The Lamp of Fate Part 61

For each of those nights had counted as a step onwards along the hard road that was to lead her back eventually to Michael. Now she knew that they had all been endured in vain. Spiritually her self-elected year of discipline might have fitted her to be the wife of "Saint Michel."

But the undimmed physical beauty and charm which Michael, the man and artist, would crave in the woman he loved was gone.

The recognition of these things rushed over her, overwhelming her with a sense of blank and utter failure. It meant the end of everything. As far as she was concerned, life henceforward held nothing more. There was nothing to hope for in the future--except to hope that Michael might never see her again! At least, she would like to feel that his memory of her--of the Wielitzska whose lithe grace and beauty had swept him headlong even against the tide of his convictions--would remain for ever unmarred.

It was a rather touching human little weakness--the weakness and prayer of many a woman who has lost her lover. . . . Let him remember her--always--as she was before the radiance of youth faded, before grief or pain blurred the perfection that had been hers!

Perhaps for Magda the wish was even stronger, more insistent by reason of the fact that her beauty had been of so fine and rare a quality, setting her in a way apart from other women.

With the instinct of the wounded wild creature she longed to hide--to hide herself from Michael, so that she might never see in his eyes that look of quickly veiled disappointment which she knew would spring into them as he realised the change in her. She felt she could not bear that.

It would be like a sword-thrust through her heart. . . . Better if she had never left the sisterhood!

Suddenly every nerve of her tautened. Supposing--supposing she returned there, never to emerge again? No chance encounter could ever then bring her within sight or sound of Michael. She would be spared watching the old, eager look of admiration fade suddenly from the grey eyes she loved.

Hour after hour she lay there, dry-eyed, staring into the darkness. And with the dawn her decision was taken.

CHAPTER x.x.x

AN UNANSWERED LETTER

"You shan't do it!"

When first Magda had bruited her idea of rejoining the sisterhood--the decision which had crystallised out of the long black hours of the night of her return to Friars' Holm--Gillian had merely laughed the notion aside, attaching little importance to it. But now, a week later, when Magda reverted to the subject with a certain purposeful definiteness, she grew suddenly frightened.

"Do you want to throw away every possibility of happiness?" she demanded indignantly. "Just because Michael isn't here, waiting for you on the doorstep, so to speak, you decide to rush off and make it impossible for him ever to see you again!"

Magda kept her head bent, refusing to meet the other's eyes.

"I don't want him to see me now," she said shrinkingly. "I'm not--not the Magda he knew any longer."

"That's an absurd exaggeration. You're not looking very well, that's all," retorted Gillian with her usual practical common sense. "You can't suppose that would make any difference to Michael! It didn't make any to me. I'm only too glad to have you back at any price!"

Magda's faint responsive smile was touched with that bitter knowledge which is the heritage of the woman who has been much loved for her beauty.

"You're a woman, Gillyflower," she said. "And Michael is not only a man--but an artist. Men don't want you when the bloom has been brushed off. And you know how Michael wors.h.i.+ps beauty! He's bound to--being an artist."

"I think you're morbidly self-conscious," declared Gillian firmly. "I suppose it's the result of being out of the world for so long. You've lost all sense of proportion. You're quite lovely enough, now, to satisfy most people. You only look rather tired and worn out."

But Magda's face remained clouded.

"But even that isn't--all," she answered. "It's--oh, it's a heap of things! Somehow I thought when I came back I should see the road clear.

But it isn't. It's all shadowed--just as it was before. I thought I should have so much to give Michael now. And I haven't anything. I don't think I ever quite realised before that, however much you try to atone, you can never _undo_ the harm you've done. But I've had time to think things out while I was with the Sisters."

"And if you go back to them you'll have time to do nothing but think for the rest of your life!" flashed back Gillian.

"Oh, no!" Magda spoke quickly. "I shouldn't return under a vow of penitence. There are working sisters attached to the community who go about amongst the sick and poor in the slums. I should join as a working sister if I went back."

Gillian stared at her in amazement. Magda devoting her life to good works seemed altogether out of the picture! She began to feel that the whole affair was getting too complicated for her to handle, and as usual, when in a difficulty, she put the matter up to Lady Arabella.

The latter, with her acc.u.mulated wisdom of seventy years, saw more clearly than the younger woman, although even she hardly understood that sense of the deadly emptiness and failure of her life which had overwhelmed Magda since her return to Friars' Holm. But the old woman realised that she had pa.s.sed through a long period of strain, and that, now the reaction had come, the Vallincourt blood in her might drive her into almost any extreme of conduct.

"If only Michael were on the spot!" she burst out irritably. "I own I'm disappointed in the man! I was so sure six months would bring him to his senses."

"I know," a.s.sented Gillian miserably. "It's--it's--the most hopeless state of things imaginable!"

Lady Arabella's interview with Magda herself proved unproductive.

"Have you written to Michael?" she demanded.

"Written to him?" A flash of the old defiant spirit sounded in Magda's voice. "No, nor shall I."

"Don't be a fool, child. He's probably learned something during this last twelve months--as well as you. Don't let pride get in your way now."

"It's not pride. Marraine, I never knew--I never thought----Look at me!

What have I to give Michael now? Have you forgotten that he's an artist and that beauty means everything to him?"

"Well?"

"'Well!'" Magda held out her hands. "Can't you see that I'm changed?

. . . Michael wouldn't want me to pose for him as Circe now!"

"He wanted you for a wife--not a model, my dear. You can buy models at so much the hour."

"Oh, Marraine! You won't understand----"

Lady Arabella took the slender, work-roughened hands in hers.

"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she said quietly. "There are other ways of a.s.sessing life than merely in terms of beauty. And you can believe this, too: you've lost nothing from the point of view of looks that a few months of normal healthy life won't set right.

Moreover, if you'd grown as plain as a pikestaff, I don't think Michael would care twopence! He's an artist, I know. He can't help that, but he's a man first. And he's a man who knows how to love. Promise me one thing," she went on insistently. "Promise that you'll do nothing definite--yet. Not, at least, without consulting me."

Magda hesitated.

"Very well. I'll do nothing without--telling you--first."

That was the utmost concession she would make, and with that her G.o.dmother had to be content.

The same evening a letter in Lady Arabella's spirited, angular handwriting sped on its way to Paris.

"If you're not absolutely determined to ruin both your own and Magda's lives, my dear Michael, put your pride and your ridiculous principles in your pocket and come back to England. I don't happen to be a grandmother, but I'm quite old enough for the job, so you might pay my advice due respect by taking it."

"I thought I was shelved altogether."

Thus Dan Storran, rather crossly, when, a day or two later, he met Gillian by appointment for lunch at their favourite little restaurant in Soho. It was the first time she had been able to fix up a meeting with him since Magda's return, as naturally his customary visits to Friars'

Holm were out of the question now.