Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel. Jarvis Stinson

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, classic 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 entitled, 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 passed 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 nobody knows of it. But, about your father? Do you assist him in his studies?"

      "I don't know that I assist 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. Nobody 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 assuming 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 attitude 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, СКАЧАТЬ