The Marriage of William Ashe Part 46

"H'm. The wives of cabinet ministers have often inspired articles. I don't remember an instance of their writing them."

"Well, Kitty is inclined to try."

"With Ashe's sanction?"

"Goodness, no! But Kitty, as you are aware"--Mrs. Alcot threw a prudent glance to right and left--"goes her own way. She believes she can be of great service to her husband's policy."

Darrell's lip twitched.

"If you were in Ashe's position, would you rather your wife neglected or supported your political interests?"

Mrs. Alcot shrugged her shoulders.

"Kitty made a considerable mess of them last year."

"No doubt. She forgot they existed. But I think if I were Ashe, I should be more afraid of her remembering. By-the-way--the gla.s.s here seems to be at 'Set Fair'?"

His interrogative smile was not wholly good-natured. But mere benevolence was not what the world asked of Philip Darrell--even in the case of his old friends.

"Astonishing!" said Mrs. Alcot, with lifted brows. "Kitty is immensely proud of him--and immensely ambitious. That, of course, accounts for Lord Parham's visit."

"Lord Parham!" cried Darrell, bounding on his seat. "Lord Parham!--coming here?"

"He arrives to-morrow. On his way from Scotland--to Windsor."

Mrs. Alcot enjoyed the effect of her communication on her companion. He sat open-mouthed, evidently startled out of all self-command.

"Why, I thought that Lady Kitty--"

"Had vowed vengeance? So, in a sense, she has. It is understood that she and Lady Parham don't meet, except--"

"On formal occasions, and to take in the groundlings," said Darrell, too impatient to let her finish her sentence. "Yes, that I gathered. But you mean that _Lord_ Parham is to be allowed to make his peace?"

Madeleine Alcot lay back and laughed.

"Kitty wishes to try her hand at managing him."

Darrell joined her in mirth. The notion of the white-haired, bullet-headed, shrewd, and masterful man who at that moment held the Premiership of England managed by Kitty, or any other daughter of Eve--always excepting his wife--must needs strike those who had the slightest acquaintance with Lord Parham as a delicious absurdity.

Suddenly Darrell checked himself, and bent forward.

"Where--if I may ask--is the poet?"

"Geoffrey? Somewhere in the Balkans, isn't he?--making a revolution."

Darrell nodded.

"I remember. They say he is with the revolutionary committee at Marinitza. Meanwhile there is a new volume of poems out--to-day," said Darrell, glancing at a newspaper thrown down beside him.

"I have seen it. The 'portrait' at the end--"

"Is Lady Kitty." They spoke under their breaths.

"Unmistakable, I think," said Kitty's best friend. "As poetry, it seems to me the best thing in the book, but the audacity of it!" She raised her eyebrows in a half-unwilling, half-contemptuous admiration.

"Has she seen it?"

Mrs. Alcot replied that she had not noticed any copy in the house, and that Kitty had not spoken of it, which, given the Kitty-nature, she probably would have done, had it reached her.

Then they both fell into reverie, from which Darrell emerged with the remark:

"I gather that last year some very important person interfered?"

This opened another line of gossip, in which, however, Mrs. Alcot showed herself equally well informed. It was commonly reported, at any rate, that the old Duke of Morecambe, the head of Lady Eleanor Cliffe's family, the great Tory evangelical of the north, who was a sort of patriarch in English political and aristocratic life, had been induced by some undefined pressure to speak very plainly to his kinsman on the subject of Lady Kitty Ashe. Cliffe had expectations from the duke which were not to be trifled with. He had, accordingly, swallowed the lecture, and, after the loss of his election, had again left England with an important newspaper commission to watch events in the Balkans.

"May he stay there!" said Darrell. "Of course, the whole thing was absurdly exaggerated."

"Was it?" said Mrs. Alcot, coolly. "Kitty richly deserved most of what was said." Then--on his start--"Don't misunderstand me, of course. If twenty actions for divorce were given against Kitty, I should believe nothing--_nothing_!" The words were as emphatic as voice and gesture could make them. "But as for the tales that people who hate her tell of her, and will go on telling of her--"

"They are merely the harvest of what she has sown?"

"Naturally. Poor Kitty!"

Madeleine Alcot rested her thin cheek on a still frailer hand and looked pensively out into the darkness of the cedars. Her tone was neither patronizing nor unkind; rather, the shade of ironic tenderness which it expressed suited the subject, and that curious intimacy which had of late sprung up between herself and Darrell. She had begun, as we have seen, by treating him _de haut en bas_. He had repaid her with manner of the same type; in this respect he was a match for any Archangel. Then some accident--perhaps the publication by the man of a volume of essays which expressed to perfection his acid and embittered talent--perhaps a casual meeting at a northern country-house, where the lady had found the man of letters her only resource amid a crowd of uncongenial nonent.i.ties--had shown them their natural compatibility. Both were in a secret revolt against circ.u.mstance and their own lives; but whereas the reasons for the man's att.i.tude--his jealousies, defeats, and ambitions--were fairly well understood by the woman, he was almost as much in the dark about her as when their friendship began.

He knew her husband slightly--an eager, gifted fellow, of late years a strong High Churchman, and well known in a certain group as the friend of Mrs. Armagh, that muse--fragile, austere, and beautiful--of several great men, and great Christians, among the older generation. Mrs. Alcot had her own intimates, generally men; but she tired of them and changed them often. Mr. Alcot spent part of every year within reach of the Cornish home of Mrs. Armagh; and during that time his wife made her round of visits.

Meanwhile her thin lips were sealed as to her own affairs. Certainly she made the impression of an unhappy woman, and Darrell was convinced of some tragic complication. But neither he nor any one of whom he had yet inquired had any idea what it might be.

"By-the-way--where is Lady Kitty?--and are there many people here?"

Darrell turned, as he spoke, to scrutinize the house and its approaches.

Haggart Hall was a large and commonplace mansion, standing in the midst of spreading "grounds" and dull plantations, beyond which could be sometimes seen the tall chimneys of neighboring coal-mines. It wore an air of middle-cla.s.s Tory comfort which brought a smile to Darrell's countenance as he surveyed it.

"Kitty is at the Agricultural Show--with a party."

"Playing the great lady? _What_ a house!"

"Yes. Kitty abhors it. But it will do very well for the party to-morrow."

"Half the county--that kind of thing?"

"_All_ the county--some royalties--and Lord Parham."

"Lord Parham being the end and aim? I thought I heard wheels."

Mrs. Alcot rose, and they strolled back towards the house.