Hillman

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 178, 18 October 1927, Page 14

Hillman

By

E. PHILLIPS OPPENHELR.

CHAPTER XIX. •There can be no possible doubt, *’ Louise remarked, as she unfolded her napkin, “as to our first subject of conversation. Both Sophy and I are simply dying of curiosity to know about the prince’s supper party.” • “It was very cheerful and very gay,” John said. “Everyone seemed to enjoy it very much.” “Oh, la, la!’ Sophy exclaimed. “Is that all you have to tell us? I shall begin to think that you were up to mischief there.” “I believe,” Louise declared, ‘‘that every one of the guests is sworn to secrecy as to what really goes on.” “I can assure you that I wasn’t,” John told them. “The papers hint at all sorts of things,” Sophy continued. “Everyone who writes for the penny illustrated papers parados his whole stock of classical knowledge when he attempts to describe them. We read of the feasts of Lucullus and Bacchanalian orgies. They say that at supper time you lie about on sofas and feast for four hours at a stretch.” “The report seems exaggerated,” John laughed. “We went in to supper at half-past twelve, and we came out just before two. We sat on chairs, and the conversation was quite decorous.” “This is most disappointing,” Louise murmured. “I cannot think why the prince never invites us.” “The ladies of his family were not present,” John remarked stiffly. There was a moment’s silence. Louise had looked down at her plate, and Sophy glanced out of the window. “Is it true that Calavera was there?” the latter asked presently. “Yes. she was there,” John replied. “She danced after supper.” “Oh, you lucky man,” Louise sighed. “She only dances once or twice a year off the stage. Is she really so wonderful close to” “She is, in her way', very wonderful.” John agreed. “Confess that you admired her,’* Louise persisted. “I thought her dancing extraordinary.” ho confessed, “and. to be truthful. I did admire her. All the same, hers is a hateful gift.” Louise looked at him curiously for a moment. His face showed few signs of the struggle through which he had passed, but the grim setting of his lips reminded her a little of his brother. He had lost, too. something of the boyishness, the simple lightheartedness of the day before. Instinctively she felt that the battle had begun. She asked him no more about the supper party, and Sophy, quick to follow her lead, also dropped the subject. Luncheon was not a lengthy meal, and immediately its service was concluded Sophy rose to her feet with a nigh. “I must go and finish my work.” she declared. “Let me have the den to myself for at least an hour, please, I.oulmc. It will take me longer than Unit to muddle through your books.” J-nulse nodded, and rose to her feet, vviil leave you entirely undis--luj 0*4," she promised. “I hope, when you have finished, you will have somelinog mo»« agreeuble to say than you Jnxi before lunch. Shall we have our « off c-e upstairs?” she suggested, turnl V 1 should like to very much,” he i

replied. “1 want to talk to you alone.” She led the way upstairs into the cool, white drawing room, with its flower-perfumed atmosphere, and its delicate, shadowy air of repose. She curled herself up in a corner of the divan and gave him his coffee. Then she leaned back and looked at him. ‘‘So you have really come to London, Mr. Countryman?” “I have followed you,” he answered. ‘‘l think you knew that I would. I tried not to,” he went on, after a moment’s pause. “I fought against it as hard as I could, but in the end I had to give in.” “That was very sensible of you,” she declared, knocking the ash from her cigarette. “There is no use wearing oneself out fighting a hopeless battle You know now that there are things in life which are not to be found in your passionless corner among the hills. You have realised that you owe a duty to yourself.” “That was not what brought me.” he answered bluntly. “I came for you! ” Louise’s capacity for fencing seemed suddenly enfeebled. A frontal attack of such directness was irresistible. “For me!” she repeated weakly. “Of course,” he replied. “None of your arguments would have brought me here. If I have desired to understand this world at all, it is because it is your world. It is you that I want —don’t you understand that? I thought you would know it from the first moment you saw me.” He was suddenly on his feet, leaning over her, a changed man, masterful, passionate. She opened her lips, but said nothing. She felt herself lifted up. clasped for a moment in his arms. Unresisting, she felt the fire of his kisses. The world seemed to have stopped. Then she tried to push him away, weakly, and against her own will. At her first movement he laid her tenderly back in her place. “I am sorry,” he said, “and yet I am not.” he added, drawing his chair close up to her side. “I am glad! You knew that I loved you, Louise. You knew that it was for you I had come.” “Listen,” she begged earnestly; “be reasonable. How could I marry you? Do you think that I could live with you up there in the hills?” “We will live,” he promised, “anywhere you choose in the world.” “Oh, no,” she continued, patting his hand. “You know what your life is. the things you want in life. You don’t know mine yet. There is my work. You cannot think how wonderful it is to me. You don’t know the things that fill my brain from day to day, the thoughts that direct my life. I cannot marry you just because—because—*” “Because what?” he interrupted eagerly. “Because you make me feel—something I don’t understand, because you come and you turn the world for a few minutes topsy-turvy. But that is all foolishness, isn’t it? Life isn’t built up of emotions. What I want you to understand, and what you please must understand, is that at present our li,ves are so far, so very far, apart. I do not feel I could be happy leading yours, and you do not understand mine.” “I have come to find out about yours,” John explained. “That is why I am here. Perhaps I ought to have waited a little time before I spoke to

you as I did just now. Come, you can forget what I have said and done, but to me it will be an everlasting joy. I shall treasure the memory of it. JLt will help me—l can’t tell you quite in what way it will help me. But for the rest, I will serve my apprenticeship. I will try to get into sympathy with the things that please you. It will not take me long. As soon as you feel that we are drawing closer together, I will ask you again what I have asked you this afternoon. In the meantime, I may be your friend, may I not? You will let me see a great deal of you? You will help me just a little?’” “Yes,” she promised, “I will help. We will leave it at that. Some day you will talk to me again, if you like. In the meantime, remember we are both free. You have not known many women, and you may change your mind when you have been longer in London. Perhaps it will be better for you if you do.” “That is quite impossible,” John said firmly. “You see,” he went on, looking at her with shining eyes, “I know now what I half believed from the first moment that I saw you. I love you.” Springing restlessly to her feet, she walked across the room and back again. Action of some sort seemed imperative. A curious hypnotic feeling seemed to be dulling all her powers of resistance. She looked into her life, and she was terrified. Everything had grown insignificant. It couldn’t really be possible that, with her brains, her experience, this man

who had dwelt all his life in the simple ways had yet the power to show her the patli toward the greater things. Through the complex web of emotions w r hich made up her temperament, there suddenly sprang a primitive instinct, the primitive instinct of all women, rebelling against the first touch of a master’s hand. Was she to find herself wrong, and this man right Was she to submit, to accept from his hand the best gifts of life — she, who had locked for them in such very high, such very inaccessible places? She felt like a child again. She trembled a little as she sat down by his side. It was not in this fashion that she had intended to hear what he had to say. “I don’t know what is the matter with me to-day,” she murmured dii-

tractedly. “I think 3 must send you away. You disturb my thoughts. I can’t see life clearly. Don’t hope for too much from me,” she begged. “But don’t go away,” she added, with a sudden irresistible impulse of anxiety. “Oh I wish—l wish you understood me and everything about me, without mv having to say a word!” feel what you are,” he answered, “and that is sufficient.” Once more she rose to her feet and walked across to the window. An automobile had stopped in the street below*. She looked down upon it with a sudden frozen feeling of apprehension. John moved to her v:de, and for him, too, the joy of those few moments was clouded. A little shiver of presentiment took its place. He recognised the footman whom he saw standing upon the pavement. “It is the Prince cf Seyre,” Louise faltered. “Must you see him?” John muttered. “Yes!” “Send him away,” John begged. “We haven’t finished yet. I won’t say anything more to upset you. What I want now is some practical guidance.” “I cannot send him away!” John glanced toward her and hated himself for his fierce jealousy. She was looking very white and very pathetic. The light had gone from her eyes. He felt suddenly dominant, and, with that feeling, there came all the generosity of the conqueror. “Good-bye!” he said. “Perhaps I

can see you some time to-morrow.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, one by one. Then he left the room. She listened to his footsteps descending the stairs—firm, resolute, deliberate. They paused, there was a sound of voices—the prince and he were exchanging greetings; then she heard other footsteps ascending—lighter, smoother, yet just as deliberate. Her face grew paler as she listened. There was something which sounded to her almost like the beating of fate in the slow*, inevitable approach of this unseen visitor. CHAPTER XX. Henri Graillot had made himself thoroughly comfortable. He was ensconced in the largest of John’s easy chairs, his pipe in his mouth, a recently re-filled teacup—Graillot was

English in nothing except his predilection for tea —on the small table by his side. Through a little cloud of tobacco smoke he was studying nis host. “So you call yourself a Londoner now, my young friend, I suppose,” he remarked, taking pensive note of John’s fashionable clothes. “It is a transformation, beyond a doubt. Is it, I wonder, upon the surface only, or have you indeed become heart and soul a son of this corrupt city?” “Whatever I may have become,” John grumbled, “it’s meant three months of the hardest work I’ve ever done.” Graillot held out his pipe in front of him and blew away a dense cloud of smoke. “Explain yourself!” he insisted. “Look here Graillot,” he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ve done, although I don’t suppose you would understand what it means to me. I’ve visited practically every theatre in London.” “Alone?” “Sometimes with Miss Maurel sometimes with her friend, Sophy Gerard, and sometimes alone,” John replied. “I have bought a Baedeker, taken a taxicab by the day, and done all the sights. I’ve spent weeks in Jtc National Gallery, picture-gazing, and I’ve done all those more modern shows up round Bond Street. I have bought a racing-car and learned to drive it. I have been to dinner parties that have bored me stiff. I have been introduced to crowds of people whom I never wish to see again, and made one or two friends,” he added, smiling at his guest, “for whom l hope I am properly grateful.” “The prince has been showing you round a bit, hasn’t lie?” Graillot grunted. “The prince has been extraordinarily kind to me,” John admitted, slowly, “for what reason I don’t know. He has introduced me to a great many pleasant and interesting people, and a great many whom I suppose a young man in my position should be glad to know. He has shown me one side of London life pretty thoroughly.” “And what about it all?” Graillot demanded. “You find yourself something more of a citizen of the world, eh?” “Not a bit” John answered simply. “The more I see of the life up here, the smaller it seems to i?e. I mean of course, the ordinary life of pleasure, the life to be lived by a young man like myself, who hasn’t any profession or work upon which he can concentrate his thoughts.” “Then why do you stay?” John made no immediate reply. Instead he walked to the window of his sitting-room and stood looking out across the Thames with a discontented frown upon his face. Retwsen him and the Frenchman a curious friendship had sprung up during the last few months. “Tell me then.” Graillot continued, taking a hite from his piece of cake and shaking the crumbs from his waistcoat, “what do you find in London to compensate you for the things vou miss? You are cooped up here in this little flat—you, who are used to large rooms and open spaces, you have given up your exercise, your sports—for what?” “Well, I’ve joined a couple of clubs. One’s rather a swagger sort of place —the prince got me in there: and then I belong to the Lambs, where you yourself go sometimes. I generally look in at one or the other of them during the evening.” ! “You see much of Miss Maurel?” John swung round upon his heel. In the clear light it was obvious that he was a little thinner in tiie lace, and that some of the tan had gone from the complexion. “I am staying up here, and going on with it,” he announced doggedly, “oecause of a woman.” Graillot stopped eating, placed the remains of his cake in the saucer of his teacup and laid it down. T.hen he leaned back in his chair and balanced his finger-tips one agamst the other. “A woman!” he murmured. “How you astonish me!” “Why?” “Candour is so good” Graillot continued, “so stimulating to the moral system. It is absolute candour which has made friends of two people so far apart in most ways as you ai.d 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 j our weakness seems to have made you rather the vogue." “What weakness?” “It is to a certain extent hearsay, I must admit," Graillot pvocesded; “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 nge, 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 1” “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 1 marry, and who, I hope, will be the mother of my children, precisely what she offers me. I want a fair bargain, from lier 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 sex. I cannot make an amusement

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 tor the man. 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 abruptyl closed them. His face suddenly underwent an extraordinary change. A few seconds ago his attitude had been that of a professor examining some favourite object of study; now a more personal note had humanised 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." Graillot took out his handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. He had

written many plays, and the dramatic instinct was 3trongly developed la him. “Louise!” he muttered under his breath. “She is very different, 1 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 & Uttk nearer to her.” There was another silence, this tiaM almost an awkward one. Then Grilllot rose suddenly to his feet. “I will respect your confidence." ho promised, holding out his hand. “Have no fear of that. lam due now at the theatre. 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 pionounced. “from what I have seen and know 01 you both, there are no two people te this world less suitable for each other. “Look here,” John ex postulated. * 1 don’t want you to go away thinktaf so. You don’t understand what tn» means to me.” “Perhaps not, my friend,” Graillot replied, “but remember that it i* » least my trade to understand men women. I have known Louise Maura since she was a child.” “Then it is I whom you don’t un* derstand.” (±0 be Continued.)