Running Sands Part 23

"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 G.o.d! 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 grat.i.tude: 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.