The Lamp of Fate Part 33

He smiled reluctantly.

"How do you know I haven't?"

"Oh, because I do."

"A woman's reason!"

"Quite. But women's reasons are generally very sound--we were endowed with a sixth sense, you know! Besides--it's obvious, isn't it? Here you are--you and June--living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it's a real definite one--as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!"

"Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?"

he asked quietly.

She laughed.

"Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know--June told us--that you were horribly opposed to anyone's coming here for the summer. I thought that you had got over that by now?"

"So I have"--bluntly.

"Then we're not--not unwelcome visitors any longer?" the soft, tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his very heartstrings.

He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her round so that she faced him.

"Why do you ask?" he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.

"Because I wanted to know--of course!"--lightly.

"Then--you're not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go----"

He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words--struck by the full significance of them.

"When you go!" he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands tightened till it was almost painful. "But you won't go! I can't let you go now! Magda--"

The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly away from him, springing to her feet.

"Don't talk like that," she said hastily. "You don't mean it, you know."

With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran down to the river's edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.

He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt the branches which overhung the river.

Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived himself saying or doing?

Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her--what? The sweat broke out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.

"G.o.d!" he muttered. "G.o.d!"

CHAPTER XII

THE LATEST NEWS

Magda hardly knew what impulse had bidden her save Dan Storran from himself--check the hot utterance to which he had so nearly given voice and which to a certain extent she had herself provoked. Driven by the bitterness of spirit which Michael's treatment of her had engendered, she knew that she had flirted outrageously with Dan ever since she had come to Stockleigh. She had bestowed no thought on June--pretty, helpless June, watching with distressed, bewildered eyes while Dan unaccountably changed towards her, his moods alternating from sullen unresponsiveness to a kind of forced and contrite tenderness which she had found almost more difficult to meet and understand.

It was indeed something altogether apart from any sympathy for June which had prompted Magda to leave Storran before he uttered words that he might regret, but which no power on earth could ever recall. Still beneath the resentment and wounded pride which Michael's going had caused her flickered the spark of an ideal utterly at variance with the whole tenor of the teaching of poor Diane's last embittered days--the ideal of womanhood which had been Michael's. And the impulse which had bade her leave Storran so abruptly was born of the one-time resolution she had made to become the sort of woman Michael would wish his wife to be.

She felt oddly perturbed when at last she reached the seclusion of her chintzy bedroom underneath the sloping roof. A vague sense of shame a.s.sailed her. The game, as between herself and Dan, was hardly a fair one, after all, and she could well picture the cold contempt in Michael's eyes had he been looking on at it.

Though he had no right to disapprove of her now! He had forfeited that right--if he had ever had it--when he went away without a word of farewell--without giving her even the chance to appeal against the judgment which, by his very going, he had silently p.r.o.nounced against her.

For months, now, she had been a prey to a conflicting jumble of emotions--the pain and hurt pride which Michael's departure had occasioned her, the craving for anything that might serve to distract her thoughts and keep them from straying back to those few vibrant meetings with him, and deep down within her an aching, restless wonder as to whether she would ever see him again.

With an effort she dismissed the fresh tangle of thought provoked by the morning's brief scene with Dan Storran, and, dressing quickly, went downstairs to the mid-day dinner which was the order of things at Stockleigh.

At first the solid repast, with its plent.i.tude of good farmhouse fare partaken of during the hottest hour of the day, had somewhat appalled Magda. But now she had grown quite accustomed to the appearance of a roast joint or of a smoking, home-cured ham, attended by a variety of country vegetables and followed by fruit tart and clotted cream.

Although she herself, as befitted a woman whose "figure was her fortune" according to Lady Arabella, partook extremely sparingly of this hospitable meal, it somehow pleased her to see big Dan Storran come in from his work in the fields and do full justice to the substantial fare. To Magda, ultra-modern and over-civilised as she was, there was something refreshing in the simple and primitive usages of Stockleigh Farm and its master--this man who toiled, and satisfied his hunger, and rested from toil, just as his fathers had done before him, literally fulfilling the law: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

And perhaps if Magda had never crossed his path Dan Storran might have gone his way contentedly, toiling from sun-up to sun-down till all his days were finished.

Even although she had crossed it, she might still have left him pretty much as she found him--unawakened to the deeps of his own nature--if she had remained in her present ambiguous mood, half-remorseful, half indifferent. But it was precisely at this particular juncture that it pleased Fate to give a fresh twist to her swiftly turning wheel.

Storran did not come in until dinner was half over, and when finally he appeared he was somewhat taciturn and avoided meeting Magda's eyes. June got up from the table and went dutifully into the kitchen to fetch the joint of meat and vegetables which she had been keeping hot for him there. Abruptly Dan followed her.

"Sorry I'm late, June," he said awkwardly. "Here, give the tray to me; I'll carry it in."

June paused in the middle of the kitchen, flushing right up to the soft tendrils of hair that curled about her forehead. It was weeks since Dan had offered to relieve her of any of her housewifely tasks, although at one time he had been wont to hurry home, if he could manage to do so, on purpose to help her. Dozens of times they had laid the table together, punctuating the process with jokes and gay little bursts of laughter and an odd kiss or two thrown in to sweeten the work. But not lately--not since the visitors from London had come to Stockleigh Farm.

So June blushed and looked at her husband with eyes that were suddenly sweet and questioning. She knew, though she had not told him yet, that there was a reason now why he should try to save her when his greater strength could do so, and for a moment she wondered shyly if he had guessed.

"Why, Dan, Dan----" she stammered.

His face darkened. Her obvious surprise irritated him, p.r.i.c.king his conscience.

"It's not very complimentary of you to look so taken aback when I offer to carry something for you," he said. "Anyone might think I never did wait on my wife."

The blood drained away from June's face as suddenly as it had rushed there.

"Well, you don't often, do you?" she returned shortly.

They re-entered the sitting-room together and Magda glanced up, smiling approval. She, too, was feeling somewhat conscience-stricken, and to see Dan helping his wife in this everyday, intimate sort of fashion seemed to minimise the significance of that little incident which had occurred by the river's edge.

"What a nice, polite husband!" she commented gaily. "Mr. Storran, you really out to come up to London and give cla.s.ses--'Manners for Men,' you know. Very few of them wait on their wives these days."

June upset the salt and busied herself spooning it up again from the cloth. There was no answering smile on her face. She was not quite clear _why_ Dan had followed her out into the kitchen so unexpectedly, but she sensed that it was not the old, quick impulse to wait upon her which had actuated him.

Had she but known it, it was the same instinct, more primitively manifested, which induces a man whose conscience is not altogether clear respecting his loyalty towards his wife to bring her home an unexpected gift of jewellery.

The disturbing memory of a lithe, scarlet-sheathed figure had been with Dan all morning as he went about his work, and he was sullenly ashamed of the riot which the vision occasioned within him and of his own utter helplessness to master it. It--it was d.a.m.nable! So he accompanied his wife to the kitchen and offered to carry in the joint.