The Lamp of Fate Part 18

"And when that time comes, then you'll come back to me," he added.

Magda threw up her head, defying him.

"You propose to be waiting round to pick up the pieces, then?" she suggested nonchalantly.

But only the sound of the closing door answered her. Davilof had gone.

CHAPTER V

THE SWAN-MAIDEN

Lady Arabella was in her element. She had two brilliant and unattached young men dining with her--one, Michael Quarrington, a lion in the artistic world, and the other, Antoine Davilof, who showed unmistakable symptoms of developing sooner or later into a lion in the musical world.

It was Davilof who was responsible for the artist's presence at Lady Arabella's dinner table. She had expressed--in her usual autocratic manner--a wish that he should be presented to her, and had determined upon the evening of the first performance of _The Swan-Maiden_ as the appointed time.

Davilof appeared doubtful, and declared that Quarrington was leaving England and had already fixed the date of his departure.

"He's crossing from Dover the very day before the one you want him to dine with you," he told her.

But Lady Arabella swept his objections aside with regal indifference.

"Crossing, is he?" she snapped. "Well, tell him I want him to dine here and go to the show with us afterwards. He'll cross the day _after_, you'll find--if he crosses at all!" she wound up enigmatically.

So it came about that her two lions, the last-arrived artist and the soon-to-arrive musician, were both dining with her on the appointed evening.

Lady Arabella adored lions. Also, notwithstanding her seventy years, she retained as much original Eve in her composition as a girl of seventeen, and she adored young men.

In particular, she decided that she approved of Michael Quarrington. She liked the clean English build of him. She liked his lean, square jaw and the fair hair with the unruly kink in it which reminded her of a certain other young man--who had been young when she was young--and to whom she had bade farewell at her parents' inflexible decree more than fifty years ago. Above all, she liked the artist's eyes--those grey, steady eyes with their look of reticence so characteristic of the man himself.

Reticence was an a.s.set in her ladyship's estimation. It showed good sense--and it offered provocative opportunities for a battle of wits such as her soul loved.

"Have you seen my G.o.d-daughter dance, Mr. Quarrington?" she asked him.

"Yes, several times."

His tone was non-committal and she eyed him sharply.

"Don't admire dancing, do you?" she threw at him.

Quarrington regarded her with a humorous twinkle.

"And I an artist? How can you ask, Lady Arabella?"

"Well, you sounded supremely detached," she grumbled.

"I think Mademoiselle Wielitzska's dancing the loveliest thing I have ever seen," he returned simply.

The old woman vouchsafed him a smile.

"Thank you," she answered. "I enjoyed that quite as much as I used to enjoy being told I'd a pretty dimple when I was a girl."

"You have now," rejoined Quarrington audaciously.

Lady Arabella's eyes sparkled. She loved a neatly turned compliment.

"Thank you again. But it's a pity to waste your pretty speeches on an old woman of seventy."

"I don't," retorted the artist gravely. "I reserve them for the young people I know of that age."

She laughed delightedly. Then, turning to Davilof, she drew him into the conversation and the talk became general.

Later, as they were all three standing in the hall preparatory to departure, she flashed another of her sudden remarks at Quarrington.

"I understand you came to my G.o.d-daughter's rescue in that bad fog last week?"

The quiet grey eyes revealed nothing.

"I was privileged to be some little use," he replied lightly.

"I hardly gathered you regarded it as a privilege," observed her ladyship drily.

The shaft went home. A fleeting light gleamed for a moment in the grey eyes. Davilof was standing a few paces away, being helped into his coat by a man-servant, and Quarrington spoke low and quickly.

"She told you?" he said. There was astonishment--resentment, almost--in his voice.

"No, no." Lady Arabella, smiling to herself, rea.s.sured him hastily. "It was a shot in the dark on my part. Magda never confides details. She hands you out an unadorned slice of fact and leaves you to interpret it as you choose. But if you know her rather well--as I do--and can add two and two together and make five or any unlikely number of them, why, then you can fill in some of the blanks for yourself."

She glanced at him with impish amus.e.m.e.nt as she moved towards the door.

"Come along, Davilof," she said. "I suppose you want to hear your own music--even if Magda's dancing no longer interests you?"

Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.

"What do you mean, miladi?" he asked. "There is no more beautiful dancing in the world."

"Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist? Shoes beginning to pinch a little, eh?"--shrewdly.

"You mean I grow too big for my boots? No, madame. If I were the greatest musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof, it could only be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the Wielitzska."

Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the limousine.

"Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now? She was playing for her at the d.u.c.h.ess of Lichbrooke's the other evening.

"Magda didn't tell you, then?"

"No, she didn't; or I'd not be wasting my breath in asking you. I asked her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes."