Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:
https://archive.org/details/abitterheritage00blougoog
(New York Public Library)
2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]
Appletons'
Town and Country
Library
No. 272
A BITTER HERITAGE
By J. BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.
***********
Each, 12mo, cloth, $1.00; paper, 50 cents.
***********
A Bitter Heritage.
"Mr. Bloundelle-Burton is one of the most successful of the purveyors
of historical romance who have started up in the wake of Stanley
Weyman and Conan Doyle. He has a keen eye for the picturesque, a happy
instinct for a dramatic (or more generally a melodramatic) situation,
and he is apt and careful in his historic paraphernalia. He usually
succeeds, therefore, in producing an effective story."--_Charleston
News and Courier_.
Fortune's my Foe.
"The story moves briskly, and there is plenty of dramatic
action."--_Philadelphia Telegraph_.
The Clash of Arms.
"Well written, and the interest is sustained from the beginning to the
end of the tale."--_Brooklyn Eagle_.
"Vividness of detail and rare descriptive power give the story life
and excitement."--_Boston Herald_.
Denounced.
"A story of the critical times of the vagrant and ambitious Charles I,
it is so replete with incident and realistic happenings that one seems
translated to the very scenes and days of that troublous era in
English history."--_Boston Courier_.
The Scourge of God.
"The story is one of the best in style, construction, information, and
graphic power, that have been written in recent years."--_Dial,
Chicago_.
In the Day of Adversity.
"Mr. Burton's creative skill is of the kind which must fascinate those
who revel in the narratives of Stevenson, Rider Haggard, and Stanley
Weyman. Even the author of 'A Gentleman of France' has not surpassed
the writer of 'In the Day of Adversity' in the moving interest of his
tale."--_St. James's Gazette_.
***************
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
A BITTER HERITAGE
_A MODERN STORY OF LOVE AND ADVENTURE_
BY
JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON
AUTHOR OF THE SEAFARERS, FORTUNE'S MY FOE,
THE CLASH OF ARMS, IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY,
DENOUNCED, THE SCOURGE OF GOD, ETC.
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
Copyright, 1899,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.--"You will forgive?"
II.--The story of a crime.
III.--"The land of the golden sun."
IV.--An encounter.
V.--"A half-breed--named Zara."
VI.--"Knowledge is not always proof."
VII.--Madame Carmaux takes a nap.
VIII.--A midnight visitor.
IX.--Beatrix.
X.--Mr. Spranger obtains information.
XI.--A visit of condolence.
XII.--The reminiscences of a French gentleman.
XIII.--A change of apartments.
XIV.--"This land is full of snakes."
XV.--Recollections of Sebastian's birth.
XVI.--A drop of blood.
XVII.--"She hates him because she loves him."
XVIII.--Sebastian is disturbed.
XIX.--A pleasant meeting.
XX.--Love's blossom.
XXI.--Julian feels strange.
XXII.--In the dark.
XXIII.--Warned.
XXIV.--Julian's eyes are opened.
XXV.--A dénouement.
XXVI.--"You have killed him!"
XXVII.--"I will save you."
XXVIII.--"I live--to kill him."
XXIX.--The watching figure.
XXX.--Beyond passion's bound.
XXXI.--"The man I love."
XXXII.--The Shark's Tooth Reef.
XXXIII.--Madame Carmaux tells all.
XXXIV.--Contentment.
A BITTER HERITAGE.
CHAPTER I.
"YOU WILL FORGIVE?"
A young man, good-looking, with well-cut features, and possessing a
pair of clear blue-grey eyes, sat in a first-class smoking compartment
of a train standing in Waterloo Station--a train that, because there
was one of those weekly race-meetings going on farther down the line,
which take place all through the year, gave no sign of ever setting
forth upon its journey. Perhaps it was natural that it should not do
so, since, as the dwellers on the southern banks of the Thames are
well aware, the special trains for the frequenters of race-courses
take precedence of all other travellers; yet, notwithstanding that
such is the case, this young man seemed a good deal annoyed at the
delay. One knows how such annoyance is testified by those subjected to
that which causes it; how the watch is frequently drawn forth and
consulted, the station clock glanced at both angrily and often, the
officials interrogated, the cigarette flung impatiently out of the
window, and so forth; wherefore no further description of the symptoms
is needed.
All things, however, come to an end at last, and this young man's
impatience was finally appeased by the fact of the train in which he
sat moving forward heavily, after another ten minutes' delay; and also
by the fact that, after many delays and stoppages, it eventually
passed through Vauxhall and gradually, at a break-neck speed of about
ten miles an hour, forced its way on towards the country.
"Thank goodness!" exclaimed Julian Ritherdon, "thank goodness! At last
there is a chance that I may see the dear old governor before night
falls. Yet, what on earth is it that I am to be told when I do see
him--what on earth does his mysterious letter mean?" And, as he had
done half a dozen times since the waiter had brought the "mysterious
letter" to the room in the huge caravansary where he had slept
overnight, he put his hand in the breast pocket of his coat and,
drawing it forth, began another perusal of the document.
Yet his face clouded--as it had done each time he read the letter, as
it was bound to cloud on doing so!--at the first worst words it
contained; words which told the reader how soon--very soon now, unless
the writer was mistaken--he would no longer form one of the living
human units of existence.
"Poor old governor, poor old dad!" Lieutenant Ritherdon muttered as he
read those opening lines. "Poor old dad! The best father any man ever
had--the very best. And now to be doomed; now--and he scarcely fifty!
It is rough. By Jove, it is!"
Then again he read the letter, while by this time the train, by
marvellous exertions, was making its way swiftly through all the
beauty that the springtide had brought to the country lying beyond the
suburban belt. Yet, just now, he saw nothing of that beauty, and
failed indeed to appreciate the warmth of the May day, or to observe
the fresh young green of the leaves or the brighter green of the
growing corn--he saw and enjoyed nothing of all this. How should he do
so, when the letter from his father appeared like a knell of doom that
was being swiftly tolled with, for conclusion, hints--nay! not hints,
but statements--that some strange secrets which had long lain hidden
in the past must now be instantly revealed, or remain still
hidden--forever?
It was not a long letter; yet it told enough, was pregnant with
matter.
"If," the writer said, after the usual form of address, "your ship,
the Caractacus, does not get back with the rest of the Squadron ere
long, I am very much afraid we have seen the last of each other;
that--and Heaven alone knows how hard it is to have to write such
words!--we shall never meet again in this world. And this, Julian,
would make my death more terrible than I can bear to contemplate. My
boy, I pray nightly, hourly, that you may soon come home. I saw the
specialist again yesterday and he said----Well! no matter what he
said. Only, only--time is precious now; there is very little more of
it in this world for me."
Julian Ritherdon gazed out of the open window as he came to these
words, still seeing nothing that his eyes rested on, observing neither
swift flowering pink nor white may, nor budding chestnut, nor laburnum
bursting into bloom, nor hearing the larks singing high up above the
cornfields--thinking only again and again: "It is hard. Hard! Hard! To
die now--and he not fifty!"
"And I have so much to tell you," he read on, "so much to--let me say
it at once--confess. Oh! Julian, in my earlier days I committed a
monstrous iniquity--a sin that, if it were not for our love for each
other--thank God, there has always been that between us!--nothing can
deprive the past of that!--would make my ending even worse than it
must be. Now it must be told to you. It must. Already, because I begin
to fear that your ship may be detained, I have commenced to write down
the error, the crime of my life--yet--yet--I would sooner tell it to
you face to face, with you sitting before me. Because I do not think,
I cannot think that, when you recall how I have always loved you, done
my best for you, you will judge me hardly, nor----"
The perusal of this letter came, perforce, to an end now, for the
train, after running through a plantation of fir and pine trees, had
pulled up at a little wayside station; a little stopping-place built
to accommodate the various dwellers in the villa residences scattered
all around it, as well as upon the slope of the hill that rose a few
hundred yards off from it.
Here Julian Ritherdon was among home surroundings, since, even before
the days when he had gone as a cadet into the Britannia and long
before he had become a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, his father had
owned one of those villas. Now, therefore, the station-master and the
one porter (who slept peacefully through the greater part of the day,
since but few trains stopped here) came forward to greet him and to
answer his first question as to how his father was.
Nor, happily, were their answers calculated to add anything further to
his anxiety, since the station-master had not "heerd" that Mr.
Ritherdon was any "wus" than usual, and the porter had "seed" him in
his garden yesterday. Only, the latter added gruesomely, "he was that
white that he looked like--well, he dursn't say what he looked like."
Mr. Ritherdon kept no vehicle or trap of any sort, and no cab was ever
to be seen at this station unless ordered by an intending arrival or
departing traveller on the previous day, from the village a mile or so
off; wherefore Julian started at once to walk up to the house, bidding
the porter follow him with his portmanteau. And since the villa, which
stood on the little pine-wooded eminence, was no more than a quarter
of a mile away, it was not long ere he was at the garden gate and, a
moment later, at the front door. Yet, from the time he had left the
precincts of the station and had commenced the ascent of the hill, he
had seen the white face of his father at the open window and the white
hand frequently waved to him.
"Poor old governor," he thought to himself, "he has been watching for
the coming of the train long before it had passed Wimbleton, I'll be
sworn."
Then, in another moment, he was with his father and, their greeting
over, was observing the look upon his face, which told as plainly as
though written words had been stamped upon it of the doom that was
about to fall.
"What is it?" he said a little later, almost in an awestruck manner.
Awestruck because, when we stand in the presence of those whose
sentence we know to be pronounced beyond appeal there falls upon us a
solemnity almost as great as that which we experience when we gaze
upon the dead. "What is it, father?"
"The heart," Mr. Ritherdon answered. "Valvular disease. Sir Josias
Smith says. However, do not let us talk about it. There is so much
else to be discussed. Tell me of the cruise in the Squadron, where you
went to, what you saw----"
"But--your letter! Your hopes that I should soon be back. You have not
forgotten? The--the--something--you have to tell me.
"No," Mr. Ritherdon answered. "I have not forgotten. Heaven help me!
it has to be told. Yet--yet not now. Let us enjoy the first few hours
together pleasantly. Do not ask to hear it now."
And Julian, looking at him, saw those signs which, when another's
heart is no longer in its normal state, most of us have observed: the
lips whitening for a moment, the left hand raised as though about to
be pressed to the side, the dead white of the complexion.
"If," he said, "it pains you to tell me anything of the past,
why--why--tell it at all? Is it worth while? Your life can contain
little that must necessarily be revealed and--even though it should do
so--why reveal it?"
"I must," his father answered, "I must tell you. Oh!" he exclaimed,
"oh! if at the last it should turn you against me--make
you--despise--hate--"
"No! No! never think that," Julian replied quickly, "never think that.
What! Turn against you! A difference between you and me! It is
impossible."
As he spoke he was standing by his father's side, the latter being
seated in his armchair, and Julian's hand was on the elder man's
shoulder. Then, as he patted that shoulder--once, too, as he touched
softly the almost prematurely grey hair--he said, his voice deep and
low and full of emotion:
"Whatever you may tell me can make no difference in my love and
respect for you. How can you think so? Recall what we have been to
each other since I was a child. Always together till I went to
sea--not father and son, but something almost closer, comrades----"
"Ah, Julian!"
"Do you think I can ever forget that, or forget your sacrifices for
me; all that you have done to fit me for the one career I could have
been happy in? Why, if you told me that you--oh! I don't know what to
say! how to make you understand me!--but, if you told me you were a
murderer, a convict, a forger, I should still love you; love you as
you say you loved the mother I never knew----"
"Don't! Don't! For Heaven's sake don't speak like that--don't speak of
her! Your mother! I--I--have to speak to you of her later. But
now--now--I cannot bear it!"
For a moment Julian looked at his father, his eyes full of amazement;
around his heart a pang that seemed to grip at it. They had not often
spoken of his mother in the past, the subject always seeming one that
was too painful to Mr. Ritherdon to be discussed, and, beyond the
knowledge that she had died in giving birth to him, Julian knew
nothing further. Yet now, his father's agitation--such as he had never
seen before--his strange excitement, appalled, almost staggered him.
"Why?" he exclaimed, unable to refrain from dwelling upon her. "Why
not speak of her? Was she----"
"She was an angel. Ah," he continued, "I was right--this story of my
past must be told--of my crime. Remember that, Julian, remember that.
My crime! If you listen to me, if you will hear me, as you must--then
remember it is the story of a crime that you will learn. And," he
wailed almost, "there is no help for it. You must be told!"
"Tell it, then," Julian said, still speaking very gently, though even
as he did so it seemed as if he were the elder man, as if he were the
father and the other the son. "Tell it, let us have done with
vagueness. There has never been anything hidden between us till now.
Let there be nothing whatever henceforth."
"And you will not hate me? You will--forgive, whatever I may have to
tell?"
"What have I said?" Julian replied. And even as he did so, he again
smoothed his father's hair while he stood beside him.