Chapter X: Part III: Development (1)

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Sich ein Character in dem Strom, der Welt."

XIV

"What does Lady Kitty do with herself here?" said Darrell, looking round him. He had just arrived from town on a visit to the Ashes, to find the Haggart house and garden completely deserted, save for Mrs. Alcot, who was lounging in solitude, with a cigarette and a novel, on the wide lawn which surrounded the house on three sides.

As he spoke he lifted a chair and placed it beside her, under one of the cedars which made deep shade upon the grass.

"She plays at Lady Bountiful," said Mrs. Alcot. "She doesn't do it well, but--"

"--The wonder is, in Johnsonian phrase, that she should do it at all. Anything else?"

"I understand--she is writing a book--a novel."

Darrell threw back his head and laughed long and silently.

"Il ne manquait que cela," he said--"that Lady Kitty should take to literature!"

Mrs. Alcot looked at him rather sharply.

"Why not? We frivolous people are a good deal cleverer than you think."

The languid arrogance of the lady's manner was not at all unbecoming. Darrell made an inclination.

"No need to remind me, madam!" A recent exhibition at an artistic club of Mrs. Alcot's sketches had made a considerable mark. "Very soon you will leave us poor professionals no room to live."

The slight disrespect of his smile annoyed his companion, but the day was hot and she had no repartee ready. She only murmured as she threw away her cigarette:

"Kitty is much disappointed in the village."

"They are greater brutes than she thought?"

"Quite the contrary. There are no poachers--and no murders. The girls prefer to be married, and the Tranmores give so much away that no one has the smallest excuse for starvation. Kitty gets nothing out of them whatever."

"In the way of literary material?"

Mrs. Alcot nodded.

"Last week she was so discouraged that she was inclined to give up fiction and take to journalism."

"Heavens! Political?"

"Oh, _la haute politique_, of course."

"H'm. The wives of cabinet ministers have often inspired articles. I don't remember an instance of their writing them."

"Well, Kitty is inclined to try."

"With Ashe's sanction?"

"Goodness, no! But Kitty, as you are aware"--Mrs. Alcot threw a prudent glance to right and left--"goes her own way. She believes she can be of great service to her husband's policy."

Darrell's lip twitched.

"If you were in Ashe's position, would you rather your wife neglected or supported your political interests?"

Mrs. Alcot shrugged her shoulders.

"Kitty made a considerable mess of them last year."

"No doubt. She forgot they existed. But I think if I were Ashe, I should be more afraid of her remembering. By-the-way--the glass here seems to be at 'Set Fair'?"

His interrogative smile was not wholly good-natured. But mere benevolence was not what the world asked of Philip Darrell--even in the case of his old friends.

"Astonishing!" said Mrs. Alcot, with lifted brows. "Kitty is immensely proud of him--and immensely ambitious. That, of course, accounts for Lord Parham's visit."

"Lord Parham!" cried Darrell, bounding on his seat. "Lord Parham!--coming here?"

"He arrives to-morrow. On his way from Scotland--to Windsor."

Mrs. Alcot enjoyed the effect of her communication on her companion. He sat open-mouthed, evidently startled out of all self-command.

"Why, I thought that Lady Kitty--"

"Had vowed vengeance? So, in a sense, she has. It is understood that she and Lady Parham don't meet, except--"

"On formal occasions, and to take in the groundlings," said Darrell, too impatient to let her finish her sentence. "Yes, that I gathered. But you mean that _Lord_ Parham is to be allowed to make his peace?"

Madeleine Alcot lay back and laughed.

"Kitty wishes to try her hand at managing him."

Darrell joined her in mirth. The notion of the white-haired, bullet-headed, shrewd, and masterful man who at that moment held the Premiership of England managed by Kitty, or any other daughter of Eve--always excepting his wife--must needs strike those who had the slightest acquaintance with Lord Parham as a delicious absurdity.

Suddenly Darrell checked himself, and bent forward.

"Where--if I may ask--is the poet?"

"Geoffrey? Somewhere in the Balkans, isn't he?--making a revolution."

Darrell nodded.

"I remember. They say he is with the revolutionary committee at Marinitza. Meanwhile there is a new volume of poems out--to-day," said Darrell, glancing at a newspaper thrown down beside him.

"I have seen it. The 'portrait' at the end--"

"Is Lady Kitty." They spoke under their breaths.

"Unmistakable, I think," said Kitty's best friend. "As poetry, it seems to me the best thing in the book, but the audacity of it!" She raised her eyebrows in a half-unwilling, half-contemptuous admiration.

"Has she seen it?"

Mrs. Alcot replied that she had not noticed any copy in the house, and that Kitty had not spoken of it, which, given the Kitty-nature, she probably would have done, had it reached her.

Then they both fell into reverie, from which Darrell emerged with the remark:

"I gather that last year some very important person interfered?"

This opened another line of gossip, in which, however, Mrs. Alcot showed herself equally well informed. It was commonly reported, at any rate, that the old Duke of Morecambe, the head of Lady Eleanor Cliffe's family, the great Tory evangelical of the north, who was a sort of patriarch in English political and aristocratic life, had been induced by some undefined pressure to speak very plainly to his kinsman on the subject of Lady Kitty Ashe. Cliffe had expectations from the duke which were not to be trifled with. He had, accordingly, swallowed the lecture, and, after the loss of his election, had again left England with an important newspaper commission to watch events in the Balkans.

"May he stay there!" said Darrell. "Of course, the whole thing was absurdly exaggerated."

"Was it?" said Mrs. Alcot, coolly. "Kitty richly deserved most of what was said." Then--on his start--"Don't misunderstand me, of course. If twenty actions for divorce were given against Kitty, I should believe nothing--_nothing_!" The words were as emphatic as voice and gesture could make them. "But as for the tales that people who hate her tell of her, and will go on telling of her--"

"They are merely the harvest of what she has sown?"

"Naturally. Poor Kitty!"

Madeleine Alcot rested her thin cheek on a still frailer hand and looked pensively out into the darkness of the cedars. Her tone was neither patronizing nor unkind; rather, the shade of ironic tenderness which it expressed suited the subject, and that curious intimacy which had of late sprung up between herself and Darrell. She had begun, as we have seen, by treating him _de haut en bas_. He had repaid her with manner of the same type; in this respect he was a match for any Archangel. Then some accident--perhaps the publication by the man of a volume of essays which expressed to perfection his acid and embittered talent--perhaps a casual meeting at a northern country-house, where the lady had found the man of letters her only resource amid a crowd of uncongenial nonentities--had shown them their natural compatibility. Both were in a secret revolt against circumstance and their own lives; but whereas the reasons for the man's attitude--his jealousies, defeats, and ambitions--were fairly well understood by the woman, he was almost as much in the dark about her as when their friendship began.

He knew her husband slightly--an eager, gifted fellow, of late years a strong High Churchman, and well known in a certain group as the friend of Mrs. Armagh, that muse--fragile, austere, and beautiful--of several great men, and great Christians, among the older generation. Mrs. Alcot had her own intimates, generally men; but she tired of them and changed them often. Mr. Alcot spent part of every year within reach of the Cornish home of Mrs. Armagh; and during that time his wife made her round of visits.

Meanwhile her thin lips were sealed as to her own affairs. Certainly she made the impression of an unhappy woman, and Darrell was convinced of some tragic complication. But neither he nor any one of whom he had yet inquired had any idea what it might be.

"By-the-way--where is Lady Kitty?--and are there many people here?"

Darrell turned, as he spoke, to scrutinize the house and its approaches. Haggart Hall was a large and commonplace mansion, standing in the midst of spreading "grounds" and dull plantations, beyond which could be sometimes seen the tall chimneys of neighboring coal-mines. It wore an air of middle-class Tory comfort which brought a smile to Darrell's countenance as he surveyed it.

"Kitty is at the Agricultural Show--with a party."

"Playing the great lady? _What_ a house!"

"Yes. Kitty abhors it. But it will do very well for the party to-morrow."

"Half the county--that kind of thing?"

"_All_ the county--some royalties--and Lord Parham."

"Lord Parham being the end and aim? I thought I heard wheels."

Mrs. Alcot rose, and they strolled back towards the house.

"And the party?" resumed Darrell.

"Not particularly thrilling. Lord Grosville--"

"Also, I presume, _en garçon_."

Mrs. Alcot smiled.

"--the Manleys, Lady Tranmore, Miss French, the Dean of Milford and his wife, Eddie Helston--"

"That, I understand, is Lady Kitty's undergraduate adorer?"

"It's no use talking to you--you know all the gossip. And some county big-wigs, whose names I can't remember--come to dinner to-night." Mrs. Alcot stifled a yawn.

"I am very curious to see how Ashe takes his triumph," said Darrell, as they paused half-way.

"He is just the same. No!" said Madeleine Alcot, correcting herself--"no--not quite. He _meant_ to triumph, and he _knows_ that he has done so."

"My dear lady!" cried Darrell--"a quite _enormous_ difference! Ashe never took stock of himself or his prospects in his life before."

"Well, now--you will find he takes stock of a good many things."

"Including Lady Kitty?"

His companion smiled.

"He won't let her interfere again."

"_L'homme propose_," said Darrell. "You mean he has grown ambitious?"

Mrs. Alcot seemed to find it difficult to cope with these high things. Fanning herself, she languidly supposed that the English political passion, so strong and unspent still in the aristocratic families, had laid serious hold at last on William Ashe. He had great schemes of reform, and, do what he might to conceal it, his heart was in them. His wife, therefore, was no longer his occupation, but--

Mrs. Alcot hesitated for a word.

"Scarcely his repose?" laughed Darrell.

"I really won't discuss Kitty any more," said Mrs. Alcot, impatiently. "Here they are! Hullo! What has Kitty got hold of now?"

Three carriages were driving up the long approach, one behind the other. In the first sat Kitty, a figure beside her in the dress of a nurse, and opposite to them both an indistinguishable bundle, which presently revealed a head. The carriage drew up at the steps. Kitty jumped down, and she and the nurse lifted the bundle out. Footmen appeared; some guests from the next carriage went to help; there was a general movement and agitation, in the midst of which Kitty and her companions disappeared into the house.

Lady Edith Manley and Lord Grosville began to cross the lawn.

"What is the matter?" asked Mrs. Alcot, as they converged.

"Kitty ran over a boy," said Lord Grosville, in evident annoyance. "The rascal hadn't a scratch, but Kitty must needs pick him up and drive him home with a nurse. 'I ain't hurt, mum,' says the boy. 'Oh! but you must be,' said Kitty. I offered to take him to his mother and give him half a crown. 'It's my duty to look after him,' says Kitty. And she lifted him up herself--dirty little vagabond!--and put him in the carriage. There were some laborers and grooms standing near, and one of them sang out, 'Three cheers for Lady Kitty Ashe!' Such a ridiculous scene as you never saw!"

The old man shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

"Lady Kitty is always so kind," said the amicable Lady Edith. "But her pretty dress--I _was_ sorry!"

"Oh no--only an excuse for a new one," said Mrs. Alcot.

The Dean and Lady Tranmore approached--behind them again Ashe and Mrs. Winston.

"Well, old fellow!" said Ashe, clapping a hand on Darrell's shoulder. "Uncommonly glad to see you. You look as though that damned London had been squeezing the life out of you. Come for a stroll before dinner?"

The two men accordingly left the talkers on the lawn, and struck into the park. Ashe, in a straw hat and light suit, made his usual impression of strength and good-humor. He was gay, friendly, amusing as ever. But Darrell was not long in discovering or imagining signs of change. Any one else would have thought Ashe's talk frankness--nay, indiscretion--itself. Darrell at once divined or imagined in it shades of official reserve, tracts of reticence, such as an old friend had a right to resent.

"One can see what a personage he feels himself!"

Yet Darrell would have been the first to own that Ashe had some right to feel himself a personage. The sudden revelation of his full intellectual power, and of his influence in the country, for which the general election of the preceding winter had provided the opportunity, was still an exciting memory among journalists and politicians. He had gone into the election a man slightly discredited, on whose future nobody took much trouble to speculate. He had emerged from it--after a series of speeches laying down the principles and vindicating the action of his party--one of the most important men in England, with whom Lord Parham himself must henceforth treat on quasi-equal terms. Ashe was now Home Secretary, and, if Lord Parham's gout should take an evil turn, there was no saying to what height fortune might not soon conduct him.

The will--the iron purpose--with which it had all been done--that was the amazing part of it. The complete independence, moreover. Darrell imagined that Lord Parham must often have regretted the small intrigue by which Ashe's promotion had been barred in the crisis of the summer. It had roused an indolent man to action, and freed him from any particular obligation towards the leader who had ill-treated him. Ashe's campaign had not been in all respects convenient; but Lord Parham had had to put up with it.

The summer evening broadened as the two men sauntered on through the park, beside a small stream fringed with yellow flags. Even the dingy Midland landscape, with its smoke-blackened woods and lifeless grass, assumed a glory of great light; the soft, interlacing clouds parted before the dying sun; the water received the golden flood, and each coot and water-hen shone jet and glossy in the blaze. A few cries of birds, the distant shouts of harvesters, the rustling of the water-flags along the stream, these were the only sounds--traditional sounds of English peace.

"Jolly, isn't it?" said Ashe, looking round him--"even this spoiled country! Why did we go and stifle in that beastly show!"

The sensuous pleasure and relaxation of his mood communicated itself to Darrell. They talked more intimately, more freely than they had done for months. Darrell's gnawing consciousness of his own meaner fortunes, as contrasted with the brilliant and expanding career of his school-friend, softened and relaxed. He almost forgave Ashe the successes of the winter, and that subtly heightened tone of authority and self-confidence which here and there bore witness to them in the manner or talk of the minister. They scarcely touched on politics, however. Both were tired, and their talk drifted into the characteristic male gossip--"What's ---- doing now?" "Do you ever see So-and-so?" "You remember that fellow at Univ.?"--and the like, to the agreeable accompaniment of Ashe's best cigars.

So pleasant was the half-hour, so strongly had the old college intimacy reasserted itself, that suddenly a thought struck upward in Darrell's mind. He had not come to Haggart bent merely on idle holiday--far from it. At the moment he was weary of literature as a profession, and sharply conscious that the time for vague ambitions had gone by. A post had presented itself, a post of importance, in the gift of the Home Office. It meant, no doubt, the abandonment of more brilliant things; Darrell was content to abandon them. His determination to apply for it seemed, indeed, to himself an act of modesty--almost of sacrifice. As to the technical qualifications required, he was well aware there might be other men better equipped than himself. But, after all, to what may not general ability aspire--general ability properly stiffened with interest?

And as to interest, when was it ever to serve him if not now--through his old friendship with Ashe? Chivalry towards a much-solicited mortal, also your friend--even the subtler self-love--might have counselled silence--or at least approaches more gradual. It had been far from his purpose, indeed, to speak so promptly. But here were the hour and the man! And there, in a distant country town, a woman--whereof the mere existence was unsuspected by Darrell's country-house acquaintance--sat waiting, in whose eyes the post in question loomed as a condition--perhaps indispensable. Darrell's secret eagerness could not withstand the temptation.

So, with a nervous beginning--"By-the-way, I wished to consult you about a personal matter. Of course, answer or not, as you like. Naturally, I understand the difficulties!"--the plunge was taken, and the petitioner soon in full career.

After a first start--a lifted brow of astonishment--Ashe was uncomfortably silent--till suddenly, in a pause of Darrell's eloquence, his face changed, and with a burst of his old, careless freedom and affection, he flung an arm along Darrell's shoulder, with an impetuous--

"I say, old fellow--don't--don't be a damned fool!"

An ashen white overspread the countenance of the man thus addressed. His lips twitched. He walked on in silence. Ashe looked at him--stammered:

"Why, my dear Philip, it would be the extinguishing of you!"

Darrell said nothing. Ashe, still holding his friend captive, descanted hurriedly on the disadvantages of the post "for a man of your gifts," then--more cautiously--on its special requirements, not one of which did Darrell possess--hinted at the men applying for it, at the scientific and professional influences then playing upon himself, at his strong sense of responsibility--"Too bad, isn't it, that a duffer like me should have to decide these things"--and so on.

In vain. Darrell laughed, recovered himself, changed the subject; but as they walked quickly back to the house, Ashe knew, perchance, that he had lost a friend; and Darrell's smarting soul had scored another reckoning against a day to come.

* * * * *

As they neared the house they found a large group still lingering on the lawn, and Kitty just emerging from a garden door. She came out accompanied by the handsome Cambridge lad who had been her partner at Lady Crashaw's dance. He was evidently absorbed in her society, and they approached in high spirits, laughing and teasing each other.

"Well, Kitty, how's the bruised one?" said Ashe, as he sank into a chair beside Mrs. Alcot.

"Doing finely," said Kitty. "I shall send him home to-night."

"Meanwhile, have you put him up in my dressing-room? I only ask for information."

"There wasn't another corner," said Kitty.

"There!" Ashe appealed to gods and men. "How do you expect me to dress for dinner?"

"Oh, now, William, don't be tiresome!" said Kitty, impatiently. "He was bruised black and blue"--("Serve him right for getting in the way," grumbled Lord Grosville)--"and nurse and I have done him up in arnica."

She came to stand by Ashe, talking in an undertone and as fast as possible. The little Dean, who never could help watching her, thought her more beautiful--and wilder--than ever. Her eyes--it was hardly enough to say they shone--they glittered--in her delicate face; her gestures were more extravagant than he remembered them; her movements restlessness itself.

Ashe listened with patience--then said:

"I can't help it, Kitty--you really must have him removed."

"Impossible!" she said, her cheek flaming.

"I'll go and talk to Wilson; he'll manage it," said Ashe, getting up.

Kitty pursued him, arguing incessantly.

He lounged along, turning every now and then to look at her, smiling and demurring, his hat on the back of his head.

"You see the difference," said Mrs. Alcot, in Darrell's ear. "Last year Kitty would have got her way. This year she won't."

Darrell shrugged his shoulders.

"These domesticities should be kept out of sight, don't you think?"

Madeleine Alcot looked at him curiously.

"Did you have a pleasant walk?" she said.

Darrell made a little face.

"The great man was condescending."

Madeleine Alcot's face was still interrogative.

"A touch of the _folie des grandeurs?_"

"Well, who escapes it?" said Darrell, bitterly.

* * * * *

Most of the party had dispersed. Only Lady Tranmore and Margaret French were on the lawn. Margaret was writing some household notes for Kitty; Lady Tranmore sat in meditation, with a book before her which she was not reading. Miss French glanced at her from time to time. Ashe's mother was beginning to show the weight of years far more plainly than she had yet done. In these last three years the face had perceptibly altered; so had the hair. The long strain of nursing, and that pathetic change which makes of the husband who has been a woman's pride and shelter her half-conscious dependent, had, no doubt, left deep marks upon a beauty which had so long resisted time. And yet Margaret French believed it was rather with her son than with her husband that the constant and wearing anxiety of Lady Tranmore's life should be connected. All the ambition, the pride of race and history which had been disappointed in her husband had poured themselves into her devotion to her son. She lived now for his happiness and success. And both were constantly threatened by the personality and the presence of Kitty.

Such, at least, as Margaret French well knew, was the inmost persuasion--fast becoming a fanaticism--of Ashe's mother. William might, indeed, for the moment have triumphed over the consequences of Kitty's bygone behavior. But the reckless, untamed character was there still at his side, preparing Heaven knew what pitfalls and catastrophes. Lady Tranmore lived in fear. And under the outward sweetness and dignity of her manner was there not developing something worse than fear--that hatred which is one of the strange births of love?

If so, was it just? There were many moments when Margaret would have indignantly denied it.

It was true, indeed, that Kitty's eccentricity seemed to develop with every month that passed. The preceding winter had been marked, first by a mad folly of table-turning--involving the pursuit of a particular medium whose proceedings had ultimately landed him in the dock; then by a headlong passion for hunting, accompanied by a series of new flirtations, each more unseemly than its predecessor, as it seemed to Lady Tranmore. Afterwards--during the general election--a political phase! Kitty had most unfortunately discovered that she could speak in public, and had fallen in love with the sound of her own voice. In Ashe's own contest, her sallies and indiscretions had already begun to do mischief when Lady Tranmore had succeeded in enticing her to London by the bait of a French _clairvoyante_, with whom Kitty nightly tempted the gods who keep watch over the secrets of fate--till William's poll had been declared.

All this was deplorably true. And yet no one could say that Kitty in this checkered year had done her husband much harm. Ashe was no longer her blind slave; and his career had carried him to heights with which even his mother might have been satisfied. Sometimes Margaret was inclined to think that Kitty had now less influence with him and his mother more than was the just due of each. She--the younger woman--felt the tragedy of Ashe's new and growing emancipation. Secretly--often--she sided with Kitty!

* * * * *

"Margaret!"

The voice was Kitty's. She came running out, her pale-pink skirts flying round her. "Have you seen the babe?"

Margaret replied that he and his nurse were just in sight.

Kitty fled over the lawn to meet the child's perambulator. She lifted him out, and carried him in her arms towards Margaret and Lady Tranmore.

"Isn't it piteous?" said Margaret, under her breath, as the mother and child approached. Lady Tranmore gave her a sad, assenting look.

For during the last six months the child had shown signs of brain mischief--a curious apathy, broken now and then by fits of temper. The doctors were not encouraging. And Kitty varied between the most passionate attempts to rouse the child's failing intelligence and days--even weeks--when she could hardly bring herself to see him at all.

She brought him now to a seat beside Lady Tranmore. She had been trying to make him take notice of a new toy. But the child looked at her with blank and glassy eyes, and the toy fell from his hand.

"He hardly knows me," said Kitty, in a low voice of misery, as she clasped her hands round the baby of three, and looked into his face, as though she would drag from it some sign of mind and recognition.

But the blue eyes betrayed no glimmer of response, till suddenly, with a gesture as of infinite fatigue, the child threw itself back against her, laying its fair head upon her breast with a long sigh.

Kitty gave a sob, and bent over him, kissing--and kissing him.

"Dear Kitty!" said Lady Tranmore, much moved. "I think--partly--he is tired with the heat."

Kitty shook her head.

"Take him!" she said to the nurse--"take him! I can't bear it."

The nurse took him from her, and Kitty dried her tears with a kind of fierceness.

"There is the post!" she said, springing up, as though determined to throw off her grief as quickly as possible, while the nurse carried the child away.

The footman brought the letters across the lawn. There were some for Lady Tranmore and for Margaret French. In the general opening and reading that ensued, neither lady noticed Kitty for a while. Suddenly Margaret French looked up. She saw Kitty sitting motionless with a book on her lap, a book of which the wrapper lay on the grass beside her. Her finger kept a page; her eyes, full of excitement, were fixed on the distant horizon of the park; the hurried breathing was plainly noticeable under the thin bodice.

"Kitty--time to dress!" said Margaret, touching her.

Kitty rose, without a word to either of them, and walked quickly away, her hands, still holding the book, dropped in front of her, her eyes on the ground.

"Oh, Kitty!" cried Margaret, in laughing protest, as she stooped to pick up the litter of Kitty's letters, some of them still unopened, which lay scattered on the grass, as they had fallen unheeded from her lap.

But the little figure in the trailing skirts was already out of hearing.

* * * * *

At dinner Kitty was in her wildest spirits--a sparkling vision of diamonds and lace, much beyond--so it seemed to Lord Grosville--what the occasion required. "Dressed out like a comedy queen at a fair!" was his inward comment, and he already rolled the phrases in which he should describe the whole party to his wife. Like the expected Lord Parham, he was there in sign of semi-reconciliation. Nothing would have induced Kitty to invite her aunt; the memory of a certain Sunday was too strong. On her side, Lady Grosville averred that nothing would have induced her to sit at Kitty's board. As to this, her husband cherished a certain scepticism. However, her resolution was not tried. It was Ashe, in fact, who had invited Lord Grosville, and Lord Grosville, who was master in his own house, and had no mind to break with William Ashe just as that gentleman's company became even better worth having than usual, had accepted the invitation.

But his patience was sorely tried by Kitty. After dinner she insisted on table-turning, and Lord Grosville was dragged breathless through the drawing-room window, in pursuit of a table that broke a chair and finally danced upon a flower-bed. His theology was harassed by these proceedings and his digestion upset. The Dean took it with smiles; but then the Dean was a Latitudinarian.

Afterwards Kitty and the Cambridge boy--Eddie Helston--performed a duologue in French for the amusement of the company. Whatever could be understood in it had better not have been understood--such at least was Lord Grosville's impression. He wondered how Ashe--who laughed immoderately--could allow his wife to do such things; and his only consolation was that, for once, the Dean--whose fancy for Kitty was ridiculous!--seemed to be disturbed. He had at any rate walked away to the library in the middle of the piece. Kitty was, of course, making a fool of the boy all through. Any one could see that he was head over ears in love with her. And she seemed to have all sorts of mysterious understandings with him. Lord Grosville was certain they passed each other notes, and made assignations. And one night, on going up himself to bed very late, he had actually come upon the pair pacing up and down the long passage after midnight!--Kitty in such a _negligée_ as only an actress should wear, with her hair about her ears--and the boy out of his wits and off his balance, as any one could see. Kitty, indeed, had been quite unabashed--trying even to draw _him_ into their unseemly talk about some theatrical nonsense or other; and such blushes as there were had been entirely left to the boy.

He supposed there was no harm in it. The lad was not a Geoffrey Cliffe, and it was no doubt Kitty's mad love of excitement which impelled her to these defiances of convention. But Ashe should put his foot down; there was no knowing with a creature so wild and so lovely where these things might end. And after the scandal of last year--

As to that scandal, Lord Grosville, as a man of the world, by no means endorsed the lurid imaginations of his wife. Kitty and Cliffe had certainly behaved badly at Grosville Park--that is to say, judged by any ordinary standards. And the gossip of the season had apparently gathered and culminated round some incident of a graver character than the rest--though nobody precisely knew what it might be. But it seemed that Ashe had at last asserted himself; and if in Kitty's abrupt departure to the country, and the sudden dissolution of the intimacy between herself and Cliffe, those who loved her not had read what dark things they pleased, her uncle by marriage was quite content to see in it a mere disciplinary act on the part of the husband.

Lord Grosville believed that some rumors as to Cliffe's private character had entered into the decisive defeat--in a constituency largely Nonconformist--which had befallen that gentleman at the polls. Poor Lady Tranmore! He saw her anxieties in her face, and was truly sorry for her. At the same time, inveterate gossip that he was, he regarded her with a kind of hunger. If she only _would_ talk things over with him! So far, however, she had given him very little opening. If she ever did, he would certainly advise her to press something like a temporary separation on her son. Why should not Lady Kitty be left at Haggart when the next session began? Lord Grosville, who had been a friend of Melbourne's, recalled the early history of that great man. When Lady Caroline Lamb had become too troublesome to a political husband, she had been sent to Brocket. And then Mr. Lamb was only Irish Secretary--without a seat in the cabinet. How was it possible to take an important share in steering the ship of state, and to look after a giddy wife at the same time?

* * * * *

Ashe and his guests lingered late below-stairs. When, somewhere about one o'clock, he entered his dressing-room, he was suddenly alarmed by a smell of burning. It seemed to come from Kitty's room. He knocked hastily at her door.

"Kitty!"

No answer. He opened the door, and stood arrested.

The room was in complete darkness save for some weird object in the centre of it, on which a fire was burning, sending up a smoke which hung about the room. Ashe recognized an old Spanish brazier of beaten copper, standing on iron feet, which had been a purchase of his own in days when he trifled with _bric-à-brac_. Upon it, a heap of some light material, which fluttered and crackled as it burned, was blazing and smoking away, while beside it--her profile set and waxen amid the drifts of smoke, her fair hair blanched to whiteness by the strange illumination from below, and all her slight form, checkered with the light and shade of the fire, drawn into a curve of watchfulness, vindictive and intent--stood Kitty.

"What in the name of fortune are you doing, Kitty?" cried Ashe.

She made no answer, and he approached. Then he saw that in the centre of the pile, and propped up against some small pieces of wood, a photograph of Geoffrey Cliffe was consuming slow and dismally. The fire had just sent a line across his cheek. The lower limbs were already charred, and the right hand was shrivelling.

All around were letters, mostly consumed; while at the top of the pile above the culprit's head, stuck in a cleft stick, and just beginning to be licked by the flames, was what seemed to be a leaf torn out of a book. The book from which it had apparently been wrenched lay open on a chair near.

Kitty drew a long breath as Ashe came near her.

"Keep off!" she said--"don't touch it!"

"You little goose!" cried Ashe--"what are you about?"

"Burning a coward in effigy," said Kitty, between her teeth.

Ashe thrust his hands into his pockets.

"I wish to God you'd forget the creature, instead of flattering him with these attentions!"

Kitty made no reply, but as she drew the fire together Ashe captured her hand.

"What's he been doing now, Kitty?"

"There are his poems," said Kitty, pointing to the chair. "The last one is about me."

"May I be allowed to see it?"

"It isn't there."

"Ah! I see. You've topped the pile with it. With your leave, I'll delay its doom." He snatched the leaf from its stick, and bending down read it by the light of the burning paper. Kitty watched him, frowning, her hand on her hip, the white wrap she wore over her night-dress twining round her in close folds a slender, brooding sorceress, some Canidia or Simaetha, interrupted in her ritual of hate.

But Ashe was in no mood for literary reminiscence. His lip was contemptuous, his brow angry as he replaced the leaf in its cleft stick, whither the flames immediately pursued it.

"Wretched stuff, and damned impertinence!--that's all there is to say. For Heaven's sake, Kitty, don't let any one suppose you mind the thing--for an instant!"

She looked at him with strange eyes. "But if I do mind it?"

His face darkened to the shade of hers. "Does that mean--that you still think of him--still wish to see him?"

"I don't know," said Kitty, slowly. The fire had died away. Nothing but a few charred remnants remained in the brazier. Ashe lit the gas, and disclosed a tragic Kitty, flushed by the audacity of her last remark. He took her masterfully in his arms.

"That was bravado," he said, kissing her. "You love _me_! And I may be a poor stick, but I'm worth a good many Cliffes. Defy me--and I'll write you a better poem, too!"

The color leaped afresh in Kitty's cheek. She pushed him away, and, holding him, perused his handsome, scornful face, and all the manly strength of form and attitude. Her own lids wavered.

"What a silly scene!" she said, and fell--a little, soft, yielding form--into his arms.

XV

The church clock of Haggart village had just struck half-past six. A white, sunny mist enwrapped the park and garden. Voices and shouts rang through the mist; little could yet be seen, but the lawns and the park seemed to be pervaded with bustle and preparation, and every now and then as the mist drifted groups of workmen could be distinguished, marquees emerged, flags floated, and carts laden with benches and trestle-tables rumbled slowly over the roads and tracks of the park.

The house itself was full of gardeners, arranging banks of magnificent flowers in the hall and drawing-rooms, and superintended by the head gardener, a person of much greater dignity than Ashe himself, who swore at any underling making a noise, as though the slumbers of the "quality" in the big house overhead and the danger of disturbing them were the dearest interests of a burdened life.

As to the mistress of the house, at any rate, there was no need for caution. The clocks of the house had barely followed the church clock in striking the half-hour when the workmen on the ground floor saw Lady Kitty come down-stairs and go through the drawing-room window into the garden. There she gave her opinion on the preparations, pushing on afterwards into the park, where she astounded the various contractors and their workmen by her appearance at such an hour, and by the vigor and decision of her orders. Finally she left the park behind, just as its broad, scorched surfaces began everywhere to shake off the mist, and entered one of the bordering woods.

She had a basket on her arm, and, when she had found for herself a mossy seat amid the roots of a great oak, she unpacked it. It contained a mass of written pages, some fresh scribbling-paper, ink and pens, and a small portfolio. When they were all lying on the moss beside her, Kitty turned over the sheets with a loving hand, reading here and there.

"It is good!" she said to herself. "I vow it is!"

Dipping her pen in the ink, she began upon corrections. The sun filtered through the thick leafage overhead, touching her white dress, her small shoes, and the masses of her hair. She wore a Leghorn garden-hat, tied with pink ribbons under her chin, and in her morning freshness and daintiness she looked about seventeen. The hours of sleep had calmed the restlessness of the wide, brown eyes; they were full now of gentleness and mirth.

"I wonder if he'll come?"

She looked up and listened. And as she did so, her eyes and sense were seized with the beauty of the wood. The mystery of early solitary hours seemed to be still upon it; both in the sunlight and the shadow there was a magic unknown to the later day. In a clearing before her spread a lake of willow-herb, of a pure bright pink, hemmed in by a golden shore of ragwort. The splash of color gave Kitty a passionate delight.

"Dear, dear world!" She stretched out her hands to it in a childish greeting.

Then the joy died sharply from her eyes. "How many years left--to enjoy it in--before one dies--or one's heart dies?"

Invariably, now, her moments of sensuous pleasure ended in this dread of something beyond--of a sudden drowning of beauty and delight--of a future unknown and cruel, coming to meet her, like some armed assassin in a narrow path.

William! When it came could William save her? "William is a _darling_!" she said to herself, her face full of yearning.

As for that other--it gave her an intense pleasure to think of the flames creeping up the form and face of the photograph. Should she hear, perhaps, in a week or two that he had been seized with some mysterious illness, like the witch-victims of old? A shiver ran through her, a thrill of repentance--till the bitter lines of the poem came back to memory--lines describing a woman with neither the courage for sin nor the strength for virtue, a "light woman" indeed, whom the great passions passed eternally by, whom it was a humiliation to court and a mere weakness to regret. Then she laughed, and began again with passionate zest upon the sheets before her.

A sound of approaching footsteps on the wood-path. She half rose, smiling.

The branches parted, and Darrell appeared. He paused to survey the oread vision of Lady Kitty.

"Am I not to the minute?" He held up his watch in front of her.

"So you got my note?"

"Certainly. I was immensely flattered." He threw himself down on the moss beside her, his sallow, long-chinned face and dark eyes toned to a morning cheerfulness, his dress much fresher and more exact than usual. "But he is one of the men who look so much better in their old clothes!" thought Kitty.

"Well, what can I do for you, Lady Kitty?" he resumed, smiling.

"I wanted your advice," said Kitty--not altogether sure, now that he was there beside her, that she did want it.

"About your literary work?"

She threw him a quick glance.

"Do you know? How do you know? I have been writing a book!"

"So I imagined--"

"And--and--" She broke now into eagerness, bending forward, "I want you to help me get it published. It is a deadly secret. Nobody knows--"

"Not even William?"

"No one," she repeated. "And I can't tell you about it, or show you a line of it, unless you vow and swear to me--"

"Oh! I swear," said Darrell, tranquilly--"I swear."

Kitty looked at him doubtfully a moment--then resumed:

"I have written it at all sorts of times--when William was away--in the middle of the night--out in the woods. _Nobody_ knows. You see"--her little fingers plucked at the moss--"I have a good many advantages. If people want 'Society' with a big S, I can give it them!"

"Naturally," said Darrell.

"And it always amuses people--doesn't it?"

Kitty clasped her hands round her knees and looked at him with candor.

"Does it?" said Darrell. "It has been done a good deal."

"Oh, of course," said Kitty, impatiently, "mine's not the proper thing. You don't imagine I should try and write like Thackeray, do you? Mine's _real_ people--_real_ things that happened--with just the names altered."

"Ah!" said Darrell, sitting up--"that sounds exciting. Is it libellous?"

"Well, that's just what I want to know," said Kitty, slowly. "Of course, I've made a kind of story out of it. But you'd have to be a great fool not to guess. I've put myself in, and--"

"And Ashe?"

Kitty nodded. "All the novels that are written about politics nowadays--except Dizzy's--are such nonsense, aren't they? I just wanted to describe--from the inside--how a real statesman"--she threw up her head proudly--"lives, and what he does."

"Excellent subject," said Darrell. "Well--anybody else?"

Kitty flushed. "You'll see," she said, uncertainly.

Darrell's involuntary smile was hidden by a bunch of honeysuckle at which he was sniffing. "May I look?" he asked, stretching out a hand for the sheets.

She pushed them towards him, half unwilling, half eager, and he began to turn them over. Apparently it had a thread of story--both slender and extravagant. And on the thread--Hullo!--here was the fancy ball; he pounced upon it. A portrait of Lady Parham--Ye powers! he chuckled as he read. On the next page the Chancellor of the Exchequer--snub-nosed _parvenu_ and Puritan--admirably caught. Further on a speech of Ashe's in the House--with caricature to right and caricature to left ... Ah! the poet!--at last! He bent over the page till Kitty coughed and fidgeted, and he thought it best to hurry on. But it was war, he perceived--open, undignified, feminine war. On the next page, the Archbishop of Canterbury--with Lady Kitty's views on the Athanasian Creed! Heavens! what a book! Next, Royalty itself, not too respectfully handled. Then Ashe again--Ashe glorified, Ashe explained, Ashe intrigued against, and Ashe triumphant--everywhere the centre of the stage, and everywhere, of course, all unknown to the author, the fool of the piece. Political indiscretions also, of the most startling kind, as coming from the wife of a cabinet minister. Allusions, besides, scattered broadcast, to the scandals of the day--material as far as he could see for a dozen libel actions. And with it all, much fantastic ability, flashes of wit and romance, enough to give the book wings beyond its first personal audience--enough, in fact, to secure to all its scandalous matter the widest possible chance of fame.

"Well!"

He rolled over on his elbows, and lay staring at the sheets before him--dumb. What was he to say?

A thought struck him. As far as he could perceive, there was an empty niche.

"And Lord Parham?"

A smile of mischief broadened on Kitty's lips.

"That'll come," she said--and checked herself. Darrell bowed his face on his hands and laughed, unseen. To what sacrificial rite was the unconscious victim hurrying--at that very moment--in the express train which was to land him at Haggart Station that afternoon?

"Well!" said Kitty, impatiently--"what do you think? Can you help me?"

Darrell looked up.

"You know, Lady Kitty, that book can't be published like that. Nobody would risk it."

"Well, I suppose they'll tell me what to cut out."

"Yes," said Darrell, slowly, caught by many reflections--"no doubt some clever fellow will know how near the wind it's possible to sail. But, anyway, trim it as you like, the book will make a scandal."

"Will it?" Kitty's eyes flashed. She sat up radiant, her breath quick and defiant.

"I don't see," he resumed, "how you can publish it without consulting Ashe."

Kitty gave a cry of protest.

"No, no, _no_! Of course he'd disapprove. But then--he soon forgives a thing, if he thinks it clever. And it is clever, isn't it?--some of it. He'd laugh--and then it would be all right. _He'd_ never pay out his enemies, but he couldn't help enjoying it if some one else did--could he?" She pleaded like a child.

"'No need to forgive them,'" murmured Darrell, as he rolled over on his back and put his hat over his eyes--"for you would have 'shot them all.'"

Under the shelter of his hat he tried to think himself clear. What _really_ were her motives? Partly, no doubt, a childish love of excitement--partly revenge? The animus against the Parhams was clear in every page. Cliffe, too, came badly out of it--a fantastic Byronic mixture of libertine and cad. Lady Kitty had better beware! As far as he knew, Cliffe had never yet been struck, with impunity to the striker.

If these precious sheets ever appeared, Ashe's position would certainly be shaken. Poor wretch!--endeavoring to pursue a serious existence, yoked to such an impish sprite as this! His own fault, after all. That first night, at Madame d'Estrées', was not her madness written in her eyes?

"Now tell me, Lady Kitty"--he roused himself to look at her with some attention--"what do you want me to do?"

"To find me a publisher, and"--she stooped towards him with a laughing shyness--"to get me some money."

"Money!"

"I've been so awfully extravagant lately," said Kitty, frankly. "Something really will have to be done. And the book's worth some money, isn't it?"

"A good deal," said Darrell. Then he added, with emphasis--"I really can't be responsible for it in any way, Lady Kitty."

"Of course not. I will never, _never_ say I told you! But, you see, I'm not literary--I don't know in the least how to set about it. If you would just put me in communication?"

Darrell pondered. None of the well-known publishers, of course, would look at it. But there were plenty of people who would--and give Lady Kitty a large sum of money for it, too.

What part, however, could he--Darrell--play in such a transaction?

"I am bound to warn you," he said, at last, looking up, "that your husband will probably strongly disapprove this book, and that it may do him harm."

Kitty bit her lip.

"But if I tell nobody who wrote it--and you tell nobody?"

"Ashe would know at once. Everybody would know."

"William would know," his companion admitted, unwillingly. "But I don't see why anybody else should. You see, I've put myself in--I've said the most shocking things!"

Darrell replied that she would not find that device of much service to her.

"However--I can no doubt get an opinion for you."

Kitty, all delight, thanked him profusely.

"You shall have the whole of it before you go--Friday, isn't it?" she said, eagerly gathering it up.

Darrell was certainly conscious of no desire to burden himself with the horrid thing. But he was rarely able to refuse the request of a pretty and fashionable woman, and it flattered his conceit to be the sole recipient of what might very well turn out to be a political secret of some importance. Not that he meant to lay himself open to any just reproach whatever in the matter. He would show it to some fitting person--to pacify Lady Kitty--write a letter of strong protest to her afterwards--and wash his hands of it. What might happen then was not his business.

Meanwhile his inner mind was full of an acrid debate which turned entirely upon his interview with Ashe of the day before. No doubt, as an old friend, aware of Lady Kitty's excitable character, he might have felt it his duty to go straight to Ashe, _coûte que coûte_, and warn him of what was going on. But what encouragement had been given him to play so Quixotic a part? Why should he take any particular thought for Ashe's domestic peace, or Ashe's public place? What consideration had Ashe shown for _him_? "Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin!"

So it ended in his promising to take the MS. to London with him, and let Lady Kitty know the result of his inquiries. Kitty's dancing step as they returned to the house betrayed the height of her spirits.

* * * * *

A rumor flew round the house towards the middle of the day that Harry, the little heir, was worse. Kitty did not appear at luncheon, and the doctor was sent for. Before he came, it was known only to Margaret French that Kitty had escaped by herself from the house and could not be found. Ashe and Lady Tranmore saw the doctor, who prescribed, and would not admit that there was any cause for alarm. The heat had tried the child, and Lady Kitty--he looked round the nursery for her in some perplexity--might be quite reassured.

Margaret found her, wandering in the park--very wild and pale--told her the doctor's verdict, and brought her home. Kitty said little or nothing, and was presently persuaded to change her dress for Lord Parham's arrival. By the time the operation was over she was full as usual of smiles and chatter, with no trace apparently of the mood which had gone before.

Lord Parham found the house-party assembled on the lawn, with Kitty in a three-cornered hat, fantastically garnished at the side with a great plume of white cock's feathers, presiding at the tea-table.

"Ah!" thought the Premier, as he approached--"now for the tare in Ashe's wheat!"

Nothing, however, could have been more gracious than Kitty's reception of him, or more effusive than his response. He took his seat beside her, a solid and impressive figure, no less closely observed by such of the habitual guests of the political country-houses as happened to be present, than by the sprinkling of local clergy and country neighbors to whom Kitty was giving tea. Lord Parham, though now in the fourth year of his Premiership, was still something of a mystery to his countrymen; while for the inner circle it was an amusement and an event that he should be seen without his wife.

For some time all went well. Kitty's manners and topics were alike beyond reproach. When presently she inquired politely as to the success of his Scottish tour, Lord Parham hoped he had not altogether disgraced himself. But, thank Heaven, it was done. Meanwhile Ashe, he supposed, had been enjoying the pursuits of a scholar and a gentleman?--lucky fellow!

"He has been reading the Bible," said Kitty, carelessly, as she handed cake. "Just now he's in the Acts. That's why, I suppose, he didn't hear the carriage. John!" She called a footman. "Tell Mr. Ashe that Lord Parham has arrived!"

The Premier opened astonished eyes.

"Does Ashe generally study the Scriptures of an afternoon?"

Kitty nodded--with her most confiding smile. "When he can. He says"--she dropped her voice to a theatrical whisper--"the Bible is such a 'd----d interesting' book!"

Lord Parham started in his seat. Ashe and some of his friends still faintly recalled, in their too familiar and public use of this particular naughty word, the lurid vocabulary of the Peel and Melbourne generation. But in a lady's mouth the effect was prodigious. Lord Grosville frowned sternly and walked away; Eddie Helston smothered a burst of laughter; the Dean, startled, broke off a conversation with a group of archaeological clergymen and came to see what he could do to keep Lady Kitty in order; while Lady Tranmore flushed deeply, and began a hasty conversation with Lady Edith Manley. Meanwhile Kitty, quite unconscious, "went on cutting"--or rather, dispensing "bread-and-butter"; and Lord Parham changed the subject.

"What a charming house!" he said, unwarily, waving his hand towards the Haggart mansion. He was short-sighted, and, in truth, saw only that it was big.