Geoffrey Hamstead Part 29

Cresswell paused on the threshold as he entered, and then, feeling glad that n.o.body else was in the room, advanced toward Mr. Lindon. Lindon saw him out of the corner of his eye as he came in, and a saturnine smile relaxed his face while he completed a sentence in a letter which he was writing.

"Good morning, Jack," he said briskly. "Come at last, have you?"

This was rather disconcerting, but Jack replied: "Yes, and you evidently know why." He said this cheerfully and with considerable spirit, but Mr.

Lindon's next remark was a little chilling.

"Just so. I was afraid you would come some day. Let us cut it short, my boy. I have a board meeting in ten minutes."

"Well, you know all I've got to say. Now, what do you say?"

This was a happy abruptness on Jack's part, and Lindon rather liked him for it. It seemed business like. It seemed as if Jack thought too highly of Mr. Lindon's sagacity to indulge in any persuasion or argument. He lay back in his chair with an amused look.

"Why dammit, boy, she's not in love with you."

Jack shrugged his shoulders and smiled--as if that was point on which modesty compelled him to be silent But his individuality a.s.serted itself.

"Is that all the objection?"

Evidently, abruptness and speaking to the point were preferred in this office, and Jack was prepared to give the millionaire all the abruptness he wanted.

"No," said Lindon. "Of course, that is not all. But I know, as a matter of fact, that my daughter does not care a pin about you. Don't think I have been making money all my life. I can tell when a woman is in love as well as any man. I have watched Nina myself when you were with her, and I tell you she does not care half enough for you to marry you."

"She says she does," said Jack, determined not to be browbeaten by this man's force.

"I don't believe a word of it, if she does say so. I was afraid, at one time, that she was going to make a goose of herself with you, and I waltzed her off to the Continent. But after she came back I thoroughly satisfied myself that she was in no danger, or else, my boy, you would not have had the run of my house as you have had. Under the circ.u.mstances, Jack, I was always glad to see you, since we came back last, and hope to see you always, just the same. Quite apart, however, from anything she may say or consent to, I have other plans for my daughter. I have no son to carry on the name, but my daughter's marriage will be a grand one. With her beauty and my money, she will make the biggest match of the day. I did not start with much of a family myself, but I can control family. When Nina marries, sir, she marries blood; nothing less than a dook, sir,--nothing less than a dook will satisfy me. And I'll have a dook, sir; mark my words!"

When his ambition was aroused, Mr. Lindon sometimes reverted to the more marked vulgarity of forty years ago.

Jack arose. The interview was ended as far as he was concerned.

Lindon felt kindly toward him. He was one of the few young men who were not overawed by his money and obsequious on account of his wine.

"Well, good-by," he said. "Don't let this make any interruption in your visits to Mossbank. You'll always find a good gla.s.s of wine ready for you with Joseph Lindon. I rather like you, Jack, and if you ever want any backing, just let me know. But, my boy"--here Lindon regarded him as kindly as his keen, business-loving face would allow, and he laid his hand on his arm--"my lad, you must be careful. Remember what an old man says--you're too honest to get along all through life without getting put upon. You must try to see into things a little more. Just try and be a little more suspicious. If you don't, somebody will 'go for you,' sure as a gun."

Jack saw that this was intended kindly, and he took it quietly, wondering if Joseph Lindon, while looking so uncommonly sober, could have been indulging in a morning gla.s.s of wine. He went out, and Mr.

Lindon watched his free, manly bearing as he pa.s.sed to the front door.

"If I had a son like that," he said warmly, "Nina could marry whom she liked. That boy would be family enough for me. He would have enough of the gentleman about him both for himself and his old father. Lord, if I had a son like that I'd make a prince of him! I'd just give him blank checks signed with my name. Darned if I wouldn't!"

To give a son unfilled signed checks seemed to be a culmination of parental foolishness which would show his fondness more than anything else he could do. Perhaps he was right.

CHAPTER XXI.

Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances incalculable as the descent of thistledown.--GEORGE ELIOT'S _Romola_.

During Jack's visit to her father's office, Nina pa.s.sed the time in desultory shopping until she met him on King Street.

"I need not ask what your success was," said she, smiling, as she joined him. "Your face shows that clearly enough."

"Nothing less than a dook," groaned Jack, good-humoredly. "He seems to think they can be had at auction sales in England."

"I am glad he refused," said Nina, "because his consent would delay my whims. We have done our duty in asking him, and now I am going to marry you to-morrow, Jack."'

"To-morrow?"

"Yes, I am afraid, dear Jack, that if I allowed the marriage to be put off till next week or longer you might change your mind." She gave Jack a look that disturbed thought. Affection toward him on her part was something so new that this, together with her startling announcement, made it difficult for him accurately to distinguish his head from his heels.

"But I can not leave the bank at a moment's notice."

"No; but you can get your holidays a week sooner. You were going to take them in a week."

"Had we not better wait, then, for the week to expire?"

"Fiddlesticks! Don't you see that I want to give you a chance? What I am _really_ afraid of is that I shall change my own mind. Father said only yesterday he was thinking of taking me to England at once. If you don't want to take your chances you can take your consequences instead."

It did not seem anything new or strange to Jack that she should give a little stamp of her foot imperiously, and in all the willfulness of a spoiled child determine suddenly upon carrying out a whim in spite of any objections. And Jack needed no great force of argument to push him on in this matter. His head was throbbing with excitement. To think of the bank was habitual to him; but the wildness of the new move commended itself to his young blood. The holidays were a mere matter of arrangement, for the most part, between the clerks, and he thought he saw his way to arranging for a fortnight's absence. "I'll make it all right," he said, thinking aloud. "I will arrange it with Sappy."

Whether "Sappy" was the bank manager or a fellow-clerk did not at the moment interest Nina.

"Why, Nina, I didn't know you were a person to go in for anything half so wild. It suits me. It will be the spree of my life! But how have you arranged everything? or have you arranged anything?"

"Oh, there is nothing very much to arrange. I know you can not leave the bank finally without giving due notice. So we will just go off now and get married, and when you come back, after a week or so, you can give the usual notice and then we will go to California. If your brother there wants you to go into the grape-farming he must know well enough that you have better chances there than here in the bank, and if, after all, the business there did not get on well, I dare say father will have changed his mind by that time."

"And how will you account for your absence from home?"

"Nothing simpler," said she, with a sagacious toss of her head. "I am just telegraphing to Sophronia B. Hopkins at Lockport, New York. You remember Sophronia B., when she was with us? I have telegraphed that I am coming to see her. She will answer to say 'Come along'; and then I will put her off for a couple of weeks and tell her to keep any letters forwarded for me from here until I come."

Jack was astonished. "I thought your head was only valuable as an ornament," said he, with affectionate rudeness.

"I have never, with you, had occasion to use it before. To-morrow, at half-past seven in the morning, you will take the train for Hamilton. I will take the 9.30 and we will go through to Buffalo together, where we will arrive about two o'clock, and then we can be married there and go West. But we need not arrange anything more now. You will be at the Campbells' to-night, and anything further can be spoken about there. Go off now to the bank and get everything ready. And, by the way, Jack"--here she held out her hand as if for good-by--while she asked, with what seemed to Jack an almost unimaginable coquetry and beauty, "you won't change your mind, dear Jack?" She gave him one glance from under her sweeping eyelashes, and then she left him to grope his way to the bank.

She thought, as she walked along, "I think I have read somewhere that 'whom the G.o.ds wish to take they first drive mad,' or something like that. It is just as well, as Geoffrey suggested, to keep Jack slightly insane to-day. It will prevent him from thinking my proposal strange.

Poor Jack! To-day he would give me his right arm as a present. How shabbily I have treated him, and how well he has always behaved!"

About eleven on the following forenoon, Jack was waiting in the dining-room of the Hamilton railway station, looking out through the window to see Nina's train come in. He thought it better to escape observation in this way. Nor did Nina indulge in looking out the window of the Pullman. Everything had been fully arranged, and as the bridge train moved out of the station, Jack left his obscure post of observation and hastily pa.s.sed through the crowd on the station and got on board the "smoker" in front. When clear of Hamilton he made his way back through the cars to the drawing-room car, where he found Nina, who was beginning to look a little anxious for his arrival.

The train took nearly two hours to trundle along to the bridge. For a time they talked together, but Nina was feeling the reaction of the excitement of getting away. She had had a good deal to do, and she did not feel that going away with Jack would prevent her from enjoying a fairly comfortable nap in the large swinging arm-chairs. She soon dozed off, and Jack, who was pleased to see her rest, walked to the end of the car and back again to calm his nerves. This sort of thing was new to him. He had a novel with him, but he could not read it. His "only books were woman's looks" to-day. Other people's adventures seemed poor to him just now, in comparison with his own.

While thus moving about restlessly he became a little interested in an elderly gentleman, evidently a clergyman, who was sitting un.o.btrusively behind a copy of the Detroit Church Herald. He pa.s.sed this retiring person several times, in loitering about, and then, seeing him with his paper laid down beside him, stopped and said cheerfully:

"Got the car all to ourselves to-day."

"Yes," said the grave-looking person, with an American accent. "And pleasant, too, on a warm day like this. It's worth the extra quarter to get out from among the crying babies and orange-peel and come in here and travel comfortably. Going far?"

"Only as far as Buffalo," said Jack, taking a seat beside him, for want of anything better to do.