“I do not ask you to break your word to Paul. I want you to earn the right—now.”
Hawkins was still shaking his head.
“Earn it now—after all these years! How can I?”
“By promising that you won't drink any more,” said John Bruce quietly.
Hawkins' eyes went to the floor.
“Promise!” he said in a shamed way. “I've been promising that for twenty years. Paul wouldn't believe me. I wouldn't believe myself. I went and got drunker than I've been in all my life the night that dog said he was going to marry Claire, and Claire said it was true, and wouldn't listen to anything Paul could say to her against it.”
“I would believe you,” said John Bruce gravely.
For an instant Hawkins' face glowed, while tears came into the old blue eyes—and then he turned hurriedly and walked to the window, his back to John Bruce.
“It's no use,” he said, with a catch in his voice. “You don't know me. Nobody that knows me would take my word for that—least of all Paul.”
“I know this,” said John Bruce steadily, “that you have never been really put to the test. The test is here now. You'd stop, and stop forever, wouldn't you, if it meant Claire's happiness, her future, her salvation from the horror and degradation and misery and utter hopelessness that a life with a man who is lost to every sense of decency must bring her? I would believe you if you promised under those conditions. It seems to me to be the only chance there is left to save her. It is true she believes Paul is her father and accepts him as such, and neither his influence nor his arguments will move her from her determination to marry Crang; but I think there is a chance if she is told your story, if she is brought to her own father through this very thing. I think if you are in each other's arms at last after all these years from just that cause it might succeed where everything else failed. But this much is sure. It has a chance of success, and you owe Claire that chance. Will you take it, Hawkins? Will you promise?”