CHAPTER V.

HER EVIL GENIUS.

The train stopped with a jerk and a long jolting jar that startled all the passengers, and flung a solitary traveler from her seat in a second-class carriage.

She lay on the floor, lax, inert as the dead; but her eyes were open. Where was she? What was this hard, narrow place, where a light burned dimly? She thought for one awful instant of her alcove at the convent, and screamed wildly; but the train was starting and the whistles of the engine covered it. The noise of the wheels reassured the drugged wits of the girl on the floor.

“No; it’s not the convent--it’s the train, and I’ve waked up! Oh, why didn’t I die? Am I going to live after all that stuff?”

She struggled up and back to her seat, dizzy and sick from the laudanum. She tried to think. What should she--what could she--do now? Life was before her, and not the death she had craved. Presently the train would stop; they would put her out into the cold and darkness, and she had no money for shelter or bread.

“They ought to kill girls like me!” she sobbed. “What good has life ever been to me! And what shall I do if I’ve been tracked--if a telegram from Mother Felicitas is before me at Blackpool?”

Every one’s hand had been against her all her life, and it was well for her now. For a madness of determination came over her.

“They sha’n’t find me! No one shall find me,” she thought, clenching her hands. “I’ll hide somewhere and starve sooner than go back to Mother Felicitas!”

She opened the carriage window and drank in the cold evening air. It drove the fumes of laudanum from her and stopped the headache that was rending her. She had no reason to go to Blackpool; she could starve as easily in some other place. What if she got out the first time the train stopped, and slipped away into the dark? But it had been the stoppage of the train at Preston that had wakened her; she did not know there would be no pause between that and Blackpool. The train seemed to whirl interminably on, and she shut the window and lay back against the cushions; she would have warmth and rest as long as she could.

Strangely enough, she felt better for that drugged sleep--more reasonable, more sane.

But, think as she might, she could see nothing but a miserable, lingering death before her, and the death that had passed her by would have been easy.

The train whistled, then stopped; the guard came and took her ticket.

“Blackpool, miss,” he said to the pale girl with the swollen, weary eyes. The convent uniform was black and he thought cursorily that she was in mourning, a thought that served her well afterward.

She hurried by him without answering, and stood for one moment in the glaring station, bewildered by the crowd.

Her white face, her tawny eyes, with that strange vacancy about them which long years of bullying had brought there, were striking enough among the commonplace crowd that surged by her.

A long-legged, gentlemanly-looking man, whose handsome face was haggard and drawn till it almost came to being care-worn, pulled his brown mustache as he stood waiting for the London train.

“Looks as if she were in a mess!” he thought idly. “She might be handsome, too--it’s a pity!” and he turned away. It was some other fellow’s business; he had enough on his own hands without taking up a girl who stared past him till she caught his eyes on her and then ran with a sudden, frightened bound out of the lighted station.

“The wicked flee when no man pursueth,” thought Mr. Erle; he was rather fond of the Bible, for amusement merely. And he got into his train and thought of other things, not too comfortably.

He had had an exceedingly annoying interview with his father. After all he had done to please him, the elder man would scarcely listen to his question, or indeed speak to him.

At a strenuous appeal for money, indeed Lord Erceldonne had broken out savagely:

“You had better discover a lady who possesses it,” he had said roughly, unlike himself. “As for Erceldonne, you needn’t count on the succession to it.”

“What do you mean?” his son stared.

But Lord Erceldonne had recovered himself.

“Nothing,” he returned icily, “except that every stick we own is mortgaged. You must forage yourself.”

But his son had seen him crumple up a telegram that lay on the table. It was not those ancient mortgages that troubled him.

“I wonder what the deuce it was!” he reflected now in the train, for distasteful as London was, it was better than his father’s society.

“For a moment I thought my reverend parent was about to impart to me that I was not the rightful heir!” sneeringly. “He’s got something on his mind, but that would be rot! There’s been no question of it for years.”

The strange girl had completely left his memory as the train reached London; indeed, she had never stayed there. Mr. Erle glanced at his watch as he took a cab at Euston. It was not eleven o’clock; he would see what fortune had done for him before he went--by George! he had forgotten. He could not show himself in town. There was that business of the sheriff, and Andria!

“The Continent!” said he to himself. “As soon as possible! But first I must visit my--well, I hope he’ll be my banker!” He stopped the cab and got out at the very shop where Beryl had bought that useless laudanum no farther back than the morning.

“A shabby chemist’s,” she had thought, quite unconscious that the drugs were but an outward show, and that the proprietor was one of the largest book-makers in London, though he never attended a race. Sometimes he had provided Mr. Erle with sums that tided him over; but of late that gentleman had not been lucky. He entered the shop with a languid nod, and was glad to see the proprietor was alone.

For once, too, he seemed to be paying some attention to his legitimate trade. He was studying a greasy blank-book that was not out of his inside office.

“Ah, Mr. Erle!” he said. “I have some money for you--a hundred or more.”

Mr. Erle never moved a muscle, though he needed the money and had not expected it.

“Right!” he returned carelessly. “What have you got there?”

“Only my register, sir. By the way, could you read that name?” He pushed the book across the counter.

“B. Corselas,” in an unsteady, childish hand stared Mr. Erle in the face. B. Corselas, and his father, neither to hold nor to bind! There could be nothing in it, and yet--Mr. Erle was startled.

“No,” he said coolly. “Cassels, or something. Why?”

“Well, she was a slip of a thing,” dryly, “and she bought laudanum. She had a queer look about her--very light eyes!”

“Tall, charming?” scoffingly.

“No, Mr. Erle. Childish and frightened-looking. Will you have a check, or notes? They’re both here. She would have been handsome if she hadn’t looked hungry.”

“Notes,” said Erle slowly. “You’ll get into trouble yet, Peters, with your drugs. Good night!”

He was richer than he had been for many a day; but he was not thinking of that as he got into his cab and drove back to Euston.

It was queer that he felt so assured that he had seen at Blackpool the very girl who had signed Peter’s book. He dismissed his cab at the Euston Hotel, but before he entered it he returned to the station. A few inquiries made him surer than ever, but the “B. Corselas” staggered him. It might be all right, but if, after all these years, it was going to be all wrong, it was no joke.

He wrote a brief note to his father, for there was no sense in trusting a country telegraph office, and then retired to bed.

“Paris for me!” he reflected as he put out the light. “If there is anything queer the farther I’m out of it the better. Besides, other things. But, of course, it’s all a silly coincidence.”

He little knew the trouble it would have saved him if he had spoken kindly to that girl at Blackpool.