CHAPTER XII.

THE REMINISCENCES OF A FRENCH GENTLEMAN.

A week later Julian was once more on his way towards Desolada, and upon a journey which he was fully determined should either result in satisfying him that Sebastian did not properly occupy the position which he now held openly in the eyes of the whole colony, or should be his last one.

He did not 'come to this decision without much anxious consideration being given to the subject by himself, by Mr. Spranger, and by Beatrix--who had been taken into the confidence of the others on the evening following Sebastian's visit to "Floresta." Nor had he arrived at the decision to again become his cousin's guest without taking their opinions on that subject as well.

And the result was--when briefly stated--that he was on his road once more.

Now, as he rode along a second time on the mule (which had been returned to its owner by a servant from Desolada), because it was at least a safe and trusty animal although not speedy--such a qualification being, indeed, unnecessary, in a country where few people ride swiftly because of the heat--he was musing deeply on all that the past weeks had brought forth.

"First," he reflected, "it has done one thing which was not to be expected, and may or may not have a bearing on what I am in this place for. It has caused me to fall over head and ears in love. Some people would say, 'That's good.' Others that it is bad, since it might distract my attention from more serious matters. So it would be bad, for me, if she doesn't feel the same way. I suppose I shall have courage to tell her all about it some day, but at present I'm sure I couldn't do it. And, anyhow, we will first of all see who and what I am. As the owner of Desolada I should be a more suitable match than as a lieutenant of five years' seniority with a few thousand pounds in various colonial securities."

Whereupon, since the animal had by now reached the knoll where he had halted with his guide for luncheon upon the occasion of his former journey along the same road, he dismounted and, drawing out of his haversack a packet of sandwiches prepared for him by Beatrix's cook, commenced, while eating them to reconsider all that had taken place during the past week.

What had taken place needs, indeed, to be set down here, since the passage of the last few days had brought to light more than one discrepancy in connection not only with Sebastian's first statements to Julian, but also with his possession of all that the late Mr. Ritherdon had left him the sole possessor of.

Mr. Spranger had brought home with him to dinner, on the night following that when Beatrix had been informed of the strange variance between the statement made by George Ritherdon in England, and the recognised position held by Sebastian in British Honduras, an elderly gentleman who filled a position in one of the principal schools established by the Government and in receipt of Government aid, in the city; while, before doing so, he had suggested to Julian that he should keep his ears open but say as little as possible. To his daughter he had also made the same suggestion, which was, as a matter of fact, unnecessary, since that young lady had now thrown herself heart and soul into the unravelling of a mystery which she said was more interesting than the plot of any novel she had read for many a long day. Also, it need scarcely be said to which side her opinions inclined, or in which quarter her sympathies were enlisted. Julian had wondered later, as he ate his lunch on the knoll, whether the affection which had sprung up in his heart for this girl was ever likely to be returned; but, had he been able to peer closely into that mystical receptacle of conglomerate feelings--a woman's heart--his wonderment might, perhaps, have ceased to exist.

With considerable skill, Mr. Spranger led the conversation at dinner to the old residents in the colony and, at last, by more or less devious ways, to the various personages who at one time or another had been inhabitants of Desolada. Then, when he and his guest were, to use a hunting metaphor, in full cry over a fine open country, he casually remarked that, among others, Madame Carmaux had herself held a considerable place of trust in the establishment for a great many years.

"Yes, yes," said the old gentleman, who was himself a French-American from Florida, "yes, a long time. Miriam Carmaux! Ha! Miriam Carmaux--Miriam Gardelle as she was when she arrived here from New Orleans and sought a place as governess. A beautiful girl then; oh! my faith, she was beautiful."

"Did she get a place as governess?" Mr. Spranger asked, filling Monsieur Lemaire's glass.

"Well, you see, she did and she did not. She got lessons in families, but no posts, no. No posts. Then, of course, she married poor Carmaux. Oh! these snakes--ah! _mon Dieu_, that coral-snake, and the tommy-goff--there are dreadful creatures for you! It was a tommy-goff that killed poor Jules Carmaux."

"Was it, though? And what was poor Carmaux?"

"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire, shaking his head most mournfully, "he was not a solid man, not steady. Oh! no, not at all steady. Carmaux loved pleasure too much: all kinds of pleasure. He loved cards, and--and--excuse me, Miss Spranger--but he loved this also," while as he spoke the old gentleman shook his head reprovingly at the claret jugs. "Also he loved sport--shooting the curassow, hunting the raccoon and the jaguar--ah! he did not love work. Oh, no! Work and he were never the best of friends. Then the tommy-goff killed him in the woods."

"Perhaps," remarked Beatrix with one of her bright smiles, "as a punishment for his not loving work."

"But," said Mr. Spranger, "he must have been a poor husband for that young lady, Mademoiselle Gardelle, as she was then. If he would not work, how did he support a wife?"

"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire with a very emphatic shake of his head now, so that Beatrix wondered he did not get quite warm over the exertion, "Ah! they did say that he thought she might earn the money to support him." And still he wagged his head.

"I wonder," exclaimed Julian, who had been listening to all this with considerable interest, "that she should have married him. He seems to have been a useless sort of man."

"Ah! Ah! There were reasons, very sad reasons. You see, she had been in love with another man. Ah! _mon Dieu_, these love affairs. Another man, Mr. Ritherdon, was supposed to have been the object of her affections."

"Dear! dear," said Mr. Spranger.

"Yes. Only--" and now Monsieur Lemaire made a sort of apologetic, old-court-life-in-France style of bow to Beatrix, as though beseeching pardon for the errors of his own sex--sinking his voice, too, to a kind of pleading one, as well as one reprobating the late Mr. Ritherdon's conduct--"only he jilted her."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the girl, feeling it necessary to say something in return for the old Frenchman's politeness, while, as a matter of fact, she had heard the story from her father only a night or so before. "Good gracious!"

"Ah! yes. Ah! yes," Lemaire continued. "It was so indeed. Indeed it was. Then, they do say----" And now he sank his voice so much that he might have been reciting the history of some most awful and soul-stirring Greek tragedy, "they do say that in her rage and despair she flung herself away on Carmaux. But the tommy-goff killed him after he trod on it in the woods--and, so, she was free." Then his voice rose crescendo, as though the mention of the tragedy being concluded, a lighter tone was permissible.

"Take some more claret," said Mr. Spranger; "help yourself." While as the old gentleman did so, he continued--

"But how in such circumstances did she become a resident in Mr. Ritherdon's house? One would have thought that was the last place she would be found in next."

"Ah!" said Monsieur Lemaire, "then the woman's heart, the heart of all good women"--and he bowed solemnly now to Beatrix--"exerted its sway. She was bereft, even the little girl, the poor little daughter that had been born to her after Carmaux's death--when the tommy-goff killed him--was dead and buried----"

"So she had had a daughter?" said Mr. Spranger.

"Poor woman, yes. But what--what was I saying. The good woman's heart prompted her, and, smothering her own griefs, forgetting her own wrongs, knowing the stupendous misery which had fallen on the man who had jilted her through the loss of his wife, she went to him and offered to look after the poor little motherless Sebastian; to be a guide and nurse to it. Ah! a noble woman was Miriam Carmaux, a woman who buried her own griefs in assuaging those of others."

"She went to Desolada," Julian said, "after Mrs. Ritherdon's death? She did that? After Mrs. Ritherdon's death?"

"_Si_. After her death. Soon. Very soon. As soon as her own sorrows, her own loss, were more or less softened."

That night, when Monsieur Lemaire had been driven back into the city in Mr. Spranger's buggy, the latter gentleman, his daughter and Julian, sat out on the lawn, inhaling the cool breeze which comes up from the sea at sunset as well as watching the fireflies dancing. All were quite silent now, for all were occupied with their own thoughts: Julian in reflecting on what Monsieur Lemaire had said; Beatrix in wondering whether George Ritherdon's dying disclosures could possibly have been true; Mr. Spranger in feeling positive that they were false. Everything, he told himself, or almost everything, pointed to such being the case. The registration of Sebastian's birth by the late Mr. Ritherdon; the acknowledgment of the young man during all the dead man's remaining years as his heir: the knowledge which countless people possessed in the colony of Sebastian's whole life having been passed at Desolada! And against this, what set-off was there?

Only the falsehood--for such it must have been--told by Sebastian to the effect that Miriam Carmaux was his mother's relative, which, since she was a French creole, was impossible. Nothing much more than that; nothing tangible.

As for the slip made by him to Julian, the words, "My mother ca--I mean my mother always wanted to go there and see it," (New Orleans being the place referred to) well, there was nothing in that. It was a slip any one might easily have made. And no living soul in British Honduras had ever heard a whisper of any stolen child. Surely that was enough to settle all doubt.

Then, breaking in upon the silence around, he and his daughter heard Julian saying: "If Monsieur Lemaire's facts are accurate, Sebastian made another misstatement to me. He said that Madame Carmaux had been at Desolada for many years, _even before his mother died_. That could not have been so."

"And," said Beatrix, emerging now from the silence which she had preserved so long, "it was perhaps with reference to that subject that he had uttered the words which you overheard, to the effect that you must know something, but that knowledge was not always proof."

"All the same," said Mr. Spranger now, "it is a blank wall, a wall against which you will push in vain, I fear. Honestly, I see no outlet."

"Nor I," answered Julian, "yet all the same I mean to try and find one. At present I am groping in the dark; perhaps the light will come some day."

"I cannot believe it," Mr. Spranger said, "much as I might like to do so. If--if Charles Ritherdon's child had been stolen from its father's house how could it be that, in so small a place as this, the thing would never have been heard of? And if it was stolen, if you were stolen, how could another, a substitute, take your place?"

"Heaven only knows," Julian replied. "It is to find out this that I am going back to Desolada," while as he spoke, he saw again on Beatrix's face the look of dissent to that proposed journey which, a day or two before, she had signalled to him through her eyes.

So--determinate, resolved to fathom the mystery, if mystery there were; refusing, too, to believe that George Ritherdon's story could have been one huge fabrication, one hideous falsehood from beginning to end, and that a fabrication, a falsehood, which must ere long be disproved, directly it was challenged--he did set out and was by now drawing near the end of his journey.

"Only," said Beatrix to him on the morning of his departure, "I do so wish you would let me persuade you not to go. I dread----"

"What?"

"Oh!" she said, raising her hands to her hair with a bewildered movement--a movement that perhaps expressed regret as to the destination for which he was about to depart. "I do not know. Yet--still--I fear. Sebastian Ritherdon is cruel;--fierce--if--if--he thought you were about to cross his path--if--he knows anything that you do not know, then I dread what the end may be. And, I shall think always of that half-caste girl--peering in--glaring into your room, with perhaps, if she is a creature, a tool of his, murder in her heart."

"Fear nothing, I beseech you," he said deeply moved at her sympathy. "I can be very firm--very resolute--when occasion needs. Fear nothing."