The Hillman Part 32

Graillot stopped eating, placed the remains of his cake in the saucer of his teacup, and laid it down. Then he leaned back in his chair and balanced his finger-tips one against the other.

"A woman!" he murmured. "How you astonish me!"

"Why?"

"Candor is so good," Graillot continued, "so stimulating to the moral system. It is absolute candor which has made friends of two people so far apart in most ways as you and myself. You surprise me simply because of your reputation."

"What about my reputation?"

Graillot smiled benignly.

"In France," he observed, "you would probably be offered your choice of lunatic asylums. Here your weakness seems to have made you rather the vogue."

"What weakness?"

"It is to a certain extent hearsay, I must admit," Graillot proceeded; "but the report about you is that, although you have had some of the most beautiful women in London almost offer themselves to you, you still remain without a mistress."

"What in the world do you mean?" John demanded.

"I mean," Graillot explained frankly, "that for a young man of your age, your wealth, and your appearance to remain free from any feminine entanglement is a thing unheard of in my country, and, I should imagine, rare in yours. It is not so that young men were made when I was young!"

"I don't happen to want a mistress," John remarked, lighting a cigarette. "I want a wife."

"But meanwhile--"

"You can call me a fool, if you like," John interrupted. "I may be one, I suppose, from your point of view. All I know is that I want to be able to offer the woman whom I marry, and who I hope will be the mother of my children, precisely what she offers me. I want a fair bargain, from her point of view as well as mine."

Graillot, who had been refilling his pipe, stopped and glowered at his host.

"What exactly do you mean?" he asked.

"Surely my meaning is plain enough," John replied. "We all have our peculiar tastes and our eccentricities. One of mine has to do with the other s.e.x. I cannot make an amus.e.m.e.nt of them. It is against all my prejudices."

Graillot carefully completed the refilling of his pipe and lit it satisfactorily. Then he turned once more to John.

"Let us not be mistaken," he said. "You are a purist!"

"You can call me what you like," John retorted. "I do not believe in one law for the woman and another for the man. If a man wants a woman, and we all do more or less, it seems to me that he ought to wait until he finds one whom he is content to make the mother of his children."

Graillot nodded ponderously.

"Something like this I suspected," he admitted. "I felt that there was something extraordinary and unusual about you. If I dared, my young friend, I would write a play about you; but then no one would believe it. Now tell me something. I have heard your principles. We are face to face--men, brothers, and friends. Do you live up to them?"

"I have always done so," John declared.

Graillot was silent for several moments. Then he opened his lips to speak and abruptly closed them. His face suddenly underwent an extraordinary change. A few seconds ago his att.i.tude had been that of a professor examining some favorite object of study; now a more personal note had humanized his expression. Whatever thought or reflection it was that had come into his mind, it had plainly startled him.

"Who is the woman?" he asked breathlessly.

"There is no secret about it, so far as I am concerned," John answered.

"It is Louise Maurel. I thought you must have guessed."

The two men looked at each other in silence for some moments. Out on the river a little tug was hooting vigorously. The roar of the Strand came faintly into the room. Upon the mantelpiece a very ornate French clock was ticking lightly. All these sounds seemed suddenly accentuated. They beat time to a silence almost tragical in its intensity.

Graillot took out his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. He had written many plays, and the dramatic instinct was strongly developed in him.

"Louise!" he muttered under his breath.

"She is very different, I know," John went on, after a moment's hesitation. "She is very clever and a great artist, and she lives in an atmosphere of which, a few months ago, I knew nothing. I have come up here to try to understand, to try to get a little nearer to her."

There was another silence, this time almost an awkward one. Then Graillot rose suddenly to his feet.

"I will respect your confidence," he promised, holding out his hand.

"Have no fear of that. I am due now at the theater. Your tea is excellent, and such little cakes I never tasted before."

"You will wish me good luck?"

"No!"

"Why not?" John demanded, a little startled.

"Because," Graillot p.r.o.nounced, "from what I have seen and know of you both, there are no two people in this world less suitable for each other."

"Look here," John expostulated, "I don't want you to go away thinking so. You don't understand what this means to me."

"Perhaps not, my friend," Graillot replied, "but remember that it is at least my trade to understand men and women. I have known Louise Maurel since she was a child."

"Then it is I whom you don't understand."

"That may be so," Graillot confessed. "One makes mistakes. Let us leave it at that. You are a young man of undeveloped temperament. You may be capable of much which at present I do not find in you."

"Tell me the one quality in which you consider me most lacking," John begged. "You think that I am narrow, too old-fas.h.i.+oned in my views?

Perhaps I am, but, on the other hand, I am very anxious to learn and absorb all that is best in this wider life. You can't really call me prejudiced. I hated the stage before I came to London, but during the last few months no one has been a more a.s.siduous theatergoer. I understand better than I did, and my views are immensely modified. I admit that Louise is a great artist, I admit that she has wonderful talents. I am even willing, if she wished it, to allow her to remain for a time upon the stage. What could I say more? I want you on my side, Graillot."

"And I," Graillot replied, as he shook his friend's hand and hurried off, "want only to be on the side that will mean happiness for you both."

He left the room a little abruptly. John walked back to the window, oppressed with a sense of something almost ominous in the Frenchman's manner, something which he could not fathom, against which he struggled in vain. Side by side with it, there surged into his memory the disquietude which his present relations with Louise had developed. She was always charming when she had any time to spare--sometimes almost affectionate. On the other hand, he was profoundly conscious of her desire to keep him at arm's length for the present.

He had accepted her decision without a murmur. He made but few efforts to see her alone, and when they met he made no special claim upon her notice. He was serving his apprentices.h.i.+p doggedly and faithfully. Yet there were times like the present when he found his task both hateful and difficult.

He walked aimlessly backward and forward, chafing against the restraint of the narrow walls and the low ceiling. A sudden desire had seized him to fly back to the hills, wreathed in mist though they might be; to struggle on his way through the blinding rain, to drink down long gulps of his own purer, less civilized atmosphere.

The telephone-bell rang. He placed the receiver to his ear almost mechanically.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Lady Hilda Mulloch is asking for you, sir," the hall-porter announced.