DOLLY’S PREDICAMENT.
It is hard to tell how commonplace things grow slowly into terror,
intangible and unseen, but sure as death. Into the dull life at Ardmore
Castle horror had crept; even Dolly could not be blind to it, and it
haunted Magdalen Clyde by night and day.
The awful loneliness of the place began to hang over them like a pall.
For a month they had been installed, and not a visitor from all the
countryside had been near them.
“Not even a grocer’s boy!” Dolly said to herself uncomfortably, though
there was nothing remarkable in that. Their meat was home-killed, their
other stores came once a year from Edinburgh. And in spite of the
silver-decked table and Stratharden’s invaluable servants, there was
no doubt that Mrs. Keith barely doled them out enough to eat--that was
eatable.
The horses, in spite of reiterated orders, had never come. James made
one respectful and well-grounded excuse after another--“next week,”
“to-morrow”--and neither brought them. As for rowing across the
Clyde it was not to be done. One winter storm after another made it
angry, and not a servant in the house could row. Magdalen, going to
the tumble-down boathouse to see the boats, found none; she screamed
herself hoarse in trying to hail a boat from the opposite shore that
was two miles off; and found herself civilly assisted by James, at
whose appearance she turned about and went home.
After long wet days in the house, when the clouds broke at sundown
she would drag Dolly out to walk in the evergreen shrubberies. But in
a little while Dolly’s eyes would meet hers and they would go indoors
quickly, Ronald angrily protesting from his aunt’s shoulder. But to the
lonely, unhappy women it had been certain that stealthy feet kept pace
with them behind the dripping firs, that eyes were on them hungrily as
they walked.
“It’s nerves,” said Dolly in an angry whisper; “nerves, or Mrs. Keith.”
They had long ago moved into those forbidden rooms of Stratharden’s,
but neither of them felt any better for the change. The southern aspect
was a mockery in a Scotch winter.
Ronald grew paler every day, had a queer little asthmatic cough and
seized every chance of spending his time with Ah Lee, who seemed to
fascinate him. On Mrs. Keith Magdalen had never laid eyes. Sometimes
in the long nights she fancied she could hear the old woman’s skirts
brushing against her door, and would get up silently and creep there
and then on to Dolly’s and Ronald’s apartments, for the three rooms
connected; would feel that the bolts were all shot home, and slip back
to bed again, not even owning to herself that it was not terror of Mrs.
Keith that made her do it.
She turned now to where Dolly sat on her bed taking off her wet boots
after one of those garden outings that had been worse than usual.
“It may be nerves, but it isn’t Keith,” she began, and then decided,
for the fiftieth time, that it would be madness to frighten Dolly about
Ah Lee because of a dream.
“Do you know what I found out just now?” for she had sent Dolly and
Ronald to the house, while she ran back in a towering rage to ransack
the shrubberies. “I ran along by the garden wall till I came out on the
avenue, ever so far from the house; and there was the postboy! He was
giving letters and papers to James.”
“Then the boat can cross again! Hurrah!” cried Dolly quite gay again.
“It never stopped crossing,” Magdalen dryly replied, “except for two
days. I asked the boy.”
“Then where--why--what did James say?” with incoherent energy.
“James explained,” more dryly than ever, “he had been no wiser than
we, etc. Mrs. Keith must have done it to annoy us. He would take great
care in future; could not be too glad that he had been tempted to
investigate--but he did not say it before the boy! Here are some papers
and a letter for you.”
But Dolly looked at neither.
“Who do you think it is? And what do they mean?” she said, with a queer
look in her shallow eyes. “I think James told the truth, and it’s just
old Keith, who, because she hates us, wants to drive us away.”
Magdalen threw open the door into the passage. It was empty, dark and
cold, and she shut it again. For a moment she stood facing Dolly, stood
stretching like a cat, as if she were trying every muscle in her body.
“Oh, don’t do gymnastics; talk!” cried Dolly pettishly. “Don’t you
think the old wretch wants to drive us away?”
“She takes a queer way to do it,” Magdalen gravely answered, seating
herself close to Dolly and speaking in a subdued tone. “Hasn’t it
struck you that being a countess here is extremely like being in jail?
Suppose we say we’re going to London to-morrow? Well! there are no
horses to take us the five miles to the steamer that comes here, and
you and Ronald can’t walk.”
“We can go the way we came!” sharply.
“We can’t, for I’ve tried it! We’ve no boat, and it’s no more use to
try and hail one from the other side than to sit here. There’s a rocky
point between us and the mainland; no one can see us.”
“You’re talking nonsense.” The familiar obstinacy was in Dolly’s voice.
“I’m mistress in my own house, I suppose. It’s rubbish to say I can’t
get away from it. But I don’t mean to be driven out to please Mrs.
Keith. It’s she who’s always crawling after us. She shan’t think she
can frighten me.”
It was not Mrs. Keith who was frightening Magdalen. She looked at Dolly
with veiled black eyes and lay back on the bed, a lovely, careless
figure; against the old embroidered coverlet her rusty hair seemed to
catch all the light left in the room. There was only one thing to be
done--get away from here and tell Dolly afterward. The very inaction
of the quiet face showed the utter strength in it as she thought of
something that had never entered Dolly Barnysdale’s head.
“I wouldn’t fuss over Mrs. Keith’s feelings,” she observed calmly.
“It’s deadly dull here, and some one hates us, it doesn’t matter who.
And I don’t think Ronald’s well.”
Dolly jumped up, scattering her papers and her dirty boots.
“What do you mean?” she angrily cried. “Are you trying to frighten me?
Of course I know he’s pale and has a cough, but he was always pale.”
There was something wild and untamed about her small figure as she
stood over the quiet girl on the bed.
“He wasn’t always--drowsy!” said Miss Clyde slowly. “Look at him now.”
Dolly whirled round, took a quick step and stood still. There on the
hearthrug in the middle of his toys lay Ronald--asleep! He was pale
indeed, and round his open mouth and his closed eyes were faint blue
stains.
Lady Barnysdale shook as she saw them; yet for a moment her face was
that of a woman looking at a child she saw for the first time. The next
instant she had the boy in her arms with the fierce, soft tenderness
Magdalen hated. “Do you mean----” she began in a hushed rage not like
her.
“I don’t mean anything. The boy’s ill and we’re not comfortable, so
don’t let us stay.”
“Don’t be superior,” said Dolly sharply. “You as good as said Keith
was drugging the boy, and now you try to back out of it. But we’ll go
to-morrow.” Her voice rose hysterically. “She hates me because she’s
just devoted to Stratharden, and she’s capable of anything.”
“I don’t think she has anything to do with it,” Magdalen coolly
declared. “She wouldn’t dare. But we’ll go to-morrow. I’ll be only too
glad.” There was no use in telling Dolly things till they were away
from this house.
But Dolly was no fool.
“It couldn’t be!” she said barely over her breath.
“He was kind, he----”
“We’ll see to-morrow,” Magdalen Clyde said to herself. Outwardly she
only shrugged her shoulders and turned away.
Dolly sat clutching Ronald like a woman possessed. She never touched
the dinner sent up to her--for she had no intention of letting the
boy from her sight while Mrs. Keith was in the house--and never even
thought of her unread London letter till Magdalen came back from the
meal she had made as short as possible, under Ah Lee’s hateful eyes.
The girl glanced at Dolly’s set little face, the tension of her figure.
She had been a fool to get her into a state like this, but----
“If I hadn’t waked her up to it Ronald would never have left this
house alive!” she thought, for she had not lived in London for nothing,
nor for nothing haunted the slums near Dolly’s house, while Dolly had
men to tea. “Here’s your letter,” she said in a matter-of-fact way;
“aren’t you going to read it? I’ll put Ronald to bed.”
She was half-way into the next room when a queer sound made her turn
sharply; she had no fear of waking the boy she had taken from Dolly’s
tired clasp.
“What’s the matter?” she cried, for on Lady Barnysdale’s face was the
look Dolly Arden had worn that night in Krug’s restaurant.
“It’s----” The words came stammering, incoherent. “We must get out of
this. It’s Starr-Dalton. He wants to come here.”
It seemed to Magdalen that even Starr-Dalton would be better than no
one. Had Dolly no sense? Did not she see what was plain as print?
“Well, he’s hateful,” she said slowly; “but--what does he say?”
Magdalen put out a hand as if to take the letter, but Dolly ran to the
fire and threw it into the blaze.
“What does it matter what he says?” she cried contemptuously.
“Starr-Dalton! I didn’t half read the thing.”
There was no earthly reason that it should matter, yet as she turned
away Magdalen knew Dolly was lying.