THE HAUNTING EYES.
Beryl Corselas, wearied out, had slept from ten in the morning till
late afternoon.
Now, as she sat in the drawing-room with the western sun pouring
through the open doorway, she looked a different girl; one whom Egerton
would scarcely have known.
Her dusky hair was dressed like Andria’s, her golden-tawny eyes shone
serene in her pale face; even the crimson of her lips was brighter.
For the first time in all her miserable young life she was happy. As
a child, she had worshiped Andria Heathcote, and to be alone with the
only human being she had never feared or deceived was rapture to her;
even in this lonely island, with not a creature but themselves and the
black servants. The drawing-room looked wonderfully homelike, with its
open piano and comfortable tea-table, to the two who were so strangely
met after five years.
“Andria,” Beryl said, drawing a long breath and clasping her thin young
arms round her knees, “why are you so quiet? Why aren’t you like me,
ready to dance because you’re free? Free--but you can’t know what it is
to me!”
“‘Free among the dead,’” quoted the elder woman softly under her
breath, but Beryl’s ears were good.
“What do you mean?”--looking up from her low seat with eyes like wells
of golden light.
Andria rose, and opened the two doors of the room. There was not a soul
in sight, and from somewhere she could hear the servants talking over
their tea.
“Beryl, how brave are you?” She had shut the doors softly and come very
close, so that her voice was but a whisper.
“I don’t know!” said Beryl, startled. “Rough words--Mother
Felicitas--always made me a coward. But there are neither here.”
“There’s something. I don’t know what. Listen”--Andria’s voice was
suddenly protecting, motherly--“and don’t speak loud! You heard Mr.
Egerton warn us not to go out after dark on the verandas, or use that
path. Well, there is some reason, I can’t tell what. I heard him
talking to Salome, and I know the place isn’t safe. And he knew it when
he brought us here.”
“He only said we’d get fever if we went out after sunset. If he wanted
us to, he wouldn’t have warned us,” said Beryl sensibly.
“I know! But----” The shrewd reason of Salome’s “might as well kill ’em
as scare ’em to death” came back to her. She must not fill the girl
with fear like her own--only she wished she had not overheard that talk
about accidents! She began to walk up and down the room restlessly.
“I can’t see why he brought us here!” she cried, but guardedly. “What
reason could he have? Think, Beryl, why do you imagine he ever took you
away from that Fuller woman? What did he say?”
“Nothing; but that she was too poor to be able to afford to be kind.”
“Do you think he knows anything about you--is anything to you?”
“No, but kind as he has been, I can’t like him.”
“Why did he pretend to bring us to Bermuda, and leave us in a place
like this? That is what puzzles me. I would think he knew something of
you; wanted to hide you away safely, if----” she broke off. It was no
use to say “if I didn’t feel that this was a dangerous place, and that
he deceives us about it because he didn’t want us even to know where he
had taken us.”
“What do you mean?” said Beryl, staring. “Isn’t this Bermuda?”
Andria laughed as Beryl’s Andria had not known how.
“No!” she returned contemptuously. “Bermuda is a lot of small islands;
small and low, not high like this. And it’s full of people--an English
garrison and American visitors. I knew a man who went there.”
Beryl’s eyes dilated like a cat’s.
“Then what’s this?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” answered Andria, shrugging her shoulders. “I haven’t
enough geography.”
“Andria, you don’t believe he means to leave us here or murder us,”
said Beryl, with a queer calmness.
“The first, perhaps! Not the last, or he wouldn’t have told Salome to
take care of us.”
“Did he?”
Andria nodded. There was no need to say she was sure he had not meant
it.
“But there’s nothing to take care of us from!” continued Beryl
ungrammatically.
“He said there was. Oh, Beryl! I think and think, and I can’t see
daylight. Why he brought us, why he lied to us; what it all means!
He never saw me in his life, nor heard of me, so it must be on your
account. No one in the convent ever knew who you were except Mother
Felicitas----”
“Did she?” asked Beryl sharply.
“Yes. But never mind her now, I only guessed that she knew. Think if
you can remember anything before you ever came to the nuns.”
Beryl shook her head hopelessly.
“I’ve often tried. I can’t remember one thing but a woman who used to
hold me so tight and hard against her that I cried. It seemed to be in
a room with a queer violet light in it--but it may be just a dream!”
“It’s no more useful.” Andria walked to the open door and stood
watching the sun dip into the bay they had reached that morning; it lay
empty now, blank, rose, and opal under a gorgeous sky, but she was not
thinking of it. She was no girl like Beryl, but a woman, with a woman’s
sense of responsibility. Beryl was her charge, she would take care of
her--but how? That queer, blank feeling of thoughts that would not come
overpowered her as it had the day she had learned she was not Andria
Erle, but only Andria Heathcote, dishonored and deserted. A soft, heavy
step made her start.
“’Scuse me, missus,” said Salome civilly, “but it’s mighty nigh
sundown, and I got to lock up dis place.”
“Lock up now!” Andria’s gentle voice was even, as usual. “Why, Salome?”
“It’s dark here, missus, de minute after de sun drops. I always does
like dis;” and she moved from jalousy to jalousy, round the long
veranda, drawing down and bolting each stout wooden shutter with easy
strength.
To the remonstrance of the new mistress she paid no more attention than
to a child’s; and, in truth, Andria could not wish it. Since there was
some danger, somewhere, by all means let Salome bar it out! But she
meant to discover and fight it openly before long.
As the black woman barred the front door, Andria noticed how strong it
was, and how heavy. Was it to shut in--or to shut out--that the bolts
were so big!
“Where do you sleep, Salome?” she asked suddenly.
“In de quarters behind de kitchen.”
“Out of the house, do you mean?” she asked, with an uncontrollable
start.
“Yes, missus, after de ladies’ dinner, at half-past seven, Chloe an’ me
an’ Amelia Jane goes to our own house.”
“But we can’t stay all alone, Salome! If we wanted anything in the
night----” said Andria, aghast now in good earnest.
“De ladies ring de bell,” returned the woman anxiously. “Dat’s de only
way.”
“May I come and see? I’d like to.”
Salome chuckled. She led the way through what seemed half a mile of
empty rooms and disused pantries into the kitchen; from its barred and
grated window Andria saw a paved courtyard, with a high wall on two
sides, on the third a stone house.
“Oh, you’re not far! I could run to you.”
“Please don’t, missus! Ring de bell; we’ll do de running,” said Salome
anxiously.
“Then you’re not afraid to cross the courtyard in the dark?” she asked,
with sudden quickness.
Salome looked nervously at the courtyard wall.
“No, missus,” she answered. “Colored people ain’t got time to be
frightened o’ de dark.”
Andria remembered what the woman had said about her black skin
protecting her. What could she have meant?
By the time she was back in the drawing-room again she saw Salome had
been right about the darkness. It had dropped on the world like a
curtain the instant the sun vanished.
There were no blinds to the windows, and in the lamplight after dinner
the dark squares of them were like blind eyes. As the two lonely girls
sat talking, each, without telling the other, felt a growing dislike to
those black windows, through which the darkness of the shut-up veranda
showed like a solid wall. By degrees a curious quietude fell on the
two. How silent the house was, and how silent the night outside.
“Andria,” said Beryl softly, “have the servants gone to their funny
little house? Who puts out these lights?”
“I do. We leave the hall lights burning, Salome said.”
Beryl gave a sudden shiver.
“Let’s go to bed! I don’t like it here in this room.”
“Don’t you? Why?”
The girl, with an infinitesimal movement of her finger, pointed to the
unblinded windows.
“Those!” she whispered. “I feel as if some one were looking in.”
So did Andria. A dreadful feeling that they were watched had come on
her as they talked. Brave as she was, she would have given a good deal
to have had her back to the wall instead of those windows, that might
suddenly splinter and crash in.
“That’s nonsense!” she said, more to herself than Beryl. “The jalousies
are shut; no one could see in.”
“They could--through the slats!”
“You goose, there isn’t any one within miles!” If Andria’s quick laugh
jarred a little, Beryl did not notice it as the elder girl extinguished
the lamps.
“Come along to bed--you’re getting nervous,” she commanded; and
purposely blundered against a chair in the dark.
Once in her own room she put out the light there, and knelt by the
shut jalousies of the veranda--listening. She had heard something
down-stairs; had laughed that Beryl might not hear it, too. Now, in the
hush of the veiled moonlight, she heard it still.
Some one was below her, in the garden, going round and round the house
with a fevered eagerness, almost running. Holding her breath, she heard
those quick, quick steps, and her blood grew chill.
Who could be there?