The Fortunate Youth Part 40

"If you take it that way," said Wilson, "there's no more to be done."

"There's nothing to be done, except to find out who put up the man to make the announcement."

"He did it on his own," Wilson replied warmly. "None of our people would resort to a dirty trick like that."

"And yet you want me to take advantage of it now it's done."

"That's quite a different matter."

"I can't see much difference," said Paul.

So Wilson, seeing that his candidate was more unmanageable than ever, presently departed, and Paul sat down to breakfast. But he could not eat. He was both stricken with shame and moved to the depths by immense pity. Far removed from him as Silas Finn was in mode of life and ideals, he found much in common with his father. Each had made his way from the slum, each had been guided by an inner light--was Silas Finn's fantastic belief less of an ignis fatuus than his own?--each had sought to get away from a past, each was a child of Ishmael, each, in his own way, had lived romantically. Whatever resentment against his father lingered in his heart now melted away. He was very near him. The shame of the prison struck him as it had struck the old man. He saw him bowed down under the blow, and he clenched his hands in a torture of anger and indignation. And to crown all, came the intolerable conviction, in the formation of which Wilson's triumphant words had not been necessary, that if he won the election it would be due to this public dishonouring of his own father. He walked about the room in despair, and at last halted before the mantelpiece on which still stood the photograph of the Princess in its silver frame. Suddenly he remembered that he had not told her of this incident in his family history. She too would be reading her newspaper this morning. He saw her proud lips curl. The son of a gaol-bird! He tore the photograph from its frame and threw it into the fire and watched it burn. As the paper writhed under the heat, the lips seemed to twist into sad reproach. He turned away impatiently. That romantic madness was over and done with. He had far sterner things to do than shriek his heart out over a woman in an alien star. He had his life to reconstruct in the darkness threatening and mocking; but at last he had truth for a foundation; on that he would build in defiance of the world.

In the midst of these fine thoughts it occurred to him that he had hidden the prison episode in his father's career from the Winwoods as well as from the Princess. His checks flushed; it was one more strain on the loyalty of these dear devoted friends. He went downstairs, and found the Colonel and Miss Winwood in the dining-room. Their faces were grave. He came to them with outstretched arms--a familiar gesture, one doubtless inherited from his Sicilian ancestry.

"You see what has happened. I knew all the time. I didn't tell you. You must forgive me."

"I don't blame you, my boy," said Colonel Winwood. "It was your father's secret. You had no right to tell us."

"We're very grieved, dear, for both your sakes," Ursula added. "James has taken the liberty of sending round a message of sympathy."

As ever, these two had gone a point beyond his antic.i.p.ation of their loyalty. He thanked them simply.

"It's hateful," said he, "to think I may win the election on account of this. It's loathsome." He shuddered.

"I quite agree with you," said the Colonel. "But in politics one has often to put up with hateful things in order to serve one's country.

That's the sacrifice a high-minded man is called upon to make."

"Besides," said Miss Winwood, "let us hope it won't affect votes. All the papers say that the vote of confidence was pa.s.sed amid scenes of enthusiasm."

Paul smiled. They understood. A little while later they drove off with him to his committee room in the motor car gay with his colours. There was still much to be done that day.

CHAPTER XX

HICKNEY HEATH blazed with excitement. It is not every day that a thrill runs through a dull London borough, not even every election day. For a London borough, unlike a country town, has very little corporate life of its own. You cannot get up as much enthusiasm for Kilburn, say, as a social or historical ent.i.ty, as you can for Winchester or Canterbury.

You may perform civic duties, if you are public-spirited enough, with business-like zeal, and if you are borough councillor you may be proud of the nice new public baths which you have been instrumental in presenting to the community. But the ordinary man in the street no more cares for Kilburn than he does for Highgate. He would move from one to the other without a pang. For neither's glory would he shed a drop of his blood. Only at election times does it occur to him that he is one of a special brotherhood, isolated from the rest of London; and even then he regards the const.i.tuency as a convention defining geographical limits for the momentary range of his political pa.s.sions. So that the day when an electric thrill ran through the whole of Hickney Heath was a rare one in its uninspiring annals.

The dramatic had happened, touching the most sluggish imaginations. The Liberal candidate for Parliament, a respected Borough Councillor, a notorious Evangelical preacher, had publicly confessed himself an ex-convict. Every newspaper in London--and for the matter of that, every newspaper in Great Britain--rang with the story, and every man, woman and child in Hickney Heath read feverishly every newspaper, morning and evening, they could lay their hands on. Also, every man, woman and child in Hickney Heath asked his neighbour for further details. All who could leave desk and shop or factory poured into the streets to learn the latest, tidings. Around the various polling stations the crowd was thickest. Those electors who had been present at Silas Finn's meeting, the night before, told the story at first-hand to eager groups. Rumours of every sort spread through the mob. The man who had put the famous question was an agent of the Tories. It was a smart party move. Silas Finn had all the time been leading a double life.

Depravities without number were laid to his charge. Even now the police were inquiring into his connection with certain burglaries that had taken place in the neighbourhood. And where was he that day? Who had seen him? He was at home drunk. He had committed suicide. Even if he hadn't, and was elected, he would not be allowed to take his seat in Parliament.

On the other hand, those in whose Radical bosoms burned fierce hatred for the Tories, spoke loud in condemnation of their cowardly tactics.

There was considerable free-fighting in the ordinarily dismal and decorous streets of Hickney Heath. Noisy acclamations hailed the automobiles, carriages and waggonettes bringing voters of both parties to the polls. Paul, driving in his gaily-decked car about the const.i.tuency, shared all these demonstrations and heard these rumours.

The latter he denied and caused to be denied, as far as lay in his power. In the broad High Street, thronged with folk, and dissonant with tram cars and motor 'buses, he came upon a quarrelsome crowd looking up at a window above a poulterer's shop, from which hung something white, like a strip of wall paper.

Approaching, he perceived that it bore a crude drawing of a convict and "Good old Dartmoor" for legend. White with anger, he stopped the car, leaped out on to the curb, and pus.h.i.+ng his way through the crowd, entered the shop. He seized one of the white-coated a.s.sistants by the arm. "Show me the way to that first-floor room," he cried fiercely.

The a.s.sistant, half-dragged, half-leading, and wholly astonished, took him through the shop and pointed to the staircase. Paul sprang up and dashed through the door into the room, which appeared to be some business office. Three or four young men, who turned grinning from the window, he thrust aside, and plucking the offending strip from the drawing-pins which secured it to the sill, he tore it across and across.

"You cads! You brutes!" he shouted, trampling on the fragments. "Can't you fight like Englishmen?"

The young men, realizing the ident.i.ty of the wrathful apparition, stared open-mouthed, turned red, and said nothing. Paul strode out, looking very fierce, and drove off in his car amid the cheers of the crowd, to which he paid no notice.

"It makes me sick!" he cried pa.s.sionately to Wilson, who was with him.

"I hope to G.o.d he wins in spite, of it!"

"What about the party?" asked Wilson.

Paul d.a.m.ned the party. He was in the overwrought mood in which a man d.a.m.ns everything. Quagmire and bramble and the derision of Olympus-that was the end of his vanity of an existence. Suppose he was elected--what then? He would be a failure-the high G.o.ds in their mirth would see to that--a puppet in Frank Ayres' hands until the next general election, when he would have ignominiously to retire. Awakener of England indeed!

He could not even awaken Hickney Heath. As he dashed through the streets in his triumphal car, he hated Hickney Heath, hated the wild "hoorays" of waggon-loads of his supporters on their way to the polls, hated the smug smiles of his committee-men at polling stations. He forgot that he did not hate England. A little black disk an inch or two in diameter if cunningly focussed can obscure the sun in heaven from human eye. There was England still behind the little black disk, though Paul for the moment saw it not.

Wilson pulled his scrubby moustache and made no retort to Paul's anathema. To him Paul was one of the fine flower of the Upper Cla.s.ses to which lower middle-cla.s.s England still, with considerable justification, believes to be imbued with incomprehensible and unalterable principles of conduct. The grand old name of gentleman still has its magic in this country--and is, by the way, not without its influence in one or two mighty republics wherein the equality of man is very loudly proclaimed. Wilson, therefore, gladly suffered Paul's lunatic Quixotry. For himself he approved hugely of the cartoon.

If he could have had his way, Hickney Heath would have flamed with poster reproductions of it. But he had a dim appreciation of, and a sneaking admiration for, the aristocrat's point of view, and, being a practical man, evaded a discussion on the ethics of the situation.

The situation was rendered more extraordinary because the Liberal candidate made no appearance in the const.i.tuency. Paul inquired anxiously. No one had seen him. After lunch he drove alone to his father's house. The parlour-maid showed him into the hideously furnished and daub-hung dining-room. The Viennese horrors of plaster stags, gnomes and rabbits stared fatuously on the hearth. No fire was in the grate. Very soon Jane entered, tidy, almost matronly in buxom primness, her hair as faultless as if it had come out of a convoluted mould, her grave eyes full of light. She gave him her capable hand.

"It's like you to come, Paul."

"It's only decent. My father hasn't shown up. What's the matter with him?"

"It's a bit of a nervous breakdown," she said, looking at him steadily.

"Nothing serious. But the doctor--I sent for him--says he had better rest--and his committee people thought it wiser for him not to show himself."

"Can I see him?"

"Certainly not." A look of alarm came into her face. "You're both too excited. What would you say to him?"

"I'd tell him what I feel about the whole matter."

"Yes. You would fling your arms about, and he would talk about G.o.d, and a precious lot of good it would do to anybody. No, thank you. I'm in charge of Mr. Finn's health."

It was the old Jane, so familiar. "I wish," said he, with a smile--"I wish I had had your common sense to guide me all these years."

"If you had, you would now be a clerk in the City earning thirty s.h.i.+llings a week."

"And perhaps a happier man."

"Bosh, my dear Paul!" she said, shaking her head slowly. "Rot! Rubbis.h.!.+

I know you too well. You adding up figures at thirty s.h.i.+llings a week, with a common sense wife for I suppose you mean that--mending your socks and rocking the cradle in a second-floor back in Hickney Heath!

No, my dear"--she paused for a second or two and her lips twitched oddly--"common sense would have been the death of you."

He laughed in spite of himself. It was so true.

Common sense might have screwed him to a thirty s.h.i.+llings-a-week desk: the fantastic had brought him to that very house, a candidate for Parliament, in a thousand-guinea motor car. On the other hand--and his laughter faded from his eyes--the fantastic in his life was dead.

Henceforward common sense would hold him in her cold and unstimulating clasp. He said something of the sort to Jane. Once more she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed "Rot, rubbish and bos.h.!.+" and they quarrelled as they had done in their childhood.

"You talk as if I didn't know you inside out, my dear Paul," she said in her clear, unsmiling way. "Listen. All men are donkeys, aren't they?"