The Mayor of Warwick Part 12

The young man supposed that in thus discovering the whereabouts of the bishop he had also located his daughter, and he marked the spot against the restoration of full light to the room. Meanwhile he maintained his position in the door, and would have continued to do so, had not his host tiptoed to his side and thrust him into a near-by chair.

For some time he remained almost rigidly still, as if he would make amends for the slight noise of his entrance by subsequent self-effacement. The succession of pictures, even the surrender of Breda and the scene of the jolly drinkers, shared his attention with that part of the room in which he had seen the bishop rise, but he soon realised that no further discoveries were possible as yet in that direction, and began to pay more heed to the lecturer.

He knew in a vague way that he was sitting beside a woman; but presently this consciousness increased till it became a delicate and pervasive atmosphere. There was a seduction in the shadowy presence that distracted his thoughts from the woman he loved, sitting somewhere there in the obscurity before him. He experienced a well-nigh guilty pleasure in this temporary yielding to a feminine influence other than that to which he had consecrated himself, and finally he admitted his deliberate appreciation. Leaning back in his chair and turning his head to satisfy his curiosity, he saw for the first time the trick his mind had played him. Convinced though he had been that Miss Wycliffe was in another part of the room, he had known all the time with his senses that she was sitting at his side. At least, it now seemed to him that his apparent disloyalty was in reality an involuntary tribute to her quality. She had made herself felt even when he thought she was another. As he looked down at her rounded cheek and white shoulders, she lifted her eyes with a recognition as suppressed as that of acquaintances in church, and then whispered inaudibly in the ear of a companion beyond. It was now that he saw a bunch of lilies of the valley in the hand that rested in her lap, and knew by what channel his imagination had been awakened.

The lecture was shorter than Leigh had antic.i.p.ated, and all too short for his desire. There was in his present position a peculiar, unspoken intimacy of which he felt that she also must be aware. It seemed unlikely that he could see her alone, and he cherished every moment as perhaps the best that would be vouchsafed. Almost before he realised what had happened, the walls of the room sprang into view at the sharp click of the electric lights, and he saw the lecturer, previously a disembodied voice, making his final bow. As he rose with the others, he caught a glimpse of many faces already familiar, and felt unexpectedly at home. Among the crowd he recognized Cardington by the bishop's side, Cobbens's smiling face, several of his colleagues, and a number of the students. The tide set toward the door, and they were carried before it. Not until they reached the less crowded room beyond did Leigh perceive that Miss Wycliffe was still closely attended by the companion with whom she had exchanged an occasional whisper at the lecture.

"You remember Mrs. Parr?" she reminded him.

"I do indeed," he replied, though till now he had received merely the impression of a face vaguely familiar.

"But you pa.s.sed me only yesterday on the street without recognition,"

Mrs. Parr complained. "I don't know whether I ought to speak to you or not."

The tone of her voice, which aimed at charming piquancy and realised only an airy affectation, attracted his attention, and revamped her upon his mind as one of the party of star-gazers. Her personality was acrid and insistent, and he imagined that the friendship between the two women was of her own making and maintenance. The nature of her greeting left him no choice but a flat and awkward confession of absent-mindedness. This trifling irritation, however, was of small moment compared with the fact that Miss Wycliffe was evidently content with his company and not disposed to leave him, as she could easily have done upon a reasonable pretext. The three continued together, drifting in the same direction through the rooms which now began to present a bewildering spectacle of changing groups and colours. Their talk was the usual art jargon which the recent lecture suggested, but in this Leigh bore perforce a subordinate part. It was Mrs. Parr who appealed to him from time to time for a confirmation of her views concerning composition, drawing, and high lights, and each appeal presented itself to him as an interruption. At last he was merely relieved to find that she had disappeared. Miss Wycliffe regarded him with a curious look, in which disapproval of his unconscious rudeness was mitigated by an indulgent appreciation of its cause.

"You 've succeeded in driving her away at last," she said, with a touch of severity.

He divined that he was not seriously under the ban of her displeasure.

"I?" he echoed, disingenuously.

"She began by taking a great fancy to you," she went on, "that night on the tower, but you simply refused to pay any attention to her. And to-night you behaved in the same manner. When you came and sat beside us, she regarded it as quite a romantic little event."

"She has a husband, has n't she?" he questioned bluntly.

"Yes, but she still indulges fancies for 'stunning young men.'"

"Then Mr. Parr does n't answer to that description, I suppose?" he queried.

"Mr. Parr is more stunned than stunning," she achieved, quick as a flash.

"I don't wonder at it," he said, laughing heartily. "I seem to see the poor fellow sunk in a coma of marital despair."

"This is extremely wicked and ungrateful talk in both of us," she murmured, "and I shall encourage it no further."

Leigh was fairly intoxicated by Miss Wycliffe's manner toward him. She had never been so frankly sweet before, and he had never seen her as radiant as now. She had the air of one filled with a mischievous impulse, which she restrained with an effort. A suggestion of daring lurked in her momentary sidelong glance, and awoke in him a responsive exhilaration. To other eyes that watched them curiously she appeared to a.s.sume a certain proprietary right. If she introduced him to this one or that, if they ran into other groups from time to time, she contrived with exquisite skill to make these interruptions temporary and to keep him to herself.

Their progress, though he was but dimly aware of it, was something of a triumphal one for himself. He was sufficiently striking in appearance when alone to attract attention, and Miss Wycliffe's evident partiality now made him a special mark for speculative glances. He began to gain an appreciation of her absolutely entrenched position in that society in which the older women were inclined to pet her and the older men indulged in gallant little speeches. As for her contemporaries, they paid her tribute in their kind.

In this way they partic.i.p.ated in the slow movement that for some time had been turning toward the dining-room. Through the open door they saw the solid phalanx of earnest eaters that surged about the tables.

To disinterested eyes the sight might have appeared one of agonised appet.i.tion, in which, as in battle, some particular person or movement arrested the attention for a moment from the general effect: a stout and determined matron planted like James Fitz-James upon his rock; a tall youth with salad raised aloft as he turned to make his escape; the perspiring face of some bewildered darkey, who could have found ample use for the hands of a Briareus in the stress of conflicting orders.

Leigh turned to his companion with an enquiring glance.

"Will you allow me to forage for you, Miss Wycliffe?"

She shook her head. "Not yet, at any rate," she answered. "What a spectacle! We might step into the conservatory and rest awhile."

She led the way through a near-by door into the vistas of greenness beyond. There she paused from time to time to call his attention to some rare plant, to lift some blossom to her face, and then went on with the a.s.surance of one entirely at home in her surroundings.

Through the thick branches Leigh caught more than one glimpse of a white dress, and heard an occasional ripple of youthful merriment. The vision of one of his students hurrying down a parallel aisle with spoils from the table gave him a humorous sense of fellow feeling.

At length they found a seat of twisted branches, screened by a row of palms. From the hallway of the house the sc.r.a.ping of the violins came intermittently, like the sound of crickets in a distant field, so faint that they could also hear the puffing of the breeze through a raised panel in the slanting roof of gla.s.s above their heads. It seemed as if the wonderful Indian Summer night were trying to steal in among the guests through that small opening, to bid them be still. To look up at that vitreous, transparent roof was like gazing into the enchantment of a witch's mirror, so imminent was the mysterious depth of the night beyond. Miss Wycliffe emitted the ghost of a sigh, as if to express her relief and sense of escape, perhaps her weariness. Leigh, following her glance upward, caught sight of a solitary, brilliant star peeping through the triangular aperture, and reflected with keen appreciation that it was the planet Venus. There was an opportunity in this chance apparition, of which, however, he did not avail himself.

It was true that she had drawn his eyes down from the stars to gaze into her own, and that the planet upon which they then looked together had been given the name of the G.o.ddess of love. These facts, beautifully coincident as they seemed to him, would not bear expression in words. She would think he was making conventional love to her, and his instinct forbade such an obvious beginning. He spoke, therefore, only of the refreshing contrast of their asylum with the noise and glare of the drawing-rooms, noting with a pa.s.sing pang as he did so that the lilies of the valley which she had carried with her thus far were drooping in her lap, their expiring odour quenched by the heavy fragrance about them.

Perhaps it was a touch of feminine perversity that led her to acquiesce in his animadversions upon the scene they had just left. It was certainly a function in which she was peculiarly fitted to shine, and she had taken her part with every appearance of enjoyment; yet her comments were more caustic than his own.

"The lecture was the better part," she declared. "I wish it had been longer--but you missed a good deal of it."

"Yes," he explained. "I didn't get away from the debate till after six o'clock."

"The debate!" she echoed, fixing him with an interested gaze. "I had forgotten that this was the evening. Tell me about it. Did your tentative efforts with Mr. Emmet bear any fruit, after all?"

He shook his head, smiling. "It was an extraordinary spectacle," he mused. "The pit and the balconies, the aisles, the s.p.a.ce at the back, and the stairs down to the sidewalk were filled with labourers, packed close together, their dinner-pails in their hands and their pipes in their mouths. You could have cut the air with a knife into chunks of tobacco smoke."

"And how did he seem?" she asked.

"You have good reason to be proud of your _protege_, Miss Wycliffe," he answered, kindling with generous enthusiasm. "Emmet outcla.s.sed his opponent completely--in style, in delivery, in subject-matter, and, as it seemed to me, in the justice of his cause. I was so amazed and impressed that I carried the atmosphere of the thing with me until--until I dropped into the chair beside you, and then I forgot all about it."

She moved uneasily and toyed with the flowers in her lap, then glanced up at him, but not with the glance of a woman who is ready to listen to a declaration of love. His next words were determined by that look, and there was no little self-renunciation in his pursuance of a subject he would fain have dropped for one nearer his heart. He had to remind himself once more of the shortness of their acquaintance, and of her natural curiosity concerning one of the crises in a struggle which had interested her so keenly.

"It only shows how far one's judgments fall below the mark sometimes,"

he went on. "Not till this afternoon did I get a true perspective of the man, when I saw him standing there, perfectly self-possessed and powerful, reading his speech"--

"Reading!" she interrupted.

"Yes, reading, and actually gaining in effectiveness by doing so. It seems that each speaker was allowed only twenty minutes, and rather than run the risk of going off on a tangent, he had written the whole thing out--but he knew it practically by heart."

"It was like him," she commented. "He's clever. But what did he say?"

Her eager interest, her knowledge of the man, the compliment she paid him, filled Leigh with bitterness of which he was ashamed. He found himself under the necessity of describing to the woman he loved the triumph of another man, who had, as he now saw clearly, appealed to her imagination. To be sure, it was nothing more than that, but as far as it went, it hurt his own cause to play the role of the narrating messenger. He was focussing her attention upon an exciting drama in which he had borne the inglorious part of witness; but he was too proud a man to be ungenerous in his comments, or to let her see the duality of his mental state.

"His speech was a frank setting off of the ma.s.ses against the cla.s.ses,"

he returned. "He said the same things I had heard him say in conversation, only with more pith and point. Emmet has the Irish gift of expression when he's aroused--there's no doubt of it. He practically took for his text: The Man in the One-storied House against the Man in the Mansion. One thing struck me as especially keen. His opponents have been claiming that the city is a great business corporation, in which the citizens are stockholders and the officials directors; but Emmet pointed out the fact that in a stock company a man is ent.i.tled to as many votes as he has shares, while in a munic.i.p.al corporation the individual, not the stock he possesses, is the unit.

He made a good point there in maintaining that the corner-stone of democracy is manhood suffrage, not property suffrage. He tore apart that apparently reasonable comparison, and showed beneath it an attempt to rob the poor man of his rights."

She nodded her appreciation. "It was a good point, but I don't agree with him, nevertheless. Property-holders ought to have more to say in the management of a city than those who have nothing at stake. If I had my way, I would confine manhood suffrage to state and national elections."

Leigh was struck by these words into silence. For the first time she had made him realise that she was a rich woman, though he had heard from Cardington that the bishop merely held his wife's large property in trust for the daughter. Now he detected in her a shrewd and practical strain, perhaps an inheritance from some ancestor who had laid the foundations of her fortune. He saw also that her revolt against the moribund spirituality of the wealthy cla.s.s to which she belonged was offset by a consciousness of possession, so that she could support Emmet one moment and condemn his theories the next. On one side of their natures, Leigh and Miss Wycliffe touched in sympathetic understanding; on the other, they were as far apart as the poles. No poor man, however civilised he may be, can range himself on the side of wealth, unless he is either a fortune hunter or a sycophant, and Leigh was neither. At the present moment he merely felt, with a sinking of spirit, the existence of an artificial barrier between them of which he had previously been but dimly conscious.

"I 'm something of a socialist myself," he said, "only, I 'm waiting for a great leader and a reasonable propaganda."

"You 'll never find either," she retorted with spirit. Then her face softened into the expression of a listener to a good story. "But don't let us discuss these endless and stupid questions. What I want is the personal and spectacular side of it. How did the two men compare? And with which of them did the people side?"

"With their own representative, naturally. I was impressed with the tenseness of the feeling. The audience cheered Emmet until he had to remind them that they were cutting into his twenty-minute allowance.

Then they kept silent, but more like animals held in leash, I thought, and I could n't help wondering what would happen if the cork should suddenly pop off and let out all that bottled sense of ill usage. When Judge Swigart got up, he did n't mend matters by referring continually to Emmet as his 'distinguished antagonist,' in a tone that suggested irony rather than respect. He said he was pained and astonished to hear Mr. Emmet declare that there was cla.s.s feeling in Warwick; he himself had never detected any; he objected to the setting off of aristocrat against democrat, when all were democratic; he denied that the city was run by a clique."

"Really," Miss Wycliffe remarked, laughing, "he could n't expect them to swallow that. Of course Warwick is run by a clique--it always has been--and I 'd like to see them turned out for once."

Leigh was no longer astonished at the sudden swinging of the pendulum.