he said in that first letter that the marriage took place in the parish church of St. Pierre in Martinique on the 28th of August, 1881; that he himself was born the following year, and christened in the same church under the name of Philip Arthur, and registered as the son of Mr. Arthur Collingwood de Mountford of Ford's Mount in the county of Northampton, England, and of Adeline de Mountford, née Petit, his wife."
"Twenty-four years ago," said Louisa thoughtfully, "and he only claims kinship with Lord Radclyffe now?"
"That's just," rejoined Luke, "where the curious part of the story comes in. This Philip de Mountford – I don't know how else to call him – said in his first letter that his mother never knew that Mr. Arthur de Mountford was anything more than a private English gentleman travelling either for profit or pleasure, but in any case not possessed of either wealth or social position. Between you and me, dear, I suppose that this Adeline Petit was just a half-caste girl, without much knowledge of what goes on in the world, and why she should have married Uncle Arthur I can't think."
"If she did marry him, you mean."
"If she did marry him, as you say," said Luke with a singular want of conviction, which Louisa was not slow to remark.
"You think that this young man's story is true then?"
"I don't know what to think, and that's the truth."
"Tell me more," added Louisa simply.
"Well, this Philip's story goes on to say that his father – Uncle Arthur – apparently soon tired of his exotic wife, for it seems that two years after the marriage he left Martinique and never returned to it to the day of his death."
"Pardon," said Louisa in her prim little way, "my interrupting you: but have any of you – Lord Radclyffe I mean, or any of your friends – any recollection of your uncle Arthur living at Martinique for awhile? Two years seems a long time – "
"As a matter of fact, Uncle Arthur was a bit of a wastrel you know. He never would study for anything. He passed into the navy – very well, too, I believe – but he threw it all up almost as soon as he got his commission, and started roaming about the world. I do know for a fact that once his people had no news of him for about three or four years, and then he turned up one fine day as if he had only been absent for a week's shooting."
"When was that?"
"I can't tell you exactly. I was only a tiny kid at the time, not more than three years old I should say. Yes, I do remember, now I come to think of it, that Uncle Arthur was home the Christmas after my third birthday. I have a distinct recollection of my dad telling me that Uncle Arthur was one of my presents from Father Christmas, and of my thinking what a rotten present it was. Later on in the nursery all of us children were rather frightened of him, and we used to have great discussions as to where this uncle came from. The Christmas present theory was soon exploded, because of some difficulty about Uncle Arthur not having been actually found in a stocking, and his being too big anyway to be hidden in one, so we fell back on Jim's suggestion that he was the man in the moon come down for a holiday."
"You," she said, "had your third birthday in 1883."
"Yes."
"That was the year, then, that your uncle Arthur came home from his wanderings about the world, during which he had never given any news of himself or his doings to any member of his family."
"By Jove, Lou, what a splendid examining magistrate you'd make!" was Luke's unsophisticated comment on Louisa's last remark.
But she frowned a little at this show of levity, and continued quietly:
"And your uncle, according to this so-called Philip de Mountford, was married in 1881 in Martinique, his son was born in 1882, and he left Martinique in 1883 never to return."
"Hang it all, Lou!" exclaimed the young man almost roughly, "that is all surmise."
"I know it is, dear; I was only thinking."
"Thinking what?"
"That it all tallies so very exactly and that this – this Philip de Mountford seems in any case to know a great deal about your Uncle Arthur, and his movements in the past."
"There's no doubt of that; and – "
Luke paused a moment and a curious blush spread over his face. The Englishman's inborn dislike to talk of certain subjects to his women folk had got hold of him, and he did not know how to proceed.
As usual in such cases the woman – unmoved and businesslike – put an end to his access of shyness.
"The matter is – or may be – too serious, dear, for you to keep any of your thoughts back from me at this juncture."
"What I meant was," he said abruptly, "that this Philip might quite well be Uncle Arthur's son you know; but it doesn't follow that he has any right to call himself Philip de Mountford, or to think that he is Uncle Rad's presumptive heir."
"That will of course depend on his proofs – his papers and so on," she assented calmly. "Has any one seen them?"
"At the time – it was sometime last November – that he first wrote to Uncle Rad, he had all his papers by him. He wrote from St. Vincent; have I told you that?"
"No."
"Well, it was from St. Vincent that he wrote. He had left Martinique, I understand, in 1902, when St. Pierre, if you remember, was totally destroyed by volcanic eruption. It seems that when Uncle Arthur left the French colony for good, he lodged quite a comfortable sum in the local bank at St. Pierre in the name of Mrs. de Mountford. Of course he had no intention of ever going back there, and anyhow he never did, for he died about three years later. The lady went on living her own life quite happily. Apparently she did not hanker much after her faithless husband. I suppose that she never imagined for a moment that he meant to stick to her, and she certainly never bothered her head as to what his connections or friends over in England might be. Amongst her own kith and kin, the half-caste population of a French settlement, she was considered very well off, almost rich. After a very few years of grass-widowhood, she married again, without much scruple or compunction, which proves that she never thought that her English husband would come back to her. And then came the catastrophe."
"What catastrophe?"
"The destruction of St. Pierre. You remember the awful accounts of it. The whole town was destroyed. Every building in the place – the local bank, the church, the presbytery, the post-office – was burned to the ground; everything was devastated for miles around. And thousands perished, of course."
"I remember."
"Mrs. de Mountford and her son Philip were amongst the very few who escaped. Their cottage was burned to the ground, but she, with all a Frenchwoman's sense of respect for papers and marks of identification, fought her way back into the house, even when it was tottering above her head, in order to rescue those things which she valued more than her life, the proofs that she was a respectable married woman and that Philip was her lawfully begotten son. Her second husband – I think from reading between the lines that he was a native or at best a half-caste – was one of the many who perished. But Mrs. de Mountford and Philip managed to reach the coast unhurt and to put out to sea in an open boat. They were picked up by a fishing smack from Marie Galante and landed there. It is a small island – French settlement, of course – off Guadeloupe. They had little or no money, and how they lived I don't know, but they stayed in Marie Galante for some time. Then the mother died, and Philip made his way somehow or other to Roseau in Dominica
