The Mayor of Warwick Part 24

THE BLINDNESS OF THE BISHOP

The following morning, Felicity did not appear at the breakfast-table, a circ.u.mstance sufficiently unusual to cause the bishop some uneasiness, for she rarely failed to rise at a reasonable hour.

"Lena," he said, "go upstairs and see whether Miss Wycliffe is ill, but don't wake her if she is still asleep."

Left alone, he glanced over the morning paper, too much absorbed in the hypothesis that would explain his daughter's non-appearance to find much amus.e.m.e.nt in the editor's bland and innocuous comments upon the sensational episode of the preceding night. He recalled her evident excitement and preoccupation when she came in from her walk with Leigh.

If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight.

When Lena Harpster received no response to her gentle tap, she ventured to open the door softly and to step within her mistress's room. The lightest sleeper could scarcely have been awakened by her entrance, as noiseless as a shadow or the slow swaying of a curtain. She stood near the foot of the bed, in the dim and fragrant room, looking at the beautiful head upon the pillow, the dark, abundant hair, the half-open lips relaxed from the control of the mind, revealing now more clearly all the promises and pa.s.sions which when awake they might deny.

Some sense of the awe and mystery of sleep caused Lena to stand thus motionless at gaze, herself a pale, ethereal figure, scarcely less beautiful than her mistress. There was a guilty consciousness also of deliberate intrusion. Familiar as she was with the room, it now took on a different aspect to her eyes. All the objects of art, the tapestries and pictures and statuettes, which she had admired for themselves, seemed in a peculiar way the property of their happy owner, an overflowing expression of her abundant loveliness. What a contrast that lace-covered bed, that nest of luxury, presented to her own simple couch beneath the roof, which served merely as a place where she could lie down and rest! And there was another contrast of which she was unaware. The sleeping face was more instinct with life, though Sleep is said to be the brother of Death, than the shadowed eyes that watched.

Miss Wycliffe, she reflected, had only to wish for a thing, and possession was a.s.sured. Above all, it was the thought that she might also have taken her lover from her which kept the girl's eyes fixed in wistful speculation. She had ventured to write again to Emmet, but without result; he had even pa.s.sed her blindly on the street, leaving her faint, with a whispered greeting dying pathetically on her lips.

How could she contend with her mistress, if what she feared were true?

Yet how slender her cause of suspicion! Only the incident of the ring, which Miss Wycliffe had explained most naturally; but the final warning against Emmet remained in her mind as a declaration of possession.

It was characteristic of Lena's nature that she yielded to no one in appreciation of Felicity's beauty. Chastened rather than embittered by a conviction of her own loss, she was not without a consciousness of the appealing change which sleep now made in the woman she had such cause to dread. No hint remained of that imperious quality which moulded others to her will. She seemed to have grown softer, and there was something childlike in the position of her arm on the counterpane, in her hand turned palm upward, in her half-curled fingers. A lover, were he a poet, might have likened them to the petals of a flower that had begun to open with returning day. Presently the sleeper stirred and opened her eyes, dimly aware of a retreating presence and a closing door, but when, an hour later, she awoke fully, the impression was like that of a dream.

It was ten o'clock when she rang her bell and ordered breakfast in her room. This order was as unusual as her late sleep, but she seemed to herself to have awakened a different person, one in whom such small changes of action were merely an index of greater possibilities. She received her father's inquiries through Lena with indifference, and sent back word that she had been only over-tired. Knowing that he lingered below to see her, she delayed deliberately until he should grow impatient and leave the house, for she wished to take up again the train of thought that had kept her so long awake the previous night.

At present, her sole concern was of herself and of her lover.

Having placed the steaming cup of coffee beside her on the dressing-table, she sipped it from time to time while she fastened up her hair. Like Leigh, she too had come to a new realisation of self, but the revelation was attended with far less of spiritual turmoil. It was as if she were making her own acquaintance over again, and the process was not without fascination. He had called her cruel. Was there truth in the charge? She had never been conscious of intentional cruelty, and yet she was intellectual enough to see that her husband might have good reason to accuse her of it in her treatment of him.

But Leigh had no such cause of complaint, unless he would hold her responsible for her beauty. There must be some expression in her face which she herself had never seen, which she could never summon from its reflection in the mirror, an expression of desire, impersonal it might be, but moving the beholder to a personal response.

She was pleased, rather than distressed, by Leigh's condemnation. In spite of his talk of cruelty and vanity, he had said he did not know a woman could be so sweet. She knew she could be sweet to the man she loved, and that no one had ever yet divined how much she had to give.

She placed the back of her hand against her lips and tried to imagine how they had felt to him when he kissed them. The youthfulness of the action and the fancy made her smile, and showed her how far she had gone in thinking of him as a lover.

Her sense of guilt was less acute than her realisation of the difficulty of her position. It came upon her that she was one day nearer discovery and condemnation. As yet no plan of action had taken final shape in her mind. She did not know whether she would wait for discovery to come and find her, or take the initiative. Leigh's declaration had acted as a sedative on her unhappiness, and had banished the desire of an explanation with her husband. She would fain arrest time while the situation remained as it was, while Leigh was not yet lost to her for good. What did she mean by allowing him to kiss her a second time? Did she wish to make amends for the suffering she had caused, or was her acquiescence a fatal admission? In the latter case, what hope or consolation could she find in this new discovery?

Cardington too came in for a share of her thought, but scarcely for a share of her concern. Whatever his suspicions or knowledge, she was sure that his affection and loyalty would keep him silent. If his final outbreak at the table the previous evening expressed his indignation at Emmet's treatment, it seemed to tell also his acceptance of the inevitable, and to convey to her in her doubt his advice, almost his entreaty. It was as if he had pointed out to her the path of duty, and warned her against his colleague, not in a spirit of jealousy, but in the spirit of a friend who had readied an absolute renunciation of whatever hopes he might once have cherished, and now thought only of her. For a moment she softened almost to the point of tears, but this indulgence was brief. A vision of her husband's bulldog air, as he sat there baffled and at bay, returned to menace her. She realised that he would not leave matters longer as they were, that he might force the crisis that very day. The mettle of the bishop's daughter was never more apparent than now, as she faced the probable results of her own actions. She was by no means inclined to take her punishment quietly, or to admit that she was in the wrong. Having ruled her husband so long, she would not now allow him to dictate to her, but would fight for her own happiness. Her hands clenched involuntarily, and her breath came quick with militant excitement. Had she been a man, her career, in whatever line she might have chosen, could scarcely have been less than remarkable.

Meanwhile the bishop was frittering the morning away by a desultory attention to his correspondence, hoping each moment that Felicity would pa.s.s the open door of his study. He was no longer a busy man, for the onerous duties of his office were now taken by his coadjutor, and he could well afford to wait. He did not know what he wished to say to her, but he would see her face again and observe her manner, that he might examine anew his grounds of suspicion. For him there were no longer golden hours which it were a sin for others to filch from him.

In the sunset of his life he dreamed of the active labours of his successors, of the inst.i.tution which he would leave in a position to feed more generously the ministry of the Church. Should he allow her foolish fancy for a fortune hunter to divert her from the purpose he hoped she would one day cherish? Even if a husband made no attempt to dissuade her, a child would inevitably become an heir, and her plans would be solely for him. Cold and austere by nature, he had married his own position to wealth, and he felt no desire to perpetuate his line under the name of another man. Above all, he shrunk from the thought of his daughter's marriage as from a profanation. She was so like him in certain mental traits and interests that he could not appreciate the temperamental difference that kept them far apart.

As the hands of the clock crept toward eleven, he realised that the morning was slipping away, and that he could wait no longer if he was to see President Renshaw before he went to lunch. A few minutes later, he stood in the hall, a distinguished and old-fashioned figure, with his silk hat, his long cape, and his gold-headed ebony cane. Lena Harpster was there, dusting an antique chair of ecclesiastical design that looked as if it had been imported from the chancel of some English cathedral.

"Lena," he said, laying his letters on the table and beginning to draw on his gloves, "don't forget to give these to the postman when he comes; and tell Miss Wycliffe I shall be home to lunch."

She opened the door for his exit and started back against the wall with a little cry, as if she had seen a ghost, for there, blocking the bishop's way, his hand extended to touch the bell, stood Mayor Emmet.

The bishop, too much surprised to note the panic of his servant, was silent for a moment. It did not occur to him that the call could be on any one but himself. How great would his astonishment have been, had he known that poor Lena was almost fainting beside him with the wild hope that her lover had come to claim her at last! How great his stupefaction, could he have seen his daughter standing midway on the stairs, one hand on the bal.u.s.ter, the other raised to her heart in petrifying fear! It was fortunate indeed for Felicity that she had time, un.o.bserved in the shadow of the stairway, to regain her self-control. Had she descended a moment earlier, had she been at the door when Lena threw it open, she could hardly have answered for herself.

The bishop retreated a step, as if he would thereby invite his visitor's entrance, but, busy with his gloves, his cane hugged under one arm, he failed, without the effect of discourtesy, to extend his hand.

"Ah, good-morning, Mr. Emmet," he said in his courtly and deliberate manner, and with that suggestion of a purr in his voice which always betokened concealment and a latent ability to spring. "You find me just about to go out, but I still have a little leeway. Won't you step in?"

He was not without curiosity in regard to the object of the mayor's visit. Speculation glimmered in his eyes, and his wide, affable smile was subtle with antic.i.p.ation of a diplomatic test. He was secretly amused that Emmet should presume upon his blushing honours in this fashion, but doubtless the man had a plausible excuse for his intrusion, some civic scheme for which he wished to bespeak cooperation. After his humiliation the previous night, he had conceived a plan for drawing some of his opponents into his own camp, and this was perhaps the first movement of the new campaign. So ran the bishop's conjecture, and he was not surprised at his visitor's unmistakable air of excitement, at the pallor of his face. Perhaps his drubbing at the hands of Cobbens had taught him more respect for the cla.s.s he had been wont to denounce to his followers, and had deprived him of a moiety of his self-a.s.surance.

"Bishop Wycliffe," Emmet returned, coming into the hall and taking off his hat, "I had n't decided to call upon you--yet. It is your daughter whom I wish to see."

It was months since the bishop had given Felicity's advocacy of this man a thought. The election seemed to have killed her interest, for she had not spoken of him since, and besides, his suspicions were centred solely on Leigh. Perhaps, then, the scheme was one of charity, and the mayor had planned to begin with Felicity, remembering her former kindness.

The bishop hesitated, when the rustle of silken skirts caused him to turn his head, but he greeted Felicity's appearance unperturbed.

"Oh, here you are, my dear. I thought you had gone out."

"I overheard I had a caller," she returned, taking her husband's hand and meeting his eyes unflinchingly. "I have n't had a chance to congratulate you, Mr. Emmet, upon your election, for we had to go South the next day on account of father's health. You caught me at the feminine trick of listening over the banisters."

The bishop was secretly annoyed at her cordiality, but still confident that he could trust his daughter to remember the difference between a common interest in charitable work and social equality.

"I leave Mr. Emmet in your hands," he said to her. "I have a little business at the Hall, and shall return for lunch."

And he went out, thinking how like a bewildered yokel the mayor seemed in the face of his daughter's graceful greeting, and imagining with relish his further discomfiture.

The door had closed behind him, and as yet Emmet had not said a word to his wife. Even now it was she who took the initiative.

"Let us go into the drawing-room," she suggested, turning and leading the way. He followed at once, brushing past Lena with cruel emphasis of manner. There she stood, or rather leaned against the wall, like one stricken. The jar of his pa.s.sing seemed to release the tension of her limbs, and she sank down slowly, noiselessly, in a dead faint.

Emmet neither heeded her anguish nor heard her soft fall upon the heavy rug. He hurriedly closed the drawing-room door to prevent his sweetheart from overhearing his interview with his wife, and strode into the centre of the room, where Felicity had turned at bay.

"What have you come for?" she asked in a low voice. Her face was as white as his own, but her self-control was greater.

"For you, Felicity," he answered. "You are my wife, and I 've come for you."

"I did n't know," she returned relentlessly, "but you had come to see that poor girl in the hall to whom you gave my ring. Looking from the stairs, I saw by her manner that she thought so too."

"My G.o.d, Felicity!" he gasped, "I believe you 've kept her in this house like a bird in a cage, to torture her as you 've tortured me.

Why did n't you send her away, when you discovered I 'd been making love to her?"

"For your greater convenience?"

"Oh, as for that," he retorted, "when you left her here in Warwick and went away, you practically threw her into my arms. But I did n't take advantage of it,--only once,--and then I stopped short. That was what I came to explain. I want you to know how much less cause you have to throw me over in this way than you think. I want you to forgive me, and to keep your promise. She's nothing to me--nothing. She 's no more to me than any one of the dozen men you 've been running around with are to you,--Cobbens, for example, or that young professor up at the Hall."

There was more than a suggestion of scorn in his refusal to mention his real rival by name, and in the belittling adjective. His a.s.sumption that she cared nothing for Leigh would perhaps have found acceptance in her mind only the day before, but now a memory of last night's scene made her as cruel to her husband as he had just been to Lena Harpster.

She looked at him coolly, aware of her utter awakening from the adventurous and romantic mood she had mistaken for love, wondering also that she should ever have supposed this man capable of satisfying her ideal. The ideal itself had vanished in the personality of the man who had taken her in his arms the previous night and poured his pa.s.sionate love into her ears.

"It is n't a question of forgiving, Tom," she said, after a pause; and her tone was conciliatory. "It's a question of discovery. I was deceived in you. I did n't think you capable of such--such weakness and vulgarity. It was my fault of judgement, perhaps, but the awakening is fatal. Can't you see that?"

"What do you mean to do?" he demanded, glaring at her helplessly.

Their points of view were so different, her expression so unrelenting, that the self-justification he had planned to speak was choked in his throat. "Do you mean to get a divorce? I tell you, Felicity, there 's no cause."

"I don't know yet what I mean to do," she said frankly.

"I 'll call upon your father, then," he declared grimly, "and see what he thinks of it." An ugly gleam shone in his eyes, as he uttered the threat. It was plain now that love for his wife was the least of his motives in demanding her; there was ambition, but, strongest of all, a desire for revenge on the bishop and his cla.s.s. He would make them accept him at last. They should pay dearly for their scorn. "I 'll not be elbowed out of the way and kept in the closet like a family skeleton any longer," he went on. "The limit of my endurance has been reached."

Felicity now saw clearly what she had brought upon herself. She paled with fear, and flushed with anger, but neither emotion coloured her reply.

"You must give me a few days longer. I prefer to see my father first--alone. I will let you know--I'll write."

So absorbed were they in their own tense feelings that they failed to hear the opening and shutting of the front door, which was left unlatched during the day for just such unconventional calls as the one Mrs. Parr now happened to make. The first intimation they had of interruption was her shrill and terror-stricken cry: "Felicity!