The Reason Why

Chapter 19

He sprang from bed and picked them up. What could they possibly mean?

They were her roses, certainly--he remembered she wore the dressing-gown

that first evening at Dover, when he had gone to her to give her the

gardenias. And they certainly had not been there when at six o'clock he

had come in. He would in that case have seen them against the pale

carpet.

For one exquisite moment he thought they were a message and then he

noticed the ribbon had been wrenched off and was torn.

No, they were no conscious message, but they did mean that she had been

in his room while he slept.

Why had she done this thing? He knew she hated him--it was no

acting--and she had left him the night' before even unusually incensed.

What possible reason could she have, then, for coming into his room? He

felt wild with excitement. He would see if, as usual, the door between

them was locked. He tried it gently. Yes, it was.

And Zara heard him from her side, and stiffened in her bed with all the

expression of a fierce wolfhound putting its hackles up.

Yes, the danger of the ways of men was not over! If she had not

unconsciously remembered to lock the door when she had returned from her

terrifying adventure he would have come in!

So these two thrilled with different emotions and trembled, and there

was the locked harrier between them. And then Tristram rang for his

valet and ordered his bath. He would dress quickly, and ask casually if

she would breakfast in the sitting-room. It was so late, almost eleven,

and they could have it at twelve upstairs--not in the restaurant as he

had yesterday intended. He must find out about the roses; he could not

endure to pass the whole day in wonder and doubt.

And Zara, too, started dressing. It was better under the circumstances

to be armed at all points, and she felt safer and calmer with Henriette

in the room.

So a few minutes before twelve they met in the sitting-room.

Her whole expression was on the defensive: he saw that at once.

The waiters would be coming in with the breakfast soon. Would there be

time to talk to her, or had he better postpone it until they were

certain to be alone? He decided upon this latter course, and just said a

cold "Good morning," and turned to the _New York Herald_ and looked at

the news.

Zara felt more reassured.

So they presently sat down to their breakfast, each ready to play the

game.

They spoke of the theaters--the one they had arranged to go to this

Saturday night was causing all Paris to laugh.

"It will be a jolly good thing to laugh," Tristram said--and Zara

agreed.

He made no allusion to the events of the night before, and she hardly

spoke at all. And at last the repast was over, and the waiters had left

the room.

Tristram got up, after his coffee and liqueur, but he lit no cigar; he

went to one of the great windows which look out on the Colonne Vendme,

and then he came back. Zara was sitting upon the heliotrope Empire sofa

and had picked up the paper again.

He stood before her, with an expression upon his face which ought to

have melted any woman.

"Zara," he said softly, "I want you to tell me, why did you come into my

room?"

Her great eyes filled with startled horror and surprise, and her white

cheeks grew bright pink with an exquisite flush.

"I?"--and she clenched her hands. How did he know? Had he seen her,

then? But he evidently did know, and there was no use to lie. "I was

so--frightened--that--"

Tristram took a step nearer and sat down by her side. He saw the

confession was being dragged from her, and he gloried in it and would

not help her out.

She moved further from him, then, with grudging reluctance, she

continued,

"There can be such unpleasant quarrels with those horrible men. It--was

so very late--I--I--wished to be sure that you had come safely in."

Then she looked down, and the rose died out of her face, leaving it very

white.

And if Tristram's pride in the decision he had come to, on the fatal

wedding night, that she must make the first advances before he would

again unbend, had not held him, he would certainly have risked

everything and clasped her in his arms. As it was, he resisted the

intense temptation to do so, and made himself calm, while he answered,

"It mattered to you, then, in some way, that I should not come to harm?"

He was still sitting on the sofa near her, and that magnetic essence

which is in propinquity appealed to her; ignorant of all such emotions

as she was she only knew something had suddenly made her feel nervous,

and that her heart was thumping in her side.

"Yes, of course it mattered," she faltered, and then went on coldly, as

he gave a glad start; "scandals are so unpleasant--scenes and all those

things are so revolting. I had to endure many of them in my former

life."

Oh! so that was it! Just for fear of a scandal and because she had known

disagreeable things! Not a jot of feeling for himself! And Tristram got

up quickly and walked to the fireplace. He was cut to the heart.

The case was utterly hopeless, he felt. He was frozen and stung each

time he even allowed himself to be human and hope for anything. But he

was a strong man, and this should be the end of it. He would not be

tortured again.

He took the little bunch of flowers out of his pocket and handed it to

her quietly, while his face was full of pain.

"Here is the proof you left me of your kind interest," he told her.

"Perhaps your maid will miss it and wish to sew it on." And then without

another word he went out of the room.

Zara, left alone, sat staring into the fire. What did all this mean? She

felt very unhappy, but not angry or alarmed. She did not want to hurt

him. Had she been very unkind? After all, he had behaved, in comparison

to Ladislaus, with wonderful self-control--and--yes, supposing he were

not quite a sensual brute she had been very hard. She knew what pride

meant; she had abundance herself, and she realized for the first time

how she must have been stinging his.

But there were facts which could not be got over. He had married her for

her uncle's money and then shown at once that her person tempted him,

when it could not be anything else.

She got up and walked about the room. There was a scent of him

somewhere--the scent of a fine cigar. She felt uneasy of she knew not

what. Did she wish him to come back? Was she excited? Should she go out?

And then, for no reason on earth, she suddenly burst into tears.

* * * * *

They met for dinner, and she herself had never looked or been more icy

cold than Tristram was. They went down into the restaurant and there, of

course, he encountered some friends dining, too, in a merry party; and

he nodded gayly to them and told her casually who they were, and then

went on with his dinner. His manner had lost its constraint, it was just

casually indifferent. And soon they started for the theater, and it was

he who drew as far away as he could, when they got into the automobile.

They had a box--and the piece had begun. It was one of those impossibly

amusing Paris farces, on the borderland of all convention but so

intensely comic that none could help their mirth, and Tristram shook

with laughter and forgot for the time that he was a most miserable young

man. And even Zara laughed. But it did not melt things between them.

Tristram's feelings had been too wounded for any ordinary circumstances

to cause him to relent.

"Do you care for some supper?" he said coldly when they came out. But

she answered. "No," so he took her back, and as far as the lift where he

left her, politely saying "Good night," and she saw him disappear

towards the door, and knew he had again gone out.

And going on to the sitting-room alone, she found the English mail had

come in, and there were the letters on the table, at least a dozen for

Tristram, as she sorted them out--a number in women's handwriting--and

but two for herself. One was from her uncle, full of agreeable

congratulations subtly expressed; and the other, forwarded from Park

Lane, from Mirko, as yet ignorant of her change of state, a small,

funny, pathetic letter that touched her heart. He was better, and again

able to go out, and in a fortnight Agatha, the little daughter of the

Morleys, would be returning, and he could play with her. That might be a

joy--girls were not so tiresome and did not make so much noise as boys.

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 drle 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.