Chapter VIII: Magdalen Dreams

In the cold dawn Magdalen Clyde got out of the hideous four-poster where she had tossed all night, and with shaking hands rekindled the dead fire. When a blaze was roaring up the chimney she bathed and dressed, as if cold water and clean linen could drive away the senseless terrors of the night.

“I’ll never sleep in this room again,” she thought crossly. “No wonder I had bad dreams in a bed walled in with purple rep!” She shuddered, as if the bare memory of her dream sickened her. “I was tired; I’d nightmare. What should I ever have to do with a Chinaman?” She scoffed at herself, and for distraction went to the window, where a cold rain beat upon the glass.

Outside lay a sodden, wind-swept garden, behind it black-clefted, threatening hills. In her ears as she leaned out, regardless of the wet, the muffled sound of the Clyde water that she hated, beyond reach, except that it seemed like a living jailer to keep her in this cheerless place. She drew back shivering and shut out the sound of the river with the raw, cold morning, as some one knocked at her door.

It was Ronald’s nurse with a cup of tea in her hand, and the neat woman stood staring at Miss Clyde.

“Good morning, miss,” she said. “I heard you stirring, and as I’d made my tea I brought you some. Oh, you do look ill this morning! Is anything the matter?”

For in the dull-gray light the girl’s eyes were inky in her dead white face, uncanny under her queer, dull-red hair.

“The matter? No!” And then she laughed. What was she making a mystery about? “I had a bad dream, Pearce; but don’t tell your mistress. Thank you for the tea; it was very thoughtful of you.”

“My lady’s not awake, miss. She was very tired. His lordship seems well. But if I might advise you I should go back to bed.” This was vague, if well meaning, advice.

“Bed!” Miss Clyde glanced at the purple catafalque. “Oh, I couldn’t! But you’re right, I don’t feel well. Do you believe in dreams, Pearce?”

“No, miss,” she cheerfully replied.

“Well, neither do I! But this was so vivid that I’ve felt weak ever since.” She laughed at the fancy that came over her that if she told the thing she would forget it, and yet it drove her on, restlessly. “It was absurd. I thought I was sitting in a small room off a large one; it had two doors, one leading into a passage, the other into the big room, exactly opposite a long glass. It was that queer light you see in dreams, and I noticed everything that was reflected in the glass; just a bare, empty room. And then--I heard something. Some one moving with very quiet feet outside in the passage, and I heard the creaking of the door that led from it into the large room. I couldn’t move--in my dream; I sat and stared at the door in front of me, and I can’t tell you the awful terror that was on me. Just the terror of death, and nothing else.

“I couldn’t see anything, only hear that noise like some one moving, crawling. And then I knew that if I sat there one second longer it would have me--I’d be killed! I got up and went out into the passage, and I meant to run out of the house, but I felt there was some one between me and the entrance and I couldn’t.

“I looked from the passage into the big room, and over by the fireplace I saw a woman standing with her back to me. I didn’t know her. But between her and me, going to her step by step, was a Chinaman. He was directly in the light that seemed to come from a street lamp outside, and I could see his side face. He looked like a devil--a stooping, yellow devil, with a hideous white scar on his neck. I don’t know how I saw it, but I did.

“He had long, long nails, and he held his hands out crooked and wicked. I knew he was going to pounce on the woman by the fireplace and strangle her with those long, wicked fingers. I ran and tried to catch him, but I was too late.

“He had jumped at the woman. And as she turned--and if you can understand me, the silence of it all was the dreadful part, for she never screamed--I saw her face, and it was me. Me! And then I wasn’t watching any longer, for it was I, not she, who was struggling with him; I felt his claws of hands on my throat as we rolled over and over on the floor. I could see his face, all yellow and distorted, but his eyes were the worst. They looked like dead eyes, fixed and glassy.

“I think I must have fainted then; I was cold and wet when I woke up. It was only half-past twelve; I couldn’t have been in that bed,” with a glance of detestation, “more than an hour, and I’ve never slept since. Ugh! I can feel those nails on my throat yet.”

“It was horrid, miss,” said Pearce, “but it was only nightmare. You know, miss, you couldn’t have seen yourself.”

“But I did,” she firmly persisted. “I saw my own self looking at me to save her. Yet at first I was sure it was a stranger, for the figure was more like Lady Barnysdale’s than mine. I think if I were to see the mildest-looking Chinaman I should run miles!”

Pearce smiled respectfully.

“You’re not likely to, miss--not here! But I shouldn’t tell her ladyship; she seemed nervous enough in this strange house last night. I hope it will be more comfortable soon. The maids tell me the housekeeper returns to-day.”

“I shan’t mention it, but it did me good to tell you,” smiling at the woman as if she liked her. “You have plenty of sense, Pearce.”

“You need it, Miss Clyde, when you earn your living,” returned the nurse soberly.

When she was gone a queer thought overtook Lady Barnysdale’s stepsister. In spite of the absurdity of that dream she would not stay, or let Dolly stay, another night in this house, if it held two rooms like those in her dream--rooms opening into each other, with right-angled outside doors forming the corner of a corridor.

She ran down the stone stairs and went methodically from room to room of the large, rambling place. Some doors were open and some locked, but in no passage up-stairs or down were there two close together in the way her dream made vivid.

With a laugh at her own folly Magdalen ran down again to breakfast.

* * * * *

“Magdalen!” cried Dolly blankly, flying into the small room they had elected to sit in instead of the cold and hideous drawing-room. “Did you ever hear anything like it? I can’t send her away!”

“Who?” lazily questioned Magdalen. She had been out roaming the lonely hillsides in the wet, and if Ardmore Castle were not a bright abode it was better to come back to than an unpaid-for flat, with no prospect of dinner.

“Mrs. Keith,” with wrath. “You know when she came back yesterday I thought everything would be all right. She was civil enough for a sour old Scotch woman. You haven’t seen her, have you?” breaking off.

“No!” She had no fancy for bothering about other people’s servants. Pearce was different since it was she, not Dolly, who had engaged her. “Why?”

“Because she’s an insolent old hag,” vindictively. “To-day, when you were out, I thought I’d go over the house and see what rooms I’d take instead of the barns we have. I want Ronald to have all the sunshine there is in this dismal country,” with a cross glance at the rain that had never ceased since their arrival. “I saw the old woman looking at me over the stairs as I rambled round, and when I got up to that cross-corridor on the second story there she was, with both maids, and a perfect storm of sweeping--in the afternoon. I told them to stop, and Mrs. Keith never took any notice. Said it was the regular day. Then I ordered her to get the keys of the locked rooms down-stairs; so she did. And when I opened them I saw her grin, for they were all empty. Just bare, cobwebbed holes. When we got up to that corridor again I marched over Sophy and the tea-leaves,” with fresh annoyance, “and found three locked doors at the very end of it, quite cut off from our part of the house. I asked for the keys--and what do you think she said? That they were Stratharden’s rooms, and not to be opened without his leave. Stratharden’s rooms in my own house!--and the very best southern aspect in the place, for up-stairs there are no windows on that side. Mrs. Keith looked at me as if I were just nobody, and didn’t even pretend to obey me.”

“Perhaps he was always allowed those rooms,” Magdalen pondered. “You don’t know, Dolly!”

“I know I’m not going to have shut-up rooms in my house, and I said so. I told her she must get more servants, that I would not have that doddering old David to wait on table; he drops things so frequently that I cannot resist screaming.”

“What did she say?”

“Said there were servants enough for people who came from the Lord knows where. So then I told her to go, bag and baggage.”

“Then we’d better write to London to-night. Did she seem routed?”

“She turned round and said I was wasting breath. That old David and she could not be sent away by me, Mr. Stratharden, or anyone. That his lordship’s will--and she didn’t mean Barnysdale’s, but his father’s--forbade it. And her eyes were just like gimlets in her horrid old head.”

Magdalen sat up.

“I suppose they can be retired as superannuated,” she observed. “The old lady doesn’t seem to think of that. We can’t live like this. I’ve rung for tea four times and not a soul has come.”

“Superannuated! I’ll have her put in jail,” violently. “Do you know Pearce has gone?”

“Pearce! Who sent her? What for?”

“Mrs. Keith. I went up and found Ronald alone, and rang for Pearce. By and by Sophy came and said she had gone, that Mrs. Keith had dismissed her for impertinence and had her ferried over to the station.”

“But why did Pearce take her warning?” Magdalen asked utterly confounded. “She could have come to you, to me!”

“You were out. I was exploring the garrets. I found a note from Pearce, who had evidently thought I had deputed Mrs. Keith to get rid of her. So then I sent for the old woman again. She said, quite coolly, that she could not bear strange women about the place, and that she’d paid Pearce and told her I should not require her any longer. Then she turned her back on me and walked out just as if she were the mistress, not I.”

“She must be mad. Pearce was a fool to go,” with a cold anger, very different from Dolly’s.

“What could the poor soul do? Mrs. Keith said I sent her, paid her and carted her off. And the unlucky part of it was that Pearce was stupid about Ronald this morning, and I was angry with her. She must have thought her dismissal was because of that.”

“Don’t worry,” said Magdalen as calmly as if she were not raging. “We’ll get her back. You go and bring Ronald down here and I’ll make somebody bring tea. I don’t care who does, but bring it they shall.”

“Good gracious! You do look awful when you scowl,” and Dolly really started. “You ought to be able to manage people. I shouldn’t like to quarrel with a girl with eyes like yours and a dead-white face. You’ll never be pretty, Magdalen, but you could be dangerous.”

For the courage and power in her stepsister’s face had suddenly flashed on Dolly like a revelation, though she was blind to the wild beauty of it.

“You couldn’t quarrel with me,” Magdalen laughed, in spite of herself, remembering the times when Dolly had tried it and failed. “Go on, I’ll get the tea.”

And when Dolly came back it was there, and Magdalen was laughing.

“Poor Sophy!” she observed. “She was between the devil and the deep sea. Now, Dolly, what are you going to do? Give in to Mrs. Keith and take charge of Ronald?”

Dolly’s cat’s teeth showed.

“I’m going to write to Stratharden this minute and ask if what she said was true, about my not being able to dismiss her. I’ll give the letters to the postboy when he comes with the papers. My dear Mrs. Keith would probably claw it out of the bag. Does she think I am to be bullied in my own house?”

Magdalen laughed.

“If we can’t send her away I’ll wrestle with her,” she said. “I don’t believe you understand Scotch people. You have to get the upper hand once and for all.”

“How on earth do you know?”

“I!” The girl gave a queer laugh. “I don’t know exactly, but they’re just like the Clyde--precisely as I knew they would be. I’ve the funniest feeling in this house, Dolly, as if I’d seen it all before,” her wonderful eyes clouding.

“Then I’ve no opinion of your sense. If I’d known what it was like, as you think you did, wild horses wouldn’t have got me here. I’d rather be in London, snubbing Starr-Dalton.”

“What made you think of him?”

“I only just remembered that I’d never asked him if he were at Krug’s that night. Perhaps it was just as well I didn’t. He knows my name’s Dolly.”

“What does it matter since you weren’t the Dolly the man meant?”

Lady Barnysdale opened her mouth and shut it again with ill-considered words still in it. In silence she wrote and despatched her outraged letter to Stratharden, beseeching him to deal with Mrs. Keith and send a proper staff of servants.

It was two days before she got his answer. Forty-eight hours, when she fretfully refused to go out or leave Ronald, even to let Magdalen try to put the fear of God into Mrs. Keith.

“What’s the good when we don’t know whether we can do anything?” she demanded sensibly enough, and Magdalen agreed with a shrug of her lovely shoulders. But she could stay in no four walls even for Dolly. She tramped up the high hill above Ardmore Castle on the second day and looked down on all Ronald’s property, on the rushing Clyde water that hemmed Ardmore in. And not till then did the full loneliness of the place come over her.

Ardmore had been a famous stronghold in its day; even now it was nothing but a rocky island, some five miles long and half as wide. There was not a village or a house on it, but some fishermen’s huts that she could scarcely see in the dazzle of the low sunlight. They were far below her on the shore, and three miles off if a yard.

As she watched she saw a small steamer touch at a point and go off again. That must be the ferry Sophy said you must cross by when the Clyde ran too heavily for a rowboat. The opposite shore was Ronald’s, too, and a queer possession it looked, all rolling hills black against the sunset.

Magdalen turned and saw on the other side of the river from which they had come to Ardmore, more wild hills, higher, more desolate, showing their teeth of crags and gullies as the sun dropped.

“Well, I’ve got my bearings, and much good may it do me,” she said, little knowing. But the walk and the air had raised her spirits.

She went into the castle humming a song Dolly assuredly had never heard, and gazed with astonishment when the door was opened to her by an immaculate London footman. Lord Stratharden then had not let the grass grow. The man must have come by that steamer she had seen touch at the point this afternoon.

“Stratharden must be a marvel,” she said, finding Dolly by her sitting-room fire. “Catch me getting servants for a lady who’d supplanted me and my son! And such an immaculate footman, too!”

But there was no jubilation on Dolly’s face.

“He’s done the best he can,” she returned, “but even he says Mrs. Keith can’t be dismissed, and begs I’ll be patient with her. Where’s his letter? Oh, here! Listen: ‘I know Keith’s cross-grained ways must be a sore trial to you, and for her unpardonable conduct in dismissing your maid I can of course offer no excuse. I can only ask you to be patient with her, and remember that she was my son’s nurse, and is broken-hearted that he is no longer heir to Ardmore. I hope you can find some capable country girl to look after your boy, and in the meantime, as I am going abroad, it is both a pleasure and a convenience to me to send you my two men servants, hoping you may keep them till I return. James is a capable servant and used to managing Keith. My Chinese butler you will find better than any nurse, and most useful to----’”

“The what?” cried Magdalen.

“The Chinese butler. He’s dressed like an Englishman and he speaks perfectly. What about him?”

But Magdalen sat staring, every drop of blood drained from her cheeks and lips.