A Bitter Heritage

"There is the likeness between us," whispered Julian in Mr. Spranger's ear. "How can that be accounted for? Can it be-is it possible-that in truth two children were born to him at the same time?"

"No," said Mr. Spranger. "No. If such had been the case, your uncle, the man you were brought up to believe in for years as your father, must have known of it."

"Then," said Julian, "the mystery is as much unsolved as ever, and is likely to remain so. She," directing his own glance to Madame Carmaux, "will never tell-and-well. Heaven help him! Sebastian is probably dead by now."

"In which case," said the other, always eminently practical, "you are the owner of Desolada all the same. If Sebastian was the rightful heir, and he is dead, you, as Mr. Ritherdon's nephew, come next."

"Nevertheless," replied Julian, "I am not his nephew. I am his son. I feel it; am sure of it."

But, even as he spoke, he noticed-had noticed indeed, already-that there was some stir in the direction where Madame Carmaux was. He had seen that, as he uttered the words "Heaven help him! Sebastian is probably dead by now," she had sprung to her feet, while uttering a piteous cry as she did so, and had stood scowling at Julian as though it was he who had sent the other to his doom. Then, too, he had seen that, in spite of the sergeant of police and one or two of his men having endeavoured to prevent her, she had brushed them on one side and was crossing the room to where he, with Mr. Spranger and Beatrix, stood. A moment later, she was before them; facing them.

"You have said," she exclaimed, "that he is probably dead by now," and they saw that her face was white and drawn; that it was, indeed, ghastly. "But," she continued, "if he is not dead-if yet he should be saved, if the scheme of that devil incarnate, Zara, should have failed-will you-will you hold him harmless-if-if-I tell all? Will you hold him harmless! For myself I care not, you may do with me what you will."

"Yes," said Julian. "Yes-if you will-"

"No," said the sergeant of police. "That is impossible. You cannot give such a promise. He has to answer to the law."

"What!" cried Madame Carmaux, turning on the man, her eyes flashing-"what if I prove him innocent of everything-of everything attempted against this one here," and she indicated Julian.

"Do that," said the sergeant, "and he may escape."

"Come, then," she said, addressing Mr. Spranger and Julian; "but not you, you bloodhound," turning on the man. "Not you! Come, I will tell you everything. I will save him."

While, making her way through the others as though she still ruled supreme in the house, and followed by the two men, she led the way to a small parlour situated upon the same floor they were on.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SHARK'S TOOTH REEF

Meanwhile the night grew on, and with it there was that accompaniment which is so common in the tropics: the wind rising, and from blowing lightly soon sprang up into what the sailors call half a gale.

Now and again, far away to the east, flashes of rusty red lightning might be seen also, the almost sure heralds of a storm later.

The wind blew, too, over the dense masses of orange groves and other vegetation which go to form the tropical jungle that hereabout fringes the seashore; compact masses that, to many endeavouring to arrive at that shore, would offer an impenetrable, an impassable, barrier. Though not so to those acquainted with the vicinity and used to threading the jungle, nor to the Indians and half-castes whose huts and cabins bordered on that jungle, since they knew every spot where passage might be made, and the coast thereby reached at last.

Zara knew also each of those passages well, and threaded them now with the confidence born of familiarity; with, too, the stern determination to arrive at the end she had sworn to attain, if such attainment were possible.

She had left the room where Madame Carmaux had been confronted, not only by her but by all the others, in the manner described; had left it suddenly, though mysteriously, even as to her maddened brain a thought had sprung, dispelling for the moment all the agony and passion with which that brain was racked. The thought that, as she had sent the man she loved to his doom, so, also, it might not yet be too late to avert that doom-to save him.

The Indians who were bearing him to the old ramshackle sailing-boat he possessed (a thing half yawl and half lugger-a thing, too, which she supposed those men had been instructed to pierce and bore so that it would begin to fill from the first, and should, thereby, sink by the time it was in deep water) must necessarily go slowly, owing to the burden they had to carry, while she-well! she could progress almost as swiftly as the deer could themselves thread the thickets that bordered the coast.

Surely, surely, lithe, young, and active as she was she would overtake those men with their burden ere they could reach the yawl; she would be able to bid them stop, and could at once point out to them the fatal mistake that had been made. She could give them proof, by bidding them take one glance at the features of the senseless man they were transporting, of the nature of that mistake.

So she set out to overtake the Indians with their burden; set out, staying for nothing, and allowing nothing to hinder her. For, swiftly as she might go, every minute was still precious.

And now-now-as the night wind arose still more and the rusty red of the lightning turned to a more purple-violet hue-sure warning of the nearness of the coming storm-she was almost close to the beach where she knew Sebastian's crazy old craft was kept in common with one or two others; namely, a punt with a deep tank for fish, a scow, and a boat with oars. She was close to the beach, but with, at this time, her heart like lead in her bosom because of the fear she had that she was too late.

"No sound," she muttered to herself. "No voices to be heard. They are gone. They are gone. I am too late!"

Then, redoubling her exertions, she ran swiftly the remainder of the distance to where she knew the boathouse-an erection of poles with planks laid across them-stood.

And in a moment she knew that she was, indeed, too late. Where the yawl usually floated there was now an empty space; there was nothing in the boathouse but the punt and the rowboat.

"Oh! what to do," she cried, "what to do!" and she beat her breast as she so cried. "They have carried him out to sea, even now the yawl is sinking-has sunk-they will be on their way back. He is dead! he is dead! he must be dead by now!"

While, overcome by the horror and misery of her thoughts, she sank down to the ground. But not for long, however, since at such a crisis as this her strong-if often ungovernable-heart became filled with greater courage and resource. To sink to the ground, she told herself, to lie there wailing and moaning over the impending fate of him she loved, was not the way to avert that fate. Instead, she must be prompt and resolute.

She sprang, therefore, once more to her feet and-dark as was all around her, except for the light of a young crescent moon peeping up over the sea's rim and forcing a glimmer now and again through the banks of deep, leaden clouds which the wind was bringing up from that sea-made her way into the boathouse, where, swiftly unloosing the painter of the rowboat, she pushed the latter out into the tumbling waves and began to scull it.

"They must have gone straight out," she thought, "straight out. And they would not go far. Only to where the water is deep enough for the yawl to sink, or to encounter one of the many reefs-those jagged crested reefs which would make a hole in her far worse than fifty awls could do."

Then still bending her supple frame over the oars, while her little hands clenched them tightly, she rowed and rowed for dear life-as in actual truth it was! – her breath coming faster and faster with her exertions, her bosom heaving, but her courage indomitable.

"I may not be too late," she whispered again and again; "the boat may not yet have filled. I may not be too late."

Suddenly she paused affrighted, startled; her heart seemed to cease to beat, her hands were idle as they clutched the oars. Startled, and despairing!

For out here the water was calmer, there being on it only the long Atlantic roll that is so common beneath the roughness of the winds; except for the slapping and crashing of those waves against the bows of the boat with each rise and fall it made, there was scarcely any noise; certainly none such as those waves had made, and would make against the boathouse and the long line of the shore. So little noise that what she had heard before she heard again now, as she sat listening and terrified in her place. She caught the beat of oars in another boat, a boat that was drawing nearer to her with each fresh stroke-that was, also, drawing nearer to the boathouse.

The Indians were returning. Their work was done!

"I am too late," she moaned. "I am too late. God help us both!"

Then, too, she heard something else.

Over the waters, over the rolling waves, there came to her ears the clear sounds of a man singing in a high tenor-it was almost a high treble-a man singing a song in Maya which she, who was of their race, knew was one that, in bygone days the Caribs and natives had sung in triumph over the downfall of their enemies. A song which, when it was concluded, was followed by a little bleating laugh, one which she knew well enough, a laugh which only one man in all that neighbourhood could give. Then she heard words called out in a half-chuckling, half-gloating tone, still in Maya.

"'Sink him beneath the sea forever,' she say, 'forever beneath the sea.' And Paz he never for get, oh, never, never! Now he sunk," and again she heard the bleating laugh, and again the beginning of that wild Carib song of triumph.

Springing up, dropping the oars heedlessly-her heart almost bursting-the girl rose from her seat, then shrieked aloud-sending her voice in the direction where now there loomed before her eyes a blur beneath the moon's glimmer which she knew to be a boat. "Paz," she cried, "Paz, it is not true, say it is not true. Oh! Paz, where is he?"

"Where you wish. Where you tell me put him," the other called back, while still beneath the brawny, muscular strokes of the Indians rowing it, the boat swept on toward the shore. "Beneath the waves or soon will be. Breaking to pieces on Shark's Tooth Reef. Paz never forget."

"Beast! devil!" the girl cried in her agony, forgetting, or recalling with redoubled horror, that what had been done was her own doing, was perpetrated at her suggestion. "Return and help me to save him. Oh! come back."

But the boat was gone, was but a speck now beneath the moon, and she was alone upon the sea, over which the wind howled as it lashed it to fury at last.

"The Shark's Tooth Reef," she murmured. "The Shark's Tooth Reef, The worst of all around. Yet-yet-if caught on that, the yawl may not sink. Oh! oh!" and she muttered to herself some wild unexpressed words that were doubtless a prayer. Then she grasped the oars once more, which, since they were fixed by loops on to thole pins instead of being loose in rowlocks, had not drifted away as might otherwise have been the case, and set the boat toward the spot where the Shark's Tooth Reef was as nearly as she could guess.

"If I can but reach it," she muttered to herself. "If I can but reach it."

But now her labours were more intense than before, her struggles more terrible. For, coming straight toward the bow of the boat, the Atlantic rollers beat it back with every stroke she took, while also they deluged it with water, so that she knew ere long it must sink beneath the waves. Already there were three or four inches in the bottom-nay, more, for the stretchers were half-covered-another three of four and it would go down like lead. And each fresh wave that broke over the bows added a further quantity.

"To see him once again; only to see him though if not to save," she moaned-weeping at last; "to see him, to be able to tell him that though I sent him to his doom I loved him," while roused by the thought, she still struggled on, buffeted and beaten by the waves; breathless, almost lifeless-but still unconquered and unconquerable.

Suddenly she gave a gasp, a shriek. Close by her, rising up some twenty feet from the sea, there was a cone-shaped rock, jagged and serrated at its summit; black, too, and glistening as, in the rays of the fast rising young moon, the water streaming from off it. It was the Shark's Tooth Reef, so called because, from its long length of some fifty yards (a length also serrated and jagged like the under jaw of a dog), there rose that cone-shaped thing which resembled what it was named from.

And again she shrieked as, looking beyond the base of the cone, peering through the hurtling waves and white filmy spume and spray, she saw upon the further edge of the base of the reef a black, indistinct mass being beaten to and fro. She heard, too, the grinding of that mass against the reef, as well as its thumps as it was flung on and dragged off it by the swirling of the sea; she heard, how each time, the force of the impact became louder and more deadly.

"To reach him at last," she cried, "to die with him! To die together."

Then it seemed that into that quivering, nervous frame there came a giant's strength; it seemed as though the cords and sinews of her arms had become steel and iron, as though the little hands were vises in the power of their grip. "To die together," she thought again, as, with superhuman efforts, she forced her boat toward the battered, broken yawl.

Now, she was close to it-now! – then, with a crash her own boat was dashed against the larger one, its bow crushed in, in a moment, its stem lifted into the air. But, catlike, desperate, too, fighting fate with the determination of despair, she had seized the top of the yawl's side; had clung to it one moment while the sea thundered and broke against her feet below, and had then drawn herself up onto the deck over the side.

And he was there, lying half-in, half-out the little forecastle cuddy, bound and corded-insensible.

"I have found you, Sebastian," she whispered, her lips to his cold ones. "I have found you."

With an awful lurch the yawl heeled over, the man's body rolling like a log as it did so, and then Zara knew that the end had come. Even though he lived, nothing could save him now; his arms were bound tightly to his sides, the cords passing over his chest from left to right. He was without sense or power.

"Nothing can save him now-nor me," she said. "Nothing."

Then she forced her own little hands beneath those cords so that, thereby, she was bound to him; whereby if ever they were found, they would be found locked together; she grasping tightly, too, the top ply, so that neither wave, nor roll of sea, nor any force could tear them apart again. And if they were never found-still-still, nothing could part them more.

"Together," she murmured, for the last time, her own strength ebbing fast, "together forever. Together at the end. Always together now-in death!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

MADAME CARMAUX TELLS ALL

Calmly-almost contemptuously-as though she were in truth mistress of Desolada and a woman who conferred honour upon those who followed her, instead of one who was in actual fact their prisoner, Madame Carmaux led the way to that parlour wherein she had promised to divulge all; to reveal the secret of how another man had usurped for so long the place and position which rightfully belonged to Julian Ritherdon.

And they who followed her, observing how rigid, how masklike were the handsome features; how the soft, dark eyes gleamed now with a hard, determined look, knew that as she had said, so she would do; so she would perform. They recognised that she would not falter in her task, she deeming that what she divulged would tell in Sebastian's favour.

Still firm and calm, therefore, and still as though she were the owner of that house which she had ruled for so long with absolute sway, she motioned to Julian and Mr. Spranger to be seated-while standing before them enveloped in the long loose robe of soft black material in which she had been clad, and with the lace hood thrown back from her head and setting free the dark masses of hair which had always been one of her greatest beauties-hair in which there was scarcely, even now, a streak of white.

"It is," she murmured, when the lights had been brought, "for Sebastian's sake, if he still lives. And to prove to you that he is innocent-was innocent until almost the day when he, that other, came here," and her glance fell on Julian-"that I tell you all which I am about to do. Also, that I tell you how I alone am the guilty one."

Her eyes resting on those of Julian and Mr. Spranger, they both signified by a look that they were prepared to hear all she might have to narrate. Then, ere she began the recital she was about to make, she said:

"Yet, if you desire more witnesses, call them in. Let them hear, too. I care neither for what they may think of me, nor what testimony they may bear against me in the future. Call in whom you will."

For a moment the two men before her looked into each other's faces; then Mr. Spranger said:

"Perhaps it would be as well to have another witness, especially as Mr. Ritherdon is the most interested person. My daughter is outside, if-if your story contains nothing she may not hear-"

"It contains nothing," Madame Carmaux answered, there being a tone of contempt in it which she did not endeavour to veil, "but the story of a crime, a fraud, worked out by a deserted, heartbroken woman. Call her in."

Then, summoned by Julian, Beatrix entered the room, and, taking a seat between her father and her lover, was an ear-witness to all that the other woman had to tell.

For a moment it seemed as if Madame Carmaux scarce knew how to commence; for a few moments she stood before them, her eyes sometimes cast down upon the floor, sometimes seeking theirs. Then, suddenly, she said:

"That narrative which George Ritherdon wrote in England when he was dying, and sent to his brother Charles, who was himself close to his end, was true."

"It was true!" whispered Julian, repeating her words, "I knew it was! I was sure of it! Yet how-how-was the deception accomplished?"

"He loved me," madame exclaimed, she hardly, as it seemed, hearing or heeding Julian's remark. "Charles loved me-till he saw her, Isobel Leigh. And I-I-well, I had never loved any other man. I did not know what love was till I saw him. Then-then-he-what need to seek for easy words-he jilted me, and, in despair, I married Carmaux on the day that he married her. It seemed to my distracted heart that by doing so I might more effectually erase his memory from my mind forever. And my son was born but a week or so before you, Julian Ritherdon, were born."

"Sebastian. Not a daughter?" Julian said.

"Yes; Sebastian; not a daughter. Yet, later, when it was necessary that my child should be registered, I recorded the birth as that of a daughter, and at the same time I registered that daughter's death. Later, you will understand why it was necessary that any child of mine should disappear out of existence, and also why, above all things, it must never be known that I had a son."

Again Julian looked in Mr. Spranger's eyes, and Mr. Spranger into his, their glances telling each other plainly that, even now, they thought they began to understand.

"I heard," Madame Carmaux went on, "that she too had borne a son, and in some strange, heartbroken excitement that took possession of me, I determined to go and see Charles Ritherdon, to show him my child, to prove to him-as I thought it would do-that if he who had forgotten me was happy in marriage, so, too, was I. Happy! oh, my God! However, no matter for my happiness-I went.

"I arrived here late at night, and I found him almost distracted. His wife was dying: she could not live, they said; how was the child to live without her? Then I promised that, if he would let me stay on at Desolada, I would be as much a mother to that child as to my own, that I would forget his cruelty to me, that I would forgive.

"'Come,' he said to me, on hearing this, 'come and see them-come.' And I went with him to the room where she was, where you were," and she looked at Julian.

"I went to that room," she continued, "with every honest feeling in my heart that a woman who had sworn to condone a man's past faithlessness could have; before Heaven I swear that I went to that room resolved to be what I had said, a second mother to you. I went with pity in my heart for the poor dying woman-the woman who had never really loved her husband, but, instead, had loved his brother. For, as you know well enough, she had been forced to jilt George Ritherdon even as Charles had jilted me. I went to that room and then-then we learned that she was dead. But, also, we learned something else. There was no child by her side. It was gone. Its place was empty."

"I begin to understand," murmured Julian, while Beatrix and her father showed by their expression that to them also a glimmering of light was coming.

"Yet," said Madame Carmaux, "scarcely can you understand-scarcely dream of-the temptation that fell in my way. In a moment, at the instant that Charles Ritherdon saw that his child was missing, he cried, 'This is my brothers doing! It is he who has stolen it. To murder it, to be avenged on me for having won his future wife from him. I know it.' And, distractedly, he raved again and again that it was his brother's doing. In vain I tried to pacify him, saying that his brother was far away in the States. To my astonishment he told me that, on the contrary, he was here, close at hand, if not even now lurking in the plantation of Desolada, or at Belize.

"'I saw him there yesterday,' he cried, 'I saw him with my own eyes. Now I understand what took him there. It was to steal my child-to murder it. Great God! to thereby become my heir.'

"As he spoke there came a footfall in the passage; some one was coming. Perhaps the nurse returning; perhaps, also, if George Ritherdon had only been there a short time before us, she did not know that the child had been kidnapped. 'And if she does not know, then no one else can know,' he cried. 'While,' he said, 'if that unutterable villain, George, thinks to profit by this theft, I will thwart him. He may rob me of my child, he may murder the poor innocent babe-but he at least shall never be my heir,' and as he spoke his eyes fell on my child in my arms. 'Cover it up,' he whispered, 'show its face only, otherwise the clothes it wears will betray it. Cover it up.'"

"If this is true, the crime was his," whispered Julian.

"That crime was his," said Madame Carmaux, "the rest was mine. But-let me continue. As Charles spoke, the nurse was at the door-a negro woman who died six months afterward-a moment later she was in the room. Yet not before I had had time to whisper a word in his ear, to say, 'If I do this, it is forever? If your child is never found, is mine to remain in its place?'-and with a glance he seemed to answer, 'Yes.'

"None ever knew of that substitution, no living soul ever knew that the child growing up as his, its birth registered by him at Belize as his, was, in truth, mine. Not one living soul. Nor were you ever heard of again. We agreed to believe that you had been made away with. Yet, as time went on, Charles Ritherdon seemed to repent of what he had done; he came to think that, after all, his brother might not have been the thief, or, being so, that he had not slain the child; to also think that perhaps some of the half-castes or Indians, on whom he was occasionally hard, might have stolen it out of revenge. And it required all my tears and supplications, all my prayers to him to remember that, had he not been cruelly false to me, it would in truth have been our child which was the rightful heir, which was here-his child and mine! At last he consented-provided that the other-the real child-you-were never heard of again. My son should remain in his son's place, if you never appeared to claim that place.

"Sebastian grew up in utter ignorance of all; he grew up also to resemble strangely the man who was supposed to be his father-perhaps because from the moment I married Monsieur Carmaux it was not his image but that of Charles Ritherdon which was ever in my mind.