CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HAND OF FATE.

“Thou sleepest? Awake! What darest thou get for her sake?”

Mr. Egerton stood in his cabin on the _Flores_ making a hasty toilet.

His thin face was savage as he shaved, and his hand shook as if from bodily fatigue.

“Why the devil doesn’t Raimond come?” he thought, and gashed his cheek till he swore aloud, though at the same instant the door had opened on his son, a disheveled object in silk pajamas.

“You’d better sit down and wait a moment!” said the newcomer. “Have a drink?”

Erceldonne mopped his bleeding face.

“Have the goodness not to drawl, I hate it,” he said angrily. “You can’t be as indifferent as you pretend after the night’s work!”

“I’m not. I’m much less indifferent,” he said, with a short laugh. “I begin to have a hankering after that little devil, now since she’s been sharp enough to deceive you. I believe if you threw a girl into the sea she’d come up smiling in some man’s arms!”

“It wasn’t the girl. It was that damned governess. But how the man ever got here----”

“Doesn’t matter now, that I can see,” answered Egerton, with a shrug. “You’re sure it was the governess? I thought you said she was old.”

“I said she was an excellent woman,” replied Egerton dryly.

“All the same. But Mattel said he saw the girl in his arms. Heriot’s! And the last man in the world to----But it doesn’t matter.”

“I didn’t believe Mattel, like a fool! Or we could----”

“We couldn’t have done any better. I thought it was all up when I heard you laugh and saw the light go out. I was in time, though. But, by the Lord, if I’d known it was Heriot I don’t think I’d have done it!”

“You would have turned out Erceldonne penniless, I suppose, and let him walk into your shoes! You’re sure it’s all right?”

“Yes, I tell you!” said Raimond, with sudden vicious savagery. “Let it alone!” It was the son who was pale now, not the father.

“Curse Mattel and his prowling on shore,” he added, biting his mustache. But the girl he had been willing to marry for her money--and something else--had suddenly grown desirable to him since another man had found her fair. She would be hard to get, too, judging from the way she had slipped from him to Heriot--and nothing but the unattainable was ever coveted by Raimond Erle. If Andria had not been too faithful he might have been at her feet still.

“If it hadn’t been for Mattel,” said Erceldonne practically, “we’d never have known there was a man on the island. If Heriot kissed the girl he would have married her.” The past conditional came curiously, but to the listener it sounded natural enough.

“For God’s sake, wash your face!” he said, with womanish disgust, or perhaps because it was not so long since he had cleansed a like red stain from his hands. “And throw away the water. Mattel might think things if he saw it was bloody. He didn’t follow us, I suppose!”

“Mattel is a Maltese thief, who daren’t think or do anything,” but he was careful enough to follow his son’s advice. “No one knows anything but you and me,” and his hand grew unsteady again as he thought of the awful danger he had dared last night for the sake of Raimond--Raimond and Erceldonne.

Beryl Corselas had builded worse than she knew when she had bidden the madman and his dreadful servants to keep far away on the night of all nights when they might have defended her. But all Erceldonne had thought was that luck was on his side still.

“I suppose there’s no reason to stay on here,” said Erle, with a glance of loathing out the port-hole. “I’ll do what I can with the girl and we’ll take her and the governess off to-night. I can make love to her, if I must, at sea.”

Erceldonne nodded. He was himself again. No one would have known him for the man of two hours before.

“The sooner the better,” he returned briefly. “Before they have time to wonder why he doesn’t come back.”

“Let him alone!” cried Raimond, with that black rage again. “If you keep harping on him I’ll chuck the whole thing. I don’t care a damn for the succession, it’s only the money--and that won’t make me stand your conversation!”

“Then you’d better tell the girl so,” said Erceldonne dryly. “Do you suppose she is going to avoid the subject?”

“I know it. She thinks we don’t know anything about him,” replied Raimond grimly. “She won’t dare give herself away. And once married to her----” he laughed, and Andria might have known why.

But Andria, for once, was wearied out. It was no more than eight o’clock and she knew Raimond never faced existence till eleven. It seemed safe to sleep, and sleep she must, or she could not think or act. If Salome came in softly and darkened the room it was without an idea of the mischief she was doing, nor how Andria Erle would wake. Beryl, with a strange color in her cheeks, a strange brightness in her tawny eyes, was freshly dressed and out even as Andria closed her eyes. From pure humiliation she had put that thin, sealed packet in her pocket, but she was not thinking of it now. Up and down the garden she stepped with a quiet fierceness that might have been learned from the jaguars she played with. There was no sign of the crazy old man, let her call and search as she would; no sign of Heriot, and her heart grew full of fear.

Yet there seemed little cause for terror.

If she had thought to see Egerton and his son come hurrying up from the yacht to carry her off she was mistaken. Neither of them appeared.

She wondered wretchedly why Heriot had left her. Surely not because they said she had money; it meant nothing to her, instinct told her little to Heriot. Why did he not come back?

She was afraid of these two men who had come with lies. Why should Erceldonne call himself Egerton to a girl to whom neither name meant anything? It came over her sharply that an obscure Mr. Egerton might leave England unobserved in a yacht, while Lord Erceldonne’s departure would have been chronicled in all the papers.

“Whatever he means to do with me, he’ll do it secretly,” she thought, trembling. “But oh, if I could only hear the cats scream! I must just wait. Only wait.”

But though she waited till the sun rose high and the hours passed at noon, she was waiting still.

And it was so that Raimond Erle came up from the shore and saw her; standing straight and tall in the blazing sun among the gorgeous flowers; young, lithe, magnificent with her dusky hair and her golden eyes, and that strange color on her cheeks; a woman any man might covet. And for the first time he cared nothing for the thing he had done.

Every bit of color went from her face as she saw who it was, though she had known the step was not Heriot’s.

“Well,” she said defiantly, “what do you want?”

“Only to say good morning. You’re not going to run away again, are you?” for she had moved restlessly under his eyes.

“I don’t want to run away. Why should I?” she replied, with a slow glance of dislike she had not known the trick of yesterday. “I want to talk. When is--Mr. Egerton--going to take us away?”

“To-day, if you like. But don’t talk here, it’s too scorching. Come into the house.” There was nothing but his own comfort in the suggestion, but his glance said it was hers.

The girl shaded her eyes and looked once round the empty garden, the stirless noontide woods. There was not a soul.

“Come in, then.” She had caught her breath curiously. She led the way, not into the house itself, but up by an outside stair to the veranda that opened off Andria’s bedroom. From it she could see the faintest signal from the hillside down which Heriot must come, if he came in time; would be within call of Andria, sleeping like the dead behind her closed shutters.

Erle looked at her.

She had a crushed hibiscus blossom in her hand that was not so crimson as her mouth. He would get her by fair means or foul, if it were only for that and her tawny eyes.

“So you’re anxious to get away?” he said slowly, but she hesitated instead of assenting.

“I don’t see why I was brought here at all!” she returned at last, frowning.

He smiled.

“Don’t you? I do. Look at me, don’t you remember me?”

“Look at me!”--with what different eyes another man had said those very words!

“Remember you!” she retorted. “No; how could I?”

But she shivered. The man was lying, as Andria had warned her he would lie.

“Think!” he said. “Have you forgotten one evening at Blackpool station? And a frightened girl who stood there without anywhere to go? Because I remember, if you don’t.”

But like a flash it had come back to her. His white duck clothes made him look different, but it was the same face she had seen. And she remembered there had been no pity in the man’s eyes as he watched her.

“You do remember!” he said. “Well, don’t be angry if I tell you something. I went away and you haunted me. I couldn’t forget you. When I heard of the girl found starving in the wreck I knew it was you. I sent my father to get you from--the woman”--with a momentary hesitation, since he had never known exactly about that part of the business and dared not invent--“who had adopted you. It was I who suggested bringing you here,” he continued calmly lying. “I knew convent arms are long and you weren’t safe in England. But if you want to go back you can, though it’s a living grave, a convent, for a beautiful girl,” he spoke dreamily, and so impersonally that yesterday she would not have noticed the flattery.

“Why did you care?” abruptly. “I was nothing to you.”

“I wanted to help you live your life,” he said, with a queer shrug. “That was all. Oh! you are a child still. You’ve seen nothing. Not diamonds, nor satin gowns, nor balls where the music gets into your blood and you know half the men in the room are mad about you.”

“To that life?” said Beryl slowly, for Brian Heriot had told her none of these things. Yet she searched the empty hillside once more with her eyes.

“That, and more. I don’t know why I cared you should be saved from the convent, but I did. You can go back, as I said, if you like.”

“No!” she said, with a shudder, remembering only the cruelty of Mother Felicitas and nothing of the kindness of the other nuns. “They said I had no name, that I was a charity child. Am I? If you know anything about me, tell me!” she could not keep back the question, though she knew it was useless, but the slow, insolent answer turned her blood to fire.

“You are Beryl, and you have golden eyes. I don’t know, or care for anything more.”

“You do know who I am!” she flashed out at him, “else why would your father trouble with me? If he is your father and not your uncle, as you said.”

His face changed ever so slightly. Well, Heriot was paid for talking!

“I know nothing but that I have done my best to help you from that very first night I saw you,” he said, very low.

There was a passion on his face there had never been on Heriot’s, but she was not old enough to know that passion in a man is the very last reason for a woman to trust in him. And the sudden softening of the haggard lines round his mouth, the widening of his eyes, made her for the first time wonder if, after all, he were speaking the truth.

“Where do you want to take me?” She was staring at him with great, fascinated eyes. If he had been like this yesterday she would never have run away from him, unwarned as she was then.

“Back to England--to London--to the world. Why should you be buried here?” he said slowly.

“But you said it wasn’t safe,” she faltered. “The convent----”

“Can’t recall you if you’ll let me take care of you,” he answered, with his voice utterly caressing. “Will you?”

For the first time she saw what he meant, what he had been meaning all along. And it was just what Andria had said. With a start of fright she sprang up.

“Do you mean you want me to marry you?” she cried, wide-eyed, and, without her will, Heriot’s face sprang to her memory.

She was so beautiful as she stood aghast and trembling that the man lost his head.

“Yes,” he said, “just that!” and before she could move had caught her to him and kissed her madly.

She could not cry out because his lips crushed her mouth, but the stifled moan would have brought any other man to his senses. She fought against him till her lips were free.

“I hate you,” she stormed. “Why did I ever listen to you when Andria--ah!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Andria!”

If she had stabbed him he could not have let her go more suddenly.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Who is Andria?”

But it was another voice that answered him from behind his back.

“I!” said Andria Erle, standing like a ghost in her white dressing-gown between the open green shutters of her bedroom window.

Raimond Erle turned livid.

It was Andria; Andria who was the governess, who had been engaged to take care of the only girl in the world she should never have met!

He saw once more the pale face, the red-brown hair of the woman he had called his wife--and the only emotion it brought him was furious hatred.

He looked from her to Beryl and back again and knew what he must do.

“And who,” he said calmly, “are you?”

“No one,” she answered steadily, “now! Shall I tell you who I was?”

Her eyes blazed at him, standing at the window of the very room where she had thanked God he had come back to her. The man shrugged his shoulders.

“No,” he said, “stand back! I will tell you what you were, and are. A woman who is no fit companion for an innocent girl, who is here under false pretenses and a feigned name.”

His quick ear had caught footsteps coming up the stairs, and as Andria caught her breath at the words that were true enough in their way, Raimond Erle turned to his father.

“So this is your governess!” he cried, before she could speak. “Do you know who she is? A woman who was the talk of all London--a woman no girl should so much as see!”

“Raimond!” She had been his wife for five years, or she thought so; small wonder she cried out as if he had struck her. She reeled where she stood.

“Take the girl away,” said Erle savagely. “Don’t you understand?”

But at that cry of his son’s name Lord Erceldonne had understood indeed.

It was this woman and no other who had enslaved Raimond for five years, and the very irony of fate had brought her here to ruin him.

“Andria, what does he mean? What does he know about you?”

Beryl had sprung between the two men and flung her arms round Andria’s neck. But the woman stood cold as marble.

“Come!” said Erceldonne, between his teeth. He laid his hand on Beryl’s shoulder and she tore it away.

“Andria, speak to me, don’t mind them!” she cried. “I believe in you. I don’t care what they say, Andria, darling.”

Erle’s discarded wife caught her in her arms and stood back, knowing that the time was come.

“I am what you made me!” she cried to the man whom once she had loved. “I will take care you have no other girl to torture as you have tortured me. Oh, I know why you want her, why you changed your minds about letting her die here!” She came a step nearer to Erle, still holding Beryl clasped in one arm. “But you forgot me!”

Her breast heaved as if she could not breathe. She kept her eyes on Raimond’s face and never saw Erceldonne as he slipped behind her.

There was no stopping the tongue of a furious woman, but if Beryl heard her story the game was up. And without the girl, ruin stared him in the face. Dead or alive, they must have her, and there was no driving Raimond when he had the bit in his teeth. He would have her quick, not dead, in spite of all the discarded women in London.

“Come,” he repeated, with a voice he tried to make shocked but only made angry. “This is no place for you. And as for you, madam,” to Andria, “we will leave you to the society of your friend, Mr. Heriot. I may say that what I saw last night shocked and pained me inexpressibly.”

He took Beryl by the arm, but she struck back at him wildly, with all the strength of her young arm. For an instant the man staggered; the next he had caught his son’s eye.

“Settle it,” he said, with an ugly word. And with hands that were strong as steel he forced the two women apart. It was done so dexterously that neither had time to make a sound, but the girl turned on him viciously, wrenched away from him, and fell backward down the wooden stairs. As she fell she screamed, but another cry covered it.

Half an hour afterward Raimond Erle came quietly out of a house that seemed strangely still. There was blood on his hand and he wiped it away with fastidious care.