even where his own pleasures were involved; and so, he was accustomed to
presenting the problem to his wife much as he presented her with an
allowance, recalling an engagement at one of the clubs, going out and
not returning until he was sure that Ethel had gone to bed "to sleep on
it." In this way, even when the subject proved a hard mattress,
Preston's couch remained downy, and Ethel would meet him, over the
breakfast eggcups, with the riddle solved.
In the instance of the disposal of Muriel, the matter proceeded as
always. Mrs. Newberry came downstairs next morning in her newest and
pinkest kimono, an embroidered importation from Japan, whose wing-like
sleeves showed plumper arms and wrists than such a garment is made to
display. Though her eyes were red, she smiled.
"You won't mind paying the child's school bills?" she quavered.
"Not if the school's far enough away," said Preston.
"I had thought----" began his wife.
"Because," said Preston, "it would be wrong to the girl to bring her up
at one of these New York finishing-schools. They inculcate extravagant
ideals; they're full of a lot of the little children of the rich, and
Muriel might acquire there a notion that she was to inherit some of my
money--which she isn't."
Ethel Newberry considered this hint final. She dropped at once to the
last of the dozen institutions of instruction that she had made into a
mental list, and Muriel was sent to a convent school.
"Though we are not Catholics," said Mrs. Newberry.
"Excellent discipline," said Preston. "Is it far away?"
"Nearly in Philadelphia."
"Oh, well, at holiday time----"
"She can"--Ethel brightened--"she can come----"
"Yes, she can have you come to see her," said Preston.
Muriel passed eight years at this school. So long as Mrs. Newberry's
conscience was able to conquer her desires, the young pupil's aunt would
run over to Philadelphia for the short vacations; the long ones were, as
often as could be arranged, spent by Muriel, by invitation, at the home
of one or another of her classmates. Now, however, the girl had
graduated and had remained as a post-graduate as long as the curriculum
permitted.
"She'll have to come out," said Mrs. Newberry.
"Of the school," asked Preston, "or into society?"
"Both. The one entails the other."
"What's the hurry?"
"Good heavens, Preston; if she stays there much longer she'll become a
nun!"
"Suppose she does?" asked Newberry, who was a Presbyterian. "I'm
surprised to hear you refer to a pious life as if it were a smash-up."
Nevertheless, in the end, he agreed that Muriel should pass the present
winter under his hospitable roof ("Though, further than that," he
mentally vowed, "I'll be damned if I endure"). So, Muriel had, without
too much effort on her guardians' part, been taken about with them on
numerous occasions lately, most recently to the Metropolitan, where
Stainton had met her.
It was on the morning after this meeting that, with commendable
promptness, but at a deplorably early hour--to be exact, at eleven
o'clock--Stainton called at the Newberrys'. His card was presented to
Mrs. Newberry through the crack of the door while that good lady was in
her bath.
Ethel, who was big, blonde, and bovine, struggled into the nearest
dressing-gown and hurried to the breakfast-room, where her husband, over
a newspaper, was engaged in his matutinal occupation of scolding the
coffee. Her face a tragic mask, Mrs. Newberry placed the offending
pasteboard by Preston's plate.
"Preston," said she. "Look at that. _Look_ at it!"
Newberry appeared shorter and thinner than ever as he sat crumpled over
the newspaper, his grey moustache short and thin and his head covered by
grey hair, short and thin and worn in a bang. He obeyed his wife's
request. He expressed no surprise.
"Looks like somebody's card," he said.
"It is, Preston," wailed his wife. "It is that awful western person's
that George Holt would drag to our box--_our_ box--last night."
"My dear," said Newberry, "Mr.--er--what's his name?--oh, ah:
Stainton;--yes--Mr. Stainton appears to be a man of means. Concerning
the rich nothing except good."
"But his card, Preston; his card!"
"What's the matter with his card?"
"He has sent it up--here--at this time of day!"
"Hum. Western eccentricity, I suppose. He'll get over all that sort of
thing in time."
Ethel was hopping heavily from one slippered foot to the other.
"He hasn't merely left it," she distractedly explained. "He's here--he's
actually in the house."
"Well, he's not a burglar, Ethel."
"Don't talk so, Preston. I know he's not a burglar. But what does he
want here at this hour?"
"I suppose he wants to see you."
"Now? _What_ can he want to see _me_ about at 11 A.M.?"
"If you really want to know, my dear, I think that the best way to
satisfy your curiosity is to go down and ask him."
"How can I?" She spread wide her arms, the more clearly to bring to her
husband's wandering attention the fact that she was not yet by any means
dressed to receive callers. "Won't you go?" she pleaded.
"Why should I?" asked Newberry. "_I'm_ not in the least curious----This
coffee is worse every morning. You really must have Mrs. Dawson
discharge Jane."
Ethel uttered a mighty sob and fled. She sent word to Stainton that she
would be down in five minutes to greet him. After half an hour, she
entered the reception room. Not ten minutes later, she rushed again upon
her husband, this time in the smoking room, that she called his "study."
"What on earth do you suppose he wants?" she cried.
Preston, with a face like a martyred saint's, put down his newspaper. He
did not, however, take his cigarette from his mouth to reply.
"What who wants?"
Ethel wrung her hands.
"That awful man!" she said.
"Is it possible that you are referring to my friend, Mr.--er--Mr.
Stainton?"
"Of course I am, Preston."
"Oh! He's still here?"
"Why, yes. I've only just seen him."
"You made him wait rather long, my dear. I hope you are not keeping him
waiting again."
"What else could I do?"
"How do I know?"
"Preston, do try to show a little interest. I say: what on earth do you
suppose he wants?"
"If he was as bored by that performance at the Metropolitan as I was,"
said Newberry, yawning, "he wants a drink. Don't _you_ know what he
wants?"
"He wants--he wants," Ethel dramatically brought it out, "to take Muriel
for a ride in his motor."
Preston had been seated in an arm-chair without the slightest indication
of disturbing himself either for his wife or the visitor. At this
announcement by Mrs. Newberry he rose with what, for him, was alacrity.
"I'll call her myself," he said.
"But, Preston! Think of it!"
"That is just what I am doing, my dear--and I think confoundedly well of
it, let me tell you."
"In his motor!" Mrs. Newberry repeated the phrase as if it were pregnant
with evil.
"What's the matter with his motor?" snapped Preston. "It's a motor, you
say, not a monoplane. Mr.--Mr. Stainton has money enough to buy a safe
motor--as motors go."
"Oh, Preston, consider: Muriel--alone--morning! The child isn't even
really out yet!"
At this, Newberry fronted his wife squarely. For perhaps the first time
in his life, he suffered the pains of definite assertion.
"Now, understand, Ethel," he said, "let's cut out all this rot about
Muriel. The girl is _not_ such a child and she is out: she's out of
school, and that's all the outing she's going to get. In fact, it's high
time she was in again."
"She can't go back to the convent, Preston."
"Mr. Stainton doesn't want to motor her back to the convent. No. But if
we manage things with half a hand, she needn't be much longer at large.
Now, don't keep my friend Mr. Stansfield waiting any longer. I surmise
that he has his machine with him?"
"He came in it. It's at the door. I couldn't see the make."
"No. Naturally. Well, his bringing it along shows him to be a man of
expedition. It's what we might expect of a successful miner. And it is
promising for other reasons, too. Get Muriel, take her down, hand her
over to him with your blessing--but be sure you hand her over as your
dearest treasure--and then come back here to me."
Saying this, Preston resumed the perusal of his newspaper.
Ethel left the room. When she returned, she had the air of seeing blood
upon her hands.
"Well?" asked Preston.
"They're gone."
Preston folded the paper and laid it carefully upon the table that stood
beside him. The mood of assertion still tore at his vitals.
"Now then," he began, "about this Mr. Stansfield----"
"Stainton," mildly corrected his wife as she took a seat opposite him
and looked out over the now rapidly filling Madison Avenue.
"Stainton." Newberry accepted the amendment. "What's wrong with him?"
"Oh," said Ethel, her fingers twisting in her lap, "it's not that.
There's nothing _wrong_ with him."
"Well, then!" Preston spoke as if his wife's admission settled the
matter.
But it did not settle the matter.
"Only he is not----" Ethel added: "Is he quite a gentleman?"
Newberry sighed as one sighs at a child that will not comprehend the
simplest statement.
"It's hard for art to compete with Nature," said he; "a gentleman is
man-made, but Nature can do better when she wants."
"We don't really know him."
"I know a good deal about him, Ethel. Enough for present purposes."
"From Mr. Holt?"
"Yes. When Holt read of his success in the papers, the canny George went
to his brokers and made inquiries--thorough inquiries."
"He seems to have got whatever money he has very quickly, Preston."
"That only proves that he is either lucky or crooked. It doesn't prove
he didn't get it. What makes you think he's not quite a gentleman?"
"Well," said Ethel, "----that."
"Poof!" said Newberry. "He was talking a good deal to Muriel at the
opera last night. Didn't he behave all right?"
"I don't know. I suppose so. I asked her what he talked about, and she
said she didn't know."
"Very sensible of her, I'm sure. I wouldn't have expected it of her. It
goes to show that she's not too young to marry."
Ethel permitted herself a fat start.
"O, Preston, you never mean----"
"Now, my dear, you know very well that we've meant nothing else. You've
known it ever since I sent you to call Muriel."
"And you don't think him too old for her?"
"Old? He's probably not fifty."
"Mr. Holt said he thought fifty."
"Very well: fifty. Fifty and eighteen. The one has the youth and the
other supplies the balance. Most suitable. Besides, it's done every day.
Heavens, Ethel, you mustn't expect everything!"
"But do you think there's nobody else, Preston? She has been away a good
deal, you know, and----"
"Somebody else?"
"Yes." Ethel's eyes sought her husband's and, meeting them, fell.
"Somebody that the child cares for," she murmured.
"Stuff!" said Preston. "That convent-place has a high reputation for
the way it's conducted. Also, any man of forty can steal a girl from any
boy of twenty if he only cares to try. The only trouble is that he
hardly ever cares enough about it to try."
"Fifty," repeated Mrs. Newberry.
"Fifty,--granted," continued Preston. "Where we're lucky is that this
fellow seems to want to try--supposing there is any other chap, and of
course there isn't."
"Do you think, Preston"--Ethel's eyes were downcast--"that she can learn
to love him?"
"Ethel!" said Preston.
"But, dear," Ethel insisted, "it does seem a little as if this were the
sort of thing that a girl ought to be left to decide for herself."
Newberry had risen and gone to the mantelpiece to seek a fresh
cigarette. His wife's words brought him to a stop. He folded his thin
arms across his chest.
"Look here," he said; "we have got to face this thing right now, and
once and for all. What are the facts in the case? The facts are these:
Here's Muriel with a pretty face and a good, sound, sensible education
of the proper homely sort, which includes a healthy ignorance of this
wicked world. And here's this fellow Stainsfield, or Stainborough, or
whatever his name is, and I'm sure it makes no difference, a strong,
fatherly kind of old dodo, comes to New York, 'b'gosh,' with his eyes
bugging out at the first good-looker they light on. Well, he's not the
Steel Trust, or a Transatlantic steamship combination, but he's what,
until our palates were spoiled twenty years or so ago, we'd have called
a confoundedly rich man. Understand? Then add to it that Muriel hasn't a
cent of her own and no prospects--_no prospects_, mind you. And now see
whether you'd not better forget to talk sentiment and begin to get busy.
If you and Muriel don't get busy, it's a hundred-to-one shot some other
girl will--and'll get him damned quick. Then Muriel will probably be
left to get a job as school-teacher or something-or-other nearly as bad.
He's worth a half-million if he's worth a cent."
Ethel Newberry's large, innocent eyes opened wide. If surprise can be
placid, they were placidly surprised.
"Are you quite sure about the money, dear?" she asked.
V
ONE ROAD TO LOVE
Among the little company of persons aware of Jim Stainton's sentimental
inclinations, or so far as were concerned the people most intimately
affected by those inclinations, there appeared, thus far, to be a
singular unanimity of opinion regarding the matter. Stainton, it is to
be supposed, approved because the inclinations concurred with his pet
theories. Newberry, although he did not know anything about Stainton's
pet theories and would in all probability have jeered at them had he
been enlightened, proved ready to welcome the miner because he had
decided that the miner should relieve the Newberry household of a quiet
presence that, its quiescence to the contrary notwithstanding,
distinctly disturbed the even course of Newberry's existence. Ethel, as
may be readily believed, found, under her husband's expert guidance, no
difficulty in reaching the conclusion that, as she put it, "a match of
this sort would be for the child's best interests."
To be sure, there was George Holt, if one counted him and his verdict.
Still, even in this singularly imperfect world, where we believe in
majorities and where they misgovern us, we acknowledge the purging
benefits of an ever-present party in opposition; and the party in
opposition to James Stainton was now composed of Mr. George Vanvechten
Holt. He was a splendid minority of one, but he was not one of those
most intimately affected, and he was not generally the sort of
individual noticed. Stainton had saved his life, yet even Holt admitted
that the life was scarcely worth the saving.
"Not that I care anything about the youngster for her own sake," he
would say, night after night, at his club, where he had made all the
club-members he knew an exception to his promise of secrecy; "it's not
that, and it isn't that my liking for Stainton shuts my eyes to his
faults. Not a little bit. Tying up little Muriel to a man half a hundred
years old is like sending virgins to that Minotaur-chap and all that
sort of thing. And hitching good old Jim to a girl of eighteen is like
fastening a scared bulldog to the tail of some new-fangled and
unexploded naval-rocket: you don't know what's inside of it and you
don't know where it's going to land; all you do know is that it's going
to be mighty mystifying to the dog. Still, as I say, I'm not personal.
What makes me sore is the principle of the thing. It's so rottenly
unprincipled, you know."
Holt, however, always ended by declaring that he would not attempt to
interfere. He intimated, darkly, that he could, if he would, interfere
with considerable effect, but he was specific, if darker, in his
reasons therefor, in his decision not to attempt to save his threatened
friends or fight for his outraged principles.
The truth was that George had made one more endeavour after the evening
of the opera. He was severely rebuffed. Because, as he never tired of
stating, he really liked Stainton and would not forget that the miner
had saved his life, he recurred, after much painful plucking-up of
courage, to the amatory subject, which only intoxication had permitted
him so boldly to pursue on the night previous.
He was seated in Stainton's sitting-room high in the hotel. It was late
afternoon; the rumble and clatter of the city rose from the distant
street, and Stainton, full of fresh memories of his motor drive with
Muriel, was walking backward and forward from his bedroom, slowly
getting into evening clothes.
"I sure never would have thought you were morbid," said Holt, from his
seat on the edge of a table, whence he dangled his legs.
"Morbid?" repeated Stainton. "I am not."
"I mean--you know: about death and old age and all that sort of thing."
"I thought I had explained all that last night."
"It must have been over when I was with you in the West."
"It wasn't."
"Not when you were the first man to volunteer to go down in the shaft
of 'Better Days' mine after the explosion?"
"I have rarely been more afraid than I was then."
"Or when you played head-nurse in the spotted-fever mess at Sunnyside?"
"I was nearly sick--scared sick--myself."
Holt's patent-leather boots flashed in and out of the shadow cast by the
table-edge.
"Hum," he said. "It don't seem to show a healthy state of mind, does
it?"
Stainton had disappeared into his bedroom. From there his answer came,
partly muffled by the half-closed door.
"I don't care to talk any more about it. I made my explanation to you
last night, because I had promised to make one. That's all."
"I'm afraid I was a bit illuminated last night," said Holt.
"You were."
"Still, you know, I knew what I was saying."
Stainton did not reply.
"And what I said," Holt supplemented, "is what I think now and what I
always will think."
"Very well. Let it go at that, George."
Holt made a mighty effort.
"The plain truth is," said he, "that people will call you an old fool to
buy a piece of undressed kid."
Stainton's bulky figure filled the doorway. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, his hands busy with the collar-button at the back of his
neck.
"That will do," he said.
"I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings----" said Holt.
"Then keep quiet."
"But you ought to know what people will say. Someone's got to tell you."
"I don't care what people will say."
"They'll say----"
Stainton advanced. His hands were now at his side, idle, but his face
was completely calm.
"Never mind," he said.
"They'll say," concluded Holt, "that you're buying the little girl, and
that you've been cheated in the transaction----"
Stainton's hands were raised. They descended heavily upon Holt's
shoulders. They plucked Holt from his perch and shook him until his
teeth chattered. Then they dropped him, rather gently, into a chair.
"Now," said Stainton. His face was firm, and there was a cold blue flame
playing from under his brows, but he was not even breathing hard. "Now,
let this end it. If you want to be my friend, let this end your comments
on my personal affairs. If you do not want to be my friend, go on
talking as you have been, and I will throw you out of the window."
This incident partially accounts for Holt's resolute refusal thereafter
to advise Stainton. Advise him further George certainly did not,
although among his club-fellows he expressed himself as extremely
anxious to have it remembered that, should anything go wrong with
Stainton, George Holt had predicted as much.
There remained, however, one person of importance to Stainton's project
that still remained unconsulted and might have some opinion of more or
less weight in regard to it. This was Muriel Stannard.
What she thought, or what she would ultimately come to feel about his
plan, did occupy space in Stainton's cogitations. Notwithstanding his
romanticism, Stainton was not so blind to fact as to fail to see that
the girl's mind was as virgin as her body. Indeed, her brain, so far as
her education might be said to have developed that organ, was less
advanced than the rest of her physique, and this not because she was not
intelligent, for now that she was in the world at last he could see her
daily hastening toward mental maturity, but because her pastors and
masters had brought her up in the manner supposed to be correct for
girls of her position. Critics of that manner might say that its
directors proceed on the theory that, since life is full of serpents,
the best way to train children for life is not to teach them to
distinguish between harmless and venomous reptiles, but to keep them in
such ignorance of the snakes that they will be sure not to know one when
they see it. Yet Stainton, anything rather than a critic of the
established order, found himself not displeased with this
manifestation--or lack of it. He wanted youth; he wanted his long lost,
long postponed romance, and chance had put both these things within his
reach in the person of this dusky-eyed girl. Physically she was what her
mother had been, mentally she could be trained to complete resemblance.
He would make of her what he conceived to be the best. And so he loved
her.
To ascertain her opinion, to predetermine it, Stainton was now
elaborately preparing. Beginning with that introductory motor ride, in
which Stainton's cautious manipulation of the automobile seemed to
Muriel's unspoiled delight a union of skill and daring, he went about
his courtship in what he believed a frank and regular way; in a way that
both Preston and Ethel Newberry considered absolutely committal; in a
way that, consider it as she might, Muriel accepted with every evidence
of girlish pleasure.
There were more motor drives, with the aunt now playing chaperon: a
chaperon that conscientiously chaperoned as little as possible. There
were small theatre parties, small suppers, small dinners. One or two
mothers of daughters, who dared to be civil to Stainton, were shooed
away, attacked by Ethel with all the brazen loyalty of a ponderous hen
defending her chicks from the assault of a terrier. The Newberrys, as in
duty bound, retaliated upon Stainton's theatres, dinners, and suppers
with two teas and a luncheon. Stainton "came back at them," as George
Holt phrased it, with more suppers, theatres, and dinners, the dramas
always carefully selected to suit the immature condition of Muriel's
soul; and so the whole courtship progressed along those conventional
lines which lay the road to the altar over a plain of rich foods
irrigated by vintage wines.
"Do you like this sort of thing?" Stainton heard himself asking the girl
during one of the morning walks that he was permitted to take with her,
unescorted, through Central Park.
"What sort of thing?" asked Muriel. "A day like this? I love it!"
It was a day worthy of being loved: one of those crisp autumnal days
when New York is at its best and when the air, from the earth to the
clear blue zenith, has a crystal clarity and a bracing tang that none
other of the world's great cities possesses. Stainton felt as he used on
some Rocky Mountain peak with the crests of lower eminences rolling away
to the horizon like the waves of an inland sea below him; and Muriel,
her cheeks glowing, walked by his side more like some firm-breasted
nymph of those forests than a child of modern days and metropolitan
civilisation.
"Yes," said Stainton, "this is splendid. But I meant the whole thing:
New York, the life here, the city."
"I love that, too," said Muriel.
To Stainton's ear the use of one's first Latin verb translated was not
merely schoolgirl carelessness and want of variety of phrase; it was an
accurate expression of her abounding capacity for intense affection, her
splendid fortune of emotion and her equally splendid generosity in its
disposal.
"So do I," he said. "You can't begin to know how much it means to me to
get back here."
"From the West?" Her eyes were soft at this. "But the West must be so
romantic."
"Scarcely that. It has its points, but romance is not one of them."
"Oh, but your life there was romantic." She nodded wisely. "I know," she
said.
Stainton's smile was tenderly indulgent.
"How did you get that idea?" he asked.
"Auntie Ethel has told me some of the brave things you did, and so has
Uncle Preston."
"They have been reading some of the silly stories that the papers
published when I made my big find. You mustn't believe all that the
newspapers say."
"I believe these things," affirmed Muriel. "Wasn't that true about the
time you rescued the man from the lynchers at Grand Junction?"