The Marriage of William Ashe Part 41

Probably, when she had time to remember such trifles, Kitty would feel the shock more than he did. Lady Parham had certainly won this round of the rubber!

He settled to his solitary dinner, but in the middle of it put down Kitty's Aberdeen terrier, which, for want of other company, he was stuffing atrociously, and ran up to the nursery. The nurse was at her supper, and Harry lay fast asleep, a pretty little fellow, flushed into a semblance of health, and with a strong look of Kitty.

Ashe bent down and put his whiskered cheek to the boy's. "Never mind, old man!" he murmured, "better luck next time!"

Then raising himself with a smile, he looked affectionately at the child, noticed with satisfaction his bright color and even breathing, and stole away.

He ran through the comments of the evening papers on the new cabinet list, finding in only two or three any reference to himself, then threw them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged with avidity into the theological review.

For some two hours he sat enthralled by an able summary of the chief Tubingen positions; then suddenly threw himself back with a stretch and a laugh.

"Wonder what the chap's doing that's got my post! Not reading theology, I'll be bound."

The reflection followed that were he at that moment Home Secretary and in the cabinet, he would not probably be reading it either--nor left to a solitary evening. Friends would be dropping in to congratulate--the modern equivalent of the old "turba clientium."

As his thoughts wandered, the drawing-room clock struck eleven. He rose, astonished and impatient. Where was Kitty?

By midnight she had not arrived. Ashe heard the butler moving in the hall and summoned him.

"There may have been some mishap to the coach, Wilson. Perhaps they have stayed at Richmond. Anyway, go to bed. I'll wait for her ladyship."

He returned to his arm-chair and his books, but soon drew Kitty's _couvre-pied_ over him and went to sleep.

When he awoke, daylight was in the room. "What has happened to them?" he asked himself, in a sudden anxiety.

And amid the silence of the dawn he paced up and down, a prey for the first time to black depression. He was besieged by memories of the last two months, their anxieties and quarrels--the waste of time and opportunity--the stabs to feeling and self-respect. Once he found himself groaning aloud, "Kitty! Kitty!"

When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her again--conquer her again--as in the exquisite days after their marriage?

He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be jealous or afraid. Kitty had amused herself--had tested her freedom, his patience, to the utmost. Might she now be content, and reward him a little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!

A French novel on Kitty's little table drew his attention. He thought not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have made of a similar situation--recalling the remark of a French acquaintance on some case ill.u.s.trating the freedom of English wives. "Il y a un element turc dans le mari francais, qui nous rendrait ces moeurs-la impossibles!"

_a la bonne heure_! Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his daughter--scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no! And who comes worst off? Not the Englishman--if, at least, we are to believe the French novel on the French _menage!_

He paced thus up and down for an hour, defying his unseen critics--his mother--his own heart.

Then he went to bed and slept a little. But with the post next morning there was no letter from Kitty. There might be a hundred explanations of that. Yet he felt a sudden need of caution.

"Her ladyship comes up this morning by train," he said to Wilson, as though reading from a note. "There seems to have been a mishap."

Then he took a hansom and drove to the Alcots.

"Is Mrs. Alcot at home?" he asked the butler. "Can I have an answer to this note?"

"Mrs. Alcot has been in her room since yesterday morning, sir. She was taken ill just before the coach was coming round, and the horses had to be sent back. But the doctor last night hoped it would be nothing serious."

Ashe turned and went home. Then Kitty was not with Madeleine Alcot--not on the coach! Where was she, and with whom?

He shut himself into his library and fell to wondering, in bewilderment, what he had better do. A tide of rage and agony was mounting within him.

How to master it--and keep his brain clear!

He was sitting in front of his writing-table staring at the floor, his hands hanging before him, when the door opened and shut. He turned.

There, with her back to the door, stood Kitty. Her aspect startled him to his feet. She looked at him, trembling--her little face haggard and white, with a touch of something in it which had blurred its youth.

"William!" She put both her hands to her breast, as though to support herself. Then she flew forward. "William! I have done nothing wrong--nothing--nothing! William--look at me!"

He sternly put out his hand, protecting himself.

"Where have you been?" he said, in a low voice--"and with whom?"

Kitty fell into a chair and burst into wild tears.

XIII

There was silence for a few moments except for Kitty's crying. Ashe still stood beside his writing-table, his hand resting upon it, his eyes on Kitty. Once or twice he began to speak, and stopped. At last he said, with obvious difficulty:

"It's cruel to keep me waiting, Kitty."

"I sent you a telegram first thing this morning." The voice was choked and pa.s.sionate.

"I never got it."

"Horrid little fiend!" cried Kitty, sitting up and dashing back her hair from her tear-stained cheeks. "I gave a boy half a crown this morning to be at the station with it by eight o'clock. And I couldn't possibly either write or telegraph last night--it was too late."

"Where were you?" said Ashe, slowly. "I went to the Alcots' this morning, and--"

"--the butler told you Madeleine was in bed? So she is. She was ill yesterday morning. There was no coach and no party. I went with Geoffrey."

Kitty held herself erect; her eyes, from which the tears were involuntarily dropping, were fixed on her husband.

"Of course I guessed that," said Ashe.

"It was Geoffrey brought me the news--here, just as I was starting to go to the Alcots'. Then he said he had something to read me--and it would be delicious to go to Pangbourne--spend the day on the river--and come back from Windsor--at night--by train. And I had a horrid headache--and it was so hot--and you were at the office"--her lip quivered--"and I wanted to hear Geoffrey's poems--and so--"

She interrupted herself, and once more broke down--hiding her face against the chair. But the next moment she felt herself roughly drawn forward, as Ashe knelt beside her.

"Kitty!--look at me! That man behaved to you like a villain?"

She looked up--she saw the handsome, good-humored face transformed--and wrenched herself away.

"He did," she said, bitterly--"like a villain." She began to twist and torment her handkerchief as Ashe had seen her do once before, the small white teeth pressed upon the lower lip--then suddenly she turned upon him--