GEOFFREY HAMPSTEAD.
CHAPTER I.
I do not think
So fair an outward, and such stuff within,
Endows a man but he.
Cymbeline.
The Victoria Bank, Toronto, is on the corner of Bay and Front Streets, where it overlooks a part of the harbor large enough to gladden the eyes of the bank-clerks who are aquatic in their habits and have time to look out of the windows. Young gentlemen in tattered and ink-stained coats, but irreproachable in the matter of trousers and linen, had been known to gaze longingly and wearily down toward that strip of shining water when hard fate in the shape of bank duty apparently remained indifferent to the fact that an interesting race was being rowed or sailed. This, sometimes, was rather a bad thing for the race; for the Victoria Bank had, immured within its cut stone and plate glass, some good specimens of muscular gentility; and in contests of different kinds, the V. B. had a way (discomforting to other banks) of producing winners. The amount of muscle some of them could apply to a main-sheet was creditable, while, as to rowing, there were few who did not cultivate a back and thigh action which, if not productive of so much speed as Hanlan's, was certainly, to the uninitiated, quite as pleasant to look upon; so that, in sports generally, there was a decided call for the Vics.; not only among men on account of their skill, but also in the ranks of a gentler community whose interest in a contest seemed to be more personal than sporting. The Vics. had adopted as their own a particular color, of which they would wear at least a small spot on any "big day"; and, when they were contesting, this color would be prevalent in gatherings of those interested personally. And who would inquire the reasons for this favoritism? "Reasons! explanations!—why are men so curious? Is it not enough that those most competent to decide have decided? What will you? Go to!" Indeed, the sex is very divine. It is a large part of their divinity to be obscure.
Perhaps these young men danced with the ease and self-satisfaction of dervishes. Perhaps their prowess was unconsciously admired by those who formerly required defenders. But the most compelling reason, on this important point, was that "ours" of the Victoria Bank had established themselves socially as "quite the right sort" and "good form"—and thus desirable to the Toronto maiden, and, if not so much so to her more match-making mother, the fact that they were considered chic provided a feminine argument in their favor which had, as usual, the advantage of being, from its vagueness, difficult to answer; so that the more mercantile mother grew to consider that a "detrimental" who was chic was not, after all, as bad as a "det." without leaven.
It has been said that bank-clerks are all the same; but, while admitting that, in regard to their faultless trousers and immaculate linen, there does exist a pleasing general resemblance, rather military, it must be insisted that there are different sorts of them; that they are complete in their way, and need not be idealized. The old barbaric love for wonderful story-telling is still the harvest-ground of those who live by the propagation of ideas, but must we always demand the unreal?
There was nothing unreal about Jack Cresswell. As he stood poring over columns of figures in a great book, one glance at him was sufficient to dispel all hope of mystery. He was inclosed in the usual box or stall—quite large enough for him to stand up in, which was all he required (sitting ruins trousers)—and his office coat was all a bank-clerk could desire. The right armpit had "carried away," and the left arm was merely attached to the body by a few ligaments—reminding one of railway accidents. The right side of the front and the left arm had been used for years as a pen-wiper. A metallic clasp for a patent pencil was clinched through the left breast. The holes for the pockets might be traced with care even at this epoch, but they had become so merged in surrounding tears as to almost lose identity with the original design.
The bank doors had been closed for some time, after three o'clock, on this particular day in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and blank, and Jack Cresswell had been puzzling his brains over figures with but poor success. Whether his head was dull, or whether it was occupied by other things, it is hard to say—probably both; so, on hearing Geoffrey Hampstead, the paying-teller, getting ready to go away, he leaned over the partition and said, in an aggrieved tone:
"Look here, Geoffrey, I'm three cents out in my balance."
A strong, well-toned voice answered carelessly, "That is becoming a pretty old story with you, Jack. You're always out. However, make yourself comfortable, dear boy, as you will doubtless be at it a good while." Then, as he put on his hat and sauntered away, Geoffrey added a little more comfort. "If you really intend to bring it out right, you had better arrange to guard the bank to-night. You can do both at once, you know, and get your pay as well, while you work on comfortably till morning."
"I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll get these three cents right for me, I'll stand the dinners."
"Much obliged. Mr. Hampstead has the pleasure of regretting. Prior engagement. Has asked Mr. Maurice Rankin to dine with him at the club. But perhaps, even without your handsome reward, we might get these figures straightened out for you." Then, taking off his coat, "You had better take a bite with us if we can finish this in time."
Geoffrey came up to the books and "took hold," while Jack, now in re-established good humor, amused himself by keeping up a running fire of comments. "Aha! me noble lord condescends to dine the poor legal scribe. I wonder, now, what led you to ask Maurice Rankin to dine with you. You can't make anything out of Morry. He hasn't got a cent in the world, unless he got that police-court case. Not a red shekel has he, and me noble lord asks him to dinner—which is the humor of it! Now, I would like to know what you want with Rankin. You know you never do anything without some motive. You see I know you pretty well. Gad! I do."
Geoffrey was working away under this harangue, with one ear open, like a telegraph operator, for Jack's remarks. He said: "Can not a fellow do a decent thing once in a way without hearing from you?"
"Not you," cried Jack, "not you. I'll never believe you ever did a decent thing in your life without some underground motive."
Geoffrey smiled over the books, where he was adding three columns of figures at once, lost the addition, and had to begin at the bottom again; and Jack, who thought that never man breathed like Geoffrey, looked a little fondly and very admiringly at the way his friend's back towered up from the waist to the massive shoulders—and smiled too.
Jack's smile was expansive and contagious. It lighted up the whole man—some said the whole room—but never more brightly than when with Hampstead. Geoffrey had a fascination for him, and his admiration had reached such a climax after nearly two years' intercourse that he now thought there was but little within the reach of man that Geoffrey could not accomplish if he wished. It was not merely that he was good looking and had an easy way with him and was in a general way a favorite—not merely that he seemed to make more of Jack than of others. Hampstead had a power of some kind about him that harnessed others besides Jack to his chariot-wheels; and, much as Cresswell liked to exhibit Geoffrey's seamy side to him when he thought he discovered flaws, he nevertheless had admitted to an outsider that the reason he liked Hampstead was that he was "such an altogether solid man—solid in his sports, solid in his work, solid in his virtues, and, as to the other way—well, enough said." But the chief reason lay in the great mental and bodily vigor that nearly always emanated from Geoffrey, casting its spell, more or less effectively, for good or evil. With most people it was impossible to ignore his presence; and his figure was prepossessing from the extraordinary power, grace, and capacity for speed which his every movement interpreted.
It was his face that bothered observant loungers in the clubs. For statuary, a sculptor could utilize it to represent the face of an angel or a devil with equal facility—but no second-class devil or angel. Its permanent expression was that which a man exhibits when exercising his will-power. The tenacious long jaw had a squareness underneath it that seemed to be in keeping with the length of the upper lip. The high, long nose made its usual suggestions, two furrows between the thick eyebrows could ordinarily be seen, and the protuberant bumps over the eyes gave additional strength. The eyes were light blue or steel gray, according to the lights or the humor he was in. An intellectual forehead, beveled off under the low-growing hair, might suggest that the higher moral aspirations would not so frequently call for the assistance of the determination depicted in the face as would the other qualities shown in the width and weight of head behind the ears.
But Jack did not believe what he said in his tirades, and his good-will makes him lax in condemnation of things which in others he would have denounced. What Geoffrey said or did, so far as Jack knew, met, at his hands, with an easy indifference if culpable, and a kindling admiration if apparently virtuous. The two had lived together for a long time, and no one knew better than Geoffrey how trustworthy Jack was. Consequently, he sometimes entered into little confidences concerning his experiences, which he glossed over with a certain amount of excuse, so that the moral laxity in them did not fully appear; and what with the intensity of his speech, his word painting, and enthusiastic face, a greater stoic than poor Jack might have caught the fire, and perhaps condoned the offense.
Jack thought he knew Hampstead pretty well.
On the other side, Hampstead, though keen at discerning character, confessed to himself that Jack was the only person he could say he knew.
CHAPTER II.
This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries.—Hamlet.
As Jack expected, it did not take long for his friend Hampstead to show where the mistake about the three cents lay; and then they sallied forth for a little stroll on King Street before dinner.
They lived in adjoining chambers in the Tremaine Buildings on King Street. The rooms had been intended for law offices, and were reached by a broad flight of stairs leading up from the street below. Here they were within five minutes' walk of their bank or the club at which they generally took their meals. Hampstead had first taken these rooms because they were in a manner so isolated in the throng of the city and afforded an uncontrolled liberty of ingress and egress to young men whose hours for retiring to rest were governed by no hard and fast rules.
A widow named Priest lived somewhere about the top of the building, with her son, who was known to the young gentlemen as Patsey. Mrs. Priest made the beds, did the washing, attended to the fires, and was generally useful. She also cleaned offices, even to the uttermost parts of the great building, and altogether made a good thing of it; for besides the remunerations derived in these ways she had her perquisites. For instance, in the ten years of her careful guardianship of chambers and offices in the building, she had never bought any coal or wood. She possessed duplicate keys for each room in her charge, and thus having a large number of places to pillage she levied on them all, according to the amount of fuel she could safely carry away from each place without its being missed. Young men who occupied chambers there never had to give away or sell old clothes, because they were never found to be in the way. She asked for them when she wanted to cut them down for Patsey, because it would not do to have the owners recognize the cloth on him. The clothes which she annexed as perquisites she sold.
Patsey was accustomed occasionally to go through the wardrobes of the gentlemen with his mother, while she made the beds in the morning, and he then chose the garments that most appealed to his artistic taste. This interesting heir to Mrs. Priest's personal estate also had his perquisites "unbeknownst to ma." He consumed a surprising amount of tobacco for one so young, and might frequently be seen parading King Street on a summer evening enjoying a cigar altogether beyond his years and income. His clothes bore the pattern of the fashion in vogue three or four years back; and, despite some changes brought about by the scissors of Mrs. Priest, the material, which had been the best Toronto could provide, still retained much of the glory that had captivated King Street not so very long ago. Having finally declared war against education in all its recognized branches, he generally took himself off early in the day, and lounged about the docks, or derived an indifferently good revenue from the sale of ferry-boat tickets to the island; and in various other ways did Patsey provide himself with the luxuries and enjoyments of a regular topsawyer.
In the immediate neighborhood of Mrs. Priest, at an altitude in the building which has never been exactly ascertained, dwelt Mr. Maurice Rankin, barrister-at-law and solicitor of the Supreme Court. He resided in Chambers, No. 173 Tremaine Buildings, King Street, West, Toronto, and certainly all this looked very legal and satisfactory on the professional card which he had had printed. But the interior appearance of the chambers was not calculated to inspire confidence in the profession of the law as a kind nurse for aspiring merit; and as for the approach to No. 173, it was so intricate and dark in its last few flights of stairs, that none but a practiced foot could venture up or down without a light, even in the day-time. The room occupied by Mr. Rankin could never have been intended to be used as an office, or perhaps anything else, and consequently the numbers of the rooms in the buildings had not been carried up to the extraordinary elevation in which No. 173 might now be found. Still, it seemed peculiar not to have the number of one's chambers on one's card, if chambers should be mentioned thereon, so he found that the rooms numbered below ended at 172, and then conscientiously marked "No. 173" on his own door with a piece of white chalk. He also carefully printed his name, "Mr. Maurice Rankin," on the cross-panel and added the letters "Q.C."—just to see how the whole thing looked and assist ambition; but he hurriedly rubbed The Q.C. out on hearing Mrs. Priest approach for one of her interminable conversations from which there was seldom any escape. When Rankin first came to Tremaine Buildings he lived in one of the lower rooms, now occupied by Jack Cresswell, and not without some style and comfort—taking his meals at the club, as our friends now did. His father, who had been a well-known broker,—a widower—kept his horses, and brought up his son in luxury. He then failed, after Maurice had entered the Toronto University, and, unable to endure the break-up of the results of his life's hard work, he died, leaving Maurice a few hundred dollars that came to him out of the life-insurance.
It was with a view to economy that our legal friend came to live in the Tremaine Buildings after leaving the university and articling himself as a clerk in one of the leading law firms in the city, where he got paid nothing. The more his little capital dwindled, the harder he worked. Soon the first set of chambers were relinquished for a higher, cheaper room, and the meals were taken per contract, by the week, at a cheap hotel. Then he had to get some clothes, which further reduced the little fund. So he took "a day's march nearer home," as he called it, and removed his effects au quatrième étage, and from that au cinquième—and so on and up. Regular meals at hotels now belonged to the past. A second-hand coal-oil stove was purchased, together with a few cheap plates and articles of cutlery; and here Rankin retired, when hungry, with a bit of steak rolled up in rather unpleasant brown paper; and after producing part of a loaf and a slab of butter on a plate, he cooked a trifle of steak about the size of a flat-iron, and caroused. This he called the feast of independence and the reward of merit.
Among his possessions could be found a wooden bed and bedding—clean, but not springy—also a small deal table, and an old bureau with both hind-legs gone. But the bureau stood up bravely when propped against the wall. These were souvenirs of a transaction with a second-hand dealer. In winter he set up an old coal-stove which had been abandoned in an empty room in the building, and this proved of vast service, inasmuch as the beef-steak and tea could be heated in the stove, thereby saving the price of coal-oil. It will occur to the eagle-eyed reader that the price of coal would more than exceed the price of coal-oil. On this point Rankin did not converse. Although he started out with as high principles of honor as the son of a stock-broker is expected to have, it must be confessed that he did not at this time buy his coal. Therefore there was a palpable economy in the use of the derelict stove—to say nothing of its necessary warmth. No mention of coal was ever made between Rankin and Mrs. Priest; but as Maurice rose in the world, intellectually and residentially, Mrs. Priest saw that his monetary condition was depressed in an inverse ratio, and being in many ways a well-intentioned woman, she commenced bringing a pail of coal to his room every morning, which generally served to keep the fire alight for twenty-four hours in moderate weather. Maurice at first salved his conscience with the idea that she was returning the coal she had "borrowed" from him during his more palmy days. After the first winter, however, when he had suffered a good deal from cold, his conscience became more elastic and communistic; and ten o'clock P.M. generally saw him performing a solitary and gloomy journey to unknown regions with a coal-scuttle in one hand and a wooden pail in the other. Jack Cresswell had come across this coal-scuttle one night in a distant corridor. He filled it with somebody else's coal and came up with it to Rankin's room—his face beaming with enjoyment—and, entering on tip-toe, whispered mysteriously the word "pickings." Then, after walking around the room in the stealthy manner of the stage villain who inspects the premises before "removing" the infant heir, he dumped the scuttle on the floor and gasped, breathlessly, "A gift!"
Rankin put aside Byles on Bills and arose with dignity: "What say you, henchman? Pickings? A gift? Ay, truly, a goodly pickings! Filched, perchance, from the pursy coal-bins of monopoly?"
"Even so," was the reply, given with bated breath; and with his finger to his lips, to imply that he was on a criminal adventure, Jack again inspected the premises with much stealth and agility, and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. If Jack or Geoffrey ever saw anything lying about the premises they thought would be of use to Rankin, there was a nocturnal steal, and up it went to Rankin's room. This was sport.
In this way Rankin lived. With one idea set before him, he grappled with the leather-covered books that came by ones and twos into his room, until, when the great struggle came at his final examinations, he was surprised to find he had come out so well, and quite charmed when he returned from Osgoode Hall to his dreary room, a solicitor of the Supreme Court and a barrister-at-law, with a light heart, and not a single solitary cent in the wide world.
CHAPTER III.
Frien'ship maks us a' mair happy,
Frien'ship gies us a' delight;
Frien'ship consecrates the drappie,
Frien'ship brings us here to-night.
Robert Burns.
At the opening of this story, about six months had elapsed since Rankin had been licensed to prey upon the public, and as yet he had not despoiled it to any great extent. If he had kept body and soul together, it was done in ways that are not enticing to young gentlemen who dream of attacking the law single-handed.
An old lawyer named Bean had an office in the lower part of Tremaine Buildings, and Maurice arranged with him to occupy one of the ancient desks in his office, and, in consideration of answering all questions as to the whereabouts of Mr. Bean, the privilege of office-room was given to him rent-free. As Mr. Bean had no clients, and as Rankin never knew where he was, this duty was a light one. He also had from Mr. Bean the privilege of putting his name up on the door, and, of course, as frequently and as alluringly along the passage and on the stairs as he might think desirable. But it was set out very clearly in the agreement, which Rankin carefully drew up and Bean pretended to revise, that Mr. Rankin should not in any way interfere with the clients of Mr. Bean, and that Mr. Bean should not in any way interfere with the clients of the aforesaid Rankin.
Bean had a little money, which he seemed to spend exclusively in the consumption of mixed drinks; and whatever else he did during the day, besides expending his income in this way, certainly engrossed his attention to a very large extent. When he looked into the office daily, or, say, bi-weekly, it was only for a few moments—except when he fell asleep in his chair.
It was after he had been five or six months with Mr. Bean that Geoffrey Hampstead had asked Rankin to dinner. He locked up the office about five o'clock, having closed the dampers in the stove (Bean supplied the coal—a great relief) and putting the key in his pocket, he ascended to No. 173 for a while, and then he came down to Hampstead's chambers, where he found our two bank friends taking a glass of sherry and bitters to give their appetites a tone, which was a very unnecessary proceeding.
"Hello, old man! How are you?" cried Hampstead in a hearty voice, handing him a wine glass.
"Ah! How am I? Just so!" quoth Rankin, helping himself. "How should a man be, who is on the high road to fortune?"
"He ought to be pretty chirpy, I should think," said Jack.
"Chirpy! That's the word. 'Chirpy' describes me. So does 'fit.' The money is rolling in, gentlemen. Business is on the full upward boom, and I feel particularly 'fit' to-day—also chirpy."
"Got a partnership?" inquired Geoffrey, with interest.
"I suppose you mean a partnership with Mr. Bean, and I answer emphatically 'No.' I refer to my own business, sir, and I have no intention of taking Mr. Bean into partnership. Bean is dying for a partnership with me. Sha'n't take Bean in. A client of mine came in to-day—"
"Great Scott! you haven't got a client, have you?" cried Geoffrey, starting from his chair.
"Don't interrupt me," said Mr. Rankin. "As I was saying," he added with composure, "a client of mine—"
"No, no, Morry! This is too much. If you want us to believe you, give us some particulars about this client—just as an evidence of good faith, you know."
"The client you are so inquisitive about," said Rankin, with dignity, "is a lady who has been, in a sense, prematurely widowed—"
"It's Mrs. Priest," said Jack, turning to Geoffrey. "He has been defending her for stealing coal, sure as you're born!"
"The lady came to me," said Maurice, taking no notice of the interruption, "about a month ago, apparently with a view to taking proceedings for alimony—at least her statement suggested this—"
"By Jove, this is getting interesting!" said Jack.
"But on questioning the unfortunate woman as to her means, I found that her funds were in a painfully low condition—in fact, at a disgustingly low ebb, viewed from a professional standpoint. And I also found that her husband had offered her four dollars a week, to be paid weekly, on condition that he should never see her and that somebody else should collect the money. The husband was evidently a bold, bad man to have given rise to the outbursts of jealously which it pained me to listen to, and the poor lady, forgetful of my presence, and with all the ability of an ancient prophet, denounced two or three women both jointly and severally. She then roused herself, and asked what I would charge to collect her four dollars per week. This seemed to decide the alimony suit in the negative, and from the fact that she was, not to put too fine a point upon it, three parts drunk at the time, I thought it better to say what I would do. So now I collect four dollars a week from her husband and pay it over to her every Saturday, for which I deduct, each time, the sum of twenty-five cents. There is a good deal of money to be made in the practice of the law."
"What about the husband?" asked Jack, laughing.
"I believe that I was invited to-day to dine—at least I came with that intention. Instead of talking any more, I would be better satisfied if somebody produced so much as the photograph of a chicken—and after that I will further to you unfold my tale."
Mr. Rankin slapped a waistcoat that appeared to be unduly slack about the lower buttons.
They then repaired to the club, where, having but a small appetite himself, and the representatives of bank distinguishing themselves more than he could as trenchermen, Rankin kept the ball rolling by relating his experiences as a barrister, which seemed to amuse his two friends. These experiences, leading to police-court items and police-court savages, brought up the question of "What is a savage?"—which introduced the Fuegians, the wild natives of Queensland, the Mayalans, and others, with whom Hampstead compared the lowest-class Irish. He had profited by much travel and reading, and anthropology was a subject on which he could be rather brilliant. To show how our civilization is a mere veneer, he drew a comparison between savage and civilized fashions, and brought out facts culled from many different peoples—not omitting Schweinfurth's Monbuttoo women—as to the primitive nature of the dress-improver. Then, somehow, the conversation got back to the police court, and the question, "What is a criminal?" and they agreed that if the harm done to others was one criterion of guilt, it seemed a pity that some things—woman's gossip, for instance—went so frequently unpunished.
"And I think," broke in Cresswell, after the subject had been well thrashed, "that you two fellows are talking a good deal of what you know very little about. After all your chatter, I think the point is right here (and I put it in the old-fashioned way). If one does wrong he violates his own appreciation of right, and his guilt can only be measured by the way he tramples on his conscience, and as conscience varies in almost every person, I think we had better give up wading into abstractions and come down to the concrete—to the solid enjoyment of a pipe." And Jack pushed back his chair.
"Then, according to you, Jack, a fellow with no conscience would in human judgment have no guilt," laughed Hampstead.
"I don't believe there exists a sane man in the world without a conscience," replied Jack, with his own optimism.
"I don't think I agree with you," said Rankin. "I feel sure there are men who, if they ever had a conscience, have trained it into such elasticity that they may be said to have none. Do you not think so, Hampstead?"
"Really, I hardly know. I haven't thought much upon the subject, but I think we ought, if we do possess any conscience ourselves, to give Jack a chance to light his pipe."
They soon sauntered back to the Tremaine Buildings, where Jack sat down at the piano and played to them. While Jack played on, Geoffrey seemed interested in police-court items, but Rankin preferred listening to Beethoven and Mozart to "talking shop." After they had sung some sea-songs together and chatted over a glass of "something short," Rankin said good-night and mounted to No. 173 on the invisible stairs with as much activity as if daylight were assisting him.
Having lit his lamp, he soliloquized, as he attended to some faults in his complexion before a small looking-glass, "So I have got another client, I perceive. That dinner to-day was a fee—nothing else in the world. I don't know now that I altogether like my new client. He evidently didn't get what he wanted. Perhaps Jack was in the way. Now, I wonder what the beggar does want. Chances are I'll have another dinner soon. Happy thought! make him keep on dining me ad infinitum! Ornamental dinner! Pleasant change!"
Maurice undressed and walked up and down the room. "Perhaps I am all wrong, though," said he. "I can't help liking him in many ways, and he's chock-full of interesting information. How odd that he didn't know anything about a fellow having no conscience. Hadn't thought over that idea. Very likely! Gad! I could imagine him just such a one, now that I have got suspicious. He has a bad eye when he doesn't look after it. It doesn't always smile along with his mouth. I may be wrong, but I believe there's something there that's not the clean wheat," and Maurice ascended to the woolsack and disappeared for the night.
CHAPTER IV.
How can I tell the feelings in a young lady's mind; the thoughts in a young gentleman's bosom? As Professor Owen takes a fragment of bone and builds a forgotten monster out of it, so the novelist puts this and that together: from the foot-prints finds the foot; from the foot, the brute who trod on it; ... traces this slimy reptile through the mud; ... prods down this butterfly with a pin. —Thackeray (The Newcomes).
Hampstead did not get to sleep, after Rankin had retired, as early as he expected. Jack Cresswell followed him into his bedroom and sat down, lit another pipe, and then walked about, and seemed preoccupied, as he had all the evening. Geoffrey did not speak to him at first, as this was an unusual proceeding between the two, but, having got into bed and made himself comfortable by bullying the pillows into the proper shape and position, addressed his friend:
"Now, old man, unburden your mind. I know you want to tell me something, but do not be surprised if you find me asleep before you get your second wind. If you care for me, cut it short."
"Got a letter to-day," said Jack, "from her."
"Well, Jack, as you seem, with some eccentricity, to have only one "her," of course I am interested. Your feelings in that quarter never fail in their attraction. Pour into my devoted ear for the next five minutes (not longer) a synopsis of your woes or joys. What is it you want to-night? Congratulation or balm for wounds?"
"Oh, I don't wish to keep you awake," said Jack testily, rising, as if to depart.
"Go on, sir. Go on, sir. Your story interests me."
Geoffrey assumed an attitude of attention. Jack smiled and sat down again. He had no intention of going away. He had thought over his letter all day, till at last a confidential friend seemed almost necessary.
"My letter comes from London. They've' returned from the Continent, and, as they are now most likely on the sea, she'll be at home in about a week." And Jack seemed in a high state of satisfaction.
"Well, well! I never saw a real goddess in my life," said Geoffrey. "And there is no doubt about Miss Lindon being one, because I have listened to you for two years, and now I know that she is what I have long wished to see."
"It will give me the greatest pleasure to have you know her. I have looked forward tremendously to that. Next to meeting her myself comes the idea of we three being jolly good friends, and going around together on little jamborees to concerts and that sort of thing. I haven't a doubt but what we three will 'get on' amazingly."
"Playing gooseberry with success requires a clever person," said Geoffrey. "I don't think I'm quite equal to the call for the tact and loss of individuality which the position demands. However, dear boy, I am quite aware that to introduce me to the lady of your heart as your particular friend is the greatest compliment one fellow can pay another—all things considered. Don't you think so? Oh, yes, I dare say we will be a trio quite out of the common. But, if she is as pretty as you say she is, I'll have to look at her, you know. Can't help looking at a handsome woman, even if she were hedged in with as many prohibitions as the royal family. You'll have to get accustomed to that, of course."
"But that's the very reason why I want you to know her," said Jack, in his whole-souled way. "I really often feel as if her beauty and brightness and her power of pleasing many should not be altogether monopolized by any one man. It would redouble my satisfaction if I thought you admired her also." Jack stopped for a moment as he considered that her power of "pleasing many" had been rather larger at times than he had cared about. "It seems to me that she has enough of these attractions for me, and some to spare for others."
Geoffrey smiled as he wondered if the girl herself thought she had enough to spare for others besides Jack.
"Young man, your sentiments do you credit! It must make things much more satisfactory to an engaged girl to understand that she is expected not to neglect the outside world whenever she is able 'to tear herself away,' as it were."
"I see you grinning to yourself under the bed-clothes," said Jack, who rather winced at this. "I don't know that I ever asked her to distribute herself more than she did. On the contrary, if you must have the unvarnished truth, quite the reverse." Jack reddened as he ventilated some of the truths which are generally suppressed. "The fact is, it was rather the other way. I frequently have acted like a donkey when I didn't get her undivided attention. You know girls often get accused of flirting, and when one hears their own explanation, nothing seems clearer, you know, than that there was no occasion for the row at all."
Geoffrey thought he did know, but said nothing.
"Two years, though, make changes, and having seen nothing of her for such a long time, I feel as if one glimpse of her would repay me for all the waiting. I should never have thought of our differences again if you had not raked them up."
"Which I am sorry to have done," said Geoffrey. "No doubt, two years do sometimes make a difference. I am sure you treat the affaire sublimely, and, if she is equally generous in her thoughts of you, it will be a unique thing to gaze upon both of you at once."
Jack took Geoffrey's remarks in good part, for he had got accustomed to the cynical way the latter treated most things. It was his way, he thought, and Geoffrey was "such an all-round good fellow, and all that sort of thing, you know," that it was to be expected that he should have "ways." Besides this, Jack had seen from time to time that, though very ready to recognize sterling merit, Geoffrey had ability in detecting humbug, and that he considered the optimist had too many chances against him to make him valuable as a prophet. Thus, when he spoke in this way of Nina Lindon, Jack supposed that his friend had his doubts, and, much as he loved her, he stopped, like many another, and asked himself whether she had such a generosity and nobility in her character as he had supposed. This, he felt, was rather beneath him in one way, and rather beyond him in another. When he looked for admirable traits, he remembered several instances of good-natured impulse, and while the graceful manner in which she had done these things rose before him, he grew enthusiastic. Then he sought to call up for inspection the qualities he took exception to. That she had seemed inconsiderate of his feelings at times seemed true. There was, he thought, a frivolity about her. He thought life had for him some few well-defined realities, and that she had never seemed to quite grasp the true inwardness of his best moments. But all was explained by her youth and the adulation paid to her. And then the memory of her soft dark eyes and flute-like voice, the various allurements of her vivacious manner and graceful figure, produced an enthusiasm quite overwhelming. So he laughed at the defeat of his impartiality, looked over at Geoffrey, who was peacefully snoring by this time, and went away to his own room. But deep down in his heart lay the shadow of a doubt which, with his instinctive courtesy, he never approached even in an examination supposed to be a searching one. The inspection of it seemed a sacrilege, and he put it from him. Nevertheless, there had been times when Jack felt doubtful as to whether Nina could be relied upon for absolute truth.
Joseph Lindon, the father of Nina, came from—no person seemed to know where. He, or his family, might have come from the north of Ireland or south of Scotland, or middle of England, or anywhere else, as far as any one could judge by his face; and, as likely as not, his lineage was a mixture of Scotch, Irish, English, or Dutch, which implanted in his physiognomy that conglomeration of nationalities which now defies classification, but seems to be evolving a type to be known as distinctively Canadian. His accent was not Irish, Scotch, English, nor Yankee. It was a collection of all four, which appeared separately at odd times, and it was, in this way, Canadian.
His family records had not been kept, or Joseph would certainly have produced them, if creditable. He had the appearance of a self-made man. If want of a good education somewhat interfered with the completeness of his social success, it certainly had not retarded him in business circles. If he had swept out the store of his first employers, those employers were now in their graves, and of those who knew his beginnings in Toronto there were none with the temerity to remind him of them. Mr. Lindon was not a man to be "sat upon." He had a bold front, a hard, incisive voice, and a temper that, since he began to feel his monetary oats, brooked no opposition. He might have been taken for a farmer, except for the keenness of his eye and the fact that his clothes were city made. These two differences, however, are of a comprehensive kind.
Mr. Lindon, early in life, had opened a small shop, and then enlarged it. Having been successful, he sold out, and took to a kind of broker, money-lending, and land business, and being one who devoted his whole existence to the development of the main chance, with a deal of native ability to assist him, the result was inevitable.
His entertainments gave satisfaction to those who thought they knew what a good glass of wine was. Mr. Lindon himself did not. Few do. When exhausted he took a little whisky. When he entertained, he sipped the wine that an impecunious gentleman was paid to purchase for him, regardless of cost. So, although there were those who turned up their noses at Joseph Lindon while they swallowed him, there did not seem to be any reluctance in going through the same motions with his wine.
The fact that he was able to, and did entertain to a large extent was of itself sufficient in certain quarters to provoke a smile suggesting that the society in that city did not entertain. Some members had been among the exclusives for a comparatively short time, and the early occupation of their parents was still painfully within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. A good many based their right on the fact that they came "straight from England"—without further recommendation; while others pawed the air like the heraldic lion because they had, or used to have, a second cousin with a title in England.
But these good people were partly correct when they hinted that some old families did not entertain much. Either there had been some scalawag in the family who had wasted its substance, or else the respected family had had a faculty for mortgaging and indorsing notes for friends in those good old times which happily are not likely to return.
The consequence was that there was a good deal of satisfaction on both sides. Joseph Lindon could pat his breeches pocket, figuratively, and, not without reason, consider he had the best of it. Many a huge mortgage at ruinous interest made by the first families, who never lived within their means, had found its way to Lindon's office, and many an acre, subsequently worth thousands of dollars, had been acquired by him in satisfaction of the note he held against the family scalawag. During all the times that these people had been "keeping up the name," as they called it, Lindon had been salting down the hard cash, and if some of his transactions were of the "shady" sort, he had, in dealing with some of the patrician families, some pretty shady customers to look after.
But these transactions were in the old times, when Lindon was rolling up his scores of thousands. All he had to do now was to attend the board meetings of companies of which he was president, and to arrange his large financial ventures in cold blood over his chop at the club with those who waited for his consent with eager ears. If there were few transactions in business circles that he was not conversant with, there were still fewer affairs in his own domestic circle that he knew anything about. It was his wife that had brought him into his social position, such as it was; that is, his wife's wishes and his money.
Mrs. Lindon had been a pretty woman in her day, which, of course, had lost its first freshness, and she was approaching that period when the retrospect of a well-spent life is expected to be gratifying. Her married life with Mr. Lindon had not been the gradual conquest of that complete union which makes later years a climax and old age the harvest of sweet memories in common, as marriage has been defined for us. On the contrary, their married life had been a gradual acquisition of that disunion which law and public opinion prevent from becoming complete. The two had now established the semblance of a union—the system in which the various pretenses of deep regard become so well defined by long years of mutual make-believe, as to often encourage the married to hope that it will be publicly supposed to be the glad culmination of their courtship dreams.
Mrs. Lindon said of herself that she had been of a Lower Canadian family, with some French name, prior to her marriage, and her story seemed to suggest, in the absence of further particulars, that Mr. Lindon had married her more for her family than her good looks. The "looks" were pretty nearly gone, but the "family" was still within the reach of a sufficiently fertile imagination, and so often had the suggestion been made that of late years the idea had assumed a definiteness in her mind which materially assisted her in holding her own in the society in which she now floated. A natural untidiness in the way she put on her expensive garments, which in a poorer woman would have been called slatternly, and the dark, French prettiness which she still showed traces of (and which was rather of the nurse-girl type) combined to suggest that in reality she was the offspring of Irish and French emigrants, "and steerage at that"—some of the first families said—"decidedly steerage."
Mrs. Lindon was supremely her own mistress. This was not, perhaps, an ultimate benefit to her, but, as she had nothing on earth to trouble about, long years of idleness and indulgence in every whim had led her to conjure up a grievance, which she nursed in her bosom, and on account of it she excused herself for all shortcomings. This was that she was left so much without the society of Mr. Lindon. Often, in the pauses between the excitements she created for herself, tears of self-pity would arise at the thought of her abandoned condition. The truth was that she did not care anymore for Lindon than he did for her; but from the fact that she really did desire to have a husband who would see better the advantages of shining in society, the poor lady contrived to convince herself that he had been greatly wanting in his duties to her as a husband, that the affection was all on her side, and that that affection was from year to year quietly repulsed. Their domestic bearing toward each other was now that of a quiet neutrality. They always addressed each other in public as "my dear," and, if either of them had died, no doubt the bereaved one would have mourned in the usual way, on the principle of "Nil de mortuis nisi bunkum."
It had not occurred to Mrs. Lindon that, if more time had been spent with her daughter in fulfilling a mother's duties toward a young girl, there would have been less need for extraneous assistance to aid her in her passage through the world. Nina was fond of her mother, and it was strange that the two did not see more of each other. Nina could be a credit to her in any social gathering, and this made it all the more strange. But Mrs. Lindon was forever gadding about to different institutions, Bible-readings, and other little excitements of her own (for which Nina had no marked liking), and she seemed rather more easy in her mind when Nina was not with her. Perhaps Mr. Lindon was not solely at fault concerning the coolness pervading the domestic atmosphere.
The charitable institutions had been the salvation of Mrs. Lindon—that is, in a mundane sense. When Joseph Lindon, with characteristic method, came home one day and said, "My dear, I have bought the Ramsay mansion, and now I am going to spend my money," Mrs. Lindon enjoyed a pleasure exceeding anything she had known. That was a happy day for her! The dream of her life was to be consummated! She immediately left the small church which she had attended for years and changed her creed slightly to take a good pew in a certain fashionable church. After this it was merely a question of time and money, both of which were available to any extent. She showed great interest in charities. She contributed humbly but lavishly. The ladies of good position who go around with subscription-books smiled in their hearts at seeing the old game going on. They smiled and bled her profusely. They discussed Mrs. Lindon among themselves—with care, of course, because they did not wish to appear to have known her before. But as time wore on they thought she could be bled to a much greater extent if she were induced to become "a worker in the flock," which the good lady was quite willing to do. On being approached by some of the leading spirits, she went first to a weekly Bible-class, which she had previously been afraid to attend because the audience was so select, and after this she showed such an interest in various charities that she was soon placed upon committees. By ladies with heads for real management on their shoulders she was led to believe that they really could not do without her mental assistance, so that at first when she was gravely consulted on a financial question and asked for her advice she generally eased the tension on her mind by writing a substantial check. This led her to believe that she had something of the financier about her, and she even told her husband that she was beginning to quite understand all about money matters, at which Joseph smiled an ineffable smile.
She could have been used more advantageously if she had been kept out of the desired circle for a couple of years longer, because she was ready to pay any price for her admission. The good ladies made a slight mistake in being too hasty to control the bottomless purse, because, after she had got fairly installed, the purse was worked in several other ways, and the ecclesiastical drain on it became reduced to an ordinary amount. She gave a fair sum to each of the charities and accepted the attentions of those whom the odor of money attracted, without troubling herself in the slightest degree about the periodical financial difficulties of the institutions.
Yet she never altogether relaxed her efforts in "working for the Lord," as she called it, in such good company. She acquired a taste for it that never left her. She would take a couple of the "poor but honest" ladies of good family with her, in her sumptuous barouche, to the "Incurables" and other places. After a capital luncheon at her house they would visit the "Home," and sometimes kiss the poor women there; and if the strengthening sympathy and religious value of Mrs. Lindon's kiss did not bind them to a life of virtue ever afterward they must indeed have been lost—in every sense of the word.
Nina was not born for some time after Mr. and Mrs. Lindon had been married. Her mother had kept her, when a child, very much in the dark as to their antecedents, and, as the social position of the family had been well established by Mrs. Lindon when Nina was very young, the girl always had grown up with the idea that she was a lady; and in spite of a few wants in her father and some doubts as to her mother's origin, she came out into society with a fixed idea that she was "quite good enough for the colonies," as she laughingly told her friends.
No pains or expense had been spared in her education. She had first gone to the best Toronto school, and had "finished" at a boarding-school in England. Jack Cresswell knew her when she was at school, where she shared his heart with several others. When she emerged from the educational chrysalis and floated for the first time down a society ball-room Jack was after the butterfly hat-in-hand, as it were, and never as yet had he given up the chase. Mr. Lindon knew nothing of domestic affairs, but he had found Jack so frequently at his house that he had begun to see that his ambitious plans for his daughter were perhaps in danger of being frustrated, and so, having at that time to send a man to England to float the shares of some company on the London market, he decided to go himself, and one day, when Jack was dining there, he rather paralyzed all, especially Jack, by instructing his wife and daughter to be ready in a week for the journey.
The parting on Jack's part would have been tender if Nina had not been in such exasperatingly high spirits—hilarity he found it quite impossible to participate in or appreciate. He made her excuses to himself, like the decent soul he was, although he really suffered a good deal. He was an ardent youth, and for the week prior to departure he received very little of the sympathy he hungered for, but he tried to speak cheerfully as he held her hand in saying good-by.
"Well, now, you won't forget your promise, old lady, will you?" he said, while he tried to photograph her in his mind as she stood bewitchingly before him.
"What! and throw over the French count that proposed to me in London?" she said archly. Jack muttered something under his breath that sounded like hostility toward the French count.
She heard him, however, and said: "Certainly. So we will. It will kill him, but you will rejoice. And I will come back and marry Jack. There! isn't it nice of me to say that? Now, kiss me and say good-by!"
She withdrew, and held the porch door so that only her face appeared, which Jack lightly touched with his lips, and then he went away speechless. As he went he heard her singing:
"And I'll come back to my own true love,
Ten thousand miles away."
This sentiment, from one of his yachting songs, smoothed the ragged edge of his feelings. He loved in an old-fashioned way, and in his ideas as to carrying out the due formalities of a lover's leave-taking he was conservative even to red-tapeism, and disappointment, tenderness, anger, and hopelessness surged through his brain as they only can in that of a young man.
There was further tragedy in that Jack, unable to sleep at night and despondent in the morning, must needs go down to the boat to see her "just once more" before she left. The gangways had been hauled in and the paddle-wheels were beginning to move. Nina was standing inside the lower-deck bulwarks and leaned across the water to shake hands, but the distance was too great She was in aggressively high spirits, and said to him, as he moved along the end of the wharf, keeping pace with the boat:
"Don't you remember what your pet authoress says?"
"No," said Jack, hoping that she would say something nice to him.
"She says that a first farewell may have pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an opening to comedy."
Her rippling laugh smote Jack cruelly. Then she tried to soften this by smiling and waving her hand to him as the boat swept away. Jack raised his hat stiffly in return, and wandered back to the bank with a head that felt as if it would split.
And this was their parting two years ago.
CHAPTER V.
Fair goes the dancing when the sitar's tuned;
Tune us the sitar neither low nor high,
And we will dance away the hearts of men.
The string o'erstretched breaks, and music flies;
The string o'erslack is dumb, and music dies;
Tune us the sitar neither low nor high.
Nautch girls' song.—The Light of Asia. Arnold.
Mr. Lindon did not remain long with his family on the trip which Mrs. Lindon thought was only to last a month or two. On arriving in England, he transacted his business in a short time, and then proposed a run on the Continent. By degrees he took the family on to Rome, where they made friends at the hotel and seemed contented to remain for a while. He then pretended to have received a cablegram, and came home by the quickest route, having got them fairly installed in a foreign country without letting them suspect any coercion in the matter. Afterward he wrote to say he wished Nina to see something of England and Scotland, and, the proposal being agreeable to Mrs. Lindon, they accepted invitations from people they had met to pay visits in different places, so that, together with an art course in Paris and a musical course at Leipsic, they wandered about until nearly two years had elapsed, when they suddenly suspected that Mr. Lindon preferred that they should be away, upon which they returned at once.
Whether Nina came back "in love" with Jack was a question as to which he made many endeavors to satisfy himself. The ability to live up to the verb "to love" in all its moods and tenses is so varied, and the outward results of the inward grace are often so ephemeral that it would be hazardous to say what particular person is sufficiently unselfish to experience more than a gleam of a phase that calls for all the most beautiful possibilities. It is not merely a jingle of words to say that one who is not minded to be single should be single-minded.
Let us pass over the difficult point and take the young lady's statement for what it was worth. She said, of herself, that she was in love with Jack. He had extracted this from her with much insistence, while she aggravatingly asserted at the same time, that she only made the admission "for a quiet life," leaving Jack far from any certainty of possession that could lead to either indifference or comfort.
Two or three proposals of marriage which she had while away had evidently not captured her, even if they had turned her head a little. She had seen no person she liked better than Jack or else she would not, perhaps, have come back in the way she did. The proposals, however, if they ever had been made, served to turn Jack's daily existence into alternations of hot and cold shower-baths. One day she would talk about a Russian she had met in Paris. Then she solemnly gave the history of her walks and talks with a naval officer in Rome, till Jack's brow was damp with a cold exudation. But when it came to the delightful appearance of Colonel Vere, and the devotion he showed when he took her hand and asked her to share his estates, Jack said, with his teeth clinched, that he had had enough of the whole business—and departed. He then spent two days of very complete misery, barometer at 28°, until she met him and laid her hand on his arm and said she was sorry; would he stop being a cross boy? that she had only been teasing him, and all the rest of it; while she looked out of her soft dark eyes in a way that left no doubt in Jack's mind that he had behaved like a brute.
In this way the first week of her return had been consumed, and as yet he had not felt that he could afford to divide her society with anybody. What with the rich Russian, the naval officer, and Colonel Vere—what with getting into agonies and getting out of them—it took him pretty nearly all his time to try to straighten matters out. So Geoffrey's introduction had not been mentioned further by him, except to Nina, who was becoming curious to see Jack's particular friend and Admirable Crichton. The opportunity for this meeting seemed about to offer itself in the shape of an entertainment where all those who remained in Toronto during the summer would collect—one of those warm gatherings where the oft-tried case of pleasure vs. perspiration results so frequently in an undoubted verdict for the defendant.
The Dusenalls were among those wise enough to know that in summer they could be cooler in Toronto, at their own residence, with every comfort about them, than they could possibly be while stewing in an American hotel or broiling on the sands of an American seaport. They objected to spending large sums yearly in beautifying their grounds, merely to leave the shady walks, cool arbors, and tinkling fountains for the enjoyment of the gardeners' wives and children. In the thickness of their mansion walls there was a power to resist the sun which no thin wooden hotel can possess; therefore, in spite of a fashion which is somewhat dying out, they remained in Toronto during the hot months, and amused themselves a good deal on young Dusenall's yacht.
Their residence was well adapted for such a party as they were now giving, and the guests were made to understand that in the afternoon there would be a sort of garden-party, with lawn-tennis chiefly in view, and at dark a substantial high tea—to wind up with dancing as long as human nature could stand the strain; and if any had got too old or too corpulent or too dignified to play tennis, they could hardly get too much so to look on; or, if this lacked interest, they could walk about the lawns and gardens and converse, or, if possible, make love; or listen to a good military band while enjoying a harmless cigarette; and if they liked none of these things they could never have been known by the people of whom this account is given, and thus, perhaps, might as well never have been born.
The men, of course, played in their flannels, which a few of them afterward changed in Charley Dusenall's rooms when there was a suspension of hostilities for toilets. Most of them went home to dinner and appeared later on for the dancing. People came in afternoon-dress and remained for tea and through the evening in that attire, or else they dropped in at the usual time in evening-dress. It did not matter. It was all a sort of "go-as-you-please." Some girls danced in their light tennis dresses, and others had their maids come with ball dresses. Of course the majority came late—especially the chaperons, the heavy fathers, starchy bank-managers, and such learned counsel as scorned not to view the giddy whirl nor to sample the cellars of the Dusenalls.
Mrs. Lindon arrived with her daughter late in the evening, when everything was whirling. Jack had his name down for a couple of dances, and a few more were bestowed upon eager aspirants, and then she had no more to give away—so sorry!—card quite filled! She told dancing fibs in a charming manner that seemed to take away half the pang of disappointment. This was a field-day, and the discarded ones could receive more notice on some other, smaller occasion.
To see Jack and Nina dancing together was to see two people completely satisfied with themselves. As a dancer, Jack "fancied himself." He had an eye for calculating distances and he had the courage of his opinions when he proposed to dance through a small space. As for Nina, she was the incarnation of a waltz. Her small feet seemed as quick as the pat of a cat's paw. In watching her the idea of exertion never seemed to present itself. There is a pleasure in the rhythmic pulsations of the feet and in yielding to the sensuous strains of the music (which alone seems to be the propelling power) that is more distinctly animal than a good many of our other pleasures; and Nina was born to dance.
At the end of Jack's first dance with her, Geoffrey came idling through the conservatory, and entered the ball-room close beside the place where Mrs. Lindon was seated with several other mothers. As the last bars of the waltz were expiring, Jack brought up at what he called "the moorings" with all the easy swing and grace of a dancer who loves his dance. The act of stopping seemed to divide the unity in trinity existing between his partner, himself and the music, and it was therefore to be regretted, and not to be done harshly, but lingeringly, if it must be done, while Nina, as he released her, came forward toward her mother with her sleeveless arms still partly hanging in the air, and with a pretty little trip and slide on the floor, as if she could not get the "time" out of her feet. Her head was slightly thrown back, the eyelids were drooped, and the lips were parted with a smile of recognition for Mrs. Lindon, while her attitude showed the curves of her small waist to advantage; so that the first glimpse of Nina that Geoffrey received was not an unpleasant one. She seemed to be moving naturally and carelessly. She was only endeavoring to make the other mothers envious, when they compared her with their own daughters. Such wiles were part of her nature. When feeling particularly vigorous, almost every attitude of some people is a challenge—males with their bravery, females with their graces—and, whatever changes the future may develop in the predilections of woman, there may for a long time be some left to acknowledge that for them a likable man is one who is able to assert, in a refined way, sufficient primitive force to make submission seem like conquest rather than choice.
Jack at once introduced Geoffrey—his face beaming while he did so. He was so proud of Nina. He was so proud of Geoffrey. Nina was blushing at having Hampstead witness her little by-play with her mother at the conclusion of the dance—but not displeased withal. Jack thought he had never seen her look so beautiful. And Geoffrey was such a strapper. Jack surveyed them both with unbounded satisfaction. He slapped Hampstead on the arm, and tightened the sleeve of his coat over his biceps, patting the hard limb, and saying warmly: "Here's where the secret lies, Nina! This is what takes the prizes."
"So you are Jonathan's David, are you?" said Nina, smiling, as they talked together.
"Well, he patronizes me a good deal," said Geoffrey. "But don't you think he looks as if he wished to find his next partner? Suppose we give him a chance to do so; let us go off and discuss his moral character."
He went away with Nina on his arm, leaving Jack quite radiant to see them both so friendly.
When they arrived in the long conservatory adjoining, Geoffrey held out his hand for her card. He did not ask for it, except perhaps by a look. Having possessed himself of it, he found five successive dances vacant—evidently kept for some one, and he was bold enough suddenly to conclude they had been kept for him. He looked at the card amused, and as he scratched a long mark across all five, he drawled, "May I have the pleasure of—some dances?" And then he mused aloud as he examined the card, "Don't seem to be more than five. Humph! Too bad! But perhaps we can manage a few more, Miss Lindon?"
Nina was accustomed to distribute her favors with a reluctant hand and with a condescension peculiarly her own, and to hear suppliant voices around her. She would be capricious, and loved her power. Even Jack did not count upon continued sunshine, and took what he could get with some thanksgivings. She was a presumptive heiress, and had not escaped the inflation of the purse-proud. But, on the other hand, since her return she had heard a good deal about the various perfections of his friend, and how well he did everything; and from what her girl friends said, she had gleaned that Geoffrey was more in demand than would be confessed. He was not very desirable financially, perhaps, but hugely so because he was sought after. This much would have been sufficient to have made her amused rather than annoyed at his cool way of assuming that she would devote herself to him for an unlimited time, but there was something more about Geoffrey than mere fashion to account for his popularity, and that was the peculiar influence of his presence upon those with whom he conversed.
Thus Nina, if she came to the Dusenalls with the intention of having a flirtation with Geoffrey, which the condition of her card and her acquiescence to his demands confessed, had hit upon a person who was far more than her match, for Hampstead's acquaintanceships were not much governed by rule. As long as a girl diverted him and wished to amuse herself he had no particular creed as to consequences, but merely made it understood—verbally, at least—that there was nothing lasting about the matter, and that it was merely for "the temporary mutual benefit and improvement of both parties." This was a remnant of a code of justification by which he endeavored to patch up his self-respect; but nobody knew better than he that such phrases mean nothing to women who are falling in love and intend to continue in love.
Underneath the careless tones with which he spoke to Nina there was an earnestness and concentration that influenced her. As he gravely handed back her card and caught and held her glance with an intensity in his gray eyes and will-power in his face, she felt, for the first time with any man, that she was not completely at her ease. When obeying the warning impulses that formerly fulfilled the offices of thought women do not often make a mistake. By these intuitions, sufficient at first for self-protection, she knew there was willfulness and mastery in him, and that if she would be true to Jack she should return to him. If change of masters be hurtful to women, this was the time for her to remember about the woman who hesitates. Geoffrey said, "Let us go in and have a dance, Miss Lindon," and she rose with a nervous smile and glanced across to the place where her mother was sitting. But Mrs. Lindon had never been a tower of strength to her, or she might have gone to her. She had a distinct feeling that this new acquaintance was more powerful in some way than she had anticipated, and that everything was not all right with Jack's interests, and she was at one of those moments when a woman's ability to decide is so peculiarly the essence of her character, circumstances, and teaching as fairly to indicate her general moral level. Goethe tells us "to first understand"; but if we can not know the extent of Geoffrey's influence, or how far her unknown French lineage assisted temptation, we would better leave judgment alone. Geoffrey said something in her ear about the music being delicious. She listened for a moment and longed for a dance with him. Rubbish! only a dance, after all! And the next moment she was circling through the ball-room with his arm around her.
The band that played at the Dusenalls' was one that could be listened to with pleasure. It was composed of bottle-nosed Germans who worked at trades during the day and who played together generally for their own amusement. In all they played they brought out the soul of the movement. It was to one of the dreamiest of waltzes that Nina danced with Geoffrey—one of those pieces where from softer cadences the air swells into rapturous triumph, or sinks into despair, and wooes the dancer into the most unintellectual and pleasant frame of mind—if the weather be not too warm.
A cool night breeze was passing through the room, bringing with it the fragrance of the dewey flowers outside, and carrying off the odor of those nauseating tube-roses (which people will wear), and replacing it with a perfume more acceptable to gods and men—especially men.
If Jack "fancied himself" as a dancer, Geoffrey had a better right to do so. His stature aided him also, and men with retreating chins were rather inclined to give him the road. He had a set look about the lower part of his face which in crowds was an advantage to him. It suggested some vis major—perhaps a locomotive, which no one cares to encounter.
In two minutes after they had embarked on this hazardous voyage Nina had but one idea, or rather she was conscious of a pervading sense of pleasure, that ran away with her calmer self. No thought of anything definite was with her, only a vague consciousness of turning and floating, of being admired, of being impelled by music and by Geoffrey. As the dance went on it seemed like some master power that led through the mazes delightfully and resistlessly.
When the music ended, for they had never stopped, she sighed with sorrow. It had been too short. She had yielded herself so completely to its fascination that she seemed like one awakening from a dream. And then her conscience smote her when she thought of Jack, and how in some way she had enjoyed herself too much, and did not seem to be quite the same girl that she had been half an hour before; but these thoughts left her as they walked about and spoke a few words together. While circling the long room she noticed Geoffrey bowing to a tall young lady whose long white silk train swept behind her majestically. There was a respect and gravity in his bow which Nina, with her quick observation, noticed.
"Who is that you are bowing to?" she asked.
"That is Miss Margaret Mackintosh."
"Oh, I think she is perfectly lovely," said Nina, as she looked back admiringly.
"So do I," said Geoffrey.
Nina turned about now with curiosity, in order to meet her again. Miss Mackintosh came down the room once more with a partner who was one of the very young persons who now are the dancing men in Toronto—called the "infants" by a lady (still unwon) who remembers when there were marriageable men to be found dancing at parties. This detrimental with Miss Mackintosh was having an enjoyable time of it. What with the beauty of his partner, her stately figure, gracious manner, and the rapidity with which she talked to him, the little man did not quite know where he was, and he could do little else than turn occasionally and murmur complete acquiescence in what she was saying, while he sometimes glanced at her active face for a moment. In doing this, though, he would lose the thread of her discourse, in consequence of his unfeigned admiration, and, as he was straining every nerve to follow her quick ideas, this was a risky thing to do. Once or twice, seeing him turn toward her so attentively, she turned also and said, "Don't you think so?" and then the little man would endeavor to mentally pull himself together, and with some appearance of deep thought would again acquiesce with unction. Certainly he thought he did think so—every time.
The close scrutiny of Hampstead and Nina did not seem to affect her as she passed them with her face unlifted and earnest. She did not seem to have any side eyes open to see who were regarding her. When the handsome dress that had made such a cavern in her allowance money was trodden on, she gathered it up with an active movement—not seeming to notice the unpleasantness, nor for a moment abating the earnestness of her conversation. Her idea seemed to be to prevent the dress from interrupting her rather than to save it. One could see that, once on, the dress was perhaps not thought of again, that it was not the main part of her pleasure, but was lost in her endeavor to make herself agreeable, and in this way to enjoy herself.
"I am sure she must have a very kind heart," said Nina, smiling.
"Why?" asked Geoffrey.
"Because she takes so much trouble over such a poor specimen of a man."
"Perhaps, as Douglas Jerrold said, she belongs to the Royal Humane Society," added Geoffrey.
As Nina could not remember being acquainted with any Mr. Jerrold, the remark lost some of its weight. The true inwardness of the old wit that comes down to us in books is our knowledge of the reputation of the joker.
"And does she dance well?" asked Nina.
"No," said Geoffrey, as he still looked after Miss Mackintosh with grave and thoughtful eyes. "I don't think she has in her enough of what Gœthe calls the 'dæmonic element' of our nature to dance well."
"Not very complimentary, to those who can dance well," said Nina, archly pointing to herself.
Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, as he looked at his partner. "Some people prefer the dæmonic element," said he. But he turned again from the rose to the tall, white lily, who was once more approaching them, with something of a melancholy idea in his mind that men like him ought to confine themselves entirely to the rose, and not aspire above their moral level. Margaret Mackintosh was the one person he revered. She was the symbol to him of all that was good and pure. He had almost forgotten what these words meant, but the presence of Margaret always re-interpreted the lost language.
"And do you admire her very much?" Nina inquired.
"I admire her more than any person I ever saw."
Sooner or later, it would have gone hard with Geoffrey for making this speech, if he had been any one else. But it occurred to Nina that he did not care whether she took offense or not. He was leaning against the wall, apparently oblivious, for the moment, to any of her ideas, charms, or graces, but looking, withal, exceedingly handsome, and a thought came to her which should not come to an engaged young lady. She made up her mind that she would make him care for her a great deal and then would snub him and marry Jack.
The music commenced again.
"Come now," said Nina, gayly, "and try a little more of the dæmonic element."
Geoffrey turned to her quickly, and his face flushed as, to quote Shakespeare's sonnet, "his bad angel fired his good one out." He saw in her face her intention to subjugate him, and knew that he had accidentally paved the way for this new foolish notion of hers by his candid admiration of Miss Mackintosh.
"Have you any of it to spare?" said he, as his arm encircled her for the dance.
No verbal answer was given, but they floated away among the dancers. Here she forgot her slight feelings of resentment and retained only the desire to attract him, without further wish to punish him afterward. A few turns around the room, and she was in as much of a whirl as she had been before. They danced throughout the music—almost without ceasing; and when it ended she unconsciously leaned, upon his arm, as they strolled off together, almost as if she were tired. The thought of how she was acting came to her, only it came now as an intruder. A usurper reigned with sovereign sway, and Right was quickly ousted on his approach. A little while ago, and the power to decide, for Jack or against him, was more evenly balanced; but now, how different! She was wandering on with no other impulse than the indefinite wish to please Geoffrey. If she had been a man, sophisms and excuses might have occurred to her. But it was not her habit to analyze self much, and even sophisms require some thought.
They passed through the conservatory and out to the broad walk of pressed gravel, where several couples were promenading. Here they walked up and down once or twice in the cool breeze that seemed delicious after the invisible dust of the ball-room. Nina was saying nothing, but leaning on his arm, and it seemed to her that his low, deep tones vibrated through her—as a sympathetic note sometimes makes glass ring—as if in echo.
Geoffrey was pondering where all the pride and self-assertion had gone to in this girl who now seemed so trustful and docile. Even her answers seemed mechanical and vague, as if she were in some way bewildered.
Jack, in the mean time, was elbowing his way through a crowd, trying to get one of his partners something to eat. He was the only person likely to notice her absence, and this he did not do, and, as Geoffrey was down for five dances, he knew no others would be looking for her. So he walked on past the end of the terrace, and, descending some steps, proceeded farther till they came to more steps leading down into a path dark with overhanging trees. Nina hesitated, and said she was always afraid to go among dark trees, but Geoffrey said, "Oh, I'll take care of you." Then she thought it was pleasant to have an athlete for a protector, and she glanced at his strong face and frame with confidence. She no longer went with him as she had danced, with her mind in a whirl, but peacefully and calmly, with no other thought than to be with him. He took her hand as they descended the stairs, and, though she shrank a little from a proceeding new to her, it seemed natural enough, and gave her a sense of protection in the dark paths. It did not occur to her that she could have done without it. She did not notice their silence. Geoffrey, too, thought it pleasant enough in the balmy air without conversation. He was interested by her beauty and her sudden partiality for him.
At length he stopped in one of the distant paths as they came to a seat between the trunks of two large trees. Here they sat down at opposite sides of the seat, and Geoffrey leaned back against the tree beside him. The leaves on the overhanging boughs quivered in the light of the moon, and the delicate perfume in the air spoke of flower-beds near by. He thought it extremely pleasant here, and he laid his head back against the tree beside him to listen to the tinkling of the fountain and to enjoy the scent-laden night air. An idea was still with him that this was the girl Jack was engaged to, and he thought it would be as well to keep that idea before him. He said to himself that he liked Jack, and thought he was very considerate, under the circumstances, for his friend when he took out a little silver case and suggested that he would like a cigarette.
Nina did not answer him. She was in some phase of thought in which cigarettes had no place, and only looked toward him slowly, as if she had merely heard the sound of his voice and not the words. He selected from the case one of those innocuous tubes of rice-paper and prairie-grass, and, as he did so, the absent look on her face seemed peculiar. With a fuse in one hand and the cigarette in the other, he paused before striking a light, and they looked at each other for a moment as he thought of stories he had read of one person's influence over another. Like many, he had a general curiosity about strange phases of mankind, and it occurred to him that Nina would make an interesting subject for experiment. Presently he said, in resonant tones, deep and musical:
"Do you like to be here, Nina?"
She did not seem to notice that he called her by this familiar name, but she stood up and remained silently gazing at the moon through a break in the foliage. Her beauty was sublimated by the white light, and, as Geoffrey took a step towards her, he forgot about his cigarette, and, taking both her hands in his, he repeated his question two or three times before she answered. Then she turned impetuously.
"Oh, why do you make me do everything that is wrong? I should not be here. I should never have spoken to you. I was afraid of you from the first moment I saw you."
Geoffrey led her by one hand back to the seat.
"Now answer me. Do you like to be here—with me, Nina?"
She looked at the moon and at the ground and all about, but remained mute and apparently pondering.
He had forgotten Jack now as well as the cigarette, and was rapidly losing the remembrance that this was to be merely a scientific experiment.
"Your silence makes me all the more impatient. I will know now. Do you like to be here, Nina?"
A new earnestness in his tone thrilled her and made her tremble. She turned with a sudden impulse, as if something had made her reckless:
"You are forcing me to answer you," she said vehemently, as she looked at him with a constrained, though affectionate expression in her eyes. "But I will tell you if I die for it. Oh, I am so wicked to say so, but I must. You make me. Oh, now let us go into the house."
Geoffrey's generous intention to act rightly by Jack departed from him, and for a moment he drew her toward him, saying that she must not care too much for being there, "because, you know," he said, "this is only a little flirtation, and is quite too good to last."
She seemed not to be listening to him, but to be thinking; and after a moment she said, in long drawn out, sorrowful accents:
"Oh—poor—Jack!"
Something in the slow, melancholy way she said this, and the thought of the poor place that Jack certainly held at the present time in her affections, struck Geoffrey as irresistibly amusing, and he laughed aloud in an unsympathetic way, which presented him to her in a new light, and she sprang from him at once. Her emotion turned to anger as she thought that the laugh had been derisive, and her blood boiled to think he could bring her here to laugh at her after he had succeeded in winning her so completely.
"Come into the house at once," she cried. "I can't go in alone even if I knew the way."
Geoffrey rose and begged her pardon, assuring her that nothing but the peculiarity of her remark had caused his laugh.
"I will not stay here another instant. If you don't come at once I'll find my way alone." And she stamped her foot upon the ground.
Hampstead did not like to be stamped at, and his face altered. As long as she had been facile and pleasing, a sense of duty toward her and Jack had made him considerate. It had seemed to him while sitting there that this girl was his; and the sense of possession had made him kind, but now that she seemed to vex him unnecessarily it appeared to him like a denial of his influence. The idea of the experiment suddenly returned, together with a sense of power and a desire to compel submission which displaced his wish to be considerate. He sat down on the seat again facing her and said:
"I want you to come here." He motioned to the seat beside him.
"I won't go near you. I hate you! I'll run in by myself."
"You can not run away—because I wish you to come here."
Hampstead said this in a measured way, and his brow seemed to knot into cords as he concentrated his will-power. His face bore an unpleasant expression. A quarter of a minute passed and she stood trembling and fascinated; and before another half-minute had elapsed she came very slowly forward, and approached him with the expression of her face changed into one of enervation. Her eyes were dilated, and her hands hung loosely at her sides. Hampstead saw, with some consternation, that she had become like something else, that she looked very like a mad-woman. A shock went through him as he looked at her—not knowing how the matter might terminate. He saw that she was mesmerized—an automaton moved by his will only. The combined flirtation and experiment had gone further than he had intended, and the result was startling—especially as the possibility that she might not recover flashed through his mind. The power he had been wielding (which receives much cheap ridicule from very learned men who would fain deny what they can not explain) suddenly seemed to him to be a devilish one, and he felt that he had done something wrong. He had not intended it. An idea had seized him, and he was merely concentrating a power which he unconsciously used almost every hour of his life. He considered what ought to be done to bring her back to a normal state. Not knowing anything better to do, he walked her about quickly, speaking to her, a little sharply, so as to rouse her.
Then, by telling her to wake up, and by asking her simple questions and requiring an answer, he succeeded in bringing her back to something like her usual condition. When she quite knew where she was, she thought she must have fainted. All her anger was gone, and Geoffrey, to give the devil his due, felt sorry for her. It had been an interesting episode—something quite new to him in a scientific way—but uncanny. She still looked to him as if for protection, and she would have wept had he not warned her how she would appear in the ball-room. "Oh, Mr. Hampstead, you have treated me cruelly," she said. Geoffrey felt that this was true enough.
"It was all my own fault, though. I do not blame you. You have taught me a great deal to-night. I seem to know, somehow, your best and your worst, and what a man can be."
She leaned upon his arm, partly from weakness and partly because she felt that, good or bad, he was master, and that she liked to lean upon him. The movement touched Geoffrey with compassion. Having nothing to offer in return, it distressed him to notice her affection, which he knew would only bring her unhappiness. He tried, therefore, to say something to remove the impressions that had come to her.
"You speak of good and bad in me," he said quickly. "Now I think you are so much in my confidence that I can trust you in what I am going to say. Don't believe that there is any good in me. I tell you the truth now because I am sorry that we have been so foolish to-night. There is no good in me. It is all—the other thing."
Nina shuddered—feeling as if he had spoken the truth but that it was already too late for her to listen to it.
He took her back into the house, smiling and pleasant to those about him, as if nothing had occurred, and left her with Mrs. Lindon.
But he did not go to find Margaret Mackintosh again. He went home somewhat excited, and smoked four or five pipes of tobacco. At first he was regretful, for he knew he had been doing harm. He said he was a whimsical fool. But after a couple of "night-caps" he began to think how picturesque she had looked in the moonlight, and he afterward dropped off into as dreamless and undisturbed a sleep as the most virtuous may enjoy.
CHAPTER VI.
For in her youth
There is a prone and speechless dialect,
Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art,
When she will play with reason and discourse,
And well she can persuade.
Measure for Measure.
If anybody had stated that Geoffrey Hampstead was a scoundrel, he would have had grounds for his opinion. As he did not attempt to palliate his own misdeeds, nobody will do so for him. He repudiated the idea of being led into wrong-doing, or driven into it by outside circumstances. Whatever he did, he liked to do thoroughly, and of his own accord. When Nature lavishes her gifts, much ability for both good and evil is usually part of the general endowment; and, although, perhaps, if we knew more, all wrong-doing would receive pity, Geoffrey possessed a knowledge of results that tends to withdraw compassion. But he had overstepped the mark when he had told Nina there was no good in him. Even his own statement reminded him how few things there are about which a sweeping assertion can be made with truth. He grew impatient to find that so many people do not hold opinions—that their opinions hold them; and when the good equalities of a person under discussion met with no consideration he invariably spoke of them. He had a good word to say for most people, and no lack of courage to say it, and thus he gave impression of being fair-minded, which made men like him. He had the compassion for the faulty which seems to appear more frequently in those whose lives have been by no means without reproach than among the strictest followers of religions which claim charity as their own. He thought he realized that consciousness of virtue does not breed so much true compassion as consciousness of sin; and a young clergyman of his acquaintance found that his arguments as to the utility of sin in the world were very shocking and difficult to answer.
Thus he alternated between good and evil, very much in the ordinary way, with only these differences, that his good seemed more disinterested and his evil more pronounced than with most people. The good which he did was done without the bargaining hope of future compensation, and therefore seemed more commendable. On the other hand, as he had almost forgotten what the idea of hell was, he was not forced to brave those consequences which, if some believe as they profess, must render their deliberate wrong-doing almost heroic.
What should a man be called who had in him these combinations? Too good to be either a Quilp or a Jonas Chuzzlewit, and much too bad to resemble any of the spotless heroes of fiction. It will settle the matter with those who are intolerant of distinctions and who do not examine into mixtures of good and evil outside their own range of life to have it understood and agreed that he was a thoroughpaced scoundrel. This will place us all on a comfortable footing.
Some days after the Dusenalls' entertainment Geoffrey was strolling along King Street when he caught sight of Margaret Mackintosh coming along the street with quiet eyes observant. She walked with a long, elastic step, which seemed to speak of the buoyancy of her heart.
Geoffrey walked slower, so that he might enjoy the beauty of her carriage, and the charm of her presence as she recognized him. It seemed to him that no one else could convey so much in a bow as she could. With the graceful inclination of the head came the pleasure of recognition and a quick intelligence that lighted up her face. It was the bow of a princess, as we imagine it; not, it will be remembered, as Canada has experienced it. A nobility and graciousness in her face and figure made men feel that she had a right to condescend to them. Innocence was not the chief characteristic of her face. However attractive, innocence is a poetic name for ignorance—the ignorance which has been canonized by the Romish faith, and has thus produced all the insipid virgins and heroines of the old masters and writers. She did not show that pliable, ductile, often pretty ignorance, supposedly sanctified by the name of innocence, which has been the priestly ideal of beauty for at least nineteen hundred years—perhaps always.
Hers was a good face, with a sweet, firm, generous mouth, possibly passionate, and already marked by sympathetic suffering from such human ills as she understood. She seemed to have nothing to hide, and she was as free and open as the day, and as fresh as the dawn; and a large part of the charm she had for all men lay in the fact that her self-respect was so assured to her that she had forgotten all about it. She had none of that primness which, is the outcome of an attempt to conceal the fact, that knowledge of which one is ashamed is continually uppermost in the mind.
As soon as her eye rested on Geoffrey, it lighted up with that marvelous quickness which is the attribute of rapidly-thinking people. In a flash her mind apparently possessed itself of all she had ever known of him. Five or six little things to say came tumbling over each other to her lips, as she held out her long gloved hand in greeting. Even Hampstead felt that her quick approach, earnest manner, and the way she looked straight at him almost disconcerted him; but he had thought to wait till she spoke to him to see what she would say. And she thought he would speak first, so a little pause occurred for an instant that would have been slightly awkward had they not both been young and very good-looking and much interested in each other.
"And how are you?" said she heartily, as they shook hands. The pause might have continued as far as either of them cared. They were self-possessed persons—these two.
"Oh, I am pretty well, thank you," said Geoffrey, without hastening to continue the conversation.
"And particularly well you look. Never saw you look better," said Margaret.
Geoffrey made a deep bow, extending the palms of his hands toward her and downward in reverent Oriental pantomime, as one who should say: "Your slave is humbly glad to please, and dusts your path with his miserable body."
"And what brought you into town to-day?" said he, as he turned and walked with her. "Not the giddy delight of walking on King Street, I hope?"
"That was my only idea, I will confess. Home was dull, and I was tired of reading. Mother was busy and father was away somewhere; so I came out for a walk. Yes, King Street was my only hope. No, by the way—I had an excuse. I have been looking for a house-maid. None to be had though."
"Don't find one," said Geoffrey. "Just come out every day to look for one. I know several fellows who would hunt house-maids with you forever if they got the chance."
"Ah! they never dare to say that to me. They might get snapped up. Yet it is hard to only receive compliments by deputy, like this. Do they intend that, after all, I shall die an old maid? And your banks friends are such excellent partis! are they not?"
"They are," said Geoffrey. "At least, they would be if they had a house to put a wife into—to say nothing of the maid."
"Talking of house-maids," said Margaret, "I just met Mrs. whats-her-name—you know, the little American with the German name; and she had just discharged one of her maids. She said to me, 'You know I have just one breakfast—ice-cold water and a hot roll; sometimes a pickle. Sarah said I'd kill myself, and in spite of everything I could say she would load the table with tea or coffee and stuff I don't want. 'Last I got mad and I walked in with her wages up to date. I said, 'Sarah I guess we had better part. You don't fill the bill.' I told her I would try and get Sarah myself, as I didn't object to her ideas in the matter of breakfasts. I have been looking for her and wanting some nice person to help me to find her. What are you doing this afternoon? Won't you come and help me to find Sarah?" This, with a little pretense of implorando.
"If you think I 'fill the bill' as 'a nice person' nothing would give me greater pleasure. Sarah will be found. No, I have nothing in particular on hand to-day. I was going to the gymnasium to have a fellow pummel me with the gloves. I am certain I have received more headaches and nose-bleedings in learning how to defend myself with my hands than one would receive in being attacked a dozen times in earnest."
"Well, now would be a good time to stop taking further lessons," said Margaret. "Why do you give yourself so much trouble?"
"Oh, for the exercise, I suppose, or the prestige of being a boxer. Keeps one's person sacred, in a manner; and among young men serves to give more weight to the expression of one's opinions. I think it is a mistake, though, as far as I am concerned. Nature made me speedy on my feet, and when the time comes I'll use her gift instead of the artificial one."
"I have heard it said that it is much wiser for a gentleman to run from a street fight than to stay in it—that the fact of his not using his feet as a means of attack in a fight always places him at a disadvantage. Could you not learn the manly art of kicking, as well?"
"What a murderous notion!" exclaimed Geoffrey. "I don't think that branch of self-defense is taught in the schools. It reminds one of a duel with axes. For my part, I think that hunting Sarah is much more improving. That is, if one did not have blood-thirsty ideas put into his head on the way."
And Margaret looked so gentle and pacific.
"I always think a very interesting subject like this should be thought out carefully," said she, smiling.
If she could not talk well on all subjects, she was a boon to those who could only talk on one—to those who resemble a ship with only one sail to keep them going—slow to travel on, but capable of teaching something, and not to be despised.
With her tall figure, classic face, and blonde hair, Margaret Mackintosh was a vision; but when she came, with large-pupiled eyes, in quest of knowledge, even grave and reverend seigniors were apt to forget the information she asked for. University-degree young men, the most superior of living creatures, soon understood that she sought for what they had learned, and not for themselves; and this demeanor on her part, while it tended to disturb the nice balance in which the weight of their mental talents was accurately poised against that of their physical fascinations, went to make friends and not lovers.
There was one person, however, to whose appearance she was not indifferent; who always suggested to her the Apollo Belvedere, and gave her an increased interest in the Homer of arts, whereas the vigorous life, heroic resolve, and shapely perfection of the ancient hero meet with but little response in women who exist with difficulty. She was perhaps entitled, by a sort of natural right, to expect that a masculine appearance should approach that grade of excellence of which she was herself an example.
"Do you know," she continued, as they proceeded up Yonge Street, "just before I met you I passed such a horrible young man, with long arms reaching almost to his knees and a little face. He made me quite uncomfortable. It's all very well to believe in our evolution as an abstract idea; but an experience like this brings the conviction home to one's mind altogether too vividly. It was quite a relief to meet you. You always look so—in fact, so different from that sort of person, don't you know?"
She nearly said he looked so like her Apollo, but did not.
Geoffrey smiled. "There are times when the idea seems against common sense," said he, with a short glance at her.
"Ah! you intend that for me. But you are almost repeating father's remark. You know he is a confirmed follower of the theory. A few days ago he said that the only thing he had against you was that you upset his studies. He says you ought to hire out to the special-creationists to be used as their clinching argument. So you see what it is to be an Ap—"
She stopped.
"Ah! you were going to say something severe, then," said Geoffrey. "Just as well, though, to snub me sometimes. I don't mind it if nobody knows of it. But, about your father? Do you assist him in his studies?"
"I don't know that I assist him much. He does the hardest part of the work, and then has to explain it all to me. But I read to him a good deal when his eyes trouble him. After procuring a new book on the subject he never rests till he has exhausted it. We often worry through it together, taking turns at the reading. We have just finished Haeckel's last. We are wild about Haeckel."
"Yes, there is something very spiritual and orthodox about him," said Geoffrey. "And now that you must have got about as far as you can at present, how does the theory affect you?"
"Not at all, except to make me long to know more. If one could live to be two hundred years old, would it not be delightful?" said Margaret, looking far away up the street in front of her.
"But as to your religion?" asked Geoffrey. "Do you find that it makes any difference?"
"I don't think I was ever a very religious person," she replied, mistaking the word religious for 'churchy.' "I never was christened, nor confirmed, nor taught my catechism, nor anything of that sort. Nobody ever promised that I should renounce the devil and all his works, and so—and so I suppose I never have."
She looked at Geoffrey with the round eyes of guilelessness, slightly mirthful, as if, while deprecating this wretched state, she could still enjoy life.
Her companion could scarcely look away from her. There was such a combination of knowledge and purity and all-round goodness in her face that it fascinated him and induced him to say gravely:
"Indeed, one might have almost supposed that you had enjoyed these benefits from your earliest youth."
"No," she answered, "I have been neglected in church matters. Who knows? Perhaps, if I had been different, father and I would never have been such companions. I never remember his going to church, although he pays his pew-rent for mother and me to go. He is afraid people would call him an atheist, you know, and no man cares about being despised or looked upon as peculiar in that way. He says that as long as he pays his pew-rent the good people will let him alone. As for mother, I hardly know what her belief is now. She is mildly contemptuous of evolution; chiefly, I think, because she does not know, or care anything about it. She says the creed she was brought up in is quite enough for her, and if she can keep the dust out of the house and contentment in it she will do more than most people and fullfil the whole duty of woman. I don't think she likes to be cross-questioned about her particular tenets, which really seem to be sufficient for her, except when she is worried over a new phase of the old family lawsuit, and then she oscillates between pugnacity and resignation. So you see I was left pretty much to myself as to assuming any belief that I might care about."
"And what belief did you come to care about?" he asked, feeling interested.
"Well, father seems to think that the most dignified attitude of our ignorance is a respectful silence; but, as you have asked which belief I care about, I can answer frankly that I like best going to church and saying my prayers. It is so much more pleasant and comfortable to try to think our prayers are heard, for, as mother says, reason and logic are poor outlets for emotion when the lawsuit goes wrong. With our information as it is, our conclusions seem to depend on whether we have or have not in us the spirit of research. They tell me in the churches that, being unregenerate, my heart is desperately wicked, and, as I have nothing but a little bad temper now and then to reproach myself with, I do not agree with them. On the contrary, I always feel that my life rather tends to lead me toward believing—or, at any rate, does not make me prejudiced. I like to believe that God watches over and cares for us. There being no proof or disproof of the matter, I would find it as difficult, by way of reasoning, to altogether disbelieve as to altogether believe."
"Then you make evolution a part of your religion?" asked Geoffrey.
Margaret had been brought up in an advanced latter-day school. All the unrecognized passion within her had gone out in quest of knowledge, which her father had taught her to regard as a source of quiet happiness, or at least as comforting to the soul during the maturer years as an intricate knowledge of crochet and quilt work. When she took to her bosom the so-called dry-as-dust facts of science she clothed them in a sort of spirituality. Even slipper-working for a married curate has been known to stir the pulses, and, though she knew that when the objects of our enthusiasm seem to glow it is unsafe to say whether the glow is not merely the reflection of our own fervor, she regarded the lately dug-up facts of science somewhat as if they were mines of long-hidden coal, capable of use and possessed of intrinsic warmth. Her face brightened with all the enthusiasm of a devotee as she answered Geoffrey's question.
"Indeed, yes. The new knowledge seems like the backbone of my religion. I often sit in church and think what a blessed privilege it is to be permitted to know even as little as we do about God's plan of creation."
She joined her hands before her quickly as she walked along, forgetful of all but the idea that enchained her. Her face showed the devotion seen in some old pictures of early saints, but it was too capable and animated to be the production of any of the old masters.
"Oh, it is grand to know even a little!" she exclaimed; "to think that this is God's plan, and that bit by bit we are allowed to unravel it! Is it not true that we acquire knowledge as we are able to receive it? Did not the ruder people receive the simple laws which Moses learned in Egypt? and did not Christianity expand those laws by teaching the religion of sympathy? These are historical facts. Why, then, should we not regard evolution as an advanced gospel, the gospel of the knowledge of God's works, to bind us more closely to him from our admiration of the excellence of his handiwork—as a father might show his growing son how his business is carried on, and how beautiful things are made? Of course, one may reply that all the discoveries do not show that there is a God. Perhaps they don't; but I try to think they do. I never have been able to find that verbal creeds do much toward making us what we are. The gloomy distort Christ's life to prove the necessity for sorrow; the joyous do just the opposite. The naturally cruel practice their cruelty in the name of religion. Though all start with perhaps the same words on their lips, each individual in reality makes his religion for himself according to his nature. Look at the difference between Guiteau and Florence Nightingale. They both had the same creeds."
Hampstead was silent.
"I know that my religion might not suffice for others, because it has no terrors, but to me it is compelling. When I turn it all over more minutely, the beauty of the thoughts seems to carry me away. Let those whose brittle creeds are broken grope about in their gloom, if they will. To me it is glorious first to try to understand things, and then to praise God for his marvelous works."
Margaret grew more intense in her utterance as her subject grew upon her. They had turned off on a quiet street some time before, so there was nothing to interrupt her. As her earnestness gave weight to her voice, the words came out more fervently and more melodiously. Both her hands were raised, in an unconscious gesture, while the words welled forth with a depth and force impossible to describe.
Geoffrey walked on in silence.
He thought of the passage, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," and he wondered whether Christ would have thought that such as Margaret stood in need of any further faith. The shrine of Understanding was the only one she worshiped at, arguing, as she did, that from a proper understanding and true wisdom followed all the goodness of the Christ-life. He became conscious of a vague regret within him that he had, as he thought, passed those impressionable periods when a man's beliefs may be molded again. There was a distinct longing to participate in the assurance and joy which any kind of fixed faith is capable of producing. The Byronic temperament was not absent from him. He was keenly susceptible to anything—either moral or immoral—which called upon his ideality; and these ideas of Margaret's, although he had thought of them before, seemed new to him.
"It seems strange," he said musingly, "to hear of some of the most learned men of the day erecting an altar similar to that which Paul found at Athens 'to the unknown God,' and to find them impelled to worship something which they speak of as unknown and unknowable."
"And yet," she answered, "it is the work of some of these very men, and their predecessors, that gives the light and life to the religion which I, for one, find productive of comfort and enthusiasm. One can understand the practicability of a heaven where a gradual acquisition of the fullness of knowledge could be a joyful and everlasting occupation; and I think a religion to fit us for such a heaven should, like the Buddhist's, strive to increase our knowledge instead of endeavoring to stifle it. What is there definitely held out as reward by religions to make men improve? As far as I can see, there is nothing definite promised, except in Buddhism perhaps, which men with active minds would care to accept. But knowledge! knowledge! This is what may bring an eternity of active happiness. Here is a vista as delightful as it is boundless. Surely in this century, we have less cause to call God altogether 'unknown' than had the men of Athens. In the light of omniscience the difference may be slight indeed, but to us it is great. I do hope," she added, "that what I have said does not offend any of your own religious convictions."
"I have none," said Geoffrey simply; "and it is very good of you to tell me so much about yourself. I have been wanting something of the kind. You know Bulwer says, 'No moral can be more impressive than that which shows how a man may become entangled in his own sophisms.' He says it is better than a volume of homilies; and it is difficult sometimes, after a course of reading mixed up with one's own vagaries, to judge as to one's self or others from a sufficiently stable standpoint. You always seem to give me an intuitive knowledge of what good really is, and to tell me where I am in any moral fog."
They walked on together for some little distance further when Margaret stopped and began to look up and down the street.
"Why, where are we?" she said. "What street is this?"
"I can not help you with the name of the street. I supposed we were approaching the domicile of Sarah. We are now in St. John's Ward, I think, and unless Sarah happens to be a colored person you are not likely to find her in this neighborhood."
"Dear me," said Margaret, as she descended from considering the possible occupations of the heavenly host to those usual in St. John's Ward, "I have not an idea where we are. We must have come a long distance out of our way. It is your fault for doing all the talking."
"On the contrary, Miss Margaret, I have been unable to get a word in edgewise."
The search for Sarah was abandoned, and they wended their way toward Margaret's home, the conversation passing to other subjects and to Nina Lindon, whom they discussed in connection with the ball at the Dusenalls'.
"They certainly seem very devoted, do they not?" said Margaret, referring to Jack Cresswell also.
"Yes, their attachment for each other is quite idyllic," said Geoffrey, lapsing into his cynical speech, "which is as it should be. I did not see them much together, as I left early."
"I noticed your absence, at least I remembered afterward not having seen you late in the evening, but, as you take such an interest in your friend, you should have stayed longer, if only to see the very happy expression on his face. You know she is spoken of as being the belle, and certainly he ought to be proud of her, as the attention she attracted was so very marked. I thought her appearance was charming. They seemed to make an exception to the rule among lovers that one loves and the other submits to be loved."
"I am glad to hear you say this," said Geoffrey, as he silently reflected as to the cause of Nina's return to do her duty in a way that would tend to ease her conscience. "Jack is worthy of the best of girls. Have you ever called upon the Lindons?"
"No, not yet. But Mr. Cresswell spoke to me about Miss Lindon and said he would like me to know her. So I said we would call. I am afraid, however, that mother will complain at the length of her visiting list being increased. She will have to be coaxed into this call to please me."
"Jack cherishes an idea that Miss Lindon, he, and I will become a trio of good friends," said Geoffrey. "Now, if anything could be done to make it a quartette, if you would consent to make a fourth, Miss Margaret, I am certain the new arrangement would be more satisfactory to all parties, especially so to me considered as one of the trio. A gooseberry's part is fraught with difficulties."
"The more the merrier, no doubt, in this case. Numbers will release you from your responsibilities. I have myself two or three friends that would make excellent additions to the quartette. There's Mr. Le Fevre, of your bank, and also Mr.—"
"Ah, well!" said Geoffrey, interrupting. "Let us consider. I don't think that it was contemplated to make a universal brotherhood of this arrangement. If there are to be any more elected I should propose that the male candidates should be balloted for by the male electors only, and that additional lady members should be disposed of by their own sex only. Let me see. In the event of a tie in voting, the matter might be left to a general meeting to be convened for consultation and ice-cream, and, if the candidate be thrown out by a majority, the proposer should be obliged to pay the expenses incurred by the conclave."
"That seems a feasible method," said Margaret. "Although I tell you, if we girls do not have the right men, there will be trouble. And now we ought to name the new society. What do you say to calling it 'An Association for the Propagation of Friendly Feeling among Themselves'?"
"Limited," added Geoffrey, thinking that the membership ought to be restricted.
"Oh, limited, by all means," cried Margaret. "I should rather think so. Limited in finances, brains, and everything else. And then the rules! Politics and religion excluded, of course, as in any other club?"
"Well, I don't mind those so much as discussions of millinery and dress-making. These should be vetoed at any general meeting."
"Excuse me. These are subjects that come under the head of art, and ought to be permissible to any extent; but I do make strong objection to the use of yachting terms and sporting language generally."
"Possibly you are right," said Geoffrey. "But Jack—poor Jack! he must refer to starboard bulkheads and that sort of thing from time to time. However, we will agree to each other's objections, but we must certainly place an embargo upon saying ill-natured things about our neighbors—"
"Good heavens, man! Do you expect us to be dumb?" cried Margaret. "Very well. It shall be so. We will call it the 'Dumb Improvement Company for Learned Pantomime.'"
And thus they rattled on in their fanciful talk merrily enough—interrupting each other and laughing over their own absurdities, and sharpening their wits on each other, as only good friends can, until Margaret's home was reached.
To Geoffrey it seemed to emphasize Margaret's youth and companionability when, in following his changing moods, she could so readily make the transition from the sublime to the ridiculous.
CHAPTER VII.
Rosalind. Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown more than your enemies.—As You Like It.
In the few weeks following the entertainment of the Dusenalls, Hampstead had not seen Nina. He felt he had been doing harm. The memory of that which had occurred and a twinge or two at his unfaithfulness to his friend Jack had made him avoid seeing her. But afterward, as fancy for seeing her again came to him more persistently, he gradually reverted to the old method of self-persuasion, that if she preferred Jack she might have him. He said he did not intend to show "any just cause or impediment" when Jack's marriage bans were published, and what the girl might now take it into her head to do was no subject of anxiety to him.
She, in the mean time, had lost no time in improving her acquaintance with Margaret after the calls had been exchanged. Margaret was not peculiar in finding within her an argument in favor of one who evidently sought her out, and the small amount of effusion on Nina's part was not without some of its desired effect. Nina wished to be her particular friend. She had perceived that a difference existed between them—a something that Geoffrey seemed to admire; and she had the vague impulse to form herself upon her.
Huxley explained table-turning by a simple experiment. He placed cards underneath the hands of the people forming the charmed circle round the table, and when they all "willed" that the table should move in a particular direction the cards and hands moved in that direction, while the table resisted the spirits and remained firm on its feet. In a similar way, Nina's impulse to know Margaret and frame herself upon her were all a process of unconscious self-deception which resembled the illusions of unrecognized muscular movements. She had no fixed ideas regarding Hampstead. Her actions were simply the result of his presence in her thoughts. She moved toward him, distantly and vaguely, but surely—somewhat as the card of a ship-compass, when it is spinning, seems to have no fixed destination, though its ultimate direction is certain.
She found it easy to bring the Dusenall girls to regard Margaret as somebody worth cultivating. The family tree of the Dusenall's commenced with the grandfather of the Misses Dusenall, who had got rich "out West." On inquiry they found that Margaret's family tree dwarfed that of any purely Canadian family into a mere shrub by comparison; and on knowing her better they found her brightness and vivacity a great addition to little dinners and lunches where conversational powers are at a premium.
With plenty of money, no work, an army of servants, a large house and grounds, a stable full of horses, and a good yacht, three or four young people can with the assistance of their friends support life fairly well. Lawn-tennis was their chief resource. Nina, being rather of the Dudu type, was not wiry enough to play well, and Margaret had not learned. She was strong and could run well, but this was not of much use to her. When the ball came toward her through the air she seemed to become more or less paralyzed. Between nervous anxiety to hit the ball and inability to judge its distance, she usually ended in doing nothing, and felt as if incurring contempt when involuntarily turning her back upon it. If she did manage to make a hit, the ball generally had to be found in the flower-beds far away on either side of the courts. In cricketing parlance, she played to "cover point" or "square leg" with much impartiality.
So these two generally looked on and made up for their want of skill in dignity and in conversation among themselves and with the men too languid to play. The wonder was that the marriageable young women liked Margaret so well. With her long, symmetrical dress rustling over the lawn and her lace-covered parasol occasionally hiding her dainty bonnet and well-poised head, Margaret might have been regarded as an enemy and labeled "dangerous," but the girls trusted her with their particular young men, with a sort of knowledge that she did not want any of them, even if the men themselves should prove volatile and recreant. After all, what young girls chiefly seek "when all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green," is to have a good time and not be interrupted in their whims. So Margaret, who was launching out into a gayer life than she had led before, got on well enough, and the wonder as to what girls who did nothing found to talk about was wearing off. If she was not much improved in circles where general advantages seemed to promise originality, it was no bad recreation sometimes to study the exact minimum of intelligence that general advantages produced, and the drives in the carriages and Nina's village-cart were agreeable. She was partial to "hen-parties." Nina had one of these exclusive feasts where perhaps the success of many a persistent climber of the social ladder has been annihilated. It was a luncheon party. Of course the Dusenall girls were there, and a number of others. Mrs. Lindon did not appear. Nina was asked where she was, but she said she did not know. As she never did seem to know, this was not considered peculiar.
On this day Margaret was evidently the particular guest, and she was made much of by several girls whom she had not met before. It was worth their while, for she was Nina's friend and Nina had such delicious things—such a "perfect love" of a boudoir, all dadoes, and that sort of thing, with high-art furniture for ornament and low-art furniture in high-art colors for comfort, articles picked up in her traveling, miniature bronzes of well-known statues, a carved tower of Pisa of course, coral from Naples, mosaics from Florence, fancy glassware from Venice—in fact a tourist could trace her whole journey on examining the articles on exhibition. A French cook supplied the table with delectable morsels which it were an insult to speak of as food. Altogether her home was a pleasant resort for her acquaintances, and there were those present who thought it not unwise to pay attention to any person whom Nina made much of.
There were some who could have been lackadaisical and admiring nothing, if the tone of the feast had been different, but Margaret was for admiring everything and enjoying everything, and having a generally noisy time and lots of fun. She was a wild thing when she got off in this way, as she said, "on a little bend," and carried the others off with her.
What concerns us was the talk about the bank games. Some difference of opinion arose as to whether or not these were enjoyable. Not having been satisfied with attention from the right quarter at previous bank games, several showed aversion to them. Nina was looking forward with interest to the coming events, and Margaret, when she heard that Geoffrey and Jack and other friends were to compete in the contests, was keen to be a spectator. Emily Dusenall remarked that Geoffrey Hampstead was said to be a splendid runner, and that these games were the first he had taken any part in at Toronto, as he had been away during last year's. It was arranged that Nina and Margaret should go with the Dusenalls to the games after some discussion as to whose carriage should be used. Nina asserted that their carriage was brand new from England and entitled to consideration, but the Dusenalls insisted that theirs was brand new, too, and, more than that, the men had just been put into a new livery. It was left to Margaret, who decided that she could not possibly go in any carriage unless the men were in livery absolutely faultless.
Some days after this the carriage with the men of spotless livery rolled vice-regally and softly into the great lacrosse grounds where the Bank Athletic Sports were taking place. The large English carriage horses pranced gently and discreetly as they heard the patter of their feet on the springy turf, and they champed their shining bits and shook their chains and threw flakes of foam about their harness as if they also, if permitted, would willingly join in the sports. There was Margaret, sitting erect, her eyes luminous with excitement. Inwardly she was shrinking from the gaze of the spectators who were on every side, and as usual she talked "against time," which was her outlet for nervousness in public places. Mrs. Mackintosh had made her get a new dress for the occasion, which fitted her to perfection, and Nina declared she looked just like the Princess of Wales bowing from the carriage in the Row. The two Dusenalls were sitting in the front seat. Nina sat beside Margaret. Nina was looking particularly well. So beautiful they both were! And such different types! Surely, if one did not disable a critical stranger, the other would finish him.
The whole turn-out gave one a general impression of laces, French gloves, essence of flowers, flower bonnets, lace-smothered parasols, and beautiful women. There was also an air of wealth about it, which tended to keep away the more reticent of Margaret's admirers. She knew men of whose existence Society was not aware—men who were beginning—who lived as they best could, and, as yet, were better provided with brains than dress-coats. Moreover, the Dusenalls had a way of lolling back in their carriage which they took to be an attitude capable of interpreting that they were "to the manor born." There was a supercilious expression about them, totally different from their appearance at Nina's luncheon, and they had brought to perfection the art of seeing no person but the right person. Consequently, it required more than a usual amount of confidence in one's social position to approach their majesties. The wrong man would get snubbed to a dead certainty.
After passing the long grand stand the carriage drew up in an advantageous spot where they could see the termination of the mile walking match. The volunteer band had brokenly ceased to play God save the Queen on discovering that theirs was not the vice-regal carriage, and, in the field, Jack Cresswell was coming round the ring, with several others apparently abreast of him, heeling and toeing it in fine style. As they watched the contest, sympathy with Jack soon became aroused. Margaret heard somebody say that this was the home-stretch. Several young bank-clerks were standing about within earshot, and she listened to what they were saying as if all they said was oracular.
"Gad! Jack's forging ahead," said one.
"Yes, but Brownlee of Molson's is after him. Bet you the cigars Brownlee wins!"
This was too much for Margaret. She stood up in the carriage and, without knowing it, slightly waved her parasol at Jack, not because he would see her encouragement, but on general principles, because she felt like doing so, regardless of what the finer feelings of the Dusenalls might be. The walkers crossed the winning line, and it was difficult to see who won. Margaret sat down again, her face lighted with excitement, and said all in a breath:
"Was not that splendid? How they did get over the ground! What a pace they went at! Poor Jack, how tired he must be! I do hope he won, Nina," and she laid her hand on Nina's tight-sleeved soft arm with emphasis.
The Dusenalls did not think there was much interest in a stupid walking-match, and they thought standing up and waving one's parasol rather bad form, so they were not enthusiastic.
Nina said softly: "Indeed, if you take so much interest in Jack I'll get jealous."
While she said this her face began to color, and Margaret's reply was interrupted by Geoffrey Hampstead's voice which announced welcome news. He gave them all a sort of collective half-bow and shook hands with Nina in a careless, friendly way.
"I come with glad tidings—as a sort of harbinger of spring, or Noah's dove with an olive-branch—or something of the kind."
"Is your cigar the olive-branch? To represent the dove you should have it in your mouth," said Nina. "Stop, I will give you an olive-branch, so that you may look your part better."
She wished Geoffrey to know that she felt no anger for what had occurred at the ball. Geoffrey saw the idea, and answered it understandingly as she held out a sprig of mignonette.
"I suppose this token of peace can only be carried in my mouth," said Geoffrey, throwing away his cigar.
"Certainly," said Nina, and her gloved fingers trembled slightly as she put the olive-branch between his lips, saying "There! now you look wonderfully like a dove."
Margaret was smiling at this small trifling, but her anxiety about the walking-match was quite unabated. She said: "I do not see why you call yourself a harbinger of spring or anything else unless you have something to tell us. What is your good news? Has Mr. Cresswell won the prize?"
"By about two inches," said Geoffrey. "I thought I might create an indirect interest in myself, with Miss Lindon at least, by coming to tell you of it." He wore a grave smile as he said this, which made Nina blush.
"And so you did create an indirect interest in yourself," said Margaret. "Now you can interest us on your own account. What are you going to compete for to-day?"
Hampstead was clad in cricketing flannels—his coat buttoned up to the neck.
"I entered for a good many things," said he, "in order that I might go in for what I fancied when the time came. They are contesting now for the high-pole jump. Perhaps we had better watch them, as they have already begun to compete. I am anxious to see how they do it."
High leaping with the pole is worth watching if it be well done. Margaret's interest increased with every trial of the men who were competing, and she almost suffered when a "poler" did his best and failed. One man incased in "tights" was doing well, and also a small young fellow who had thrown off his coat, apparently in an impromptu way, and was jumping in a pair of black trousers, which looked peculiar and placed him at a disadvantage from their looseness. The others soon dropped out of the contest, being unable to clear the long lath that was always being put higher. These two had now to fight it out together. They had both cleared the same height, and the next elevation of the lath had caused them both to fail. Margaret was on her feet again in the carriage, her face glowing as she watched every movement of the "polers." Her sympathies were entirely with the funny little man in black trousers. The other at length cleared the lath, amid applause. But the little hero in black still held on and made his attempts gracefully.
"Oh," said Margaret, gazing straight before her, "I would give anything in the world to see that circus-man beaten!"
"How much would you give, Miss Mackintosh?" said Geoffrey.
Margaret did not hear him.
"Oh, I want my little flying black angel to win. Is it impossible for anybody to beat the enemy?" Then, turning excitedly to the girls, she said hurriedly, "I could just love anybody who could beat the enemy."
"Does 'anybody' include me?" asked Geoffrey, laughing.
"Yes, yes," cried Margaret, catching at the idea. "Can you really defeat him? Yes, indeed, I will devote myself forever to anybody who can beat him. Have you a pole? Borrow one. Hurry away now, while you have a chance." In her eagerness her words seemed to chase each other.
"Well—will you all love me?" inquired Geoffrey, with an aggravating delay.
There was a shrill chorus of "Until death us do part" from the girls, and Geoffrey skipped over a couple of benches and ran over to the "polers," where he claimed the right to compete, as he had been entered previously in due time for this contest. Strong objection was immediately raised by the man in tights. The judges, after some discussion, allowed Geoffrey to take part amid much protestation from the members of the circus-man's bank.
Geoffrey took his pole from Jack Cresswell, who had competed on it without success. It was a stout pole of some South American wood, and very long. He threw off his coat, displaying a magnificent body in a jersey of azure silk. After walking up to look at the lath he grasped his pole and, making a long run, struck it into the ground and mounted into the air. He had not risen very high when he saw that he had miscalculated the distance; so he slid down his pole to the earth. Derisive coughs were heard from different parts of the field, and "Tights" looked at Geoffrey maliciously and laughed.
At the next rush that Geoffrey made, he sailed up into the air on his pole like a great bird, and as he became almost poised in mid-air, he went hand over hand up the stout pole. Then, by a trick that can not be easily described, his legs and body launched out horizontally over the lath, and throwing away his pole he dropped lightly on his feet without disturbing anything.
"Tights" was furious, and he said something hot to Geoffrey, who, however, did not reply.
A difficulty arose here because there were no more holes in the uprights to place the pegs in to hold up the lath. Geoffrey was now even with the enemy, but not ahead of him. So he asked the judges to place the lath across the top of the uprights. This raised the lath a good fifteen inches, and nobody supposed that it could be cleared.
There was something stormy about Hampstead when a man provoked him, and "Tights" had been very unpleasant. He pointed to the almost absurd elevation of the lath; his tones were short and exasperating as he addressed his very savage rival:
"Now, my man, there's your chance to exhibit your form."
"Tights" refused to make any useless trial, but relieved the tension of his feelings by forcing a bet of fifty dollars on Geoffrey that he could not clear it himself.
The excitement was now considerable. Geoffrey took the offered bet, pleased to be able to punish his antagonist further. But really the whole thing was like child's-play to him. It seemed as if he could clear anything his pole would reach. His hand-over-hand climbing was like lightning, and he went over the lath, cricket trousers and all, with quite as much ease as when it was in the lower position, and this amid a wild burst of applause.
He then grabbed his coat and made for the dressing-room, to prepare for the hurdle race, for which the bell was ringing.
When he ran out into the field again, after about a moment, he was clad in tights of azure silk with long trunks of azure satin, and his feet wore running shoes that fitted like a glove. No wonder girls raved about him. So did the men. He was a grand picture, as beautiful as a god in his celestial colors.
But there was work for him to do in the hurdle race. The best amateur runners in Canada were to be with him in this race, and there is a field for choice among Canadian bank athletes. They were to start from a distant part of the grounds, run around the great oval, and finish close to our carriage, where eager faces were hopeful for his success. Geoffrey made a bad start—not having recovered after being once called back. The first hurdle saw him over last, but between the jumps his speed soon put him in the ruck. There is no race like the hurdle race for excitement. At the fourth hurdle some one in front struck the bar, which flew up just as Geoffrey rose to it. His legs hit it in the air and he was launched forward, turned around, and sent head downward to the ground. The thought that he might be killed went through many minds. But those who thought so did not know that he could gallop over these hurdles like a horse, lighting on his hands. No doubt it was a great wrench for him, but he lit on his hands and was off again like the wind.
The fall had lost him his chance, he thought, but he went on with desperation and pain, his head thrown back and his face set to win. It was a long race, and five more hurdles had yet to be passed. The first of these was knocked down so that in merely running through he gained time by not having to jump, and he rapidly closed on those before him. His speed between jumps was marvelous. His hair blew back in blonde confusion, and he might well have been taken to represent some god of whirlwinds, or an azure archangel on some flying mission. He hardly seemed to touch the earth, and Margaret, who delighted in seeing men manly and strong and fleet, felt her heart go out to him in a burst of enthusiasm that became almost oppressive as the last hurdle was approached.
There were now only two men ahead of him, and Geoffrey was so set on winning that it seemed with him to be more a matter of mind than body. A yell suddenly arose from all sides. One of the two first men struck the last hurdle and went down, and Geoffrey, shooting far into the air in a tremendous leap to clear the flying timber, passed the other man in the last arrow-like rush, and dashed in an undoubted winner.
The enthusiasm for him was now unmingled. The sensation of horror that many had felt on seeing him fall head downward during the race had given way to a keen admiration for his plucky attempt to catch up with such hopeless odds against him. There were old business men present whose hearts had not moved so briskly since the last financial panic as when the handicapped hero in azure leaped the last hurdle into glory. There were men looking on whose figures would never be redeemed who, at the moment, felt convinced that with a little training they could once more run a good race—men whose livers were in a sad state and who certainly forgot the holy inspiration before rising that night from their late dinners. Surely if these old stagers could be thus moved, feminine hearts might be excused. It was not necessary to know Geoffrey personally to feel the contagious thrill that ran through the multitude at the vision of his prowess. The impulse and the verdict of the large crowd were so unanimous that no one could resist them.
As for Margaret, she was, alas, standing on the seat by the time he raced past the carriage—a fair, earnest vision, lost in the excitement of the moment. With her gloved hands tightly closed and her arms braced as if for running, she appeared from her attitude as if she, too, would join in the race where her interest lay. The true woman in her was wild for her friend to win. Geoffrey's appearance appealed to all her sense of the beautiful. Knowledge of art led her to admire him—art of the ancient and vigorous type. All the plaudits that moved the multitude were caught up and echoed even more loudly within her. It was a dangerous moment for a virgin heart. As Geoffrey managed to land himself a winner against such desperate odds, she saw in his face, even before he had won, a half supercilious look of triumph and mastery that she had never seen there before. In a brief moment she caught a glimpse of the indomitable will that with him knew no obstacles—a will shown in a face of the ancient type, with gleaming eyes and dilated nostrils, heroic, god-like, possibly cruel, but instinct with victory and resolve.
To her the triumph was undiluted. At the close of the race her lungs had refused to work until he passed the winning line, and then her breath came in a gasp, as she became conscious that her eyes were filled with tears of sympathy.
With Nina it was different. That she was intensely interested is true. Everybody was. But, instead of that whirl of sympathetic admiration which Margaret felt, the strongest feeling she had was a desire that Geoffrey would come to her first, would lay, as it were, his honors at her feet—a wish suggesting the complacency with which the tigress receives the victor after viewing with interest the combat.
When Geoffrey rejoined them half an hour afterward he was endeavoring to conceal an unmistakable lameness resulting from striking the hurdle in the race. He had had his leg bathed, which he afterward found had been bleeding freely during the run, and had got into his flannels again. In the mean time a small circle of admirers had grouped themselves about the Dusenalls' carriage.
Jack had been in to see them for a moment with a hymn of praise for Geoffrey on his lips, but Nina made him uncomfortable by treating him distantly, and, although Margaret beamed on him, he departed soon after Geoffrey's arrival, making an excuse of his committee-man's duties.
Geoffrey noticed that, on his reappearing among them, Margaret did not address him, but left congratulations to Nina and the Dusenalls. In the interval after the race she had suddenly begun to consider how great her interest in Geoffrey was. She had known him for over a year. During that time he had ever appeared at his best before her. It was so natural to be civilized and gentle in her presence. And Margaret was not devoid of romance, in spite of her prosaic studies. Her ideality was not checked by them, but rather diverted into less ordinary channels, and she was as likely as anybody else to be captivated by somebody who, besides other qualities, could form a subject for her imaginative powers. Nevertheless, in spite of this sometimes dangerous and always charming ideality, she had acquired the habit of introspection which Mr. Mackintosh had endeavored to cultivate in her. He told her that when she fell in love she "would certainly know it." And it was the remembrance of this sage remark that now caused her to be silent and thoughtful. She was wondering whether she was going to fall in love with Geoffrey, and what it would be like if she did do so, and if she could know any more interest in him if it so turned out that she eventually became engaged to him. Then she looked at Geoffrey, intending to be impartial and judicial, and thought that his looks were not unpleasing, and that his banter with Miss Dusenall was not at all slow to listen to. She was pleased that he did not address her first. She felt that she might have been in some way embarrassed. Sometimes he glanced at her, as if carelessly, and yet she seemed to know that all his remarks were to amuse her, and that he watched her without looking at her. She had never thought of his doing this before.
Bad Margaret! Full of guilt!
Geoffrey was endeavoring to make the plainest Miss Dusenall fix the day for their wedding, declaring that it was she who had promised to marry him if he won at jumping with the pole, and that she alone had nerved him for the struggle, and he went on arranging the matter with a volubility and assurance which she would have resented in anybody else. She had affected to belittle Geoffrey somewhat, not having been much troubled with his attentions, and she was conscious now that this banter on his part was detracting from her dignity. But what was she to do? The man was the hero of the hour, and cared but little for her dignity and mincing ways. She would have snubbed him, only that he carried all the company on his side, and a would-be snub, when one's audience does not appreciate it, returns upon one's self with boomerang violence. After all, it was something to monopolize the most admired man in six thousand people, even if he did make game of her and treat her, like a child.
As for Nina, she answered feebly the desultory remarks of several young men who hung about the carriage, and she listened, while she looked at the contests, to one sound only—to the sound of Geoffrey's voice. From time to time she put in a word to the other girls which showed that she heard everything he said. This sort of thing proved unsatisfactory to the young men who sought to engage her attention. They soon moved off, and then she gave herself up to the luxury of hearing Geoffrey speak. It might have been, she thought, that all his gayety was merely to attract Margaret, but none the less was his voice music to her. Poor Nina! She would not look at him, for fear of betraying herself. She lay back in the carriage and vainly tried to think of her duty to Jack. Then she thought herself overtempted, not remembering the words:
The devil tempts us not—'tis we tempt him,
Beckoning his skill with opportunity.
This meeting, which to her was all bitter-sweet, to Geoffrey was piquant. To make an impression on the woman he really respected by addressing another he cared nothing about was somewhat amusing to him, but to know that every word he said was being drunk in by a third woman who was as attractive as love itself and who was engaged to be married to another man added a flavor to the entertainment which, if not altogether new, seemed, in the present case, to be mildly pungent.
After this Nina deceived herself less.
CHAPTER VIII.
Come o'er the sea,
Maiden with me,
Mine through sunshine, storm, and snows.
Seasons may roll,
But the true soul
Burns the same wherever it goes.
Is not the sea
Made for the free,
Land for courts and chains alone?
Here we are slaves;
But on the waves
Love and liberty's all our own.
Moore's Melodies.
Mr. Maurice Rankin was enjoying his summer vacation. Although the courts were closed he still could be seen carrying his blue bag through the street on his way to and from the police court and other places. It is true that, for ordinary professional use, the bag might have been abandoned, but how was he to know when a sprat might catch a whale?—to say nothing of the bag's being so convenient for the secret and non-committal transportation of those various and delectable viands that found their way to his aerial abode at No. 173 Tremaine Buildings. He was now provided by the law printers with pamphlet copies of the decisions in different courts, and a few of these might always be found in his bag. They served to fill out to the proper dimensions this badge of a rank entitling him to the affix of esquire, and they had been well oiled by parcels of butter or chops which, on warm days, tried to lubricate this dry brain food as if for greater rapidity in the bolting of it.
In this way he was passing his summer vacation. Many a time he thought of his father's wealth before his failure and death. Where had those thousands melted away to? Oh, for just one of the thousands to set him on his feet! This perpetual grind, this endless seeking for work, with no more hope in it than to be able to get even with his butcher's bill at the end of the month! To see every person else go away for an outing somewhere while he remained behind began to make him dispirited. The buoyancy of his nature, which at first could take all his trials as a joke, was beginning to wear off. After yielding himself to their peculiar piquancy for six months, these jokes seemed to have lost their first freshness, and he longed to get away somewhere for a little change. The return, then, he thought, would be with renewed spirit.
While thinking over these matters his step homeward was tired and slow. He was by no means robust, and his narrow face had grown more hatchety than ever in the last few hot days. Hope deferred was beginning to tell upon him, but a surprise awaited him.
Jack Cresswell and Charley Dusenall were walking at this time on the other side of the street. They sighted Rankin going along gloomily, with his nose on the ground, well dressed and neat as usual, but weighted down, apparently with business, really with loneliness, law reports, and lamb-chops.
They both pointed to him at once. Jack said, "The very man!" and Charlie said, nodding assent, "Just as good as the next." Jack clapped Charley on the back—"By Jove, I hope he will come! Do him all the good in the world."
Charley was one of those happy-go-lucky, loose-living young men who have companions as long as their money lasts, and who seem made of some transmutable material which, when all things are favorable, shows some suggestion of solidity, but, when acted upon by the acid of poverty, degenerates into something like that parasitic substance remarkable for its receptibility of liquids, called a sponge. He liked Rankin, although he thought him a queer fish, and he would laugh with the others when Rankin's quiet satire was pointed at himself, not knowing but that there might be a joke somewhere, and not wishing to be out of it.
The two young men crossed the road and walked up to Rankin who was just about to enter Tremaine Buildings. Charlie asked him to come on a yachting cruise around Lake Ontario—to be ready in two days—that Jack would tell him all about it, as he was in a hurry. He then made off, without waiting for Maurice to reply.
Jack explained to Rankin that the yacht was to take out a party, with the young ladies under the chaperonage of Mrs. Dusenall, that the two Misses Dusenall, and Nina and Margaret were going, that he and Geoffrey Hampstead and two or three of the yacht-club men would lend a hand to work the craft, and that Rankin would be required to take the helm during the dead calms. As Rankin listened he brightened up and looked along the street in meditation.
"The business," he said thoughtfully, "will perish. Bean can't run my business."
His large mouth spread over his face as he yielded himself to the warmth of the sunny vista before him. Already he felt himself dancing over the waves. Suddenly, as they stood at the entrance to Tremaine Buildings, he caught Jack by the arm and whispered—so that clients, thronging the streets might not overhear:
"The business," he whispered. "What about it?" He drew off at arm's length and transfixed Jack with his eagle eye. Then, as if to typify his sudden and reckless abandonment of all the great trusts reposed in him, he slung the blue bag as far as he could up the stairs while he cried that the business might "go to the devil."
"Correct," said Jack. "It will be all safe with him. You know he is the father of lawyers. But I say, old chap, I am awfully glad you are coming with us. You see, the old lady has to get those girls married off somehow, and several fellows will go with us who are especially picked out for the business. Then, of course, the Dusenall girls want 'backing,' and they thought Nina and I could certainly give them a lead. And Nina would not go without Margaret. I rather think, too, that Geoffrey would not go without Margaret. Wheels within wheels, you see. Have you not got a lady-love, Morry, to bring along? No? Well, I tell you, old man, I expect to enjoy myself. I've been round that lake a good many times, but never with Nina."
Jack blushed as he admitted so much to his old friend, and after a pause he went on, with a young man's facile change of thought, to talk about the yacht.
"And we will just make her dance, and don't you forget it."
"But, my dear fellow, won't she object?"
"Object? No—likes it. She is coming out in a brand-new suit. Wait till you see her. She'll be a dandy."
"I can quite believe that she will appear more beautiful than ever," said Maurice, rather mystified.
"She is as clean as a knife, clean as a knife. I tell you, Morry, her shape just fills the eye. She—"
"Oh, yes, I understand. You are speaking of the yacht. I thought when you said you would make her dance that you referred to Miss Lindon. Excuse my ignorance of yachting terms. I know absolutely nothing about them."
"Never mind, old man, you might easily make the mistake. Talking of dancing now, I had a turn with her the other day and I will say this much—that she can waltz and no mistake. You could steer her with one finger."
"And shall we rig this spinnaker boom on her?" asked Rankin, with interest. "What is a spinnaker boom? I have always wanted to know."
"Spinnaker on who? or what?" cried Jack, looking vexed. "Don't be an ass, Rankin."
"My dear fellow—a thousand pardons—I certainly presumed you still spoke of the yacht. It is perfectly impossible to understand which you refer to."
"Well, perhaps it is," replied Jack; "I mix the two up in my speech just as they are mixed up in my heart, and I love them both. So let us have a glass of sherry to them in my room."
"I think," said Rankin, smiling, with his head on one side, "that to prevent further confusion we ought to drink a glass to each love separately, in order to discriminate sufficiently between the different interests."
"Happy thought," said Jack. "And just like you robbers. Every interest must be represented. Fees out of the estate, every time."
After gulping down the first glass of sherry in the American fashion, they sat sipping the second as the Scotch and English do. It struck Rankin as peculiar that Mr. Lindon allowed Nina to go off on this yachting cruise when he must know that Jack would be on board. He asked him how he accounted for his luck in this respect.
Jack said: "I can not explain it altogether to myself. The old boy sent her off to Europe to get her away from me, and that little manœuvre was not successful in making her forget me. I think that now he has washed his hands of the matter, and lets her do entirely as she pleases—except as to matrimony. They don't converse together on the subject of your humble servant. He is fond of Nina in his own way—when his ambition is not at stake. One thing I feel sure of, that we might wait till crack of doom before his consent to our marriage would be obtained. I never knew such a man for sticking to his own opinion."
"But you could marry now and keep a house, in a small way," said Rankin.
"Too small a way for Nina. She knows no more of economy than a babe. No; I may have been unwise, from a practical view, to fall in love with her, but the affair must go on now; we will get married some way or other. Perhaps the old boy will die. At any rate, although I have no doubt she would go in for 'love in a cottage,' I don't think it would be right of me to subject her to the loss of her carriage, servants, entertainments, and gay existence generally. Of course she would be brave over it, but the effort would be very hard upon the dear little woman."
When Jack thought of Nina his heart was apt to lose some of its chronometer movement. He turned and began fumbling for his pipe.
Maurice wished to pull him together, as it were, and said, as he grasped the decanter and filled the wine glasses again:
"Thank you; I don't mind if I do. Now I come to think of it, your first proposed toast was the right one. For the next three weeks at least we do not intend to separate the lady from the yacht. Why should we drink them separately? Ho, ho! we will drink to them collectively!" He waved his glass in the air. "Here's to The Lady and the Yacht considered as one indivisible duo. May they be forever as entwined in our hearts as they are incomprehensibly mixed up in our language!"
"Hear, hear!" cried Jack, with renewed spirit. "Drink hearty!" And then he energetically poured out another, and said "Tiger!"—after which they lit cigars and went out, feeling happy and much refreshed, while Rankin quite forgot the blue bag and the contents thereof yielding rich juices to the law-reports in the usual way.
About ten o'clock on the following Saturday morning valises were being stowed away on board the yacht Ideal, and maidens fair and sailors free were aglow with the excitement of departure. The yacht was swinging at her anchor while the new cruising mainsail caused her to careen gently as the wind alternately caught each side of the snowy canvas. A large blue ensign at the peak was flapping in the breeze, impatient for the start, while the main-sheet bound down and fettered the plunging and restless sail. Lounging about the bows of the vessel were a number of professional sailors with Ideal worked across the breasts of their stout blue jerseys. The headsails were loosed and ready to go up, and the patent windlass was cleared to wind up the anchor chain. Away aloft at the topmast head the blue peter was promising more adventures and a new enterprise, while grouped about the cockpit were our friends in varied garb, some of whom nervously regarded the plunging mainsail which refused to be quieted. Rankin was the last to come over the side, clad in a dark-blue serge suit, provided at short notice by the long-suffering Score. His leather portmanteau, lent by Jack, had scarcely reached the deck before the blocks were hooked on and the gig was hoisted in to the davits. Margaret, sitting on the bulwarks, with an arm thrown round a backstay to steady her, was taking in all the preparations with quiet ecstasy, her eyes following every movement aloft and her lips softly parted with sense of invading pleasure.
Mrs. Dusenall was down in the after-cabin making herself more busy than useful. Instead of leaving everything to the steward, the good woman was unpacking several baskets which had found their way aft by mistake. In a very clean locker devoted solely to charts she stowed away five or six pies, wedging them, thoughtfully, with a sweet melon to keep them quiet. Then she found that the seats at the side could be raised, and here she placed a number of articles where they stood a good chance of slipping under the floor and never being seen again. Fortunately for the party, her pride in her work led her to point out what she had done to the steward, who, speechless with dismay, hastily removed everything eatable from her reach.
As the anchor left its weedy bed, the brass carronade split the air in salute to the club and the blue ensign dipped also, while the headsail clanked and rattled up the stay. There was nobody at the club house, but the ladies thought that the ceremony of departure was effective.
Jack was at the wheel as she paid off on the starboard tack toward the eastern channel, and Geoffrey and others were slacking off the main-sheet when Rankin heard himself called by Jack, who said hurriedly:
"Morry, will you let go that lee-backstay?"
Maurice and Margaret left it immediately and stood aside. Jack forgot, in the hurry of starting, that Rankin knew nothing of sailing, and called louder to him again, pointing to the particular rope: "Let go that lee-backstay."
"Who's touching your lee-backstay?" cried Morry indignantly.
The boom was now pressing strongly on the stay, while Jack, seeing his mistake, leaned over and showed Rankin what to do. He at once cast off the rope from the cleat, and, there being a great strain on it, the end of it when loosed flew through his fingers so fast that it felt as if red hot.
"Holy Moses!" cried he, blowing on his fingers, "that rope must have been lying on the stove." He examined the rope again, and remarked that it was quite cool now. The pretended innocence of the little man was deceiving. The Honorable Marcus Travers Head, one of the rich intended victims of the Dusenalls, leaned over to Jack and asked who and what Rankin was.
"He's an original—that's what he is," said Jack, with some pride in his friend, although Rankin's by-play was really very old.
"What! ain't he soft?" inquired the Hon. M. T., with surprise.
"About as soft as that brass cleat," said Jack shortly. "I say, old Emptyhead, you just keep your eye open when he's around and you'll learn something."
There was a murmur of "Ba-a Jeuve!" and the honorable gentleman regarded Rankin in a new light.
The Ideal was a sloop of more than ordinary size, drawing about eight feet of water without the small center-board, which she hardly required for ordinary sailing. Her accommodations were excellent, and her internal fittings were elegant, without being so wildly expensive as in some of the American yachts. Her comparatively small draught of water enabled her to enter the shallow ports on the lakes, and yet she was modeled somewhat like a deep-draught boat, having some of her ballast bolted to her keel, like the English yachts. Her cruising canvas was bent on short spars, which relieved the crew in working her, but, even with this reduction, her spread of canvas was very large, so that her passage across the bay toward the lake was one of short duration.
To Margaret and Maurice the spirited start which they made was one of unalloyed delight. For two such fresh souls "delight" is quite the proper word. They crossed over to the weather side and sat on the bulwarks, where they could command a view of the whole boat. It was a treat for all hands to see their bright faces watching the man aloft cast loose the working gaff-topsail. When they heard his voice in the sky calling out "Hoist away," Morry waved his hand with abandon and called out also "Hoist away," as if he would hoist away and overboard every care he knew of, and when the booming voice aloft cried "Sheet home," it was as good as five dollars to see Margaret echo the word with commanding gesture—only she called it "Sea foam," which made the sailors turn their quids and snicker quietly among themselves. But when the huge cream-colored jib-topsail went creaking musically up from the bowsprit-end, filling and bellying and thundering away to leeward, and growing larger and larger as it climbed to the topmast head, their admiration knew no bounds. As the sail was trimmed down, they felt the good ship get her "second wind," as it were, for the rush out of the bay. It was as if sixteen galloping horses had been suddenly harnessed to the boat, and Margaret fairly clapped her hands. Maurice called to Jack approvingly:
"You said you would make her dance."
"She's going like a scalded pup," cried Jack poetically in reply, and he held her down to it with the wheel, tenderly but firmly, as he thereby felt the boat's pulse. When they came to the eastern channel Jack eased her up so close to the end of the pier that Maurice involuntarily retreated from the bulwarks for fear she would hit the corner. The jib-topsail commenced to thunder as the yacht came nearer the wind, but this was soon silenced, and half a dozen men on the main-sheet flattened in the after-canvas as she passed between the crib-work at the sides of the channel in a way that gave one a fair opportunity for judging her speed.
A moment more and the Ideal was surging along the lake swells, as if she intended to arrive "on time" at any place they pointed her for. The main-sheet was paid out as Jack bore away to take the compass course for Cobourg. This put the yacht nearly dead before the wind, and the pace seemed to moderate. Charlie Dusenall then came on deck, after settling his dunnage below and getting into his sailing clothes. Charlie had been "making a night of it" previous to starting, and felt this morning indisposed to exert himself. Jack and he had cruised together in all weathers, and they were both good enough sailors to dispense with pig-headed sailing-masters. Jack had sailed everything, from a birch-bark canoe to a schooner of two hundred tons, and had never lost his liking for a good deal of hard work on board a boat. As for his garb, an old flannel shirt and trousers that greased masts could not spoil were all that either he or Charlie ever wore. These, with the yachting shoes, broad Scotch bonnet, belt, and sheath-knife, were found sufficient, without any finical white jackets and blue anchors, and, if not so fresh as they might have been, these garments certainly looked like business.
Before young Dusenall put his head up the companion-way he knew exactly where the boat was by noticing her motions while below. There was something of the "old salt" in the way he understood how the yacht was running without coming on deck to find out. Generally he could wake up at night and tell you how the boat was sailing, and almost what canvas she was carrying, without getting out of his berth. These things had become a sort of second nature.
He was yawning as he hauled on a stout chain and dragged up from his trousers pocket a silver watch about the size of a mud-turtle. Then he looked at the wake through the long following waves and glanced rapidly over the western horizon while he counted with his finger upon the face of the enormous timepiece. "We will have to do better than this," he said, after making a calculation, "if we wish to dance at the Arlington to-night."
"They are just getting the spinnaker on deck," said Jack, nodding toward the bows. "As you say, it won't do her any harm. This breeze will flatten out at sundown, and walloping about in a dead calm all night is no fun."
"What a time they take to get a sail set!" said Charlie impatiently, as he looked at the sailors for a few moments. "I have a good mind to ask some of you fellows to go forward and show them how."
"Oh, never mind," said Jack, "We are not racing, and hurrying them only makes them sulky."
But Charlie's nerves were a little irritable to-day, and he swung himself on deck and went forward. A long boom was lowered out over the side and properly guyed; then a long line of sail, tied in stops, went up and up to the topmast-head; the foot of it was hauled out to the end of the boom; then there was a pull on a rope, and, as the wind broke away the stops, hundreds of yards of sail spread out as if by magic to the breeze, filling away forward like a huge three-cornered balloon, the foot of which almost swept the surface of the water.
"Look at that for a sail, Nina," said Jack. "Now you'll see her git right up and git."
When Jack was talking about yachts or sailing it was next to impossible for him to speak in anything but a jargon of energetic slang and metaphor picked up among the sailors, who, in their turn, picked up all they could while ashore. He seemed to take a pleasure in throwing the English grammar overboard. His heart warmed to sailors. He was fond of their oddities and forcible unpolished similes; and when he sometimes sought their society for a while, he was well received. When a man in good clothes begins to talk sailing grammatically to lake-sailors they seem to feel that he is not, as far as they can see, in any way up to the mark. His want of accuracy in sailing vernacular attaches to his whole character.
If Jack intended to say that the spinnaker would make the Ideal go fast, he was right. She was traveling down the lake almost as fast as she would go in a race with the same breeze. A long thin line of fine white bubbles extending back over the tops of several blue waves showed where her keel had divided the water and rubbed it into white powder as she passed. Jack had no time for continued conversation now. He had to watch his compass and the sails, the wind, and the land. He did not wish the wake behind the vessel to look like a snake-fence from bad steering, and to get either of the sails aback, while under such a pressure, would be a pretty kettle of fish. He was enjoying himself. Some good Samaritan handed him a pipe filled and lighted, and with his leg slung comfortably over the shaft of the wheel, his pipe going, Nina in front of him, and all his friends around him, he felt that the moment could hardly be improved.
Some time after the buildings of Toronto had dwindled away to nothing, and the thin spire of St. James's Cathedral had become a memory, the steward announced that luncheon was ready. One of the hands relieved Jack at the wheel, and all went below except Mrs. Dusenall, who was left lying among cushions and pillows arranged comfortably on deck, where she preferred to remain, as she was feeling the motion of the boat.
Luncheon was a movable feast on the Ideal—as liable to be shifted about as the hands of a wayward clock. The cabin was prettily decorated with flowers, and the table, weighted so as to remain always horizontal, was covered with snowy linen and delicate glass, while a small conceit full of cut flowers faced each of the guests. The steward and stewardess buzzed about with bottles and plates, and any appetite that could not have been tempted must have been in a bad way. The absence of that apology for a chaperon, who was trying to enjoy the breezes overhead, gave the repast an informality which the primness of the Misses Dusenall soon failed to check, although at first their precise intonations and carefully copied English accent did something to restrain undue hilarity on the part of those who did not know them well.
The idea of being able to entertain in this style gave the Misses Dusenall an inflation which at first showed itself in a conversation and manner touchingly English. The average English maiden, though by nature sufficiently insular in manner and speech, is taught to be more so. The result is that among strangers she rarely seems quite certain of herself, as if anxious lest she should wreck herself on a slip of the tongue or the sounding of a false note. Her prudish manners and her perfect knowledge of what not to say often suggest Swift's definition of "a nice man." One trembles to think what effect the emancipation of marriage will have upon some of these wildly innocent creatures. In Canada, and especially in the United States, we are thankful to take some things for granted, without the advertisement of a manner which seems to say: "I am so awfully pure and carefully brought up, don't you know."
The Misses Dusenall on this occasion soon found themselves in a minority (not the minority of Matthew Arnold), and before leaving the table they adopted some of that more genial manner and speech which, if slightly faulty, we are satisfied to consider as "good enough for the colonies."
Maurice seemed to expand as the English fog gradually lifted. The aged appearance that anxiety was giving him had disappeared. Amid the chatter going on, in which it was difficult to get an innings, Jack Cresswell seized a bottle of claret and called out that he proposed a toast.
"What? toasts at such an informal luncheon as this, Jack?" exclaimed Propriety, with the accent somewhat worn off.
"What's the odds as long as you're happy and the 'rosy' is close at hand?" said Jack. "Besides, this is a case of necessity—"
"I propose that we have a series of toasts," interrupted Charlie; who was beginning to feel himself again. "With all their necessary subdivisions," added Rankin, in his incisive little voice, which could always make itself heard.
"There you are again, Rankin," cried Jack. "I proposed a toast with Rankin two days ago, ladies, and, as I live by bread, he subdivided it sixteen times."
Dusenall was calling for a bottle of Seltzer water.
"Never mind your soda," commanded Jack. "Soda can't do justice to this toast. I propose this toast because I regard it as one of absolute necessity—"
"They all are," called Maurice.
"Gentlemen, I must protest against my learned friend's interrup—"
"Go on, Jack. Don't protest. Propose. I am getting thirsty," cried Hampstead's voice among a number of others.
"Well, gentlemen, am I to proceed or not? Have I the floor, or not?"
"That's just what he said after those sixteen horns," said Rankin, addressing the party confidentially. "Only, then he did not 'have the floor,' the floor had him."
His absurdity increased the hubbub, as Jack rapped on the table to command attention.
"The toast I am about to propose is one of absolute neces—"
"Oh, my!" groaned Rankin, "give me something in the mean time." He grasped a bottle, as if in desperation. "All right, now. Go on, Jack. Don't mind me."
The orator went on, smiling:
"It is, as I think I have said before, one of absolute—"
Here the disturbance threatened to put an end to the proposed toast.
"Take a new deal."
"Got any more toasts like this?"
"Oh, I would like a smoke soon. Hurry up, Jack."
"Well, ladies and gentlemen," said Jack, banging on the table to quell the tumult; "I will skip over the objectionable words, and propose that we drink to the health of one who has been unable to be with us to-day, and who needs our assistance; who perhaps at this moment is suffering untold troubles far from our midst. Ladies and gentlemen, have you charged your glasses?"
Answers of "Frequently."
"Well, then," said Jack, as he stood with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, "I ask you to drink with me to the health of 'The Chaperon,' who is nigh unto death."
All stood up, and were loudly echoing, "The Chaperon—nigh unto death!" when a long hand came down the skylight overhead and a voice was heard from on high, saying:
"Nothing of the kind. How dare you, you bad boy? Just put something into my hand and I'll drink my own health. I don't need your assistance at all."
Cheers broke out from the noisy gathering, and they all rushed on deck to see Mrs. Dusenall drink her own health, which she bravely accomplished.
They were a riotous lot. All the boat wanted was a policeman to keep them in something more like order, for a small joke received too much credit with them, and they laughed too easily.
Frenchman's Bay and Whitby were passed before they came up from lunch. Oshawa could be seen far away on the shore, as the yacht buzzed along with unabated speed. A speck on the horizon had risen up out of the sea to be called Raby Head—the sand-bluff near Darlington. Small yellow and green squares on the far-off brown uplands that rolled back from the shores denoted that there were farms in that vicinity; dark-blue spots, like feathery tufts, appeared here and there where the timber forests had been left untouched, and among them small marks or lines of white would occasionally appear where, on looking through the glasses, little railway trains seemed to be toiling like ants across the landscape.
There was no ceremony to be observed, nor could it be seen that anybody endeavored to keep up conversations which required any effort. The men, lounging about on the white decks, seemed to smoke incessantly while they watched the water hissing along the sides of the vessel, or lay on their backs and watched the masthead racing with the white clouds down the lake, and the girls, disposed on cushions, tried to read novels and failed. The sudden change to the fresh breezes of the lake, and the long but spirited rise and fall of the vessel made them soon doze away, or else remain in that peaceful state of mind which does not require books or masculine society or music, or anything else except a continuation of things just as they are. Granby and Newcastle were mentioned as the yacht passed by, but most of the party were drowsy, and few even raised their heads to see what little could be seen. Port Hope created but feeble interest, though the Gull Light, perched on the rocks far out in the lake, appeared romantic and picturesque. It seemed like true yachting to be approaching a strange lighthouse sitting like a white seabird on the dangerous-looking reefs, where the waves could be seen dashing up white and frothy.
Somewhere off Port Hope, about three or four miles away from the "Gull," one of the sailors had quietly remarked to the man at the wheel:
"We're a-goin' to run out of the wind."
Margaret was interested in this, wondering how the man knew. Far away in front and to the eastward could be seen a white haze that obliterated the horizon, and, as the yacht bore down to the Gull Light, one could see that beyond a certain defined line stretching across the lake the bright sparkle and blueness of the waves ceased, and, beyond, was a white heaving surface of water, without a ripple on it to mark one distance from another. It seemed strange that the wind blowing so freshly directly toward this calm portion of the lake should not ruffle it. The yacht went straight on before the wind at the same pace till she crossed the dividing line and passed with her own velocity into the dead air on the other side. The sails, out like wings, seemed at once to fill on the wrong side, as if the breeze had come ahead, and this stopped her headway. She soon came to a standstill. Every person at once awoke—feeling some of that numbness experienced in railway trains when, after running forty miles an hour for some time, the brakes are suddenly put on.
For half an hour the yacht lay within pistol-shot of the dancing, sparkling waves, where the breeze blew straight toward them, as far as the mysterious dividing line, and then disappeared. The spinnaker was taken in, and the yacht, regardless of the helm, "walloped" about in all directions, as the swells, swashing against the bow, or pounding under the counter, turned her around. This was unpleasant, and might last all night, if "the calm beat back the wind," as the sailors say, so Charley sent out the crew in the two boats, which were lowered from the davits, to tow the yacht into Cobourg, now about three miles away. The main-sheet was hauled flat aft to keep the main-boom quiet, and soon she had steerage way on.
To insure fine weather at home one must take out an umbrella and a water-proof. On the water, for a dead calm, sending the boats out to tow the yacht is as good as a patent medicine. Before very long the topsail seemed to have an inclination to fill on one side more than on the other, so one boat was ordered back and a club-gaff-topsail used in races was sent aloft to catch the breath moving in the upper air. This sail had huge spars on it that set a sail reaching a good twenty-five feet above the topmast head, and about the same distance out from the end of the gaff. It was no child's-play getting it up, and the sailors' chorus as they took each haul at the halyards attracted some attention. Perhaps no amateur can quite successfully give that break in the voice peculiar to a professional sailor when hauling heavily on a rope. And then the interjections:
"O-ho! H'ister up."
"Oh-ho! Up she goes."
"O-ho! R-Raise the dead."
"Now-then-all-together-and-carry-away-the-mast, O-ho!" etc.
Some especial touches were put on to-day for the benefit of the ladies, and when the man aloft wished those on deck to "sheet home" the big topsail, the rascal looked down at Margaret and called "sea foam!" In the forecastle she was called "Sea Foam" during the whole trip, not because she wore a dress of cricketing flannel, but on account of her former mistake in the words. To Rankin and some others who saw the little joke, the idea seemed poetical and appropriate.
Not more than a breath of wind moved aloft—none at all below—but it proved sufficient to send the yacht along, and about half-past six in the evening they slipped in to an anchor at Cobourg, fired a gun, and had dinner.
CHAPTER IX.
Ah, what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea!
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams, come back to me.
Sails of silk and ropes of sendal,
Such as gleam in ancient lore;
And the singing of the sailors,
And the answer from the shore.
Till my soul is full of longing
For the secret of the sea,
And the heart of the great ocean
Sends a thrilling pulse through me.
Longfellow.
Nothing tends to convince us of the element of chance in our lives more than noticing the consequences of whims. We act and react upon each other, after joining in a movement, till its origin is forgotten and lost. A politician conceives a whim to dazzle a fighting people with a war, and the circumstances of thousands are unexpectedly and irretrievably altered. We map out our lives for ourselves, and propose to adhere to the chart, but on considering the effects of chance, one's life often seems like an island upheaved from the sea, on which the soil, according to its character, fructifies or refuses the seeds that birds and breezes accidentally bring.
Our yachting cruise seemed to be like this. One evening when Nina was dining at the Dusenalls', Charley had proposed the trip in an idle sort of way. Nina fastened on the idea, and during little talks with Mrs. Dusenall, induced her to see that it might be advantageous for her daughters to make a reality of the vague proposal.
In thus providing opportunity for sweet temptation, Nina was not deceiving herself so much as formerly, and she knew that her feeling for Geoffrey was deep and strong. But she would morally bind herself to the rigging and sail on without trouble while she listened to the song as well. Would not Jack be with her always to serve as a safeguard? Dear Jack! So fond of Jack! Of course it would be all right. And then, to be with Geoffrey all the time for two or three weeks! or, if not with him, near enough to hear his voice! After all, she could not be any more in love with him than she was then. Where was the harm?
Margaret's presence on the yacht, if at times rather trying, would certainly make an opening for excitement, and, on the whole, it would be more comfortable to have both Geoffrey and Margaret on the yacht than to leave them in Toronto together. This friendship between them—what did it amount to? She had a desire to know all about it—as we painfully pull the cot off a hurt finger, just to see how it looks.
For Geoffrey the trip promised to be interesting, and, having in the early days examined Cupid's armory with some curiosity, he tried to persuade himself that the archer's shafts were for him neither very keen nor very formidable. As Davidge used to say, "too much familiarity breeds despisery," and up to this time of his life it had not seemed possible for him to care for any one very devotedly—not even himself. Yet Margaret Mackintosh, he thought, was the one woman who could be permanently trusted with his precious future. No one less valuable could be the making of him. He agreed with the Frenchman in saying that "of all heavy bodies, the heaviest is the woman we have ceased to love," and he hoped when married to be able to feel some of that respect and trust which make things different from the ordinary French experience. But when he thought of Margaret as his wife the thought was vague, and not so full of purpose as some of his other schemes. The mental picture of Margaret sitting near him by the fireside keeping up a bright chatter, or else playing Beethoven to him, the music sounding at its best through the puff-puff of a contemplative pipe, had not altogether dulled his appreciation of those pleasures of the chase, as he called them, over which he had wasted so much of his time. Moreover, he felt that it was altogether a toss-up whether she would accept him or not, and that he did not appeal to her quite in the same way that he did to other women. This threw his hand out. If he wished her to marry him at any time, he thought he would have to put his best foot foremost, and tread lightly where the way seemed so precarious. He knew that she liked him very much as she would a work of art. It was a good thing to have a tall figure and clean-cut limbs, but it seemed almost pathetic to be ranked, as it were, with old china, no matter how full of soul the willow-pattern might be.
Now that Nina had fairly commenced the yachting cruise, she could be pleasant and jolly with Jack on board the boat, but when it came to leaving the ball-room at the Arlington for a little promenade with him on the verandas, the idea seemed slow and uninviting. After a dance, Jack moved away with her, intending to saunter out through one of the low windows.
"Don't you think it is pleasanter in here?" she said.
"Well, I find it a little warm here, don't you? Besides the moon is shining outside, and we can get a fine view of the lake from the end of the walk."
"But, my dear Jack, have we not been enjoying a fine view of the lake all day? You see I don't want every person to think that we can not be content unless we are mooning off together in some dark corner. It does not look well; now, does it?"
Jack raised his eyebrows. "I did not think you were so very careful of Mrs. Grundy. When did you turn over the new leaf? I suppose the idea did not occur to you that being out with Geoffrey for two or three dances might also excite comment."
Nina had already surveyed the lake to some extent during the evening under pleasing auspices, but she did not like being reminded of it, and answered hotly:
"How then, do you expect me to enjoy going to look at the lake again? I have seen the lake three times already this evening, and no person has made me feel that there was any great romance in the surroundings. Surely you don't think that you would conjure up the romance, do you?"
"Evidently I would not be able to do that for you," said Jack slowly, while he thought how different her feelings were from his own. It galled him to have it placed before him how stale he had become to her. He conquered his rising anger, and said:
"I am afraid that our engagement had become very prosaic to you."
"Horribly so," said Nina. "It all seems just as if we were married. Not quite so bad, though, because I suppose I would then have to be civil. What a bore! Fancy having to be civil continually!"
"I believe that a fair amount of civility is considered—"
"Oh, you need not tell me what our married life will be. I know all about it. Mutual resignation and endearing nothings. Church on Sundays; wash on Mondays. It will be respectable and meritorious and virtuous and generally unbearable—"
"Hush, hush, Nina! Why do you talk in this strain? Why do you go out of your way to say unkind things? I know you do not mean a quarter of what you say. If I thought you did I—"
"Was I saying unkind things?" interrupted Nina. "I did not think of their being unkind. It seems natural enough to look at things in this way."
She was endeavoring now to neutralize her hasty words by softer tones, and she only made matters worse. It is difficult to climb clear of the consciousness of our own necessities when it envelops us like a fog, obscuring the path. In some way a good deal of what she said to Jack now seemed tinged with the wrong color, and out of the effort to be pleasant had begun to grow a distaste for his presence. Much as she still liked him, she always tried during this cruise to get into the boat or into the party where Jack was not.
It had been his own proposal that she should see a good deal of Hampstead, and so it never occurred to him to be jealous; and afterward she became more crafty in blinding his eyes to the real cause of the dissatisfaction she now expressed. While in Jack's presence her manner toward Geoffrey was studiously off-hand and friendly. Whatever her manner might be when they strolled off together, it was certain that an understanding existed between the two to conceal from Jack whatever interest they might have in one another. She was forced to think continuously of Geoffrey so that every other train of thought sank into insignificance, and was crowded out. A colder person, with temptation infinitely less, would have done what was right and would have captured the world's approbation. It would do harm to examine too closely the natures of many saints of pious memory and to be obliged to paint out their accustomed halo. If the convicted are ever more richly endowed than the social arbiters, they are different and not understood, and therefore judged. No sin is so great as that which we ourselves are not tempted to commit. Ignorance either deifies or spits upon what can not be understood. But, after all, we must have some standard, some social tribunal; and social wrong, no matter how it is looked at, must be prevented, no matter how well we understand that some are, as regards social law, made crooked.
But let us hasten more slowly.
Sunday morning, strangely enough, followed the Saturday night which had been spent at the Arlington. The daylight of Sunday followed about two hours after the last man coaxed himself to his berth from the yacht's deck and the tempting night. When all the others were fairly off in a solid sleep, as if wound up for twenty-four hours, one individual arrived at partial consciousness and wondered where he was. A sensation of pleasure pervaded him. Something new and enjoyable lay before him, but he could not make up his mind what it was. That he was not in 173 Tremaine Buildings seemed certain. If not there, where was he? To fully consider the matter he sat up in his berth and gave his head a thump on a beam overhead, which conveyed some intelligence to him. Then, lying back on the pillow, he laughed and rubbed his poll. "A lubber's mistake," quoth he; and then, after a little, "I wonder what it's like outside?" A lanky figure in a long white garment was presently to be seen stumbling up the companion-way, and a head appeared above the deck with hair disheveled looking like a sleepy bird of prey. All around it was so still that nothing could be heard but some one snoring down below. The yacht lay with her anchor-chain nowhere—a thread would have held her in position. The boats behind were lying motionless with their bows under the yacht's counter, drawn up there by the weight of their own painters lying in the water. Maurice gazed about the little wharf-surrounded harbor with curiosity and artistic pleasure. It could only have been this and the feeling of gladness in him that made him interested in the lumber-piles and railway-derricks about him, but it was all so new and strange to him. "Gad! to be off like this, on a yacht, and to live on board, you know!" said he, talking to himself, as he hoisted himself up by his arms and sat on the top of the sliding hatchway. He moved away soon after sitting down, because of about half an inch of cold dew on the hatch. This awakened him completely. He walked gingerly toward the stern and looked at the blaze of red and gold in the eastern sky where the sun was making a triumphal entry. Then he walked to the bow and watched the light gild the masts of the lumber-schooners and the fog-bank over the lake, and the carcass of a drowned dog floating close at hand. He saw bits of the shore beyond the town and wanted to go there. He wanted to inspect the little squat lighthouse that shone in its reflected glory better than it ever shone at night. Yes, he must see all these things. It was all fairyland to him. The gig was carefully pulled alongside when, happy thought! a smoke would be just the thing. The weird figure dived down for pipe, matches, and "'baccy," and soon came up smiling. "Never knew anything so quiet as this," he said, as he filled the pipe. The snore below seemed to be the only note typical of the scene—not very musical, perhaps, but eloquent and artistically correct.
He had not gone far in the gig when he came across the picturesque drowned dog. Really it would be too bad to allow this to remain where it was, even though gilded. The sun would get up higher, and then there would be no poetry about it, but only plain dog. So he went back to the deck and saw a boat-hook. That would do well enough to remove the eyesore with, but how could he row and hold the boat-hook at the same time? If he only had a bit of string, now, or a piece of rope! But these articles are not to be found on a well-kept deck, and it would not be right to wake up anybody. Happy thought! He took the pike-pole and rowed rapidly toward the dog, and, as he passed it, dropped the oars and grabbed the dog with the end of the pike-pole. His idea was that the momentum of the boat would, by repeated efforts, remove the dog. But the deceased was not to be coaxed in this way from the little harbor where he had so peacefully floated for four weeks. So Maurice, after suffering in the contest, went on board again. Still the snore below went on, and still nobody got up to help him. He searched the deck for any part of the rigging that would suit him, determined to cut away as much as he wanted of whatever came first. Ah! the signal halyards! He soon had about two hundred feet unrove, little recking of the man who had to "shin up" to the topmast-head to reeve the line again. The dog must go. That Margaret's eyes should not be insulted was so settled in his chivalrous little head that—well, in fact, the dog would have to go, and, if not by hook or by crook, he finally went lassoed a good two hundred feet behind, Rankin rowing lustily.
After this object had been committed to the deep, a seagull came and lighted on a floating plank to consider the situation, and gave a cry that could be heard a vast distance. Maurice rowed out about half a mile into the lake, and then could be seen a lithe figure diving in over the side of the boat and disporting itself, which uttered cries like a peacock when it came to the surface, and interested the lethargic seagulls.
While he was doing this the fog bank slowly moved in from the lake and enveloped him, so that he began to wonder where the shore was. He got into the boat, without taking the trouble to don his garment, and rowed toward the place where he thought the shore was. Half an hour's rowing brought him back to some driftwood which he had noticed before, so he gave up rowing in circles, put on the garment, settled himself in the stern-sheets, and lit a pipe. The air was warm, and a gentle motion in the lake rocked him comfortably, until a voice aroused him that might have been a hundred yards or two miles off.
"Ahoy!" came over the water.
"Ahoy yourself," called Rankin.
Jack had got up, and, having missed the gig, had come to the end of the wharf in his basswood canoe, which the Ideal also carried in this cruise.
"By Jove," thought Jack, "I believe that's Morry out there in the fog; he will never get back as long as he can not see the shore."
"Ahoy there," he called again.
"Ahoy yourself," came back in a tone of indifference.
"Where are you?"
"Never you mind."
"Who is out there with you?"
"The gulls," answered Maurice, as he smiled to himself.
Jack did not quite hear him. "The Gull?" thought he. "Surely not! Why, he must be at least three miles off."
"Do you mean the Gull Light?" he called.
"Ya-as. What's the matter with you, any way?"
They were so far apart that their voices sounded to each other as if they came through a telephone.
At this time the fog had lifted from Maurice, and he lay basking in the sun, perfectly content with everything, while Jack, still enveloped in fog, was feeling quite anxious about him. He paddled quickly back to the yacht and got a pocket compass, and with this in the bottom of the canoe steered sou'-sou'west until he got out of the fog, and discovered the gig floating high up at the bow and low down aft, puffing smoke and drifting up the lake before an easterly breeze and looking, in the distance, rather like a steam-barge.
"Is that the costume you go cruising in?" asked Jack, as he drew near.
"This is the latest fashion, Mother Hubbard gown, don't you know!" said Maurice, as he viewed his spindle calves with satisfaction. "Look at that for a leg," he cried, as he waved a pipe-stem in the air. "No discount on that leg."
"Nor anything else," growled Jack. "What do you mean by going off this way with the ship's boats?"
"Not piracy, is it?" asked Morry.
"Don't know," said Jack, "but I am going to arrest you for being a dissolute, naked vagrant, without visible means of support, and I shall take you to the place whence you came and—"
"Bet you half a dollar you don't. I'm on the high seas, so 'get out of me nar-east coorse,' or by the holy poker I'll sink you."
Jack came along to tie the gig's painter to his canoe and thus take it into custody. Then a splashing match followed, during which Jack got hold of the rope and began to paddle away. This was but a temporary advantage. A wild figure leaped from the gig and lit on the gunwale of the canoe, causing confusion in the enemy's fleet. Jack had just time to grab his compass when he was shot out into the "drink," as if from a catapult, and when he came to the surface he had to pick up his paddle, while Morry swam back to the gig, proceeding to row about triumphantly, having the enemy swamped and at his mercy. The overturned canoe would barely float Jack, so Rankin made him beg for mercy and promise to make him an eggnog when they reached the yacht. When on board again they slept three hours before anybody thought of getting up.
As eight o'clock was striking in the town, these two children thought it was time for everybody to be up. They were spoiling for some kind of devilment. Geoffrey and Charley and others were already awake, and had slipped into shirt and trousers to go away for a morning swim in the lake.
Jack visited the sleepers with a yell. Mr. Lemons, another proposed victim of the Dusenalls, still slept peacefully.
"Now, then, do get up!" cried Jack, in a tone of reproach.
"Wha's matter?"
"Get up," yelled Jack.
"Wha' for?"
"To wash yourself, man."
Suppressed laughter was heard from the ladies' cabins.
"Gor any washstands on board?" still half asleep, but sliding into an old pair of sailing trousers.
"Washstands? Well, I never! Wouldn't a Turkish bath satisfy you? No, sir! You'll dive off the end of the pier with the others."
"Not much. Gimme bucket an' piece soap."
"What! you won't wash yourself?" cried Jack, at the top of his voice. "Oh, this is horrible! I say there, aft! you, fellows, come here! Lemons says he won't wash himself."
At this four or five men ran in and pulled him on deck, where Charley stood with a towel in his hand. No one would give Lemons a chance to explain. They said, "See here, skipper, Lemons won't wash himself."
Charley's countenance assumed an expression of disgust. "Oh, the dirty swab! Heave him overboard!"
Lemons broke away then and tried to climb the rigging, but he was caught and carried back, two men at each limb, who showered reproach upon him. The victim was as helpless as a babe in their hands, and was conscious that the ladies had heard everything.
Charlie rapped on the admiralty skylight and asked for instructions. He declared Lemons would not wash himself, and he asked what should be done with him? In vain the victim cried that the whole thing was a plot. A prompt answer came, with the sound of laughter, from the admiralty that he was to go overboard. This was received with savage satisfaction, and, after three swings backward and forward, Lemon's body was launched into the air and disappeared under the water.
But Lemons did not come up again. In two or three seconds it occurred to some one to ask whether Lemons could swim. They had taken it for granted that he could. The thought came over them that perhaps by this time he was gone forever. Without waiting further, Geoffrey dived off the wall-sided yacht to grope along the bottom, which was only twelve feet from the surface. He entered the water like a knife, and from the bubbles that rose to the surface it could be seen that a thorough search was being made. Each one took slightly different directions, and went over the side, one after another, like mud-turtles off a log. Between them all, the chance of his remaining drowned upon the bottom was small. Several came up for air, and dived again in another place and met each other below. There was no gamboling now. They were horrified, and looked upon it as a matter of life or death. They dived again and again, until one man came up bleeding at the nose and sick with exhaustion. Geoffrey swam to help him to reach the yacht, when an explosion of laughter was heard on the deck, and there was Lemons, with the laugh entirely on his side. As soon as he had got underneath the surface he had dived deep, and by swimming under water had come up under the counter, where he waited till all were in the water, and then he came on deck.
Revenge was never more complete. Lemons was the hero of the hour. The girls thought him splendid, and afterward the sight of eight pairs of trousers and eight shirts drying on the main-boom seemed to do him good.
Charlie said they ought not to make a laundry clothes-horse of the yacht on Sunday, and proposed to leave Cobourg. Mrs. Dusenall made a slight demur to leaving on Sunday. Jack explained that if it blew hard from the south they could not get out at all without a steam-tug from Port Hope. This seemed a bore—to be locked up, willy-nilly, in harbor—so the yacht was warped to the head of the east pier, where, catching the breeze, she cleared the west pier and headed out into the lake. Outside they found the wind pretty well ahead and increasing, but, with sails flattened in, the Ideal lay down to it, and clawed up to windward in a way that did their hearts good.
Some topsails were soon descried far away to windward, showing where two other vessels were also beating down the lake. This gave them something to try for, and when the topmast was housed and all made snug not a great while elapsed before the hulls of the schooners became occasionally visible. The sea was much higher and the motion greater than on the previous day, but the breeze, being ahead, was more refreshing, and nobody felt in danger of being ill after the first hour out. They "came to" under the wooded rocks of Nicholas Island, put in a couple of reefs, for comfort's sake, and "hove to" in calm water to take lunch quietly.
After lunch, as the yacht paid off on a tack to the southward to weather the Scotch Bonnet Lighthouse, they found, on leaving the shelter of the island, a sea rolling outside large enough to satisfy any of them. One hardly realizes from looking at a small atlas what a nice little jump of a sea Ontario can produce in these parts. The hour lost in mollycoddling for lunch under the island made a difference in the work the yacht had to do. The two schooners, having received another long start, were making good weather of it well to windward of the light, and, when on the tops of waves, their hulls could be seen launching ahead in fine style through the white crests. The yacht's rigging, as she soared to the top of the wave, supplied a musical instrument for the wind to play barbaric tunes upon, which to Jack and some others were inspiring. As she swept down the breezy side of a conquered wave, her rigging sounded a savage challenge to the next bottle-green-and-white mountain to come on and be cut down.
Mrs. Dusenall went below and fell asleep in her berth, and some of the others were lying about the after-cabin dozing over books. Nina and the Dusenall girls lay on the sloping deck, propped against the companion-hatch, where they could command the attention of several other people who were sprawled about in the neighborhood of the wheel. Margaret and Rankin persisted in climbing about the slanting decks, changing their positions as new notions about the sailing of the vessel came to them. They seemed so pleased with each other and with everything—exchanging their private little jokes and relishing the odd scraps culled from favorite authors that each brought out in the talk, as old friends can. Maurice made love to her in the openest way—every glance straight into her deep-sea eyes. Not possessing a muscle or a figure, he wooed her with his wits and a certain virtuous boldness that asserted his unmixed admiration and his quaint ideas with some force. And she to him was partly motherly, chiefly sisterly, and partly coquettish, like one who accepts the admiration of half a score before her girlish fancies are gathered into the great egotism of the one who shall reign thrice-crowned. Just look at Geoffrey now, as he nears this schooner, steering the yacht as she comes up behind and to leeward of the big vessel that majestically spurns the waves into half an acre of foam. They tell him he can't weather her, that he'll have to bear away. Now look at his muscular full neck and thick crisp curls. See his jaw grow rigid and his eye flash as he calculates the weight of the wind and the shape of the sea, the set of the sails, and the distances. Obviously, a man to have his way. Objections do not affect him. See how Margaret's eyes sweep quickly from the schooner back to Geoffrey, to watch what he is doing. Why is it when they say he can't do it that it never occurs to her that he won't? She looks at him open-eyed and thoughtful, and thinks it is fine to carry the courage of one's opinions to success, and she smiles as the yacht skillfully evades the main-boom of the schooner and saws up on her windward side.
The sunrise that Maurice saw early in the morning was too sweet to be wholesome. As the day wore on, the barometer grew unsteady. A leaden scud came flying overhead, and the fellows began to wonder whether they would have to thrash around Long Point all night. A good many opinions were passed on the weather, which certainly did not look promising. Margaret suggested that it would be more comfortable to go into port, but was just as well pleased to hear that they had either to go about forty miles further for a shelter or else run back to Cobourg. Presque Isle was not spoken of, since it was too shallow and intricate to enter safely at night. Lemons suggested that they should go back and anchor under Nicholas Island, where they had lunched.
"Might as well look for needle in a hay-stack," said Charley. "It's going to be as black as a pocket when daylight is gone. And if you did get there it is no place to anchor on a night like this."
Jack did not say anything. He knew that Charley would go on to South Bay, and he looked forward to another night of it round Long Point. The only person who cared much what was done was Mr. Lemons. Towards evening he began to think about the next meal.
"My dear skipper, how can you ever get a dinner cooked in such a sea as this? The cook will never be able to prepare anything in such a commotion," said he regretfully.
"Won't he!" exclaimed Charley decisively. "Just wait and see. My men understand that they have to cook if the vessel never gets up off her beam ends."
"What, you do not mean to say it will be all—" Mr. Lemons came and laid his head on Charley's shoulder—"that it will be all just as it was yesterday? Oh, say that it will. 'Stay me with flagons; comfort me with apples.'"
"Get up—off me, you fat lump," cried Charley, pushing him away vehemently. "I say that we will do better to-day, or we'll put the cook in irons. I hate a measly fellow who gives in just when you want him. I have sacked four stewards and six cooks about this very thing, and it is a sore subject with me."
"De-lightful man," said Lemons, gazing rapturously at Charley.
"Rankin will tell you," said Jack. "He drew the papers. The whole thing is down in black and white."
"True enough," said Maurice. "But I don't see how signing papers will teach a man to cook on the side of a stove, when the ship is lying over and pitching like this."
"No more do I," said Lemons anxiously.
"Why, man alive!" said Charley, "the whole stove works something like a compass, don't-you-know. He has got it all swinging—slung in irons."
"That is far better than having the cook in irons," suggested Margaret.
"Oh!" said Mr. Lemons, as he gazed at the sky, "that remark appeals to me. The lady is correct."
Then he arose and grasped Charley in a vice-like grip, for though fat he was powerful. He pinned the skipper to the deck and sat upon him.
"Say, dearest," he cooed into his ear, "at about what hour will this heavenly-repast be ready?"
"Pull him off—somebody!" groaned Charley. "I hate a man that has to be thrown in the water to—" a thump on the back silenced him.
"May I convey your commands to the Minister of the Interior," asked his tormentor.
"Oh, my ribs! Yes. Tell him to begin at it at once."
"I don't mind if I do," said Mr. Lemons sagaciously; and he disappeared down the companion-way to interview the cook.
"Ain't he a brick?" said Charley, after Lemons had gone forward. "He's a regular one-er, that chap! Give him his meals on time and he's the gamest old sardine. By the way, let us have a sweepstake on the time we drop anchor in South Bay."
"We haven't any money in these togs," said Geoffrey.
"Well, you'll all have to owe it, then. We'll imagine there's a quarter apiece in the pool."
Margaret wanted to know what was to be done. It was explained that each person had to write his name on a folded paper with the time he thought anchor would be dropped in South Bay. The names were read out afterward. They all, with two exceptions, ranged between one o'clock at night and seven the next morning. The sea was running tremendously high and the wind dead ahead. It was now seven o'clock in the evening and with some thirty-five miles yet to beat to windward. What surprised them all was that Jack had chosen ten o'clock and Charley half-past ten of the same evening. They explained that they had based their ideas on the clouds.
"If you look carefully," said Jack, "you'll see that close to this lower scud coming from the east, there is a lighter cloud flying out the south and west."
"I wish, Jack, you had not come on this trip," said Charley. "I could make lots of money if you were not on board."
Sure enough, the yacht began to point up nearer and nearer to her course, soon after they spoke. Presently she lay her course, with the sheet lightly started, mounting over the head seas like a race-horse, and roaring straight into the oncoming walls of water till it seemed as if her bowsprit would be whipped out. The wind kept veering till at last they had a quarterly breeze driving them forcibly into the seas that had been rising all day. Ordinarily they would have shortened sail to ease the boat, but now that dinner was ordered for half-past nine o'clock, they drove her through it in order that they might dine in calm water.
They raced past the revolving light on Long Point faster than they had expected to pass it that night. The twenty-five miles run from here was made in darkness and gloom. The boom was topped up to keep it out of the water, and the peak of the reefed mainsail was dropped, as the increasing gale threatened to bury the bows too much in the head seas. Although early enough in the evening, everything around was, as Charley had predicted, as black as a pocket. Now and then some rain drove over them. Maurice and Margaret sat out together on deck, wrapped in heavy coats, and watched what little they could see. The howling of the wind and roaring of the black surges beneath them were new experiences. Close to them was Jack, standing at the wheel, tooling her through. By the binnacle-light his face, which was about all that could be seen, seemed to be filled with a grave contentment that broke into a grim smile when the boat surged into a wall of water that would have stopped a bluff-bowed craft. Soon after dropping Long Point, he leaned over the hatchway and called down to Charley, who was lying on his back on gay cushions, smoking a cigarette and reading a newspaper. "Got the Duck Light, skip."
"All right, old boy. Wire in."
Dusenall turned over his newspaper, but did not take the trouble to come on deck to investigate.
"Say!" he called.
"Hello."
"Won't she take the peak again? I've got a terrible twist on me for dinner."
"No. Bare poles is more what she wants just now," said Jack.
"The deuce! Who's forrud?"
"Billy and Joe."
"All right. Must be damp for 'em up there."
"Can't see. Guess it's blue water to the knees, most of the time."
"Shouldn't wonder. Do 'em good."
After this jargon was finished, it did not take long to run down to the False Duck Light. Here the double-reefed mainsail was "squatted" and the fourth reef-pennant hauled down. The reefed staysail was taken in and stowed; and under the peak of the mainsail they jibed over. Steering by the compass, they then rounded to leeward of Timber Island and hauled their wind into South Bay.
To put the Ideal over so far with so little canvas showing, it must have been blowing a gale. They sped up into the bay close hauled, and "came to" in about four fathoms. Down went the big anchor through the hissing ripples to that best of holding-grounds, and the vessel, drifting back as if for another wild run, suddenly fetched up with a grind on her iron cable. The mad thing knew that unyielding grip, and swung around submissively.
CHAPTER X.
Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.
George Eliot's Poems.
There is a want of primness in the manners and customs of my characters which a reviewer might take exception to. To be sure he might with effect criticise their making up a pool on Sunday. But the fact was that nobody remembered it to be Sunday until Jack wanted to collect his winnings after dinner. At this, Mrs. Dusenall held up her hands in high disapproval. While out in the lake, in the worst part of the sea, she had commenced to read her Bible, and had felt thankful to arrive in shelter. Consequently she remembered the day.
"Surely, Charley, you have not been gambling on Sunday?" said she reprovingly.
The girls looked guilty, with an expression of "Oh, haven't we been bad?" on their faces.
Rankin endeavored to relieve the situation by explaining in many words that the whole thing was a mere matter of form, and no more than an expression of opinion as to the time the boat would reach the harbor, because no money was put up—in fact, as the arrangement was made on Sunday, the whole thing was illegal, and no money ever would be put up, etc.
Jack kicked him under the table for arguing away his winnings, and Margaret quoted at him:
"His tongue
Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels."
"Good," said Geoffrey. "Give him the rest of it, Miss Margaret. Rub it in well."
Margaret continued, and with mirthful eyes declaimed at Maurice:
"For his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: and yet he pleas'd the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began."
This amused Margaret, because Maurice was such a decent little man. But Geoffrey's enjoyment of it was different. Rankin felt that there was growing in him an antagonism to Hampstead. He was afraid of him for her sake—afraid she would learn to like him too much. At any other time chaff would have found him invulnerable, but Geoffrey's amusement made him redden.
"You seem to be well acquainted with the characteristics of Belial, Hampstead," he said. "Margaret, your memory is excellent. Could you favor us with the lines just preceding what you first quoted?"
Why should Margaret have blushed as she did so? She quoted:
"On th' other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not heaven; he seem'd
For dignity compos'd and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropp'd manna," etc.
"Thank you," said Maurice. "You see the lines are intended to describe a person far different from me in appearance. Hampstead, you observe, had studied the passage. A coincidence, is it not?"
Soon they were all composing themselves for sleep. Margaret was listening peacefully to the shrieking of the wind in the rigging as she thought how every moment on board the yacht had been one of unclouded enjoyment. An unconscious smile went over her face that would have been pleasant to see. Then she thought of Geoffrey and smiled again. This time she caught herself, and asked herself why? All day, since she had watched Geoffrey steering the yacht beside the schooner in the lake, her mind had been chanting two lines of poetry. When asked in the evening to repeat the lines aloud she had blushed because it seemed like confessing herself.
A fairer person lost not heaven; he seemed
For dignity composed and high exploit.
In her mind Geoffrey had become identified with these two lines. But what had friend Maurice meant by saddling the context on him in that malevolent way? Could he really have thought that Belial's character was also Geoffrey's? She put away this idea as untenable. She was one of those born in homes where the struggle for existence has not for generations taught the household to be suspicious; with the innate nobility that tends, whether rightly or wrongly, to think the best of others; she was one of those whom men turn to with relief after the cunning and suspicion of the business world, each feeling the assistance it is to meet some one who is ready to take him at the valuation he would like to be able justly to put upon himself.
When morning broke, there were eight or ten schooners to be seen on different sides that had run in for shelter during the night. About six o'clock Margaret crept out to satisfy her curiosity as to what kind of place they were in. With only her head above the hatchway at the top of the stairs leading up from the ladies' cabin she gazed about for some time before she spied Maurice sitting on the counter with his back to her, his feet dangling over the water while he watched the vessels.
She crept toward him and gave a cry close to his ear, to startle him.
"Don't make so much noise," said he, quite unstartled. "I don't like you to call out like that in my ear." He added, perforce, as he looked at her, "At least I don't like it when I can't see you."
"Don't tell stories, Morry. You know you would like me to do it at any time."
"I would not, indeed," he asserted. "Come and sit down and keep quite silent. Just when I was having such a happy, peaceful time you come and spoil it all."
Margaret sat down on the rail and turned herself about so that she could sit in the same position beside him. His helping hand still held hers as they sat together. He was almost afraid to turn toward her, for fear he would look too tenderly. She might go away if he did. His rôle was to bully her, and then she would never know how exquisite it was for him to have her sit beside him.
"There, now! Sit perfectly quiet and don't say another word. Just look around and enjoy yourself in a reasonable manner. I'm not going to have my morning disarranged and my valuable reveries disturbed."
The wind had shifted to the northwest in the morning and had blown itself out and down to a moderate breeze with a clearing sky, with patches of blue and broken clouds overhead.
"Now listen to the chorus of the sailors as they get up their anchor. Does it not seem a sweet and fitting overture to the whole oratorio of the voyage before them? I have been watching the vessels go out, one by one, for over an hour. I must say there are some uncommonly rude men among the sweet singers we are listening to, and—and—" He stopped and forgot to go on.
"And what?" cried Margaret peremptorily.
Maurice had lost himself in the contemplation of some locks of sunny hair, that were flying in the breeze from Margaret's forehead, and the graceful curve of her full neck as she looked away at the ships.
"Oh, yes. And that's Timber Island over there, covered with trees and stamped out round like a breakfast bun, and that's the False Duck Island, where we came in last night. The schooner sailing yonder is going to take the channel between that white line of breakers and South Bay Point running out there, and those huts you see nestling in the trees far away on the main-land are fishermen's houses—"
He was not looking at any of these things, but was following out two trains of thought in his active head while he talked against time. What really absorbed him was Margaret's ear, and a sort of invisible down on the back part of her cheek. He was thinking to himself that if five dollars would purchase a kiss on that spot he would be content to see a notice in the Gazette: "Maurice Rankin, failed: liabilities, $5.00."
Margaret was listening, gravely unconscious of being so much admired, enjoying all he said, and feasting her eyes upon the distances, the brilliant colors, and the fleeting shadows of the broken clouds upon the water.
"Why, what a nice old chappie you are!" she exclaimed, giving his hand a pat and taking hers away. "How did you manage to find out all about the surroundings?"
"Been around boarding the different schooners lying at anchor. Examining their papers, you know," said he grandly. "Went around in the canoe to the first fellow—a coal vessel. A man appeared near the bow and looked down at me as if I were a kind of fish swimming about. 'Heave-to, or I'll sink you,' I said in the true old nautical style. He did not say a word, but stooped down and did heave two, in fact three, pieces of coal at me. I passed on, satisfied that his vessel needed no further inspection. I was then attracted by the name of another schooner, on whose stern was painted the legend 'Bark Swaller.'"
"What a strange name," said Margaret, as Maurice spelled it out.
"Well, it puzzled me a good deal, as I examined it closely, being in doubt whether Barque Swallow was intended, or perhaps the name of some German owner. At all events a sailor spied me paddling about under the stern of the boat and regarded me with evident suspicion. I thought I would deal more gently with this man than with the other fellow. 'Can you tell me,' I asked, 'the name of that round island over there?' The only answer I got was unsatisfactory. 'Sheer off,' said he, 'wid your dirty dug-out.' This seemed rather rude, but I did not retaliate. I thought I might go further and fare worse, so I endeavored to mollify him. Perhaps, I thought, being up all night in hard weather had made these sailors irritable.
"'Can you drink whisky?' I said—" Margaret was looking at Maurice with a soft expression of interest and mirth. He was talking on in order that he might continue to bask in the beauty of the face that looked straight at him. But the strain for a moment was too great. For an instant he slacked up his check-rein, and while he narrated his story he continued in the same tone with: "(Believe me, my dear Margaret, you are looking perfectly heavenly this morning) and the effect on this poor toiler of the sea was, I assure you, quite wonderful." Rankin's tongue went straight on, as if the parenthesis were part of the narrative. Margaret saw that it was useless to speak, and resigned herself to listen again. "Quite wonderful," he continued. "The fellow motioned to me to come to the bow of the vessel, and when I got there he came over the bulwarks and dropped like a monkey from one steel rope to another till he stood on the bobstay chains."
"'Whist!' said he. 'Divil a word! Have you got it there?'
"'There is some on the yacht,' I said, 'and I want to ask you some questions about this place. What island is that over there?'
"'Mother of Pathrick,' said he, 'an' did ye come down all the way in your yacht and not know Timber Island when you'd see it?'
"He looked at me as if I was some strange being.
"'And where was ye last night, might I axe?'
"'Where we axe now,' I said.
"'Faith, it was a big head that brought you into the nursery here before last night came on! More be-token, I have'nt had a dhry rag on me for tin hours, and divil a sail we've got widout a shplit in it the size of a shteam-tug. Bring it in a sody-bottle, darlint, and the Lord'll love ye if ye don't spoil it. Whisht, love! You drink my health in the sody and don't lave any in the bottle.'
"I came back and got him a soda-bottle of the genuine article, and while he drank it the rapidity of his tongue was peculiar. 'So you have been here before?' I asked.
"'Whisht, darlint! till the captain won't hear you. Been here before? Begorra, this place has been a mine of goold to me many a time. For siventeen days at a slap I've laid here in Dicimber at four dollars a day, with nothin' to do but play checkers and sphlit wood for the shtove and pray for a gale o' wind down the lake till shpring-time.'
"This eloquence continued until I thought he would certainly fall off the bobstay.
"'Tell me, now,' he said, after I had got all the information I wanted, 'have ye a berth for an old salty aboard that craft?'
"I said we had not.
"'Faith, perhaps you're right. I kin see by the stow on yer mainsail and by the nate way yer heads'ls is drag-gen' in the wather that you're born and bled up to the sea and don't require no assistance.'
"With these sarcastic words he gave me his blessing, threw away the bottle, and disappeared again over the bow."
"I gather from your remarks that your friend was of Hibernian origin," said Margaret. "Perhaps a good dynamiter spoiled. But we will speak of him again. What I have been wanting for some time has been a trip in the canoe to the beach over there. I want to walk over the sand bar and get close to those great breakers rolling in on the shingle. Unhitch your canoe-string and bring the canoe alongside."
"Unhitch your canoe-string!" repeated Rankin contemptuously. "You must speak more nautically or I won't understand you."
"Well, what ought I to say?"
"Dunno. 'Cast adrift your towline' sounds well."
"It does, indeed," said Margaret, as Morry swung the light cockleshell into position and she descended into it with care. "'Cast adrift your towline' has a full, able-bodied seaman sort of sound; but it has not the charm of mystery about it that some expressions have. Now 'athwart your hawse' seems portentous in its meaning. I don't want to know what it means. I would rather go on thinking of it as of the arm that handed forth the sword Excalibur,' clothed in white samite—mystic, wonderful.' Do you know I read all Clark Russell's sea stories, and drive through all his sea-going technicalities with the greatest interest, although I understand nothing about them. When he goes aloft on the main-boom and brails up his foregaff-bobstay I go with him. Sometimes he describes how small the deck below looks from the dizzy height when, poised upon the capstan-bars, he furls the signal halyards that flap and fill away and thunder in the gale; and then I see it all—"
"So do I, so do I!" cried Morry, as he paddled dexterously to the shore. "You've got Clark Russell to a T. He goes on like that by the hour together. I read every word, and the beauty of it is I always think I understand. Why do we like his stories so much, I wonder?"
"One reason is because his heroes are manly men and have brave hearts," said Margaret confidently. "I think that is why they appeal to women; he always arouses a sentiment of pity for the hero's misfortunes. Few women can resist that." And Margaret, somewhat stirred, looked away over the broad sea. Almost unconsciously there flashed before her the image of a Greek god winning a foot-race under circumstances that aroused her sympathy. Again she saw him steering a yacht, keen, strong, active, determined, and calm amid excitement. A flush suffused her countenance, and her eyes became soft and thoughtful as she gazed far away. Ah, these rushes of blood to the head! How they kindle an unacknowledged idea into activity! A moment and, like a flash, a latent, undeveloped instinct becomes a living potent force to develop us. The admirer becomes a lover, the plotter a criminal, and the religious man a fanatic.
When the canoe pushed its way through the rushes and beached itself upon the soft sand the two jumped out and crossed over to the lake side, where the heavy ground swells of the last night's gale were still mounting high upon the shingle. The bar leading toward them from False Duck Island was a seething expanse of white breakers, and over the lake to the south and west, as far as the eye could reach in the now rarefied atmosphere a tumbling mass of bright-green waters could be seen, which grew blue in color at the sharply cut horizon. Not far off the "Bark Swaller" was buffeting her way to the southward, toward Oswego, and around the wooded island with the lighthouse on it, the mail steamer, twelve hours detained, was getting a first taste of the open water.
It was a morning that made the two feel as if it were impossible to keep still. The flat shingle, washed smooth by the high waves of the previous night, was firm under foot as they walked and trotted along between the wreckage and driftwood on one side and the highest wash of the hissing water on the other. An occasional flight of small plover suggested the wildness of the spot, and something of the spirit of these birds in their curving and wheeling flight seemed to possess the two young people—making them run and caper on the sands.
"You ought to be able to run a pretty good race," said Maurice, glancing at the shapely figure of his companion.
"So I am," said Margaret, as she sprang up on a large piece of driftwood. "I'll run you a race to that bush on the far point around the little bay. Do you see it?"
"I see it," said Maurice. "Are you ready? Go!"
Margaret sprang down from the stump and was off like an arrow. Morry thought it was only a sham and a pretense of hers, as he bounded off beside her. He soon found his mistake, however, as his unaccustomed muscles did their utmost to keep him abreast of the gliding figure in the dark-blue skirt and jersey. They rounded the curve of the bay, Maurice on the inside track. But this advantage did not give him a lead. The distance to the winning point seemed fatal to his chances, but he hung on, hoping his opponent would tire. Again he was mistaken.
"Come on, Morry! Don't be beaten by a woman."
Her voice, as she said this, seemed aggressively fresh, and the taunt brought Rankin even with her again. He had no breath left to say anything in reply as they came to a small indentation filled with water where the shore curved in, making another little bay. Margaret ran around it, but Maurice, as a last chance, splashed through it, regardless of water up to his ankles. He gained about ten feet by this subterfuge. A few gliding bounds, impossible to describe, and Margaret was beside him again.
"That was a shabby advantage to take," she said as she passed his panting form. "Now I'll show you how fast I can run."
She left him then as he labored on. She floated away from him like a thistle-blossom on the breeze. He forgot his defeat in his admiration of that fleeting figure which he would have believed to move in the air had he not seen marks in the sand made by toes of small shoes. He could hardly comprehend how she could run away from him in this way. Yet there was no wings attached to the lithe form before him. No wings, but a bit of silk ankle which seemed far preferable.
Margaret stopped at the bush which was to be the winning post. Morry then staggered in exhausted and threw himself sideways into the yielding mass of the willow bush and fell out on the other side.
"Oh," he said, as he rolled over on his back with his head resting in his hands, "wasn't that beautiful?"
"The race—yes, indeed, it was splendid."
"No, I don't mean the race. That was horrible. I mean to see you run." (Gasp.)
Margaret's face was sparkling with excitement and color, while her bosom rose and fell after her exertion.
"I can run fast, can I not?" Her arms were hanging demurely at her side again. She could run, but she never seemed to be at all masculine.
"I never ran a race with a man before," she said, laughing.
"And never will run another with this individual," said Rankin. "Nothing goes so fast as a train you have missed, just as it leaves the station, and yet I have caught it sometimes. You can go faster than anything I ever saw." (A breath.) "It is a good thing to know when one is beaten. You will always be an uncatchable distance before me." (A sigh.)
"My shoes are full of sand," said Margaret ruefully, looking down at them.
"Mine are full of water," said Maurice. He did not seem to care. He was quite content to lie there and gaze at her without reservation. And, with his heightened color and excitement, he actually appeared rather good looking.
"I think the least you could do would be to offer to take the sand out of my shoes," said Margaret.
"If I don't have to get up I could do it. I won't be able to get up for about twenty minutes. But if you sit on that stump—so—I think I could manage it."
Resting on one elbow, he unlaced the shoes, knocked the sand out of them, and spent a long time over the operation. Then he wondered at their small size, and measured them, sole to sole, with his own boots while he chattered on, as usual, about nothing. Hers were not by any means microscopic shoes, but they seemed so to him, and he regarded them with some of the curiosity of the miners of Blue Dog Gulch, Nevada, when a woman's boot appeared among them after their two years' isolation from the interesting sex. There was something in the way he handled them that spoke of exile—something that stirred the compassion one might feel on seeing the monks of Man Saba tend their canaries.
The left shoe was put on with great care, and then he sat looking over the lake for a while in silence before beginning with the second. It was a long, well-chiseled foot, with high instep, and none of those knobs which sometimes necessitate long dresses, and in men's boots take such a beautiful polish. He pretended to brush some sand away, and then, banding over, kissed the silk-covered instep, and received an admonitory tap for his boldness.
"Fie, Morry! to kiss an unprotected lady's foot," said Margaret archly, as she took the shoe from him and put it on herself. "You have insulted me."
"Nay, Margaret, 'twas but the sign of my allegiance and fealty," said he, looking up with what tried to be an off-hand manner. "It is the old story," he said lightly; "the worship of the unattainable—the remnant, perhaps, of our old nature worship. If you were not better acquainted with the subject than I am, I could give you a discourse which would be, I assure you, very instructive as to how we have always striven after what we think to be good in the unattainable. We have been forbidden to worship the sun or to appease the thunders and lightnings, and, one by one, nearly all the objects of worship have been swept away, leaving a world that now does not seem to know what to do with its acquired instincts. One object is left, though, and I am inclined to think that men are never more thoroughly admirable than when influenced by the worship of the women who seem to them the best, that many thus come to know the pricelessness of good and the despair of evil, with quite as satisfactory practical results as any other creed could bring about."
"What, then, becomes of the search for the unattainable after marriage?" asked Margaret practically.
"I imagine that the search would continue, that the greatest peace of marriage is the consciousness of approaching good in being assisted to live up to a woman's higher ideals. It seems as if the condition of Milton's idyllic pair—'he for God only, she for God in him'—has but little counterpart in real life, and that, in a thousand cases to one, the morality of the wife is the main chance of the husband."
"I understand, then, that we are to be worshiped as a means toward the improvement of our husbands. I was hoping," said Margaret smiling, "that you were going to prove us to be real goddesses, worthy of devotion for ourselves—without more."
"You are raising a well-worn question—as to what men worship when they bow before a shrine. If you were the shrine, I should say generally the shrine. At other times they worship that which the shrine suggests. What I mean is, that it is a good thing for one to have a power with him capable of improving all the good that is in him. For myself, the point is somewhat wanting in interest, as I never expect to be able to put it to a practical test."
"Not get married, Maurice? Why will you never get married?"
"I intended to have casually mentioned the reason a minute ago, only you interrupted me just as I was coming to the interesting part."
"Then tell me now, and I won't interrupt."
"Well, you know I am like the small boys who want pie, and won't eat anything if they don't get it," said he, striving to be prosaic. "I love you far too well to make it possible for me to marry anybody else."
In spite of the assistance that pulling his hair gave him, as his head lay back in his hands, his voice shook and his form stiffened out along the sand in a way that told of struggle. Margaret was surprised, but she hardly yet understood the matter enough to feel pained. She had not been led to expect that men would first express their love while lying on their backs.
"I thought I would tell you of it, as you would then know how particularly well you could trust me—as your friend—a very faithful one. You know, even in my present state, I would be full of hope, if things were different, because the money is bound to come sooner or later; but you, Margaret, I know, without your words, will never be attainable—that the moon would be more easy for me to grasp."
Margaret was not often at a loss for a word, but now she knew not what to say. It did not seem as if anything could be said. She essayed to speak; but he stopped her.
"I know what you would say," he said. "They would be kind words in their tone, full of sympathy, words that I love to hear—that I hear like music in my ears when you are out of sight? You must, and I know you will, forgive me for all these confessions," said he, smiling, "you have made such a change come over my life. You have given me so much happiness."
"I don't see how," said Margaret, not knowing what to say.
"No—you could hardly know why. If you knew what a different life I have led from that of others you would understand better the real happiness you have given me. My life of late years has been unlovely. I have not had the soft influences of a home as it should be, but I have always yearned for them."
The pretense of being off-hand in his manner had left him. He talked disjointedly, and with effort. "You can not know what it is to feel continually the want of affection. You have never hungered for the luxury of being in some way cared for. But these weaknesses of mine will not bore you, because you are kind. It will make my case plainer when I tell you that for years—as long as I can remember—there never has been a night that a longing for the presence of my parents has not come over me. Until I saw you. Now you have come to fill the gap. Now I think of you, and listen to your voice, and look at your face, and care for you. You fill more places in my heart than you know of. You are father and mother and all beside to me, and I shall go back to my dreary life gladder for this experience, this love for you which will remain with me always. Still, it is dreadful to look into a future of loneliness! Oh, Margaret, it is dreadful to be always alone—always alone."
Margaret was watching the part of his face not covered with his cap as his words were ground out haltingly, and she could see his lips twitch as old memories mingled with his present emotions. As he proceeded she saw from his simple words how deep-seated were his affections, and she wondered at the way he had concealed his love for her. A great compassion for him was welling up in her heart. As she listened to his words, it came upon her what it might be to love deeply and then to find that it only led to disappointment. She felt glad that she had given him some happiness—glad when he said he could look forward more cheerfully to going back to his hopeless existence. It was brave to speak of it thus—asking nothing. But when he said it was dreadful to be alone—always alone—his voice conveyed the idea of horror to her, and, in a moment, without knowing exactly why, the tears were in her eyes, and she was kneeling beside him on the sand asking what could be done, and blaming herself for giving him trouble. Her touch upon his hand thrilled him. He dared not remove his cap. He dared not look at her for very fear of his happiness; but then he heard a half sob in her voice, and that cured him. It would never do for her to be weeping. He had said too much, he thought. He partly sat up, leaning upon his hand, and was himself again. Margaret was looking at him (so beautiful with her dewy eyes), with but one thought in her mind, which was how to be kind to him, how to make up to him some of the care that his life had been shorn of. It was all done in a moment. Margaret said tearfully, "Oh, what can I do?" and Rankin's native quickness was present with him. He leaned forward, inspired by a new thought, and said, "Kiss me," and Margaret, knowing nothing but a great compassion for him, in which self was entirely forgotten, said: "Indeed, I will, if you would care for that."