Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel

CHAPTER I

I do not think

So fair an outward, and such stuff within,

Endows a man but he.

The Victoria Bank, Toronto, is on the corner of Bay and Front Streets, where it overlooks a part of the harbor large enough to gladden the eyes of the bank-clerks who are aquatic in their habits and have time to look out of the windows. Young gentlemen in tattered and ink-stained coats, but irreproachable in the matter of trousers and linen, had been known to gaze longingly and wearily down toward that strip of shining water when hard fate in the shape of bank duty apparently remained indifferent to the fact that an interesting race was being rowed or sailed. This, sometimes, was rather a bad thing for the race; for the Victoria Bank had, immured within its cut stone and plate glass, some good specimens of muscular gentility; and in contests of different kinds, the V. B. had a way (discomforting to other banks) of producing winners. The amount of muscle some of them could apply to a main-sheet was creditable, while, as to rowing, there were few who did not cultivate a back and thigh action which, if not productive of so much speed as Hanlan's, was certainly, to the uninitiated, quite as pleasant to look upon; so that, in sports generally, there was a decided call for the Vics.; not only among men on account of their skill, but also in the ranks of a gentler community whose interest in a contest seemed to be more personal than sporting. The Vics. had adopted as their own a particular color, of which they would wear at least a small spot on any "big day"; and, when they were contesting, this color would be prevalent in gatherings of those interested personally. And who would inquire the reasons for this favoritism? "Reasons! explanations! – why are men so curious? Is it not enough that those most competent to decide have decided? What will you? Go to!" Indeed, the sex is very divine. It is a large part of their divinity to be obscure.

Perhaps these young men danced with the ease and self-satisfaction of dervishes. Perhaps their prowess was unconsciously admired by those who formerly required defenders. But the most compelling reason, on this important point, was that "ours" of the Victoria Bank had established themselves socially as "quite the right sort" and "good form" – and thus desirable to the Toronto maiden, and, if not so much so to her more match-making mother, the fact that they were considered chic provided a feminine argument in their favor which had, as usual, the advantage of being, from its vagueness, difficult to answer; so that the more mercantile mother grew to consider that a "detrimental" who was chic was not, after all, as bad as a "det." without leaven.

It has been said that bank-clerks are all the same; but, while admitting that, in regard to their faultless trousers and immaculate linen, there does exist a pleasing general resemblance, rather military, it must be insisted that there are different sorts of them; that they are complete in their way, and need not be idealized. The old barbaric love for wonderful story-telling is still the harvest-ground of those who live by the propagation of ideas, but must we always demand the unreal?

There was nothing unreal about Jack Cresswell. As he stood poring over columns of figures in a great book, one glance at him was sufficient to dispel all hope of mystery. He was inclosed in the usual box or stall – quite large enough for him to stand up in, which was all he required (sitting ruins trousers) – and his office coat was all a bank-clerk could desire. The right armpit had "carried away," and the left arm was merely attached to the body by a few ligaments – reminding one of railway accidents. The right side of the front and the left arm had been used for years as a pen-wiper. A metallic clasp for a patent pencil was clinched through the left breast. The holes for the pockets might be traced with care even at this epoch, but they had become so merged in surrounding tears as to almost lose identity with the original design.

The bank doors had been closed for some time, after three o'clock, on this particular day in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and blank, and Jack Cresswell had been puzzling his brains over figures with but poor success. Whether his head was dull, or whether it was occupied by other things, it is hard to say – probably both; so, on hearing Geoffrey Hampstead, the paying-teller, getting ready to go away, he leaned over the partition and said, in an aggrieved tone:

"Look here, Geoffrey, I'm three cents out in my balance."

A strong, well-toned voice answered carelessly, "That is becoming a pretty old story with you, Jack. You're always out. However, make yourself comfortable, dear boy, as you will doubtless be at it a good while." Then, as he put on his hat and sauntered away, Geoffrey added a little more comfort. "If you really intend to bring it out right, you had better arrange to guard the bank to-night. You can do both at once, you know, and get your pay as well, while you work on comfortably till morning."

"I'll tell you what I'll do. If you'll get these three cents right for me, I'll stand the dinners."

"Much obliged. Mr. Hampstead has the pleasure of regretting. Prior engagement. Has asked Mr. Maurice Rankin to dine with him at the club. But perhaps, even without your handsome reward, we might get these figures straightened out for you." Then, taking off his coat, "You had better take a bite with us if we can finish this in time."

Geoffrey came up to the books and "took hold," while Jack, now in re-established good humor, amused himself by keeping up a running fire of comments. "Aha! me noble lord condescends to dine the poor legal scribe. I wonder, now, what led you to ask Maurice Rankin to dine with you. You can't make anything out of Morry. He hasn't got a cent in the world, unless he got that police-court case. Not a red shekel has he, and me noble lord asks him to dinner – which is the humor of it! Now, I would like to know what you want with Rankin. You know you never do anything without some motive. You see I know you pretty well. Gad! I do."

Geoffrey was working away under this harangue, with one ear open, like a telegraph operator, for Jack's remarks. He said: "Can not a fellow do a decent thing once in a way without hearing from you?"

"Not you," cried Jack, "not you. I'll never believe you ever did a decent thing in your life without some underground motive."

Geoffrey smiled over the books, where he was adding three columns of figures at once, lost the addition, and had to begin at the bottom again; and Jack, who thought that never man breathed like Geoffrey, looked a little fondly and very admiringly at the way his friend's back towered up from the waist to the massive shoulders – and smiled too.

Jack's smile was expansive and contagious. It lighted up the whole man – some said the whole room – but never more brightly than when with Hampstead. Geoffrey had a fascination for him, and his admiration had reached such a climax after nearly two years' intercourse that he now thought there was but little within the reach of man that Geoffrey could not accomplish if he wished. It was not merely that he was good looking and had an easy way with him and was in a general way a favorite – not merely that he seemed to make more of Jack than of others. Hampstead had a power of some kind about him that harnessed others besides Jack to his chariot-wheels; and, much as Cresswell liked to exhibit Geoffrey's seamy side to him when he thought he discovered flaws, he nevertheless had admitted to an outsider that the reason he liked Hampstead was that he was "such an altogether solid man – solid in his sports, solid in his work, solid in his virtues, and, as to the other way – well, enough said." But the chief reason lay in the great mental and bodily vigor that nearly always emanated from Geoffrey, casting its spell, more or less effectively, for good or evil. With most people it was impossible to ignore his presence; and his figure was prepossessing from the extraordinary power, grace, and capacity for speed which his every movement interpreted.

It was his face that bothered observant loungers in the clubs. For statuary, a sculptor could utilize it to represent the face of an angel or a devil with equal facility – but no second-class devil or angel. Its permanent expression was that which a man exhibits when exercising his will-power. The tenacious long jaw had a squareness underneath it that seemed to be in keeping with the length of the upper lip. The high, long nose made its usual suggestions, two furrows between the thick eyebrows could ordinarily be seen, and the protuberant bumps over the eyes gave additional strength. The eyes were light blue or steel gray, according to the lights or the humor he was in. An intellectual forehead, beveled off under the low-growing hair, might suggest that the higher moral aspirations would not so frequently call for the assistance of the determination depicted in the face as would the other qualities shown in the width and weight of head behind the ears.

But Jack did not believe what he said in his tirades, and his good-will makes him lax in condemnation of things which in others he would have denounced. What Geoffrey said or did, so far as Jack knew, met, at his hands, with an easy indifference if culpable, and a kindling admiration if apparently virtuous. The two had lived together for a long time, and no one knew better than Geoffrey how trustworthy Jack was. Consequently, he sometimes entered into little confidences concerning his experiences, which he glossed over with a certain amount of excuse, so that the moral laxity in them did not fully appear; and what with the intensity of his speech, his word painting, and enthusiastic face, a greater stoic than poor Jack might have caught the fire, and perhaps condoned the offense.

Jack thought he knew Hampstead pretty well.

On the other side, Hampstead, though keen at discerning character, confessed to himself that Jack was the only person he could say he knew.

CHAPTER II

This fellow might be in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, his fines, his double vouchers, his recoveries. —Hamlet.

As Jack expected, it did not take long for his friend Hampstead to show where the mistake about the three cents lay; and then they sallied forth for a little stroll on King Street before dinner.

They lived in adjoining chambers in the Tremaine Buildings on King Street. The rooms had been intended for law offices, and were reached by a broad flight of stairs leading up from the street below. Here they were within five minutes' walk of their bank or the club at which they generally took their meals. Hampstead had first taken these rooms because they were in a manner so isolated in the throng of the city and afforded an uncontrolled liberty of ingress and egress to young men whose hours for retiring to rest were governed by no hard and fast rules.

A widow named Priest lived somewhere about the top of the building, with her son, who was known to the young gentlemen as Patsey. Mrs. Priest made the beds, did the washing, attended to the fires, and was generally useful. She also cleaned offices, even to the uttermost parts of the great building, and altogether made a good thing of it; for besides the remunerations derived in these ways she had her perquisites. For instance, in the ten years of her careful guardianship of chambers and offices in the building, she had never bought any coal or wood. She possessed duplicate keys for each room in her charge, and thus having a large number of places to pillage she levied on them all, according to the amount of fuel she could safely carry away from each place without its being missed. Young men who occupied chambers there never had to give away or sell old clothes, because they were never found to be in the way. She asked for them when she wanted to cut them down for Patsey, because it would not do to have the owners recognize the cloth on him. The clothes which she annexed as perquisites she sold.

Patsey was accustomed occasionally to go through the wardrobes of the gentlemen with his mother, while she made the beds in the morning, and he then chose the garments that most appealed to his artistic taste. This interesting heir to Mrs. Priest's personal estate also had his perquisites "unbeknownst to ma." He consumed a surprising amount of tobacco for one so young, and might frequently be seen parading King Street on a summer evening enjoying a cigar altogether beyond his years and income. His clothes bore the pattern of the fashion in vogue three or four years back; and, despite some changes brought about by the scissors of Mrs. Priest, the material, which had been the best Toronto could provide, still retained much of the glory that had captivated King Street not so very long ago. Having finally declared war against education in all its recognized branches, he generally took himself off early in the day, and lounged about the docks, or derived an indifferently good revenue from the sale of ferry-boat tickets to the island; and in various other ways did Patsey provide himself with the luxuries and enjoyments of a regular topsawyer.

In the immediate neighborhood of Mrs. Priest, at an altitude in the building which has never been exactly ascertained, dwelt Mr. Maurice Rankin, barrister-at-law and solicitor of the Supreme Court. He resided in Chambers, No. 173 Tremaine Buildings, King Street, West, Toronto, and certainly all this looked very legal and satisfactory on the professional card which he had had printed. But the interior appearance of the chambers was not calculated to inspire confidence in the profession of the law as a kind nurse for aspiring merit; and as for the approach to No. 173, it was so intricate and dark in its last few flights of stairs, that none but a practiced foot could venture up or down without a light, even in the day-time. The room occupied by Mr. Rankin could never have been intended to be used as an office, or perhaps anything else, and consequently the numbers of the rooms in the buildings had not been carried up to the extraordinary elevation in which No. 173 might now be found. Still, it seemed peculiar not to have the number of one's chambers on one's card, if chambers should be mentioned thereon, so he found that the rooms numbered below ended at 172, and then conscientiously marked "No. 173" on his own door with a piece of white chalk. He also carefully printed his name, "Mr. Maurice Rankin," on the cross-panel and added the letters "Q.C." – just to see how the whole thing looked and assist ambition; but he hurriedly rubbed The Q.C. out on hearing Mrs. Priest approach for one of her interminable conversations from which there was seldom any escape. When Rankin first came to Tremaine Buildings he lived in one of the lower rooms, now occupied by Jack Cresswell, and not without some style and comfort – taking his meals at the club, as our friends now did. His father, who had been a well-known broker, – a widower – kept his horses, and brought up his son in luxury. He then failed, after Maurice had entered the Toronto University, and, unable to endure the break-up of the results of his life's hard work, he died, leaving Maurice a few hundred dollars that came to him out of the life-insurance.

It was with a view to economy that our legal friend came to live in the Tremaine Buildings after leaving the university and articling himself as a clerk in one of the leading law firms in the city, where he got paid nothing. The more his little capital dwindled, the harder he worked. Soon the first set of chambers were relinquished for a higher, cheaper room, and the meals were taken per contract, by the week, at a cheap hotel. Then he had to get some clothes, which further reduced the little fund. So he took "a day's march nearer home," as he called it, and removed his effects au quatrième étage, and from that au cinquième– and so on and up. Regular meals at hotels now belonged to the past. A second-hand coal-oil stove was purchased, together with a few cheap plates and articles of cutlery; and here Rankin retired, when hungry, with a bit of steak rolled up in rather unpleasant brown paper; and after producing part of a loaf and a slab of butter on a plate, he cooked a trifle of steak about the size of a flat-iron, and caroused. This he called the feast of independence and the reward of merit.

Among his possessions could be found a wooden bed and bedding – clean, but not springy – also a small deal table, and an old bureau with both hind-legs gone. But the bureau stood up bravely when propped against the wall. These were souvenirs of a transaction with a second-hand dealer. In winter he set up an old coal-stove which had been abandoned in an empty room in the building, and this proved of vast service, inasmuch as the beef-steak and tea could be heated in the stove, thereby saving the price of coal-oil. It will occur to the eagle-eyed reader that the price of coal would more than exceed the price of coal-oil. On this point Rankin did not converse. Although he started out with as high principles of honor as the son of a stock-broker is expected to have, it must be confessed that he did not at this time buy his coal. Therefore there was a palpable economy in the use of the derelict stove – to say nothing of its necessary warmth. No mention of coal was ever made between Rankin and Mrs. Priest; but as Maurice rose in the world, intellectually and residentially, Mrs. Priest saw that his monetary condition was depressed in an inverse ratio, and being in many ways a well-intentioned woman, she commenced bringing a pail of coal to his room every morning, which generally served to keep the fire alight for twenty-four hours in moderate weather. Maurice at first salved his conscience with the idea that she was returning the coal she had "borrowed" from him during his more palmy days. After the first winter, however, when he had suffered a good deal from cold, his conscience became more elastic and communistic; and ten o'clock P.M. generally saw him performing a solitary and gloomy journey to unknown regions with a coal-scuttle in one hand and a wooden pail in the other. Jack Cresswell had come across this coal-scuttle one night in a distant corridor. He filled it with somebody else's coal and came up with it to Rankin's room – his face beaming with enjoyment – and, entering on tip-toe, whispered mysteriously the word "pickings." Then, after walking around the room in the stealthy manner of the stage villain who inspects the premises before "removing" the infant heir, he dumped the scuttle on the floor and gasped, breathlessly, "A gift!"

Rankin put aside Byles on Bills and arose with dignity: "What say you, henchman? Pickings? A gift? Ay, truly, a goodly pickings! Filched, perchance, from the pursy coal-bins of monopoly?"

"Even so," was the reply, given with bated breath; and with his finger to his lips, to imply that he was on a criminal adventure, Jack again inspected the premises with much stealth and agility, and disappeared as mysteriously as he had come. If Jack or Geoffrey ever saw anything lying about the premises they thought would be of use to Rankin, there was a nocturnal steal, and up it went to Rankin's room. This was sport.

In this way Rankin lived. With one idea set before him, he grappled with the leather-covered books that came by ones and twos into his room, until, when the great struggle came at his final examinations, he was surprised to find he had come out so well, and quite charmed when he returned from Osgoode Hall to his dreary room, a solicitor of the Supreme Court and a barrister-at-law, with a light heart, and not a single solitary cent in the wide world.

CHAPTER III

At the opening of this story, about six months had elapsed since Rankin had been licensed to prey upon the public, and as yet he had not despoiled it to any great extent. If he had kept body and soul together, it was done in ways that are not enticing to young gentlemen who dream of attacking the law single-handed.

An old lawyer named Bean had an office in the lower part of Tremaine Buildings, and Maurice arranged with him to occupy one of the ancient desks in his office, and, in consideration of answering all questions as to the whereabouts of Mr. Bean, the privilege of office-room was given to him rent-free. As Mr. Bean had no clients, and as Rankin never knew where he was, this duty was a light one. He also had from Mr. Bean the privilege of putting his name up on the door, and, of course, as frequently and as alluringly along the passage and on the stairs as he might think desirable. But it was set out very clearly in the agreement, which Rankin carefully drew up and Bean pretended to revise, that Mr. Rankin should not in any way interfere with the clients of Mr. Bean, and that Mr. Bean should not in any way interfere with the clients of the aforesaid Rankin.

Bean had a little money, which he seemed to spend exclusively in the consumption of mixed drinks; and whatever else he did during the day, besides expending his income in this way, certainly engrossed his attention to a very large extent. When he looked into the office daily, or, say, bi-weekly, it was only for a few moments – except when he fell asleep in his chair.

It was after he had been five or six months with Mr. Bean that Geoffrey Hampstead had asked Rankin to dinner. He locked up the office about five o'clock, having closed the dampers in the stove (Bean supplied the coal – a great relief) and putting the key in his pocket, he ascended to No. 173 for a while, and then he came down to Hampstead's chambers, where he found our two bank friends taking a glass of sherry and bitters to give their appetites a tone, which was a very unnecessary proceeding.

"Hello, old man! How are you?" cried Hampstead in a hearty voice, handing him a wine glass.

"Ah! How am I? Just so!" quoth Rankin, helping himself. "How should a man be, who is on the high road to fortune?"

"He ought to be pretty chirpy, I should think," said Jack.

"Chirpy! That's the word. 'Chirpy' describes me. So does 'fit.' The money is rolling in, gentlemen. Business is on the full upward boom, and I feel particularly 'fit' to-day – also chirpy."

"Got a partnership?" inquired Geoffrey, with interest.

"I suppose you mean a partnership with Mr. Bean, and I answer emphatically 'No.' I refer to my own business, sir, and I have no intention of taking Mr. Bean into partnership. Bean is dying for a partnership with me. Sha'n't take Bean in. A client of mine came in to-day – "

"Great Scott! you haven't got a client, have you?" cried Geoffrey, starting from his chair.

"Don't interrupt me," said Mr. Rankin. "As I was saying," he added with composure, "a client of mine – "

"No, no, Morry! This is too much. If you want us to believe you, give us some particulars about this client – just as an evidence of good faith, you know."

"The client you are so inquisitive about," said Rankin, with dignity, "is a lady who has been, in a sense, prematurely widowed – "

"It's Mrs. Priest," said Jack, turning to Geoffrey. "He has been defending her for stealing coal, sure as you're born!"

"The lady came to me," said Maurice, taking no notice of the interruption, "about a month ago, apparently with a view to taking proceedings for alimony – at least her statement suggested this – "

"By Jove, this is getting interesting!" said Jack.

"But on questioning the unfortunate woman as to her means, I found that her funds were in a painfully low condition – in fact, at a disgustingly low ebb, viewed from a professional standpoint. And I also found that her husband had offered her four dollars a week, to be paid weekly, on condition that he should never see her and that somebody else should collect the money. The husband was evidently a bold, bad man to have given rise to the outbursts of jealously which it pained me to listen to, and the poor lady, forgetful of my presence, and with all the ability of an ancient prophet, denounced two or three women both jointly and severally. She then roused herself, and asked what I would charge to collect her four dollars per week. This seemed to decide the alimony suit in the negative, and from the fact that she was, not to put too fine a point upon it, three parts drunk at the time, I thought it better to say what I would do. So now I collect four dollars a week from her husband and pay it over to her every Saturday, for which I deduct, each time, the sum of twenty-five cents. There is a good deal of money to be made in the practice of the law."