Stainton

“ Stainton was not unusual.
"I have won my fight—yes," he said. "I have got the means. Can I gain the end? It's you who must tell me that."
She saw now.
"How can I help?" she faltered.
"I wanted Life," he repeated, and wished that he could see her face. "Life means more than money. Money will protect it, secure it; but Life means Love. Long ago I knew your mother."
Very simply, but directly, he told her how he had loved that other Muriel. ”

“ Stainton did not long remember all these things, was never even aware that at this wedding, as at all the other public demonstrations that go by the same name, the young girls wondered what it portended and the young men smirked because they knew. After a brief engagement in which the flames of his desire had grown in expectant intensity upon the fuel of those minor favours which conventional engagements make the right of the man, he was hurried into the church in no state of mind that a sane man would willingly describe as sane. ”

“ The first of these affairs sprang from a conversation started by a letter with a blue French twenty-five-centime stamp upon it, which their always discreet waiter brought to the rooms one morning with the coffee. It had been forwarded from New York.
"What's that?" asked Muriel.
Stainton had been reading with his iron-grey brows in a pucker and a smile on his lips.
"It is a Frenchman trying to write English," he said. "He doesn't succeed." ”

“ They were standing by the parapet when he staggered, panting, toward them: Muriel's black eyes shining with tears, and a light in von Klausen's boyish face that made the husband wince.
"Why, Jim," said Muriel, "how muddy your clothes are. You look perfectly ridiculous."
Stainton was thinking:
"I must get her away. I must get myself away from this awful place. I must take her with me. I am afraid to be alone. I must get her away." ”

“ But to-night——Even you've got to admit to-night, Jim. It isn't every day in the year that a man that's saved my life turns up in New York with a newly discovered, warranted pure, gold mine in his pocket."
This was so clearly true that Stainton capitulated, or at least compromised by going to the bar and drinking a thimbleful of white-mint while Holt, chattering like a cheerful magpie—if a magpie can be cheerful—consumed two long glasses of Irish whiskey with a little aerated water added. ”

“ But yes; I know them! I have been to their meetings and heard one of these savants talk while ten snored. 'Nature, nature!' they cry, and all the time, all the time they forget Nurture. What do I to them say? I, Paul Achille Boussingault?" The doctor struck his heart, and breathed: "I say one word: 'Environment!'—and they silence themselves."
Before this volley Stainton felt dismayed. ”

“ It was useless to imagine that he might live and leave her, for he knew that if he left her she, unable to marry von Klausen, would marry no one and would come to what Stainton believed to be a worse estate. He knew that if he lived, he would have to live beside her and not with her, a despised protector. If passion should once or twice more flicker in its socket, it would be an animal passion that he detested and that would make Muriel and him detest each other. ”

“ Stainton was a trifle nervous at the fear that the [Pg 187] talk would soon turn to subjects of which a young wife is supposed to be ignorant. He glanced at Muriel, but he saw that she was engaged solely with the cut of canard sauvage that lay on her plate, and he concluded that since she must some day learn of these things of which the doctor and he were talking, it was as well for her to learn of them from her husband and a physician. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stainton produced his ticket.
Holt glanced at it and shook his head. [Pg 13]
"Too close to hear," he said. "But what's the difference? We've all heard the confounded thing so often——"
"I have not," said Stainton.
"Eh? What? But it's Madama Butterfly, you know—Oh, yes, of course: I forgot. Still, what'll interest you, once you get there, will be what interests everybody else—and that's not the stage and not the orchestra. Now, look here: I'm with the Newberrys, you know—the Preston Newberrys——"
"I don't know," said Stainton.
"Well, you will, my boy; you will. That's just the point. ”

“ Stainton had not yet come back. [Pg 272]
"He will certainly follow us very shortly," said von Klausen. "It may be better that we await him in your sitting-room."
Muriel had been expecting either that Stainton would have reached the hotel before them or that her companion would leave her at the door. Now a new difficulty presented itself. It is one of the curses of our minor errors—perhaps the greatest—that they inspire us with the fear that the persons about us may be suspecting us of worse offences. Muriel had never before considered what the people of the hotel might think of her. ”

“ But the not-knowing profound of mankind! Incredible! Truly. Nine-tens of my women patients, they are married, who of themselves know not half so much as the savage little girl of ten years. And the men, they I think no more wise."
Stainton passed through the now crowded waiting-room and into the sunlit street in a mood that wavered between rebellion and submission. He walked to the Chatham and, once arrived, walked past the hotel. He [Pg 227] did this twice, when, with the realisation that he hesitated from fear of Muriel, he mastered his timidity and entered. ”

“ The strongest impulses are not infrequently those of which one is entirely unconscious. At Aiken, Stainton had yielded himself with the extravagance of the young man of twenty-five, which he thought he was, to the demands of the situation in which he found himself. ”

“ As the voyage progressed, Stainton and von Klausen became more and more friendly, and Muriel more and more restless, she could not tell why. Her husband had passed his entire manhood among men and had acquired, though he did not know it, the taste for the discussion of what, because of the inferior grade of education that we grant to women, we magnificently call manly topics. ”

“ Perhaps's Nature's a better word. Nature. Beautiful nature. Trees and things. Birds mating in—in May. Mustn't go 'gainst beautiful nature, Jim."
"Come on," said Stainton.
But in the street, Holt flung his arms about his unwilling companion's neck.
"I'm—I'm fond of you, Jim," he said. "You save' my life 'n'—an' God knows I love you." Easy tears [Pg 58] were running down his puffed cheeks. "Only you are old, Jim. You know you are."
Stainton disguised his disgust. He disengaged himself gently.
"No, I'm young, George," he said, "and young blood will have its way, you know." ”

“ Stainton regarded this man of thirty-odd with whom, for a short time, he had been once so fast a friend and [Pg 36] whom New York had so speedily converted into a corpulent, smug, bald-headed dandy. It would, indeed, be a pity if Stainton at fifty were not younger than Holt at thirty-five. And yet Holt had referred to the prematurely withered Newberry as "Old Newberry" much as he had now spoken of the miner as "Old Stainton"!
"Oh, you," said Stainton: "you have reached the age at which a man doesn't object to being called old." ”

“ Stainton."
"Your services?" asked Muriel.
"To occupy you during your husband's absence. It is unendurable to think of you as wholly deserted—is it not, sir?"
The Austrian was addressing Jim. Stainton and his wife exchanged a quick glance. Jim was thinking of her expression of dislike for the Captain; Muriel was annoyed because her husband had neglected to read [Pg 252] his letter before they joined von Klausen: she was in the mood for revenge.
"Oh, she'll make out," said Stainton. "Won't you, Muriel?"
"I don't know," replied Muriel. "It will be very dull." ”

“ Holt groaned. [Pg 38]
"All right; all right," he said, "but for Heaven's sake tell it!"
Stainton settled himself in his chair. He lit a cigar.
"I have to begin," he said, "at the beginning. The average man's biography is the story of an internecine war, a war between his heart and his head, and the heart generally wins. What has won with me, you may, as I said, judge for yourself. My father was a doctor in one of those little towns that are scattered about Boston in the way that the smaller drops of ink are scattered about the big splash on a blotter. My mother died when I was born. ”

“ Stainton strove to pass the embarrassing interruption.
"Well, doctor," he said, and from the corner of his eye saw with satisfaction that Muriel busied herself with an intricate ice, "I stick to my belief in humanity."
Boussingault flourished his coffee cup and spilled a liberal portion of its contents.
"In what world do you live?" he asked.
"In an eminently sane one," said Stainton. [Pg 193]
"Bien; I knew it was not the real world. In your world you know nothing, then, of all the ways, direct and indirect, to make women bear babies they do not want ”

“ Boussingault produced a huge handkerchief, shook it, mopped his sparkling brow, and resumed absolute immobility.
Stainton was now sincerely interested. He had thought somewhat upon these matters and, although he saw as yet no personal relevance in them, he had an intellectual appetite for their discussion.
"As I see it," he said, "none of these people that are trying to improve the breed denies that the poor are in a bad way, but just because the poor are in a bad way, they fail to be the stuff by which the race can be improved. ”

“ Muriel's face quivered.
"So that I—that we——" she started.
"So that you and von Klausen may marry."
"But we can't anyhow! Oh—that's the horror of it! That's why the thing can never be mended. In his religion there is no divorce. Marriage is a sacrament. Final. It lasts until one or the other dies."
Stainton frowned. ”

“ Holt relieved him there. It was his turn to laugh, and he laughed heartily.
"O, Lord, no!" said he. "Make yourself easy about that, old man. I've got just enough to live on comfortably by myself without exercising too much economy, and if I ever marry it will have to be a woman that can give me the luxuries I can't get otherwise."
"Then," smiled Stainton, "I hope you will soon need many luxuries and will soon find a good woman to supply [Pg 55] them. I thank you for your interest, George," he went on; "but you have been arguing about me, and, in spite of our ages, you are old and I am young. ”

“ I won't doubt. I believe in the world; I believe in Man.'"
Holt smiled.
"Wait till you know New York," said he.
"I am doubt-proof," answered Stainton. "I am immune."
"And so——" urged Holt, dropping this phase of the subject and reverting to Preston Newberry's niece.
"And so," Stainton took him up, "I decided to marry, sell my mine as soon as a good offer comes and be easy. I came to New York. I went to-night to the opera." His voice grew unaffectedly softer. "And at the opera," he said, "I saw the girl that I had loved all those years ago; that dead girl come to life again ”

“ Doubtless he was paying a heavy commission to the hotel's ticket-agent; perhaps he was obtaining less change than, under the terms of that commission, he was entitled to; but certainly about none of these things did he care. Toil had at last granted him success, toil and good luck; and success had immediately given him the right to emancipation from financial trifling. There are two times in a man's life when no man counts its cost: the time of his serious wooing and that of his ultimate illness. Stainton had come to New York with a twofold purpose ”

“ Stainton smiled.
"Anyhow," he said, "there's no harm in trying. See him and make one more appeal. I'll cut around here and have a try at climbing to the top of the cliff. There's a path by the back way. The hotel proprietor spoke enough English to tell me there was a small chapel on the top of this cliff over our heads, and a wonderful view, from Toulon to Marseilles—Try it, [Pg 347] Muriel—for my sake. I want to pay up. I don't pretend to be happy, but I want to pay up. So long! Good luck. And never say die!" ”

“ Holt ventured.
"I don't mind your giving it if it amuses you," said Stainton, shrugging his shoulders; "but I am quite clear on one point: you are what most city-bred men are: you have looked so hard after happiness that, when you see it, you can't enjoy it."
"Am I?" The liquor was burning in Holt's eyes. [Pg 49] "Perhaps I am, but that rule works two ways. Some fellows don't look hard enough. I don't know, but I imagine if a man never uses his eyes he goes blind."
Stainton, who had carried a few of his books to the West with him, wanted to quote Cicero: "Sis a veneris amoribus aversus ”

“ Stainton realised that it must be foolishly feminine longer to fence.
"Fifty," he belligerently declared.
Dr. Boussingault leaned back, spread wide his arms, and smiled.
"Vous voilà!"
"But, doctor, wait a moment. You don't understand——"
"My friend, if you understand these things more well than do I, why is it that you come to me? A man of fifty, he but recently marries a girl of eighteen——"
"But I have lived a careful life!"
"We all do. I have never known a drunkard; all of my drunkards, they are moderate drinkers." ”