The Fortunate Youth

nsisted in a bedroom, a kitchen and a scullery in a grimy little house in a grimy street made up of rows of exactly similar grimy little houses, and forming one of a

rous Londoner, yearned for noise. When Mr. Button came home drunk he punched his wife about the head and kicked her about the body, while they both exhausted the vocabulary of vituperation of North and South, to the horror and edification of the neighbourhood. When Mr. Button was sober Mrs. Button chastised little Paul. S

een neither Paul nor any inhabitant of Bludston knew. Once the boy inquired, and she broke a worn frying-pan over his head. Kegworthy, whoever he might have been, was wrapt in mystery. She had appeared in the town when Paul was a year old, giving herself out as a widow. That she was by no means destitute was obvious from the fact that she at once rented the house in Budge Street, took in lodgers, and lived at her ease. Button, who was one of the lodgers, cast upon her the eyes of desire and married her. Why she married Button she could never

y, children of the grey cap and the red shawl, resembled hundreds of thousands of little human rabbits similarly parented. Only the trained eye could have identified them among a score or two of their congeners. For the most part, they were dingily fair, with snub noses, coarse mouths, and eyes of an indeterminate blue. Of that type, once blowsily good-looking, was Mrs. Button herself. But Paul wandered a changeling about the Bludston streets. In the rows of urchins in the crowded Board School classroom he sat as conspicuous as any little Martian who might have been bundled down to earth. He had wavy black hair, of raven black, a dark olive complexion, flushed, in spite of haphazard nourishment and nights spent on the stone floor of the reeking scullery, with the warm blood of

Buttons his experience as scapegoat taught him to take but little interest. From his earliest memories they were the first to be fed, clothed and bedded; to his own share fell the exiguous scraps. As they were much younger than himself, he found no pleasure in their companionship. For society he sought such of the youth of Budge Street as would admit him into their raucous fellowship. But, for some reason which his immature mind could not fathom, he felt a pariah even among his coevals. He could run as fast as Billy Goodge, the undisputed leader of the gang; he could dribble the rag football past him any time he desired; once he had sent him home to his mother with a bleeding nose, and, even in that hour of triumph, popular sympathy had been with Billy, not with him. It was the only problem in existence to which his fatalism did not supply the key. He knew

' the Wolves hadn'

illy!" and never a word of thanks to him. Then, knowing Billy to be a liar, he

d it was five to one

n to S

ut Billy Goodge. He had a soul-reaching contempt for Billy Goodge, a passionate envy of him. Why did Billy hold his position instead of crumbling into dust before him? Assuredly he was a better man than Billy. When, Billy duce et auspice Billy, the gang played at pirates or Red Indians, it was pitiful to watch their ignorant endeavours. Paul, deeply read in the subject, gave them chapter and

erd, a slip of a girl of nineteen, staying at St. Luk

amsel. The vicar looked at his watch. They were three minutes late, He tut-tutted impatiently. The vicar's daughter ran indoors in search of Maisie and pounced upon her as she sat on t

ughter. "Come along. Dad and moth

st change

ve no

. It's twenty-six shillings a bottle, and one littl

ut you'll disinfect Bludston, and that will be a good thing." Whe

imself, so to speak, to Sunday school, where, besides learning lots of queer things about God and Jesus Christ which interested him keenly, he could shine above his fellows by recitations of collects and bits of Catechism, which did not interest him at all. Then he won scores of good-conduct cards, gaudy treasures, with pictures of Daniel in the Lions' Den and the Marriage of Cana and such like, which he secreted preciously beneath a loose slab in the scullery floor. He did not show them to his mother, knowing that she would tear them up and bang him over the head; and for similar reasons he refrained from telling her of the Sunday-school treat. If she came to hear of it, as possibly she would through one of the little Buttons, who might pick up the news in the street, he would be soundly beaten. But there was a chance of her not hearing, and he desired to be no more of a blight than he could help. So Paul, vagabond and self-reliant from his babyhood, turned up at the Sunday-school treat, hatless and coatless, his dirty littl

with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the h

amuse the little girls. Heaven knew how she was to do it. Already the unintelligibility of Lancashire speech had filled her with dismay. The array of hard-faced little girls daunted her; she turned to the boys, but she only saw one-the little hatless, coatless scarecrow with the perfect features And arresting grace, who stood out among his smug companions with the singularly vivid incongruity of a Greek Hermes in

h agape and nostril wide, he followed the exquisite source of the emanation like one in a dream, half across the yard. A curate laughingly and unsuspectingly brought him back to earth by laying hands on him and bundling him back into his place. There he remained, being a docile urchin; but his eyes remaine

n in which the sign "First Class Waiting Room" glared an outrage and a mockery, and were marshalled into the waiting train. The wonderful experience of which Paul ha

glimpses of blue sky and waving trees above the others' heads. The glory of the day was blotted out until he should see and smell the goddess again. At the wayside station where they descended he sa

l dells of shade carpeted with golden buttercups, where cattle fed lazily. Once a herd of fallow deer browsing by the wayside scuttled away at the noisy approach of the brakes. Only afterward did Paul learn their name and nature: to him then they were mythical beasts of fairyland. Once also the long pile-of the Tudor house came into view, flashing-white in the sunshine. The teacher in charge of

iful of the feast, had provided swing-boats and a merry-go-round which discoursed infernal music to enraptured ears. Paul stood aloof for a while from these delights, his eye on the section of the girls among whom his goddess moved. As soon as

m. "Why aren't you playing wi

eels. "Dunno, mis

ed, and blamed herself for the tactless ques

said Paul, with

anything but just-just-w

he grew bolder. "I like being

leave you,"

kin, and he leaped to his feet. "Aw didn't mean t

ick sensitiveness. "I was only teasi

rs, accustomed to the harsh Lancashire burr, her low, accentless voi

so pretty

ing to have some boys' races, miss, and we want the ladies to look on.

w," she said to Paul. "Go al

his place in the line of competing children. Far away in the grassy distance were two men holding a stretched string. On one side of him was a tubby boy with a freckled face and an amorphous nose on which the perspiration beaded; on the other a lank, consumptive creature, in Eton collar and red tie and a sprig of sweet William in his buttonhole, a very superior person. Neither of them desired his propinquity. They tried to hustle him from the line. But Paul, born Ishmael, had his hand against them. The fat boy, smitten beneath the

space, ran with his soul in the toes that protruded through the ragged old boots. He knew not who was in front or w

, my boy-s

n a dazed way. "Hav

aid not,

ed his mind to another quest

but you ran

ter a few moments' vivid realization of what had happened, sobbed out the agony of his little soul's despair. Sixth! He had come in sixth! He had failed miserably in his championship. How she must despise him-she who had sent him forth to victory! And yet how 'had it been possible? How had it bee

pion, sought him out and easily found him und

s side and put her hand on his lean s

. He checked his sobs and wiped his eyes with the b

id comfortingly. "Did you

ared at her. "Yo

u ran

A

n ancient days might a fair maiden have regarded her knight who underwent entirely unnecessary

n attired for the serious business of a school treat carry upon her person? She laughed i

body should see it," said Paul,

ou show it

, he had learned, was not Sunday-school lang

cornelian heart from a thin gold chain round her neck. "

He was speechless with amazement; Maisie, thrilled too, realized that a word spoken would have rung false. The boy gloated over h

oing to keep i

is true, in Pantagruelian fashion on luscious viands, transcending his imagination of those which lay behind Blinks the confectioner's window in Bludston: there he succumbed to the animal; but the sports, the swing-boats, the m

screen lay Paul, his eyes on his goddess, his heels in the air, a buttercup-stalk between his teeth. He felt the comforting knot beneath his thigh. For the first time, perhaps, in his life, he knew utter happiness. He

aid the beloved voice, "he is the most beautiful thing I've

. "Of course I've noticed him.

different clay. He's as sensitive as-as a sensitive plant. You ought to keep your

sus naturae"

lusus naturae was, but

and one day he'll co

f you saw h

rincess could be Paul Kegwor

his f

ince

om her lips. A wild wonder racked his little soul. She had said that his mother was not his

crying in the street? She would learn him to Mess about with parsons and Sunday-school teachers. She was in process of "learning" him when Mr. Button entered. He swore in a manner which would have turned our armies in Flanders pallid, and kicked Paul into