Geoffrey Hamstead Part 4

The leaves on the overhanging boughs quivered in the light of the moon, and the delicate perfume in the air spoke of flower-beds near by. He thought it extremely pleasant here, and he laid his head back against the tree beside him to listen to the tinkling of the fountain and to enjoy the scent-laden night air. An idea was still with him that this was the girl Jack was engaged to, and he thought it would be as well to keep that idea before him. He said to himself that he liked Jack, and thought he was very considerate, under the circ.u.mstances, for his friend when he took out a little silver case and suggested that he would like a cigarette.

Nina did not answer him. She was in some phase of thought in which cigarettes had no place, and only looked toward him slowly, as if she had merely heard the sound of his voice and not the words. He selected from the case one of those innocuous tubes of rice-paper and prairie-gra.s.s, and, as he did so, the absent look on her face seemed peculiar. With a fuse in one hand and the cigarette in the other, he paused before striking a light, and they looked at each other for a moment as he thought of stories he had read of one person's influence over another. Like many, he had a general curiosity about strange phases of mankind, and it occurred to him that Nina would make an interesting subject for experiment. Presently he said, in resonant tones, deep and musical:

"Do you like to be here, Nina?"

She did not seem to notice that he called her by this familiar name, but she stood up and remained silently gazing at the moon through a break in the foliage. Her beauty was sublimated by the white light, and, as Geoffrey took a step towards her, he forgot about his cigarette, and, taking both her hands in his, he repeated his question two or three times before she answered. Then she turned impetuously.

"Oh, why do you make me do everything that is wrong? I should not be here. I should never have spoken to you. I was afraid of you from the first moment I saw you."

Geoffrey led her by one hand back to the seat.

"Now answer me. Do you like to be here--with me, Nina?"

She looked at the moon and at the ground and all about, but remained mute and apparently pondering.

He had forgotten Jack now as well as the cigarette, and was rapidly losing the remembrance that this was to be merely a scientific experiment.

"Your silence makes me all the more impatient. I will know now. Do you like to be here, Nina?"

A new earnestness in his tone thrilled her and made her tremble. She turned with a sudden impulse, as if something had made her reckless:

"You are forcing me to answer you," she said vehemently, as she looked at him with a constrained, though affectionate expression in her eyes.

"But I will tell you if I die for it. Oh, I am so wicked to say so, but I must. You make me. Oh, now let us go into the house."

Geoffrey's generous intention to act rightly by Jack departed from him, and for a moment he drew her toward him, saying that she must not care too much for being there, "because, you know," he said, "this is only a little flirtation, and is quite too good to last."

She seemed not to be listening to him, but to be thinking; and after a moment she said, in long drawn out, sorrowful accents:

"Oh--poor--Jack!"

Something in the slow, melancholy way she said this, and the thought of the poor place that Jack certainly held at the present time in her affections, struck Geoffrey as irresistibly amusing, and he laughed aloud in an unsympathetic way, which presented him to her in a new light, and she sprang from him at once. Her emotion turned to anger as she thought that the laugh had been derisive, and her blood boiled to think he could bring her here to laugh at her after he had succeeded in winning her so completely.

"Come into the house at once," she cried. "I can't go in alone even if I knew the way."

Geoffrey rose and begged her pardon, a.s.suring her that nothing but the peculiarity of her remark had caused his laugh.

"I will not stay here another instant. If you don't come at once I'll find my way alone." And she stamped her foot upon the ground.

Hampstead did not like to be stamped at, and his face altered. As long as she had been facile and pleasing, a sense of duty toward her and Jack had made him considerate. It had seemed to him while sitting there that this girl was his; and the sense of possession had made him kind, but now that she seemed to vex him unnecessarily it appeared to him like a denial of his influence. The idea of the experiment suddenly returned, together with a sense of power and a desire to compel submission which displaced his wish to be considerate. He sat down on the seat again facing her and said:

"I want you to come here." He motioned to the seat beside him.

"I won't go near you. I hate you! I'll run in by myself."

"You can not run away--because I wish you to come here."

Hampstead said this in a measured way, and his brow seemed to knot into cords as he concentrated his will-power. His face bore an unpleasant expression. A quarter of a minute pa.s.sed and she stood trembling and fascinated; and before another half-minute had elapsed she came very slowly forward, and approached him with the expression of her face changed into one of enervation. Her eyes were dilated, and her hands hung loosely at her sides. Hampstead saw, with some consternation, that she had become like something else, that she looked very like a mad-woman. A shock went through him as he looked at her--not knowing how the matter might terminate. He saw that she was mesmerized--an automaton moved by his will only. The combined flirtation and experiment had gone further than he had intended, and the result was startling--especially as the possibility that she might not recover flashed through his mind.

The power he had been wielding (which receives much cheap ridicule from very learned men who would fain deny what they can not explain) suddenly seemed to him to be a devilish one, and he felt that he had done something wrong. He had not intended it. An idea had seized him, and he was merely concentrating a power which he unconsciously used almost every hour of his life. He considered what ought to be done to bring her back to a normal state. Not knowing anything better to do, he walked her about quickly, speaking to her, a little sharply, so as to rouse her.

Then, by telling her to wake up, and by asking her simple questions and requiring an answer, he succeeded in bringing her back to something like her usual condition. When she quite knew where she was, she thought she must have fainted. All her anger was gone, and Geoffrey, to give the devil his due, felt sorry for her. It had been an interesting episode--something quite new to him in a scientific way--but uncanny.

She still looked to him as if for protection, and she would have wept had he not warned her how she would appear in the ball-room. "Oh, Mr.

Hampstead, you have treated me cruelly," she said. Geoffrey felt that this was true enough.

"It was all my own fault, though. I do not blame you. You have taught me a great deal to-night. I seem to know, somehow, your best and your worst, and what a man can be."

She leaned upon his arm, partly from weakness and partly because she felt that, good or bad, he was master, and that she liked to lean upon him. The movement touched Geoffrey with compa.s.sion. Having nothing to offer in return, it distressed him to notice her affection, which he knew would only bring her unhappiness. He tried, therefore, to say something to remove the impressions that had come to her.

"You speak of good and bad in me," he said quickly. "Now I think you are so much in my confidence that I can trust you in what I am going to say.

Don't believe that there is any good in me. I tell you the truth now because I am sorry that we have been so foolish to-night. There is no good in me. It is all--the other thing."

Nina shuddered--feeling as if he had spoken the truth but that it was already too late for her to listen to it.

He took her back into the house, smiling and pleasant to those about him, as if nothing had occurred, and left her with Mrs. Lindon.

But he did not go to find Margaret Mackintosh again. He went home somewhat excited, and smoked four or five pipes of tobacco. At first he was regretful, for he knew he had been doing harm. He said he was a whimsical fool. But after a couple of "night-caps" he began to think how picturesque she had looked in the moonlight, and he afterward dropped off into as dreamless and undisturbed a sleep as the most virtuous may enjoy.

CHAPTER VI.

For in her youth There is a p.r.o.ne and speechless dialect, Such as moves men; besides, she hath prosperous art, When she will play with reason and discourse, And well she can persuade.

_Measure for Measure._

If anybody had stated that Geoffrey Hampstead was a scoundrel, he would have had grounds for his opinion. As he did not attempt to palliate his own misdeeds, n.o.body will do so for him. He repudiated the idea of being led into wrong-doing, or driven into it by outside circ.u.mstances.

Whatever he did, he liked to do thoroughly, and of his own accord. When Nature lavishes her gifts, much ability for both good and evil is usually part of the general endowment; and, although, perhaps, if we knew more, all wrong-doing would receive pity, Geoffrey possessed a knowledge of results that tends to withdraw compa.s.sion. But he had overstepped the mark when he had told Nina there was no good in him.

Even his own statement reminded him how few things there are about which a sweeping a.s.sertion can be made with truth. He grew impatient to find that so many people do not hold opinions--that their opinions hold them; and when the good equalities of a person under discussion met with no consideration he invariably spoke of them. He had a good word to say for most people, and no lack of courage to say it, and thus he gave impression of being fair-minded, which made men like him. He had the compa.s.sion for the faulty which seems to appear more frequently in those whose lives have been by no means without reproach than among the strictest followers of religions which claim charity as their own. He thought he realized that consciousness of virtue does not breed so much true compa.s.sion as consciousness of sin; and a young clergyman of his acquaintance found that his arguments as to the utility of sin in the world were very shocking and difficult to answer.

Thus he alternated between good and evil, very much in the ordinary way, with only these differences, that his good seemed more disinterested and his evil more p.r.o.nounced than with most people. The good which he did was done without the bargaining hope of future compensation, and therefore seemed more commendable. On the other hand, as he had almost forgotten what the idea of h.e.l.l was, he was not forced to brave those consequences which, if some believe as they profess, must render their deliberate wrong-doing almost heroic.

What should a man be called who had in him these combinations? Too good to be either a Quilp or a Jonas Chuzzlewit, and much too bad to resemble any of the spotless heroes of fiction. It will settle the matter with those who are intolerant of distinctions and who do not examine into mixtures of good and evil outside their own range of life to have it understood and agreed that he was a thoroughpaced scoundrel. This will place us all on a comfortable footing.

Some days after the Dusenalls' entertainment Geoffrey was strolling along King Street when he caught sight of Margaret Mackintosh coming along the street with quiet eyes observant. She walked with a long, elastic step, which seemed to speak of the buoyancy of her heart.

Geoffrey walked slower, so that he might enjoy the beauty of her carriage, and the charm of her presence as she recognized him. It seemed to him that no one else could convey so much in a bow as she could. With the graceful inclination of the head came the pleasure of recognition and a quick intelligence that lighted up her face. It was the bow of a princess, as we imagine it; not, it will be remembered, as Canada has experienced it. A n.o.bility and graciousness in her face and figure made men feel that she had a right to condescend to them. Innocence was not the chief characteristic of her face. However attractive, innocence is a poetic name for ignorance--the ignorance which has been canonized by the Romish faith, and has thus produced all the insipid virgins and heroines of the old masters and writers. She did not show that pliable, ductile, often pretty ignorance, supposedly sanctified by the name of innocence, which has been the priestly ideal of beauty for at least nineteen hundred years--perhaps always.

Hers was a good face, with a sweet, firm, generous mouth, possibly pa.s.sionate, and already marked by sympathetic suffering from such human ills as she understood. She seemed to have nothing to hide, and she was as free and open as the day, and as fresh as the dawn; and a large part of the charm she had for all men lay in the fact that her self-respect was so a.s.sured to her that she had forgotten all about it. She had none of that primness which, is the outcome of an attempt to conceal the fact, that knowledge of which one is ashamed is continually uppermost in the mind.

As soon as her eye rested on Geoffrey, it lighted up with that marvelous quickness which is the attribute of rapidly-thinking people. In a flash her mind apparently possessed itself of all she had ever known of him.

Five or six little things to say came tumbling over each other to her lips, as she held out her long gloved hand in greeting. Even Hampstead felt that her quick approach, earnest manner, and the way she looked straight at him almost disconcerted him; but he had thought to wait till she spoke to him to see what she would say. And she thought he would speak first, so a little pause occurred for an instant that would have been slightly awkward had they not both been young and very good-looking and much interested in each other.

"And how are you?" said she heartily, as they shook hands. The pause might have continued as far as either of them cared. They were self-possessed persons--these two.

"Oh, I am pretty well, thank you," said Geoffrey, without hastening to continue the conversation.