Gillian was sitting alone in the yew-hedged garden, her slim fingers busy repairing the holes which appeared with unfailing regularity in the heels of Coppertop’s stockings. From the moment he had come to Stockleigh the number and size of the said holes had increased appreciably, for, although five weeks had elapsed since the day of arrival, Coppertop was still revelling whole-heartedly in the incredible daily delights which, from the viewpoint of six years old, attach to a farm.
Day after day found him trotting contentedly in the wake of the stockman, one Ned Honeycott, whom he had adopted as guide, philosopher, and friend, and whom he regarded as a veritable fount of knowledge and the provider of unlimited adventure and entertainment.
It was Honeycott who lifted Coppertop on to the broad back of the steadiest cart-horse; who had taught him how to feed calves by dipping his chubby little hand into a pail of milk and then letting them suck the milk from off his fingers; who beneficently contrived that hardly a load of hay was driven to the great rick without Coppertop’s small person perched proudly aloft thereon, his slim legs dangling and his shrill voice joining with that of the carter in an encouraging “Come-up, Blossom,” to the bay mare as she plodded forward between the shafts.
Gillian experienced no anxiety with regard to Coppertop’s safety while he was in Ned Honeycott’s charge, but she missed the childish companionship, the more so as she found herself frequently alone these days. June Storran was naturally occupied about her house and dairy, while Magda, under Dan Storran’s tutelage, appeared smitten with an extraordinary interest in farm management.
It seemed to Gillian that Magda and Dan were in each other’s company the greater part of the time. Every day Dan had some suggestion or other to make for Miss Vallincourt’s amusement. Either it was: “Would you care to see the hay-loader at work?” Or: “I’ve just bought a couple of pedigree Devon cows I’d like to show you, Miss Vallincourt.” Or, as yesterday: “There’s a pony fair to be held to-morrow at Pennaway Bridge. Would you care to drive in it?” And to each and all of Storran’s suggestions Magda had yielded a ready assent.
So this morning had seen the two of them setting out for Pennaway in Dan’s high dog-cart, while Gillian and June stood together in the rose-covered porch and watched them depart.
“Wouldn’t you like to have gone?” Gillian asked on a sudden impulse.
She regretted the question the instant it had passed her lips, for in the wide-apart blue eyes June turned upon her there was something of the mute, puzzled misery of a dog that has received an unexpected blow.
“I couldn’t spare the time,” she answered hastily. “You see”—the sensitive colour as usual coming and going quickly in her face—“Miss Vallincourt is on a holiday.”
She turned and went quickly into the house, leaving Gillian conscious of a sudden uneasiness—that queer “trouble ahead” feeling which descends upon us sometimes, without warning and without our being able to assign any very definite cause for it.
She was thinking over the little incident now, as she sat sewing in the evening light, and meditating whether she should give Magda a hint that it might be kinder of her not to monopolise so much of Dan’s society. And then the crisp sound of a horse trotting on the hard, dry road came to her ears, and almost immediately the high dog-cart swung between the granite gateposts and clattered into the yard.
Dan tossed the reins on to the horse’s neck and, springing to the ground, came round to help Magda down from the cart.
“It’s rather a steep step. Let me lift you down,” he said.
“Very well.”
Magda stood up in the trap and looked down at him with smiling eyes, unconsciously delighting in his sheer physical good looks. He was a magnificent specimen of manhood, and the good yeoman blood in him, which had come down through the generations of the same sturdy stock, proclaimed itself in his fine physique and splendid virility.
A moment later he had swung her down as easily as though she were a child, and she was standing beside him.
She laughed up at him.
“Oh, ‘girt Jan Ridd’!” she exclaimed softly.
He laughed back, well pleased. (Was there ever a man who failed to be ridiculously flattered by a feminine tribute to his physical strength?) Nor did his hands release her quite at once.
“You’re as light as a feather! I could carry you all day and—”
“Not know it!” concluded Magda gaily.
His hands fell away from her slim body abruptly.
“Oh, I should know it right enough!” he said jerkily.
His eyes kindled, and Magda, conscious of something suddenly disturbing and electric in the atmosphere, turned quickly and, leaving Storran to unharness the horse, made her way to where she espied Gillian sitting.
The latter looked up from her sewing.
“So you’ve got back? Did you have a good time?”
“Yes. It was quite amusing. There were heaps and heaps of ponies—some of them wild, unbroken colts which had been brought straight off the Moor. They were rearing and plunging all over the place. I loved them! By the way, I’m gong to learn riding, Gillyflower. Mr. Storran has offered to teach me. He says he has a nice quiet mare I could start on.”
A small frown puckered Gillian’s brows.
“Do you think Mrs. Storran will like it?”
Magda started.
“Why on earth shouldn’t she?”
“Well,”—Gillian spoke with a vague discomfort. “He’s her husband!”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” replied Magda. “We’re staying here and, of course, the Storrans want to make it as nice as they can for us. Anyway, I’m going to take such goods as the gods provide.”
She got up abruptly and went in the direction of the house, leaving Gillian to digest as best she might the hint that her interference was not likely to be either welcomed or effective.
Left to herself, Gillian sighed unhappily. Almost she wished they had never come to Stockleigh, only that it was pure joy to her to see Coppertop’s rather thin little cheeks filling out and growing sunburnt and rosy. He had not picked up strength very readily after his attack of croup, and subsequently the intense heat in London had tried him a good deal.
But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing consequences might accrue from Magda’s stay at Stockleigh Farm. A woman of her elusive charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her environment had taught her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of Storran’s primitive way of life the fascination of something new and rather wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush of sympathy for June’s unarmoured youth and inexperience.
Magda’s curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a little. She was unlike herself—at times brooding and introspective, at other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety—a gaiety which had the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda had ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though she were developing a certain new quality of hardness.
It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate loss of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to old Lady Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in the art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that she had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself—as she had done the night of Lady Arabella’s reception—even for a moment.
It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example—her mother’s precept and her father’s example—that to let a man count for anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make, and Michael’s treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the warnings Diane had instilled.
He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she craved now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a question that never presented itself to her.
She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London—for a few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.
The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael’s sudden defection had shaken.
She knew—as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by her—that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman, whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran’s emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown quantity, and whose fierce, elemental passions, once aroused, might prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.
It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of the trees.
Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs—a new and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their debut into this world of sin—and had watched the cows being milked, and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the grass at her feet.
“I’m in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly,” declared Magda, fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. “Whew! It is hot! As soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you come?”
Gillian shook her head lazily.
“I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And it’s such a long trudge from here down to the river.”
“Yes, I know.” Magda nodded. “It’s three interminable fields away—and the thistles and things prick one’s ankles abominably. Still, it’s lovely when youdoget there! I think I’ll go now”—springing up from the velvet turf—“before I get too lazy to move.”
Gillian’s eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the house. She had never seen Magda so restless—she seemed unable to keep still a moment.
Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak, a little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the hearts of half of Europe.
“Good-bye!” she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the wicket gate leading into the fields.
There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.
Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of bramble whipped against her bare ankles.
At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes’ further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous moments of a precarious existence.
Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.
She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below, where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun’s heat poured down unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and bask in the golden warmth.
She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when a familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran’s tall figure emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his face taking on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauvilleplage, where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan’s ken.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he began, flushing uncomfortably.
Magda waved to him airily.
“You needn’t be. I’m having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?”
“No, I’m not too busy,” he said slowly.
There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her. Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like wine.
“Then come and amuse me!” Magda patted the warm surface of the rock beside her invitingly. “You can give me a cigarette to begin with.”
Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was trembling absurdly.
He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:
“I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?”
Magda laughed a little.
“Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don’t find it dull. Change is never really dull.”
“Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you’ve been accustomed to lead.”
“How do you know what sort of life I lead?”—teasingly.
“I can guess. One has only to look at you. You’re different—different from everyone about here. The way you move—you’re like a thoroughbred amongst cart-horses.” He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.
Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her knees.
“Now you’re talking nonsense, you know,” she said amusedly. “Frankly, I like it down here immensely. I happened to be—rather worried when I came away from London, and there’s something very soothing and comforting about the country—particularly your lovely Devon country.”
“Worried?” Storran’s face darkened. “Who’d been worrying you?”
“Oh”—vaguely. “All sorts of things. Men—and women. But don’t let’s talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as though there weren’t any such things in the world.”
She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second nature. Storran’s eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression. Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he was fighting blindly.
He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight or sound of this other woman—this woman with her slender limbs and skin like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June’s young peach-bloom prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.
“It must be nice to be you”—Magda nodded at him. “With no vague, indefinable sort of things to worry you.”
He smiled reluctantly.
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Oh, because I do.”
“A woman’s reason!”
“Quite. But women’s reasons are generally very sound—we were endowed with a sixth sense, you know! Besides—it’s obvious, isn’t it? Here you are—you and June—living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it’s a real definite one—as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!”
“Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?” he asked quietly.
She laughed.
“Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know—June told us—that you were horribly opposed to anyone’s coming here for the summer. I thought that you had got over that by now?”
“So I have”—bluntly.
“Then we’re not—not unwelcome visitors any longer?” the soft, tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his very heartstrings.
He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her round so that she faced him.
“Why do you ask?” he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.
“Because I wanted to know—of course!”—lightly.
“Then—you’re not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go——”
He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words—struck by the full significance of them.
“When you go!” he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands tightened till it was almost painful. “But you won’t go! I can’t let you go now! Magda—”
The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly away from him, springing to her feet.
“Don’t talk like that,” she said hastily. “You don’t mean it, you know.”
With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran down to the river’s edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.
He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt the branches which overhung the river.
Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived himself saying or doing?
Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her—what? The sweat broke out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.
“God!” he muttered. “God!”
Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from himself—check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the bitterness of spirit which Michael’s treatment of her had engendered, she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June—pretty, helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she had found almost more difficult to meet and understand.
It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June which had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that he might regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still beneath the resentment and wounded pride which Michael’s going had caused her flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with the whole tenor of the teaching of poor Diane’s last embittered days—the ideal of womanhood which had been Michael’s. And the impulse which had bade her leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time resolution she had made to become the sort of woman Michael would wish his wife to be.
She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame assailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a fair one, after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in Michael’s eyes had he been looking on at it.
Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited that right—if he had ever had it—when he went away without a word of farewell—without giving her even the chance to appeal against the judgment which, by his very going, he had silently pronounced against her.
For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of emotions—the pain and hurt pride which Michael’s departure had occasioned her, the craving for anything that might serve to distract her thoughts and keep them from straying back to those few vibrant meetings with him, and deep down within her an aching, restless wonder as to whether she would ever see him again.
With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by the morning’s brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly, went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at Stockleigh.
At first the solid repast, with its plentitude of good farmhouse fare partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a roast joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of country vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.
Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose “figure was her fortune” according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of this hospitable meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran come in from his work in the fields and do full justice to the substantial fare. To Magda, ultra-modern and over-civilised as she was, there was something refreshing in the simple and primitive usages of Stockleigh Farm and its master—this man who toiled, and satisfied his hunger, and rested from toil, just as his fathers had done before him, literally fulfilling the law: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.
And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his days were finished.
Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty much as she found him—unawakened to the deeps of his own nature—if she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.
Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally he appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda’s eyes. June got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him there. Abruptly Dan followed her.
“Sorry I’m late, June,” he said awkwardly. “Here, give the tray to me; I’ll carry it in.”
June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the soft tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks since Dan had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks, although at one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could manage to do so, on purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid the table together, punctuating the process with jokes and gay little bursts of laughter and an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the work. But not lately—not since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm.
So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had guessed.
“Why, Dan, Dan——” she stammered.
His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, pricking his conscience.
“It’s not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I offer to carry something for you,” he said. “Anyone might think I never did wait on my wife.”
The blood drained away from June’s face as suddenly as it had rushed there.
“Well, you don’t often, do you?” she returned shortly.
They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up, smiling approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken, and to see Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of fashion seemed to minimise the significance of that little incident which had occurred by the river’s edge.
“What a nice, polite husband!” she commented gaily. “Mr. Storran, you really out to come up to London and give classes—‘Manners for Men,’ you know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days.”
June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite clearwhyDan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly, but she sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her which had actuated him.
Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether clear respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an unexpected gift of jewellery.
The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been with Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly ashamed of the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his own utter helplessness to master it. It—it was damnable! So he accompanied his wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.
Following upon this incident the atmosphere seemed to become all at once constrained and difficult. June sat very silent, her eyes holding that expression of pain and bewilderment which was growing habitual to them, while Storran hurried through his meal in the shortest possible time. As soon as he had finished he pushed back his chair abruptly and, with a muttered apology, quitted the room and went out again on to the farm. June rose and began clearing the table mechanically.
“Can’t I help you?” Gillian paused as she was about to follow Magda out of the room. “You look so tired to-day.”
June’s lip quivered sensitively. She was in the state of nerves when a little unexpected sympathy is the most upsetting thing imaginable.
“Oh, I can’t let you!” she answered hastily. “No—really!”—as Gillian calmly took the tray she was carrying out of her hands.
“Supposing you go and lie down for a little while,” suggested Gillian practically. “And leave the washing-up to Coppertop and me!”
The tears suddenly brimmed up into the wide-open blue eyes.
“Oh, I couldn’t!”
“Wouldn’t you like a little rest?” urged Gillian persuasively. “I believe you’d be asleep in two minutes!”
“I believe I should,” acknowledged June faintly. “I—I haven’t been sleeping very well lately.”
A little shudder ran through her as she recalled those long hours each night when she lay at Dan’s side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness and wondering dully what it was that had come between herself and her husband—come just at the time when, with his unborn child beneath her heart, they two should have been drawn together in to the most wonderful and blessed comradeship and understanding. Only Dan didn’t know this—didn’t know that before the snowdrops lifted their white heads again from the green carpet of spring there would be a little son—June was sure it would be a son, to grow up tall and strong like Dan himself!—born of the love which had once been so sweet and untroubled by any creeping doubts.
“I assure you”—Gillian broke in on the miserable thoughts that were chasing each other through June’s tired brain—“I assure you, Coppertop and I are very competent people. We won’t break a single dish!”
“But you’ve never been used to that kind of thing—washing-up!” protested June, glancing significantly at Gillian’s white hands and soft, pretty frock of hyacinth muslin.
“Haven’t I?” Gillian laughed gaily. “I haven’t always been as well off as I am not, and I expect I know quite as much about doing ‘chores’ as you! Come now!” She waited expectantly.
“Dan would be awfully angry if he knew—it’s my duty, you see,” objected June, visibly weakening.
“If he knew! But what a husband doesn’t know his heart doesn’t grieve over,” replied Gillian sagely. “There, that’s settled. Come along upstairs and let me tuck you up in your bed, and leave the rest to Coppertop and me.”
And June, with her heart suddenly warmed and comforted in the way in which an unexpected kindness does warm and comfort, went very willingly and, tired out in body and mind, fell asleep in ten minutes.
Meanwhile Magda had established herself in the hammock slung from the boughs of one of the great elms which shaded the garden. She had brought a book with her, since her thoughts were none too pleasant company just at the moment, and was speedily absorbed in its contents.
It was very soothing and tranquil out there in the noonday heat. The gnats hovered in the sunlight, dancing and whirling in little transient clusters; now and again a ladybird flickered by or a swallow swooped so near that his darting shadow fell across her book; while all about her sounded the pleasant hum of a summer’s day—the soft susurration of the pleasant hum of a thousand insect voices blending into an indefinite, murmurous vibration of the air.
Occasionally the whir of a motor-car sweeping along the adjacent road broke harshly across the peaceful quiet. Magda glanced up with some annoyance as the first one sped by, dragging her back to an unwilling sense of civilisation. Then she bent her head resolutely above her book and declined to be distracted any further, finally losing herself completely in the story she was reading.
So it came about that when a long, low, dust-powdered car curved in between the granite gateposts of Stockleigh Farm and came abruptly to a standstill, she remained entirely oblivious of its advent. Nor did she see the tall, slender-limbed man who had been driving, and whose questing hazel eyes had descried her almost immediately, slip from his seat behind the steering-wheel and come across the grass towards her.
“Antoine!”
The book fell from her hand and she sat up suddenly in the hammock.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she demanded. There was no welcome in her tone.
For a moment Davilof remained watching her, the sunshine, slanting between the leaves of the trees, throwing queer little flickering lights into the hazel eyes and glinting on his golden-brown hair and beard.
“What are you doing here?” she repeated.
“I came—to see you,” he said simply.
There was something disarming in the very simplicity of his reply. It seemed to imply an almost child-like wonder that she should ask—that there could possibly be any other reason for his presence.
But it failed to propitiate Magda in the slightest degree. She felt intensely annoyed that anyone from the outside world—from her world of London—should have intruded upon her seclusion at Ashencombe, nor could she imagine how Davilof had discovered her retreat.
“How did you learn I was here?” she asked.
“From Melrose.”
Magda’s eyes darkened sombrely.
“Do you mean you bribed him?” she asked quickly. “Oh, but surely not!”—in dismayed tones. “Melrose would go to the stake sooner than accept a bribe!”
Davilof’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile.
“I’m sure he would! I tried him, but he wouldn’t look at a bribe of any sort. So I had to resort to strategy. It was one evening, when he was taking your letters to post, and I waited for him at the pillar-box. I came up very quietly behind him and just nipped one of the letters, readdressed to you, out of his hand. I read the address and then posted the letter for him. It was very simple.”
He recounted the incident with a little swaggering air of bravado, boyishly delighted at the success of his small ruse. Vexed as she was Magda could hardly refrain from smiling; the whole thing was so eminently un-English—so exactly like Davilof!
“Well, now that you have seen me, will you please go away again?” she said coolly, reopening her book as though to end the conversation.
He regarded her with unqualified reproach.
“Won’t you even ask me to tea?” he said plaintively.
“Certainly not,” Magda was beginning. But precisely as she spoke June Storran, looking more herself again after her short sleep, came towards them from the house.
Her face brightened as she caught sight of Davilof. Even to June’s inexperienced eyes it was quite obvious that he admired the woman with whom he was talking. The very way he looked at her told her that. Presumably he was one of her London friends who had motored to Devonshire to see her. No man—within the limited scope of June’s knowledge of men—did that deliciously absurd, extravagant kind of thing unless he was tremendously in love. Nor would any nice woman let a man take such a journey on her behalf unless she reciprocated his feelings. Of this June—whose notions were old-fashioned—felt assured. So her spirits rose accordingly. Since, if these two were on the verge of becoming engaged, the mere fact would clear away the indefinable shadows which seemed to have been menacing her own happiness from the time Miss Vallincourt had come to Stockleigh.
“Tea is just ready,” she announced, approaching. “Will you come in? And perhaps your friend will have tea with us?” she added shyly.
Davilof was presented and June repeated her invitation. He shot a glance of triumph at Magda.
“I shall be delighted, madame,” he said, giving June one of his quaint little foreign bows. “But—the sun is shining so gloriously—might we not have it out here?”
June looked round her doubtfully. As is often the case with people born and bred in the country, it never occurred to the Storrans to have the family meals out-of-doors, and June felt considerable misgiving as to whether Dan would appreciate the innovation.
“Ah, please, madame!” pleaded Davilof persuasively. “Let us have it here—under this tree. Why, the tree grows here expressly for the purpose!”
Davilof had all the charm of his nationality, and June capitulated, retreating to make the necessary arrangements.
“I don’t fancy Dan Storran will at all approve of the alteration from his usual customs which you’ve engineered,” observed Magda when they were again alone.
“Dan Storran?” Davilof’s glance flashed over her face, searching, questioning.
“The owner of the place. He’s been teaching me to ride,” she added inconsequently.
“Who is he?”—with swift jealousy. “The little fair-haired lady’s brother?”
“No, her husband. I saidMrs.Storran.”
Davilof’s interest waned suddenly.
“Did you?”—indifferently. “I didn’t notice. She’s a pretty little person.”
Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her identity.
“Oh, by the way,” she said hurriedly. “They don’t know me here as Magda Wielitzska. I’m plain Miss Vallincourt to them—enjoying the privileges of being a nobody! You’ll be sure to remember, won’t you?” He nodded, and she pursued more lightly: “And now, as you insist on having your tea here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London gossip. We hear nothing at all down here. We don’t even get a London newspaper.
“I don’t think there is much news. There never is at this time of the year. Everybody’s out of town.”
He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends—an engagement here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and Mrs. Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager to America—all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire over the social prairie.
“Oh, by the way,” he went on, “your artist friend—”
“Which artist friend?” Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved by a perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to say.
“Why, Quarrington—Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a Spanish woman—a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for one of his pictures. That’s the latest bit of news.”
For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood still—gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic pause which for an infinitesimal space of time succeeds a bad accident. Then she heard herself saying:
“Really? Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, there’ve been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature—a dancer. And the other day I saw in one of the papers—theWeekly GossipI think it was—that he’d married her.”
The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter certainty. It was true, then—quite true! The fact that the Spaniard had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so worshipped every form of dancing.
“Never give your heart to any man.” Her mother’s last cynical warning beat in Magda’s brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her. She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.
Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine’s voice again:
“I’m glad Quarrington’s married. He was the man who saved you in the fog—you remember?—and I’ve always been afraid you might get to care for him.”
Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only—that somewhere, deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would never feel anything again—much. . . . She thought death must come like that sometimes—just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable agony, and then a dull, numbed sense of finality.
“. . . afraid you might get to care for him.” The meaning of Antoine’s last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.
“Why should I? Does one ‘get to care’ for a man just because he does the only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?”
She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It was quite steady. Reassured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:
“Besides—do I ever care?”
Antoine, sitting on the grass at her feet, suddenly raised himself a little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on her lap.
“You shall care—some time,” he said in a low, tense voice. “I swear it!”