The Lamp of Fate Part 26

"Very well," she answered a trifle breathlessly.

She was almost glad when the waltz came to an end. They had danced it in utter silence--a tense, packed silence, vibrant with significances half-hidden, half-understood, and she found herself quivering with a strange uncertainty and nervousness as she and Quarrington together made their way into the dim-lit quiet of the winter-garden opening off the ballroom.

Overhead the green, s.h.i.+ning leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale cl.u.s.ters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From somewhere near at hand came the silvery, showering plash of a fountain playing--a delicate and aerial little sound against the robust harmonies of the band, like the notes of a harp.

It seemed to Magda as though she and Michael had left the world behind them and were quite alone, enfolded in the sweet-scented, tender silence of some Garden of Eden.

They stood together without speaking. In every tingling nerve of her she was acutely conscious of his proximity and of some rapidly rising tide of emotion mounting within him. She knew the barrier against which it beat and a little cry escaped her, forced from her by some impulse that was stronger than herself.

"Oh, Saint Michel! Can't you--can't you believe in me?"

He swung round at the sound of her voice and the next moment she was crushed against his breast, his mouth on hers, his kisses burning their way to her very heart. . . .

Then voices, quick, light footsteps--someone else had discovered the Eden of the winter-garden, and Michael released her abruptly.

Behind the chimneystacks the grey fingers of dawn were creeping up in the sky as Magda drove home. In the wan light her face looked unusually pale, and beneath the soft lace at her breast her heart throbbed unevenly.

Five minutes ago Michael had held her in his arms and she had felt herself stirred to a sudden pa.s.sionate surrender and response that frightened her.

Was this love--the love against which Diane had warned her? It had all happened so suddenly--that last, unpremeditated dance, those tense, vibrant moments in the winter-garden, then the jarring interruption of other couples seeking its fragrant coolness. And she and Michael suddenly apart.

Afterwards, only the barest conventionalities had pa.s.sed between them.

Nothing else had seemed possible. Their solitude had been ruthlessly destroyed; the outside world had thrust itself upon them without warning, jerking them back to the self-consciousness of suddenly arrested emotion.

"I must be going." The stilted, ba.n.a.l little phrase had fallen awkwardly from Magda's lips, and Quarrington had a.s.sented without comment.

She felt confused and bewildered. What had he meant? Had he meant anything at all? Was it possible that he believed in her now--trusted her? It had been in answer to that low, imploring cry of hers--"_Saint Michel, can't you believe in me?_"--that he had taken her in his arms.

Looking out through the mist-blurred window at the pale streamers of dawnlight penciling the sky, Magda's eyes grew wistful--wonderingly questioning the future. Was she, too, only waiting for the revelation of dawn--the dawn of that mysterious thing called love which can trans.m.u.te this everyday old world of ours into heaven or h.e.l.l?

Gillian was at the door to welcome her when at length the car pulled up at Friars' Holm. She looked rather white and there were purple shadows under her eyes, but her lips smiled happily.

"Coppertop? How is he?" asked Magda quickly.

"Sleeping, thank G.o.d! He's safe now! But--oh, Magda! It's been awful!"

And quite suddenly Gillian, who had faced Death and fought him with a dogged courage and determination that had won the grave-eyed doctor's rare approval, broke down and burst into tears.

Magda petted and soothed her, until at last her sobs ceased and she smiled through her tears.

"I _am_ a fool!" she said, dabbing at her eyes with a moist, screwed-up ball of something that had once been a cambric handkerchief. "But I've quite recovered now--really. Come and tell me about everything. Did Davilof play for you all right? And did you enjoy the dance afterwards?

And, oh, I forgot! There's a letter for you on the mantelpiece. It was delivered by hand while we were both at Lady Arabella's."

Mechanically, as she responded to Gillian's rapid fire of questions, Magda picked up the square envelope propped against the clock and slit open the flap. It was probably only some note of urgent invitation--she received dozens of them. An instant later a half-stifled cry broke from her. Gillian turned swiftly.

"What is it?" she asked, a note of apprehension sharpening her voice.

Magda stared at her dumbly. Then she held out the letter.

"Read it," she said flatly. "It's from Kit Raynham's mother."

Gillian's eyes flew along the two brief lines of writing:

"Kit has disappeared. Do you know where he is?--ALICIA RAYNHAM."

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST REAPING

At breakfast, some hours later, Magda was in a curiously petulant and uncertain mood. To some extent her fractiousness was due to natural reaction after the emotional excitement of the previous evening.

Granted the discovery of the Garden of Eden, and add to this the almost immediate intrusion of outsiders therein--for everybody else is an "outsider" to the pair in possession--and any woman might be forgiven for suffering from slightly frayed nerves the following day. And in Magda's case she had been already rather keyed up by finding the preceding few days punctuated by unwelcome and unaccustomed happenings.

They all dated from the day of the accident which had befallen her in the fog. It almost seemed as though that grey curtain of fog had been a symbol of the shadow which was beginning to dog her footsteps--the shadow which stern moralists designate "unpleasant consequences."

First there had been Michael Quarrington's plain and candid utterance of his opinion of her. Then had followed Davilof's headlong wooing and his refusal, when thwarted, to play for her again. He, too, had not precisely glossed things over in that tirade of accusation and reproach which he had levelled at her!

And now, just when it seemed as though she had put these other ugly happenings behind her, Kit Raynham, who for the last six months had been one of the little court of admirers which surrounded her, had seen fit to complicate matters by vanis.h.i.+ng without explanation; while his mother, in an absurd maternal flurry of anxiety as to what had become of him, must needs write to her as though it inevitably followed that she was responsible for his disappearance!

Magda was conscious of an irritated sense of injury, which Gillian's rather apprehensive little comments on the absence of further news concerning young Raynham scarcely tended to allay.

"Oh, don't be tiresome, Gillian!" she exclaimed. "The boy's all right. I expect he's been having a joy-day--which has prolonged itself a bit."

"It seems he hasn't been seen or heard of since the day before yesterday," responded Gillian gravely. "They're afraid he may--may have committed suicide"--she brought out the word with a rush. "They've been dragging the lake at his home."

Magda flared.

"Where did you hear all this--this nonsense? You said nothing about it last night."

"Lady Raynham told me. She rang up half an hour ago--before you were down--to ask if by any chance we had had any news of him," replied Gillian gently.

Magda pushed away her plate and, leaving her breakfast unfinished, moved restlessly across to the window.

"There's nothing about it in this morning's paper, is there?" she asked.

Her tone sounded apprehensive.

Gillian's eyes grew suddenly compa.s.sionate.

"Yes. There is--something," she returned, laying her hand quickly over the newspaper as though to withhold it.

But Magda swung round and s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her. Gillian half rose from her chair.