The Lamp of Fate Part 56

It looked hard and very weary. His strong fingers moved restlessly, crumbling one of the small cakes on the plate in front of him.

"'Though the mills of G.o.d grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,'" he quoted at last, quietly.

Gillian met his harshly cynical glance with one of brave defiance.

"I don't think G.o.d's mills have anything to do with it," she said swiftly. "He'd understand all the excuses and allowances that should be made for her better even than I do. And I shouldn't want to punish Magda. I'd make her--happy. She's never known what it means to be really happy. Success and gaiety aren't _happiness_."

"And you?" he asked quickly.

There was a soft and wonderful shining in the brown eyes that were lifted to his.

"I had one year of utter happiness," she answered gently. "And I've got Coppertop--so I can't ever be quite unhappy."

"If there were more women like you----" he began abruptly.

She shook her head.

"No, no," she said, smiling a little. "If there were more men like Tony!

You men are so hard--so cruelly hard."

He looked at her very directly.

"Haven't I the right to be?" he demanded bitterly.

"Ah! Forgive me!" Gillian spoke with an accent of self-reproach. "I'd forgotten you still--care."

"For Magda?" He laughed shortly. "No. That's dead, thank G.o.d! I killed it. Worked it out of my system in 'Frisco"--with exceeding bitterness.

"Then I got the news of June's death. Her sister wrote me. Told me she died because she'd no longer any wish to live. That sobered me-brought me back to my sense. There was a good deal more to the letter--my sister-in-law didn't let me down lightly. I've had to pay for that summer at Stockleigh. And now Magda's paying. . . . Well, that seems to square things somehow."

"Oh, you are brutal!" broke out Gillian.

His eyes, hard as steel and as unyielding, met hers.

"Am I?"--indifferently. "Perhaps I am."

This was a very different Dan from the impetuous, hot-headed Dan of former times. Gillian found his calm ruthlessness difficult to understand, and yet, realising all that he had suffered, she could not but condone it to a certain extent.

When at last she rose to go, he detained her a moment.

"I am remaining in England now. I should like to see you sometimes. May I?"

She hesitated. Then something that appealed in the tired eyes impelled her answer.

"If you wish," she said gently.

Back once more in the street she made her way as quickly as possible to the nearest tube station, in order to reach it before the usual evening crowd of homeward-wending clerks and typists poured into the thoroughfares from a thousand open office doors. But as soon as she was safely seated in the train her thoughts reverted to the two strange interviews in which she had taken part that afternoon.

She felt very low-spirited. Since she had seen and talked with the two men in whose lives Magda had played so big a part, she was oppressed with a sense of the utter hopelessness of trying to put matters right.

Things must take their course--drive on to whatever end, bitter or sweet, lay hidden in the womb of fate.

She had tried to stem the current of affairs, but she had proved as powerless to deflect it as a dried stick tossed on to a river in spate. And now, whether the end were ultimate happiness or hopeless, irretrievable disaster, Michael and Magda must still fight their way towards it, each alone, by the dim light of that "blind Understanding"

which is all that Destiny vouchsafes.

CHAPTER XXVI

FAREWELL

The curtains swung together for the last time, the orchestra struck up the National Anthem, and the great audience which had come from all parts to witness the Wielitzska's farewell performance began to disperse.

A curious quietness attended its departure. It was as though a pall of gravity hung over the big a.s.semblage. Public announcements of the performance had explained that the famous dancer proposed taking a long rest for reasons of health. "But," as everyone declared, "you know what that means! She's probably broken down--heart or something. We shall never see her dance again." And so, beneath the tremendous reception which they gave her, there throbbed an element of sadness, behind all the cheers and the clapping an insistent minor note which carried across the footlights to where Magda stood bowing her thanks, and smiling through the mist of tears which filled her eyes.

The dance which she had chosen for her last appearance was the _Swan-Maiden_. There had seemed a strange applicability in the choice, and to those who had eyes to see there was a new quality in the Wielitzska's dancing--a depth of significance and a spirituality of interpretation which was commented upon in the Press the next day.

It had been quite unmistakable. She had gripped her audience so that throughout the final scene of the ballet no word was spoken. The big crowd, drawn from all cla.s.ses, sat tense and silent, sensitive to every movement, every exquisite, appealing gesture of the Swan-Maiden. And when at last she had lain, limp in death, in her lover's embrace, and the music had quivered into silence, there followed a vibrant pause--almost it seemed as though a sigh of mingled ecstasy and regret went up--before the thunderous applause roared through the auditorium.

The insatiable few were still clapping and stamping a.s.siduously when Magda, after taking innumerable calls, at last came off the stage. It had been a wonderful night of triumph, and as she made her way towards her dressing-room she was conscious of a sudden breathless realisation of all that she was sacrificing. For a moment she felt as though she must rush back on to the stage and tell everybody that she couldn't do it, that it was all a mistake--that this was not a farewell! But she set her teeth and moved resolutely towards her dressing-room.

As her fingers closed round the handle of the door, someone stepped out from the shadows of the pa.s.sage and spoke:

"Magda!"

The voice, wrung and urgent, was Antoine Davilof's.

Her first impulse was to hurry forward and put the dressing-room door betwixt herself and him. She had not seen him since that night when he had come down to the theatre and implored her to be his wife, warning her that he would prevent her marriage with Michael. He had carried out his threat with a completeness that had wrecked her life, and although, since the breaking-off of her engagement, he had both written and telephoned, begging her to see him, she had steadfastly refused. Once he had come to Friars' Holm, but had been met with an inexorable "Not at home!" from Melrose.

"Magda! For G.o.d's sake, give me a moment!"

Something in the strained tones moved her to an unexpected feeling of compa.s.sion. It was the voice of a man in the extremity of mental anguish.

Silently she opened the door of the dressing-room and signed to him to follow her.

"Well," she said, facing him, "what is it? Why have you come?"

The impulse of compa.s.sion died out suddenly. His was the hand that had destroyed her happiness. The sight of him roused her to a fierce anger and resentment.

"Well?" she repeated. "What do you want? To know the result of your handiwork?"--bitterly. "You've been quite as successful as even you could have wished."

"Don't," he said unevenly. "Magda, I can't bear it. You can't give up--all this. Your dancing--it's your life! I shall never forgive myself . . . I'll see Quarrington and tell him--"

"You can't see him. He's gone away."

"Then I'll find him."

"If you found him, nothing you could say would make any difference,"

she answered unemotionally. "It's the facts that matter. You can't alter--facts."