Stinson Jarvis - Geoffrey Hampstead - A Novel

They passed through the conservatory and out to the broad walk of pressed gravel, where several couples were promenading. Here they walked up and down once or twice in the cool breeze that seemed delicious after the invisible dust of the ball-room. Nina was saying nothing, but leaning on his arm, and it seemed to her that his low, deep tones vibrated through her – as a sympathetic note sometimes makes glass ring – as if in echo.

Geoffrey was pondering where all the pride and self-assertion had gone to in this girl who now seemed so trustful and docile. Even her answers seemed mechanical and vague, as if she were in some way bewildered.

Jack, in the mean time, was elbowing his way through a crowd, trying to get one of his partners something to eat. He was the only person likely to notice her absence, and this he did not do, and, as Geoffrey was down for five dances, he knew no others would be looking for her. So he walked on past the end of the terrace, and, descending some steps, proceeded farther till they came to more steps leading down into a path dark with overhanging trees. Nina hesitated, and said she was always afraid to go among dark trees, but Geoffrey said, "Oh, I'll take care of you." Then she thought it was pleasant to have an athlete for a protector, and she glanced at his strong face and frame with confidence. She no longer went with him as she had danced, with her mind in a whirl, but peacefully and calmly, with no other thought than to be with him. He took her hand as they descended the stairs, and, though she shrank a little from a proceeding new to her, it seemed natural enough, and gave her a sense of protection in the dark paths. It did not occur to her that she could have done without it. She did not notice their silence. Geoffrey, too, thought it pleasant enough in the balmy air without conversation. He was interested by her beauty and her sudden partiality for him.

At length he stopped in one of the distant paths as they came to a seat between the trunks of two large trees. Here they sat down at opposite sides of the seat, and Geoffrey leaned back against the tree beside him. The leaves on the overhanging boughs quivered in the light of the moon, and the delicate perfume in the air spoke of flower-beds near by. He thought it extremely pleasant here, and he laid his head back against the tree beside him to listen to the tinkling of the fountain and to enjoy the scent-laden night air. An idea was still with him that this was the girl Jack was engaged to, and he thought it would be as well to keep that idea before him. He said to himself that he liked Jack, and thought he was very considerate, under the circumstances, for his friend when he took out a little silver case and suggested that he would like a cigarette.

Nina did not answer him. She was in some phase of thought in which cigarettes had no place, and only looked toward him slowly, as if she had merely heard the sound of his voice and not the words. He selected from the case one of those innocuous tubes of rice-paper and prairie-grass, and, as he did so, the absent look on her face seemed peculiar. With a fuse in one hand and the cigarette in the other, he paused before striking a light, and they looked at each other for a moment as he thought of stories he had read of one person's influence over another. Like many, he had a general curiosity about strange phases of mankind, and it occurred to him that Nina would make an interesting subject for experiment. Presently he said, in resonant tones, deep and musical:

"Do you like to be here, Nina?"

She did not seem to notice that he called her by this familiar name, but she stood up and remained silently gazing at the moon through a break in the foliage. Her beauty was sublimated by the white light, and, as Geoffrey took a step towards her, he forgot about his cigarette, and, taking both her hands in his, he repeated his question two or three times before she answered. Then she turned impetuously.

"Oh, why do you make me do everything that is wrong? I should not be here. I should never have spoken to you. I was afraid of you from the first moment I saw you."

Geoffrey led her by one hand back to the seat.

"Now answer me. Do you like to be here – with me, Nina?"

She looked at the moon and at the ground and all about, but remained mute and apparently pondering.

He had forgotten Jack now as well as the cigarette, and was rapidly losing the remembrance that this was to be merely a scientific experiment.

"Your silence makes me all the more impatient. I will know now. Do you like to be here, Nina?"

A new earnestness in his tone thrilled her and made her tremble. She turned with a sudden impulse, as if something had made her reckless:

"You are forcing me to answer you," she said vehemently, as she looked at him with a constrained, though affectionate expression in her eyes. "But I will tell you if I die for it. Oh, I am so wicked to say so, but I must. You make me. Oh, now let us go into the house."

Geoffrey's generous intention to act rightly by Jack departed from him, and for a moment he drew her toward him, saying that she must not care too much for being there, "because, you know," he said, "this is only a little flirtation, and is quite too good to last."

She seemed not to be listening to him, but to be thinking; and after a moment she said, in long drawn out, sorrowful accents:

"Oh – poor – Jack!"

Something in the slow, melancholy way she said this, and the thought of the poor place that Jack certainly held at the present time in her affections, struck Geoffrey as irresistibly amusing, and he laughed aloud in an unsympathetic way, which presented him to her in a new light, and she sprang from him at once. Her emotion turned to anger as she thought that the laugh had been derisive, and her blood boiled to think he could bring her here to laugh at her after he had succeeded in winning her so completely.

"Come into the house at once," she cried. "I can't go in alone even if I knew the way."

Geoffrey rose and begged her pardon, assuring her that nothing but the peculiarity of her remark had caused his laugh.

"I will not stay here another instant. If you don't come at once I'll find my way alone." And she stamped her foot upon the ground.

Hampstead did not like to be stamped at, and his face altered. As long as she had been facile and pleasing, a sense of duty toward her and Jack had made him considerate. It had seemed to him while sitting there that this girl was his; and the sense of possession had made him kind, but now that she seemed to vex him unnecessarily it appeared to him like a denial of his influence. The idea of the experiment suddenly returned, together with a sense of power and a desire to compel submission which displaced his wish to be considerate. He sat down on the seat again facing her and said:

"I want you to come here." He motioned to the seat beside him.

"I won't go near you. I hate you! I'll run in by myself."

"You can not run away – because I wish you to come here."

Hampstead said this in a measured way, and his brow seemed to knot into cords as he concentrated his will-power. His face bore an unpleasant expression. A quarter of a minute passed and she stood trembling and fascinated; and before another half-minute had elapsed she came very slowly forward, and approached him with the expression of her face changed into one of enervation. Her eyes were dilated, and her hands hung loosely at her sides. Hampstead saw, with some consternation, that she had become like something else, that she looked very like a mad-woman. A shock went through him as he looked at her – not knowing how the matter might terminate. He saw that she was mesmerized – an automaton moved by his will only. The combined flirtation and experiment had gone further than he had intended, and the result was startling – especially as the possibility that she might not recover flashed through his mind. The power he had been wielding (which receives much cheap ridicule from very learned men who would fain deny what they can not explain) suddenly seemed to him to be a devilish one, and he felt that he had done something wrong. He had not intended it. An idea had seized him, and he was merely concentrating a power which he unconsciously used almost every hour of his life. He considered what ought to be done to bring her back to a normal state. Not knowing anything better to do, he walked her about quickly, speaking to her, a little sharply, so as to rouse her.