CHAPTER XX.

LOVE'S BLOSSOM.

A fortnight had elapsed since that meeting on the palm-clad knoll, and Julian was still an inmate of Desolada. But each day as it came and went--while it only served to intensify his certainty that some strange trickery had been practised at the time when he was gone and when George Ritherdon had stolen him from his dying, or dead, mother's side--served also to convince him that he would never find out the manner in which the deceit had been practised, nor unravel the clue to that deceit. He had, too, almost decided to take his farewell of Desolada and its inmates, to shake the dust of the place off his shoes, and to abandon any idea of endeavouring to obtain further corroboration of his uncle's statement.

For he had come to believe, to fear, that no corroboration was to be found. Every one in British Honduras regarded Sebastian as the undoubted child and absolute heir of the late Charles Ritherdon, while, in addition, there were still scores of persons alive, black and white and half-caste, who remembered the birth of the boy, though not one individual could be discovered who had heard even a whisper of any kidnapping having ever taken place. Once, Julian had thought that a journey to New Orleans and a verification of the copy of his baptismal certificate with the original might be of some use, but on reflection he had decided that this, as against the certificate of Sebastian's baptism in Belize, would be of no help whatever.

"It is indeed a dead wall, a solid rock, against which I am pushing, as Mr. Spranger said," he muttered to himself again and again. "And it is too firm for me. I shall have to retreat--not because I fear my foe, but because that foe has no tangible shape against which to contend."

He had not returned to Desolada on the night that followed his meeting with, first, Sebastian on the knoll and then with Beatrix; he making his appearance at that place about dawn on the following morning. The reason whereof was, that, after passing the whole day with Miss Spranger on that spot (the lunch she had brought with her being amply sufficient to provide an afternoon, or evening, meal), he had insisted on escorting her back to her father's house.

At first she protested against his doing this, she declaring that Jupiter was quite sufficient cavalier for her, but he would take no denial and was firm in his resolve to do so. He did not tell her, though (as perhaps, there was no necessity for him to do, since, if all accounts are true, young ladies are very apt at discovering the inward workings of those whom they like and by whom they are liked), that he regarded this opportunity as a most fortuitous one, and, as such, not to be missed. Who is there amongst us all who, given youth and strength and the near presence of a woman whom we are fast beginning to love with our whole heart, would not sacrifice a night's rest to ride a score of miles by her side? Not one who is worthy to win that woman's love!

So through the tropical night--where high above them blazed the constellations of the Southern Crown, the Peacock, and the Archer, with their incandescentlike glow--those two rode side by side; the negro on ahead and casting many a glance of caution around at bush and shrub and clump of palm and mangrove. Of love they did not speak, for a sufficient reason; each knew that it was growing and blossoming in the other's heart--that it was there! The man's love there--in his heart, not only because of the girl's winsome beauty; but born and created also by the knowledge that she went hand in hand with him in all that he was endeavouring to accomplish; the woman's love engendered by her recognition of his bravery and strength of character. If she had not come to love him before, she did so when he exclaimed that, because the danger was near to and threatening him, he would never desist from the task on which he had embarked.

But love often testifies its existence otherwise than in words, and it did so now--not only in the subdued tones of their voices as they fell on the luscious sultry air of the night, but also in the understanding which they came to as to how they should be in constant communication with each other in the future, so that, if aught of evil befell Julian at Desolada, Beatrix might not be long unaware of the evil.

"Perhaps," Julian said, as now they were drawing near Belize--"perhaps it will not be necessary that I should apprise you each day of my safety, of the fact that everything is all right with me. Therefore----"

"I must know frequently! hear often," Beatrix said, turning her eyes on him. "I must. Oh! Mr. Ritherdon, forty-eight hours will appear an eternity to me, knowing, as I shall know, that you are in that dreadful house. Alone, too, and with none to help you. What may they not attempt against you next!"

"Whatever they attempt," he replied, "will, I believe, be thwarted. I take Paz and Zara--especially Zara, now that you tell me she is a jilted woman--against Sebastian and Madame Carmaux. But, to return to my communications with you."

"Yes," she said, with an inward catching of her breath--"yes, your communications with me.

"Let it be this way. If you do not hear from me at the end of every forty-eight hours, then begin to think that things may be going wrong with me; while if, at the end of a second forty-eight hours, you have still heard nothing from me, well! consider that they have gone very wrong indeed. Shall it be like that?"

"Oh!" the girl exclaimed with almost a gasp, "I am appalled. Appalled even at the thought that such an arrangement, such precautions, should have to be made."

"Of course, they may not be necessary," he said; "after all, we may be misjudging Sebastian."

"We are not," she answered emphatically. "I feel it; I know it. I mistrust that man--I have always disliked him. I feel as sure as it is possible to be that he meditates harm to you. And--and--" she almost sobbed, "what is to be done if the second forty-eight hours have passed, and still I have heard nothing from or of you."

"Then," he said with a light laugh--"then I think I should warn some of those gentry whom we have seen loafing about Belize in a light and tasteful uniform--the constabulary, aren't they?--that a little visit to Desolada might be useful."

"Oh!" Beatrix cried again now, "don't make a joke of it, Mr. Ritherdon! Don't, pray don't. You cannot understand how I feel, nor what my fears are. If four days went by and I heard no tidings of you, I should begin to think that--that----"

"No," he said, interrupting her. "No. Don't think that! Whatever Sebastian may suspect me of knowing, he would not do what you imagine. He would not----"

"Kill you, you would say! Why, then, should he mount you on that horse? And--and was--there no intention of killing you when the coral snake was found in your bed--a deadly, venomous reptile, whose bite is always fatal within the hour--nor when that shot was fired at you?"

"Is there not a chance," Julian said now, asking a question instead of answering one, "that, after all, we are entirely on a wrong tack, granting even that Sebastian is in a false position--a position that by right is mine?"

"What can you mean? How can we be on a false tack?"

"In this way. Even should it be as I suggest, namely, that he is--well, the wrong man, how is it possible that he should be aware of it; above all, how is it possible that he should know that I am aware of it? He has been at Desolada, and held the position of heir to--to--to my father ever since he was a boy, a baby. If wrong has been done, he was not and could not be the doer of it. Therefore, why should he suspect me of being the right man, and consequently wish to injure me?"

"Surely the answer is clear enough," Beatrix replied. "However innocent he may once have been of all knowledge of a wrong having been done, he possesses that knowledge now--in some way. And," the girl went on, turning her face towards him as she spoke, so that he could see her features plainly in the starlight, "he knows that it is to you it has been done. Would not that suffice to make him meditate harm to you?"

"Yet, granting this, how--how can it be? How can he have discovered the wrongdoing. A wrongdoing that his father--his supposed father--died without suspecting."

"Yes, that is it; that is what puzzles me more than all else," Beatrix exclaimed, "that Mr. Ritherdon should have died without suspecting.' That is it. It is indeed marvellous that he could have been imposed upon from first to last."

Then for a time they rode on in silence, each deep in their own thoughts: a silence broken at last by Beatrix saying--

"Whatever the secret is, I am convinced that one other person knows it besides himself."

"Madame Carmaux?"

"Yes, Madame Carmaux. If we could find out what her influence over him is, or rather what makes her so strong an ally of his, then I feel sure that all would be as clear as day."

These conversations caused Julian ample food for meditation as he rode back towards Desolada in the coolness of the dawn--a roseate and primrose hued dawn--after having left Beatrix Spranger at her father's house.

What was Madame Carmaux's influence over Sebastian? Why was she so strong an ally of his? And for answer to his self-communings, he could find only one. The answer that this woman, who had been bereft in one short year of the husband she had hurriedly espoused in her bitterness of desolation as well as of the little infant daughter who had come as a solace to her misery, had transferred all the affection left in her heart to the boy she found at Desolada; no matter whom that boy might be.

An affection that year following year had caused to ripen until, at last, her very existence had become bound up in his. This, combined with the fact that Desolada had been her home, and that home a comfortable one, over which she had ruled as mistress for so many years, was the only answer he could find.

All was very still as he rode into the back part of the mansion where the stables were--for it was now but little after four o'clock, and consequently there was hardly daylight yet--when, unsaddling the mustang himself, he closed the stable door again and prepared to make his way into the house. This was easy enough to do, since, in such a climate, windows were never closed at night, and, beyond the persianas, which could easily be lifted aside, there was no bar to any one's entrance.

Yet early as it was or, as it should be said, perhaps, far advanced as the night was, Sebastian had not yet sought his bed. Instead, he seemed to have decided on taking whatever rest he might require in the great saloon in which he seemed to pass the principal part of his time when at home. He was asleep now in the large Singapore chair he always sat in--it being inside the room at this time instead of outside on the veranda--possibly for fear of any night dews that--even in this climate--will sometimes arise; he being near the table on which was the never-failing bottle of Bourbon whisky. "The young man's companion," as Sebastian had more than once hilariously termed it.

But that was not the only bottle, the only liquid, on the table by his side.

For there stood also by Sebastian's hand a stumpy, neckless bottle which looked as if it might once have been part of the stock-in-trade of some chemist's shop--a bottle which was half full of a liquid of the faintest amber or hay-colour. And, to his astonishment, he likewise saw standing on the table a small retort, a thing he had never supposed was likely to be known to Sebastian.

"Well!" he thought to himself as he moved slowly along the balcony to the open door, not being desirous of waking the sleeping man, "you are indeed a strange man, if 'strange' is the word to apply to you. I wonder what you are dabbling in chemistry for now? Probably no good!"