AT THE OLD CONTINENTAL
One snowy afternoon, shortly before Christmas, Mayor Emmet came out to
his sleigh from the City Hall, drawing on his gloves with a sense of
release from unaccustomed confinement. While others hurried along,
shrinking into their coats as if they would withdraw as far as possible
from the nipping cold, he strode slowly and breathed deep, showing a
strong man's conscious enjoyment of Nature in one of her sterner moods.
His manner displayed a consciousness of something else also, of the
position he meant to grace. He was already beginning to appreciate the
discomfiture of his enemies. They had thought to find him bewildered
and inefficient, and had encountered instead a man whose conception of
his rights and duties was just and adequate. Strange also to
superficial thinkers was his dignity of bearing, to which the _élite_
of Warwick paid the compliment of their resentment. But that ease and
precision of movement, that steady glance of the eye, had been
transferred from the baseball field to become singularly effective in
the mayor's office.
It was now that his experience as a conductor also yielded its harvest,
though few of those whose money he had formerly collected realised the
valuable knowledge they had given him of human nature's more difficult
side. They had unwittingly taught him to control his temper under
trying circumstances, to hear much and say little, and now they
wondered at the success of their teaching. Even his language was
exasperatingly correct. They might claim that his speech for the joint
debate had been written by another, but this would not explain the
excellent quality of his ordinary conversation; and it never occurred
to them to point to him with pride as a product of the public schools
for which their city was justly famous.
That a man not connected with one of the old families, not possessed of
a baccalaureate degree, should really be effective in the mayor's chair
was such an unheard-of presumption that they denied the fact. Yet they
could not claim that he assumed excess of air. His lack of exuberance
was so marked, he had taken hold of his work with such seriousness and
sobriety, that he seemed to be a man of great coldness, or one whose
sense of triumph was tempered by a secret trouble.
Those whose condemnation was not altogether sweeping found the phrase
"an imitation" capable of conveying some consolation. He was like a
wooden cigar, a lead quarter; in short, he was a loaf baked in a
different oven, and that was enough. How could a man that wore a heavy
watch-chain possess the genuine quality? In the judgment of the First
Church, that chain was heavy enough to bind him hand and foot and to
sink him in the depths of the sea.
But criticisms from this source Emmet accepted as a matter of course,
much as a Republican candidate for the Presidency would count on a
solid Democratic South. A more serious menace to his future lay in the
attitude of some of his own supporters, who supposed that the mayor's
office could now be their lounging-place and headquarters. Bat Quayle,
the leader of a strong constituency of the submerged tenth, had already
departed breathing vengeance, when he discovered that there was nothing
in the new _régime_ for the Boys. They had given their votes to Emmet
in the confident expectation of special privilege and protection; but
he had made no promises, and had none to keep. No previous Democratic
mayor of Warwick had ever been able to dispense with the Boys, and it
remained for Emmet to offset their loss by winning new supporters
during his administration. Bat Quayle, he knew, would be picked up by
his opponents and used against him two years hence; but two years
seemed a long time, and the mayor shook out the lines and started off
with a burst of speed, as if he would tumble black care into the snow
behind him.
The street was like a vista of fairyland. A new fall of snow had
covered all unsightly stains of traffic, and now lay heaped on every
inch of horizontal space, on branch and roof and post, on window-ledge
and fence. The sky was clearing, and the last belated flakes were
floating slowly downward, detached from the burdened roofs by light
puffs of wind. To one glancing upward, the feathery visitors seemed to
drop from the widening spaces of pale blue sky. The ringing sound of
snow shovels and the crisp crunching of pedestrians' feet indicated a
falling mercury. The air was filled with the jocund jingling of
sleighbells, now coming, now near at hand, now lessening into the
distance, a pleasing confusion of silvery sounds, not inharmonious in
their varying pitch and intensity.
Emmet, crouching low among his blankets, drew his cap down over his
eyes and let out another link of speed. At last he was free to take up
the problem that occupied his leisure moments. His wife had gone South
with her father on the very day when he had expected her to lift the
veil from their marriage, and an acknowledgement of the justice of her
anger caused him to keep the secret still, awaiting her decision. He
could count the times they had met during the last two years on the
fingers of his hands. This relationship, which had promised so much at
its inception, was the great mystery of his life, and every succeeding
month it became more unreal, more inexplicable. Now he went back in
his mind to the time when the bishop's daughter began to take his car
rather than another, and conveyed to him in some subtle way the
impression of her preference. By little and little he had played the
dangerous game that made such an appeal to his vanity.
The poets were true in their psychology when they pictured the distress
of mortal men beloved of goddesses: Tithonus and Aurora, Venus and
Adonis, Diana and Endymion. How could aught but tragedy result from
such loves as these? How could a mortal have dared to lift his eyes to
such a height unbidden? The gulf between Miss Wycliffe, beautiful,
rich, aristocratic, and Tom Emmet, the professional baseball player and
street-car conductor, was to his mind as impassable. It was she who
had first suggested the possibility of a bridge between them. His
conception of her mental states was as dim as our dreams of the
inhabitants of Mars. Of her ennui in that life which seemed to him all
lightness and pleasure, of the romance with which she invested his
commonplace days, of the possibilities she read in his personality, he
had no conception; but to the lingering of her fingers in his own, to
the glance of her eyes, the primitive man within him made response.
Love of adventure lured him on. The subtle courtship progressed apace,
and if any of Miss Wycliffe's friends noted her growing friendship with
the conductor, it was merely to praise her sweet and unassuming
humanity. At the end of that period of increasing intimacy, marked by
little incidents which no lover in the retrospect can ever arrange in
their proper sequence, the night of his marriage loomed in his memory,
every detail ineradicable. Their coincident absence from Warwick was
naturally unnoted; and who, in all the range of human probabilities,
would be present to see them meet at a certain day and hour on a
certain street corner in New York?
Life is a careless maker of plots. The villain did not appear to
shadow them to the obscure old church, to lurk in the darkening pews
and see them married, to watch their exit in the twilight as man and
wife, to observe from a safe distance their long talk on the corner of
the street, and, most inexplicable of all, to see her call a passing
cab and drive away in evident haste, perhaps in sudden alarm.
Emmet would never have brooked such desertion from a woman of his own
class, but the ascendancy which she had established over him from the
first was not materially shaken by the fact that she was now his wife.
He did not even know where she passed the night, while he walked the
streets, a deceived and baffled bridegroom, until in desperation he
took the midnight train and arrived home at dawn, too weary to care for
aught but sleep.
When they met again in Warwick, she resumed her mysterious power of
direction as before, and his status as her husband gave him no
advantage that he dared to press. He accepted the secret interviews
she granted, and learned at last the part he had to play. On that
promissory note which she had given him at the altar she paid the
instalment of a few elusive kisses, and he discovered to his dismay
that he must do some great thing to make himself worthy of her, before
the note should be paid in full. It was she who had seen the
possibilities of his connection with a union and of his interest in
politics, and had suggested the career he was to follow. His election
as mayor was to be crowned by her acknowledgement of him before the
world. This was the plan in which he had acquiesced, as one who had
only to obey and to wait humbly for his reward.
But a sense of power developed with the struggle. It was true that she
had directed his feet into the right path; but once there, he began to
feel that he would have found it unaided. She was secret with him,
giving and withholding as she chose. He saw her with other men, and
his strong nature rebelled. Should she be free, while he was bound?
At a certain meeting he presented this point of view, but she said
truly enough that the men she met were nothing to her, and that to do
as he wished would only excite surprise and suspicion. She would fain
play the part of Egeria and lay down the law to him in stolen
interviews beyond the city. But Emmet had never heard of that
delightful arrangement, and the rôle of a Numa in the making began to
be intolerable to him. When they met again, he no longer upbraided
her, for he had met Lena Harpster at a lodge dance in the interval, and
in the culmination of a reckless mood, he had taken his revenge. Only
a consciousness of his own duplicity saved Felicity from his insistence
and restored her power.
Emmet meant that the affair with Lena should go no further, but the
memory of the kiss she had given him drew him back at last and he
sought her out, as the first man might have sought again the first
woman in the Garden of Eden, after an ingenuous shame had driven them
asunder. And hereupon began a titanic struggle in his soul. He knew
that he loved his wife and meant to be true to her, but Lena's kisses
more deeply stirred his blood. She was wonderfully pliant to his will,
as pliant in reality as he seemed to be to the will of his wife. For
longer or shorter periods he neglected her, only to come back again to
find her more helpless in his grasp, himself more than ever fascinated
by his power over her. It was a milestone in their nameless
relationship when he feigned jealousy of her other admirers, when she
admitted his right to question. Then came the night when she had
fainted beside him in the half-finished building, and he knew that the
jealousy was real. After that wild moment of parting at the gate, he
resolved to see her no more. The prize he had sought so long was
almost within his grasp,--the mayoralty and a wife who would make that
office but a stepping-stone to something higher,--and he would not
forfeit his reward. He meant also, as he had meant all along, to be
essentially true to his moral obligations.
The pathos of Lena's position he but dimly discerned, and his cruelty
was unconscious. The election almost swept her from his mind, and the
note in which she disclosed her refuge in his wife's house stirred only
a momentary anxiety. He would deny whatever she might say, and he felt
that she would quietly acquiesce in her fate when she knew the truth.
But he had forgotten the ring, and the ring was his undoing.
At the very moment when he turned his sleigh into Birdseye Avenue he
pressed his hand to his side and felt Felicity's letter crinkle beneath
his touch. He had carried it continuously with him, and knew its brief
contents by heart. She had hoped the letter might have been one of
pure congratulation; she had intended to keep her promise and to come
to him as his wife before the world, but now he must wait until she had
time to think over her course of action by herself. An explanation
would be useless; but she had recovered her ring, and she knew the
value he put upon her gifts, both this one and the greater gift of
which it was a symbol. And that was all.
The fact remained that she had not utterly cast him off. He would be
punished, but not forever, and he divined that his probation would end
with her return. He had a firm conviction that her sense of obligation
was like his own, that repentance and good conduct would restore him to
her, and he longed for an opportunity to tell her how it had happened,
how much less guilty he was than she might suppose. If he had been
weak with Lena, he knew that he had also been strong. He had withheld
his hand from taking all, when she would have offered no resistance to
his will. Surely, that counted for much, and his temptation had been
great. Cheered by this thought, little realising that the very
simplicity of his position would make it difficult for his wife to
understand, that the vulgarity of his temptation was to her its worst
feature, he glanced down the long avenue with a sudden sentiment at the
thought of passing her home.
This street, because of its width, the absence of car-tracks, and its
comparative freedom from heavy traffic, was often the scene of races in
the winter, and now he saw a group of sleighs ready for the start. As
the bunch drew away, his own horse came abreast of the others, and
without prearrangement he found himself racing side by side with
Anthony Cobbens.
"Well met, Mr. Mayor!" the lawyer cried cheerily. "I 'll race you down
to College Street."
Emmet glanced at his opponent, and shouted his acceptance of the
challenge, his sporting-blood surging suddenly to his very finger-tips.
As he gave his mare the whip and held her in from breaking, he looked
once more at the figure whizzing along by his side against the western
light. Something in the pink, pinched face, the red, eager eyes,
appealed to his sense of humour, and he laughed aloud. Emmet had more
than one reason for wishing to beat this man. He had worsted his
candidate in the election, and now he would show him a clean pair of
heels in the race. His heart beat with exultation as they two drew
away from the others. For a moment the thought of Felicity flashed
through his mind as they passed her house and the nose of his pacer was
shoved an inch ahead of her opponent.
"Good girl," he murmured, squaring his jaw; "good girl. Steady there,
steady."
The feathery snow flew up in whirls from the flying heels. Pedestrians
on the sidewalk paused and cheered as they flashed by under the bending
branches of the elms, under the electric lights that were just then
beginning their sputtering struggle for supremacy against the sunset.
Emmet had learned to handle horses during an apprenticeship at the
race-track in his boyhood, and now the judgment with which he had
selected his pacer was amply vindicated. Her steaming flanks swung
powerful and free; her long stride just missed the dashboard of the
sleigh. As he lightly touched her swaying back with the whip for a
final burst of speed, he loved the beast as only a horseman can, and
murmured terms of endearment that were equally applicable to a
sweetheart.
The head of Cobbens's horse was just in a line with Emmet's shoulder as
they passed the goal. The mayor turned while the other began to drop
behind and shouted a derisive farewell, with a parting flourish of the
whip. The victory was as sweet to his heart as the taste of honey to
the lips. The race had changed his mood completely, filling him with a
joyous truculence. He would gladly have embraced the opportunity of a
rough knock-down and drag-out fight with a picked champion from the
enemy's camp.
As he passed along the eastern border of the campus and glanced up at
St. George's Hall, it no longer appeared the impregnable fortress of
privilege he had once thought it. Yet, in reality, the towers of the
college had never looked more formidable. Rising magnificently at the
crest of a bleak expanse of snow, the embrasured battlements,
silhouetted against the sunset sky, might well have suggested to a
beholder grim thoughts of mediaeval strongholds and robber barons. The
red orb of the sun, hovering just above the rim of the western hills,
flashed successively through the windows of the long, low hall, like a
running trail of fire. Emmet was directly opposite the towers when he
saw the muzzle of the telescope rise slowly above the topmost line of
coping, as if it were a living thing stretching itself to take a look
at the surrounding country. Evidently Professor Leigh was preparing
the instrument for an observation. Emmet pictured the platform heaped
with snow, imagined the cold air rushing into the small shed through
the open roof, and wondered that his friend's enthusiasm could brave
such discomforts to win a knowledge so remote from the interests of
life.
He turned his eyes once more to the road and winked away the glare of
the sun. The floating spots, changing from crimson to green and from
green to purple, so obscured his vision that he failed to see the
figure of a woman plodding slowly on in the centre of the track. The
wind was directly ahead, and the hood of a golf cape so closely
enveloped the woman's head that she for her part was deaf to the sound
of coming sleighbells. Emmet had been driving slowly to give his mare
a breathing-space. Now, as she veered suddenly of her own accord, he
drew in the reins with a jerk, and brought the sleigh to a standstill
so near to Lena Harpster that he could have touched her with his hand.
Her first alarm was followed immediately by such a chaos of deeper
emotions that the cry died away on her lips. She stood looking at him
with shining eyes from behind the fringe of her tall, peaked hood,
then, in a voice as low as the wind, she spoke his name. At the same
moment she laid her hand on the edge of the seat, either obeying the
impulse that would draw her to him, or because she must otherwise have
fallen.
Since their last meeting, their night together in the shelter of the
half-finished building, he had resolutely put her from his thoughts.
He had supposed the victory won, and never more so than on this very
day, when self-interest and moral obligations had marshalled such
invincible arguments before his mind. If he had seen her from a
distance, if she had been on the sidewalk instead of in his very path,
would he have had time to wrestle with his temptation and to overthrow
it? Would he have whipped up his horse and passed her by without a
look of recognition? But the hypothesis is contrary to the fact, and
suggests a fruitless speculation. It would seem that his evil genius
had planned deliberately to put his resolution to the supreme test,
first by filling him with arrogant self-confidence, then by firing his
blood with a triumph over his enemy, and finally by placing within the
reach of his hand the very woman whom most of all, in his heart of
hearts, he longed to see.
As she stood there before him, all her soul concentrated in her eyes,
her lips apart in breathless waiting on his will, it seemed that
trouble had never put a marring finger upon her beauty; and suddenly he
knew the overmastering hunger of his nature. This was the woman that
loved him without question, the woman he wished to take into his arms
and carry off. The place and time were propitious. Already the sun
had set--there was no one in sight--and just beyond the ridge the open
country beckoned.
"Lena," he said, his voice vibrant with reckless abandonment to his
desire, "jump in here, quick!"
There was no previous greeting, no inquiry or explanation, no dalliance
with emotion. His first words were a command, her inevitable response
was to obey. Now, as always, she threw the whole responsibility upon
him. And Emmet felt equal to the burden. He was like a god, knowing
good and evil. He meant to do good in the main, but just now it was
his pleasure to deviate a little. To-morrow he would come back into
the straight road and hold it to the end. This resolve gave him a
peculiar exhilaration, a special license for the definite indulgence.
The next moment she was nestling close to his side, borne swiftly along
as in a dream to the music of the bells. Putting his left arm behind
her shoulders, he drew the robe up across her face to ward off the
whistling wind. For some time she was content to lie thus in silence,
lost in a sense of his strong embrace and in a consciousness of the
romance that had come to her so unexpectedly out of loneliness and
despair. This was her own lover, come back to her again, but he had
never come thus before; and she remembered with a thrill that he was
now the mayor of Warwick, taking his pleasure in his own sleigh. She
wondered whether he had admired her golf cape; she had no need to
wonder what he thought of its wearer. As if to reassure her on this
very point, he spoke aloud.
"Lena, I had clean forgot you were so pretty."
"What did you say, Tom?" she asked, thrusting her head above the robe
to hear again the praise she feigned to miss.
"I had forgotten," he repeated, "that you were so confoundedly pretty."
"I should think you would have forgotten it," she retorted. "You gave
yourself time enough to forget almost anything."
This unexpected show of spirit invested her with new piquancy, and he
laughed aloud. At that moment the sleigh emerged upon the brow of the
hill and caught the full force of the wind. A violent gust filled her
hood and threw it back upon her shoulders, disclosing, as by the touch
of a magician's wand, the mass of soft curls blowing wildly about her
little head, her flushed cheeks and shining eyes. She saw the wide,
desolate sweep of the valley, dotted here and there with twinkling
lights, the belt of crimson against the distant hills; and then she saw
his eyes bending near her own, as if they would drink in the beauty of
every line of her face and every curl. His head blotted out the
western sky, and their lips met.
The sleigh began to drop below the hill, faster and faster, and her
pulses kept time to the jingling of the bells. Without premeditation
she had struck a new note in their relationship. The resentment which
she had scarcely acknowledged to herself had grown during the weeks of
unmerited neglect, and its expression had given her an advantage, had
filled him with strange pleasure. He would find it harder to stay away
from her so long again. From now on she was armed with a new knowledge
of her lover.
Emmet too was seeing new light. He did like opposition in a woman, but
not that of a superior mind and a higher station. He would have
enjoyed the tingle of Lena's little hand smiting his cheek, that
helpless little hand which he could so easily control. Out of this
special indulgence which he allowed himself sprang an unexpected menace
for the future.
"Where are you taking me, Tom?" she asked presently.
"To Hillside," he answered, "for supper. I can have you home by eight
o'clock. There's no hurry about your getting back?"
"Oh, no," she assured him. "The housekeeper thinks I have gone to my
sister's."
"Then you are still at the bishop's?"
"Yes--and with very little to do. I get rather lonely sometimes."
"And Miss Wycliffe didn't take you with her as her maid? I should have
thought she would."
He longed to ask her about the scene attending the discovery of the
ring, and to find out just what his wife had said. Of course she had
not told the truth, but a new suspicion of Lena's astuteness made him
cautious. He was impressed by the fact that Felicity had left Lena
behind. Had she loved him wholly, would she not have made every effort
to keep her rival from his path? Was this her way of showing that she
refused to regard a servant in such a light? Or was it thus that she
put him upon his honour? At the thought he winced with a consciousness
of guilt. A third explanation occurred to his mind. Perhaps she left
Lena behind, like a bait in a trap, with the old housekeeper as spy.
This was a mean thought, he knew, suggested by his own duplicity, but
he resolved to act upon the supposition and to avoid all danger.
"She spoke of taking me," Lena said, "but changed her mind, and left me
to help take care of the house."
She too had questions to ask, but instinctively she shrunk from
disturbing the deep content of the present moment. The road they
travelled was not the one Leigh had taken that October afternoon when
he made his bicycle trip to Hillside, but a parallel way about half a
mile to the south. As they neared the other side of the valley, Emmet
took a cross-cut back to the northern road and passed her house,
without knowing that the place at which she glanced in passing was her
home. She had no desire to tell him, for it seemed mean and homely in
her eyes. She saw her father's silhouette on the curtain, his corncob
pipe in his mouth, and while she would have liked to exhibit her lover
to her family, she was ashamed of their rustic ways and feared the
impression they might make upon the mayor of Warwick.
The village of Hillside was typical of the country. In summer time a
stream dropping down from the hills turned the wheels of a large paper
mill. There was a general store, a post-office, a white, wooden
Congregational church with four Corinthian pillars, and an inn dating
from Colonial days, as its swinging sign-board, adorned with the
blurred image of a Revolutionary soldier, bore witness. This inn, "The
Old Continental," had recovered from its moribund condition with the
advent of the automobile, and was often the scene of gay supper parties
from Warwick. It had received a new coat of yellow paint and a new
roof, but the Society for the Preservation of Colonial Landmarks had
decreed that the figure of the soldier on the sign-board should remain
untouched by the brush. Thus the uniform that had once shone so spick
and span in streaks of buff and blue would better recall the ragged
regimentals of the well-known poem.
The distance from Warwick was ten miles, but it still lacked something
of six o'clock when Emmet drove into the stable, blanketed his mare,
and lifted his companion from the sleigh. He led her through a side
door and into a small room that had formerly been the kitchen. Here,
in a huge brick fireplace, blazing logs threw out a dancing light that
glinted on the polished mahogany table and quaint chairs, and disclosed
the dark red walls and brown beams, as well as several highly coloured
English coaching scenes.
Lena seated herself close to the blaze, and glanced up at the sooty
arch above her head with small appreciation of the historic memories of
the place, of the archaeological interest inherent in the swinging
crane and twisted andirons. It did not occur to her, as it would have
occurred to many visitors, to open the doors of the baking-ovens at the
side and to peer within. If she thought at all of these things, it was
merely to realise their inconvenience, and to be reminded of the
similar room in her own home.
And yet, though she did not know it, she was eligible to membership in
the Daughters of the American Revolution. Her ancestors had taken
their muskets from just such chimney places to go forth and fight the
British. Only, they had never kept their family records, their
descendants had never climbed high in the world; and now one of them
was sitting in her own appropriate environment, suggesting in her sweet
face, her curling hair and slender figure, in the very cape thrown over
the back of the chair, the familiar picture of Priscilla.
It was Emmet, an American of only one generation, who reminded her of
the legend that Washington had stopped there overnight on his way to
take command of the army in Cambridge; but she was too deeply absorbed
in thinking how handsome he was and how much he seemed the mayor to
listen with attention to his remarks. She took his intellectual
interests for granted, and accepted as a matter of course his larger
knowledge of a history that was his merely by adoption. Love was her
mental theme and the sum of all her interests, not academic
speculations concerning the effect upon America of the great Irish
immigration of the last century, of which indeed she had never even
heard.
She had not observed his quick, keen glance at the stalls of the
stable, nor noted his relief when he found them empty. They two had
the house entirely to themselves, but the larger dining-room, seen
through the open door, suggested guests, for the tables were set and
the lights turned low.
"Yes, sir," the waiter answered in reply to his question, "there's a
party due here at six-thirty from Warwick. Mr. Cobbens is bringing 'em
out."
"Then hurry up," Emmet commanded. "Bring us something hot, and be
quick about it."
The man did not know him; there was consolation in that. But Emmet
realised the necessity of getting away before the party should arrive.
There seemed a fatality in the coincidence that he and Cobbens should
cross each other's path twice in the same day, when often they did not
meet for a fortnight.
As Lena Harpster drank her coffee and noted her lover's increasing
uneasiness, she gave no sign of her resentment, part of which was due
to the unwillingness of a sensuous nature to leave a warm corner by the
fire on a winter night. Her awakened sense of power made her for the
first time rebellious of being hustled out of sight and kept in the
dark. The struggle between her and Emmet was on in earnest, and her
heart beat fast with a resolve to delay him there until they should be
seen together.
It was quarter after six when the jingle of bells was heard before the
door, and Cobbens's voice calling loudly for the stable-man. Even then
there was time to escape. Emmet had only to pay his bill and slip
quickly out the side door as his enemy entered at the front. Lena too
saw the chance and started from her chair, her eyes fixed upon his with
instinctive questioning and submission, all her high resolves forgotten
in the actual crisis. Their respective attitudes at that moment were
singularly characteristic. She was now poised for instant flight, with
something of the air of a creature of the wild whose safety lies in
speed of wing or foot; he, who had thought to steal away unobserved,
now threw the thought contemptuously aside. A dull glow of anger
spread slowly over his handsome features, and his jaw grew rigid.
"Sit down, Lena," he said peremptorily. "Sit down."
She sank into her chair again, grasping the arms with her thin, white
fingers.
"What's the matter with your supper?" he asked with a short laugh.
"Have you lost your appetite?"
She took up her spoon once more, but her hand trembled, and she was
forced to steady it against the table.
Cobbens entered the door, throwing back his great-coat and tugging at
his gloves, to meet Emmet's slow turn of the head and forbidding stare.
It was the look of one who feels himself intruded upon and waits in no
very amiable mood for an apology. The rest of the party followed, six
in all, and Emmet recognised Mrs. Parr, Felicity's neighbour and
friend, among them. The worst had come to pass. Of Cobbens's malice
there could be no doubt, but in all probability he had not observed
Lena in the bishop's house during her short stay there before her
mistress's departure. Mrs. Parr, however, was in and out daily; and
what more choice bit of gossip could she write to her friend than an
account of this unexpected meeting? If there was any momentary doubt
in his mind, it was dispelled by her action. One sharp look told her
all she wished to know; then she turned her back upon her friend's
servant and the mayor of Warwick with ostentatious indifference,
holding out her hands to the blaze and chatting of the inclemency of
the weather. The others followed her example, closing in about the
fire, as if utterly unconscious of the two of whose presence they were
in reality so acutely aware. Cobbens alone chose a different course.
"Ah, Emmet," he said, with easy familiarity, and in a tone that
displayed a distinct relish for the situation, "I did n't mean to
interrupt your _tête-à-tête_, but the fact is, I had engaged the place
for dinner--wired out this afternoon, just before you beat me so
handsomely on the avenue. That's a fine pacer of yours. If you want
to part with her at any time, I hope you 'll give me a chance to make
you an offer."
"I believe the waiter told me you were coming at six-thirty," Emmet
answered coolly, glancing at his watch. "Miss Harpster and I were
counting on another ten minutes to finish our supper."
If the speaker's first stare had failed of its effect, his words now
interpreted it and gave it significance. The lawyer's jauntiness
dropped off, as if a modicum of respect for this man had found its way
into his calculating soul. Here was no poor devil of a conductor, but
the mayor of Warwick, a very different person; and though he was
surprised in an adventure of gallantry, he intended to carry it off
with a high hand, as nobody's business but his own. Cobbens reflected
that the mayor's companion might well be a respectable girl, perhaps
his _fiancée_. Now he was quick to see his trespass and to mend his
manner.
"Why, of course," he assented graciously. "Don't let us hurry you.
The fact is, we all came in here before we noticed the room was
occupied, to leave our wraps. Quaint old place, isn't it? I fancy
Washington could have touched the ceiling with his hand. There's a
fire in the larger room, I believe."
The party took the hint and filed out in silence, leaving Emmet and
Lena in possession of the field. But to the mayor the victory appeared
only half won, for Lena had risen to her feet at their first entrance,
as if to remain standing in the presence of her superiors, thereby
discounting his own assurance. Now she flushed beneath his look of
speechless indignation and reproach. If she had only supported him!
If she had only realised what a beauty she was in contrast with the
other women! As superior as he knew himself to be to that little
Cobbens, or to the bland and elephantine husband of Mrs. Parr.
No words now passed between them, but in the other room the chatter
continued, though in a more subdued key. Emmet knew well that they
were only waiting for him to depart to break forth into excited
comments; and presently he heard the phrase, "What assurance!" followed
by a lull, as if some one had made a cautioning gesture. Then the
somewhat dilapidated piano began to tinkle, as it could tinkle only
under the mincing fingers of Mrs. Parr. Had her random notes been
given a name, they might have been called Mrs. Parr's Tale of a Wayside
Inn.
Emmet realised that the fat was in the fire. If he were only free, he
reflected bitterly, how little he would now care what they thought or
said! He would take Lena as his wife and make a lady of her, and force
her down their throats by the power of the money he meant to win.
Position was something, but money everything. Let him once get their
husbands and sons in his debt, and every door would open wide. With
Felicity as his wife, his acceptance was assured; but in his present
mood he scorned to make his entry in such a manner. Now, if he spelled
aright the handwriting on the wall, he might remain forever on the
outside of the citadel he had thought to storm. He rose to his feet
and paid his bill with a rueful conviction that he had fought not
wisely, though so well.
The very action, the very throwing down of the money, somehow restored
his earlier exhilaration, the assurance of a man who can pay the bill.
It seemed symbolic of future accounts of whatever kind, all of which he
meant to square. The web he had woven for himself was now so complete,
his discomfiture so inevitable, that his spirits rose to meet the odds
he had arrayed against himself.
Lena, divining his change of moods, but little realising their depths
and heights, was tenderly grateful. He had stood up for her before
them all, and her wildest hope was fulfilled. As they drove from the
inn yard, she seized his left hand, which he was about to thrust into
his glove, and pressed it tremulously to her lips. In this way she
thanked him for what she thought he had done for her, for what in
reality he could never do; and at the touch of her soft lips his
accusing conscience spoke to him in no uncertain voice.
During the homeward drive she was unexpectedly easy upon him. An
innate womanly tact warned her not to speak of the incident as
committing him to her before the world. For the second time that
evening she showed the wisdom of a daughter of Eve in dealing with one
of the sons of men; but her gaiety, a new sparkle in her eyes, a new
vibration in her laugh, told him unmistakably the secret joyousness of
her heart. He had a glimpse also of what she might be under happier
circumstances; he saw how the bud which was even now so sweet could
unfold in love's sunlight; he imagined the possibility of their life
together; but none the less he determined that now at last he must
break away from her forever.
The immutable fact remained that he was married to Felicity. Though he
had ceased to attend his own church from the days of his boyhood, the
Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage remained as one of
his traditions, and this too in spite of the fact that he had been
married by a Protestant priest. He had not committed the one sin which
his wife's church recognised as the only cause for divorce. There was
no escape from his obligation, provided his wife would forgive him and
take him back. Her wrong to him had borne the bitter fruit of his
wrong to this defenceless girl. Let her come back--she could not come
too soon--and face him with his faithlessness. He would tell her what
she had done, and bid her to forgive him or not, as she chose.
The wind was now at their backs, and having slackened its velocity
until it approximated their pace, it seemed to have died down
altogether, leaving them to glide along in a dead calm. Emmet looked
up at the stars, which had never seemed to shine with such peculiar
brilliancy, and thought of Leigh. There was the one man in whom he
could confide. None of his old acquaintances could be trusted with
such a vital secret. The astronomer bore no part in the struggles and
jealousies about him. His very occupation at that moment invested him
in Emmet's eyes with something of the impartiality and spiritual
aloofness of the seer. It did not occur to him to seek the help of the
confessional, to make his peace with the church from whose instruction,
even as a boy, he had fled to the public schools, in spite of his
mother's disapproval and the angry protests of his parish priest. That
very night he would go to Leigh, if not for advice, at least for
sympathy and understanding.
Immersed in such thoughts, he said little, but from time to time he
drew Lena to him and kissed her, not with his former intensity, but
with a softening sense of impending farewell. They had come within
sight of the towers of St. George's Hall, looming against the pale
horizon, when she threw him into sudden panic.
"Tom, dear," she said, "did you know that Miss Wycliffe took away the
ring you gave me?"
"Took it away?" he echoed.
"Yes; she said it belonged to her, and that she had lost it in the car.
Of course, I had to give it up." After vacillating in delicate
hesitation she went on. "I did n't mind losing the ring so very much,
since it was really hers, but I was a little hurt that you did n't buy
me a ring."
He winced perceptibly, and she hastened to make her peace.
"What a queer old thing it was! I liked it at first because you gave
it to me, though it seemed to have an unlucky look, somehow. I 'd much
rather have had just a little ring, with a solitary diamond in it."
"Did you tell her where you got it?" he demanded abruptly.
"She asked who gave me the ring, and I told her. But I did n't tell
her we were engaged, or anything like that."
"What did you tell her, then?" he persisted.
"Just that you gave me the ring, Tom. Then she told me you must have
found it in the car."
"I suppose she blamed me for not returning the thing to the office," he
suggested.
His effort to appear indifferent did not escape her awakened
perception. She suffered again the pang of losing him that had brought
her to her knees on that dreadful night, and fluttered toward him in
terror.
"Oh, no, Tom," she cried. "She did n't say anything about that, but
she seemed angry with me, though she was so quiet. I thought,
Tom,--how foolish you will think me,--that she loved you and meant to
take you away from me!"
He laughed harshly. "She love me!"
The bitter incredulity of his accent was too pronounced to be feigned,
as indeed it was not, and she lifted her head, reassured. "I might
have known it," she said, dashing away her tears with a tremulous
little laugh, "but I loved you so. And she warned me against you. She
said you meant nothing good by me. I suppose she thought you would
want to marry a lady, now that you are mayor; but at the time I felt
somehow that she wanted you for herself!"
A subtler and more highly developed man would have foreseen all this
suffering from the first; he would have sown the wind with some
knowledge of the whirlwind to come. But Emmet was a child in matters
feminine, and he stood aghast at the thought of the probable effect
upon Lena of the inevitable discovery of the truth. If the very fancy
caused her such grief, what would she do when she found out that her
imagination had been prophetic? A frantic desire to postpone the blow
that must fall upon her so soon gave him the skill of a Faustus. He
scoffed at the absurdity of her fear, and a bitter conviction of his
wife's selfishness gave his arguments the ring of truth. Only, when he
drew a picture of the difference between his social position and that
of women of Miss Wycliffe's class, she stopped him with the assertion
that not one of them, with all their money, was worthy to be his wife.
She added humbly that she knew how little worthy she was herself.
As if the approaching end of their journey drove her on to lay her soul
bare before him, she told him every detail of that interview with her
mistress in her room, down to the moment when she had groped blindly
for the window and looked out through her tears to see him pass.
He had planned to leave her some distance from the bishop's house, but
now caution was useless. The street, however, was deserted
thereabouts, though the night was still young, and no one saw their
farewell. As he drove away and glanced back to see her figure still
motionless against the snow, he experienced some of the punishment that
comes to him who plays at ducks and drakes with a woman's heart.