The Hillman Part 23

She moved a little uneasily in her chair. It might have been his fancy, but he imagined that she glanced under her eyelids toward the Prince of Seyre. The prince, however, had turned almost ostentatiously away from her. He was leaning across the table, talking to Faraday.

"You have not lost your gift of plain speech," she observed.

"I hope I never shall," he declared. "It seems to me to be the simplest and the best plan, after all, to say what you feel and to ask for what you want."

"So delightful in c.u.mberland and Utopia," she sighed; "so impracticable here!"

"Then since we can't find Utopia, come back to c.u.mberland," he suggested.

A reminiscent smile played for a moment about her lips.

"I wonder," she murmured, "whether I shall ever again see that dear, wonderful old house of yours, and the mist on the hills, and the stars shining here and there through it, and the moon coming up in the distance!"

"All these things you will see again," he a.s.sured her confidently. "It is because I want you to see them again that I am here."

"Just now, at this minute, I feel a longing for them," she whispered, looking across the table, out of the window, to the softly waving trees.

At the close of the luncheon, a servant handed around coffee and liqueurs. The prince turned to Louise.

"You must not keep our young friend too late," he said. "He has appointments with his tailor and other myrmidons who have undertaken to adorn his person."

"Alas," replied Louise, rising, "I, too, have to go early to my dressmaker's. Do the honors for me, prince, will you?--and I will make my adieus now."

They all rose. She nodded to Graillot and Faraday. The prince moved to stand by the door. For a moment she and John were detached from the others.

"I want to see you alone," he said under his breath. "When can I?"

She hesitated.

"I am so busy!" she murmured. "Next week there are rehearsals nearly every minute of the day."

"To-morrow," John said insistently. "You have no rehearsals then. I must see you. I must talk to you without this crowd."

It was his moment. Her half-formed resolutions fell away before the compelling ring in his voice and the earnest pleading in his eyes.

"I will be in," she promised, "to-morrow at six o'clock."

XIV

After the departure of her guests, Louise seemed to forget the pressing appointment with her dressmaker. She stood before the window of her drawing-room, looking down into the street. She saw Faraday hail a taxicab and drive off by himself. She watched the prince courteously motion John to precede him into his waiting automobile. She saw the two men seat themselves side by side, and the footman close the door and take his place beside the chauffeur. She watched until the car took its place in the stream of traffic and disappeared. The sense of uneasiness which had brought her to the window was unaccountable, but it seemed in some way deepened by their departure together. Then a voice from just behind suddenly startled her.

"Lest your reverie, dear lady, should end in spoken words not meant for my ears, I, who often give myself up to reveries, hasten to acquaint you with the fact of my presence."

She turned quickly around. It was Graillot who had returned noiselessly into the room.

"You?" she exclaimed. "Why, I thought you were the first to leave."

"I returned," Graillot explained. "An impulse brought me back. A thought came into my mind. I wanted to share it with you as a proof of the sentiment which I feel exists between us. It is my firm belief that the same thought, in a different guise, was traveling through your mind, as you watched the departure of your guests."

She motioned him to a place upon the couch, close to where she had already seated herself.

"Come," she invited, "prove to me that you are a thought-reader!"

He sank back in his corner. His hands, with their short, stubby fingers, were clasped in front of him. His eyes, wide open and alert, seemed fixed upon her with the ingenuous inquisitiveness of a child.

"To begin, then, I find our friend, the Prince of Seyre, a most interesting, I might almost say a most fascinating, study."

Louise did not reply. After a moment's pause he continued:

"Let me tell you something which may or may not be unknown to you. A matter of eighty years ago, there was first kindled in the country places of France that fire which ultimately blazed over the whole land, devastating, murderous, anarchic, yet purifying. The family seat of the house of Seyre was near Orleans. In that region were many oppressors of the poor who, when they heard the mutterings of the storm, shivered for their safety. Upon not one of them did that furious mob of men and women pause to waste a single moment of their time. Without even a spoken word save one simultaneous, unanimous yell, they grouped together from all quarters--from every hamlet, from every homestead, men and women and even children--and moved in one solid body upon the Chateau de Seyre.

The old prince would have been burned alive but for a servant who threw him a pistol, with which he blew out his brains, spitting at the mob.

One of the sons was caught and torn almost to pieces. Only the father of our friend, the present Prince of Seyre, escaped."

"Why do you tell me all this?" Louise asked, shivering. "It is such a chapter of horrors!"

"It ill.u.s.trates a point," Graillot replied. "Among the whole aristocracy of France there was no family so loathed and detested as the _seigneurs_ of Seyre. Those at the _chateau_, and others who were arrested in Paris, met their death with singular contempt and calm. Eugene of Seyre, whose character in my small way I have studied, is of the same breed."

Louise took up a fan which lay on the table by her side, and waved it carelessly in front of her face.

"One does so love," she murmured, "to hear one's friends discussed in this friendly spirit!"

"It is because Eugene of Seyre is a friend of yours that I am talking to you in this fashion," Graillot continued. "You have also another friend--this young man from c.u.mberland."

"Well?"

"In him," Graillot went on, "one perceives all the primitive qualities which go to the making of splendid manhood. Physically he is almost perfect, for which alone we owe him a debt of grat.i.tude. He has, if I judge him rightly, all the qualities possessed by men who have been brought up free from the taint of cities, from the smear of our spurious over-civilization. He is chivalrous and unsuspicious. He is also, unfortunately for him, the enemy of the prince."

Louise laid down her fan. She no longer tried to conceal her agitation.

"Why are you so melodramatic?" she demanded. "They have scarcely spoken.

This is, I think, their third meeting."

"When two friends," Graillot declared, "desire the same woman, then all of friendship that there may have been between them is buried. When two others, who are so far from being friends that they possess opposite qualities, opposite characters, opposite characteristics, also desire the same woman--"

"Don't!" Louise interrupted, with a sudden little scream. "Don't! You are talking wildly. You must not say such things!"

Graillot leaned forward. He shook his head very slowly; his heavy hand rested upon her shoulder.

"Ah, no, dear lady," he insisted, "I am not talking wildly. I am Graillot, who for thirty years have written dramas on one subject and one subject only--men and women. It has been given to me to study many varying types of the human race, to watch the outcome of many strange situations. I have watched the prince draw you nearer and nearer to him.

What there is or may be between you I do not know. It is not for me to know. But if not now, some day Eugene of Seyre means you to be his, and he is not a person to be lightly resisted. Now from the skies there looms up this sudden obstacle."

"You do not realize," Louise protested, almost eagerly, "how slight is my acquaintance with Mr. Strangewey. I once spent the night and a few hours of the next morning at his house in c.u.mberland, and that is all I have ever seen of him. How can his presence here be of any serious import to Eugene?"

"As to that," Graillot replied, "I say nothing. If what I have suggested does not exist, then for the first time in my life I have made a mistake; but I do not think I have. You may not realize it, but there is before you one of those struggles that make or mar the life of women of every age. As for the men, I will only say this, and it is because of it that I have spoken at all--I am a lover of fair play, and the struggle is not even. The younger man may hold every card in the pack, but Eugene of Seyre has learned how to win tricks without aces. I stayed behind to say this to you, Louise. You know the young man and I do not. It is you who must warn him."