The Lamp of Fate Part 48

"You don't give me much choice"--twisting her shoulders restlessly beneath his hands.

He laughed a little.

"You haven't answered me."

"Well, then--yes!"

She almost flung the word at him, and instantly she felt him lift his hands from her shoulders and heard his footsteps as he tramped out of the cabin and up on to the deck. Presently he returned, carrying the blankets which he had wrapped round her earlier in the course of their vigil. Magda accepted them with becoming docility.

"Thank you, Wise Man," she said meekly.

He stood looking down at her in the faint moonlight that slanted in through the open door of the cabin, and all at once something in the intentness of his gaze awakened her to a sudden vivid consciousness of the situation--of the hour and of her absolute aloneness with him.

Their solitude was as complete as though they had been cast on a desert island.

Magda felt her pulses throb unevenly. The whole atmosphere seemed sentient and athrill with the surge of some deep-lying emotion. She could feel it beating up against her--the clamorous demand of something hardly curbed and straining for release.

"Michael----" The word stammered past her lips.

The sound of her voice snapped the iron control he had been forcing on himself. With a hoa.r.s.e, half-strangled exclamation he caught her up from where she lay, crus.h.i.+ng her slim, soft body in a grip that almost stifled her, kissing her fiercely on eyes and lips and throat. Then abruptly he released her and, without a word, without a backward look, strode out of the cabin and up on to the deck.

Magda sank down weakly on the edge of the narrow bunk. The storm of his pa.s.sion had swept through her as the wind sweeps through a tree, leaving her spent and trembling. Sleep was an impossibility. Ten minutes, twenty pa.s.sed--she could not have told how long it was. Then she heard him coming back, and as he gained the threshold she sprang to her feet and faced him, nervously on the defensive. In the pale, elusive moonlight, and with that startled poise of figure, she might well have been the hamadryad at bay of one of her most famous dances.

Michael looked rather white and there was a grim repression about the set of his lips. As he caught sight of her face with its mute apprehension and dilated eyes, he spoke quickly.

"You should be resting," he said. "Let me tuck you up and then try to go to sleep."

There was something infinitely rea.s.suring in the steady tones of his voice. It held nothing but kindness--just comrades.h.i.+p and kindness. He was master of himself once more. For her sake he had fought back the rising tide of pa.s.sion. It had no place while they two were here alone on the wide waters.

He stooped and picked up the blankets, laying them over her with a tenderness that seemed in some subtle way to be part of his very strength. Her taut nerves relaxed. She smiled up at him.

"Good-night, Saint Michel," she said simply. "Take care of me."

He stooped and kissed the slim hand lying outside the blanket.

"Now and always," he answered gravely.

When Magda awoke, seven hours later, the sunlight was streaming into the cabin. She could hear Michael moving about the deck, and she sprang up and proceeded to make such toilette as was possible in the circ.u.mstances, taking down her hair and dressing it afresh at the tiny looking-gla.s.s hung on the wall. She had barely completed the operation when she heard Michael give a shout.

"Ahoy! Ahoy there!"

She ran up on deck. Approaching them was a small steam-tug, and once again Quarrington sent his voice ringing l.u.s.tily across the water, while he flourished a large white handkerchief in the endeavour to attract the attention of those on board.

Suddenly the tug saw them and, altering her course, came fussing up alongside. Quarrington briefly explained their predicament--in the face of the _Bella Donna's_ battered appearance a lengthy explanation was hardly necessary--and a few minutes later the tug was steaming for Netherway harbour, towing the crippled yacht behind her.

CHAPTER XXI

THE OTHER MAN

"Please, Marraine, will you give us your blessing?"

The joyous excitement and relief incidental to the safe return of the voyagers had spent itself at last, and now, refreshed and invigorated by a hot bath and by a meal of more varied const.i.tuents than biscuit and plain chocolate, Magda propounded her question, a gleam of mirth glancing in her eyes.

Lady Arabella glanced doubtfully from one to the other. Then a look of undisguised satisfaction dawned in her face.

"Do you mean----" she began eagerly.

"We've been and gone and got engaged," explained Quarrington.

"My dears!" Lady Arabella jumped up with the agility of twenty rather than seventy and proceeded to pour out her felicitations. Incidentally she kissed everybody all round, including Quarrington, and her keen old hawk's eyes grew all soft and luminous like a girl's.

Coppertop was hugely excited.

"Will the wedding be to-morrow?" he asked hopefully. "And shall I be a page and carry the Fairy Lady's train?"

Magda smiled at him.

"Of course you shall be a page, Topkins. But the wedding won't be quite as soon as to-morrow," she told him.

"Why not?" insinuated Quarrington calmly. "There are such things as special licences, you know."

"Don't be silly," replied Magda scathingly. "I've only just been saved from drowning, and I don't propose to take on such a risk as matrimony till I've had time to recover my nerve."

Lady Arabella surveyed them both with a species of irritated approval.

"And to think," she burst out at last, indignantly, "of all the hours I've spent having my silly portrait painted and getting cramp in my stiff old joints, and that even then it needed Providence to threaten you both with a watery grave to bring you up to the scratch!"

"Well, we're engaged now," submitted Magda meekly.

Lady Arabella chuckled sardonically.

"If you weren't, you'd have to be--after last night!" she commented drily.

"No one need know about last night," retorted Magda.

"Huh!" Lady Arabella snorted. "Half Netherway will know the tale by midday. And you may be sure your best enemy will hear of it. They always do."

"Never mind. It will make an excellent advertis.e.m.e.nt," observed Magda philosophically. "Can't you see it in all the papers?--'NARROW ESCAPE OF THE WIELITZSKA.' In big capitals."

They all laughed, realising the great amount of probability contained in her forecast. And, thanks to an enterprising young journalist who chanced to be prowling about Netherway on that particular day, the London newspapers flared out into large headlines, accompanied by vivid and picturesque details of the narrow escape while yachting of the famous dancer and of the well-known artist, Michael Quarrington--who, in some of the cheaper papers, was credited with having saved the Wielitzska's life by swimming ash.o.r.e with her.

The immediate result was an augmented post-bag for the Hermitage, and Gillian had to waste the better part of a couple of suns.h.i.+ny days in writing round to Magda's friends a.s.suring them of her continued existence and wellbeing, and thanking them for their kind inquiries.

It was decided to keep the engagement private for the present, and life at the Hermitage resumed the even tenor of its way, Magda continuing to sit daily for the picture of Circe which Michael was anxious to complete before she returned to London for the autumn season.