The Mayor of Warwick Part 19

Leigh, absorbed in the impression he had received, was unconscious of the one he had given, of his somewhat repellent expression when he saw the mayor's square figure bearing down upon him. Yet his emotion was less personal and intense than the other's in proportion as he was less primitive by nature and training. He distinguished between Emmet the mayor and Emmet the lover; for he was familiar with the phenomenon of official probity combined with a lack of that quality in some personal relationship. Had Emmet's quandary been presented to him abstractly, he would have been quite tolerant in his judgement, with the understanding of a man of the world; but, in spite of resentment and chagrin, he still continued to love Felicity Wycliffe, and this fact made him scornful of the man who had trampled her gift under foot. But would Felicity continue to give?

Leigh believed that she had awakened from her delusion; but what direction would her pride now take? Would she continue in the course she had chosen in sheer perversity, in sheer fidelity to herself?

There was also the attraction of extreme opposites to be reckoned with, the fascination which a man of simple psychology, of strength and wholesome good looks, might possess for a woman of great subtlety and cultivation. Yet what could he do to prevent it? With what grace could he attempt to open her eyes to her husband's ulterior motives in seeking a reconciliation, now that she knew of his own love for her?

Could he advise her to get a divorce on some technical ground, that she might marry the man who had opened her eyes to the truth? And how could he a.s.sume that to her he was an element in the situation?

After his first emotion in learning that she had never lived with her husband, and his consequent conviction that she regarded the marriage as a mistake, the ceremony itself loomed up as a grim fact, one not to be brushed aside by ingenious arguments. Behind it, as a prop to its stability, was the strict tradition of Christianity, an inheritance of peculiar influence with both the partic.i.p.ants in the strange mistake.

There was no cause for divorce which either of their respective churches recognised as valid; at least, so he believed, for he did not doubt that Emmet had told him the whole truth in regard to Lena Harpster, and he felt sure that he would now avoid the very appearance of evil. He recognised also that he was the recipient of a confession he must regard as sacred. Felicity must not know he shared her secret.

His part must be merely that of a spectator of a drama.

These were his thoughts as he wandered from place to place, trying to convince himself that he had reached a point of renunciation; but as often as her face rose up before him he wavered in his resolution, and went back to the conviction that she really did not love the man who was only technically her husband. Might not her treatment of himself be capable of a more favourable interpretation than his first anger and chagrin had put upon it? He felt that it would depend upon her, when she returned, whether he could maintain a feigned indifference.

He purchased a pipe for Cardington, and ultimately found himself in a large department store turning over the volumes on the book counter in search of a gift for his father. Presently he heard a voice at his elbow.

"Are you engaged in Christmas shopping too, Mr. Leigh?"

He turned and saw Mrs. Parr looking at him tentatively, her hands full of bundles. A remembrance of his rudeness to her at Littleford's caused him to welcome this opportunity to make amends. She was Felicity's nearest friend, and perhaps she would mention her name.

Moreover, the fact that Emmet suspected her of having divined his secret, and her meeting with him and Lena at the inn, gave her a new interest in his eyes.

"Yes, Mrs. Parr," he returned. "I'm doing as well as a mere man can be expected to do, which is n't very well. Perhaps you can come to my a.s.sistance."

She placed her bundles on the counter with alacrity, and her thin, gloved hand hovered over the rows of volumes.

"You must give me some hint as to the destination of the gift," she declared, turning upon him with a sparrow-like motion of the head and a significant smile.

"No," he said, laughing at her intimation, "it isn't what you suspect.

I want a book for an old-fashioned gentleman, past middle life. There seems to be nothing here but the latest novels."

"As to that," she responded, "the bishop reads everything, from the Talmud to a Nick Carter detective story."

"Neither of the cla.s.sics you mention will fit the present case, however."

"I know!" she cried. "'The Bible in Spain.' You need n't look dubious; it is n't a Sunday-school book, as you might think from the t.i.tle. You may be sure that Felicity Wycliffe would n't like insipid literature, and this is one of her favourite books."

Leigh's dubious look had not been due to ignorance of the book, but to a doubt as to whether his father possessed it. On reflection, he thought the choice a safe one, and his reply left his adviser undisturbed in her conviction that she was admitting him into the select circle of Borrovians.

"The recommendation goes," he said. "Not," he corrected himself, "that I would not have purchased it upon yours alone, Mrs. Parr."

"Oh, I'm not vain of my knowledge of books," she a.s.sured him. "Miss Wycliffe is my literary conscience. I do miss her so much! When she 's away, I 'm only half a person, I declare; and when she 's here, I 'm just n.o.body at all, because I lose myself in her."

"You make the friendships of men pale into insignificance," he remarked jestingly, yet not without a new respect, inspired by this glimpse of her capacity for loyalty to one who overshadowed her.

"If you only knew her!" she said. "But you don't."

He could not help wondering which of them knew the more about one great incident in her life, but he merely echoed her words with a rueful conviction of his own: "No, I don't."

She regarded him with sympathetic understanding. Of course he was infatuated with Felicity, like many others, and undoubtedly his chances were as remote as theirs.

"Now tell me," she said, "what you are going to get for the rest of your family."

"That's what I want you to tell me," he answered.

"Follow me, then," she said brightly, "and I 'll see that you don't get imposed upon."

He took the book and her bundles, and they left the counter on the best of terms. Though he was hopelessly in love with another, a knowledge of Mrs. Parr's partiality for him lent a certain charm to his manner.

Without attaching any weight to the fancy Miss Wycliffe had told him of, he was sufficiently human to enjoy being liked and to make some response. At his first meeting with Mrs. Parr she had seemed merely insignificant; at Littleford's he had found her irritating; now, to his astonishment, he discovered in her worship of Felicity her attractive side. When they finally left the shop with their acc.u.mulated purchases, she insisted that he follow her into the sleigh and go to her home for a cup of tea.

"People are so inconsiderate during the Christmas season," she chattered. "Now I never have my things sent home at this time of year, when the delivery men are so overworked; and I don't even bother the boys to carry them out to the sleigh for me, unless I positively have to. John and I do our shopping together, don't we, John?"

The coachman touched his hat with his whip in acknowledgement of the copartnership in humanitarianism, and deftly steered his horses into the open street. "I belong to a league of women," she went on, "who have agreed not to go shopping in the late afternoons, and not to have the things they can carry sent by the delivery waggons. I don't know how many printed slips I have sent out requesting shoppers to use the same consideration. We looked up nearly every name in the directory.

This is the third year we 've done it."

"That's why I did n't receive a copy of your communication," he remarked. "My name 's not in the directory yet."

"You would n't believe what fun Felicity always makes of us," she said.

"She pretends that we are trying to excuse people from doing what they are paid to do."

He was able to see how the virtue of the league could appeal to Felicity's sense of humour, even though she might accept its suggestion.

"There 's that man!" she cried, suddenly stiffening. "It seems to me I can never go down-town without meeting the horrid creature somewhere, strutting along as if he owned the town, just because a lot of ruffians have made him mayor. But I believe Felicity has won you over to her strange point of view."

"Emmet is n't at all a bad mayor," he returned. "I happen to know that he has refused to have anything to do with Bat Quayle, the political boss of the worst element of his party. What do you say to that?"

"That you have been misinformed," she answered implacably, "or that he has gone back on his word, and now refuses to pay his political debts."

"In either case you don't leave him a leg to stand on. Still, I can only reiterate my conviction in regard to his political honesty, and wait for developments."

"I notice you don't make any claims for his private character," she retorted, giving him a severe glance. "But men have their own code of morals, and always stand by each other. Now I happen to know that he is running around with one of Felicity's servants. Out at the Old Continental, the other evening, we found them in possession of a room we had engaged for dinner. He practically ordered us out of the place until he and Miss Harpster, as he called her, chose to take their departure. Did you ever hear of such a thing in your life?"

"Never," he answered. "Emmet would be quite a catch for her, would n't he?"

She threw up her hands with a gesture of infinite scorn. "He never in this world intends to marry her. I 'm sure of that."

He wondered whether she guessed how truly she had spoken, but her face was sphinx-like in its hard acerbity. She seemed to shrink and grow pinched with the intensity of her emotion, and her next words, spoken almost as a soliloquy, showed the trend of her thoughts.

"I had n't quite made up my mind to write to Felicity yet, but now I will, this very night. She ought not to let such a girl stay in the house. But I 'm afraid my writing will only make her determined--she 's so perverse."

The words only completed his mystification. It now occurred to him that this might be merely the excessive virtue of a New Englander, that Mrs. Parr merely wished to save her friend from the mortification of a scandal belowstairs in her house. Her prejudice against Emmet was sufficient to explain her belief in his bad intentions regarding Lena Harpster.

"On second thoughts I sha'n't do it," she declared, with a curious gleam in her eyes; then she closed her lips firmly, as if to dismiss the subject.

Leigh could only guess why she had changed her mind, and had suddenly decided to let matters take their course. a.s.suming that she knew nothing of Emmet's true relationship with Felicity and thought merely that her friend was infatuated with him, it was possible that she might even welcome a moral breakdown on Emmet's part, provided it would open Felicity's eyes to his true quality. He was tempted to believe that Mrs. Parr would willingly let Lena be sacrificed to accomplish this result. The various possibilities that lay concealed behind his companion's enigmatical features were bewildering, and the subject was too delicate for further probing. As the fine vista of Birdseye Avenue opened up before them, he turned the subject by remarking that Christmas never seemed so truly Christmas as in New England. The dictum was a happy one.

"Yes," she a.s.sented with fervour, "and is n't Warwick beautiful? I never go away, even to Europe, without realising when I come back that Warwick is the most beautiful place in the world. Thank G.o.d, I was born and brought up in New England!"

"And thank G.o.d, I was n't!" he retorted.

"What do you mean by that?" she demanded, turning upon him with shocked asperity.

"I merely mean that my view would have been limited for life to the vista that may be obtained from the steps of the First Church--not that it is n't a fine one, in its way."