CHAPTER

I The Face That Did not Fit

II One Man and Another

III When the Dark Went Away

IV Advent and Adventure

V The Rate Clerk

VI On Two Fronts

VII The High Bid

VIII John Makes Up

IX A Demonstration from the Gallery

X A Stage Kiss

XI Seed to the Wind

XII A Thing Incalculable

XIII The Scene Played Out

XIV The Method of a Dream

XV The Catastrophe

XVI The King Still Lives

XVII When Dreams Come True

XVIII The House Divided

XIX His Next Adventure

XX A Woman with a Want

XXI A Cry of Distress

XXII Pursuit Begins

XXIII Capricious Woman

XXIV The Day of All Days

XXV His Bright Idea

XXVI Unexpectedly Easy

XXVII The First Alarm

XXVIII The Arrest

XXIX The Angel Advises

XXX The Scene in the Vault

XXXI A Misadventure

XXXII The Coward and His Conscience

XXXIII The Battle of the Headlines

XXXIV A Way That Women Have

XXXV On Preliminary Examination

XXXVI A Promise of Strength

XXXVII The Terms of Surrender

XXXVIII Sunday in All People's

XXXIX The Cup Too Full

XL The Elder in the Chair

*HELD TO ANSWER*

*CHAPTER I*

*THE FACE THAT DID NOT FIT*

Two well-dressed men waited outside the rail on what was facetiously

denominated the mourners' bench. One was a packer of olives, the other

the owner of oil wells. A third, an orange shipper, leaned against the

rail, pulling at his red moustaches and yearning wistfully across at a

wattle-throated person behind the roll-top desk who was talking

impatiently on the telephone. Just as the receiver was hung up with an

audible click, a buzzer on the wall croaked harshly,--one long and two

short croaks.

Instantly there was a scuffling of feet upon the linoleum over in a

corner, where mail was being opened by a huge young fellow with the

profile of a mountain and a gale of tawny hair blown up from his brow.

Undoubling suddenly, this rangy figure of a man shot upward with

Jack-in-the-box abruptness and a violence which threatened the stability

of both the desk before him and the absurdly small typewriter stand upon

his left. Seizing a select portion of the correspondence, he lunged

past the roll-top desk of Heitmuller, the chief clerk, and aimed toward

the double doors of grained oak which loomed behind. But his progress

was grotesque, for he careened like a camel when he walked. In the

first stride or two these careenings only threatened to be dangerous,

but in the third or fourth they made good their promise. One lurching

hip joint banged the drawn-out leaf of the chief clerk's desk, sweeping

a shower of papers to the floor.

"John--dammit!" snapped Heitmuller irritably. The other hip caracoled

against the unopened half of the double doors as John yawed through.

The door complained loudly, rattling upon its hinges and in its brazen

sockets, so that for a moment there was clatter and disturbance from one

end of the office to the other.

The orange shipper started nervously, and the chief clerk, cocking his

head gander-wise, gazed in disgust at the confusion on the floor, while

far within Robert Mitchell, the General Freight Agent of the California

Consolidated Railway, lifted a massive face from his desk with a look of

mild reproof in his small blue eyes.

Yet when the huge stenographer came back, and with another scuffling of

clumsy feet stooped to retrieve the litter about Heitmuller's revolving

chair, he seemed so regretful and his features lighted with such a

helplessly apologetic smile that even his awkwardness appeared

commendable, since it was so obviously seasoned with the grace of

perfectly good intent.

Appreciation of this was advertised in the forgiving chuckle of the

chief clerk who, standing now at the rail, remarked _sotto voce_ to the

orange shipper: "John is as good as a vaudeville act!"

At this the red moustaches undulated appreciatively, while the two

"mourners" laughed so audibly that the awkward man, once more in his

chair, darted an embarrassed glance at them, and the red flush came

again to his face. He suspected they were laughing at him, and as if to

comfort himself, a finger and thumb went into his right vest pocket and

drew out a clipping from the advertising columns of the morning paper.

Holding it deep in his hand, he read furtively:

_ACTING TAUGHT_. Charles Kenton, character actor, temporarily

disengaged, will receive a few select pupils in dramatic expression at

his studio in The Albemarle. Terms reasonable.

Then John looked across aggressively at the men who had laughed. They

were not laughing now, but nodding in his direction, and whispering

busily.

What were they saying? That he was a joke, a failure? That he had been

in this chair seven years? That he was a big, snubbed, defeated,

over-worked handy-man about this big, loosely organized office? That in

seven years he had neither been able to get himself promoted nor

discharged? No doubt!

As if to get away from the thought, John turned from his typewriter to

the open window and looked out. There was the spire of the grand old

First Church down there below him. Yonder were the sky-notching

business blocks of the pushing city of Los Angeles, as it was in the

early nineteen hundreds. There, too, were the villa-crowned heights to

the north, shut in at last by the barren ridges of the Sierra Madre

Mountains, some of which, in this month of January, were snow-capped.

But here were these foolish men still nodding and whispering. Good

fellows, too, but blind. What did they know about him really?

They knew that he was a stenographer, but they did not know that he was

a stenographer to the glory of God!--one who cleaned his typewriter,

dusted his desk, opened the mail, wrote his letters, ate, walked, slept,

all to the honor of his creator--that the whole of life to him was a

sort of sacrament.

They thought he was beaten and discouraged, an industrial slave, drawn

helplessly into the cogs. They, poor, purblind materialists, were

without vision. They did not know that there were finer things than

pickles and crude oil. They did not know that he was to soar; that

already his wings were budding, nor that he lived in an inner state of

spiritual exaltation as delicious as it was unsuspected. They pitied

him; they laughed commiseratingly. He did not want their commiseration;

he spurned their laughter and their pity. He was full of youth and the

exuberance of hope. He was full of an expanding strength that made him

stronger as his dream grew brighter. Only his eyes were tired. The

cross lights were bad. For a moment he shaded his brow tenderly with

his hand, reflecting that he must hereafter use an eye-shade by day as

methodically he used one in his nightly study.

The morning moved along. The yearning orange shipper went away. One

mourner rose and passed inside. The other waited impatiently for his

turn to do the same. Luncheon time came for John, and he ate it in the

file room--ravenously; and while he ate he read--the Congressional

Record; and reading, made notations on the margin, for John was

preparing for what he was preparing, although he did not quite know

what. The train of destiny was rumbling along, and when it stopped at

his station, he proposed to swing on board.

His luncheon down swiftly, as much through hunger as through haste, he

swung out of the door, bound for Charles Kenton, "actor--temporarily

disengaged--Hotel Albemarle--terms reasonable," moving with such

headlong speed that he was soon within that self-important presence.

"Hampstead is my name," he blurted, with clumsy directness, "John

Hampstead," and the interview with Destiny was on.

"The first trouble with you," declared the white-haired actor

critically, "is that your face doesn't fit."

John wet a lip and hitched a nervous leg, but sat awkwardly silent, his

eyes boring hungrily, as if waiting for more. The actor, however, was

slow to add more. Faces were his enthusiasm, as well as the raw material

of his profession, but this face puzzled him, so that before committing

himself further he paused to survey it again: the strong nose with its

hump of energy, the well buttressed chin, and then the broad forehead

with its unusually thick, bony ridge encircling the base of the brows

like a bilge keel, proclaiming loudly that here was a man with racial

dynamite in his system, one who, whatever else he might become, was now

and always a first-class animal.

The eyebrows heightened this suggestion by being thick and yellow, and

sweeping off to the temples in a scroll-like flare. The forehead itself

was broad, but gathered a high look from that welter of tawny hair which

was roached straight up and back, giving the effect of one who plunges

headlong.

But the eyes completely modified the countenance. They did not plunge.

They halted and beamed softly. Gray and deep-seated, they made all that

face's force the force of tenderness, by burning with a light that was

obviously inner and spiritual. The mouth, again, while as cleanly

chiseled as if cut from marble,--sensitive, impressionistic, fine, was,

alas! weak; or if not weak, advertising weakness by an habitual

expression of lax amiability; although along with this the actor noted

that the two lips, buttoning so loosely at the corners, could none the

less collaborate in a most engaging smile.

Kenton concluded his second appraisal with a little gesture of

impatience. The man's features gave each other the lie direct, and that

was all there was to it. They said: This man is a beast, a great,

roaring lion of a man; and then they said: No, this lion is a lamb, a

mild, dreamy, sucking dove sort of person.

"That's it," he iterated. "Your face doesn't fit."

Hampstead did not wince.

"The question is," he proposed, in a voice husky with a mixture of

embarrassment and determination, "how am I to make it fit? Or, failing

that, how am I to get somewhere with a face that doesn't fit?"

The actor's reply was half sagacity, half "selling talk", mixed with

some judicious flattery and tinged with inevitable gallery play,

although there was no gallery.

"Elocution?" Kenton observed, with a little grimace of derision. "No!

Oratory? Not at all!" The weight of his withering scorn was

tremendous. "There are no such things. It is all acting! A man speaks

with the whole of himself--his eyes, his mouth, his body, his walk, his

pose--everything. That's what you need to learn. Self-expression! I

can make your face fit. That's simple enough," and Kenton waved his hand

as if the re-stamping of a man's features was the easiest thing he did.

"I can make your body graceful. I can take that voice of yours and make

it strong as the roar of a bull, and as soft as rich, brown velvet.

Yes," and the actor leaped to his feet in growing enthusiasm, "I can

make 'em all respond to every whim of what's passing inside. But," he

asked suddenly, with a penetrating glance, "will that make an orator of

you? Well, that depends on what's passing inside. It takes a great

soul to make an orator--great imagination, mind, feelings, sentiments.

Have you got 'em? I doubt it! I doubt it!"

The old man confirmed his dubiousness with the uncomplimentary emphasis

of hesitating silence. In the sincerity of his critical analysis, he

had forgotten that he was trying to secure a pupil. "And yet--and

yet--" his eye began to kindle as he looked, "I tell you I don't know,

boy--there's something--there might be something behind that face of

yours. It might come out, you know, _it might come out_!"

Kenton drawled the last words out slowly in a deeply speculative tone,

and then asked abruptly: "How old are you?"

"Twenty-four," admitted John, feeling suddenly as if he confessed the

years of Methuselah.

But the dark eyes of the old actor sparkled, and his long, mobile lips

parted in the ghost of a sigh which crept out through teeth stained

yellow by years and tobacco, after which he ejaculated admiringly: "My

God, but you are young!"

This came as an inspiring thought to John. He did feel young, all but

his eyes. What was the matter with them that the lids were so woodeny

of late? Yes; he was young, despite seven submerged years, and the

wings of his soul were preening.

Back in the General Freight Office, John fell upon his work with happy

vigor. Spat, spat, spat, and a letter was on its way from Dear Sir to

Yours truly. But in the midst of these spattings, he paused to muse.

"Kenton said he could make me graceful," the big fellow was communing

over his typewriter, when abruptly the outer door opened and, after a

single glance, John appeared to forget both his communings and his work.

Swinging about, he sat transfixed, his odd features turned eccentrically

handsome by a light of adoration which began to glow upon them, as if an

astral presence had entered.

Yet to the unprejudiced observer the newcomer was no heavenly being, but

a mere schoolgirl, whose dress had not been long at the shoe-top stage.

With a swish of skirts and an excited ripple of laughter, she had burst

in like a breeze of youth itself. But to this breeziness of youth the

young lady added the indefinable thing called charm, and the promise of

greater charm to come. She was already tall and would be taller, fair

to look upon and certain to be fairer. To a dress of some warm red

color, a touch of piquancy was added by a Tam-o'-Shanter cap of plaid

that was itself pushed jauntily to one side by a wealth of crinkly brown

hair; while a bit of soft brown fur encircled the neck and cuddled

affectionately as a kitten under the smooth, plump chin. The face was

oval with a tendency to fullness, and the nose, while by no means

_retrousse_, was as distinctively Irish as the sparkle in the blue of

her laughing eyes. Irish, too, were the smiling lips, but the delicious

dimples that flecked the white and red of her cheeks were entirely

without nationality. They were just woman, budding, ravishing woman;

and there is no doubt whatever that they helped to make the fascination

of that merry face complete, when its spell was cast over the soul of

Hampstead.

"Oh, John!" exclaimed the young lady with impulsive familiarity,

bounding through the gate and over to his side, "I want you to write

some invitations for me. This is my week to entertain the Phrosos. See!

Isn't the paper dear?"

There were caresses in the big man's eyes as the girl drew near, but he

replied with less freedom than her own form of address invited: "Good

afternoon, Miss Bessie."

The restraint in his speech however was much in contrast to the bold

poaching of his eyes. But Bessie appeared to notice neither restraint

nor the boldness as, standing by his desk, with the big man looking on

interestedly, she undid the package in her hand.

The picture of frank and simple comradeship so immediately established

proclaimed a certain mutual unawareness between this pretty,

half-developed girl and this big, unawakened man that was as delightful

to contemplate as it evidently was to enjoy.

"Isn't it darling?" the girl demanded again, having exposed to view the

contents of her box, invitation paper with envelopes to match, in color

as pink as her own cheeks.

"Yes, Miss Bessie, it is dear," John concurred placidly.

"But you are not looking at it," protested the girl.

"No," the awkward man confessed, but entirely unabashed, "I am looking

at you--devouringly."

"Well, you needn't," Bessie answered spicily.

"Yes, I need," John declared coolly. "You do not know how much I need.

You are the only unspoiled human being I ever see in this office."

"Old Heit does look rather shopworn," Bessie whispered roguishly. "But,

look here," and she thrust out her lips in a pout that was at once

defiant and tantalizing, while her eyes rested for a moment upon the

closed double doors: "My father is an unspoiled human being."

"What have you been doing to your hair?" Hampstead demanded critically,

refusing to be diverted.

"Doing it up, of course, as grown women should," she vouchsafed with

emphasis. "Don't you like it?"

With a flash of her two hands, one of which snatched out a pin while the

other swept off the plaid cap, she spun herself rapidly about so that

John might view the new coiffure from all angles.

"Oh, of course, I have to like it," he said, with mock mournfulness. "I

have to like anything you do, because I like you, and because you are my

boss's boss; but I am sorry to lose the thick braids down your back,

with that delicious little velvety tuft at the end that I used to catch

up and tickle your ear with in the long, long ago."

"But how long ago was that, Sir Critical?" challenged Bessie.

"Long, long ago," affirmed Hampstead, with another of his humorous

sighs, "when it was a part of my duty to take you to the circus and buy

you peanuts and lemonade of a color to match your cheeks."

"And that," dissented the young lady triumphantly, "was only last

September, and the one before that, and, in fact, almost every circus

day since I can remember."

"But now that you are doing your hair up high, you will not need me to

take you to the circus again."

This time the note of sadness in Hampstead's voice was genuine, whereat

all the loyalty in the soul of Bessie leaped up.

"You shall," she declared, with an impulsive sweetness of manner, while

she leaned close and added in a whisper that made the assurance

deliciously confidential--"as long as you wish."

"Then I shall do it forever," declared John recklessly.

"However," and Miss Elizabeth Mitchell, with a playful acquisition of

dignity, switched the subject abruptly by announcing briskly, "business

before circuses."

"Phrosos before rhinos, as it were," consented John.

"Yes--now take your pencil and let me dictate."

"But," bantered John, "I allow no woman to dictate to me. Besides, I

write a perfectly horrible hand."

"Oh," explained Bessie, "but I want them on the typewriter. It'll make

the other girls wild. None of them can command a typewriter."

"Yet," protested Hampstead, "overlooking for the moment the

offensiveness in that word 'command', I venture to suggest, Miss

Mitchell, that things are not done that way this year. A typewritten

invitation isn't considered good form in the best circles."

"I don't care; we'll have 'em," declared Bessie. "We'll set a new

fashion." Her little foot smote the floor sharply, and she stood bolt

upright, so upright that she leaned back, gazing at John through austere

lashes, her face lengthening till the dimples disappeared, while the

Cupid's bow of her lips became almost a memory.

"Oh, very well," weakened Hampstead, bowing his head, "I cannot brook

that gaze for long. It shall be as your Grace commands."

"Tired, aren't you?" commented Bessie, suddenly mollified, and scanning

the big face narrowly, while a look of soberness came into her eyes. "I

can see it; and your eyes look bad--very bad, John." Her voice was

girlishly sympathetic. "These people do not appreciate you, either.

But I do! I know!" and she nodded her round chin stoutly, while she

laid a hand upon the arm of this man who, seven years her senior, was in

some respects her junior. "You are a very great man in the day of his

obscurity. It will come out some time. You will be General Manager of

the railroad, or something very, very big. Won't you?" and she leaned

close again with that delightfully confidential whisper.

"I admit it," confessed John, with a happy chuckle.

But Bessie's restless eye had fallen upon the clock. "Pickles and

artichokes!" she exclaimed, with a sudden change of mood, "I must flit."

Snatching from her bag a crumpled note, she tossed it on the desk,

calling back: "Here. This is what I want to say to 'em."

Hampstead sat for a moment looking after her, his lips parted, his great

hands set upon his knees with fingers sprawled very widely, until Bessie

was out of view behind the double doors that admitted to her father's

presence.

*CHAPTER II*

*ONE MAN AND ANOTHER*

In the dusk of the early winter's night in that land where winter hints

its presence but slightly in any other way, two children dashed out of a

rambling shell of a cottage that sprawled rather hopelessly over an

unkempt lot, screaming: "Uncle John! Uncle John!"

Roused from castled, starry dreams, the big stenographer, who had been

enjoying the feel of the dark upon his eyes, and the occasional happy

fragrance of orange blossoms in his nostrils, greeted each with a bear

hug, and the three clattered together up the rickety steps into a tiny

hall. On the left was an oblong room, and beyond it, through curtains,

appeared a table set for dinner. Light streaming in from this second

room revealed the first as a sort of parlor-studio, where a piano, a

lounge, easels, malsticks, palettes, and stacks of unframed canvases

jostled each other indifferently. An inspection would have shown that

these pictures were mostly landscapes, with now and then a flower study

in brilliant colors; and to the practised eye a distressing atmosphere

of failure would have obtruded from every one.

From somewhere beyond the dining room came the odor of cooking food, and

the sound of energetic but heavy footsteps.

"Hello, Rose," called John cheerily.

At the moment a woman came into view, bearing a steaming platter. She

was large of frame, with gray eyes, with straight light hair, fair wide

brow, and features that showed a general resemblance to Hampstead's own.

Her face had a weary, disturbed look, but lighted for a moment at the

sight of her brother.

Depositing the platter upon the table, the woman sank heavily into a

chair at the end, where she began immediately to serve the plates. The

children, a girl and a boy, sat side by side, with John across from

them. This left a vacant chair opposite Rose, and before this a plate

was laid.

For a time the family fell upon its food in silence. The girl was eleven

years old perhaps, with eyes of lustrous hazel, reddish-brown hair

massed in curls upon her shoulders and hanging below, cheeks hopelessly

freckled, mouth large, and nose also without hope through being

waggishly pugged. The boy, whose sharp, pale features exhibited traces

of a battle with ill health begun at birth and not yet ended, had eyes

that were like his mother's, clear and gray, and there was a brave turn

to his upper lip that excited pity on a face so pale. He looked older

but was probably younger than his sister. Hero-worship, frank and

unbounded, was in the glance with which the two from time to time beamed

upon their uncle.

After a considerable interval, John, glancing first at the empty chair

and then at his sister, asked with significant constraint in his tone:

"Any word?"

His sister's head was shaken disconsolately, and the angular shoulders

seemed to sink a little more wearily as her face was again bowed toward

her plate.

After another interval, Hampstead remarked: "You seem worried to-night,

Rose."

"The rent is due to-morrow," she replied in a wooden voice.

"Is that all?" exclaimed John, throwing back his head with a relieved

laugh. At the same time a hand had stolen into his pocket, and he drew

out a twenty-dollar gold piece and tossed it across the table.

"The rent is $17.50," observed Rose, eyeing the coin doubtfully.

"Keep the change," chuckled John, "and pass the potatoes."

But the woman's gloom appeared to deepen.

"You pay your board promptly," she protested. "This is the third month

in succession that you have also paid the rent. Besides, you are always

doing for the children."

"Who wouldn't, I'd like to know?" challenged John, surveying them both

proudly; whereat Dick, his mouth being otherwise engaged, darted a look

of gratitude from his great, wise eyes, while Tayna reached over and

patted her uncle's hand affectionately. "Tayna" was an Indian name the

girl's father had picked up somewhere.

"Besides," went on John, "Charles is having an uphill fight of it right

now. It's a pleasure to stand by a gallant fellow like him. He goes

charging after his ideal like old Sir Galahad."

But the face of his sister refused to kindle.

"Like Don Quixote, you mean," she answered cynically. "I haven't heard

from him in three weeks. He has not sent me any money in six. He sends

it less and less frequently. He becomes more and more irresponsible.

You are spoiling him to support his family for him, and," she added,

with a choke in her voice, while a tear appeared in her eye, "he is

spoiling us--killing our love for him."

The boy slipped down from his chair and stood beside his mother,

stroking her arm sympathetically.

"Poppie's all right," he whispered in his peculiar drawl. "He'll come

home soon and bring a lot of money with him. See if he don't!"

"Oh, I know," confessed Rose, while with one hand she dabbed the corner

of her eye with an apron, and with the other clasped the boy impulsively

to her. "I know I should not give way before the children. But--but it

grows worse and worse, John!"

"Nonsense!" rebuked her brother. "You're only tired and run down. You

need a rest, by Hokey! that's what you need. Charles is liable to sell

that Grand Canyon canvas of his any time, and when he does, you'll get a

month in Catalina, that's what you will!"

The wife was silently busy with her apron and her eyes.

"Do you know, Rose," John continued with forced enthusiasm, "my

admiration for Charles grows all the time. He follows his star, that

boy does!"

"And forgets his family--leaves it to starve!" reproached the sister

bitterly, while the sag of her cheeks became still more noticeable.

"Ah, but that's where you do Charles an injustice," insisted John. "He

knows I'm here. We have a sort of secret understanding; that is," and

he gulped a little at going too far--"that is, we understand each other.

He knows that while he is following his ideal, I won't see you starve.

He's a genius; I'm the dub. It's a fair partnership. His eye is always

on the goal. He will get there sure--and soon, now, too."

"He will never get there!" blurted out the dejected woman, as if with a

sudden disregardful loosing of her real convictions. "For thirteen

years I have hoped and toiled and believed and waited. A good while ago

I made up my mind. He has not the vital spark. For five years I have

pleaded with him to give it up--to surrender his ambition, to turn his

undoubted talent to account. He has had the rarest aptitude for

decorating. We might be having an income of ten thousand a year now.

Instead he pursues this will-o'-the-wisp ambition of his. He is crazy

about color, always chasing a foolish sunset or some wonderful desert

panorama of sky and cloud and mountain--seeing colors no one else can

see but unable to put his vision upon the canvas. That's the truth,

John! I have never spoken it before. Never hinted it before the

children! Charles Langham is a failure. He will never be anything else

but a failure!"

The words, concluded by the barely successful suppression of a sob, fell

on unprotesting silence. Who but this life-worn woman had so good an

opportunity to know if they were true, so good a right to speak them if

she believed them true? John looked at his plate, Tayna and Dick looked

at each other. It required a stout heart to break the oppressive quiet,

and for the moment no one in this group had that heart. The break came

from the outside, when some one ran swiftly up the steps and threw open

the front door. Instant sounds of collision and confusion issued from

the hall, followed immediately by a masculine voice, thin and injured in

tone, calling excitedly:

"Well, for the love of Michael Angelo! What do you keep stuffing the

hall so full of furniture for? Won't somebody please come and help me

with these things?"

The dinner table was abruptly deserted; but quick as John and the

children were, Rose was ahead of them, and when they reached the

hallway, a thin man of medium height, with an aquiline nose, dark eyes,

and long loose hair, was helplessly in the embrace of the laughing and

crying woman.

"Oh, Charles, you did come home; you did come home, didn't you?" she was

crying.

Charles broke in volubly. "Well, I should say I did. What did you

expect? Have I ever impressed you as a man who would neglect his

family?" After which, with the look of one who has put his accusers in

the wrong, he rescued himself from his wife's emphatic embraces, held

her off for a moment with a look of real fondness, and then brushed her

with his lips, first on one cheek and then upon the other.

"Dad-dee!" clamored the children in chorus. "Daddee!" Yet it was

noticeable that they did not presume to rush upon their father, but

flung their voices before them, experimentally, as it were.

"Well, well, _las ninas_" (las ninas being the Spanish for children),

the father exclaimed, his piercing dark eyes upon them with delight and

displeasure mingling. "Aren't you going to give me a hug? Your mother

nearly strangles me, and you stand off eyeing me as if I were a new

species."

At the open arms of invitation, both of the children plunged

unhesitatingly; but their reception was brief.

"Run away now, father is tired," the nervous-looking man proclaimed

presently, straightening his shoulders, while he sniffed the atmosphere.

"Dinner, eh? Gods and goats, but I am hungry!"

Rose led the little procession proudly back to the table, drawing out

her husband's chair for him, hovering over him, smoothing his hair,

unfolding his napkin, and stooping to place a fresh kiss upon his fine,

high, but narrow brow.

"That will do now; that will do now," he chided, with an air of having

indulged a foolishly doting woman long enough. "For goodness' sake,

Rose, give me something to eat."

His wife, still upon her feet, carried him the platter from which the

family had been served. Charles condemned it with a glance.

"Isn't there something fresh you could give me? Something that hasn't

been--pawed over?"

His tone was eloquent of sensibilities outraged, and his dark eyes,

having first flashed a reproach upon his wife, swept the circle with a

look of expected comprehension in them, as if he knew that all would

understand the delicacies of the artistic temperament.

"Why, yes," admitted Rose, without a sign of resentment. "I can get you

something fresh if you will wait a few minutes."

She slipped out to the kitchen from which presently the odor of broiling

meat proceeded, while the artist coolly rolled his cigarette, and,

surveying without touching the cup of coffee which John had poured for

him, raised his voice to call: "Some fresh coffee, too, Rose, please!"

After this Langham leveled his eye on his brother-in-law and asked

airily, "Well, John, how's everything with you?"

"Fine as silk, Charles," replied Hampstead. "How is it with you?"

"Never better," declared Langham. "Never saw such sunsets in your life

as they are having up the Monterey coast. I tell you there never were

such colors. There was one there in December,"--and he launched into a

detailed description of it, his eyes, his face, his hands, his whole

body laboring to convey the picture which his animated spirits

proclaimed was still upon the screen of his mind.

As the description was concluded, Rose placed a platter before him, upon

which, garnished with parsley, two small chops appeared, delicately

grilled.

Abruptly ceasing conversation, Charles sank a knife and fork into one of

them and transferred a generous morsel to his mouth.

"Thanks, old girl; just up to your topmost mark," he confessed

ungrudgingly, after a few moments, during which, with half-closed eyes,

he had been chewing vigorously and with a singleness of purpose rather

rare in him.

"Sold any pictures lately?" asked John casually.

"No," said Langham abruptly, lowering his voice, while a look of

annoyance shaded his brow. "I dropped in at the gallery first thing,

but"--and he shrugged his shoulders--"Nothing doing! However," and he

became immediately cheerful again, "Mrs. Lawson has been looking awfully

hard at that Grand Canyon canvas. If she buys that, my fortune's made."

"And if she doesn't," observed Rose pessimistically.

"And if she doesn't?" her husband exclaimed with sudden irritation.

"Well--it'll be made just the same. You see if it isn't! Oh, say!" and

a light broke upon his face so merry that it immediately dissipated

every sign of annoyance. "What do you think? I saw Owens to-day, the

fellow who auctions alleged oil paintings at a minimum of two dollars

each. You know the scheme--pictures painted while you wait--roses,

chrysanthemums, landscapes even. Well, he offered me fifteen dollars a

day to paint pictures for him. Think of it! To sit in the window before

a gaping crowd painting those miserable daubs, a dozen or two a day,

while he auctions them off. His impudence! If I had been as big as you

are, Jack, I would have punched him."

"Fifteen dollars a day," commented Rose thoughtfully.

"Yes," laughed Langham, his little black eyes a-twinkle, as he clipped

the last morsel from the first of his chops. "The idea!"

"Well, I hope you took it," his wife suggested.

"Rose!" exclaimed Langham, rising bolt upright at the table and looking

into her face as if she had unwarrantably and unexpectedly hurled the

blackest insult. "Rose! An artist like me!"

"It is the kind of a job for an artist like you," she rejoined

stingingly, with a sarcastic emphasis on just the right words.

"Oh, my God! My God!" exclaimed the man sharply, turning from the

table, while he threw his hands dramatically upward and clutched at the

back of his head, after which he took a turn up and down the room as if

beside himself with unutterable emotions.

John judged that this was the fitting moment for his withdrawal, but

Langham's distress of mind was not too great for him to observe the

movement and to follow. He overtook his brother-in-law in the

studio-parlor, and his manner was coolly importunate.

"Say, old man!" he whispered, "could you let me have five? I'm a little

short on carfare, and you'll be gone in the morning before I get up."

"Sure," exclaimed John, without a moment's hesitation, delving in the

depths of the pocket from which he had produced the money for the rent,

and handing out a five-dollar piece.

"Thanks, old chap," said Langham, seizing it eagerly and hastening away,

after an affectionate slap on the shoulder of his bigger and as he

thought baser metaled brother-in-law. He did not, however, say that he

would repay the loan, and Hampstead did not remark that it was the last

gold coin in his pocket and that he should have no more till pay day,

ten days hence.

John let his admiration for the assurance of Langham play for a moment,

and then turned to the rear of the studio, opened a door, struck a

match, and groped his way to a naked gas jet. The sudden flare of light

revealed a lean-to room, meant originally for nobody knew what, but

turned into a bedroom. The only article of furniture which piqued

curiosity in the least was a table against the wall, across which a long

plank had been balanced. Upon it and equilibrated as carefully as the

plank itself, was a row of books of many shapes and sizes and in various

stages of preservation. This plank was John's library.

Stuck about upon the walls were several large photogravures, portraying

various stirring scenes in history, mostly Roman. They were unframed

and fastened crudely to the wall with pins. Evidently this was the

living place of an untidy man.

The tiny table, with its balanced over-load of books, was directly

beneath the gas. John dropped heavily into the wooden chair before it

and drew to him a number of sheets of paper, upon which, with much labor

and many erasings, he began to fashion a sort of motto or legend.

Satisfied at length with his work, he printed the finished legend

swiftly in rude capital letters in the center of a fresh sheet, snatched

down the picture of a Christian martyr which occupied the central space

above his library, and with the same four pins affixed his motto in that

particular spot, where it would greet him instantly upon opening the

door, and where it would be the last thing upon which his eyes fell as

he went to sleep and the first when he awakened in the morning.

Once it was in position, he stood off and admired it, reading aloud:

"ETERNAL HAMMERING IS THE PRICE OF SUCCESS!"

"That's the stuff," he croaked enthusiastically.

"Eternal hammering!" And then he paused a moment, after which his

reverie was continued aloud. "That actor was telling me to-day about

technique. He said: 'There's a right way to do everything--to pitch a

horseshoe even.' He's right. The fellow with the best technique will

knock the highest persimmon. What makes me such a good stenographer?

Technique. What makes me such a bum office flunkey? The lack of

technique--no voice--no form--no self-confidence. I am a

young-man-afraid-of-himself--that's who I am. Technique first and

then--gravitation! That's the idea!"

By gravitation, however, Hampstead did not mean that law which keeps the

heavenly bodies from getting on the wrong side of the street, but that

process, which in his short life he had already observed, by means of

which the man in the crowd who takes advantage of his opportunities and,

by the dig of an elbow here, the insert of a shoulder there, and the

stiff thrust of a foot and leg yonder, sooner or later arrives opposite

the gateway of his particular desires.

Mere opportunism? That and a little more; a sort of conviction that

fortune herself is something of an opportunist, that what a man wants to

do, fortune, sooner or later, will help him to do, if he only wills

himself in the direction of the want early enough and long enough to

give the fickle jade her chance.

By way of proceeding immediately to hammer, Hampstead reached for a

heavy calf-bound volume, bearing the imprint of the Los Angeles Public

Library, and settled himself to read.

Most people in the railroad office were tired when they finished their

day's work. They were done with effort. John, however, was just ready

to begin. They thought of recreation; John thought only of hammering.

Since his scholastic education had been broken off in the middle by

economic necessities, he had formed the plan of reading at night the

entire written history of the world, from the first cuneiform

inscription down to the last edition of the last newspaper. In

pursuance of this plan, he had already traveled far down the centuries,

and it was with eagerness that he adjusted his eye-shade to-night,

because when he lifted the cover of his book he knew that he would swing

open the doors on one of the greatest centuries in human history, the

century in which the world discovered the individual. Hampstead was

himself an individual. This was in some sense the story of his own

discovery.

When John had been reading for perhaps half an hour, there came a

bird-like tap at his door, accompanied by a suppressed giggle.

"Who comes there?" called the student in sepulchral tones, stabbing the

page at a particular spot with his thumb, while his eyes were lifted.

The only audible sound was another giggle, but the door swung open

mysteriously, revealing two small, white-robed figures silhouetted

against the shadows in the studio.

"Enter, ghosts!" John commanded, in the same sepulchral voice, while his

eyes fell again upon his pages. The ghosts chortled and advanced, but

with great circumspection, to the little table with its dangerously

balanced bookshelf, its miscellaneous litter of papers, and its silent,

absorbed student.

Tayna, her long burnished curls cascading over the white of her

nightgown, and her eyes shining softly, ducked her head and arose under

one arm of her uncle, where presently she felt herself drawn close with

an affectionate, satisfying sort of squeeze. The boy, approaching from

the other side, laid an arm upon the shoulder of the man, and stood

watching with fascination the eyes of his uncle in their steady sweep

from side to side of the printed page.

"Uncle John," asked Tayna shyly, burying her face in his neck as she put

the question, "when will you be President?"

"When _shall_ you be President?" corrected the boy, looking across at

his sister with that same old-mannish expression which was a part of all

he said and did.

Hampstead cuddled the girl closer, and his eye abandoned the page to

look down the bridge of his nose into distance.

"Why?" he asked presently.

"Oh, because," said Tayna, with a little shiver of eagerness, "I can

hardly wait."

Hampstead's eyes wandered to his motto on the wall. The eyes of the boy

followed and spelled out the letters wonderingly, but in silence.

"We must be able to wait," said John, squeezing Tayna again. "It's a

long, long way; but if we just keep on keeping on, why, after a while we

are there, you know."

Tayna sighed and reached up a round, plump arm till it encircled

Hampstead's neck, as she asked, still more shyly:

"And when you are President, every one will know just how good and great

you are, and they won't call you awkward nor--nor homely any more, will

they?"

A flush and a chuckle marked John's reception of this query, after which

he observed hastily and a bit apprehensively:

"Say, you wet little goldfishes! Remember that you are never, never,

now or any time, howsoever odd I bear myself, to breathe a word to

anybody, not to a single soul, not to your mamma or your papa or your

Sunday-school teacher or anybody, of all these nice little play secrets

which we have between ourselves."

An instant seriousness came over the children's faces.

"Cross my heart," murmured Tayna, with a twitch of her slender finger

across her breast.

"And hope to die," added Dick, with a funeral solemnity, as he completed

Tayna's cross by a vertical movement of a stubby thumb in the direction

of his own wishbone of a breast.

Hampstead looked relieved.

"But," affirmed Tayna stoutly, "they are not play secrets. They are

real secrets. Aren't they?"

John looked up at his motto again.

"Yes," he said in a low, determined voice. "They are real secrets."

"And," half-declared, half-questioned Dick, "if you aren't President,

you are going to be some other kind of a very great man?

"Aren't you?" the boy persisted, when Hampstead was silent.

"Tell you to-morrow," laughed John. "Good night, ghosts!" and with a

swift assault of his lips upon the cheeks of either, he gently impelled

them toward the door.

"Good night, your Excellency!" giggled Tayna.

"Good night, my counselors," responded Hampstead, reaching for his book.

An hour later Hampstead was still reading. Another hour later he was

still reading. But something like a quarter of an hour beyond that,

when it might have been, say, near half-past eleven, he was not reading.

He was turning his head strangely from side to side and digging a

knuckle into his eyes. A surprising thing had happened. He could no

longer see the lines upon the page--nor the page itself--nor the

book--nor anything!

His first impression was that the gas had gone out; but this swiftly

gave way to the conviction that he had gone blind--stone blind!--and so

suddenly that it happened right between the beheading of one of the

queens of Henry the Eighth and the marrying of another. He was now

tardily conscious that for some time his eyes had been giving him pain,

that he had rubbed them periodically to clear away white opacities that

appeared upon the page; but now there was no pain; they were suffused

with moisture, and the room was dark.

After an interval he could make out the gaslight glowing feebly like the

tiny glare of a candle visible in some distant pit of darkness, but he

could discern no shapes about the room. Not one!

A horrible fear stole into his breast and chilled it. All of him had

suddenly come to naught, and just as he was getting started. He turned

futile, streaming orbs up to where his new-made motto should loom upon

the wall. It was there, of course, mocking at him now; but he could not

see it. He could not see the wall even. For fully five minutes he sat

in darkness, his hands clasped above his bowed head. Then he arose and

groped his way along the wall to the door and opened it, and stood

facing out into the grotesque dark of the studio. He thought of trying

to grope his way across it--of calling out--but decided to wait a few

minutes.

He felt stricken, broken, overwhelmed. His life, his career, himself

were ruined. He required time to get used to the sensation, time to

adjust his mind to the extent of the calamity and to gather some

elements of fortitude wherewith to face the world. Not even Rose must

see him broken and shattered as he felt right now.

Turning back, he closed the door, felt his way to the gas, and turned it

off. He had no need of gas now. Then he lay down, fully clothed, upon

the bed, with a cold cloth upon his eyes, thinking flightily and feeling

very sorry for himself.

*CHAPTER III*

*WHEN THE DARK WENT AWAY*

+--------------------------------+

| 513 |

| General Freight Department |

| CALIFORNIA CONSOLIDATED |

| RAILWAY COMPANY |

| ROBERT MITCHELL, |

| General Freight Agent. |

| Walk in! |

+--------------------------------+

This was the sign on the door that John Hampstead had opened every

morning for seven years. This morning he did not open it, and there was

something like consternation when as late as nine-thirty the chair of

the big, amiable, stenographic drudge was still vacant. Old Heitmuller,

the chief clerk, after swearing his way helplessly from one point of the

compass to another, was about to dispatch the office boy to Hampstead's

residence.

Inside, and unaware of all this pother, sat the General Freight Agent.

Big of body, with the topography of his father's heath upon his wide

face, soft in the heart and hard in the head, Robert Mitchell was a man

of no airs. His origin was probably shanty Irish, and he didn't care

who suspected it. By painful labor, a ready smile, a hearty laugh, a

square deal to his company and as square a deal to the public as he

could give--"consistently"--he had got to his present modest eminence.

He was going higher and was not particular who suspected that either;

but was not boastful, had the respect of all men who knew him well, and

the affection of those who knew him intimately.

He sat just now in a thoroughly characteristic pose, with the stubby

fingers of one fat hand thoughtfully teasing a wisp of reddish brown

hair, while his shrewd blue eyes were screwing at the exact significance

of the top letter on a pile before him.

Over in a corner was Mitchell's guest and vast superior, Malden H. Hale,

the president of the twelve thousand miles of shining steel which made

up the Great South-western Railway System, in which Mitchell's little

road nestled like a rabbit in the maw of a python. Mr. Hale was signing

some letters dictated yesterday to John, finding them paragraphed and

punctuated to his complete satisfaction, with here and there a word

better than his own looming up in the context. For a time there was no

sound save the scratching of his pen and the fillip of the sheets as he

turned them over. Then he chuckled softly, and presently spoke.

"Bob," he said, "that's an odd genius, that stenographer out there."

"Yes," replied Mr. Mitchell absently, without looking up from his work,

and then suddenly he stabbed the atmosphere with a significant rising

inflection: "Genius?"

"Well, yes," affirmed Mr. Hale. "Genius! He impresses you first as

absurdly incompetent, but his workmanship is really superior, and later

you get a suggestion of something back of him, something buried that

might come out, you know."

"I used to think so," the General Freight Agent replied, with a tone

which indicated loss of interest in the subject, but being tardily

overtaken in his reading by a sense that he had not quite done justice

to the big stenographer, he broke the silence to add: "He is a fine

character. He has very high thoughts,"--vacancy was in his eye for a

moment,--"so high they're cloudy."

And that was all. Mr. Hale made no further comment. Mr. Mitchell, a

just man, was satisfied that he had done justice. Thus in the minds of

two arbiters of the destinies of many men, John Hampstead, loyal,

laborious, who had served faithfully for seven years, was lifted for a

moment until the sun of prospect flashed upon him,--lifted and then

dropped. And they did not even know that nature, too, had dropped

him,--that he was blind.

But just then a privileged person knocked and entered without waiting

for an invitation. The newcomer was Doctor Gallagher, the "Company"

oculist, his fine, dark eyes aglow with sympathy and importance.

"That boy Hampstead," he began abruptly, "is in bad shape."

"Hampstead!" ejaculated Mr. Mitchell antagonistically, as if it were

impossible that lumbering mass of bone and muscle could ever be in bad

shape.

"Yes," affirmed the physician, with the air of one who announces a

sensation, "he's likely to go blind!"

"No!" ejaculated Mr. Mitchell, in still more emphatic tones of

disbelief, though his blue eyes opened wide and grew round with shock

and sympathetic apprehension.

"Yes," explained Doctor Gallagher volubly. "Continual transcription,

the sweep of the eye from the notebook page to the machine and back,

year in and year out, for so long, has broken down the muscular system

of the eye. He had a blind spell last night. He can see all right this

morning. But to let him go to work would be criminal. I have him in

the Company Hospital for two weeks of absolute rest, and then he will be

all right. But the typewriter, never again! You can put him on the

outside to solicit freight, or something like that."

A broad grin overspread the features of the General Freight Agent. "You

don't know John," he said. "That boy would die of nervousness the first

day out. He's afraid of people. Besides," went on Mitchell, "we

couldn't get along without him. He knows too much that nobody else

knows."

"Well, anyway, never again the typewriter!" commanded the doctor from

the door, getting out quickly and hurrying away with the consciousness

of duty extremely well performed. He knew that he had exaggerated the

extent of John's eye-trouble; but he believed that it was necessary to

exaggerate it, both to Hampstead and to Mr. Mitchell.

In his darkened room at the hospital, John was feeling somehow suddenly

honored of destiny. People were thinking, talking, caring about him.

There was exaltation just in that. But also he was fuming. He wasn't

ill. He was simply confined. He could not read. He could not write.

He could do nothing but sit in a darkened room according to

prescription, and wait. But on the third day Doctor Gallagher said:

"As soon as it is dusk, you may go out for a swift walk. That's to get

exercise. Keep off the main streets; keep away from bright lights, do

not try to read signs, to recognize people, or in fact to look at

anything closely."

John leaped eagerly at this permission, but there was design in his

devotion to the new prescription of which the doctor knew nothing. On

the fifth day of his confinement, Tayna and Dick, who had been coming

every afternoon to sit for an hour in the semi-darkness with their

uncle, surprised the interned one doing odd contortions in the depths of

his room: twisting his wrists; standing on one foot like a stork and

twirling his great heel and toe from the knee in some eccentric

imitation of a ballet dancer; then creeping to and fro across the room

in a silly series of bowings and scrapings and salutings that threw Dick

into irrepressible laughter. Caught shamefacedly in the very midst of

these absurdities, John confessed to the two of them what he would at

the moment have confessed to no other living being--last of all to

Bessie.

"I am taking lessons," he said, "from an actor. He is going to make me

easy and graceful, so people won't call me awkward any more--nor

homely," and he looked significantly at Tayna.

"Oh," the children both gasped respectfully, and repeated with a kind of

awe in their voices: "From an actor!"

"Yes. Every evening the doctor lets me go for a walk. On every other

one of these walks I go to the actor's hotel, and he teaches me."

"Awh! An actor-r-r!" breathed Dick again, his features depicting

profoundness both of impression and speculation.

"Say!" he proposed presently. "I would rather you would be an actor

than a president, anyway."

John laughed. "I am not going to be an actor," he said, "I am only

going to be polished till I shine like a human diamond." And then he

devoted himself to the entertainment of his callers.

"Remember! Never again the typewriter!" the physician adjured sternly,

when the fortnight of John's captivity was done. For although conveying

this verdict immediately to Mitchell, the doctor had postponed its

announcement to his patient till his discharge from the hospital. John

was stunned. The typewriter was his bread. At first he rebelled, but

with a rush like the swirl of waters over his head, the memory of that

night when he was blind for an hour came to him and humbled him.

With the trembling courage of a coward, he opened the door of room 513;

saw with sickening heart the strange face at his desk, shook the flabby

hand of Heitmuller, and inwardly braced himself to enter for the last

time between the double doors, where presently he confessed his plight

as if it had been a crime.

"You don't imagine we would let you go, do you?" Mr. Mitchell asked,

while an expression of amazement grew upon his face till it became a

laugh. "Why, Jack"--Mr. Mitchell had never called him Jack before--"we

should have to pay you a salary just to stick around and keep the rest

of us straight."

The stenographer gulped. It was not the first note of praise he had

ever received from this kindly railroad man, but it was the first time

Mr. Mitchell or any one else in that whole office had ever acknowledged

to John that he was valuable for what he knew as well as for what he

beat out of his finger-tips.

"You are going to be my private secretary," explained Mr. Mitchell,

still chuckling at the simplicity of John. "I have few letters to write,

and you know enough to do most of them without dictation. You keep me

reminded of things; handle my telephone calls and appointments.

Gallagher says your eyes will probably give you no trouble whatever

under these conditions. The salary will be fifteen dollars more a

month."

The big awkward man was too confusedly grateful and overwhelmed even to

attempt to murmur his thanks. Instead, he did a thing of unheard-of

boldness. He reached over and touched the General Freight Agent on the

arm,--just stabbed him in the upper, fleshy part of the arm with a

thrust of his stiff fingers, accompanying the act with a monosyllabic

croak. It was a clumsy touch, and it was presuming; but to a man of

understanding, it was eloquent.

After one month in this new position, John found himself seeing the

transportation business through new glasses. He had passed from details

to principles, and the change stimulated his mind enormously.

One of his new duties now was to sit at the General Freight Agent's

elbow in conferences, and later to make summaries of the arguments pro

and con. In transcribing Mr. Mitchell's part of these talks, it

interested John to elaborate a little. Soon he ventured to make the

General Freight Agent's points stronger when he felt it could be done,

and then waited, after laying the transcript on the big man's desk, for

some word of reproof. Reproof did not come, and yet John thought the

changes must be noticed.

But one day H. B. Anderson, Assistant General Freight Agent of the San

Francisco and El Paso, a rival line, was in the office.

"Mitchell," Anderson began, "I am compelled to admit your argument reads

a blamed sight stronger than it sounded to me the other day."

At this the General Freight Agent laughed complacently.

"The point about the demurrage especially," went on Anderson. "I didn't

remember that somehow."

"Um," said the General Freight Agent in a puzzled way and picked up the

transcript of the argument. As he scanned it, his face grew more

puzzled; then light broke. "Yes," he replied emphatically, "that's the

strongest point, in my judgment."

"Well," confessed Anderson, "it knocks me out. I am now agreeable to

your construction."

The private secretary listened from his little cubby-hole with mingled

exultation and apprehension. When the visitor had gone, the General

Freight Agent walked in and tossed the transcript upon the secretary's

table. John looked up timidly. The Mitchell brow was ridged and

thoughtful.

"Hampstead," he declared with an air of grave reluctance, "I guess I'll

have to lose you, after all."

"What, sir," gasped John, guilty terror shaking him somewhere inside.

At the change in John's face, Mitchell threw back his head and laughed;

one of those huge, hearty, bellowing laughs at his own humor, from which

he extracted so much enjoyment.

"Yes," he specified, "I am going to put you in the rate department. You

have the making of a great railroad man in you. What you need now is

the fundamentals. That's where you get 'em. Your brains are coming out,

John. I always thought you had 'em,--but it certainly took you a long

time to get any of them into the show window."

"It was seven years before you let me get to the window at all,"

suggested John, meaning to be a little bit vengeful.

"Nobody's fault but yours, my boy," said the G.F.A. brusquely, over his

shoulder. "By the way," he remarked, turning back again, "you aren't

afraid of people any more, either."

John flushed with pleasure. This was really the most desirable

compliment Mitchell could bestow.

"I think I am getting a little more confidence in myself," the big man

confessed, glowing modestly.

This was what three months of Kenton and "old Delsarte", as the actor

called the great French apostle of intelligible anatomy, had done for

John.

But Kenton and "old Delsarte" were doing something else to John that was

vastly more serious, but of which Robert Mitchell received no hint until

nearly a year later, when the knowledge came to him suddenly with a

shock that jarred and almost disconcerted him. It was somewhere about

noon of a day in February, and he had just touched the button for John

Hampstead, rate clerk. Instead of John, Heitmuller answered the summons,

laughing softly.

Now in the rate department John had made an amazing success. In six

months gray-headed clerks were seeking his opinions earnestly. At the

present moment he was in charge of all rates west of Ogden, Albuquerque,

and El Paso, and half the department took orders from him.

"John's away at rehearsal," explained Heitmuller, still chuckling.

"At rehearsal?"

"Yes,--he's going to play Ursus, the giant, in _Quo Vadis_, with

Mowrey's Stock Company at the Burbank next week."

"The hell!" ejaculated the General Freight Agent, while a look of blank

astonishment came upon his usually placid features. "When did that bug

bite him?"

"I can't tell yet whether it's a bite or only an itch," grinned

Heitmuller. "For a while he was reciting at smokers and parties and

things, and then I heard he was teaching elocution at home nights. Now

he's got a small dramatic company and goes out around giving one-act

plays and scenes from Shakespeare. Pretty good, too, they say!"

"Well, I be damned," Mitchell commented, when Heitmuller had finished.

"He's only away from eleven-thirty to one-thirty," explained Heitmuller.

"He was so anxious and does so much more work than any two men that I

couldn't refuse him."

"Of course not," assented Mitchell.

"Besides," added the chief clerk, "he might have gone, anyway. John's

getting a little headstrong, I've noticed, since he's coming out so

fast."

"Naturally," observed Mitchell drily, after which he dismissed

Heitmuller and appeared to dismiss the subject by turning again to his

desk.

*CHAPTER IV*

*ADVENT AND ADVENTURE*

But the General Freight Agent took care that Mrs. Mitchell, Bessie, and

himself were in a box at the Burbank on the following Monday night, when

the curtain went up on the Mowrey Stock Company's sumptuous production

of _Quo Vadis_, which for more than nine days was the talk of the town

in the city of angels, oranges, atmosphere, and oil. The Mitchells

strained their eyes for a sight of their late-grown protege, but it

appeared he was not "on." However, in the midst of a garden scene with

Roman lords, ladies, soldiers in armor and slaves decking the view,

there appeared a huge barbarian, long of hair and beard, his torso bound

round with an immense bearskin, his sandals tied with thongs, his sinewy

limbs apparently unclad, savage bands of silver upon his massy, muscled

arms, the alpine ruggedness of his countenance and the light of a

fanatical devotion that gleamed in his eye contributing in their every

detail to make the creature appear the thing the programme proclaimed

him, "Ursus, a Christian Slave."

But the programme claimed something more: that this Ursus was John

Hampstead.

Mitchell gaped and then rocked uneasily. The thing was unbelievable.

If the man would only speak, perhaps some tone of voice--but the man did

not speak, not even move. He stood half in the background, far up the

center of the stage, while the talk and action of the piece went on

beneath his lofty brow, like some mountain towering above a lakelet in

which ripples sparkle and fish are leaping. At length, however, stage

attention does center on Ursus, when the man enacting St. Peter, struck

by the nature-man's appearance of gigantic strength, observes:

"Thou art strong, my son?"

The rugged human statue moved. In a voice that was low at first but

broke quickly into reverberating tones which filled the theater to the

rafters, the answer came:

"Holy Father! I can break iron like wood!"

As the speech was delivered, the eye of Ursus gleamed, the folded arms

unbent, and one mighty muscle flexed the forearm through a short but

significant arc, after which the figure resumed its pose of respectful

but impressive immobility.

In that single speech and gesture Hampstead had achieved a personal

success and keyed the play as plausible, for by it he had come to birth

before a theater-full as a character equal to the prodigious feats of

strength upon which the action turned.

"Go to the stable, Ursus!" commanded an authoritative voice.

The huge head of the hairy man, with its crown of long, wild locks was

inclined humbly, and with an odd, rolling stride suggestive of enormous

animal-like strength, he swung deliberately across the scene and out of

it.

Robert Mitchell, staring fixedly, suddenly nodded his head with

satisfaction. At last, in that careening walk, he had seen something

that he recognized. That was the walk of Hampstead; but now Mitchell

recalled it was long since he had seen that gait, long since he had

heard the office door reverberate from a bang of one of those hip

joints, long since the big man had made any conspicuous exhibition of

the physical awkwardness that once had been so characteristic. And now?

Why now John was an actor. Not Nero yonder, harp in hand, looked more

nearly like his part. Hampstead had put on the pose, the voice, the

walk, as he had put on the bearskin and the beard.

"Isn't he w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l?" breathed Bessie, with a little squeeze of

her father's arm.

Mitchell laughed amiably and reached out for the curling lock upon his

brow which was his mainstay in time of mental shipwreck and began to

twist it, while he waited impatiently to see more of Ursus.

But the play appeared to have forgotten Ursus. A great party was on in

the palace of Caesar. The stage was alive with lights and music, and

with the movements of many people--senators in togas, generals in armor,

women with jewels in their hair and golden bands upon their white,

gracefully swelling arms. There was drinking and laughter and high

carousal. In right center, Caesar upon his throne was singing and

pretending to strike notes from a harp of pasteboard and gilt, notes

which in reality proceeded from the orchestra pit. At lower left upon a

couch sat Lygia, the Christian maiden, beautiful beyond imagining and

being greatly annoyed by the love-makings of the half-intoxicated Roman

soldier, Vinicius, who had laid aside his helmet and his sword, and was

pleading with the lovely but embarrassed girl, at first upon his knees,

then standing, with one knee upon the couch, while he trailed his

fingers luxuriously through the glossy blackness of her hair.

As the love-making proceeded, Lygia's apprehension grew. When Vinicius

pressed her tresses to his lips, she shrank from him. When, after

another cup of wine and just as the whole court was in raptures over the

conclusion of Caesar's song, Vinicius attempted to place his kisses yet

more daringly, Lygia started up with a cry of terror. Instantly there

sounded from the wings a bellowing roar of rage, and like a flying fury,

the wild, hairy figure of Ursus came bounding upon the scene.

Seizing Vinicius by the shoulders, Ursus shook him till all his harness

rattled, then hurled him up stage and crashing to the floor. Lygia was

swaying dizzily as if about to faint, but with another leap Ursus had

gained her side and swung her into his arms, after which he turned and

went hurdling across the stage, running in long, springing strides as

lightly as a deer, the fair, delicious form of the girl balanced

buoyantly on his arms, while her dark hair streamed out and downward

over his shoulder--all of this to the complete consternation of the

half-drunken Court of Caesar and the vast and tumultuously expressed

delight of the audience, which kept the curtain frisking up and down

repeatedly over this climactic conclusion of the second act, while the

principals posed and bowed and posed again and bowed again, to the

audience, to themselves, and to the scenery. Robert Mitchell even

supposed that Ursus was bowing to him, so being naturally polite and

somewhat beside himself, the General Freight Agent was on the point of

bowing back again when Bessie screamed:

"Oh! Oh! He bowed directly at me."

By this time, however, the curtain had recovered from its frenzy and

stayed soberly down while the lights came up so the people could read

the advertisements on the front. Immediately the tongues of the

audience were all a-buzz, and industriously passing up and down the

lines of the seats was the information that John Hampstead was a local

character. "Oh, yes, indeed,--instructor in public speaking at the

Young Men's Christian Association."

In due course, this piece of interesting information reached the

Mitchells in their box.

"I knew it all along," gurgled Bessie proudly.

"I begin to be jealous," announced Mrs. Mitchell, broad of face,

expansive of heart, aggressive of disposition. "I want all these people

to know that Ursus is our rate clerk."

"And I want them to know," said Mr. Mitchell, by way of venting his

disapproval, "that he is spoiling a mighty good rate clerk to make a

mighty poor actor."

"But," pouted the loyal Bessie, "he is not a poor actor. He's a

w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l actor! You are spoiling the plain truth to make a

poor epigram. You," and she looked up pertly at her father, "you are

just a bunch of sour grapes! You kept my poor Jack's nose on the

grindstone so long that he broke out in a new place, and now you are

afraid you'll lose him."

"Your poor Jack!" sneered Mrs. Mitchell merrily.

"Yes--mine!" answered Bessie stoutly. "I always told you Jack Hampstead

was a great man in disguise. I saw him first--before he saw himself,

almost. I'm going to be his friend for always and for always. Oh, look

there!"

The curtain had gone up on an odd, out-of-the-way corner of the imperial

city. There had been some colloquy over the gate of a small close,

participated in by the vibrant voice of an unseen Ursus and the calmer

one of a visible St. Peter, after which the gate opened and Ursus

entered, bearing the still fainting form of Lygia in his arms; giving,

of course, the desired impression that this fair figure of a woman had

been nestling on his great bosom ever since the curtain went down some

twelve minutes before, an inference that led some of the clerks in the

General Freight Office and other persons scattered through the audience,

to envy John. This presumption, however, was some distance from the

truth. As a matter of fact, Lygia had but recently resumed her position

in the arms of Ursus, while two stage hands, lying prone, had plucked

open the gate; and various happenings quite unsuspected of the audience

had intervened, at least one of which had been a severe shock to the

Puritan nature of John Hampstead.

However, there was the dramatic impression already referred to, and it

ate its way like acid into the consciousness of at least one person in

the playhouse.

Ursus, after looking about him for a moment in the little yard of the

Christian's house to make sure he was entirely surrounded by friends,

drew his fair burden closer and, as if by a protective instinct, bent

over it with a look of tenderness so long and concentrated that his

flaxen beard toyed with the white cheek, and his flaxen locks gleamed

for a moment amid the raven ones.

"Well," commented Bessie, in a tone that mingled sharp annoyance with

that judicially critical note which is the right of all high-school

girls in their last year, "I do not see any dramatic necessity for

prolonging this. Why doesn't he stick her face under the fountain there

for a moment and then lay her on the grass?"

Mercifully, Bessie was not compelled to contain her annoyance too long.

Ursus did eventually relinquish his hold upon the lady, and the piece

moved on from scene to scene to the final holocaust of Rome.

With the news instinct breaking out above the critical, the dramatic

columns of the morning papers gave the major stickful of type to the

performance of that histrionic athlete, John Hampstead, forgetting to

mention his connection with the Y.M.C.A., but making clear that in

daylight he was a highly respected member of the staff of Robert

Mitchell, the well-known railroad man.

But to John, the process of conversion from rate clerk to actor had been

even more exciting than the demonstration of the fact proved to his

friends.

To begin with, it was an experience quite unforgettable to the chairman

of the Prayer Meeting Committee of the Christian Endeavor Society of the

grand old First Church when for the first time he found himself upon the

stage of the Burbank at rehearsal time, with twenty-five or thirty real

actors and actresses about him. He looked them over curiously, with a

puritanic instinct for moral appraisal, as they stood, lounged, sat,

gossiped, smoked, laughed or did several of these things at once; yet

all keeping a wary eye and ear for the two men who sat at the little

table in the center of the bare, empty stage with their heads together

over a manuscript.

"Just about like other people," confessed Hampstead to himself, with

something of disappointment.

There were some tailor suited women, there were some smartly dressed

young men, there were some very nice girls, not more than a whit

different in look and manner from the typists in the general office.

There were two or three gray-haired men who, so far as appearance and

demeanor went, might have served as deacons of the First Church. There

were a couple of dignified, matronly-looking elderly ladies with

fancy-work or mending in their laps, as they swayed to and fro in the

wicker rockers that were a part of the furnishings for Act II of the

play then running. These two ladies, so far as John could see, might

have been respectively President of the Ladies' Aid and of the Woman's

Missionary Society, instead of what they were, "character old women," as

he later learned.

Totaling his impressions, Mowrey's Stock Company seemed like a large

exclusive family in which he was suffered but not seen. Nobody

introduced him to anybody. Mowrey merely threw him a glance, and that

was not of recognition but of observation that he was present.

"First act!" snapped the manager, with a voice as sharp as the clatter

of the ruler with which he rapped upon the table. Stepping forward,

prompt book in one hand, ruler in the other for a pointer, he began to

outline the scene upon the bare stage:

"This chair is a tree--that stage brace is a bench--this box is a rock,"

and so forth.

The rehearsal had begun. It moved swiftly, for Mowrey was a man with

snap to him. His words were quick, nervous, few--until angry. His

glance was imperative. It was all business, hot, relentless pressure of

human beings into moulds, like hammering damp sand in a foundry.

"Go there! Stand here! Laugh! Weep! Look pleased! Feign

intoxication!" Each short word was a blow of Mowrey's upon the wet

human sand.

John's name was never mentioned. Mowrey called him by the name of his

part, Ursus. Ursus was "on" in the first act, but with nothing to do,

and his eyes were wide with watching. One woman in particular attracted

him. She was tall and shapely, clad in a close-fitting tailored suit,

with hat and veil that seemed to match both her garments and herself.

She moved through her part with a kind of distinguished nonchalance, her

veil half raised, and a vagrant fold of it flicking daringly at a rosy

spot on her cheek when she turned suddenly; while in her gloved hands

she held a short pencil with which, from time to time, additional stage

directions were noted upon the pages of her part. This accomplished and

really beautiful young actress was Miss Marien Dounay, one of the two

leading women of the company.

Hampstead was inexperienced of women. He confessed it now to himself.

But this was to be the day of his opportunity, and he felt the blood of

adventure leaping in his veins. In his consciousness, too, floated

little arrows like indicators, and as if by common agreement, they

pointed their heads toward Miss Dounay.

If it were she now who played Lygia? Yes; it was she. They were

calling her Lygia. Hampstead smiled to himself. Presently he chuckled

softly, and the chuckle appeared to loose a small avalanche of new-born

emotions that leaped and jumbled somewhere inside.

But the first encounter was disappointing. Miss Dounay seized him by

the arm, without a glance,--her eyes being fixed on Mowrey,--and led the

big man out of the scene exactly as if he had been a wooden Indian on

rollers.

"Now," she said, "you have just carried me off." Her voice had

wonderful tones in it, tones that started more avalanches inside; but

she appeared as unconscious of the tones and their effect as of him.

She was making another note in her part.

"Better practice that 'carry off stage' before we try it at rehearsal,"

called the sharp voice of Mowrey. His eyes and his remark were

addressed to Miss Dounay. Miss Dounay nodded.

"Shall we?" she said, and looked straight at Hampstead, giving him his

first glance into self-confident eyes which were clear, brownish-black,

with liquescent, unsounded depths. In form it was a question she had

asked; in effect it was a command from a very cool and business-like

young person.

"I presume we had better," said John, affecting a foolish little laugh,

which did not, however, get very far because the earnest air of Miss

Dounay was inhospitable to levity.

"See here!" she instructed. "I throw up my arms in a faint. My left

arm falls across your right shoulder. At the same time I give a little

spring with my right leg, and I throw up my left leg like this. At the

same instant you throw your right arm under my shoulders, your left arm

gathers my legs; I will hold 'em stiff. There!"

Miss Dounay's arm was on John's shoulder, and she was preparing to suit

the rest; of her action to her words. "Without any effort to lift me,"

she continued, talking now into his ear, "I will be extended in your

arms. All you have to do is to be taking your running stride as I come

to you, and after that to hold me poised while you bound off the stage.

Can you do it?"

With this crisp, challenging question on her lips, Miss Dounay completed

the proposed manoeuvre of her lower limbs, and John found himself with

the long, exquisitely moulded body of a beautiful woman balancing in his

arms, while a foolish quiver passed over him and shook him till he

actually trembled.

[Illustration: A foolish quiver passed over him and shook him till he

actually trembled.]

"Am I so heavy?" asked a matter-of-fact voice from his shoulder.

"You are not heavy at all," replied Hampstead, hotly provoked at

himself.

"Run, then," she commanded.

The resultant effort was a few staggering, ungraceful steps.

"Dounay weighs a hundred and fifty if she weighs an ounce," said a

passing voice.

John, all chagrin as he deposited the lady upon her feet, saw her lip

curl, and her dark eyes flash scornfully at the leading juvenile man

who, with grimacing intent to tease, had made the remark to the ingenue

as both passed near.

"Insolence!" hissed Miss Dounay after the scoffer, and turned again to

Hampstead, speaking sharply. "Very bad! You must be in your running

stride when my weight falls on you. We must practice."

And practice they did, at every spare moment of the rehearsal during the

entire week. From these "practices", Hampstead learned an unusual

number of things about women which, in his limited experience, he had

either not known or which had not been brought home to him before. Some

of these he presumed applied generally to all women; others, he had no

doubt, were particular to Miss Dounay.

As, for instance, when he looked down at her face where it lay in the

curve of his arm, he saw that the oval outline of her cheeks was

startlingly perfect; that there were pools of liquid fire in her eyes;

that her lips were beautifully and naturally red; that they were long,

pliable, sensitive, with fleeting curves that raced like ripples upon

these shores of velvet and ruby, expressing as they ran an infinite

variety of passing moods. The chin, too, came in for a great deal of

this attention. It was round and smooth at the corners, with a

delicately chiseled vertical cleft in it, which at times ran up and met

a horizontal cleft that appeared beneath the lower lip, when any slight

breath of displeasure brought a pout to that ruby, pendant lobe. This

meeting-place of the two clefts formed a kind of transitory dimple, a

trysting-place of all sorts of fugitive attractions which exercised a

singular fascination for the big man.

He used to wonder what the sensation would be like to sink his lips in

that precious, delectable valley. It would have been physically simple.

A slight lifting of his right arm and shoulder, a slight declension of

his neck, and the mere instinctive planting of his lips, and the thing

was done. However, John had no thought of doing this. In the first

place he wouldn't--without permission; for he was a man of honor and of

self-control. In the second place, he wouldn't because a woman was a

thing very sacred to him, and a kiss, a deliberate and flesh-tingling

kiss, was a caress to be held as sacred as the woman herself and for the

expression of an emotion he had not yet felt for any woman; a statement

which to the half-cynical might prove again that John Hampstead was a

very inexperienced and very monk-minded youth indeed to be abroad in the

unromanticism of this twentieth century. Yet the fact remains that

Hampstead did not consciously conspire to violate the neutrality of this

tiny, alluring haunt of tantalizing beauty which lurked bewitchingly

between the red lower lip and the white firm chin of Miss Marien Dounay.

But there were other things that John was learning swiftly, some of

which amounted to positive disillusionment. One was that a woman's body

is not necessarily so sacred nor so inviolate, after all. That instead

of inviolate, it may be made inviolable by a sort of desexing at will.

Miss Dounay could do this and did do it, so that for instance when her

form stiffened in his arms, it was no more like what he supposed the

touch of a woman's body should be than a post. In the first place the

body itself, beneath that trim, tailored suit, appeared to be sheathed

in steel from the shoulder almost to the knee. John had supposed that

corsets were to confine the waist. This one, if that were what it was

and not some sort of armor put on for these rehearsals, encased the

whole body.

Another thing that contributed to this desexing of the female person was

Miss Dounay's bearing toward himself. He might have been a mere

mechanical device for any regard she showed him at rehearsals. She

pushed or pulled him about, commanded the bend and adjustment of his

arms as if he had been an artificial man, and never by any hint

indicated that she thought of him as a person, least of all as a male

person. Undoubtedly this robbed his new adventure of some of its spice.

But a change came. When for five days John was undecided whether he

should admire this manner of hers as supreme artistic abstraction or

resent it as supercilious disdain, Margaret O'Neil, one of the character

old ladies who had constituted herself a combination of critic and

chaperone of these "carry" practices, turned, after a word with Miss

Dounay, and said:

"We should like to know who it is that is carrying us about."

"Why, certainly," exclaimed John, all his doubt disappearing in a

toothful smile as he swept off his hat. "My name is Hampstead, John

Hampstead."

"Miss Dounay, allow me to present Mr. Hampstead," said Miss O'Neil,

without the moulting of an eyelash.

Miss Dounay extended her hand cordially for a lofty, English handshake,

accompanied by an agreeable smile and a chuckling laugh, understood by

John to be in recognition of the oddness of the situation.

After this, things were somewhat different. There was less sense of

strain on his part, and he began to realize that there had been some

strain upon hers which now was relaxed. Her body was less post-like;

and toward the end of rehearsal, when possibly she was a little tired,

it lay in his arms quite placidly, relaxing until its curves yielded and

conformed to the muscular lines of his own torso.

Yet Miss Dounay never betrayed the slightest self-consciousness at such

moments. Whatever the woman as woman might be, she was, as an actress,

so absolutely devoted to the creation of the character she was

rehearsing, so painstakingly careful to reproduce in every detail of

tone and action the true impression of a pure-minded, Christian maiden

that Hampstead, with his firm religious backgrounding, unhesitatingly

imputed to the woman herself all the virtues of the chaste and

incomparable Lygia.

When dress-rehearsal time came at midnight on Sunday, just after the

regular performance had been concluded, and John saw Miss Dounay for the

first time in the dress of the character, his soul was enraptured. The

simple folds of her Grecian robe were furled at the waist and then swept

downward in one billowy leap, unrelieved in their impressive whiteness

by any touch of color, save that afforded by the jet-bright eyes with

their assumed worshipful look and the wide, flowing stream of her dark,

luxuriant hair, which, loosely bound at the neck, waved downward to her

hips. The devout curve of her alabaster neck, the gleaming shoulders,

the full, tapering, ivory arms, her sandaled bare feet--yes, John looked

close to make sure, and they were actually bare--rounded out the

picture.

Marien Dounay stood forth more like an angel vision than a woman, at

once so beautiful and so adorable that big, sincere, open-eyed John

Hampstead worshipped her where she stood--worshipped her and loved

her--as a man should love an angel. Yet as he looked, he was almost

guiltily conscious that he knew a secret about this angelic

vision,--that this chiseled flesh with rounded, shapely contours that

would be the despair of any sculptor was not as marble-like as it

looked, was, indeed, soft to the touch and warm, radiant and magnetic.

And John, blissfully aglow with his spiritual ardor, had no faint

suspicion that his secret might kill his illusion dead, nor that his

devotion would survive that decease, although something very like this

happened on the night of the first performance.

The great second act was on. Things were not going as smoothly as they

appeared to from the front. Even the inexperienced Hampstead, as he

waited for his cue, could see that his angel was being enormously vexed

by the manner in which Vinicius made love. Henry Lester was a brilliant

actor, but flighty and erratic. During rehearsal Mowrey had much trouble

in getting him to memorize accurately the business of his part. He

would do one thing one way to-day and forget it or reverse it on the

next. To-night Lester was committing all these histrionic crimes. Miss

Dounay had continually to adapt herself to his impulsive erraticisms, to

shift speeches and alter business. The climax of exasperation came when

one of the wide metal circlets upon his arm became entangled in the

gossamer threads of Lygia's hair and pulled it painfully. Yet the

actress was sufficiently accomplished to play her own part

irreproachably and deliver John's cue at the right moment to secure the

startling entrance already described, and thus to be gracefully and

dramatically swept away from the rude advances of her importunate lover.

It was at the end of this particular scene and off stage, when the

curtain was descending to the accompaniment of applause from the

audience, that the death of John's illusion came. For a delicious

instant, he was still holding Lygia from the floor as if instinctively

sheltering her amidst the general confusion of crowding actors and

hurrying stage hands. Nothing loth, she lay at rest, with eyes closed

and features composed as if in the faint. To the raw, impressionable

young man, Marien had never looked so much an angel as at this moment;

and now she was coming to, as if still in character. Her eyelids

fluttered but did not open, and then her lips moved slightly, stiffly,

under their load of greasy carmine, as if she would speak. In

self-forgetful ecstasy, Hampstead bent eagerly to receive the

confidence. Perhaps she was going to thank him, to whisper a word of

congratulation. Whatever the communication might be, his soul was in

raptures of delightful anticipation as he felt her breath upon his

cheek.

The communication was made promptly and unhesitatingly, after which Miss

Dounay alertly swung her feet to the floor and walked out upon the stage

to receive her curtain call, leading Ursus by the hand, mentally dazed,

inwardly wabbling, outwardly bowing,--trying, in fact, to do just as the

others did. But in John's mind now there was this numbing sense of

shock, for he could not refuse to believe his ears, and what this

angelic vision had breathed into them in tones of cool, emphatic

conviction, was:

"What a damn fool that man Lester is!"

Off the stage again Hampstead stumbled about amid flying scenery, racing

stage hands, and a surging mass of supernumeraries, like a man

recovering consciousness. He wanted to get out of sight somewhere. He

had the feeling of having been stripped naked. Every vestige of his

religious adoration had been dynamited out of existence. This was no

Christian maiden but an actress playing a part. As for the woman

herself, she was very blase and very modern, who, at this moment, as he

could see by a glance into the open door of her dressing room, was

sitting with crossed knees, head back and enveloped in a halo of smoke,

while her pretty lips were distended in a yawn, and the spark of a

cigarette glowed in her finger tips.

"And I am another!" Hampstead muttered, with a sneer that was aimed

inward.

Seven minutes later, Lygia walked out of her dressing room minus the

cigarette and looking again that angel vision, but Hampstead knew better

now. He viewed her at first critically and then reflectively; but was

presently startled at the gist of his reflections, which was a sort of

self-congratulation because this creature that he was about to take in

his arms was not an angel, but that more alluring, less elusive thing, a

woman.

Two more minutes and the pair of stage hands were stretched stomach-wise

upon the floor ready to swing open the wings of the gate at the cue from

St. Peter, and Lygia was lying once more in John's arms. In the instant

of waiting before the curtain rose, he had time to notice how

contentedly and trustfully she appeared to nestle there. Her breathing

was like his at first, easy and natural; but gradually, as the moment of

suspense lengthened and the instant of action drew near, the rhythmic

pulse of both bosoms accelerated, as if, heart on heart, their souls

beat in unison. John was noticing, too, how soft Marien's body was

where the armor did not extend, how deliciously warm it was, indeed how

something like an ethereal heat radiated from it and filled all his

veins with a strange, electric, impulsive wistfulness. What was that

giddy perfume?

Involuntarily he drew her closer, with a gentle, steady pressure. At

this she raised her eyelids and gazed at him for a moment,

contemplatively first and then passively curious, after which she

lowered the lids again, while her lips half parted in a voiceless sigh.

So far as Hampstead was concerned, illusion had gone. He knew that he

was just a man. So far as Miss Dounay was concerned, he suspected that

she was just a woman. But devotion remained. John did not relax his

hold. Instead there was a momentary tightening of his arms.

"Let 'er go," called the low, tense voice of Mowrey; and with a rustling

sound the great curtain slipped slowly upward.

*CHAPTER V*

*THE RATE CLERK*

The week went by like a shot. On Sunday night the glory that was a very

stagy Rome burned down for the last time beneath the gridiron of the old

Burbank Theater. On Monday morning no odor of grease paint and no

noxious smell of stewing glue, which proclaims the scene painter at his

work, was in the nostrils of John. Instead, the clack of typewriters,

the tinkle of telephone bells, the droning voices of dictators, and the

shuffling feet of office boys filled his ears.

As if to completely re-merge the man in his environment, Robert Mitchell

came walking in, tossed a bundle of papers upon the desk, fixed the rate

clerk with a shaft of his blue eye, and commanded drily:

"Ursus! Make a set of tariffs embracing our new lines to correspond

with the commodity tariffs of the San Francisco and El Paso."

John colored slightly at the thrust of that name Ursus, but looked Mr.

Mitchell fairly and meekly in the eye and answered:

"Yes, sir."

"Have them effective July 1st," concluded the General Freight Agent, as

he turned away.

Burman, the lordly through rate clerk, lowered his sleek face behind his

books and snickered. John shot a scowl at Burman and then for a few

minutes hunched his shoulders over the documents in the case.

The California Consolidated was being consolidated some more. Two more

roads in the big system had just been pitchforked into the jurisdiction

of Robert Mitchell, adding twelve hundred additional miles to his

responsibility and pushing him several swift rounds up the ladder of

promotion.

These additions made the California Consolidated competitive with the

San Francisco and El Paso lines at hundreds of new stations. John's job

was to consolidate the freight tariffs of the three lines and make sure

that they equalized the rates of the competitor at competing stations.

It was an enormous task, and the General Freight Agent had breezily

commanded it to be done in ten weeks. That was why Burman snickered.

It was also why Hampstead scowled.

Now a freight tariff starts youthfully out to be the most scientific

thing in the world, but it ends by being the most utterly unscientific

document that ever was put together. The longer a tariff lives, the

more depraved it becomes. The S.F. & E.P. tariffs were very old, but

not, therefore, honorable.

John turned to the shelf that contained them and scowled again, a double

scowl, as black as his blond Viking brows could manage. These were to

be his models. They were yellow--a disagreeable color to begin

with,--each a half inch thick and larger than a letter page,--abortions,

every one of them! They were pea-vine growths like the monster system

which issued them, cumbered with the adjustments and easements of the

years.

The flour tariff! The hay tariff! The grain tariff! John took these in

his hands one by one and glowered at them. The mistakes, the

inconsistencies, the clumsiness of thirty sprawling years were in them.

And he was asked to duplicate these confusions on his own system.

Should he do it? No; be hanged if he would! He felt big and

self-important as he slammed the first of them face down upon his desk

and each thereafter in succession upon its fellow, until the pile

toppled over, after which, leaving the reckless heap behind him, while

Burman snickered again, John stamped out of the room.

"These S.F. & E.P. tariffs are so old they've got whiskers on 'em," he

began to say to Mr. Mitchell, "and hairs! And the hair has never been

cut nor even combed. They have been tagged and fattened and trimmed and

sliced and slewed round till the tariff is issued just to keep up the

basis and the tradition, and then you look in something else,--an

amendment, or a special, or a 'private special', or sometimes the carbon

copy of a letter,--to find out what the rate actually is. Sometimes

when I call their office up on the 'phone to get a rate, it takes 'em

twenty-four hours to answer, and maybe a week later they notify me the

answer was wrong. Our slate is clean; why not simmer the figures down

to what is the actual basis instead of the assumed one, and publish the

rates as we intend to charge 'em, and as we know they do charge 'em?"

Mitchell had listened with surprise at first to this rash proposal. It

sounded youthful and impetuous. But it also sounded sensible. Mitchell

hated red tape, and he knew that John's idea was the right one; but

tradition was god on the S.F. & E.P. They would fight the innovation

and fight it hard; they might win, too, and Mr. Mitchell had no stomach

for tilting at windmills. However, it might be a good thing for John,

this fight; might make him forget that foolish stage ambition of his;

and if he won, might crown him so lustrously that of itself it would

save him to a future already assuredly brilliant in the railroad

business.

"Do you think you could whip it out with 'em before their faces, John,

when the scrap comes?" Mr. Mitchell asked tentatively, but also by way

of further firing the soul of the fighter.

"I believe I could," replied John ardently.

"Then go to it," said Mr. Mitchell tersely.

And John went to it.

But there was another man who had been shocked by John's theatrical

venture, and that was the pastor of the First Church, who had his

virtues, much as other men. His face was round and like his figure, full

of fatness. He was a merry soul and loved a joke. He had a heart as

tender as his sense of humor was keen.

But beside his virtues, this man of God had also his convictions. His

pulpit was no wash-wallowing craft. He steered her straight. To Heaven

with Scylla! To Gehenna with Charybdis! Indeed, if there was one man

in all Los Angeles who knew where he was going and all the rest of the

world too, it was this same Charles Thompson Campbell, pastor of the

aforesaid grand old First Church. Doctor Campbell's hair and eyes were

black. His voice had the ultimate roar in it. When he stood up, locks

flying, perspiration streaming, and thumped his pulpit with that fat

doubled fist, the palm of which had been moulded in youth upon the

handle of a plow, every nook and cranny of the auditorium echoed with

the force of his utterance. But Doctor Campbell's convictions, like

most people's, were only in part based upon knowledge.

Some things in particular he wot not of yet scorned. One was the modern

novel. Another was the stage! Shakespeare, Doctor Campbell admitted

largely, had shed some sheen upon the stage and more upon literature;

but he never quoted Shakespeare. One could almost doubt if he had read

him, and when Shakespeare came to town, he never went to see him.

On the morning, therefore, when the good Doctor Campbell read in the

papers that the youngest of his deacons had the night before made his

debut as Ursus in _Quo Vadis_, he was not only pained but moved to

self-reproach. Grief enveloped him. It thrust the sharp cleft of a

frown into his smooth brow. It thrust his chin down upon his bosom and

caused him to heave a tumultuous sigh. He bowed his head beside his

study table and then and there put up an earnest petition for the soul

of John Hampstead. It was a sincere and natural prayer, because Doctor

Campbell was a sincere man and believed in the efficacy of prayer.

Besides, he loved John Hampstead. The young man's impending fate

stirred the minister deeply and caused him to reproach himself. In this

mood, he dug out all his sermons on the stage, nine years of annual

sermons on the influence of the drama, and read them sketchily and with

disappointment. Paugh! Piffle! How weak and ineffective they seemed.

He delved into his concordance for a text and found one. Then he drove

his pen deep into his inkwell and began to write.

The following Sunday night Doctor Campbell's red, excited features were

seen dimly through dun, sulphurous clouds of brimstone and fire; but to

the preacher's dismay, John Hampstead was not present for fumigation.

The reverend gentleman, in his unthinking goodness, had quite overlooked

the fact that the play in which John was performing concluded on Sunday

night instead of Saturday night; and so while his pastor was hurling his

fiery diatribes at that conspicuously assailable institution, the stage,

Deacon Hampstead was blissfully bearing Marien Dounay about in his arms.

But the next morning John read the sermon published in the newspaper.

He had already noted that the more doubtful the sermon, the more likely

it is to get into the headlines, because from the editor's standpoint it

thus becomes news, and late Sunday night, which is the scarcest hour of

the whole week for news, there is more joy in the "city room" over one

sermon that breathes the fiery spirit of sensation than over ninety and

nine which need no hell and damnation in which to express the tender

gospel of Jesus. John read it with a sense of wrath, of outrage, and of

humiliation. That night he launched himself at the study door of his

pastor.

"I was very sorry you did not hear my sermon last night," began Doctor

Campbell blandly, sensing the advantage of striking first.

"Brother Campbell, I have come to arraign you for that sermon," retorted

John, with an immediate outburst of feeling. "I say that you spoke what

you did not know. I say," and his voice almost broke with the weight of

its own earnestness, "I say that you bore false witness!"

The amazed minister's mouth opened, but John repressed his utterance

with a gesture.

"You will say you preached your convictions. I say you preached your

prejudice, your ignorance. I say you bore false witness against

struggling women, against aspiring men, against those of whose bitter

battlings you know nothing."

The Reverend Charles Thompson Campbell leaned back aghast. No man had

ever presumed to talk to him like this, no man of twice his years and

spiritual attainments; yet here was this stripling not only talking to

him like this, but with a fervor of unction in his utterance that made

his upbraiding sound half inspired.

"You are condemning the stage as an institution," went on John

scornfully. "You might as well condemn the printing press as an

institution. You discriminate with regard to newspapers and books. Do

the same with the stage. Taboo the corrupt play and teach your people

to avoid it. Support the good and teach the managers that you will.

Taboo the notorious actor or actress if you wish. Give the rest of them

the benefit of the doubt, as you do in your personal contact with all

humanity. Oh, Doctor Campbell, you are so charitable in your personal

relations with men and so uncharitable in much of your preaching!"

This one exclamatory sentence had in it enough of affectionate regard to

enable the minister to contain himself a little longer, under the

impassioned tide which now flowed again.

"The stage? The stage as an institution?" John appeared to pause and

wind himself up. "Why, listen! The stage function is a godlike

function. When God created man out of the dust of the ground and

breathed into him the breath of life he planted in man's breast also the

instinct to create. That instinct is the foundation of all art. Man

has always exhibited this passion to create something in his own image.

It might be a rude drawing on a rock, or only a manikin sculptured in

mud and set in the sun to dry; or it might be a marble of Phidias, with

the form, the strength, the spirit of life upon it. The painter can go

farther. He gets the color and the very visage of thought and even of

emotion. Yet each falls short. There is no God to breathe into their

creations the breath of life."

The minister leaned back a little as if to put his understanding more at

poise.

"But," continued Hampstead, "the playwright and the actor can go

farther. They breathe into their creations that very breath of God

himself, which he breathed into man. They make a character real because

he is a living man. They put him in the company of other men and women

who are as real for the same reason; they toss them all into the sea of

life together; the winds of life blow upon them. Hate and love, virtue

and vice, hope and despair, weakness and strength, birth and death, work

their will upon them."

"That is very beautiful, John," said Doctor Campbell, "very beautiful."

The tribute was sincere, but John was not to be checked even by a

compliment.