Geoffrey Hamstead Part 5

"And particularly well you look. Never saw you look better," said Margaret.

Geoffrey made a deep bow, extending the palms of his hands toward her and downward in reverent Oriental pantomime, as one who should say: "Your slave is humbly glad to please, and dusts your path with his miserable body."

"And what brought you into town to-day?" said he, as he turned and walked with her. "Not the giddy delight of walking on King Street, I hope?"

"That was my only idea, I will confess. Home was dull, and I was tired of reading. Mother was busy and father was away somewhere; so I came out for a walk. Yes, King Street was my only hope. No, by the way--I had an excuse. I have been looking for a house-maid. None to be had though."

"Don't find one," said Geoffrey. "Just come out every day to look for one. I know several fellows who would hunt house-maids with you forever if they got the chance."

"Ah! they never dare to say that to me. They might get snapped up. Yet it is hard to only receive compliments by deputy, like this. Do they intend that, after all, I shall die an old maid? And your banks friends are such excellent _partis_! are they not?"

"They are," said Geoffrey. "At least, they would be if they had a house to put a wife into--to say nothing of the maid."

"Talking of house-maids," said Margaret, "I just met Mrs.

whats-her-name--you know, the little American with the German name; and she had just discharged one of her maids. She said to me, 'You know I have just one breakfast--ice-cold water and a hot roll; sometimes a pickle. Sarah said I'd kill myself, and in spite of everything I could say she _would_ load the table with tea or coffee and stuff I don't want. 'Last I got mad and I walked in with her wages up to date. I said, 'Sarah I guess we had better part. You don't fill the bill.' I told her I would try and get Sarah myself, as I didn't object to her ideas in the matter of breakfasts. I have been looking for her and wanting some nice person to help me to find her. What are you doing this afternoon? Won't you come and help me to find Sarah?" This, with a little pretense of _implorando_.

"If you think I 'fill the bill' as 'a nice person' nothing would give me greater pleasure. Sarah will be found. No, I have nothing in particular on hand to-day. I was going to the gymnasium to have a fellow pummel me with the gloves. I am certain I have received more headaches and nose-bleedings in learning how to defend myself with my hands than one would receive in being attacked a dozen times in earnest."

"Well, now would be a good time to stop taking further lessons," said Margaret. "Why do you give yourself so much trouble?"

"Oh, for the exercise, I suppose, or the prestige of being a boxer.

Keeps one's person sacred, in a manner; and among young men serves to give more weight to the expression of one's opinions. I think it is a mistake, though, as far as I am concerned. Nature made me speedy on my feet, and when the time comes I'll use her gift instead of the artificial one."

"I have heard it said that it is much wiser for a gentleman to run from a street fight than to stay in it--that the fact of his not using his feet as a means of attack in a fight always places him at a disadvantage. Could you not learn the manly art of kicking, as well?"

"What a murderous notion!" exclaimed Geoffrey. "I don't think that branch of self-defense is taught in the schools. It reminds one of a duel with axes. For my part, I think that hunting Sarah is much more improving. That is, if one did not have blood-thirsty ideas put into his head on the way."

And Margaret looked so gentle and pacific.

"I always think a very interesting subject like this should be thought out carefully," said she, smiling.

If she could not talk well on all subjects, she was a boon to those who could only talk on _one_--to those who resemble a ship with only one sail to keep them going--slow to travel on, but capable of teaching something, and not to be despised.

With her tall figure, cla.s.sic face, and blonde hair, Margaret Mackintosh was a vision; but when she came, with large-pupiled eyes, in quest of knowledge, even grave and reverend seigniors were apt to forget the information she asked for. University-degree young men, the most superior of living creatures, soon understood that she sought for what they had learned, and not for themselves; and this demeanor on her part, while it tended to disturb the nice balance in which the weight of their mental talents was accurately poised against that of their physical fascinations, went to make friends and not lovers.

There was one person, however, to whose appearance she was not indifferent; who always suggested to her the Apollo Belvedere, and gave her an increased interest in the Homer of arts, whereas the vigorous life, heroic resolve, and shapely perfection of the ancient hero meet with but little response in women who exist with difficulty. She was perhaps ent.i.tled, by a sort of natural right, to expect that a masculine appearance should approach that grade of excellence of which she was herself an example.

"Do you know," she continued, as they proceeded up Yonge Street, "just before I met you I pa.s.sed such a horrible young man, with long arms reaching almost to his knees and a little face. He made me quite uncomfortable. It's all very well to believe in our evolution as an abstract idea; but an experience like this brings the conviction home to one's mind altogether too vividly. It was quite a relief to meet you.

You always look so--in fact, so different from that sort of person, don't you know?"

She nearly said he looked so like her Apollo, but did not.

Geoffrey smiled. "There are times when the idea seems against common sense," said he, with a short glance at her.

"Ah! you intend that for me. But you are almost repeating father's remark. You know he is a confirmed follower of the theory. A few days ago he said that the only thing he had against you was that you upset his studies. He says you ought to hire out to the special-creationists to be used as their clinching argument. So you see what it is to be an Ap--"

She stopped.

"Ah! you were going to say something severe, then," said Geoffrey. "Just as well, though, to snub me sometimes. I don't mind it if n.o.body knows of it. But, about your father? Do you a.s.sist him in his studies?"

"I don't know that I a.s.sist him much. He does the hardest part of the work, and then has to explain it all to me. But I read to him a good deal when his eyes trouble him. After procuring a new book on the subject he never rests till he has exhausted it. We often worry through it together, taking turns at the reading. We have just finished Haeckel's last. We are wild about Haeckel."

"Yes, there is something very spiritual and orthodox about him," said Geoffrey. "And now that you must have got about as far as you can at present, how does the theory affect you?"

"Not at all, except to make me long to know more. If one could live to be two hundred years old, would it not be delightful?" said Margaret, looking far away up the street in front of her.

"But as to your religion?" asked Geoffrey. "Do you find that it makes any difference?"

"I don't think I was ever a very religious person," she replied, mistaking the word religious for 'churchy.' "I never was christened, nor confirmed, nor taught my catechism, nor anything of that sort. n.o.body ever promised that I should renounce the devil and all his works, and so--and so I suppose I never have."

She looked at Geoffrey with the round eyes of guilelessness, slightly mirthful, as if, while deprecating this wretched state, she could still enjoy life.

Her companion could scarcely look away from her. There was such a combination of knowledge and purity and all-round goodness in her face that it fascinated him and induced him to say gravely:

"Indeed, one might have almost supposed that you had enjoyed these benefits from your earliest youth."

"No," she answered, "I have been neglected in church matters. Who knows?

Perhaps, if I had been different, father and I would never have been such companions. I never remember his going to church, although he pays his pew-rent for mother and me to go. He is afraid people would call him an atheist, you know, and no man cares about being despised or looked upon as peculiar in that way. He says that as long as he pays his pew-rent the good people will let him alone. As for mother, I hardly know what her belief is now. She is mildly contemptuous of evolution; chiefly, I think, because she does not know, or care anything about it.

She says the creed she was brought up in is quite enough for her, and if she can keep the dust _out_ of the house and contentment _in_ it she will do more than most people and fullfil the whole duty of woman. I don't think she likes to be cross-questioned about her particular tenets, which really seem to be sufficient for her, except when she is worried over a new phase of the old family lawsuit, and then she oscillates between pugnacity and resignation. So you see I was left pretty much to myself as to a.s.suming any belief that I might care about."

"And what belief did you come to care about?" he asked, feeling interested.

"Well, father seems to think that the most dignified att.i.tude of our ignorance is a respectful silence; but, as you have asked which belief I _care about_, I can answer frankly that I like best going to church and saying my prayers. It is so much more pleasant and comfortable to try to think our prayers are heard, for, as mother says, reason and logic are poor outlets for emotion when the lawsuit goes wrong. With our information as it is, our conclusions seem to depend on whether we have or have not in us the spirit of research. They tell me in the churches that, being unregenerate, my heart is desperately wicked, and, as I have nothing but a little bad temper now and then to reproach myself with, I do not agree with them. On the contrary, I always feel that my life rather tends to lead me toward believing--or, at any rate, does not make me prejudiced. I like to believe that G.o.d watches over and cares for us.

There being no proof or disproof of the matter, I would find it as difficult, by way of reasoning, to altogether disbelieve as to altogether believe."

"Then you make evolution a part of your religion?" asked Geoffrey.

Margaret had been brought up in an advanced latter-day school. All the unrecognized pa.s.sion within her had gone out in quest of knowledge, which her father had taught her to regard as a source of quiet happiness, or at least as comforting to the soul during the maturer years as an intricate knowledge of crochet and quilt work. When she took to her bosom the so-called dry-as-dust facts of science she clothed them in a sort of spirituality. Even slipper-working for a married curate has been known to stir the pulses, and, though she knew that when the objects of our enthusiasm seem to glow it is unsafe to say whether the glow is not merely the reflection of our own fervor, she regarded the lately dug-up facts of science somewhat as if they were mines of long-hidden coal, capable of use and possessed of intrinsic warmth. Her face brightened with all the enthusiasm of a devotee as she answered Geoffrey's question.

"Indeed, yes. The new knowledge seems like the backbone of my religion.

I often sit in church and think what a blessed privilege it is to be permitted to know even as little as we do about G.o.d's plan of creation."

She joined her hands before her quickly as she walked along, forgetful of all but the idea that enchained her. Her face showed the devotion seen in some old pictures of early saints, but it was too capable and animated to be the production of any of the old masters.

"Oh, it is grand to know even a little!" she exclaimed; "to think that this is G.o.d's plan, and that bit by bit we are allowed to unravel it! Is it not true that we acquire knowledge as we are able to receive it? Did not the ruder people receive the simple laws which Moses learned in Egypt? and did not Christianity expand those laws by teaching the religion of sympathy? These are historical facts. Why, then, should we not regard evolution as an advanced gospel, the gospel of the knowledge of G.o.d's works, to bind us more closely to him from our admiration of the excellence of his handiwork--as a father might show his growing son how his business is carried on, and how beautiful things are made? Of course, one may reply that all the discoveries do not show that there is a G.o.d. Perhaps they don't; but I try to think they do. I never have been able to find that verbal creeds do much toward making us what we are.

The gloomy distort Christ's life to prove the necessity for sorrow; the joyous do just the opposite. The naturally cruel practice their cruelty in the name of religion. Though all start with perhaps the same words on their lips, each individual in reality makes his religion for himself according to his nature. Look at the difference between Guiteau and Florence Nightingale. They both had the same creeds."

Hampstead was silent.

"I know that my religion might not suffice for others, because it has no terrors, but to me it is compelling. When I turn it all over more minutely, the beauty of the thoughts seems to carry me away. Let those whose brittle creeds are broken grope about in their gloom, if they will. To me it is glorious first to try to understand things, and then to praise G.o.d for his marvelous works."

Margaret grew more intense in her utterance as her subject grew upon her. They had turned off on a quiet street some time before, so there was nothing to interrupt her. As her earnestness gave weight to her voice, the words came out more fervently and more melodiously. Both her hands were raised, in an unconscious gesture, while the words welled forth with a depth and force impossible to describe.

Geoffrey walked on in silence.

He thought of the pa.s.sage, "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance," and he wondered whether Christ would have thought that such as Margaret stood in need of any further faith. The shrine of Understanding was the only one she worshiped at, arguing, as she did, that from a proper understanding and true wisdom followed all the goodness of the Christ-life. He became conscious of a vague regret within him that he had, as he thought, pa.s.sed those impressionable periods when a man's beliefs may be molded again. There was a distinct longing to partic.i.p.ate in the a.s.surance and joy which any kind of fixed faith is capable of producing. The Byronic temperament was not absent from him. He was keenly susceptible to anything--either moral or immoral--which called upon his ideality; and these ideas of Margaret's, although he had thought of them before, seemed new to him.

"It seems strange," he said musingly, "to hear of some of the most learned men of the day erecting an altar similar to that which Paul found at Athens 'to the unknown G.o.d,' and to find them impelled to worship something which they speak of as unknown and unknowable."