty. With some difficulty she consented to let me go and see her yesterday evening about nine o'clock.

"I arrived between six and seven, having travelled straight through without a break, except for an hour or two at Milan, and immediately on arriving I sent a note to Margaret French. She came in great distress, having just had a fresh scene with Kitty. Oh, my dear William, her report could not well be worse. Since she wrote to us Kitty seems to have thrown over all precautions. They used to meet in churches or galleries, and go out for long days in the gondola or a fis.h.i.+ng-boat together, and Kitty would come home alone and lie on the sofa through the evening, almost without speaking or moving. But lately he comes in with her, and stays hours, reading to her, or holding her hand, or talking to her in a low voice, and Margaret cannot stop it.

"Yet she has done her best, poor girl! Knowing what we all knew last year, it filled her with terror when she first discovered that he was in Venice and that they had met. But it was not till it had gone on about a week, with the strangest results on Kitty's spirits and nerves, that she felt she must interfere. She not only spoke to Kitty, but she spoke and wrote to him in a very firm, dignified way. Kitty took no notice--only became very silent and secretive.

And he treated poor Margaret with a kind of courteous irony which made her blood boil, and against which she could do nothing. She says that Kitty seems to her sometimes like a person moving in sleep--only half conscious of what she is doing; and at others she is wildly excitable, irritable with everybody, and only calming down and becoming reasonable when this man appears.

"There is much talk in Venice. They seem to have been seen together by various London friends who knew--about the difficulties last year. And then, of course, everybody is aware that you are not here--and the whole story of the book goes from mouth to mouth--and people say that a separation has been arranged--and so on. These are the kind of rumors that Margaret hears, especially from Mary Lyster, who is staying in this hotel with her father, and seems to have a good many friends here.

"Dearest William--I have been lingering on these things because it is so hard to have to tell you what pa.s.sed between me and Kitty.

Oh! my dear, dear son, take courage. Even now everything is not lost. Her conscience may awaken at the last moment; this bad man may abandon his pursuit of her; I may still succeed in bringing her back to you. But I am in terrible fear--and I must tell you the whole truth.

"Kitty received me alone. The room was very dark--only one lamp that gave a bad light--so that I saw her very indistinctly. She was in black, and, as far as I could see, extremely pale and weary. And what struck me painfully was her haggard, careless look. All the little details of her dress and hair seemed so neglected. Blanche says she is far too irritable and impatient in the mornings to let her hair be done as usual. She just rolls it into one big knot herself and puts a comb in it. She wears the simplest clothes, and changes as little as possible. She says she is soon going to have done with all that kind of thing, and she must get used to it. My own impression is that she is going through great agony of mind--above all, that she is ill--ill in body and soul.

"She told me quite calmly, however, that she had made up her mind to leave you; she said that she had written to you to tell you so.

I asked her if it was because she had ceased to love you. After a pause she said 'No.' Was it because some one else had come between you? She threw up her head proudly, and said it was best to be quite plain and frank. She had met Geoffrey Cliffe again, and she meant henceforward to share his life. Then she went into the wildest dreams about going back with him to the Balkans, and nursing in a hospital, and dying--she hopes!--of hard work and privations. And all this in a torrent of words--and her eyes blazing, with that look in them as though she saw nothing but the scenes of her own imagination. She talked of devotion--and of forgetting herself in other people. I could only tell her, of course, that all this sounded to me the most grotesque sophistry and perversion. She was forgetting her first duty, breaking her marriage vow, and tearing your life asunder. She shook her head, and said you would soon forget her. 'If he had loved me he would never have left me!' she said, again and again, with a pa.s.sion I shall never forget.

"Of course that made me very angry, and I described what the situation had been when you reached London--Lord Parham's state of mind--and the consternation caused everywhere by the wretched book.

I tried to make her understand what there was at stake--the hopes of all who follow you in the House and the country--the great reforms of which you are the life and soul--your personal and political honor. I impressed on her the endless trouble and correspondence in which you had been involved--and how meanwhile all your Home Office and cabinet work had to be carried on as usual, till it was decided whether your resignation should be withdrawn or no. She listened with her head on her hands. I think with regard to the book she is most genuinely ashamed and miserable. And yet all the time there is this unreasonable, this monstrous feeling that you should not have left her!

"As to the scandalous references to private persons, she said that Madeleine Alcot had written to her about the country-house gossip.

That wretched being, Mr. Darrell, seems also to have written to her, trying to save himself through her. And the only time I saw her laugh was when she spoke of having had a furious letter from Lady Grosville about the references to Grosville Park. It was like the laugh of a mischievous, unhappy child.

"Then we came back to the main matter, and I implored her to let me take her home. First I gave her your letter. She read it, flushed up, and threw it away from her. 'He commands me!' she said, fiercely. 'But I am no one's chattel.' I replied that you had only summoned her back to her duty and her home, and I asked her if she could really mean to repay your unfailing love by bringing anguish and dishonor upon you? She sat dumb, and her stubbornness moved me so that I fear I lost my self-control and said more, much more--in denunciation of her conduct--than I had meant to do. She heard me out, and then she got up and looked at me very bitterly and strangely. I had never loved her, she said, and so I could not judge her. Always from the beginning I had thought her unfit to be your wife, and she had known it, and my dislike of her, especially during the past year, had made her hard and reckless. It had seemed no use trying. I just wanted her dead, that you might marry a wife who would be a help and not a stumbling-block. Well, I should have my wish, for she would soon be as good as dead, both to you and to me.