THE HAND OF FATE.
“Thou sleepest? Awake!
What darest thou get for her sake?”
Mr. Egerton stood in his cabin on the _Flores_ making a hasty toilet.
His thin face was savage as he shaved, and his hand shook as if from
bodily fatigue.
“Why the devil doesn’t Raimond come?” he thought, and gashed his cheek
till he swore aloud, though at the same instant the door had opened on
his son, a disheveled object in silk pajamas.
“You’d better sit down and wait a moment!” said the newcomer. “Have a
drink?”
Erceldonne mopped his bleeding face.
“Have the goodness not to drawl, I hate it,” he said angrily. “You
can’t be as indifferent as you pretend after the night’s work!”
“I’m not. I’m much less indifferent,” he said, with a short laugh. “I
begin to have a hankering after that little devil, now since she’s been
sharp enough to deceive you. I believe if you threw a girl into the sea
she’d come up smiling in some man’s arms!”
“It wasn’t the girl. It was that damned governess. But how the man ever
got here----”
“Doesn’t matter now, that I can see,” answered Egerton, with a shrug.
“You’re sure it was the governess? I thought you said she was old.”
“I said she was an excellent woman,” replied Egerton dryly.
“All the same. But Mattel said he saw the girl in his arms. Heriot’s!
And the last man in the world to----But it doesn’t matter.”
“I didn’t believe Mattel, like a fool! Or we could----”
“We couldn’t have done any better. I thought it was all up when I heard
you laugh and saw the light go out. I was in time, though. But, by the
Lord, if I’d known it was Heriot I don’t think I’d have done it!”
“You would have turned out Erceldonne penniless, I suppose, and let him
walk into your shoes! You’re sure it’s all right?”
“Yes, I tell you!” said Raimond, with sudden vicious savagery. “Let it
alone!” It was the son who was pale now, not the father.
“Curse Mattel and his prowling on shore,” he added, biting his
mustache. But the girl he had been willing to marry for her money--and
something else--had suddenly grown desirable to him since another man
had found her fair. She would be hard to get, too, judging from the way
she had slipped from him to Heriot--and nothing but the unattainable
was ever coveted by Raimond Erle. If Andria had not been too faithful
he might have been at her feet still.
“If it hadn’t been for Mattel,” said Erceldonne practically, “we’d
never have known there was a man on the island. If Heriot kissed the
girl he would have married her.” The past conditional came curiously,
but to the listener it sounded natural enough.
“For God’s sake, wash your face!” he said, with womanish disgust, or
perhaps because it was not so long since he had cleansed a like red
stain from his hands. “And throw away the water. Mattel might think
things if he saw it was bloody. He didn’t follow us, I suppose!”
“Mattel is a Maltese thief, who daren’t think or do anything,” but he
was careful enough to follow his son’s advice. “No one knows anything
but you and me,” and his hand grew unsteady again as he thought of the
awful danger he had dared last night for the sake of Raimond--Raimond
and Erceldonne.
Beryl Corselas had builded worse than she knew when she had bidden
the madman and his dreadful servants to keep far away on the night of
all nights when they might have defended her. But all Erceldonne had
thought was that luck was on his side still.
“I suppose there’s no reason to stay on here,” said Erle, with a glance
of loathing out the port-hole. “I’ll do what I can with the girl and
we’ll take her and the governess off to-night. I can make love to her,
if I must, at sea.”
Erceldonne nodded. He was himself again. No one would have known him
for the man of two hours before.
“The sooner the better,” he returned briefly. “Before they have time to
wonder why he doesn’t come back.”
“Let him alone!” cried Raimond, with that black rage again. “If you
keep harping on him I’ll chuck the whole thing. I don’t care a damn for
the succession, it’s only the money--and that won’t make me stand your
conversation!”
“Then you’d better tell the girl so,” said Erceldonne dryly. “Do you
suppose she is going to avoid the subject?”
“I know it. She thinks we don’t know anything about him,” replied
Raimond grimly. “She won’t dare give herself away. And once married to
her----” he laughed, and Andria might have known why.
But Andria, for once, was wearied out. It was no more than eight
o’clock and she knew Raimond never faced existence till eleven. It
seemed safe to sleep, and sleep she must, or she could not think or
act. If Salome came in softly and darkened the room it was without an
idea of the mischief she was doing, nor how Andria Erle would wake.
Beryl, with a strange color in her cheeks, a strange brightness in
her tawny eyes, was freshly dressed and out even as Andria closed her
eyes. From pure humiliation she had put that thin, sealed packet in her
pocket, but she was not thinking of it now. Up and down the garden she
stepped with a quiet fierceness that might have been learned from the
jaguars she played with. There was no sign of the crazy old man, let
her call and search as she would; no sign of Heriot, and her heart grew
full of fear.
Yet there seemed little cause for terror.
If she had thought to see Egerton and his son come hurrying up from the
yacht to carry her off she was mistaken. Neither of them appeared.
She wondered wretchedly why Heriot had left her. Surely not because
they said she had money; it meant nothing to her, instinct told her
little to Heriot. Why did he not come back?
She was afraid of these two men who had come with lies. Why should
Erceldonne call himself Egerton to a girl to whom neither name meant
anything? It came over her sharply that an obscure Mr. Egerton might
leave England unobserved in a yacht, while Lord Erceldonne’s departure
would have been chronicled in all the papers.
“Whatever he means to do with me, he’ll do it secretly,” she thought,
trembling. “But oh, if I could only hear the cats scream! I must just
wait. Only wait.”
But though she waited till the sun rose high and the hours passed at
noon, she was waiting still.
And it was so that Raimond Erle came up from the shore and saw her;
standing straight and tall in the blazing sun among the gorgeous
flowers; young, lithe, magnificent with her dusky hair and her golden
eyes, and that strange color on her cheeks; a woman any man might
covet. And for the first time he cared nothing for the thing he had
done.
Every bit of color went from her face as she saw who it was, though she
had known the step was not Heriot’s.
“Well,” she said defiantly, “what do you want?”
“Only to say good morning. You’re not going to run away again, are
you?” for she had moved restlessly under his eyes.
“I don’t want to run away. Why should I?” she replied, with a slow
glance of dislike she had not known the trick of yesterday. “I want to
talk. When is--Mr. Egerton--going to take us away?”
“To-day, if you like. But don’t talk here, it’s too scorching.
Come into the house.” There was nothing but his own comfort in the
suggestion, but his glance said it was hers.
The girl shaded her eyes and looked once round the empty garden, the
stirless noontide woods. There was not a soul.
“Come in, then.” She had caught her breath curiously. She led the way,
not into the house itself, but up by an outside stair to the veranda
that opened off Andria’s bedroom. From it she could see the faintest
signal from the hillside down which Heriot must come, if he came in
time; would be within call of Andria, sleeping like the dead behind her
closed shutters.
Erle looked at her.
She had a crushed hibiscus blossom in her hand that was not so crimson
as her mouth. He would get her by fair means or foul, if it were only
for that and her tawny eyes.
“So you’re anxious to get away?” he said slowly, but she hesitated
instead of assenting.
“I don’t see why I was brought here at all!” she returned at last,
frowning.
He smiled.
“Don’t you? I do. Look at me, don’t you remember me?”
“Look at me!”--with what different eyes another man had said those very
words!
“Remember you!” she retorted. “No; how could I?”
But she shivered. The man was lying, as Andria had warned her he would
lie.
“Think!” he said. “Have you forgotten one evening at Blackpool station?
And a frightened girl who stood there without anywhere to go? Because I
remember, if you don’t.”
But like a flash it had come back to her. His white duck clothes made
him look different, but it was the same face she had seen. And she
remembered there had been no pity in the man’s eyes as he watched her.
“You do remember!” he said. “Well, don’t be angry if I tell you
something. I went away and you haunted me. I couldn’t forget you.
When I heard of the girl found starving in the wreck I knew it was
you. I sent my father to get you from--the woman”--with a momentary
hesitation, since he had never known exactly about that part of the
business and dared not invent--“who had adopted you. It was I who
suggested bringing you here,” he continued calmly lying. “I knew
convent arms are long and you weren’t safe in England. But if you want
to go back you can, though it’s a living grave, a convent, for a
beautiful girl,” he spoke dreamily, and so impersonally that yesterday
she would not have noticed the flattery.
“Why did you care?” abruptly. “I was nothing to you.”
“I wanted to help you live your life,” he said, with a queer shrug.
“That was all. Oh! you are a child still. You’ve seen nothing. Not
diamonds, nor satin gowns, nor balls where the music gets into your
blood and you know half the men in the room are mad about you.”
“To that life?” said Beryl slowly, for Brian Heriot had told her none
of these things. Yet she searched the empty hillside once more with her
eyes.
“That, and more. I don’t know why I cared you should be saved from the
convent, but I did. You can go back, as I said, if you like.”
“No!” she said, with a shudder, remembering only the cruelty of Mother
Felicitas and nothing of the kindness of the other nuns. “They said I
had no name, that I was a charity child. Am I? If you know anything
about me, tell me!” she could not keep back the question, though she
knew it was useless, but the slow, insolent answer turned her blood to
fire.
“You are Beryl, and you have golden eyes. I don’t know, or care for
anything more.”
“You do know who I am!” she flashed out at him, “else why would your
father trouble with me? If he is your father and not your uncle, as you
said.”
His face changed ever so slightly. Well, Heriot was paid for talking!
“I know nothing but that I have done my best to help you from that very
first night I saw you,” he said, very low.
There was a passion on his face there had never been on Heriot’s, but
she was not old enough to know that passion in a man is the very last
reason for a woman to trust in him. And the sudden softening of the
haggard lines round his mouth, the widening of his eyes, made her for
the first time wonder if, after all, he were speaking the truth.
“Where do you want to take me?” She was staring at him with great,
fascinated eyes. If he had been like this yesterday she would never
have run away from him, unwarned as she was then.
“Back to England--to London--to the world. Why should you be buried
here?” he said slowly.
“But you said it wasn’t safe,” she faltered. “The convent----”
“Can’t recall you if you’ll let me take care of you,” he answered, with
his voice utterly caressing. “Will you?”
For the first time she saw what he meant, what he had been meaning all
along. And it was just what Andria had said. With a start of fright she
sprang up.
“Do you mean you want me to marry you?” she cried, wide-eyed, and,
without her will, Heriot’s face sprang to her memory.
She was so beautiful as she stood aghast and trembling that the man
lost his head.
“Yes,” he said, “just that!” and before she could move had caught her
to him and kissed her madly.
She could not cry out because his lips crushed her mouth, but the
stifled moan would have brought any other man to his senses. She fought
against him till her lips were free.
“I hate you,” she stormed. “Why did I ever listen to you when
Andria--ah!” she screamed at the top of her voice. “Andria!”
If she had stabbed him he could not have let her go more suddenly.
“What do you mean?” he said. “Who is Andria?”
But it was another voice that answered him from behind his back.
“I!” said Andria Erle, standing like a ghost in her white dressing-gown
between the open green shutters of her bedroom window.
Raimond Erle turned livid.
It was Andria; Andria who was the governess, who had been engaged to
take care of the only girl in the world she should never have met!
He saw once more the pale face, the red-brown hair of the woman he had
called his wife--and the only emotion it brought him was furious hatred.
He looked from her to Beryl and back again and knew what he must do.
“And who,” he said calmly, “are you?”
“No one,” she answered steadily, “now! Shall I tell you who I was?”
Her eyes blazed at him, standing at the window of the very room where
she had thanked God he had come back to her. The man shrugged his
shoulders.
“No,” he said, “stand back! I will tell you what you were, and are. A
woman who is no fit companion for an innocent girl, who is here under
false pretenses and a feigned name.”
His quick ear had caught footsteps coming up the stairs, and as Andria
caught her breath at the words that were true enough in their way,
Raimond Erle turned to his father.
“So this is your governess!” he cried, before she could speak. “Do you
know who she is? A woman who was the talk of all London--a woman no
girl should so much as see!”
“Raimond!” She had been his wife for five years, or she thought so;
small wonder she cried out as if he had struck her. She reeled where
she stood.
“Take the girl away,” said Erle savagely. “Don’t you understand?”
But at that cry of his son’s name Lord Erceldonne had understood indeed.
It was this woman and no other who had enslaved Raimond for five years,
and the very irony of fate had brought her here to ruin him.
“Andria, what does he mean? What does he know about you?”
Beryl had sprung between the two men and flung her arms round Andria’s
neck. But the woman stood cold as marble.
“Come!” said Erceldonne, between his teeth. He laid his hand on Beryl’s
shoulder and she tore it away.
“Andria, speak to me, don’t mind them!” she cried. “I believe in you.
I don’t care what they say, Andria, darling.”
Erle’s discarded wife caught her in her arms and stood back, knowing
that the time was come.
“I am what you made me!” she cried to the man whom once she had loved.
“I will take care you have no other girl to torture as you have
tortured me. Oh, I know why you want her, why you changed your minds
about letting her die here!” She came a step nearer to Erle, still
holding Beryl clasped in one arm. “But you forgot me!”
Her breast heaved as if she could not breathe. She kept her eyes on
Raimond’s face and never saw Erceldonne as he slipped behind her.
There was no stopping the tongue of a furious woman, but if Beryl heard
her story the game was up. And without the girl, ruin stared him in
the face. Dead or alive, they must have her, and there was no driving
Raimond when he had the bit in his teeth. He would have her quick, not
dead, in spite of all the discarded women in London.
“Come,” he repeated, with a voice he tried to make shocked but only
made angry. “This is no place for you. And as for you, madam,” to
Andria, “we will leave you to the society of your friend, Mr. Heriot. I
may say that what I saw last night shocked and pained me inexpressibly.”
He took Beryl by the arm, but she struck back at him wildly, with all
the strength of her young arm. For an instant the man staggered; the
next he had caught his son’s eye.
“Settle it,” he said, with an ugly word. And with hands that were
strong as steel he forced the two women apart. It was done so
dexterously that neither had time to make a sound, but the girl turned
on him viciously, wrenched away from him, and fell backward down the
wooden stairs. As she fell she screamed, but another cry covered it.
Half an hour afterward Raimond Erle came quietly out of a house that
seemed strangely still. There was blood on his hand and he wiped it
away with fastidious care.