The Lamp of Fate Part 32

But she was gradually becoming apprehensive that disturbing consequences might accrue from Magda's stay at Stockleigh Farm. A woman of her elusive charm, equipped with all the subtle lore that her environment had taught her, must almost inevitably hold for a man of Storran's primitive way of life the fascination of something new and rather wonderful. To contrast his wife with her was to contrast a field-flower with some rare, exotic bloom, and Gillian was conscious of a sudden rush of sympathy for June's unarmoured youth and inexperience.

Magda's curiously uncertain moods of late, too, had worried her not a little. She was unlike herself--at times brooding and introspective, at other times strung up to a species of forced gaiety--a gaiety which had the cold sparkle of frost or diamonds. With all her faults Magda had ever been lovably devoid of bitterness, but now it seemed as though she were developing a certain new quality of hardness.

It puzzled Gillian, ignorant of that sudden discovery and immediate loss of the Garden of Eden. It might have been less of an enigma to old Lady Arabella, to whom the jigsaw puzzle of human motives and impulses was always a matter of absorbing interest, and who, as more or less an onlooker at life during the last thirty years, had become an adept in the art of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.

Magda herself was only conscious of an intense restlessness and dissatisfaction with existence in general. She reflected bitterly that she had been a fool to let slip her hold of herself--as she had done the night of Lady Arabella's reception--even for a moment.

It had been thoroughly drilled into her both by precept and example--her mother's precept and her father's example--that to let a man count for anything much in her life was the biggest mistake a woman could make, and Michael's treatment of her had driven home the truth of all the warnings Diane had instilled.

He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she craved now was change. Change and amus.e.m.e.nt to drug her mind so that she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a question that never presented itself to her.

She had not expected to find amus.e.m.e.nt at Stockleigh. She had been driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London--for a few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.

The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael's sudden defection had shaken.

She knew--as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by her--that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman, whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran's emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown quant.i.ty, and whose fierce, elemental pa.s.sions, once aroused, might prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.

CHAPTER XI

STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH

It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden s.h.i.+eld out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of the trees.

Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs--a new and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their debut into this world of sin--and had watched the cows being milked, and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the gra.s.s at her feet.

"I'm in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly," declared Magda, fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. "Whew! It is hot! As soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you come?"

Gillian shook her head lazily.

"I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And it's such a long trudge from here down to the river."

"Yes, I know." Magda nodded. "It's three interminable fields away--and the thistles and things p.r.i.c.k one's ankles abominably. Still, it's lovely when you _do_ get there! I think I'll go now"--springing up from the velvet turf--"before I get too lazy to move."

Gillian's eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the house. She had never seen Magda so restless--she seemed unable to keep still a moment.

Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak, a little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the hearts of half of Europe.

"Good-bye!" she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the wicket gate leading into the fields.

There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun, cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it pa.s.sed, and occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.

Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little cry of protest as a particularly p.r.i.c.kly thistle or hidden trail of bramble whipped against her bare ankles.

At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes'

further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous moments of a precarious existence.

Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.

She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below, where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun's heat poured down unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and bask in the golden warmth.

She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when a familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran's tall figure emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his face taking on a schoolboy look of embarra.s.sment. Deauville _plage_, where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan's ken.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he began, flus.h.i.+ng uncomfortably.

Magda waved to him airily.

"You needn't be. I'm having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?"

"No, I'm not too busy," he said slowly.

There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her.

Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like wine.

"Then come and amuse me!" Magda patted the warm surface of the rock beside her invitingly. "You can give me a cigarette to begin with."

Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was trembling absurdly.

He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:

"I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?"

Magda laughed a little.

"Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don't find it dull. Change is never really dull."

"Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you've been accustomed to lead."

"How do you know what sort of life I lead?"--teasingly.

"I can guess. One has only to look at you. You're different--different from everyone about here. The way you move--you're like a thoroughbred amongst cart-horses." He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.

Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her knees.

"Now you're talking nonsense, you know," she said amusedly. "Frankly, I like it down here immensely. I happened to be--rather worried when I came away from London, and there's something very soothing and comforting about the country--particularly your lovely Devon country."

"Worried?" Storran's face darkened. "Who'd been worrying you?"

"Oh"--vaguely. "All sorts of things. Men--and women. But don't let's talk about worries to-day. This glorious suns.h.i.+ne makes me feel as though there weren't any such things in the world."

She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second nature. Storran's eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression.

Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for him a disturbing allure which he could not a.n.a.lyse and against which he was fighting blindly.

He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight or sound of this other woman--this woman with her slender limbs and skin like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June's young peach-bloom prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.

"It must be nice to be you"--Magda nodded at him. "With no vague, indefinable sort of things to worry you."