The Lamp of Fate Part 16

"Still, you mustn't be greedy, Topkins," urged Magda persuasively.

"Remember all the grown-up people who want me to dance to them! I can't keep it all for one little boy." He stared at her for a moment in silence. Suddenly he flung his arms round her slender hips, clutching her tightly, and hid his face against her skirt.

"Oh, Fairy Lady, you are so booful--_so booful_!" he whispered in a smothered voice. Then, with a big sigh: "But one little boy won't be greedy." He turned to his mother. "Come along, mummie!" he commanded superbly. And trotted out of the room beside her with his small head well up.

Left alone, Davilof and Magda smiled across at one another.

"Funny little person, isn't he?" she said.

The musician nodded.

"Grown-ups might possibly envy the freedom of speech permitted to childhood," he said quietly. Then, still more quietly: "'Fairy Lady, you are so beautiful!'"

"But you're not a child, so don't poach Coppertop's preserves!" retorted Magda swiftly. "Let's get to work, Antoine. I'll just change into my practice-kit and then I want to run through the 'Swan-Maiden's' dance.

You fix the lighting."

She vanished into an adjoining room, while Davilof proceeded to switch off most of the burners, leaving only those which illumined the s.p.a.ce in front of the great mirror. The remainder of the big room receded into a grey twilight encircling the patch of luminance.

Presently Magda reappeared wearing a loose tunic of some white silken material, girdled at the waist, but yet leaving her with perfect freedom of limb.

Davilof watched her as she came down the long room with the feather-light, floating walk of the trained dancer, and something leaped into his eyes that was very different from mere admiration--something that, taken in conjunction with Lady Arabella's caustic comments of a few days ago, might have warned Magda had she seen it.

But with her thoughts preoccupied by the work in hand she failed to notice it, and, advancing till she faced the great mirror, she executed a few steps in front of it, humming the motif of _The Swan-Maiden_ music under her breath.

"Play, Antoine," she threw at him over her shoulder.

Davilof hesitated, made a movement towards her, then wheeled round abruptly and went to the piano. A moment later the exquisite, smoothly rippling music which he had himself written for the Swan-Maiden dance purled out into the room.

The story of the Swan-Maiden had been taken from an old legend which told of a beautiful maiden and the youth who loved her.

According to the narrative, the pair were unfortunate enough to incur the displeasure of the evil fairy Ritmagar, and the latter, in order to punish them, transformed the maiden into a white swan, thus separating the hapless lovers for ever. Afterwards, the disconsolate youth, bemoaning the cruelty of fate, used to wander daily along the sh.o.r.es of the lake where the maiden was compelled to dwell in her guise of a swan, and eventually Ritmagar, apparently touched to a limited compa.s.sion, permitted the Swan-Maiden to resume her human form once a day during the hour immediately preceding sunset. But the condition was attached that she must always return to the lake ere the sun sank below the horizon, when she would be compelled to rea.s.sume her shape of a swan. Should she fail to return by the appointed time, death would be the inevitable consequence.

Every reader of fairy tales--and certainly anyone who knows anything at all about being in love--can guess the sequel. Comes a day when the lovers, absorbed in their love-making, forget the flight of time, so that the unhappy maiden returns to the sh.o.r.e of the lake to find that the sun has already dipped below the horizon. She falls on her knees, beseeching the witch Ritmagar for mercy, but no answer is vouchsafed, and gradually the Swan-Maiden finds herself growing weaker and weaker, until at last death claims her.

A dance, based upon this legend, had been devised for Magda in conjunction with Vladimir Ravinski, the brilliant Russian dancer, he taking the lover's part, and the whole tragic little drama was designed to terminate with a solo dance by Magda as the dying Swan-Maiden.

Davilof had written the music for it, and the dance was to be performed at the Imperial Theatre for the first time the following week.

Davilof played ever more and more softly as the dance drew to its close. The note of lament sounded with increasing insistence through the slowing ripple of the accompaniment, and at last, as Magda sank to the ground in a piteous att.i.tude that somehow suggested both the drooping grace of a dying swan and the innocence and helplessness of the hapless maiden, the music died away into silence.

There was a little pause. Then Davilof sprang to this feet.

"By G.o.d, Magda! You're magnificent!" he exclaimed with the spontaneous appreciation of one genuine artist for another.

Magda raised her head and looked up at him with vague, startled eyes.

She still preserved the pose on which the dance had ceased, and had hardly yet returned to the world of reality from that magic world into which her art had transported her.

The burning enthusiasm in Davilof's excited tones recalled her abruptly.

"Was it good--was it really good?" she asked a little shakily.

"Good?" he said. "It was superb!"

He held out his hands and she laid hers in them without thinking, allowing him to draw her to her feet beside him.

She stood quite still, breathing rather quickly from her recent exertions and supported by the close clasp of his hands on hers. Her lips were a little parted, her slight breast rose and fell unevenly, and a faint rose-colour glowed beneath the ivory pallor of her skin.

Suddenly Davilof's grip tightened.

"You beautiful thing!" he exclaimed huskily. "Magda----"

The next moment, with a swift, ungoverned movement, he caught her to him and was crus.h.i.+ng her in his arms.

"Antoine! . . . Let me go!"

But the pressure of her soft, pulsing body against his own sent the blood racing through his veins. He smothered the words with his mouth on hers, kissing her breathless with a headlong pa.s.sion that defied restraint--slaking his longing for her as a man denied water may at last slake his thirst at some suddenly discovered pool.

Magda felt herself powerless as a leaf caught up in a whirlwind--swept suddenly into the hot vehemence of a man's desire while she was yet unstrung and quivering from the emotional strain of the Swan-Maiden's dance, every nerve of her quickened to a tingling sentience by the underlying pa.s.sion of the music.

With an effort she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran from him blindly into the furthest corner of the room. She had no clear idea of making for the door, but only of getting away--anywhere--heedless of direction. An instant later she was standing with her back to the wall, leaning helplessly against the ancient tapestry that clothed it. In that dim corner of the vast room her slim figure showed faintly limned against its blurred greens and greys like that of some pallid statue.

"Go . . . go away!" she gasped.

Davilof laughed triumphantly. Nothing could hold him now. The barriers of use and habit were down irrevocably.

"Go away?" he said. "No, I'm not going away."

He strode straight across the s.p.a.ce that intervened between them. She watched his coming with dilated eyes. Her hands, palms downwards, were pressed hard against the woven surface of the tapestry on either side of her.

As he approached she shrank back, her whole body taut and straining against the wall. Then she bent her head and flung up her arms, curving them to s.h.i.+eld her face. Davilof could just see the rounded whiteness of them, glimmering like pale pearl next the satin sheen of night-black hair.

With a stifled cry he sprang forward and gripped them in his strong, supple hands, drawing them down inexorably.

"Kiss me!" he demanded fiercely. "Magda, kiss me!"

She shook her head, struggling for speech.

"No!" she gasped. "No!"

She glanced desperately round, but he had her hemmed in, prisoned against the wall.

"Kiss me!" he repeated unsteadily. "You--you'd better, Magda."

"And if I don't?" she forced the words through her stiff lips.

"But you will!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "You will!"

There was a dangerous note in his voice. The man had got beyond the stage to be played with. In the silence of the room Magda could hear his laboured breathing, feel his heart leaping against her own soft breast crushed against his. It frightened her.

"You'll let me go if I do?" The words seemed to run into each other in her helpless haste.