Chapter XI: Part III: Development (2)

Kitty looked at him in wonder--a friendly and amiable wonder. She said it was very kind of him to try and spare her feelings, but, really, anybody might say what they liked of Haggart. She and William weren't responsible.

Lord Parham, rather nettled, put on his eye-glass, and, being an obstinate man, still maintained that he saw no reason at all to be dissatisfied with Haggart, from the æsthetic point of view. Kitty said nothing, but for the first time a gleam of mockery showed itself in her changing look.

Lady Tranmore, always nervously on the watch, moved forward at this point, and Lord Parham, with marked and pompous suavity, transferred his conversation to her.

Thus assured, as he thought, of a good listener, and delivered from his uncomfortable hostess, Lord Parham crossed his legs and began to talk at his ease. The guests round the various tea-tables converged, some standing and some sitting, and made a circle about the great man. About Kitty, too, who sat, equally conspicuous, dipping a biscuit in milk, and teasing her small dog with it. Lord Parham meanwhile described to Lady Tranmore--at wearisome length--the demonstrations which had attended his journey south, the railway-station crowds, addresses, and so forth. He handled the topic in a tone of jocular humility, which but slightly concealed the vast complacency beneath. Kitty's lip twitched; she fed Ponto hastily with all possible cakes.

"No one, of course, can keep any count of what he says on these occasions," resumed Lord Parham, with a gracious smile. "I hope I talked some sense--"

"Oh, but why?" said Kitty, looking up, her large fawn's eyes bent on the speaker.

"Why?" repeated Lord Parham, suddenly stiffening. "I don't follow you, Lady Kitty."

"Anybody can talk sense!" said Kitty, throwing a big bit of muffin at Ponto's nose. "It's the other thing that's hard--isn't it?"

"Lady Kitty," said the Dean, lifting a finger, "you are plagiarizing from Mr. Pitt."

"Am I?" said Kitty. "I didn't know."

"I imagine that Mr. Pitt talked sense sometimes," said Lord Parham, shortly.

"Ah, that was when he was drunk!" said Kitty. "Then he wasn't responsible."

Lord Parham and the circle laughed--though the Premier's laugh was a little dry and perfunctory.

"So you worship nonsense, Lady Kitty?"

Kitty nodded sweetly.

"And so does William. Ah, here he is!"

For Ashe appeared, hurrying over the lawn, and Lord Parham rose to greet his host.

"Upon my word, Ashe, how well you look! _You_ have had some holiday!"

"Which is more than can be said of yourself," said Ashe, with smiling sympathy. "Well!--how have the speeches gone? Is there anything left of you? Edinburgh was magnificent!"

He wore his most radiant aspect as he sat down beside his guest; and Kitty watching him, and already conscious of a renewed and excitable dislike for her guest, thought William was overdoing it absurdly, and grew still more restive.

The Premier brought the tips of his fingers lightly together, as he resumed his seat.

"Oh! my dear fellow, people were very kind--too much so! Yes--I think it did good--it did good. I should now rest and be thankful--if it weren't for the Bishops!"

"The Bishops!" said the Rector of the parish standing near. "What have the Bishops been doing, my lord?"

"Dying," said Kitty, as she fell into an attitude which commanded both William and Lord Parham. "They do it on purpose."

"Another this morning!" said Ashe, throwing up his hands.

"Oh! they die to plague me," said the Prime Minister, with the air of one on whom the universe weighs heavy. "There never was such a conspiracy!"

"You should let William appoint them," said Kitty, leaning her chin upon her hands and studying Lord Parham with eyes all the more brilliant for the dark circles which fatigue, or something else, had drawn round them.

"Ah, to be sure!" said Lord Parham, affably. "I had forgotten that Ashe was our theologian. Take me a walk before dinner!" he added, addressing his host.

"But you won't take his advice," said Kitty, smiling.

The Premier turned rather sharply.

"How do you know that, Lady Kitty?"

Kitty hesitated--then said, with the prettiest, slightest laugh:

"Lady Parham has such strong views--hasn't she?--on Church questions!"

Lord Parham's feeling was that a more insidiously impertinent question had never been put to him. He drew himself up.

"If she has, Lady Kitty, I can only say I know very little about them! She very wisely keeps them to herself."

"Ah!" said Kitty, as her lovely eyebrows lifted, "that shows how little people know."

"I don't quite understand," said Lord Parham. "To what do you allude, Lady Kitty?"

Kitty laughed. She raised her eyes to the Rector, a spare High Churchman, who had retreated uncomfortably behind Lady Tranmore.

"Some one--said to me last week--that Lady Parham had saved the Church!"

The Prime Minister rose. "I must have a little exercise before dinner. Your gardens, Ashe--is there time?"

Ashe, scarlet with discomfort and annoyance, carried his visitor off. As he did so, he passed his wife. Kitty turned her little head, looked at him half shyly, half defiantly. The Dean saw the look; saw also that Ashe deliberately avoided it.

The party presently began to disperse. The Dean found himself beside his hostess--strolling over the lawn towards the house. He observed her attentively--vexed with her, and vexed for her! Surely she was thinner than he had ever seen her. A little more, and her beauty would suffer seriously. Coming he knew not whence, there lit upon him the sudden and painful impression of something undermined, something consumed from within.

"Lady Kitty, do you ever rest?" he asked her, unexpectedly.

"Rest!" she laughed. "Why should I?"

"Because you are wearing yourself out."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Do you ever lie down--alone--and read a book?" persisted the Dean.

"Yes. I have just finished Renan's _Vie de Jésus_!"

Her glance, even with him, kept its note of audacity, but much softened by a kind of wistfulness.

"Ah! my dear Lady Kitty, let Renan alone," cried the Dean--then with a change of tone--"but are you speaking truth--or naughtiness?"

"Truth," said Kitty. "But--of course--I am in a temper."

The Dean laughed.

"I see Lord Parham is not a favorite of yours."

Kitty compressed her small lips.

"To think that William should have to take his orders from that man!" she said, under her breath.

"Bear it--for William's sake," said the Dean, softly, "and, meanwhile--take my advice--and don't read any more Renan!"

Kitty looked at him curiously.

"I prefer to see things as they are."

The Dean sighed.

"That none of us can do, my dear Lady Kitty. No one can satisfy his _intelligence_. But religion speaks to the _will_--and it is the only thing between us and the void. Don't tamper with it! It is soon gone."

A satirical expression passed over the face of his companion.

"Mine was gone before we had been a month married. William killed it."

The Dean exclaimed:

"I hear always of his interest in religious matters!"

"He cares for nothing so much--and he doesn't believe one single word of anything! I was brought up in a convent, you know--but William laughed it all out of me."

"Dear Lady Kitty!"

Kitty nodded. "And now, of course, I know there's nothing in it. Oh! I _do_ beg your pardon!" she said, eagerly. "I never meant to say anything rude to _you._ And I must go!" She looked up at an open window on the second floor of the house. The Dean supposed it was the nursery, and began to ask after the boy. But before he could frame his question she was gone, flying over the grass with a foot that scarcely seemed to touch it.

"Poor child, poor child!" murmured the Dean, in a most genuine distress. But it was not the boy he was thinking of.

Presently, however, he was overtaken by Miss French, of whom he inquired how the baby was.

Margaret hesitated. "He seems to lose strength," she said, sadly. "The doctor declares there is no danger, unless--"

"Unless what?"

"Oh! but it's so unlikely!" was her hasty reply. "Don't let's think of it."

* * * * *

Kitty was just giving a last look at herself in the large mirror which lined half one of the sides of her room when Ashe invaded her. She glanced at him askance a little, and when the maid had gone Kitty hurriedly gathered up gloves and fan and prepared to follow her.

"Kitty--one word!"

He caught her in his arm, and held her while he looked down upon her sparkling dress and half-reluctant face. "Kitty, do be nice to that old fellow to-night! It's only for two nights. Take him in the right way, and make a conquest of him--for good. He's been very decent to me in our walk--though you did say such extraordinary things to him this afternoon. I believe he really wants to make amends."

"I do hate his white eyelashes so," said Kitty, slowly.

"What does it matter," cried Ashe, angrily, "whether he were a blue-faced baboon!--for two nights? Just listen to him a little, Kitty--that's all he wants. And--don't be offended!--but hold your own small tongue--just a little!"

Kitty pulled herself away.

"I believe I shall do something dreadful," she said, quietly.

A sternness to which Ashe's good-humored face was almost wholly strange showed itself in his expression.

"Why should you do anything dreadful, please? Lord Parham is your guest, and my political chief. Is there any woman in England who would not do her best to be civil to him under the circumstances?"

"I suppose not," said Kitty, with deliberation. "No, I don't think there can be."

"Kitty!"

For the first time Ashe was conscious of real exasperation. What was to be done with a temperament and a disposition like this?

"Do you never think that you have it in your power to help me or to ruin me?" he said, with vehemence.

"Oh yes--often. I mean--to help you--in my own way."

Ashe's laugh was a sound of pure annoyance.

"But please understand, it would be _infinitely_ better if you would help me, in _my_ way--in the natural, accepted way--the way that everybody understands."

"The way Lord Parham recommends?" Kitty looked at him quietly. "Never mind, William. I _am_ trying to help you."

Her eyes shone with the strangest glitter. Ashe was conscious of another of those sudden stabs of anxiety about her which he had felt at intervals through the preceding year. His face softened.

"Dear, don't let's talk nonsense! Just look at me sometimes at dinner, and say to yourself, 'William asks me--for his sake--to be nice to Lord Parham.'"

He again drew her to him, but she repulsed him almost with violence.

"Why is he here? Why have we people dining? We ought to be alone--in the dark!"

Her face had become a white mask. Her breast rose and fell, as though she fought with sobs.

"Kitty--what do you mean?" He recoiled in dismay.

"Harry!"--she just breathed the word between her closed lips.

"My darling!" cried Ashe, "I saw Dr. Rotherham myself this afternoon. He gave the most satisfactory account, and Margaret told me she had repeated everything to you. The child will soon be himself again."

"He is _dying_!" said Kitty, in the same low, remote voice, her gaze still fixed on Ashe.

"Kitty! Don't say such things--don't think them!" Ashe had himself grown pale. "At any rate"--he turned on her reproachfully--"tell me _why_ you think them. Confide in me, Kitty. Come and talk to me about the boy. But three-fourths of the time you behave as though there were nothing the matter with him--you won't even see the doctor--and then you say a thing like this!"

She was silent a moment; then with a wild gesture of the head and shoulders, as of one shaking off a weight, she moved away--drew on her long gloves--and going to the dressing-table, gave a touch of rouge to her cheeks.

"Kitty, why did you say that?" Ashe followed her entreatingly.

"I don't know. At least, I couldn't explain. Now, shall we go down?"

Ashe drew a long breath. His frail son held the inmost depths of his heart.

"You have made the party an abomination to me!" he said, with energy.

"Don't believe me, then--believe the doctor," said Kitty, her face changing. "And as for Lord Parham, I'll try, William--I'll try."

She passed him--the loveliest of visions--flung him a hand to kiss--and was gone.

XVI

There could be no question that in all external matters Lord Parham was that evening magnificently entertained by the Home Secretary and Lady Kitty Ashe. The chef was extravagantly good; the wines, flowers, and service lavish to a degree which made both Ashe and Lady Tranmore secretly uncomfortable. Lady Tranmore in particular detested "show," influenced as much by aristocratic instinct as by moral qualms; and there was to her mind a touch of vulgarity in the entertaining at Haggart, which might be tolerated in the case of financiers and _nouveaux riches_, while, as connected with her William and his wife, who had no need whatever to bribe society, it was unbecoming and undignified. Moreover, the winter had been marked by a financial crisis caused entirely by Kitty's extravagance. A large sum of money had had to be raised from the Tranmore estates; times were not good for the landed interest, and the head agent had begun to look grave.

If only William would control his wife! But Haggart contained one of those fine, slowly gathered libraries which make the distinction of so many English country-houses; and in the intervals of his official work, which even in holiday time was considerable, Ashe could not be beguiled from the beloved company of his books to help Kitty sign checks, or scold her about expenditure.

So Kitty signed and signed; and the smaller was Ashe's balance, the more, it seemed, did Kitty spend. Then, of course, every few months, there were deficits which had to be made good. And as to the debts which accumulated, Lady Tranmore preferred not to think about them. It all meant future trouble and clipping of wings for William; and it all entered into that deep and hidden resentment, half anxious love, half alien temperament, which Elizabeth Tranmore felt towards Ashe's wife.

However--to repeat--Lord Parham, as far as the fleshpots went, was finely treated. Kitty was in full force, glittering in a spangled dress, her dazzling face and neck, and the piled masses of her hair, thrown out in relief against the panelled walls of the dining-room with a brilliance which might have tempted a modern Rembrandt to paint an English Saskia. Eddie Helston, on her left, could not take his eyes from her. And even Lord Parham, much as he disliked her, acknowledged, during the early courses, that she was handsome, and in her own way--thank God! it was not the way of any womankind belonging to him--good company.

He saw, too, or thought he saw, that she was anxious to make him amends for her behavior of the afternoon. She restrained herself, and talked politics. And within the lines he always observed when talking to women, lines dictated by a contempt innate and ineradicable, Lord Parham was quite ready to talk politics too. Then--it suddenly struck him that she was pumping him, and with great adroitness. Ashe, he knew, wanted an early place in the session for a particular measure in which he was interested. Lord Parham had no mind to give him the precedence that he wanted; was, in fact, determined on something quite different. But he was well aware by now that Ashe was a person to be reckoned with; and he had so far taken refuge in vagueness--an amiable vagueness, by which Ashe, on their walk before dinner, had been much taken in, misled no doubt by the strength of his own wishes.

And now here was Lady Kitty--whom, by-the-way, it was not at all easy to take in--trying to "manage" him, to pin him to details, to wheedle him out of a pledge!

Lord Parham, presently, looked at her with cold, smiling eyes.

"Ah! you are interested in these things, Lady Kitty? Well--tell me your views. You women have such an instinct--"

--whereby the moth was kept hovering round the flame. Till, in a flash, Kitty awoke to the fact that while she had been listening happily to her own voice, taking no notice whatever of the signals which William endeavored to send her from the other end of the table--while she had been tripping gayly through one indiscretion after another, betraying innumerable things as to William's opinions and William's plans that she had infinitely better not have betrayed--Lord Parham had said nothing, betrayed nothing, promised nothing. A quiet smile--a courteous nod--and presently a shade of mockery in the lips--the meaning of them, all in a moment, burst on Kitty.

Her face flamed. Thenceforward it would be difficult to describe the dinner. Conversationally, at Kitty's end it became an uproar. She started the wildest topics, and Lord Parham had afterwards a bruised recollection as of one who has been dragged or driven, Caliban-like, through brake and thicket, pinched and teased and pelted by elfish fingers, without one single uncivil speech or act of overt offence to which an angry guest could point. With each later course, the Prime Minister grew stiffer and more silent. Endurance was written in every line of his fighting head and round, ungraceful shoulders, in his veiled eyes and stolid mouth. Lady Tranmore gave a gasp of relief when at last Kitty rose from her seat.

* * * * *

The evening went no better. Lord Parham was set down to cards with Kitty, Eddie Helston, and Lord Grosville. Lord Grosville, his partner, played, to the Premier's thinking, like an idiot, and Lady Kitty and the young man chattered and sparred, so that all reasonable play became impossible. Lord Parham lost more than he at all liked to lose, and at half-past ten he pleaded fatigue, refused to smoke, and went to his room.

Ashe was perfectly aware of the failure of the evening, and the discomfort of his guest. But he said nothing, and Kitty avoided his neighborhood. Meanwhile, between him and his mother a certain tacit understanding began to make itself felt. They talked quietly, in corners, of the arrangements for the speech and fête of the morrow. So far, they had been too much left to Kitty. Ashe promised his mother to look into them. He and she combined for the protection of Lord Parham.

When about one o'clock Ashe went to bed, Kitty either was or pretended to be fast asleep. The room was in darkness save for the faint illumination of a night-light, which just revealed to Ashe the delicate figure of his wife, lying high on her pillows, her cheek and brow hidden in the confusion of her hair.

One window was wide open to the night, and once more Ashe stood lost in "recollection" beside it, as on that night in Hill Street, more than a year before. But the thoughts which on that former occasion had been still as tragic and unfamiliar guests in a mind that repelled them had now, alack, lost their strangeness; they entered habitually, unannounced--frequent, irritating, deplorable.

Had the relation between himself and Kitty ever, in truth, recovered the shock of that incident on the river--of his night of restlessness, his morning of agonized alarm, and the story to which he listened on her return? It had been like some physical blow or wound, easily healed or conquered for the moment, which then, as time goes on, reveals a hidden series of consequences.

Consequences, in this case, connected above all with Kitty's own nature and temperament. The excitement of Cliffe's declaration, of her own resistance and dramatic position, as between her husband and her lover, had worked ever since, as a poison in Kitty's mind--Ashe was becoming dismally certain of it. The absurd incident of the night before with the photograph had been enough to prove it.

Well, the thing, he supposed, would right itself in time. Meanwhile, Cliffe had been dismissed, and this foolish young fellow Eddie Helston must soon follow him. Ashe had viewed the affair so far with an amused tolerance; if Kitty liked to flirt with babes it was her affair, not his. But he perceived that his mother was once more becoming restless, under the general _inconvenance_ of it; and he had noticed distress and disapproval in the little Dean, Kitty's stanchest friend.

Luckily, no difficulty there! The lad was almost as devoted to him--Ashe--as he was to Kitty. He was absurd, affected, vain; but there was no vice in him, and a word of remonstrance would probably reduce him to abject regret and self-reproach. Ashe intended that his mother should speak it, and as he made up his mind to ask her help, he felt for the second time the sharp humiliation of the husband who cannot secure his own domestic peace, but must depend on the aid of others. Yet how could he himself go to young Helston? Some men no doubt could have handled such an incident with dignity. Ashe, with his critical sense for ever playing on himself and others; with the touch of moral shirking that belonged to his inmost nature; and, above all, with his half-humorous, half-bitter consciousness that whoever else might be a hero, he was none: Ashe, at least, could and would do nothing of the sort. That he should begin now to play the tyrannous or jealous husband would make him ridiculous both in his own eyes and other people's.

And yet Kitty must somehow be protected from herself!... Then--as to politics? Once, in talking with his mother, he had said to her that he was Kitty's husband first, and a public man afterwards. Was he prepared now to make the statement with the same simplicity, the same whole-heartedness?

Involuntarily he moved closer to the bed and looked down on Kitty. Little, delicate face!--always with something mournful and fretful in repose.

He loved her surely as much as ever--ah! yes, he loved her. His whole nature yearned over her, as the wife of his youth, the mother of his poor boy. Yet, as he remembered the mood in which he had proposed to her, that defiance of the world and life which had possessed him when he had made her marry him, he felt himself--almost with bitterness--another and a meaner man. No!--he was _not_ prepared to lose the world for her--the world of high influence and ambition upon which he had now entered as a conqueror. She _must_ so control herself that she did not ruin all his hopes--which, after all, were hers--and the work he might do for his country.

What incredible perversity and caprice she had shown towards Lord Parham! How was he to deal with it--he, William Ashe, with his ironic temper and his easy standards? What could he say to her but "Love me, Kitty!--love yourself!--and don't be a little fool! Life might be so amusing if you would only bridle your fancies and play the game!"

As for loftier things, "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control"--duty--and the passion of high ideals--who was he to prate about them? The little Dean, perhaps!--most spiritual of worldlings. Ashe knew himself to be neither spiritual nor a hypocrite. A certain measure, a certain order and harmony in life--laughter and good-humor and affection--and, for the fight that makes and welds a man, those great political and social interests in the midst of which he found himself--he asked no more, and with these he would have been abundantly content.

He sighed and frowned, his muscles stiffening unconsciously. Yes, for both their sakes he must try and play the master with Kitty, ridiculous as it seemed.

... He turned away, remembering his sick child--and went noiselessly to the nursery. There, along the darkened passages, he found a night-nurse, sitting working beside a shaded lamp. The child was sleeping, and the report was good. Ashe stole on tiptoe to look at him, holding his breath, then returned to his dressing-room. But a faint call from Kitty pursued him. He opened the door, and saw her sitting up in bed.

"How is he?"

She was hardly awake, but her expression struck him as very wild and piteous. He went to her and took her in his arms.

"Sleeping quietly, darling--so must you!"

She sank back on her pillows, his arm still round her.

"I was there an hour ago," she murmured. "I shall soon wake up--"

But for the moment she was asleep again, her fair head lying against his shoulder. He sat down beside her, supporting her. Suddenly, as he looked down upon her with mingled passion, tenderness, and pain, a sharp perception assailed him. How thin she was--a mere feather's weight! The face was smaller than ever--the hands skin and bone! Margaret French had once or twice bade him notice this, had spoken with anxiety. He bent over his wife and observed her attentively. It was merely the effect of a hot summer, surely, and of a constant nervous fatigue? He would take her abroad for a fortnight in September, if his official work would let him, and perhaps leave her in north Italy, or Switzerland, with Margaret French.

* * * * *

The great day was half-way through, and the throng in Haggart Park and grounds was at its height. A flower-show in the morning; then a tenants' dinner with a speech from Ashe; and now, in a marquee erected for the occasion, Lord Parham was addressing his supporters in the county. Around him on the platform sat the Whig gentry, the Radical manufacturers, the town wire-pullers and local agents on whom a great party depended; in front of him stretched a crowded meeting drawn in almost equal parts from the coal-mining districts to the north of Haggart and from the agricultural districts to the south....

The August air was stifling; perspiration shone on the broad brows and cheeks of the farmers sitting in the front half of the audience; Lord Parham's gray face was almost white; his harsh voice labored against the acoustic difficulties of the tent; effort and heat, discomfort and ennui breathed from the packed benches, and from the short-necked, large-headed figure of the Premier.

Ashe sat to the speaker's right, outwardly attentive, inwardly ashamed of his party and his chief. He himself belonged to a new generation, for whom formulæ that had satisfied their fathers were empty and dead. But with these formulas Lord Parham was stuffed. A man of average intriguing ability, he had been raised, at a moment of transition, to the place he held, by a consummate command of all the meaner arts of compromise and management, no less than by an invaluable power of playing to the gallery. He led a party who despised him--and he complacently imagined that he was the party. His speech on this occasion bristled with himself, and had, in truth, no other substance; the I's swarmed out upon the audience like wasps.

Ashe groaned in spirit, "We have the ideas," he thought, "but they are damned little good to us--it is the Tories who have the men! Ye gods! must we all talk like this at last?"...

Suddenly, on the other side of the platform, behind Lord Parham, he noticed that Kitty and Eddie Helston were exchanging signs. Kitty drew out a tablet, wrote upon it, and, leaning over some white-frocked children of the Lord Lieutenant who sat behind her, handed the torn leaf to Helston. But from some clumsiness he let it drop; at the moment a door opened at the back of the platform, and the leaf, caught by the draught, was blown back across the bench where Kitty and the house-party were sitting, and fluttered down to a resting-place on the piece of red baize wheron Lord Parham was standing--close beside his left foot.

Ashe saw Kitty's start of dismay, her scarlet flush, her involuntary movement. But Lord Parham had started on his peroration. The rustics gaped, the gentry sat expressionless, the reporters toiled after the great man. Kitty all the time kept her eyes fixed on the little white paper; Ashe no less. Between him and Lord Parham there was first the Lord Lieutenant, a portly man, very blind and extremely deaf--then a table with a Liberal peer behind it for chairman.

Lord Parham had resumed his seat. The tent was shaken with cheers, and the smiling chairman had risen.

"Can you ask Lord Parham to hand me on that paper on the floor," said Ashe, in the ear of the Lord Lieutenant, "it seems to have dropped from my portfolio."

The Lord Lieutenant, bending backward behind the chairman as the next speaker rose, tried to attract Lord Parham's attention. Eddie Helston was, at the same time, endeavoring to make his way forward through the crowded seats behind the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile Lord Parham had perceived the paper, raised it, and adjusted his spectacles. He thought it was a communication from the audience--a question, perhaps, that he was expected to answer.

"Lord Parham!" cried the Lord Lieutenant again, "would you--"

"Silence, please! Speak up!"--from the audience, who had so far failed to catch a word of what the new speaker was saying.

"What _is_ the matter? You really can't get through here!" said a gray-haired dowager crossly to Eddie Helston.

Lord Parham looked at the paper in mystification. It contained these words:

"Hope you've been counting the 'I's.' I make it fifty-seven.--K."

And in the corner of the paper a thumb-nail sketch of himself, perorating, with a garland of capital I's round his neck.

The Premier's face became brick-red, then gray again. He folded up the paper and put it in his waistcoat-pocket.

The meeting had broken up. For the common herd, it was to be followed by sports in the park and refreshments in big tents. For the gentry, Lady Kitty had a garden-party to which Royalty was coming. And as her guests streamed out of the marquee, Lord Parham approached his hostess.

"I think this belongs to you, Lady Kitty." And taking from his pocket a folded slip of paper he offered it to her.

Kitty looked at him. Her color was high, her eyes sparkled.

"Nothing to do with me!" she said, gayly, as she glanced at it. "But I'll look for the owner."

"Sorry to give you the trouble," said Lord Parham, with a ceremonious inclination. Then, turning to Ashe, he remarked that he was extremely tired--worn out, in fact--and would ask his host's leave to desert the garden-party while he attended to some most important letters. Ashe offered to escort him to the house. "On the contrary, look after your guests," said the Premier, dryly, and, beckoning to the Liberal peer who had been his chairman, he engaged him in conversation, and the two presently vanished through a window open to the terrace.

Kitty had been joined meanwhile by Eddie Helston, and the two stood talking together, a flushed, excited pair. Ashe overtook them.

"May I speak to you a moment, Kitty?"

Eddie Helston glanced at the fine form and stiffened bearing of his host, understood that his presence counted for something in the annoyance of Ashe's expression, and departed abashed.

"I should like to see that paper, Kitty, if you don't mind."

His frown and straightened lip brought fresh wildness into Kitty's expression.

"It is my property." She kept one hand behind her.

"I heard you just disavow that."

Kitty laughed angrily.

"Yes--that's the worst of Lord Parham--one has to tell so many lies for his _beaux yeux_!"

"You must give it me, please," said Ashe, quietly. "I ought to know where I am with Lord Parham. He is clearly bitterly offended--by something, and I shall have to apologize."

Kitty breathed fast.

"Well, don't let's quarrel before the county!" she said, as she turned aside into a shrubbery walk edged by clipped yews and hidden from the big lawn. There she paused and confronted him. "How did you know I wrote it?"

"I saw you write it and throw it."

He stretched out his hand. Kitty hesitated, then slowly unclosed her own, and held out the small, white palm on which lay the crumpled slip.

Ashe read it and tore it up.

"That game, Kitty, was hardly worth the candle!"

"It was a perfectly harmless remark--and only meant for Eddie! Any one else than Lord Parham would have laughed. _Then_ I might have begged his pardon."

"It is what you ought to do now," said Ashe. "A little note from you, Kitty--you could write it to perfection--"

"Certainly not," said Kitty, hastily, locking her hands behind her.

"You prefer to have failed in hospitality and manners," he said, bitterly. "Well, I'm afraid if you don't feel any disgrace in it I do. Lord Parham in our _guest_!"

And Ashe turned on his heel and would have left her, when Kitty caught him by the arm.

"William!"

She had grown very pale.

"Yes."

"You've never spoken to me like that before, William--never! But--as I told you long ago, you can stop it all if you like--in a moment."

"I don't know what you mean, Kitty--but we mustn't stay arguing here any longer--"

"No!--but--don't you remember? I told you, you can always send me away. Then I shouldn't be putting spokes in your wheel."

"I don't deny," said Ashe, slowly, "it might be wisest if, next spring, you stayed here, for part at least of the session--or abroad. It is certainly difficult carrying on politics under these conditions. I could, of course, come backward and forward--"

Kitty's brown eyes that were fixed upon his face wavered a little, and she grew even whiter.

"Very well. That would be a kind of separation, wouldn't it?"

"There would be no need to call it by any such name. Oh! Kitty!" cried Ashe, "why can't you behave like a reasonable woman?"

"Separation," she repeated, steadily. "I know that's what your mother wants."

A wave of sound reached them amid the green shadow of the yews. The cheers that heralded Royalty had begun.

"Come!" said Kitty.

And she flew across the grass, reaching her place by the central tent just as the Royalties drove up.

The Prime Minister sulked in-doors; and Kitty, with the most engaging smiles, made his apologies. The heat--the fatigue of the speech--a crushing headache, and a doctor's order!--he begged their Royal Highnesses to excuse him. The Royal Highnesses were at first astonished, inclined, perhaps, to take offence. But the party was so agreeable, and Lady Kitty so charming a hostess, that the Premier's absence was soon forgotten, and as the day cooled to a delicious evening, and the most costly bands from town discoursed a melting music, as garlanded boats appeared upon the river inviting passengers, and, with the dusk, fireworks began to ascend from a little hill; as the trees shone green and silver and rose-color in the Bengal lights, and amid the sweeping clouds of smoke the wide stretches of the park, the close-packed groups of human beings, appeared and vanished like the country and creatures of a dream--the success of Lady Kitty's fête, the fame of her gayety and her beauty, filled the air. She flashed hither and thither, in a dress embroidered with wild roses and a hat festooned with them--attended always by Eddie Helston, by various curates who cherished a hopeless attachment to her, and by a fat German grand-duke, who had come in the wake of the Royalties.

Her cleverness, her resource, her organizing power were lauded to the skies, Royalty was gracious, and the grand-duke resentfully asked an aide-de-camp on the way home why he had not been informed that such a pretty person awaited him.

"I should den haf looked beforehand--as vel as tinking behind," said the grand-duke, as he wrapped himself sentimentally in his military cloak, to meditate on Lady Kitty's brown eyes.

Meanwhile Lord Parham remained closeted in his sitting-room with his secretary. Ashe tried to gain admittance, but in vain. Lord Parham pleaded great fatigue and his letters; and asked for a _Bradshaw_.

"His lordship has inquired if there is a train to-night," said the little secretary, evidently much flustered.

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 "damn" 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 passed 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, pushing 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 façade which possessed some architectural interest. A low balustrade 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 companionship 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 Association. 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 _señorita_ 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.

"Nobody's tired--and nobody 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 space, 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 _méchant_ 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--apron 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 gods, 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 passed.

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.

"Kitty!--put it down!"

"Lady Kitty!" cried the Dean, in dismay, while all behind him held their breath.

"Stand back!" said Kitty, "or I shall drop it!" She held up the lamp, straight and steady. Ashe paused--in an agony of doubt what to do, his whole soul concentrated on the slender arm and on the brightly burning lamp.

"If you make me speeches," said Kitty, "I must reply, mustn't I? (Keep back, William!--I'm all right.) Hebe thanks you, please--_mille fois_! She herself hasn't been happy--and she's afraid she hasn't been good! _N'importe!_ It's all done--and finished. The play's over!--and the lights go out!"

She waved the lamp above her head.

"Kitty! for God's sake!" cried Ashe, rushing to her.

"She is mad!" said Lord Parham, standing at the back. "I always knew it!"

The other spectators passed through a second of anguish. The bright figure on the pedestal wavered; one moment, and it seemed as though the lamp must descend crashing upon the head and neck and the white dress beneath it; the next, it had fallen from Kitty's hand--fallen away from her--wide and safe--into the depths of the garden below. A flash of wild light rose from the burning oil and from the dry shrubs amid which it fell. Kitty, meanwhile, swayed--and dropped--heavily--unconscious--into William Ashe's arms.

* * * * *

Kitty barely recovered life and sense during the night that followed. And while she was still unconscious her boy passed away. The poor babe, all ignorant of the straits in which his mother lay, was seized with convulsions in the dawn, and gave up his frail life gathered to his father's breast.

Some ten weeks later, towards the end of October, society knew that the Home Secretary and Lady Kitty had started for Italy--bound first of all for Venice. It was said that Lady Kitty was a wreck, and that it was doubtful whether she would ever recover the sudden and tragic death of her only child.