CHAPTER XXII.

BEHIND THE CYPRESS BOUGHS.

“Andria!” a soft tap came at her locked door. “Let me in. Why haven’t you been down all day?”

“I was busy,” Andria answered, shutting the door behind Beryl. She had been busy, indeed, and if Egerton had seen her now he would have had no fears that her beauty might be a snare to any man’s feet. The pale mauve gown had vanished with all the others that littered her bedroom; in the plainest black gown she owned, Andria stood, tall and pale, her eyes sunken, her mouth drawn; it was as if she had aged ten years.

Beryl sat down on the table, a bright rose spot burning in each cheek.

“I wish you’d come down. I don’t like it without you,” she said restlessly. “Isn’t your throat well enough?”

“I don’t know. I’d forgotten it. Why do you want me? Don’t you like--him?” for her life she could not say the name.

“Who? Mr. Egerton. I’ve always loathed him,” Beryl said angrily, “and I always shall. If it were not for being with you, I’d rather he’d left me in the workhouse!”

“No”--hesitating--“the other?”

“I don’t know. No, I don’t think I do! I liked him when I was with him, but I hate him when I remember his eyes. He looked at me as if I were something to eat,” she said pettishly. “No, I don’t like him. He frightens me.”

“How?” incredulously. Any other than Beryl she would have turned from contemptuously if they had dared to criticize Raimond Erle. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know exactly. But he wanted me to go out in the yacht with him this afternoon, and I said I wouldn’t without you. I wouldn’t go anywhere alone with him.”

“Without me! You said--Beryl, quick, what did you call me? Not Andria?” white as death she stood over the girl.

“No. I did slip and say Miss Heathcote, but I corrected myself and said Miss Holbeach. Why do you look like that? He didn’t notice. You don’t mean he knows you?”

“Not now,” said Andria, holding herself hard. “He did, once. What did he say when you slipped on my name?”

“Nothing. Half-shut his eyes like some people do when they smell a nasty smell.”

“You’re more truthful than polite.”

“Well, you asked me, and that was exactly how he did look. Mr. Egerton swam into the conversation with something about ‘Miss Holbeach being my governess and an excellent woman,’ and Mr. Erle looked comfortable again.”

Andria did not wonder. “An excellent woman!” No words could have been found that would have better set Raimond at rest.

“Did he say any more?” she asked wretchedly.

Beryl turned crimson.

“No, he--he’s a beast, and I hate him!” she said passionately. “He said he was glad I did not produce you at meals; learned ladies took away his appetite.”

“I won’t interfere with it; he needn’t agitate himself! Beryl, dear, don’t speak of me to him; don’t tell him my Christian name, and don’t let Heathcote slip again. I knew him once. I don’t want him to know I’m here. At least,” hastily, “not now.”

Every pulse of her longed to meet him, but not before Egerton and Beryl. If she was to go to England in the same ship she must see him first, but it should be no chance meeting before strangers.

“I won’t say a word about you,” and, with a rare caress, she flung her arms round Andria’s neck--“if you say not. Are you afraid of him, too?”

“No!” said Andria sharply. “I can’t meet any one I ever knew till I’m better--that’s all. See how ugly and swollen my throat is.”

“I hate you being hurt for me. I wish it had been me that was bitten!” Beryl said, with more force than grammar.

“Did you tell him about that?”

“No, I didn’t! I don’t believe he would have listened if I had. He only talked nonsense.”

“Do you mean he made love to you? Bah! Don’t answer me,” she cried, “I was a fool to ask. He would make love to a girl who kept pigs, if she were pretty.”

“I don’t want him to think I’m pretty!” said Beryl, ruffled as a cat stroked the wrong way, utterly ignorant of the way she was betraying her own thoughts. “What have you done about Mr. Heriot? Have you told?”

“No; I--waited!” answered Andria, with a ghastly smile, knowing she had waited for what would never be. “Beryl, come here, look! There go Mr. Egerton and--his friend--down to the shore. What for, do you suppose?”

“Didn’t you know? They’re not going to stay here. They’re going to dine and sleep on board the yacht and come back in the morning. And Mr. Erle isn’t his friend--he’s his nephew. That’s why I came; I thought we might go”--flushing--“and speak to Mr. Heriot. Didn’t you get anything out of Mr. Egerton about our going away? And did he say anything about that dreadful man, and the jaguars?”

“Yes,” said Andria, as if she talked in her sleep. “I’ll tell you by and by.” She leaned from the window looking after the man whose shoulders and walk she would know among a thousand. He knew nothing of her being here. Beryl’s slip of “Heathcote” had been to him only a disagreeable coincidence, reminding him of things he wished to forget. Then, what had brought him?

“Beryl!” It was as if another person had spoken aloud in her ear. “Egerton means to marry him to Beryl!”

She could think of no reason why, and yet she was sure. And why not? For all she knew, Beryl Corselas might be any one’s daughter, and whatever her secret history was, Egerton must know it.

“He’ll never do it, never! Whether I’m Raimond’s wife or not, I’ll stop it,” she thought, wild passion at her heart. “I’ll tell anything, everything. Mr. Heriot will back me up----”

Beryl pinched her.

“What are you dreaming about, with your face all screwed up?” she said. “Let’s go and see Mr. Heriot. How those two men do loiter! If they’re going, why don’t they go?”

Andria stared at her. Beryl--Raimond--Heriot--what a tangle it was! And would Heriot back her up? He knew nothing of her but that she had been called “the Lovely Andria,” and had been thought to have fastened like a leech on Raimond Erle, dragging him to that financial ruin which had certainly overtaken him--though not through her, Heaven knew! And when Heriot saw Raimond here, he would never believe Andria was not in the whole scheme, let it be what it might.

“I don’t care what he thinks!” she reflected swiftly. “Nothing matters to me but Raimond. And I may be wronging him. Egerton may be trying to keep me out of his way.”

She turned impulsively to Beryl.

“Stay here,” she said impetuously, “wait for me. I don’t know what to do. I must go and think.”

But it was not to think that she ran out into the gardens, brushing by Salome, who tried to stop her in the hall to say something--what, Andria neither knew nor cared. Only one thing was in her mind--to find out why Raimond Erle was here, if not for her. Why should she believe Egerton; who had lied to her before?

The front door was in full view of the two men, who stood talking still just where she had first seen them. Andria ran to a disused side veranda and dropped down on a flower-bed. She wanted no one to see her, least of all Beryl from her window. She vanished into a tangle of overgrown bushes that Beryl called “the cat’s walk.” It cut the long road to the shore--that instinct told her the two men would take--at a right angle, and then ran parallel with it almost to the bay. There would be only a yard of impervious thicket between her and Raimond, if she got there in time to keep pace with him as he walked down the wide road.

She did not care as she ran that it was nearly sunset, and that those teeth that had marked her neck might not be shaken off twice; she was not even breathless with her breakneck pace as she reached the angle of the path. She need only reach it, and whatever Raimond spoke of she would hear.

“It’s low--contemptible!” she thought grimly, “but I don’t care. I must find out what I can, and----” the thought broke off unfinished. They were coming!

White-faced over her black dress, the governess, “that excellent woman,” crouched behind the thicket of black cypress that was all that stood between her and the man who had been her husband.

And, sharpened as her senses were, she never dreamed that two yards in front of her stood some one else, equally quiet, but from widely different motives.

Raimond’s voice--how the woman’s heart burned in her at the rich note of it!--came on her ears.

“You do hurry so unmercifully,” he was saying, “even down to that confounded ship of yours. Why wouldn’t you stay up there and sleep in a decent bed? Would you mind waiting one instant? My cigar’s gone out.”

“Light it and be good enough to come on!” returned Egerton sharply. “It’s nearly sunset, and I have no desire to get fever. You can talk on the yacht.”

“Oh, damn the yacht! That cook has the same menu every night. I wanted to see what your niggers would give us for dinner.”

Andria heard a match struck, then another.

“Take my box,” said Egerton irritably, “and if you must dawdle here, tell me what you mean to do. Isn’t the girl handsome enough for you, or--you’re not still thinking of that wretched woman in London!” said Egerton suspiciously.

“Her? Oh, Lord, no! To be candid with you, I’d had enough of that; I wasn’t sorry to be well out of it. She was a good-looking woman, though! But I was tired of that house in Pont Street.”

“You told me the truth when you said you weren’t fool enough to marry her?”

In the dead silence the woman they spoke of heard the man she loved puffing at a cigar that would not draw; more interested in that than in the question on which her life seemed to hang. The screen of trees was thick, but if either man had seen the face behind it he would not have known the white mask of agony. Would Raimond never answer? When he did, it was with a laugh, and the governess, poor fool! winced.

“I was mad enough for anything--at first! When I took her away from Lady Parr’s,” he said coolly. “But I drew the line at that, more by good luck than good management. At first I thought the marriage legal enough, but then I found the man who did it was only a student--no more ordained than you or I, though he’s since become a priest. Oh, I’m perfectly eligible, my dear sir,” with another slight laugh. “But though I see excellent reasons for my marrying this particular girl, I’m not in much haste. She looks too much of a tiger-cat, for one thing! Now, the late Mrs. Erle had faults, but she was never more gentle than when she was in a furious rage.”

“What became of her?” asked Egerton shortly.

“Don’t know, and don’t care. I don’t see why you should, either, when you were always at me to get rid of her. But that’s beside the question. What you don’t seem to see is that you can’t hurry this girl. She shies off if I look at her. You’re always too nippy. You shoved her off here to get rid of her, and then tore your hair because you’d done it. Let me remind you, it was I put you on her track in the first place; without me, you’d never have put a finger on her. You chose to treat me as a fool, and sneaked her off here. Then when you see that a certain Spanish grandee is dead and--oh, don’t interrupt me; there is not a soul about--has left all his money to a certain lady or her heirs, and that those heirs are being advertised for, you fall on my neck and beseech me to save your credit and your acres. Well, it suits me well enough! I fancy the girl. But I’m going to do it in my own way. So far, I beg to tell you, you’ve made a mess of it, in yours.”

“Raimond!” the man’s voice was furious. “Don’t play the fool, don’t dare. You don’t know all that hangs on it. It’s not the money only, nor even the succession, it’s----” his voice dropped so low that even Andria, whose very soul was listening, could not hear.

“What!” cried Erle, startled for once. “But she dare not tell, there!”

“No; we’ve got her in our hands in a way--but only in a way. She--Mother Felicitas, they call her now,” with that uncontrollable, jarring laugh of his, “has long claws! She will want the money, too, to go to the convent--and the Lord knows she’ll have to pay well for her seat in heaven!”

“But why,” said Raimond, stupefied, “if you knew about her all along, didn’t you have her out of the convent long ago?”

“With publicity--back debts to pay up--to take you or leave you as seemed good to the half-fledged brat! No! And I couldn’t have got her. If you will have it, I’d been taken in. That woman held her over my head till I found her--and I didn’t know about the money till I got back from here. Before that, if I’d claimed her, I’d have brought out old stories, ruined myself, ousted you or saddled you with a penniless wife.”

“Whereas, now, I’m made or marred by what a pale little devil with cat’s eyes chooses to answer me,” replied Raimond coarsely. “Well, there’s no choice! I’ll marry her if she says yes to my somewhat mature charms. If she says no, I fail to see what’s to be done next!”

“Then,” said Egerton angrily, “you’ve less sense than I imagined. Why do you suppose I hired a yacht with money I haven’t got, and brought her and you to this God-forsaken hole? If she says no, she can live and die here. She’ll never get back to England, and she doesn’t know who she is in any case. I should fancy it was simple as A B C. We’ll lose the money, but we’ll save the rest.”

Raimond Erle for a long minute said nothing. The wretched listener who shrank appalled behind the screen of cypress could not see that he was looking the other man up and down.

“Well,” he remarked at last, “you must have been a daredevil when you were young! But I quite agree with you. There’s only one character in which your protégée can be taken to England, but you must give me a little time to play the game. Come on out of this,” with sudden distaste. “I don’t know why, but I feel as if there were devils behind every bush in your secluded retreat.”

“There’s one; oh, there’s one!” said Andria Heathcote, who knew now that she had never been Andria Erle, though she had hoped against hope even when she was turned out on the world with ten pounds. “I’ll ruin you--ruin you! If there’s a God in heaven, you shall never have Beryl to torture as you tortured me!”

A thousand slights, a thousand dreadful positions he had put her in where she must hold up her head till women called her brazen--aye, and men, too!--came back to her. One kindly word, one pitying regret for the woman he had once been mad for, and she might have played into his hands for no other reason than that he had spoken of her softly for old sake’s sake. But now--she could hate him now!

Blindly, not seeing or caring where she was going, she stumbled forward on the rough path, and round the very next bush nearly fell against--Heriot!

Pale, quivering from head to foot, she stood quite still. For a moment she could not speak for the ungovernable fury of rage in her that he should have heard her shamed.

“You listened!” she cried at last. “You heard.” In the last low rays of the sinking sun he stood before her bareheaded.

“I slipped out for some air,” he said, very low. “I stood here because I did not want them to see me till I knew what you had done. Yes, I heard.”

If he had dared to pity her she would have stood like a stone, but now something in his voice reached the heart that felt frozen in her breast. She broke into such a dreadful sobbing as he had never heard.

“I knew it before,” she cried; “though I wouldn’t believe it. Even when he turned me away, I wouldn’t believe it. I thought I was his wife. He shall never have Beryl--never, unless he kills me to get her!”

“Come back to the house. It is too late to be out,” was all Heriot could find to say. He turned away that he might not see the shame and agony in her distorted face.

“He whispered,” she cried, distracted. “I couldn’t hear. Why, besides the money, does his uncle want him to marry her?”

“His uncle!” Heriot exclaimed. He was glad as he had not often been that he had heard all that had been said, or not for a hundred oaths from her would he have believed this woman knew nothing of the dirty work Erle had on hand. And he had wronged her enough by judging her. If it had not been for his self-righteousness she would have told him everything long ago. “That wasn’t his uncle. That was his father, Lord Erceldonne! He is not Egerton at all.”