The Fortunate Youth Part 46

Whereupon he went home feeling that though there would be the deuce to pay, Paul Savelli would find himself perfectly solvent; and meeting the somewhat dubious Leader of the Opposition later in the day he said: "Anyhow, this 'far too gentlemanly party' has got someone picturesque, at last, to touch the popular imagination."

"A new young Disraeli?"

"Why not?"

The Leader made a faint gesture of philosophic doubt. "The mould is broken," said he.

"We'll see," said Frank Ayres, confidently.

Meanwhile, Paul returned to his room and wrote a letter, three words of which he had put on paper--"My dear Princess"--when the summons to meet the Chief Whip had come. The unblotted ink had dried hard. He took another sheet.

"My dear Princess," he began.

He held his head in his hand. What could he say? Ordinary courtesy demanded an acknowledgment of the Princess's message of inquiry. But to write to her whom he had held close in his arms, whose lips had clung maddeningly to his, in terms of polite convention seemed impossible.

What had she meant by her message? If she had gone scornfully out of his life, she had gone, and there was an end on't. Her coming back could bear only one interpretation--that of Jane's pa.s.sionate statement. In spite of all, she loved him. But now, stripped and naked and at war with the world, for all his desire, he would have none of her love. Not he.... At last he wrote:

PRINCESS,--A thousand grateful thanks for last night's gracious act--the act of the very great lady that I have the privilege of knowing you to be.

PAUL SAVELLI.

He rang for a servant and ordered the note to be sent by hand, and then went out to Hickney Heath to see to the burying of his dead. On his return he found a familiar envelope with the crown on the flap awaiting him. It contained but few words:

PAUL, come and see me. I will stay at home all day.

SOPHIE.

His pulses throbbed. Her readiness to await his pleasure proved a humility of spirit rare in Princess Sophie Zobraska. Her hands were held out towards him. But he hardened his heart. The fairy-tale was over. Nothing but realities lay before him. The interview was perilous; but he was not one to shirk danger. He went out, took a cab and drove to Berkeley Square.

She rose shyly as he entered and advanced to meet him. He kissed her hand, but when he sought to release it he found his held in her warm clasp. "Mon Dieu! How ill you are looking!" she said, and her lips quivered.

"I'm only tired."

"You look so old. Ah!" She moved away from him with a sigh. "Sit down.

I suppose you can guess why I've asked you to come," she continued after a pause. "But it is a little hard to say. I want you to forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive," said Paul.

"Don't be ungenerous; you know there is. I left you to bear everything alone."

"You were more than justified. You found me an impostor. You were wounded in everything you held sacred. I wounded you deliberately. You could do nothing else but go away. Heaven forbid that I should have thought of blaming you. I didn't. I understood."

"But it was I who did not understand," she said, looking at the rings on her fingers. "Yes. You are right. I was wounded--like an animal, I hid myself in the country, and I hoped you would write, which was foolish, for I knew you wouldn't. Then I felt that if I had loved you as I ought, I should never have gone away."

"I thought it best to kill your love outright," said Paul.

She lay back on her cushions, very fair, very alluring, very sad. From where he sat he saw her face in its delicate profile, and he had a mighty temptation to throw himself on his knees by her side.

"I thought, too, you had killed it," she said.

"Still think so," said Paul, in a low voice.

She raised herself, bent forward, and he met the blue depths of her gaze. "And you? Your love?"

"I never did anything to kill it."

"But I did."

"No, you couldn't. I shall love you to the hour of my death." He saw the light leap into her eyes. "I only say it," he added somewhat coldly, "because I will lie to you no longer. But it's a matter that concerns me alone."

"How you alone? Am not I to be considered?"

He rose and stood on the hearthrug, facing her. "I consider you all the time," said he.

"Listen, mon cher ami," she said, looking up at him. "Let us understand one another. Is there anything about you, your birth or your life that I still don't know--I mean, anything essential?"

"Nothing that matters," said Paul.

"Then let us speak once and for all, soul to soul. You and I are of those who can do it. Eh bien. I am a woman of old family, princely rank and fortune--you--"

"By my father's death," said Paul, for the second time that day, "I am a rich man. We can leave out the question of fortune--except that the money I inherit was made out of a fried-fish shop business. That business was conducted by my father on lines of peculiar idealism. It will be my duty to carry on his work--at least"--he inwardly and conscientiously repudiated the idea of buying fish at Billingsgate at five o'clock in the morning--"as far as the maintenance of his principles is concerned."

"Soit," said the Princess, "we leave out the question of fortune. You are then a man of humble birth, and the rank you have gained for yourself."

"I am a man of no name and of tarnished reputation. Good G.o.d!" he blazed out suddenly, losing control. "What is the good of torturing ourselves like this? If I wouldn't marry you--before--until I had done something in the front of the world to make you proud of me, what do you think I'll do now, lying in the gutter for every one to kick me?

Would it be to the happiness of either of us for me to sneak through society behind your rank? It would be the death of me and you would come to hate me as a mean hound."

"You? A mean hound?" Her voice broke and the tears welled up in her eyes. "You have done nothing for me to be proud of? You? You who did what you did last night? Yes, I was there. I saw and heard. Listen!"

She rose to her feet and stood opposite to him, her eyes all stars, her figure trembling and her hands moving in her Frenchwoman's pa.s.sionate gestures. "When I saw in the newspapers about your father, my heart was wrung for you. I knew what it meant. I knew how you must suffer. I came up straight to town. I wanted to be near you. I did not know how. I did not want you to see me. I called in my steward. 'How can I see the election?' We talked a little. He went and hired a room opposite the Town Hall. I waited there in the darkness. I thought it would last forever. And then came the result and the crowd cheered and I thought I should choke. I sobbed, I sobbed, I sobbed--and then you came. And I heard, and then I held out my arms to you alone in the dark room--like this--and cried: 'Paul, Paul!"' Woman conquered. Madness surged through him and he flung his arms about her and they kissed long and pa.s.sionately.

"Whether you do me the honour of marrying me or not," she said a while later' flushed and triumphant, "our lives are joined together."

And Paul, still shaken by the intoxication of her lips and hair and clinging pressure of her body, looked at her intensely with the eyes of a man's longing. But he said: "Nothing can alter what I said a few minutes ago--not all the pa.s.sion and love in the world. You and I are not of the stuff, thank G.o.d, to cut ourselves adrift and bury ourselves in some romantic island and give up our lives to a dream. We're young.

We're strong. We both know that life is a different sort of thing altogether from that. We're not of the sort that shirks its responsibilities. We've got to live in the world, you and I, and do the world's work."

"Parfaitement, mon bien aime." She smiled at him serenely. "I would not bury myself with you in an Ionian island for more than two months in a year for anything on earth. On my part, it would be the unforgivable sin. No woman has the right, however much she loves him, to ruin a man, any more than a man has the right to ruin a woman. But if you won't marry me, I'm perfectly willing to spend two months a year in an Ionian island with you," and she looked at him, very proud and fearless.

Paul took her by the shoulders and shook her, more roughly than he realized. "Sophie, don't tempt me to a madness that we should both regret."

She laughed, wincing yet thrilled, under the rude handling, and freed herself. "But what more can a woman offer the man who loves her--that is to say if he does love her?"

"I not love you?" He threw up his hands--"Dear G.o.d!"

She waved him away and retreated a step or two, still laughing, as he advanced. "Then why won't you marry me? You're afraid."

"Yes," he cried. "It's the only thing on this earth that I'm afraid of."

"Why?"