Part 28

Nor did the public mind the discrepancies greatly. The _Messenger's_ story was a triumph of journalism. It was the most eagerly read, the most convincingly detailed explanation of what had occurred. The public absorbed it with a sense of relief that at last it had learned how such a man as John Hampstead could have fallen as he had. The story even excited a little sympathy for the minister by revealing the unexpected element of romance in his life. Nevertheless, its publication upon the evening of the third day after the minister's arrest battered away the last pretense of any considerable section of the popular mind that, whatever the outcome of his trial, Hampstead was any longer a man entitled to public confidence.

Flying rumor, published gossip, and vociferous assault upon one side, combined with guilty silence upon the other, had absolutely completed the work of destruction. The reputation of the pastor of All People's was hopelessly blasted. Even to the minister, sitting alone like a convict in his cell, this effect was clearly apparent. The question of whether he was a thief or not a thief had faded into the background of triviality. The issue was whether he, a trusted minister, while occupying his pulpit and bearing himself as a chaste and irreproachable servant of mankind, had yielded to an intrigue of the flesh. The indictment did not lie in definite specifications that could be refuted, but in inferences that were unescapable.

The riot of reckless gossip had made the preacher's honor common. Anything was believable. Each single incident became a convincing link in the chain of evidence that John Hampstead was an apostate to the creed and character he espoused.

The minister in his study, his desk and chair an island surrounded by a sea of rumpled newspapers, harried on every side by doubt and suspicion so aggressive that it almost forced him to doubt and suspect himself, laid his face upon his desk.

This was more than he had prayed for. This was no honored cross that he was asked to bear. It was a robe of shame to be put upon him publicly. To be sure, it was loose, ill-fitting, diaphanous, but none the less it was enveloping. It did not blot out, yet it ate like a splotch of acid.

But suddenly the man sat up, and for the first time since the startling disclosure in the vault room, a look of terror shot into his eyes, terror mixed with pain that was indescribable. It was a thought of the effect of this last story upon the mind of Bessie that had stabbed him. Bessie had grown wonderfully during these five years. She had completed four years at Stanford and one year of post-graduate work in the University of Chicago. To-morrow, if he had the date right, she would be receiving her degree. The beauty of her character and the beauty of her person had ripened together, until John's imagination could think of nothing so exquisite in all the universe as Bessie Mitchell. And after the degree and a summer in Europe, she was coming back to California and to him! Together they were going to enter upon a life and the making of a home that was to be rich in happiness for both of them, and as they fondly hoped, rich in happiness for all with whom they came in contact.

Reflecting that in this last week Bessie would be too busy to read the newspapers, John had chivalrously thought to tell her nothing of what was befalling him, that she might set out happily upon her European journey. But now had come this alleged vindication, which was the most terrible assault of all, with its disgusting insinuations. He felt instinctively that Bessie would see that story, because it was the one of all which she ought not to see. Seeing it, he assured himself, she would believe it, more fully than any one else would believe it. John knew that despite his own years of steadfast devotion and despite her own constant effort to do so, she had never quite wiped out the horrible suspicions engendered by his confession of the brief attachment for Miss Dounay. He suspected it was a thing no woman ever successfully wipes out. This damnable story would revive that suspicion convincingly. It was inevitable that Bessie should believe that Marien Dounay's presence had revived the old infatuation, and that he had yielded to its power.

This reflection left Hampstead with his lips pursed, his cheeks drawn, sitting bolt and rigid like a frozen man.

In this polar atmosphere the telephone tinkled. The minister answered it with wooden movements and a wooden voice:

"No, nothing to say--yet."

Always the "yet" was added. "Yet" meant the minister's hope for deliverance. The reporters who had heard that "yet" so many times in the three days began to find in it something pathetic and almost convincing. But though the minister had added it this last time from sheer force of habit, the hope had just departed from him. With his love-hope gone, there was nothing personally for which John Hampstead cared to ask the future. Time, for him, was at an end. He was not a being. He was an instrument.

But as if to remind him for what purpose he was an instrument, he had barely hung up the 'phone when there was a faint tap at the outer entrance of his study, followed at his word of invitation by the figure of a man who, with a furtive, backward glance as if afraid of the shadows beneath the palm trees, slipped quickly through the narrowest possible opening, closed the door and halted uncertainly, his eyes blinking at the light, his hands rubbing nervously one upon the other. The man was carefully dressed and tonsured. There was every evidence that to the world he was trying to be his old debonair self, but before the minister he stood abject and pitiable.

"Rollie!" exclaimed Doctor Hampstead, leaping up.

"She haunted me!" the conscience-stricken man faltered helplessly, sinking into a chair. "She threatened to denounce me right there in the bank, if I dared to communicate with you." Again there was that frightened look backward to the door.

An hour before, when the minister had not yet reasoned out the effect upon Bessie of this awful story of his alleged relations with the actress, he would have leaped upon Rollie vehemently, so anxious to know how the diamonds got into his safe-deposit box as almost to tear the story from the young man's throat.

But now he had the feeling that there was no longer anything at stake worth while. All in him that quickened at the sight of his visitor was a sort of clinical interest in the state of a soul.

As Rollie told his story, the minister gasped with relief to learn that his own plight was due to no Judas-like betrayal, but that the young man was, like himself, a victim of this scheming, devilish woman, and he listened with sympathetic eagerness while the narrator depicted brokenly the frightful conflict between fear and duty through which he had passed during the two days gone.

But with the narrative concluded, the duty of each was still plain. The silence must be kept. Moreover, in this revulsion of feeling from doubt to active sympathy, the minister perceived that things were going very hardly with the young man. Knowing Miss Dounay now rather well, he was able to understand, even without explanation, the paralyzing fear which had kept Rollie dumb for these three days, and to realize that his coming even tardily was a sign of some renascence of moral courage. This perception quickened both the minister's sympathy and his interest in his duty. He was able to interrogate the young man considerately and to put him gradually somewhat at his ease, and this so tactfully as to make it seem to Rollie that, his delay in coming was half a virtue and that the act of coming itself was a supreme moral victory which gave promise of greater victories to come.

But it did not require this exhibition of magnanimity to bring young Burbeck to finish his story with an outpouring of the bitter self-reproaches he had for two days been heaping upon himself.

"I never realized before what a despicable coward sin or crime can make of a man," he concluded. "This spectacle of you bearing uncomplainingly upon your back the burden of my guilt before this whole community sets something burning in me like a fire. It has given me courage to come here. Sometimes in the last few hours I have almost had the courage to come out and tell the truth, to denounce this devilish woman for what she is, and to take my guilt upon myself."

For a moment Rollie's eyes opened till a ring of white appeared about the iris, and he shifted his position dizzily.

"But," exclaimed the minister with sudden apprehension and an outburst of great earnestness, "you must not. You must consider your mother. I command you to consider her above everything else! I should forbid you to speak for her sake, if nothing else were involved. I do want you to become brave enough to take this guilt upon yourself, if circumstances permit it; but, they do not permit. Besides," and the minister shook his head sadly, "even that would now be powerless to relieve me from these awful consequences. I might be proved spotlessly innocent of the charge of theft, and yet my reputation would still be hopelessly ruined. It has cost me all, Rollie--all!"

The minister and the penitent, the innocent and the guilty, drew together for the moment linked by that bond of sympathy which invariably exists when one man suffers willingly in the cause of another, and is heightened when the sufferer winces under the pain.

"Even," the minister labored on, "even that hope of Her, of which I told you the other day, has been torn from me."

Rollie's face turned a more ghastly white.

"That?" he murmured huskily.

"That!" assented the minister, with a grave, downward bend of the head.

"It is too much," groaned the young man in real agony of spirit. "Nothing, nothing that is at stake is worth that--can be worth that."

For a moment Hampstead was silent.

"To be loyal, Rollie, to be true to the highest duty is worth everything."

This was what he would have liked to say; it was what he believed; it was what he meant to demonstrate by his course of action; but for the moment he could not say it. Instead, he swallowed hard and looked downward, toying with a paper-knife upon his desk. But his visitor was going now. There was no reason why he should stay, and the minister, as he held open the door, was able to say warningly: "Remember! Not one word for the sake of your mother's life."

"But you," protested the young man, his eyes again staring wildly.

"You are to try not to think of me," declared Hampstead, with low emphasis, "except as my own steadfastness in my duty--if I am able to be steadfast--may help you to be steadfast in yours. Rollie! We understand each other?"

But the young fellow only shook his head negatively with a growing look of awe and wonder in his eyes, then turned and slipped hastily away. He did not understand this man--the bigness of him--at all; but he found himself leaning on him more and more heavily and felt some spiritual cleansing process digging at the inside of himself like the scrape and bite of a steam shovel.

As for the minister, once he was free to think of himself alone, he perceived that Rollie's story had set him free of silence. It supplied the gap in his knowledge which had made him dumb. There was a real defense which could now be offered. Now, too, that there was again some prospect of vindication, he felt his desire for vindication grow.

Up to the present he had waived arraignment on the charge, and had twice secured the customary two days' postponement of the hearing upon preliminary examination. But immediate action should now be taken. Accordingly he located Judge Brennan at his club by telephone and the Assistant District Attorney Searle at his residence, and without explanation asked that the time for his arraignment and preliminary hearing be set as soon as possible.

Next morning the papers presented as the most startling development of the Hampstead Case the fact that the minister had announced himself prepared to go to trial, and the preliminary hearing had been set for Saturday at ten o'clock in Judge Brennan's court room.

Public interest centered, of course, upon the nature of the minister's defense. There was even observable something like a turn of the tide in his favor. Rumor, suspicion, and innuendo for the time had played themselves out. Shrewd managing editors--keen students of mass psychology that they were--discerned signs that these ebbing cross-currents of doubt and uncertainty might sweep suddenly in the opposite direction, and they were alertly prepared to switch the handling of the news if the popular appetite changed.

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

*A WAY THAT WOMEN HAVE*

Friday for John was a day of impatience, its tedious hours consumed in turning over and over in his mind the story he would tell upon the witness stand and the plea he would make to the court for a dismissal of the complaint against him; when the day was finished, John found his mind in a rather chaotic state, and it seemed to him that little had been accomplished.

But if little happened that day in Encina which was of moment to his cause, there was an interesting sequence of events transpiring in Chicago, which had at least some relation to the matter; for this was the day upon which the degrees were being conferred.

The assembly hall of the great university was large, and every seat was taken. The huge platform was decked, studded, draped and upholstered with professors, assistant professors and presidents, all in mortar boards and gowns, the somber black of the latter relieved by the rich colors of the insignia indicating the rank or character of their respective degrees.

The presence of all this banked and massed doctorial dignity made the atmosphere of the hall to reek with erudition. The vast number of individuals in front felt their puny intellects dwarfed to pigeon's brains. Hitherto some of them had rather congratulated themselves that they knew the multiplication table and the rule of three. Now their instinct was to grovel.

Yet not all of that assemblage were so impressed. Robert Mitchell was not. Huge of chest, thick-fingered, heavy-shouldered, amiable of his broad countenance, shrewd of eye, and growing thin of that curly brown thatch which had been one of Hibernia's gifts to his ensemble, he surveyed the scene with a critic's air.

Not that Mitchell scorned the pundits of learning. Being the vice-president of a transcontinental line of railroad and therefore necessarily a man of wide acquaintance and of wide employment of the talents of mankind, he knew there were occasions when even he must wait upon the pronouncements of some spectacled creature of the laboratory. Still, he could not help reflecting that he would like to see that pale, gangling pundit on the end try to calculate the exact instant in which to throw the lever to make a flying switch. He would like further to see that fellow with a dome that loomed like a water-tank on the desert try to pick up a string of car numbers as they ran by him on the track, and see how many he could carry in his head and carry right.

In fact, everything about the function expressed itself to Mitchell in terms of traffic. Quite a hall, this. The seats in it came from Grand Rapids, no doubt; or perhaps from Manitowoc. The rate from Grand Rapids was nineteen cents a hundred or thereabouts; from Manitowoc it was twenty,--practically an even basis. But on a trans-continental haul now, to San Francisco for instance, common point rates applied, and Manitowoc had an advantage of five cents a hundred unless--unless the Michigan roads rebated the Michigan manufacturers something of their share in the division of the through rate. Of course, rebates were illegal; but you never could exactly tell what an originating line might not do to keep a sufficient amount of business originating. Take his own line, now, for instance, and borax shipments from the Mojave Desert as against the Union Pacific with borax shipments from Death Valley.

Thus the mind of the great master of transportation roved on while professors rose and droned and presented round rolls to never-ending strings of candidates; but at length there appeared in the serpentine line going up for Master's degrees one presence which took the glaze of speculation from the eye of Mitchell.

The world at large has often noted the anomalous fact that a Doctor's cap and gown does not appear to detract greatly from the masculinity of a man. If anything, it makes a beard, a brow, or the pale, unprosperous furze upon a lip look more virile than otherwise; but that same cap and gown will deceitfully rob a woman of something of the indefinable air of her femininity. It gives her an ascetic cast, and asceticism is unwomanly. But there are exceptions. Some types of women's faces look just a little more fetchingly feminine and bewitchingly alluring under a mortar-board cap than beneath any other form of headdress.

The eye of the railroad man rested now with benevolence and satisfaction upon the shapely, ripened figure of such a woman. Glowing upon her features was a youth and a feminism so vital as to seem that nothing could overcome them. Her eyes were blue and bright; her hair was brown and crinkly; while dimples that refused to be subdued by the dignity of the occasion kept continually upon her features the suggestion of a smile about to break.

But with these evidences of sunny personality, there went stout hints of substantial character. The forehead was good and finely arched to stand for brains. The chin was perhaps a trifle wide to permit the finest oval to the countenance, but it suggested balance and power, and proclaimed that what the mind of this young lady planned, her will might be expected to accomplish. In fact, the young lady stood at this moment face to face with the consummation of a five years' programme, and five years is long for youth to hold a purpose.

With swelling satisfaction the railroad man saw the president of the university now addressing his daughter. It was the same Latin formula that had been repeated scores of times already this morning; but now Mitchell made his first effort to grasp it, to reason out its meaning, all the while greatly admiring his daughter's unfaltering courage under the fire of these unintelligible phrases.

The somewhat irrepressible Miss Bessie was, indeed, doing very well. For a moment the dimples had actually composed themselves, and there was a light of high dignity in the eye, as the candidate extended her hand for the diploma and stood meekly while the silken collar was placed about her neck.

"That is a very able man, that Doctor Winton," remarked Mitchell to his wife. "He has got the same way as the rest of them when he talks; but what he says is sense."

Since Mitchell did not know at all what the university president had said, this remark showed that he had fallen back upon his intuitive judgment of men and had swiftly perceived in the university president something of the same practical qualities that go to the making of a business executive in any other walk.

But an excited whisper was just now coming from behind the white-gloved hand of Mrs. Mitchell. "Oh! look!" that lady exclaimed, "she's got her box lid on crooked!"

It was true that Miss Bessie by some restless twitch of her head or some rebellious outburst of a knot of that crinkly hair, had got her mortar board rakishly atilt. Of course, there were other mortar boards askew, but Bessie's was individualistically and pronouncedly listed far to port. And she didn't care. Bessie was so brimming and beaming with the happiness of life that her whole being was this morning recklessly atilt.

But that afternoon, at about the hour of three, in the ample suite of rooms high up on the lake side of the Annex, which had been occupied by the Mitchells for a week, there was nothing atilt at all about the soul of Bessie. Her spirits were all a-droop. One single glance around showed that the busy preparation for the European trip had been suspended. Wardrobe trunks stood about on end, their contents gaping, while dresses were draped over screens and chairs and laid out upon beds; but the packers had ceased their work. Mrs. Mitchell, distracted between parental love and the fulfillment of long cherished plans, as well as distressed at the exhibition of petulant and even tearful temper which her daughter had been displaying for an hour, walked restlessly from room to room.

"I tell you, it's California for mine!" that young lady affirmed in school-girlish vernacular, while an impatient foot stamped the floor, a dimpled hand smote wilfully upon the arm of a huge, brocaded satin chair, and the blue swimming eyes burned with a rebellious light.

Neither the language nor the mood would seem to become the beautiful Mistress of Arts; but each testified to the survival of the humanness of the young woman. In justice to her, however, it must be explained that she had not begun this upsetting of father's and mother's and her own cherished plan with impetuous defiances. She had begun gently, with sighs, with remarks about longing for California. She felt so tired; she wished she didn't have to travel now. If she could just go back and walk under the palms and orange trees in dear old Los Angeles; if she could get one great big bite of San Francisco fog, and see a little desert and a mountain or two, before starting out for this junky old Europe, she would be reconciled.

Otherwise, she would not be reconciled. Of course, she would go,--since they had planned it for so long, and since mamma's heart was set upon it;--but she would go unreconciled.

Reconciled! Mrs. Mitchell knew perfectly well what reconciled meant, but she did not know just what Bessie meant by dinging on that word.

After fifteen minutes it appeared that Bessie was through with hints. She had begun to boldly propose, and then earnestly to plead, and finally tearfully to demand that the European trip be postponed two weeks.

"But my child! The trip is all planned. The passages are paid for, everything is ready," protested Mrs. Mitchell.

"But what's the good of being the slave of your plans? You don't have to do a thing you don't want to just because you've planned."

Bessie's lip was full and ripe when she pouted and her voice was freighted heavily with protest and appeal. How pretty her eyelids were when there was a tear quivering on the lashes like a ball of quicksilver. And how really enchanting she looked, as with hair a bit disheveled and color heightening, she went on to argue impetuously:

"What's the good of having a private car? What's the good of being a vice-president's wife and daughter, if you can't change your mind and go galloping out to California when you feel like it? Back to your own home! Back to your own people! Back where the scenery is the grandest in the world! Back where the sky is high enough that you don't have to shoulder the zenith out of the way in the morning so that you can stand up straight and take a full breath."

"Bessie Mitchell!" exclaimed her mother at this juncture, turning on her offspring accusingly. "What has got into you? Something has! You're up to something. What is it?"

Bessie brooked her mother's discerning glance and then dodged it, very much as if that lady had hurled at her the silver-backed hair brush she held in her hand.

"Why," she exclaimed with an air of injured innocence; "nothing has got into me. I was just taking one last look at the California papers, and it made me homesick."

She made a gesture toward a pile of papers that surrounded her chair. Mrs. Mitchell paused and cerebrated. Somewhere about two o'clock of the afternoon, Bessie had stepped to the telephone.