How can I tell the feelings in a young lady's mind; the thoughts in
a young gentleman's bosom? As Professor Owen takes a fragment of
bone and builds a forgotten monster out of it, so the novelist puts
this and that together: from the foot-prints finds the foot; from
the foot, the brute who trod on it; ... traces this slimy reptile
through the mud; ... prods down this butterfly with a pin.
--THACKERAY (_The Newcomes_).
Hampstead did not get to sleep, after Rankin had retired, as early as he
expected. Jack Cresswell followed him into his bedroom and sat down, lit
another pipe, and then walked about, and seemed preoccupied, as he had
all the evening. Geoffrey did not speak to him at first, as this was an
unusual proceeding between the two, but, having got into bed and made
himself comfortable by bullying the pillows into the proper shape and
position, addressed his friend:
"Now, old man, unburden your mind. I know you want to tell me something,
but do not be surprised if you find me asleep before you get your second
wind. If you care for me, cut it short."
"Got a letter to-day," said Jack, "from her."
"Well, Jack, as you seem, with some eccentricity, to have only one
"her," of course I am interested. Your feelings in that quarter never
fail in their attraction. Pour into my devoted ear for the next five
minutes (not longer) a synopsis of your woes or joys. What is it you
want to-night? Congratulation or balm for wounds?"
"Oh, I don't wish to keep you awake," said Jack testily, rising, as if
to depart.
"Go on, sir. Go on, sir. Your story interests me."
Geoffrey assumed an attitude of attention. Jack smiled and sat down
again. He had no intention of going away. He had thought over his letter
all day, till at last a confidential friend seemed almost necessary.
"My letter comes from London. They've' returned from the Continent, and,
as they are now most likely on the sea, she'll be at home in about a
week." And Jack seemed in a high state of satisfaction.
"Well, well! I never saw a real goddess in my life," said Geoffrey. "And
there is no doubt about Miss Lindon being one, because I have listened
to you for two years, and now I know that she is what I have long wished
to see."
"It will give me the greatest pleasure to have you know her. I have
looked forward tremendously to that. Next to meeting her myself comes
the idea of we three being jolly good friends, and going around together
on little jamborees to concerts and that sort of thing. I haven't a
doubt but what we three will 'get on' amazingly."
"Playing gooseberry with success requires a clever person," said
Geoffrey. "I don't think I'm quite equal to the call for the tact and
loss of individuality which the position demands. However, dear boy, I
am quite aware that to introduce me to the lady of your heart as your
particular friend is the greatest compliment one fellow can pay
another--all things considered. Don't you think so? Oh, yes, I dare say
we will be a trio quite out of the common. But, if she is as pretty as
you say she is, I'll have to look at her, you know. Can't help looking
at a handsome woman, even if she were hedged in with as many
prohibitions as the royal family. You'll have to get accustomed to
_that_, of course."
"But that's the very reason why I want you to know her," said Jack, in
his whole-souled way. "I really often feel as if her beauty and
brightness and her power of pleasing many should not be altogether
monopolized by any one man. It would redouble my satisfaction if I
thought you admired her also." Jack stopped for a moment as he
considered that her power of "pleasing many" had been rather larger at
times than he had cared about. "It seems to me that she has enough of
these attractions for me, and some to spare for others."
Geoffrey smiled as he wondered if the girl herself thought she had
enough to spare for others besides Jack.
"Young man, your sentiments do you credit! It must make things much more
satisfactory to an engaged girl to understand that she is expected not
to neglect the outside world whenever she is able 'to tear herself
away,' as it were."
"I see you grinning to yourself under the bed-clothes," said Jack, who
rather winced at this. "I don't know that I ever asked her to distribute
herself more than she did. On the contrary, if you must have the
unvarnished truth, quite the reverse." Jack reddened as he ventilated
some of the truths which are generally suppressed. "The fact is, it was
rather the other way. I frequently have acted like a donkey when I
didn't get her undivided attention. You know girls often get accused of
flirting, and when one hears their own explanation, nothing seems
clearer, you know, than that there was no occasion for the row at all."
Geoffrey thought he did know, but said nothing.
"Two years, though, make changes, and having seen nothing of her for
such a long time, I feel as if one glimpse of her would repay me for all
the waiting. I should never have thought of our differences again if you
had not raked them up."
"Which I am sorry to have done," said Geoffrey. "No doubt, two years do
sometimes make a difference. I am sure you treat the _affaire_
sublimely, and, if she is equally generous in her thoughts of you, it
will be a unique thing to gaze upon both of you at once."
Jack took Geoffrey's remarks in good part, for he had got accustomed to
the cynical way the latter treated most things. It was _his way_, he
thought, and Geoffrey was "such an all-round good fellow, and all that
sort of thing, you know," that it was to be expected that he should have
"ways." Besides this, Jack had seen from time to time that, though very
ready to recognize sterling merit, Geoffrey had ability in detecting
humbug, and that he considered the optimist had too many chances against
him to make him valuable as a prophet. Thus, when he spoke in this way
of Nina Lindon, Jack supposed that his friend had his doubts, and, much
as he loved her, he stopped, like many another, and asked himself
whether she had such a generosity and nobility in her character as he
had supposed. This, he felt, was rather beneath him in one way, and
rather beyond him in another. When he looked for admirable traits, he
remembered several instances of good-natured impulse, and while the
graceful manner in which she had done these things rose before him, he
grew enthusiastic. Then he sought to call up for inspection the
qualities he took exception to. That she had seemed inconsiderate of his
feelings at times seemed true. There was, he thought, a frivolity about
her. He thought life had for him some few well-defined realities, and
that she had never seemed to quite grasp the true inwardness of his best
moments. But all was explained by her youth and the adulation paid to
her. And then the memory of her soft dark eyes and flute-like voice, the
various allurements of her vivacious manner and graceful figure,
produced an enthusiasm quite overwhelming. So he laughed at the defeat
of his impartiality, looked over at Geoffrey, who was peacefully snoring
by this time, and went away to his own room. But deep down in his heart
lay the shadow of a doubt which, with his instinctive courtesy, he never
approached even in an examination supposed to be a searching one. The
inspection of it seemed a sacrilege, and he put it from him.
Nevertheless, there had been times when Jack felt doubtful as to whether
Nina could be relied upon for absolute truth.
Joseph Lindon, the father of Nina, came from--no person seemed to know
where. He, or his family, might have come from the north of Ireland or
south of Scotland, or middle of England, or anywhere else, as far as any
one could judge by his face; and, as likely as not, his lineage was a
mixture of Scotch, Irish, English, or Dutch, which implanted in his
physiognomy that conglomeration of nationalities which now defies
classification, but seems to be evolving a type to be known as
distinctively Canadian. His accent was not Irish, Scotch, English, nor
Yankee. It was a collection of all four, which appeared separately at
odd times, and it was, in this way, Canadian.
His family records had not been kept, or Joseph would certainly have
produced them, if creditable. He had the appearance of a self-made man.
If want of a good education somewhat interfered with the completeness of
his social success, it certainly had not retarded him in business
circles. If he had swept out the store of his first employers, those
employers were now in their graves, and of those who knew his beginnings
in Toronto there were none with the temerity to remind him of them. Mr.
Lindon was not a man to be "sat upon." He had a bold front, a hard,
incisive voice, and a temper that, since he began to feel his monetary
oats, brooked no opposition. He might have been taken for a farmer,
except for the keenness of his eye and the fact that his clothes were
city made. These two differences, however, are of a comprehensive kind.
Mr. Lindon, early in life, had opened a small shop, and then enlarged
it. Having been successful, he sold out, and took to a kind of broker,
money-lending, and land business, and being one who devoted his whole
existence to the development of the main chance, with a deal of native
ability to assist him, the result was inevitable.
His entertainments gave satisfaction to those who thought they knew what
a good glass of wine was. Mr. Lindon himself did _not_. Few do. When
exhausted he took a little whisky. When he entertained, he sipped the
wine that an impecunious gentleman was paid to purchase for him,
regardless of cost. So, although there were those who turned up their
noses at Joseph Lindon while they swallowed him, there did not seem to
be any reluctance in going through the same motions with his wine.
The fact that he was able to, and did entertain to a large extent was of
itself sufficient in certain quarters to provoke a smile suggesting that
_the_ society in that city did not entertain. Some members had been
among the exclusives for a comparatively short time, and the early
occupation of their parents was still painfully within the memory of the
oldest inhabitant. A good many based their right on the fact that they
came "straight from England"--without further recommendation; while
others pawed the air like the heraldic lion because they had, or used to
have, a second cousin with a title in England.
But these good people were partly correct when they hinted that some old
families did not entertain much. Either there had been some scalawag in
the family who had wasted its substance, or else the respected family
had had a faculty for mortgaging and indorsing notes for friends in
those good old times which happily are not likely to return.
The consequence was that there was a good deal of satisfaction on both
sides. Joseph Lindon could pat his breeches pocket, figuratively, and,
not without reason, consider he had the best of it. Many a huge mortgage
at ruinous interest made by the first families, who never lived within
their means, had found its way to Lindon's office, and many an acre,
subsequently worth thousands of dollars, had been acquired by him in
satisfaction of the note he held against the family scalawag. During all
the times that these people had been "keeping up the name," as they
called it, Lindon had been salting down the hard cash, and if some of
his transactions were of the "shady" sort, he had, in dealing with some
of the patrician families, some pretty shady customers to look after.
But these transactions were in the old times, when Lindon was rolling up
his scores of thousands. All he had to do now was to attend the board
meetings of companies of which he was president, and to arrange his
large financial ventures in cold blood over his chop at the club with
those who waited for his consent with eager ears. If there were few
transactions in business circles that he was not conversant with, there
were still fewer affairs in his own domestic circle that he knew
anything about. It was his wife that had brought him into his social
position, such as it was; that is, his wife's wishes and his money.
Mrs. Lindon had been a pretty woman in her day, which, of course, had
lost its first freshness, and she was approaching that period when the
retrospect of a well-spent life is expected to be gratifying. Her
married life with Mr. Lindon had not been the gradual conquest of that
complete union which makes later years a climax and old age the harvest
of sweet memories in common, as marriage has been defined for us. On the
contrary, their married life had been a gradual acquisition of that
disunion which law and public opinion prevent from becoming complete.
The two had now established the semblance of a union--the system in
which the various pretenses of deep regard become so well defined by
long years of mutual make-believe, as to often encourage the married to
hope that it will be publicly supposed to be the glad culmination of
their courtship dreams.
Mrs. Lindon said of herself that she had been of a Lower Canadian
family, with some French name, prior to her marriage, and her story
seemed to suggest, in the absence of further particulars, that Mr.
Lindon had married her more for her family than her good looks. The
"looks" were pretty nearly gone, but the "family" was still within the
reach of a sufficiently fertile imagination, and so often had the
suggestion been made that of late years the idea had assumed a
definiteness in her mind which materially assisted her in holding her
own in the society in which she now floated. A natural untidiness in the
way she put on her expensive garments, which in a poorer woman would
have been called slatternly, and the dark, French prettiness which she
still showed traces of (and which was rather of the nurse-girl type)
combined to suggest that in reality she was the offspring of Irish and
French emigrants, "and steerage at that"--some of the first families
said--"decidedly steerage."
Mrs. Lindon was supremely her own mistress. This was not, perhaps, an
ultimate benefit to her, but, as she had nothing on earth to trouble
about, long years of idleness and indulgence in every whim had led her
to conjure up a grievance, which she nursed in her bosom, and on account
of it she excused herself for all shortcomings. This was that she was
left so much without the society of Mr. Lindon. Often, in the pauses
between the excitements she created for herself, tears of self-pity
would arise at the thought of her abandoned condition. The truth was
that she did not care anymore for Lindon than he did for her; but from
the fact that she really did desire to have a husband who would see
better the advantages of shining in society, the poor lady contrived to
convince herself that he had been greatly wanting in his duties to her
as a husband, that the affection was all on her side, and that that
affection was from year to year quietly repulsed. Their domestic bearing
toward each other was now that of a quiet neutrality. They always
addressed each other in public as "my dear," and, if either of them had
died, no doubt the bereaved one would have mourned in the usual way, on
the principle of "Nil de mortuis nisi _bunkum_."
It had not occurred to Mrs. Lindon that, if more time had been spent
with her daughter in fulfilling a mother's duties toward a young girl,
there would have been less need for extraneous assistance to aid her in
her passage through the world. Nina was fond of her mother, and it was
strange that the two did not see more of each other. Nina could be a
credit to her in any social gathering, and this made it all the more
strange. But Mrs. Lindon was forever gadding about to different
institutions, Bible-readings, and other little excitements of her own
(for which Nina had no marked liking), and she seemed rather more easy
in her mind when Nina was not with her. Perhaps Mr. Lindon was not
solely at fault concerning the coolness pervading the domestic
atmosphere.
The charitable institutions had been the salvation of Mrs. Lindon--that
is, in a mundane sense. When Joseph Lindon, with characteristic method,
came home one day and said, "My dear, I have bought the Ramsay mansion,
and now I am going to spend my money," Mrs. Lindon enjoyed a pleasure
exceeding anything she had known. That was a happy day for her! The
dream of her life was to be consummated! She immediately left the small
church which she had attended for years and changed her creed slightly
to take a good pew in a certain fashionable church. After this it was
merely a question of time and money, both of which were available to any
extent. She showed great interest in charities. She contributed humbly
but lavishly. The ladies of good position who go around with
subscription-books smiled in their hearts at seeing the old game going
on. They smiled and bled her profusely. They discussed Mrs. Lindon among
themselves--with care, of course, because they did not wish to appear to
have known her before. But as time wore on they thought she could be
bled to a much greater extent if she were induced to become "a worker in
the flock," which the good lady was quite willing to do. On being
approached by some of the leading spirits, she went first to a weekly
Bible-class, which she had previously been afraid to attend because the
audience was so select, and after this she showed such an interest in
various charities that she was soon placed upon committees. By ladies
with heads for real management on their shoulders she was led to
believe that they really could not do without her mental assistance, so
that at first when she was gravely consulted on a financial question and
asked for her advice she generally eased the tension on her mind by
writing a substantial check. This led her to believe that she had
something of the financier about her, and she even told her husband that
she was beginning to quite understand all about money matters, at which
Joseph smiled an ineffable smile.
She could have been used more advantageously if she had been kept out of
the desired circle for a couple of years longer, because she was ready
to pay any price for her admission. The good ladies made a slight
mistake in being too hasty to control the bottomless purse, because,
after she had got fairly installed, the purse was worked in several
other ways, and the ecclesiastical drain on it became reduced to an
ordinary amount. She gave a fair sum to each of the charities and
accepted the attentions of those whom the odor of money attracted,
without troubling herself in the slightest degree about the periodical
financial difficulties of the institutions.
Yet she never altogether relaxed her efforts in "working for the Lord,"
as she called it, in such good company. She acquired a taste for it that
never left her. She would take a couple of the "poor but honest" ladies
of good family with her, in her sumptuous barouche, to the "Incurables"
and other places. After a capital luncheon at her house they would visit
the "Home," and sometimes kiss the poor women there; and if the
strengthening sympathy and religious value of Mrs. Lindon's kiss did not
bind them to a life of virtue ever afterward they must indeed have been
lost--in every sense of the word.
Nina was not born for some time after Mr. and Mrs. Lindon had been
married. Her mother had kept her, when a child, very much in the dark as
to their antecedents, and, as the social position of the family had
been well established by Mrs. Lindon when Nina was very young, the girl
always had grown up with the idea that she was a lady; and in spite of a
few wants in her father and some doubts as to her mother's origin, she
came out into society with a fixed idea that she was "quite good enough
for the colonies," as she laughingly told her friends.
No pains or expense had been spared in her education. She had first gone
to the best Toronto school, and had "finished" at a boarding-school in
England. Jack Cresswell knew her when she was at school, where she
shared his heart with several others. When she emerged from the
educational chrysalis and floated for the first time down a society
ball-room Jack was after the butterfly hat-in-hand, as it were, and
never as yet had he given up the chase. Mr. Lindon knew nothing of
domestic affairs, but he had found Jack so frequently at his house that
he had begun to see that his ambitious plans for his daughter were
perhaps in danger of being frustrated, and so, having at that time to
send a man to England to float the shares of some company on the London
market, he decided to go himself, and one day, when Jack was dining
there, he rather paralyzed all, especially Jack, by instructing his wife
and daughter to be ready in a week for the journey.
The parting on Jack's part would have been tender if Nina had not been
in such exasperatingly high spirits--hilarity he found it quite
impossible to participate in or appreciate. He made her excuses to
himself, like the decent soul he was, although he really suffered a good
deal. He was an ardent youth, and for the week prior to departure he
received very little of the sympathy he hungered for, but he tried to
speak cheerfully as he held her hand in saying good-by.
"Well, now, you won't forget your promise, old lady, will you?" he said,
while he tried to photograph her in his mind as she stood bewitchingly
before him.
"What! and throw over the French count that proposed to me in London?"
she said archly. Jack muttered something under his breath that sounded
like hostility toward the French count.
She heard him, however, and said: "Certainly. So we will. It will kill
him, but you will rejoice. And I will come back and marry Jack. There!
isn't it nice of me to say that? Now, kiss me and say good-by!"
She withdrew, and held the porch door so that only her face appeared,
which Jack lightly touched with his lips, and then he went away
speechless. As he went he heard her singing:
"And I'll come back to my own true love,
Ten thousand miles away."
This sentiment, from one of his yachting songs, smoothed the ragged edge
of his feelings. He loved in an old-fashioned way, and in his ideas as
to carrying out the due formalities of a lover's leave-taking he was
conservative even to red-tapeism, and disappointment, tenderness, anger,
and hopelessness surged through his brain as they only can in that of a
young man.
There was further tragedy in that Jack, unable to sleep at night and
despondent in the morning, must needs go down to the boat to see her
"just once more" before she left. The gangways had been hauled in and
the paddle-wheels were beginning to move. Nina was standing inside the
lower-deck bulwarks and leaned across the water to shake hands, but the
distance was too great She was in aggressively high spirits, and said to
him, as he moved along the end of the wharf, keeping pace with the boat:
"Don't you remember what your pet authoress says?"
"No," said Jack, hoping that she would say something nice to him.
"She says that a first farewell may have pathos in it, but to come back
for a second lends an opening to comedy."
Her rippling laugh smote Jack cruelly. Then she tried to soften this by
smiling and waving her hand to him as the boat swept away. Jack raised
his hat stiffly in return, and wandered back to the bank with a head
that felt as if it would split.
And this was their parting two years ago.