The Man with the Double Heart Part 21

"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 sh.o.r.es 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sent, 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 part.i.tion.

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 emanc.i.p.ation 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.