The Fortunate Youth Part 27

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 Zionist."

"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?" he exclaimed, setting down the beer gla.s.s 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 s.h.a.g.

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 gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sed. Paul explained once more his loss of Jane and his fruitless efforts to find her.

"We didn't know," said Jane. "We thought that either you were dead or had forgotten us--or had grown too big a man for us."

"Axing your pardon," said Barney Bill, taking his blackened clay from his lips and holding it between his gnarled fingers, "you said so. I didn't. I always held that, if he wasn't dead, the time would come when, as it was to-night, the three of us would be sitting round together. I maintained," he added solemnly after a puff or two, "that his heart was in the right place. I'm a broken-down old crock, no longer a pagan; but I'm right. Ain't I, sonny?" He thrust an arm into the ribs of Paul, who was sitting between them.

Paul looked at Jane. "I think this proves it."

She returned his look steadily. "I own I was wrong. But a woman only proves herself to be right by always insisting that she is wrong."

"My dear Jane," cried Paul. "Since when have you become so psychological?"

"Gorblime," said Barney Bill, "what in thunder's that?"

"I know," said Jane. "You"--to Paul--"were good enough to begin my education. I've tried since to go on with it."

"It's nothing to do with edication," said Barney Bill. "It's fac's.

Let's have fac's. Jane and I have been tramping the same old high-road, but you've been climbing mountains--yer and yer gold cigarette cases.

Let's hear about it."

So Paul told his story, and as he told it, it seemed to him, in its improbability, more like a fairy-tale than the sober happenings of real life.

"You've said nothing about the princess," Jane remarked, when he had ended.

"The princess?"

"Yes. Where does she come in?"

"The Princess Zobraska is a friend of my employers."

"But you and she are great friends," Jane persisted quietly. "That's obvious to anybody. I was standing quite close when you helped her into the motor car."

"I didn't see you."

"I took care you didn't. She looks charming."

"Most princesses are charming--when they've no particular reason to be otherwise," said Paul. "It is their metier--their profession."

There was a little silence. Jane, cheek on hand, looked thoughtfully into the fire. Barney Bill knocked' the ashes out of his pipe and thrust it in his pocket. "It's getting late, sonny."

Paul looked at his watch. It was past one o'clock. He jumped up. "I hope to goodness you haven't to begin work at half-past five," he said to Jane.

"No. At eight." She rose as he stretched out his hand. "You don't know what it is to see you again, Paul. I can't tell you. Some things are upsetting. But I'm glad. Oh, yes, I'm glad, Paul dear. Don't think I'm not."

Her voice broke a little. They were the first gentle words she had given him all the evening. Paul smiled and kissed her hand as he had kissed that of the princess, and, still holding it, said: "Don't I know you of old? And if you suppose I haven't thought of you and felt the need of you, you're very much mistaken. Now I've found you, I'm not going to let you go again."

She turned her head aside and looked down; there was the slightest movement of her plump shoulders. "What's the good? I can't do anything for you now, and you can't do anything for me. You're on the way to becoming a great man. To me, you're a great man already. Don't you see?"

"My dear, I was an embryonic Sh.e.l.ley, Raphael, Garrick, and Napoleon when you first met me," he said jestingly.

"But then you didn't belong to their--to their sphere. Now you do. Your friends are lords and ladies and--and princesses--"

"My friends," cried Paul, "are people with great true hearts--like the Winwoods--and the princess, if you like--and you, and Barney Bill."

"That's a sentiment as does you credit," said the old man. "Great true hearts! Now if you ain't satisfied, my dear, you're a d.a.m.n criss-cross female. And yer ain't, are yer?' She laughed and Paul laughed. The little spell of intensity was broken. There were pleasant leave-takings.

"I'll set you on your road a bit," said Barney Bill. "I live in the neighbourhood. Good-bye, Jane."

She went with them to the front door, and stood in the gusty air watching them until they melted into the darkness.

CHAPTER XIV

BETWEEN the young man of immaculate vesture, of impeccable manners, of undeniable culture, of instinctive sympathy with the great world where great things are done, of unerring tact, of mythological beauty and charm, of boundless ambition, of resistless energy, of incalculable promise, in outer semblance and in avowed creed the fine flower of aristocratic England, professing the divine right of the House of Lords and the utilitarian sanct.i.ty of the Church of England--between Paul, that is to say, and the Radical, progressive councillor of Hickney Heath, the Free Zionist dissenter (not even Congregationalist or Baptist or Wesleyan, or any powerfully organized Non-conformist whose conscience archbishops consult with astute patronage), the purveyor of fried fish, the man of crude, uncultivated taste, there should have been a gulf fixed as wide as the Pacific Ocean. As a matter of fact, whatever gulf lay between them was narrow enough to be bridged comfortably over by mutual esteem. Paul took to visiting Mr. Finn.