Held to Answer/Chapter 36
Late in the afternoon of this day, which, it will be remembered, was Saturday, the minister had three callers in tolerably prompt succession. The first to appear was the Angel of the Chair, hailing the minister with a smile as if, instead of disgrace, he had achieved a triumph.
Hampstead's sad face lighted with sheer joy at her manner. It was such a relief that she had not come to commiserate him. His mood was extremely subtle. It irritated him to be pitied; it stung him to be doubted. He only wanted to be believed and to be encouraged by those who did believe him. This fragile blossom of a woman who, with all her gentleness and weakness, had yet in her breast the battling spirit of the martyrs of old, touched just the right note, as after an interval of sympathetic silence, she asked gently, with a voice full of the tenderest consideration, "Can you—can you see it to the end?"
"To the end?"
Hampstead lifted his brows gravely. "You mean—conviction?"
"Yes," she answered with that simple directness which showed that she was blinking no phase of the question. "Is the issue big enough to require such a sacrifice?"
"Oh, I think it is too improbable it could go to that length," Hampstead answered thoughtfully.
"But it might! Is it worth it?" Mrs. Burbeck persisted.
The calm sincerity of her manner poised the question like a lance aimed at his heart.
Hampstead hesitated. He really had not thought as far as this, any farther in fact than the hateful smudge of the thumb print and the picture in the Gallery of Rogues. But now, with her considerately calculating glances upon him, he did think that far, weighing all his hopes, his work, his position at the head of All People's, his priceless liberty, his fathomless love for Bessie, against the pledged word of a priest to a weak and penitent thief, whose soul at this moment trembled on the brink, suspended alone by the spectacle of the integrity of the confessor to his vow.
He weighed his duty to this thief now somewhat as five years before he had weighed his duty to Dick and Tayna against the supreme ambition of his life. The stakes then, on both sides, large as they had seemed, were infinitely smaller than the values at issue now. Looking back, John knew that then he had not only made the right decision, but the best decision for himself. He thought that he was humbling himself; but instead he had exalted himself.
But now the lines were not so sharply drawn. He was renouncing his very position and power to do his duty.
"Is it?"
Mrs. Burbeck half-looked and half-breathed this gentle reminder that she had asked her pastor a question.
"I believe," said the minister, revealing frankly the trend of his thought, "that the nearest duty is the greatest duty; that the man who spares himself for some great task will never come to a great task. I hold that a man ought to be true in any relation of life; and when the issue is drawn between one duty and another, he should try to determine calmly which is the highest duty and be true to that. I shall try to be that in this case—even to conviction!"
The sheen upon the face of the woman as she listened was as great as the glow upon the face of the man as he spoke.
"That is a very simple religion," Mrs. Burbeck concurred happily, "and it contains the larger fact of all religion. That is why Jesus went to the cross; because he was true. That was why the grave couldn't hold him; because he was true. You cannot bury truth, nor brand it, nor photograph it, nor put its thumb prints in a book, nor put stripes upon it."
Hampstead arose suddenly, enthusiasm kindling like the glow of inspiration upon his face. "That is why I still feel free—unscathed by what has happened," he exclaimed. "In a small and comparatively unimportant way it has been given to me to be true. Yes," he said, sitting down again and speaking very soberly, "I shall be true to the end—conviction, imprisonment even. Prison terms do not last forever; and every day spent there will be a witness to the fact that I am true." Exalted enthusiasm had passed on for a moment to a strained note that sounded like fanatical egotism.
As if to check this Mrs. Burbeck asked quietly but with a significance that was arresting:
"Are you strong enough, do you think?"
For a moment the minister was thoughtful and something like a shudder of apprehension swept over him.
"No," he replied humbly. "I begin to confess it to myself. The fear that I will weaken begins to come to me at times."
"That is good," the Angel of the Chair commented surprisingly, gathering her scarf about her shoulders as she spoke. "It is better to be too weak than to be too strong. But strength will be given you. That is what I came to say. I feel strangely weak myself, to-day, and must be going now."
"You should not have come," reproached the minister, as he helped Mori, the Japanese, to wheel her to the door; "and yet I am so glad you did come, for you have made me feel like some chivalrous champion of eternal right jousting in the lists against an impious Lucifer."
For this the Angel gave him back a smile over the top of her chair, and the minister watched her out of sight, reflecting that in the few days since this strain upon them all began she had failed perceptibly, and recalling that never before had he heard her allude to her weakness or make her physical condition the excuse for anything she did or did not do.
Within a quarter of an hour, so soon almost that it seemed as if he had been waiting for his wife to depart, Elder Burbeck was announced as the second caller at Doctor Hampstead's door.
For the five years of his eldership before the advent of Hampstead, Elder Burbeck had a record in the official board of never permitting any subject to be passed upon without a word from him, nor ever having allowed any question to be considered settled until it was settled according to the dictates of the thing he supposed to be his conscience.
At their first momentary clash on the day when Hampstead, the book agent, had broken open the church which Burbeck had nailed up, the older man thought he sensed in the younger the presence of a spiritual endowment greater than his own. To this the ruling Elder had bowed within himself. Externally, his manner was not changed, nor his leadership affected. To the congregation his submission to the final judgment of the minister was accounted as a virtue. Instead of weakening him, it strengthened his own standing with the membership.
While Burbeck had at times voiced his protests to the pastor at what he felt to be mistaken sentimentalism, and while the protests had been dismissed at times with an unchristian impatience, there was no one to whom the events and disclosures of this terrible week of headlines had been more surprising or more shocking than to the meticulous apostle of the status quo. Upon the Elder's metallic cast of mind each revelation impacted with the shattering effect of a solid shot. Through a thousand crevices thus created, suspicion, rumor, and the stream of truths, half-truths, and lies percolated to the bed of reason. His mind was without elasticity. The school of logic in which he had been trained reasoned coldly, by straight lines to rectangular conclusions. There was no place for allowances or adjustments. Once a stitch was dropped, there was no picking it up, and the blemish was in the garment.
So he reasoned now about Hampstead. The minister, having been weak once, must have also been wicked; being brittle, he must have been broken; frail, he must have been fractured. Having been wicked, broken, fractured, this explained his immense sympathy for and capacity to reach other frail, weak, brittle men and women; but it did not justify his pose as a pillar unscathed by fire. Loving All People's as he loved himself, his wife, his brilliant son,—with pride and self-complacence,—Burbeck felt hot resentment at the disgrace which the disclosures and the flood of scandal brought upon the church.
Searle himself had not believed many of the charges he hurled against Hampstead in his concluding speech. Elder Burbeck, who heard that speech from behind the rail, believed it all. Believing it, and believing in his mission to purge the church of this impostor, his zeal roused him to the point where he forgot to be logical. He believed the preacher was a thief, a liar and a hypocrite; and at the same time believed that he had told the truth upon the witness stand in his own defense. But this only made his sin more heinous. He was harboring some crook—some other man, weak, frail, brittle, wicked as himself. That man was necessarily a hypocrite, a whited sepulcher, posing before the community as a pillar of virtue. It would be an act of righteousness to find and expose that man. But who could it be? Somebody at that supper, of course. Now it might be Haggard, managing editor of The Sentinel; newspaper men were always suspicious characters, anyway; and surely Hampstead was under obligations to Haggard. Haggard, with all his publicity, had given the minister his first fame, and for years supported him upon his pedestal as a public idol. Yes, it probably was Haggard. But whoever it was, Burbeck undertook in his mind a second mission; to find and expose and brand the thief whom the minister was protecting.
With no more fiery fanaticism did the followers of Mohammed set out with the sword to purge the world of infidels than did Elder Burbeck purpose to purge All People's of its pastor and wring from the lips of Hampstead the secret of another's crime.
He entered the minister's study with a pompous dignity that was ominous. His face was as red, the bony protuberances on his boxlike and hairless skull were as prominent, as ever. His shaggy eyebrows lent their usual fierceness to the steel gleam of his blue eye. His close-cropped gray mustache clung perilously above lips that were straight and unsmiling.
"Good evening, Hampstead," he said, with a falling inflection.
This was the first time he had ever failed to say "Brother" Hampstead.
The minister had risen to greet his visitor, but subtly discerning in the first appearance of the man the mood in which he came, had not advanced, but stood with his desk between them, waiting.
"How are you, Burbeck!" the minister replied evenly. This was also the first time he had failed to address the Elder as "Brother." He was rather surprised at himself for omitting it now and took warning therefrom that his feelings were poised upon hair triggers.
The Elder saw in the minister's manner instant confirmation of his conclusions. The man had not the spirit of Christ. He met hard looks with hard looks. This was well. It made the Elder's task the easier. He could proceed at once to business.
In his hand he held a copy of the last edition of The Sentinel, and now he spread the paper across the desk before the clergyman's eye. The same old headline was there, "HELD TO ANSWER," but in the center of the page was a frame or box which contained a half-tone, a smear, and a short column of black-face type, both words and figures.
Hampstead saw at a glance that it was a printed copy of his Bertillon record. The smear was his thumb print; the picture was his picture, a half-tone of the bald, unretouched photograph of himself which had been made for the Gallery of Rogues, and across the bottom of the picture was a suggestive space, in which was printed: "No.?" The inference sought to be conveyed was clear. So great was the sense of pain which Hampstead felt that it was reflected in the glance he turned upon the Elder, a glance that came as near to an appeal for pity as any that had yet been in the clergyman's eye. But it met no response from the stern old Puritan.
"Be seated!" the minister said, a trifle sadly.
"I can say what I've got to say better if I stand," replied the Elder tersely. "Of course you'll resign!"
A look of intense surprise crossed the face of Hampstead.
"Resign what?" he asked, with raised brows.
"Why, the pulpit of All People's!"
The minister stared in amazement. Burbeck also stared, but in impatience, during an interval of silence in which Hampstead had full opportunity to weigh again the manner of his visitor and appraise its meaning.
"No," the young man replied within a minute, firmly but almost without inflection, "I shall not resign."
"Then," declared Burbeck aggressively, "the pulpit of All People's will be declared vacant." The Elder's chin was raised, and implacable resolution was photographed upon his features.
Again Hampstead paused, and weighed and sounded the really sterling character of this honest old man, whose pride was as inflexible and undeviating as the rule of his moral life. He saw him not as a fanatical vengeance, but as a father. He thought of Rollie, of the man's pride in his son, and of what a crushing blow it would be to him to know the plight in which that son really stood to-day. It brought to him the memory of something he had read somewhere: "The more you do for a man, the easier it is to love him and to forgive him." His feeling now was not of resentment, but of sympathy. He felt very sorry for the Elder and for the position in which he stood.
"Why, Brother Burbeck," he reproached softly, "All People's would not do that. You would not let them do that. When you have stopped to think, you would not let me resign even. If I am convicted by a jury, I should have to resign; but a jury would not convict, I think. Besides, many things can happen before that. My accuser, who knows I am innocent, might relent. It is even more conceivable that a condition might arise under which the thief could speak out, and I should be vindicated."
The upper lip of Burbeck curled till it showed a tooth and then straightened out again. The minister continued to speak:
"To resign now would amount to a confession of guilt. To force me to resign would be an act of treachery. I am guilty of nothing, proven guilty of nothing. I am assailed because of the whimsical caprice of a half-crazed woman. I am temporarily helpless before that assault because I am faithful to my vows as a minister of All People's, vows which I took kneeling, with your hand upon my head. In spirit I am unscathed, as your own observations must show you. If my reputation is wounded, it is a wound sustained in the course of my duty, and it is the part of All People's and every member of it to rally valiantly to my support. If I were not persuaded that they would do this, I should be gravely disheartened."
The manner in which Hampstead spoke was clearly disconcerting to the Elder. He felt again that consciousness of moral superiority before which he had bowed until bowing had become a habit. But now he had more information. Reason stiffened the back of prejudice. He knew that this assumption of the minister was a pose. His conviction was this time strong enough to avert its spell; and he answered unmoved, except to deeper feeling, with still harsher utterance:
"Then Hampstead, you will be disheartened! All People's shall never support you again. I have called a meeting of the official board for to-night. I shall present a resolution declaring the pulpit vacant. If they recommend it, it will be acted upon to-morrow morning by the congregation. If they do not receive it, I shall myself bring it before the congregation."
A look of deepening pain crossed the features of the minister.
"Not to-morrow," he pleaded, his voice choking strangely; "not to-morrow. I have been counting greatly on to-morrow. It has been a hard week. Man!" and Hampstead suddenly arose, "man, have you not heart enough to realize what this has been to me. I long passionately for the privilege of standing again in the pulpit of All People's. I want them to see how undaunted in spirit I am. I want them to judge for themselves the mark of conscious innocence upon my face. I want to feel myself once more under the gaze of a thousand pairs of eyes, every one of which I know is friendly. I want the whole of Oakland to know that my church is solidly behind me; that though in a Court of Justice I am 'Held to Answer', in the Court of the Lord and before the jury of my own church, I stand approved, with the very stigma of official shame recognized as a decoration of honor."
Hampstead had walked around the desk. He lifted his hand in appeal and sought to lay it upon the shoulder of the Elder to express the sympathy and the need of sympathy which he felt.
But Burbeck deliberately moved out of reach, replying sternly and perhaps vindictively:
"Hampstead! You do not appear to appreciate your position. You will never again stand in the pulpit of All People's. That is one sacrilege which you have committed for the last time. More than that, I hold it to be my duty to God to wring from your own lips the secret of the man whom you are shielding, and I shall find a way to do it! I—"
But the man's feeling had overmastered his speech. His body shook, his face was purple with the vehemence of anger. He lifted his hand as if to call down an imprecation when words had failed him, then abruptly turned, unwilling to trust himself to further speech, and made for the outside door. It closed behind him with a bang that left the key rattling in the lock.
Perhaps this noise and the sound of the Elder's clumping, heavy feet as they went down the steps, prevented the minister from hearing the chugging of a motor-car as it was brought to a stop in front.
Elder Burbeck, hurrying directly across the street to relieve his feelings by getting away quickly from what was now a house of detestation, almost ran into the huge black shape drawn up before the curb. He backed away and lunged around the corner of the car too quickly to notice the figure that emerged from it, or his emotions might have been still more hotly stirred.
Hampstead, sitting at his desk, trying to think calmly of this new danger which threatened him, and to reflect upon the irony of the circumstance by which the father of the man and the husband of the mother he was risking everything to protect, should become the self-appointed Nemesis to hurl him from his pulpit and wrest the secret from his lips, heard faintly the ring at the front door, heard the door close, and an exclamation from his sister in the hall, followed by silence which, while lasting perhaps no more than a few seconds, was quite long enough for him to forget, in the absorption of his own thoughts, that some one had entered the house. Hence he started with surprise when the inner door was opened, and Rose appeared, her white, strained features expressing both fright and hate. She closed the door carefully behind her and whispered hoarsely: "That—that woman is here!"