Part 70 (1/2)

”When did you have the first idea of this book, Kitty?”

”About a year ago,” she said, in a low voice.

”In October? At Haggart?”

Kitty nodded.

Ashe thought. Her admission took him back to the autumn weeks at Haggart, after the Cliffe crisis and the rearrangement of the ministry in the July of that year. He well remembered that those weeks had been weeks of special happiness for both of them. Afterwards, the winter had brought many renewed qualms and vexations. But in that period, between the storms of the session and Kitty's escapades in the hunting-field, memory recalled a tender, melting time--a time rich in hidden and exquisite hours, when with Kitty on his breast, lip to lip and heart to heart, he had reaped, as it seemed to him, the fruits of that indulgence which, as he knew, his mother scorned. And at that very moment, behind his back, out of his sight, she had begun this atrocious thing.

He looked at her again--the bitterness almost at his lips, almost beyond his control.

”I wish I knew what could have been your possible object in writing it?”

She sat up and confronted him. The color flamed back again into her pale cheeks.

”You know I told you--when we had that talk in London--that I wanted to write. I thought it would be good for me--would take my thoughts off--well, what had happened. And I began to write this--and it amused me to find I could do it--and I suppose I got carried away. I loved describing you, and glorifying you--and I loved making caricatures of Lady Parham--and all the people I hated. I used to work at it whenever you were away--or I was dull and there was nothing to do.

”Did it never occur to you,” said Ashe, interrupting, ”that it might get you--get us both--into trouble, and that you ought to tell me?”

She wavered.

”No!” she said, at last. ”I never did mean to tell you, while I was writing it. You know I don't tell lies, William! The real fact is, I was afraid you'd stop it.”

”Good G.o.d!” He threw up his hands with a sound of amazement, then thrust them again into his pockets and began to pace up and down.

”But then”--she resumed--”I thought you'd soon get over it, and that it was funny--and everybody would laugh--and you'd laugh--and there would be an end of it.”

He turned and stared at her. ”Frankly, Kitty--I don't understand what you can be made of! You imagined that that sketch of Lord Parham”--he struck the open page--”a sketch written by _my wife_, describing my official chief--when he was my guest--under my own roof--with all sorts of details of the most intimate and offensive kind--mocking his speech--his manners--his little personal ways--charging him with being the corrupt tool of Lady Parham, disloyal to his colleagues, a man not to be trusted--and justifying all this by a sort of evidence that you could only have got as my wife and Lord Parham's hostess--you actually supposed that you could write and publish _that!_--without in the first place its being plain to every Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry that you had written it--and in the next, without making it impossible for your husband to remain a colleague of the man you had treated in such a way? Kitty!--you are not a stupid woman! Do you really mean to say that you could write and publish this book without _knowing_ that you were doing a wrong action--which, so far from serving me, could only damage my career irreparably? Did nothing--did no one warn you--if you were determined to keep such a secret from your husband, whom it most concerned?”

He had come to stand beside her, both hands on the back of a chair--stooping forward to emphasize his words--the lines of his fine face and n.o.ble brow contracted by anger and pain.

”Mr. Darrell warned me,” said Kitty, in a low voice, as though those imperious eyes compelled the truth from her--”but of course I didn't believe him.”

”Darrell!” cried Ashe, in amazement--”Darrell! You confided in him?”

”I told him all about it. It was he who took it to a publisher.”

”Hound!” said Ashe, between his teeth. ”So that was his revenge.”

”Oh, you needn't blame him too much,” said Kitty, proudly, not understanding the remark. ”He wrote to me not long ago to say it was horribly unwise--and that he washed his hands of it.”

”Ay--when he'd done the deed! When did you show it him?” said Ashe, impetuously.

”At Haggart--in August.”

”_Et tu, Brute!_” said Ashe, turning away. ”Well, that's done with. Now the only thing to do is to face the music. I go home. Whatever can be done to withdraw the book from circulation I shall, of course, do; but I gather from this precious letter”--he held up the note which had been enclosed in the parcel--”that some thousands of copies have already been ordered by the booksellers, and a few distributed to 'persons in high places.'”

”William,” she said, in despair, catching his arm again--”listen! I offered the man two hundred pounds only yesterday to stop it.”

Ashe laughed.

”What did he reply?”