Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/955

Rh tail. Ascot—Lord's—innumerable parties in London and in the country, to some of which he had not been able to accompany her, owing to the stress of Parliamentary and official work. Grosville Park, for instance,—he had been stopped at the last moment from going down there by the arrival of some important foreign news, and Kitty had gone alone. She had reappeared on the Monday, pale and furious, saying that she and her aunt had quarrelled, and that she would never go near the Grosvilles either in town or country again. She had not volunteered any further explanation, and Ashe had refrained from inquiry. There were in him certain disgusts and disdains, belonging to his general epicurean conception of existence, which not even his love for Kitty could overcome. One was a disdain for the quarrels of women. He supposed they were inevitable; he saw, by the way, that Kitty and Lady Parham were once more at daggers drawn; and Kitty seemed to enjoy it. Well, it was her own affair; but while there was a Greek play, or a Shakespeare sonnet, or even a Blue Book to read, who could expect him to listen?

What had old Lady Grosville been about? He understood that Cliffe had been of the party. Kitty, no doubt, had been imprudent and absurd.

Well, what was he to do? It was now July. The session would last certainly till the middle of August, and though the American business would be disposed of directly, there was fresh trouble in the Balkan Peninsula, and an anxious situation in Egypt. Impossible that he should think of leaving his post. And as for the chance of a dissolution, the government was now a good deal stronger than it had been before Easter,—worse luck!

Of course he ought to take Kitty away. But short of resignation how was it to be done? And what even would resignation do—supposing, per impossibile, it could be thought of—but give to gnawing gossip a bigger bone, and probably irritate Kitty to the point of rebellion? Yet how induce her to go with any one else? Lady Tranmore was out of the question. Margaret French perhaps?

Then, suddenly, Ashe was assailed by an inner laughter, hollow and discomfortable. Things were come to a pretty pass when he must even dream of resigning because a man whom he despised would haunt his house and absorb the company of his wife; when moreover he could not even think of a remedy for such a state of things without falling back dismayed from the certainty of Kitty's temper,—Kitty's wild and furious temper.

For during the last fortnight, as it seemed to Ashe, all the winds of tempest had been blowing through his house. Himself, the servants, even Margaret, even the child,—had all suffered. He also had lost his temper several times,—such a thing had scarcely happened to him since his childhood. He thought of it as of a kind of physical stain or weak- ness. To keep an even and stoical mind, to laugh where one could not conquer,—this had always seemed to him the first condition of decent existence. And now to be wrangling over an expenditure, an engagement, a letter, the merest nothing,—whether it was a fine day or it wasn't,—could anything be more petty, degrading, intolerable?

He vowed that this should stop. Whatever happened, he and Kitty should not degenerate into a pair of scolds—besmirch their life with quarrels as ugly as they were silly. He would reason with her,—his beloved, unreasonable, foolish Kitty; he ought, of course, to have done so before. But it was only within the last week or so that the horizon had suddenly darkened,—the thing grown serious. And now this beastly paragraph! But, after all, what did such garbage matter! It would, of course, be a comfort to thrash the editor. But our modern life breeds such creatures,—and they have to be borne.

He let himself into a silent house. His letters lay on the hall table. Among them was a handwriting which arrested him. He remembered, yet could not put a name to it. Then he turned the envelope. "H'm, Lady Grosville!" He read it, standing there, then thrust it into his pocket, thinking angrily that there seemed to be a good many fools in this world who occupied themselves with other people's business. Exaggeration, of course, damnable parti pris! When did she ever see Kitty except with a