Part 41 (1/2)
Probably, when she had time to remember such trifles, Kitty would feel the shock more than he did. Lady Parham had certainly won this round of the rubber!
He settled to his solitary dinner, but in the middle of it put down Kitty's Aberdeen terrier, which, for want of other company, he was stuffing atrociously, and ran up to the nursery. The nurse was at her supper, and Harry lay fast asleep, a pretty little fellow, flushed into a semblance of health, and with a strong look of Kitty.
Ashe bent down and put his whiskered cheek to the boy's. ”Never mind, old man!” he murmured, ”better luck next time!”
Then raising himself with a smile, he looked affectionately at the child, noticed with satisfaction his bright color and even breathing, and stole away.
He ran through the comments of the evening papers on the new cabinet list, finding in only two or three any reference to himself, then threw them aside, and seized upon a pile of books and reviews that were lying on his table. He carried them up to the drawing-room, hesitated between a theological review and a new edition of Horace, and finally plunged with avidity into the theological review.
For some two hours he sat enthralled by an able summary of the chief Tubingen positions; then suddenly threw himself back with a stretch and a laugh.
”Wonder what the chap's doing that's got my post! Not reading theology, I'll be bound.”
The reflection followed that were he at that moment Home Secretary and in the cabinet, he would not probably be reading it either--nor left to a solitary evening. Friends would be dropping in to congratulate--the modern equivalent of the old ”turba clientium.”
As his thoughts wandered, the drawing-room clock struck eleven. He rose, astonished and impatient. Where was Kitty?
By midnight she had not arrived. Ashe heard the butler moving in the hall and summoned him.
”There may have been some mishap to the coach, Wilson. Perhaps they have stayed at Richmond. Anyway, go to bed. I'll wait for her ladys.h.i.+p.”
He returned to his arm-chair and his books, but soon drew Kitty's _couvre-pied_ over him and went to sleep.
When he awoke, daylight was in the room. ”What has happened to them?” he asked himself, in a sudden anxiety.
And amid the silence of the dawn he paced up and down, a prey for the first time to black depression. He was besieged by memories of the last two months, their anxieties and quarrels--the waste of time and opportunity--the stabs to feeling and self-respect. Once he found himself groaning aloud, ”Kitty! Kitty!”
When this huge, distracting London was left behind, when he had her to himself amid the Scotch heather and birch, should he find her again--conquer her again--as in the exquisite days after their marriage?
He thought of Cliffe with a kind of proud torment, disdaining to be jealous or afraid. Kitty had amused herself--had tested her freedom, his patience, to the utmost. Might she now be content, and reward him a little for a self-control, a philosophy, which had not been easy!
A French novel on Kitty's little table drew his attention. He thought not without a discomfortable humor of what a French husband would have made of a similar situation--recalling the remark of a French acquaintance on some case ill.u.s.trating the freedom of English wives. ”Il y a un element turc dans le mari francais, qui nous rendrait ces moeurs-la impossibles!”
_a la bonne heure_! Let the Frenchman keep up his seraglio standards as he pleased. An Englishman trusts both his wife and his daughter--scorns, indeed, to consider whether he trusts them or no! And who comes worst off? Not the Englishman--if, at least, we are to believe the French novel on the French _menage!_
He paced thus up and down for an hour, defying his unseen critics--his mother--his own heart.
Then he went to bed and slept a little. But with the post next morning there was no letter from Kitty. There might be a hundred explanations of that. Yet he felt a sudden need of caution.
”Her ladys.h.i.+p comes up this morning by train,” he said to Wilson, as though reading from a note. ”There seems to have been a mishap.”
Then he took a hansom and drove to the Alcots.
”Is Mrs. Alcot at home?” he asked the butler. ”Can I have an answer to this note?”
”Mrs. Alcot has been in her room since yesterday morning, sir. She was taken ill just before the coach was coming round, and the horses had to be sent back. But the doctor last night hoped it would be nothing serious.”
Ashe turned and went home. Then Kitty was not with Madeleine Alcot--not on the coach! Where was she, and with whom?