YACHTING ONLY.
Some hearts might have yearned to have been on board during the fishing in Hay Bay, and to have enjoyed those evenings when the yacht anchored in the twilight calm, beside rocky shores, or near waving banks of sedge and rushes, where the whip-poor-will and bull frog supplied all the necessary music. I abandon all that occurred at pretty Picton and Belleville, but I must not forget the little episode that happened one evening near Indian Point as the yacht was on her way to Kingston. A fresh breeze had been blowing during the afternoon, and the two reefs, taken in for comfort's sake, still remained in the mainsail, as no one after dinner felt equal to the exertion of shaking them out. The wind had almost died away as they approached Indian Point, and not far off, on the other side of this long, narrow arm of the sea called the Bay of Quinte, lay MacDonald's Cove, a snug little place for anchorage in any kind of weather. A heavy bank of clouds was rapidly rising over the hills in the west, and hastening up the sky to extinguish the bright moon that had been making a fairy landscape of the bay and its surroundings, and the barometer was falling rapidly.
This condition of affairs Jack reported to Charley, who was below with several others having a little game in which the word "ante" seemed to be used sometimes in a tone of reproach. Charles answered gayly, without looking away from the game, that Jack had better get the yacht into the Cove while there was wind to take her there, and Jack, who observed that he was "seeing" and "raising" an antagonist for the fifth time on a pair of fours, thought a man should not be disturbed at such a time, and went on deck to shake out the reefs so as to drift into the Cove, if possible, before the storm came on. But when in the middle of the bay the wind gave out entirely. For half an hour the Ideal lay becalmed and motionless. Oilskin suits and sou'westers were donned. Now fringes of whitish scud, torn from the driving clouds, could be seen flying past the bleared moon, and it seemed in the increasing darkness, while they were waiting for the tumult, as if the shores around contracted, so as to give the yacht no space for movement. Jack took the compass bearings of the lighthouse, expecting soon to be in total darkness, and he had both anchors prepared for instant use. The sails had been close-reefed, but after being reefed they were lowered again so as to present nothing but bare poles to the squall. The darkness came on and grew intense. Between the rapidly increasing peals of thunder the squall could be heard approaching, moaning over the hills in the west and down the bay as if ravening for prey, while the lightning seemed to take a savage delight in spearing the distant cliffs which, in the flashes, were beautifully outlined in silhouette against an electric atmosphere. Still the yacht lay motionless in the dead air difficult to breathe and oppressive; and still Charley continued to "raise" and get "raised" in the cheerfully lighted cabin, whence the laughter and the talk of the game mingled strangely, in the ears of those on deck, with the sounds of the coming tempest. Margaret, with her head out of the companion-way, watched the scene with a nervousness that impending electrical storms oppressed her with. Her quick eyes soon caught sight of something on the water, not far off. A mystic line of white could be seen coming along the surface. She asked what it was at a moment when the deadness and blackness of the air seemed appalling, and the ear was filled with strange swishing sounds. She never heard any answer. Another instant and the yacht heeled over almost to the rail in that line of white water, which the whips of the tornado had lashed into spume. Blinding sheets of spray, picked up by the wind from the surface of water, flew over those on deck, and instantly the lee scuppers were gushing with the rain and spray which deluged the decks. Word was carried forward by a messenger from the wheel to hoist a bit of headsail, and when this was immediately done the yacht paid off before the squall, running easterly, with all the furies after her. The darkness was so great that it was impossible to see one's hand close to one's eyes. The thunderclaps near at hand were rendered more terrific by the echoes from the hills, and only while the lightning clothed the vessel in a spectral glare could they see one another. Still the yacht sped on, while Jack jealously watched the binnacle where the only guide was to be found. The Indian Point light, though not far off, was completely blotted out by the rain, which seemed to fall in solid masses, and even the lightning failed to indicate the shores or otherwise reveal their position.
A wild career, such as they were now pursuing, must end somewhere, and in the narrow rock-bound locality they were flying through, the chance of keeping to the proper channel entirely by compass and chart did not by any means amount to a certainty. Nor was anchoring in the middle of the highway to be thought of, especially as some trading vessels were known to be in the vicinity. The chance of being cut down by them was too great. Jack felt that an error now might cause the loss of the yacht. After calculating a variation of the compass in these parts, he decided to run before the gale for a while and keep in the channel if possible—hoping for a lull in the downfall of rain, so that his whereabouts could be discovered.
A high chopping sea was driving the yacht on, while she scudded under bare poles before the gale, and Jack had been for some little time endeavoring to estimate their rate of speed when the deluge seemed to abate partly and the glimmer of a light could be seen to the southward. A sailor called out "There's Indian Point light." If it had been the light he mentioned they would have had all they wanted. Jack feared they had run past it, but, to make sure, he asked the sailors their opinion. They all said they were certain it was Indian Point light. One of them declared he had seen the lighthouse itself in one of the flashes. So Jack had the peak of the mainsail partly hoisted and they drew around to the southward, so as to anchor under the lee of the lighthouse point. As the yacht came round sideways to the wind she lay down to it and moved slowly and heavily through the short angry seas that, hitting the side, threw spray all over her. Jack was feeling his way carefully and slowly through the inky blackness of the night with the lead-line going to show the depth of the water, when the lookout on the bowsprit-end, after they had proceeded a considerable distance to the south, suddenly cried "Breakers ahead!" and he tumbled inboard off the bowsprit, as if he thought the boat about to strike at once. "Let her go round, sir, for God's sake! We're right on the rocks."
Jack, back at the wheel, had not been able to get a glimpse of the foaming rocks in the lightning which the man on the bowsprit had seen. He despaired of the boat's going about, but he tried it. The high chopping sea stopped the yacht at once. He knew it was asking too much of her to come about with so little way on, and the canvas all in a bag, so, as there was evidently no room to wear the ship, he had the big anchor dropped. His intention was to come about by means of his anchor and get out on the other tack into the channel and anywhere away from the rocks and the breakers that could be heard above the tempest roaring close to them on the port side. While the chain was being paid out, the close-reefed mainsail was hoisted up to do its work properly. The storm staysail was also hoisted and sheeted home on the port side to back her head off from the land. As this was being done, the sailors paid out the anchor-chain rapidly. To do so more quickly they carelessly threw it off the winch and let it smoke through the hawse-pipe at its own pace. But suddenly there came a check to it, which, in the darkness, could not be accounted for. A bight or a knot in the chain had come up and got jammed somewhere, and now it refused to run out. The Ideal immediately straightened out the cable, and, at the moment, all the king's horses and all the king's men would have been powerless to clear it. Jack came forward, and with a lantern discovered how things were. "Never mind," he thought. "If she will lie here for a while no harm will be done." In the mean time, while the men were getting a tackle rigged to haul up a bit of the chain, so as to obtain control of it again, the rain ceased to fall, while the lightning, by which alone the men could see to work, served only to make the succeeding darkness more profound.
The place they had sailed into was on the north shore of Amherst Island. As Jack feared, the sailors had been wrong in thinking that the light they saw was the one on Indian Point. It was a lantern on a schooner which had gone ashore on the rocks close to where the Ideal now lay.
The worst of their anxiety was, however, yet to come. During a vivid flash, after the rain had partly cleared away, a reef of rocks was discovered a short distance off, trending out from the shore directly behind the yacht. Jack had been lying with his hand on the cable to feel whether the anchor was holding or not. He soon found that the yacht was "dragging." The sails were lowered at once, and the second anchor was left go, in the hope that it might catch hold when the first one had dragged back far enough to allow the second to work.
With the rocks behind waiting for them, it was now a question of anchors holding, or nothing—yacht or no yacht. Every moment as she pitched and ducked and tossed against the driving seas and wind she dropped back toward a black mass over which the waves broke savagely. The yacht was literally locked up to the big anchor. They could neither haul up nor pay out its cable, so that, until this was remedied by means of a tackle (which takes some time in a jumping sea and darkness) sailing again was impossible. Carefully they paid out chain enough for the second anchor to do its work. Not till they were close to the rocks did they allow any strain to come upon it. Then they took a turn on its chain and waited to see how it would hold.
Feeling the cable, when there is nothing to hope for but that the hook will do its work, is a quiet though anxious occupation. Jack waited for the sensations in the hand which will often tell whether the anchor is holding or not, and then rose, and in the moonlight which now began to break through the clouds his face looked anxious. "Flat rock," he muttered, "with a layer of mud on it."
By this time the men had got control of the big anchor's chain again and had knocked the kink out of it. But there was no room now to slip cables and sail off.
The rocks were too close. The idea struck him of winding in the first anchor a bit—in the hope that it might catch in a crack in the rock, or on a bowlder, before it got even with the second one.
This proved of no use, and the yacht was now approaching, stern-first, the point or outward rock of the reef which stood up boldly in the water. Only a few feet now separated this outside rock from the counter of the yacht. In two minutes more the stem would be dashing itself into matches.
Jack's brain, you may be sure, was on the keen lookout for expedients. He had the mainsail hoisted and the staysail flattened down to the port side—so as to back her head off. He hoped by this possibly to grind off the rocks by his sails after striking, and by then slipping his cables to get out into deep water before the stern was completely stove in. But while this was being done the thought came into his mind whether the stern might not clear the outer rock without hitting it. The changeable gusts of wind had been swinging the yacht sidewise—first a little one way and then a little the other. At the time he looked back at the yacht, they were just about near enough to strike when the wind shifted her a little toward the north, and for a moment the stern pointed clear of the outer rock. His first idea was that the wind was shifting permanently. But suddenly it came to him that this might be his only chance. He did not wait to command others, but flew to the anchor chains and threw off the coils. The yacht shot astern like the recoil of a cannon. He threw the chains clear of the windlass so that the vessel could dart backward without any check. It seemed a mad thing to do—to let both anchors go overboard—but it was a madness which when successful is called genius. It was genius to conceive and carry out the idea in an instant, and single handed, too, as if he were the only one on the boat, genius to know quickly enough exactly how the vessel would act. Half a dozen seconds sufficed to throw off the chains, and then he got back to the wheel, steering her as she went backward grazing her paint only against the rock, while the chains rushed out like a whirlwind over the bows. The staysail sheets had already been flattened down on the port side and the yacht's head paid off fast on the port tack, while Jack rapidly slacked the main sheet well off, and as she gathered way and plunged out into the open channel, an understanding of the quick idea that had saved the vessel trickled through the brains of the hired men. Instead of climbing to the rocks from a sinking yacht, as they expected to be doing at this moment, here they were heading out into deep water again—with the old packet good as new.
Cresswell called to the mate to keep her "jogging around" till he spoke to the owner about getting back the anchors, and then went below with the other men of the party who had remained on deck throughout the uncomfortable affair.
The workers on deck, who looked like submarine divers, slipped out of their oil-skins and descended from the deck to the gay cabin below. Charley still continued to "raise" and get "raised" with a pertinacity which defied the elements. His game had had the effect of making his mother and the others think, in spite of their tremors, that the danger lay chiefly in their own minds, and, under the circumstances, Charley had no easy time of it. He had listened to every sound, and knew a good deal more about the proximity of the rocks, and the trouble generally, than any one would have supposed.
He decided not to attempt to pick up the anchors that night, so they beat back to MacDonald's Cove, where they entered, in the moonlight, and made fast for the night to some trees beside a steep rocky shore.
CHAPTER XII.
Bassanio:
So may the outward shows be least themselves;
The world is still deceived with ornament.
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil? In religion,
What damméd error, but some sober brow
Will bless it, and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
Salarino:
My wind, cooling my broth,
Would blow me to an ague when I thought
What harm a wind too great might do at sea.
... Should I go to church,
And see the holy edifice of stone,
And not bethink me straight of dangerous rocks?
Merchant of Venice.
When approaching from the west among picturesque islands and past wooded points of land, our old city of Kingston affords the traveler a pleasant scene. Above the blue and green expanse of her spacious harbor, the penitentiary with its high wall and surrounding turrets suggests the Canadian justice we are proud of; and, further up, rises the asylum, suggestive only of Canadian lunacy, for which we do not claim pre-eminence, while beyond, some little spires and domes, sparkling in the sun, are seen over the tops of some English-looking stone residences, where the grassy lawns stretch down to the line of waves breaking on the rocky shore. Further off one sees the vessel-masts along the ship-yards and docks; here and there some small Martello forts try to look formidable; large vessels cross and recross the harbor, while others lie at anchor drying their sails; and beyond all, on the hill at the back, rises the garrison walls, where—
In spite of all temptation,
Dynamite and annexation,
Canada is content, for the present at least, to see the English flag instead of our own.
As our friends came on deck the next morning (Sunday) they were able to enjoy this pleasant approach to Kingston. Mrs. Dusenall and others had wished to attend church if possible in the limestone city, and an early start had been made by the sailors long before the guests were awake. The wind came lightly from the southward, which allowed them to pick up the anchors without difficulty, and it took but a short time to sweep in past the city and "come to" off the barrack's wharf, where a gun was ceremoniously fired as the anchor was lowered from the catheads.
Mrs. Dusenall piped all hands for divine service. They came out of the ark two by two and filed up the streets in that order until the church was reached. The boys came out in "heavy marching order"—Sunday coats, and all that sort of thing—which made a vast change from the picturesque and rather buccaneer-like appearance they presented on the yacht.
If a traveling circus had proceeded up the center aisle of the attractively decorated edifice, no greater curiosity could have been exhibited among the worshipers. Mrs. Dusenall had some of the imposing mien of a drum-major as she led her gallant band to seats at the head of the church, and Charley was justly proud of the fine appearance they made. He had surveyed them all with pleasure while on the sidewalk outside, and had paid the usher half a dollar to lead them all together to front seats. Walk as lightly as they could, it was impossible in the stillness of the church to prevent their entrance from sounding like that of soldiery, and once the eyes of the worshipers rested on the noble troop they became fixed there for some time. There was a ruddy, bronzed look about the yachting men's faces which, innocent of limestone dust tended to deny the almost aggressive respectability which good tailoring and cruelty collars attempted to claim for them. In the hearts of the fair Kingstonians who glanced toward them there arose visions of lawn-tennis, boating, and buccaneer costumes suggested by that remarkably able-bodied and healthy appearance which a fashionable walk, bank trousers, and a gauzy umbrella may do much to modify but can not obliterate. As for the male devotees, it was touching to mark their interest in Margaret as she went up the aisle keeping step with the shortened pace of the long-limbed Geoffrey. The clergyman was just saying that the scriptures moved them in sundry places when all at once he became a mere cipher to them. After their first thrill at the beauty of her face, their eyes followed Margaret and that wonderful movement of hers that made her, as with a well-ordered regiment, almost as dangerous in the retreat as in the advance. But Nina came along close behind her, and those who, though disabled, survived the first volley were slaughtered to a man when the rich charms of her appearance won her a triumph all her own. Jack, walking by her side, full of gravity but happy, took in the situation with pride at her silent success. Then all the others followed, and when they were installed in a body in the three front pews, and after they had all bowed their heads and the gentlemen had carefully perused the legend printed in their hats—"Lincoln Bennett & Coy, Sackville Street, Piccadilly, London. Manufactured expressly for Jas. H. Rogers, Toronto and Winnipeg"—they got their books open and admitted that they had done things they ought not to have done and that there was no health in them.
The interior of the church was a luxury to the eye in its mellow coloring from stained-glass windows and carefully-arranged lights, and in its banners, altar-cloths, embroidery, and church millinery generally, it left little to be desired. The clergyman was a young unmarried offspring of a high-church college who, with a lofty disregard for general knowledge, had acquired a great deal of theology. He it was who arranged that dim religious light about the altar and walled up a neighboring window so that the burning of candles seemed to become necessary. Never having been out of America, it was difficult to imagine where he acquired the ultra-English pronunciation that had all those flowing "ah" sounds which after a while make all words so pleasantly alike in the high-pitched reading of prayers when, it may be inferred, that word-meanings are perhaps of minor import. It seemed that he alone was, from the holiness of his office, qualified to enter that mysterious place at the head of the chancel where, with his back to the congregation, at stated times he went through certain genuflexions and other movements in which the general public did not participate further than to admire the splendor of his back. The effect of the many mysteries on some of the Kingston men was to keep them away from the church. A few fathers of families and others came to please wives, sweethearts, or clients, and in the cool, agreeable edifice enjoyed some respectable slumber or watched the proceedings with mild curiosity or had their ears filled either with good music or the agreeable sound of the intoning.
The effect of the little mysteries on the well-to-do women of the church (for it was no place for a poor man's family) was varied. On the large-eyed, nervous, impressionable, and imaginative virgins—those who could always be found ready in the days of human sacrifices—the clergyman's mysteries and the exercise of the power of the Church, as exhibited in the continual working of his strong will upon them, had of course the usual results in enfeebling their judgment and in rendering them very subservient. In the case of some unimaginative matrons and more level-headed girls these attractions did not unfit them for every-day life more than continual theatre-going, and they took a pride in and enjoyed a sense of quasi-ownership in the man whom it tickled their fancy to clothe in gorgeous raiment. To these solid, pleasure-loving, good-natured women, whose religion was inextricably mixed up with romance, the mysteries, sideshows, and formalities of their splendid protégé brought satisfaction; and in their social gatherings they discussed the doings of their favorite much as a syndicate of owners might, in the pride of ownership, discuss their horse. It may be pleasing to be identified with the supernatural, but one's self-respect must need all such compensations to allow one to become a peg for admiring women to hang their embroidery on—to be largely dependent upon their gratuities, subject to some of their control, to put in, say, two fair days' work in seven, and spend the rest in fiddle-faddle.
"There is but one God. What directly concerns you, my friends, is that Mohammed is his Prophet—to interpret the supernatural for you." It would be interesting to find out if there ever existed a religion, savage or civilized, whose public proclamation did not contain a qualifying clause to retain the power in the priests.
The sermon on this occasion was on the observance of the Sabbath. It contained much church law and theology, and in quotations from different saints who had lived at various periods during the dark ages, and whose sayings did not seem to be chosen so much on account of their force as for the weight given by the names of the saints themselves, which were delivered ore rotundo. But it is doubtful whether the most erudite quotation from obscure mediæval saints is capable of carrying much conviction to the hearts of a Canadian audience, and Jack and Charley had to be kicked into consciousness from an uneasy slumber.
From the saints the priest descended to Chicago, a transition which awoke several. And he sought to illustrate the depravity of that city by commenting upon the large facilities there provided for Sabbath-breaking. He spoke of the street-cars he had seen there running on that day, and of the suburban trains that carried thousands of working-women and girls out of the city. He did not say that the cars were chiefly drawn by steam-power, nor that these poor, jaded, hollow-eyed girls worked harder in one day than he did in three weeks; nor did he speak of the weak women's hard struggle for existence in the life-consuming factories; nor of the freshness of the lake breezes in the spots where the trains dropped thousands of their overworked passengers.
Margaret Mackintosh had seen these dragged, dust-choked, narrow-chested, smoke-dried girls, with all the bloom of youth gone from them, trying to make their drawn faces smile as they go off together in their clean, Sunday print dresses, too jaded for anything save rest and fresh air. She knew that any man not devoid of the true essence of Christ might almost weep in the fullness of his sympathy with them. But the young priest convicted them of sacrilege, and did not say he was thankful for being privileged to witness such a sight, or that Chicago existed to shame the more priest-ridden cities of Canada.
When this story was concluded, Mrs. Dusenall, and many of her kind; and the unimpressionable girls looked acquiescence, because the words were backed by the Church, but their hearts went out to the poor sinners in Chicago. Only with those who took their mental bias from the priest did his words find solid resting-place. Geoffrey sat with an inmovable face, impossible to read. His subsequent remark to Margaret, when she had delivered her opinions about the matter, was, however, characteristic. He said simply, as if deprecating her vehemence:
"The man must live, you know, and how is he to live if people go out of town on Sunday." To Geoffrey a short time was sufficient to satisfy him that the preacher ought to have lived in the days when mankind were saturated with belief in miracle and looked for explanation of events by miracle without dreaming of other explanation.
During the next five minutes the sermon rather wandered from the subject, but fastened upon it again in an anecdote of an occurrence said to have taken place at an American seaport town, during the preacher's visit there.
Several young mechanics, instead of going to church one Sunday morning, had engaged a yawl, and also the fishermen who owned it, to take them to a village on the coast and back again. It appeared from the account that for a day and a night the yawl had been blown away from the coast, and then that the wind had changed, so as to drive it back again; and the story of the voyage naturally found attentive listeners among our yachting friends.
"All through that first terrible day, and all through the long, black night they were tossed about among the giant billows of a most tempestuous ocean. And what, dear friends, must have been the agony and remorse of those misguided young men when they thus realized the results of their deliberate breaking of the holy day. As they clung to the frail vessel, which reeled to and fro beneath them like a drunken man, and which now alone remained to possibly save them from a watery grave—as they perceived the billows breaking in upon that devoted ship, insomuch that it was covered with waves, what must have been their sensations? And when the wind suddenly changed its direction and blew them with terrible force back again toward the rocky coast, we can imagine how earnestly they made their resolutions never again to transgress in this way. Once more, after a while, they saw the land again, and as they came closer they could discern the spires of those holy edifices which they had abandoned for the sake of forbidden pleasures and in which they were doomed never to hear the teachings of the Church again. There lay the harbor before them, as if in mockery of all their attempts to reach it; and while raised on high in the air, on the summit of some white, mountainous billow, they could obtain a Pisgah-like view of those homes they were destined never again to enter."
Jack was broad awake now and wondering why, with the wind dead after them, the fishermen in charge of the boat could not make the harbor.
"Suddenly there came a great noise, which no doubt sounded like a death knell in the hearts of the terrified and exhausted young men. It was soon discovered that the mainsail of the ship had been blown away by the fury of the tempest."
"Now what was their unhappy condition? How could they any longer strive to reach the longed-for haven when the mainsail of the yawl was blown away?"
Jack shifted in his seat uncomfortably at this point. He was saying to himself: "Why not sneak in under a jib? Or even under bare poles? Or, if the harbor was intricate, why not heave to under the mizzen and signal for a tug?" Half a score of possibilities followed each other through his brain, which in sailing matters worked quickly. He always inclined from his early training to accept without question all that issued from the pulpit; but this story bothered him. The instructor went on:
"Clearly there was now no hope for the devoted vessel. Even the anchor was gone; the anchor of Hope, dear friends, was gone. The strong trustworthy anchor (in which mariners place so great confidence that it has become the type or symbol of Hope) was gone—washed overboard by the temptuous waves."
Charley here received a kick under the seat from Jack whose face was now filled with a blank incredulity, which showed that the influence of his early training had departed from him.
In one way or another, the preacher succeeded in irritating some of the Ideal's crew. He went on to say that the yawl was dashed to pieces on the rocks, and that only one man—a fisherman—survived; from which he drew the usual moral.
With three or four exceptions, our friends went out of church not as good-humored as when they came in. Geoffrey alone seemed to have enjoyed himself. His heart-felt cynicism pulled him through. He said aloud to Mrs. Dusenall, when they were all together again, that he thought the preacher's description of the perils of the deep was very beautiful. (Dead silence from Jack and Charley). Mrs. Dusenall concurred with him, and said it was wonderful how clergymen acquired so much general knowledge.
Presently Charley, thoughtfully: "Say, Jack, what was the matter with that boat, any way?"
"Blessed if I could find out," said Jack.
"Why! did you not hear? Her mainsail was gone," said Geoffrey gravely, to draw Jack out.
"Well, who the deuce cares for a mains'l?" answered Jack, rising testily to the bait. "The man does not know what he is—well, of course, he is a clergyman, but then, you know—my stars! not make a port in broad daylight with the wind dead aft! Perfectly impossible to miss it! And, then the anchor—a fisherman's anchor!—washed overboard!"
Geoffrey persisted, more gravely, in a reproachful tone; "You don't mean to say, Jack, that you doubt that what a clergyman says is true?"
The Misses Dusenall also looked at him very seriously.
Jack was a candid young man, and had his religious views fixed, as it were, hereditarily. He looked at his boots, as if he would like to evade the question; but, seeing no escape, he came out with his answer like parting with his teeth.
"When the parson," he said with stolid determination, "goes in for mediæval saints, I don't interfere. He can forge ahead and I won't try to split his wind. But when he talks sailing he must talk sense. No, sir! I do not believe that story—and no Angel Gabriel would make me."
There was a force behind his tones of conviction which amused some of his hearers.
"Jack Cresswell! You surprise me," said Geoffrey loftily.
After lunch the ladies went up into the city to visit some friends, and the men were lying about under the awning, chatting, smoking, and sipping claret.
"Well, there was one thing about that boat that caused the entire disturbance," said Charley, sagaciously. "I've thought the whole thing out; and I put down the trouble to the usual cause—and that is—whisky. When the fishermen found there was liquor on board they 'steered for the open sea,' and when they were all stark, staring, blind drunk they went ashore."
"I fancy you have solved the difficulty," said Mr. Lemons. "The preacher did not, somehow, seem to get hold of me. My notion is that he should come down to your level and help you up—like those Arab chaps that lug and butt you up the Pyramids—not stand at the top and order you to climb."
"Just so," said Geoffrey. "A speaker must in some way make his listeners feel at home with him, just as a novel, to sell well, must contain some one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. The sympathies must be excited. In books accepted by gentle folk the "one touch" of attractive and primitive nature is refined, and in this shape it is called poetry—in this shape it creates vague and pleasant wonderings, especially in the minds of those whose fancies are capable of no higher intellectual flight. When we see that people so universally seek productions in which nature is only more or less disguised, we seem to understand man better."
"What are you trying to get at now?" asked Jack, with a smiling show of impatience.
"Why," said Hampstead, "take the work of the sprightliest modern novel writers—say, for instance, Besant and Rice. Deduct the fun from their books and the shadowy plot, and what remains? A girl—a fresh, young, innocent girl—who, with her beautiful face and figure, charms the heart. She does not do much, and (with William Black) she says even less; but the people in the book are all in love with her, and the reader becomes, in a second-hand and imaginative way, in love with her also. She is quiet, lady-like, and delicious; her surroundings assist in creating an interest in her; but in the dawn and development of love within her lies the chief interest of most readers. The mind concentrates itself without effort when lured by any of our earlier instincts. What we want is a definition as to what degree of careful mental exertion is worthy of being dignified by the name of "thought," as distinguished from that sequence of ideas, without exertion, which is sufficient in all animals for daily routine and the carrying out of instinct."
"There are some of your ideas, Hampstead, which do not seem to promise improvement to anybody," said Jack.
"And, for you, the worst thing about them is that they have a semblance of truth," replied Hampstead.
"Sometimes—yes," admitted Jack. "But I would not excuse you because they happened to be true. The only way I excuse you is because, after your scientific mud-groveling, you sometimes point higher than others. Are we to understand, then, that you object to novel reading on moral grounds?"
"Don't be absurd. A novel may be all that it should be. I am stating what I take to be facts, and I think it interesting to consider why we enjoy what ladies call 'a good love-story.' You will notice that people who adopt an over-ascetic and unnatural life and do not seek nature, give up reading 'good love-stories.' Perhaps they vaguely realize that the difference in the interest created by Black's insipid Yolande and Byron's Don Juan is merely one of degree."
"Now, will you be so good as to say candidly what gain you or any one else ever received from thinking in such channels as these?" inquired Jack, with impatience.
"Certainly. It keeps me from transcendentalism—from being led off into vanity—thoughts about my immortality—"
"Surely," interrupted Jack, "the aspirations of one's soul are sufficient to convince us that we will live again."
"Jack, a man's soul is simply his power of imagining and desiring what he hasn't got. Once a day, more or less, his soul imagines immortality. The rest of the time it imagines his sweetheart. If a poet, his soul combines the two. Or else it is the mighty dollar, or hunting, or something else. Shall all his aspirations toward nature go for nothing? His soul will conjure up his sweetheart nine thousand times for one thought of his future state. Because he has acquired neither. If he had acquired either, he would soon be quite as certain that there was something still better in store for him. With our minds as active and refined as they are, it would be quite impossible for men to do otherwise than have their imaginings about souls and immortality. These make no proof; the savage has none of them; and if they were proof, whither do man's aspirations chiefly point? To earth or to heaven?"
"Well, I suppose your answer," said Jack, "is sufficient for yourself. You study science, then, to persuade yourself that when you die you will remain teetotally dead?"
"Rather to make myself content with a truth which is different from and not so pleasant as that which we are taught in early life."
"For goodness' sake," cried Mr. Lemons, yawning, "pass the claret."
CHAPTER XIII.
Visam Britannos hospitibus feros.
Horace, Lib. 3, Carm. 4.
Mrs. Dusenall liked the visit to Kingston. She was proud of the appearance her guests and family made at the church, and she thought of going home and writing a book as prodigal of pretty woodcuts and fascinating price-lists as those published by other gilded ladies. True, she had with her no young children wherewith to awake interest in foreign places by detailing what occurred in the ship's nursery; and thus she might have been driven to say something about the foreign places themselves, which, in a book of travels, are perhaps of secondary importance when a whole gilded family may be studied in their interesting retirement.
They kept a log on the Ideal, and each one had to take his or her turn at keeping the account of the cruise posted up to date.
Some events on board or near the Ideal did not come under Mrs. Dusenall's notice and did not appear in the log-book. Nobody flirted with Mrs. Dusenall to make her experience exciting, and her book, if written, would have been one long panorama of landscape interlarded with the mildest of items. But compress your world even to the size of a yacht, and there will be still more going on, in the same eternal way, than any one person can observe, especially if that person happens to be a chaperon.
The first evening among the islands was spent in different ways. Some paddled about to explore or bathe. Flirtation of a mild type was prevalent—interesting possibly to the parties concerned, and, as usual, to themselves only. Toward dusk the gig was manned by the crew for the transportation of Mrs. Dusenall and part of her suite across the river through the islands to the hotels at Alexandria Bay on the American shore. The hotel guests on the balconies and verandas were continuing to enjoy or endure that eternal siesta which at these places seems to be quite unbroken save at meal times, and the arrival of a number of very presentable people in a handsome gig, rowed in the man-of-war style by uniformed sailors and steered by a person with a gold-lace badge on his cap, created a ripple of interest. Among those on the verandas engaged, perhaps overtaxed, in the digestion of their dinners, not a few were slightly interested by what they saw. In a group of a dozen or more a gentleman behind a solitaire shirt-stud, worth a good year's salary for a Victoria Bank clerk seemed to be speaking the thoughts of the party, though his words came out chiefly as a form of soliloquy. He seemed to be taking a sort of admiring inventory of the gig and its occupants as it approached the landing wharf:
"Small sailor boy—standing in the bow—with a spear in his hand."
It was a boat-hook in the boy's hand, but it might have been a trident.
"He's real cunnin'—that boy—in his masquerade suit. Four sailors—also in masquerade costume. And they can make her hump up the river, sure's-yer-born. Now I wonder who those fellows are—in buttons—with gold badges on their hats. Wonder what those badges might imply! Part of the masquerade, I guess. But stylish—very."
Then, turning to a friend, he said:
"Cha'ley, those people are yachting round here."
At this discovery the exhausted-looking refugee from overwork in some city addressed as "Cha'ley," whose face was lit up solely by a cigar, answered slowly but decisively:
"Looks like it—very."
Then followed a quick mental calculation in the head of the gentleman behind the solitaire, and, as the boat came alongside the landing, the oars being handled with trained accuracy, he said:
"I wonder how many of those paid men they have on board. I like it. I like the whole thing. I shall do it myself next summer. And right up to the handle. Cha'ley, bet you half a dollar that those are first-class gentlemen and ladies down there, and we ought to go down and receive them."
"Why, certainly," said the other in grave, staccato tones, which seemed to deny the exhaustion of his appearance by indicating some internal strength. "James," he added in solemn self-reproach, "we should have been down—on the landing—to assist the ladies from their canoe."
As they left the veranda several ladies called after them:
"Mr. Cowper, we would be pleased to have you bring the ladies up."
Mr. Cowper bowed with gravity, but did not say anything, as he was preparing within him his form of self-introduction.
In a few moments Mr. Cowper and Mr. Withers met our party as they slowly meandered up the ascent toward the hotel. Mr. Cowper, hat in hand, gave them collectively a bow, which, if somewhat foreign in its nature, was not without dignity, and he addressed them with unmistakable hospitality, while Mr. Withers, by a flank movement, attacked the left wing of the party, where he conducted a little reception of his own.
Mr. Cowper said, "How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?"
Mrs. Dusenall bowed and smiled, and the others, wondering what was coming, bowed also as they caught Mr. Cowper's encompassing eye. "We regret," he said, looking toward Geoffrey, to whom he was more especially attracted on account of his cap-badge and greater stature. "We regret, captain, that we did not notice your arrival in time to be on the landing to assist the ladies from your canoe."
Geoffrey's smile only indicated his gratification and had no reference to Mr. Cowper's new name for the yacht's gig.
"We are only guests in the hotel ourselves, but if we had known of your coming some of us certainly would have been down to receive you in the proper manner."
What "proper manner" of reception Mr. Cowper had in his head it is difficult to say. His words showed Mrs. Dusenall, however, that he was not the custom-house officer or the hotel-keeper, which relieved her of some anxiety lest she should make a mistake. At a slight pause in his flow of language she thanked him in her most reassuring accents, and continued in those suave tones and with that perfect self-possession, with which the English duchess, her head a little on one side and chin upraised, has been supposed carelessly to assert her person, crown, and dignity.
"I assure you," she said, "that we are only knocking about, as it were, quite informally, from place to place in the yacht."
"Quite informally," echoed Geoffrey, who was enjoying Mrs. Dusenall.
She added: "So, of course, we could not think of allowing you to give yourselves any trouble on our account."
In what pageantry Mrs. Dusenall proceeded when not traveling quite informally Mr. Cowper did not give himself the trouble to consider. The thought came to him that he might be entertaining an English duchess unawares, but the succeeding consciousness that he could probably buy up this duchess "and her whole masquerade" fortified him as with triple brass.
"Madam," he said, with that distinctness and intensity with which Americans convey the impression that they mean what they say, "if we have neglected you and your friends at first, we will be pleased if you will allow us now to try to make your visit attractive."
Mrs. Dusenall thought this was assuming a heavy responsibility.
"If you will come up on the pe-az-a, there are a number of real nice ladies who would be most pleased to meet you."
Several of the party began to think that the cares of "knocking about quite informally" were about to commence. But as there was no escape, and all smiled pleasantly, and Mr. Cowper conversed as he and Mr. Withers led them up to the "pe-az-a." He was gratified at the way they responded to his endeavors; and perhaps he was not without a latent wish to show his hotel friends how perfectly at home he was in "first-class British society."
"There is always something going on here," he said; "and if there is nothing on just now we will get up something real pleasant—or my name's not Cowper."
This hint as to his identity was not thrown away, and as it seemed more than likely that they were about to be entertained immediately by this gentleman behind the solitaire headlight, it occurred to Geoffrey that it would be as well for the party to know what his name was.
"Mr. Cowper, let me introduce you to Mrs. Dusenall."
This quickness on Geoffrey's part relieved Mr. Cowper from any difficulty in mentioning his own name. Mrs. Dusenall then introduced him in a general way to the remainder of the party. To Miss Dusenall it was impossible for him to do more than bow, as she was chilling in her demeanor. She had received, as has been hinted, that final distracting finishing polish which an English school is expected to give, and she sought to be so entirely English as not to know what cosmopolitan courtesy was.
Margaret's face, however, gave Mr. Cowper encouragement and pleasure, and, as he shook hands warmly with her, something in her appearance gave a new spur to his hospitable intentions. The energy of a new nation seemed bottled up within him, as he said to Margaret:
"If I can't get up something here to make you enjoy yourself, why—why don't believe in me any more."
His evident but respectful admiration could only elicit a laugh and a blush. It was impossible to resist Mr. Cowper in his energetic intention to be host, and, in spite of his dazzling headlight, the national generosity and forgetfulness of self were so apparent in him that Margaret "took to him" in a way that mystified the other girls, who regarded the headlight only as a warning beacon placed there by Providence to preserve young ladies with an English boarding-school finish from undesirable associations.
Mr. Cowper was what is called "self-made"—a word that in the States conveys with it no implied slur—for the simple reason that there is not the same necessity for it as in England. Speaking generally, an American has a generous consideration for women and a largeness of character, or rather an absence of smallness, not yet sufficiently recognized as national characteristics. He is generally the same man after "making his pile" as before—not always fully acquainted, perhaps, with social veneer, but kind, keen, and generous to a fault. It would be an insult to such a one to compare him with the "self-made" Englishman, whose rude pretension of superiority to those poorer than himself, truckling servility to rank and position, and ignorance of everything outside his own business render him very unlovely.
"Now," said Mr. Cowper, when he had been introduced to them all. "Now," he said, "we're all solid. We will just step up-stairs, if you please." He looked at them all pleasantly as he offered his arm to assist Mrs. Dusenall's ascent. When they arrived on the veranda above, his idea was that, in order to bring about the perfect concord he desired to see, individual introductions were necessary. To Mrs. Dusenall he introduced a large number of lean girls and stout women, ninety per cent of whom said "pleased to meet you," and Mrs. Dusenall, appearing, with surprising activity of countenance, to be freshly gratified at each introduction, quite won their hearts.
But when Mr. Cowper commenced to introduce them all over again to Margaret, that young person, not being afraid of women, rebelled, and, touching his arm to stay his impetuous career, said: "Oh, no, it will take too long. Let me do it." Then she turned to the company. "As Mr. Cowper says, my name is Mackintosh," and she ducked them a sort of old-fashioned courtesy. The company bowed—some smiling and some solemn at her audacity. "And very much at your service," she added, as she dipped again to the solemn ones—capturing them also. Then she turned to the others. "And this is Miss Dusenall," and so-and-so, and so-and-so, until they were all made known.
"And this is Morry," she said lastly, taking the little man by the coat-sleeve. "Make your bow, Morry."
Rankin remained gazing on the ground until she shook him by the sleeve. Then he took a swift, scared glance at the assembly, and said, "I'm shy," and hid his head behind tall Margaret's shoulder. This absurdity amused the American girls, and five or six of them, forgetting their stiffness, crowded around to encourage him. A beaming matron came up to Margaret and took her kindly by the elbows.
"I must kiss you, my dear. You did that so charmingly."
"Indeed, it's very kind of you to say so," replied Margaret, as she received an affectionate salute. "Long introductions are so tiresome, are they not?"
"They do take time, my dear," said the motherly person, as they sat down together.
"Yes, time and introductions should be taken by the forelock," smiled Margaret.
"Just what you did, my dear. I do wish I had a daughter like you. Oh my!" And the little woman's face grew long for a moment at some sad recollection. An interesting episode of family sorrow would have been confided to Margaret if they had not been interrupted by the arrival of four tall young men, in company with Mr. Withers. The grave, worn-out face of Mr. Withers had just a flicker in it as his strong ratchet-spring voice addressed itself to our party:
"Mrs. Dusenall and friends, permit me to introduce to you the 'Little Frauds.'"
The four tall young men bowed with the usual gravity, and then mixed with the company. They wore untanned leather and canvas shoes, dark-blue stockings, light-colored knickerbocker trousers, and leather belts. Navy-blue flannel shirts, with white silk anchors on the broad collars, completed their costume, with the exception of black neck-ties and stiff white linen caps with horizontal leather peaks. Taken as a whole, their costume was such a happy combination of a baseball player's and a Pullman-car conductor's that the brain refused to believe in the maritime occupation suggested by the white anchors.
Mr. Withers explained who they were.
"The Little Frauds," he said, "are a party of young men who live together in a kind of small shanty on one of the neighboring islands. Although the locality is picturesque, they do not live here during the winter, but only migrate to these parts when—well, when I suppose no other place will have them. They come here every year to enjoy the solitude of a hermit-life. Here they withdraw themselves from their fellow-man, and more especially their fellow-woman."
The gentlemen referred to were taking no manner of notice of Mr. Withers, and in their chatter with the girls were not living up to their character.
"The reason why they are called 'Little Frauds' has now almost ceased to be handed down by the voice of tradition," continued Mr. Withers. "It is not because they are intrinsically more deceptive than other men. No man who had any deception in his nature would go round with a leg like this without resorting to artifice to improve its shape."
Mr. Withers here picked up a blue-covered pipe-stem which served one of the Frauds with the means of locomotion.
"That, ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Withers, slowly, in the tone of a lecturer, and poising the limb in his hand, "is essentially the leg of a hermit. If for no other reason than to hide that leg from the public, its owner, ladies, should become a hermit."
The leg here became instinct with life, and Mr. Withers suddenly stepped back and gasped for breath. Then he explained further:
"Seeing that the origin of the name is now almost lost in obscurity, the Little Frauds themselves have lately taken advantage of this fact, ladies, to palm off upon the public a spurious version of the story. They say, in fact, that because they systematically withdrew themselves into a life of celibacy and retirement, and being, as they claim, very desirable as husbands, this name was given to them as being frauds upon the matrimonial market."
Somebody here called out: "Oh, dry up, Withers!"
Mr. Withers took a glass of champagne from one of the waiters passing with a tray and did quite the reverse. He took two gulps, threw the rest over the railing, and continued:
"One glance, ladies, at these people, who are really outcasts from society, will satisfy you that their explanation of the term is as palpably manufactured as the manuscripts of Mr. Shapira—"
"Mister who?" inquired a profane voice.
"Unaccustomed as they are to the usages of polite society, ladies, you will excuse any utterances on their part that might seem intended to interrupt my discourse. The real reason of this ridiculous name is as follows—"
Here, a remarkably good-looking Fraud stood up before Mr. Withers and obliterated him. He spoke in a voice something like a corn-craik:
"We commissioned Mr. Withers to speak to you, Mrs. Dusenall, and to your party, on a topic of great interest to ourselves, but as the night is likely to pass before Mr. Withers gets to the point, we will have to dispense with his services."
Mr. Withers had already retired behind his cigar again, with the air of a man who had acquitted himself pretty well.
The Frauds then begged leave to invite by word of mouth all our party to a dance next evening on their island.
Mrs. Dusenall accepted for all, as she rose to go, suggesting, at the same time, that perhaps some of her new friends, if they did not think it too late, would accompany them across the water in the moonlight to examine their yacht.
After some conversation, a number went with Mrs. Dusenall in the gig, while Margaret and the rest of our party were ferried over by Frauds and others in their long and comfortable row-boats.
Some more champagne was broached on the yacht, but Mr. Withers said he remembered once, early in life, drinking some of the old rye whisky of Canada, and that since then he had always sought for annexation with that delightful country.
To the surprise of Mrs. Dusenall, both he and all the "Melican men" took rye whisky, and ignored her champagne.
The dismay of Mr. Cowper on hearing that the yacht would depart on the morning after the Frauds' dance was unfeigned. He said it "broke him all up."
"Just when we were getting everything down solid for a little time together," he said.
Mrs. Dusenall explained that the yacht was to take part in a race at Toronto in a few days, and must be on hand to defend her previously won laurels.
"Well, Mrs. Dusenall," said Mr. Cowper thoughtfully, "I have myself, over there in the bay, a small smoke-grinder that—"
"A—what?" inquired Mrs. Dusenall.
"A steamboat, madame—a small steam-yacht. Nothing like this, of course." He waved his hand airily as if he considered himself in a floating palace. "But very comfortable, I do assure you. Now, if you are going away so soon, the only thing I can do is to get you all to visit the different islands round here in my steam-barge. I call her the old roadster, madame, because she can't do her mile in better than three minutes."
As this represented a speed of twenty miles an hour, Mrs. Dusenall said it was fast enough for her. If he could have got a steamboat fast enough to beat the best trotting record Mr. Cowper would have been content.
It was settled that at eleven o'clock next day the steamer should call and take the whole party off to visit the islands; and he suggested that, as there would be "a sandwich or something" on the boat, Mrs. Dusenall need not think about a return to the Ideal for luncheon.
He then gravely addressed himself to the four Frauds and to Mr. Withers:
"Gentlemen, before we leave this elegant vessel, I wish to remind you that no real old Canadian rye whisky will pass our lips again until such a chance as this once more presents itself. Gentlemen, as this is the last drink we will have to-night, we will, with Mrs. Dusenall's permission, make ready our glasses, and we will dedicate and consecrate this toast to the success of the Ideal and her delightful crew. Mrs. Dusenall—ladies and gentlemen of the Ideal—this toast is not only to celebrate our new acquaintance, which we hope may have in the future more chances to ripen into intimacy (and which on our part will never be forgotten), but we drink it also for another reason—for another less worthy reason—and I can not disguise from you the fact that, to speak plainly, we like the liquor. Madame, the gentlemen of the Ideal have consented to come back with me now, to smoke just one cigar on the hotel before we all retire for the night. Citizens of the United States, Frauds, and others, as this is the last drink we are to have to-night, we will drink the toast in silence."
The gravity of the Americans is a huge national sham, throwing into relief their humor and sunshiny good-will, as in a picture a somber gray background throws up the high lights.
In half an hour more all the men were back at the hotel with Mr. Cowper; but, instead of pursuing the tranquil occupation of smoking a cigar, as he proposed, they were led in and confronted with a banquet in which the extensive resources of the hotel had been taxed to the utmost Mr. Cowper called it the "little something to eat," as he pressed them to come from the verandas into the hotel. But really it was a magnificent affair, and, as Mr. Lemons, who was eloquent on the subject, said, it was calculated to appeal to a man's most delicate sensibilities.
We will not follow them any further on this evening. Mr. Cowper's idea was to all have a good time together—banish stiffness, promote intimacy, and to drive to the winds all cares. He certainly succeeded, for at twelve o'clock there was not a "Mister" in the room for anybody. At one o'clock it was "Jack, old man," and "Cowper, old chappie," all round. At two o'clock the friendship on all sides was not only hermetically sealed, but it promised to be eternal, and after that, it was thought the night was a little dark for Charley Dusenall to return with the others to the yacht, so he remained at the hotel till morning.
CHAPTER XIV.
Ferdinand:
... Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard; and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear; for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so full a soul but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed,
And put it to the foil; but you, O you
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature's best.
The Tempest.
The "old roadster" had a busy time of it the next morning preparing for the visit to the islands. She was steaming up and down the river for a long while before our friends knew it was time to get up. At eleven o'clock she took on board the Canadians, and away they went—not at "better" than twenty miles an hour, but pretty fast. Mr. Cowper's hint that the Ideal was magnificent in its fittings had pleased the Dusenalls. They thought he had been somewhat impressed by a swinging chandelier over the cabin table. Mr. Cowper had examined this, found it did not contain the last improvements, said it was splendid, and the Dusenalls were pleased. But their pleasure was damped when they were led into the main cabin of the "old roadster." The crimson silk-plush cushions covering the divan around the apartment, into which they sank somewhat heavily, did not at first afford them complete repose. The window curtains and portières throughout the vessel were all of thick corded silk or silk plush. The walls and ceilings in the cabins were simply a museum of the rarest woods, and in the main cabin was a little tiled fireplace with brass dogs and andirons, its graceful curtains reined in with chains. The cabins alone had cost a fortune, and the Dusenalls were for once completely taken aback. Mrs. Dusenall did not get her head over on one side a la duchesse any more that day, and it ended in her coming to the conclusion that Americans in their hospitalities may frequently have no other motive than to give pleasure. This could only be realized by Britons able to denationalize themselves so far as to understand that there may be a life on earth which is not alternate patronage and sponging. It is to be feared though that most of them receive attentions from Americans only as that which should, in the ordinary course of things, be forthcoming from a people blessed with a proper power to appreciate those excellent qualities of head and heart with which the visitor represents his incomparable nation.
Mr. Cowper did not do things by halves. As they sped about among the many islands the strains of harps and violins came pleasantly from some place about the boat where the musicians could not be seen. A number of people from the hotels and islands were also among Mr. Cowper's guests, and Mr. Withers, as a sort of aid-de-camp, assisted the host in bringing everybody together and in seeing that the colored waiters with trays of iced liquids did their duty. One room down below was reserved for the inspection of "the boys," a room which had received a good deal of personal attention and in which any drink known to the civilized world could be procured. Mr. Withers confidentially invited our friends to name anything liquid under the sun they fancied—from nectar to nitric acid. For himself, he said that "that champagne and stuff" going round on deck was not to his taste, and he had the deft-handed "barkeep" mix one of his own cocktails. His own invention in this direction was composed of eight or ten ingredients, and the Canadians were polite enough to praise the mixture; but, afterward, when among themselves, Jack's confession met with acquiescence when he said it seemed nothing but hell-fire and bitters.
The long, narrow craft threaded its tortuous way like a smooth-gliding fish through the little channels between the islands, passing up small natural harbors or coming alongside a precipitous rock. They several times disembarked to see how much art had assisted nature on the different islands, and viewed the fishponds, summer houses, awnings, and hammocks, and the taste displayed in the picturesque dwellings. Mr. Cowper's assurances that the owners of the islands would not object to be caught in any kind of occupation or garment were corroborated by the warm welcomes extended to them. Such is the freedom of the American citizen, that a good many of the islanders who heard Mr. Cowper was having a picnic "guessed they'd go along, too." It was evidently expected that they would do just as they liked, without being invited; in fact, Mr. Cowper loudly objected in several cases, declaring he had no provisions for them. "Never mind, old man, we're not proud. We'll whack up with your last crust, and bring a pocket-flask for ourselves."
This seemed friendly.
Of course the lunch, which was found to be spread under a large marquee on a distant island, was really another banquet. The hotel retinue had been up all night preparing for it. The waiters, glass, table-linen, flowers, and everything else showed what money could do in the way of transformation scenes. The only fault about it was that it was too magnificent for a picnic. It can not be a picnic when there is no chance of eating sand with your game-pie, no chance of carrying pails of water half a mile, no difficulty in keeping stray cows, dogs, and your own feet out of the table-cloth spread upon the ground. And when the trip in the steamer had ended and most of our crew were having a little doze on the Ideal during the latter part of the afternoon, the curiosity which Mr. Cowper had awakened was still at its height.
After dinner that evening, about eight o'clock, a pretty picture might have been made of the Ideal, as she lay in the shadows, moored to a well-wooded island where the rock banks seemed to dive perpendicularly into blue fathomless depths. The party were taking their coffee in the open air for greater coolness, and all had arrayed themselves for the dance in the evening. The delicately shaded muslins and such thin fabrics as the ladies wore blended pleasantly with the soft evening after-glow that fell upon the rustling trees and running water. Seated on the overhanging rocks beside the yacht, or perched up on the stowed mainsail, they not only supplied soft color to the darkling evening hues, but seemed to have a glow of their own, and reminded one of Chinese lanterns lit before it is dark. This may have been only a fancy, helped out by radiant faces and the slanting evening lights, but, even if the simile fails, they were certainly prepared to shine as brightly as they knew how at the ball later on.
The little basswood canoe, with its comfortable rugs and cushions, lay beside the yacht, bobbing about in the evening breeze, and Margaret sat dreamily watching its wayward movements.
"A penny for your thoughts?" asked somebody.
"I was thinking," answered Margaret, "that the canoe is the only craft that ought to be allowed in these waters, and that the builders of houses on these islands ought to realize that the only dwelling artistically correct should be one that either copies or suggests the wigwam. No one can come among these islands without wondering how long the Indians lived here. All the Queen Anne architecture we have seen to-day has seemed to me to be altogether misplaced."
"What you suggest could hardly be expected here," said Geoffrey, "because, putting aside the difficulty of building a commodious house which would still resemble a wigwam, there remains the old difficulty of getting people to see in imagination what is not before them—the old difficulty that gave us the madonnas, saints, and heroes as Dutch, Italian, or English, according to the nationality of the painter. Of all the pictures of Christ scattered over Europe, none that I have seen could have been like a person living much in the open air of the Holy Land. They will paint Joseph as brown as the air there will make anybody, because it does not matter about Joseph, but the Christs are always ideal."
"Still, I am sure something might be done to carry out my idea," said Margaret, keeping to the subject. "Surely localities have the same right to be illustrated according to their traditions that nations have to expect that their heroes shall be painted so as to show their nationality. No one would paint the Arab desert and leave out the squat black tent, the horse, and all the other adjuncts of the Bedouin. Why, then, build Queen Anne houses in a place where the mind refuses to think of anything but the Indian?"
"Perhaps," said Hampstead, "the case here is unique. It is difficult to find a parallel. But the same idea would present itself if one attempted to build an English Church in the Moorish style instead of the Gothic or something similar. I fancy that the subscribers would feel that the traditions of their race and native land were not being properly represented, as you say, in their architecture—that they would resent an Oriental luxury of outline suggesting only Mohammed's luxurious religion, and that nothing would suit them but the high, severe, and moral aspect of their own race, religion, and churches. By the way, did you ever consider how the moral altitude of each religion throughout the world is indelibly stamped in the very shape of each one's houses of worship. Begin at the whimsical absurdities of the Chinese, and come westward to the monstrosities of India, then to the voluptuous domes of the Moor and the less voluptuous domes of Constantinople, then to the still less Oriental domes of Rome, then to the fortress-like rectangular Norman, then to the lofty, refined, severe, upward-pointing Gothic of Germany and England. Each church along the whole line, by its mere external shape, will tell of the people and religion that built it better than a host of words."
"If that be so, it would seem like retrograding in architecture to suggest the Indian wigwam here," said Jack. "What do you say, Margaret?"
"I think that this is not a place where national aspirations in monuments need be looked for. Its claims must always be on the side of simple nature and the picturesque—a place for hard workers to recuperate in, and, therefore, the poetry of all its early traditions should in every way be protected and suggested."
"Of course, I suppose, Miss Margaret, the Indian you wish to immortalize is John Fenimore Cooper's Indian, and that you have no reference to Batoche half-breeds. Perhaps after a while we may see the genius of this place suggested further, but I think the Americans have had too much trouble in exterminating 'Lo, the poor Indian' to wish to be reminded of his former existence, and that the savagery of Queen Anne is sufficient for them. 'Lo' has, for them, no more poetry than a professional tramp. Out West, you know, they read it 'Loathe the poor Indian.'"
"They don't loathe the poor Indian everywhere," said Rankin, as he remembered an item about the dusky race. "You know our act forbidding people to work on Sunday makes a provision for the unconverted heathen, and says 'this act shall not apply to Indians.' Some time ago a man at the Falls of Niagara was accustomed to run an elevator on Sunday to carry tourists up and down the cliff to the Whirlpool Rapids. His employés were prosecuted for carrying on their business on the Sabbath day. When the following Sunday arrived, a quite civilized remnant of the Tuscarora tribe were running the entire business at splendid profits, and claimed, apparently with success, that the law could not touch them."
While this desultory talk was going on, Margaret was still watching the little canoe bobbing about on the water. Geoffrey said to her: "Those rugs and cushions in the canoe look very inviting, do they not?"
Margaret nodded.
"I know what you are thinking about," he whispered. "You want to go away in the canoe, and dream over the waters and glide about from island to island and imagine yourself an Indian princess."
She nodded again brightly.
"Well, if my dress-coat will not interfere with your imagining me a 'great brave,' you might get your gloves, fan, and shawl, and we can go for a sail, and come in later on at the dance. If the coat spoils me you can think of me as John Smith, and of yourself as Pocahontas."
As Margaret nestled down into the cushions of the canoe, Geoffrey stepped a little mast that carried a handkerchief of a sail, and, getting in himself, gave a few vigorous strokes with the paddle, which sent the craft flying from under the lee of the island. As the sail filled and they skimmed away, he called out to Mrs. Dusenall that they would go and see the people at the hotels, and would meet them at the dance about nine o'clock. From the course taken by the butterfly of a boat, which was in any direction except toward the hotels, this explanatory statement appeared to be a mere transparency.
Nina's spirits sank to low ebb when she saw these two going off together.
They sailed on for some distance in open water, and then, as the sail proved unsatisfactory, Margaret took it down, and they commenced a sinuous course among small islands. The dusk of the evening had still some of the light of day in it, but the moon was already up and endeavoring to assert her power. Everybody had given up wearing hats, which had become unnecessary in such weather. As they glided about, Geoffrey sometimes faced the current with long, silent strokes that gave no idea of exertion foreign to the quiet charm of the scene, and at other times the paddle dragged lazily through the water as he sat back and allowed the canoe to drift along on the current close to the rocky islands. They floated past breezy nooks where the ferns and mosses filled the interstices between rocks and tree roots, where trees had grown up misshapenly between the rocks, under wild creeping vines that drooped from the overhanging boughs and swept the flowing water. Hardly a word had been spoken since they left the yacht. For Margaret, there was enough in the surroundings to keep her silent. She had yielded herself to the full enjoyment of the balmy air and faint evening glows, changing landscape, and sound of gurgling water. Her own appearance as seen from the other end of the canoe did not tend to spoil the view. Her happy face and graceful lines, and the full neck that tapered out of the open-throated evening dress did not seem out of harmony with anything. Reclining on one elbow against a cushioned thwart, she leaned forward and altered the course of the light bark by giving a passing rock a little push with her fan.
They were now passing a sort of natural harbor on the shore of one of the islands. It had been formed by the displacement of a huge block of granite from the side of the rock wall, and the roots and trunks of trees had roofed it in.
Geoffrey pointed it out for inspection, and they landed lower down so that they could walk back to a spot like that to which Shelley's Rosalind and Helen came.
To a stone seat beside a stream,
O'er which the columned wood did frame
A rootless temple, like a fane
Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
Man's early race once knelt beneath
The overhanging Deity.
Here they rested, while Margaret, lost in the charm of the surroundings, exclaimed:
"Could anything be more delightful than this?"
Geoffrey had always been conscious of something in Margaret's presence which, seemingly without demand, exacted finer thought and led him to some unknown region which other women did not suggest. When with her he divined that it was by some such influence that men are separately civilized, and that, with her, his own civilization was possible. Every short-lived, ill-considered hope for the future seemed now so entangled with her identity that her existence had become in some way necessary to him. He had come to know this by discovering how unfeigned was the earnestness with which he angled for her good opinion, and he was rather puzzled to note his care lest "a word too much or a look too long" might spoil his chances of arriving at some higher, happier life that her presence assisted him vaguely to imagine. Nevertheless, so great was his doubt as to his own character that all this seemed to him as if he must be merely masquerading in sheep's clothing to gain her consideration, and that it must in some way soon come to an end from his own sheer inability to live up to it. All he knew was that this living up to an ideal self was a civilizing process, and if he did not count upon its permanency it certainly, he thought, did him no harm while it lasted. "After all, was it not possible to continue in the upper air?"
While his thoughts were running in this channel, such a long pause elapsed, that Margaret had forgotten what he was answering to when he said decisively: "Yes. It is pleasant."
She looked around at him because his voice sounded as if he had been weighing other things than the scenery in his head.
"Oh, it is more than pleasant," she said. "It is something never to forget." Margaret looked away over earth, water, and sky, as if to point them out to interpret her enthusiasm. Her range of view apparently did not include Geoffrey. Perhaps he was to understand from this that he, personally, had little or nothing to do with her pleasure. But a glimpse of one idea suggested more serious thought, and the next moment she was wondering how much he had to do with her present thorough content.
Geoffrey, who was watching her thoughts by noticing the half smile and half blush that came to her face, felt his heart give a little bound. He imagined he divined the presence of the thought that puzzled her, but he answered in the off-hand way in which one deals with generalities.
"I believe, Miss Margaret, this whole trip provides you with great happiness."
"I believe it does," said Margaret. To conceal a sense of consciousness she uprooted a rush growing at the edge of the rock seat.
"Well, that is a great thing, to know when you are happy. Happiness is a difficult thing to get at."
"Do you find it so hard to be happy?"
"I think I do," said Geoffrey. "That is, to be as much so as I would like."
"You must be rather difficult to please."
"No doubt it is a mistake not to be happy all the time," replied Geoffrey. "There is such a thing, however, as chasing happiness about the world too long. She shakes her wings and does not return, and leaves us nothing but not very exalting memories of times when we seem, as far as we can recollect, to have been only momentarily happy."
"For me, I think that I could never forget a great happiness, that it would light up my life and make it bearable no matter what the after conditions might be," said Margaret thoughtfully.
"Just so," answered Geoffrey lightly. "There's the rub. How's a fellow to cultivate a great happiness when he never can catch up to it. I don't know of any path in which I have not sought for the jade, but I can look back upon a life largely devoted to this chase and honestly say that beyond a few gleams of poor triumph I never think of my existence except as a period during which I have been forced to kill time."
"That is because you are not spiritually minded," said Margaret, smiling.
"I suppose you mean consistently spiritually minded," said Geoffrey. "No doubt some who live for an exalted hereafter may sometimes know what actual joy is, but this can only approach continuity where one has great imaginative ambition and weak primitive leanings. For most people the chances of happiness in spirituality are not good. Happily, the savage mind can not grasp the intended meaning of either the promised rewards or punishments continually, if at all; and this inability saves them from going mad. Of course the more men improve themselves the more they may rejoice, both for themselves and their posterity, but mere varnished savages like myself have a poor chance to gain happiness in consistent spirituality. It is foolish to suppose that we are free agents. A high morality and its own happiness are an heirloom—a desirable thing—which our forefathers have constructed for us."
"I have sometimes thought," said Margaret, "that if happiness depends upon one's goodness it is not necessarily that goodness which we are taught to recognize as such. Goodness seems to be relative and quite changeable among different people. Some of the best people under the Old Testament would not shine as saints under the New Testament, yet the older people were doubtless happy enough in their beliefs. Desirable observances necessary to a Mohammedan's goodness are not made requisite in any European faith, and yet our people are not unhappy on this account. Nobody can doubt that pagan priests were, and are, completely happy when weltering in the blood of their fellow-creatures, and, if it be true that conscience is divinely implanted in all men, that under divine guidance it is an infallible judge between good and evil, that one may be happy when his conscience approves his actions, and that therefore happiness comes from God, how is it that the pagan priest while at such work is able to think himself holy and to rejoice in it with clearest conscience? It would seem, from this, that there must be different goodnesses diametrically opposed to each other which are equally-pleasing to Him and equally productive of happiness to individuals."
Geoffrey smiled at her, as they talked on in their usual random way, for it seemed that she was capable of piecing her knowledge together in the same sequence (or disorder) that he did himself. One is well-disposed toward a mind whose processes are similar to one's own. He smiled, too, at her attempts to reconcile facts with the idea of beneficence toward individuals on the part Of the powers behind nature. For his part, he had abandoned that attempt.
"I have a rule," he said, "which seems to me to explain a good deal, namely, if a person can become persuaded that he is rendered better or more spiritual by following out his natural desires, he is one of the happiest of men. The pagan priest you mentioned was gratifying his natural desires, his love of power and love of cruelty—which in conjunction with his beliefs made him feel more godly. Mohammed built his vast religion on the very corner-stone of this rule. Priests are taught from the beginning to guard and increase the power of the Church. This is their first great trust, and it becomes a passion. Their natural love of power is utilized for this purpose. For this object, history tells us that no human tie is too sacred to be torn asunder and trampled on. Natural love of dominion in a man can be trained into such perfect accord with the desired dominion of a priesthood that he may feel not only happy but spiritually improved in carrying out anything his Church requires him to do—no matter what that may be."
Geoffrey-stopped, as he noticed that Margaret shuddered. "You are feeling cold," he said.
"No, I was only thinking of some of the priests' faces. They terrify me so. I don't want to interrupt you, but what do you think makes them look like that?"
Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know," he answered. "Perhaps interpreting the supernatural has with some of them a bad effect upon the countenance. All one can say is that many of them bear in their faces what in other classes of men I consider to be unmistakable signs that their greatest happiness consists in something which must be concealed from the public." Hampstead spoke with the tired smile of one who on an unpleasant subject thinks more than he will say.
"Let us not speak of them. They make me think of Violet Keith, and all that sort of thing. Go back to what you were saying. It seems to me that the most refined and educated followers of different faiths do not gain happiness in spirituality in the way you suggest. Your rule does not seem to apply to them."
"I think it does," answered Geoffrey, with some of that abruptness which in a man's argument with a woman seems to accept her as a worthy antagonist from the fact that politeness is a trifle forgotten. "You refer to men whose mental temperament is stronger in controlling their daily life than any other influence—men with high heads, who seem made of moral powers—ideality, conscientiousness, and all the rest of them. They have got the heirloom I spoke of. They are gentle from their family modification. These few, indeed, can, I imagine, be happy in religion, for this reason. There has been in their families for many generations a production of mental activity, which exists more easily in company with a high morality than with satisfactions which would only detract from it. With such men it may be said that their earlier nature has partly changed into what the rule applies to equally well. With ordinary social pressure and their own temperaments they would still, even without religion, be what they are; because any other mode of life does not sufficiently attract them. Their ancestors went through what we are enduring now."
"But," said Margaret—and she continued to offer some objections, chiefly to lead Geoffrey to talk on. However incomplete his reasoning might be, his strong voice was becoming music to her. She did not wish it to stop. Both her heart and her mind seemed impelled toward both him and his way of thinking by the echo of the resonant tones which she heard within herself. Being a woman, she found this pleasant. "But," she said, "people who are most imperfect surely may have great happiness in their faith?"
"At times. Yes," replied he. "But their happiness is temporary, and necessarily alternates with an equal amount of misery. The loss of a hope capable of giving joy must certainly bring despair in the same proportion, inversely, as the hope was precious. All ordinary men with any education alternate more or less between the enjoyment of the energetic mental life and the duller following of earlier instincts, and when, in the mental life, they allow themselves to delight in immaterial hopes and visions, there is unhappiness when the brain refuses to conjure up the vision, and most complete misery after there has occurred that transition to their older natures which must at times supervene, unless they possess the great moral heirloom, or perhaps a refining bodily infirmity to assist them. Ah! this struggle after happiness has been a long one. Solomon, and all who seek it in the way he did, find their mistake. Pleasure without ideality is a paltry thing and leads to disgust. Religion-makers have hovered about the idea contained in my rule to make their creeds acceptable. In this idea Mohammed pleased many. Happiness in spirituality can only be continuous for men when they come to have faces like some passionless but tender-hearted women, and still retain the wish to imagine themselves as something like gods."
Geoffrey paused.
"Go on," said Margaret, turning her eyes slowly from looking at the running water without seeing it. She said very quietly: "Go on; I like to hear you talk." The spell of his presence was upon her. There was the soft look in her eyes of a woman who is beginning to find it pleasant to be in some way compelled, and for a moment her tones, looks, and words seemed to be all a part of a musical chord to interpret her response to his influence. Geoffrey looked away. The time for trusting himself to look into the eyes that seemed very sweet in their new softness had not arrived. For the first time he felt certain that he had affected her favorably. Almost involuntarily he took a couple of steps to the water's edge and back again.
"What is there more to say?" said he, smiling. "We neither hope very much nor fear very much nowadays. Men who have no scientific discovery in view or who can not sufficiently idealize their lives gradually cease expecting to be very happy. To men like myself religions are a more or less developed form of delusion, bringing most people joy and despair alternately and leading others to insanity. We know that religions commenced in fear and in their later stages have been the result of a seeking for happiness and consolation. To us the idea of immortality is but a development of the inherent conceit we notice in the apes. We do not allow ourselves the pleasing fantasy that because brain power multiplies itself and evolves quickly we are to become as gods in the future. If we do not hope much neither do we despair. Still, there is a capacity for joy within us which sometimes seems to be cramped by the level and unexciting mediocrity of existence. We do not readily forget the beautiful hallucinations of our youth; and for most of us there will, I imagine, as long as the pulses beat, be an occasional and too frequent yearning for a joy able to lift us out of our humdrum selves."
Margaret felt a sort of sorrow for Geoffrey. Although he spoke lightly, something in his last words struck a minor chord in her heart. "Your words seem too sad," she said after a pause.
"I do not remember speaking sadly," said he.
"No; but to believe all this seems sad when we consider the joyful prospects of others. You seem to put my vague ideas into coherent shape. The things you have said seem to be correct, and yet" (here she looked up brightly) "somehow they don't seem to exactly apply to me. I never had strong hopes nor visions about immortality. They never seemed necessary for my happiness. Small things please me. I am nearly always fairly happy. Small things seem worth seeking and small pleasures worth cultivating."
"Because you have not lived your life. Do you imagine that you will always be content with small pleasures?" asked Geoffrey quickly as he watched her thoughtful face.
Margaret suddenly felt constraint. After the many and long interviews she had had with Geoffrey she had always come away feeling as if she had learned something. What it was that she had learned might have been hard for her to say. His conversation seemed to her to have a certain width and scope about it, and to her he seemed to grasp generalities and present them in his own condensed form; but she had been unconsciously learning more than was contained in his conversation. His words generally appealed in some way to her intellect; but tones of voice go for a good deal. Perhaps in making love the chief use of words is first to attract the attention of the other person. Perhaps they do not amount to much and could be dispensed with entirely, for we see that a dozen suitors may unsuccessfully plead their cause with a young woman in similar words until some one appears with tones of voice to which she vibrates. Perhaps it matters little what he says if he only continues to speak—to make her vibrate. Certainly Cupid studied music before he ever studied etymology. Hampstead had never said a word to her about love, but the resonant tones, his concentration, and the magnetism of his presence, were doing their work without any usual formulas.
The necessity of answering his question now brought the idea to her with a rush that Geoffrey had taught her perhaps too much—that he had taught her things different from what she thought she was learning—that the simplicity of her life would never be quite the same again. She became conscious of a movement in her pulses before unknown to her that made her heart beat like a prisoned bird against its cage, that made her whole being seem to strain forward toward an unknown joy which left all the world behind it. In the whirl of feeling came the impulse to conceal her face lest he should detect her thoughts, and she bent her head to arrange her lace shawl, as if preparatory to going away. She looked off over the water, so that she could answer more freely. Her answer came haltingly.
"Something tells me," she said, "that the small pleasures I have known will not always be enough for me." Then faster: "But, of course, all young people feel like this now and then. I think our conversation has excited me a little."
She arose, and walked a step or two, trying to quell the tumult within her.
"We must be going. It is late," she said in a way that showed her self-command.
Geoffrey arose also, to go away, and they walked to the higher ground. Suddenly Margaret felt that for some reason she wished to remember the appearance of this place for all her life, and she turned to view it again. The moon was silvering the tracery of vines and foliage and the surface of the twisting water, and giving dark-olive tones to the shadowed underbrush close by. The large hotels could be seen through a gap in the islands with their many lights twinkling in the distance; a lighthouse, not far off, sent a red gleam twirling and twisting across the current toward them, and a whip-poor-will was giving forth its notes, while the waltz music from the far-away island floated dreamily on the soft evening breeze. Geoffrey said nothing. He, too, was under the influence of the scene. For once he was afraid to speak to a woman—afraid to venture what he had to say—to win or lose all. He thought it better to wait, and stood beside her almost trembling. But Margaret had had no experience in dealing with the new feelings that warred for mastery within her, and she showed one of her thoughts, as if in soliloquy. She was too innocent. The vague pressures were too great to allow her to be silent, and the words came forth with hasty fervor.
"No, no! You must be wrong when you say there is nothing in the world worth living for?"
"No, not so," interrupted Geoffrey. "I did not say that. I said that life, for many of us, was mediocre, because ideals were scarce and imaginations did not find scope. But there is a better life—I know there is—the better life of sympathy—of care—of joy—of love."
As she listened, each deep note that Geoffrey separately brought forth filled her with an overwhelming gladness. When he spoke slowly of sympathy, care, joy, and love, the words were freighted with the musical notes of a strong man's passion, and they seemed to bring a new meaning to her, one deeper than they had ever borne before.
Earth and heaven seemed one,
Life a glad trembling on the outer edge
Of unknown rapture.
What a transparent confession the love of a great nature may be suddenly betrayed into! The tears welled up into Margaret's eyes, and, partly to check the speech that moved her too strongly, and partly to steady herself, and chiefly because she did not know what she was doing, she laid her hand upon his arm.
He trembled as he tried to continue calmly with what he had been saying. He did not move his arm or take her hand, but her touch was like electricity.
"I know there is such a life—a perfect life—and that there might be such a life for me, a life that more than exhausts my imagination to conceive of. You were wrong in saying that I said—that is, I only said—oh, I can't remember what I said—I only know that I worship you, Margaret—that you are my heaven, my hereafter—the only good I know—with power to make or mar, to raise me from myself and to gild the whole world for me—"
Margaret put up her hand to stay the torrent of his utterance. She had to. For, now that he gave rein to his wish, the forceful words seemed to overwhelm her and seize and carry off her very soul. He took her hand between both of his, and, still fearful lest she might give some reason for sending him away, he pleaded for himself in low tones that seemed to bring her heart upon her lips, and when he said: "Could you care for me enough to let me love you always, Margaret?" she looked half away and over the landscape to control her voice. Her tall, full figure rose, like an Easter lily, from the folds of the lace shawl which had fallen from her shoulders. Her eyes, dewy with overmuch gladness and wide with new emotions, turned to Geoffrey's as she said, half aloud—as if wondering within herself:
"It must be so, I suppose."
When she looked at him thus, Geoffrey was beyond speech. He drew her nearer to him, touching her reverently. He did not know himself in the fullness Of the moment. To find himself incoherent was new to him. She was so peerless—such a vision of loveliness in the moonlight! The thought that he now had a future before him—that soon she would be with him for always—that soon they would be the comfort, the sympathy, the cheer, and the joy of one another! It was all unspeakable.
Margaret placed both her hands upon his shoulder as he drew her nearer, and, as she laid her cheek upon her wrists, she said again, as if still wondering within herself:
"It must be so, I suppose. I did not know that I loved you, Geoffrey. Oh, why are you so masterful?"
A little while after this they approached the island, where the ball was at its height, and it seemed to Margaret that all this illumination of Chinese lanterns, ascending in curving lines to the tree tops—that all the music, dancing, and gayety were part of the festival going on within her. As Geoffrey strode into the ball-room with Margaret on his arm he carried his head high. A man who appeared well in any garb, in evening dress he looked superb. Some who saw him that night never forgot how he seemed to typify the majesty of manhood, and how other people seemed dwarfed to insignificance when Margaret and he entered. If only a modified elasticity appeared in her step, the wonder was she did not skip down the room on her toes. They went toward Mrs. Dusenall, who came forward and took Margaret by the elbows and gave them a little shake.
"You naughty girl, how late you are! Dear child, how beautiful you look! Where—?"
Some imp of roguery got into Margaret. She bent forward and whispered to her motherly friend.
"Dear mother," she whispered, "we landed on an island, and Geoffrey kissed me."
"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Dusenall, not knowing what to think. "Why—but of course it's all right. Of course he did, my dear—he could not do anything else—and so will I. And so you are engaged?"
At this Margaret tried to look grave and to shock Mrs. Dusenall again.
"I don't know. I don't think we got as far as saying anything about that." Then, turning to Geoffrey, with simplicity, "Are we engaged?"
"Girl! are my words but as wind that you should mock me with their emptiness? Come and let us dance, for it is advocated by the preacher." And they danced.
When Nina had seen Mrs. Dusenall kiss Margaret on her late arrival, she knew its meaning at once, and her heart sickened.
Pretty playthings seemed in some way rather degrading to Geoffrey that night, and Nina was able to speak to him only for a moment, just before all were going away. She then pretended to know nothing about the engagement, and said, with cat-like sweetness:
"I thought you did not care for Margaret's dancing much? I see she must have improved, as you have been with her all the evening."
Geoffrey answered gravely; "I believe you are right; there is a difference. Yes, I did not think of it before, but, now you speak of it, there does seem to have been an improvement in her dancing."
"Ah!" said Nina.
As Geoffrey paddled the canoe back to the yacht that night, or rather morning, and the Yankee band had finished a complimentary God save the Queen, and after the last cheer had been exchanged, Margaret said to him in the darkness, just before they parted:
"If there were no more happiness to follow, Geoffrey, to-night would last me all my life!"
CHAPTER XV.
How like a younker, or a prodigal,
The scarfed bark puts from her native bay,
Hugged and embraced by the wanton wind.
How like the prodigal doth she return,
With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails.
Lean, rent, and beggared by the wanton wind.
Merchant of Venice.
Next morning the deck of the Ideal was all activity.
A strong northeasterly wind had sprung up, so that by a rare chance they were able to sail up the current instead of employing a tug. Only the paid hands and one or two others were on deck as they struggled up the stream till near Clayton. Here the channels opened out, the current seemed to ease up, and they got the wind continuously as she boiled up to Kingston. The steward went ashore at the city, and there was a delay while he was getting in more ice for the refrigerator, and poultry, and other supplies. Then they went off again, flying before the wind, past the wharves of Kingston toward Snake Island lying hull down and showing nothing but its tree-tops.
Breakfast was very irregular that day—terribly so, the steward thought. He was preparing breakfast at any and all times up to twelve o'clock, and after that it was called luncheon. No troublesome bell awoke the tired sleepers, no colored man came to take away their beds as on the sleeping-cars. The dancers of the previous night tumbled up, more or less thirsty, just when the spirit moved them, and, as all had a fair quantum of sleep in this way, there were no bad tempers on board, except—well, the steward knew enough to look pleasant.
It was a fine start they made. But it did not last long. During the night the heavy water-laden atmosphere began to break up into low clouds that went flying across the face of the moon, producing weird effects in alternate light and darkness. They were soon close-hauled on a wind from the southward, and before the port of Charlotte was reached they had a long tussle with a stiff breeze from the west—topmast housed, two reefs down, and the lee-scuppers busy.
At dawn, when they went into Charlotte, it was blowing a gale. Not a Cape Horn gale, perhaps, but a good enough gale, and the water was lively around the pier-heads. Several vessels could be seen up the lake, running down to the harbor for shelter, and wallowing in the sea. So they ran the yacht far up into the harbor between the piers, and made fast as far away from the lake as they could get, to avoid being fouled by incoming vessels, and to escape the heavy swell that found its way in from outside. An hour after the sailing vessels had made the port the mail-line steamer Eleusinian came yawing in, with some of her windows in bad shape, and glad to get in out of the sea.
Next morning it was blowing harder than ever. Everything outside the cabins was disagreeable. The water they floated in seemed to be principally mud, and on land the mud seemed principally water. Some of the adventurous waded through the mire to see the works for smelting iron in the neighborhood. But the only thing resembling fun outside the boat was trying to walk on the piers. Two figures, to which yellow oilskin suits lent their usual grace, would support a third figure, clad in a long water-proof, resembling a sausage. These three would make a dash through the wind and seize a tall post or a spile for mooring vessels, and here they would pause, hold on, and recover their lost breath. Then, slanting into the wind, they would make a sort of tack, partly to windward, till they reached the next spile, and so on, while occasionally they would be deluged with the top of a wave. The fun of this consisted in the endeavor to avoid being blown into the water. Certainly the sausage could not have gone alone. After several hours in the cabin the element of change in this exercise made it quite a pastime. It cooled the blood and took away the fidgets, and, on returning, made the cabins seem a pleasant shelter instead of a prison.
So far there had been no chance to leave the harbor for the purpose of reaching Toronto. The wind was dead ahead from that quarter. Young Dusenall was watching the weather continually, very anxious to get away to be in time for the yacht race there on the 7th and 8th. He was over at the steamboat hobnobbing with the captain of the Eleusinian, who was also anxious to get on with his vessel. What with whisky and water, nautical magic, and one thing or another between the two of them they got the wind to go down suddenly about five o'clock that evening. Charley came back in high good-humor. The captain had offered to tow the Ideal behind the steamer to Toronto, and nothing but a long, rolling sea, with no wind to speak of, could be noticed outside.
Jack did not like going to sea hitched up, Mazeppa-like, to a steamer, and he had misgivings as to the weather. The leaden-colored clouds, banked up in the west, were moving slowly down the lake like herded elephants. They did not yet look pacific, and he feared that they would make another stampede before the night was over. He declared it was only looking for another place to blow from. Charley answered that the race came off on the day after to-morrow, and, as they had to get to Toronto somehow, why not behind the steamer? As Jack was unable to do any more than say what he thought, he suggested "that, if the boat must go out in this sort of way during bad weather, that the women had better take the train home." The trip in the yacht promised to be unpleasant, but when Mrs. Dusenall considered the long, dusty, and hot journey around the western end of the lake she decided to "stick to the ship."
At seven o'clock in the evening they were flying out of port behind the steamer at the end of a long hawser. A heavy dead swell was rolling outside, and the way the Ideal got jerked from one wave to another boded ill for the comfort of the passage. Charley hung on, however, thinking that this was the worst of it and that the sea would go down.
The night grew very dark, and two hours afterward the gale commenced again, and blew harder than before from the same quarter. Every time they plunged hard into a wave the decks would be swept from stem to stern, while a blinding spray covered everything. If they had cast off at this time they could have sailed back to Charlotte in safety, but Charley was bound to see Toronto, and held on.
Suddenly, in the wildness of the night, they heard a crack of breaking timber, and the next moment the tall mast whipped back toward the stern like a bending reed. A few anxious moments passed before those aft could find out what had happened. In the darkness, and the further obscurity caused by the flying water, the bowsprit had fouled the towline. The bowstays had at once parted and, perhaps assisted by the recoil of the mast, the bowsprit had snapped off, like a carrot, close to the stem.
This large piece of timber was now in the water, acting like a battering-ram against the starboard bow, with the stowed staysail, and all the head gear, attached to it. There was no use trying to clear away the wreck by endeavoring to chop through all the wire rigging, chains, forestays, bowsprit shrouds, bobstays, and running gear, all adrift in a mass that would have taken a long time to cut away or disentangle, even in daylight and calm water. Besides this, one could not see his hand held before his face, except by lantern-light, and such was the unnatural pitching of the yacht that it was almost impossible to stand without holding on to something. Charley, who was steering, asked of one of the English hands, who was carefully crawling aft to take the wheel, "How's everything forward?" To Charley's mind the reply seemed to epitomize things as the man touched his hat and answered respectfully, "Gone to 'ell, sir." He spat on the watery deck, as he said this, while a blast of wind and half a ton of water from the bows swept away so effectually both the remark and the tobacco juice that Mr. Lemons could not help absurdly thinking of the tears of Sterne's recording angel. The sailor was very much disgusted at the condition of things, and both he and his remark were so free from any appearance of timidity that the Hon. M. T. Head felt like giving him five dollars. While on shore, the honorable gentleman was accustomed to emphasize his language, but, in the present crisis, no wild horses could have dragged from him a questionable word.
Geoffrey's long arms and strength came in well that night. At the first crack of the timber he slid out of his oil-skins for work, and his was one of those cool heads that alone are of use at such a time. On a sailing vessel the first effect of a bad accident in the night-time is to paralyze thought. The danger and the damage are at first unknown. The blackness of the night, the sounds of things smashing, the insecurity of foothold, the screaming of the wind, and the tumbling of the waters, all tend to kill that energy and concentration of thought which, to be useful, must rise above these enervating influences.
Jack had had more experience than Geoffrey, and thus knew better what to do. But Geoffrey, for his part, was "all there." When he was hanging down over the side, and climbing about to get the floating, banging mass of wreckage attached to the throat-halyards, the tops of the waves that struck him were unable to wash him away, and when he had succeeded in his efforts, the wreckage was hoisted bodily inboard.
The fellows at the wheel were momentarily expecting the mast to snap and fall backward on their heads, as there was now no forestay on it. The worst fault of the sloop-rig here became apparent. Unlike cutters, sloops have no forestay leading from the masthead down to the stem, but one leading only to the outer end of the bowsprit, and when the bowsprit carries away, as it frequently does, the mast then has nothing but its own strength to save it from snapping in a sudden recoil.
What made the plunging of the mast worse was that the lower-mast backstays had both carried away at the deck, as also had the topmast backstays, after pulling the head off the housed topmast. All this heavy wire rigging, with its blocks, immediately became lost to sight. It was streaming out aft on the gale from the masthead, together with every other line that had a chance to get adrift. If a halyard got loose from its belaying pin that night it was not seen again. It said good-by to the deck and went to join the flying mass overhead, that afterward by degrees wound itself round and round the topping-lifts and peak-halyards, effectually preventing the hoisting of the mainsail. The long and heavy main-boom, which had long since kicked its supporting crutch overboard, was now lowered down to rest on the cabin-top, so as to take the weight off the mast; and while the end of it dragged in the boiling caldron behind the counter, the middle part of it rose and fell with every pitch, in spite of endeavors to lash it down, until it seemed that the cabin-top would certainly give way. Had the top caved in, the chances of swamping were good.
Their power to sail by means of the canvas was now virtually gone. Nothing was left for them but to follow the huge "smoke-grinding" mass that yawed and pitched in front of them. One or two men were kept at the stern of the steamer during this part of the night, to report any signals of distress and to aid the yacht's steering by showing bright lights. Near to these bright lights the figure of the captain could be seen from time to time through the night, anxiously watching the lights on the yacht, which told him that she still survived. Sometimes he was apparently calling out to those on the yacht, but of course no sound could be heard.
The ladies were in their cabins all this time, sorry enough that they had not taken the railway home.
When the mast was stayed forward, by setting up the staysail-halyards, etc., at the stem, there was nothing to do on deck but steer and keep watch, and as nearly everything had been carried away except the whale boat, Geoffrey went below for dry clothes and, feeling tired with his hard work, took a nap in one of the bunks in the after-cabin. As the sailors say, he "turned in all standing"—that is, with his clothes on.
The other men remained on deck. Most of them were drenched to the skin and were becoming gradually colder in the driving spray and heavy swashes of solid wave that swept the decks with clock-like regularity. They thought it better to remain where they could at least swim for a while if the yacht went down, and they preferred exposure to the idea of being drowned like rats in the cabin.
After some time Geoffrey awoke, feeling that a soft warm hand was being passed around his chin. He knew it was Margaret before he got his eyes open. He peered at her for a moment without raising his head. She was sitting on the seat outside, looking very despairing.
"Oh, Geoffrey," she said, "I think we are going to the bottom."
Geoffrey listened, with his eyes shut, and heard both pumps clanging outside. Margaret thought he was going off to sleep again. She was very frightened, and the fear seemed to draw her toward Geoffrey all the more for protection. She put her hand half around his neck and urged him to wake up.
"Oh, how can you go on sleeping at such a time? Do wake up, dear Geoffrey. I tell you the yacht is sinking. We are all going to the bottom. Do get up!"
Geoffrey was perfectly wide awake, but this was even pleasanter than being waked by music, and her hand on his chin seemed like a caress. With his eyes shut, he reproached her sleepily: "No, no, don't make me get up. I like it. I like going to the bottom."
Margaret smiled through her fears. "But, Geoffrey, do look here! The water has risen up over the cabin floor."
He got up then. Certainly, things did seem a little threatening. A couple of corks were dancing about in the water upon the carpet quite merrily. This meant a good deal. He heard that peculiar sound of rushing water inside the boat which can be easily recognized when once heard. Above the howling of wind and swash of waves, both pumps could be heard working for all they were worth. The vessel was pitching terribly, mercilessly dragged as she was from one wave to another, without having time to ride them.
Geoffrey thought the time for bailing with the pails might be deferred for a while. Without Margaret's knowledge he stuck a pen-knife into the woodwork near the floor to define high-water mark, and thus detect any increase in the leakage over the pumps. Then he devoted some time toward endeavoring to calm Margaret's fears, chiefly by exhibiting a masterly inaction in regard to the leak and in searching about for a lost pipe. By the time he had found it and was enjoying a quiet smoke, reclining on the cushions to make the motion seem easier, her fears began to weaken. She did not at all object to the smoke of pipes, and Geoffrey's comfort became contagious. Although the clanging of the pumps outside recalled stories of shipwreck, she was, on the other hand, more influenced by the easy-going indifference that he assumed. Twenty minutes passed in this way, and then she felt sure that the danger was not so great as she had thought. Geoffrey in the mean time was covertly watching his pen-knife, that marked the rise or fall of the water in the boat. At the end of half an hour he could see, from where he lay, that half the blade of the knife was covered with water. So he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and said he would go and see the boys on deck, and that Margaret had better go and comfort the others in the ladies' cabins, and tell them it was all right.
When Margaret had staggered away, Geoffrey's manner was not that of one satisfied with his surroundings. He ripped up the carpet and the planks underneath to get at the well, and then skipped up the companion-way in the liveliest manner. When on deck, he made out Jack at the wheel.
"How's the well?" Jack cried, in the wind. "Did you sound it?"
Geoffrey had to roar to make himself heard above the gale and noise of waters.
"Get your buckets!" he said; and Jack passed his order forward by a messenger, who crawled along by the main-boom carefully, lest he should go overboard in the pitching.
"Why, the pumps were gaining on the leak a while ago!" Jack said to Geoffrey. "Did you examine the well?"
"There is no well left that I could see. It's all a lake on the cabin floor. The leak gained on the pumps an inch in half an hour! I waited and watched to make sure, and to quiet the women."
"Then it is only a question of time," said Jack. "The buckets and pumps won't keep her afloat long. She is working the caulking out of her seams, and that will get worse every moment."
There were no loiterers on board after that. They all "turned to" and worked like machines. Even the steward and cook were on deck to take their trick at the pumps. Five men in soaking trousers and shirts worked five buckets in the cabin, heaving the water out of the companion-way. Of these five, some dropped out from time to time exhausted, but the others relieved them, and so kept the five buckets going as fast as they could be worked. Some fell deadly sick with the heat, hard work, and terrible pitching and driving motion of the boat, but nobody said a word. If a man fell sick, he had something else to think of than his comfort, and he staggered around as well as he could. From the companion-way to the well, and from the well to the companion-way, for two hours more they kept up the incessant toil. At first some had attempted to be pleasant by saying it was easy to get water enough for the whisky, and by making other light remarks. But now it was changed. They said nothing on the exhausting and dreary round, but worked with their teeth clinched—while the sweat poured off them as if they, too, had started every seam and were leaking out their very lives.
Still the pitiless great mass of a steamer in front of the yacht plunged and yawed and dragged them without mercy through the black waters, where a huge surge could now be occasionally discerned sweeping its foaming crest past the little yacht, which was gradually succumbing to the wild forces about it.
Margaret was back again in the cabin now. She had wedged herself in, with her back against the bunks, and one foot up against the table as a prop to keep her in position. In one hand she held a bottle of brandy and in the other a glass. And when a man fell out sick and exhausted she attended to him. There was no water asked for. They took the brandy "neat." She had succeeded in quieting the other women, and as they could not hear the bailing in the after-cabin they were in happy ignorance of the worst. Whatever fears she had had when the knowledge of danger first came to her, she showed no sign of them now—but only a compassion for the exhausted workers that heartened them up and did them good.
A third hour had nearly expired since they began to use the buckets, and Margaret for a long time had been watching the water, in which the bailers worked, gradually creeping up over their feet as they spent themselves on a dreary round, to which the toil of Sisyphus was satisfactory. The water was rising steadily in spite of their best efforts to keep the boat afloat. Margaret had quietly made up her mind that they would never see the land again. There did not seem to be any chance left, and she was going, as men say, to "die game." Her courage and cheering words inspired the others to endless exertions. She was like a big sister to them all. At times she was hilarious and almost boisterous, and when she waved the bottle in the air and declared that there was no Scott Act on board, her conduct can not be defended. Maurice Rankin tried to say he wished they could get a Scott Act on the water, but the remark seemed to lack intrinsic energy, and he failed from exhaustion to utter it.
Another half-hour passed, and while the men trudged through the ever-deepening water Margaret experienced new thoughts whenever she gazed at Geoffrey, who had worked almost incessantly. She looked at the knotted cords on his arms and on his forehead, at the long tenacious jaw set as she had seen it in the hurdle race, and she knew from the swelling nostril and glittering eye that the idea of defeat in this battle with the waters was one which he spurned from him. His clothes were dripping with water. The neck-button of his shirt had carried away, his trousers were rolled up at the bottom, and his face perspired freely with the extraordinary strain, and yet in spite of his appearance she felt as if she had never cared for him so much as when she now saw him. On through the night she sat there doing her woman's part beside those who fought with the water for their lives. She saw the treacherous enemy gaining on them in spite of all their efforts, and in her heart felt fully convinced that she could not have more than two hours to live. The hot steam from men working frantically filled the cabin, the weaker ones grew ill before her, and she looked after them without blenching. Hers was no place for a toy woman. She was there to help all those about to die; and to do this rightly, to force back her own nausea, and face anxiety and death with a smile.
As for Geoffrey, life seemed sweet to him that night. For him, it was Margaret or—nothing. To him, this facing of death did just one thing. It raised the tiger in him. He had what Shakespeare and prize-fighters call "gall," that indomitable courage which women worship hereditarily, although better kinds of courage may exist.
Another long half-hour passed, and then Maurice fell over his bucket, keel-up. He had fainted from exhaustion, and was dosed by Margaret in the usual way, and after this he was set on his pins and sent on deck for the lighter work at the pumps. After that, the paid hands, having in some way purloined too much whisky, mutinied, and said they would be blanketty-blanketted if they would sling another bucket.
The others went on as steadily as before, while the crew went forward to wait sulkily for the end.
Jack and Charley then consulted as to what was best to be done. To hold on in this way meant going to the bottom, without a shadow of doubt. They had tried to signal to the steamer, to get her to slow up and take all hands on board. But the watchers at the stern of the steamer had been taken off to work at the steamer's pumps; for, as was afterward found, she also was leaking badly and in a dangerous condition.
Ought they to cut the towline, throw out the inside ballast, and cut away the mast to ease the straining at the seams? The wooden hull, minus the inside ballast, might float in spite of the lead on the keel, which was not very heavy, and in this way they might drift about until picked up the next day. But the ballast was covered with water. They could not get it out in time to save her. Yet the seas seemed somewhat lighter than they had been. Would not the boat leak less while proceeding in an ordinary way, instead of being dragged from wave to wave? No doubt it would, but was it safe to let the steamer leave them? Ought they to cut the towline, get up a bit of a sail, and endeavor to make the north shore of the lake?
While duly weighing these things, Jack was making a rough calculation in his head, as he took a look at the clock. Then he walked forward, took a halyard in his hands, and embracing the plunging mast with his legs, he swarmed up about twenty feet from the deck. Then, after a long look, he suddenly slid down again, and running aft he called to the others, while he pointed over the bows.
"Toronto Light, ahoy!"
"Holy sailor!" cried Charley in delight. "Are you sure of it?"
"Betcherlife!" said Jack. "Can't fool me on Toronto Light. Go and see for yourself."
Charley climbed up and took a look. Then he went down into the forecastle and told the men they would get no pay for the trip if they did not help to bail the boat.
Seeing that not only life but good pay awaited them, they turned to again and helped to keep the ship afloat.
In a few minutes more Jack called to Margaret to come on deck. When she had ascended, she sat on the dripping cabin-top and watched a changing scene, impossible to forget. Soon after she appeared, there came a flicker in the air, as short as the pulling of a trigger, and all at once she perceived that she began dimly to see the waves and the pitching boat. It was like a revelation, like an experience of Dante's Virgil, to see at last some of that hell of waters in which they had struggled so long for existence.
As the first beginning of weird light, coming apparently from nowhere, began to spread over the weary waste of heaving, tumbling, merciless waters and to dilute the ink of the night, as if with only a memory of day, a momentary chill went through Margaret, as she began to realize a small part of what they had come through. But as the ragged sky in the east paled faintly, rather than warmed, with an attempt at cheerfulness, like the tired smile of a dying man, it sufficed, although so deficient in warmth, to cheer her heart. The calm certainty of an almost immediate death that had settled like a pall upon her was dispelled by rays of hope that seemed to be identical with the invading rays of light. "Hope comes from the east," she thought, as a ray from that quarter made the atmosphere take another jump toward day, and as she fell into a tired reverie she remembered, with a heart forced toward thanksgiving, those other early glad tidings from the East. Worn out, she yielded to early emotions, and thanked God for her deliverance. She arose and went carefully along the deck, holding to the wet boom, until she reached the mast, where she stopped and gazed at the black mass of the great steamer still plunging and yawing and swinging through the waters, with its lights looking yellow in the pale glimmer of dawn. After viewing the disorder on decks she could form an idea of the work the men had had during the darkness of the night.
But, oh, what a broken-nosed nightmare of a yacht it was, in the dreary morning light, with all the dripping black-looking heap of wreckage piled over the bows, the mast pitching back toward the stern with a tangled mass of everything imaginable wound in a huge plait down the lifts. In this draggle-tailed thing, with a boom lying on deck and hanging over the counter and its canvas trailing in the water, Margaret could not recognize the peerless swan that a short time ago poised itself upon its pinions and swept so majestically out of Toronto Bay.
The water, at every mile traversed, now grew calmer as the gale came partly off the land. Soon the pitching ended altogether. The opened seams ceased to smile so invitingly to the death that lurks under every boat's keel. The pumps and buckets had begun to gain upon the water in the cabin, and by the time they had swept round the lighthouse and reached the wharf the flooring had been replaced, while the pumps were still clanging at intervals.
When they made fast to the dock a drawn and haggard group of men—a drooping, speechless, and even ragged group of men—allowed themselves to sleep. It did not matter where or how they slept. They just dropped anywhere; and for five hours Nature had all she could do to restore these men to a semblance of themselves.
[Note.—If Captain Estes, of the Mail Line Steamer Abyssinian, should ever read this chapter, he will know a part of what took place at the other end of the hawser on the night of September 5, 1872.]
CHAPTER XVI.
What slender youth, bedewed with liquid odors,
Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,
Pyrrha? For whom bindest thou
In wreaths thy golden hair,
Plain in its neatness? Oh, how oft shall he
On faith, and changed gods, complain,
To whom thou untried seemest fair?
Horace, Lib. I, Ode 5.
A fine spring afternoon. A dark-eyed, well-dressed young lady with an attractive figure descends from a street car near the Don Bridge. She crosses the bridge leisurely and proceeds eastward along the Kingston Road toward Scarborough. Whatever her destination may be, the time at which she arrives is evidently of no consequence. She does "belong" down Kingston Roadway. The street car dropped her there, and one may come a long way for ten cents on street cars. From the uninterested way in which she views the semi-rural surroundings one can see that she is carelessly unfamiliar with the region.
A fine horse, with his glossy coat and harness shining in the sun, comes along behind her at a rate that would not be justified in a crowded thoroughfare. Behind the horse a stylish dog-cart bowls along with its plate-glass lamps also shining in the sun. Between this spot and the city of Kingston there is no man on the road handsomer than he who drives the dog-cart. The lady looks pleased as she hears the trap coming along; a flush rises to her cheeks and makes her eyes still brighter. When the horse trots over the sod and stops beside the sidewalk her surprise is so small that she does not even scream. On the contrary, she proceeds, without speaking, to climb into the vehicle with an expression on her face in which alarm has no place.
In some analogy with that mysterious law which rules that an elephant shall not climb a tree, symmetrical people in fashionable dresses, whose lines tend somewhat toward convexity, do not climb into a high dog-cart with that ease which may compensate others for being long and lanky. A middle-aged elder of the Established Kirk stands on his doorstep directly opposite and looks pious. He says this is a meeting not of chance but of design, and reproof is shown upon his face. The lady wears Parisian boots, and the general expression of the middle-aged elder is severe except where the eyes suggest weakness unlooked for in a face of such high moral pitch. Once in, the young lady settles herself comfortably and wraps about her dress the embroidered dust-linen as if she were well accustomed to the situation. They drive off, and the middle-aged elder shakes his head after them and says with renewed personal conviction that the world is not what it ought to be.
The road is soft and smooth, and the horse saws his head up and down as he steps out at a pace that makes him feel pleasantly disposed toward country roads and inclined to travel faster than a gentlemanly, civilized, by-law-regulated horse should desire. The young lady lays aside her parasol, which is remarkable—a gay toy—and takes up a black silk umbrella which is not remarkable but serviceable. The good-looking man pulls out of his pocket a large brown veil rolled up in paper, and she of the Parisian boots ties it quickly around a little skull-cap sort of bonnet of black beads and lace. The veil is thrown around in such a way that the folds of it can be pulled down over her face in an instant. Here, also, the lady shows a deftness in assuming this head-gear that argues prior practice, and when this is done she lays her hand on the handsome man's arm and looks up at him radiantly, while the silk umbrella shuts out a couple of farmer's wives.
"Doesn't it make me look hideous?" she says, referring to the veil.
"Yes, my dear, worse than ever," says the handsome man. His face is a mixture of careless good-nature and quiet devil-may-care recklessness. Perhaps there are women who never make men look spiritual. It is to be hoped that the umbrella hides his disregard for appearances on the public street and that the farmer's wives in the neighborhood are not too observant.
"For goodness' sake, Geoffrey, do behave better on the highway! What will those women think?"
"Their curiosity will gnaw them cruelly, I fear. They are looking after us yet. I can see them."
"Well, it is not fair to me to go on like that; besides I am terrified all the time lest the people may find out who it is that wears the brown veil about the country. I have heard four or five girls speaking about it. It's the talk of the town."
"No fear about that, Nina. I don't think your name was ever mentioned in connection with the veil, but, in case it might be, I drove out Helen Broadwood and Janet Carruthers lately, and, in view of the dust flying, I persuaded them to wear the brown veil. We drove all over the city and down King Street several times. So now the brown veil is divided between the two of them. It was not much trouble to devote a little time to this object, and besides, you know, the old people give excellent dinners."
"That was nice of you to put it off on those girls and to take so much trouble for me, but it can't last, Geoffrey, dear. We are sure to be recognized some day. Helen and Janet will both say they were not on the Indian road near the Humber the day we met the Joyces's wagonette, and those girls are so stupid that people will believe them; and that bad quarter of an hour when Millicent Hart rode behind us purposely to find out who I was. That was a mean thing of her to do, but I paid her off. I met her at Judge Lovell's the other night. It was a terrible party, but I enjoyed it. I knew she expected to bring things to a climax with Mr. Grover; she's folle about that man. I monopolized him the whole evening—in fact he came within an ace of proposing. Gracious, how that girl hates me now!"
"I would not try paying her off too much, or she will think you have a strong reason for doing so," said Geoffrey. "After all, her curiosity did her no good. You managed the umbrella to a charm."
"The best thing you could do would be to have a linen duster for me to wear—such as the American women travel in; then, as the veil covered my head, I could discard the umbrella, and they would not recognize my clothes."
In this way they rattled down to Scarborough, and then Geoffrey turned off the highway through a gate and drove across a lot of wild land covered with brushwood until he struck a sort of road through the forest which had been chopped out for the purpose of hauling cordwood in the winter. He followed this slowly, for it was rough wheeling. Then he stopped, tied the horse, and Nina and he sauntered off through the woods until they reached the edge of the high cliffs overlooking the lake. This spot escaped even picnic parties, for it was almost inaccessible except by the newly cut and unknown road. Solitude reigned where the finest view in the neighborhood of Toronto could be had. They could look along the narrow cliffs eastward as far as Raby Head. At their feet—perhaps a hundred and fifty feet down—the blue-green waves lapped the shore in the afternoon breeze, and on the horizon, across the thirty or forty miles of fresh water, the south shore of the lake could be dimly seen in a summer haze.
The winter had come and gone since we saw our friends last, and the early spring was delicious in the warmth that hurried all nature into a promise of maturity. Not much of importance had happened to any of them since we last saw them. Jack was as devoted as ever, and Nina was not. She tried to do what she could in the way of being pleasant to Jack, and she went on with the affair partly because she had not sufficient hardness of heart to break it off, and chiefly because Geoffrey told her not to do so. He preferred that she should remain, in a nondescript way, engaged to Jack.
Hampstead generally dined with the Mackintoshes on Sunday, and called in the evening once or twice during the week. He also took Margaret for drives in the afternoon—generally about the town. When this happened a boy in buttons sat behind them and held the horse when they descended to make calls together on Margaret's friends. This was pleasant for both of them, and a beginning of the quiet domestic life which, after marriage, Geoffrey intended to confine himself to, and he won good opinions among Margaret's friends from the cheerful, pleasant, domesticated manner he had with him when they dropped in together, in an off-hand, "engaged" sort of way to make informal calls. And so far as Margaret could know he seemed in every way entitled to the favorable opinions she created. All his better, kinder nature was present at these times, and no one could make himself more agreeable when he was, as he said of himself, "building up a moral monument more lasting than brass."
But Geoffrey had his "days off," and then he was different. He smiled as he thought that in cultivating a high moral tone it was well not to overdo the thing at first; that two days out of the week would suffice to keep him socially in the traces. He thought his "off" days frequently made him prize Margaret all the more when he could turn with some relief toward the one who embodied all that his imagination could picture in the way of excellence. He despised himself and was complacent with himself alternately, with a regularity in his inconsistencies which was the only way (he would say, smiling) that he could call himself consistent. If necessary, he would have admitted that he was bad; but to himself he was fond of saying that he never tried to conceal from himself when he was doing wrong; and, among men, he despised the many "Bulstrodes" of existence who succeed in deceiving themselves by falsities. He said that this openness with self seemed to have something partly redeeming about it; perhaps only by comparison—that it possibly ranked among the uncatalogued virtues, marked with a large note of interrogation. He thought there were few brave enough to be quite honest with themselves, and that there was always a chance for a man who remained so; that the hopeless ones were chiefly those who, with or without vice, have become liars to themselves; who, by mingling uncontrolled weakness and professed religion, have lost the power to properly adjust themselves.
This day of the drive to Scarborough was one of his "off" days. He found a piquancy in these trips with him, because so many talked about her beauty; and, as the majority of men do not have very high ideals concerning feminine beauty, Nina was well adapted for extensive conquest. No doubt she was very attractive, quite dazzling sometimes. She was partly of the French type, perfect in its way, but not the highest type; she was lady-like in her appearance, yet with the slightest soupçon of the nurse-girl. It amused him to hear men discussing, even squabbling about her, especially after he had come from a trip with the brown veil. If men had been more sober in the way they regarded her, if her costumes had been less bewitching, he soon would have become tired. But these incentives made him pleased with his position, and he was wont to quote the illustrious Emerson in saying that "greatly as he rejoiced in the victories of religion and morality, it was not without satisfaction that he woke up in the morning and found that the world, the flesh, and the devil still held their own, and died hard." In other words, it pleased him that Nina existed to give life—for the present—a little of that fillip which his nature seemed to demand.
"What is a wise man? Well, sir, as times go, 'tis a man who knows himself to be a fool, and hides the fact from his neighbor."
This was the only text upon which Geoffrey founded any claim to wisdom.
As they left the cliff and walked slowly back through the woods Nina was leaning on his arm, and the happiness of her expression showed how completely she could forget the duties which both abandoned in order to meet in this way. But when they arrived at the dog-cart a change came over her. The brown veil had to be tied on again. At many other times she had done this placidly, as part of the masquerade. But to-day she was not inclined to reason carefully. To-day the veil was a badge of secrecy, a reminder of underhand dealings, a token that she must ever go on being sly and double-faced with the public, that she must renounce the idea of ever caring for Geoffrey in any open and acknowledged way. To be sure, she had accepted this situation in its entirety when she continued to yield to her own wishes by being so much with an engaged man. But to be reasonable always, is uncommon. She resisted an inclination to tear the veil to shreds. Something told her that exhibitions of temper would not be very well received by her companion. No matter how she treated Jack, was she not honest with Geoffrey? Did she not risk her good name for him? And why should she have to mask her face and hide it from the public? She—an heiress, who would inherit such wealth—whose beauty made her a queen, to whom men were like slaves!
The veil very nearly became altered in its condition as she thought of these things, but she put it on, and smothered her wrath until they got out upon the highway. Then she said, after a long silence: "Would it not be as well to let Margaret wear this brown veil a few times, Geoffrey? She has a right to drive about with you, and if people thought it was only she, their curiosity might cease."
A farm-house cur came barking after the dog-cart just then, and Geoffrey's anger expended itself partly on the dog, instead of being embodied in a reply.
The whip descended so viciously through the air that a more careful person might have seen that the suggestion had not improved his temper.
Except this, he gave no answer. She pressed the subject, although she knew he was angry. "Don't you think, Geoffrey, that that would be a good thing to do? It would quite remove curiosity, and would, in any case, be only fair to me."
Now, if there was one thing Hampstead could not and would not endure, it was to have a woman he amused himself with attempt to put herself on a par with the one he reverenced. Margaret was about all that remained of his conscience. She embodied all the good he knew. Every resolve and hope of his future depended upon her. He could not as yet, he thought, find it possible always to live as she would like; but in a calm way, so controlled as to seem almost dispassionate, he worshiped her, as it were, in the abstract.
His ideas concerning her were so rarefied that, in any other person, he might have called them fanatical. He was bad, but he felt that he would rather hang himself than allow so much as a breath to dim the fair mirror of Margaret's name. At the very mention of her as wearing this brown veil he grew pale with anger, and the barking cur got the benefit of it, and at Nina's insistence his face and eyes grew like steel.
"Heavens above! Can't you let her name alone? Is it not enough for you to raise the devil in me, without scheming to give her trouble? Do you think I will allow her to step in and be blamed for what it was your whim to go in for—risks and all?"
Nina was ready now to let the proposition drop, but she could not refrain from adding: "She would not be blamed for very much if she were blamed for all that has happened between us."
There was truth in what she said, but Geoffrey had looked upon these meetings as anything but innocent. Argument on the point was insufferable, and it only made him lash out worse, as he interrupted her.
"Good God, Nina! you must be mad! Don't you see? Don't you understand?"
Nina waited a second while she thought over what he meant, and her blood seemed to boil as she considered different things.
"Yes, I do understand. You need say no more," cried she, with her eyes blazing. "You want me to realize that I am so much beneath her—that she is so far above me—that, although I have done nothing much out of the way, the imputation of her doing the same thing is a kind of death to you. You go out of your way to try and hurt me—"
"No, no, Nina," said Geoffrey, controlling himself, "I do not want to hurt your feelings. If we must continue speaking on this unpleasant subject, I will explain."
"That will do, Geoffrey Hampstead," she exclaimed in a rage; "I don't want to hear your explanation. I hate you and despise you! I have been a fool myself, but you have been a greater one. I could have made a prince of you. I was fool enough to do this, and now," here Nina tore the veil off her head, and threw it on the road, "and now," she continued, as she faced him with flashing eyes, "you will always remain nothing but a miserable bank-clerk. Who are you that you should presume to insult me? and who is she that she should be held over my head? I am as good in every way as she is, and, if all that's said is true, I am a good deal better."
Geoffrey listened silently to all she said, and to her blind imputation against Margaret. Gazing in front of him with a look that boded ill, he reduced the horse's pace to a walk, so that he need not watch his driving, and turned to her, speaking slowly, his face cruel and his eyes small and glittering.
"Listen! You have consciously played the devil with me ever since I knew you. You have known from the first how you held me; you played your part to perfection, and I liked it. It amused me. It made better things seem sweeter after I left you. It is not easy to be very good all at once, and you partly supplied me with the opposite. I don't blame you for it, because I liked it, and I confess to encouraging you, but the fact is—you sought me. Hush! Don't deny it! As women seek, you sought me. We tacitly agreed to be untrue to every tie in order to meet continually, and in a mild sort of way try to make life interesting. Did either of us ever try by word or deed to improve the other? Certainly not. Nor did we ever intend to do so. We taught each other nothing but scheming and treachery. And you thought that you would make the devil so pleasing that I could not do without him. This is the plain truth—in spite of your sneer. Recollect, I don't mind what you say about me, but you have undertaken to insult and lay schemes for somebody else, and that I'll not forgive. For that, I say what I do, and I make you see your position, when you, who have been a mass of treachery ever since you were born, dare to compare yourself with—no matter who. I won't even mention her name here. That's how I look upon this affair, if you insist upon plain speech. Now we understand things."
It was a cruel, brutal tirade. Truth seems very brutal sometimes. He began slowly, but as he went on, his tongue grew faster, until it was like a mitrailleuse. Nina was bewildered. She had angered him intentionally; but she had not known that on one subject he was a fanatic, and thus liable to all the madness that fanaticism implies. She said nothing, and Hampstead, with scarcely a pause, added, in a more ordinary tone: "It will be unpleasant for us to drive any further together. You are accustomed to driving. I'll walk."
He handed the reins to Nina and swung himself out without stopping the horse. She took the reins in a half-dazed way and asked vaguely:
"What will I do with the horse when I get to the town?"
"Turn him adrift," said Geoffrey, over his shoulder, as he proceeded up a cross-road, feeling that he never wished to see either her or the trap again.
Nina stopped the horse to try to think. She could not think. His biting words had driven all thought out of her. She only knew he was going away from her forever. She looked after him, and saw him a hundred yards off lighting a cigar with a fusee as he walked along. She called to him and he turned. The country side was quiet, and he could hear her say, "Come here!" He went back, and found her weeping. All she could say was "Get in." Of course he got in, and they drove off up the cross-road so as to meet no person until she calmed herself. After a while she sobbed out:
"Oh, you are cruel, Geoffrey. I may be a mass of treachery, but not to you—not to you, Geoffrey. Having to put on the veil angered me. I have been wicked. We have both been wicked. But you are so much worse than I am. You know you are!"
As she said this it sounded partly true and partly whimsical, so she tried to smile again. He could not endeavor to resist tears when he knew that he had been unnecessarily harsh, and he was glad of the opportunity to smile also and to smooth things over.
As a tacit confession that he was sorry for his violence, he took the hand that lay beside him into his, and so they drove along toward the city, each extending to the other a good deal of that fellow-feeling which arises from community in guilt. Both felt that in tearing off the mask for a while they had revealed to each other things which, being confessed, left them with hardly a secret on either side, and if this brought them more together, by making them more open with each other, both felt that they now met upon a lower platform.
CHAPTER XVII.
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?—Ecclesiastes vii, 13.
A few days after the disturbance in the dog-cart Geoffrey and Maurice Rankin were dining, on a Sunday, with the Mackintoshes. After dinner a walk was proposed, and Margaret went out with them, very spick-and-span and charming in an old black silk "made over," and with a bright bunch of common geraniums at her belt. She had invited the young lawyer partly because he had seemed so distrustful of Geoffrey, and she wished to bring the two more together, so that Maurice might see that he had misjudged him. In the course of their walk Geoffrey asked, for want of something better to say:
"How goes the law, Rankin? Things stirring?"
"Might be worse," replied Maurice. "By the way, Margaret, I forgot to tell you Mr. Bean actually brought in a client the other day."
"Somebody he had been drinking with, I suppose," said Margaret, who had heard of Mr. Bean.
"Right you are. They supported each other into the office, and before Bean sank into his chair I was introduced by him as his 'jun'or par'ner.'"
"Could not Mr. Bean do the same every day? Supply the office by bringing up his friends when prepared to be lavish with money?"
"I'm afraid not. Bean would be always tipsy himself before the victim was ready. Still, your idea is worth consideration. Of course nobody would want law from Bean unless he were pretty far gone, and in this case the poor old chap knew no more about what was wanted than the inquirer."
"Had the client any money?" asked Geoffrey.
"Money? He was reeking with it. What he wanted, he said, was a quiet lawyer. I told him that the quietness of our business was its strong point, only equaled, in fact, by the unpleasant grave. Then it appeared that he had come on a trip from the States with a carpet-bag full of money which he said he had borrowed, and he wished, in effect, to know whether the United States could take him back again, vi et armis. I told him 'No,' and knocked ten dollars out of him before you could say 'knife.'"
"You might have made it fifty while you were about it," said Geoffrey.
"Well, you see, the man was not entirely sober, and, after all, ten dollars a word is fair average pay. I never charge more than that."
"You mean that the unfortunate was too sober to be likely to pay any more," said Margaret.
Maurice shrugged his shoulders in deprecation of this idea.
Said Geoffrey: "I often meet Mr. Bean on the street. He is a very idle man; I know by the way he carries his pipe in his mouth."
"What has that to do with it?"
"Everything. He smokes with his pipe in the center of his mouth."
"Well?"
"Well, no one does that unless very old or very idle. Men get the habit from smoking all day while sitting down or lounging. No one can walk hurriedly with his pipe in that position; it would jar his front teeth out. I have noticed that an active man invariably holds his pipe in the side of his mouth, where he can grasp it firmly."
"Hampstead, you should have been a detective."
"Such is genius," said Margaret. "Geoffrey has any quantity of unprofitable genius."
"That reminds me that I once heard my grandfather telling my father the same thing, but it was not very correct about my father."
"Indeed! By the way, Geoffrey, if it is not an impertinent question for your future wife to ask, who was your grandfather?"
This ignorance on the part of an engaged girl made Maurice cackle.
"Who is he, you mean. He is still alive, I think, and as old as the hills."
"Dear me! How very strange that you never told me of his existence before!"
"His existence is not a very interesting one to me—in fact, quite the reverse; besides I don't think we have ever lacked a more interesting topic, have we Margaret?"
"I imagine not," quoth Rankin dryly. Margaret stopped; she thought there might be something "queer" about this grandfather that Geoffrey might not care to speak about before a third person. She merely said, therefore, intending to drop the matter gently:
"How very old the senior Mr. Hampstead must be?"
"Hampstead is only the family name. The old boy is Lord Warcote. I am a sort of a Radical you know, Margaret, and the truth is I had a quarrel with my family. Only for this, I might have gone into the matter before."
"Never mind going into anything unpleasant. You told my father, of course, that you were a son of Mr. Manson Hampstead, one of the old families in Shropshire. And so you are. We will let it rest at that. Family differences must always be disagreeable subjects. Let us talk about something else."
"Now we are on the subject, I might as well tell you all about it. First, I will secure Rankin's secrecy. Behold five cents! Mr. Rankin, I retain you with this sum as my solicitor to advise when called upon concerning the facts I am about to relate. You are bound now by your professional creed not to divulge, are you not?"
"Drive on," said Maurice, "I'm an oyster."
"There is not a great deal to tell," said Geoffrey. "The unpleasant part of it has always made me keep the story entirely to myself. When I came to this continent I was in such a rage with everything and everybody that I abandoned the chance of letters of introduction. Nobody here knows who I am. I have worked my own way to the exalted position in which you find me. A good while ago my father was in the English diplomatic service, and he still retains, I believe, a responsible post under the Government. Like a good many others, though, he was, although clever, not always quite clever enough, and in one episode of his life, in which I am interested, he failed to have things his own way. For ten years he was in different parts of Russia, where his duties called him. He had acquired such a profound knowledge of Russian and other languages that these advantages, together with his other gifts, served to keep him longer in a sort of exile for the simple reason that there were few, if any, in the service who could carry out what was required as well as he could himself. From his official duties and his pleasant manner he became well known in Russian society, and he counted among his intimate friends several of the nobility who possessed influence in the country. After a long series of duties he and some young Russians, to whom passports were almost unnecessary, used to make long trips through the country in the mild seasons to shoot and fish. In this way some of the young nobles rid themselves of ennui, and reverted by an easy transition to the condition of their immediate ancestors. They had their servants with them, and lived a life of conviviality and luxury even in the wildest regions which they visited. When they entered a small town on these journeyings they did pretty much what they liked, and nobody dared to complain at the capital. If a small official provoked or delayed them they horsewhipped him. In fact, what they delighted in was going back to savagery and taking their luxuries with them, dashing over the vast country on fleet horses, making a pandemonium whenever and wherever they liked; in short, in giving full swing to their Tartar and Kalmuck blood. On one occasion my father was feeling wearied to death with red tape, but nobody was inclined at the time for another expedition. He therefore obtained leave to go with a military detachment to Semipalatinsk, from which town some prisoners had to be brought back to St. Petersburg. There was little trouble in obtaining his permit, especially as he had been partly over the road before. So he went with his horses and servant as far as the railway would take him, and then joined a band of fifty wild-looking Cossacks and set out. When within a hundred and fifty versts from Semipalatinsk they encountered a warlike band of about twenty-five well mounted Tartars returning from a marauding expedition. They had several horses laden with booty, also some female prisoners. It was the old story of one tribe of savages pillaging another. The Cossacks were out in the wilderness. Although supposed to be under discipline, they were one and all freebooters to the backbone. Their captain, under pretense of seeing right done, allowed an attack to be made by the Cossacks. They drove off the other robbers, ransacked the booty, took what they wanted, and under color of giving protection, took the women also, hoping to dispose of them quietly as slaves at some town. These women were then mounted on several of the pack-horses, and the Cossacks rode off on their journey, leaving everything else on the plain for the other robbers to retake.
"My father had kept aloof from the disturbance. It was none of his business. He sat on his horse and quietly laughed at the whole transaction. He had become very Russian in a good many ways, and he certainly knew what Cossacks were, and that any protest from him would only be useless. It was simply a case of the biter bit. He joined the party as they galloped on to make up for lost time.
"As for the women, it was now nothing to them that their captors had changed. Early in the morning their village had been pillaged and their defenders slain. It was all one to them, now. Slavery awaited them wherever they went. So they sat their horses with their usual ease, veiled their faces, and resigned themselves to their fate. But as the afternoon wore on, the wily captain began to think that my father would certainly see through the marauding escapade of his, and that it would be unpleasant to hear about it again from the authorities, and so he cast about him for the easiest way to deceive or propitiate him. That evening, as my father was sitting in his kibitka, the curtain was raised and the captain smilingly led in one of the captive slaves—a woman of extraordinary beauty. And who do you think she was?"
Margaret turned pale. She grasped Geoffrey's arm, as her quick intelligence divined what was coming.
"No, no," she said. "You are not going to tell me that?"
"Yes," said Geoffrey with a pinched expression on his face. "That is just what I am going to tell you. That poor slave—that ignorant and beautiful savage was my mother."
Margaret was thunderstruck. She did not comprehend how things stood, but with a ready solicitude for him in a time of pain, she passed her hand through his arm and drew herself closer to him, as they walked along.
As for Maurice, he ground his teeth as he witnessed Margaret's loving solicitude. It was a relief to him to rasp out his dislike for Geoffrey under his breath. "I always knew he was a wolf," he muttered to himself.
"You will see now," continued Geoffrey, "why I preferred not to be known in this country. To be one of a family with a title in it did not compensate me for being a thorough savage on my mother's side.
"But I will continue my story. The beauty of the woman attracted my father. He spoke to her kindly in her own language and made her partake of his dinner with him. He thought that in any case he could save her from being sold into slavery by the Cossacks.
"These wild half-brothers of mine took it as a matter of course that my father would be pleased with his acquisition, but they suggested vodki and got it—so that my mother was in reality purchased from them for a few bottles of whisky.
"They went on toward Semipalatinsk and got the prisoners. My father intended to leave the woman at that town, but she wished to see the White Czar and his great city, of which she had heard, and she begged so hard to be taken back with him that he began to think he might as well do so.
"The fact was that a whim seized him to see her dressed as a European, and as they waited at Semipalatinsk for ten days before returning, he had time to have garments made which were as near to the European styles as he could suggest. It was evidently the clothes that decided the matter. In her coarse native habiliments she was simply a savage to a fastidious man, but when she was arrayed in a familiar looking dress assisted by the soft silken fabrics of the East, he was bewitched. She told him, on the journey back, how her father had always counted upon having enough to live on for the rest of his life when she was sold to the traders who purchased slaves for the harems at Constantinople.
"My father took her to St. Petersburg with him, where they lived for three years together. Such a thing as marrying her never entered his head. He simply lived like his friends. I never found out how much she was received in society—no doubt she had all the society she wanted—but I did hear from an old friend of my father, who spoke of her with much respect, that her beauty created the greatest sensation in St. Petersburg, and that when she went to the theatre the spectators were all like astronomers at a transit of Venus. She made good use of her time, however, and at the end of three years she could speak and write English a little.
"At the end of three years from the time he met her, my father was called back to England. He left her in his house in St. Petersburg with all the money necessary, and came home. I think he intended to go back to her when he got ready. But she settled that question by coming to England herself. She could not bear the separation after three months of waiting. Imagine the scene when she arrived! Lord and Lady Warcote were having a dinner party, when in came my mother, as lovely as a dream, and throwing her arms round my father she forgot her English and addressed him fondly in the Tartar dialect.
"My father, for a moment, was paralyzed; but, in spite of the enervating effect of this exotic's sudden appearance, he could not help feeling proud of her when he saw how magnificent she was in her new Paris costume, and it occurred to him that her wonderful beauty would carry things off with a high hand for a while, until he could perhaps get her back to Russia. She, however, after the moment in which she greeted him, stood up to her full height, and glancing rapidly around the table at all the speechless guests, recognized my grandfather from a photograph she had seen. Lord Warcote was sitting—starchy and speechless—at the end of the table.
"'Ah! zo! Oo are ze little faäzer!' And before he could say a word the handsomest woman in England had kissed him, and had taken his hand and patted it."
"Another brisk look around, and she recognized Lady Warcote in the same way. She floated round the table to greet 'dear mutter.' But here she saw she was making a mistake—that everything was not all right. Lady Warcote was not so susceptible to female beauty as she might have been. She arose from her chair, her face scarlet with anger, and motioned my mother away.
"'Manson,' she said, addressing my father, 'is this woman your wife?'"
"My father had now recovered from his shock, and was laughing til the tears ran down his face. My mother, seeing his merriment, took courage again and said gayly:
"'Yes, yes! He have buy me—for one—two—tree bottle vodki.' She counted the numbers on the tips of her fingers, her shapely hands flashing with jewels. Then her laughter chimed merrily in with my father's guffaw. She ran back to him, took his head in both her hands and said, imitating a long-drawn tone of childish earnestness:
"'It was cheap—che-ap. I was wort' more dan vodki.'
"Lord Warcote had lived a fast life in his earlier days. After Nature had allowed him a rare fling for sixty years she was beginning to withdraw her powers, and my grandfather had become as religious as he had been fast. The effect of my mother's presence upon him was to make him suddenly young again, and although he soon assumed his new Puritan gravity he could not keep his eyes off her. On a jury he would have acquitted her of anything, and when she turned around imperiously and told a servant to bring a chair, 'Good Lord!' he said, 'she's a Russian princess!' and he jumped up like an old courtier to get the chair himself. The more he heard of her story the more interested he became, and when he had heard it all, nothing would suffice but an immediate marriage. My father protested on several grounds, but his protests made no difference to the old man. His will, he said, would be law until he died, and even after he died, and, what with my mother's beauty, which made him take what he understood to be a strong religious interest in her behalf, and one thing and another, he got quite fanatical on the point. He forgot himself several times, and swore he would cut father off with nothing if he refused.
"The end of it was that they were married at once, and afterward I was born. My poor mother had no intention of giving father trouble when she came to England, neither did she wish in the slightest degree for a formal marriage, the usefulness of which she did not understand. She simply felt that she could not do without him. And I don't think he ever regretted the step he was driven to. She had some failings, but she was as true and loving to him as a woman could be, besides being, for a short time, considered a miracle of beauty in London.
"I can only remember her dimly as going out riding with father. They say her horsemanship was the most perfect thing ever seen in the hunting field. It was the means of her death at last. The trouble was that she did not know what fear was while on horseback. She thought a horse ought to do anything. Father has told me that when they were out together a freak would seize her suddenly, and away she would go across country for miles—riding furiously, like her forefathers, waving her whip high in the air for him to follow, and taking everything on the full fly. If her horse could not get over anything he had to go through it. At last, one day, an oak fence stopped her horse forever, and she was carried home dead. I was three years old then."
Geoffrey paused.
The others remained silent. His strong magnetic voice, rendered more powerful by the vehement way he interpreted the last part of the story in his actions, impressed them. They were walking in the Queen's Park at this time, and it did not matter that he was more than usually graphic. When he spoke of the wild riding of the Tartars, he sprang forward full of a bodily eloquence. For an instant, while poised upon his toes, his cane waving high aloft, his head and shoulders thrown back in an ecstasy of abandon, and his left hand outstretched as if holding the reins, he seemed to electrify them, and to give them the whole scene as it appeared in his own mind. Rankin shuddered. Involuntarily he gasped out:
"Hampstead! For God's sake, don't do that!"
"Why not?" said Geoffrey, as he resumed his place beside them, while the wild flash died out of his eyes.
"Because no man could do it like that unless—because, in fact, you do it too infernally well."
Rankin felt that Margaret must be suffering. It seemed to him that. Geoffrey had really become a Tartar marauder for a moment. Perhaps he had.
"Don't mind my saying this," Maurice added, with apology. "Really, I could not help it."
Geoffrey laughed. Margaret was grave. Rankin strayed on a few steps in advance, and Geoffrey, taking advantage of it, whispered quickly. "What are you thinking of, Margaret?"
"I was thinking I saw a wild man," said Margaret truthfully. Then, to be more pleasant, she added, "And I thought that if Tartar marauders were all like you, Geoffrey, I would rather prefer them as a class."
Maurice, who was unconsciously de trop at this moment, turned and said:
"You have got me 'worked up' over your story, and now I demand to know more. Do not say that 'the continuation of this story will be published in the New York Ledger of the current year.' Go ahead."
"Anything more I have to tell," said Geoffrey, "only relates to myself."
"Never mind. For once you are interesting. Drive on."
"Well, where was I? Oh, yes! Well, my father married again six months after my mother's death. He married a woman who had been a flame of his in early youth, and who had developed a fine temper in her virgin solitude. They had six children. I was packed off to school early, and was kept there almost continually. After that I was sent away traveling with a tutor, a sanctimonious fellow who urged me into all the devilment the Continent could provide, so that he might really enjoy himself. Then I came home and got rid of him. It was at this time that I first heard from my father about my mother and my birth. The story did me no good. I got morbid over it. Previously I had thought myself of the best blood in England. We were entitled as of right to royal quarterings, and the new intelligence struck all the peacock pride out of me. I felt like a burst balloon. The only thing I cared about was to go to Russia and see the place my mother came from. I got letters from my father to some of his old friends at St. Petersburg, and with their influence found my way to the very village my mother came from. Some of the villagers remembered quite well the raid when my mother was carried off and how her enterprising father had been killed. What made me wonder was where my mother got her aristocratic beauty. Among the undiluted, pug-nosed, bestial Tartars such beauty was impossible. I found, however, that my mother's mother had also been a captive. No one knew where she came from. Most likely from Circassia or Persia. The villagers at the time of the raid were the remnants of a large predatory tribe that formerly used to sally forth on long excursions covering many hundreds of miles. At that time—the time of their strength—they lived almost entirely by robbery, and their name was dreaded everywhere within a radius of five hundred miles. I have always hoped that my mother's mother was of some better race than the Tartar. There is no doubt, however, that my mother's father was a full-blooded Tartar, though he may have had straighter features than the generality of them. I found there a younger brother of my mother. He was a wallowing, drunken, thieving pig, this uncle of mine, but under the bloated look he had acquired from excesses, one could trace straight and possibly handsome features. As the son would most likely resemble his father, I can only infer that the father was not so bad-looking as he might have been, and so, with one thing and another, I came to understand the possibility of my mother's beauty.
"It may have been morbid of me. I should have left the matter alone, for I believed in 'race' so much that my discoveries ground me into dust. Nothing satisfied me, however, unless I went to the bottom of it. I watched this uncle of mine for two or three weeks, and made a friend of him, merely to see if I could trace in him any likeness to myself. I made him drunk. I made him sober. I made him run and walk and ride. Sometimes I thought I traced the likeness clearly, and then again I changed my mind. I tried him in other ways, leaving in my quarters small desirable objects partly concealed. They always disappeared. He stole them with the regularity of clockwork. I can laugh over these matters now, speaking of them for the first time in twelve years. At that time I groaned over it, and still persevered in trying to find out what could do me no good. I am so like my father that I could find no resemblance in me to the Tartar uncle. But at last I got a 'sickener.' While talking to him I noticed that he made his gestures pointing the two first fingers; instead of all or only one finger. I watched his dirty hands while he mumbled on, half drunk, and then I saw that for a pastime, as a Western Yankee might whittle or pick his teeth, this man threw the third and fourth fingers of his left hand out of joint and in again. He said his father and also, he had heard, his grandfather could do this with ease.
"An hour afterward, I think I must have been a good ten miles off—flying back to civilized Russia, my servants after me, thinking I was mad. Perhaps I was a little queer in the head at the time."
"What made you go off in that way?" asked Maurice, who did not see the connection.
Geoffrey made no verbal reply, but he held out his left hand with the two last fingers out of joint. Then he showed how easily he could put them "in" and "out."
"None of my father's family can do this, but my mother could. Both my mother and the pig of an uncle held out these two fingers in their gestures, and curled the others up so, and I do the same. I can laugh now, but it killed me at the time.
"I traveled all over the world before I came back to England. My half-brothers were then pretty well grown up and were fully acquainted with everything concerning my birth and my mother's history. My step-mother hated me because I was the eldest son, and she poisoned her children's minds against me. She sought out my old tutor, who, when paid well, told her a lot of vile and untrue stories about me. With these she tried to poison my father's mind also in regard to me. I was moody, morbid, and restless. They looked at me as if I was some other kind of creature, the son of a savage, and it galled me, for all my subsequent travelings had never removed the sting of my birth. Some deplore illegitimacy. Rubbish! Wrong selection, not want of a ceremony, is the real sin that is visited unto the children.
"After my return home I could have died with more complacency than I felt in living. Even my father seemed at last to be turned against me by my step-mother. One day while we were at dinner my step-mother, who possessed a fiend's temper, had a hot discussion with me about something which I have forgotten. Words were not well chosen on either side, and she flew into a tantrum. I remember saying at last: 'Madame, it would take two or three keepers to keep you in order.' Everybody was against me, of course, and when her own eldest son half arose and addressed me, his remarks met with applause. What he said to me, in quiet scorn, was:
"'Our mother's temper may not be good, sir, but we don't find it necessary to send a keeper with her to keep her from stealing.'
"I have since found out, in a roundabout way, that my beautiful mother preferred to steal a thing out of a shop rather than pay for it. My father had always looked at this weakness of hers as a most humorous thing. Anything she did charmed him. Sometimes she would show him what she had stolen, and it would be returned or paid for. However, at the time that this was said to me at the table I did not know of these facts. I arose, amid the derisive laughter that followed the 'good hit,' and demanded of my father how he dared to allow my mother's name to be insulted. I secretly felt at the time that the slur upon her honesty might be well founded, but the possible truth of it made the insult all the worse to me.
"This was the last straw. I felt myself growing wild. Father did not look at me. He merely went on with his dinner, laughing quietly at the old joke and at my discomfiture. He said: 'I can not see any insult, when what Harry says is perfectly true—and a devilish good joke it was.'
"I did not appreciate that joke. I was almost crazy at the time. My father's laughter seemed the cruelest thing I had ever heard. I 'turned to,' as Jack Cresswell would say, and cursed them all, individually and collectively, and then took my hat and left the house, which I have never seen since and never intend to see again."
"And what about the tutor that told the stories about you?" asked Rankin.
"Aha, Maurice," continued Geoffrey, brightening up from painful memories, "you have a noble mind for sequences. What about the tutor? Just so, what about him?" and Geoffrey slapped Rankin on the back heartily, as a pleasanter memory presented itself gratefully.
"I wish you would not strike me like that. I am thinking of going to church to-night, unless disabled. What about your beastly tutor? For goodness' sake, do drive on!"
"Oh, well, I can't tell you much about that, not just now. Of course, the first thing I did was to pay him a call at his lodgings in London. Your great mind saw that this was natural. That call was a relief. I came out when it was finished and told somebody to look after him, and then took passage for New York in a vessel that sailed from London on the same day."
Margaret and Rankin smiled at the grim way in which he spoke about the visit to the tutor.
"On arriving in New York I got a small position in a Wall Street broker's office, and learned the business. From that I went, with the assistance of their recommendation, into a bank. While in this bank I fell in with some young fellows from Montreal, and afterward stayed with them in Montreal during holidays. They wanted me to come to that city, and I liked the English way of the Canadians, so I came. On entering the Victoria Bank I got good recommendations from the one I had left. From Montreal I was moved to the head office, and here I am."
There was much to render Margaret thoughtful in this story that Geoffrey told. She was pleased to find that he belonged to the English nobility, because it seemed to assist her opinion when, with the confidence of love, she had placed him in a nobility such as she hoped could exist among mankind. Otherwise, the fact that there was a title in his family meant very little to her. Her own father's family would have declined any title in England involving change of name. What did affect her as a thinking woman, and one given to the study of natural history, was the awful gap on the other side of the house. Following so closely upon the assurance that he was well born, it was a cruel wrench. His interests were hers now, and it seemed as if they suffered jointly—she, through him. She felt that all this bound them more together, and she did her best to appear unconscious and gay.
He looked at her when he had finished, and, behind their smiles, each saw that the other was trying to make the best of things—that there was something now between them to be feared, which might rise up in the future and give them pain.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Those aggressive impulses inherited from the pre-social state—those tendencies to seek self-satisfaction regardless of injury to other beings, which are essential to a predatory life, constitute an anti-social force, tending ever to cause conflict and eventual separation of citizens.—Herbert Spencer, Synthetic Philosophy.
Nina Lindon had by no means given up the pulse-stirring and secret drives with Geoffrey. The only thing she had given up was saying to herself that in the future she would not go any more. The result of this frequent yielding to inclination was that she was miserable enough when away from him and not particularly contented when with him. Between her and Margaret Mackintosh a coolness had arisen. Margaret was an unsuspicious person, but her affections had developed her womanhood, and in some mysterious way she had divined that Nina cared to be with Geoffrey more than she would confess. There was no jealousy on Margaret's side. She simply dropped Nina, and perhaps would have found it hard to say on what grounds. In such matters women take their impressions from such small occurrences that their dislikes often seem more like instinct even to themselves.
As for Nina, she had liked Margaret only with her better self, and now she had become conscious of a growing feeling of constraint when in her presence. The increasing frigidity with which the taller beauty received her seemed to afford ground for private dislike. She was unconfessedly trying to bring herself to hate Margaret, and was on the lookout for a reasonable cause to do so. To undermine a detested person treacherously would be far more comfortable than undermining a friend. The difficulty lay in being unable to hate sufficiently for the hate to become a support.
Later on in June a ball was given at Government House. The usual rabble was present. Margaret did not go, as her father happened to be ill at the time. Nina was there in full force. Geoffrey appeared late in the evening with several others who had been dining with him at the club. As the host he had been observing the hospitalities, and it took several dances to bring his guests down to the comfortable assurance that they really had their sea-legs on. They looked all right and perhaps felt better than they looked; but during the first waltz or two there seemed to be unexpected irregularities in the floor that had to be treated with care.
After a few dances, which Geoffrey found kept for him as usual, Nina and he disappeared—also as usual. Nina was not among the dissolving views who do nothing but dissolve. She was fond of her dancing as yet, and, as a rule, only disappeared once in the course of the evening. This sounds virtuous, but there is perhaps more safety in a plurality of disappearances.
The next day she telegraphed to some friends in Montreal, from whom she had a standing invitation, that she was coming to see them. They wired back that they would be charmed to see her. Then she telegraphed again: "Had arranged to stop at Brockville on my return from you, but have just heard that they go away in ten days. Would it be all the same if I went to you about Monday week?"
The answer came from Montreal: "That will suit us very well—though we are disappointed. Mind you come." Then Nina wrote and posted to her Montreal girl friend a note, in which she said: "If any letters should come for me just keep them until I arrive. I will go to Brockville now."
Jack Cresswell saw her off by the evening train, bought her ticket to Montreal, and secured her compartment in the sleeper. Her two large valises were carried into the compartment. She said she preferred to have her wearing apparel with her and not bother about baggage-checks.
When everything was settled in the compartment she said in a worried nervous way to Jack: "And I suppose you will be wanting me to write to you?"
"When you get a chance, Nina. It is not easy, sometimes, to get away, at a friend's house, to write letters. Don't write till you feel like doing so and get a good chance."
This was his kind, self-controlled way of taking her vexatious remarks. But to-day it seemed as if kindness was what she least wished to receive from him.
"If I waited till I wished to write to you I don't think I would ever write again."
"You don't quite mean that, Nina. You are worried and anxious to-night. It makes you unkind and fretful."
"Well, perhaps so," said Nina. "I think I danced too much last night. And this stupid affair of ours worries me. I want a change, and I am going to have it. No. I shall not write for at least ten days—perhaps two weeks, and you had better think over the advisability of getting somebody else to wear down to a shadow with a long engagement."
The bell was ringing for departure. Jack tried to make the best of it, and to excuse her inconsiderate remarks. "Remember," she repeated, "I shall not write for at least ten days, and you had better not write for a week or so either. I want a complete change."
This was so very decisive that Jack could hardly repress a sigh as he rose and said: "Well, good-by, old lady; I hope you will have a pleasant visit."
As he lightly kissed her cheek she stood before him as inanimate as marble. All at once it seemed dreadful to let him believe in her so thoroughly. A feeling of kindness toward him came over her—a moment of remorse—remorse for everything. The train was moving off now. She suddenly put her arms round his neck and burst into tears. Then she pushed him away. "Run quickly now and get off. Go at once—"
"But Nina, darling what is the matter?"
"Never mind—run, or you'll be killed getting off. I'm only worried. Good-by!" And she pushed him through the door.
Nina continued her passage to Montreal as far as Prescott, where she left the train with her luggage, and crossed the St. Lawrence to Ogdensburg.
CHAPTER XIX.
E'en now, through thee, my worst seems less forlorn....
When Jack, with the agility of a railroad employé, landed on his feet all right, he stood watching the disappearing train, annoyed, disappointed, and mystified. He usually found moderate speech sufficient for daily use, and as he walked back slowly toward his club, all he said was: "Well, if all women are like Nina, I don't think I altogether understand them!"
He felt lonely already, and for diversion bethought himself of turning and going down to the Ideal to inspect the preparations for the race to be sailed on the following day. There he met Charley Dusenall, and as the yacht gently rose and fell on the slight swell coming in from the lake, these two sat watching some of the racing spars floating alongside and rolling about in the wavelets of the evening breeze, soaking themselves tough for the coming contest.
"What's the matter with you?" said Charley, noticing how grumpy and silent Jack was. "The old story, I suppose. Has Her Majesty gone back on you again?"
Jack grunted assent.
"Only pro tem., though?" asked Charley.
"Oh yes, only pro tem., of course, but still—"
"I know. Deuced unpleasant. But, after all, what does it matter about a woman or two when you have got a boat under you that can cut the eye-teeth out of an equinoctial and make your soul dance the Highland fling. Bah, chuck the whole thing up. Finish your grog and we'll have another. Vive le joy, as we say in Paris."
Jack's face grew less long. "That's all very well, but—"
"Rubbish! you want to hug your melancholy to yourself. Rats! whistle it down the wind. D'you think I don't know? Look at me! D'you think I haven't been through the whole gamut—from Alpha to Omaha—with all the hemidemisemiquavers thrown in? Lord, I have quavered whole nights. And I say that le jew ne vaut pas the candle."
"You are quite Frenchy to-night," said Jack, brightening.
"I always get more or less Parisian after eight o'clock at night. Dull as a country squire in the morning, though. Woke up awfully English, and moral to-day. By the way, you had better sleep on board to-night, so as to be ready in good time to-morrow. And don't be spoiling your nerves with the blues. I want you to tool her through to-morrow, and get over your megrims first. Remember this, that—
Womankind more joy discovers
Making fools than keeping lovers."
"Perhaps you are right," smiled Jack, getting up as if to shake himself clear of his gloom. "And yet—
To be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."
"There isn't much the matter with you," said Charley, as he saw Jack swing over the water and make a gymnastic tour round a backstay. And when the second gun was fired the next morning, and the Ideal was preening her feathers as she swept through a fleet of boats, there was nothing very sad about Jack. When the huge club topsail, sitting flat as a board, caused her to careen gently as she zipped through the preliminary canter, and when in the race she drew out to windward, eating up into the wind every chance slant, Charley was watching how Jack's finger-tips gently felt the wheel, and how his eager eye took in everything, from the luff of the topsail to the ripples on the water or the furthest cloud, and he whispered in his ear: "What about Her Majesty just now, old man?"
Jack was too intent on getting up into a favoring breath of air to answer; but he tossed his head to signify that he was all right, and fell to marveling that he had not thought of Nina for a full hour.
In spite of the yachting, however, it was difficult to keep from being lonely at other times, especially at the chambers, because Geoffrey was out of town, taking his summer vacation, and Jack was forced to fly from the desolation in the city and pass most of his nights on the Ideal. This, with the afternoon sailing and a daily bulletin sent to Nina, addressed to Montreal, served to help him to pass away the time until the return of Geoffrey, who was greeted, as it were, with open arms. Their bachelor quarters were very homelike and comfortable. The sitting-room and library, which they shared together, always seemed a little lonely when either of them was absent.
Hampstead was pleased to get back to his luxurious arm-chair and magazines. Jack's unsuspicious and welcoming face gave the place all the restfulness of home after a period of more or less watchfulness against detection. They stretched out their legs from the arm-chairs in which they sat, and smoked and really enjoyed themselves in the old way among their newspapers and books. After having settled in New York, when he first came to America, Geoffrey had employed an old friend, on whose secrecy he could rely, to call at his father's house in Shropshire and procure for him all his old relics and curiosities. These the friend had sent out to him. Every one of them recalled some more or less interesting memory, and as they hung drying in the dust that Mrs. Priest seldom attempted to remove they were like a tabular index of Geoffrey's wanderings, on which he could cast his eyes at night and unconsciously drop back into the past. There were whips, Tartar bridles, Arab pipes and muskets, and old-fashioned firearms. No less than six cricket bats proclaimed their nationality, as an offset against the stranger trophies. There were foils and masks, boxing-gloves, fishing-rods, snow-shoes, old swords, and any quantity of what Mrs. Priest called "rotten old truck, only fit for a second-'and shop." Besides all this, there were hanging shelves, covered with cups and other prizes that Geoffrey and Jack had won in athletic contests. Even the ceiling was made to do duty in exhibiting some lances and a central trophy composed of Zulu assegais and Malay arrows and such things. These, with the large bookcases of books, and, of course, Mrs. Priest, constituted their Penates.
Here Geoffrey ensconced himself for several evenings after his return, immersed in his books until long after Jack had knocked out his last pipe and turned in. His manner of taking his holidays had been an episode which was forgotten now if anything arose to divert him, something for him to smile at, but powerless to distract his attention from a good article in the Nineteenth Century.
But he did not visit Margaret for three or four days after his return. When he saw her again, all his better nature came to the fore. He delighted again in the quiet worship he felt for her now that he could see more clearly the beauties of temperate life. "Now," he said, as he stretched himself in his arm-chair one night, after having visited Margaret earlier in the evening, "now, I will soon get married. With Margaret, goodness will not only be practicable, but, I can imagine, even enjoyable." Then, after a while, his mind recurred to his holidays, which seemed to have been a long time ago. He yawned over the subject, and thought it was time to go to bed. "Heigh-ho! I have exhausted the devil and all his works now. He has got nothing more to offer me that I care to accept. Now I have done with risks and worries. If I can only get my money affairs straightened out I'll get married in September. Federal stock is bound to rise, with the new changes in the bank, and then I'll be all right. I'll just let Lewis have my horse and trap. He'll give me more than I paid for them. The seven hundred will wipe out a few things, and then if I can turn myself round again, I'll get married at once."
For several days after this he saw Margaret; and the more he saw of her the more he really longed for the life that seemed best. He was tired of plot and counterplot. As one whose intellect was generally a discerning one, when not clouded by exciting vagaries, he had had, all his life, the idea of enjoying goodness for itself—at some time or other. And entering Margaret's presence seemed like going to a pure spring fountain from which he came away refreshed. She had the quick brain that could skim off the best of his thought and whip it up and present it in a changed and perhaps more pleasing form. Even the look of her hands, the way she held up cut flowers, and delighted in their faintest odors (to him quite imperceptible) showed how much keener and more refined her sensibilities were than his own and made him marvel to find that in some respects she lived in a world wherein it was a physical impossibility for him to enter. As the days wore on in which he daily saw her, he found himself making little sacrifices for her sake, and even practicing a trifle of self-denial. He did things that he knew would please her, and afterward he felt all the healthy glow and ability for virtue which are the essences that gracious deeds distill. "Doing these things makes me better," he said. "This moral happiness is a thing to be worked up. I can not cultivate goodness in the abstract. I must have something tangible—something to understand; and if good deeds pay me back in this sort of way I may yet become, partly through my deeds, what she would wish me to be."
Full of all this, while ruminating late one night, he took it into his head to put it into verse, and he rather liked the simple lines.
TO MARGARET.
I.
My Love! I would Love's true disciple be,
That, 'neath the king of teachers' gracious art,
Refined sense and thought might be to me
The stepping-stones to lead me to thy heart;
That thine own realm of peace I too might share.
Where Nature's smallest things show much design
To teach kind thoughts for all that breathe; and where,
As music's laws compel by rule divine,
Naught but obeying good gives joy and rest;
Where thou can'st note the immaterial scent
Of thought and thing, which we gross men at best
Can hardly know, with senses often lent
To heavy joys that leave us but to long
For that unknown which makes thyself a song.