The Lamp of Fate Part 55

"Oh--self-respect!" There was a note of contempt in Gillian's voice. "If you set your 'self-respect' above your love--"

"You don't understand!" he interrupted violently. "You're a woman and you can't understand! I must honour the woman I love--it's the kernel of the whole thing. I must look up to her--not down!"

Gillian clasped her hands.

"Oh!" she said in a low, vehement voice. "I don't think we women _want_ to be 'looked up to.' It sets us so far away. We're not G.o.ddesses. We're only women, Michael, with all our little weaknesses just the same as men. And we want the men who love us to be comrades--not worshippers.

Good pals, who'll forgive us and help us up when we tumble down, just as we'd be ready to forgive them and help them up. Can't you--can't you do that for Magda?"

"No," he said shortly. "I can't."

Gillian was at the end of her resources. She would not tell him that Magda proposed joining the Sisters of Penitence for a year. Somehow she felt she would not wish him to know this or to be influenced by it.

She had made her appeal to Michael himself, to his sheer love for the woman he had intended to make his wife. And she had failed because the man was too bitter, too sore, to see clearly through the pain that blinded him.

His voice, curt and clipped, broke the silence which had fallen.

"Have you said all you came to say?" he asked with frigid politeness.

"All," she returned sadly.

He moved slowly towards the door.

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand.

He took it and held it in his. For a moment the hard eyes softened a little.

"I'm sorry I can't do what you ask," he said abruptly.

Gillian opened her lips to speak, but no words came. Instead, a sudden lump rose in her throat, choking her into silence, at the sight of the man's wrung face, with its bitter, pain-ridden eyes and the jaw that was squared implacably against love and forgiveness, and against his own overwhelming desire.

CHAPTER XXV

"CHILDREN STUMBLING IN THE DARK"

As Gillian mingled once more with the throng on the pavements she felt curiously unwilling to return home. She had set out from Friars' Holm so full of hope in her errand! It had seemed impossible that she could fail, and she had been almost unconsciously looking forward to seeing Magda's wan, strained face relax into half-incredulous delight as she confided in her the news that Michael was as eager and longing for a reconciliation as she herself.

And instead--this! This utter, hopeless failure to move him one jot.

Only the memory of the man's stern, desperately unhappy eyes curbed the hot tide of her anger against him for his iron refusal.

He still loved Magda, so he said. And, indeed, Gillian believed it. But--love! It was not love as she and Tony Grey had understood it--simple, forgiving, and wholly trustful. It seemed to her as though Michael and Magda were both wandering in a dim twilight of misunderstanding, neither of them able to see that there was only one thing for them to do if they were ever to find happiness again. They must thrust the past behind them--with all its bitterness and failures and mistakes, and go forward, hand in hand, in search of the light. Love would surely lead them to it eventually.

Yet this was the last thing either of them seemed able to think of doing. Magda was determined to spend the sweetness of her youth in making reparation for the past, while Michael was torn by bitterly conflicting feelings--his pa.s.sionate love for Magda warring with his innate recoil from all that she had done and with his loyalty to his dead sister.

Gillian sighed as she threaded her way slowly along the crowded street.

The lights of a well-known tea-shop beckoned invitingly and, only too willing to postpone the moment of her return home, she turned in between its plate-gla.s.s doors.

They swung together behind her, dulling the rumble of the traffic, while all around uprose the gay hum of conversation and the c.h.i.n.k of cups and saucers mingling with the rhythmic melodies that issued from a cleverly concealed orchestra.

The place was very crowded. For a moment it seemed to Gillian as though there were no vacant seat. Then she espied an empty table for two in a distant corner and hastily made her way thither. She had barely given her order to the waitress when the swing doors parted again to admit someone else--a man this time.

The new arrival paused, as Gillian herself had done, to search out a seat. Then, noting the empty place at her table, he came quickly towards it.

Gillian was idly scanning the list of marvellous little cakes furnished by the menu, and her first cognisance of the new-comer's approach was the vision of a strong, masculine hand gripping the back of the chair opposite her preparatory to pulling it out from under the table.

"I'm afraid there's no other vacant seat," he was beginning apologetically. But at the sound of his voice Gillian's eyes flew up from that virile-looking hand to the face of its owner, and a low cry of surprise broke from her lips.

"Dan Storran!"

Simultaneously the man gave utterance to her own name.

Gillian stared at him stupidly. Could this really be Dan Storran--Storran of Stockleigh?

The alteration in him was immense. He looked ten years older. An habitual stoop had lessened his apparent height and the dark, kinky hair was streaked with grey. The golden-tan bestowed by an English sun had been exchanged for the sallow skin of a man who has lived hard in a hot country, and the face was thin and heavily lined. Only the eyes of periwinkle-blue remained to remind Gillian of the splendid young giant she had known at Ashencombe--and even they were changed and held the cynical weariness of a man who has eaten of Dead Sea fruit and found it bitter to the taste.

There were other changes, too. Storran of Stockleigh was as civilised, his clothes and general appearance as essentially "right," as those of the men around him. All suggestion of the "cave-man from the backwoods,"

as Lady Arabella had termed him, was gone.

"I didn't know you were in England," said Gillian at last.

"I landed yesterday."

"You've been in South America, haven't you?"

She spoke mechanically. There seemed something forced and artificial about this exchange of plat.i.tudes between herself and the man who had figured so disastrously in Magda's life. Without warning he brought the conversation suddenly back to the realities.

"Yes. I was in 'Frisco when my wife died. Since then I've been half over the world."

Behind the harshly uttered statement Gillian could sense the unspeakable bitterness of the man's soul. It hurt her, calling forth her quick sympathy just as the sight of some maimed and wounded animal would have done.

"Oh!" she said, a sensitive quiver in her voice. "I was so sorry--so terribly sorry--to hear about June. We hadn't heard--we only knew quite recently." Her face clouded as she reflected on the tragic happenings with which the news had been accompanied.

At this moment a waitress paused at Storran's side and he gave his order. Then, looking curiously at Gillian, he said:

"What did you hear? Just that she died when our child was born, I suppose?"

Gillian's absolute honesty of soul could not acquiesce, though it would have been infinitely the easier course.

"No," she said, flushing a little and speaking very low. "We heard that she might have lived if--if she had only been--happier."

He nodded silently, rather as though this was the answer he had antic.i.p.ated. Presently he spoke abruptly:

"Does Miss Vallincourt know that?"

Gillian hesitated. Then, taking her courage in both hands she told him quickly and composedly the whole story of the engagement and its rupture, and let him understand just precisely what June's death, owing to the special circ.u.mstances in which it had occurred, had meant for Magda of retribution and of heartbreak.

Storran listened without comment, in his eyes an odd look of concentration. The waitress dexterously slid a tray in front of him and he poured himself out a cup of tea mechanically, but he made no attempt to drink it. When Gillian ceased, his face showed no sign of softening.