Chapter XX: Dolly Takes Fear by the Throat

In the brougham Magdalen sat petrified with amazement. It had been Mrs. Keith, and no other, at the window, crooked bonneted, wild-eyed, motioning frantically to her not to stop. Keith, whom Dolly had thought the trusted ally of Stratharden. She could not understand it.

Dolly caught her by the arm.

“Did you see them?” she cried. “That old wretch, and Stratharden behind her? They saw us; perhaps they’ll follow us home. I won’t be found. I won’t!”

She poked her head out of the carriage window.

“Charing Cross Station!” she ordered. “And be quick.” She thanked Heaven they had walked to a livery stable and taken the man there. He knew no address, if he were asked for one.

She sat in feverish silence till they got out in the crowded station, scarcely spoke till they were lost in the busy throng, had emerged in a maze of back streets that would take them home. Then she stamped her foot as she walked, with Ronald running by her side.

“How dare he watch for me? It’s no business of his where I am,” she said. “And if he’s living opposite the bank, with that wicked old devil Keith, I can’t get any money; for I won’t have them following me home.”

“You’re walking too fast for Ronald,” said Magdalen; she picked him up in her strong young arms. “Dolly, I can’t understand you. I don’t think I ever could. If you don’t want to go to the bank, make a check payable to Madame Aline, and I’ll go with it.”

“And Providence will identify you, I suppose,” she dryly remarked; “and old Keith won’t know your black-and-white face and her head! She could follow you home as well as me, couldn’t she? You know yourself they tried their hardest to get him out of the way,” her keen fixed eyes on Ronald. “If they find us they’ll do it again.”

“Look here,” said Magdalen. “I can’t see any sense in all this. Stratharden knows you’re here. Why don’t you snap your fingers at him and go about openly? Anyone would think you’d been going to steal from the bank! It’s your own money. Why don’t you face Stratharden, and speak out what we know? But hold your tongue if you like, but stop this idiotic hiding.”

“I’m afraid,” and thick fear was in her voice. “Afraid for Ronald.”

For an instant Magdalen paused. There was one thing that made her think there was sense in this madness of Dolly’s. Mrs. Keith had been afraid, too. It was that desperate, earnest terror in the old woman’s face that had made Magdalen drop the check-string unpulled. With all her soul the housekeeper had warned them not to stop. But in the safe, busy London streets common sense spoke loud to her. Here there could be no hole-and-corner poisoning, no keeping them prisoners here.

“Be reasonable, Dolly!” she cried. “What could they do if they found us, a hundred times? Or, if you’re really afraid of them, tell the police. And if you won’t, I will. Why should we hide like criminals?”

“Do you want to kill me with your police? Isn’t it enough that I’m frightened, that I’ve no money----”

“Oh, Dolly,” her stepsister’s voice cut her short with a kind of despair in it, “why won’t you trust me? You’ve something behind all this. Tell me, let me help you.”

“It’s nothing,” said Lady Barnysdale. “Noth----” The words died on her lips.

Face to face with them, a gardenia in his creased frock coat, an immaculate tie round a twice-worn collar, was Starr-Dalton.

He stopped, flushed dull-red with incredulous triumph, and stood hat in hand, barring the way. It was no news to him that Dolly was in London, but he had thought her harder to find than this. His coarse smile was odious.

“Dolly, oh, forgive me--Lady Barnysdale!” he cried, his red-rimmed eyes on hers. “What a charming meeting! But somehow I fancied you wouldn’t stay long out of London.”

Fancied! Magdalen’s blood boiled. When she knew that he knew. Was she to be worried with Starr-Dalton, when Dolly was already doing her best to give Stratharden an excuse for calling her crazy? And Dolly, the color of ashes, was stopping.

“Come on!” said Magdalen sharply.

Not a word had she said about Lovell, for fear of Dolly’s laughter and worse; not a word about the dogging of her steps by the man who stood smiling before her, but it came back to her now with all its intolerable impertinence.

She took no notice of Mr. Starr-Dalton by word or look; she could have shaken Dolly in her fury that in the middle of things that mattered she should care whether a man like this met them or not. For she looked as if she would faint in the street.

“Come, Dolly!” she cried. “Here’s a hansom”--for it was the only way to be rid of him; she knew of old how he stuck.

Dolly’s little, nervous hand caught her arm like a claw.

“I’m going to walk,” she said, and something in her voice turned the girl’s heart cold. “Don’t you know Mr. Starr-Dalton, Magdalen?”

“Quite as well as I want to.”

Even Starr-Dalton, who did not admire her, saw the stare she gave him was superb.

“Don’t talk nonsense about walking, Dolly. Here’s a cab.”

“How have I offended Miss Magdalen?” Mr. Starr-Dalton gazed fishily at the sky. “I apologize until I hear. But if she says you are to drive home she is probably right.”

He held up a hand to summon a second hansom.

Magdalen was livid with fury.

“She’s got one,” she retorted, and for a minute thought Dolly would back her. For Lady Barnysdale had waved away the second hansom, had leaned for one breathless instant on Magdalen’s arm.

“There’s hardly room for three of us in one,” Dolly said, and if her voice was not steady there was a sudden courage in the look she gave Mr. Starr-Dalton; evil courage, if Magdalen had known it. “I must hurry home now, but perhaps you’ll come to tea this afternoon.”

Miss Clyde, with Ronald in her arms, hung paralyzed, half in and half out of her hansom. Dolly, with her old smile, was giving their address, Madame Aline and all, to the man.

“For Heaven’s sake,” she said when she had tumbled to her seat and Dolly was beside her, “what ails you? He’s a hateful, disreputable beast and you know it. How can you worry with a man like that when you ought to be thinking.” She bit her lip. When Dolly looked at her like that there was no sense in talking to her.

“Because he’ll be useful,” said Lady Barnysdale. “He loves the ground I walk on”--in which she was wrong; he was only hugging to himself when she left him the thought of a very different thing. “I must have some one to help me and he’ll do it. Leave me in peace for a week to manage my own affairs and we won’t need your dear police.”

“Help you! Like he helped us in Krug’s restaurant,” she scornfully retorted.

“Was that why you were so rude to him? You did your best to”--she hesitated--“to make him detest us.”

“In his conduct at Krug’s? No!” She poured out what she had never meant Dolly to know about Lovell and the bakery and Starr-Dalton.

“What!” cried Dolly; her laugh cut like a knife. “You! Having tea with a man you don’t know! For you can’t know him; I never heard of any Lovell in my life.” The mirth died out of her face. “What’s he like? Is he a gentleman? Does he know who you are?”

“You ought to know whether he is a gentleman or not!” The laugh had touched her temper. “He put out the lights in Krug’s restaurant.”

Dolly sat dumb. From every quarter wherever she looked something threatened her; things, people, the very straws in the street menaced her, and only her own wits to match against them all.

She turned to the only soul in the world who cared for her, except the child between them.

“You go out like a chorus girl and meet a man!” she cried, trembling with rage. “You, that were always fussy as one of your nuns if I spoke to a man I knew. You’re nothing but a hypocrite!” It was odd that she looked just like a chorus girl herself in her temper. “How do you know who the man is? He may have gone straight away and told Stratharden!”

“That’s absurd! For goodness’ sake, Doll, don’t let us fight!” Something had caught the blood at her heart. It was not that she had never seen Dolly in such a temper, but that, after all, she might be right. She got out of the hansom in silence.

There was more there than she knew. Dolly was afraid of Starr-Dalton! Think as she would she could not see why, but she knew it; and knew, too, that Dolly’s reasons for hiding were trumped-up lies. Her old uneasiness about Dolly’s turning into a countess swept back on her.

“If she only would not make so many mysteries!” she thought. But the biggest mystery of all was that Dolly should turn penniless away from an almost untouched bank-account rather than face Stratharden.