Running Sands Part 2

"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 pa.s.s. 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 gla.s.ses 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. "h.e.l.lo," 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 b.u.t.terfly_, 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 b.u.t.terfly_ 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 battles.h.i.+p, was engaged in that vocal a.s.sault upon a fortress of heavy orchestration which is the penance of all that have to sing the role 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 s.h.i.+fted 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, a.s.suming 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.