The Marriage of William Ashe Part 71

"That can't be helped. And I couldn't go on like this, Kitty--even if this affair of the book could be patched up. The strain's too great."

They were but a yard apart, and yet she seemed to be looking at him across a gulf.

"You have been so happy in your work!" This time the sob escaped her.

"Oh, don't let's talk about that," he said, abruptly, as he walked away.

"There'll be a certain relief in giving up the impossible. I'll go back to my books. We can travel, I suppose, and put politics out of our heads."

"But--you won't resign your seat?"

"No," he said, after a pause--"no. As far as I can see at present, I sha'n't resign my seat, though my const.i.tuents, of course, will be very sick. But I doubt whether I shall stand again."

Every phrase fell as though with a thud on Kitty's ear. It was the wreck of a man's life, and she had done it.

"Shall you--shall you go and see Lord Parham?" she asked, after a pause.

"I shall write to him first. I imagine"--he pointed to the letter lying on the table--"that creature has already sent him the book. Then later I daresay I shall see him."

She looked up.

"If I wrote and told him it was all my doing, William?--if I grovelled to him?"

"The responsibility is mine," he said, sternly. "I had no business to tell even you the things printed there. I told them at my own risk. If anything I say has any weight with you, Kitty, you will write nothing."

She spread out her hands to the fire again, and he heard her say, as though to herself:

"The thing is--the awful thing is, that I'm mad--I must be mad. I never thought of all this when I was writing it. I wrote it in a kind of dream. In the first place, I wanted to glorify you--"

He broke into an exclamation.

"Your _taste_, Kitty!--where was your taste? That a wife should praise a husband in public! You could only make us both laughing-stocks."

His handsome features quivered a little. He felt this part of it the most galling, the most humiliating of all; and she understood. In his eyes she had shown herself not only reckless and treacherous, but indelicate, vulgar, capable of besmirching the most sacred and intimate of relations.

She rose from her seat.

"I must go and take my things off," she said, in "a vague voice," and as she moved she tottered a little. He turned to look at her. Amid his own crushing sense of defeat and catastrophe, his natural and righteous indignation, he remembered that she had been ill--he remembered their child. But whether from the excitement, first of the meeting in the Vercelli palace, and now of this scene--or merely from the heat of the fire over which she had been hanging, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes blazed. Her beauty had never been more evident; but it made little appeal to him; it was the wild, ungovernable beauty from which he had suffered. He saw that she was excited, but there was an air also of returning physical vigor; and the nascent feeling which might have been strengthened by pallor and prostration died away.

Kitty moved as though to pa.s.s him and go to her room, which opened out of the _salon_. But as she neared him she suddenly caught him by the arm.

"William!--William! don't do it!--don't resign! Let me apologize!"

He was angered by her persistence, and merely said, coldly:

"I have given you my reasons, Kitty, why such a course is impossible."

"And--and you start to-morrow morning?"

"By the early train. Please let me go, Kitty. There are many things to arrange. I must order the gondola, and see if the people here can cash me a check."

"You mean--to leave me alone?" The words had a curious emphasis.

"I had a few words with Miss French before you came in. The packet arrived by the evening post, and seeing that it was books--for you--I opened it. After about an hour"--he turned and walked away again--"I saw my bearings. Then I called Miss French, told her I should have to go to-morrow, and asked her how long she could stay with you."

"William!" cried Kitty again, leaning heavily on the table beside her--"don't go!--don't leave me!"

His face darkened.

"So you would prevent me from taking the only honorable, the only decent way out of this thing that remains to me?"

She made no immediate reply. She stood--wrapped apparently in painful abstraction--a creature lovely and distraught. The ma.s.ses of her fair hair loosened by the breeze on the ca.n.a.l had fallen about her cheeks and shoulders; her black hat framed the white brow and large, feverish eyes; and the sable cape she had worn in the gondola had slipped down over the thin, sloping shoulders, revealing the young figure and the slender waist. She might have been a child of seventeen, grieving over the death of her goldfinch.

Ashe gathered together his official letters and papers, found his check-book, and began to write. While he wrote he explained that Miss French could keep her company at least another fortnight, that he could leave with them four or five circular notes for immediate expenses, and would send more from home directly he arrived.

In the middle of his directions Kitty once more appealed to him in a pa.s.sionate, m.u.f.fled voice not to go. This time he lost his temper, and without answering her he hastily left the room to arrange his packing with his valet.

When he returned to the _salon_ Kitty was not there. He and Miss French--who knew only that something tragic had happened in which Kitty was concerned--kept up a fragmentary conversation till dinner was announced and Kitty entered. She had evidently been weeping, but with powder and rouge she had tried to conceal the traces of her tears; and at dinner she sat silent, hardly answering when Margaret French spoke to her.

After dinner Ashe went out with his cigar towards the Piazza. He was in a smarting, dazed state, beginning, however, to realize the blow more than he had done at first. He believed that Parham himself would not be at all sorry to be rid of him. He and his friends formed a powerful group both in the cabinet and out of it. But they were forcing the pace, and the elements of resistance and reaction were strong. He pictured the dismay of his friends, the possible breakdown of the reforming party. Of course they might so stand by him--and the suppression of the book might be so complete--

At this moment he caught sight of a newspaper contents bill displayed at the door of the only shop in the Piazza which sold English newspapers.

One of the lines ran, "Anonymous attack on the Premier." He started, went in and bought the paper. There, in the "London Topics" column, was the following paragraph:

"A string of extracts from a forthcoming book, accompanied by a somewhat startling publisher's statement, has lately been sent round to the press. We are asked not to print them before the day of publication, but they have already roused much attention, if not excitement. They certainly contain a very gross attack on the Prime Minister, based apparently on first-hand information, and involving indiscretions personal and political of an unusually serious character. The wife of a cabinet minister is freely named as the writer, and even if no violation of cabinet secrecy is concerned, it is clear that the book outrages the confidential relations which ought to subsist between a Premier and his colleagues, if government on our English system is to be satisfactorily carried on. The statements it makes with every appearance of authority both as to the relations between Lord Parham and some of the most important members of his cabinet, and as to the Premier's intentions with regard to one or two of the most vital questions now before the country, are calculated seriously to embarra.s.s the government. We fear the book will have a veritable _succes de scandale_."

"That fellow at least has done his best to kick the ball, d.a.m.n him!"

thought Ashe, with contempt, as he thrust the paper into his pocket.

It was no more than he expected; but it put an end to all thoughts of a more hopeful kind. He walked up and down the _Piazza_ smoking, till midnight, counting the hours till he could reach London, and revolving the phrases of a telegram to be sent to his solicitor before starting.

Kitty made no sign or sound when he entered her room. Her fair head was turned away from him, and all was dark. He could hardly believe that she was asleep; but it was a relief to him to accept her pretence of it, and to escape all further conversation. He himself slept but little. The mere profundity of the Venetian silence teased him; it reminded him how far he was from home.

Two images pursued him--of Kitty writing the book, while he was away electioneering or toiling at his new office--and then, of his returns to Haggart--tired or triumphant--on many a winter evening, of her glad rush into his arms, her sparkling face on his breast.

Or again, he conjured up the scene when the MS. had been shown to Darrell--his pretence of disapproval, his sham warnings, and the smile on his sallow face as he walked off with it. Ashe looked back to the early days of his friendship with Darrell, when he, Ashe, was one of the leaders at Eton, popular with the masters in spite of his incorrigible idleness, and popular with the boys because of his bodily prowess, and Darrell had been a small, sickly, bullied colleger. Scene after scene recurred to him, from their later relations at Oxford also. There was a kind of deliberation in the way in which he forced his thoughts into this channel; it made an outlet for a fierce bitterness of spirit, which some imperious instinct forbade him to spend on Kitty.

He dozed in the later hours of the night, and was roused by something touching his hand, which lay outside the bedclothes. Again the little head!--and the soft curls. Kitty was there--crouched beside him--weeping. There flashed into his mind an image of the night in London when she had come to him thus; and unwelcome as the whole remembrance was, he was conscious of a sudden swelling wave of pity and pa.s.sion. What if he sprang up, caught her in his arms, forgave her, and bade the world go hang!

No! The impulse pa.s.sed, and in his turn he feigned sleep. The thought of her long deceit, of the selfish wilfulness wherewith she had requited deep love and easy trust, was too much; it seared his heart. And there was another and a subtler influence. To have forgiven so easily would have seemed treachery to those high ambitions and ideals from which--as he thought, only too certainly--she had now cut him off. It was part of his surviving youth that the catastrophe seemed to him so absolute. Any thought of the fresh efforts which would be necessary for the reconquering of his position was no less sickening to him than that of the immediate discomforts and humiliations to be undergone. He would go back to books and amus.e.m.e.nt; and in the idling of the future there would be plenty of time for love-making.

In the morning, when all preparations were made, the gondoliers waiting below, Ashe's telegram sent, and the circular notes handed over to Margaret French, who had discreetly left the room, William approached his wife.

"Good-bye!" said Kitty, and gave him her hand, with a strange look and smile.

Ashe, however, drew her to him and kissed her--against her will. "I'll do my best, Kitty," he said, in a would-be cheery voice--"to pull us through. Perhaps--I don't know!--things may turn out better than I think. Good-bye. Take care of yourself. I'll write, of course. Don't hurry home. You'll want a fortnight or three weeks yet."