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THE MAYOR OF WARWICK
by
HERBERT M. HOPKINS
Author of "The Fighting Bishop"
[Frontispiece: "Have you noticed how silent it has grown?" he asked.]
Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1906
Copyright 1906 by Herbert M. Hopkins
All Rights Reserved
Published April 1906
TO PAULINE
CONTENTS
I. THE MEETING IN THE MAPLE WALK
II. THE TOWER
III. CARDINGTON
IV. THE BISHOP'S DAUGHTER
V. THE CANDIDATE
VI. LENA HARPSTER
VII. THE STAR-GAZERS
VIII. "WHAT MAKES HER IN THE WOOD SO LATE?"
IX. "HER HEART WAS OTHERWHERE"
X. MISTRESS AND MAID
XI. AT THE OLD CONTINENTAL
XII. THE CONFESSION
XIII. FURNITURE AND FAMILY
XIV. THE PRESIDENT TAKES A HAND
XV. "I PLUCKED THE ROSE, IMPATIENT OF DELAY"
XVI. THE BLINDNESS OF THE BISHOP
XVII. CONDITIONS
XVIII. "TWO SISTER VESSELS"
XIX. FATHER AND DAUGHTER
XX. "PUNISHMENT, THOUGH LAME OF FOOT"
XXI. THE MAYOR FINDS HIMSELF AT LAST
THE MAYOR OF WARWICK
CHAPTER I
THE MEETING IN THE MAPLE WALK
St George's Hall, situated on a high hill overlooking the city of
Warwick, was still silent and tenantless, though the long vacation was
drawing to a close. To a stranger passing that way for the first time,
the building and the surrounding country would doubtless have suggested
the old England rather than the new. There was something mediaeval in
the massive, castellated tower that carried the eye upward past the
great, arched doorway, the thin, deep-set windows, the leaded eaves and
grinning gargoyles, into the cool sky of the September morning.
The stranger, were he rich in good traditions, would pause in
admiration of the pure collegiate-gothic style of the low hall that
extended north and south three hundred feet in either direction from
the base of the great tower; he would note the artistry of the
iron-braced, oaken doors, flanked at the lintels by inscrutable faces
of carven stone, of the windows with their diamonded panes of milky
glass peeping through a wilderness of encroaching vines. Nor would
this be all. Had he ever viewed the quadrangles of Oxford and
Cambridge, he might be able to infer that here, on this sunny plateau
above the hill, devoted men, steept in the traditions of old England,
had endeavoured to reproduce the plan of one of her famous colleges.
He would see, perhaps, that only one side of the quadrangle was built,
one fourth of the work done. Here, along the northern line, should be
the chapel, its altar window facing the east; on the southern, the
dining-hall, adorned with rafters of dark oak and with portraits of the
wise and great. To complete the plan, the remaining gap must be closed
by a hall similar in style to the one already built.
He might picture himself standing in the midst of this beautiful
creation of the imagination, taking in its architectural glories one by
one, until his eye paused at the eastern gateway to note the distant
landscape which it framed. And then, if he were in sympathy with the
ideals of which this building was the outward expression, he would wake
from his constructive reverie to realise sadly for the first time, not
the beauty, but the incompleteness, of the institution; not its
proximity to the city beyond, but its air of aloofness from the
community in which it stood.
About ten o'clock of the morning in which this story begins, a
stranger, not quite such an one as we have imagined, left the car at
the foot of the long hill and turned his face for the first time
towards St. George's Hall. As he passed up the shaded street along the
northern side of the campus, his keen, blue-grey eyes swept eagerly the
crest on which stood the institution that was destined to be the scene
of his professional labours for at least a year, perhaps for many
years, it might be, for life. Even a casual glance at the tall,
loosely hung figure of the young man, at his clean-cut features and
firm mouth, at the nervous, capable hand that grasped his walking-stick
as if it were a weapon, would reveal the type claimed by America as
peculiarly her own. It was evident that he possessed energy and
endurance, if not the power of the athlete. His expression was
intellectual, and shrewd almost to hardness; yet somewhere in his eyes
and in the corners of his mouth there lurked a suggestion of sweetness
and of ideality, that gave the whole personality a claim to more than
passing interest and regard.
This curious blending of opposite traits, of shrewdness and of
ideality, was illustrated by his thoughts as he strode along, making no
more of the hill than he would have made of level ground. Nothing
escaped his eye or failed of its impression upon his mind. Fresh from
the teeming life of a large university, he noted the absence of
students from the steps of the fraternity houses on his right, though
it lacked but three days of the opening of the college. Already his
own university had felt the first wave of the incoming class, a class
that would doubtless contain four times as many students as the total
membership of St. George's Hall. Instinctively he searched his mind
for an explanation of this lack of growth in an institution that
numbered nearly one hundred years of life. What was the defect? Where
was the remedy? He jumped at once to the conclusion that both were
discoverable, and dimly foresaw that the discovery might be his own.
He approached the scene where he was himself to be on trial in the
spirit of one who questioned, not his fitness for the place he was to
occupy, for of that he had no shadow of doubt, but the fitness of the
place for him. If he saw promotion, perhaps the presidency, within his
grasp, he might deem it worth his while to stay; if not, his
professorship should be a stepping-stone to something better. With the
history, the traditions, and the ideals of the Hall he was but slightly
acquainted; in fact, the institution existed for him at present only in
its relation to himself and his possible future.
And yet, beneath these thoughts of self ran a current of feeling or
impressions which never rose high enough in his consciousness to win
definite recognition. If his first view of the college was depressing
because of the failure of fruition its appearance suggested, he was not
utterly unappreciative of the pictorial effect: the splendid lines of
dignity and beauty; the soft brown colour of the stone, relieved by the
lighter tone of lintel and window-frame and sill; the dark green of the
ivy; the great, black shadow of the tower on the slated roof where
every jutting dormer window threw its lesser shade; the wide sky
beyond, of a blueness which an artist would have wished to paint.
From the meadow below the plateau came the tinkle of cow-bells, musical
in the distance; and this sound, combined with the note of a bird and
the voices of children from an unseen garden, produced an Arcadian
atmosphere which even the harsh gong of the returning electric car
could not dispel.
As he climbed higher, the houses fell away, disclosing the bare hilltop
over which the road seemed to dip down and disappear; and though he
knew it could not be so, he was half expectant of the sea when he
should have lifted his head above the verge. Instead, he saw a wide
and shallow valley, rich in the varied products of the autumn, with
here and there a bare, reaped field, with many a white farmhouse and
barn of red or grey, till his eye followed the road to the western hill
line and noted a patch of small, white objects which might be a group
of boulders left by a prehistoric glacier, or the houses of a distant
town.
The view on the east, when he turned and faced in the direction from
which he had come, was one of greater interest and of no less beauty.
In the immediate foreground the city of Warwick, in which he had passed
the previous night, thrust its smoking factory chimneys, its spires and
towers, above the shining roofs and lofty elms. But the final element
of charm was found in a broad and sinuous river, blue as the reflected
sky, which flowed past the city's wharves, under a fine stone bridge,
and on through woodland and ploughed land to the sea. Small wonder
that he now forgot for a moment his own ambitions and plans, and
thought only that St. George's Hall lifted its head within an earthly
paradise!
The building, seen from the end, presented the same extraordinary
change that is to be noted when a long ocean steamship which has been
trailing across the horizon turns, shrinks, and comes bow on. In some
such proportion to its length was the width of the Hall; but the tower,
viewed from any angle, was still magnificent. With its four supporting
turrets it appeared rather a group of towers than a single structure.
His immediate curiosity satisfied, the young man now exchanged the
bright sunlight of the open for the comparative gloom of two long lines
of maples, which flanked a narrow board walk from the street to the
college. There was a prophecy of winter in the red and yellow leaves
that dropped slowly downward one by one, or descended in rustling
showers as a sudden gust of wind seized the thin branches and shook
them against the sky.
And now, as if to personify the spirit of the place, he saw the figure
of a young woman enter the walk from the other end, apparently from the
college building. As they approached each other, he noted the fact
that she was without hat or gloves, like a lady walking at ease through
her own estate, and he guessed that she had some peculiar proprietary
right in the premises. For one moment, in passing, he was startled to
encounter a cool and observant gaze; then her eyes dropped to the
collection of leaves which she held in her hands, as if she resumed an
interrupted study of their harmonious shades.
He divined, after he had passed her by, that she had seen him from the
moment they entered the opposite ends of the walk; and though he could
not recall distinctly a feature of her face, he carried with him an
impression of charm and colour singularly in unison with the season of
the year. Moreover, her gaze, though momentary, was cumulative in its
remembered effect, so that he presently turned and looked curiously
after her retreating figure.
She had now emerged from the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of
the open street beyond, where she stood looking westward, as if minded
to continue her walk into the country. Even from that distance he
could see how the unobstructed wind struggled with her slender figure,
so that she leaned against it in resistance. As if persuaded by its
force to change her plan, she turned slowly, released the leaves with a
gesture of surrender, gathered her skirts in one hand, and with the
other raised to her loosened hair she began to descend the hill.
The young man stood still until she had disappeared, smitten by an
inexplicable sense of the fatality of that meeting. Verging upon the
sixth lustrum of his age, he had passed through that vernal period when
the face of every woman of more than ordinary charm suggested
possibilities of the heart's adventure. With him the main business of
life was no longer the seeking of a mate. All books, all arts, all
accomplishments, had ceased to seem merely the accessories and the
handmaidens of love. Yet never in those days of searching and romance
had he been so attracted by a passing face. Beauty alone would have
left him cold. The impression he received was far more rich, an
impression to which the circumstances of the encounter gave a peculiar
emphasis. The adventure seemed a possible keynote of the future, and
there was an element of vague disquiet in his hope that he might meet
her again, an element akin to fear.