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----"