Chapter XXVII: “why Should I Trust You?”

Mrs. Keith; gaunt, dusty, so shabby--and with such a look on her face--that but for her voice Dolly would hardly have known her.

“Ye’re here. I’ve found ye!” she cried the instant the door opened. “Bring her here that I may speak with her. No!” and she pushed away like a leaf the door Dolly would have shut in her face. “I’ll have none of that; the time and the need’s over. Call her here, I say, if ye’ve sense in yer head.”

She had come in and closed the door behind her before she said anything but that “No!” She never even glanced at the bare disorder of the place as she sat down on one of the three chairs left.

Dolly stared at her, speechless with fright and anger. This was not the Mrs. Keith she had fought with, this old woman whose face was working, who wiped her hard eyes.

“Thanks be to Gude I’m in time!” the housekeeper cried suddenly. “It was just foreordained I should see ye getting in here.”

Dolly at last found her voice.

“What do you want of me? How dare you come here?--follow me?” she demanded. Her thoughts flew to Ronald on the sofa; if this strong old woman had come to take him she would claw her eyes out.

“I want nothing of ye,” said Mrs. Keith; with her old distasteful grimness she took in Dolly from head to toe. “Ye may die in the gutter for all I care. I want the girl ye call yer sister. Have ye no wits, woman, that ye stand staring? Cry on her to come down.”

“That ye call your sister.” Dolly clutched at the smooth wall she stood by.

“What do you mean?” she cried.

“I mean I know she’s not yer sister and never was. Call her down, ye daft woman. There’s no time to waste.”

“Who is she if she isn’t my sister?” If the words were defiant the voice shook. The unexpected attack had caught Dolly Barnysdale unprepared.

“That’s what I’ve come to see. And to save her life this night, for her look of one that’s dead, and the chance----Let her down, ye shaking atom; or will ye never understand!”

Dolly shook indeed. For once she saw things as they were and that this was no trick to steal Ronald. Mrs. Keith--and God knew why--had come here for Magdalen.

“Get her?” she almost shrieked it. “I can’t get her. She’s gone! What do you mean about her? What have you to do with her and her life?”

“Gone? I’ll not believe it.” The thankfulness disappeared from the gnarled old face. “Gone?”

“Go and look,” said Dolly. She went, from meaningless caution, to Ronald, and stood by him; but she knew all the while that, for some reason she could not comprehend, she and Ronald were no more to Stratharden’s housekeeper than dead leaves on a tree. She had not thought any old woman could run so frantically from room to room, could be back at her side with such quickness; nor that human flesh could wear so livid a fear on its face.

“What have ye done with her?” demanded Mrs. Keith and laid an iron clutch on her shoulder. “Did ye not know from the day he saw her from my window that it was she, not you, that was in peril of her life?”

Dolly was shrewd enough. She knew like a flash that the woman was honest. Mad as she sounded, there might be--a bare might be, from a dim past--reason in her wild words. From where she sat beside Ronald she told Mrs. Keith all she knew about this day’s work and never thought of the irony of it. If this were Stratharden’s work, and the woman on his side, she would know it in any case; if not--all who were not against Dolly might be with her.

“And so,” she wound up, “after she said she wouldn’t stay here because of her dream, I went to Marlow after her, where I got her telegram from there. And she wasn’t there. But she had been, for it was she who sent the telegram. They said so in the office. ‘A woman with queer eyes.’”

Mrs. Keith’s eyes flashed green; but when she spoke it was as slow as dripping water.

“She sent you no telegram,” declared Mrs. Keith and tightened the hand she had never taken from Dolly’s shoulder. “Why would she, since she was here not an hour ago? Come yer ways with me.”

Dolly caught up Ronald and followed her, and in the kitchen Mrs. Keith turned on her.

“Smell!” she said. “Smell! or have ye no nose? And look here! Does a girl drag the hairs out of her own head?”

Dolly looked at the hard wooden chair, and long, fine strands of hair hung from its splintered back like a flame, sniffed hard at the air--and stood like a stone. When she left on that wild-goose chase to Marlow there had been nothing on that clean-scrubbed chair. Magdalen had come back and gone again. The queer scent in the room must have been something she had bought to make herself fair for the man to whom she had gone. For, in spite of Mrs. Keith, Lovell, and only Lovell, was to Dolly Barnysdale the meaning of this day’s work.

“I suppose she caught her hair somehow,” she said bitterly. “As for the smell, it’s nothing but scent you buy in a shop.”

“It’s a scent ye’ll get in no shop,” the woman cut her short. “It’s----But why am I talking to ye? Answer me this before I go. Are ye on Stratharden’s side--ye that he told me was crazy?”

“Stratharden’s side?” she stupidly reiterated; then with sudden fury: “His side, when I was in fear of my life from him, and you know it.”

“I did not--at the time,” she slowly asserted. “Yer life’s safe from him now; he’s after other game.” Her face contracted with a sharp pang. “It’s her he wants,” she cried, “her! Speak out as if she were in her coffin and I may be able to save her yet.”

“Magdalen! From Stratharden?”

“Just from him. Does she know she’s no half-sister of yours?”

“How do you know it?” Dolly asked.

“I found it out. Ye’d no sister; your mother, that was Mrs. Deane, took in a woman and a child. The woman’s name was Clyde and she’d a little money. Your mother----”

“What has that to do with Stratharden?” Dolly fiercely demanded.

“Maybe nothing. I know it all, that’s all. Now tell me the woman’s real name, for the fear of God.”

“I can’t,” replied Dolly. “Mother never knew it. Only Clyde. And Magdalen never heard of her.”

Mrs. Keith flung out her hands.

“There must be some one who knows,” she said chokingly. “And in the meantime she’ll die for her black eyes and her red hair. You’ll never see her again--and I’ll go down to my grave with my work undone.”

“Stop!” said Dolly furiously. “You’re talking riddles. Who would hurt Magdalen if her name was not Clyde ten times over?”

“Stratharden’s heathen, that she dreamed of. That scent ye smell is his devil’s incense. Oh, my grief! and I stand talking here and know no way to turn to look for her!”

“But he’d have no reason. It’s I that am in Stratharden’s way.”

“Ye’ll be out of it to-morrow. Do ye not guess that it’s she Stratharden fears? Have ye no love for her that ye stand making talk? Was there nowhere she might have gone? But I’m no better! She could go nowhere with that scent of hell in the house.”

“Lovell,” said Dolly sharply. Mrs. Keith’s wild talk and her knowledge of Dolly herself had frightened her till she almost prayed she was speaking the truth. “I think she’s gone to Mr. Lovell; and I don’t know where he lives.”

“Who’s Lovell?”

“A man. He----”

“Would I think he was a spirit?” she questioned harshly.

“Why would she go to him?”

Dolly’s misery broke out in bitterness.

“Because he’s a man!” she cried. “Because he had a dark skin and a hard mouth, and eyes that looked you through and through, and a way of moving like a tiger-cat, soft and quick.”

“Lovell, ye call him.” Mrs. Keith stood motionless. “A man that would throw back his head and look at you? That spoke soft and clean?”

Dolly nodded sullenly.

“Then may the Lord have mercy on her,” exclaimed Mrs. Keith. “Woman, that’s no Lovell, but Buff Ogilvie, Stratharden’s son, for I saw them together. They’ve trapped her, and ’twas me did it. Me!” Her voice rang harsh, anguished; she turned to run from the house.

Dolly, slim, soft Dolly, sprang at her like a cat. When Magdalen had hated that tigerish love of Dolly’s for Ronald, she had not guessed it would wake like this for her.

“You’ll not go till I know what you’re driving at.” She shook like a reed the woman she had feared. “Why would they trap her? Why do you talk nonsense about Ah Lee having been in a locked-up house like this? What has she to do with Stratharden?”

Mrs. Keith looked at her and was her old stony self.

“I’ll not tell you,” said she, “till I find her. Why would I trust you any more than him, a light woman and a liar?” She shook Dolly’s hands off like water, and the heavy sound of her old feet came back as she ran, with trembling knees, down the stairs.