The Lamp of Fate Part 62

"Well, you expected my time to be pretty well occupied the first week or two after Magda came back, didn't you?" countered Gillian.

She smiled as she spoke and proceeded leisurely to draw off her gloves, while Storran signalled to a waiter.

She was really very glad to see him again. There was something so solid and dependable about him, and she felt it would be very comforting to confide in him her anxieties concerning Magda. Not that she antic.i.p.ated he would have any particular compa.s.sion to bestow upon the latter.

But she was femininely aware that inasmuch as Magda's affairs were disturbing her peace of mind, he would listen to them with sympathetic attention and probably, out of the depths of his man's consciousness, produce some quite sound and serviceable advice.

Being a wise woman, however, she did not launch out into immediate explanation, but waited for him to work off his own individual grumble at not having seen her recently, trusting to the perfectly cooked little lunch to exercise a tranquillising effect.

It was not until they had reached the cigarette and coffee stage of the proceedings that she allowed a small, well-considered sigh to escape her and drift away into the silence that had fallen between them. Storran glanced across at her with suddenly observant eyes.

"What is it?" he asked quickly. "You look worried. Are you?"

She nodded silently.

"And here I've been grousing away about my own affairs all the time! Why didn't you stop me?"

"You know I'm interested in your affairs."

"And I'm interested in yours. What's bothering you, Gillian? Tell me."

"Magda," said Gillian simply.

She was rather surprised to observe that Dan's face did not, as usual, darken at the mere mention of Magda's name.

"I saw her the other day," he said quickly. "I was in the Park and she drove by."

Gillian felt that there was something more to come. She waited in silence.

"She has altered very much," he went on bluntly. Then, after a moment: "I felt--sorry for her."

"_You_ did, Dan?" Gillian's face lit up. "I'm glad. I've always hated your being so down on her."

With an abrupt movement he jabbed the glowing stub of his cigarette on to an ash-tray, pressing it down until it went out. Then, taking out his case, he lit another before replying.

"I shan't be 'down on her' any more," he said at last. "I never guessed she'd felt things--like that."

"No. No one did. I don't suppose even Magda herself knew she could ever go through all she has done just for an ideal."

Then very quietly, very simply and touchingly, she told him the story of all that had happened, of Magda's final intention of becoming a working member of the sisterhood, and of Lady Arabella's letter summoning Michael back to England.

"But even when he comes," added Gillian, "unless he is very careful--unless he loves her in the biggest way a man can love, so that _nothing else matters_, he'll lose her. He'll have to convince her that she means just that to him."

Storran was silent for a long time, and when at last he spoke it was with an obvious effort.

"Listen," he said. "There's something you don't know. Perhaps when I've told you, you won't have anything more to say to me--I don't know."

Gillian opened her lips in quick disclaimer, but he motioned her to be silent.

"Wait," he said. "Wait till you've heard what I have to say. You think, and Magda thinks, that June died of a broken heart--at least, that the shock of all that miserable business down at Stockleigh helped to kill her."

"Yes." Gillian a.s.sented mechanically when he paused.

"I thought so, too, once. It was what June's sister told me--told everyone. But it wasn't true. She believed it, I know--probably believes it to this day. But, thank G.o.d, it wasn't true!"

"How can you tell? All that strain and heart-break just at a time when she wasn't strong. Oh, Dan! We can never be sure--_sure_!"

"I _am_ sure. Quite sure," he said steadily. "When I came to my senses out there in 'Frisco, I couldn't rest under that letter from June's sister. It burned into me like a red-hot iron. I was half-mad with pain, I think. I wrote to the doctor who had attended her, but I got no answer. Then I sailed for England, determined to find and see the man for myself. I found him--my letter had miscarried somehow--and he told me that June could not have lived. There were certain complications in her case which made it impossible. In fact, if she had been so happy that she had longed to live--and _tried_ to--it would only have made it harder for her, a rougher journey to travel. As it was, she went easily, without fighting death--letting go, without any effort, her hold on life."

He ceased, and after a moment's silence Gillian spoke in strained, horror-stricken tones.

"And you never told us! Oh! It was cruel of you, Dan! You would have spared Magda an infinity of self-reproach!"

"I didn't want to spare her. I left her in ignorance on purpose. I wanted her to be punished--to suffer as she had made me suffer."

There were tears in Gillian's eyes. It was terrible to her that Dan could be so bitter--so vengefully cruel. Yet she recognised that it had been but the natural outcome of the man's primitive nature to pay back good for good and evil for evil.

"Then why do you tell me now?" she asked at last.

"Why--because you've beaten me--you with your sweetness and courage and tolerance. You've taught me that retribution and punishment are best left in--more merciful Hands than ours."

Gillian's hand went out to meet his.

"Oh, Dan, I'm so glad!" she said simply.

He kept her hand in his a moment, then released it gently.

"Well, you can tell her now," he said awkwardly.

"I?" Gillian smiled a little. "No. I want you to tell her. Don't you see, Dan"--as she sensed his impulse to refuse--"it will make all the difference in Magda if you and she are--are square with each other?

She's overweighted. She's been carrying a bigger burden than she can bear. Michael comes first, of course, but there's been her treatment of you, as well. June, too. And--and other things. And it's crushing her.

. . . No, you must tell her."

"I will--if you say I must. But she won't forgive me easily."

"I think she will. I think she'll understand just what made you do it.

So now we'll go back to Friars' Holm together."

An hour later Storran came slowly downstairs from the little room where he and Magda had met again for the first time since that moonlight night at Stockleigh--met, not as lovers, but as a man and woman who have each sinned and each learned, out of their sinning, how to pardon and forgive.

Storran was very quiet and grave when presently he found himself alone with Gillian.

"We men will never understand women," he said. "There's an angel hidden away somewhere in every one of you." His mouth curved into a smile, half-sad, half-whimsical. "I've just found Magda's."

Lady Arabella and Gillian, both feeling rather like conspirators, waited anxiously for a reply to the former's letter to Quarrington. But none came. The time slipped by until a fortnight had elapsed, and with the pa.s.sage of each day their hearts sank lower.

Neither of them believed that Michael would have utterly disregarded the letter, had he received it, but they feared that it might have miscarried, or that he might be travelling and so not receive it in time to prevent Magda's carrying out her avowed intention of becoming a working member of the sisterhood.