The Fortunate Youth Part 44

He took it up and looked at it stupidly. It bore a crown and the inscription: "The Princess Sophie Zobraska," and a pencilled line, in her handwriting: "With anxious inquiries." He reeled, as if someone had dealt him a heavy blow on the head. He recovered to see Jane regarding him with her serene gravity. "Did you know about this?" he asked dully.

"No. I've just seen the card. I found it at the bottom of the pile."

"How did it come?"

Jane rang the bell. "I don't know. If Annie's still up, we can find out. As it was at the bottom, it must have been one of the first."

"How could the news have travelled so fast?" said Paul.

The maid came in. Questioned, she said that just after Paul had gone upstairs, and while Jane was at the telephone, a chauffeur had presented the card. He belonged to a great lighted limousine in which sat a lady in hat and dark veil. According to her orders, she had said that Mr. Finn was dead, and the chauffeur had gone away and she had shut the door.

The maid was dismissed. Paul stood on the hearthrug with bent brows, his hands in his jacket pockets. "I can't understand it," he said.

"She must ha' come straight from the Town Hall," said Barney Bill.

"But she wasn't there," cried Paul.

"Sonny," said the old fellow, "if you're always dead sure of where a woman is and where a woman isn't, you're a wiser man than Solomon with all his wives and other domestic afflictions."

Paul threw the card into the fire. "It doesn't matter where she was,"

said he. "It was a very polite--even a gracious act to send in her card on her way home. But it makes no difference to what I was talking about. What have I got to do with princesses? They're out of my sphere.

So are Naiads and Dryads and Houris and Valkyrie and other fabulous ladies. The Princess Zobraska has nothing to do with the question."

He made a step towards Jane and, his hand on her shoulder, looked at her in his new, masterful way. "I come in the most solemn hour and in the crisis of my life to ask you to marry me. My father, whom I've only learned to love and revere to-night, is lying dead upstairs. To-night I have cut away all bridges behind me. I go into the unknown. We'll have to fight, but we'll fight together. You have courage, and I at least have that. There's a seat in Parliament which I'll have to fight for afterwards like a dog for a bone, and an official position which brings in enough bread and-b.u.t.ter--"

"And there's a fortune remarked Barney Bill.

"What do you mean?" Paul swung round sharply.

"Yer father's fortune, sonny. Who do yer suppose he was a-going to leave it to? 'Omes for lost 'orses or Free Zionists? I don't know as 'ow I oughter talk of it, him not buried yet--but I seed his will when he made it a month or two ago, and barring certain legacies to Free Zionists and such-like lunatic folk, not to speak of Jane ere being left comfortably off, you're the residuary legatee, sonny--with something like a hundred thousand pounds. There's no talk of earning bread-and-b.u.t.ter, sonny."

"It never entered my head," said Paul, rather dazed. "I suppose a father would leave his money to his son. I didn't realize it." He pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes. "So many things have happened to-night.

Anyhow," he said, smiling queerly, in his effort to still a whirling brain, "if there are no anxieties as to ways and means, so much the better for Jane and me. I am all the more justified in asking you to marry me. Will you?"

"Before I answer you, Paul dear," she replied steadily, "you must answer me. I've known about the will, just like Bill, all the time--"

"She has that," confirmed the old man.

"So this isn't news to me, dear, and can't alter anything from me to you."

"Why should it?" asked Paul. "But it makes my claim a little stronger."

"Oh, no," she replied, shaking her head. "It only--only confuses issues. Money has nothing to do with what I'm going to ask you. You said to-night you were going to live for the Truth--the real naked Truth. Now, Paul dear, I want the real, naked Truth. Do you love that woman?"

At her question she seemed to have grown from the common sense, clear-eyed Jane into a great and commanding presence. She had drawn herself to her full height. Her chin was in the air, her generous bust thrown forward, her figure imperious, her eyes intense. And Paul too drew himself up and looked at her in his new manhood. And they stood thus for a while, beloved enemies.

"If you want the Truth--yes, I do love her," said he.

"Then how dare you ask me to be your wife?"

"Because the one is nonsensical and illusory and the other is real and practical."

She flashed out angrily: "Do you suppose I can live my woman's life on the real and practical? What kind of woman do you take me for? An Amelia, a Patient Griselda, a tabby cat?"

Paul said: "You know very well; I take you for one of the greatest-hearted of women. I've already said it to-night."

"Do you think I'm a greater-hearted woman than she? Wait, I've not finished," she cried in a loud voice. "Your Princess--you cut her heart into bits the other day, when you proclaimed yourself a low-born impostor. She thought you a high-born gentleman, and you told her of the gutter up north and the fried-fish shop and the Sicilian organ-grinding woman. She, royalty--you of the sc.u.m! She left you. This morning she learned worse. She learned that you were the son of a convict. What does she do? She comes somehow--I don't know how--to Hickney Heath and hears you publicly give yourself away--and she drives straight here with a message for you. It's for you, the message. Who else?" She stood before Paul, a flashing Jane unknown. "Would a woman who didn't love you come to this house to-night? She wouldn't, Paul.

You know it! Dear old Bill here, who hasn't moved in royal circles, knows it. No, my dear man," she said regally, "I've given you all my love--everything that is in me--since I was a child of thirteen. You will always have it. It's my great joy that you'll always have it. But, by G.o.d, Paul, I'm not going to exchange it for anything less. Can you give me the same?"

"You know I can't," said Paul. "But I can give you that which would make our marriage a happy one. I believe the experience of the world has shown it to be the securest basis."

She was on the point of breaking out, but turned away, with clenched hands, and, controlling herself, faced him again. "You're an honourable and loyal man, Paul, and you're saying this to save your face. I know that you would marry me. I know that you would be faithful to me in thought and word and act. I know that you would be good and kind and never give me a moment's cause for complaint. But your heart would be with the other woman. Whether she's out of your sphere or not--what does it matter to me? You love her and she loves you. I know it. I should always know it. You'd be living in h.e.l.l and so should I. I should prefer to remain in purgatory, which, after all, is quite bearable--I'm used to it--and I love you enough to wish to see you in paradise."

She turned away with a wide gesture and an upward inflexion of her voice. Barney Bill refilled his pipe and fixed Paul with his twinkling diamond eyes. "It's a pity, sonny--a dodgasted pity!"

"We're up against the Truth, old man, the unashamed and naked truth,"

said Paul, with a sigh.

Jane caught Paul's fur-lined coat and hat from the chair on which he had thrown it and came to him. "It's time for you to go and rest, dear.

We're all of us exhausted."

She helped him on with the heavy coat, and for farewell put both her hands on his shoulders. "You must forget a lot of things I've said to-night."

"I can't help remembering them."

"No, dear. Forget them." She drew his face down and kissed him on the lips. Then she led him out to the front door and accompanied him down the steps to the kerb where the car with its weary chauffeur was waiting. The night had cleared and the stars shone bright in the sky.

She pointed to one, haphazard. "Your star, Paul. Believe in it still."

He drove off. She entered the house, and, flinging herself on the floor by Barney Bill, buried her head on the old man's knees and sobbed her brave heart out.

CHAPTER XXII

THE next morning amazement fluttered over a million breakfast tables and throbbed in a million railway carriages. For all the fierceness of political pa.s.sions, parliamentary elections are but sombre occurrences to the general public. Rarely are they attended by the picturesque, the dramatic, the tragic. But already the dramatic had touched the election of Hickney Heath, stimulating interest in the result. Thousands, usually apathetic as to political matters, opened their newspapers to see how the ex-convict candidate had fared. They read, with a gasp, that he was dead; that his successful opponent had proclaimed himself to be his son. They had the dramatic value of c.u.mulative effect. If Paul had ever sought notoriety he had it now. His name rang through the length and breadth of the land. The early editions of the London afternoon papers swelled the chorus of amazed comment and conjecture.

Some had even routed out a fact or two, Heaven knows whence, concerning father and son. According to party they meted out praise or blame.

Some, unversed in the law, declared the election invalid. The point was discussed in a hundred clubs.

There was consternation in the social world. The d.u.c.h.esses' boudoirs with which Paul had been taunted hummed with indignation. They had entertained an adventurer unawares. They had entrusted the sacred ark of their political hopes to a charlatan. Their daughters had danced with the offspring of gaol and gutter. He must be cast out from the midst of them. So did those that were foolish furiously rage together and imagine many a vain thing. The Winwoods came in for pity. They had been villainously imposed upon. And the Young England League to which they had all subscribed so handsomely--where were its funds? Was it safe to leave them at the disposal of so unprincipled a fellow? Then germs of stories crept in from the studios and the stage and grew perversely in the overheated atmosphere. Paul's reputation began to a.s.sume a pretty colour. On the other hand, there were those who, while deploring the deception, were impressed by the tragedy and by Paul's att.i.tude. He had his defenders. Among the latter first sprang forward Lord Francis Ayres, the Chief Whip, officially bound to protect his own pet candidate.

He called early at the house in Portland Place, a distressed and anxious man. The door was besieged by reporters from newspapers, vainly trying to gain, entrance. His arrival created a sensation. At any rate there was a headline "Opposition Whip calls on Savelli." One or two attempted to interview him on the doorstep. He excused himself courteously. As-yet he knew as much or as little as they. The door opened. The butler s.n.a.t.c.hed him in hurriedly. He asked to see the Winwoods. He found them in the library.

"Here's an awful mess," said he, throwing up his hands. "I thought I'd have a word or two with you before I tackle Savelli. Have you seen him this morning?"

"Oh, yes."

"Well, what do you think about it?"

"I think," said Ursula, "that the best thing I can do is to take him away with me for a rest as soon as possible. He's at the end of his tether."