The Fortunate Youth Part 43

"Liquor is like a dawg," said Bill. "Keep it in subjection, so to speak, and it's yer faithful friend."

"Where's Jane?" Paul asked.

"She's busy. Half the borough seem to be calling, or telephoning"--and even at that moment Paul could hear the maid tripping across the hall and opening the front door--"I've told her what occurred. She seemed half skeered. She's had a dreadful day, pore gal."

"She has indeed," said Paul.

He threw himself into a chair, dead beat, at the end of emotional strain, and remained talking with the old man of he scarce knew what.

But these two--Jane and the old man--were linked to him by imperishable ties, and he could not leave them yet awhile in the house of death.

Barney Bill stirred the fire, which blazed up, making the perky animals on the hearth cast faint and fantastic shadows.

"It's funny how he loved those darned little beasts, isn't it now? I remember of him telling me as how they transported him into magic something--or the other--medi--he had a word for it--I dunno--"

"Mediaeval?"

"That's it, sonny. Mediaeval forests. It means back of old times, don't it? King Arthur and his Round Table--I done a bit of reading, yer know." The old man took out pouch and pipe. "That's what drew us together, sonny, our taste for literature. Remember?"

"Can I ever forget?" said Paul.

"Well, he was like that too. He had lots of po'try in him--not the stuff that rhymes, yer know, like 'The Psalm of Life' and so forth, but real po'try. I wish I could tell yer what I mean--" His face was puckered into a thousand wrinkles with the intellectual effort, and his little diamond eyes gleamed. "He could take a trumpery common thing like that there mug-faced, lop-eared hare and make it stand for the medi-what-you-call-it-forest. I've said to him, 'Come out with me on the old 'bus if you want green and loneliness and nature.' And he has said--I recollect one talk in particular--he said, 'I'd love to hear'

something about a pipe--I'm getting old, sonny--"

"The Pipes of Pan?" Paul suggested.

"The very words. Lor lumme! how did you guess it?" He paused, his fingers holding the lighted match, which went out before he could apply it to his tobacco. "Yus. 'The Pipes of Pan.' I don't know what it means. Anyway, he said he'd love to hear them in the real forest, but duty kept him to bricks and mortar and so he had to hear them in imagination. He said that all them footling little beasts were a-listening to 'em, and they told him all about it. I remember he told me more about the woods than I know myself--and I reckon I could teach his business to any gamekeeper or poacher in England. I don't say as how he knew the difference between a stoat and a weasel--he didn't. A c.o.c.k-pheasant and a hen-partridge would have been the same to him. But the spirit of it--the meaning of it--he fair raised my hair off--he knew it a darned sight better nor I. And that's what I set out for to say, sonny. He had po'try in him. And all this"--he swept an all-inclusive hand--"all this meant to him something that you and I can't tumble to, sonny. It meant something different to what it looked like--ah!" and impatient at his impotence to express philosophic thought, he cast another lighted match angrily into the fire.

Paul, high product of modern culture, sat in wonder at the common old fellow's clarity of vision. Tears rolled down his cheek. "I know, dear old Bill, what you're trying to say. Only one man has ever been able to say it. A mad poet called Blake.

'To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour'."

Barney Bill started forward in his chair and clapped his hand on the young man's knee. "By gum! you've got it. That's what I was a-driving at. That's Silas. I call to mind when he was a boy--pretty dirty and ragged he was too--as he used to lean over the parapet of Blackfriars Bridge and watch the current sort of swirling round the piers, and he used to say as how he could hear what the river was saying. I used to think him loony. But it was po'try, sonny, all the time."

The old man, thus started on reminiscence, continued, somewhat garrulous, and Paul, sunk in the armchair by the fire, listened indulgently, waiting for Jane. She, meanwhile, was occupied upstairs and in the library answering telephone messages and sending word out to callers by the maid. For, on the heels of Paul, as Barney Bill had said, many had come on errand of inquiry and condolence and all the news agencies and newspapers of London seemed to be on the telephone.

Some of the latter tried for speech with the newly elected candidate whom they understood to be in the house, but Jane denied them firmly.

She had had some training as a politician's private secretary. At last the clanging bell ceased ringing, and the maid ceased running to and from the street door, and the doctor had come and given his certificate and gone, and Jane joined the pair in the dining-room. She brought in from the hall a tray of visiting cards and set it on the table. "I suppose it was kind of them all to come," she said.

She sat down listlessly in a straight-backed chair, and then, at a momentary end of her fine strength suddenly broke into tears and sobs and buried her head on her arms. Paul rose, bent over her and clasped her shoulders comfortingly. Presently she turned and blindly sought his embrace. He raised her to her feet, and they stood as they had done years ago, when, boy and girl, they had come to the parting of their ways. She cried silently for a while, and then she said miserably: "I've only you left, dear."

In this hour of spent effort and la.s.situde it was a queer physical comfort, very pure and sweet, to feel the close contact of her young, strong body. She, too, out of the wreck, was all that he had left. His clasp tightened, and he murmured soothing words.

"Oh, my dear, I am so tired," she said, giving herself up, for her part also, to the foolish solace of his arms. "I wish I could stay here always, Paul."

He whispered: "Why not?"

Indeed, why not? Instinct spoke. His people were her people and her people his. And she had proved herself a brave, true woman. Before him no longer gleamed the will-o'-the-wisp leading him a fantastic dance through life. Before him lay only darkness. Jane and he, hand in hand, could walk through it fearless and undismayed. And her own great love, shown unashamed in the abandonment of this moment of intense emotion'

made his pulses throb. He whispered again: "Why not?"

For answer she nestled closer. "If only you could love me a little, little bit?"

"But I do," said Paul hoa.r.s.ely.

She shook her head and sobbed afresh, and they stood in close embrace at the end of the room by the door, regardless of the presence of the old man who sat, his back to them, smoking his pipe and looking, with his birdlike crook of the neck, meditatively into the fire. "No, no,"

said Jane, at last. "It's silly of me. Forgive me. We mustn't talk of such things. Neither of us is fit to--and to-night it's not becoming. I have lost my father and you are only my brother, Paul dear."

Barney Bill broke in suddenly; and at the sound of his voice they moved apart. "Think over it, sonny. Don't go and do anything rash."

"Don't you think it would be wise for Jane to marry me?"

"Ay--for Jane."

"Not for me?"

"It's only wise for a man to marry a woman what he loves," said Barney Bill.

"Well?"

"You said, when we was a-driving here, as you are going to live for the Truth and nothing but the Truth. I only mention it," added the old man drily.

Jane recovered herself, with a gulp in the throat, and before Paul could answer said: "We too had a talk to-day, Paul. Remember," her voice quavered a little--"about carrots."

"You were right in essence," said Paul, looking at her gravely. "But I should have my incentive. I know my own mind. My affection for you is of the deepest. That is Truth--I needn't tell you. We could lead a happy and n.o.ble life together."

"We belong to two different social cla.s.ses, Paul," she said gently, again sitting in the straight-backed chair by the table.

"We don't," he replied. "I repudiated my claims to the other cla.s.s this evening. I was admitted into what is called high society, partly because people took it for granted that I was a man of good birth. Now that I've publicly proclaimed that I'm not--and the newspapers will pretty soon find out all about me now--I'll drop out of that same high society. I shan't seek readmittance."

"People will seek you."

"You don't know the world," said he.

"It must be mean and horrid."

"Oh, no. It's very just and honourable. I shan't blame it a bit for not wanting me. Why should I? I don't belong to it."

"But you do, dear Paul," she cried earnestly. "Even if you could get rid of your training and mode of thought, you can't get rid of your essential self. You've always been an aristocrat, and I've always been a small shop-keeper's daughter and shall continue to be one."

"And I say," Paul retorted, "that we've both sprung from the people, and are of the people. You've raised yourself above the small shop-keeping cla.s.s just as much as I have. Don't let us have any sham humility about it. Whatever happens you'll always a.s.sociate with folk of good-breeding and education. You couldn't go back to Barn Street. It would be idiotic for me to contemplate such a thing for my part. But between Barn Street and Mayfair there's a refined and intellectual land where you and I can meet on equal ground and make our social position.

What do you say?"

She did not look at him, but fingered idly the cards on the tray.

"To-morrow you will think differently. To-night you're all on the strain."

"And, axing yer pardon, sonny, for chipping in," said the old man, holding up his pipe in his gnarled fingers, "you haven't told her as how you loves her--not as how a young woman axed in marriage ought to be told."

"I've spoken the Truth, dear old friend," said Paul. "I've got down to bed-rock to-night. I have a deep and loyal affection for Jane. I shan't waver in it all my life long. I'll soon find my carrot, as she calls it--it will be England's greatness. She is the woman that will help me on my path. I've finished with illusions for ever and ever. Jane is the bravest and grandest of realities. To-night's work has taught me that.

For me, Jane stands for the Truth. Jane--"

He turned to her, but she had risen from her chair, staring at a card which she held in her hand. Her clear eyes met his for an instant as she threw the card on the table before him. "No, dear. For you, that's the Truth."