The Marriage of William Ashe

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

The maid retired, and Lady Tranmore was left alone. As she sat waiting, a thought occurred to her. She rang for the butler.

"Where is the Times?" she asked, when he appeared. The man replied that it was no doubt in Mr. Ashe's room, and he would bring it.

"Kitty has probably not looked at it," thought the visitor. When the paper arrived she turned at once to the Parliamentary report. It contained an important speech by Ashe in the House the night before. Lady Tranmore had been disturbed in the reading of it that morning, and had still a few sentences to finish. She read them with pride, then glanced again at the leading article on the debate, and at the flattering references it contained to the knowledge, courtesy, and debating power of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

"Mr. Ashe," said the Times, "has well earned the promotion he is now sure to receive before long. In those important rearrangements of some of the higher offices which cannot be long delayed, Mr. Ashe is clearly marked out for a place in the cabinet. He is young, but he has already done admirable service; and there can be no question that he has a great future before him."

Lady Tranmore put down the paper and fell into a reverie. A great future? Yes—if Kitty permitted—if Kitty could be managed. At present it appeared to William's mother that the caprices of his wife were endangering the whole development of his career. There were wheels within wheels, and the newspapers knew very little about them.

Three years, was it, since the marriage? She looked back to her dismay when William brought her the news, though it seemed to her that in some sort she had foreseen it from the moment of his first mention of Kitty Bristol—with its eager appeal to her kindness, and that new and indefinable something in voice and manner which put her at once on the alert.

Ought she to have opposed it more strongly? She had, indeed, opposed it; and for a whole wretched week she who had never yet gainsaid him in anything had argued and pleaded with her son, attempting at the same time to bring in his uncles to wrestle with him, seeing that his poor paralyzed father was of no account, and so to make a stubborn family fight of it. But she had been simply disarmed and beaten down by William's sweetness, patience, and good-humor. Never had he been so determined, and never so lovable.

It had been made abundantly plain to her that no wife, however exacting and adorable, should ever rob her, his mother, of one tittle of his old affection—nay, that, would she only accept Kitty, only take the little forlorn creature into the shelter of her motherly arms, even a more tender and devoted attention than before, on the part of her son, would be surely hers. He spoke, moreover, the language of sound sense about his proposed bride. That he was in love, passionately in love, was evident; but there were moments when he could discuss Kitty, her family, her bringing-up, her gifts and defects, with the same cool acumen, the same detachment, apparently, he might have given, say, to the Egyptian or the Balkan problem. Lady Tranmore was not invited to bow before a divinity; she was asked to accept a very gifted and lovely child, often troublesome and provoking, but full of a glorious promise which only persons of discernment, like herself and Ashe, could fully realize. He told her, with a laugh, that she could never have behaved even tolerably to a stupid daughter-in-law. Whereas, let London and society and a few years of love and living do their work, and Kitty would make one of the leading women of her time, as Lady Tranmore had been before her. "You'll help her, you'll train her, you'll put her in the way," he had said, kissing his mother's hand. "And you'll see that in the end we shall both of us be so conceited to have had the making of her there'll be no holding us."

Well, she had yielded—of course she had yielded. She had explained the matter, so far as she could, to the dazed wits of her paralyzed husband. She had propitiated the family on both sides; she had brought Kitty to stay with her, and had advised on the negotiations which banished Madame d'Estrées from London and the British Isles, in return for a handsome allowance and the payment of her debts; and, finally, she had with difficulty allowed the Grosvilles to provide the trousseau and arrange the marriage from Grosville Park, so eager had she grown in her accepted task.

And there had been many hours of high reward. Kitty had thrown herself at first upon William's mother with all the effusion possible. She had been docile, caressing, brilliant. Lady Tranmore had become almost as proud of her gifts, her social effect, and her fast advancing beauty as Ashe himself. Kitty's whims and humors; her passion for this person, and her hatred of that; her love of splendor and indifference to debt; her contempt of opinion and restraint, seemed to her, as to Ashe, the mere crude growth of youth. When she looked at Ashe, so handsome, agreeable, and devoted, at his place and prestige in the world, his high intelligence and his personal attraction, Ashe's mother must needs think that Kitty's mere cleverness would soon reveal to her her extraordinary good-fortune; and that whereas he was now at her feet, she before long would be at his.