style="font-size:15px;"> "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.
