Diane sat in the twilight, brooding. Winter had come round again, gripping the world with icy fingers, and she shivered a little as she crouched in front of the fire.
She felt cold--cold in body and soul. The passage of time had brought no cheery warmth of love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and the estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite and absolute as it had been the day Catherine quitted Coverdale for the Sisterhood of Penitence.
But the years which had elapsed since then had taken their inevitable toll. Hugh had continued along the lines he had laid down for himself, rigidly ascetic and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze with fanatical fervour.
Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly foreign to her temperament, debarred the fulfilment of her womanhood which her spontaneous, impetuous nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually losing both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless atmosphere to which her husband had condemned her.
She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding between herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine's departure that the downfall of her hopes had come upon her as a bitter disappointment. Once she had stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer as a stranger to her. But he had repulsed her harshly, refusing her pleading with an inexorable decision there was no combating.
Afterwards she had given herself up to despair, and gradually--almost imperceptibly at first--her health had declined until finally, at the urgent representations of Virginie, Hugh had called in Dr. Lancaster.
"There is no specific disease," he had said. "But none the less"-- looking very directly at Hugh--"your wife is dying, Vallincourt."
Diane had been told the first part of the doctor's pronouncement, and recommended by her husband to "rouse herself" out of her apathetic state.
"'No specific disease!'" she repeated bitterly, as she sat brooding in the firelight. "No--only this death in life which I have had to endure. Well, it will be over soon--and the sooner the better."
The door burst open suddenly and Magda came in to the room, checking abruptly, with a child's stumbling consciousness of pain, as she caught sight of her mother curled up in front of the fire, staring mutely into its glowing heart.
"
Maman?" she begin timidly. "
Petite maman?"
Diane turned round.
"Cherie, is it thou?"
She kneeled up on the hearthrug and, taking the child in her arms, searched her face with dry, bright eyes.
"Baby," she said. "Listen! And when thou art older, remember always what I have said."
Magda stared at her, listening intently.
"Never, never give your heart to any man," continued Diane. "If you do, he will only break it for you--break it into little pieces like the glass scent-bottle which you dropped yesterday. Take everything. But do not give--anything--in return. Will you remember?"
And Magda answered her gravely.
"
Oui, maman, I will remember."
What happened after that remained always a confused blur in Magda's memory--a series of pictures standing out against a dark background of haste and confusion, and whispered fears.
Suddenly her mother gave a sharp little cry and her hands went up to her breast, while for a moment her eyes, dilated and frightened- looking, stared agonisingly ahead. Then she toppled over sideways and lay in a little heap on the great bearskin rung in front of the fire.
After that Virginie came running, followed by a drove of scared- looking servants and, last of all, by Hugh himself, his face very white and working strangely.
The car was sent off in frantic haste in search of Dr. Lancaster, and later in the day two white-capped nurses appeared on the scene. Then followed hours of hushed uncertainty, when people went to and fro with hurried, muffled footsteps and spoke together in whispers, while Virginie's face grew yellow and drawn-looking, and the tears trickled down her wrinkled-apple cheeks whenever one spoke to her.
Last of all someone told Magda that "
petite maman" had gone away-- and on further inquiry Virginie vouchsafed that she had gone to somewhere called Paradise to be with the blessed saints.
"When will she come back again?" demanded Magda practically.
Upon which Virginie had made an unpleasant choking noise in her throat and declared:
"Never!"
Magda was frankly incredulous.
Petite maman would never go away like that and leave her behind! Of that she felt convinced, and said so. Gulping back her sobs, Virginie explained that in this case madame had been given no choice, but added that if Magda comported herself like a good little girl, she would one day go to be with her in Paradise. Magda found it all very puzzling.
But when, later, she was taken into her mother's room and saw the slender, sheeted figure lying straight and still on the great bed, hands meekly crossed upon the young, motionless breast, while tall white candles burned at head and foot, the knowledge that
petite maman had really gone from her seemed all at once to penetrate her childish mind.
That aloofly silent figure could not be her gay, pretty
petite maman --the one who had played and laughed with her and danced so exquisitely that sometimes Magda's small soul had ached with the sheer beauty and loveliness of it. . . .
She met Dr. Lancaster as she came out from the candle-lit room and clutched him convulsively by the hand.
"Is that--being dead?" she whispered, pointing to the room she had just quitted.
Very gently he tried to explain things to her. Afterwards Magda overheard the family lawyer asking him in appropriately shocked tones of what complaint Lady Vallincourt had died, and there had been a curious grim twist to Lancaster's mouth as he made answer.
"Heart," he said tersely.
"Ah! Very sad. Very sad indeed," rejoined the lawyer feelingly. "These heart complaints are very obscure sometimes, I believe?"
"Sometimes," said Lancaster. "Not always."
The next happening that impressed itself on Magda's cognisance as an event was the coming of Lady Arabella Winter. She arrived on a day of heavy snow, and Magda's first impression of her, as she came into the hall muffled up to the tip of her patrician nose in a magnificent sable wrap, was of a small, alert-eyed bird huddled into its nest.
But when the newcomer had laid aside her furs Magda's impression qualified itself. Lady Arabella was not in the least of the "small bird" type, but rather suggested a hawk endowed with a grim sense of humour--quick and decisive in movement, with eyes that held an incalculable wisdom and laughed a thought cynically because they saw so clearly.
Her hair was perfectly white, as white as the snow outside, but her complexion was soft and fine-grained as that of a girl of sixteen-- pink and white like summer roses. She had the manner of an empress with extremely modern ideas.
Magda was instructed that this great little personage was her godmother and that she would in future live with her instead of at Coverdale. She accepted the information without surprise though with considerable interest.
"Think you'll like it?" Lady Arabella shot at her keenly.
"Yes," Magda replied unhesitatingly. "But why am I going to live with you? Sieur Hugh isn't dead, too, is he?"--with impersonal interest.
"And who in the name of fortune is Sieur Hugh?"
Lady Arabella looked around helplessly, and Virginia, who was hovering in the background, hastened to explain the relationship.
"Then, no," replied Lady Arabella. "Sieur Hugh is not dead--though to be sure he's the next thing to it!"
Magda eyed her solemnly.
"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
petite 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 prickly 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."