The Lamp of Fate Part 13

As she opened the door the twilight, shot by quivering spears of light from the fire's dancing flames, seemed to rush out at her, bearing with it the mournful, heart-shaking music of some Russian melody. Magda uttered a soft, half-amused exclamation of impatience and switched on the lights.

"All in the dark, Davilof?" she asked in a practical tone of voice calculated to disintegrate any possible fabric of romance woven of firelight and fifths.

The flood of electric light revealed a large, lofty room, devoid of furniture except for a few comfortable chairs grouped together at one end of it, and for a magnificent grand piano at the other. The room appeared doubly large by reason of the fact that the whole of one wall was taken up by four immense panels of looking-gla.s.s, cleverly fitted together so that in effect the entire wall was composed of a single enormous mirror. It was in front of this mirror that Magda practised.

The remaining three walls were hung with priceless old tapestry woven of sombre green and greys.

As she entered the room a man rose quickly from the piano and came forward to meet her. There was a kind of repressed eagerness in the action, as though he had been waiting with impatience for her coming.

He was a striking-looking man, tall, and built with the slender-limbed grace of a foreigner. Golden-brown hair, worn rather longer than fashion dictates, waved crisply over his head, and the moustache and small Vandyck beard which partially concealed the lower part of his face were of the same warmly golden colour.

The word "musician" was written all over him--in the supple, capable hands, in the careless stoop of his loosely knit shoulders, and, more than all, in the imaginative hazel eyes with their curious mixture of abstraction and fire. They rather suggested lightning playing over some dreaming pool.

Magda shook hands with him carelessly.

"We shall have to postpone the practice as I'm so late, Davilof," she said. "I had a smash-up in the fog. My car ran into a bus--"

"And you are hurt?" Davilof broke in sharply, his voice edged with fear.

"No, no. I was stunned for a minute and then afterwards I fainted, but I'm quite intact otherwise."

"You are sure--sure?"

"Quite." Hearing the keen anxiety in his tone she smiled at him rea.s.suringly and held out a friendly hand. "I'm all right--really, Antoine."

He took the hand in both his.

"Thank G.o.d!" he said fervently.

Antoine Davilof had lived so long in England that he spoke without trace of accent, though he sometimes gave an unEnglish twist to the phrasing of a sentence, but his quick emotion and the simplicity with which he made no effort to conceal it stamped him unmistakably as a foreigner.

A little touched, Magda allowed her hand to remain in his.

"Why, Davilof!" She chided him laughingly. "You're quite absurdly upset about it."

"I could not have borne it if you had been hurt," he declared vehemently. "You ought not to go about by yourself. It's horrible to think of _you_--in a street accident--alone!"

"But I wasn't alone. A man who was in the other half of the accident--the motor-bus half--played the good Samaritan and carried me into his house, which happened to be close by. He looked after me very well, I a.s.sure you."

Davilof released her hand abruptly. His face darkened.

"And this man? Who was he?" he demanded jealously. "I hate to think of any man--a stranger--touching you."

"Nonsense! Would you have preferred me to remain lying in the middle of the road?"

"You know I would not. But I'd rather some woman had looked after you.

Do you know who the man was?"

"I did not--at first."

"But you do now. Who was it?"

"No one you know, I think," she answered provokingly. His eyes flashed.

"Why are you making a mystery about it?" he asked suspiciously. "You're keeping something from me! Who was this man? Tell me his name."

Magda froze.

"My dear Antoine! Why this air of high tragedy?" she said lightly. "And what on earth has it to do with you who the man was?"

"You know what it has to do with me----"

"With my accompanist?"--raising her brows delicately.

"No!"--with sudden violence--"With the man who loves you! I'm that--and you know it, Magda! Could I play for you as I do if I did not understand your every mood and emotion? You know I couldn't! And then you ask what it matters to me when some unknown man has held you in his arms, carried you into his house--kissed you, perhaps, while you were unconscious!"--his imagination running suddenly riot.

"Stop! You're going too far!" Magda checked him sharply. "You're always telling me you love me. I don't want to hear it." She paused, then added cruelly: "I want you for playing my accompaniments, Davilof. That's all.

Do you understand?"

His eyes blazed. With a quick movement he stepped in front of her.

"I'm a man--as well as an accompanist," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "One day you'll have to reckon with the man, Magda!"

There was a new, unaccustomed quality in his voice. Hitherto she had not taken his ardour very seriously. He was a Pole and a musician, with all the temperament that might be expected from such a combination, and she had let it go at that, pushing his love aside with the careless hand of a woman to whom the incense of men's devotion has been so freely offered as to have become commonplace. But now the new ring of determination, of something unexpectedly dogged in his voice, poignantly recalled the warning uttered by Lady Arabella earlier in the day.

Magda's nerve wavered. A momentary panic a.s.sailed her. Then she intuitively struck the right note.

"Ah, Davilof, don't worry me now--not to-night!" she said appealingly.

"I'm tired. It's been a bit of a strain--the accident and--and----"

"Forgive me!" In a moment he was all penitence--overwhelmed with compunction. "Forget it! I've behaved like a brute. I ought to have seen that you were worn out."

He was beside himself with remorse.

"It's all right, Antoine." She smiled forgiveness at him. "Only I felt--I felt I couldn't stand any more to-night. I suppose it's taken it out of me more than I knew--the shock, and fainting like that."

"Of course it has. You ought to rest. I wish Mrs. Grey were in."

"Is she not?"

"No. The maid told me she was out when I came, and she hasn't returned yet."

"She's been held up by the fog, I expect," answered Magda. "Never mind.

I'll sit here--in this big chair--and you shall switch off these glaring lights and play to me, Antoine. That will rest me better than anything."

She was a little sorry for the man--trying to make up to him for the pain she knew she had inflicted a moment before, and there was a dangerous sweetness in her voice.

Davilof's eyes kindled. He stooped swiftly and kissed her hand.

"You are too good to me!" he said huskily.