Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/952

884 "I don't know. They say she is very unhappy about it. Certainly she looks ill and depressed."

"And Ashe?"

His companion hesitated. "I don't like to say it, but, of course, you know there are many people who will tell you that Ashe doesn't care twopence what his wife does, so long as she is nice to him and he can read his books and carry on his politics as he pleases!"

"Ashe always strikes me as the soul of honor!" said the other, indignantly.

"Of course—for himself. But a more fatalist believer in liberty than Ashe doesn't exist,—liberty especially to damn yourself—if you must and will."

"It would be hard to extend that doctrine to a wife," said the other—with a grave, uncomfortable laugh.

Meanwhile the man whose affairs they had been discussing walked home, wrapped in solitary and disagreeable thought. As he neared the Marlborough House Corner, a carriage passed him. It was delayed a moment by other carriages, and as it halted beside him Ashe recognized Lady M, the hostess of the fancy ball, and a very old friend of his parents. He took off his hat. The lady within recognized him and inclined slightly,—very slightly and stiffly. Ashe started a little and walked on.

The meeting vividly recalled the ball, the terminus a quo indeed from which the meditation in which he had been plunged since entering the park had started. Between six and seven weeks ago, was it?—it might have been a century. He thought of Kitty as she was that night,—Kitty pirouetting in her glittering dress,—or bending over the boy,—or holding her face to his, as he kissed her on the stairs. Never since had she shown him the smallest glimpse of such a mood. What was wrong with her and with himself? Something, since May, had turned their life topsy-turvy, and it seemed to Ashe that in the general unprofitable rush of futile engagements he had never yet had time to stop and ask himself what it might be.

Why, at any rate, was he in this chafing irritation and discomfort? Why could he not deal with that fellow Cliffe as he deserved? And what in Heaven's name was the reason why old friends like Lady M were beginning to look at him coldly, and avoid his conversation?

His mother, too! He gathered that quite lately there had been some disagreeable scene between her and Kitty. Kitty had resented some remonstrance of hers, and for some days now they had not met. Nor had Ashe seen his mother alone. Did she also avoid him, shrink from speaking out her real mind to him?

Well, it was all monstrously absurd!—a great coil about nothing, as far as the main facts were concerned; although the annoyance and worry of the thing were indeed becoming serious. Kitty had no doubt taken a wild liking to Geoffrey Cliffe,—

"And by George," said Ashe, pausing in his walk,—"she warned me!"

And there rose in his memory the formal garden at Grosville Park, the little figure at his side, and Kitty's franknesses: "I shall take mad fancies for people. I sha'n't be able to help it. I have one now, for Geoffrey Cliffe."

He smiled. There was the difficulty! If only the people whose envious tongues were now wagging could see Kitty as she was, could understand what a gulf lay between her and the ordinary "fast" woman,—there would be an end of this silly ill-natured talk. Other women might be of the earth, earthy. Kitty was a sprite, with all the irresponsibility of such ethereal incalculable creatures. The men and women—women especially—who gossiped and lied about her, who sent abominable paragraphs to scurrilous papers,—he had one now in his pocket which had reached him at the House from an anonymous correspondent,—spoke out of their own vile experience, judged her by their own standards. His mother, at any rate,—he proudly thought,—ought to know better than to be misled by them for a moment.

At the same time, something must be done. Kitty had no doubt been behaving like a romantic, excitable child, with this unscrupulous man, whose record with regard to women was probably wholly unknown to her,—however foolishly she might plume herself on her knowledge of the world. What had Kitty, indeed, been doing with herself these six weeks? Ashe tried to recall them in de-