Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: He could picture in the next box Cydonia's golden head
at just the same angle and in between the narrow velvet curtains barely
separating the pair. _See page 93_.]
THE MAN WITH
THE DOUBLE HEART
BY
MURIEL HINE
(MRS. SIDNEY COXON)
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN : : MCMXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1914
BY JOHN LANE COMPANY
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.
TO
MY MOTHER
Some starlit garden grey with dew
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?
--_W. L. Henley_.
THE MAN WITH
THE DOUBLE HEART
PART I
"Flower o' the broom
Take away love and our earth is a tomb!"
--_R. Browning_.
CHAPTER I
The hour was close on midday, but the lamps in Cavendish Square shone
with a blurred light through the unnatural gloom.
The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in
Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting
Harcourt House it found room to expand and took on spectral shape; dim
forms with floating locks that clung to the stunted trees and,
shuddering, pressed against the high London buildings which faded away
indistinctly into the blackened sky.
From thence ragged pennons went busily fluttering South to be caught in
the draught of the traffic in noisy Oxford Street, where hoarse and
confusing cries were blent with the rumble of wheels in all the
pandemonium of man at war with the elements.
The air was raw and sooty, difficult to breathe, and McTaggart, already
irritable with the nervous tension due to his approaching interview,
his throat dry, his eyes smarting as he peered at the wide crossing,
started violently as the horn of an unseen motor sounded unpleasantly
near at hand.
"Confound the man!" he said, in apology to himself and stepped back
quickly onto the narrow path as a shapeless monster with eyes of flame
swung past, foiled of its prey.
"A nice pace to go on a day like this!" And here something struck him
sharply in the rear, knocking his hat forward onto the bridge of his
nose.
"What the...!" he checked his wrath with a sudden shamefaced laugh as
he found his unseen adversary to consist of the square railings.
Somewhere down Wigmore Street a clock boomed forth the hour. A quarter
to twelve. McTaggart counted the strokes and gave a sigh of relief not
unmixed with amusement: the secret congratulation of an unpunctual man
redeemed by an accident from the error of his ways.
Wedging his hat more firmly down on his head, he dared again the black
space before him, struck the curb on the opposite side and, one hand
against the wall, steered round the corner and up into Harley Street.
Under the first lamp he paused and hunted for the number over the
nearest door where four brass plates menaced the passer-by with that
modern form of torture that few live to escape--the inquisitorial
process known as dentistry.
Making a rapid calculation, he came to the conclusion that the house he
sought must lie at the further end of the street--London's "Bridge of
Sighs"--where breathless hope and despair elbow each other ceaselessly
in the wake of suffering humanity.
The fog was changing colour from a dirty yellow to opal, and the damp
pavement was becoming visible as McTaggart moved forward with a quick
stride that held an elasticity which it did not owe to elation.
He walked with an ease and lightness peculiar in an Englishman who,
athletic as he may be, yet treads the earth with a certain conscious
air of possessing it: a tall, well-built man, slender and very erect,
but without that balanced stiffness, the hall-mark of "drill."
A keen observer would guess at once an admixture of blood that betrayed
its foreign strain in that supple grace of his; in the olive skin, the
light feet, and the glossy black hair that was brushed close and thick
to his shapely head.
Not French. For the Frenchman moves on a framework of wire, fretting
toward action, deadly in attack. But the race that bred Napoleon,
subtle and resistant, built upon tempered steel that bends but rarely
breaks.
Now, as he reached the last block and the house he sought, McTaggart
paused for a second, irresolute, on the step.
He seemed to gather courage with a quick indrawn breath, and his mouth
was set in a hard line as his hand pressed the bell.
Then he raised his eyes to the knocker above, and with the slight
action his whole face changed.
For, instead of being black beneath their dark brows, the man's eyes
were blue, an intense, fiery blue; with the clear depths and the temper
touch that one sees nowhere else save in the strong type of the hardy
mountain race. They were not the blue of Ireland, with her
half-veiled, sorrowful mirth; nor the placid blue of England, that mild
forget-me-not. They were utterly unmistakable; they brought with them
a breath of heather-gloried solitude and the deep and silent lochs.
Here was a Scot--a hillsman from the North; no need of his name to cry
aloud the fact.
And yet...
The door was opened, and at once the imprisoned fog finding a new
outlet drove into the narrow hall.
A tall, bony parlour maid was staring back at him as, mechanically,
McTaggart repeated the great man's name.
"You have an appointment, sir?" Her manner seemed to imply that her
dignity would suffer if this were not the case.
Satisfied by his answer, she ushered him into a room where a gas fire
burned feebly with an apologetic air, as though painfully conscious of
its meretricious logs. Half a dozen people, muffled in coats and furs,
were scattered about a long dining table, occupied in reading
listlessly the papers, to avoid the temptation of staring at each
other. The place smelt of biscuits, of fog and of gas, like an unaired
buffet in a railway station.
McTaggart, weighed down by a sense of impending doom, picked up a
"Punch" and retired to the window, ostensibly to amuse himself, in
reality to rehearse for the hundredth time his slender stock of
"symptoms." The clock ticked on, and a bleak silence reigned, broken at
intervals by the sniff of a small boy, who, accompanied by a parent and
a heavy cold in the head, was feasting his soul on a volume of the
"Graphic."
Something familiar in the cartoon under his eyes drew McTaggart away
from his own dreary thoughts.
"I mustn't forget to tell him..." he was saying to himself, when he
realized that the paper he held was dated five months back! He felt
immediately quite unreasonably annoyed. A sudden desire to rise up and
go invaded his mind. In his nervous state the excuse seemed amply
sufficient. A "Punch" five months old! ... it was a covert insult.
A doctor who could trade on his patient's credulity--pocketing his
three guineas, don't forget that!--and offer them literature but fit to
light the fire...
A "Punch" Five Months Old! ... he gathered up his gloves.
But a noiseless step crossed the room, a voice whispered his name.
"Mr. McTaggart? This way, please."
He found himself following the bony parlour maid, past the aggressive
eyes of the still-waiting crowd, out into the hall and down a
glass-roofed passage.
"Now I'm in for it..." he said silently... "Oh! ... _damn_!" He put
on his most truculent air.
The maid tapped at a door.
"Come in," said a sharp voice.
McTaggart entered and stood still for a moment, blinking on the
threshold, irresolute.
For the scene was unexpected. Despite the heavy fog that filtered
through the windows with its insidious breath, a hint of Spring was
there in the fresh white walls, the rose-covered chintzes and the
presence of flowers.
The place seemed filled with them. An early bough of blossom, the
exquisite tender pink of the almond in bloom, stood against a mirror
that screened a recess; and the air was alive with the scent of
daffodils, with subtle yellow faces, like curious Chinamen, peering
over the edge of a blue Nankin bowl.
In the centre of the room a man in a velvet coat was bending over a
mass of fresh violets, adding water carefully to the surrounding moss
out of a copper jug that he held in his hands.
McTaggart stared at him; at the lean, colourless face under its untidy
thatch of coarse, gray hair; at the spare figure, the long, steady
hands and the loose, unconventional clothes that he wore. He might
have been an artist of Rossetti's day in that shabby brown coat and
soft faded shirt. But the great specialist--whose name carried weight
wherever science and medicine were wont to foregather. Had he made a
mistake? It seemed incredible.
The doctor gave a parting touch to an overhanging leaf and wheeled
round to greet his patient with a smile.
"I can't bear to see flowers die from lack of care, and this foggy
weather tries them very hard. Excuse me a moment." He passed into the
recess, and washed his hands vigorously, talking all the while.
"Some years ago," he switched off the tap, "I went to a public dinner
of agriculturists. Found to my surprise I was sitting next Oscar
Wilde--one doesn't somehow associate him with such a function! On my
left was a farmer of the good old-fashioned type, silent, aggressive,
absorbed in his food. I happened to remark that the flowers were all
withered; the heat of the room had been too much for them.
"'Not withered'--Wilde corrected me--'but merely _weary_...'
"The farmer turned his head, and gave him one glance.
"'Silly Ass!' he said explosively and returned to his dinner. It was
his single contribution to the evening's conversation. I've never
forgotten it, nor the look on Wilde's face."
McTaggart laughed. He felt oddly at ease.
The doctor glanced at his nails and came back into the room.
He pushed an easy-chair toward his patient and leaning against the
mantelpiece with his hands in his pocket:
"Now, tell me all the trouble," he suggested quietly.
A slight flush crept up under the olive skin. McTaggart was suddenly
immensely ashamed.
"I don't believe really ... there's anything ... wrong..." He gave an
apologetic, husky little laugh ... "but the fact is, a friend of
mine--he's a medical student--ran over me the other day, and, well--he
said--there was something odd--that he couldn't understand--something
about the beat of my heart. I'd fainted, you know--awfully
inconvenient--at a supper party, too ... I'd been feeling pretty
cheap..." He broke off, confused, as for the first time the older man
deliberately fixed his eyes upon him. Hazel eyes they were with
curious flecks of yellow, bright and hard beneath his pince-nez.
"You fainted? For how long were you unconscious?" He added a few more
questions, nodded his shaggy head, and crossing the room sat down at
his desk. He opened a book, massively bound, where on each page was
printed, hideous and suggestive, an anatomical sketch of the human form
divine.
"I'd like your name in full." He picked up the card which McTaggart
had sent in by the parlour maid.
"P. M. McTaggart--what does that stand for?"
"It's rather a mouthful." The owner smiled. "Peter Maramonte."
The specialist glanced up shrewdly.
"Italian?--I thought so."
"On my mother's side. My father was Scotch, an Aberdonian."
"Your parents are living?"
"No, both dead." He stood there, tall and sombre, watching the other
write in a thin, crabbed hand the unusual name.
"Any hereditary tendency to heart trouble?"
"Not that I know of. My father was drowned--out fishing, one day. The
boat overturned, caught by a squall. He was, I believe, a strong
healthy man."
"And your mother?"
"She never seemed the same after his death. And then the climate tried
her. She'd been brought up in the South. The end was pneumonia. I
was only twelve at the time, but I don't think that either of them
suffered from the heart."
"I see. And now if you'll take off your things--strip to the waist,
please--and lie on that sofa."
It seemed to McTaggart that at this juncture the devil himself entered
into his clothes. Buttons multiplied and waxed evasive, his collar
stud stuck, his vest clove to his head.
He dragged it off at last, breathless and ruffled.
"That's capital." The great man adjusted his stethoscope and leaned
over the white young body outstretched. McTaggart felt dexterous hands
passing swiftly, surely; tapping here, pressing there, over his bare
flesh.
"A deep breath--so. Thank you, that will do. Now gently in and out
... quite naturally. Ah...!" He paused, listened a second and gave a
grunt. "I wonder?"
A wave of anger swept over the prostrate man.
"He's found something, damn him!" he said to himself, resenting the
eager light on that lean, absorbed face.
"Curious!" The specialist drew himself upright, and reached round for a
shorter, wooden instrument.
Another silence followed, pregnant of disaster. The pressure of the
wooden disk upon McTaggart's chest seemed to become insupportable--a
thing of infinite weight.
The doctor's coarse gray hair exhaled a faint scent where brilliantine,
ineffectually, had played a minor part, and in some mysterious way it
added to the other's annoyance. The suspense was unbearable.
"Found anything wrong?" His voice, unnaturally cheerful, brought a
frown to the doctor's face.
"Don't move, please. Keep silent, now." The disk slid across his
chest and settled above his ribs, on the right side this time, with its
load of discomfort.
"Marvellous ... extraordinary! One's read of it, of course, but never
come across it ... my first experience." The great man stood erect,
perplexity at end, a vast enthusiasm glowing in his eyes.
Suddenly he divined the patient's anxiety. "Nothing to worry about,"
he added soothingly. "You can dress now. Your heart's perfectly
sound." He walked away to his writing table, still engrossed in
thought.
McTaggart felt an immense relief that swamped curiosity. The ordeal
was over, and life still smiled at him. He tumbled into his clothes
and groped for his collar stud, which, with the guile of these wayward
things, had crept away to hide.
Suddenly in a glass he caught his own reflection--his hair dishevelled,
his collar bent, and felt an insane desire, despite these minor flaws,
to shake himself by the hand, as though, by personal effort, he had
prolonged his days!
The doctor still stood motionless, gazing into space. In the silence
of the room a faint pattering told of the almond blossom falling on the
polished floor.
McTaggart straightened his tie, and with his back turned,
surreptitiously began to dive in his pocket for the fee.
He found it at last, and took a step forward toward the absorbed figure
at the desk.
"I'd like to know," he suggested, "what you really think is the
cause...."
"Of course!" The lean face lifted with a start. "You must forgive me.
The fact is"--he smiled--"I'm too interested in your case to remember
your natural anxiety. I think your present trouble is caused by an
error in digestion. The palpitation comes from that and the other
symptoms too. A little care with your diet--I'll write you a
prescription--a bismuth mixture to be taken after meals. But if you've
further worry, come to me again. As a friend--you understand? ... Oh,
no!--it's pure selfishness. I don't want to lose sight of you. You
see--to cut it short--you're by way of being a freak! You've got--for
want of a better name--what I call a Double Heart. One heart's on your
right side and one's in the proper place. It's the most amazing thing
I've ever come across. You're perfectly healthy--sound as a bell. I
shouldn't wonder, upon my soul, if you hadn't two lives!"
McTaggart stared at him, trying to take it in.
"It sounds rather mad. But you say it doesn't matter?"
"It doesn't seem to affect your circulation in the least. I'm certain
what you complain about is due to indigestion--the aftermath perhaps of
a touch of Influenza."
A twinkle crept into the blue eyes watching him. "I suppose one
heart's Italian and the other purely Scotch?" He ventured the joke
against himself in a spirit of relief.
"That's it!" His new friend laughed ... "a dual personality. Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with a physical excuse." He gave loose reins for
a moment to his vivid imagination, which swept him on with the current
of his thoughts.
"You're not married, you say? Well--you'd better be careful. It might
lead to bigamy! If so, refer to me."
A curious expression came into the young man's face as he echoed the
other's laugh with a trace of confusion.
"A fair wife and a dark one? Porridge and ... Chianti!"
He paid his fee and went out into the London fog.
CHAPTER II
McTaggart walked down Harley Street, his blue eyes full of light, still
hugging the consciousness of a new lease of life.
High above him an orange sun was swung in the misty heavens, putting to
shame the wistful gleam of the pale lamps below, with their air of
straggling revellers caught by the dawn. A carriage rolled down the
street and was met by a passing taxi, and then, as he moved forward
rejoicing to himself, into the foggy calm came a sudden stir of life:
the sound of young voices, of laughter and light feet.
From under a gloomy portico a crowd of girls swept forth, gathered in
groups of twos and threes and dissolved into the fog, chattering and
linking arms, swinging bags of books, north and south they scattered
with a sweet note of youth.
And at the sight McTaggart came to a sudden halt, conscious that he had
received the answer to his prayer; that steadily growing wish for the
presence of a friend to share in the new-born exuberance of his mood.
He crossed the street quickly and joined in the crowd, receiving demure
glances of studied unconcern and here and there a frown from elderly
duennas whose acid displeasure added to his amusement. But cool, and
imperturbable, he proceeded to run the gauntlet until on the steps of
the College itself he saw a lonely figure busily engaged in tightening
the strap that held together exercises and books.
His hand was already midway to his hat when the girl raised a pair of
dark-fringed gray eyes and favoured him with a cold glance of
non-recognition. For a second McTaggart stared, clearly taken aback.
Then, with an impatient gesture, he walked straight past, recrossed the
road and turned up a side street. Here he slackened his pace, and,
smiling to himself, was presently rewarded by the sound of hurrying
steps; but, conscious of former warnings, refrained from looking back
until a breathless voice sounded in his ear.
"Peter!"
He walked on with mischievous intention,
"Peter--it's _me_!" He felt a touch on his arm.
"Hullo!" He wheeled round. "Why, it's Jill!--what a surprise!"
The gray-eyed girl looked up at him with a reproving frown, at his
handsome, laughing face and unrepentant air.
"I _wish_ you'd remember!" She stood there, slim and straight; as it
seemed to him, a-quiver with the miracle of life. For not all the
shabby clothes she wore, from the little squirrel cap which, with the
tie about her throat, had seen better days, to the short tweed skirt
revealing mended boots, could mar the spring-like radiance of her
golden youth.
"You're a prim little school miss," said McTaggart teasingly.
"I'm _not_." She drew back, her head very high, the thick plait of
dark hair swinging with the movement.
"You don't understand, you really _are_ dense! I've told you heaps of
times, not in Harley Street."
He gave a happy chuckle, warming to the fray. "Now, don't stand there
quarrelling, but give me your books. I'll walk home with you if you're
a good girl."
Unresisted he took the strap from her, with its tightly wedged pencil
case above the school primers. For her thoughts were far away, her
dark brows drawn together as she went on steadily in her own defence.
"I hate being cross with you--but it's not fair play! You wouldn't
like it yourself if you were me, Peter. It didn't matter last year
when I was in the Juniors, but now I'm a First Senior" ... pride lay in
the words ... "it's quite a different thing. We think it jolly bad
form in _my_ set, you know."
Instinctively in talking she had fallen into his step. McTaggart
glanced sideways, as they turned up Portland Place, at the pretty,
flushed face with its dark frame of hair under the little furry cap,
pulled close about her ears.
"All right, Jill. I won't do it again. I'll admit I was tempted,
being sorely in need of a pal. I'd just been through a bad half hour,
you see, and was weakly yearning for a little sympathy."
She looked up quickly with affectionate concern; for he knew the royal
road to her instant forgiveness.
"Bills?" He laughed aloud at the laconic suggestion. Then a shade of
pity seized the man. Despite her youthful years she spoke from
experience.
"Not this time." On the verge of confidence, he checked himself, moved
by a sudden reticence.
"Do you think your mother would give me some lunch? Or, better still,
will you come and lunch with me?"
He halted as he spoke. "There's Pagani's now, it's not far from
here,--in Great Portland Street."
She shook her head. "I'd love to"--her voice was regretful--"but I
must get back. I've promised Roddy. He's home for his exeat and we're
going to the Zoo. You'd better lunch with us if you don't mind pot
luck. But we mustn't be late; we've got a new cook."
"Another?" McTaggart laughed. It seemed a familiar joke.
"The fourth since the Summer," the girl answered dryly. "But Stephen
found this one, so she _ought_ to be perfect!"
They turned up the Broad Walk where the fog still hung, white and
shadowy over the sodden grass. Here and there a nurse moved with
steady intention, children trotting beside her, homeward to lunch; and
upon a damp bench, oblivious of the weather, a loving couple lingered,
speechlessly hand in hand.
"And how is the great Stephen? I haven't seen him for years."
"Oh, he's just the same." The girl's voice was weary. She stared
straight ahead as they swung along together, and a short silence
followed that both understood. For they met here on the grounds of a
common mistrust, and a hatred shared is a stronger link than even that
of love. At the turnstile McTaggart paused, watching her thoughtful
face.
"Let's go by the Inner Circle, it's a much nicer way."
"All right." The words were husky, and, as she passed through, the
dark lashes hid from him her downcast eyes. But not before McTaggart
had seen what she tried to disguise--the tears standing there in their
clear gray depths.
"Why, Jill!--why, my dear, whatever is the matter?"
"Nothing." She bit her under lip, furious with herself.
The fog swallowed them up again in the narrow hedged-in road, and
McTaggart tucked a hand through his companion's arm.
"Tell me all about it," he said persuasively, "a worry only grows by
being bottled up."
She gave him a swift look from under her wet lashes, tempted by the
sympathy which rang in his voice.
"It's Stephen. That's all."
"I thought so," his face was dark; "what's he been doing now? What a
rotter the fellow is!"
"It's not so much what he does," she pulled herself together and with a
defiant gesture passed a hand across her eyes. "It's the fact of his
being there, all day long ... it's difficult to explain. But I can't
bear to see him, sitting in Father's chair, as if it were his by right,
as though he were the master..."
She broke off indignantly, her tears dried by anger, her smooth cheeks
flushed, her hand unconsciously tightening on his arm.
"It makes Roddy furious! Of course he's only a boy, but he's such an
old dear,"--her love for her brother was plain. "If only Stephen would
let him alone instead of teasing him! He treats him like a kid, with a
'Run away and play!' And no boy will stand that--in his own home too!
And of course there are rows, and Mother takes _his_ side."
"What--Stephen's?" McTaggart stared in surprise.
"Rather! He can't do wrong--'poor dear Stephen'! And it's no good
chiming in, it only makes things worse. For if I do Mother says it's
because ... I'm jealous."
The little break in her voice showed how deep the shaft had sped.
"Poor old girl"--McTaggart pressed her arm. "It's jolly rough on
you--I'd like to kick the chap! He's a regular parasite; he can't
support himself, and he's always hanging around sponging on his
friends."
But Jill was following out her own line of thought.
"And I'm not jealous, Peter--not in that mean way. But since Father
died I've got to think of Roddy. It's not that Mother isn't really
fond of him, but she doesn't understand or see he's growing up. She's
always so busy with all this Suffrage work, and Stephen eggs her on.
She's no time for home. We never seem to have her now for a second to
ourselves without Stephen in the background like a sort of household
spy!"
"What excuse does he give for haunting the place? He's no relation of
yours, by any chance?"
"Thank Heaven, no!" She gave a shaky laugh. "Why, we only know him
since Father died. He was Secretary to a branch of the Woman's
Suffrage League. Mrs. Braid, you know, took Mother to a meeting, and
then she got keen on the movement herself. I was pleased at the time
because it seemed to rouse her. She simply collapsed after Father's
death, and anything seemed better than to see her lying there, caring
for nothing, utterly crushed.
"I never thought then she'd become a Suffragette. Militant too!--it's
so unlike Mother. She's always been so gentle and hated publicity--the
very thought of a crowd would keep her at home. But when she took it
up she went quite mad about it. That's where Stephen came in--he was
Secretary, you see. Mother's no earthly good at any sort of
business--she always depended on Father for everything. And of course
she missed him frightfully, and Roddy's only a boy. So Stephen used to
come and explain things to her."
They turned into the open park where the wet asphalt path cut across
the empty grass like a tight-drawn wire. "Where does Stephen live?"
McTaggart's voice was hard. This child-friend of his was very dear to
him.
"Just round the corner, but, like the poor, you know, he's 'with us
always'--it's practically his home. Mother found him new digs up by
Primrose Hill. She thought West Kensington air too depressing!--that
Stephen looked pale, was inclined to be anaemic."
McTaggart smiled at her rueful grimace.
"So now he nurses his failing strength under your Mother's eye?"
"She gives him rum and milk and warm Winter socks!--which by the way I
was once asked to darn. I did strike at that! I don't mind mending
Roddy's, but Stephen's?--No thanks!"
Her clear young laugh rang out as she caught McTaggart's eye.
"He's a somewhat spoilt young man, from all accounts. D'you think..."
he paused a moment, then risked the question ... "d'you think your
Mother's really ... a bit ... fond of him?"
"No." Her tone was definite--"not ... like that." A faint colour
stole up into her childish face, but loyally she went on, resenting the
imputation. "Mother never flirts, you know. She hates that sort of
thing. She's awfully down on other people too. That Mrs. Molineux,
d'you remember the gossip? Mother cuts her now whenever they meet."
McTaggart looked amused.
"Funny, isn't it? Because, I suppose people ... talk! It's not
everyone who'd understand Stephen."
"Don't!" The girl's hand slipped from his arm. Then at his quick:
"Oh--I don't mean _that_!--Of course I know your mother--she's one of
the best--I didn't mean anything--don't be vexed, Jill. It's only that
outsiders might be rather dense"--her face relaxed and she turned
impulsively, gratitude shining in the gray eyes.
"That's just what hurts most--to have her misjudged. When one knows
... it's _Mother_!--that she _couldn't_ stoop..." The hot blood surged
up into her face. "To think that people can say nasty, mean
things--that she gives them the chance! It makes me wild. And Mother
all the time doesn't see it a bit. She thinks because it's _her_"
(vehemence ousted grammar) "that everyone must know it's bound to be
all right. And she goes to all sorts of places, lecturing, you know,
and takes Stephen with her and stays away for days. Only
yesterday"--her words poured on--"Aunt Elizabeth came to tea and the
first thing she said was: 'I hear you were at Folkestone, staying at
the Grand?--_and_ Mr. Somerville?' And Mother answered calmly: 'Yes--I
took Stephen. He's such a help, you know. I couldn't do without him.'
And Aunt Elizabeth gave such a nasty little laugh and said--'Really,
Mary, I think _I_ must get a Stephen!'
"But Mother didn't see it." She gave an impatient sigh.
"She's a law unto herself," McTaggart suggested. "I vote we drown
Stephen. Some dark night--in the Regent's Park Canal. And here it is;
let's choose the spot."
He paused as he spoke on the little iron bridge that spans the narrow
stream, where the barges come and go; slowly drifting along the still
line of water, a mute protest against the feverish haste of the age.
"The worst of it is," said Jill, ignoring his suggestion to remove the
enemy into a better world, "that Stephen eggs her on in all this
militant work. And Mother isn't strong; she's not fit for it. Why,
last year she was ill for weeks after that trouble when the windows
were smashed in Regent Street. And her name was in the papers. Roddy
got so ragged. All the boys at school were pulling his leg. And he's
so proud of Mother!--it nearly broke his heart--to think of her being
taken off to a common police station. Why! ..."
She stopped short, leaning over the bridge,--"There he is, on the foot
path, with his fishing rod."
She put her hands to her mouth and called in her clear voice, "Rod-dy!"
"Hullo!" came an answering hail. "You up there, Jill?"
There came a scrambling in the bushes that fringed the waterway, and,
with a noise of snapping twigs at the summit of the bank, a leg and an
arm shot out, then a laughing boy's face, with a great black smudge
neatly bisecting it.
"Hullo, Peter!" The pair shook hands.
"Had any sport?" said McTaggart gravely.
"No such luck," replied that ardent fisherman. "I wonder what the time
is?--it _feels_ like lunch."
"You'd better cut home and wash"--his sister smiled at him--"You look
as if you'd spent the morning sweeping chimneys."
"I think I'll slip in with you," the schoolboy winked, "there's a new
cook to-day and I'm warned off the area. Stephen's about." He tucked
a hand through her arm, and the three moved on over the bridge.
"Look here, old girl, you're coming to the Zoo? Half past two sharp.
I've bought a bag of nuts."
"Rather," said his sister. She turned to McTaggart. "You come too?"
"I will." Peter decided.
"Good biz," said Roddy, "he can carry the bread." He sniffed up the
air as they mounted the slope. "Jolly smell the fog has!" and, as the
others laughed, proceeded to explain his singular predilection. "It
smells of holidays, of good old town. You know what I mean--a sort of
smell of its own. I can tell you I long for it sometimes at school.
Talk about 'clear air' and 'Yorkshire moors.' Give me London any
blessed day."
They left the Park behind, and skirting Primrose Hill came to a terrace
facing the North. At the third porch Jill produced a key, and fitting
it in the lock, noiselessly opened the door.
"In you go, Roddy, the coast's quite clear..."
The boy slipped past and up the narrow stairs.
Then she turned to Peter with a sudden hesitation. "If you don't mind
waiting here I'll go and find Mother."
McTaggart stood in the gloomy hall, watching the girl, as she walked
down the passage with her long, boyish step, opened a door beyond and
closed it behind her and a sound of voices drifted across to him.
He was just beginning to regret his sudden impulse when the door was
reopened and a man appeared. Tall and very blond, dressed with studied
care in a coat that curved in to his narrow waist, the light from above
fell on his face, weakly good-looking, with a loose under lip and
sentimental eyes of a pale greenish hue, thickly shadowed by long fair
lashes.
"H'are you, McTaggart." He drawled out the greeting in a thin, light
voice that somehow matched his hair. He held out a limp hand with
carefully tended nails. McTaggart shook it like a terrier with a rat.
"You'll find Mrs. Uniacke in he-are," he went on. McTaggart silently
following in his wake experienced a sudden tingling in his toes.
Within the little study that faced on a strip of garden suggestive of
cats a lady was seated before a littered desk, piled up with pamphlets
which she was directing.
She rose as he entered, and came forward quickly--passing her tall
daughter--with outstretched hand.
Slight and fragile, with wide dark eyes, something bird-like in the
eager poise of the head--reminded McTaggart instinctively of a
linnet--the last type imaginable of the "Militant Suffragette."
"I'm so glad to see you," her voice was sweet and low. "You're quite a
stranger, Peter!--And only yesterday Stephen was saying he thought you
had left town."
"I _have_ been away," McTaggart replied--"down in Devonshire--and when
I met Jill near Regent's Park, I was tempted to walk across and look
you up. Especially," he added with his sunny smile, "when I heard my
friend Roddy would be at home."
"Very much at home," Stephen interposed, conscious of Jill's swift
glance of disgust--"the window, you observe, bears silent witness to
it." He pointed a slender finger at the broken pane. Then went on
smoothly: "You'll stay to lunch, of course." But Peter ignored him,
his eyes on his hostess.
"Of course he will," Mrs. Uniacke echoed the words, "and there goes the
gong." She pushed her papers together with a regretful glance at the
unfinished work, as Roddy, his face shining with its hurried ablutions,
slipped in noiselessly and joined the little group.
"It's very kind of you," McTaggart replied, "and I'd simply love to
lunch with you and the kids."
As they passed through the hall Jill heard her friend say politely to
Somerville:
"You lunching too?"
CHAPTER III
Cydonia sat in the window seat, her face full of dreams, her white
hands folded above her needlework. The smooth and slender fingers with
their faintly pink nails, the small head so proudly set on the long
rounded neck, her air of self-possession, of calm dignity suggested an
ancient lineage that in truth was not hers.
For Cydonia was a miracle. In a freakish spring-tide mood Dame Nature
had evolved a jest at the expense of caste. From the union of a
withered, elderly governess with a rich cheesemonger past the prime of
life she had sprung on an astounded world this exquisite young creature
with all the outward signs of patrician birth.
Exquisite she was: exquisite and inert. From the slim, arched feet
beneath her satin gown to the pale golden hair parted above her brow
and gathered in a great knot behind her little ears, flawless she
showed against the window's light, like a picture by a master's hand in
delicate silver point.
Now as she sat there pensive, the full-lidded eyes fixed unseeing upon
a bowl of early lilies, one wondered what unutterable, deep, maiden
thoughts held her thus absorbed, with slightly parted lips, motionless
save for the rise and fall of the low girlish breast.
And once she gave a little sigh and into her soft brown eyes under the
long gold lashes stole a light of warm content.
Her mother glanced up from the book upon her knee as the faint sound
broke through the silence of the room; a tall, gaunt woman with an
energetic face under the plaited coronet of iron-gray hair.
"What are you dreaming about, Cydonia?"
The girl in the window slowly turned her head.
"I was thinking, Madre dear, if the Bishop is coming to lunch that Mrs.
Nix will send us up a pine-apple cream. She always remembers that it's
his favourite dish."
She gave a little laugh, musical and low.
"I like pine-apple cream." The curved lips closed.
A slight frown showed between Mrs. Cadell's eyes behind the pince-nez
that nipped her high-arched nose.
"You don't seem to be getting on very quickly with your work."
Cydonia, obediently, re-threaded her needle and proceeded to make
minute stitches in the narrow strip of lace.
Mrs. Cadell still watched her with restless dark eyes.
"Do you like doing that?"
Cydonia raised her head.
"Oh yes, Madre." Her voice was mildly surprised, "I'm copying that
Byzantine piece we found at Verona. Don't you remember, dear?--the day
it rained so hard."
Her mother smiled. "Would you care to go back there again?--to Italy,
I mean? I really think we must stay at Venice for Easter--you'd like
that beautiful service at St. Mark's--and then"--her thoughts ran
on--"we could go through the Dolomites and perhaps put in a week in
Vienna. What do you think of the plan yourself?"
"It sounds very nice." Cydonia's even voice held no enthusiasm, and
again Mrs. Cadell gave a little frown. She had the net impression that
had she said Margate her daughter would have acquiesced with equal
serenity.
"Well, it's some way off yet." She was gathering up her book when the
door was burst open and a short fat man, red-faced and impatient,
bounced into the room as though propelled by an invisible force behind.
"Just looked in, Helen, to say I'm going now. Back to dinner eight
sharp and bringing Cleaver Jones. Why, Cydonia!"--he paused by his
daughter's side, hands thrown up in jesting admiration. "How smart we
are!-- Is this for the Bishop?" With clumsy affection he caught her
by the chin.
"Give your father a kiss ... there's my good girl!" Dutifully she
pressed her lips to his rough cheek. Then, bustling round, in his
harsh loud voice he added a final instruction to his wife.
"You won't forget, Helen, about Cleaver Jones? And tell Harris to get
up some of the old port. I want to come to terms with him over that
group." He laid his hand as he spoke on a beautiful bronze that stood
on a column near the open door. "Shall never get another bargain like
this"--a note of regret sounded through the speech. "Oh--by the
way--can you come to-morrow to Christie's? There's a picture that Amos
thinks..." He checked himself abruptly as a bell below pealed through
the house.
"That's the Bishop--I'm off!" and the door slammed behind him. They
heard his heavy steps clattering downstairs.
Mrs. Cadell drew a breath of relief, Cydonia, imperturbable, added
another stitch. Her father's volcanic methods rarely disturbed her
nerves, though they left the older woman quivering.
Mrs. Cadell rose to her feet and straightened her hair in the mirror
beside her. Very tall and angular in her draped black dress, she had
that indefinable air of authority which clings to those whose mission
in life has been to instruct the young.
Past long since was the drudgery of those days: the cramped school
hours, the dreary evenings alone. But the educational atmosphere still
lingered about her, the outward stamp of hard-won culture.
Well--it had brought her much! This life of luxury, an outlet for her
insatiable ambition; and, greater miracle, a fair young daughter, flesh
of her own flesh--but no child of her mind.
This was the flaw in her crown of success. For if ever a woman
worshipped brains, measured humanity by the standard of intellect,
scorned the ignorant, and shrank from stupidity, that woman was Helen
Cadell.
It was the one link which bound her to her husband, the knowledge that
with all his faults he was a clever man. He had too that driving force
behind his shrewd wits which spells nowadays the secret of success.
Hard-headed, tireless, smiling at rebuffs, steadily he had accomplished
his task; building up a fortune by personal effort, with, under his
vulgarity, something rather fine, a belief in his star which amounted
to power.
Perhaps his first moment of weakness and doubt was the one that
witnessed the height of his achievement; when money bred money, regular
and sustained, and a new life where leisure lurked opened out to him.
For in the long struggle Ebenezer Cadell had hardly given a thought to
the end of the fight. He had no time to speculate, no tendency to
dream what money should bring him once it was his.
And he found, to his surprise, that to be a rich man involved on a
larger scale the qualms of the poor; the risk of being cheated out of
his wealth; to lose moreover pounds where once he risked pence.
Ambition dies harder even than vanity, and ostentation took the place
of his thrift. He craved the outward signs of opulence, a house filled
with treasures that other men of mark could recognize and covet and
openly discuss.
But here commercial instinct failed him at the start. No longer could
he wholly depend on himself. He lacked the inherited knowledge, the
slow experience and the everyday atmosphere of a cultured home.
Advisers could be bought, but were they trustworthy? It maddened him,
this closed door to a rich man's clue. Suddenly he became sensitive to
a sneer. Above all he dreaded the smile of the connoisseur.
He realized that a partner was what he required, and for the first time
began to think of a wife. Fate threw Helen Greaves at this juncture in
his path. He found her in a small hotel upon the East coast with her
youngest pupil, whose health required care, and was interested
immediately when he heard her discussing the merits of a certain
picture with her charge.
Their tables, side by side, in the deserted dining room gave him the
opportunity he sought. An acquaintance was formed and friendship
ripened quickly between the curious, dissimilar pair.
Past her first youth, withered, austere, Helen Greaves nevertheless
possessed a certain charm: the impress of the class she had lived with
and served, that knowledge of the cultured world which Ebenezer lacked.
Moreover, for many years, she had taught the daughters of a certain
peer; in a well-known house full of art treasures, inherited and added
to by the present owner; and with her quick brain and love of the
beautiful had become herself no mean connoisseur.
She had travelled largely with her pupils, had learned to criticize and
discriminate. Here was a woman after Ebenezer's heart, grounded in
that hobby he longed to make his own.
The object of his visit to the little sea-side town had been to attend
a neighbouring sale where the death of the owner had thrown on the
market a certain much-discussed old master.
Impressed by Helen Greaves' obvious knowledge, he begged her to
accompany him, and under her advice he had bought that bronze group now
in his London house, somehow overlooked by the dealers at the sale.
Without her encouragement he would have passed it by, misled by the
absurdly low price, and even at the time he made the purchase he
wondered to himself if she were not at fault.
On his return, however, he showed it to a dealer, and found to his
amazement that Helen's acumen had secured him an undoubted treasure.
For the first time he tasted the peculiar deep joy of the bargain
hunter in his hour of triumph.
Then and there he made up his mind. Here was the partner his new life
entailed. And the realization of all he had to offer, with the fact of
her present subordinate position, swung him back again on to his old
pedestal, with a returned consciousness of mastery. For the man had to
reign. It was no passing weakness. Abdication meant paralysis of his
powers.
In cold-blooded terms, void of sentiment, he had worded a letter to
Helen Greaves. No deed of partnership was ever made more clear than
this formal proposal of marriage! Six months later they were man and
wife, launched on a honeymoon planned to include a thorough course of
study at the foreign galleries.
It speaks for the character of the ex-governess that this business
alliance was sealed in a church. For Ebenezer was a staunch
Nonconformist and lived and died loyal to his creed.
Slowly but surely in his wife's clever hands he mastered the intricaces
of his new cult. He came to the fore as an ardent collector, and, to
crown his success, Cydonia appeared.
With the advent of her child, Helen's ambition found a new outlet. She
became more social, seeking to force those doors where money, though a
help, could not purchase right of admission.
Here she found a new factor in her Church. Always religiously
inclined, she turned to Charity--whose cloak nowadays shelters many
"climbers"--poured forth money in big bazaars, and fed the clergy, who
flocked to her house. Ebenezer grumbled, but bent before her will.
Little by little her name appeared as patroness of the pleasure schemes
devised to "help the poor." She was sought for on committees, pestered
for donations, patronized herself by that upper class, which used her
and smiled at her and let her drift among them.
But Helen Cadell had come to stay. Slowly and quietly she strengthened
her position, inconspicuous, yet ever to the fore, looking to that day
when her daughter should step as though by right on this hallowed
ground.
The only flaw in the long campaign was the sleeping soul of Cydonia.
For as the years passed over her head, and her mother watched with
anxious eyes, it seemed to her that her offspring lacked that latent
force which in both her parents had spurred them on to fulfill
themselves.
She had no energy, no enthusiasm. Beautiful, passive, sweetly good, no
one could truly call her clever. Beneath her lily-white, delicate
grace, she was just a healthy young animal, content to exist, without
ambition, to eat and walk and deeply sleep.
And watching this, with her restless mind, the mother began to pin her
hope on the element she herself had scorned, the stimulus of awakening
love. It stung her pride at times to feel that a daughter of hers
could lack brain power! Education had been her all--the motive force
of her strenuous life.
And now Minerva, with wise cold eyes, must be set aside for the God of
Love. With ever the risk of the sacrifice: that his altar might snatch
from her her child.
Something of this passed through her mind as Helen stood before the
glass, mechanically smoothing her hair in its straight gray bands above
her brow.
She could see the reflection of the room; the long white walls where
the pictures hung, each with its own reflecting light, each a great
man's masterpiece. Here and there the wintry sun caressed a statue or
carven pillar, gilding the backs of the great high chairs, where
long-dead prelate and prince had sat. For the room was a very treasure
house, breathing history at each turn, filled with beauty of colour and
form, mellowed by the touch of age.
And the thought pierced through her with sharp pain that all she had
accomplished here, knowledge and forethought of long years, the daily
care from the hour of birth when in agony she had borne her child: all
could be swept aside, made nought by the first love-words breathed by a
man.
"Cydonia"--her voice was sharp, reflecting the tension of her mood, and
the girl looked up with a mild surprise.
"Put your work away, my dear," she smiled with an effort as her
daughter complied. "I can hear the Bishop coming upstairs."
But as she spoke the door went wide.
"Mr. McTaggart," the man announced.
CHAPTER IV
Nothing could ruffle Cydonia's calm. The smile she had, unconsciously,
prepared for the Bishop warmed McTaggart as he entered the room. Dazed
him a little, truth to tell, she looked so lovely sitting there.
On her mother's face he read surprise and hastened to explain his
mission.
"I'm the bearer of a message from Lady Leason. I must apologize for
the hour, but she asked me to come on at once. She's dreadfully
worried about the Tableaux. It seems Marie Dilke is off to Cannes.
'Doctor's orders'--so she says. Anyhow," he smiled mischievously, "one
can understand the excuse this weather! So now the third picture is
spoilt. We want another Sleeping Beauty. And I thought--we thought,"
he glanced at Cydonia--"that perhaps your daughter would help us out."
"But she's acting already in the first." Mrs. Cadell, secretly
pleased, did not wish the fact to appear.
"I know. But there'll be loads of time." McTaggart swept the excuse
aside. "The second tableau is in three parts; it will take at least a
quarter of an hour. And it's really such a lovely scene--the stage
will be a mass of flowers. Do say 'Yes.'" His blue eyes pleaded as he
glanced from the mother back to the girl.
"Would you like it, Cydonia?" Mrs. Cadell consulted her daughter, but
before the latter could find time to reply the door was opened by the
butler, announcing the long-expected guest.
The Bishop of Oxton hurried in: a slight, bent man past the prime of
life with a domed head which seemed too large for the small and
delicate features beneath. His short-sighted, prominent eyes held a
look of chronic bewilderment, and about his thin lips hovered a smile,
sweet and deprecating, as though he felt perpetual astonishment at the
high position thrust upon him.
"I fear I'm a trifle late," he said, shaking hands with Mrs.
Cadell--"the fact is I have been detained by a matter of business in
the City." He beamed affectionately at Cydonia, with an absent-minded
glance towards McTaggart.
The hostess introduced the men.
"Ah yes." The Bishop blinked. "I fancy we have met before--at my
cousin's, Lady Leason."
"That's curious." McTaggart laughed--"I've just this moment come from
her, hot-foot on a begging errand."
"Then I'm sure," the Bishop responded suavely, "that your mission will
not be in vain! This is the house of Charity."
The butler, to emphasize the fact, announced that the prelate's lunch
was served.
McTaggart began to take his leave, but his hostess would not hear of it.
"You _must_ stay and lunch with us--we have to decide about the
Tableaux."
"I've half promised a man at the Club..." He offered the well-worn
excuse, but Mrs. Cadell moved to the door.
"A half promise," she said lightly, "is surely one that can be broken."
As they passed out on to the stairs she referred the matter to the
Bishop.
"You mustn't ask for my opinion," he entered into the little joke.
"I'm not a believer in half measures! But if you make it a point of
conscience I should say it depended upon the host."
"In that case"--McTaggart smiled--"I may consider myself absolved. It
was what the Americans call 'Dutch Treat'--each to pay his own
expenses."
They settled themselves at the round table, curiously inlaid with
brass, smooth and innocent of cloth, where oysters in old Wedgwood
plates lay on mats of Italian lace. The fruit, piled high on a centre
dish--grapes with peaches and pears beneath--and the gold-flecked
Venetian glass gave it a wholly foreign look. And this was emphasized
by the room; the faded tapestry of the walls forming a mellow-toned
background for the high-backed chairs and painted chest--once a
wedding-coffer of state--and the heavy curtains of brocade, where the
gold thread, tarnished, caught the light.
A perfect setting, McTaggart thought, for the fair-haired girl in her
satin gown, as he watched the small patrician head bend attentive to
the Bishop.
He wondered if she herself had chosen that misty, metallic blue, and
the single ornament that hung from a fine gold chain around her neck.
He looked at the latter with curious eyes, appreciating the design;
seed pearls strung about a cross of pale and flawed emeralds, set with
barbaric carelessness in the rough hand-wrought metal, and weighed down
by loops of pearls, quivering with each breath she drew.
Meanwhile, the hostess was explaining the reason for the young man's
visit. The Bishop, happy over his oysters, beamed his approval of the
scheme.
"But who, may I ask, is to be the Prince?" His voice was sly and a
twinkle gleamed in the prominent short-sighted eyes, as McTaggart,
somewhat hurriedly, admitted that the part was his.
"In doublet and hose and pointed shoes. And a dreadful cap that won't
stay on. You've no idea"--he turned to Cydonia--"the agony of mind it
causes! Supposing--at the crucial moment"--he watched her still face
as he spoke--"it tilted forward on to my nose? What a death-blow to
Romance! And they won't allow me to wear an elastic, neatly fastened
under my chin. And hat-pins are no earthly use. Can you suggest a
remedy?"
"I should hold it in my hand," she said.
"Wonderful!"--McTaggart laughed--"and it never even occurred to me."
He was relieved--at the same time piqued--by her smiling air of
unconcern.
"Under the circumstances, too, it might appear more chivalrous."
He added the speech in a lower tone, with a sudden mischievous desire
to stir in her a slight revolt. And, as if conscious of his thought,
the brown eyes were averted. A faint fugitive color stole under the
fairness of her skin.
The Bishop's glance sought his hostess. Between the pair of elderly
folk a silent question and answer flashed.
"That's what I shall do," said McTaggart, "kneel and press it to my
heart. I'd far rather have it there than balanced on my luckless head.
Unfortunately," his voice was light--"you'll miss all my exquisite
acting--unless you peep beneath your lashes. Do tell me that you will?
Of course you're _supposed_ to be asleep."
"You talk as if it were quite settled," Mrs. Cadell with a smile,
interposed, "but I haven't yet decided whether Cydonia will take the
part."
"Oh! you couldn't be so cruel!" McTaggart showed his disappointment.
"Think of poor Lady Leason. You've no idea how worried she is. And,
if your daughter refuses to help us, we're threatened with Mrs. Bertie
Eying. She's simply dying to take it on. Just picture her as a
Sleeping Beauty!"
He gave a sudden shiver and turned toward the amused Bishop.
"One of those new ropy girls--all shoulders and feet, you know. No
spine, and straight hair drawn down over her ears. Like a French
fashion-plate with all the Frenchness left out."
"I observe there are no half-measures here," the Bishop gave a little
chuckle. "I had no idea of the harassing details involved in an effort
of charity. It's for some hospital, is it not?"
Mrs. Cadell supplied the name.
"We hope to clear off part of the debt. Since the Insurance Act was
passed the subscriptions have decreased. So seriously in fact they
talk of closing down a ward."
"Indeed?" The Bishop, nervously, evaded the lead into politics.
"Talking of financial losses----" he went on somewhat
hurriedly--"reminds me of my morning's work. I'm afraid the ways of
the City are quite beyond my understanding."
He sighed as he helped himself to curry.
Mrs. Cadell, to fill the pause, remarked that McTaggart was on the
Stock Exchange.
"Really?" The Bishop looked up quickly. "Then, perhaps, he can
relieve my mind on the question that is puzzling me."
Into the younger man's blue eyes came a shrewd look of attention.
Inwardly he was summing up the possibility of a client.
"Delighted--if I can help at all."
Cydonia stole a glance at him. Here was another side to the picture
she already knew by heart.
She watched the serious olive face with its strong chin and
tight-closed lips--a hint of obstinacy there which added a strongly
British look to his slightly foreign grace, banishing all effeminacy,
suggesting a hidden power.
It seemed to her he was snatched away into a world remote from her, and
for the first time in her life she felt uneasy, half-afraid ...
"Some years ago," the Bishop blinked, "six, to be strictly accurate, I
was induced to invest some money in a new company. I am not quite sure
as to the process, but it--the invention--claimed to produce a liquid
fuel out of coal-slag at an absurdly low cost. The shares had run up
quickly until they were eight pounds apiece--one pound shares, you
understand. I gave eight." He paused ruefully.
"And now?" McTaggart prompted gently.
"I believe," the Bishop gave a sigh--"they are selling at ... about
twelve shillings! The worst of it is----" his voice rose. "They have
never paid a dividend."
"How did you hear of it?" McTaggart felt a half-amused sense of pity.
"One night I was dining with Lord Warleigh. His place, you know, is
near Oxton. And the principal director--the promoter of the
affair--was staying with him for the week-end, in order to place a
block of shares to provide for further working expenses. Warleigh was
enthusiastic and as to the man himself, he seemed most reliable, heart
and soul absorbed in the scheme. Of German origin, naturalized--Herman
Schliff---- Do you know the name?"
"Never heard of it--or the company." McTaggart shook his head.
"No, really?" The Bishop frowned.
"One of the most eloquent men I have ever come across. I remember, at
the time----" he smiled apologetically--"I thought what a preacher was
lost to the Church! And with it an enthusiasm, a grip of his subject
and a faith in the prospects, which carried his listeners bodily away.
To give you an example of this, Warleigh's poor old butler invested his
savings--the hardly won nest-egg of forty years' service--then and
there in the affair. He handed every penny of it over to Schliff
before he left."
"What a shame!" Mrs. Cadell's sympathy was plainly aroused--"I suppose
he will never get it back?"
"I fear not. And he's one of many." The Bishop frowned thoughtfully.
"Looking through a list of shareholders only this morning I was
surprised to find many names I knew personally of quite small people
with narrow incomes. Good people too, I mean. Service men and petty
squires living in the depths of the country."
"Exactly." McTaggart's face was grim--"the usual victims, I'm afraid.
But it seems to have dragged on rather longer than these forlorn hopes
generally do. What reason do they give for the fall in shares? and the
absence of a dividend? What do the reports say?"
"Oh--they're full of excuses." The Bishop's thin, delicate hand went
out in a gesture of impatience. "For instance--new machinery--some
hitch in the process--a technical difference of opinion between the
experts they employ. With always the same golden future dangled before
our weary eyes, in Schliff's magnetic and pompous speeches, bolstered
up by his tame directors. And the _money_ sunk in it--thousands
squandered! With nothing practical to show--to warrant the huge
expenditure."
"I suppose by now," McTaggart hazarded, "Schliff's a pretty prosperous
man?"
"I couldn't say. To give him his due I should hesitate to class the
man in any way as unscrupulous. He has a firm belief in himself and in
anything that he undertakes. It's temperamental and most misleading;
but I think, according to his light, he's honest. I really think so!
That's the perplexing part to me. But he's hypnotized by his own
verbosity----" the Bishop paused, pleased with the phrase--"he sees
himself a second Napoleon--alas! without his genius for management."
McTaggart allowed himself the luxury of a long-repressed smile.
"The type is perhaps not uncommon. If you like I'll make a few
inquiries--quite quietly, of course--and find out what sort of a record
he bears in the city. I conclude this isn't his first venture? Herman
Schliff ... and the Company?" He made a note upon his cuff. "Oh, it's
really no trouble--I'm interested in the affair."
"I wish I were not!" The victim smiled. "But I went on buying after
the fall."
Mrs. Cadell's restless eyes met McTaggart's. They both smiled. Then
she signalled to the butler to fill up the Bishop's glass.
"Yes, I insist----" as the prelate protested--"it won't hurt you, it's
quite light. And here comes your favourite sweet--ordered expressly
for you."
The worn face cleared, and he smiled, touched by the other's kindly
thought.
"I'm always spoilt in this house," he said, "and I'm afraid that the
shocking result is that I take advantage of it, and come too often to
loosen my pack of worries here. What can the Sleeping Beauty think of
all this dreary business talk?"
He looked across wistfully at Cydonia's lovely face, with next to it
the virile contrast of her dark-haired, handsome friend. Only too well
he realized the heavy burden of the years and the narrowing road ahead
where he must pass with lonely feet. Death he feared not. For the
Faith he had long preached was indeed his own. Yet the human in him
shrank, faced with the decay of power.
Cydonia's soft brown eyes met his with a child's affection. His
question cut across her dreams.
"I?" she hesitated, smiling. "Oh! I like to hear of things."
McTaggart, watching her, caught into his memory an elusive dimple, near
the fresh young mouth.
Following up the train of thought provoked by this miracle, he heard
the doctor's voice once more, with a note of mischief, in his ears.
"Not married, are you, Mr. McTaggart? Well--you'd better take care ...
a fair wife and a dark one..." He was certain, then and there, that
his "Scotch heart" lay in Cydonia's hands.
He watched them now, with a languid grace remove the velvety skin of a
peach. The faint colour of the fruit was not more fair than her little
pink nails.
But swift on the thought came a vision of Fantine--mischievous,
provocative, tingling with life; of dark-fringed eyes and full red
lips, and honey-coloured fingers that flashed in quick gesture matching
each turn of her gay clipped speech.
He thrust aside the picture, half-angrily; conscious of the atmosphere
that hung about the Cadells' house, vaguely ecclesiastic and
super-refined. The intrusion of Fantine seemed almost profane, the
contrast too crude between this sheltered home and the gilded,
over-lighted flat. He could see the long rooms with the doors flung
wide and the ever-changing brilliant crowd, elbowing each other round
the green table with the piled-up stakes and fluttering cards. He
could feel once more the strain that hung in the air, the excitement of
the lust for gain, the grasping hands and greedy eyes...
"A penny for your thoughts?" He gave a guilty start. Cydonia was
watching him with childish curiosity.
"Impossible--the price is too high!"
He answered her lightly but his face was grave.
"I believe you've gone back to that velvet cap? You looked so solemn.
It must be that!"
"More likely I was harassed with this cruel suspense." He leaned a
little nearer and lowered his voice.
"You _are_ going to help us? Tell me, don't you want to?--You've no
idea how anxious I am that you should take the part."
Then, seeing her hesitate, he added with malice, "Mrs. Bying would jump
at it."
"But I'm _not_ Mrs. Bying."
Up went Cydonia's head in pride.
"Thank Heaven, no." He laughed at her voice. "I didn't mind Marie
Dilke--she's such a good sort"--he went on meditatively, forgetful of
his listener--"but as to kissing Mrs. Bying..."
The moment the word was out he felt, with horror, the folly of his
mistake. "Pretend to,--I mean," he corrected hurriedly. "Of course in
acting--it's always pretence--and in this instance--I only ... you
know----"
He broke off, at a loss for words. He dared not even look at her. The
ominous pause prolonged itself. He felt an insane desire to laugh.
"With any other girl"--he thought--"but this girl ... oh! _hang_ it
all!" He grabbed at a peach. Viciously he dug his fork into it,
searching in his empty brain for some sensible remark. But....
"I think it's going to snow----" was all that came to him after due
thought. He said it with the air of a weather expert. "It's so
awfully chilly..." And then a faint laugh startled him into a
side-long glance.
Cydonia's face was pink and in her smooth cheek the dimple betrayed her
battle with mirth.
"Snow?" said the Bishop. "Indeed, I trust not. One hopes at this time
of year the winter is getting past. Not that we have much snow at
Oxton."
He turned again to Mrs. Cadell.
"A wonderful year for chrysanthemums."
They started to discuss the Temple show.
"Say I'm forgiven?" McTaggart's voice was humble.
But Cydonia had recovered. She sat bolt upright, brown eyes discreetly
lowered upon her plate.
"If you don't speak to me soon--" this in tragic tones--"I'll cut my
throat with a silver knife. It will be a long business--painful
too..." He checked his rising mischief, trying to probe her thought.
But the fact was Cydonia was somewhat at a loss. For the first time
she tasted the consciousness of power--sweet, indeed, to the schoolgirl
in her opening year of life. She wanted to be dignified and she wanted
to laugh. And behind it all lay a curious joy--a touch of excitement
and of wonder that hurt ... She wrapped it up in silence, mistrustful
of speech.
"I want you to understand," McTaggart was watching her. The little
scene had gained a sudden significance. "However I might laugh--or
joke, you know, I never could _think_ of you without respect. And if
you take this part I'd hate you to feel ... that you weren't quite safe
with me. D'you see what I mean." He took a deep breath and plunged in
again. "I might flirt with Mrs. Bying--she's fair game, you know--but
you----you're different..."
He stammered on the word.
For Cydonia had looked up and in her shy eyes he read a childish
gratitude and with it, sweet and deep, the dawn of a woman's
comprehension of men.
Something in the absorbed attitude of the pair caught the mother's
restless glance.
"Well, Cydonia," she rose as she spoke, for the Bishop had snatched a
quick look at the clock--"Have you made up your mind about the
Tableaux, dear?"
"I think so, Madre. I think it sounds ... nice."
"You blessed child," said McTaggart in his heart.
CHAPTER V
McTaggart lay in bed, his eyes half-closed, watching the gray light
spread from under the blind. His head ached and he felt unusually
tired and heavy, bound down to his pillow by invisible chains.
From the sitting-room beyond came the clatter of plates, boards
creaking in the wake of his housekeeper's step, and through the open
window stole a muffled steady hum--the day-song of the London streets.
A door banged loudly, and blessed silence followed. He drew the
bed-clothes tighter under his chin. But now sleep had fled and into
his brain thoughts rushed swiftly as though against his will; a
baffling succession of events and surmises, throwing up pictures before
his closed eyes.
He reached out a hand in search of his watch and found that the hour
was close upon ten. A vast dissatisfaction settled down upon him.
"Another day to be lived through?" it whispered in his ear. He felt a
sick disgust for this business of life.
His eyes, from under their heavy lids, roaming about the room, marked
on his dressing-table, without exultation, the little heap of silver
and gold and crinkled bank-notes, thrown among his brushes from
overnight.
In his fastidious mood the sight brought no joy, merely a memory of the
long hot hours, with their inevitable accompaniment of frequent drinks.
For the gambler's instinct was not his. He played carelessly, more as
a means to pass the time than from any feverish attraction for the game.
And Fortune, that fickle jade, had stood by his side, tempting his
indifference with a long run of luck.
He wondered as he lay there how Fantine could stand the life, night
after night watch the same sordid scene, with that slightly aloof and
mocking air of hers that warred with the welcome he read in her eyes.
He wondered, drearily, if the game could pay? He wondered what was to
be the end of it all? It was not a woman's work, the strain was too
great. For he knew the risks that underlay the affair.
He knew that she lived in fear of the police. What a horrible
atmosphere! He shivered in his bed. He wished now he had not won.
That heap of money there seemed to prolong the struggle of her days.
How pretty she was! He stirred restlessly, conjuring up her picture
against the dark blind. With something beyond beauty, that
inexpressible charm of the subtle Parisian, conscious of her power.
Something hyper-feminine set her apart from the women of that other
world in which he moved. Delicately rounded, with tiny hands and feet,
witty, provocative, dangerously sweet, she showed a curious contrast to
the modern English girl with her sporting instincts and brusque, boyish
speech.
Soft? That was the adjective--fragrant and warm, made for a strong man
to love and protect. So few women nowadays held this appeal, meeting
men on equal terms, half-ashamed of sex.
And all McTaggart's vanity and young virile pride were stirred by her
silent call to his knight-errantry.
How he would like to snatch her away from her present feverish life!
He braced himself between the sheets at the sudden stirring thought.
And then, with perplexing speed, another vision rose. He saw the face
of Cydonia, with her childish smile. That was the right setting for a
young girl, he decided, that cultured, shrine-like home, locked from
the world outside.
For man still clings fondly to feudal memories. His reason may force
him to approve the great stride of woman to the foreground of
intellectual power, but his instinct still whispers that the woman he
loves should be guarded from evil and from too curious eyes.
Some day this may fade away, swept aside in the course of the growing
cry for freedom, but with it will pass a hidden safeguard to the sex, a
human note divine--that tenderness towards the weak, purifying passion.
Well--it was all a mystery! McTaggart yawned and stretched. Almost as
bewildering as his own curious case. He fell to thinking again about
his double heart, Cydonia and Fantine at the back of his mind.
"It might lead to bigamy." He recalled the doctor's words--not without
a certain youthful complacency! He dallied with the notion of possible
married life, attracted by the novelty but mistrustful of the tie.
And here Romance was rudely assailed by an interruption from the world
without and he became conscious of a knocking, loud and long, on the
further door of his sitting-room.
McTaggart cursed the invisible one. Struggling out of bed he threw on
a dressing-gown and blinking at the light made his way through the
folding-doors to where his breakfast lay and called an exasperated,
husky "Come in."
"Hullo, Peter!" a cheery voice replied--"hope I didn't wake you from
your beauty sleep?"
In the open doorway stood a thick-set man, rendered still more bulky by
a tweed overcoat, with merry dark eyes under shaggy brows, gleaming out
of his pale, square face.
"Just off shooting," he explained hurriedly--"and run out of
whiskey"--he held up a flask--"no time to get it in, so I thought as I
passed your door I'd try and cadge some from you, old man."
McTaggart seized the decanter from off the sideboard, his face relaxing
into a smile.
"Help yourself--confound yon! I was half asleep, after a somewhat late
night."
"Sorry." The visitor grinned as he spoke. "Better for you, sonnie, up
with the dawn. How doth the busy little bee--or rather how _did_ he
sacrifice to the gods his heritage of sleep?"
"In a silly game that's called chemin-de-fer, varied by supper and
fifth-rate fizz."
"Any luck?" Bethune carefully filled the flask. "How's that for a
steady hand?" He screwed in the stopper.
"More than mine is! Yes, I won--forty pounds odd--as far as I
remember."
"The devil you did!" Bethune stared--"you wouldn't like to lend me a
fiver, would you?"
"D'you mean it?" McTaggart turned toward his room, but his visitor
caught him by the arm.
"Don't be an ass! I was only rotting. Nice stuff that----" he
fingered the dressing-gown--"lapped in luxury--and wins forty pounds!"
His brown eyes rested for a second affectionately on his friend's weary
face.
"Pity, all the same," he said abruptly. "Do you an almighty good to
work. No--I mean it..." as McTaggart laughed--"a slack life's all
wrong for a fellow like you. Now here I am, at it hard, every blessed
day in the week. And what's the result? When I get a Saturday clear
for a day's shoot or golf, you've no idea how I enjoy it. I'm like a
school-boy at a bean-feast!"
"Bless you, my child," McTaggart mocked. "I don't grudge you your
virtuous pleasure--go and paddle and make mud-pies--it keeps you nice
and young--_and_ fat!"
"Shut up!" Bethune made for the door--"Oh, by the way, would you like
the car? If so ring up Central 609, and one of the men will bring it
round. Any time before two o'clock, but you'll have to take it back
yourself. It's half-day at the works, you know."
"Right-o! Hope you'll have good sport."
He watched Bethune clamber down the narrow staircase out of sight, with
his broad shoulders and thick brown coat, not unlike an enormous
bumble-bee.
Then, closing his door, he poured out a cup of tepid coffee and drank
it thirstily. He lifted the cover off the dish that flanked the
battered rack of toast. Spread-eagled, gray and cold, a mackerel met
his disgusted gaze.
"Looks dead," said McTaggart thoughtfully. He replaced the cover
rather quickly, played with some toast upon his plate and gathered up
his pile of letters.
Three bills, a stockbroker's list and an invitation to a dance. Then,
with a slight awakening of interest, he found a letter in Jill's round
hand.
"DEAR PETER,
Many happy returns of the day. I'm awfully sorry your present's not
ready, but I've been so busy all this term. I'll explain better when
we meet and I hope to send it you next week.
Wishing you no end of luck.
Yours affectionately,
JILL."
McTaggart laid the letter down, a sudden glow in the "double heart."
He was pleased that the child should remember the date.
His birthday? Why--of course, it was!
"And I'll take her out and give her a treat. By Jove, there's the
car--it's Saturday too. I'll send her a wire to say I'm coming--she'll
find it when she gets back from school."
Under the spur of awakened energy the old depression fell away. To his
surprise he found himself singing, midway through his bath.
CHAPTER VI
Jill herself opened the door.
"Come in and have some coffee," her eyes passed from McTaggart to the
big gray car. "Doesn't it look jolly! I'm longing to go in it, but
I'm rather bothered too--I'll tell you why..."
She led the way through the hall into the dining-room, where the
remains of a frugal lunch on a much-darned cloth were scattered around
a dying fern in a tarnished brass pot, sole ornament of the long bare
table.
The room had a forlorn look, with its dingy, crooked blinds, the
mantel-piece littered with circulars above the feeble gas fire. It had
the unhomelike air one associates with lodgings--a place to be used,
not loved, and shunned when meals were over.
"Now don't say you can't come." McTaggart frowned severely--"because I
mean to carry you off whether you like it or not. I've got the car for
the day, and we'll go right into the country and have tea somewhere--at
a little village pub!"
"Lovely!" Jill clapped her hands. She poured out a brimming cup of a
thin and cloudy mixture from a chipped coffee-pot. "There you
are!--Sugar? The only thing is I'd promised to go and see the baker's
wife."
McTaggart laughed at her serious face.
"Oh, bother the baker's wife! Surely for one day you might relax your
... social efforts. Think of poor me."
"Poor you!" Jill mocked--"I shall have to go there first if we can fit
it in. She's been so ill--it's rather a sad story, but I'll tell you
if you like."
"Nothing infectious, I hope?" McTaggart stirred his muddy coffee;
then, manfully, took a great gulp.
"Oh, dear, no." Jill's voice was calm. "She's had a baby, that's
all." There came a little pause.
"It's dead too," the girl went on in clear, steady tones. "That's the
cruel part. It needn't have been."
"No?" McTaggart felt somewhat at a loss. But Jill was plainly
absorbed in the simple tragedy. She leaned towards him, elbows planted
on the table, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes far away.
"She was _such_ a nice little thing!--I've known her for years. She
used to come with her grandmother, who did upholstery work, on Saturday
afternoons and give her a hand. She, herself, was employed at a
laundry and engaged to the baker even then.
"For five long years they saved all they could and at last they were
married and took a tiny house next door to where our charwoman lives.
It's not the baker himself, you know, but one of his employes who makes
the bread--he's the head man. They _were_ so happy, and then--all this
trouble came!
"The 'bakers' went out on strike--d'you remember it?--and, bit by bit,
all their savings melted away. The husband was worried out of his
life. He couldn't go back on his pals, you see, or find any other job
to do; and so at last his wife returned to the laundry and begged for
some employment again.
"There happened to be a vacancy in the ironing room just then--far too
heavy work for a delicate woman!--but the rate of pay is higher there,
so, pluckily, she took it on. She kept this a secret from her husband
and gave the latter to understand it was just a matter of light
mending, without dangerous exertion. And in this way she earned enough
to keep them afloat to the end of the strike. Then she
collapsed--broke down utterly!--and her baby was born, before its time.
The baker nearly went off his head when the true story leaked out. To
think of her, with those heavy irons, on her feet all day in the heat
and steam! ... I call her a real heroine." Jill's gray eyes flashed as
she spoke, then softened as she added, sadly:
"But the baby died. It hadn't a chance, so the doctor said, and she
was so ill. Now she's simply broken-hearted at losing it and can't
pick up. I heard about it from our charwoman and promised to go and
see her to-day. I must, Peter." Her voice was firm. "You won't mind
if I call there first?"
"Of course not----" said McTaggart gravely. He felt a trifle taken
aback by this pitiful, sordid chapter of life from the lips of his
little friend: a man's discomfort, too, at the thought of her youthful
knowledge of matters he deemed better kept from her awhile. He
realised with sudden force the outlook, purely practical, of the
growing generation of girls. Healthy, but somewhat startling too, this
determination to face the facts of life in defiance of old traditions.
Jill still sat there, chin on hands, absorbed in the problem offered to
her by this contrast in the life of the poor with that of the
well-to-do around him.
Serenely devoid of self-consciousness she looked up suddenly at
McTaggart, meeting the kindly blue eyes with a faint trouble in their
depths.
"I wish these strikes could be avoided. They seem to bring such
misery. I can't understand life at all!--the hopeless suffering
involved..." Her voice held a note of rebellion.
"Everyone seems to be fighting hard, not for the present but the
future--for something they'll never live to see!--ruining their own
lives meanwhile. Supposing these strikers get their way--higher wages
and all that--" she waved her hand with a broad gesture--"D'you think
the generations ahead will be contented in their turn? Or will they be
fighting for more, too? I don't see any end to it!"
"Well, I wouldn't worry if I were you," McTaggart nodded his head
wisely. "I expect it's always been the same. It's what we're pleased
to call 'Progress'.
"I think your plan's the best, my dear. To help and comfort where you
can; and leave the larger questions alone for those who have really
studied the matter.
"We'll go and see the baker's wife, and--can't we take her something,
Jill? Food--or money? what d'you think?"
"Not money!" Jill winced. "They aren't really paupers, you know.
It's so easy to hurt the pride of the poor--the _working_ poor. We
might get her some flowers."
"Well, come along then. Thanks for my coffee." He rose to his feet.
"You'll want a thick coat, old girl, the wind's in the North--but a
good blow will do you good--scatter the cobwebs."
As they passed into the hall he asked after Mrs. Uniacke.
"She's not very well." Jill still looked troubled. "She's gone to
Reading for a suffrage meeting."
"I say--did you tell her about the baker's wife?" He tucked the rug
closely around her as she settled herself in the car.
"Oh, yes." She gave him a comical glance, half-annoyed, half-amused.
"Can't you guess what she said?"
But Peter was winding up the engine. He sprang back into his seat and
the girl went on, raising her voice above the noisy throbbing note.
"She said--'You must try and win her at once to the Cause. Of course
when _we_ get the vote, all this will be put to rights.' They always
think of the mass, you see, never of the individual. I suppose there's
some truth in it." She paused doubtfully--"I wonder?"
"Well, I don't!" said McTaggart shortly. "I'm not very keen on present
day politics, but I think when women are allowed to add a new party it
will be a case of confusion worse confounded! So don't you go and get
involved, Jill. You keep an open mind. I'd hate to see you in any way
mixed up in this militant folly."
"Well--I wish Mother weren't. It's simply killing her. She hasn't the
nerve for these perpetual scenes."
They slowed down at a corner where a flower-woman stood with a basket
of yellow chrysanthemums.
"Will these do for you?" McTaggart bought a bunch and laid them in
Jill's lap; the heavy golden heads on their long pale stems preserving
their subtle and Eastern charm, as though a secret lay beneath the
curled petals in each still and exquisite flower heart.
They twisted through mean streets until they came to a row of little
houses behind the Circus Road.
"It's number 36," directed Jill; but as the car stopped before the door
it was opened from within and a woman emerged, old and bent, shrouded
in a shawl.
Jill got down and spoke to her, and after a few words returned to
McTaggart's side.
"She's fast asleep"--her voice was hushed--"so I won't go in and wake
her up." The woman, with suspicious eyes, stared at the young man in
the car, as Jill took the flowers and held them out.
"Give her these, please, and say I'll come again. I'm so glad she's
getting on. Thank you--good-bye."
McTaggart was amused at the lack of gratitude. For the woman took the
offering without another word. He guessed shrewdly that the sight of
the car--the outward sign of luxury--had roused the deep slumbering
resentment of the poor, their latent fear of being patronized.
"Charming old lady," he suggested. But Jill seemed unconscious of the
slight.
"That's her Aunt," she informed him with a sigh, spelling relief at a
duty done. "She's come from Stratford to look after her. So now we
can have a lovely drive."
She turned a smiling face toward him, cheeks rosy with the air, keen
and crisp, of the winter day, and drew the shabby fur tighter round her
throat as the car backed slowly out of the narrow road.
"Where are we going?"
"That's for you to decide. But I think through Hampstead, now we've
come this way. Sure you're warm enough? I put in my other coat--so
burrow into that if the wind gets keen."
He turned the car up the long hilly road leading to Swiss Cottage and
leaned back easily.
"How's school going?" He smiled at her with pride. She looked so
pretty with her childish, flushed cheeks.
"College, d'you mean?" Jill corrected him. "Nothing exciting since the
row over ancient history. I'm working rather hard for the Exams now."
"I don't think you told me that. Let's hear about it."
"Well, it's rather a long story----" she settled herself back with her
cold hands thrust beneath the fur rug. "So if you get bored, please
say so at once."
"Fire away," McTaggart observed.
"You remember that unholy fuss last Boat Race day? When I and the
other Cambridge girls held the Bun Shop against Oxford?"
"No--not exactly. What Bun Shop?"
McTaggart saw fun ahead, for Jill's gray eyes were full of mischief
beneath their dark lashes. He noticed, for the first time, how long
and thick they were, curling back in a rippling line that cast a faint
shadow when she lowered the lids.
"Oh, the Bun Shop is a little room in the basement of the college where
old Mother Griggs sells all sorts of cakes, sticks of chocolate and hot
coffee--for 'Elevens' or lunch, you know. It's at the end of a long
passage, quite by itself, with just a counter across it and a dim
religious sort of light from a top-window into the area. There Mother
Griggs sits and barters--rather like a grim old idol--and in between
she grumbles and knits socks. She must have knitted hundreds by now!
Well, on boat race day we all wear colors--I'm Cambridge, of course,
because Uncle was at King's. And some Oxford girl had a wonderful
cousin who was rowing in the boat. So she simply 'swanked,' you know,
and swore Oxford was sure to win. The end of it was _we_ got riled.
So we formed up into the Bun Shop--all of us Cambridge girls--and we
held the place against Oxford right through the mid-day hour---- We
wouldn't let a single Dark Blue pass. It _was_ fun!--a gorgeous
scrimmage. Until some sneak went up and told, and down came the
Principal. As luck would have it, she fell on me. So I got put in the
Black Book."
She paused for breath as they crossed FitzJohn's Parade and started on
the steep climb to Hampstead.
McTaggart glanced at her and laughed.
"What does that mean?" he inquired.
"The very worst." Her voice was tragic. "It's the only punishment we
get. You see, it's not like any school. It's run on University lines.
Just lectures you're supposed to attend and if you don't it's your
lookout--you get ploughed in the Exams. But for any serious, big
offence your name is written in the Black Book. And after a third
entry (which rarely happens) you're 'sent down'--that is, expelled."
"Phew...!" McTaggart whistled. "May I ask how many times you've
managed to get yourself inscribed?"
"Twice." The girl's face was grave. "It's bad luck, isn't it? And
the other day at ancient history I very nearly was nabbed again!"
She paused for a moment to turn the collar of her coat up round her
ears. Her eyes above the gray fur shone like stars in the frosty air.
"We got a new Professor last term; rather young, just down from Oxford.
I don't think..." she smiled mischievously--"he _quite_ understands
girls. It isn't like a school, you see. We're rather keen on that
idea. We don't mind hard work or a man who insists on our attention.
But the Professor thought it funny to--well, to patronize, you know.
He used to be satirical and make allowance for female brains. Just as
if we weren't as sharp--and sharper, too, than a pack of boys! He had
bright ginger hair and a brand-new cap and gown--rather a
'nut'!"--McTaggart roared--"with a drawly sort of 'superior' voice.
Well, Judy Seton----" Jill broke off--"she's a pal of mine--a splendid
girl, always up to sport--arrived one day just before his lecture and
handed round envelopes. Inside was a card and stitched to it was a
little curl cut off a door-mat--one of those ginger ones, you know.
It's woolly stuff, but exactly the shade of the Professor's Titian
glory!
"Underneath it she had written--'In fond memory'--and below--'R.I.P.
The Oxford man--ah!'
"We were all in the class-room ready for lecture and some girl had a
box of pins. So it ended in our fastening the love-locks over our
hearts!
"Well, presently my Lord arrives, in his brand-new cap and gown with
his sheaf of notes, and mounts the platform, very suave and very bored.
"And the first thing that he did--you'd never believe it!--was to run
his hand smoothly across his head.
"'He's missing them!' Judy whispered, and, of course, we all went off
at that. We daren't laugh out aloud, but there we were, giggling
hopelessly, while the Professor glared at us.
"He started in his most sarcastic voice:
"'A little less amusement, ladies. I can understand that it is
difficult for youth to stoop to serious subjects...' And then he
stopped with a little gasp and we knew he had seen the red curls! Just
at that moment the door opened and in came a lady visitor. You know
they're sort of inquisitors, very often 'old girls'--who can walk into
any class-room and sit there to hear a lecture. Judy calls them
'Propriety Pills,' and, although some are really nice, here and there
you get a Tartar who carries stories to the Principal.
"This one was a Mrs. Bevis--we'd nicknamed her 'The Beaver.' She
really was rather like that animal, with a snub-nosed, anxious face,
and she always wore a black mantle and waddled as she walked.
Well--you're sure you're not bored?"
"Sure." McTaggart's voice was hearty. This sidelight on a school for
girls was entertaining and unexpected.
"Go on. What happened then?"
"The Professor gave the Beaver a chair by the fire, facing the room.
We'd hurriedly removed the curls during their polite palaver. This is
the idiotic part. I'd put mine into a book that lay with others on my
desk. I didn't notice at the time that it was an 'Ancient History.'
As it happened, that day I was sitting just beneath the platform. We
were, all of us, solemn as owls under the Beaver's sharp black eyes.
For she's about the worst of the pack for nosing out any trouble.
"The Professor lent her his primer and started on the lecture, still
looking a little flushed, while we were busy taking notes. As luck
would have it, midway, some date tripped him up and before I could
collect my wits he asked me for my 'Ancient History.'"
"Where the curl was?" McTaggart suggested.
"Exactly." Jill's voice was tragic. "He leaned down from the platform
and picked it up off my desk. Of course, it opened at _the_ page!
There was the red lock--the card as well!
"You can just imagine how I felt and I heard Judy Seton gasp. Luckily
the Beaver missed it. The Professor never said a word, but his face
was like a thunder-cloud. He hunted up the date he wanted, closed the
book with a snap and put it down on his desk. At the end of the
lecture he handed it back with a curt word of thanks and went off with
the 'lady visitor,' talking fourteen to the dozen."
"That's not the end?" McTaggart saw by the girl's face there was more
to follow.
"No--of course not. All that morning I simply sat on thorns, expecting
between every lecture to be sent for by the Principal. But nothing
happened. At five o'clock I went down from my last lecture and passed
by the Professors' room, where the door was wide open. Inside was Mr.
Jackson--_the_ Professor--you know--writing hard. So, then, I had an
inspiration. I knocked and said: 'May I speak to you, sir?' And he
wheeled round, looked surprised and said in a chilly voice:
"'Certainly. What do you want?'
"It was no good mincing matters, so I asked, outright:
"'Are you going to report me, sir?'
"He didn't answer for a moment. He seemed to be thinking hard. Then,
in the same cold, absent manner----
"'No.' Just that and nothing more."
Jill stopped, her attention caught by the first glimpse of the open
heath as the car breasted the last rise, and the wind came blustering
in their teeth.
"Oh, _isn't_ it lovely here!" She drew a deep breath of content.
"Straight across?" McTaggart asked. She nodded her head, her eyes
fixed on the far-away vista of trees, bare but shrouded in a violet
haze.
Over Hendon a misty sun was veiled in banks of gray clouds, but high in
the sky a wide streak showed of a pale and tender bird's egg blue.
"Well--what happened next?" McTaggart brought her, with a sudden drop,
back to earth.
"Oh ... I felt so relieved I just rushed ahead, you know. I told him
he was a regular brick! And then, as he seemed a bit surprised, I
explained about the Black Book--how a third entry now might end in my
being sent down for good.'
"'Good Heavens!' he said, 'I'd no idea,' and, really, he looked
sympathetic. So _I_ said I was awfully sorry that we'd all of us
played the goat. Well, what d'you think _he_ said then? quite
simply--without 'side.'
"'It's partly my own fault, too ... I'm not popular, I know--I can't
get the atmosphere...'
"You might have knocked me down with a feather!"
"I'll bet anything you explained it!" McTaggart smiled to himself.
"Why, of course I did." Jill stared at him. "I felt so awfully sorry.
I said:
"'Look here, sir, we'd like you all right if only you'd treat us more
like men. It's not a girl's school, it's a college. And lots of us
are working hard to earn our own living when we leave. So, perhaps, we
think a good deal of the ... usefulness of our work. We like to feel
the Professors know it, and help and ... respect us--just like men. In
the senior lectures most of us, too, are in our third year course, you
know, and you treat us exactly like the juniors! It's all wrong, sir,
don't you see?'"
"Bravo you! ..." McTaggart cried. "How did he take your ... candid
help?"
"He said: 'Thank you--I see the point--you aren't Freshers any more.
And, perhaps ... Yes--the manner's wrong.' Then, quite suddenly, he
laughed. 'The Oxford man--ah! eh, Miss Uniacke?'
"I felt rather a fool then, Peter."
Irrelevantly, she added: "He's got nice eyes when he laughs."
"Oh ... Jill, Jill!" McTaggart's glance swerved from the steering
wheel aside to find his little friend's face flushed beyond the excuse
of the breeze.
"Anyhow, we shook hands," Jill went on hurriedly, "and he said, 'Well I
hope at the next lecture I shall find a more attentive class.'"
"So I told him _I'd_ see to that! and I went downstairs and talked to
the girls. And the next Friday we were good. You could hear a pin
fall," Jill laughed.
"I must say he looked nervous but, when the lecture was over and he
stood on the platform ready to leave, Judy got up and gave the
signal--'Three Cheers for Mr. Jackson.'
"We let it rip--such a row! He looked rather taken aback but awfully
pleased, said 'Thank you, ladies,' and then simply did a bolt."
"Well, I'm blessed!" McTaggart roared--"but glad I'm not a Professor
for girls."
"We thought him such a brick, you see, for not reporting the whole
matter. And, after all," Jill smiled--"he can't help his red hair."
"Nor his 'nice eyes'?" Peter added.
But Jill refused to be drawn.
CHAPTER VII
Mrs. Merrod gazed into her mirror across the littered dressing-table.
It was a gilded triple affair, each side panel swinging on a pivot so
that the woman sitting there could study herself from all angles.
Under the crude electric light, from which she had removed the
rose-coloured shade, her face looked sallow and almost plain, but was
saved from insignificance by the intelligence of her eyes.
Dark topaz colour they were under the fine arched brows, full of deep
slumbering fire that accentuated the hint of passion in the full-lipped
and mocking mouth.
After a moment's steady gaze, drawing her lace peignoir about her, she
rang the bell that lay on the table: a dainty little silver toy where a
winged Eros stooped to kiss a smiling Psyche with arms uplifted. When
the lips of the little creatures met the electric poles were united,
and away in her maid's room she could hear the distant reverberation.
The door opened noiselessly.
"Melanie, my velvet dress, and the boots with the gray suede tops."
"Bien, Madame." The maid passed into the dressing-room adjoining,
where a looped-up curtain of rose-coloured silk revealed an elaborately
fitted bath.
"The ermine scarf--no! The gray fox." She still studied her pale
face--"and I want those new combs from Lalique--and long gray gloves
and my violet toque."
She glanced as she spoke at the little clock which pointed to half-past
six, and, with a sigh of relief, leaned back comfortably in her chair.
To pass the time while the maid came and went between the cupboards of
the two rooms, Mrs. Merrod opened her manicure case, and began to
polish her pink nails.
Then, as the door closed at last behind Melanie's brisk step, she
stirred herself and started upon the lengthy business of her toilette.
Into a saucer she poured from a bottle a thick creamy-looking liquid,
and, with a broad camel's hair brush, spread it smoothly over her face.
She waited for the skin to absorb it, then, with a piece of chamois
leather, she polished the whitened surface lightly, added a faint dust
of powder and peered again into the glass.
Satisfied with the result, she drew out the nearest drawer of the
satin-wood dressing table, disclosing a number of pencils and
lip-salves and little pots of cosmetic.
She hunted for a tiny brush, dipped it in a dark powder and, holding
back each eyelid, proceeded to brush the lashes upward. Next a black
pencil for her eyebrows, the merest line, traced with skill; then
another, this time blue to accentuate the length of her eyes.
Finally, with care, she selected a lip-salve case from among many and
held it thoughtfully for a moment against the creamy-white face.
"Too red." Fantine sighed. Her weakness was for carmine lips, but she
feared McTaggart's critical gaze, those keen and mischievous blue eyes.
Picking out a paler shade, she passed it slowly over her mouth. At
once the face became alive, losing the suggestion of a mask. Beneath
the dark curls, bunched low on her ears, she coloured carefully each
lobe, and, with her head tilted back, added a touch inside her nostrils.
This singular performance over, she rose briskly to her feet, shed the
filmy lace peignoir and stood before the long mirror.
She nodded happily to her image, conscious of her perfect figure. In
the shimmering long black silk tights with the frilled lace about her
bosom, she looked like a dainty travesty of a Harlequin in a
Transformation.
Slipping quickly into her dress, she was sheathed now in black velvet;
very severe but with a cut that whispered Paris in each line.
She fastened a single deep red rose into the folds above her waist,
then swayed slowly from side to side, very supple, her hands to her
hips, a slight smile on the reddened lips.
"Bon!" She reached back for her hat--a violet splash on the lace
counterpane--settled it closely on her head, with a final touch to the
glossy hair, doubly black now against the warmth of the crumpled purple
velvet.
At this moment the knocker sounded. Close at hand it seemed to
clatter, for her bedroom door faced the entrance with only a narrow
strip of hall.
She heard the maid's step pass and then the well-known voice of
McTaggart.
"Entrez donc!" She cried gaily, "I am almost ready, Pierrot." Through
the half-open door, glancing sideways with bright eyes, her hands still
lifted to her head, she caught a glimpse of his laughing face.
He hesitated on the threshold, drinking in the pretty picture of the
dainty pink room with its gleaming mirror and silver toys and the
perfect silhouette of Fantine in her sombre velvet dress.
"Epatante! Comment ca va?" For he prided himself on a slender stock
of French slang acquired mostly from a painstaking study of Willy's
works.
"You _do_ look nice!" He eased the strain of a conversation begun in
French.
"Just one?" He stooped down and lightly kissed her smiling lips. Then
he stood back, holding her hands, and, with a comprehensive glance,
looked her over from head to foot, touched anew by her feminine charm.
"Only my boots now--and gloves, mon cher."
Her eyes with their half-veiled topaz lights returned his gaze hardily,
with an answering pressure of tiny hands. "Go, now--there's a good
boy. Melanie!" she raised her voice--"vite! mes bottines." She sank
down on a low chair, her feet outstretched.
"Let me do it," McTaggart begged, "I'm sure I'd make a splendid maid."
"No, no--Melanie." The sly face of the femme de chambre drove him
effectually from the room.
He sauntered across into the salon, where a fire was burning cosily.
The wide portiere was drawn across the larger room beyond where, on the
evenings when they played, the card table was set out.
He warmed his hands before the blaze, glancing at the crowded
mantel-piece, covered with many photographs, most of them portraits of
men.
He smiled as he recognized the face of a youthful college friend. It
was signed in a sprawling hand--"Yours, Archie," and the thought
flashed into his mind that no power of blandishment could win from
himself a similar trophy.
Whatever his weakness for Fantine might cost, McTaggart knew, deep down
in his heart, respect did not share in the feeling; his shrewdness
would balance his desire. But he knew as well that she held a charm
which set her apart from her type, not only physical but mental,
appealing to his intellect.
There lay the danger. For after her the English women he admired
seemed heavy; they lacked her spice; their calmer beauty was apt to
cloy on close acquaintance.
He was idly scanning the photographs, his mind partially abstracted,
when he caught a glimpse of a curious face, half-hidden from his sight.
The portrait, old and faded, had slipped into the crack between mirror
and wall and he rescued it and held it a moment underneath the electric
light.
A man with a short square beard, his dark hair cut "en brosse," with
evil eyes and an aquiline nose, rather crooked below the bridge.
Something Eastern, McTaggart thought, lay in the lazy, sensuous smile,
in the heavily lidded narrow eyes, slightly tilted toward the temples.
A Frenchman? hardly. A Greek? perhaps. A "wrong un'"!--of that he
was sure.
He had just time to replace the photo before Fantine entered the room.
"Me voila donc!--you admire my gallery?--all the men I have loved and
lost..."
"It makes me glad I am not among them." McTaggart turned with a short
laugh. "I should like to flatter myself with the thought, that I am
the one you will love ... and _keep_!"
"That depends." She came nearer and the faint perfume she affected
floated up into his nostrils as he looked down from his height at her.
"On what?" Despite his control the narrow face upturned to him, above
the shimmering gray fur, with its red lips in a mocking line cutting
the dead-white of her skin, made his pulses beat faster.
"On yourself." She turned away with a quick, indifferent shrug. Fully
aware of her power, she never strained a situation.
"My friend--I'm famished!" She fastened her glove. "Why talk about
the little heart when the big rest of one is empty? I thought you were
here to take me out to a new restaurant to-night?"
"But it's only seven o'clock." He smiled at the rueful note in her
voice. "You can't eat anything yet, can you? Of course we'll
start--at once, if you like."
"Good." She clapped her hands like a child. "I'm ver' hungry, really,
Pierrot. I slept late and missed lunch."
McTaggart noticed, with amusement, that the question of his own
appetite never occurred to the fair speaker. Manlike, a trait which
would have aggrieved his sense of mastership in his home, appeared to
him as involving no martyrdom in this piquante egoist's hands.
"Greedy child! As a matter of fact, I told my taxi to wait. It's such
a nice one, almost new. I thought, perhaps, you'd like a drive?"
"Merci, non." She drew her furs carefully about her shoulders, the
gray head of the fox nestling under her little pink ear.
"Lucky beast!" said McTaggart, with a gesture pointing his remark.
"Why wasn't I born a fox?"
"Because the English are born sheep!" Her topaz eyes flashed wickedly.
"They only ask for a stupid leader--and off they go, baa ... baa ...
quite contented--straggling down the same dull path paved with
precepts."
They passed out as she spoke and entered the narrow lift where a
saddened-looking individual clung to the rope like a drowning man.
Mrs. Merrod glanced at him, recognizing a new porter.
"Slowly, please,"--she commanded. "I hate..." she explained to
McTaggart--"to feel my feet running up my spine. Once when I went into
the City to see my lawyer the lift went down at such a terrible pace,
mon Dieu!--I found a boot-button in my hair."
"You're sure it wasn't the top of a hat-pin?"
McTaggart's voice was studiously grave.
"Mais non! A button. But I'm not _quite_ certain whether it came off
a boot..."
The sad-looking porter, his back turned, relaxed into a sudden grin.
He saw the pair into their taxi and stood for a moment watching them.
"There goes a little bit of all right!"--he confided to the world at
large. Then he solemnly spat on McTaggart's shilling "for luck" and
burrowed back into the lift.
CHAPTER VIII
The Restaurant "Au Bon Bourgeois" faced on a dingy Soho street, the
newly painted white door flanked by myrtle-trees in tubs. The entrance
was through a narrow passage which led to a low room in the rear,
divided from the one in front by a partition of plate glass.
The latter place was reserved for the Cafe, where marble tables were
closely packed on a red-tiled and sanded floor; and it boasted its own
separate entrance, carefully remote from the other. It gave a Bohemian
atmosphere to the newly opened Restaurant. For the diners in the room
beyond could watch the ever-changing scene--undisturbed by smoke or
chatter--like a slice of French life cut bodily from the gay capital
over seas.
The proprietor had been head-waiter in a fashionable London hotel; a
shrewd Swiss--known as "Monsieur Auguste"--he had learned the secret
underlying the modern demand for catering.
He realized that the Englishman will readily pay an exorbitant price
for rich food badly cooked in a first-class Restaurant; impervious to a
hurried service, to overcrowding and noise, provided that the place
held a fixed reputation for "smartness."
But he knew, besides, that success waited at the other end of the long
scale: that it tickled the average British mind to strike a bargain
over dinner: to justify the national shrewdness and play the pauper
(without discomfort)--with a hint, too, of mild Bohemia to salt its
sense of respectability. The fact that he gave them well-cooked
whiting instead of a tepid "Sole Normande"; "pot-au-feu" which was
mainly stock, in place of a glue-like "Consomme" his clients manfully
ignored. Conscious of the economy of dining "Au Bon Bourgeois," their
virtue was rewarded, doubtless, by the after ease of their digestion.
No noisy band rent the air. The service was clean and prompt under the
all-pervading eye of the busy proprietor. And for those who found no
special interest in the Cafe life the place offered as a perpetual
mise-en-scene, two rooms on the first floor were provided, where the
tables ranged along the walls were screened by match-wood partitions,
offering a sanctuary for flirtation and isolation for the "Select."
McTaggart had reserved a table in the coveted angle of the room where
no waiter could jar his chair by darting feverishly behind it. It
allowed his guest a full view through the screen of plate-glass and, as
Fantine took her place, under the cool, admiring eye of "Monsieur
Auguste," in attendance, she gave a quick exclamation of mingled
pleasure and surprise.
"Charming--quite Continental..."
A wistful note crept into her face. Absorbed by this travesty of the
Boulevards, she peeled off her long suede gloves and smoothed her hair
with an absent gesture.
Monsieur Auguste, in spotless white--linen coat and long
apron--relieved by a huge black cravatte fastened with the famous pin
(the present of a Grand Duke), glanced at McTaggart with the smile of a
serene and confident host.
"Look at those men playing dominoes! and the long-haired creature with
the cape--He's drinking absinthe ... oh! how nice...!" Fantine's eyes
shone with golden lights.
"Madame is pleased?" Monsieur Auguste handed the Wine Carte to
McTaggart, the page carelessly opened where the list of champagnes
began. With a long nail cut into a point he underlined a special
brand. "Madame would like this," he said, "not _too_ dry, a good
vintage."
But "Madame" was not of his opinion. With all her artistic little soul
she revelled in the atmosphere, recognizing the bourgeois note--"Red
wine, n'est ce pas, Pierrot?--something that sings aloud of France."
And, suddenly, before her eyes, the scene blurred and, in its place,
memory tricked her. She was back in a smoke-wreathed cabaret at
Montmartre. She could hear the merry chorus rise and see Bruant, with
his shaggy mane, roaring out the "Song of the Grape"; while by her
side, his arm about her, was the one man she had really loved.
Ah! those days ... She caught her breath and was conscious again of
Auguste's stare.
He studied the white, piquante face and wondered if he had made a
mistake. But he added a new shade of respect to his suave
acknowledgment of her order. Not many ladies with such red lips,
combined with a costume of faultless cut, carelessly dismissed
champagne. He bowed himself away from her, and sent the pair his best
waiter.
"I'm glad you approve of the little place." McTaggart took on an
explorer's pride. "I found it by the merest chance and since then have
come often. The food's not bad--well, you'll see for yourself!--and it
always comes in piping hot. Now, what shall we have?" He gathered up
the big card with its printed list.
"Petite Marmite,--d'you agree to that? and fish--you choose----" he
handed it over.
"Skate," she said decidedly--"with 'black butter'" (she translated).
"It sounds vile in English, somehow--what a difference language makes
to things. Listen, now--'Raie au beurre noir'--Isn't there a charm
about it?--and ... 'Veal Schnitzel' ... and 'Petits Pois'--Yes, I know
they're tinned----" she forestalled his objection--"but with plenty of
butter and well cooked...." she flashed an expressive little gesture.
"What potatoes?" McTaggart asked.
"Fi donc!" She smiled indulgently--"a boiled potato for you, mon
cher--the hall-mark of the English 'home.' And cabbage, perhaps, to
make you happy!"
"No--I draw the line at that!--What do you say to a bird, to follow?"
"Comme tu veux!--For me it's enough--with a little fruit and good
coffee ... and a 'petit verre.' Say, now, Pierrot, shall we come one
day and sit there?" She pointed gaily through the screen to the
crowded noisy room beyond.
"I should love that! To sip absinthe--dressed like a little milliner!
Look at that woman on the right with the shabby ulster and elegant
boots. You rarely see that over here--It's a feathered hat in the
latest fashion and no thought for the 'dessous.' And the hair all
scrabbled up and _dull_--the gloves old or far too tight--everything
squandered on the dress, with colors to make one's ... 'digestion'
turn!"
"Even the women in higher classes don't seem 'soignees'--only smart.
And you call yourself a clean race! ... Because you walk through a cold
bath."
For that sudden mirage of the Past had aroused in her the mal du pays.
She flogged the Present with a rod, pickled in salt experience.
McTaggart felt a trifle ruffled. He was English enough to hold the
theory that nothing outside the little island--with a patronizing
lesser degree of excellence for its colonies--could nearly approach the
standard set by British prosperity--plus its morals.
"Oh, come, now"--he paused a moment as the waiter ladled out their
soup. "I defy you to find anywhere a finer type than our English
girls. Look at their skin--their teeth--their hair--the healthy,
well-bred look of them. Oh, no--I grant, there's charm, and style and
an inborn sense of dress in foreign women and they're generally witty
and can talk fourteen to the dozen! But give me an English girl"--his
thoughts flashed back to Cydonia---"unless," he added somewhat
quickly--"unless, of course, I can have Fantine."
"Ah! merci----" she clapped her hands--"I'm the exception to prove the
rule? But, seriously, I think you're biassed, though part of what you
say is true. They've everything to make them perfect, these rose-leaf
tinted, long-limbed girls--everything! That's what annoys me--save the
wit to profit by Nature's gifts. It's such a prodigal waste of beauty
... Look at that girl at the end table----" she lowered her voice as
she spoke--"with the colouring of Titian's 'Flora.' And she wears--bon
Dieu!--an orange blouse. Because she's taking Tango lessons! And with
it a cheap amethyst necklace. Someone has told her--without
doubt!--they're Queen Alexandra's favorite stones. Her hat? Yes--it
cost two guineas. So she compromised with shoes from a Sale and last
year's skirt, taken in rather badly round the ankles. What a
hotch-potch!--bound about that divine figure--ruined by cheap
corsets--and yes! I was sure of it--a hole in a pair of openwork
thread stockings!"
"I give in!----" McTaggart laughed--"or I know you won't enjoy your
dinner. You see I'm half-Italian, too, so it's not real disloyalty."
She looked up, interested.
"Tiens! Perhaps it explains your ... un-English charm? On your
mother's side, I suppose?"
"Yes. She was a Maramonte. They've lived for centuries at Siena. I
believe they've got a palace there a good bit older than the Tower!
But I've never met my relations. My uncle is the present marquis--with
two sons and a second wife. So there's no chance for me as
heir--beyond what was left me by my mother."
He laughed, happily unconcerned. "I can't picture myself, somehow, the
lordly owner of feudal lands. You know Siena's quite mediaeval in many
of its customs now. 'Il Palio,'--those weird races are still run twice
a year. Every quarter of the city sends a horse to compete, and the
jockeys wear historic clothes and tear round the market-place. It's a
little bigger than Hanover Square and sloped on the side of a hill, so
at the most dangerous angle they lay out a row of mattresses! Fact, I
assure you"--he smiled. "I mean to see it myself some day. And, after
the race is run, the jockey leads the winning horse, in gorgeous
trappings with the banner of the victorious Quarter, right into the
Cathedral! There it receives a solemn blessing and after that a feast
is held in the market-place by torch light and the horse, if you
please, presides--with his bin of corn--at the head of the table!
Isn't it quaint? In these days of 'wireless' and Zeppelins there's
something rather refreshing about it--the glamour of a fairy-tale."
"Delightful. Take me with you, Pierrot." She sent him a mocking smile
over the edge of her wine-glass.
"Will you come?" McTaggart's voice was low,
The "intime" atmosphere of the place, with the magnetism of Fantine,
her strange and nameless charm, were not without effect on him.
"Per'aps..." She shrugged her shoulders lightly. "If you will promise
to leave behind that rather alarming British half sacred to the
'English Miss.'"
His "Scotch heart!" Whimsically he studied the proposition. It seemed
just now a small item beside the beat of his other organ.
A sudden moodiness beset him. Was he never to understand himself? To
be swayed with every turn of the wind at the mercy of his temperament?
For the foreign blood in his veins warred perpetually with the Scotch.
It was in truth a heady mixture, typical South and typical North. With
the passion of the former, its restless fiery love of beauty, were
blent the caution and the strength and something vaguely
religious--'dour'--tinged with a faint melancholy, the heritage with
his blue eyes from a long-dead Covenanter.
Never, he said to himself, should he find a woman who suited both
sides; gave him ardour and left him respect, satisfying body and soul...
Fantine, with her subtle instinct, divined the change in his mood. She
swept aside personalities and started to talk of the Russian Ballet.
"It's curious how it has left its mark. It seems to have bitten and to
have scratched!"
McTaggart, despite himself, smiled at the clever, brutal touch. This
was Fantine at her best.
"To succeed now one must surprise!--the days of Mendelssohn are past.
I suppose the world is getting old with emotions that Time has dulled."
"Or the Worldlings too degenerate." McTaggart still felt gloomy.
"These Cubists now ... What do you think of their pictures? Do you
call it really Art?"
"I can't somehow make up my mind. I like the idea at the back of it.
I think they're groping in the dark for a sign not yet vouchsafed to
us."
McTaggart tried to follow her thought, failed and asked for a nearer
clue.
Fantine's eyes were far away, the fine brows drawn together in an
effort of concentration. She pushed her plate away from her and, with
hands clasped on the table, leaned unconsciously toward him.
"Have you ever read Swedenborg? His 'Heaven and Hell!' No? What a
pity! Well one of his favourite theories is on what he calls
'Correspondences.' He thinks that everything lovely here is the
symbol, materialized, of a higher, more exquisite spiritual
force--known to angels in Paradise. For instance, a rose--with its
perfect shape, its colour, its scent, has a counterpart--a
_'Correspondence_' is his word--with a '_state_'--it's difficult to
explain---a ... sense of happiness above. Well, it seems to me that
artists now, in music and painting--in all the arts--are trying to get
away from _form_ to express the _meaning_ in their work. It's a
wireless message to the mind away beyond the animal senses; something
above the mere glamour of appeal to the flesh--it's 'correspondence.'"
McTaggart nodded his head gravely.
"It sounds bigger than I imagined." He felt a half-ashamed surprise at
these depths in a woman he deemed light.
And, as if in answer to his thought, the old mocking look returned to
the painted lips that smiled at him. But scorn was in her half-veiled
eyes. For Fantine knew the ways of men: the forfeit that her class
must pay--to be used and loved and set aside as a thing of nought when
custom staled.
She felt a keen stab of revolt, a fierce desire to extort to the full
her share of the bargain, blow for blow, to prey on the weaknesses she
served.
And McTaggart's next careless remark sealed his fate as far as it lay
in the hands of the shrewd adventuress, turning the scales against the
man.
"I didn't know you read so much. How on earth do you find the time?"
The speech, innocently meant, stung the wound in her heart.
But she gave him a daring glance.
"Mon cher--I _am_ alone ... sometimes!"
"You wouldn't be if I had my way." He checked himself as the waiter
poured the fragrant coffee into their cups.
"Talking of the Cubists' work"--Fantine reverted to the subject. "I
was over in Paris last year when they held their exhibition. Rather a
funny thing happened." She dipped the long slab of sugar daintily into
her cup and sucked it like a wilful child, conscious of stolen
pleasure. "We used to call that a 'canard,' Pierrot----" laughingly,
she interjected--"Well, revenons! There was a picture--I can't quite
remember the name. But I think it was called 'A woman, falling
downstairs.' There was always a little crowd before it--the artist was
the 'dernier cri'--and I stood one day and amused myself by listening
to their remarks. One man said: 'There--don't you _see_? It's her
head--and that touch of white is an arm--and, well, of course! her foot
is plain against the background of the wall.' The poor lady by his
side tried in vain to see the outline. She screwed up both her eyes
and looked like a child with a jig-saw puzzle. As to myself----"
Fantine laughed--"I must confess I could make out nothing but a blur of
colour and sharp lines without the slightest human form. Well, some
months later I happened to meet this very artist and I told him of the
enthusiasm in Paris and the remarks I had overheard. Ma foi!--I
thought he would have slain me. He said:
"'Madame--They are fools, fools, fools! There is no woman--But--of
course! It's the feeling ... the fear ... I have painted. The _sense_
of falling down steep stairs.'"
McTaggart laughed heartily.
"Well--it's a bit above my head! I'm afraid I've no artistic merit. I
like a picture I understand."
"I know." Fantine's voice was sweet, but malice lay underneath--"a
picture that tells its own story--like that famous Scotch cow lost in
the snow."
But her host's attention was wandering. The Titian "Flora" had caught
his eye. With flushed cheeks and an air of pride she was smoking her
first cigarette. He pointed it out to his companion.
"Let's hope it will agree with her. Hullo! she's choked--poor child!
She's really quite a pretty girl--I don't know why you find fault with
her."
"Not with her face," Fantine corrected--"one sees that the Bon Dieu
modelled that. It's the sinful clothes she makes for herself--without
celestial inspiration! She reminds me of an English girl my husband
used to adore in Algiers."
McTaggart felt a sudden curiosity. This was the first time Mrs. Merrod
had mentioned to him the late partner of her married joys and cares.
"Yes? And what did _you_ say to that?"
"I? why nothing." She laughed lightly. "I'm not jealous--pas si bete!
He was always very kind to me and I liked to watch his little affairs.
But in this instance it proved tragic..."
She smiled the meaning out of the word.
"What happened?" McTaggart asked, his eyes still on the distant "Flora."
"She was very pretty--the wild-rose type--and poor Gustave was quite
captured. You see, she always wore gloves..." She paused with a
pensive, teasing air.
"Too tight, perhaps? or shabby, eh?" He remembered her sweeping
remarks.
"Oh, dear, no--far worse than that! One evening she took them off and
he found ... that she actually _bit her nails_!"
"And that finished it?"
Fantine nodded as the waiter handed McTaggart's bill.
"But, of course! Gustave wept with chagrin. But I told him it was his
own fault. He should have laid his volatile heart at the feet of a
Parisienne."
"The love then was only skin-deep?"
Obedient to her little sign, he handed his guest her furs, watching her
with amused blue eyes as she powdered her face in the glass.
"Not ever, that, mon cher Pierrot"--she flashed him a mocking glance,
hard and brilliant, holding a hint of the resentment in her heart.
Then she rose to her feet with a supple movement, gathering her furs
about her.
"He loved her," she volunteered--"as far as--jusqu'aux bouts des
ongles!"
CHAPTER IX
Ebenezer Cadell was one of those men--daily becoming more rare--who,
after a life of strenuous work, can face, at breakfast, a mutton chop.
In this nervous age the fact in itself stands for an attribute of
success. For next to money a good digestion will thrust an ambitious
man far.
He did not even take his chop in obedience to his doctor's wishes, but
out of a healthy appetite for that peculiar delicacy. He liked it as a
second course, after eggs or fish or bacon, rather underdone and large,
remembering lean years of porridge.
Breakfast over, he filled his pipe before the fire, where his boots
were warming, and steeped his soul in the Liberal papers with the air
of governing the Empire.
Mrs. Cadell, naturally, took in the _Morning Post_ to keep in touch
with that social world where names mean more than personal effort.
Cydonia was given the _Daily Mirror_, generally left unread by her and
devoured in the Servants' Hall. Once a week _Punch_ arrived and an
unwieldy Ladies' journal, while into the depths of the smoking-room was
smuggled a certain apricot paper.
On this particular winter morning the master of the house had failed to
find the notice of a sale in his beloved _Chronicle_. Slightly
aggrieved, he made his way into the morning-room beyond, where Helen
was occupied poring over household matters. He begged the loan of
those crisp sheets, white and pleasant to the touch, that seem to hold
a faint suggestion of the class they represent.
He was leaving the room when his wife turned and stopped him with an
imperious gesture.
"Can you spare me a moment, Ebenezer?" The request was in truth a
command. "I want to talk about Cydonia?"
Cadell, unwillingly, glanced at the clock.
"Well--five minutes--if that will do. What's the trouble about, my
dear? Hope there's nothing wrong with the child?"
"Oh, no. I'm thinking of giving a dance. Cydonia's birthday falls
next month. It would be a 'coming-out' affair and I want
it--naturally--well done."
"Quite right. Dear me!"--the man sighed. "It seems only the other day
she was running about in pinafores! I can't think of her as grown-up."
The tender look came into his face that only his daughter could evoke.
Mrs. Cadell saw it and smiled, as he added in his pompous manner:
"If it's a question of money, my dear, you needn't spare it. Order the
best. I'll settle the bills."
"Thank you. There'll be a good deal to arrange ... But since you
approve I'll take it in hand."
The old man lingered at the door.
"Who are you going to invite?" he asked--"You're not counting on me for
men?"
"Oh, no!"--She spoke hurriedly, with a faint note of satire he knew
full well--"But I'm counting on you for good champagne."
"H'm ... I see. But I always thought it didn't matter much at a
dance--more quantity than quality."
"A popular mistake," said Helen, "or rather most _un_popular! It's
like this"--she explained--"we don't know many dancing-men--at least
not of the kind I want! But it's quite easy nowadays. You ask people
to make up parties. Only they're not _your_ guests, you see, but
friends of the people who dine and bring them; and they feel they can
grumble openly at any flaw in the entertainment. So I want the
arrangements and the wine--(it's more important than the food) to be
quite--well, above suspicion. _Then_, you see," she smiled
enigmatically, "the men will come again--by themselves."
Ebenezer's face grew red.
"I'd like to see them grumble here! Dash it all!--we make no
charge--it's _my_ hospitality."
He bristled visibly at the thought.
"That counts for nothing nowadays." Helen's voice was quite composed.
"They come to enjoy themselves--for what they can get out of it! The
only people who can give small parties and consider themselves the
attraction are artists or Royalty. They can _afford_ simplicity."
"H'm!--A pretty state of affairs. And what about Cydonia? You'd think
any man would be proud to dance with my lovely girl."
"Ah! you're her father." Helen laughed. "I don't say, mind, that I
approve of the present-day attitude. But the fact remains that the
modern youth considers that his presence at a party confers a favour
... and, in return, he demands a first-class entertainment."
She met his eyes, smiled again, and turned to her desk with an air of
dismissal.
"What about presenting the child? I'd like that done, you know, Helen.
It don't mean much to my mind to bob down before Royalty, but I gather
it's a sort of hall-mark."
He gave a gruff, contented laugh.
"That will come later," said Mrs. Cadell. "I was talking to Lady
Leason about it, and she knows of a certain friend of hers who arranges
these little matters. For a consideration, of course."
"I didn't know you had to pay?" Ebenezer was interested. Secretly he
admired his wife's steady assault on Society.
"My dear, one pays for everything. Look at the people who get honours!
It will mean, I should say, about three figures to get a well-known
name to present her--a titled woman of good standing; and then there
will be Lady Leason's present--and the commission..." She knit her
brows. "Anyhow, Cydonia's worth it."
"That she is--bless her pretty face! She's the crowning gem of my
collection! And I mean her to make a fine marriage! If it costs me
every penny I've got."
He turned his sharp, near-set eyes shrewdly on Helen's countenance.
"What's this young man who's always around? McTaggart, I think, is his
precious name. A tall fellow with blue eyes and a damned cool manner
when I meet him!"
"He's all right," said the mother quickly, "and rather useful just now.
He's a great friend of Lady Leason's and moves in a very good set."
"Well--don't allow any nonsense there. He don't come here to see _me_!
And he don't seem to do any work--I can't stand his 'haw, haw' style."
The door banged behind him loudly.
Mrs. Cadell took up her pen, but held it a moment, absently, gazing out
on the Mayfair street, empty at this early hour.
Did her daughter like McTaggart? That was the question she asked
herself. Was his society the reason that Cydonia of late had seemed to
quicken, to lose her slumbering childish calm?
And if so...? She frowned at the thought. Then she sighed. Ebenezer
was right. But the mother-love warred within her with the ambition of
her life. All the happiness she had missed!--she reached for it with
nervous hands, longing to pile it, height on height, into the lap of
her only child.
And, as if her thoughts had drawn the girl, Cydonia, that moment,
entered the room.
"Am I disturbing you, Madre, dear?"
She stood there, radiant, in coat and hat; the fair face full of life,
an eager look in the soft brown eyes. There seemed a little suppressed
air of excitement in her bearing.
Helen stretched out her hand. Her daughter took it indifferently,
pressed it lightly and let it fall.
"It's just to ask may I go out?--with Mason, of course--to do some
shopping?"
"Wouldn't you rather wait for me? I shall be ready about twelve."
"Well ... you see, Madre,"--a faint flush stole into the clear skin as
she spoke. "Christmas is getting very near and I've no presents at
all, as yet. And----" a sudden excuse seemed to strike her--"I rather
thought ... I'd get yours."
"Oh, very well." Helen laughed, "I mustn't trespass on any 'secret.'"
Cydonia averted her brown eyes, conscious of a twinge of conscience.
"Thank you, Madre, dear." She stooped and kissed her mother
gratefully, hesitated for a moment, and breathed an indistinct
"Good-bye."
But once outside the front door her spirits began to rise. She looked
unusually animated, beautiful in her costly furs.
The maid shuffled along beside her, a subdued black form of
indeterminate shape, rather like an unwilling retriever, dragged by an
invisible leash.
They crossed Berkeley Square and swerved up to the right into Bond
Street. Here Cydonia's step quickened as she glanced eagerly about
her. She paused once or twice before a shop, gazing abstractedly into
the window, and bought a bunch of Parma violets, which she pinned on to
her white fox.
Then, with the gold head proudly carried, shining in the wintry sun
like a halo under her black hat, she moved on, very sedate, avoiding
all admiring glances.
"Hullo! Here's a stroke of luck."
McTaggart barred her further progress.
"What are you doing out so early?" His blue eyes were mischievous.
"How do you do?" she said demurely. "I'm shopping." Conversation
failed her.
"Can I come, too?" McTaggart asked. He turned without waiting for
permission.
The maid, with dog-like fidelity, fell to heel behind the pair, and,
lowering his voice, he added:
"I began to think I must have missed you."
"Am I late?" said Cydonia. "I shall really have to buy something. I
told Mother it was Christmas presents... And I shouldn't like to tell
a lie."
"We'll buy the whole street," said McTaggart, ministering to the
wounded conscience. "Let's cross over and look at Asprey's--their
window's bursting with 'suitable gifts.'"
They dodged across between the taxis, heedless of the nervous maid.
"Can't we lose her?" he suggested. "I'm not used to a royal escort."
Glancing round him, he observed a Gallery close at hand where an
Exhibition was advertised, and jumped at the way of escape.
"Come in and see the pictures." He raised his voice as he spoke.
"You really ought to--they're fine!--done by that man..." he spelled
out the name.
Cydonia giggled, recovered herself and turned to the reluctant maid.
"Mason--we're going in here. Do you think, meanwhile, that you'd have
time to run up to Marshall's and match that satin for my frock?"
"Yes, miss." The girl's face brightened. She much preferred to shop
alone and dawdle down the long counters. "I'd be back within
half-an-hour."
"Excellent," said McTaggart. As Cydonia passed through the doors he
slipped his hand into his pocket and noiselessly tipped the maid.
"Take your time," he said kindly. The pale, subdued Cockney thanked
him.
"Yes, sir. I understand."
"I'll bet you do!" thought the man.
They passed down a narrow passage and into the long empty room with its
crude top-light, so trying to many a fair-haired woman.
But Cydonia stood the test triumphantly, her skin shell-like above her
furs.
A single sad-faced man was standing in possession of the scene, gazing
with ardent eyes at a violent blue seascape.
"I'll guarantee that's the artist." McTaggart whispered in her ear.
"Don't let's break into his dreams---- That sofa looks comfortable."
They sat down on the green plush, side by side, and Cydonia played with
the violets at her breast, conscious of McTaggart's eyes.
"Don't you want to see the pictures?" She made an effort at small
talk. "I thought--you said--they were rather fine."
"Never heard of them in my life! Besides, I'm looking at a picture."
Cydonia vainly pretended to miss the meaning of his speech. She
pointed a slender finger at the portrait of a Spanish girl, facing the
pair with a bold smile, a red rose behind her ear.
"I like the colour of her hair--that glossy black which looks blue..."
"So do I." McTaggart smiled, "but it's not black--it's ... spun
sunshine! And the only blue that I can see is a tiny vein near the
temple."
"I wonder," said Cydonia desperately, "how much we've made by those
Tableaux?"
"Fifteen pounds, four and tuppence."
"_Really_? ... Not more than that?" She turned a bewildered face
toward him.
"Ah ... that's better," said McTaggart. "To tell you the truth," he
admitted, "I haven't the faintest idea of the sum. But I was getting
tired of your profile." He saw her frown and stopped short.
"All right! I'll be good. But it's such fun, now, isn't it? When I
think of the patient Mason matching yards of satin up at Marshall's."
Cydonia laughed. The soft note echoed through the empty room, for the
artist had quietly slipped away into a further one beyond.
One quick glance he had given them, and his sensitive mind had received
the impression. The girl, with her apple-blossom face, Spring
incarnate, wooed by Summer.
"It isn't often I have the chance of your company without Mamma. Don't
you ever go to dances?" He watched her lips move as she answered.
"Not yet--but, Peter, I forgot! I've such a lovely piece of news. I'm
going to have a birthday party next month ... You'll come, won't you?"
"_Rather_. I say, that's ripping! A dance? Good," as she nodded her
head. "I'll bet your people will do it well." Unconsciously he voiced
the sentiments expressed that morning by Mrs. Cadell.
"How many dances may I have? I suppose you can't spare the lot?"
The infection of his mood was catching.
"One and an extra..." Cydonia laughed.
"Nonsense!" He hunted for a pencil and pulled out his cuff
aggressively.
"Five at least. And supper too. Oh, Cydonia! you really _might_..."
But over the girl's merry face a shadow fell. She turned her head with
startled eyes and a quick "Hush!" as a voice outside, loud and harsh,
echoed down the long passage.
"It's Father!" She gave a gasp. "Oh, Peter, what shall we do?"
McTaggart was on his feet.
"The inner room"--he grasped her arm--"don't speak!" On tiptoe they
fled.
"Stand here--in this corner--it's hidden from either door." He
whispered the words, his lips brushing the soft hair drawn over her
ears.
"Worth it--even if we're caught!" He said to himself with inward joy,
conscious of the girl's hand, tightly clasped in his own.
They heard the heavy step pass and enter the room beyond; then a sound
of men's voices broke across their strained attention.
McTaggart crept to the curtain that half veiled their hiding-place,
then back to Cydonia, his smile showing his vast relief.
"He's talking to that artist chap. Now, softly into the passage, and
then we'll make a bolt for it."
But he paused for a moment, very near her, his eyes on her frightened
face.
"You dear thing--don't worry! I hate to see you look like that."
For a second's space he fought hard against the temptation of her
answering smile. Then, drawing back, he led the way noiselessly into
the hall.
The ruse succeeded, but outside a further problem awaited them. For
Mason was "taking her time" conscientiously earning her tip.
"I can't leave you here alone." McTaggart's glance swept the street.
"What shall we do? Walk to Marshall's? or--isn't that your car there?"
He pointed out a landaulette, drawn up against the curb.
"Is Willcox safe, do you think?"
Willcox was the Cadells' chauffeur. He despised the family whom he
served, realizing with the flair of his kind their status as parvenu.
But he made an exception of Cydonia. Her sweet voice and well-bred
face induced in him the belief of blue blood--achieved by some worthy
misdemeanor!
The girl, aware of his silent worship, welcomed the sight of him with
relief.
"He'll say nothing--how splendid! I'll just get into the car and wait."
McTaggart agreed. "You can explain you saw your Father go into the
Gallery. And, as you felt tired, dispatched Mason to do your shopping,
while you rested."
"Yes. That's it." She nodded her head. "Please go now. He might
come out. You know what a rush he's always in."
She reached the carriage breathlessly, with a glance at the chauffeur's
impassive face.
"Willcox--I'll wait inside. Mr. Cadell won't be long."
McTaggart tucked the rug around her.
"To-morrow," he whispered, "at Lady Leason's." Then, out loud,
"Good-bye, Miss Cadell--I won't forget your Mother's dance."
"Good-bye, Mr. McTaggart." She smiled at the formal address.
Stiff and discreet on the box Willcox was smiling too. He was
conscious of the whole manoeuvre, and in his heart he approved. He
watched McTaggart stride away, with his careless, well-bred walk, pause
at the corner and glance back surreptitiously through the crowd.
And then he heard his young mistress call in a low, quick voice,
"Mason!"
And the maid's excuse, rather frightened.
"I hope I'm not late, miss--I've got the satin."
"A little," Cydonia calmly replied, "but you needn't wait. Give me the
parcel. I'm driving home with Mr. Cadell when he's bought that picture
we went to see."
CHAPTER X
"If you please, miss"--the untidy maid stood in the doorway,
aggressively--"the chicken 'asn't come yet and Cook sez it would be no
good sending round, as the shop's shut."
Jill jumped up from the floor where she crouched drying her wet hair
before the fire. She glanced up at the clock and frowned.
"Why, it's half past seven!--Of course. She ought to have told me long
ago."
"I'm sure, miss"--the other protested with a faint smile not unmixed
with malice--"it isn't Cook's fault--she does 'er best. But I'm sure
in this 'ouse it's 'ard to please. What with meals at any hour and
never knowing if it's two or _three_ ... I'm sure..." She stopped
short at the sudden anger in Jill's expressive gray eyes.
"That will do." She threw back her hair, which fell in a dark cloud
over her shoulders, narrowing into damp points far below the line of
her waist. "I'll come down and see Cook myself."
Lizzie retreated, her face sullen, before the peremptory young voice.
Then, changing her mind, she whisked round and barred Jill's passage
insolently.
"I'd like to say I want to leave. This day month." She tossed her
head. "I don't seem to suit--and it don't suit me!--such goings-on ...
an' lawless talk. I ain't used to a mistress as ups and breaks
windows--it ain't decent!--an' my young man, 'e sez..."
"Be silent!"--Jill was white with suppressed rage--"If you want to give
notice you must speak to Mrs. Uniacke."
"_Or_ Mr. Somerfield, I s'pose..."
The barbed shaft stung the girl as she ran down the stairs, leaving
Lizzie, quivering, in possession of the field.
Jill reached the basement, breathless and angry.
"Cook!" she called at the kitchen door. A stout and slovenly woman
turned slowly round from before the range.
"Yes, miss?" She wiped her greasy hands on a torn apron, and stood
there, expectant.
"What's all this about the chicken? Lizzie tells me it hasn't come?"
"No, miss." She leaned against the table, massive, inert, with an
over-red face. Her person exhaled a faint smell of brandy and the
glazed eyes completed the story.
"Then what are we going to have for dinner?"
"I'm sure I don't know, miss."
Jill gave her one look and passed with a quick stride into the larder.
Thrown anyhow on the dingy shelves were scraps of fish, butter and
suet, jars of dripping, some shrivelled apples and the scraggy remains
of a leg of mutton. The closed-in place smelled of cheese and mice.
Jill explored with hopeless disgust. Too well she knew the domestic
chaos that balanced her mother's political activity.
For Mrs. Uniacke had no time for "home." She scorned the narrow
"sheltered life" and wore out her strength in that daily fight to prove
that Woman was fitted to rule.
"This mutton now..." Jill tipped the bone onto a clean plate from its
close companionship with a raw herring, and came back, still frowning,
into the kitchen.
"You could grill it, couldn't you?" she asked sharply.
The cook, stupidly, turned it over.
"I _could_..." she debated with tipsy solemnity. "But there's only,
then, enough for two."
"Well, we _are_ two!" Jill was impatient.
The cook sniffed. "More often three! ... I'm sure it's enough to drive
one crazy, never knowing what's wanted. An' the tradesmen clamouring
for their money ... There's the butcher to-day--'e told me straight:
'That's the last j'int you'll get from _us_!'--I've never lived in such
a place...." Her voice rose. She stuck her hands on her hips and
faced her young mistress.
"And I won't stay--what's more! I've always been a respectable woman
... and 'ard-working ... an' treated as such..." (The quick anger
induced by spirits brought the tears to her bleary eyes.) "I'm sure if
my pore 'usband was 'ere, 'e'd say: 'Martha--you clear, my girl.' 'E'd
be ashamed--that's wot 'e'd be ... a butler 'e were in good service.
So you can tell yer mother, miss, I've made my mind up--an' I goes!"
With a sob of injured pride she seized the bone in a shaky hand.
"Look at that!" She brandished it under Jill's disgusted nose.
"That's been our dinner since Sunday--and _Canterb'ry_--that's what it
is!"
Poor Jill swallowed hard, struggling to keep her temper in check.
Diplomacy she knew full well was the only weapon she dared use.
"Now, look here, Cook. I'm awfully sorry. But I don't want to bother
Mother. She's not well--and she's worried to death ... You know what
it is to feel bad."
"That I do, Miss Jill!" The cook, mollified, wiped her eyes. "I'm
sure with my 'eart as is always flutt'ring--an' the 'ot kitchen--an'
pore food ... I didn't ought to do scrubbing--it's a crool shame at my
age ... But there..." the facile sentiment born of alcohol was bubbling
up and drowning anger. "I don't want to upset yer, miss. Yer don't
'ave too gay a life, you an' Master Roddy--bless 'im!--as always 'as a
kind word for Cook..."
She maundered on as Jill retreated, aware that the crisis was postponed.
"That's right, Cookie--you'll see to it? You always make a ripping
grill."
"And may Heaven forgive me for the fib," she added as she ran upstairs.
"I wonder why it's such a muddle? Always changing servants like this?"
But in her heart she knew the fault lay in the lack of proper
management. The justice of her clear young brain told her that never
could they expect a good class of maid to stay in this disorganized
"feckless" house! The discomfort of the servants' quarters, the
wretched food and poor pay forced Mrs. Uniacke to take the riff-raff
whose characters held obvious flaws--like the unsober creature below or
Lizzie, lazy and insolent.
And it struck the girl with sudden force that her Mother was giving up
her life to secure the Vote with the main object of ameliorating the
condition of women.
Yet here in her own small kingdom were servants badly housed and fed,
expected to work for a barren wage sixteen hours without complaint.
And there was Roddy--her own brother--with riddled socks and worn-out
clothes at a cheap school, while his mother spent their meagre surplus
in outside expenses involved by this omnivorous Cause!
A memory of old times when her father lived rose in her mind. For
Colonel Uniacke had held a firm rule over the house. In common with
many retired officers, he supervised the daily menage, with the result
that when he died his wife missed his wise authority.
And if they couldn't govern their houses--Jill's active mind ran
on--with the skill of the "old-fashioned woman," how were they going to
govern the Empire?
It came to her with a sudden flash of childish insight that, in the
new, inexorable cry of her sex, the Usefulness of the Individual was
being carelessly swept aside for the dangerous Power of the Mass.
She had reached by now the second floor, immersed in her sombre
thoughts, when she heard the front door open and paused to lean over
the rail.
"That you, darling?" she called down--"it's so late--I was getting
anxious."
She checked the impulse to retrace her steps as she saw below the
shadow of Stephen.
Slowly toiling up the stairs, Mrs. Uniacke appeared, with a worn face
where dark circles heightened the brilliance of her eyes.
"Oh, Mother--how tired you look!--and wet through..." Jill's hands ran
with anxious fondness over the coat that shrouded the fragile form.
The older woman smiled feebly.
"I've had a hard day, Jill." She kissed her daughter's fresh cheek and
moved on shakily into the bedroom.
"What luxury!"--her thin hands went out to the cheerful blaze--"did you
tell Lizzie to light it, dear?"
"Yes. I washed my head, you see," Jill explained, "and I thought--it's
_so_ cold to-night--I could dry it here by your fire and then it would
warm your room for you."
"It's very nice." Her mother sank down in the armchair as she spoke.
Jill, with quick fingers, undid her veil and removed the soaking hat.
"Now, your boots..." She began to unlace them. "I put your slippers
to toast--there, isn't that nice? Look here, darling, just to please
me, won't you go straight to bed?"
"I can't." Mrs. Uniacke sighed. "I've brought Stephen back to dinner.
He's been so good ... and he's wet too. I do hope he won't get a
chill."
A shadow fell on the girl's bright face.
"Well--he can dine with me--for once! I'll bring you up your dinner
myself, so it won't make extra work for Lizzie."
She tossed back her mane of hair and tried to speak in a cheerful tone.
But Mrs. Uniacke's mouth hardened.
"I promised to go through some papers to-night ... I can't,
Jill--though it's very tempting..." She pressed her hand to her hot
forehead. "This wet weather gives me neuralgia. Oh dear! I wish I
were stronger."
"Do go to bed"--Jill pleaded. "Look here--if you _must_ work this
evening, why can't Stephen come up here? I could put a table by your
side and you've got that lovely pink jacket Aunt Elizabeth sent at
Christmas."
"Here? In my bedroom?" Mrs. Uniacke stared. "I shouldn't _think_ of
such a thing! Really, Jill, you must be mad!"
The girl's face went suddenly scarlet at the horror in her mother's
voice.
"Well--he's almost one of the family. I don't see..." She bit her lip.
"All right, Mother--you know best." She hesitated for a moment, then
went slowly toward the door. "It's getting late. I must do my hair."
But on the landing outside she gave vent to her impatience.
"Bother him!--I _know_ she'll be ill." Then a voice called her back.
"Jill--I think--after all--I'll go to bed--my head's so bad. Will you
look after Stephen? He likes a glass of port, remember. And I'm
wondering if Roddy's slippers..."
"Too small," said Jill promptly. "There goes the gong!--don't you
worry--I'll see to everything all right."
"No meat for me," her Mother added--"just a little soup--with a rack of
toast. I'm too tired for anything solid."
"That's a mercy in disguise," said Jill as she fled up the further
stairs. Her mind was much relieved as she thought of the debatable
grilled bone. She brushed back her rebellious locks and tied them
hurriedly with a ribbon. "I'm glad about the chicken now. Stephen
_will_ enjoy his dinner!"
That worthy greeted her with his supercilious smile. "H'are
you--Where's your mother?" He held out a limp white hand.
"She's dead-tired and gone to bed. You'll have to put up with me
to-night."
"An unexpected pleasure." He drawled with a side-long glance at the
girl, her face rosy from the fire in its mass of waving dark-brown
hair. "'Pon me word, you're growing up!" He stuck his glass into his
eye and moved leisurely to take the head of the long table.
"My place," said Jill politely. "Roddy's away. Will you sit here?"
With an air of childish dignity she began to ladle out the soup.
Stephen laughed--a trifle sourly.
"Sorry to hear your mother's ill. What's the matter?"
"Overwork."
Their eyes met, and at last the man lowered his against his will.
"I suppose you know you're killing her? She can't go on at this rate!
I should have thought"--Jill paused a moment--"you would have seen it
for yourself."
Stephen laid his spoon down. His irritation at her words was increased
by his first taste of the soup, a muddy, thin brown mixture.
"Is this the cook I found for you?" Purposely he ignored her speech
and spoke in a languid voice, with studied indifference.
"Yes. Aren't you pleased?" Jill laughed aloud. "You really _are_ a
comfort, Stephen! What should we do without your help?" She rose to
her feet as she spoke. "Roddy was saying the other day"--she covered
her mother's basin of soup and went on with mischievous glee--"'What I
do like about Stephen is he always knows what's what! You've only to
look at his socks and ties--they match to a T--he's such a K-nut!'
D'you like being a Nut, Stephen?"
Her voice was innocence itself.
She turned with the tray in her hand, and added, as he answered nothing:
"Drink your soup--it will do you good! And Mother's sure to ask for
news of your appetite."
The door banged and she was gone.
Stephen turned with a frown to Lizzie, now recovered from her tantrums
and inwardly enjoying the sport, for the servants all hated the man.
He enjoyed in the kitchen circle the pseudonym of "The Cuckoo"--a
flight of fancy on Cook's part, who likened the house to a Robin's nest!
"Sherry, please," he ordered sharply.
"There's none up, sir," the maid snapped. She would miss nothing by
her manner, for Stephen rarely gave a tip.
Down came Jill with a kind message.
"Mother hopes you've all you want? She's feeling a little more rested.
I think I shall keep her in bed a week."
"I'm afraid that's impossible." Stephen sneered. "She's going to
speak at a meeting to-morrow, and on Friday we're off to Leeds--for the
great Demonstration." ("One back," he said to himself, as he saw the
girl's mouth tighten.)
"It's an odd thing," said Jill shortly, "that rest's not included in
Woman's Rights."
"Not until we get the Vote." Somerfield eyed with suspicion a scraggy,
blackened object borne by Lizzie toward his little hostess.
"Silver Grill," she explained, "cooked 'a point' by your
treasure-trove. Like a bit?" She dug the fork into the charred meat
and smiled.
"It's best Canterbury," she added, with a reminiscence from below.
"You know, we have to economize or there'd be nothing for the Cause."
Stephen's temper began to slide.
"Look here, Jill. Don't talk of things you're too young yet to
understand."
He turned the unpalatable fragments over angrily on his plate.
"Potatoes?--Onions?" Her voice was sweet. "Oh, I'm _so_ sorry,
Stephen. I quite forgot you couldn't eat them! But then, you see, I
didn't expect you. If you'd only given us a little warning. If you'd
told me, for instance, yesterday--or was it Monday you lunched with us?
No. Sunday supper. How stupid I am!--I never can remember dates."
Upstairs Mrs. Uniacke was lying back against the pillows and enjoying
the rare luxury of a quiet rest in bed.
"I hope they're getting on all right?" Her thoughts were with the pair
below. "I don't know how it is that Jill seems always to upset
Stephen."
She knew her children resented his presence and the claim he made upon
her time. But habit was too strong for her, and each day cemented the
tie. She had always leaned. From nursery days she had never learnt to
stand alone, and since her husband's death Stephen had slowly become a
part of her life.
The friendship was that rare achievement, a purely platonic affair.
Perhaps, as her children grew older, strong and capable, she missed the
sense of tenderness about her, the touch of baby clinging hands. With
all her utterly feminine nature, she longed to comfort and to guide.
And in this parasite who had crept into the heart of her home she found
the two attributes needed in her barren and widowed life.
She could "mother" him. He loved "fuss," with none of her children's
independence. And at the same time she could lean on his young
strength and masculine mind.
But her thoughts of him were utterly pure. It was no sentimental
affair cropping up in her middle age with a last desperate clutch at
romance.
And to strengthen the link between them stood the Cause--the cry of
Woman's wrongs; the excitement of new-found power and the secret thrill
of martyrdom.
She had reached an impressionable age, and broken by her great
sorrow--for her husband had been the love of her life--her arms went
out to her suffering sisters.
If only she could ease the burden, throw her failing strength into the
balance, she could die with the sense of something achieved.
Humbly she offered her "widow's mite."
* * * * *
Meanwhile in the dingy dining-room Jill had checked her love of fun.
Her natural courtesy forbade an open quarrel with her mother's guest.
She felt she had gone quite far enough...!
Assuming a more serious air, she asked the man for information
respecting the long day's work.
Stephen, a little mollified by a glass of the late Colonel's port,
smoking an excellent cigarette (recommended by him to Mrs. Uniacke),
launched forth into description of a visit to a factory; a lengthy
investigation of wages and the hours allotted to the female "hands";
while Jill sat at the end of the table, listening thoughtfully.
She held as yet no settled opinions on the question of Woman's
Suffrage. Undetermined, she kept herself, by McTaggart's advice,
slightly aloof.
Nevertheless the atmosphere of the house stimulated thought. It made
life a bigger affair to picture a broader field for her sex.
"You say"--she leaned her chin on her hands, her dark-fringed eyes full
of light. "That the finer, more delicate work is undertaken by the
women. That they do it better, are paid less ... No, it doesn't sound
a bit fair!"
"Ah! you begin to see," said Somerfield. "They do it too in less time.
Their fingers are smaller, their work neater--in fact it's economy to
employ them."
"Then what do you propose?" said Jill--"to get them paid the same as
men?"
"Undoubtedly--or even more. It's their due--and we shall see it's
_done_."
"But--wait a minute. You can't make money. I mean--it's got to come
from somewhere. And if the employers can't give more, I suppose ...
they'll take it from the men?" She went on thoughtfully, thinking
aloud. "They could level down and pay all alike. Is that the idea?"
Somerfield nodded. "Well--one of them--but there are other methods."
"Let's stick to the first." Jill was logical, true to the broad
college training.
It saved her from the common pitfall of feminine minds in argument.
She could weigh the various pros and cons free from personalities.
"I suppose most of the men are married?"
"About two-thirds, roughly speaking."
"Then what about _their_ wives and children? If you cut down the wages
the husbands earn won't it come pretty hard on them? It seems unfair
that the factory women--who are most of them, I suppose,
unmarried--should take the bread out of the mouths of their married
sisters--and the children."
Somerfield looked annoyed.
"Oh, I don't say that would happen exactly. There are other ways ...
But what we want is to see women get decent wages, full value for their
work. The employers will have to come forward. If we make a strong
stand they're bound to give way..."
"Strikes?" Jill raised her eyebrows. "I thought they ruined the
nation's trade? And that women always suffered more--the wives and
mothers in these times. Besides..." relentlessly she pursued her way
with a child's honest search for knowledge. "I don't really understand
... But, supposing that wages all round are raised, well then the
employers--to make a profit--will have to sell at a higher cost. And
won't that make living dearer?--in case of food and necessities?"
"Not in the end. You ought to study Political Economy. I doubt if it
much affects the class we're working for at any rate. It may hit
ours!" He smiled sadly with an air of secret martyrdom--"And the rich
too, I sincerely hope!"
"But if you keep on 'hitting the rich'"--Jill adopted his
expression--"and the large class of employers--won't they some day have
to retrench? And doesn't that mean cutting down employment in every
grade--for women too?"
"More likely smaller dividends!" Somerfield sneered. "These syndicates
and capitalists are the curse of England"--his voice rose--"that's
where the people's money goes--back to the pockets of the rich!"
"But aren't there a lot of decent people, middle-class and rather poor,
investors too, dependent on dividends? Oh, I can't understand it
all!--It seems to me whatever you do to alter the distribution of
wealth you ruin some one--and always, _always_ it pans out harder for
those who work!"
"We're not talking of Socialism," Somerfield hastily interposed--"we're
discussing the need for the Vote--for women to have a hand in the
Government. To see that their own sex don't suffer--to put down all
sorts of wrongs that have lingered on from feudal days when women were
nothing more than slaves!"
"It sounds glorious." Jill was moved, but the doubt still haunted her.
"If only one could pick the women. They're such a lot of us, you
see--and--really--some are awful fools!"
"And what about the present Government? And the next too, if it comes
to that! D'you think their brains are above suspicion?" He gave her a
mocking glance.
"No." Jill nodded her head. "But allowing that they're rather stupid,
do you want to add to the general confusion by pairing them with the
other sex--an equal number of ignorant women?"
"Oh! you're _hopeless_!" He got up and poured himself out another
glass from the port decanter on the sideboard. "I thought you really
wanted to learn?"
"So I do." Jill sat tight. "But I won't be swept off my feet by ... a
sort of hypnotism of Sex! I want to keep an unprejudiced eye. _Of
course_ I'd like to see women take a leading place everywhere. But if
they make a mess of it, we're worse off than we were before. We stand
to lose as well as gain by rushing into public life." She threw back a
lock of hair that had fallen forward, blinding her.
"Now, look here, Stephen, we've got a lot ... I'm not talking of
influence and the right to expect chivalry--which by the way I think
we're losing, through the tactics of the Militants! You've only to
stand in a Suffrage crowd and listen to some of the remarks. Why,
fifty ... a hundred years ago ... a decent man would have taken
umbrage. Men were run through in those days for far less said of their
sisters or wives! But--to go back---we've got _some_ pull. To begin
with, men, when they marry, keep us! I dare say I'm old-fashioned.
Yes--of course! I knew you'd laugh!--but it's big, really. It means a
home--and protection--and a fair chance for ... bringing up a family."
She flushed slightly under his smile, but went on bravely with her
argument.
"It seems to me that by and by we'll have to work, share and share
alike, ill or well, on equal terms. And what's to become of our home
life--and--well ... the next generation?"
Stephen saw his chance at last.
"Are you thinking of marriage yourself, Jill? You seem to arrange for
_all_ possibilities..."
His greenish eyes were insolent under their long fair lashes.
"Oh!" She sprang up. "Oh! you _beast_...!"
But she faced him still, breathless, white.
"At any rate, if I did, I'd live in my _own_ house!" she cried.
CHAPTER XI
McTaggart drew his chair forward from behind the curtain of the box and
gazed out on the crowded Hippodrome.
Not a seat was vacant. For to-night a famous composer was conducting
his masterpiece with a picked company brought over for a fleeting visit
to England.
As he watched, the lights were lowered in the body of the hall and the
beautiful overture began, stealing like a spirit of sun-lit shores
across the artificially warm atmosphere. The curtain rolled up to
disclose a narrowed stage and the cheap, garish scenery that seems a
necessary adjunct to the opera in Italy.
McTaggart's eyes took it in with a careless glance, and returned to the
other occupant of the box.
To-night Fantine seemed to acquire a new personality. An air faintly
tragic and dignified hung over the pale face, and even her dress
enhanced the suggestion, with that subtle link that lies between a
Parisian and her clothes.
She wore a long cloak of velvet brocade: dull wine-coloured flowers on
an oyster ground, relieved by a border of silver fox and the faint
gleam of metallic threads running through the material.
Beneath this, one caught a glimpse of a demi-toilette of black and
white: that veiled decolletage dear to the foreigner, suggesting
without revealing each line of the neck and arms which the Englishwoman
seems more ready to expose. Her hair, waved, glossy and black, was
perfectly dressed without ornament, and among the crowd of women there,
each with nodding Paradise plumes or a jewelled fillet, the delusive
simplicity struck a restful, distinctive note, throwing into strong
relief the haunting charm of her pale face.
McTaggart's eyes rested on her, with a quiet sense of pleasure. Where
other women of her class would have welcomed the occasion to outvie in
"smartness" the "respectable rich," Fantine seemed to have drawn back
with unconscious pride relying on some hidden power to set her apart.
A faint buzz of applause broke through the young man's silent
admiration. The fat tenor had achieved a wonderful feat of long-drawn
breath. The air still trembled with the vibration of sound, and it
seemed to add to the scented heat of the over-packed, excited house.
"Would you mind the door ajar?" McTaggart whispered in her ear. "I can
close it directly you feel the draught."
Fantine, absently, nodded assent, her eyes riveted on the stage, heart
and soul absorbed in the music.
He got up noiselessly, and effected the improvement, standing there for
a few seconds--to breathe the cooler air without. Down the curved
corridor some late arrivals were hastening, a short, stout, red-faced
man and a young girl with golden hair.
McTaggart started. He gave them a quick, searching glance and ducked
back. To his annoyance the pair paused outside, and he heard the
attendant's voice:
"This way, please."
The door of the next box grated on its hinges, and steps echoed beyond
the partition.
McTaggart listened, his face very grim. Then he heard Cydonia's voice,
clear and gentle. "Yes, Papa. Please, Papa," and the scrabbling noise
of chairs dragged forward over the floor.
The unlooked-for contretemps clouded his pleasure. He had no desire
the two women should meet. Above all he mistrusted Cadell's shrewd
eyes and the use he might make of the innocent adventure.
He closed the door softly again. Fantine was plainly far away, lost to
a world of heat or cold. She leaned forward, listening, her hands
tightly clasped together on the broad velvet edge before her.
"I wish she'd keep back!" thought McTaggart. He could picture in the
next box Cydonia's golden head at just the same angle and in between
the narrow velvet curtains barely separating the pair.
In the dim light he groped for and found his own chair, lifted it with
bated breath and placed it down again behind that of his guest, who
turned at his movement with a faint frown of displeasure over her
broken dreams.
"What are you doing there, Pierrot?" The whisper was sharp.
"I thought," McTaggart explained mendaciously, "this way I could hear
without seeing too much. That fat soprano is murdering romance!"
"Quel enfant!" Fantine smiled. For the singer in question with her
capacious bosom, now clasped fervently in the fat tenor's arms,
appealed suddenly to her dormant sense of humor.
"Rather a ... magnificent figure for a maiden..." McTaggart followed up
his remark. Some one below them breathed an indignant "Sh! ..." and
Fantine held up an admonitory finger.
McTaggart leaned back, conscious again of the heat. "Stifling in
here--wish I hadn't come!" His thoughts ran on, seeking a plan to get
his guest away before the final rush.
He was determined the pair should not meet. Oddly enough
sub-consciously he blamed Cydonia--with that hateful
parent--exonerating himself in the matter.
His flirtation with the girl had lapsed a little of late, owing to the
serious illness of Mrs. Cadell. A chill followed up by a tiring sale
of work in a draughty hall had resulted in pneumonia. The dance had
been postponed and Cydonia herself, bereft of her chaperone, had rarely
made an appearance among the few friends she shared with McTaggart.
Stolen meetings had been few and far between. The anxiety caused by
her mother's condition had roused the slumbering conscience in the
girl, and McTaggart's love for her had suffered from the test. It
needed propinquity to keep the fires alight.
Fantine had profited by the disaffection. Daily her hold on him grew
more strong. Her ever-changing moods, her daring speech, her open
dependence on his attentions, had forged new links in the chain between
them, riveted by the subtle ties of habit.
Without home interests or the urgent need to work, McTaggart found time
hang heavy on his hands. He had long since wearied of London's appeal
to the moneyed youth on his emancipation from school. The round of
music hall and supper club, of cards and drink and doubtful ladies had
held him a victim but a very short time. His brains had saved him the
career of a "Nut."
He had no active distaste for work; it was more that work did not come
his way. For his first three years on the Stock Exchange he had thrown
himself unwearied into the task of absorbing the details of his
profession in the interest of his few clients.
But, bit by bit, these had fallen away.
College friends for the greater part, they had drifted abroad, lost
money or married, preferring few investments to many speculations.
For a brief period McTaggart had tried to hunt up others through social
means. But his soul shrank from the merest suggestion of touting
without the strong spur of necessity.
Bad times, heavy taxes and perpetual wars had broken the confidence of
the public. He found himself at the end of the third year several
hundreds out of pocket!
The cost of entertaining well--not for pleasure but possible
profit--and bad debts had more than swallowed the sum of his hard-won
commissions.
His father had left him a steady income quite sufficient for his needs,
and from his mother he had inherited a fluctuating interest from
property abroad.
Had he been poor, it is probable that he would have made a career for
himself. His idleness was undoubtedly due to the lack of necessity:
that poor man's stimulus.
Unfortunately for his comfort, his vitality resented inaction. With no
outlook his restlessness fed on itself, and he waxed irritable, a prey
to sudden moods.
He was not a man to live alone. Healthy, impulsive, and full of life,
he had nothing of the celibate in his mixed composition.
But a certain fastidiousness held him back from the casual vice of many
men, and his hot blood was generally balanced by the finer instincts of
his brain.
Nevertheless the man suffered. And, since his memorable visit to the
specialist, his imagination had been disturbed, to a degree hardly
healthy, by a physical self-consciousness.
It bred in him a profound distrust. It set him apart from other men.
It seemed to give him a moral excuse for an irresolute habit of thought.
He had kept the secret to himself, fearing ridicule from his kind and
with a shrewd appreciation of its doubtful value in feminine circles.
Once he had nearly confided in Jill, realizing that with the girl sex
still lay in abeyance, almost ignored by her clean young soul.
But something had checked him; a feeling perhaps that it led into a
further field, impossible to discuss with her, this child who claimed
his loyal respect.
And meanwhile Fantine lured him on with the skill of her vast
experience.
The drop scene fell amid loud applause, and lights flashed up about the
house.
McTaggart felt a sudden thirst, but dare not leave the sheltering box
unaware whether Mr. Cadell would take advantage of the entr'acte.
Fantine turned and smiled at him, tears not far from the topaz eyes, a
faint colour in her face, soft with the pleasure of the music.
"Like it?" He knew as he said the words that the question was
superfluous, and went on a little quickly, full of his own immediate
cares.
"We'll have supper at the Savoy--it's sure to be packed to-night." He
drew out his watch as he spoke, and glanced at it with a slight frown.
"Jove! it's getting pretty late..."
Fantine smiled, resigning herself. She knew exactly what he wanted,
guessing him bored by the music.
"Would you like to go before the end? After all"--she checked a
sigh--"one knows by heart the tragic story. We could slip out before
the finale."
The man brightened visibly.
"Well, you see--it's like this--I haven't reserved a table to-night.
We shall have to take our chance, so we'd better be there before the
rush."
He still avoided the front of the box, conscious of his neighbour's
eyes, but, now that the danger seemed averted, he felt a mischievous
delight. He could picture Cydonia, very correct, in her white frock
and string of pearls, with her inevitable "Isn't it nice?" addressed to
the somewhat bored parent.
And at the thought a slight shame ran through him; the knowledge, too,
of all the young girl represented in his somewhat aimless life.
But Fantine was addressing him.
"Say now, Pierrot, would you mind--instead of going to the Savoy--a
picnic supper at my flat?"
His face fell, and immediately she added quickly: "We'd leave
early--but ... the fact is I can't bear to think of that aggressive
band. It seems almost profane to me--after the feast of music here.
But of course--if you're hungry?" Her voice pleaded. "I think I've
got some foie gras--and a cold tongue--won't that do? And we'd have
... a cosy evening together."
"Do?" McTaggart laughed softly, relieved by the saving clause, "Why,
I'd infinitely prefer it. One gets so tired of the Savoy."
"Good." She slipped her hand sideways and laid it a moment on his knee.
"Rather fun, eh, Pierrot?--to play at being Darby and Joan."
McTaggart nodded, without speaking. He felt a sudden tinge of
excitement, the forerunner of adventure. "We're hardly old enough for
that"--mischief was in his laughing eyes--"Why not 'Paul et
Virginie?'--brought a little up-to-date."
The lights went down. Behind the curtain a bell tolled as if for Mass,
cutting through the buzz of chatter, a summons from another world.
Then, like a clear call to love, came the sweet sound of Santuzza's
voice.
Fantine caught a quick breath. The scene to come was significant. For
she knew that this night spelled the last of many a happy one with
McTaggart. And she wondered ... Would she miss the man?
For a second her whole soul recoiled from the task she had set herself:
the crisis of the long-drawn-out and carefully prepared betrayal. She
saw in a flash the years ahead on that stony downward path of intrigue,
a tool herself in another man's hands, to be cast aside when Time
should blunt it ...
The mood lasted until they reached the flat. McTaggart believed her
still to be under the spell of the music. He respected her silence and
enjoyed his cigarette as they sat side by side in the speeding taxi.
She opened the door with her latch-key, and switched on the hall light,
leading the way into the drawing-room, where before a bright fire a
table was spread with a dainty supper laid for one.
"I'm all alone to-night--it will be a real picnic." She took off her
opera cloak and threw it on the sofa. "My cook sleeps out--she's a
married woman--and Melanie has gone home for a short holiday."
She told the lie coolly, knowing that near at hand the maid, well
coached, was waiting for her cue; an important witness if subsequent
events should necessitate her reappearance.
"You aren't nervous?" McTaggart looked surprised--"I mean, of staying
here alone all night."
"Oh, dear no." She shrugged her shoulders. "I could ring up the
porter in case of need."
She studied her face a moment in the glass, fingering the tulle that
covered her shoulders. "I think perhaps... Yes!--I'll get out of this
and slip into a comfortable tea-gown. You don't mind waiting, do you,
Pierrot? I shan't be long." She turned to the door, then came back
again with a forced smile.
"I wonder--could you undo these hooks." She turned her back to him as
she spoke. "I can manage all the rest ... but just those between the
shoulders?"
Gallantly McTaggart stooped to the task.
As the tulle fell away, leaving her neck bare, a sudden temptation
seized the man. He lowered his head and kissed the warm flesh,
honey-tinted, and soft to his lips.
But she swung round quickly with an incoherent cry. "Non, non,
Pierrot--je ne veux pas!" Her face looked frightened. She thrust him
back, a sudden remorse awake in her heart.
McTaggart laughed. She read in his eyes amusement at her show of
resistance.
And the knowledge of this and his lack of respect swept aside her
lingering scruples. Her mood veered round. A feverish exultation
spurred her now down the path of revenge.
"Naughty boy!" She shook her head and was gone, with a laughing
backward glance.
Left to himself, McTaggart strolled about, stretching his long legs,
cramped in the box.
A memory brought him back to the mantelpiece, and he sought for and
found the faded photograph.
Once more he gazed at the sinister face, with its black beard and evil
eyes. It held a curious fascination for him, repulsive and mesmeric at
the same time. He saw that a name was written beneath, indistinct in
violet ink, and holding it nearer to the light he deciphered "Gustave,"
with a slight start. Below it was a blotted date and then "Alger"
clear and bright, where a frame had once protected the edge.
He put it back behind the mirror, a frown on his face, his mouth tight.
So that was the husband. What a brute! ...
His pity stirred beneath his disgust. He thought of Fantine, dainty
and sweet, at the mercy of such a type. Thank God the man was dead!
He recalled her remark in the restaurant, the night they had dined at
the "Bon Bourgeois."
"He was always very kind to me..."
"Kind?"--with those eyes!--He shuddered slightly, connecting the pair
in his mind.
Poor little woman ... what a life!
It sobered him, bringing the best to the surface, and he turned with a
very real affection on his handsome face as she opened the door.
But here was a new irresistible Fantine. With bright eyes, she danced
toward him, mischief incarnate, her pale face laughing above a
peignoir, diaphanous, intimate; showing gleams of silk-shod ankles
through the daring draperies.
"You see! I make myself at home ... And now for supper." She laid
down a silver tray with a plate and glass and arranged his knives and
forks for him.
"Monsieur est servi." She caught up a napkin and threw it gaily over
her arm.
"Monsieur will not forget the poor waiter--who--how absurd!--cannot
open the wine!" She held out toward him a bottle of champagne.
"Vite, mon cher!--I die of thirst."
McTaggart felt suddenly relieved. He entered heartily into the sport.
"What would the poor waiter like for a tip? Furs perhaps, or a motor
car?"
"I'll tell you later," she flashed him a glance as he cut the wire and
extracted the cork.
He poured it foaming in the glasses.
"Here's to ... to-night!" He drank it off.
As supper proceeded the desire of adventure drowned all else in
McTaggart's mind. A man can only be young once, he told himself, and
refilled his glass.
And Fantine seemed to lay aside all thought of to-morrow, to drift
content through this golden hour the Gods vouchsafed, ignoring the loom
where the Grey Fates spun.
When the last drop of wine was gone and satiety claimed them as willing
victims, McTaggart dragged the table back and pulled the sofa near the
fire.
"Now--come and talk to me, mon amie--here's a stool for those little
feet. You really are a dream to-night!--I never saw you look so ...
tempting!"
She lay back against the cushions, watching him stir the coals in the
grate.
"Let's sit in the fire light," he suggested, and switched off the
electricity.
Behind his back she stole a glance at the clock, and her face fell,
then grew thoughtful.
"Another hour," she said to herself, with the odd sensation of a
respite.
"A cigarette first--please, Pierrot."
"What nonsense! You've smoked enough." His voice was masterful and
she pouted.
"Mechant! give me one, _at once_."
He lit it, somewhat grudgingly, watching the flame of the match spurt
and illumine her piquante face in the semi-darkness of the room.
She drew the smoke in lazily, through the pursed-up, vivid lips.
"Have one too?" She handed the box--"and tell me ... all about
yourself."
"That's clever..." McTaggart smiled. "You've hit upon my favorite
subject. But I think to-night we'll talk of you. Tell me"--he
paused--"of your life in Algiers." Strange, how that picture haunted
him!
"That's long ago," she shrank slightly, then rallied herself to the
task. "I went there as a bride, you see. My husband was head of a
kind of syndicate. It's a nice place in the Winter-time--there's a
large French Colony there. And plenty of English people too--it's
quite gay--with music--and cards."
McTaggart smiled to himself. At the words he made a shrewd guess at
Gustave's business in Algiers. But Fantine skillfully led the talk
through devious channels back to himself. Once launched on the stream
he told her of his early years, his parents' death, his college career,
and the growing boredom of his days.
And between the lines Fantine gleaned all that she needed; his obvious
means and that fastidiousness of his--an important factor in her game.
The clock ticked on and the fire died low. The little room seemed shut
off from the world.
"It sounds lonely..." she said at last--"You poor boy!--I understan'."
"Do you?" he leaned eagerly nearer. "No one cares--that's about it!"
His arm stole round her. "Fantine ... _dear_, it's in your hands to
cure, you know."
He stooped down and their lips met ...
The clock struck with a silver chime, ringing out the midnight hour;
and Fantine, startled, drew away. Not yet--the warning rang in her
ears.
But McTaggart, fired by that close embrace, stung too by her shrinking
gesture, caught her roughly in his arms.
"Pierrot!"--she gasped--"wait ... wait! There's something--I must tell
you--first..."
His strong young arms were like a vise, his eyes were brilliant,
pleading for him.
"Fantine...?" he breathed.
"No! _no_!" She forced him back with all her strength, aware of his
sudden loss of control, but perfect mistress of herself. Her hands,
pressed against his chest, checked him for a fleeting moment. Within
his coat that the struggle forced open, her eyes detected a note of
white--the corner of an envelope, and in a flash her fingers sought and
found the letter, purloining it.
She heard him give a little gasp, incredulous and vexed at once; his
arms relaxed, the spell snapped, and twisting sidewards she slipped
away out of his reach, breathless, triumphant.
Little she guessed what the trick cost her! For McTaggart in common
with his kind was scrupulous toward correspondence. Nothing on earth
would have induced him to trifle with another's letters.
And now as Fantine stood before him with a mocking smile, and in her
grasp an envelope with his name upon it, in Jill's childish scrawling
hand, it added the last fatal spark to resentment caused by baffled
desire.
"That's mine, I think." His husky voice, almost rude in his sudden
anger, proved to the woman she had found the right excuse to delay her
surrender.
"Ah non, mon cher Pierrot!--I think I will keep your ... lettre
d'amour. I'm very, ver-ry cross with you..." But her eyes belied the
implied reproof. She stepped back, and the glow from the fire fell on
her flushed and mischievous face, on the crumpled transparent peignoir
that had fallen away from one bare shoulder.
And suddenly it came to McTaggart what she was ... and his own folly!
He saw that passion swayed him alone without the redeeming touch of
love.
"I'm sorry." He stood up, stiff and straight. "You're quite right--I
lost my head!" For the shrewder side of his nature swung him back once
more into safe balance. He switched on the electric light and glanced
openly at the clock.
"I'm afraid, too, I'm keeping you up. I'd no idea it was so late."
His voice was frigidly polite, a mask to hide his deep anger. For
there she stood, with Jill's letter--Jill's of all people on
earth!--that note of hers yet unread, caught up at the Club before he
started.
He held out his hand for it.
Silently she gave it up. For once the woman in her quailed before the
wrath in his blue eyes.
"Thank you." He placed it in his pocket and smiled, his young face
still hard.
"Now we're quits ... eh! Fantine."
She began to realize her mistake.
"Quits?" she pouted. With one hand she smoothed the tumbled laces
about her. "I think ... that you're unkind, Pierrot."
To his dismay she began to cry.
For indeed her nerve had given out, and the tears, at first assumed,
grew real. She sobbed on, her head in her hands.
"You're not going?--oh--Pierrot! ... don't go ... Mon Dieu! ... Mon
Dieu! ... I didn't mean ... I only ... tease ... oh! unkind..." she
choked on the word.
McTaggart's heart began to soften.
"Why! Fantine ... why--my dear ...! I'm _not_ cross ... honour
bright! But it's getting deuced late, you know ... there ... there ...
don't cry."
He soothed her like a fractious child.
"You go to bed---you're dog-tired. That's it--I'm a selfish ass! ..."
He tried to thrust the thought aside of what was really troubling her.
And in his friendly voice she read the failure of her deep-laid plans,
conscious too that their early return had thrown out the scheme of
time. Well, it was over--no! postponed...
She lifted her tear-stained face, oddly swayed between relief and
infinite discouragement.
"Good night, Pierrot--I'm ... so tired! I'll go to bed--you're quite
right. But come and see me very soon. Promise, Pierrot."
He smiled at her.
"Rather!--why! what d'you think?"
But once outside the front door he felt a sudden sense of blankness.
He hated tears and shrank from scenes with the wholesome distrust of
perfect nerves. And then--that letter! His face darkened ... What an
end to the evening! The unexpected with a vengeance. He started to
descend the stairs when a sound below made him pause.
Some one was coming slowly up. The steps passed the third floor and
moved toward the last flight.
McTaggart glanced quickly round. He felt a curious distaste to be
found there at this hour, and his eyes fell on the lift, level with
Fantine's door. He remembered he had brought her up, working the ropes
himself, and there it stood in semi-darkness offering a hiding-place.
He stepped inside and sat down in the far corner, holding his breath,
as a tall man came into sight muffled in an overcoat.
"He's going to the opposite flat. Jolly lucky the lift being here."
McTaggart's soliloquy stopped short. He gave a little gasp of wonder.
For the man passed him, unaware of his presence, making straight for
Fantine's door, with a light, noiseless step that seemed to the other
oddly furtive.
Arrived there he paused a moment, then bent down and with his finger
lifted up the narrow flap of the letter box and peered through.
Instantly McTaggart was on the defensive. He thought of Mrs. Merrod
alone, without a single soul to guard her, and the opportunity it
offered.
But the next moment the pseudo-thief produced a latch-key from his
pocket, fitted it softly in the lock, and the light shone out through
the opened door. Here the first check greeted him. For the key stuck
and, as he turned, McTaggart caught a glimpse of his face with a sudden
and bewildering shock.
The square-cut beard had been shaved away, but above it gleamed those
evil eyes and the hooked nose slightly bent of the man in the faded
photograph!
"Gustave"--"Alger"--The two words flashed into remembrance. Here in
the flesh was Fantine's husband--the dead returned! No doubt of it!
The man, with a shrug of his narrow shoulders, ceased to wrestle with
the lock, and through the door left ajar McTaggart, his face glued to
the glass of the lift, could see him cross the narrow hall, still on
tiptoe, and bend to listen at the opposite key-hole.
What did it mean? A sudden suspicion shot through McTaggart's brain.
He caught dimly the thread of the plot and a cold chill ran down his
spine.
The next moment the bedroom door was flung wide, and Fantine stood,
half dressed, her white face sharp and haggard, but undismayed.
A quick volley of words passed, unintelligible, in French. The sudden
draught caught the outer door, and it slammed to with a loud bang.
Alone, in the darkness of the lift, McTaggart crouched, his brain on
fire. A single word from the woman's lips had reached him and vaguely
repeated itself.
"Rate...!" He found no meaning to it. With the consciousness of his
equivocal position came the desire to escape. His hand groped for the
cords and the lift slid down to the ground floor.
He fumbled with the heavy door, and was outside in the cold night air.
Like a thief himself, he took to his heels, running down the deserted
street, hailed a belated four-wheeler and arrived at length at his own
chambers.
Once inside his sitting-room, he seemed to awaken from his stupor. He
caught a glimpse of himself in the glass, forced a laugh at his white
face and helped himself to a stiff drink.
Blackmail. The ugly word supplied the link that was missing.
Blackmail--that was it. And Fantine? He felt suddenly sick. But as
the brandy sent a glow through his cold disgusted frame, another memory
returned to set the seal on his doubts.
He crossed to his bookcase and drew out from a pile of tattered French
novels a shabby book bound in leather, thumbed and torn by days of
school.
With nervous haste he turned the pages. "P," "Q," "R"--here it was!
His eyes strained down the narrow print.
"Rater--(verb) to miss fire."
PART II
"Flower o' the quince
I let Lisa go and what good's in life since?"
R. BROWNING.
CHAPTER XII
"I dreamed last night," said Jill, "that you and Stephen were having a
fencing match. The worst of it was"--she sighed---"I woke before the
end!"
She settled herself back more firmly in her corner as the car swept
them down a steep incline between high hedges bared of leaves,
gathering impetus for the upward hill beyond. Roddy sat in front, his
cap pulled down to his eyes, his back like a ramrod, every muscle
braced. He was deeply engrossed in watching Bethune drive, pouring
questions into his new friend's ear.
McTaggart pulled the rug higher about the girl as the keen wind smote
them with its frosty breath. "You don't feel cold, Jill?" His blue
eyes rested affectionately on the glowing face beside him.
"Not a bit! I love it." She returned to her dream. "Wasn't it
annoying to wake like that?"
"Which side were you backing?" McTaggart gave a chuckle at her
indignant:
"Why--_you_--of course! Fancy backing Stephen! I forgot to tell you,
Peter. We had a real row the other night. And the worst of it is he
told Mother something. He's such a sneak!--and now she's cross with
me."
"Poor old girl!" McTaggart groped for her hand under the heavy rug;
and the girl, contentedly, let it lie in his warm clasp with a child's
confidence.
"Dreams are funny things," she went on happily, conscious of his
sympathy, her eyes fixed ahead on the long line of trees fringing the
country road, gaunt against the sky, warmed by the sunset hour. "D'you
ever dream the same one over and over again?"
"I don't think so," said Peter. "I can't remember them--not
distinctly, I mean, when I'm awake."
"I do." Jill turned to him with a far-away expression, "and there's
one dream returns and seems to haunt me. A cluster of white towers
that rise up on a hill against a deep blue sky and glitter in the
sunshine. It's all _so_ vivid!--I can see it now. Just that--those
high white towers with a darker one among them. It seems to have a
little cap--like a chimney pot--snow white ... And, although I've never
been there, it's like a memory. I know it sounds absurd, but it
feels"--she paused for words--"like coming home ... And then, I wake
up."
"How odd! Perhaps it's part of another life. You know"--his face was
thoughtful--"I think we've lived before. I can't believe that this is
the whole of my existence; that all those centuries back bold no trace
of me. Any more than I can think, as lots of fellows do, that we're
snuffed out when we die like a row of little candles!"
"Of course not." Jill spoke with the certainty of youth--"though
Heaven always sounds such a dreadfully dull place! That 'Heaven' I
mean of the 'goody-goody' people, with no work to do but only eternal
rest. I don't see the use of all we learn here if spiritual experience
dies with the body. It's such a waste of power and so unlike Nature.
Why--even the trees, you know, after centuries, turn into coal!" She
drew a deep breath. "That's always so comforting! When I get the
blues and feel afraid of death I like to look at the fire and believe
that nothing's lost ... it all goes on, forward in the Scheme."
"That's true." McTaggart's hand tightened on hers. "Bethune--over
there"--he lowered his voice--"was talking the other day--we're great
pals, you know--he's a chap you _can_ talk to, awfully sane--and we'd
got on to religion and how it's broken up into rival camps and endless
confusion--and he said: 'I haven't any particular creed and I don't go
to Church, but ... it's just like this. I've always felt the
Almighty's been so awfully good to me--he's cast my lot in very
pleasant places, and given me health and strength and a jolly good
time. It seems a dirty trick to doubt what He's planned, when He sees
fit to shift me from this old Earth.'"
"I like that. How nice!" Jill nodded her head. "It does sound rather
like ingratitude; and, now one comes to think of it, it is cheek to
question the future after this lovely world. Look at that sky there
and those little pink clouds!"
She spoke simply, with no lack of reverence, but rather that deeper one
needing no outward show.
Silence fell between the pair as the car scudded on: that truest proof
of minds in perfect sympathy.
The distant hills were veiling themselves in a violet haze, and in the
high hedgerows the birds were still. Away to the right a deep blue
line showed the river flowing along to London and the sea.
Jill broke the spell first, with a little sign to attract his attention.
"I'm sure I hear music--a long way off. There!" She bent her head,
straining forward. "It's a band down in the valley. How funny at this
hour!--and right away from everywhere!"
"Territorials, perhaps."
McTaggart listened too.
"We're about midway, I should say, between Henley and town."
For Jill's letter with the news of Roddy's return--the school having
broken up through a sudden epidemic--had suggested this outing in
Bethune's car on one of his rare Saturdays of holiday. They had gone
to see the Cambridge crew practice for the boat race and lunched at
Henley, a merry quartette.
Jill's letter!--McTaggart's mind swung off at a tangent. He felt a
new-born gratitude to his schoolgirl friend. Had it not been for this
and Fantine's want of tact--(he could see her now holding the letter to
her breast)--he must have stumbled headlong into the trap.
He felt again heart-sore at the betrayal.
"We're getting nearer," said Jill. "I don't think it's a band."
The car swerved round a bend and lights flashed out, pale in the
twilight like glow-worms on the green.
"Oh, Peter--look!" Jill clapped her hands. "It's a Village Fair--how
lovely!--with merry-go-rounds!"
"So it is." Peter smiled as Roddy twisted round, his boy's face
alight, with an eager request.
"Can't we stop, Peter?--and have _one_ turn ... My hat! there's a
cocoanut shy! Oh, _do_ pull up..."
McTaggart leaned forward and consulted the driver. "Have you time, old
man? These kids are awfully keen."
"Rather," Bethune laughed good-naturedly. "We'll run the car first
into the Inn yard. Can't leave it here--the road's too narrow."
They skirted the crowd slowly at the end of the village street, the
horn (worked by Roddy) vying with the strains of the cracked "Steam
Band," and, handing over the rugs to the care of the ostler, proceeded
on foot to the scene of the fun.
It was hardly a fair, but one of those travelling shows that wander
across the country with a handful of caravans.
Dark gypsy faces, the hoarse cry of the showmen, the flaring petroleum
jets and the noisy metallic music were blent in a scene garish and
crude but strangely exciting after the lonely roads.
"The merry-go-rounds first," Jill declared. "I choose the piebald
horse--you take the black!" McTaggart swarmed up, infected by her
mood, Roddy in front of them, with a roar of delight as Bethune settled
his bulky form on a wooden donkey.
"Off we go!--Houp-la! ..." They whirled round and round.
"Two to one on the rat-tailed mare!" McTaggart's voice rang out.
Jill, clinging to the piebald's neck, with a fine show of ankles, her
dark hair streaming back, looked like a Bacchante.
"Isn't it ripping?" Her motor veil swung loose, her fur cap slid back,
and about her glowing face the straying curls blew. Her gray eyes like
stars met McTaggart's open smile. Joy was in her heart.
The machine ran down. Panting, they descended.
"Now--the cocoanuts!" Roddy led the way to where a narrow screen of
sacking protected the crowd of village folks from too violent an
onslaught.
A hoarse voice greeted them:
"This way--guv'nor! Six sticks a penny! _All_-the-fun-o'-the-fair!
Now then--young sir--move on ... Hi!--Don't shove the lidy!--_Six
sticks a penny_!" They found themselves in the centre of the firing
line.
"Got 'im!" Bethune shouted his approval. "Bravo, Miss Uniacke!" as
Roddy with a yell captured the cocoanut his sister had dislodged.
The crowd pressed round them, and McTaggart found himself suddenly
isolated from his own party.
"Cross the gypsy's 'and, my fine gentleman..." A coaxing voice chanted
in his ear.
"There's fortune for you, dearie; I see it in your face--it's coming
over the seas--with a golden crown..."
Peter turned quickly. In the dim half light he looked back into a pair
of glowing dark eyes: a gypsy woman's face with glossy black hair and
long coral earrings hanging on each side.
He was going to draw back when he felt his hand caught; held by dark
fingers, supple and strong, the palm turned upward as the husky voice
went on with its curious crooning lilt, its patter of words.
"It's under the cloud you stand, my fine gentleman; the cloud of a lie
... but it clears ... it clears.... There's a far-off journey and
castle walls ... and love all the time--hidden--by your side...."
She bent her head lower, tracing the lines with a forefinger stiff with
a broad gold ring. The light of the flares fell on her bare neck and
the bright Paisley shawl, crossed on her full bosom.
"Beware of a dark woman!--she's playing you false. Between two fires
you will burn and burn ... And then, when the light fades ... on the
turn of the tide ... there's the Lucky Moon and the Dream of your
life...!"
Her voice sank away. She straightened herself, with a clink of silver
bangles, and let his hand fall. Her lips were still muttering and her
eyes, opened wide, were like pools of ink as McTaggart stared at her.
"And what about the golden crown?" He felt in his pocket. With an
effort he spoke lightly to break the uncanny charm.
"It will come, my fine gentleman--before the year is dead."
"Peter!" He heard Jill calling to him. "Peter! where _are_ you?" The
coin changed hands.
"A blessing on your head--the gypsy's blessing, sir. The eyes that see
and the ears that hear ... And through the dark clouds the sun shining
bright--with love coming swiftly ... love by your side..."
"Peter!" Impatiently Jill caught his arm--"we thought we had lost you."
He turned with a start.
"Hullo, Jill!" He felt a trifle dazed. "I've been listening to a
gypsy--having my fortune told."
"No?--what fun! What did she tell you?"
He glanced behind him, but the woman had gone.
"All sorts of things. I'm to have a golden crown--and a castle
somewhere. In Spain, I should think!"
"Well, come along now--they've gone to the swings."
He slipped a hand through his little friend's arm. "Let me carry that
cocoanut. Did you win it, Jill?" But the girl refused, guarding her
treasure.
They crossed the trodden grass, damp with the dew, to where a row of
booths with poisonous-looking sweets, cheap ribands and laces and
ginger-bread "snaps" had attracted the usual pairs of village lovers.
"Buy yer lidy a fairing!" A shrill voice hailed them--"a pretty brooch
now--a bracelet?--a ring? Come now, young sir--yer 'and in yer
pocket!--there's yer sweet'art waitin' ... the price of a kiss!"
McTaggart laughed back with a side glance at Jill.
"Would you like a fairing?" His eyes ran over the stall.
"Have a ring with 'Mizpah'?--Let's buy one for Stephen."
But the girl shook her head, with a gesture of annoyance.
"Come now, dearie"--the woman entreated--"choose a pretty keepsake--the
gen'leman 'ull pay."
McTaggart bent forward, searching for a gift, suddenly obstinate.
"You'll _have_ to have something!"
"Hullo! what's this?" From the tray of tawdry jewellery, he picked up
a locket with a smile to himself.
Two little hearts in bright red glass, with a true lover's knot joining
them together.
Cheap and meretricious, the toy was saved from vulgarity by the colour
which glowed like a pigeon-blood ruby.
It reminded McTaggart of his own curious case--the Double Heart--surely
a symbol!
"There, Jill! Never say I'm not a generous man."
He tossed a shilling across to the woman--and with due solemnity made
his offering.
"Thanks awfully." Jill's grey eyes were hidden by the dark fringe of
lashes, sweeping down on to her cheeks. "I'll keep it for Court ... or
wear it on my sleeve. Thank you, Peter."
She slipped it in her pocket.
"Hi! McTaggart!" Bethune from afar was waving to them. "Time we were
off!" He shouted the warning as they hastened toward him where he
stood with Roddy, still breathless from the swings.
"It's awfully late..." he added apologetically. "I'm sorry to rush
you--but I think we'd better start."
They made for the Inn, Bethune by his friend, Roddy hanging onto his
sister's arm.
"We'll have to go slow when we get to Hounslow--those beastly trams
spoil the run. Here we are!" He babbled on--"now, bundle in..."
But Jill checked her brother, with one foot on the step. "I think I'd
rather like to ride in front. D'you mind, Mr. Bethune?" She smiled up
at him.
"Mind? I should think not." The man looked pleased, but McTaggart's
face fell at the words.
"Going to desert me? You little turn-coat!--After that lovely fairing
too."
But Jill was settling herself beside the driver.
"Rather rough on Roddy!" was all she said.
The schoolboy laughed. He produced a bag, brimming over with highly
coloured sweets.
"Have a suck?" he said, and diving into it drew out a sugar stick,
striped pink and yellow.
"Thanks--no. Not just now." McTaggart's face was eloquent.
"All right," said Roddy with happy unconcern. "You just tell me when
you feel like it."
The car trundled out between the narrow posts, and, avoiding the crowd,
turned to the right; then, as the road, devoid of life, stretched
straight ahead, took on speed.
The noisy music faded away into darkness and silence and the rustling
breeze. McTaggart drowsily closed his eyes, as the stars began to peer
out of the heavens. His head sank lower, his thoughts became involved
... Then with a flash he came back to life. Awoke to find the lamps
glowing about him, the hum of the traffic, the busy London streets,
and, against the light, Bethune's broad back and the girl's clear
profile like a silhouette.
Jill was chattering, plainly absorbed.
Every now and then, her companion would lean to catch a sentence broken
by the wind, and a laugh would float back with the hearty ring that
seemed a part of the man's honest nature.
McTaggart watched them in a moody silence, still slightly piqued by
Jill's desertion.
Roddy, surfeited, with a nearly empty bag, was rolled up in the corner
like a happy dormouse.
They turned more slowly into dimly lighted roads, and the trees of
Regent's Park came into sight.
Jill was giving directions now to Bethune. "It's the turning before
Primrose Hill," McTaggart heard her say.
Then the car slackened, mounted the slight hill and they were in front
of the terrace of gloomy little houses.
Stiff and pleasantly tired, they stepped down on the pavement,
Bethune's strong arm for a moment supporting Jill.
Hurried adieux and thanks and the pair were off again, McTaggart now in
the corner, still warm, where the girl had sat beside the driver on the
long ride home.
A sudden silence had fallen between them, each engrossed in his own
train of thought.
Bethune broke it first.
"Shall I drop you at the Club? I've got to take the car home--it's on
our way."
"Thanks." McTaggart roused himself. "Can't you come back and dine
with me?--or we'll have a grill somewhere--if you prefer it?"
"Sorry--I can't. I've promised to meet a man--it's a business matter.
Otherwise I would."
"Well--some other night." He felt a shade relieved. "It's very good
of you to have given us this run. Those kids will talk of it till
Kingdom Come--it's a great treat for them."
Bethune grunted.
"Oh--as to that--I enjoyed it myself. That's a nice boy..." there came
a little pause--"and Miss Uniacke's ... perfectly ripping!--pretty
too." He nodded his head.
"Think so?" McTaggart's voice was coolly indifferent.
"Of course," he added, "she's only a child."
CHAPTER XIII
It was the night of Cydonia's dance.
Although the band had been playing since the stroke of ten, guests were
still arriving at the Cadells' door; in parties "personally conducted"
by the hostess with whom they had dined, their cards already filled and
flirtations well started, wearing an air of frozen indifference toward
the rest of the gay crowd; in knots of twos and threes hastening from
the play; and in stray units, chiefly men, cheered by the thought of
approaching supper.
The morning room had been arranged to hold the coats and hats, and for
the moment the hall was free from guests. A young man with straight,
red hair brushed back from his forehead, and a discontented expression
about his tired eyes, emerged from the cloak-room buttoning his gloves
and, with a faint start of pleased surprise, nodded to a friend who
stood above him on the stairs.
"Hullo, Merivale!--fancy meeting you!"
"Thesiger--by all that's strange!--Thought you barred dances?"
"So I do--loathe 'em. But Susan dragged me here. Wait a second, will
you?--This confounded glove..."
His friend nodded, leaning against the banisters: a short dark youth
with a tiny moustache, that hovered like a butterfly about to take wing
under his finely cut aquiline nose.
"What's the name of the people here? I've clean forgotten."
"Cadell," answered Merivale as Thesiger joined him.
"D'you know the hostess by sight?--I promised to meet Susan, but cut it
rather fine. Point her out, will you? or give me a description."
"Tall bony woman--face like the Sphinx--and big black pearls,
suggesting the prize product of a poultry farm."
"Sounds opulent. What time's supper? I say--there's Kilmarny! Now,
who could have brought him?"
"So it is." Merivale waved his hand. "Pity he's getting fat. I
suppose Letty Urquhart. Have you heard of that smash?"
"Yes." Thesiger nodded. "Bound to come to it--the pace he was goin'.
Good old Urquhart! But I'm sorry for her--a nice little woman. What's
she doing here, 'dans cette galere'?"
"Well, I _think_..." he lowered his voice, "she's going to present the
Cadell girl next season. Lady Leason's fixed it up--she's trying to
help Letty. There's precious little left, you know, for her and the
kids."
"I don't blame her. Look at Kilmarny trying to dance the Tango! Let's
stand here and watch. Oh--by the way, I heard rather a funny yarn
about one of these new steps--'Bunny Hug' or something. Man was
watching a girl in a sort of knot with her partner, and some one else
objected on the score of Mother Grundy. 'Oh,' said the man--'I'm sorry
for the girl. More danced against than dancing'--eh?--what!'"
Merivale laughed, as they stood on the landing outside the ballroom
watching the scene within.
"Miss Cadell," said he, "is by way of being a beauty. Rather
statuesque, with pale gold hair. Jinks knows her--you remember Jinks
of Trinity--calls her 'The Heavy Angel!'--Rather a good name."
He leaned a little forward.
"There she goes, _now_ ... dancing with McTaggart--and not for the
first time! He's in the running to-night. Pots of money, you know.
Poppa was in biscuits--or beer--no! Cheese..."
He broke off suddenly as a short red-faced man turned the corner
abruptly and cannoned into them.
He seemed all shirt front, a starched battering-ram, painfully hot and
labouring for breath.
"Sorry, sorry!" He stopped to apologize, puffing out the words with a
forced cordiality.
"Why aren't you dancing, you young men?--Want some partners? Let's see
your cards."
Thesiger stared at him with open disgust.
"No--er--thanks." He turned to his friend as the thick-set man bustled
away downstairs, mopping his brow with a large silk handkerchief.
"Who's that bounder?"
"Sh ... I--it's the host."
"Good Lord!--that?" he frowned impatiently--"I can't see Susan--I've a
great mind to cut it!"
"Better wait for supper," Merivale suggested. "Look here"--he
added--"if you're not already booked we'll have it together."
"Righto!--and then you come on with me--for a game of 'Chemmy,' eh?--I
feel in luck to-night."
"Well ... we'll see. How's Mrs. Merrod?" His dark eyes twinkled as he
watched Thesiger's face.
"The fair Fantine?--oh--goin' pretty strong ... How are you,
McTaggart----?" He broke off to greet a couple approaching.
The man nodded back.
"Hullo, Archie?--d'you know Miss Cadell?"
Cydonia was introduced, dazzling in white, her brown eyes glowing with
suppressed excitement.
"Can't you spare him a dance? He's an old pal of mine?" McTaggart
asked the girl with a subtle air of possession.
Cydonia smiled mischievously.
"I _might_ give him that extra I half promised you..."
"I'll see that you don't!" said her partner aggressively.
"Rather!" said Thesiger, entering into the sport. "Which is it, Miss
Cadell?--the first, I hope?"
Cydonia glanced from one man's face to the other, unusually animated,
conscious of her power.
"If Peter lets me off--it's the second supper dance."
"That's all right." McTaggart laughed--"You're supping with me--you
seem to forget that!"
"Greedy brute!" Thesiger wrote it down with ostentatious care. "I'll
come and look for you. In the supper-room!"
The music ceased and a gay crowd passed through the narrow opening
dividing the trio.
"Upstairs, Cydonia." McTaggart lowered his voice--"and I'm not going
to be cheated--even by Archie. Here--I'll lead the way----" he forged
ahead, passing the couples preceding them. They reached the second
landing, then up the third flight. Here seats were arranged in
isolated pairs.
"Where does that lead to?" McTaggart, as he spoke, pointed to a narrow
passage blocked by palms.
"The servants' staircase." Cydonia paused, but her companion
deliberately drew the plants aside, holding back the leaves for her to
pass.
"Come along, quick!" She gave him a glance, then obeyed with a sudden
giggle.
"I say--this is fine!" He continued to explore, mounting the twisted
dingy stairs.
"Let's go up and sit on the top." A faint glimmering light showed him
the way. "Now--here we are--all to ourselves!"
Cydonia, a little scared by her own sense of daring, settled herself,
her dress drawn about her, her little feet in their silver shoes
shimmering beyond the dead-white brocade.
"It's rather narrow..." she suggested; then blushed as McTaggart,
unabashed, took the step below.
He looked up into the beautiful face, still faintly flushed,
transparent as a shell: into brown eyes like some clear woodland pool,
where the sunshine through the trees cast golden gleams. His hand
stole across and captured the girl's with the pretence of playing with
her fan.
"Cydonia...!" The word was music in his ears. "How the name suits
you--you lovely child!"
She drew back a little against the further wall.
"No--don't move--Cydonia--are you happy?" He slipped his right arm
between her shoulders and the stairs. "There's a cushion for
you--isn't that better?"
But Cydonia protested, sitting bolt upright. "No--Peter--don't. I'd
really ... rather ... not."
"Why?--there's no one here. Can't you trust me, sweet?"
For McTaggart was drifting on the tide of his desire. He knew, too, it
was part of his own fixed plan; no mere folly due to the place and hour.
Fantine's treachery had served to accentuate, by contrast, the value of
his other love. Her girlhood, her purity, her quiescent charm stood
out like snow against that dark background.
This night should decide it. No more would he stand, tossed by every
impulse, with every change of mood. He would anchor in the haven of
Cydonia's love, safe from the storms of life without.
Marriage, he thought, with a young man's confidence, would be the
"settling down" of body and mind. He held that curious faith in
established institutions which is the mainspring of British orthodoxy.
A duet of words intoned in a Church was to conquer his temperament from
that moment until death. Faithful, he swore, he would be to her, by
these holy vows, publicly pledged; and, the miracle accomplished, his
hot blood should turn into the quiet circulation of a saint.
Love should work the charm and passion complete it. He thrust far from
him its shadow, satiety; and that still greater pitfall for those who
wed in haste, a dissimilarity in habit and thought.
So now as he lay, stretched on the stairs, so near to the fragrance of
the girl's golden youth, drinking in the beauty of rounded arms and
neck, and the shy, tender curve of her childish mouth, he felt that
life held no deeper desire than to know her his until Death should part.
"Peter ... I don't think we ought to be here." This wise remark came a
trifle late. For the faint smile with which she mitigated her sentence
revealed for a second her white even teeth, and the parted lips and
famous dimple completed the strain on McTaggart's control.
"Don't you, my darling?" His face was close to hers, his blue eyes,
dilated, pleaded for him.
"Peter ... no!" She stiffened in his arms--then, with a little sigh,
her lips met his, and clung...
"Well!--I'll be damned!" A harsh angry voice tore them apart, startled
and bewildered.
Ebenezer Cadell, with apoplectic face, was glaring from below at the
absorbed pair. The next moment heavy feet shook the stairs; the old
man was on them--a fiery retribution.
He caught McTaggart roughly by the shoulder. "What the devil..." he
stuttered--"is the meaning of this?"
Cydonia scrambled up with more speed than grace, retreating to the
landing with a shamed cry:
"_Father!_"
McTaggart, honestly taken aback, sat there, dazed, finding no reply.
For Cadell was almost beside himself.
Cydonia to him was more than a daughter; she was the ideal of his
work-a-day life: the crowning proof of his money's worth.
In the depths of his parental heart love was tinged with awe--the
emotion he felt before a masterpiece.
That a man should _dare_ ... under his own roof ... to hold her in his
arms--to kiss her untouched mouth! Here was sacrilege. He shook
McTaggart, his social veneer cracking apart.
"Now, then, sir--haven't you a tongue? How dare you come here--into my
house--and treat my girl like a...?"
"_Silence!_"
The young man was on his feet, his face very white, his blue eyes
aflame.
"If you'd give me time to speak----" each word was measured--"you'd
find there's no need to insult your daughter!"
"Shall I--you puppy--you!" for the shaft had sped. "You leave my house
first--This minute--see?"
He pointed down the stairs with a hand that shook.
"You git--_now_!--I'll have no truck with you!" He was back once more
in his master grocer days.
"With pleasure"--McTaggart stood his ground--"_when_ you have listened
to what I have to say. I shall call on you at twelve to-morrow, Mr.
Cadell--to ask you for the honour of your daughter's hand."
Melodramatic?--with a touch of the South, but not without a certain
youthful dignity.
The very fact of this, of the young man's breeding, served but to
remind Cadell of his own.
"I tell you," he boiled, "I'll have no words about it. Marry
Cydonia----? a pauper like you!" He fought for his breath as McTaggart
smiled. "You can call if you choose and be damned to you!"
Peter bowed, outwardly calm. He turned his head once. Cydonia had
vanished, safely sheltered in the house-maid's bedroom.
Then, leisurely, he walked downstairs, conscious that the moral victory
was his.
But the flights seemed endless. He passed the ball-room door and
joined in the steady stream pouring down to supper.
The thought stung him suddenly as he drew on his coat and tipped the
man who handed him his hat.
"Hardly hospitable!"
But his smile twisted. He refused, as he passed out, the appeal of
loitering taxis, and with long angry strides he forged ahead down the
empty pavements in a bee line for his club.
The night was still young. The stars above shone down through the glow
that London spreads upon the domed sky: orange-colored smoke, incense
offered up from the fires of her pleasure and burnt sacrifice.
In Piccadilly a woman accosted him, with painted lips that brought to
mind Fantine.
He hurried on, restless, with a feeling in his heart that all was
crooked in this maddening world. Love bartered--love profaned ... His
eyes still filled with Cydonia's light shrank from that ghastly pageant
of lust which decorous London openly allows.
In the hall of his club a page ran after him, a pile of letters
outstretched on a tray.
He took them absently and turned into the smoking-room, with a breath
of relief at finding it empty, save for a solitary form, half-buried in
a chair, feet outstretched toward the fire.
"Hullo!--Bethune." The man reading turned. "Luck, finding you here."
For he felt a real pleasure at the sight of the burly figure of his
friend and a sudden, uncontrollable longing for sympathy.
They drew their chairs together before the cheerful blaze and exchanged
commonplaces as the waiter brought drinks.
Then, as the door closed, Bethune's voice changed. "What's up,
Peter?--got the flu?"
"No--the sack!" He laughed as he spoke, amused at the other's
perspicacity.
For Bethune was a man to whom his friends turned instinctively in
trouble, with--perhaps?--no memory that, on other occasions more
hilarious, they voted this "quiet chap" a trifle "slow."
"Turned you down--eh? Not that Merrod woman?"
"Good Lord, no! I've done with her. It's a girl ... a young girl. Or
rather her father! I'm feeling a bit hipped over it all."
He told the story from beginning to end, Bethune listening with an
occasional grunt.
"Nice sort of man for a father-in-law! Seems to me you're well out of
it."
"But I don't want to be! Never mind Cadell! I'm not marrying the
family." Bethune smiled. "I'm hard hit this time--and I'll see it
through--if it comes to a good old Gretna Green bolt!"
"Better take my car," Bethune was amused--"You're a Scotchman, aren't
you? Once across the border you've only got to say you're husband and
wife and the thing's fair and square, I understand."
"Jove! I never thought of it." McTaggart looked up. "She's the
prettiest thing you ever set eyes on."
"Anything like Jill?"
"Not a scrap!" The sudden contrast checked his flow of words on the
crest of a lover-like flood of description. Then followed one of those
swift afterthoughts peculiar to his analytical brain. The difference
was not all to Cydonia's advantage; she lacked the mentality of the
other girl.
Angrily he thrust aside the fleeting disloyalty as Bethune went on in
his calm voice.
"I don't see why the old man was so riled? ... You're quite decent to
look at----" his honest eyes twinkled--"and you've got a steady income,
rare in these days. What does he want? A title, I suppose. Some
young ass with debts who'll make her 'milady.'"
"That's about it." McTaggart scowled.
"D'you think she'll stand by you?"
"Of course," said the lover.
"Then--that's all serene. I don't suppose you hanker for fatherly
attention and the family circle?"
"Well, not much!" McTaggart shuddered. "He's utterly impossible. The
mother's not so bad--too stiff, you know, and conscious of her
'dignity,' but quite presentable--pass in a crowd."
"Then go in and win, my son."
Silence fell between them and at last McTaggart rose to his feet.
"I'm going to have some nourishment--I missed supper, you know."
Bethune grinned. "That's a nasty jar! He might have stood you a
parting drink."
"I'll come back presently----" but still he lingered. His whiskey and
soda had quenched his thirst and he found he had but little taste for
food.
Mechanically he gathered up his letters; then sat down again in his
chair.
"I'll read these first--it isn't late."
"Lost your appetite?" Bethune rubbed it in.
His friend, ignoring this ignoble sally, began to tear open the
envelopes.
At the bottom of the pile was a large square letter which he recognized
as bearing his lawyer's writing.
He frowned a little at the sight, in no mood for business, then settled
down grudgingly to study the contents. Inside was an envelope with a
deep black edge sealed with an elaborate coat-of-arms.
Bethune was staring into the fire, his mind still full of his friend's
adventure. He felt that deep, rather wistful, admiration which a man
of his type extends to those more brilliant.
A quick exclamation made him turn his head. McTaggart was plainly
startled by his news.
"I say--Bethune--Good Lord--it's impossible!"
He re-read the document in his hand.
"My Uncle's dead!--and both my cousins! A motor-smash outside Rome.
What an awful thing!--the car overturned..." He skimmed on,
breathless--"the old man was killed ... on the spot--the eldest son,
too ... the other lingered ... died on Tuesday..."
He turned the letter over. "Why, it's nearly a week old. Oh, I
see!--it went to Scotland and then to my lawyers, who sent it here.
They want me to go to Siena at once."
Bethune began to voice condolences.
"Oh! I never knew them. But, of course, I'm sorry. He was my
mother's brother. (Just touch that bell.) They quarrelled when she
married ... I shall have to go."
He turned to the waiter answering the summons.
"Bring me a Continental Bradshaw."
"Do you come in for anything?" asked the practical Bethune.
"Anything?"--the young man laughed with a touch of excitement. "I'm
the only one left. There's a palace in Siena ... and a flat in Rome
... and a villa somewhere. And a lot of land, vines and olive groves
and a nice fat income ... and--Bethune--don't roar!--I'm the present
Marquis. They actually address me..." he choked with mirth--"as the
Illustrious Marquis Maramonte!"
"Good for you." Bethune leaned across and the two shook hands. "I'm
jolly glad. It'll make old Cadell sit up a bit--you've a dead cert
there." He chuckled with glee.
"Splendid--I forgot that." His face sobered suddenly. "Although I've
half a mind ... yes!--Look here, Bethune--keep this between
ourselves--it's not likely to leak out--and I'd rather win Cydonia as
plain Peter McTaggart."
His voice softened on the girl's name. What a setting for her--this
palace in Siena!
"All right, old man. I quite understand. You can count on me to keep
my mouth shut."
The waiter returned and they fell to ways and means, wrestling with the
Bradshaw, discussing the route.
"I'll come back and give you a hand with your packing. You'll be
wanting a car now, Monsieur le Marquis?"
McTaggart chuckled.
"Good old Bethune! always an eye to business, what? You can take the
order--and spare no cost. Line it with white. It'll do for the
wedding."
Then a sudden memory clouded his mirth as his thoughts reverted to the
tragedy at Rome.
"I'm glad all the same I'm too late for the funeral..."
Early next morning he started for Siena.
CHAPTER XIV
At Dover he remembered Mr. Cadell.
With a sense of guilt he sent the following wire:
"Cannot call to-day. Obliged to go abroad on important business. Will
write.
"McTAGGART."
Once on board the boat he began a letter to Cydonia; but the passage
was rough and he abandoned the attempt, returning to the deck to enjoy
the sight of the great rollers slapping up against the sides of the
steamer and breaking into high columns of spray, glittering like mica
in the wintry sunshine.
He consoled himself with the thought that Mr. Cadell would undoubtedly
keep a stern eye on the post, and that his missive was unlikely to
reach the lady of his heart.
His luggage was registered through to Siena, and, when he arrived at
the Gare du Nord, he took an "auto," directing the man to drive him
down the Boulevards. After the damp of London, the air, light and
exciting, went to his head. He drew it in, in deep breaths, with its
sharp familiar scent of roasting coffee-berries, of waxed floors and of
wine, that the crowded cafes wafted toward him as he passed: that
typical smell of Paris, pungent, unforgettable, which welcomes the
votaries of the City of Light.
He dined at Noel Peter's and felt absurdly pleased when the gerant
recognized him as one of a quartette who more than a year since had
frequented the restaurant on an Easter holiday visit.
Then, turning up the Passage des Princes, he strolled along happily,
glad to stretch his legs before his long night journey.
The flower shops were fairy-like; the jewellers' ablaze. Slim forms,
muffled in furs, slipped past with that subtle air of conscious power,
of sure and sensuous appeal which marks the Parisienne in every grade
of life. Clubmen were strolling toward their 'aperitifs,' husbands
with wives, sedately arm in arm, trim 'midinettes' and bare-headed
'bonnes'; all combined to give the crowded pavements the sense of a
meeting place, an outdoor haunt of pleasure spiced with intrigue
instead of a mere channel for the traffic.
McTaggart reached the Madeleine, glanced down the Rue Royale and, with
a sigh of regret, hailed a passing auto. He was jarred and rattled
over the stones of that aggressive road which ends at the Gare de Lyon.
Bethune had wired that morning for a wagon-lit, a wise precaution as
the train was packed. The conductor, in reply to his stilted French,
led McTaggart down the long corridor.
"A telegram without name? From London, Monsieur?" He produced it and
McTaggart smiled. In the hurry of departure his careful friend had
omitted this essential.
"Voici, Monsieur."
The young man peeped past him into the narrow coupe. The beds were
already arranged for the night and on the lower berth, impassive, there
sat a very fat priest, absorbed in his breviary. The windows were
shut, the heat turned on full.
McTaggart drew back with a gesture of disgust.
"This won't do." Unconsciously his voice took on that arrogant note
which the travelling Englishman employs for the benefit of foreign
servants.
"What name did you say, Monsieur?" The shrewd French face was studying
him, gauging the value of his tip.
A sudden idea flashed into McTaggart's brain. He would test here and
now the value of his title.
"I'm the Marquis Maramonte," he answered, steadily watching the black
eyes fixed on his.
"Pardon, Monsieur?" The man looked puzzled. Then a ray of light
illumined his face.
"It is ... the English milord? who inherits ... Mon Dieu! what a sad
affair! ..." he became voluble--"the papers were full of it ... and
Monsieur le feu Marquis has often travelled by this train. He loved
well Paris. If Monsieur le Marquis had but given his name..." He
backed ceremoniously and threw open the door of an empty compartment.
"I will see that Monsieur is not disturbed. He has only to ring. I am
here all night. And at Modane I will warn the Customs. Monsieur would
like an extra 'couverture'?"
McTaggart was smiling in his sleeve.
"C'est bien." He tipped the man generously, delighted at the result of
his tactics.
"Monsieur, sans doute, travels to Siena?--a cold journey ... the passes
are full of snow. But Monsieur will be quite undisturbed"--a gleam of
mischief came into the dark shrewd face--"one understands Monsieur
could not travel with the Church!"
This puzzled Peter. He had yet to learn that his Uncle had been a
member of the Anti-clerical party. Like most Protestants, he lived in
the error that the nearer one approached to Rome the more fervent the
Catholicism. He had heard of the two great factions in that city, the
"Black" and the "White," without measuring their importance. Moreover,
he did not realize the curious apathy of the lower classes in the land
of the Saints and that deep-rooted hatred of the Socialist and
"Patriot" for monastic institutions and temporal power.
But he smiled at the sally, conscious of hidden meaning, and the man,
encouraged, lowered his voice.
"This berth, milord, was reserved for a German--un banquier Juif--qui
vient de Hambourg..." he reached up and removed the ticket from its
slot--"we will place him to-night on the road to salvation!"
"With the priest?"--McTaggart laughed until he cried as the door closed
on his new friend's parting grin. He tried to picture the same scene
in England with the typical conductor of a Pullman Car.
What a nation it was! Light and witty, with under the froth a curious
depth. He thought of its paralyzing series of defeats in the
Franco-Prussian war, its mad Revolutions and that marvellous
recuperative force which had brought France back to her present era of
prosperity. Then he began to dream of Italy; to picture Siena and, in
the far distance, Cydonia beside him there ... Cydonia in his arms.
With her name on his lips he fell asleep.
He woke, refreshed, made a leisurely toilette and wandered forth in
search of breakfast. In the Restaurant Car he announced his
nationality by demanding eggs with his cafe au lait; then settled down
to the long day's journey, thankful now for the full steam heat as they
mounted steadily toward the Alps and plunged with a shrill whistle into
the tunnel.
On and on, with tantalizing peeps of the Mont Cenis Pass. The hoar
frost without traced fairy patterns on the window-pane. The wind
roared past them but the sun shone bright on snow-clad peaks and
valleys dazzling white. Through Turin, with its broad blue river
twisting like a serpent round her ancient walls, on and on, now heading
South, as the snow vanished swiftly and the plains spread about them.
McTaggart grew restless. He paced up and down the narrow corridor,
smoking innumerable cigarettes as the light slowly faded away from the
sky.
Genoa! He drew a breath of relief and barricaded himself again in his
coupe. A swarm of passengers besieged the train and he let the window
down, amused at the sight. Boys were selling oranges and glasses of
"sirops," Bologna sausages and lurid papers.
Then the train moved out and the salt smell of the sea tempted him to
search in vain through the dark. The Mediterranean. He remembered,
with a smile, it had stood for a test of spelling at school! Once he
thought he saw a faint dark line; then it vanished into the night.
He began to feel drowsy after his dinner. This would never do! He
marched up and down, conscious he had to change at Pisa--then at
Empoli. He yawned, stiff and tired.
After what seemed an interminable spell, with a grisly noise of brakes,
they slackened speed. "Pisa ... Pi-sa ...!" He gathered up his rug
and descended the steep step on to the platform.
His train puffed out. He felt, suddenly, as if he had parted with his
only friend, as he stood there waiting for the Florence express,
stamping his feet, in the bitter cold.
"If this is the South..." he said to himself--"Give me London!" He
turned up his collar, straining his eyes through the vaulted tunnel of
the long station into the dark.
Great lamps flaring like hungry eyes and in she roared with her
high-built engine, spiteful, frost-rimmed, spitting steam ...
McTaggart found a seat in a crowded carriage.
Then on again through this endless night and Empoli, a God-forsaken
spot, quite unscreened from the icy blast, with twenty frozen minutes
to wait.
At last a faint streak of golden smoke rewarded his patience.
"Siena--Siena," a hoarse voice shouted. He made for the nearest door
labelled First Class and clambered in, finding a single occupant.
An old man with a white imperial, the soft black felt beloved of Italy,
a thick coat with a wolf-skin collar and a lawyer's portfolio across
his knees.
He raised the aforementioned hat courteously.
"Fa freddo," he said in a musical voice.
McTaggart lifted his cap, with pleased surprise, his loneliness fading
before the stranger's smile.
"Do you speak French?" He asked in that language. "I'm afraid my
Italian's somewhat scanty."
"Si, si, Monsieur." Again he raised his hat.
Again McTaggart clutched at his cap.
"I hope it isn't necessary with every word!" he thought with an
Englishman's distaste for ceremony.
"A cold night for travelling," the stranger suggested. "Monsieur has
come far?" His keen black eyes shone like bright coal in their wrinkled
sockets.
"From London," said McTaggart with the conscious pride of a tired man
at the end of his journey. "I'm bound for Siena," he volunteered. "Is
it generally as cold as this in Italy?"
The old man smiled.
"It is Winter still, Monsieur. What would you have?"
He spread out his hands. "In Siena we are high ... altis ... simo!
But healthy--one gets few fevers there. Monsieur is 'en touriste'?"
His gentle curiosity was freed from all impertinence by his charming
manner.
"No--not exactly. I'm going there on business."
McTaggart paused a moment, then made up his mind.
"I've inherited a property from my mother's brother. He was killed in
an accident, near Rome, with his sons."
The effect on his audience was electrical.
"But, Monsieur!" ... he stuttered--"e impossibile!--Monsieur is not the
English Milord?--the new Marchese Maramonte?"
For the third time off came his hat.
"I'm afraid so." Peter laughed outright. For the old man, wiry and
light, was on his feet, bowing before him with a deferential air.
"My humble 'felicitations' to Monsieur le Marquis. His lawyer, Jacopo
Vanni--at his service."
"No!--really?" McTaggart held out his hand and shook the other's
heartily; and by that simple act, unknown to himself, he secured a
life-long friend.
"You're just the very man I wanted to meet."
"We were in despair," Vanni continued, "no news from England when I
left yesterday! I have been in Florence on business for the Marchesa,
and, I suppose, the message arrived later."
"I only wired early this morning. The letter had miscarried and
reached me last night. As you see, I have wasted no time in coming!"
McTaggart smiled back at the eager old face.
"And now, can you tell me some of my new duties? I am anxious to learn
the extent of my inheritance and I feel rather like a duck out of
water! Not speaking Italian makes it worse. I should really be
grateful for any advice."
"Monsieur le Marquis does me honour." The bright eyes devoured him,
approving his handsome face. "Every inch a Maramonte!" Unconsciously,
he spoke aloud.
"Really?" McTaggart was interested. "I was always told I resembled my
mother."
"Sicuro!" Vanni's voice was stirred. "All save the eyes--of the
English blue. And when Monsieur sees his gallery of portraits, he will
feel at home! Monsieur le Marquis is like his famous ancestor--that
Giordano Maramonte, the hero of Montaperti, who led in the capture of
the Carroccio of Firenze ... And there is a look of the Marchese
Cesare--who went down to fame for his attack on the Citadel. He drove
the Spaniards out of Siena--that was before the last great siege..."
His words poured on. He was plainly lost in the history of the house
he served, back in those war-like days of the past when great names
testified to greater deeds.
McTaggart realized he had touched on a hobby. "Tell me all about my
family." He leaned back, happy, and lit a cigarette while the old man
drew with lightning gestures on his absorbing hoard of knowledge.
Of Guelph and Ghibeline intrigue, of wars with Spain and Florentine
raids; of Popes and Emperors, Patriots, Tyrants; of the endless strife
between the nobles and people; of the "Sacrifice of the Useless Mouths"
and the Plague that ran like a burning flame.
So enthralled was McTaggart that the time passed on flying wings until,
at length, the train swept into the last noisy tunnel.
Vanni started. He glanced at his watch.
"Ecco Siena!"--and, at the words, a curious thrill ran through his
listener of excitement tinged with awakened pride.
For the vast part his house had played in the wars and government of
the city, their reckless heroism and careless prodigality had thrown a
new light of fiery romance on this inheritance of his.
With it was blent an odd shrinking, the nervousness of the Englishman
before the customs and conventions alien to his normal life.
The train emerged, lights twinkled. The long journey was accomplished.
CHAPTER XV
Signor Vanni, full of importance and inwardly delighted at the accident
which had placed the hero of the hour in his hands, gathered up his
portfolio and descended nimbly on to the platform with a suave:
"If Monsieur le Marquis will deign to wait?"
He was off, crying lustily for the station-master.
McTaggart drew out his watch. It was nearly four o'clock. He felt
hungry but his weariness had passed, killed by his present sense of
excitement. The air, crisp and sweet, blew in his face like frozen
honey, the night was still; and through the dark he could just make out
the sheltering walls rising black and sheer with a crenellated edge
against the indigo of the sky, where a single luminous star was poised.
The lawyer returned with a bowing superintendent, two bowing servants
and a bowing porter.
McTaggart's cap was busy again as the little group fussed about him.
He found himself at last in a vast landau, the lawyer facing him, two
men on the box and a third individual mounted behind on a narrow
platform between the wheels. "Like the Lord Mayor!" he said to himself
and checked a wild desire to laugh.
They rumbled on through deserted streets, dark and narrow, mounted a
hill, turned to the left, past a Hotel where lights were gleaming, and
on again.
"The Signora Marchesa," said the lawyer, "makes her compliments and is
looking forward to receive Monsieur le Marquis in the morning. The
hour being so late, he would wish to sleep and, doubtless, prefers this
arrangement. She asked Giuseppe to deliver the message."
"Very thoughtful of my aunt." McTaggart felt relieved at the news.
They twisted down between high houses and then there came a sudden
halt. Lanterns flashed out. Peering eagerly, he saw a massive doorway
before him, flanked by windows narrow and deep with spiked bars, rusty
from age. With a hollow echo they drove through the arch and emerged
into an inner court, vast and full of shadows thrown by the high walls
on every side.
In the centre a fountain towered up: dolphins massed with icicles and a
deep basin covered with frost supported by crouching griffins.
The carriage encircled it and stopped. The door was opened. McTaggart
descended.
He found himself gazing at a marble staircase, silvery-white, with
shallow steps that curved round like a parchment scroll, fairy-like,
against the night.
He passed up like a man in a dream. It led to a long gallery on the
first floor, dim and high, open on one side to the air and laced with
slender twisted columns. Where these supported the domed roof arches
formed and the carved points bit into the outer dark like sharp teeth
nibbling the heart of the sky.
A bell tolled with a sweet, low note and the entrance doors were flung
wide. With a sudden sense of warmth and light he passed through into
the palace.
Walls hung with tapestry, a painted ceiling, myriad candles glimmering
in crystal lustres...
For a second McTaggart stood there, dazed. He felt an odd lump rise in
his throat. Then Signor Vanni touched his arm with a whispered word of
apology.
"If Monsieur le Marquis would speak to Beppo? Beppo was there in his
mother's time."
"Mia madre..." The long-forgotten words rose from the mirage of the
past. He looked down into a wrinkled face: an old, old man in shabby
livery. The next moment his hand went out and was held in the shaky
clasp of age.
"Mother of all the Saints! _Her_ face!" Tears were in the dim old
eyes. "Ahi!--she was a Saint herself. A thousand humble welcomes 'a
Lei'! He must forgive this old man who worships his blessed lady's
memory ... God be praised that I see this day..."
"Basta ... Basta!" Vanni checked him as the soft Italian speech flowed
on, unintelligible to McTaggart, smiling down at the faithful servant.
"The Signor Marchese is tired and would sleep."
The "maestro di casa" effaced himself, leading the way, on tottering
feet, through a long suite of rooms, into a corridor lined with statues
and Etruscan pottery.
They came at last to narrow stairs, built in the thickness of the wall,
mounted these to another passage and paused before a double door.
Within was a bedroom with marble floor and deep-set windows draped with
silk. A stove was burning and candles gleamed, but the place felt
cheerless and rather damp: magnificent, but strangely bare, the high
walls discolored with age.
Another servant appeared with a tray and a steaming tureen of thick red
soup. McTaggart welcomed it where he sat at a round table before the
stove with sandwiches and fruit arranged in heavy dishes of silver-gilt.
The bread, he thought, tasted sour, but when the man filled his glass
with a golden wine, clear and sparkling, he drank it down and his eyes
shone.
"What is it?" he asked Vanni--"not champagne?" The lawyer smiled.
"Asti Spumante--The late Marquis was well known for his cellar. And
the dried figs and oranges and the goat's milk cheese are from the
estate."
"Excellent." McTaggart approved. "Won't you have a glass with me?"
The old man was visibly pleased. He propounded an elaborate toast.
"And now, I think, with his permission, I will retire." He bowed low.
"May pleasant dreams wait on slumber." The door closed gently behind
him.
McTaggart drew a deep breath, glad at last to be alone. He finished
the wine and began to smoke, his cold feet planted against the stove.
He could not quite free himself from the spell of a fairy-tale; this
strange arrival in the night into a mediaeval land.
He glanced round him at the room, with its painted ceiling and
comfortless floor and the huge bed of gilded wood shrouded with blue
brocade.
He began sleepily to undress, but a low tap came at the door.
"Come in!--Entrez!--whatever's the word?"
Beppo appeared with a slim, dark youth.
"Ecco Mario." He explained. The newcomer bowed and stood, expectant,
gazing respectfully at his bewildered new master.
McTaggart hunted for a phrase.
"Non capisco." He looked triumphant and immediately old Beppo smiled
and fell back on pantomime.
He turned and took from Mario a long garment in thin batiste,
embroidered at the neck and wrist, with a breast-pocket where a
monogram was worked beneath a tiny coronet.
McTaggart struggled with his mirth. It was evident that his own
luggage had been delayed at the closed Customs. This was a relic of
his Uncle, destined for his use that night.
Mario bowed and disappeared to return with a small jug of hot water,
ivory brushes and other articles destined for his master's toilette.
Solemnly he arranged the room while Beppo cleared the supper table.
Then, to McTaggart's vast relief, both men wished him "good repose."
He locked the door and hastily slipped out of his remaining clothes,
proceeding to encase himself in the ridiculous thin night-shirt.
"Can't say much for my Uncle's taste!--it's only fit for a ballet
dancer!" He caught sight of himself in the glass and chuckled with a
faint disgust. The batiste strained on his broad chest and beneath the
folds his legs appeared, long and sinewy. He shivered.
"Brr!--this _is_ the limit!"
He drew it up above his knees and gingerly clambered on to his bed;
snuggled down among the pillows, thankful for the eider down.
The candle beside him was still alight and, before he leaned to blow it
out, he glanced upward curiously at the dark draperies overhead.
And then he started.
For on the ceiling a shadow lay, huge, grotesque: the shadow of a
mighty crown! A sudden memory assailed him.
He looked closer. The curtains were drawn into a knot and held in
place by a heavy ring of gilded wood, carved into a coronet.
What was it the gipsy had said?
"There's fortune coming over-seas ... and a castle, my fine
gentleman..."
Again he heard the husky voice crooning above his outstretched hand.
And he stared at the ceiling, his eyes wide.
For there it hung ... his "golden crown!"
CHAPTER XVI
When he awoke it was ten o'clock.
A shaft of sunshine from under the blind fell across his vast bed and
he rubbed his eyes, sleepy, bewildered, wondering where on earth he
could be? Then he remembered, felt for his watch, throwing back the
heavy clothes, and caught his knees in the frail night-shirt. The
batiste ripped as he slid to the floor.
The icy cold of the marble roused him, effectually banishing further
sleep. He pattered across toward the light for the first glimpse of
the world outside.
Here he was foiled at the start. For the deep windows were set high,
the opening far above his head, dating from those warlike times when
the solid walls were a shelter from missiles.
He dragged a heavy gilded chair underneath and mounting upon it, drew
the faded curtains aside and peered forth eagerly.
But his room faced the court-yard. He could only see the opposite wing
of the palace dark against the sky, rugged and gray, with a turreted
roof, a picture of mediaeval strength.
A cloud of pigeons swirled up, flashing their myriad silver wings, as a
servant passed along the gallery, with its twisted columns of carved
marble.
Beneath he caught a glimpse of the fountain and against the dazzling
sapphire sky, like a lily on a slender stem, a single tower rose above
the walls, in faded brick with a pointed belfry, white as snow, and an
iron cross.
Dissatisfied, he returned to bed and, conscious of his appetite, rang
the bell by his side, his teeth chattering with the cold.
Beppo answered to the summons, his old face wreathed in smiles, voluble
and bearing a tray with hot chocolate and rolls. In vain McTaggart
tried to gather the gist of the old man's talk. One word stood out
plain, recurrent, with a questioning, anxious note.
"Toob"--he pondered upon it as at last the old servant withdrew and he
leaned back against the pillows, glad of the somewhat scanty breakfast.
Presently he heard steps. A knock sounded on the door, and in came
four men, staggering under a heavy burden. It proved to be an enormous
bath, of the kind one associates with a fixed base and many fittings,
utterly devoid of paint. McTaggart watched with wide eyes. It was
bumped down before the stove, which Mario proceeded to light, and then
under Beppo's guidance a sheet was spread over the vast sarcophagus and
tucked in to form a lining.
Then the men filed out. The bath was filled with cold water and beside
it--like a tender offspring!--a small foot-tub was arranged. From the
latter a cloud of steam arose--a welcome sight to McTaggart--and on a
chair before the stove was laid a garment in bath-toweling.
Mario approached the bed.
"Good morning to Him. His 'toob' is ready." He smiled with a flash of
strong white teeth that lit up the olive face and lingered in the
sloe-like eyes.
His tub! McTaggart solved the enigma. And what a tub! He checked a
laugh as Beppo gravely took his tray with a glance in which triumph
lurked.
But still Mario stood, expectant. His coat was off, his sleeves rolled
up and--Beppo, lingering in the rear--he began a long respectful
inquiry.
McTaggart, bewildered, shook his head. He caught the words
"fregamento"--"massage" ... Good Heavens!--they were going to bathe
him!
"Non, non!"--he stammered--"solo!" He pointed to the door, confused,
as the two men consulted together.
Beppo resumed his pantomime. He took Mario's strong hand and rubbed it
sharply across his chest.
"Ecco! ... 'friction'?" His anxious eyes watched his master's amazed
face.
"Io," said McTaggart stoutly--"always ... sempre." He waved them away.
"Grazia--ma ... _addio_!"
At this very obvious hint the two servants slowly withdrew.
McTaggart shot from his bed and turned the key in the door. Then his
stifled mirth exploded and he laughed until he cried.
"That was a narrow shave," he said, staring into the huge bath. "My
uncle had some funny habits--muslin night-shirts and massage!
Horrible, this wet sheet..." He dipped a finger in and shivered.
"I'll swear there's ice in it----" he said. "Happy thought!" He took
the foot-tub and poured in the boiling water.
His bath over, he dressed quickly, then rang the bell for the man,
after a vain hunt for razors among the many toilette articles.
But Mario was prepared for this. He shaved McTaggart skilfully,
produced powder, produced perfumes--which Peter hurriedly declined.
Then Beppo reappeared, with a message from the Marchesa. She would
receive her new nephew as soon as it suited him.
He followed the "maestro di casa" to the further wing of the palace and
was shown into a small boudoir hung with a striped primrose silk. The
room was dainty, filled with flowers and photographs, scattered about
on the modern French furniture above the delicate Aubusson carpet. On
an easel under a palm, stood a large portrait in pastel of a dapper
little gentleman, with a slim waist and padded shoulders. The face,
old but still handsome, bore lines of dissipation around the keen dark
eyes. He had grizzled hair, grey eyebrows, and a startlingly black
moustache.
"My uncle, I should imagine." McTaggart was bending down to examine
the picture more closely when a door on his right was opened by a
smiling maid.
"Par ici, Monsieur." She stood aside for him to pass and a musical
voice from the room beyond welcomed him.
"Entrez donc!--Bonjour, mon neveu..."
He stood on the threshold, tall and eager, his blue eyes opening wide,
as he looked into a dainty bedroom, dim and warm and heavily scented.
Before him was a high bed, draped in black, and against the pillows,
vivid, alive, in the sable setting, a young and very lovely woman.
Her hair, of a glossy raven hue, was piled loosely on her head under a
boudoir cap of lace and she wore a filmy negligee, from which her arms,
white and rounded, escaped beneath knots of ribbon and lay on the black
satin bedspread with the effect of chiselled marble.
Her face, oval and ivory-white, was faintly amused. Her great brown
eyes, languorous and insolent, swept McTaggart from head to foot.
But what absorbed his attention most was her mouth, like a curved
scarlet flower blown on to her still face by a breath of Spring ... He
gazed at her.
Then his wits returned to him.
He walked forward and took the hand lazily extended, stooped, and, with
a happy inspiration, raised it gravely to his lips.
The Marchesa's dark eyes flashed. The red mouth smiled at him.
"Mais vous etes tr ... es bien!" She rolled her r's with Italian
emphasis.
"Delighted to make your acquaintance, my aunt." And, indeed, he only
spoke the truth. In a flash he found a valid excuse for his late
uncle's dandyism; that somewhat pathetic defiance of age beside his
youthful second wife.
"You have well slept?--Had all you needed?" Her French, full of liquid
vowel sounds, fell musically on his ears.
"And the 'tub'? Ah! I know the English ways. I say to Beppo: See
now!--a cold bath--cold ... cold ...! That is what the English love."
She gave a clear, rippling laugh.
"And then you appear--a true Italian! Ma si!" she nodded her head
gaily. "A Maramonte--Mon Dieu, I am glad!--without the teeth. You
understand?"
"Not quite," McTaggart smiled back, showing a white row as he spoke.
"The English teeth--quel horreur!--that stick out like the wild boar."
The young man laughed outright.
"Oh--we aren't all as bad as that! But Italy is the land of
beauty----" he gazed at her--"I am learning that."
Then, suddenly, it flashed across him that his attitude was hardly
correct toward a newly made widow, and the mirth died out of his blue
eyes.
"I wish," he said, "that my first visit had been at a less painful
moment. Believe me..." He stammered, searching for words, trying to
find the proper phrase.
She watched him with a shade of malice, divining his perplexity.
"Death is sad," she said calmly. "But it has to be ... and he was old."
McTaggart started. This cold philosophy struck him as distinctly
heartless, and with quick intuition she guessed his thought, a touch of
sadness in her eyes.
"You think it strange I speak like that?--My nephew, wait ... I am but
nineteen. The marriage was arranged for me; I left the convent to come
here. Ah! I was young--too young by far!"
Under the ivory of her cheek the colour rose and into her eyes came a
shrinking look, like a hurt child, remembering past punishment.
"I come here, to this ... _tomb_," she shivered as she chose the
word--"so gay, so fresh ... so innocent! He had seen me once among the
Sisters--his cousin was the Mother Superior...
"And then--to be alone so much. He loved Paris well, you
see"--(McTaggart remembered the phrase before and the shrewd glance of
the French guard)--"He did not take me even to Rome, but left me here
with old Beppo. And jealous!--jealous all the time ... of his own
sons--of my music master!----
"Ah--what a life!" Her hands went up. She gave a fierce little laugh.
"I thank the good God from my heart. I make no pretence to you."
A deep pity stirred the man with a horror of foreign marriages. He
thought for a second of Cydonia--and pictured her, here and alone, at
the mercy of the late marquis. His soul rose in revolt.
"Poor little Aunt--I understand." His voice was grave, his eyes tender.
She raised herself against the pillows with a quick smile of gratitude.
"My nephew--I like you very much. You have a heart--one feels that.
And--see you--I will pray for his soul." She crossed herself with a
touch of fervour. "I will have many masses sung ... But regret?--ah,
no! that is beyond me."
A silence fell between the pair. McTaggart averted his eyes and they
fell on the sombre hangings of the huge funereal-looking bed.
"This is the custom here?" he asked.
"The custom?" She frowned slightly. Then her tense look relaxed. The
red lips quivered apart. "Dieu!--qu'il est drole!" She laughed aloud.
"This?--and this?" She touched the curtains, then the counterpane with
her hand.
"You think this is mourning, perhaps?--Au contraire..." She shook with
mirth.
"Your Uncle had these made for _me_ ... il avait des idees ... assez
bizarres!" She stretched out one perfect arm on the black satin and
admired it.
McTaggart felt a swift horror of the old man with his tired eyes. Then
he laughed. The Marchesa's face was like an impudent, healthy child's.
"And now, my nephew--au revoir. We meet again at twelve for lunch."
He stooped and kissed her outstretched hand. The dreaded interview was
over.
He found his way into the hall and sat down at a writing-table,
determined to get his letter off to Cydonia's father before lunch.
"Dear Sir."
He wrote the words on a sheet edged with an inch of black. Then tore
it up and started again.
"Suppose I must call him Mr. Cadell!" This done, he stared into space,
searching for an opening phrase; faced with the problem of explaining
the urgency of his trip abroad.
"If I start by saying my uncle is dead it opens the question of my
inheritance--I shall have to explain about my family and it makes the
letter long-winded. Besides, I don't want him to know anything about
the title. I'd rather, as I said before, go in and win as Peter
McTaggart."
He thought for a moment, then covered a page; read it through and
crumpled it up.
"Too colloquial--oh, hang! What on earth am I to say?"
Like many men who talk easily, he could not put his thoughts on paper.
For speech is merely to let loose words; writing to draw them close
together.
At last he flung down his pen.
"It's no good!" He rose to his feet. "After all, he's got my wire,
and I shall be back within the week. But I wish I could write to
Cydonia..." He stood for a moment by the stove. "I do hope they're
not worrying her, and that the child understands? I know the letter
would never reach her, and I'd rather have it fair and square ... It
would make things worse to do anything now the Cadells could call
underhand!"
He stretched his arms above his head with a yawn that ended in a sigh.
Then started to explore his kingdom, casting dull care aside.
He walked down the corridor, glancing at the statuary, and came, at
last, to a pair of doors with a coat of arms carved above them.
Here he hesitated for a second, wondering what lay within, and as he
did so he heard a step shuffling along in his wake.
He turned to find an old woman, her head shrouded in a shawl, clasping
between her withered hands a rounded jar of baked clay. It had a high
handle bridging it resembling that of a market basket, and over this
the wrinkled face peered at him with sharp black eyes.
"Buon' giorno," said McTaggart. He stared down at her burden. The old
creature smiled back and held it out invitingly.
He saw it was filled with hot ashes, the primitive brazier of the
people. He warmed his hands for a moment against it, and then pointed
to the door.
"Si, si. Venga, Signore." She slipped past him and turned the handle
and he found himself in a picture gallery, dimly lighted, with drawn
blinds. The door closed, he was alone. Curiously he stared about him.
Above his head was a painted ceiling, a battle scene, mellow with age,
with the slightly artificial splendour of the early Sienese School.
But from the walls, on every side, out of their dull gilded frames,
faces peered down at him, measuring him with liquid eyes.
McTaggart felt a curious pride, swift and clean, run through him.
These were his! The same blood stirred in his veins; here was his real
inheritance!
He passed slowly along the room. Men in armour challenged him;
Cardinals in scarlet robes; fair women smiled down; children paused in
their play...
Then he came to the last picture, vivid, with its modern paint, in
contrast to those earlier ones, softened by the touch of time.
A young girl in a white dress, a blue riband at her waist and a leghorn
hat that swung from her arm wreathed with tiny pink roses. One hand,
with taper [Transcriber's note: tapering?] fingers, lay on the sleek
head of a greyhound, the other held her flowing skirts from beneath
which a slender foot in white stocking and buckled shoe pointed its way
down marble steps against a background of cypresses.
And the face? The smile so like his own, the dark hair piled high, the
slim form and girlish grace...? Tears rose to the young man's eyes.
Here was his mother in her youth. Before that first season in Rome
when she had met his father there, and, with the passion of her race,
loved and married the hardy Scot, brought down the anger of her house
and sailed away to that northern land never more to return home.
It seemed to her son that she smiled now with triumph in her glowing
eyes; calling upon him to vindicate the choice she had made in the past.
And, suddenly, the deeper side of his nature responded to the cry. He
saw that it lay within his hands to restore her tarnished honour now.
He drew himself up, his mouth firm, aware of a new responsibility. The
fairy atmosphere had fled--this was life ... no mere adventure.
He was the last Maramonte. His eyes swept down the long room, past
Cesare--the patriot--to Giordano, hero of Montaperti.
His face, under its olive skin, paled, then flushed; his eyes were
grave.
For he must hand on the torch ... he caught his breath, seeing Cydonia.
And a new reverence tinged his love. Not only sweetheart and wife but
mother. And at the word he pictured her with a little golden-headed
son, clasped within her loving arms.
He had that passionate affection the Italian--of all nations on
earth--feels for his offspring and, looking up into his mother's lovely
face, he shared his secret hope with her.
Then he started with a frown. For, like some unworthy ghost into that
throng, centuries old, came the heavy form of Cadell.
This was the blood he chose to mix with that proud Maramonte strain!
It seemed to him, at his treachery, a silence fell upon the room; eyes
turned with a cold stare, haughty faces sneered at him...
Cydonia's parent!--He saw him there with his bourgeois birth stamped
upon him; heard again that grating voice, marked the coarse congested
face.
For a moment he shrank from the tie.
Then the quick reaction came. What did he owe to this ancient stock?
How had they treated his fair young mother?
He was his father's son as well--an Englishman. Up went his head.
Cydonia should be his wife--the wife of plain Peter McTaggart.
He swung round and marched out, more in love with her than ever!
CHAPTER XVII
A thaw had followed the long frost and from the South, on eager feet,
came Primavera, hooded still but clasping pale buds to her breast.
Birds sang as she glided by, anemones peered through the grass and in
the olive trees young leaves danced in the sun like silver coins,
tossed up by gay Mother Earth as ransom to the pirate Winter.
Light poured down from the sapphire sky, gilding the ivory city of
towers as McTaggart drove through the winding roads, the Marchesa,
still muffled in furs, beside him.
They had been to the borders of his estate, by vineyards planted on the
slopes in terraces like a giant staircase, screened from the north by
dark lines of cypresses, warped with the cruel wind; past fields of
oranges and lemons, covered with screens of plaited reeds, to the
agent's house where they had lunched and tasted later the olive oil,
smooth and sweet, stored in huge jars, suggesting those of the "Forty
Thieves."
Now they were returning home, drowsy from the long day spent in the
open air, happily tired, soothed by the motion of the carriage.
A mischievous breeze played with the veil the Marchesa wore, of heavy
crape, and every now and then McTaggart could catch a glimpse of her
rounded chin and that flower-like mouth beneath the folds, vivid, alive
and tantalizing.
He watched for it, lazily, leaning back against the high, padded
cushions, and, conscious suddenly of his gaze, she turned her head and
broke the silence.
"You are quite decided then, Pietro?" Her voice was sweetly
disconsolate. "You will not come with me to Fiesole?"
"I can't, really. I'm very sorry. I must be getting back to
England"--a faint smile curved his lips. "I've important business
there just now. I assure you I'd stay if I could."
His aunt laughed, a trifle sharply.
"That means a woman, I should say!--'Important business'--at your age.
There never yet was a Maramonte who was happy unless he was playing
with fire."
Her dark eyes flashed through her veil an inquisitive glance, but he
shook his head. He was not in a mood for confidences. Moreover, he
knew that Cydonia's birth would hardly fulfil his aunt's requirements
and dreaded a possible catechism.
"It's your sister's villa, near Florence, where you are going, isn't
it?"
The Marchesa nodded lazily.
"And beautiful..." she stirred herself--"it faces the Arno valley with
a wide loggia due south. She's my eldest sister--I was the baby--and
her daughter, Bianca, must be sixteen. There's no son--such a grief!
My brother-in-law breaks his heart about it. He is a Florentine
himself, with an old palazzo (now shut up) and some fine pictures near
the Cascine."
"You will be happy there?" asked Peter.
"But, yes!" She shrugged her shoulders lightly. "For a time, until my
mourning's over. It's a quiet spot, Fiesole, and I am very attached to
my sister. Then I shall go to live in Rome."
"And your life begins?" He guessed her thought.
"Chi lo sa?" But her eyes were bright. "At any rate, it's farewell to
Siena! In Rome one can live as one likes."
"May I come and see you there?"
Impulsively she turned to him.
"Mais je crois bien!--For as long as you can. I shall be proud of my
handsome nephew. And then, caro mio, I will find you a wife." She
nodded her head with an air of wisdom.
"Some beautiful Roman. Let me think ... There is Princess Doria's only
girl--the Principe was my mother's cousin--and Donna Maria
Archiveschi...? Well--we shall choose, you and I."
A sudden thought sprang into her brain. Why not Bianca?--her sister's
child. What an excellent match it would be for her--as soon as she
should leave the convent.
Moreover, it would suit the Marchesa. She would have a double right of
entry in the Maramonte family circle and indulge to the full her love
of intrigue.
Following up this train of thought, she smiled sweetly at McTaggart.
"You could not spare me one week now?--a little week before you return
...? At Fiesole--just think again. To abandon your poor aunt at
once--one sees you do not care for her! ... Just seven days, Pietro
mio, to leave me happily settled there?"
She drew back her veil and her velvet eyes, like darkest pansies,
pleaded mutely. McTaggart summoned all his strength, conjuring up
Cydonia.
"_Please_ don't make it any harder! I'd love to come, you know that.
It's not every day in one's life one ... inherits such a perfect aunt!"
He smiled at her with real affection.
"I'll come back when you're at Rome--(and not alone!" he said to
himself). "But I'm bound to return to England first and settle up my
business there."
"You talk as if you kept a shop!" She shrugged her shoulders
pettishly. "What does the Marquis Maramonte want with commissions on
the 'Bourse'?"
He laughed outright with the memory of her disgusted, lovely face when
he had told her of his profession.
"Fi donc!" Mischievous, she shook a slender finger at him. "It would
make poor Gino turn in his grave."
"And serve him right!" was McTaggart's thought. He could not forgive
the dead man for his heartless treatment of his sister. He had the
Italian's centuries-deep love of justice and liberty and was not
without a strain of revenge, the lingering trace of some far-off
"Vendetta."
He sat there moody, his mouth hard; grimly glad that the scales of fate
had weighed in favour of his rise into the power denied to her.
The sun, sinking toward the hills, plunged the city walls in shadow as
they drove through the Porta Romana and past the great church of the
Servites.
Then, winding round the ancient market, they emerged into the open
"Campo"--that curious shell-shaped piazza where throbs the heart of old
Siena.
"What is that tower?" McTaggart pointed. "I can see it from my
bedroom window."
"The Torre del Mangia," his aunt replied, "above the palace of the
Commune. You must see the frescoes in the Chapel, by Bazzi--pure
quattro cento. And there is the famous Fonte Gaia--after Giacomo della
Quercia. The original fragments are in the museum. That is a
copy--but still fine. This Square is where 'il Palio' is run, the two
occasions in the year when Siena awakes to life----" she smiled
scornfully as she spoke.
"Dio!--I shall be glad to go--it is a city of the dead. And cold...!"
She shivered and drew her furs closer, aware of the sunset hour.
They came at last into the palace. Beppo received them in the hall
with letters for his young master. McTaggart eagerly gathered them up.
"Bring 'sweet wine' into the boudoir," said the Marchesa to the
servant. She turned to her nephew. "It's warmer there. I will join
you when I get rid of my furs."
But McTaggart went to his room first, anxious to find if the letters
held any news of Cydonia, and, locking the door, sat down by his stove.
There were three of them, sent on from his club. A line from Bethune,
a tailor's bill and an envelope in a clerkly hand. He tore it open
carelessly.
Then, quickly, he turned it over, glanced at the signature, set his
teeth; and his face flushed with growing anger as he went through the
contents again.
It was signed "Ebenezer Cadell," and contained a narrow unfastened note.
He read that too, then leaned back and swore aloud in his bitter
chagrin.
Never in all his wildest dreams had he pictured himself a jilted man!
Yet here it was--he smiled sourly--Cydonia had thrown him over!
Cydonia--the woman he loved. The girl for whom, in his loyalty, he had
sworn to sacrifice the pride of his ancient and historic name.
She had "made a mistake." He read it again, holding to the light of
the stove the mauve paper with the monogram "C" engraved in a fantastic
wreath.
She was "too young"--as her "parents said"--"to think of marriage for
some years." She hoped "Peter would understand"--and "not feel very
hurt!" She would "like to keep him as a friend."
("I'll be damned if she will!"--said the angry man.)
Her Mother had been "quite ill" again, upset by their "secrecy."
("Dash it all!" In the midst of his pain McTaggart smiled. "She can't
expect a proposal in public--whatever is she driving at?")
Cydonia hoped he would not write. "Father" thought it better not. She
was "_VERY_ sorry." For the first time the careful writing shook a
little. A line crossed through revealed the fact that she would "miss
him dreadfully."
But she thought her parents "knew best." They had been "very kind" to
her--and "Father was writing to explain."
This statement was distinctly true. For Cadell rubbed salt into the
sore!
McTaggart turned once more to his letter.
To begin with it was plain he mistrusted McTaggart's unforeseen
departure; only too evident that he thought this foreign trip a way of
escape from the outcome of an evening's folly!
But, in any case, whether or no his intentions toward Cydonia were
honorable and uninvolved by any "pecuniary consideration," McTaggart
stood no earthly chance of success as his son-in-law.
Cydonia was destined to higher flights ... (McTaggart thought of
Bethune's words: "Some young ass with a title and debts!")
She would inherit a large fortune and her beauty and costly education
"would fit her for any position."
"She's _almost_ worthy," McTaggart sneered, "to become the Marchesa
Maramonte."
For anger was still dominant. The lonely longing was to follow.
The letter, pompous, devoid of tact, went on to a definite prohibition.
Cadell closed the door of his house in the face of the undesirable
suitor. A note of spite rang out sharp in the older man's reference to
his daughter's note. "The enclosure will make the matter clear."
It did. McTaggart leaned down and pushed both letters into the stove,
watching the flames rise high, turning love into ashes.
Long he sat there, his chin on his hands, his blue eyes staring into
space. The clock ticked on noisily, marking the death of more than
Time. Broken ideals, vanished dreams ... enthusiasm, loyalty; wasted
at an unworthy shrine--his mind veered round at last to Fantine.
Women were all alike, it seemed. Creatures of impulse, without
honour...
There came a knock at his bedroom door--a message from the Marchesa.
He rose to his feet with a curious smile. The French maid was waiting
outside.
McTaggart, pointing to Bethune's letter, explained that business of
importance required an immediate answer. He would be with her mistress
shortly--the time to write a hurried line...
He paused as the girl raised her eyes and, in the darkness of the
passage, slipping an arm round her waist, he stole a kiss from her
fresh mouth, amused at the maid's swift surrender.
Then he passed her and went downstairs. "That's the only way to treat
them!" he said to himself, with no sense of pleasure, but a perverse,
cold disgust.
In the hall he sat down, drew out a sheet of black-edged paper with a
coronet engraved upon it and wrote forthwith to Cadell.
He abided by the parent's decision ... Cydonia was, indeed, young ...
He wished, however, to make it clear that his departure for Italy had
been, by its nature, unavoidable.
His uncle and his cousins were dead. He gave them their full sonorous
titles. And, as heir to their fortune and estates, his presence had
been imperative.
A faint flicker of malice passed over his mouth as he wrote the phrase
and pictured the recipient's eyes starting out of his red face.
Mr. Cadell could rest assured that never again would McTaggart trespass
across the threshold of his house ... He thanked him for past
hospitality.
Then he signed it, read it through, folded it neatly and enclosed it.
Before him lay a bunch of seals and a long stick of black wax. He lit
the taper and, smiling slightly, gathered up the largest of these on
which were the Maramonte arms surmounted by a coronet.
He pressed it down heavily onto the liquid splash of wax.
"It's snobbish"--his lips curled--"but I know Cadell--it will make him
squirm!"
He rang and handed the letter to Beppo. "For the post--presto!"--and
walked upstairs. "May I come in?" He opened the door of his Aunt's
boudoir, his eyes bright with the pain his smiling mouth concealed.
"Ah, mon cher, how late you are!" It might have been Fantine--he said
to himself. But there he misjudged his aunt.
There were only, really, two sorts of women--his bitter reasoning went
on--the innocent and stupid and weak: and the strong ones, clever and
corrupt.
"Sit down and have some wine." From her seat in the low "bergere" she
held out an inviting hand. "Dio! how cold you are!"
For his fingers were icy, his brain hot.
"Never with you, ma chere tante--Impossible." He bent his head to kiss
her fragrant slender wrist--then changed his mind as he caught a glance
from the dark eyes full of coquetry.
For the first time he took advantage of the new relationship, but
without pleasure, merely an outward symbol of the queer recklessness he
felt.
"My business is settled. Are you glad? I'm coming with you to
Fiesole."
She offered him her other cheek with the frank gaiety of a child.
"Tu vois!" She laughed merrily. "But, indeed, I am charmed. And my
sister, too--she will be glad to welcome you." Her face sobered on the
words. She poured him out a glass of wine, watching his smile fade
away. He looked pale and strained now. Shrewdly she probed his change
of mood.
"That 'business'----" she said to herself. "I was right--a woman!--I
wonder where? The boy's wounded--one sees that--let's hope it's only a
passing fancy. All the better for my plan ... at no time is a man so
weak as after a lover's quarrel. But now--one must move cautiously. I
shall wire to Fiesole to-night--Bianca must leave the Convent. It
would be wise to find her there--a surprise to us both." She glanced
at the clock. Then, in her soft, musical voice, she went on with her
speech.
"You will not find it dull, I hope? With my mourning, you understand,
we shall live very quietly. Just you and I and my sister there--and my
brother-in-law, en famille."
"I shall like that," he spoke sincerely. "I'm rather tired of London
life--a little rest will do me good. It's so nice of you to wish to
have me."
He sipped the glass of sweet liqueur he held with a sudden secret
craving for a good strong brandy and soda to steady his quivering
nerves.
For the reaction was coming on. Beneath his armour of wounded pride a
sense of loss was stabbing him.
He did not close his eyes that night.
CHAPTER XVIII
Meanwhile, under grey skies, in a gloomy room near Primrose Hill,
another young man faced (with dismay) a definite tide in his affairs.
He sat in a shabby dressing-gown before a table covered with papers,
sorted now in grim piles of unpaid bills, reading a writ.
Stephen Somerfield stared at it, his weak good-looking face drawn into
lines of hopeless disgust.
"It's a deuce of a mess!" So he summed it up. "What an unlucky beggar
I am!--I thought it was pretty bad, but this"--he threw down the
document--"is the limit!"
For months past he had postponed a thorough survey of his liabilities,
with the shallowness of his character, preferring to ignore the worst.
Even now, when he found himself hopelessly involved in debt, he could
raise no better reason for it than his own "chronic ill-luck!"
With this phrase he stifled his conscience. Where another man would
have realized the necessity for immediate action, he sat there numbed,
half unbelieving, a martyr in his own opinion.
He felt no spur toward work as a means to solve the enigma. He could
only look back and vent his anger on those concerned in his career who
had failed at length to come forward to the assistance of a wastrel.
He cursed his father, his hand clenched, his green eyes full of spite.
He could see him now, still erect despite the heavy burden of years, at
that final painful interview, when heart-sore at his son's extravagance
he had flatly refused further help.
He allowed Stephen two hundred a year, in addition to the eighty pounds
his mother had left him, annually, considering this a fair arrangement,
and had told him crudely to "go and work!"
But work was the last thing Stephen sought. He had had the misfortune
when barely twenty to meet a rich widow, double his age, who had taken
a fancy to the boy.
She had made him a home in her pleasant house, petted and fed him much
in the fashion she would have treated a favourite spaniel, but secretly
amused by his pretensions.
With his sentimental, greenish eyes under their long, fair lashes, his
clear complexion and pointed chin he had seemed not unlike a pretty
girl.
He suited her purpose very well, not important enough to cause scandal,
and this rich and somewhat lonely woman had paid gladly for his
companionship.
It suited Stephen Somerfield, too.
He escorted her everywhere, enjoying the luxury of her car, executing
her commissions, buying theatre tickets and planning facilities for her
continual round of pleasure.
But she never made the signal mistake of sharing her purse with the
man. There were no "perquisites" to be gleaned, save an occasional
lonely "fiver" handed over for Bridge at her house.
She paid his expenses only when with him; and, when she died suddenly,
after a bare two days' illness, every penny of her money went back to
her husband's people.
Before this disaster fell, Stephen had been caught up in the movement,
then new, of Woman's Suffrage, in his liege lady's train.
He turned it to account in the lean days that followed, glad to augment
his slender income by becoming the paid secretary to one of the most
prominent branches.
Here fortune sent him Mrs. Uniacke, eager, hypnotized in turn by the
shrill cry of woman's wrongs, but ignorant of business matters, glad to
turn to him for advice. Little by little he strengthened the tie,
slipping into her daily life; inwardly sore at the "chronic ill-luck"
which forced him to accept her poor hospitality after a course of Ritz
dinners, yet too shrewd to miss the economy, under the present heavy
cloud.
But nothing could check his love of show. He ran up tailor bills
galore; hatters and bootmakers learned to know him, credit was failing
everywhere. Now the day of reckoning had dawned, tradesmen's patience
at an end.
Something must be done at once. He swore moodily at his bills.
He got up from his seat at the table, went to the cupboard, found a
cork-screw and opened a bottle of brandy there with this typical
reflection:
"I'm jolly glad now I ordered a dozen! A stroke of luck meeting
Charlie like that..." He referred to a school friend of narrow means
who had lately entered a wine merchant's business and had run against
Stephen in the street and parted from him with an order.
He filled his glass up with water--the grocer had flatly refused to
deliver further syphons to his credit--and, on his way back to the
table, he paused for a moment thoughtfully to study his pale face in
the glass.
"I wonder?" He smiled at the reflection, smoothing back his sleek hair.
"You never know ... I've a mind to try it!--Women are queer
kittle-cattle. It's just on the cards she'd rise to it. Anyhow, it
can do no harm."
He sat down, drank thirstily, then took up his pen and with knit brows.
"Dear Mrs. Uniacke," he began at the top of a plain sheet of paper.
(No date and no address; he was not without a certain method!)
"Will you excuse my dining with you? I'm so sorry and disappointed,
but the fact is I am faced to-night with harassing business of my own
and really quite unfit for company.
"For some time past I've longed to tell you of all these painful
worries of mine. You're so awfully kind and _understanding_..."
He broke off and drained his glass.
"She'll like that--they always do!" then picked up his pen again.
"I'm really in a dreadful hole. I think I explained to you once that
my father has never been quite fair to me--a hard man, fond of his
money--and my sister is his favourite child. I lost my mother years
ago and have no one to turn to in my trouble except yourself--so I hope
you'll forgive me--but I'm feeling so utterly wretched to-night.
"The fact is I can't go on living in London on my means. It's
impossible with my small salary and the result is pressing debts.
"I'm seriously thinking of cutting it all----" ("She won't like
that!"--he smiled as he wrote) "and trying again in a new
land--Australia--perhaps, or Canada. This country is played out--the
competition too strong--and, unless I can see my way clear to
raising----"
he paused--"a hundred pounds ... (I daren't ask more at the start, and
this would prove a useful sop...) I'm afraid I shall have to throw up
my work and, what is more painful still--to say good-bye to my few real
friends and start afresh overseas.
"I've written and written to my father!--but he simply ignores my
prayer for help. If only my mother were alive how different life would
be for me!"
He smiled sourly over the phrase. For Mrs. Somerfield's early death
had been accelerated by drink--one of the many crushing blows his
hard-working father had survived.
"I know," he started to write again, "you will treat this letter as
_strictly private_. I am bound to come in for a good round sum when my
father dies, and with help _now_ I could guarantee to return the
loan--with the usual interest, of course.
"I feel I have not the slightest excuse for turning to you in my
need--but I can't bear to think of parting with the one true friend
life has brought me.
"You have been _more_ than ... a sister to me (I can't say
'Mother'--it's too absurd), and, if ever a man were grateful for it,
that man is
"Your ... broken,
"STEPHEN."
He read it through thoughtfully, smiling a little at the finale.
"'Broke' would be better!--but, on the whole, I think it's a pretty
useful epistle."
He fastened and sealed it carefully, then glanced at the clock and rang
the bell.
"It ought to catch Mrs. Uniacke before Jill gets back from college."
An untidy maid answered the summons, thrusting her head round the door,
with a soiled collar, elaborate hair and a certain pretty anaemic
fairness.
"Well--what now, Mr. Stephen?"
"Come here, Letty." He beckoned to her. "Would you like to do
something for me?" He smiled, laying a hand on her arm. The girl
coloured at his touch.
"You're always wantin' somethin'," she said.
"And get it sometimes--eh, Letty? There--don't be cross! Give us a
kiss..."
But she drew herself away from him with a toss of her averted head.
"I'm not that sort--I've told you so." Her voice was sullen, her face
strained.
"You've no call to talk like that--I'd lose my place if the Missus
knew--it ain't fair..."
She wavered suddenly under the sentimental eyes.
"Well--I'll do it. A letter, I s'pose? To that 'ouse in the Terrace
where you go night after night to meet yer ... 'Jill'!" She brought
the name out with a snap.
"Wrong this time----" he still smiled, looking up at the moody face,
faintly coloured under its curls of puffed-out, ashen hair.
"Jill is no friend of mine, my dear. She hates me--and it's mutual!
This is a letter to her mother--business for the Woman's Cause."
The girl brightened visibly.
"Well--I 'ope we gets the vote. It's time we did and better wages.
I'm sick of being called 'Skivvy! Skivvy!' by every shop boy in Chalk
Farm. We'll make _them_ 'skivvies' by-and-bye! I'm tired o'
men--they're all alike! They gets the fun while we slave--it's a dog's
life to be a girl!"
"Not always." Stephen answered softly. "Not when you're pretty--eh,
Letty?"
He placed the letter in her hand, and, stooping quickly, stole a kiss.
She sprang back with a little cry. Then stood there, her lip
quivering, tears not far from her hazel eyes.
"I told you ... I wouldn't. Never again!"
"Oh! a kiss!--what's a kiss?" He shrugged his shoulders
contemptuously. "There--run away--can't you see I'm busy?" He sat
down again at the table.
For a moment the child hesitated--for child she was by the test of
time--love and resentment struggling within her; then, with tight lips,
she flung away.
"Good Lord!" Stephen yawned. "Bother the girl. I've turned her head.
I'd like to leave these beastly rooms--only there's that confounded
bill. And Letty's useful, after a fashion."
His eyes fell on the fire. He knew she stole many a lump of coal when
his meagre scuttle failed--pitying the improvident man she had made the
hero of her dreams; under the spell of his green eyes and careless
familiarity.
Meanwhile, as he sat and smoked one of Mrs. Uniacke's cigarettes, with
which he had carefully filled his case after his last meal with her,
the servant crossed Primrose Hill, through the damp evening air, and,
gaining the terrace near the park, delivered her lord's begging letter.
Jill had not yet returned home. Roddy was far away at school and a
silence hung about the house with its dingy blinds and fogged windows.
Mrs. Uniacke was upstairs, mending the edge of a shabby skirt that had
suffered during a rainy day from a long tramp in a procession.
Indeed, the wear and tear of 'the Cause' reflected itself in her very
clothes; but the thin face, with its bird-like look of brightness and
vivid emotion, its high cheek-bones, and quick flush, was filled with
the inner fire of hope.
They were getting nearer to their goal. She said the words softly
aloud as she bent her frail shoulders over the bed, pinning together
the frayed edges.
"Pioneers, O Pioneers..." She could hear the throb of marching steps,
see at last the faint line of the distant hills where freedom lay.
What mattered, then, if the road were long, and the sharp rock cut her
weary feet, when on the horizon a new day dawned--an era of justice for
her sex?
Something achieved, something done...
There came a knock at her bedroom door and Lizzie entered with a letter
between a dirty finger and thumb.
An odd premonition of disaster seized Mrs. Uniacke as she took it. She
waited for the servant to go before she broke the careful seal. And,
as she read, she gave a gasp. Stephen--leaving her? ... deserting the
Cause...? Here was a shattering of her dreams, a swift blow out of the
dark.
She left her sewing and sat down, the letter open on her knees.
One definite thought held her now--this must be stopped--at any cost!
But where was she to find the money? She crossed to the table by the
window, unlocked a drawer and drew out her pass-book, turning the pages
feverishly.
There was Roddy, clamouring for clothes, household bills in abeyance,
Jill's music lessons to pay ... Then, like a flash, it came to her.
Her diamond star! Yes--that must go.
Anything--to keep Stephen!
She felt like a man who for many months has moved on crutches and finds
himself suddenly bereft of them, helpless, without support ...
But was it fair?--fair to Jill. The star had been her husband's
gift--she had meant to leave it to her child.
The fight began. In reality, it resolved itself into a choice between
the pair--Stephen, her friend, and Jill ... that "independent" daughter.
The adjective betrayed her mood.
For, proud as she was in her mother's heart of the bright young girl
with her clever brain, the rankling fact was hidden there--her
offspring had outgrown the nest.
She could not realize that the age was mainly responsible for the lack
of what she called "proper respect"--that mid-Victorian subservience.
She held that what _she_ considered fit was the natural guidance for
the girl; that the latter should shape her every thought in the mould
of the past generation.
Yet she, herself, had broken loose. It did not occur to her to weigh
the question of militant suffrage in the same scales her own mother had
used...
Marriage had given her the right to an independent judgment, she
thought--the full authority of the woman.
She did not see that life had changed. That the youth of to-day
asserted their claim to a freedom of thought unknown in her time,
upheld by a sounder education.
She hated in secret the very word. It had been sufficient in her day
for a girl to possess a smattering of surface knowledge from
old-fashioned primers. A little French, history, grammar, needlework
and "good manners": of music enough to produce "pieces" when required
for home consumption. But no training for the brain--little logic or
reasoning power--the arts neglected for fear they should bring an
alarming hint of Bohemianism. And "what mother says is right." This
was an axiom, weighty, approved; stifling all further argument, the
Alpha and Omega of the question.
Jill's intensely modern attitude, fostered by her college life, her
alarming tendency to revoke old standards of convention--even her
religious doubts, honestly faced, shocked her mother and threatened her
authority. She mourned in secret over her child.
Stephen, now--her face relaxed--was always attentive, glad to learn ...
With a charming courtesy he bent to her will, respecting her every
opinion.
With her delicate purity of intention it never occurred to her to see
that the fact of sex was involved here, Nature at work in her hidden
ways.
She would have shrunk from the suggestion that it flattered her woman's
heart to find that a man, much younger than herself, could turn to her
for inspiration.
And then there was the link between them--'the Cause'--daily growing
stronger, and Jill's open scepticism, that cut her mother to the quick.
Roddy, of course, was only a boy! Mrs. Uniacke smiled faintly. You
expected your son to break away early or later from "home" opinions.
Never once in this tangled maze did she see the weakness of her
position: a champion of woman's rights--refusing the same to her only
daughter.
Again she read Stephen's letter. Then, with a determined hand, she
drew her cheque book nearer to her. The parasite had gained the day.
She told herself it was for the Cause. The faint suspicion of
dishonesty she thrust rigidly from her mind, realizing subconsciously
that to place her action on other grounds was to open up a dangerous
question.
But, for the first time in her life, sentiment stole into the
friendship. The fault--if it were--was an error of love; she could not
bear to part from Stephen.
Then she raised her head and listened, hearing the front door open and
shut, and Jill's voice, happy, young:
"Mother!--Mother ... Where are you, Mother?"
She slipped the cheque book in the drawer with the open letter and
turned the key, her cheeks flushed, her head high. She did not need
Jill's advice!
"Here I am----" she went to the stairs and the girl raced up, two steps
at a time.
"Oh, Mother--I've got such a lot to tell you--it's been such a lovely
day!"
Impulsively her arms went out, seizing the slight, waiting figure in a
childish hug, her fresh mouth pressed upon her mother's cheek.
"There!--I'm feeling so happy. I got 'Excellent' for Ancient History
and I'm top at Algebra this week. And Judy Severn's giving a
party--and she wants me to come and bring a man. Peter's away, but I
thought, perhaps, I'd ask Mr. Bethune--what do you think? It's on the
9th. A real dance." Madly she waltzed her mother round.
"Stop, Jill!" Mrs. Uniacke laughed--the girl's gaiety was infectious.
She dropped breathless into a chair, Jill on her knees by her side.
"Isn't it ripping?" She pulled off her cap and threw it neatly on the
bed, her dark, ruffled hair like a cloud round her excited, pretty face.
"Jill--your hat!" Her mother frowned.
"Well, it's so old--it can't hurt--and rabbit skin!"
Her happy laugh took the sting out of the words.
"But that reminds me--about my frock...? I've not a single thing to
wear."
"And what about your white muslin?" An anxious look crept into Jill's
eyes at the note in Mrs. Uniacke's voice.
"Oh--Mother--I _can't_ ... not to Judy's party! And it's _so_
short--up to my knees." She sighed. "I wish I'd stop growing. I let
it down, with a false hem, you remember--when Aunt Elizabeth came here?"
"It will have to do." Unconsciously, her mother glanced across the
room to the locked drawer where the cheque lay, signed and payable to
Stephen.
Jill drew away slightly. She clasped her hands round her knees, with a
sombre face, staring down at her mended shoes and a darn in her
stocking.
"Then I can't go." Her voice was hard. "I won't wear that old frock.
It's so tight over the chest I can hardly breathe." She bit her lips.
Mrs. Uniacke, watching her, wavered. "You could make a fichu, couldn't
you? I could find you a piece of lace, perhaps--and add a frill?"
Jill scowled.
"Sounds like an early Victorian picture." She rose to her feet. "With
a crinoline and black mittens--thanks, awfully. I'll tell Judy the
party's off."
This was the mood her mother disliked--slangy and impertinent. So she
summed it up to herself, resenting her daughter's manner.
"It's entirely your own fault if you do. I am quite prepared to help
you, Jill. We could easily alter the frock between us. It isn't as if
you were really 'out.'"
Jill gave her a quick glance.
"I could make one myself for thirty shillings--I know I could. And it
isn't much. I haven't had a new dress this year..." Her grey eyes
were wistful.
"It can't be done." At this fresh attack Mrs. Uniacke's mouth
tightened--"there's Roddy to think of beside yourself..."
"To say nothing of Stephen's expenses?"
The words escaped Jill against her will. Little she guessed their
significance, but Mrs. Uniacke flushed crimson. For a moment she could
have boxed Jill's ears.
"That will do." She turned away and, with hands that shook, took up
her work, leaning over the torn skirt, her back turned to her daughter.
Jill closed the door behind her. She stood for a moment on the stairs,
her dark brows drawn together, her mouth a narrow scarlet line.
"Oh!" she said--"I'd like ... I'd like----" she stamped her foot--"to
_murder_ Stephen!"
PART III
"Flower o' the peach
Death for us all and his own life for each."