THE EXPIATION OF MOTHER FELICITAS.
“Andria!” said Beryl wildly, unbelievingly.
“Andria, they told me you were dead.”
She had never spoken when the woman she thought dead had run in; pale,
breathlessly, but Andria herself and no ghost. She had only gazed
dumfounded; then leaped with the instinct of an animal, and caught
Erle’s arm as he would have paid his debt to his wife in full.
“Oh! how did you get here?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Erle’s fist had only grazed her, yet she was leaning helplessly against
the wall. She hated him, despised him, and yet--he had struck her; and
if he had held out a finger instead she would have gone to the ends of
the earth with him still. He was gone out of her sight forever. What
ailed her that she could not be glad?
“Didn’t know I was coming?” she forced herself to speak. “Didn’t Father
Maurice tell you?”
“Nothing but that Mrs. Fuller was to take my place and I was to run
to the carriage. We spoke to her out in the hall, and she was like a
child. She did everything he said. She hated Erceldonne, but she was
afraid of him. She had owed him money she could not pay; he had her
note and could have taken everything she had. Father Maurice told her I
would pay everything she owed if she helped me. It was she who thought
of cutting off my hair for a wig. Oh, never mind all that! Tell me what
has happened?”
She dared not ask for Heriot, lest only one, not two, might have come
back alive from Flores.
“Look!” said Andria gently. “Salome and the poor old man saved us.”
Her heart contracted as she thought of the lunatic running over the
moors for his life. He had seemed sane enough till now; had begged
them with tears to take him to England to see the dearest of his
soul again. Had been times messenger to Beryl before they dared come
themselves, and now would finish his life in an asylum, away from the
animals that he loved.
But Beryl thought of only one thing, one person. Here in the doorway,
behind the priest, stood Brian Heriot, alive. He stretched out his
hands, and she ran to him. At the sight the woman whom love would know
no more turned away.
“Father Maurice,” she said, “let us get away from this dreadful place.”
“Wait,” the priest whispered, “they are bringing him in. It is better
for her not to see.”
“Him!” she stammered, thinking of the man who had run from the house.
“Lord Erceldonne.”
He laid a hand on her arm.
“Mr. Erle has gone,” he said quietly, knowing she would never speak
that name again. “I must stay and arrange matters for the funeral.”
“But I don’t really understand yet,” Beryl cried out still in the
embrace of Heriot. “You were shot and----”
“The poor old crazy man you sent saved me. Salome nursed me back to
life again.”
“The old man!” she cried, with a cry that stopped Father Maurice and
Andria in their low talk. Beryl dragged her hand from Heriot’s.
“Let me go,” she said, “don’t touch me! I am his granddaughter. It was
no wonder I could manage the cats. I am like him, I----”
“You are no relation to him,” said Father Maurice quietly. “Your mother
was his adopted daughter; but he had gone too crazy to remember it. She
ran away from him and married Lord Erceldonne’s elder brother. You are
their daughter.”
“My mother?” she said, in a thick whisper.
“Died long ago,” he would not tell her how yet, “and you were stolen
and hidden away in the convent. Only Mother Felicitas knew you were
the heiress of Erceldonne. The Lord Erceldonne you knew had never any
right to the title, which is one of the few that descend in direct
line to male or female heirs. You would have been left to die on that
island, but for a fortune left you by your mother’s brother. The papers
were full of advertisements for you; so, you see, you were suddenly
worth more alive than dead. A marriage with you would not only secure
the succession to Raimond Erle, but set him and his father on their
feet as to money. You would not have been told of your parentage till
you were married. A penniless waif might accept without question a
husband whom a viscountess in her own right would refuse.”
“But Andria! He couldn’t have married me.”
“Not if she lived. But he thought her dead. It was she, under Heaven,
who saved you. Raimond Erle was married to her by me, at that time a
minister in the Presbyterian church, who had given up my charge because
I could not preach those things I no longer believed. When he heard,
afterward, that I had become a priest of the Catholic church, he made
use of it to tell her she was not, nor never had been, his wife.
“Wife or no wife, she was a menace to him; he left her to die. The
black servant saved her; the madman gave money to her and Mr. Heriot
which brought them to England; to Mother Felicitas, to me, who had
performed the ceremony Erle dared call null and void.”
“Mother Felicitas!” she cried. “Do you mean I must go back to her? I
won’t! I’ll----”
“Mother Felicitas is dead,” the priest said gravely. “But you are
wrong to hate her. She was your friend--in the end. It was she who,
when Erceldonne was found tenantless, thought of this Moorland house.
She, who, on hearing Mrs. Erle’s story, sent for me, the chaplain of
the convent, the only person in all England, by God’s grace, who knew
of her marriage. I went to London and discovered Mr. Erle as if by
accident; I seemed to believe all he told me. And when I came to this
evil house, his wife, Heriot, and the police were at my heels. But I
had no time to tell you.”
“But Mother Felicitas,” she said incredulously. “She hates me!”
“Yes,” he answered slowly, “she hated you, but not as you thought. She
was a great sinner, but she died like a martyr. She repented.”
Even now he remembered with how great a courage. There had been no
half-measures in her atonement; no shielding of herself, or of that
reputation that had been dearer than life.
He had been as stunned as the nuns when, after a service for the dead
for which she asked him, the Mother Superior had risen in her stall in
the chapel and faced them all--every nun in the convent and himself.
She was the color of ashes, even to her lips; and she swayed as she
stood.
She began very quietly; she asked their prayers, their patience.
When her long story was done, each nun was on her knees. Was the
reverent mother raving, that she should call herself a murderess, a
hypocrite, a blasphemer? That she gave chapter and verse of her sins,
her great humiliation?
She stood in the silence that was full of hushed weeping, and beckoned
to the convent chaplain, then led the way to the confessional.
In agony she wrote a deposition, in agony she gave those directions
that had saved Beryl Corselas, and fell on her knees.
“You will excommunicate me!” she said.
Father Maurice had raised his hands, and spoken. And as he finished a
great cry rang out to the listening nuns.
He had absolved her, as One Higher than he had forgiven the dying thief
on the cross. But when he would have raised her from her knees, she was
dead.
He roused himself now, and looked for a long moment at Beryl Corselas.
“Pray,” he said gently, “that you may make as good an ending.” Then he
went away, to begin his watch by the dead.
“Come,” said Heriot softly. “Let us go.”
And, with Andria’s hand in hers, Beryl Corselas, who was Beryl Corselas
no longer, left that house of crime.
There is little more to tell.
The madman who had paid his lifelong debt to Lord Erceldonne was never
found. If he perished miserably on the wild moorlands, his misshapen
bones were never discovered; if with the cunning of madness, he made
his way back to the Azores, there was no one who suggested it to the
police, though perhaps Andria Erle might have been able to, had she
wished.
Raimond Erle, rather than face bankruptcy and disinheritance, slipped
away to Mexico; and there he died in a gambling-brawl.
In his stead there reigned Beryl, Viscountess Erceldonne, whose husband
was the Honorable Brian Heriot, next heir to the baronage of Heriot,
for his brother never married. He was true to his word; he never
touched a penny of her vast fortune. She spent it nearly all in helping
the outcast and wretched.
The sham Mrs. Fuller was a white slave no more. She lived at peace with
the husband she loved--the man whom Lord Erceldonne had sworn to ruin,
and thus had maintained an overmastering influence over her.
Ebenezer Davids lighted lamps no more. He and his wife left the lodge
at the great gate of Erceldonne, and he prided himself greatly that
it was he who first discovered his present mistress was “the spit and
image of his lordship.”
And the whole truth about Mother Felicitas Lady Erceldonne never knew.
There is no loyalty like that of religious women. Not a nun in the
convent ever opened her lips, not one but was helped on the narrow path
by the memory of the expiation of Mother Felicitas.
Salome, faithful still, worshiped Beryl’s child, which was named Andria.
And Andria?
At twenty-four no one can say their life is done.
Andria Erle took up hers and was living it, not a pensioner on Beryl’s
bounty, nor a nun in a convent.
On the boards of the Queen’s Theater she became an actress whom princes
were glad to applaud, whom great ladies visit. Men laid titles and
fortunes at her feet, but she remained Andria Erle; beautiful, gentle,
and a little unapproachable!
Time, instead of adding lines to her face, had smoothed the hardness
and bitterness from it.
But to no one had she ever spoken of Raimond Erle.
THE END.
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Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Table of contents has been added and placed into the public domain by
the transcriber.
The line: “‘Miss Holbeach; thank you!’ He just glanced at” was missing
from the book due to a typesetting error; the lost text was restored
from the original serial appearance in _Street & Smith’s New York
Weekly_, v. 54, no. 50 (September 30, 1899), page 1.
On page 214, the line “the words died on her tongue remembered how the
girl had mastered the jaguar” appears to be missing words. The original
serial installment for this chapter could not be located, and this is
reproduced here as printed in the book version.