The Fortunate Youth Part 13

He rose with a clatter, threw his cigarette on the floor and stamped on it violently.

"He's a pretty bad wrong 'un," said Paul. "We hadn't been going a fortnight before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up, with a rise, as soon as business got better. Like an idiot, I consented."

His friend sat down again hopelessly. "I don't know what's going to become of us. The missus has p.a.w.ned everything she has got, poor old girl! Oh, it's d.a.m.ned hard! We had been out six months."

"Poor old chap!" said Paul, sitting on the bed beside his portmanteau.

"How does Mrs. Wilmer take it?"

"She's knocked endways. You see," cried Wilmer desperately, "we've had to send home everything we could sc.r.a.pe together to keep the kids--there's five of them; and now--and now there's nothing left. I'm wrong. There's that." He fished three or four coppers from his pocket and held them out with a harsh laugh. "There's that after twenty years'

work in this profession."

"Poor old chap!" said Paul again. He liked Wilmer, a sober, earnest, ineffectual man, and his haggard, kindly-natured wife. They had put on a brave face all through the tour, letting no one suspect their straits, and doing both him and other members of the company many little acts of kindness and simple hospitality. In the lower submerged world of the theatrical profession in which Paul found himself he had met with many such instances of awful poverty. He had brushed elbows with Need himself. That morning he had given, out of his scanty resources, her railway fare to a tearful and despairing girl who played the low-comedy part. But he had not yet come across any position quite so untenable as that of Wilmer. Forty odd years old, a wife, five children, all his life given honestly to his calling--and threepence half-penny to his fortune.

"But, good G.o.d!" said he, after a pause, "your kiddies? If you have nothing--what will happen to them?"

"Lord knows," groaned Wilmer, staring in front of him, his elbows on the back of the chair and his head between his fists.

"And Mrs. Wilmer and yourself have got to get back to London."

"I've got the dress suit I wear in the last act. It's fairly new. I can get enough on it."

"But that's part of your outfit--your line of business; you'll want it again," said Paul.

Wilmer had played butlers up and down the land for many years. Now and again, when the part did not need any special characterization, he obtained London engagements. He was one of the known stage butlers.

"I can hire if I'm pushed," said he. "It's h.e.l.l, isn't it? Something told me not to go out with a fit-up. We'd never come down to it before.

And I mistrusted Larkins--but we were out six months. Paul, my boy, chuck it. You're young; you're clever; you've had a swell education; you come of gentlefolk--my father kept a small hardware shop in Leicester--you have"--the smitten and generally inarticulate man hesitated--"well, you have extraordinary personal beauty; you have charm; you could do anything you like in the world, save act--and you can't act for toffee. Why the blazes do you stick to it?"

"I've got to earn my living just like you," said Paul, greatly flattered by the artless tribute to his aristocratic personality and not offended by the professional censure which he knew to be just.

"I've tried all sorts of other things-music, painting, poetry, novel-writing--but none of them has come off."

"Your people don't make you an allowance?"

"I've no people living," said Paul, with a smile--and when Paul smiled it was as if Eros's feathers had brushed the cheek of a Praxitelean Hermes; and then with an outburst half sincere, half braggart--"I've been on my own ever since I was thirteen."

Wilmer regarded him wearily. "The missus and I have always thought you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

"So I was," Paul declared from his innermost conviction. "But," he laughed, "I lost it before my teeth came and I could get a grip on it."

"Do you mean to say," exclaimed Wilmer, "that you're not doing this for fun?"

"Fun?" cried Paul. "Fun? Do you call this comic?" He waved his hand comprehensively, indicating the decayed pink-and-purple wall-paper, the ragged oil-cloth on the floor, the dingy window with its dingier outlook, the rickety deal wash-stand with the paint peeling off, a horrible clothless tray on a horrible splotchy chest of drawers, containing the horrible scraggy remains of a meal. "Do you think I would have this if I could command silken sloth? I long like h.e.l.l, old chap, for silken sloth, and if I could get it, you wouldn't see me here."

Wilmer rose and stretched out his hand. "I'm sorry, dear boy," said he.

"The wife and I thought it didn't very much matter to you. We always thought you were a kind of young swell doing it for amus.e.m.e.nt and experience--and because you never put on side, we liked you."

Paul rose from the bed and put his hand on Wilmer's shoulder. "And now you're disappointed?"

He laughed and his eyes twinkled humorously. His vagabond life had taught him some worldly wisdom. The sallow and ineffectual man looked confused. His misery was beyond the relief of smiles.

"We're all in the same boat, old chap," said Paul, "except that I'm alone and haven't got wife and kids to look after."

"Good-bye, my boy," said Wilmer. "Better luck next time. But chuck it, if you can."

Paul held his hand for a while. Then his left hand dived into his waistcoat pocket and, taking the place of his right, thrust three sovereigns into Wilmer's palm. "For the kiddies," said he.

Wilmer looked at the coins in his palm, and then at Paul, and the tears spurted. "I can't, my boy. You must be as broke as any of us--you--half salary--no, my boy, I can't. I'm old enough to be your father. It's d.a.m.ned good of you--but it's my one pride left--the pride of both of us--the missus and me--that we've never borrowed money--"

"But it isn't borrowed, you silly a.s.s," cried Paul cheerfully. "It's just your share of the spoils, such as they are. I wish to G.o.d it was more." With both hands he clasped the thin, ineffectual fingers over the coins and pushed the man' with his young strength out of the door.

"It's for the kiddies. Give them my love," he cried, and slammed the door and locked it from the inside.

"Poor old chap!" said he.

Then he went through his pockets and laid the contents on the narrow mantel-piece. These were a gold watch and chain, a cornelian heart fixed to the free end of the chain, a silver cigarette case, a couple of keys, one sovereign, four s.h.i.+llings, three pennies and two half-pennies. A trunk already fastened and filled with books and clothes, and the portmanteau on the bed, contained the rest of his possessions. In current coin his whole fortune amounted to one pound, four s.h.i.+llings and fourpence. Luckily he had paid his landlady. One pound four and fourpence to begin again at three-and-twenty the battle of life on which he had entered at thirteen. He laughed because he was young and strong, and knew that such reverses were foreordained chapters in the lives of those born to a glorious destiny. They were also preordained chapters in the lives of those born to failure, like poor old Wilmer. He was conscious of the wide difference between Wilmer and himself. Good Heavens! To face the world at forty-three, with wife and children and threepence-halfpenny, and the once attendant hope replaced by black-vestured doom! Poor Wilmer! He felt certain that Wilmer had not been able to pay his landlady, and he felt that he had been mean in keeping back the other sovereign.

The sudden loss, however, of three-fourths of his fortune brought him up against practical considerations. The more he had in his pocket when he arrived in London, the longer could he subsist. That was important, because theatrical engagements are not picked up in a hurry. Now; the railway fare would swallow a goodly number of s.h.i.+llings. Obviously it was advisable to save the railway fare; and the only way to do this was to walk to London. His young blood thrilled at the notion. It was romantic. It was also inspiring of health and joy. He had been rather run down lately, and, fearful of the catastrophe which had in fact occurred, he had lived this last week very sparingly---chiefly on herrings and tea. A hundred and fifty miles' tramp along the summer roads, with bread and cheese and an occasional gla.s.s of beer to keep him going, would be just the thing to set him up again. He looked in the gla.s.s. Yes, his face was a bit pinched and his eyes were rather too bright. A glorious tramp to London, thirty or forty miles a day in the blazing and beautiful suns.h.i.+ne, was exactly what he needed.

Joyously he unpacked his trunk and took from it a Norfolk jacket suit and stockings, changed, and, leaving his luggage with his landlady, who was to obey further instructions as to its disposal, marched buoyantly away through the sun-filled streets of the little town, stick in hand, gripsack on shoulder, and the unquenchable fire of youth and hope in his heart.

CHAPTER VIII

MISS URSULA WINWOOD, hatless, but with a cotton sunshade swinging over her shoulder, and with a lean, s.h.i.+ny, mahogany-coloured Suss.e.x spaniel trailing behind, walked in her calm, deliberate way down the long carriage drive of Drane's Court. She was stout and florid, and had no scruples as to the avowal of her age, which was forty-three. She had clear blue eyes which looked steadily upon a complicated world of affairs, and a square, heavy chin which showed her capacity for dealing with it. Miss Ursula Winwood knew herself to be a notable person, and the knowledge did not make her vain or crotchety or imperious. She took her notability for granted, as she took her mature good looks and her independent fortune. For some years she had kept house for her widowed brother, Colonel Winwood, Conservative Member for the Division of the county in which they resided, and helped him efficiently in his political work. The little towns.h.i.+p of Morebury--half a mile from the great gates of Drane's Court--felt Miss Winwood's control in diverse ways. Another town, a little further off, with five or six millions of inhabitants, was also, through its newspapers, aware of Miss Winwood.

Many leagues, societies, a.s.sociations, claimed her as President, Vice-President, or Member of Council. She had sat on Royal Commissions.

Her name under an appeal for charity guaranteed the deserts of the beneficiaries. What she did not know about housing problems, factory acts, female prisons, hospitals, asylums for the blind, decayed gentlewomen, sweated trades, dogs' homes and Friendly Societies could not be considered in the light of knowledge. She sat on platforms with Royal princesses, Archbishops welcomed her as a colleague, and Cabinet Ministers sought her counsel.

For some distance from the porch of the red-brick, creeper-covered Queen-Anne house the gravel drive between the lawns blazed in the afternoon sun. For this reason, the sunshade. But after a while came an avenue of beech and plane and oak casting delectable shade on the drive and its double edging of gra.s.s, and the far-stretching riot of flowers beneath the trees, foxgloves and canterbury bells and campanulas and delphiniums, all blues and purples and whites, with here and there the pink of dog-roses and gorgeous yellow splashes of celandine. On entering the stately coolness, Miss Winwood closed her sunshade and looked at her watch, a solid timepiece harboured in her belt. A knitted brow betrayed mathematical calculation. It would take her five minutes to reach the lodge gate. The train bringing her venerable uncle, Archdeacon Winwood, for a week's visit would not arrive at the station for another three minutes, and the two fat horses would take ten minutes to drag from the station the landau which she had sent to meet him. She had, therefore, eight minutes to spare. A rustic bench invited repose. Graciously she accepted the invitation.

Now, it must be observed that it was not Miss Winwood's habit to waste time. Her appointments were kept to the minute, and her appointment (self-made on this occasion) was the welcoming of her uncle, the Archdeacon, on the threshold of Drane's Court. But Miss Winwood was making holiday and allowed herself certain relaxations. Her brother's health having broken down, he had paired for the rest of the session and gone to Contrexeville for a cure. She had therefore shut up her London house in Portland Place, Colonel Winwood's home while Parliament sat, and had come to her brother's house, Drane's Court, her home when her presence was not needed in London. She was tired; Drane's Court, where she had been born and had lived all her girlhood's life, was restful; and the seat in the shade of the great beech was cunningly curved. The s.h.i.+ny, mahogany-coloured spaniel, prescient of siesta, leaped to her side and lay down with his chin on her lap and blinked his yellow eyes.

She lay back on the seat, her hand on the dog's head, looking contentedly at the opposite wilderness of bloom and the glimpses, through the screen of trees and shrubs, of the sunlit stretches of park beyond. She loved Drane's Court. Save for the three years of her brother's short married life, it had been part of herself. A Winwood, a very younger son of the Family--the Family being that of which the Earl of Harpenden is Head (these things can only be written of in capital letters)--had acquired wealth in the dark political days of Queen Anne, and had bought the land and built the house, and the property had never pa.s.sed into alien hands. As for the name, he had used that of his wife, Viscountess Drane in her own right,--a notorious beauty of whom, so History recounts, he was senilely enamoured and on whose naughty account he was eventually run through the body by a young Mohawk of a paramour. They fought one spring dawn in the park--the traditional spot could be seen from where Ursula Winwood was sitting.

Ursula and her brother were proud of the romantic episode, and would relate it to guests and point out the scene of the duel. Happy and illusory days of Romance now dead and gone! It is not conceivable that, generations hence, the head of a family will exhibit with pride the stained newspaper cuttings containing the unsavoury details of the divorce case of his great-great-grandmother.

This aspect of family history seldom presented itself to Ursula Winwood. It did not do so this mellow and contented afternoon.

Starlings mindful of a second brood chattered in the old walnut trees far away on the lawn; thrushes sang their deep-throated bugle-calls; finches twittered. A light breeze creeping up the avenue rustled the full foliage languorously. Ursula Winwood closed her eyes. A b.u.mble-bee droned between visits to foxglove bells near by. She loved b.u.mble-bees.

They reminded her of a summer long ago when she sat, not on this seat--as a matter of fact it was in the old walled garden a quarter of a mile away--with a gallant young fellow's arms about her and her head on his shoulder. A b.u.mble-bee had droned round her while they kissed.

She could never hear a b.u.mble-bee without thinking of it. But the gallant young fellow had been killed in the Soudan in eighteen eighty-five, and Ursula Winwood's heart had been buried in his sandy grave. That was the beginning and end of her sentimental history. She had recovered from the pain of it all and now she loved the b.u.mble-bee for invoking the exquisite memory. The lithe Suss.e.x spaniel crept farther on her lap and her hand caressed his polished coat. Drowsiness disintegrated the exquisite memories. Miss Ursula Winwood fell asleep.

The sudden plunging of strong young paws into her body and a series of sharp barks and growls awakened her with a start, and, for a second, still dazed by the drowsy invocation of the b.u.mble-bee, she saw approaching her the gallant fellow who had been pierced through the heart by a Soudanese spear in eighteen eighty-five. He was dark and handsome, and, by a trick of coincidence, was dressed in loose knickerbocker suit, just as he was when he had walked up that very avenue to say his last good-bye. She remained for a moment tense, pa.s.sively awaiting co-ordination of her faculties. Then clear awake, and sending scudding the dear ghosts of the past, she sat up, and catching the indignant spaniel by the collar, looked with a queer, sudden interest at the newcomer. He was young, extraordinarily beautiful; but he staggered and reeled like a drunken man. The spaniel barked his respectable disapproval. In his long life of eighteen months he had seen many people, postmen and butcher boys and casual diggers in kitchen gardens, whose apparent permit to exist in Drane's Court had been an insoluble puzzle; but never had he seen so outrageous a trespa.s.ser. With unparalleled moral courage he told him exactly what he thought of him. But the trespa.s.ser did not hear. He kept on advancing.

Miss Winwood rose, disgusted, and drew herself up. The young man threw out his hands towards her, tripped over the three-inch-high border of gra.s.s, and fell in a sprawling heap at her feet.

He lay very still. Ursula Winwood looked down upon him. The s.h.i.+ny brown spaniel took up a strategic position three yards away and growled, his chin between his paws. But the more Miss Winwood looked, and her blue eyes were trained to penetrate, the more was she convinced that both she and the dog were wrong in their diagnosis. The young man's face was deadly white, his cheeks gaunt. It was evidently a grave matter. For a moment or so she had a qualm of fear lest he might be dead. She bent down, took him in her capable grip and composed his inert body decently, and placed the knapsack he was wearing beneath his head. The faintly beating heart proved him to be alive, but her touch on his brow discovered fever. Kneeling by his side, she wiped his lips with her handkerchief, and gave herself up to the fraction of a minute's contemplation of the most beautiful youth she had ever seen. So there he lay, a new Endymion, while the most modern of Dianas hung over him, stricken with great wonderment at his perfection.

In this romantic att.i.tude was she surprised, first by the coachman of the landau and pair as he swung round the bend of the drive, and then by the Archdeacon, who leaned over the door of the carriage. Miss Winwood sprang to her feet; the coachman pulled up, and the Archdeacon alighted.

"My dear Uncle Edward"--she wrung his hand--"I'm so glad to see you. Do help me grapple with an extraordinary situation."