Geoffrey Hamstead Part 26

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 pa.s.sage 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 employe, 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 a.s.sent.

"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--"

"Rubbis.h.!.+ 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 Shrops.h.i.+re 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-fas.h.i.+oned firearms. No less than six cricket bats proclaimed their nationality, as an offset against the stranger trophies. There were foils and masks, boxing-gloves, fis.h.i.+ng-rods, snow-shoes, old swords, and any quant.i.ty 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 a.s.segais and Malay arrows and such things. These, with the large bookcases of books, and, of course, Mrs. Priest, const.i.tuted 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 wors.h.i.+p 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.

II.

From gracious deeds exhale the perfumes rare Of active rest, glad care, and hopeful trust The soul snuffs these, well pleased, and seems to share, For once, a joy in concord with the dust.

Thus simple deeds, through Love, make known th' unknown-- That immaterial most substantial gain Which makes of earth a heaven all its own.