CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CRY IN THE STARLIGHT.

“Erceldonne!” the world swam with her.

For how many years had that name been her terror, its owner her evil genius. Sometimes it had been clear even to her blinded eyes that his anger was used as a pretext for not acknowledging her, and again she had known when he had really put pressure on his son, and nothing but a dogged, cross-grained temper had kept Raimond from giving her up. And here she was taking his money, the paid servant of the man who had ruined her life; for if it had not been for the fear of disinheritance, Raimond would have married her openly in the days when love was young. And Erceldonne----

To Heriot’s horror, she broke out into a harsh scream of laughter. What would Erceldonne say if he knew the very woman he had been at his wit’s end to get rid of had been brought by his own accord under his very roof? She turned to Heriot, wiping away the tears born of that horrible, mirthless laughter.

“What a merry-andrew patchwork it is!” she cried. “‘Three blind mice, see how they run’--now you come in, and then Raimond and the others; we’re all in the dreadful round. And by and by the farmer’s wife will come and cut all our tails off! Why don’t you laugh?” she cried wildly.

He might have answered with perfect truth, because there was nothing further from his mind than laughter. Here in the fast-growing gloom of the cypress thicket, where Andria’s face was already but a patch of white against the dark foliage, they were half a mile from the house; and he knew now what the dangers were in this place after nightfall. The very man who had brought two women here had not cared to stay and face them.

“What a fool I was to lie low!” he thought angrily. “If I had appeared at first everything would have had to be open and aboveboard. Now, I can’t come out after slinking away as I did. I wonder why I listened to that child?”

But he knew quite well why he had listened. From the very first day her slow, soft voice, her strange eyes, had bewitched him. It was for more than Andria’s sake that he was aghast at the cold wickedness of the man who was pleased to call himself Egerton.

“Come home, come back to the house!” he said sharply. “We’ve only got to-night before us to settle what we must do;” but in his mind there was, of course, only one thing to be done. He must reckon with Erceldonne in the morning.

He dared not even talk as he hurried his companion up the path. His foot was stiff still, though his strength had come back to him; but no man’s strength and his bare hands were going to avail anything against a madman and two jaguars; and the woman at his side would welcome death as a friend.

If he had been alone he would have returned to the house with his hands in his pockets--he could only die once, and life was not so sweet to a broken man that he should worry about it. But with this silent, listless woman on his hands, Heriot’s heart was in his mouth at every strange shadow in the ever-deepening dark. When they were free of the woods he felt easier. The good stars shone down on them as they reached the open garden and drew near the house, and a quick compassion ran through him for Andria Erle, whose only refuge was under the roof of her enemy.

“Look! What’s that?” he said quietly. “Let me go first.”

“There’s no need,” returned Andria lifelessly. “If you mean that black thing in the shadow by the steps, it’s Salome. She’s waiting for me; she saw me go out.”

The woman came to them swiftly, her finger on her lips.

“Don’t speak,” she said softly; “Chloe’s in de dining-room. Oh, my Lawd! I didn’t know where you was both got to.”

“Send her away,” whispered Andria, with sudden passion. “Tell her you’ll wait on me, anything!” She would go mad if she had to sit through dinner alone, if Heriot must hide when there was so little time to make a plan.

“I’ll tell her and ’Melia Jane dey must iron dem two white dresses for Miss Ber’l to-night. Dey won’t be no more’n time, and when dey gits out in de wash-house,” she said shrewdly, “dey’ll be skeered to come in again. Dey’ll sneak up-stairs to deir beds.”

“Anything, only be quick!” Heriot should stay where he was till he heard all she had to say; all the dreadful tale Egerton had let out about Beryl, without knowing that she was putting two and two together. “Lock them out, Salome,” she added feverishly.

“Yes’m! You come into de house, de two of you. Just you sit in de drawing-room an’ don’t speak till I tell you dey’s gone.”

Heriot had almost to push Andria in. It seemed as if she courted death out under the stars.

When he had bolted the heavy door noiselessly, he followed her into the dark drawing-room. What was Salome doing that she was so long? He heard her voice in the back of the house; not raised in authority, but wild with astonishment and fright. Before he could draw breath, the fat black woman had thrown open the dining-room door, her shapeless figure grotesque against the lighted dinner-table as she stared into the gloom where the two sat.

“Oh, missus,” she said, “missus! And dem niggers never told me.”

“Told you what?” cried Andria. Heriot, with that open door in front of him dared not speak.

“Little miss is gone out. Dat man, de tall one, wid de marks o’ de devil’s claws round his eyes, he come back for her. He said you was waiting for her down at de shore, you was both going to dinner on de yacht. An’ she’s went wid him, after last night. Dey’ll be et.”

Heriot let out an astonished oath. If it had not been for that stupid lie about the governess and his private knowledge, it might have seemed natural enough that Beryl should dine on the yacht. But Andria’s wits were quicker, and she knew Raimond Erle.

He had been bored with his father’s society, and must have come straight back by the short cut. The girl was handsome. Even without getting her on board the _Flores_, a starlight walk with her would pass the time. That lie about the governess had been told when she refused to go with him; it was the first thing he would think of. She knew how obstinate he was about anything he might take in his head. He knew nothing about the dangers of the island; if he did, recklessness and a revolver would make him laugh at them. A beautiful girl, whom he must make love to for reasons he had seen fit to exclaim at; a night warm and silent, heavy with flower scents, the soft stars ablaze in the sky!--his discarded wife clenched her teeth. Not anything on earth would have balked Raimond of his evening walk.

“But I will!” she cried to herself, wild and bitter in her rebellion. “I, that he shamed and turned out,” she fumbled blindly on a table in the dark.

“I must go,” she said, with something cold and dreadful in her voice that Salome took for fear, like her own. “If he said I was at the shore, I’ll be there. There will be time by the short cut.”

“Oh, don’t you do it! You won’t do no good,” cried the black woman. “Mr. Egerton he’ll take care of little miss--if ever she gets to de boat!”

“He’ll take such care of her that she’ll never come back,” Andria muttered.

Yet it was not fear for the girl that was in her heart, but the jealousy that is more cruel than the grave. No one knew as she did what Raimond could be when he chose. She did not believe for one instant that any girl could resist him. She was past Heriot like a flash, regardless of anything but those two walking down to the shore in the scented night, under the gorgeous stars--a man and a maid.

“Hold on!” Heriot was at her side. “Did you think I wasn’t coming? Though I don’t see what good either of us can do if she’s gone on board the yacht. What’s that?”

His hand, swinging against hers as they walked, had touched something cold and sharp. Before she knew what she was doing it was in his grasp, not hers. In the starlight he saw what it was.

“This will do to fight the jaguars with,” he said coolly, pocketing the lean, ugly dagger just as if he had not seen her face in the square patch of light from the dining-room door as she ran past him. “I’ll attend to that, if you’ll catch your charge. Hold on, that’s not the way!”

“It’s the way I’m going,” she replied savagely.

She began to run as once before she had run down that path; every turn of it seemed familiar to her, even in the veiled light. She took no more thought for Heriot than if he had been a dog; he had the dagger; let him take care of himself.

Round the great boulders, through the thickets of flowers, she fled as one possessed; hatred at her heart, jealousy tearing her. Heriot, stumbling over the tough, trailing vines, missing the dim track a hundred times, was soon far behind. The more he hurried, the less he got on. He had taken the dagger from her because he had seen red murder in her eyes, yet now he almost wished she had it. He knew from instinct that there was more abroad in the woods than Raimond Erle and the girl he had decoyed away. Yet not a sound reached him as he doggedly followed the governess. He gave a sudden, contemptuous laugh at himself for being mixed up in such a wild-goose chase--and at Erle, who had had to cajole a girl to go with him by a lie! The next instant he laughed no longer.

He was out of the wooded path on the open shore. Before him was the dark figure of Andria Erle, standing motionless; as he came up to her she pointed dumbly.

The moon had risen, and perfectly distinct on the calm waves of the bay was a boat with a solitary figure in it, a man rowing with a quick, ill-tempered stroke.

“She left him. She hasn’t gone with him!” Heriot exclaimed. “But where is she?”

“I don’t know,” answered Andria, with chattering teeth. What would have seemed nothing in another place was eery here, after the strange story of that other girl who sang to animals. And yet her heart was lighter as she turned away. It was something, at least, that Beryl had not gone to the yacht.

But now that her passion of rage and fear was dead, she dared not go back to the house by that path she had been warned not to use in broad daylight. It was by the long way that she hurried Heriot to the house; yet it was he, not she, who was nervous about the girl who had gone back alone. If Egerton’s tale were true, neither the madman nor his dreadful familiars would hurt Beryl; but still Andria winced when they reached the house and found she had not come in.

“What shall we do?” She sat down on the door-steps sick at heart.

“Go and look for her. At least, I will. You stay here,” but he had not gone twenty yards when he recoiled.

“Did you call?” he cried sharply.

“No one did,” but through her words there came the echo of a faint cry, low and wailing like a lost soul.

Heriot, running as if he had been shot out of a gun, made for the moonlit woods.