The Man with the Double Heart Part 70

He saw her face clear at his words. She threw him a furtive, sidelong glance and the long lashes trembled and fell, casting a shadow on her cheek.

Then she raised her head again with a faintly malicious smile.

"I don't understand yet, Peter. I always thought we were just friends!

Don't you remember when you returned home from abroad, only this Summer--you said you wanted me to feel that you were ... well--an 'elder brother.'" (McTaggart winced at the memory. It was true: those were his words.) "And now--you're going back on that. Isn't it a pity, rather--to spoil it all by this new idea?"

"It's not a new idea to me!" his voice was hot, faintly indignant.

"I've loved you for ages past..." She turned on him with a sudden gesture that checked the rest of his ardent speech.

"Then why do you tell me this to-night--for the first time? Why not before?" She was on her feet facing him, her face defiant, her eyes ablaze.

"I know. You needn't answer me. It's because of Stephen and Mother--there! You think that I shall have a rotten life at home--and you're _sorry_--that's all! If you _had_ cared all this time there was nothing to stop your telling me. And I don't choose," she stamped her foot, carried away by a gust of pride, "to be married from a sense of pity! I can make my own life for myself. I've got Roddy ... and heaps of friends. I daresay you think it's very kind..."

But McTaggart was at the end of his patience. "How _dare_ you say that to me?" He caught her firmly by the shoulders, his blue eyes full of anger. "Look at me!" he compelled her gaze. "Now--don't you know that I'm in earnest?"

He could feel her, rigid, under his touch, but the very warmth of her young body, through the thin summer dress she wore, fired his blood and he went on, with an ominous break in his voice.

"I see what it is!--I've left it too late. I ought to have spoken weeks ago! But I did it, Jill--for _your_ sake..."

"Did what?" She bit her lip, fighting against the magnetism of his youth and her own answering pa.s.sion.

"Held my tongue," said Peter grimly.

His hands fell away from her. He turned and stared out of the window.

"Some other fellow, I suppose?" He addressed the moon-lit patch of garden.

"No." Rather quickly, Jill sat down. She felt her limbs trembling beneath her.

Deeply annoyed at this sudden weakness, she went on, in a careful voice.

"Don't let's quarrel over it, Peter. It's ... just a mistake. Let's forget it."

To this he deigned no reply, still silent by the window.

She could see his profile against the sky--the well remembered set of his head on his broad shoulders; his hands were clasped in a hard grip behind his back.

"Peter?" a faint appeal sounded, against her will.

McTaggart turned, hesitated, then threw himself into his old seat facing her.

"I'm going to tell you ... everything. It's not a very pretty story--in parts, you know. It's just life--a man's life." His voice was hard.

Jill stirred restlessly. She nodded her head, reclasping her hands in her old att.i.tude round her knees as though it, somehow, nerved her to listen.

So he began. At the very beginning; with his interview in Harley Street and the mystery of his "double heart."

Jill's grey eyes went wide with wonder.

But he went on without a break. He told her of Fantine and Cydonia; of his brief engagement with the latter, and his subsequent disillusion.

For a certain reason of his own he cut out both the time and place, avoiding mention of his inheritance, merely stating that he had been jilted.

Had he been watching Jill's face and seen her indignation rise, flooding the clear skin with colour, his story might have been abridged.

But he still stared out of the window, far from the girl's secret thought. ("How dared this creature throw him over! a silly, brainless..." Jill choked.)

For now he came to a harder part: that year of light adventures abroad.

But he forged through it ruthlessly, hurting himself and her. This threatened Jill's ideals, dragging him out of his secret shrine.

Peter, no longer her childish idol, but a man, made of baser metal.

Still, she sat without movement, rather white, her lips compressed.

She did him the justice in her heart to respect him for his honesty.

But it made a difference even then; though later it strengthened the reason why, loving her, he had bound himself to silence for a term of probation.

It accounted, too, for his withdrawal from her society since the day he had rescued her and brought her from Cluar. And her secret fear was slain for good. The fear that had haunted her proud spirit that, during her brief unconsciousness, the disarray of her torn dress had betrayed the little "double heart!" That gift of his, carelessly offered, lightly accepted, which had lain, day after day, and night after night, on the faithful living heart beneath...

So at last he came to the end; his strange experience in the train and the doctor's verdict; the second one, that had overthrown its shadowy rival. That bogey was dead for good. Jill breathed a sigh of relief.

It was like a page from a Fairy book, the curse some malignant witch had laid.

"So I haven't a double heart at all..." McTaggart smiled wearily, "not even one I can call my own. It's yours, now--what's left of it!"

He stole a glance at the girl before him. Her face was pale; her hands, still clasped, suggested that she held herself, by a strong effort, cool and apart.

"That's what seems so hard," said Jill. "We give ... _all_ to the man we love--and he gives us ... 'what's left.'"

McTaggart was stung by the truth of the words. "Don't!" there was real pain in his voice. "It hurts awfully," he paused. "If only you understood men," he went on miserably--"if you knew...! We're rotters I'll own. Young and old--but until a fellow's _really_ in love it doesn't seem to matter much. It's just ... well, ordinary life. And, Jill----" his eyes were beseeching now--"I think, all the time, it's been really _you_--though I didn't guess it at the first!

"I've always come back to you--to that dear child's face of yours--those grey eyes..." he stopped, stung by the fear of the years ahead without her.

Jill's dark lashes were lowered now. He tried in vain to probe her thought, to catch some faint sign of hope.

"I've always come back," he said again, "I always shall. It's _love_ this time. It's the woman a man returns to, you know, who holds his heart in her hands. Those other ... affairs were mere pa.s.sion. I see it now--now it's too late! What a fool I've been...!" his head sank down for a moment on his clenched fists.

Then he raised it and faced Jill, a new light in the blue eyes.

"I love you so," his voice rang, "that, if I thought it were better for you to go away right out of your life, I believe _now_ I could do it, Jill. But I don't. I _know_ I'd make you happy!"

He saw a quiver cross her face, and breathlessly he leaned toward her.

"_Don't_ you care? Tell me, Jill. Couldn't you learn to care ... a little?"

Slowly the girl raised her eyes. He saw that they were wet with tears.

"I've loved you all my life," she said.

A cry broke from him. He slipped down on his knees before her, arms outstretched.

"Jill! ... My darling! What do you mean?"