The Razor's Edge (4 page)

'We've all known Henry Maturin for many years. He's a very fine man and a very rich one. Gray's stepping into the best brokerage house in Chicago. He's got the world at his feet. He wants to marry Isabel and one can't deny that from her point of view it would be a very good match. I'm all in favour of it myself and I know Louisa is too.'

'You've been away from America so long, Elliott,' said Mrs Bradley, with a dry smile, 'you've forgotten that in this country girls don't marry because their mothers and their uncles are in favour of it.'

'That is nothing to be proud of, Louisa,' said Elliott sharply. 'As the result of thirty years' experience I may tell you that a marriage arranged with proper regard to position, fortune, and community of circumstances has every advantage over a love match. In France, which after all is the only civilized country in the world, Isabel would marry Gray without thinking twice about it; then, after a year or two, if she wanted it, she'd take Larry as her lover, Gray would install a prominent actress in a luxurious apartment, and everyone would be perfectly happy.'

Mrs Bradley was no fool. She looked at her brother with sly amusement.

'The objection to that, Elliott, is that as the New York plays only come here for limited periods, Gray could only hope to keep the tenants of his luxurious apartment for a very uncertain length of time. That would surely be very unsettling for all parties.'

Elliott smiled.

'Gray could buy a seat on the New York stock exchange. After all, if you must live in America I can't see any object in living anywhere but in New York.'

I left soon after this, but before I did Elliott, I hardly know why, asked me if I would lunch with him to meet the Maturins, father and son.

'Henry is the best type of the American businessman,' he said, 'and I think you ought to know him. He's looked after our investments for many years.'

I hadn't any particular wish to do this, but no reason to refuse, so I said I would be glad to.

I had been put up for the length of my stay at a club which possessed a good library, and next morning I went there to look at one or two of the university magazines that for the person who does not subscribe to them have always been rather hard to come by. It was early and there was only one other person there. He was seated in a big leather chair absorbed in a book. I was surprised to see it was Larry. He was the last person I should have expected to find in such a place. He looked up as I passed, recognized me and made as if to get up.

'Don't move,' I said, and then almost automatically: 'What are you reading?'

'A book,' he said, with a smile, but a smile so engaging that the rebuff of his answer was in no way offensive.

He closed it and looking at me with his peculiarly opaque eyes held it so that I couldn't see the title.

'Did you have a good time last night?' I asked.

'Wonderful. Didn't get home till five.'

'It's very strenuous of you to be here so bright and early.'

'I come here a good deal. Generally I have the place to myself at this time.'

'I won't disturb you.'

'You're not disturbing me,' he said, smiling again, and now it occurred to me that he had a smile of great sweetness. It was not a brilliant, flashing smile, it was a smile that lit his face as with an inner light. He was sitting in an alcove made by jutting out shelves and there was a chair next to him. He put his hand on the arm. 'Won't you sit down for a minute?'

'All right.'

He handed me the book he was holding.

'That's what I was reading.'

I looked at it and saw it was William James's
Principles of Psychology.
It is, of course, a standard work and important in the history of the science with which it deals; it is moreover exceedingly readable; but it is not the sort of book I should have expected to see in the hands of a very young man, an aviator, who had been dancing till five in the morning.

'Why are you reading this?' I asked.

'I'm very ignorant.'

'You're also very young,' I smiled.

He did not speak for so long a time that I began to find the silence awkward and I was on the point of getting up and looking for the magazines I had come to find. But I had a feeling that he wanted to say something. He looked into vacancy, his face grave and intent, and seemed to meditate. I waited. I was curious to know what it was all about. When he began to speak it was as though he were continuing the conversation without awareness of that long silence.

'When I came back from France they all wanted me to go to college. I couldn't. After what I'd been through I felt I couldn't go back to school. I learnt nothing at my prep school anyway. I felt I couldn't enter into a freshman's life. They wouldn't have liked me. I didn't want to act a part I didn't feel. And I didn't think the instructors would teach me the sort of things I wanted to know.'

'Of course I know this is no business of mine,' I answered, 'but I'm not convinced you were right. I think I understand what you mean and I can see that, after being in the war for two years, it would have been rather a nuisance to become the sort of glorified schoolboy an undergraduate is during his first and second years. I can't believe they wouldn't have liked you. I don't know much about American universities, but I don't believe American undergraduates are very different from English ones, perhaps a little more boisterous and a little more inclined to horseplay, but on the whole very decent, sensible boys, and I take it that if you don't want to lead their lives they're quite willing, if you exercise a little tact, to let you lead yours. I never went to Cambridge as my brothers did. I had the chance, but I refused it. I wanted to get out into the world. I've always regretted it. I think it would have saved me a lot of mistakes. You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.'

'You may be right. I don't mind if I make mistakes. It may be that in one of the blind alleys I may find something to my purpose.'

'What is your purpose?'

He hesitated a moment.

'That's just it. I don't quite know it yet.'

I was silent, for there didn't seem to be anything to say in answer to that. I, who from a very early age have always had before me a clear and definite purpose, was inclined to feel impatient, but I chid myself; I had what I can only call an intuition that there was in the soul of that boy some confused striving, whether of half-thought-out ideas or of dimly felt emotions I could not tell, which filled him with a restlessness that urged him he did not know whither. He strangely excited my sympathy. I had never before heard him speak much and it was only now that I became conscious of the melodiousness of his voice. It was very persuasive. It was like balm. When I considered that, his engaging smile, and the expressiveness of his very black eyes I could well understand that Isabel was in love with him. There was indeed something very lovable about him. He turned his head and looked at me without embarrassment, but with an expression in his eyes that was at once scrutinizing and amused.

'Am I right in thinking that after we all went off to dance last night you talked about me?'

'Part of the time.'

'I thought that was why Uncle Bob had been pressed to come to dinner. He hates going out.'

'It appears that you've got the offer of a very good job.'

'A wonderful job.'

'Are you going to take it?'

'I don't think so.'

'Why not?'

'I don't want to.'

I was butting into an affair that was no concern of mine, but I had a notion that just because I was a stranger from a foreign country Larry was not disinclined to talk to me about it.

'Well, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers,' I said, with a chuckle.

'I have no talent.'

'Then what do you want to do?'

He gave me his radiant, fascinating smile.

'Loaf,' he said.

I had to laugh.

'I shouldn't have thought Chicago the best place in the world to do that in,' I said. 'Anyhow, I'll leave you to your reading. I want to have a look at the
Yale Quarterly.'

I got up. When I left the library Larry was still absorbed in William James's book. I lunched by myself at the club and since it was quiet in the library went back there to smoke my cigar and idle an hour or two away, reading and writing letters. I was surprised to see Larry still immersed in his book. He looked as if he hadn't moved since I left him. He was still there when about four I went away. I was struck by his evident power of concentration. He had neither noticed me go nor come. I had various things to do during the afternoon and did not go back to the Blackstone till it was time to change for the dinner party I was going to. On my way I was seized with an impulse of curiosity. I dropped into the club once more and went into the library. There were quite a number of people there then, reading the papers and what not. Larry was still sitting in the same chair, intent on the same book. Odd!

Next day Elliott asked me to lunch at the Palmer House to meet the elder Maturin and his son. We were only four. Henry Maturin was a big man, nearly as big as his son, with a red fleshy face and a great jowl, and he had the same blunt aggressive nose, but his eyes were smaller than his son's, not so blue and very, very shrewd. Though he could not have been much more than fifty he looked ten years older and his hair, rapidly thinning, was snow-white. At first sight he was not prepossessing. He looked as though for many years he had done himself too well, and I received the impression of a brutal, clever, competent man who, in business matters at all events, would be pitiless. At first he said little and I had a notion that he was taking my measure. I could not but perceive that he looked upon Elliott as something of a joke. Gray, amiable and polite, was almost completely silent, and the party would have been sticky if Elliott, with his perfect social tact, hadn't kept up a flow of easy conversation. I guessed that in the past he had acquired a good deal of experience in dealing with Middle Western businessmen who had to be cajoled into paying a fancy price for an old master. Presently Mr Maturin began to feel more at his ease and he made one or two remarks that showed he was brighter than he looked and indeed had a dry sense of humour. For a while the conversation turned on stocks and shares. I should have been surprised to discover that Elliott was very knowledgeable on the subject if I had not long been aware that for all his nonsense he was nobody's fool. It was then that Mr Maturin remarked:

'I had a letter from Gray's friend Larry Darrell this morning.'

'You didn't tell me, Dad,' said Gray.

Mr Maturin turned to me.

'You know Larry, don't you?' I nodded. 'Gray persuaded me to take him into my business. They're great friends. Gray thinks the world of him.'

'What did he say, Dad?'

'He thanked me. He said he realized it was a great chance for a young fellow and he'd thought it over very carefully and come to the conclusion he'd have been a disappointment to me and thought it better to refuse.'

'That's very foolish of him,' said Elliott.

'It is,' said Mr Maturin.

'I'm awfully sorry, Dad,' said Gray. 'It would have been grand if we could have worked together.'

'You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink.'

Mr Maturin looked at his son while he said this and his shrewd eyes softened. I realized that there was another side to the hard businessman; he doted on this great hulking son of his. He turned to me once more.

'D 'you know, that boy did our course in two under par on Sunday. He beat me seven and six. I could have brained him with my niblick. And to think that I taught him to play golf myself.'

He was brimming over with pride. I began to like him.

'I had a lot of luck, Dad.'

'Not a bit of it. Is it luck when you get out of a bunker and lay your ball six inches from the hole? Thirty-five yards if it was an inch, the shot was. I want him to go into the amateur championship next year.'

'I shouldn't be able to spare the time.'

'I'm your boss, ain't I?'

'Don't I know it! The hell you raise if I'm a minute late at the office.'

Mr Maturin chuckled.

'He's trying to make me out a tyrant,' he said to me. 'Don't you believe him. I'm my business, my partners are no good, and I'm very proud of my business. I've started this boy of mine at the bottom and I expect him to work his way up just like any young fellow I've hired, so that when the time comes for him to take my place he'll be ready for it. It's a great responsibility, a business like mine. I've looked after the investments of some of my clients for thirty years and they trust me. To tell you the truth, I'd rather lose my own money than see them lose theirs.'

Cray laughed.

'The other day when an old girl came in and wanted to invest a thousand dollars in a wildcat scheme that her minister had recommended he refused to take the order, and when she insisted he gave her such hell that she went out sobbing. And then he called up the minister and gave him hell too.'

'People say a lot of hard things about us brokers, but there are brokers and brokers. I don't want people to lose money, I want them to make it, and the way they act, most of them, you'd think their one object in life was to get rid of every cent they have.'

'Well, what did you think of him?' Elliott asked me as we walked away after the Maturins had left us to go back to the office.

'I'm always glad to meet new types. I thought the mutual affection of father and son was rather touching. I don't know that that's so common in England.'

'He adores that boy. He's a queer mixture. What he said about his clients was quite true. He's got hundreds of old women, retired service men, and ministers whose savings he looks after. I'd have thought they were more trouble than they're worth, but he takes pride in the confidence they have in him. But when he's got some big deal on and he's up against powerful interests there isn't a man who can be harder and more ruthless. There's no mercy in him then. He wants his pound of flesh and there's nothing much he'll stop at to get it. Get on the wrong side of him and he'll not only ruin you, but get a big laugh out of doing it.'

On getting home Elliott told Mrs Bradley that Larry had refused Henry Maturin's offer. Isabel had been lunching with girl friends and came in while they were still talking about it. They told her. I gathered from Elliott's account of the conversation that ensued that he had expressed himself with considerable eloquence. Though he had certainly not done a stroke of work for ten years, and the work by which he had amassed an ample competence had been far from arduous, he was firmly of opinion that for the run of mankind industry was essential. Larry was a perfectly ordinary young fellow, of no social consequence, and there was no possible reason why he shouldn't conform to the commendable customs of his country. It was evident to a man as clear-sighted as Elliott that America was entering upon a period of prosperity such as it had never known. Larry had a chance of getting in on the ground floor, and if he kept his nose to the grindstone he might well be many times a millionaire by the time he was forty. If he wanted to retire then and live like a gentleman, in Paris, say, with an apartment in the Avenue du Bois and a chateau in Touraine, he (Elliott) would have nothing to say against it. But Louisa Bradley was more succinct and more unanswerable.

'If he loves you, he ought to be prepared to work for you.'

I don't know what Isabel answered to all this, but she was sensible enough to see that her elders had reason on their side. All the young men of her acquaintance were studying to enter some profession or already busy in an office. Larry could hardly expect to live the rest of his life on his distinguished record in the air corps. The war was over, everyone was sick of it and anxious only to forget about it as quickly as possible. The result of the discussion was that Isabel agreed to have the matter out with Larry once and for all. Mrs Bradley suggested that Isabel should ask him to drive her down to Marvin. She was ordering new curtains for the living-room and had mislaid the measurements, so she wanted Isabel to take them again.

'Bob Nelson will give you luncheon,' she said.

'I have a better plan than that,' said Elliott. 'Put up a luncheon basket for them and let them lunch on the stoop and after lunch they can talk.'

'That would be fun,' said Isabel.

'There are few things so pleasant as a picnic eaten in perfect comfort,' Elliott added sententiously. 'The old Duchesse d'Uzès used to tell me that the most recalcitrant male becomes amenable to suggestion in these conditions. What will you give them for luncheon?'

'Stuffed eggs and a chicken sandwich.'

'Nonsense. You can't have a picnic without
pâté de foie gras.
You must give them curried shrimps to start with, breast of chicken in aspic, with a heart-of-lettuce salad for which I'll make the dressing myself, and after the
pate
if you like, as a concession to your American habits, an apple pie.'

'I shall give them stuffed eggs and a chicken sandwich, Elliott,' said Mrs Bradley with decision.

'Well, mark my words, it'll be a failure and you'll only have yourself to blame.'

'Larry eats very little, Uncle Elliott,' said Isabel, 'and I don't believe he notices what he eats.'

'I hope you don't think that is to his credit, my poor child,' her uncle returned.

But what Mrs Bradley said they should have was what they got. When Elliott later told me the outcome of the excursion he shrugged his shoulders in a very French way.

'I told them it would be a failure. I begged Louisa to put in a bottle of the Montrachet I sent her just before the war, but she wouldn't listen to me. They took a thermos of hot coffee and nothing else. What would you expect?'

It appeared that Louisa Bradley and Elliott were sitting by themselves in the living-room when they heard the car stop at the door and Isabel came into the house. It was just after dark and the curtains were drawn. Elliott was lounging in an armchair by the fireside reading a novel and Mrs Bradley was at work on a piece of tapestry that was to be made into a firescreen. Isabel did not come in, but went on up to her room.

Elliott looked over his spectacles at his sister.

'I expect she's gone to take off her hat. She'll be down in a minute,' she said.

But Isabel did not come. Several minutes passed.

'Perhaps she's tired. She may be lying down.'

'Wouldn't you have expected Larry to have come in?'

'Don't be exasperating, Elliott.'

'Well, it's your business, not mine.'

He returned to his book. Mrs Bradley went on working. But when half an hour had gone by she got up suddenly.

'I think perhaps I'd better go up and see that she's all right. If she's resting I won't disturb her.'

She left the room, but in a very short while came down again.

'She's been crying. Larry's going to Paris. He's going to be away for two years. She's promised to wait for him.'

'Why does he want to go to Paris?'

'It's no good asking me questions, Elliott. I don't know. She won't tell me anything. She says she understands and she isn't going to stand in his way. I said to her, "If he's prepared to leave you for two years he can't love you very much." "I can't help that," she said, "the thing that matters is that I love
him
very much." "Even after what's happened today?" I said "Today's made me love him more than ever I did," she said, "and he does love me, Mamma. I'm sure of that."'

Elliott reflected for a while.

'And what's to happen at the end of two years?'

'I tell you I don't know, Elliott.'

'Don't you think it's very unsatisfactory?'

'Very.'

'There's only one thing to be said and that is that they're both very young. It won't hurt them to wait two years and in that time a lot may happen.'

They agreed that it would be better to leave Isabel in peace. They were going out to dinner that night.

'I don't want to upset her,' said Mrs Bradley. 'People would only wonder if her eyes were all swollen.'

But next day after luncheon, which they had by themselves, Mrs Bradley brought the subject up again. But she got little out of Isabel.

'There's really nothing more to tell you than I've told you already, Mamma,' she said.

'But what does he want to do in Paris?'

Isabel smiled, for she knew how preposterous her answer would seem to her mother.

'Loaf.'

'Loaf? What on earth do you mean?'

'That's what he told me.'

'Really I have no patience with you. If you had any spirit you'd have broken off your engagement there and then. He's just playing with you.'

Isabel looked at the ring she wore on her left hand.

'What can I do? I love him.'

Then Elliott entered the conversation. He approached the matter with his famous tact, 'Not as if I was her uncle, my dear fellow, but as a man of the world speaking to an inexperienced girl,' but he did no better than her mother had done. I received the impression that she had told him, no doubt politely but quite unmistakably, to mind his own business. Elliott told me all this later on in the day in the little sitting-room I had at the Blackstone.

'Of course Louisa is quite right,' he added. 'It's all very unsatisfactory, but that's the sort of thing you run up against when young people are left to arrange their marriages on no better basis than mutual inclination. I've told Louisa not to worry; I think it'll turn out better than she expects. With Larry out of the way and young Gray Maturin on the spot – well, if I know anything about my fellow-creatures the outcome is fairly obvious. When you're eighteen your emotions are violent, but they're not durable.'

'You're full of worldly wisdom, Elliott,' I smiled.

'I haven't read my La Rochefoucauld for nothing. You know what Chicago is; they'll be meeting all the time. It flatters a girl to have a man so devoted to her, and when she knows there isn't one of her girl friends who wouldn't be only too glad to marry him – well, I ask you, is it in human nature to resist the temptation of cutting out everyone else? I mean it's like going to a party where you know you'll be bored to distraction and the only refreshments will be lemonade and biscuits; but you go because you know your best friends would give their eye-teeth to and haven't been asked.'

'When does Larry go?'

'I don't know. I don't think that's been decided yet.' Elliott took a long, thin cigarette case in platinum and gold out of his pocket and extracted an Egyptian cigarette. Not for him were Fatimas, Chesterfields, Camels, or Lucky Strikes. He looked at me with a smile full of insinuation. 'Of course I wouldn't care to say so to Louisa, but I don't mind telling you that I have a sneaking sympathy for the young fellow. I understand that he got a glimpse of Paris during the war, and I can't blame him if he was captivated by the only city in the world fit for a civilized man to live in. He's young and I have no doubt he wants to sow his wild oats before he settles down to married life. Very natural and very proper. I'll keep an eye on him. I'll introduce him to the right people; he has nice manners and with a hint or two from me he'll be quite presentable; I can guarantee to show him a side of French life that very few Americans have a chance of seeing. Believe me, my dear fellow, the average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St Germain. He's twenty and he has charm. I think I could probably arrange a liaison for him with an older woman. It would form him. I always think there's no better education for a young man than to become the lover of a woman of a certain age and of course if she is the sort of person I have in view, a
femme du monde,
you know, it would immediately give him a situation in Paris.'