Paul rose from the bed and put his hand on Wilmer's shoulder. "And now you're disappointed?"

He laughed and his eyes twinkled humorously. His vagabond life had taught him some worldly wisdom. The sallow and ineffectual man looked confused. His misery was beyond the relief of smiles.

"We're all in the same boat, old chap," said Paul, "except that I'm alone and haven't got wife and kids to look after."

"Good-bye, my boy," said Wilmer. "Better luck next time. But chuck it, if you can."

Paul held his hand for a while. Then his left hand dived into his waistcoat pocket and, taking the place of his right, thrust three sovereigns into Wilmer's palm. "For the kiddies," said he.

Wilmer looked at the coins in his palm, and then at Paul, and the tears spurted. "I can't, my boy. You must be as broke as any of us—you—half salary—no, my boy, I can't. I'm old enough to be your father. It's damned good of you—but it's my one pride left—the pride of both of us—the missus and me—that we've never borrowed money—"

"But it isn't borrowed, you silly ass," cried Paul cheerfully. "It's just your share of the spoils, such as they are. I wish to God it was more." With both hands he clasped the thin, ineffectual fingers over the coins and pushed the man' with his young strength out of the door. "It's for the kiddies. Give them my love," he cried, and slammed the door and locked it from the inside.

"Poor old chap!" said he.

Then he went through his pockets and laid the contents on the narrow mantel-piece. These were a gold watch and chain, a cornelian heart fixed to the free end of the chain, a silver cigarette case, a couple of keys, one sovereign, four shillings, three pennies and two half-pennies. A trunk already fastened and filled with books and clothes, and the portmanteau on the bed, contained the rest of his possessions. In current coin his whole fortune amounted to one pound, four shillings and fourpence. Luckily he had paid his landlady. One pound four and fourpence to begin again at three-and-twenty the battle of life on which he had entered at thirteen. He laughed because he was young and strong, and knew that such reverses were foreordained chapters in the lives of those born to a glorious destiny. They were also preordained chapters in the lives of those born to failure, like poor old Wilmer. He was conscious of the wide difference between Wilmer and himself. Good Heavens! To face the world at forty-three, with wife and children and threepence-halfpenny, and the once attendant hope replaced by black-vestured doom! Poor Wilmer! He felt certain that Wilmer had not been able to pay his landlady, and he felt that he had been mean in keeping back the other sovereign.

The sudden loss, however, of three-fourths of his fortune brought him up against practical considerations. The more he had in his pocket when he arrived in London, the longer could he subsist. That was important, because theatrical engagements are not picked up in a hurry. Now; the railway fare would swallow a goodly number of shillings. Obviously it was advisable to save the railway fare; and the only way to do this was to walk to London. His young blood thrilled at the notion. It was romantic. It was also inspiring of health and joy. He had been rather run down lately, and, fearful of the catastrophe which had in fact occurred, he had lived this last week very sparingly—-chiefly on herrings and tea. A hundred and fifty miles' tramp along the summer roads, with bread and cheese and an occasional glass of beer to keep him going, would be just the thing to set him up again. He looked in the glass. Yes, his face was a bit pinched and his eyes were rather too bright. A glorious tramp to London, thirty or forty miles a day in the blazing and beautiful sunshine, was exactly what he needed.

Joyously he unpacked his trunk and took from it a Norfolk jacket suit and stockings, changed, and, leaving his luggage with his landlady, who was to obey further instructions as to its disposal, marched buoyantly away through the sun-filled streets of the little town, stick in hand, gripsack on shoulder, and the unquenchable fire of youth and hope in his heart.



CHAPTER VIII

MISS URSULA WINWOOD, hatless, but with a cotton sunshade swinging over her shoulder, and with a lean, shiny, mahogany-coloured Sussex spaniel trailing behind, walked in her calm, deliberate way down the long carriage drive of Drane's Court. She was stout and florid, and had no scruples as to the avowal of her age, which was forty-three. She had clear blue eyes which looked steadily upon a complicated world of affairs, and a square, heavy chin which showed her capacity for dealing with it. Miss Ursula Winwood knew herself to be a notable person, and the knowledge did not make her vain or crotchety or imperious. She took her notability for granted, as she took her mature good looks and her independent fortune. For some years she had kept house for her widowed brother, Colonel Winwood, Conservative Member for the Division of the county in which they resided, and helped him efficiently in his political work. The little township of Morebury—half a mile from the great gates of Drane's Court—felt Miss Winwood's control in diverse ways. Another town, a little further off, with five or six millions of inhabitants, was also, through its newspapers, aware of Miss Winwood. Many leagues, societies, associations, claimed her as President, Vice-President, or Member of Council. She had sat on Royal Commissions. Her name under an appeal for charity guaranteed the deserts of the beneficiaries. What she did not know about housing problems, factory acts, female prisons, hospitals, asylums for the blind, decayed gentlewomen, sweated trades, dogs' homes and Friendly Societies could not be considered in the light of knowledge. She sat on platforms with Royal princesses, Archbishops welcomed her as a colleague, and Cabinet Ministers sought her counsel.

For some distance from the porch of the red-brick, creeper-covered Queen-Anne house the gravel drive between the lawns blazed in the afternoon sun. For this reason, the sunshade. But after a while came an avenue of beech and plane and oak casting delectable shade on the drive and its double edging of grass, and the far-stretching riot of flowers beneath the trees, foxgloves and canterbury bells and campanulas and delphiniums, all blues and purples and whites, with here and there the pink of dog-roses and gorgeous yellow splashes of celandine. On entering the stately coolness, Miss Winwood closed her sunshade and looked at her watch, a solid timepiece harboured in her belt. A knitted brow betrayed mathematical calculation. It would take her five minutes to reach the lodge gate. The train bringing her venerable uncle, Archdeacon Winwood, for a week's visit would not arrive at the station for another three minutes, and the two fat horses would take ten minutes to drag from the station the landau which she had sent to meet him. She had, therefore, eight minutes to spare. A rustic bench invited repose. Graciously she accepted the invitation.

Now, it must be observed that it was not Miss Winwood's habit to waste time. Her appointments were kept to the minute, and her appointment (self-made on this occasion) was the welcoming of her uncle, the Archdeacon, on the threshold of Drane's Court. But Miss Winwood was making holiday and allowed herself certain relaxations. Her brother's health having broken down, he had paired for the rest of the session and gone to Contrexeville for a cure. She had therefore shut up her London house in Portland Place, Colonel Winwood's home while Parliament sat, and had come to her brother's house, Drane's Court, her home when her presence was not needed in London. She was tired; Drane's Court, where she had been born and had lived all her girlhood's life, was restful; and the seat in the shade of the great beech was cunningly curved. The shiny, mahogany-coloured spaniel, prescient of siesta, leaped to her side and lay down with his chin on her lap and blinked his yellow eyes.

She lay back on the seat, her hand on the dog's head, looking contentedly at the opposite wilderness of bloom and the glimpses, through the screen of trees and shrubs, of the sunlit stretches of park beyond. She loved Drane's Court. Save for the three years of her brother's short married life, it had been part of herself. A Winwood, a very younger son of the Family—the Family being that of which the Earl of Harpenden is Head (these things can only be written of in capital letters)—had acquired wealth in the dark political days of Queen Anne, and had bought the land and built the house, and the property had never passed into alien hands. As for the name, he had used that of his wife, Viscountess Drane in her own right,—a notorious beauty of whom, so History recounts, he was senilely enamoured and on whose naughty account he was eventually run through the body by a young Mohawk of a paramour. They fought one spring dawn in the park—the traditional spot could be seen from where Ursula Winwood was sitting.

Ursula and her brother were proud of the romantic episode, and would relate it to guests and point out the scene of the duel. Happy and illusory days of Romance now dead and gone! It is not conceivable that, generations hence, the head of a family will exhibit with pride the stained newspaper cuttings containing the unsavoury details of the divorce case of his great-great-grandmother.

This aspect of family history seldom presented itself to Ursula Winwood. It did not do so this mellow and contented afternoon. Starlings mindful of a second brood chattered in the old walnut trees far away on the lawn; thrushes sang their deep-throated bugle-calls; finches twittered. A light breeze creeping up the avenue rustled the full foliage languorously. Ursula Winwood closed her eyes. A bumble-bee droned between visits to foxglove bells near by. She loved bumble-bees. They reminded her of a summer long ago when she sat, not on this seat—as a matter of fact it was in the old walled garden a quarter of a mile away—with a gallant young fellow's arms about her and her head on his shoulder. A bumble-bee had droned round her while they kissed. She could never hear a bumble-bee without thinking of it. But the gallant young fellow had been killed in the Soudan in eighteen eighty-five, and Ursula Winwood's heart had been buried in his sandy grave. That was the beginning and end of her sentimental history. She had recovered from the pain of it all and now she loved the bumble-bee for invoking the exquisite memory. The lithe Sussex spaniel crept farther on her lap and her hand caressed his polished coat. Drowsiness disintegrated the exquisite memories. Miss Ursula Winwood fell asleep.

The sudden plunging of strong young paws into her body and a series of sharp barks and growls awakened her with a start, and, for a second, still dazed by the drowsy invocation of the bumble-bee, she saw approaching her the gallant fellow who had been pierced through the heart by a Soudanese spear in eighteen eighty-five. He was dark and handsome, and, by a trick of coincidence, was dressed in loose knickerbocker suit, just as he was when he had walked up that very avenue to say his last good-bye. She remained for a moment tense, passively awaiting co-ordination of her faculties. Then clear awake, and sending scudding the dear ghosts of the past, she sat up, and catching the indignant spaniel by the collar, looked with a queer, sudden interest at the newcomer. He was young, extraordinarily beautiful; but he staggered and reeled like a drunken man. The spaniel barked his respectable disapproval. In his long life of eighteen months he had seen many people, postmen and butcher boys and casual diggers in kitchen gardens, whose apparent permit to exist in Drane's Court had been an insoluble puzzle; but never had he seen so outrageous a trespasser. With unparalleled moral courage he told him exactly what he thought of him. But the trespasser did not hear. He kept on advancing. Miss Winwood rose, disgusted, and drew herself up. The young man threw out his hands towards her, tripped over the three-inch-high border of grass, and fell in a sprawling heap at her feet.

He lay very still. Ursula Winwood looked down upon him. The shiny brown spaniel took up a strategic position three yards away and growled, his chin between his paws. But the more Miss Winwood looked, and her blue eyes were trained to penetrate, the more was she convinced that both she and the dog were wrong in their diagnosis. The young man's face was deadly white, his cheeks gaunt. It was evidently a grave matter. For a moment or so she had a qualm of fear lest he might be dead. She bent down, took him in her capable grip and composed his inert body decently, and placed the knapsack he was wearing beneath his head. The faintly beating heart proved him to be alive, but her touch on his brow discovered fever. Kneeling by his side, she wiped his lips with her handkerchief, and gave herself up to the fraction of a minute's contemplation of the most beautiful youth she had ever seen. So there he lay, a new Endymion, while the most modern of Dianas hung over him, stricken with great wonderment at his perfection.

In this romantic attitude was she surprised, first by the coachman of the landau and pair as he swung round the bend of the drive, and then by the Archdeacon, who leaned over the door of the carriage. Miss Winwood sprang to her feet; the coachman pulled up, and the Archdeacon alighted.

"My dear Uncle Edward"—she wrung his hand—"I'm so glad to see you. Do help me grapple with an extraordinary situation."

The Archdeacon smiled humorously. He was a spare man of seventy, with thin, pointed, clean-shaven face, and clear blue eyes like Miss Winwood's. "If there's a situation, my dear Ursula, with which you can't grapple," said he, "it must indeed be extraordinary."

She narrated what had occurred, and together they bent over the unconscious youth. "I would suggest," said she, "that we put him into the carriage, drive him up to the house, and send for Dr. Fuller."

"I can only support your suggestion," said the Archdeacon.

So the coachman came down from his box and helped them to lift the young man into the landau; and his body swayed helplessly between Miss Winwood and the Archdeacon, whose breeches and gaiters were smeared with dust from his heavy boots. A few moments afterwards he was carried into the library and laid upon a sofa, and Miss Winwood administered restoratives. The deep stupor seemed to pass, and he began to moan.

Miss Winwood and the housekeeper stood by his side. The Archdeacon, his hands behind his back, paced the noiseless Turkey carpet. "I hope," said he, "your doctor will not be long in coming."

"It looks like a sunstroke," the housekeeper remarked, as her mistress scrutinized the clinical thermometer.

"It doesn't," said Miss Winwood bluntly. "In sunstroke the face is either congested or clammy. I know that much. He has a temperature of 103."

"Poor fellow!" said the Archdeacon.

"I wonder who he is," said Miss Winwood.

"Perhaps this may tell us," said the Archdeacon.

From the knapsack, carelessly handled by the servant who had brought it in, had escaped a book, and the servant had laid the book on the top of the knapsack. The Archdeacon took it up.

"Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici and Urn Burial. On the flyleaf, 'Paul Savelli.' An undergraduate, I should say, on a walking tour."

Miss Winwood took the book from his hands—a little cheap reprint. "I'm glad," she said.

"Why, my dear Ursula?"

"I'm very fond of Sir Thomas Browne, myself," she replied.

Presently the doctor came and made his examination. He shook a grave head. "Pneumonia. And he has got it bad. Perhaps a touch of the sun as well." The housekeeper smiled discreetly. "Looks half-starved, too. I'll send up the ambulance at once and get him to the cottage hospital."

Miss Winwood, a practical woman, was aware that the doctor gave wise counsel. But she looked at Paul and hesitated. Paul's destiny, though none knew it, hung in the balance. "I disapprove altogether of the cottage hospital," she said.

"Eh?" said the doctor.

The Archdeacon raised his eyebrows. "My dear Ursula, I thought you had made the Morebury Cottage Hospital the model of its kind."

"Its kind is not for people who carry about Sir Thomas Browne in their pocket," retorted the disingenuous lady. "If I turned him out of my house, doctor, and anything happened to him, I should have to reckon with his people. He stays here. You'll kindly arrange for nurses. The red room, Wilkins,—no, the green—the one with the small oak bed. You can't nurse people properly in four-posters. It has a south-east aspect"—she turned to the doctor—"and so gets the sun most of the day. That's quite right, isn't it?"

"Ideal. But I warn you, Miss Winwood, you may be letting yourself in for a perfectly avoidable lot of trouble."

"I like trouble," said Miss Winwood.

"You're certainly looking for it," replied the doctor glancing at Paul and stuffing his stethoscope into his pocket. "And in this case, I can promise you worry beyond dreams of anxiety."

The word of Ursula Winwood was law for miles around. Dr. Fuller, rosy, fat and fifty, obeyed, like everyone else; but during the process of law-making he had often, before now, played the part of an urbane and gently satirical leader of the opposition.

She flashed round on him, with a foolish pain through her heart that caused her to catch her breath. "Is he as bad as that?" she asked quickly.

"As bad as that," said the doctor, with grave significance. "How he managed to get here is a mystery!" Within a quarter-of-an-hour the unconscious Paul, clad in a suit of Colonel Winwood's silk pyjamas, lay in a fragrant room, hung with green and furnished in old, black oak. Never once, in all his life, had Paul Kegworthy lain in such a room. And for him a great house was in commotion. Messages went forth for nurses and medicines and the paraphernalia of a luxurious sick-chamber, and-the lady of the house being absurdly anxious—for a great London specialist, whose fee, in Dr. Fuller's quiet eyes, would be amusingly fantastic.

"It seems horrible to search the poor boy's pockets," said Miss Winwood, when, after these excursions and alarms the Archdeacon and herself had returned to the library; "but we must try to find out who he is and communicate with his people. Savelli. I've never heard of them. I wonder who they are."

"There is an historical Italian family of that name," said the Archdeacon.

"I was sure of it," said Miss Winwood.

"Of what?"

"That his people—are—well—all right."

"Why are you sure?"

Ursula was very fond of her uncle. He represented to her the fine flower of the Church of England—a gentleman, a scholar, an ideal physical type of the Anglican dignitary, a man of unquestionable piety and Christian charity, a personage who would be recognized for what he was by Hottentots or Esquimaux or attendants of wagon-lits trains or millionaires of the Middle West of America or Parisian Apaches. In him the branch of the family tree had burgeoned into the perfect cleric. Yet sometimes, the play of light beneath the surface of those blue eyes, so like her own, and the delicately intoned challenges of his courtly voice, exasperated her beyond measure. "It's obvious to any idiot, my dear," she replied testily. "Just look at him. It speaks for itself."

The Archdeacon put his thin hand on her plump shoulder, and smiled. The old man had a very sunny smile. "I'm sorry to carry on a conversation so Socratically," said he. "But what is 'it'?"

"I've never seen anything so physically beautiful, save the statues in the Vatican, in all my life. If he's not an aristocrat to the finger tips, I'll give up all my work, turn Catholic, and go into a nunnery—which will distress you exceedingly. And then"—she waved a plump hand—"and then, as I've mentioned before, he reads the Religio Medici. The commonplace, vulgar young man of to-day no more reads Sir Thomas Browne than he reads Tertullian or the Upanishads."

"He also reads," said the Archdeacon, stuffing his hand into Paul's knapsack, against whose canvas the stiff outline of a book revealed itself—"he also reads"—he held up a little fat duodecimo—"the Chansons de Beranger."

"That proves it," cried Miss Winwood.

"Proves what?"

His blue eyes twinkled. Having a sense of humour, she laughed and flung her great arm round his frail shoulders. "It proves, my venerable and otherwise distinguished dear, that I am right and you are wrong."

"My good Ursula," said he, disengaging himself, "I have not advanced one argument either in favour of, or in opposition to, one single proposition the whole of this afternoon."

She shook her head at him pityingly.

The housekeeper entered carrying a double handful of odds and ends which she laid on the library table—a watch and chain and cornelian heart, a cigarette case bearing the initials "P.S.," some keys, a very soiled handkerchief, a sovereign, a shilling and a penny. Dr. Fuller had sent them down with his compliments; they were the entire contents of the young gentleman's pockets.

"Not a card, not a scrap of paper with a name and address on it?" cried Miss Winwood.

"Not a scrap, miss. The doctor and I searched most thoroughly."

"Perhaps the knapsack will tell us more," said the Archdeacon.

The knapsack, however, revealed nothing but a few toilet necessaries, a hunk of stale bread and a depressing morsel of cheese, and a pair of stockings and a shirt declared by the housekeeper to be wet through. As the Beranger, like the Sir Thomas Browne, was inscribed "Paul Savelli," which corresponded with the initials on the cigarette case, they were fairly certain of the young man's name. But that was all they could discover regarding him.

"We'll have to wait until he can tell us himself," said Miss Winwood later to the doctor.

"We'll have to wait a long time," said he.



CHAPTER IX

THE London physician arrived, sat up with Paul most of the night, and went away the next morning saying that he was a dead man. Dr. Fuller, however, advanced the uncontrovertible opinion that a man was not dead till he died; and Paul was not dead yet. As a matter of fact, Paul did not die. If he had done so, there would have been an end of him and this history would never have been written. He lay for many days at the gates of Death, and Miss Winwood, terribly fearful lest they should open and the mysterious, unconscious shape of beauty and youth should pass through, had all the trouble promised her by the doctor. But the gates remained shut. When Paul took a turn for the better, the London physician came down again and declared that he was living in defiance of all the laws of pathology, and with a graceful compliment left the case in the hands of Dr. Fuller. When his life was out of danger, Dr. Fuller attributed the miracle to the nurses; Ursula Winwood attributed it to Dr. Fuller; the London physician to Paul's superb constitution; and Paul himself, perhaps the most wisely, to the pleasant-faced, masterful lady who had concentrated on his illness all the resources of womanly tenderness.

But it was a long time before Paul was capable of formulating such an opinion. It was a long time before he could formulate any opinion at all. When not delirious or comatose, he had the devil of pleurisy tearing at the wall of his lung like a wild cat. Only gradually did he begin to observe and to question. That noiseless woman in coot blue and white was a nurse. He knew that. So he must be in hospital. But the room was much smaller than a hospital ward; and where were the other patients? The question worried him for a whole morning. Then there was a pink-faced man in gold spectacles, Obviously the doctor. Then there was a sort of nurse whom he liked very much, but she was not in uniform. Who could she be? He realized that he was ill, as weak as a butterfly; and the pain when he coughed was agonizing. It was all very odd. How had he come here? He remembered walking along a dusty road in the blazing sun, his head bursting, every limb a moving ache. He also vaguely remembered being awakened at night by a thunder storm as he lay snugly asleep beneath a hedge. The German Ocean had fallen down upon him. He was quite sure it was the German Ocean, because he had fixed it in his head by repeating "the North Sea or German Ocean." Mixing up delirious dream with fact, he clearly remembered the green waves rearing themselves up first, an immeasurable wall, then spreading a translucent canopy beneath the firmament and then descending in awful deluge. He had a confused memory of morning sunshine, of a cottage, of a hard-featured woman, of sitting before a fire with a blanket round his shoulders, of a toddling child smeared to the eyebrows with dirt and treacle whom he had wanted to wash. Over and over again, lately, he had wanted to wash that child, but it had always eluded his efforts. Once he had thought of scraping it with a bit of hoof-iron, but it had turned into a Stilton cheese. It was all very puzzling. Then he had gone on tramping along the high road. What was that about bacon and eggs? The horrible smell offended his nostrils. It must have been a wayside inn; and a woman twenty feet high with a face like a cauliflower—or was it spinach?—or Brussels sprouts?—silly not to remember—one of the three, certainly—desired to murder him with a thousand eggs bubbling up against rank reefs of bacon. He had escaped from her somehow, and he had been very lucky. His star had saved him. It had also saved him from a devil on a red-hot bicycle. He had stood quite still, calm and undismayed, in the awful path of the straddling Apollyon whose head was girt around with yellow fire, and had seen him swerve madly and fall off the machine. And when the devil had picked himself up, he had tried to blast him with the Great Curse of the Underworld; but Paul had shown him his cornelian heart, his talisman, and the devil had remounted his glowing vehicle and had ridden away in a spume of flame. The Father of Lies had tried to pass himself off as a postman. The memory of the shallow pretence tickled Paul so that he laughed; and then he half fainted in pleuritic agony.

After the interlude with the devil he could recollect little. He was going up to London to make his fortune. A princess was waiting for him at the golden gate of London, with a fortune piled up in a coach-and-six. But being very sick and dizzy, he thought he would sit down and rest in a great green cathedral whose doors stood invitingly open ... and now he found himself in the hospital ward. Sometimes he felt a desire to question the blue-and-white nurse, but it seemed too much trouble to move his lips. Then in a flash came the solution of the puzzle, and he chuckled to himself over his cunning. Of course it was a dream. The nurse was a dream-nurse, who wanted to make him believe that she was real. But she was not clever enough. The best way to pay her out for her deception was to take no notice of her whatsoever. So comforted, he would go to sleep.

At last one morning he woke, a miserably weak but perfectly sane man, and he turned his head from side to side and looked wonderingly at the fresh and exquisite room. A bowl of Morning Glow roses stood by his bedside, gracious things for fevered eyes to rest upon. A few large photographs of famous pictures hung on the walls. In front of him was the Santa Barbara of Palma Vecchio, which he recognized with a smile. He had read about it, and knew that the original was in Venice. Knowledge of things like that was comforting.

The nurse, noticing the change, came up to him and spoke in a soothing voice. "Are you feeling better?"

"I think so," said Paul. "I suppose I've been very ill."

"Very ill," said the nurse.

"This can't be a hospital?"

"Oh, no. It's the house of some very kind, good friends. You don't know them," she added quickly, seeing him knit a perplexed brow. "You stumbled into their garden and fainted. And they're very anxious for you to get well and strong."

"Who are they?" asked Paul.

"Colonel and Miss Winwood. T hey will be so glad to see you better—at least Miss Winwood will; the Colonel's not at home."

She lifted his head gently and smoothed his pillows, and ordained silence. Presently the doctor came, and spoke kindly. "You've had a narrow shave, my friend, and you're not out of the wood yet," said he. "And you'll have to go slow and take things for granted for some time."

Then came Miss Winwood, whom he recognized as the puzzling but pleasant nurse out of uniform.

"I don't know how to thank you for taking me in, a stranger, like this," said Paul.

She smiled. "It's Providence, not me, that you must thank. You might have been taken ill by the roadside far away from anybody. Providence guided you here."

"Providence or Destiny," murmured Paul, closing his eyes. It was absurd to feel so weak.

"That's a theological question on which we won't enter," laughed Miss Winwood. "Anyhow, thank God, you're better."

A little later she came to him again. "I've been so anxious about your people—you see, we've had no means of communicating with them."

"My people?" asked Paul, surprised.

"Yes. They must be wondering what has become of you."

"I have no people," said Paul.

"No people? What do you mean?" she asked sharply, for the moment forgetful of the sick room. She herself had hundreds of relations. The branches of her family tree were common to half the country families of England. "Have you no parents—brothers or sisters—?"

"None that I know of," said Paul. "I'm quite alone in the world."

"Have you no friends to whom I could write about you?"

He shook his head, and his great eyes, all the greater and more lustrous through illness, smiled into hers. "No. None that count. At least—there are two friends, but I've lost sight of them for years. No—there's nobody who would be in the least interested to know. Please don't trouble. I shall be all right."

Miss Winwood put her cool hand on his forehead and bent over him. "You? You, alone like that? My poor boy!"

She turned away. It was almost incredible. It was monstrously pathetic. The phenomenon baffled her. Tears came into her eyes. She had imagined him the darling of mother and sisters; the gay centre of troops of friends. And he was alone on the earth. Who was he? She turned again.

"Will you tell me your name?"

"Savelli. Paul Savelli."

"I thought so. It was in the two books in your knapsack. A historical Italian name."

"Yes," said Paul. "Noble. All dead."

He lay back, exhausted. Suddenly a thought smote him. He beckoned. She approached. "My heart—is it safe?" he whispered.

"Your heart?"

"At the end of my watch-chain."

"Quite safe."

"Could I have it near me?"

"Of course."

Paul closed his eyes contentedly. With his talisman in his hand, all would be well. For the present he need take thought of nothing. His presence in the beautiful room being explained, there was an end of the perplexity of his semi-delirium. Of payment for evident devoted service there could be no question. Time enough when he grew well and able to fare forth again, to consider the immediate future. He was too weak to lift his head, and something inside him hurt like the devil when he moved. Why worry about outer and unimportant matters? The long days of pain and illness slipped gradually away. Miss Winwood sat by his bedside and talked; but not until he was much stronger did she question him as to his antecedents. The Archdeacon had gone away after a week's visit without being able to hold any converse with Paul; Colonel Winwood was still at Contrexeville, whence he wrote sceptically of the rare bird whom Ursula had discovered; and Ursula was alone in the house, save for a girl friend who had no traffic with the sick-chamber. She had, therefore, much leisure to devote to Paul. Her brother's scepticism most naturally strengthened her belief in him. He was her discovery. He grew almost to be her invention. Just consider. Here was a young Greek god—everyone who had a bowing acquaintance with ancient sculpture immediately likened Paul to a Greek god, and Ursula was not so far different from her cultured fellow mortals as to liken him to anything else—here was a young Phoebus Apollo, all the more Olympian because of his freedom from earthly ties, fallen straight from the clouds. He had fallen at her feet. His beauty had stirred her. His starlike loneliness had touched her heart. His swift intelligence, growing more manifest each day as he grew stronger, moved her admiration. He had, too, she realized, a sunny and sensuous nature, alive to beauty—even the beauty of the trivial things in his sickroom. He had an odd, poetical trick of phrase. He was a paragon of young Greek gods. She had discovered him; and women don't discover even mortal paragons every day in the week. Also, she was a woman of forty-three, which, after all, is not wrinkled and withered eld; and she was not a soured woman; she radiated health and sweetness; she had loved once in her life, very dearly. Romance touched her with his golden feather and, in the most sensible and the most unreprehensible way in the world, she fell in love with Paul.

"I wonder what made you put that Santa Barbara of Palma Vecchio just opposite the bed," he said one day. He had advanced so far toward recovery as to be able to sit up against his pillows.

"Don't you like it?" She turned in her chair by his bedside.

"I worship it. Do you know, she has a strange look of you? When I was half off my head I used to mix you up together. She has such a generous and holy bigness—the generosity of the All-woman."

Ursula flushed at the personal tribute, but let it pass without comment. "It's not a bad photograph; but the original—that is too lovely."

"It's in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa in Venice," said Paul quickly.

He had passed through a period of wild enthusiasm for Italian painting, and had haunted the National Gallery, and knew by heart Sir Charles Eastlake's edition of Kugler's unique textbook.

"Ah, you know it?" said Ursula.

"I've never been to Venice," replied Paul, with a sigh. "It's the dream of my life to go there."

She straightened herself on her chair. "How do you know the name of the church?"

Paul smiled and looked round the walls, and reflected for a moment. "Yes," said he in answer to his own questioning, "I think I can tell you where all these pictures are, though I've never seen them, except one. The two angels by Melozzo da Forli are in St. Peter's at Rome. The Sposalia of Raphael is in the Breza, Milan. The Andrea del Sarto is in the Louvre. That's the one I've seen. That little child of Heaven, playing the lute, is in the predella of an altar-piece by Vittore Carpaccio in the—in the—please don't tell me—in the Academia of Venice. Am I right?"

"Absolutely right," said Miss Winwood.

He laughed, delighted. At three and twenty, one—thank goodness!—is very young. One hungers for recognition of the wonder-inspiring self that lies hidden beneath the commonplace mask of clay. "And that," said he—"the Madonna being crowned—the Botticelli—is in the Uffizi at Florence. Walter Pater talks about it—you know—in his 'Renaissance'—the pen dropping from her hand—'the high, cold words that have no meaning for her—the intolerable honour'! Oh, it's enormous, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid I've not read my Pater as I ought," said Miss Winwood.

"But, you must!" cried Paul, with the gloriously audacious faith of youth which has just discovered a true apostle. "Pater puts you on to the inner meaning of everything—in art, I mean. He doesn't wander about in the air like Ruskin, though, of course, if you get your mental winnowing machine in proper working order you can get the good grain out of Ruskin. 'The Stones of Venice' and 'The Seven Lamps' have taught me a lot. But you always have to be saying to yourself, 'Is this gorgeous nonsense or isn't it?' whereas in Pater there's no nonsense at all. You're simply carried along on a full stream of Beauty straight into the open Sea of Truth."

And Ursula Winwood, to whom Archbishops had been deferential and Cabinet Ministers had come for, guidance, meekly promised to send at once for Pater's 'Renaissance' and so fill in a most lamentable gap in her education.

"My uncle, the Archdeacon," she said, after a while, "reminded me that the great Savelli was a Venetian general—of Roman family; and, strangely enough, his name, too, was Paul. Perhaps that's how you got the name."

"That must be how," said Paul dreamily. He had not heard of the great general. He had seen the name of Savelli somewhere—also that of Torelli—and had hesitated between the two. Thinking it no great harm, he wove into words the clamour of his cherished romance. "My parents died when I was quite young—a baby—and then I was brought to England. So you see"—he smiled in his winning way—"I'm absolutely English."

"But you've kept your Italian love of beauty."

"I hope so," said Paul.

"Then I suppose you were brought up by guardians," said Ursula.

"A guardian," said Paul, anxious to cut down to a minimum the mythical personages that might be connected with his career. "But I seldom saw him. He lived in Paris chiefly. He's dead now."

"What a poor little uncared-for waif you must have been."

Paul laughed. "Oh, don't pity me. I've had to think for myself a good deal, it is true. But it has done me good. Don't you find it's the things one learns for oneself—whether they are about life or old china—that are the most valuable?"

"Of course," said Miss Winwood. But she sighed, womanlike, at the thought of the little Paul—(how beautiful he must have been as a child!)—being brought up by servants and hirelings in a lonely house, his very guardian taking no concern in his welfare.

Thus it came about that, from the exiguous material supplied by Paul, Miss Winwood, not doubting his gentle birth and breeding, constructed for him a wholly fictitious set of antecedents. Paul invented as little as possible and gratefully accepted her suggestions. They worked together unconsciously. Paul had to give some account of himself. He had blotted Bludston and his modeldom out of his existence. The passionate belief in his high and romantic birth was part of his being, and Miss Winwood's recognition was a splendid confirmation of his faith. It was rather the suppressio veri of which he was guilty than the propositio falsi. So between them his childhood was invested with a vague semblance of reality in which the fact of his isolation stood out most prominent.

They had many talks together, not only on books and art, but on the social subjects in which Ursula was so deeply interested. She found him well informed, with a curiously detailed knowledge of the everyday lives of the poor. It did not occur to her that this knowledge came from his personal experience. She attributed it to the many-sided genius of her paragon.

"When you get well you must help us. There's an infinite amount to be done."

"I shall be delighted," said Paul politely.

"You'll find I'm a terrible person to deal with when once I've laid my hands on anybody," she said with a smile. "I drag in all kinds of people, and they can't escape. I sent young Harry Gostling—Lord Ruthmere's son, you know—to look into a working girls' club in the Isle of Dogs that was going wrong. He hated it at first, but now he's as keen as possible. And you'll be keen too."

It was flattering to be classified with leisured and opulent young Guardsmen; but what, Paul reflected with a qualm, would the kind lady say if she learned the real state of his present fortunes? He thought of the guinea that lay between him and starvation, and was amused by the irony of her proposition. Miss Winwood evidently took it for granted that he was in easy circumstances, living on the patrimony administered during his boyhood by a careless guardian. He shrank from undeceiving her. His dream was beginning to come true. He was accepted by one of the high caste as belonging to the world where princes and princesses dwelt serene. If only he could put the theatre behind him, as he had put the rest, and make a stepping-stone of his dead actor self! But that was impossible, or at least the question would have to be fought out between himself and fortune after he had left Drane's Court. In the meanwhile he glowed with the ambition to leave it in his newly acquired splendour, drums beating, banners flying, the young prince returning to his romantic and mysterious solitude.

The time was approaching when he should get up. He sent for his luggage. The battered trunk and portmanteau plastered with the labels of queer provincial towns did not betray great wealth. Nor did the contents, taken out by the man-servant and arranged in drawers by the nurse. His toilet paraphernalia was of the simplest and scantiest. His stock of frayed linen and darned underclothes made rather a poor little heap on the chair. He watched the unpacking somewhat wistfully from his bed; and, like many another poor man, inwardly resented his poverty being laid bare to the eyes of the servants of the rich.

The only thing that the man seemed to handle respectfully—as a recognized totem of a superior caste—was a brown canvas case of golf clubs, which he stood up in a conspicuous corner of the room. Paul had taken to the Ancient and Royal game when first he went on tour, and it had been a health-giving resource during the listless days when there was no rehearsal or no matinee—hundreds of provincial actors, to say nothing of retired colonels and such-like derelicts, owe their salvation of body and soul to the absurd but hygienic pastime—and with a naturally true eye and a harmonious body trained to all demands on its suppleness in the gymnasium, proficiency had come with little trouble. He was a born golfer; for the physically perfect human is a born anything physical you please. But he had not played for a long time. Half-crowns had been very scarce on this last disastrous tour, and comrades who included golf in their horizon of human possibilities had been rarer. When would he play again? Heaven knew! So he looked wistfully, too, at his set of golf clubs. He remembered how he had bought them—one by one.

"Do you want this on the dressing table?" The nurse held up a little oblong case.

It was his make-up box, luckily tied round with string.

"Good heavens, no!" he exclaimed. He wished he could have told her to burn it. He felt happier when all his belongings were stowed away out of sight and the old trunk and portmanteau hauled out of the room.

Colonel Winwood came home and asked his sister pertinent questions. He was a bald, sad-looking man with a long grizzling moustache that drooped despondently. But he had a square, obstinate chin, and his eyes, though they seldom smiled, were keen and direct, like Miss Winwood's. Romance had passed him by long since. He did not believe in paragons.

"I gather, my dear Ursula," said he in a dry voice, "that our guest is an orphan, of good Italian family, brought up in England by a guardian now dead who lived in France. Also that he is of prepossessing exterior, of agreeable manners, of considerable cultivation, and apparently of no acquaintance. But what I can't make out is: what he does for a living, how he came to be half-starved on his walking tour—the doctor said so, you remember—where he was going from and where he is going to when he leaves our house. In fact, he seems to be a very vague and mysterious person, of whom, for a woman of your character and peculiar training, you know singularly little."

Miss Winwood replied that she could not pry into the lad's private affairs. Her brother retorted that a youth, in his physically helpless condition, who was really ingenuous, would have poured out his life's history into the ears of so sympathetic a woman, and have bored her to tears with the inner secrets of his soul.

"He has high aspirations. He has told me of them. But he hasn't bored me a bit," said Ursula.

"What does he aspire to?"

"What does any brilliant young fellow of two or three and twenty aspire to? Anything, everything. He has only to find his path."

"Yes, but what is his path?"

"I wish you weren't so much like Uncle Edward, James," said Ursula.

"He's a damned clever old man," said Colonel Winwood, "and I wish he had stayed here long enough to be able to put our young friend through a searching cross-examination."

Ursula lifted her finger-bowl an inch from the doiley and carefully put it down again. It was the evening of Colonel Winwood's arrival, and they were lingering over coffee in the great, picture-hung and softly lighted dining room. Having fixed the bowl in the exact centre of the doiley, she flashed round on her brother. "My dear James, do you think I'm an idiot?"

He took his cigar from his lips and looked at her with not unhumorous dryness. "When the world was very young, my dear," said he, "I've no doubt I called you so. But not since."

She stretched out her hand and tapped his. She was very fond of him. "You can't help being a man, my poor boy, and thinking manly thoughts of me, a woman. But I'm not an idiot. Our young friend, as you call him, is as poor as a church mouse. I know it. No, don't say, 'How?' like Uncle Edward. He hasn't told me, but Nurse has—a heart-breaking history of socks and things. There's the doctor's diagnosis, too. I haven't forgotten. But the boy is too proud to cry poverty among strangers. He keeps his end up like a man. To hear him talk, one would think he not only hadn't a care in the world, but that he commanded the earth. How can one help admiring the boy's pluck and—that's where my reticence comes in—respecting the boy's reserve?"

"H'm!" said Colonel Winwood.

"But, good gracious, Jim, dear, supposing you—or any of us—men, I mean—had been in this boy's extraordinary position—would you have acted differently? You would have died rather than give your poverty away to absolute strangers to whom you were indebted, in the way this boy is indebted to us. Good God, jim"—she sent her dessert knife skimming across the table—"don't you see? Any reference to poverty would be an invitation—a veiled request for further help. To a gentleman like Paul Savelli, the thing's unthinkable."

Colonel Winwood selected a fresh cigar, clipped off the end, and lit it from a silver spirit lamp by his side. He blew out the first exquisite puff—the smoker's paradise would be the one first full and fragrant, virginal puff of an infinite succession of perfect cigars—looked anxiously at the glowing point to see that it was exactly lighted, and leaned back in his chair.

"What you say, dear," said he, "is plausible. Plausible almost to the point of conviction. But there's a hole somewhere in your argument, I'm sure, and I'm too tired after my journey to find it."

Thus, as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so did they fight for Paul; and in both cases they used a woman as their instrument.

Colonel Winwood, in spite of a masculine air of superiority, joined with the Archbishops and Cabinet Ministers above referred to in their appreciation of his sister's judgment. After all, what business of his were the private affairs of his involuntary guest? He paid him a visit the next day, and found him lying on a couch by the sunny window, clad in dressing gown and slippers. Paul rose politely, though he winced with pain.

"Don't get up, please. I'm Colonel Winwood."

They shook hands. Paul began to wheel an armchair from the bedside, but Colonel Winwood insisted on his lying down again and drew up the chair himself. "I'm afraid," said Paul, "I've been a sad trespasser on your hospitality. Miss Winwood must have told you it has scarcely been my fault; but I don't know how to express my thanks."

As Paul made it, the little speech could not have been better. Colonel Winwood, who (like the seniors of every age) deplored the lack of manners of the rising generation, was pleased by the ever so little elaborate courtesy.

"I'm only too glad we've pulled you round. You've had a bad time, I hear."

Paul smiled. "Pretty bad. If it hadn't been for Miss Winwood and all she has done for me, I should have pegged out."

"My sister's a notable woman," said the Colonel. "When she sets out to do a thing she does it thoroughly."

"I owe her my life," said Paul simply.

There was a pause. The two men, both bright-eyed, looked at each other for the fraction of a second. One, the aristocrat secure of his wealth, of his position, of himself, with no illusion left him save pride of birth, no dream save that of an England mighty and prosperous under continuous centuries of Tory rule, no memories but of stainless honour—he had fought gallantly for his Queen, he had lived like a noble gentleman, he had done his country disinterested service—no ambition but to keep himself on the level of the ideal which he had long since attained; the other the creation of nothing but of dreams, the child of the gutter, the adventurer, the vagabond, with no address, not even a back room over a sweetstuff shop in wide England, the possessor of a few suits of old clothes and one pound, one shilling and a penny, with nothing in front of him but the vast blankness of 'life, nothing behind him save memories of sordid struggle, with nothing to guide him, nothing to set him on his way with thrilling pulse and quivering fibres save the Vision Splendid, the glorious Hope, the unconquerable Faith. In the older man's eyes Paul read the calm, stern certainty of things both born to and achieved; and Colonel Winwood saw in the young man's eyes, as in a glass darkly, the reflection of the Vision.

"And yours is a very young life," said he. "Gad! it must be wonderful to be twenty. 'Rich in the glory of my rising sun.' You know your Thackeray?"

"'Riche de ma jeunesse,'" laughed Paul. "Thackeray went one better than Beranger, that time."

"I forgot," said Colonel Winwood. "My sister told me. You go about with Beranger as a sort of pocket Bible."

Paul laughed again. "When one is on the tramp one's choice of books is limited by their cubical content. One couldn't take Gibbon, for instance, or a complete Balzac."

Colonel Winwood tugged at his drooping moustache and again scrutinized the frank and exceedingly attractive youth. His astonishing perfection of feature was obvious to anybody. Yet any inconsiderable human—a peasant of the Campagna, a Venetian gondolier, a swaggering brigand of Macedonia—could be astonishingly beautiful. And, being astonishingly beautiful, that was the beginning and end of him. But behind this merely physical attractiveness of his guest glowed a lambent intelligence, quick as lightning. There was humorous challenge in those laughing and lucent dark eyes.

"Do you know your Balzac?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," said Paul.

"I wonder if you do," said Colonel Winwood. "I'm rather a Balzacian myself."

"I can't say I've read all Balzac. That's a colossal order," said Paul, rather excited-for, in his limited acquaintance with cultivated folk, Colonel Winwood was the only human being who could claim acquaintance with one of the literary gods of his idolatry—"but I know him pretty well. I can't stand his 'Theatre'—that's footle—but the big things—'Le Pere Goriot,' 'La Cousine Bette,' 'Cesar Birotteau'—what a great book 'Cesar Birotteau' is!—"

"You're right," said Colonel Winwood, forgetful of any possible barriers between himself and the young enthusiast. "It's one of the four or five great books, and very few people recognize it."

"'Le Lys dans la Vallee,'" said Paul.

"There's another—"

And they talked for half an hour of the Baron Nucingen, and Rastignac, and Hulot, and Bixiou, and Lousteau, and Gobsec, and Gaudissart, and Vautrin, and many another vivid personage in the human comedy.

"That man could have gone on writing for a hundred years," cried Paul, "and he could have exhausted all the possibilities of human life."

Colonel Winwood smiled courteously. "We have a bond in Balzac," said he. "But I must go. My sister said I mustn't tire you." He rose. "We're having a lot of people down here this week for the shooting. There'll be good sport. Pity you're not well enough to join us."

Paul smiled. He had one of his flashes of tact, "I'm afraid," said he modestly, "that I've never fired off a gun in my life."

"What?" cried the Colonel.

"It's true."

Colonel Winwood looked at him once more. "It's not many young men," said he, "who would dare to make such a confession."

"But what is the good of lying?" asked Paul, with the eyes of a cherub.

"None that I know of," replied the Colonel. He returned to his chair and rested his hand on the back. "You play golf, anyhow," said he, pointing to the brown canvas bag in the corner.

"Oh, yes," said Paul.

"Any good?"

"Fair to middling."

"What's your handicap?" asked the Colonel, an enthusiastic though inglorious practitioner of the game.

"One," said Paul.

"The deuce it is!" cried the Colonel. "Mine is fifteen. You must give me a lesson or two when you pull round. We've a capital course here."

"That's very kind of you," said Paul, "but I'm afraid I shall be well enough for ordinary purposes long before I'm able to handle a golf club."

"What do you mean?"

"This silly pleurisy. It will hang about for ages!"

"Well?"

"I'll have to go my ways from here long before I can play."

"Any great hurry?"

"I can't go on accepting your wonderful hospitality indefinitely," said Paul.

"That's nonsense. Stay as long as ever you like."

"If I did that," said Paul, "I would stay on forever."

The Colonel smiled and shook hands with him. In the ordinary way of social life this was quite an unnecessary thing to do. But he acted according to the impulses common to a thousand of his type—and a fine type—in England. Setting aside the mere romantic exterior of a Macedonian brigand, here was a young man of the period with astonishingly courteous manners, of—and this was of secondary consideration—of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of this country are not gods; they are very humanly fallible; but of such is the Kingdom of England.

"At any rate," said he, "you mustn't dream of leaving us yet."

He went downstairs and met his sister in the hall.

"Well?" she asked, with just a gleam of quizzicality in her eyes, for she knew whence he had come.

"One of these days I'll take him out and teach him to shoot," said the Colonel.



CHAPTER X

THE shooting party came, and Paul, able to leave his room and sit in the sunshine and crawl about the lawn and come down to dinner, though early retirement was prescribed, went among the strange men and women of the aristocratic caste like one in a dream of bliss. Much of their talk, sport and personalities, was unintelligible; every man seemed to have killed everything everywhere and every woman seemed to know everybody and everybody's intimate secrets. So when conversation was general, Paul, who had killed nothing and knew nobody, listened in silent perplexity. But even the perplexity was a happiness. It was all so new, so fascinating. For was not this world of aristocrats—there were lords and ladies and great personages whose names he had read in the newspapers—his rightful inheritance, the sphere to which he had been born? And they did not always talk of things which he did not understand. They received him among them with kind welcome and courtesy. No one asked him whence he came and whither he was going. They took him for granted, as a guest of the Winwoods. Of course if Paul had seen himself on the way to rival the famous actor whose photograph in the window of the London Stereoscopic Company had inspired him with histrionic ambitions, he would have been at no pains to hide his profession. But between the darling of the London stage and a seedy member of a fit-up company lies a great gulf. He shrank from being associated with Mr. Vincent Crummles. One thing, however, of invaluable use he had brought with him from Theatreland—the dress suit which formed part of his stage wardrobe. There were other things, too, which he did not appreciate—ease of manner, victory over the lingering Lancastrian burr, and a knowledge of what to do with his feet and hands.

One day he had a great shock. The house party were assembling in the drawing-room, when in sailed the great lady, the ever-memorable great lady, the Marchioness of Chudley, who had spoken to him and smiled on him in the Bludston factory. Fear laid a cold grip on his heart. He thought of pleading weakness and running away to the safe obscurity of his room. But it was too late. The procession was formed immediately, and he found himself in his place with his partner on his arm. Dinner was torture. What he said to his neighbours he knew not. He dared not look up the table where Lady Chudley sat in full view. Every moment he expected—ridiculous apprehension of an accusing conscience—Colonel Winwood to come and tap him on the shoulder and bid him begone. But nothing happened. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, Fate drove him into a corner near Lady Chudley, whose eyes he met clear upon him. He turned away hurriedly and plunged into conversation with a young soldier standing by. Presently he heard Miss Winwood's voice.

"Mr. Savelli, I want to introduce you to Lady Chudley."

The fear gripped him harder and colder. How could he explain that he was occupying his rightful place in that drawing-room? But he held himself up and resolved to face the peril like a man. Lady Chudley smiled on him graciously—how well he remembered her smile!—and made him sit by her side. She was a dark, stately woman of forty, giving the impression that she could look confoundedly cold and majestic when she chose. She wore diamonds in her hair and a broad diamond clasp to the black velvet round her throat.

"Miss Winwood has been telling me what an awful time you've had, Mr. Savelli," she said pleasantly. "Now, whenever I hear of people having had pneumonia I always want to talk to them and sympathize with them."

"That's very kind of you, Lady Chudley," said Paul.

"Only a fellow-feeling. I nearly died of it once myself. I hope you're getting strong."

"I'm feeling my strength returning every day. It's a queer new joy."

"Isn't it?"

They discussed the exhilaration of convalescence. It was a 'wonderful springtide. They reverted to the preceding misery.

"You're far luckier than I was," she remarked. "You've had a comfy English house to be ill in. I was in a stone-cold palazzo in Florence—in winter. Ugh! Shall I ever forget it? I don't want to speak evil of Italy to an Italian—"

"I'm only Italian by descent," exclaimed Paul, with a laugh, his first frank laugh during the whole of that gloomy evening. And he laughed louder than was necessary, for, as it suddenly dawned upon him that he did not in the least recall to her mind the grimy little Bludston boy, the cold hand of fear was dissolved in a warm gush of exultation. "You can abuse Italy or any country but England as much as you like."

"Why mustn't I abuse England?"

"Because it's the noblest country in the world," he cried; and, seeing approval in her eyes, he yielded to an odd temptation. "If one could only do something great for her!"

"What would you like to do?" she asked.

"Anything. Sing for her. Work for her. Die for her. It makes one so impatient to sit down and do nothing. If one could only stir her up to a sense of her nationality!" he went on, less lyrically, though with the same fine enthusiasm. "She seems to be losing it, letting the smaller nations assert theirs to such an extent that she is running the risk of becoming a mere geographical expression. She has merged herself in the Imperial Ideal. That's magnificent; but the Empire ought to realize her as the great Motherheart. If England could only wake up as England again, what a wonderful thing it would be!"

"It would," said Lady Chudley. "And you would like to be the awakener?"

"Ay!" said Paul—"what a dream!"

"There was never a dream worth calling a dream that did not come true."

"Do you believe that, too?" he asked delightedly. "I've held to it all my life."

Colonel Winwood, who had been moving hostwise from group to group in the great drawing-room, where already a couple of bridge tables had been arranged, approached slowly. Lady Chudley gave him a laughing glance of dismissal. Paul's spacious Elizabethan patriotism, rare—at least in expression—among the young men of the day, interested and amused her.

"Have you dreamed all your life of being the Awakener of England?"

"I have dreamed of being so many things," he said, anxious not to commit himself. For, truth to say, this new ambition was but a couple of minutes old.

It had sprung into life, however, like Pallas Athene, all armed and equipped.

"And they have all come true?"

His great eyes laughed and his curly head bent ever so slightly. "Those worth calling dreams," said he.

A little later in the evening, when on retiring to an early bed he was wishing Miss Winwood good night, she said, "You're a lucky young man."

"I know—but—" He looked smiling inquiry.

"Lady Chudley's the most valuable woman in England for a young man to get on the right side of."

Paul went to bed dazed. The great lady who had recognized the divine fire in the factory boy had again recognized it in the grown man. She had all but said that, if he chose, he could be the Awakener of England. The Awakener of England! The watchword of his new-born ambition rang in his brain until he fell asleep.

The time soon came when the prospective Awakener of England awoke to the fact that he must fare forth into the sleeping land with but a guinea in his pocket. The future did not dismay him, for he knew now that his dreams came true. But he was terribly anxious, more anxious than ever, to leave Drane's Court with all the prestige of the prospective Awakener. Now, this final scene of the production could not be worked for a guinea. There were golden tips to servants, there was the first-class railway fare. Once in London—he could pawn things to keep him going, and a Bloomsbury landlady with whom he had lodged, since the loss of Jane, would give him a fortnight or three weeks' credit. But he had to get to London-to get there gloriously; so that when the turn of Fortune's wheel enabled him to seek again these wonderful friends in the aristocratic sphere to which he belonged, he could come among them untarnished, the conquering prince. But that miserable guinea! He racked his brains. There was his gold watch and chain, a symbol, to his young mind, of high estate. When he had bought it there crossed his mind the silly thought of its signification of the infinite leagues that lay between him and Billy Goodge. He could pawn it for ten pounds—it would be like pawning his heart's blood—but where? Not in Morebury, even supposing there was a pawnbroker's in the place. He had many friends in his profession, scattered up and down the land. But he had created round himself the atmosphere of the young magnifico. It was he who had lent, others who had borrowed. Rothschild or Rockefeller inviting any of them to lend him money would have produced less jaw-dropping amazement. Even if he sent his pride flying and appealed to the most friendly and generous, he shrank from the sacrifice he would call upon the poor devil to make. There was only his beautiful and symbolic watch and chain. The nearest great town where he could be sure of finding a pawnbroker was distant an hour's train journey.

So on the day before that for which, in spite of hospitable protestations on the part of Colonel and Miss Winwood, he had fixed his departure, he set forth on the plea of private business, and returned with a heavier pocket and a heavier heart. He had been so proud, poor boy, of the gold insignia across his stomach. He had had a habit of fingering it lovingly. Now it was gone. He felt naked—in a curious way dishonoured. There only remained his cornelian talisman. He got back in time for tea and kept his jacket closely buttoned. But in the evening he had perforce to appear stark and ungirt—in those days Fashion had not yet decreed, as it does now, the absence of watchchain on evening dress—and Paul shambled into the drawing-room like a guest without a wedding garment. There were still a few people staying in the house—the shooting party proper, and Lady Chudley, had long since gone—but enough remained to be a social microcosm for Paul. Every eye was upon him. In spite of himself, his accusing hand went fingering the inanity of his waistcoat front. He also fingered, with a horrible fascination, the dirty piece of card that took the place of his watch in his pocket.

One must be twenty to realize the tragedy of it. Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans! To be twenty, in a garret, with the freedom and the joy of it! Yes; the dear poet was right. In those "brave days" the poignancy of life comes not in the garret, but in the palace.

To-morrow, with his jacket buttoned, he could make his exit from Drane's Court in the desired splendour—scattering largesse to menials and showing to hosts the reflected glow of the golden prospects before him; but for this evening the glory had departed. Besides, it was his last evening there, and London's welcome tomorrow would be none too exuberant.

The little party was breaking up, the ladies retiring for the night, and the men about to accompany Colonel Winwood to the library for a final drink and cigarette. Paul shook hands with Miss Winwood.

"Good night—and good-bye," she said, "if you take the early train. But must you really go to-morrow?"

"I must," said Paul.

"I hope we'll very soon be seeing you again. Give me your address." She moved to a bridge table and caught up the marking block, which she brought to him. "Now I've forgotten the pencil."

"I've got one," said Paul, and impulsively thrusting his fingers into his waistcoat pocket, flicked them out with the pencil. But he also flicked out the mean-looking card of which he had been hatefully conscious all the evening. The Imp of Mischance arranged that as Miss Winwood stood close by his side, it should fall, unperceived by him, on the folds of her grey velvet train. He wrote the Bloomsbury address and handed her the leaf torn from the pad. She folded it up, moved away, turning back to smile. As she turned she happened to look downward; then she stooped and picked the card from her dress. A conjecture of horror smote Paul. He made a step forward and stretched out his hand; but not before she had instinctively glanced first at the writing and then at his barren waistcoat. She repressed a slight gasp, regarding him with steady, searching eyes.

His dark face flushed crimson as he took the accursed thing, desiring no greater boon from Heaven than instant death. He felt sick with humiliation. The brightly lit room grew black. It was in a stupor of despair that he heard her say, "Wait a bit here, till I've got rid of these people."

He stumbled away and stood on the bearskin rug before the fireplace, while she joined the lingering group by the door. The two or three minutes were an eternity of agony to Paul. He had lost his great game.

Miss Winwood shut the door and came swiftly to him and laid her hand on his arm. Paul hung his head and looked into the fire. "My poor boy!" she said very tenderly. "What are you going to do with yourself?"

If it had not been for the diabolical irony of the mishap he would have answered with his gay flourish. But now he could not so answer. Boyish, hateful tears stood in his eyes and, in spite of anguished effort of will, threatened to fall. He continued to look into the fire, so that she should not see them. "I shall go on as I always have done," he said as stoutly as he could.

"Your prospects are not very bright, I fear."

"I shall keep my head above water," said Paul. "Oh, please don't!" he cried, shivering. "You have been so good to me. I can't bear you to have seen that thing. I can't stand it."

"My dear boy," she said, coming a little nearer, "I don't think the worse of you for that. On the contrary, I admire your pluck and your brave attitude towards life. Indeed I do. I respect you for it. Do you remember the old Italian story of Ser Federigo and his falcon? How he hid his poverty like a knightly gentleman? You see what I mean, don't you? You mustn't be angry with me!"

Her words were Gilead balm of instantaneous healing.

"Angry?"

His voice quavered. In a revulsion of emotion he turned blindly, seized her hand and kissed it. It was all he could do.

"If I have found it out—not just now," she quickly interjected, seeing him wince, "but long ago—it was not your fault. You've made a gallant gentleman's show to the end—until I come, in a perfectly brutal way, and try to upset it. Tell me—I'm old enough to be your mother, and you must know by this time that I'm your friend—have you any resources at all—beyond—?" She made ever so slight a motion of her hand toward the hidden pawn ticket.

"No," said Paul, with his sure tact and swiftly working imagination. "I had just come to an end of them. It's a silly story of losses and what-not—I needn't bother you with it. I thought I would walk to London, with the traditional half-crown in my pocket"—he flashed a wistful smile—"and seek my fortune. But I fell ill at your gates."

"And now that you're restored to health, you propose in the same debonair fashion to—well—to resume the search?"

"Of course," said Paul, all the fighting and aristocratic instincts returning. "Why not?"

There were no tears in his eyes now, and they looked with luminous fearlessness at Miss Winwood. He drew a chair to the edge of the bearskin. "Won't you sit down, Miss Winwood?"

She accepted the seat. He sat down too. Before replying she played with her fan rather roughly—more or less as a man might have played with it. "What do you think of doing?"

"Journalism," said Paul. He had indeed thought of it.

"Have you any opening?"

"None," he laughed. "But that's the oyster I'm going to open."

Miss Winwood took a cigarette from a silver box near by. Paul sprang to light it. She inhaled in silence half a dozen puffs. "I'm going to ask you an outrageous question," she said, at last. "In the first place, I'm a severely business woman, and in the next I've got an uncle and a brother with cross-examining instincts, and, though I loathe them—the instincts, I mean—I can't get away from them. We're down on the bedrock of things, you and I. Will you tell me, straight, why you went away to-day to—to"—she hesitated—"to pawn your watch and chain, instead of waiting till you got to London?"

Paul threw out his arms in a wide gesture. "Why—your servants—"

She cast the just lighted cigarette into the fire, rose and clapped her hands on his shoulders, her face aflame. "Forgive me—I knew it—there are doubting Thomases everywhere—and I'm a woman who deals with facts, so that I can use them to the confusion of enemies. Now I have them. Ser Federigo's watch and chain. Nicht wahr?"

Remember, you who judge this sensible woman of forty-three, that she had fallen in love with Paul in the most unreprehensible way in the world; and if a woman of that age cannot fall in love with a boy sweetly motherwise, what is the good of her? She longed to prove that her polyhedral crystal of a paragon radiated pure light from every one of his innumerable facets. It was a matter of intense joy to turn him round and find each facet pure. There was also much pity in her heart, such as a woman might feel for a wounded bird which she had picked up and nursed in her bosom and healed. Ursula was loath to let her bird fly forth into the bleak winter.

"My brother and I have been talking about you—he is your friend, too," she said, resuming her seat. "How would it suit you to stay with us altogether?"

Paul started bolt upright in his chair. "What do you mean?" he asked breathlessly, for the heavens had opened with dazzling unexpectedness.

"In some such position as confidential secretary—at a decent salary, of course. We've not been able to find a suitable man since Mr. Kinghorne left us in the spring. He got into Parliament, you know, for Reddington at the by-election—and we've been muddling along with honorary secretaries and typists. I shouldn't suggest it to you," she went on, so as to give him time to think, for he sat staring at her, openmouthed, bewildered, his breath coming quickly—"I shouldn't suggest it to you if there were no chances for you in it. You would be in the thick of public affairs, and an ambitious man might find a path in them that would lead him anywhere. I've had the idea in my head," she smiled, "for-some time. But I've only spoken to my brother about it this afternoon—he has been so busy, you see—and I intended to have another talk with him, so as to crystallize things—duties, money, and so forth—before making you any proposal. I was going to write to you with everything cut and dried. But"—she hesitated delicately—"I'm glad I didn't. It's so much more simple and friendly to talk. Now, what do you say?"

Paul rose and gripped his hands together and looked again into the fire. "What can I say? I could only go on my knees to you—and that—"

"That would be beautifully romantic and entirely absurd," she laughed. "Anyhow, it's settled. Tomorrow we can discuss details." She rose and put out her hand. "Good night, Paul."

He bowed low. "My dearest lady," said he in a low voice, and went and held the door open for her to pass out.

Then he flung up his arms wildly and laughed aloud and strode about the room in exultation. All he had hoped for and worked for was an exit of fantastic and barren glory. After which, the Deluge—anything. He had never dreamed of this sudden blaze of Fortune. Now, indeed, did the Great Things to which he was born lie to his hand. Queerly but surely Destiny was guiding him upward. In every way Chance had worked for him. His poverty had been a cloak of honour; the thrice-blessed pawn ticket a patent of nobility. His kingdom lay before him, its purple mountains looming through the mists of dawn. And he would enter into it as the Awakener of England. He stood thrilled. The ambition was no longer the wild dream of yesterday. From the heart of the great affairs in which he would have his being he could pluck his awakening instrument. The world seemed suddenly to become real. And in the midst of it was this wonderful, beautiful, dearest lady with her keen insight, her delicate sympathy, her warm humanity. With some extravagance he consecrated himself to her service.

After a while he sat down soberly and took from his pocket the cornelian heart which his first goddess had given him twelve years ago. What had become of her? He did not even know her name. But what happiness, he thought, to meet her in the plenitude of his greatness and show her the heart, and say, "I owe it all to you!" To her alone of mortals would he reveal himself.

And then he thought of Barney Bill, who had helped him on his way; of Rowlatt, good fellow, who was dead; and of Jane, whom he had lost. He wished he could write to Jane and tell her the wonderful news. She would understand.... Well, well! It was time for bed. He rose and switched off the lights and went to his room. But as he walked through the great, noiseless house, he felt, in spite of Fortune's bounty, a loneliness of soul; also irritation at having lost Jane. What a letter he could have written to her! He could not say the things with which his heart was bursting to anyone on earth but Jane. Why had he lost Jane? The prospective Awakener of England wanted Jane.



CHAPTER XI

ONE morning Paul, with a clump of papers in his hand, entered his pleasant private room at Drane's Court, stepped briskly to the long Cromwellian table placed in the window bay, and sat down to his correspondence.

It was gusty outside, as could be perceived by the shower of yellow beech leaves that slanted across the view; but indoors a great fire flaming up the chimney, a Turkey carpet fading into beauty, rich eighteenth century mezzotints on the walls, reposeful leather-covered chairs and a comfortable bookcase gave an atmosphere of warmth and coziness. Paul lit a cigarette and attacked a pile of unopened letters. At last he came to an envelope, thick and faintly scented, bearing a crown on the flap. He opened it and read:

DEAR MR. SAVELLI:

Will you dine on Saturday and help me entertain an eminent Egyptologist? I know nothing of Egypt save Shepheard's Hotel, and that I'm afraid wouldn't interest him. Do come to my rescue. Yours, SOPHIE ZOBRASKA.

Paul leaned back in his chair, twiddling the letter between his fingers, and looked smilingly out on the grey autumn rack of clouds. There was a pleasant and flattering intimacy in the invitation: pleasant because it came from a pretty woman; flattering because the woman was a princess, widow of a younger son of a Royal Balkan house. She lived at Chetwood. Park, on the other side of Morebury, and was one of the great ones of those latitudes. A real princess.

Paul's glance, travelling back from the sky, fell upon the brass date indicator on the table. It marked the 2nd of October. On that day five years ago he had entered on his duties at Drane's Court. He laughed softly. Five years ago he was a homeless wanderer. Now princesses were begging him to rescue them from Egyptologists. With glorious sureness all his dreams were coming true.

Thus we see our Fortunate Youth at eight-and-twenty in the heyday of success. If he had strutted about under Jane's admiring eyes, like a peacock among daws, he now walked serene, a peacock among peacocks. He wore the raiment, frequented the clubs, ate the dinners of the undeservingly rich and the deservingly great. His charm and his self-confidence, which a genius of tact saved from self-assertion, carried him pleasantly through the social world; his sympathetic intelligence dealt largely and strongly with the public affairs under his control. He loved organizing, persuading, casting skilful nets. His appeal for subscriptions was irresistible. He had the magical gift of wringing a hundred pounds from a plutocrat with the air of conferring a graceful favour. In aid of the Mission to Convert the Jews he could have fleeced a synagogue. The societies and institutions in which the Colonel and Ursula Winwood were interested flourished amazingly beneath his touch. The Girls' Club in the Isle of Dogs, long since abandoned in despair by the young Guardsman, grew into a popular and sweetly mannered nunnery. The Central London Home for the Indigent Blind, which had been languishing for support, in spite of Miss Winwood's efforts, found itself now in a position to build a much-needed wing. There was also, most wonderful and, important thing of all, the Young England League, which was covering him with steadily increasing glory. Of this much hereafter. But it must be remembered. Ursula complained that he left her nothing to do save attend dreary committee meetings; and even for these Paul saved her all the trouble in hunting up information. She was a mere figurehead.

"Dearest lady," Paul would say, "if you send me about my business, you'll write me a character, won't you, saying that you're dismissing me for incorrigible efficiency?"

"You know perfectly well," she would sigh, "that I would be a lost, lone woman without you."

Whereat Paul would laugh his gay laugh. At this period of his life he had not a care in the world.

The game of politics also fascinated him. A year or so after he joined the Winwoods there was a General Election. The Liberals, desiring to drive the old Tory from his lair, sent down a strong candidate to Morebury. There was a fierce battle, into which Paul threw himself, heart and soul. He discovered he could speak. When he first found himself holding a couple of hundred villagers in the grip of his impassioned utterance he felt that the awakening of England had begun. It was a delicious moment. As a canvasser he performed prodigies of cajolery. Extensive paper mills, a hotbed of raging Socialism, according to Colonel Winwood, defaced (in the Colonel's eyes) the outskirts of the little town.

"They're wrong 'uns to a man," said the Colonel, despondently.

Paul came back from among them with a notebook full of promises.

"How did you manage it?" asked the Colonel.

"I think I got on to the poetical side of politics," said Paul.

"What the deuce is that?"

Paul smiled. "An appeal to the imagination," said he.

When Colonel Winwood got in by an increased majority, in spite of the wave of Liberalism that spread over the land, he gave Paul a gold cigarette case; and thenceforward admitted him into his political confidence. So Paul became familiar with the Lobby of the House of Commons and with the subjects before the Committees on which Colonel Winwood sat, and with the delicate arts of wire-pulling and intrigue, which appeared to him a monstrously fine diversion. There was also the matter of Colonel Winwood's speeches, which the methodical warrior wrote out laboriously beforehand and learned by heart. They were sound, weighty pronouncements, to which the House listened with respect; but they lacked the flashes which lit enthusiasm. One day he threw the bundle of typescript across to Paul.

"See what you think of that."

Paul saw and made daring pencilled amendments, and took it to the Colonel.

"It's all very funny," said the latter, tugging his drooping moustache, "but I can't say things like that in the House."

"Why not?" asked Paul.

"If they heard me make an epigram, they would have a fit."

"Our side wouldn't. The Government might. The Government ought to have fits all the time until it expires in convulsions."

"But this is a mere dull agricultural question. The Board of Agriculture have brought it in, and it's such pernicious nonsense that I, as a county gentleman, have to speak against it."

"But couldn't you stick in my little joke about the pigs?" asked Paul pleadingly.

"What's that?" Colonel Winwood found the place in the script. "I say that the danger of swine fever arising from this clause in the Bill will affect every farmer in England."

"And I say," cried Paul eagerly, pointing to his note, "if this clause becomes law, swine fever will rage through the land like a demoniacal possession. The myriad pigs of Great Britain, possessed of the devils of Socialism, will be turned into Gadarene swine hurtling down to destruction. You can show how they hurtle, like this—" He flickered his bands. "Do try it."

"H'm!" said Colonel Winwood.

Sorely against his will, he tried it. To his astonishment it was a success. The House of Commons, like Mr. Peter Magnus's friend, is easily amused. The exaggeration gave a cannon-ball's weight to his sound argument. The Government dropped the clause—it was only a trivial part of a wide-reaching measure—the President of the Board of Agriculture saying gracefully that in the miracle he hoped to bring about he had unfortunately forgotten the effect it might have on the pigs. There was "renewed laughter," but Colonel Winwood remained the hero of the half-hour and received the ecstatic congratulations of unhumorous friends. He might have defeated the Government altogether. In the daily round of political life nothing is so remarkable as the lack of sense of proportion.

"It was the Gadarene swine that did it," they said.

"And that," said Colonel Winwood honestly, "was my young devil of a secretary."

Thenceforward the young wit and the fresh fancy of Paul played like a fountain over Colonel Winwood's and speeches.

"Look here, young man," said he one day, "I don't like it. Sometimes I take your confounded suggestions, because they happen to fit in; but I'm actually getting the reputation of a light political comedian, and it won't do."

Whereupon Paul, with his swift intuition, saw that in the case of a proud, earnest gentleman like Colonel Winwood the tempting emendations of typescript would not do. In what Miss Winwood called his subtle Italian way, he induced his patron to discuss the speeches before the process of composition. These discussions, involving the swift rapier play of intelligences, Colonel Winwood enjoyed. They stimulated him magically. He sat down and wrote his speeches, delightfully unconscious of what in them was Paul and what was himself; and when he delivered them he was proud of the impression he had made upon the House.

And so, as the years passed, Paul gained influence not only in the little circle of Drane's Court and Portland Place, but also in the outer world. He was a young man of some note. His name appeared occasionally in the newspapers, both in connection with the Winwood charities and with the political machine of the Unionist party. He was welcomed at London dinner tables and in country houses. He was a young man who would go far. For the rest, he had learned to ride and shoot, and not to make mistakes about the genealogical relationships of important families. He had travelled about Europe, sometimes with the Winwoods, sometimes by himself. He was a young man of cultivation and accomplishment.

On this fifth anniversary he sat gazing unseeingly at the autumn rack, the Princess's letter in his band, and letting his thoughts wander down the years. He marvelled how valiantly the stars in their courses had fought for him. Even against recognition his life was charmed. Once, indeed, he met at the house in Portland Place a painter to whom he had posed. The painter looked at him keenly.