"That man could have gone on writing for a hundred years," cried Paul, "and he could have exhausted all the possibilities of human life."
Colonel Winwood smiled courteously. "We have a bond in Balzac," said he. "But I must go. My sister said I mustn't tire you." He rose. "We're having a lot of people down here this week for the shooting. There'll be good sport. Pity you're not well enough to join us."
Paul smiled. He had one of his flashes of tact, "I'm afraid," said he modestly, "that I've never fired off a gun in my life."
"What?" cried the Colonel.
"It's true."
Colonel Winwood looked at him once more. "It's not many young men," said he, "who would dare to make such a confession."
"But what is the good of lying?" asked Paul, with the eyes of a cherub.
"None that I know of," replied the Colonel. He returned to his chair and rested his hand on the back. "You play golf, anyhow," said he, pointing to the brown canvas bag in the corner.
"Oh, yes," said Paul.
"Any good?"
"Fair to middling."
"What's your handicap?" asked the Colonel, an enthusiastic though inglorious practitioner of the game.
"One," said Paul.
"The deuce it is!" cried the Colonel. "Mine is fifteen. You must give me a lesson or two when you pull round. We've a capital course here."
"That's very kind of you," said Paul, "but I'm afraid I shall be well enough for ordinary purposes long before I'm able to handle a golf club."
"What do you mean?"
"This silly pleurisy. It will hang about for ages!"
"Well?"
"I'll have to go my ways from here long before I can play."
"Any great hurry?"
"I can't go on accepting your wonderful hospitality indefinitely," said Paul.
"That's nonsense. Stay as long as ever you like."
"If I did that," said Paul, "I would stay on forever."
The Colonel smiled and shook hands with him. In the ordinary way of social life this was quite an unnecessary thing to do. But he acted according to the impulses common to a thousand of his type—and a fine type—in England. Setting aside the mere romantic exterior of a Macedonian brigand, here was a young man of the period with astonishingly courteous manners, of—and this was of secondary consideration—of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of this country are not gods; they are very humanly fallible; but of such is the Kingdom of England.
"At any rate," said he, "you mustn't dream of leaving us yet."
He went downstairs and met his sister in the hall.
"Well?" she asked, with just a gleam of quizzicality in her eyes, for she knew whence he had come.
"One of these days I'll take him out and teach him to shoot," said the Colonel.
THE shooting party came, and Paul, able to leave his room and sit in the sunshine and crawl about the lawn and come down to dinner, though early retirement was prescribed, went among the strange men and women of the aristocratic caste like one in a dream of bliss. Much of their talk, sport and personalities, was unintelligible; every man seemed to have killed everything everywhere and every woman seemed to know everybody and everybody's intimate secrets. So when conversation was general, Paul, who had killed nothing and knew nobody, listened in silent perplexity. But even the perplexity was a happiness. It was all so new, so fascinating. For was not this world of aristocrats—there were lords and ladies and great personages whose names he had read in the newspapers—his rightful inheritance, the sphere to which he had been born? And they did not always talk of things which he did not understand. They received him among them with kind welcome and courtesy. No one asked him whence he came and whither he was going. They took him for granted, as a guest of the Winwoods. Of course if Paul had seen himself on the way to rival the famous actor whose photograph in the window of the London Stereoscopic Company had inspired him with histrionic ambitions, he would have been at no pains to hide his profession. But between the darling of the London stage and a seedy member of a fit-up company lies a great gulf. He shrank from being associated with Mr. Vincent Crummles. One thing, however, of invaluable use he had brought with him from Theatreland—the dress suit which formed part of his stage wardrobe. There were other things, too, which he did not appreciate—ease of manner, victory over the lingering Lancastrian burr, and a knowledge of what to do with his feet and hands.
One day he had a great shock. The house party were assembling in the drawing-room, when in sailed the great lady, the ever-memorable great lady, the Marchioness of Chudley, who had spoken to him and smiled on him in the Bludston factory. Fear laid a cold grip on his heart. He thought of pleading weakness and running away to the safe obscurity of his room. But it was too late. The procession was formed immediately, and he found himself in his place with his partner on his arm. Dinner was torture. What he said to his neighbours he knew not. He dared not look up the table where Lady Chudley sat in full view. Every moment he expected—ridiculous apprehension of an accusing conscience—Colonel Winwood to come and tap him on the shoulder and bid him begone. But nothing happened. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, Fate drove him into a corner near Lady Chudley, whose eyes he met clear upon him. He turned away hurriedly and plunged into conversation with a young soldier standing by. Presently he heard Miss Winwood's voice.
"Mr. Savelli, I want to introduce you to Lady Chudley."
The fear gripped him harder and colder. How could he explain that he was occupying his rightful place in that drawing-room? But he held himself up and resolved to face the peril like a man. Lady Chudley smiled on him graciously—how well he remembered her smile!—and made him sit by her side. She was a dark, stately woman of forty, giving the impression that she could look confoundedly cold and majestic when she chose. She wore diamonds in her hair and a broad diamond clasp to the black velvet round her throat.
"Miss Winwood has been telling me what an awful time you've had, Mr. Savelli," she said pleasantly. "Now, whenever I hear of people having had pneumonia I always want to talk to them and sympathize with them."
"That's very kind of you, Lady Chudley," said Paul.
"Only a fellow-feeling. I nearly died of it once myself. I hope you're getting strong."
"I'm feeling my strength returning every day. It's a queer new joy."
"Isn't it?"
They discussed the exhilaration of convalescence. It was a 'wonderful springtide. They reverted to the preceding misery.
"You're far luckier than I was," she remarked. "You've had a comfy English house to be ill in. I was in a stone-cold palazzo in Florence—in winter. Ugh! Shall I ever forget it? I don't want to speak evil of Italy to an Italian—"
"I'm only Italian by descent," exclaimed Paul, with a laugh, his first frank laugh during the whole of that gloomy evening. And he laughed louder than was necessary, for, as it suddenly dawned upon him that he did not in the least recall to her mind the grimy little Bludston boy, the cold hand of fear was dissolved in a warm gush of exultation. "You can abuse Italy or any country but England as much as you like."
"Why mustn't I abuse England?"
"Because it's the noblest country in the world," he cried; and, seeing approval in her eyes, he yielded to an odd temptation. "If one could only do something great for her!"
"What would you like to do?" she asked.
"Anything. Sing for her. Work for her. Die for her. It makes one so impatient to sit down and do nothing. If one could only stir her up to a sense of her nationality!" he went on, less lyrically, though with the same fine enthusiasm. "She seems to be losing it, letting the smaller nations assert theirs to such an extent that she is running the risk of becoming a mere geographical expression. She has merged herself in the Imperial Ideal. That's magnificent; but the Empire ought to realize her as the great Motherheart. If England could only wake up as England again, what a wonderful thing it would be!"
"It would," said Lady Chudley. "And you would like to be the awakener?"
"Ay!" said Paul—"what a dream!"
"There was never a dream worth calling a dream that did not come true."
"Do you believe that, too?" he asked delightedly. "I've held to it all my life."
Colonel Winwood, who had been moving hostwise from group to group in the great drawing-room, where already a couple of bridge tables had been arranged, approached slowly. Lady Chudley gave him a laughing glance of dismissal. Paul's spacious Elizabethan patriotism, rare—at least in expression—among the young men of the day, interested and amused her.
"Have you dreamed all your life of being the Awakener of England?"
"I have dreamed of being so many things," he said, anxious not to commit himself. For, truth to say, this new ambition was but a couple of minutes old.
It had sprung into life, however, like Pallas Athene, all armed and equipped.
"And they have all come true?"
His great eyes laughed and his curly head bent ever so slightly. "Those worth calling dreams," said he.
A little later in the evening, when on retiring to an early bed he was wishing Miss Winwood good night, she said, "You're a lucky young man."
"I know—but—" He looked smiling inquiry.
"Lady Chudley's the most valuable woman in England for a young man to get on the right side of."
Paul went to bed dazed. The great lady who had recognized the divine fire in the factory boy had again recognized it in the grown man. She had all but said that, if he chose, he could be the Awakener of England. The Awakener of England! The watchword of his new-born ambition rang in his brain until he fell asleep.
The time soon came when the prospective Awakener of England awoke to the fact that he must fare forth into the sleeping land with but a guinea in his pocket. The future did not dismay him, for he knew now that his dreams came true. But he was terribly anxious, more anxious than ever, to leave Drane's Court with all the prestige of the prospective Awakener. Now, this final scene of the production could not be worked for a guinea. There were golden tips to servants, there was the first-class railway fare. Once in London—he could pawn things to keep him going, and a Bloomsbury landlady with whom he had lodged, since the loss of Jane, would give him a fortnight or three weeks' credit. But he had to get to London-to get there gloriously; so that when the turn of Fortune's wheel enabled him to seek again these wonderful friends in the aristocratic sphere to which he belonged, he could come among them untarnished, the conquering prince. But that miserable guinea! He racked his brains. There was his gold watch and chain, a symbol, to his young mind, of high estate. When he had bought it there crossed his mind the silly thought of its signification of the infinite leagues that lay between him and Billy Goodge. He could pawn it for ten pounds—it would be like pawning his heart's blood—but where? Not in Morebury, even supposing there was a pawnbroker's in the place. He had many friends in his profession, scattered up and down the land. But he had created round himself the atmosphere of the young magnifico. It was he who had lent, others who had borrowed. Rothschild or Rockefeller inviting any of them to lend him money would have produced less jaw-dropping amazement. Even if he sent his pride flying and appealed to the most friendly and generous, he shrank from the sacrifice he would call upon the poor devil to make. There was only his beautiful and symbolic watch and chain. The nearest great town where he could be sure of finding a pawnbroker was distant an hour's train journey.
So on the day before that for which, in spite of hospitable protestations on the part of Colonel and Miss Winwood, he had fixed his departure, he set forth on the plea of private business, and returned with a heavier pocket and a heavier heart. He had been so proud, poor boy, of the gold insignia across his stomach. He had had a habit of fingering it lovingly. Now it was gone. He felt naked—in a curious way dishonoured. There only remained his cornelian talisman. He got back in time for tea and kept his jacket closely buttoned. But in the evening he had perforce to appear stark and ungirt—in those days Fashion had not yet decreed, as it does now, the absence of watchchain on evening dress—and Paul shambled into the drawing-room like a guest without a wedding garment. There were still a few people staying in the house—the shooting party proper, and Lady Chudley, had long since gone—but enough remained to be a social microcosm for Paul. Every eye was upon him. In spite of himself, his accusing hand went fingering the inanity of his waistcoat front. He also fingered, with a horrible fascination, the dirty piece of card that took the place of his watch in his pocket.
One must be twenty to realize the tragedy of it. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans! To be twenty, in a garret, with the freedom and the joy of it! Yes; the dear poet was right. In those "brave days" the poignancy of life comes not in the garret, but in the palace.
To-morrow, with his jacket buttoned, he could make his exit from Drane's Court in the desired splendour—scattering largesse to menials and showing to hosts the reflected glow of the golden prospects before him; but for this evening the glory had departed. Besides, it was his last evening there, and London's welcome tomorrow would be none too exuberant.
The little party was breaking up, the ladies retiring for the night, and the men about to accompany Colonel Winwood to the library for a final drink and cigarette. Paul shook hands with Miss Winwood.
"Good night—and good-bye," she said, "if you take the early train. But must you really go to-morrow?"
"I must," said Paul.
"I hope we'll very soon be seeing you again. Give me your address." She moved to a bridge table and caught up the marking block, which she brought to him. "Now I've forgotten the pencil."
"I've got one," said Paul, and impulsively thrusting his fingers into his waistcoat pocket, flicked them out with the pencil. But he also flicked out the mean-looking card of which he had been hatefully conscious all the evening. The Imp of Mischance arranged that as Miss Winwood stood close by his side, it should fall, unperceived by him, on the folds of her grey velvet train. He wrote the Bloomsbury address and handed her the leaf torn from the pad. She folded it up, moved away, turning back to smile. As she turned she happened to look downward; then she stooped and picked the card from her dress. A conjecture of horror smote Paul. He made a step forward and stretched out his hand; but not before she had instinctively glanced first at the writing and then at his barren waistcoat. She repressed a slight gasp, regarding him with steady, searching eyes.
His dark face flushed crimson as he took the accursed thing, desiring no greater boon from Heaven than instant death. He felt sick with humiliation. The brightly lit room grew black. It was in a stupor of despair that he heard her say, "Wait a bit here, till I've got rid of these people."
He stumbled away and stood on the bearskin rug before the fireplace, while she joined the lingering group by the door. The two or three minutes were an eternity of agony to Paul. He had lost his great game.
Miss Winwood shut the door and came swiftly to him and laid her hand on his arm. Paul hung his head and looked into the fire. "My poor boy!" she said very tenderly. "What are you going to do with yourself?"
If it had not been for the diabolical irony of the mishap he would have answered with his gay flourish. But now he could not so answer. Boyish, hateful tears stood in his eyes and, in spite of anguished effort of will, threatened to fall. He continued to look into the fire, so that she should not see them. "I shall go on as I always have done," he said as stoutly as he could.
"Your prospects are not very bright, I fear."
"I shall keep my head above water," said Paul. "Oh, please don't!" he cried, shivering. "You have been so good to me. I can't bear you to have seen that thing. I can't stand it."
"My dear boy," she said, coming a little nearer, "I don't think the worse of you for that. On the contrary, I admire your pluck and your brave attitude towards life. Indeed I do. I respect you for it. Do you remember the old Italian story of Ser Federigo and his falcon? How he hid his poverty like a knightly gentleman? You see what I mean, don't you? You mustn't be angry with me!"
Her words were Gilead balm of instantaneous healing.
"Angry?"
His voice quavered. In a revulsion of emotion he turned blindly, seized her hand and kissed it. It was all he could do.
"If I have found it out—not just now," she quickly interjected, seeing him wince, "but long ago—it was not your fault. You've made a gallant gentleman's show to the end—until I come, in a perfectly brutal way, and try to upset it. Tell me—I'm old enough to be your mother, and you must know by this time that I'm your friend—have you any resources at all—beyond—?" She made ever so slight a motion of her hand toward the hidden pawn ticket.
"No," said Paul, with his sure tact and swiftly working imagination. "I had just come to an end of them. It's a silly story of losses and what-not—I needn't bother you with it. I thought I would walk to London, with the traditional half-crown in my pocket"—he flashed a wistful smile—"and seek my fortune. But I fell ill at your gates."
"And now that you're restored to health, you propose in the same debonair fashion to—well—to resume the search?"
"Of course," said Paul, all the fighting and aristocratic instincts returning. "Why not?"
There were no tears in his eyes now, and they looked with luminous fearlessness at Miss Winwood. He drew a chair to the edge of the bearskin. "Won't you sit down, Miss Winwood?"
She accepted the seat. He sat down too. Before replying she played with her fan rather roughly—more or less as a man might have played with it. "What do you think of doing?"
"Journalism," said Paul. He had indeed thought of it.
"Have you any opening?"
"None," he laughed. "But that's the oyster I'm going to open."
Miss Winwood took a cigarette from a silver box near by. Paul sprang to light it. She inhaled in silence half a dozen puffs. "I'm going to ask you an outrageous question," she said, at last. "In the first place, I'm a severely business woman, and in the next I've got an uncle and a brother with cross-examining instincts, and, though I loathe them—the instincts, I mean—I can't get away from them. We're down on the bedrock of things, you and I. Will you tell me, straight, why you went away to-day to—to"—she hesitated—"to pawn your watch and chain, instead of waiting till you got to London?"
Paul threw out his arms in a wide gesture. "Why—your servants—"
She cast the just lighted cigarette into the fire, rose and clapped her hands on his shoulders, her face aflame. "Forgive me—I knew it—there are doubting Thomases everywhere—and I'm a woman who deals with facts, so that I can use them to the confusion of enemies. Now I have them. Ser Federigo's watch and chain. Nicht wahr?"
Remember, you who judge this sensible woman of forty-three, that she had fallen in love with Paul in the most unreprehensible way in the world; and if a woman of that age cannot fall in love with a boy sweetly motherwise, what is the good of her? She longed to prove that her polyhedral crystal of a paragon radiated pure light from every one of his innumerable facets. It was a matter of intense joy to turn him round and find each facet pure. There was also much pity in her heart, such as a woman might feel for a wounded bird which she had picked up and nursed in her bosom and healed. Ursula was loath to let her bird fly forth into the bleak winter.
"My brother and I have been talking about you—he is your friend, too," she said, resuming her seat. "How would it suit you to stay with us altogether?"
Paul started bolt upright in his chair. "What do you mean?" he asked breathlessly, for the heavens had opened with dazzling unexpectedness.
"In some such position as confidential secretary—at a decent salary, of course. We've not been able to find a suitable man since Mr. Kinghorne left us in the spring. He got into Parliament, you know, for Reddington at the by-election—and we've been muddling along with honorary secretaries and typists. I shouldn't suggest it to you," she went on, so as to give him time to think, for he sat staring at her, openmouthed, bewildered, his breath coming quickly—"I shouldn't suggest it to you if there were no chances for you in it. You would be in the thick of public affairs, and an ambitious man might find a path in them that would lead him anywhere. I've had the idea in my head," she smiled, "for-some time. But I've only spoken to my brother about it this afternoon—he has been so busy, you see—and I intended to have another talk with him, so as to crystallize things—duties, money, and so forth—before making you any proposal. I was going to write to you with everything cut and dried. But"—she hesitated delicately—"I'm glad I didn't. It's so much more simple and friendly to talk. Now, what do you say?"
Paul rose and gripped his hands together and looked again into the fire. "What can I say? I could only go on my knees to you—and that—"
"That would be beautifully romantic and entirely absurd," she laughed. "Anyhow, it's settled. Tomorrow we can discuss details." She rose and put out her hand. "Good night, Paul."
He bowed low. "My dearest lady," said he in a low voice, and went and held the door open for her to pass out.
Then he flung up his arms wildly and laughed aloud and strode about the room in exultation. All he had hoped for and worked for was an exit of fantastic and barren glory. After which, the Deluge—anything. He had never dreamed of this sudden blaze of Fortune. Now, indeed, did the Great Things to which he was born lie to his hand. Queerly but surely Destiny was guiding him upward. In every way Chance had worked for him. His poverty had been a cloak of honour; the thrice-blessed pawn ticket a patent of nobility. His kingdom lay before him, its purple mountains looming through the mists of dawn. And he would enter into it as the Awakener of England. He stood thrilled. The ambition was no longer the wild dream of yesterday. From the heart of the great affairs in which he would have his being he could pluck his awakening instrument. The world seemed suddenly to become real. And in the midst of it was this wonderful, beautiful, dearest lady with her keen insight, her delicate sympathy, her warm humanity. With some extravagance he consecrated himself to her service.
After a while he sat down soberly and took from his pocket the cornelian heart which his first goddess had given him twelve years ago. What had become of her? He did not even know her name. But what happiness, he thought, to meet her in the plenitude of his greatness and show her the heart, and say, "I owe it all to you!" To her alone of mortals would he reveal himself.
And then he thought of Barney Bill, who had helped him on his way; of Rowlatt, good fellow, who was dead; and of Jane, whom he had lost. He wished he could write to Jane and tell her the wonderful news. She would understand.... Well, well! It was time for bed. He rose and switched off the lights and went to his room. But as he walked through the great, noiseless house, he felt, in spite of Fortune's bounty, a loneliness of soul; also irritation at having lost Jane. What a letter he could have written to her! He could not say the things with which his heart was bursting to anyone on earth but Jane. Why had he lost Jane? The prospective Awakener of England wanted Jane.
ONE morning Paul, with a clump of papers in his hand, entered his pleasant private room at Drane's Court, stepped briskly to the long Cromwellian table placed in the window bay, and sat down to his correspondence.
It was gusty outside, as could be perceived by the shower of yellow beech leaves that slanted across the view; but indoors a great fire flaming up the chimney, a Turkey carpet fading into beauty, rich eighteenth century mezzotints on the walls, reposeful leather-covered chairs and a comfortable bookcase gave an atmosphere of warmth and coziness. Paul lit a cigarette and attacked a pile of unopened letters. At last he came to an envelope, thick and faintly scented, bearing a crown on the flap. He opened it and read:
DEAR MR. SAVELLI:
Will you dine on Saturday and help me entertain an eminent Egyptologist? I know nothing of Egypt save Shepheard's Hotel, and that I'm afraid wouldn't interest him. Do come to my rescue. Yours, SOPHIE ZOBRASKA.
Paul leaned back in his chair, twiddling the letter between his fingers, and looked smilingly out on the grey autumn rack of clouds. There was a pleasant and flattering intimacy in the invitation: pleasant because it came from a pretty woman; flattering because the woman was a princess, widow of a younger son of a Royal Balkan house. She lived at Chetwood Park, on the other side of Morebury, and was one of the great ones of those latitudes. A real princess.
Paul's glance, travelling back from the sky, fell upon the brass date indicator on the table. It marked the 2nd of October. On that day five years ago he had entered on his duties at Drane's Court. He laughed softly. Five years ago he was a homeless wanderer. Now princesses were begging him to rescue them from Egyptologists. With glorious sureness all his dreams were coming true.
Thus we see our Fortunate Youth at eight-and-twenty in the heyday of success. If he had strutted about under Jane's admiring eyes, like a peacock among daws, he now walked serene, a peacock among peacocks. He wore the raiment, frequented the clubs, ate the dinners of the undeservingly rich and the deservingly great. His charm and his self-confidence, which a genius of tact saved from self-assertion, carried him pleasantly through the social world; his sympathetic intelligence dealt largely and strongly with the public affairs under his control. He loved organizing, persuading, casting skilful nets. His appeal for subscriptions was irresistible. He had the magical gift of wringing a hundred pounds from a plutocrat with the air of conferring a graceful favour. In aid of the Mission to Convert the Jews he could have fleeced a synagogue. The societies and institutions in which the Colonel and Ursula Winwood were interested flourished amazingly beneath his touch. The Girls' Club in the Isle of Dogs, long since abandoned in despair by the young Guardsman, grew into a popular and sweetly mannered nunnery. The Central London Home for the Indigent Blind, which had been languishing for support, in spite of Miss Winwood's efforts, found itself now in a position to build a much-needed wing. There was also, most wonderful and, important thing of all, the Young England League, which was covering him with steadily increasing glory. Of this much hereafter. But it must be remembered. Ursula complained that he left her nothing to do save attend dreary committee meetings; and even for these Paul saved her all the trouble in hunting up information. She was a mere figurehead.
"Dearest lady," Paul would say, "if you send me about my business, you'll write me a character, won't you, saying that you're dismissing me for incorrigible efficiency?"
"You know perfectly well," she would sigh, "that I would be a lost, lone woman without you."
Whereat Paul would laugh his gay laugh. At this period of his life he had not a care in the world.
The game of politics also fascinated him. A year or so after he joined the Winwoods there was a General Election. The Liberals, desiring to drive the old Tory from his lair, sent down a strong candidate to Morebury. There was a fierce battle, into which Paul threw himself, heart and soul. He discovered he could speak. When he first found himself holding a couple of hundred villagers in the grip of his impassioned utterance he felt that the awakening of England had begun. It was a delicious moment. As a canvasser he performed prodigies of cajolery. Extensive paper mills, a hotbed of raging Socialism, according to Colonel Winwood, defaced (in the Colonel's eyes) the outskirts of the little town.
"They're wrong 'uns to a man," said the Colonel, despondently.
Paul came back from among them with a notebook full of promises.
"How did you manage it?" asked the Colonel.
"I think I got on to the poetical side of politics," said Paul.
"What the deuce is that?"
Paul smiled. "An appeal to the imagination," said he.
When Colonel Winwood got in by an increased majority, in spite of the wave of Liberalism that spread over the land, he gave Paul a gold cigarette case; and thenceforward admitted him into his political confidence. So Paul became familiar with the Lobby of the House of Commons and with the subjects before the Committees on which Colonel Winwood sat, and with the delicate arts of wire-pulling and intrigue, which appeared to him a monstrously fine diversion. There was also the matter of Colonel Winwood's speeches, which the methodical warrior wrote out laboriously beforehand and learned by heart. They were sound, weighty pronouncements, to which the House listened with respect; but they lacked the flashes which lit enthusiasm. One day he threw the bundle of typescript across to Paul.
"See what you think of that."
Paul saw and made daring pencilled amendments, and took it to the Colonel.
"It's all very funny," said the latter, tugging his drooping moustache, "but I can't say things like that in the House."
"Why not?" asked Paul.
"If they heard me make an epigram, they would have a fit."
"Our side wouldn't. The Government might. The Government ought to have fits all the time until it expires in convulsions."
"But this is a mere dull agricultural question. The Board of Agriculture have brought it in, and it's such pernicious nonsense that I, as a county gentleman, have to speak against it."
"But couldn't you stick in my little joke about the pigs?" asked Paul pleadingly.
"What's that?" Colonel Winwood found the place in the script. "I say that the danger of swine fever arising from this clause in the Bill will affect every farmer in England."
"And I say," cried Paul eagerly, pointing to his note, "if this clause becomes law, swine fever will rage through the land like a demoniacal possession. The myriad pigs of Great Britain, possessed of the devils of Socialism, will be turned into Gadarene swine hurtling down to destruction. You can show how they hurtle, like this—" He flickered his hands. "Do try it."
"H'm!" said Colonel Winwood.
Sorely against his will, he tried it. To his astonishment it was a success. The House of Commons, like Mr. Peter Magnus's friend, is easily amused. The exaggeration gave a cannon-ball's weight to his sound argument. The Government dropped the clause—it was only a trivial part of a wide-reaching measure—the President of the Board of Agriculture saying gracefully that in the miracle he hoped to bring about he had unfortunately forgotten the effect it might have on the pigs. There was "renewed laughter," but Colonel Winwood remained the hero of the half-hour and received the ecstatic congratulations of unhumorous friends. He might have defeated the Government altogether. In the daily round of political life nothing is so remarkable as the lack of sense of proportion.
"It was the Gadarene swine that did it," they said.
"And that," said Colonel Winwood honestly, "was my young devil of a secretary."
Thenceforward the young wit and the fresh fancy of Paul played like a fountain over Colonel Winwood's speeches.
"Look here, young man," said he one day, "I don't like it. Sometimes I take your confounded suggestions, because they happen to fit in; but I'm actually getting the reputation of a light political comedian, and it won't do."
Whereupon Paul, with his swift intuition, saw that in the case of a proud, earnest gentleman like Colonel Winwood the tempting emendations of typescript would not do. In what Miss Winwood called his subtle Italian way, he induced his patron to discuss the speeches before the process of composition. These discussions, involving the swift rapier play of intelligences, Colonel Winwood enjoyed. They stimulated him magically. He sat down and wrote his speeches, delightfully unconscious of what in them was Paul and what was himself; and when he delivered them he was proud of the impression he had made upon the House.
And so, as the years passed, Paul gained influence not only in the little circle of Drane's Court and Portland Place, but also in the outer world. He was a young man of some note. His name appeared occasionally in the newspapers, both in connection with the Winwood charities and with the political machine of the Unionist party. He was welcomed at London dinner tables and in country houses. He was a young man who would go far. For the rest, he had learned to ride and shoot, and not to make mistakes about the genealogical relationships of important families. He had travelled about Europe, sometimes with the Winwoods, sometimes by himself. He was a young man of cultivation and accomplishment.
On this fifth anniversary he sat gazing unseeingly at the autumn rack, the Princess's letter in his hand, and letting his thoughts wander down the years. He marvelled how valiantly the stars in their courses had fought for him. Even against recognition his life was charmed. Once, indeed, he met at the house in Portland Place a painter to whom he had posed. The painter looked at him keenly.
"Surely we have met before?"
"We have," said Paul with daring frankness. "I remember it gratefully. But if you would forget it I should be still more grateful."
The painter shook hands with him and smiled. "You may be sure I haven't the least idea what you're talking about."
As for Theatreland, the lower walks in the profession to which Paul had belonged do not cross the paths of high political society. It lay behind him far and forgotten. His position was secure. Here and there an anxious mother may have been worried as to his precise antecedents; but Paul was too astute to give mothers over-much cause for anxiety. He lived under the fascination of the Great Game. When he came into his kingdom he could choose; not before. His destiny was drawing him nearer and nearer to it, he thought, with slow and irresistible force. In a few years there would be Parliament, office, power, the awaking from stupor of an England hypnotized by malign influences. He saw himself at the table in the now familiar House of green benches, thundering out an Empire's salvation. 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.
There entered a self-effacing young woman with pencil and notebook. "Are you ready for me, sir?"
"Not quite. Sit down for a minute, Miss Smithers. Or, come up to the table if you don't mind, and help me open these envelopes."
Paul, you see, was a great man, who commanded the services of a shorthand typist.
To the mass of correspondence then opened and read he added that which he had brought in from Colonel and Miss Winwood. From this he sorted the few letters which it would be necessary to answer in his own handwriting, and laid them aside; then taking the great bulk, he planted himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and, cigarette in mouth, dictated to the self-effacing young woman. She took down his words with anxious humility, for she looked upon him as a god sphered on Olympian heights—and what socially insecure young woman of lower-middle-class England could do otherwise in the presence of a torturingly beautiful youth, immaculately raimented, who commanded in the great house with a smile more royal and debonair than that of the master thereof, Member of Parliament though he was, and Justice of the Peace and Lord of the Manor? And Paul, fresh from his retrospect, looked at the girl's thin shoulders and sharp, intent profile, and wondered a little, somewhat ironically. He knew that she regarded him as a kind of god, for reasons of caste. Yet she was the daughter of a Morebury piano tuner, of unblemished parentage for generations. She had never known hunger and cold and the real sting of poverty. Miss Winwood herself knew more of drunken squalor. He saw himself a ragged and unwashed urchin, his appalling breeches supported by one brace, addressing her in familiar terms; and he saw her transfigured air of lofty disgust; whereupon he laughed aloud in the middle of a most unhumorous sentence, much to Miss Smithers' astonishment.
When he had finished his dictation he dismissed her and sat down to his writing. After a while Miss Winwood came in. The five years had treated her lightly. A whitening of the hair about her brows, which really enhanced the comeliness of her florid complexion, a few more lines at corners of eyes and lips, were the only evidences of the touch of Time's fingers. As she entered Paul swung round from his writing chair and started to his feet. "Oh, Paul, I said the 20th for the Disabled Soldiers and Sailors, didn't I? I made a mistake. I'm engaged that afternoon."
"I don't think so, dearest lady," said Paul.
"I am."
"Then you've told me nothing about it," said Paul the infallible.
"I know," she said meekly. "It's all my fault. I never told you. I've asked the Bishop of Frome to lunch, and I can't turn him out at a quarter-past two, can I? What date is there free?"
Together they bent over the engagement book, and after a little discussion the new date was fixed.
"I'm rather keen on dates to-day," said Paul, pointing to the brass calendar.
"Why?"
"It's exactly five years since I entered your dear service," said Paul.
"We've worked you like a galley slave, and so I love your saying 'dear service,'" she replied gently.
Paul, half sitting on the edge of the Cromwellian table in the bay of the window, laughed. "I could say infinitely more, dearest lady, if I were to let myself go."
She sat on the arm of a great leathern chair. Their respective attitudes signified a happy intimacy. "So long as you're contented, my dear boy—-" she said.
"Contented? Good heavens!" He waved a protesting hand.
"You're ambitious."
"Of course," said he. "What would be the good of me if I wasn't?"
"One of these days you'll be wanting to leave the nest and—what shall we say?—soar upwards."
Paul, too acute to deny the truth of this prophecy said: "I probably shall. But I'll be the rarissima avis, to whom the abandoned nest will always be the prime object of his life's consideration."
"Pretty,"' said Miss Winwood.
"It's true."
"I'm sure of it," she said pleasantly. "Besides, if you didn't leave the nest and make a name for yourself, you wouldn't be able to carry on our work. My brother and I, you see, are of the older generation—you of the younger."
"You're the youngest woman I know," Paul declared.
"I shan't be in a few years, and my brother is a good deal older than I."
"Well, I can't get into Parliament right away," said Paul. "For one thing, I couldn't afford it."
"We must find you a nice girl with plenty of money," she said, half in jest.
"Oh, please don't. I should detest the sight of her. By the way, shall you want me on Saturday evening?"
"No—unless it would be to take Miss Durning in to dinner."
Now Miss Durning being an elderly, ugly heiress, it pleased Miss Winwood to be quizzical. He looked at her in mock reproof. "Dearest lady that you are, I don't feel safe in your hands just now. I shall dine with the Princess on Saturday."
An enigmatic smile flitted across Ursula Winwood's clear eyes. "What does she want you for?"
"To entertain an Egyptologist," assured Paul. He waved his hand toward the letter on the table. "There it is in black and white."
"I suppose for the next few days you'll be cramming hard."
"It would be the polite thing to do, wouldn't it?" said Paul blandly.
Miss Winwood shook her head and went away, and Paul happily resumed his work. In very truth she was to him the dearest of ladies.
The Princess Zobraska was standing alone by the fireplace at the end of the long drawing-room when Paul was announced on Saturday evening. She was a distinguished-looking woman in the late twenties brown-haired, fresh-complexioned, strongly and at the same time delicately featured. Her dark blue eyes, veiled by lashes, smiled on him lazily as he approached; and lazily, too, her left arm stretched out, the palm of the hand downward, and she did not move. He kissed her knuckles, in orthodox fashion.
"It is very good of you to come, Mr. Savelli," she said in a sweetly foreign accent, "and leave your interesting company at Drane's Court."
"Any company without you, Princess, is chaos," said Paul.
"Grand flatteur, va,—' said she.
"C'est que vous etes irresistible, Princesse, surlout dans ce costume-la."
She touched his arm with an ostrich feather fan. "When it comes to massacring languages, Mr. Savelli, let me be the assassin."
"I laid the tribute of my heart at your feet in the most irreproachable grammar," said Paul.
"But with the accent of John Bull. That's the only thing of John Bull you have about you. For the sake of my ears I must give you some lessons."
"You'll find me such a pupil as never teacher had in the world before. When shall we begin?"
"Aux Kalendes Grecques."
"Ah que vous etes femme!"
She put her hands to her ears. "Listen. Que-vous-etes-femme" she said.
"Que-vous-etes-femme," Paul repeated parrotwise. "Is that better?"
"A little."
"I see the Greek Kalends have begun," said he.
"Mechant, you have caught me in a trap," said she.
And they both laughed.
From which entirely foolish conversation it may be gathered that between our Fortunate Youth and the Princess some genial sun had melted the icy barriers of formality. He had known her for eighteen months, ever since she had bought Chetwood Park and settled down as the great personage of the countryside. He had met her many times, both in London and in Morebury; he had dined in state at her house; he had shot her partridges; he had danced with her; he had sat out dances with her, notably on one recent June night, in a London garden, where they lost themselves for an hour in the discussion of the relative parts that love played in a woman's life and in a man's. The Princess was French, ancien regime, of the blood of the Coligny, and she had married, in the French practical way, the Prince Zobraska, in whose career the only satisfactory incident history has to relate is the mere fact of his early demise. The details are less exhilarating. The poor little Princess, happily widowed at one-and-twenty, had shivered the idea of love out of her system for some years. Then, as is the way of woman, she regained her curiosities. Great lady, of enormous fortune, she could have satisfied them, had she so chosen, with the large cynicism of a Catherine of Russia. She could also, had she so chosen, have married one of a hundred sighing and decorous gentlemen; but with none of them had she fallen ever so little in love, and without love she determined to try no more experiments; her determination, however, did not involve surrender of interest in the subject. Hence the notable discussion on the June night. Hence, perhaps, after a few other meetings of a formal character, the prettily intimate invitation she had sent to Paul.
They were still laughing at the turn of the foolish conversation when the other guests began to enter the drawing-room. First came Edward Doon, the Egyptologist, a good-looking man of forty, having the air of a spruce don, with a pretty young wife, Lady Angela Doon; then Count Lavretsky, of the Russian Embassy, and Countess Lavretsky; Lord Bantry, a young Irish peer with literary ambitions; and a Mademoiselle de Cressy, a convent intimate of the Princess and her paid companion, completed the small party.
Dinner was served at a round table, and Paul found himself between Lady Angela Doon, whom he took in, and the Countess Lavretsky. Talk was general and amusing. As Doon did not make, and apparently did not expect anyone to make any reference to King Qa or Amenhotep or Rameses—names vaguely floating in Paul's brain—but talked in a sprightly way about the French stage and the beauty of Norwegian fiords, Paul perceived that the Princess's alleged reason for her invitation was but a shallow pretext. Doon did not need any entertainment at all. Lady Angela, however, spoke of her dismay at the prospect of another winter in the desert; and drew a graphic little sketch of the personal discomforts to which Egyptologists were subjected.
"I always thought Egyptologists and suchlike learned folk were stuffy and snuffy with goggles and ragged old beards," laughed Paul. "Your husband is a revelation."
"Yes, he's quite human, isn't he?" she said with an affectionate glance across the table. "He's dead keen on his work, but he realizes—as many of his stuffy and snuffy confreres don't—that there's a jolly, vibrating, fascinating, modern world in which one lives."
"I'm glad to hear you say that about the modern world," said Paul.
"What is Lady Angela saying about the modern world?" asked the Princess, separated from Paul's partner only by Count Lavretsky.
"Singing paeans in praise of it," said Paul.
"What is there in it so much to rejoice at?" asked the diplomatist, in a harsh voice. He was a man prematurely old, and looked at the world from beneath heavy, lizard-like eyelids.
"Not only is it the best world we've got, but it's the best world we've ever had," cried Paul. "I don't know any historical world which would equal the modern, and as for the prehistoric—well, Professor Doon can tell us—"
"As a sphere of amenable existence," said Doon with a smile, "give me Chetwood Park and Piccadilly."
"That is mere hedonism," said Count Lavretsky. "You happen, like us all here, to command the creature comforts of modern wealthy conditions, which I grant are exceedingly superior to those commanded by the great Emperors of ancient times. But we are in a small minority. And even if we were not—is that all?"
"We have a finer appreciation of our individualities," said the Princess. "We lead a wider intellectual life. We are in instant touch, practically, with the thought of the habitable globe."
"And with the emotive force of mankind," said Paul.
"What is that?" asked Lady Angela.
Why Paul, after the first glance of courtesy at the speaker, should exchange a quick glance with the Princess would be difficult to say. It was instinctive; as instinctive as the reciprocal flash of mutual understanding.
"I think I know, but tell us," she said.
Paul, challenged, defined it as the swift wave of sympathy that surged over the earth. A famine in India, a devastating earthquake in Mexico, a bid for freedom on the part of an oppressed population, a deed of heroism at sea—each was felt within practically a few moments, emotionally, in an English, French or German village. Our hearts were throbbing continuously at the end of telegraph wires.
"And you call that pleasure?" asked Count Lavretsky.
"It isn't hedonism, at any rate," said Paul.
"I call it life," said the Princess. "Don't you?"—she turned to Doon.
"I think what Mr. Savelli calls the emotive force of mankind helps to balance our own personal emotions," said he.
"Or isn't it rather a wear and tear on the nervous system?" laughed his wife.
"It seems so to me," said Count Lavretsky. "Perhaps, being a Russian, I am more primitive and envy a nobleman of the time of Pharaoh who never heard of devastations in Mexico, did not feel his heart called upon to pulsate at anything beyond his own concerns. But he in his wisdom at his little world was vanity and was depressed. We moderns, with our infinitely bigger world and our infinitely greater knowledge, have no more wisdom than the Egyptian, and we see that the world is all the more vanity and are all the more overwhelmed with despair."
"But—" said Paul.
"But—" cried the Princess.
Both laughed, and paused. Paul bowed with a slight gesture.
"I am not overwhelmed with despair," the Princess continued.
"Neither am I," said Paul.
"I am keeping my end up wonderfully," said Lady Angela.
"I am in a nest of optimists," Count Lavretsky groaned. "But was it not you, Lady Angela, who talked of wear and tear.
"That was only to contradict my husband."
"What is all this about?" asked the Countess Lavretsky, who had been discussing opera with Lord Bantry and Mademoiselle de Cressy.
Doon scientifically crystallized the argument. It held the octette, while men-servants in powder and gold-laced livery offered poires Zobraska, a subtle creation of the chef. Lord Bantry envied the contemplative calm which unexciting circumstances allowed the literary ancient. Mademoiselle de Cressy advanced the feminist view in favour of the modern world. The talk became the light and dancing interplay of opinion and paradox common to thousands of twentieth-century dinner-tables.
"All the same," said Count Lavretsky, "they wear you out, these emotive forces. Nobody is young nowadays. Youth is a lost art."
"On the contrary," cried Mademoiselle de Cressy in French. "Everybody is young to-day. This pulsation of the heart keeps you young. It is the day of the young woman of forty-five."
Count Lavretsky, who was fifty-nine, twirled a grey moustache. "I am one of the few people in the world who do not regret their youth. I do not regret mine, with its immaturity, its follies and subsequent headaches. I would sooner be the scornful philosopher of sixty than the credulous lover of twenty."
"He always talks like that," said the Countess to Paul; "but when he met me first he was thirty-five—and"—she laughed—"and now voila—for him there is no difference between twenty and sixty. Expliquez-moi ca."
"It's very simple," declared Paul. "In this century the thirties, forties, and fifties don't exist. You're either twenty or sixty."
"I hope I shall always be twenty," said the Princess lightly.
"Do you find your youth so precious, then?" asked Count Lavretsky.
"More than I ever did!" She laughed and again met Paul's eyes.
This time she flushed faintly as she held them for a fraction of a second. He had time to catch a veiled soft gleam intimate and disquieting. For some time he did not look again in her direction; when he did, he met in her eyes only the lazy smile with which she regarded all and sundry.
Later in the evening she said to him: "I'm glad you opposed Lavretsky. He makes me shiver. He was born old and wrinkled. He has never had a thrill in his life."
"And if you don't have thrills when you're young, you can't expect to have them when you're old," said Paul.
"He would ask what was the good of thrills."
"You don't expect me to answer, Princess."
"We know because we're young."
They stood laughing in the joy of their full youth, a splendid couple, some distance away from the others, ostensibly inspecting a luminous little Cima on the wall. The Princess loved it as the bright jewel of her collection, and Paul, with his sense of beauty and knowledge of art, loved it too. Yet, instead of talking of the picture, they talked of Lavretsky, who was looking at them sardonically from beneath his heavy eyelids.