THE PATTERING FOOTSTEPS.
In a less lonely place the governess would have thought nothing of
those footsteps, but here she had been expressly told two things--there
were no neighbors and there was danger abroad at night.
“I wonder if I dare!” she thought, and peered through the slats of
the jalousy. The moon was on the other side of the house; she could
see that much, for this side was in deep shadow. No one below could
possibly see if a jalousy were pushed out an inch or not. She unbolted
the smallest division of the heavy hanging shutters, and noiselessly
pushed it outward as far as she dared.
All she could see was the strip of garden and shrubbery directly
beneath her; darkly shadowed as it was she could not tell if there was
any one there.
“The night is dreadful in this place--dreadful!” she thought. “There
might be devils behind every bush. The very moonlight is not like the
good, clear light I know. Mr. Egerton need not have warned me not to go
out--nothing would take me into those dreadful shadows, that veiled,
honey-colored light.”
The heavy jalousy tired her wrist, in another minute she must let
it go, and so far had learned nothing. She had known down in the
drawing-room that some person or thing was outside. Nothing moved now
in the stirless garden--those strangely light, quick steps had ceased.
But out of the quiet another sound and a nearer smote on her senses, a
creaking as of wood rubbing on wood.
Her aching wrist forgotten, she peered through the crack, and with
horror, for the creepers were swaying below her.
Some one was climbing up!
Somehow, she shut the jalousy, bolted it and got back into her room.
Something noiseless, light, a darker shadow against the dark, clung
for an instant to the very shutter she had just closed, clung and was
gone. She heard the quick slither of it as it went down the creepers,
but whether it had been man or beast she could not tell.
Her terror had taken her to the opposite wall of the room, that she
might at least have something solid behind her back, and for a long
minute she stood there, sick with the horror of the thing.
Yet as she stood there, trembling-kneed, her heart grew strangely
light; she felt suddenly uplifted, happy, in the midst of she knew not
what mysterious dangers. Here was the chance to do as Mother Benedicta,
that saint on earth, had bidden her long ago. To fight Beryl’s battles
bravely, and in doing it rub out, perhaps, those years that had been so
evil. For evil they had been; she had never been sure as she pretended
that Raimond Erle and she were man and wife. She had snatched at
happiness, had cared little if that happiness were a sin, and now----
“I have my chance to blot it out,” she said to herself deliberately.
“I’ll save the child if I have to die for her. Perhaps Mother
Benedicta’s saints won’t shut me out of heaven then.”
The hope that had never yet left her, that Raimond Erle might some day
come back to her, ceased suddenly, as her thoughts of revenging herself
died in the new hope that came over her.
“I’ll never see him again,” she thought, little knowing, “and I’ll
beat Mr. Egerton yet! A better woman would have been a far more easily
managed governess. One like me knows too much. For I’m sure--sure that
he brought that girl here to put her out of the way, and his warnings
to Salome and me were nothing but a blind.”
The danger she was in made her almost gay.
Quite boldly she stepped out on the veranda and looked through those
shutters where that strange, hunting thing had scented her.
What was it? It had looked, with its spread-eagle arms and legs, like
an ape. She would find out in the morning if there were such things
here. Then she shuddered, with a quailing at even her cold heart.
Salome had thanked Heaven she was black!
Then the thing, whatever it was, only attacked white people. Could it
be some dreadful, half-crazy black man, run wild in the woods?
“I can’t get a pistol,” mused Andria dryly, “but I can get a knife!”
and she went quietly in to bed. The thing, whatever it was, was gone.
* * * * *
Bright and early she woke to a new day.
Amelia Jane, with a tea-tray, stood by her bed, and Andria, after a
dazed instant, remembered where she was, and saw, too, that Amelia
Jane looked tired. She was the youngest of the colored women and the
stupidest, and she stared as she answered Andria’s good morning.
Fully dressed, she had lain down on her bed, her only toilet for the
night having been to take out the pins from the great circle of ruddy
hair that hung round her in a glorious mass. Under the servant’s
wondering eyes, she laughed.
“I must have fallen asleep,” she said. “Don’t tell any one, Amelia.”
“You wasn’t awake late, was you?” the woman returned curiously.
“I don’t know. I thought I heard footsteps, Amelia, last night!”
Amelia Jane put down her tray.
“Don’t speak of ’em--they isn’t lucky!” she said. “They’s haunts, miss.”
“Do you mean ghosts?”
“Jus’ ghosts. My soul! I slep’ here in this house once. I heard them
steps all night. Hurry, hurry--hunt, hunt--but I never see nothin’.
Bermuda’s haunted, I tell you so.”
“Is the house called Bermuda?” asked Andria quickly.
“Yas’m. And if it isn’t haunted, why is it that they’s no footsteps
heard out’n the quarters? Only in the big house.”
So the house was called Bermuda!
That was what Amelia had meant on the stairs.
Andria’s heart lightened a little, for at least it showed the servants
were not in league with Egerton to deceive her.
“Nobody ever sees the ‘haunt,’ do they?” she asked.
“No’m! Sometimes ’taint here at all. Salome she say it’s nonsense--but
I don’t hear it. An’ yet it ain’t never amounted to nothing, only jus’
noises.”
“Are there monkeys here, Amelia?”
Amelia Jane laughed till she had to cover her face with her apron.
“Monkeys! No’m. I been here three years, an’ I never hear tell of no
monkeys. There ain’t no beasts ’tall. When you’ve had you bath’m kin
I brush out your hair? It’s tangled till if you piroots round in it
you’ll tear it out.”
Andria thanked her, her heart warming to the kindly voice. But when her
toilet was done and she stood, fresh and fair, in front of the glass,
some one knocked at the door. It was Salome, and her fat face was
anxious.
“Morning, missus,” she said hastily. “I come to tell you little miss
must habe gone out. I can’t see her nowhere.”
“Out! Alone?” Andria gasped, “Oh, Salome! Which way? Not down that
path?”
“You clear out and look down de road, ‘Melia Jane!” commanded the
housekeeper, and stopped Andria, as she would have followed.
“Don’t you say nothin’ of dat path to ‘Melia Jane,” she whispered.
“She’d be faint-hearted of de place ef she got skeered. But run,
missus, do; and get little miss. She didn’t know no other way to go.”
“Then you heard--last night!” cried Andria, almost running through the
house, Salome at her heels.
“Heard what? Dey ain’t nothin’ to hear. Don’t you listen to tales from
‘Melia Jane ’bout haunts. Dey’s fever in dat path, dat’s all,” said the
woman, lying obstinately.
Andria shot out of the house like an arrow from a bow.
Down that uncanny path, with its hot, strong scents and gaudy flowers,
she ran as she had never thought she could run; her skirts caught to
her knees, she leaped and stumbled and slid over the tangled vines and
sharp rocks. Suddenly a gleam of white caught her eyes, and between two
high rocks she saw Beryl, kneeling over something on the ground.
“Beryl,” she screamed, hoarse with fear and anger at the girl’s
disobedience; “Beryl, why did you come here? Come home!”
“Hush!” said the girl softly, turning her head, “I’m all right! Come
here quietly and see what I’ve found. Such a darling kitten!”
Andria, her pulses thumping and her breath gone, caught back an angry
word. What did the child mean? She had noticed last evening that Salome
had no dogs or cats. And then her heart contracted.
On the ground beside Beryl, playing with her hand, was a small cat--all
marked with curious black rings on its yellow-white coat.
But it was no cat. Its face was square, its eyes wild, as it stopped
its play at the sight of a second person. Beryl, her own strange eyes
intent and masterful, began to stroke it with soft, strong fingers.
“Pussy, pussy--little, little cat!” she whispered in the thing’s small
ear; and as if it knew her it lay on its back and patted her with
velvet paws.
What she had seen in the night came back to the governess. Had it been
a full-grown thing like this that had smelled her out on the upper
veranda? Trembling, she stepped to the girl’s side.
“Beryl, put it down! Come home,” she begged, for orders, when the
girl’s face was absent and obstinate, were useless. “It may have its
mother somewhere, you don’t know! Come home.”
“She wouldn’t hurt me!” said Beryl, and for a moment those strange,
yellow eyes met Andria’s, not so unlike the eyes of the queer, wild
kitten.
“No, but she might me,” said Andria quietly, as a forlorn hope.
Beryl turned pale.
“Oh, Andria, forgive me!” she cried. “I forgot. There, little cat, run
home! Or shall I take it with us and feed it?”
“No, no! Oh, come away!” with a wild horror she thought of being
followed up the path by a prowling thing like she had seen the night
before. Almost she stamped her foot as Beryl lingered, kissing her
new-found toy. Instead of scratching, it purred and rubbed its head
against her, and Andria knew that if she had touched it the thing would
have clawed her eyes out. Her heartbeats, which had shaken her from
breathlessness, shook her now with terror. Who could tell what moment
death might not be on them?
But Beryl, putting down the kitten very gently, slipped her arm through
Andria’s with quick compunction.
“Come along,” she said sweetly. “I’d forgotten this was a bad place and
we weren’t to come here. Run home, little cat! See, Andria, it will
follow us!”
“Yes,” said Andria, with stiff lips. “It won’t come far, I fancy.” She
pushed Beryl in front of her so that if more than the kitten should
follow the girl would have a chance to run, and found herself glancing
every which way just as Egerton had done the morning before. To her
despair Beryl turned suddenly off the path.
“Look!” she cried, “here’s the kitten again! It’s caught up with us.
And here’s the dearest little pond, Andria!” She did not believe for
one second in that fairy-tale of the kitten’s mother. “See it--all
white sand, and so clear.”
Andria was utterly furious.
“Beryl, please come! I’m so hungry,” she said. “I believe you want me
to get fever.”
“How can you!” said Beryl. “You poor dear, I’ll come now.”
And she did, hurrying with easy steps up the stony path. The kitten
stayed behind, and that terrified Andria anew. She turned to follow
Beryl, and her foot slipped. For a moment she fell on her knees, faint
with pain; her face bent over the still water of the little pond that
mirrored her clearly. The next second her heart seemed to die in her.
There was more than her own face reflected in the water. Over her
shoulder, leering, mouthing as if it jabbered at her, was a second
face, so wild and dreadful that her throat grew shut and dry with fear.
With her newborn instinct of facing an enemy, she wrenched herself
round on her knees and scrambled to her feet.
The space behind her was utterly empty! Even the wild kitten was gone.
Not a rustle, a moving leaf, stirred the gorgeous shrubs anywhere,
and yet she knew some one had vanished into them but now. That face
that had leered at her from the water mirror had been no dream, but a
dreadful reality.
“Reflection can’t lie,” she thought. “And I saw it face to face with
me.” She could scarcely move as she realized how close it must have
been to her to have peered over her very shoulder.
“Beryl!” She suddenly remembered the girl she had sworn to herself to
take care of, and forgot her turned ankle as she raced after her. At
the end of the path she almost sobbed with joy. There stood Beryl,
fresh and lovely in the sunshine that flooded the open turfed lawns.
Her face was quite careless and untroubled.
“I won’t tell her,” Andria thought swiftly. “She’s seen nothing.” But
even there in the open ground she made her charge walk in front of her
all the way to the house, for fear of what might yet be behind them.
Salome stood waiting at the door, and turned away as she saw them.
“What on earth’s the matter with Salome?” Beryl said, laughing.
“Andria, she was truly pale! She was gray!”
But Andria said nothing.