Chapter XV: Dolly Sees Daylight

“What next?” said the toneless voice from the bed. “What next?”

The girl who sat by the fire started. That ceaseless question of all last night had been silent for the last four hours; she had thought that when Dolly had slept she would wake quite sensible.

“There’s no next,” Magdalen patiently answered just as if it were not for the twentieth time. “I rowed and rowed. Daylight finally dawned and we were close to a rocky shore. When we got out I pushed the boat out into the river and we walked. We came to a town and a station, and that’s all. You had plenty of money.”

“I know all that, you idiot!” The unexpected retort was hoarse, but unmistakably to the point. “I mean what are we going to do next? I feel awfully ill. I must have taken a chill.”

“Chill!” said Magdalen. She got up and went over to the bed. “I thought you’d got your death. You couldn’t hold your head up when we got to Euston. I had to come here and send for a doctor, and nothing he gave you would keep you quiet.”

“It was that powder he gave me,” said Dolly crossly. “Those things don’t quiet me; they only make me silly. I remember all that, and your lugging me into the Euston Hotel, and the doctor, and the awful pain in my head. Did I talk?”

“You kept saying ‘What next?’ all the time. I thought you were beginning it again,” looking at the drawn face. “Have some tea, Dolly; it’s just after lunch.”

“No. I feel sick. Oh, how sore I am! It was sitting in those wet clothes. But I kept Ronald dry,” with a laugh that hurt her.

“Dry as a bone! And I was rowing; I didn’t get chilled. I forgot how easily you took cold, and you would go straight to the train, wet clothes and all.”

“I’d had enough of Scotland,” she admitted with a shudder. “Magdalen, you didn’t write our names here--our own names, I mean?” Dolly questioned to sudden panic.

“I wrote ‘Mrs. Morton, child and maid,’ just as badly as I could. I don’t know why I did it; for it’s we who have the whip-hand now,” Magdalen musingly replied.

“Whip-hand?” Dolly sat up rather dizzily.

“Oh! Stratharden, you mean?” she said. Then, as her head ceased to swim, she continued, “I don’t know but I’m glad you didn’t write down Lady Barnysdale; it would have made me nervous; the other gives us time to think. Magdalen, I will have tea, if it’s there. I’m all right now, except that I ache all over.”

She drank the tea and lay quiet, revolving a thousand things in her mind. Some were good and some bad, but to her worn-out nerves the bad predominated. She tossed restlessly in the wide bed. The good thing was that Ronald was safe and well; her eyes fairly devoured him where he played on the floor. The bad things, or one of them, was that her cleverness seemed to have deserted her. She could not think.

“Magdalen,” she said sharply, “talk! Have you heard anything? Countesses can’t get drowned and have nothing said about it.”

“Oh, there’s been something said about it,” Magdalen observed without much spirit. “Look here.”

She brought the evening paper to the bedside and pointed to a paragraph among the telegraphic despatches.

“Terrible accident at Ardmore. Death of Lady Barnysdale and her son.”

“Death!” cried Dolly. “Then he must have been sure!”

“Read this.” Magdalen turned over to “Notes of the News,” and Dolly Barnysdale looked dull-eyed on her own name.

“The sad death of Lady Barnysdale and her young son in a carriage
accident will be a lesson to those ladies who allow half-trained
stable-boys to drive them at night. The unfortunate countess,
accompanied by her sister and her little boy, was driving from
Ardmore Castle to Ardmore Pier, but on her way must have discovered
that she had mistaken the hour of the daily ferry-boat’s arrival
there, and given orders to the lad who was driving her to go to a
nearer pier long since disused by the ferry, but where, by taking a
rowboat always kept there, she might cross the Firth of Clyde and
still be in time to catch the night-train for London. On the steep
descent to the water the horses bolted, and as they were completely
unmanageable by the poor boy on the box, took the carriage over the
pier-end into the Clyde. So far neither the carriage nor its contents
have been found, as there is a strong current in that part of the
frith. One of the drowned horses was washed ashore at Pirn. Lord
Stratharden, who was staying at Ardmore Castle, is greatly shocked
and distressed at the death of his sister-in-law, of whom it will be
remembered he was a firm friend under difficult circumstances. The
late Lady Barnysdale had been living at Ardmore in great seclusion
and quite unknown in the neighborhood. The tragic event of course
returns the succession to its original channel.”

“Does it?” said Dolly. She dropped the paper furiously. “I’ll show him whether I’m dead or not! I’ll----” She stopped with the sentence unfinished.

The rage went from her face as if it had been wiped off. To be dead would be to be rid of Starr-Dalton. It was curious how an unimportant thing like getting rid of a distasteful lover could weigh against decent punishment of or retaliation against a man who had done his best to murder her; but it did.

More than all the real terrors that had surrounded her at Ardmore Castle could do, that letter which she had said was unimportant, that was assuredly affectionate--as Mr. Starr-Dalton understood affection--had shaken Dolly Barnysdale’s nerve and paralyzed her wits.

Her brain seemed to clear in a flash. In spite of her feverish cold, her aching bones, it was the old Dolly who suddenly laughed where she sat huddled in the bedclothes. She could be a match for them both now--for Stratharden and his murderous plots, and Starr-Dalton and his hateful love-letters.

“I know now,” she said slowly, “what I’ll do. I suppose you’re all ready for lawyers and detectives and exposure.”

“What else?” said Magdalen. “It’s all plain enough. James and Mrs. Keith were told that you were crazy, and that man who turned us back was just an attendant from an asylum. The screws were out of your door-locks, so that you could be overlooked at night, and the reason we never felt alone in the garden was that we never were alone. That gamekeeper man was always following us.”

“How do you know for certain?”

“Because I’m not a fool. I know. And the only man who was in Stratharden’s confidence was Ah Lee. It was he who drugged Ronald’s milk, for I saw him do it! I was in one of those deep windows in the corridor outside of our sitting-room door, just at tea-time that day--I found out about the postboy. I was just standing there thinking, and along came James with a tea-tray and set it down on the hall table. I thought it was ours, and I was hungry, so I went to see what was on it, but it was only Ronald’s food.

“I went back to the window again to get my hat, which I’d left there, and I heard some one walking so softly that I walked softly, too. I looked out in the hall and there was Ah Lee with his back to me, putting something out of a bottle into the milk-jug. He heard James coming with the other tray before I did, and he slipped off before I could pounce on him--not toward the pantry, but up-stairs. By the time I got to the table where the milk was James was behind me with our tray. I should think these things were enough to make some fuss about! And as for the carriage--I defy them to make it out an accident. I saw Ah Lee as plainly as I see you, and you know as well as I do that it was no old pier you meant to drive to, and that Stratharden lied to you about the boat. Why on earth shouldn’t I be ready to help you show him up?”

“Because,” said Dolly, and she laughed, “I don’t mean to.”

“Are you going to stay dead?” Magdalen contemptuously asked, “because you’re afraid of a man?”

Dolly’s face reddened angrily.

“What man?” she cried. “I’m not afraid of any man.

“Do you think, after all I did to be a countess, and have money, and do Ronald justice, I’m going to sit by and lose it all?”

“You’d be a fool if you did,” observed Miss Clyde, looking at Dolly with half-closed eyes that were very black, and with uncombed hair and flushed face. “But you hadn’t to do so much. Only put on a black gown and pretend a little.”

“Pretend!” Was it fancy that Dolly’s little figure grew suddenly rigid under the bedclothes?

She spoke out suddenly, just as she had done long ago in the little pink drawing-room.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “If you think it was easy to go and tell all these things about myself it wasn’t. Do you mean you think I made them up?”

“No, for I know you couldn’t. Don’t go off at a tangent, Dolly; say what you mean to do.”

Dolly’s heart knocked against her ribs like a woman who has seen a danger pass by.

“I’m tired,” she said, and there were tears in her eyes. “If it weren’t for Ronald I’d stay dead. I----You don’t know how hard it’s all been!”

Magdalen put a hand on the frail ones that had suddenly covered Dolly’s eyes. For the first time she saw what nervous hands Dolly had, what nervous, pointed nails. No hands for a woman who must fight her own battles. The girl looked at her own hand that was so white and hard, and a sudden compassion swept over her. It was true indeed that she must deal gently with Dolly. Of late she had been impatient and scornful enough with her. “Whatever you want I’ll do, Doll,” she said softly. It was Dolly’s eyes and not hers that were hard as she let her hands drop from under Magdalen’s.

“Look here,” she said, “if I were not the only soul on earth Ronald has to trust to I’d----” She pulled herself up sharply. “I suppose you’re saying to yourself that you’re not afraid of Stratharden?”

“Why should I be? We’ve the whip-hand.”

“That’s just the reason. We know too much. And I don’t think,” Dolly continued slowly, “that we’d be able to prove anything! I know that if Barnysdale had done what Stratharden has”--groping in the past she so seldom spoke of--“he would have done it too well to be found out. He’s cast one doubt on my sanity; I think he’d only cast a great many more--and perhaps get appointed as Ronald’s guardian. We’ve got to be cleverer than that. We want to be alive and publish we’re alive; I must be able to draw my money and educate Ronald; and yet not let Stratharden know where we are--or anyone else,” she added musingly. “I’ve no desire to have any of my dear old friends hanging round me and cadging for money.”

“How can we do all that?”

Magdalen, sitting on the bed, was curiously graceful, and somehow every line of her was curiously hard. Dolly’s words were true enough; why did her stepsister have the old distrustful thought that she was not saying all she meant?--there was a hidden mainspring to it all.

“Easily,” said Dolly, yet she was trembling. “Only I’ve got to do it now. Get me my clothes!”

“You can’t get up!”

“I can; and I would if it killed me! We’ve no time to lose. I’ll get dressed, you pay the bill here, and we’ll go into the station and take a cab as if we’d just come from the train.”

“A cab! Where to? Don’t be a fool, Doll; you might get pneumonia.”

“I’ll get brain fever if I lie here and think,” Dolly sharply responded. “I’m going straight to Mr. Barrow. It’s madness to be here under a made-up name.”

“But you said----”

“I know! I hadn’t got my wits back.”

“You weren’t going to expose Stratharden,” Magdalen finished as if Dolly had not spoken.

“Neither I am,” said Dolly with a sudden laugh, and if her hands were frail and nervous as she hurried into her clothes they were also the insincere, unscrupulous hands of a woman who could outwit most men. “I’m going to know nothing, think nothing, but that a stupid stable-boy took us to the wrong pier and we got out of the carriage just before something startled the horses and they bolted. You and I were terrified; started of course for Ardmore to get help; lost our way; found a boat, and could not row back to the castle against the stream. After which we drifted ashore and lost the train to London, where we’ve just arrived and seen the papers. Ronald was ailing and I have been so terrified that I never even remembered till I saw the account in the _Star_ that Stratharden must be thinking us drowned. Mr. Barrow will telegraph to my anxious brother-in-law at once, and I--with my nerves horribly shaken by the whole thing, and especially by seeing my own death notice--leave to-night for Paris. It will be too late to go to the bank, so Barrow will cash a good, solid check for me--and there you are!”

“Paris!” cried Magdalen blankly. “That we don’t know at all, and Stratharden probably knows like a book. If you want to keep out of his way----”

Dolly’s laugh stopped her.

“We won’t go there! Exactly. We’re going to stay here in London. It’s big enough,” recklessly. “I was a fool ever to leave it. Help me, Magdalen--I feel so dizzy and queer.”

But the girl made no motion toward handing her the cloak she held.

“Doll, don’t do it!” she gravely begged. “I don’t like the look of it. Better tell the truth a hundred times; there’s no sense in acting a silly lie about Paris, or in pretending that you saw nothing queer at Ardmore. Speak out.”

Dolly dragged the cloak from her.

“I won’t!” she said. “Never mind hunting for reasons. I’m ill, for one, and I want to go to bed and be ill. I don’t want to have anything to do with lawyers and prosecutions and Stratharden.” She fastened her cloak and turned, with her rain-spoiled sailor hat in her hand. “All I want,” she cried with a reckless passion in her face, pointing with the crooked, warped hat to Ronald, “is to keep him safe till he’s twenty-one; to have enough to eat and drink and wear; and to rest. I’m tired; I’ve borne all I can. I’m not fit to fight--openly! You must let me manage my life in my own way.” Tired and ill Dolly had announced her intentions. The girl who looked at her saw she was more than either. An hour ago she had looked driven, hunted, desperate; now there was a triumph in her eyes as if from a dark prison she saw daylight and liberty.

There was reason enough for triumph; it is not everyone who escapes scotfree from being murdered. But it was not that which had lighted Dolly’s eyes and got her out of her bed, regardless of the bad cold that at any other time would have made her send for two doctors and declare she was dying.

“Don’t stand like a stuck pig, my good child,” she cried, “unless you want Stratharden to get to London before we’ve vanished. I know what you’re thinking; but Ronald’s my child, and the whole show’s my business. And I know,” she declared with confidence, “that I’m doing the best thing I can. Who would listen to a woman like me if I said that in a Christian country I’d been shut up by my own brother-in-law, and only escaped with my life through luck--and you?” with a moment’s softening.

Who, indeed?

“After all,” Magdalen said to herself, “Dolly’s right. It’s her business.”

Yet it was with a heavy heart that she paid the bill and followed Dolly into the station and the four-wheeler. It was not by lies and hiding they would escape from Stratharden, but----

A cold suspicion gripped her and a senseless one that. She looked at Dolly’s feverish little face and held her tongue.