Part 36 (1/2)

”I know that,” said Paul, coldly; ”but I am going to give it all the same.” He paused, held up his hand and looked at the Princess. ”Mr.

Silas Finn happens to be my father.”

”Good G.o.d!” gasped the Colonel, after a flash of silence.

The Princess caught a quick breath and sat erect in her chair.

”Votre Pere, Paul?”

”Yes, Princess. Until half an hour ago I did not know it. Never in my life did I know that I had a father living. My friends there can bear witness that what I say is true.”

”But, Paul dear,” said Miss Winwood, laying her kind fingers on his arm and searching his face, ”you told us that your parents were dead and that they were Italians.”

”I lied,” replied Paul calmly. ”But I honestly believed the woman who was my mother not to be my mother, and I had never heard of my father.

I had to account for myself to you. Your delicacy, Miss Winwood, enabled me to invent as little as possible.”

”But your name--Savelli?”

”I took it when I went on the stage--I had a few years' obscure and unsuccessful struggle. You will remember I came to you starving and penniless.”

The Princess grew white and her delicate nostrils quivered.

”Et monsieur votre pere--” she checked herself. ”And your father, what do you say he is?”

Paul motioned to Silas to speak.

”I, Madam,” said the latter, ”am a self-made man, and by the establishment of fried-fish shops all over London and the great provincial towns, have, by the grace of G.o.d, ama.s.sed a considerable fortune.”

”Fried fish?” said the Princess in a queer voice.

Silas looked at her out of his melancholy and unhumorous eyes.

”Yes, Madam.”

”I have also learned,” said Paul, ”that my grandmother was a Sicilian who played a street-organ. Hence my Italian blood.”

Jane, standing by the door with Barney Bill, most agonized of old men, wholly nervous, twisting with gnarled fingers the broken rim of his hard felt hat, turned aside so that no one but Bill should see a sudden gush of tears. For she had realized how drab and unimportant she was in the presence of the great and radiant lady; also how the great and radiant lady was the G.o.d-sent mate for Paul, never so great a man as now when he was cutting out his heart for truth's sake.

”I should like to tell you what my life has been,” continued Paul, ”in the presence of those who know it already. That's why I asked them to stay. Until an hour ago I lived in dreams. In my own fas.h.i.+on I was an honest man. But now I've got this knowledge of my origin, the dreams are swept away and I stand naked to myself. If I left you, Miss Winwood, and Colonel Winwood, who have been so good to me--and Her Highness, who has deigned to honour me with her friends.h.i.+p--in a moment's doubt as to my antecedents I should be an impostor.”

”No, no, my boy,” said Colonel Winwood, who was standing with hands deep in trouser pockets and his head bent, staring at the carpet. ”No words like that in this house. Besides, why should we want to go into all this?”

He had the Englishman's detestation of unpleasant explanations. Ursula Winwood supported him.

”Yes, why?” she asked.

”But it would be very interesting,” said the Princess slowly, cutting her words.

Paul met her eyes, which she had hardened, and saw beneath them pain and anger and wounded pride and repulsion. For a second he allowed an agonized appeal to flash through his. He knew that he was deliberately killing the love in her heart. He felt the monstrous cruelty of it. A momentary doubt shook him. Was he justified? A short while ago she had entered the room her face alight with love; now her face was as stern and cold as his own. Had he the right to use the knife like this? Then certainty came. It had to be. The swifter the better. She of all human beings must no longer be deceived. Before her, at supreme cost, he must stand clean.

”It's not very interesting,” said he. ”And it's soon told. I was a ragged boy in a slum in a Lancas.h.i.+re town. I slept on sacking in a scullery, and very seldom had enough to eat. The woman whom I didn't think was my mother ill-treated me. I gather now that she hated me because she hated my father. She deserted him when I was a year old and disappeared; she never spoke of him. I don't know exactly how old I am.