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Updated: May 11, 2025
He had passed through Bludston and he had caught a glimpse of what had once been his brickfield, now the site of more rows of mean little houses, and he had seen the grim factory chimneys still smoking, smoking.... The little Buttons, having grown up into big Buttons, were toiling away their lives in those factories. And Button himself, the unspeakable Button? Was he yet alive? And Mrs.
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.
The veil which he had thrown so adroitly over his past history, which needed continuous adroitness to maintain, was useless in this house. Both Barney Bill and Jane had spoken of him freely. Silas Finn knew of Bludston, of his modeldom, of his inglorious career on the stage. He could talk openly once more, without the never-absent subconscious sense of reserve.
To Billy the football news in the Saturday afternoon edition of The Bludston Herald was a cryptogram; to him it was an open book.
They had passed through many towns as similar to Bludston as one factory chimney to another, and had plied their trade in many a mean street, so much the counterpart of Budge Street that he had watched a certain window or door with involuntary trepidation, until he realized that it was not Budge Street, that he was a happy alien to its squalor, that he was a butterfly, a thing of woods and hedgerows fluttering for an inconsequent moment in the gloom.
A couple of the gorgeous ladies giggled. "Yuss," said he, "you're a man with an experience of life and nobody can do nothing for you but yerself. Poor old Barney Bill has been past helping you this many a year." "But I owe everything to you!" cried Paul, boyishly. "If it hadn't been for you, I should still be working in that factory at Bludston."
"Gor bless you," exclaimed Barney Bill. "Nothing of the kind. Didn't I tell yer I've knowed him since we was lads together? And Jane lives there." Paul laughed. "In that case " "You'll be most welcome," said Mr. Finn. "This way." He went ahead with Barney Bill, whose queer side limp awoke poignant memories of the Bludston brickfield. Paul followed with Jane.
She alone knew of Bludston, of Barney Bill, of the model days the memory of which made him shiver. 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 blotted Bludston and his modeldom out of his existence. The passionate belief in his high and romantic birth was part of his being, and Miss Winwood's recognition was a splendid confirmation of his faith. It was rather the suppressio veri of which he was guilty than the propositio falsi.
He might have been sober and industrious-the proletariat of Bludston is not entirely composed of Buttons-but he would have taken the colour of his environment, and the world outside Bludston would never have heard of him. Paul, however, differed greatly from the little Buttons.
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