What slender youth, bedewed with liquid odors,Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,Pyrrha? For whom bindest thouIn wreaths thy golden hair,Plain in its neatness? Oh, how oft shall heOn faith, and changed gods, complain,To whom thou untried seemest fair?Horace,Lib. I, Ode 5.
What slender youth, bedewed with liquid odors,Courts thee on roses in some pleasant cave,Pyrrha? For whom bindest thouIn wreaths thy golden hair,Plain in its neatness? Oh, how oft shall heOn 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,dobehave 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'sfolleabout 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 slightestsoupçonof 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. Forthat, 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.
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?—Ecclesiastesvii, 13.
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?—Ecclesiastesvii, 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, whowasyour grandfather?"
This ignorance on the part of an engaged girl made Maurice cackle.
"Whoishe, 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 ofennui, 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 hiskibitka, 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 suggestedvodkiand 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 bottlevodki.' 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 danvodki.'
"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 unconsciouslyde tropat 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.
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.
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 whatisthe 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.