The Fortunate Youth | Page 5

certain rigidity, differentiated him outwardly from his
fellows. Mr. Button, to whom the unusual was anathema, declared that
the sight of the monstrosity made him sick, and rarely suffered him in
his presence; and one day Mrs. Button, discovering him in front of the
cracked mirror in which Mr. Button shaved, when his hand was steady
enough, on Sunday afternoons, smote him over the face with a pound
of rump steak which she happened to be carrying, instinctively desirous
not only to correct her son for vanity, but also to spoil the comeliness
of which he might be vain.
Until a wonderful and illuminating happening in his eleventh year, little

Paul Kegworthy had taken existence with the fatalism of a child. Of his
stepfather, who smelt lustily of sour beer, bad tobacco and incidentally
of other things undetected by Paul's nostrils, and whom he saw rarely,
he dwelt in mortal terror. When he heard of the Devil, at Sunday school,
which he attended, to his stepfather's disgust, he pictured the Prince of
Darkness not as a gentleman, not even as a picturesque personage with
horns and tail, but as Mr. Button. As regards his mother, he had a
confused idea that he was a living blight on her existence. He was not
sorry, because it was not his fault, but in his childish way he coldly
excused her, and, more from a queer consciousness of blighterdom than
from dread of her hand and tongue, he avoided her as much as possible.
In the little 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 himself to be a
better man than Billy Goodge. There was no doubt about it. At school,
where Billy was the woodenest blockhead, he was top of his class. He
knew things about troy weight and geography and Isaac and the
Mariners of England of which Billy did not dream. To Billy the
football news in the Saturday afternoon edition of The Bludston Herald
was a cryptogram; to him it was an open book. He would stand,
acknowledged scholar, at the street corner and read out from the soiled
copy retrieved by Chunky, the newsboy, the enthralling story of the
football day, never stumbling over a syllable, athrill with the joy of
being the umbilicus of a tense world, and, when the recital was over, he
would have the mortification of seeing the throng pass away from him
with the remorselessness of a cloud scudding from the moon. And he
would hear Billy Goodge say exultantly:

"Didn't Aw tell yo' the Wolves hadn't a dog's chance?"
And he would see the admiring gang slap Billy on the back, and hear
"Good owd Billy!" and never a word of thanks to him. Then, knowing
Billy to be a liar, he would tell him so, yelping shrilly, in Buttonesque
vernacular (North and South):
"This morning tha said it was five to one on Sheffield United."
"Listen to Susie!"
The parasitic urchins would yell at the witticism--the eternal petitio
principii of childhood, which Billy, secure in his cohort from bloody
nose, felt justified in making. And Paul Kegworthy, the rag of a
newspaper crumpled tight in his little hand, would watch them
disappear and wonder at the paradox of life. In any sphere of human
effort, so he dimly and childishly realized, he could wipe out 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 verse for his
suggestions. But they heeded him so little that he would turn away
contemptuously, disdaining the travesty of the noble game, and dream
of a gang