"I implore you to do so. I will go on my knees and beseech you," said Mr. Finn, with hands clasped in front of him.

Paul looked round. "I'm afraid, Bill," said he, "that this is getting rather painful."

"It is painful. It's more than painful. It's horrible! It's ghastly!"

cried Mr. Finn, in sudden shrill crescendo, leaping to his feet. In an instant the man's demeanour had changed. The mournful apostle had become a wild, vibrating creature with flashing eyes and fingers.

"Easy, now, Silas. Whoa! Steady!" said Barney Bill.

Silas Finn advanced on Paul and clapped his hands on his shoulders and shouted hoa.r.s.ely: "For the love of G.o.d--don't thwart me in this. You can't thwart me. You daren't thwart me. You daren't thwart G.o.d."

Paul disengaged himself impatiently. The humour had pa.s.sed from the situation. The man was a lunatic, a religious maniac. Again he addressed Barney Bill. "As I can't convince Mr. Finn of the absurdity of his request, I must ask you to do so for me."

"Young man," cried Silas, quivering with pa.s.sion, "do not speak to G.o.d's appointed in your vanity and your arrogance. You--you--of all human beings--"

Both Jane and Barney Bill closed round him. Jane clutched his arm.

"Come away. Do come away."

"Steady now, Silas," implored Barney Bill. "You see it's no use. I told you so. Come along."

"Leave me alone," shouted Finn, casting them off. "What have I to do with you? It is that young man there who defies G.o.d and me."

"Mr. Finn," said Paul, very erect, "if I have hurt your feelings I am sorry. But I fight this election. That's final. The choice no longer rests with me. I'm the instrument of my party. I desire to be courteous in every way, but you must see that it would be useless to prolong this discussion." And he moved to the door.

"Come away now, for Heaven's sake. Can't you realize it's no good?"

said Jane, white to the lips.

Silas Finn again cast her off and railed and raved at her. "I will not go away," he cried in wild pa.s.sion. "I will not allow my own son to raise an impious hand against the Almighty."

"Lor' lumme!" gasped Barney Bill, dropping his hat. "He's done it."

There was a silence. Silas Finn stood shaking in the middle of the room, the sweat streaming down his forehead.

Paul turned at the door and walked slowly up to him. "Your son? What do you mean?"

Jane, with wringing hands and tense, uplifted face, said in a queer cracked voice: "He promised us not to speak. He has broken his promise."

"You broke your sacred word," said Barney Bill.

The man's face grew haggard. His pa.s.sion left him as suddenly as it had seized him. He collapsed, a piteous wreck, looked wide of the three, and threw out his hands helplessly. "I broke my promise. May G.o.d forgive me!"

"That's neither here nor there," said Paul, standing over him. "You must answer my question. What do you mean?"

Barney Bill limped a step or two toward him and cleared his throat.

"He's quite correct, sonny. Silas Kegworthy's your father right enough."

"Kegworthy?"

"Yes. Changed his name for business--and other reasons."

"He?" said Paul, half dazed for the moment and pointing at Silas Finn.

"His name is Kegworthy and he is my father?"

"Yes, sonny. 'Tain't my fault, or Jane's. He took his Bible oath he wouldn't tell yer. We was afraid, so we come with him."

"Then?" queried Paul, jerking a thumb toward Lancashire.

"Polly Kegworthy? Yes. She was yer mother."

Paul set his teeth and drew a deep breath--not of air, but of a million sword points, Jane watched him out of frightened eyes. She alone, with her all but life-long knowledge of him, and with her woman's intuition, realized the death-blow that he had received. And when she saw him take it unflinching and stand proud and stern, her heart leaped toward him, though she knew that the woman in the great chased silver photograph frame on the mantelpiece, the great and radiant lady, the high and mighty and beautiful and unapproachable Princess, was the woman he loved. Paul touched his father on the wrist, and motioned to a chair.

"Please sit down. You too, please,"--he waved a hand, and himself resumed his seat in his writing chair. He turned it so that he could rest his elbow on his table and his forehead in his palm. "You claim to be my father," said he. "Barney Bill, in whom I have implicit confidence, confirms it. He says that Mrs. b.u.t.ton is my mother--"

"She has been dead these six years," said Barney Bill.

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked Paul.

"I didn't think it would interest yer, sonny," replied Barney Bill, in great distress. "Yer see, we conspirated together for yer never to know nothing at all about all this. Anyway, she's dead and won't worry yer any more."

"She was a bad mother to me. She is a memory of terror. I don't pretend to be grieved," said Paul; "any more than I pretend to be overcome by filial emotion at the present moment. But, if you are my father, I should be glad to know--in fact, I think I'm ent.i.tled to know--why you've taken thirty years to reveal yourself, and why"--a sudden fury swept him--"why you've come now to play h.e.l.l with my life."

"It is the will of G.o.d," said Silas Finn, in deep dejection.

Paul snapped three or four fingers. "Bah!" he cried. "Talk sense. Talk facts. Leave G.o.d out of the question for a while. It's blasphemy to connect Him with a sordid business like this. Tell me about myself--my parentage--let me know where I am."

"You're with three people as loves yer, sonny," said Barney Bill. "What pa.s.ses in this room will never be known to another soul on earth."

"That I swear," said Silas Finn.

"You can publish it broadcast in every newspaper in England," said Paul. "I'm making no bargains. Good G.o.d! I'm asking for nothing but the truth. What use I make of it is my affair. You can do--the three of you--what you like. Let the world know. It doesn't matter. It's I that matter--my life and my conscience and my soul that matter."

"Don't be too hard upon me," Silas besought him very humbly.

"Tell me about myself," said Paul.

Silas Finn wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and covered his eyes with his hand. "That can only mean telling you about myself," he said. "It's raking up a past which I had hoped, with G.o.d's help, to bury. But I have sinned to-night, and it is my punishment to tell you.

And you have a right to know. My father was a porter in Covent Garden Market. My mother--I've already mentioned--"

"Yes--the Sicilian and the barrel organ--I remember," said Paul, with a shiver.

"I had a hard boyhood. But I rose a little above my cla.s.s. I educated myself more or less. At last I became a.s.sistant in a fishmonger's shop.

Our friend Simmons here and I were boys together. We fell in love with the same girl. I married her. Not long afterward she gave way to drink.

I found that in all kinds of ways I had mistaken her character. I can't describe your own mother to you. She had a violent temper. So had I. My life was a h.e.l.l upon earth. One day she goaded me beyond my endurance and I struck at her with a knife. I meant at the bloodred instant to kill her. But I didn't. I nearly killed her. I went to prison for three years. When I came out she had vanished, taking you with her. In prison I found the Grace of G.o.d and I vowed it should be my guide through life. As soon as I was free from police supervision I changed my name--I believe it's a good old Devonshire name; my father came from there--the prison taint hung about it. Then, when I found I could extend a miserable little business I had got together, I changed it again to suit my trade. That's about all."

There was a spell of dead silence. The shrunken man, stricken with a sense of his sin of oath-breaking, had Spoken without change of att.i.tude, his hand over his eyes. Paul, too, sat motionless, and neither Jane nor Barney Bill spoke. Presently Silas Finn continued:

"For many years I tried to find my wife and son--but it was not G.o.d's will. I have lived with the stain of murder on my soul"--his voice sank--"and it has never been washed away. Perhaps it will be in G.o.d's good time.... And I had condemned my son to a horrible existence--for I knew my wife was not capable of bringing you up in the way of clean living. I was right. Simmons has since told me--and I was crushed beneath the burden of my sins."

After a pause he raised a drawn face and went on to tell of his meeting, the year before, with Barney Bill, of whom he had lost track when the prison doors had closed behind him. It had been in one of his Fish Palaces where Bill was eating. They recognized each other. Barney Bill told his tale: how he had run across Polly Kegworthy after a dozen years' wandering; how, for love of his old friend, he had taken Paul, child of astonishing promise, away from Bludston--