The Mayor of Warwick Part 2

"Then you lost the opportunity of your life. If you had only said, 'Thank you, my Lord!' Even a Yankee bishop would have had no objection to being my-lorded, you know. Ah, that would have been the retort courteous, and the story is incomplete without it. By your kind permission I shall tell it with that addendum."

"A footnote by Professor Cardington," Leigh suggested.

"No, no, not at all. I 'll work it into the text as your own. The story must go down in history along with the cla.s.sic jest in regard to the position of the statue's outstretched palm. The bishop told you that, no doubt, antic.i.p.ating my own good offices."

"It may interest you to know," he went on, as they began to descend the stairs, "that you are to meet a very charming young lady to-night.

Miss Wycliffe is a very remarkable young woman in some respects. Have you yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance?"

"What is she like?" Leigh asked, wondering whether the answer would suggest in any way the young woman he had met the morning of his arrival.

"I shall not allow my enthusiasm to betray me into an inadequate description," Cardington declared. "I could no more make the subject clear to you than you could explain to me the _n_th degree of _x+z_, if there is any such expression in algebra, which I should n't be surprised to discover is the case."

"Then I shall have to possess my soul in patience," Leigh answered, with apparent indifference.

When they emerged from the shadow of the Hall, and plunged between the lines of maples, they were obliged to go in single file, for the narrowness of the way. The young mathematician glanced at the last melancholy glow of the sunset which spread out in a faint, fan-shaped aurora above a dun rampart of clouds. His love of nature was no less keen than his appreciation of people and events. The mathematician and the poet held alternate sway over him. This di-psychic quality was evidenced by the rapidity with which the expression of his eye would frequently change from cold calculation to a certain rapt observation, as if he looked up from a complicated problem to contemplate a glimpse of blue distance. Thus it was that he appreciated to the full the panorama spread out before him, though his mind was intent upon another subject; or rather, it might be said that the sight gave warmth and colouring to his thought. He had pa.s.sed the place of that first meeting several times during the week, and never without a vivid remembrance of it. If the young woman who had made such an impression upon him were the bishop's daughter, why had he not seen her in the interim, at the initial service in the chapel when visitors were present, upon the grounds, or in the streets of the city? Perhaps she had been away, and had just returned. At all events, he should know before long.

Of one thing he felt a.s.sured. If Miss Wycliffe turned out to be some one else, she would hold no interest for him, not even if she possessed all the indescribable qualities of which Cardington had hinted.

Speculating upon this possibility, he scarcely listened now to the words of his companion swinging on ahead, as they came brokenly to his ears in the gusts of wind.

CHAPTER IV

THE BISHOP'S DAUGHTER

The bishop's house was situated about half a mile from the college on Birdseye Avenue, the princ.i.p.al residence street of Warwick. A forest aisle and city thoroughfare combined, this vista of ancient elms suggested the inspiration of those Gothic cathedrals of the Old World from whose a.s.sociations and influence the Puritans had fled away.

During their transit beneath this splendid nave, Cardington entertained his companion with an account of the house they were to visit, its history and architectural pretensions. In sharp distinction to the prevalent style of building, the episcopal residence suggested a Tudor palace. Its pointed windows, its dentilated battlements, its miniature turrets, would have been impressive on a larger scale, in stone, but being of wood, in a reduced proportion, they appeared an inadequate plagiarism, which not even the extensive grounds could shield from criticism. Seen at night-time, however, the counterfeit was far less glaring. The form, rather than the material, attracted the eye; the ecclesiastical windows glimmering among the trees, the antique lantern in the vestibule, which concealed behind its powdered gla.s.s a modern electric bulb, the turrets, dimly discerned by the light from the avenue, combined to make an appeal to the historical imagination.

To Leigh, seeing the house thus for the first time, it appeared a peculiarly appropriate habitat for Bishop Wycliffe; for he was one that carried the stamp of his profession in his very bearing, and in every lineament of his face. It was more difficult to imagine a young and charming woman housed in such a place, but his first glimpse of the bishop's daughter showed him that her Pagan beauty was emphasized rather than lessened by contrast with her surroundings.

She was sitting in the drawing-room to the left of the entrance hall, bending over a book. If she heard the entrance of her visitors into the hall, she made no sign, but kept her eyes bent upon her novel, the left-hand side of which, supported on her knee, had grown to the thickness of half an inch. Only a few pages remained unread, half lifted on the other side, above which her ivory paper knife hung suspended. Clothed in a yellow gown and sitting in a flood of yellow light that radiated from the shaded lamp beside her, she presented an extraordinarily vivid picture against the brown panelling of the wall.

Even in repose one divined the suppressed energy of the figure, a quality indicated by the almost imperceptible movement of the small slipper that peeped beyond the border of her gown, and by the gentle heaving of the lace at her throat. Yet there was something in the graceful abandon of her att.i.tude reminiscent of the women of the South.

So struck was Leigh by this picture, and by the fact that his hope of meeting again the G.o.ddess of the maple walk was about to be realized, that Cardington was well on his way up the stairs before he hurried in pursuit. Unawake himself to modern art tendencies, he felt, without conscious reflection or comparison, the old-fashioned appearance of the house. The severe, dark paper on the wall, the steel engravings that had hung for years untouched, were evidently as the bishop's wife, or as one belonging to a still earlier generation, had placed them. They proclaimed a reverence for old a.s.sociations, or the indifference of an unmarried daughter to the artistic possibilities of a house that was not of her own choosing.

The room into which they entered appeared to be the bishop's own, or a guest chamber. At least, there was no suggestion of the feminine in the furniture, or in the ecclesiastical pictures that adorned the walls. Even the military brushes on the bureau possessed an episcopal dignity of size and weight, and the two tall candles in their ma.s.sive silver candlesticks glimmered like altar lights.

"There's plenty of atmosphere in this place," Leigh remarked, as he stood before the mirror and applied the brushes to his hair, which, because of its thickness, was invariably disordered by the lifting of his hat. "I mean atmosphere in the modern fictional sense. It seems to me I saw a duplicate of that four-posted monstrosity of a bed at the Exposition this summer."

"I love to come in contact with the fresh, unprejudiced view of the West," Cardington returned. "I've no doubt you are calculating the number of microbes that ancient piece of furniture could accommodate, and thinking that a bra.s.s bedstead would be much more sanitary."

"You do me injustice," Leigh retorted good-humouredly. "Even scientists have their unprofessional moments. I was just reminded of a story I once read of a bed of that kind with a movable canopy that came down in the night and smothered the occupant."

"Excellent," said Cardington. "The thing was worked, as I remember, from the room above, and was used by the robber host to persuade his guests to part peaceably with their valuables. But I fear that you are going to show an irreverent att.i.tude of mind toward the local divinities."

"And what may they be?"

"Two in particular, an alliterative couple, Family and Furniture."

"Why not add Folly to the number?" Leigh suggested.

"An instinct of self-preservation should prevent such an addition.

That might be as injudicious as it would have been for some bright young man in ancient Egypt, five thousand years before the Christian era, to express a doubt concerning the divinity of the sacred bull.

The correctness of his conjecture would not have saved him from a horrible death at the hands of the faithful." And he began to lead the way downstairs.

As they entered the drawing-room, Miss Wycliffe closed her book with satisfied emphasis and rose to meet them. The bishop was there also, standing in the background and waiting his turn. His eyes were on his daughter rather than on his guests, with a pride that was evident at even a casual glance. Again Leigh encountered that look which had so deeply attracted him. Her eyes were very dark, and almost misty in their warm light, as if she were somewhat dazed by long perusal of the printed page. She possessed also that mark of feminine beauty so prized by the ancients, a low forehead, and there was a suggestion of the cla.s.sic in the arrangement of her hair. He found her smile peculiarly winning, and was conscious of the responsiveness of her fingers, so different from the limp pa.s.sivity of many a feminine greeting. Though not more given to self-importance than the average young man, he was somehow aware that she too remembered their first casual encounter. Her failure to mention it now served only to invest it with the greater significance.

"Miss Felicity," Cardington began, when they had become seated, "I suspect that you were racing against time, endeavouring, in fact, to finish that book before our arrival should interrupt you."

"You would not have been welcome a moment sooner," she admitted.

"Felicity is a deep student in shallow literature," the bishop put in epigrammatically.

"As if Zola were ever shallow," she said. "I'll leave it with Mr.

Leigh."

"You can search me for an opinion," he replied; and in the breezy colloquialism of the expression, no less than in a certain vividness of manner, his isolation from the others became apparent. "My French reading is mostly confined to astronomical monographs."

"Miss Felicity," Cardington interposed, with an elaborate and old-fashioned gallantry that became him, "Mr. Leigh is a student of stars, and therefore he is more concerned with the reader than with the book. If you will persist in shining upon him so dazzlingly, you cannot be surprised if he turns an unseeing eye upon any object you may present for his inspection. Now, since I have basked longer in your light, I may perhaps--allow me." He reached for the book and began to turn over the leaves. She watched his growing absorption with indulgent amus.e.m.e.nt, and the comradeship of the two omnivorous readers was evident. Cardington was frankly reading, oblivious of his hosts, a liberty which indicated his familiar standing in that house.

"I have a weakness for polymathists of the old school," the bishop remarked, harking back to his guest's confession of narrower interests, "of which cla.s.s I may say that Professor Cardington is almost the only example within my range of observation. I have noticed that Latin is becoming as strange to the average graduate as Eliot's Indian Bible."

"But Latin does n't help the modern world to build railroads, or battleships, or motor cars," Leigh suggested, by way of presenting the opposite view.

"Always the argument of utility," the bishop returned, with mournful resignation. "But how have modern inventions added to the beauty or the dignity of human life? Man is mastered and slain by his own inventions, and a skysc.r.a.per reduces him to the proportions of an ant."

"I am tempted to mention cathedrals as having rather a dwarfing effect upon their builders," Leigh said.

"I should hope so! Better to be dwarfed by the magnificence of a temple of the Lord than by the hideous hugeness of a temple of trade."

The bishop's dry smile indicated that he had scored.

His antagonist laughed outright, with a keen appreciation of the fact that his comparison had given the bishop the very opportunity he desired. It seemed that circ.u.mstances rather than conviction had forced him into his present championship of the useful. Miss Wycliffe's appeal had brought out the confession of a special interest, which had stamped him unduly. In addition, the section of the country from which he came was against him. The bishop was not without his prejudices, and was disposed to father all the materialistic spirit of the age upon his guest, whether or no. He had noted that lapse into slang, and his att.i.tude had become like that of the loiterers in the hall of Caiaphas, the high priest. Had his thought become vocal, it would have run like a garbled version of their triumphant charge against St. Peter: "Thou art a Westerner, and thy speech bewrayeth thee."

His daughter had been a mere observer of the little tilt she had unwittingly precipitated, and now, as she saw the younger champion go down so gaily, she was moved by his spirit to sympathetic partic.i.p.ation.

"It seems to me, father," she interposed, "that you and Mr. Leigh are like the two knights who came to blows over the colour of a shield that was white on one side and black on the other."

"You are quite right, my dear," he replied gracefully, "and as I see that dinner is served, I will take this opportunity to dismount from my hobby for a little refreshment."

"You must let me take this book with me when I go," Cardington begged, rising from its perusal with evident reluctance.

"It must lie on Mrs. Parr's table for a month first," she replied. "I promised to let her pretend to read it."

"I call that a wicked speech," he reproved. "Where is that charity which your father has striven to inculcate in your heart?"

She slipped the book into a large Satsuma vase, with a sidelong glance at Leigh. Cardington accepted the act with a meek acquiescence that rested comically upon him and proclaimed his chains.

Had Leigh been asked subsequently to give a description of the dishes of which he partook that evening, he would have made a sorry showing, for he was conscious only of his hostess, and intoxicated by a divination of her consciousness of him. Cardington and the bishop were the chief talkers, and as the conversation presently turned to purely local affairs, of which Leigh had as yet scant knowledge, he was rather pleased than otherwise to become a listener and observer. In this divided att.i.tude of mind his observation was chiefly engaged. He noted particularly the string of gold beads which Miss Wycliffe wore, and their reflection against her throat reminded him of a children's game, which consisted in holding a b.u.t.tercup beneath the chin of a companion.