Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel. Jarvis Stinson

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СКАЧАТЬ among lovers that one loves and the other submits to be loved."

      "I am glad to hear you say this," said Geoffrey, as he silently reflected as to the cause of Nina's return to do her duty in a way that would tend to ease her conscience. "Jack is worthy of the best of girls. Have you ever called upon the Lindons?"

      "No, not yet. But Mr. Cresswell spoke to me about Miss Lindon and said he would like me to know her. So I said we would call. I am afraid, however, that mother will complain at the length of her visiting list being increased. She will have to be coaxed into this call to please me."

      "Jack cherishes an idea that Miss Lindon, he, and I will become a trio of good friends," said Geoffrey. "Now, if anything could be done to make it a quartette, if you would consent to make a fourth, Miss Margaret, I am certain the new arrangement would be more satisfactory to all parties, especially so to me considered as one of the trio. A gooseberry's part is fraught with difficulties."

      "The more the merrier, no doubt, in this case. Numbers will release you from your responsibilities. I have myself two or three friends that would make excellent additions to the quartette. There's Mr. Le Fevre, of your bank, and also Mr. – "

      "Ah, well!" said Geoffrey, interrupting. "Let us consider. I don't think that it was contemplated to make a universal brotherhood of this arrangement. If there are to be any more elected I should propose that the male candidates should be balloted for by the male electors only, and that additional lady members should be disposed of by their own sex only. Let me see. In the event of a tie in voting, the matter might be left to a general meeting to be convened for consultation and ice-cream, and, if the candidate be thrown out by a majority, the proposer should be obliged to pay the expenses incurred by the conclave."

      "That seems a feasible method," said Margaret. "Although I tell you, if we girls do not have the right men, there will be trouble. And now we ought to name the new society. What do you say to calling it 'An Association for the Propagation of Friendly Feeling among Themselves'?"

      "Limited," added Geoffrey, thinking that the membership ought to be restricted.

      "Oh, limited, by all means," cried Margaret. "I should rather think so. Limited in finances, brains, and everything else. And then the rules! Politics and religion excluded, of course, as in any other club?"

      "Well, I don't mind those so much as discussions of millinery and dress-making. These should be vetoed at any general meeting."

      "Excuse me. These are subjects that come under the head of art, and ought to be permissible to any extent; but I do make strong objection to the use of yachting terms and sporting language generally."

      "Possibly you are right," said Geoffrey. "But Jack – poor Jack! he must refer to starboard bulkheads and that sort of thing from time to time. However, we will agree to each other's objections, but we must certainly place an embargo upon saying ill-natured things about our neighbors – "

      "Good heavens, man! Do you expect us to be dumb?" cried Margaret. "Very well. It shall be so. We will call it the 'Dumb Improvement Company for Learned Pantomime.'"

      And thus they rattled on in their fanciful talk merrily enough – interrupting each other and laughing over their own absurdities, and sharpening their wits on each other, as only good friends can, until Margaret's home was reached.

      To Geoffrey it seemed to emphasize Margaret's youth and companionability when, in following his changing moods, she could so readily make the transition from the sublime to the ridiculous.

      CHAPTER VII

      Rosalind. Sir, you have wrestled well, and overthrown more than your enemies. —As You Like It.

      In the few weeks following the entertainment of the Dusenalls, Hampstead had not seen Nina. He felt he had been doing harm. The memory of that which had occurred and a twinge or two at his unfaithfulness to his friend Jack had made him avoid seeing her. But afterward, as fancy for seeing her again came to him more persistently, he gradually reverted to the old method of self-persuasion, that if she preferred Jack she might have him. He said he did not intend to show "any just cause or impediment" when Jack's marriage bans were published, and what the girl might now take it into her head to do was no subject of anxiety to him.

      She, in the mean time, had lost no time in improving her acquaintance with Margaret after the calls had been exchanged. Margaret was not peculiar in finding within her an argument in favor of one who evidently sought her out, and the small amount of effusion on Nina's part was not without some of its desired effect. Nina wished to be her particular friend. She had perceived that a difference existed between them – a something that Geoffrey seemed to admire; and she had the vague impulse to form herself upon her.

      Huxley explained table-turning by a simple experiment. He placed cards underneath the hands of the people forming the charmed circle round the table, and when they all "willed" that the table should move in a particular direction the cards and hands moved in that direction, while the table resisted the spirits and remained firm on its feet. In a similar way, Nina's impulse to know Margaret and frame herself upon her were all a process of unconscious self-deception which resembled the illusions of unrecognized muscular movements. She had no fixed ideas regarding Hampstead. Her actions were simply the result of his presence in her thoughts. She moved toward him, distantly and vaguely, but surely – somewhat as the card of a ship-compass, when it is spinning, seems to have no fixed destination, though its ultimate direction is certain.

      She found it easy to bring the Dusenall girls to regard Margaret as somebody worth cultivating. The family tree of the Dusenall's commenced with the grandfather of the Misses Dusenall, who had got rich "out West." On inquiry they found that Margaret's family tree dwarfed that of any purely Canadian family into a mere shrub by comparison; and on knowing her better they found her brightness and vivacity a great addition to little dinners and lunches where conversational powers are at a premium.

      With plenty of money, no work, an army of servants, a large house and grounds, a stable full of horses, and a good yacht, three or four young people can with the assistance of their friends support life fairly well. Lawn-tennis was their chief resource. Nina, being rather of the Dudu type, was not wiry enough to play well, and Margaret had not learned. She was strong and could run well, but this was not of much use to her. When the ball came toward her through the air she seemed to become more or less paralyzed. Between nervous anxiety to hit the ball and inability to judge its distance, she usually ended in doing nothing, and felt as if incurring contempt when involuntarily turning her back upon it. If she did manage to make a hit, the ball generally had to be found in the flower-beds far away on either side of the courts. In cricketing parlance, she played to "cover point" or "square leg" with much impartiality.

      So these two generally looked on and made up for their want of skill in dignity and in conversation among themselves and with the men too languid to play. The wonder was that the marriageable young women liked Margaret so well. With her long, symmetrical dress rustling over the lawn and her lace-covered parasol occasionally hiding her dainty bonnet and well-poised head, Margaret might have been regarded as an enemy and labeled "dangerous," but the girls trusted her with their particular young men, with a sort of knowledge that she did not want any of them, even if the men themselves should prove volatile and recreant. After all, what young girls chiefly seek "when all the world is young, lad, and all the trees are green," is to have a good time and not be interrupted in their whims. So Margaret, who was launching out into a gayer life than she had led before, got on well enough, and the wonder as to what girls who did nothing found to talk about was wearing off. If she was not much improved in circles where general advantages seemed to promise originality, it was no bad recreation sometimes to study the exact minimum of intelligence that general advantages produced, and the drives in the carriages and Nina's village-cart were agreeable. She was partial to "hen-parties." Nina had СКАЧАТЬ