The Lamp of Fate Part 66

"I'm not quite such a crock as I look. But won't you sit down yourself while I read this letter? Is it of importance?"

"Oh! Please read it!" exclaimed Gillian with sudden nervous impatience.

It seemed to her an eternity while he read the letter. But at last he looked up from its perusal.

"Well?" she asked under her breath.

Very deliberately he refolded the sheet of notepaper and slipped it back into its envelope.

"It would have made no difference if I had received it earlier," he said composedly.

"No difference"

"None. Because, you see, this letter--asking me to go back to Magda--is written under a misapprehension.

"How? What do you mean?"

"I mean--that Magda has--no further use for me."

Gillian leaned forward.

"You're wrong," she said tersely--"quite wrong."

"No." He shook his head. "I'm not blaming her. Looking back, I'm not even very much surprised. But still, the fact remains, she has no further use for me."

"Will you tell me what makes you think that?" With an effort Gillian forced herself to speak quietly and composedly.

He was silent a moment, staring out of the window at the gay blue sea beyond, sparkling in the morning sunlight. All at once he swung round on her, his face wrung with a sudden agony.

"I _know_," he said in a roughened voice. "I know, because I wrote to her--six months ago. I was hard, I know, brutally hard to her that last day at Friars' Holm. But--G.o.d! I paid for it afterwards! And I wrote to her--bared my very soul to her. . . . Wrote so that if she had ever cared she must at least have answered me."

He stopped abruptly, his face working.

"And she didn't answer?"

A wry smile twisted his lips.

"I got my own letter back," he said quietly. "After all, that was an answer--a conclusive one."

Gillian was thinking rapidly. Six months ago! A momentary flash of recollection came to her. So Lady Arabella, that wise old citizen of the world, had been quite right after all! She had given Michael six months to find out his imperative need of Magda. And he had found it.

Only--something had gone wrong.

"Magda never had that letter," she said quietly at last.

She was gradually beginning to piece together the separate parts of the puzzle. All letters that came for Magda had been forwarded on to the sisterhood, and had she herself readdressed this of Michael's she would have recognised the handwriting. But probably she had been away from home, or had chanced to be out at post time, in which case Melrose, or old Virginie, would have readdressed the envelope and dropped it in the pillar box at the corner of the road.

Then--as was the case with any correspondence addressed to one of the Sisters of Penitence--the letter would be read by the Mother Superior and pa.s.sed on to its destined recipient if she thought good. If not----

Gillian had learned a great deal about Catherine Vallincourt by now, both from Lady Arabella and from Magda herself, who, before leaving the community, had discovered the ident.i.ty of its head. And she could visualise the stern, fanatical woman, obsessed by her idea of disciplining Magda and of counteracting the effects of her brother's marriage with Diane Wielitzska, opening the letter and, after perusal, calmly sealing it up in its envelope again and returning it to the sender.

"Magda never had that letter, Michael," she repeated. "Listen!" And then, without preamble, but with every word vibrant with pity for the whole tragedy, she poured out the story of Magda's pa.s.sionate repentance and atonement, of her impetuous adoption of her father's remorseless theory, mistaken though it might be, that pain is the remedy for sin, and of the utter, hopeless despair which had overwhelmed her now that she believed it had all proved unavailing.

"She has come to believe that you don't want her--never could want her, Michael--because she has failed so much."

There was more than one reproach mingled with the story, but Michael made no protest. It was only when she had finished that Gillian could read in his tortured eyes all that her narrative had cost him.

"Yes," he said at last. "It's true. I wanted the impossible. I was looking for a G.o.ddess--not a woman. . . . But now I want--just a woman, Gillian."

"Then, if you want her, you must save her from herself. You've just twenty-four hours to do it in. To-morrow she's still Magda. The next day she'll be Sister Somebody. And you'll have lost her."

Half an hour later, when Michael's nurse returned, she found her patient packing a suit-case with the a.s.sistance of a pretty, brown-haired girl whose eyes shone with the unmistakable brightness of recent tears.

"But you're not fit to travel!" she protested in horrified dismay. "You mustn't think of it, Mr. Quarrington."

But Michael only laughed at her, defying her good-humouredly.

"If the man you loved were waiting for you in England, nurse, you know you'd go--and you wouldn't care a hang whether you were fit to travel or not!"

The nurse smiled in spite of herself.

"No," she admitted. "I suppose I shouldn't."

As the Havre-Southampton boat steamed through the moonlit night, Dan and Gillian were pacing the deck together.

"I'm so glad Michael is going back to Magda without knowing--about June," said Gillian, coming to a standstill beside the deck-rail. "Going back just because his love is too big for anything else to matter now."

"Haven't you told him?"--Storran's voice held surprise.

"No. I decided not to. I should like Magda to tell him that herself."

They were both silent for a little while. Gillian bent over the rail, looking down at the phosph.o.r.escent water breaking away from the steamer's bow. Suddenly a big hand covered hers.

"I think I'm--lonely," said Storran.

"Gillian," he went on, his voice deepening. "Gillian . . . dear. We're two rather lonely people. We shall be lonelier still when Michael and Magda are married. Couldn't we be lonely--in company?"

Gillian's hand moved a little beneath his, then stayed still.

"Why, Dan--Dan----" she stammered.

"Yes," went on the strong, tender voice. "I'm asking you to marry me, Gillian, I'd never expect too much of you. We both know all that's in the past of each of us. But we might help each other to be less lonely--good comrades together, Gillian."

And suddenly Gillian realised how good it would be to rest once more in the shelter of a man's affection and good comradeship--to have someone to laugh with or to be sorry with. There's a tender magic in the word "together." And she, too, had something to give in return--sympathy, and understanding, and a warm friendship. . . . She would not be going to him empty-handed.

"Is it yes, Gillian?"

She bent her head.