The Man with the Double Heart Part 38

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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s 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 doc.u.ment--"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 a.s.sistance 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s.

"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 hara.s.sing 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_..."