“But baby was so much younger than I!” I cried, going back on my recollections once more. “How could he ever manage to make the dates come right again?”
“Quite true,” Jack answered; “the baby was younger than you. But your step-father—I’ve no other name by which I can call him—made a clever plan to set that straight. He concealed from the people in Australia which child had been ill, and he entered her death as Mary Wharton. Then, to cover the falsification, he left Melbourne at once, and travelled about for some years on the Continent in out-of-the-way places till all had been forgotten. You went forth upon the world as Una Callingham, with your true personality as Mary Wharton all obscured even in your own memory. Fortunately for your false father’s plot, you were small for your age, and developed slowly: he gave out, on the contrary, that you were big for your years and had outgrown yourself, Australian-wise, both in wisdom and stature.”
“But my mother!” I exclaimed, appalled. “How could she ever consent to such a wicked deception?”
“Mr. Callingham had your mother completely under his thumb,” Jack answered with promptitude. “She couldn’t call her soul her own, your poor mother—so I’ve heard: he cajoled her and terrified her till she didn’t dare to oppose him. Poor shrinking creature, she was afraid of her life to do anything except as he bade her. He must have persuaded her first to acquiesce passively in this hateful plot, and then must have terrified her afterwards into full compliance by threats of exposure.”
“He was a very unhappy man himself,” I put in, casting back. “His money did him no good. I can remember now how gloomy and moody he was often, at The Grange.”
“Quite true,” Jack replied. “He lived in perpetual fear of your real father’s return, or of some other breakdown to his complicated system of successive deceptions. He never had a happy minute in his whole life, I believe. Blind terrors surrounded him. He was afraid of everything, and afraid of everybody. Only his scientific work seemed ever to give him any relief. There, he became a free man. He threw himself into that, heart and soul, on purpose, I fancy, because it absorbed him while he was at it, and prevented him for the time being from thinking of his position.”
“And how did you find it all out?” I asked eagerly, anxious to get on to the end.
“Well, that’s long to tell,” Jack replied. “Too long for one sitting. I won’t trouble you with it now. Discrepancies in facts and dates, and inquiries among servants both in England and in Victoria, first put me upon the track. But I said nothing at the time of my suspicions to anyone. I waited till I could appeal to the man’s own conscience with success, as I hoped. And then, besides, I hardly knew how to act for the best. I wanted to marry you; and therefore, as far as was consistent with justice and honour, I wished to spare your supposed father a complete exposure.”
“But why didn’t you tell the police?” I asked.
“Because I had really nothing definite in any way to go upon. Realise the position to yourself, and you’ll see how difficult it was for me. Mr. Callingham suspected I was paying you attentions. Clearly, under those circumstances, it was to my obvious interest that you should get possession of all his property. Any claims I might make for you would, therefore, be naturally regarded with suspicion. The shipwrecked man had told nobody but myself. I hadn’t even an affidavit, a death-bed statement. All rested upon his word, and upon mine as retailing it. He was dead, and there was nothing but my narrative for what he told me. The story itself was too improbable to be believed by the police on such dubious evidence. I didn’t even care to try. I wanted to make your step-father confess: and I waited for that till I could compel confession.”