The Marriage of William Ashe Part 56

Ashe protested. And, indeed, as it turned out, there was no train worth the taking. Then Lord Parham sent a message that he hoped to appear at dinner.

Kitty locked her door while she was dressing, and Ashe, whose mind was a confusion of many feelings--anger, compunction, and that fascination which in her brilliant moods she exercised over him no less than over others--could get no speech with her.

They met on the threshold of the child's room, she coming out, he going in. But she wrenched herself from him and would say nothing. The report of the little boy was good; he smiled at his father, and Ashe felt a cooling balm in the touch of his soft hands and lips. He descended--in a more philosophical mind; inclined, at any rate, to "d.a.m.n" Lord Parham.

What a fool the man must be! Why couldn't he have taken it with a laugh, and so turned the tables on Kitty?

Was there any good to be got out of apologizing? Ashe supposed he must attempt it some time that night. A precious awkward business! But relations had got to be restored somehow.

Lady Tranmore overtook him on the way down-stairs. In the press of the afternoon they had hardly seen each other.

"What is really wrong with Lord Parham, William?" she asked him, anxiously. Ashe hesitated, then whispered a word or two in her ear, begging her to keep the great man in play for the evening. He was to take her in, while Kitty would fall to the Bishop of the diocese.

"She gets on perfectly with the clergy," said Lady Tranmore, with an involuntary sigh. Then, as the sense of humor was strong in both, they laughed. But it was a chilly and perfunctory laughter.

They had no sooner pa.s.sed into the main hall than Kitty came running down-stairs, with a large packet in her hand.

"Mr. Darrell!"

"At your service!" said Darrell, emerging from the shadows of one of the broad corridors of the ground-floor.

"Take it, please!" said Kitty, panting a little, as she gave the packet into his hands. "If I look at it any more, I _might_ burn it!"

"Suppose you do!"

"No, no!" said Kitty, pus.h.i.+ng the bundle away, as he laughingly tendered it. "I must see what happens!"

"Is the gap filled?"

She laid her finger on her lips. Her eyes danced. Then she hurried on to the drawing-room.

Whether it were the soothing presence of the clergy or no, certainly Kitty was no less triumphant at dinner than she had been in the afternoon. The chorus of fun and pleasure that surrounded her, while he himself sat, tired and bored, between Lady Edith Manley and Lady Tranmore, did but make her offence the greater in the eyes of Lord Parham. He had so far buried it in a complete and magnificent silence.

The meeting between him and his hostess before dinner had been marked by a strict conformity to all the rules. Kitty had inquired after his headache; Lord Parham expressed his regrets that he had missed so brilliant a party; and Kitty, flirting her fan, invented messages from the Royalties which, as most of those present knew, the Royalties had been far too well amused to think of. Then after this _pas seul_, in the presence of the crowded drawing-room, had been duly executed, Kitty retired to her Bishop, and Lord Parham led forth Lady Tranmore.

"What a lovely moon!" said Lady Edith Manley to the Dean. "It makes even this house look romantic."

They were walking outside the drawing-room windows, on a terrace which was, indeed, the only feature of the Haggart facade which possessed some architectural interest. A low bal.u.s.trade of terra-cotta, copied from a famous Italian villa, ran round it, broken by large terra-cotta pots now filled with orange-trees. Here and there between the orange-trees were statues transported from Naples in the late eighteenth century by a former Lord Tranmore. There was a Ceres and a Diana, a Vestal Virgin, an Athlete, and an Antinous, now brought into strange companions.h.i.+p under the windows of this ugly English house. Chipped and blackened as they were, and, to begin with, of a mere decorative importance, they still breathed into the English evening a note of Italy or Greece, of things lovely and immortal. The lamps in the sitting-rooms streamed out through the widely opened windows upon the terrace, checkering the marble figures, which now emerged sharply in the light, and now withdrew in the gloom; while at one point they shone plainly upon an empty pedestal before which the Dean and his companion paused.

The Dean looked at the inscription. "What a pity! This once held a statue of Hebe holding a torch. It was struck by lightning fifty years ago."

"Lady Kitty might stand for her to-night," said Edith Manley.

For Kitty, the capricious, had appeared at dinner in a _quasi_-Greek dress, white, soft, and flowing, without an ornament. The Dean acquiesced, but rather sadly.

"I wish she had the bloom of Hebe! My dear Lady Edith, our hostess looks _ill_!"

"Does she? I can't tell--I admire her so!" said the woman beside him, upon whose charming eyes some fairy had breathed kindness and optimism from her cradle.

"_Ouf!_" cried Kitty, as she sprang across the sill of the window behind them. "They're _all_ gone! The Bishop wishes me to become a vice-president of the Women's Diocesan a.s.sociation. And I've promised three curates to open bazaars. _Ah, mon Dieu!_" She raised her white arms with a wild gesture, and then beckoned to Eddie Helston, who was close beside her.

"Shall we try our dance?"

The young men of the house, a group of young guardsmen and diplomats, gathered round, laughing and clapping. Kitty's dancing had become famous during the winter as one of her many extravagances. She no longer recited; literature bored her; motion was the only poetry. So she had been carefully instructed by a _danseuse_ from the Opera, and in many points, so the enthusiasts declared, had bettered her instructions. She was now in love with a tempestuous Spanish dance, taught her by a gypsy _senorita_ who had been one of the sensations of the London season. It required a partner, and she had been practising it with young Helston, for several mornings past, in the empty ballroom. Helston had spread its praises abroad; and all Haggart desired to see it.

"There!" said Kitty, pointing her partner to a particular spot on the terrace. "I think that will do. Where are the castanets, I wonder?"

"Kitty!" said a voice behind her. Ashe emerged from the drawing-room.

"Kitty, please! It is nearly midnight. Everybody is tired--and you yourself must be worn out! Say good-night, and let us all go to bed."

She turned. Willam's voice was low, but peremptory. She shook back her hair from her temples and neck, with the gesture he had learned to dread.

"n.o.body's tired--and n.o.body wants to go to bed. Please stand out of the way, William. I want plenty of room for my steps."

And she began pirouetting, as though to try the capacities of the s.p.a.ce, humming to herself.

"Helston--this must be, please, for another night," said Ashe, resolutely, in the young man's ear. "Lady Kitty is much too tired."

Then to Lady Edith, and the Dean--"Lady Edith, it would be very kind of you to persuade my wife to go to bed. She never knows when she is done!"

Lady Edith warmly acquiesced, and, hurrying up to Kitty, she tried to persuade her in soft, caressing phrases.

"I stand on my rights!" said the Dean, following her. "If my hostess is used up to-night, there'll be no hostess for me to-morrow."

Kitty looked at them all, silent--her head bending forward, a curious _mechant_ look in the eyes that shone beneath the slightly frowning brows. Meanwhile, by her previous order, a footman had brought out two silver lamps and placed them on a small table a little way behind her.

Whether it was from some instinctive sense of the beauty of the small figure in the slender, floating dress under the deep blue of the night sky and amid the romantic shadows and lights of the terrace--or from some divination of things significant and hidden--it would be hard to say; but the group of spectators had fallen back a little from Kitty, so that she stood alone, a picture lit from the left by the lamps just brought in.

The Dean looked at her--troubled by her wild aspect and the evident conflict between her and Ashe. Then an idea flashed into his mind, filled always, like that of an innocent child, with the images of poetry and romance.

"One moment!" he said, raising his hand. "Lady Kitty, you spoil us!

After amusing us all day, now you would dance for us all night. But your guests won't let you! We love you too well, and we want a bit of you left for to-morrow. Never mind! You offered us a dance--you bring us a vision--and a poem!--Friends!"

He turned to those crowding round him, his white hair glistening in the lamplight, his delicate face, so old and yet so eager, the smile on his kind lips, and all the details of his Dean's dress--ap.r.o.n and knee-breeches, slender legs and silver buckles--thrown out in sharp relief upon the dark....

"Friends! you see this pedestal. Once Hebe, the cup-bearer of the G.o.ds, stood there. Then--ungrateful Zeus smote her, and she fell! But the Hours and the Graces bore her safe away, into a golden land, and now they bring her back again. Behold her!--Hebe reborn!"

He bowed, his courtly hand upon his breast, and a wave of laughter and applause ran through the young group round him as their eyes turned from the speaker to the exquisite figure of Kitty. Lady Edith smiled kindly, clapping her soft hands. Mrs. Winston, the Dean's wife, had eyes only for the Dean. In the background Lady Tranmore watched every phase of Kitty's looks, and Lord Grosville walked back into the dining-room, growling unutterable things to Darrell as he pa.s.sed.

Kitty raised her head to reply. But the Dean checked her. Advancing a step or two, he saluted her again--profoundly.

"Dear Lady Kitty!--dear bringer of light and ambrosia!--rest, and good-night! Your guests thank you by me, with all their hearts. You have been the life of their day, the spirit of their mirth. Good-night to Hebe!--and three cheers for Lady Kitty!"

Eddie Helston led them, and they rang against the old house. Kitty with a fluttering smile kissed her hand for thanks, and the Dean saw her look round--dart a swift glance at Ashe. He stood against the window-frame, in shadow, motionless, his arms folded.

Then suddenly Kitty sprang forward.

"Give me that lamp!" she said to the young footman behind her.

And in a second she had leaped upon the low wall of the terrace and on the vacant pedestal. The lad to whom she had spoken lost his head and obeyed her. He raised the lamp. She stooped and took it. Ashe, who was now standing in the open window with his back to the terrace, turned round, saw, and rushed forward.