The Man with the Double Heart Part 4

"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--pa.s.sing 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 Devons.h.i.+re--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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sed 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 st.i.tches 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 st.i.tch. 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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.