Part 4

"So you really mean--mean to do--to do----? You know what I mean?"

"If she will have me, I do," said Stainton, for the third time that night: "I intend to marry her."

IV

THE APPLE OF THEIR EYE

Mrs. Preston Newberry had risen to the distinction of that name several months before Stainton, as a young Harvard undergraduate, came to know and love her sister. Very likely she had never heard of Jim until his triumphal march to New York, and certainly, if she had ever heard of him, she had long ago forgotten his name. Her early married life had completely occupied itself in an endeavour to live up to her new title, and, since this effort was not crowned with a success so secure as to dispense with the necessity of careful watching (for eternal vigilance is the price of more things than liberty), her present existence was sufficiently employed to make her regard the care of her niece with resignation rather than with joy.

Muriel's father had not survived his wife beyond a decade. In that period he managed to spend all the money that the previous portion of his mature career had been devoted to acquiring, and Muriel's grandparents on both sides had long since passed to the sphere of celestial compensations; the girl had, therefore, in some measure, been forced upon her aunt. A timid little girl with long dark hair that nearly concealed her face, she was brought to New York.

"And now," Mrs. Newberry had remarked to her husband, "the question is: what are we to do with her?"

It may be that she had entertained from her early reading of the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward a vague hope that Preston would propose to make Muriel the child-light of their otherwise now definitely childless home. If, however, such an expectation had formed, it was speedily shattered: Preston, like many another husband, inclined to the opinion that one member of his wife's family was enough in his house. He expressed this opinion in his usual manner: briefly, but not directly.

"How the hell do I know?" he asked.

When Ethel--Ethel was really the stout Mrs. Newberry's Christian name--when Ethel had evinced a disposition to discuss in further detail the question of Muriel's future, Newberry had done what he usually did when Ethel began any discussion: he recalled an engagement at one of the three of New York's most difficult clubs.

It was a procedure that seldom failed. He disliked deciding anything, 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.