Part 7

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 event of 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, _stop_ it! 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 her arms 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, with its 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 will never 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 what _is_ it?"

"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 his embracing 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 new island 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 did not 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't _know_, 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 for _you_, 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 succeeding days 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?"

"_I_ sha'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 you _do_ something?"

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.

IX

ANOTHER ROAD

It was a few days later that Muriel, the reconciled, decided that she wanted to leave Aiken.

"Don't you think," she asked, for she had come unconsciously often to use phrases characteristic of Jim, "that a change of scene would be good for us both?"

Stainton had not thought so. He had wandered so much in his life that, now wandering was no longer a necessity of life, he was tired of it. Besides, he was eminently satisfied with Aiken.

"I don't know," he said. "I think it's splendid here. Haven't we been--aren't you happy, dear?"

Muriel was looking out of the window of their hotel sitting-room.

"Of course I'm happy," she said in a low voice. "At least," she added, "I know I ought to be, and I know I never knew what happiness was till I had you. It was only that I thought it would be--perhaps it would be good for me--now--if we travelled."

Stainton cursed himself for a negligent brute.

"What a beast I am!" he said, his arm encircling her waist. "We shall go wherever you want, and we shall go to-morrow."

Muriel smiled ruefully.

"Perhaps," she submitted, "the real reason is only that I've always wanted so to travel and have never had the chance before."

But Stainton would hear of no reason but her first. He upbraided himself again for his stupidity in not guessing her need before she could have given it expression.

"I've been cruel to you!" he declared.

She stopped him with a swift embrace.

"You're never anything," she contritely vowed, "but just darling to me. I only thought----"

"I know, I know. Where shall we go, Muriel? How about France? I ought to see that syndicate, you know: I ought to meet those men personally. Then there's Paris. I have always longed for Paris myself, and now I shall have you for my guide there."

"Your guide, Jim?"

"Well, you speak French like a book, and I have forgotten nearly all of the little I ever learned."

"I speak school-French," Muriel corrected him.

"At any rate," he assured her, "yours is fluent, and I can only stammer in the language. Then, too," he went on, "there will be the trip across. That will be good for you. Sea air ought to be good for you." She winced, and so he hurried to add: "I think I need a bracer, too.--Are you a good sailor, Muriel?"

"I don't know. I've never been on the ocean. Are you?"

"I used to be." His eyes darkened. "It's a good many years since I have tried the water. But I know I shall be all right. I am in such splendid shape. Where is a newspaper? Wait a minute; I'll ring for one. Aren't you glad for newspapers now? They carry shipping advertisements, you see. We'll look up the sailings. We have found our first five heavens in America; we must find the sixth in France, and then we must come back here so that our seventh will happen on American soil."

Considering the fact that he did not wish to go, he was self-sacrificingly energetic. He was so energetic that they left Aiken on the next morning and, three days later, were aboard their steamer.

The Newberrys were out of town, still enjoying the rest that they had earned by settling Muriel for life. George Holt was, however, there and had come all the way to Hoboken to see them off.

"And as a German steamship captain once said to me when I asked him to lunch with me at my club," explained Holt, "it's a terribly long way from Hoboken to America."

"It was good of you to come," said Muriel, while the crowd of second-class passengers and the friends of passengers jostled about the first-class promenade deck. "Don't you wish you were coming along?"

"Better," said Stainton, already in his steamer cap.

"Thanks, no," said Holt, and then, as the siren blew: "If you'd asked my advice before you bought your tickets, old man, I'd have told you: 'Don't go to sea; but if you do go, don't play cards; but if you do play cards, cut the cards. They'll cheat you anyhow, but it'll take longer.'"

He waved a plump farewell and bared a bald head and waddled down the gang-plank. The band began to play, and Stainton and his wife went to their stateroom to unpack: they were travelling without a maid because Muriel had said something about wanting to secure one in France.

By sunrise next morning the _Friedrich Barbarossa_ was racing through the grey Atlantic with even speed. It was late winter--it was really early spring--and she had already encountered a storm and heavy seas, but the lean ocean express dove through the former and rode the latter as easily as if she had been a railway train running on tried rails along a perfect roadbed. There was no reason in the world why anybody should be sick aboard her; few others were sick; yet, Stainton, on that second day out, remained below.