The Reason Why by Elinor Glyn

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Zara turned to the piano, which she had not yet opened, and sat down and
comforted herself with the airs she loved; and the maid who listened,
while she waited for her mistress to be undressed, turned up her eyes in
wonder.

_"Quel drole de couple!"_ she said.

And Tristram reencountered his friends and went off with them to sup.

Her ladyship was tired, he told them, and had gone to bed. And two of
the Englishwomen who knew him quite well teased him and said how
beautiful his bride was and how strange-looking, and what an iceberg he
must be to be able to come out to supper and leave her alone! And they
wondered why he then smiled cynically.

"For," said one to the other on their way home, "the new Lady Tancred is
perfectly beautiful! Fancy, Gertrude, Tristram leaving her for a minute!
And did you ever see such a face? It looks anything but cold."

Zara was wide-awake when, about two, he came in. She heard him in the
sitting-room and suddenly became conscious that her thoughts had been
with him ever since she went to bed, and not with Mirko and his letter.

She supposed he was now reading his pile of correspondence--he had such
numbers of fond friends! And then she heard him shut the door, and go
round into his room; but the carpets were very thick and she heard no
more.

If she could have seen what happened beyond that closed door, would it
have opened her eyes, or made her happy? Who can tell?

For Higgins, with methodical tidiness, had emptied the pockets of the
coat his master had worn in the day, and there on top of a letter or two
and a card-case was one tiny pink rose, a wee bud that had become
detached from the torn bunch.

And when Tristram saw it his heart gave a great bound. So it had stayed
behind, when he had returned the others, and was there now to hurt him
with remembrance of what might have been! He was unable to control the
violent emotion which shook him. He went to the window and opened it
wide: the moon was rather over, but still blazed in the sky. Then he
bent down and passionately kissed the little bud, while a scorching mist
gathered in his eyes.

CHAPTER XX

So at last the Wednesday morning came--and they could go back to
England. From that Saturday night until they left Paris Tristram's
manner of icy, polite indifference to his bride never changed. She had
no more quaking shocks nor any fear of too much ardor! He avoided every
possible moment of her society he could, and when forced to be with her
seemed aloof and bored.

And the freezing manner of Zara was caused no longer by haughty
self-defense but because she was unconsciously numb at heart.

Unknown, undreamed-of emotion came over her, whenever she chanced to
find him close, and during his long absences her thoughts followed
him--sometimes with wonderment.

Just as they were going down to start for the train on the Wednesday
morning a telegram was put into her hand. It was addressed "La Baronne
de Tancred," and she guessed at once this would be Mimo's idea of her
name. Tristram, who was already down the steps by the concierge's desk,
turned and saw her open it, with a look of intense strain. He saw that
as she read her eyes widened and stared out in front of them for a
moment, and that her face grew pale.

For Mimo had wired, "Mirko not quite so well." She crumpled the blue
paper in her hand, and followed her husband through the bowing personnel
of the hotel into the automobile. She controlled herself and was even
able to give one of her rare smiles in farewell, but when they started
she leaned back, and again her face went white. Tristram was moved. Whom
was her telegram from? She did not tell him and he would not ask, but
the feeling that there were in her life, things and interests of which
he knew nothing did not please him. And this particular thing--what was
it? Was it from a man? It had caused her some deep emotion--he could
plainly see that. He longed to ask her but was far too proud, and their
terms had grown so distant he hardly liked to express even solicitude,
which, however, he did.

"I hope you have not had any bad news?"

Then she turned her eyes upon him, and he saw that she had hardly heard
him; they looked blank.

"What?" she asked vaguely; and then, recollecting herself confusedly,
she went on, "No--not exactly--but something about which I must think."

So he was shut out of her confidence. He felt that, and carefully
avoided taking any further notice of her.

When they got to the station he suddenly perceived she was not following
him as he made way for her in the crowd, but had gone over to the
telegraph office by herself.

He waited and fumed. It was evidently something about which she wished
no one to see what she wrote, for she could perfectly well have given
the telegram to Higgins to take, who would be waiting by the saloon
door.

She returned in a few moments, and she saw that Tristram's face was very
stern. It did not strike her that he was jealous about the mystery of
the telegram; she thought he was annoyed at her for not coming on in
case they should be late, so she said hurriedly, "There is plenty of
time."

"Naturally," he answered stiffly as they walked along, "but it is quite
unnecessary for Lady Tancred to struggle through this rabble and take
telegrams herself. Higgins could have done it when we were settled in
the train."

And with unexpected meekness all she said was, "I am very sorry."

So the incident ended there--but not the uneasy impression it left.

Tristram did not even make a pretense of reading the papers when the
train moved on; he sat there staring in front of him, with his handsome
face shadowed by a moody frown. And any close observer who knew him
would have seen that there was a change in his whole expression, since
the same time the last week.

The impossible disappointment of everything! What kind of a nature could
his wife have, to be so absolutely mute and unresponsive as she had
been? He felt glad he had not given her the chance to snub him again.
These last days he had been able to keep to his determination, and at
all events did not feel himself humiliated. How long would it be before
he should cease to care for her? He hoped to God--soon, because the
strain of crushing his passionate desires was one which no man could
stand long.

The little, mutinous face, with its alluring, velvet, white skin, her
slightly full lips, all curved and red, and tempting, and anything but
cold in shape, and the extraordinary magnetic attraction of her whole
personality, made her a most dangerous thing; and then his thoughts
turned to the vision of her hair undone that he had had on that first
evening at Dover. He had said once to Francis Markrute, he remembered,
that these great passions were "storybook stuff." Good God! Well, in
those days he had not known.

He thought, as he returned from his honeymoon this day, that he could
not be more frightfully unhappy, but he was really only beginning the
anguish of the churning of his soul--if he had known.

And Zara sat in her armchair, and pretended to read; but when he glanced
at her he saw that it was a farce and that her expressive eyes were
again quite blank.

And finally, after the uncomfortable hours, they arrived at Calais and
went to the boat.

Here Zara seemed to grow anxious again and on the alert, and, stepping
forward, asked Higgins to inquire if there was a telegram for her,
addressed to the ship. But there was not, and she subsided once more
quietly and sat in their cabin.

Tristram did not even attempt to play the part of the returning
bridegroom beyond the ordinary seeing to her comfort about which he had
never failed; he left her immediately and remained for all the voyage on
deck.

And when they reached Dover Zara's expectancy showed again, but it was
not until they were just leaving the station that a telegram was thrust
through the window and he took it from the boy, while he could not help
noticing the foreign form of address. And a certainty grew in his brain
that it was "that same cursed man!"

He watched her face as she read it, and noticed the look of relief as,
quite unconscious of his presence, his bride absently spread the paper
out. And although deliberately to try and see what was written was not
what he would ever have done, his eyes caught the signature, "Mimo,"
before he was aware of it.

Mimo--that was the brute's name!

And what could he say or do? They were not really husband and wife, and
as long as she did nothing to disgrace the Tancred honor he had no valid
reason for questions or complaints.

But he burnt with suspicion, and jealousy, and pain.

Then he thought over what Francis Markrute had said the first evening,
when he had agreed to the marriage. He remembered how he had not felt it
would be chivalrous or honorable to ask any questions, once he had
blindly gone the whole length and settled she should be his; but how
Francis had gratuitously informed him that she had been an immaculate
wife until a year ago, and married to an unspeakable brute.

He knew the financier very well, and knew that he was, with all his
subtle cleverness, a man of spotless honor. Evidently, then, if there
was anything underneath he was unaware of it. But was there anything?
Even though he was angry and suspicious he realized that the bearing of
his wife was not guilty or degraded. She was a magnificently proud and
noble-looking creature, but perhaps even the noblest women could stoop
to trick from--love! And this thought caused him to jump up
suddenly--much to Zara's astonishment. And she saw the veins show on the
left side of his temple as in a knot, a peculiarity, like the horseshoe
of the Redgauntlets, which ran in the Tancred race.

Then he felt how foolish he was, causing himself suffering over an
imaginary thing; and here this piece of white marble sat opposite him in
cold silence, while his being was wrung! He suddenly understood
something which he had never done before, when he read of such things
in the papers--how, passionately loving, a man could yet kill the thing
he loved.

And Zara, comforted by the telegram, "Much better again to-day," had
leisure to return to the subject which had lately begun unconsciously to
absorb her--the subject of her lord!

She wondered what made him look so stern. His nobly-cut face was as
though it were carved in stone. Just from an abstract, artistic point of
view, she told herself, she honestly admired him and his type. It was
finer than any other race could produce and she was glad she was half
English, too. The lines were so slender and yet so strong; and every
bone balanced--and the look of superb health and athletic strength.

Such must have been the young Greeks who ran in the Gymnasium at Athens,
she thought.

And then, suddenly, an intense quiver of unknown emotion rushed over
her. And if at that moment he had clasped her and kissed her, instead of
sitting there glaring into space, the rest of this story need never have
been written!

But the moment passed, and she crushed whatever it was she felt of the
dawning of love, and he dominated the uneasy suspicions of her fidelity;
and they got out of the train at Charing Cross--after their remarkable
wedding journey.

CHAPTER XXI

Francis Markrute's moral antennae upon which he prided himself informed
him that all was not as it should be between this young bride and
bridegroom. Zara seemed to have acquired in this short week even an
extra air of regal dignity, aided by her perfect clothes; and Tristram
looked stern, and less joyous and more haughty than he had done. And
they were both so deadly cold, and certainly constrained! It was not one
of the financier's habits ever to doubt himself or his deductions. They
were based upon far too sound reasoning. No, if something had gone wrong
or had not yet evolutionized it was only for the moment and need cause
no philosophical _deus ex machina_ any uneasiness.

For it was morally and physically impossible that such a perfectly
developed pair of the genus human being could live together in the bonds
of marriage, and not learn to love.

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 passed 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 mass 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 passage 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 God!" 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 ladyship had gone out
at half-past nine o'clock and that his lordship had given orders to his
valet not to disturb him, in his lordship'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
Halicarnassus 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 reassured 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 attitude 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.
Harcourt, and bent over her and chaffed and whispered in her ear, and
she--Zara--was left primly in one of the armchairs, a little aloof. But
such a provoking looking type of beauty as hers did not long leave the
men of the party cold to her charms; and soon Jimmy Danvers joined her
and a Colonel Lowerby, commonly known as "the Crow," and she held a
little court. But to relax and be genial and unregal was so difficult
for her, with the whole contrary training of all her miserable life.

Hitherto men and, indeed, often women were things to be kept at a
distance, as in one way or another they were sure to bite!

And after a while the party adjusted itself, some for bridge and some
for sleep; and Jimmy Danvers and Colonel Lowerby went into the small
compartment to smoke.

"Well, Crow," said Jimmy, "what do you think of Tristram's new lady?
Isn't she a wonder? But, Jehoshaphat! doesn't she freeze you to death!"

"Very curious type," growled the Crow. "Bit of Vesuvius underneath, I
expect."

"Yes, that is what a fellow'd think to look at her," Jimmy said, puffing
at his cigarette. "But she keeps the crust on the top all the time; the
bloomin' volcano don't get a chance!"

"She doesn't look stupid," continued the Crow. "She looks stormy--expect
it's pretty well worth while, though, when she melts."

"Poor old Tristram don't look as if he had had a taste of paradise with
his houri, for his week, does he? Before we'd heartened him up on the
platform a bit--give you my word--he looked as mum as an owl," Jimmy
said. "And she looked like an iceberg, as she's done all the time. I've
never seen her once warm up."

"He's awfully in love with her," grunted the Crow.

"I believe that is about the measure, though I can't see how you've
guessed it. You had not got back for the wedding, Crow, and it don't
show now."

The Crow laughed--one of his chuckling, cynical laughs which to his dear
friend Lady Anningford meant so much that was in his mind.

"Oh, doesn't it!" he said.

"Well, tell me, what do you really think of her?" Jimmy went on. "You
see, I was best man at the wedding, and I feel kind of responsible if
she is going to make the poor, old boy awfully unhappy."

"She's unhappy herself," said the Crow. "It's because she is unhappy
she's so cold. She reminds me of a rough terrier I bought once, when I
was a lad, from a particularly brutal bargeman. It snarled at every one
who came near it, before they could show if they were going to kick or
not, just from force of habit."

"Well?" questioned Jimmy, who, as before has been stated, was rather
thick.

"Well, after I had had it for a year it was the most faithful and the
gentlest dog I ever owned. That sort of creature wants oceans of
kindness. Expect Tristram's pulled the curb--doesn't understand as yet."

"Why, how could a person who must always have had heaps of
cash--Markrute's niece, you know--and a fine position be like your dog,
Crow? You _are_ drawing it!"

"Well, you need not mind what I say, Jimmy," Colonel Lowerby went on.
"Judge for yourself. You asked my opinion, and as I am an old friend of
the family I've given it, and time will show."

"Lady Highford's going to be at Montfitchet," Jimmy announced after a
pause. "She won't make things easy for any one, will she!"

"How did that happen?" asked the Crow in an astonished voice.

"Ethelrida had asked her in the season, when every one supposed the
affair was still on, and I expect she would not let them put her off--"
And then both men looked up at the door, for Tristram peeped in.

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