"I do not believe that one drop of your blood runs in my veins."
He bent forward, laying his hands flat on the cloth, then gripping
it fiercely in clenched fists:
"All I want of you is what was my mother's. I bear the name she
gave me; it pleased her to bestow it; it is good enough for me to
wear. If it be hers only, or if it was also my father's, I do not
know; but that name, legitimate or otherwise, is not for exchange!
I will keep it, Colonel Arran. I am what I am."
He hesitated, rigid, clenching and unclenching his hands--then drew
a deep, agonised breath:
"I suppose you have meant to be just to me, I wish you might have
dealt more mercifully with my mother. As for what you have done to
me--well--if she was illegally my mother, I had rather be her
illegitimate son than the son of any woman who ever lived within
the law. Now may I have her letters?"
"Is that your decision, Berkley?"
"It is. I want only her letters from you--and any little
keepsakes--relics--if there be any----"
"I offer to recognise you as my son."
"I decline--believing that you mean to be just--and perhaps
kind--God knows what you do mean by disinterring the dead for a son
to look back upon----"
"Could I have offered you what I offer, otherwise?"
"Man! Man! You have nothing to offer me! Your silence was
the only kindness you could have done me! You have killed
something in me. I don't know what, yet--but I think it was the
best part of me."
"Berkley, do you suppose that I have entered upon this matter
lightly?"
Berkley laughed, showing his teeth. "No. It was your damned
conscience; and I suppose you couldn't strangle it. I am sorry you
couldn't. Sometimes a strangled conscience makes men kinder."
Colonel Arran rang. A dark flush had overspread his forehead; he
turned to the butler.
"Bring me the despatch box which stands on: my study table."
Berkley, hands behind his back, was pacing the dining-room carpet.
"Would you accept a glass of wine?" asked Colonel Arran in a low
voice.
Berkley wheeled on him with a terrible smile.
"Shall a man drink wine with the slayer of souls?" Then, pallid
face horribly distorted, he stretched out a shaking arm. "Not that
you ever could succeed in getting near enough to murder hers!
But you've killed mine. I know now what died in me. It was that!
. . . And I know now, as I stand here excommunicated by you from
all who have been born within the law, that there is not left alive
in me one ideal, one noble impulse, one spiritual conviction. I am
what your righteousness has made me--a man without hope; a man with
nothing alive in him except the physical brute. . . . Better not
arouse that."