The Marriage of William Ashe Part 44

"'Anywhere--anywhere--out of the world!'"

"Kitty!" Startled by the abandonment of her words, Ashe caught her hands and held them. "Kitty!--- you regret--"

"That man? Do I?" She opened her eyes, frowning. "I loathe him! When I think of yesterday, I could drown myself. If I could pile the whole world between him and me--I would. But"--she shivered--"but yet--if he were sitting there--"

"You would be once more under the spell?" said Ashe, bitterly.

"Spell!" she repeated, with scorn. Then s.n.a.t.c.hing her hands from his, she threw back the hair from her temples with a wild gesture. "I warned you," she said--"I warned you."

"A man doesn't pay much attention to those warnings, Kitty."

"Then it is not my fault. I don't know what's wrong with me," she said, sombrely; "but I remember saying to you that sometimes my brain was on fire. I seem to be always in a hurry--in a desperate, desperate hurry!--to know or to feel something--while there is still time--before one dies. There is always a pa.s.sion--always an effort. More life--_more life_!--even if it lead to pain--and agony--and tears."

She raised her strange, beautiful eyes, which had at the moment almost a look of delirium, and fixed them on his face. But Ashe's impression was that she did not see him.

He was conscious of the same pang, the same sudden terror that he had felt on that never-to-be-forgotten evening when she had talked to him of the mask in the "Tempest." He thought of the Blackwater stories he had heard from Lord Grosville. "_Mad, my dear fellow, mad!_"--the old man's frequent comment ran through his memory. Was there, indeed, some unsound spot in Kitty?

He sat dumb and paralyzed for a moment; then, recovering himself, he said, as he recaptured the cold little hands:

"'More _light_,' Kitty, was what Goethe said, in dying. A better prayer, don't you think?"

There was a strong, even a stern insistence in his manner which quieted Kitty. Her face as it came back to full consciousness was exquisitely sweet and mournful.

"That's the prayer of the _calm_," she said, in a whisper, "and my nature is hunger and storm. And Geoffrey Cliffe is the same. That's why I couldn't help being--"

She sprang up.

"William, don't let's talk nonsense. I can't ever see that man again.

How's it to be done?"

She moved up and down--all practical energy and impatience--her mood wholly altered. His own adapted itself to hers.

"For the present, fear nothing," he said, dryly. "For his own sake Cliffe will hold his tongue and leave London. And as to the future--I can get some message conveyed to him--by a man he won't disregard. Leave it to me."

"You can't write to him, William!" cried Kitty, pa.s.sionately.

"Leave it to me," he repeated. "Then suppose you take the boy--and Margaret French--to Haggart till I can join you?"

"And your mother?" she said, timidly, coming to stand beside him and laying a hand on each shoulder.

"Leave that also to me."

"How she'll hate the sight of me," she said, under her breath. Then, with another tone of voice--"How long, William, do you give the government?"

"Six months, perhaps--perhaps less. I don't see how they can last beyond February."

"And then--we'll _fight_!" said Kitty, with a long breath, smoothing back the hair from his brow.

"Allow me, please, to command the forces! Well, now then, I must be off!" He tried to rise, but she still held him.

"Did you have any breakfast, William?"

"I don't remember."

"Sit still and eat one of my sandwiches." She divided one into strips, and standing over him began to feed him. A knock at the door arrested her.

"Don't move!" she said, peremptorily, before she ran to open the door.

"Please, my lady," said Blanche, "Lady Tranmore would like to see you."

Kitty started and flushed. She looked round uncertainly at Ashe.

"Ask her ladyship to come up," said Ashe, quietly.

The maid departed.

"Feed me if you want to, Kitty," said Ashe, still seated.

Kitty returned, her breath hurried, her step wavering. She looked doubtfully at Ashe--then her eyes sparkled--as she understood. She dropped on her knees beside him, kissing the sleeve of his coat, against which her cheek was pressed--in a pa.s.sion of repentance.

He bent towards her, touching her hair, murmuring over her. His mind meanwhile was torn with feelings which, so to speak, observed each other. This thing which had happened was horribly serious--important. It might easily have wrecked two lives. Had he dealt with it as he ought--made Kitty feel the gravity of it?

Then the optimist in him asked impatiently what was "the good of exaggerating the d.a.m.ned business"? That fellow has got his lesson--could be driven headlong out of his life and Kitty's henceforward. And how could _he_ doubt the love shown in this clinging penitence, these soft kisses? How would the Turk theory of marriage, please, have done any better? Kitty had had her own wild way. No fiat from without had bound her; but love had brought her to his feet. There was something in him which triumphed alike in her revolt and her submission.

Meanwhile, in the cool drawing-room to which the green _persiennes_ gave a pleasant foreign look, Lady Tranmore had been waiting for the maid's return. She shrank from every sound in the house; from her own reflection in Kitty's French mirrors; from her own thoughts most of all.

Lady Edith Manley--at Holland House--had been the most innocent of gossips. A little lady who did no wrong herself--and thought no wrong of others; as white-minded and unsuspicious as a convent child. "Poor Lady Kitty! Something seemed to have gone wrong with the Alcots' coach, and they were somehow divided from all their party. I can't remember exactly what it was they said, but Mr. Cliffe was confident they would catch their train. Though my boy--you remember my boy? they've just put him in the eight!--thought they were running it _rather_ fine."

Then, five minutes later, in the supper-room, Lady Tranmore had run across Madeleine Alcot's husband, who had given her in pa.s.sing the whole story of the frustrated expedition--Mrs. Alcot's chill, and the despatch of Cliffe to Hill Street. "Horrid bore to have to put it off! Hope he got there in time to stop Lady Kitty getting ready. Oh, thanks, Madeleine's all right."

And then no more, as the rush of the crowd swept them apart.

After that, sleep had wholly deserted Lady Tranmore--if, indeed, after the publication of the cabinet list in the afternoon, and William's letter following upon it, any had been still possible. And in the early morning she had sent her note to Kitty--a _ballon d'essai_, despatched in a horror of great fear.

"Her ladyship has not yet returned." The message from Hill Street, delivered by the footman's indifferent mouth, struck Lady Tranmore with trembling.

"Where is William?" she said to herself, in anguish. "I must find him--but--what shall I say to him?" Then she went up-stairs, and, without calling for her maid, put on her walking things with shaking hands.

She slipped out un.o.bserved by her household, and took a hansom from the corner of Grosvenor Street. In the hansom she carefully drew down her veil, with the shrinking of one on whom disgrace--the long pursuing, long expected--has seized at last. All the various facts, statements, indications as to Kitty's behavior, which through the most diverse channels had been flowing steadily towards her for weeks past, were now surging through her mind and memory--a grievous, d.a.m.ning host. And every now and then, as she caught the placards in the streets, her heart contracted anew. Her son, her William, in what should have been the heyday of his gifts and powers, baffled, tripped up, defeated!--by his own wife, the selfish, ungrateful, reckless child on whom he had lavished the undeserved treasures of the most generous and untiring love. And had she not only checked or ruined his career--was he to be also dishonored, struck to the heart?

She could scarcely stand as she rang the bell at Hill Street, and it was only with a great effort that she could ask her question:

"Is Mr. Ashe at home?"

"Mr. Ashe, my lady, is, I believe, just going out," said Wilson. "Her ladyship arrived just about an hour ago, and that detained him."

Elizabeth betrayed nothing. The training of her cla.s.s held good.