"KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ALWAYS PROOF."
If there was one desire more paramount than another in Julian's
mind--as now they threaded a campeachy wood dotted here and there with
clumps of cabbage palms while, all around, in the underbrush and
pools, the Caribbean lily grew in thick and luxurious profusion--that
desire was to be alone. To be able to reflect and to think
uninterruptedly, and without being obliged at every moment to listen
to his companion's flow of conversation--which was so unceasing that
it seemed forced--as well as obliged to answer questions and to
display an interest in all that was being said.
Julian felt, perhaps, this desire the more strongly because, by now,
he was gradually becoming able to collect himself, to adjust his
thoughts and reflections and, thereby, to bring a more calm and clear
insight to bear upon the discovery--so amazing and surprising--which
had come to his knowledge but an hour or so ago. If he were alone now,
he told himself, if he could only get half-an-hour's entire and
uninterrupted freedom for thought, he could, he felt sure, review the
matter with coolness and judgment. Also, he could ponder over one or
two things which, at this moment, struck him with a force they had not
done at the time when they had fallen with stunning--because
unexpected--force upon his brain. Things--namely words and
statements--that might go far towards explaining, if not towards
unravelling, much that had hitherto seemed inexplicable.
Yet, all the same, he was obliged to confess to himself that one thing
seemed absolutely incapable of explanation. That was, how this man
could be the child of Charles Ritherdon, the late owner of the vast
property through which they were now riding, if his brother George had
been neither demented nor a liar. And that Sebastian should have
invented his statement was obviously incredible for the plain and
simple reasons that he had made it before several witnesses, and that
he was in full possession, as recognised heir, of all that the dead
planter had left behind.
It was impossible, however, that he could meditate--and, certainly, he
could not follow any train of thought--amid the unfailing flow of
conversation in which his companion indulged. That flow gave him the
impression, as it must have given any other person who might by chance
have overheard it, that it was conversation made for conversation's
sake, or, in other words, made with a determination to preclude all
reflection on Julian's part. From one thing to another this man,
called Sebastian Ritherdon, wandered--from the trade of the colony to
its products and vegetation, to the climate, the melancholy and
loneliness of life in the whole district, the absence of news and of
excitement, the stagnation of everything except the power of making
money by exportation. Then, when all these topics appeared to be
thoroughly beaten out and exhausted, Sebastian Ritherdon recurred to a
remark made during the earlier part of their ride, and said:
"So you have a letter of introduction to the Sprangers? Well! you
should present it. Old Spranger is a pleasant, agreeable man, while as
for Beatrix, his daughter, she is a beautiful girl. Wasted here,
though."
"Is she?" said Julian. "Are there, then, no eligible men in British
Honduras who could prevent a beautiful girl from failing in what every
beautiful girl hopes to accomplish--namely getting well settled?"
"Oh, yes!" the other answered, and now it seemed to Julian as though
in his tone there was something which spoke of disappointment, if not
of regret, personal to the man himself. "Oh, yes! There are such men
among us. Men well-to-do, large owners of remunerative estates,
capitalists employing a good deal of labour, and so forth.
Only--only----"
"Only what?"
"Well--oh! I don't know; perhaps we are not quite her class, her
style. In England the Sprangers are somebody, I believe, and Beatrix
is consequently rather difficult to please. At any rate I know she has
rejected more than one good offer. She will never marry any colonist."
Then, as Julian turned his eyes on Sebastian Ritherdon, he felt as
sure as if the man had told him so himself that he was one of the
rejected.
"I intend to present that letter of introduction, you know," he said a
moment later. "In fact I intended to do so from the first. Now, your
description of Miss Spranger makes me the more eager."
"You may suit her," the other replied. "I mean, of course, as a
friend, a companion. You are a naval officer, consequently a gentleman
in manners, a man of the world and of society. As for us, well, we may
be gentlemen, too, only we don't, of course, know much about society
manners."
He paused a moment--it was indeed the longest pause he had made for
some time; then he said, "When do you propose to go to see them?"
"I rather thought I would go back to Belize to-morrow," Julian
answered.
"To-morrow!"
"Yes. I--I--feel I ought not to be in the country and not present that
letter."
"To-morrow!" Sebastian Ritherdon said again. "To-morrow! That won't
give me much of your society. And I'm your cousin."
"Oh!" said Julian, forcing a smile, "you will have plenty of that--of
my society--I'm afraid. I have a long leave, and if you will have me,
I will promise to weary you sufficiently before I finally depart. You
will be tired enough of me ere then."
To his surprise--since nothing that the other said (and not even the
fact that the man was undoubtedly regarded by all who knew him as the
son and heir of Mr. Ritherdon and was in absolute fact in full
possession of the rights of such an heir) could make Julian believe
that his presence was a welcome one--to his surprise, Sebastian
Ritherdon greeted his remark with effusion. None who saw his smile,
and the manner in which his face lit up, could have doubted that the
other's promise to stay as his guest for a considerable time gave him
the greatest pleasure.
Then, suddenly, while he was telling Julian so, they emerged from one
more glade, leaving behind them all the chattering members of the
animal and feathered world, and came out into a small open plain which
was in a full state of cultivation, while Julian observed a house,
large, spacious and low before them.
"There is Desolada--the House of Desolation as my poor father used to
call it, for some reason of his own--there is my property, to which
you will always be welcome."
His property! Julian thought, even as he gazed upon the mansion (for
such it was); his property! And he had left England, had travelled
thousands of miles to reach it, thinking that, instead, it was _his_.
That he would find it awaiting an owner--perhaps in charge of some
Government official, but still awaiting an owner--himself. Yet, now,
how different all was from what he had imagined--how different! In
England, on the voyage, the journey from New York to New Orleans, nay!
until four hours ago, he thought that he would have but to tell his
story after taking a hasty view of Desolada and its surroundings to
prove that he was the son who had suddenly disappeared a day or so
after his birth: to show that he was the missing, kidnapped child. He
would have but to proclaim himself and be acknowledged.
But, lo! how changed all appeared now. There was no missing, kidnapped
heir--there could not be if the man by his side had spoken the
truth--and how could he have spoken untruthfully here, in this
country, in this district, where a falsehood such as that statement
would have been (if not capable of immediate and universal
corroboration), was open to instant denial? There must be hundreds of
people in the colony who had known Sebastian Ritherdon from his
infancy; every one in the colony would have been acquainted with such
a fact as the kidnapping of the wealthy Mr. Ritherdon's heir if it had
ever taken place, and, in such circumstances, there could have been no
Sebastian. Yet here he was by Julian's side escorting him to his own
house, proclaiming himself the owner of that house and property.
Surely it was impossible that the statement could be untrue!
Yet, if true, who was he himself? What! What could he be but a man who
had been used by his dying father as one who, by an imposture, might
be made the instrument of a long-conceived desire for vengeance--a
vengeance to be worked out by fraud? A man who would at once have been
branded as an impostor had he but made the claim he had quitted
England with the intention of making.
Under the palms--which grew in groves and were used as
shade-trees--beneath the umbrageous figs, through a garden
in which the oleanders flowered luxuriously, and the plants and
mignonette-trees perfumed deliciously the evening air, while
flamboyants--bearing masses of scarlet, bloodlike flowers--allamandas,
and temple-plants gave a brilliant colouring to the scene, they rode
up to the steps of the house, around the whole of which there was a
wooden balcony. Standing upon that balcony, which was made to traverse
the vast mansion so that, no matter where the sun happened to be, it
could be avoided, was a woman, smiling and waving her hand to
Sebastian, although it seemed that, in the salutation, the newcomer
was included. A woman who, in the shadow which enveloped her, since
now the sun had sunk away to the back, appeared so dark of complexion
as to suggest that in her veins there ran the dark blood of Africa.
Yet, a moment later, as Sebastian Ritherdon presented Julian to her,
terming him "a new-found cousin," the latter was able to perceive that
the shadows of the coming tropical night had played tricks with him.
In this woman's veins there ran no drop of black blood; instead, she
was only a dark, handsome Creole--one who, in her day, must have been
even more than handsome--must have possessed superb beauty.
But that day had passed now, she evidently being near her fiftieth
year, though the clear ivory complexion, the black curling hair, in
which scarcely a grey streak was visible, the soft rounded features
and the dark eyes, still full of lustre, proclaimed distinctly what
her beauty must have been in long past days. Also, Julian noticed, as
she held out a white slim hand and murmured some words of cordial
welcome to him, that her figure, lithe and sinuous, was one that might
have become a woman young enough to have been her daughter. Only--he
thought--it was almost too lithe and sinuous: it reminded him too much
of a tiger he had once stalked in India, and of how he had seen the
striped body creeping in and out of the jungle.
"This is Madame Carmaux," Sebastian said to Julian, as the latter
bowed before her, "a relation of my late mother. She has been here
many years--even before that mother died. And--she has been one to me
as well as fulfilling all the duties of the lady of the house both for
my father and, now, for myself."
Then, after Julian had muttered some suitable words and had once more
received a gracious smile from the owner of those dark eyes, Sebastian
said, "Now, you would like to make some kind of toilette, I suppose,
before the evening meal. Come, I will show you your room." And he led
the way up the vast campeachy-wood staircase to the floor above.
Tropical nights fall swiftly directly the sun has disappeared, as it
had now done behind the still gilded crests of the Cockscomb range,
and Julian, standing on his balcony after the other had left him and
gazing out on all around, wondered what was to be the outcome of this
visit to Honduras. He pondered, too, as he had pondered before,
whether George Ritherdon had in truth been a madman or one who had
plotted a strange scheme of revenge against his brother; a scheme
which now could never be perfected. Or--for he mused on this also--had
George Ritherdon spoken the truth, had Sebastian----
The current of his thoughts was broken, even as he arrived at this
point, by hearing beneath him on the under balcony the voice of
Sebastian speaking in tones low but clear and distinct--by hearing
that voice say, as though in answer to another's question:
"Know--of course he must know! But knowledge is not always proof."