"TWO SISTER VESSELS"
The January thaw now took on a sinister and unwholesome phase,
preparatory to its final retreat before the onslaught of returning
winter. The heavy snowfall was reduced to a few discoloured streaks
lingering in the deeper ruts and hollows, and the brown earth, never so
unlovely, exhaled faint wreaths of vapour that caused old-fashioned
folk to shake their heads and to speak of full graveyards. The sun
seemed to draw up in the form of mist more and more of the water that
had been soaking into the soil. People moved about in a dank haze,
that rose gradually to the tops of the houses, until by noontime it had
obscured the moist blue sky and turned the sun into a dull-red disk set
in a golden aura. There was something ominous in the strange
atmosphere thus engendered, in the dimming and distorting of
architectural lines, in the muffling of familiar sounds. The
unseasonable conditions resembled in some way what in other climates is
called earthquake weather, when Nature seems to be throwing a veil over
the world to hide the monstrous deed she is about to commit.
Those whose lives were happy, drawing their breath with a sense of
oppression, imagined impending trouble, while those with real tragedies
to bear now found them almost insupportable.
Early in the day, St. George's Hall looked down from its lofty ridge
upon basins of mist that presented the appearance of white lakes in the
meadows below. Gradually the tide rose above the long, low hall, until
the towers seemed to rest on clouds. Finally the whole mass
disappeared, to loom up larger than reality to the eyes of one
approaching from the city. As night came on, the lights from the
windows cut lurid pathways into the surrounding obscurity. A gradual
chill crept along the ground, thinning the fog and disclosing at
intervals ghostly glimmerings of the moon.
Through this strange medium two figures were toiling up the street that
flanked the northern limit of the campus. Under normal conditions, the
second could easily have seen the one in advance, but now his view was
obstructed, and though he gained rapidly, he had reached the entrance
of the maple walk before the mist in front of him seemed to concentrate
into a flitting shadow that resembled a woman's form. The young
astronomer had been wandering for hours in a vain search for diversion,
and the vision before him, embodying as it did the subject upon which
his mind had been concentrated, caused him to stand still in a tumult
of emotion. The next moment it was gone, and he believed that he had
been visited by an hallucination. Recently, that earlier picture of
Felicity beside the lamp had given place in his imagination to one
associated with a deeper experience. He had just pictured her in her
scarlet cloak and hood; then he had looked up to see the same figure
vanishing before his eyes.
A moment's reflection convinced him of the psychic nature of the
phenomenon. In all the range of human probabilities, what errand could
lead her at ten o'clock on such a night to that lonely hilltop, and on
down the road into the country beyond? It was manifest that his own
mind had shaped the vision from the pale vapours, and he realised how
weary and overwrought he had become. His sensation was now almost one
of fear, as if he had seen the ghost of a loved one rising out of the
mists of a remote and passionate past. A strange impulse seized him to
follow the phantom further, but he was shivering with the penetrating
dampness to which he had been long exposed, and instead he continued
his way toward his room.
Had he obeyed his impulse, he would soon have overtaken the living form
which he imagined to be an apparition of the mind. Felicity did not
keep straight ahead, however, to the westward, but paused at the brow
of the hill, breathing deep after her long climb, conscious that the
rapid beating of her heart was not wholly due to her recent exertion.
It was the prospect of a meeting now imminent that caused the painful
tumult in her side and the widening of her dark eyes as she looked up
at the saffron blur which marked the position of the moon. Yet there
was resolution in her step as she turned southward and took the road
that passed between the college and the cliff. In spite of the long
thaw, the gravelled track was firm beneath her feet, and she walked
rapidly in the direction of the Hall, her face pale and set, her warm
breath mingling with the swirling mist.
Leigh was also progressing in the same direction by the almost parallel
path between the maples, but somewhat in advance of Felicity, inasmuch
as she had climbed to the very summit of the hill before turning, while
the course he took extended diagonally across the campus from a point
further down. Thus it happened that he had gained his rooms by the
time she came opposite his western windows. As she glanced up at them
in passing, their location in the wall became more clearly defined by
the appearance of a glimmering light within. She saw Leigh, with his
hat and coat still on, come from his eastern room, holding a candle in
his hand. He stood under the chandelier, raised the candle, and
lighted the jets of gas. Then he advanced to the windows, and pulled
the curtains down with a decisive motion, that expressed his inward
determination to shut out all ghostly imaginings with the night.
Felicity stood for some time regarding the yellow squares in the murky
expanse of the wall. She reflected that he might have been very near
her in the mist but a few moments before, since he must have entered
the grounds by the maple walk. The other path, by the bishop's statue
and across the fields, was seldom used in winter, and was now
impracticable because of the soggy condition of the turf. The possible
results of the meeting, which had evidently been avoided by mere
accident, perhaps only by the thickness of the atmosphere, were
incalculable, and sent the blood to her cheeks in a sudden glow.
The memory of their last meeting flooded her whole being warmly, to be
followed by a dreary realisation of their present position. The very
drawing of the curtains between them seemed symbolical, not so much of
his expressed determination to see her no more as of the relentlessness
of Fate. She believed that he was strong enough to keep his promise,
and knew how gladly she would have him break it. Her actual situation
at the moment, shut out from him and standing alone in the night, gave
her longing an intensity which she had not hitherto experienced. She
wondered whether he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her
good-bye once more, had he overtaken her upon the hill. Presently she
resumed her way, thinking of the man she was leaving there in his
lonely tower rather than of the man she was so soon to meet.
Some quarter of a mile further on, she came to a huge button-ball tree
that marked the trysting-place. Its great trunk and long branches,
spotted with white patches, like scars on the twisted limbs of a giant,
confronted her as a hideous and uncanny thing. This tree, the only
kind in all the country that lacked beauty of line and colour, received
a touch of ghastliness from the atmosphere that enveloped it which was
not without its effect upon her imagination, and when she saw the mayor
emerge from its shadow, she started as if she were confronted by a
highwayman.
"Is it you, Felicity?" he ventured anxiously. "I thought you were
never coming."
"Was I late?" she returned. "I did n't mean to be; but let us walk
further on. We can talk as we go."
As she caught sight of the eager light in his eyes and noted the
intonation of his voice, she divined that his mood was radically
different from that which had carried him to her house in hot haste a
few mornings before. Then, he was burning with a sense of humiliation,
frantic with the thought that she was slipping from his grasp,
embittered by baffled ambition, and determined to assert his rights.
Now, softer emotions held sway in his heart. The memory of that scene
in the opera house had grown less galling. He was soothed by the
blandishments of resilient self-esteem and by his friends' more
flattering interpretation of the incident. Indeed, looked at from one
perspective, it was a most impressive vindication of his official
dignity against the slight that had been put upon it. A new point of
view had somehow sprung from his brief contact with the President. For
the first time, Cobbens and his kind appeared to him the provincials
they were. They no longer blocked his whole horizon, like the lion in
the way. Dim dreams of wider ambitions, vague exhilarations, stirred
within him. He began to think it possible to transcend Warwick. Thus
his temper was less bitter than before, his poise was less a pose, the
result of a new adjustment of values.
"Felicity," he began, almost happily, "I could n't help thinking, as I
stood there waiting for you, how often I have waited in the same way
before. Just think of it, Felicity, for years and years! It seems
almost a lifetime, so much has happened in the interval. Did you
notice this coat and cap? They 're the same I used to wear when you
began to take my car rather than any other. A pretty good disguise for
the mayor of Warwick, don't you think?"
A pain went through her heart, not for a lost love, but for the
vanished dreams of girlhood. The chord he had hoped to touch remained
mute. In view of the fact that she believed love to be dead between
them, this method of stimulating an outworn romance seemed sentimental
and insincere. Had he loved her, she might well have thought it boyish
and pathetic. What he spoke of as a disguise had seemed so natural as
to escape her notice; and this indicated the height from which she had
never really descended and could now never descend. He had lost his
great opportunity of appearing the mayor in her eyes. It was no part
of her plan, however, to emphasise this difference between them, for
she had seen what vindictive passions a realisation of the fact might
arouse within him. Full of the warmth of his own emotions, he failed
to grasp the significance of her unresponsiveness.
"But have you spoken to the bishop yet, as you promised to?" he asked
eagerly.
"No, I have n't--I could n't, yet."
"I 'm glad of it," he returned buoyantly. "I wanted another chance to
see you before you spoke to him, to set myself right with you. I did
n't mean to threaten you, Felicity. I knew that was no way to win
forgiveness, but I was n't myself. Can't you see how the long waiting
for you almost drove me mad? But now we 're together again in the old
way, and I feel that I can explain everything so that you can
understand. Everything that's happened lately to keep us apart seems a
dream, something utterly unreal. Come, Felicity, don't you think our
meeting was rather a cold one, after such a long separation? Have n't
I won the prize you set for me to win, and are you going to deny me my
reward?" He made as if he would put his arm about her, but she shrank
away with such emphatic and spontaneous denial that he desisted in
chagrin. "After all there has been between us," he protested, "are you
going to let a passing flirtation outweigh the fact that we are man and
wife?"
Felicity had somehow not anticipated that he would attempt to kiss her,
and the movement set her quivering as at an outrage.
"Has there really been so much between us, Tom?" she asked. "Doesn't
it all seem a great mistake, which it would be better to acknowledge
frankly, rather than to assume the existence of something that has
ceased to exist?"
"And whose mistake was it?" he demanded, with sudden fierceness. "Tell
me that."
"Mine," she admitted. "You know how I came to make it--the narrowness
of my life that yet seemed so broad, the insignificance of the
artificial men I knew, the longing for romance, for a love affair with
a flavour of risk and adventure in it. You must n't hold me now to
that girl's dream, since you were the one that waked me from it. You
showed me first that we really did n't care for each other. If you
loved me, why did you take up with the first pretty servant-girl you
met?"
She had not meant to recall their difference in class, but in Lena's
station in life lay the chief sting of his offence, and the fact could
not be concealed.
"Why? Why?" he echoed. "Because she loved me more than you did,--if
you ever loved me at all,--because you starved my heart and made me
feel that you were not my wife at all, but only a patroness who had
taken me up to make something of me, with an indefinite promise of a
reward at the end of it, if I would be a good little boy and do as you
told me, and keep out of mischief, and win a prize. What kind of a
position is that to put a man in?"
"I supposed the reward was worth working and waiting for," she retorted
coolly. "You 're whipping yourself into a passion now, Tom, but you
know in your heart that my cruelty to you, if it was cruelty, was not
as great as your cruelty to Lena. I would have kept my promise, and
you know it, if you had not yourself forfeited all claim to my respect.
I supposed you were a strong man"--
"And have I no wrongs?" he broke in. "Did you think I was n't a man at
all, but just a lump of putty to be moulded by your hands? How do you
suppose I felt when we were married in New York, and you left me at the
very door of the church?"
"I did n't realise till then what I had done," she gasped, the panic of
that moment returning to her, "and I had to leave you."
"But I did realise it," he cried bitterly, "as any man would have
realised it. I realised nothing else. I walked the streets, wondering
whether it was a practical joke. You made a fool of me. You did n't
tell me beforehand that you were going to play such a trick on me."
"Trick!"
"Yes, trick! What else, in the name of God, was it? It seemed like
nothing else, at first. I could hardly remember what you said,--you
spoke so confused and were so anxious to get away,--but finally I
figured it out that you were just scared, and that I would have to wait
a little while for you to get used to the idea that you were my wife."
He paused, choked by emotion. "I waited, God knows," he went on,
"waited for nearly three years. And what did I get? A few stolen
meetings and a few kisses, not very genuine ones at that. Somehow you
carried the thing out in your father's high-handed way. I could n't
break through and get at you. Every time we met I thought I would, but
instead I took advice and promises, until it became a habit of mind. I
became tired of the mockery, and heart-sick. You made yourself seem
less and less my wife. And when I did n't see you for weeks at a time,
and when I was filled with resentment, I met Lena"--
"And did the very thing that lost me to you forever," she supplemented
relentlessly.
They had come to a point where the road ascended and ran along the
margin of a great stone quarry, from which the material that went into
the building of St. George's Hall had been hewn. The air had grown
momently colder, condensing the mist, which now floated away in milky
wreaths, disclosing the full moon shining down upon the wide sweep of
the valley toward the west. Stung to madness by her words, he stopped
and turned upon her, but his answer died on his lips, for he looked
into a face of such surpassing beauty that he seemed never to have seen
it truly before. The gathered crimson hood invested it with something
of the sorcery that Leigh had felt, that any man must have felt. The
divinity that had hitherto hedged about the bishop's daughter vanished
for the first time like a vanishing mist, and left her only an
irresistible woman standing alone with him in the moonlight.
The impulse that swept over him was one of sheer desire. Lena had
taught him what a woman's kisses could be, kisses such as Felicity had
never given him, such as he would now have from her as his right.
Before she could anticipate his intention, he had seized her roughly
and strained her to his breast with a violence that hurt.
"Felicity!" he cried in savage delight, "I could make you come to me
now. You are my wife--I tell you, my wife!"
She managed to free herself from his grasp, and having retreated a few
steps, she faced him, white with anger. Leigh's embrace had been
passionate, and had fired her blood with an answering emotion, but
Emmet's was an assault, arousing within her an implacable resentment.
"I am not your wife!" she cried, quivering. "Marriage or no marriage,
I am not your wife, and never will be. After what has passed between
you and that girl, how dared you kiss me--how dared you? When you came
down to me--the other morning--from her room--and found me in the
hall--did n't I see in your face--in your tears--the state of your
mind?"
In her heart she believed it probable that he had wronged Lena to the
greatest extent that a man can wrong a woman. He did not divine the
extent of her suspicions, however, and unfortunately his next words
deepened them to practical certainty.
"God help me," he groaned. "You 've told the truth. You 're not my
wife and never have been, but you 've kept her from being, poor girl.
You 've made me wrong her--perhaps kill her, for all I know."
Something of the wild and tragic strain that lies so deep in the Celtic
race now rose to the surface and transformed him. He took a step
forward and seized her by the wrist.
"I could end it all at once by dragging you with me over the cliff, and
I don't know but I will!"
Powerless in his grasp, she stood on the very edge of the rock that
fell away sheer before them to the depth of two hundred feet. He
looked down into the basin, showing here and there in the hollows a
pool mirrored in the moonlight, and shapeless masses of machinery and
stone. Whether he had really been in earnest, or had only imagined
himself to be, the vision of that cruel abyss made him pause,
shuddering. But Felicity had not taken her eyes from his face. Now he
turned to meet them, not distended with fear, but fixed upon him in
discerning scorn. She even made no effort to free her wrist, but stood
poised on the brink with an apparent unconcern, that reëstablished her
ascendancy as if by magic.
"You 're merely acting now, Tom," she said calmly. "You don't want to
die, and you have no intention of killing me. You 've got too much to
live for, to throw your life away in that fashion. When you 've had
time to think it over, you 'll discover that it was n't love that made
you want me, but ambition. The love was gone long ago, but the
ambition remains. You want to live for that."
He dropped her wrist, and cowered away from the cliff as if he were
shrinking from a nightmare horror, while she began to move slowly in
the direction of the college. The very act of retreat aroused within
her the emotion which, curiously enough, she had not experienced in the
crisis of danger. It was not fear that made her flee, but her flight
that produced the fear; and the possibility of the crime, the grewsome
picture it suggested, flashed upon her with such sinister power that
her knees weakened and caused her to stumble. He overtook her in a few
long strides, and walked beside her in dumb penitence.
"You 'll never forgive me now, Felicity," he said, when he could bear
the silence no longer, "never--never!"
"We 'll not talk of forgiveness any more on either side," she returned
wearily. "We 're merely going round and round in a circle, without
arriving at any conclusion."
His own nature shared her reaction from intense emotion to
indifference, and again silence fell between them. Apparently, they
were scarcely better able to understand each other than if they spoke
in different languages, and each took refuge in incommunicable
thoughts. It would always be thus, she reflected, if they lived
together; no community of interests, herself living in a region apart,
which he was generations short of being able to enter. Nothing would
remain but practical politics, and already she sickened of the sordid
subject. Unionism, public ownership of public utilities versus private
privilege, charges and counter-charges of political corruption,
problems of taxation--such things would constitute his sole interest in
life and the gist of his conversation. It was not enough that he
talked intelligently, even eloquently, on these subjects. Her active
mind had already exhausted their possibilities, and what to her was a
mere by-play of the intellect was to him the be-all and end-all of
existence. Of the books she had given him, he understood and
appropriated only those parts that related to his subject. All the
rest was lost: the literary quality, the atmosphere, the historic
perspective. To him it could never mean anything that Plato saw the
Parthenon.
This fact indicated a limitation, a reason why he could never develop
from the politician into the statesman, why, for example, she knew that
he was not the kind of man to become a cabinet officer or ambassador.
She would be merely the wife of a mayor, or at the most, of a governor
or representative. And she knew she would never respect his opinions,
that he was one who might champion crude and undigested theories,
theories which men trained as her father and Leigh and Cardington had
been trained would weigh in the balance and find wanting. How rashly
she had condemned this training, how effectually her experiment had
cured her of radicalism, she herself now saw clearly. The problem of
liberty within conventionality was still unsolved, and she had beaten
her wings against the bars in vain.
On the other hand, just as she had once endowed Emmet with
possibilities he never possessed, so now, in her disillusion, she lost
sight of those primitive virtues that would always make him a force for
good in whatever level he was destined to reach. Unjust to him in the
beginning, she was unjust to him still.
Felicity Wycliffe was a mystery to herself no less than to others. The
normal functions of her sex had dropped so far below her ken, in the
course of her complicated development, as to seem negligible.
Beginning with this negation, she had passed rapidly on to an attitude
of universal scepticism, to which religion was merely a matter of
taste, and prayer was a psychological phenomenon. She was not one to
lend herself to the constructive dreams of men, or to attach herself to
their theories. Her weariness of her father's academic plans presaged
her disillusion in regard to Emmet's career, even if he had been what
she first imagined him. Her colossal egotism demanded everything from
a man, and was prepared to give nothing in return, except the
precarious possession of herself. Yet what man, fascinated by the
mysterious unrest and nocturnal splendour of her eyes, would not gladly
pay for that possession whatever price she might demand?
Presently, when their silence had again become awkward, she began to
speak of impersonal things; of the strange transformation of the night,
lately so oppressive and obscure, now so dazzlingly serene; of the
carrying power of sound in the stillness about--a dog's barking, the
distant notes of the bell in the tower of the First Church striking the
hour of eleven. As they passed the Hall, she saw that the windows of
Leigh's room were again dark, and imagined that he had taken advantage
of the clearing atmosphere to ascend to the top of the tower and resume
his observations. Emmet, following the direction of her eyes upward,
divined her thought.
"The professor is probably looking at the moon through his telescope,"
he remarked.
"Yes," she answered, in a tone as casual as his own, "he would
doubtless not lose this opportunity of examining the cracks that have
appeared recently on its surface, if he can see them with that lens,
which is n't likely. They are said to be hundreds, or even thousands,
of miles long, and only a few yards in width."
Her knowledge of such a recent astronomical discovery confirmed his
suspicion that she and Leigh saw much of each other. Knowing the man's
infatuation with her by his own confession, he now became convinced
that she returned it; that she had used his fault in regard to Lena
Harpster to justify its counterpart in herself. Correct in his main
surmise, he was nevertheless mistaken concerning the source of her
information, a short press despatch from the Lick Observatory which he
had overlooked in the morning paper.
He was in no mood to renew the struggle with her on the basis of these
suspicions, but laid them away in his heart for future consideration.
About to reply indifferently, his words were checked by a sudden fit of
coughing. The long exposure in the penetrating fog and the subsequent
increase in the cold were producing their effect, and as they descended
the hill, his cough became more frequent and severe.
She was concerned for him, much as she would have been concerned for
any one under similar circumstances. Some hereditary instinct, a
tradition of professional humanity, moved her to expressions of
sympathy and advice; and when they arrived before her house, she
insisted that he come in and get something warm to drink before
exposing himself further to the cold night air. He followed her
obediently through the dimly lighted hall into the dining-room,
wondering at her apparent indifference to the possibility of meeting
either Lena or the bishop.
The indifference was real. Wearied of her own efforts to disentangle
herself from the meshes of her plight, she was ready to challenge
chance. Had her father been sitting up for her, she would have led her
husband into his presence, prepared to take the consequences. But as
chance decided otherwise, she accepted the respite, not without relief.
She heated water over a small alcohol lamp, which she placed on the
table, and called his attention to the reflection of the green flame in
the polished mahogany surface. There was that in her manner and
conversation which deprived her act of the tone of personal service.
She watched him sip his whiskey with a judicial expression, overruling
the protest his principles suggested. She poured for herself a glass
of wine and sat opposite him, the tall wax candles between them, and
asked him for the first time how he found his duties as mayor. The
question seemed to occur to her as one which ordinary courtesy should
have prompted her to ask before.
Emmet felt her aloofness, and met it with unexpected dignity. In his
answer he spoke of Bat Quayle, and of a plan forming against him among
his enemies in the board of aldermen to lay all his appointments on the
table indefinitely, and thus to make his administration a failure. But
he did not assume, as he would once have done, that she was vitally
interested, and his remarks were fragmentary.
Felicity noticed his sombre mood and attributed it partly to his
physical condition, little dreaming how bitterly he resented, not her
kindness, but the manner of it. It was the old grievance over again.
Like the bishop, like her whole class, she was unconsciously
patronising, he reflected, even when she meant to be charitable. For
the time, at least, he asked nothing from her, and this indifference
gave him more of a tone of the world, more the air of a gentleman, than
she had ever seen in him before. For once the tables were turned, and
it was he who appeared enigmatical. If he were any longer conscious of
his conductor's uniform, it was a proud consciousness, and he seemed to
wear it like the insignia of a soldier. When he left, it was without
further appeals or personalities, but with brief thanks for her
kindness and good wishes.
She stood and watched him going down the walk in the moonlight, the
black shadows of the bare branches falling one after another across his
shoulders, and suddenly the thought that this was her husband who was
leaving her thus came over her with a wave of irresistible emotion.
Her throat ached with a piercing realisation of the tragedy of it, and
without stopping to think, she ran down the steps and pursued him,
panting and almost weeping. He turned at the sound of her hurrying
steps, puzzled by the pursuit and on his guard against her influence.
He was suspicious of her intentions now, and waited for her to explain
the meaning of this mercurial change.
"Tom," she said in a choking voice, laying a detaining hand upon his
sleeve. But she was possessed by an emotion, rather than by a thought
that could be expressed in words, and so she stood thus awhile in
silence. His grim immobility and manly self-containment brought back
some flavour of that early romance, when he, unaware as yet of her
fancy, paid her slight heed, and for that very reason appealed to her
imagination.
The change in her mood seemed to flow into him like a solvent that
broke up his resentment and suspicion. That realisation of their
relationship which had sent her after him was conveyed in the thrilling
note of her voice when she uttered his name, and though at first he had
refused to understand it thus, her lingering touch became its full
interpreter. They searched each other's eyes mutely, and he knew
before he began to speak that she was his.
"Felicity," he said, his eyes gathering an intense, exultant light,
"you 've come after me of your own accord, and you 've got to abide by
it. You 've played fast and loose with me long enough. Don't go back
into the house--come with me now--you're my wife--why should n't you
come with me? Whose business is it but our own? I say you must!"
With an effort she withdrew her eyes from his face and looked back at
the open door of her father's house, imprinting every detail upon her
memory: the dull red carpet, the antique chairs, the stairway hung with
old engravings, climbing upward to the room which she was never again
to enter as before. The temptation assailed her to cut once and for
all the Gordian knot, and obeying its impulse, she began to walk down
the flagging beside him.
At the street she paused once more and pressed her hands piteously
against her heart, trying to think. This was the spot where Leigh had
kissed her, and his ghost seemed to confront her there in the cold
moonlight, looking at her with sad, reproachful eyes, eyes full of a
deep, ethereal passion that burned this other passion to ashes. This,
then, was the explanation of her vacillation. If his mere memory could
stay her thus, while she vibrated to the influence of the man that was
present, she must love him indeed. She looked up and saw Emmet's face
distinctly, already hardening with new suspicion, without a trace of
tenderness, marked only by the ravages of disappointment. By contrast
she remembered that other face. She felt again Leigh's kisses and
heard his murmured words of love.
"No, Tom," she said, shrinking back. "I will not go with you--I am not
your wife."
Her tone was final, but his passion, newly awakened, was terrible in
its imperious demands. He could scarcely carry her off by force, and
yet for one moment such seemed to be his intention. He took a step
toward her, his hand raised as if to strike her down, then stopped.
"We 'll see about that," he retorted, with a strange, short laugh. He
would have said more and disclosed his further intention by a final
threat, but another fit of coughing caught at his throat, and before he
could find his voice again she was well on her way toward the house,
fleeing between the trees like a frightened bird. He stood still until
the door closed behind her.
"She must be a devil," he said aloud. "She stirs up the devil in me.
She makes me bad."
Could any one have seen the malign record which his experience with her
had traced upon his face, he would have been forced to admit the
justice of this accusation. He walked slowly away, striving to reckon
with his tempestuous emotions, but he could not pass beyond the limit
of the grounds.
"I was going away quietly enough," he muttered, "when she came chasing
after me. Why did n't she let me go, or else come with me?"
He stopped short, as a sudden thought flashed upon him. Then he looked
up at the windows of Lena's room. They were dark; but the windows of
Felicity's room, immediately below, now shone with a saffron glow
behind their curtains. He regarded them only to reflect how he hated
the woman they concealed from his view, and then wondered whether Lena
were asleep. He took out his watch and held it up to the moon. As he
did so, he saw that the hands pointed at midnight, and simultaneously
the bell from the First Church began to ring the hour.
If Lena were still awake, she might possibly be lingering in the
kitchen, perhaps with some new lover. She had a right to do so, but
the very thought filled him with a fury of jealousy. It would be an
easy matter, he reflected, to tiptoe down the driveway behind the
trees, to gain the shadow of the house, and to peep into one of the
kitchen windows. Of course they were dark, but he wished to be assured
of it. Let him once discover that the house was closed for the night,
and he would be content.
As he began to put his plan into execution, gliding stealthily from
tree to tree and pausing to look and listen from the shelter of each
shadow, he was acutely aware of the fact that it was the mayor of
Warwick who was doing this thing. The realisation could not stay his
progress or change his purpose. After all, she would probably not be
there; and if the bishop's coachman or some servant should come out and
find him, his explanation was ready. The driveway passed by the
bishop's stable and on through the square to the street beyond. He
would say that he was making a short cut, and the explanation would be
plausible. From time to time he stifled a cough with difficulty, and
it was this difficulty alone that almost persuaded him to turn back.
It was by no strange coincidence or accident that Lena remained reading
by the lamp in the large, deserted kitchen. She might have been seen
there, as Emmet saw her now, almost every evening after the others had
gone to bed, poring over some paper-covered novel that depicted a life
of romance quite different from the dull monotony of her own days. But
though she herself was wide awake with the interest of the story, her
good angel had gone to sleep, and left her there, unwarned, to face her
peril alone.
Emmet ventured to thrust his head for a moment into the bar of light
that cut the deep shadow of the house, and saw that his most
extravagant hopes were fulfilled. He saw also that she was prettily
dressed, with a red velvet ribbon about her throat, her hair showing a
careful and coquettish arrangement. He was convinced that she had
dressed herself thus for a lover, and he meant to call her to account.
Little by little he crept closer, until he stood beside the window, his
back against the wall. He had only to turn and lean forward and look
her in the face. His eyes searched the wide stretches of the lawn in
vain for a sign of life. The stable was dark, the house was silent.
Only he and Lena were awake. No thought of pity for her softened his
heart at that moment. He only chafed inwardly at a memory of his
stupid and mistaken loyalty to Felicity.
Lena Harpster was one of those timid natures that are paralysed by
sudden surprise or fear. Had it not been so, the apparition of his
face against the pane, his intense and hungry gaze, would have caused
her to wake the house with a scream. But she sat staring at him with
her wide grey eyes, like one turned to stone, until she saw that her
first impression of a burglar was false, and then that her lover was
beckoning her to come.
She had never resisted his will, and she did not do so now. When she
had comprehended who it was, and his meaning, she glanced behind her
with instinctive caution; she rose from her chair and tiptoed to the
farther door, where she looked and listened until satisfied. Then she
returned, placed her hands on the table, and leaned over the lamp.
Emmet saw the light of the flame illumine the pink curve of her lips as
she formed them for a breath. He saw the upward shadow of her features
against the golden mist of her hair, and then the vision was swallowed
up in darkness. A moment later the outside door was softly opened, and
as softly closed.