friendly, and Muriel more and more restless, she could not tell why. Her
husband had passed his entire manhood among men and had acquired, though
he did not know it, the taste for the discussion of what, because of the
inferior grade of education that we grant to women, we magnificently
call manly topics. These he had not enjoyed since his wedding-day, and
now he was hungry for them. He did not neglect Muriel, and von Klausen
often made efforts to bring her into their conversations, but her mind
had never been trained to these subjects and was, moreover, now filled
with a more intimate concern. For an hour she would sit beside Jim and
listen to him with some admiration, but less comprehension of his
technical terms, and then for fifteen minutes she would leave the pair
and walk the deck alone.
"To me it seems," von Klausen was one day saying, "that the great danger
in your country is the disintegration of the unit of society, the
break-up of the home."
"Oh," said Stainton, "you're referring to our divorce laws?"
The captain nodded.
"Well, how are they in your country?" asked Jim.
"In Austria the code of 1811 is still in force, and under it there are
divorces allowed for violence, cruelty, desertion, incompatibility, and
adultery. Adultery is a crime and is punishable by five years'
imprisonment."
"That sounds as if your code is pretty broad, too," remarked Stainton.
"Ah, but it is applicable only to persons that are not Catholics, and
Austria is a Catholic country."
"I see. And what do the Catholics do?"
"They remain married."
"Always?"
"The law allows them the remedy of judicial separation."
Stainton was smoking a cigar. He puffed at it thoughtfully.
"Judicial separation," he finally said, "has always struck me as
begging the question. It denies liberty and yet winks at license. A good
marriage ought to be guarded and a bad one broken."
"That," replied von Klausen, "is the American view."
"Not at all. We have all sorts of views--and there is one great trouble.
You can get a divorce for nothing in Nevada, and you can't get it for
anything in South Carolina. The South Carolina result is that they have
had to pass a law there removing illegitimacy as a bar to succession."
"Nevertheless," said von Klausen, "except for Japan, there are more
divorces in the United States than in any other country in the world. I
was told, while I was in Washington, that the American statistics
were--they showed seventy-nine divorces to every hundred thousand of
your population. Your divorces increase more rapidly than your
population; they increase more rapidly than your marriage-rate."
"I don't know about that," said Stainton; "although I believe that I
have seen some such figures given somewhere, but I am clear on one
point: the man that treats his wife badly ought not to be allowed the
chance to have a wife any longer." He looked at Muriel, seated at his
side; he smiled and patted her hand as it lay on the arm of her chair.
"Don't you think so, dear?" he asked.
Muriel smiled in answer.
"Of course I do," said she. "Don't you, Captain von Klausen?"
The Austrian's face remained serious.
"I am of the religion of my country," he said.
"Eh?" said Stainton. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Not at all. Please." Von Klausen waived religious immunity. "I govern
myself one way, but I do not object to hear the reasons why other people
should choose other ways. Your way--your American way of divorce--is one
of the peculiarities of your great nation, and so I studied it much
while I lived there. If you permit, sir, to say it: the figures do not
well bear out the boast that the American husband is the best husband.
So, Mrs. Stainton?"
"But he is, just the same," protested Muriel.
"What do the figures show?" asked Jim.
"That two divorces are granted to wives to every one granted husbands."
"With all the respect to the best wife in the world," chuckled Stainton,
as he again patted Muriel's hand, "that is largely due to the fact that
the average American is so good a husband that, innocent as he may be,
he pretends to be the guilty party."
Von Klausen's eyes twinkled shrewdly.
"Is it not a little," he enquired, "because the disgrace of being judged
a guilty husband is easier to bear than the ridicule that is involved in
being unable to keep the love of one's wife?"
"Perhaps it is; perhaps it is," admitted Stainton. "But your figures do
not prove anything against us as husbands, Captain. The only reason that
similar figures don't show the men of other countries to be worse
husbands than we are--if, indeed, they don't show it--is that the laws
of other countries simply do not permit such easy divorce."
"Then what of your population?" asked the Austrian, reverting to his
previous line of attack. "It declines as divorce rises in your country."
Muriel rose abruptly.
"I think I shall take a little walk," she said.
Stainton half-rose. Von Klausen sprang to his feet.
"Permit me----" began the Captain.
"No, no," said Muriel; "please sit still, both of you."
"But, my dear----" said Stainton.
"I don't want to interrupt your talk," the girl said. "Finish that and
then join me, Jim."
"In ten minutes, then," said Stainton.
The men resumed their chairs. They looked after her strong young body
as, the wind blowing her skirt about her, she walked away.
"At all events," said Stainton heartily, "there goes the best American
wife."
Von Klausen had grown accustomed to the open domesticity of Americans.
He did not smile.
"She is a charming lady," he agreed. He looked out to sea. "And a
beautiful." After a moment he added: "Do you object, sir, if I say that
it is delightful, the manner in which the black hair gathers over her
forehead and that in which she carries her gracious head?"
"Object, Captain? I say you're quite right. I'm a lucky man. Have you
ever seen more lovely eyes?"
Von Klausen was still looking out to sea.
"In all the world I have seen but one pair that was their equal," he
answered.
Stainton pulled at his cigar.
"You were saying,"--he returned to their previous subject--"that the
American birth-rate declined as divorce grew. Do you think the increase
of the one causes the decrease of the other?"
"I admit that the rate falls in times of commercial depression."
"Of course: divorce and birth are both expensive. If you would look into
the matter a little closer, Captain, I think you would find that the
growth of child labour and the cost of living have about as much to do
with the fall in the birth-rate as anything else. Some of our divorces
are granted to foreigners that come to America because they can't get
easy divorces in their native lands. Most are given for desertion, which
generally means that they are arranged by mutual consent. Nearly as
many result from charges of 'cruelty,' which is as often as not
the man's habit of whistling in the house when his wife has a
headache--'constructive cruelty' we call it, although 'concocted
cruelty' would be a better term. Adultery comes only next, I am told,
and then neglect to provide, and drunkenness. The other causes are all
lower in the list. So you see that when our divorces are not really the
result of a quiet agreement between the husband and wife--and every
judge that signs a decree knows in his heart that nine-tenths are
that--they are the result of conduct which, for anybody who does not
consider marriage a sacrament, abundantly justifies the action."
The talk shifted to Wall Street and continued for half an hour.
"Von Klausen has some antiquated ideas," remarked Stainton to Muriel as
they were going to bed that night; "but he seems to be a pretty good
sort of man. I like him."
Muriel was standing before the mirror, brushing the blue-black hair that
fell nearly to her knees.
"Do you?" she asked, with no show of interest.
"Yes, he has good stuff in him. Of course, he's a mere boy, but he has
good stuff in him, I'm sure."
"I don't see why you call him a boy," said Muriel,
"Why? Why, because he _is_ a boy, my dear."
"I'm sure you seem just as young as he is."
Stainton laughed and kissed her.
"Little Loyalty!"
"I don't care," said Muriel, "I don't like him."
"You don't? Why, I thought----"
"I did like him at first, but I don't any more."
"Why not? You ought to. He admires you tremendously."
"Does he? How do you know?"
"By what he says. He told me to-day that he had never seen but one pair
of eyes equal to yours."
"Only one? That was nice of him, I'm sure. What else did he say?"
"He said--oh, lots of things. He said you had beautiful hair and that it
somehow grew in curves from your forehead, and I said that he was quite
right."
"Is that all?"
"All I can remember. How much do you want, anyhow?"
"Well, I don't like him."
"But why not?"
"I don't know. I suppose because you like him too well. I hardly see you
any more."
Stainton assured his wife that no man or woman in the world was worth
her little finger. He clambered into the upper berth and watched her for
some time as her bared arm rose and fell, wielding the brush. At last
the sight of that regular motion, added to the gentle rocking of the
ship, closed his eyes. He had had a full day and was tired. He was
soundly asleep when he was wakened by her embrace.
She was standing on the ladder and pressing his face to hers.
"Love me!" she was whispering. "O, Jim, love me!"
Stainton was still half-asleep,
"I do love you, Muriel," he said.
"Yes, but--_Love_ me, Jim!" she whispered.
She clutched him suddenly.
"Ouch, my hair!" said Stainton. "You're pulling my hair!"
"Oh!" Muriel's tone was all self-reproach. "I'm sorry. Did I hurt you,
dear?"
"No," he smiled. "No. There, there!" He patted her head. "It's all
right. Good-night, dearest."
"Good-night?" There was a question in the words as she repeated them,
but she retreated, albeit slowly, down the ladder. "Good-night, Jim."
"Good-night, dear," he responded cheerily, "and--I do love you, you
know."
She answered from below:
"Yes, Jim."
"You do know it, don't you, dear heart?"
"Yes, Jim."
He heard her draw the bedclothes about her. When he awoke in the
morning, she slept, but he would not breakfast until she was ready to
breakfast with him, and so he sat, hungry, and waited for the hour that
she devoted to her toilette. Then they went to the saloon, and
afterwards to the deck, together.
Neither on that day nor on the day following was Muriel alone with von
Klausen. Indeed, she was not alone with him again until they touched, at
ten o'clock of a bright morning, at Plymouth, where the grateful green
and yellow hills rose from the blue water, and the town nestled in a
long white belt behind a chain of grim, grey men-of-war. The tender had
stood by, and, now that some of the high stacks of mail-bags, which had
been filling the stern decks since dawn, were transferred, an endless
procession of slouching porters out of uniform carried, one brick to
each man for each trip, large bricks of silver down the gangways and
deposited them in piles of five, well forward on the tender. Jim had
gone to the writing-room to scribble a note that might catch a fast boat
from England to his agent at the mine, and Muriel was left beside the
rail to talk with the Austrian.
"It has been a delightful voyage, has it not?" he asked, in that precise
English to which she had now grown accustomed.
"I dare say," answered Muriel. "I don't know. You forget that I have had
no others with which to compare it."
"But you have not been bored?"
"No."
"It has surely been pleasant, for I have by it had the opportunity to
meet you and your brave husband."
"My husband, I know, would say as much of it because he has met you."
The Austrian bowed.
"Nor have I failed," he said, "to tell him how much the entire company
aboard seem to admire his charming wife."
Muriel was resting her elbows on the rail; her glance was fixed upon the
distant town.
"He told me," she responded, "that you thought my eyes about the second
best within your experience. I hope your experience has been wide."
Von Klausen flushed.
"My experience," he said, gravely, "has, I regret to tell you, been that
of most young men."
"Oh!" said Muriel. Her tone showed dislike of all that this implied, but
she recalled that Jim had had no such experiences as those to which von
Klausen plainly referred, and she suddenly felt, somehow, that this
difference between the men did not altogether advance Stainton.
"Nevertheless, dear lady," the Austrian was going on, "the eyes that I
thought as beautiful as yours--I did not say more beautiful--were eyes
that have long since been shut."
Muriel was now more piqued than before. Had the man been comparing her
to a dead fiancee to whom he, living, remained faithful?
"Were they Austrian eyes?" she asked, her own eyes full of obtrusive
indifference.
"No; they were Italian. Had you come to Europe three years ago, you
would have seen them when you went to the Louvre. They were the eyes
that have been given to the Mona Lisa."
Muriel and he were standing apart from the crowd of passengers that
watched the unloading of the silver. The girl turned to her companion.
Her glance was interested enough now, and she saw at once that his was
serious.
"There is something that I have been wanting to tell you," she began,
before she was well aware that she spoke--"something that I don't know
exactly how to say, or whether I ought to say it at all."
Von Klausen was openly concerned.
"If you are in doubt," he replied, "perhaps it would be better if you
first thought more about it."
But his opposition, though totally the reverse to what she had expected,
clinched her resolve.
"No," she said. "I ought to tell you about it. Now that I have started I
know I ought. It's--it's about that time in the fog."
Von Klausen's colour mounted. Then, politely, he pretended to forget the
incident.
"Yes, don't you remember? You must remember."
"I remember. It was a very sudden fog."
"Well," she said, "it was about what happened then. I must speak to
you--I must explain about that." She was holding tightly to the rail.
Von Klausen saw her wrists tremble. He made little of the subject.
"When you were frightened, and I took your hand to reassure you? Dear
lady, I trust that you have not supposed that I acted on my
presumption----"
"You're kind to put it that way," she interrupted. "You're generous. But
I want to be honest. I have to be honest, because I want you to
understand--because you must understand--just why I behaved as I did,
and you wouldn't understand--you couldn't--if I weren't honest with you.
Captain von Klausen, you didn't take my hand, and you know it. I took
yours."
He raised the disputed hand; he raised it in protest.
"Mrs. Stainton, I assure you that it was I who----"
"No, it wasn't. And I wasn't frightened by the fog, either. You must
remember that, from the way I spoke; I showed I didn't even realise what
a fog means at sea. So how could I be afraid of it? You did know and you
had just said that you were afraid of fogs. I took your hand. I did it
before I thought----"
"Yes, yes, dear Mrs. Stainton"--he was painfully anxious to end all
this--"before you thought. It was nothing but a kindly----"
"Before I thought," she pursued, determinedly, her dark eyes steady on
his. "You had told me of that awful experience of yours in the Bosphorus
and of the effect it had on you. No wonder it did have such an effect.
I am not blaming you for that. Only, I saw that you needed help and
comfort. I was sorry for you. That was all: I was just sorry. I did it
without thinking. I didn't know I had done it at all till it was all
over. You see," she concluded, "I just couldn't, now, bear to have you
misunderstand."
Carefully analysed, it might seem a contradictory explanation, but it
was no sooner free of her lips than she felt that her soul was free of
this thing which she had sought to explain.
Von Klausen was quite as much relieved as Muriel. He accepted it as she
wished him to accept it.
"Never for a moment did I misunderstand," said he.
"Then," added Muriel, "you will understand why I haven't mentioned it to
my husband----"
"Your husband?" The Austrian was all amazement. "Why should you?"
"Because," said Muriel, compressing her full lips and assuming her full
height, "I always tell Jim everything."
If the shadow of a smile passed beneath his military moustache, she
could not be sure of it.
"Everything?" said he. "But you have said that this was nothing."
"Exactly, and--don't you see?--that is one of the reasons why I haven't
told it. You will--you will please not refer to it to him, Captain von
Klausen, because----"
"Refer to it?" Von Klausen squared his shoulders. "To him? Never!"
His assertion was vehement.
"There is no reason why you shouldn't," Muriel replied; "only, as I say,
I haven't told him, and the only real reason that I didn't tell him was
because to do so I should have to tell him, too, that you had been
afraid; and that isn't my secret: it's yours."
The Austrian's boyish face was now very grave.
"I thank you," he said. "For your thought of me I thank you, and the
more I thank you because, by keeping my secret, you made it _ours_."
"Oh, but I don't mean----" said Muriel.
She did not finish, for she saw Stainton come from the writing-room and
stride rapidly toward them. He had written his letter and despatched it.
Although the three stood shoulder to shoulder in the customs-shed at
Cherbourg later in the day and occupied the same first-class compartment
in the fast express through the rolling Norman country to Paris, Muriel
and von Klausen were not then given an opportunity to conclude their
conversation. The Austrian bade the Staintons good-bye in the swirl of
porters and chauffeurs at the Gare St. Lazare, and Muriel took it for
granted that the interruption must be final.
XI
DR. BOUSSINGAULT
Muriel awoke in their apartments at the Chatham the next morning to find
herself decidedly out of sorts. Well as she had borne the voyage, she no
sooner put her feet from her one of the two little canopied beds to the
floor than she felt again the motion of the ship, and there was a return
of the nausea that she attributed to the trouble which silently weighed
upon her. She crawled back to the bed.
"I can't get up," she said.
Stainton was worried. He fluttered about her. He wanted to ring for
servants to bring half-a-dozen things that Muriel would not accept. He
wanted the smallest details of her symptoms. He wanted to send for a
doctor.
"Go away," Muriel pleaded. "Please go away."
"But, dearie----"
"I wish I were back in New York."
Stainton, though he now feared the sea, was ready to undertake the
return trip on the morrow.
"No, no," moaned Muriel. "Of course, now we are here, we must see
things. But I won't have a doctor, Jim. Can't you see how it is with
me? I shall be all right in an hour."
"All right, dearie; all right. I shall sit here by you."
"Please don't. I'm horrid when I'm sick."
"Not to me," said Jim.
"But I am. I look so horrid."
"I don't see it."
"Oh, you're good, Jim. But I want to be alone, just as you did when you
were seasick. Go into the sitting-room. Please. I'll call you if I need
you."
He went into their sitting-room, a room that shone with green and gilt,
and looked out, across a narrow street, at the grey houses of uniform
height and listened to the shrill street-sounds of Paris. He was lonely.
Somebody knocked at the door opening on the hall.
"Come in," he called. "I mean: _entrez_!"
A servant advanced, bearing a tray.
Jim saw that there was a card on the tray. He took it up and read the
name of Paul Achille Boussingault. He did not remember ever having heard
the name.
"_Pour moi?_" asked Jim.
"Yes, sir," said the servant, in a wholly unaccented English.
"Hum," said Jim. "Now I wonder what _he_ wants. Very well, show him up."
He hurried to the bedroom.
"Dear," he enquired, "tell me quick: how do you pronounce B-o-u-double
s-i-n-g-a-u-l-t?"
Muriel did not lift the covers that concealed her face.
"Go away," she said.
"I am going, only, dearie----"
"Go away--_please_!"
Jim re-entered the sitting-room. Was it Bou-sing-go? He had his doubts
about that French _in_. If he remembered rightly, it was a kind of _an_,
and the _n_ ended somewhere in the nose. And who was M. Boussingault,
anyhow?
"M. le docteur Boo-san-go," announced the servant.
"Wait. How was that?" asked Jim, and then found himself face to face
with his visitor.
His visitor was a stocky man, of not more than five feet five or six
inches in height, inclined to pugginess. He had a leathery complexion,
and the point of his thin Van Dyck beard was in a straight line from the
sharper point in which his close-clipped bristling hair ended above his
nose. It was black hair, and it retreated precipitately on both sides.
He looked at Jim through eyeglasses bearing a gold chain and bound
together by a straight bar, which gave the effect of a continuous scowl
to his heavy brows. He bowed deeply.
"M. James Stainton?" he enquired.
"Yes," said Jim. "Good-morning."
"Good-morning, monsieur. I have the honour to present the compliments of
my brother, M. Henri Duperre Boussingault, and to ask that you will be
so very good as me to command in the case I can be of any the slightest
service to you and madame during your visit to Paris."
Stainton was at a loss.
"Your brother?" said he.
"M. Henri Boussingault," repeated the visitor. "He has to me written
from Lyon to attend well to the appearance of your name among the
distinguished arrivals in the _Daily Mail_."
The mention of Lyons aided Stainton's memory. He recalled now that the
name of Henri Boussingault had appeared among those of the Lyonnaise
syndicate that was interested in the purchase of the mine.
"Oh, yes," he said, and his broad teeth showed in a smile. "To be sure.
This is very kind of you. Won't you sit down?"
Paul Achille Boussingault arranged his coat-tails and sat down with a
grunt that apparently always accompanied this action on his part. His
knees were far apart, and his feet scarcely touched the parquet floor.
He was dressed completely in black, with the ribbon of an order fastened
in the lapel of his frock-coat. His collar was low and round and
upright, its junction with the shirt concealed by a small, prim black
tie.
Stainton took a chair opposite him.
"Won't you have a cigar?" he asked.
"But thanks," said the visitor. "A cigarette only, if you do not
object?" He produced a yellow packet of _Marylands_, and offered it to
Jim.
"Thank you," said Stainton, lighting the cigarette. He did not like it,
because, being an American, he did not care for American tobacco; but he
tried to appear to like it. He wondered what he should talk about. "I
shall be glad to make use of your kind offer."
"You will honour me," said the Frenchman.
"Um. And are you, too, interested in mining investments?"
The visitor dismissed mines and mining to his brother with a wave of his
short hand. Stainton noticed that his fingers, though not long, were
well shaped and tapering, in contradistinction to the spatulate thumbs,
and that he wore a diamond set in a ring of thick gold.
"Those there are the avocation of my brother. I take no part in these
affairs of the bourse. You will me forgive if I say, monsieur, that I
have no traffic with such abominations of our society modern. I am a man
of science."
"A doctor?" asked Jim.
"Of medicine."
For a moment Stainton revolved the idea of taking the visitor to see
Muriel, but he divined Muriel's attitude toward such an action and
banished the thought. Her indisposition was, of course, but natural and
passing.
"What," asked Jim, "ought we to see first in Paris? We are strangers
here, you know."
The doctor flung out his short arms. He indulged in an apostrophe to
Paris that reminded Stainton of some of the orations he had read as
having been delivered in the councils of the First Republic.
Boussingault's English was frequently cast in a French mould and
sometimes so fused that it was mere alloyage; but he never paused for a
word, and he spoke with a fervour that was almost vehemence. There were
moments when Jim wondered if the Frenchman suspected him of some slur on
Paris and conceived it a duty to defend the city. What Jim must see was,
in brief, everything.
Nevertheless, so soon as the apostrophe ended, Boussingault appeared to
forget all about it. His sharp eyes travelled over the hotel
sitting-room, and his mind occupied itself therewith as devotedly as it
had just been giving itself to the Gallic metropolis.
"Ah, you Americans," he sighed; "how you love the luxury!"