Chapter 20 - Page 2

to you still from the papa in your later childish memories?"

"I remember it very well," I replied. "It came back to me on the
Sarmatian. I think of him always now as the papa in the loose white
linen coat. The more I dwell on him, the more does he come out to me
as a different man from the other one--the father...I shot at The
Grange, at Woodbury. The father that lives with me in that
ineffaceable Picture."

"He WAS a different man," Jack answered, with a sudden burst, as if
he knew all my story. "Una, I may as well relieve your mind all at
once on that formidable point. You shot that man"--he pointed to the
white-bearded person in the photograph,--"but it was not parricide:
it was not even murder. It was under grave provocation...in more
than self-defence...and he was NOT your father."

"Not my father!" I cried, clasping my hands and leaning forward in
my profound suspense. "But I killed him all the same! Oh, Jack, how
terrible!"

"You must quiet yourself, my child," he said, still soothing me
automatically. "I want your aid in this matter. You must listen to
me 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 came
back to me as fast as he spoke, scene by scene and year by year, in
long and familiar succession. I remembered everything, sometimes
only when he suggested it; but sometimes also, before he said the
words, my memory outran his tongue, and I put in a recollection or
two with my own tongue as they recurred to me under the stimulus of
this new birth of my dead nature. I recalled my early days in the
far bush in Australia; my journey home to England on the big steamer
with mamma; the way we travelled about for years from place to place
on the Continent. I remembered how I had been strictly enjoined,
too, never to speak of baby; and how my father used to watch my
mother just as closely as he watched me, always afraid, as it
appeared to me, she should make some verbal slip or let out some
great secret in an unguarded moment. He seemed relieved, I
recollected now, when my poor mother died: he grew less strict with
me then, but as far as I could judge, though he was careful of my
health, he never really loved me.

Then Jack reminded me further of other scenes that came much later
in my forgotten life. He reminded me of my trip to Torquay, where I
first met him: and all at once the whole history of my old visits to
the Moores came back like a flood to me. The memory seemed to
inundate and overwhelm my brain. They were the happiest time of all
life, those delightful visits, when I met Jack and fell in love