Geoffrey Hampstead. Jarvis Stinson
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