CHAPTER XX.

AN UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL.

“‘Bone of thy bone,’ said God to Adam. ‘Core of my core,’ say I to thee.”

“You’re sure, Salome?” Andria cried. Too stiff and weary to move, only her eyes looked alive in her pale face.

“It’s de boat, it mayn’t be him. Oh, my land, Miss Holbeach, dey’s blood on you dress! He’ll kill me. Honey, let ole Salome see! Whata done got yer?”

But Heriot saw she knew.

“If it is Egerton,” he observed grimly, “he won’t have everything his own way. He’ll be amenable enough when he finds he hasn’t only women to bully.”

Andria started.

“He mustn’t find you here!” she cried. “Perhaps he has come to take us away. You must go back to the quarters till I find out what he means to do.”

“We can’t go away and leave him here!” said Beryl sharply, pointing to Heriot.

“We won’t. If Egerton means to take us back to England we’ll make him take Mr. Heriot, too. He mayn’t know how dreadful things are here--he may be better than we think.”

“He knows, honey,” said Salome pitifully. “Don’t you put no trust in dat.”

“You must hide, don’t you see it?” Andria repeated. “This is Egerton’s house. If he finds you here he can turn you out. And then what help could you be to us?”

“He’d have his work cut out,” Heriot returned, almost smiling, standing straight and tall among the three women.

“He wouldn’t cut out no more’n he could do,” observed Salome dryly. “Dat crew on board dat yacht is all cutthroat dagos, dey’d do whatever he tell ’em, knife you or drown you. I been six years in dis house, and you mind me--dey ain’t no chance here in a fight for any one but Mr. Egerton heself!”

“If you want to help us,” begged Andria, “go into the quarters and wait. Chloe and Amelia Jane won’t tell, they’re too frightened of him to speak to him if they can help it.” It was the best way. To see a strange man here might turn Egerton’s good intentions into bad ones.

“Oh, I can’t!” said Heriot, with an angry laugh. “I’d rather have things out with the man.”

A slim, cool hand was on his wrist as he spoke.

“Wait and see,” said Beryl. “Please, Mr. Heriot. Then if he means badly to us you’ll be here to help us.”

Voice and touch were exactly like a child’s. Heriot flushed as he met the tawny eyes that were so innocent.

“All right,” he returned reluctantly. “But if there’s going to be any delay about taking you away from this you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

Andria nodded. This girl, fresh from the convent, had bent the man’s will as all her own worldly wisdom could not do. She glanced from one to the other with a pang at her heart. Love was a bitter thing. If it grew up between them how would it end? She bit her lip, remembering her own love’s beginning.

Salome had run out into the veranda. She came back now frowning with excitement.

“It’s him, he’s back! Coming up de path wid two sailors,” she cried. “Whatever’ll we do if he sees Mr. Heriot?”

“He won’t!” said Beryl promptly. “Mr. Heriot’s going into the quarters to wait and see what happens. Chloe and Amelia won’t tell.”

“Ain’t no sense in trusting dem niggers. You stay here, and I’ll tell ’em you’re gone--went last night. Dey won’t tell you’s been here when dey might tell you is here,” she said shrewdly, and she was off and back before it seemed possible.

“Come, down de side stairs,” she whispered. “Chloe and ’Melia’s comin’ up de front ones now to get ready master’s room. Hurry!”

She dragged him off as she spoke, and Beryl turned to Andria.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Look!” said Andria, and bent down.

The girl drew back with a cry.

“You got that, to save me!”

“I got it, anyhow,” grimly. “I’ll show him that and the broken window in his room where the man went out. I dare him to leave us here after that. I wonder what brought him back so soon?”

“He could have been here before. It’s only six days to England. Andria, do you think he’s come to take us away?”

“What else?”

“I don’t know,” said Beryl, very low. “But I think he hates me worse than Mother Felicitas did. Listen; don’t tell him those jaguars are tame--don’t tell him I play with the kittens. Let him think we’re afraid.”

“I am afraid. There’s no thinking about it.”

“Tell him about the crazy man, make more of that, for that’s really the root of all,” Beryl persisted, with more truth than she knew.

“Why don’t you want him to know the beasts aren’t really dangerous?”

“They are,” coolly, “as far as he is concerned. Andria, are you going to meet him like that, all torn and bloody?” looking at the other woman’s flimsy muslin gown, whose real lace was in shreds.

“It won’t hurt him to see it, I had to feel it,” Andria answered dully. “Beryl, did you notice something last night? When that dreadful, wizened creature came jabbering into our room last night, it wasn’t you he sprang at, it was I! If he had made for you I couldn’t have done anything.”

“I saw,” but to Andria’s surprise she broke into a passion of tears. “Oh, Andria,” she sobbed, “what’s wrong with me that all strange things fear me? Am I half a beast, or crazy, like that dumb, jabbering man?”

But Andria never answered. For once she let the girl she loved cry to her in vain. She was on her feet, breathless, listening with every nerve.

Did every one who came to this dreadful house lose their senses? or did she in very truth hear a voice she had never thought to hear this side of the grave?

Frantic, she hushed the girl who sobbed beside her.

“Be quiet, listen!” her hand like a vise on Beryl’s shoulder. “There’s some one else there with Mr. Egerton.”

A man’s voice, sweet and drawling, came up the stairs from the entrance-hall.

“By George! You do yourself well in your country retreat. The man must have been crazy to sell it to you for such a song!”

“Perhaps he was,” the answer was dry and significant. “My dear boy,” Egerton said in his ordinary tone, “did you expect me to keep my ward in a tent?”

Andria staggered back against Beryl, whose tears had dried on her cheeks.

“I’m faint,” she muttered, “ill. Tell them they can’t see me. I’m going to bed.”

The strength gone from her muscles, her feet barely carrying her, she wrenched herself from Beryl’s hold and crept, more than walked, to her room. That was Egerton down-stairs, and with him was--Raimond Erle!

Why was he here? What had brought him?

She flung herself down on her bed, laughing and crying with incredulous joy. There could be but one reason, he must have found out from Egerton that she was here; must have wearied for her as she had for him, and come himself to tell her that that letter was all a lie; that she was still his wife, always had been and always would be, world without end.

“Thank God! Oh, thank God!” gasped Andria Erle, face down on her bed. She knew now that she could never forget the man who had been all hers, never look on any other but with indifferent eyes. She could forgive Egerton for all the mystery that was round her, could thank him even with that smarting wound at the back of her neck that had brought her here. She had been but half-alive all these weeks, a ghost of herself. Now she could rise again as from her grave, and dress herself to go down fresh and fair when Raimond sent for her. For the first time she was glad the French maid had disobeyed her and packed the gowns she had never meant to wear again.

Not even a thought of all she had to forgive crossed her mind. He was here, he had come for her; that was all.

She rose with feverish haste. There was a pale lilac gown he had liked--“he said I looked like spring in it,” she thought, hunting in her boxes till she found it.

She looked like spring indeed when she had it on and remembered the day he had bought it for her. It deepened her blue-gray eyes into violet, set off her cream-white skin and ruddy hair. Heriot, the past night, forgotten as if they had never been, she stared at herself.

“I’m handsomer than I was,” she thought, with a leaping heart, “fairer, softer! He will be glad, glad when he sees me. But I won’t go down till he sends.”

The soft lilac stuff fell in lovely folds round her as she turned at a knock at the door.

“Come in!” she cried; she could not make her voice quiet. “Come in.”

It was Amelia Jane, carrying her breakfast.

“I thought you was sick!” she cried. “My soul, I dunno when I see you look so well.”

“I’m better--well! Tell me”--the question came beyond her will--“did--did Mr. Egerton send me any message? Is Miss Beryl at breakfast?”

“Yes’m. She an’ Mr. Egerton an’ another gentleman. No, he didn’t send no message.”

“Very well,” she said, her voice oddly flat and unmusical.

“Put the breakfast down, please, Amelia.”

But when the woman was gone she made no attempt to eat; only sank into a chair as if her new-found strength had somehow failed her. If she had been in Raimond Erle’s place, could she have waited all this time?

“Not one minute of it,” said her starving heart. “Not one minute!”

The color faded from her face as she sat and watched the clock. Ten minutes, twenty, three-quarters of an hour--and he had not come, though breakfast must long have been over. She could not sit still and wait like this, dared not go down and meet him before the others.

“I’ll get up and walk up and down. Perhaps by the time I count a thousand steps he’ll be here! Only a thousand little steps, dear saints, and I’ll see him, kiss him, be in his arms.”

She had barely counted a hundred in her wild walk when a man’s step sounded in the hall, a man’s knock on her door.

Radiant, triumphant, incredulous of her own joy, she sprang to the door and flung it wide.

Every drop of blood in her body seemed to surge back to her heart. Egerton, tall, suave, middle-aged, stood on her threshold.