CHAPTER XXI.

STRANGERS.

“Thou shalt meet him, but wilt thou greet him?” “Ah, no.”

“My dear Miss Holbeach,” he said, “good morning. I am sorry to find you not well. I hope my unexpected arrival did not startle you.”

And indeed she looked ill enough, and startled enough for anything, as she leaned hard on the door-handle that she might not fall. Every vestige of color had gone from her face, even her lips were ashy.

“I’m only faint--I had a fright,” she could only mutter incoherently, as she tried for the breath that came so hardly, “a fright--last night.”

“My poor lady,” he said quite kindly. “I see you are altogether unstrung. I came to ask you to come to my room. I wish to tell you----”

“Oh! not there,” she cried, with an uncontrollable shudder. “Not there!”

“May I come in here, then?” he asked courteously. “This is your sitting-room, I imagine.”

Andria glanced backward at the door she had so carefully closed that Raimond Erle might not see her disordered bedroom, where she had thrown down gown after gown in the search for this one that should please him.

“Come in,” she said, with white lips, anxious only to get the door into the passage shut lest Raimond might pass by, and Egerton looked at her covertly as she sank into a chair, too nerveless to stand. There must have been wild work here to make this woman look as she did. He had heard nothing from either Beryl or Salome, who had both been silent and sullen; but he knew from Andria’s face that she had seen what perhaps he had meant her to see when he brought her here, but what now--since his purpose had changed--he had nearly burst the boilers of his yacht in trying to get here in time to prevent.

For Andria was right, he had never meant to return, his warnings to her and Salome had all been a blind; Beryl Corselas, when first he found her, had been a burden to get rid of, he had not dared to let her stay in England or let his name be heard in connection with her. Here in this island he had meant her to disappear for good and all--but, of course, to his deep sorrow and surprise! He was so careful a scoundrel that he had acted a part even before the servant who was his miserable slave and the woman he had engaged because of her probable unscrupulousness. That he had warned them had been all that kept Egerton from cursing himself for a fool all the way from England. One paragraph in a paper had made those sham warnings real. Lord Erceldonne had sent for his son, and two days after set out in hot haste for his secret retreat, terrified that his plans might have flourished so well as to ruin him.

In the long pause Andria’s slow pulses were loud in her ears; but she had pulled herself together. After all, it was natural that Egerton should come first, natural that he should be puzzled how to open a difficult subject; and of course he must be in Raimond’s confidence. But when he did speak it was not about the man he had brought with him.

“Miss Holbeach,” he said slowly, “you said you had been frightened. Do you mean in this house? Or out of doors? I warned you, you remember!”

“You warned me, and yet you left me here with a defenseless girl,” she said almost inaudibly. She cared little now for the horrors she had suffered; he had come to take them away. Raimond was here; it was all past and gone.

“There was no reason not to leave you here,” he lied calmly. “I will be quite frank with you, there had been a reason; but I learned from Salome that it had quite disappeared.”

There was a sort of lethargy in Andria’s soul; nothing mattered now but Raimond. Yet at the plausible untruth she shook it off.

“It appeared again the very night you left here!” she cried. “A man came, a little, wizened man, like an ape, that hurried around the house and climbed up the jalousies like a monkey. And the next day I saw his face over my shoulder in the pond, a leering thing that mouthed at me----”

“The pond! I told you to keep away from that path,” the anger that was sincere at last steadied her nerves.

“I went to get Beryl. She had strayed there.” The governess looked him in the face with eyes that were magnificent. “I took care that she never went again. But that’s not all. There are beasts here, dreadful jaguars. All night long they hunt and sniff about the house, they climb the jalousies and--I’ve seen their eyes!” with a shudder. “Oh, Mr. Egerton, take us away!”

The man had started to his feet.

“It is what I came to do,” he answered hurriedly. “Believe me, I had no idea of this. I thought the place was safe--Salome said so.”

“Safe for white women!” She rose, too, as the scornful cry broke from her. “I will show you how safe it is. Look here!” She pulled down the lace and ribbon at the back of her collar. “Look at that. Do you know there was nearly murder done here last night. I don’t know why there wasn’t.”

She bent her head, and at sight of the double rows of deep-crimson punctures where the piece had been all but bitten out, the man who had brought her to this evil place was dumb, though a month ago it might have suited him well enough. She straightened her collar again with trembling fingers.

“What did that?” Egerton moistened his lips. “Not a beast? You--you never could have got away!”

“A man,” she said quietly, “a man, dumb, and crazy, and strong, so strong that only God saved me from him. We were standing in Beryl’s room when he came in on us, running, stooping so low that he seemed to be on all fours. I ran between him and Beryl and he jumped on my back. I felt his teeth through my flesh. I ran out into the hall with his fingers round my throat and shut the door on the girl. Then”--her hesitation was so momentary that he did not see it--“something frightened the thing. It let me go and I ran. Did you see there was a chest of drawers against your sitting-room window? It was I put it there. I broke the window when I ran in there, and the man thought I had gone out through the broken pane and followed me. I moved the chest--locked the door”--her chest heaved at the memory; tears born of that suspense that was eating at her heart blinded her. “Oh, surely you didn’t know what you were leaving us to!” she cried.

“Where was Salome?” He was not given to swearing, but he barely kept in a furious oath.

“In Beryl’s bedroom. She saw nothing, knew nothing till I and--that thing--were out in the hall. She has done everything to keep us safe.”

“Whereas you evidently think I brought you here to be murdered!” he returned, a queer look in his black eyes that seemed blacker than ever. “Well, I can’t wonder if you do! Sit down, please, and rest. I owe you a very deep gratitude.”

He bent his head to hide his face, which was not grateful. In his inmost soul he would have been glad if this foolhardy woman had behaved like a good, sensible coward. It would have cut the knot that galled him night and day, though it would have cost him a fortune. Perhaps not that, he would have been in a position to seek other girls with money.

“It’s a long story,” he cut off his thoughts hastily, since what was done was done, “but I must tell it to you to explain. Might I smoke? You don’t mind? Perhaps you will have a cigarette yourself?”

“I? No, I never smoke,” she said, with annoyed surprise.

Mr. Egerton broke out into that hoarse cackle of a laugh that always jarred on Andria’s nerves. He had noticed cigar smoke heavy in the shut-up drawing-room the very instant he had entered the house at dawn; had seen the butt of one of his own cigars reposing in a flower-pot. And now the governess’ hasty lie amused him even in his annoyance. A cigar, too, of all things!

“Many women do smoke, even cigars,” he said urbanely. “I beg your pardon if I thought you had the habit. It seemed quite possible.”

Then he did know about her past when the few women she had known smoked like chimneys! She never remembered having told Salome that Heriot must have cigars; she only wished Egerton would go on. Would he never get to Raimond Erle? She looked at his face and imagined it pleased him to tantalize her.

“What does it all mean?” she asked. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter if we are going away.”

“It does matter. I don’t want you to think me a murderer,” he said, so gently that it brought back to her another voice which each minute seemed an hour till she heard. “But I must go back a long way to make you understand. Twenty years ago I saw this place first. I was yachting and found it by chance. The house stood exactly as it does now, but it was surrounded by magnificent gardens, was full of servants and luxury. There were only two people in it, a retired planter of forty, and his daughter. She was the most beautiful person I have ever seen, but that,” hastily, “was not my affair, nor, if her father could help it, any one else’s. I saw then the man was mad. He told me he would shoot the first man who wished to marry his daughter, had brought her here out of the world that she might live and die unmarried; a girl who was more beautiful than any woman alive!

“‘He would not have her suffer as women suffered,’ he said. ‘All men were cruel, she should not be at the mercy of any.’ She was his idol. His only other interest was wild animals. He had a regular menagerie--lions, a tiger, jaguars--and he and that girl would play with them as if they were lambs. It used to make my blood run cold to see them. She would sit among the jaguars crooning a queer song”--Andria’s hands that lay on her knees clenched with the effort not to cry out; did he know how dreadful a thing he was telling her? did he mean the madman’s daughter was Beryl’s mother?--“till the beasts came fawning round her like a kitten. Oh, I know it sounds like a fairy-tale! But I saw it.”

Only her innate caution, her habit of distrust, kept her from a quick disclosure. Long afterward she knew she had saved her life by holding her peace.

“Well, I went away! The girl was nothing to me,” he continued, looking not at Andria, but his half-smoked cigarette, so that, being a woman, she knew the girl had been everything to him and he nothing at all to her. “I came back again two years afterward--and I would not have known the place. The beautiful gardens were a tangle of creepers and weeds, the servants were all gone; the animals dead from starvation in their enclosures, all but the jaguars, that had broken loose and foraged for themselves. The man I found at last, ragged, thin, half-naked, and at first he would not speak to me; would only jabber at me without words.”

“Then it was he!” she gasped.

“Wait,” he nodded. “He was dumb, mad, but by and by his madness cleared a little and he told me what had happened. A stranger had come to the island; it was the old story that I need not dwell on”--reflecting hastily that it was one this woman probably knew from cover to cover. “She defied her father and ran away with him in a native boat. The man dismissed his servants and sat alone in his misery, and then heard that all his money, which had been in Brazilian bonds, was lost. He had not a penny to go and seek her through the world. He forgot, as I said, even his animals; almost forgot the use of his tongue, for only at intervals could I make him talk. Well, I was sorry for him!” What vindictive light lit his eyes to her sharp vision! “I liked the place and bought it for a toy, merely that the old man,” he continued slowly, “might be free to go and find his daughter who had deserted him.”

The words were so gently spoken that it took all her cleverness to grasp their meaning. He had tried to set a madman on the track of the woman who had refused him and the man she had loved. Her eyes dilated with abhorrence, and yet his next words came so smoothly that she did not know what to think, and there was no one to tell her how cunningly he was mingling the truth with lies.

“You would have pitied him, too; he had aged twenty years in the two that had passed. All he wanted was to find his daughter, yet when I gave him money he was too crazy to go. He threw it before my eyes into that pond you spoke of and went off to some lair in the woods with his jaguars.” He did not say how pitifully inadequate had been the purchase-money, nor that the lawful owner had been hunted away by men with guns. “In all the years I have been coming here I have only once had any evidence that he was alive”--that once would have made any other man long for the grave that he might hide his shame there!--“and Salome, who has been in charge here for six years, swore to me when I brought you that the place was safe. I am more shocked and horrified than I can say that you should have been in such danger from that lunatic and his animals. To-morrow, if you like, I will have my yacht’s crew scour the country till we find him.”

“Let him be,” said Andria pitifully. “Besides, if we are going away! And we shall be quite safe with you in the house”--“and Raimond!” she added in her mind, the thought of him bringing light to her eyes, color to her lips.

“Yes, exactly,” he agreed quickly, though he had no idea of sleeping in the house or letting the man he had brought with him sleep there either. That madman would tear him limb from limb if he could; Mr. Egerton knew only too well that the very sight of him would rouse boundless fury in the dumb thing that ran up and down the deserted gardens whence his delight had fled. He would never dare to stay in the house knowing that his crazy enemy had ever been able to enter it.

“How did he get in?” he asked.

“I don’t quite know,” she stammered. “I was up-stairs.”

She had forgotten all about Heriot stuffed away in the servants’ quarters till now. She had it on the tip of her tongue to avow everything, but something furtive, dishonest, in Egerton’s face stopped her.

“Better wait,” she thought. “I can tell Raimond first. He will know what to do.”

And though Egerton had explained far more than he had imagined to her all was not clear yet. As he rose to go she rose, too, and looked at him.

“Why did you tell me this was Bermuda?” she asked suddenly.

“From inadvertency, at first--the house is called Bermuda. Then because I feared you would rebel against being banished to an uninhabited part of the Azores. I fancied you had not been accustomed to--dulness!” and at the covert meaning of the words and the lie that began them, she caught her breath. There had been no inadvertence in his mention of Bermuda, first or last.

“I wanted Beryl out of England, you’re right!” he added, as if he knew what was in her mind. “I pitied her. I had no wish to see a long arm stretched out from the convent to claim her, for of course she has told you her story. I hope to see her happily married, not dragging out existence in prison, all but the name. And I knew no other place to put her. But that,” with his queer laugh, “will be remedied now.”

Something in the assured expectancy of his voice woke a dreadful thought in Andria Erle. Like a flash the glamour fell from her eyes, she put two and two together. He meant to see Beryl safely married; he had brought Raimond Erle to this place; the things dovetailed with horrible accuracy, though she could not see what Raimond had to do with Egerton.

“You mean----” she said; she could hardly speak.

“I mean one never knows what the day may bring forth,” he answered lightly. “If you look from your window you may understand.”

She had no need to. Their voices, Beryl’s and Raimond’s, came up to her gaily where she stood. Had she been deaf not to have heard them before?

It was as if a gulf of darkness had opened under her feet, yet she would not flinch if pride could keep her steady. Raimond--did Egerton mean it was for her sake he had come?

Egerton, watching the hot color come and go in the governess’ face, wondered he had never seen how beautiful she was. She would be a dangerous rival for that half-fledged girl down-stairs. He hoped there were not going to be any troublesome complications.

“You are not coming down to-day, you said!” he suggested. “Perhaps you are right, and it would be well to rest.”

She was ready to say she would go down now, this instant, when she remembered he was her master; that governesses did not always come to the table with guests.

“Perhaps it would,” she answered, and the coldness of her voice pleased him.

“I have not mentioned you, at least your name,” he had the grace not to look at her, even though he had no idea she and Erle had ever met; “I thought, perhaps, you would prefer not to meet strangers.”

“No,” and by good luck he did not see her face, “not strangers, though there is no earthly reason you should not mention my name,” for Holbeach would mean nothing to Raimond. “I will go down when you send for me.”

As the door closed behind him she caught at the table to hold herself up. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, and her nostrils pinched as she breathed. From the scented shade of the oleanders below her there floated up a man’s laugh, low and sweet. Agony racked her as even she had not known it could without killing her.

“Strangers,” she said in a dreadful whisper, “he and I!”

Her face convulsed out of all beauty, she ran to the window and looked out behind the jalousy. In the garden, tall, handsome in a haggard, hard-bitten way--and oh, God, beloved!--lounged the man who had been her husband for five years. It took all her will to crush back the cry on her lips. She knew from his face it was not for her he had come back. He had forgotten.

“Then why is he here?” she asked herself. But she dared not answer her own soul.