A Bitter Heritage: A Modern Story of Love and Adventure

by John Bloundelle-Burton

"Yet," thought Julian, "she cannot quit her room. It is strange. Strange, too, that she should be up so late. It must be two o'clock, at least."

With a glance from his eye towards the lower part of the window, which still he could see from the position in which he lay, he observed that the mysterious watcher outside was gone. Those eyes, at least, no longer gleamed from low down by the floor; through the slats of the blind he perceived that the spot where they had lately been was now a void. The watcher was gone! But what of the one who had been watched, of the lurking creature that was near his bed, and that had gasped with fear even as he turned over on the sofa? What of that? Well, it was still there. He was alone with it.

His thumb drew back the trigger of the revolver, the well-known click was heard--the click which can never be disguised or silenced. A click that many a man has listened to with mortal agony and terror of soul, knowing that it sounds his knell. Then again on his ears there fell that gasp, that indrawn catching of the breath, which told of a terrified object close by his side.

And it could not be Sebastian who had uttered it; Sebastian, the one person alone who had reason to meditate the worst towards him that one human being can desire for another. It could not be he. For was he not still singing boisterously below in the front of the house? It could not be he. And, Julian reflected, he was about to take a life, the life of some one whom he himself did not know, of some one whose presence in his room even at night, at such an hour of the night, might yet be capable of explanation; that might not, in absolute fact, bode evil to him. Suppose, that after all, it should be Zara, and that again she was there for some purpose of serving his interest as he had told Beatrix he believed she had been more than once before. Suppose that, and that now he should fire and kill her! How would he feel then! What would his remorse be?

No! He would not do it.

Instead, therefore, he whispered the words, "Zara, what is it?"

Even as he did so, even as he spoke, he noticed that a change had come over the room. It was quite dark now; the moon's rays no longer gleamed in; the moon itself was gone, obscured. What had happened? In a moment the question was answered.

Upon the balcony outside there came a rattle as though a deluge of small stones had been hurled down upon it, and he, who knew well what the violence of tropical storms is, recognized that one had broken over Desolada, and that the rain, if not hail, was descending in a deluge. A moment later there came, too, a flash of purple, gleaming lightning which was gone before he could turn his eyes into the quarter of the room where lurked the thing that he suspected, felt sure was there. Then, over all, there burst the roar of the thunder from above, reverberating, pealing all around, rumbling, and reechoing a moment later in the Cockscomb Mountains.

"Zara!" he called louder now, so as to make himself heard above the din of the storm--"Zara, why do you not answer me? I mean you no harm."

But, if amid this tumult any answer was given, he did not hear it. For now the crash of the thunder, the downpour of the rain, the screaming of the parrots, and the demoniacal howlings of the baboons farther away, served to create such a turmoil that scarcely could the cry of a human voice be heard above it all.