Part 86

But when it came to the point, Lady Evenswood suavely took the task out of his hands. Her instinct told her that she could do it best; he soon came to agree. She had that delicacy which he desired but lacked; she could claim silence when he must have suffered interruption; she could excuse her interference on the ground of old friendship; she could plead an interest which might seem impertinent in him. Above all, she could be elusively lucid and make herself understood without any bluntness of statement.

"If it could be so managed that the whole miserable accident should be blotted out and forgotten!" she exclaimed, as though she implored a personal favor.

"How can that be?" asked Harry. "I was in, and I am out, Lady Evenswood."

"You're out, and your cousin's in, yes." Harry's eyes noted the words and dwelt on her face. "She can't be happy in that state of affairs either."

"Perhaps not," he admitted. "Facts are facts, though."

"There are ways--ways of preventing that," Southend interposed, murmuring vaguely.

"I don't know how you'll feel about it, but we all think you ought to consider other things besides your personal preferences. Might I tell Mr Disney--no, one moment, please! Our idea, I mean, was that there might be a family arrangement. A moment, please, Mr Tristram! I don't mean, by which she would lose what she has----"

"But that I should get it?"

"Well, yes. Oh, I know your feelings. But they would cease to exist if you came to her on an equality, with what is really and truly your proper position recognized and--and----"

"Regularized," Southend supplied with a sharp glance at Harry.

"I don't understand," Harry declared. "You must tell me what you mean. Is it something that concerns Cecily as well as me?"

"Oh, about that we haven't the right even to ask your feelings. That would be simply for you to consider. But if anything were to happen----"

"Nothing could." Harry restrained himself no longer. "There can be no question of it."

"I knew you'd feel like that. Just because you feel like that, I want to make the other suggestion to you. I'm not speaking idly. I have my warrant, Mr Tristram. If----" She was at a loss for a moment. "If you ever went back to Blent," she continued, not satisfied, but driven to some form of words, "it isn't inevitable that you should go as Mr Tristram. There are means of righting such injustices as yours. Wait, please! It would be felt--and felt in a quarter you can guess--that the master of Blent, which you'd be in fact anyhow, should have that position recognized. Perhaps there would not be the same feeling unless you were still associated with Blent."

"I don't understand at all."

She exchanged a despairing glance with Southend; she could not tell whether or not he was sincere in saying that he did not understand. Southend grew weary of the diplomacy which he had advocated; after all it had turned out to be Lady Evenswood's, not his, which may have had something to do with his change of mood toward it. He took up the task with a brisk directness.

"It's like this, Harry. You remember that the unsuccessful claimant in the Bearsdale case got a barony? That's our precedent. But it's felt not to go quite all the way--because there was a doubt there. (Luckily for Mina she was not by to hear.) But it is felt that in the event of the two branches of your family being united it would be proper to--to obliterate past--er--incidents. And that could be done by raising you to the peerage, under a new and, as we hope, a superior title. We believe Mr Disney would, under the circumstances I have suggested, be prepared to recommend a viscounty, and that there would prove to be no difficulties in the way." The last words had, presumably, reference to the same quarter that Lady Evenswood had once described by the words, "Somebody Else."

They watched him as he digested the proposal, at last made to him in a tolerably plain form. "You must give me a moment to follow that out," he said, with a smile. But he had it all clear enough before he would allow them to perceive that he understood. For although his brain made easy work of it, his feelings demanded a pause. He was greatly surprised. He had thought of no such a thing. What differences would it make?

Southend was well satisfied with the way in which his overture was received. Lady Evenswood was watching intently.

"The idea is----" said Harry slowly--"I mean--I don't quite gather what it is. You talk of my cousin, and then of a viscounty. The two go together, do they?"

It was rather an awkward question put as bluntly as that.

"Well, that did seem to be Mr Disney's view," said Southend.

"He was thinking of the family--of the family as a whole. I'm sure you think of that too," urged Lady Evenswood. There would never be a Tristram who did not, she was thinking. Well, except Addie perhaps, who really thought of nothing. "Of course as a thing purely personal to you it might be just a little difficult." She meant, and intended Harry to understand, that without the marriage the thing could not be done at all. Mina had reported Mr Disney faithfully, and Lady Evenswood's knowledge of her cousin Robert was not at fault. "Apart from anything else, there would be the sordid question," she ended, with a smile that became propitiatory against her will; she had meant it to be merely confidential.

There was ground for hope; Harry hesitated--truth will out, even where it impairs the grandeur of men. The suggestion had its attractions; it touched the spring of the picturesque in him which Blinkhampton had left rusting in idleness. It suggested something in regard to Cecily too--what it was, he did not reason out very clearly at the moment. Anyhow what was proposed would create a new situation and put him in a different position toward her. In brief, he would have something more on his side.

"Once he was sure the proposal was agreeable to you----" murmured Lady Evenswood gently. She was still very tentative about the matter, and still watchful of Harry.

But Southend was not cautious or did not read his man so well. To him the battle seemed to be won. He was assured in his manner and decidedly triumphant as he said:

"It's a great thing to have screwed Disney up to the viscounty. It does away with all difficulty about the name, you see."

Harry looked up sharply. Had Mr Disney been "screwed up?" Who had screwed him up?--by what warrant?--on whose commission? That was enough to make him glower and to bring back something of the old-time look of suspicion to his face. But the greater part of his attention was engrossed by the second half of Southend's ill-advised bit of jubilation.