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David Widger - "Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner"

William J. Locke - "The Fortunate Youth"

Peter B. Kyne - "Cappy Ricks Retires"

Samuel Pepys - "Diary of Samuel Pepys, September 1667"

The Fortunate Youth

W >> William J. Locke >> The Fortunate Youth




He sat down a made man, amid pleasant laughter and bowings and
lifting of glasses, the length of the long table.

Lady Danesborough said gently: "It was charming of you to bring me
in. But I shall be besieged with questions. What on earth shall I
tell them?"

"The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," he replied.
"What do the Princess and I care?"

Later in the evening he managed to find himself alone for a moment
with the Princess. "My wonderful Sophie, what can I say to you?"

She smiled victoriously. "Cry quits. Confess that you have not the
monopoly of the grand manner. You have worked in your man's way--I
in my woman's way."

"You took a great risk," said he.

Her eyes softened adorably. "Non, mon Paul, cheri. C'etait tout
arrange. It was a certainty."

And then, Paul's dearest lady came up and pressed both their hands.
"I am so glad. Oh, so glad." The tears started. "But it is something
like a fairy-tale, isn't it?"

Well, as far as his chronicler can say at present, that is the end
of the Fortunate Youth. But it is really only a beginning. Although
his party is still in opposition, he is still young; his sun is
rising and he is rich in the glory thereof. A worldful of great life
lies before him and his Princess. What limit can we set to their
achievement? Of course he was the Fortunate Youth. Of that there is
no gainsaying. He had his beauty, his charm, his temperament, his
quick southern intelligence--all his Sicilian heritage--and a
freakish chance had favoured him from the day that, vagabond urchin,
he attended his first and only Sunday-school treat. But personal
gifts and favouring chance are not everything in this world.

On the day before his wedding he had a long talk with Barney Bill.

"Sonny," said the old man, scratching his white poll, "when yer used
to talk about princes and princesses, I used to larf--larf fit to
bust myself. I never let yer seen me do it, sonny, for all the time
you was so dead serious. And now it has come true. And d'yer know
why it's come true, sonny?" He cocked his head on one side, his
little diamond eyes glittering, and laid a hand on Paul's knee.
"D'yer know why? Because yer believed in it. I ain't had much
religion, not having, so to speak, much time for it, also being an
old crock of a pagan--but I do remember as what Christ said about
faith--just a mustard seed of it moving mountains. That's it,
sonny. I've observed lots of things going round in the old 'bus.
Most folks believe in nothing. What's the good of 'em? Move
mountains? They're paralytic in front of a dunghill. I know what I'm
talking about, bless yer. Now you come along believing in yer
'igh-born parents. I larfed, knowing as who yer parents were. But
you believed, and I had to let you believe. And you believed in your
princes and princesses, and your being born to great things. And I
couldn't sort of help believing in it too."

Paul laughed. "Things happen to have come out all right, but God
knows why."

"He does," said Barney Bill very seriously. "That's just what He
does know. He knows you had faith."

"And you, dear old man?" asked Paul, "what have you believed in?"

"My honesty, sonny," replied Barney Bill, fixing him with his bright
eyes. "'Tain't much. 'Tain't very ambitious-like. But I've had my
temptations. I never drove a crooked bargain in my life."

Paul rose and walked a step or two.

"You're a better man than I am, Bill."

Barney Bill rose too, rheumatically, and laid both hands on the
young man's shoulders. "Have you ever been false to what you really
believed to be true?"

"Not essentially," said Paul.

"Then it's all right, sonny," said the old man very earnestly, his
bent, ill-clad figure, his old face wizened by years of exposure to
suns and frosts, contrasting oddly with the young favourite of
fortune. "It's all right. Your father believed in one thing. I
believe in another. You believe in something else. But it doesn't
matter a tuppenny damn what one believes in, so long as it's worth
believing in. It's faith, sonny, that does it. Faith and purpose."

"You're right," said Paul. "Faith and purpose."

"I believed in yer from the very first, when you were sitting down
reading Sir Walter with the bead and tail off. And I believed in yer
when yer used to tell about being 'born to great things!"

Paul laughed. "That was all childish rubbish," said he.

"Rubbish?" cried the old man, his head more crooked, his eyes more
bright, his gaunt old figure more twisted than ever. "Haven't yer
got the great things yer believed yer were born to? Ain't yer rich?
Ain't yer famous? Ain't yer a Member of Parliament? Ain't yer going
to marry a Royal Princess? Good God Almighty! what more d'yer want?"

"Nothing in the wide, wide world!" laughed Paul.

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