"Is he very ill?" she asked.
"No, merely cranky like all the Vallincourts. He"s in a community, joined a brotherhood, you know, and proposes to spend the rest of his days repenting his sins and making his peace with heaven. I"ve no patience with the fool!" continued the old lady irascibly. "He marries to please himself and then hasn"t the pluck of a rabbit to see the thing through decently. So you"re to be my responsibility in future--and a pretty big one, too, to judge by the look of you."
Magda hardly comprehended the full meaning of this speech. Still she gathered that her father had left her--though not quite in the same way as _pet.i.te maman_ had done--and that henceforth this autocratic old lady with the hawk"s eyes and quick, darting movements was to be the arbiter of her fate. She also divined, beneath Lady Arabella"s p.r.i.c.kly exterior, a humanness and ability to understand which had been totally lacking in Sieur Hugh. She proceeded to put it to the test.
"Will you let me dance?" she asked.
"Tchah!" snorted the old woman. "So the Wielitzska blood is coming out after all!" She turned to Virginia. "Can she dance?" she demanded abruptly.
"Mais oui, madame!" cried Virginie, clasping her hands ecstatically.
"Like a veritable angel!"
"I shouldn"t have thought it," commented her ladyship drily.
Her shrewd eyes swept the child"s tense little face with its long, Eastern eyes and the mouth that showed so vividly scarlet against its unchildish pallor.
"Less like an angel than anything, I should imagine," muttered the old woman to herself with a wicked little grin. Then aloud: "Show me what you can do, then, child."
"Very well." Magda paused, reflecting. Then she ran forward and laid her hand lightly on Lady Arabella"s knee. "Look! This is the story of a Fairy who came to earth and lost her way in the woods. She met one of the Mortals, and he loved her so much that he wouldn"t show her the way back to Fairyland. So"--abruptly--"she died."
Lady Arabella watched the child dance in astonished silence. Technique, of course, was lacking, but the interpretation, the telling of the story, was amazing. It was all there--the Fairy"s first wonder and delight in finding herself in the woods, then her realisation that she was lost and her frantic efforts to find the way back to Fairyland.
Followed her meeting with the Mortal and supplication to him to guide her, and finally the Fairy"s despair and death. Magda"s slight little figure sank to the ground, drooping slowly like a storm-bent snowdrop, and lay still.
Lady Arabella sat up with a jerk.
"Good gracious! The child"s a born dancer! Lydia Tchinova must see her.
She"ll have to train. Poor Hugh!" She chuckled enjoyably. "This will be the last straw! He"ll be compelled to invent a new penance."
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
THE FLOWERING
"You"re very trying, Magda. Everyone is talking about you, and I"m tired of trying to explain you to people."
Lady Arabella paused in her knitting and spoke petulantly, but a secret gleam of admiration in her sharp old eyes as they rested upon her G.o.d-daughter belied the irritation of her tones.
Magda leaned back negligently against the big black velvet cushions in her chair and lit a cigarette.
"I _want_ everyone to talk about me," she returned composedly. Her voice was oddly attractive--low-pitched and with a faint blur of huskiness about it that caught the ear with a distinctive charm. "It increases the box-office receipts. And there"s no reason in the world for you to "explain" me to people."
Her G.o.dmother regarded her with increasing irritation, yet at the same time acutely conscious of the arresting quality of the young, vividly alive face that gleamed at her from its black-velvet background.
Ten years had only served to emphasise the unusual characteristics of the child Magda. Her skin was wonderful, of a smooth, creamy-white texture which gave to the sharply angled face something of the pale, exotic perfection of a stephanotis bloom. Her eyes were long, the colour of black pansies--black with a suggestion of purple in their depths.
They slanted upwards a little at the outer corners, and this together with the high cheek-bones, alone would have betrayed her Russian ancestry. When Lady Arabella wanted to be particularly obnoxious she told her that she had Mongolian eyes, and Magda would shrug her shoulders and, thrusting out a foot which was so perfect in shape that a painting of it by a certain famous artist had been the most talked-of picture of the year, would reply placidly: "Well, thank heaven, _that"s_ not English, anyway!"
"It certainly required some explanation when you chose to leave me and go off and live by yourself," pursued Lady Arabella, resuming her knitting. "A girl of twenty! Of course people have talked. Especially as half the men in town imagine themselves in love with you."
"Well, I"m perfectly respectable now. I"ve engaged a nice, tame p.u.s.s.y-cat person to take charge of my morals and chaperon me generally. Not--like you, Marraine--an Early Victorian autocrat with a twentieth-century tongue."
"If you mean Mrs. Grey, she doesn"t give me the least impression of being a "nice, tame p.u.s.s.y-cat,"" retorted Lady Arabella. "You"ll find that out, my dear."
Magda regarded her thoughtfully.
"Do you think so?"
"I do."
"Oh, Gillian is all right," affirmed Magda, dismissing the matter airily. "She"s a gorgeous accompanist, anyway--almost as good as Davilof himself. Which reminds me--I must go home and rehea.r.s.e my solo dance in the _Swan-Maiden_. I told Davilof I"d be ready for him at four o"clock; and it"s half-past three now. I shall never get back to Hampstead through this ghastly fog in half an hour." She glanced towards the window through which was visible a discouraging fog of the "pea-soup"
variety.
Lady Arabella sniffed.
"You"d better be careful for once in your life, Magda. Davilof is in love with you."
"Pouf! What if he is?"
Magda rose, and picking up her big black hat set it on her head at precisely the right angle, and proceeded to spear it through with a wonderful black-and-gold hatpin of Chinese workmanship.
Lady Arabella shot a swift glance at her.
"He"s just one of a crowd?" she suggested tartly.
Magda a.s.sented indifferently.
"You"re wrong--quite wrong," returned her G.o.dmother crisply. "Antoine Davilof is not one of a crowd--never will be! He"s half a Pole, remember."
Magda smiled.
"And I"m half a Russian. It must be a case of deep calling to deep," she suggested mockingly.
Lady Arabella"s shining needles clicked as they came to an abrupt stop.
"Does that mean you"re in love with him?" she asked.
Magda stared.
"Good gracious, no! I"m never in love. You know that."
"That doesn"t prevent my hoping you may develop--some day--into a normal G.o.d-fearing woman," retorted the other.