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.