Part 5

“I was as displeased as I was surprised when I heard that my daughter-in-law had lately met you at a ball at Lady Carnal’s. The Carnals of my day were more discreet in their introductions. In my day, sir, such fine gentlemen as you were not so easily enabled to corrupt youth by your companionship. Such men as you, sir, used not to be received in decent houses. Nor had good people yet become inured to the habit of going to balls in the houses of _parvenu_ Americans and grotesquely rich Jews, to mix with bankrupts, card-sharpers, notorious adulterers and Socialist politicians. In some such house you must have met my grandson; and, Mr. Maturin, I must grant you the quality of attraction, little though I myself may be privileged to feel it, for with your good looks and casual airs you seem to taint every child you meet. You corrupted my grandson, Mr. Maturin! You flattered him by treating him as a grown man, you taught him to gamble, to dissipate, and, worst of all, to think uncleanly. Both my grandson and my granddaughter, as you were aware, have fortunes of their own from their mother’s father--and by God, sir, you played the devil with that wretched boy’s money, didn’t you!”

“Why,” Mr. Maturin smiled, “the boy _enjoyed_ money for the first time in his life! Until he met me, Sir Guy, he had only worried about what he was going to do with it.”

“And did he, Mr. Maturin, _enjoy_ the money he lost to you at cards? It is not for nothing, I have gathered, that you are spoken of as the best _picquet_ player in London. That wretched boy would, I am sure, give you a certificate----”

“I should be even better pleased, Sir Guy, with a cheque for what he owes me.”

“You shall have it. Eleanour, my cheque-book! A flower in hell, Mr. Maturin, would not be more lonely than a debt of honour on your person.”

“Quite,” said Mr. Maturin, thoughtfully folding the cheque. “Thank you very much.”

“I have dealt with the boy,” old Sir Guy went on in a low voice, “as you are no doubt aware; and he is now expiating his folly and, I hope, regaining his health and self-respect, with some hard work on my Canadian property. At our last meeting he defended you to me. He remained, you understand, a gentleman even after his connection with you, and he couldn’t but speak up for one who had been his friend.”

“He was a good boy,” said Mr. Maturin softly. “I liked that boy.”

Sir Guy rose to his full lean height. The two men faced one another. “Mr. Maturin,” the old gentleman said, “you have corrupted my grandson. You have plundered the best years of his life. Have you anything to say?”

Mr. Maturin said: “If you don’t mind, sir, I will reserve my defence. Isn’t there still worse to come?”

Sir Guy stared, as though he was seeing him for the first time, at the elegant figure who stood with his back to the fire, warming his hands. The savage old man was, so far as it was possible for him to be, nonplussed. Always a great reader of those memoirs and _belles-lettres_ that tell intimately of the lives of gentlemen of more careless and debonair times, the anatomy of _galanterie_, scoundrelism and coxcombry, as exemplified in the Restoration gallants and the eighteenth-century fops, had interested old Sir Guy’s leisure; but never had he thought he would be faced by one so completely unashamed, so bad, by one who could wear the evil _dandysme_ of his soul as nonchalantly as a monocle. Sir Guy again sat himself at his long, burdened writing-table and played thoughtfully with a paper-knife. For the first time in his life he was faced with the humiliation of not knowing what to do: for here before him was a man, an incredible man, to whom such ancient words as honour, loyalty, betrayal, were without meaning. Beau Maturin would take such words, distort them with a slanting smile, put false feet to them, and send them tripping away on the wings of a merry laugh. Merry, for what could shame such a man from his gaiety? And Sir Guy realised now that he had made a mistake in sending Capel Maturin the bank-note. He had sent it to arouse the man’s curiosity, thus to ensure his presence at this interview, from which the old gentleman still, though grimly, expected the best issue; but, more particularly, he had sent that bank-note as an earnest of what he might be prepared to do for Mr. Maturin if he would help the de Gramercys to bring about that blessed issue. But now Sir Guy realised his false step. A thousand pounds more or less did not matter very much to him; but did they matter so very much, he could now reflect, to that pretty, penniless gentleman? Money, to be sure, could not be of the first importance to so complete a cad as Capel Maturin: he had spent his own considerable fortune quickly enough, and, they said, generously enough: it must, thought Sir Guy, be the little cads to whom money really appealed.

The old gentleman’s voice, when he continued, was more subdued, less proud. And has it not been already remarked that Mr. Maturin did not like to see the descent from pride to humility? which, had he had any part of virtue, he should have taken for a sign of grace, even as it is written in the Scriptures. But maybe he did not notice the slight tremor that played in that proud old voice before it could be subdued, for at the moment he was intent on examining his patent-leather shoes, which were exquisite examples of Lobb’s later manner.

Sir Guy was saying: “My grandson, you corrupted. My granddaughter, you have sed----”

“Dear!” cried Mrs. de Gramercy.

Mr. Maturin was quite silent, examining his shoes.

“Perhaps that was too harsh a word,” the old gentleman conceded--he conceded!

“It was,” said Beau Maturin softly. “Much.”

Now Sir Guy’s voice was so low as to be barely audible, while his eyes were as though enchanted by the monogram on his paper-knife.

“I was carried beyond my intention, Mr. Maturin. I apologise, to you and to the child’s mother. But I have had a day that I would not wish for my bitterest enemy. I am very old, Mr. Maturin. Peace, comfort, heart’s ease, have lately assumed an importance which only a few years ago I would have disdained to allow them. Was it essential to you, Capel Maturin, to pilfer my granddaughter from me?”

“But why do you say ‘pilfer,’ sir? Am I not allowed to be like any other man, to make love?”

“Men,” said old Sir Guy, “did not, I thought, make love to young girls. Bankrupts, I am sure, should not. And a man who has been a corespondent in two notorious divorce cases--he _cannot_! Mr. Maturin, it is not that I wish to insult you wantonly, but----”

“I quite understand, Sir Guy. Let us, after all, face the facts.”

“Yes. My granddaughter has just come of age--and, incidentally, into her fortune. You, I believe, are forty or so----”

“Ah, those confounded facts! Forty-seven.”

“I must say they become you very lightly. But, even so, there is a grave disparity of age between you and the child; and, Mr. Maturin, there is an even graver disparity of everything else. By Heaven, man, how could you, how could any man like you, have so blinded yourself to all the decencies of life as to put yourself in the way of a girl like my granddaughter!”

“I’m positively damned if I know!” murmured Mr. Maturin. “But these things happen. They just happen, Sir Guy.”

Sir Guy at last looked up from the shine of the paper-knife; and pressing down with his knuckles on the writing-table as though to steady himself, said: “Mr. Maturin, to-day I have had the greatest shock of my life. My granddaughter told me she was going to marry you.”

“A brave girl!” said Mr. Maturin softly.

The old gentleman’s voice trembled. “Man, you cannot be serious!”

“I can be in love!” said Mr. Maturin coldly.

“Love!” cried the lady in the shadows.

“More,” said Mr. Maturin, “I can love. I did not know that until quite lately. I did not know that when I was young. I get quite rhetorical when I think of it. I did not know, Sir Guy, of this beautiful thing lying in wait for me, Capel Maturin--to love, without fear, without shame, even without hope, without desire----”

“Without desire!” cried Mrs. de Gramercy. “Mr. Maturin, aren’t you exalting yourself?”

Mr. Maturin suddenly looked old and very tired. He said: “I did not speak the exact truth a moment ago. I knew when I was young that I could love. I suspected it. I have awaited the moment for many years. Of course, I have had to kill time meanwhile. I must inform you, Sir Guy, that when I was born a sunflower looked over a wall in Elm Park Gardens. All the gardeners in the neighbourhood were astounded. No sunflower has ever before looked over a wall in Elm Park Gardens. It could only have meant that I would love--one day. And the day has come, I love.”

Sir Guy said: “You blaspheming _poseur_!”

“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Maturin, “for speaking the truth about myself. People are not used to hearing others speak the truth about themselves. It shall not occur again.”

The voice of Mrs. de Gramercy rose bitterly from the shadows: “Love! What, dear Heaven, do you mean by ‘love,’ Mr. Maturin?”

“Love,” said Mr. Maturin, “is one of the few diseases of the liver which cannot be cured by temperance or an apple a day. That is merely a suggestion.”

“A vile one!” said old Sir Guy.

“Sorry,” sighed Mr. Maturin.

“Mr. Maturin,” cried Mrs. de Gramercy, “how dare you, you of all men, talk so glibly of love! For you were right just now, when you spoke in jest. For men like you love is no more than a fine word for a physical distemper.”

“Mental,” said Mr. Maturin. “Quite mental, I assure you.”

“It’s a passing mood, it doesn’t last! Oh, the lives that have been crucified in the name of love! And now you would crucify my little Joan’s!”

Sir Guy said with savage calm: “Come, come, Eleanour, not so dramatic! You will make the man shy. Mr. Maturin,” Sir Guy went on with a perceptible effort, “I cannot stop the girl from marrying, as you know. She came of age to-day, and from to-day has her own fortune. But, man, is there no way in which we can appeal to your--your generosity! I pay you the compliment of thinking that you are not intending to marry Joan primarily for her money. Am I right?”

“I don’t know. You see,” Mr. Maturin rose to explain seriously, “these things get awfully entangled. To-night, as you saw, the cards ran very badly against me. And as I came away from the place I was so annoyed with myself that I emptied my pockets of the last penny I had. I was intending to begin life entirely afresh from to-morrow. With your daughter, madam, if I may say so. For I am like any other Englishman, Sir Guy, very sentimental about money when I haven’t any and not in the least romantic about it when I have. And so I thought I wouldn’t bring the taint of what money I had to my life with Joan. You must allow me, Sir Guy, and you, Mrs. de Gramercy, to respect and love Joan.”

“And I almost believe you do!” said Sir Guy savagely. “After your fashion. But fashions change, Mr. Maturin.”

“And so do the moon, the stars, the clouds and dancing; yet, let’s face it, they are eternal and everlasting. Sir Guy, I would wish to marry your granddaughter if she were penniless. Why should I not marry her because she is not penniless? What is this spurious humbug about honour that covers the middle and upper classes of England like verdigris: that a poor man may not with honour marry a rich woman, that a poor girl can only “sell” herself to a rich man? Can a man or woman not be loved, then, because he or she is rich? Is that what our religion means when it says that a rich man shall not enter the kingdom of heaven? Was it for that, then, that the late Charles Garvice devoted his life?”

“A moment!” Sir Guy begged wearily. “I am to understand from this rigmarole that you hold Joan to her promise?”

“Mr. Maturin, please!” sighed, as though involuntarily, the voice from the shadows.

Mr. Maturin lit another cigarette and inhaled it. “Wasn’t Joan,” he asked, “at all swayed by your arguments against me? They must have been cogent enough, I fancy.”

“Like the boy,” Sir Guy said with sudden gentleness, “she defended you. You have some magic for youth, it seems. They admit your faults, but do not hold them against your character. But I have observed that it takes grown-up people to condemn caddishness. Children will overlook it.”

“True,” said Mr. Maturin. “You see, Sir Guy, children like people for what they are, not for what they do.” He turned to the dim lady. “I fancy,” he said, “that you have both got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I mean, don’t you see, that it’s not really much use persuading me to give Joan up. I mean, it wouldn’t be much use if I did.”

“How, sir!”

“Mr. Maturin, I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, let’s face it, we must persuade her to give me up. Otherwise,” said Mr. Maturin with an air of conviction, “if I were to break my promise to her she would guess that it was at your persuasion--you might indeed insinuate that you had paid me off, but she wouldn’t believe it--and you would be faced for the rest of your days by an accusing girl. And that would be beastly for you.”

There was a heavy silence: which fled sharply before a rattle when old Sir Guy, with a gesture of distaste, flung his paper-knife on to the table.

“Do I understand you to be caring for my old age, Mr. Maturin?”

“Neither your youth nor your old age are of any interest for me, sir. I am merely suggesting that if I were to give up Joan without her consent she would make a martyr of herself. Her very name will encourage the idea. Mrs. de Gramercy, I am sure you understand me.”

“But,” the lady cried gladly, “does this mean that you _will_ give Joan up? Father, I knew he would. Oh, I knew!”

Mr. Maturin said quickly: “You have misunderstood me. I will not give Joan up.”

“Bah!” snapped Sir Guy.

“But,” said Mr. Maturin.

“Bah!” snapped Sir Guy.

“_But_,” said Mr. Maturin, “I will persuade Joan to give me up.”

“Oh, thank God, thank God!” breathed the mother.

“For,” said Mr. Maturin, “it is, as you say, a deplorable connection. I see that. Besides, when the sunflower looked over the wall in Elm Park Gardens nothing was said about my being loved, only that I should love. And how much more fitting, Sir Guy, for a lady to disown a cad than for a cad to disown a lady! Let us be reasonable.”

The taut old gentleman seemed almost to smile. “You are a dangerous comedian, Mr. Maturin. And how will you effect this _finesse_?”

“Is Joan awake? Splendid! The practice of love grows easier every moment. You ought to try it, Sir Guy. Do you mind if I now make a small speech? It is about girls. Girls are by nature hero-worshippers. When they are not they dress badly and write novels. There is, however, some nonsense abroad to the effect that there is a ‘modern’ girl. How one detests the word ‘modern!’ Disbelieve in the existence of the ‘modern’ girl, Sir Guy. Girlhood is an ancient situation, is exalted by ancient joys, suffers ancient sorrows, reacts to ancient words. There is no modern girl except on the tongues of certain silly people who find an outlet for their own lewdness by ascribing it to other people.”

“And what is the point of all this, sir?”

“It is that no girl, Sir Guy, ancient or modern or what-not, will cease to love a man because of any of the ordinary accusations you can bring against him. There is only one which will destroy her love. You may call her man a cad, and she will smile, and if you repeat it she will get bored. He may be a burglar, but she won’t cease to love him, for is not the world a den of thieves? A poisoner, and she may still love him, for are there not many whom it would be good to poison? A coward, and she may not despise him, for girls are not necessarily fools and brave men can make uncommonly dull lovers. A card-sharper, and she may excuse him, for does not God Himself play with loaded dice? But verily, I say unto you, prove that man guilty of a deep disloyalty and at that moment her love will be as distant as your youth, Sir Guy, and as dead as mine; for disloyalty is the only bedfellow love will certainly reject. Will you call your daughter in, Mrs. de Gramercy, and I will tell her a story? Perhaps it will interest you, too.”

“Call her, Eleanour,” said old Sir Guy. “I fancy Mr. Maturin will have no difficulty in persuading her of his ineligibility on those grounds.”

“True,” said Mr. Maturin. “True.”

III

Now, at last, the occasion is complete, the parts of the comedy all filled: the persons of the play bear themselves with becoming suspense: and the scene is richly set with age, dignity, devilry and youth, one and all essential to the true spirit of comedy.

The grandeur of distress, the lofty silence of disdain--there is the girl’s mother in her shadowed chair and Sir Guy Conduit de Gramercy at his writing-table, the light of the shaded lamp by his elbow laying a rich gloss on his thick white hair. The indifference that masks the depths of emotion, the faint mockery, the deep gravity, and the cunning candour of love----there is Joan de Gramercy coiled in a chair near her mother, a girl with those cool eyes that dare a man to surprise in them any secret that they will not, in their own good time, completely surrender to him.

Mr. Maturin, handsome Beau Maturin, is talking. He generally is. A talkative man, let’s face it.

“Joan,” he addressed the girl’s eyes, “your mother and your grandfather have objected to our engagement. We guessed they would, you remember? Just lately, in fact, we’ve been guessing nothing else. Unfortunately for their authority, however, they are not in a position to prevent it. Now, Joan, we have had quite a long conversation in here, a little about you, but considerably more about me. That I am as God made me is a truth your grandfather will not for a moment admit. He is convinced that I am a good deal worse. That I am in love, your mother is unkind enough to doubt. She is convinced that I am suffering from a physical distemper. And so, just as you were not swayed by your guardians’ arguments to-day, I have not been swayed by them to-night----”

“How, sir!” cried Sir Guy hotly. “Are you----”

“I am talking, Sir Guy. But, Joan,” continued Mr. Maturin, “they insisted that I could cure you of your attachment to me, if I wished. I pointed out that I had already put myself before you as a man whose character contained certain grave flaws; and that you had, while deploring my recent and second bankruptcy and my only too frequent lapses from the strictly moral code, chosen to believe that there is still some good in me, and had therefore remained by your decision to become my wife. Your mother and grandfather, however, have dared me to tell you the complete truth about myself and yet hold you. Joan, did I think for one moment that I would lose you in this way, I frankly admit,” said Mr. Maturin emphatically, “that I would not put my hand to any such quixotic folly----”

“After all,” said Joan de Gramercy, “the past is dead.”

“My point exactly, child. And that is why,” said Mr. Maturin, “if only to satisfy your mother and grandfather of the inevitability of your choice and of my complete faith in your love, I have decided to do what I will do. Listen, Joan----”

It was Sir Guy’s stern voice that fell on the room like an axe.

“You live up to my description of you completely, Mr. Maturin. You are indeed the ace of cads! For now you are betraying your word of a few minutes ago.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t interrupt,” said Mr. Maturin warmly. “I am embarked, let’s face it, on a suspension-bridge of very doubtful strength and you keep on trying to upset my balance with sweeping comments on my character. My tale, Joan,” he continued into the middle air, and spoke from this moment on with his eyes fixed absently in the shadows of the books on the shelves opposite, “my tale has to do with many years ago. Now I have been and I have done many things in my time; and have become one of those men of whom it is vaguely said, ‘He could write a book about his life,’ which of course means that I have done everything in my life except write a book. At the time I speak of I was a subaltern in a Guards regiment; a mode of life which, it may distress you to hear, Sir Guy, bored me in the extreme. As, however, the small allowance my father gave me was contingent on my retaining my commission, and as even the smallest allowance is better than a poke in the eye, I endured in patience the while I gave myself up to the pleasures of the town. You must not for a moment think,” protested Mr. Maturin with feeling, “that I am trying to belittle the gentlemen of the Brigade, for better men than I have tried and failed at that game: nor that I am a slave to malice, for as you know I was later expelled from their company: but truth compels me to confess that my companions of those days were notable rather for the correctness of their appearance than for their learning, while their charm was of that static, profound sort which no one could call ingratiating and a certain kind of primitive _badinage_ was held among them to be the superior of wit. And as time went on I came to be esteemed among the lighter sort for those qualities of the tongue and mind that are calculated to send any man, in due course, headlong down the crooked path.

“But I must tell you I had one very great friend among them. This was a man who had everything I had not: a simple frankness, a plain but almost painfully honest bearing, and a heart like gold; which was then, of course, more evidently in circulation than it is now. I cannot imagine how a boy of that sort could have loved and admired me; but he undoubtedly did, and to a singular degree, so that I was frequently enabled to borrow money from him almost painlessly, for he was heir to a great fortune, with which went a great name; although, to be sure, he was often as hard put to it as I was to fit a morsel of caviare to a piece of toast, for his father had ideas about real estate quite contrary to ours.

“My friend became engaged to a beautiful girl. What she saw in the boy, I do not know. Women are, let’s face it, odd. That she loved him, I was instantly certain. Even my youthful cynicism could not ascribe to her the mean calculation of a fortune-hunter. That he loved her, madly and madly again, he frequently made clear to me in those broken and inarticulate periods that are the hall-mark of all honest Englishmen in love: and which, being often quite inaudible, have earned for Englishmen a delightful reputation for restraint. But let us not generalise when we can so profitably be particular.

“We were at that time in the barracks that guard the frontiers of Chelsea: my friend and I in adjacent rooms. Our ways of life, however, were at that time vastly different; for as I was passing through a financial void I would, with that resignation which no one can deny has been my one consistent virtue, go early to bed every night: whereas my friend would return night after night at about this hour, having escorted his betrothed home after a play and a ball; and night after night, as he prepared himself for bed in the adjoining room, he would softly whistle a tune. Thus, you understand, he expressed his happiness; and killed it, for the walls were thin and the tune intolerable.

“It was Mendelssohn’s _Spring Song_; and, Sir Guy, I have already told you,” said Mr. Maturin with a glance at the old gentleman, who was listening with every mark of attention if not of approval, “how my distaste for that composition led me, some months after the time I speak of, to a hasty action. But what that same distaste caused me to do to that boy was not done hastily.