Running Sands Part 15

"How did you get that idea?" he asked.

"Auntie Ethel has told me some of the brave things you did, and so has Uncle Preston."

"They have been reading some of the silly stories that the papers published when I made my big find. You mustn't believe all that the newspapers say."

"I believe these things," affirmed Muriel. "Wasn't that true about the time you rescued the man from the lynchers at Grand Junction?"

"Grand Joining. I didn't read it," said Stainton.

"But did you do it?"

"Oh, there was something of the sort." He honestly disliked to have his supposedly heroic exploits praised, only from modesty perhaps, perhaps from a super-sensitive consciousness that they were the results rather of fear than of bravery. "Look at that sky. Isn't it glorious?"

"Then about the express robbery on the Rio Grande," said Muriel; "they said you went after the robbers when the sheriff and his men were afraid to go, and you captured them by yourself--three of them."

Stainton laughed, his broad, white teeth showing.

"The sheriff and his men," he said, "were along with me. It was not half so exciting as that play last night. Didn't you like the play?"

"I loved it. But, Mr. Stainton----"

"Yes?"

"Won't you tell me about some of these things?"

"I am sure they are much more interesting in the form in which the newspapers presented them."

"I always wanted to see a mine. Surely a mine must be lovely. Please tell me about a mine."

He tried to tell her, but mining had been to him only a means to an end and, the end now being attained, mining struck him as a dull subject. He abruptly concluded by telling her so.

"Besides," he said, "it is merely a business: a mere business, like any other. What can girls and women care for business?"

So he brought back the conversation to the play that they had seen the night before. He discussed the plot with her, the plot having no relation to business, or to anything else approaching actuality for that matter, his iron-grey eyes all the while eagerly feeding on her beauty and her youth.

"You think," he asked, "that the d.u.c.h.ess should not have tried to break off the match?"

"Just because Arthur was young and poor?" inquired Muriel. "Of course I think she shouldn't. He was far too nice for her daughter anyway."

"But there was the suspicion that he had cheated at cards. Lord Eustace had told her so."

"She didn't really believe that; she only wanted to believe it. I think she was horrid."

"And her daughter, Lady--Lady----" He hesitated for the name.

"Lady Gladys," supplied Muriel. "I think she was horrid, too. To give up Arthur like that!"

Stainton smiled gravely.

"You would not have done it, Miss Stannard?"

"Indeed I would not!"

"What _would_ you have done?"

Muriel's chin became resolute.

"I should have gone right up to him before them all there in the drawing-room, and I should have put my----" She broke off, rosy with embarra.s.sment. "You will think I am awfully silly," she said.

But Stainton did not think so. He urged her on.

"No, you will laugh," said Muriel.

"I should not," he answered her. "I really want to know."

Nevertheless, the illusion of the theatre, which her memory had partially renewed, her self-consciousness finally dispelled, and her conclusion was in lame contrast to her beginning:

"I should just have married him in spite of them all."

Of such material was Stainton's wooing made. Though it may seem but poor stuff to you, it did not seem so to those who wove it, and it was, if you will but reflect upon your own, the material generally in vogue.

Our modern method of courting is, of course, the most artificial phase of modern artificial life. The period of courtship is, for most lovers, what Sunday used to be for the small boy in the orthodox family of the early 'seventies. As he then put on his best clothes for the Sabbath, our men and women now put on their best manners for the courting. As he then put off his real self at church-time, they now lay aside, for this supposedly romantic interlude in an existence presently to return to the acknowledged prosaic, all their crudities. It was thus with Muriel and Stainton.

Not that the latter meant to appear other than he was. His great Plan presumed, indeed, quite the reverse. He was intent that Muriel should admire not his wealth or his reputation, but his inherent worth and the genuine basis for his reputation. He was resolved that she should love not any or all of the things that he might be, but the one thing, the real self, that he had himself made. His fault, according to the prevailing standards, if any fault resulted, consisted only in his insistence upon a too introspectively observed ideal of just what that thing happened to be.

Nor yet, and this is likewise intrinsic, would the severest scrutiny have revealed in Muriel any realisation of a pose upon her own part. Her aunt, trusting as do most guardians of youth to a natural intuition in the ward, which has no standing in fact, refrained from informing the girl in plain language what it was that Stainton wanted. Mrs. Newberry's fears were ungrounded: the conventional calm had not been disturbed, and Muriel, save for timid smiles at the butcher's boy when he called at the school and furtive glances at the acolytes in church, had never yet known love. Not guessing the truth, Muriel was merely, for the first time, being accorded a glimpse of those kingdoms of this world of which all schoolgirls have had their stolen dreams. With what she saw she was frankly delighted, and when a pretty young girl is frankly delighted, a pretty young girl is obviously not at her worst.

"You look very happy nowadays," said Mrs. Newberry at the luncheon-table, looking, however, not at the subject of her remarks but at the master of her affections, who, chancing to be lunching at home, sat opposite her.

"I am, Aunt Ethel," said Muriel. "I always have been happy, but I am happier than ever now."

Mrs. Newberry smiled meaningly at Preston, but Muriel could not see the smile, and Preston would not.

"Why is that?" asked Ethel.

"Oh, because."

"Because why?"

"Because I am seeing so much. The city, you know, and these suppers and things. Sitting up until to-morrow. And I do so love the theatres!"

Ethel's smile faded.

"Yes," she said, "Mr. Stainton is very kind."

"And generous," put in Preston so unexpectedly that his wife jumped.

"Thompson; the salmon."