Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 10, 2025
Kegworthy was cast into the limbo of common things, and he became Paul Savelli. But this was later. He made friends at the theatre. Some of the women, by petting and flattery, did their best to spoil him; but Paul was too ambitious, too much absorbed in his dream of greatness and his dilettante literary and musical pursuits, too much yet of a boy to be greatly affected.
In an animal way she was fond of the children of Button, and in a way equally animal she bore a venomous dislike to the child of Keg-worthy. Who and what Kegworthy had been neither Paul nor any inhabitant of Bludston knew. Once the boy inquired, and she broke a worn frying-pan over his head. Kegworthy, whoever he might have been, was wrapt in mystery.
So rumour had it; and to unsophisticated Paul rumour was gospel truth. With all these unexperienced joys before him, what cared he for the blankety little blanks who gibed at him? If you imagine that little Paul Kegworthy formulated his thoughts as would the angel choir-boy in the pictures, you are mistaken. The baby language of Bludston would petrify the foc'sle of a tramp, steamer.
"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.
If he thought more of the awakener than the awakening, it was because he was the same little Paul Kegworthy to whom the cornelian heart had brought the Vision Splendid in the scullery of the Bludston slum. The cornelian heart still lay in his waistcoat pocket at the end of his watch chain. He also held a real princess's letter in his hand. A tap at the door aroused him from his day-dream.
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 "Do you remember, sonny, when I left you alone that night and went to the other side of the brickfield? It was to think it out," said Bill. "To think out my duty as a man." Paul nodded.
In those few moments of intense feeling, in the presence of death, it was given to Paul to tread across the threshold of the mystery of his birth. Here lay stiff and cold no base clay such as that of which Polly Kegworthy had been formed. It had been the tenement of a spirit beautiful and swift.
Behind the screen lay Paul, his eyes on his goddess, his heels in the air, a buttercup-stalk between his teeth. He felt the comforting knot beneath his thigh. For the first time, perhaps, in his life, he knew utter happiness. He heard the talk, but did not listen. Suddenly, however, the sound of his own name caused him to prick his ears. Paul Kegworthy! They were talking about him.
Instinct had been right in its promptings to assume an Italian name; but the irony of it was of the quality that makes for humour in hell. And his very Christian name Paul the exotic name which Polly Kegworthy would not have given to a brat of hers was but a natural one for a Silas to give his son, a Silas born of generations of evangelical peasants.
Button, who had been Polly Kegworthy and called herself his mother? It was astonishing how seldom he thought of her.... He had run away a scarecrow boy in a gipsy van. He came back a formative force in the land, the lover of a princess, the honoured guest of the great palace of the countryside. He slipped his hand into his waistcoat pocket and felt the cornelian heart.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking