Held to Answer/Chapter 6
There was high commotion in a big front office in the top floor of a tall, gray building that stood in the days before the fire on the corner of Kearney and Market streets in the city of San Francisco. This gray structure housed the general offices of the San Francisco and El Paso Railroad Company, and that big front office contained the desk of the Freight Traffic Manager. Before this desk sat a man with a domed brow and the beak of an eagle, hair gray, eyes piercing, complexion colorless, and a mouth that closed so tightly it was discernible only as a crescent-shaped pucker above his spike-like chin. His mouth at the moment was not a pucker; it was a geyser. The name of this man was William N. Scofield, and he was obviously in a rage. He had grown up with the S. F. & E. P., his brain expanding as it expanded, his power rising as it had risen. Long ago, when the one lone clerk in its little rate department, he had made with his own hands the first of those yellow commodity tariffs that John Hampstead had scorned with objurgations. Now Scofield held in the hand which trembled with his anger the first of that upstart's own contributions to the science of tariff making—not yellow, but white, in token of the clarity it was meant to introduce.
"How did they make it? this—this botch!" he exploded, repeating his interrogation with other embellishing phrases not properly reproducible and then slamming the offending white sheets down hard upon his desk,—much harder than John had slammed the yellow ones,—this impudent, white-livered thing that was an assault upon the customs he, Scofield, had instituted and time itself had honored!
"Telegram!" he barked to his stenographer. "Robert Mitchell, Los Angeles. Insist immediate withdrawal your entire line of commodity tariffs, series J. Basis carried in our own tariffs is only one we will recognize."
Mitchell answered:
"Decline to withdraw; our tariffs issued on actual basis on which charges are assessed."
The fight was on.
Arming himself cap-a-pie with tariffs, amendments, letters, and memoranda, Mitchell two days later followed his telegram to San Francisco. Most of his resources, however, were packed behind the wide, blond brow of John Hampstead, who accompanied his chief and was more eager for the fray than Mitchell. The battle began on Monday morning about ten of the clock, and was not finished with the day. The field of action was a room of this same gray building, where Howison, General Freight Agent of the S. F. & E. P., sat at the end of a long table, flanked right and left by assistant general freight agents, rate clerks, and even general and district freight agents called in from the field, all to convince Robert Mitchell and his lone rate clerk sitting at the other end of the table that their new tariff was a hodgepodge, without practical basis or the show of reason to support it. Scofield himself did not take a seat in the battle line, but looked in occasionally, either to walk about nervously or sit just back of Howison's shoulder.
On the afternoon of the second day, the enemy Traffic Manager appeared to watch Hampstead intently for half an hour. Again and again the keen old fighter saw his allied forces attack, but invariably this self-confident, smiling young man with a ready citation, the upflashing of a yellow "special", the digging out of a letter or a telegram from his file, or occasionally even of an old freight bill issued by the S. F. & E. P. showing exactly what rate had been assessed, triumphantly repelled the assaults, until reverses began to be the order of the day.
"It strikes me," Scofield remarked sarcastically, "that this young man has got us all pretty well buffaloed. The trouble is, Howison," he glowered, "that your Tariff Department needs cleaning out. You've got a lot of old mush heads in there."
With this warning shot into his own ranks, Scofield arose, went discontentedly out, and never once came back. Keener than any of his staff, he had already discerned that defeat was advancing down the road.
But the battle of the tariffs raged on throughout the week, and it was not until late on Saturday afternoon that John, standing in one room of the suite in the Palace Hotel charged to the name of Robert Mitchell, flung the pile of papers from his arms into the bottom of a suitcase with a swish and solid thud of satisfaction. Victory from first to last had perched upon his tawny head. He had met good men and beaten them; and he had a right to the wave of exultation that surged for a moment dizzily through his brain.
Mr. Mitchell, too, was feeling exultant and proud beyond words, as he stood in the door of John's room. His hands were deep in his pockets; his large black derby hat was pushed far back from his bulging brow. On his great landscape of a countenance was an oddly significant expression.
"Well, Jack," he began, after an interval of silence, "what about the stage?"
John started like a man surprised in a guilty act, although he had known for months that this was a question Mr. Mitchell might ask at any moment; but the decision involved seemed now so big that from day to day he had hoped the inevitable might be postponed.
"I shall be naming a new chief clerk in a couple of weeks, now that Heitmuller is to become General Agent," Mr. Mitchell went on half-musingly, and as if to forestall a hasty reply to the question he had asked. "The new man will be in line to be appointed Assistant General Freight Agent very soon, on account of the consolidations."
For a moment John saw himself as Chief Clerk, sitting in the big swivel chair at the high, roll-top desk, with all the strings of the business he knew so well how to pull lying on the table before him; with clerks, stenographers, men from other departments and that important part of the shipping public which carried its business to the general freight office, all running to him.
And from there it was only a short, easy step to the position of Assistant General Freight Agent.
Only the man who has toiled far down in the ranks of a railroad organization doing routine work at the same old desk in the same old way for half a score of years can know on what a dizzy height sits the Chief Clerk, or how far beyond that swings the lofty title of Assistant General Freight Agent.
"Your advancement would be very rapid," suggested Mr. Mitchell, flicking his flies skilfully upon the whirling eddies of the young man's thought.
John had achieved enough and glimpsed enough to see that Mitchell was right. Advancement would be rapid. Mitchell would soon go up the line himself; he could follow him. General Freight Agent, Assistant Traffic Manager, Traffic Manager, Vice-president in charge of traffic—President! with twelve thousand miles of shining steel flowing from his hand, which he might swing and whirl and crack like a whip! The prospect was dazzling in the extreme, and yet it was only for a moment that the picture kindled. In the next it was dead and sparkless as burned-out fireworks.
"You have a strong vein of traffic in your blood," the General Freight Agent began adroitly, but John broke in upon him.
"Mr. Mitchell," he said, and his utterance was grave, "I am sorry to disappoint you, but it comes too late. A year ago such a hint would have thrown me into ecstasies. To-day it leaves me cold. I have had another vision."
The face of Mitchell shaded from seriousness almost to sadness, but he was too wise to increase by argument an ardor about which, to the railroad man, there was something not easy to be understood, something, indeed, almost fanatical. Instead Mitchell asked with sober, interested friendliness:
"What is your plan, John?"
"To resign July first," John answered, for the first time definitely crossing the bridge, "to come to San Francisco and seek an engagement with some of the stock companies playing permanently here, even though I begin the search for an opening without money enough to last more than a week or two."
"Without money!" exclaimed Mr. Mitchell, in surprise.
"Yes," confessed Hampstead, flushing a little. "My salary was not very munificent, you know, and I have usually contrived to get rid of it, frequently before I got the pay check in my hands."
Mr. Mitchell's small, prudent eyes looked disfavor at a spendthrift.
"However," he suggested, "you have only yourself to think of."
"That's another point against me," confessed Hampstead. "I have some one else to look out for. My brother-in-law is an artist, you know, and he has not been very successful yet, so that I hold myself ready to help with my sister and the children if it should ever become necessary."
"That's a handicap," declared Mitchell flatly.
"I won't admit it," said John loyally. "You don't know those children. Tayna's the girl, nearly twelve now, a beauty if her nose is pugged. Such hair and eyes, and such a heart! Dick's the boy, past ten. He's had asthma always, and is about a thousand years old, some ways. But they—"
Hampstead gulped queerly.
"Those two children," he plunged on, "are dearer to me than anything in the whole wide world. You know," and his tone became still more confidential, while his eyes grew moist, "it would only be something that happened to them that would keep me from going on with my stage career."
Mitchell's respect for John was changing oddly to a fatherly feeling. He felt that he was getting acquainted with his clerk for the first time. He resolved that he would not tempt the boy, and that if it became necessary, he would help him. However, before he could express this resolve, if he had intended to express it, the telephone rang.
Hampstead answered it, stammered, faltered, replied: "I will see, sir, and call you in five minutes," hung up the 'phone and turned to confront Mitchell, with a look almost of fright upon his face.
"It's William N. Scofield," he exclaimed. "He wants me to take dinner with him at his club to-night."
A disbelieving smile appeared for a moment on the wide lips of Mitchell; then understanding broke, and his smile was swallowed up in a hearty laugh.
"He wants to offer you a position," Mitchell said, when his exultant cachinnations had ceased. "Look out that he doesn't win you. Scofield is a very persuasive man. He nearly got me once. Besides, he has more to offer you than I have."
Hampstead pressed his hand to his brow. Under his tawny thatch ideas were in a whirl.
"What shall I do?" he asked rather helplessly.
"Stay over," commanded Mitchell unhesitatingly. "Ring up and tell him you'll be there."
"But there's no use, anyway," replied John suddenly, getting back to the main point. "My mind's made up."
"No man's mind is made up when he's going to take dinner on the proposition with William N. Scofield," answered Mitchell oracularly.
"And you?" asked Hampstead, suddenly aware how good a man at heart was Robert Mitchell, and quite unaware that he had seized that gentleman's pudgy right hand and was wringing it in a manner most embarrassing to Mitchell himself. "You—"
But the telephone was tingling impatiently.
"Mr. Scofield wants to know," began a voice.
"Yes, yes, I'll be happy to," interrupted John, not knowing just what tone or form one should take in expressing the necessary amenities to the secretary of a great man.
"Very well. His car will call for you at six-thirty," responded the voice.
But before John could pick up the thread of his unfinished sentence to Mr. Mitchell, a knock sounded at the door, at first soft and cushioned, as if from a gloved hand, then louder and more determined, and repeated with quick impatience.
"Come in," called Mitchell.
The knob turned, and the door swung wide, leaving the panel of white to frame the picture of a woman. She was young, of medium height and appealing roundness, clad from head to foot in a traveling dress of dark green, with a small hat of a shade to match, the chief adornment of which was a red hawk's feather slanting backward at a jaunty angle. A veil enveloped both hat brim and face but was not thick enough to dim the sparkle of bright eyes or the pink flush of dimpled cheeks, much less to conceal two rows of gleaming teeth from between which, after a moment's pause for sensation, burst a ringing cadence of laughter.
"Miss Bessie!" exclaimed John excitedly.
"The very first guess!" declared that young lady, advancing and yielding the doorframe to another figure which filled it so much more completely as to sufficiently explain a more deliberate arrival.
"Mollie!" ejaculated Mitchell, who by this time had turned toward the door. "What in thunder?"
But the General Freight Agent's lines of communication were just then temporarily disconnected by an assault upon his features conducted by Miss Bessie in person. During this interval, Mrs. Mitchell stood placidly surveying the room, and as she took in its air of preparation for immediate departure, a tantalizing smile spread itself on her expansive features.
"Is this an accident or a calamity?" demanded Mitchell, playfully thrusting Bessie aside and advancing to greet his wife.
"Both!" declared that lady, submitting her lips with more of formality than enthusiasm, after which, feeling that sufficient time had elapsed to make an explanation of her sudden appearance not undignified, she proceeded:
"Just one of my whims, Bob! Next week was the spring vacation; no school, and the poor child was pale from overstudy and so anxious about her examinations (Bessie shot a look at Hampstead), that I just made up my mind I'd bring her up here and let her get a good bite of fog and a breath from the Golden Gate."
"Fine idea!" declared Mitchell. "Fine! Now that you've had it," he chuckled, "we'll start home. I'm leaving at eight."
"You are not!" proclaimed Mrs. Mitchell flatly. "You will stay right here for at least three days and do nothing but devote yourself to your child. And to her mother!" she subjoined, as if that were an afterthought; all with a toss of her chin, which, by way of emphasis, held its advanced position for a moment after the speech was done.
"And the business of the company?" Mitchell suggested, with a solicitous air.
"It can wait on me," averred Mrs. Mitchell decisively, taking a turn up and down the room and surveying once more the signs of confusion and of hasty packing. "Many's the time I've waited on it. You can stay, too, John," she said, turning to Hampstead. "I want you to take Bessie to a lot of places Robert and I have been and won't care to visit this time."
"Robert!" and while her eyes turned toward the windows, two of which opened on a view of Market Street, the new commander began a redisposition of forces, "I rather like this suite. Bessie and I will take the corner room. You can take this room and Mr. Hampstead can move across the hall, or anywhere else they can put him."
As an act of possession, Mrs. Mitchell walked to the dresser, took off her hat, stabbed the two pins into it emphatically, and tossed it upon the bed, where it bloomed like a flower-garden in the midst of a desert of papers while she, still standing before the mirror, bestowed a few comfortable pats upon her hair.
"John," Mitchell said jovially, "I know orders from headquarters when I get 'em. You were going to stay over, anyway; but use your own judgment about obeying the instructions you have just received."
"Never had such agreeable instructions in my life," declared Hampstead, turning to Mrs. Mitchell with an elaborately stagy bow, and the natural quotation from Hamlet which leaped to his lips:
{{" '}}I shall in all my best obey you, madam.{{' "}}
"See that you do," said that lady, not half liking the bow and shooting a glance at Hampstead less cordial than austere. "And by the way," she added, "see that you don't let that stage nonsense carry you much further, young man," with which remark Mrs. Mitchell turned abruptly and gave Hampstead a most complete view of a broad and uncompromising back.
In Mrs. Mitchell's mind a man had much better be a section hand on the Great Southwestern than a fixed star on the drama's milky way.
"By the way, mother," remarked Mr. Mitchell, with the air of one who makes an important revelation, "John is just going out to dine with William N. Scofield."
Mrs. Mitchell turned quickly, and her dark eyes shot a meaningful glance at her husband, while the line of her lower lip first grew full and then protruded. A squeeze of that lip at the moment, Hampstead reflected, would extract something at least as sour as very sour lemon juice.
"Scofield is after him," bragged Mitchell.
"Well, see that he doesn't get him," his wife commanded sternly, and then shifting her somber glance until it rested on John with a look that was near to menace, inquired acridly:
"Young man, you wouldn't be disloyal? You wouldn't sell yourself?" In the second interrogatory her voice had passed from acridity to bitterness, while the eyes bored implacably, till Hampstead at first wriggled, then grew resentful and replied crisply, standing very straight:
"No, Mrs. Mitchell, I would not sell myself!"
"That's right," exclaimed Bessie, stepping impulsively toward John's side. "Do not let her browbeat you. I am sorry to say, Mr. Hampstead, that mother is inclined to be somewhat dictatorial. You see what she does to poor papa!"
"And you see what you do to poor me," exclaimed that worthy lady, turning on her daughter with surprise and injury in her glance and tone,—"dragging me almost out of bed last night to make this foolish trip up here with you. Next week, of all weeks, too, when I wanted to do so many other things."
"Ho! ho!" broke in Mitchell, "so that's the way of it. This trip up here is a scheme of yours," and he turned accusingly upon his daughter, but Bessie smiled and curtseyed, entirely unabashed. "Well, then, I don't guess we'll stay," teased Mitchell. "And I don't suppose you knew a thing about Hampstead's being here. That was all an accident."
"It was not," flashed Bessie. "I did. I haven't seen dear old John for a year. I could go in and have delightful tête-à-têtes with him when he was a stenographer, but out in the Rate Department there are forty prying eyes and men with ears as long as jack-rabbits. He hasn't taken me to a circus or anything for nobody knows how long. You shall give him money for theater tickets, for dinners, for auto rides, for everything nice for three whole days."
Bessie was standing directly in front of her father, her eyes looking up into his, and her two hands patting his generous jowls, as her speech was concluded.
John listened rapturously. This was the old Bessie talking. She had entered the room looking a year older, a year prettier since that day when he wrote the Phroso invitations for her, and had taken on so easily the lacquer and dignity of dresses and of years that he was beginning to feel in awe of her. This speech was a great relief.
Besides, in the whirl of the hour before she came, he had found himself strangely wanting to take counsel with Bessie. The Mitchells had made of him for all these years a convenient caretaker of their daughter. Bessie had made of him a playfellow with whom she took the same liberties as with any other of her father's possessions. This attitude on her part had created the only atmosphere in which Hampstead could have been at ease with her. It had permitted his soul to bask when she was by, but it had done no more. But now, he somehow wanted to confide in Bessie,—not to take her advice for he wasn't going to take anybody's advice; all advice was against him,—but to tell her what he was going to do, because he believed she would listen appreciatingly, if not sympathetically. He felt he needed at least the added support of a neutral mind. He had rejected Mr. Mitchell's proposal, but the glitter of it flashed occasionally. And now he was going to face the resourceful, the ingratiating, the dominating William N. Scofield, and he felt like a man who goes alone to meet his temptation on the mountain top.