The Man with the Double Heart Part 9

Many happy returns of the day. I'm awfully sorry your present's not ready, but I've been so busy all this term. I'll explain better when we meet and I hope to send it you next week.

Wishing you no end of luck.

Yours affectionately, JILL."

McTaggart laid the letter down, a sudden glow in the "double heart."

He was pleased that the child should remember the date.

His birthday? Why--of course, it was!

"And I'll take her out and give her a treat. By Jove, there's the car--it's Sat.u.r.day too. I'll send her a wire to say I'm coming--she'll find it when she gets back from school."

Under the spur of awakened energy the old depression fell away. To his surprise he found himself singing, midway through his bath.

CHAPTER VI

Jill herself opened the door.

"Come in and have some coffee," her eyes pa.s.sed from McTaggart to the big gray car. "Doesn't it look jolly! I'm longing to go in it, but I'm rather bothered too--I'll tell you why..."

She led the way through the hall into the dining-room, where the remains of a frugal lunch on a much-darned cloth were scattered around a dying fern in a tarnished bra.s.s pot, sole ornament of the long bare table.

The room had a forlorn look, with its dingy, crooked blinds, the mantel-piece littered with circulars above the feeble gas fire. It had the unhomelike air one a.s.sociates with lodgings--a place to be used, not loved, and shunned when meals were over.

"Now don't say you can't come." McTaggart frowned severely--"because I mean to carry you off whether you like it or not. I've got the car for the day, and we'll go right into the country and have tea somewhere--at a little village pub!"

"Lovely!" Jill clapped her hands. She poured out a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup of a thin and cloudy mixture from a chipped coffee-pot. "There you are!--Sugar? The only thing is I'd promised to go and see the baker's wife."

McTaggart laughed at her serious face.

"Oh, bother the baker's wife! Surely for one day you might relax your ... social efforts. Think of poor me."

"Poor you!" Jill mocked--"I shall have to go there first if we can fit it in. She's been so ill--it's rather a sad story, but I'll tell you if you like."

"Nothing infectious, I hope?" McTaggart stirred his muddy coffee; then, manfully, took a great gulp.

"Oh, dear, no." Jill's voice was calm. "She's had a baby, that's all." There came a little pause.

"It's dead too," the girl went on in clear, steady tones. "That's the cruel part. It needn't have been."

"No?" McTaggart felt somewhat at a loss. But Jill was plainly absorbed in the simple tragedy. She leaned towards him, elbows planted on the table, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes far away.

"She was _such_ a nice little thing!--I've known her for years. She used to come with her grandmother, who did upholstery work, on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and give her a hand. She, herself, was employed at a laundry and engaged to the baker even then.

"For five long years they saved all they could and at last they were married and took a tiny house next door to where our charwoman lives.

It's not the baker himself, you know, but one of his employes who makes the bread--he's the head man. They _were_ so happy, and then--all this trouble came!

"The 'bakers' went out on strike--d'you remember it?--and, bit by bit, all their savings melted away. The husband was worried out of his life. He couldn't go back on his pals, you see, or find any other job to do; and so at last his wife returned to the laundry and begged for some employment again.

"There happened to be a vacancy in the ironing room just then--far too heavy work for a delicate woman!--but the rate of pay is higher there, so, pluckily, she took it on. She kept this a secret from her husband and gave the latter to understand it was just a matter of light mending, without dangerous exertion. And in this way she earned enough to keep them afloat to the end of the strike. Then she collapsed--broke down utterly!--and her baby was born, before its time.

The baker nearly went off his head when the true story leaked out. To think of her, with those heavy irons, on her feet all day in the heat and steam! ... I call her a real heroine." Jill's gray eyes flashed as she spoke, then softened as she added, sadly:

"But the baby died. It hadn't a chance, so the doctor said, and she was so ill. Now she's simply broken-hearted at losing it and can't pick up. I heard about it from our charwoman and promised to go and see her to-day. I must, Peter." Her voice was firm. "You won't mind if I call there first?"

"Of course not----" said McTaggart gravely. He felt a trifle taken aback by this pitiful, sordid chapter of life from the lips of his little friend: a man's discomfort, too, at the thought of her youthful knowledge of matters he deemed better kept from her awhile. He realised with sudden force the outlook, purely practical, of the growing generation of girls. Healthy, but somewhat startling too, this determination to face the facts of life in defiance of old traditions.

Jill still sat there, chin on hands, absorbed in the problem offered to her by this contrast in the life of the poor with that of the well-to-do around him.

Serenely devoid of self-consciousness she looked up suddenly at McTaggart, meeting the kindly blue eyes with a faint trouble in their depths.

"I wish these strikes could be avoided. They seem to bring such misery. I can't understand life at all!--the hopeless suffering involved..." Her voice held a note of rebellion.

"Everyone seems to be fighting hard, not for the present but the future--for something they'll never live to see!--ruining their own lives meanwhile. Supposing these strikers get their way--higher wages and all that--" she waved her hand with a broad gesture--"D'you think the generations ahead will be contented in their turn? Or will they be fighting for more, too? I don't see any end to it!"

"Well, I wouldn't worry if I were you," McTaggart nodded his head wisely. "I expect it's always been the same. It's what we're pleased to call 'Progress'.

"I think your plan's the best, my dear. To help and comfort where you can; and leave the larger questions alone for those who have really studied the matter.

"We'll go and see the baker's wife, and--can't we take her something, Jill? Food--or money? what d'you think?"

"Not money!" Jill winced. "They aren't really paupers, you know.

It's so easy to hurt the pride of the poor--the _working_ poor. We might get her some flowers."

"Well, come along then. Thanks for my coffee." He rose to his feet.

"You'll want a thick coat, old girl, the wind's in the North--but a good blow will do you good--scatter the cobwebs."

As they pa.s.sed into the hall he asked after Mrs. Uniacke.

"She's not very well." Jill still looked troubled. "She's gone to Reading for a suffrage meeting."

"I say--did you tell her about the baker's wife?" He tucked the rug closely around her as she settled herself in the car.

"Oh, yes." She gave him a comical glance, half-annoyed, half-amused.

"Can't you guess what she said?"

But Peter was winding up the engine. He sprang back into his seat and the girl went on, raising her voice above the noisy throbbing note.

"She said--'You must try and win her at once to the Cause. Of course when _we_ get the vote, all this will be put to rights.' They always think of the ma.s.s, you see, never of the individual. I suppose there's some truth in it." She paused doubtfully--"I wonder?"

"Well, I don't!" said McTaggart shortly. "I'm not very keen on present day politics, but I think when women are allowed to add a new party it will be a case of confusion worse confounded! So don't you go and get involved, Jill. You keep an open mind. I'd hate to see you in any way mixed up in this militant folly."

"Well--I wish Mother weren't. It's simply killing her. She hasn't the nerve for these perpetual scenes."

They slowed down at a corner where a flower-woman stood with a basket of yellow chrysanthemums.