The Man with the Double Heart Part 53

"When the light fades ... on the turn of the tide ... there's the Lucky Moon and the Dream of your life...!"

The "Dream of his life"? He shook himself as though to break the uncanny spell.

"What nonsense it is! I expect she tells the same tale to every man."

But he knew in his heart he was not unmoved. There was magic in the chosen words.

The Dream of his life...?

With wistful eyes he tried in vain to pierce the veil, knowing behind a vision lay, sweet--unguessed--the face of Love.

CHAPTER XXIV

"Now--what do you think of my Roof Garden?"

Lady Leason turned to McTaggart with a conscious air of triumph.

"Isn't it nice?--and I planned it myself!" She was like a child with a new toy, her still young face eager and bright under her soft gray hair.

"I think it _perfect_," said McTaggart, warmly. He glanced around him as he spoke at the awning, striped with green, the basket chairs, gay red cushions, and the coa.r.s.e rush matting beneath his feet.

For the leaded roof of the smoking-room, that was built out into the garden, had been transformed, with the help of green lattice work and great tubs filled with geraniums and daisies, into a sort of lounge, protected by the striped tent cloth.

"I'm growing golden hops in this box at the edge to twine up the supports and along the lattices, and in the Spring I'm going to have no end of bulbs and turn that horrid bank down there into a rockery."

She pointed to the patch of discolored gra.s.s below them, where a dingy wall completed her small domain. Above it one caught a glimpse of the trees, in the distant Park, and the evening sky, where stars already were beginning to steal out, one by one.

"Sit down--both of you"--she turned to her guests. "And talk while I make you some Turkish coffee. Here are some cigarettes--those are cigars..."

They settled themselves in the basket chairs, watching their hostess turn up the flame, under the bright copper pan, and measure out the coffee, which filled the air with its fragrance, delicate and refreshing.

"Have you seen Mrs. Fleming lately?" The Bishop addressed McTaggart.

"I think the last time I met you was at the Cadells' house."

"Not for many months," the other replied--"I've been abroad, travelling about. What sort of man is Euan Fleming?"

Lady Leason looked up quickly.

"Take care what you say, Bertram. Don't make Peter jealous! I thought"--she added mischievously--"that it was a case _there_..."

At her merry gesture toward him McTaggart laughed.

"Only a mild calf-love affair! But I always imagined she'd marry a t.i.tle."

"Well," said the Bishop, "I rather believe it will come to that in the end. I _hear_--but it's quite between ourselves--that he's down on the next list of Birthday honours."

"Indeed? A useful man to the party?"

McTaggart saw a twinkle come into the prominent short-sighted eyes.

"Hardly as a speaker perhaps. But he has a valuable gift--of silence!

Very necessary on occasions."

Lady Leason smiled subtly. "And, of course," proceeded the Bishop hurriedly--"the Cadells are very wealthy people. With his father-in-law to finance him, and a beautiful wife, he stands a chance of being Lord Fleming some day--of a mythical Castle like Laura's friends ... I forget the name."

"D'you mean 'the Crumpets?'"

The hostess laughed, mischief in her hazel eyes.

"Peter--haven't you heard?----it's too quaint!--I must tell you." She stirred the coffee again, then started with her story.

"I don't know if you ever met a dark, excitable little woman, the wife of a big engineer called Crumpe? She always came to my parties, frightfully overdressed and hung round with pearls like a Tecla advertis.e.m.e.nt. You surely must remember her? Well, this year he was made a peer. He'd given a park somewhere to the people and was a large subscriber to party funds.

"Little Mrs. Crumpe was in her glory! She cut all her old friends, drawing a strict line round Belgravia and Mayfair. And what d'you imagine they took for a name? We'd always called them 'the Crumpets,'

you know--it seemed to suit them. He had such a 'b.u.t.tery' manner! And now they're Lord and Lady Quinningborough of Castle Normantayne"--she choked.

Tears of mirth stood in her eyes as she leaned, still laughing, toward McTaggart.

"It sounds like feudal towers, and a moat, and a drawbridge. But it _isn't_--that's the pure joy! It's not a house at all, it seems, but the name of a tiny village where Crumpet's father owned a farm!"

McTaggart roared, and the Bishop's charity was not proof against the infection of her mirth.

"Really, it is remarkable, the modern mania for a t.i.tle." He took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them, still faintly shaken with laughter.

McTaggart inwardly congratulated himself (and not for the first time) on his determination to drop his foreign honours on landing in England.

("A fine a.s.s I should look now, posing as an Italian Marquis among friends who have known me since college days as Peter McTaggart"--he smiled at the thought.)

His princ.i.p.al trouble had been with Mario, but the latter's ignorance of the English tongue and the knowledge that if he talked it would mean his dismissal had made him obedient, albeit sulkily.

The fear of a slip had dissuaded McTaggart himself from much talk with Jill on his Sienese inheritance. She knew he had some property there, but, beyond this, very little. Bethune was the only man wholly in the secret. Luckily for McTaggart, it had escaped the papers, filled at that period with a royal marriage. The Scotch side of his character, cautious and reserved, stood him in good stead, and besides this he had a horror of sn.o.bism, somewhat rare in these days.

"It seems a pity," he said now, "that honours are so frequent--or rather, I should say, so easily earned. So many splendid men in the past have won them by deeds of heroism, for fine administration and solid work done in the interests of the Empire. Men _worthy_ I mean, without any question of _s.d_.

"Of course one knows lots of people--dear people too--who deserve them, every inch--like the Cheltenhams... But when a t.i.tle's frankly bought, it seems to take away from the dignity of those others and the men to come. There should be a special kind of distinction to mean money--We talk of 'Law Lords'--for instance--why not Finance Lords? And Lords of Silence"--he smiled--"like Fleming. Not the 'Golden Fleece' but the 'Golden Tongue'!"

Lady Leason nodded her head approvingly, engrossed just then with the final process of the coffee.

McTaggart turned to the Bishop.

"By the way," he said, "talking of money, how's that company of yours?

I looked up Schliff's record as far as I could, and--as I wrote you--it was hardly rea.s.suring, though I didn't care to say too much in my letter."

"I quite understood"--the Bishop sighed--"in these days it doesn't do.

But I was _most_ grateful. I'm afraid the matter is going from bad to worse. I hear privately they're contemplating a call on the shares--five shillings; despite an optimistic speech packed with promises made by Schliff at the General Meeting. And--would you believe it?--only yesterday I came across an old friend I hadn't seen for years--up for this Congress from the North of England--and he'd been buying shares at _two pounds apiece_! Why, it's simply infamous!

Of course he'd taken them from Schliff himself on _his_ advice and they're selling now on the Stock Exchange for nine and sixpence!"