Running Sands Part 5

Stainton's pulses leaped.

"About what things?" was all that he was at first able to say.

The girl smiled. Stainton thought her smile wistful.

"The sort that fill these boxes," said Muriel: "the sort, I dare say, that uncle and aunt and Mr. Holt and I are."

He heard a s.h.i.+mmering sprite of regret in her voice: regret not that he did not care for these people, but that these people should be what they were.

"Don't include yourself in this lot," he answered.

He was immediately aware that his reply was scarcely courteous to his hosts, and so was she.

"You are hard on them," she said.

"Hadn't you just been hard on them, too?" he countered.

"Ah, yes, but they are my relatives. At least Uncle Preston and Aunt Ethel are. Family criticism is permitted everywhere."

He did not like her schoolgirlish attempt at epigram, and he showed his disapproval.

"Now you are trying to be of a piece with them," he said.

The glance that she gave him was no longer calm: there was a flash of flame in it.

"You talk as if you had known me for years."

"For thirty years."

"Yes?" She did not understand.

"I have known you for thirty years."

What sort of man was this? "But I am only eighteen," she said.

"Nevertheless, I have known you for thirty years."

She gave an empty glance at her programme.

"Since you were in pinafores," she said, still looking down.

Stainton bit his lip. There had been no malice in her tone, yet all children are cruel, he reflected, and the modern child's cruelty is ingenious. Was there anything in that speech for her to be sorry for, and, if there were, would she be sorry?

"Some day," he said quietly, "I shall try to explain."

She regarded him again, this time with altered gaze.

"Some day," she said, "I hope you will tell me about that romantic career that Aunt Ethel was talking of."

Was she sorry? Was she interested?

"It's not romantic," he protested. "It isn't in the least romantic. It's just a story of hard work and disappointment, and hard work and success."

"But Mr. Holt told us that in one month you were condemned to death for piracy in Central America and acted--what do they call it?--floor-manager for a firemen's ball in Denver."

"George has been dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse. He never knew me till he met me in the West five or six years ago. I was condemned for piracy _in absentio_ by a Spanish-American court because I had a job as cook on a filibustering s.h.i.+p that was wrecked off Yucatan and never got any nearer to sh.o.r.e, and I was floor-manager at the firemen's ball because--well, because I happened to belong to a fire-company."

"But you did have adventures in Alaska and Colorado and New Mexico?"

"Oh, I've knocked about a bit."

"And----" Her lips were parted, her eyes large. She no longer heard the voices on the stage. "Did you ever----Mr. Holt said you once shot----"

"Yes," said Stainton, gravely, "I think I once killed a man."

She clasped her hands on the railing of the box.

"Tell me about it," she commanded. Her tone was a compliment.

"There's nothing to tell. It was in an Alaskan mining-camp. The man was drunk and armed. He attacked me, and I had to defend myself. He shot twice before I shot at all, but I hit and he didn't. I'm sorry I had to do it to remain alive, but I'm not sorry to have remained alive."

"Oh," she cried, petulantly, "you are _so_ matter-of-fact!"

"Not nearly so matter-of-fact as you suppose. Not in the important things. In business, in everyday life, a man has to be matter-of-fact.

It's the only method to get what you want."

"Do you really think so?" She appealed to him now as to a well of knowledge. Perhaps, he reflected, she had about her ordinarily few wells to which she was permitted so to appeal. "Then maybe that is why I don't get what I want."

"Surely you have all you want."

She shook her raven hair. "Not any of it."

"And you want?"

"Lots of things."

"For instance?"

She smiled, but was firm. "No, I sha'n't tell you."

"Not one?"

"Not now."

"Perhaps they are not always the sort of things that you ought to have."

"Yes, they are."

"All of them?"