The Man with the Double Heart Part 11

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 Princ.i.p.al. But nothing happened. At five o'clock I went down from my last lecture and pa.s.sed 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 bl.u.s.tering 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 cla.s.s.'"

"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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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.