Chapter V: Part II: Three Years After (1)

"The world an ancient murderer is."

VII

"Her ladyship will be in before six, my lady. I was to be sure and ask you to wait, if you came before, and to tell you that her ladyship had gone to Madame Fanchette about her dress for the ball."

So said Lady Kitty's maid. Lady Tranmore hesitated, then said she would wait, and asked that Master Henry might be brought down.

The maid went for the child, and Lady Tranmore entered the drawing-room. The Ashes had been settled since their marriage in a house in Hill Street--a house to which Kitty had lost her heart at first sight. It was old and distinguished, covered here and there with eighteenth-century decoration, once, no doubt, a little florid and coarse beside the finer work of the period, but now agreeably blunted and mellowed by time. Kitty had had her impetuous and decided way with the furnishing of it; and, though Lady Tranmore professed to admire it, the result was, in truth, too French and too pagan for her taste. Her own room reflected the rising worship of Morris and Burse-Jones, of which, indeed, she had been an adept from the beginning. Her walls were covered by the well-known pomegranate or jasmine or sunflower patterns; her hangings were of a mystic greenish-blue; her pictures were drawn either from the Italian primitives or their modern followers. Celtic romance, Christian symbolism, all that was touching, other-worldly, and obscure--our late English form, in fact, of the great Romantic reaction--it was amid influences of this kind that Lady Tranmore lived and fed her own imagination. The dim, suggestive, and pathetic; twilight rather than dawn, autumn rather than spring; yearning rather than fulfilment; "the gleam" rather than noon-day: it was in this half-lit, richly colored sphere that she and most of her friends saw the tent of Beauty pitched.

But Kitty would have none of it. She quoted French sceptical remarks about the legs and joints of the Burne-Jones knights; she declared that so much pattern made her dizzy; and that the French were the only nation in the world who understood a _salon_, whether as upholstery or conversation. Accordingly, in days when these things were rare, the girl of eighteen made her new husband provide her with white-panelled walls, lightly gilt, and with a Persian carpet of which the mass was of a plain, blackish gray, and only the border was allowed to flower. A few Louis-Quinze girandoles on the walls, a Vernis-Martin screen, an old French clock, two or three inlaid cabinets, and a collection of lightly built chairs and settees in the French mode--this was all she would allow; and while Lady Tranmore's room was always crowded, Kitty's, which was much smaller, had always an air of space. French books were scattered here and there; and only one picture was admitted. That was a Watteau sketch of a group from "L'Embarquement pour Cythère." Kitty adored it; Lady Tranmore thought it absurd and disagreeable.

As she entered the room now, on this May afternoon, she looked round it with her usual distaste. On several of the chairs large illustrated books were lying. They contained pictures of seventeenth and eighteenth century costume--one of them displayed a colored engraving of a brilliant Madame de Pompadour, by Boucher.

The maid who followed her into the room began to remove the books.

"Her ladyship has been choosing her costume, my lady," she explained, as she closed some of the volumes.

"Is it settled?" said Lady Tranmore.

The maid replied that she believed so, and, bringing a volume which had been laid aside with a mark in it, she opened on a fantastic plate of Madame de Longueville, as Diana, in a gorgeous hunting-dress.

Lady Tranmore looked at it in silence; she thought it unseemly, with its bare ankles and sandalled feet, and likely to be extremely expensive. For this Diana of the Fronde sparkled with jewels from top to toe, and Lady Tranmore felt certain that Kitty had already made William promise her the counterpart of the magnificent diamond crescent that shone in the coiffure of the goddess.

"It really seemed to be the only one that suited her ladyship," said the maid, in a deprecating voice.

"I dare say it will look very well," said Lady Tranmore. "And Fanchette is to make it?"

"If her ladyship is not too late," said the maid, smiling. "But she has taken such a long time to make up her mind--"

"And Fanchette, of course, is driven to death. All the world seems to have gone mad about this ball."

Lady Tranmore shrugged her shoulders in a slight disgust. She was not going. Since her elder son's death she had had no taste for spectacles of the kind. But she knew very well that fashionable London was talking and thinking of nothing else; she heard that the print-room of the British Museum was every day besieged by an eager crowd of fair ladies, claiming the services of the museum officials from dewy morn till eve; that historic costumes and famous jewels were to be lavished on the affair; that those who were not invited had not even the resource of contempt, so unquestioned and indubitable was the prospect of a really magnificent spectacle; and that the dress-makers of Paris and London, if they survived the effort, would reap a marvellous harvest.

"And Mr. Ashe--do you know if he is going, after all?" she asked of the maid as the latter was retreating.

"Mr. Ashe says he will, if he may wear just court-dress," said the maid, smiling. "Not unless. And her ladyship's afraid it won't be allowed."

"She'll make him go in costume," thought Lady Tranmore. "And he will do it, or anything, to avoid a scene."

The maid retired, and Lady Tranmore was left alone. As she sat waiting, a thought occurred to her. She rang for the butler.

"Where is the _Times_?" she asked, when he appeared. The man replied that it was no doubt in Mr. Ashe's room, and he would bring it.

"Kitty has probably not looked at it," thought the visitor. When the paper arrived she turned at once to the Parliamentary report. It contained an important speech by Ashe in the House the night before. Lady Tranmore had been disturbed in the reading of it that morning, and had still a few sentences to finish. She read them with pride, then glanced again at the leading article on the debate, and at the flattering references it contained to the knowledge, courtesy, and debating power of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

"Mr. Ashe," said the _Times_, "has well earned the promotion he is now sure to receive before long. In those important rearrangements of some of the higher offices which cannot be long delayed, Mr. Ashe is clearly marked out for a place in the cabinet. He is young, but he has already done admirable service; and there can be no question that he has a great future before him."

Lady Tranmore put down the paper and fell into a reverie. A great future? Yes--if Kitty permitted--if Kitty could be managed. At present it appeared to William's mother that the caprices of his wife were endangering the whole development of his career. There were wheels within wheels, and the newspapers knew very little about them.

Three years, was it, since the marriage? She looked back to her dismay when William brought her the news, though it seemed to her that in some sort she had foreseen it from the moment of his first mention of Kitty Bristol--with its eager appeal to her kindness, and that new and indefinable something in voice and manner which put her at once on the alert.

Ought she to have opposed it more strongly? She had, indeed, opposed it; and for a whole wretched week she who had never yet gainsaid him in anything had argued and pleaded with her son, attempting at the same time to bring in his uncles to wrestle with him, seeing that his poor paralyzed father was of no account, and so to make a stubborn family fight of it. But she had been simply disarmed and beaten down by William's sweetness, patience, and good-humor. Never had he been so determined, and never so lovable.

It had been made abundantly plain to her that no wife, however exacting and adorable, should ever rob her, his mother, of one tittle of his old affection--nay, that, would she only accept Kitty, only take the little forlorn creature into the shelter of her motherly arms, even a more tender and devoted attention than before, on the part of her son, would be surely hers. He spoke, moreover, the language of sound sense about his proposed bride. That he was in love, passionately in love, was evident; but there were moments when he could discuss Kitty, her family, her bringing-up, her gifts and defects, with the same cool acumen, the same detachment, apparently, he might have given, say, to the Egyptian or the Balkan problem. Lady Tranmore was not invited to bow before a divinity; she was asked to accept a very gifted and lovely child, often troublesome and provoking, but full of a glorious promise which only persons of discernment, like herself and Ashe, could fully realize. He told her, with a laugh, that she could never have behaved even tolerably to a stupid daughter-in-law. Whereas, let London and society and a few years of love and living do their work, and Kitty would make one of the leading women of her time, as Lady Tranmore had been before her. "You'll help her, you'll train her, you'll put her in the way," he had said, kissing his mother's hand. "And you'll see that in the end we shall both of us be so conceited to have had the making of her there'll be no holding us."

Well, she had yielded--of course she had yielded. She had explained the matter, so far as she could, to the dazed wits of her paralyzed husband. She had propitiated the family on both sides; she had brought Kitty to stay with her, and had advised on the negotiations which banished Madame d'Estrées from London and the British Isles, in return for a handsome allowance and the payment of her debts; and, finally, she had with difficulty allowed the Grosvilles to provide the trousseau and arrange the marriage from Grosville Park, so eager had she grown in her accepted task.

And there had been many hours of high reward. Kitty had thrown herself at first upon William's mother with all the effusion possible. She had been docile, caressing, brilliant. Lady Tranmore had become almost as proud of her gifts, her social effect, and her fast advancing beauty as Ashe himself. Kitty's whims and humors; her passion for this person, and her hatred of that; her love of splendor and indifference to debt; her contempt of opinion and restraint, seemed to her, as to Ashe, the mere crude growth of youth. When she looked at Ashe, so handsome, agreeable, and devoted, at his place and prestige in the world, his high intelligence and his personal attraction, Ashe's mother must needs think that Kitty's mere cleverness would soon reveal to her her extraordinary good-fortune; and that whereas he was now at her feet, she before long would be at his.

Three years! Lady Tranmore looked back upon them with feelings that wavered like smoke before a wind. A year of excitement, a year of illness, a year of extravagance, shaken moreover by many strange gusts of temper and caprice, it was so she might have summarized them. First, a most promising début in London. Kitty welcomed on all hands with enthusiasm as Ashe's wife and her own daughter-in-law, fêted to the top of her bent, smiled on at Court, flattered by the country-houses, always exquisitely dressed, smiling and eager, apparently full of ambition for Ashe no less than for herself, a happy, notorious, busy little person, with a touch of wildness that did but give edge to her charm and keep the world talking.

Then, the birth of the boy, and Kitty's passionate, ungovernable recoil from the deformity that showed itself almost immediately after his birth--a form of infantile paralysis involving a slight but incurable lameness. Lady Tranmore could recall weeks of remorseful fondling, alternating with weeks of neglect; continued illness and depression on Kitty's part, settling after a while into a petulant melancholy for which the baby's defect seemed but an inadequate cause; Ashe's tender anxiety, his willingness to throw up Parliament, office, everything, that Kitty might travel and recover; and those huge efforts by which she and his best friends in the House had held him back--when Kitty, it seemed, cared little or nothing whether he sacrificed his future or not. Finally, she herself, with the assistance of a new friend of Kitty's, had become Kitty's nurse, had taken her abroad when Ashe could not be spared, had watched over her, and humored her, and at last brought her back--so the doctors said--restored.

Was it really recovery? At any rate, Lady Tranmore was often inclined to think that since the return to London--now about a twelvemonth since--both she and William had had to do with a different Kitty. Young as she still was, the first exquisite softness of the expanding life was gone; things harder, stranger, more inexplicable than any which those who knew her best had yet perceived, seemed now and then to come to the surface, like wreckage in a summer sea.

* * * * *

The opening door disturbed these ponderings. The nurse appeared, carrying the little boy. Lady Tranmore took him on her knee and caressed him. He was a piteous, engaging child, generally very docile, but liable at times to storms of temper out of all proportion to the fragility of his small person. His grandmother was inclined to look upon his passions as something external and inflicted--the entering-in of the Blackwater devil to plague a tiny creature that, normally, was of a divine and clinging sweetness. She would have taught him religion, as his only shield against himself; but neither his father nor his mother was religious; and Harry was likely to grow up a pagan.

He leaned now against her breast, and she, whose inmost nature was maternity, delighted in the pressure of the tiny body, crooning songs to him when they were left alone, and pausing now and then to pity and kiss the little shrunken foot that hung beside the other.

She was interrupted by a soft entrance and the rustle of a dress.

"Ah, Margaret!" she said, looking round and smiling.

The girl who had come in approached her, shook hands, and looked down at the baby. She was fair-haired and wore spectacles; her face was round and childish, her eyes round and blue, with certain lines about them, however, which showed that she was no longer in her first youth.

"I came to see if I could do anything to-day for Kitty. I know she is very busy about the ball--"

"Head over ears apparently," said Lady Tranmore. "Everybody has lost their wits. I see Kitty has chosen her dress."

"Yes, if Fanchette can make it all right. Poor Kitty! She has been in such a state of mind. I think I'll go on with these invitations."

And, taking off her gloves and hat, Margaret French went to the writing-table like one intimately acquainted with the room and its affairs, took up a pile of cards and envelopes which lay upon it, and, bringing them to Lady Tranmore's side, began to work upon them.

"I did about half yesterday," she explained; "but I see Kitty hasn't been able to touch them, and it is really time they were out."

"For their party next week?"

"Yes. I hope Kitty won't tire herself out. It has been a rush lately."

"Does she ever rest?"

"Never--as far as I can see. And I am afraid she has been very much worried."

"About that silly affair with Prince Stephan?" said Lady Tranmore.

Margaret French nodded. "She vows that she meant no harm, and did no harm, and that it has been all malice and exaggeration. But one can see she has been hurt."

"Well, if you ask me," said Lady Tranmore, in a low voice, "I think she deserved to be."

Their eyes met, the girl's full of a half-smiling, half-soft consideration. Lady Tranmore, on the other hand, had flushed proudly, as though the mere mention of the matter to which she had referred had been galling to her. Kitty, in fact, had just been guilty of an escapade which had set the town talking, and even found its way here and there in the newspapers. The heir to a European monarchy had been recently visiting London. A romantic interest surrounded him; for a lady, not of a rank sufficiently high to mate with his, had lately drowned herself for love of him, and the young man's melancholy good looks, together with the magnificent apathy of his manner, drew after him a chain of gossip. Kitty failed to meet him in society; certain invitations that for once she coveted did not arrive; and in a fit of pique she declared that she would make acquaintance with him in her own way. On a certain occasion, when the Princeling was at the play, his attention was drawn to a small and dazzling creature in a box opposite his own. Presently, however, there was a commotion in this box. The dazzling creature had fainted; and rumor sent round the name of Lady Kitty Ashe. The Prince despatched an equerry to make inquiries, and the inquiries were repeated that evening in Hill Street. Recovery was prompt, and the Prince let it be known that he wished to meet the lady. Invitations from high quarters descended upon Kitty; she bore herself with an engaging carelessness, and the melancholy youth was soon spending far more pains upon her than he had yet been known to spend upon any other English beauties presented to him. Ashe and Kitty's friends laughed; the old general in charge of the Princeling took alarm. And presently Kitty's audacities, alack, carried away her discretion; she began, moreover, to boast of her ruse. Whispers crept round; and the general's ears were open. In a few days Kitty's triumph went the way of all earthly things. At a Court ball, to which her vanity had looked forward, unwarned, the Prince passed her with glassy eyes, returning the barest bow to her smiling courtesy. She betrayed nothing; but somehow the thing got out, and set in motion a perfect hurricane of talk. It was rumored that the old Prime Minister, Lord Parham, had himself said a caustic word to Lady Kitty, that Royalty was annoyed, and that William Ashe had for once scolded his wife seriously.

Lady Tranmore was well aware that there was, at any rate, no truth in the last report; but she also knew that there was a tone of sharpness in the London chatter that was new with regard to Kitty. It was as though a certain indulgence was wearing out, and what had been amusement was passing into criticism.

She and Margaret French discussed the matter a little, _sotto voce_, while Margaret went on with the invitations and Lady Tranmore made a French toy dance and spin for the babe's amusement. Their tone was one of close and friendly intimacy, an intimacy based clearly upon one common interest--their relation to Kitty. Margaret French was one of those beings in whom, for our salvation, this halting, hurried world of ours is still on the whole rich. She was unmarried, thirty-five, and poor. She lived with her brother, a struggling doctor, and she had come across Kitty in the first months of Kitty's married life, on some fashionable Soldiers' Aid Committee, where Margaret had done the work and Kitty with the other great ladies had reaped the fame. Kitty had developed a fancy for her, and presently could not live without her. But Margaret, though it soon became evident that she had taken Kitty and, in due time, the child--Ashe, too, for the matter of that--deep into her generous heart, preserved a charming measure in the friendship offered her. She would owe Kitty nothing, either socially or financially. When Kitty's smart friends appeared, she vanished. Nobody in her own world ever heard her mention the name of Lady Kitty Ashe, largely as that name was beginning to figure in the gossip of the day. But there were few things concerning the Hill Street ménage that Lady Tranmore could not safely and rightly discuss with her; and even Ashe himself went to her for counsel.

"I am afraid this has made things worse than ever with the Parhams," said Lady Tranmore, presently.

Margaret shook her head anxiously.

"I hope Kitty won't throw over their dinner next week."

"She is talking of it!"

"Yesterday she had almost made up her mind," said Margaret, reluctantly. "Perhaps you will persuade her. But she has been terribly angry with Lord Parham--and with Lady P., too."

"And it was to be a reconciliation dinner, after the old nonsense between her and Lady Parham," sighed Lady Tranmore. "It was planned for Kitty entirely. And she is to act something, isn't she, with that young De La Rivière from the embassy? I believe the Princess is coming--expressly to meet her. I have been hearing of it on all sides. She _can't_ throw it over!"

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. "I believe she will."

The older lady's face showed a sudden cloud of indignation.

"William must really put his foot down," she said, in a low, decided voice. "It is, of course, most important--just now--"

She said no more, but Margaret French looked up, and they exchanged glances.

"Let's hope," said Margaret, "that Mr. Ashe will be able to pacify her. Ah, there she is."

For the front door closed heavily, and instantly the house was aware from top to toe of a flutter of talk and a frou-frou of skirts. Kitty ran up the stairs and into the drawing-room, still talking, apparently, to the footman behind her, and stopped short at the sight of Lady Tranmore and Margaret. A momentary shadow passed across her face; then she came forward all smiles.

"Why, they never told me down-stairs!" she said, taking a hand of each caressingly, and slipping into a seat between them. "Have I lost much of you?"

"Well, I must soon be off," said Lady Tranmore. "Harry has been entertaining me."

"Oh, Harry; is he there?" said Kitty, in another voice, perceiving the child behind his grandmother's dress as he sat on the floor, where Lady Tranmore had just deposited him.

The baby turned towards his beautiful mother, and, as he saw her, a little wandering smile began to spread from his uncertain lips to his deep-brown eyes, till his whole face shone, held to hers as to a magnet, in a still enchantment.

"Come!" said Kitty, holding out her hands.

With difficulty the child pulled himself towards her, moving in sideway fashion along the floor, and dragging the helpless foot after him. Again the shadow crossed Kitty's face. She caught him up, kissed him, and moved to ring the bell.

"Shall I take him up-stairs?" said Margaret.

"Why, he seems to have only just come down!" said Lady Tranmore. "Must he go?"

"He can come down again afterwards," said Kitty. "I want to talk to you. Take him, Margaret."

The babe went without a whimper, still following his mother with his eyes.

"He looks rather frail," said Lady Tranmore. "I hope you'll soon be sending him to the country, Kitty."

"He's very well," said Kitty. Then she took off her hat and looked at the invitations Margaret had been writing.

"Heavens, I had forgotten all about them! What an angel is Margaret! I really can't remember these things. They ought to do themselves by clock-work. And now Fanchette and this ball are enough to drive one wild."

She lifted her hands to her face and pressed back the masses of fair hair that were tumbling round it, with a gesture of weariness.

"Fanchette can make your dress?"

"She says she will, but I couldn't make her understand anything I wanted. She is off her head! They all are. By-the-way, did you hear of Madeleine Alcot's. telegram to Worth?"

"No."

Kitty laughed--a laugh musical but malicious. Mrs. Alcot, married in the same month as herself, had been her companion and rival from the beginning. They called each other "Kitty" and "Madeleine," and saw each other frequently; why, Lady Tranmore could never discover, unless on the principle that it is best to keep your enemy under observation.

"She telegraphed to Worth as soon as her invitation arrived, 'Envoyez tout de suite costume Vénus. Réponse.' The answer came at dinner--she had a dinner-party--and she read it aloud: 'Remercîments. Il n'y en a pas.' Isn't it delightful?"

"Very neat," said Lady Tranmore, smiling. "When did you invent that? You, I hear, are to be Diana?"

Kitty made a gesture of despair.

"Ask Fanchette--it depends on her. There is no one but she in London who can do it. Oh, by-the-way, what's Mary going to be? I suppose a Madonna of sorts."

"Not at all," said Lady Tranmore, dryly; "she has chosen a Sir Joshua costume I found for her."

"A vocation missed," said Kitty, shaking her head. "She ought to have been a 'Vestal Virgin' at least.... Do you know that you look _such_ a duck this afternoon!" The speaker put up two small hands and pulled and patted at the black lace strings of Lady Tranmore's hat, which were tied under the delicately wrinkled white of her very distinguished chin.

"This hat suits you so--you are such a _grande dame_ in it. Ah! Je t'adore!"

And Kitty softly took the chin aforesaid into her hands, and dropped a kiss on Lady Tranmore's cheek, which reddened a little under the sudden caress.

"Don't be a goose, Kitty." But Elizabeth Tranmore stooped forward all the same and returned the kiss heartily. "Now tell me what you're going to wear at the Parhams'."

Kitty rose deliberately, went to the bell and rang it.

"It must be quite time for tea."

"You haven't answered my question, Kitty."

"Haven't I?" The butler entered. "Tea, please, Wilson, at once."

"Kitty!--"

Lady Kitty seated herself defiantly a short distance from her mother-in-law and crossed her hands on her lap.

"I am not going to the Parhams'."

"Kitty!--what do you mean?"

"I am not going to the Parhams'," repeated Kitty, slowly. "They should behave a little more considerately to me if they want to get me to amuse their guests for them."

At this moment Margaret French re-entered the room. Lady Tranmore turned to her with a gesture of distress.

"Oh, Margaret knows," said Kitty. "I told her yesterday."

"The Parhams?" said Margaret.

Kitty nodded. Margaret paused, with her hand on the back of Lady Tranmore's chair, and there was a short silence. Then Lady Tranmore began, in a tone that endeavored not to be too serious:

"I don't know how you're going to get out of it, my dear. Lady Parham has asked the Princess, first because she wished to come, secondly as an olive-branch to you. She has taken the greatest pains about the dinner; and afterwards there is to be an evening party to hear you, just the right size, and just the right people."

"Cela m'est égal," said Kitty, "par-faite-ment égal! I am not going."

"What possible excuse can you invent?"

"I shall have a cold, the most atrocious cold imaginable. I take to my bed just two hours before it is time to dress. My letter reaches Lady Parham on the stroke of eight."

"Kitty, you would be doing a thing perfectly unheard of--most rude--most unkind!"

The stiff, slight figure, like a strained wand, did not waver for a moment before the grave indignation of the older woman.

"I should for once be paying off a score that has run on too long."

"You and Lady Parham had agreed to make friends, and let bygones be bygones."

"That was before last week."

"Before Lord Parham said--what annoyed you?"

Kitty's eyes flamed.

"Before Lord Parham humiliated me in public--or tried to."

"Dear Kitty, he was annoyed, and said a sharp thing; but he is an old man, and for William's sake, surely, you can forgive it. And Lady Parham had nothing to do with it."

"She has not written to me to apologize," said Kitty, with a most venomous calm. "Don't talk about it, mother. It will hurt you, and I am determined. Lady Parham has patronized or snubbed me ever since I married--when she hasn't been setting my best friends against me. She is false, false, _false_!" Kitty struck her hands together with an emphatic gesture. "And Lord Parham said a thing to me last week I shall never forgive. Voilà! Now I mean to have done with it!"

"And you choose to forget altogether that Lord Parham is William's political chief--that William's affairs are in a critical state, and everything depends on Lord Parham--that it is not seemly, not possible, that William's wife should publicly slight Lady Parham, and through her the Prime Minister--at this moment of all moments."

Lady Tranmore breathed fast.

"William will not expect me to put up with insults," said Kitty, also beginning to show emotion.

"But can't you see that--just now especially--you ought to think of nothing--_nothing_--but William's future and William's career?"

"William will never purchase his career at my expense."

"Kitty, dear, listen," cried Lady Tranmore, in despair, and she threw herself into arguments and appeals to which Kitty listened quite unmoved for some twenty minutes. Margaret French, feeling herself an uncomfortable third, tried several times to steal away. In vain. Kitty's peremptory hand retained her. She could not escape, much as she wished it, from the wrestle between the two women--on the one side the mother, noble, already touched with age, full of dignity and protesting affection; on the other the wife, still little more than a child in years, vibrating through all her slender frame with passion and insolence, more beautiful than usual by virtue of the very fire which possessed her--a mænad at bay.

Lady Tranmore had just begun to waver in a final despair when the door opened and William Ashe entered.

He looked in astonishment at his mother and wife. Then in a flash he understood, and, with an involuntary gesture of fatigue, he turned to go.

"William!" cried his mother, hurrying after him, "don't go. Kitty and I were disputing; but it is nothing, dear! Don't go, you look so tired. Can you stay for dinner?"

"Well, that was my intention," said Ashe, with a smile, as he allowed himself to be brought back. "But Kitty seems in the clouds."

For Kitty had not moved an inch to greet him. She sat in a high-back chair, one foot crossed over the other, one hand supporting her cheek, looking straight before her with shining eyes.

Lady Tranmore laid a hand on her shoulder.

"We won't talk any more about it now, Kitty, will we?"

Kitty's pinched lips opened enough to emit the words:

"Perhaps William had better understand--"

"Goodness!" cried Ashe. "Is it the Parhams? Send them, Kitty, if you please, to ten thousand _diables_! You won't go to their dinner? Well, don't go! Please yourself--and hang the expense! Come and give me some dinner--there's a dear."

He bent over her and kissed her hair.

Lady Tranmore began to speak; then, with a mighty effort, restrained herself and began to look for her parasol. Kitty did not move. Lady Tranmore said a muffled good-bye and went. And this time Margaret French insisted on going with her.

* * * * *

When Ashe returned to the drawing-room, he found his wife still in the same position, very pale and very wild.

"I have told your mother, William, what I intend to do about the Parhams."

"Very well, dear. Now she knows."

"She says it will ruin your career."

"Did she? We'll talk about that presently. We have had a nasty scene in the House with the Irishmen, and I'm famished. Go and change, there's a dear. Dinner's just coming in."

Kitty went reluctantly. She came down in a white, flowing garment, with a small green wreath in her hair, which, together with the air of a storm which still enwrapped her, made her more mænad-like than ever. Ashe took no notice, gave her a laughing account of what had passed in the House, and ate his dinner.

Afterwards, when they were alone, and he was just about to return to the House, she made a swift rush across the dining-room, and caught his coat with both hands.

"William, I can't go to that dinner--it would kill me!"

"How you repeat yourself, darling!" he said, with a smile. "I suppose you'll give Lady Parham decent notice. What'll you do? Get a doctor's certificate and go away?"

Kitty panted. "Not at all. I shall not tell her till an hour before."

Ashe whistled.

"War? I see. Open war. Very well. Then we shall get to Venice for Easter."

Kitty fell back.

"What do you mean?"

"Very plain, isn't it? But what does it matter? Venice will be delightful, and there are plenty of good men to take my place."

"Lord Parham would pass you over?"

"Not at all. But I can't work in public with a man whom I must cut in private. It wouldn't amuse me. So if you're decided, Kitty, write to Danieli's for rooms."

He lit his cigarette, and went out with a perfect nonchalance and good-temper.

* * * * *

Kitty was to have gone to a ball. She countermanded her maid's preparations, and sent the maid to bed. In due time all the servants went to bed, the front door being left on the latch as usual for Ashe's late return. About midnight a little figure slipped into the child's nursery. The nurse was fast asleep. Kitty sat beside the child, motionless, for an hour, and when Ashe let himself into the house about two o'clock he heard a little rustle in the hall, and there stood Kitty, waiting for him.

"Kitty, what are you about?" he said, in pretended amazement. But in reality he was not astonished at all. His life for months past had been pitched in a key of extravagance and tumult. He had been practically certain that he should find Kitty in the hall.

With great tenderness he half led, half carried her up-stairs. She clung to him as passionately as, before dinner, she had repulsed him. When they reached their room, the tired man, dropping with sleep, after a Parliamentary wrestle in which every faculty had been taxed to the utmost, took his wife in his arms; and there Kitty sobbed and talked herself into a peace of complete exhaustion. In this state she was one of the most exquisite of human beings, with words, tone, and gestures of a heavenly softness and languor. The evil spirit went out of her, and she was all ethereal tenderness, sadness, and remorse. For more than two years, scenes like this had, in Ashe's case, melted into final delight and intoxication which more than effaced the memory of what had gone before. Now for several months he had dreaded the issue of the crisis, no less than the crisis itself. It left him unnerved as though some morbid sirocco had passed over him.

When Kitty at last had fallen asleep, Ashe stood for some time beside his dressing-room window, looking absently into the cloudy night, too tired even to undress. A gusty northwest wind tore down the street and beat against the windows. The unrest without increased the tension of his mind and body. Like Lady Tranmore, he had, as it were, stepped back from his life, and was looking at it--the last three years of it in particular--as a whole. What was the net result of those years? Where was he? Whither were he and Kitty going? A strange pang shot through him. The mere asking of the question had been as the lifting of the lamp of Psyche.

The scene that night in the House of Commons had been for him a scene of conflict; in the main, also, of victory. His virile powers, capacities, and ambitions had been at their height. He had felt the full spell of the English political life, with all its hard fighting joy, the exhilaration which flows from the vastness of the interests on which it turns, and the intricate appeal it makes, in the case of a man like himself, to a hundred inherited aptitudes, tastes, and traditions.

And here he stood in the darkness, wondering whether indeed the best of his life were not over--the prey of forebodings as strong and vagrant as the gusts outside.

Birds of the night! He forced himself to bed, and slept heavily. When he woke up, the May sun was shining into his room. Kitty, in the freshest of morning dresses, was sitting on his bed like a perching bird, waiting impatiently till his eyes should open and she could ask him his opinion on her dress for the ball. The savor and joy of life returned upon him in a flood. Kitty was the prettiest thing ever seen; he had scored off those Tory fellows the night before; the Parhams' dinner was all right; and life was once more kind, manageable, and full of the most agreeable possibilities. A certain indolent impatience in him recoiled from the mere recollection of the night before. The worry was over; why think of it again?

VIII

Meanwhile Lady Tranmore had reached home, and after one of those pathetic hours in her husband's room which made the secret and sacred foundation of her daily life, she expected Mary Lyster, who was to dine at Tranmore House before the two ladies presented themselves at a musical party given by the French Ambassadress. Before her guest's arrival, Lady Tranmore wandered about her rooms, unable to rest, unable even to read the evening papers on Ashe's speech, so possessed was she still by her altercation with Kitty, and by the foreboding sense of what it meant. William's future was threatened; and the mother whose whole proud heart had been thrown for years into every successful effort and every upward step of her son, was up in arms.

Mary Lyster arrived to the minute. She came in, a tall gliding woman, her hair falling in rippled waves on either side of her face, which in its ample comeliness and placidity reminded the Italianate Lady Tranmore of many faces well known to her in early Siennese or Florentine art. Mary's dress to-night was of a noble red, and the glossy brown of her hair made a harmony both with her dress and with the whiteness of her neck that contented the fastidious eye of her companion. "Polly" was now thirty, in the prime of her good looks. Lady Tranmore's affection for her, which had at one time even included the notion that she might possibly become William Ashe's wife, did not at all interfere with a shrewd understanding of her limitations. But she was daughterless herself; her family feeling was strong; and Mary's society was an old and pleasant habit one could ill have parted with. In her company, moreover, Mary was at her best.

Elizabeth Tranmore never discussed her daughter-in-law with her cousin. Loyalty to William forbade it, no less than a strong sense of family dignity. For Mary had spoken once--immediately after the engagement--with energy--nay, with passion; prophesying woe and calamity. Thenceforward it was tacitly agreed between them that all root-and-branch criticism of Kitty and her ways was taboo. Mary was, indeed, on apparently good terms with her cousin's wife. She dined occasionally at the Ashes', and she and Kitty met frequently under the wing of Lady Tranmore. There was no cordiality between them, and Kitty was often sharply or sulkily certain that Mary was to be counted among those hostile forces with which, in some of her moods, the world seemed to her to bristle. But if Mary kept, in truth, a very sharp tongue for many of her intimates on the subject of Kitty, Lady Tranmore at least was determined to know nothing about it.

On this particular evening, however, Lady Tranmore's self-control failed her, for the first time in three years. She had not talked five minutes with her guest before she perceived that Mary's mind was, in truth, brimful of gossip--the gossip of many drawing-rooms--as to Kitty's escapade with the Prince, Kitty's relations to Lady Partham, Kitty's parties, and Kitty's whims. The temptation was too great; her own guard broke down.

"I hear Kitty is furious with the Parhams," said Mary, as the two ladies sat together after their rapid dinner. It was a rainy night, and the fire to which they had drawn up was welcome.

Lady Tranmore shook her head sadly.

"I don't know where it is to end," she said, slowly.

"Lady Parham told me yesterday--you don't mind my repeating it?"--Mary looked up with a smile--"she was still dreadfully afraid that Kitty would play her some trick about next Friday. She knows that Kitty detests her."

"Oh no," said Lady Tranmore, in a vague voice, "Kitty couldn't--impossible!"

Mary turned an observant eye upon her companion's conscious and troubled air, and drew conclusions not far from the truth.

"And it's all so awkward, isn't it?" she said, with sympathy, "when apparently Lady Parham is as much Prime Minister as he is."

For in those days certain great houses and political ladies, though not at the zenith of their power, were still, in their comparative decline, very much to be reckoned with. When Lady Parham talked longer than usual with the French Ambassador, his Austrian and German colleagues wrote anxious despatches to their governments; when a special mission to the East of great importance had to be arranged, nobody imagined that Lord Parham had very much to do with the appointment of the commissioner, who happened to have just engaged himself to Lady Parham's second girl. No young member on the government side, if he wanted office, neglected Lady Parham's invitations, and admission to her more intimate dinners was still almost as much coveted as similar favors had been a generation before in the case of Lady Jersey, or still earlier, in that of Lady Holland. She was a small old woman, with a shrewish face, a waxen complexion, and a brown wig. In spite of short sight, she saw things that escaped most other people; her tongue was rarely at a loss; she was, on the whole, a good friend, though never an unreflecting one; and what she forgave might be safely reckoned as not worth resenting.

Elizabeth Tranmore received Mary's remark with reluctant consent. Lady Parham--from the English aristocratic stand-point--was not well-born. She had been the daughter of a fashionable music-master, whose blood was certainly not Christian. And there were many people beside Lady Tranmore who resented her domination.

"It will be so perfectly easy when the moment comes to invent some excuse or other for shelving William's claims," sighed Ashe's mother. "Nobody is indispensable, and if that old woman is provoked, she will be capable of any mischief."

"What do you want for William?" said Mary, smiling.

"He ought, of course, to have the Home Office!" replied Lady Tranmore, with fire.

Mary vowed that he would certainly have it. "Kitty is so clever, she will understand how important discretion is, before things go too far."

Lady Tranmore made no answer. She gazed into the fire, and Miss Lyster thought her depressed.

"Has William ever interfered?" she asked, cautiously.

Lady Tranmore hesitated.

"Not that I know of," she said, at last. "Nor will he ever--in the sense in which any ordinary husband would interfere."

"I know! It is as though he had a kind of superstition about it. Isn't there a fairy story, in which an elf marries a mortal on condition that if he ever ill-treats her, her people will fetch her back to fairyland? One day the husband lost his temper and spoke crossly; instantly there was a crash of thunder and the elf-wife vanished."

"I don't remember the story. But it's like that--exactly. He said to me once that he would never have asked her to marry him if he had not been able to make up his mind to let her have her own way--never to coerce her."

But having said this, Lady Tranmore repented. It seemed to her she had been betraying William's affairs. She drew her chair back from the fire, and rang to ask if the carriage had arrived. Mary took the hint. She arrayed herself in her cloak, and chatted agreeably about other things till the moment for their departure came.

As they drove through the streets, Lady Tranmore stole a glance at her companion.

"She is really very handsome," she thought--"much better-looking than she was at twenty. What are the men about, not to marry her?"

It was indeed a puzzle. For Mary was increasingly agreeable as the years went on, and had now quite a position of her own in London, as a charming woman without angles or apparent egotisms; one of the initiated besides, whom any dinner-party might be glad to capture. Her relations, near and distant, held so many of the points of vantage in English public life that her word inevitably carried weight. She talked politics, as women of her class must talk them to hold their own; she supported the Church; and she was elegantly charitable, in that popular sense which means that you subscribe to your friends' charities without setting up any of your own. She was rich also--already in possession of a considerable fortune, inherited from her mother, and prospective heiress of at least as much again from her father, old Sir Richard Lyster, whose house in Somersetshire she managed to perfection. In the season she stayed with various friends, or with Lady Tranmore, Sir Richard being now infirm, and preferring the country. There was a younger sister, who was known to have married imprudently, and against her father's wishes, some five or six years before this. Catharine was poor, the wife of a clergyman with young children. Lady Tranmore sometimes wondered whether Mary was quite as good to her as she might be. She herself sent Catharine various presents in the course of the year for the children.

--Yes, it was certainly surprising that Mary had not married. Lady Tranmore's thoughts were running on this tack when of a sudden her eyes were caught by the placard of one of the evening papers.

"Interview with Mr. Cliffe. Peace assured." So ran one of the lines.

"Geoffrey Cliffe home again!" Lady Tranmore's tone betrayed a shade of contemptuous amusement.

"We shall have to get on without our daily telegram. Poor London!"

If at that moment it had occurred to her to look at her companion, she would have seen a quick reddening of Mary's cheeks.

"He has had a great success, though, with his telegrams!" replied Miss Lyster. "I should have thought one couldn't deny that."

"Success! Only with the people who don't matter," said Lady Tranmore, with a shrug. "Of what importance is it to anybody that Geoffrey Cliffe should telegraph his doings and his opinions every morning to the English public?"

We were in the midst of a disagreement with America. A whirlwind was unloosed, and as it happened Geoffrey Cliffe was riding it. For that gentleman had not succeeded in the designs which were occupying his mind when he had first made Kitty's acquaintance in the Grosvilles' country-house. He had desired an appointment in Egypt; but it had not been given him, and after some angry restlessness at home, he had once more taken up a pilgrim's staff and departed on fresh travels, bound this time for the Pamirs and Thibet. After nearly three years, during which he had never ceased, through the newspapers and periodicals, to keep his opinions and his personality before the public, he had been heard of in China, and as returning home by America. He arrived at San Francisco just as the dispute had broken out, was at once captured by an English paper, and sent to New York, with _carte blanche_. He had risen with alacrity to the situation. Thenceforward for some three weeks, England found a marvellous series of large-print telegrams, signed "Geoffrey Cliffe," awaiting her each morning on her breakfast-table.

"'The President and I met this morning'--'The President considers, and I agree with him'--'I told the President'--etc.--'The President this morning signed and sealed a memorable despatch. He said to me afterwards'"--etc.

Two diverse effects seemed to have been produced by these proceedings. A certain section of Radical opinion, which likes to see affairs managed _sans cérémonie_, and does not understand what the world wants with diplomatists when journalists are to be had, applauded; the old-fashioned laughed.

It was said that Cliffe was going into the House immediately; the young bloods of the party in power enjoyed the prospect, and had already stored up the _ego et Rex meus_ details of his correspondence for future use.

"How could a man make such a fool of himself!" continued Lady Tranmore, the malice in her voice expressing not only the old aristocratic dislike of the press, but also the jealousy natural to the mother of an official son.

"Well, we shall see," said Mary, after a pause. "I don't quite agree with you, Cousin Elizabeth--indeed, I know there are many people who think that he has certainly done good."

Lady Tranmore turned in astonishment. She had expected Mary's assent to her original remark as a matter of course. Mary's old flirtation with Geoffrey Cliffe, and the long breach between them which had followed it, were things well known to her. They had coincided, moreover, with her own dropping of the man whom for various reasons she had come to regard as unscrupulous and unsafe.

"Good!" she echoed--"_good_?--with that boasting, and that _fanfaronnade_. Polly!"

But Miss Lyster held her ground.

"We must allow everybody their own ways of doing things, mustn't we? I am quite sure he has meant well--all through."

Lady Tranmore shrugged her shoulders. "Lord Parham told me he had had the most grotesque letters from him!--and meant henceforward to put them in the fire."

"Very foolish of Lord Parham," said Mary, promptly. "I should have thought that a Prime Minister would welcome information--from all sides. And of course Mr. Cliffe thinks that the government has been _very_ badly served."

Lady Tranmore's wonder broke out. "You don't mean--that--you hear from him?"

She turned and looked full at her companion. Mary's color was still raised, but otherwise she betrayed no embarrassment.

"Yes, dear Cousin Elizabeth. I have heard from him regularly for the last six months. I have often wished to tell you, but I was afraid you might misunderstand me, and--my courage failed me!" The speaker, smiling, laid her hand on Lady Tranmore's. "The fact is, he wrote to me last autumn from Japan. You remember that poor cousin of mine who died at Tokio? Mr. Cliffe had seen something of him, and he very kindly wrote both to his mother and me afterwards. Then--"

"You didn't forgive him!" cried Lady Tranmore.

Mary laughed.

"Was there anything to forgive? We were both young and foolish. Anyway, he interests me--and his letters are splendid."

"Did you ever tell William you were corresponding with him?"

"No, indeed! But I want very much to make them understand each other better. Why shouldn't the government make use of him? He doesn't wish at all to be thrown into the arms of the other side. But they treat him so badly--"

"My dear Mary! are we governed by the proper people, or are we not?"

"It is no good ignoring the press," said Mary, holding herself gracefully erect. "And the Bishop quite agrees with me."

Lady Tranmore sank back in her seat.

"You discussed it with the Bishop?" It was now some time since Mary had last brought the family Bishop--her cousin, and Lady Tranmore's--to bear upon an argument between them. But Elizabeth knew that his appearance in the conversation invariably meant a _fait accompli_ of some sort.

"I read him some of Mr. Cliffe's letters," said Mary, modestly. "He thought them most remarkable."

"Even when he mocks at missionaries?"

"Oh! but he doesn't mock at them any more. He has learned wisdom--I assure you he has!"

Lady Tranmore's patience almost departed, Mary's look was so penetrated with indulgence for the prejudices of a dear but unreasonable relation. But she managed to preserve it.

"And you knew he was coming home?"

"Oh yes!" said Mary. "I meant to have told you at dinner. But something put it out of my head--Kitty, of course! I shouldn't wonder if he were at the embassy to-night."

"Polly! tell me--"--Lady Tranmore gripped Miss Lyster's hand with some force--"are you going to marry him?"

"Not that I know of," was the smiling reply. "Don't you think I'm old enough by now to have a man friend?"

"And you expect me to be civil to him!"

"Well, dear Cousin Elizabeth--you know--you never did break with him, quite."

Lady Tranmore, in her bewilderment, reflected that she had certainly meant to complete the process whenever she and Mr. Cliffe should meet again. Aloud she could only say, rather stiffly:

"I can't forget that William disapproves of him strongly."