Geoffrey Hamstead Part 31

"Well, I hated to see an old gent put about so, and his speaking about 'taking a cab' and coming from 'home' in such a natural, put-about sort of way kinder made me think he was solid, and, like a dum fool, I slings him the license and tells him to call in after the ceremony. He thanked me, with what I should call Christian grat.i.tude in his face. Yes, sir, it was Christian grat.i.tude, there, every time. And--would you believe it?--the old boozer never showed up since!"

"Ha!" said Jack, who only heard the main facts of what Simpson was saying. "Did you never see this old man before?" he added.

"Well, that is a funny thing about it. It seemed to me I knew the face.

That was one thing that made me trust him. I could not swear to it, but I have a great mind for faces, and I believe I have, at some time or other, sold the old c.o.o.n a license before."

Jack thought this would account for the old man, while on the train, giving the name Matthew Simpson, when he had the whole scheme quickly arranged in his head. Still, it might be that he was in fact some profligate, ruined clergyman, who played these confidence games to make a livelihood. The license was issued in his and Nina's names, and, although incorrect on its face and not paid for, might still, he thought, be a legal license for him to claim a _bona-fide_ marriage under. If the license was good enough, the next thing to do was to go to the police office and find out what he could there. "The marriage might be a good one still."

He threw down the price of the license for Mr. Simpson, and asked him to be good enough to keep the papers in his possession carefully, as they might be required afterward. He left Mr. Simpson rather mystified as to the interest he took in the matter, and then, having still two hours before train-time, he repaired to the police headquarters. There he related in effect what had taken place to Superintendent Fox. Two or three quiet-looking men were lounging about, seeming to take but little interest in Jack's story. Detectives are not easily disturbed by that which excites the victim who tells his unfortunate experience. These fellows were smoking cigars, and they occasionally exchanged a low sentence with each other in which Jack thought he heard the word "Faro-Joseph." What that meant he did not know; but he described the gentleman of dignified aspect, whom he had known on the train as Rev.

Matthew Simpson, and then he heard one of them mutter "Faro-Joseph"

again, while they nodded significantly.

One of the men, who had his boots on a desk in front of him, was consulting his note-book. He then said:

"On the 23d of last month Faro-Joseph got off the train at the Central Depot at two o'clock. On the 26th he left on the Michigan Southern at 10 P. M."

It dawned upon Jack that his clerical friend was called "Faro-Joseph" in police circles.

"Why did you not warn me when you saw me in company with this man. He got off the train with me at the the time you say. Surely I should have had some word from you!"

"Well, gent, I tell you why. I was just about to arrest another man, and in the crowd I did not see that you were with him. Don't remember ever seeing you before. I might pa.s.s you twenty times and never know I had seen you. You're not the kind we reaches out for. Now, I dare say, unless a woman is of a fine figure--tall, possibly, or the kind of figure you admire--chances are you don't see her at all. That is, you could not tell afterward whether you had seen her or not. Same thing here. You're not the kind we hunt."

Jack turned to the superintendent and asked him whether this man, Faro-Joseph, was not really at one time a clergyman. The superintendent smiled pityingly.

"Why, he only started the sky-pilot game during the last ten years, and only takes it up occasionally. Though I believe it's his best holt. As a Gospel-sharp he'll beat anybody out of their socks. He's immense on that lay. What I call just perfect. He's all on the confidence ticket now and the pasteboards. Has quite given up the heavy business. Why, sir, you would forgive him most anything if you could see him handle card-board.

We pulled him for a 'vag.' one night about four months ago; and, just to find out how he did things, I played a little game with him after we let him go on promise to quit. We put the stakes about as low as they could be put--five-cent ante, and twenty-five cent limit--just for the experiment. Now, sir, you would be surprised. He cheated me from the word 'go,' and I don't know yet how it was done. If he dealt the cards he would get an all-fired hand himself, and if I dealt him nothing he'd bluff me right up the chimney. For poker he has no match, I believe. All I know about that game is that I lost three dollars in thirty minutes."

"Perhaps you have his record written down somewhere?" said Jack, feeling sick at heart, and yet fascinated by the account of Faro-Joseph.

"Perhaps we have," said the superintendent, smiling toward one of the loungers near by. "Just come in this way."

The superintendent opened a large case like a wardrobe, and began flapping back a large number of thin flat wings that all worked on separate hinges. These wings were covered with photographs of criminals--a terrible collection of faces--and from one of them he took a very fair likeness of our clerical friend in another dress. Pasted at the back of the photograph was a folded paper containing a list in fine writing of his known convictions and suspected offenses for a period of over forty years. He had been burglar, counterfeiter, and forger, which the superintendent called the 'heavy business' that he had given up.

Since those earlier days he had been train-gambler, confidence-man, and sneak-thief.

There was nothing to be done. Faro-Joseph never had been a clergyman. To put the law in force was out of the question for several reasons. Jack got away to catch his train for Toronto and to think and think what it would be best to do about Nina, and where and how they could get married properly.

CHAPTER XXII.

Spread no wings For sunward flight, thou soul with unplumed vans!

Sweet is the lower air and safe, and known The homely levels.

Dear is the love, I know, of wife and child; Pleasant the friends and pastimes of your years.

Live--ye who must--such lives as live on these; Make golden stairways of your weakness; rise By daily sojourn with those fantasies To lovelier verities.

(_Buddha's Sermon--The Light of Asia._)--ARNOLD.

Jack made another mistake in coming on to Toronto after finding out the disastrous failure of his supposed marriage. If he had gone to Lockport and found Nina at her friend's house, perhaps some arrangement could have been made for their marriage in Buffalo on the following day. Mr.

Toxham, the clergyman on whom Jack called at the parsonage, had tried to get his ear for advice on this subject. But, as mentioned before, when Jack read the address of Matthew Simpson he immediately bolted out, without waiting to listen to the suggestions which the clergyman tried to make. If this idea occurred to Jack, there were reasons why he did not act upon it. He was due at the bank the next morning, and regularity at the bank was a cast-iron creed with him--the result of continually subordinating his own wishes to that which the inst.i.tution expected of him. The clerk who was doing his work there would be leaving for his own holidays on the following day, and Jack felt the pressure his duty brought upon him. Again, how would it be possible, after finding where Nina was staying in Lockport, to call at the house and take her away from her friends almost before she had fairly arrived? Geoffrey would have got over this difficulty. But he had the inventive mind which goes on inventing in the presence of shock and surprise. Jack was not like him on land. He had this ability only on a yacht during a sudden call for alert intelligence. His nerve had not been educated to steadiness by escapades on land, nor had he had experience in any trouble that required much insight into consequences. The discovery that the woman for whom he existed was not his wife seemed to prostrate and confuse thought. He felt the need of counsel, and was afraid to trust his own decision. If he could only get home and tell Geoffrey the whole difficulty, he felt that matters could be mended.

He arrived in Toronto about ten o'clock at night feeling ill and faint, having eaten nothing since a light breakfast thirteen hours before. He dropped in at the club and took a sandwich and some spirits to make him sleep. Then he went to his lodgings (Geoffrey was out somewhere), rolled into bed, and slept the clock round till eight the next morning.

As he gradually awoke, thoroughly refreshed, there was a time during which, although he seemed to himself to be awake, he had forgotten about his supposed marriage. He was single John Cresswell again, with nothing on his mind except to be at the bank "on time." So his troubles presented themselves gently; first as only a sort of dream that he had once been married to the love of his life--to Nina. When he fully awoke he began to realize everything; but not as he realized it the night before. Then, the case seemed almost hopeless. Now, his invigorated self promised success in some way. He was glad he had not met Geoffrey the night before. The morning confidence in himself made Geoffrey seem unnecessary. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he walked through the museum of a sitting-room and into Hampstead's bedroom, where he fell upon that sleeping gentleman and rudely shook him into consciousness.

"h.e.l.lo, Jack! Got back?" growled Geoffrey as he awoke.

"Yes. You had better get up if you want to attend the bank to-day."

"All right," said Geoffrey, sitting up. "What sort of a time did you have? Old people well?"

Jack was supposed to have been in Halifax, where his parents lived with the other old English families there.

"Yes, I had a pretty good time," said Jack. "The old people are fine!"

he added, freshly. "How are things in the bank?"

Geoffrey then retired to his bath-room, and an intermittent conversation about the bank and other matters went on for a few minutes during the pauses created by cold water and splashing.

It was a relief to Jack that neither at breakfast nor afterward did Geoffrey ask any more questions about his fortnight's holiday. Hampstead knew better.

During the next six weeks Geoffrey was decidedly unsettled. "Federal"

went up as a matter of course, and he sold out with advantage. He cleared five thousand dollars on this transaction, and had now a capital of fifteen thousand dollars. He was rather lucky in his venture into the stock market. His experience on Wall Street had given him a keen insight into such matters, and he studied probabilities until his chances of failure were reduced, keeping up a correspondence by telegraph and letter with his old Wall Street employers who, in a friendly way, shared with him some of their best knowledge.

Immediately after he had sold out "Federal" an American railway magnate died. This man almost owned an American railway which was operating and leasing a Canadian railway. No sooner was the death known than the stock of the Canadian Railway took a tumble. For a moment public confidence in it seemed to be lost. Now Geoffrey had studied chances as to this line.

He knew that it was one of the few Canadian railways that under fair management was able to pay a periodical dividend--a small one at times, perhaps, but always something. It did not go on for years without paying a cent like some of the others. He had waited for this millionaire to die in order to buy the largely depreciated stock. When the opportunity arrived he bought on margin a very large quant.i.ty of it at a low figure.

But the trouble was that the public did not agree with him and the few cool heads who tried to keep quiet, hold on, and wait till things reinstated themselves. An ordinary man's chances in the stock market do not depend upon his own sagacity more than does guessing at next week's weather. Fortunes are lost, like lives, not from the threatened danger but from panic. Bad rumors about the railway were afloat and the stock continued to go down. Geoffrey hastily sold out his other stocks for what he could get, and stuffed everything available into the widening gap through which forces seemed to be entering to overwhelm him.

In the meantime while Nina was at Lockport, Jack had gone on quietly with his work in the Victoria Bank. He had not given notice of his intentions to leave that inst.i.tution, because, after his return, he had thought he would like to take more money than he had already saved to California with him. His brother had written previously to say that he ought to bring with him at least three thousand dollars, to put into the business of grape-farming, and Jack thought if he could only hold on at the bank, where he was fairly well paid, he might in a few months complete the sum required. Already he had put away over twenty-five hundred dollars, and it would not take long to save the balance.

Nina came back from Lockport blaming herself for her former unreasoning infatuation for Geoffrey. Hers was a nature that had of necessity to lavish its affection on something or somebody. If she could have given this affection, or part of it, to her own mother it would have been a valuable outlet in these later years. The confidences that ought to have existed between them would then have been the first links to be sundered when she sought Hampstead's society.

Unluckily Mrs. Lindon was not in every way perfect. While she had continued to be "not weary in well doing," as she called it, her daughter had been gradually commencing to consider how her duties and social law might be evaded. While Mrs. Lindon visited the Haven and listened to the stories of the women there which were always so interesting to her, and while she expended her time in ways that her gossip-loving nature sought, her daughter had been left the most defenseless person imaginable.

The fact to be remarked was, that the same impulses which had led Nina into wrong-doing previously were now becoming her greatest power for good. For those who claim to distinguish the promptings that come from Satan from those that come from Heaven, there is in nature a good deal of irony. Nature is wonderfully kind to the pagan, considering his disadvantages. When self has been abandoned for an inspiring object there is no reason to think that the self-surrendered devoted Buddhist, or the self-offered victim to Moloch, experiences, any less than the Salvation Army captain, that deep, heart-felt, soul-set, almost ecstatic gladness--that sensation of consecration and confidence--that internal song which the New Testament so beautifully puts words to. It is a great thing for a woman to be allowed to lavish her affection in a way permitted by society, for few have enough strength of character to hold up their heads when society frowns.

Nina was just such a woman as many whom her mother liked to converse with at the Haven. They were poor and she was rich and well educated, but she was neither better nor worse than the majority of them.

Nevertheless, from a social point of view, she was on the right track now, apparently. From a social point of view, Mrs. John Cresswell with society at her feet would not be at all the same person as Nina Lindon disgraced. True, it would require subtlety and deception before she could feel that she had re-established herself safely, but, as Hampstead quoted, "some sorts of dirt serve to clarify," and to her it seemed the only way feasible. She did not like painstaking subtlety any more than other people. It gave her intense unrest. She looked gladly forward to the time when she would leave Toronto with Jack for California, said she longed with her whole heart for the necessity of deception to be over and done with. She did not know--Jack had not told her--that their supposed marriage was void, and she was following out the train of thought that leads toward ultimate good. She was saddened and subdued, wept bitter tears of contrition for her faults, and prayed with an agonized mind for forgiveness and strength to carry her through what lay before her.

The change in her was due to improved conditions under which her nature became able to advance by woman's ordinary channels toward woman's possible perfection. A great after-life might be opening before her.

Some time, probably, her father's wealth would be hers. After long years of chastening remembrances of trouble, after years of the outflow toward good of a heart that refused to be checked in its love, and would be able from personal experience to understand, and thus lift up lovingly, wounded souls, and with many of the perfections of a ripened womanhood, we can imagine Nina as admirable among women, a power for good, controlling through the heart rather than the intellect, as generous as the sun.

But where will these beautiful possibilities be if her sin is found out?

Since her return Jack had not told Nina the terrible news which awaited her. The secret on his mind made him uneasy in her presence. When he had called once or twice in the afternoon he was very silent and even depressed, but she considered that he had a good deal to think about, and it was also a relief to her not to be expected to appear brilliantly happy. What he thought was that after he had earned the rest of the money he required they could get married at the first American town they came to on their way to California. He could not bring himself to tell her the truth, which would make her wretched in the mean time, and he did not see why the real marriage should not be deferred until it was more convenient for him to leave Canada. When Nina had spoken about going away, he had evaded the topic, and she did not wish to press the point. He explained his long periods of absence during this time by several excuses. His secret weighed so heavily upon him that he dreaded lest in a weak moment he might tell her. It was significant of the change in Nina toward him that, during the time he was there, nothing would induce her to sacrifice the restful moments to anybody. She would sit beside him, talking quietly and restfully, holding his hand in hers, or with her head upon his shoulder. Once, when he was leaving, all the hope she now felt welled up within her as she said good-by. All that was good and kind seemed to her to be personified in Jack, and it smote him when she put her arms round his neck and, with a quiet yearning toward good in her face, said:

"Good-by, Jack, dear husband!"

Jack's great heart was rent with pity and affection as he saw through the gathering mists that calm, wondrous yearning look in her face that afterward haunted him. He did not understand fully from what depths of black anguish that look came, straining toward the light. But he knew that he was not her husband, and he could see that when she called him by this name she was uttering a word which to her was hallowed.