Chapter XIX: “good Lord, Deliver Us!”

For a woman come to London on Lord Stratharden’s unselfish business, Mrs. Keith behaved peculiarly, and according to no one’s lights but her own.

She took a lodging opposite the Court Street branch of the London and Provincial Bank, certainly, but she was seldom in it, and never once looked out of the window. There was plenty of time for that, though if Stratharden had been in England she might not have thought so. But his lordship was tightly and financially tied up at Ostend, and likely to be so till kingdom come. Mrs. Keith did not take him into her calculations at all.

She went her way to Mr. Barrow’s office at a time when he was certain not to be there--and interviewed his head clerk, a Scotchman and an old friend. The two--who were reticent enough to the outside world--unbent in cheerful conversation; Mr. Fleming had not spent so pleasant an hour for many a day. But when Mrs. Keith left the office, a respectable, unnoticed old person in decent black, her face changed.

“The devil’s in playhouses,” said she, “but I doubt I’m over old to be affected,” and she stopped an omnibus. Two addresses had Mr. Fleming let fall in the joy of conversing in broad Scotch; Mrs. Keith, who “knew London,” proceeded to both of them by bus. It took some time, but it was her own money she was spending; and time was more plenty than it was.

When she got home to her lodgings she was worn out. She sat over her tea as if she could not rouse herself.

It was queer; but she was only disappointed that it was not queerer.

“I’ve spent ninepence on gadding,” she said to herself, bringing her hard fist down on the table, “and all I’ve found out is that the daft, flighty body Barnysdale married never had any sister. The manager man, with his smirks, was sure about that. ‘Miss Dorothy Deane,’” with a mincing imitation like anything on earth but her model, “‘was quite alone in the world. He remembered her perfectly, since she had never been employed anywhere but at his theater. He had been delighted to hear she had done so well for herself. Of course, when she married no one had any idea that she had married an earl. She was a pretty little thing, with her fair hair, and was very popular at the theater. It had always been a marvel to him that she did not return to the stage. That was a lucky escape she had had, by the way, from that terrible carriage accident.’”

Sentence by sentence Mrs. Keith went over all the information she had gained, and found it wanting.

“It’s not Dorothy Deane,” and she sniffed contemptuously, “that I’m wanting. It’s a woman named Duplessis. You can’t climb a tree from the top. I’ll begin at the weary old root again. Her name was Ninon Duplessis, and she’s been dead fifteen years. I’ll write it down. I’m not good at saying it the way he did.”

She finished her tea deliberately, and got out ink and paper. When she was done, it was a curious document her knotted old fingers had written. She blotted the last wet lines of it on clean white blotting paper, and put it in her petticoat pocket.

“That’ll make it clear to him,” said she contentedly, “when it’s time to go to the prying man. But that’s not yet. First, I’ll put my finger--and that’s not Stratharden’s--on my Lady Barnysdale!” And at the look of her Dolly might have shaken in her shoes. There was no pity for her or Ronald in Mrs. Keith.

During the next day or two she went about in queer places, but she might as well have stayed at home. She came on nothing, met the same old stumbling-blocks that had tripped her fifteen years ago. When the week was out it might have edified Lord Stratharden to see the faithful Keith seated all day long at her second-floor window, even if he were not pleased that her spectacles raked the street in vain.

“I’ll take the air,” she thought one fine morning, being cramped to death from the inactive life. “I’ll be back before the bank opens,” and it was odd that she had not cared when first she came to London how many times Lady Barnysdale might have got money without her knowledge, while now she watched for her as if life and death depended on it. But at a quarter to nine in the morning the most zealous watch would be wasted. Mrs. Keith put on her unornamental bonnet and went out.

When, on the stroke of ten, she returned, she stood aghast and indignant on her threshold. A man sat by the table, perfectly at home, for his strong cigar made even Keith cough.

“Get out of my room, ye----” she began furiously, when he turned his face to her. Strong old woman as she was, she leaned against the door-post.

“Stratharden!” she cried, and would sooner have seen the devil. “How came ye here?”

“To see how you’re getting on”--to her startled senses his voice was ominously smooth--“and to help you. Come in, my good soul, and shut the door! This isn’t Ardmore Castle.”

If she had been staggered she recovered herself finely.

“Ye terrified me,” said she grimly. “Have ye no sense better than to come where they might jail ye for debt?” and she shut the door before she said it.

“Might have--not might,” corrected his lordship. “I’m a free man, Keith; I needn’t trouble you any longer. My debts are paid, at least enough to whitewash me.”

“Then there’s fools in the world,” was the woman’s calm comment.

“Thank Heaven!”

“It was not them that lent the money I was meaning,” she responded significantly, but the next minute she wished with late wisdom that she had held her tongue. There was something she did not like in her visitor’s manners; she looked at him angrily, and spoke to cover her foolish fling at him, in a sudden, dreadful uneasiness that he might know what it meant.

“Think of it, Stratharden!” she cried. “Can ye not see ye’ll be in bondage to her for that paying of yer debts? And that money--I’d have seen ye in jail before ye’d borrowed it!”

“You’re a Presbyterian, my faithful Keith,” returned the man lazily. “And now, having borrowed, and being out of jail, I’ll let you go home, and I’ll find out my poor little sister-in-law by myself. I’m afraid you’re a poor detective; but you think it underhand work I dare say.”

Mrs. Keith’s hand was on her pocket; but the folded paper was there. She executed a nimble flank movement and established herself fair and square in the window.

“If you mean I’ve been neglecting my orders,” she said sturdily, “I haven’t. There’s been no Lady Barnysdale at that bank yet. Would ye have me sit here at five in the morning? I was out, but ye saw me come back ere they opened their doors.”

He could not see that she was looking up and down the street in an agony of terror. Fool that she had been to let things take their course, to trust to time. She should have ransacked all London, have had her finished business in her hand to meet him with. Blood and bone she knew Stratharden, and there was that in his soft manner that told her that he had been too sharp for her. What should she do, if this day, of all days, Lady Barnysdale should come to the bank? She threw the window up and leaned out.

“You’re a zealous, faithful creature, Keith!” observed his lordship kindly. “But I shan’t need you any more. I dare say you’ll be glad to get back to Davie.”

The paper in the old woman’s pocket crackled as she leaned against the window-sill, and the sound of it did her good. “He was always like that,” she reflected, “as if he knew something you did not want known,” but there was something he could not know while that paper was safe in her pocket. If only Lady Barnysdale did not come to the bank this morning! And for a woman who had a contemptuous hatred for another, it was odd that Mrs. Keith prayed, standing, that she might not so come; odder, too, that, like a woman in agony, she only knew she prayed, and not that all her prayer was one sentence over and over, and that from no Presbyterian petition.

“You’ll strain your eyes out, Keith,” observed the kind Stratharden. “And my poor little sister-in-law, who was terrified of you, could see you yards away. Give me your place!”

“Good Lord, deliver us! Good Lord, deliver us!” If a mind can jabber, hers did it then. But she never moved.

There was a hired brougham coming down the street. She knew, like a woman possessed, who was in it. And Stratharden sat still behind her. If she faced him she might keep him there, but never long enough, never.

“Ye’re very anxious for one that’s no fool, Stratharden,” said she acridly. “I’ll draw back from the window when it’s time I should not be seen there.”

Was he moving? She dared not look to see, so fast was that brougham coming down the street.

“Good Lord, deliver us!” she thought faster than ever. Her stiff old arm was bent from the elbow close against her breast; she dared not fling it out, dared not call. But her hand Stratharden could not see. She motioned with it from the wrist, frantically; her body between it and Stratharden, her arm and shoulder still; caught a look from black eyes in the brougham window, pointed again with her gnarled fingers, and saw a hand fall from the unpulled check-string.

They were gone, the street was empty; she had won--for to-day.

Stratharden’s hand fell on her shoulder; she hardly felt it, yet somehow it had thrust her aside like a reed.

He had leaned past her, and had flung his cigar into the street.

There was fury and triumph in her eyes as she watched his apparently unconscious, careless gesture, and the next second a startling suspicion aroused her.

Stratharden had turned and laughed softly in her face.

“So you’ve a friend with black eyes,” he said. “You seem exhausted, Keith; you don’t look well. Come with me, and we’ll take your ticket for home. There’s a train at twelve.”

“And your bidding not done,” she remarked, careless which way he took it.

“There’s no hurry about it. Besides, I don’t think you’ll be able to do it. Go and pack your clothes.”

A terrible old woman Magdalen Clyde had thought her. She gritted her teeth in weakness, and turned on him, terrible once more. “I took none of your money, Stratharden,” she said. “I’ll take none of your orders. I’ll leave when I’m ready. And now ye can go.”

“Oh, if that’s it, we won’t quarrel over it!” he said easily. “I didn’t know it was a holiday jaunt. But if you’re wise, you’ll go to Ardmore. You’re getting old, my good soul, old and perhaps a little foolish. You can forget all I said about finding Lady Barnysdale, for I don’t know that I care especially where she is. I won’t forget how you tried to help me, and that’s the great thing. Good-by and, by the way, Keith, what you have in your mind is a mare’s nest, and I think you’ll find it so.” His laugh was so real that the housekeeper turned away her head. When she looked around he was gone.

She looked round the room wildly; then, lest each flying second should mean something, she sat herself down to think. He knew! And what she had written out was in her pocket, unless she had been a fool and made a mistake.

But it was not that. What she had written was in her hand, and she had asked no question anywhere that could have come to his ears. He might have searched the room while she was out, and found nothing.

With a snarl of rage she saw something, and ran to it with shaking knees. The blotting-book lay humped on the table, as she had not left it; and the hump, as she flung it open, was made of a tiny mirror such as some men carry about with them. She saw, and did not know what it meant; but as she jerked the mirror up against the edge of the book, the reflection in it caught her eye--the writing, left to right in the glass, plain.

“And me that did not know,” said Mrs. Keith. “And he’s found me out!” She dropped her face on her hands. “Good Lord, deliver us!”

For there would be no doing what she meant to do now. The girl herself was the only key, and Stratharden had seen her and her black eyes, knew all that Keith thought, prayed, hoped. She lifted her head, and her face was gray.

“He was oversoft,” she thought painfully, for the horror that was on her had stunned her. “He saw that, and he saw her, and, for all I know----” A thrill shook her to her deadened soul. By her very door-steps had she not seen a Chinaman pass by as she entered, and had not so much as looked at his face! “I’ll never see her more,” she moaned. “I’ll never know.” Without speech with the girl, there was no detective in England who could help her, and she knew it; knew, too, that Stratharden’s Chinaman had followed Lady Barnysdale and her sister home, at his bidding, when he threw his cigar into the street.

“He shan’t do it!” she thought. “I’ll warn the police----” She abruptly stopped.

Warn them of what? A foolish surmise, a tissue of imaginations? End her days in a madhouse for telling a story without a leg to stand on. Her gray head dropped on her hands.

“Good Lord, deliver us, indeed!”