The Fortunate Youth

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"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. Halt 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."

CHAPTER XIII

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 I' 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 Zion'st."

"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 Y' 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.

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