The Marriage of William Ashe Part 6

"Yes. They've offered me Hickson's place. More fools they, don't you think?"

"Good! Upon my word, Bill, you've got your foot in the stirrup now! Hope you'll continue to be civil to poor devils like me."

The speaker looked up smiling, but neither the tone nor the smile was really cordial. Ashe felt the embarra.s.sment that he had once or twice felt before in telling Darrell news of good fortune. There seemed to be something in Darrell that resented it--under an outer show of felicitation.

However, they went on talking of the political moment and its prospects, and of Ashe's personal affairs. As to the last, Darrell questioned, and Ashe somewhat reluctantly replied. It appeared that his allowance was to be largely raised, that his paralyzed father, in fact, was anxious to put him in possession of a substantial share in the income of the estates, that one of the country-houses was to be made over to him, and so on.

"Which means, of course, that they want you to marry," said Darrell.

"Well, you've only to throw the handkerchief."

They were pa.s.sing a lamp as he spoke, and the light shone on his long, pale face--a face of discontent--with its large sunken eyes and hollow cheeks.

Ashe treated the remark as "rot," and endeavored to get away from his own affairs by discussing the party they had just left.

"How does she get all those people together? It's astonishing!"

"Well, I always liked Madame d'Estrees well enough," said Darrell, "but, upon my word, she has done a beastly mean thing in bringing that girl over."

"You mean?"--Ashe hesitated--"that her own position is too doubtful?"

"Doubtful, my dear fellow!" Darrell laughed unpleasantly. "I never really understood what it all meant till the other night when old Lady Grosville took and told me--more at any rate than I knew before. The Grosvilles are on the war-path, and they regard the coming of this poor child as the last straw."

"Why?" said Ashe.

Darrell gave a shrug. "Well, you know the story of Madame d'Estrees'

step-daughter--old Blackwater's daughter?"

"Ah! by his first marriage? I knew it was something about the step-daughter," said Ashe, vaguely.

Darrell began to repeat his conversation with Lady Grosville. The tale threatened presently to become a black one indeed; and at last Ashe stood still in the broad walk crossing the Green Park.

"Look here," he said, resolutely, "don't tell me any more. I don't want to hear any more."

"Why?" asked Darrell, in amazement.

"Because"--Ashe hesitated a moment. "Well, I don't want it to be made impossible for me to go to Madame d'Estrees' again. Besides, we've just eaten her salt."

"You're a good friend!" said Darrell, not without something of a sneer.

Ashe was ruffled by the tone, but tried not to show it. He merely insisted that he knew Lady Grosville to be a bit of an old cat; that of course there was something up; but it seemed a shame for those at least who accepted Madame d'Estrees' hospitality to believe the worst. There was a curious mixture of carelessness and delicacy in his remarks, very characteristic of the man. It appeared as though he was at once too indolent to go into the matter, and too chivalrous to talk about it.

Darrell presently maintained a rather angry silence. No man likes to be checked in his story, especially when the check implies something like a snub from his best friend. Suddenly, memory brought before him the little picture of Ashe and Lady Kitty together--he bending over her, in his large, handsome geniality, and she looking up. Darrell felt a twinge of jealousy--then disgust. Really, men like Ashe had the world too easily their own way. That they should pose, besides, was too much.

III

Rather more than a fortnight after the evening at Madame d'Estrees', William Ashe found himself in a Midland train on his way to the Cambridgeshire house of Lady Grosville. While the April country slipped past him--like some blanched face to which life and color are returning--Ashe divided his time between an idle skimming of the Sat.u.r.day papers and a no less idle dreaming of Kitty Bristol. He had seen her two or three times since his first introduction to her--once at a ball to which Lady Grosville had taken her, and once on the terrace of the House of Commons, where he had strolled up and down with her for a most amusing and stimulating hour, while her mother entertained a group of elderly politicians. And the following day she had come alone--her own choice--to take tea with Lady Tranmore, on that lady's invitation, as prompted by her son. Ashe himself had arrived towards the end of the visit, and had found a Lady Kitty in the height of the fashion, stiff mannered, and flushed to a deep red by her own consciousness that she could not possibly be making a good impression. At sight of him she relaxed, and talked a great deal, but not wisely; and when she was gone, Ashe could get very little opinion of any kind from his mother, who had, however, expressed a wish that she should come and visit them in the country.

Since then he frankly confessed to himself that in the intervals of his new official and administrative work he had been a good deal haunted by memories of this strange child, her eyes, her grace--even in her fits of proud shyness--and the way in which, as he had put her into her cab after the visit to Lady Tranmore, her tiny hand had lingered in his, a mute, astonishing appeal. Haunted, too, by what he heard of her fortunes and surroundings. What was the real truth of Madame d'Estrees'

situation? During the preceding weeks some ugly rumors had reached Ashe of financial embarra.s.sment in that quarter, of debts risen to mountainous height, of crisis and possible disappearance. Then these rumors were met by others, to the effect that Colonel Warington, the old friend and support of the d'Estrees' household, had come to the rescue, that the crisis had been averted, and that the three weekly evenings, so well known and so well attended, would go on; and with this phase of the story there mingled, as Ashe was well aware, not the slightest breath of scandal, in a case where, so to speak, all was scandal.

And meanwhile what new and dolorous truths had Lady Kitty been learning as to her mother's history and her mother's position? By Jove! it _was_ hard upon the girl. Darrell was right. Why not leave her to her French friends and relations?--or relinquish her to Lady Grosville? Madame d'Estrees had seen little or nothing of her for years. She could not, therefore, be necessary to her mother's happiness, and there was a real cruelty in thus claiming her, at the very moment of her entrance into society, where Madame d'Estrees could only stand in her way. For although many a man whom the girl might profitably marry was to be found among the mother's guests, the influences of Madame d'Estrees'

"evenings" were certainly not matrimonial. Still the unforeseen was surely the probable in Lady Kitty's case. What sort of man ought she to marry--what sort of man could safely take the risks of marrying her--with that mother in the background?

He descended at the way-side station prescribed to him, and looked round him for fellow-guests--much as the card-player examines his hand. Mary Lyster, a cabinet minister--filling an ornamental office and handed on from ministry to ministry as a kind of necessary appendage, the public never knew why--the minister's second wife, an attache from the Austrian emba.s.sy, two members of Parliament, and a well-known journalist--Ashe said to himself flippantly that so far the trumps were not many. But he was always reasonably glad to see Mary, and he went up to her, cared for her bag, and made her put on her cloak, with cousinly civility. In the omnibus on the way to the house he and Mary gossiped in a corner, while the cabinet minister and the editor went to sleep, and the two members of Parliament practised some courageous French on the Austrian attache.

"Is it to be a large party?" he asked of his companion.

"Oh! they always fill the house. A good many came down yesterday."

"Well, I'm not curious," said Ashe, "except as to one person."

"Who?"

"Lady Kitty Bristol."

Mary Lyster smiled.

"Yes, poor child, I heard from the Grosville girls that she was to be here."

"Why 'poor child'?"

"I don't know. Quite the wrong expression, I admit. It should be 'poor hostess.'"

"Oh!--the Grosvilles complain?"

"No. They're only on tenter-hooks. They never know what she will do next."

"How good for the Grosvilles!"

"You think society is the better for shocks?"

"Lady Grosville can do with them, anyway. What a masterful woman! But I'll back Lady Kitty."

"I haven't seen her yet," said Mary. "I hear she is a very odd-looking little thing."

"Extremely pretty," said Ashe.

"Really?" Mary lifted incredulous eyebrows. "Well, now I shall know what you admire."

"Oh, my tastes are horribly catholic--I admire so many people," said Ashe, with a glance at the well-dressed elegance beside him. Mary colored a little, unseen; and the rattle of the carriage as it entered the covered porch of Grosville Park cut short their conversation.

"Well, I'm glad you got in," said Lady Grosville, in her full, loud voice, "because we are connections. But of course I regard the loss of a seat to our side just now as a great disaster."