John Bloundelle-Burton

“ So, gradually, they came to think that never in this world would Walter Cundall's death be avenged, and gradually their thoughts turned to other things, to the happy life that seemed before them, and to the way in which that life should be spent. Under the fir trees they would sit and plan how the vast fortune that the dead man had left should best be laid out, how an almshouse bearing his name should be erected at Occleve Chase, and how a large charity, also in his name, should be endowed in London. And even then, they knew that but a drop of his wealth would be spent ”

“ Smerdon said, with a bitter sneer, "because you are not quite sure yet of your own right to it. You would have to prove that there was a male child of this marriage, and then that you were he. That would not be so easy, I imagine."
"There is nothing would be more easy. I have every proof of my birth and my identity."
"And you intend to use them to break off my marriage with Ida Raughton," Gervase Occleve said.
"For God's sake do not misunderstand me!" Cundall answered. "I simply want you to tell her and her father all this, and be married as Gervase Occleve. ”

“ The day dawned upon the plateau; a few struggling rays of the sun illuminated the great glacier above and turned its dead gray snow and ice into a pure, warm white, while the mists rolled away from the high mountains keeping watch above; and below on the smaller glacier, and at the edge of a yawning crevasse, lay the body of Philip Smerdon.
Two guides, proceeding over the pass to meet a party of mountain climbers, reached the plateau at dawn, and sitting down upon the stone to eat a piece of bread and take a draught of cold coffee, saw his knapsack lying beside it. ”

“ Ida answered. "It is only in romances, and in some few cases of real life, that a murder planned as this one must have been is punished. Yet, so long as we live, we will pray that some day his wicked assassin may be discovered."
"Do you still think," Penlyn asked, "that the figure which you saw in your dream was known to you in actual life? Do you think that if the murderer is ever found you will remember that you have known him?" ”

“ If by the detectives you mean Dobson, the heavy man, he will not assist me, and of the lawyers I know nothing; and at present I will not tell you when and where I have seen this man. But, sir--but, Lord Penlyn, I know one thing. When that man and I once more stand face to face, Walter Cundall, who shielded me from his uncle's wrath, who was as a brother to my beloved Juanna, will be avenged."
"What will you do?" Penlyn asked in an almost awestruck whisper. "You will not take the law into your own hands and kill him?" ”

“ Had he been the murderer he would never have revealed himself, would never have allowed it to be known that he was Corot, the man against whom circumstances had looked so black. And Cundall's letter was sufficient to show that what the Señor had told him, about the friendship that had existed between them, was true.
"You must know more than any of us, Señor Guffanta, as no doubt you do--to inspire you with such confidence of finding him. Had he any enemy in Honduras, who may now be in England, and have done this deed?"
"To my knowledge, none. He was a man who made friends, not enemies." ”

“ I was born in Honduras, the child of a Spanish lady and of a friend of the old Englishman, Cundall, him from whom your brother's wealth was derived. That friend was a scoundrel, a man who tricked my mother into a marriage with him under a false name, who never was her husband at all. When they had been married, as she thought, for some few years, and when another child, my sister, had been born, she found out the deception, and--she killed him."
"Killed him!" Penlyn exclaimed.
"Yes, dead! We Spaniards brook no dishonour, we never allow a wrong to pass unavenged. ”

“ And one was the friend of the other, he lived with and upon him, he dares not meet me face to face, he evades me! he, he is the murderer. He, Philip Smerdon!"
Stuart sprung to his feet.
"Philip Smerdon!" he exclaimed. "No, no! it cannot be!"
"It is, I say! It is he. Of all others, who but he could have done this deed? Who but he who crept back to Occleve House having in his pocket the keys whereby to enter it, who but he who shuns me because it has been told him that I knew the assassin's face! ”

“ A whispered word sufficed, a direction given by one to the other, and these hardy mountaineers were descending the moraine, digging their sticks deeply into the stones, and gradually working their way skilfully to the glacier.
"Is he dead, Carl?" the one asked of his friend, who stooped over the prostrate form and felt his heart.
"No; he lives. Mein Gott! how has he ever fallen here without instant death? But he must die! See, his bones are all broken!" and as he spoke he lifted Smerdon's arm and touched one of his legs. ”

“ Lord Penlyn had been watching him fixedly as the words fell from his lips, and had noticed the calmness, which seemed like the calmness of despair, that accompanied those words. But there was not, however, the calm that accompanies resignation in them, for they implied that, in this case, he did not intend to follow the usual rule.
"You are right in your idea, Mr. Cundall," he answered. "Surely it is not your intention to struggle against what is always accepted as the case?" ”

“ His conversation, his stories of a varied life in other lands, had had a charm for her that the invertebrate gossip of an ordinary London salon could never possess; but there her liking for him had stopped. And, for she was always frank even to herself, she acknowledged that he was a man whom she regarded with some kind of awe; a man whose knowledge of the world was as much above hers as his wealth was above her father's wealth. ”

“ At dinner, things were more comfortable for Ida. All the visitors knew now that Penlyn and Cundall were certain absentees, and, having once discussed this, they found plenty of other things to talk about. Sir Paul had got all his guests well assorted, even to the melancholy mother, who took comfort from the words of wisdom that dropped from the mouth of the gentleman who wanted to back Flip Flap: "Let the boy have his fling, madam, let him have his fling! There is nothing sickens a man so much of gambling as an unlimited opportunity of indulging in it. ”

“ And in some unexpected moment remembrance will come to me."
"Even though it does, I am afraid the remembrance will hardly bring the murderer to justice," Penlyn said. "A man can scarcely be convicted of a reality by a dream." ”

“ He was an honourable, straightforward man, and, with the exception of being possessed of a somewhat violent and obstinate temper when thwarted in anything he had set his heart upon, had no perceptible failings. Above all he hated secrecy, or secrecy's next-door neighbour, untruth; and it seemed to him that, if not Ida, at least Ida's father, should be told about the discovery he had made.
"With the result," said Philip Smerdon, who was possessed of a cynical nature, "that Miss Raughton would be shocked at hearing of your father's behaviour, and that Sir Paul would laugh at you." ”

“ There was undoubtedly this feeling amongst the group, by whom Cundall was surrounded. Not one of these men, except the boyish member, but was aware that, before he went abroad six months ago, London society was daily expecting to hear that he and the beautiful Ida Raughton were engaged. Now they understood, with that accuracy of perception which men of the world possess in an extraordinary degree, that her recent engagement to Lord Penlyn was unknown to him, and they unanimously determined--though without any agreement between them--that they would not be the first to open his eyes. ”

“ I cannot go on living this life of deception any longer. No! Not even though Ida herself should cast me off." But he thought that though he might bear the world's condemnation, he did not know how he would sustain the loss of her love. Still, the truth should be told even though he should lose her by so telling it; even though the whole world should point to him as a fratricide! ”

“ Cundall had been, it said, a man of superbly generous impulses, one who seemed to delight in doing acts of munificence that other men would never dream of; what more natural a thing for him to do than to leave his great wealth to the very man who had won the woman he had sought for his wife? ”

“ He paused again for a moment and drew a deep breath, and then he proceeded:
"Are you a strong man?" he asked. "Do you think you can bear a sudden shock?"
"I do not know what you mean, nor what you are driving at!" Lord Penlyn said, beginning to lose his temper at these strange hints and questions. "I am sorry for your disappointment, in one way, but it is not in your power, nor in that of any one else, to come between the love Miss Raughton and I bear to each other." ”

“ Christoph. There I will leave you until you can be taken to England."
For the first time since he had seen the avenger of Walter Cundall standing before him, Smerdon smiled bitterly.
"Señor Guffanta," he said, "you are very big and strong--it may well be stronger than I am. But you overrate your strength strangely if you think that any power you possess can make me go with you. I am a murderer--God help and pardon me! ”

“ A lonely and grim road even in the daytime, when a few rays of sunshine manage to penetrate it at midday, when occasionally a party of tourists may be met with, and when sometimes the voice of a goatherd calling his flocks rises from the valley below; but lonelier and more grim, and more black and impenetrable at night, and rarely or ever then trod by human foot. For he who should attempt the passage of the Schwarzweiss Pass at night, unless there were a brilliant moon to light him through its most dangerous parts, would take his life in his own hands. ”

“ Fordyce said. "It will not understand your silence."
"Must everything be made public?" Penlyn asked.
"More or less. One cannot suppress a will dealing with over two millions worth of property. Even though you were willing to destroy it and forfeit your inheritance, it could not be done. If Mr. Stuart and I allowed such a thing as that, we should become criminals."
"Well, so be it! the public must think what they like of me--at least until the murderer is discovered." Then he asked again: "But what clue is there to help us to find him?"
"None that we know of, as yet," Stuart said. ”

“ Walter knew it, and Juanna knew it, and I knew it, but of others there was no one alive who knew it. Yet here, is this big, stupid man, in this big, stupid city (where--por Dios! one may be stabbed to death and none find the slayer) , with the name upon his lips. How has he ever heard it, how has he ever known of it?"
He could find no answer to these questions which he asked himself, and gradually his thoughts went off into another train.
"So, after all," he continued, "his name was not Cundall but Occleve, and he it was who was this lord, this Penlyn, though that other bears the name. ”

“ I wonder who will inherit his enormous wealth?"
"Why?" Penlyn asked, and as he did so it seemed as though, once again, his heart would stop beating.
"Because I should think that that man would be in a difficult position--unless he can prove his utter absence from London at the time."
To Penlyn it appeared that everything pointed in men's minds to the same conclusion, that the heir of Walter Cundall was the guilty man. Every one was of the same opinion, Sir Paul, and the man going to Ascot who seemed like a lawyer; and, as he remembered, he had himself said the same thing to Smerdon. ”

“ As these reflections passed through his mind it occurred to him that, after all, it would not be well for him to disclose to Ida the fact that he and Cundall were brothers--would she not know then that he was the heir, and might she not also then look upon him as the murderer? If that idea should ever come to her mind, she was lost to him for ever. No! Philip Smerdon was right; she must never learn of the fatal relationship between them.
"By-the-way," Sir Paul said, after a pause, "what on earth ever made you go to that hotel in town? Occleve House is comfortable enough, surely!" ”

“ I have blasted my life for ever by one foul deed; let me endure it as a reparation for my crime. But what is my future to be? Am I to live a miserable existence for years in some distant country, frightened at every strange face, dreading to read every newspaper that reaches me for fear that I shall see myself denounced in it, and never knowing a moment's peace or tranquillity? Ah, Gervase! I wonder what you would say if you knew that, for your sake, I have sacrificed every hope of happiness in this world and all my chances of salvation in the next. ”

“ They have been our solicitors for years."
"It is only letting another person into the story, as he probably knows nothing about it," Philip said. "I wouldn't go, if I were you."
"I will, though," Penlyn answered; and he did.
Mr. Bell was a solicitor of the modern type that is so vastly different from the old one. Thirty years ago, when our fathers went to consult the family lawyer, they saw either an elderly gentleman with a shaved upper lip and decorous mutton-chop whiskers, or a young man, also with his lip shaved, and clad in a solemn suit of black. ”

“ Was it not at once a splendid piece of magnanimity, a glorious example of how one might heap coals of fire on those who thwarted us--was it not a truly noble way of retaliating upon the woman he loved, but who had no love for him? She would, through his bequest to her husband that was to be, become enormously rich, but she could never enjoy the vastness of those riches without remembering whence they came; every incident in her life would serve to remind her of him. ”

“ As she stood talking to young Montagu on the verandah, this youth began to wish that he was Lord Penlyn, and to think that there were other things in the world better than going Banco or backing winners--or losers! Indefatigable in everything connected with sport, the young man, in company with two other visitors, officers who had been in India and had become accustomed to early rising, had already ridden over to Ascot to learn what was going on there, and to see if any information could be picked up. ”

“ Since I saw you last Saturday I have been thinking deeply upon what passed between us, and I have come to the conclusion that, after all, it will be best for nothing to be said to any one on the subject of our father's first marriage; not even to Miss Raughton or her father. By keeping back the fact that you have an elder brother, no harm is done to any one. I shall never marry now, and consequently, you are only taking possession of what will be yours, or your children's, eventually. No one but you, your friend Mr. Smerdon, and I, know of this secret ”

“ Fulke and young Montagu had betaken themselves to an hotel not far off and had promised that they would look round before quitting the neighbourhood, she probably derived some consolation from knowing that she would see the former again.
"This is a dreadful affair, Penlyn!" the baronet said, when he received his future son-in-law in the pretty morning-room that Ida's own taste had decorated. "The shock has been bad enough to me, who looked upon Cundall as a dear friend, but it has perfectly crushed my poor girl. You know how much she liked him." ”