The Lamp of Fate

Part Two
Chapter XVI. What Lady Arabella Knew

Lady Arabella might disapprove of her god-daughter from every point of the compass, but she was nevertheless amazingly fond of her, so that when Gillian appeared on her spotless Park Lane doorstep one afternoon with the information that she and Magda had returned from Devonshire, she hailed the announcement with enthusiasm.

"But where is Magda? Why didn't she come with you?" she demanded impatiently.

"Her manager rang up to know if he could see her about various things in connection with this next winter's season, so there's a great council in progress. But she's coming to see you to-morrow. Won't I do"--Gillian wrinkled her brows whimsically--"for to-day?"

"Bless the child! Of course you will! Come along and tell me all about your Devonshire trip. I suppose," she went on, "you heard the news of Michael Quarrington's marriage? Or didn't you get any newspapers down in your benighted village?"

"No, we had no London papers," replied Gillian doubtfully. "But--I don't understand. Mr. Quarrington isn't married, is he? I thought--I thought----"

"You thought he was in love with Magda. So he was. The announcement startled everybody, I can tell you! And Davilof promptly decided that a motoring trip would benefit his health and shot off to Devonshire at top speed. Of course he wanted to impart the news to Magda. He must have felt a pretty fool since!" And Lady Arabella gave one of her enjoyable chuckles.

"Yes. Antoine came down to see us," replied Gillian in puzzled tones. "But Magda never confided anything special he had said. I suppose he must have told her----" She broke off as all at once illumination penetrated the darkness. "That explains it, then! Explains everything!" she exclaimed.

"What explains what?" demanded Lady Arabella bluntly.

"Why----" And Gillian proceeded to recount the events which had led up to the abrupt termination of the visit to Stockleigh Farm.

"She was in a very odd kind of mood after Antoine had gone. I even asked her if he had brought any bad news, but I couldn't get any sensible answer out of her. And that night she proceeded to dance in the moonlight with Dan Storran for audience--out of sheer devilment, of course!"

"Or sheer heartsickness," suggested Lady Arabella, with one of those quick flashes of tender insight which combined so incongruously with the rest of her personality.

"Do you think she--cared, then?" asked Gillian.

"For Quarrington? Of course I do. Oh, well it will all come right in the end, I hope. And, anyway"--with a wicked little grin--"Davilof won't have quite such a clear coast as he anticipated."

"But if Michael Quarrington is married--"

"He isn't," interrupted Lady Arabella briskly. "It was contradicted in the papers the very next morning. Only I suppose Davilof hustled off to Devonshire in such a hurry that he never saw it.

"Contradicted? But how did such a mistake arise?"

"Oh, whoever supplied that particular tidbit of news got the names mixed. It ought really to have been Warrington, not Quarrington-- Mortrake Warrington, the sculptor, you know. It seems he and Michael were both using the same woman as a model--only Warrington married her! Spoiled Michael's picture--or his temper--when he ran off with her for a honeymoon, I expect!"

On her return to Friars' Holm Gillian hastened to retail for Magda's benefit the information she had acquired from Lady Arabella, and was rewarded by the immediate change in her which became apparent. The haunted, feverish look in her eyes was replaced by a more tranquil shining, the intense restlessness she had evinced of late seemed to fall away from her, and she ceased to pepper her conversation with the bitter speeches which had worried Gillian more than a little, recognising in them, as she did, the outcrop of some inward and spiritual turmoil.

To Magda, the fact that Michael was not married, after all, seemed to re-create the whole world. It left hope still at the bottom of the box of life's possibilities. Looking backward, she realised now how strongly she had clung to the belief that some day he would come back to her. It had been the one gleam of light through all those dark months which had followed his abrupt departure; and the intolerable pain of the hours that had succeeded Davilof's announcement of his marriage to the Spanish woman had taught her how much Michael meant to her.

She was beginning to appreciate, too, the tangle of convictions and emotions which had driven him from her side. His original attitude toward her, based on the treatment she had accorded to his friend who had loved her, had been one of plain censure and distrust, strengthened and intensified by that strong "partisan" feeling of one man for another--fruit of the ineradicable sex antagonism which so often colours the judgments men pass on women and women on men. Then had come love, against which he had striven in vain, and gradually, out of love, had grown a new tentative belief which the pitiful culmination of the Raynham episode had suddenly and very completely shattered.

Of late, circumstances had combined to impress on Magda an altogether new point of view--the viewpoint from which other people might conceivably regard her actions. She had never troubled about such a thing before, nor was she finding the experience at all a pleasant one. But it helped her to understand to a certain extent--though still only in a very modified degree--the influences which had sent Michael Quarrington out of England.

And now, in the passionate relief bred of the knowledge that he was still free, that he had not gone straight from her to another woman, much of the resentful hardness which had embittered her during the last few months melted away, and she became once more the nonchalant, tantalising but withal lovable and charming personality of former days.

She was even conscious of a certain compunction for her behaviour at Stockleigh. She had been bitterly hurt herself, and since, for the moment, to experiment with a new and, to her, quite unknown type of man had amused her and helped to distract her thoughts, she had not paused to consider the possible resultant consequences to the subject of the experiment.

She endeavoured to solace herself with the belief that after she had gone he would instinctively turn to June once more, and that life on the farm would probably resume the even tenor of its way. Gradually, with the passage of time, her thoughts reverted less and less often to the happenings at Stockleigh, and the prickings of conscience--which beset her return to London--grew considerably fainter and more infrequent.

It was almost inevitable that this should be so. With the autumn came the stir and hustle of the season, with its thousand-and-one claims upon her thought and time. The management of the Imperial Theatre was nothing if not enterprising, and designed to present a series of ballets throughout the course of the winter, in the greater number of which Magda would be the bright and particular star. And in the absorption of work and the sheer joy she found in the art which she loved, the recollection of her holiday at Stockleigh slipped by degrees into the background of her mind. Fraught with such immense significance and catastrophe to those others, Dan and June--to Magda it soon came to occupy no more than an incidental niche in her memory.