Running Sands Part 4

"Mr. Holt has just been telling us of your splendid bravery and how you saved his life," said Mrs. Newberry.

She was a stout, uncertain nonent.i.ty, whose chief endeavours in her narrow world were to seem as slim as she would like to be and as certain of her social position as was proper for a woman of moderate antecedents, who had married a membership in Manhattan's three most difficult clubs. What, of course, she had been thinking was not at all about Stainton's bravery: it was, rather, that Stainton had become quite rich quite romantically, and that he was not the rough diamond which tradition demanded.

Stainton took all this for granted and, knowing not what to say in reply, bowed and said nothing.

"Glad to know you," was what Newberry said: and he presently added: "The cast's in rotten voice to-night. Sit down."

Newberry, the sleek, weary-eyed elderly man, whom Stainton had barely noticed in his first survey of the box, was the membership in New York's three most difficult clubs. He had inherited money without brains, had sought to adjust matters by marrying brains without money, and had been intellectually disappointed.

To him in turn Stainton bowed in silence. His eyes were on the girl, and the girl's slim back was set resolutely toward him.

There was an awkward pause. n.o.body seemed to remember Muriel. At length Holt, still in terror, blundered forward.

"Miss Muriel----" he began.

The girl turned. The glory of her warm eyes brushed Stainton's face and pa.s.sed it.

"I am Miss Stannard," she said. "It is good of you to join us. Do sit down, Mr. Stainton."

Stainton sat down. He sat down directly behind her, and at last, politely unencouraging though she at first managed to remain, he succeeded in gaining some sort of conversational opening.

What did he say there, for the early ten minutes of their talk? He was unable at any later date to recall one word of it. Everything, he was sure, that was clumsy. As a matter of fact, his own speech was probably by no means so uncouth as his torturing fancy declared it, hers by no means so brilliant as his memory, which retained no souvenirs, insisted.

More likely than not, their talk fulfilled the requirements of convention. Convention requires the commonplace.

n.o.body paid any but sporadic attention to the opera. To the left of the girl and Stainton, Mrs. Newberry and her husband, a Dido matched to a Don Juan, exchanged low monosyllables with each other and darting exchanges of talk, like rallies at badminton, with Holt. Sometimes they were ill-mannered enough to converse in whispers, near Stainton's shoulder, but mostly Mrs. Newberry was laboriously conventional, out of a constant fear of being adjudged plebeian, and now and again, to Stainton's huge disgust, she would lean to confer a word on her niece and her niece's companion.

"I hope you care for opera," she said to Stainton in one of these sallies.

"I hope to," replied the miner, guardedly.

"Though of course," pursued Mrs. Newberry, "this is rather an off evening. The cast led us to expect so much, but they all seem to be in such poor voice."

Stainton made a civil noise.

"Apart from the music," his hostess continued, "I dare say that the stage doesn't appeal to you."

"I have had very little chance to know it," said Stainton, "but I am fond of it."

"Indeed?" Mrs. Newberry's tone indicated that she was mildly interested in meeting a tamed adventurer. "But I should suppose that it would all seem so false to you. It must seem false, I should think, to anyone that has known so much of--of Real Life, you know; and dear Mr. Holt has given us _such_ descriptions of your romantic career."

Stainton's disavowal of this apparent praise of his career was earnest, but not convincing.

"My life has seemed dull to me," he said, with a deadly glance at dear Mr. Holt, grinning in the background.

Holt tried to change the subject.

"At all events, this is a romantic episode for you, isn't it?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" snapped Stainton.

"Oh," Holt hurried to explain, "all this." He indicated the audience with the sweep of a plump hand.

"It is new," granted Stainton.

Holt edged his chair forward.

"Of course it is, and whatever's new's romantic. That's all romance is, isn't it, Miss Muriel?"

The girl had been listening to the music, her dark eyes, veiled by their long lashes, fixed on nothing.

"Is it?" she enquired.

"Sure it is," said Holt. "Now, Jim, you're in the crowd you read about.

You ought to get us to point 'em out to you."

"The woman just next," whispered Mrs. Newberry--"the one in forget-me-not blue, draped with chiffon and crystal tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--don't you see? The bodice is finished with crystal fringe----"

"I'm afraid----" said Stainton.

Preston Newberry explained.

"Girl with yellow hair," said he.

"Oh!" said Stainton.

"That," Mrs. Newberry went on, "is Dora van Rooz. She was a Huyghens, you know."

"I'm afraid I don't read the society-columns," Stainton apologised.

"Dora's not confining herself to them," said Newberry. "She and van Rooz are calling each other names in the divorce-court now."

"And just beyond," Mrs. Newberry ran on, "in the American beauty satin veiled in ninon--there: her waist is embroidered with beads and rows of silver lace; you can't see very well in this light."

"Girl with the fine nose," Preston elucidated.

"I see."

"That's Mrs. Billy Merton. You must have heard of her. She divorced Clem Davis last month and married Billy the next day."

She rattled on for some time, ceasing her chatter only for brief pauses, at intervals unconsciously regulated by her long acquaintance with the opera and its finer moments. The strains of the beautiful music seemed to Stainton to be a loveliness unworthily draping, on the stage, the story of a base man's perfidy; and the pleasant indiscretions of the fashionable opera-gowns to be clothing, in the audience, none but women that had already stripped their souls in one or other of the scandalous rituals imposed by modern law for the dissolution of the most private of relationships.

He made but brief answers, and he was unfeignedly relieved when his poor responsiveness forced Mrs. Newberry to retreat and left him free again with Muriel. He looked frank admiration at her level brows, her dark eyes, and her full lips. Here, he a.s.sured himself, was innocence: her face was her young soul made visible.

Perhaps, as she pretended, it was his distress at her aunt's garrulity; for it must have been evident to her. Perhaps it was the dropped hint of his adventurous life; for women are all Desdemonas at heart. Perhaps it was only his patent worship of her beauty; since we are all a.s.sailable through this sort of compliment to whatever of our charms we are least responsible for. Perhaps it was all or none of these things. In any case, as Mrs. Newberry retired to a continuation of her gossip with Holt, broken only by the terser remarks of Newberry, Muriel bent a little closer to Stainton.

"You don't care a bit about such things, do you?" she enquired.

Her tone was lower than when she had last spoken. It was low enough to draw the curtain of confidence between them and their companions, with that subtle quality that takes account of but one listener.