Running Sands Part 13

"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 n.o.body 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 d.a.m.ned 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.