Running Sands Part 32

Captain von Klausen, you didn't take my hand, and you know it. I took yours."

He raised the disputed hand; he raised it in protest.

"Mrs. Stainton, I a.s.sure you that it was I who----"

"No, it wasn't. And I wasn't frightened by the fog, either. You must remember that, from the way I spoke; I showed I didn't even realise what a fog means at sea. So how could I be afraid of it? You did know and you had just said that you were afraid of fogs. I took your hand. I did it before I thought----"

"Yes, yes, dear Mrs. Stainton"--he was painfully anxious to end all this--"before you thought. It was nothing but a kindly----"

"Before I thought," she pursued, determinedly, her dark eyes steady on his. "You had told me of that awful experience of yours in the Bosphorus and of the effect it had on you. No wonder it did have such an effect.

I am not blaming you for that. Only, I saw that you needed help and comfort. I was sorry for you. That was all: I was just sorry. I did it without thinking. I didn't know I had done it at all till it was all over. You see," she concluded, "I just couldn't, now, bear to have you misunderstand."

Carefully a.n.a.lysed, it might seem a contradictory explanation, but it was no sooner free of her lips than she felt that her soul was free of this thing which she had sought to explain.

Von Klausen was quite as much relieved as Muriel. He accepted it as she wished him to accept it.

"Never for a moment did I misunderstand," said he.

"Then," added Muriel, "you will understand why I haven't mentioned it to my husband----"

"Your husband?" The Austrian was all amazement. "Why should you?"

"Because," said Muriel, compressing her full lips and a.s.suming her full height, "I always tell Jim everything."

If the shadow of a smile pa.s.sed beneath his military moustache, she could not be sure of it.

"Everything?" said he. "But you have said that this was nothing."

"Exactly, and--don't you see?--that is one of the reasons why I haven't told it. You will--you will please not refer to it to him, Captain von Klausen, because----"

"Refer to it?" Von Klausen squared his shoulders. "To him? Never!"

His a.s.sertion was vehement.

"There is no reason why you shouldn't," Muriel replied; "only, as I say, I haven't told him, and the only real reason that I didn't tell him was because to do so I should have to tell him, too, that you had been afraid; and that isn't my secret: it's yours."

The Austrian's boyish face was now very grave.

"I thank you," he said. "For your thought of me I thank you, and the more I thank you because, by keeping my secret, you made it _ours_."

"Oh, but I don't mean----" said Muriel.

She did not finish, for she saw Stainton come from the writing-room and stride rapidly toward them. He had written his letter and despatched it.

Although the three stood shoulder to shoulder in the customs-shed at Cherbourg later in the day and occupied the same first-cla.s.s compartment in the fast express through the rolling Norman country to Paris, Muriel and von Klausen were not then given an opportunity to conclude their conversation. The Austrian bade the Staintons good-bye in the swirl of porters and chauffeurs at the Gare St. Lazare, and Muriel took it for granted that the interruption must be final.

XI

DR. BOUSSINGAULT

Muriel awoke in their apartments at the Chatham the next morning to find herself decidedly out of sorts. Well as she had borne the voyage, she no sooner put her feet from her one of the two little canopied beds to the floor than she felt again the motion of the ship, and there was a return of the nausea that she attributed to the trouble which silently weighed upon her. She crawled back to the bed.

"I can't get up," she said.

Stainton was worried. He fluttered about her. He wanted to ring for servants to bring half-a-dozen things that Muriel would not accept. He wanted the smallest details of her symptoms. He wanted to send for a doctor.

"Go away," Muriel pleaded. "Please go away."

"But, dearie----"

"I wish I were back in New York."

Stainton, though he now feared the sea, was ready to undertake the return trip on the morrow.

"No, no," moaned Muriel. "Of course, now we are here, we must see things. But I won't have a doctor, Jim. Can't you see how it is with me? I shall be all right in an hour."

"All right, dearie; all right. I shall sit here by you."

"Please don't. I'm horrid when I'm sick."

"Not to me," said Jim.

"But I am. I look so horrid."

"I don't see it."

"Oh, you're good, Jim. But I want to be alone, just as you did when you were seasick. Go into the sitting-room. Please. I'll call you if I need you."

He went into their sitting-room, a room that shone with green and gilt, and looked out, across a narrow street, at the grey houses of uniform height and listened to the shrill street-sounds of Paris. He was lonely.

Somebody knocked at the door opening on the hall.

"Come in," he called. "I mean: _entrez_!"

A servant advanced, bearing a tray.

Jim saw that there was a card on the tray. He took it up and read the name of Paul Achille Boussingault. He did not remember ever having heard the name.

"_Pour moi?_" asked Jim.

"Yes, sir," said the servant, in a wholly unaccented English.

"Hum," said Jim. "Now I wonder what _he_ wants. Very well, show him up."

He hurried to the bedroom.