A week later Julian was once more on his way towards Desolada, and upon a journey which he was fully determined should either result in satisfying him that Sebastian did not properly occupy the position which he now held openly in the eyes of the whole colony, or should be his last one.
He did not 'come to this decision without much anxious consideration being given to the subject by himself, by Mr. Spranger, and by Beatrix--who had been taken into the confidence of the others on the evening following Sebastian's visit to "Floresta." Nor had he arrived at the decision to again become his cousin's guest without taking their opinions on that subject as well.
And the result was--when briefly stated--that he was on his road once more.
Now, as he rode along a second time on the mule (which had been returned to its owner by a servant from Desolada), because it was at least a safe and trusty animal although not speedy--such a qualification being, indeed, unnecessary, in a country where few people ride swiftly because of the heat--he was musing deeply on all that the past weeks had brought forth.
"First," he reflected, "it has done one thing which was not to be expected, and may or may not have a bearing on what I am in this place for. It has caused me to fall over head and ears in love. Some people would say, 'That's good.' Others that it is bad, since it might distract my attention from more serious matters. So it would be bad, for me, if she doesn't feel the same way. I suppose I shall have courage to tell her all about it some day, but at present I'm sure I couldn't do it. And, anyhow, we will first of all see who and what I am. As the owner of Desolada I should be a more suitable match than as a lieutenant of five years' seniority with a few thousand pounds in various colonial securities."
Whereupon, since the animal had by now reached the knoll where he had halted with his guide for luncheon upon the occasion of his former journey along the same road, he dismounted and, drawing out of his haversack a packet of sandwiches prepared for him by Beatrix's cook, commenced, while eating them to reconsider all that had taken place during the past week.
What had taken place needs, indeed, to be set down here, since the passage of the last few days had brought to light more than one discrepancy in connection not only with Sebastian's first statements to Julian, but also with his possession of all that the late Mr. Ritherdon had left him the sole possessor of.
Mr. Spranger had brought home with him to dinner, on the night following that when Beatrix had been informed of the strange variance between the statement made by George Ritherdon in England, and the recognised position held by Sebastian in British Honduras, an elderly gentleman who filled a position in one of the principal schools established by the Government and in receipt of Government aid, in the city; while, before doing so, he had suggested to Julian that he should keep his ears open but say as little as possible. To his daughter he had also made the same suggestion, which was, as a matter of fact, unnecessary, since that young lady had now thrown herself heart and soul into the unravelling of a mystery which she said was more interesting than the plot of any novel she had read for many a long day. Also, it need scarcely be said to which side her opinions inclined, or in which quarter her sympathies were enlisted. Julian had wondered later, as he ate his lunch on the knoll, whether the affection which had sprung up in his heart for this girl was ever likely to be returned; but, had he been able to peer closely into that mystical receptacle of conglomerate feelings--a woman's heart--his wonderment might, perhaps, have ceased to exist.
With considerable skill, Mr. Spranger led the conversation at dinner to the old residents in the colony and, at last, by more or less devious ways, to the various personages who at one time or another had been inhabitants of Desolada. Then, when he and his guest were, to use a hunting metaphor, in full cry over a fine open country, he casually remarked that, among others, Madame Carmaux had herself held a considerable place of trust in the establishment for a great many years.
"Yes, yes," said the old gentleman, who was himself a French-American from Florida, "yes, a long time. Miriam Carmaux! Ha! Miriam Carmaux--Miriam Gardelle as she was when she arrived here from New Orleans and sought a place as governess. A beautiful girl then; oh! my faith, she was beautiful."
"Did she get a place as governess?" Mr. Spranger asked, filling Monsieur Lemaire's glass.
"Well, you see, she did and she did not. She got lessons in families, but no posts, no. No posts. Then, of course, she married poor Carmaux. Oh! these snakes--ah! mon Dieu, that coral-snake, and the tommy-goff--there are dreadful creatures for you! It was a tommy-goff that killed poor Jules Carmaux."
"Was it, though? And what was poor Carmaux?"
"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire, shaking his head most mournfully, "he was not a solid man, not steady. Oh! no, not at all steady. Carmaux loved pleasure too much: all kinds of pleasure. He loved cards, and--and--excuse me, Miss Spranger--but he loved this also," while as he spoke the old gentleman shook his head reprovingly at the claret jugs. "Also he loved sport--shooting the curassow, hunting the raccoon and the jaguar--ah! he did not love work. Oh, no! Work and he were never the best of friends. Then the tommy-goff killed him in the woods."
"Perhaps," remarked Beatrix with one of her bright smiles, "as a punishment for his not loving work."
"But," said Mr. Spranger, "he must have been a poor husband for that young lady, Mademoiselle Gardelle, as she was then. If he would not work, how did he support a wife?"
"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire with a very emphatic shake of his head now, so that Beatrix wondered he did not get quite warm over the exertion, "Ah! they did say that he thought she might earn the money to support him." And still he wagged his head.
"I wonder," exclaimed Julian, who had been listening to all this with considerable interest, "that she should have married him. He seems to have been a useless sort of man."
"Ah! Ah! There were reasons, very sad reasons. You see, she had been in love with another man. Ah! mon Dieu, these love affairs. Another man, Mr. Ritherdon, was supposed to have been the object of her affections."
"Dear! dear," said Mr. Spranger.
"Yes. Only--" and now Monsieur Lemaire made a sort of apologetic, old-court-life-in-France style of bow to Beatrix, as though beseeching pardon for the errors of his own sex--sinking his voice, too, to a kind of pleading one, as well as one reprobating the late Mr. Ritherdon's conduct--"only he jilted her."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed the girl, feeling it necessary to say something in return for the old Frenchman's politeness, while, as a matter of fact, she had heard the story from her father only a night or so before. "Good gracious!"
"Ah! yes. Ah! yes," Lemaire continued. "It was so indeed. Indeed it was. Then, they do say----" And now he sank his voice so much that he might have been reciting the history of some most awful and soul-stirring Greek tragedy, "they do say that in her rage and despair she flung herself away on Carmaux. But the tommy-goff killed him after he trod on it in the woods--and, so, she was free." Then his voice rose crescendo, as though the mention of the tragedy being concluded, a lighter tone was permissible.
"Take some more claret," said Mr. Spranger; "help yourself." While as the old gentleman did so, he continued--
"But how in such circumstances did she become a resident in Mr. Ritherdon's house? One would have thought that was the last place she would be found in next."
"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire, "then the woman's heart, the heart of all good women"--and he bowed solemnly now to Beatrix--"exerted its sway. She was bereft, even the little girl, the poor little daughter that had been born to her after Carmaux's death--when the tommy-goff killed him--was dead and buried----"
"So she had had a daughter?" said Mr. Spranger.
"Poor woman, yes. But what--what was I saying. The good woman's heart prompted her, and, smothering her own griefs, forgetting her own wrongs, knowing the stupendous misery which had fallen on the man who had jilted her through the loss of his wife, she went to him and offered to look after the poor little motherless Sebastian; to be a guide and nurse to it. Ah! a noble woman was Miriam Carmaux, a woman who buried her own griefs in assuaging those of others."
"She went to Desolada," Julian said, "after Mrs. Ritherdon's death? She did that? After Mrs. Ritherdon's death?"
"Si. After her death. Soon. Very soon. As soon as her own sorrows, her own loss, were more or less softened."
That night, when Monsieur Lemaire had been driven back into the city in Mr. Spranger's buggy, the latter gentleman, his daughter and Julian, sat out on the lawn, inhaling the cool breeze which comes up from the sea at sunset as well as watching the fireflies dancing. All were quite silent now, for all were occupied with their own thoughts: Julian in reflecting on what Monsieur Lemaire had said; Beatrix in wondering whether George Ritherdon's dying disclosures could possibly have been true; Mr. Spranger in feeling positive that they were false. Everything, he told himself, or almost everything, pointed to such being the case. The registration of Sebastian's birth by the late Mr. Ritherdon; the acknowledgment of the young man during all the dead man's remaining years as his heir: the knowledge which countless people possessed in the colony of Sebastian's whole life having been passed at Desolada! And against this, what set-off was there?
Only the falsehood--for such it must have been--told by Sebastian to the effect that Miriam Carmaux was his mother's relative, which, since she was a French creole, was impossible. Nothing much more than that; nothing tangible.
As for the slip made by him to Julian, the words, "My mother ca--I mean my mother always wanted to go there and see it," (New Orleans being the place referred to) well, there was nothing in that. It was a slip any one might easily have made. And no living soul in British Honduras had ever heard a whisper of any stolen child. Surely that was enough to settle all doubt.
Then, breaking in upon the silence around, he and his daughter heard Julian saying: "If Monsieur Lemaire's facts are accurate, Sebastian made another misstatement to me. He said that Madame Carmaux had been at Desolada for many years, even before his mother died. That could not have been so."
"And," said Beatrix, emerging now from the silence which she had preserved so long, "it was perhaps with reference to that subject that he had uttered the words which you overheard, to the effect that you must know something, but that knowledge was not always proof."
"All the same," said Mr. Spranger now, "it is a blank wall, a wall against which you will push in vain, I fear. Honestly, I see no outlet."
"Nor I," answered Julian, "yet all the same I mean to try and find one. At present I am groping in the dark; perhaps the light will come some day."
"I cannot believe it," Mr. Spranger said, "much as I might like to do so. If--if Charles Ritherdon's child had been stolen from its father's house how could it be that, in so small a place as this, the thing would never have been heard of? And if it was stolen, if you were stolen, how could another, a substitute, take your place?"
"Heaven only knows," Julian replied. "It is to find out this that I am going back to Desolada," while as he spoke, he saw again on Beatrix's face the look of dissent to that proposed journey which, a day or two before, she had signalled to him through her eyes.
So--determinate, resolved to fathom the mystery, if mystery there were; refusing, too, to believe that George Ritherdon's story could have been one huge fabrication, one hideous falsehood from beginning to end, and that a fabrication, a falsehood, which must ere long be disproved, directly it was challenged--he did set out and was by now drawing near the end of his journey.
"Only," said Beatrix to him on the morning of his departure, "I do so wish you would let me persuade you not to go. I dread----"
"What?"
"Oh!" she said, raising her hands to her hair with a bewildered movement--a movement that perhaps expressed regret as to the destination for which he was about to depart. "I do not know. Yet--still--I fear. Sebastian Ritherdon is cruel;--fierce--if--if--he thought you were about to cross his path--if--he knows anything that you do not know, then I dread what the end may be. And, I shall think always of that half-caste girl--peering in--glaring into your room, with perhaps, if she is a creature, a tool of his, murder in her heart."
"Fear nothing, I beseech you," he said deeply moved at her sympathy. "I can be very firm--very resolute--when occasion needs. Fear nothing."
A boisterous welcome from Sebastian, a cordial grasp of the hand, accompanied by a smile from the dark eyes of Madame Carmaux (which latter would have appeared more sincere to Julian had the corners of the mouth been less drawn down and the eyelids closed a little less, while the eyes behind those lids glittering with a light that seemed to him unnatural), did not, to use a metaphor, throw any dust in his own eyes.
For long reflection on everything that had occurred since first George Ritherdon had made his statement in the Surrey home until now, when Julian stood once more in the house in which he believed himself to have been born, had only served to produce in his mind one conviction--the firm conviction that George Ritherdon was his uncle and had spoken the truth; that Sebastian was--in spite of all evidence seeming to point in a totally different direction--occupying a position which was not rightly his. A belief that, before long, he was resolved at all hazards to himself to justify and disprove once and for all.
The hilarious welcome on the part of Sebastian did not deceive him, therefore; the greeting of Madame Carmaux was, he felt, insincere. And feeling thus he knew that in the latter was one against whom he would have to be doubly on his guard.
And on his guard, against both the man and the woman, he commenced to be from the moment when he once more entered the precincts of Desolada.
That night at dinner, which was here called supper, but which only varied from the former meal in name, he observed a most palpable desire on the part of both his hosts to extract from him all that he had done while staying with the Sprangers--as well as an even stronger desire to discover into what society he might have been introduced, or what acquaintances he might happen to have made.
"I made one acquaintance," he replied to Madame Carmaux, who was by far the most pertinacious in her inquiries, "the hearing about whom may interest you considerably. A gentleman who knew you long ago."
"Indeed!" she said, "and who might that be?"
She asked the question lightly, almost indifferently, yet--unless the flicker of the lamp in the middle of the table was playing tricks with his vision--there came suddenly a look of nervousness, of apprehension, upon her face. A look controlled yet not altogether to be subdued.
"It was Monsieur Lemaire," he replied, "the professor of modern languages at the Victoria College. He said he knew you very well once, before your marriage."
"Yes," she replied, "he did," and now he saw that, whatever nervousness she might be experiencing, she was exerting a strong power of suppression of any visible outward sign of her feelings. "Monsieur Lemaire was very good to me. He enabled me to find employment as a teacher in various houses. What did he tell you besides?"
"He mentioned the sad ending to your marriage. Also the death of your little---- Excuse me," he broke off, "but you have upset your glass. Allow me," and from where he sat he bent forward, and with his napkin sopped up the spilt water which had been in that glass.
"It was very clumsy," she muttered. "My loose sleeves are always knocking things over. Thank you. But what was it you said he mentioned? The death of my----"
"Little daughter," Julian replied softly, feeling sorry--and indeed, annoyed with himself--at what he now considered a lack of delicacy and consideration. A lack of feeling, because he thought it very possible that, even after a long lapse of time, this poor widowed woman might still lament bitterly the death of her little child.
"Ah! yes," she said, though why now her face should brighten considerably he did not understand. "Ah! yes. Poor little thing, it did not live long, only a very little while. Poor little baby!"
Looking still under the lamp and feeling still a little disconcerted at the reflection that he had quite unintentionally recalled unhappy recollections to Madame Carmaux, he saw that Sebastian was also regarding her with a strange, almost bewildered look in his eyes. What that look meant, Julian was not sufficiently a judge of expression to fathom; yet, had he been compelled there and then to describe what feeling that glance most suggested to him, he would probably have termed it one of surprise.
Surprise, perhaps, that Madame Carmaux should have been so emotional as to exhibit such tenderness at the recollection being brought to her mind of her little infant daughter, dead twenty-five years ago and almost at the hour of its birth.
No more was said, however, on the subject and an adjournment was made directly the meal was over to the veranda, that place on which in British Honduras almost all people pass the hours of the evening; none staying indoors more than is absolutely necessary. And here their conversation became of the most ordinary kind for some time, its commonplace nature only being varied occasionally by divers questions put to Julian by both Sebastian and Madame Carmaux as to what George Ritherdon's existence had been since he quitted Honduras to return to England.
"It was a quiet enough one," replied Julian, carefully weighing every word he uttered and forcing himself to be on his guard over every sentence. "Quiet enough. He took to England some capital from this part of the world, as I have always understood, and he was enabled to make a sufficient living by the use of it to provide for us both. He was never rich, yet since his desires were not inordinate, we did well enough. At any rate, he was able to place me in the only calling I was particularly desirous of following, without depriving himself of anything."
"And he left money behind?" Madame Carmaux asked, while, even as she did so, Julian could not but observe that her manner was listless and absent, as well as to perceive that she only threw in a remark now and again with a view of appearing to be interested in the conversation.
"Yes," he replied, "he left money behind him. Not much; some few thousand pounds fairly well invested. Enough, anyhow, for a sailor who, at the worst, can live on his pay."
"All the same," Sebastian said, "a few thousand pounds is a mighty good thing to have handy. I wish I had a few."
"You!" exclaimed Julian, looking at him in surprise. "Why! I should have thought you had any amount. This is a big property, even for the colonies, and Mr. Ritherdon--your father--has left the reputation behind him in Belize of being one of the richest planters in the place."
"Ay," said Sebastian, "rich in produce, stores, cattle, and so forth, but no money. No ready money. Not sufficient to work a large place like this. Why, look here, Julian, as a matter of fact, you and I are each other's heirs, yet I expect I'd sooner come in for your few thousands than you would for Desolada. One can do a lot with a few thousands. I wish I had some."
"Didn't your father leave any ready money, then?" Julian asked.
"Oh, yes! He did. But it's all sunk in the place already."
Such a conversation as this would, in ordinary circumstances, have been one of no importance and certainly not worth recording, had it not--short as it was--furnished Julian with some further food for reflections. And among other shapes which those reflections took, one was that he did not believe that all the money which Mr. Ritherdon was stated to have died possessed of had been sunk in the estate. He, the late Mr. Ritherdon, had been able to put by money out of the products of that estate--it scarcely stood to reason, therefore, that his successor would have instantly invested all that money in it. Wherefore Julian at once came to the conclusion that if it was really gone--vanished--it had done so in Sebastian's gambling transactions.
Then, as to their being each other's heirs! Well, that view had never occurred to him--certainly it had never occurred to him that by any chance Sebastian could be his heir. Yet, if Sebastian was in truth Charles Ritherdon's son and he, Julian, was absolutely George Ritherdon's son, such was the case. And, if anything should happen to him while staying here at Desolada, where he had announced himself plainly as the son of George Ritherdon, he could scarcely doubt that Sebastian would put in a claim as that heir. If anything should happen to him!
Well! it might! One could never tell. It might! Especially as, when Sebastian had uttered those words, he had seen a flash from Madame Carmaux's eyes and had observed a light spring into them which told plainly enough that she had never regarded matters in that aspect before; that this new view of the state of things had startled her.
If anything should happen to him! Well, to prevent anything doing so he must be doubly careful of himself. That was all.
The evening--like most evenings spent in the tropics and away from the garish amusements and gaieties of tropical towns--was passed more or less monotonously, it being got through by scraps of conversation, by two or three cooling drinks being partaken of by Julian and Sebastian, and by Madame Carmaux in falling asleep in her chair. Though, Julian thought, her slumbers could neither have been very sound nor refreshing, seeing that, whenever he chanced to turn his eyes towards her, he observed how hers were open and fixed on him, though shut immediately that she perceived he had noticed that they were unclosed.
"Come," exclaimed Sebastian now, springing from out of his chair with as much alacrity as is ever testified in the tropics, while as he did so Madame Carmaux became wide-awake in the most perfect manner. "Come, this won't do. Early to bed you know--and all the rest of it. We practise that good old motto here."
"I thought you practised stopping up rather late when I was here last," Julian remarked quietly. "As I told you, I heard your voices and saw you sitting in the balcony long after I had turned in."
"But to-night we must be off to bed early," Sebastian replied. "I have to start for Belize to-morrow in good time, as I remarked to you at supper, and you are going to take a gun and try for some shooting in the Cockscomb mountains. Early to bed, my boy, early, and, also, an early breakfast."
After which Julian and Madame Carmaux made their adieux to each other for the night, while Sebastian, as he had done before, escorted his cousin up the vast stairs to his room. This room was, however, a different one from that occupied previously by Julian, it being on the other side of the house and looking towards those Cockscomb mountains which, gun in hand, he was to explore on the morrow.
"It is a better room," said Sebastian, "than the other, as you see; although not so large. And the sun will not bother you here in the morning, nor will our chatter on the balcony beneath or inside the room do so either. Good night, sleep well. To-morrow, breakfast at six."
"Good-night," replied Julian as he entered the room, and, after Sebastian was out of earshot (as he calculated), turned the key in the lock. Then, as he sat himself down in his chair, after again producing his revolver and placing it by his side, he thought to himself:
"Yes! he spoke truly. Their conversation below will not disturb me, nor will there be any chance of my overhearing it. All right, Sebastian, you understand the old proverb about one for me and two for yourself. But you have for gotten a little fact, namely, that a sailor can move about almost as lightly as a cat when he chooses, and, if I think you and your respected housekeeper have anything to say that it will be worth my while to hear--why, I shall be a cat for the time being."
The truth was, as the reader is by now very well aware, that Julian no more believed in either Sebastian's lawful possession of Desolada or in his being the son of Charles Ritherdon, than he believed that George Ritherdon had concocted the whole of that story which he narrated ere his death. "For," said the young man to himself, "if it were true, his manner and her manner--that of the superb Madame Carmaux--would not be what they are. 'Think it out,' our old naval instructor in the Brit, used to say, 'analyze, compare, exercise the few brains Heaven has mercifully given you.' Well, I will--or, rather, I have."
And he had done so. He had thought it all over and over again--Sebastian's manner, Madame Carmaux's manner, Sebastian's slight inaccuracies of statement, Madame Carmaux's pretence of being asleep when she was awake, and her strange side-glances at him when she thought he was not observing her.
"I played Hamlet once at an amateur show in the Leviathan," he mused. "It was an awful performance, and, if it had been for more than one act, I should undoubtedly have been hissed out of the ship. All the same it taught me something. What was it the poor chap said? 'I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds.' Well, I'll take my uncle's word--for uncle he was and he was telling the truth--for a thousand pounds, too. Only, how to prove it? That is the question--which, by-the-bye, Hamlet also remarked."
That was indeed the question. How to prove it!
"That fellow is no more Charles Ritherdon's son than I'm a soldier," he went on, "and I am the son. That I'm sure of! Everything, every fresh look on their faces, every word they say, convinces me only the more certainly. Even this shifting of the room I am to occupy: why, Lord bless me! does he think I'm a fool? Yet, all the same, I don't see how it is to be proved. Confound them! Some one played a trick on Charles Ritherdon after George had stolen me--for steal me he did--some trick or other. And she, this Madame Carmaux was in it. Only why--why--why?"
He clenched his hands in front of his forehead, as he recalled now Mr. Spranger's words: "It is a blank wall against which you will push in vain." Almost, indeed, he began to fear that such was the case; that never would he throw down that wall which rose an adamantine object between him and his belief. Yet, even as he did so, he recollected that he was an Englishman and a sailor; that, consequently, he must be resolved not to be beaten. Only, how was it to be accomplished; how was the defeat to be avoided?
As he arrived at this determination he heard, outside on the veranda, a sound which he had heard more than once on his first visit, and when he slept on the other side of the mansion. A sound, light, stealthy--such a one as if some soft-footed creature, a cat, perhaps, was creeping gently in the night along the balcony. Creeping nearer to his window in front of which, as had been the case before, the Venetian blind was lowered.
Then he resolved that, this time, his strange visitant should know that he had discovered the spying to which he was again to be subjected.
In a moment he feigned sleep as he sat by the table on which stood the lamp--casting out a considerable volume of light--while, as he did so, he let his outstretched hands and fingers cover the revolver.
And still the weird, soft scraping of those catlike feet came nearer; he knew that his ghost-like visitor was close to the open window. He heard also, though it was the faintest click in the world, the slat or lath turning the least little bit, he knew that now those eyes that had gleamed into the other and darkened room were gleaming in at him in this one.
Then, suddenly, he opened his own eyes as wide as he could, while with his outstretched hand he now raised the revolver and pointed it at the little dusky figure that he could see was holding the slat back, while he said in a voice, low but perfectly clear in the silence of the night:
"Don't move. Stop where you are--there--outside that blind till I come to you. If you do move I will scatter your brains on the floor of the veranda!"
And as he rose and went towards the persianas he could see that his instructions were--through fear--obeyed. The eyes, now white, horrible, almost chalky in their glare of fright, instead of being dusky as he had once seen them, stared with a hideous expression of terror into the room. Also, the brown finger which was crooked over the blind-slat trembled.
He pulled the persianas up with his left hand, still keeping his right hand extended with the revolver in it (of course only with the intention of frightening the girl into making no attempt to fly); then, when he had fastened the pulley he took her unceremoniously by the upper part of the arm and led her into the room.
"Now, Mademoiselle Zara, as I understand your name to be, kindly give me an explanation of why, whenever I am in my room in this house, you honour me with these attentions. My manly beauty can be observed at any time in the daylight much better than at night, and----"
"Don't tell him," the girl whispered, and he felt as he still held her arm that she was trembling, while, also, he saw that she was deathly pale, her usual coffee-and-milk complexion being more of the latter than the former now. "Oh, don't tell him!"
"Don't tell whom?" he asked astonished. Astonished at first, since he had deemed her an emissary of his host, sent to pry in on him for some reason best known to both of them. Then, he reflected, this was only some ruse hatched in her scheming, half-Indian brain, whereby to escape from his clutches; upon which he said:
"Now, look here. No lies. What do you come peeping and prying in on me for in the middle of the night. Perhaps you're not aware that I saw you do so the last time I was here."
"I came to see," she said inconsequently, "if you were comfortable; I am a servant----"
But now Julian laughed so loudly at this ridiculous statement that the girl in hasty terror--and if it was assumed, she must be a good actress, he thought--put up her hand as though she intended to clap it over his mouth.
"Oh!" she whispered, "don't! Don't! He will hear you--or she will----"
"Well, what if they do! I suppose they know you are here just as much as I do. Come," he continued, "come, don't look so frightened, I'm not going to shoot you or harm you in any way. Though, mind you, my dark beauty, you might have got shot if you had timed your visit at a later hour and startled me out of a heavy slumber, or if I had seen those eyes looking in on me in the dead of night However, out with the explanation. Quick."
For a moment the girl paused as though thinking deeply, then she looked up at him with all the deep tropical glow once more in her sombre eyes, and said:
"I won't tell you. No. But----"
"But what?"
"I--will you believe what I say?"
"Perhaps. That depends. I might, if it sounded likely."
"Listen, then. I don't come here to do you any harm. My visits won't hurt you. Only--only--this is a dangerous house in more ways than one. It is a very old one--strange things happen sometimes in it. How," she said, and now her voice which had been sunk to a whisper became even lower, "how would you like to die in it?"
Perhaps the slow mysterious tones of that voice--the something weird and wizard in the elf-like appearance of this dusky girl who was, in truth, beautiful with that beauty often found in the half-caste Indian--was what caused Julian to feel a sort of creepiness to come over him in spite of the warm, bath-like temperature of the night.
"Neither in this house nor elsewhere, just at present," he remarked, steadying his nerves. "But," he continued, "I don't suppose there is much likelihood of that. Who is going to cause me to die?"
For answer the girl cast those marvellous orbs of hers all around the room, taking, meanwhile, as she did so, the mosquito curtains in her hands and shaking them with a swish away from the floor on which they drooped in festoons; she looking also behind the bedposts and in other places.
"No one--to-night," she said, "but--but--if I may not come here again, if you will not let me, then do this always. And--perhaps--some night you will know."
After which she moved off towards the window, her lithe, graceful figure seeming to glide without the assistance of any movement from her feet towards the open space; and made as though she meant to retire. Yet, as she stood within the framework of that window, she turned and looked back at him, her finger slightly raised as though impressing silence.
Then she stepped outside on to the boards of the veranda and peered over the front of it down towards the garden from which, now, there rose the countless perfumes exhaled by the Caribbean wealth of flowers. Also, she crept along to either side of the window, glancing to right and left of her until, at that moment, borne on the soft night breeze, there came from the front of the house, a harsh, strident, and contemptuous laugh--the laugh of Sebastian Ritherdon. When, seemingly reassured by this, she returned again towards the open window and said:
"You go to-morrow to the Cockscomb mountains shooting. Yet, when there, be careful. Danger is there, too. This land is full of snakes, the coral snake--which kills instantly, even like the fer de lance of the islands, the rattlesnake, the tamagusa, or, as you English say, the 'tommy-goff.' One killed him--her husband," and she pointed down to where Madame Carmaux might be supposed to be sitting at this moment, while as she did so he saw in her eyes a look so startling--since they blazed with fire--that he stared amazed. Was she, this half-savage girl, gloating over the horrid death of a man which must have taken place ere she was born? Or--or--what?
"In all the land," she went on, "there are snakes. Those I tell you of--and--others. You understand? And others."
"I almost understand," Julian muttered hoarsely--though he knew not why. "And others. Is that--? ah! yes--I do understand. Yet tell me further, tell----"
But she was gone; the window frame was empty of the dark shadowy figure it had enshrouded. Gone, as he saw when he stepped out on to the balcony and observed a sombre form stealing along betwixt the bright gleams of the low-lying stars and himself.
"Why does she warn me thus," he muttered to himself as now he began to undress slowly, "why? She is that man's servant--almost, as servants go here, his slave. Why warn me--she whom I deemed his creature--she who does his dirty work as croupier at a gambling hell? And she gloated over Carmaux's death in days of long ago--why that also? Does she hate this woman who governs here as mistress of the house?"
With some degree of horror on him now, with some sort of mystic terror creeping over him at unknown and spectrelike dangers that might be surrounding his existence, he turned down the light serape stretched over the bed for coverlet, and threw back the upper sheet Then he started away with a hoarse exclamation at what he saw.
For, lying coiled up in the middle of the bed, yet with a hideous flat head raised and vibrating, while from out that head gleamed a pair of threatening and scintillating emerald eyes, was a small, red coral-coloured snake--a snake that next unwound itself slowly with horribly lithe and sinuous movements which caused Julian to turn cold, warm as the night was.
"So," he whispered to himself, as now he seized a rifle that he had brought out from England with him, and, after beating the reptile on to the floor, used the stock as a bat and sent the thing flying out of the window; "this is what she was looking for, what she expected to find. But where are the others? The other snakes she hinted at? I think I can guess."
It is forty miles inland to where the Cockscomb mountains rear their appropriately named crests, but not half that distance to where obliquely from north to south there run spurs and ridges which, though they do not rise to the four thousand feet that is attained by the highest peak or summit of the range, are still lofty mountains. Here, amidst these spurs and ridges, which dominate and break up what is otherwise a country, or lowland, almost as flat as Holland (and which until a few years ago was marked on the maps as "unexplored country"), Nature presents a different aspect from elsewhere in the colony. The country becomes wild and rugged; the copses of mangroves are superseded by woods and forests of prickly bamboos and umbrageous figs; vast clumps of palms of all denominations cluster together, forming in their turn other little woods, while rivers, whose sources are drawn from the great lagoons inland, roll swiftly towards the sea.
Here, upon the bank of one of those lagoons, Julian sat next day beneath the shadow of a clump of locust-trees, in which were intermingled other trees of salm-wood, braziletto, and turtle-bone, as well as many others almost unknown of and unheard of by Europeans, with at his feet a fowling-piece, while held across his knees was a safety repeating rifle. This was the rifle with which he had overnight beaten out on to the veranda (where this morning he had left it dead and crushed) the coral snake, and which he had provided himself with ere he left England in case opportunities for sport should arise. The gun, an old-fashioned thing lent him by Sebastian, he had not used against any of the feathered inhabitants of the woods, although many opportunities had arisen of shooting partridges, wild pigeons, whistling ducks, quails, and others. Had not used it because, remembering one or two other incidents, such as that of the horse and that of the coral-snake (which might have crept into his bed for extra warmth, as such reptiles will do even in the hottest climates, but on the other hand might have reached that spot by different means), and because since also he was now full of undefined suspicion, he thought it very likely that if used it would burst in his hands.
He was not alone, as by his side, there sat now a man whose features, as well as his spare, supple frame, bespoke him one of that tribe of half-breeds, namely, Spanish and Carib Indian, which furnishes so large a proportion of the labourers to the whole of Central America. He was an elderly man, this--a man nearer sixty than fifty, with snow-white hair; yet any one who should have regarded him from behind, or watched his easy strides from a distance, or his method of mounting an incline, might well have been excused for considering him to be about thirty-five.
"What did Mr. Ritherdon strike you for this morning?" Julian asked now, while, as he spoke he raised his rifle off his knee, and, with it ready to be brought to the shoulder, sat watching a number of ripples which appeared a hundred and fifty yards away in the lagoon.
"Because he is a cruel man," his companion, who was at the present time his guide, replied; "because, too, everything makes him angry now--even so small a thing as my having buckled his saddle-girth too loose. A cruel man and getting worse. Always angry now."
"Why?" asked Julian, raising the rifle and aiming it at this moment towards a conical grey-looking object that appeared above the ripples on the lagoon--an object that was, in absolute fact, the snout of an alligator.
"Because--don't fire yet, senor; he's coming nearer--because, oh! because things go very bad with him, they say. He lose much money and--and--pretty Missy Sprangy don't love him."
"Does he love her?"
"They say. Say, too, Massa Sprangy much money. Seabastiano wants money as well as pretty missy. Never get it, though. Perhaps, too, he not live get much more."
"What do you mean?" asked Julian, lowering the rifle as the huge reptile in the lagoon now drew its head under water; while he looked also at the man with stern, inquiring eyes. "What do you mean?" Though inwardly he said to himself: "This is a new phase in these mysterious surroundings. My life doesn't seem just now one that the insurance companies would be very glad to get hold of, while also my beloved cousin's doesn't appear to be a very good one. Lively place, this!"
"He very much hated," the half-breed answered. "Very cruel. Some day tommy-goffy give him a nice bite, or half-breed gentleman put a knife in his liver."
"The snakes don't hate him, do they? He can't be cruel to them."
The other gave a laugh at this; it was indeed a laugh which was something between the bleating of a sheep and the (so-called) terrible war-whoop of a North-American Indian; then he replied: "Easy enough make tommy-goffy hate him. Take tommy into room where a man sleeps, wrapped up in a serape with his head out, then put him mouth to man's arm. Tommy do the rest. Gentleman want no breakfast."
"This is a nice country!" Julian thought. "I'm blessed if some of these chaps couldn't give the natives in India, or the dear old Chinese, a tip or two."
While as he so reflected, he also thought: "Easy enough, too, to put tommy-goff into a man's bed. Then that man wouldn't want any breakfast either. It's rather a good job that I found myself with an appetite this morning."
"Here he comes," the man, whose name was Paz, exclaimed, now suddenly referring to the alligator. "Hit him in the eye if you can, señor, or mouth. If he gets on shore we shall have to run." While, as he spoke, from out of the lagoon there rose the head of an enormous alligator, which seemed to have touched bottom since it was waddling ashore.
"I shall never hit him in the eye," Julian said, taking deliberate aim, however. "Gather up the traps, Paz, and get further away. I'll have a shot at him; and, then if he comes on land, I'll have another. Here goes."
But now, even as he prepared to fire, the beast gave him a chance, since, either from wishing to draw breath or from excitement at seeing a probable meal, it suddenly began opening and shutting its vast jaws as it came along, so that the hideous rows of yellow teeth, and the whity-pink roof of its mouth were plainly visible. And, at that moment, from the repeating rifle rang out a report, while, after the smoke had drifted away, it was easy to perceive that the monster had received a deadly wound. It was now spread-eagled out upon the rim of the lagoon's bank, its short, squat legs endeavouring to grip the sand, its eyes rolled up in its head and a stream of blood pouring from its open mouth.
"Though," said Julian, as now he approached close to the creature, and, taking steady aim, delivered another bullet into its eye which instantly gave it the coup de grace; "though I don't know why I should have killed the poor beast either. It couldn't have done me any harm." Then he thought, "I might as well have reserved the fire for something that threatened danger to me."
He had had enough sport for the day by now, having done that which every visitor to Central America is told he ought to do, namely, kill a jaguar and an alligator; wherefore, bidding Paz go on with the skinning of the former (which the man had already began earlier) since the spotted coat of this creature is worth preserving, he took a last look at the dead reptile lying half in and half out of the lagoon, and then made preparations for their return to Desolada. These preparations consisted of readjusting the saddle on the mustang, which he was still the temporary proprietor of, and in also saddling Paz's mule for him.
Then, when the operation of skinning was finished, they took their way back towards the coast.
Among other questions which Julian had asked this man during the morning with reference to the owner of the above abode, was one as to how long he had been present on the estate--a question which had remained unanswered owing to the killing of the jaguar having occurred ere it could be answered. But now--now that they were riding easily forward, the skin of the creature hanging like a horse-cloth over the tail of the half-breed's mule, he returned to it.
"How long did you say you had known Mr. Ritherdon and his household?" he asked, referring of course to the late owner of the property to the borders of which they were now approaching.
"Didn't say anything," Paz replied, "because then we killed him," and he touched the fast drying skin of the dead animal. "But I know Desolada for over thirty years. Before Massa Ritherdon come."
"Then you've known the present Mr. Ritherdon all his life--since the day he was born."
"Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. Since that day. Always remember that. Same day my poor old mother die. She Carib from Tortola."
"Did you know his--mother--too; the lady who had been Miss Leigh?"
"Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. I know her. I remember she beautiful young girl--English missy. With the blue eye and the skin like the peach and the hair like the wheat. Oh, yes. I remember her. Very beautiful."
"Blue eyes, skin like a peach, hair like the wheat," thought Julian to himself; "his supposed mother, my own mother as before Heaven I believe. Yet he, Sebastian, speaks of this woman Carmaux, this woman of French origin hailing from New Orleans, as a near relative of hers. Bah! it is impossible."
"Also I remember," Paz went on, "when--when--his brother--the man who Sebastian tell us the other day was your father--love her too. And she love him. Only old man Leigh he say that no good. Old man ruin very much. They say constabulary and old man English Chief Justice very likely to arrest him. Then Missy Leigh save her father and marry Massa Ritherdon when Massa George's back turned."
Julian nodded as he heard all this--nodded as though confirming Paz's story. Though, in fact, it was Paz's story which confirmed that which the dead man in England had told him.
"You knew her and her father, Mr. Leigh?" he asked now.
"Know him! Know him! I worked for him at the Essex hacienda----"
"Essex hacienda!"
"Yes, he gave it that name because he love it. 'All my family, Paz,' he say to me one day when I was painting the name on waggon--'all my family come from Essex many, many long years. All born there--grandmother, father, mother, myself, and daughter Isobel, Paz. All; every one. Oh! Paz,' he say to me, 'England always been good enough for us till my turn come. Then I very bad young man--very dis--dis--dis--something he say. Now, he say, I have to be the first exile of family, I and poor little Isobel. No Leigh ever have to live abroad before!"
"Did he say all that, Paz? Is this the truth?"
"Truff, sir! Sir, my father Spanish gentleman, my mother Carib lady. Very fine lady."
"All right. I beg your pardon. Never mind, I did not mean that. And so you remember when this Mr. Ritherdon was born, eh? Did the old gentleman seem pleased?"
"He very pleased about the son--very sad about the poor wife. He weep much, oh! many weeps. But he give us all money to drink Sebastian's health, and he tell us that as his poor wife dead. Mam Carmaux come keep the house and bring up little boy."
"Did he?" said Julian, and then lapsed into silence as they rode along. Yet, to himself he said continually: "What is this mystery? What is the root of it all? What is at the bottom? Somehow I feel as certain as that I am alive that I was this son--yet--yet--he was pleased--gave money--oh! shall I ever unravel it all?"