Читать книгу Running Sands - Reginald Wright Kauffman - Страница 6

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Stainton decided that he would go to the Metropolitan Opera House that night to hear Madama Butterfly. 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 Butterfly.

A page was passing, 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 Butterfly 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 Côte 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 brasses, 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 reassured 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 circumstance, to counting his two-bit pieces, and now, precisely because all that had passed, he enjoyed sharply the luxury of counting nothing, not even the double-eagles. He laid a yellow-backed bill on the glass 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 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; 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-glass and secretly criticising his attitude 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 sparsely 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.

Below him swirled the yellow evening life of the third greatest among the world's great thoroughfares. Looking down from the height of his hotel was to Stainton like looking down upon a riverside furnace through its roof. Molten streams, swelling from the darker channels to the north, flowed along their appointed alleyways and broke and divided, hissing and spluttering against the pier that was the Times Building. And as the steam rises from the red waste that runs from the furnace into the river, there now rose to Stainton's desert-starved ears the clanging of cable-cars, the rattle of carriages, the tooting of the purring motors—all the humming chorus of the night-wakeful thing that men call New York.

He stretched his arms apart to it. He wanted to enfold it, to inhale its breath, to mix with it and become lost in it. He had come back. After all these years, he had come back, and he had come back a victor unscarred.

"I'm still young," he repeated, raising his head and spreading his nostrils to the damp air of the city-evening. And "Still young!" he continued to whisper on his way down in the elevator and through the crowded dining-room to his seat at a glittering table.

A ready waiter detached himself from a group of his fellows and dexterously steered a rapid course, between seated diners and laden serving-tables, to Stainton's broad shoulder.

Stainton was studying, with less difficulty than he had anticipated, the menu.

"Soup, sir?" suggested the waiter.

"Yes; consommé," said Stainton.

"And a little fish, sir?"

"No, thank you; no fish."

"Those bass are very nice, sir. I can recommend them."

"No, thank you, I think not. I want a steak, sirloin."

"Rare, sir?"

"Medium."

"Yes, sir. And shall we say potatoes au gratin?"

"No. Boiled potatoes. And French peas."

"A little cauliflower with sauce Hollandaise?"

"No. Only the steak, potatoes, and peas."

The waiter raised his brows ever so slightly.

"And what salad, sir?" he asked.

"No salad, thank you."

"Er—and about dessert?"

"Nothing. After the meal you may bring me a demi-tasse."

The waiter suppressed surprise. A New Yorker may dine simply, but that a still obvious stranger in New York should dine upon less than five courses—that was beyond his experience.

"What cocktail, sir?" he enquired.

"None," said Stainton.

"Very good, sir. Shall I send the wine-card?"

"No."

Stainton spoke briefly this time, even sharply, and his tone had the effect that he desired for it. He ate his dinner undisturbed.

A more pleasant disturbance than that of the waiter was, however, in store for him. As he left the dining-room and returned to the lobby, ready now for the opera, there brushed by him, en route from the bar-room, a stout man of about thirty-five, with a round face and a high hat perched at the extreme rear of a head almost completely bald.

The two looked at each other.

"I beg your pardon," said the stranger.

"I beg your par——" Stainton began to echo.

But he did not finish, for the stranger, suddenly a stranger no longer, was fairly shouting:

"Hello, hello, hello! What in the name of all that's——"

Stainton's lips broke into a delighted smile, which showed square, white teeth.

"Holt," he said: "George Holt!"

"Alive and well—thanks to you, old man." Holt seized the proffered hand and began to pump it. "And you!" he continued. "Think of it! You! I saw about your luck in the papers, and I meant to write. Upon my soul, I did. I don't know how it was I didn't——"

"Oh, that's all right."

"But I was glad. I never was so glad. And you're here—here in little old New York?"

"So it seems."

"For good? Of course it is. Everybody comes here to spend his money."

"Well, I hope it's not for harm."

Holt ceased pumping, dropped the hand, put both his hands on Stainton's shoulders, and held him at arm's length.

"Great Scott, but it's good to see you again," he said. "Five years, isn't it?"

"All of that."

"And then I was out there in the last of the Wild and Woolly, and we were sworn brother-adventurers and all that, and you saved my life——"

"Nonsense."

"Yes, you did—saved my life, by the great horn spoon, just as the knife-claws of that big grizzly were raised to rip out what passes with me for a heart. I'll never forget it as long as I live."

Stainton wished it forgotten.

"How's the world treating you?" he asked.

"So, so; I mean, badly. In fact, it's not treating me at all; I have to pay for myself, and just enough to pay and none to save, at that. But you—you! Oh, you lucky beast, you!" He shook Stainton by the shoulders and again studied his smiling face. "Good old Jim!" he said.

Stainton's smile went somewhat awry.

"Old?" he echoed. "Oh, I don't know."

"What? No, of course not." Holt thrust a playful thumb between Stainton's ribs. "Young as ever, eh? So am I. Still, you know, time does pass. Oh, well, what of it? I certainly am glad to see you."

He hooked his arm into Stainton's. "Come on and have a drink."

"Thank you, no," said Stainton; "I scarcely ever take anything, you know."

Holt, unlike the waiter, showed his disapproval.

"I know you scarcely ever did out there." He jerked his round face in what he supposed was a westerly direction. "But that's over now. You don't have to be careful now. What's the good of being rich if you have to be careful?"

"Still, I am careful," said Stainton, quietly.

"But on this occasion? Surely not on this occasion, Jim!"

The miner laughed freely now.

"You always were a wonder at discovering occasions, George," he said. "Your occasions were as frequent as saints' days and other holidays in a Mexican peon's calendar."

"And still are, thank the Lord. 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.

Holt made endless plans for his friend. He would "put up" Stainton's name at his club. He would introduce him to this personage and to that. He would—

"Oh, by Jove, yes, and the women!" he interrupted himself. "You've got to go gently there, Jim."

A bright tint showed on Stainton's cheeks.

"I never——" he began.

"Oh, not them!" said Holt, dismissing the entire half-world with a light gesture. "I know you didn't—the more fool you. But what I mean is the—you know: the all-righters. They'll be setting their caps at you worse than any of the other sort. You've got to remember that you're a catch."

This was all very pleasant, and Stainton was too honest with himself not to admit so much.

"Marriage," he admitted, "isn't beyond my calculations."

"Exactly. Now, you leave that little matter to me, Jim. I know——"

"I think that, if you don't much mind, I shall leave it to myself. There is no hurry, you see."

"Um; yes. I do see. But if there's no hurry, just you wait—just you wait, old man, till you have seen what I can show you. New York is the biggest bond-market and marriage-market in the world." He looked at his watch. "Hello," he said: "I'll be late. Now, look here: where'll you be after the opera? I've got to go there. I hate it, but I have to."

"The opera?" repeated Stainton. "The Metropolitan?"

"Yes, sure."

"But I'm going there myself."

"The devil you are. Where are you?"

Stainton produced his ticket.

Holt glanced at it and shook his head.

"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. We'll call a taxi and motor there together—it's just a step to the Metropolitan—and then, after the first act, I'll come round to you and take you over to meet 'em. What do you say?"

Stainton said what he was expected to say, which was, of course, that he would be delighted to meet any friends of Holt, and so it befell that the two men went to the opera-house together and parted at the door only with the certainty of meeting soon again.

Yet, the miner was still glowing with the thrill of his new life. "I'm young!" he repeated to himself as he was shown to his seat. And he felt young. He felt that he had never yet lived and that he was now about to live; and he thanked Heaven that he had kept himself trained for the experience.

He had dined slowly, as befits a man that has earned his leisure, and his conversation with Holt had not been hurried. Consequently, when he reached his place, the first act of Madama Butterfly was already well over. With the voice of Apollo and the figure of an elephant, the tenor, bursting through the uniform of a naval officer with a corpulence that would endanger a battleship, was engaged in that vocal assault upon a fortress of heavy orchestration which is the penance of all that have to sing the rôle of "Pinkerton." Stainton listened and tried to enjoy. He listened until the curtain fell at length upon the beginning of the inevitable tragedy, until the lights flashed up about him, and he found himself looking straight into the eyes of a young girl in a lower box not thirty feet away.

About him swept the broad curve of boxes that has been called "The Diamond Horseshoe," filled with wonderful toilettes and beautiful women, but Stainton did not see these. In the particular box toward which he was looking there were three other people: there was a matronly woman in what appeared to be brocade; there was a sleek, weary-eyed, elderly man, and there was another man faintly suggested in the background, as the lover of the mistress is faintly suggested in Da Vinci's masterpiece—but Stainton was no more conscious of this trio than he was of the gowns and women of the broad horseshoe. He saw, or was conscious of seeing, only that girl.

And she was leaning far over the rail, at pause where, when their eyes met, his intense gaze had arrested her: a young girl, scarcely eighteen years old, her delicate, oval face full of the joy of life, aglow with the excitement, the novelty of place, people, music. The light was upon her—upon her slim, softly white-clad body trembling at the unguessed portal of womanhood just as it trembled also under his gaze. She had wonderful hair, which waved without artifice, as blue-black as a thunder-cloud in May; she had level brows and eyes large and dark and tender. Her lips were damp, the lower one now timidly indrawn. While he looked at her, there awoke in Stainton the Neolithic man, the savage and poet that sang what he felt and was unashamed to feel and sing: she was like a Spring evening in the woods: warm and dusky and clothed in the light of stars.

Stainton did not move, yet his heart seemed twisting in his breast. Was he mad? Was he alive, sane, awake and in New York of to-day? If so, if he were himself, then were the old stories true, and did the dead walk? Sitting there, stonily, there floated through his brain a line from a well-conceived and ill-executed poem:

"At Paris it was, at the opera there ..."

The girl was the one to break the spell. When Stainton would have ceased looking, he could never know. But the girl flushed yet more deeply and turned away, with a quick movement that was almost a reprimand but not enough of a reprimand to be an acknowledgment that she was aware of him.

Jim, his own cheeks burning at the realisation of his insolence, but his heart tumultuous for that other reason, himself started. He shifted clumsily in his chair and so became conscious of another movement in the box.

A man—the man that had been, at Stainton's first glimpse of the party, dimly outlined—was disentangling himself from the background, was bending forward to make vehement signs in Stainton's direction, was finally, and with no end of effort on Stainton's part, assuming recognisable shape. It was George Holt.

Holt waved his hand again and nodded toward the lobby. Then, as Stainton nodded a tardy comprehension, he faded once more into the background of the box.

They met a few moments later in the corridor.

"I see you found your friends," said Stainton. At least temporarily, he had regained his self-control.

"My who? Oh, the Newberrys? Of course. Come over; you must meet them."

"The Newberrys?" Stainton looked a misapprehension.

"Yes, I told you, you know. Good old Preston Newberry and his wife."

"I thought," urged Stainton, "that I saw a girl——"

"Oh, that?" asked Holt, recollecting with some difficulty a person of such small importance. "That's their little Boston ward."

"What's her name?"

"Something or other. I forget. Stannard: that's it—Muriel Stannard. She's just out of her——"

He stopped and blinked, his narrow eyes directed at Stainton, who had lifted to his face a hand that visibly trembled.

"What's the trouble?" asked Holt. "Too used to the desert to stand our nifty opera-house air? Don't wonder. Come out and have a drink. Plenty of time."

"No," said Stainton. He achieved a smile. "I'm all right. Why in the world did you think I wasn't? I'm just——She's eighteen, isn't she?"

"Who? Mrs. New——Oh, the girl? Yes, I imagine she is about that. But she's an orphan and hasn't a cent and is too young to mix in, anyhow. Don't you bother: she won't interfere. Come along, if you won't have a drink, and meet the Newberrys. Mrs. Preston is every bit as good as a Bronx cocktail, though she wouldn't be seen in the Bronx for a thousand of 'em."

Stainton replied with compressed lips.

"I should like to meet Miss—Miss Stannard," he said.

"Miss Stannard? The youngster?" Holt broke into a laugh. "Bless my soul! Why, she's not even out yet; and you mean to say——"

But Stainton's firm fingers had closed so sharply about Holt's arm that, while the pain of the unexpected grip shot through him, Holt's laughter ended in a gasp.

"Don't joke about this," commanded Stainton. "You remember that we used to be friends."

"Sure. Aren't we friends now? What's hit you, Jim? We're friends still, I hope. You don't think I'm likely to forget what you once did for me, do you?"

"Very well, then: don't joke about Miss Stannard."

"No offence intended," said the perplexed Holt; "but why in thunder shouldn't I joke about her?"

Stainton's grip loosened, and his eyes twinkled.

"After all," he said, "it must have seemed strange to you——"

"Strange? It looked like the asylum!" said Holt.

"And so," Stainton continued, "I dare say that I do owe you an explanation." He put out his hand again, but Holt dodged.

"No more of that!" said Holt.

"All right," Stainton answered. He laid a hand on Holt's shoulder. "Can you keep a secret, George?"

The clubman blinked in anticipation.

"Seems to me we've had a few together," he said.

"Then," said Stainton, "I'll tell you why I was a little sensitive about comments on Miss Stannard: I am going to marry her."