VIII
WITH A NICE MAN
We sat in the “cave,” the smallest of Tranton’s rooms, and the one consecrated to his choicest company. Mere acquaintances were never asked into the “cave,” and even friends found that the place expressed certain moods in the owner. When Tranton said, “Let us go into the cave,” or shuffled mutely into the place in his barbarically embroidered slippers, and lighted the candles, the favored one understood. It was impossible to tell precisely why candles were used here rather than more modern agencies of illumination. When I once ventured to ask Tranton he simply said, “I like them.”
In the candle light the “cave” looked to be a cross between a condensed studio and a business office. Rugs, skins, weapons, pipes, and trinkets littered the walls. There were other elements of conventional disorder. Over an oak desk in the corner were several photographs of women, an etching of Napoleon, a bow of yellow satin and a Turkish slipper filled with joss sticks. On the desk itself was a mess of literature and tobacco. Punctuating the triteness of the room were many little touches that were distinctively Trantonian, but which I spare publicity, lest they be repeated and thereby become trite in turn. Tranton himself personified something of the same conventionality relieved by difference. In the outer world he was so well dressed that no one ever spoke of his clothes, just as his place in society was so important and secure that no one ever called him a “society man.” He was old enough to have met a great many people; young enough still to have an open account with the affections.
As Tranton always took the chair by the desk, and as this when occupied blocked the path of retreat, he first sent me to the couch among the pillows. Then he drew over some pipes and a curious Egyptian jar containing his favorite weed. The pipe he chose for himself was of the sort you will see an Italian trench laborer biting, a black, hardened, surly-looking pipe which Tranton caressed with a tenderness that is lavished only upon inexplicable pets.
“When I left them,” said Tranton, resuming the talk we had begun in the other room, “they were all quarreling over the question of Kipling’s treatment of women. It was a great circus. That Miss Fanchell said she didn’t think that Kipling could have known many good women—I think she said any good women—at the beginning, and that since he married an American girl, rather than modify his literary attitude, he preferred to write about men, beasts and locomotives. Mrs. Arch thought that he only used women as literary accessories, and Mrs. Gameston said she had heard that Kipling was very timid with women and that of course he couldn’t understand them very well. Little Miss Stillberry said it was quite inevitable that men should know more of forward women. They appealed to me before I got away, and I told them I could be of no help whatever, because I didn’t understand either women or Kipling, though I liked both. I ventured to say, however, that if the American girl Kipling had married didn’t make him like women, in my opinion there was no hope for him. That let me out.”
“I should think it ought to,” I said.
“Women,” went on Tranton, with his eyes critically directed toward the bowl of his pipe, “will forgive a man for not understanding them, but never for not wanting to. Every debate of that sort has this explanation.”
“Did you tell them that?”
“I didn’t have time to stay and tease them. Perhaps I didn’t think of it until I got away. That often happens, doesn’t it?”