“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 constituents 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 advertisement,” 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 ashore 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 sunshiny days in writing round to Magda’s friends assuring 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.
“It’s our picture now, Saint Michel,” she told him, with a happy, possessive pride in his work.
In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.
It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with him she was no longer the assured woman of the world, the spoilt and feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.
She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the crook of her arm.
Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and dragons such as Coppertop’s small soul delighted in. On one such occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.
“I suppose,” he asked rather forlornly, “when you’re married they’ll give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won’t they?”
The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.
“Perhaps so, Topkins,” she answered very low.
He heaved a big sigh. “He’ll be a very lucky little boy,” he said plaintively. “If Mummie couldn’t have been my mummie, I’d have choosed you.”
And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London. The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her sometimes.
“It can’t last, Gilly,” she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an access of superstitious fear. “It simply can’t last! No one was meant to be as happy as I am!”
“I think we were all meant to be happy,” replied Gillian simply. “Happy and good!” she added, laughing.
“Yes. But I haven’t been particularly good. I’ve just done whatever it occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day.”
Gillian smiled.
“Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of them,” she said cheerfully.
“Perhaps—perhaps you wouldn’t be able to.”
There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda’s voice—an accent of fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of uneasiness.
“Nonsense!” she said brusquely. “What on earth has put all these ridiculous notions into your head?”
Magda smiled at her. “I think it was four lines I read in a book yesterday. They set me thinking.”
“More’s the pity then!” grumbled Gillian. “What were they?”
Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted eyes. It was so blue to-day—all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight. But she knew that self-same sea could be grey—grey and chill as death.
Her glance came slowly back to Gillian’s face as she quoted the fragment of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:
“To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows
Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal
The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days—
Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel.”
After a moment she added:
“Even you couldn’t cut through ‘ropes of steel,’ my Gillyflower.”
Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.
“Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose to send an announcement of your engagement to the Morning Post. You’re not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?”
“Oh, no. It was only that I didn’t want to be pestered with congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they’ll have to come some day”—with a small grimace of disgust.
“You’ll be snowed under with them,” Gillian assured her encouragingly.
The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda’s return from Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing details concerning their personal tastes.
“Dear me, I never knew Michael had a passion for raw meat before,” remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different accounts aloud for Gillian’s edification.
“Has he?” Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly, owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her lips.
“Yes, he must have. Listen to this, ‘Mr. Quarrington’s wonderful creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets—so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.’ I’m glad I’ve learned that,” pursued Magda earnestly. “It seems to me an important thing for a wife to know. Don’t you think so, Gillian?”
Gillian shouted with delight.
“Of course I do! Do let’s ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of raw cutlets on a charger.”
“No,” insisted Magda firmly. “I shall keep a splendid treat like that for him till after we’re married. Even at a strictly conservative estimate it should be worth a new hat to me.”
“Or a dose of arsenic in your next cup of tea,” suggested Gillian, giggling.
The following evening was the occasion of Magda’s first appearance at the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. “House Full” boards were exhibited outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the critics characterised next day as “the most appealing performance of The Swan-Maiden which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us,” she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.
She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy, and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old woman’s neck.
“Oh, the dears!” she exclaimed. “The blessed dears! Virginie, I believe I’m the happiest woman alive!”
“And who should be, mon petite chou, if not thou?” returned the old woman with conviction. “Of course they love thee! Mais bien sur! Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel visions that they could not imagine for themselves?” She paused. Then thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her apron and producing a card: “Tiens! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle receive him?”
Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway. He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious to get her first meeting with the musician over. He would probably rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion characteristic of him, and the sooner he “got it out of his system,” as Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better for everyone concerned. So Magda braced herself for the interview, and prepared to receive a tragical and despondent Davilof.
But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him, paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.
She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey—grey and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features, particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.
“Antoine!” His name faltered from Magda’s lips. The man’s face, its beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.
He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.
“Is it true?” he demanded imperiously.
She shrank back from him. There was a dynamic force about him that startled her.
“Is what true?”
“Is it true that you’re engaged to Quarrington?”
“Of course it is. It was in all the papers. Didn’t you see it?”
“Yes, I saw it. I didn’t believe it. I was in Poland when I heard and I started for England at once. But I was taken ill on the journey. Since then I’ve been travelling night and day.” He paused, adding in a tone of finality: “You must break it off.”
“Break it off? Are you crazy, Antoine?”
“No, I’m not crazy. But you’re mine. You’re meant for me. And no other man shall have you.”
Magda’s first impulse was to order him out of the room. But the man’s haggard face was so pitifully eloquent of the agony he had been enduring that she had not the heart. Instead, she temporised persuasively.
“Don’t talk like that, Antoine.” She spoke very gently. “You don’t mean it, you know. If—if you do care for me as you say, you’d like me to be happy, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d make you happy,” he said hoarsely.
She shook her head.
“No,” she answered. “You couldn’t make me happy. Only Michael can do that. So you must let me go to him. . . . Antoine, I’d rather go with your good wishes. Won’t you give them to me? We’ve been friends so long—”
“Friends?” he broke in fiercely. “No! We’ve never been ‘friends.’ I’ve been your lover from the first moment I saw you, and shall be your lover till I die!”
Magda retreated before his vehemence. She was still wearing her costume of the Swan-Maiden, and there was something frailly virginal and elusive about her as she drew away from him that set the hot, foreign blood in him on fire. In two strides he was at her side, his hands gripping her bare arms with a savage clasp that hurt her.
“Mon adoree!”
His voice was harsh with the tensity of passion, and the cry that struggled from her throat for utterance was smothered by his lips on hers. The burning kisses seemed to scorch her—consuming, overwhelming her. When at last he took his mouth from hers she tried unavailingly to free herself. But his clasp of her only tightened.
“Now you know how I love you,” he said grimly. He was breathing rather fast, but in some curious way he seemed to have regained his self-control. It was as though he had only slipped the leash of passion so that she might, as he said, comprehend his love for her. “Do you think I’ll give you up? I tell you I’d rather kill you than see you Quarrington’s wife.”
Once more she made an effort to release herself.
“Oh, you’re mad, you’re mad!” she cried. “Let me go, Davilof! At once!”
“No,” he said in a measured voice. “Don’t struggle. I’m not going to let you go. Not yet. I’ve reached my limit. You shall go when you promise to marry me. Me, not Quarrington.”
She had not been frightened by the storm of passion which had carried him headlong. That had merely roused her to anger. But this quiet, purposeful composure which had succeeded it filled her with an odd kind of misgiving.
“It’s absurd to talk like that,” she said, holding on desperately to her self-possession. “It’s silly—and melodramatic, and only makes me realise how glad I am I shall be Michael’s wife and not yours.”
“You will never be Quarrington’s wife.”
He spoke with conviction. Magda called up all her courage to defy him.
“And do you propose to prevent it?” she asked contemptuously.
“Yes.” Then, suddenly: “Adoree, don’t force me to do it! I don’t want to. Because it will hurt you horribly. And it will all be saved if you’ll promise to marry me.”
He spoke appealingly, with an earnestness that was unmistakable. But Magda’s nerve was gradually returning.
“You don’t seem to understand that you can’t prevent my marrying Michael—or anyone else,” she said coolly. “You haven’t the power.”
“I can prevent your marrying Michael”—doggedly.
She was silent a moment.
“I suppose,” she said at last, “you think that because he once thought badly of me you can make him think the same again. Well, you can’t. Michael and I trust each other—absolutely!”
Her face was transfigured. Michael trusted her now! Nothing could really hurt her while he believed in her. She could afford to laugh at Antoine’s threat.
“And now,” she said quietly, “will you please release me?”
Slowly, reluctantly Davilof’s hands dropped from her arms, revealing red weals where the grip of his fingers had crushed the soft, white flesh. He uttered a stifled exclamation as his eyes fell on the angry-looking marks.
“Mon dieu! I’ve hurt you—”
“No!” Magda faced him with a defiance that was rather splendid. “No! You can’t hurt me, Davilof. Only the man I love can do that.”
He flinched at the proud significance of the words—denying him even the power to hurt her. It was almost as though she had struck him, contemptuously disdainful of his toy weapons—the weapons of the man who didn’t count.
There was a long silence. At last he spoke.
“You’ll be sorry for that,” he said in a voice of concentrated anger. “Damned sorry. Because it isn’t true. I can hurt you. And by God, if you won’t marry me, I will! . . . Magda——” With one of the swift changes so characteristic of the man he softened suddenly into passionate supplication. “Have a little mercy! God! If you knew how I love you, you couldn’t turn me away. Wait! Think again—”
“That will do.” She checked him imperiously. “I don’t want your love. And for the future please understand that you won’t even be a friend. I don’t wish to see or speak to you again!”
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