THE STORY OF A CRIME.
The disclosure was made, not among, perhaps, surroundings befitting
the story that was told; not with darkness outside and in the
house--with, in truth, no lurid environments whatever. Instead, the
elderly man and the young one, the father and son, sat facing each
other in the bright sunny room into which there streamed all the
warmth and brilliancy of the late springtide, and into which, now and
again, a humble-bee came droning or a butterfly fluttered. Also,
between them was a table white with napery, sparkling with glass and
silver, gay with fresh-cut flowers from the garden. It is amid such
surroundings that, nowadays, we often enough listen to stories brimful
with fate--stories baneful either to ourselves or others--hear of
trouble that has fallen like a blight upon those we love, or learn
that something has happened which is to change forever the whole
current of our own lives.
It was thus that Julian Ritherdon listened to the narrative his father
now commenced to unfold; thus amid such environment, and with a
freshly-lit cigarette between his lips.
"You do not object to this?" he asked, pointing to the latter; "it
will not disturb you?"
"I object to nothing that you do," Mr. Ritherdon replied. "In my day,
I have, as you know, been a considerable smoker myself."
"Yes, in the days, your days, that I know of. But--forgive me for
asking--only--is it to tell me of your earlier years, those with which
I am not acquainted, that you summoned me here and bade me lose no
time in coming to you?--those earlier days of which you have spoken so
little in the past?"
"For that," replied the other slowly, "and other reasons. To hear
things that will startle and disconcert you. Yet--yet--they have their
bright side. You are the heir to a great----"
"My dear father!"
"Your 'dear father'! Ay! Your 'dear father'!" Once more, nay, twice
more, he repeated those words--while all the time the younger man was
looking at him intently. "Your 'dear father.'" Then, suddenly, he
exclaimed: "Come, let us make a beginning. Are you prepared to hear a
strange story?"
"I am prepared to hear anything you may have to tell me."
"So be it. Pay attention. You have but this moment called me your
'dear father.' Well, I am not your father! Though I should have been
had all happened as I once--so long ago--so--so long ago--hoped would
be the case."
"_Not--my--father!_" and the younger man stared with a startled look
at the other. "Not--my--father. You, who have loved me, fostered me,
anticipated every thought, every wish of mine since the first moment I
can recollect--not my father! Oh!" and even as he spoke he laid his
hand, brown but shapely, on the white, sickly looking one of the
other. "Don't say that! Don't say that!"
"I must say it."
"My God! who, then, are you? What are you to me?
And--and--who--am--_I_? It cannot be that we are of strange blood."
And the faltering words of the younger man, the blanched look that had
come upon his face beneath his bronze--also the slight tremor of the
cigarette between his fingers would have told Mr. Ritherdon, even
though he had not already known well enough that such was the case,
how deep a shock his words had produced.
"No," he answered slowly, and on his face, too, there was, if
possible, a denser, more deadly white than had been there an hour
ago--while his lips had become even a deeper leaden hue than before.
"No. Heaven at least be praised for that! I am your father's brother,
therefore, your uncle."
"Thank Heaven we are so near of kin," and again the hand of the young
man pressed that of the elder one. "Now," he continued, though his
voice was solemn--hoarse as he spoke, "go on. Tell me all. Blow as
this is--yet--tell me all."
"First," replied the other, "first let me show you something. It came
to me by accident, otherwise perhaps I should not have summoned you so
hurriedly to this meeting; should have restrained my impatience to see
you. Yet--yet--in my state of health, it is best to tell you by word
of mouth--better than to let you find out when--I--am--dead, through
the account I have written and should have left behind me. But, to
begin with, read this," and he took from his breast pocket a neatly
bound notebook, and, opening it, removed from between the pages a
piece of paper--a cutting from a newspaper.
Still agitated--as he would be for hours, for days hence!--at all that
he had already listened to, still sorrowful at hearing that the man
whom he loved so much, who had been so devoted to him from his
infancy, was not his father, Julian Ritherdon took the scrap and
read it. Read it hastily, while in his ear he heard the other man
saying--murmuring: "It is from a paper I buy sometimes in London at a
foreign newspaper shop, because in it there is often news of a--of
Honduras, where, you know, some of my earlier life was passed."
Nodding his head gravely to signify that he heard and understood,
Julian devoured the cutting, which was from the well-known New Orleans
paper, the Picayune. It was short enough to be devoured at a glance.
It ran:
Our correspondent at Belize informs us by the last mail, amongst other
pieces of intelligence from the colony, that Mr. Ritherdon (of
Desolada), one of the richest, if not the richest, exporters of
logwood and mahogany, is seriously ill and not expected to recover.
Mr. Ritherdon came to the colony nearly thirty years ago, and from
almost the first became extremely prosperous.
"Well!" exclaimed Julian, laying down the slip. "Well! It means, I
suppose--that----"
"He is your father? Yes. That is what it does mean. He is your father,
and the wealth of which that writer speaks is yours if he is now dead;
will be yours, if he is still alive--when he dies."
Because, when our emotion, when any sudden emotion, is too great for
us, we generally have recourse to silence, so now Julian said nothing;
he sitting there musing, astonished at what he had just heard. Then,
suddenly, knowing, reflecting that he must hear more, hear all, that
he must be made acquainted now with everything that had occurred in
the far-off past, he said, very gently: "Yes? Well, father--for it is
you whom I shall always regard in that light--tell me everything. You
said just now we had better make a beginning. Let us do so."
For a moment Mr. Ritherdon hesitated, it seeming as if he still
dreaded to make his avowal, to commence to unfold the strange
circumstances which had caused him to pass his life under the guise of
father to the young man who was, in truth, his nephew. Then, suddenly,
nerving himself, as it seemed to Julian, he began:
"My brother and I went to British Honduras, twenty-eight years ago,
three years before you were born; at a time when money was to be made
there by those who had capital. And _he_ had some--a few thousand
pounds, which he had inherited from an aunt who died between his birth
and mine. I had nothing. Therefore I went as his companion--his
assistant, if you like to call it so. Yet--for I must do him
justice--I was actually his partner. He shared everything with me
until I left him."
"Yes," the other said. "Yes. Until you left him! Yet, in such
circumstances, why----?"
"Leave him, you would say. Why? Can you not guess? Not understand?
What separates men from each other more than all else, what divides
brother from brother, what----"
"A woman's love, perhaps?" Julian said softly. "Was that it?"
"Yes. A woman's love," Mr. Ritherdon exclaimed, and now his voice was
louder than before, almost, indeed, harsh. "A woman's love. The love
of a woman who loved me in return. That was his fault--that for which,
Heaven forgive me!--I punished him, made him suffer. She was my
love--she loved me--that was certain, beyond all doubt!--and--she
married him."
"Go on," Julian said--and now his voice was low, though clear, "go
on."
"Her name was Isobel Leigh, and she was the daughter of an English
settler who had fallen on evil days, who had gone out from England
with her mother and with her--a baby. But now he had become a man who
was ruined if he could not pay certain obligations by a given time.
They said, in whispers, quietly, that he had used other people's names
to make those obligations valuable. And--and--I was away in New
Orleans on business. You can understand what happened!"
"Yes, I can understand. A cruel ruse was practised upon you."
"So cruel that, while I was away in the United States, thinking always
about her by day and night, I learnt that she had become his wife.
Then I swore that it should be ruse against ruse. That is the word! He
had made me suffer, he had broken, cursed my life. Well, henceforth, I
would break, curse him! This is how I did it."
Mr. Ritherdon paused a moment--his face white and drawn perhaps from
the emotion caused by his recollection, perhaps from the disease that
was hurrying him to his end. Then, a moment later, he continued:
"There were those with whom I could communicate in Honduras, those who
would keep me well informed of all that was taking place in the
locality: people I could rely upon. And from them there came to New
Orleans, where I still remained, partly on business and partly because
it was more than I could endure to go back and see her his wife, the
news that she was about to become a mother. That maddened me, drove me
to desperation, forced me to commit the crime that I now conceived,
and dwelt upon during every hour of the day."
"I begin to understand," Julian said, as Mr. Ritherdon paused. "I
begin to understand." Then, from that time he interrupted the other no
more--instead, both the narrative and his own feelings held him
breathless. The narrative of how he, a newborn infant, the heir to a
considerable property, had been spirited away from Honduras to
England.
"I found my way to the neighbourhood of Desolada, stopping at Belize
when once I was back in the colony, and then going on foot by night
through the forest towards where my brother's house was--since I was
forced to avoid the public road--forests that none but those who knew
their way could have threaded in the dense blackness of the tropical
night. Yet I almost faltered, once I turned back, meaning to return to
the United States and abandon my plan. For I had met an Indian, a
half-caste, who told me that she, my loved, my lost Isobel was dying,
that--that--she could not survive. And then--then--I made a compact
with myself. I swore that it she lived I would not tear her child away
from her, but that, if--if she died, then he who had made me wifeless
should himself be not only wifeless but childless too. He had tricked
me; now he should be tricked by me. Only--if she should live--I could
not break her heart as well.
"But again I returned upon my road: I reached a copse outside
Desolada, outside the house itself. I was near enough to see that the
windows were ablaze with lights, sometimes even I saw people passing
behind the blinds of those windows--once I saw my brother's figure and
that excited me again to madness. If she were dead I swore that then,
too, he should become childless. Her child should become mine, not
his. I would have that satisfaction at least.
"Still I drew nearer to the house, so near that I could hear people
calling to each other. Once I thought--for now I was quite close--that
I could hear the wailing of the negro women-servants--I saw a
half-breed dash past me on a mustang, riding as for dear life, and I
knew, I divined as surely as if I had been told, that he was gone for
the doctor, that she was dying--or was dead. Your father's chance was
past."
"Heaven help him!" said Julian Ritherdon. "Heaven help him. It was an
awful revenge, taken at an awful moment. Well! You succeeded?"
"Yes, I succeeded. She _was_ dead--I saw that when, an hour later, I
crept into the room, and when I took you from out of the arms of the
sleeping negro nurse--when, God forgive me, _I stole you!_"