The Mayor of Warwick Part 29

She resumed her chair obediently, and waited for him to ask more questions. Apparently he was unwilling or unable to do so, and the silence seemed interminable, though in reality it lasted but a few minutes. During that short time the bishop's thoughts ranged with characteristic rapidity over every aspect of the situation. Emmet as a son-in-law! First of all, the fact that he was the mayor of Warwick, a fact which the bishop had hitherto belittled, now presented itself as a mitigating circ.u.mstance. Then the thought that he was a Catholic followed immediately, to suggest complications and humiliations which the bishop's large experience enabled him to see with fatal distinctness.

What was the man's paltry office compared with this stupendous fact?

Nothing--a mere accident--a pa.s.sing honour that would probably be plucked from him two years hence, leaving him--what? Tom Emmet, ex-professional baseball player and streetcar conductor, out of a job, no longer mayor, but always a Catholic, married to the richest woman in Warwick, and that woman his daughter, the daughter of Bishop Wycliffe!

It was inevitable that he should look at the situation from the point of view of the bishop rather than from that of the father simply. Had she been a son who had "gone over to Rome" after taking Anglican orders, the bishop's professional humiliation would not have been as great as that which now stared him in the face. It would have been a keen disappointment indeed, but lightened by the prospect of his son's preferment in an ancient communion. There would still have been the possibility of a career for the boy, a career which his father could watch, or at least antic.i.p.ate, with emotions of pride; for the bishop was too purely an ecclesiastic to under-estimate professional success in the Church of Rome. The career of a Cardinal Newman, for example, was one that challenged his respect, however much he regretted the loss of such talents to the Anglican faith, however forcibly he might characterise the convert's action as apostasy.

But how different the actual case, how infinitely worse! Felicity's fortune was lost indeed to the great cause for which he had laboured a lifetime. Could he not imagine the delicately malicious triumph of the Catholic bishop, by whose side he had so recently sat on equal terms?

Did he not know how the man would begin to scheme for the fortune of Emmet's wife from the very day the marriage was published, how he would strive to reach Felicity through her husband, flattering, threatening, moving heaven and earth to get the money for his parochial schools, his nunneries, his cathedral? Only one as intensely partisan as the bishop, and with his reasons for partisans.h.i.+p, could divine his sensations as he viewed the picture thus presented to his mind--the troops of Irish or Italian children screaming in their dusty playground, watched by the monkish forms of their teachers. And the other possibility had been St.

George's Hall, the miniature Oxford of America!

But even if the money should not go in such a direction through the hands of Felicity,--and the bishop realised that a husband would not be likely to succeed where a father had failed,--it would ultimately reach the hands of her children. Baffled by the parents, the authorities of the Catholic Church would transfer their efforts to the children from their very cradles, and would bring the game to earth at last.

The thought of children reminded the bishop now far he had gone on the facts he knew thus far. What were they? That Felicity had married Emmet, that she did not love him, that she already repented the deed! It was characteristic of his mental processes that the consideration of love had been overlooked in his first agonised speculations, but now he clutched at it as a drowning man clutches at a straw.

It was a wonderfully interesting face that he turned upon her, transformed by his complicated emotions--his mechanical smile of suffering, humiliation, scorn, disgust; the sudden leaping into his eyes of a desperate hope. The master spirit within him was already awaking from the stunning blow she had dealt. Every faculty of his acute mind was once more alert, hungering for more facts, all the facts, as a basis of future action.

He spoke not one word of the terrible anger that racked him like a physical nausea. Even in this crisis, his temperament and training held fast. Reproaches on his part would only drive her more surely to the place from which she seemed desirous to return. His flurry at the table had shown him how she could match anger with anger, and over-power him by sheer vitality. An instinct of self-preservation, and an astuteness that now reached its final triumph, pointed the wiser way.

"Then you feel that you have made a mistake, Felicity?" he questioned.

"I have long divined a great trouble in you, though of course this is far beyond my worst fears. If I am to be of any help to you, I must know all."

For the first time in her life she felt that her father might be her friend, her refuge in trouble. Hungry for sympathy and understanding,--she knew not how hungry till now,--she told her story, beginning impetuously and with starting tears. The bishop listened attentively to the facts, dismissing from his mind her point of view, her reasons for dissatisfaction with her life. Such crude immaturity he had encountered a thousand times, though he had never suspected it in her.

The only facts that concerned him were: that the marriage had never really been consummated; that there was no question of a child to consider; that Felicity was anxious to escape from the man in whose clutches she had placed herself; and that there were grounds for divorce.

Emmet himself might be induced--purchased--to bring action on the ground of desertion. To be sure, such a cause was not acknowledged by the Church as valid, but the bishop was prepared to lay aside his prejudice in this particular case. Not for a moment did he think of holding his daughter to her mistake, as soon as he knew the facts in the case. But she made no mention of Leigh.

As the dangers with which he had at first seen himself threatened became less formidable, and the way of escape suggested itself, his wonder at her stupendous selfishness increased. What manner of woman had he reared and educated with such care? In spite of the restraints of his questions and comments, incredulous scorn was written in his expression and in the gleam of his eyes. It was much that she had not been physically coa.r.s.e, but her psychic equation was beyond his solving.

Felicity could not fail to be conscious of this growing antagonism, and the warmth of emotion with which she had begun her explanation cooled with every word. Her grat.i.tude vanished, to give way to implacable resentment at his att.i.tude of virtuous superiority. Her judgment of him was no less bitter than that she received. Angry reproaches would have stung her less than this courteous contempt.

"And how many persons are in this secret?" he asked finally.

"Mr. Emmet has taken Mr. Leigh into his confidence, I believe," she answered, a faint colour creeping into her face.

"Ah, Leigh," he returned, thrown off his guard by surprise. He thought he saw now what her intimacy with the young professor really meant. She was pledging him to secrecy, and the young man had now the motive of revenge to turn and reveal what he knew.

"It would perhaps be better to keep him in the college, after all," he mused.

"What do you mean, father?" she demanded. "To keep him in the college?

You had n't asked him to go?"

To this question he made no reply, but she saw confusion plainly written in his face.

"I naturally supposed that he was a fortune hunter"--

She rose to her feet, flaming with an anger that appalled him. "You asked him to go," she cried, "because you thought I might marry him, and not give my mother's money and mine to the college! A fortune hunter!

It does n't seem to me, father, that you have much cause to talk about fortune hunting!"

The taunt stung him to the quick, and his face grew scarlet and livid by turns. Never had this question come to an open issue and caused an explosion like the present.

"I am not a fortune hunter," he said raspingly. "If you are so dead to the most inspiring of G.o.d's works, yours be the blame, Felicity, and yours the condemnation."

"I have no idea of marrying Mr. Leigh," she went on pa.s.sionately, "but one thing I can tell you once for all. If you think I am going to give one cent to the college, you are utterly mistaken! Don't I know your plans? Haven't I seen the drift of your casual remarks about the glory of serving G.o.d? I know you would have me give every cent I possess to the college and become a deaconess--repent of my sins--retire from the world. You already see an opportunity in my mistake to profit by my repentance. Oh, I know all the choice phrases by heart! You never loved my mother, nor me, but you wanted the money for your St. George's Hall.

It was you that drove me into this marriage. G.o.d knows, I admit I was wrong, but I made the mistake in a frantic desire for fresh air, for some other atmosphere than the stuffy gloom of churches and seminaries and colleges. What do I care for that miserable little college on the hill, full of your good little boys with their churchly conceits and bowings and deadness? I want life, and I mean to have it. I will spend my money as I see fit--for travel--for clothes--for luxury--for anything that strikes my fancy--but never--never--never--for that college!"

A wild impulse swept over her to seize something and break it in fragments on the floor, but seeing nothing fragile at hand in that book-lined room, she stood still, trembling like an aspen leaf. The bishop, little realising that she was driven to this extraordinary transport by his treatment of Leigh, looked at her in stupefaction. It seemed to him that her mother stood before him once more, though she had never acted thus; but the mental att.i.tude was the same. The mother had thwarted his plans by leaving her money to the daughter, and now the daughter would spend it as she willed. It was like a second defeat at the hands of the same woman. And this was the flower he had cherished with such pride, now scentless of spirituality and dead at the roots! He rose to his feet, suddenly an old man, utterly bereft, and shook a trembling finger in her face.

"You lack nothing of filling up your cup of wickedness," he quavered, "but that you have refrained from making a physical attack upon me.

Felicity, G.o.d will punish you!"

The corners of her beautiful lips curled upward in cruel scorn, and she swept from the room, slamming the door behind her. Presently he heard the door of her own room closed with equal force, not once, but twice, as if she had opened it again, and again slammed it shut, to give adequate expression to her feelings. Completely bewildered, he wandered into the hall, reached mechanically for his hat and coat, and went out into the street.

Instinctively he turned his steps toward St. George's Hall, as if from its contemplation he could derive comfort. Something, at least, had been done toward realising his ideal, though far less than he had hoped to accomplish. Many a graduate had gone forth from beneath the shadow of that stately tower to win fame and applause in the great world. The bishop knew most of them, and was known and loved by all. There were bishops among them, and clergymen, and judges, and physicians, and some who had freely given their promising young lives in the service of their country. He counted over the names, as a miser counts his gold. His boys! It was such as these, their successors, whom his daughter characterised with scorn, impatient of the pa.s.sing fads and fancies common to their age, of an immaturity which she herself had exemplified so much less venially.

Musing thus, he traversed the length of Birdseye Avenue, saluting those who pa.s.sed him with absent-minded courtesy. At length he raised his eyes and looked up the hill to the long, low roof against the cloudless sky.

For the thousandth time his eyes kindled at the sight, for the thousandth time he experienced the artistic satisfaction of the connoisseur in collegiate architecture, and mentally limned the remainder of the plan.

His sensations were like those of a skilled musician who has heard the first movement of a masterly sonata and is left to imagine the perfect whole. The sun, now mounting toward the zenith, was shortening the shadows of the tower on the slate roof that shone in the bright atmosphere like dull silver. Not a student was in sight, and the place seemed to share the drowsy influence of the noontime.

Motionless, and leaning heavily on his cane, the bishop's mood grew warm, as if it travelled upward with the sun. His dream, now destined to remain unfulfilled, had not been one merely of stone and brick and mortar. His spirit was akin to that of the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages. They might drive the people in harness to accomplish their purpose, but that purpose was to erect a splendid temple to their G.o.d, a symbol of human aspiration toward the divine.

The bishop reflected with pride that if he had measurably failed, he had yet planned greatly. He had taken his stand firmly on the ideal, defying the utilitarian spirit of his time and country. It was nothing to him that the money which disappeared in the rearing of that splendid fragment could have been spent for humbler structures which practical men would have called more useful. Useful! He hated the word. As if a beautiful thing employed in the service of G.o.d were not useful in exact proportion to its beauty! If the churchmen of America had not been inspired by this fair and brave beginning to complete the work, the fault was theirs. He had pointed them the way.

And how had he merited his wife's indifference, his daughter's reproaches? He had not desired the money for himself, he had used no undue influence, he had forged no will; he had merely striven to make them realise their stewards.h.i.+p, to inspire them with his own ideal. In this effort he could find no grounds for self-accusation; on the contrary, the effort was a merit he might lay with humble pride before his G.o.d, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.

Presently he resumed his way, until he stood directly opposite the towers, at the foot of the path which crossed the intervening meadows.

Here the gateway was to have been built, similar to that of Trinity College, Cambridge, with flanking towers and a statue, perhaps of himself, standing above the portal. At the thought the bishop smiled ironically, and began a tentative progress up the hill.

The later hours of the night had been cold and the ground was still fairly firm, even under the softening influence of the noonday sun. As he went further, the students began to come from their recitations and to disperse toward their various rooms. One figure, however, detached itself from the rest and struck out across the upper campus in the direction of the bronze statue of the founder, who stood with hand outstretched in perennial blessing toward the hall which one of his successors had reared. That successor now caught sight of a head and shoulders emerging above the rim of the plateau, until a man's full length came into view and rapidly descended the slope. Then the bishop recognised Leigh. His greeting to the young man was affable, and his pause an invitation.

"You are adventurous to come this way," he remarked, prodding the earth with his cane. "This crust will scarcely sustain the weight of an old t.i.thonus like myself, let alone a vigorous young Ajax like you."

Leigh glanced down at his soiled shoes, and smiled with an appreciation of the ironies of life not unlike that which the other had felt so recently. "I came this way for sentimental reasons, I imagine," he replied. "This is a good point from which to look back at the towers."

"Then you 've caught the disease too?" the bishop asked. "But one can't long remain an immune in St. George's Hall."

"I shall have plenty of time to recover," Leigh returned, "when I shall have left."

"Yes--yes," the bishop murmured. "I heard something about that. There was an unfortunate misunderstanding, concerning which I believe I can set Dr. Renshaw right. It will give me great pleasure, Mr. Leigh, if you will not think of leaving us."

The overture was practically an admission of his own responsibility in the matter, but the astronomer was only impressed by the fact that for some reason the bishop had ceased to regard him with disfavour. Could it be that he had discovered Felicity's secret at last? A study of the haggard record in the old man's face made the conjecture almost a certainty. Leigh felt that the bishop would now make amends to him for suspecting him falsely in connection with his daughter, and reflected guiltily that the suspicion was not as false as the bishop supposed.

"I have been thinking of leaving--naturally," he answered, hesitating, "but my plans are not yet matured."

The bishop nodded understandingly. He appreciated the fact that the other's sensitiveness and resentment could not be put aside at once, and that his own change of front could not draw forth immediate confidences.

The subject was a delicate one to both, and they were mutually anxious to separate.

"I hope you will let me know, then," he said courteously, "whether you decide that your best interests call you elsewhere, but I hope not--I hope not."

He turned his face once more toward the Hall, his sagacious mind already grappling with another possibility. If Felicity must marry after getting her divorce,--and it now seemed wiser that she should,--let her marry this young professor, who was, after all, of her own cla.s.s. Her fortune would not be wholly alienated from the college interests, should Leigh continue in his professors.h.i.+p. The young man might be made president after Dr. Renshaw's impending retirement. He could take orders to conform with the traditions of the place; and men had taken orders for smaller rewards. His pride in the inst.i.tution, which his wife must then share, would influence them much in the direction of giving.