CROSS CURRENTS
Winter had slipped away, pushed from his place by the tender, resistless
hands of spring. And now spring had given place to summer, and June,
arms filled with flowers, was converting the earth into a garden of
roses.
Magda’s car, purring its way southward along the great road from London,
sped between fields that still gleamed with the first freshness of their
young green, while through the open window drifted vagrant little puffs
of clean country air, coming delicately to her nostrils, fragrant of
leaf and bloom.
She was motoring to Netherway, a delightfully small and insignificant
place on the Hampshire coast where Lady Arabella had what it pleased her
to term her “cottage in the country,” a charming old place, Elizabethan
in character--the type of “cottage” which boasted a score or so of rooms
and every convenience which an imaginative estate agent, sustained by
the knowledge that his client regarded money as a means and not an end,
could devise.
Summer invitations to the Hermitage--as the place was quite inaptly
called, since no one could be less akin to a hermit than its gregarious
owner--were much sought after by the younger generation of Lady
Arabella’s set. The beautifully wooded park, with its green aisles of
shady solitude sloping down from the house to the very edge of the blue
waters of the Solent, was an ideal spot in which to bring to a safe
and happy conclusion a love affair that might seem to have hung fire
a trifle during the hurly-burly of the London season. And if further
inducement were needed, it was to be found in the fact that Lady
Arabella herself constituted the most desirable of chaperons, remaining
considerately inconspicuous until the moment when her congratulations
were requested.
This year a considerable amount of disappointment had been occasioned by
the fact that she had left town quite early during the season, and later
on had apparently limited her invitations exclusively to the trio at
Friars’ Holm. She declared that the number of matrimonial ventures
for which the Hermitage was responsible was beginning to weigh on her
conscience. Also, she wanted a quiet holiday and she proposed to take
one.
And now Magda was on her way to join her, Gillian remaining behind in
order to close up the house at Hampstead and settle the servants on
board wages. It had been arranged that she and Coppertop should come on
to Netherway immediately this was accomplished.
Magda could hardly believe that only a year had elapsed since last the
roses beckoned her out of London. It seemed far longer since that hot
summer’s day when she had rushed away to Devonshire, vainly seeking a
narcotic for the new and bewildering turmoil of pain that was besetting
her.
She had learned now that you carry a heartache with you, and that no
change of scenery makes up for the beloved face you can no longer see.
For Michael had not come back. He had remained abroad and had never by
sign or letter acknowledged that he even remembered her existence. Magda
had come to accept it as a fact now that he had gone out of her life
entirely.
A whiff of air tinged with the salt tang of the sea blew in at the
window, and she came suddenly out of her musings to find that the car
was winding its way up the hill upon which the Hermitage was perched.
A long, low house, clothed in creeper, it stood just below the hill’s
brow, sheltered to the rear by a great belt of woods, and overlooking a
sea which sparkled in the sunlight as though strewn with diamond-dust.
Lady Arabella was waiting in the porch when the car drew up and welcomed
her god-daughter with delight. She seemed bubbling over with good
spirits, and there was a half-mischievous, half-guilty twinkle in her
keen old eyes which suggested that there might be some ulterior cause
for her effervescence.
“If you were poor I should say you’d just come into a fortune,”
commented Magda, regarding her judicially. “As you’re not, I should like
to know why you’re looking as pleased as a child with a new toy. Own up,
now, Marraine! What’s the secret you’ve got up your sleeve?”
“Yes, there is a secret,” acknowledged Lady Arabella gleefully. “Come
along and I’ll show it you.”
Magda smiled and followed her across the long hall and into a room at
the further end of which stood a big easel. On the easel, just nearing
completion, rested a portrait of her godmother. It was rather a
wonderful portrait. The artist seemed to have penetrated beyond the mere
physical lineaments of his sitter into the very crannies of her soul. It
was all there--the thoroughly worldly shrewdness, the mordant, somewhat
cynical humour, and the genuine kindness of heart which went to make up
Lady Arabella’s personality as her world knew it. And something more.
Behind all these one sensed the glamour of a long-past romance, the
unquenched spark of a faith that, as Lady Arabella had herself once put
it in a rare moment of self-revelation, “love is the best thing this
queer old world of ours has to offer.” The portrait on the easel was
that of a woman who had visioned the miracle of love only to be robbed
of its fulfilment.
Magda stood silently in front of the picture, marvelling at its keen
perceptive powers. And then quite suddenly she realised who must have
painted it. It almost seemed to her as though she had really known it
from the first moment her eyes had rested on the canvas. The brushwork,
and that uncannily clever characterisation, were unmistakable.
“Good likeness, don’t you think?”
Lady Arabella’s snapping speech broke the silence.
“It’s rather more than that, isn’t it?” said Magda. “How did you seduce
Michael Quarrington? I thought”--for an instant her voice wavered, then
steadied again--“I thought he was abroad.”
“He was. At the present moment he’s at the Hermitage.”
“_Here_?”
Magda turned her head aside so that Lady Arabella might not see the
wave of scarlet which flooded her face and then receded, leaving it
milk-white. Michael . . . _here_! She felt her heart beating in great
suffocating throbs, and the room seemed to swim round her. If he were
here, knowing that she was to be his fellow-guest, surely he could not
hate her so badly! She was conscious of a sudden wild uprush of hope.
Perhaps--perhaps happiness was not so far away, after all!
And then she heard Lady Arabella’s voice breaking across the riot of
emotion which stirred within her.
“Yes, he has been here the last three weeks painting my portrait. It’s
for you, the portrait. I thought you’d like to have it when you haven’t
got the original any longer.”
Magda turned to her suddenly, her affection for her godmother alertly
apprehensive.
“What do you mean?” she said anxiously. “You’re--you’re not ill,
Marraine?”
“Ill? No. But I’m over seventy. And after seventy you’ve had your
allotted span, you know. Anything beyond that’s an extra. And whether
fate gives me a bit more rope or not, I’ve nothing to grumble at. I’ve
_lived_, not vegetated--and I’ve had a very good time, too.” She paused,
then added slowly: “Though I’ve missed the best.”
Magda slipped her hand into the old woman’s thin, wrinkled one with a
quick gesture of understanding, and a little sympathetic silence fell
between them.
“Then you’ll find the hanging-room for the portrait at Friars’ Holm?”
queried Lady Arabella, breaking it at last in practical tones.
“You know we’d love to have it,” replied Magda warmly. In a studiously
casual voice she pursued: “By the way, does Mr. Quarrington know I’m
here?”
Lady Arabella nodded. Secretly she was congratulating herself on having
successfully tided over the awkwardness of explaining Michael’s presence
at the Hermitage. She had been somewhat apprehensive as to how Magda
would take it. It was quite on the cards that she might have ordered her
car round again and driven straight back to London!
But she had accepted the fact with apparent composure--one’s mental
states, fortunately, being invisible to the curious eyes of the outside
world!--and Lady Arabella felt proportionately relieved. Nor had
Quarrington himself evinced any particular emotion, either of
dissatisfaction or otherwise, when she had confided to him the fact that
she was expecting her god-daughter. And although the extreme composure
exhibited by both Michael and Magda was a trifle baffling, Lady Arabella
was fain to comfort herself with her confirmed belief in propinquity as
the resolution of most lovers’ problems and misunderstandings.
She was fully determined to bring these two together once more if it
were in any way possible, and the commission to paint her portrait had
been merely part of her scheme. Her three score years and ten had had
little enough to do with it. They weighed extremely lightly on her erect
old shoulders, and her spirit was as unquenchable as it had been twenty
years ago. It seemed more than likely that fate was preparing to allow
her quite a good deal of rope.
As for Quarrington, he would probably have refused to return to England
at this juncture to please anyone other than Lady Arabella. But somehow
no one ever did refuse Lady Arabella anything that she particularly set
her heart upon. Moreover, as he reflected upon receipt of her assured
little missive commissioning him to paint her portrait, he would be
obliged to return to England sooner or later, and by now he felt he
had himself sufficiently in hand to risk the contingency of a possible
meeting with Magda. But he had hardly counted upon finding himself
actually under the same roof with her for days together, and, although
outwardly unmoved, he was somewhat taken aback when halfway through
his visit to the Hermitage, Lady Arabella cheerfully communicated the
prospect to him.
He could read between the lines and guess her purpose, and it afforded
him a certain sardonic amusement. It was like Lady Arabella’s
temerity, he reflected! No other woman, knowing as much of the special
circumstances as she did, would have ventured so far.
Well, she would soon realise that her attempt to bridge matters over
between himself and her god-daughter was foredoomed to failure. He would
never trust Magda, or any other woman, again. From the moment he had
left England he had made up his mind that henceforth no woman should
have any place in his life, and certain subsequent occurrences had
confirmed him in this determination.
At the same time he was not going to run away. He would stay and face it
out. He would remain at the Hermitage until he had finished the portrait
upon which he was at work, and then he would pack up and depart.
So that when finally he and Magda met in the sun-filled South Parlour at
the Hermitage each of them was prepared to treat the other with a cool
detachment.
But Magda found it difficult to maintain her pose after her first glance
at his face. The alteration in it sent a swift pang to her heart. It had
hardened--hardened into lines of a grim self-control that spoke of long
mental conflict. The mouth, too, had learned to close in a new line
of bitterness, and in the grey eyes as they rested on her there lay a
certain cynical indifference which seemed to set her as far away from
him as the north is from the south. She realised that the gulf between
them was almost as wide and impassable as though he were in very truth
the Spanish dancer’s husband. This man proposed to give her neither love
nor forgiveness. Only the feminine instinct of pride--the pride of woman
who must be sought and never the seeker--carried her through the ordeal
of the first meeting. Nor did he seek to make it easier for her.
“It is a long time since you were in England,” she remarked after the
first interchange of civilities.
“Very long,” agreed Quarrington politely. “It would probably have been
still longer if Lady Arabella had not tempted me. But her portrait was
too interesting a commission to refuse.”
“It sounds banal to say how good I think it. You never paint anything
that _isn’t_ good, do you?”
“I paint what I see.”
“In that case quite a lot of people might be afraid to have their
portraits painted by you--beauty being so much in the eye of the
beholder!” returned Magda with the flippancy that is so often only the
defence behind which a woman takes refuge.
“I don’t think so. As a matter of fact I have no objection to painting a
plain face--provided there’s a beautiful soul behind it.”
“But I suppose a beautiful soul in a beautiful body would satisfy you
better?”
“It might, if such a combination existed.”
Magda flushed a little.
“You don’t think it does?”
The grey, contemptuous eyes swept her face suddenly.
“My experience has not led me to think so.”
There was an almost calculated insolence in the careless answer. It was
as though he had tossed her an epitome of his opinion of her. Magda’s
spirit rose in opposition.
“Perhaps your experience has been somewhat limited,” she observed.
“Perhaps it has. If so, I have no wish to extend it.”
In spite of Michael’s taciturnity--or perhaps, more truly, on account of
it--Magda’s spirits lightened curiously after that first interview with
him. The mere fact of his presence had stilled the incessant ache at
her heart--the ache to see him again and hear his voice. And the morose
cynicism of his thrusts at her was just so much proof that, although he
had forced himself to remain out of England for a year and a half, yet
he had not thereby achieved either peace of mind or indifference. Magda
was too true a daughter of Eve not to know that a man doesn’t expend
powder and shot on a woman to whom he is completely indifferent.
The next day or two were not without their difficulties, as Lady
Arabella speedily realised. A triangular party, when two out of the
three share certain poignant memories, is by no means the easiest thing
to stage-manage. There were inevitable awkward moments that could only
be surmounted by the exercise of considerable tact, and the hours which
Lady Arabella passed sitting to Quarrington for her portrait, while
Magda wandered alone through the woods or sculled a solitary boat up the
river, helped to minimize the strain considerably.
Nevertheless, it was a relief to everyone concerned when Gillian and
Coppertop were added to the party. A strained atmosphere was somewhat
difficult of accomplishment anywhere within the joyous vicinity of the
latter, while Gillian’s tranquil and happy nature reacted on the whole
household.
“That’s an extraordinary friendship,” commented Quarrington one day
as he and his hostess stood at the window watching Gillian and Magda,
returned from shopping in the village, approaching up the drive.
“Mrs. Grey is so simple and--to use an overworked word--so essentially
womanly.”
“And Magda?”
The hard look deepened in Michael’s eyes.
“Essentially--feminine,” he answered curtly. “A quite different thing.”
“She hasn’t found her soul yet,” said Lady Arabella. Adding with sudden
daring: “Suppose you find it for her, Michael?”
“I don’t think the search would interest me,” he returned coolly. “I
haven’t the instinct of the prospector.” He paused, then went on slowly
and as though making the admission almost against his will: “But I’d
like to paint her.”
“A portrait of her?”
“No, not a portrait.”
“Then you mean you want her to sit for your ‘Circe’?”
Lady Arabella knew all about the important picture he had in mind to
paint. They had often discussed it together during the progress of the
sittings she had been giving him, and she was aware that so far he had
been unable to find a suitable model.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “She is the perfect model for such a
subject--body and soul.”
Lady Arabella ignored the sneer.
“Then why not ask her to sit for you?”
Quarrington’s brows drew together.
“You know the answer to that, I think, Lady Arabella,” he answered
curtly.
“Oh, you men! I’ve no patience with you!” exclaimed the old lady
testily. “_I_ shall ask her, then!”
Gillian and Magda, laden with parcels, entered the room as she spoke,
and, before Quarrington could prevent her, she had flashed round on her
god-daughter.
“Magda, here’s Michael in need of a model for the best picture he’s ever
likely to paint, and it seems you exactly fit the bill. Will you sit for
him?”
Followed an astonished silence. Gillian glanced apprehensively towards
Magda. She felt as though Lady Arabella had suddenly let off a firework
in their midst. Magda halted in the process of unwrapping a small
parcel.
“What is the subject of the picture?”
There was a perceptible pause. Then Lady Arabella took the bull by the
horns.
“Circe,” she said tersely.
“Oh!” Magda seemed to reflect. “She turned men into swine, didn’t she?”
She looked across at Quarrington. “And I’m to understand you think I’d
make a suitable model for that particular subject?”
“She was a very beautiful person,” suggested Gillian hastily.
“Mr. Quarrington hasn’t answered my question,” persisted Magda.
He met her glance with cool defiance.
“Then, yes,” he returned with a little bow. “As Mrs. Grey has just
remarked--Circe was very beautiful.”
“You score,” observed Magda demurely. There was a glint of amusement in
her eyes.
“Yes, I think he does,” agreed Lady Arabella, who was deriving an
impish, pixie-like enjoyment from the situation. Then, recognising that
it might be more diplomatic not to press the matter any further at the
moment, she skilfully drew the conversation into other channels.
It was not until evening, after dinner, that she reverted to the
subject. They had all four been partaking of coffee and cigarettes
on the verandah, and subsequently she had proposed a stroll in the
garden--a suggestion to which Gillian responded with alacrity. Magda,
her slim length extended on a comfortably cushioned wicker lunge, shook
her head.
“I’m too comfortable to stir,” she declared idly.
Lady Arabella paused at the edge of the verandah and contemplated her
critically. Something in the girl’s pose and in the long, lithe lines of
her recumbent figure was responsible for her next remark.
“I can see you as Circe,” she commented, “quite well.” She tucked her
arm into Gillian’s and, as they moved away together, threw back over her
shoulder: “By the way, have you two settled the vexed question of the
model for the picture yet?”
Quarrington blew a thin stream of smoke into the air before replying.
Then, looking quizzically across at Magda, he asked: “Have we?”
“Have we what?”
“Decided whether you will sit for my picture of Circe?”
Magda lifted her long white lids and met his glance.
“Why should I?” she asked lazily.
He shrugged his shoulders with apparent unconcern.
“No reason in the world--unless you feel inclined to do a good turn.”
His indifference was maddening.
“I don’t make a habit of doing good turns,” she retorted sharply.
“So I should imagine.”
The contemptuous edge to his voice roused her to indignation. As always,
she found herself stung to the quick by the man’s coolly critical
attitude towards her. She was back once more in the atmosphere of their
first meeting on the day he had come to her assistance in the fog.
It seemed almost incredible that all that followed had ever taken
place--incredible that he had ever cared for her or taught her to
care for him. At least he was making it very clear to her now that he
intended to cut those intervening memories out of his life.
It was a sheer challenge to her femininity, and everything that was
woman in her rose to meet it.
She smiled across at him engagingly.
“I might--perhaps--make an exception.”
For a moment there was silence. Quarrington’s gaze was riveted on her
slim, supple figure with its perfect symmetry and rare grace of limb.
It was difficult to interpret his expression. Magda wondered if he were
going to reject her offer. He seemed to be fighting something out with
himself--pulled two ways--the artist in him combating the man’s impulse
to resist her.
Suddenly the artist triumphed. He rose and, coming to her side, stood
looking down at her.
“Will you?” he said. “_Will you_?”
Something more than the artist spoke in his voice. It held a note of
passionate eagerness, a clipped tensity that set all her pulses racing.
She turned her head aside.
“Yes,” she answered, a little breathlessly. “Yes--if you want me to.”