Alisa Paige - A Book Sample
Page 9"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
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
"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.
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."