The Marriage of William Ashe Part 16

"What are you three gossiping about?" said Ashe, strolling in presently from the other room to join them.

"As usual," said Darrell. "I am listening to perfection. Miss Lyster and Harman are discussing pictures."

Ashe stifled a little yawn. He threw himself down by Mary, vowing that there was no more pleasure to be got out of pictures now that people would try to know so much about them. Mary meanwhile raised herself involuntarily to look into the farther room, where the noise made by Cliffe and Lady Kitty had increased.

"They are going to sing," said Ashe, lazily--"and it won't be hymns."

In fact, Lady Kitty had opened the piano, and had begun the first bars of something French and operatic. At the first sound of Kitty's music, however, Lady Grosville drew herself up; she closed the volume of Evangelical sermons for which she had exchanged the _Times_; she deposited her spectacles sharply on the table beside her.

"Amy!--Caroline!"

Those young ladies rose. So did Lady Grosville. Kitty meanwhile sat with suspended fingers and laughing eyes, waiting on her aunt's movements.

"Kitty, pray don't let me interfere with your playing," said Lady Grosville, with severe politeness--"but perhaps you would kindly put it off for half an hour. I am now going to read to the servants--"

"Gracious!" said Kitty, springing up. "I was going to play Mr. Cliffe some Offenbach."

"Ah, but the piano can be heard in the library, and your cousin Amy plays the harmonium--"

"_Mon Dieu_!" said Kitty. "We will be as quiet as mice. Or"--she made a quick step in pursuit of her aunt--"shall I come and sing, Aunt Lina?"

Ashe, in his shelter behind Mary Lyster, fell into a silent convulsion of laughter.

"No, thank you!" said Lady Grosville, hastily. And she rustled away followed by her daughters.

Kitty came flying into the inner room followed by Cliffe.

"What have I done?" she said, breathlessly, addressing Harman, who rose to greet her. "Mayn't one play the piano here on Sundays?"

"That depends," said Harman, "on what you play."

"Who made your English Sunday?" said Kitty, impetuously. "Je vous demande--_who_?"

She threw her challenge to all the winds of heaven--standing tiptoe, her hands poised on the back of a chair, the smallest and most delicate of furies.

"A breath unmakes it, as a breath has made," said Cliffe. "Come and play billiards, Lady Kitty. You said just now you played."

"Billiards!" said Harman, throwing up his hands. "On Sunday--_here_?"

"Can they hear the b.a.l.l.s?" said Kitty, eagerly, with a gesture towards the library.

Mary Lyster, who had been perfunctorily looking at a book, laid it down.

"It would certainly greatly distress Lady Grosville," she said, in a voice studiously soft, but on that account perhaps all the more significant.

Kitty glanced at Mary, and Ashe saw the sudden red in her cheek. She turned provokingly to Cliffe. "There's quite half an hour, isn't there, before one need dress--"

"More," said Cliffe. "Come along."

And he made for the door, which he held open for her. It was now Mary Lyster's turn to flush--the rebuff had been so naked and unadorned. Ashe rose as Kitty pa.s.sed him.

"Why don't you come, too?" she said, pausing. There was a flash from eyes deep and dark beneath a pair of wilful brows. "Aunt Lina would never be cross with _you_!"

"Thank you! I should be delighted to play buffer, but unfortunately I have some work I must do before dinner."

"Must you?" She looked at him uncertainly, then at Cliffe. In the dusk of the large, heavily furnished room, the pale yet brilliant gold of her hair, her white dress, her slim energy and elegance drew all their eyes--even Mary Lyster's.

"I must," Ashe repeated, smiling. "I am glad your headache is so much better."

"It is not in the least better!"

"Then you disguise it like a heroine."

He stood beside her, looking down upon her, his height and strength measured against her smallness. Apparently his amused detachment, the slight dryness of his tone annoyed her. She made a tart reply and vanished through the door that Cliffe held open for her.

Ashe retired to his own room, dealt with some Foreign Office work, and then allowed himself a meditative smoke. The click of the billiard-b.a.l.l.s had ceased abruptly about ten minutes after he had begun upon his papers; there had been voices in the hall, Lord Grosville's he thought among them; and now all was silence.

He thought of the events of the afternoon with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and annoyance. Cliffe was an unscrupulous fellow, and the child's head might be turned. She should be protected from him in future--he vowed she should. Lady Tranmore should take it in hand. She had been a match for Cliffe in various other directions before this.

What brought the man, with his notorious character and antecedents, to Grosville Park--one of the dwindling number of country-houses in England where the old Puritan restrictions still held? It was said he was on the look-out for a post--Ashe, indeed, happened to know it officially; and Lord Grosville had a good deal of influence. Moreover, failing an appointment, he was understood to be aiming at Parliament and office; and there were two safe county-seats within the Grosville sphere.

"Yet even when he wants a thing he can't behave himself in order to get it," thought Ashe. "Anybody else would have turned Sabbatarian for once, and refrained from flirting with the Grosvilles' niece. But that's Cliffe all over--and perhaps the best thing about him."

He might have added that as Cliffe was supposed to desire an appointment under either the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office, it might have been thought to his interest to show himself more urbane than he had in fact shown himself that afternoon to the new Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. But Ashe rarely or never indulged himself in reflections of that kind. Besides, he and Cliffe knew each other too well for posing.

There was a time when they had been on very friendly terms, and when Cliffe had been constantly in his mother's drawing-room. Lady Tranmore had a weakness for "influencing" young men of family and ability; and Cliffe, in fact, owed her a good deal. Then she had seen cause to think ill of him; and, moreover, his travels had taken him to the other side of the world. Ashe was now well aware that Cliffe reckoned on him as a hostile influence and would not try either to deceive or to propitiate him.

He thought Cliffe had been disagreeably surprised to see him that afternoon. Perhaps it was the sudden sense of antagonism acting on the man's excitable nature that had made him fling himself into the wild nonsense he had talked with Lady Kitty.

And thenceforward Ashe's thoughts were possessed by Kitty only--Kitty in her two aspects, of the morning and the afternoon. He dressed in a reverie, and went down-stairs still dreaming.

At dinner he found himself responsible for Mary Lyster. Kitty was on the other side of the table, widely separated both from himself and Cliffe.

She was in a little Empire dress of blue and silver, as extravagantly simple as her gown of the afternoon had been extravagantly elaborate.

Ashe observed the furtive study that the Grosville girls could not help bestowing upon her--upon her shoulder-straps and long, bare arms, upon her high waist and the blue and silver bands in her hair. Kitty herself sat in a pensive or proud silence. The Dean was beside her, but she scarcely spoke to him, and as to the young man from the neighborhood who had taken her in, he was to her as though he were not.

"Has there been a row?" Ashe inquired, in a low voice, of his companion.

Mary looked at him quietly.

"Lord Grosville asked them not to play--because of the servants."

"Good!" said Ashe. "The servants were, of course, playing cards in the house-keeper's room."