The Lamp of Fate Part 49

"It's _our_ picture now, Saint Michel," she told him, with a happy, possessive pride in his work.

In this new atmosphere of tranquil happiness Magda bloomed like a flower in the sun. To the nameless natural charm which was always hers there was added a fresh sweetness and appeal, and the full revelation of her love for him startled even Michael. He had not realised the deep capacity for love which had lain hidden beneath her nonchalance.

It seemed as though her whole nature had undergone a change. Alone with him she was no longer the a.s.sured woman of the world, the spoilt and feted dancer, but just a simple, unaffected girl, sometimes a little shy, almost diffident, at others frank and spontaneous with the splendid candour and simplicity of a woman who knows no fear of love, but goes courageously to meet it and all that it demands of her.

She was fugitively sweet and tender with Coppertop, and now and then her eyes would shine with a quiet, dreaming light as though she visioned a future wherein someone like Coppertop, only littler, might lie in the crook of her arm.

Often during these tranquil summer days the two were to be found together, Magda recounting the most gorgeous stories of knights and dragons such as Coppertop's small soul delighted in. On one such occasion, at the end of a particularly thrilling narrative, he sat back on his heels and regarded her with a certain wistful anxiety.

"I suppose," he asked rather forlornly, "when you're married they'll give you a little boy like me, Fairy Lady, won't they?"

The clear, warm colour ran up swiftly beneath her skin.

"Perhaps so, Topkins," she answered very low.

He heaved a big sigh. "He'll be a very _lucky_ little boy," he said plaintively. "If Mummie couldn't have been my mummie, I'd have choosed you."

And so, in this tender atmosphere of peace and contentment, the summer slipped by until it was time for Magda to think of going back to London.

The utter content and happiness of these weeks almost frightened her sometimes.

"It can't last, Gilly," she confided to Gillian one day, caught by an access of superst.i.tious fear. "It simply _can't_ last! No one was meant to be as happy as I am!"

"I think we were all meant to be happy," replied Gillian simply. "Happy and good!" she added, laughing.

"Yes. But I haven't been particularly good. I've just done whatever it occurred to me to do without considering the consequences. I expect I shall be made to take my consequences all in a heap together one day."

Gillian smiled.

"Then I suppose we shall all of us have to rally round and get you out of them," she said cheerfully.

"Perhaps--perhaps you wouldn't be able to."

There was a strange note of foreboding in Magda's voice--an accent of fatality, and despite herself Gillian experienced a reflex sense of uneasiness.

"Nonsense!" she said brusquely. "What on earth has put all these ridiculous notions into your head?"

Magda smiled at her. "I think it was four lines I read in a book yesterday. They set me thinking."

"More's the pity then!" grumbled Gillian. "What were they?"

Magda was silent a moment, looking out over the sea with abstracted eyes. It was so blue to-day--all blue and gold in the dancing sunlight.

But she knew that self-same sea could be grey--grey and chill as death.

Her glance came slowly back to Gillian's face as she quoted the fragment of verse which had persisted in her thoughts:

"To-day and all the still unborn To-morrows Have sprung from Yesterday. For Woe or Weal The Soul is weighted by the Burden of Dead Days-- Bound to the unremitting Past with Ropes of Steel."

After a moment she added:

"Even you couldn't cut through 'ropes of steel,' my Gillyflower."

Gillian tried to shrug away this fanciful depression of the moment.

"Well, by way of a counterblast to your dejection of spirit, I propose to send an announcement of your engagement to the _Morning Post_. You're not meaning to keep it private after we get back to town, are you?"

"Oh, no. It was only that I didn't want to be pestered with congratulations while we were down here. I suppose they'll have to come some day"--with a small grimace of disgust.

"You'll be snowed under with them," Gillian a.s.sured her encouragingly.

The public announcement of the engagement preceded Magda's return from Netherway by a few days, so that by the time the Hermitage house-party actually broke up, its various members returning to town, all London was fairly humming with the news. The papers were full of it. Portraits of the fiances appeared side by side, together with brief histories of their respective careers up to date, and accompanied by refreshing details concerning their personal tastes.

"Dear me, I never knew Michael had a pa.s.sion for raw meat before,"

remarked Magda, after reading various extracts from the different accounts aloud for Gillian's edification.

"Has he?" Gillian was arranging flowers and spoke somewhat indistinctly, owing to the fact that she had the stem of a chrysanthemum between her lips.

"Yes, he must have. Listen to this, 'Mr. Quarrington's wonderful creations are evidently not entirely the fruit of the spirit, since we understand that his staple breakfast dish consists of a couple of underdone cutlets--so lightly cooked, in fact, as to be almost raw.'

I'm glad I've learned that," pursued Magda earnestly. "It seems to me an important thing for a wife to know. Don't you think so, Gillian?"

Gillian shouted with delight.

"Of course I do! Do let's ask Michael to lunch and offer him a couple of raw cutlets on a charger."

"No," insisted Magda firmly. "I shall keep a splendid treat like that for him till after we're married. Even at a strictly conservative estimate it should be worth a new hat to me."

"Or a dose of a.r.s.enic in your next cup of tea," suggested Gillian, giggling.

The following evening was the occasion of Magda's first appearance at the Imperial after the publication of her engagement, and the theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. "House Full" boards were exhibited outside at quite an early hour, and when Magda appeared on the stage she was received with such enthusiasm that for a time it was impossible to proceed with the ballet. When finally the curtain fell on what the critics characterised next day as "the most appealing performance of _The Swan-Maiden_ which Mademoiselle Wielitzska has yet given us,"

she received an absolute ovation. The audience went half-crazy with excitement, applauding deliriously, while the front of the stage speedily became converted into a veritable bank of flowers, from amidst which Magda bowed and smiled her thanks.

She enjoyed every moment of it, every handclap. She was radiantly happy, and this spontaneous sharing in her happiness by the big public which idolised her served but to intensify it. She was almost crying as she returned to her dressing-room after taking a dozen or more calls, and when, as usual, Virginie met her on the threshold, she dropped the great sheaf of lilies she was carrying and flung her arms round the old woman's neck.

"Oh, the dears!" she exclaimed. "The blessed _dears_! Virginie, I believe I'm the happiest woman alive!"

"And who should be, _mon pet.i.te chou_, if not thou?" returned the old woman with conviction. "Of course they love thee! _Mais bien sur_!

Doest thou not dance for them as none else can dance and give them angel visions that they could not imagine for themselves?" She paused. Then thrusting her hand suddenly into the pocket of her ap.r.o.n and producing a card: "_Tiens_! I forgot! Monsieur Davilof waits. Will mademoiselle receive him?"

Magda nodded. She had not seen Antoine since her return from Netherway.

He had been away in Poland, visiting his mother whom, by the way, he adored. But as her engagement to Michael was now public she was anxious to get her first meeting with the musician over. He would probably rave a little, despairing in the picturesque and dramatic fashion characteristic of him, and the sooner he "got it out of his system," as Gillian had observed on one occasion, the better for everyone concerned.

So Magda braced herself for the interview, and prepared to receive a tragical and despondent Davilof.

But she was not in the least prepared for the man as he appeared when Virginie ushered him into the dressing-room and retired, discreetly closing the door behind her. Magda, her hand outstretched to greet him, paused in sheer dismay, her arm falling slowly to her side.

She had never seen so great a change in any man. His face was grey--grey and lined like the face of a man who has had no sleep for days. His shoulders stooped a little as though he were too weary to hold himself upright, and there was a curiously rigid look about his features, particularly the usually mobile mouth. The only live thing about him seemed to be his eyes. They blazed with a burning brightness that made her think of flame. With it all, he was as immaculately groomed, his small golden beard as perfectly trimmed, as ever.

"Antoine!" His name faltered from Magda's lips. The man's face, its beauty all marred by some terrible turmoil of the soul, shocked her.

He vouchsafed no greeting, but came swiftly to her side.