The Mayor of Warwick Part 10

The seat became crowded to the point of discomfort, and Emmet, with a significant look, went back to join the conductor on the platform.

Leigh interpreted the look to mean that some of the political business on which he was bent lay with this man, and their earnest conversation confirmed his impression. Left alone, he took Emmet's place at the end of the seat and began to watch the pa.s.sing scene. The car swung down a steep street and crossed a long bridge over the river, from which he had a view of a wide blue basin, where a score of little yachts lay motionless as floating gulls. In the other direction several sand-bars showed brown, ribbed backs, spa.r.s.ely covered with coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, and Leigh wished that he could find himself dropped upon one of them, that he might have the pleasure of wading ash.o.r.e. The fancy put him in a better frame of mind, and the afternoon began to brighten. In front of him the open country beckoned, and before committing himself to it, he turned for a farewell look at Warwick. The city stood upon the high river wall, roof above roof shimmering in the hazy light, every line of chimney, spire, and tower softened by the distance, like a blurred etching against a pale blue background.

The country was similar to that through which he had pa.s.sed the day before, only now the quality of the air was a little more drowsy, the quietude more absolute, and he awoke to the fact that the Indian Summer had begun. The car had gone about four miles before Emmet returned, and so absorbed had Leigh become that his reappearance was a surprise.

They were now at the top of a long hill, from the summit of which the country fell away till it rose again far off in dark purple ridges of low mountains.

"I am reminded of California by that sky-line," Leigh remarked. "Only out there you see no patches of gorgeous foliage like those yonder.

The autumn comes on by imperceptible gradations. The first thing you know, the leaves have shrivelled and gone."

"The park lies down there in the valley," Emmet said, on whom the comparison had evidently made no impression. "There's nothing to see, though, at this time of year. Why don't you go on to Pitkinton and visit the silk mills?"

"Because I 'm determined to explore the park," Leigh answered. He was not one to be swerved from his purpose by another's persistence; in fact, any effort in such a direction usually had an opposite effect.

"I have no desire to see a lot of men working over machinery to-day who ought to be out enjoying the Indian Summer," he explained. "I'll reserve the mills for some other time."

The car came to a stop at a switch before a rustic gate, and they got off together. It occurred to Leigh that possibly he had been a little short with Emmet, somewhat unsympathetic with his practical and industrial interests. If this were so, it was merely because he realised the uselessness of explaining the peculiar intoxication of his mood, for he suspected that the other would regard such emotions as fit only for women and poets. "You might come for a walk with me," he suggested. "The exercise would do you good."

Emmet hesitated, as if he considered the proposition seriously, looking down the track at the approaching car for which their own was waiting.

"No," he said slowly. "I must be getting back to town, and there's one of the boys on this car that I want to see."

"Some other time, then," said Leigh. "There are n't any bandits in these woods, are there?"

"You 'd better keep your gun handy," Emmet answered. "Well, take care of yourself."

Leigh had by this time reached the wicket gate, where he turned a moment to catch Emmet's friendly wave of the hand. A few steps more, and the woods enclosed him like a wall. He heard the diminishing buzz of the returning car with a sense of relief and escape, for he was pleased that his invitation had not been accepted. In his mind lingered a feeling that he and Emmet had not been able to meet this afternoon quite as before, but the feeling vanished with the disappearance of the car, leaving him merely glad of the solitude.

Soon he came to a spring, a placid basin of water canopied by an artificial grotto of rock, and kneeling down he gazed intently at his own reflection. But no thought of Narcissus, or of Horace's fountain of Bandusia, intervened to subst.i.tute literary memories for the reality of sensation; he was too genuine a lover of nature to interpret it in the terms of letters.

Down at the bottom of the pool the water welled up in slow puffs, as if the ground were panting, stirring dead sticks and withered leaves, and presently, in the spokes of light that radiated from the reflection of his head, he descried a frog resting motionless below him. He disturbed the water, so transparent that he could not tell when his fingers would enter it, and the frog was gone like a grey streak, leaving little swirls like dust where its feet had touched the bottom in its flight. The only thought that floated through his mind as he knelt there was one concerning the infinitely small in nature. The place, he knew, was swarming with unseen life, creatures compared with which the frog was a devouring monster of colossal proportions; and he reflected that the immeasurable s.p.a.ces of the sky were not more wonderful than they.

Having taken a deep drink, he continued on his way, noting that here beneath the trees the afternoon seemed several hours advanced beyond the time of the sunny open, for the shadows were like twilight. Below the path, crossed and recrossed by rustic bridges, ran a small rivulet.

The gurgling of its miniature falls, like the sound of water coming from the neck of a jug, the occasional cawing of a crow, and the snapping of twigs beneath his feet were the only interruptions to the silence. Here was a sudden hushed restfulness, as grateful as the draught of water he had drunk at the spring.

The rivulet ended in a broader stream, on whose bank he found a long, low boat-house already locked and abandoned. A wooden bridge ran across to the opposite sh.o.r.e, where a large dancing-pavilion stood, waiting for the snow to follow the drifting leaves through the open windows. A path which skirted this larger stream to the left promised more seclusion than the way across the bridge and decided his choice.

On the bosom of the water were scattered the wrecks of what had recently been a beautiful bed of Egyptian lotos. Here, where all had been glistening greenness with splashes of yellow blossoms, attenuated stalks lifted what looked like crumpled fragments of brown paper, which quivered in a breeze too light to move the surface of the stream. Here alone the fingers of the frost had left a blight, like that of flames, and had denied to their destructive work the glamour of a funeral pall, dealing death without pomp or circ.u.mstance.

The trees crept down and almost thrust him at times into the water which lay at his feet, black from the vegetation in its bed and reflecting on its br.i.m.m.i.n.g surface bright patches of colour from the foliage on the opposite sh.o.r.e. Here and there a stricken tree was duplicated by a long white image that seemed to point like a finger to the depths below. Apparently there was no current, and this lack of motion, combined with the blackness of the water and the sombreness of the woods, produced an effect in striking contrast with the blue and sunny river he had first crossed, its floating boats and scattered sand-bars.

At length the trail took a sudden turn into the woods. The oaks and elms gave way to a grove of pines, and the tangled jungle of undergrowth was replaced by a slippery carpet of brown needles. The path climbed upward until it ended in a comparatively open s.p.a.ce, and there, under the branches of a pine, her white hands clasped upon her knees, he saw a woman sitting alone. If a hamadryad had suddenly thrust her head around the bole of a tree and looked him full in the face, he would not have been more astonished, so absolute was his sense of utter loneliness; but when he saw that the figure was that of Miss Wycliffe, he stood like one transfixed and deprived of the power of speech. This was like a wild freak of his fancy, and he could scarcely believe the vision real. The surprise appeared to be entirely on his side, for she smiled as if the meeting were a matter of course, or one of appointment. Undoubtedly she had been listening to his approach for some time, and had seen him first.

"Well, Mr. Leigh," she called, "I hope I did n't frighten you. You started as if you had seen a ghost."

He came forward, laughing. "So you are one of the bandits Emmet told me of! He said the woods were full of them."

"Emmet," she repeated. "Did you come out with him? I did n't know he was on this line."

"He is n't on any line at present. He has thrown up his job entirely for politics. That seemed to be what he came out for. I left him on the platform waiting for the down car, which he said was run by 'one of the boys' whom he wanted to see." After a slight hesitation he added: "I tried to persuade him to come with me, but I 'm glad now he did n't."

The frank friendliness of her gaze betrayed no acceptance of his meaning. "And how did our experiment come out?" she asked. "I inferred from his presence with you last night that you had struck up some sort of a friendship. I thought you would." She motioned him to be seated with her characteristic suggestion of imperiousness. "Sit down, do, and tell me all about it. You 've come just in time for my little picnic, though I 'm afraid the friend I expected has failed me.

You 'll get nothing to eat, however, but this basket of Concord grapes which I picked up on the way." And she thrust it forward with a smile of invitation.

He threw himself down at her feet, and having selected a cl.u.s.ter of the purple fruit, he held it up admiringly to the light.

"I did n't see any one on the car except the usual suburbanites," he remarked. "But would n't you be afraid out here all alone, with no men to protect you?" He wondered who the friend might be, but was too much pleased with his own good fortune to give it more than a pa.s.sing thought.

"I believe we ought to be," she confessed, "but we 're not. The truth is, we like to get far away from civilisation and exchange confidences.

Warwick is a great whispering-gallery, full of tale-bearing bats that peep and mutter."

He lifted his head and listened. "Did you get that faint lift of the breeze in the pines just then? Now it's gone; but it was just like the distant sound of the surf. If my eyes were shut, I should think myself by the sh.o.r.e."

"Oh, I 've been listening to nothing else for the last half hour," she returned, "and I much prefer the sound of a human voice. Too much of nature frightens me. You see I have no soul."

"You 've too much soul, perhaps," he amended. "If you had less, you would be impervious to such suggestions. But I know what you mean.

However, we were talking about our friend Emmet, and your description of Warwick reminded me of his animadversions on the place. But let me go back to the beginning for a fair start, and tell you how I managed to get hold of him." He described the events of the morning following the dinner and the visit Emmet had paid him in the evening, putting in the personal detail with an instinctive knowledge of a woman's demand for such things. Her evident appreciation rewarded him. She had something to say of the captain who had helped him in his effort, and at many a point in their talk the congeniality of their minds became evident. "You know how Emmet feels about the college, and about colleges in general?" he asked.

She nodded understandingly.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "St. George's Hall is personified for him in Anthony Cobbens. He told me all about their early a.s.sociations and subsequent estrangement. I must say that after his arraignment of the man, I half expected to see them fly at each other's throats, whereas they almost embraced." He threw back his head and laughed heartily at the remembrance.

"The amenities of civilisation--and politics," she murmured, smiling.

"But how roiled poor Emmet was underneath," he mused. "I wish I had Cardington's gift of speech to express the thoughts that have lately been taking shape in my mind concerning the spectacle of a democratic aristocracy. Now, if Emmet had the philosophical att.i.tude of mind, he would n't have the strength to struggle which he undoubtedly does have.

He needs that stimulus of personal animosity to get somewhere; if he were philosophical, he would be unambitious. When he has arrived, as they say, he will come to see that an aristocracy in the usual worldly sense of the term must have money to maintain its existence. The old aristocracy must have accessions of vulgar blood and vulgar money to keep it alive, just as the language must be rejuvenated from time to time by slang from the streets. I made a tentative effort to present some such point of view to him as you suggested, but it didn't take.

He could only see Cobbens's red head in front of his eyes, and it was like the proverbial rag of the same colour to the bull. Emmet is a generation short of being able to see in his personal enemy a synopsis of the processes of history. This, in short, is my conclusion. I'm afraid I did n't accomplish what we hoped for."

"I might have known it," she commented. "But I'm grateful to you for making the attempt."

"What hypocrites we are!" he cried, sitting up. "A little of my own philosophy would n't be a bad thing for home use. I could easily allow myself to get into as great a rage against Warwick as Emmet himself.

Already I 've begun to call it hard names, such as deadly, and cold, and sn.o.bbish. I'm beginning to see that a man like myself must always be on the outside here. I ought to have begun to live in Warwick three generations ago, or to have brought a fortune with me. In the West men are estimated on their individual merits, and one is n't made to feel himself an outsider."

"Perhaps because there's no inside to get into," she suggested coolly.

He had a vision of that sanctum into which Cobbens could buy his way with his wife's money, and he realised that this was not the first glimpse he had had of a quality in the woman he loved that was not all sweetness.

"I feel like one who has interfered in a family quarrel," he returned, good-naturedly. "Well, I may be only a transient here, a bird of pa.s.sage nesting for a year in the towers of the Hall. I will earnestly request myself to be amused at the spectacle of a democratic aristocracy." He felt that in her heart she agreed with him, else, why did she favour Emmet's candidacy?

"That will be like the attempt to extract sunbeams from cuc.u.mbers," she replied, with a note of weariness in her voice. "But the equanimity with which you took my speech about the West makes me feel like a horrid shrew. Have you really got a sweet disposition, Mr. Leigh, or are you just putting on airs?"

"Perhaps I have some occult reason for wishing to win your good opinion," he suggested.

For the second time she staved off a personal drift in the conversation. "It's getting darker," she said, looking about with sudden concern.

"Don't say you must be going, Miss Wycliffe," he begged. "This is the very best part of the day. Let me light a fire of pine cones." He started up and stood before her, antic.i.p.ating her acquiescence. She nodded her approval graciously, and at that moment the setting sun, struggling through the trees, shone full across her face and illumined her eyes. In this clear glow they were no longer black, but brown as the brown velvet of her jacket. He was haunted by a sense of a duplicated experience, and then remembered the fragile girl sitting on the stone step with her basket of eggs in her lap. But Miss Wycliffe's colouring was glorified, rather than penetrated, by the sun's rays, enriched rather than absorbed. Her face, framed in a large hat faced underneath with a delicate tint of blue chiffon, seemed to look out at him as from an inverted sea-sh.e.l.l, and the picture arrested him on the point of going. As if she suspected the cause of his delay and intended to break the charm, she removed the hat deftly and placed it with her gloves beside her.

"I think a fire would be pleasant," she remarked, "though it is really as warm as summer."

She had changed the picture only to improve it, for the suggestion of wildness and freedom in her dark hair fitted more perfectly with the spirit of the twilight woods. It may be that only a man can understand the fascination that exists for men in just such a simple operation as she had performed. The absolute femininity of it, the fumbling for the hatpins, the deliberate and thoughtful reinserting of them afterward in the discarded hat, where they can be found when needed, the invariable smoothing back of the hair from brow and eyes,--all these things make their peculiar appeal. It was this that caused Leigh to smile as he turned away and went in search of fuel, whistling softly to himself.

Returning with his hat well filled with pine cones, he caught sight of her face before she noted his approach, and was struck, as once before, by her expression of immeasurable sadness. She sat, as at first, embracing her knees with her hands, her nether lip drawn in as if she would suppress a sigh, her eyes fixed upon the distance and shadowed by something of the solemnity of the coming night.

As the light flames shot suddenly up from the heap of cones, their brilliancy made the surrounding woods seem vast and dark, the more so as the sun had now sunk behind the hill across the stream, filling the woods in that quarter with a glow as from another fire. He fed the flames thoughtfully with bits of broken branches, talking somewhat at random about a camping trip in the Yosemite.

"Isn't it absurd," she said presently, "that we have gradually lowered our voices till we are talking almost in whispers?"