Geoffrey Hamstead Part 23

"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 sh.o.r.e in the afternoon breeze, and on the horizon, across the thirty or forty miles of fresh water, the south sh.o.r.e 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 b.u.t.tons 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 ent.i.tled 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 bra.s.s."

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 slightest _soupcon_ of 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 dispa.s.sionate, 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 G.o.d, 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. For _that_, I say what I do, and I make you see your position, when you, who have been a ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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.

CHAPTER XVII.

Consider the work of G.o.d: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?--_Ecclesiastes_ vii, 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 n.o.body 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."