The Mayor of Warwick Part 31

"I 'm sorry," he murmured, "very sorry. I hoped you did not. But there, we 'll not discuss the subject any more at present, Felicity.

The interview was fruitless, worse than fruitless, I fear." He s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his chair, and she understood his dumb appeal to be left alone.

When she had gone, he arose from his seat and unlocked a long drawer beneath one of his bookcases, from which he took a ma.s.s of material relating to the plans for St. George's Hall. These he spread out on the desk before him and studied with deep attention, turning again to this dream with an instinct of self-preservation. To-morrow he would take up again the fight for his daughter's freedom and happiness, but now he was in sore need of some narcotic influence, of something beautiful and permanent, as a refuge from the pa.s.sions that had threatened to overpower him. Felicity would live this down; it would ultimately seem but a stormy day in the retrospect. Meanwhile, what could he do about this chapel? Here, in this envelope, was a promise of half the money needed, if he could raise the balance within a specified time. He recalled having read in the morning paper of the arrival from Europe of an old friend and former paris.h.i.+oner. She was a rich woman, and was now alone in the world. Perhaps he could get away in a few days and run down to New York to see her. He began to drum absently on the desk with his fingers, turning over in his mind some details in the arrangement of the chapel which he had never settled to his satisfaction. Presently he realised that something was lacking, and reaching forward, he took a cigar from the open box that stood on the revolving bookcase near by.

It was noon when the mayor returned to the City Hall. On the steps, as he entered, stood a figure long familiar in the streets of Warwick, a blind news-vender, with his cane and smoked gla.s.ses and bundle of papers. In the morning, he might be seen at the railroad station, a grotesque and patient form, holding out his papers silently in the direction of the shuffling feet that pa.s.sed by. He never cried his wares, but his appeal was more compelling than the noisy shouts of his more fortunate compet.i.tors. He had become an inst.i.tution in Warwick.

Every one knew where to find him at certain hours: in the morning, at the station; toward noon, taking his way, una.s.sisted except by his cane, toward the City Hall, carrying the first edition of a great metropolitan daily of the flaming variety; in the evening, at the station once more. He had made these two posts of vantage his own, as unfortunates in the Old World take possession of sunny corners beside cathedral doors, and no one ventured to trespa.s.s within his sphere.

Each noon Emmet had been accustomed to buy a paper, paying a nickel or a dime as it came to his hand, but seldom the penny that was the price of the sheet. To-day he followed his custom mechanically and hurried on, eager to plunge into the distraction of work as a refuge from the tormenting devil within him. The outer office, lined with chairs for visitors and adorned with pictures of former occupants of the mayoralty, was deserted. He pa.s.sed into the inner office, where his desk stood, piled with the last mail, and sent his stenographer out to lunch, for his own appet.i.te had deserted him.

He had thrown the paper down, with no thought of reading it, and paused to hang up his coat and hat. Upon his return, he was confronted by a black headline in letters two inches deep, and flinging the paper open with a sharp crackle, he stood rigid while the meaning of it burst upon him.

PRETTY MAID MARRIES RICH SWELL!

ROMANTIC RUNAWAY MATCH. YOUNG HOLLISTER PYLE OF WARWICK MARRIES THE GIRL THAT FORMERLY LIVED IN HIS HOUSE.

CUPID NOT TO BE BAFFLED BY THE DIFFERENCE IN SOCIAL POSITION. PARENTS OF BRIDEGROOM TELEGRAPH THEIR FORGIVENESS.

Emmet slowly sank into his chair, his staring eyes fixed on the page while he rapidly ran through the startling story--not a seven days'

wonder, indeed, in these times of universal publicity, but the gossip of a few hours, until the whirling sheets of the next issue should fling some other story of folly or crime into the hands of its gaping readers.

But Emmet was not comforted by a realisation of the transitory nature of the sensation. He heard the newsboys in the street without, crying it hoa.r.s.ely, and almost wondered why his own name was not coupled with the others, to be bruited about the sidewalks, proclaiming his guilt.

In the first moments, his sensations were those of fear and horror.

The bottom had dropped out of his world, leaving him suspended over an abyss. He experienced no relief that this act of Lena's freed his own hands. He was free in one sense, but she had fastened a crime upon him forever by taking herself from his path.

What he had intended to do, he did not know. Some vague idea of providing for her had lain dormant in his mind. He had even gone to the bishop's with a subconscious disposition to give Felicity up; but her father's scorn had aroused his perversity, and had resulted in a declaration of obstinacy that was unpremeditated.

Now he knew that he had loved Lena, had intended to stand by her, even to marry her; and he was struck by her pitiful humility. Evidently it had not occurred to her mind that he might get a divorce. Too late he wished he had been frank with her and had asked her to wait. In reality, he was no sensualist, and Lena's frailty had not made him a cynic; on the contrary, he regarded it as a proof of her love alone.

In his agony, he did not judge her; he judged only himself. He had taught her duplicity, but he was aghast at her skill in practising the lesson she had learned. During all this time, he had received no hint that young Pyle had followed her from his house. He could only imagine the facts. When Lena left that place to go to Bishop Wycliffe's, she doubtless had an honest desire to escape from the unwelcome attentions she had told him of. She must have begun to weaken only after discovering that the man for whom she made the effort had played her false.

Emmet threw down the paper with a groan and turned to his desk, moved by a desperate hope that he could force himself to appreciate the reality of the interests those piled envelopes represented. He seized them feverishly, and began to shuffle them over like a pack of cards.

His random glance was arrested by a thin, wavering hand he knew well, scrawled on an envelope that bore the picture and name of a New York hotel. Had he been a student of chirography, he might have read the secret of the enigma that tormented him in those pale, uncertain pen-strokes, so unlike the firm, compact characters by which Miss Wycliffe visualised her will. But his only thought was that this letter came to him as a final explanation and farewell, after he had lost her forever.

The epistle was confused, and blotted with tears. She told how Pyle had pursued her, how she had resisted him, how she had finally yielded to his importunities, to s.h.i.+eld the man that had wronged her and to save herself. If she had not done this, she would have killed herself, but she was afraid to die, and there was no third way. She wrote no word of reproach, but closed with a final message of love and a prayer for his happiness.

Emmet shrank from the lines, as if each were the waving lash of a whip that descended upon him. When he had finished reading, he tore the letter into minute fragments and threw them in the basket. His heart was swelling with the sense of a tragedy that was not completed, but only begun, a tragedy that he and Lena must share together. She had bound him to her forever by putting this barrier between them. He thought of Felicity only to resolve to free himself from her at once, that he might be in readiness to come to Lena's aid in the future, should she need him. Perhaps G.o.d would yet give him a chance to make amends. If her husband would only break his worthless neck in one of his mad rushes with his machine, Emmet reflected savagely, or drink himself to death--

Any moment some one might come in and find him there. He got up and locked the door against intrusion before he should be able to master the outward signs of his emotion. Then he returned to his chair and looked about, thinking confusedly. There was something pitiless in the glaring light of noon that disclosed every crack and stain on the ugly brown walls. It was like the relentless light of his new revelation turned upon the stains and patches of his soul, dreary and terrible.

Had the hour been twilight, some glamour of lost romance and self-pity might have fallen upon him like a violet veil, hiding the sordid truth; but he lacked the imagination with which artistic natures may s.h.i.+eld themselves, and he saw things as they were. He even wandered momently from his own misery to reflect that he would have this room refitted and painted a more cheerful hue, whether for himself or for his successor. The office was beneath the dignity of a city like Warwick.

He picked up the paper and spread it out before him once more, quivering sensitively at the flippant and vulgar tone of the announcement. That "pretty maid" was just Lena to him, whom he had loved in secret, now haled before the tribunal of public opinion. His sensations could scarcely have been more keen, had he also been billed before the gaping crowd. The fact that he was not so billed made him realise what a small part of any secret ever readies the general ear.

The plant is pulled up for inspection, but the deeper roots remain behind, hidden in the earth.

There was the elder Pyle, a dignified man, with a war record, who had been one of the committee that thrust the mayor of Warwick aside as unworthy to welcome the President. Here was a strange, unmeditated revenge! Emmet, through Lena, had done much to wreck the happiness of that household. His deed had gotten away from him, and was working on and on, beyond his power to recall, pa.s.sing from one social cla.s.s into another as through a familiar medium. The mayor's straight lines of demarcation between cla.s.ses became blurred; he saw them s.h.i.+ft and waver and disappear, till the whole seemed a confused ma.s.s of humanity, confluent and interchangeable.

His only desire now was to make reparation, and reparation was denied him. His success had been so steadily progressive, his growing appreciation of his own power so intoxicating, that he had somehow felt he could control this situation also. Even Felicity had not been beyond him, had he chosen to a.s.sert himself. But Lena,--so gentle and acquiescent,--it was she who had taken the bit in her teeth and done this astounding thing!

It would be a relief, he reflected, if he could make open confession and begin life over again, or run away from the daily reminder of his sin; but he must remain where he was, and steel himself to see Lena unmoved, a man with an abiding shadow.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MAYOR FINDS HIMSELF AT LAST

It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, and the sun still shone dazzlingly on the deep, unblemished snow. All morning long, the janitors of the Hall had been toiling through the drifts with their shovels, leaving a narrow pathway behind them from the southern extremity of the building to the street at the end of the maple walk. Now, their heads and shoulders had ceased to rise and fall above the bleak expanse.

Instead, a solitary figure could be seen advancing in the direction of the college, seeming from a distance to be that of a child, and reminding one of Little Red Riding-Hood in the fairy tale. The height of the side walls of snow aided the distance in producing this illusion. Upon coming nearer, one would have seen the child gradually a.s.sume the stature of a woman, and had he been a citizen of Warwick, he would have recognised Felicity Wycliffe.

Although, as a general thing, women were not wont to pa.s.s that way, except to attend the chapel services of a Sunday or some public ceremony, the bishop's daughter was free of the grounds by peculiar rights, which no one dreamed of questioning. A group of students, meeting her halfway, leaped gallantly into the snow waist-deep to let her pa.s.s, and did not presume to question her mission or destination.

The wind had already begun to sift the fine snow into the bottom of the trench, increasing the difficulty of her progress, and forming innumerable little rifts and scallops in the white dunes that swelled upward toward the skyline like the sands of the sea. Suddenly she heard the harsh cawing of a flock of crows that pa.s.sed overhead, wheeling westward. The sound caused her heart to vibrate with a memory of that wonderful October afternoon when she had listened with Leigh to the same notes beneath the pines, and she shaded her eyes against the sun to watch the course of the flock across the wide basin of the valley. The notes grew less and less, no longer streperous but strangely musical, and finally were heard no more, leaving her oppressed by a sense of loneliness and desertion. Something akin to an antique mood fell upon her, as if she had been given an augury of an irreversible fate.

This spiritual quiescence, numbing her from a realisation of her purpose, held until she disappeared into the huge archway of the tower and began to ascend the narrow stairs. But here her spirit failed her, and she paused. Standing motionless in the gloom, she could hear her heart beating wildly, and the folly of her intention became apparent.

But the momentum of her original purpose presently urged her on, it seemed against her will and better judgement, until she stood before Leigh's half-open door. Had the door been closed, she might not have been able to bring herself to knock, she might have turned and departed as silently as she had come; but there was an invitation in this accidental circ.u.mstance, to which the gleam of an open fire gave warmth and persuasion.

Listening intently, she heard no sound from within. The few students she had met on the hillside were the only ones she had seen, and she guessed that the majority were still detained by their recitations. At the end of the hour, he would doubtless return from a cla.s.s. There was time for her to recall what she wished to say and how she would begin.

Rea.s.sured by this reflection, she was about to enter, when the door on the other side of the hall opened, and she turned to see Cardington's tall figure against the light from within.

"I was listening for your step, Miss Felicity," he said, "having observed your approach from my corner window, but you came as quietly as a snowflake. This is an unexpected honour. It's a long time since I have had the pleasure of a call from you; in fact, not since those days of blessed memory when you were a little girl, and used to run up to take a look at my pictures. But come in. Perhaps I can make you a cup of afternoon tea."

She followed him into the room, and said nothing until he had closed the door behind her. Then she flung back her hood with a sweep of her hand and met his gaze steadily.

"You know I did n't come to see you, don't you?" she demanded with quiet defiance.

"Far be it from me," he temporised, "to a.s.sume accurate knowledge of anything as doubtful as the direction a charming young woman's favour may take; but I thought it possible--I thought it possible--for old sake's sake."

The repet.i.tion of the reminder touched her, in spite of her preoccupation, and she glanced about the once familiar room with a wistful kindling of the eyes.

"I used to come up here often, did n't I?" she mused. "And father knew where to find me when he had finished his smoke and talk with the boys.

There 's the same old picture of the Alhambra you used to tell me stories about." Her defiance was gone now, though her purpose still held. "But I did n't come to see you this time; I shall--soon. I came to see some one else."

"My dear child," he said, fixing her with a gaze of deep concern, "I am old enough to be your father, am I not?"

She nodded silently, waiting for the lecture she felt she so well deserved. Yet it was characteristic of their relations.h.i.+p that she experienced no serious apprehension; she was too well aware of his understanding and indulgence for that.

"But still," he continued, "I lack a few years of reaching the imposing longevity of Methuselah."

She put out her hands in impulsive protest against this reference to their difference in age, understanding the pain that underlay his effort at jocularity. He took and retained them in his own, and his colour deepened.

"This is a most embarra.s.sing demonstration of affection," he commented.

"If any one should suddenly open the door, I fear his surprise would be very great. Now, is it not fortunate that my room is opposite that of my young colleague, rather than the room of some other person less well disposed, less a friend, I may say, to you both?"

"I 'm sure it is," she answered. "If any one else had been living in this room, I would never have ventured"--

"Exactly. No one else, perhaps, has had my opportunities for understanding you. Now, on the basis of our long acquaintance, and because of my deep attachment to yourself and your father, I wish to urge you to reconsider your intention of making any other call this afternoon."

"I shall have to use my own judgement," she returned, without flinching. "I am in great perplexity--you don't know."