Part 18 (1/2)
”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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 n.o.body, 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.sembling 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 n.o.blest 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 a.s.sert 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 s.p.a.cious 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?”