Lady Arabella might disapprove of her god-daughter from every point of the compass, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that when Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon with the information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire, she hailed the announcement with enthusiasm.
“But where is Magda? Why didn’t she come with you?” she demanded impatiently.
“Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things in connection with this next winter’s season, so there’s a great council in progress. But she’s coming to see you to-morrow. Won’t I do”—Gillian wrinkled her brows whimsically—“for to-day?”
“Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about your Devonshire trip. I suppose,” she went on, “you heard the news of Michael Quarrington’s marriage? Or didn’t you get any newspapers down in your benighted village?”
“No, we had no London papers,” replied Gillian doubtfully. “But—I don’t understand. Mr. Quarrington isn’t married, is he? I thought—I thought——”
“You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that a motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at top speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must have felt a pretty fool since!” And Lady Arabella gave one of her enjoyable chuckles.
“Yes. Antoine came down to see us,” replied Gillian in puzzled tones. “But Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose hemusthave told her——” She broke off as all at once illumination penetrated the darkness. “That explains it, then! Explains everything!” she exclaimed.
“What explains what?” demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.
“Why——” And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had led up to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.
“She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even asked her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn’t get any sensible answer out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in the moonlight with Dan Storran for audience—out of sheer devilment, of course!”
“Or sheer heartsickness,” suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the rest of her personality.
“Do you think she—cared, then?” asked Gillian.
“For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in the end, I hope. And, anyway”—with a wicked little grin—“Davilof won’t have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated.”
“But if Michael Quarrington is married—”
“He isn’t,” interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. “It was contradicted in the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.
“Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?”
“Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the names mixed. It ought really to have beenWarrington, not Quarrington—Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he and Michael were both using the same woman as a model—only Warrington married her! Spoiled Michael’s picture—or his temper—when he ran off with her for a honeymoon, I expect!”
On her return to Friars’ Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda’s benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.
To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box of life’s possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It had been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours that had succeeded Davilof’s announcement of his marriage to the Spanish woman had taught her how much Michael meant to her.
She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened and intensified by that strong “partisan” feeling of one man for another—fruit of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so often colours the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love, against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love, had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely shattered.
Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether new point of view—the viewpoint from which other people might conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a thing before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant one. But it helped her to understand to a certain extent—though still only in a very modified degree—the influences which had sent Michael Quarrington out of England.
And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was still free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman, much of the resentful hardness which had embittered her during the last few months melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant, tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality of former days.
She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the moment, to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not paused to consider the possible resultant consequences to the subject of the experiment.
She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had gone he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on the farm would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually, with the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to the happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience—which beset her return to London—grew considerably fainter and more infrequent.
It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came the stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims upon her thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present a series of ballets throughout the course of the winter, in the greater number of which Magda would be the bright and particular star. And in the absorption of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which she loved, the recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh slipped by degrees into the background of her mind. Fraught with such immense significance and catastrophe to those others, Dan and June—to Magda it soon came to occupy no more than an incidental niche in her memory.
Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender, resistless hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer, and June, arms filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden of roses.
Magda’s car, purring its way southward along the great road from London, sped between fields that still gleamed with the first freshness of their young green, while through the open window drifted vagrant little puffs of clean country air, coming delicately to her nostrils, fragrant of leaf and bloom.
She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased her to term her “cottage in the country,” a charming old place, Elizabethan in character—the type of “cottage” which boasted a score or so of rooms and every convenience which an imaginative estate agent, sustained by the knowledge that his client regarded money as a means and not an end, could devise.
Summer invitations to the Hermitage—as the place was quite inaptly called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious owner—were much sought after by the younger generation of Lady Arabella’s set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green aisles of shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge of the blue waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring to a safe and happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have hung fire a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations were requested.
This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned by the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and later on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the trio at Friars’ Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial ventures for which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to weigh on her conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to take one.
And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in order to close up the house at Hampstead and settle the servants on board wages. It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should come on to Netherway immediately this was accomplished.
Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed since last the roses beckoned her out of London. It seemed far longer since that hot summer’s day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly seeking a narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil of pain that was besetting her.
She had learned now that you carry a heartache with you, and that no change of scenery makes up for the beloved face you can no longer see. For Michael had not come back. He had remained abroad and had never by sign or letter acknowledged that he even remembered her existence. Magda had come to accept it as a fact now that he had gone out of her life entirely.
A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the window, and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car was winding its way up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.
A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just below the hill’s brow, sheltered to the rear by a great belt of woods, and overlooking a sea which sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-dust.
Lady Arabella was waiting in the porch when the car drew up and welcomed her god-daughter with delight. She seemed bubbling over with good spirits, and there was a half-mischievous, half-guilty twinkle in her keen old eyes which suggested that there might be some ulterior cause for her effervescence.
“If you were poor I should say you’d just come into a fortune,” commented Magda, regarding her judicially. “As you’re not, I should like to know why you’re looking as pleased as a child with a new toy. Own up, now, Marraine! What’s the secret you’ve got up your sleeve?”
“Yes, there is a secret,” acknowledged Lady Arabella gleefully. “Come along and I’ll show it you.”
Magda smiled and followed her across the long hall and into a room at the further end of which stood a big easel. On the easel, just nearing completion, rested a portrait of her godmother. It was rather a wonderful portrait. The artist seemed to have penetrated beyond the mere physical lineaments of his sitter into the very crannies of her soul. It was all there—the thoroughly worldly shrewdness, the mordant, somewhat cynical humour, and the genuine kindness of heart which went to make up Lady Arabella’s personality as her world knew it. And something more. Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a long-past romance, the unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady Arabella had herself once put it in a rare moment of self-revelation, “love is the best thing this queer old world of ours has to offer.” The portrait on the easel was that of a woman who had visioned the miracle of love only to be robbed of its fulfilment.
Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it from the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The brushwork, and that uncannily clever characterisation, were unmistakable.
“Good likeness, don’t you think?”
Lady Arabella’s snapping speech broke the silence.
“It’s rather more than that, isn’t it?” said Magda. “How did you seduce Michael Quarrington? I thought”—for an instant her voice wavered, then steadied again—“I thought he was abroad.”
“He was. At the present moment he’s at the Hermitage.”
“Here?”
Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the wave of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it milk-white. Michael . . .here! She felt her heart beating in great suffocating throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were here, knowing that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not hate her so badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope. Perhaps—perhaps happiness was not so far away, after all!
And then she heard Lady Arabella’s voice breaking across the riot of emotion which stirred within her.
“Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It’s for you, the portrait. I thought you’d like to have it when you haven’t got the original any longer.”
Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly apprehensive.
“What do you mean?” she said anxiously. “You’re—you’re not ill, Marraine?”
“Ill? No. But I’m over seventy. And after seventy you’ve had your allotted span, you know. Anything beyond that’s an extra. And whether fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I’ve nothing to grumble at. I’velived, not vegetated—and I’ve had a very good time, too.” She paused, then added slowly: “Though I’ve missed the best.”
Magda slipped her hand into the old woman’s thin, wrinkled one with a quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell between them.
“Then you’ll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars’ Holm?” queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.
“You know we’d love to have it,” replied Magda warmly. In a studiously casual voice she pursued: “By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I’m here?”
Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on having successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael’s presence at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda would take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her car round again and driven straight back to London!
But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure—one’s mental states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside world!—and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor had Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as the resolution of most lovers’ problems and misunderstandings.
She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had been merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had little enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her erect old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty years ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow her quite a good deal of rope.
As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible meeting with Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the prospect to him.
He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded him a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella’s temerity, he reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special circumstances as she did, would have ventured so far.
Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He would never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he had left England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman should have any place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences had confirmed him in this determination.
At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face it out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the portrait upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and depart.
So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour at the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a cool detachment.
But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first glance at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her heart. It had hardened—hardened into lines of a grim self-control that spoke of long mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to close in a new line of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested on her there lay a certain cynical indifference which seemed to set her as far away from him as the north is from the south. She realised that the gulf between them was almost as wide and impassable as though he were in very truth the Spanish dancer’s husband. This man proposed to give her neither love nor forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct of pride—the pride of woman who must be sought and never the seeker—carried her through the ordeal of the first meeting. Nor did he seek to make it easier for her.
“It is a long time since you were in England,” she remarked after the first interchange of civilities.
“Very long,” agreed Quarrington politely. “It would probably have been still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was too interesting a commission to refuse.”
“It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything thatisn’tgood, do you?”
“I paint what I see.”
“In that case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their portraits painted by you—beauty being so much in the eye of the beholder!” returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the defence behind which a woman takes refuge.
“I don’t think so. As a matter of fact I have no objection to painting a plain face—provided there’s a beautiful soul behind it.”
“But I suppose a beautiful soul in a beautiful body would satisfy you better?”
“It might, if such a combination existed.”
Magda flushed a little.
“You don’t think it does?”
The grey, contemptuous eyes swept her face suddenly.
“My experience has not led me to think so.”
There was an almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It was as though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her. Magda’s spirit rose in opposition.
“Perhaps your experience has been somewhat limited,” she observed.
“Perhaps it has. If so, I have no wish to extend it.”
In spite of Michael’s taciturnity—or perhaps, more truly, on account of it—Magda’s spirits lightened curiously after that first interview with him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache at her heart—the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the morose cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that, although he had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and a half, yet he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or indifference. Magda was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that a man doesn’t expend powder and shot on a woman to whom he is completely indifferent.
The next day or two were not without their difficulties, as Lady Arabella speedily realised. A triangular party, when two out of the three share certain poignant memories, is by no means the easiest thing to stage-manage. There were inevitable awkward moments that could only be surmounted by the exercise of considerable tact, and the hours which Lady Arabella passed sitting to Quarrington for her portrait, while Magda wandered alone through the woods or sculled a solitary boat up the river, helped to minimize the strain considerably.
Nevertheless, it was a relief to everyone concerned when Gillian and Coppertop were added to the party. A strained atmosphere was somewhat difficult of accomplishment anywhere within the joyous vicinity of the latter, while Gillian’s tranquil and happy nature reacted on the whole household.
“That’s an extraordinary friendship,” commented Quarrington one day as he and his hostess stood at the window watching Gillian and Magda, returned from shopping in the village, approaching up the drive. “Mrs. Grey is so simple and—to use an overworked word—so essentially womanly.”
“And Magda?”
The hard look deepened in Michael’s eyes.
“Essentially—feminine,” he answered curtly. “A quite different thing.”
“She hasn’t found her soul yet,” said Lady Arabella. Adding with sudden daring: “Suppose you find it for her, Michael?”
“I don’t think the search would interest me,” he returned coolly. “I haven’t the instinct of the prospector.” He paused, then went on slowly and as though making the admission almost against his will: “But I’d like to paint her.”
“A portrait of her?”
“No, not a portrait.”
“Then you mean you want her to sit for your ‘Circe’?”
Lady Arabella knew all about the important picture he had in mind to paint. They had often discussed it together during the progress of the sittings she had been giving him, and she was aware that so far he had been unable to find a suitable model.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “She is the perfect model for such a subject—body and soul.”
Lady Arabella ignored the sneer.
“Then why not ask her to sit for you?”
Quarrington’s brows drew together.
“You know the answer to that, I think, Lady Arabella,” he answered curtly.
“Oh, you men! I’ve no patience with you!” exclaimed the old lady testily. “Ishall ask her, then!”
Gillian and Magda, laden with parcels, entered the room as she spoke, and, before Quarrington could prevent her, she had flashed round on her god-daughter.
“Magda, here’s Michael in need of a model for the best picture he’s ever likely to paint, and it seems you exactly fit the bill. Will you sit for him?”
Followed an astonished silence. Gillian glanced apprehensively towards Magda. She felt as though Lady Arabella had suddenly let off a firework in their midst. Magda halted in the process of unwrapping a small parcel.
“What is the subject of the picture?”
There was a perceptible pause. Then Lady Arabella took the bull by the horns.
“Circe,” she said tersely.
“Oh!” Magda seemed to reflect. “She turned men into swine, didn’t she?” She looked across at Quarrington. “And I’m to understand you think I’d make a suitable model for that particular subject?”
“She was a very beautiful person,” suggested Gillian hastily.
“Mr. Quarrington hasn’t answered my question,” persisted Magda.
He met her glance with cool defiance.
“Then, yes,” he returned with a little bow. “As Mrs. Grey has just remarked—Circe was very beautiful.”
“You score,” observed Magda demurely. There was a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“Yes, I think he does,” agreed Lady Arabella, who was deriving an impish, pixie-like enjoyment from the situation. Then, recognising that it might be more diplomatic not to press the matter any further at the moment, she skilfully drew the conversation into other channels.
It was not until evening, after dinner, that she reverted to the subject. They had all four been partaking of coffee and cigarettes on the verandah, and subsequently she had proposed a stroll in the garden—a suggestion to which Gillian responded with alacrity. Magda, her slim length extended on a comfortably cushioned wicker lunge, shook her head.
“I’m too comfortable to stir,” she declared idly.
Lady Arabella paused at the edge of the verandah and contemplated her critically. Something in the girl’s pose and in the long, lithe lines of her recumbent figure was responsible for her next remark.
“I can see you as Circe,” she commented, “quite well.” She tucked her arm into Gillian’s and, as they moved away together, threw back over her shoulder: “By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the model for the picture yet?”
Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying. Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: “Have we?”
“Have we what?”
“Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?”
Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
“Why should I?” she asked lazily.
He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
“No reason in the world—unless you feel inclined to do a good turn.”
His indifference was maddening.
“I don’t make a habit of doing good turns,” she retorted sharply.
“So I should imagine.”
The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation. As always, she found herself stung to the quick by the man’s coolly critical attitude towards her. She was back once more in the atmosphere of their first meeting on the day he had come to her assistance in the fog. It seemed almost incredible that all that followed had ever taken place—incredible that he had ever cared for her or taught her to care for him. At least he was making it very clear to her now that he intended to cut those intervening memories out of his life.
It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything that was woman in her rose to meet it.
She smiled across at him engagingly.
“I might—perhaps—make an exception.”
For a moment there was silence. Quarrington’s gaze was riveted on her slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb. It was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he were going to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out with himself—pulled two ways—the artist in him combating the man’s impulse to resist her.
Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood looking down at her.
“Will you?” he said. “Will you?”
Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses racing.
She turned her head aside.
“Yes,” she answered, a little breathlessly. “Yes—if you want me to.”
Magda glanced from the divan covered with a huge tiger-skin to Michael, wheeling his easel into place. A week’s hard work on the part of the artist had witnessed the completion of Lady Arabella’s portrait, and to-day he proposed to make some preliminary sketches for “Circe.”
Magda felt oddly nervous and unsure of herself. This last fortnight passed in daily companionship with Quarrington had proved a considerable strain. Not withstanding that she had consented to sit for his picture of Circe, he had not deviated from the attitude which he had apparently determined upon from the first moment of her arrival at the Hermitage—an attitude of aloof indifference to which was added a bitterness of speech that continually thrust at her with its trenchant cynicism. It was as though he had erected a high wall between them which Magda found no effort of hers could break down, and she was beginning to ask herself whether he could ever really have cared for her at all. Surely no man who had once cared could be so hard—so implacably hard!
And now, alone with him in the big room which had been converted into a temporary studio, she found herself overwhelmed by a feeling of intense self-consciousness. She felt it would be impossible to bear the coolly neutral gaze of those grey eyes for hours at a time. She wished fervently that she had never consented to sit for the picture at all.
“How do you want me to pose?” she inquired at last, endeavouring to speak with her usual detachment and conscious that she was failing miserably. “You haven’t told me yet.”
He laughed a little.
“I haven’t the least intention of telling you,” he replied. “‘The Wielitzska’ doesn’t need advice as to how to pose.”
Magda looked at him uncertainly.
“But you’ve given me no idea of what you want,” she protested. “I must have some idea to start from!”
“I want a recumbent Circe,” he vouchsafed at last. “Hence the divan. Here is the goblet”—he held it out—“supposed to contain the fatal potion which transformed men into swine. I leave the rest to you. You posed very successfully for me some years ago—without my issuing any stage directions. Afterwards you played the part of a youthful Circe, I remember. You should be more experienced now.”
She flushed under the cool, satirical tone. It seemed as though he neglected no opportunity of impressing on her the poor estimation in which he held her. Her thoughts flew back to a sunlit glade in a wood and to the grey-eyed, boyish-looking painter who had kissed her and called her “Witch-child!”
“You—you were kinder in those days,” she said suddenly. She made a few steps towards him and stood looking up at him, her hands hanging loosely clasped in front of her, like a penitent school-girl.
“Saint Michel”—and at the sound of her old childish name for him he winced. “Saint Michel, I don’t think I can sit for you if—if you’re going to be unkind. I thought I could, but—but—I can’t!”
“Unkind?” he muttered.
“Yes,” she said desperately. “Since I came here you’ve said a good many hard things to me. I—I dare say I’ve deserved them. But”—smiling up at him rather wanly—“it isn’t always easy to accept one’s deserts.” She paused, then spoke quickly: “Couldn’t we—while we’re here together—behave like friends? Just friends? It’s only for a short time.”
His face had whitened while she was speaking. He was silent for a little and his hand, grasping the side of the big easel, slowly tightened its grip till the knuckles showed white like bone. At last he answered her.
“Very well—friends, then! So be it.”
Impulsively she held out her hand. He took it in his and held it a moment, looking down at its slim whiteness. Then he bent his head and she felt his lips hot against her soft palm.
A little shaken, she drew away from him and moved towards the divan. She paused beside it and glanced down reflectively at the goblet she still carried in her hand, mentally formulating her conception of Circe before she posed. An instant later and her voice roused Quarrington from the momentary reverie into which he had fallen.
“How would this do?”
He looked up, and as his gaze absorbed the picture before him an eager light of pure aesthetic satisfaction leaped into his eyes.
“Hold that!” he exclaimed quickly. “Don’t move, please!” And, snatching up a stick of charcoal, he began to sketch rapidly with swift, sure strokes.
The pose she had assumed was matchless. She was half-sitting, half-lying on the divan, the swathing draperies of her tunic outlining the wonderful modelling of her limbs. The upper part of her body, twisting a little from the waist, was thrown back as she leaned upon one arm, hand pressed palm downward on the tiger-skin. In her other hand she held a golden goblet, proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted face with its strange, enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the seductive entreaty and beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of mankind, which are the garnerings of the Circes of this world.
At length Quarrington laid down his charcoal.
“It’s a splendid pose,” he said enthusiastically. “That sideways bend you’ve given to your body—it’s wonderful! But can you stand it, do you think? Of course I’ll give you rests as often as I can, but even so it will be a very trying pose to hold.”
Magda sat up, letting her feet slide slowly over the edge of the divan. The “feet of Aurora” someone had once called them—white and arched, with rosy-tipped toes curved like the petals of a flower.
“I can hold it for a good while, I think,” she answered evasively.
She did not tell him that even to her trained muscles the preservation of this particular pose, with its sinuous twist of the body, was likely to prove somewhat of a strain. If the pose was so exactly what he wanted for his Circe, he should have it, whatever the cost to herself.
And without knowing it, yielding to an impulse which she hardly recognised, Magda had taken the first step along the pathway of service and sacrifice trodden by those who love.
“It seems as though you were destined to be the model of my two ‘turning-point’ pictures,” commented Quarrington some days later, during one of the intervals when Magda was taking a brief rest. “It was the ‘Repose of Titania’ which first established my reputation, you know.”
“But this can’t be a ‘turning-point,’” objected Magda. “When you’ve reached the top of the pinnacle of fame, so to speak, there isn’t any ‘turning-point’—unless”—laughing—“you’re going to turn round and climb down again!”
“There’s no top to the pinnacle of work—of achievement,” he answered quietly. “At least, there shouldn’t be. One just goes on—slipping back a bit, sometimes, then scrambling on again.” His glance returned to the picture and Magda watched the ardour of the creative artist light itself anew in his eyes. “That”—he nodded towards the canvas—“is going to be the best bit of work I’ve done.”
“What made you”—she hesitated a moment—“what made you choose Circe as the subject?”
His face clouded over.
“The experience of a friend of mine.”
Magda caught her breath.
“Not—you don’t mean——-”
“Oh, no”—divining her thought—“not the friend of whom you know—who loved the dancer. She hurt him”—looking at her significantly—“but she didn’t injure him to that extent. Circe turned men into swine, you remember. My friend was too fine a character for her to spoil like that.”
“I’m glad.” Magda spoke very low, her head bent. She felt unable to meet his eyes. After a short silence she asked: “Then what inspired—this picture?”
Was it some woman-episode that had occurred while he was abroad which had scored those new lines on his face, embittering the mouth and implanting that sternly sad expression in the grey eyes? She must know—at all hazards, she must know!
Quarrington lit a cigarette.
“It’s not a pretty story,” he remarked harshly.
Magda glanced towards the picture. The enchanting, tilted face smiled at her from the canvas, faintly derisive.
“Tell it me,” was all she said.
“There’s very little to tell,” he answered briefly. “There was a man and his wife—and another woman. Till the latter came along they were absolutely happy together—sufficient unto each other. The other woman was one of the Circe type, and she broke the man. Broke him utterly. I happened to be in Paris at the time, and he came to see me there on his way out to South America. He’d left his wife, left his work—everything. Justquitted! Since then I believe ‘Frisco has seen more of him than any other place. A man I know ran across him there and told me he’d gone under—utterly.”
“And the wife?”
“Dead”—shortly. “She’d no heart to go on living—no wish to. She died when their first child was born—she and the child together—a few months after her husband had left her.”
Magda uttered a stifled cry of pity, but Quarrington seemed not to hear it.
“That woman was a twentieth-century Circe.” He paused, then added with grim conviction: “There’s no forgiveness for a woman like that.”
“Ah! Don’t say that!”
The words broke impulsively from Magda’s lips. The recollection of the summer she had spent at Stockleigh rushed over her accusingly—and she realised that actually she had come between Dan Storran and his wife very much as the Circe woman of Michael’s story had come between some other husband and wife.
A deep compassion for that unknown woman surged up within her. Surely her burden of remorse must be almost more than she could endure! And Magda—to whom penalties and consequences had hitherto been but very unimportant factors with which she concerned herself as little as possible—was all at once conscious of an intense thankfulness that she had not been thus punished, that she had quitted Stockleigh leaving husband and wife still together. Together, they would find the way back into each other’s hearts!
“Don’t say that!” she repeated imploringly. “It sounds so hard—so relentless!”
“I don’t think that it is a case for relenting. But I oughtn’t to have told you about it. After all, neither the husband nor wife were friends of yours. And you’re looking quite upset over it. I didn’t imagine that you were so easily moved to sympathy.”
She looked away. Of late she had been puzzled herself at the new and unwonted emotions which stirred her.
“I don’t think—I used to be,” she said at last, uncertainly.
“Well, please don’t take the matter too much to heart or you won’t be able to assume the personality of Circe again when you’ve rested. I don’t want to paint the picture of a model of propriety!”
It seemed as though he were anxious to restore the conversation to a lighter vein, and Magda responded gladly.
“I’m quite rested now. Shall I pose again?” she suggested a few minutes later.
Michael assented and, picking up his palette, began squeezing out fresh shining little worms of paint on to it while Magda reassumed her pose. For a while he chatted intermittently, but presently he fell silent, becoming more and more deeply absorbed in his work. Finally, when some remark of hers repeated a second time still remained unanswered, she realised that he had completely forgotten her existence. As far as he was concerned she was no longer Magda Wielitzska, posing for him, but Circe, the enchantress, whose amazing beauty he was transferring to his canvas in glowing brushstrokes. As with all genius, the impulse of creative work had seized him suddenly and was driving him on regardless of everything exterior to his art.
Time had ceased to matter to him, and Magda, with little nervous pains shooting first through one limb, then another, was wondering how much longer she could maintain the pose. She was determined not to give in, not to check him while that fervour of creation was upon him.
The pain was increasing. She felt as though she were being stabbed with red-hot knives. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and her breath came gaspingly between her lips.
All at once the big easel at which Michael was standing receded out of sight, and when it reappeared again it was quite close to her, swaying and nodding like a mandarin. Instinctively she put out her hand to steady it, but it leaned nearer and nearer and finally gave a huge lurch and swooped down on top of her, and the studio and everything in it faded out of sight. . . .
The metallic tinkle of the gold goblet as it fell from her hand and rolled along the floor startled Michael out of his absorption. With a sharp exclamation he flung down his brush and palette and strode hurriedly to the divan. Magda was lying half across it in a little crumpled heap, unconscious.
His first impulse to lift her up was arrested by something in her attitude, and he stood quite still, looking down at her, his face suddenly drawn and very weary.
In the limp figure with its upturned face and the purple shadows which fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an irresistible appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the knowledge that she had done this for him—forced her limbs into agonised subjection until at last conscious endurance had failed her—moved him indescribably.
Surely this was a new Magda! Or else he had never known her. Had he been too hard—hard to her and pitilessly hard to himself—when he had allowed the ugly facts of her flirtation with Kit Raynham to drive him from her?
Eighteen months ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of gossip, no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had made her suffer, he had at least suffered equally himself!
He stooped over the prone figure on the divan. Lower, lower still, till a tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead quivered beneath his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking himself upright. Striding across the room he pealed the bell and, when a neat maidservant appeared in response, ordered sharply:
“Bring some brandy—quick! And ask Mrs. Grey to come here. Mademoiselle Wielitzska has fainted.”