The Fortunate Youth

e was the man born to be king. The attainment of his kingdom alone mattered. The intermediary phases were of no account. It had been a period of struggle, hardship and, as

rstudying. He drifted into the provinces, where, when he obtained an engagement, he found more scope for his ambitions. Often he was out, and purchase

where he and three or four of the company shared the same mean theatrical lodgings; with the dirty, insanitary theatres; with the ceaseless petty jealousies and bickerings of the ill-paid itinerant troupe. The discomforts affected Paul but little, he had never had experience of luxuries, and the life itself was silken ease compared with what i

had found himself sufficiently prosperous to take a third-class ticket to Paris, where he spent

young woman of high modern cultivation, and once or twice narrowly escaped wrecking his heart on the Scylline rock of her intellect. It was only when he discovered that she had lost her head over his romantic looks, and not over his genius and his inherited right to leadership, that he began to question her intellectual sincerity. And there is nothing to send love scuttling away with his quiver between his legs like a note of interrogation of that sort. The only touch of the mor

himself to be a better man in every way than the actor whose part he was playing, just as in his childhood days he knew himself to be a better man than Billy Goodge, could not understand the general lack of appreciation. Then he remembered the early struggles of the great actors: Edmund Kean, who on the eve of his first appearance at Drury Lane cried, "If I succeed I shall go mad!"; of Henry Irving (then at

ed at all has not had such dreams at twe

ealized that his search on the stage for the true expression of his genius was only empirical. If he failed there, it was for him to try a hundred other spheres until he found the right one. But j

aunt's house having fallen in, they were moving to the south side of London. When he desired to answer the letter, he found he had lost it and could not remember the suburb, much less the street and number, whither Jane had migrated. A letter posted to the old address was returned through the post. The tour over, and he being again in London, he went on an errand of inquiry to C

. On the chance that Jane, not hearing from him, should address a letter to the last theatre on the list, he communicated at once with the local management. But as local managements of provincial theatres shape their existences so as to avoid responsibilities of any kind save the maintenance of their bars and the deduction of their percentages from the box-office receipts, Paul knew that it was ludicrous to expect it to interest itself in the correspondence

e artificialities and pretences and pseudo-emotionalities of his young actor's life, she was the one thing that was real. She alone knew of Bludston, of Barney Bill, of the model days the memory of which made him shiver. She alone (save Barney Bill) knew of his high destiny-for Paul, quick to recognize the cynical scepticism of an indifferent world, had not revealed the Vision Splendid to any of his associates. To her he could write; to her, when he was in London, he could talk; to her he could outpour all the jumble of faith, vanity, romance, egotism and poetry that was his very self, without thought of miscomprehension. And of late she had mastered the silly splenetics of childhood. He had an uncomfortable yet comforting impression that latterly she had developed an odd, calm wisdom,

was employed, thinking the matter of little interest; and he, in his careless way, had never inquired. Once he had suggested calling for her at her office, and she had abruptly vetoed the suggestion. Paul was too remarkable a young man to escape the notice of her associates; her feelings towards him were too fine to be s

into manhood. But one day at three-and-twenty he found himsel

had played in halls and concert rooms, on pier pavilions, in wretched little towns. It was glorious July Weather and business was bad-so bad that the mana

k bedroom, watched disconsolately by a sallow, careworn man who sat astride the one cane c

atter. "You're young. You're strong. You're rich. You've no on

highly paid member of the disastrous company, and he had acquired sufficient worldly wisdom to know that to him who has but a penny th

kunk. A fortnight's salary gone and no railway fare to London. I wish to God I had never taken it on. I could h

w his cigarette on the floor

ht before he asked me to accept half salary, swearing he would make it up

to become of us. The missus has pawned everything she has got,

g on the bed beside his portmantea

keep the kids-there's five of them; and now-and now there's nothing left. I'm wrong. There's that." He fished three or fo

of kindness and simple hospitality. In the lower submerged world of the theatrical profession in which Paul found himself he had met with many such instances of awful poverty. He had brushed elbows with Need himself. That morning he had given, out of his scanty resources, her railw

pause, "your kiddies? If you have

front of him, his elbows on the back of

yourself have got t

r in the last act. It's fairly

it-your line of business; you

nd again, when the part did not need any special characterization, h

, my boy, chuck it. You're young; you're clever; you've had a swell education; you come of gentlefolk-my father kept a small hardware shop in Leicester-you have"-the smitten and generally inarticula

aristocratic personality and not offended by the professional censure which he knew to be just. "I've

on't make you

Eros's feathers had brushed the cheek of a Praxitelean Hermes; and then with an o

us and I have always thought you were

onviction. "But," he laughed, "I lost it befor

laimed Wilmer, "that you'

indow with its dingier outlook, the rickety deal wash-stand with the paint peeling off, a horrible clothless tray on a horrible splotchy chest of drawers, containing the horrible scr

hought it didn't very much matter to you. We always thought you were a kind of young swel

his hand on Wilmer's shoulder

had taught him some worldly wisdom. The sallow and ineffectual

said Paul, "except that I'm alone and

lmer. "Better luck next tim

is waistcoat pocket and, taking the place of his right, thrust

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

God it was more." With both hands he clasped the thin, ineffectual fingers over the coins and pushed the man' with his young s

d chap!"

oin 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 live

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 mil

th his landlady, who was to obey further instructions as to its disposal, marched buoyantly away through the sun-filled s