The Man with the Double Heart Part 60

"I can't ... _You_ go!"

He laughed, happy.

"Now, then..." stooping down, he picked her up in his arms. Her loosened hair fell about him, her bruised hands clasped his neck.

He felt then he could have started and fought the battle through again.

He sheltered her, as best he could, striding along toward the car.

The chauffeur, with a white face, helped her in and sprang to his place.

"Now drive like h.e.l.l!" said McTaggart.

The man needed no second bidding.

Off they swept, past the church, up and up towards the sky.

McTaggart leaned back with a sigh as the shouts died away behind them.

Jill was there--safe--beside him. He thanked G.o.d for the fact. Also for a good fight, as he looked down at his bleeding knuckles.

"Well--Jill?" he turned to her. "You all right?"

But she started up, with a shrill cry:

"Peter--your _face_!..."

Her grey eyes were wide with fear. She gave a little gasp, relaxed, and fell back in a dead faint. For her brave spirit had failed her at last. The sight of the blood still trickling down from the open cut on his smeared cheek had finished the strain on her overwrought nerves.

Nature, outraged, had claimed her due, sending oblivion to the spirit in the interest of the taxed flesh.

"Jill--what is it?" McTaggart, frightened, bent over her white face.

Mechanically he wiped his own, conscious at last of his injury.

The chauffeur turned his head at the cry.

"The lady ill? I don't wonder! I expect she's only fainted, sir. A nasty business for any man, let alone a woman, sir."

He felt somewhat a hero himself for the part he had played, true to promise.

"Another chap would 'ave driven off"--he soliloquized--"but there ... I couldn't!

"A deep one?--that 'e is!--never a word about 'is girl. But Lor'--'e can use 'is fists. 'E gave Ap Jones a fair knock-out--Serve 'im right too for mauling a lady--not that I hold with this Suffrage business, still"--he switched on the brake--"a lady's a lady, when all's said."

Then out aloud, as the car shot down into sight of the rock-bound valley:

"We'll be coming soon to the Falls of Ghyll. Some water may revive 'er, sir."

Meanwhile McTaggart propped her up, an arm around the limp shoulders.

Never had she seemed so dear ... He felt a lump rise in his throat.

"Jill?" He whispered the appeal, but the girl was out of the reach of his voice, far away in those dark lands, whereof no man knows the boundary.

Tenderly he drew together the torn folds of her blouse which showed beneath it a white slip threaded with a narrow ribbon.

He felt a chivalrous pity to see the disorder of her simple dress, and, drawing the pin out of his tie, he tried clumsily, to repair it.

But as he did so he gave a start, a new fear gripping him.

For something red gleamed beneath the thin and tattered material. It looked like a great drop of blood against the fairness of her skin!

He set his teeth. Deliberately, but with unconscious reverence, he drew down the frill of lace where the ribbon held the folds together.

Then he gave a gasp of relief. Into his blue eyes came the light of love victorious; infinite wonder flooded his soul with tenderness.

For there it lay, in the soft hollow between the delicate curves of her breast, in ruby gla.s.s with its lover's knot, his "fairing"--the little "double heart"!

CHAPTER XXVII

The night was close and sultry. A sudden longing for air drove McTaggart into the deserted Park. His luggage was packed, and early next day he would start for the North and his round of visits there.

The Uniackes were at Worthing, and McTaggart's thoughts instinctively turned to Jill as he left the path and took a chair in an empty row beyond the Achilles Statue.

The girl's initial venture as a Militant Suffragette had left no lasting trace physically. But mentally it had marked a definite turning point in her views on the subject that engrossed her home.

She had gone to Cluar expecting resistance from the law and possible rough treatment at the hands of men; but the sight of fellow-women, losing all control, violently turning against their own s.e.x, and the utter absence of that esprit de corps--so strong a feature of her college life--had astounded and revolted her to the depths of her soul.

She argued thus: If a movement that held as its primary cause the advancement of women produced not only a breach with the opposite s.e.x but civil war among themselves, what would be the state of a government where the rival factions _each_ held the vote and in which the fighting element despised the prevailing laws of the land?

Was Arson a slight weapon of offence? Or a.s.sa.s.sination, risked by bombs?

It was Anarchy none the less, the offenders being mere women.

The present scheme of government might be open to various abuses, but at least it was a rule of order, upholding the laws it sought to enforce and the safety of the citizen.

In the long journey home, Jill had threshed out in this fashion the pros and cons of Woman's Suffrage with McTaggart; and needless to say the man had approved the conclusion she reached at last. She turned her back on the "Cause."

Now as he sat in the shadows thrown by the high trees over the gra.s.s, hearing the leaves, already falling, rustle faintly overhead, he smiled as he conjured up her face with its indignant wide gray eyes.

They had reached her home late that night, and, for the first time, McTaggart had realized that Mrs. Uniacke cared deeply for her child.

The instincts of motherhood had risen supreme over her ardour for the Cause. She had cried aloud at the sight of Jill with her bruised arms and tattered clothes.

Bitterly, too, she had blamed Stephen for deserting the girl in the hour of danger.

She had placed her daughter in his care and the story, tersely told by McTaggart, of their meeting with that prudent person in the coffee-room of the Commercial Hotel, placidly eating an excellent lunch, had roused her genuine indignation.

For Stephen had been "caught out"! The sight of McTaggart, dusty, blood-stained, the cut on his forehead hastily plastered by the local chemist, escorting Jill, herself still white, bruised and shaken, her dress in ribbons, without a hat, standing in the narrow doorway, had shattered that young man's calm a.s.surance.