Chapter II: When the Present’s Questionable

Dolly--headlong, hard, pretty Dolly--a countess!

“I don’t believe it,” said Magdalen Clyde to herself, even after seeing Dolly depart in a black gown--got, Heaven knows where--and the borrowed black hat.

Exactly what she had done to make herself look so pathetic and yet so dignified her stepsister did not know. She looked precisely as a deserted wife should look; tremulously brave, meek, yet determined. But even so, and in the face of those certificates and that letter there was cold, lurking disbelief in the heart of the girl she left behind.

“I don’t know what ails me,” she thought angrily. “Dolly tells lies, of course, but not to me. And this couldn’t be a lie, or she wouldn’t dare. But how on earth she can ever be a countess? Dolly, who hates everything conventional and never was civil to a woman in her life. Bah!” with sudden self-contempt, “it isn’t that and I know it. It’s that I’m frightened. I’d rather go and sing in a music-hall than have to live with Dolly if they find her story’s true.”

She looked round her with a queer feeling of being in a dream. Here in this little rose-colored room she and Dolly had lived for two years. She remembered how dumfounded she had been when Dolly appeared at the convent and calmly announced that she wanted her sister. Her maid was dead and she was too young to live alone. With hostile eyes under level black brows, Magdalen had stared at the pretty, exquisitely dressed stepsister whom she barely knew. She had gone with her distastefully enough. And now----

“Now I’m glad I did,” she thought. “Dolly’s right; she’d have been talked about long ago if it hadn’t been for me. We sailed too close to the wind as it is. If I’d known what might hang on Dolly’s ‘reputation,’” quoting unconsciously, “I’d have made more fuss than I did about the men who gave parties for us. But it doesn’t really matter. She’s never lived alone since that man left her. A few dinners and suppers,” mendaciously, “can’t matter. She said we had a good time. Well,” with that sudden dark look, “she may have; we didn’t. I never enjoyed one of the parties she dragged me to. I hated the men and their suppers. I wish we’d never seen one of them,” and not even to herself did she say what she meant; that only one man of all they knew was loathsome to her.

Too full of suspense to settle to anything, not daring to go out lest Dolly should come home, she sat down, listlessly wishing that Dolly had not seen fit to take Ronald with her. The child’s society would have been better than her own.

The striking of the clock startled her. Five strokes, and two hours since Dolly went.

“Well, I’ve got to eat!” said she frowning, “even if it’s only bread. And I feel as if I’d sell my soul for a leg of mutton,” for luncheon, except for Ronald, had been an empty name.

She strolled into the servantless kitchen, where there was no fire and nothing to make one, and with a distasteful shrug provided herself with all there was--dry bread and tea. With these and a black kettle she returned to the sitting-room fire. The half pint of milk must be kept for Ronald.

She was an incongruous figure enough in the little rose-hung room that she hated. Her black gown was only a shade neater than Dolly’s dressing-gown, but out of it rose a throat and face that in their strange way had no match in London. For if ever there was a beauty that was wild and uncanny it was Magdalen Clyde’s as she sat huddled by the grate trying to make a sooty kettle boil. Her almost white skin--and not a woman in ten thousand has a white skin--her black eyes that had bottomless depths in them under narrow, level brows blacker than they, were lovely enough. But under the crown of thick hair that waved back from her forehead their black and whiteness was a thing to marvel at. For her hair was the color of rusted iron--not red nor brown, but glorious; and she hated it every time she combed it. But her thoughts were anywhere but on her looks as she made tea to-day.

She had the steaming, comfortless cup at her lips when a knock came at the door. Not a loud knock, but a peculiar one. Miss Clyde set down her cup with absolute noiselessness and smiled.

“You can knock,” she thought, “but knocking never opened a door. I hate you, hate you, and if you could feel it through that door you’d----” But the queer uneasiness that had been on her ever since Dolly’s extraordinary tale was told deepened suddenly.

If the man at the door knew how she loathed him he would simply knock all the harder. And just as if he read her thoughts the would-be visitor gave the door a vicious shake. The girl sat without breathing till she heard him go away.

She had forgotten that man when she said she would even sing at music-halls for a living. If she and Dolly lost all their belongings and had to live by their wits they would never get rid of him. But if Dolly could prove her claims he would not dare to trouble them.

“Oh, I can pray she can!” Magdalen thought passionately, all her distrust and terror lost in something far more tangible. “We mayn’t know how to be great ladies, but Dolly need never be civil to a man like that again.”

She took up her tea and drank it thirstily, though it was flat and lukewarm. If Dolly were really Countess of Barnysdale there would be cream every day and----

The latch clicked, the door flew open and banged behind some one.

It was Dolly. Dolly, half crying, half laughing, her demure hat on the back of her head, her gown unspotted by the rain that had set in out of doors. And the pretty, fragile child beside her had an armful of toys.

“Well?” said Magdalen thickly. Her cup went over as she jumped up and she let the tea lie in a pool on the rose-velvet table-cloth. “Well?”

“That’s just what it is! I went. I asked for Mr. Barrow, and--oh, it was awful! I was kept waiting in a musty little room and I could hear people talking behind a glass door. It made me frantic, for I knew they were talking about me.”

“They couldn’t have been!”

“They were. When Mr. Barrow came in I saw he knew all about us; he wasn’t surprised.”

“You don’t mean to say he observed you were very welcome, and could walk in to-morrow and take possession?” scornfully.

“No, he was non-committal enough. But he was civil and---- Magdalen, they can’t have any hope that I’m not Barnysdale’s wife, not a ghost of a hope! For Barrow gave himself away. He let me have ten pounds; I told the bare, plain fact that I was starving, but I might have starved ten times if that smug, respectable lawyer had not thought I was going to win.”

“I wouldn’t have taken it,” doubtfully. “But--oh, Dolly! you’re sure it’s all right? There isn’t anything they can bring up against you? Think! Because if we have to fight them we must fight well. There mustn’t be any surprises.”

“There’s nothing,” slowly. “Every step of my life since Barnysdale left me is clear and plain. I went from the rooms I was in to others, but always respectable. In the last of them my maid died when Ronald was a year old. And the day she was buried I went for you.”

“It’s only three years,” Magdalen said hopefully. “The people in the house where Barnysdale left you would know you. They could identify you.”

Mrs. Arden’s face flushed.

“Don’t rely on that,” she sharply returned. “The woman who kept those lodgings is dead. The place is turned into offices. All the others, though,” with a vehement confidence, “will know me.”

“Barnysdale may have left a photograph of you in his papers, too.”

“A photograph!” Dolly had turned her back and was locking away the papers she had been too cautious to trust to Barnysdale’s lawyer. For a moment she stood with the key half turned, as motionless as a woman painted on canvas. “No,” she said slowly, breathlessly, “I don’t think there was any photograph. I--I would remember.” Her face was almost gray as she turned round, though it was only a very small proof to be missing.

“Where’s the money he gave you?” said Magdalen, pitifully. “I must get Ronald something to eat.”

“I bought things. They’re in the hall.”

She shivered as she sat down by the fire. Why could they not put her out of her misery to-day? If Magdalen kept on harping about the thing she would never be able to bear it.

“I must think it’s all right,” she muttered feverishly, “or I’ll fail. After everything it would kill me if I failed,” and watching Ronald at his tea, Dolly Arden for once was hungry and could not eat.