CHAPTER XIX.

A PLEASANT MEETING.

The morning was drawing on and it was getting late--that is, for the tropics--namely, it was near nine o'clock, and soon the sun would be high in the heavens, so that it was not likely along the dusty white road from Belize any sign of human life would make it appearance until sunset was close at hand.

"If Mr. Spranger doesn't come pretty soon," Julian said consequently to himself, "he won't come at all, and has, probably, important business to attend to in the city. Wherefore I shall have to pass to-day alone here, or have a sunstroke before I can get as far back as All Pines for a meal. I ought to have brought some lunch with me."

"Halloa, my friend," he remarked a moment later to the mustang, which had commenced to utter little whinnies, and seemed to be regarding him with rather a piteous sort of look, "what's the matter with you? You don't want to start back and get a sunstroke, do you? Oh! I know. Of course!" and he rose from his seat and, going further into the bushes behind the knoll, began to use both his eyes and his ears. For it had not taken him a moment to divine--he who had been round the world three times! that the creature required that which in all tropical lands is wanted by man and animal more than anything else--namely, the wherewithal to quench their thirst.

Presently, he heard the grateful sound of trickling water, which in British Honduras is bountifully supplied by Providence, and discovered a swift-flowing rivulet on its way to the sea below--it being, in fact, a little tributary of Mullin's River--when, going back for the creature, he led it to where the water was, while, tying its bridle to some reeds, he left it there to quench its thirst. After which he returned to the summit of the knoll to continue his lookout along the road from Belize.

But now he saw that, during his slight absence, some signs of other riders had appeared, there being at this present moment two black-and-white blurs upon the white dusty thread. Two that progressed side by side, and presented a duplicate, party-coloured imitation of that which, earlier, Sebastian Ritherdon and his steed had offered to his view.

"If that's Mr. Spranger," Julian thought to himself, "he has brought a companion with him, or has picked up a fellow traveller. By Jove though! one's a darkey and, well! I declare, the other's a woman. Oh!" he exclaimed suddenly, joyfully too; "it's Miss Spranger. Here's luck!" and with that, regardless of the sun's rays and all the calamities that those rays can bring in such a land, he jumped into the road and began waving his handkerchief violently.

The signal, he saw, was returned at once; from beneath the huge green umbrella held over the young lady's head--and his own--by the negro accompanying her, he observed an answering handkerchief waved, and then the mass of white material which formed a veil thrown back, as though she was desirous that he who was regarding her should not be in any doubt as to who was approaching. Yet, she need not have been thus desirous. There is generally one form (as the writer has been told by those who know) which, when we are young, or sometimes even, no longer boys and girls, we recognise easily enough, no matter how much it may be disguised by veils or dust-coats or other similar impediments to our sight.

Naturally, Beatrix and her sable companion rode slowly--to ride fast here on such a morning means death, or something like it--but they reached the knoll at last, and then, after mutual greetings had been exchanged and Julian had lifted Miss Spranger off her horse--one may suppose how tenderly!--she said:

"Father was sorry, but he could not come. So I came instead. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind!" he said, while all the time he was thinking how pretty she looked in her white dress, and how fascinating the line which marked the distinction between the sunburn of her face and the whiteness of her throat made her appear--"mind!" Then, words seeming somehow to fail him (who rarely was at a loss for such things, either for the purpose of jest or earnest) at this moment, he contented himself with a glance only, and in preparing for her a suitable seat in the shade. Yet, all the same, he was impelled directly afterwards to tell her again and again how much he felt her goodness in coming at all.

"Jupiter," she said to the negro now, "bring the horses in under the shade and unsaddle and unbridle them. And, find some 'water for them. I am going to stay quite a time, you know," she went on, addressing Julian. "I can't go back till sunset, or near sunset, so you will have to put up with my company for a whole day. I suppose you didn't happen to think of bringing any lunch or other provisions?"

"The mere man is forgetful," he replied contritely, finding his tongue once more, "so----"

"So I am aware. Therefore, I have brought some myself. Oh! yes, quite enough for two, Mr. Ritherdon; therefore you need not begin to say you are not hungry or anything of that sort. Later, Jupiter shall unpack it. Meanwhile, we have other things to think and talk about. Now, please, go on with that," and she pointed to the pipe in his hand which he had let go out in her presence, "and tell me everything. Everything from the time you left us."

Obedient to her orders and subject to no evesdropping by the discreet Jupiter--who, having been told by Julian where the rivulet was, had conducted the two fresh horses there and was now seated on the bank crooning a mournful ditty which, the former thought, might have been sung by some African sorcerer to his barbaric ancestors--he did tell her everything. He omitted nothing, from the finding of the coral-snake in his bed to his last meeting with Sebastian half an hour ago.

While the girl sitting there by his side, her pure clear eyes sometimes fixed on the narrator's face and sometimes gazing meditatively on the sapphire Caribbean sparkling a mile off in front of them, listened to and drank in and weighed every word.

"Lieutenant Ritherdon," she said, when he had concluded, and placing her hand boldly, and without any absurd false shame, upon his sleeve, "you must give me a promise--a solemn promise--that you will never go back to that place again."

"But!" he exclaimed startled, "I must go back. I cannot leave and give up my quest like that. And," he added, a little gravely, "remember I am a sailor, an officer. I cannot allow myself to be frightened away from my search in such a manner."

"Not for----" she began interrupting.

"Not for what?" he asked eagerly, feeling that if she said, "not for my sake?" he must comply.

"Not for your life? Its safety? Not for that?" she concluded, almost to his disappointment. "May you not retreat to preserve your life?"

"No," he answered a moment later. "No, not even for that. For my own self-respect, my own self-esteem I must not do so. Miss Spranger," he continued, speaking almost rapidly now, "I know well enough that I shall do no good there; I have come to understand at last that I shall never discover the truth of the matter. Yet I do believe all the same that George Ritherdon was my uncle, that Charles Ritherdon was my father, that Sebastian Ritherdon is a--well, that there is some tricking, some knavery in it all. But," he continued bitterly, "the trickery has been well played, marvellously well managed, and I shall never unearth the method by which it has been done."

"Yet, thinking this, you will not retreat! You will jeopardize your life?"

"I have begun," he said, "and I cannot retreat, short of absolute, decisive failure. Of certain failure! And, oh! you must see why, you must understand why, I can not--it is because my life is in jeopardy that I cannot do so. I embarked on this quest expecting to find no difficulties, no obstacles in my way; I came to this country and, at once, I learned that my appearance here, at Desolada, meant deadly peril to me. And, because of that deadly peril, I must, I will, go on. I will not draw back; nor be frightened by any danger. If I did I should hate myself forever afterwards; I should know myself unworthy to ever wear her Majesty's uniform again. I will never draw back," he repeated emphatically, "while the danger continues to exist."

As he had spoken, Julian Ritherdon--the bright, cheery Englishman, full of joke and quip, had disappeared: in his place had come another Julian--the Englishman of stern determination, of iron nerve; the man who, because peril stared him in the face and environed his every footstep, was resolute to never retreat before that danger.

While she, the girl sitting by his side, her eyes beaming with admiration (although he did not see them), knew that, as he had said, so he would do. This man--fair, young, good-looking, and _insouciant_--was, beneath all that his intercourse with the world and society had shaped him into being, as firm as steel, as solid as a rock.

What could she answer in return?

"If you are so determined," she said now, controlling her voice for fear that, through it, she should betray her admiration for his strength and courage, "you will, at least take every measure for your self-preservation. Write every day, as you have said you will in your letter to my father, be ever on your guard--by night and day. Oh!" she went on, thrusting her hands through the beautiful hair from which she had removed her large Panama hat for coolness while in the shade, "I sicken with apprehension when I think of you alone in that mournful, mysterious house."

"You need not," he said, and now he too ventured to touch her sleeve as she had previously touched his--"you need not do so. Remember, it is man to man at the worst; Sebastian Ritherdon--if he is Sebastian Ritherdon--against Julian. And I, at least, am used to facing risks and dangers. It is my trade."

"No," she answered, almost with a shudder, while her lustrous eyes expressed something that was very nearly, if not quite, horror--"no! it is not. It is a man and a woman--and that a crafty, scheming woman--against a man. Against you. Lieutenant Ritherdon," she cried, "can you doubt who--who----"

"Hush," he said, "hush. Not yet. Let us judge no one yet. Though I--believe me--_I_ doubt nothing. _I_, too, can understand. But," he went on a little more lightly now, "remember, Sebastian is not the only one possessed of a female auxiliary, of female support. Remember, I have Zara."

"Zara," she repeated meditatively, "Zara. The girl with whom he amused himself by making believe that he loved her; made her believe that, when this precious Madame Carmaux should be removed, she might reign over his house as his wife."

"Did he do that?"

"He did. If all accounts are true he led her to believe he loved her until he thought another woman--a woman who would not have let him serve her as a groom--might look favourably on his pretensions."

"Therefore," said Julian, ignoring the latter part of her remark, though understanding not only it, but the deep contempt of her tone, "therefore, now she hates him. May she not be a powerful ally of mine, in consequence. That is, if she does hate him, as my other ally--Paz--says."

"Yes, yes," Beatrix said, still musing, still reflectively. "Yet, if so, why those mysterious visits to your bedroom window, why that haunting the neighbourhood of your room at midnight?"

"I understand those visits now, I think I understand them, since the episode of the coral snake. I believe she was constituting herself a watch, a guard over me. That she knows much--that--that she suspects more. That she will at the worst, if it comes, help me to--to thwart him."

"Ah! if it were so. If I could believe it."

"And Paz, too. Sebastian told me to-day that Paz has enemies. Well! doubtless he has--only, I would rather be Paz than one of those enemies. You would think so yourself if you had seen the blaze of the man's eyes, the look upon his face, when that shot was fired, and, later, when he showed me the rifle which he had found close by the spot. No; I should not like to be one of Paz's enemies nor--a false lover of Zara's."

"If I could feel as confident as you!" Beatrix exclaimed. "Oh! if I could. Then--then--" but she could find no ending for her sentence.