Geoffrey Hampstead: A Novel. Jarvis Stinson

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ