The Lamp of Fate Part 35

"Dan Storran?" Davilof's glance flashed over her face, searching, questioning.

"The owner of the place. He's been teaching me to ride," she added inconsequently.

"Who is he?"--with swift jealousy. "The little fair-haired lady's brother?"

"No, her husband. I said _Mrs._ Storran."

Davilof's interest waned suddenly.

"Did you?"--indifferently. "I didn't notice. She's a pretty little person."

Magda agreed absently. A fresh difficulty had occurred to her; Davilof might chance to give away to the Storrans the secret of her ident.i.ty.

"Oh, by the way," she said hurriedly. "They don't know me here as Magda Wielitzska. I'm plain Miss Vallincourt to them--enjoying the privileges of being a n.o.body! You'll be sure to remember, won't you?" He nodded, and she pursued more lightly: "And now, as you insist on having your tea here, you might begin to earn it by telling me the latest London gossip.

We hear nothing at all down here. We don't even get a London newspaper.

"I don't think there is much news. There never is at this time of the year. Everybody's out of town."

He vouchsafed one or two items concerning mutual friends--an engagement here, a forthcoming divorce there. So-and-so was in Italy and Mrs.

Somebody Else was said to have eloped with a well-known actor-manager to America--all the odds and ends of gossip that runs like wildfire over the social prairie.

"Oh, by the way," he went on, "your artist friend--"

"Which artist friend?" Magda interrupted almost rudely. She was moved by a perfectly irrational impulse to stop him, to delay what he had to say.

"Why, Quarrington--Michael Quarrington. It seems he has married a Spanish woman--a rather lovely person who had been sitting to him for one of his pictures. That's the latest bit of news."

For an instant it seemed to Magda as though the whole world stood still--gripped in a strange, soundless stillness like the catastrophic pause which for an infinitesimal s.p.a.ce of time succeeds a bad accident.

Then she heard herself saying:

"Really? Where did you hear that?"

"Oh, there've been several rumours of a beautiful Spaniard whom he has been using as a model. The Arlingtons were travelling in Spain and saw her. Mrs. A. said she was a glorious creature--a dancer. And the other day I saw in one of the papers--the _Weekly Gossip_ I think it was--that he'd married her."

The carelessly spoken words drove at Magda with the force of utter certainty. It was true, then--quite true! The fact that the Spaniard had been a dancer gave an irrefutable reality to the tale; Michael so wors.h.i.+pped every form of dancing.

"Never give your heart to any man." Her mother's last cynical warning beat in Magda's brain with a dull iteration that almost maddened her.

She put her hand up to her throat, feeling as if she were choking.

Then, dimly, as though from a great way off, she heard Antoine's voice again:

"I'm glad Quarrington's married. He was the man who saved you in the fog--you remember?--and I've always been afraid you might get to care for him."

Magda was conscious of one thing and one thing only--that somewhere, deep down inside her, everything had turned to ice. She knew she would never feel anything again--much. . . . She thought death must come like that sometimes--just one thrust of incredible, immeasurable agony, and then a dull, numbed sense of finality.

". . . afraid you might get to care for him." The meaning of Antoine's last words slowly penetrated her mind. She gave a hard little laugh.

"Why should I? Does one 'get to care' for a man just because he does the only obvious thing there is to do in an emergency?"

She was surprised to hear how perfectly natural her voice sounded. It was quite steady. Rea.s.sured, she went on, shrugging her shoulders:

"Besides--do I ever care?"

Antoine, sitting on the gra.s.s at her feet, suddenly raised himself a little and put his hand over hers as they lay very still and folded on her lap.

"You shall care--some time," he said in a low, tense voice. "I swear it!"

CHAPTER XIII

DAN STORRAN'S AWAKENING

"Fairy Lady, we're going to have a picnic tea!"

Coppertop's excited voice, shrilling across the garden as he came racing over the gra.s.s, put an abrupt end to a scene that was threatening to develop along the familiar tempestuous lines dictated by Antoine's temperament.

The child's advent was somewhat differently received--by Magda with unmixed relief, by Antoine with a baulked gesture of annoyance. However, he recovered himself almost immediately, and when, a moment later, June reappeared, laden with the paraphernalia for tea, he rushed forward with his usual charming manners to a.s.sist her.

Presently Gillian joined them, exclaiming with surprise as she perceived who was the visitor.

"Why, this is like a bit of London appearing in our very midst," she declared, shaking hands with Davilof. "Where have you hailed from? I heard the car but never suspected you were the arrival."

"I'm on holiday," he replied. "And it struck me"--his hazel eyes smiled straight into hers--"that Devons.h.i.+re might be a very delightful place in which to spend my holiday."

Magda looked up suddenly from stirring her tea.

"I think you've made a mistake, Davilof," she said curtly. "You're not likely to enjoy a holiday in Devons.h.i.+re."

June, innocently unaware of any double entente in Magda's speech, glanced across at her in astonishment.

"Oh, but why not, Miss Vallincourt? Devon is a lovely county; most people like it so much. But perhaps you don't care for the country, Mr.--Mr. Davilof?" She stumbled a little over the foreign name.

"I think it would depend upon who my neighbours were--whether I liked it or nor," he returned, meeting Magda's glance challengingly over the top of June's head, bent above the teacups. "I feel sure I should like it here. And there is a charming little inn at Ashencombe where one might stop."

Gillian divined that a veiled pa.s.sage of arms between Magda and the musician underlay the light discussion. Moreover--though she had no clue to the cause--she was sensitively conscious that the former was not quite herself. She had seen that white, set look on her face before.

Something had distressed her, and Gillian felt apprehensive lest Davilof had been the bearer of unwelcome tidings. It was either that, or else he must have succeeded in frictioning Magda in some way himself, since, beyond flinging an occasional double-edged sentence in his direction, she seemed absent and disinclined to take part in the conversation.

It was almost a relief to Gillian when Dan Storran appeared, although the recollection of the strained atmosphere which had attended the previous meal did not hold out much promise of better things to come.

His face was still clouded and he glowered at the tea-table under the elms with dissatisfied eyes.

"What on earth's the meaning of this?" he demanded ungraciously of his wife. "Is it some newfangled notion that's got you?"

June coloured up nervously, and was about to falter an explanation of the innovation when Magda suddenly took the matter out of her hands.

"There's nothing newfangled about tea out-of-doors, on a glorious day like this," she said. "It's the only sensible thing to do. You don't really mind, do you?"

She smiled up at him provocatively and his sombre face lightened.