Chapter XIII: Part IV: Storm (2)

Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of the canal. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute--and the whole vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps, straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night. Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata, lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola, revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans who filled it, in a hard white flash.

"Oh! listen, Kitty!" said Margaret. "Some one is going to sing 'Ché faro.'"

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure towards the _barca_ whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand. The search-light flashed here and there among them. A gondola at the very edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms. As Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was suddenly lit up. The light passed in a second, and while it lasted those in the flash could see nothing outside it. When it withdrew all was in darkness. The black mass of boats floated on, soundless again, save for an occasional plash of water or the hoarse cry of a gondolier--and in the distance the wail for Eurydice.

Kitty fell back in her seat. An excitement, from which she shrank in a kind of terror, possessed her. Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish--for which, whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she searched the canal in vain. If what she madly dreamed were true, had she herself been seen--and recognized?

The serenata in honor of Italy's beautiful princess duly made its way to the Grand Canal. The princess came to her balcony, while the "Jewel Song" in "Faust" was being sung below, and there was a demonstration which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the Rialto. Then the gondolas dispersed. That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide coming from the lagoon.

* * * * *

Kitty was apparently asleep when Ashe returned. He had sat late with his hosts--men prominent in the Risorgimento and in the politics of the new kingdom--discussing the latest intricacies of the Roman situation and the prospects of Italian finance. His mind was all alert and vigorous, ranging over great questions and delighting in its own strength. To come in contact with these able foreigners, not as the mere traveller but as an important member of an English government, beginning to be spoken of by the world as one of the two or three men of the future--this was a new experience and a most agreeable one. Doors hitherto closed had opened before him; information no casual Englishman could have commanded had been freely poured out for him; last, but not least, he had at length made himself talk French with some fluency, and he looked back on his performance of the evening with a boy's complacency.

For the rest, Venice was a mere trial of his patience! As his gondola brought him home, struggling with wind and wave, Ashe had no eye whatever for the beauty of this Venice in storm. His mind was in England, in London, wrestling with a hundred difficulties and possibilities. The old literary and speculative habit was fast disappearing in the stress of action and success. His well-worn Plato or Horace still lay beside his bedside; but when he woke early, and lit a candle carefully shaded from Kitty, it was not to the poets and philosophers that he turned; it was to a heap of official documents and reports, to the letters of political friends, or an unfinished letter of his own, the phrases of which had perhaps been running through his dreams. The measures for which he was wrestling against the intrigues of Lord Parham and Lord Parham's clique filled all his mind with a lively ardor of battle. They were the children--the darlings--of his thoughts.

Nevertheless, as he entered his wife's dim-lit room the eager arguments and considerations that were running through his head died away. He stood beside her, overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, alive through all his being to the appeal of her frail sweetness, the helplessness of her sleep, the dumb significance of the thin, blue-veined hand--eloquent at once of character and of physical weakness--which lay beside her. Her face was hidden, but the beautiful hair with its childish curls and ripples drew him to her--touched all the springs of tenderness.

It was a loveliness so full, it seemed, of meaning and of promise. Hand, brow, mouth--they were the signs of no mere empty and insipid beauty. There was not a movement, not a feature, that did not speak of intelligence and mind.

And yet, were he to wake her now and talk to her of the experience of his evening, how little joy would either get out of it.

Was it because she had no intellectual disinterestedness? Well, what woman had! But other women, even if they saw everything in terms of personality, had the power of pursuing an aim, steadily, persistently, for the sake of a person. He thought of Lady Palmerston--of Princess Lieven fighting Guizot's battles--and sighed.

By Jove! the women could do most things, if they chose. He recalled Kitty's triumph in the great party gathered to welcome Lord Parham, contrasting it with her wilful and absurd behavior to the man himself. There was something bewildering in such power--combined with such folly. In a sense, it was perfectly true that she had insulted her husband's chief, and jeopardized her husband's policy, because she could not put up with Lord Parham's white eyelashes.

Well, let him make his account with it! How to love her, tend her, make her happy--and yet carry on himself the life of high office--there was the problem! Meanwhile he recognized, fully and humorously, that she had married a political sceptic--and that it was hard for her to know what to do with the enthusiast who had taken his place.

Poor, pretty, incalculable darling! He would coax her to stay abroad part of the Parliamentary season--and then, perhaps, lure her into the country, with the rebuilding and refurnishing of Haggart. She must be managed and kept from harm--and afterwards indulged and spoiled and _fêted_ to her heart's content.

If only the fates would give them another child!--a child brilliant and lovely like herself, then surely this melancholy which overshadowed her would disperse. That look--that tragic look--she had given him on the day of the _fête_, when she spoke of "separation"! The wild adventure with the lamp had been her revenge--her despair. He shuddered as he thought of it.

He fell asleep, still pondering restlessly over her future and his own. Amid all his anxieties he never stooped to recollect the man who had endangered her name and peace. His optimism, his pride, the sanguine perfunctoriness of much of his character were all shown in the omission.

* * * * *

Kitty, however, was not asleep while Ashe was beside her. And she slept but little through the hours that followed. Between three and four she was finally roused by the sounds of storm in the canal. It was as though a fleet of gigantic steamers--in days when Venice knew but the gondola--were passing outside, sending a mountainous "wash" against the walls of the old palace in which they lodged. In this languid autumnal Venice the sudden noise and crash were startling. Kitty sprang softly out of bed, flung on a dressing-gown and fur cloak, and slipped through the open window to the balcony.

A strange sight! Beneath, livid waves, lashing the marble walls; above, a pale moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds. Not a sign of life on the water or in the dark palaces opposite. Venice looked precisely as she might have looked on some wild sixteenth-century night in the years of her glorious decay, when her palaces were still building and her state tottering. Opposite, at the Traghetto of the Accademia, there were lamps, and a few lights in the gondolas; and through the storm-noises one could hear the tossed boats grinding on their posts.

The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty's fair hair and wrestled with her cloak. As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their challenge to the sea--the forces that make the land, to the forces that engulf it.

Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave. She felt herself, as it were, anchored a moment at sea, in the midst of a war of elements, physical and moral.

Yes, yes!--it was Geoffrey. Once, under the skipping light, she had seen the face distinctly. Paler than of old--gaunt, unhappy, absent. It was the face of one who had suffered--in body and mind. But--she trembled through all her slight frame!--the old harsh power was there unchanged.

Had he seen and recognized her--slipping away afterwards into the mouth of a side canal, or dropping behind in the darkness? Was he ashamed to face her--or angered by the reminder of her existence? No doubt it seemed to him now a monstrous absurdity that he should ever have said he loved her! He despised her--thought her a base and coward soul. Very likely he would make it up with Mary Lyster now, accept her nursing and her money.

Her lip curled in scorn. No, _that_ she didn't believe! Well, then, what would be his future? His name had been but little in the newspapers during the preceding year; the big public seemed to have forgotten him. A cloud had hung for months over the struggle of races and of faiths now passing in the Balkans. Obscure fighting in obscure mountains; massacre here, revolt there; and for some months now hardly an accredited voice from Turk or Christian to tell the world what was going on.

But Geoffrey had now emerged--and at a moment when Europe was beginning perforce to take notice of what she had so far wilfully ignored. _À lui la parole!_ No doubt he was preparing it, the bloody, exciting story which would bring him before the foot-lights again, and make him once more the lion of a day. More social flatteries, more doubtful love-affairs! Fools like herself would feel his spell, would cherish and caress him, only to be stung and scathed as she had been. The bitter lines of his "portrait" rung in her ears--blackening and discrowning her in her own eyes.

She abhorred him!--but the thought that he was in Venice burned deep into senses and imagination. Should she tell William she had seen him? No, no! She would stand by herself, protect herself!

So she stole back to bed, and lay there wakeful, starting guiltily at William's every movement. If he knew what had happened!--what she was thinking of! Why on earth should he? It would be monstrous to harass him on his holiday--with all these political affairs on his mind.

Then suddenly--by an association of ideas--she sat up shivering, her hands pressed to her breast. The telegram--the book! Oh, but _of course_ she had been in time!--_of course_! Why, she had offered the man two hundred pounds! She lay down laughing at herself--forcing herself to try and sleep.

XIX

Sir Richard Lyster unfolded his _Times_ with a jerk.

"A beastly rheumatic hole I call this," he said, looking angrily at the window of his hotel sitting-room, which showed drops from a light shower then passing across the lagoon. "And the dilatoriness of these Italian posts is, upon my soul, beyond bearing! This _Times_ is _three_ days old."

Mary Lyster looked up from the letter she was writing.

"Why don't you read the French papers, papa? I saw a _Figaro_ of yesterday in the Piazza this morning."

"Because I can't!" was the indignant reply. "There wasn't the same amount of money squandered on _my_ education, my dear, that there has been on yours."

Mary smiled a little, unseen. Her father had been, of course, at Eton. She had been educated by a succession of small and hunted governesses, mostly Swiss, whose remuneration had certainly counted among the frugalities rather than the extravagances of the family budget.

Sir Richard read his _Times_ for a while. Mary continued to write checks for the board wages of the servants left at home, and to give directions for the beating of carpets and cleaning of curtains. It was dull work, and she detested it.

Presently Sir Richard rose, with a stretch. He was a tall old man, with a shock of white hair and very black eyes. A victim to certain obscure forms of gout, he was in character neither stupid nor inhuman, but he suffered from the usual drawbacks of his class--too much money and too few ideas. He came abroad every year, reluctantly. He did not choose to be left behind by county neighbors whose wives talked nonsense about Botticelli. And Mary would have it. But Sir Richard's tours were generally one prolonged course of battle between himself and all foreign institutions; and if it was Mary who drove him forth, it was Mary also who generally hurried him home.

"Who was it you saw last night in that ridiculous singing affair?" he asked, as he put the fire together.

"Kitty Ashe--and her mother," said Mary--after a moment--still writing.

"Her mother!--what, that disreputable woman?"

"They weren't in the same gondola."

"Ashe will be a great fool if he lets his wife see much of that woman! By all accounts Lady Kitty is quite enough of a handful already. By-the-way, have you found out where they are?"

"On the Grand Canal. Shall we call this afternoon?"

"I don't mind. Of course, I think Ashe is doing an immense amount of harm."

"Well, you can tell him so," said Mary.

Sir Richard frowned. His daughter's manners seemed to him at times abrupt.

"Why do you see so little now of Elizabeth Tranmore?" he asked her, with a sharp look. "You used to be always there. And I don't believe you even write to her much now."

"Does she see much of anybody?"

"Because, you mean, of Tranmore's condition? What good can she be to him now? He knows nobody."

"She doesn't seem to ask the question," said Mary, dryly.

A queer, soft look came over Sir Richard's old face.

"No, the women don't," he said, half to himself, and fell into a little reverie. He emerged from it with the remark--accompanied by a smile, a little sly but not unkind:

"I always used to hope, Polly, that you and Ashe would have made it up!"

"I'm sure I don't know why," said Mary, fastening up her envelopes. As she did so it crossed her father's mind that she was still very good-looking. Her dress of dark-blue cloth, the plain fashion of her brown hair, her oval face and well-marked features, her plump and pretty hands, were all pleasant to look upon. She had rather a hard way with her, though, at times. The servants were always giving warning. And, personally, he was much fonder of his younger daughter, whom Mary considered foolish and improvident. But he was well aware that Mary made his life easy.

"Well, you were always on excellent terms," he said, in answer to her last remark. "I remember his saying to me once that you were very good company. The Bishop, too, used to notice how he liked to talk to you."

When Mary and her father were together, "the Bishop" was Sir Richard's property. He only fell to Mary's share in the old man's absence.

Mary colored slightly.

"Oh yes, we got on," she said, counting her letters the while with a quick hand.

"Well, I hope that young woman whom he _did_ marry is now behaving herself. It was that fellow Cliffe with whom the scandal was last year, wasn't it?"

"There was a good deal of talk," said Mary.

"A rum fellow, that Cliffe! A man at the club told me last week it is believed he has been fighting for these Bosnian rebels for months. Shocking bad form I call it. If the Turks catch him, they'll string him up. And quite right, too. What's he got to do with other people's quarrels?"

"If the Turks will be such brutes--"

"Nonsense, my dear! Don't you believe any of this radical stuff. The Turks are awfully fine fellows--fight like bull-dogs. And as for the 'atrocities,' they make them up in London. Oh, of course, what Cliffe wants is notoriety--we all know that. Well, I'm going out to see if I can find another English paper. Beastly climate!"

But as Sir Richard turned again to the window, he was met by a burst of sunshine, which hit him gayly in the face like a child's impertinence. He grumbled something unintelligible as Mary put him into his Inverness cape, took hat and stick, and departed.

Mary sat still beside the writing-table, her hands crossed on her lap, her eyes absently bent upon them.

She was thinking of the serenata. She had followed it with an acquaintance from the hotel, and she had seen not only Kitty and Madame d'Estrées, but also--the solitary man in the heavy cloak. She knew quite well that Cliffe was in Venice; though, true to her secretive temper, she had not mentioned the fact to her father.

Of course he was in Venice on Kitty's account. It would be too absurd to suppose that he was here by mere coincidence. Mary believed that nothing but the intervention of Cliffe's mighty kinsman from the north had saved the situation the year before. Kitty would certainly have betrayed her husband but for the _force majeure_ arrayed against her. And now the magnate who had played Providence slumbered in the family vault. He had passed away in the spring, full of years and honors, leaving Cliffe some money. The path was clear. As for the escapade in the Balkans, Geoffrey was, of course, tired of it. A sensational book, hurried out to meet the public appetite for horrors--and the pursuance of his intrigue with Lady Kitty Ashe--Mary was calmly certain that these were now his objects. He was, no doubt, writing his book and meeting Kitty where he could. Ashe would soon have to go home. And then! As if that girl Margaret French could stop it!

Well, William had only got his deserts! But as her thoughts passed from Kitty or Cliffe to William Ashe, their quality changed. Hatred and bitterness, scorn or wounded vanity, passed into something gentler. She fell into recollections of Ashe as he had appeared on that bygone afternoon in May when he came back triumphant from his election, with the world before him. If he had never seen Kitty Bristol!--

"I should have made him a good wife," she said to herself. "_I_ should have known how to be proud of him."

And there emerged also the tragic consciousness that if the fates had given him to her she might have been another woman--taught by happiness, by love, by motherhood.

It was that little, heartless creature who had snatched them both from her--William and Geoffrey Cliffe--the higher and the lower--the man who might have ennobled her--and the man, half charlatan, half genius, whom she might have served and raised, by her fortune and her abilities. Her life might have been so full, so interesting! And it was Kitty that had made it flat, and cold, and futureless.

Poor William! Had he really liked her, in those boy-and-girl days? She dreamed over their old cousinly relations--over the presents he had sometimes given her.

Then a thought, like a burning arrow, pierced her. Her hands locked, straining one against the other. If this intrigue were indeed renewed--if Geoffrey succeeded in tempting Kitty from her husband--why then--then--

She shivered before the images that were passing through her mind, and, rising, she put away her letters and rang for the waiter, to order dinner.

"Where shall we go?" said Kitty, languidly, putting down the French novel she was reading.

* * * * *

"Mr. Ashe suggested San Lazzaro." Margaret looked up from her writing as Kitty moved towards her. "The rain seems to have all cleared off."

"Well, I'm sure it doesn't matter where," said Kitty, and was turning away; but Margaret caught her hand and caressed it.

"Naughty Kitty! why this sea air can't put some more color into your cheeks I don't understand."

"I'm _not_ pale!" cried Kitty, pouting. "Margaret, you do croak about me so! If you say any more I'll go and rouge till you'll be ashamed to go out with me--there! Where's William?"

William opened the door as she spoke, the _Gazetta di Venezia_ in one hand and a telegram in the other.

"Something for you, darling," he said, holding it out to Kitty. "Shall I open it?"

"Oh no!" said Kitty, hastily. "Give it me. It's from my Paris woman."

"Ah--ha!" laughed Ashe. "Some extravagance you want to keep to yourself, I'll be bound. I've a good mind to see!"

And he teasingly held it up above her head. But she gave a little jump, caught it, and ran off with it to her room.

"Much regret impossible stop publication. Fifty copies distributed
already. Writing."

She dropped speechless on the edge of her bed, the crumpled telegram in her hand. The minutes passed.

"When will you be ready?" said Ashe, tapping at the door.

"Is the gondola there?"

"Waiting at the steps."

"Five minutes!" Ashe departed. She rose, tore the telegram into little bits, and began with deliberation to put on her mantle and hat.

"You've got to go through with it," she said to the white face in the glass, and she straightened her small shoulders defiantly.

* * * * *

They were bound for the Armenian convent. It was a misty day, with shafts of light on the lagoon. The storm had passed, but the water was still rough, and the clouds seemed to be withdrawing their forces only to marshal them again with the darkness. A day of sudden bursts of watery light, of bands of purple distance struck into enchanting beauty by the red or orange of a sail, of a wild salt breath in air that seemed to be still suffused with spray. The Alps were hidden; but what sun there was played faintly on the Euganean hills.

"I say, Margaret, at last she does us some credit!" said Ashe, pointing to his wife.

Margaret started. Was it rouge?--or was it the strong air? Kitty's languor had entirely disappeared; she was more cheerful and more talkative than she had been at any time since their arrival. She chattered about the current scandals of Venice--the mysterious contessa who lived in the palace opposite their own, and only went out, in deep mourning, at night, because she had been the love of a Russian grand-duke, and the grand-duke was dead; of the Carlist pretender and his wife, who had been very popular in Venice until they took it into their heads to require royal honors, and Venice, taking time to think, had lazily decided the game was not worth the candle--so now the sulky pair went about alone in a fine gondola, turning glassy eyes on their former acquaintance; of the needy marchese who had sold a Titian to the Louvre, and had then found himself boycotted by all his kinsfolk in Venice who were not needy and had no Titians to sell--all these tales Kitty reeled out at length till the handsome gondoliers marvelled at the little lady's vivacity and the queer brightness of her eyes.

"Gracious, Kitty, where do you get all these stories from?" cried Ashe, when the chatter paused for a moment.

He looked at her with delight, rejoicing in her gayety, the slight touches of white which to-day for the first time relieved the sombreness of her dress, the return of her color. And Margaret wondered again how much of it was rouge.

At the Armenian convent a handsome young monk took charge of them. As George Sand and Lamennais had done before them, they looked at the printing-press, the garden, the cloister, the church; they marvelled lazily at the cleanliness and brightness of the place; and finally they climbed to the library and museum, and the room close by where Byron played at grammar-making. In this room Ashe fell suddenly into a political talk with the young monk, who was an ardent and patriotic son of the most unfortunate of nations, and they passed out and down the stairs, followed by Margaret French, not noticing that Kitty had lingered behind.

Kitty stood idly by the window of Byron's room, thinking restlessly of verses that were not Byron's, though there was in them, clothed in forms of the new age, the spirit of Byronic passion, and more than a touch of Byronic affectation--thinking also of the morning's telegram. Supposing Darrell's prophecy, which had seemed to her so absurd, came true, that the book did William harm, not good--that he ceased to love her--that he cast her off?...

... A plash of water outside, and a voice giving directions. From the lagoon towards Malamocco a gondola approached. A gentleman and lady were seated in it. The lady--a very handsome Italian, with a loud laugh and brilliant eyes--carried a scarlet parasol. Kitty gave a stifled cry as she drew back. She fled out of the room and overtook the other two.

"May we go back into the garden a little?" she said, hurriedly, to the monk who was talking to William. "I should like to see the view towards Venice."

William held up a watch, to show that there was but just time to get back to the Piazza, for lunch. Kitty persisted, and the monk, understanding what the impetuous young lady wished, good-naturedly turned to obey her.

"We must be _very_ quick!" said Kitty. "Take us please, to the edge, beyond the trees."

And she herself hurried through the garden to its farther side, where it was bounded by the lagoon.

The others followed her, rather puzzled by her caprice.

"Not much to be seen, darling!" said Ashe, as they reached the water--"and I think this good man wants to get rid of us!"

And, indeed, the monk was looking backward across the intervening trees at a party which had just entered the garden.

"Ah, they have found another brother!" he said, politely, and he began to point out to Kitty the various landmarks visible, the arsenal, the two asylums, San Pietro di Castello.

The new-comers just glanced at the garden apparently, as the Ashes had done on arrival, and promptly followed their guide back into the convent.

Kitty asked a few more questions, then led the way in a hasty return to the garden door, the entrance-hall, and the steps where their gondola was waiting. Nothing was to be seen of the second party. They had passed on into the cloisters.

* * * * *

Animation, oddity, inconsequence, all these things Margaret observed in Kitty during luncheon in a restaurant of the Merceria, and various incidents connected with it; animation above all. The Ashes fell in with acquaintance--a fashionable and harassed mother, on the fringe of the Archangels, accompanied by two daughters, one pretty and one plain, and sore pressed by their demands, real or supposed. The parents were not rich, but the girls had to be dressed, taken abroad, produced at country-houses, at Ascot, and the opera, like all other girls. The eldest girl, a considerable beauty, was an accomplished egotist at nineteen, and regarded her mother as a rather inefficient _dame de compagnie_. Kitty understood this young lady perfectly, and after luncheon, over her cigarette, her little, sharp, probing questions gave the beauty twenty minutes' annoyance. Then appeared a young man, ill-dressed, red-haired, and shy. Carelessly as he greeted the mother and daughters, his entrance, however, transformed them. The mother forgot fatigue; the beauty ceased to yawn; the younger girl, who had been making surreptitious notes of Kitty's costume in the last leaf of her guide-book, developed a charming gush. He was the owner of the Magellan estates and the historic Magellan Castle; a professed hater of "absurd womankind," and, in general, a hunted and self-conscious person. Kitty gave him one finger, looked him up and down, asked him whether he was yet engaged, and when he laughed an embarrassed "No," told him that he would certainly die in the arms of the Magellan housekeeper.

This got a smile out of him. He sat down beside her, and the two laughed and talked with a freedom which presently drew the attention of the neighboring tables, and made Ashe uncomfortable. He rose, paid the bill, and succeeded in carrying the whole party off to the Piazza, in search of coffee. But here again Kitty's extravagances, the provocation of her light loveliness, as she sat toying with a fresh cigarette and "chaffing" Lord Magellan, drew a disagreeable amount of notice from the Italians passing by.

"Mother, let's go!" said the angry beauty, imperiously, in her mother's ear. "I don't like to be seen with Lady Kitty! She's impossible!"

And with cold farewells the three ladies departed. Then Kitty sprang up and threw away her cigarette.

"How those girls bully their mother!" she said, with scorn. "However, it serves her right. I'm sure she bullied hers. Well, now we must go and do something. Ta-ta!"

Lord Magellan, to whom she offered another casual finger, wanted to know why he was dismissed. If they were going sight-seeing, might he not come with them?"

"Oh no!" said Kitty, calmly. "Sight--seeing with people you don't really know is too trying to the temper. Even with one's best friend it's risky."

"Where are you? May I call?" said the young man.

"We're always out," was Kitty's careless reply. "But--"

She considered--

"Would you like to see the Palazzo Vercelli?"

"That magnificent place on the Grand Canal? Very much."

"Meet me there to-morrow afternoon," said Kitty. "Four o'clock."

"Delighted!" said Lord Magellan, making a note on his shirt-cuff. "And who lives there?"

"My mother," said Kitty, abruptly, and walked away.

Ashe followed her in discomfort. This young man was the son of a certain Lady Magellan, an intimate friend of Lady Tranmore's--one of the noblest women of her generation, pure, high-minded, spiritual, to whom neither an ugly word nor thought was possible. It annoyed him that either he or Kitty should be introducing _her_ son to Madame d'Estrées.

It was really tiresome of Kitty! Rich young men with characters yet indeterminate were not to be lightly brought in contact with Madame d'Estrées. Kitty could not be ignorant of it--poor child! It had been one of her reckless strokes, and Ashe was conscious of a sharp annoyance.

However, he said nothing. He followed his companions from church to church, till pictures became an abomination to him. Then he pleaded letters, and went to the club.

"Will you call on maman to-morrow?" said Kitty, as he turned away, looking at him a little askance.

She knew that he had disapproved of her invitation to Lord Magellan. Why had she given it? She didn't know. There seemed to be a kind of revived mischief and fever in the blood, driving her to these foolish and ill-considered things.

Ashe met her question with a shake of the head and the remark, in a decided tone, that he should be too busy.

Privately he thought it a piece of impertinence that Madame d'Estrées should expect either Kitty or himself to appear in her drawing-room at all. That this implied a complete transformation of his earlier attitude he was well aware; he accepted it with a curious philosophy. When he and Kitty first met he had never troubled his head about such things. If a woman amused or interested him in society, so long as his taste was satisfied she might have as much or as little character as she pleased. It stirred his mocking sense of English hypocrisy that the point should be even raised. But now--how can any individual, he asked himself, with political work to do, affect to despise the opinions and prejudices of society? A politician with great reforms to put through will make no friction round him that he can avoid--unless he is a fool. It weighed sorely, therefore, on his present mind that Madame d'Estrées was in Venice--that she was a person of blemished repute--that he must be and was ashamed of her. It would have been altogether out of consonance with his character to put any obstacle in the way of Kitty's seeing her mother. But he chafed as he had never yet chafed under the humiliation of his relationship to the notorious Margaret Fitzgerald of the forties, who had been old Blackwater's _chère amie_ before she married him, and, as Lady Blackwater, had sacrificed her innocent and defenceless step-daughter to one of her own lovers, in order to secure for him the step-daughter's fortune--black and dastardly deed!

Was it all part of the general growth and concentration that any shrewd observer might have read in William Ashe?--the pressure--enormous, unseen--of the traditional English ideals, English standards, asserting itself at last in a brilliant and paradoxical nature? It had been so--conspicuously--in the case of one of his political predecessors. Lord Melbourne had begun his career as a person of idle habits and imprudent adventures, much given to coarse conversation, and unable to say the simplest thing without an oath. He ended it as the man of scrupulous dignity, tact, and delicacy, who moulded the innocent youth of a girl-queen, to his own lasting honor and England's gratitude. In ways less striking, the same influence of vast responsibilities was perhaps acting upon William Ashe. It had already made him a sterner, tougher, and--no doubt--a greater man.

The defection of William only left Kitty, it seemed, still more greedy of things to see and do. Innumerable sacristans opened all possible doors and unveiled all possible pictures. Bellini succeeded Tintoret, and Carpaccio Bellini. The two sable gondoliers wore themselves out in Kitty's service, and Margaret's kind, round face grew more and more puzzled and distressed. And whence this strange impression that the whole experience was a _flight_ on Kitty's part?--or, rather, that throughout it she was always eagerly expecting, or eagerly escaping from some unknown, unseen pursuer? A glance behind her--a start--a sudden shivering gesture in the shadows of dark churches--these things suggested it, till Margaret herself was caught by the same suppressed excitement that seemed to be alive in Kitty. Did it all point merely to some mental state--to the nervous effects of her illness and her loss?

When they reached home about five o'clock, Kitty was naturally tired out. Margaret put her on the sofa, gave her tea, and tended her, hoping that she might drop asleep before dinner. But just as tea was over, and Kitty was lying curled up, silent and white, with that brooding look which kept Margaret's anxiety about her constantly alive, there was a sudden sound of voices in the anteroom outside.

"Margaret!" cried Kitty, starting up in dismay--"say I'm not at home."

Too late! Their smiling Italian housemaid threw the door open, with the air of one bringing good-fortune. And behind her appeared a tall lady, and an old gentleman hat in hand.

"May we come in, Kitty?" said Mary Lyster, advancing. "Cousin Elizabeth told us you were here."

Kitty had sprung up. The disorder of her fair hair, her white cheeks, and the ghostly thinness of her small, black-robed form drew the curious eyes of Sir Richard. And the oddness of her manner as she greeted them only confirmed the old man's prejudice against her.

However, greeted they were, in some sort of fashion; and Miss French gave them tea. She kept Sir Richard entertained, while Kitty and Mary conversed. They talked perfunctorily of ordinary topics--Venice, its sights, its hotels, and the people staying in them--of Lady Tranmore and various Ashe relations. Meanwhile the inmost thought of each was busy with the other.

Kitty studied the lines of Mary's face and the fashion of her dress.

"She looks much older. And she's not enjoying her life a bit. That's my fault. I spoiled all her chances with Geoffrey--and she knows it. She _hates_ me. Quite right, too."

"Oh, you mean that nonsensical thing last night?" Sir Richard was saying to Margaret French. "Oh no, I didn't go. But Mary, of course, thought she must go. Somebody invited her."

Kitty started.

"You were at the serenata?" she said to Mary.

"Yes, I went with a party from the hotel."

Kitty looked at her. A sudden flush had touched her pale cheeks, and she could not conceal the trembling of her hands.

"That was marvellous, that light on the Salute, wasn't it?"

"Wonderful!--and on the water, too. I saw two or three people I knew--just caught their faces for a second."

"Did you?" said Kitty. And thoughts ran fast through her head. "Did she see Geoffrey?--and does she mean me to understand that she did? How she detests me! If she did see him, of course she supposes that I know all about it, and that he's here for me. Why don't I ask her, straight out, whether she saw him, and make her understand that I don't care twopence?--that she's welcome to him--as far as I'm concerned?"

But some hidden feeling tied her tongue. Mary continued to talk about the serenata, and Kitty was presently conscious that her every word and gesture in reply was closely watched. "Yes, yes, she saw him. Perhaps she'll tell William--or write home to mother?"

And in her excitement she began to chatter fast and loudly, mostly to Sir Richard--repeating some of the Venice tales she had told in the gondola--with much inconsequence and extravagance. The old man listened, his hands on his stick, his eyes on the ground, the expression on his strong mouth hostile or sarcastic. It was a relief to everybody when Ashe's step was heard stumbling up the dark stairs, and the door opened on his friendly and courteous presence.

"Why, Polly!--and Cousin Richard! I wondered where you had hidden yourselves."

Mary's bright, involuntary smile transformed her. Ashe sat down beside her, and they were soon deep in all sorts of gossip--relations, acquaintance, politics, and what not. All Mary's stiffness disappeared. She became the elegant, agreeable woman, of whom dinner-parties were glad. Ashe plunged into the pleasant malice of her talk, which ranged through the good and evil fortunes--mostly the latter--of half his acquaintance; discussed the debts, the love-affairs, and the follies of his political colleagues or Parliamentary foes; how the Foreign Secretary had been getting on at Balmoral--how so-and-so had been ruined at the Derby and restored to sanity and solvency by the Oaks--how Lady Parham, at Hatfield, had been made to know her place by the French Ambassador--and the like; passing thereby a charming half-hour.

Meanwhile Kitty, Margaret French, and Sir Richard kept up intermittent remarks, pausing at every other phrase to gather the crumbs that fell from the table of the other two.

Kitty was very weary, and a dead weight had fallen on her spirits. If Sir Richard had thought her bad form ten minutes before, his unspoken mind now declared her stupid. Meanwhile Kitty was saying to herself, as she watched her husband and Mary:

"I used to amuse William just as well--last year!"

When the door closed on them, Kitty fell back on her cushions with an "ouf!" of relief. William came back in a few minutes from showing the visitors the back way to their hotel, and stood beside his wife with an anxious face.

"They were too much for you, darling. They stayed too long."

"How you and Mary chattered!" said Kitty, with a little pout. But at the same moment she slipped an appealing hand into his.

Ashe clasped the hand, and laughed.

"I always told you she was an excellent gossip."

* * * * *

Sir Richard and Mary pursued their way through the narrow _calles_ that led to the Piazza. Sir Richard was expatiating on Ashe's folly in marrying such a wife.

"She looks like an actress!--and as to her conversation, she began by telling me outrageous stories and ended by not having a word to say about anything. The bad blood of the Bristols, it seems to me, without their brains."

"Oh no, papa! Kitty is very clever. You haven't heard her recite. She was tired to-night."

"Well, I don't want to flatter you, my dear!" said the old man, testily, "but I thought it was pathetic--the way in which Ashe enjoyed your conversation. It showed he didn't get much of it at home."

Mary smiled uncertainly. Her whole nature was still aglow from that contact with Ashe's delightful personality. After months of depression and humiliation, her success with him had somehow restored those illusions on which cheerfulness depends.

How ill Kitty looked--and how conscious! Mary was impetuously certain that Kitty had betrayed her knowledge of Cliffe's presence in Venice; and equally certain that William knew nothing. Poor William!

Well, what can you expect of such a temperament--such a race? Mary's thoughts travelled confusedly towards--and through--some big and dreadful catastrophe.

And then? After it?

It seemed to her that she was once more in the Park Lane drawing-room; the familiar Morris papers and Burne-Jones drawings surrounded her; and she and Elizabeth Tranmore sat, hand in hand, talking of William--a William once more free, after much folly and suffering, to reconstruct his life....

"Here we are," said Sir Richard Lyster, moving down a dark passage towards the brightly lit doorway of their hotel.

With a start--as of one taken red-handed--Mary awoke from her dream.

XX

Madame d'Estrées and her friend, Donna Laura, occupied the _mezzanin_ of the vast Vercelli palace. The palace itself belonged to the head of the Vercelli family. It was a magnificent erection of the late seventeenth century, at this moment half furnished, dilapidated, and forsaken. But the _entresol_ on the eastern side of the _cortile_ was in good condition, and comfortably fitted up for the occasional use of the Principe. As he was wintering in Paris, he had let his rooms at an ordinary commercial rent to his kinswoman, Donna Laura. She, a soured and melancholy woman, unmarried in a Latin society which has small use or kindness for spinsters, had seized on Marguerite d'Estrées--whose acquaintance she had made in a Mont d'Or hotel--and was now keeping her like a caged canary that sings for its food.

Madame d'Estrées was quite willing. So long as she had a sofa on which to sit enthroned, a sufficiency of new gowns, a maid, cigarettes, breakfast in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly, and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the recital of it would surprise no one so much as herself.

It was five o'clock. Madame d'Estrées had just established herself in the silk-panelled drawing-room of Donna Laura's apartment, expectant of visitors, and, in particular, of her daughter.

In begging Kitty to come on this particular afternoon, she had not thought fit to mention that it would be Donna Laura's "day." Had she done so, Kitty, in consideration of her mourning, would perhaps have cried off. Whereas, really--poor, dear child!--what she wanted was distraction and amusement.

And what Madame d'Estrées wanted was the presence beside her, in public, of Lady Kitty Ashe. Kitty had already visited her mother privately, and had explored the antiquities of the Vercelli palace. But Madame d'Estrées was now intent on something more and different.

For in the four years which had now elapsed since the Ashe's marriage this lively lady had known adversity. She had been forced to leave London, as we have seen, by the pressure of certain facts in her past history so ancient and far removed when their true punishment began that she no doubt felt it highly unjust that she should be punished for them at all. Her London debts had swallowed up what then remained to her of fortune; and, afterwards, the allowance from the Ashes was all she had to depend on. Banished to Paris, she fell into a lower stratum of life, at a moment when her faithful and mysterious friend, Markham Warington, was held in Scotland by the first painful symptoms of his sister's last illness, and could do but little for her. She had, in fact, known the sordid shifts and straits of poverty, though the smallest moral effort would have saved her from them. She had kept disreputable company, she had been miserable, and base; and although shame is not easy to persons of her temperament, it may perhaps be said that she was ashamed of this period of her existence. Appeals to the Ashes yielded less and less, and Warington seemed to have forsaken her. She awoke at last to a panic-stricken fear of darker possibilities and more real suffering than any she had yet known, and under the stress of this fear she collapsed physically, writing both to Warington and to the Ashes in a tone of mingled reproach and despair.

The Ashes sent money, and, though Kitty was at the moment not fit to travel, prepared to come. Warington, who had just closed the eyes of his sister, went at once. He was now the last of his family, without any ties that he could not lawfully break. Within two days of his arrival in Paris, Madame d'Estrées had promised to marry him in three months, to break off all her Paris associations, and to give her life henceforward into his somewhat stern hands. The visit to Venice was part of the price that he had had to pay for her decision. Marguerite pleaded, with a shudder, that she must have a little amusement before she went to live in Dumfriesshire; and he had been obliged to acquiesce in her arrangement with Donna Laura--stipulating only that he should be their escort and guardian.

What had moved him to such an act? His reasons can only be guessed at. Warington was a man of religion, a Calvinist by education and inheritance, and of a silent and dreamy temperament. He had been intimate with very few women in his life. His sister had been a second mother to him, and both of them had been the guardians of their younger brother. When this adored brother fell shot through the lungs in the hopeless defence of Lady Blackwater's reputation, it would have been natural enough that Markham should hate the woman who had been the occasion of such a calamity. The sister, a pious and devoted Christian, had indeed hated her, properly and duly, thenceforward. Markham, on the contrary, accepted his brother's last commission without reluctance. In this matter at least Lady Blackwater had not been directly to blame; his mind acquitted her; and her soft, distressed beauty touched his heart. Before he knew where he was she had made an impression upon him that was to be life-long.

Then gradually he awoke to a full knowledge of her character. He suffered, but otherwise it made no difference. Finding it was then impossible to persuade her to marry him, he watched over her as best he could for some years, passing through phases of alternate hope and disgust. His sister's affection for him was clouded by his strange relation to the Jezebel who in her opinion had destroyed their brother. He could not help it; he could only do his best to meet both claims upon him. During her lingering passage to the grave, his sister had nearly severed him from Marguerite d'Estrées. She died, however, just in time, and now here he was in Venice, passing through what seemed to him one of the ante-rooms of life, leading to no very radiant beyond. But, radiant or no, his path lay thither. And at the same time he saw that although Marguerite felt him to be her only refuge from poverty and disgrace, she was painfully afraid of him, and afraid of the life into which he was leading her.

* * * * *

The first guest of the afternoon proved to be Louis Harman, the painter and dilettante, who had been in former days one of the _habitués_ of the house in St. James's Place. This perfectly correct yet tolerant gentleman was wintering in Venice in order to copy the Carpaccios in San Giorgio dei Schiavoni. His copies were not good, but they were all promised to artistic fair ladies, and the days which the painter spent upon them were happy and harmless.

He came in gayly, delighted to see Madame d'Estrées in flourishing circumstances again, delivered apparently from the abyss into which he had found her sliding on the occasion of various chance visits of his own to Paris. Warington's doing, apparently--queer fellow!

"Well!--I saw Lady Kitty in the Piazza this afternoon," he said, as he sat down beside his hostess. Donna Laura had not yet appeared. "Very thin and fragile! But, by Jove! how these English beauties hold their own."

"Irish, if you please," said Madame d'Estrées, smiling.

Harman bowed to her correction, admiring at the same time both the toilette and the good looks of his companion. Dropping his voice, he asked, with a gingerly and sympathetic air, whether all was now well with the Ashe ménage. He had been sorry to hear certain gossip of the year before.

Madame d'Estrées laughed. Yes, she understood that Kitty had behaved like a little goose with that _poseur_ Cliffe. But that was all over--long ago.

"Why, the silly child has everything she wants! William is devoted to her--and it can't be long before he succeeds."

"No need to go trifling with poets," said Harman, smiling. "By-the-way, do you know that Geoffrey Cliffe is in Venice?"

Madame d'Estrées opened her eyes. "Est-il possible? Oh! but Kitty has forgotten all about him."

"Of course," said Harman. "I am told he has been seen with the Ricci."

Madame d'Estrées raised her shoulders this time in addition to her eyes. Then her face clouded.

"I believe," she said, slowly, "that woman may come here this afternoon."

"Is she a friend of yours?" Harman's tone expressed his surprise.

"I knew her in Paris," said Madame d'Estrées, with some hesitation, "when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common acquaintance. And now--frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most appalling temper!--and she sticks at nothing."

Harman wondered what the exact truth of this might be, but did not inquire. And as guests--including Colonel Warington--began to arrive, and Donna Laura appeared and began to dispense tea, the _tête-à-tête_ was interrupted.

Donna Laura's _salon_ was soon well filled, and Harman watched the gathering with curiosity. As far as it concerned Madame d'Estrées--and she was clearly the main attraction which had brought it together--it represented, he saw, a phase of social recovery. A few prominent Englishmen, passing through Venice, came in without their wives, making perfunctory excuse for the absence of these ladies. But the cosmopolitans of all kinds, who crowded in--Anglo-Italians, foreign diplomats, travellers of many sorts, and a few restless Venetians, bearing the great names of old, to whom their own Venice was little more than a place of occasional sojourn--made satisfactory amends for these persons of too long memories. In all these travellers' towns, Venice, Rome, and Florence, there is indeed a society, and a very agreeable society, which is wholly irresponsible, and asks few or no questions. The elements of it meet as strangers, and as strangers they mostly part. But between the meeting and the parting there lies a moment, all the gayer, perhaps, because of its social uncertainty and freedom.