She did not reply at once. Then, so low that he scarcely caught the words, "I--I have been with--a friend."
Sidney Ames came puffing into the office at that moment. "h.e.l.lo!" he cried as he saw Carmen. "How does it happen you"re out riding with Willett? Saw him help you out of an auto just now."
"He brought me here," she answered softly.
"Where from?"
"Your father"s office."
Hitt and the lad stared at her with open mouths. She turned, and started for her own room, moving as if in a haze. As she neared the door she stumbled. Sidney sprang after her and caught her in his arms.
When she turned her face, they saw that her eyes were swimming in tears.
Hitt was on his feet instantly. "Look here!" he cried. "Something"s wrong! Leave us, Sidney. Let me talk with her alone."
The boy reluctantly obeyed. Hitt closed the door after him, then took the girl"s hand and led her back to his own chair. "Now, little one,"
he said gently, "tell me all about it."
For a moment she sat quiet. Then the tears began to flow; and then she leaned her head against him and sobbed--sobbed as does the stricken mother who hangs over the lifeless form of her babe--sobbed as does the strong man bereft of the friend of his bosom--sobbed as did the Man of Sorrow, when he held out his arms over the worldly city that cruelly rejected him. He was the channel for the divine; yet the wickedness of the human mind broke his great heart. Carmen was not far from him at that moment.
Hitt held her hand, and choked back the lump that filled his throat.
Then the weeping slowly ceased, and the girl looked up into his anxious face.
"It"s all past now," she said brokenly. "Jesus forgave them that killed him. And--"
"You have been with--Ames?" said Hitt in a low, quiet tone. "And he tried to kill you?"
"He--he knew not what he was doing. Evil used him, because as yet he has no spiritual understanding. But--G.o.d is life! There is--no--death!" Her voice faded away in a whisper.
"Well, little girl, I am waiting for the whole story. What happened?"
Carmen got to her feet. "Nothing happened, Mr. Hitt--nothing. It didn"t happen--it wasn"t real. I--I seemed to manifest weakness--and I fell--to the floor--but I didn"t lose consciousness. And just then Mr.
Willett came in--and Mr. Ames sent me here with him."
"But what had Ames said to you, Carmen?" persisted Hitt, his face dark with anger.
The girl smiled feebly. "I see Mr. Ames only as--as G.o.d"s child," she murmured. "Evil is not real, and it doesn"t happen. Now I want to work--work as I never did before! I must! _I must!_"
"Will you not tell me more about it?" he asked, for he knew now that a deadly thrust had been made at the girl"s life.
She brushed the tears away from her eyes. "It didn"t happen," was her reply. "Good is all that is. G.o.d is life. There is _no_ death!"
A suspicion flashed into Hitt"s mind, kindled by the girl"s insistence upon the nothingness of death. "Carmen," he asked, "did he tell you that--some one had died?"
She came to him and laid her head against him. Her hands stole into his. "Don"t! Please, Mr. Hitt! We must never speak of this again!
Promise me! I shall overcome it, for G.o.d is with me. Promise that no one but us shall know! Make Sidney promise. It--it is--for me."
The man"s eyes grew moist, and his throat filled. He drew the girl to him and kissed her forehead. "It shall be as you wish, little one," he said in a choking voice.
"Now set me to work!" she cried wildly. "Anything! This is another opportunity to--to prove G.o.d! I must prove Him! I must--right here!"
He turned to his desk with a heavy heart. "There is work to be done now," he said. "I wonder--"
She took the telegram from his hands and scanned it. At once she became calm, her own sorrow swallowed up in selfless love. "Oh, they have gone out at Avon! Those mothers and children--they need me! Mr.
Hitt, I must go there at once!"
"I thought so," he replied, swallowing hard. "I knew what you would do. But you are in higher hands than mine, Carmen. Go home now, and get ready. You can go down in the morning. And we, Sidney and I, will say nothing of--of your visit to his father."
That night Hitt called up the Beaubien and asked if he and Haynerd might come and talk with her after the paper had gone to press, and requesting that she notify Carmen and Father Waite. A few hours later the little group met quietly in the humble cottage. Miss Wall and Sidney were with them. And to them all those first dark hours of morning, when as yet the symbol of G.o.d"s omnipresence hung far below the horizon, seemed prescient with a knowledge of evil"s further claims to the lives and fortunes of men.
"I have asked you here," Hitt gravely announced when they were a.s.sembled, "to consider a matter which touches us all--how deeply, G.o.d alone knows. At ten o"clock to-night I received this message." He opened the paper which he held in his hand and read:
""Property of Hitt oil company, including derricks, pump houses, storage tanks, destroyed by fire. Dynamite in pump houses exploded, causing wells to cave and choke. Loss complete. Wire instructions.""
The news burst over them like the cracking of a bomb. Haynerd, who, like the others, had been kept in ignorance of the message until now, started from his chair with a loud exclamation, then sank back limp.
Carmen"s face went white. Evil seemed to have chosen that day with canny shrewdness to overwhelm her with its quick sallies from out the darkness of the carnal mind.
Hitt broke the tense silence. "I see in this," he said slowly, "the culmination of a long series of efforts to ruin the Express. That my oil property was deliberately wrecked, I have not the slightest doubt.
Nor can I doubt by whose hand."
"Whose?" demanded Haynerd, having again found his voice. "Ames"s?"
Hitt replied indirectly. "The Express has stood before the world as a paper unique and apart. And because of its high ideals, the forces of evil singled it out at the beginning for their murderous a.s.saults.
That the press of this country is very generally muzzled, stifled, bought and paid for, I have good reason now to know. My constant brushes with the liquor interests, with low politicians, judges, senators, and dive-keepers, have not been revealed even to you. Could you know the pressure which the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, has tried to exert upon us, you would scarce credit me with veracity.
But the Express has stood out firm against feudalism, mediaevalism, and entrenched ecclesiasticism. It has fearlessly opposed the legalizing of drugging. It has fought the debauching of a nation"s manhood by the legalized sale of a deadly poison, alcohol. And it has fought without quarter the pernicious activity of morally stunted brewers and distillers, whose h.e.l.lish motto is, "Make the boys drink!"
It has fought the money octopus, and again and again has sounded to the world the peril which money-drunken criminals like Ames and his clique const.i.tute. And for that we must now wear the crown of martyrdom!"
Silence, dismal and empty, lay over the little room for a long time.
Then Hitt resumed. "The Express has not been self-supporting. Its growth has been steady, but it has depended for its deficit upon the revenue from my oil property. And so have we all. Ames ruined Madam Beaubien financially, as well as Miss Wall. He cleaned you out, Ned.
And now, knowing that we all depended upon my oil wells, he has, I doubt not, completely removed that source of income."
"But," exclaimed Haynerd, "your property was insured, wasn"t it?"
"Yes," replied Hitt, with a feeble attempt at a smile. "But with the proviso that dynamite should not be kept on the premises. You will note that dynamite wrecked the wells. That doubtless renders my policies void. But, even in case I should have a fighting chance with the insurance companies, don"t you think that they will be advised that I purposely set fire to the wells, in order to collect the insurance? I most certainly do. And I shall find myself with a big lawsuit on my hands, and with no funds to conduct the fight. Ames"s work, you know, is always thorough, and the Express is already facing his suit for libel."
"But you told us you were going to mortgage your property," said Miss Wall.
"I stood ready to, should the Express require it. But, with its recent little boom, our paper did not seem to need that as yet," he returned.
"Good G.o.d!" cried Haynerd. "We"re done for!"
"Yes, Ned, G.o.d _is_ good!" It was Carmen who spoke.
Hitt turned quickly to the girl. "Can you say that, after all you have endured, Carmen?"
He looked at her for a moment, lost in wonder. "An outcast babe," he murmured, "left on the banks of a great river far, far away; reared without knowledge of father or mother, and amid perils that hourly threatened to crush her; torn from her beloved ones and thrust out into an unknown and unsympathetic world; used as a stepping-stone to advance the low social ambitions of worldly women; blackened by the foulest slander, and ejected as an outcast by those who had fawned at her feet; still going about with her beautiful message of love, even though knowing that her childhood home is enveloped in the flames of war, and her dear ones scattered, perhaps lost; spurned from the door of the rich man whom she sought to save; carrying with her always the knowledge that the one upon whom her affections had centered had a son in distant Cartagena, and yet herself contributing to the support of the little lad; and now, this morning--" He stopped, for he remembered his promise.