The Lamp of Fate Part 44

"It's a splendid pose," he said enthusiastically. "That sideways bend you've given to your body--it's wonderful! But can you stand it, do you think? Of course I'll give you rests as often as I can, but even so it will be a very trying pose to hold."

Magda sat up, letting her feet slide slowly over the edge of the divan.

The "feet of Aurora" someone had once called them--white and arched, with rosy-tipped toes curved like the petals of a flower.

"I can hold it for a good while, I think," she answered evasively.

She did not tell him that even to her trained muscles the preservation of this particular pose, with its sinuous twist of the body, was likely to prove somewhat of a strain. If the pose was so exactly what he wanted for his Circe, he should have it, whatever the cost to herself.

And without knowing it, yielding to an impulse which she hardly recognised, Magda had taken the first step along the pathway of service and sacrifice trodden by those who love.

"It seems as though you were destined to be the model of my two 'turning-point' pictures," commented Quarrington some days later, during one of the intervals when Magda was taking a brief rest. "It was the 'Repose of t.i.tania' which first established my reputation, you know."

"But this can't be a 'turning-point,'" objected Magda. "When you've reached the top of the pinnacle of fame, so to speak, there isn't any 'turning-point'--unless"--laughing--"you're going to turn round and climb down again!"

"There's no top to the pinnacle of work--of achievement," he answered quietly. "At least, there shouldn't be. One just goes on--slipping back a bit, sometimes, then scrambling on again." His glance returned to the picture and Magda watched the ardour of the creative artist light itself anew in his eyes. "That"--he nodded towards the canvas--"is going to be the best bit of work I've done."

"What made you"--she hesitated a moment--"what made you choose Circe as the subject?"

His face clouded over.

"The experience of a friend of mine."

Magda caught her breath.

"Not--you don't mean-----"

"Oh, no"--divining her thought--"not the friend of whom you know--who loved the dancer. She hurt him"--looking at her significantly--"but she didn't injure him to that extent. Circe turned men into swine, you remember. My friend was too fine a character for her to spoil like that."

"I'm glad." Magda spoke very low, her head bent. She felt unable to meet his eyes. After a short silence she asked: "Then what inspired--this picture?"

Was it some woman-episode that had occurred while he was abroad which had scored those new lines on his face, embittering the mouth and implanting that sternly sad expression in the grey eyes? She must know--at all hazards, she must know!

Quarrington lit a cigarette.

"It's not a pretty story," he remarked harshly.

Magda glanced towards the picture. The enchanting, tilted face smiled at her from the canvas, faintly derisive.

"Tell it me," was all she said.

"There's very little to tell," he answered briefly. "There was a man and his wife--and another woman. Till the latter came along they were absolutely happy together--sufficient unto each other. The other woman was one of the Circe type, and she broke the man. Broke him utterly. I happened to be in Paris at the time, and he came to see me there on his way out to South America. He'd left his wife, left his work--everything.

Just _quitted_! Since then I believe 'Frisco has seen more of him than any other place. A man I know ran across him there and told me he'd gone under--utterly."

"And the wife?"

"Dead"--shortly. "She'd no heart to go on living--no wish to. She died when their first child was born--she and the child together--a few months after her husband had left her."

Magda uttered a stifled cry of pity, but Quarrington seemed not to hear it.

"That woman was a twentieth-century Circe." He paused, then added with grim conviction: "There's no forgiveness for a woman like that."

"Ah! Don't say that!"

The words broke impulsively from Magda's lips. The recollection of the summer she had spent at Stockleigh rushed over her accusingly--and she realised that actually she had come between Dan Storran and his wife very much as the Circe woman of Michael's story had come between some other husband and wife.

A deep compa.s.sion for that unknown woman surged up within her. Surely her burden of remorse must be almost more than she could endure! And Magda--to whom penalties and consequences had hitherto been but very unimportant factors with which she concerned herself as little as possible--was all at once conscious of an intense thankfulness that she had not been thus punished, that she had quitted Stockleigh leaving husband and wife still together. Together, they would find the way back into each other's hearts!

"Don't say that!" she repeated imploringly. "It sounds so hard--so relentless!"

"I don't think that it is a case for relenting. But I oughtn't to have told you about it. After all, neither the husband nor wife were friends of yours. And you're looking quite upset over it. I didn't imagine that you were so easily moved to sympathy."

She looked away. Of late she had been puzzled herself at the new and unwonted emotions which stirred her.

"I don't think--I used to be," she said at last, uncertainly.

"Well, please don't take the matter too much to heart or you won't be able to a.s.sume the personality of Circe again when you've rested. I don't want to paint the picture of a model of propriety!"

It seemed as though he were anxious to restore the conversation to a lighter vein, and Magda responded gladly.

"I'm quite rested now. Shall I pose again?" she suggested a few minutes later.

Michael a.s.sented and, picking up his palette, began squeezing out fresh shining little worms of paint on to it while Magda rea.s.sumed her pose.

For a while he chatted intermittently, but presently he fell silent, becoming more and more deeply absorbed in his work. Finally, when some remark of hers repeated a second time still remained unanswered, she realised that he had completely forgotten her existence. As far as he was concerned she was no longer Magda Wielitzska, posing for him, but Circe, the enchantress, whose amazing beauty he was transferring to his canvas in glowing brushstrokes. As with all genius, the impulse of creative work had seized him suddenly and was driving him on regardless of everything exterior to his art.

Time had ceased to matter to him, and Magda, with little nervous pains shooting first through one limb, then another, was wondering how much longer she could maintain the pose. She was determined not to give in, not to check him while that fervour of creation was upon him.

The pain was increasing. She felt as though she were being stabbed with red-hot knives. Tiny beads of sweat broke out on her forehead, and her breath came gaspingly between her lips.

All at once the big easel at which Michael was standing receded out of sight, and when it reappeared again it was quite close to her, swaying and nodding like a mandarin. Instinctively she put out her hand to steady it, but it leaned nearer and nearer and finally gave a huge lurch and swooped down on top of her, and the studio and everything in it faded out of sight. . . .

The metallic tinkle of the gold goblet as it fell from her hand and rolled along the floor startled Michael out of his absorption. With a sharp exclamation he flung down his brush and palette and strode hurriedly to the divan. Magda was lying half across it in a little crumpled heap, unconscious.

His first impulse to lift her up was arrested by something in her att.i.tude, and he stood quite still, looking down at her, his face suddenly drawn and very weary.

In the limp figure with its upturned face and the purple shadows which fatigue had painted below the closed eyelids, there was an irresistible appeal. She looked so young, so helpless, and the knowledge that she had done this for him--forced her limbs into agonised subjection until at last conscious endurance had failed her--moved him indescribably.

Surely this was a new Magda! Or else he had never known her. Had he been too hard--hard to her and pitilessly hard to himself--when he had allowed the ugly facts of her flirtation with Kit Raynham to drive him from her?

Eighteen months ago! And in all those eighteen months no word of gossip, no lightest breath of scandal against her, had reached his ears. Had he been merely a self-righteous Pharisee, enforcing the penalty of old sins, bygone failings? A grim smile twisted his lips. If so, and he had made her suffer, he had at least suffered equally himself!

He stooped over the p.r.o.ne figure on the divan. Lower, lower still, till a tendril of dark hair that had strayed across her forehead quivered beneath his breath. Then suddenly he drew back, jerking himself upright.

Striding across the room he pealed the bell and, when a neat maidservant appeared in response, ordered sharply:

"Bring some brandy--quick! And ask Mrs. Grey to come here. Mademoiselle Wielitzska has fainted."