The Marriage of William Ashe. Mrs. Humphry Ward
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then, and I had a passion for their society, and their books—for their plays—dare I confess it?"—he lowered his voice and glanced at his hostess—"their plays, above all!"
Kitty clapped her hands. The Dean looked at her, and ran on:
"My mother shared it. When I came over for my Eton holidays, she and I lived at the Théâtre-Français. Ah, those were days! I remember Mademoiselle Mars in 'Hernani.'"
Kitty bounded in her seat. Whereupon it appeared that just before she left Paris she had been taken by a friend to see the reigning idol of the Comédie-Française, the young and astonishing actress, Sarah Bernhardt, as Doña Sol. And there began straightway an excited duet between her and the Dean; a comparison of old and new, a rivalry of heroines, a hot and critical debate that presently silenced all other conversation in the room, and brought Lord Grosville to stand gaping and astounded behind the Dean, reflecting no doubt that this was not precisely the Dean of the Diocesan Conference.
The old man indeed forgot his age, the girl her youth; they met as equals, on poetic ground, till suddenly Kitty, springing up, and to prove her point, began an imitation of Sarah in the great love-scene of the last act, before arresting fate, in the person of Don Ruy, breaks in upon the rapture of the lovers. She absolutely forgot the Grosville drawing-room, the staring Grosville girls, the other faces, astonished or severe, neutral or friendly. Out rolled the tide of tragic verse, fine poetry, and high passion; and though it be not very much to say, it must at least be said that never had such recitation, in such French, been heard before within the walls of Grosville Park. Nor had the lips of any English girl ever dealt there with a poetic diction so unchastened and unashamed. Lady Grosville might well feel as though the solid frame of things were melting and cracking round her.
Kitty ceased. She fell back upon her chair, smitten with a sudden perception.
"You made me!" she said, reproachfully, to the Dean.
The Dean said another "Brava!" and gave another clap. Then, becoming aware of Lord Grosville's open mouth and eye, he sat up, caught his wife's expression, and came back to prose and the present.
"My dear young lady," he began, "you have the most extraordinary talent—" when Lady Grosville advanced upon him. Standing before him, she majestically signalled to her husband across his small person.
"William, kindly order Mrs. Wilson's carriage."
Lord Grosville awoke from his stupor with a jerk, and did as he was told. Mrs. Wilson, the agent's timid wife, who was not at all aware that she had asked for her carriage, rose obediently. Then the mistress of the house turned to Lady Kitty.
"You recite very well, Kitty," she said, with cold and stately emphasis, "but another time I will ask you to confine yourself to Racine and Corneille. In England we have to be very careful about French writers. There are, however, if I remember right, some fine passages in 'Athalie.'"
Kitty said nothing. The Austrian attaché who had been following the little incident with the liveliest interest, retired to a close inspection of the china. But the Dean, whose temper was of the quick and chivalrous kind, was roused.
"She recites wonderfully! And Victor Hugo is a classic, please, my lady—just as much as the rest of them. Ah, well, no doubt, no doubt, there might be things more suitable." And the old man came wavering down to earth, as the enthusiasm which Kitty had breathed into him escaped, like the gas from a balloon. "But, do you know, Lady Kitty "—he struck into a new subject with eagerness, partly to cover the girl, partly to silence Lady Grosville—"you reminded me all the time so remarkably—in your voice—certain inflections—of your sister—your step-sister, isn't it?—Lady Alice? You know, of course, she is close to you to-day—just the other side the park—with the Sowerbys?"
The Dean's wife sprang to her feet in despair. In general it was to her a matter for fond complacency that her husband had no memory for gossip, and was in such matters as innocent and as dangerous as a child. But this was too much. At the same moment Ashe came quickly forward.
"My sister?" said Kitty. "My sister?"
She spoke low and uncertainly, her eyes fixed upon the Dean.
He looked at her with a sudden odd sense of something unusual, then went on, still floundering:
"We met her at St. Pancras on our way down. If I had only known we were to have had the pleasure of meeting you—Do you know, I think she is looking decidedly better?"
His kindly expression as he rose expected a word of sisterly assent. Meanwhile even Lady Grosville was paralyzed, and the words with which she had meant to interpose failed on her lips.
Kitty, too, rose, looking round for something, which she seemed to find in the face of William Ashe, for her eyes clung there.
"My sister," she repeated, in the same low, strained voice. "My sister Alice? I—I don't know. I have never seen her."
Ashe could not remember afterwards precisely how the incident closed. There was a bustle of departing guests, and from the midst of it Lady Kitty slipped away. But as he came down-stairs in smoking trim, ten minutes later, he overheard the injured Dean wrestling with his wife, as she lit a candle for him on the landing.
"My dear, what did you look at me like that for? What did the child mean? And what on earth is the matter?"
IV
After the ladies had gone to bed, on the night of Lady Kitty's recitation, William Ashe stayed up till past midnight talking with old Lord Grosville. When relieved of the presence of his women-kind, who were apt either to oppress him, in the person of his wife, or to puzzle him, in the persons of his daughters, Lord Grosville was not by any means without value as a talker. He possessed that narrow but still most serviceable fund of human experience which the English land-owner, while our English tradition subsists, can hardly escape, if he will. As guardsman, volunteer, magistrate, lord-lieutenant, member—for the sake of his name and his acres—of various important commissions, as military attaché even, for a short space, to an important embassy, he had acquired, by mere living, that for which his intellectual betters had often envied him—a certain shrewdness, a certain instinct, as to both men and affairs, which were often of more service to him than finer brains to other persons. But, like most accomplishments, these also brought their own conceit with them. Lord Grosville having, in his own opinion, done extremely well without much book education himself, had but little appreciation for it in others.
Nevertheless he rarely missed a chance of conversation with William Ashe, not because the younger man, in spite of his past indolence, was generally held to be both able and accomplished, but because the elder found in him an invincible taste for men and women, their fortunes, oddities, catastrophes—especially the latter—similar to his own.
Like Mary Lyster, both were good gossips; but of a much more disinterested type than she. Women indeed as gossips are too apt to pursue either the damnation of some one else or the apotheosis of themselves. But here the stupider no less than the abler man showed a certain broad detachment not very common in women—amused by the human comedy itself, making no profit out of it, either for themselves or morals, but asking only that the play should go on.
The incident, or rather the heroine of the evening, had given Lord Grosville a topic which in the case of William Ashe he saw no reason for avoiding; and in the peace of the smoking-room, when he was no longer either hungry for his dinner or worried by his responsibilities as host, he fell upon his wife's family, and, as though he had been the manager of a puppet-show, unpacked the whole box of them for Ashe's entertainment.
Figure after figure emerged, one more besmirched than another, till finally the most beflecked of all was shaken out and displayed—Lady Grosville's brother and Kitty's father, the late Lord Blackwater. And on this occasion Ashe did not try to escape the story which was thus a second time brought across him. Lord Grosville, if