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GEOFFREY HAMPSTEAD.

CHAPTER X.

  THERE is a want of primness in the manners and customs of my characters which a reviewer might take exception to. To be sure he might with effect criticise their making up a pool on Sunday. But the fact was that nobody remembered it to be Sunday until Jack wanted to collect his winnings after dinner. At this, Mrs. Dusenall held up her hands in high disapproval. While out in the lake, in the worst part of the sea, she had commenced to read her Bible, and had felt thankful to arrive in shelter. Consequently she remembered the day.

  Surely, Charley, you have not been gambling on Sunday?" said she reprovingly.

  The girls looked guilty, with an expression of "0h, haven't we been bad?" on their faces.

  Rankin endeavored to relieve the situation by explaining in many words that the whole thing was a mere matter of form, and no more than an expression of opinion as to the time the boat would reach the harbor, because no money was put up — in fact, as the arrangement was made on Sunday, the whole thing was illegal, and no money ever would be put up, etc.

  Jack kicked him under the table for arguing away his winnings, and Margaret quoted at him:

"His tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason, to perplex and dash Maturest counsels!"

  "Good," said Geoffrey. "Give him the rest of it, Miss Margaret. Rub it in well."

  Margaret continued, and with mirthful eyes declaimed at Maurice:

"For his thoughts were low; To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds Timorous and slothful: and yet he pleas'd the ear, And with persuasive accent thus began."

  This amused Margaret, because Maurice was such a decent little man. But Geoffrey's enjoyment of it was different. Rankin felt that there was growing in him an antagonism to Hampstead. He was afraid of him for her sake — afraid she would learn to like him too much. At any other time chaff would have found him invulnerable, but Geoffrey's amusement made him redden.

  "You seem to be well acquainted with the characteristics of Belial, Hampstead," he said. "Margaret, your memory is excellent. Could you favor us with the lines just preceding what you first quoted?"

  Why should Margaret have blushed as she did so? She quoted:

"On th' other side up rose Belial, in act more graceful and humane; A fairer person lost not heaven; he seem'd For dignity compos'd and high exploit: But all was false and hollow; though his tongue Dropp'd manna," etc.

  "Thank you," said Maurice. "You see the lines are intended to describe a person far different from me in appearance. Hampstead, you observe, had studied the passage. A coincidence, is it not?"

  Soon they were all composing themselves for sleep. Margaret was listening peacefully to the shrieking of the wind in the rigging as she thought how every moment on board the yacht had been one of unclouded enjoyment. An unconscious smile went over her face that would have been pleasant to see. Then she thought of Geoffrey and smiled again. This time she caught herself, and asked herself why? All day, since she had watched Geoffrey steering the yacht beside the schooner in the lake, her mind had been chanting two lines of poetry. When asked in the evening to repeat the lines aloud she had blushed because it seemed like confessing herself.

In her mind Geoffrey had become identified with these two lines. But what had friend Maurice meant by saddling the context on him in that malevolent way? Could he really have thought that Belial's character was also Geoffrey's? She put away this idea as untenable. She was one of those born in homes where the struggle for existence has not for generations taught the household to be suspicious; with the innate nobility that tends, whether rightly or wrongly, to think the best of others; she was one of those whom men turn to with relief after the cunning and suspicion of the business world, each feeling the assistance it is to meet some one who is ready to take him at the valuation he would like to be able justly to put upon himself.

  When morning broke, there were eight or ten schooners to be seen on different sides that had run in for shelter during the night. About six o'clock Margaret crept out to satisfy her curiosity as to what kind of place they were in. With only her head above the hatchway at the top of the stairs leading up from the ladies' cabin she gazed about for some time before she spied Maurice sitting on the counter with his back to her, his feet dangling over the water while he watched the vessels.

  She crept toward him and gave a cry close to his ear, to startle him.

  "Don't make so much noise," said he, quite unstartled. "I don't like you to call out like that in my ear." He added, perforce, as he looked at her, "At least I don't like it when I can't see you."

  "Don't tell stories, Morry. You know you would like me to do it at any time."

  "I would not, indeed," he asserted. "Come and sit down and keep quite silent. Just when I was having such a happy, peaceful time you come and spoil it all."

  Margaret sat down on the rail and turned herself about so that she could sit in the same position beside him. His helping hand still held hers as they sat together. He was almost afraid to turn toward her, for fear he would look too tenderly. She might go away if he did. His rôle was to bully her, and then she would never know how exquisite it was for him to have her sit beside him.

  "There, now! Sit perfectly quiet and don't say another word. Just look around and enjoy yourself in a reasonable manner. I'm not going to have my morning disarranged and my valuable reveries disturbed."

  The wind had shifted to the northwest in the morning, and had blown itself out and down to a moderate breeze; with a clearing sky, with patches of blue and broken clouds overhead.

  "Now listen to the chorus of the sailors as they get up their anchor. Does it not seem a sweet and fitting overture to the whole oratorio of the voyage before them? I have been watching the vessels go out, one by one, for over an hour. I must say there are some uncommonly rude men among the sweet singers we are listening to, and — and ——" He stopped and forgot to go on.

  "And what?" cried Margaret peremptorily.

  Maurice had lost himself in the contemplation of some locks of sunny hair, that were flying in the breeze from Margaret's forehead, and the graceful curve of her full neck as she looked away at the ships.

  "Oh, yes. And that's Timber Island over there, covered with trees and stamped out round like a breakfast bun, and that's the False Duck Island, where we came in last night. The schooner sailing yonder is going to take the channel between that white line of breakers and South Bay Point running out there, and those huts you see nestling in the trees far away on the main-land are fishermen's houses ——"

  He was not looking at any of these things, but was following out two trains of thought in his active head while he talked against time. What really absorbed him was Margaret's ear, and a sort of invisible down on the back part of her cheek. He was thinking to himself that if five dollars would purchase a kiss on that spot he would be content to see a notice in the Gazette: "Maurice Rankin, failed: liabilities, $5.00."

  Margaret was listening, gravely unconscious of being so much admired, enjoying all he said, and feasting her eyes upon the distances, the brilliant colors, and the fleeting shadows of the broken clouds upon the water.

  "Why, what a nice old chappie you are!" she exclaimed, giving his hand a pat and taking hers away. "How did you manage to find out all about the surroundings?"

  "Been around boarding the different schooners lying at anchor. Examining their papers, you know," said he grandly. "Went around in the canoe to the first fellow — a coal vessel. A man appeared near the bow and looked down at me as if I were a kind of fish swimming about, 'Heave-to, or I'll sink you,' I said in the true old nautical style. He did not say a word, but stooped down and did heave two, in fact three, pieces of coal at me. I passed on, satisfied that his vessel needed no further inspection. I was then attracted by the name of another schooner, on whose stem was painted the legend 'Bark Swaller.'"

  "What a strange name," said Margaret, as Maurice spelled it out.

  "Well, it puzzled me a good deal, as I examined it closely, being in doubt whether Barque Swallow was intended, or perhaps the name of some German owner. At all events a sailor spied me paddling about under the stern of the boat and regarded me with evident suspicion. I thought I would deal more gently with this man than with the other fellow. 'Can you tell me,' I asked, 'the name of that round island over there?' The only answer I got was unsatisfactory. 'Sheer off,' said he, 'wid your dirty dug-out.' This seemed rather rude, but I did not retaliate. I thought I might go further and fare worse, so I endeavored to mollify him. Perhaps, I thought, being up all night in hard weather had made these sailors irritable.

  "'Can you drink whisky?' I said ——" Margaret was looking at Maurice with a soft expression of interest and mirth. He was talking on in order that he might continue to bask in the beauty of the face that looked straight at him. But the strain for a moment was too great. For an instant he slacked up his check-rein, and while he narrated his story he continued in the same tone with: "(Believe me, my dear Margaret, you are looking perfectly heavenly this morning) and the effect on this poor toiler of the sea was, I assure you, quite wonderful." Rankin's tongue went straight on, as if the paranthesis were part of the narrative. Margaret saw that it was useless to speak, and resigned herself to listen again. "Quite wonderful," he continued. "The fellow motioned to me to come to the bow of the vessel, and when I got there he came over the bulwarks and dropped like a monkey from one steel rope to another till he stood on the bobstay chains.

  "'Whist!' said he. 'Divil a word! Have you got it there?'

  "'There is some on the yacht,' I said, 'and I want to ask you some questions about this place. What island is that over there?'

  "'Mother of Pathrick,' said he, 'an' did ye come down all the way in your yacht and not know Timber Island when you'd see it?'

  "He looked at me as if I was some strange being.

  "'And where was ye last night, might I axe?'

  "'Where we are now,' I said.

  "'Faith, it was a big head that brought you into the nursery here before last night came on! More be-token, I have'nt had a dhry rag on me for tin hours, and divil a sail we've got widout a shplit in it the size of a shteam-tug. Bring it in a sody-bottle, darlint, and the Lord 'll love ye if ye don't spoil it. Whisht, love! You drink my health in the sody and don't lave any in the bottle.'

  "I came back and got him a soda-bottle of the genuine article, and while he drank it the rapidity of his tongue was peculiar. 'So you have been here before?' I asked.

  "'Whisht, darlint! till the captain won't hear you. Been here before? Begorra, this place has been a mine of goold to me many a time. For siventeen days at a slap I've laid here in Dicimber at four dollars a day, with nothin' to do but play checkers and sphlit wood for the shtove and pray for a gale o' wind down the lake till shpring-time.'

  "This eloquence continued until I thought he would certainly fall off the bobstay.

  "'Tell me, now,' he said, after I had got all the information I wanted, 'have ye a berth for an old salty aboard that craft?'

  "I said we had not.

  "'Faith, perhaps you're right. I kin see by the stow on yer mainsail and by the nate way yer heads'ls is draggen' in the wather that you're born and bred up to the sea and don't require no assistance.'

  "With these sarcastic words he gave me his blessing, threw away the bottle, and disappeared again over the bow."

  "I gather from your remarks that your friend was of Hibernian origin," said Margaret. "Perhaps a good dynamiter spoiled. But we will speak of him again. What I have been wanting for some time has been a trip in the canoe to the beach over there. I want to walk over the sand bar and get close to those great breakers rolling, in on the shingle. Unhitch your canoe-string and bring the canoe alongside."

  "Unhitch your canoe-string!" repeated Rankin contemptuously. "You must speak more nautically or I won't understand you."

  "Well, what ought I to say?"

  "Dunno. 'Cast adrift your towline' sounds well."

  "It does, indeed," said Margaret, as Morry swung the light cockleshell into position and she descended into it with care. "'Cast adrift your towline' has a full, able-bodied seaman sort of sound; but it has not the charm of mystery about it that some expressions have. Now 'athwart your hawse' seems portentous in its meaning. I don't want to know what it means. I would rather go on thinking of it as of the arm that handed forth the sword Excalibur, 'clothed in white samite — mystic, wonderful.' Do you know I read all Clark Russell's sea stories, and drive through all his sea-going technicalities with the greatest interest, although I understand nothing about them. When he goes aloft on the mainboom and brails up his foregaff-bobstay I go with him. Sometimes he describes bow small the deck below looks from the dizzy height when, poised upon the capstan-bars, he furls the signal halyards that flap and fill away and thunder in the gale; and then I see it all ——"

  "So do I, so do I!" cried Morry, as he paddled dexterously to the shore. "You've got Clark Russell to a T. He goes on like that by the hour together. I read every word, and the beauty of it is I always think I understand. Why do we like his stories so much, I wonder?"

  "One reason is because his heroes are manly men and have brave hearts," said Margaret confidently. "I think that is why they appeal to women; he always arouses a sentiment of pity for the hero's misfortunes. Few women can resist that." And Margaret, somewhat stirred, looked away over the broad sea. Almost unconsciously there flashed before her the image of a Greek god winning a foot-race under circumstances that aroused her sympathy. Again she saw him steering a yacht, keen, strong, active, determined, and calm amid excitement. A flush suffused her countenance, and her eyes became soft and thoughtful as she gazed far away. Ah, these rushes of blood to the head! How they kindle an unacknowledged idea into activity! A moment and, like a flash, a latent, undeveloped instinct becomes a living potent force to develop us. The admirer becomes a lover, the plotter a criminal, and the religious man a fanatic.

  When the canoe pushed its way through the rushes and beached itself upon the soft sand the two jumped out and crossed over to the lake side, where the heavy ground swells of the last night's gale were still mounting high upon the shingle. The bar leading toward them from False Duck Island was a seething expanse of white breakers, and over the lake to the south and west, as far as the eye could reach in the now rarefied atmosphere a tumbling mass of bright-green waters could be seen, which grew blue in color at the sharply cut horizon. Not far off the "Bark Swaller" was buffeting her way to the southward, toward Oswego, and around the wooded island with the lighthouse on it, the mail steamer, twelve hours detained, was getting a first taste of the open water.

  It was a morning that made the two feel as if it were impossible to keep still. The flat shingle, washed smooth by the high waves of the previous night, was firm under foot as they walked and trotted along between the wreckage and driftwood on one side and the highest wash of the hissing water on the other. An occasional flight of small plover suggested the wildness, of the spot, and something of the spirit of these birds in their curving and wheeling flight seemed to possess the two young people — making them run and caper on the sands.

  "You ought to be able to run a pretty good race," said Maurice, glancing at the shapely figure of his companion.

  "So I am," said Margaret, as she sprang up on a large piece of driftwood. "I'll run you a race to that bush on the far point around the little bay. Do you see it?"

  "I see it," said Maurice. "Are you ready? Go!"

  Margaret sprang down from the stump and was off like an arrow. Morry thought it was only a sham and a pretense of hers, as he bounded off beside her. He soon found his mistake, however, as his unaccustomed muscles did their utmost to keep him abreast of the gliding figure in the dark-blue skirt and jersey. They rounded the curve of the bay, Maurice on the inside track. But this advantage did not give him a lead. The distance to the winning point seemed fatal to his chances, but he hung on, hoping his opponent would tire. Again he was mistaken.

  "Come on, Morry! Don't be beaten by a woman."

  Her voice, as she said this, seemed aggressively fresh, and the taunt brought Rankin even with her again. He had no breath left to say anything in reply as they came to a small indentation filled with water where the shore curved in, making another little bay. Margaret ran around it, but Maurice, as a last chance, splashed through it, regardless of water up to his ankles. He gained about ten feet by this subterfuge. A few gliding bounds, impossible to describe, and Margaret was beside him again.

  "That was a shabby advantage to take," she said as she passed his panting form. "Now I'll show you how fast I can run."

  She left him then as he labored on. She floated away from him like a thistle-blossom on the breeze. He forgot his defeat in his admiration of that fleeting figure which he would have believed to move in the air had he not seen marks in the sand made by toes of small shoes. He could hardly comprehend how she could run away from him in this way. Yet there was no wings attached to the lithe form before him. No wings, but a bit of silk ankle which seemed far preferable.

  Margaret stopped at the bush which was to be the winning post. Morry then staggered in exhausted and threw himself sideways into the yielding mass of the willow bush and fell out on the other side.

  "Oh," he said, as he rolled over on his back with his head resting in his hands, "wasn't that beautiful?"

  "The race — yes, indeed, it was splendid."

  "No, I don't mean the race. That was horrible. I mean to see you run." (Gasp.)

  Margaret's face was sparkling with excitement and color, while her bosom rose and fell after her exertion.

  "I can run fast, can I not?" Her arms were hanging demurely at her side again. She could run, but she never seemed to be at all masculine.

  "I never ran a race with a man before," she said, laughing.

  "And never will run another with this individual," said Rankin. "Nothing goes so fast as a train you have missed, just as it leaves the station, and yet I have caught it sometimes. You can go faster than anything I ever saw." (A breath.) "It is a good thing to know when one is beaten. You will always be an uncatchable distance before me." (A sigh.)

  "My shoes are full of sand," said Margaret ruefully, looking down at them.

  "Mine are full of water," said Maurice. He did not seem to care. He was quite content to lie there and gaze at her without reservation. And, with his heightened color and excitement, he actually appeared rather good looking.

  "I think the least you could do would be to offer to take the sand out of my shoes," said Margaret.

  "If I don't have to get up I could do it. I won't be able to get up for about twenty minutes. But if you sit on that stump — so — I think I could manage it."

  Resting on one elbow, he unlaced the shoes, knocked the sand out of them, and spent a long time over the operation. Then he wondered at their small size, and measured them, sole to sole, with his own boots while he chattered on, as usual, about nothing. Hers were not by any means microscopic shoes, but they seemed so to him, and he regarded them with some of the curiosity of the miners of Blue Dog Gulch, Nevada, when a woman's boot appeared among them after their two years' isolation from the interesting sex. There was something in the way he handled them that spoke of exile — something that stirred the compassion one might feel on seeing the monks of Man Saba tend their canaries.

  The left shoe was put on with great care, and then he sat looking over the lake for a while in silence before beginning with the second. It was a long, well-chiseled foot, with high instep, and none of those knobs which sometimes necessitate long dresses, and in men's boots take such a beautiful polish. He pretended to brush some sand away, and then, bending over, kissed the silk-covered instep, and received an admonitory tap for his boldness.

  "Fie, Morry! to kiss an unprotected lady's foot," said Margaret archly, as she took the shoe from him and put it on herself. "You have insulted me."

  "Nay, Margaret, 'twas but the sign of my allegiance and fealty," said he, looking up with what tried to be an off-hand manner. "It is the old story," he said lightly; "the worship of the unattainable — the remnant, perhaps, of our old nature worship. If you were not better acquainted with the subject than I am, I could give you a discourse which would be, I assure you, very instructive as to how we have always striven after what we think to be good in the unattainable. We have been forbidden to worship the sun or to appease the thunders and lightnings, and, one by one, nearly all the objects of worship have been swept away, leaving a world that now does not seem to know what to do with its acquired instincts. One object is left, though, and I am inclined to think that men are never more thoroughly admirable than when influenced by the worship of the women who seem to them the best, that many thus come to know the pricelessness of good and the despair of evil, with quite as satisfactory practical results as any other creed could bring about."

  "What, then, becomes of the search for the unattainable after marriage?" asked Margaret practically.

  "I imagine that the search would continue, that the greatest peace of marriage is the consciousness of approaching good in being assisted to live up to a woman's higher ideals. It seems as if the condition of Milton's idyllic pair — 'he for God only, she for God in him' — has but little counterpart in real life, and that, in a thousand cases to one, the morality of the wife is the main chance of the husband."

  "I understand, then, that we are to be worshiped as a means toward the improvement of our husbands. I was hoping," said Margaret smiling, "that you were going to prove us to be real goddesses, worthy of devotion for ourselves — without more."

  "You are raising a well-worn question — as to what men worship when they bow before a shrine. If you were the shrine, I should say generally the shrine. At other times they worship that which the shrine suggests. What I mean is, that it is a good thing for one to have a power with him capable of improving all the good that is in him. For myself, the point is somewhat wanting in interest, as I never expect to be able to put it to a practical test."

  "Not get married, Maurice? Why will you never get married?"

  "I intended to have casually mentioned the reason a minute ago, only you interrupted me just as I was coming to the interesting part."

  "Then tell me now, and I won't interrupt."

  "Well, you know I am like the small boys who want pie, and won't eat anything if they don't get it," said he, striving to be prosaic. "I love you far too well to make it possible for me to marry anybody else."

  In spite of the assistance that pulling his hair gave him, as his head lay back in his hands, his voice shook and his form stiffened out along the sand in a way that told of struggle. Margaret was surprised, but she hardly yet understood the matter enough to feel pained. She had not been led to expect that men would first express their love while lying on their backs.

  "I thought I would tell you of it, as you would then know how particularly well you could trust me — as your friend — a very faithful one. You know, even in my present state, I would be full of hope, if things were different, because the money is bound to come sooner or later; but you, Margaret, I know, without your words, will never be attainable — that the moon would be more easy for me to grasp."

  Margaret was not often at a loss for a word, but now she knew not what to say. It did not seem as if anything could be said. She essayed to speak; but he stopped her.

  "I know what you would say," he said. "They would be kind words in their tone, full of sympathy, words that I love to hear — that I hear like music in my ears when you are out of sight? You must, and I know you will, forgive me for all these confessions," said he, smiling. "You have made such a change come over my life. You have given me so much happiness."

  "I don't see how," said Margaret, not knowing what to say.

  "No — you could hardly know why. If you knew what a different life I have led from that of others you would understand better the real happiness you have given me. My life of late years has been unlovely. I have not had the soft influences of a home as it should be, but I have always yearned for them."

  The pretense of being off-hand in his manner had left him. He talked disjointedly, and with effort. "You can not know what it is to feel continually the want of affection. You have never hungered for the luxury of being in some way cared for. But these weaknesses of mine will not bore you, because you are kind. It will make my case plainer when I tell you that for years — as long as I can remember — there never has been a night that a longing for the presence of my parents has not come over me. Until I saw you. Now you have come to fill the gap. Now I think of you, and listen to your voice, and look at your face, and care for you. You fill more places in my heart than you know of. You are father and mother and all beside to me, and I shall go back to my dreary life gladder for this experience, this love for you which will remain with me always. Still, it is dreadful to look into a future of loneliness! Oh, Margaret, it is dreadful to be always alone — always alone."

  Margaret was watching the part of his face not covered with his cap as his words were ground out haltingly, and she could see his lips twitch as old memories mingled with his present emotions. As he proceeded she saw from his simple words how deep-seated were his affections, and she wondered at the way he had concealed his love for her. A great compassion for him was welling up in her heart. As she listened to, his words, it came upon her what it might be to love deeply and then to find that it only led to disappointment. She felt glad that she had given him some happiness — glad when he said he could look forward more cheerfully to going back to his hopeless existence. It was brave to speak of it thus — asking nothing. But when he said it was dreadful to be alone — always alone — his voice conveyed the idea of horror to her, and, in a moment, without knowing exactly why, the tears were in her eyes, and she was kneeling beside him on the sand asking what could be done, and blaming herself for giving him trouble. Her touch upon his hand thrilled him. He dared not remove his cap. He dared not look at her for very fear of his happiness; but then he heard a half sob in her voice, and that cured him. It would never do for her to be weeping. He bad said too much, he thought. He partly sat up, leaning upon his hand, and was himself again. Margaret was looking at him (so beautiful with her dewy eyes), with but one thought in her mind, which was how, to be kind to him, how to make up to him some of the care that his life had been shorn of. It was all done in a moment. Margaret said tearfully, "Oh, what can I do?" and Rankin's native quickness was present with him. He leaned forward, inspired by a new thought, and said, "Kiss me," and Margaret, knowing nothing but a great compassion for him, in which self was entirely forgotten, said: "Indeed, I will, if you would care for that."

(End of Chapter X.)

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