THE STAR-GAZERS
In the following night the storm terminated its triduan existence some
time between darkness and dawn. It must have been in the earlier hours
that the change occurred, for Warwick gazed from its windows in the
morning to find the ground rimed with hoar-frost, that looked like
streaks of crusted salt. The sun was scarcely three hours in the
ascendant before the frost disappeared, like the withdrawal of a
silvery veil, disclosing the bareness it had beautified so briefly.
Even the most casual observer could now see that autumn had made a long
forward march in the last three days toward the confines of winter.
That afternoon Leigh called upon Miss Wycliffe, not without a thought
that the interval which had elapsed since the dinner was decidedly
short. Still, he would come ostensibly to report the result of the
interview she had suggested, and, as the election was not far distant,
he felt that this excuse, if one were needed, was entirely adequate.
To his chagrin, he found that she was not at home. The maid informed
him further that she had gone to New York for a week. As he walked
slowly away, he wondered almost resentfully at this sudden
disappearance, as if he felt that she ought to stay in Warwick and
watch the result of her experiment. But he did not consider that if
the daughters of men would be clothed like the lilies of the field,
they must seek periodically the place most remote from the solitude in
which their models grow.
The week that followed was one in which autumn flung out all her brave
banners in a final pageantry. The nights were cold and still, with
stars peculiarly brilliant. Each morning the mists hung like fleecy
cobwebs in the valley, filaments that parted and drifted away at the
touch of the sun, disclosing the magic work of the nocturnal frosts
upon the foliage of the trees. It seemed to Leigh, looking from his
eyrie, that Nature had never before painted a panorama of such wondrous
beauty. Here a solitary elm in the meadow below the cliff, in the
region which the collegians called "over the rock," stood forth all
crimson against the green sward; further on, the woods began, masses of
yellow and red maples, with scattered pines and oaks of more sombre
hue, billowing gently upward toward the blue of the distant skyline.
It was now that the young astronomer began to take up once more the
pursuit that had been so long interrupted. He felt that if he were to
accomplish something, he must begin a series of observations with a
definite end in view. There was also another motive than the desire of
professional reputation--a wish to increase his worth in Miss
Wycliffe's eyes by achievement. Her absence from town, though of only
a few days' duration, freed him from the distraction which the very
possibility of seeing her presented, and night after night he ascended
to his watch-tower.
But he presently discovered that it was one thing to take observations
on Mount Hamilton, where no other claims occupied part of his time, and
quite another to watch by night and teach by day. The bishop was right
in saying that his chief occupation must needs be the teaching of
elementary mathematics to undergraduates. For any satisfactory
results, prolonged observations must be made from twilight to dawn, and
such periods of wakefulness were impossible when he must present
himself before a class at nine o'clock in the morning. Not that this
was necessary each day. His hours were irregular, but the morning
classes were sufficiently numerous to break up the continuity of his
observations, and to render their results unsure.
In this quandary, he ought, perhaps, to have abandoned his purpose and
to have taken up some problem in pure mathematics, but here the
perversity of human nature interposed. The forbidden, or at least
difficult, road was the one he desired to travel, and he could not make
up his mind to turn back, though he saw no prospect of going far.
Instead, he began to make a few preliminary observations at random, and
enjoyed the sight of the familiar constellations as one enjoys a return
to old faces and associations. For the present he swept the skies
leisurely, feasting on the infinite wonders which no consuetude could
render commonplace. He longed for some unusual phenomenon in the
sidereal tracts, a comet, or a temporary star, one of those strange
wanderers that appear for a time, attain a brief and vivid maximum, and
vanish into the darkness from which they have emerged. But only about
a score of such objects had been credibly reported in historic times,
and he searched the thoroughfare of the Milky Way, the region in which
they were wont to appear, with small hope of reward.
One morning he received a letter from Miss Wycliffe, in which she named
that night, if the skies were clear, for the observation she had
mentioned at the dinner. He had almost forgotten the wish she then
expressed in the greater importance she seemed to attach to her plan to
help Emmet. Now he was surprised to discover that this matter, which
had put him to such pains, had apparently slipped from her mind
altogether. It gave him a conception of the multiplicity of her
interests. It was as if she could not attend to all her charitable
plans in person, but, having chosen a responsible agent, she dismissed
the subject from her mind. Nor was he offended that she did not seem
to consider the possibility of his having another engagement. On the
contrary, the omission might imply her knowledge of the absolute
unimportance to him of any claims compared with those she chose to
make. Thus his love fed on crumbs invisible to her from whose table
they had inadvertently fallen.
Had he been less infatuated, he might have divined in this omission one
of those unconscious revelations of character--the selfishness of a
spoiled and petted woman, who has come to assume that the convenience
of others must necessarily coincide with her own. But Leigh saw only a
hint of something confidential between them. He experienced also that
peculiar intensity of interest which attends a lover's first glimpse of
his mistress's handwriting. Even if it were commonplace, it would seem
to him like no other in the world; but here there was really something
distinctive. The letters were almost microscopically small, and
crowded into the centre of the page with the effect of a decorative
panel. He carried the epistle about with him all day, and observed the
weather with solicitous attention, but no change occurred. The
turquoise sky remained without a cloud. Fires from burning leaves sent
up sluggish pillars of smoke, that spread out equilaterally above the
trees in the windless air.
It so happened that he had the afternoon to himself. The prospect of
inaction was intolerable, so he went down into the cool vaults below
the Hall to take out his wheel for an afternoon of exploration. In
these subterranean regions, perhaps more here than elsewhere, the
imaginative appeal of the Hall was still present. As he prepared his
wheel for the trip, which he meant should be a long one, he glanced up
at the arched windows, down whose wide, slanting sills the sunlight
poured in a flood of dusty gold. The walls of these foundations were
five feet in thickness, built as if to keep out an invading host. Even
in this unfrequented place, each stone was carefully cut, and fitted
with exact nicety in its place. There was no rubble, no mere filling.
Here was a lavishness of expenditure, a conscience in building, rare in
modern times. Leigh looked down the long succession of massive
archways, dwindling into the distance, with vague thoughts of the
Castle of Chillon and the Man with the Iron Mask. When he ascended
again into the warmth and sunlight of the open air, he had a passing
sense of having emerged from a brief incarceration.
He pushed his bicycle through the maple walk to the brow of the hill
from which he had first looked over the valley toward the west. There
in the distance the village he had noted sparkled like a handful of
white dice thrown carelessly down against the earth. He fixed upon
this point as the terminus of his ride, and began to coast down the
long slope, leaving a trail of grey dust to mark his flight. There was
a peculiar exhilaration in the dry heat of the October afternoon.
Flocks of crows passed over his head with raucous cries. The
cornstalks were stacked in serried array, like Indian wigwams, and
heaps of apples, red and yellow and russet brown, lay ungathered in the
orchards.
Through this rich and varied scene he sped swiftly, filled with all a
Westerner's keen appreciation of a New England landscape, constantly
contrasting the arid glories of deserts he had seen with the plenty
about him. The farms of the fertile tracts of California were
infinitely greater, the methods by which they were worked more modern,
but about these smaller homesteads hung an atmosphere of history and
romance. Leigh might champion the West in the presence of the bishop,
but now, alone with his own thoughts, he paid tribute to the land in
which the liberties of his country had been cradled. He seemed to have
known it of old, though he now saw it for the first time. This
experience was not a discovery, but a reacquaintance. From these old
farmhouses, with their sagging roof-trees and windows filled with small
panes, the minute men had issued with their muskets to repel the
invader. At yonder sweep-well some English soldier had perhaps stopped
in his dusty retreat for a drink of water, and had paid the penalty of
his life for the delay. Above all, the fact that this was the native
country of the woman he loved was ever present in his mind to add
radiance to the afternoon.
At a point where the road took a sudden dip and curved in a wide sweep
toward the southwest, his attention was arrested by an old house that
lay nestled in the bend as in an encircling arm. The colour had once
been red, but was now faded by many suns and washed thin by innumerable
rains. A rampart of loose stones, overgrown with brambles and broken
in places as if for the passage of cattle, enclosed the premises, and
the typical well of the country lifted its curving pole in the front
yard only a few feet from the roadway. Two women were seated on the
worn stone slab in the opening that served for a gate, evidently
basking in the afternoon sun and engaged in desultory chat. When Leigh
dismounted from his wheel and asked for a drink of water, they moved
slightly to let him pass, and he went up to the well to help himself.
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 shells 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 sturdier 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 passing 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.
"Hello, 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 pawn 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 anticipated 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 pass, as one waits for the passing 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 anticipations 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 passage 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 goddess 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 pass us up
without delay." Then, turning to her companions with whimsical
imperiousness, "Stand in a row, the whole class, 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 passed 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 sparse
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 assurance 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.
"Hello!" 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 anticipated a scene, but he had looked for some
coldness and restraint. The other visitors, with a curious glance in
passing, 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 _protégé_ 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 embarrassed admiration.
"Thank you, Miss Wycliffe--I think we shall win."
"I hope so," she returned, with a momentary side-long look at Cobbens.
The lawyer's eyes were upon her, and as Leigh caught their hungry
glimmer, he remembered with a sharp contraction of the heart that he
was a widower, and that sometimes the most hideous men possess a
compelling fascination for women of great beauty.
"Oh, astrology is out of date," Cobbens broke in, with an easy chuckle.
"Isn't it, professor?"
"Yes," Leigh retorted, "but I believe politics is not."
The laughter with which this remark was greeted indicated the real
tension that underlay all this appearance of good feeling.
"Politics is never out of date," Emmet declared, with grim emphasis,
"as we mean to show you soon."
"Politics is like poker," Cobbens commented sententiously. "Just now
we 're raising the ante, but presently there 'll be a show down, and
may the best hand win."
"We ask nothing better," Emmet assured him, moving toward the stairs.
"Good-night. I must be off."
"Wait a moment!" Miss Wycliffe called after him. "Here--take this
candle to light your way, and may good luck go with it."
Emmet had already begun to descend the stairs when her voice arrested
him. He turned as she approached, and because of his lower position
her form hid him entirely from the view of the two men she had just
left. Leigh saw the fur edge of her wrap standing out like a mist
against the flaring light of the candle as she stooped to hand it down,
and he thought she lingered longer than was absolutely necessary, as if
to speak some parting words of encouragement. The impression that
further words had passed between them was so disquieting, in view of
his suspicion of Emmet's audacity, that he was fain to believe himself
mistaken. It seemed that Cobbens also had lost nothing of this
incident, for when she returned, he regarded her with as much
disapproval as he dared to show.
"You 'll turn the poor beggar's head, Miss Wycliffe," he said. "It's a
mistaken kindness. His fall will be all the greater for your whim."
"Sometimes beggars get on horseback," she retorted coolly, "and then
they keep on riding."
Leigh's knowledge of the lawyer's career enabled him to appreciate the
sharpness of this remark, but Cobbens was more adroit than he could
have thought possible in the face of such a taunt.
"Well, when that poor beggar tries to mount the political horse, he 'll
get thrown so hard that he 'll never try it again."
Miss Wycliffe vouchsafed no reply, but turned toward the cabin, and
they followed her in silence. During the subsequent session about the
telescope, Leigh was not surprised to find that she domineered over her
friends, or that they accepted her tyranny without question. In her
self-appointed office of the instructor's assistant, she gave this one
or that the chair, until the young astronomer thought it high time to
protest.
"I insist upon your taking a look yourself," he said. "I have
something of peculiar interest reserved for you." And he trained the
instrument upon Castor, in the constellation of the Twins. She took
the chair and looked for a tantalising length of time in silence, while
with one hand she waved off the questions and impatience of the others.
He bent over her, almost oblivious of their presence. "It's a double
star, you see. What do you think of it?"
"Beautiful!" she answered. "I wondered why I was seeing double. Tell
us about it."
"They are two suns in one sphere, swinging on through space side by
side. Two centuries of calculations have brought out the fact that it
takes forty-four years for the light of Castor to reach us, and that a
thousand years are consumed in one circuit of its orbit."
"I must admit," she said, looking up at him with a mysterious splendour
in her eyes, in which there yet lurked a suspicion of humour, "that a
thousand years gives me a shiver."
Up to this time the moral atmosphere of the room had by no means
attained the level reached by Leigh and Emmet alone, not only because
of the restless presence of Cobbens, which refused to harmonise with
the idea of sublimity, but also because, in any such gathering, the
tendency is downward toward the plane of the most frivolous and
common-place person present. The jest about the class, intermittently
revived, had reduced the stars to pretty baubles or, at most, to the
fairy lamps of fanciful verse, in spite of figures of distance that
grew more and more stupendous. But now a sudden hush fell upon them;
it might have been a tardy appreciation, or the mere emotional reaction
from little talk. For the moment Leigh forgot that they were not
alone, and almost unconsciously he spoke the thought that had flashed
from her eyes to his: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as
yesterday, seeing that it is past as a watch in the night."
The situation had grown suddenly and unexpectedly dramatic. It was as
if a troupe of revellers had torn aside a curtain in their mad rush,
and had come face to face with the silence and blackness of an abyss.
Miss Wycliffe rose from the chair as if starting back from such a
vision, and though her tone, when she spoke, was light, it was
apparently so by design.
"If you insist upon quoting from the Burial Service, Mr. Leigh, I shall
take it as a hint to go home at once."
"And it's time we did," Cobbens put in. "We 're much obliged to you,
sir. We 've had a charming time, and owe you a vote of thanks."
When Leigh had lighted them downstairs, he ascended once more to his
cabin, tortured by an acute self-consciousness. The evening had been
far from satisfactory; never had the difference between anticipation
and realisation been more impressively illustrated. In his afternoon
dreams he had not considered Miss Wycliffe's companions, except as
shadows, and it was they who had disturbed what would otherwise have
been a charmed atmosphere. His quotation would have been natural had
he been alone with the woman he loved, but in that company it seemed
inept and melodramatic, deserving the rebuke she so easily
administered. In his humiliation he thought that he must have appeared
extremely youthful in her eyes, one who could not conceal his emotions
before the gaze of the curious and shallow. Could he have overheard
the conversation which took place between Cobbens and Miss Wycliffe on
their way home, his distress would have been in no way lightened.
The lawyer allowed the machine to run more slowly, that its jar and
noise might not drown his voice.
"Your friend with the comet-coloured hair," he began, "will never fit
into the life of St. George's Hall. I can see he has n't the true Hall
traditions or spirit."
She was apparently more interested in his views than inclined to
express her own. If she reflected at all upon the speaker's lack of
that physical distinction which he selected in Leigh for the exercise
of his wit, and if she derived some enjoyment from an understanding of
his resentment, she kept it to herself.
"What makes you think so?" she asked serenely. "What was he doing with
that Tom Emmet up there?" he demanded, by way of answer. "In my day,
the professors of the Hall were more select in the company they kept."
"Times have changed since then," she commented, "and the world has
grown democratic."
He suspected her mood of mockery, but his intelligence could not hold
his spleen in check.
"Yes," he went on malevolently, "I suppose it has; and soon we shall
have a lot of muckers in the college instead of the gentlemen that used
to go there in my day. So that's the prize poor old Renshaw drew from
the Western grab-bag! It's too bad your father was away."
"Is n't it?" she assented. "But then, you know, he is here on a year's
appointment, and perhaps he will leave in the spring."
"I can't understand," he resumed, "how he came to know Tom Emmet, of
all men, in this short time, and how he happened to have him up there
on the tower."
As she seemed unable to throw any light upon this mystery, he was left
to grapple with it alone.