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
[Illustration:
_A Paramount Picture._ _The Ace of Cads._