The Marriage of William Ashe Part 12

V

The effect of the few sobbing words, with which Kitty Bristol had greeted his presence beside her, upon the feeling of William Ashe was both sharp and deep, for they seemed already to imply a peculiar relation, a special link between them. Had it not, indeed, begun in that very moment at St. James's Place when he had first caught sight of her, sitting forlorn in her white dress?--when she had "willed" him to come to her, and he came? Surely--though as to this he had his qualms--she could not have spoken with this abandonment to any other of her new English acquaintances? To Darrell, for instance, who was expected at Grosville Park that evening. No! From the beginning she had turned to him, William Ashe; she had been conscious of the same mutual understanding, the same sympathy in difference that he himself felt.

It was, at any rate, with the feeling of one whose fate has most strangely, most unexpectedly overtaken him that he sat down beside her.

His own pulses were running at a great rate; but there was to be no sign of it for her. He tried, indeed, to calm her by that mere cheerful strength and vitality of which he was so easily master. "Why should you be in despair?" he said, bending towards her. "Tell me. Let me try and help you. Was your sister unkind to you?"

Kitty made no reply at once. The tears that brimmed her large eyes slipped down her cheeks without disfiguring her. She was looking absently, intently, into a dark depth of wood as though she sought there for some truth that escaped her--truth of the past or of the present.

"I don't know," she said, at last, shaking her head, "I don't know whether it was unkind. Perhaps it was only what we deserve, maman and I."

"You!" cried Ashe.

"Yes," she said, pa.s.sionately. "Who's going to separate between maman and me? If she's done mean, shocking things, the people she's done them to will hate me too. They _shall_ hate me! It's right."

She turned to him violently. She was very white, and her little hands as she sat there before him, proudly erect, twisted a lace handkerchief between them that would soon be in tatters. Somehow Ashe winced before the wreck of the handkerchief; what need to ruin the pretty, fragile thing?

"I am quite sure no one will ever hate you for what you haven't done,"

he said, steadily. "That would be abominably unfair. But, you see, I don't understand--and I don't like--I don't wish--to ask questions."

"_Do_ ask questions!" she cried, looking at him almost reproachfully.

"That's just what I want you to do--Only," she added, hanging her head in depression, "I shouldn't know what to answer. I am played with, and treated as a baby! There is something horrible the matter--and no one trusts me--every one keeps me in the dark. No one ever thinks whether I am miserable or not."

She raised her hands to her eyes and vehemently wiped away her tears with the tattered lace handkerchief. In all these words and actions, however, she was graceful and touching, because she was natural. She was not posing or conscious, she was hiding nothing. Yet Ashe felt certain she could act a part magnificently; only it would not be for the lie's sake, but for the sake of some romantic impulse or imagination.

"Why should you torment yourself so?" he asked her, kindly. Her hand had dropped and lay beside her on the bench. To his own amazement he found himself clasping it. "Isn't it better to forget old griefs? You can't help what happened years ago--you can't undo it. You've got to live your own life--_happily_! And I just wish you'd set about it."

He smiled at her, and there were few faces more attractive than his when he let his natural softness have its way, without irony. She let her eyes be drawn to his, and as they met he saw a flush rise in her clear skin and spread to the pale gold of her hair. The man in him was marvellously pleased by that flush--fascinated, indeed. But she gave him small time to observe it; she drew herself impatiently away.

"Of course, you don't understand a word about it," she said, "or you couldn't talk like that. But I'll tell you." Her eyes, half miserable, half audacious, returned to him. "My sister--came here--because I sent for her. I made mademoiselle go with a letter. Of course, I knew there was a mystery--I knew the Grosvilles did not want us to meet--I knew that she and maman hated each other. But maman will tell me nothing--and I have a _right_ to know."

"No, you have no right to know," said Ashe, gravely.

She looked at him wildly.

"I have--I have!" she repeated, pa.s.sionately. "Well, I told my sister to meet me here--I had forgotten, you see, all about you! My mind was so full of Alice. And when she came I felt as if it was a dream--a horrible, tragic dream. You know--she is _so_ like me--which means, I suppose, that we are both like papa. Only her face--it's not handsome, oh no--but it's stern--and--yes, n.o.ble! I was proud of her. I would like to have gone on my knee and kissed her dress. But she would not take my hand--she would hardly speak to me. She said she had come, because it was best, now that I was in England, that we should meet once, and understand that we _couldn't_ meet--that we could never, never be friends. She said that she hated my mother--that for years she had kept silence, but that now she meant to punish maman--to drive her from London. And then"--the girl's lips trembled under the memory--"she came close to me, and she looked into my eyes, and she said, 'Yes, we're like each other---we're like our father--and it would be better for us both if we had never been born--'"

"Ah, cruel!" cried Ashe, involuntarily, and once more his hand found Kitty's small fingers and pressed them in his.

Kitty looked at him with a strange, exalted look.

"No. I think it's true. I often think I'm not made to be happy. I can't ever be happy--it's not in me."

"It's in you to say foolish things then!" said Ashe, lightly, and crossing his arms he tried to a.s.sume the practical elder-brotherly air, which he felt befitted the situation--if anything befitted it. For in truth it seemed to him one singularly confused and ugly. Their talk floated above tragic depths, guessed at by him, wholly unknown to her.

And yet her youth shrank from it knew not what--"as an animal shrinks from shadows in the twilight." She seemed to him to sit enwrapped in a vague cloud of shame, resenting and hating it, yet not able to escape from thinking and talking of it. But she must not talk of it.

She did not answer his last remark for a little while. She sat looking before her, overwhelmed, it seemed, by an inward rush of images and sensations. Till, with a sudden movement, she turned to him and said, smiling, quite in her ordinary voice:

"Do you know why I shall never be happy? It is because I have such a bad temper."

"Have you?" said Ashe, smiling.

She gave him a curious look.

"You don't believe it? If you had been in the convent, you would have believed it. I'm mad sometimes--quite mad; with pride, I suppose, and vanity. The Soeurs said it was that."

"They had to explain it somehow," said Ashe. "But I am quite sure that if I lived in a convent I should have a furious temper."

"You!" she said, half contemptuously. "You couldn't be ill-tempered anywhere. That's the one thing I don't like about you--you're too calm--too--too satisfied. It's--Well! you said a sharp thing to me, so I don't see why I shouldn't say one to you. You shouldn't look as though you enjoyed your life so much. It's _bourgeois_! It is, indeed." And she frowned upon him with a little extravagant air that amused him.

By some prescience, she had put on that morning a black dress of thin material, made with extreme simplicity. No flounces, no fanfaronnade. A little girlish dress, that made the girlish figure seem even frailer and lighter than he remembered it the night before in the splendors of her Paris gown. Her large black hat emphasized the whiteness of her brow, the brilliance of her most beautiful eyes; and then all the rest was insubstantial sprite and airy nothing, to be crushed in one hand. And yet what untamed, indomitable things breathed from it--a self surely more self, more intensely, obstinately alive than any he had yet known.

Her attack had brought the involuntary blood to his cheeks, which annoyed him. But he invited her to say why cheerfulness was a vice. She replied that no one should look success--as much as he did.

"And you scorn success?"

"Scorn it!" She drew a long breath, clasped both her hands above her head, then slowly let the thin arms fall again. "Scorn it! What nonsense! But everybody who hasn't got it hates those who have."

"Don't hate me!" said Ashe, quickly.

"Yes," she said, with stubbornness, "I must. Do you know why I was such a wild-cat at school? Because some of the other girls were more important than I--much more important--and richer--and more beautiful--and people paid them more attention. And that seemed to _burn_ the heart in me." She pressed her hands to her breast with a pa.s.sionate gesture. "You know the French word _panache_? Well, that's what I care for --that's what I _adore_! To be the first--the best--the most distinguished. To be envied--and pointed at--obeyed when I lift my finger--and then to come to some great, glorious, tragic end!"

Ashe moved impatiently.

"Lady Kitty, I don't like to hear you talk like this. It's wild, and it's also--I beg your pardon--"

"In bad taste?" she said, catching him up breathlessly. "That's what you meant, isn't it? You said it to me before, when I called you handsome."

"Pshaw!" he said, in vexation. She watched him throw himself back and feel for his cigarette-case; a gesture of her hand gave him leave; she waited, smiling, till he had taken a few calming whiffs. Then she gently moved towards him.

"Don't be angry with me!" she said, in a sweet, low voice. "Don't you understand how hard it is--to have that nature--and then to come here out of the convent--where one had lived on dreams--and find one's self--"

She turned her head away. Ashe put down his new-lit cigarette.

"Find yourself?" he repeated.

"Everybody scorns me!" she said, her brow drooping.

Ashe exclaimed.

"You know it's true. My mother is not received. Can you deny that?"

"She has many friends," said Ashe.

"She is _not received_. When I speak of her no one answers me. Lady Grosville asked me here--_me_--out of charity. It would be thought a disgrace to marry me--"

"Look here, Lady Kitty!--"