The Marriage of William Ashe Part 43

"Shut the door, William. I have something very important to say to you."

He obeyed her, and she walked up to him deliberately. He saw the fluttering of her heart beneath her white dress--the crushed, bedraggled dress, which still in its soft elegance, its small originalities, spoke Kitty from head to foot. But her manner was quite calm and collected.

"William, we must separate! You must send me away."

He started.

"What do you mean?"

"What I say. It is--it is intolerable--that I should ruin your life like this."

"Don't, please, exaggerate, Kitty! There is no question of ruin. I shall make my way when the time comes, and Lady Parham will have nothing to say to it!"

"No! Nothing will ever go well--while I'm there--like a millstone round your neck. William"--she came closer to him--"take my advice--do it! I Warned you when you married me. And now you see--it was true."

"You foolish child," he answered, slowly, "do you think I could forget you for an hour, wherever you were?"

"Oh yes," she said, steadily, "I know you would forget me--- if I wasn't here. I'm sure of it. You're very ambitious, William--more than you know. You'll soon care--"

"More for politics than for you? Another of your delusions, Kitty.

Nothing of the sort. Moreover, if you will only let me advise you--trust your husband a little--think both for him and yourself. I see nothing either in politics or in our life together that cannot be retrieved."

He spoke with manly kindness and reasonableness. Not a trace of his habitual indolence or indifference. Kitty, listening, was conscious of the most tempestuous medley of feelings--love, remorse, shame, and a strange gnawing desolation. What else, what better _could_ she have asked of him? And yet, as she looked at him, she thought suddenly of the moonlit garden at Grosville Park, and of that young, headlong chivalry with which he had thrown himself at her feet. This man before her, so much older and maturer, counting the cost of his marriage with her in the light of experience, and magnanimously, resolutely paying it--Kitty, in a flash, realized his personality as she had never yet done, his moral independence of her, his separateness as a human being. Her pa.s.sionate self-love instinctively, unconsciously, had made of his life the appendage of hers. And now--? His devotion had never been so plain, so attested; and all the while bitter, terrifying voices rang upon the inner ear, voices of fate, vague and irrevocable.

She dropped into a chair beside his table, trembling and white.

"No, no," she said, drawing her handkerchief across her eyes, with a gesture of childish misery, "it's all been a--a horrid mistake. Your mother was quite right. Of course she hated your marrying me--and now--now she'll see what I've done. I guess perfectly what she's thinking about me to-day! And I can't help it--I shall go on--if you let me stay with you. There's a twist--a black drop in me. I'm not like other people."

Her voice, which was very quiet, gave Ashe intolerable pain.

"You poor, tired, starved child," he said, kneeling down beside her.

"Put your arms round my neck. Let me carry you up-stairs."

With a sob she did as she was told. Ashe's library a comparatively late addition to the rambling, old-fas.h.i.+oned house, communicated by a small staircase at the back with his dressing-room above. He lifted the small figure with ease, and half-way up-stairs he impetuously kissed the delicate cheek.

"I'm glad you're not Polly Lyster, darling!"

Kitty laughed through her tears. Presently he deposited her on the large sofa in her own room, and stood beside her, panting a little.

"It's all very well," said Kitty, as she nestled down among the pillows, "but we're _none_ of us feathers!"

Her eyes were beginning to recover a little of their sparkle. She looked at him with attention.

"You look horribly tired. What--what did you do--last night?" She turned away from him.

"I sat up reading--then went to sleep down-stairs. I thought the coach had come to grief, and you were somewhere with the Alcots."

"If I had known that," she murmured, "_I_ might have gone to sleep. Oh, it was so horrible--the little stuffy room, and the dirty blankets." She gave a s.h.i.+ver of disgust. "There was a poor baby, too, with whooping-cough. Lucky I had some money. I gave the woman a sovereign.

But she wasn't at all nice--she never smiled once. I know she thought I was a bad lot."

Then she sprang up.

"Sit there!" She pointed to the foot of the sofa. Ashe obeyed her.

"When did you know?"

"About the ministry? Between six and seven. I saw Lady Parham afterwards driving in St. James's Street. She never enjoyed anything so much in her life as the bow she gave me.'"

Kitty groaned, and subsided again, a little crumpled form among her cus.h.i.+ons.

"Tell me the names."

Ashe gave her the list of the ministry. She made one or two shrewd or bitter comments upon it. He fully understood that in her inmost mind she was registering a vow of vengeance against the Parhams; but she made no spoken threat. Meanwhile, in the background of each mind there lay that darker and more humiliating fact, to which both shrank from returning, while yet both knew that it must be faced.

There was a knock at the door, and Blanche appeared with the tray which had been ordered down-stairs. She glanced in astonishment at her mistress.

"We had an accident on the river last night, Blanche," said Kitty. "Come back in half an hour. I'm too tired to change just yet."

She kept her face hidden from the maid, but when Blanche had departed, Ashe saw that her cheeks were flaming.

"I hate lying!" she said, with a kind of physical disgust--"and now I suppose it will be my chief occupation for weeks."

It was true that she hated lying, and Ashe was well aware of it. Of such a battle-stroke, indeed, as she had played at the ball, when her prompt falsehood s.n.a.t.c.hed Cliffe from Mary Lyster, she was always capable. But in general her pride, her very egotism and quick temper kept her true.

Perhaps the fact represented one of those deep sources whence the well of Ashe's tenderness was fed. At any rate, consciously or not, it was at this moment one of his chief motives for not finding the past intolerable or the future without hope. He took some wine and a sandwich from the tray, and began to feed her. In the middle, she pushed his hands away, and her eyes brimmed again with tears.

"Put it down," she commanded. And when he had done so, she raised his hands deliberately, one after the other, and kissed them, crying:

"William!--I have been a horrible wife to you!"

"Don't be a goose, Kitty. You know very well that--till this last business--And don't imagine that I feel myself a model, either!"

"No," she said, with a long sigh. "Of course, you ought to have beaten me."

He smiled, with an unsteady lip.

"Perhaps I might still try it."

She shook her head.

"Too late. I am not a child any more."

Then throwing her soft arms round his neck, she clung to him, saying the most adorable and poignant things, dissolved, indeed, in a murmuring anguish of remorse; until, with the same unexpectedness as before, she again disengaged herself--urging, insisting that he should send her away.

"Let me go and live at Haggart, baby and I." (Haggart was one of the Tranmore "places," recently handed over to the young people.) "You can come and see me sometimes. I'll garden--and write books. Half the smart women I know write stories--or plays. Why shouldn't I?"

"Why, indeed? Meanwhile, madam, I take you to Scotland--next week."

"Scotland?" She pressed her hands over her eyes.