CHAPTER XX.
THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA
I held his hand tight. It was so pleasant to know I could love himnow with a clear conscience, even if I had to give myself up to thepolice to-morrow. And indeed, being a woman, I didn't really muchcare whether they took me or not, if only I could love Jack, andknow Jack loved me.
"You must tell me everything--this minute--Jack," I said, clingingto him like a child. "I can't bear this suspense. Begin telling meat once. You'll do me more harm than good if you keep me waiting anylonger."
Jack took instinctively a medical view of the situation.
"So I think, my child," he said, looking lovingly at me. "Yournerves are on the rack, and will be the better for unstringing. Oh,Una, it's such a comfort that you know at last who I am! It's such acomfort that I'm able to talk to you to-day just as we two used totalk four years ago in Devonshire!"
"Did I love you then, Jack?" I whispered, nestling still closer tohim, in spite of my horror. Or rather, my very horror made me feelmore acutely than ever the need for protection. I was no longeralone in the world. I had a man to support me.
"You told me so, darling," he answered, smoothing my hair with hishand. "Have you forgotten all about it? Doesn't even that come back?Can't you remember it now, when I've told you who I am and how itall happened?"
I shook my head.
"All cloudy still," I replied, vaguely. "Some dim sense offamiliarity, perhaps,--as when people say they have a feeling ofhaving lived all this over somewhere else before,--but nothing morecertain, nothing more definite."
"Then I must begin at the beginning," Jack answered, bracing himselffor his hard task, "and reconstruct your whole life for you, as faras I know it, from your very childhood. I'm particularly anxious youshould not merely be TOLD what took place, but should remember thepast. There are gaps in my own knowledge I want you to eke out.There are places I want you to help me myself over. And besides,it'll be more satisfactory to yourself to remember than to be toldit."
I leaned back, almost exhausted. Incredible as it may seem to you,in spite of that awful photograph, I couldn't really believe even soI had killed my father. And yet I knew very well now that Jack, atleast, hadn't done it. That was almost enough. But not quite. Myhead swam round in terror. I waited and longed for Jack to explainthe whole thing to me.
"You remember," he said, watching me close, "that when you lived asa very little girl in Australia you had a papa who seems differentto you still from the papa in your later childish memories?"
"I remember it very well," I replied. "It came back to me on theSarmatian. I think of him always now as the papa in the loose whitelinen coat. The more I dwell on him, the more does he come out to meas a different man from the other one--the father...I shot at TheGrange, at Woodbury. The father that lives with me in thatineffaceable Picture."
"He WAS a different man," Jack answered, with a sudden burst, as ifhe knew all my story. "Una, I may as well relieve your mind all atonce on that formidable point. You shot that man"--he pointed to thewhite-bearded person in the photograph,--"but it was not parricide:it was not even murder. It was under grave provocation...in morethan self-defence...and he was NOT your father."
"Not my father!" I cried, clasping my hands and leaning forward inmy profound suspense. "But I killed him all the same! Oh, Jack, howterrible!"
"You must quiet yourself, my child," he said, still soothing meautomatically. "I want your aid in this matter. You must listen tome calmly, and bring your mind to bear on all I say to you."
Then he began with a regular history of my early life, which cameback to me as fast as he spoke, scene by scene and year by year, inlong and familiar succession. I remembered everything, sometimesonly when he suggested it; but sometimes also, before he said thewords, my memory outran his tongue, and I put in a recollection ortwo with my own tongue as they recurred to me under the stimulus ofthis new birth of my dead nature. I recalled my early days in thefar bush in Australia; my journey home to England on the big steamerwith mamma; the way we travelled about for years from place to placeon the Continent. I remembered how I had been strictly enjoined,too, never to speak of baby; and how my father used to watch mymother just as closely as he watched me, always afraid, as itappeared to me, she should make some verbal slip or let out somegreat secret in an unguarded moment. He seemed relieved, Irecollected now, when my poor mother died: he grew less strict withme then, but as far as I could judge, though he was careful of myhealth, he never really loved me.
Then Jack reminded me further of other scenes that came much laterin my forgotten life. He reminded me of my trip to Torquay, where Ifirst met him: and all at once the whole history of my old visits tothe Moores came back like a flood to me. The memory seemed toinundate and overwhelm my brain. They were the happiest time of alllife, those delightful visits, when I met Jack and fell in love withhim, and half confided my love to my Cousin Minnie. Strange to say,though at Torquay itself I'd forgotten it all, in that littleCanadian house, with Jack by my side to recall it, it rushed backlike a wave upon me. I'd fallen in love with Jack without myfather's knowledge or consent; and I knew very well my father wouldnever allow me to marry him. He had ideas of his own, my father,about the sort of person I ought to marry: and I half suspected inmy heart of hearts he meant if possible always to keep me at homesingle to take care of him and look after him. I didn't know, asyet, he had sufficient reasons of his own for desiring me to remainfor ever unmarried.
I remembered, too, that I never really loved my father. His naturewas hard, cold, reserved, unsympathetic. I only feared and obeyedhim. At times, my own strong character came out, I remembered, and Idefied him to his face, defied him openly. Then there were scenes inthe house, dreadful scenes, too hateful to dwell upon: and theservants came up to my room at the end and comforted me.
So, step by step, Jack reminded me of everything in my own pastlife, up to the very night of the murder, from which my Second Statedated. I'd come back from Torquay a week or two before, very fullindeed of Jack, and determined at all costs, sooner or later, tomarry him. But though I had kept all quiet, papa had suspected myliking on the day of the Berry Pomeroy athletics, and had forbiddenme to see Jack, or to write to him, or to have anything further tosay to him. He was determined, he told me, whoever I married, Ishouldn't at least marry a beggarly doctor. All that I remembered;and also how, in spite of the prohibition, I wrote letters to Jack,but could receive none in return--lest my father should see them.
And still, the central mystery of the murder was no nearer solution.I held my breath in terror. Had I really any sort of justificationin killing him?
Dimly and instinctively, as Jack went on, a faint sense ofresentment and righteous indignation against the man with the whitebeard rose up vaguely in my mind by slow degrees. I knew I had beenangry with him, I knew I had defied him, but how or why as yet Iknew not.
Then Jack suddenly paused, and began in a different voice a new partof his tale. It was nothing I remembered or could possibly remember,he said; but it was necessary to the comprehension of what cameafter, and would help me to recall it. About a week after I leftTorquay, it seemed, Jack was in his consulting-room at Babbicombeone day, having just returned from a very long bicycle ride--for hewas a first-rate cyclist,--when the servant announced a newpatient; and a very worn-out old man came in to visit him.
The man had a ragged grey beard and scanty white hair; he was cladin poor clothes, and had tramped on foot all the way from London toBabbicombe, where Jack used to practice. But Jack saw at once underthis rough exterior he had the voice and address of a cultivatedgentleman, though he was so broken down by want and long sufferingand exposure and illness that he looked like a beggar just let loosefrom the workhouse.
I held my breath as Jack showed me the poor old man's photograph. Itwas a portrait taken after death--for Jack attended him to the endthrough a fatal illness;--and it showed a face thin and worn, andmuch lined by unspeakable hardships. But I burst out crying at on
cethe very moment I looked at it. For a second or two, I couldn't saywhy: I suppose it was instinct. Blood is thicker than water, theytell us; and I have the intuition of kindred very strong in me, Ibelieve. But at any rate, I cried silently, with big hot tears,while I looked at that dead face of silent suffering, as I never hadcried over the photograph of the respectable-looking man who laydead on the floor of the library, and whom I was always taught toconsider my father. Then it came back to me, why... I gazed at itand grew faint. I clutched Jack's arm for support. I knew what itmeant now. The poor worn old man who lay dead on the bed with thatlook of mute agony on his features--was my first papa: the papa inthe loose white linen coat: the one I remembered with childlike loveand trustfulness in my earliest babyish Australian recollections!
I couldn't mistake the face. It was burnt into my brain now. Thiswas he, though much older and sadder, and more scarred and lined byage and weather. It was my very first papa. My own papa. I criedsilently still. I couldn't bear to look at it. Then the real truthbroke upon me once more. This, and this alone, was in very deed myone real father!
I seized the faded photograph and pressed it to my lips.
"Oh, I know him!" I cried wildly. "It's my father! My father!"
Some minutes passed before Jack could go on with his story. Thisrush of emotions was too much for me for a while. I could hardlyhear him or attend to him, so deeply did it stir me.
At last I calmed down, still holding that pathetic photograph on thetable before me.
"Tell me all about him," I murmured, sobbing. "For, Jack, I remembernow, he was so good and kind, and I loved him--I loved him."
Jack went on with his story, trying to soothe me and reassure me.The old man introduced himself by very cautious degrees as a personin want, not so much of money, though of that to be sure he hadnone, as of kindness and sympathy in a very great sorrow. He was ashipwrecked mariner, in a sense: shipwrecked on the sea of Life andon the open Pacific as well. But once he had been a clergyman, and aman of education, position, reputation, fortune.
Gradually as he went on Jack began to grasp at the truth of thiscurious tale. The worn and battered stranger had but lately landedin London from a sailing vessel which had brought him over from aremote Pacific islet: not a tropical islet of the kind with whosepalms and parrots we are all so familiar, but a cold and snowy rock,away off far south, among the frosts and icebergs, near theAntarctic continent. There for twenty long years that unhappy manhad lived by himself a solitary life.
I started at the sound.
"For twenty years!" I exclaimed. "Oh, Jack, you must be wrong; forhow could that be? I was only eighteen when all this happened. Howcould my real father have been twenty years away from me, when I wasonly eighteen, and I remember him so perfectly?"
Jack looked at me and shook his head.
"You've much to learn yet, Una," he answered. "The story's a longone. You were NOT eighteen but twenty-two at the time. You've beendeliberately misled as to your own age all along. You developedlate, and were always short for your real years, not tall andprecocious as we all of us imagined. But you were four years olderthan Mr. Callingham pretended. You're twenty-six now, nottwenty-two as you think. Wait, and in time you'll hear all aboutit."
He went on with his story. I listened, spell-bound. The unhappyman explained to Jack how he had been wrecked on the voyage, andescaped on a raft with one other passenger: how they had drifted farsouth, before waves and current, till they were cast at last on thiswretched island: how they remained there for a month or two, pickingup a precarious living on roots and berries and eggs of sea-birds:and how at last, one day, he had come back from hunting limpets andsea-urchins on the shore of a lonely bay--to find, to hisamazement, his companion gone, and himself left alone on thatdesolate island. His fellow-castaway, he knew then, had deceived anddeserted him!
There was no room, indeed, to doubt the treachery of the wretchedbeing who had so basely treated him. As he looked, a ship under fullsail stood away to northward. In vain the unhappy man made wildsignals from the shore with his tattered garments. No notice wastaken of them. His companion must deliberately have suppressed theother's existence, and pretended to be alone by himself on theisland.
"And his name?" Jack asked of the poor old man, horrified.
The stranger answered without a moment's pause:
"His name, if you want it--was Vivian Callingham."
"And yours?" Jack continued, as soon as he could recover from hisfirst shock of horror.
"And mine," the poor castaway replied, "is Richard Wharton."
As Jack told me those words, another strange thrill ran through me.
"Richard Wharton was the name of mamma's first husband. Then I'm nota Callingham at all!" I cried, unable to take it all in at first inits full complexity. "I'm really a Wharton!"
Jack nodded his head in assent.
"Yes, you're really a Wharton," he said. "You're the baby that died,as we all were told. Your true Christian name's Mary. But, Una, youwere always Una to all of us in England; and though the real UnaCallingham died when you were a little girl of three or four yearsold, you'll be Una always now to Elsie and me. We can't think of youas other than we've always called you."
Then he went on to explain to me how the stranger had landed inLondon, alone and friendless, twenty years later, from a passingAustralian merchant vessel which had picked him up on the island.All those years he had waited, and fed himself on eggs of penguins.He landed by himself, the crew having given him a suit of oldclothes, and subscribed to find him in immediate necessaries. Hebegan to inquire cautiously in London about his wife and family. Atfirst, he could learn little or nothing; for nobody remembered him,and he feared to ask too openly, a sort of Enoch Arden terrorrestraining him from proclaiming his personality till he knewexactly what had happened in his long absence. But bit by bit, hefound out at last that his wife had married again, and was now longdead: and that the man she had married was Vivian Callingham, hisown treacherous companion on the Crozet Islands. As soon as helearned that, the full depth of the man's guilt burst upon him likea thunderbolt. Richard Wharton understood now why Vivian Callinghamhad left him alone on those desert rocks, and sailed away in theship without telling the captain of his fellow-castaway's plight. Hesaw the whole vile plot the man had concocted at once, and the stepshe had taken to carry it into execution.
Vivian Callingham, whom I falsely thought my father, had gone backto Australia with pretended news of Richard Wharton's death. He hadsought my widowed mother in her own home up country, and told her alying tale of his devotion to her husband in his dying moments onthat remote ocean speck in the far Southern Pacific. By this storyhe ingratiated himself. He knew she was rich: he knew she was worthmarrying: and to marry her, he had left my own real father, RichardWharton, to starve and languish for twenty years among rocks andsea-fowl on a lonely island!
My blood ran cold at such a tale of deadly treachery. I rememberednow to have heard some small part of it before. But much of it, asJack told it to me, was quite new and unexpected. No wonder I hadturned in horror that night from the man I long believed to be myown father, when I learned by what vile and cruelly treacherousmeans he had succeeded in imposing his supposed relationship uponme! But still, all this brought me no nearer the real question ofquestions--why did I shoot him?