The Lamp of Fate Part 15

Magda gave a little grin.

"You mean it would have been quite comprehensible if he _had_ known me?"

she observed ironically.

The other laughed.

"Don't be so provoking! You know perfectly well what I meant! You deserve that I should answer 'yes' to that question."

"Do, if you like."

"I would--only I happen to know you a good deal better than you know yourself."

"What do you know about me, then, that I don't?"

Gillian's nice brown eyes smiled across at her.

"I know that, somewhere inside you, you've got the capacity for being as sweet and kind and tender and self-sacrificing as any woman living--if only something would happen to make it worth while. I wish--I wish to heaven you'd fall in love!"

"I'm not likely to. I'm in love with my art. It gives you a better return than love for any man."

"No," answered Gillian quietly. "No. You're wrong. Tony died when we'd only been married a year. But that year was worth the whole rest of life put together. And--I've got Coppertop."

Magda leaned forward suddenly and kissed her.

"Dear Gillyflower!" she said. "I'm so glad you feel like that--bless you! I wish I could. But I never shall. I was soured in the making, I think"--laughing rather forlornly. "I don't trust love. It's the thing that hurts and tortures and breaks a woman--as my mother was hurt and tortured and broken." She paused. "No, preserve me from falling in love!" she added more lightly. "'A Loaf of Bread, and Thou beside me in the Wilderness' doesn't appeal to me in the least."

"It will one day," retorted Gillian oracularly. "In the meantime you might go on telling me about the man who fished you out of the smash.

Was he young? And good-looking? Perhaps he is destined to be your fate."

"He was rather over thirty, I should think. And good-looking--quite. But he 'hates my type of woman,' you'll be interested to know. So that you can put your high hopes back on the top shelf again."

"Not at all," declared Gillian briskly. "There's nothing like beginning with a little aversion."

Magda smiled reminiscently.

"If you'd been present at our interview, you'd realise that 'a little aversion' is a cloying euphemism for the feeling exhibited by my late preserver."

"What was he like, then?"

"At first, because I wouldn't take the sal volatile--you know how I detest the stuff!--and sit still where he'd put me like a good little girl, he ordered me about as though I were a child of six. He absolutely bullied me! Then it apparently occurred to him to take my moral welfare in hand, and I should judge he considered that Jezebel and Delilah were positively provincial in their methods as compared with me."

"Nonsense! If he didn't know you, why should he suppose himself competent to form any opinion about you at all--good, bad, or indifferent?"

"I don't know," replied Magda slowly. Then, speaking with sudden defiance: "Yes, I do know! A pal of his had--had cared about me some time or other, and I'd turned him down. That's why."

"Oh, Magda!" There was both reproach and understanding in Gillian's voice.

Magda shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, if he wanted to pay off old scores on his pal's behalf, he succeeded," she said mirthlessly.

Gillian looked at her in surprise. She had never seen Magda quite like this before; her sombre eyes held a curious strained look like those of some wild thing of the forest caught in a trap and in pain.

"And you don't know who he was--I mean the man who came to your help and then lectured you?"

"Yes, I do. It was Michael Quarrington, the artist."

"Michael Quarrington? Why, he has the reputation of being a most charming man!"

Magda stared into the fire.

"I dare say he might have a great deal of charm if he cared to exert it.

Apparently, however, he didn't think I was worth the effort."

CHAPTER IV

IN THE MIRROR ROOM

Shouts of mirth came jubilantly from the Mirror Room as Davilof made his way thither one afternoon a few days later. The shrill peal of a child's laughter rose gaily above the lower note of women's voices, and when the accompanist opened the door it was to discover Magda completely engrossed in giving Coppertop a first dancing lesson, while Gillian sat st.i.tching busily away at some small nether garments afflicted with rents and tears in sundry places. Every now and again she glanced up with softly amused eyes to watch her son's somewhat unsteady efforts in the Terpsich.o.r.ean art.

Coppertop, a slim young reed in his bright green knitted jersey, was clinging with one hand to a wooden bar attached to the wall which served Magda for the "bar practice" which const.i.tutes part of every dancer's daily work, while Magda, holding his other hand in hers, essayed to instruct him in the principle of "turning out"--that flexible turning of the knees towards the side which gives so much facility of movement.

"Point your toes sideways--so," directed Magda. "This one towards me--like that." She stooped and placed his foot in position. "Now, kick out! Try to kick me!"

Coppertop tried--and succeeded, greeting his accomplishment with shrieks of delight.

It was just at this moment that Davilof appeared on the scene, pausing abruptly in the doorway as he caught sight of Magda's laughing face bent above the fiery red head. There was something very charming in her expression of eager, light-hearted abandonment to the fun of the moment.

At the sound of the opening door Coppertop wriggled out of her grasp like an eel, twisting his lithe young body round to see who the new arrival might be. His face fell woefully as he caught sight of Davilof.

"Oh, you can't _never_ have come already to play for the Fairy Lady!" he exclaimed in accents of dire disappointment.

"Fairy Lady" was the name he had bestowed upon Magda when, very early in their acquaintance, she had performed for his sole and particular benefit a maturer edition of the dance she had evolved as a child--the dance with which she had so much astonished Lady Arabella. Nowadays it figured prominently on her programmes as "The Hamadryad," and was enormously popular.

"It's not never three o'clock!" wailed Coppertop disconsolately, as Davilof dangled his watch in front of him.

"I think it is, small son," interpolated Gillian, gathering together her sewing materials. "Come along. We must leave the Fairy Lady to practise now, because she's got to dance to half the people in London to-morrow."

"Must I really go?" appealed Coppertop, beseeching Magda with a pair of melting green eyes.

She dropped a light kiss on the top of his red curls.

"'Fraid so, Coppertop," she said. "You wouldn't want Fairy Lady to dance badly and tumble down, would you?"

But Coppertop was not to be taken in so easily.

"Huh!" he scoffed. "You _couldn't_ tumble down--not never!"