So Justice, while she winks at crimes,Stumbles on innocence sometimes.Hudibras.
So Justice, while she winks at crimes,Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
Hudibras.
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.—Henry Ward Beecher.
He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.—Henry Ward Beecher.
About two o'clock on this day of the trial, when Geoffrey and all the rest of the bank-clerks were hurrying through their work in order to get out to attend the police court, Mr. Dearborn came in unexpectedly, and talked to Hampstead for a while. He said that the prisoner Cresswell was very ill, perhaps dying, and had begged him to go and bring Geoffrey to see him—if only for a moment.
"All right," said Hampstead, "I'll speak to the manager about going, and will then drop over with you."
He did so, and they walked to the police station together. They descended into the basement, and Mr. Dearborn unlocked a cell which was very dark inside.
"You'll find him in there," said the detective. "I'll have to keep the door locked, of course, while you are with him."
Geoffrey entered, and the door was locked on the outside. He looked around the cell, and then a fear struck him. He turned coolly to the detective, who was still outside the bars, and said: "You have brought me to the wrong cell. Cresswell is not in this one."
"Well, the fact is," said Mr. Dearborn, "a warrant was just now placed in my hands for your arrest, and, as they say you are particularly good both at running and the manly art, I thought a little stratagem might work the thing in nice, quiet shape."
"Just so," said Hampstead, laughing. "Perhaps you are right. I don't think you could catch me if I got started. Who issued the warrant, and what is it about?"
"Here is the warrant. You are entitled to see it. An information was laid, and that's all I know about it. You'll be called up in court in a few minutes, and I must leave you now—to look after some other business."
At three o'clock, when the court-room was packed almost to suffocation, the magistrate mounted the bench, and Cresswell was brought up and remanded until the next morning. The spectators were much disappointed at not hearing the termination of the matter, but their interest revived as they heard the magistrate say, "Bring in the other prisoner."
A dead silence followed, broken only by the measured tread of men's feet in the corridor outside. The double doors opened, and there appeared Geoffrey Hampstead handcuffed and accompanied by four huge policemen. In ten minutes, any person in the court could easily sell his standing-room at a dollar and a half a stand, or upward.
There was no hang-dog look about Geoffrey. His crest was high. It was surprising to see how dignified a man could appear in handcuffs. Suppressed indignation was so vividly stamped upon his face that all gained the idea that the gentleman was suffering an outrage. As he approached the dock, one of his guards laid his hand on his arm. Hampstead stopped short and turned to the policeman as if he would eat him:
"Take your hand off my arm!" he rasped out. The man did so in a hurry, and the spectators were impressed by the incident.
A charge about the fifty thousand dollars was read out to Geoffrey, similar to that in the Cresswell case. That he did, etc.—on, etc.—at, etc.—feloniously, etc.—and all the rest of it.
Now Hampstead did not see how, when he was apparently innocent, and another man practically convicted, he could possibly be thought guilty also. The case against Cresswell had been so complete that it was impossible for any one to doubt his guilt. Hampstead knew also that if he were tried once now and acquitted, he never could be tried again for the same offense. He had been fond of talking to Rankin about criminal law, and on some points was better posted than most men. He did not know whether Jack would be well enough to give evidence to-day, if at all, and if, for want of proof or otherwise, the case against him failed now, he would be safe forever. Jack might recover soon, and then the case would be worse if he told all he knew. He did not engage a lawyer, as this might seem as if he were doubtful and needed assistance. He was, he thought, quite as well able to see loopholes of escape as a lawyer would be, so long as they did not depend on technicalities. Altogether he had decided, after his arrest and after careful thought, to take his trial at once.
He elected to be tried before a police magistrate, said he was ready for trial, and pleaded "not guilty."
About this time the manager of the Victoria Bank, who was very much astonished and hurt at the proceedings taken against Geoffrey, leaned over and asked the county attorney if he had much evidence against Mr. Hampstead. The poor manager was beginning almost to doubt his own honesty. Every person seemed guilty in this matter. As for Jack and Hampstead, he would have previously been quite ready to have sworn to his belief in their honesty.
"My dear sir," replied the county attorney, "I don't know anything about it. Mr. Rankin came flying down in a cab, saw the prisoner Cresswell, swore out a warrant, had Mr. Hampstead arrested, sent the detectives flying about in all directions, and that's all I know about it. He is running the entire show himself."
"Indeed!" said the manager. "I shall never be surprised at anything again, after to-day."
Nobody knew but Rankin himself what was coming on. Several detectives had had special work allotted to them, but this was all they knew, and the small lawyer sat with apparent composure until it was time to call his first witness.
Mr. St. George Le Mesurier Hector Northcote was the first witness called, and his fashionable outfit created some amusement among the "unwashed." Rankin, with a certain malignity, made him give his name in full, which, together with his affected utterance, interested those who were capable of smiling.
After some formal questions, Rankin unrolled a parcel, shook out a waistcoat with a large pattern on it, and handed it to the witness.
"Did you ever see that waistcoat before?"
"Oh, yes. It belongs to Mr. Hampstead. At least it used to belong to him."
"When did you see it last?"
"Up in his rooms a few evenings ago."
"That was the night of the day the fifty thousand dollars was stolen from the bank?"
"Yes."
"What did you do with it then?"
"I took it out of his bedroom closet to give to a poor boy."
"Why did you do that?"
"I thought it was a kindness to Mr. Hampstead to take that very dreadful waistcoat away from him. I took this and a number of other garments to give to the boy."
"You were quite generous that night! Did Mr. Hampstead object?"
"Object? Oh, no! I should have said that he took them from me and gave them to the boy himself."
"Now, why were you so generous with Mr. Hampstead's clothes, and why should he consent to give them to the boy?"
This was getting painful for Sappy. His manager was standing, as he said, plumb in front of him.
"Well, if I must tell unpleasant things," said Sappy, "the boy was sent out that evening to get us a little wine, and I thought giving him that waistcoat would be a satisfaction to all parties."
"You were perfectly right. You have given a great deal of satisfaction to a great many people. So Mr. Hampstead was entertaining his friends that night?"
"Yes. We dined with him at the club that evening, and adjourned afterward to his rooms to have a little music."
"Ah! Just so. Seeing how pleasantly things had been going in the bank that day, and that his particular friend Cresswell had decamped with fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Hampstead was celebrating the occasion. Now, I suppose that, taking in the cost of the dinners and the wine—or rather, excuse me—themusic, and all the rest of it, you got the impression that Mr. Hampstead had a good deal of money that night?"
"That's none of your business," said Sappy, firing up. "Mr. Hampstead spends his money like a gentleman. I suppose he did spend a good deal that night, and generally does."
"Very good," said Rankin.
He then went on to ask questions about Hampstead's salary and his probable expenses, but perhaps this was to kill time, for he kept looking toward the door, as if he expected somebody to come in. Finally he let poor Sappy depart in peace, after making him show beyond any doubt that Geoffrey wore this waistcoat at the time of the theft at the bank—that the garment was old fashioned, and that it had seemed peculiar that Hampstead, a man of some fashion, should be wearing it.
Patsey Priest was now called, and he slunk in from an adjoining room, in company with a policeman. He had a fixed impression in his mind that Geoffrey was his prosecutor, and that he was going to be charged with stealing liquors, cigars, tobacco, and clothes. He was prepared to prove his innocence of all these crimes, but he trembled visibly. His mother had put his oldest clothes upon him, as poverty, she thought, might prove a good plea before the day was out. The difference between his garments and those of the previous witness was striking. His skin, as seen through the holes in his apparel, suggested how, by merelaches, real estate could become personalty.
"Where were you on Wednesday night last, about one or two o'clock in the evening?"
"I wus in Mr. 'Ampstead's rooms part of the time."
"Did you ever see that waistcoat before?"
"Yes, I did, and he gev it to me, so help me on fourteen Bibles, as I kin prove by five or six gents right in front of me over there, and its altogether wrong ye are fur to try and fix it on to a poor boy as has to get his livin' honest and support his mother, and her a widder—"
"Stop, stop!" called Rankin. "Did you get this other waistcoat at the same time?"
"Yes, I did, an' a lot more besides, an' I tuk them all up and gev them to me mother just the same as I gives her all me wages and the hull of the clothes an' more besides give me fur goin' round to the Rah-seen House fur to buy the drinks—"
"That will do, that will do," interrupted Rankin. "You can go."
"Faith, I knew ye'd hev to discharge me, fur I'm as innercent as y'are yerself."
Mrs. Priest was called.
She came in with more assurance now, as she had become convinced, from seeing Hampstead in the dock and guarded by the police, that the matter in question did not refer to her consumption of coal, or her legal right to perquisites.
"Mrs. Priest, did you ever see that waistcoat before?" said Rankin.
"See it before! Didn't you take it out of me own hands not two hours ago? What are ye after, man?"
Rankin explained, that the magistrate wished to know all about it.
"Well, I'll tell his lordship the hull story: Ye see, yer 'anor, the boy gets the clothes from Mr. Geoffrey and brings them up to me last Wednesday night begone and says they was give to him, an' the next day I wus lookin' through them, and I thought I'd sell this weskit becas the patthern is a thrifle large for a child, an' I puts me 'and into these 'ere pockets on the inside an' I pulls out a paper—"
"Stop! Is this the paper you found?"
"Yes, that's it; 'an I thought it might be of some use, as it hed figures on it and writin'. An' I says to Mr. Renkin, when he come into my room to-day fur to get a cup—"
"Never mind what I came in for," said Rankin, coloring.
"An' I says to Mr. Rankin, sez I, 'Is this paper any use, do you think, to Mr. 'Ampstead.' An' he looks at it awful hard and sez, 'Where did yer get it? An' then I ups and told him (for I wus quite innercent, and so wus the boy) that I had got it out of the weskit—out of these 'ere inside pockets. An' then I shows him that other weskit an' how the lining of one weskit had been cut out and sewn onter the other—as anybody can see as compares the two—an' I never saw any weskit with four long pockets on the inside before, an' I wondered what they wus fur.
"An' I hedn't got the words out of me mouth before Mr. Renkin turned as white as the drippin' snow and says, 'My God!' an' he grabs the two weskits widout me leave or license, an' also the paper, an' I thought he'd break his neck down the stairs in the dark. An' that's all I know about it until the cops brought me and the child here in the hack, after we put on our best clothes fur to be decent to answer to the charge before yer lordship; an' if that's all yer lordship wants ter know, I'd like to axe yer lordship if there'll be anythin' comin' to me fur comin' down here widout resistin' the cops?"
As Rankin finished with Mrs. Priest, the police magistrate reminded the prisoner that he had the right to cross-examine the witness.
Hampstead smiled, and said he had no doubt all she said was true.
Rankin then read the marks on the piece of paper. It was a longish slip of paper, about three inches wide, and had been cut off from a large sheet of office letter-paper. There had been printing at the top of this sheet when it was entire. On the piece cut off still remained the printed words "Western Union." On the opposite side of the paper, which seemed to have been used as a wrapper and fastened with a pin, were the figures, in blue pencil, "$50,000," and, below, a direction or memorandum: "For Mont. Teleg. Co'y. Toronto." These words had had a pen passed through them.
The excitement caused by this evidence was increased when Hampstead arose and requested to be allowed to withdraw his consent to be tried before the magistrate.
"I see," he said, smiling, "that my friend Mr. Rankin has been led astray by some facts which can be thoroughly well explained. But I must have time and opportunity to get such evidence as I require."
The magistrate rather sternly replied that he had consented to his trial to-day, and said he was ready for trial, and that the request for a change would be refused. The trial must go on.
The Montreal Telegraph clerk was then called, and identified the wrapper as the one that had been around the stolen fifty thousand dollars. He had run his pen through the written words before depositing the money in the Victoria Bank. He again identified by their numbers the two one-thousand dollar bills found on Jack, and he was then told to stand down until again required.
The receiving teller of the bank could not swear positively to the wrapper. He remembered that there had been a paper around the bills with blue writing on it, which he thought he had not removed when counting the bills.
Rankin then requested the police to bring in John Cresswell.
Want of proper nourishment had had much to do with Jack's mental weakness. Besides the exhaustion which he had suffered from, he had not, until his friends looked after him, eaten or drunk anything for over forty hours. He had neglected the food brought him by the police.
As the constable half supported him to the box, he was still a pitiable object, in spite of the champagne the fellows had made him swallow. As his bodily strength had come back under stimulant, his intellect had returned also with proportional strength, which of course was not great. His ideas as to what was going on were of the vaguest kind. He looked surprised to see Geoffrey in custody, but smiled across the room to him and nodded.
After he was sworn, Rankin asked him:
"You went away last Wednesday on a schooner called the North Star?"
"Yes."
"Did any person tell you to go in this way, instead of by steamer or railway?"
"I think it was Geoffrey's suggestion at first. I had to go away on private business. I think we arranged the manner of my going together."
"Did any person tell you to take your valises to the yacht club early on Wednesday morning?"
"I think it was Hampstead's idea originally, and I thought it was a good one."
"You wished to go away secretly?"
"Well, we discussed that point. I was going by rail, but Hampstead thought the schooner was best."
"You evidently did everything he told you?"
"Certainly, I did," said Jack, as he smiled across to Geoffrey. "Hampstead has the best head for management I know of."
"Quite so. No doubt about that! Now, since the accident to the boats in the lake some bills were found upon you. Are those your bills?" (producing them).
"Yes, they look like my bills. The seven one-hundred dollars I got myself, and the two for one thousand each I got—" Jack stopped here and looked troubled. He looked across at Geoffrey and remained silent. It came to him for the first time that Hampstead was being charged with something that had gone wrong in the bank about this money.
The magistrate said sharply "I wish to know where you got that money. You will be good enough to answer without delay."
Jack looked worried. "My money was all in smallish bills, and either Geoffrey or I (I forget which) suggested that I had better take these two American one-thousand-dollar bills, as they would be smaller in my pocket. He slipped these two out of a package of bills which I imagine were all of the same denomination."
Rankin evidently was wishing to spin out the time, for he glanced at the side door whenever it was opened.
He went on asking questions and showing that Geoffrey had been at the bottom of everything, and in the mean time three men appeared in the room, and one of them handed Rankin a parcel.
"During your trial this morning I think I heard you say that the bills you saw on Hampstead's desk were all dark-green colored?"
"I think they were all the same color as these two. He ran his finger over them as he drew these two out."
"I have some money here," said Rankin. "Does this package look anything like the one you then saw?"
"I could not swear to it. It looks like it."
Even the magistrate was excited now. The news had flown through the business part of the city that Geoffrey Hampstead had been arrested and was on trial for stealing the fifty thousand dollars. The news stirred men as if the post-office had been blown up with dynamite. The court-room was jammed. When word had been passed outside that things looked bad for Hampstead, as much as five dollars was paid by a broker for standing room in the court. It had also become known that Maurice Rankin had caused the arrest to be made himself, and that nobody but he knew what could be proved. People thought at first that the bank authorities were forcing the prosecution, and wondered that they had not employed an older man. The fact that this young sprig, professionally unknown, had assumed the entire responsibility himself, gave a greater interest to the proceedings.
The magistrate leaned over his desk and asked quietly:
"What money is that you have there, Mr. Rankin?"
Maurice's naturally incisive voice sounded like a bell in the death-like stillness of the court-room.
"These," he said, "are what I will prove to be the forty-eight thousand-dollar bills stolen from the bank."
The pent-up excitement could be restrained no longer. A sound, half cheer and half yell, filled the room.
Rankin had not been idle after he left Mrs. Priest that day. He first went in a cab to Jack, and simply asked him if Geoffrey had worn the large-patterned waistcoat on the day he went away. Jack remembered hearing Sappy talking about his wearing it. Rankin then drove to the Montreal Telegraph clerk, who identified the wrapper. Then he had the warrant issued for Hampstead's arrest, and also subpœnas, which were handed to different policemen for service, with instructions to bring the witnesses with them if possible. The Priests, mother and son, he secured by having a constable bring them in a cab. He then requested the magistrate to hear the case at once.
He supposed, rightly enough, that Hampstead, on becoming aware that the numbers of the stolen bills were all known would be afraid to pass any of them, and would still have the money somewhere in his possession. So he had three detectives sent with a search warrant to break in Geoffrey's door and search for it. He thought it was by no means certain that they would find the money, and he was anxious on this point, but he knew that, even if he failed to secure a conviction against Hampstead, he had at least sufficient evidence to render Jack's conviction doubtful. In the case against Hampstead, Jack's evidence would be heard in full, and Rankin felt satisfied that in some way it would explain away the terribly damaging case that had been made out against him in the morning.
The sudden shout in the court had been so full of sympathy for Jack and admiration for Rankin's cleverness that for the first time in his magisterial existence "His Worship" forgot to check it, and the call to order by the police was of the weakest kind. All the bank-clerks of the city were jammed into that room, and for a moment Jack's friends were wild.
A few more questions were put to Jack, but only to improve his position before the public as to the charge against himself.
"Are you aware that you have been made a victim of in a matter where the Victoria Bank was robbed of fifty thousand dollars?"
"No," said Jack, looking dazed. "I am not."
"Are you aware that you were tried this morning for stealing that money?"
"I seemed at times to know that something was wrong. Once I knew I was charged with stealing something or other, but I did not know or care. I must have been unconscious after the collision in the lake. The first thing I knew of, they said we were at Port Dalhousie. We must have sailed there with nothing drawing but the forward canvas, and that must have taken a good while."
Jack was now allowed to stand down, but he was not removed from the court-room.
To clear up Jack's record thoroughly, Rankin called Detective Dearborn and, before the magistrate stopped the examination as being irrelevant, he succeeded in showing that Jack had been delirious for twelve hours after his arrest. The fact that Dearborn had not mentioned these circumstances placed him in a rather bad light with the audience, while it showed once again what a common habit it is with the police to suppress and even distort facts in order to secure a conviction.
The telegraph clerk identified the recovered forty-eight bills, and the receiving teller, gave the same evidence as in the Cresswell case, and then the detective who found the money in Hampstead's room was called.
As soon as he heard his first words, Geoffrey knew what was coming and rose to his feet and addressed the magistrate:
"I suppose, Your Worship, that it is not too late to withdraw my plea of not guilty and at this late hour plead guilty. This will be my only opportunity to cast a full light on this case, and, if I may be permitted, I will do so."
The magistrate nodded. Geoffrey continued:
"Of course, it is perfectly clear that Cresswell is quite innocent. For private reasons, in a matter that was entirely honorable to himself, Cresswell wished to leave Canada. He was going through the States to California, and did not intend to return, and would have resisted being brought back to Canada. There was no law existing by which he could be extradited. He could only be brought back by his own consent. From the way I sent him on the schooner, his arrest before arriving in the United States was in the highest degree improbable. If he had afterward been arrested in the States I could have at once arranged to be sent by the bank to persuade him to return. I had it all planned that he never should return. He would have done as I told him. Even if he insisted on coming back I then would be safe in the States. Of course, I did not know that identification could be made of the bills—which could not have been foreseen—and my object in giving him two of them was that suspicion would rest temporarily on him, which might be necessary to give me time to escape. As it turned out, if Cresswell had insisted on returning to Canada he would be returning to certain conviction—part of the identified money being found on him.
"So far I speak only of my intentions at the time of the theft. But I hope no one will think I would allow my old friend Jack Cresswell to go to jail under sentence for my misdeeds. To-night I intended to cross the lake in a small boat and then telegraph to the bank where to find all the money at my chambers. This, with a letter of explanation, would have acquitted Jack. I had to save him—also myself, from imprisonment; but there was another matter worth far more than the money to me which I hoped to be able to eventually make right. If I had got away to-night the bank would have had its money to-morrow.
"On the day before the theft I had lost all my twelve years' earnings and profits in speculation. If I had been able to hold my stocks until the evening of the theft I would have made over seventy-five thousand dollars. For weeks during the excitement preceding my loss I had been drinking a great deal, and when the chance came to recoup myself from the bank I seemed to take the money almost as a matter of right."
As Geoffrey continued he was looking up out of the window, evidently oblivious of the crowd about him, thinking the thing out, as if confessing to himself.
"I know that without the liquor I never would have stolen, and that with it I became—"
His face grew bitter as he thought of his thieving Tartar uncle and his mother who could not be prevented from stealing. But he pulled himself together and continued: "It would have been open to me to call men from this gathering to give evidence as to my previous character, and I have no hesitation in leaving this point in your hands if it will do anything to shorten my sentence. On this ground only am I entitled to ask for your consideration, and you will be doing a kindness if you will pass sentence at once."
As Hampstead said these words he looked abstractedly around for the last time upon the scores of former friends who now averted their faces. There was no bravado in his appearance. He held himself erect, as he always did, and his face was impenetrable. His eyes claimed acquaintance with none who met his glance. Some smiled faintly, impressed as they were with his bearing, but he seemed to look into them and past them, as if saying to himself: "There's Brown, and there's Jones, and there's Robinson, I wonder when I will ever see them again?"
There were men in that throng who knew, when Hampstead spoke of the effects of the liquor on him, exactly what was meant, who knew from personal experience that, if there is any devilish tendency in a man or any hereditary predisposition to any kind of wrong-doing, alcohol will bring it out, and these men could not refrain from some sympathy with him who had partly explained his fall, and somehow there were none who thought after Geoffrey's statement that he would have sacrificed Jack to imprisonment under sentence.
The magistrate addressed him:
"Geoffrey Hampstead, I do not think there has been anything against your character since you came to Toronto. That an intelligence such as yours should have been prostituted to the uses to which you have put it is one of the most melancholy things that ever came to my knowledge. I can not think you belong to the criminal classes, and I would be glad to be out of this matter altogether, because I feel how unable one may be to deal for the best with a case like yours. It may be that if you were liberated you would never risk your ruin again. I do not think you would; but, in that case, this court might as well be closed and the police disbanded. I am compelled to make your case exemplary, and I sentence you to six years in the Kingston Penitentiary."
A dead silence followed, and then his former friends and acquaintances began to go away. They went away quietly, not looking at each other. There was something in the proceedings of the day that silenced them. They had lost faith in one honest man and had found it again; and another, on whom some nobility was stamped, they had seen condemned as a convict. As they took their last look at the man whom they had often envied and admired, they wished to escape observation. So many of them were thinking how, at such a time in their lives, if things had not luckily turned out as they did, they, too, might have fallen under some kind of temptation, and they knew the sympathy that comes from secret consciousness of what their own possibilities in guilt might have been.
Geoffrey received his sentence looking out of the window toward the blue sky and the swallows that flew past. Every word that the magistrate had said had in it the tone of a friend, which made it harder to bear. While he heard it all vividly, he strained to keep his attention on the flying swallows in order that he might not break down. Outside of that window, and just in that direction, Margaret, the wife that never would be, was waiting for him. The man's face was like ashes. Oh, the relief to have dashed himself upon the floor when he thought of Margaret!
Yet he held out. He felt it would be better for him to be dead; but he met his fate bravely, and now sought relief in another way. He caught Rankin's eye, and motioned to him to come near.
With a face that was afraid to relax its tension, he said, with an effort at something like his ordinary speech:
"Rankin, you forsook me sadly to-day, did you not? But I can still count on you to do me a good turn—if only in return for to-day."
"Go on, Geoffrey. Yes, I have disliked you from the first. But now I don't. You make people like you, no matter what you do. You take it like a man. What do you want?"
Rankin could not command his countenance as Geoffrey could. Now that he had accomplished the work of convicting him, it seemed terrible that one who, with all his faults, appeared so manly a man, and so brave, should be on his way to six years' darkness.
Geoffrey pulled him closer and whispered in his ear: "Go to Margaret—at once—before she can read anything! Take a cab. Tell her all. Break it to her. You can put it gently. Go to her now—let her know, fairly, before you come away, that all my chances are gone—that she is released—that I am nothing—now—but a dead man."
His head went down as the words were finished with a wild effort, and his great frame shook convulsively for a moment. The thought of Margaret killed him.
During the day, before his arrest, he had seen that he would have to return at least part of the money to corroborate his story and to save Jack. And he could not abscond with the balance, because that would mean the loss of Margaret. By returning the money and saving himself from imprisonment, he had hoped that eventually she would forgive him. And now—
Maurice could not stand it. He said, hurriedly: "All right. I'll see you to-morrow." And then he dashed off, out a side door, and into a cab. And on the way to Margaret he wept like a child behind the carriage curtains for the fate of the man whom he had convicted.
Yea, it becomes a manTo cherish memory, where he had delight,For kindness is the natural birth of kindness.Whose soul records not the great debt of joy,Is stamped forever an ignoble man.Sophocles(Ajax).
Yea, it becomes a manTo cherish memory, where he had delight,For kindness is the natural birth of kindness.Whose soul records not the great debt of joy,Is stamped forever an ignoble man.
Sophocles(Ajax).
As Rankin broke the news to Margaret—by degrees and very quietly—she showed but little sign of feeling. Her face whitened and she moved stiffly to the open window, where she could sit in the draught. As she made Rankin tell her the whole story she simply grew stony, while she sat with bloodless hands clinched together, as if she thus clutched at her soul to save it from the madness of a terrible grief.
Suddenly she interrupted him.
"Dismiss your cab," she said. "I will walk back with you part of the way."
When she turned toward him, the strained face was so white and the eyes so wide and expressionless that he became afraid.
"Perhaps you would rather be alone," said he, doubtful about letting her go into the street.
She seemed to divine what was in his mind, for she made him feel more at ease by a gentler tone:
"Alone? No, no! Anything but that! The walk will do me good."
The cab was dismissed while she put on her hat, and as they walked through the quiet streets toward the heart of the city, he went on with all the particulars, which she seemed determined to hear. Several times they met people who knew her and knew of her engagement to Hampstead, and they were surprised to see her walking with—of all men—Maurice Rankin. But she saw no one, gazing before her with the look which means madness if the mind be not diverted. Suddenly, as they had to cross one of the main arteries of the city, a sound fell upon Margaret's ear that made her stop and grasp Rankin by the arm. Then the cry came again—from a boy running toward them along the street:
"Special edition of the Evening News! All about Geoffrey Hampstead, the bank robber!"
For a moment her grasp came near tearing a piece out of Rankin's arm. But this was only when the blow struck her. She stopped the boy and bought a paper. She gave him half a dollar and walked on.
"This will do to give them at home," she said simply. "I could not tell them myself."
But the blow was too much for her. To hear the name of the man she worshiped yelled through the streets as a bank robber's was more than she felt able to bear. She must get home now. Another experience of this kind, and something would happen.
"Good-by!" she said, as she stopped abruptly at the corner of a street. Not a vestige of a tear had been seen in her eyes. "I will go home now. You have been very kind. I forgive you for—"
She turned quickly, and Rankin stood and watched her as she passed rapidly away.
No. 173 Tremaine Buildings had become slightly better furnished since the opening of this story. Between the time when he made the cruise in the Ideal and the events recorded in the preceding chapters, Rankin had contributed somewhat to his comforts in an inexpensive way. In order to buy his coal, which he did now with much satisfaction, he had still to practice the strictest economy. But he took some pleasure in his solitary existence. From time to time he bought different kinds of preserves sold in pressed-glass goblets and jugs of various sizes. After the jam was consumed the prize in glassware would be washed by Mrs. Priest and added to his collection, and there was a keen sense of humor in him when he added each terrible utensil to his stock. "A poor thing—but mine own!" he would quote, as he bowed to an imaginary audience and pointed with apologetic pride to a hideous pressed-glass butter-bolt.
In buying packages of dusty, doctored, and detestable tea he acquired therewith a collection of gift-spoons of different sizes, and also knives, forks, and plates, which, if not tending to develop a taste for high art, were useful. At a certain "seven-cent store" he procured, for the prevailing price, articles in tinware, the utility of which was out of all proportion to the cost.
Thus, when he sat down of an evening and surveyed a packing-box filled with several sacks of coal, all paid for; when he viewed the collection of glassware, the "family plate," and the very desirable cutlery; when he gazed with pride upon his seven-cent treasures and his curtains of chintz at ten cents a mile; when he considered that all these were his very own, his sense of having possessions made him less communistic and more conservative. Primitively, a Conservative was a being who owned something, just as Darwin's chimpanzee in the "Zoo," who discovered how to break nuts with a stone and hid the stone, was a Tory; the other monkeys who stole it were necessarily Reformers.
About ten o'clock on the evening of the trial Rankin was sitting among his possessions sipping some "gift-spoon" tea. Around him were three evening papers and two special editions. The "startling developments" and "unexpected changes" which had "transpired" at the Victoria Bank had made the special editions sell off like cheap peaches, and Rankin was enjoying the weakness—pardonable in youth and not unknown to maturity—of reading each paper's account of himself and the trial. They spoke of his "acuteness" and "foresight," and commented on his being the sole means of recovering the forty-eight thousand dollars. One paper must have jumped at a conclusion when it called him "a well-known and promising young lawyer—one of the rising men at the bar."
"The tide has turned," he said. "Twenty cents a day is not going to cover my total expenses after this. I feel it in my bones that the money will come pouring in now." He was mechanically filling a pipe when a rap at the door recalled him from his dream. A tall Scotchman, whom Rankin recognized as the messenger of the Victoria Bank, handed him a letter and then felt around for the stairs in the darkness, and descended backward, on his hands and knees, for fear of accidents.
A pleasing letter from the manager of the Victoria Bank inclosed one of the recovered thousand-dollar bills.
Rankin sat down. "I shall never," he said, with an air of resolve, "steal any more coal! And now I'll have a cigar, three for a quarter, and blow the expense!"
Two weeks afterward there came to him a copy of a resolution passed by the bank directors, together with a notification that they had arranged with the bank solicitors, Messrs. Godlie, Lobbyer, Dertewercke, and Toylor, to have him taken in as a junior partner.
Immediately after Geoffrey was sentenced, Jack Cresswell was, of course, discharged. A dozen hands were being held out to congratulate him, when Detective Dearborn drew him through a side door into an empty room, where they had a short talk about keeping the name of Nina Lindon from the public, and then they departed together for Tremaine Buildings in a cab, while the two valises in front looked, like their owner, none the better for their vicissitudes. Dearborn felt that little could be said to mend the trouble he had caused Jack, but he did all he could, and there was certainly nothing hard-hearted in the care with which the redoubtable detective assisted his former victim to bed. Mrs. Priest was summoned, also a doctor. Jack was found to be worse than he thought, and Patsey was ordered to remain within call in the next room, where he consumed cigars at twelve dollars the hundred throughout the night.
The next day Mrs. Mackintosh and Margaret came down in a cab to Jack's lonely quarters, and insisted upon his being moved to their house during his illness. While unable to go home to his parents at Halifax he was loath to give trouble to his friends, and made excuses, until he saw that Margaret really wished him to come, and divined that his coming might be a relief to her.
It was so. In the weeks that followed, whatever these two suffered in the darkness and solitude of the nights, during the day-time they were brave. The heart of each knew its own bitterness. In a short time Jack found the comfort of speech in telling Margaret many things. Unavoidably Geoffrey's name came up, for he was entangled in both their lives. Little by little Jack's story came out, as he lay back weakly on his couch, until, warmed by Margaret's sympathy, he told her all about Nina and himself—so far as he knew the story—and in the presence of his manifold troubles, and at the thought of his suffering when he witnessed, as a captive, Nina's death, Margaret felt that she was in the presence of one who had known even greater grief than her own. This was good for her. After a while she was able to speak to Jack about Geoffrey, and this brought them more and more together.
When he got well, his breach of duty in going away without notice was overlooked, and he was taken back to his old post. There he worked on as the years rolled by. Country managerships were offered to him, and declined. He had nothing to make money for, and the only thing he really enjoyed was Margaret's society, in which he would talk about Nina and Geoffrey without restraint. For many years he remained ignorant that his marriage with Nina was, after all, for New York State a valid one, since marriage by simple contract, without religious ceremony, is sufficient in that State. He never dreamed Geoffrey had been indirectly the cause of his life's ruin, and always spoke of him as a man almost without blame. However unreasonable, there are, among all the faulty emotions, few more beautiful than a man's affection for a man. When it exists, it is the least exacting attachment of his life.
Margaret listened to his superlatives about Geoffrey. She listened; but as the years passed on she grew wiser. When walking in the open fields, or perhaps beside the wide lake, an image would come to her in gladsome colors, in matchless beauty—a Greek god with floating hair and full of resolve and victory, and in her dreams she would see and talk with him, and would find him grave and thoughtful and tender, and all that a man could be. Then would come the rending of the heart. This was a thief who had decoyed his friend, and, good or bad, was lost to her.
And thus time passed on. For two or three years she went nowhere. She tried going into society, after Geoffrey's sentence, thinking to obtain relief in change of thought, but the experiment was a failure. She found that she had not the elasticity of temperament which can doff care and don gayety as society demands. So she gave up the attempt for years, and then went again only at her mother's solicitation. She said she had her patients at the hospital, her studies with her father, her many books to read, her long walks with Jack and Maurice Rankin, and what more did she want?
She did not hear of Geoffrey. The six years of his imprisonment had dragged themselves into the past, and she supposed he was free again, if he had not died in the penitentiary. But nothing was heard of him, and thus the time rolled on, while Margaret's mother secretly wept to see her daughter's early bloom departing, while no hope of any happy married life seemed possible to her.
Grave, pleasant, studious, thoughtful, as the years rolled by, she went on with her hospital work. From the depths of the grief into which she was plunged, she could discern some truths that might have remained unknown if her life had continued sunny—just as at noonday from the bottom of a deep pit or well the stars above us can be seen. To her the bitterness of her life was medicinal. Speaking chemically, it was like the acid of the unripe apple acting upon the starch in it to make a sugar—thus to perfect a sweet maturity. She was one of the richly endowed women in whom sensitiveness and strength combine peculiarly for either superlative joy or sorrow, and hers was a grief which, for her, nothing but tending the bed of sickness seemed to mitigate. Many a bruised heart was healed, gladdened, and bewitched by the angel smile on the sweet firm, full lips which could quiver with compassion. There are some smiles, given for others, when grief has made thought for self unbearable, which nothing but a descent into hell and glorious rising again could produce.