William Ashe

“ What incredible perversity and caprice she had shown towards Lord Parham! How was he to deal with it—he, William Ashe, with his ironic temper and his easy standards? What could he say to her but "Love me, Kitty!—love yourself!—and don't be a little fool! Life might be so amusing if you would only bridle your fancies and play the game!"
As for loftier things, "self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control"—duty—and the passion of high ideals—who was he to prate about them? The little Dean, perhaps!—most spiritual of worldlings. Ashe knew himself to be neither spiritual nor a hypocrite. ”

“ 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." ”

“ She was much more inclined to think of William Ashe. What a good-looking fellow he had grown! She heaved an inward sigh, of mingled envy and appreciation, directed towards Lady Tranmore.
Poor Susan indeed had suffered terribly in the death of her eldest son. But the handsomer and abler of the two brothers still remained to her—and the estate was safe. Lady Grosville thought of her own three daughters, plain and almost dowerless; and of that conceited young man, the heir, whom she could hardly persuade her husband to invite, once a year, for appearance sake.
"Why are we so early?" ”

“ Each word came out winged and charged with a strange intensity of passion.
"Do I?" said Cliffe, raising his eyebrows—"do I want to know?"
Her look held him.
"My husband, William Ashe!"
And she fell back, flushed and breathless, like one who throws out a rebel and challenging flag.
Cliffe was silent a moment, observing her.
"Strange!" he said, at last. "It is only when you are miserable you are kind. I could wish you miserable again, chérie."
Tone and look broke into a sombre wildness before which she shrank. Her own violence passed away. ”

“ I am giving away all my smart clothes. Blanche is going home. Oh, William, William! I'm going to shut this, and it's like the good-bye of death—a mean and ugly—death.
"... Later. They have just brought me a note from Danieli's. So Margaret did write to you, and your mother has come. Why did you send her, William? She doesn't love me—and I shall only stab and hurt her. Though I'll try not—for your sake."
Two days later Ashe received almost by the same post which brought him the letter from Kitty, just quoted, the following letter from his mother:
"My DEAREST WILLIAM,—I have seen Kitty. ”

“ Ashe sat to the speaker's right, outwardly attentive, inwardly ashamed of his party and his chief. He himself belonged to a new generation, for whom formulæ that had satisfied their fathers were empty and dead. But with these formulas Lord Parham was stuffed. A man of average intriguing ability, he had been raised, at a moment of transition, to the place he held, by a consummate command of all the meaner arts of compromise and management, no less than by an invaluable power of playing to the gallery. ”

“ She knew well that he was a violent and selfish man; but he understood much in her that William would never understand. With a morbid eagerness she recalled the play of feeling between them, before that mad evening at Hamel Weir. What perpetual excitement—no time to think—or regret!
During her weeks of illness she had lost all count of his movements. Had he been still writing during the summer for the newspaper which had sent him out? Had there not been rumors of his being wounded—or attacked by fever? Her memory, still vague and weak, struggled painfully with memories it could not recapture. ”

“ For the rest, all was as before, and in the formal list the name of the Honorable William Travers Ashe still remained attached to the Under-Secretaryship for Foreign Affairs.
Ashe's friend shrugged his shoulders, and avoided looking at his companion. "A bomb-shell, to begin with," he said; "otherwise the flattest thing out."
"On the contrary," laughed Ashe. "Parham has shown a wonderful amount of originality. If you and I are taken by surprise, what will the public be? And they'll like him all the better—you'll see. He has shown courage and gone for new men—that's what they'll say. ”

“ Parham will disappear with the next appeal to the country. He is getting too infirm! Above all, his eyes are nearly gone; his oculist, I hear, gives him no more than six months' sight, unless he throws up. Then Ashe will take his proper place, and if he doesn't make his mark on English history, I'm a Dutchman. Oh! of course that affair last year was an awful business—the two affairs! When Parliament opened in February there were some of us who thought that Ashe would never get through the session. A man so changed, so struck down, I have seldom seen. ”

“ But he was always reasonably glad to see Mary, and he went up to her, cared for her bag, and made her put on her cloak, with cousinly civility. In the omnibus on the way to the house he and Mary gossiped in a corner, while the cabinet minister and the editor went to sleep, and the two members of Parliament practised some courageous French on the Austrian attaché.
"Is it to be a large party?" he asked of his companion.
"Oh! they always fill the house. A good many came down yesterday."
"Well, I'm not curious," said Ashe, "except as to one person."
"Who?"
"Lady Kitty Bristol." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Johnny Russell, Lord Althorp, Peel, Melbourne—seemed, to the observer on the rug, steeped in the typical habit and reminiscence of English public life.
Well, if the father, poor fellow, had been distinguished in his day, the son had gone far beyond him. The Dean ruminated on a conversation wherewith he had just beguiled his cup of tea at the Athenæum—a conversation with one of the shrewdest members of Lord Parham's cabinet, a "new man," and an enthusiastic follower of Ashe.
"Ashe is magnificent! At last our side has found its leader. Oh! ”

“ They made their way in with difficulty, shaping their course towards that corner in the room where they knew they should find their hostess. Ashe was greeted on all sides with friendly words and congratulations, and a passage was opened for him to the famous "blue sofa" where Madame d'Estrées sat enthroned.
She looked up with animation, broke off her talk with two elderly diplomats who seemed to have taken possession of her, and beckoned Ashe to a seat beside her.
"So you're in? Was it a hard fight?"
"A hard fight? Oh no! One would have had to be a great fool not to get in." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kitty and Ashe bade their gondoliers take them to the Piazzetta, and presently they were gliding across waters of flame and silver, where the white front and red campanile of San Giorgio—now blazing under the sunset—mirrored themselves in the lagoon. The autumn evening was fresh and gay. A light breeze was on the water; lights that only Venice knows shone on the tawny sails of fishing-boats making for the Lido, on the white sides of an English yacht, on the burnished prows of the gondolas, on the warm reddish-white of the Ducal Palace. ”

“ What have you to do with Ashe, Kitty, any longer? You and he are already divided. You have tried life together and what have you made of it? You're not fit for this mincing, tripping London life—nor am I? And as for morals—- I'll tell you a strange thing, Kitty. ”

“ Take starving women and hunted children into your arms—- feel with them—weep with them—look with them into the face of death! Make friends with nature—with rocks, forests, torrents—with night and dawn, which you've never seen, Kitty! They'll love you—they'll support you—the rough people—and the dark forests. They'll draw nature's glamour round you—they'll pour her balm into your soul. ”

“ Like all strong men, Ashe despised the meditations of self-pity. But the involuntary reflection that on this evening of humiliation Kitty was not with him—did not apparently care enough about his affairs and his ambitions to be with him—brought with it a soreness which had to be endured. ”

“ From the dark wall it shone out with a flower-like brilliance, a vision of color and of grace. The children danced through a golden air, their bodies swaying to one of those "unheard melodies" of art, sweeter than all mortal tunes; their delicate faces alive with joy. The sky and grass and trees seemed to caress them; a soft sunlight clothed them; and flowers brushed their feet.
Kitty turned back again and was silent. Was it Ashe's fancy, or had she grown pale? ”

“ For there is in it an appeal which torments them—like the winding of a mystic horn, on purple heights, by some approaching and unseen messenger. Ineffable beauty, offering itself—and in the human soul, the eternal human discord: what else makes the poignancy of art—the passion of poetry?
"That's enough!" said Kitty, at last, turning abruptly away.
"You like it?" said Ashe, softly, detaining her, while he pressed the little hand upon his arm. His heart was filled with a great pity for his wife in these days. ”

“ What was she to do with her half-sister, stranded and dishonored as she was?—How content or comfort her?—How live her own life beside her?
Kitty sat silent, her eyes fixed upon the barca which held the coffin under its pall. Her mind was the scene of an infinite number of floating and fragmentary recollections; of the day when she and Cliffe had followed the murazzi towards the open sea; of the meeting at Verona; of the long winter, with its hardship and its horror; and that hatred and contempt which had sprung up between them. Could she love no one, cling faithfully to no one? ”

“ Such, at least, as Margaret French well knew, was the inmost persuasion—fast becoming a fanaticism—of Ashe's mother. William might, indeed, for the moment have triumphed over the consequences of Kitty's bygone behavior. But the reckless, untamed character was there still at his side, preparing Heaven knew what pitfalls and catastrophes. Lady Tranmore lived in fear. And under the outward sweetness and dignity of her manner was there not developing something worse than fear—that hatred which is one of the strange births of love? ”

“ Kitty looked at him quietly. "Never mind, William. I am trying to help you."
Her eyes shone with the strangest glitter. Ashe was conscious of another of those sudden stabs of anxiety about her which he had felt at intervals through the preceding year. His face softened.
"Dear, don't let's talk nonsense! Just look at me sometimes at dinner, and say to yourself, 'William asks me—for his sake—to be nice to Lord Parham.'"
He again drew her to him, but she repulsed him almost with violence.
"Why is he here? Why have we people dining? We ought to be alone—in the dark!" ”

“ The hard peasant life, in contact with the soil and natural forces; the elemental facts of birth and motherhood, of daily toil and suffering; what it means to fight oppressors for freedom, and see your dearest—son, lover, wife, betrothed—die horribly amid the clash of arms; into this caldron of human fate had Kitty plunged her light soul; and in some ways Ashe scarcely knew her again. ”

“ Kitty slipped in beside Ashe for a moment, with her back to the wall, laughing and breathless.
"I say, Kitty," said Ashe, bending over her and speaking in her small ear, "I thought Lady Parham was eternally obliged to us. What's wrong with her?"
"Only that I can't stand her," said Kitty. "What's the good of trying?" She looked up, a flame of mutiny in her cheeks.
"What, indeed?" said Ashe, feeling as reckless as she. "Her manners are beyond the bounds. But look here, Kitty, don't you think you'll come home? You know you do look uncommonly tired." ”

“ Oh, be thou our help in trouble: for vain is the help of man."
The door opened, and the Dean straightened himself impetuously, every nerve tightening to its work.
"How do you do, my dear Dean?" said Ashe, enclosing the frail, ascetic hand in both his own. "I trust I have not kept you waiting. My mother was with me. Sit there, please; you will have the light behind you." ”

“ 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. ”