CHAPTER XXVIII.
Yea, it becomes a man To 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--sheshowed but little sign of feeling. Her face whitened and she movedstiffly to the open window, where she could sit in the draught. As shemade Rankin tell her the whole story she simply grew stony, while shesat with bloodless hands clinched together, as if she thus clutched ather 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 theway."
When she turned toward him, the strained face was so white and the eyesso wide and expressionless that he became afraid.
"Perhaps you would rather be alone," said he, doubtful about letting hergo into the street.
She seemed to divine what was in his mind, for she made him feel more atease 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 walkedthrough the quiet streets toward the heart of the city, he went on withall the particulars, which she seemed determined to hear. Several timesthey met people who knew her and knew of her engagement to Hampstead,and they were surprised to see her walking with--of all men--MauriceRankin. But she saw no one, gazing before her with the look which meansmadness if the mind be not diverted. Suddenly, as they had to cross oneof the main arteries of the city, a sound fell upon Margaret's ear thatmade her stop and grasp Rankin by the arm. Then the cry came again--froma boy running toward them along the street:
"Special edition of the Evening News! All about Geoffrey Hampstead, thebank 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 andbought 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 tellthem myself."
But the blow was too much for her. To hear the name of the man sheworshiped yelled through the streets as a bank robber's was more thanshe felt able to bear. She must get home now. Another experience of thiskind, 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 passedrapidly away.
* * * * *
No. 173 Tremaine Buildings had become slightly better furnished sincethe opening of this story. Between the time when he made the cruise inthe Ideal and the events recorded in the preceding chapters, Rankin hadcontributed somewhat to his comforts in an inexpensive way. In order tobuy his coal, which he did now with much satisfaction, he had still topractice the strictest economy. But he took some pleasure in hissolitary existence. From time to time he bought different kinds ofpreserves sold in pressed-glass goblets and jugs of various sizes. Afterthe 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 humorin him when he added each terrible utensil to his stock. "A poorthing--but mine own!" he would quote, as he bowed to an imaginaryaudience and pointed with apologetic pride to a hideous pressed-glassbutter-bolt.
In buying packages of dusty, doctored, and detestable tea he acquiredtherewith a collection of gift-spoons of different sizes, and alsoknives, forks, and plates, which, if not tending to develop a taste forhigh art, were useful. At a certain "seven-cent store" he procured, forthe prevailing price, articles in tinware, the utility of which was outof all proportion to the cost.
Thus, when he sat down of an evening and surveyed a packing-box filledwith several sacks of coal, all paid for; when he viewed the collectionof glassware, the "family plate," and the very desirable cutlery; whenhe gazed with pride upon his seven-cent treasures and his curtains ofchintz at ten cents a mile; when he considered that all these were hisvery own, his sense of having possessions made him less communistic andmore conservative. Primitively, a Conservative was a being who ownedsomething, just as Darwin's chimpanzee in the "Zoo," who discovered howto break nuts with a stone and hid the stone, was a Tory; the othermonkeys who stole it were necessarily Reformers.
About ten o'clock on the evening of the trial Rankin was sitting amonghis possessions sipping some "gift-spoon" tea. Around him were threeevening papers and two special editions. The "startling developments"and "unexpected changes" which had "transpired" at the Victoria Bank hadmade the special editions sell off like cheap peaches, and Rankin wasenjoying the weakness--pardonable in youth and not unknown tomaturity--of reading each paper's account of himself and the trial. Theyspoke of his "acuteness" and "foresight," and commented on his beingthe sole means of recovering the forty-eight thousand dollars. One papermust have jumped at a conclusion when it called him "a well-known andpromising young lawyer--one of the rising men at the bar."
"The tide has turned," he said. "Twenty cents a day is not going tocover my total expenses after this. I feel it in my bones that the moneywill come pouring in now." He was mechanically filling a pipe when a rapat the door recalled him from his dream. A tall Scotchman, whom Rankinrecognized as the messenger of the Victoria Bank, handed him a letterand then felt around for the stairs in the darkness, and descendedbackward, on his hands and knees, for fear of accidents.
A pleasing letter from the manager of the Victoria Bank inclosed one ofthe 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 bythe bank directors, together with a notification that they had arrangedwith the bank solicitors, Messrs. Godlie, Lobbyer, Dertewercke, andToylor, 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, whenDetective Dearborn drew him through a side door into an empty room,where they had a short talk about keeping the name of Nina Lindon fromthe public, and then they departed together for Tremaine Buildings in acab, while the two valises in front looked, like their owner, none thebetter for their vicissitudes. Dearborn felt that little could be saidto mend the trouble he had caused Jack, but he did all he could, andthere was certainly nothing hard-hearted in the care with which theredoubtable detective assisted his former victim to bed. Mrs. Priest wassummoned, also a doctor. Jack was found to be worse than he thought, andPatsey was ordered to remain within call in the next room, where heconsumed cigars at twelve dollars the hundred throughout the night.
The next day Mrs. Mackintosh and Margaret came down in a cab to Jack'slonely quarters, and insisted upon his being moved to their house duringhis illness. While unable to go home to his parents at Halifax he wasloath to give trouble to his friends, and made excuses, until he sawthat Margaret really wished him to come, and divined that his comingmight be a relief to her.
It was so. In the weeks that followed, whatever these two suffered inthe darkness and solitude of the nights, during the day-time they werebrave. The heart of each knew its own bitterness. In a short time Jackfound the comfort of speech in telling Margaret many things. UnavoidablyGeoffrey'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 hiscouch, until, warmed by Margaret's sympathy, he told her all about Ninaand himself--so far as he knew the story--and in the presence of hismanifold troubles, and at the thought of his suffering when hewitnessed, as a captive, Nina's death, Margaret felt that
she was in thepresence of one who had known even greater grief than her own. This wasgood for her. After a while she was able to speak to Jack aboutGeoffrey, and this brought them more and more together.
When he got well, his breach of duty in going away without notice wasoverlooked, and he was taken back to his old post. There he worked onas the years rolled by. Country managerships were offered to him, anddeclined. He had nothing to make money for, and the only thing he reallyenjoyed was Margaret's society, in which he would talk about Nina andGeoffrey without restraint. For many years he remained ignorant that hismarriage with Nina was, after all, for New York State a valid one, sincemarriage by simple contract, without religious ceremony, is sufficientin that State. He never dreamed Geoffrey had been indirectly the causeof his life's ruin, and always spoke of him as a man almost withoutblame. However unreasonable, there are, among all the faulty emotions,few more beautiful than a man's affection for a man. When it exists, itis the least exacting attachment of his life.
Margaret listened to his superlatives about Geoffrey. She listened; butas 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 gladsomecolors, in matchless beauty--a Greek god with floating hair and full ofresolve 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 mancould be. Then would come the rending of the heart. This was a thief whohad decoyed his friend, and, good or bad, was lost to her.
And thus time passed on. For two or three years she went nowhere. Shetried going into society, after Geoffrey's sentence, thinking to obtainrelief in change of thought, but the experiment was a failure. She foundthat she had not the elasticity of temperament which can doff care anddon gayety as society demands. So she gave up the attempt for years, andthen went again only at her mother's solicitation. She said she had herpatients at the hospital, her studies with her father, her many books toread, her long walks with Jack and Maurice Rankin, and what more did shewant?
She did not hear of Geoffrey. The six years of his imprisonment haddragged themselves into the past, and she supposed he was free again, ifhe had not died in the penitentiary. But nothing was heard of him, andthus the time rolled on, while Margaret's mother secretly wept to seeher daughter's early bloom departing, while no hope of any happy marriedlife seemed possible to her.
Grave, pleasant, studious, thoughtful, as the years rolled by, she wenton with her hospital work. From the depths of the grief into which shewas plunged, she could discern some truths that might have remainedunknown if her life had continued sunny--just as at noonday from thebottom of a deep pit or well the stars above us can be seen. To her thebitterness of her life was medicinal. Speaking chemically, it was likethe acid of the unripe apple acting upon the starch in it to make asugar--thus to perfect a sweet maturity. She was one of the richlyendowed women in whom sensitiveness and strength combine peculiarly foreither superlative joy or sorrow, and hers was a grief which, for her,nothing but tending the bed of sickness seemed to mitigate. Many abruised heart was healed, gladdened, and bewitched by the angel smile onthe sweet firm, full lips which could quiver with compassion. There aresome smiles, given for others, when grief has made thought for selfunbearable, which nothing but a descent into hell and glorious risingagain could produce.