Running Sands.

by Reginald Wright Kauffman.

PREFACE

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of G.o.d, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony....

"It was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name....

"It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of continence might marry, and keep themselves undefiled....

"It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other....

"Into which holy estate these two persons come now to be joined...."

--The Book of Common Prayer.

I

"WON'T YOU WALK INTO MY PARLOUR?"

Stainton decided that he would go to the Metropolitan Opera House that night to hear _Madama b.u.t.terfly_. He did not care for operatic music, but he hoped to learn. He did not expect to meet anyone he knew, but he trusted that he might come to know someone he met. There was, at any rate, no spot in the Great American Desert, where he had found his fortune, quite so lonely as this crowded lobby of the Astor, the hotel at which he was now stopping--so he decided upon the Metropolitan and _Madama b.u.t.terfly_.

A page was pa.s.sing, uttering shrill demands for a man whose name seemed to be "Mr. Kerrghrrr." Stainton laid a large, but hesitating, hand upon the boy's shoulder.

"Where can I buy a ticket for to-night's opera?" he enquired.

The page ceased his vocal rumble and looked up with wounded reproof at the tall cause of this interruption.

"News-stand," he said, and immediately escaped to resume the summons of "Mr. Kerghrrr."

Stainton followed the direction that the page's eyes had indicated. Over the booth where newspapers might be purchased for twice the price that he would have to pay for them in the street, fifteen yards away, he saw a sign announcing the fact that opera and theatre tickets were here for sale. He approached, somewhat awkwardly, and, over a protruding ledge of red and blue covered magazines on which were portrayed the pink and white prettiness of impossibly insipid girls, confronted a suave clerk, who appeared tremendously knowing.

"You have tickets for the opera?" asked Stainton.

"Yessir."

"For the Metropolitan Opera House?"

"Yessir. How many?"

"There are----It's _Madama b.u.t.terfly_ to-night, I think the paper said?"

"Yessir. What part of the house do you want?"

"I don't know," said Stainton. "That's a good show, isn't it?"

The clerk was too well fitted for his business to smile at such a query.

He had, besides, perception enough to discern something beyond the humorous in this broad-shouldered, grave man of anywhere from forty to fifty, who was evidently so strong in physique and yet so clearly helpless in the commonplaces of city-life.

"It's the best production of that opera for the whole season," the clerk made answer. "Caruso sings _Pinkerton_ and----"

"So I understand," said Stainton, quickly.

The clerk nimbly shifted the quality of his information.

"And anyhow," he went urbanely on, "the Metropolitan audience is always a show in itself, you know. Everybody that is anybody is there; for a steady thing it beats the Horseshow in Madison Square Garden. You'll be wanting seats in the orchestra, of course?"

"One," corrected Stainton. "Shall I?" he added.

"Oh, yes. That is, if you're a stranger in New York. I----Pardon me, sir, but I suppose you are a stranger?"

"Very much of a stranger."

"Then I can recommend this seat, sir." The clerk disappeared behind a hanging vine of magazines more glorious than the slopes of the Cote d'Or in autumn, and immediately reappeared with a ticket projecting from a narrow envelope. "Fifth row," he said. "Second from the aisle. Not on the side with the bra.s.ses, either. You can see all the boxes from it."

Jim Stainton's heavy, iron-grey eyebrows came together in a puzzled meeting. Under them, however, his iron-grey eyes twinkled.

"Thank you," he said; "but I want to see the stage, you know."

"Oh," the clerk rea.s.sured him, "of course you'll see the stage perfectly."

Stainton accepted the ticket.

"Very well," he said. "Take it out of that."

For many a hard year he had been used, by compulsion of desperate circ.u.mstance, to counting his two-bit pieces, and now, precisely because all that had pa.s.sed, he enjoyed sharply the luxury of counting nothing, not even the double-eagles. He laid a yellow-backed bill on the gla.s.s counter and received, without regarding it, the change that the now thoroughly deferential clerk deftly returned to him. 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 ent.i.tled 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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; he had come to bury the man that he had been, and he had come to woo.

He went to his elaborate rooms to dress. For the last decade and more, he had not worn evening-clothes a score of times, and he now donned the black suit, fresh from a Fifth Avenue tailor's shop, with a care that was in part the result of this scant experience and in part the consequence of a fear of just how ridiculous the new outfit would make him seem. He endangered the shirt when he came to fasten it; he was sure that he had unnecessarily wrinkled the white waistcoat, and the tie occupied his bungling fingers for a full five minutes.

His apprehensions, nevertheless, were unjustified. Something, when the toilet was completed, rather like a man of fashion appeared to have been made by the man of the needle out of the man of the pick: if the miner had not wholly vanished, at least the familiar of Broadway had joined him. Stainton, critically surveying himself in the pier-gla.s.s and secretly criticising his att.i.tude of criticism, saw nothing that, to his unaccustomed and therefore exacting eye, presented opportunity for objection. The figure was heavier, more stalwart than, as he had been told, was for that season the mode, but the mode, that season, exacted a slimness that indicated the weakling. The clothes themselves were, on the other hand, perfection and to the point of perfection they fitted.

The face--

Jim Stainton, with suspended breath, drew the hanging electric-lamp nearer, leaned forward and studied the reflection of that face closely.

He saw a large, well-proportioned head, the head of a man serious, perhaps, but admirably poised. The black hair was only spa.r.s.ely sprinkled with gray. The deep line between the thick brows might be the furrow of concentration rather than the mark of years. The rugged features--earnest eyes of steel, strong nose, compressed lips and square, clean-shaven chin--were all features that, whatever the life they had faced, betokened stamina from the beginning. Hot suns had burnished his cheeks, but a hard career had entailed those abstinences which are among the surest warders of youth. Experience had strengthened, but time had been kind.

"I am still young," he thought. "I am fifty, but I don't look forty, and I have the physique of twenty-five."

He walked to the window and flung it wide.