"Your uncle Arthur?" she repeated somewhat bewildered.
"Yes. You never knew him, did you?"
"No," she said, "I never knew him, though as a baby I must have seen him. I was only three, I think, when he died. But I never heard that he had been married. I am sure father never knew."
"Nor did I, nor did Uncle Rad, nor any of us. The whole thing is either a thunderbolt or.. an imposture."
"Tell me," she said, "a little more clearly, Luke dear, will you? I am feeling quite muddled." And now it was she who led the way to the isolated seat beneath that group of silver birch, whose baby leaves trembled beneath the rough kiss of the cool April breeze.
They sat down together and on the gravelled path in front of them a robin hopped half shyly, half impertinently, about and gazed with tiny, inquisitive eyes on the doings of these big folk. All around them the twitter of bird throats filled the air with its magic, its hymn to the reawakened earth, and drowned in this pleasing solitude the distant sounds of the busy city that seemed so far away from this secluded nook inhabited by birds and flowers, and by two dwellers in Fata Morgana's land.
"Tell me first," said Louisa, in her most prosy, most matter of fact tone of voice, "all that is known about your uncle Arthur."
"Well, up to now, I individually knew very little about him. He was the next eldest brother to Uncle Rad, and my father was the youngest of all. When Uncle Rad succeeded to the title, Arthur was heir-presumptive of course. But as you know he died – as was supposed unmarried – nineteen years ago, and my poor dear father was killed in the hunting field the following year. I was a mere kid then and the others were babies – orphans the lot of us. My mother died when Edith was born. Uncle Rad was said to be a confirmed bachelor. He took us all to live with him and was father, mother, elder brother, elder sister to us all. Bless him!"
Luke paused abruptly, and Louisa too was silent. Only the song of a thrush soaring upward to the skies called for that blessing which neither of them at that moment could adequately evoke.
"Yes," said Louisa at last, "I knew all that."
Lord Radclyffe and his people were all of the same world as herself. She knew all about the present man's touching affection for the children of his youngest brother, but more especially for Luke on whom he bestowed an amount of love and tender care which would have shamed many a father by its unselfish intensity. That affection was a beautiful trait in an otherwise not very lovable character.
"I daresay," resumed Luke after a little while, "that I have been badly brought up. I mean in this way, that if – if the whole story is true – if Uncle Arthur did marry and did have a son, then I should have to go and shift for myself and for Jim and Frank and Edith. Of course Uncle Rad would do what he could for us, but I should no longer be his heir – and we couldn't go on living at Grosvenor Square and – "
"Aren't you rambling on a little too fast, dear?" said Louisa gently, whilst she beamed with an almost motherly smile – the smile that a woman wears when she means to pacify and to comfort – on the troubled face of the young man.
"Of course I am," he replied more calmly, "but I can't help it. For some days now I've had a sort of feeling that something was going to happen – that – well, that things weren't going to go right. And this morning when I got up, I made up my mind that I would tell you."
"When did you hear first, and from whom?"
"The first thing we heard was last autumn. There came a letter from abroad for Uncle Rad. It hadn't the private mark on it, so Mr. Warren opened it along with the rest of the correspondence. He showed it to me. The letter was signed Philip de Mountford, and began, 'My dear uncle.' I couldn't make head or tail of it; I thought it all twaddle. You've no idea what sort of letters Uncle Rad gets sometimes from every kind of lunatic or scoundrel you can think of, who wants to get something out of him. Well, this letter at first looked to me the same sort of thing. I had never heard of any one who had the right to say 'dear uncle' to Uncle Rad – but it had a lot in it about blood being thicker than water and all the rest of it, with a kind of request for justice and talk about the cruelty of Fate. The writer, however, asserted positively that he was the only legitimate son of Mr. Arthur de Mountford, who – this he professed to have only heard recently – was own brother to the earl of Radclyffe. The story which he went on to relate at full length was queer enough in all conscience. I remember every word of it, for it seemed to get right away into my brain, then and there, as if something was being hammered or screwed straight into one of the cells of my memory never really to come out again."
"And yet when – when we were first engaged," rejoined Louisa quietly, "you never told me anything about it."
"I'll tell you directly how that was. I remembered and then forgot – if you know what I mean – and now it has all come back. At the time I thought the letter of this man who called himself Philip de Mountford nothing but humbug. So did Mr. Warren, and yet he and I talked it over and discussed it between us for ever so long. It all sounded so strange. Uncle Arthur – so this man said who called himself Philip de Mountford – had married in Martinique a half-caste girl named Adeline Petit, who was this same Philip's mother. He declares that he has all the papers – marriage certificates or whatever they are called – to prove every word he says. He did not want to trouble his uncle much, only now that his mother was dead, he felt all alone in the world and longed for the companionship and affection of his own kith and kin. All he wanted he said, was friendship. Then he went on to say that of course he did not expect his lordship to take his word for all this, he only asked for an opportunity to show his dear uncle all the papers and other proofs which he held that he was in real and sober truth the only legitimate son of Mr. Arthur de Mountford, own brother to his lordship."
"How old is this man – this Philip de Mountford – supposed to be?"
"Well, he said in that first letter that the marriage took place in the parish church of St. Pierre in Martinique on the 28th of August, 1881; that he himself was born the following year, and christened in the same church under the name of Philip Arthur, and registered as the son of Mr. Arthur Collingwood de Mountford of Ford's Mount in the county of Northampton, England, and of Adeline de Mountford, née Petit, his wife."
"Twenty-four years ago," said Louisa thoughtfully, "and he only claims kinship with Lord Radclyffe now?"
"That's just," rejoined Luke, "where the curious part of the story comes in. This Philip de Mountford – I don't know how else to call him – said in his first letter that his mother never knew that Mr. Arthur de Mountford was anything more than a private English gentleman travelling either for profit or pleasure, but in any case not possessed of either wealth or social position. Between you and me, dear, I suppose that this Adeline Petit was just a half-caste girl, without much knowledge of what goes on in the world, and why she should have married Uncle Arthur I can't think."
"If she did marry him, you mean."
"If she did marry him, as you say," said Luke with a singular want of conviction, which Louisa was not slow to remark.
"You think that this young man's story is true then?"
"I don't know what to think, and that's the truth."
"Tell me more," added Louisa simply.
"Well, this Philip's story goes on to say that his father – Uncle Arthur – apparently soon tired of his exotic wife, for it seems that two years after the marriage he left Martinique and never returned to it to the day of his death."
"Pardon," said Louisa in her prim little way, "my interrupting you: but have any of you – Lord Radclyffe I mean, or any of your friends – any recollection of your uncle Arthur living at Martinique for awhile? Two years seems a long time – "
"As a matter of fact, Uncle Arthur was a bit of a wastrel you know. He never would study for anything. He passed into the navy – very well, too, I believe – but he threw it all up almost as soon as he got his commission, and started roaming about the world. I do know for a fact that once his people had no news of him for about three or four years, and