A GOLDEN FUTURE.
Dolly Arden was right. Mr. Barrow’s letter meant more than it expressed.
There was no shadow of doubt to cast on her claims; the dead man had
kept his word and left a will that made them irrefutable. Without talk
of law or courts, with merely a triumphal proving of his mother’s
identity by the owners of the houses in which she had lodged with her
baby and maid, three-year-old Ronald entered into his inheritance, Earl
of Barnysdale, without let or hindrance.
And Dolly, with her old name, shook away all the haunting fears she had
done her best to keep to herself. She asked for only one thing, that
there should be as little publicity as possible.
“Of course,” she said with a pathetic face, “I know it will have to be
in the papers, but I’ve led a hard life. I was humiliated and--surely,
Mr. Barrow, you can understand! All this has been so abhorrent to me it
was only for Ronald’s sake that I felt I had no right to remain silent.”
She breathed freely as she saw how short and how matter-of-fact the
newspaper comments were. There was no nine days’ wonder about it, no
staring headlines. She, Dolly Arden, was triumphant, was tasting the
sweet after the bitter. It had been worth it after all. She had been a
fool ever to doubt.
Barnysdale had been rather poor, for a peer, but to the new Lady
Barnysdale her son’s revenues, or all she could touch of them, seemed
inexhaustible. But at the thought of the gloomy house in Berkeley
Square, where Barnysdale died, she shivered. She could not live
there--not yet. Besides, for many reasons, it would be better to get
out of London. The men who had been welcome to Mrs. Arden would be
doubtful acquaintances for Lady Barnysdale.
No, she would go to Scotland, to Ardmore Castle. It might be dull, but
it was the right thing to be dull. She would not think any more on the
matter, but pack up and go.
If Lady Barnysdale was triumphant, her sister was busy. It was she
who bought new clothes, paid bills, engaged a nurse for Ronald. And
so it chanced that when Lord Stratharden--who, for excellent reasons,
had made up his mind to welcome the sister-in-law he could not cast
out--came to offer her any information or help she needed, he did not
see Magdalen Clyde. If he pictured Dolly’s sister to himself it was her
double--small, fair, bloodlessly pretty--and not quite a lady.
If he could have seen her at that moment, with her dull hair, her
pale, smooth cheeks, her dark, fathomless eyes lovely under her black
hat, perhaps nothing on earth would have made him believe she was Lady
Barnysdale’s sister.
Dolly walking up Fleet Street in the afternoon would have had eyes for
every man she met. Magdalen never even saw that their heads turned as
she passed, till one man, coming out of a dingy doorway, nearly fell
over her and stopped dead, as she did; for neither had ever expected to
see the other again.
Her first thought as he took off his hat and greeted her was
that he was both thinner and older than she had fancied him, yet
infinitely--oh! infinitely, better-looking. Tanned, strong, tall, his
lean face like no face she had ever seen, he stood in front of her.
And as he smiled his eyes grew suddenly sweet.
Under them she was for one moment speechless. What long lashes he had!
She wished he would not throw back his head and look at her through
them.
“Fancy my meeting you!” was what she said; and if she was confused she
did not show it. “You must let me thank you again now. I hope you heard
no more of it.”
“Oh! I did,” he said, and laughed, for she had to thank him for more
than she knew--all his worldly wealth but one penny. “I went back and
was thanked by the proprietor. You see,” softly, “it saved him a row.”
“The proprietor,” Magdalen started. “Oh!” she said. “My--our dinner. I
never paid him!”
“You forget,” with calm mendacity. “You or your sister left the money
on the table. I hope she’s all right--quite forgotten your friend?”
“Did he tell you so? Krug, I mean?” for it was not like Dolly to leave
money anywhere.
Her nameless acquaintance nodded, and with some haste changed the
subject.
“Do you often honor Fleet Street?” he said. He had a way of drawling
that was not like the speech of Dolly’s friends, any more than his look
of perfect cleanliness resembled their rather tumbled fashion.
“No! I came on an errand for--my sister.” She dared not say Dolly. “Do
you?”
For the first time he saw her smile, and Magdalen Clyde’s smile was
a thing to live to see. The unworn youth of it, the lovely lips and
teeth, the sudden light in her deep eyes, took away the man’s breath.
“I live here, work and have my being!” he returned as if there were
humor in it. “I work at a photographer’s up-stairs,” with a backward
fling of his head.
If he had said he broke stones it could not have amazed her any more.
“You don’t look as though you worked!” she said with involuntary truth.
“I assure you I earn my own bread--and consider myself lucky.”
He had quietly fallen into her step and was walking beside her toward
Charing Cross. For the life of him he could not help wondering who she
was and where she lived.
But she had evidently no idea of enlightening him, for at the end of
the Strand she stopped.
“I’m late,” she said, and her face changed. “I must take a cab. But
first will you tell me something? Why did you do that the other night?
We were nothing to you.” Something in her straight, direct look made
him tell the plain truth.
“Because I never saw any woman like you,” he said, as if he were
remarking on the weather, “and it annoyed me to see you put in such a
position.”
She put her hand to her hair sullenly.
“There isn’t another like me,” she retorted as if he had hurt her.
“Luckily for them! Do you suppose I like being black and white and red
like a poster? I’m tired of being stared at, tired of--but it doesn’t
matter!” bruskly. “I’m leaving London for good to-morrow. And I’m glad.”
“Why?” He left her looks alone with late wisdom.
“I hate it. I’m afraid of it. I haven’t a friend. Oh, yes!” stopping
him coolly. “I know plenty of men, but I hate men. I don’t think I like
anyone in the world but my sister; and I know I don’t trust anyone.”
“You’re trusting me,” said the man quietly. “Now let me tell you
something. It wasn’t because I thought you handsome that I turned out
those lights, but because there was such a curious, lonely look about
you, and, though you mayn’t think it, I’m lonely, too. I did what I
could for some one who was like me, without a soul on earth to turn to.
And if ever I can do anything for you again I will. My name,” with a
little halt, for he was not used to it yet, “is Lovell--Dick Lovell.
Now I shall call a hansom for you.”
The girl stood on the curbstone and looked at him. This was not the
manner of the men Dolly knew. He meant what he was saying. Though his
face was hard, almost indifferent, she had an odd feeling that for the
first time in her life she had made a friend.
“You’ve done enough for me,” she said slowly. “If I ever see you again
it will be my turn. Good-by.”
But as she got into her hansom a strange feeling came over her, as if
in this utter stranger she were leaving behind some one known before,
dear to her; some one, too, who would get nothing but ill for helping
her. She held out her hand with a smile, though there were quick tears
in her eyes.
“Good-by and good luck to you!” she cried, senselessly enough, and as
she drove off remembered he knew no more of her name than Magdalen.
Well, it was no matter--and her strange beauty hardened, darkened; the
less he knew the less he would be likely to hear of Starr-Dalton and
the others; of her reputation, that must be written down with Dolly’s.
Dolly, who was Countess of Barnysdale and had given up cakes and ale!
“You’re a fool,” she said to herself. “The man’s nothing to you,” and
knew she would have sold her soul for him. She, Magdalen Clyde, who had
always boasted to herself that she was like a man who could not get
drunk--she could not care.
With Dick Lovell’s face--and even the set of his collar--before
her eyes she came into Lady Barnysdale’s flat. And there, smug,
thick-lipped, too polite by far, sat Starr-Dalton with a gardenia in
his coat. Magdalen could not be even civil, and Dolly was nervously,
profusely so. When Starr-Dalton said good-by she turned on Magdalen
viciously.
“Why did you look at him like that?”
“Do you mean you hadn’t paid him?”
“Oh, I paid him,” slowly. “Magda, you’re right. He isn’t kind. I wish
we’d never seen him.”
Mr. Starr-Dalton would not have echoed the wish. Divided between fury
and amusement he was fingering the notes in his pocket.
“So,” he thought, “I’ve been useful, useful! And now I’m to discreetly
vanish. It’s not good enough, Dolly,” and he turned toward Krug’s
restaurant that he had never mentioned to her. It was raging passion,
half love, half hatred, that made his thick smile evil as he strolled.
For in his way he loved her, and what Mr. Starr-Dalton wanted he
usually got, cleanly or otherwise.
But Dolly was singing, as she thought she would never see him again.