The Fortunate Youth

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"That's neither here nor there," said Paul, standing over him. "You
must answer my question. What do you mean?"

Barney Bill limped a step or two toward him and cleared his throat.
"He's quite correct, sonny. Silas Kegworthy's your father right
enough."

"Kegworthy?"

"Yes. Changed his name for business--and other reasons."

"He?" said Paul, half dazed for the moment and pointing at Silas
Finn. "His name is Kegworthy and he is my father?"

"Yes, sonny. 'Tain't my fault, or Jane's. He took his Bible oath he
wouldn't tell yer. We was afraid, so we come with him."

"Then?" queried Paul, jerking a thumb toward Lancashire.

"Polly Kegworthy? Yes. She was yer mother."

Paul set his teeth and drew a deep breath--not of air, but of a
million sword points, Jane watched him out of frightened eyes. She
alone, with her all but life-long knowledge of him, and with her
woman's intuition, realized the death-blow that he had received. And
when she saw him take it unflinching and stand proud and stern, her
heart leaped toward him, though she knew that the woman in the great
chased silver photograph frame on the mantelpiece, the great and
radiant lady, the high and mighty and beautiful and unapproachable
Princess, was the woman he loved. Paul touched his father on the
wrist, and motioned to a chair.

"Please sit down. You too, please,"--he waved a hand, and himself
resumed his seat in his writing chair. He turned it so that he could
rest his elbow on his table and his forehead in his palm. "You claim
to be my father," said he. "Barney Bill, in whom I have implicit
confidence, confirms it. He says that Mrs. Button is my mother--"

"She has been dead these six years," said Barney Bill.

"Why didn't you tell me?" asked Paul.

"I didn't think it would interest yer, sonny," replied Barney Bill,
in great distress. "Yer see, we conspirated together for yer never
to know nothing at all about all this. Anyway, she's dead and won't
worry yer any more."

"She was a bad mother to me. She is a memory of terror. I don't
pretend to be grieved," said Paul; "any more than I pretend to be
overcome by filial emotion at the present moment. But, if you are my
father, I should be glad to know--in fact, I think I'm entitled to
know--why you've taken thirty years to reveal yourself, and why"--a
sudden fury swept him--"why you've come now to play hell with
my life."

"It is the will of God," said Silas Finn, in deep dejection.

Paul snapped three or four fingers. "Bah!" he cried. "Talk sense.
Talk facts. Leave God out of the question for a while. It's
blasphemy to connect Him with a sordid business like this. Tell me
about myself--my parentage--let me know where I am."

"You're with three people as loves yer, sonny," said Barney Bill.
"What passes in this room will never be known to another soul on
earth."

"That I swear," said Silas Finn.

"You can publish it broadcast in every newspaper in England," said
Paul. "I'm making no bargains. Good God! I'm asking for nothing but
the truth. What use I make of it is my affair. You can do--the
three of you--what you like. Let the world know. It doesn't
matter. It's I that matter--my life and my conscience and my soul
that matter."

"Don't be too hard upon me," Silas besought him very humbly.

"Tell me about myself," said Paul.

Silas Finn wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and covered his
eyes with his hand. "That can only mean telling you about myself,"
he said. "It's raking up a past which I had hoped, with God's help,
to bury. But I have sinned to-night, and it is my punishment to tell
you. And you have a right to know. My father was a porter in Covent
Garden Market. My mother--I've already mentioned--"

"Yes--the Sicilian and the barrel organ--I remember," said Paul,
with a shiver.

"I had a hard boyhood. But I rose a little above my class. I
educated myself more or less. At last I became assistant in a
fishmonger's shop. Our friend Simmons here and I were boys together.
We fell in love with the same girl. I married her. Not long
afterward she gave way to drink. I found that in all kinds of ways I
had mistaken her character. I can't describe your own mother to you.
She had a violent temper. So had I. My life was a hell upon earth.
One day she goaded me beyond my endurance and I struck at her with a
knife. I meant at the bloodred instant to kill her. But I didn't. I
nearly killed her. I went to prison for three years. When I came out
she had vanished, taking you with her. In prison I found the Grace
of God and I vowed it should be my guide through life. As soon as I
was free from police supervision I changed my name--I believe it's
a good old Devonshire name; my father came from there--the prison
taint hung about it. Then, when I found I could extend a miserable
little business I had got together, I changed it again to suit my
trade. That's about all."

There was a spell of dead silence. The shrunken man, stricken with a
sense of his sin of oath-breaking, had Spoken without change of
attitude, his hand over his eyes. Paul, too, sat motionless, and
neither Jane nor Barney Bill spoke. Presently Silas Finn continued:

"For many years I tried to find my wife and son--but it was not
God's will. I have lived with the stain of murder on my soul"--his
voice sank--"and it has never been washed away. Perhaps it will be
in God's good time. . . . And I had condemned my son to a horrible
existence--for I knew my wife was not capable of bringing you up
in the way of clean living. I was right. Simmons has since told
me--and I was crushed beneath the burden of my sins."

After a pause he raised a drawn face and went on to tell of his
meeting, the year before, with Barney Bill, of whom he had lost
track when the prison doors had closed behind him. It had been in
one of his Fish Palaces where Bill was eating. They recognized each
other. Barney Bill told his tale: how he had run across Polly
Kegworthy after a dozen years' wandering; how, for love of his old
friend, he had taken Paul, child of astonishing promise, away from
Bludston--

"Do you remember, sonny, when I left you alone that night and went
to the other side of the brickfield? It was to think it out," said
Bill. "To think out my duty as a man."

Paul nodded. He was listening, with death in his heart. The whole
fantastic substructure of his life had been suddenly kicked away,
and his life was an inchoate ruin. Gone was the glamour of romance
in which since the day of the cornelian heart he had had his
essential being. Up to an hour ago he had never doubted his
mysterious birth. No real mother could have pursued an innocent
child with Polly Kegworthy's implacable hatred. His passionate
repudiation of her had been a cardinal article of his faith. On the
other hand, the prince and princess theory he had long ago consigned
to the limbo of childish things; but the romance of his birth, the
romance of his high destiny, remained a vital part of his spiritual
equipment. His looks, his talents, his temperament, his instincts,
his dreams had been irrefutable confirmations. His mere honesty, his
mere integrity, had been based on this fervent and unshakable creed.
And now it had gone. No more romance. No more glamour. No more
Vision Splendid now faded into the light of common and sordid day.
Outwardly listening, his gay, mobile face turned to iron, he lived
in a molten intensity of thought, his acute brain swiftly
coordinating the ironical scraps of history. He was the son of Polly
Kegworthy. So far he was unclean; but hitherto her blood had not
manifested itself in him. He was the son of this violent and
pathetic fanatic, this ex-convict; he had his eyes, his refined
face; perhaps he inherited from him the artistic temperament--he
recalled grimly the daubs on the man's walls, and his purblind
gropings toward artistic self-expression; and all this--the
Southern handsomeness, and Southern love of colour, had come from
his Sicilian grandmother, the nameless drab, with bright yellow
handkerchief over swarthy brows, turning the handle of a barrel
organ in the London streets. Instinct had been right in its
promptings to assume an Italian name; but the irony of it was of the
quality that makes for humour in hell. And his very Christian
name--Paul--the exotic name which Polly Kegworthy would not have
given to a brat of hers--was but a natural one for a Silas to give
his son, a Silas born of generations of evangelical peasants. His
eyes rested on the photograph of his Princess. She, first of all,
was gone with the Vision. An adventurer he had possibly been; but an
adventurer of romance, carried high by his splendid faith, and
regarding his marriage with the Princess but as a crowning of his
romantic destiny. But now he beheld himself only as a base-born
impostor. His Princess was gone from his life. Death was in his
heart.

He saw his familiar, luxurious room as in a dream, and Jane,
anxious-eyed, looking into the fire, and Barney Bill a little way
off, clutching his hard felt hat against his body; but his eyes were
fixed on the strange, many-passioned, unbalanced man who claimed to
be--nay, who was--his father.

"When I first met you that night my heart went out to you," he was
saying. "It overflowed in thankfulness to God that He had delivered
you out of the power of the Dog, and in His inscrutable mercy had
condoned that part of my sin as a father and had set you in high
places."

With the fringe of his brain Paul recognized, for the first time,
how he brought into ordinary talk the habits of speech acquired in
addressing a Free Zionist congregation.

"It was only the self-restraint," Silas continued, "taught me by
bitter years of agony and a message from God that it was part of my
punishment not to acknowledge you as my son--"

"And what I told you, and what Jane told you about him," said Barney
Bill. "Remember that, Silas."

"I remember it--it was these influences that kept me silent. But
we were drawn together, Paul." He bent forward in his chair. "You
liked me. In spite of all our differences of caste and creed--you
liked me."

"Yes, I was drawn to you," said Paul, and a strange, unknown note in
his voice caused Jane to glance at him swiftly. "You seemed to be a
man of many sorrows and deep enthusiasms--and I admit I was in
close sympathy with you." He paused, not moving from his rigid
attitude, and then went on: "What you have told me of your
sufferings--and I know, with awful knowledge, the woman who was my
mother--has made me sympathize with you all the more. But to
express that sympathy in any way you must give me time. I said you
had played hell with my life. It's true. One of these days I may be
able to explain. Not now. There's no time. We're caught up in the
wheels of an inexorable political machine. I address my party in the
constituency to-night." It was a cold intelligence that spoke, and
once more Jane flashed a half-frightened glance at him. "What I
shall say to them, in view of all this, I don't quite know. I must
have half an hour to think."

"I know I oughtn't to interfere, Paul," said Jane, "but you mustn't
blame Mr. Finn too much. Although he differs from you in politics
and so on, he loves you and is proud of you--as we all are--and
looks forward to your great career--I know it only too well. And
now he has this deep conviction that he has a call from on High to
ruin your career at the very beginning. Do understand, Paul, that he
feels himself in a very terrible position."

"I do," said Mr. Finn. "God knows that if it weren't for His
command, I should myself withdraw."

"I appreciate your position, perfectly," replied Paul, "but that
doesn't relieve me of my responsibilities."

Silas Finn rose and locked the fingers of both hands together and
stood before Paul, with appealing eyes. "My son, after what I have
said, you are not going to stand against me?"

Paul rose too. A sudden craze of passion swept him. "My country has
been my country for thirty years. You have been my father for five
minutes. I stand by my country."

Silas Finn turned away and waved a haphazard hand. "And I must stand
by my God."

"Very well. That bring; us to our original argument. 'Political
foes. Private friends.'"

Silas turned again and looked into the young man's eyes. "But father
and son, Paul."

"All the more honourable. There'll be no mud-throwing. The cleanest
election of the century."

The elder man again covered his face with both hands, and his black
and white streaked hair fell over his fingers and the great diamond
in his ring flashed oddly, and he rocked his head for a while to and
fro.

"I had a call," he wailed. "I had a call. I had a call from God. It
was clear. It was absolute. But you don't understand these things.
His will must prevail. It was terrible to think of crushing your
career--my only son's career. I brought these two friends to help
me persuade you not to oppose me. I did my best, Paul. I promised
them not to resort to the last argument. But flesh is weak. For the
first time since--you know--the knife--your mother--I lost
self-control. I shall have to answer for it to my God--" He
stretched out his arms and looked haggardly at Paul. "But it is
God's will. It is God's will that I should voice His message to the
Empire. Paul, Paul, my beloved son--you cannot flout Almighty
God."

"Your God doesn't happen to be my God," said Paul, once more
suspicious--and now hideously so--of religious mania. "And
possibly the real God is somebody else's God altogether. Anyway,
England's the only God I've got left, and I'm going to fight for
her."

The door opened and Wilton, the man-servant, appeared. He looked
round. "I beg your pardon, sir."

Paul crossed the room. "What is it?"

"Her Highness, sir," he said in his well-trained, low voice, "and
the Colonel and Miss Winwood. I told them you were engaged. But
they've been waiting for over half-an-hour, sir."

Paul drew himself up. "Why did you not tell me before? Her Highness
is not to be kept waiting. Present my respectful compliments to Her
Highness, and ask her and Colonel and Miss Winwood to have the
kindness to come upstairs."

"We had better go," cried Jane in sudden fear.

"No," said lie. "I want you all to stay."

CHAPTER XVIII

IN the tense silence of the few moments of waiting Paul passed from
the boy to whom the earth had been a fairyland to the man grappling
with great realities. In those few moments he lived through his past
life and faced an adumbration of the future.

The door was thrown open and the Princess appeared, smiling, happy,
a black ostrich feather in her hat and a sable stole hanging loose
from her shoulders; a great and radiant lady. Behind her came the
Colonel and Ursula Winwood. Paul bent over the Princess's,
outstretched hand.

"A thousand pardons for keeping you waiting. I did not know you had
come. I was engaged with my friends. May I have the honour of
presenting them? Princess, this is Mr. Silas Finn, the managing
director of Fish Palaces Limited. These are two very dear friends,
Miss Seddon--Mr. Simmons. Miss Winwood--Colonel Winwood, may I?"

He waved an introductory hand. The Princess: bowed; then, struck by
their unsmiling faces and by Paul's strange manner, turned to him
quickly.

"'Qu'est ce qu'il y a?"

"Je vais vous le dire."

He pushed a chair. She sat down. Ursula Winwood sat in Paul's
writing chair. The others remained standing.

"Mr. Finn called to inform me that he has been adopted as the
Liberal candidate for Hickney Heath."' "My felicitations," said the
Princess.

Silas bowed to her gravely and addressed Colonel Winwood.

"We have been, sir--Mr. Savelli and I--for some time on terms of
personal friendship in the constituency."

"I see, I see," replied the Colonel, though he was somewhat puzzled.
"Very polite and friendly, I'm sure."

"Mr. Finn also urges me to withdraw my candidature," said Paul.

The Princess gave a little incredulous laugh. Ursula Winwood rose
and, with a quick protective step, drew nearer Paul. Colonel Winwood
frowned.

"Withdraw? In Heaven's name why?"

Silas Finn tugged at his black-and-white-streaked beard and looked
at his son.

"Need we go into it again? There are religious reasons, which
perhaps, Madam"--Silas addressed the Princess--"you might
misunderstand. Mr. Savelli possibly thinks I am a fanatic. I can't
help it. I have warned him. That is enough. Good-bye, Mr. Savelli."

He held out his hand; but Paul did not take it. "You forget, Mr.
Finn, that I asked you to stay." He clutched the sides of his jacket
till his knuckles grew white, and he set his teeth. "Mr. Finn has
another reason for wishing me not to oppose him--"

"That reason you need never give," cried Silas in a loud voice, and
starting forward. "You know that I make no claims whatsoever."

"I know that," said Paul, coldly; "but I am going to give it all the
same." He paused, held up his hand and looked at the Princess. "Mr.
Silas Finn happens to be my father."

"Good God!" gasped the Colonel, after a flash of silence.

The Princess caught a quick breath and sat erect in her chair.

"Votre Pere, Paul?"

"Yes, Princess. Until half an hour ago I did not know it. Never in
my life did I know that I had a father living. My friends there can
bear witness that what I say is true."

"But, Paul dear," said Miss Winwood, laying her kind fingers on his
arm and searching his face, "you told us that your parents were dead
and that they were Italians."

"I lied," replied Paul calmly. "But I honestly believed the woman
who was my mother not to be my mother, and I had never heard of my
father. I had to account for myself to you. Your delicacy, Miss
Winwood, enabled me to invent as little as possible."

"But your name--Savelli?"

"I took it when I went on the stage--I had a few years' obscure
and unsuccessful struggle. You will remember I came to you starving
and penniless."

The Princess grew white and her delicate nostrils quivered.

"Et monsieur votre pere--" she checked herself. "And your
father, what do you say he is?"

Paul motioned to Silas to speak.

"I, Madam," said the latter, "am a self-made man, and by the
establishment of fried-fish shops all over London and the great
provincial towns, have, by the grace of God, amassed a considerable
fortune."

"Fried fish?" said the Princess in a queer voice.

Silas looked at her out of his melancholy and unhumorous eyes.

"Yes, Madam."

"I have also learned," said Paul, "that my grandmother was a
Sicilian who played a street-organ. Hence my Italian blood."

Jane, standing by the door with Barney Bill, most agonized of old
men, wholly nervous, twisting with gnarled fingers the broken rim of
his hard felt hat, turned aside so that no one but Bill should see a
sudden gush of tears. For she had realized how drab and unimportant
she was in the presence of the great and radiant lady; also how the
great and radiant lady was the God-sent mate for Paul, never so
great a man as now when he was cutting out his heart for truth's
sake.

"I should like to tell you what my life has been," continued Paul,
"in the presence of those who know it already. That's why I asked
them to stay. Until an hour ago I lived in dreams. In my own fashion
I was an honest man. But now I've got this knowledge of my origin,
the dreams are swept away and I stand naked to myself. If I left
you, Miss Winwood, and Colonel Winwood, who have been so good to
me--and Her Highness, who has deigned to honour me with her
friendship--in a moment's doubt as to my antecedents I should be
an impostor."

"No, no, my boy," said Colonel Winwood, who was standing with hands
deep in trouser pockets and his head bent, staring at the carpet.
"No words like that in this house. Besides, why should we want to go
into all this?"

He had the Englishman's detestation of unpleasant explanations.
Ursula Winwood supported him.

"Yes, why?" she asked.

"But it would be very interesting," said the Princess slowly,
cutting her words.

Paul met her eyes, which she had hardened, and saw beneath them pain
and anger and wounded pride and repulsion. For a second he allowed
an agonized appeal to flash through his. He knew that he was
deliberately killing the love in her heart. He felt the monstrous
cruelty of it. A momentary doubt shook him. Was he justified? A
short while ago she had entered the room her face alight with love;
now her face was as stern and cold as his own. . Had he the right to
use the knife like this? Then certainty came. It had to be. The
swifter the better. She of all human beings must no longer be
deceived. Before her, at supreme cost, he must stand clean.

"It's not very interesting," said he. "And it's soon told. I was a
ragged boy in a slum in a Lancashire town. I slept on sacking in a
scullery, and very seldom had enough to eat. The woman whom I didn't
think was my mother ill-treated me. I gather now that she hated me
because she hated my father. She deserted him when I was a year old
and disappeared; she never spoke of him. I don't know exactly how
old I am. I chose a birthday at random. As a child I worked in a
factory. You know what child-labour in factories was some years ago.
I might have been there still, if my dear old friend there hadn't
helped me when I was thirteen to run away. He used to go through the
country in a van selling mats and chairs. He brought me to London,
and found me a lodging with Miss Seddon's mother. So, Miss Seddon
and I were children together. I became an artist's model. When I
grew too old for that to be a dignified ocupation, I went on the
stage. Then one day, starving and delirious, I stumbled through the
gates of Drane's Court and fell at Miss Winwood's feet. That's all."

"Since we've begun, we may as well finish and get it over," said
Colonel Winwood, still with bent head, but looking at Paul from
beneath his eyebrows. "When and how did you come across this
gentleman who you say is your father?"

Paul told the story in a few words.

"And now that you have heard everything," said he, would you think
me justified in withdrawing my candidature?"

"Certainly not," said the Colonel. "You've got your duty to the
Party."

"And you, Miss Winwood?"

"Can you ask? You have your duty to the country."

"And you, Princess?"

She met his challenging eyes and rose in a stately fashion.

"I am not equal to these complications of English politics, Mr.
Savelli," she said. She held herself very erect, but her lips
trembled and tears were very near her eyes. She turned to Miss
Winwood and held out her hand. "I am afraid we must postpone our
discussion of the Forlorn Widows. It is getting late. Au revoir,
Colonel Winwood--"

"I will see you to your carriage."

On the threshold she turned, included Paul in a vague bow to the
company, and passed through the door which Colonel Winwood held
open. Paul watched her until she disappeared--disappeared
haughtily out of his life, taking his living heart with her, leaving
him with a stone very heavy, very cold, dead. And he was smitten as
with a great darkness. He remained quite still for a few moments
after the door had closed, then with a sudden jerk he drew himself
up.

"Mr. Finn," said he, "as I've told you, I address my first meeting
to-night. I am going to make public the fact that I'm your son."

Silas put his hand to his head and looked at him wildly.

"No, no," he muttered hoarsely--"no."

"I see no reason," said Miss Winwood gently.

"I see every reason," said Paul. "I must live in the light now. The
truth or nothing."

"Then obey your conscience, Paul," she answered.

But Silas came forward with his outstretched hands.

"You can't do it. You can't do it, I tell you. It's impossible."

"Why?"

He replied in an odd voice, and with a glance at Miss Winwood. "I
must tell you afterwards."

"I will leave you," she said.

"Mr. Finn"--she shook hands with him--"I hope you're proud of
your son." And then she shook hands with Jane and Barney Bill. "I'm
glad to meet such old friends of Paul." And to Paul, as he held the
door open, she said, her clear kind eyes full on him, "Remember, we
want men in England."

"Thank God, we've got women," said he' with lips from which he could
not keep a sudden quiver.

He closed the door and came up to his father standing on the
hearthrug.

"And now' why shouldn't I speak? Why shouldn't I be an honest man
instead of an impostor?"

"Out of pity for me, my son."

"Pity? Why, what harm would it do you? There's nothing dishonourable
in father and son fighting an election." He laughed without much
mirth. "It's what some people would call sporting. As for me,
personally, I don't see why you should be ashamed of owning me. My
record is clean enough."

"But mine isn't, Paul," said Silas mournfully.

For the first time Paul bowed his head. "I'm sorry," said he. "I
forgot." Then he raised it again. "But that's all over and buried in
the past."

"It may be unburied."

"How?"

"Don't you see?" cried Jane. "Even I can. If you spring your
relationship upon the public, it will create an enormous sensation--it
will set the place on fire with curiosity. They'll dig up
everything they can about you--everything they can about him. Oh,
Paul, don't you see.

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