“WHY SHOULD I TRUST YOU?”
Mrs. Keith; gaunt, dusty, so shabby--and with such a look on her
face--that but for her voice Dolly would hardly have known her.
“Ye’re here. I’ve found ye!” she cried the instant the door opened.
“Bring her here that I may speak with her. No!” and she pushed away
like a leaf the door Dolly would have shut in her face. “I’ll have none
of that; the time and the need’s over. Call her here, I say, if ye’ve
sense in yer head.”
She had come in and closed the door behind her before she said anything
but that “No!” She never even glanced at the bare disorder of the place
as she sat down on one of the three chairs left.
Dolly stared at her, speechless with fright and anger. This was not the
Mrs. Keith she had fought with, this old woman whose face was working,
who wiped her hard eyes.
“Thanks be to Gude I’m in time!” the housekeeper cried suddenly. “It
was just foreordained I should see ye getting in here.”
Dolly at last found her voice.
“What do you want of me? How dare you come here?--follow me?” she
demanded. Her thoughts flew to Ronald on the sofa; if this strong old
woman had come to take him she would claw her eyes out.
“I want nothing of ye,” said Mrs. Keith; with her old distasteful
grimness she took in Dolly from head to toe. “Ye may die in the gutter
for all I care. I want the girl ye call yer sister. Have ye no wits,
woman, that ye stand staring? Cry on her to come down.”
“That ye call your sister.” Dolly clutched at the smooth wall she stood
by.
“What do you mean?” she cried.
“I mean I know she’s not yer sister and never was. Call her down, ye
daft woman. There’s no time to waste.”
“Who is she if she isn’t my sister?” If the words were defiant the
voice shook. The unexpected attack had caught Dolly Barnysdale
unprepared.
“That’s what I’ve come to see. And to save her life this night, for her
look of one that’s dead, and the chance----Let her down, ye shaking
atom; or will ye never understand!”
Dolly shook indeed. For once she saw things as they were and that this
was no trick to steal Ronald. Mrs. Keith--and God knew why--had come
here for Magdalen.
“Get her?” she almost shrieked it. “I can’t get her. She’s gone! What
do you mean about her? What have you to do with her and her life?”
“Gone? I’ll not believe it.” The thankfulness disappeared from the
gnarled old face. “Gone?”
“Go and look,” said Dolly. She went, from meaningless caution, to
Ronald, and stood by him; but she knew all the while that, for some
reason she could not comprehend, she and Ronald were no more to
Stratharden’s housekeeper than dead leaves on a tree. She had not
thought any old woman could run so frantically from room to room, could
be back at her side with such quickness; nor that human flesh could
wear so livid a fear on its face.
“What have ye done with her?” demanded Mrs. Keith and laid an iron
clutch on her shoulder. “Did ye not know from the day he saw her from
my window that it was she, not you, that was in peril of her life?”
Dolly was shrewd enough. She knew like a flash that the woman was
honest. Mad as she sounded, there might be--a bare might be, from a dim
past--reason in her wild words. From where she sat beside Ronald she
told Mrs. Keith all she knew about this day’s work and never thought of
the irony of it. If this were Stratharden’s work, and the woman on his
side, she would know it in any case; if not--all who were not against
Dolly might be with her.
“And so,” she wound up, “after she said she wouldn’t stay here because
of her dream, I went to Marlow after her, where I got her telegram from
there. And she wasn’t there. But she had been, for it was she who sent
the telegram. They said so in the office. ‘A woman with queer eyes.’”
Mrs. Keith’s eyes flashed green; but when she spoke it was as slow as
dripping water.
“She sent you no telegram,” declared Mrs. Keith and tightened the hand
she had never taken from Dolly’s shoulder. “Why would she, since she
was here not an hour ago? Come yer ways with me.”
Dolly caught up Ronald and followed her, and in the kitchen Mrs. Keith
turned on her.
“Smell!” she said. “Smell! or have ye no nose? And look here! Does a
girl drag the hairs out of her own head?”
Dolly looked at the hard wooden chair, and long, fine strands of
hair hung from its splintered back like a flame, sniffed hard at the
air--and stood like a stone. When she left on that wild-goose chase to
Marlow there had been nothing on that clean-scrubbed chair. Magdalen
had come back and gone again. The queer scent in the room must have
been something she had bought to make herself fair for the man to whom
she had gone. For, in spite of Mrs. Keith, Lovell, and only Lovell, was
to Dolly Barnysdale the meaning of this day’s work.
“I suppose she caught her hair somehow,” she said bitterly. “As for the
smell, it’s nothing but scent you buy in a shop.”
“It’s a scent ye’ll get in no shop,” the woman cut her short.
“It’s----But why am I talking to ye? Answer me this before I go. Are ye
on Stratharden’s side--ye that he told me was crazy?”
“Stratharden’s side?” she stupidly reiterated; then with sudden fury:
“His side, when I was in fear of my life from him, and you know it.”
“I did not--at the time,” she slowly asserted. “Yer life’s safe from
him now; he’s after other game.” Her face contracted with a sharp pang.
“It’s her he wants,” she cried, “her! Speak out as if she were in her
coffin and I may be able to save her yet.”
“Magdalen! From Stratharden?”
“Just from him. Does she know she’s no half-sister of yours?”
“How do you know it?” Dolly asked.
“I found it out. Ye’d no sister; your mother, that was Mrs. Deane, took
in a woman and a child. The woman’s name was Clyde and she’d a little
money. Your mother----”
“What has that to do with Stratharden?” Dolly fiercely demanded.
“Maybe nothing. I know it all, that’s all. Now tell me the woman’s real
name, for the fear of God.”
“I can’t,” replied Dolly. “Mother never knew it. Only Clyde. And
Magdalen never heard of her.”
Mrs. Keith flung out her hands.
“There must be some one who knows,” she said chokingly. “And in the
meantime she’ll die for her black eyes and her red hair. You’ll never
see her again--and I’ll go down to my grave with my work undone.”
“Stop!” said Dolly furiously. “You’re talking riddles. Who would hurt
Magdalen if her name was not Clyde ten times over?”
“Stratharden’s heathen, that she dreamed of. That scent ye smell is his
devil’s incense. Oh, my grief! and I stand talking here and know no way
to turn to look for her!”
“But he’d have no reason. It’s I that am in Stratharden’s way.”
“Ye’ll be out of it to-morrow. Do ye not guess that it’s she
Stratharden fears? Have ye no love for her that ye stand making talk?
Was there nowhere she might have gone? But I’m no better! She could go
nowhere with that scent of hell in the house.”
“Lovell,” said Dolly sharply. Mrs. Keith’s wild talk and her knowledge
of Dolly herself had frightened her till she almost prayed she was
speaking the truth. “I think she’s gone to Mr. Lovell; and I don’t know
where he lives.”
“Who’s Lovell?”
“A man. He----”
“Would I think he was a spirit?” she questioned harshly.
“Why would she go to him?”
Dolly’s misery broke out in bitterness.
“Because he’s a man!” she cried. “Because he had a dark skin and a
hard mouth, and eyes that looked you through and through, and a way of
moving like a tiger-cat, soft and quick.”
“Lovell, ye call him.” Mrs. Keith stood motionless. “A man that would
throw back his head and look at you? That spoke soft and clean?”
Dolly nodded sullenly.
“Then may the Lord have mercy on her,” exclaimed Mrs. Keith. “Woman,
that’s no Lovell, but Buff Ogilvie, Stratharden’s son, for I saw them
together. They’ve trapped her, and ’twas me did it. Me!” Her voice rang
harsh, anguished; she turned to run from the house.
Dolly, slim, soft Dolly, sprang at her like a cat. When Magdalen had
hated that tigerish love of Dolly’s for Ronald, she had not guessed it
would wake like this for her.
“You’ll not go till I know what you’re driving at.” She shook like a
reed the woman she had feared. “Why would they trap her? Why do you
talk nonsense about Ah Lee having been in a locked-up house like this?
What has she to do with Stratharden?”
Mrs. Keith looked at her and was her old stony self.
“I’ll not tell you,” said she, “till I find her. Why would I trust you
any more than him, a light woman and a liar?” She shook Dolly’s hands
off like water, and the heavy sound of her old feet came back as she
ran, with trembling knees, down the stairs.