CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE DARK HOUSE.

That Beryl Corselas was not at Erceldonne Mother Felicitas knew. But that he owned a disused, rat-haunted house in Westmoreland even the superior had almost forgotten.

And it had been a very simple business to double on their own track at Blackpool and get off at a desolate little station in Westmoreland.

It was pouring rain. Beryl, hurried into a close carriage, had not time to see the whilom convent “boy of all work” was the driver. They drove on endlessly it seemed to the girl. Through the rain she could see nothing but endless, rolling moors. When at last they stopped it was pitch-dark. Dazed and weary Beryl got out and for the first time trembled.

A dark house, without a lighted window, stood before them. Erceldonne was unlocking the door with a key from his pocket, and as he swung back the door a close, cold air of emptiness and desolation came out on the girl. What were they going to do with her? How could she avenge Andria here?

She fought down the cowardly thought that at least she would have been safe in the convent, and followed Erle into the dark hall. The cold air of it breathed like death and the grave.

He struck a match and opened the first door he came to.

“Why is it like this?” he said to his father angrily. “Do you want us to die of cold and discomfort? Where is the woman?” But before there was time for an answer a door opened, and against a blaze of light that made her blink Beryl saw the woman who had taken her from the workhouse.

“Mrs. Fuller!” she cried.

“Yes,” returned the woman slowly, “Mrs. Fuller.”

She was not given to pity, but for one weak instant compassion rose in her. The next she swept it away. There was no need to pity the girl. Erle meant to marry her. She drew back as Beryl ran to her.

“Your dinner is ready,” she said to Erceldonne. “Such as it is.”

Tone and manner were so changed from the Mrs. Fuller she had known that Beryl stood astounded. Then it came to her with an awful sinking of her heart that this woman was in the plot against her, was a part of the mystery she loathed and feared. There would be no help from her.

She looked around the room into which Erle led her gently. There was a huge fire, a mean lamp, a table with meat, bread, and wine. Everything else was bare and desolate. She was suddenly conscious that this was her prison, where she might live and die unless she did what they told her. All her fine dreams had come to this. For she knew by the tinned food on the table that the pale woman with golden hair had put it there, and that there was not another soul in the house.

She sat down and could not eat--only looked up with a start to see Erle and Mrs. Fuller finish and leave the room. She was alone with the man who called himself Egerton.

“Listen,” he said coldly, stretching his feet out and lighting a cigarette. “My son tells me you say he killed your governess and the man you and she saw fit to hide in my house. You had better disabuse your mind of that; and to help you I will tell you who you are--the granddaughter of that crazy old man on the island. You may break away from here and tell all you imagine, and if you do I will prove you as mad as he.”

He waited for an answer, but she only cowered as if he had struck her. Somehow it was no surprise. All her life she had been told there was something about her that was inhuman, horrible. She knew what it was now--remembered with horror how she had soothed the madman’s cats with a song she must have inherited the trick of.

“You see,” he said, “you can do nothing. Your friends, as you chose to think them, are dead.”

“I can go back to the convent,” she muttered, for at least she could hide her head there.

“You can go nowhere,” he answered coldly. “We did our best to take care of you, and you repay us with ingratitude. If I were wise I would put you in an asylum at once before you had a chance to spread your crazy imaginings. But I will give you a chance. See,” he went on slowly, “if with solitude and quiet you will perhaps come to your right mind. My son----”

“Why did you say he was your nephew?”

This man could only kill her, and at least she would strike back at him first.

“Did I?” he returned coolly. “If you think, you will find it was Salome who told you that.”

The memory of that morning flashed back on her. It had not been Salome who introduced “My nephew, Mr. Erle.”

“You see,” he pursued, with a shrug, “you cannot remember anything correctly.”

“I remember this much,” and a tide of fury swept over her, taking all her terror away. She sprang up and faced him, with the resemblance to him more marked than ever. “You knew that island wasn’t safe, but something made you change your mind about letting me die there. The evening you went back to the yacht because you were afraid to stay after what happened to Andria, she followed you. She heard every word you said to your nephew where you stood behind the cypress thicket--and Heriot heard, too. You have done nothing but lie to me. Even your name isn’t true!”

She shook with passion where she stood over him and for once he lost his self-control.

“This knowledge didn’t last long,” he said brutally, for he was not afraid of the dead, “nor will yours, if you make me angry. Your governess was a treacherous, infamous woman, who made use of my house to send for her lover.”

“She never sent. He was wrecked there,” she could hardly speak for rage. “Oh, you did well to kill him! In another day he would have saved us both.”

Erceldonne’s face was livid.

“I have had enough heroics,” he said. “No one has murdered any one, as you are crazy enough to think, and if you were in your right mind no one would be kinder to you than I. As it is, all I mean to do with you is to keep you here till you come back to your senses. You’ll never get away while you rave like this. I told you who your mother was--that lunatic’s daughter, but I did not tell you who your father was. You little fool, I am your only relation, your only legal guardian!”

“No, no!” she cried, and covered her eyes with her hands that at least she might not see his face when he said he was her father. Yet if he did it would make Erle her brother, unless he were really his nephew!

“You’re quite wrong,” said Erceldonne, with his jarring laugh, as he saw that at last he had made her flinch. “It was not I who had the doubtful felicity of being your parent.”

“Then I am----” she faltered; she did not believe his denial of her. What could she be, who had madness and wickedness for father and mother?

“You’re no one,” he answered shortly, “while you cling to your crazy delusions. If you give them up you’ll get away from me and be Raimond’s wife. But he doesn’t want a crazy one, and you can think that over at your leisure.”

An older woman would have realized that whoever she was, she must be worth having for them to care nothing for her strain of lunacy; or else that there was a lie somewhere. Beryl was ignorant of the world.

The old vacancy came into her eyes as she stared at the dying coals on the hearth. This house was her prison; she would never get away from it except as the wife of a man who, instinct told her, was a murderer. And she had let them take her past Mother Felicitas, trusting in her own strength to bring home crime to men like these.

In all the world there was no one to help her; those two she had loved were dead. This was a house the world thought empty. No one would come here, or hear her if she screamed her life out. She did not even know where it stood.

She looked up to see Erceldonne was gone, and Mrs. Fuller standing by her.

“You had better go to bed,” the woman said, not unkindly. “You are to sleep with me.”

But the girl never answered.

Oh! why had she not died with Andria?