The Fortunate Youth Part 38

"And now you don't? But a woman gave it to you."

"Yes," said Paul, wondering, in his masculine way, how the deuce she knew that. "I was a brat of eleven."

"Then keep it. Put it on your chain again. I'm sure it's a true little G.o.d. Take it back to please me."

As there was nothing, from lapping up Eisel to killing a crocodile, that Paul would not have done, in the fulness of his wondering grat.i.tude, for his dearest lady, he meekly attached the heart to his chain and put it in his pocket.

"I must tell you," said he, "that the lady--she seemed a G.o.ddess to me then--chose me as her champion in a race, a race of urchins at a Sunday school treat, and I didn't win. But she gave me the cornelian heart as a prize."

"But as my champion you will win," said Miss Winwood. "My dear boy,"

she said, and her eyes grew very tender as she laid her hand on the young man's arm, "believe what an old woman is telling you is true.

Don't throw away any little shred of beauty you've ever had in your life. The beautiful things are really the true ones, though they may seem to be illusions. Without the trinket or what it stood for, would you be here now?"

"I don't know," replied Paul. "I might have taken a more honest road to get here."

"We took you to ourselves as a bright human being, Paul--not for what you might or might not have been. By the way, what have you decided as regards making public the fact of your relationship?"

"My father, for his own reasons, has urged me not to do so."

Miss Winwood drew a long breath.

"I'm glad to hear it," she said.

So Paul, comforted by one woman's amazing loyalty, went out that evening and addressed his great meeting. But the roar of applause that welcomed him echoed through void s.p.a.ces of his being. He felt neither thrill nor fear. The speech prepared by the Fortunate Youth was delivered by a stranger to it, glowing and dancing eloquence. The words came trippingly enough, but the informing Spirit was gone.

Those in the audience familiar with the magic of his smile were disappointed. The soundness of his policy satisfied the hard-headed, but he made no appeal to the imaginative. If his speech did not fall flat, it was not the clarion voice that his supporters had antic.i.p.ated.

They whispered together with depressed headshakings. Their man was not in form. He was nervous. What he said was right enough, but his utterance lacked fire. It carried conviction to those already convinced; but it could make no proselytes. Had they been mistaken in their choice? Too young a man, hadn't he bitten off a hunk greater than he could chew? So the inner ring of local politicians. An election audience, however, brings its own enthusiasms, and it must be a very dull dog indeed who damps their ardour. They cheered prodigiously when Paul sat down, and a crowd of zealots waiting outside the building cheered him again as he drove off. But Paul knew that he had been a failure. He had delivered another man's speech. To-morrow and the day after and the day after that, and ever afterwards, if he held to the political game, he would have to speak in his own new person. What kind of a person would the new Paul be?

He drove back almost in silence with the Colonel and Miss Winwood, vainly seeking to solve the problem. The foundations of his life had been swept away. His foot rested on nothing solid save his own manhood.

That no shock should break down. He would fight. He would win the election. He set his lips in grim determination. If life held no higher meaning, it at least offered this immediate object for existence.

Besides he owed the most strenuous effort of his soul to the devoted and loyal woman whose face he saw dimly opposite. Afterwards come what might. The Truth at any rate. Magna est veritas et praevalebit.

These were "prave 'orts" and valorous protestations.

But when their light supper was over and Colonel Winwood had retired, Ursula Winwood lingered in the dining room, her heart aching for the boy who looked so stern and haggard. She came behind him and touched his hair.

"Poor boy," she murmured.

Then Paul--he was very young, barely thirty--broke down, as perhaps she meant that he should, and, elbows sprawling amid the disarray of the meal, poured out all the desolation of his soul, and for the first time cried out in anguish for the woman he had lost. So, as love lay a-bleeding mortally pierced, Ursula Winwood wept unaccustomed tears and with tender fingers strove to staunch the wound.

CHAPTER XIX

DAYS of strain followed: days of a thousand engagements, a thousand interviews, a thousand journeyings, a thousand speeches; days in which he was reduced to an unresisting automaton, mechanically uttering the same formulas; days in which the irresistible force of the campaign swept him along without volition. And day followed day and not a sign came from the Princess Zobraska either of condonation or resentment. It was as though she had gathered her skirts around her and gone disdainfully out of his life for ever. If speaking were to be done, it was for her to speak. Paul could not plead. It was he who, in a way, had cast her off. In effect he had issued the challenge: "I am a child of the gutter, an adventurer masquerading under an historical name, and you are a royal princess. Will you marry me now?" She had given her answer, by walking out of the room, her proud head in the air. It was final, as far as he was concerned. He could do nothing--not even beg his dearest lady to plead for him. Besides, rumour had it that the Princess had cancelled her town engagements and gone to Morebury. So he walked in cold and darkness, uninspired, and though he worked with feverish energy, the heart and purpose of his life were gone.

As in his first speech, so in his campaign, he failed. He had been chosen for his youth, his joyousness, his magnetism, his radiant promise of great things to come. He went about the const.i.tuency an anxious, haggard man, working himself to death without being able to awaken a spark of emotion in the heart of anybody. He lost ground daily. On the other hand, Silas Finn, with his enthusiasms, and his aspect of an inspired prophet, made alarming progress. He swept the mult.i.tude. Paul Savelli, the young man of the social moment, had an army of helpers, members of Parliament making speeches, friends on the Unionist press writing flamboyant leaders, fair ladies in automobiles hunting for voters through the slums of Hickney Heath. Silas Finn had scarcely a personal friend. But hope reigned among his official supporters, whereas depression began to descend over Paul's brilliant host.

"They want stirring up a bit," said the Conservative agent despondently. "I hear old Finn's meetings go with a bang. They nearly raised the roof off last night. We want some roof-raising on this side."

"I do my best," said Paul coldly, but the reproach cut deep. He was a failure. No nervous or intellectual effort could save him now, though he spent himself to the last heartbeat. He was the sport of a mocking Will o' the Wisp which he had taken for Destiny.

Once on coming out of his headquarters he met Silas, who was walking up the street with two or three of his committee-men. In accordance with the ordinary amenities of English political life, the two candidates shook hands, and withdrew a pace or two aside to chat for a while. This was the first time they had come together since the afternoon of revelation, and there was a moment of constraint during which Silas tugged at his streaked beard and looked with mournful wistfulness at his son.

"I wish I were not your opponent, Paul," said he in a low voice, so as not to be overheard.

"That doesn't matter a bit," Paul replied courteously. "I see you're putting up an excellent fight."

"It's the Lord's battle. If it weren't, do you think I would not let you win?"

The same old cry. Through sheer repet.i.tion, Paul began almost to believe in it. He felt very weary. In his father's eyes he recognized, with a pang, the glow of a faith which he had lost. Their likeness struck him, and he saw himself, his old self, beneath the unquestioning though sorrowful eyes.

"That's the advantage of a belief in the Almighty's personal interest,"

he answered, with a touch of irony: "whatever happens, one is not easily disillusioned."

"That is true, my son," said Silas.

"Jane is well?" Paul asked, after an instant's pause, breaking off the profitless discussion.

"Very well."

"And Barney Bill?"

"He upbraids me bitterly for what I have said."

Paul smiled at the curiously stilted phrase.

"Tell him from me not to do it. My love to them both."

They shook hands again, and Paul drove off in the motor car that had been placed at his disposal during the election, and Silas continued his sober walk with his committee-men up the muddy street. Whereupon Paul conceived a sudden hatred for the car. It was but the final artistic touch to this comedy of mockery of which he had been the victim.... Perhaps G.o.d was on his father's side, after all--on the side of them who humbly walked and not of them who rode in proud chariots.

But his political creed, his sociological convictions rose in protest.

How could the Almighty be in league with all that was subversive of social order, all that was destructive to Imperial cohesion, all that which inevitably tended to England's downfall?

He turned suddenly to his companion, the Conservative agent.

"Do you think G.o.d has got common sense?"

The agent, not being versed in speculations regarding the attributes of the Deity, stared; then, disinclined to commit himself, took refuge in plat.i.tude.

"G.o.d moves in a mysterious way, Mr. Savelli."

"That's rot," said Paul. "If there's an Almighty, He must move in a common-sense way; otherwise the whole of this planet would have busted up long ago. Do you think it's common sense to support the present Government?"

"Certainly not," said the agent, fervently.

"Then if G.o.d supported it, it wouldn't be common sense on His part. It would be merely mysterious?"

"I see what you're driving at," said the agent. "Our opponent undoubtedly has been making free with the name of the Almighty in his speeches. As a matter of fact he's rather crazy on the subject. I don't think it would be a bad move to make a special reference to it. It's all d.a.m.ned hypocrisy. There's a chap in the old French play--what's his name?"