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.