Читать книгу The Lamp of Fate - Margaret Pedler - Страница 18

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A sudden warning shout, the transient glare of fog-blurred headlights, then a crash and a staggering blow on the car’s near side which sent it reeling like a drunken thing, bonnet foremost, straight into a motor-omnibus.

Magda felt herself pitched violently forward off the seat, striking her head as she fell, and while the car yet rocked with the force of its collision with the motor-bus another vehicle drove blindly into it from the rear. It lurched sickeningly and jammed at a precarious angle, canted up on two wheels.

Shouts and cries, the frenzied hooting of horns, the grinding of brakes and clash of splintered glass combined into a pandemonium of terrifying hubbub.

Magda, half-dazed with shock, crouched on the floor of the car where she had been flung. She could see the lights appearing and disappearing in the fog like baleful eyes opening and shutting spasmodically. A tumult of hoarse cries, cursing and bellowing instructions, crossed by the thin scream of women’s cries, battered against her ears.

Then out of the medley of raucous noise came a cool, assured voice:

“Don’t be frightened. I’ll get you out.”

Magda was conscious of a sudden reaction from the numbed sense of bewildered terror which had overwhelmed her. The sound of that unknown voice—quiet, commanding, and infinitely reassuring—was like a hand laid on her heart and stilling its terrified throbbing.

She heard someone tugging at the handle of the door. There came a moment’s pause while the strained woodwork resisted the pull, then with a scrape of jarring fittings the door jerked open and a man’s figure loomed in the aperture.

“Where are you?” he asked, peering through the dense gloom. “Ah!” She felt his outstretched hands close on her shoulders as she knelt huddled on the floor. “Can you get up? Or are you hurt?”

Magda tested her limbs cautiously, to discover that no bones were broken, though her head ached horribly, so that she felt sick and giddy with the pain.

“No, I’m not hurt,” she answered.

“Then come along. The car’s heeled up a bit, but I’ll lift you out if you can get to the door.”

She stumbled forward obediently, groping her way towards the vague panel of lighter grey revealed by the open door.

Once more, out of the swathing fog, hands touched her.

“There you are! That’s right. Now lean forward.”

She found herself clasped by arms like steel—so strong, so sure, that she felt as safe and secure as when Vladimir Ravinski, the amazingly clever young Russian who partnered her in several of her dances, sometimes lifted her, lightly and easily as a feather, and bore her triumphantly off the stage aloft on his shoulder.

“You’re very strong,” she murmured, as the unknown owner of the arms swung her down from the tilted car.

“You’re not very heavy,” came the answer. There was a kind of laughter in the voice.

As the man spoke he set her down on her feet, and then, just as Magda was opening her lips to thank him, the fog seemed to grow suddenly denser, swirling round her in great murky waves and surging in her ears with a noise like the boom of the ocean. Higher and higher rose the waves, a resistless sea of blackness, and at last they swept right over her head and she sank into the utter darkness of oblivion.

“Drink this!”

Someone was holding a glass to her lips and the pungent smell of sal volatile pricked her nostrils. Magda shrank back, her eyes still shut, and pressed her head further into the cushions against which it rested. She detested the smell of sal volatile.

“Drink it! Do you hear?”

The voice seemed to drive at her with its ring of command. She opened her eyes and looked straight up into other eyes—dark-grey ones, these—that were bent on her intently. To her confused consciousness they appeared to blaze down at her.

“No,” she muttered, feebly trying to push the glass away.

The effort of moving her arm seemed stupendous. Her head swam with it. The sea of fog came rolling back again, and this time she sank under it at once.

Then—after an immensity of time, she was sure—she felt herself struggling up to the surface once more. She was lying rocking gently on the top of the waves now; the sensation was very peaceful and pleasant. A little breeze played across her face. She drew in deep breaths of the cool air, but she did not open her eyes. Presently a murmur of voices penetrated her consciousness.

“She’s coming round again.” A man was speaking. “Go on fanning her.”

“Poor young thing! She’s had a shaking up and no mistake!” This in a woman’s voice, very kindly and commiserating. A hand lightly smoothed the fur of her coat-sleeve. “Looks as if she was a rich young lady. Her people must be anxious about her.”

Someone laughed a little, softly.

“Oh, yes, she’s a rich enough young lady, Mrs. Braithwaite. Don’t you know who it is we’ve rescued?”

“I, sir? No. How should I?”

“Then I’ll tell you. This is Mademoiselle Wielitzska, the famous dancer.”

“Never, sir! Well, I do declare——”

“Now, drink this at once, please.” The man’s voice cut sharply across the impending flow of garrulous interest, and Magda, who had not gathered the actual sense of the murmured conversation, felt an arm pass behind her head, raising it a little, while once more that hateful glass of sal volatile was held to her lips.

Her eyes unclosed fretfully.

“Take it away,” she was beginning.

“Drink it! Do you hear? Do as you’re told!”

The sharp, authoritative tones startled her into sudden compliance. She opened her mouth and swallowed the contents of the glass with a gulp. Then she looked resentfully at the man whose curt command she had obeyed in such unexpected fashion. Magda Wielitzska was more used to giving orders than to taking them.

“There, that’s better,” he observed, regarding the empty glass with satisfaction. “No, lie still”—as she attempted to rise. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

“I’m better now,” declared Magda sulkily.

Her head was growing clearer every minute. She was even able to feel an intense irritation against this man who had just compelled her to drink the sal volatile.

He looked at her unperturbedly.

“Are you? That’s good. Still, you’ll stay where you are till I tell you that you may get up.” He turned to a comfortable-looking woman who was standing at the foot of the couch on which Magda lay—a housekeeper of the nice old-fashioned black-satin kind. “Now, Mrs. Braithwaite, I think this lady will be glad of a cup of tea by the time you can have one ready.”

“Very good, sir.”

With a last, admiring glance at the slender figure on the couch the good woman bustled away, leaving Magda alone with her unknown host and burning with indignation at the cool way in which he had ordered her to remain where she was.

He had his back to her for the moment, having turned to poke up the fire, and Magda raised herself on her elbow, preparatory to getting off the couch. He swung round instantly.

“I told you to stay where you were,” he said peremptorily.

“I don’t always do as I’m told,” she retorted with spirit.

“You will in this instance, though,” he rejoined, crossing the room swiftly towards her.

But quick though he was, she was still quicker. Her eyes blazing defiance, she slipped from the couch and stood up before he could reach her side. She took a step forward.

“There!” she began defiantly. The next moment the whole room seemed to swim round her as she tottered weakly and would have fallen had he not caught her.

“What did I tell you?” he said sharply. “You’re not fit to stand.”

Without more ado he lifted her up in his arms and deposited her again on the couch.

“I—I only turned a little giddy,” she protested feebly.

“Precisely. Just as I thought you would. Another time, perhaps, you’ll obey orders.”

He stood looking down at her with curiously brilliant grey eyes. Magda almost winced under their penetrating glance. She felt as though they could see into her very soul, and she summoned up all her courage to combat the man’s strange force.

“I’m not used to obeying orders,” she said impatiently.

“No?”—with complete indifference. “Then it will be a salutary experience for you. Now, lie still until tea comes. I have a letter to write.”

He walked away and, seating himself at a desk in the window, appeared to forget all about her, while his pen travelled swiftly over the sheet of notepaper he had drawn towards him.

Magda watched him with rebellious eyes. Gradually, however, the rebellion died out of them, replaced by a puzzled look of interest. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. Had she ever seen him before? Or was it merely one of those chance resemblances which one comes across occasionally? That fair hair with its crisp wave, the lean, square-jawed face, above all, the dark-grey eyes with their bright, penetrating glance—why did she feel as though every detail of the face were already known to her?

She failed to place the resemblance, however, and finally, with a little sigh of fatigue, she gave up the attempt. Her brain still felt muddled and confused from the blow she had received. Perhaps later she would be able to think things out more clearly.

Meanwhile she lay still, her eyes resting languidly on the face that so puzzled her. It was not precisely a handsome face, but there was a certain rugged fineness in its lines that lifted it altogether out of the ruck of the ordinary. It held its contradictions, too. Notwithstanding the powerful, determined jaw, the mouth had a sensitive upward curve at the corners which gave it an expression of singular sweetness, and beneath the eyes were little lines which qualified their dominating glance with a hint of whimsical humour.

The clock ticked on solemnly. Presently Mrs. Braithwaite bustled in with the tea and withdrew again. But the man remained absorbed in his writing, apparently oblivious of everything else.

Magda, who was rapidly recovering, eyed the teapot longingly. She was just wondering whether she dared venture to draw his attention to its arrival or whether he would snap her head off if she did, when he looked up suddenly with that swift, hawk-like glance of his.

“Ready for some tea?” he queried.

She nodded.

“Yes. Am I”—sarcastically—“allowed to get up now?”

He surveyed her consideringly.

“No, I think not,” he said at last. “But as the mountain can’t go to Mahomet, Mahomet shall come to the mountain.”

He crossed the room and, while Magda was still wondering what he proposed to do, he stooped and dexterously wheeled the couch with its light burden close up to the tea-table.

“Now, I’ll fix these cushions,” he said. And with deft hands he rearranged the cushions so that they should support her comfortably while she drank her tea.

“You would make a very good nurse, I should think,” commented Magda, somewhat mollified.

“Thanks,” was all he vouchsafed in answer.

He busied himself pouring out tea, then brought her cup and placed it beside her on a quaint little table of Chinese Chippendale.

“Mrs. Braithwaite—my housekeeper—is looking after your chauffeur in the kitchen,” he observed presently. “Possibly you may be interested to hear”—sarcastically—“that he wasn’t hurt in the smash-up.”

Magda felt herself flushing a little under the implied rebuke—as much with annoyance as anything else. She knew that she was not really the heartless type of woman he inferred her to be, to whom the fate of her dependents was only of importance in so far as it affected her own personal comfort, and she resented the injustice of his assumption that she was.

She had been so bewildered and dazed by the suddenness of the accident and by the blow she herself had received that she had hardly yet collected her thoughts sufficiently to envisage the possible consequences to others.

With feminine perverseness she promptly decided that nothing would induce her to explain matters. If this detestably superior individual chose to think her utterly heartless and selfish—why, let him think so!

“And the car?” she asked in a tone of deliberate indifference. “That’s quite as important as the chauffeur.”

“More so, surely?”—with polite irony. “The car, I am sorry to say, will take a good deal of repairing. At present it’s still in the middle of the street with red lights fore and aft. It can’t be moved till the fog lifts.”

“What a nuisance! How on earth am I to get home?”

“There are such things as taxis”—suggestively. “Later, when it clears a bit, I’ll send out for one.”

“Thanks. I’m afraid I’m giving you a lot of trouble.”

He did not hastily disclaim the idea as most men would have done.

“That can’t be helped,” he returned bluntly.

Magda felt herself colouring again. This man was insufferable!

“Evidently the role of knight-errant is new to you,” she observed.

“Quite true. I’m not in the habit of rescuing damsels in distress. But how did you guess?”—with interest.

“Because you do it with such a very bad grace,” she flashed at him.

He smiled—and once more Magda was aware of the sense of familiarity even with that whimsical, crooked smile.

“I see,” he replied composedly. “Then you think I ought to have been overwhelmed with delight that your car cannoned into my bus—incidentally I barked my shins badly in the general mix-up—and that I had to haul you out and bring you round from a faint and so on?”

The question—without trimmings—was unanswerable. But to Magda, London’s spoiled child, conscious that there were men who would have given half their fortune for the chance to render a like service, and then counted themselves amply rewarded by the subsequent hour or two alone with her, the question was merely provocative.

“Some men would have been,” she returned calmly.

“Ah! Just because you are the Wielitzska, I suppose?”

She stared at him in blank astonishment.

“You knew—you knew who I was all the time?” she gasped.

“Certainly I knew.”

“Then—then——”

“Then why wasn’t I suitably impressed?” he suggested drily.

She sprang to her feet.

“Oh! you are intolerable!” she exclaimed hotly. “You know I didn’t mean that!”

He regarded her quite placidly.

“You did. That is precisely what you were thinking. Only you funked putting it into plain words.”

He got up and came to her side and stood looking down at her.

“Isn’t it a fact?” he insisted. “Isn’t it?”

Magda looked up, tried to answer in the negative and failed. He had spoken the simple truth and she knew it. But none the less she hated him for it—hated him for driving her up into a corner and trying to force an acknowledgment from her. She remained obstinately silent.

He turned away with a short, amused laugh.

“So you haven’t even the courage of your convictions,” he commented.

Magda clenched her hands, driving the nails hard into the soft palms of them. He was an absolute boor, this man who had come to her rescue in the fog! He was taking a brutal advantage of their relative positions to speak to her as no man had ever dared to speak to her before. Or woman either! Even old Lady Arabella would hardly have thrust the naked truth so savagely under her eyes.

And now he had as good as told her that she was a coward! Well, at least he should not have the satisfaction of finding he was right in that respect. She walked straight up to him, her small head held high, in her dark eyes a smouldering fire of fierce resentment.

“So that is what you think, is it?” she said in a low voice of bitter anger. “Well, I have the courage of my convictions.” She paused. Then, with an effort: “Yes, I did think you weren’t ‘suitably impressed,’ as you put it. You are perfectly right.”

He threw her a swift glance of surprise. Presumably he hadn’t anticipated such a candid acknowledgment, but even so he showed no disposition to lay down the probe.

“You didn’t think it possible that anyone could meet the Wielitzska without regarding the event as a piece of stupendous good luck and being appropriately overjoyed, did you?” he pursued relentlessly.

Magda pressed her lips together. Then, with an effort:

“No,” she admitted.

“And so, just because I treated you as I would any other woman, and made no pretence of fatuous delight over your presence here, you supposed I must be ignorant of your identity? Was that it?”

Magda writhed under the cool, ironical questioning with its undercurrent of keen contempt. Each word stung like the flick of a lash on bare flesh. But she forced herself to answer—and to answer honestly.

“Yes,” she said very low. “That was it.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.

“Comment is superfluous, I think.”

She made an impulsive step towards him.

For some unfathomable reason she minded—minded intensely—that this man should hold her in such poor esteem. She wanted to put herself right with him, to justify her attitude in his eyes.

“Have you ever seen me dance?” she asked abruptly.

Surely if he had ever seen that wonderful artistry which she knew was hers, witnessed the half-crazy enthusiasm with which her audience received her, he would make allowance, judge her a little less harshly for what was, after all, a very natural assumption on the part of a stage favourite.

An expression of unwilling admiration came into his eyes.

“Have I seen you dance?” he repeated. “Yes, I have. Several times.”

He did not add—which would have been no more than the truth—that during her last winter’s season at the Imperial Theatre he had hardly missed a dozen performances.

“Then—then——” Magda spoke with a kind of incredulous appeal. “Can’t you understand—just a little?”

“Oh, I understand. I understand perfectly. You’ve been spoilt and idolised to such an extent that it seems incredible to you to find a man who doesn’t immediately fall down and worship you.”

Magda twisted her hands together. Once more he was thrusting at her with the rapier of truth. And it hurt—hurt inexplicably.

“Yes, I believe that’s—almost true,” she acknowledged falteringly. “But if you understand so well, couldn’t you—can’t you”—with a swift supplicating smile—“be a little more merciful?”

“No. I—I hate your type of woman!”

There was an undertone of passion in his voice. It was almost as though he were fighting against some impulse within himself and the fierceness of the struggle had wrung from him that quick, unvarnished protest.

“Then you despise dancers?”

“Despise? On the contrary, I revere a dancer—the dancer who is a genuine artist.” He paused, then went on speaking thoughtfully. “Dancing, to my mind, is one of the most consistent expressions of beauty. It’s the sheer symmetry and grace of that body which was made in God’s own likeness developed to the utmost limit of human perfection. . . . And the dancer who desecrates the temple of his body is punished proportionately. No art is a harder taskmistress than the art of dancing.”

Magda listened breathlessly. This man understood—oh, he understood! Then why did he “hate her type of woman”?

Almost as though he had read her thoughts he pursued:

“As a dancer, an artist—I acknowledge the Wielitzska to be supreme. But as a woman——”

“Yes? As a woman? Go on. What do you know about me as a woman?”

He laughed disagreeably.

“I’d judge that in the making of you your soul got left out,” he said drily.

Magda forced a smile.

“I’m afraid I’m very stupid. Do you mind explaining?”

“Does it need explanation?”

“Oh—please!”

“Then—one of my best pals was a man who loved you.”

Magda threw him a glance of veiled mockery from beneath her long white lids.

“Surely that should be a recommendation—something in my favour?”

His eyes hardened.

“If you had dealt honestly with him, it might have been. But you drew him on, made him care for you in spite of himself. And then, when he was yours, body and soul, you turned him down! Turned him down—pretended you were surprised—you’d never meant anything! All the old rotten excuses a woman offers when she has finished playing with a man and got bored with him. . . . I’ve no place for your kind of woman. I tell you”—his tone deepening in intensity—“the wife of any common labourer, who cooks and washes and sews for her man day in, day out, is worth a dozen of you! She knows that love’s worth having and worth working for. And she works. You don’t. Women like you take a man’s soul and play with it, and when you’ve defiled and defaced it out of all likeness to the soul God gave him, you hand it back to him and think you clear yourself by saying you ‘didn’t mean it’!”

The bitter speech, harsh with the deeply rooted pain and resentment which had prompted it, battered through Magda’s weak defences and found her helpless and unarmed. Once she had uttered a faint cry of protest, tried to check him, but he had not heeded it. After that she had listened with bent head, her breath coming and going unevenly.

When he had finished, the face she lifted to him was white as milk and her mouth trembled.

“Thanks. Well, I’ve heard my character now,” she said unsteadily. “I—I didn’t know anyone thought of me—like that.”

He stared at her—at the drooping lines of her figure, the quivering lips, at the half-stunned expression of the dark eyes. And suddenly realisation of the enormity of all he had said seemed to come to him. But he did not appear to be at all overwhelmed by it.

“I’m afraid I’ve transgressed beyond forgiveness now,” he said curtly. “But—you rather asked for it, you know, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I think I did—ask for it.” Suddenly she threw up her head and faced him. “If—if it’s any satisfaction to you to know it, I think you’ve paid off at least some of your friend’s score.” She looked at him with a curious, almost piteous surprise. “You—you’ve hurt me!” she whispered passionately. She turned to the door. “I’ll go now.”

“No!” He stopped her with a hand on her arm, and she obeyed his touch submissively. For a moment he stood looking down at her with an oddly conflicting expression on his face. It was as though he were arguing out some point with himself. All at once he seemed to come to a decision.

“Look, you can’t go till the fog clears a bit. Suppose we call a truce? Sit down here”—pulling forward a big easy-chair—“and for the rest of your visit let’s behave as though we didn’t heartily disapprove of one another.”

Magda sank into the chair with that supple grace of limb which made it sheer delight to watch her movements.

“I never said I disapproved of you,” she remarked.

He seated himself opposite her, on the other side of the hearth, and regarded her quizzically.

“No. But you do, all the same. Naturally, you would after my candour! And I’d rather you did, too,” he added abruptly. “But at least you’ve no more devoted admirer of your art. You know, dancing appeals to me in a way that nothing else does. My job’s painting—”

“House-painting?” interpolated Magda with a smile. Her spirits were rising a little under his new kindliness of manner.

He laughed with sudden boyishness and nodded gaily.

“Why, yes—so long as people continue to cover their wall-space with portraits of themselves.”

Magda wondered whether he was possibly a well-known painter. But he gave her no chance to find out, for he continued speaking almost at once.

“I love my art—but a still, flat canvas, however beautifully painted, isn’t comparable with the moving, living interpretation of beauty possible to a dancer. I remember, years ago—ten years, quite—seeing a kiddy dancing in a wood.” Magda leaned forward. “It was the prettiest thing imaginable. She was all by herself, a little, thin, black-and-white wisp of a thing, with a small, tense face and eyes like black smudges. And she danced as though it were more natural to her than walking. I got her to pose for me at the foot of a tree. The picture of her was my first real success. So you see, I’ve good reason to be grateful to one dancer!”

Magda caught her breath. She knew now why the man’s face had seemed so familiar! He was the artist she had met in the wood at Coverdale the day Sieur Hugh had beaten her—her “Saint Michel”! She was conscious of a queer little thrill of excitement as the truth dawned upon her.

“What was the picture called?” she asked, forcing herself to speak composedly.

“‘The Repose of Titania.’”

She nodded. The picture was a very well-known one. Everybody knew by whom it had been painted.

“Then you must be Michael Quarrington?”

“Yes. So now, we’ve been introduced, haven’t we?”

It seemed almost as if he had repented of his former churlish manner, and were endeavouring to atone for it. He talked to her about his work a little, then slid easily into the allied topics of music and books. Finally he took her into an adjoining room, and showed her a small, beloved collection of coloured prints which he had gathered together, recounting various amusing little incidents which had attended the acquisition of this or that one among them with much gusto and a certain quaint humour that she was beginning to recognise as characteristic.

Magda, to whom the study of old prints was by no means an unknown territory, was thoroughly entertained. She found herself enthusing, discussing, arguing points, in a happy spirit of camaraderie with her host which, half an hour earlier, she would have believed impossible.

The end came abruptly. Quarrington chanced to glance out of the window where the street lamps were now glimmering serenely through a clear dusk. The fog had lifted.

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” he said shortly. “I was beginning—” He checked himself and glanced at her with a sudden stormy light in his eyes.

“Beginning—what?” she asked a little breathlessly. The atmosphere had all at once grown tense with some unlooked-for stress of emotion.

“Shall I tell you?”

“Yes—tell me!”

“I was beginning to forget that you’re the ‘type of woman I hate,’” he said. And strode out of the room, leaving her startled and unaccountably shaken.

When he came back he had completely reassumed his former non-committal manner.

“There’s a taxi waiting for you,” he announced. “It’s perfectly clear outside now, so I think you will be spared any further adventures on your way home.”

He accompanied her into the hall, and as they shook hands she murmured a little diffidently:

“Perhaps we shall meet again some time?”

He drew back sharply.

“No, we shan’t meet again.” There was something purposeful, almost vehemently so, in the curtly spoken words. “If I had thought that——”

“Yes?” she prompted. “If you had?”

“If I’d thought that,” he said quietly, “I shouldn’t have dared to risk this last half-hour.”

A momentary silence fell between them. Then, with a shrug, he added lightly:

“But we shan’t meet again. I’m leaving England next week. That settles it.”

Without giving her time to make any rejoinder he opened the street-door and stood aside for her to pass out. A minute later she was in the taxi, and he was standing bare-headed on the pavement beside it.

“Good-bye,” she said. “Good-bye—Saint Michel.”

His hand closed round hers in a grip that almost crushed the slender fingers.

“You!” he cried hoarsely. There was a note of sudden, desperate recognition in his voice. “You!”

As Magda smiled into his startled eyes—the grey eyes that had burned their way into her memory ten years ago—the taxi slid away into the lamp-lit dusk.