"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?"
"He said it was impossible. Fifty copies had been already issued."
"The review copies, no doubt. By next week there will be, I should say, five thousand in the shops. Your man understands his business, Kitty.
This is the kind of puff preliminary he has been scattering about."
And with sparkling eyes he handed to her a printed slip containing an outline of the book for the information of the booksellers.
It drew attention to the extraordinary interest of the production as a painting of the upper cla.s.s by the hand of one belonging to its inmost circle. "People of the highest social and political importance will be recognized at once; the writer handles cabinet ministers and their wives with equal freedom, and with a touch betraying the closest and most intimate knowledge. Details. .h.i.therto quite unknown to the public of ministerial combinations and intrigues--especially of the feminine influences involved--will be found here in their lightest and most amusing form. A certain famous fancy ball will be identified without difficulty. Scathing as some of the portraits are, the writer is by no means merely cynical. The central figure of the book is a young and rising statesman, whose aim and hopes are touched with a loving hand--the charm of the portrait being only equalled by the venom with which the writer a.s.sails those who have thwarted or injured his hero.
But our advice is simply--"Buy and Read!" Conjecture will run wild about the writer. All we can say is that the most romantic or interesting surmise that can possibly be formed will fall far short of the reality."
"The beast is a shrewd beast!" said Ashe, as he raised himself from the stooping position in which he had been following the sentences over Kitty"s shoulder. "He knows that the public will rush for his wares! How much money did he offer you, Kitty?"
He turned sharply on his heel to wait for her reply.
"A hundred pounds," said Kitty, almost inaudibly--"and a hundred more if five thousand sold." She had returned again to her crouching att.i.tude over the fire.
"Generous!--upon my word!" said Ashe, scornfully turning over the two thick-leaved, loosely printed Mudie volumes. "A guinea to the public, I suppose--fifteen shillings to the trade. Darrell didn"t exactly advise you to advantage, Kitty."
Kitty kept silence. The sarcastic violence of his tone fell on her like a blow. She seemed to shrink together; while Ashe resumed his walk to and fro.
Presently, however, she looked up, to ask, in a voice that tried for steadiness:
"What do you mean to do--exactly--William?"
"I shall, of course, buy up all I can; I shall employ some lawyer fellow, and appeal to the good feelings of the newspapers. There will be no trouble with the respectable ones. But some copies will get out, and some of the Opposition newspapers will make capital out of them.
Naturally!--they"d be precious fools if they didn"t."
A momentary hope sprang up in Kitty.
"But if you buy it up--and stop all the papers that matter," she faltered--"why should you resign, William? There won"t be--such great harm done."
For answer he opened the book, and without speaking pointed to two pa.s.sages--the first, an account full of point and malice of the negotiations between himself and Lord Parham at the time when he entered the cabinet, the conditions he himself had made, and the confidential comments of the Premier on the men and affairs of the moment.
"Do you remember the night when I told you those things, Kitty?"
Yes, Kitty remembered well. It was a night of intimate talk between man and wife, a night when she had shown him her sweetest, tenderest mood, and he--incorrigible optimist!--had persuaded himself that she was growing as wise as she was lovely.
Her lip trembled. Then he pointed to the second--to the pitiless picture of Lord Parham at Haggart.
"You wrote that--when he was under our roof--there by our pressing invitation! You couldn"t have written it--unless he had so put himself in your power. A wandering Arab, Kitty, will do no harm to the man who has eaten and drunk in his tent!"
She looked up, and as she read his face she understood at last how what she had done had outraged in him all the natural and all the inherited instincts of a generous and fastidious nature. The "great gentleman," so strong in him as in all the best of English statesmen, whether they spring from the cla.s.ses or the ma.s.ses, was up in arms.
She sprang to her feet with a cry. "William, you can"t give up politics!
It would make you miserable."