Part 40 (1/2)
Ashe smoked and smiled. Lady Tranmore saw that his pride, too, had been aroused, and that here he was likely to prove as obstinate as Kitty.
”I wish I could get her out of my mind!” she sighed.
Ashe glanced at her kindly.
”I daresay we shall hold our own. Xanthippe is not beloved, and I don't believe Parham will let her interfere with what he thinks best for the party. Will it pay to put me in the cabinet or not?--that's what he'll ask. I shall be strongly backed, too, by most of our papers.”
A number of thoughts ran through Lady Tranmore's brain. With her long experience of London, she knew well what the sudden lowering of a man's ”consideration”--to use a French word--at a critical moment may mean. A cooling of the general regard--a breath of detraction coming no one knows whence--and how soon new claims emerge, and the indispensable of yesterday becomes the negligible of to-day!
But even if she could have brought herself to put any of these anxieties into words, she had no opportunity. Kitty's voice was in the hall; the handle turned, and she ran in.
”William! Ah!--I didn't know mother was here.”
She went up to Elizabeth, and lightly kissed that lady's cheek.
”Good-morning. William, I just came to tell you that I may be late for dinner, so perhaps you had better dine at the House. I am going on the river.”
”Are you?” said Ashe, gathering up his papers. ”Wish I was.”
”Are you going with the Crashaw's party?” asked Elizabeth. ”I know they have one.”
”Oh, dear, no!” said Kitty. ”I hate a crowd on the river. I am going with Geoffrey Cliffe.”
Ashe bent over his desk. Lady Tranmore's eyebrows went up, and she could not restrain the word:
”Alone?”
”_Naturellement_!” laughed Kitty. ”He reads me French poetry, and we talk French. We let Madeleine Alcot come once, but her accent was so shocking that Geoffrey wouldn't have her again!”
Lady Tranmore flushed deeply. The ”Geoffrey” seemed to her intolerable.
Kitty, arrayed in the freshest of white gowns, walked away to the farther end of the library to consult a _Bradshaw_. Elizabeth, looking up, caught her son's eyes--and the mingled humor and vexation in them, wherewith he appealed to her, as it were, to see the whole silly business as he himself did. Lady Tranmore felt a moment's strong reaction. Had she indeed been making a foolish fuss about nothing?
Yet the impression left by the miserable meditations of her night was still deep enough to make her say--with just a signal from eye and lips, so that Kitty neither saw nor heard--”Don't let her go!”
Ashe shook his head. He moved towards the door, and stood there despatch-box in hand, throwing a last look at his wife.
”Don't be late, Kitty--or I shall be nervous. I don't trust Cliffe on the river. And please make it a rule that, in locks, he stops quoting French poetry.”
Kitty turned round, startled and apparently annoyed by his tone.
”He is an excellent oar,” she said, shortly.
”Is he? At Oxford we tried him for the Torpids--” Ashe's shrug completed his remark. Then, still disregarding another imploring look from Lady Tranmore, he left the room.
Kitty had flushed angrily. The belittling, malicious note in Ashe's manner had been clear enough. She braced herself against it, and Lady Tranmore's chance was lost. For when, summoning all her courage, and quite uncertain whether her son would approve or blame her, Elizabeth approached her daughter-in-law affectionately, trying in timid and apologetic words to unburden her own heart and reach Kitty's, Kitty met her with one of those outbursts of temper that women like Elizabeth Tranmore cannot cope with. Their moral recoil is too great. It is the recoil of the spiritual aristocrat; and between them and the children of pa.s.sion the links are few, the antagonism eternal.
She left the house, pale, dignified, the tears in her eyes. Kitty ran up-stairs, humming an air from ”Faust,” as though she would tear it to pieces, put on a flame-colored hat that gave a still further note of extravagance to her costume, ordered a hansom, and drove away.
Whether Kitty got much joy out of the three weeks which followed must remain uncertain. She had certainly routed Mary Lyster, if there were any final satisfaction in that. Mary had left town early, and was now in Somersets.h.i.+re helping her father to entertain, in order, said the malicious, to put the best face possible on a defeat which this time had been serious. And instead of devoting himself to the wooing of a northern const.i.tuency where he had been adopted as the candidate of a new Tory group, Cliffe lingered obstinately in town, endangering his chances and angering his supporters. Kitty's influence over his actions was, indeed, patent and undenied, whatever might be the general opinion as to her effect upon his heart. Some of Kitty's intimates at any rate were convinced that his absorption in the matter was by now, to say the least, no less eager and persistent than hers. At this point it was by no means still a relation of flattery on Kitty's side and a pleased self-love on his. It had become a duel of two personalities, or rather two imaginations. In fact, as Kitty, learning the ways of his character, became more proudly mistress of herself and him, his interest in her visibly increased. It might almost be said that she was beginning to hold back, and he for the first time pursued.
Once or twice he had the grace to ask himself where it was all to end.