Running Sands Part 6

Her nod was positive: "All."

"But, whether you ought to have them or not, are you equally sure that they would be worth possessing?"

"How can I know till I have had them?"

"Easily. There are two ways of learning the value of anything we want: one is to get it, the other to lose it."

"We're crabbed against the things we miss."

"Are we? I don't know. Even if we are, there's a good deal to be said in favour of the comfort that lies in the philosophy of sour grapes."

She did not wholly follow him, but she was clear on the chief point. "It doesn't make me feel any more contented," she said, "to believe that I wouldn't have been happy if I had got something that I wanted to get and didn't."

Stainton shook his head.

"Some time," he said, "that belief will be your greatest comfort."

Muriel looked away. She was revolving this problem in her youthful mind, and when she replied it was by the _argumentum ad hominem_, which is an excellent argument and generally _ab femina_.

"You have been successful," she began. "If you had not been, would it have made you more contented to believe that success wouldn't have brought you happiness?"

"I was thinking," said Stainton, "of something in the past, something that I didn't get, and something that was not a business matter." He spoke slowly.

She understood.

"I'm sorry," she said, softly.

"No, no," he smiled. "In point of fact, whenever I failed in prospecting I did try to think that money would not have made me happy. But you may be right, for I always started prospecting again."

"And now?"

"Oh, now," said Stainton, with a concluding smile, "I am trying hard to resist the manifold temptations of good fortune."

As he spoke, the curtain was falling on the tragic termination of _Madama b.u.t.terfly_. The Newberrys and their guests rose as the curtain fell, and Stainton held her cloak for Muriel. Newberry was gasping his way into his own coat, and Holt was holding for Mrs. Newberry a gorgeous j.a.panese kimono absurdly reminiscent of the opera to which they had not listened; but Muriel's cloak was a simple and beautiful garment in Stainton's eyes, a grey garment lined with satin of the colour of old-fas.h.i.+oned roses. As she got into it--"Oh, it's quite easy," she said--his awkward hand was brushed by her cheek, and he bent his head, certain of being un.o.bserved in that hurry to depart wherewith the average American opera-audience expresses its opinion of the average operatic performance, and inhaled the perfume of her hair. His hands shook.

With Holt he saw their hosts to their motor.

"Aren't you coming home with us for supper?" asked Mrs. Newberry.

But Holt, who was abominably curious, wished to quiz Stainton, and Stainton, with the wisdom of his years, knew that enough had been done for an initial evening.

"No, thanks," Stainton allowed Holt to say; "we've just met after five years, you know, and we've got no end of things to talk about."

Ethel Newberry leaned forward and pressed Stainton's hand.

"You will look us up soon?" she politely enquired.

"Indeed, yes," said Stainton.

"Always glad to see you," said Newberry.

Muriel said nothing, but Stainton pressed warmly the little hand that she unreservedly offered.

"Good-night," said Stainton.

"Good-night," said Muriel.

No, thought Stainton, as he reluctantly turned away with Holt, in spite of her caustic reference to his age, she must be merely an impulsive, innocent girl. He was glad to come to this determination, glad, however, simply because it was what he concluded must be a final answer to a question that had already become annoying.

III

EN GARDE, MONSIEUR!

As the motor swerved away from them, making for the up-channel of Broadway, Holt seized Stainton's arm, and began to pilot him through the crowd.

"Now," said he, "will you _please_ tell me what the----"

"No," said Stainton, "I won't. Not yet."

"But you promised----"

"I know that. Only wait until we get to a quieter place than this. You can scarcely expect me to call out such things for all New York to hear."

They freed themselves of the whirlpool around the opera-house and began to walk northward.

Stainton was looking about him with the eyes of a man that has been for years in prison and has but just returned to his native town. He was not a New Yorker by birth, and he had never known the city well, but he had always loved it and through all his western exile he had dreamed of this triumphal return. He soon seemed to have forgotten the puzzle that he had agreed to explain to his friend.

"It's the same," he said, his gaze darting about the scurrying street, pausing now and again to rest on this or that building new to him although already old to Broadway. "It's still the same, and yet it's new--all new.--What's that place, the one over there on the corner?"

Holt grudgingly told him.

"Fresh?" asked Stainton.

"Five years old," said Holt.

"And that?--And that?"

Again Holt supplied the information thus requested.

"I think that New York is alive," said Stainton.

"Well, you never thought it was Philadelphia, did you?"

"I mean that the city itself is a living thing, a gigantic organism. You know they say a man changes, atom by atom, so that, every seven years, he is a fresh being, and yet remains the same being. I believe that is true of some cities and most of all of New York."