CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH WE SIT AT THE FEET OF GAMALIEL
ON the morrow, or about midnight that same day, to be precise, when Arminius Wingrove came into the club after attending an important première, the great man was engaged in conversation by Mr. Philip while they dallied with devilled kidneys and other comestibles.
“Minnie,” said the vain young fellow, “everybody says you are the cleverest chap in London, so I want your advice.”
Rather cool, perhaps, to demand advice of the cleverest chap in London in this point-blank manner, but Arminius, who kept a generous heart beneath his waistcoat of white piquè, showed no displeasure.
“If you mean about the girl you are making a fool of yourself over,” said the great man, “don’t, is the advice I shall have to give you.”
“Oh, but I’ve got beyond that already,” said the vain young fellow with a rather grand simplicity.
“Have you, though?” said Arminius, pensive-like.
“Yes, I’m goin’ to marry her if she’ll have me, but the trouble is, she won’t.”
“Won’t she, though!” said Arminius, looking rather like the statuette of himself by Sir W. G-sc-mbe J-hn.
“No, she won’t, Minnie, and that’s all about it, until her old grandmother gives her consent; and the old lady simply won’t hear of it.”
“Who is her old grandmother?” inquired Arminius, “and why won’t she?”
“Her grandmother is Mrs. Cathcart, who played Lady Macbeth with David Garrick, and she’s taken a prejudice against me because I’m the son of a peer.”
The manner of Arminius seemed to imply that old Mrs. Cathcart had been guilty of a very unfeminine proceeding. But being a disciple of Talleyrand, the great man did not clothe his thoughts with words.
“And to make matters worse, Minnie, there was a simply frightful turn-up between her grandmother and my Mater yesterday afternoon.”
With the flair of a playwright whom Hannibal had himself approved, Arminius Wingrove asked for further information.
“Simply gorgeous, Minnie, for a chap who hadn’t to be in it. Wouldn’t have missed it for worlds—except that I kind of wasn’t in a position to enjoy it, was I? But it hasn’t half crabbed the piece! Tragedy Queen ordered Mater out of the house, and says she shan’t receive her in future. So it’s all up with my people, and I’m afraid it’s all up with hers; and the girl isn’t going to marry me without the consent of all parties.”
The statement of the vain young fellow seemed both florid and ingenuous to Arminius Wingrove, who had hardly been so much amused by anything since the revival of The Importance of Being Earnest.
“And so you don’t think she’ll marry you, do you, my son?”
Arminius Wingrove had not a mercenary nature, but he wouldn’t mind laying a “pony” on the event. The heart of the heir to the barony gave a bound.
“Why, what reason have you to think so, Minnie?” he said in a voice of tense emotion.
“Because there’s not half a reason why she shouldn’t, my lad.”
“But she is simply devoted to her old grandmother.”
“The old lady has all her faculties, I presume?”
“My Mater thinks so, anyway.”
“Well, then, there’s not half a reason why the girl shouldn’t marry you.”
Still the reasoning of Arminius Wingrove was not altogether clear to the heir to the barony, who, to be sure, was somewhat slow in the uptake.
“Do you suppose, young feller, that any girl’s grandmother would stand in the way of forty thousand a year and a peerage?”
The young man shook his head.
“No, Minnie! She’s not that sort of girl; and she’s not that sort of grandmother. It is the confounded peerage that has crabbed the piece.”
Polite incredulity on the part of the audience.
“Minnie, old boy, everybody says you are the cleverest chap in London, but you don’t know Mary Caspar.”
Arminius Wingrove knew something about Woman, though.
No, ladies—not a cynical ruffian altogether. His heart was in the right place even though he took this mercantile view. Therefore, by the time the Welsh rarebit arrived the great man conceived it to be his duty to dispense something extra superior in the way of advice.
“Young Shelmerdine,” said he, “what the dooce do you want to go foolin’ around the stage door at all for? A chap like you ought to marry Adela Rocklaw. Make things unpleasant at home. No longer be welcomed in the best houses. Bored to tears about the second week of the honeymoon. Opportunities squandered. Much better have stayed in the Second, and gone racing quietly than to have come into money and to have broken out in this way. Now take the advice of a friend; and let us see you at the Church of Paul or of Peter at an early date awaiting the arrival of old Warlock’s seventh and most attractive daughter, and I will have my hat ironed, and be proud to accompany you down the nave of the cathedral.”
It was not often that this man of the world was moved in this way; but he had just staged a rattling good comedy, and devilled kidneys and Welsh rarebits and tankards of strong ale are rather stimulating diet, when you sit listening to the chimes at midnight. It is a disconcerting psychological fact, though, that no young man has ever heeded the voice of wisdom in these circumstances.
“It is awful good of you, Minnie, to take the trouble to advise me, but I’m goin’ to marry Mary Caspar if flesh and blood can manage it.”
“Then it’s a walk-over for flesh and blood, you silly young fool,” said Arminius Wingrove with rather brutal frankness.