The Mayor of Warwick Part 8

He lowered and raised the dripping bucket, not without awkwardness and a sense of pleasure in the unaccustomed task, as well as a memory of the poem which had immortalized that simple operation. It required only a casual glance about to see that this was a poultry farm. At the back of the house he saw a number of chicken runs, where a man was engaged in repair work. The air was filled with the comfortable clucking of hens, the most cheerful of country sounds. From his present slight elevation he had a view also of the trolley line which bisected the farm and crossed the road a few yards further on.

As he paused, before going on his way, to thank the women for their courtesy, he was struck, as he had not been at first, by the appearance of the younger. So delicate she seemed, so daintily dressed, that he wondered to find her in this rustic setting. In her lap she held a small basket of eggs, and he guessed correctly that she was a visitor, waiting for the next car to Warwick. He asked the distance to his destination, and from her appeal to the older woman he learned that they were mother and daughter. During these few moments he began to realise that she might well be called a beauty, though her pale, ethereal type was not one that made a personal appeal to him. Her whole figure was steept in sunshine, and as her lips parted in a smile, he noticed how the strong rays penetrated her cheeks, filling her mouth with a faint pink light and intensifying the whiteness of her teeth.

Just so they penetrated the sh.e.l.ls of the white eggs in her basket.

This picture remained with him for some time. The girl had appeared almost as fragile as the burden she carried, and suggested a train of thought concerning a certain type of New Englander whose strength is spent. It was such people, he reflected, who still clung to the old soil whence the st.u.r.dier representatives of the stock had long since departed, destined to give way at last to the swarming Polack, the French Canadian, and the Italian. The thought was melancholy, and coloured to no little extent the remainder of his ride. This incident, which was only one of several, was afterward revived to win a permanent place in his memory when he came to know the girl as Lena Harpster; for her part in the drama of the immediate future was destined to be connected strangely with his own.

Seven o'clock found him again upon the tower, setting the telescope in order and preparing for his guests. He could scarcely expect them for an hour, but he walked restlessly about the enclosure of the parapet, breathing gratefully the cool night air. The lamp within his cabin shone dimly through the small windows upon his promenade. Beyond the battlements to the east, the evening star, which the Roman poet called Noctifer, began to bicker and brighten in the serene sky, and the last vestige of the sun's afterglow had now faded from the west. It was already as dark as a summer midnight. Small and continuous sounds came floating up from the city beyond. Immediately below he heard the occasional voices of students pa.s.sing on the stone walk, and from the meadows on the west came the melancholy hoot of an owl.

Accustomed though he had been to lonely vigils, he was impressed by the juxtaposition of the minute and the infinitely vast, of the transient and the eternal. He stood looking for some time at the track of the Milky Way, till his gaze plunged into one of those abysms of blackness where no star shines, and the ghastliness of the distance suggested flooded in upon him. This lost and shivering sensation, when the world itself seems to shrink away and send the watcher spinning into the void, is vouchsafed to the astronomer only at rare moments, and from it an escape is offered by exact and intricate calculations. Even figures that climb into the millions, incomprehensible as they may be, offer some consolation to microscopic man; but when this consolation is withdrawn, as it was withdrawn from Leigh for the moment, he stands, as it were, annihilated by immensity.

Lost in this mood, the voice of Emmet came to his ears with a shock, a mere succession of sounds with scarce a meaning.

"h.e.l.lo, professor! Are you up here star-gazing? I saw the door open at the foot of the stairs, and followed my nose till I found you, though it's a wonder I did n't break it, for my matches gave out two flights below."

The incongruity of this interruption was almost as great as a shout of laughter at a funeral, and Leigh experienced a reaction akin to hilarity.

"I 'm glad to see you," he returned, "for I had rather given you up till after the election."

"I just dropped in for a few minutes' chat," his visitor explained.

"There's something doing later. It's funny that I have n't been up to the Hall once in the last ten years, and now I 've come twice in a week. When I was a kid, I used to hang around the edge of the campus, over there by the bishop's statue, and listen to the band on Commencement Day. Sometimes I used to crawl in under the fence to baseball games, too. St. George's put up a gilt-edged article of ball in those days."

"I remember hearing that they had a star year, when they beat everything in sight."

Emmet remembered the year in question, and the very names of the chief players, who were enshrined in his mind as only an athletic hero can be enshrined in the imagination of the normal boy. As he chatted on about his early impressions of the Hall, his listener became aware that he regarded their first interview as the doorway of a friendship into which he had now entered. A knowledge of this fact smote Leigh with some compunction, for he had been so much absorbed in his own ulterior purpose as to regard this man in the light of a means toward its accomplishment. Now Emmet stood before him again, haying taken him at his word, innocent of his original position as a p.a.w.n in another's game. He was not one who deserved to be so regarded, and Leigh felt this, though a greater interest had hitherto interfered with his appreciation. There was an element of discovery in this second meeting that was not unwelcome. Emmet's implied acceptance of his friendship suddenly added a new interest to his life, and served to enrich for him the city of Warwick, which until now had appeared a somewhat nebulous place, where only one spot glowed with warmth and light.

"Come into my shanty here," he said heartily. "I want to show you something I think will interest you. Have you ever looked at the stars?"

"On the street corner, at ten cents a look," Emmet answered.

"Then this will be something of a revelation to you. Miss Wycliffe is going to bring up a party to-night to use the telescope, but it's early yet."

The other made no comment upon this statement, and the reason of his silence remained obscure; whether it were due to indifference, or to a fear of disclosing a cherished emotion. It seemed more likely that the latter was the true explanation, and Leigh already knew his visitor well enough to be prepared for sudden streaks of reticence or secretiveness. The fact that he had discouraged his previous advances on the subject of Miss Wycliffe was enough to explain this present silence, but he felt that Emmet was acutely conscious of her impending arrival. He could not help wondering also whether he would linger deliberately until she should come. Speculating thus, he sat down in the chair and trained the telescope upon Saturn.

"There," he said, rising. "What do you make of that?"

"I see a star," Emmet answered after a while, "with a ring of mist around it--two rings."

"There are four, at least," said Leigh; "but the inner and intermediate rings are dark. A better instrument would show a greenish hue. There are eight satellites besides. You can imagine what sort of moonlit nights they have in Saturn, supposing that any one lives there to enjoy them."

Emmet drew a deep breath of wonder, and it was evident that his unimaginative mind was struggling with new conceptions. There was a gleam of humour in his eyes which contrasted oddly with the suggestion of awe in his voice, as he looked up and answered: "It must be a great place for lovers, professor. And how far away might it be?"

"Let me see--something over eight hundred and eighty millions of miles from the sun. Its distance from us depends"--

"Never mind," Emmet put in. "A few million miles more or less don't bother me any. It makes things down here seem rather small, does n't it? Politics, for example."

"It has the effect of readjusting our perspective a little," Leigh admitted. "I wanted to show you that planet at this time, because it is now at its best. If you waited another seven or eight years, you would see it only as a ball, for the rings would then be edgewise to the plane of your vision. Twice in about thirty years the rings seem to disappear, and twice they fan out to their largest extent. You 'll never see them broader than now."

Without a word Emmet turned back to the telescope.

"You can imagine," Leigh continued, sure of his listener's interest, "how that change puzzled the earlier astronomers. They thought that Saturn was merely a central ball with two handles, like the handles of a soup tureen; and when Galileo watched them grow thinner and thinner and at last disappear, he wondered whether Saturn had devoured his own children, as he expressed it. It was n't until fifty years later that a Dutchman named Huygens discovered the real cause of the variation.

You don't mind a few excerpts from my lectures? But wait a minute; let me show you something else."

It was long after eight o'clock, so imperceptibly did the time slip away, when they emerged from the cabin, and Emmet prepared to go.

Leigh looked at his watch, and realised with a quickening of his pulses that the visit so eagerly antic.i.p.ated must be imminent, that Miss Wycliffe might even now be coming up the stairs. What if she had come, and, failing to find him below to guide her, had gone away offended?

At the thought, he rushed back into the cabin and lighted the lantern which he used for his transits up and down the tower. When he came out again, he found that Emmet, instead of going, had drifted over to the western parapet, where he stood looking through an embrasure, as if the later engagement of which he had spoken were his last concern.

"My other visitors will be coming soon," Leigh explained, "and I must go to light them up the stairs."

He thought of the probable composition of the party, and reflected that it would simplify the situation if Emmet should go before their arrival. But his visitor failed to accept his implied suggestion. Was he dazed by the immensities into which he had looked, or did he form a sullen resolve to remain and meet that society against which he had so bitterly inveighed? Leigh knew that he could count on Miss Wycliffe's friendliness and upon her tact in meeting a situation, but he guessed that, if her companions were of like mind with the bishop, his present guest might be made to feel that he was an intruder.

"Just look at that car over in the valley," Emmet called, without turning. "It crawls through the darkness like an illuminated centipede."

Leigh was struck by the comparison, and in spite of his impatience, he went over and glanced through another depression in the wall. At the moment of turning away he was arrested by the distant panting of a motor-car far down the boulevard that skirted the cliff. Instinctively he waited to see it pa.s.s, as one waits for the pa.s.sing of a train.

Turning his eyes in the direction of the sound, which ascended with startling distinctness through the night air, he presently saw a gleam shoot above the hill; and now the great touring-car came on at breakneck pace, searching the dusty highway a hundred yards in advance with a clean pencil-shaft of light.

He was far from suspecting that he was watching the arrival of his visitors. It was not among his antic.i.p.ations that Miss Wycliffe might come swooping down upon the college in this fashion, and moreover the machine was speeding from a direction directly opposite to that in which she lived. In fact, it was headed for the city from the open country beyond. His astonishment was great, therefore, when the car came to a sudden stop at the base of the tower, and the occupants fairly tumbled out in a gale of merriment and talk. In the babel of sounds Miss Wycliffe's voice detached itself, by its peculiar quality rather than by its power, causing his heart to vibrate as a string trembles to the touch.

"Mr. Cobbens," she cried gaily, "I believe you were bent on breaking our necks!"

"I 'm for walking home," came a man's voice.

There were no students' rooms directly over them, but to the north and south windows were flung open and heads peered curiously forth.

"Hush!" said another of the party. "Don't wake up the children."

This sally was greeted with another burst of mirth, and then the star-gazers filed through a small postern door in the walled-up arch that was one day to be opened wide for the pa.s.sage of a road. Leigh took up his lantern, only to find that in his haste he had unwittingly turned out the flame. A puff of wind extinguished his match, and he was obliged to reenter the cabin for shelter from the draught. Owing to this delay, he had scarcely begun to descend before he heard the voices of his guests growing louder in their progress from below.

About midway he saw them coming across the platform immediately below him, the bishop's daughter in the lead with a tall wax candle in her hand. As she ascended the stairs, the light of the candle gave her uplifted face the effect of a delicate cameo set in a frame of radiating gold. Her lips were parted, her breath came fast, and her eyes were wondrous in their dark brilliancy. Rarely beautiful as the picture was, Leigh received no impression of a "missioned spirit rising unawares," for as her wrap slipped down from her shoulders, she suggested rather that G.o.ddess who floated into the light one April day on the crest of a wave. Apparently she was in a most gracious mood, and not inclined to hold him to account. She did not wait to learn the reason of his detention above.

"Don't apologise, please," she panted, "for we got along capitally.

Dr. Cardington gave me this candle, but declined to come with us. I thought he quite resented our intrusion, and was anxious to pa.s.s us up without delay." Then, turning to her companions with whimsical imperiousness, "Stand in a row, the whole cla.s.s, till I introduce you to your new instructor."

The dimness of the light and Leigh's perturbation of mind at the thought of Emmet made his impression of the personnel of the party so vague that he might have pa.s.sed most of them the following day without recognition. They had evidently dined well, and were finishing a gay evening with a flying visit to the college observatory. Only the personality of Cobbens was salient in the group, and would have been so even if Leigh's curiosity concerning the man had not been previously aroused.

"We're too frivolous for Cardington," he said, taking off his cap and mopping his brow. "I'm glad to meet you, sir. This is a spooky place, the ideal place for a man to hang himself in. I spent four years in the Hall and never came up here before. I knew and loved your predecessor, as all the fellows did. The old gentleman may not have been well up in astronomy,--I don't know anything about that,--but he was well up in the psychology of boys. He left a big place behind him, which we 're not likely to see filled in a hurry."

During this address he continued to shake Leigh's hand with an apparent cordiality that contrasted strongly with his final innuendo, but now their hands fell apart with mutual repulsion. Leigh had been prejudiced against the lawyer beforehand, and his first remarks at their introduction contained a grisly jest and an implied slight. But these things only paved the way to the final cause of distrust--the fashion of the man himself. He was unprepossessing in every line. His thin, pale face widened rapidly, like a top, to a broad and shining pate, which looked not so much bald as half naked below its spa.r.s.e covering of reddish hair. His eyes were glimmering and of an indeterminate colour. Yet his voice was not unattractive in its persuasive intonation, and his manner was friendly almost to the verge of effusiveness. Whatever might be his demerits from a physical point of view, he lacked the general air of inconsequence that characterised most of his companions. He conveyed unmistakably the a.s.surance of a certain malign power. One felt that his normal method of locomotion was the mole's, but that sooner or later he would thrust his head above the soil at the top of the hill.

As they emerged upon the roof, they came face to face with Emmet.

"h.e.l.lo!" Cobbens cried, as the two men shook hands. "Are you taking a course in astronomy too?"

"Yes," replied the other, "and I'm just about going."

Their mutual cordiality of manner, somewhat in excess of the requirements of conventional courtesy, struck Leigh with a sense of the ridiculous. He had not antic.i.p.ated a scene, but he had looked for some coldness and restraint. The other visitors, with a curious glance in pa.s.sing, spread out over the roof or entered the cabin, but the bishop's daughter remained behind. She shifted the candle to her left hand, and offered her right to her _protege_ with charming courtesy.

"Has Mr. Leigh been casting your horoscope?" she asked, smiling. "I hope he found your star in the ascendant."

Leigh did not wonder that Emmet appeared dazzled, or that his bold eyes were a shade less bold in their embarra.s.sed admiration.