The Mayor of Warwick Part 1

The Mayor of Warwick.

by Herbert M. Hopkins.

CHAPTER I

THE MEETING IN THE MAPLE WALK

St George's Hall, situated on a high hill overlooking the city of Warwick, was still silent and tenantless, though the long vacation was drawing to a close. To a stranger pa.s.sing that way for the first time, the building and the surrounding country would doubtless have suggested the old England rather than the new. There was something mediaeval in the ma.s.sive, castellated tower that carried the eye upward past the great, arched doorway, the thin, deep-set windows, the leaded eaves and grinning gargoyles, into the cool sky of the September morning.

The stranger, were he rich in good traditions, would pause in admiration of the pure collegiate-gothic style of the low hall that extended north and south three hundred feet in either direction from the base of the great tower; he would note the artistry of the iron-braced, oaken doors, flanked at the lintels by inscrutable faces of carven stone, of the windows with their diamonded panes of milky gla.s.s peeping through a wilderness of encroaching vines. Nor would this be all. Had he ever viewed the quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, he might be able to infer that here, on this sunny plateau above the hill, devoted men, steept in the traditions of old England, had endeavoured to reproduce the plan of one of her famous colleges.

He would see, perhaps, that only one side of the quadrangle was built, one fourth of the work done. Here, along the northern line, should be the chapel, its altar window facing the east; on the southern, the dining-hall, adorned with rafters of dark oak and with portraits of the wise and great. To complete the plan, the remaining gap must be closed by a hall similar in style to the one already built.

He might picture himself standing in the midst of this beautiful creation of the imagination, taking in its architectural glories one by one, until his eye paused at the eastern gateway to note the distant landscape which it framed. And then, if he were in sympathy with the ideals of which this building was the outward expression, he would wake from his constructive reverie to realise sadly for the first time, not the beauty, but the incompleteness, of the inst.i.tution; not its proximity to the city beyond, but its air of aloofness from the community in which it stood.

About ten o'clock of the morning in which this story begins, a stranger, not quite such an one as we have imagined, left the car at the foot of the long hill and turned his face for the first time towards St. George's Hall. As he pa.s.sed up the shaded street along the northern side of the campus, his keen, blue-grey eyes swept eagerly the crest on which stood the inst.i.tution that was destined to be the scene of his professional labours for at least a year, perhaps for many years, it might be, for life. Even a casual glance at the tall, loosely hung figure of the young man, at his clean-cut features and firm mouth, at the nervous, capable hand that grasped his walking-stick as if it were a weapon, would reveal the type claimed by America as peculiarly her own. It was evident that he possessed energy and endurance, if not the power of the athlete. His expression was intellectual, and shrewd almost to hardness; yet somewhere in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth there lurked a suggestion of sweetness and of ideality, that gave the whole personality a claim to more than pa.s.sing interest and regard.

This curious blending of opposite traits, of shrewdness and of ideality, was ill.u.s.trated by his thoughts as he strode along, making no more of the hill than he would have made of level ground. Nothing escaped his eye or failed of its impression upon his mind. Fresh from the teeming life of a large university, he noted the absence of students from the steps of the fraternity houses on his right, though it lacked but three days of the opening of the college. Already his own university had felt the first wave of the incoming cla.s.s, a cla.s.s that would doubtless contain four times as many students as the total membership of St. George's Hall. Instinctively he searched his mind for an explanation of this lack of growth in an inst.i.tution that numbered nearly one hundred years of life. What was the defect? Where was the remedy? He jumped at once to the conclusion that both were discoverable, and dimly foresaw that the discovery might be his own.

He approached the scene where he was himself to be on trial in the spirit of one who questioned, not his fitness for the place he was to occupy, for of that he had no shadow of doubt, but the fitness of the place for him. If he saw promotion, perhaps the presidency, within his grasp, he might deem it worth his while to stay; if not, his professorship should be a stepping-stone to something better. With the history, the traditions, and the ideals of the Hall he was but slightly acquainted; in fact, the inst.i.tution existed for him at present only in its relation to himself and his possible future.

And yet, beneath these thoughts of self ran a current of feeling or impressions which never rose high enough in his consciousness to win definite recognition. If his first view of the college was depressing because of the failure of fruition its appearance suggested, he was not utterly unappreciative of the pictorial effect: the splendid lines of dignity and beauty; the soft brown colour of the stone, relieved by the lighter tone of lintel and window-frame and sill; the dark green of the ivy; the great, black shadow of the tower on the slated roof where every jutting dormer window threw its lesser shade; the wide sky beyond, of a blueness which an artist would have wished to paint.

From the meadow below the plateau came the tinkle of cow-bells, musical in the distance; and this sound, combined with the note of a bird and the voices of children from an unseen garden, produced an Arcadian atmosphere which even the harsh gong of the returning electric car could not dispel.

As he climbed higher, the houses fell away, disclosing the bare hilltop over which the road seemed to dip down and disappear; and though he knew it could not be so, he was half expectant of the sea when he should have lifted his head above the verge. Instead, he saw a wide and shallow valley, rich in the varied products of the autumn, with here and there a bare, reaped field, with many a white farmhouse and barn of red or grey, till his eye followed the road to the western hill line and noted a patch of small, white objects which might be a group of boulders left by a prehistoric glacier, or the houses of a distant town.

The view on the east, when he turned and faced in the direction from which he had come, was one of greater interest and of no less beauty.

In the immediate foreground the city of Warwick, in which he had pa.s.sed the previous night, thrust its smoking factory chimneys, its spires and towers, above the shining roofs and lofty elms. But the final element of charm was found in a broad and sinuous river, blue as the reflected sky, which flowed past the city's wharves, under a fine stone bridge, and on through woodland and ploughed land to the sea. Small wonder that he now forgot for a moment his own ambitions and plans, and thought only that St. George's Hall lifted its head within an earthly paradise!

The building, seen from the end, presented the same extraordinary change that is to be noted when a long ocean steamship which has been trailing across the horizon turns, shrinks, and comes bow on. In some such proportion to its length was the width of the Hall; but the tower, viewed from any angle, was still magnificent. With its four supporting turrets it appeared rather a group of towers than a single structure.

His immediate curiosity satisfied, the young man now exchanged the bright sunlight of the open for the comparative gloom of two long lines of maples, which flanked a narrow board walk from the street to the college. There was a prophecy of winter in the red and yellow leaves that dropped slowly downward one by one, or descended in rustling showers as a sudden gust of wind seized the thin branches and shook them against the sky.

And now, as if to personify the spirit of the place, he saw the figure of a young woman enter the walk from the other end, apparently from the college building. As they approached each other, he noted the fact that she was without hat or gloves, like a lady walking at ease through her own estate, and he guessed that she had some peculiar proprietary right in the premises. For one moment, in pa.s.sing, he was startled to encounter a cool and observant gaze; then her eyes dropped to the collection of leaves which she held in her hands, as if she resumed an interrupted study of their harmonious shades.

He divined, after he had pa.s.sed her by, that she had seen him from the moment they entered the opposite ends of the walk; and though he could not recall distinctly a feature of her face, he carried with him an impression of charm and colour singularly in unison with the season of the year. Moreover, her gaze, though momentary, was c.u.mulative in its remembered effect, so that he presently turned and looked curiously after her retreating figure.

She had now emerged from the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the open street beyond, where she stood looking westward, as if minded to continue her walk into the country. Even from that distance he could see how the un.o.bstructed wind struggled with her slender figure, so that she leaned against it in resistance. As if persuaded by its force to change her plan, she turned slowly, released the leaves with a gesture of surrender, gathered her skirts in one hand, and with the other raised to her loosened hair she began to descend the hill.

The young man stood still until she had disappeared, smitten by an inexplicable sense of the fatality of that meeting. Verging upon the sixth l.u.s.trum of his age, he had pa.s.sed through that vernal period when the face of every woman of more than ordinary charm suggested possibilities of the heart's adventure. With him the main business of life was no longer the seeking of a mate. All books, all arts, all accomplishments, had ceased to seem merely the accessories and the handmaidens of love. Yet never in those days of searching and romance had he been so attracted by a pa.s.sing face. Beauty alone would have left him cold. The impression he received was far more rich, an impression to which the circ.u.mstances of the encounter gave a peculiar emphasis. The adventure seemed a possible keynote of the future, and there was an element of vague disquiet in his hope that he might meet her again, an element akin to fear.

CHAPTER II

THE TOWER

Llewellyn Leigh found himself upon the wide stone flagging in front of the Hall before he awoke to a realisation of another meeting, now imminent, whose importance was far less conjectural than that upon which his fancy would fain have lingered.

The personality of the president of a large university might be a matter of indifference to a young instructor, inconspicuous among his many colleagues; but to be transferred to a full professorship in a small college was to come into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar a career. At this thought the young man began to speculate with some intensity upon the personality indicated thus far to his mind only by the name of Doctor Renshaw.

The very silence of the Hall, which impressed him now not so much by its beauty as by its solidity and height, invested the presiding genius of the place with something of sphinxlike mystery. The very faces of the gargoyles, impenetrable and calm, or grinningly grotesque, gave the fancy visible outward expression. One monster in particular, with twisted horns and impish tongue lolling forth between wide, inhuman teeth, seemed to look upon him with peculiar and malicious amus.e.m.e.nt.

He experienced the spiritual depression which sometimes seems to emanate from inanimate things, that mood of self-distrust, that a.s.surance of being unwelcome, which makes the coming to a strange city where one's fortunes are to be cast an act requiring courage. Seen close at hand, the college lost something of that inviting charm with which a distant view invested it. Though the length of the corporate life of the inst.i.tution was not unimpressive from an American standpoint, the present building was comparatively recent. A thirty years' growth of ivy was scarcely able to atone for the unencrusted newness of the stones beneath. There was none of that narcotic suggestion of grey antiquity which in Oxford or Cambridge rebukes and stills a personal ambition.

Beyond each small doorway he saw a flight of stone stairs vanishing into the obscurity, and through the open windows he caught glimpses of decorations on the walls, the flags and signs and photographs which everywhere represent the artistic standards of the average undergraduate.

But a compensating surprise was presently in store. As he pa.s.sed the tower, he heard the deep notes of a pipe organ; the open diapason and flutes of the great, the reeds of the swell, piled one upon another in a splendid harmony. He looked up and saw the lengthened windows that indicated the location of the chapel, which apparently extended the full height of the building. The musician within added a two-foot stop, the final needed element of brilliancy, crowning the edifice of sound his fingers had reared, so that now the music seemed to burst through the half-open windows and to shake the vines upon the wall.

Lover of music as he was, this unexpected and triumphant symphony made a peculiar appeal to Leigh's imagination. Through it, as through a golden mist, he saw the drama of life sublimated, himself an actor of dignity and worth; and a few moments later he entered the president's office with a poise in which there remained no trace of anxious conjecture.

A figure rose to greet him as he entered, and though he was himself a tall man, the other loomed above him in the comparative twilight of the room, until he seemed to a.s.sume colossal proportions. Then Leigh realized that it was not the height of the man, but his bearing, that gave such significance to the inch or two between them. His grey hair alone suggested years; he held his shoulders like a man of forty. He removed his gla.s.ses deliberately, put them on the pile of papers beside him, and stood waiting. There was a courteous enquiry in his very att.i.tude, although as yet he spoke no word. His head was tilted slightly backward, and his smile might have seemed almost inane in its width and in the impression of permanency which it conveyed, were it not for the intellectuality of the brow, the force of the fine aquiline nose, and the watchful perspicacity of the deepset eyes.

"This is Doctor Renshaw, I believe," said Leigh tentatively.

"Doctor Renshaw is here," returned the other, indicating by a slight gesture a figure seated at the far end of the table, which now arose and came toward them. "Doctor, I venture to a.s.sume that I have the pleasure of making you acquainted with Mr. Leigh, our new professor of mathematics."

His words were distinctly spoken, but pitched in so low a tone that they produced an odd effect, as of purring.

It was now that Leigh discovered his mistake. The man whom he had taken for the president was Bishop Wycliffe, and it required but five minutes of conversation to show him that the bishop, not the president, was the significant personality.

Doctor Renshaw might have been anywhere in the afternoon of life, and one felt instinctively that his sunset had antedated his meridian. He was like those ancients, spoken of with such disapproval by Cicero, who began to be old men early that they might continue to be old men for a long time. His value to the inst.i.tution he had served so long, and his safety in his position, lay in the possession of negative qualities.

His silence was interpreted as an indication of wisdom, and the firmly cut features of his inscrutable face would have served an artist as a personification of discipline. As he exchanged the conventional greetings the occasion demanded, he might even then have been standing for the portrait of himself that was one day to be added to those of his predecessors on the library wall; or he might have been one of the portraits already there that had stepped from its frame for a moment to take the newcomer by the hand.

In short, the thing of greatest significance in this meeting, the thing which made itself felt by all three partic.i.p.ants, was the juxtaposition of the ancient and modern. The young man, clothed in a light grey suit, his soft hat crushed in the nervous grasp of his long fingers, a man whose scholastic training had been disa.s.sociated from religious traditions, now stood face to face with mediaevalism, with two elderly men in dark habiliments, as greatly superior to himself in that subtlety which finds its highest expression in the ecclesiastical type as he was superior to them in the acquisition of scientific truth.

Presently the bishop invited his young friend, as he already called the new arrival, to walk with him about the grounds. Doctor Renshaw, left alone, resumed his seat in the heavy oaken chair which had once belonged to the founder of blessed memory, his shining head round as a ball against the diamonded panes at his back, the framed plans of the St. George's Hall of the future looking down upon him. On the broad stone mantel rested an antique episcopal mitre of black cloth, decorated with ecclesiastical symbols in tarnished thread, and a tall clock of almost equal age stood silent in the corner, showing on its pale, round face the carven signs of the zodiac. These objects seemed the peculiar property of the solitary tenant of the room, rather than relics of a former time, so still he sat, so convincing was the changelessness of his decorous age.

Meanwhile the bishop was giving Leigh new light upon his status in St.

George's Hall.

"I must tell you, Mr. Leigh,--for it is better to be frank always,--that your appointment is in the nature of an experiment.

Doctor Renshaw engaged your services for a year while I was absent in Europe. I knew nothing of it until my return, though I have every reason to believe, in view of your excellent recommendations and family connections, that the choice was felicitous."

Leigh listened to these words, so kindly but decisively spoken, with an emotion of uneasiness not untouched by resentment. How premature his thought of the presidency now appeared, how slight his claims to consideration! He learned now definitely that the bishop was the real president of the college, and that Doctor Renshaw was a fairly negligible element in the situation. He divined also the proud and self-sufficient spirit of the place, a pride entirely independent of worldly success, of numbers and noise.

"To be equally frank, bishop," he returned, "I thought I had pa.s.sed my professional probation."

"We are all on probation, always," said the bishop, with a suggestion of amused indulgence in his smile. "I am far from questioning your professional capacity, but an arrangement for one year leaves us both free to make other plans, in case we find that the adjustment is not as perfect as we could have wished. However, that is a future contingency. _Quid sit futurum cras_--you know the sentiment. If you leave us, it will doubtless be at your own volition and, like the man in the parable, for the purpose of taking a higher place."

He laid his hand affectionately on his companion's shoulder. "Now here," he continued, "is the southern boundary of the quadrangle."

Having outlined the architectural possibilities of the future, he pointed with his stick to the large bronze statue of the founder that stood on the eastern verge of the plateau, opposite the tower.

"There is only one defect," he remarked, "in that otherwise fine work of art. You observe that the bishop's hand is extended in blessing toward the college, with the palm downward. Did you ever know a bishop to hold out his hand in such a position?"

His air was that of a man who has turned from business to friendly and familiar discourse with a sense of relief. They visited in turn two red brick buildings placed at some distance beyond and below the sacred square, devoted to scientific and athletic pursuits. Leigh wondered whether their position symbolised their relative unimportance to the magnificent hall upon the hill, and indicated a grudging concession to the dominant scientific spirit of the times.