The Marriage of William Ashe Part 58

"Why, we thought you were an invalid."

For, some three weeks before, a letter had reached him at Haggart, so full of melancholy details as to Madame d'Estrees' health and circ.u.mstances that even Kitty had been moved. Money had been sent; inquiries had been made by telegraph; and but for a hasty message of a more cheerful character, received just before they started, the Ashes, instead of journeying by Brussels and Cologne, would have gone by Paris that Kitty might see her mother. They had intended to stop there on their way back. Ashe was not minded that Kitty should see more of Madame d'Estrees than necessity demanded; but on this occasion he would have felt it positively brutal to make difficulties.

And now here was this moribund lady, this forsaken of G.o.ds and men, disporting herself at Venice, evidently in the pink of health and attired in the freshest of Paris toilettes! As he coldly shook hands, Ashe registered an inner vow that Madame d'Estrees' letters henceforward should receive the attention they deserved.

And beside her was her somewhat mysterious friend of London days, the Colonel Warington who had been so familiar a figure in the gatherings of St. James's Place--grown much older, almost white-haired, and as gentlemanly as ever. Who was the lady? Ashe was introduced, was aware of a somewhat dark and Jewish cast of face, noticed some fine jewels, and could only suppose that his mother-in-law had picked up some one to finance her, and provide her with creature comforts in return for the social talents that Madame d'Estrees still possessed in some abundance.

He had more than once noticed her skill in similar devices; but, indeed, they were indispensable, for while he allowed Madame d'Estrees one thousand a year, she was, it seemed, firmly determined to spend a minimum of three.

He and Warington looked at each other with curiosity. The bronzed face and honest eyes of the soldier betrayed nothing. "Are you going to marry her at last?" thought Ashe. "Poor devil!"

Meanwhile Madame d'Estrees chattered away as though nothing could be more natural than their meeting, or more perfect than the relations between herself and her daughter and son-in-law.

As they all strolled down the church she looked keenly at Kitty.

"My dear child, how ill you look!--and your mourning! Ah, yes, of course!"--she bit her lip--"I remember--the poor, poor boy--"

"Thank you!" said Kitty, hastily. "I got your letter--thank you very much. Where are you staying? We've got rooms on the Grand Ca.n.a.l."

"Oh, but, Kitty!" cried Madame d'Estrees--"I was so sorry for you!"

"Were you?" said Kitty, under her breath. "Then, please, never speak of him to me again!"

Startled and offended, Madame d'Estrees looked at her daughter. But what she saw disarmed her. For once even she felt something like the pang of a mother. "You're _dreadfully_ thin, Kitty!"

Kitty frowned with annoyance.

"It's not my fault," she said, pettishly. "I live on cream, and it's no good. Of course, I know I'm an object and a scarecrow; but I'd rather people didn't tell me."

"What nonsense, _chere enfant!_ You're much prettier than you ever were."

A wild and fugitive radiance swept across the face beside her.

"Am I?" said Kitty, smiling. "That's all right! If I had died it wouldn't matter, of course. But--"

"Died! What do you mean, Kitty?" said Madame d'Estrees, in bewilderment.

"When William wrote to me I thought he meant you had overtired yourself."

"Oh, well, the doctors said it was touch and go," said Kitty, indifferently. "But, of course, it wasn't. I'm much too tough. And then they fussed about one's heart. And that's all nonsense, too. I couldn't die if I tried."

But Madame d'Estrees pondered--the bright, intermittent color, the emaciation, the hollowness of the eyes. The effect, so far, was to add to Kitty's natural distinction, to give, rather, a touch of pathos to a face which even in its wildest mirth had in it something alien and remote. But she, too, reflected that a little more, a very little more, and--in a night--the face would have dropped its beauty, as a rose its petals.

The group stood talking awhile on the steps outside the church. Kitty and her mother exchanged addresses, Donna Laura opened her mouth once or twice, and produced a few contorted smiles for Kitty's benefit, while Colonel Warington tipped the sacristan, found the gondolier, and studied the guide-book.

As Madame d'Estrees stepped into her gondola, a.s.sisted by him, she tapped him on the arm.

"Are you coming, Markham?"

The low voice was pitched in a very intimate note. Kitty turned with a start.

"A casa!" said Madame d'Estrees, and she and her friend made for one of the ca.n.a.ls that pierce the Zattere, while Colonel Warington went off for a walk along the Giudecca.

Kitty and Ashe bade their gondoliers take them to the Piazzetta, and presently they were gliding across waters of flame and silver, where the white front and red campanile of San Giorgio--now blazing under the sunset--mirrored themselves in the lagoon. The autumn evening was fresh and gay. A light breeze was on the water; lights that only Venice knows shone on the tawny sails of fishing-boats making for the Lido, on the white sides of an English yacht, on the burnished prows of the gondolas, on the warm reddish-white of the Ducal Palace. The air blowing from the Adriatic breathed into their faces the strength of the sea; and in the far distance, above that line of buildings where lies the heart of Venice, the high ghosts of the Friulian Alps glimmered amid the sweeping regiments and purple shadows of the land-hurrying clouds.

"This does you good, darling!" said Ashe, stooping down to look into his wife's face, as she nestled beside him on the soft cushions of the gondola.

Kitty gave him a slight smile, then said, with a furrowed brow:

"Who could ever have thought we should find maman here!"

"Don't have her on your mind!" said Ashe, with some sharpness. "I can't have anything worrying you."

She slipped her hand into his.

"Is that man going to marry her--at last? She called him 'Markham.'

That's new."

"Looks rather like it," said Ashe. "Then _he'll_ have to look after the debts!"

They began to piece together what they knew of Colonel Warington and his relation to Madame d'Estrees. It was not much. But Ashe believed that originally Warington had not been in love with her at all. There had been a love-affair between her and Warington's younger brother, a smart artillery officer, when she was the widowed Lady Blackwater. She had behaved with more heart and scruple than she had generally been known to do in these matters, and the young officer adored her--hoped, indeed, to marry her. But he was called on--in Paris--to fight a duel on her account, and was killed. Before fighting, he had commended Lady Blackwater to the care of his much older brother, also a soldier, between whom and himself there existed a rare and pa.s.sionate devotion; and ever since the poor lad's death, Markham Warington had been the friend and quasi-guardian of the lady--through her second marriage, through the checkered years of her existence in London, and now through the later years of her residence on the Continent, a residence forced upon her by her agreement with the Tranmores. Again and again he had saved her from bankruptcy, or from some worse scandal which would have wrecked the last remnants of her fame.

But, all the time, he was himself bound by strong ties of grat.i.tude and affection to an elder sister who had brought him up, with whom he lived in Scotland during half the year. And this stout Puritan lady detested the very name of Madame d'Estrees.

"But she's dead," said Ashe. "I remember noticing her death in the _Times_ some three months ago. That, of course, explains it. Now he's free to marry."

"And so maman will settle down, and be happy ever afterwards!" said Kitty, with a sarcastic lifting of the brow. "Why should anybody be good?"

The bitterness of her look struck Ashe disagreeably. That any child should speak so of a mother was a tragic and sinister thing. But he was well aware of the causes.

"Were you very unhappy when you were a child, Kitty?" He pressed the hand he held.

"No," said Kitty, shortly. "I'm too like maman. I suppose, really, at bottom, I liked all the debts, and the excitement, and the shady people!"

"That wasn't the impression you gave me, in the first days of our acquaintance!" said Ashe, laughing.

"Oh, then I was grown up--and there were drawbacks. But I'm made of the same stuff as maman," she said, obstinately--"except that I can't tell so many fibs. That's really why we didn't get on."

Her brown eyes held him with that strange, unspoken defiance it seemed so often beyond her power to hide. It was like the fluttering of some caged thing hungering for it knows not what. Then, as they scanned the patient good-temper of his face, they melted; and her little fingers squeezed his; while Margaret French kept her eyes fixed on the two columns of the Piazzetta.

"How strange to find her here!" said Kitty, under her breath. "Now, if it had been Alice--my sister Alice!"

William nodded. It had been known to them for some time that Lady Alice Wensleydale, to whom Italy had become a second country, had settled in a villa near Treviso, where she occupied herself with a lace school for women and girls.

The mention of her sister threw Kitty into what seemed to be a disagreeable reverie. The flush brought by the sea-wind faded. Ashe looked at her with anxiety.

"You have done too much, Kitty--as usual!"