CHAPTER XXXI
Miss Elizabeth Uniacke wore an aggressive air.
She stood in front of the mirror, her gray eyes critical, studying the effect of her newly made gown.
On her knees beside her a stout dressmaker waited, in mute suspense, her mouth full of pins. Her attitude was that of profound admiration, but in her heart she quailed, foreseeing the verdict.
"Too tight round the ankles," said Aunt Elizabeth.
Mrs. Crouch, between the pins, bleated her dismay. She assured "Meddam" it was the latest fashion: that to alter it by a "hair-breadth" was to "ruin the cut!"
"I can't help that——" Miss Uniacke scowled—"I've told you before—I won't be trussed like a fowl. I don't care what frights other women make of themselves! I've my own style, and I shall keep to it."
She placed her pretty hands to either side of her waist, tightly confined by a broad Petersham belt, and with a little wriggle of her angular body seemed to shoot up like a crocus on its stem.
Mrs. Crouch swallowed a heavy sigh—a somewhat difficult and precarious performance!
Pins still sprouted from between her lips and she gathered up the scissors with a tragic gesture. Slowly she unpicked the two side seams.
"That's better!" Miss Uniacke gave an unexpected movement, followed by an ominous rending sound.
"Ha!" she cried triumphantly. "You see for yourself!—I can't walk a step. It's ridiculous!"
Mrs. Crouch sighed.
"We might..." she suggested, "leave one side open. With—perhaps—a button?"
"And show my legs!" At the wrath in her client's voice the dressmaker breathed a hurried:
"Oh, Meddam!—Indeed, Meddam, I had no intention—I was going to suggest a fold ... underneath..."
"Not at all!" The irate lady snapped. "You've plenty of turnings. Let it out. That's better ... Now, pin it ... There!——" Again she took a step forward. "I can move at last. I'm sure I don't know what we're coming to! You'll be asking me next to dye my hair blue! In my young days..."
There came a low tap at the door, breaking through the current of her memories.
"Come in!—What is it?" She wheeled round, displeased.
"If you please, Mum." The parlour maid stood there, gaunt and prim.
"It's Mr. McTaggart asking to see you."
"Shut that door!—Now, what do you mean, Maria? You know I'm engaged. Tell him I'm out."
But the elderly servant stood her ground. "He's in the drawing-room, if you please, Mum. I told him you was h'occupied—but he said he could wait." She cast an openly inquisitive glance at her mistress' dress. The new Autumn gown was an "event" in that quiet household.
"Indeed." Aunt Elizabeth's voice was acid. "Well, he can wait, then! You'd no business, Maria, to let him in at all. You take too much on yourself."
"I'm sorry, Mum. But the card in the hall said 'h'In,' not 'h'Out,' so 'ow was I to tell?" She tossed her head with an air of injured innocence.
"That will do." Miss Uniacke's eyes had wandered back to the mirror, irresistibly attracted.
It certainly was smart ... The colour suited her.
"Perhaps I'd better go and get it over," she said. "If these pins will hold?" She addressed the kneeling figure.
"I'll make sure, Meddam." Mrs. Crouch smiled. She came to work "by the day" and was not at all averse to a spell of idleness reaped from the occasion.
But Aunt Elizabeth guessed her secret thought. "You can have your tea now, instead of later on. That will save time." Mrs. Crouch sighed.
"Yes, Meddam." She drove a pin upward with the amiable desire that Miss Uniacke should risk, when she sat down, a reminder of the fact!
The unconscious victim rustled through the hall. That, she decided, was the best of taffetas. It had a distinctive and aristocratic note. Her temper was soothed by the gentle frou-frou.
McTaggart was standing talking to the parrot who, after the manner of those wayward birds, received his advances with a stony silence, and sharpened, at intervals, his beak on the perch.
"How do you do?" Her guest wheeled round quickly at Miss Uniacke's voice, his face eager. "This is good of you! I heard you were engaged and was prepared to wait for hours! Polly refused to take pity upon me," he added as they shook hands.
"Silly fool!" said the parrot explosively, the moment McTaggart turned his back.
Aunt Elizabeth, fearing that worse might follow, picked up the baize cover and blotted the bird out effectually.
"He gets so tiresome," she explained. "Won't you sit here?" and was settling herself on the sofa facing her visitor when she rose with a startled look of pain.
"Silly fool!" came from the cage in muffled accents. "Ha ... ha ... ha!"
"A pin!" said Aunt Elizabeth, gingerly sinking down again. "The fact is I was being fitted on with a new dress when you arrived. I didn't like to keep you waiting, so I came as I was—pins and all!"
"It's a very pretty one," said McTaggart—"suits you, too. Such a jolly colour."
"You think so?" The little old lady was pleased and a slight flush warmed her face.
"I suppose," said McTaggart as the pause prolonged itself and he felt she was waiting to gather the object of his visit; "I suppose you've heard about ... Mrs. Uniacke?"
The moment the words had passed his lips he knew he had made a tactless start.
For his hostess bristled visibly.
"If you've called to plead for Mary," she said and her voice was short—"I had better tell you that I wash my hands of that affair! I've finished with them—the whole family!"
"Jill?" ...
"Yes——" she caught him up. "Jill, and Roddy—They might have guessed. They ought to have warned me long ago! It's their own fault—and I've done with them."
"Oh, no!" McTaggart's blue eyes were eloquent. "You don't mean it? You couldn't just now when they want you so." He saw a slight quiver cross her face. "And I want you—all your help! We can't get on without it, you know—Jill and I..."
She gave a start at the coupling together of the names.
"I don't understand," she said drily.
"No?—I'm afraid I'm explaining myself rather badly. I thought you'd guess ... The fact is, Aunt Elizabeth," he smiled at her affectionately, "I'm hoping you'll let me become, you know, a real nephew of yours, one day."
The little old lady gave a gasp. "I knew it!" she cried triumphantly. "You and Jill?—Ha!" she laughed. "You can't deceive an old woman like me!"
"I don't want to!" McTaggart sprang up, his hand outstretched to meet her own, his face so radiant with happiness that her old heart softened at the sight.
"But I must have your permission first. I don't care a hang what her mother says!—She's placed herself outside the affair. Gone off and left those two children..." he checked himself, his voice indignant. "But you're her father's sister, you see—his favourite one. And we both think you've as good a right as any one ... to give her away."
He stopped abruptly.
"Give her away? Jill, you mean?" she stared at him, obviously amazed. "What are you talking about, young man? You're not going to marry her to-morrow?"
"No," he amended, "to-morrow week."
He laughed at her startled exclamation, and went on, still holding her hand—unconsciously abandoned to him—with subtle persuasion in his voice.
"I don't want you—exactly—to 'give her away.' In any sense!——" he laughed again—"but you simply must come to the wedding. We've both of us set our hearts on that."
"I never heard such utter nonsense in all my life!" she protested stoutly—"and don't imagine I shall allow it!" But, as she looked at his resolute face, inwardly she commended his spirit.
"Of all the ridiculous notions..." she fumed; but McTaggart guessed she was wavering.
"Tell me, first, you're pleased about it? Do say you think I'll make Jill happy?"
"Well——" she paused—"I'll admit you'll try! She's a bit of a handful—that young woman."
Her grey eyes began to twinkle. Jill, she thought, had found her master.
"Yes—I'm glad. Though I shan't hear..."
He checked the protest audaciously. Before she could gather his intention he had stooped and kissed her faded cheek.
"Thank you, Aunt Elizabeth. On Tuesday week I'll take another—In the vestry!"
He chuckled gaily.
"Well—I never...!" Miss Uniacke gasped. For once her sharp tongue was silenced. Her face was flushed and, helplessly, she straightened the crooked brown fringe.
"Now——" McTaggart sat down, uninvited, by her side ... "I think we ought to talk business and fix up a few plans. I've got the license—that's all right. And to-night I'm going down to Oxton. The Bishop is my friend, you know, and I want him to come and marry us. Mrs. Uniacke's honeymoon—I mean Mrs. Somerfield——" her sister-in-law winced slightly and he went on hurriedly—"Well, she doesn't get back to Worthing till Wednesday. So, if you could manage to run down and stay with Jill until we're married ... You see my idea?" his face went red—"It would stop any silly talk, you know. But, perhaps, you could come to the lawyers first and fix up the settlements? I want to make that all square; for Jill's sake, you understand?"
Miss Uniacke caught him up sharply. "I hope you're not under the delusion that my niece has anything of her own?" Purposely she withheld from him the knowledge of the modest sum left the girl by her Father.
"My dear Aunt Elizabeth!" McTaggart looked taken aback. "I meant my money, of course. I'd better tell you all about it."
He proceeded forthwith to enlighten her on the subject of his inheritance.
Miss Uniacke's gray eyes slowly widened with amazement.
"You mean to say," she said at last, "that Jill will be a marchioness?"
"Well, that's thrown in!" McTaggart laughed—"Won't she make a pretty one! I think she'll just love Siena—and Rome too—it's a ripping place! You'll have to come and stay with us. Oh, I forgot—about Roddy." He went on with his plans for the latter, his handsome face alight with pleasure. Miss Uniacke guessed in every word the depths of his love for the boy's sister.
"It's like a fairy tale!" she said.
"It is a fairy tale——" his voice was lowered now with a touch of awe.
"All true love is that, I think. It's outside this work-a-day world. Something too fine to be measured—like a beautiful vision seen in a dream..."
He glanced up shyly at his listener and in her worn and serious face caught a look of longing, oddly pathetic, but full of genuine sympathy. For a moment their thoughtful eyes met—the old, saddened ones, knowing life, and those of youth, bright with hope: met and wondered, across the gulf.
Then McTaggart broke the silence.
"I don't want Jill to know yet. About my inheritance, I mean. I want it to come as a huge surprise!—on our arrival in Siena. She knows I've got some property there—I fancy she thinks it's just a farm!—but I've always kept it rather dark from everybody. It's like this——" he fidgeted, under the gaze of her shrewd grey eyes, hunting for words.
"Although my mother was Italian I've always felt an Englishman. Really, deep down in myself, I'd sooner be English, any day. But, on the other hand, you see, I admit a certain responsibility. My mother was treated abominably"—a hard look came into his face—"just because she married my father! They practically cut her adrift.
"Now, by an odd stroke of luck, I have come into all that my mother lost. And I feel it's up to me to show that she was right, after all. She married for love, and so shall I. An English wife ... my little Jill! But we'll have to live in Italy half the year—be Maramonte as well as McTaggart—not for ourselves but because I believe that she would have wished it."
His eyes had a curious far away look. Then he seemed to come back to the present.
"All the same I've felt, somehow, that a foreign title, over here, wouldn't do—rather snobbish..." He laughed with a shade of nervousness.
"Quite right." Miss Uniacke nodded. She liked the man more and more. But, despite her careless attitude toward the secret he shared with her, her old heart warmed at the thought of this splendid match for the girl she loved.
"You won't tell her? You'll keep it dark!"
"Of course—it's your affair, not mine."
She smiled the harshness out of the words.
"All the same," she went on, "I think you ought to tell her mother. I don't approve of Mary myself—I think her conduct to her children simply shocking——" she frowned again—"the secrecy—and this sudden marriage! Still, she brought Jill into the world—it's her daughter, not mine. It's paying her back in her own coin ... but I know I ought to stop this folly!"
"But you won't?" His voice was very earnest. "Look here, Miss Uniacke. She's never given a thought to Jill—or Roddy either, latterly. She's bringing a penniless, idle chap into her home to live with her children. She'll have to support him—you know that? At their expense! For, after all, it's Colonel Uniacke's money, you know, that she holds in trust for the next generation. It means a cruel time for them under the thumb of that rotter, Stephen. On a slender income, deprived of their rights and shadowed by this Suffrage nonsense.
"Think of Jill, living with Stephen?—and Roddy—a schoolboy, in his hands...!
"Instead of which, here am I—luckily a rich man; able to give the boy a chance, and Jill ... pretty well all she wants!
"I'd just like you to see some pearls I've got for her in the Roman bank"—he threw his head back and laughed boyishly, with a note of triumph—"They'd make Stephen's mouth water—damn the chap!—I beg your pardon!"
But Miss Uniacke smiled grimly; forgetful of the listening parrot.
McTaggart, encouraged, started again.
"I can't bear to think of Jill for a day in the house with that man. That's why I'm doing this, entirely, to get her away before he returns. Can't you guess what it will save her? The bitterness of seeing him there, ruling in her father's place, in the old home, where he lived..."
"Stop!" Miss Uniacke grasped his arm—"I can't stand it!—It's not fair. Edward..." She choked on the name.
McTaggart took her hands in his.
"Tell me now, honestly"—his blue eyes were keen and anxious as he gazed into her moved face. "D'you think, if your brother were alive, he'd give me Jill?"
There came a pause. It seemed to them both that, somewhere near, a shadow hovered, watching them, with a love that had survived the grave.
Then, at last, Miss Uniacke spoke.
"Yes," she answered solemnly—"I think he would. And so will I."