Chapter IX: Dolly’s Predicament

It is hard to tell how commonplace things grow slowly into terror, intangible and unseen, but sure as death. Into the dull life at Ardmore Castle horror had crept; even Dolly could not be blind to it, and it haunted Magdalen Clyde by night and day.

The awful loneliness of the place began to hang over them like a pall. For a month they had been installed, and not a visitor from all the countryside had been near them.

“Not even a grocer’s boy!” Dolly said to herself uncomfortably, though there was nothing remarkable in that. Their meat was home-killed, their other stores came once a year from Edinburgh. And in spite of the silver-decked table and Stratharden’s invaluable servants, there was no doubt that Mrs. Keith barely doled them out enough to eat--that was eatable.

The horses, in spite of reiterated orders, had never come. James made one respectful and well-grounded excuse after another--“next week,” “to-morrow”--and neither brought them. As for rowing across the Clyde it was not to be done. One winter storm after another made it angry, and not a servant in the house could row. Magdalen, going to the tumble-down boathouse to see the boats, found none; she screamed herself hoarse in trying to hail a boat from the opposite shore that was two miles off; and found herself civilly assisted by James, at whose appearance she turned about and went home.

After long wet days in the house, when the clouds broke at sundown she would drag Dolly out to walk in the evergreen shrubberies. But in a little while Dolly’s eyes would meet hers and they would go indoors quickly, Ronald angrily protesting from his aunt’s shoulder. But to the lonely, unhappy women it had been certain that stealthy feet kept pace with them behind the dripping firs, that eyes were on them hungrily as they walked.

“It’s nerves,” said Dolly in an angry whisper; “nerves, or Mrs. Keith.”

They had long ago moved into those forbidden rooms of Stratharden’s, but neither of them felt any better for the change. The southern aspect was a mockery in a Scotch winter.

Ronald grew paler every day, had a queer little asthmatic cough and seized every chance of spending his time with Ah Lee, who seemed to fascinate him. On Mrs. Keith Magdalen had never laid eyes. Sometimes in the long nights she fancied she could hear the old woman’s skirts brushing against her door, and would get up silently and creep there and then on to Dolly’s and Ronald’s apartments, for the three rooms connected; would feel that the bolts were all shot home, and slip back to bed again, not even owning to herself that it was not terror of Mrs. Keith that made her do it.

She turned now to where Dolly sat on her bed taking off her wet boots after one of those garden outings that had been worse than usual.

“It may be nerves, but it isn’t Keith,” she began, and then decided, for the fiftieth time, that it would be madness to frighten Dolly about Ah Lee because of a dream.

“Do you know what I found out just now?” for she had sent Dolly and Ronald to the house, while she ran back in a towering rage to ransack the shrubberies. “I ran along by the garden wall till I came out on the avenue, ever so far from the house; and there was the postboy! He was giving letters and papers to James.”

“Then the boat can cross again! Hurrah!” cried Dolly quite gay again.

“It never stopped crossing,” Magdalen dryly replied, “except for two days. I asked the boy.”

“Then where--why--what did James say?” with incoherent energy.

“James explained,” more dryly than ever, “he had been no wiser than we, etc. Mrs. Keith must have done it to annoy us. He would take great care in future; could not be too glad that he had been tempted to investigate--but he did not say it before the boy! Here are some papers and a letter for you.”

But Dolly looked at neither.

“Who do you think it is? And what do they mean?” she said, with a queer look in her shallow eyes. “I think James told the truth, and it’s just old Keith, who, because she hates us, wants to drive us away.”

Magdalen threw open the door into the passage. It was empty, dark and cold, and she shut it again. For a moment she stood facing Dolly, stood stretching like a cat, as if she were trying every muscle in her body.

“Oh, don’t do gymnastics; talk!” cried Dolly pettishly. “Don’t you think the old wretch wants to drive us away?”

“She takes a queer way to do it,” Magdalen gravely answered, seating herself close to Dolly and speaking in a subdued tone. “Hasn’t it struck you that being a countess here is extremely like being in jail? Suppose we say we’re going to London to-morrow? Well! there are no horses to take us the five miles to the steamer that comes here, and you and Ronald can’t walk.”

“We can go the way we came!” sharply.

“We can’t, for I’ve tried it! We’ve no boat, and it’s no more use to try and hail one from the other side than to sit here. There’s a rocky point between us and the mainland; no one can see us.”

“You’re talking nonsense.” The familiar obstinacy was in Dolly’s voice. “I’m mistress in my own house, I suppose. It’s rubbish to say I can’t get away from it. But I don’t mean to be driven out to please Mrs. Keith. It’s she who’s always crawling after us. She shan’t think she can frighten me.”

It was not Mrs. Keith who was frightening Magdalen. She looked at Dolly with veiled black eyes and lay back on the bed, a lovely, careless figure; against the old embroidered coverlet her rusty hair seemed to catch all the light left in the room. There was only one thing to be done--get away from here and tell Dolly afterward. The very inaction of the quiet face showed the utter strength in it as she thought of something that had never entered Dolly Barnysdale’s head.

“I wouldn’t fuss over Mrs. Keith’s feelings,” she observed calmly. “It’s deadly dull here, and some one hates us, it doesn’t matter who. And I don’t think Ronald’s well.”

Dolly jumped up, scattering her papers and her dirty boots.

“What do you mean?” she angrily cried. “Are you trying to frighten me? Of course I know he’s pale and has a cough, but he was always pale.” There was something wild and untamed about her small figure as she stood over the quiet girl on the bed.

“He wasn’t always--drowsy!” said Miss Clyde slowly. “Look at him now.”

Dolly whirled round, took a quick step and stood still. There on the hearthrug in the middle of his toys lay Ronald--asleep! He was pale indeed, and round his open mouth and his closed eyes were faint blue stains.

Lady Barnysdale shook as she saw them; yet for a moment her face was that of a woman looking at a child she saw for the first time. The next instant she had the boy in her arms with the fierce, soft tenderness Magdalen hated. “Do you mean----” she began in a hushed rage not like her.

“I don’t mean anything. The boy’s ill and we’re not comfortable, so don’t let us stay.”

“Don’t be superior,” said Dolly sharply. “You as good as said Keith was drugging the boy, and now you try to back out of it. But we’ll go to-morrow.” Her voice rose hysterically. “She hates me because she’s just devoted to Stratharden, and she’s capable of anything.”

“I don’t think she has anything to do with it,” Magdalen coolly declared. “She wouldn’t dare. But we’ll go to-morrow. I’ll be only too glad.” There was no use in telling Dolly things till they were away from this house.

But Dolly was no fool.

“It couldn’t be!” she said barely over her breath.

“He was kind, he----”

“We’ll see to-morrow,” Magdalen Clyde said to herself. Outwardly she only shrugged her shoulders and turned away.

Dolly sat clutching Ronald like a woman possessed. She never touched the dinner sent up to her--for she had no intention of letting the boy from her sight while Mrs. Keith was in the house--and never even thought of her unread London letter till Magdalen came back from the meal she had made as short as possible, under Ah Lee’s hateful eyes.

The girl glanced at Dolly’s set little face, the tension of her figure. She had been a fool to get her into a state like this, but----

“If I hadn’t waked her up to it Ronald would never have left this house alive!” she thought, for she had not lived in London for nothing, nor for nothing haunted the slums near Dolly’s house, while Dolly had men to tea. “Here’s your letter,” she said in a matter-of-fact way; “aren’t you going to read it? I’ll put Ronald to bed.”

She was half-way into the next room when a queer sound made her turn sharply; she had no fear of waking the boy she had taken from Dolly’s tired clasp.

“What’s the matter?” she cried, for on Lady Barnysdale’s face was the look Dolly Arden had worn that night in Krug’s restaurant.

“It’s----” The words came stammering, incoherent. “We must get out of this. It’s Starr-Dalton. He wants to come here.”

It seemed to Magdalen that even Starr-Dalton would be better than no one. Had Dolly no sense? Did not she see what was plain as print?

“Well, he’s hateful,” she said slowly; “but--what does he say?”

Magdalen put out a hand as if to take the letter, but Dolly ran to the fire and threw it into the blaze.

“What does it matter what he says?” she cried contemptuously. “Starr-Dalton! I didn’t half read the thing.”

There was no earthly reason that it should matter, yet as she turned away Magdalen knew Dolly was lying.