CHAPTER XXV.

THE LAUGH IN THE DARK.

A weakness like the lethargy that comes before death had bound Andria hand and foot. Where she had sunk down on the door-step she stayed, caring nothing for the dark shadows of the garden, or the beasts, and worse, that might be hidden in them.

Raimond had left Beryl and gone to the yacht--that was the only thing really in her thoughts. But he would not be so balked a second time. It would be better if death came and took her where she sat, found Beryl in the lonely woods, for it would cut the coil around them both, the coil the girl understood not at all--the woman too well. She bowed her head on the cold stone door-steps, too hopeless to care how the matter ended.

The moon rose and poured a flood of light on the lovely, desolate figure, almost lying on the steps with hidden face. Her misery, her shame that another had heard, had numbed the woman’s wits. Raimond was done with her, would care no more for her claim on him than for his last year’s neckties. If Beryl fell in love with him she might not care either. Andria could not think past that, except to be sure that she would never leave the island, even if she chose to go in the yacht with Raimond and the girl who was to stand lawfully in her own unlawful shoes.

A sudden touch roused her. Salome, like a black statue, was sitting beside her.

“I been down in de woods,” she whispered. “I seen him kiss her. She’s coming now. Oh, missus, dey’ll be murder!”

“Seen who?” fierce, suddenly alive in every nerve, she sprang up. Had she been mistaken, and it was not Raimond she had seen rowing away! “For God’s sake, Salome, who?”

“Mr. Heriot,” but she sprang up, too, at the dreadful laugh that came from Andria. “Don’t do like dat for de land’s sake!” she exclaimed. “Dey ain’t never no good come from dat kind o’ laughin’. And I tell you he must go out o’ dis to-night. Mr. Egerton he tell me Miss Ber’l gwine to marry dat nephew he brung. What’ll he say when he finds out?--for she’ll never marry him now, dat I tell you!”

“Oh, Salome!” the white woman seized the black one’s hand, more relieved than if she had brought her the riches of the world. “What a fool I’ve been. I never thought of that. Hush! Here’s Miss Beryl now. But--she’s alone!”

Yet as she looked at the girl’s face in the warm moonlight she knew Salome was right. The indifferent child of yesterday was gone. This was a woman, and surely, surely, she would fight as women do, tooth and claw, for the man she loved.

“Where’s Mr. Heriot?” she asked softly.

“Coming.” She hesitated. “Andria----”

“I know,” a wave of pity came over her for the girl whose wooing would be so stormy, and then a cold terror. Salome knew Egerton--she knew Raimond--neither would hesitate in this lonely island at anything that would put out of the way the man and woman who threatened their schemes. She looked up and saw Heriot approaching as carelessly as if the terrors of the place did not exist, and the foolhardy thing they were all doing came over her.

“Come in; it isn’t safe to sit here,” she cried, and as Beryl broke from her at the coming steps she turned to Salome. “Take her in and put her to bed. Make her eat something,” she whispered. “I’ll talk to him.”

Salome nodded.

“Make him go,” she breathed. “Get him out o’ dis. Dey’ll murder him if dey finds out. It ain’t no use his wantin’ to marry her nor trying to fight for her. Dey’ll just walk plunk over him, and all she’ll ever know is dat he ain’t come back some morning.”

She shambled off after the girl, but there was tragedy in her working face.

From old, old times she had known that there was no way but giving in with Egerton. If the girl were meant for his nephew he would have her in spite of ten Heriots and without an open refusal.

“Come in,” repeated Andria, as Heriot stood irresolute in the doorway. “I think we must all be mad to stay out of doors after last night.”

She spoke with an irrepressible shiver; he looked so handsome and debonair, and the odds against him were so great.

“I’d rather not go into Erceldonne’s house,” he hesitated, “but there’s so much to say. And you can’t stay out here.”

“I don’t think you can either,” he said dryly.

Then Beryl had said nothing! But there had been no time. And after all, why should he trust their safety to a madman’s word?

“Perhaps so,” he returned irrelevantly, entering and fastening the door. “Look here. I--I wonder if you’ll think I’ve behaved like a blackguard? I don’t know. I mean to marry that girl, and I haven’t one farthing to rub against another, while she--you heard what Erceldonne said about her?”

“You told her so?”

“Not about the money, nor anything but myself. I--oh, it’s been a mad evening! Do you know she saw that crazy old man and spoke to him?”

“Then she did scream!” said Andria sharply.

“Yes: but when I got there she had tamed him as she tamed the jaguars. He could have killed her, but instead she says he promised not to hurt us any more.”

Andria turned swiftly away from the lamp that he might not see her face as Egerton’s story about the madman came back to her. The remembrance of all it must mean chilled her to the bone.

“Begin at the beginning,” she temporized. “How did she get away from----” she could not say the name. She sat silent as he obeyed. If Egerton’s story were true, that jabbering lunatic’s daughter must have been Beryl’s mother! And yet, how could she tell it to Heriot?

A queer, dull passion rose in her and seemed to choke down the words she would have tried, perhaps, to say. Heriot was all that really stood between Raimond and Beryl--let him find out her history for himself.

“Besides, I don’t believe it!” she thought, and knew she lied. She scarcely dared look up lest he might ask if she knew who the crazy creature was that haunted the place.

“Mr. Heriot,” she said quickly, “you’re in earnest about Beryl?”

“Yes,” he answered very quietly, but she saw his mouth tighten. “What right Erceldonne has to her I don’t know, but it isn’t any better than mine. As for her being rich,” with a quick, sweet laugh, “when I get her away from here I’ll never inquire about her fortune.”

“Or her people?” She could not keep in the dangerous question.

“I don’t care who she is as long as she’s my wife.” But she could not salve her conscience with the answer; she knew he would care. “Once we’re out of this, and I’ve settled with her delightful friends down there”--with a motion of his head toward the harbor.

“You can’t settle with him!” said Andria quickly. “Do you mean you are going to meet them in the morning?”

“I fail to see any other way,” he replied, laughing. “Why?”

“Do you know what facing them would mean?” There was an indescribable flatness in her voice. “None of us would ever get away from the island, except perhaps Beryl, and what would become of her I know better than you.”

“He wouldn’t marry her against her will,” he said shortly. “And as for carrying her off, he couldn’t keep her. There is a law in England.”

“There’s no law for the dead--I mean you and I could never rescue her, for we--they would never let us leave this island alive! You, because you love the girl; I because----” but she could not go on, and he knew well enough that a deserted and discarded woman would get short rope from Raimond Erle.

She was right, of course; an open struggle would be madness. Erle and Erceldonne he might manage, but the yacht’s crew could easily overpower a man who had no revolver. And yet he ached to try the fight.

Andria looked at him, with hot, smarting eyes.

“Twenty to one,” she said slowly. “Three of them you might account for, with my dagger, and then you would tell no tales! And Beryl, married to Raimond, would kill herself.”

“What else can I do?”

“Go away,” she said very gently. “No, don’t look like that!” for he was staring at her as if she had lost her senses. “You think I would play into Raimond’s hands if you did? You don’t know women! If he had loved me still I might have been his willing tool, I’m bad enough for that. But now”--her voice sank to an ugly whisper--“I’m all hatred for him; when I think of him I burn like fire. I only live to thwart him, to pay some of an old score. Oh! talk of something else!” she cried, with a sudden wild outbreak. “It is nothing to you that I wake at night and long to kill him with my hands.”

Heriot turned his eyes away from her ashy face. Once he would have laughed at believing in that Andria Erle whose name had been a byword, but he trusted her now. If he had trusted her before this night all might have been safely away by this time. But as it was he knew her broken heart and her broken pride would fight a better battle for the girl he loved than all his strength could do.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “You have a plan?”

Andria nodded.

“I want you to go and find a village and get a boat. You are the only one who can do it. But you must go alone, for if you took Beryl and me, even if we reached a town Egerton’s steamer would be there before us and cut us off. He knows every inch of the island. He’d guess where we were going--that is, if there’s a town to get at, as Salome says.”

“There must be,” he answered quickly. “This is either Flores or Corvo, I don’t know which. But on the eastern side of each there’s a town.”

“Across the mountain?”

“Yes. Santa Cruz in Flores, Rosario in Corvo; either would do. But I think this is Flores. We left Fayal for Grasiosa and were blown off our course by a southeast wind. The boat must have gone to pieces on the southeast point of Flores--there was too much east in the wind for Corvo.”

“Then we’ll suppose we’re on the southwest side of Flores. How far would it be to Santa Cruz?”

“Ten miles, as the crow flies. Twenty or more, allowing for the mountain and no track. I could be there to-morrow.”

“And get a boat and sail back. You could slip into some little bay and come for us at dawn the day after, if you’d had a fair wind. I’ll bring food, and we could hide in some tiny inlet the yacht would never notice if they sailed round the island till doomsday. Then when they get tired and go, we can sail to Fayal. How far is it?”

“A hundred and fifty miles or so. You wouldn’t be afraid in an open boat?”

“I’d take her away from him if we had to go on a raft,” she said hardly. “Come and eat now, and then you’d better go. Have you a compass?”

“I don’t want one. I can go by my watch and the sun. You don’t think they’ll try to take you both while I’m gone?”

“They won’t try to take me, and I don’t think they’ll dare to hurry her so. Raimond will take his time, even in making love. And he won’t find her very kind, if she’s promised to marry you.”

“She hasn’t, in so many words.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Andria answered wearily. “She means it. Come and eat; you must be on your way before daylight. You’re not afraid of the man and his beasts?”

“I’m afraid to leave you alone here for two days,” he said shortly. “I tell you plainly I don’t like it.”

She had opened the door into the dining-room where her neglected dinner stood cold on the table. Under the bright light of the hanging lamp she turned on him with a wild passion that there was no gainsaying.

“Listen to me!” she cried--and if her face was ghastly, over her black gown her red-brown hair shone like fire and her eyes swayed him, for all their weariness and red rims--“listen to me. The girl is yours, but the man is mine! It is my quarrel, and I will settle my debts for myself. If you stay you may kill him before you’re killed yourself, if it comes to main force; but do you think it is death I want for the man who’s killed all the good in me? I want more than that. I want him to live, with all his schemes ruined; to suffer as he has made me suffer; to starve as he turned me out to starve. If he gets the girl he will have to kill me first--I, that was bone of his bone! But it won’t come to that. I’ll put him off. I’ll make Beryl make time; I’ll tell her my secret that has ruined me, body and soul. But there won’t be any need before you’re back,” and with a sudden listlessness she sat down at the table. “Eat his meat and drink his wine; it will be as good a weapon against him as a revolver,” she said, with an evil look in her half-closed eyes. But he knew it was not she, but what a man had made her, that had taught her that look.

“I’ve no money,” he began shamefacedly.

“I have. Salome’s wages,” and she drew a roll of gold out of her pocket. “Salome’s wages for Erceldonne’s work!” but her laugh made Heriot wince.

“I’ll go now!” he said, pushing back his plate. “Tell her!”

Andria could only nod.

She was helping Beryl to freedom and happiness, and to what was she helping herself? Only to the just payment for her broken life. Even Mother Benedicta could not blame her.

“So,” she said, very low; “the dawn is coming. But be quick. I can’t promise to protect her for more than three days.”

“I’ll be back in one--at dawn to-morrow.”

Andria sprang to her feet.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Did you hear anything?”

Heriot shook his head.

“You’re done up, tired out,” he returned gently. “There’s nothing--not a sound!”

For sole answer she put out the light. He felt her hand on his wrist as she led him in the dark across the room and out on a disused veranda.

“Go this way, and be quick, quick!” she cried in the same toneless whisper. “It’s the only chance to save her now.”

She watched him as he ran across a narrow belt of moonlight and disappeared in the blackness of the scrub. Then, noiseless in her stocking feet, she searched every inch of the wide veranda round the house.

There was no one there, no one in the garden. Her wrought-up nerves must have deceived her, and it had been fancy that she heard out of the darkness of the veranda behind the dining-room Egerton’s uncontrollable, cackling laugh.