CHAPTER VIITHE PRISONER
The owner of the miserable face came downstairs after watching Philip Barrimore’s departure and joined Thomas Alvin in the dining-room.
“Well, Mrs. Le Breton, we have walked into a lion’s jaws,” remarked the man, pouring out a wine-glass of brandy and gulping it down. “That man who called is Philip Barrimore, and he is come to live near us.”
“We must go away,” said the woman. “We must go at once.”
“What a fool you are!” thundered Alvin. “That would excite suspicion. We must just stand our ground. No one can disprove our statements—and the girllooksmad enough to convince anyone.”
“But she has seen him! She is frantic. She will escape to get to him, and we shall be ruined!” cried Mrs. Le Breton. “I wish to God I had never consented to do this thing! I might have known ill luck would follow me, mixing myself up with ‘The Thirteenth Man!’”
“Let me hear no more of that hateful nickname,” he said. “I left that behind me in Canada.”
“But not your ill-luck,” she reminded him.
“Look here, woman!” rejoined Alvin. “It was a pretty lucky thing for you that you let me know that that girl of yours was dying, and I took Eweretta to see her. By making Eweretta take the dead girl’splace you came into comfort. No one doubted that Eweretta lay in the coffin that went to the grave, and no one doubted that the girl we took away with us was Aimée. We kept her well drugged soshecouldn’t enlighten them. I came into the fortune which was hers under her father’s will, and you and she share it. She passes as your dead daughter, and always will, if you don’t play the fool. Have you given her a dose?”
“She won’t take it. I have locked her in her room. I wish you would go to her.”
“I wish you wouldn’t shout so, the servants will hear you. I am always afraid you will lead them to suspect something by your tomfoolery.”
Mrs. Le Breton bit her lips with anger. She was still a handsome woman, though her expression spoiled her.
Alvin went on.
“Didn’t you often tell me you would give anything to have revenge on my brother? What better revenge could you have than you’ve got?”
In the room to which Mrs. Le Breton had alluded Eweretta lay upon her face sobbing wildly.
She dashed the tears from her eyes as her uncle entered. She stood up and faced him.
“Uncle, uncle!” she pleaded, lifting an agonized face to his. “Keep all the money, I don’t want it! But let me go to him!”
“What are you talking about?” said the man viciously. “You are mad! mad, do you hear? You are mad, Aimée Le Breton! What does he want withyou?”
Eweretta’s spirit had not been quite broken by the treatment she had received, though she was weakened by drugs and unhappiness.
There was now a dangerous flash in the dark eyes, as of an animal at bay.
“Do you think to persuade me to believe the lie you have invented?” she asked with fine scorn. “You and that woman have done your best to deprive me of reason; but you have not succeeded. What have I ever done that you should so torture me? I have told you that you can take the money. I will never claim one penny of it. But give me my liberty!”
“A likely thing that!” laughed Alvin, “and lay myself open to your revenge!”
“Ah!” she mocked; “what revenge could poor half-witted Aimée Le Breton take? You say I am she!”
“I shall never give you your freedom,” Alvin affirmed stoutly, “and my advice to you is don’t attempt to take it. I have everything on my side. You have nothing! You lie buried at Qu’Appelle! You could not even persuade Barrimore that you are other than Aimée Le Breton. He saw you to-day. He has gone away believing you to be Aimée. He will not return.”
Eweretta turned her face away to hide the agony of despair that convulsed it.
“From now you will not walk in the garden,” went on Alvin, “you will walk only in the wood. If I liberate you now, from this room, will you promise to behave reasonably? You will always be well treated so long as you behave reasonably, and make no attempt to cross my purposes. You know the consequences of your wild outbursts. They drive me to drink.”
She turned and faced him.
“What a coward you are!” she exclaimed fiercely.
Then he struck her.
She did not cry out, though the pain was well-nigh intolerable.
“Coward! Coward!” she repeated.
He went out and left her, locking the door.
She paced the room, backwards and forwards like a caged animal, till the sun set and darkness came. Then she crouched upon the floor, her head in her hands.
A dull, unfeeling apathy was upon her. She no longer struggled. She was faint for want of food, for she had refused what Mrs. Breton had offered her both at breakfast and luncheon, believing—and with good reason—that her food and drink were drugged.
At last a low scratching sound made itself heard.
Eweretta sprang up and listened.
“Miss Aimée!” came in a sharp whisper. “I got the key.Heis drunk and Mrs. Le Breton is out.”
The grating sound of the key as it turned in the lock was like music to the ears of the unhappy girl.
It was Mattie, the cook, who had often before secretly befriended her. Mattie thoroughly believed that poor Ewerettawasmad Aimée Le Breton, but she humored her by pretending to believe otherwise. She believedMr.Alvin’s assertion that the poor girl was at times violent, and that it was necessary to control her. But the servant’s kind heart grieved for the unfortunate girl.
“Come with me, miss, and have a meal before the master wakes, and before the missis comes back from Hastings.”
“Are you not afraid of me, Mattie?” asked Eweretta with a pitiful effort at raillery.
“Afraid of you! No, dear heart! You need not tread softly,Mr.Alvin has drunk enough to keep him asleep till the dead rise at the last day. What a pity he ever drinks. He is kind enough when sober.”
It was in the kitchen that Mattie served a good meal for Eweretta, which she ate ravenously—for she had deprived herself of food so much from fear of her brain being dulled by drugs. Her brain was clear enough to-day.
Mattie, who had come from Montreal—engaged there at the same time as her fellow-servants, Faith and Pierre, was homesick for her beloved Canada, and perhaps this made her the more sympathetic with this unhappy Canadian girl, who was moreover so beautiful.
While Eweretta ate in the lamplight, Mattie talked to her of Canada.
All at once the servant caught sight of a red streak showing through the muslin of Eweretta’s blouse.
“Oh, you poor lamb!” she cried, with tears springing to her eyes. “Didhedo that?”
“Yes,” answered Eweretta with a fiery flash from her splendid eyes. “I called him a coward and he struck me.”
Mattie insisted on bathing the broken skin, accompanying her work with invectives on the cruel monster who had inflicted it.
“It’s the drink,” she said.
“My old lover came here to-day,” burst from Eweretta, while her tears fell. “I saw him! Oh, Mattie, won’t you help me to escape? You are so kind!”
Mattie set her teeth hard. She believed this was a delusion of the poor girl’s about her lover. She knewthe story of the supposed dead Eweretta, and that the girl she really believed to be Aimée Le Breton now imagined herself to be her dead sister.
“Ah, where would you go, honey, if I did?” she answered, “and what would become of you?”
“I should go to Philip Barrimore,” Eweretta answered with great decision. “I don’t want my father’s money. Uncle Thomas and Mrs. Le Breton are welcome to it. It was to obtain that money that they pretended I died; and it was my half-sister who died. We were so much alike that one might easily be mistaken for the other. I remember well Uncle Thomas taking me to see Aimée die. The next thing I remember is finding myself in a strange place out on the prairie. I was dressed in Aimée’s clothes. They told me IwasAimée. They said ‘Eweretta died suddenly, and is buried.’ Ever since then they have pretended that I am Aimée. They drug me to make me stupid. Am I stupid to-night? You can’t think so. I am myself because I have touched no food or drink that they have offered to me.”
Mattie looked full at the girl, full and critically. Could there, after all, be truth in what she said? Mattie felt for the first time that it might be true, this so-called delusion of the unhappy girl.
“Well, miss,” she said, “if all you say is truth, then you are the most wronged creature on God’s earth.”
“Itistrue, Mattie. It is also true that Philip Barrimore came to this house to-day. If I had not fainted, I should have run to him.Hewould have known me! Why did he come? He must believe me dead.”
She broke down and wept.
“Look you here, miss,” said Mattie, growing suddenlyalert, “that gentleman who came here has taken the red bungalow across the fields. You can see it from your window. I heard it from the boy that brings the milk from Pickett’s Farm. He pointed him out to me and said, ‘That bloke has taken the bungalow across there from the governor.’ Those were his words. If so, he will find you out, never fear. You take things quietly, and don’t anger the master. That’s my advice. And now get you to bed before Mrs. Le Breton comes.”
“Will you get into trouble, Mattie, for letting me out of the room?” Eweretta asked anxiously.
“I can take care of myself, miss, never fear,” said Mattie. “Hark! I hear Pierre and Faith coming in. Go at once!”
Pierre and Faith were “keeping company,” and had been for a walk together.
Eweretta went to her room with an elastic tread. She had hope for the first time in this most horrible year. She went to her window.
A light was burning in the bungalow.