STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH
It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out
of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of
the trees.
Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered
herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs--a new
and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their
debut into this world of sin--and had watched the cows being milked,
and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and
breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where
Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the
grass at her feet.
“I’m in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly,” declared Magda,
fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. “Whew! It is hot! As
soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you
come?”
Gillian shook her head lazily.
“I think not to-day. I want to finish this overall for Coppertop. And
it’s such a long trudge from here down to the river.”
“Yes, I know.” Magda nodded. “It’s three interminable fields away--and
the thistles and things prick one’s ankles abominably. Still, it’s
lovely when you _do_ get there! I think I’ll go now”--springing up from
the velvet turf--“before I get too lazy to move.”
Gillian’s eyes followed her thoughtfully as she made her way into the
house. She had never seen Magda so restless--she seemed unable to keep
still a moment.
Half an hour later Magda emerged from the house wrapped in a cloak,
a little scarlet bathing-cap turbanning her dark hair, and a pair of
sandals on the slim supple feet that had danced their way into the
hearts of half of Europe.
“Good-bye!” she called gaily, waving her hand. And went out by the
wicket gate leading into the fields.
There was not a soul in sight. Only the cows, their red, burnished
coats gleaming like the skin of a horse-chestnut in the hot sun,
cast ruminative glances at her white-cloaked figure as it passed, and
occasionally a peacefully grazing sheep emitted an astonished bleat at
the unusual vision and skedaddled away in a hurry.
Magda emulated Agag in her progress across the field which intervened
between the house and the river, now and then giving vent to a little
cry of protest as a particularly prickly thistle or hidden trail of
bramble whipped against her bare ankles.
At last from somewhere near at hand came the cool gurgle of running
water and, bending her steps in the direction of the sound, two minutes’
further walking brought her to the brink of the river. Further up
it came tumbling through the valley, leaping the rocks in a churning
torrent of foam, a cloud of delicate up-flung spray feathering the air
above it; but here there were long stretches of deep, smooth water
where no boulder broke the surface into spume, and quiet pools where fat
little trout heedlessly squandered the joyous moments of a precarious
existence.
Magda threw off her wrapper and, picking her way across the moss-grown
rocks, paused for an instant on the bank, her slender figure, clad in
its close-fitting scarlet bathing-suit, vividly outlined against the
surrounding green of the landscape. Then she plunged in and struck out
downstream, swimming with long, even strokes, the soft moorland water
laving her throat like the touch of a satin-smooth hand.
She was heading for a spot she knew of, a quarter of a mile below,
where a wooden bridge spanned the river and the sun’s heat poured down
unchecked by sheltering trees. Here she proposed to scramble out and
bask in the golden warmth.
She had just established herself on a big, sun-warmed boulder when
a familiar step sounded on the bridge and Dan Storran’s tall figure
emerged into view. He pulled up sharply as he caught sight of her, his
face taking on a schoolboy look of embarrassment. Deauville _plage_,
where people bathed in companionable parties and strolled in and out of
the water as seemed good to them, was something altogether outside Dan’s
ken.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he began, flushing uncomfortably.
Magda waved to him airily.
“You needn’t be. I’m having a sun-bath. You can stay and talk to me if
you like. Or are you too busy farming this morning?”
“No, I’m not too busy,” he said slowly.
There was a curious dazzled look in his eyes as they rested on her.
Sheathed in the stockingette bathing-suit she wore, every line and curve
of her supple body was revealed. Her wet, white limbs gleamed pearl-like
in the quivering sunlight. The beauty of her ran through his veins like
wine.
“Then come and amuse me!” Magda patted the warm surface of the rock
beside her invitingly. “You can give me a cigarette to begin with.”
Storran sat down and pulled out his case. As he held a match for her to
light up from, his hand brushed hers and he drew it away sharply. It was
trembling absurdly.
He sat silent for a moment or two; then he said with an odd abruptness:
“I suppose you find it frightfully dull down here?”
Magda laughed a little.
“Is that because I told you to come and amuse me? . . . No, I don’t find
it dull. Change is never really dull.”
“Well, you must find it change enough here from the sort of life you’ve
been accustomed to lead.”
“How do you know what sort of life I lead?”--teasingly.
“I can guess. One has only to look at you. You’re different--different
from everyone about here. The way you move--you’re like a thoroughbred
amongst cart-horses.” He spoke with a kind of sullen bitterness.
Magda drew her feet up on to the rock and clasped her hands round her
knees.
“Now you’re talking nonsense, you know,” she said amusedly. “Frankly,
I like it down here immensely. I happened to be--rather worried when
I came away from London, and there’s something very soothing and
comforting about the country--particularly your lovely Devon country.”
“Worried?” Storran’s face darkened. “Who’d been worrying you?”
“Oh”--vaguely. “All sorts of things. Men--and women. But don’t let’s
talk about worries to-day. This glorious sunshine makes me feel as
though there weren’t any such things in the world.”
She leaned back, stretching her arms luxuriously above her head with
the lithe, sensuous grace of movement which her training had made second
nature. Storran’s eyes dwelt on her with a queer tensity of expression.
Every gesture, every tone of her curiously attractive voice, held for
him a disturbing allure which he could not analyse and against which he
was fighting blindly.
He had never doubted his love for his wife. Quite honestly he had
believed her the one woman in the world when he married her. Yet now he
was beginning to find every hour a blank that did not bring him sight
or sound of this other woman--this woman with her slender limbs and skin
like a stephanotis petal, and her long Eastern eyes with the subtle lure
which seemed to lie in their depths. Beside her June’s young peach-bloom
prettiness faded into something colourless and insignificant.
“It must be nice to be you”--Magda nodded at him. “With no vague,
indefinable sort of things to worry you.”
He smiled reluctantly.
“How do you know I haven’t?”
“Oh, because I do.”
“A woman’s reason!”
“Quite. But women’s reasons are generally very sound--we were endowed
with a sixth sense, you know! Besides--it’s obvious, isn’t it? Here you
are--you and June--living a simple, primitive kind of existence, all to
yourselves, like Adam and Eve. And if you do have a worry it’s a real
definite one--as when a cow inconveniently goes and dies or your root
crop fails. Nothing intangible and uncertain about that!”
“Have you forgotten that the serpent intruded even upon Adam and Eve?”
he asked quietly.
She laughed.
“Is that a hit at Gillian and me? I know--June told us--that you were
horribly opposed to anyone’s coming here for the summer. I thought that
you had got over that by now?”
“So I have”--bluntly.
“Then we’re not--not unwelcome visitors any longer?” the soft,
tantalising voice went on. The low cadence of it seemed to tug at his
very heartstrings.
He leaned nearer to her and, catching both her hands in his, twisted her
round so that she faced him.
“Why do you ask?” he demanded, his voice suddenly roughened and uneven.
“Because I wanted to know--of course!”--lightly.
“Then--you’re not an unwelcome visitor. You never have been! From the
moment you came the place was different somehow. When you go----”
He stopped as though startled by the sound of his own words--struck by
the full significance of them.
“When you go!” he repeated blankly. His grip of her slight hands
tightened till it was almost painful. “But you won’t go! I can’t let you
go now! Magda--”
The situation was threatening to get out of hand. Magda drew quickly
away from him, springing to her feet.
“Don’t talk like that,” she said hastily. “You don’t mean it, you know.”
With a sudden, unexpected movement she slipped from his side and ran
down to the river’s edge. He caught a flashing glimpse of scarlet, heard
the splash as her slim body cleaved the water, and a moment later all he
could see was the red of her turban cap, bobbing like a scarlet poppy
on the surface of the river, and the glimmer of a moon-white arm and
shoulder as a smooth overhand stroke bore her swiftly away from him.
He stood staring after her, conscious of a sudden bewildered sense of
check and thwarting. The blood seemed leaping in his veins. His heart
thudded against his ribs. He stepped forward impetuously as though to
plunge in after the receding gleam of scarlet still flickering betwixt
the branches which overhung the river.
Then, with a stifled exclamation, he drew back, brushing his hand across
his eyes as though to clear their vision. What mad impulse was this
urging him on to say and do such things as he had never before conceived
himself saying or doing?
Magda had checked him on the brink of telling her--what? The sweat broke
out on his forehead as the realisation surged over him.
“God!” he muttered. “God!”