CHAPTER XXXIII
MADAME CARMAUX TELLS ALL
Calmly-almost contemptuously-as though she were in truth mistress of Desolada and a woman who conferred honour upon those who followed her, instead of one who was in actual fact their prisoner, Madame Carmaux led the way to that parlour wherein she had promised to divulge all; to reveal the secret of how another man had usurped for so long the place and position which rightfully belonged to Julian Ritherdon.
And they who followed her, observing how rigid, how masklike were the handsome features; how the soft, dark eyes gleamed now with a hard, determined look, knew that as she had said, so she would do; so she would perform. They recognised that she would not falter in her task, she deeming that what she divulged would tell in Sebastian's favour.
Still firm and calm, therefore, and still as though she were the owner of that house which she had ruled for so long with absolute sway, she motioned to Julian and Mr. Spranger to be seated-while standing before them enveloped in the long loose robe of soft black material in which she had been clad, and with the lace hood thrown back from her head and setting free the dark masses of hair which had always been one of her greatest beauties-hair in which there was scarcely, even now, a streak of white.
"It is," she murmured, when the lights had been brought, "for Sebastian's sake, if he still lives. And to prove to you that he is innocent-was innocent until almost the day when he, that other, came here," and her glance fell on Julian-"that I tell you all which I am about to do. Also, that I tell you how I alone am the guilty one."
Her eyes resting on those of Julian and Mr. Spranger, they both signified by a look that they were prepared to hear all she might have to narrate. Then, ere she began the recital she was about to make, she said:
"Yet, if you desire more witnesses, call them in. Let them hear, too. I care neither for what they may think of me, nor what testimony they may bear against me in the future. Call in whom you will."
For a moment the two men before her looked into each other's faces; then Mr. Spranger said:
"Perhaps it would be as well to have another witness, especially as Mr. Ritherdon is the most interested person. My daughter is outside, if-if your story contains nothing she may not hear-"
"It contains nothing," Madame Carmaux answered, there being a tone of contempt in it which she did not endeavour to veil, "but the story of a crime, a fraud, worked out by a deserted, heartbroken woman. Call her in."
Then, summoned by Julian, Beatrix entered the room, and, taking a seat between her father and her lover, was an ear-witness to all that the other woman had to tell.
For a moment it seemed as if Madame Carmaux scarce knew how to commence; for a few moments she stood before them, her eyes sometimes cast down upon the floor, sometimes seeking theirs. Then, suddenly, she said:
"That narrative which George Ritherdon wrote in England when he was dying, and sent to his brother Charles, who was himself close to his end, was true."
"It was true!" whispered Julian, repeating her words, "I knew it was! I was sure of it! Yet how-how-was the deception accomplished?"
"He loved me," madame exclaimed, she hardly, as it seemed, hearing or heeding Julian's remark. "Charles loved me-till he saw her, Isobel Leigh. And I-I-well, I had never loved any other man. I did not know what love was till I saw him. Then-then-he-what need to seek for easy words-he jilted me, and, in despair, I married Carmaux on the day that he married her. It seemed to my distracted heart that by doing so I might more effectually erase his memory from my mind forever. And my son was born but a week or so before you, Julian Ritherdon, were born."
"Sebastian. Not a daughter?" Julian said.
"Yes; Sebastian; not a daughter. Yet, later, when it was necessary that my child should be registered, I recorded the birth as that of a daughter, and at the same time I registered that daughter's death. Later, you will understand why it was necessary that any child of mine should disappear out of existence, and also why, above all things, it must never be known that I had a son."
Again Julian looked in Mr. Spranger's eyes, and Mr. Spranger into his, their glances telling each other plainly that, even now, they thought they began to understand.
"I heard," Madame Carmaux went on, "that she too had borne a son, and in some strange, heartbroken excitement that took possession of me, I determined to go and see Charles Ritherdon, to show him my child, to prove to him-as I thought it would do-that if he who had forgotten me was happy in marriage, so, too, was I. Happy! oh, my God! However, no matter for my happiness-I went.
"I arrived here late at night, and I found him almost distracted. His wife was dying: she could not live, they said; how was the child to live without her? Then I promised that, if he would let me stay on at Desolada, I would be as much a mother to that child as to my own, that I would forget his cruelty to me, that I would forgive.
"'Come,' he said to me, on hearing this, 'come and see them-come.' And I went with him to the room where she was, where you were," and she looked at Julian.
"I went to that room," she continued, "with every honest feeling in my heart that a woman who had sworn to condone a man's past faithlessness could have; before Heaven I swear that I went to that room resolved to be what I had said, a second mother to you. I went with pity in my heart for the poor dying woman-the woman who had never really loved her husband, but, instead, had loved his brother. For, as you know well enough, she had been forced to jilt George Ritherdon even as Charles had jilted me. I went to that room and then-then we learned that she was dead. But, also, we learned something else. There was no child by her side. It was gone. Its place was empty."
"I begin to understand," murmured Julian, while Beatrix and her father showed by their expression that to them also a glimmering of light was coming.
"Yet," said Madame Carmaux, "scarcely can you understand-scarcely dream of-the temptation that fell in my way. In a moment, at the instant that Charles Ritherdon saw that his child was missing, he cried, 'This is my brothers doing! It is he who has stolen it. To murder it, to be avenged on me for having won his future wife from him. I know it.' And, distractedly, he raved again and again that it was his brother's doing. In vain I tried to pacify him, saying that his brother was far away in the States. To my astonishment he told me that, on the contrary, he was here, close at hand, if not even now lurking in the plantation of Desolada, or at Belize.
"'I saw him there yesterday,' he cried, 'I saw him with my own eyes. Now I understand what took him there. It was to steal my child-to murder it. Great God! to thereby become my heir.'
"As he spoke there came a footfall in the passage; some one was coming. Perhaps the nurse returning; perhaps, also, if George Ritherdon had only been there a short time before us, she did not know that the child had been kidnapped. 'And if she does not know, then no one else can know,' he cried. 'While,' he said, 'if that unutterable villain, George, thinks to profit by this theft, I will thwart him. He may rob me of my child, he may murder the poor innocent babe-but he at least shall never be my heir,' and as he spoke his eyes fell on my child in my arms. 'Cover it up,' he whispered, 'show its face only, otherwise the clothes it wears will betray it. Cover it up.'"
"If this is true, the crime was his," whispered Julian.
"That crime was his," said Madame Carmaux, "the rest was mine. But-let me continue. As Charles spoke, the nurse was at the door-a negro woman who died six months afterward-a moment later she was in the room. Yet not before I had had time to whisper a word in his ear, to say, 'If I do this, it is forever? If your child is never found, is mine to remain in its place?'-and with a glance he seemed to answer, 'Yes.'
"None ever knew of that substitution, no living soul ever knew that the child growing up as his, its birth registered by him at Belize as his, was, in truth, mine. Not one living soul. Nor were you ever heard of again. We agreed to believe that you had been made away with. Yet, as time went on, Charles Ritherdon seemed to repent of what he had done; he came to think that, after all, his brother might not have been the thief, or, being so, that he had not slain the child; to also think that perhaps some of the half-castes or Indians, on whom he was occasionally hard, might have stolen it out of revenge. And it required all my tears and supplications, all my prayers to him to remember that, had he not been cruelly false to me, it would in truth have been our child which was the rightful heir, which was here-his child and mine! At last he consented-provided that the other-the real child-you-were never heard of again. My son should remain in his son's place, if you never appeared to claim that place.
"Sebastian grew up in utter ignorance of all; he grew up also to resemble strangely the man who was supposed to be his father-perhaps because from the moment I married Monsieur Carmaux it was not his image but that of Charles Ritherdon which was ever in my mind.
"But when George Ritherdon's statement came, and with it the information that you were in existence, Charles determined to tell Sebastian everything. He would have done so, too, but that the illness he was suffering from took a fatal termination almost directly afterward-doubtless from the shock of learning what he did. Yet it made no difference, for the day after his death Sebastian found the paper and so discovered all."
"He knew then," said Julian-though as he spoke his voice was not harsh, he recognising how cruel had been this woman's lot from the first, and how doubly cruel must have been the blow which fell on her when, after twenty-five years of possession, the son whom she had loved so, and had schemed so for, was about to be dispossessed-"he knew then who I was when we first met, and-and-God forgive him! – from that moment commenced to plot my death."
"No!" cried Madame Carmaux. "No! Have I not said that he was innocent? It was I-I-who plotted-alas! he was my son. Will not a mother do all for her only child? It was I who changed the horses in their stalls, putting his, which none but he could ride in safety, in place of the sure-footed one he had destined for you; it was I-God help and pardon me! who put the coral snake in your bed-I-I-who did the rest you know of."
"And did you, too, procure the Indians who were to take me out to sea and drown me?" asked Julian with a doubtful glance at her. "Surely not. There was a man's hand in that. And it was Sebastian who was advancing along the passage when Zara's knife struck him down."
"By instigation I did it," Madame Carmaux cried, determined to the last to shield the son she still hoped to meet again in this world-"the suggestion, the plot was mine alone. While because he was weak, because from the first he has ever yielded to me, he yielded now. Spare him!" she cried, and flung herself upon her knees before that listening trio, her calmness, her contemptuousness, vanished now. "Spare him, and do with me what you will."
So the story was told, so the discovery of all was made at last. Julian knew now upon how simple a thing-the fact of Madame Carmaux having taken that strange determination to go and see the man who had cast her off and jilted her, carrying her child in her arms-the whole mystery had rested. But what he never knew was that, had Zara lived, she could have also told him all. For in the savage girl's love for the man, who in his turn had treated her badly, and in her determination to be ever watching over him, she had long since overheard scraps of conversation which had revealed the secret to her in the same way as they had done to Paz.
And it was to her, and her determination to prevent Sebastian from committing any crime by which his life or his liberty might become imperilled, that Julian owed the fact that he had not long since died by the hand of Madame Carmaux-if not by that of Sebastian.
CHAPTER XXXIV
CONTENTMENT
"And on her lover's arm she leaned,
And 'round her waist she felt it fold."
Some two or three months of Julian's leave remained to expire at the time when the foregoing explanation had taken place, and perhaps nothing which had occurred since the day when he first set foot in British Honduras had caused him more perplexity than his present deliberations as to how to make the best of that period.
For now he knew that he had done with the colony for ever; he had achieved that for which he had come to it; he had proved the truth of George Ritherdon's statement up to the hilt, and-in so far as obtaining the possession of that which was undoubtedly his-well! the law would soon take steps to enable him to do so.
Only, when he told himself that he had done with the colony, when he reflected that henceforth his foot would never tread on its earth more, he had also to tell himself that he could alone consent to sever his connection with it by also taking away with him the most precious thing it contained in his eyes-Beatrix Spranger.
"For," he said to that young lady, as once more they sat in the garden at "Floresta," with about and around them all the surroundings that he had learned to know so well and to recall during many of the gloomy nights and days he had spent at Desolada-the great shade palms, the gorgeous flamboyants and delicate oleander blossoms, as well as the despairing looking and lugubrious monkey-"for, darling, I cannot go without you. If I were to do so, Heaven alone knows when I could return to claim you; and, also, I cannot wait. Sweetheart, you too must sail for England with me, and it must be as Mrs. Ritherdon."
He said the same thing often. Indeed at night, which is-as those acquainted with such matters tell us-the period when young ladies pass in review the principal events that have happened to them during the day, Beatrix used to consider, or rather to calculate, that he made the same remark about twenty times daily. While, since, loving and gentle as she was, she was also possessed of a considerable amount of feminine perspicacity, she supposed that he reiterated the phrase upon the principle that the constant drop of water which falls upon a stone will at last wear it away.
"Though," the girl would say to herself in those soft hours of maiden meditation, "he need not fear. He cannot but think that his longing is also shared by me."
Aloud, however, when once more he repeated what had become almost a set phrase, she said:
"You know that you have taken an unfair advantage of me. Indeed, though it was only by chance, you have put me to terrible mortification. You overheard my avowal to that unhappy girl, my avowal that-that-I loved you." And Beatrix blushed most beautifully as she softly uttered the words. "Think what an avowal it was. To be made by a woman for a man who had never asked for her love."
"Had he not," Julian said, "had he not, Beatrix? Never asked for that love on one happy day spent alone by that woman's side, when he confided everything to her that bore upon his presence here; and she, full of soft and gentle sympathy, told him all her fears and anxiety for the risks he might run. And, did he not ask for that love on the night which followed that day, as they rode back to Belize beneath the stars?"
And now his eyes were gazing into hers with a look of love which no woman could doubt, even though no other man had ever looked at her so before; while since loverlike, they were sitting close together, his arm stole round her waist.
To the inexperienced-the present narrator included-it may be permitted to wonder how lovers learn to do these things as well as how they discover, too, the efficacy of such subtle tenderness; yet one is told that they are done, and that the success thereof is indisputable.
Nor, with Beatrix, did either the look of love or the soft environment of his arm fail in their effort, as may be judged from her answer to his whispered question, "It shall be, shall it not, darling?"
"Yes," she murmured, blushing again and more deeply. "Yes. If father permits."
And so Julian's love grew toward a triumphant termination; yet still there were other matters to be seen to and arranged ere he, with his wife by his side, should quit the colony forever. One thing, however, it transpired, would require little trouble in arranging; namely, the property of Desolada, when the law should put him in possession of it, since, on investigation being made after the disappearance of Sebastian, it was found to be so heavily mortgaged that to pay off the loans upon it would leave Julian without any capital whatever; while, at the same time, he would be saddled with a possession in a country with which he had nothing in common. Of what had become of the money left by Charles Ritherdon at his death (and it had been a substantial sum) or of what had become of the other sums borrowed on Desolada, there was no one to inform them.
Sebastian had disappeared, was undoubtedly gone forever-and of his fate there could be little doubt. Certainly there could be no doubt in the minds of either Beatrix or Julian or of Mr. Spranger, who had of course been made acquainted with the substitution of Sebastian for Julian. Zara also had disappeared, and Madame Carmaux had-escaped.
How she had done it no one ever knew, but in the morning which followed that eventful night when she made her confession, she was missing from her room, at the door of which one of the constabulary had been set as a guard. That she should be able so to evade those who were passing the night at Desolada was easily to be comprehended when, the next day, her room was examined; they understood how she might have passed on to the balcony outside that room, have traversed it for some distance, and then have made her way into some other apartment, and so from that have descended the great stairs in the darkness, and stolen away into the plantations. At any rate, whether these surmises were correct or not, she was gone, and she has never since been seen in British Honduras.
Yet one planter, who makes frequent journeys to New Orleans in connection with his imports and exports, declares that only a few months ago he saw her in Lafayette Square in that city. It was at the time when the terrible scourge of Louisiana, the yellow fever, is most dreaded, and even as the planter entered the Square he saw a man lying prostrate on the ground, while afar off from him, because of fear of the infection, yet regarding him with a gaping curiosity, was a crowd of negroes and whites. Then, still watching the scene, this gentleman saw a woman clad in the garb of a Nun of Calvary, who approached the prostrate man, and, while calling on those near to assist him, ministered to his wants in so far as she could. And, her veil falling aside, the planter declared that he saw plainly the face of the woman who, in British Honduras, had been known for a quarter of a century as Miriam Carmaux. He also recognized her voice.
If such were the case, if, at last, that tempestuous soul-the soul of a woman who, in her earlier days, had had meted out to her a more cruel fate than falls to the lot of most women-if at last the erring woman who had been driven to fraud and crime by the love she bore her child-had found calm, if not peace, beneath that holy garb, perhaps those who have heard her story may be disposed to think of her without harshness. Such was the case with Julian Ritherdon, who, as she made her confession, forgave her for all that she had attempted against him-since she was scarcely a greater sinner than his own father, who had countenanced the fraud she perpetrated, or his uncle, whose early vindictiveness led to that fraud. Such, also, was the case with Beatrix, from whose gentle eyes fell tears as she listened to the narrative told by the unhappy woman while she was yet uncertain of the doom of the son for whom she had so long schemed and plotted. And so let it be with others. If she had erred, so also she had suffered. And, by suffering, is atonement made.
You could not have witnessed, perhaps, a brighter scene than that which took place on a clear October morning in the handsome Gothic church of Belize, when Julian Ritherdon and Beatrix Spranger became man and wife.
Space has not permitted for the introduction of the reader to several other sweet young English maidens whose parents' affairs have led to their residences in the colony; yet such maidens there are in Honduras-as the inquiring traveller may see for himself, if he chooses-and of these fair exiles some were, this morning, bridesmaids. They, you may be sure, lent brightness and brilliancy to the scene, and so did the uniforms of several young officers of her Majesty's navy, these gentlemen having been impressed into the ceremony For, as luck would have it, not a week before, H.M.S. Cerberus (twin-screw cruiser, first-class, armoured) had anchored, off Belize, and, as those acquainted with the Royal navy are aware, no officer of that noble service can come into contact with any ship belonging to it (as Julian Ritherdon soon did) without finding therein old friends and comrades. Be very sure also, therefore, that George Hope, George Potter, John Hamilton, that most illustrious of naval doctors, "Jock" Lyons, and many others dear to friends both in and out of the service, all came ashore in the bravery of their full dress-epaulettes, cocked hats, and so forth-while the Padré "stood by" to lend a hand to the local clergyman in performing the ceremony. While, too, the path from the churchyard gates to the church door was lined by bluejackets who, of course, were here clad in their "whites" and straw hats.
But, because rumour ever runneth swift of foot, even in so small a colony as this-where, naturally, its feet have not so much ground to cover-and in so small a capital as Belize, with its six thousand inhabitants, the church was also filled with many others drawn from the various races, mixed and pure, who dwell therein. For, by now, there was scarcely a person in either the colony or capital to whose ears there had not come the news that the handsome young officer who was in a few moments to become the husband of Miss Spranger, was, in truth, the rightful owner of Desolada. Likewise, all knew that Sebastian had never been that owner, but that he was the son of Carmaux, who had perished by the fangs of the tommy-goff, and of the dark, mysterious beauty who had come among them as Miriam Gardelle and had married him. And they knew, too, that this marriage was to be the reward and crown of dangers run by Julian, of more than one attempt upon his life, as well as that it was the outcome of a deep fraud perpetrated and kept dark for many years.
Paz was there, too, his eyes glistening with rapture at the sound of the Wedding March, his weird soul being ever stirred by music; so, also, was Monsieur Lemaire, grave, dignified, and calm as became a French gentleman in exile, and with, about him as ever, that flavour of one who ought by right to have walked in the gardens of Versailles two hundred years ago, and have basked in the smiles of the Great Monarch.
And so they were married, nor can it be doubted that they will live happy ever afterward-to use the sweet, old-time expression of the storybooks of our infancy. Married-she given away by her father; he supported by his oldest friend in the Cerberus-and both passing happy! Married, and going forth along the path of life, he most probably to distinction in his calling, she to the duties of an honest English wife. Married and happy. What more was needed?
"I come," he said to her that afternoon, when already the steamer was leaving Honduras far astern, and they were travelling by the new route toward Kingstown on their road to England-"I came to Honduras to find perhaps a father, perhaps an inheritance. Neither was to be granted to me, but, instead, something five thousand times more precious-a wife five thousand times more dear than any parent or any possession."
"And," she asked, her pure, earnest eyes gazing into his, "you are contented? You are sure that that will make you happy?"
To which he replied-as-well! as, perhaps-if a man-you would have replied yourself.