The Fortunate Youth | Page 8

traditional routine of the school treat-games for the girls, manlier sports for the boys. Lord Chudley, patron of the living of St. Luke's, Bludston, and Lord Bountiful 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 she became detached and he could approach her without attracting notice, he crept within the magic circle of the scent and lay down prone, drinking in its intoxication, and, as she moved, he wriggled toward her on his stomach like a young snake.
After a time she came near him. "Why aren't you playing with the other boys?" she asked.
Paul sat on his heels. "Dunno, miss," he said shyly.
She glanced at his rapscallion attire, blushed, and blamed herself for the tactless question. "This is a beautiful place, isn't it?"
"It's heavenly," said Paul, with his eyes on her.
"One scarcely wants to do anything but just-just-well, be here." She smiled.
He nodded and said, "Ay!" Then he grew bolder. "I like being alone," he declared defiantly.
"Then I'll leave you," she laughed.
The blood flushed deep under his unwashed olive skin, and he leaped to his feet. "Aw didn't mean that!" he protested hotly. "It wur them other boys."
She was touched by his beauty and quick sensitiveness. "I was only teasing. I'm sure you like being with me."
Paul had never heard such exquisite tones from human lips. To his ears, accustomed to the harsh Lancashire burr, her low, accentless voice was music. So another of his senses was caught in the enchantment.
"Yo' speak so pretty," said he.
At that moment a spruce but perspiring young teacher came up. "We're going to have some boys' races, miss, and we want the ladies to look on. His lordship has offered prizes. The first is a boys' race-under eleven."
"You can join in that, anyhow," she said to Paul. "Go along and let me see you win."
Paul scudded off, his heart aflame, his hand, as he ran, tucking in the shirt whose evasion from the breeches was beyond the control of the single brace. Besides, crawling on your stomach is dislocating even to the most neatly secured attire. But his action was mechanical. His thoughts were with his goddess. In his inarticulate mind he knew himself to be her champion. He sped under her consecration. He knew he could run. He could run like a young deer. Though despised, could he not outrun any of the youth in Budge Street? He took 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 belt, doubled up in pain and the consumptive person rubbed agonized shins. A curate, walking down repressing bulges and levelling up concavities, ordained order. The line stood tense. Away beyond, toward the goal, appeared a white mass, which Paul knew to be the ladies in their summer dresses; and among them, though he could not distinguish her, was she in whose eyes he was to win glory. The prize did not matter. It was for her that he was running. In his childish mind he felt passionately identified with her. He was her champion.
The word was given. The urchins started. Paul, his little elbows squared behind him and his eyes fixed vacantly in space, ran with his soul in the toes that protruded through the ragged old boots. He knew not who was in front or who was behind. It was the madness of battle. He ran and ran, until somebody put his arms round him and stopped him.
"Steady on, my boy-steady on!"
Paul looked round in a dazed way. "Have A' won th' race?"
"I'm afraid not, my lad."
With a great effort he screwed his mind to another question. "Wheer did A' coom in?"
"About sixth, but you ran awfully well."
Sixth! He had come in sixth! Sky and grass and trees and white mass of ladies (among whom was the goddess) and unconsiderable men and boys became a shimmering blur. He seemed to stagger away, stagger miles away, until, finding himself quite alone, he threw himself down under a beech tree, and, after a few moments' vivid realization of what had happened, sobbed out the agony of his little soul's despair. Sixth! He had come