“Father, listen to me. You have told me your whole story; I have listened to every word of it most attentively; and, though I admit that it is a singular enough history, you have not yet mentioned one single circumstance directly inculpating my mother. For my part I believe she was innocent of the duplicity you charged her with, and that she only spoke the truth when she asserted that her conduct admitted of a simple and easy explanation.”
“Do you really believe that, Leo, on your honour as a gentleman?” demanded my father eagerly.
“I believe it, sir, as implicitly as I do the fact of my own existence.”
“Well,” said my father, sighing heavily, “there have been times when I have felt almost disposed to do so too; what a blessed relief it would be to me if I could believe it altogether! It is these distracting doubts which are wearing both my life and my reason away, and it was those same doubts which prevented my enjoying your company when you were a child, and almost succeeded in destroying my natural affection for you; it was those doubts which caused me to neglect you as I did when you were most in need of a parent’s love and care; and it was these same doubts again which—forgive me for saying it, Leo—caused me almost to rejoice when I first contemplated the possibility of your being killed in the mutiny.”
“Well,” said I, “that is a strange confession for a father to make to his own son—a strange feeling for a parent to entertain toward his own offspring. How do you account for it, sir?”
“I will tell you, Leo,” said my father. “Sit down, my son, and do not look at me so coldly; if you had passed through as many years of mental anguish as I have endured, you would wonder, not so much that my ideas have been warped and distorted, as that my reason has not altogether given way beneath the strain. For, Leo, I want you to understand that I loved your mother; I loved her!” he repeated fiercely, with a strange maniacal gleam flashing in his eyes. Then, after pausing for a moment and recovering control of himself by a powerful effort, he continued:
“What was the question?—oh, yes, I remember! In the first place, you were, as a child, strikingly like your mother—you are so even now, although the likeness is no longer so marked as it was. Thus you were a constant reminder to me of one who had first raised me to the highest pinnacle of human bliss only to hurl me thence into the lowest depths of grief and humiliation. Then your wonderful physical resemblance to your mother caused me to dread that you would also inherit her character, and that you would grow up deceitful and untrustworthy. Connect those two feelings with the unbalanced state of my mind and you will easily understand the rest.
“This miserable state of things remained with me up to the time of receiving the letter penned by you after your escape from La Guayra; and you will not be surprised to learn that, after so many years of mental anguish, as acute at the end as it was at the beginning, your letter found me with my health undermined, my reason tottering, and myself in hourly danger of dropping into a suicide’s grave. That letter, Leo, aroused me; it dispelled the unhealthy vapours from my mind, caused me to see circumstances in a totally different light from that in which I had regarded them before, and, finally, impelled me to take ship and come out here to join you; as the idea suddenly took hold upon me that, with the aid of your young, healthy, vigorous, common-sense intellect, the question which has tormented me all these years might after all be definitely settled one way or the other. And now you have not only the bitter secret of my life, Leo, but the explanation of my being on board the Indiaman.”
I warmly grasped the hand which my father extended to me across the table, and said:
“I believe, father, you have done well to come out here; indeed I might almost venture to say that your decision to do so seems providential, as perhaps you too will think, when I tell you that a certain Giuseppe Merlani, an Italian, is a notorious character in these regions. Not that I think it probable he can be the individual who has caused you all your trouble, for he is a pirate; and I can scarcely realise the possibility of anyone who has ever enjoyed my poor mother’s acquaintance degenerating into such a character as that of pirate. But let that be as it may, now that we are together, and have no longer any secrets from each other, we can talk the whole affair unreservedly over together; and, depend upon it, father, we shall eventually succeed in satisfactorily demonstrating my mother’s truthfulness and the groundlessness of your suspicions that you held but a subordinate place in her affection.”