Part 4
Fountain lost patience. He said severely: “I never seen you like this before, sir. Not all these years. I don’t know what you are talking about, that I don’t. You married twice! Once was enough for you, sir, if you will permit an old man the liberty. And you divorced! I never heard of such a thing! I’d like to see the woman fit to divorce a Lapwing, that I would! I never heard of such a thing.”
“Ah,” said Mr. Lapwing. “Well, have it your own way, Fountain. But it made such a thundering good story that I was near believing it myself. All in a good cause, Fountain: to teach that boy a thing or two. One likes to see children happy, Fountain. And his mother won’t mind, not she. A good sensible woman she was, if on the plain side. And, d’you remember, Fountain, she always wanted a drop of romance in her life? Well, she’s got it now, poor dear. But her son will appreciate it for her, won’t he? And just give me another drop of that brandy, will you? That’s very fine brandy, that is.”
“The bottle,” said Fountain bitterly, “is empty, sir.”
“Drat that boy!” said Mr. Lapwing. “Comes here looking for romance and laps up all my brandy!”
II: THE ACE OF CADS
I
They tell a tale of high romance and desperate villainy, how one night the dæmon of wickedness arose from the depths and faced his master Capel Maturin, the pretty gentleman whose exploits have made him known to all London by the engaging title of Beau Maturin, the ace of cads. The tale begins in bitter darkness and its direction is Piccadilly, not the shopkeeper’s nor the wanton’s Piccadilly but the sweet sulky side where the pavement trips arm-in-arm with the trees of the Green Park and men are wont to walk alone with the air of thinking upon their debts and horses and women. There and thus, they say, George Brummel walked, to the doom that awaits all single-hearted men, and Scrope Davies, that pleasant wit, Lord Alvanley, the gross, D’Orsay, the beautiful and damned, and latterly Beau Maturin, who was a very St. George for looks and as lost to grace as the wickedest imp in hell.
But here was no night for your _beau_ to be abroad in, and a man had been tipsy indeed to have braved those inclement elements unless he must. Yet one there was, walking the Green Park side. Ever and often the east wind lashed the rain into piercing darts, as though intent to inflict with ultimate wretchedness the sodden bundles of humanity that may any night be seen lying one against the other beneath the railings of the Green Park. But the deuce was in it if the gentleman in question appeared to be in the least discommoded. His flimsy overcoat flung wide open and ever wider in paroxysms of outraged elegance by the crass wind, and showing an expanse of white shirt-front of that criss-cross _piqué_ kind which is one of the happiest discoveries of this century, and his silk hat rammed over his right eyebrow as though to dare a tornado to embarrass it, he strode up from Hyde Park Corner at a pace which, while not actually leisurely, seemed to be the outward manifestation of an entire absence of interest in time, place, destination, man, God and the devil. Nor was there anything about this gentleman’s face to deny this superlative indifference to interests temporal and divine; for, although that of a man still young enough, and possessed of attractions of a striking order, it showed only too plainly the haggard _blasé_ marks of a wanton and dissipated life.
It was with such epithets, indeed, that the more austere among his friends had some time before finally disembarrassed themselves of the acquaintance of Capel Maturin. A penniless cadet of good family, Mr. Maturin, after a youth devoted to prophecy as to the relative swiftness of horses and to experiments into the real nature of wines, had in his middle thirties been left a fortune by an affectionate uncle who, poor man, had liked his looks; and Mr. Maturin was now engaged in considering whether three parts of a decade had been well spent in reducing that fortune, with no tangible results, to as invisible an item as, so Mr. Maturin vulgarly put it to himself, a pony on a profiteer. It was a question, thought Mr. Maturin, which could demand neither deep thought nor careful answering, insomuch as the answer was only too decidedly a lemon.
At a certain point on Piccadilly Mr. Maturin suddenly stayed his walk. What it was that made him do this we shall, maybe, never know, but stop he did. There were witnesses to the event: the same lying at Mr. Maturin’s feet, huddled against the railings of the Green Park, a heap of sodden bundles with hidden faces; and it had wanted the attention of a physician or the like to decide which of the five or six was of the male or the female of the species.
“It’s a cold night,” said a husky voice.
Mr. Maturin, towering high into the night above the husky voice, agreed that it was a cold night.
“Ay, that it is!” said a woman’s cracked voice. “Cold as Christian charity!”
Whereupon Mr. Maturin exhorted her to thank her stars that he was a pagan and, withdrawing his hand from an inner pocket, scattered some bank-notes over the bewildered wretches.
“Oh! Oh!” they cried, but caught them quickly enough, not grabbing nor pushing overmuch, for there was maybe a couple or so for each. And when, with the bank-notes tight and safe in their hands, they stared their wonder up at their mad benefactor, it was to find him staring moon-struck at a point far above their heads, while across his face was stamped a singular smile. It should be known that Beau Maturin had in his youth been a great reader of romantic literature, and now could not but smile at the picture of himself in an ancient situation, for is not the situation of a penniless spendthrift, with that of a man in love, among the most ancient in the world?
A policeman, his black cape shining in the rain like black armour, approached heavily: the august impersonality of the law informed for the moment with an air of interest that had a terrifying effect on the suddenly enriched wretches, for the law does not by ordinary recognise any close connection between a person with no visible means of support and the Bank of England.
“Good evening, sir,” said the law to Mr. Maturin, who, returning the greeting somewhat absently, was about to continue his walk when an anxious voice from the ground whispered:
“’Ere, sir, these are fivers, sir!”
“I beg your pardon?” said Mr. Maturin.
The law, meanwhile, had taken one of the bank-notes from a reluctant hand and was examining it against the lamplight.
“These ’ere, sir,” said the law impersonally, “are five-pun notes.”
“True,” said Mr. Maturin. “True. Lovely white angels of the devil. Good-night, constable.”
“Good-night, sir,” said the constable, replacing the bank-note into an eager hand; and Mr. Maturin, for long devoid of common sense, and now entirely devoid of money as well, continued his walk in the rain. His direction, or such direction as his feet appeared to have, led him towards the
pillared arcade that protects the entrance of the Ritz Restaurant from the gross changes of London’s climate; and it was as he strode under this arcade, his steps ringing sharply on the dry white stones, that it was distinctly brought to his notice that he was being followed.
He did not, however, turn his head or show any other sign of interest, merely dismissing his pursuer as an optimist. Mr. Maturin’s, in point of fact, was a nature peculiarly lacking in any interest as to what might or might not at any moment be happening behind him; and one of his favourite _mots_ had ever been, whether in discussion, distress or danger, “Well, my friends, let’s face it!” There were, of course, not wanting those who ventured to doubt whether Beau Maturin had so readily faced “things” had he not had such a prepossessing face with which to conciliate them. “Ah,” Mr. Maturin would say to such, “you’re envious, let’s face it.”
On this occasion, so absorbed was he in absence of thought, he allowed himself to reach the corner of Arlington Street before swinging round to “face it.”
“Well?” said Mr. Maturin.
“’Ere!” said the other _sans_ courtesy. “You do walk a pace, you do!”
“I am sorry,” said Mr. Maturin. “What do you want?”
“Want!” said the other. “I like that! What do _I_ want! Jerusalem!”
“If you want Jerusalem,” said Mr. Maturin severely, “you should apply to the Zionist Society. They would be company for you. It must be very depressing for a man of your size to go about wanting Jerusalem all by yourself.”
That the pursuer had no evil intentions, at least to one of Mr. Maturin’s stature, had instantly been obvious. He was a small seedy-looking man in a bowler-hat of some past civilisation: his clothes sadly reflected the inclemencies of the weather, but had the air of not being very valuable, while the coloring of his face was that of one who had not in recent times suffered the delightful but perilous purification of water; and, as he stood panting beneath our gentleman, his expression was one of such bitter disgust that Mr. Maturin, being able to account for it only by the continued action of acid foods on the liver, thought it but right to advise him not to take so much vinegar with his tinned salmon.
“Am I,” snapped the small seedy man, “talking to Mr. Chapel Matcherin, or am I not?”
“More or less,” Mr. Maturin could not but admit.
“Orl I knows is,” snapped the small seedy man, “that you was the gent pointed out to me as yer left that club in Belgrave Square. Gent told me to give yer this. ’Ere.”
Mr. Maturin quickly opened the envelope, which was addressed to his name, and drew from it a folded sheet of note-paper and a folded bank-note. The small seedy man looked bitterly surprised and hurt.
“Money!” he sighed. “Money! ’Ow I ’ate money! And me carrying it abaht! I like that! Me!”
“You’re still here?” said Mr. Maturin.
“Still ’ere!” said the small seedy man. “I like that! Still ’ere! Me!”
But Mr. Maturin was giving his full attention to the note-paper, the while the folded bank-note depended tantalisingly from between the knuckles of two fingers. The small seedy man stared at it fascinated.
“If I’d _known_!” he sighed bitterly.
The letter addressed to Mr. Maturin ran thus:
“Enclosed Mr. Maturin will find a bank-note, which is in the nature of a present to him from the correspondent: who, if he was not misinformed, this night saw Mr. Maturin lose the last of his fortune at _chemin de fer_. Should Mr. Maturin’s be a temperament that does not readily accept gifts from strangers, which the correspondent takes the liberty to doubt, he may give the bank-note to the bearer, who will no doubt be delighted with it. The correspondent merely wishes Mr. Maturin to know that the money, having once left his hands and come into contact with Mr. Maturin’s, interests him no further. Nor are there any conditions whatsoever attached to this gift. But should Mr. Maturin retain some part of honour, which the correspondent takes the liberty to doubt, he may return service for service. In so remote a contingency Mr. Maturin will find a closed motor-car awaiting him near the flower-shop in Clarges Street.”
Mr. Maturin thoughtfully tore the note into several parts and dropped them to the pavement. The folded bank-note he, very thoughtful indeed, put into an inner pocket.
“’Ere!” whined the small seedy man.
“Tell me,” said Mr. Maturin, “what manner of gentleman was the gent who gave you this?”
“Bigger than you!” snarled the small seedy man. “Blast ’im for an old capitalist, else my name isn’t ’Iggins!”
“I am sorry your name is Higgins if you don’t like it. But why,” asked Mr. Maturin, “do you blast the gent who sent you after me?”
“I like that! Why hell! ’Ere he gives me two bob to go chasing after you to give you a bank-note! Two bob! You couldn’t offer two bob for a bloater in Wapping without getting arrested for using indecent language. And you’re so blarsted superior, you are, that you ain’t even looked to see ’ow much it is!”
“Why, I had forgotten!” smiled Mr. Maturin, and, producing the bank-note, unfolded it. It was a Bank of England note for £1,000.
“It’s not true!” gasped the small seedy man. “Oh, Gawd, it can’t be true! And in my ’and all that time and me chasing orl up Piccadilly with it to _give_ away!”
“Well, good-night,” said Mr. Maturin. “And thank you.”
“’E thanks me!” gasped the small seedy man. “’Ere, and ain’t you even going to give me a little bit of somethink extra so’s I’ll remember this ewneek occasion?”
“I’m very afraid,” said Mr. Maturin, feeling carefully in all his pockets, “that this note you have brought me is all I have. I am really very sorry. By the way, don’t forget what I said about the salmon. And be very careful of what you drink. For what, let’s face it, do they know of dyspepsia, who only Kia-Ora know?”
“’Ere!” whined the small seedy man, but Mr. Maturin, crossing Piccadilly where the glare of an arc-lamp stamped the mire with a thousand yellow lights, was already lost in the shadow of the great walls of Devonshire House. In Clarges Street, near the corner, he came upon a long, closed car. The chauffeur, a boy, looked sleepily at him.
“I believe you have your directions,” said Mr. Maturin.
“_And_ I’ve had them for hours!” said the boy sleepily. A nice boy.
II
We live in a world of generalisations, which the wise never tire of telling the foolish to mistrust and with which the foolish never tire of pointing the failures of the wise. There is one, for instance, that lays it down that a bad conscience is a sorry bedfellow. Yet Mr. Maturin, whose conscience could not have been but in the blackest disorder, immediately went to sleep in the car: to awake only when, the car having stopped, the young chauffeur flung open the door of the tonneau and said:
“If you please, sir!”
Mr. Maturin found himself before the doors of a mansion of noble proportions. From the head of the broad steps he looked about him and recognised the long narrow park of trees as that of Eaton Square. A voice said:
“Come in, Mr. Maturin. A wretched night.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Maturin. “It is.”
Within, in a vast hall floored with black and white marble, he found himself faced by an old gentleman who, as the small seedy man had said, was even taller than himself. Mr. Maturin bowed. The tall old gentleman said:
“It is good of you to have come, Mr. Maturin. I thank you. I must confess, however, that I expected you would.”
“It is a rare pleasure for me, Sir Guy, to do what is expected of me,” smiled Mr. Maturin.
“You know me then! You recognised me to-night at your--your club?”
Mr. Maturin smiled at that. It was, let’s face it, a low club. But, what with one thing and another, he had had to resign from all his others. He only said:
“Naturally. Who does not know you, Sir Guy!”
The deep old eyes seemed to pierce the younger man with a savage contempt. “In coming here to-night, Mr. Maturin,” said old Sir Guy, “am I to understand that you are serious? You have, as you may know, something of a reputation for having made an art of misbehaviour.”
Mr. Maturin delayed answering while he thoughtfully considered the ceiling of the great hall, which was so high as to refuse itself to exact scrutiny. At the gaming-club that night he had immediately recognised the formidable old gentleman; for the great lean height, the sabre-wound across the left cheek, the mass of loosely brushed white hair and the savage blue eyes under bushy white eyebrows, were the well-known marks of Sir Guy Conduit de Gramercy, a _seigneur_ of a past century who made no secret of the fact that he disdained any part in this. For a passing moment Mr. Maturin had wondered what the proud old gentleman was doing in those depths; but now, revealed as the donor of the magnificent note, he could not but suspect what had brought Sir Guy down from his contemptuous seclusion. Sir Guy’s descent, however, was far from pleasing to Beau Maturin, for it always offended that man as much to see pride humbled and the mighty fallen as to watch the lowly being exalted and the humble getting above themselves. Mr. Maturin was not a religious man; but he was decidedly one who had what he called “let’s face it, a code of ethics.”
“Why, I’m serious enough,” said he at last. “I take your gift----”
“Ha!” snapped the old gentleman.
“In the spirit in which you give it, Sir Guy.”
“And what the devil can you know of that, sir?”
“Nothing, nothing!” said Mr. Maturin peaceably, and without more ado old Sir Guy led the way into a wide, dim room lined with many books in rare bindings, for here was a small part of the famous de Gramercy library. From the shadows a lady emerged. Very beautiful this lady must have been in her youth, but she was no longer young and now a sad, gentle dignity was the flower of her personality, half hiding, while it half revealed, the lovely dead graces of her youth. It was plain to see, however, that she was not in her best looks this night, for her eyes were as though strained with some pitiless anxiety; and, distantly acknowledging Mr. Maturin’s bow, she retired again into the shadows of the room, for it is only in the East that vanity dies with youth.
Said old Sir Guy: “I believe you have met my daughter-in-law. She and my granddaughter are staying with me for a few days.”
From her shadows Mrs. de Gramercy spoke swiftly, almost breathlessly, as though she would at all costs and quickly be done with something she must say:
“Mr. Maturin, I have tried my best to dissuade Sir Guy from taking this step. I feel there _must_ be a way of effecting our--our wish other than one which must offend you so deeply----”
The voice of the old gentleman fell like a bar of iron across the poor lady’s swift light speech. “Eleanour, you will kindly leave this to me, as you promised. And Mr. Maturin is, I fancy, past taking offence at the truth.”
“That depends on the truth,” said Mr. Maturin in a reasonable way. “So far, I am quite mystified.”
“You lie, Mr. Maturin. You are not mystified.”
“Very well, sir. I lie. I am not mystified.”
Said Mrs. de Gramercy in distress: “I think, then, I will leave you, since I can do nothing----”
“You will kindly stay, Eleanour. Surely you see that the occasion needs the authority of your presence!”
“Yes, please stay, Mrs. de Gramercy,” Mr. Maturin begged. “For if I am called a liar by my host while you are present, Heaven only knows what I may not be called when you are gone. Please stay. And, if I may, I would like to congratulate you on a very beautiful and talented daughter.”
Quivering with passion, the gigantic old man raised an arm. Mr. Maturin did not move. He was lazy, and disliked moving.
“Mr. Maturin,” the old man whispered just audibly, “you are an unbelievable cad! You are the--sir, you are the ace of cads!”
“Father, _please_!” the lady begged from the shadows, but in return Mr. Maturin begged her not to be distressed, protesting that the insult was not so pointed as it first appeared, whereas it would certainly be provoking to be called the deuce of cads, which in the degree of degradations must take a place near that of being run over by a Ford car. “But please continue, Sir Guy. Your last words were that I am the ace of cads. I would beg you not be constrained by any such small consideration as my presence in your house.”
“Sit down, sit down,” said a _hidalgo_ to a hound, but it was Sir Guy himself who sat down, while the other remained standing before the fireplace. Mr. Maturin, for all his forty odd years of self-indulgence, had still a very good figure, and he liked to be seen at his best. He has, in point of fact, the best figure of any man in this book, and should therefore be treated with some respect. Mrs. de Gramercy, a shadow of distress, sat in a deep chair away in the dimness of the room. And the thousands of books around the oak walls lent a fictitious air of dignity to an occasion which must have embarrassed any but a _grand seigneur_ and an ace of cads. Sir Guy, with a perceptible effort at calm, addressed Mr. Maturin:
“As you may have gathered, sir, I want you to do me a service----”
“Only a great brain like mine could have divined it, sir.”
“Mr. Maturin, would you not provoke my father-in-law!” spoke the lady sharply, and was as sharply told:
“This is men’s business, Eleanour. Now, sir! My son, this lady’s husband, was killed in the war, as you may know. The best men _were_ killed, Mr. Maturin. Fate is not very generous to fine men in time of war. You, I believe, were years ago cashiered from the Brigade for drunkenness in a restaurant?”
“I assure you, sir, that the provocation was more than I could bear,” Mr. Maturin explained with a gravity becoming in one faced by such a misdeed. “I am, you must know, very musical. Perhaps you would hardly think it, but I undoubtedly have a musical _flair_. And in that wretched restaurant the orchestra would insist on playing Mendelssohn’s _Spring Song_! Now I put it to you, Sir Guy--and to you, Mrs. de Gramercy, if I may--could a man bear Mendelssohn’s _Spring Song_ over dinner? Yet I bore myself with a fortitude which some of my lighter friends have since been kind enough to think remarkable. I begged the conductor to cease, once, twice, and thrice; and then, you know, I wasted a bottle of wine over his head. I was hasty, let’s face it. But the provocation!”
Dimly spoke Mrs. de Gramercy from the shadows:
“Father, I believe Mr. Maturin has a D.S.O. with a bar.”
“Mr. Maturin,” the old gentleman said, “I apologise if I have seemed to reflect at all on your courage. Such men as you are, I believe, frequently very courageous----”
“Only when drunk, Sir Guy. In which such men as I are very much the same as other men. Were you, may I ask, ever in a trench before an attack?”
“My fighting days were over before Omdurman, sir----”
“Oh, dear, dashing Omdurman! Illustrations by R. Caton Woodville! You will agree with me that one didn’t need the stimulus of alcohol to turn machine-guns on to a lot of septic-looking niggers without even a water-pistol between them, even though they were devils with assegais, darts, catapults or boomerangs. But the Germans needed fighting. I remember----”
“That will do, Mr. Maturin. Your modesty takes as singular a form as your manners. My son, I was saying, was killed in the war, and his son and daughter were left to the charge of their mother. My grandchildren, Mr. Maturin--heirs to an ancient name and a fortune which must, by decent people, be taken as a responsibility rather than as a means for self-indulgence. I have never agreed with that principle of privilege which demands respect for ancient lineage and great fortune: such things alone are merely baubles; and without the dignity of some office and the ardour of some responsibility they can be of no value, but rather of grave detriment, to serious minds.”
“Oh, quite,” said Mr. Maturin.
“I wished my grandchildren to be brought up to a lofty conception of the duties of their station. My son had, quite rightly, a great regard for the strength and good-sense of his wife, and left her as their sole guardian. I, who have a no less regard for my daughter-in-law, was content with the situation; and, with my mind at rest, continued to lead the very retired life to which my years entitle me, even had I been able to endure the manners of a generation of which, Mr. Maturin, you are such a polished example. Thus, it was only lately that I heard of my grandson’s folly. My grandson, Mr. Maturin! Or must I call upon you to strain your imagination before you can realise that there are still some men in this world to whom the honour of their name is dear!