“This is very nice—but it won’t exactly contribute towards finishing the picture!”
As she spoke Magda leaned back luxuriously against her cushions and glanced smilingly across at Michael where he sat with his hand on the tiller of theBella Donna, the little sailing-yacht which Lady Arabella kept for the amusement of her guests rather than for her own enjoyment, since she herself could rarely be induced to go on board.
It had been what Magda called a “blue day”—the sky overhead a deep unbroken azure, the dimpling, dancing waters of the Solent flinging back a blue almost as vivid—and she and Quarrington had put out from Netherway harbour in the morning and crossed to Cowes.
Here they had lunched and Magda had purchased one or two of the necessities of life (from a feminine point of view) not procurable in the village emporia at Netherway. Afterwards, as there was still ample time before they need think of returning home, Michael had suggested an hour’s run down towards the Needles.
TheBella Donnasped gaily before the wind, and neither of its occupants, engrossed in conversation, noticed that away to windward a bank of sullen cloud was creeping forward, slowly but surely eating up the blue of the sky.
“Of course it will contribute towards finishing the picture.” Quarrington answered Magda’s laughing comment composedly. “A blow like this will have done you all the good in the world, and I shan’t have you collapsing on my hands again as you did a week ago.”
“Oh, then, you brought me out on hygienic grounds alone?” derided Magda.
She was feeling unaccountably happy and light-hearted. Since the day when she had fainted during the sitting Michael seemed to have changed. He no longer gave utterance to those sudden, gibing speeches which had so often hurt her intolerably. That sense of his aloofness, as though a great wall rose between them, was gone. Somehow she felt that he had drawn nearer to her, and once or twice those grey, compelling eyes had glowed with a smothered fire that had set her heart racing unsteadily within her.
“Haven’t you enjoyed to-day, then?” he inquired, responding to her question with another.
“I’ve loved it,” she answered simply. “I think if I’d been a man I should have chosen to be a sailor.”
“Then it’s a good thing heaven saw to it that you were a woman. The world couldn’t have done without its Wielitzska.”
“Oh, I don’t know”—half-indifferently, half-wistfully. “It’s astonishing how little necessary anyone really is in this world. If I were drowned this afternoon the Imperial management would soon find someone to take my place.”
“But your friends wouldn’t,” he said quietly.
Magda laughed a little uncertainly.
“Well, I won’t suggest we put them to the test, so please take me home safely.”
As she spoke a big drop of rain splashed down on to her hand. Then another and another. Simultaneously she and Michael glanced upwards to the sky overhead, startlingly transformed from an arch of quivering blue into a monotonous expanse of grey, across which came sweeping drifts of black cloud, heavy with storm.
“By Jove! We’re in for it!” muttered Quarrington.
His voice held a sudden gravity. He knew the danger of those unexpected squalls which trap the unwary in the Solent, and inwardly he cursed himself for not having observed the swift alteration in the weather.
TheBella Donna, too, was by no means the safest of craft in which to meet rough weather. She was slipping along very fast now, and Michael’s keen glance swept the gray landscape to where, at the mouth of the channel, the treacherous Needles sentinelled the open sea.
“We must bring her round—quick!” he said sharply, springing up. “Can you take the tiller? Do you know how to steer?”
Magda caught the note of urgency in his voice.
“I can do what you tell me,” she said quietly.
“Do you know port from starboard?” he asked grimly.
“Yes. I know that.”
Even while they had been speaking the wind had increased, churning the sea into foam-flecked billows that swirled and broke only to gather anew.
It was ticklish work bringing theBella Donnato the wind. Twice she refused to come, lurching sickeningly as she rolled broadside on to the race of wind-driven waves. The third time she heeled over till her canvas almost brushed the surface of the water and it seemed as though she must inevitably capsize. There was an instant’s agonised suspense. Then she righted herself, the mainsail bellied out as the boom swung over, and the tense moment passed.
“Frightened?” queried Quarrington when he had made fast the mainsheet.
Magda smiled straight into his eyes.
“No. We almost capsized then, didn’t we?”
“It was a near shave,” he answered bluntly.
They did not speak much after that. They had enough to do to catch the wind which seemed to bluster from all quarters at once, coming in violent, gusty spurts that shook the frail little vessel from stem to stern. Time after time the waves broke over her bows, flooding the deck and drenching them both with stinging spray.
Magda sat very still, maintaining her grip of the wet and slippery tiller with all the strength of her small, determined hands. Her limbs ached with cold. The piercing wind and rain seemed to penetrate through her thin summer clothing to her very skin. But unwaveringly she responded to Michael’s orders as they reached her through the bellowing of the gale. Her eyes were like stars and her lips closed in a scarlet line of courage.
“Port your helm!Hard! . . . Hold on!”
Then the thudding swing of the boom as theBella Donnaslewed round on a fresh tack.
The hurly-burly of the storm was bewildering. In the last hour or so the entire aspect of things had altered, and Magda was conscious of a freakish sense of the unreality of it all. With the ridiculous inconsequence of thought that so often accompanies moments of acute anxiety she reflected that Noah probably experienced a somewhat similar astonishment when he woke up one morning to find that the Flood had actually begun.
It seemed as though the storm had reached out long arms and drawn the whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them down again in a smother of angry spume.
Overhead, it screamed through the rigging of the little craft like a tormented devil, tearing at the straining canvas with devouring fingers while the slender mast groaned beneath its force.
Suddenly a terrific gust of wind seemed to strike the boat like an actual blow. Magda saw Michael leap aside, and in the same instant came a splitting, shattering report as the mast snapped in half and a tangled mass of wood and cordage and canvas fell crash on to the deck where he had been standing.
Magda uttered a cry and sprang to her feet. For an instant her heart seemed to stop beating as she visioned him beneath the mass of tackle. Or had he been swept off his feet—overboard into the welter of grey, surging waters that clamoured round the boat?
The moment of uncertainty seemed endless, immeasurable. Then Michael appeared, stepping across the wreckage, and came towards her. The relief was almost unendurable. She stretched out shaking hands.
“Oh, Michael! . . . Michael!” she cried sobbingly.
And all at once she was in his arms. She felt them close about her, strong as steel and tender as love itself. In the rocking, helpless boat, with the storm beating up around them and death a sudden, imminent hazard, she had come at last into haven.
An hour later the storm had completely died away. It had begun to abate in violence almost immediately after the breaking of theBella Donna’smast. It was as though, having wreaked its fury and executed all the damage possible short of absolute destruction, it was satisfied. With the same suddenness with which it had arisen it sank away, leaving a sulky, sunless sky brooding above a sullen sea still heaving restlessly with the aftermath of tempest.
The yacht had drifted gradually out of mid-channel shorewards, and after one or two unsuccessful efforts Quarrington at last succeeded in casting anchor. Then he turned to Magda, who had been assisting in the operation, with a smile.
“That’s about all we can do,” he said. “We’re perfectly helpless till some tug or steamer comes along.”
“Probably they’ll run us down,” she suggested. “We’re in the fairway, aren’t we?”
“Yes—which is about our best hope of getting picked up before night.” Then, laying his hand on her arm: “Are you very cold and wet?”
Magda laughed—laughed out of sheer happiness. What did being cold matter, or wet either, if Michael loved her? And she was sure now that he did, though there had been but the one moment’s brief embrace. Afterwards he had had his hands full endeavouring to keep theBella Donnaafloat.
“I think the wind has blown my things dry,” she said. “How about you?”
“Oh, I’m all right—men’s clothing being adapted for use, not ornament! But I must find something to wrap you up in. We may be here for hours and the frock you’re wearing has about as much warming capacity as a spider’s web.”
He disappeared below into the tiny, single-berthed cabin, and presently returned armed with a couple of blankets, one of which he proceeded to wrap about Magda’s shoulders, tucking the other over her knees where she sat in the stern of the boat.
“I don’t want them both,” she protested, resisting. “You take one.”
There was something rather delightful in this unconventional comradeship of discomfort.
“You’ll obey orders,” replied Michael firmly. “Especially as you’re going to be my wife so soon.”
A warm flush dyed her face from brow to throat. He regarded her with quizzical eyes. Behind their tender mockery lurked something else—something strong and passionate and imperious, momentarily held in leash. But she knew it was there—could feel the essential, imperative demand of it.
“Well? Does the prospect alarm you?”
Magda forced herself to meet his glance.
“So soon?” she repeated hesitantly.
“Yes. As soon as it can be accomplished,” he said triumphantly.
He seated himself beside her and took her in his arms, blankets and all.
“Did you think I’d be willing to wait?” he said.
“I didn’t think you wanted to marry me at all!” returned Magda, the words coming out with a little rush. “I thought you—you disapproved of me too much!”
His mouth twisted queerly.
“So I did. I’m scrapping the beliefs of half a lifetime because I love you. I’ve fought against it—tried not to love you—kept away from you! But it was stronger than I.”
“Saint Michel, I’m so glad—glad it was stronger,” she said tremulously, a little break in her voice.
He bent his head and kissed her lips, and with the kiss she gave him back she surrendered her very self into his keeping. She felt his arms strain about her, and the fierce pressure of their clasp taught her the exquisite joy of pain that is born of love.
She yielded resistlessly, every fibre of her being quivering responsive to the overwhelming passion of love which had at last stormed and broken down all barriers—both the man’s will to resist and her own defences.
Somewhere at the back of her consciousness Diane’s urgent warning:“Never give your heart to any man. Take everything, but do not give!”tinkled feebly like the notes of a worn-out instrument. But even had she paused to listen to it she would only have laughed at it. She knew better.
Love was the most wonderful thing in the world. If it meant anything at all, it meant giving. And she was ready to give Michael everything she had—to surrender body, soul, and spirit, the threefold gift that a man demands of his mate.
She drew herself out of his arms and slipped to her knees beside him.
“Saint Michel, do you believe in me now?”
“Believe in you? I don’t know whether I believe in you or not. But I know I love you! . . . That’s all that matters. I love you!”
“No, no!” She resisted his arms that sought to draw her back into his embrace. “I want more than that. I’m beginning to realise things. There must be trust in love. . . . Michael, I’m not really hard—and selfish, as they say. I’ve been foolish and thoughtless, perhaps. But I’ve never done any harm. Not real harm. I’ve never”—she laughed a little brokenly—“I’ve never turned men into swine, Michael. . . . I’ve hurt people, sometimes, by letting them love me. But, I didn’t know, then! Now—now I know what love is, I shall be different. Quite different. Saint Michel, I know now—love is self-surrender.”
The tremulous sweetness of her, the humble submissiveness of her appeal, could not but win their way. Michael’s lingering disbelief wavered and broke. She had been foolish, spoilt and thoughtless, but she had never done any real harm. Men had loved her—but how could it be otherwise? And perhaps, after all, they were none the worse for having loved her.
Deliberately Michael flung the past behind him and with it his last doubt of her. He drew her back into his arms, against his heart, and their lips met in a kiss that held not only love but utter faith and confidence—a pledge for all time.
“Beloved!” he whispered. “My beloved!”
Michael and Magda stood together on the deck of the crippled yacht which now rocked idly on a quite placid sea. Dusk was falling. That first glorious, irrecoverable hour when love had come into its own was past, and the consideration of things mundane was forcing itself on their notice—more especially consideration of their particular plight.
“It looks rather as though we may have to spend the night here,” observed Quarrington, his eyes scanning the channel void of any welcome sight of sail or funnel.
Magda’s brows drew together in a little troubled frown.
“Marraine and Gillian will be frightfully worried and anxious,” she said uneasily. It was significant of the gradual alteration in her outlook that this solicitude for others should have rushed first of anything to her lips.
“Yes.” He spoke with a curious abruptness. “Besides, that’s not the only point. There’s—Mrs. Grundy.”
Magda shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
“Well, if it’s to come to a choice between Mrs. Grundy and Davy Jones, I think I should decide to face Mrs. Grundy! Anyway, people can’t say much more—or much worse—things about me than they’ve said already.”
Quarrington frowned moodily.
“I’d like to kick myself for bringing you out to-day and landing you into this mess. I can’t stand the idea of people gossiping about you.”
“They’ve left me very little reputation at any time. A little less can’t hurt me.”
His eyes grew stormy.
“Don’t!” he said sharply. “I hate to hear you talk like that.”
“But it’s true! No public woman gets a fair chance.”
“Youwill—when you’re my wife,” he said between his teeth. “I’ll see to that.”
Magda glanced at him swiftly.
“Then you don’t want me to—to give up dancing after we’re married?”
“Certainly I don’t. I shall want you to do just as you like. I’ve no place for the man who asks his wife to ‘give up’ things in order to marry him. I’ve no more right to ask you to give up dancing than you have to ask me to stop painting.”
Magda smiled at him radiantly.
“Saint Michel, you’re really rather nice,” she observed impertinently. “So few men are as sensible as that. I shall call you the ‘Wise Man,’ I think.”
“In spite of to-day?” he queried whimsically, with a rueful glance at the debris of mast and canvas huddled on the deck.
“Becauseof to-day,” she amended softly. “It’s—it’s very wise to be in love, Michael.”
He drew her into his arms and his lips found hers.
“I think it is,” he agreed.
Another hour went by, and still there came no sign of any passing vessel.
“Why the devil isn’t there a single tug passing up and down just when we happen to want one?” demanded Quarrington irately of the unresponsive universe. He swung round on Magda. “I suppose you’re starving?” he went on, in his voice a species of savage discontent—that unreasonable fury to which masculine temperament is prone when confronted with an obstacle which declines to yield either to force or persuasion.
Magda laughed outright.
“I’ll admit to being hungry. Aren’t you? . . . It’s horribly unromantic of us, Michael,” she added regretfully.
Quarrington grinned.
“It is,” he assented. “All the same, I believe I could consume a tin of bully beef and feel humbly grateful for it at the present moment!”
Magda had a sudden inspiration.
“Michael! Let’s forage in the locker! There’s almost sure to be some biscuits or chocolate there. Marraine nearly always has things like that put on board. And there may be something left from the last supply.”
A brief search brought to light a half-tin of biscuits and some plain chocolate, and off these, with the addition of a bottle of soda-water, also discovered, they proceeded to make an impromptu meal. It was a somewhat thin substitute for the perfectly appointed little dinner of which they would have partaken in the ordinary course of events at the Hermitage, but when you have been a good many hours without food of any description, and spent the greater part of the time in “saving your own life at sea,” as Michael put it, even biscuits and chocolate have their uses.
When the improvised feast was over, Quarrington explored the recesses of the tiny hold and unearthed a lantern, which he proceeded to light and attach to the broken mast. It burned with a flickering, uncertain light, momentarily threatening to go out altogether.
“We’re not precisely well-equipped with lights,” he remarked grimly. “But at least that’s a precaution—as long as it lasts! It may—or may not—save us from being run down.”
Twilight deepened slowly into dark. The lights of Yarmouth sprang into being, a cluster of lambent orange points studding the dim coast of the Island. One by one the stars twinkled out in the dusky sky, and a waning moon, thin and frail like a worn sickle, flung a quivering ribbon of silver across the sea.
It was strangely still and quiet. Now and again the idle rudder creaked as the boat swung to the current. Once there came the long-drawn hoot of a distant siren. Beyond these fitful sounds only the gurgle of water lapping the sides of the boat broke the silence.
“We’re here till morning,” said Quarrington at last. “You may as well go to bed.”
“To bed?”
“Well, there’s a cabin, isn’t there?”—smiling. “And a more or less uncomfortable bunk. Come down and see what you can make of it as an abiding-place for the night.”
“And—and you? Can’t we rig up anything for you?” Magda looked round her vaguely.
“I shan’t sleep. I’ll do sentry-go on deck”—laughing. “It wouldn’t do for us both to go comfortably asleep and get run down without even having a shot at making our presence known!”
“Then I’ll keep watch with you,” said Magda.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’ll go down to the cabin and sleep.”
“Let me stay, Michael. I couldn’t bear to think of your watching all through the night while I slept comfortably below.”
“You won’t sleepcomfortably—if my estimate of the look of that bunk is correct. But you’ll be out of the cold. Come, be sensible, Magda. You’re not suitably attired for a night watch. You’d be perished with cold before morning.”
“Well, let us take it in turns, then,” she suggested. “I’ll sleep four hours and then I’ll keep a look-out while you have a rest.”
“No,” he said quietly.
“Then we’ll both watch,” she asserted. Through the starlit dark he could just discern her small head turned defiantly away from him.
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked incisively, “what a night spent in the open might mean to you? Rheumatism is not precisely the kind of thing a dancer wants to cultivate.”
“Well, I’m not going below, anyway.”
She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.
“You baby!” he said at last in an amused voice.
And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly down the few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of her accident in the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and twisted car into his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she could feel the strength of his arms clasped about her, the masterful purpose of the man that bore her whither he wished regardless of whether she wanted to go or not.
He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on her shoulders.
“Now,” he demanded, “are you going to stay there?”
A faint rebellion still stirred within her.
“Supposing I say ‘no’!”—irresolutely.
“I’m not supposing anything so unlikely,” he assured her. “I’m merely waiting to hear you say ‘yes.’”
She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against the indomitable will of the man beside her.
“Michael, you are a bully!” she protested indignantly, half angry with him.
“Then you’ll stay there?” he persisted.
“You don’t give me much choice”—twisting her shoulders restlessly beneath his hands.
He laughed a little.
“You haven’t answered me.”
“Well, then—yes!”
She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility.
“Thank you, Wise Man,” she said meekly.
He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of the situation—of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him. Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert island.
Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She could feel it beating up against her—the clamorous demand of something hardly curbed and straining for release.
“Michael——” The word stammered past her lips.
The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on himself. With a hoarse, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up from where she lay, crushing her slim, soft body in a grip that almost stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look, strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.
Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his passion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty passed—she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight, and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.
Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about the set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.
“You should be resting,” he said. “Let me tuck you up and then try to go to sleep.”
There was something infinitely reassuring in the steady tones of his voice. It held nothing but kindness—just comradeship and kindness. He was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the rising tide of passion. It had no place while they two were here alone on the wide waters.
He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with a tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.
“Good-night, Saint Michel,” she said simply. “Take care of me.”
He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.
“Now and always,” he answered gravely.
When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into the cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she sprang up and proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the circumstances, taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny looking-glass hung on the wall. She had barely completed the operation when she heard Michael give a shout.
“Ahoy! Ahoy there!”
She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once again Quarrington sent his voice ringing lustily across the water, while he flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to attract the attention of those on board.
Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament—in the face of theBella Donna’sbattered appearance a lengthy explanation was hardly necessary—and a few minutes later the tug was steaming for Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.
“Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?”
The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated by a hot bath and by a meal of more varied constituents than biscuit and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth glancing in her eyes.
Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.
“Do you mean——” she began eagerly.
“We’ve been and gone and got engaged,” explained Quarrington.
“My dears!” Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather than seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally she kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen old hawk’s eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl’s.
Coppertop was hugely excited.
“Will the wedding be to-morrow?” he asked hopefully. “And shall I be a page and carry the Fairy Lady’s train?”
Magda smiled at him.
“Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won’t be quite as soon as to-morrow,” she told him.
“Why not?” insinuated Quarrington calmly. “There are such things as special licences, you know.”
“Don’t be silly,” replied Magda scathingly. “I’ve only just been saved from drowning, and I don’t propose to take on such a risk as matrimony till I’ve had time to recover my nerve.”
Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.
“And to think,” she burst out at last, indignantly, “of all the hours I’ve spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten you both with a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!”
“Well, we’re engaged now,” submitted Magda meekly.
Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.
“If you weren’t, you’d have to be—after last night!” she commented drily.
“No one need know about last night,” retorted Magda.
“Huh!” Lady Arabella snorted. “Half Netherway will know the tale by midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They always do.”
“Never mind. It will make an excellent advertisement,” observed Magda philosophically. “Can’t you see it in all the papers?—‘NARROW ESCAPE OF THE WIELITZSKA.’ In big capitals.”
They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained in her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington—who, in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the Wielitzska’s life by swimming ashore with her.
The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of sunshiny days in writing round to Magda’s friends assuring them of her continued existence and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.
It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and life at the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda continuing to sit daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was anxious to complete before she returned to London for the autumn season.
“It’sourpicture now, Saint Michel,” she told him, with a happy, possessive pride in his work.
In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.
It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.
She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the crook of her arm.
Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and dragons such as Coppertop’s small soul delighted in. On one such occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.
“I suppose,” he asked rather forlornly, “when you’re married they’ll give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won’t they?”
The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.
“Perhaps so, Topkins,” she answered very low.
He heaved a big sigh. “He’ll be a veryluckylittle boy,” he said plaintively. “If Mummie couldn’t have been my mummie, I’d have choosed you.”
And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London. The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her sometimes.
“It can’t last, Gilly,” she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an access of superstitious fear. “It simplycan’tlast! No one was meant to be as happy as I am!”
“I think we were all meant to be happy,” replied Gillian simply. “Happy and good!” she added, laughing.
“Yes. But I haven’t been particularly good. I’ve just done whatever it occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day.”
Gillian smiled.
“Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of them,” she said cheerfully.
“Perhaps—perhaps you wouldn’t be able to.”
There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda’s voice—an accent of fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of uneasiness.
“Nonsense!” she said brusquely. “What on earth has put all these ridiculous notions into your head?”
Magda smiled at her. “I think it was four lines I read in a book yesterday. They set me thinking.”
“More’s the pity then!” grumbled Gillian. “What were they?”
Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted eyes. It was so blue to-day—all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight. But she knew that self-same sea could be grey—grey and chill as death.
Her glance came slowly back to Gillian’s face as she quoted the fragment of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:
“To-day and all the still unborn To-morrowsHave sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or WealThe Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days—Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel.”
After a moment she added:
“Even you couldn’t cut through ‘ropes of steel,’ my Gillyflower.”
Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.
“Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose to send an announcement of your engagement to theMorning Post. You’re not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?”
“Oh, no. It was only that I didn’t want to be pestered with congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they’ll have to come some day”—with a small grimace of disgust.
“You’ll be snowed under with them,” Gillian assured her encouragingly.
The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda’s return from Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing details concerning their personal tastes.
“Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,” remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different accounts aloud for Gillian’s edification.
“Has he?” Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly, owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her lips.
“Yes, he must have. Listen to this, ‘Mr. Quarrington’s wonderful creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets—so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.’ I’m glad I’ve learned that,” pursued Magda earnestly. “It seems to me an important thing for a wife to know. Don’t you think so, Gillian?”
Gillian shouted with delight.
“Of course I do! Do let’s ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of raw cutlets on a charger.”
“No,” insisted Magda firmly. “I shall keep a splendid treat like that for him till after we’re married. Even at a strictly conservative estimate it should be worth a new hat to me.”
“Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea,” suggested Gillian, giggling.
The following evening was the occasion of Magda’s first appearance at the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. “House Full” boards were exhibited outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the critics characterised next day as “the most appealing performance ofThe Swan-Maidenwhich Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us,” she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.
She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy, and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old woman’s neck.
“Oh, the dears!” she exclaimed. “The blesseddears! Virginie, I believe I’m the happiest woman alive!”
“And who should be,mon petite chou, if not thou?” returned the old woman with conviction. “Of course they love thee!Mais bien sur! Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel visions that they could not imagine for themselves?” She paused. Then thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and producing a card: “Tiens! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle receive him?”
Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway. He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious to get her first meeting with the musician over. He would probably rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion characteristic of him, and the sooner he “got it out of his system,” as Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better for everyone concerned. So Magda braced herself for the interview, and prepared to receive a tragical and despondent Davilof.
But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him, paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.
She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey—grey and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features, particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.
“Antoine!” His name faltered from Magda’s lips. The man’s face, its beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.
He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.
“Is it true?” he demanded imperiously.
She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that startled her.
“Is what true?”
“Is it true that you’re engaged to Quarrington?”
“Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn’t you see it?”
“Yes, I saw it. I didn’t believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since then I’ve been travelling night and day.” He paused, adding in a tone of finality: “You must break it off.”
“Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?”
“No, I’m not crazy. But you’re mine. You’re meant for me. And no other man shall have you.”
Magda’s first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man’s haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.
“Don’t talk like that, Antoine.” She spoke very gently. “You don’t mean it, you know. If—if you do care for me as you say, you’d like me to be happy, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d make you happy,” he said hoarsely.
She shook her head.
“No,” she answered. “You couldn’t make me happy. Only Michael can do that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I’d rather go with your good wishes. Won’t you give them to me? We’ve been friends so long—”
“Friends?” he broke in fiercely. “No! We’ve never been ‘friends.’ I’ve been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your lover till I die!”
Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her costume of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her bare arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.
“Mon adoree!”
His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on hers. The burning kisses seemed to scorch her—consuming, overwhelming her. When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly to free herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.
“Now you know how I love you,” he said grimly. He was breathing rather fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his self-control. It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion so that she might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. “Do you think I’ll give you up? I tell you I’d rather kill you than see you Quarrington’s wife.”
Once more she made an effort to release herself.
“Oh, you’re mad, you’re mad!” she cried. “Let me go, Davilof! At once!”
“No,” he said in a measured voice. “Don’t struggle. I’m not going to let you go. Not yet. I’ve reached my limit. You shall go when you promise to marry me. Me, not Quarrington.”
She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried him headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet, purposeful composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd kind of misgiving.
“It’s absurd to talk like that,” she said, holding on desperately to her self-possession. “It’s silly—and melodramatic, and only makes me realise how glad I am I shall be Michael’s wife and not yours.”
“You will never be Quarrington’s wife.”
He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.
“And do you propose to prevent it?” she asked contemptuously.
“Yes.” Then, suddenly: “Adoree, don’t force me to do it! I don’t want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved if you’ll promise to marry me.”
He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But Magda’s nerve was gradually returning.
“You don’t seem to understand that you can’t prevent my marrying Michael—or anyone else,” she said coolly. “You haven’t the power.”
“I can prevent your marrying Michael”—doggedly.
She was silent a moment.
“I suppose,” she said at last, “you think that because he once thought badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can’t. Michael and I trust each other—absolutely!”
Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could really hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at Antoine’s threat.
“And now,” she said quietly, “will you please release me?”
Slowly, reluctantly Davilof’s hands dropped from her arms, revealing red weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white flesh. He uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-looking marks.
“Mon dieu! I’ve hurt you—”
“No!” Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. “No!You can’thurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that.”
He flinched at the proud significance of the words—denying him even the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him, contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons—the weapons of the man who didn’t count.
There was a long silence. At last he spoke.
“You’ll be sorry for that,” he said in a voice of concentrated anger. “Damned sorry. Because it isn’t true. Icanhurt you. And by God, if you won’t marry me, I will! . . . Magda——” With one of the swift changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into passionate supplication. “Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I love you, you couldn’t turn me away. Wait! Think again—”
“That will do.” She checked him imperiously. “I don’t want your love. And for the future please understand that you won’t even be a friend. I don’t wish to see or speak to you again!”