The Fortunate Youth

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"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.

CHAPTER XII

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 wisdoril 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 bear 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 intro duced 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 bad 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.

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