STRATHARDEN “SEES THEM OFF.”
“Well?”
But it was cold rage, not cold fright, that had kept Magdalen from even
hearing a foot on the floor till Dolly’s hand was on her shoulder.
“Well?” Magdalen said, and there was only curiosity in her voice. “How
did you get on? What did he say?”
Dolly sat down on the rug by Ronald and snatched him to her.
“Say?” she cried. “It was I that said! We’re to go to-night--to London.
The horses came this morning anyhow. Magdalen,” with a sudden doubt,
“I don’t know what to think about him. Before I could ask him when he
arrived he said he came late last night and feared to disturb me.”
Late--at dinner-time? But she did not say it.
“Then you didn’t let out that I saw him?”
“No,” she responded not too comfortably. She had been, as she said, a
failure on the stage; she knew her surprise at seeing Stratharden had
been acting of the same class.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing, except what I said in my letters. I didn’t think it would
do to say we’d tried to get away and couldn’t. He said it was my
letter that brought him; he was anxious to see for himself that I was
comfortable.”
“What did you say?”
“That we weren’t, and I didn’t think Ronald’s food agreed with him
here.”
Magdalen’s face grew perfectly expressionless. Truly, Dolly must have
used up all her wits in London! She had said the very last thing she
should have let out she knew. If she was going to tell everything the
less she knew the better; if it once dawned on her that she was here in
the character of a madwoman she would do her best to behave like one.
“Why aren’t we going till to-night?” Magdalen asked. “It seems to me
the ferry-boat comes here at three in the day.”
“It did, but it’s changed. It comes at eight now.”
“Oh!” said the girl carelessly. If that were true it made Stratharden a
liar when he said he came last night. Nothing could have got him over
five miles and into a smoking-jacket by seven minutes past eight. But
he must be a poor sort of villain to give in so easily and let them go.
She felt strangely uneasy for a person whose trouble would be over in
eight hours; it did not seem possible that a man who had gone to such
pains to keep them here should let them go at the bare asking. She was
so sure that all the queer things in Ardmore Castle were Stratharden’s
work that she would not trust herself to see him; as for going to
luncheon with him she would as soon have dined with the devil.
When Dolly would have taken Ronald to see him she called her a fool to
her face. It might be their last day under Stratharden’s auspices, but,
all the more, she would not let the child out of her own keeping for
five minutes.
“You can go on saying he’s not well, since you’ve already admitted it,”
she remarked obdurately, “and I’m packing.”
But if Stratharden kept his word, and she packed to any purpose, she
knew she would be pleasurably astounded.
To her utter amazement he did.
At seven Dolly flew up-stairs.
“The carriage is here!” she cried. “Stratharden has gone on to the
ferry to see us on board.”
“Is he coming, too?”
“No. He’ll come back in the carriage and stay here a day or two. Then
he’s going to Russia. Come on, and for Heaven’s sake be civil when he
meets us at the boat, no matter what you think.”
“I don’t know what to think,” she replied in perplexity, for the actual
carriage at the door had knocked all her theories to bits. As for
telling Mrs. Keith she was going--with an uneasy remembrance of the
woman’s words--for all she knew, that might stop them. The housekeeper
might be innocent about Ronald, but what she said about a madhouse had
fitted in too well with the face of the man who had turned them back
yesterday.
“My going away might be very different to my taking Dolly!” Magdalen
thought swiftly, and with Ronald in her arms followed Dolly down-stairs.
It was odd how slowly her heart beat. It should have been thumping with
joy that she was turning her back on this hateful house forever, and
need never again think of Ah Lee and her dream of him, need only see
his hateful face this once more as she passed by him to the carriage.
She looked over Dolly’s shoulder and saw she was spared even one more
sight of the man. There was no one in the hall but James, holding the
front door wide. And outside, in the seven-o’clock darkness, was a
closed carriage and a pair of strong young horses pawing the gravel. At
the blessed sight the girl’s black eyes were suddenly alive in her pale
face.
She looked at the horses like friends; at her old acquaintance, the
red-headed boy, who sat alone on the box; followed Dolly into the
carriage with a laugh of pure gaiety, and fell back into her seat as
James shut the carriage door behind her with a bang that made the
horses start nearly out of their skins.
They were off, after all her doubts! Ardmore and its mysteries were
behind them; her dream and the Chinaman off her mind forever.
“I’d like to shout hurrah,” she cried. “Oh! Dolly, wouldn’t you?”
“We’re going awfully fast,” said Dolly irrelevantly. “Is it down-hill?”
Magdalen looked out of the window.
There was nothing to see but bare hills, dark against the watery
night-sky.
“The horses are fresh,” she returned comfortably. “It’s all right.” She
wished she were as sure about the boat; it was queer how quickly her
exultation left her.
In a little while Magdalen put her head out of the window again and
caught her breath with surprise. Surely they had never come five miles.
For before her was the Firth of Clyde; and black against its dark water
there lay a long pier, like a pointing finger. They were at the ferry.
The horses dropped into a walk half-way out on the ramshackle pier,
stopped and stood uneasily. There was no Stratharden, no ferry-boat; no
sign that anyone ever came to the desolate place.
The wind whined from the hills once and again; the tide sucked at the
shaky wharf; overhead it was spitting rain. To a London girl’s eyes the
pier was horribly narrow. If anything frightened the horses there would
be no room to turn.
“Do you see Stratharden?” asked Dolly quickly.
“No. He’s not here, Dolly; there’s no ferry-boat here either!”
Dolly shut her teeth.
“I won’t go back if I wait till daylight,” she said. “Do you think
Stratharden’s done it on purpose and there won’t be any boat? Can’t you
see him?”
“Wait,” said Magdalen, peering into the darkness.
In the deadly quiet she could have heard the lightest footstep on
the pier, as she heard her own heart and the spattering rain on the
carriage. Wherever Lord Stratharden was he was not here.
She got out noiselessly and stood, a darker shadow in the dark. The
carriage door swung under her hand as the horses shifted restlessly in
the chilly wind, the boy on the box----
“Get out!” said Magdalen suddenly, thrusting her head into the dim
carriage. “Get out! Don’t speak!”