The Reason Why Part 24

Meanwhile, it was his business as the friend and uncle of the two to be genial and make things go on greased wheels.

So he exerted himself to talk at dinner--their dinner _a trois_--. He told them all the news that had happened during the week--Was it only a week--Zara and Tristram both thought!

How there were rumors that in the coming spring there might be a general election, and that the Radicals were making fresh plots to ruin the country; but there was to be no autumn session, and, as usual, the party to which they all had the honor to belong was half asleep.

And then the two men grew deep in a political discussion, so as soon as Zara had eaten her peach she said she would leave them to their talk, and say "Good night," as she was tired out.

"Yes, my niece," said her uncle who had risen. And he did what he had not done since she was a child, he stooped and kissed her white forehead. "Yes, indeed, you must go and rest. We both want you to do us justice to-morrow, don't we, Tristram? We must have our special lady looking her best."

And she smiled a faint smile as she pa.s.sed from the room.

"By George! my dear boy," the financier went on, "I don't believe I ever realized what a gorgeously beautiful creature my niece is. She is like some wonderful exotic blossom--a ma.s.s of snow and flame!"

And Tristram said with unconscious cynicism,

"Certainly snow--but where is the flame?"

Francis Markrute looked at him out of the corners of his clever eyes.

She had been icy to him in Paris, then! But his was not the temperament to interfere. It was only a question of time. After all, a week was not long to grow accustomed to a perfect stranger.

Then they went back to the library, and smoked for an hour or so and continued their political chat; and at last Markrute said to his new nephew-in-law blandly,

"In a year or so, when you and Zara have a son, I will give you, my dear boy, some papers to read which will interest you as showing the mother's side of his lineage. It will be a fit balance, as far as actual blood goes, to your own."

In a year or so, when Zara should have a son!

Of all the aspects of the case, which her pride and disdain had robbed him of, this, Tristram felt, was perhaps--though it had not before presented itself to him--the most cruel. He would have no son!

He got up suddenly and threw his unfinished cigar into the grate--that old habit of his when he was moved--and he said in a voice that the financier knew was strained,

"That is awfully good of you. I shall have to have it inserted in the family tree--some day. But now I think I shall turn in. I want to have my eye rested, and be as fit as a fiddle for the shoot. I have had a tiring week."

And Francis Markrute came out with him into the pa.s.sage and up to the first floor, and when they got so far they heard the notes of the _Chanson Triste_ being played again from Zara's sitting-room. She had not gone to bed, then, it seemed!

"Good G.o.d!" said Tristram. "I don't know why, but I wish to heaven she would not play that tune."

And the two men looked at one another with some uneasy wonder in their eyes.

"Go on and take her to bed," the financier suggested. "Perhaps she does not like being left so long alone."

Tristram went upstairs with a bitter laugh to himself.

He did not go near the sitting-room; he went straight into the room which had been allotted to himself: and a savage sense of humiliation and impotent rage convulsed him.

The next day, the express which would stop for them at Tylling Green, the little station for Montfitchet, started at two o'clock, and the financier had given orders to have an early lunch at twelve before they left. He, himself, went off to the City for half an hour to read his letters, at ten o'clock, and was surprised when he asked Turner if Lord and Lady Tancred had break-fasted to hear that her ladys.h.i.+p had gone out at half-past nine o'clock and that his lords.h.i.+p had given orders to his valet not to disturb him, in his lords.h.i.+p's room--and here Turner coughed--until half-past ten.

"See that they have everything they want," his master said, and then went out. But when he was in his electric brougham, gliding eastwards, he frowned to himself.

"The proud, little minx! So she has insisted upon keeping to the business bargain up till now, has she!" he thought. "If it goes on we shall have to make her jealous. That would be an infallible remedy for her caprice."

But Zara was not concerned with such things at all for the moment. She was waiting anxiously for Mimo at their trysting-place, the mausoleum of Halicarna.s.sus in the British Museum, and he was late. He would have the last news of Mirko. No reply had awaited her to her telegram to Mrs.

Morley from Paris, and it had been too late to wire again last night.

And Mrs. Morley must have got the telegram, because Mimo had got his.

Some day, she hoped--when she could grow perhaps more friendly with her husband--she would get her uncle to let her tell him about Mirko. It would make everything so much more simple as regards seeing him, and why, since the paper was all signed and nothing could be altered, should there be any mystery now? Only, her uncle had said the day before the wedding,

"I beg of you not to mention the family disgrace of your mother to your husband nor speak to him of the man Sykypri for a good long time--if you ever need."

And she had acquiesced.

"For," Francis Markrute had reasoned to himself, "if the boy dies, as Morley thinks there is every likelihood that he will, why should Tristram ever know?"

The disgrace of his adored sister always made him wince.

Mimo came at last, looking anxious and haggard, and not his debonair self. Yes, he had had a telegram that morning. He had sent one, as he was obliged to do, in her name, and hence the confusion in the answer.

Mrs. Morley had replied to the Neville Street address, and Zara wondered if she knew London very well and would see how impossible such a locality would be for the Lady Tancred!

But Mirko was better--decidedly better--the attack had again been very short. So she felt rea.s.sured for the moment, and was preparing to go when she remembered that one of the things she had come for was to give Mimo some money in notes which she had prepared for him; but, knowing the poor gentleman's character, she was going to do it delicately by buying the "Apache!" For she was quite aware that just money, for him to live, now that it was not a question of the welfare of Mirko, he would never accept from her. In such unpractical, sentimental ways does breeding show itself in some weak natures!

Mimo was almost suspicious of the transaction, and she was obliged to soothe and flatter him by saying that he must surely always have understood how intensely she had admired that work; and now she was rich it would be an everlasting pleasure to her to own it for her very own.

So poor Mimo _was_ comforted, and they parted after a while, all arrangements having been made that the telegrams--should any more come--were to go first, addressed to her at Neville Street, so that the poor father should see them and then send them on.

And as it was now past eleven o'clock Zara returned quickly back to Park Lane and was coming in at the door just as her husband was descending the stairs.

"You are up very early, Milady," he said casually, and because of the servants in the hall she felt it would look better to follow him into the library.

Tristram was surprised at this and he longed to ask her where she had been, but she did not tell him; she just said,

"What time do we arrive at your uncle's? Is it five or six?"

"It only takes three hours. We shall be in about five. And, Zara, I want you to wear the sable coat. I think it suits you better than the chinchilla you had when we left."

A little pink came into her cheeks. This was the first time he had ever spoken of her clothes; and to hide the sudden strange emotion she felt, she said coldly.

"Yes, I intended to. I shall always hate that chinchilla coat."

And he turned away to the window, stung again by her words which she had said unconsciously. The chinchilla had been her conventional "going away" bridal finery. That was, of course, why she hated the remembrance of it.

As soon as she had said the words she felt sorry. What on earth made her so often wound him? She did not know it was part of the same instinct of self-defense which had had to make up her whole att.i.tude towards life.

Only this time it was unconsciously to hide and so defend the new emotion which was creeping into her heart.

He stayed with his back turned, looking out of the window; so, after waiting a moment, she went from the room.

At the station they found Jimmy Danvers, and a Mr. and Mrs. Harcourt with the latter's sister, Miss Opie, and several men. The rest of the party, including Emily and Mary, Jimmy told them, had gone down by the eleven o'clock train.

Both Mrs. Harcourt and her sister and, indeed, the whole company were Tristram's old and intimate friends and they were so delighted to see him, and chaffed and were gay, and Zara watched, and saw that her uncle entered into the spirit of the fun in the saloon, and only she was a stranger and out in the cold.

As for Tristram, he seemed to become a different person to the stern, constrained creature of the past week, and he sat in a corner with Mrs.