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.
+--------------------------------+ | 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.