In John Drury, Barkston had actually discovered his long-lost son. Perhaps I ought not to use the phrase “long-lost,” for Barkston only learned that night, that he ever had a son. But that John Drury was his son there was no doubt whatever. And the curious thing was, that Barkston was led to make this extraordinary discovery entirely through John Drury’s speech of that evening.
For when John Drury, in his concluding sentences, quoted the Latin words upon the watch, that he had been accused of stealing, Mr. Barkston started as if he had been struck.
For the motto on the watch was his own motto, the motto which, as he remembered, had been engraved upon the watch, that he had lost.
This it was that led him, as I say, to follow John Drury from the Chamber, and to begin that conversation with him, which I had witnessed in the Library Lobby.
In this conversation, bit by bit, Mr. Barkston learned enough to convince him—and subsequent inquiries absolutely confirmed the conviction—that John Drury, the brilliant journalist, one of the most conspicuous of the coming men, was in very fact his own child.
When Barkston was a young man, he fell in love with a beautiful actress in a burlesque theatre, and, being a rash young man, he married her privately.
The woman was light-hearted and light-headed to an astonishing degree, and at a time, when it seemed probable that she was likely to become a mother, she actually left Barkston in the company of an actor, in the company to which she belonged.
Barkston tried without success to trace her, but it seemed, after long inquiries, he ascertained that she gave birth to a boy, that her lover objected to the encumbrance of the child, and that the unhappy mother abandoned it. She was herself afterwards abandoned by her lover, and died, it would seem, wretchedly.
It is a sad little story, my dear friend, and has in it, perhaps, the pith of a sermon against vice, which some better fellow than I might preach with advantage to his hearers.
I am not a preacher, I am only a humble looker-on at the grim game of life, with its joys and its sorrow, its dances and its dirges, and if I find a lot that is sad in it, I find a lot that is bright and brave as well.