Geoffrey Hamstead Part 32

Another week now slipped by, and Geoffrey could not understand why Jack had not gone to California. He called on Nina to ascertain how matters stood. She received him standing in the middle of the room. To-day Geoffrey closed the door behind him. It was the last time he ever intended to be in this house, and so he did not care much what the inquisitive door-opener might think.

There was no mark of special recognition on either side. He walked quickly toward her, seeing, at one quick glance, that he was not regarded as a friend.

"Why have you and Jack not gone yet to California?" he said, without prelude.

"I don't know," she answered coldly, still standing and eyeing him with aversion, as he also stood before her. "Has not Jack given any notice of his intention to leave the bank?"

"I have not heard of any. You ought to know that better than I," said Geoffrey. "By the way," he added, "you might as well sit down, Nina.

There is no use that I see in playing the tragedy queen." His voice hardened her aversion to him.

"No," she said, her voice deep and full with resentment. "If I am always allowed to choose, I will never sit down in your presence again. You have come here to look after your own interests, and I have got to listen to you, to learn from your lips your devil's cunning. You are forced to tell me the proper plans, and I am forced to listen and act upon them. Now go on and say what you have to say."

Hampstead nodded, and said simply: "Perhaps you are right. I don't know that it is worth your while to take so much trouble, but I respect the feeling which prompts it."

Nina looked angry.

"Don't think I say this unkindly. You, or rather your conditions, have changed, and I merely wish to acknowledge the improvement. We will speak very simply to each other to-day. Now, about California; it appears to me that Jack does not intend to go there for a good while if allowed to do as he likes. You must go at once. He very likely is wis.h.i.+ng to make more money before he leaves, but this won't do. He must go at once."

"I think," said Nina, "that there need be no further reason for your seeing me again after this interview. You have always, lately, been Jack's confidant. Send him to me this evening, and I will tell him to consult with you. After that, you can arrange with him everything necessary about our departure. He will need advice, perhaps, in many ways, and then he can (here Nina's lip curled) benefit by your wisdom."

"I would not sneer too much at the wisdom if I were you. My devil's cunning, as you are pleased to call it, has put you on the right track, whatever its faults may be. It has stood us both in good stead this time, and, if I did force you to marry Jack, you should not blame me for that now, and I do not think you do."

He turned to move toward the door. He did not consider that he had any right to say good-by, or anything else beyond what was absolutely necessary. But his reference to Jack, in a way that seemed to speak of his worth, aroused Nina; and this, together with the thought that she would never again see this man who had treated her whole existence as a plaything, induced her to speak again to him.

"Stop," she said. "I do indeed owe you something. You forced me to marry Jack, out of your own selfishness, of course, but still I must thank you for it. To my last hour I will thank you for that. Yes, I will even thank you for more--for the careful way you have shown me my way from out of my troubles. I think I am nearly done with anguish now. A little more will come, no doubt, and after that, please G.o.d, whatever troubles I endure will not be shameful. And now something tells me, Geoffrey, that I shall never see you again. I can not let you go without saying that I forgive you all. Some time, perhaps, you will be glad I said so.

You have been by turns cunning, selfish, wise, and loving to me. You have also seemed--I don't know that you _were_, but you have _seemed_--cruel to me; but I do not think, now that I look back upon everything more calmly, that you have been unjust. No; a woman should bear her part of the consequences of her own deeds. I am glad that Margaret's happiness is still possible and that I did not drag anybody down with me. The more I think of everything the less I blame you. You will think I am getting wise to look at it in this way, but I never could look at it like this until now."

Nina was speaking in a way that surprised Geoffrey. Sorrow had altered her; dangers and changes were encompa.s.sing her. Though all love for him was dead, the man whom she had once wors.h.i.+ped stood before her for the last time. He, who had caused her more happiness and distress than any other person ever could again, stood in silence taking his leave of her--forever. Urged by hope, besieged by doubts and dangers, driven by necessities, her mind had acquired an abnormal activity, and she seemed all at once to be able to realize what it was to part from him for all eternity and to become conscious while she stood there of a power to rise in intelligence above everything surrounding her--above all the clogging conditions of our existence--and to judge calmly, even pityingly, of both herself and Geoffrey and of all the agonies and joys that now seemed to have been so small and unnecessary. As she spoke the whole of her life seemed spread out before her. She recollected, or seemed to recollect, all the events of her life, and she remained a moment gazing before her in a way that made her look almost unreal.

"I can see," she said slowly, in a calm, distinct voice, "everything that has happened in my life; but all the rest is all a blank to me."

Geoffrey noticed that, with her clearness of vision into the past, she evidently expected also to see something of the future and was startled and surprised at seeing nothing. She continued looking before her, as if unconscious of his presence, until she turned to him shuddering.

"Good-by, Geoffrey. I feel that something is going to happen in some way, either to you or to me; I don't know how. I see things to-day strangely, and there are other things I want to see and can not."

She looked at him with a look such as he had never seen in any one.

"You will never see me again, Geoffrey. I am certain of that. I pray that G.o.d may be as good to you as I have been."

Geoffrey grew pale. Something convinced him that she spoke the truth and that he never would see her again. There was something in her appearance and in her words that made him shudder. A rarefied beauty had spread over her; she seemed to be merely an intelligence, speaking from the purity of some other realm. It seemed as if it were no human prompting that urged her to the utterance of forebodings, and that her last words were as sweet as they were terrible.

He tried to look at her kindly, to cheer her, but he saw that, for the moment, the emotions of our ordinary life were totally apart from her and that he had become nothing to her but a combination of recollections.

He raised her hand to his lips, took a long look at her, and went his way, leaving her standing in the middle of the room calmly watching his retreat.

As Hampstead went back to the club he felt unstrung. He went in and drank several gla.s.ses of brandy to brace himself. He had been drinking a great deal during this excitement over his investments. At ordinary times he did not care enough about liquor to try to make a pastime of drinking. Now, there was a fever in his blood that seemed to demand a still greater fever. He did not get drunk, because his individuality seemed to a.s.sert itself over and above all he consumed. To-day, to add to the depression he felt about his prospects (for ruin was staring him in the face), the strange words of Nina--full of presentiment--her uncanny, prophetess-like eyes, and the conviction that he had seen her for the last time--all weighed upon him. Her last words to him haunted him, and he drank heavily all the evening.

He told Jack he had called to see Nina in the afternoon, and that she had expressed a wish to see him in the evening.

About eight o'clock Jack made his appearance at Mossbank. Mrs. Lindon had dragged her unwilling husband off to a dinner somewhere, so that the young people were not in antic.i.p.ation of interruption.

Nina had got over the strange phase into which she had pa.s.sed while saying good-by to Geoffrey during the afternoon, and was doing her best to appear natural and pleasant. After some conversation, she inquired whether he had given the bank notice of his intention to leave. When he said he had not, she let him know that she must leave Toronto at once, and the first thing he did was to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e: "O my G.o.d, and we not married!"

Nina caught the words, and sprang toward him from the chair in which she had been sitting.

They were a pitiable pair; with faces like ashes, confronting each other.

"What did you say then, Jack? Tell me all--tell me quick, or you will kill me!"

"Yes, it's true," groaned Jack. "I found out when I went back to Buffalo that Simpson was only a blackleg criminal and no clergyman. We are no more married than we ever were."

As Jack said this he had his head down; it was bowed with the misery he felt. He dreaded to look at Nina. If he had looked, he would have seen her lips grow almost blue and her eyes lose their sight. The next moment, before he could catch her, she sank on the floor in shapeless, inert confusion.

Jack did not wish to call for help. He seized a large ornamental fan of peac.o.c.k's feathers and fanned her vigorously.

She soon came to. But still lay for some time before she had strength to rise. At last he a.s.sisted her to a sofa, where she reclined wearily until able to go on with the conversation.

"Jack," she said, after a while, "if I don't get away from here in three days I will go mad. Think, now! I can not help you much in the arrangements to get away. You must arrange everything yourself. Just let me know when to go, and I will look after myself and will meet you somewhere--anywhere you propose. But I can not--I don't feel able to a.s.sist you more than that. Stop! an idea strikes me! You can not arrange everything yourself. There are always things that are apt to be forgotten. You must get somebody to help you think out things. When we go away I feel that it will be forever--at least, I felt so this afternoon. You will have to arrange everything, so that there need be no correspondence with Toronto any more."

"Yes," said Jack, "I think your advice is good. I have always relied on Hampstead. If you did not mind my telling him the whole story, Nina, I think his a.s.sistance would be invaluable."

"There is nothing that I dread his knowing," said Nina, as she buried her face in the cus.h.i.+ons. "He is a man of the world, and will know I am innocent about our intended marriage. I thoroughly believe in his power, not only to help you to arrange everything, but also to take the secret with him to his grave."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said Jack. "I have always thought dear old Geoffrey, in spite of a good many things I would like to see changed, to be the finest all-round man I ever knew."

"Yes. Now go, Jack! I am too ill to talk a moment more. Simply tell me when and how I am to go and I will go. As for arranging anything more, my mind refuses to do it. Give me your arm to the foot of the stairs!

So. Good-night!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

Mad, call I it; for to define true madness.

What is't, but to be nothing else but mad?

But let that go.

_Hamlet._

After leaving Nina, Jack went to the club, where he found Geoffrey playing pool with half a dozen others, whose demeanor well indicated the number of times the lamp had been rubbed for the genius with the tray to appear. Geoffrey seemed to be in good-humor, but he gave Jack the idea of playing against time. He strode around the table rapidly as he took his shots, as if not caring whether he won or lost. The only effect the liquor seemed to have upon him was to make him grow fierce. Every movement of his long frame was made with a quick nervous energy, inspiriting enough to watch, but giving an impression of complete unrest. He was playing to stave off waking nightmares. Thoughts of his probable ruin on the following day came to him from time to time--like a vision of a death's head. The others with him noticed nothing different in him, but Jack, who was quietly smoking on one of the high seats near by, saw that he was in a more reckless mood than he had ever seen him before. He could not help smiling as his friend strode around the table in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, playing with a force that was almost ferocity and a haste apparently reckless but deadly in the precision that sense of power, skill, and alcohol gave him. After a while, in a pause, he spoke to Geoffrey, who at once divined that more trouble of some kind awaited him.

When they arrived at their chambers, Jack told him briefly of the journey with Nina for the purpose of getting married in Buffalo, and of what Nina had just said.

Geoffrey nodded; he was waiting for the something new that would affect himself--the something he was not prepared for.

"Is that all?" he asked sharply.