ONE ROAD TO LOVE
Among the little company of persons aware of Jim Stainton's sentimental inclinations, or so far as were concerned the people most intimately affected by those inclinations, there appeared, thus far, to be a singular unanimity of opinion regarding the matter. Stainton, it is to be supposed, approved because the inclinations concurred with his pet theories. Newberry, although he did not know anything about Stainton's pet theories and would in all probability have jeered at them had he been enlightened, proved ready to welcome the miner because he had decided that the miner should relieve the Newberry household of a quiet presence that, its quiescence to the contrary notwithstanding, distinctly disturbed the even course of Newberry's existence. Ethel, as may be readily believed, found, under her husband's expert guidance, no difficulty in reaching the conclusion that, as she put it, "a match of this sort would be for the child's best interests."
To be sure, there was George Holt, if one counted him and his verdict. Still, even in this singularly imperfect world, where we believe in majorities and where they misgovern us, we acknowledge the purging benefits of an ever-present party in opposition; and the party in opposition to James Stainton was now composed of Mr. George Vanvechten Holt. He was a splendid minority of one, but he was not one of those most intimately affected, and he was not generally the sort of individual noticed. Stainton had saved his life, yet even Holt admitted that the life was scarcely worth the saving.
"Not that I care anything about the youngster for her own sake," he would say, night after night, at his club, where he had made all the club-members he knew an exception to his promise of secrecy; "it's not that, and it isn't that my liking for Stainton shuts my eyes to his faults. Not a little bit. Tying up little Muriel to a man half a hundred years old is like sending virgins to that Minotaur-chap and all that sort of thing. And hitching good old Jim to a girl of eighteen is like fastening a scared bulldog to the tail of some new-fangled and unexploded naval-rocket: you don't know what's inside of it and you don't know where it's going to land; all you do know is that it's going to be mighty mystifying to the dog. Still, as I say, I'm not personal. What makes me sore is the principle of the thing. It's so rottenly unprincipled, you know."
Holt, however, always ended by declaring that he would not attempt to interfere. He intimated, darkly, that he could, if he would, interfere with considerable effect, but he was specific, if darker, in his reasons therefor, in his decision not to attempt to save his threatened friends or fight for his outraged principles.
The truth was that George had made one more endeavour after the evening of the opera. He was severely rebuffed. Because, as he never tired of stating, he really liked Stainton and would not forget that the miner had saved his life, he recurred, after much painful plucking-up of courage, to the amatory subject, which only intoxication had permitted him so boldly to pursue on the night previous.
He was seated in Stainton's sitting-room high in the hotel. It was late afternoon; the rumble and clatter of the city rose from the distant street, and Stainton, full of fresh memories of his motor drive with Muriel, was walking backward and forward from his bedroom, slowly getting into evening clothes.
"I sure never would have thought you were morbid," said Holt, from his seat on the edge of a table, whence he dangled his legs.
"Morbid?" repeated Stainton. "I am not."
"I mean—you know: about death and old age and all that sort of thing."