Her Evil Genius or Within Love's Call by Adelaide Stirling

Originally Published: September 16, 1899

Genres: Romance

Dime Novel Bibliography: https://dimenovels.org/Item/1152/Show

Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238584095-her-evil-genius

Gutenberg link: https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/75930

Chapters: 40

CHAPTER I

THE CONVENT PRELUDE

The summer holidays had begun and the great convent school was deserted, all its pupils gone but two, who were in the alcove belonging to the elder of them, and, as if that breakage of rule were not enough, were seated on the small white bed which was counted a crime to rumple.

The elder girl was eighteen, and after today convent rules would concern her no more, for that very afternoon she was going out into “the world” to earn her own living as a governess. She was wild with excitement, and would have been enraptured with the foretaste of liberty had it not been for the child who clung to her, sick and exhausted with stormy crying.

She looked down on her pityingly, and the reverend mother could have told you Andria Heathcote was not given to compassion. Her red-brown hair grew too strongly on her forehead for that; her full rose lips were too heavy. Yet something in the very strangeness of the girl who clutched her had caught at her hard young heart.

For Beryl Corselas was only a child, and young for her years at that. It seemed to Andria that the sins of eleven years old were too seriously taken when they were considered crimes, and yet her goblin ways were enough to provoke a saint—or Sister Felicitas!

“Beryl, look here,” repeated Andria; “don’t cry any more. I’ll write to you. I’m not going very far away.”

The child lifted her face from the girl’s shoulder. It was a curious face, with something almost vacant about it, yet what the lack was no one could quite say. She had extraordinary eyes, strangely and uncannily beautiful, so light a brown as to be almost yellow, tawny golden under the heavy eyelashes, that were black as ink. The warm whiteness of her cheeks was blurred with crying, paled with real despair, and the startling crimson of the childish lips had been hard bitten to check the sobs that might be heard.

She pushed away the long cloud of straight hair that was not black nor brown, but dusky, a cloud of darkness with no color to be named, from her face, and spoke with sullen, unchildlike contempt.

“You won’t write!” Her eyes were like burned-out coals. “You’ll mean to, but you won’t. You’re always trying to save other people’s feelings outside, but inside you never care. You’ll forget!”

“I’ll try not to,” said Andria, with a sudden pang. Was she really what Beryl said? Did her hatred of giving pain really make her more cruel in the end? She kissed the wet cheek.

“If I do forget, if I am like that, will you promise me something? Remember that I don’t mean to forget, and that I don’t, really. Think to yourself it’s just my way, and that some day you’ll see me again. Will you try, Beryl?”

“It’s no use my trying anything without you—in the house with Sister Felicitas!”

“Keep out of her way, then! Why are you always getting into her black books?”

“Because she hates me. I’m never myself with her.”

“You are with Mother Benedicta!”

“I might as well be comfortable with the statue in the chapel! I see about as much of her.”

She clung suddenly to the arm that enwrapped her.

“Oh, it’s you I want—you!” she gasped. “If I’m going to be good it will be for you. Who else do I like? Just you and animals—and I haven’t any of them except my rabbits. And I hate, hate, hate Sister Felicitas!”

A shadow, tall, slight, and angular, fell on them.

Andria looked up with a start, since convent tradition was still strong in her, and she was breaking rules openly. Sister Felicitas stood in the doorway, black against the sunlit passage.

“You’ve no right to be here, Beryl Corselas,” her voice seemed to float out into the shaded whiteness of the alcove, calm and cool as frost. “Go away and do your weeding. Your garden is not a pretty sight.”

Andria felt the quick shudder in the child’s body.

“Please, sister,” she said, “let me stay. Andria is going away.”

“I have nothing to do with that. But while I am in charge of the kitchen-garden you must do your share there. Go at once,” she said very softly, but the downcast eyes were angry. Andria Heathcote could not be reprimanded, and Sister Felicitas longed to do it; she was always making that hateful child rebel against lawful authority. But tomorrow she would be gone.

“A few minutes more or less cannot matter to you. Go to your weeding,” she said scornfully.

Beryl Corselas sat up, her slim, childish body quivering.

“I won’t go!” her voice low and passionate. “You know there are no weeds for me to dig up. I hate gardens. I wish everything in yours would die, or else choke you when you ate it—nasty, nasty old onions!” she cried, in a transport of temper.

“Beryl!” Even Andria, who hated Sister Felicitas, was aghast.

“You can do your weeding or not, that is for you to say,” said Sister Felicitas, whose face was quite untroubled, but she was trilling her fingers against her black habit. “But it is for me to say what will happen to you if you disobey.”

“I don’t care what you do to me!”

“No?” Andria knew that far-off sound in Sister Felicitas’ voice; there was not a girl in the convent whose nerves did not twitch when she heard it. “Then I suppose I can send those rabbits of yours to market! It will be time for rabbit-soup soon.”

“No, no, no!” The child’s voice was dreadful in its wild scream of supplication. If there had been anyone in the empty corridor they must have hurried to the sound of it.

“Not my bunnies. I love them. They’re truly people. You—you couldn’t be so wicked!”

“If you can talk such nonsense about your rabbits, the sooner they are gone the better,” said Sister Felicitas icily. “No—get up, child! You will tear my habit.”

For Beryl Corselas was on the floor, clutching at the immaculate black folds of the sister’s robe.

“You won’t take them away—say you won’t, sister!” She paid no attention to the hand that tried to disengage hers. “I’ll do anything, I’ll work in the garden, I’ll say I’m sorry—” The miserable voice made a listener start, but Sister Felicitas only drew her skirts away deftly.

“That you will be obliged to do,” she said.

“I’ll beg your pardon now,” sobbed Beryl, “only please don’t send my rabbits to market! I’ll go and weed—I truly will.”

“You make an idol of senseless things. You will be better without them.” In “the world” the tone would have been called cruel.

The child jumped to her feet, her wild, dusky hair streaming, her face white and furious.

“If you take them away I’ll kill you!” she cried out, shaking and gasping. “I hate you! You make me wicked, and then punish me. I—” She stopped as if something had turned her to stone.

In the doorway stood the reverend mother. Mother Benedicta, who had never been known to visit an alcove, who was high above the girls and their rulers, was in front of her, a gracious, stately figure in her black habit and white bands. There was a curious look on her beautiful, placid face, enough to stop the tongue even of Beryl Corselas in a temper. Yet she was not looking at the child, but at Sister Felicitas.

“I think breaking rules and sorrow at Andria’s going has made some one a little hysterical this morning! Is that it, Beryl? Come to me, my child;” and she put an arm round the sinner, who stood petrified, as if at the sight of a saint from heaven. Mother Benedicta’s cool fingers felt the hot throbbing of the child’s lax hands, and her face grew sterner.

“You are sorry for your rudeness to the good sister, is it not so, Beryl? Yes!” at the dumb nod that was a lie of despair. “I will see to the child, then, sister. I know you are busy. Sister Ignatia is waiting for you. She needs your help.”

Sister Felicitas’ face grew white.

“Yes, reverend mother,” she returned quietly, but her face was not quiet as she left the alcove. To have Andria Heathcote incite that hideous child to mutiny was bad enough, but to have Mother Benedicta set aside her authority was worse. And there had been that in the face of the reverend mother that told Sister Felicitas that even rancorous hatred must go softly.

“Reverend mother, my rabbits!” gasped the culprit, as the sister’s steps died away. “You won’t let her take them?”

“It was not meant, Beryl! The good sister thought to touch your heart; that is a hard little heart, is it not?” she said, smiling. “But run away now and wash your face. Then you can go to my room and wait there quietly till Andria and I come to you. I will ask Sister Felicitas to let her onions wait for today.”

But there was no smile on her face as the child slipped away, radiant with gratitude.

“It was a pity you had her here, Andria!” she said. “But it is the holidays, after all—only it provokes Sister Felicitas, who is always so conscientious.”

Andria Heathcote was brave enough, but, as a child had been quick to see, she was too apt to let things go, to put a good face on ugly matters. Yet now that curious politeness of hers left her.

“You heard, reverend mother,” she said quickly. “That goes on all day long. The child is growing sullen and strange.”

“Do you mean that, Andria?” Mother Benedicta was not apt to talk so freely, but Andria was going away.

“Yes, reverend mother! I knew you did not know. And it is true”—flushing at her own boldness—“that the sister dislikes Beryl.”

Mother Benedicta sighed.

“The child is difficult, they tell me, and incorrigibly idle;” but she said it chiefly to hear the answer.

“She can speak Spanish, and she works hard at that, though no one knows but Sister De Sales. School is bad for her; the girls bully her. Could you not send her home sometimes, dear mother?”

“She has no home; did you not know? She has been here since she was a baby. We do not even know who she is.” For once the Mother Superior had forgotten herself.

“Sister Felicitas knows,” said Andria quietly.

“What! Why do you say that?”

“Because”—once launched, Andria was floating well—“I heard her tell the child that she came by her mad temper honestly—was her mother over again.”

Mother Benedicta stood dumb.

She had heard more than she liked of Sister Felicitas’ methods this morning, but this passed all bearing.

“You must be mistaken,” she said, for the honor of the convent, but Andria saw her breathing quicken. “But I have been wrong. After this I will see more of the child. I promise you that much.”

To think of Sister Felicitas having known all this time the parentage of Beryl Corselas, which had been the mystery of the quiet convent lives, was too much even for her charity. It seemed but yesterday since a woman, wild, despairing, with the hand of death already on her, had brought the child to the convent. She had been told that no baby of three years could be taken, and had sunk into the nearest chair as if her last hope were gone.

Mother Benedicta had pitied her, seeing her so ill. (Afterward she had altered her mind about the illness; it might easily have been furious disappointment that had sapped her strange visitor’s strength.) She left the room to tell a lay sister to bring wine and food, but, though she was absent only a minute, when she returned the woman was gone. The window was open on the garden, and in the room sat a pale, yellow-eyed child, in exquisite clothing that was marked “Beryl Corselas.”

That was all. Never from that day to this had they been able to find out anything more, and only that the convent charter provided for certain charity pupils could the rules have been stretched to keep the waif.

Yet kept she was, and now a curious thrill made the superior tremble. Yet it was impossible. It had been six months before Sister Felicitas joined the community, and the woman who had flung the child on their charity had been pink-cheeked, golden-haired. Sister Felicitas was pale and dark. And still the Mother Superior— She forced herself to speak.

“I do not know what is to become of the child,” she said. “As you say, she is very strange. I never hear any good of her.”

“There is good in her. But Sister Felicitas has a repulsion for the child. You can see it.”

“I hope not,” said the good woman; but her own thoughts frightened her. “You had better write to her, Andria. I will see she gets your letters.”

She had quite forgotten the reason that had brought her to Andria Heathcote’s alcove in this sudden suspicion that had sprung up. She looked unseeingly at the girl who had spoken out against all her secretive nature. Yet Andria’s was not an ordinary face, and worth the watching.

Cleverness and self-reliance were written on the forehead, from which the hair was brushed back convent fashion; cleverness again in the wide eyebrows; perfect bravery was in the full-lipped mouth, and dogged patience in the clean chin; but the warm blue eyes had a veiled something in them that told of reluctance to speak out, of a temper that would hold out a right hand to an enemy and stab effectually with the left. Not from treachery, but because things were more easily done in that manner.

Mother Benedicta had meant to speak of these things, but she turned away with only one sentence as she signed to the girl to follow her.

“You will have to fight your own battles, Andria,” she said, almost absently. “Do it well and openly, as you fought Beryl’s today. And do not forget that this convent life has been but the prelude to your warfare.”

Andria bowed her head for the blessing that followed. She thought the reverend mother looked strangely old and worn today.