Chapter X: Between Two Evils

For once the sun shone into those southern rooms next morning when Lady Barnysdale woke, and for an instant it cheered her. Rain would have meant another day in this dull, eery house, where some one hated her, where at any moment Starr-Dalton might arrive with his two days’ worn collars and his coarse smile.

She got up and dressed with feverish haste, yet when she looked at Ronald she felt as if the worst fear of all had vanished. He looked a different child after his night’s rest. Magdalen had frightened her for nothing; the thing was too monstrous; no one, even in this house, would harm a little child.

Magdalen read her face like a book; and the relief on it made her shrug her shoulders. She had not told Dolly even half of the queer things she had seen yesterday afternoon; in consequence “everything was lovely and the goose hung high” this morning to that lady. But tell she would not till the last pinch.

“Well!” she said, “are we going to-day, or not? Because I want to know what boots to put on.”

Dolly started without seeing.

To go meant a five-mile walk to a doubtful ferry; Ronald was himself again; there was no need--but suddenly she saw Starr-Dalton’s envelope that she had forgotten to burn.

“Go! Of course we’re going!” she said sharply; for nothing on earth would make her stay where that man could find her. “But I’m sure you’re wrong about Ronald. Look at him.”

“I dare say,” responded Magdalen carelessly enough. Her heart gave a bound at the thought that Dolly was absolutely moved to do something; saw that she had no desire to be friendly with Starr-Dalton, though, if she had not been so full of other things, that might have seemed the worst sign of all.

“Well, after breakfast then!” she said cheerfully.

After all it only took a little resolution to cut most coils, and this one was disappearing like an ugly fog. All they had to do was to walk out of Ardmore Castle, and there would be no more remembrance of queer dreams, nor terrors of servants.

It was not at breakfast or lunch that Magdalen had any fears for Ronald; it was his milk at night, his cups of soup during the day. But after to-day there would be no more of that.

Miss Clyde’s thought turned gaily to that big, safe London she had once said she hated; to a little house somewhere, with nice women servants; to--and the blood flashed into her pale face and sank again--the chance sight of a calm, self-possessed face and clear eyes that were like no others.

“I’m a fool; he’s forgotten me by this time,” she thought scornfully, and set herself to the business in hand.

There was to be no mention of their purpose, even to Ronald. They would just stroll out in the garden as usual, and once out of sight of the castle windows make for the highroad leading those five long miles to the fishing village, by a short cut over the hills. Those long prowls of hers had been useful, for all Dolly’s growls at them.

Magdalen turned where she stood in the garden, waiting for Dolly--and bit her lip with helpless annoyance at a very small thing.

Lady Barnysdale stood at her elbow with Ronald, and instead of her short country skirt and her sailor hat, was attired from head to foot in her best and most becoming widow’s weeds.

“You might as well have given out your intentions,” Magdalen dryly observed. “For Heaven’s sake, Dolly, what possessed you to dress like that?”

“I’m not going to London looking like a sweep!” she smartly replied. “Besides I want my veil; we might meet Starr-Dalton.”

“As if it mattered!” Magdalen contemptuously replied, but Dolly seemed deaf.

“Come on,” she said, picking up her long skirt. “You needn’t think I’m going back to change; it’s no use glaring at me.”

It was certainly no use to stand there, with Dolly’s purpose advertised in her town clothes; but all the girl’s gaiety was gone as she took Ronald’s hand silently and led the way hastily into a screen of shrubs. Yet no one could have been spying on them so early in the morning, for there was assuredly not a soul about the devious paths that led out on the wide moor they must cross to get to the highroad. It was steep, but it cut off two miles; and even Dolly never grumbled as she toiled along, her elegant train cast over her arm. Magdalen with Ronald on her back panted a little as she led the way. To carry even a light child piggy-back is harder work than one knows.

“There!” she cried, stopping on the brow of the hill and pointing down. “There’s the road and now it’s only a mile to the store. We must keep to this little track that goes through that cluster of firs. It’s frightfully swampy on each side.”

Success and exertion had painted Magdalen’s cheeks a pale-rose; she was a sight to make an old man young as she stood with the child on her back, her gorgeous hair catching the sun and her deep eyes blacker than ever.

Dolly, exhausted and bedraggled with holding up her finery, was another story. Her smart widow’s bonnet was over on one side and her whole appearance worthy of bedlam, between mud and bushes.

“I think we’ve made frightful fools of ourselves,” she said crossly as they neared the bleak grove of stunted firs. “I wish to goodness I’d just said I was going and made James get a boat. Of course he would have done so. It was just your nonsense that he wouldn’t; like you thinking that stuff about Ronald.”

“Perhaps it was,” returned Magdalen dryly.

She was staring at the path where it entered the firs with a curious sense of danger. A cloud swept over the sun and made her shiver; from the time she was a tiny child she had always hated stray clouds to obscure the sun. She shifted Ronald to her shoulders and let Dolly pass her.

As she was moving on a shriek of rage made her spring forward wildly.

Dolly had disappeared in the firs and her angry voice came back on the wind. Who was she talking to?

Magdalen clutched Ronald’s thin, black legs and tore down the hill.

Well inside the cluster of firs stood Dolly with her back to her; in front of her, completely blocking up the narrow path between the thick trees, stood a gamekeeper in worn velveteen; a burly, respectable person with a smooth-shaven face, remarkably pale for a person who spent his life out of doors. And Dolly was storming at him like a fury.

“Pass? Why shouldn’t I pass?” she cried, and her rakish bonnet was ludicrous, her held-up skirts filthy. “How dare you stop me on my own place? I’m Lady Barnysdale.”

“That may be,” returned the gamekeeper, with a grin, and Magdalen saw he was not Scotch, “but you don’t pass here.”

“What’s all this?” said she from behind, and the man’s face changed a little as he saw her, but he never budged.

“You can’t go through here, and that’s all about it,” he said, taking no notice of Dolly’s furious tongue.

“Are you mad?” So taken aback was Magdalen that she was scarcely angry.

The man burst out laughing.

“No, not I,” he coolly returned. “But this is no place for walks and you’d better go back.”

“Nonsense!” Magdalen’s temper had come to her at that laugh. “Lady Barnysdale and I are going to the village. Get out of the way at once.”

“Then you’ll not go this way,” with impudent admiration of the tall girl’s black eyes.

“I suppose you’re Lady Barnysdale’s servant,” said Magdalen icily. “Do you mean to disobey her orders?”

“Just that,” he said rudely. “Get back now the both of you. My orders are that no one’s to go to the village--even if it were the queen!”

There was something in his face that made Dolly shrink. She sprang to Magdalen’s side.

“Oh,” she said in a whisper, “who is he? I don’t believe he’s a servant. I’m afraid of him. Come away.”

Magdalen looked the man up and down. If he had been respectful she could have dealt with him; as it was she suddenly remembered that they were two women on a lonely hillside, and their way was obstructed by a burly blackguard.

As she thought it he stretched a hand to clap her on the shoulder, half threatening, all insolent. And for a second her black eyes staggered even him.

“You’re lying, and you know it,” she said composedly. “There’s no excuse for your not letting us pass. But if you won’t get out of our way we can get out of yours. Come, Dolly!” and she had Dolly turned and safe in front of her before she took her eyes from that evil face.

Magdalen’s knees were shaking as she followed, leaving the man laughing. She tried to believe he was a poacher and that to pass him would mean insult, perhaps robbery--and Dolly had fifty pounds in her pocket. But she knew quite well that, whoever he was, he was all of a piece with every other thing in Ardmore Castle.

“Come,” she said bravely and not casting a glance behind her. “We’ll have to go back and take to the highroad, where we came out of the garden. We won’t be stopped by a tramp.”

Dolly gave her no answer, but a feverish cry to hurry. The one cloud had stretched all over the sky and rain was spitting in their faces. By the time they got back to their starting-point all three were drenched, Dolly’s crape a reeking, flabby mass.

White as death, her breath coming hardly, she turned on Magdalen.

“We must go home. It would kill Ronald to do anything else,” she said, and if her voice was hoarse it was not cowed. “Anyhow it seems to me we’d have no better luck on the highroad. That man was no accident; but one more in my little score against Mrs. Keith.”

“I don’t know,” said Magdalen dully. “Get on, Doll; we can’t stand here in the rain.”

She looked sharply at James as he met them in the hall, with a face of commiserating wonder at their plight.

“Oh, my lady!” he said quite naturally, “I had no idea you were out till you did not come to luncheon. I was just going to look for you with umbrellas.”

“It would have been quite useless,” said Dolly quietly. “Please send Sophy up with hot tea at once. It’s too late for lunch.”

At the man’s concerned look as he hurried away Magdalen began to wonder if the balance of her mind were right, and she was not imagining stuff because of that coincidence of her own dream about a Chinaman. That man on the hill might have been a poacher; but if there were any truth in what she really thought of him it lay deeper than any old woman’s hatred for Dolly. No housekeeper, sour as she might be, would dare to play a trick like that. And it was all very well to sneer at herself for a superstitious fool, but it was after Stratharden’s men came, and not before, that some one had been always haunting their footsteps; let alone that thing of yesterday, of which she had not told Dolly.

With a shiver that was only half weariness she busied herself in getting off Ronald’s wet clothes. When the tea came--with a separate jug of milk for Ronald--she quickly gave him cream and hot water instead.

In exhausted silence Dolly lay back and watched her. They were both thinking the same thing, with a different theory behind it; but before Ronald, who loved Ah Lee, Magdalen dared not let Dolly speak of it.

At Ronald’s bedtime the two looked at each other. There were no keys to the nursery door, and during dinner they must leave the child alone. It was in Magdalen’s room that they left him, sound asleep and locked in.

With the keys in her pocket Dolly talked at dinner with her old, reckless gaiety. Neither James nor Ah Lee should be able to report to Mrs. Keith that her ladyship had met with a reverse in her morning walk.

But Ah Lee, after the soup, disappeared; and James was unaccountably lazy in bringing the pudding.

“That brute Keith!” exclaimed Dolly angrily. “If I wasn’t still hungry I wouldn’t wait. Oh, Magdalen, can’t you think of something?” bursting out with what she had had on her mind all dinner-time. “Some plan of getting away, for after to-day----Oh! I’m frightened! The place is just our jail.”

“I know,” said Magdalen softly. “I----” She gazed at her own reflection in the glass above the high mantel-shelf as she tried to think what was the best thing to do. If she were right, and not Dolly, it looked as if they must stay here till some one had had his way with Ronald.

As she stared at her own pale reflection a quick astonishment came into her eyes; why she shaded them with her hand she best knew, and certainly her answer was a queer one--to the miserable appeal that had been in Dolly’s eyes.

“I dare say it’s very nice in summer,” and the slow, irrelevant words were utterly indifferent. “Don’t let’s wait for pudding, Dolly. I’m tired.”

Magdalen got up and stood waiting, her eyes still on the glass. Dolly stared at her. Too amazed to speak she pushed back her chair and followed Magdalen out.

“What’s the matter with you?” she began crossly when they were in her room. She unlocked the door leading into Magdalen’s, and was turning back to her own fire when she saw her stepsister’s face.

“Come here in my room,” said the girl very softly, passing her like a noiseless wind and drawing the bolt across the door.

“What is it?” Dolly whispered. “For Heaven’s sake, what makes you look like that?”

Magdalen sat down and looked her straight in the face.

“Doll,” she said soberly, “who is the man?”

“Man!” Lady Barnysdale cried. “Do you mean the one we met this morning? How on earth should I know?”

“No! The man who’s living in this house.”

“Do you mean a servant?” Dolly amazedly asked.

“No!” roughly. “A gentleman.”

“A gentleman! You’re mad,” said Dolly. Surely she had enough to worry her without being told things like this. “There can’t be anyone in the house but us.”

A queer thought came over Magdalen.

“Dolly,” she said slowly, “you really have no idea where Lord Stratharden is?”

“If I had I wouldn’t be here. What in the world are you driving at?”

“Listen!” and there was something in the hushed voice that made Dolly quiet. “Is your brother-in-law dark-haired, with light eyes sunk in wrinkles? Has he a way of smiling--that isn’t smiling--when he’s interested? And eyebrows like”--she signed with her fingers over her own level ones--“crooked, you know, and very finely marked?”

“You never saw him!” said Dolly, recoiling as from a too life-like portrait. “You said so.”

“I never did--till to-night.”

“To-night! How could you? He’s away abroad,” with scornful eyes on the girl who sat between her and the light, uncanny in her black and whiteness. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s here,” said Magdalen grimly. “I saw him to-night in this house.”