THE PLOT UNRAVELS ITSELF
As Jack went on unfolding that strange tale of fraud and heartless
wrong, my interest every moment grew more and more absorbing. But I
can't recall it now exactly as Jack told me it. I can only give you
the substance of that terrible story.
When Richard Wharton first learned of his wife's second marriage
during his own lifetime to that wicked wretch who had ousted and
supplanted him, he believed also, on the strength of Vivian
Callingham's pretences, that his own daughter had died in her
babyhood in Australia. He fancied, therefore, that no person of his
kin remained alive at all, and that he might proceed to denounce and
punish Vivian Callingham. With that object in view, he tramped down
all the way from London to Torquay, to make himself known to his
wife's relations, the Moores, and to their cousin, Courtenay Ivor of
Babbicombe--my Jack, as I called him. For various reasons of his
own, he called first on Jack, and proceeded to detail to him this
terrible family story.
At first hearing, Jack could hardly believe such a tale was true--of
his Una's father, as he still thought Vivian Callingham. But a
strange chance happened to reveal a still further complication. It
came out in this way. I had given Jack a recent photograph of myself
in fancy dress, which hung up over his mantelpiece. As the
weather-worn visitor's eye fell on the picture, he started and grew
pale.
"Why, that's her!" he cried with a sudden gasp. "That's my
daughter--Mary Wharton!"
Well, naturally enough Jack thought, to begin with, this was a mere
mistake on his strange visitor's part.
"That's her half-sister," he said, "Una Callingham--your wife's
child by her second marriage. She may be like her, no doubt, as
half-sisters often are. But Mary Wharton, I know, died some eighteen
years ago or so, when Una was quite a baby, I believe. I've heard
all about it, because, don't you see, I'm engaged to Una."
The poor wreck of a clergyman, however, shook his head with profound
conviction. He knew better than that.
"Oh no," he said decisively: "that's my child, Mary Wharton. Even
after all these years, I couldn't possibly be mistaken. Blood is
thicker than water: I'd know her among ten thousand. She'd be just
that age now, too. I see the creature's vile plot. His daughter died
young, and he's palmed off my Mary as his own child, to keep her
money in his hands. But never mind the money. Thank Heaven, she's
alive! That's her! That's my Mary!"
The plot seemed too diabolical and too improbable for anybody to
believe. Jack could hardly think it possible when his new friend
told him. But the stranger persisted so--it's hard for me even to
think of him as quite really my father--that Jack at last brought
out two or three earlier photographs I'd given him some time before;
and his visitor recognised them at once, in all their stages, as his
own daughter. This roused Jack's curiosity. He determined to hunt
the matter up with his unknown connection. And he hunted it up
thenceforward with deliberate care, till he proved every word of it.
Meanwhile, the poor broken-down man, worn out with his long tramp
and his terrible emotions, fell ill almost at once, in Jack's own
house, and became rapidly so feeble that Jack dared not question him
further. The return to civilisation was more fatal than his long
solitary banishment. At the end of a week he died, leaving on Jack's
mind a profound conviction that all he had said was true, and that I
was really Richard Wharton's daughter, not Vivian Callingham's.
"For a week or two I made inquiries, Una," Jack said to me as we sat
there,--"inquiries which I won't detail to you in full just now, but
which gradually showed me the truth of the poor soul's belief. What
you yourself told me just now chimes in exactly with what I
discovered elsewhere, by inquiry and by letters from Australia. The
baby that died was the real Una Callingham. Shortly after its death,
your stepfather and your mother left the colony. All your real
father's money had been bequeathed to his child: and your mother's
also was settled on you. Mr. Callingham saw that if your mother
died, and you lived and married, he himself would be deprived of the
fortune for which he had so wickedly plotted. So he made up another
plot even more extraordinary and more diabolical still than the
first. He decided to pretend it was Mary Wharton that died, and to
palm you off on the world as his own child, Una Callingham. For if
Mary Wharton died, the property at once became absolutely your
mother's, and she could will it away to her husband or anyone else
she chose to."
"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."