The Mayor of Warwick Part 28

"No, Tom," she said, shrinking back. "I will not go with you--I am not your wife."

Her tone was final, but his pa.s.sion, newly awakened, was terrible in its imperious demands. He could scarcely carry her off by force, and yet for one moment such seemed to be his intention. He took a step toward her, his hand raised as if to strike her down, then stopped.

"We 'll see about that," he retorted, with a strange, short laugh. He would have said more and disclosed his further intention by a final threat, but another fit of coughing caught at his throat, and before he could find his voice again she was well on her way toward the house, fleeing between the trees like a frightened bird. He stood still until the door closed behind her.

"She must be a devil," he said aloud. "She stirs up the devil in me.

She makes me bad."

Could any one have seen the malign record which his experience with her had traced upon his face, he would have been forced to admit the justice of this accusation. He walked slowly away, striving to reckon with his tempestuous emotions, but he could not pa.s.s beyond the limit of the grounds.

"I was going away quietly enough," he muttered, "when she came chasing after me. Why did n't she let me go, or else come with me?"

He stopped short, as a sudden thought flashed upon him. Then he looked up at the windows of Lena's room. They were dark; but the windows of Felicity's room, immediately below, now shone with a saffron glow behind their curtains. He regarded them only to reflect how he hated the woman they concealed from his view, and then wondered whether Lena were asleep. He took out his watch and held it up to the moon. As he did so, he saw that the hands pointed at midnight, and simultaneously the bell from the First Church began to ring the hour.

If Lena were still awake, she might possibly be lingering in the kitchen, perhaps with some new lover. She had a right to do so, but the very thought filled him with a fury of jealousy. It would be an easy matter, he reflected, to tiptoe down the driveway behind the trees, to gain the shadow of the house, and to peep into one of the kitchen windows. Of course they were dark, but he wished to be a.s.sured of it. Let him once discover that the house was closed for the night, and he would be content.

As he began to put his plan into execution, gliding stealthily from tree to tree and pausing to look and listen from the shelter of each shadow, he was acutely aware of the fact that it was the mayor of Warwick who was doing this thing. The realisation could not stay his progress or change his purpose. After all, she would probably not be there; and if the bishop's coachman or some servant should come out and find him, his explanation was ready. The driveway pa.s.sed by the bishop's stable and on through the square to the street beyond. He would say that he was making a short cut, and the explanation would be plausible. From time to time he stifled a cough with difficulty, and it was this difficulty alone that almost persuaded him to turn back.

It was by no strange coincidence or accident that Lena remained reading by the lamp in the large, deserted kitchen. She might have been seen there, as Emmet saw her now, almost every evening after the others had gone to bed, poring over some paper-covered novel that depicted a life of romance quite different from the dull monotony of her own days. But though she herself was wide awake with the interest of the story, her good angel had gone to sleep, and left her there, unwarned, to face her peril alone.

Emmet ventured to thrust his head for a moment into the bar of light that cut the deep shadow of the house, and saw that his most extravagant hopes were fulfilled. He saw also that she was prettily dressed, with a red velvet ribbon about her throat, her hair showing a careful and coquettish arrangement. He was convinced that she had dressed herself thus for a lover, and he meant to call her to account.

Little by little he crept closer, until he stood beside the window, his back against the wall. He had only to turn and lean forward and look her in the face. His eyes searched the wide stretches of the lawn in vain for a sign of life. The stable was dark, the house was silent.

Only he and Lena were awake. No thought of pity for her softened his heart at that moment. He only chafed inwardly at a memory of his stupid and mistaken loyalty to Felicity.

Lena Harpster was one of those timid natures that are paralysed by sudden surprise or fear. Had it not been so, the apparition of his face against the pane, his intense and hungry gaze, would have caused her to wake the house with a scream. But she sat staring at him with her wide grey eyes, like one turned to stone, until she saw that her first impression of a burglar was false, and then that her lover was beckoning her to come.

She had never resisted his will, and she did not do so now. When she had comprehended who it was, and his meaning, she glanced behind her with instinctive caution; she rose from her chair and tiptoed to the farther door, where she looked and listened until satisfied. Then she returned, placed her hands on the table, and leaned over the lamp.

Emmet saw the light of the flame illumine the pink curve of her lips as she formed them for a breath. He saw the upward shadow of her features against the golden mist of her hair, and then the vision was swallowed up in darkness. A moment later the outside door was softly opened, and as softly closed.

CHAPTER XIX

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

When the bishop and his daughter met at the breakfast-table the next morning, the air was full of unpleasant possibilities. She came in by way of the kitchen with the news that Lena had gone home on a plea of illness, and though he was concerned for the girl, the necessity of breaking in a new maid to his ways added to his evident irritation of mind.

There was none of the bright-eyed vitality and serene spiritual tone that follows nights free from care. Felicity observed that her father omitted his customary inquiries in regard to her rest, that the morning paper, the usual basis of comment at breakfast, lay unopened beside his plate, and guessed correctly that the explanation she must make could no longer be postponed. His bewilderment and suspicions had reached a point that would drive him to take the initiative, and he was only waiting for a favourable opening.

The crafty expression of his eyes filled her with irritation and resentment. How well she knew the trend of his thoughts! Others might find him inscrutable, but she knew him through and through. In their long and subtle struggle concerning the disposition of her property, in the question whether she would or would not help him to build up the college, she had always been sustained by a peculiar loyalty to her mother, who had pa.s.sed her fortune on to her daughter unimpaired. This was a practical declaration of her own will in the matter, and Felicity accepted it as she might have accepted a sacred trust. She barely remembered her mother as a shadowy and benign being floating through the great rooms of the house. During her childhood, a certain angel in one of the windows of St. George's Church had somehow been confused in her mind with that figure, and had inspired her with vague awe. These dim memories and childish fancies had crystallised in later years into an appreciation of the common interests that would doubtless have been theirs, had her mother lived.

No hint of this hidden psychological drama had ever reached the bishop's ken. His daughter's att.i.tude seemed her mother's obstinacy and worldliness reincarnated, and he was distressed also by more dangerous elements, by inexplicable sympathies, antipathies, and rebellions, until the whole fabric of his careful plans seemed destined to fall in ruins.

As the sunlight came stealing in across the table, striking prismatic colours from the gla.s.sware, he shaded his eyes with his hand and sharply ordered the maid to draw the curtain.

"What is the matter with you this morning, father?" Felicity asked severely. "Are you ill?"

The corners of her mobile lips were curled slightly upward, with just a suggestion of scorn. Unhappiness is no great promoter of the courtesies of life, and if she was conscious of wrong-doing, she was far from being on the defensive.

"Yes," he answered, "I am ill. I am sick at heart."

"If you will drink coffee, and keep on smoking those strong cigars"--

He eyed her so intently over the rim of his shaking cup that she left the sentence uncompleted. In spite of her tragic mood, his glare of resentment aroused within her an inclination to laugh.

"You see how your nerves are affected," she finished.

It was not the first time this subject had come up between them, but hitherto he had denied with urbane mendacity the ill results of his favourite indulgences. Now his control was gone.

"They are not affected," he retorted, while the rattling of the cup against the saucer disproved his declaration. It was with difficulty that he could extricate his fingers from the handle without breaking the delicate ware. "Or if they are," he went on, "you misstate the cause, deliberately, as I believe."

She opened her eyes incredulously, and pus.h.i.+ng back his chair, he rose petulantly to his feet.

"Felicity, I am disappointed in you--more than disappointed--wounded--cut to the heart--scandalised!"

He turned away, then, coming back, he seized the morning paper, and with a parting glance of reproach went into his study and closed the door.

His words, his manner of retreat, were a challenge to follow which she meant to accept. A few moments later, she flung back the door of her father's study and confronted him, intensely angry, and strikingly beautiful in her anger.

"Scandalised!" she echoed, as if no time had elapsed since he uttered the word. "What do you mean by that?"

The apparition was not unexpected, but the bishop, glancing over the top of his paper, managed to convey his surprise with the subtlety of which he was master. Chagrined by his conduct at the table, he had fortified himself in the interim against a renewal of the struggle.

"I used the word advisedly," he replied with dignity. "You might come in and close the door. It is just as well, perhaps, not to take the servants into our confidence."

She accepted the suggestion and sat confronting him expectantly, her anger ebbing away imperceptibly in the pause until only the underlying dread remained.

"Who was the man that came in with you last night?" he asked with authority. "You went out about half-past nine o'clock to Mrs. Parr's, as I supposed, and returned at midnight, not alone. I might have thought that Mr. Parr had seen you home, but I looked from my window, and though I could n't hear what you said--but never mind that. You will do me the justice to admit that I have never pried into your affairs or actions.

Until recently such a question as I have now thought it my duty to ask would never have occurred to me."

"It was Mayor Emmet," she answered in a thin voice. She was panic-stricken, and her heart beat to suffocation.

"Emmet!" he echoed.

"Who did you think it was?" she asked, with a wan smile.

"Never mind--never mind," he returned impatiently. "Ah, I begin to see more clearly. What was it you said he wanted with you here the other morning? Some trivial thing--I can't remember. Now I want to know at once--I have a right to know--whether there is anything between you and that man. It is n't possible--I am ashamed to ask--but your face betrays you. You are n't--Felicity--you can't imagine yourself in love with such a fellow?"

"Perhaps it would be better if I could," she answered desperately, "but I can't. Father, you must control yourself. I used to think myself in love with him, and--and--and I was very foolish"--

"How foolish?" His face had grown white, and he steadied his hands on the arms of his chair. "Don't torture me, Felicity. Tell me the worst at once."

"I married him."

At the words his paleness became ashen, and the rigidity of his features was so ghastly that, forgetting everything else in her alarm, she ran to his a.s.sistance. He waved her away angrily.

"No--I am not going to faint--and I don't want anything to drink."