The Coxon Fund | Page 5

futile conveniences, but never a comrade's joke--I sounded Frank Saltram in his ears; a circumstance I mention in order to note that even then I was surprised at his impatience of my enlivenment. As he had never before heard of the personage it took indeed the form of impatience of the preposterous Mulvilles, his relation to whom, like mine, had had its origin in an early, a childish intimacy with the young Adelaide, the fruit of multiplied ties in the previous generation. When she married Kent Mulville, who was older than Gravener and I and much more amiable, I gained a friend, but Gravener practically lost one. We reacted in different ways from the form taken by what he called their deplorable social action--the form (the term was also his) of nasty second-rate gush. I may have held in my 'for interieur' that the good people at Wimbledon were beautiful fools, but when he sniffed at them I couldn't help taking the opposite line, for I already felt that even should we happen to agree it would always be for reasons that differed. It came home to me that he was admirably British as, without so much as a sociable sneer at my bookbinder, he turned away from the serried rows of my little French library.
"Of course I've never seen the fellow, but it's clear enough he's a humbug."
"Clear 'enough' is just what it isn't," I replied; "if it only were!" That ejaculation on my part must have been the beginning of what was to be later a long ache for final frivolous rest. Gravener was profound enough to remark after a moment that in the first place he couldn't be anything but a Dissenter, and when I answered that the very note of his fascination was his extraordinary speculative breadth my friend retorted that there was no cad like your cultivated cad, and that I might depend upon discovering--since I had had the levity not already to have enquired--that my shining light proceeded, a generation back, from a Methodist cheesemonger. I confess I was struck with his insistence, and I said, after reflexion: "It may be--I admit it may be; but why on earth are you so sure?"--asking the question mainly to lay him the trap of saying that it was because the poor man didn't dress for dinner. He took an instant to circumvent my trap and come blandly out the other side.
"Because the Kent Mulvilles have invented him. They've an infallible hand for frauds. All their geese are swans. They were born to be duped, they like it, they cry for it, they don't know anything from anything, and they disgust one--luckily perhaps!-- with Christian charity." His vehemence was doubtless an accident, but it might have been a strange foreknowledge. I forget what protest I dropped; it was at any rate something that led him to go on after a moment: "I only ask one thing--it's perfectly simple. Is a man, in a given case, a real gentleman?"
"A real gentleman, my dear fellow--that's so soon said!"
"Not so soon when he isn't! If they've got hold of one this time he must be a great rascal!"
"I might feel injured," I answered, "if I didn't reflect that they don't rave about ME."
"Don't be too sure! I'll grant that he's a gentleman," Gravener presently added, "if you'll admit that he's a scamp."
"I don't know which to admire most, your logic or your benevolence."
My friend coloured at this, but he didn't change the subject. "Where did they pick him up?"
"I think they were struck with something he had published."
"I can fancy the dreary thing!"
"I believe they found out he had all sorts of worries and difficulties."
"That of course wasn't to be endured, so they jumped at the privilege of paying his debts!" I professed that I knew nothing about his debts, and I reminded my visitor that though the dear Mulvilles were angels they were neither idiots nor millionaires. What they mainly aimed at was reuniting Mr. Saltram to his wife. "I was expecting to hear he has basely abandoned her," Gravener went on, at this, "and I'm too glad you don't disappoint me."
I tried to recall exactly what Mrs. Mulville had told me. "He didn't leave her--no. It's she who has left him."
"Left him to US?" Gravener asked. "The monster--many thanks! I decline to take him."
"You'll hear more about him in spite of yourself. I can't, no, I really can't resist the impression that he's a big man." I was already mastering--to my shame perhaps be it said--just the tone my old friend least liked.
"It's doubtless only a trifle," he returned, "but you haven't happened to mention what his reputation's to rest on."
"Why on what I began by boring you with--his extraordinary mind."
"As exhibited in his writings?"
"Possibly in his writings,