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.