So far as Stainton was privileged to know, the end of this first act in their comedy came about in much the manner designed by him. He moved quietly, as he moved in all the details of his life; he had the gift of precision, and when he arrived at what Sarcey called thescène à faire, though he was perhaps more in love, as that term is generally understood, than most lovers, he arrived not at all breathless, and found nothing to complain of in what awaited him.
Mrs. Newberry had ostentatiously deserted him and Muriel in the white-and-gold Newberry drawing-room splendid with spindle-legged mahogany and appropriately uncomfortable. It was evening, an evening that Stainton had taken care should be unoccupied by any disturbing theatre party or other frivolous forerunner to a declaration.
That Ethel and her husband had tacitly agreed to this arrangement, Stainton did not notice as significant. Mrs. Newberry, after the spasm of chaperonage that followed his first unwatched motor drive with Muriel, had tactfully begun to withdraw from the rôle of duenna, and the suitor had consoled himself in theocular demonstration of the proverb that two are company and three none. Hitherto he had enjoyed his privilege like the temperate man that he was, which is to say that he enjoyed it without abusing it. He belonged by birth to that class of society which, though strong enough in the so-called natural affections, seems to think it indecent to display emotion in public, and he was unwilling, for both his own sake and that of the girl he loved, to hurry an affair that might lose much by speed and gain much by circumspection. Now, however, the time came to test the virtues of his plan of campaign, and Stainton was glad that the combination of the time and the place and the loved one was not marred by any extraneous interference.
The wooer was at his best. The clothes that are designed for those short hours of the twenty-four when one is at rest without being asleep, became him; they gave full value to his erect figure, his shapely hips, and his robust shoulders; and, since he was about to win or lose that which he now most prized in life, and since he had always felt sure that the only courage he lacked was physical, his strong face looked far younger than its years and his iron-grey eyes shone not with fear, but with excitement.
While he leaned against a corner of the white mantelpiece above the glowing fireplace, so much as it was possible for his upright figure to lean, he was thinking that Muriel, opposite him, was more beautiful than hehad ever yet seen her—thinking, but without terror, how dreadful it would be should he lose her and how wonderful should he win. Young enough for her in that kindly light he almost looked and was sure he was; worthy of her, though he felt more worthy than most, he was certain that no man could be. He saw her as he had seen her that first night at the opera, but more desirable.
Seated in the farther corner of a long, low couch drawn close to the chimney-place and at right-angles to it, three or four rose-red pillows piled behind the suggestion of bare shoulders only just escaping from her gown of grey ninon draped over delicate pink, Muriel's slim body fronted the dancing fire and warmed in the light that played from the flames. Her blue-black hair waved about her white temples and the narrow lines of her brows; her lips, the lower slightly indrawn, were like young red roses after the last shower of Spring.
He felt again, as he had felt when he saw her in the Newberrys' box, that she was lovely not only with the hesitant possibilities of girlhood at pause before the door of maturity, but because she gleamed with the gleam of an approaching summer night scented and starred. He noted how the yellow rays from a high candelabrum standing near the couch cast what might be an aureole about her head and set it in relief against the distant, drawn curtains, the curtains of ivory plush,which shut the heaven of this drawing-room from the earth of everywhere else. In his every early adventure among the dreams of love, this lonely man of the desert, reacting on his environment, had been less annoyed by the demands of a body that clamoured in vain than by the dictates of a soul that insisted upon the perfection of beauty among beautiful surroundings beautifully encountered. Now he was to put into action forces that would either realise or break those dreams, and, knowing that, he imprinted on his memory this picture of her and always after remembered it: her white hands clasped about the great bunch of violets he had brought to her, the glory of her wayward hair, the curve of her throat, her dark eyes with their curving lashes, her parted lips.
She had again been asking him of his life in the mining-camps of Alaska and the West and about his solitary journeys prospecting for the gold that it had often seemed was never to be found, and Stainton, wishing not to capitalise his achievements and unable to understand why a girl should interest herself in what was simply a business history, had again evaded her.
"But you must have suffered a good deal," she said.
"Oh, yes," he said; "that is part of the price of Life."
"You did it all," she asked, "to win a fortune?"
"No," he answered, his glance as steady upon hers as it had been that night at the opera. "I did it allto win Life. That has always been what I wanted; that has always been what I never had: Life. I wanted—I scarcely know how to say it: the full, sharp, clean joys of being. You understand?"
"I think I understand," she said.
"I wanted them. I saw that no man could have them in these days, living as we live, unless he was economically independent and morally straight. I made up my mind to win economic independence and to keep morally straight at any sacrifice."
She drew her fingers a little tighter about the tinfoil wrapping of the violets. Over the purple tops of the flowers, as she raised them toward her face, her intent, innocent face returned his steady scrutiny.
"And you've won?" she asked.
He wished to cross to her, to come to the couch and lean over its back, and, with his lips close to her cheek, whisper his answer. But he would not do that; he had decided that to do that at this point would be to bring about for his benefit an unfair propinquity. Instead, he moved only a step from the mantelpiece and stood upright, his arms folded.
Only a step, but to the girl he seemed somehow to draw much closer. The atmosphere of the room was somehow strained to tension. She saw that his eyes, although they did not waver, softened, and, to fill a pause of which she began to be afraid, she heard herself repeating:
"And you've won?"
"That," said Stainton, "is for you to say—Muriel."
It was the first time he had called her by her given name. Her eyes fell. She lowered the violets and, looking only at them, raised a hand to finger them. The hand shook.
"For me?" she asked.
If there is one thing in which men are more alike than another, it is the manner of their asking women to marry them. Generally it adds to many pretences the cruelty of suspense. Stainton was not unusual.
"I have won my fight—yes," he said. "I have got the means. Can I gain the end? It's you who must tell me that."
She saw now.
"How can I help?" she faltered.
"I wanted Life," he repeated, and wished that he could see her face. "Life means more than money. Money will protect it, secure it; but Life means Love. Long ago I knew your mother."
Very simply, but directly, he told her how he had loved that other Muriel. His morbid fears he did not describe, but his first romance he sketched with a gentleness that, while she, her heart steadied, looked up at his reposed strength and remembered all the stories that she had heard of his adventurous career, brought a quick mist of tears to her eyes.
"Do you remember," he asked, when his story wasfinished, "how rudely I looked at you when I first saw you in the Metropolitan Opera House?"
"It wasn't rude," she said.
"You must have thought it so then."
"I—I didn't know what to think—exactly."
"Well, now you know. It was an astonishing resemblance that made me stare at you."
Her nether lip trembled.
"I didn't know my mother," she said.
"No," said Stainton, "but you are very like her." He waited a moment and then, as her eyes were lowered, went on: "That was a boyish love of mine for her. It was really not love at all—only the rough sketch for what might have been, but never was, a finished picture. But I went away, when your mother repulsed me, with the likeness of her in my heart. I wanted love; I worked to be fit to win love and to keep it once I had won it. Then I came back and saw in that box at the opera the living original of the dream-woman that had all those years been with me."
He came another step nearer.
"I arranged to meet you," he said, "and I knew at last I was really in love. I want to be to you what your mother would not let me be to her. It is you whom I love, not a memory. I love you. I was young then and didn't know. Now I am still young—I have kept myself young—but Iknow." He bent forward and paused. Then, "Muriel," he said.
The girl drew back. She put her hand before her eyes. The violets rolled to the floor.
"I—I can't tell," she stammered. "I didn't expect—I never thought——"
Even this Stainton had foreseen.
"Then don't hurry now," he said. He drew a chair beside her and quietly took her free hand. "Take your time. Take a week, two weeks, a month, if you choose."
"But it's so new; it's all so new," said Muriel. "I never suspected——Oh, I know girls are always supposed to guess; but really, really, I never,never——"
There was genuine pain in her voice.
"I don't know what is expected of most girls," said Stainton; "but of you I shall never expect anything but the truth."
She looked up at him with eyes perplexed.
"Yes—yes, that is just what I want to be: honest. And—don't you see?—that is just why—I am so uncertain—that is just why I can't, right away, tell you——"
He pressed her hand and rose. He did not like to hurt her.
"I ask only that you will think it over," he said. "Will you think it over, Muriel?"
She bowed her head.
"Yes," said she.
"And I may come back in——"
"Yes."
"In two weeks?"
"In two weeks." Her voice was low and shaken. "Oh, you don't mind if I ask you to go now?" she pleaded.
"I understand," said Stainton. "I'll be back two weeks from this evening. Good-night."
"Good-night, Mr. Stainton," said Muriel.
She waited for him to go. She waited until she heard the street door close behind him. Then she hurried in retreat toward her own room.
But Mrs. Newberry was lying in ambush on the landing when the girl came upstairs—Mrs. Newberry, broad in white satin, with diamonds at her neck and in her hair.
"Well?" asked the aunt.
"Oh!" cried Muriel. She started. "Aunt Ethel!"
"Well?"
"You frightened me," Muriel explained. "I didn't see you until you spoke."
"Well?" persisted Mrs. Newberry.
"Nothing. That's all," said Muriel. "Nothing—only that——"
Ethel became diplomatic:
"Mr. Stainton didn't stay very long?"
"Not very long, Aunty."
Ethel heard something ominous in her niece's tone.
"You didn't—you don't mean to say you sent himaway?"
"No, Aunty. Good-night."
"It's early. You're going to bed so early?"
"Yes, I think I'll go to bed. I'm—I'm tired."
"But it's early," repeated Mrs. Newberry, who was accustomed to order her life according to hours and not to reason.
"Is it?" said Muriel.
"It's scarcely ten. The library clock just struck."
"I think it struck some time ago."
"Did it?"
"I think I shall go to bed, Aunty."
Mrs. Newberry sought to bar the way, but she could not succeed in that when she could think of no pretext for detaining the girl, so Muriel brushed past her and went to her own room.
Ethel returned to the library—so called because it contained a few hundred unread books, the newspapers, and all the current magazines. She said to herself that she wanted to think it over, "it" being the opportunity that she had so ceremoniously afforded Stainton and Muriel, together with Muriel's sudden desire for privacy.
Nevertheless, think it over as she would, she made nothing of it. When Preston returned from one of his clubs, several hours later, she was no nearer to a solution than she had at first been, and she told him so.
"I don't understand it," said Ethel. "I don't understand it at all."
Preston enjoyed his clubs so much that he rarely returned from them in his pleasantest mood.
"Then," he asked, "don't you think it might possibly be just as well for you to let it alone?"
This occurred on a Thursday. As the week progressed and passed and James Stainton did not reappear, Mrs. Newberry found it increasingly difficult to follow the advice that her husband had pointedly suggested. She assailed Muriel several times to no purpose. She wrote to Stainton, asking him to come to dinner, but he replied that he was too desperately engaged in some business that she surmised was vaguely connected with a French syndicate and his mine. Then, Muriel's silence unbroken, she made one or two tentative advances, merely inviting the confidence that she had theretofore demanded as her consanguineous right; but her niece's manner of meeting these advances merely served to simplify the task of wifely obedience.
When light was at last cast on the puzzle, it was Muriel's free will that vouchsafed it. On the Wednesday that fell thirteen days after Stainton's mysteriously terminated call, Muriel entered Ethel's boudoir—it was a pink boudoir—where Mrs. Newberry was attempting, at eleven o'clock in the morning, to dress in time for a two o'clock luncheon.
"Can you spare Marie?" asked Muriel. Marie was Mrs. Newberry's maid, just then fluttering about her mistress, who, her dressing advanced only beyond theordeal of corsets, was seated, in a grandiose kimono, before mirrors.
"In two hours and a half perhaps I can," said Ethel. "Why?"
"Because I want to talk with you."
This was odd. It was so odd that Mrs. Newberry should have scented its import; only, it is difficult to scent the import of anything when one has supped late the night before, when the first "rat" has not been nested upon one's head, and when one has but an eighth part of a day in which to make ready for a luncheon.
"Really, Muriel," complained Ethel. "You do choose the most remarkable moments for conversation. It's only eleven o'clock! What on earth can you want to talk about at such an hour?"
Muriel quietly seated herself by the window.
"About Mr. Stainton," she said.
Mrs. Newberry started so violently that a shower of gilt hairpins clattered upon the dressing-table and floor.
"You may go, Marie," she gasped. She waited until the maid had shut the door. Then she turned her gaze full upon her niece. "What is it?" she cried.
"He wants to marry me."
Mrs. Newberry floundered to her feet and rushed upon Muriel. Her flowing sleeves flew back to her sturdy shoulders. She flung plump arms around Muriel's neck.
"My dear girl!" said she. She kissed the dear girl on both passive cheeks. Then she inquired: "You've had a letter?"
"No," said Muriel. "He asked me."
"But, my dear, he hasn't been here for nearly two weeks. It was—let me see—yes, it will be two weeks to-morrow evening."
"That was when he asked me, Aunty."
Mrs. Newberry's embrace relaxed. She looked hurt.
"And you never told me! I think that implies a lack of confidence—a lack of affection, Muriel."
"I don't know. I wanted to think it over first."
"Think it over! What was there to debate, I should like to know?"
"A good deal, it seemed to me; and anyhow, Aunty, I think this is the sort of thing a girl has to decide for herself—if she can."
"Where ever did you get such notions? A girl nevercandecide it for herself."
Muriel's answering smile was rueful.
"Icouldn't, at any rate," she said, "and so, even if I'm late about it, I've come to you."
Mrs. Newberry was reassured. After all, the thing had happened; Muriel's future—so we fatuous moderns reason—was at last secured. According to the custom of her time and class, Ethel had always taken it for granted that a poor girl married to a rich man is assafe as a good girl gone to Heaven—and more certainly comfortable. She became radiant. It was necessary only that they make such decent speed as would prevent any other young woman from interfering.
"Well," she said, "I'm glad youhavecome, because, since long engagements aren't fashionable any more, your uncle and I must naturally have all the warning possible—for your uncle will, of course, provide the wedding. I think it had better be next month—yes, next month and at St. Bartholomew's."
Muriel's cheek paled. She turned again to the window and looked out.
"I don't think you quite understand," she said. "I'm not sure——"
"Now, don't be silly," interrupted Mrs. Newberry. "I won't hear any foolish talk about a home wedding or a quiet wedding. It isn't the proper thing for a wedding to be quiet; it isn't natural; besides, you have been living here in your uncle's house, and you owe something to his position."
"That's not it." Muriel's back was still turned; her eyes were fixed on the cold rain that was falling.
"Well," asked Mrs. Newberry, in complete bewilderment, "then whatisit?"
"I am not sure that I love Mr. Stainton."
The plump Mrs. Newberry again rose. Her face was a pretty blank.
"Love?" she repeated, as if she had heard that wordsomewhere before but could not for the life of her recall where. "Love, did you say?"
"Yes," replied Muriel; "I don't know whether I love him."
"What next?" asked Ethel. "Love? You don't know whether you love him! The idea! You're too young to know anything about it, my child. Of course you love him. You're just too young to know it, that's all."
Muriel displayed a wistful face.
"I'm eighteen."
"A mere baby."
"Then I should think I was too young to marry."
"Doyou think so?"
"No, only——"
Mrs. Newberry waxed wise.
"As a matter of fact, Muriel, haven't you," she enquired, "often thought of marrying even when you were younger than you are now?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Well, then!" Mrs. Newberry in the past few weeks had acquired a few of her husband's mannerisms, together with some of his convictions.
But this convincing argument did not settle matters. Muriel again faced the window; she seemed to draw inspiration for her incomprehensible stubbornness from the prospect of dripping Madison Avenue.
"It's not so easy——" she began.
"Isn't he kind?" demanded Mrs. Newberry.
"Yes, he's kind."
"You certainly think him good-looking, child. In fact,Ishould call him handsome."
"I think he isalmosthandsome, Aunty."
"Of course he is. I have heard lots of women simplyraveabout him. And he is in love with you? You can't deny that?"
"Did you know it, Aunty?"
"How could anyone help knowing it? He shows it all the time. He can't keep his eyes off you."
"Then, why didn't you tell me?"
"Because——Why, it was so evident that we took it for granted you knew."
"We?"
"Your uncle and I, yes."
"Oh! There doesn't seem to be any doubt inhismind that he's in love with me."
"Exactly, Muriel; and he is rich—quite rich. Why, there are hundreds of girls in New York who would give their eyes to catch him. Hundreds of them."
"But he is——" Muriel hesitated.
"Yes?"
"He's not young, Aunty."
"What has that to do with it?"
"I don't know, but I should think it might have a good deal to do with it. Don't people say that the young love the young?"
"And marry them, you mean? Really, my dear, you have such romantic notions! In that case, what's to become of the old?"
"They're supposed to have married before they became old, I should think. Now, I am only eighteen. I don't know—I'm only speculating about it, and I like Mr. Stainton very much—but when you think of a man of his age marrying——"
Again Mrs. Newberry interrupted. She had her position to maintain: her position as Preston Newberry's wife.
"Muriel," she said, "I can guess what is in your mind, but I cannot guess how it got there. You shock me."
"But, Aunty——"
"That is enough. There aresomethings that a young girl should not discuss."
Muriel put her hands to her burning cheeks.
"Oh, you don't understand!" she cried. "You don't understand at all. I don't know what you mean! But he's fifty." She almost sobbed. "I don't care what Uncle Preston says. Iknowhe is fifty!"
It was a trying moment for Mrs. Newberry, but she met it bravely. She considered Muriel. Then, in the glass, she considered her own image.
"Look at me," commanded Mrs. Newberry.
Her eyes still suffused with unshed tears, Muriel obeyed.
"I," said her aunt—"doIlook old?"
She did not look young, but Muriel loved her, and those whom a child loves seldom grow old.
"No," said Muriel, loyally.
"Well," confessed Ethel, "Iam fifty." She was fifty-two. It was a sacrifice, nobly offered, upon the altar of family affection. She saw nothing in the future for her niece if Stainton could not be made to suffice. "But," she added, "you must never tell anyone. All I want to explain to you is that fifty is nothing—absolutely nothing at all."
It is, however, the common fate of sacrifices made for family affection to go unrecognised by the family. Muriel, honest within the limits of her limited training, clear-sighted, was unconvinced.
"Anyhow," she decided, "the question isn't whether he is old or young, I suppose. I guess the only question is: Do I love him? I thought all last night perhaps you could answer that, but of course I was wrong. I see that now. I dare say no person can ever really answer such a question but the person that asks it. I was right in the first place: I have to find out for myself—and yet I don't seem able to find out for myself, either."
Mrs. Newberry's arguments were unavailing. Her pleas failed and so did her eulogies of Stainton: both of Stainton the hero and Stainton the rich man. Her tears sufficed not. There was no course but to recall her luncheon engagement. Her incompetence in the matter sharpened her tongue.
They quarrelled. Muriel, in a tempest of sobbing anger, fled to her own room; Mrs. Newberry fled to the luncheon.
Upon her return Ethel found that Muriel had gone out. Preston was in his "study," studying the stock reports in the Wall Street edition of his evening paper, and to him she straightway unburdened herself.
"Whatdo you think of it?" She breathlessly enquired.
"I think you meddled," said her husband.
"But, Preston, the child came to me. I didn't go to her."
"If you didn't, it was no fault of yours. You've been trying to get at her for God knows how long. Let her be. For Heaven's sake, let her be, Ethel. If you do, she is sure to take him, because I have alwayscarefully given her to understand that she may expect nothing from me. I have been conscientious about that. And she must know that we are doing her a good-sized favour this winter. But if you don't let her alone, she is bound to botch the whole affair."
He put aside his newspaper and prepared to go to that one of his clubs at which he could obtain the best cocktail. As he was about to leave the house, Muriel entered it. Preston smiled.
"Hello," he said. "Been for a walk?"
The girl was flushed and patently troubled.
"Yes, Uncle Preston," she said.
"Hum. Just going myself. How's the weather?"
"Lovely," murmured Muriel. She wanted to hurry to her room.
"What? Why, when I looked out a bit ago, I was sure it was raining."
"Oh, yes; I believe it is raining. I didn't notice."
Preston chuckled. He put out a thick thumb and forefinger and pinched her cheek.
"I've always heard that love was blind," he said, "but nowadays it seems to be water-proof, too. Look here, my dear: your aunt has been dropping a hint or two to me, and I congratulate you."
"On what?" asked Muriel, bristling into immediate rebellion.
Again Preston chuckled.
"Tut, tut!" he said: he always treated her as if shewere the child that he had always maintained to his wife she was not. "You know well enough. He's a fine fellow and well-to-do. Even if we could afford to keep you on here indefinitely, which of course we can't, it would be a good job. Lucky girl!"
He went out after that and left his wife's niece free again to hide herself. But not entirely. Ethel, unable to resist her desire for finality, soon tapped at Muriel's door.
"Muriel!" she called.
For some time there was no answer, though Mrs. Newberry made sure that she heard sounds within the room.
"Muriel!"
"Yes. Who is there?"
"It's me—Aunt Ethel."
"Yes, Aunt Ethel?"
"Well, Muriel—are you all right?"
"Quite, thanks."
"Don't you want anything?"
"No."
"Nothing atall?"
"Nothing at all, thank you."
Ethel hesitated.
"But, Muriel——"
The girl apparently waited for her aunt to finish the sentence that Ethel had not completed.
"Muriel——"
"Yes?"
Ethel softly tried the door: as she had supposed, it was locked.
"O, Muriel, do open the door and let me in."
"Why?"
"Because, Muriel."
"But why? I'm—I'm dressing."
"But—surely you know why, Muriel. Why won't you confide in me?"
There was a long wait for the answer to this question, but the answer, when it came, was resolute enough:
"I've nothing to confide. Please go away now, Aunt Ethel, and leave me alone. Please do."
Ethel went. She returned, of course, from time to time, whenever she could think of a new excuse or a new suggestion; but she was always worsted.
Muriel did not descend to dinner that night until she was sure that Mr. Newberry, whose deterrent attitude she instinctively counted upon, was there with her aunt. She contrived to be left alone not once with Ethel. It was the habit of the members of the Newberry household to breakfast together only by chance, which meant that they generally ate separately. When Thursday's luncheon was announced, Muriel sent down word that she had a headache.
"Whatdo you do when a girl locks her door on you?" asked Ethel of her husband.
"They never lock their doors on me," said Preston.
"Do be serious. What in the world do you make of all this?"
"My dear," answered Newberry, "the only thing I am bothered about is whatyoumay already have made of it. I'm afraid you have made a mess."
"But, Preston——"
"There is nothing to be done now but to wait, my dear."
So it befell that when, exactly at nine o'clock that evening, Stainton's card was sent up to Miss Stannard, Miss Stannard's guardians, one of whom stayed long in the library with ears vainly intent, were as much at sea regarding their ward's decision as was Stainton himself.
Muriel's own emotional condition was no more enlightened. Like all young people, she had had her visions of romance, and, like the visions of most young people, hers had been uninstructed, misdirected, misapplied. All women, it has been said, begin life by having in their inmost heart a self-created Prince Charming, who proves the strongest rival that their destined husbands have to endure. Such a prince was as much Muriel's as he is other girls'! She had created him unknowingly from the books she had read, from the pictures she had seen, out of blue sky and sunshine and the soft first breezes of Spring: the stuffof dreams. But she was eighteen and no longer in school, and Stainton had given her a glimpse of the great happy thing that she accepted as life.
What lacked? Something. While she descended the stairs she counted his attributes in her aching brain. He was handsome, brave, well esteemed. If he was not young, he did not seem anything but young. What was youth, that it should be essential? What did it amount to if it were but the unit of measurement for a life—a mere figure of speech—something simply verbal? This man had, it appeared, the reality without the name. What was this quality worth if its virtue resided in its name and not in its substance? Why should she even ask these questions—and why, when she asked, could she find no answer?
She paused. It struck her suddenly that the fault might lie in her. Perhaps it was she that lacked. Perhaps—as a traveller may see an unfamiliar landscape by a lightning flash—she saw this now; the loss might be not in Stainton; it might be something that she had not yet acquired.
Therein, to be sure, was the clew to the muddle. Nearer than that lightning flash of the situation she did not come. Love, as we know it in our civilisation, is not an element: it is a composite. In this girl, descending to meet the man that wanted to marry her and even now ignorant of the answer she should give him, there lay the Greater Ignorance. Companionship,affection, kindly feeling—all these things and more—she had for him; but the omnipotent force that welds and dominates and forges these elements into one, unified, spiritual, intellectual, and bodily love, the law that begets this and nourishes it—this she did not as yet know, had never known.
The Newberry drawing-room was as it had been two weeks before. The crackling fire danced over its gilt-and-white prettiness, the heavy, ivory curtains, which folded behind her, shut out all the world.
Stainton rose from a seat beside the fire, much as if he had been there since last she saw him. The interval of a fortnight seemed as nothing. She noticed again how tall and strong and fine he seemed, how virile, how much the master, not only of his own fate but of himself. He came forward with outstretched hands.
"Have you thought things over?" he asked.
There was no manoeuvring now, no backing and filling. The time for pretence was passed.
"Yes," she said. "I have thought of nothing else, and yet—and yet——"
His brows contracted slightly, but he kept his steady hand upon the tight rein by which he was accustomed to drive himself.
"And yet you aren't sure?" he supplied. "You have not been able to make up your mind?"
She hung her head. On the edge of the hearth-rugshe traced a stupid figure with the toe of her bead-embroidered slipper.
"I can't tell," she said, "I've tried. I've tried very hard——"
"To love me?"
"No." She wished to be honest; she determined upon being honest. She owed him that, even should it hurt him. "No," she said, "not to love you; for if I had to try to love you, it wouldn't be real love at all, would it? What I tried to find out was whether I do love you now."
It was on his lips to say that, as surely as trying to love would not create love, so, if love was, it need not be sought. But she raised her face when she ended, and, when the light fell upon that, he forgot all casuistry. Her slim figure just entering upon womanhood, her blue-black hair, her damp red lips and her great dark eyes: she was as he had seen her first, like an evening in the woods, he reflected: warm and dusky and bathed in the light of stars.
Quite suddenly and wholly without premeditation he came to her and seized her hot palms in his cool hands. For years he had mastered passion; now, at this sight of her after the two weeks' separation, passion mastered him. The rein had snapped.
"Muriel," he said, "I can make you love me. You don't know—there are things you don't know. I can make you love me. Do you hear that? Muriel? Answer!Do you understand? I will make you love me. I will!"
She looked up at his face. It was alight as she had never yet seen any man's. Then, before she had gathered her breath to give him an answer, she was seized by him. She was crushed to him; she was held tight in his strong arms. She was hurt, and, as she was hurt, their lips met.
The miracle—oh, she was sure now that it was the miracle—happened. Something new clutched at her throat. Something new, wonderfully, terrifyingly, deliciously new, gripped at her heart and set her whole body athrill and trembling. The blood pounded in her temples. She tried to look at him, but a violet mist covered her eyes and hid him.
"Kiss me!" she was whispering as his lips left hers. "Kiss me again. I know now. I love you!"
And so they were married. Mrs. Newberry had her way: they were married within the month and within the church.
Preston's troubles, meanwhile, were hard to bear, and were not borne in silence. By faith, as has been noted, he was a Presbyterian; but by reason of his social position it was incumbent to attend occasionally—so often, in fact, as he went to church at all—an establishment of the Protestant Episcopal persuasion. Yet it appeared, when he came to arrange for the wedding of his wife's niece, which was the first he had ever arranged for, that there were ecclesiastical distinctions about weddings concerning which he had never previously dreamed. There were certain churches where one was expected to be a regular Sunday attendant; but when it came to a wedding, these would not serve: a wedding, to be socially correct, must occur in one of two or three churches in which, apparently, nothing else ever occurred. They seemed to be set aside for the exclusive business of marrying, and they married only exclusive people. Through one's sexton one rented one of these as one rents the Berkeley Lyceum, save that, in thematter of the wedding church, its rector is thrown in for good measure; then, when one proposed to introduce one's friend Buggins, the composer, to play the wedding-marches, one was told that only the church's regular organist was permitted to play the church's superb organ, and that, if one really required music, the regular organist could be hired at so much—and "so much" was not so pleasantly indefinite as it sounded.
"I never before realised what my father-in-law went through for me," said Preston.
"Things are never so hard as you think they'll be," said his wife in an effort at comfort.
"Things are always worse," replied the uncomforted Newberry. "Thank the Lord, I'll never have to arrange for another marriage. I thought that was Heaven's business, anyhow: I thought marriages were made in heaven. I'd rather be the advance agent of a minstrel show."
Still, in some fashion or other—and Mrs. Newberry and the papers were satisfied that it was the very best fashion—the thing was accomplished. There was an immediate "Engagement Dinner" given by Ethel; there were other dinners given by Jim; there were luncheons given by friends of Muriel and the Newberrys; then, at last, there was Stainton's bachelor-supper to George Holt and the ushers-to-be, whom Holt had collected, held at Sherry's, whence everybodyexcept the host departed in one of the four socially requisite stages of drunkenness, and so the climax, with the hired church, the hired parson, the frock coats, the staring eyes, the odour of flowers, the demure bridesmaids, and the hired organist playing Wagner and Mendelssohn and "The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden."
Stainton did not long remember all these things, was never even aware that at this wedding, as at all the other public demonstrations that go by the same name, the young girls wondered what it portended and the young men smirked because they knew. After a brief engagement in which the flames of his desire had grown in expectant intensity upon the fuel of those minor favours which conventional engagements make the right of the man, he was hurried into the church in no state of mind that a sane man would willingly describe as sane. He remembered only that he felt white and solemn; that he had an interminable wait in the vestry with Holt, a silently reconciled best-man, and a second wait at the altar rail, where he was the centre of interest and commiseration until the bride appeared, when he fell to an importance scarcely equal to that of the clergyman and far below that of the pew opener. Only these things he remembered, and that Muriel, with her sweetly serious face admirably set off by the white in which she was clad, looked all that he wished her to look and strangely spiritual besides. The next eventof which he was at all certainly conscious was the hurried reception and the swiftly following bridal breakfast where Preston Newberry made truly pathetic references to some "lamp of sunshine" that had been "filched forever" from the Newberry home.
Preston was more than a little relieved. He found it in his heart to wish Muriel well.
"Good-bye, youngster," he said, when she came to him in her going-away gown. "Good-bye." ("For the sake of goodness, Ethel, stop that snivelling!") "He's a fine old buck and he'll be kind to you, I'm sure." ("My dear,stopit! Hasn't the girl got what you've wanted her to have ever since you set eyes on him?")
Muriel heard the asides addressed to Mrs. Newberry and winced at the adjective openly applied to Jim, but she bit her lip and tossed her head and went away radiant for the first month of their honeymoon in Aiken, where she was happy with new and tremendous delights that received and asked and gave and demanded and grew.
She had not before adequately guessed at happiness of this sort. It was as if her material world had always been at twilight—a soft, luminous, fragrant twilight, but twilight nevertheless—and that now, without the intervention of darkness, there had come the undreamed of wonder of dawn. She ran forth to meet the sunlight. She was eager, primal. She opened herarms to it. She gave herself to it because she gloried in it. Unsuspected capacities, unknown emotions welled in her, and she gave them forth and seized their purchase price. Her husband became in her eyes something glorious and marvellous. There was no more question of his years; she thought no more of that than any Greek girl would have questioned the youth of a condescending Zeus. He revealed; he seemed even to be the maker of what he revealed. She knew love at last; she was certain that she knew love. She was in love with love.
For Stainton, and strangely in the same manner, that same magic prevailed. Alone with her he could not keep his hands from her loveliness; before strangers his eyes ravished it—his eyes shone and his cheeks flushed and his brain turned dizzy with the thought that this was his, all his own. In the desert of his life he had come finally to the long desired oasis. The journey to it, the waiting, the molten moons, and the weary afternoons of march had not robbed him of the ability to reach it and enjoy it. He was young—he was still young!
"Let's climb the hill and see the sunset," he said to her.
This was toward the end of their second week. They were in their sitting room in the hotel, Jim seated, in flannel shirt and walking trousers, but Muriel still in a flowing kimono, at rest on the floor, her head, withits wealth of blue-black hair, resting on her husband's knee, her arms about his waist.
"No, no," she answered. "I don't want to see the sunset. Sunsets are so sad. They mean the end of something, and I don't want to think of endings, dear. We mustn't think of them, because we are at our beginning."
He smiled and stroked her hair, and the touch, as always, thrilled him to a great tenderness.
"Beginning?" he echoed. "Yes, that's it. It must be the beginning of something that will never have an end."
Her dusky eyes glowed.
"Never!" she repeated, and then, as an unreasoned wistfulness shot through her, she whispered: "It never will end, will it, Jim?"
"How could it, sweetheart?"
"But I mean it will always go on like this—just like this. I don't want us just to grow used to each other, just stupid and merely satisfied—just—just affectionate and fond."
"We can never come to that. We love too much, Muriel."
"Then don't let's forget ever," she pleaded, her arms tightening. "It must all be honeymoon, forever and forever."
He raised her face and kissed her.
"Always," he said—"always morning. We willnever let the shadows lengthen; we will hold back the hands of the clock." He kissed her again. "You know that we will?" he asked.
"I know—I know," she answered.
They had no quarrels. There was only one matter in which she deviated so much as a hair's breadth from his ideal of her and there was but one occasion when she was hurt by any act of his.
The first of these affairs sprang from a conversation started by a letter with a blue French twenty-five-centime stamp upon it, which their always discreet waiter brought to the rooms one morning with the coffee. It had been forwarded from New York.
"What's that?" asked Muriel.
Stainton had been reading with his iron-grey brows in a pucker and a smile on his lips.
"It is a Frenchman trying to write English," he said. "He doesn't succeed."
"Yes, but whatisit?"
"Only business, dear."
"Then I ought to see it," said Muriel.
Stainton laughed.
"What?" he said.
"If it is business, I ought to see it," she repeated.
"Trouble your little head with such matters? Not much."
She came to him as if to kiss him, then quickly seized the letter and ran laughing away. He pursued her,laughing, too; but she was more agile than her husband, and she managed easily to evade him until her eyes had caught enough of the letter to enable her to guess its entire contents.
"So they want to buy your mine?" she asked. "They say their expert has returned and reported"—she glanced again at the letter as his fingers closed on it—"reported favourably."
"Yes," he said; "it's a French syndicate, some wealthy men in Lyons, and they want to buy the mine."
"But you won't sell?"
"If I can get my figure, I will."
"Your mine?"
"Our mine."
For that she kissed him.
"But, if it's ours, I have something to say about it, and I won't let you."
"Why not?" he asked, smiling at her pretty assumption.
"Because I think it would be horrid of you to sell it after all the years you spent looking for it."
"I wasn't looking for it on its own account, dear; I was looking for it because of what it would bring me."
"I wish you'd take me to see it."
"It's a dull place, Muriel."
"I wish you'd take me. I wouldn't find it dull."
"I shall take you to France instead."
"To sell the mine?"
"To try."
"Horrid!" she pouted.
"But, dearest," he explained, "I don't want to have a mine on my hands. I have you."
"Do I keep you busy?"
"You are a gold mine. Don't you see? I want to be free. If I can get my price, we shall be rich."
"I thought we were rich now."
"With a mine run by an agent, yes. But if I sold to this syndicate—now, you mustn't talk about this outside, you know——"
"Of course I know."
"Or write it home."
"Of course not."
"Well, then, if these people buy, we shall be rich without any more agents or any more work. I have had enough of mining to make me certain that I don't want to chain any son of mine down to the business."
"Any——" The word turned her suddenly white. In the midst of the intimacies of the honeymoon, reference to children painted her cheeks with scarlet.
Stainton smiled indulgently. He put a strong arm about her and patted her shoulder.
"Yes, any sons, dear," he said. "Did you never think of that? Did you never think how sweet it would be if we two that are one should really see ourselves made one in a little baby?"
To his amazement she burst into tears.
"I don't want a baby!" she wailed, her head on his shoulder, her hands clasped behind him. "I don't want a baby. No, no, no!"
He tried to persuade her, but he could scarcely make himself heard until he abandoned the topic.
"There, there," he said, "it's all right. I wouldn't hurt you, dearest; you know I wouldn't. There will be nothing to worry about."
His heart ached because he had hurt her. He told himself that he should have remembered that her present nervous condition could not be normal. He upbraided himself for making to her, no matter how long he might have been married to her, a frank proposition that her sensitive nature probably repelled only because of the matter-of-fact way in which he had suggested what, he thought, should have been more delicately put. He did not change his design; he merely ceased to speak of it. Throughout the world the only persons not consulted about the possible bearing of children are the only persons able to bear them. Stainton no longer made an exception of Muriel. He decided that the best management of these matters was to leave them to chance for their occurrence and nature for their acceptance.
This conversation took place a week or more after their verbal banishment of sunsets. On the night following, Jim at the demand of his abounding health,fell asleep earlier than usual and slept, as always, soundly; but his wife chanced to be nervous and restless. She lay long awake and she was lonely. Twice she wished to rouse him for her comforting; twice she refrained. When, finally, she did sleep, her sleep was heavy, and she awoke late to find him gone. She hurried into the sitting-room, but he was not there, and it was quite ten minutes later when he returned, fully dressed and glowing, a newspaper in his hand.
"Where on earth have you been?" she asked. She had crawled back into bed, and she looked very beautiful as she lay there, her black hair wide upon the pillows and the lacy sleeves of her night-dress brushed high on her wide-flung arms.
"Downstairs. You were fast asleep and you looked so comfy I hadn't the heart to waken you. It's a wonderful morning——"
"But, Jim, I woke up all alone! I was afraid!"
He sat on the bed beside her. He took her in his arms, flattered. He gave her the chuckling consolation that the strong, knowing their strength, vouchsafe the weak. He was sorry that she should have felt badly, but he was immensely proud that she should be dependent.
"Too bad, too bad!" he said. "But it won't happen again. Next time I'll either rouse you or else sit tight till your dear eyes open of their own accord."
He was still holding the newspaper in one of hisembracing hands. It rustled against her back, and, freeing herself, she saw it.
"What's that?" she asked.
"A newspaper, of course. I thought I should like to see what was going on in the world. It suddenly struck me that I hadn't looked at a newspaper since I read the notice of our wedding—five hundred years ago."
But Muriel pouted.
"Then," she said, "I don't see why you should begin now."
"One has to begin sometime."
"I don't see why. Is anything between us different to-day from yesterday?"
"Certainly not, sweetheart."
"Well, I thought we weren't going to be like other people. I thought we were always going to be enough to each other."
"We are. Of course we are. But you were asleep, and, anyhow, I said I was never going to run away again. Besides, Muriel——"
"I don't see why," Muriel maintained.
He tried to quiet her with kisses. He held her close and pressed her face to his.
During all that month, these were the only occasions when they so much as approached a difference of opinion. They lived, instead, in that crowded winter resort, like a man and a girl made one upon a newisland in a deserted sea. They walked, hand in hand, and, as it seemed to them, heart to heart, through a wonderful world that was new to them. Happiness sparkled in their eyes and trembled at their lips. There were times when their happiness almost made them afraid. Heaven was very near.
Then, as the month ended, the blasting idea came to Muriel: she was going to have a child.
It came like that. Just when everything was perfect, just when love had realized itself. The thought lay beside her on a morning that she had expected to wake to so differently. Muriel felt as if it were the thought that had wakened her.
She cast a frightened look at Stainton, who was lying beside her, his iron-grey hair disordered, his mouth slightly open, snoring gently.
"Jim!" she said. She clutched at his pajama jacket and tried to shake him. "Jim! Jim!"
He awoke, startled. He rubbed his eyes:
"Eh? What?"
"Jim!"
Then he saw her face.
"My God! What is it, dearie?"
She gasped her fear.
"Muriel!" he cried, and held her tight to his heart. His first feeling was a flash of gratitude: his desire had been granted; he was to be the father of a child.
But Muriel only clung to him and cried. She didnot want a baby. She was horrified at thought of it. She was panic-stricken.
Stainton watched her grief with a sore heart and essayed to soothe it; yet, all the while, his heart swelled with a reasonless pride that appeared to him supremely reasonable: he had performed the Divine Act; within the year he would see a living soul clothed in his own flesh and moulded in his own image. Like hers, his eyes, though from a vastly different cause, were dimmed by tears.
"My dear, my dear!" he whispered. "O, my dear!"
Muriel, broken-hearted, wept hysterically.
Stainton stroked her blue-black hair. All women were like this, he reflected; it was a law of nature. It was the same law that, in the lower animals, first drove the female to repulse the male and then submit to him. In mankind it began by making the woman dread the accomplishment of her natural destiny and ended by awakening the maternal instinct, seemingly so at variance with its preceding action.
Suddenly Muriel looked up and saw his expression. Hers grew wild.
"You—did you know it would be?" she stammered.
"There, there!" said Stainton, stroking her hair.
She drew herself free.
"You did know!"
Stainton prepared to yield to the natural law.
"Of course, I didn'tknow, dear. How could I be certain?"
"Oh, but you were, you were!" she cried. "You knew. And I didn't. I didn't know! I didn't know! And you did—you!"
"Dearest," said Stainton. He tried to take her hand.
She was sitting straight up in bed, looking down at him, her hair falling over her nightgown.
"And you told me I wouldn't——You told me it wouldn't be!" she accused.
"I?"
"Yes. Yes, you did. You said there would be nothing to worry about. Those were your very words, Jim."
"Well, but, dear, there won't be anything to worry about."
"Nothing to worry about!" she repeated. She put her fingers to her temples. "Not foryou, of course!"
Stainton was hurt: "Dearie, you know that if I could——"
"And anyhow," she interrupted, "you didn't mean that. You meant me to think what I did think."
He felt that, in a sense, she was right: he had meant at least to quiet her, to divert her thoughts. He was ashamed of that. He sought to comfort her.
"Perhaps you are mistaken," he said.
"No, no!" she said. She got up and, slipperless, began to pace the room.
Stainton struggled to his elbow.
"But, dearie," he said, seeking relief in logic, "you must have known that when a girl married, she must expect—it was expected of her—it was her duty——"
She continued to walk, her head bent.
"Yes," she answered; "but I didn't know she would have to right away, or when she didn't want to, or——"
Genuinely amazed and genuinely pained, Stainton swung his legs from the covers and sat on the edge of the bed, his hands clasped between his knees, his mouth agape.
"Sweetheart," he asked, "don't you love me?"
"Of course, I love you, Jim."—She was still walking.
"Then what did you think marriage was for?"
She stopped before him. "I thought it was for love," she said; and, crumpling at his feet, put her face upon his knees.
He bent over her, stroking her hair, calling her by the names that they had invented for each other, waiting for the natural law to assert itself again and trying, meanwhile, to alleviate her apprehensions.
"Perhaps, after all, you are mistaken."
This was the burden of his consolation.
Nevertheless, she was not mistaken, and the succeedingdays proved it. Nor was the natural law swift in asserting itself.
"Don't you think," he once tried to urge the law, "that it would be beautiful if we should have a little baby?"
"Isha'n't be beautiful!" she wailed. "I shall lose my looks. I——"
"Muriel!"
"Yes, I shall. I know. I have seen it—on the street—lots of places. I shall grow—I shall——And all my lovely clothes!—Oh!"—She broke off and hid her eyes—"I shall grow vulgar looking and horrid!"
They were walking along a country lane, and Stainton glanced about nervously, fearing that her words, spoken in a tone altogether unrestrained, would certainly be heard by more ears than his own. The road, however, was empty. He drew her aside to a spot where the woods met the lane and where, a few paces to the left of the lane, the trees hid them. He took her into his arms.
"Muriel," he said, "if I could go through this for you, I would; you know that."
"I know you can't go through it for me," she wept, "and so it's easy enough for you to say."
"No," said Jim, "I can't go through it for you, and so you see, it must be God's will that it should be as it is to be."
She was worn out by the days of worry, but she made one more appeal.
"Jim," she said, "can't you do something else for me?"
He knitted his brows.
"Something else?" he wondered. "I can love you; I can back you up with all the love of my body and brain and soul. You may always count on that, sweetheart."
"But"—her eyes looked straight into his—"can't youdosomething?"
He understood. He fell back a step, his face grey.
"Muriel!" he whispered.
"I've read of such things in the papers," she said.
"Muriel!"
His eyes were so horrified that she hung her head.
"Oh, it's wrong; I know it's wrong," she said. "But, oh, if you knew how afraid I was of this and how I hate and how—O, Jim, Jim!"
She tottered forward, and his arms received her.
"Muriel, my dear wife," he said. "My own dear little girl, to think that when God has put a life into our keeping, you——Why, Muriel, that is murder!"
That word won Stainton's victory. Muriel succumbed. For her it was like the safe passing of one of those physical crises when the patient had rather die than face the pain of further living; for him it was the sealing of his happiness.