A FEW days afterwards you might have seen Paul dashing through the quiet main street of Morebury in a high dog-cart, on his way to call on the Princess. A less Fortunate Youth might have had to walk, risking boots impolitely muddy, or to hire a funereal cab from the local job-master; but Paul had only to give an order, and the cart and showy chestnut were brought round to the front door of Drane's Court. He loved to drive the showy chestnut, whose manifold depravities were the terror of Miss Winwood's life. Why didn't he take the cob? It was so much safer. Whereupon he would reply gaily that in the first place he found no amusement in driving woolly lambs, and in the second that if he did not take some of the devil out of the chestnut it would become the flaming terror of the countryside. So Paul, spruce in hard felt hat and box-cloth overcoat, clattered joyously through the Morebury streets, returning the salutations of the little notabilities of the town with the air of the owner not only of horse and cart, but of half the hearts in the place. He was proud of his popularity, and it scarcely entered his head that he was not the proprietor of his equipage. Besides, he was going to call on the Princess. He hoped that she would be alone: not that he had anything particular to say to her, or had any defined idea of love-making; but he was eight-and-twenty, an age at which desire has not yet failed and there is not the sign of a burdensome grasshopper anywhere about.
But the Princess was not alone. He found Mademoiselle de Cressy in charge of the tea-table and the conversation. Like many Frenchwomen, she had a high-pitched voice; she also had definite opinions on matter-of-fact subjects. Now when you have come to talk gossamer with an attractive and sympathetic woman, it is irritating to have to discuss Tariff Reform and the position of the working classes in Germany with somebody else, especially when the attractive and pretty woman does not give you in any way to understand that she would prefer gossamer to such arid topics. The Princess was as gracious as you please. She made him feel that he was welcome in her cosy boudoir; but there was no further exchange of mutually understanding glances. If a great lady entertaining a penniless young man can be demure, then demure was the Princess Sophie Zobraska. Paul, who prided himself on his knowledge of feminine subtlety, was at fault; but who was he to appreciate the repressive influence of a practical-minded convent friend, quickly formative and loudly assertive of opinions, on an impressionable lady awakening to curiosities? He was just a dunderhead, like any one of us—just as much as the most eminent feminine psychologist alive—which is saying a good deal. So he drove away disappointed, the sobriety of the chestnut's return trot through Morebury contrasting oddly with the dashing clatter of the former journey.
It was some time before he met the Princess again, for an autumn session of Parliament required migration to Portland Place. The Princess, indeed, came to London, shortly afterwards, to her great house in Berkeley Square; but it was not till late November that he was fortunate enough to see her. Then it was only a kiss of the hand and a hurried remark or two, at a large dinner-party at the Winwoods'. You see, there are such forces as rank and precedence at London dinner-parties, to which even princesses and fortunate youths have to yield.
On this occasion, as he bent over her hand, he murmured: "May I say how beautiful you are to-night, Princess?"
She wore a costume of silver and deep blue, and the blue intensified the blue depths of her eyes. "I am delighted to please monsieur," she said in French.
And that was their meeting. On parting she said again in French: "When are you coming to see me, fickle one?"
"Whenever you ask me. I have called in vain."
"You have a card for my reception next Tuesday?"
"I have replied that I do myself the honour of accepting the Princess's gracious invitation."
"I don't like London, do you?" she asked, allowing a touch of wistfulness to inflect her voice.
"It has its charms. A row on the Serpentine, for instance, or a bicycle ride in Battersea Park."
"How lovely it would be," she said, between laugh and sigh, "if only it could be kept out of the newspapers! I see it from here under the Fashionable Intelligence. 'The beautiful Princess Zobraska was observed in a boat on the ornamental water in Regent's Park with the well-known—tiens—what are you?—politician, say—with the well-known young politician, Mr. Paul Savelli.' Quel scandale, hein?"
"I must content myself with kissing your finger tips at your reception," said Paul.
She smiled. "We will find a means," she said.
At her reception, an assemblage glittering with the diamonds and orders of the great ones of the earth, she found only time to say: "Come to-morrow at five. I shall be alone."
Darkness descended on Paul as he replied: "Impossible, Princess. Colonel Winwood wants me at the House."
The next morning, greatly daring, he rang her up; for a telephone stood on the Fortunate Youth's table in his private sitting-room in Portland Place.
"It is I, Princess, Paul Savelli."
"What have you to say for yourself, Paul Savelli?"
"I am at your feet."
"Why can't you come to-day?"
He explained.
"But tell Colonel Winwood that I want you"—the voice was imperious.
"Would that be wise, Princess?"
"Wise?"
"Yes. Don't you see?"
He waited for an answer. There was blank electric current whirring faintly on his ear. He thought she had rung off—rung off not only this conversation, but all converse in the future. At last, after the waiting of despair, came the voice, curiously meek. "Can you come Friday?"
"With joy and delight." The words gushed out tempestuously.
"Good. At five o'clock. And leave your John Bull wisdom on the doorstep."
She rang off abruptly, and Paul stood ruminating puzzlewise on the audacious behest.
On Friday he presented himself at her house in Berkeley Square. He found her gracious, but ironical in attitude, very much on the defensive. She received him in the Empire drawing room—very stiff and stately in its appointments. It had the charm (and the intrinsic value) of a museum; it was as cosy as a room (under present arrangements) at Versailles. The great wood fire alone redeemed it from artistic bleakness. Tea was brought in by portentous, powdered footmen in scarlet and gold. She was very much the princess; the princess in her state apartments, a different personage from the pretty woman in a boudoir. Paul, sensitive as far as it is given man to be, saw that if he had obeyed her and left his John Bull wisdom on the doorstep, he would have regretted it. Obviously she was punishing him; perhaps herself; perhaps both of them. She kept a wary, appraising eye on him, as they talked their commonplaces. Paul's attitude had the correctness of a young diplomatist paying a first formal call. It was only when he rose to go that her glance softened. She laughed a queer little laugh.
"I hear that you are going to address a meeting in the North of London next week."
"That is so," said Paul; "but how can my unimportant engagements have come to the ears of Your Highness?"
"I read my newspapers like everybody else. Did you not know that there were announcements?"
Paul laughed. "I put them in myself. You see," he explained, "we want our Young England League to be as widely known as possible. The more lambs we can get into the fold, the better."
"Perhaps if you asked me very prettily," she said, "I might come and hear you speak."
"Princess!" His olive cheek flushed with pleasure and his eyes sparkled. "It would be an undreamed-of honour. It is such things that angels do."
"Eh bien, je viendrai. You ought to speak well. Couldn't you persuade them to give the place a better name? Hickney Heath! It hurts the roof of one's mouth. Tiens—would it help the Young England League if you announced my name in the newspapers?"
"Dear Princess, you overwhelm me. But—"
"Now, don't ask me if it is wise." She smiled in mockery. "You print the names of other people who are supporting you. Mr. John Felton, M.P., who will take the chair, Colonel Winwood, M.P., and Miss Winwood, the Dean of Halifax and Lady Harbury, et cetera, et cetera. Why not poor Princess Sophie Zobraska?"
"You have a good memory, Princess."
She regarded him lazily. "Sometimes. When does the meeting begin?"
"At eight. Oh, I forget." His face fell. "How can you manage it? You'll have to dine at an unearthly hour."
"What does it matter even if one doesn't dine—in a good cause?"
"You are everything that is perfect," said Paul fervently.
She dismissed a blissful youth. The Princess Zobraska cared as much for the Young England League as for an Anti-Nose-Ring Society in Central Africa. Would it help the Young England League, indeed! He laughed aloud on the lamp-lit pavement of decorous Berkeley Square. For what other man in the world would she dine at six and spend the evening in a stuffy hall in North London? He felt fired to great achievement. He would make her proud of him, his Princess, his own beautiful, stately, royal Princess. The dream had come true. He loved a Princess; and she—? If she cared naught for him, why was she cheerfully contemplating a six-o'clock dinner? And why did she do a thousand other things which crowded on his memory? Was he loved? The thought thrilled him. Here was no beautiful seductress of suspect title such as he had heard of during his sojourn in the Gotha Almanack world, but the lineal descendant of a princely house, the widow of a genuinely royal, though deboshed personage. Perhaps you may say that the hero of a fairy-tale never thinks of the mere rank of his beloved princess. If you do, you are committing all sorts of fallacies in your premises. For one thing, who said that Paul was a hero? For another, who said this was a fairy-tale? For yet another, I am not so sure that the swineherd is not impressed by the rank of his beloved. You must remember the insistent, lifelong dream of the ragged urchin. You must also reflect that the heart of any high-born youth in the land might well have been fluttered by signs of peculiar favour from Princess Sophie Zobraska. Why, then, should Paul be blamed for walking on air instead of greasy pavement on the way from Berkeley Square to Portland Place? Moreover, as sanity returned to him, his quick sense recognized in his Princess's offer to support him, a lovely indiscretion. Foreign ladies of high position must be chary of their public appearances. Between the row-boat on the Serpentine and the platform in the drill hall, Hickney Heath, the difference was but one of degree. And for him alone was this indiscretion about to be committed. His exultation was tempered by tender solicitude.
At dinner that evening—he was dining alone with the Winwoods—he said: "I've persuaded the Princess to come to our meeting on Friday. Isn't it good of her?"
"Very good," replied Colonel Winwood. "But what interest can she take in the lower walks of English politics?"
"It isn't English politics," said Paul. "It's world politics. The Princess is an aristocrat and is tremendously keen on the Conservative principle. She thinks our scheme for keeping the youth of the nation free from the taint of Socialism is magnificent."
"H'm!" said the Colonel.
"And I thought Miss Winwood would be pleased if I inveigled Her Highness on to the platform," said Paul.
"Why, of course it's a good thing," assented the Colonel. "But how the deuce did you get her?"
"Yes, how?" asked Miss Winwood, with a smile in her straight blue eyes.
"How does one get anything one wants in this world," said Paul, "except by going at it, hammer and tongs?"
A little later, when Paul opened the dining-room for her to pass out, she touched his shoulder affectionately and laughed. "Hammer and tongs to Sophie Zobraska! Oh, Paul, aren't you a bit of a humbug?"
Perhaps he was. But he was ingenuous in his desire to shield his Princess's action from vain conjecture. It were better that he should be supposed, in vulgar phrase, to have roped her in, as he had roped in a hundred other celebrities in his time. For there the matter ended. On the other hand, if he proclaimed the lady's spontaneous offer, it might be subjected to heaven knew how many interpretations. Paul owed much of his success in the world to such instinctive delicacies. He worked far into the night, composing his speech on England's greatness to the beautiful eyes of his French Princess.
The Young England League was his pet political interest. It had been inaugurated some years before he joined the Winwoods. Its objects were the training of the youth, the future electorate of England, in the doctrines of Imperialism, Constitutionalism and sound civicism, as understood by the intellectual Conservatives. Its mechanical aims were to establish lodges throughout the country. Every town and rural district should have its lodge, in connection wherewith should be not only addresses on political and social subjects, but also football and cricket clubs, entertainments for both sexes such as dances, whist-drives, excursions of archaeological and educational interest, and lantern (and, later, cinematographic) lectures on the wide aspects of Imperial Britain. Its appeal was to the young, the recruit in the battle of life, who in a year or two would qualify for a vote and, except for blind passion and prejudice, not know what the deuce to do with it. The octogenarian Earl of Watford was President; Colonel Winwood was one of a long list of Vice-Presidents; Miss Winwood was on the Council; a General Hankin, a fussy, incompetent person past his prime, was Honorary Secretary.
Paul worked with his employers for a year on the League thinking little of its effectiveness. One day, when they spoke despairingly of progress, he said, not in so many words, but in effect: "Don't you see what's wrong? This thing is run for young people, and you've got old fossils like Lord Watford and General Hankin running it. Let me be Assistant Secretary to Hankin' and I'll make things hum."
And thinking the words of the youth were wise, they used their influence with the Council, and Paul became Assistant Secretary, and after a year or two things began to hum so disconcertingly that General Hankin resigned in order to take the Presidency of the Wellingtonian Defence Association, and almost automatically Paul slipped into his place. With the instinct of the man of affairs he persuaded the Council to change his title. An Honorary Secretary is but a dilettante, an amateur carrying no weight, whereas an Organizing Secretary is a devil of a fellow professedly dynamic. So Paul became Organizing Secretary of the Young England League, and made things hum all the louder. He put fresh life into local Committees and local Secretaries by a paternal interest in their doings, making them feel the pulsations of the throbbing heart of headquarters. If a local lodge was in need of speakers, he exercised his arts of persuasion and sent them down in trainloads. He visited personally as many lodges as his other work permitted. In fact, he was raising the League from a jejune experiment into a flourishing organization. To his secret delight, old Lord Watford resigned the chairmanship owing to the infirmities of old age, and Lord Harbury, a young and energetic peer whom Paul had recently driven into the ranks of the Vice-Presidents, was elected in his stead. Paul felt the future of the League was assured.
With a real Member of Parliament to preside, a real dean to propose the vote of thanks, another Member of Parliament and two ex-mayors of the borough to add silent dignity to the proceedings, well-known ladies, including, now, a real Princess to grace the assembly, this meeting of the Hickney Heath Lodge was the most important occasion on which Paul had appeared in public.
"I hope you won't be nervous," said Miss Winwood, on the morning of the meeting.
"I nervous?" He laughed. "What is there to be nervous about?"
"I've had over twenty years' experience of public speaking, and I'm always nervous when I get UP."
"It's only because you persistently refuse to realize what a wonderful woman you are," he said affectionately.
"And you," she teased, "are you always realizing what a wonderful man you are?"
He cried with his sunny boldness: "Why not? It's faith in oneself and one's destiny that gets things done."
The drill hall was full. Party feeling ran high in those days at Hickney Heath, for a Liberal had ousted a Unionist from a safe seat at the last General Election, and the stalwarts of the defeated party, thirsting for revenge, supported the new movement. If a child was not born a Conservative, he should be made one. That was the watchword of the League. They were also prepared to welcome the new star that had arisen to guide the younger generation out of the darkness. When, therefore, the Chairman, Mr. John Felton, M.P., who had held minor office in the last administration, had concluded his opening remarks, having sketched briefly the history of the League and introduced Mr. Paul Savelli, in the usual eulogistic terms, as their irresistible Organizing Secretary, and Paul in his radiant young manhood sprang up before them, the audience greeted him with enthusiastic applause. They had expected, as an audience does expect in an unknown speaker, any one of the usual types of ordinary looking politicians—perhaps bald, perhaps grey headed, perhaps pink and fat—it did not matter; but they did not expect the magnetic personality of this young man of astonishing beauty, with his perfect features, wavy black hair, athletic build and laughing eyes, who seemed the embodiment of youth and joy and purpose and victory.
Before he spoke a word, he knew that he had them under his control, and he felt the great thrill of it. Physically he had the consciousness of a blaze of light, of a bare barn of an ungalleried place, of thickly-set row upon row of faces, and a vast confused flutter of beating hands. The applause subsided. He turned with his "Mr. Chairman, Your Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen," to the circle behind him, caught Miss Winwood, his dearest lady's smile, caught and held for a hundredth part of a second the deep blue eyes of the Princess—she wore a great hat with a grey feather and a chinchilla coat thrown open, and looked the incarnation of all the beauty and all the desires of all his dreams—and with a flash of gladness faced the audience and plunged into his speech.
It began with a denunciation of the Little Englander. At that period one heard, perhaps, more of the Little Englander than one does nowadays—which to some people's way of thinking is a pity. The Little Englander (according to Paul) was a purblind creature, with political vision ice-bound by the economic condition of the labouring classes in Great Britain. The Little Englander had no sense of patriotism. The Little Englander had no sense of Empire. He had no sense of India, Australia, Canada. He had no sense of foreign nations' jealousy of England's secular supremacy. He had a distinct idea, however, of three nationalities; those of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The inhabitants of those three small nations took peculiar pains to hammer that idea into his head. But of England he had no conception save as a mere geographical expression, a little bit of red on a map of Europe, a vague place where certain sections of the population clamoured for-much pay and little work. His dream was a parochial Utopia where the Irish peasant, the Welsh farmer and the Scottish crofter should live in luxury, and when these were satisfied, the English operative should live in moderate comfort. The Little Englander, in his insensate altruism, dreamed of these three nations entirely independent of England, except in the trivial matter of financial support. He wanted Australia, Canada, South Africa, to sever their links from him and take up with America, Germany, Switzerland—anybody so long as they did not interfere with his gigantic scheme for providing tramps in Cromarty with motor cars and dissolute Welsh shepherds with champagne. As for India, why not give it up to a benign native government which would depend upon the notorious brotherly love between Hindoo and Mussulman? If Russia, foolish, unawakened Russia, took possession of it, what would it matter to the miner of Merthyr Tydvil? As for England, provided such a country existed, she would be perfectly happy. The rich would provide for the poor—and what did anyone want further? Paul took up the Little Englander in his arms and tossed him in the air, threw him on the ground and jumped upon him. He cast his mutilated fragments with rare picturesqueness upon a Guy Fawkes bonfire. The audience applauded vociferously. He waited with a gay smile for silence, scanning them closely for the first time; and suddenly the smile faded from his face. In the very centre of the third row sat two people who did not applaud. They were Barney Bill and Jane.
He looked at them fascinated. There could be no mistake. Barney Bill's cropped, shoe-brush hair was white as the driven snow; but the wry, bright-eyed face was unchanged. And Jane, quietly and decently dressed, her calm eyes fixed on him, was—Jane. These two curiously detached themselves against the human background. It was only the sudden stillness of the exhausted applause that brought him to consciousness of his environment; that, and a heaven-sent fellow at the back of the audience who shouted: "Go on, sonny!"
Whereupon he plucked himself together with a swift toss of the head, and laughed his gay laugh. "Of course I'm going on, if you will let me. This is only the beginning of what I've got to tell you of the Englishman who fouls the nest of England—who fouls the nest of all that matters in the future history of mankind."
There was more applause. It was the orator's appeal to the mass. It set Paul back into the stream of his argument. He forgot Barney Bill and Jane, and went on with his speech, pointedly addressing the young, telling them what England was, what England is, what Englishmen, if they are true to England, shall be. It was for the young, those who came fresh to life with the glories of England fresh in their memories, from Crecy to the Armada, from the Armada to Waterloo, to keep the banner of England flying over their topmost roofs.
It was a fighting, enthusiastic, hyperbolic speech, glowing, as did the young face of the speaker, with the divine fire of youth. It ended triumphantly. He sat down to an ovation. Smiles and handshakes and words of praise surrounded him on the platform. Miss Winwood pressed his hand and said, "Well done." The Princess regarded him with flushed cheeks and starry eyes. It was only when silence fell on the opening words of the Dean of Halifax that he searched the rows in front for Barney Bill and Jane. They were still there. Impulsively he scribbled a few lines on a scrap of paper torn from his rough notes: "I must see you. Wait outside the side entrance for me after the meeting is over. Love to you both. Paul." A glance round showed him an attendant of the hall lurking at the back of the platform. He slipped quietly from his seat by the Chairman's side and gave the man the paper with directions as to its destination. Then he returned. Just before the Dean ended, he saw the note delivered. Jane read it, whispered its contents to Bill and seemed to nod acquiescence. It was fitting that these two dear ghosts of the past should appear for the first time in his hour of triumph. He longed to have speech with them, The Dean of Halifax was brief, the concluding ceremonies briefer. The audience gave Paul a parting cheer and dispersed, while Paul, the hero of the evening, received the congratulations of his friends.
"Those are things that needed saying, but we're too cautious to say them," remarked the Chairman.
"We've got to be," said Colonel Winwood.
"The glory of irresponsibility," smiled the Dean.
"You don't often get this kind of audience," Paul answered with a laugh. "A political infants' school. One has to treat things in broad splashes."
"You almost persuade me to be an Englishwoman," said the Princess.
Paul bowed. "But what more beautiful thing can there be than a Frenchwoman with England in her heart? Je ne demande pas mieux."
And the Princess did not put her hands to her ears.
The group passed slowly from the platform through a sort of committee room at the back, and reached the side entrance, Here they lingered, exchanging farewells. The light streamed dimly through the door on the strip of pavement between two hedges of spectators, and on the panelling and brass-work of an automobile by the curb. A chauffeur, with rug on arm, stepped forward and touched his cap, as the Princess appeared, and opened the door of the car. Paul, bare-headed, accompanied her across the pavement. Half way she stopped for a second to adjust a slipping fur. He aided her quickly and received a bright smile of thanks. She entered the car—held out her hand for, his kiss.
"Come and see me soon. I'll write or telephone."
The car rolled away. The Winwoods' carriage drove up.
It was a fighting, enthusiastic, hyperbolic speech, glowing with the divine fire of youth.
"Can we give you a lift home, Paul?" asked Miss Winwood.
"No thanks, dearest lady. There are one or two little things I must do before I go."
"Good night."
"Good night, Paul," said Colonel Winwood, shaking hands. "A thundering good speech."
PAUL looked from side to side at the palely lit faces of the spectators, trying to distinguish Barney Bill and Jane. But he did not see them. He was disappointed and depressed, seized with a curious yearning for his own people. Vehicle after vehicle drew up and carried away the remainder of the platform group, and Paul was left in the doorway with the President and Honorary Secretary of the local lodge. The little crowd began to melt away. Suddenly his heart leaped and, after a hasty good night to the two officials, he sprang forward and, to their astonishment, gripped the hand of a bent and wizened old man.
"Barney Bill! This is good. Where is Jane?"
"Close by," said Bill.
The President and Honorary Secretary waved farewells and marched away. Out of the gloom came Jane, somewhat shyly. He took both her hands and looked upon her, and laughed. "My dear Jane! What ages since we lost each other!"
"Seven years, Mr. Savelli."
"'Mr. Savelli!' Rubbish! Paul."
"Begging your pardon," said Barney Bill, "but I've got a pal 'ere what I've knowed long before you was born, and he'd like to tell yer how he enjoyed your speech."
A tall man, lean and bearded, and apparently very well dressed, came forward.
"This is my old pal, Silas Finn," said Bill.
"Delighted to meet you, Mr. Finn," said Paul, shaking hands.
"I too," said the man gravely.
"Silas Finn's a Councillor of the Borough," said Bill proudly.
"You should have been on the platform," said Paul.
"I attended in my private capacity," replied Mr. Finn.
He effaced himself. Paul found himself laughing into Barney Bill's twinkling eyes. "Dear old Bill," he cried, clapping his old friend on the shoulder. "How are things going? How's the caravan? I've looked out for it on so many country roads."
"I'm thinking of retiring," said Bill. "I can only do a few summer months now—and things isn't what they was."
"And Jane?" He turned to her.
"I'm Mr. Finn's secretary."
"Oh," said Paul. Mr. Finn, then, was an important person.
The drill hall attendant shut the door, and save for the street lamps they were in gloom. There was an embarrassed little silence. Paul broke it by saying: "We must exchange addresses, and fix up a meeting for a nice long talk."
"If you would like to have a talk with your old friends now, my house is at your disposal," said Mr. Finn, in a soft, melancholy voice. "It is not far from here."
"That's very kind of you—but I couldn't trespass on your hospitality."
"Gor bless you," exclaimed Barney Bill. "Nothing of the kind. Didn't I tell yer I've knowed him since we was lads together? And Jane lives there."
Paul laughed. "In that case—"
"You'll be most welcome," said Mr. Finn. "This way."
He went ahead with Barney Bill, whose queer side limp awoke poignant memories of the Bludston brickfield. Paul followed with Jane.
"And what have you been doing?" he asked.
"Typewriting. Then Bill came across Mr. Finn, whom he hadn't seen for years, and got me the position of secretary. Otherwise I've been doing nothing particular."
"If you knew what a hunt I had years ago to find you," he said, and began to explain the set of foolish circumstances when they turned the corner of the drill hall and found a four-wheeled cab waiting.
"I had already engaged it for my friends and myself," Mr. Finn explained. "Will you get in?"
Jane and Paul and Mr. Finn entered the cab. Barney Bill, who liked air and for whom the raw November night was filled apparently with balmy zephyrs, clambered in his crablike way next the driver. They started.
"What induced you to come to-night?" Paul asked.
"We saw the announcement in the newspapers," replied Jane. "Barney Bill said the Mr. Paul Savelli could be no one else but you. I said it couldn't."
"Why?" he asked sharply.
"There are heaps of people of the same name."
"But you didn't think I was equal to it?"
She laughed a short laugh. "That's just how you used to talk. You haven't changed much."
"I hope I haven't," replied Paul earnestly. "And I don't think you've changed either."
"Very little has happened to change me," said Jane.
The cab lumbered on through dull, dimly lit, residential roads. Only by the swinging gleam of an occasional street lamp could Paul distinguish the faces of his companions. "I hope you're on our side, Mr. Finn," he said politely to his host, who sat on the small back seat.
"I don't disagree with much that you said to-night. But you are on the side of wealth and aristocracy. I am on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed."
"But so am I," cried Paul. "The work of every day of my life tends to help them."
"You're a Conservative and I'm a Radical."
"What do labels matter? We're both attacking the same problem, only from different angles."
"Very likely, Mr. Savelli; but you'll pardon me if, according to my political creed, I regard your angle as an obtuse one."
Paul wondered greatly who he could be, this grave, intelligent friend of Barney Bill's, who spoke with such dignity and courtesy. In his speech was a trace of rough accent; but his words were chosen with precision.
"You think we glance off, whereas your attack is more direct," laughed Paul.
"That is so. I hope you don't mind my saying it. You were the challenger."
"I was. But anyhow we're not going to be enemies."
"God forbid," said Mr. Finn.
Presently the cab stopped before a fairly large detached house standing back from the road. A name which Paul could not decipher was painted on the top bar of the gate. They trooped through and up some steps to the front door, which Mr. Finn opened with his latchkey. The first impression that Paul had on entering a wide vestibule was a blaze of gilt frames containing masses of bright, fresh paint. A parlour-maid appeared, and helped with hats and coats.
"We are having a very simple supper, Mr. Savelli. Will you join us?" said Mr. Finn.
"With the greatest pleasure," said Paul.
The host threw open the dining-room door on the right. Jane and Paul entered; were alone for a few moments, during which Paul heard Barney Bill say in a hoarse whisper: "Let me have my hunk of bread and beef in the kitchen, Silas. You know as how I hates a fork and I likes to eat in my shirt sleeves."
Paul seized Jane by the arms and regarded her luminously. He murmured: "Did you hear? The dear old chap!"
She raised clear, calm eyes. "Aren't you shocked?"
He shook her. "What do you take me for?"
Jane was rebellious. "For what girls in my position generally call a 'toff.' You—-"
"You're horrid," said Paul.
"The word's horrid, not me. You're away up above us."
"'Us' seems to be very prosperous, anyhow," said Paul, looking round him. Jane watched him jealously and saw his face change. The dining room, spaciously proportioned, was, like the vestibule, a mass of gilt frames and staring paint. Not an inch of wall above the oak dado was visible. Crude landscapes, wooden portraits, sea studies with waves of corrugated iron, subject pictures of childishly sentimental appeal, blinded the eyes. It looked as if a kindergarten had been the selecting committee for an exhibition of the Royal Academy. It looked also as if the kindergarten had replaced the hanging committee also. It was a conglomerate massacre. It was pictorial anarchy. It was individualism baresark, amok, crazily frantic. And an execrably vile, nerve-destroying individualism at that.
Paul released Jane, who kept cool, defiant eyes on him.
"What do you think of it?"
He smiled. "A bit disconcerting."
"The whole house is like this."
"It's so new," said Paul.
He looked about him again. The long table was plainly laid for three at the far end. The fare consisted of a joint of cold beef, a cold tart suggestive of apple, a bit of Cheshire cheese, and celery in a glass vase. Of table decoration of any kind there was no sign. A great walnut monstrosity meagrely equipped performed the functions of a sideboard. The chairs, ten straight-backed, and two easy by the fireplace, of which one was armless, were upholstered in saddlebag, yellow and green. In the bay of the red-curtained window was a huge terra-cotta bust of an ivy-crowned and inane Austrian female. There was a great fireplace in which a huge fire blazed cheerily, and on the broad, deep hearth stood little coloured plaster figures of stags, of gnomes, of rabbits, one ear dropping, the other ear cocked, of galloping hounds unknown to the fancy, scenting and pursuing an invisible foe.
She watched him as he scanned the room.
"Who is Mr. Finn?" he asked in a low voice.
"Many years ago he was 'Finn's Fried Fish.' Now he's 'Fish Palaces, Limited.' They're all over London. You can't help seeing them even from a motor car."
"I've seen them," said Paul.
The argument outside the door having ended in a victory for the host, he entered the room, pushing Barney Bill gently in front of him. For the first time Paul saw him in the full light. He beheld a man sharply featured, with hair and beard, once raven-black, irregularly streaked with white—there seemed to be no intermediary shades of grey—and deep melancholy eyes. There hung about him the atmosphere of infinite, sorrowful patience that might mark a Polish patriot. As the runner of a successful fried fish concern he was an incongruity. As well, thought Paul, picture the late Cardinal Newman sharpening knife on steel outside a butcher's shop, and crying, "buy, buy," in lusty invitation. Then Paul noticed that he was oddly apparelled. He wore the black frock-coat suit of a Methodist preacher at the same time as the rainbow tie, diamond tie-pin, heavy gold watch-chain, diamond ring and natty spats of a professional bookmaker. The latter oddities, however, did not detract from the quiet, mournful dignity of his face and manner. Paul felt himself in the presence of an original personality.
The maid came in and laid a fourth place. Mr. Finn waved Paul to a seat on his right, Barney Bill to one next Paul; Jane sat on his left.
"I will ask a blessing," said Mr. Finn.
He asked one for two minutes in the old-fashioned Evangelical way, bringing his guest into his address to the Almighty with an almost pathetic courtesy. "I am afraid, Mr. Savelli," said he, when he sat down and began to carve the beef, "I have neither wine nor spirits to offer you. I am a strict teetotaller; and so is Miss Seddon. But as I knew my old friend Simmons would be unhappy without his accustomed glass of beer—"
"That's me," said Barney Bill, nudging Paul with his elbow. "Simmons. You never knowed that afore, did yer? Beg pardon, guv'nor, for interrupting."
"Well, there's a jug of beer—and that is all at this hour, except water, that I can put before you."
Paul declared that beer was delicious and peculiarly acceptable after public speaking, and demonstrated his appreciation by draining the glass which the maid poured out.
"You wanted that badly, sonny," said Barney Bill. "The next thing to drinking oneself is to see another chap what enjoys swallering it."
"Bill!" said Jane reprovingly.
Barney Bill cocked his white poll across the table with the perkiness of a quaint bird—Paul saw that the years had brought a striation of tiny red filaments to his weather-beaten face—and fixed her with his little glittering eyes. "Bill what? You think I'm 'urting his feelings?" He jerked a thumb towards his host. "I ain't. He thinks good drink's bad because bad has come of it to him—not that he ever took a drop too much, mind yer—but bad has come of it to him, and I think good drink's good because nothing but good has come of it to me. And we've agreed to differ. Ain't we, Silas?"
"If every man were as moderate as you, and I am sure as Mr. Savelli, I should have nothing to say against it. Why should I? But the working man, unhappily, is not moderate."
"I see," said Paul. "You preach, or advocate—I think you preach—total abstinence, and so feel it your duty to abstain yourself."
"That is so," said Mr. Finn, helping himself to mustard. "I don't wish to bore you with my concerns; but I'm a fairly large employer of labour. Now I have found that by employing only pledged abstainers I get extraordinary results. I exact a very high rate of insurance, towards a fund—I need not go into details—to which I myself contribute a percentage—a far higher rate than would be possible if they spent their earnings on drink. I invest the whole lot in my business—their stoppages from wages and my contributions. I guarantee them 3 per cent.; I give them, actually, the dividends that accrue to the holders of ordinary stock in my company. They also have the general advantages of insurance—sickness, burial, maternity, and so forth—that they would get from an ordinary benefit society."
"But that's enormous," cried Paul, with keen interest. "On the face of it, it seems impossible. It seems entirely uneconomic. Co-operative trading is one thing; private insurance another. But how can you combine the two?"
"The whole secret lies in the marvellously increased efficiency of the employee." He developed his point.
Paul listened attentively. "But," said he, when his host concluded, "isn't it rather risky? Supposing, for the sake of argument, your business failed."
Mr. Finn held up the lean, brown hand on which the diamond sparkled. "My business cannot fail."
Paul started. The assertion had a strange solemnity. "Without impertinence," said he, "why can't it fail?"
"Because God is guiding it," said Silas Finn.
The fanatic spoke. Paul regarded him with renewed interest. The black hair streaked with white, banging over the temples on the side away from the parting, the queerly streaked beard, the clear-cut ascetic features, the deep, mournful eyes in whose depths glowed a soul on fire, gave him the appearance of a mad but sanctified apostle. Barney Bill, who profoundly distrusted all professional drinkers of water, such as Mr. Finn's employees, ate his cold beef silently, in the happy surmise that no one was paying the least attention to his misperformances with knife, fork and fingers. Jane looked steadily from Paul to Silas and from Silas to Paul.
Paul said: "How do you know God is guiding it?"
At the back of his mind was an impulse of mirth—there was a touch of humorous blasphemy in the conception of the Almighty as managing director of "Fish Palaces, Limited"—but the nominal earthly managing director saw not the slightest humour in the proposition.
"Who is guiding you in your brilliant career?" he asked.
Paul threw out his hands, in the once practised and now natural foreign gesture. "I'm not an atheist. Of course I believe in God, and I thank Him for all His mercies—"
"Yes, yes," said his host. "That I shouldn't question. But a successful man's thanks to God are most often merely conventional. Don't think I wish to be offensive. I only want to get at the root of things. You are a young man, eight-and-twenty—"
"How do you know that?" laughed Paul.
"Oh, your friends have told me. You are young. You have a brilliant position. You have a brilliant future. Were you born to it?"
There was Jane on the opposite side of the table, entirely uninterested in her food, looking at him in her calm, clear way. She was so wholesome, so sane, in her young yet mature English lower-class beauty. She had broad brows. Her mass of dark brown hair was rather too flawlessly arranged. He felt a second's irritation at not catching any playfully straying strand. She was still the Jane of his boyhood, but a Jane developed, a Jane from whom no secrets were hid, a searching, questioning and quietly disturbing Jane.
"A man is born to his destiny, whatever destiny may be," said Paul.
"That is Mohammedan fatalism," said Mr. Finn, "unless one means by destiny the guiding hand of the Almighty. Do you believe that you're under the peculiar care of God?"
"Do you, Mr. Finn?"
"I have said so. I ask you. Do you?"
"In a general way, yes," said Paul. "In your particular sense, no. You question me frankly and I answer frankly. You would not like me to answer otherwise."
"Certainly not," said his host.
"Then," Paul continued, with a smile, "I must say that from my childhood I have been fired with a curious certainty that I would succeed in life. Chance has helped me. How far a divine hand has been specially responsible, it isn't for me to conjecture. But I know that if I hadn't believed in myself I shouldn't have had my small measure of success."
"You believe in yourself?"
"Yes. And I believe in making others believe in me."
"That is strange—very strange." Mr. Finn fixed him with his deep, sorrowful eyes. "You believe that you're predestined to a great position. You believe that you have in you all that is needful to attain it. That has carried you through. Strange!" He put his hand to his temple, elbow on table, and still regarded Paul. "But there's God behind it all. Mr. Savelli," he said earnestly, after a slight pause, "you are twenty-eight; I am fifty-eight; so I'm more than old enough to be your father. You'll forgive my taking up the attitude of the older man. I have lived a life such as your friends on the platform to-night—honorable, clean, sweet people—I've nothing to say against them—have no conception. I am English, of course—London born. My father was an Englishman; but my mother was a Sicilian. She used to go about with a barrel-organ—my father ran away with her. I have that violent South in my blood, and I've lived nearly all my days in London. I've had to pay dearly for my blood. The only compensation it has given me is a passion for art"—he waved his lean, bediamonded hand towards the horrific walls. "That is external—in a way—mere money has enabled me to gratify my tastes; but, as I was saying, I have lived a life of strange struggle, material, physical, and"—he brought down his free hand with a bang on the table—"it is only by the grace of God and the never-ceasing presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ by my side, that—that I am able to offer you my modest hospitality this evening."
Paul felt greatly drawn to the man. He was beyond doubt sincere. He wore the air of one who had lived fiercely, who had suffered, who had conquered; but the air of one whose victory was barren, who was looking into the void for the things unconquerable yet essential to salvation. Paul made a little gesture of attention. He could find no words to reply. A man's deep profession of faith is unanswerable.
"Ah," said Barney Bill, "you ought to have come along o' me, Silas, years ago in the old 'bus. You mightn't have got all these bright pictures, but you wouldn't have had these 'ere gloomy ideas. I don't say as how I don't hold with Gawd," he explained, with uplifted forefinger and cocked head; "but if ever I thinks of Him, I like to feel that He's in the wind or in the crickle-crackle of the earth, just near and friendly like, but not a-worrying of a chap, listening for every cuss-word as he uses to his old horse, and measuring every half-pint he pours down his dusty throat. No. That ain't my idea of Gawd. But then I ain't got religion."
"Still the same old pagan," laughed Paul.
"No, not the same, sonny," said Barney Bill, holding up his knife, which supported a morsel of cheese. "Old. Rheumaticky. Got to live in a 'ouse when it rains—me who never keered whether I was baked to a cinder or wet through! I ain't a pagan no more. I'm a crock."
Jane smiled affectionately at the old man, and her face was lit with rare sweetness when she smiled. "He really is just the same," she said.
"He hasn't changed much in forty years," said Mr. Finn.
"I was a good Conservative then, as I am now," said Bill. "That's one thing, anyhow. So was you, Silas. But you had Radical leanings."
Barney Bill's remark set the talk on political lines. Paul learned that his host had sat for a year or more as a Progressive on the Hickney Heath Borough Council and aspired to a seat in Parliament.
"The Kingdom of Heaven," said he, not unctuously or hypocritically, but in his grave tone of conviction, "is not adequately represented in the House."
Paul pointed out that in the House of Lords one had the whole bench of Bishops.
"I'm not a member of the Established Church, Mr. Savelli," replied Mr. Finn. "I'm a Dissenter—a Free Zionist."
"I've heard him conduc' the service," said Barney Bill. "He built the Meeting House close by, yer know. I goes sometimes to try and get converted. But I'm too old and stiff in the j'ints. No longer a pagan, but a crock, sonny. But I likes to listen to him. Gorbli—bless me, it's a real bean feast—that's what it is. He talks straight from the shoulder, he does, just as you talked to-night. Lets 'em 'ave it bing-bang in the eye. Don't he, Jane?"
"Bill means," she explained, with the shadow of a smile, for Paul's benefit, "that Mr. Finn is an eloquent preacher."
"D'yer suppose he didn't understand what I meant?" he exclaimed, setting down the beer glass which he was about to raise to his lips. "Him, what I discovered reading Sir Walter Scott with the cover off when he was a nipper with no clothes on? You understood, sonny."
"Of course I did." He laughed gaily and turned to his host, who had suffered Barney Bill's queer eulogy with melancholy indulgence. "One of these days I should like to come and hear you preach."
"Any Sunday, at ten and six. You would be more than welcome."
The meal was over. Barney Bill pulled a blackened clay pipe from his waistcoat pocket and a paper of tobacco.
"I'm a non-smoker," said Mr. Finn to Paul, "and I'm sorry I've nothing to offer you—I see little company, so I don't keep cigars in the house—but if you would care to smoke—-" he waved a courteous and inviting hand.
Paul whipped out his cigarette case. It was of gold—a present last Christmas from the Winwood fitting part of the equipment of a Fortunate Youth. He opened it, offered a cigarette to Barney Bill.
"Garn!" said the old man. "I smokes terbakker," and he filled his pipe with shag.
Mr. Finn rose from the table. "Will you excuse me, Mr. Savelli, if I leave you? I get up early to attend to my business. I must be at Billingsgate at half-past five to buy my fish. Besides, I have been preventing your talk with our friends. So pray don't go. Good-night, Mr. Savelli."
As he shook hands Paul met the sorrowful liquid eyes fixed on him with strange earnestness. "I must thank you for your charming hospitality. I hope you'll allow me to come and see you again."
"My house is yours."
It was a phrase—a phrase of Castilian politeness—oddly out of place in the mouth of a Free Zionist purveyor of fried fish. But it seemed to have more than a Castilian, more than a Free Zionist significance. He was still pondering over it when Mr. Finn, having bidden Jane and Barney Bill good-night, disappeared.
"Ah!" said Barney Bill, lifting up the beer jug in order to refill his glass, and checked whimsically by the fact of its emptiness. "Ah," said he, setting down the jug and limping round the table, "let us hear as how you've been getting on, sonny."
They drew their chairs about the great hearth, in which the idiotic little Viennese plaster animals sported in movement eternally arrested, and talked of the years that had passed. Paul explained once more his loss of Jane and his fruitless efforts to find her.
"We didn't know," said Jane. "We thought that either you were dead or had forgotten us—or had grown too big a man for us."
"Axing your pardon," said Barney Bill, taking his blackened clay from his lips and holding it between his gnarled fingers, "you said so. I didn't. I always held that, if he wasn't dead, the time would come when, as it was to-night, the three of us would be sitting round together. I maintained," he added solemnly after a puff or two, "that his heart was in the right place. I'm a broken-down old crock, no longer a pagan; but I'm right. Ain't I, sonny?" He thrust an arm into the ribs of Paul, who was sitting between them.
Paul looked at Jane. "I think this proves it."
She returned his look steadily. "I own I was wrong. But a woman only proves herself to be right by always insisting that she is wrong."
"My dear Jane," cried Paul. "Since when have you become so psychological?"
"Gorblime," said Barney Bill, "what in thunder's that?"
"I know," said Jane. "You"—to Paul—"were good enough to begin my education. I've tried since to go on with it."
"It's nothing to do with edication," said Barney Bill. "It's fac's. Let's have fac's. Jane and I have been tramping the same old high-road, but you've been climbing mountains—yer and yer gold cigarette cases. Let's hear about it."
So Paul told his story, and as he told it, it seemed to him, in its improbability, more like a fairy-tale than the sober happenings of real life.
"You've said nothing about the princess," Jane remarked, when he had ended.
"The princess?"
"Yes. Where does she come in?"
"The Princess Zobraska is a friend of my employers."
"But you and she are great friends," Jane persisted quietly. "That's obvious to anybody. I was standing quite close when you helped her into the motor car."
"I didn't see you."
"I took care you didn't. She looks charming."
"Most princesses are charming—when they've no particular reason to be otherwise," said Paul. "It is their metier—their profession."
There was a little silence. Jane, cheek on hand, looked thoughtfully into the fire. Barney Bill knocked' the ashes out of his pipe and thrust it in his pocket. "It's getting late, sonny."
Paul looked at his watch. It was past one o'clock. He jumped up. "I hope to goodness you haven't to begin work at half-past five," he said to Jane.
"No. At eight." She rose as he stretched out his hand. "You don't know what it is to see you again, Paul. I can't tell you. Some things are upsetting. But I'm glad. Oh, yes, I'm glad, Paul dear. Don't think I'm not."
Her voice broke a little. They were the first gentle words she had given him all the evening. Paul smiled and kissed her hand as he had kissed that of the princess, and, still holding it, said: "Don't I know you of old? And if you suppose I haven't thought of you and felt the need of you, you're very much mistaken. Now I've found you, I'm not going to let you go again."
She turned her head aside and looked down; there was the slightest movement of her plump shoulders. "What's the good? I can't do anything for you now, and you can't do anything for me. You're on the way to becoming a great man. To me, you're a great man already. Don't you see?"
"My dear, I was an embryonic Shelley, Raphael, Garrick, and Napoleon when you first met me," he said jestingly.
"But then you didn't belong to their—to their sphere. Now you do. Your friends are lords and ladies and—and princesses—"
"My friends," cried Paul, "are people with great true hearts—like the Winwoods—and the princess, if you like—and you, and Barney Bill."
"That's a sentiment as does you credit," said the old man. "Great true hearts! Now if you ain't satisfied, my dear, you're a damn criss-cross female. And yer ain't, are yer?' She laughed and Paul laughed. The little spell of intensity was broken. There were pleasant leave-takings.
"I'll set you on your road a bit," said Barney Bill. "I live in the neighbourhood. Good-bye, Jane."
She went with them to the front door, and stood in the gusty air watching them until they melted into the darkness.