The Lamp of Fate Part 40

"No," he answered. "I shan't 'get over it.' When a man loves a woman as I love Magda he doesn't 'get over it.' That's what I meant when I told you she had robbed you."

"You _will_ get over it, Dan," she persisted. "I'll help you."

"You can't," he returned doggedly. "You, least of all! Every touch of your hand--I should be thinking what her touch would have meant! The sound of your step--I'd be listening for hers!"

He saw her wince. He wanted to kick himself for hurting her like this.

But he knew what he intended doing; and sooner or later she must know too. It would be better for her in the long run to face it now than to be endlessly waiting and hoping and longing for what he knew could never be.

"Dan, I'll be very patient. Don't you think--if you tried--you could conquer this love of yours for Miss Vallincourt?"

He shook his head.

"It's conquered me, June. It's--it's torture!"

"It will be easier now she's gone away," she suggested.

"Gone away? . . . Aye, as far as London! And in five hours I could be with her--see her again----"

He broke off. At the bare thought his heart was pounding against his ribs, his breath labouring in his throat.

"Won't you try, Dan?" Even to herself June's voice sounded faint and far away.

"It would be useless." He got up and strode aimlessly back and forth, coming at last to a standstill in front of her. "A man knows his own limits, June. And I've reached mine. England can't hold the two of us."

June gave a little stifled cry.

"What do you mean? You're not--you're not going to leave me? To go abroad--now?"

There would be need for him in England soon--in a few months. But of course he couldn't know that. Should she tell him. Tell him why he _must not_ leave her now? Keep him with her by a sure and certain chain--the knowledge that she was soon to be the mother of his child?

She debated the question wildly in her mind, tempted to tell him, yet feeling that even if then he stayed with her it would not be because he loved her or had ceased to care for Miss Vallincourt, but only because he was impelled by a sense of duty. And her pride rebelled against holding him by that.

His voice broke in upon her conflicting thoughts.

"Yes. I'm going abroad. It's the only thing, June. I can't stay in England--and keep away from her."

June was silent a moment. Then she said in a very low voice, almost as though speaking to herself:

"I wonder if--if you ever loved me."

He wheeled round, and the desperate misery in his eyes hurt her almost physically.

"Yes," he said harshly. "I did love you. In a way, I do now. But it's nothing--nothing to the madness in my blood! I'm a brute to leave you.

But I'm going to do it. No civilised country can hold me now!"

So that was to be the end of it! June recognised the bitter truth at last. Magda had indeed robbed her of everything she possessed. And robbed her wantonly, seeing that she herself set no value on Dan's love--had, in fact, tossed it aside like an outworn plaything.

June ceased to plead with Dan then. She would not wish to hold him by any other chain than his love for her. And if that chain had snapped--broken irrevocably--then the child born of what had once been love would only be an enc.u.mbrance in his eyes, an unwelcome tie, shackling him to a duty from which he longed to escape.

So she let him go--let him go in silence. . . .

CHAPTER XVI

WHAT LADY ARABELLA KNEW

Lady Arabella might disapprove of her G.o.d-daughter from every point of the compa.s.s, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that when Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon with the information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire, she hailed the announcement with enthusiasm.

"But where is Magda? Why didn't she come with you?" she demanded impatiently.

"Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things in connection with this next winter's season, so there's a great council in progress. But she's coming to see you to-morrow. Won't I do"--Gillian wrinkled her brows whimsically--"for to-day?"

"Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about your Devonshire trip. I suppose," she went on, "you heard the news of Michael Quarrington's marriage? Or didn't you get any newspapers down in your benighted village?"

"No, we had no London papers," replied Gillian doubtfully. "But--I don't understand. Mr. Quarrington isn't married, is he? I thought--I thought----"

"You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that a motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at top speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must have felt a pretty fool since!" And Lady Arabella gave one of her enjoyable chuckles.

"Yes. Antoine came down to see us," replied Gillian in puzzled tones.

"But Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose he _must_ have told her----" She broke off as all at once illumination penetrated the darkness. "That explains it, then! Explains everything!"

she exclaimed.

"What explains what?" demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.

"Why----" And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had led up to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.

"She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even asked her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn't get any sensible answer out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in the moonlight with Dan Storran for audience--out of sheer devilment, of course!"

"Or sheer heartsickness," suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the rest of her personality.

"Do you think she--cared, then?" asked Gillian.

"For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in the end, I hope. And, anyway"--with a wicked little grin--"Davilof won't have quite such a clear coast as he antic.i.p.ated."

"But if Michael Quarrington is married--"

"He isn't," interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. "It was contradicted in the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.

"Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?"

"Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the names mixed. It ought really to have been _Warrington_, not Quarrington--Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he and Michael were both using the same woman as a model--only Warrington married her! Spoiled Michael's picture--or his temper--when he ran off with her for a honeymoon, I expect!"

On her return to Friars' Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda's benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.

To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box of life's possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It had been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours that had succeeded Davilof's announcement of his marriage to the Spanish woman had taught her how much Michael meant to her.

She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and emotions which had driven him from her side. His original att.i.tude toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened and intensified by that strong "partisan" feeling of one man for another--fruit of the ineradicable s.e.x antagonism which so often colours the judgments men pa.s.s on women and women on men. Then had come love, against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love, had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely shattered.