Marmaduke Part 16

This should be her last departure from the conventional. Now that Duke's safety from the dancing woman's wiles had been secured, she had time to blame for his supineness; and he, of course, when he heard of the marriage, was not likely to forgive her. Thus they were quits!

So be it. She could return to her dressmaking and never see him again.

He had his majority, and, born soldier as he was, had his chance.

Not knowing, for certain, under what name Fantine Le Grand had engaged her room for the night, she was wary with the landlady of the Cross-keys and felt relieved when she was shown into a less pretentious room than the one she had been in the night before. Her vigil--and she knew it would be a long one ere the house was quiet enough to allow of her slipping down to the office to see if Marmaduke had written anything in the visitors' book--would have been harder in surroundings so full of keen memory. What a fool she had been! Why had she been so frank with him? The hot blood mounted to her very temples at the thought of it even while she felt angry with herself that it should be so. After all, she was not quite as the other douce country folk; there was something in her blood that was different; something that rebelled against the tyranny of that bloated old man, sitting like a spider in his web, imposing his wicked will upon all by sheer force of character.

Yet he had behaved well to her, and he was terribly, horribly like Duke.

So she sat raging, her head aching, till it was time to do the last bit of trickery, as it seemed to her now. Yet it must be done; for if Marmaduke had been indiscreet, Penelope, in her pryings, which were certain, would be sure to find it out. It was not, however, till between two and three--that time when even the ostlers at an inn sleep--that it was safe for her to steal downstairs to the visitors'

book. Even so, Boots lay snoring on a sofa in the office. But her task did not take long. There, as she had foreseen, was Marmaduke's unmistakable writing in the words "Captain the Honourable and Mrs.

Marmaduke Muir." Below, as if as witnesses, two commercial travellers had written their name and address. She had brought a sharp penknife with her, so, in less than a minute, the page was removed, the corresponding one in the quire pulled out, and the book closed again without trace of any removal. She gave a sigh of relief when she reached her bedroom again, and, folding up the written sheet, placed it in her purse. Then, after burning the other, she lay down and tried to sleep. But unsuccessfully, though she felt outwearied to an altogether unusual degree. The arrival of the early coach was a relief. She took her seat in it, hoping the fresh air would drive away her _malaise_; but it did not.

"You're no feelin' just the thing, miss," said a sympathetic bagman as he got out to stretch his legs at a change of horses. "Try just a wee sup of whisky; its awful inspirin'."

Marrion, smiling, shook her head. By this time she was beginning to wonder if, despite her usual hardiness, she had got a chill the night before.

It was past eight in the evening ere Edinburgh was reached, and, anxious to be housed as soon as possible, she left her box at the coach office and made her way giddily to her old lodgings where the landlady had agreed to keep her belongings until her return from her holiday. They were up a common stair that echoed and re-echoed to the slam of the street door and her own wavering steps. The rooms were high up and more than once Marrion had to pause for breath, and when at last she rang she had to lean against the door, to recover herself.

There was no answer. She rang again and waited--waited an interminable time, until someone coming down the common stair said briefly--

"Ye're wastin' yer time, mum. Mistress McGillivray's deid."

"Dead!" she echoed feebly.

"Aye, last week, and the polis hae lockit up the place till the heirs be known," replied the man, as he pa.s.sed on, rousing the echoes again.

Marrion followed him, realising that she must seek another lodging.

Easy in a way, yet difficult, since in that quarter of the old town many of the houses were not over-respectable. Still it was only for a night, and bed she must have as soon as possible. So she closed with an exorbitant offer in cash of a fairly clean attic made by a loose-lipped lady who smelt rather of whisky, and five minutes later, having locked herself in, threw herself, still half-dressed, on the truckle bed.

There the landlady next morning, having placidly unlocked the door with a master key, found her, flushed, breathless and delirious--briefly, down with a sharp attack of pneumonia. Infirmaries and district nurses being not as yet, Mother Gilchrist, as her _clientele_ called her, coolly took possession of her lodger's purse, sent for an apothecary doctor from round the corner, and thereinafter treated the patient with a certain amount of rough kindness, sending some of her other lodgers, girls with haggard faces and loose hair, to sit with her, and going up occasionally with water-gruel and still more watery beef-tea. But Marrion Paul was strong, and so, after a fortnight's struggle in the valley, she came out of it wan and emaciated, and lay looking at a bit of torn paper on the wall, that all through her fever dreams had flapped like a sail in a boat in which she and Duke were drifting out to sea, and wondering how much of what she remembered was true and how much dreams.

"I must get up," she said suddenly, when Mother Gilchrist appeared in company with water-gruel. "And will you give me my purse, please? I put it under my pillow, I think, but it isn't there."

Mother Gilchrist laughed a loose-lipped laugh and produced the purse from her pocket.

"Yon's the purse, my dearie; but there's naethin' in it the now. What wi' rent an' doctors an' physic, forby nursin', what else is to be expect.i.t?"

Marmie stared aghast.

"But there was nigh ten pun' in till't," she protested.

"It's just awfie expensive bein' ill," replied Mother Gilchrist calmly. "Ye can hae the reckonin' later on. Meanwhile, tak yer nourishment like a good lammie."

"What's ten pun' to you one way or another," continued the exemplar of youth, when Marmie, up for the first time, returned to the charge.

"You've gotten a paper in yon purse that's worth a guid deal tae you, my la.s.s, if it's written in the man's own write--an' if ye can prove----"

Marrion interrupted her in an angry flash.

"You're making a mistake. It has nothing to do wi' me. An' I wouldn't prove if I could."

She paused, feeling she was contradicting herself.

"Lord sakes," retorted Mother Gilchrist, "ye needna loup down a body's throat! An', anyhow, a la.s.sie wi' such hair as you've gotten needna look for ten pounds."

Marrion, still weakened body and soul by her illness, thought almost regretfully of her hairdresser.

"Aye," she a.s.sented languidly, "they'd give me that for it; but I should feel bad if it were cut off, shouldn't I?"

Mother Gilchrist burst into a cackling laugh.

"There's more ways, my lammie, o' makin' money by hair than by shearin' it off like a sheep's fleece," she said meaningly.

But the meaning did not come home to Marmie until one of the rather bedraggled girls in cheap finery let her into the secret of the house.

They paid Mother Gilchrist a certain sum for board and lodging, and on the whole she was kind to them. Anyhow, they had to lump it, as most of them were in debt to her. However, there was always the chance of a stroke of luck, especially when one was new to the business and had such hair as Marrion had.

That same afternoon Marrion managed to creep round to the coach office. She intended to get her box and p.a.w.n some of her things--even the little brilliant brooch of her father's--so as to keep her in decent lodgings till she could find employment in some dressmaking concern. She would not go back to her old employers, for her address there was known and she wanted to lose herself; for a while at any rate.

But Fate was against her. Failing a claimant the box had been sent back whence it came, as the only address to be found on it was Drummuir Castle, Drum. Nor was her call at her old landlady's more successful. The flat was still locked up; so she came back utterly wearied and disheartened, to be met by a demand for more money from Mother Gilchrist, who looked at her as one looks at a rat caught in a trap. She had miscalculated with Marrion, however; and in an instant the latter made up her mind. She must get out of the present quagmire without delay. Yet she did not wish to make herself known to the friends she had in Edinburgh, because during the past fortnight her desire to lose herself--to get away once and for all from Drummuir and all that Drummuir entailed--aye, even Duke---had been strengthening.

But she could sell her hair. Mother Gilchrist, arguing from other girls, was calculating she would not; but she would find she was mistaken. She might think it safe enough to let a girl without a penny in her pocket go out alone, but she would find herself wrong.

That night Marrion slept the sleep of the just, and it was one o'clock--for the gun had just fired from the castle--next day when, with a curiously light heart, she walked out of the most fashionable hairdresser's shop in Prince's Street. She had eschewed her old admirer's for obvious reasons, but she had found no difficulty in her bargain; and if her heart was light, her purse was heavy. She was free, at any rate, of Mother Gilchrist and her kind; she was free also of any necessity for recalling the past. She would make her own future in life.

As she pa.s.sed through the shop heavily veiled, for she would run no risk of recognition, a group of fashionably dressed young men were daffing over _pommade hongroise_ with an attractive young person behind the counter, but they took no notice of the somewhat shabbily dressed figure which pa.s.sed out and went westward. With money in her pocket Marrion's plans began to formulate rapidly. She would not stop in Edinburgh; she would go to some place where the fear of recognition would not constantly be with her. So she would go--whither?

She pondered the question idly, heedless of Fate behind her in the shape of one of those fashionably dressed young men, who, two minutes after Marrion had pa.s.sed through the shop, had burst out after her, leaving his companions still looking with admiration at a great pile of red-brown hair which the proprietor of the shop, hugely delighted with his bargain, had brought in for these privileged customers to see.

So she had not long for freedom. Ere she had reached Frederick Street a detaining hand was on her arm and a joyous voice in her ears--

"Marmie! I knew it must be you! I have been looking for you everywhere."

"Duke," she said feebly as she looked round. And as she did so, the distant Calton Hill blocking the blue slopes of Arthur's Seat, the wonderful blending of town and country which makes Edinburgh seem an epitome of human life, was lost to her eyes; she only saw his face, _insouciant_, smiling, yet full of affection. The douce commonsensical world in which she had resolved to live was gone; she was among the stars again, in a different existence, herself a different being. Yet even as she realised this she realised that she was alone. He had not found his wings to follow her.

Yet he was prompt; without pause he hailed a pa.s.sing cab, put her into it unresisting, gave the order Pentland Hotel, and as he seated himself beside her reached out a hand with glad delight in the clasp of its warm fingers to find her own.

"Where are we going, Duke?" she asked, with a sort of sob in her effort to keep herself to normal.

"To have lunch, my dear!" he replied joyously. "You look as if you wanted it. And we haven't much time to spare, for the train starts for Glasgow at 2.30 and we must go by it, for my leave is up and I have to get back to Ayr by to-morrow. I'm in command of the detachment there."

The cert.i.tude of his words roused instant resentment.

"I must ask you to excuse me," she said peremptorily. "Will you stop the cab, Captain Muir?"

"But, my dear," he replied, quite pathetically, "I must speak to you somehow, and this is my only chance. Do come, Marmie, at any rate, to lunch."

The simplicity of his plea disarmed her again, and the hotel being reached at that moment she allowed him to take her on his arm up the steps after the fashion of the day. But once in the private sitting-room, which, with lunch for two as quick as possible, he had commanded in a lordly voice as he entered, his manner changed again.

"Take off that veil and bonnet, will you, please," he said abruptly.

"I want to see what that brute has dared to do."