A Bitter Heritage. John Bloundelle-Burton

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СКАЧАТЬ connection with Sebastian Ritherdon's possession of Desolada and all that Desolada represented in value-he did not hesitate now. As once he, with some of his bluejackets, had tracked slavers from the sea for miles inland and into the coast swamps and fever-haunted interior of the great Black Continent, so now he would track this man's devious and doubtful existence, as, remembering George Ritherdon's story, it seemed to him to be. If he had wronged Sebastian, if he had formed a false estimate of his possession of this place and of his right to the name he bore, no harm would be done. For then he would go away from Honduras for ever, leaving the man in peaceable possession of all that was rightly his. But, if his suspicions were not wrong-

      He let himself down to the floor from the chair on which he had been sitting in the dark for now nearly an hour, and, quietly, noiselessly, he progressed along that solid floor-one so well laid in the past that no board either creaked or made any noise-and thus he reached the balcony, there interposing nothing now between him and it but the lowered blind.

      Then when he had arrived there, he heard their voices plainly; heard every word that fell from their lips-the soft murmur of the woman's tones, the deeper, more guttural notes of the man.

      Only-he might as well have been a mile away from where they sat, he might as well have been stone deaf as able to thus easily overhear those words.

      For Sebastian and his companion were speaking in a tongue that was unknown to him; a tongue that, in spite of the Spanish surroundings and influences which still linger in all places forming parts of Central America, was not Spanish. Of this language he, like most sailors, knew something; therefore he was aware that it was not that, as well as he was aware that it was not French. Perhaps 'twas Maya, which he had been told in Belize was the native jargon, or Carib, which was spoken along the coast.

      And almost, as he recognised how he was baffled, could he have laughed bitterly at himself. "What a fool I must have been," he thought, "to suppose that if they had any confidences to make to each other, any secrets to talk over in which I was concerned they would discuss them in a language I should be likely to understand."

      But there are some words, especially those which express names, which cannot be translated into a foreign tongue. Among such, Ritherdon would be one. Julian, too, is another, with only the addition of the letter "o" at the end in Spanish (and perhaps also in Maya or Carib), and George, which, though spelt Jorge, has, in speaking, nearly the same pronunciation. And these names met his ear as did others: Inglaterra-the name of the woman Isobel Leigh, whom Julian believed to have been his mother, but whom Sebastian asserted to have been his; also the name of that fair American city lying to the north of them-New Orleans-it being referred to, of course, in the Spanish tongue.

      "So," he thought to himself, "it is of me they are talking. Of me-which would not, perhaps, be strange, since a guest so suddenly received into the house and having the name of Ritherdon might well furnish food for conversation. But, when coupled with George Ritherdon, with New Orleans, above all with the name of Isobel Leigh-"

      Even as that name was in his mind, he heard it again mentioned below by the woman-Madame Carmaux. Mentioned, too, in conjunction with and followed by a light, subdued laugh; a laugh in which his acuteness could hear an undercurrent of bitterness-perhaps of derision.

      "And she was this woman's relative," he thought, "her relative! Yet now she is jeered at, spoken scornfully of by-"

      In amazement he paused, even while his reflections arrived at this stage.

      In front of where his eyes were, low down to the floor of the balcony, something dark and sombre passed, then returned and stopped before him, blotting from his eyes all that lay in front of them-the tops of the palms, the woods beyond the garden, the dark sea beyond that. Like a pall it rested before his vision, obscuring, blurring everything. And, a moment later, he recognised that it was a woman's dress which thus impeded his view, while, as he did so, he heard some five feet above him a light click made by one of the slats.

      Then, with an upward glance of his eyes, that glance being aided by a noiseless turn of his head, he saw that a finger was holding back the lath, and knew-felt sure-that into the darkness of the room two other eyes were gazing.

      CHAPTER IX

      BEATRIX

      Thirty-six hours later Julian Ritherdon sat among very different surroundings from those of Desolada; certainly very different ones from those of his first night in the gloomy, mysterious house owned by that other man who bore his name.

      He was seated now in a wicker chair placed beneath the cool shadow cast by a vast clump of "shade-trees," as the royal palm, the thatch palm, and, indeed, almost every kind and species of that form of vegetation are denominated. These shade-trees grew in the pretty and luxuriant garden of Mr. Spranger's house on the southern outskirts of Belize, a garden in which, for some years now, Beatrix Spranger had passed the greater part of her days, and sometimes when the hot simoon was on, as it was now, and the temperature scarcely ever fell below 85°, a good deal of the early part of her nights.

      She, too, was seated in that garden now, talking to Julian, while between them there lay two or three books and London magazines (three or four months old), a copy of the Times of the same ancient date, and another of the Belize Advertiser fresh from the local press. Yet neither the news from London which had long since been published, nor that of the immediate neighbourhood, which was quite new but not particularly exciting, seemed to have been able to secure much of their attention. And this for a reason which was a simple one and easily to be understood. All their attention was at the present moment concentrated on each other.

      "You cannot think," Beatrix Spranger was saying now, "what a welcome event the arrival of a stranger is to us here, who regard ourselves more or less as exiles for the time being. Moreover," she continued, without any of that false shame which a young lady at home in England might have thought necessary to assume, even though she did not actually feel it, "it seems to me that you are a very interesting person, Lieutenant Ritherdon. You have dropped down into a place where your name happens to be extremely well known, yet in which no one ever imagined that there was any other Ritherdon in existence anywhere, except the late and the present owners of Desolada."

      "People, even exiles, have relatives sometimes in other parts of the world," Julian murmured rather languidly-the effect of the heat and the perfume of the flowers in the garden being upon him-"and you know-"

      "Oh! yes," the girl said, with an answering smile. "I do know all that. Only I happen to know something else, too. You see we-that is, father and I-are acquainted with your cousin, and we knew his father before him. And it is a rather singular thing that they have always given us to understand that, so far as they were aware, they hadn't a relation in the world."

      "They had, though, you see, all the same. Indeed, they had two until a short time ago; namely, when my father, Mr. George Ritherdon, was alive."

      "Mr. Ritherdon, Sebastian's father, hadn't seen him for many years, had he? He didn't often speak of him, and always gave people the idea that his brother was dead. I suppose they had not parted the best of friends?"

      "No," Julian answered quietly, "I don't think they had. As a matter of fact, my-George Ritherdon-was almost, indeed quite, as reticent about his brother Charles as Charles seems to have been about him." Then, suddenly changing the subject, he said: "Is Sebastian popular hereabouts. Is he liked?"

      "No," the girl replied, rather more frankly than Julian had expected, while, as she did so, she lifted a pair of beautiful blue eyes to his face. "No, I don't think he is, since you ask me."

      "Why not? You may tell me candidly, Miss Spranger, especially as you know that to-night I am going to have a rather serious interview with your father, and shall ask him for his advice and assistance on a matter СКАЧАТЬ