The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck up the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from all parts to witness the Wielitzska’s farewell performance began to disperse.
A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall of gravity hung over the big assemblage. Public announcements of the performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a long rest for reasons of health. “But,” as everyone declared, “you know what that means! She’s probably broken down—heart or something. We shall never see her dance again.” And so, beneath the tremendous reception which they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness, behind all the cheers and the clapping an insistent minor note which carried across the footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks, and smiling through the mist of tears which filled her eyes.
The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the Swan-Maiden. There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice, and to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the Wielitzska’s dancing—a depth of significance and a spirituality of interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day.
It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big crowd, drawn from all classes, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden. And when at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover’s embrace, and the music had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant pause—almost it seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret went up—before the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.
The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping assiduously when Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn’t do it, that it was all a mistake—that this was not a farewell! But she set her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.
As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out from the shadows of the passage and spoke:
“Magda!”
The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof’s.
Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although, since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once he had come to Friars’ Holm, but had been met with an inexorable “Not at home!” from Melrose.
“Magda! For God’s sake, give me a moment!”
Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling of compassion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental anguish.
Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to follow her.
“Well,” she said, facing him, “what is it? Why have you come?”
The impulse of compassion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger and resentment.
“Well?” she repeated. “What do you want? To know the result of your handiwork?”—bitterly. “You’ve been quite as successful as even you could have wished.”
“Don’t,” he said unevenly. “Magda, I can’t bear it. You can’t give up—all this. Your dancing—it’s your life! I shall never forgive myself . . . I’ll see Quarrington and tell him—”
“You can’t see him. He’s gone away.”
“Then I’ll find him.”
“If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference,” she answered unemotionally. “It’s the facts that matter. You can’t alter—facts.”
Davilof made a gesture of despair.
“Is it true you’re going into some sisterhood?” he asked hoarsely.
“Yes.”
“And it is I—I who have driven you to this! Dieu! I’ve been mad—mad!”
His hands were clenched, his face working painfully. The hazel eyes—those poet’s eyes of his which she had seen sometimes soft with dreams and sometimes blazing with love’s fire—were blurred by misery. They reminded her of the contrite, tortured eyes of a dog which, maddened by pain, has bitten the hand of a beloved master. Her anger died away in the face of that overwhelming remorse. She herself had learned to know the illimitable bitterness of self-reproach.
“Antoine——” Her voice had grown very gentle.
He swung round on her.
“And I can’t undo it!” he exclaimed desperately. “I can’t undo it! . . . Magda, will you believe me—will you try to believe that, if my life could undo the harm I’ve done, I’d give it gladly?”
“I believe you would, Antoine,” she replied simply.
With a stifled exclamation he turned away and, dropping into a chair, leaned his arms on the table and hid his face. Once, twice she heard the sound of a man’s hard-drawn sob, and the dry agony of it wrung her heart. All that was sweet and compassionate in her—the potential mother that lies in every woman—responded to his need. She ran to him and, kneeling at his side, laid a kind little hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t Antoine!” she said pitifully. “Ah, don’t, my dear!”
He caught the hand and held it against his cheek.
“It’s unforgivable!” he muttered.
“No, no. I do forgive you.”
“You can’t forgive! . . . Impossible!”
“I think I can, Antoine. You see, I need forgiveness so badly myself. I wouldn’t want to keep anyone else without it. Besides, Michael would have been bound to learn—what you told him—sooner or later.” She rose to her feet, pushing back the hair from her forehead rather wearily. “It’s better as it is—that he should know now. It—it would have been unbearable if it had come later—when I was his wife.”
Antoine stumbled to his feet. His beautiful face was marred with grief.
“I wish I were dead!”
The words broke from him like an exceeding bitter cry. To Magda they seemed to hold some terrible import.
“Not that, Antoine!” she answered in a frightened voice. “You’re not thinking—you’re not meaning——”
He shook his head, smiling faintly.
“No,” he said quietly. “The Davilofs have never been cowards. I shan’t take that way out. You need have no fears, Magda.” The sudden tension in her face relaxed. “But I shall not stay in England. England—without you—would be hell. A hell of memories.”
“What shall you do, then, Antoine? You won’t give up playing?”
He made a fierce gesture of distaste.
“I couldn’t play in public! Not now. Not for a time. I think I shall go to my mother. She always wants me, and she sees me very little.”
Magda nodded. Her eyes were wistful.
“Yes, go to her. I think mothers must understand—as other people can’t ever understand. She will be glad to have you with her, Antoine.”
He was silent for a moment, his eyes dwelling on her face as though he sought to learn each line of it, so that when she would be no more beside him he might carry the memory of it in his heart for ever.
“Then it is good-bye,” he said at last.
Magda held out her hands and, taking them in his, he drew her close to him.
“I love you,” he said, “and I have brought you only pain.” There was a tragic simplicity in the statement.
“No,” she answered steadily. “Never think that. I spoiled my own life. And—love is a big gift, Antoine.”
She lifted her face to his and very tenderly, almost reverently, he kissed her. She knew that in that last kiss there was no disloyalty to Michael. It held renunciation. It accepted forgiveness.
“Did you know that Dan Storran was in front to-night?” asked Gillian, as half an hour later she and Magda were driving back to Hampstead together. She had already confided the fact of her former meeting with him in the tea-shop.
Magda’s eyes widened a little.
“No,” she said quietly. “I think I’m glad I didn’t know.”
She was very silent throughout the remainder of the drive home and Gillian made no effort to distract her. She herself felt disinclined to talk. She was oppressed by the knowledge that this was the last night she and Magda would have with each other. To-morrow Magda would be gone and one chapter of their lives together ended. The gates of the Sisters of Penitence would close upon her and Friars’ Holm would be empty of her presence.
Everything had been said that could be said, every persuasion used. But to each and all Magda had only answered: “I know it’s the only thing for me to do. It probably wouldn’t be for you, or for anyone else. But it is for me. So you must let me go, Gillyflower.”
Gillian dreaded the morrow with its inevitable moment of farewell. As for Virginie, she had done little else but weep for the last three days, and although Lady Arabella had said very little, she had kissed her god-daughter good-bye with a brusqueness that veiled an inexpressible grief and tenderness. Gillian foresaw that betwixt administering comfort to Lady Arabella and Virginie, and setting Magda’s personal affairs in order after her departure, she would have little time for the indulgence of her own individual sorrow. Perhaps it was just as well that these tasks should devolve on her. They would serve to occupy her thoughts.
The morning sunlight, goldenly gay, was streaming in through the windows as Magda, wrapped in a soft silken peignoir, made her way into the bathroom. Virginie, her eyes reddened from a night’s weeping, was kneeling beside the sunken bath of green-veined marble, stirring sweet-smelling salts in to the steaming water. Their fragrance permeated the atmosphere like incense.
“My tub ready, Virginie?” asked Magda, cheerfully.
Virginie scrambled to her feet.
“Mais oui, mademoiselle. The bath is ready.”
Then, her face puckering up suddenly, she burst into tears and ran out of the room. Magda smiled and sighed, then busied herself with her morning ablutions—prolonging them a little as she realised that this was the last occasion for a whole year when she would step down into a bath prepared and perfumed for her in readiness by her maid.
A year! It was a long time to look forward to. So much can happen in a year. And no one can foresee what the end may bring.
Presently she emerged from her bath, her skin gleaming like wet ivory, her dark hair sparkling with the drops of water that had splashed on to it. As she stepped up from its green-veined depths, she caught a glimpse of herself in a panel mirror hung against the wall, and for a moment she was aware of the familiar thrill of delight in her own beauty—in the gleaming, glowing radiance of perfectly formed, perfectly groomed flesh and blood.
Then, with a revulsion of feeling, came the sudden realisation that it was this very perfection of body which had been her undoing—like a bitter blight, leaving in its wake a trail of havoc and desolation. She was even conscious of a fierce eagerness for the period of penance to begin. Almost ecstatically she contemplated the giving of her body to whatever discipline might be appointed.
To anyone hitherto as spoiled and imperious as Magda, whose body had been the actual temple of her art, and so, almost inevitably, of her worship, this utter renouncing of physical self-government was the supremest expiation she could make. As with Hugh Vallincourt, whose blood ran in her veins, the idea of personal renunciation made a curious appeal to her emotional temperament, and she was momentarily filled with something of the martyr’s ecstasy.
Gillian’s arms clung round Magda’s neck convulsively as she kissed her at the great gates of Friars’ Holm a few hours later.
“Good-bye! . . . Ah, Magda! Come back to me!”
“I shall come back.”
One more lingering kiss, and then Magda stepped into the open car. Virginie made a rush forward before the door closed and, dropping on to her knees on the footboard, convulsively snatched her adored young mistress’s hand between her two old worn ones and covered it with kisses.
“Oh, mademoiselle, thy old Virginie will die without thee!” she sobbed brokenly.
And then the car slid away and Magda’s last glimpse was of the open gates of Friars’ Holm with its old-world garden, stately and formal, in the background; and of Virginie weeping unrestrainedly, her snowy apron flung up over her head; and of Gillian standing erect, her brown eyes very wide and winking away the tears that welled up despite herself, and her hand on Coppertop’s small manful shoulder, gripping it hard.
As the car passed through the streets many people, recognising its occupant, stopped and turned to follow it with their eyes. One or two women waved their hands, and a small errand-boy—who had saved up his pennies and squeezed into the gallery of the Imperial Theatre the previous evening—threw up his hat and shouted “Hooray!”
Once, at a crossing, the chauffeur was compelled to pull up to allow the traffic to pass, and a flower-girl with a big basket of early violets on her arm, recognising the famous dancer, tossed a bunch lightly into the car. They fell on Magda’s lap. She picked them up and, brushing them with her lips, smiled at the girl and fastened the violets against the furs at her breast. The flower-girl treasured the smile of the great Wielitzska in her memory for many a long day, while in the arid months that were to follow Magda treasured the sweet fragrance of that spontaneous gift.
Half an hour later the doors of the grey house where the Sisters of Penitence dwelt apart from the world opened to receive Magda Vallincourt, and closed again behind her.
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