The Man with the Double Heart Part 5

But here commercial instinct failed him at the start. No longer could he wholly depend on himself. He lacked the inherited knowledge, the slow experience and the everyday atmosphere of a cultured home.

Advisers could be bought, but were they trustworthy? It maddened him, this closed door to a rich man's clue. Suddenly he became sensitive to a sneer. Above all he dreaded the smile of the connoisseur.

He realized that a partner was what he required, and for the first time began to think of a wife. Fate threw Helen Greaves at this juncture in his path. He found her in a small hotel upon the East coast with her youngest pupil, whose health required care, and was interested immediately when he heard her discussing the merits of a certain picture with her charge.

Their tables, side by side, in the deserted dining room gave him the opportunity he sought. An acquaintance was formed and friends.h.i.+p ripened quickly between the curious, dissimilar pair.

Past her first youth, withered, austere, Helen Greaves nevertheless possessed a certain charm: the impress of the cla.s.s she had lived with and served, that knowledge of the cultured world which Ebenezer lacked.

Moreover, for many years, she had taught the daughters of a certain peer; in a well-known house full of art treasures, inherited and added to by the present owner; and with her quick brain and love of the beautiful had become herself no mean connoisseur.

She had travelled largely with her pupils, had learned to criticize and discriminate. Here was a woman after Ebenezer's heart, grounded in that hobby he longed to make his own.

The object of his visit to the little sea-side town had been to attend a neighbouring sale where the death of the owner had thrown on the market a certain much-discussed old master.

Impressed by Helen Greaves' obvious knowledge, he begged her to accompany him, and under her advice he had bought that bronze group now in his London house, somehow overlooked by the dealers at the sale.

Without her encouragement he would have pa.s.sed it by, misled by the absurdly low price, and even at the time he made the purchase he wondered to himself if she were not at fault.

On his return, however, he showed it to a dealer, and found to his amazement that Helen's ac.u.men had secured him an undoubted treasure.

For the first time he tasted the peculiar deep joy of the bargain hunter in his hour of triumph.

Then and there he made up his mind. Here was the partner his new life entailed. And the realization of all he had to offer, with the fact of her present subordinate position, swung him back again on to his old pedestal, with a returned consciousness of mastery. For the man had to reign. It was no pa.s.sing weakness. Abdication meant paralysis of his powers.

In cold-blooded terms, void of sentiment, he had worded a letter to Helen Greaves. No deed of partners.h.i.+p was ever made more clear than this formal proposal of marriage! Six months later they were man and wife, launched on a honeymoon planned to include a thorough course of study at the foreign galleries.

It speaks for the character of the ex-governess that this business alliance was sealed in a church. For Ebenezer was a staunch Nonconformist and lived and died loyal to his creed.

Slowly but surely in his wife's clever hands he mastered the intricaces of his new cult. He came to the fore as an ardent collector, and, to crown his success, Cydonia appeared.

With the advent of her child, Helen's ambition found a new outlet. She became more social, seeking to force those doors where money, though a help, could not purchase right of admission.

Here she found a new factor in her Church. Always religiously inclined, she turned to Charity--whose cloak nowadays shelters many "climbers"--poured forth money in big bazaars, and fed the clergy, who flocked to her house. Ebenezer grumbled, but bent before her will.

Little by little her name appeared as patroness of the pleasure schemes devised to "help the poor." She was sought for on committees, pestered for donations, patronized herself by that upper cla.s.s, which used her and smiled at her and let her drift among them.

But Helen Cadell had come to stay. Slowly and quietly she strengthened her position, inconspicuous, yet ever to the fore, looking to that day when her daughter should step as though by right on this hallowed ground.

The only flaw in the long campaign was the sleeping soul of Cydonia.

For as the years pa.s.sed over her head, and her mother watched with anxious eyes, it seemed to her that her offspring lacked that latent force which in both her parents had spurred them on to fulfill themselves.

She had no energy, no enthusiasm. Beautiful, pa.s.sive, sweetly good, no one could truly call her clever. Beneath her lily-white, delicate grace, she was just a healthy young animal, content to exist, without ambition, to eat and walk and deeply sleep.

And watching this, with her restless mind, the mother began to pin her hope on the element she herself had scorned, the stimulus of awakening love. It stung her pride at times to feel that a daughter of hers could lack brain power! Education had been her all--the motive force of her strenuous life.

And now Minerva, with wise cold eyes, must be set aside for the G.o.d of Love. With ever the risk of the sacrifice: that his altar might s.n.a.t.c.h from her her child.

Something of this pa.s.sed through her mind as Helen stood before the gla.s.s, mechanically smoothing her hair in its straight gray bands above her brow.

She could see the reflection of the room; the long white walls where the pictures hung, each with its own reflecting light, each a great man's masterpiece. Here and there the wintry sun caressed a statue or carven pillar, gilding the backs of the great high chairs, where long-dead prelate and prince had sat. For the room was a very treasure house, breathing history at each turn, filled with beauty of colour and form, mellowed by the touch of age.

And the thought pierced through her with sharp pain that all she had accomplished here, knowledge and forethought of long years, the daily care from the hour of birth when in agony she had borne her child: all could be swept aside, made nought by the first love-words breathed by a man.

"Cydonia"--her voice was sharp, reflecting the tension of her mood, and the girl looked up with a mild surprise.

"Put your work away, my dear," she smiled with an effort as her daughter complied. "I can hear the Bishop coming upstairs."

But as she spoke the door went wide.

"Mr. McTaggart," the man announced.

CHAPTER IV

Nothing could ruffle Cydonia's calm. The smile she had, unconsciously, prepared for the Bishop warmed McTaggart as he entered the room. Dazed him a little, truth to tell, she looked so lovely sitting there.

On her mother's face he read surprise and hastened to explain his mission.

"I'm the bearer of a message from Lady Leason. I must apologize for the hour, but she asked me to come on at once. She's dreadfully worried about the Tableaux. It seems Marie Dilke is off to Cannes.

'Doctor's orders'--so she says. Anyhow," he smiled mischievously, "one can understand the excuse this weather! So now the third picture is spoilt. We want another Sleeping Beauty. And I thought--we thought,"

he glanced at Cydonia--"that perhaps your daughter would help us out."

"But she's acting already in the first." Mrs. Cadell, secretly pleased, did not wish the fact to appear.

"I know. But there'll be loads of time." McTaggart swept the excuse aside. "The second tableau is in three parts; it will take at least a quarter of an hour. And it's really such a lovely scene--the stage will be a ma.s.s of flowers. Do say 'Yes.'" His blue eyes pleaded as he glanced from the mother back to the girl.

"Would you like it, Cydonia?" Mrs. Cadell consulted her daughter, but before the latter could find time to reply the door was opened by the butler, announcing the long-expected guest.

The Bishop of Oxton hurried in: a slight, bent man past the prime of life with a domed head which seemed too large for the small and delicate features beneath. His short-sighted, prominent eyes held a look of chronic bewilderment, and about his thin lips hovered a smile, sweet and deprecating, as though he felt perpetual astonishment at the high position thrust upon him.

"I fear I'm a trifle late," he said, shaking hands with Mrs.

Cadell--"the fact is I have been detained by a matter of business in the City." He beamed affectionately at Cydonia, with an absent-minded glance towards McTaggart.

The hostess introduced the men.

"Ah yes." The Bishop blinked. "I fancy we have met before--at my cousin's, Lady Leason."

"That's curious." McTaggart laughed--"I've just this moment come from her, hot-foot on a begging errand."

"Then I'm sure," the Bishop responded suavely, "that your mission will not be in vain! This is the house of Charity."

The butler, to emphasize the fact, announced that the prelate's lunch was served.

McTaggart began to take his leave, but his hostess would not hear of it.

"You _must_ stay and lunch with us--we have to decide about the Tableaux."