Running Sands Part 28

"Please?"

"The impression that he was elderly: what gave you that?"

Von Klausen manifestly hesitated.

"I do not know," he said. "I thought that--I thought that, before we sailed, on the deck here I had seen him with you. You and two American gentlemen I thought I saw: one young and stout. I thought the gentleman young and stout went ash.o.r.e. Perhaps not. Perhaps it was the other that went ash.o.r.e. Perhaps that was your father."

There was a moment's silence. Muriel looked intently at the ragged horizon.

"The stout man was Mr. Holt," she said at last. "He is a friend of mine--of ours."

"Ah?" said von Klausen, disinterestedly polite.

"My husband," said Muriel, "is _not_ elderly."

"I ask his pardon," said von Klausen. He produced his bow again. He remained quite at his ease, but his manner implied a courteous wonder at any person's shame of his years. "He is then----"

"He is not so much over forty," lied Muriel, without the remotest idea why she should be thus untruthfully communicative.

Von Klausen ever so slightly turned his head away. She was immediately sure that he did it to conceal a smile.

"That is not old," she hotly contended. She made up her mind now that she did not like this graceful young foreigner. "And Jim is not so old as his age," she continued--"not nearly. He has lived half his life in our Great West, and he is as strong as a lion--and as brave."

She felt the folly of her remark as she made it, but von Klausen gave no sign of sharing that feeling. He settled himself comfortably in Jim's chair. She saw that his face was wholly innocent, his eyes only politely eager.

"Tell me of him, please," he said. "I have heard of your brave Westerners, as you call them, in your United States. I met, once in Was.h.i.+ngton, a Senator from Texas, but he did not seem to me quite--quite----Pray tell me of your husband, dear lady."

She was amazed to find that, offhand, she could not do this. She started twice and twice stopped, wondering what, after all, there was to say.

Then, with a vigorous concentration, she laid hold of all that her aunt and uncle had told her of her husband, all that Holt was authority for, all that the Sunday supplement of the newspapers had printed. She narrated how he had rescued the innocent runaway from the lynching party at Grand Joining, how he had saved the lives of his camp mates during the spotted fever epidemic at Sunnyside; she told of the shooting in Alaska, the filibustering expedition, of Jim's slaying with a knife the grizzly bear that was about to strip Holt's flesh from his bones; she gave in detail the story of Jim's descent into the shaft of the "Better Days" mine, and what she had not learned she supplied to the history of the train robbers on the Rio Grande. It was all deliberate boasting, and when she ended, she felt a little ashamed.

Von Klausen, however, was visibly affected.

"He is a man to admire, your husband," said the Austrian. "Strength and bravery, bravery and strength: these, dear lady, are the two things that men envy and women love, all the world over. I wish"--his young smile grew crooked--"I wish I had them."

Muriel's red lips parted in surprise:

"But you are a soldier?"

"What of that?" shrugged von Klausen.

"Oh, but you are brave!" She was sure of it.

"How do you know?" he asked--"how do I?"

"And you--you _look_ strong," she continued. Her black eyes pa.s.sed involuntarily over his slim, well-proportioned figure. "Anybody can see that you must be strong."

"If I correctly recall my sight of your good husband," said the captain, "he could break me in two pieces across his knee."

She inwardly acknowledged this possibility, but she did not like to bear her new friend belittle himself.

"That's only because Jim is _very_ strong," she explained.

"Perhaps," said von Klausen, "yet that was not the only kind of strength I bore in my mind, dear lady. I thought of the strength--of moral strength, strength of purpose--whether the purpose is for the good or the bad--which is two-thirds of bravery."

"And haven't you that?"

It might have been because he was altogether so new to her that the question came readily. There seemed then nothing strange in the discussion of these intimate topics.

"Who knows?" said von Klausen, quietly. "I have not yet been tried.

Perhaps, should I love something or somebody, I should acquire these things." His tone lacked offence because it perfectly achieved the impersonal note. "They would come to me then, for I should love that cause or person better than my own life or my own welfare. I do not know. I have not been tried. I know only that, without the cause or the person, I have not real strength; I have not real courage. I have fought my duel; I have faced death--but I know there are forms of it that I fear. I am at least brave enough to admit that I am sometimes afraid.

For the rest, I am not the type of man that women love: I need to be cared for, to be thought about, to be helped in the hundred foolish little ways--and women love men who do not take these things, but who give them."

His low voice, his simplicity, and most of all his childish manner, touched her.

"I think," she said, "that you are not fair to women."

Von Klausen pointed out across the rail.

"Look there!" said he.

A two-masted fis.h.i.+ng boat, storm driven from the Banks to sea, swung within three or four hundred yards of them. She could see its dripping gunwale contending with the waves, the oil-skinned sailors tottering upon its deck.

"Now look there!" said von Klausen.

This time be pointed ahead, and ahead she saw, just beyond the charging prow of the imperious _Friedrich_, what seemed to be a thick grey curtain. It reached to the heavens and, as the liner approached it, opened like three walls: one before the prow, the other two on either side. It had all the palpability of heavy cloth.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Fog," said von Klausen, and in a moment, with the great siren of the boat shaking their very hearts, it had descended upon them.

The walls fastened. The curtains enveloped them. The thick, tangible, breath-tightening stuff wrapped them in a kind of coc.o.o.n. All the clouds of the sky seemed to have fallen. Muriel could scarcely distinguish the features of the young fellow beside her. And always, reverberating and portentous, the siren howled overhead.

"The boat!" she called into von Klausen's ear. "Isn't it odd? Only a minute ago it was there. Then I saw only its masts. Now I can't see it at all."

He called his answer.

"Once in the Bosphorus--like this--fog. I was on the prow--an express boat. We brought up a little, low s.h.i.+p--crowded with pilgrims. Fog--shut out--the crash--I could look down and see--faces upturned, calling. I could _see_ them calling--could not hear. I am afraid--I am terribly afraid--of fogs."

She heard his voice break. She caught a glimpse of his face--the face of a frightened child. She felt him trembling as their shoulders touched: this soldier who had fought his duel and would not, she knew, fear the trial of battle. She was not afraid. Instinctively, she reached out toward him, to help, to comfort.

When the fog lifted as suddenly as it had fallen, the little fisherman was riding the waves safely and almost gaily far astern. The _Friedrich_ sped unconcernedly on.

"There was no real danger, I am sure," von Klausen was saying; "these Germans I do not like, but they are good sailors--too good to hurt a smaller boat."

Then Muriel discovered that she had been holding his hand.

"I think," she said, "that I had better go and look after Mr.

Stainton."