MICHAEL CHANGES HIS MIND
Magda’s dressing-room at the Imperial Theatre was something rather
special in the way of dressing-rooms. It had been designed expressly
for her by the management, and boasted a beautifully appointed bathroom
adjoining it where she could luxuriate in a refreshing dip immediately
after the strain and fatigue of her work on the stage.
She had been very firm about the bathroom, airily dismissing a plaintive
murmur from the manager to the effect that they were “somewhat crowded
for space at the Imperial.”
“Then take another theatre, my dear man,” she had told him. “Or build!
Or give the _corps de ballet_ one less dressing-room amongst them.
But if you want _me_, I must have a bathroom. If I dance, I bathe
afterwards. If not, I don’t dance.”
Being a star of the first magnitude, the Wielitzska could dictate her
own terms, and accordingly a bathroom she had.
She had just emerged from its white-tiled, silver-tapped luxury a
few minutes before Lady Arabella, together with Gillian and Michael
Quarrington, presented themselves at her dressing-room door, and they
found her ensconced in an easy-chair by the fire, sipping a cup of
steaming hot tea.
“I’ve brought Mr. Quarrington to see you,” announced Lady Arabella. “I
thought perhaps you’d like some other congratulations besides family
ones.”
“Am I permitted?” asked Quarrington, taking the hand Magda held out to
him. “Or are you too tired to be bothered with an outsider?”
Magda looked up at him.
“I’ve very glad to see you,” she said quietly.
She appeared unwontedly sweet and girlish as she sat there, clad in a
negligee of some soft silken stuff that clung about the lissom lines of
her figure, and with her satiny hair coiled in a simple knot at the nape
of her neck. There was little or nothing about her to remind one of the
successful ballerina, and Michael found himself poignantly recalling
the innocent, appealing charm of the Swan-Maiden. It was difficult to
associate this woman with that other who had so unconsciously turned
down his pal--the man who had loved her.
“Well? Did it go all right?”
Magda’s eyes sought Gillian’s eagerly as she put the question.
“Did it go?” Mrs. Grey’s voice held all the unqualified enthusiasm any
artiste could desire.
“Oh, Magda! It was wonderful! The most wonderful, beautiful dance I’ve
ever seen.”
“And you know it as well as we do,” interpolated Lady Arabella tartly,
but smiling pridefully in spite of herself.
“Still, of course, she likes to hear us _say_ it.” Gillian championed
her friend stoutly.
“The whole world will be saying it to-morrow,” observed Quarrington
quietly.
Here Virginie created a diversion by handing round cups of freshly
brewed tea.
“You’ll get nerves--drinking tea at this hour of the night,” commented
Lady Arabella, accepting a cup with alacrity, nevertheless.
“I take it very weak,” protested Magda, smiling faintly. “It’s the only
thing I like after dancing.”
But Lady Arabella was already deep in conversation with Gillian and
Virginie--a conversation which resolved itself chiefly into a laudatory
chorus regarding the evening’s performance. In the background Magda’s
maid moved quietly to and fro, carefully putting away her mistress’s
dancing dresses. For the moment Michael and Magda were to all intents
and purposes alone.
“I shall not easily forget to-night,” he said rather low, drawing a
chair up beside her.
“You liked it, then?” she asked hesitatingly--almost shyly.
“‘Like’ is hardly the word.”
Magda flashed him a swift glance.
“And yet,” she said slowly, “I’m the ‘type of woman you hate.’”
“You make it rather difficult to maintain the point of view,” he
admitted.
She was silent a moment.
“You were very unkind to me that day,” she said at last.
Their eyes met and in hers was something soft and dangerously disarming.
Quarrington got up suddenly from his chair.
“Perhaps I was unkind to you so that I might not be unkind to myself,”
he replied curtly.
Magda’s soft laugh rippled out.
“But how selfish! And--and aren’t you being rather mysterious?”
“Am I?” he returned pointedly. “Surely self-preservation is the first
instinct of the human species?”
She picked up the challenge and tossed it lightly back to him.
“Is the danger, then, very great?”
“I think it is. So, like a wise man, I propose to avoid it.”
“How?”
“Why, by quitting the danger zone. I go to Paris to-morrow.”
“To Paris?”
Magda experienced a sudden feeling of blankness. It was inexplicable,
but somehow the knowledge that Quarrington was going away seemed to take
all the savour out of things. It was only by a supreme effort that she
contrived to keep her tone as light and unconcerned as his own as she
continued:
“And then--after Paris?”
“After Paris? Oh, Spain possibly. Or the Antipodes!”--with a short
laugh.
“Who’s talking about the Antipodes?” suddenly chimed in Lady Arabella.
“Home to bed’s my next move. Gillian, you come with me--the car can take
you on to Hampstead after dropping me in Park Lane. And Virginie can
drive back with Magda.”
“Yes, do go with Marraine,” said Magda, nodding acquiescence in reply to
Gillian’s glance of interrogation. “I have to dress yet.”
There was a general move towards the door.
“Good-bye”--Magda’s slim hand lay for a moment in Quarrington’s. “I--I’m
sorry you’re going away, Saint Michel.”
Only Michael heard the last two words, uttered in that _trainante_,
slightly husky voice that held so much of music and appeal. He turned
abruptly and made his way out of the room in the wake of Gillian and
Lady Arabella.
“You’d better postpone your visit to the Antipodes, Mr. Quarrington,”
said the latter, as presently they all three stood together in the
vestibule, halted by the stream of people pouring out from the theatre.
“I’m giving a dinner-party next week, with a ‘crush’ to follow. Stay and
come to it.”
“It’s awfully kind of you, Lady Arabella, but I’m afraid it’s
impossible.”
“Fiddlesticks! You’re a free agent, aren’t you?”--looking at him keenly.
A whimsical light gleamed for an instant in the grey eyes.
“I sometimes wonder if I am,” he returned.
“There’s only one cord I know of that can’t be either unknotted--or cut.
And that’s lack of money. That’s not your complaint”--significantly.
“No.”
“So you’ll come?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Magda has promised to dance for me,” proceeded Lady Arabella, entirely
disregarding his quietly uttered negative. “They’re not giving _The
Swan-Maiden_ that night at the Imperial. She can’t dine, of course, poor
dear. Really, dancers have a lot to put up with--or rather, to put up
_without_! Magda never dares to enjoy a good square meal. Afraid of
getting fat, of course! After all, a dancer’s figure’s her fortune.”
Like a low, insistent undertone beneath the rattle of Lady Arabella’s
volubility Michael could hear again the murmur of a soft, dragging
voice: “I’m sorry you’re going away, Saint Michel.”
It seemed almost as though Lady Arabella, with that uncanny shrewdness
of hers, divined it.
“You’ll come, then?” She smiled at him over her shoulder, moving forward
as the crush in the vestibule lessened a little.
And Michael, with an odd expression in his eyes, answered suddenly:
“Yes, I’ll come.”
Later, as Lady Arabella and Gillian drove home together, the former
laughed quietly. There was an element of pride and triumph in the
laughter. Probably the hen who has reared a duckling and sees it sail
off into the water experiences, alongside her natural apprehension and
astonishment, a somewhat similar pride in the startling proclivities
evinced by her nurseling.
“That nice artist-man is in love with Magda,” crowed Lady Arabella
contentedly.
Gillian smiled.
“Do you think so?”
“I do. Only it’s very much against his will, for some reason or other.
Crossing from Dover to-morrow, forsooth!”--with a broad smile. “Not he!
He’ll be at my party--and asking Magda to marry him before the week’s
out, bar accidents! . . . After all, it’s not surprising that the men
are falling over each other to marry her. She’s really rather wonderful.
Where do you think she gets it all from, Gillian, my dear? Not from the
Vallincourts, I’ll swear!”--chuckling.
Mrs. Grey shook her head.
“I don’t know. But I think Magda is a standing argument in favour of the
doctrine of reincarnation! She always seems to me to be a kind of modern
embodiment of Helen of Troy or Cleopatra.”
“Only without the capacity for falling in love! She’s as chilly as an
iceberg and yet somehow gives you the idea she’s all fire and passion.
No wonder the men get misled, poor lambs!”
“She’s not cold, really,” asserted Gillian positively. “Of that I’m
sure. No one could dance as she does--and be an iceberg.”
Lady Arabella chuckled again, wickedly.
“A woman who can dance like that ought to be preceded through life by
a red flag. She positively stirs my old blood--that’s been at a
comfortably tepid temperature for the last thirty years!”
“Some day,” said Gillian, “she’ll fall in love. And then--”
“Then there’ll be fireworks.”
Lady Arabella completed the sentence briskly just as the car pulled up
in front of her house. She skipped nimbly out on to the pavement.
“Fireworks, my dear,” she repeated emphatically. “And a very fine
display, too! Good-night.”
The car slid away north with Gillian inside it reflecting rather
ruefully upon the very great amount of probability contained in Lady
Arabella’s parting comment.