A Bitter Heritage

Surprise, perhaps, that Madame Carmaux should have been so emotional as to exhibit such tenderness at the recollection being brought to her mind of her little infant daughter, dead twenty-five years ago and almost at the hour of its birth.

No more was said, however, on the subject and an adjournment was made directly the meal was over to the veranda, that place on which in British Honduras almost all people pass the hours of the evening; none staying indoors more than is absolutely necessary. And here their conversation became of the most ordinary kind for some time, its commonplace nature only being varied occasionally by divers questions put to Julian by both Sebastian and Madame Carmaux as to what George Ritherdon's existence had been since he quitted Honduras to return to England.

"It was a quiet enough one," replied Julian, carefully weighing every word he uttered and forcing himself to be on his guard over every sentence. "Quiet enough. He took to England some capital from this part of the world, as I have always understood, and he was enabled to make a sufficient living by the use of it to provide for us both. He was never rich, yet since his desires were not inordinate, we did well enough. At any rate, he was able to place me in the only calling I was particularly desirous of following, without depriving himself of anything."

"And he left money behind?" Madame Carmaux asked, while, even as she did so, Julian could not but observe that her manner was listless and absent, as well as to perceive that she only threw in a remark now and again with a view of appearing to be interested in the conversation.

"Yes," he replied, "he left money behind him. Not much; some few thousand pounds fairly well invested. Enough, anyhow, for a sailor who, at the worst, can live on his pay."

"All the same," Sebastian said, "a few thousand pounds is a mighty good thing to have handy. I wish I had a few."

"You!" exclaimed Julian, looking at him in surprise. "Why! I should have thought you had any amount. This is a big property, even for the colonies, and Mr. Ritherdon-your father-has left the reputation behind him in Belize of being one of the richest planters in the place."

"Ay," said Sebastian, "rich in produce, stores, cattle, and so forth, but no money. No ready money. Not sufficient to work a large place like this. Why, look here, Julian, as a matter of fact, you and I are each other's heirs, yet I expect I'd sooner come in for your few thousands than you would for Desolada. One can do a lot with a few thousands. I wish I had some."

"Didn't your father leave any ready money, then?" Julian asked.

"Oh, yes! He did. But it's all sunk in the place already."

Such a conversation as this would, in ordinary circumstances, have been one of no importance and certainly not worth recording, had it not-short as it was-furnished Julian with some further food for reflections. And among other shapes which those reflections took, one was that he did not believe that all the money which Mr. Ritherdon was stated to have died possessed of had been sunk in the estate. He, the late Mr. Ritherdon, had been able to put by money out of the products of that estate-it scarcely stood to reason, therefore, that his successor would have instantly invested all that money in it. Wherefore Julian at once came to the conclusion that if it was really gone-vanished-it had done so in Sebastian's gambling transactions.

Then, as to their being each other's heirs! Well, that view had never occurred to him-certainly it had never occurred to him that by any chance Sebastian could be his heir. Yet, if Sebastian was in truth Charles Ritherdon's son and he, Julian, was absolutely George Ritherdon's son, such was the case. And, if anything should happen to him while staying here at Desolada, where he had announced himself plainly as the son of George Ritherdon, he could scarcely doubt that Sebastian would put in a claim as that heir. If anything should happen to him!

Well! it might! One could never tell. It might! Especially as, when Sebastian had uttered those words, he had seen a flash from Madame Carmaux's eyes and had observed a light spring into them which told plainly enough that she had never regarded matters in that aspect before; that this new view of the state of things had startled her.

If anything should happen to him! Well, to prevent anything doing so he must be doubly careful of himself. That was all.

The evening-like most evenings spent in the tropics and away from the garish amusements and gaieties of tropical towns-was passed more or less monotonously, it being got through by scraps of conversation, by two or three cooling drinks being partaken of by Julian and Sebastian, and by Madame Carmaux in falling asleep in her chair. Though, Julian thought, her slumbers could neither have been very sound nor refreshing, seeing that, whenever he chanced to turn his eyes towards her, he observed how hers were open and fixed on him, though shut immediately that she perceived he had noticed that they were unclosed.

"Come," exclaimed Sebastian now, springing from out of his chair with as much alacrity as is ever testified in the tropics, while as he did so Madame Carmaux became wide-awake in the most perfect manner. "Come, this won't do. Early to bed you know-and all the rest of it. We practise that good old motto here."

"I thought you practised stopping up rather late when I was here last," Julian remarked quietly. "As I told you, I heard your voices and saw you sitting in the balcony long after I had turned in."

"But to-night we must be off to bed early," Sebastian replied. "I have to start for Belize to-morrow in good time, as I remarked to you at supper, and you are going to take a gun and try for some shooting in the Cockscomb mountains. Early to bed, my boy, early, and, also, an early breakfast."

After which Julian and Madame Carmaux made their adieux to each other for the night, while Sebastian, as he had done before, escorted his cousin up the vast stairs to his room. This room was, however, a different one from that occupied previously by Julian, it being on the other side of the house and looking towards those Cockscomb mountains which, gun in hand, he was to explore on the morrow.

"It is a better room," said Sebastian, "than the other, as you see; although not so large. And the sun will not bother you here in the morning, nor will our chatter on the balcony beneath or inside the room do so either. Good night, sleep well. To-morrow, breakfast at six."

"Good-night," replied Julian as he entered the room, and, after Sebastian was out of earshot (as he calculated), turned the key in the lock. Then, as he sat himself down in his chair, after again producing his revolver and placing it by his side, he thought to himself:

"Yes! he spoke truly. Their conversation below will not disturb me, nor will there be any chance of my overhearing it. All right, Sebastian, you understand the old proverb about one for me and two for yourself. But you have for gotten a little fact, namely, that a sailor can move about almost as lightly as a cat when he chooses, and, if I think you and your respected housekeeper have anything to say that it will be worth my while to hear-why, I shall be a cat for the time being."

CHAPTER XIV

"THIS LAND IS FULL OF SNAKES."

The truth was, as the reader is by now very well aware, that Julian no more believed in either Sebastian's lawful possession of Desolada or in his being the son of Charles Ritherdon, than he believed that George Ritherdon had concocted the whole of that story which he narrated ere his death. "For," said the young man to himself, "if it were true, his manner and her manner-that of the superb Madame Carmaux-would not be what they are. 'Think it out,' our old naval instructor in the Brit, used to say, 'analyze, compare, exercise the few brains Heaven has mercifully given you.' Well, I will-or, rather, I have."

And he had done so. He had thought it all over and over again-Sebastian's manner, Madame Carmaux's manner, Sebastian's slight inaccuracies of statement, Madame Carmaux's pretence of being asleep when she was awake, and her strange side-glances at him when she thought he was not observing her.

"I played Hamlet once at an amateur show in the Leviathan," he mused. "It was an awful performance, and, if it had been for more than one act, I should undoubtedly have been hissed out of the ship. All the same it taught me something. What was it the poor chap said? 'I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds.' Well, I'll take my uncle's word-for uncle he was and he was telling the truth-for a thousand pounds, too. Only, how to prove it? That is the question-which, by-the-bye, Hamlet also remarked."

That was indeed the question. How to prove it!

"That fellow is no more Charles Ritherdon's son than I'm a soldier," he went on, "and I am the son. That I'm sure of! Everything, every fresh look on their faces, every word they say, convinces me only the more certainly. Even this shifting of the room I am to occupy: why, Lord bless me! does he think I'm a fool? Yet, all the same, I don't see how it is to be proved. Confound them! Some one played a trick on Charles Ritherdon after George had stolen me-for steal me he did-some trick or other. And she, this Madame Carmaux was in it. Only why-why-why?"

He clenched his hands in front of his forehead, as he recalled now Mr. Spranger's words: "It is a blank wall against which you will push in vain." Almost, indeed, he began to fear that such was the case; that never would he throw down that wall which rose an adamantine object between him and his belief. Yet, even as he did so, he recollected that he was an Englishman and a sailor; that, consequently, he must be resolved not to be beaten. Only, how was it to be accomplished; how was the defeat to be avoided?

As he arrived at this determination he heard, outside on the veranda, a sound which he had heard more than once on his first visit, and when he slept on the other side of the mansion. A sound, light, stealthy-such a one as if some soft-footed creature, a cat, perhaps, was creeping gently in the night along the balcony. Creeping nearer to his window in front of which, as had been the case before, the Venetian blind was lowered.

Then he resolved that, this time, his strange visitant should know that he had discovered the spying to which he was again to be subjected.

In a moment he feigned sleep as he sat by the table on which stood the lamp-casting out a considerable volume of light-while, as he did so, he let his outstretched hands and fingers cover the revolver.

And still the weird, soft scraping of those catlike feet came nearer; he knew that his ghost-like visitor was close to the open window. He heard also, though it was the faintest click in the world, the slat or lath turning the least little bit, he knew that now those eyes that had gleamed into the other and darkened room were gleaming in at him in this one.

Then, suddenly, he opened his own eyes as wide as he could, while with his outstretched hand he now raised the revolver and pointed it at the little dusky figure that he could see was holding the slat back, while he said in a voice, low but perfectly clear in the silence of the night:

"Don't move. Stop where you are-there-outside that blind till I come to you. If you do move I will scatter your brains on the floor of the veranda!"

And as he rose and went towards the persianas he could see that his instructions were-through fear-obeyed. The eyes, now white, horrible, almost chalky in their glare of fright, instead of being dusky as he had once seen them, stared with a hideous expression of terror into the room. Also, the brown finger which was crooked over the blind-slat trembled.

He pulled the persianas up with his left hand, still keeping his right hand extended with the revolver in it (of course only with the intention of frightening the girl into making no attempt to fly); then, when he had fastened the pulley he took her unceremoniously by the upper part of the arm and led her into the room.

"Now, Mademoiselle Zara, as I understand your name to be, kindly give me an explanation of why, whenever I am in my room in this house, you honour me with these attentions. My manly beauty can be observed at any time in the daylight much better than at night, and-"

"Don't tell him," the girl whispered, and he felt as he still held her arm that she was trembling, while, also, he saw that she was deathly pale, her usual coffee-and-milk complexion being more of the latter than the former now. "Oh, don't tell him!"

"Don't tell whom?" he asked astonished. Astonished at first, since he had deemed her an emissary of his host, sent to pry in on him for some reason best known to both of them. Then, he reflected, this was only some ruse hatched in her scheming, half-Indian brain, whereby to escape from his clutches; upon which he said:

"Now, look here. No lies. What do you come peeping and prying in on me for in the middle of the night. Perhaps you're not aware that I saw you do so the last time I was here."

"I came to see," she said inconsequently, "if you were comfortable; I am a servant-"

But now Julian laughed so loudly at this ridiculous statement that the girl in hasty terror-and if it was assumed, she must be a good actress, he thought-put up her hand as though she intended to clap it over his mouth.

"Oh!" she whispered, "don't! Don't! He will hear you-or she will-"

"Well, what if they do! I suppose they know you are here just as much as I do. Come," he continued, "come, don't look so frightened, I'm not going to shoot you or harm you in any way. Though, mind you, my dark beauty, you might have got shot if you had timed your visit at a later hour and startled me out of a heavy slumber, or if I had seen those eyes looking in on me in the dead of night However, out with the explanation. Quick."

For a moment the girl paused as though thinking deeply, then she looked up at him with all the deep tropical glow once more in her sombre eyes, and said:

"I won't tell you. No. But-"

"But what?"

"I-will you believe what I say?"

"Perhaps. That depends. I might, if it sounded likely."

"Listen, then. I don't come here to do you any harm. My visits won't hurt you. Only-only-this is a dangerous house in more ways than one. It is a very old one-strange things happen sometimes in it. How," she said, and now her voice which had been sunk to a whisper became even lower, "how would you like to die in it?"

Perhaps the slow mysterious tones of that voice-the something weird and wizard in the elf-like appearance of this dusky girl who was, in truth, beautiful with that beauty often found in the half-caste Indian-was what caused Julian to feel a sort of creepiness to come over him in spite of the warm, bath-like temperature of the night.

"Neither in this house nor elsewhere, just at present," he remarked, steadying his nerves. "But," he continued, "I don't suppose there is much likelihood of that. Who is going to cause me to die?"

For answer the girl cast those marvellous orbs of hers all around the room, taking, meanwhile, as she did so, the mosquito curtains in her hands and shaking them with a swish away from the floor on which they drooped in festoons; she looking also behind the bedposts and in other places.

"No one-to-night," she said, "but-but-if I may not come here again, if you will not let me, then do this always. And-perhaps-some night you will know."

After which she moved off towards the window, her lithe, graceful figure seeming to glide without the assistance of any movement from her feet towards the open space; and made as though she meant to retire. Yet, as she stood within the framework of that window, she turned and looked back at him, her finger slightly raised as though impressing silence.

Then she stepped outside on to the boards of the veranda and peered over the front of it down towards the garden from which, now, there rose the countless perfumes exhaled by the Caribbean wealth of flowers. Also, she crept along to either side of the window, glancing to right and left of her until, at that moment, borne on the soft night breeze, there came from the front of the house, a harsh, strident, and contemptuous laugh-the laugh of Sebastian Ritherdon. When, seemingly reassured by this, she returned again towards the open window and said:

"You go to-morrow to the Cockscomb mountains shooting. Yet, when there, be careful. Danger is there, too. This land is full of snakes, the coral snake-which kills instantly, even like the fer de lance of the islands, the rattlesnake, the tamagusa, or, as you English say, the 'tommy-goff.' One killed him-her husband," and she pointed down to where Madame Carmaux might be supposed to be sitting at this moment, while as she did so he saw in her eyes a look so startling-since they blazed with fire-that he stared amazed. Was she, this half-savage girl, gloating over the horrid death of a man which must have taken place ere she was born? Or-or-what?

"In all the land," she went on, "there are snakes. Those I tell you of-and-others. You understand? And others."

"I almost understand," Julian muttered hoarsely-though he knew not why. "And others. Is that-? ah! yes-I do understand. Yet tell me further, tell-"

But she was gone; the window frame was empty of the dark shadowy figure it had enshrouded. Gone, as he saw when he stepped out on to the balcony and observed a sombre form stealing along betwixt the bright gleams of the low-lying stars and himself.

"Why does she warn me thus," he muttered to himself as now he began to undress slowly, "why? She is that man's servant-almost, as servants go here, his slave. Why warn me-she whom I deemed his creature-she who does his dirty work as croupier at a gambling hell? And she gloated over Carmaux's death in days of long ago-why that also? Does she hate this woman who governs here as mistress of the house?"

With some degree of horror on him now, with some sort of mystic terror creeping over him at unknown and spectrelike dangers that might be surrounding his existence, he turned down the light serape stretched over the bed for coverlet, and threw back the upper sheet Then he started away with a hoarse exclamation at what he saw.

For, lying coiled up in the middle of the bed, yet with a hideous flat head raised and vibrating, while from out that head gleamed a pair of threatening and scintillating emerald eyes, was a small, red coral-coloured snake-a snake that next unwound itself slowly with horribly lithe and sinuous movements which caused Julian to turn cold, warm as the night was.

"So," he whispered to himself, as now he seized a rifle that he had brought out from England with him, and, after beating the reptile on to the floor, used the stock as a bat and sent the thing flying out of the window; "this is what she was looking for, what she expected to find. But where are the others? The other snakes she hinted at? I think I can guess."

CHAPTER XV

RECOLLECTIONS OF SEBASTIAN'S BIRTH

It is forty miles inland to where the Cockscomb mountains rear their appropriately named crests, but not half that distance to where obliquely from north to south there run spurs and ridges which, though they do not rise to the four thousand feet that is attained by the highest peak or summit of the range, are still lofty mountains. Here, amidst these spurs and ridges, which dominate and break up what is otherwise a country, or lowland, almost as flat as Holland (and which until a few years ago was marked on the maps as "unexplored country"), Nature presents a different aspect from elsewhere in the colony. The country becomes wild and rugged; the copses of mangroves are superseded by woods and forests of prickly bamboos and umbrageous figs; vast clumps of palms of all denominations cluster together, forming in their turn other little woods, while rivers, whose sources are drawn from the great lagoons inland, roll swiftly towards the sea.

Here, upon the bank of one of those lagoons, Julian sat next day beneath the shadow of a clump of locust-trees, in which were intermingled other trees of salm-wood, braziletto, and turtle-bone, as well as many others almost unknown of and unheard of by Europeans, with at his feet a fowling-piece, while held across his knees was a safety repeating rifle. This was the rifle with which he had overnight beaten out on to the veranda (where this morning he had left it dead and crushed) the coral snake, and which he had provided himself with ere he left England in case opportunities for sport should arise. The gun, an old-fashioned thing lent him by Sebastian, he had not used against any of the feathered inhabitants of the woods, although many opportunities had arisen of shooting partridges, wild pigeons, whistling ducks, quails, and others. Had not used it because, remembering one or two other incidents, such as that of the horse and that of the coral-snake (which might have crept into his bed for extra warmth, as such reptiles will do even in the hottest climates, but on the other hand might have reached that spot by different means), and because since also he was now full of undefined suspicion, he thought it very likely that if used it would burst in his hands.

He was not alone, as by his side, there sat now a man whose features, as well as his spare, supple frame, bespoke him one of that tribe of half-breeds, namely, Spanish and Carib Indian, which furnishes so large a proportion of the labourers to the whole of Central America. He was an elderly man, this-a man nearer sixty than fifty, with snow-white hair; yet any one who should have regarded him from behind, or watched his easy strides from a distance, or his method of mounting an incline, might well have been excused for considering him to be about thirty-five.

"What did Mr. Ritherdon strike you for this morning?" Julian asked now, while, as he spoke he raised his rifle off his knee, and, with it ready to be brought to the shoulder, sat watching a number of ripples which appeared a hundred and fifty yards away in the lagoon.

"Because he is a cruel man," his companion, who was at the present time his guide, replied; "because, too, everything makes him angry now-even so small a thing as my having buckled his saddle-girth too loose. A cruel man and getting worse. Always angry now."

"Why?" asked Julian, raising the rifle and aiming it at this moment towards a conical grey-looking object that appeared above the ripples on the lagoon-an object that was, in absolute fact, the snout of an alligator.

"Because-don't fire yet, senor; he's coming nearer-because, oh! because things go very bad with him, they say. He lose much money and-and-pretty Missy Sprangy don't love him."

"Does he love her?"

"They say. Say, too, Massa Sprangy much money. Seabastiano wants money as well as pretty missy. Never get it, though. Perhaps, too, he not live get much more."

"What do you mean?" asked Julian, lowering the rifle as the huge reptile in the lagoon now drew its head under water; while he looked also at the man with stern, inquiring eyes. "What do you mean?" Though inwardly he said to himself: "This is a new phase in these mysterious surroundings. My life doesn't seem just now one that the insurance companies would be very glad to get hold of, while also my beloved cousin's doesn't appear to be a very good one. Lively place, this!"

"He very much hated," the half-breed answered. "Very cruel. Some day tommy-goffy give him a nice bite, or half-breed gentleman put a knife in his liver."

"The snakes don't hate him, do they? He can't be cruel to them."

The other gave a laugh at this; it was indeed a laugh which was something between the bleating of a sheep and the (so-called) terrible war-whoop of a North-American Indian; then he replied: "Easy enough make tommy-goffy hate him. Take tommy into room where a man sleeps, wrapped up in a serape with his head out, then put him mouth to man's arm. Tommy do the rest. Gentleman want no breakfast."

"This is a nice country!" Julian thought. "I'm blessed if some of these chaps couldn't give the natives in India, or the dear old Chinese, a tip or two."

While as he so reflected, he also thought: "Easy enough, too, to put tommy-goff into a man's bed. Then that man wouldn't want any breakfast either. It's rather a good job that I found myself with an appetite this morning."