FATHER AND DAUGHTER
When the bishop and his daughter met at the breakfast-table the next
morning, the air was full of unpleasant possibilities. She came in by
way of the kitchen with the news that Lena had gone home on a plea of
illness, and though he was concerned for the girl, the necessity of
breaking in a new maid to his ways added to his evident irritation of
mind.
There was none of the bright-eyed vitality and serene spiritual tone that
follows nights free from care. Felicity observed that her father omitted
his customary inquiries in regard to her rest, that the morning paper,
the usual basis of comment at breakfast, lay unopened beside his plate,
and guessed correctly that the explanation she must make could no longer
be postponed. His bewilderment and suspicions had reached a point that
would drive him to take the initiative, and he was only waiting for a
favourable opening.
The crafty expression of his eyes filled her with irritation and
resentment. How well she knew the trend of his thoughts! Others might
find him inscrutable, but she knew him through and through. In their
long and subtle struggle concerning the disposition of her property, in
the question whether she would or would not help him to build up the
college, she had always been sustained by a peculiar loyalty to her
mother, who had passed her fortune on to her daughter unimpaired. This
was a practical declaration of her own will in the matter, and Felicity
accepted it as she might have accepted a sacred trust. She barely
remembered her mother as a shadowy and benign being floating through the
great rooms of the house. During her childhood, a certain angel in one
of the windows of St. George's Church had somehow been confused in her
mind with that figure, and had inspired her with vague awe. These dim
memories and childish fancies had crystallised in later years into an
appreciation of the common interests that would doubtless have been
theirs, had her mother lived.
No hint of this hidden psychological drama had ever reached the bishop's
ken. His daughter's attitude seemed her mother's obstinacy and
worldliness reincarnated, and he was distressed also by more dangerous
elements, by inexplicable sympathies, antipathies, and rebellions, until
the whole fabric of his careful plans seemed destined to fall in ruins.
As the sunlight came stealing in across the table, striking prismatic
colours from the glassware, he shaded his eyes with his hand and sharply
ordered the maid to draw the curtain.
"What is the matter with you this morning, father?" Felicity asked
severely. "Are you ill?"
The corners of her mobile lips were curled slightly upward, with just a
suggestion of scorn. Unhappiness is no great promoter of the courtesies
of life, and if she was conscious of wrong-doing, she was far from being
on the defensive.
"Yes," he answered, "I am ill. I am sick at heart."
"If you will drink coffee, and keep on smoking those strong cigars"--
He eyed her so intently over the rim of his shaking cup that she left the
sentence uncompleted. In spite of her tragic mood, his glare of
resentment aroused within her an inclination to laugh.
"You see how your nerves are affected," she finished.
It was not the first time this subject had come up between them, but
hitherto he had denied with urbane mendacity the ill results of his
favourite indulgences. Now his control was gone.
"They are not affected," he retorted, while the rattling of the cup
against the saucer disproved his declaration. It was with difficulty
that he could extricate his fingers from the handle without breaking the
delicate ware. "Or if they are," he went on, "you misstate the cause,
deliberately, as I believe."
She opened her eyes incredulously, and pushing back his chair, he rose
petulantly to his feet.
"Felicity, I am disappointed in you--more than disappointed--wounded--cut
to the heart--scandalised!"
He turned away, then, coming back, he seized the morning paper, and with
a parting glance of reproach went into his study and closed the door.
His words, his manner of retreat, were a challenge to follow which she
meant to accept. A few moments later, she flung back the door of her
father's study and confronted him, intensely angry, and strikingly
beautiful in her anger.
"Scandalised!" she echoed, as if no time had elapsed since he uttered the
word. "What do you mean by that?"
The apparition was not unexpected, but the bishop, glancing over the top
of his paper, managed to convey his surprise with the subtlety of which
he was master. Chagrined by his conduct at the table, he had fortified
himself in the interim against a renewal of the struggle.
"I used the word advisedly," he replied with dignity. "You might come in
and close the door. It is just as well, perhaps, not to take the
servants into our confidence."
She accepted the suggestion and sat confronting him expectantly, her
anger ebbing away imperceptibly in the pause until only the underlying
dread remained.
"Who was the man that came in with you last night?" he asked with
authority. "You went out about half-past nine o'clock to Mrs. Parr's, as
I supposed, and returned at midnight, not alone. I might have thought
that Mr. Parr had seen you home, but I looked from my window, and though
I could n't hear what you said--but never mind that. You will do me the
justice to admit that I have never pried into your affairs or actions.
Until recently such a question as I have now thought it my duty to ask
would never have occurred to me."
"It was Mayor Emmet," she answered in a thin voice. She was
panic-stricken, and her heart beat to suffocation.
"Emmet!" he echoed.
"Who did you think it was?" she asked, with a wan smile.
"Never mind--never mind," he returned impatiently. "Ah, I begin to see
more clearly. What was it you said he wanted with you here the other
morning? Some trivial thing--I can't remember. Now I want to know at
once--I have a right to know--whether there is anything between you and
that man. It is n't possible--I am ashamed to ask--but your face betrays
you. You are n't--Felicity--you can't imagine yourself in love with such
a fellow?"
"Perhaps it would be better if I could," she answered desperately, "but I
can't. Father, you must control yourself. I used to think myself in
love with him, and--and--and I was very foolish"--
"How foolish?" His face had grown white, and he steadied his hands on the
arms of his chair. "Don't torture me, Felicity. Tell me the worst at
once."
"I married him."
At the words his paleness became ashen, and the rigidity of his features
was so ghastly that, forgetting everything else in her alarm, she ran to
his assistance. He waved her away angrily.
"No--I am not going to faint--and I don't want anything to drink."
She resumed her chair obediently, and waited for him to ask more
questions. Apparently he was unwilling or unable to do so, and the
silence seemed interminable, though in reality it lasted but a few
minutes. During that short time the bishop's thoughts ranged with
characteristic rapidity over every aspect of the situation. Emmet as a
son-in-law! First of all, the fact that he was the mayor of Warwick, a
fact which the bishop had hitherto belittled, now presented itself as a
mitigating circumstance. Then the thought that he was a Catholic
followed immediately, to suggest complications and humiliations which the
bishop's large experience enabled him to see with fatal distinctness.
What was the man's paltry office compared with this stupendous fact?
Nothing--a mere accident--a passing honour that would probably be plucked
from him two years hence, leaving him--what? Tom Emmet, ex-professional
baseball player and streetcar conductor, out of a job, no longer mayor,
but always a Catholic, married to the richest woman in Warwick, and that
woman his daughter, the daughter of Bishop Wycliffe!
It was inevitable that he should look at the situation from the point of
view of the bishop rather than from that of the father simply. Had she
been a son who had "gone over to Rome" after taking Anglican orders, the
bishop's professional humiliation would not have been as great as that
which now stared him in the face. It would have been a keen
disappointment indeed, but lightened by the prospect of his son's
preferment in an ancient communion. There would still have been the
possibility of a career for the boy, a career which his father could
watch, or at least anticipate, with emotions of pride; for the bishop was
too purely an ecclesiastic to under-estimate professional success in the
Church of Rome. The career of a Cardinal Newman, for example, was one
that challenged his respect, however much he regretted the loss of such
talents to the Anglican faith, however forcibly he might characterise the
convert's action as apostasy.
But how different the actual case, how infinitely worse! Felicity's
fortune was lost indeed to the great cause for which he had laboured a
lifetime. Could he not imagine the delicately malicious triumph of the
Catholic bishop, by whose side he had so recently sat on equal terms?
Did he not know how the man would begin to scheme for the fortune of
Emmet's wife from the very day the marriage was published, how he would
strive to reach Felicity through her husband, flattering, threatening,
moving heaven and earth to get the money for his parochial schools, his
nunneries, his cathedral? Only one as intensely partisan as the bishop,
and with his reasons for partisanship, could divine his sensations as he
viewed the picture thus presented to his mind--the troops of Irish or
Italian children screaming in their dusty playground, watched by the
monkish forms of their teachers. And the other possibility had been St.
George's Hall, the miniature Oxford of America!
But even if the money should not go in such a direction through the hands
of Felicity,--and the bishop realised that a husband would not be likely
to succeed where a father had failed,--it would ultimately reach the
hands of her children. Baffled by the parents, the authorities of the
Catholic Church would transfer their efforts to the children from their
very cradles, and would bring the game to earth at last.
The thought of children reminded the bishop now far he had gone on the
facts he knew thus far. What were they? That Felicity had married
Emmet, that she did not love him, that she already repented the deed! It
was characteristic of his mental processes that the consideration of love
had been overlooked in his first agonised speculations, but now he
clutched at it as a drowning man clutches at a straw.
It was a wonderfully interesting face that he turned upon her,
transformed by his complicated emotions--his mechanical smile of
suffering, humiliation, scorn, disgust; the sudden leaping into his eyes
of a desperate hope. The master spirit within him was already awaking
from the stunning blow she had dealt. Every faculty of his acute mind
was once more alert, hungering for more facts, all the facts, as a basis
of future action.
He spoke not one word of the terrible anger that racked him like a
physical nausea. Even in this crisis, his temperament and training held
fast. Reproaches on his part would only drive her more surely to the
place from which she seemed desirous to return. His flurry at the table
had shown him how she could match anger with anger, and over-power him by
sheer vitality. An instinct of self-preservation, and an astuteness that
now reached its final triumph, pointed the wiser way.
"Then you feel that you have made a mistake, Felicity?" he questioned.
"I have long divined a great trouble in you, though of course this is far
beyond my worst fears. If I am to be of any help to you, I must know
all."
For the first time in her life she felt that her father might be her
friend, her refuge in trouble. Hungry for sympathy and
understanding,--she knew not how hungry till now,--she told her story,
beginning impetuously and with starting tears. The bishop listened
attentively to the facts, dismissing from his mind her point of view, her
reasons for dissatisfaction with her life. Such crude immaturity he had
encountered a thousand times, though he had never suspected it in her.
The only facts that concerned him were: that the marriage had never
really been consummated; that there was no question of a child to
consider; that Felicity was anxious to escape from the man in whose
clutches she had placed herself; and that there were grounds for divorce.
Emmet himself might be induced--purchased--to bring action on the ground
of desertion. To be sure, such a cause was not acknowledged by the
Church as valid, but the bishop was prepared to lay aside his prejudice
in this particular case. Not for a moment did he think of holding his
daughter to her mistake, as soon as he knew the facts in the case. But
she made no mention of Leigh.
As the dangers with which he had at first seen himself threatened became
less formidable, and the way of escape suggested itself, his wonder at
her stupendous selfishness increased. What manner of woman had he reared
and educated with such care? In spite of the restraints of his questions
and comments, incredulous scorn was written in his expression and in the
gleam of his eyes. It was much that she had not been physically coarse,
but her psychic equation was beyond his solving.
Felicity could not fail to be conscious of this growing antagonism, and
the warmth of emotion with which she had begun her explanation cooled
with every word. Her gratitude vanished, to give way to implacable
resentment at his attitude of virtuous superiority. Her judgment of him
was no less bitter than that she received. Angry reproaches would have
stung her less than this courteous contempt.
"And how many persons are in this secret?" he asked finally.
"Mr. Emmet has taken Mr. Leigh into his confidence, I believe," she
answered, a faint colour creeping into her face.
"Ah, Leigh," he returned, thrown off his guard by surprise. He thought
he saw now what her intimacy with the young professor really meant. She
was pledging him to secrecy, and the young man had now the motive of
revenge to turn and reveal what he knew.
"It would perhaps be better to keep him in the college, after all," he
mused.
"What do you mean, father?" she demanded. "To keep him in the college?
You had n't asked him to go?"
To this question he made no reply, but she saw confusion plainly written
in his face.
"I naturally supposed that he was a fortune hunter"--
She rose to her feet, flaming with an anger that appalled him. "You
asked him to go," she cried, "because you thought I might marry him, and
not give my mother's money and mine to the college! A fortune hunter!
It does n't seem to me, father, that you have much cause to talk about
fortune hunting!"
The taunt stung him to the quick, and his face grew scarlet and livid by
turns. Never had this question come to an open issue and caused an
explosion like the present.
"I am not a fortune hunter," he said raspingly. "If you are so dead to
the most inspiring of God's works, yours be the blame, Felicity, and
yours the condemnation."
"I have no idea of marrying Mr. Leigh," she went on passionately, "but
one thing I can tell you once for all. If you think I am going to give
one cent to the college, you are utterly mistaken! Don't I know your
plans? Haven't I seen the drift of your casual remarks about the glory
of serving God? I know you would have me give every cent I possess to
the college and become a deaconess--repent of my sins--retire from the
world. You already see an opportunity in my mistake to profit by my
repentance. Oh, I know all the choice phrases by heart! You never loved
my mother, nor me, but you wanted the money for your St. George's Hall.
It was you that drove me into this marriage. God knows, I admit I was
wrong, but I made the mistake in a frantic desire for fresh air, for some
other atmosphere than the stuffy gloom of churches and seminaries and
colleges. What do I care for that miserable little college on the hill,
full of your good little boys with their churchly conceits and bowings
and deadness? I want life, and I mean to have it. I will spend my money
as I see fit--for travel--for clothes--for luxury--for anything that
strikes my fancy--but never--never--never--for that college!"
A wild impulse swept over her to seize something and break it in
fragments on the floor, but seeing nothing fragile at hand in that
book-lined room, she stood still, trembling like an aspen leaf. The
bishop, little realising that she was driven to this extraordinary
transport by his treatment of Leigh, looked at her in stupefaction. It
seemed to him that her mother stood before him once more, though she had
never acted thus; but the mental attitude was the same. The mother had
thwarted his plans by leaving her money to the daughter, and now the
daughter would spend it as she willed. It was like a second defeat at
the hands of the same woman. And this was the flower he had cherished
with such pride, now scentless of spirituality and dead at the roots! He
rose to his feet, suddenly an old man, utterly bereft, and shook a
trembling finger in her face.
"You lack nothing of filling up your cup of wickedness," he quavered,
"but that you have refrained from making a physical attack upon me.
Felicity, God will punish you!"
The corners of her beautiful lips curled upward in cruel scorn, and she
swept from the room, slamming the door behind her. Presently he heard
the door of her own room closed with equal force, not once, but twice, as
if she had opened it again, and again slammed it shut, to give adequate
expression to her feelings. Completely bewildered, he wandered into the
hall, reached mechanically for his hat and coat, and went out into the
street.
Instinctively he turned his steps toward St. George's Hall, as if from
its contemplation he could derive comfort. Something, at least, had been
done toward realising his ideal, though far less than he had hoped to
accomplish. Many a graduate had gone forth from beneath the shadow of
that stately tower to win fame and applause in the great world. The
bishop knew most of them, and was known and loved by all. There were
bishops among them, and clergymen, and judges, and physicians, and some
who had freely given their promising young lives in the service of their
country. He counted over the names, as a miser counts his gold. His
boys! It was such as these, their successors, whom his daughter
characterised with scorn, impatient of the passing fads and fancies
common to their age, of an immaturity which she herself had exemplified
so much less venially.
Musing thus, he traversed the length of Birdseye Avenue, saluting those
who passed him with absent-minded courtesy. At length he raised his eyes
and looked up the hill to the long, low roof against the cloudless sky.
For the thousandth time his eyes kindled at the sight, for the thousandth
time he experienced the artistic satisfaction of the connoisseur in
collegiate architecture, and mentally limned the remainder of the plan.
His sensations were like those of a skilled musician who has heard the
first movement of a masterly sonata and is left to imagine the perfect
whole. The sun, now mounting toward the zenith, was shortening the
shadows of the tower on the slate roof that shone in the bright
atmosphere like dull silver. Not a student was in sight, and the place
seemed to share the drowsy influence of the noontime.
Motionless, and leaning heavily on his cane, the bishop's mood grew warm,
as if it travelled upward with the sun. His dream, now destined to
remain unfulfilled, had not been one merely of stone and brick and
mortar. His spirit was akin to that of the cathedral builders of the
Middle Ages. They might drive the people in harness to accomplish their
purpose, but that purpose was to erect a splendid temple to their God, a
symbol of human aspiration toward the divine.
The bishop reflected with pride that if he had measurably failed, he had
yet planned greatly. He had taken his stand firmly on the ideal, defying
the utilitarian spirit of his time and country. It was nothing to him
that the money which disappeared in the rearing of that splendid fragment
could have been spent for humbler structures which practical men would
have called more useful. Useful! He hated the word. As if a beautiful
thing employed in the service of God were not useful in exact proportion
to its beauty! If the churchmen of America had not been inspired by this
fair and brave beginning to complete the work, the fault was theirs. He
had pointed them the way.
And how had he merited his wife's indifference, his daughter's
reproaches? He had not desired the money for himself, he had used no
undue influence, he had forged no will; he had merely striven to make
them realise their stewardship, to inspire them with his own ideal. In
this effort he could find no grounds for self-accusation; on the
contrary, the effort was a merit he might lay with humble pride before
his God, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed.
Presently he resumed his way, until he stood directly opposite the
towers, at the foot of the path which crossed the intervening meadows.
Here the gateway was to have been built, similar to that of Trinity
College, Cambridge, with flanking towers and a statue, perhaps of
himself, standing above the portal. At the thought the bishop smiled
ironically, and began a tentative progress up the hill.
The later hours of the night had been cold and the ground was still
fairly firm, even under the softening influence of the noonday sun. As
he went further, the students began to come from their recitations and to
disperse toward their various rooms. One figure, however, detached
itself from the rest and struck out across the upper campus in the
direction of the bronze statue of the founder, who stood with hand
outstretched in perennial blessing toward the hall which one of his
successors had reared. That successor now caught sight of a head and
shoulders emerging above the rim of the plateau, until a man's full
length came into view and rapidly descended the slope. Then the bishop
recognised Leigh. His greeting to the young man was affable, and his
pause an invitation.
"You are adventurous to come this way," he remarked, prodding the earth
with his cane. "This crust will scarcely sustain the weight of an old
Tithonus like myself, let alone a vigorous young Ajax like you."
Leigh glanced down at his soiled shoes, and smiled with an appreciation
of the ironies of life not unlike that which the other had felt so
recently. "I came this way for sentimental reasons, I imagine," he
replied. "This is a good point from which to look back at the towers."
"Then you 've caught the disease too?" the bishop asked. "But one can't
long remain an immune in St. George's Hall."
"I shall have plenty of time to recover," Leigh returned, "when I shall
have left."
"Yes--yes," the bishop murmured. "I heard something about that. There
was an unfortunate misunderstanding, concerning which I believe I can set
Dr. Renshaw right. It will give me great pleasure, Mr. Leigh, if you
will not think of leaving us."
The overture was practically an admission of his own responsibility in
the matter, but the astronomer was only impressed by the fact that for
some reason the bishop had ceased to regard him with disfavour. Could it
be that he had discovered Felicity's secret at last? A study of the
haggard record in the old man's face made the conjecture almost a
certainty. Leigh felt that the bishop would now make amends to him for
suspecting him falsely in connection with his daughter, and reflected
guiltily that the suspicion was not as false as the bishop supposed.
"I have been thinking of leaving--naturally," he answered, hesitating,
"but my plans are not yet matured."
The bishop nodded understandingly. He appreciated the fact that the
other's sensitiveness and resentment could not be put aside at once, and
that his own change of front could not draw forth immediate confidences.
The subject was a delicate one to both, and they were mutually anxious to
separate.
"I hope you will let me know, then," he said courteously, "whether you
decide that your best interests call you elsewhere, but I hope not--I
hope not."
He turned his face once more toward the Hall, his sagacious mind already
grappling with another possibility. If Felicity must marry after getting
her divorce,--and it now seemed wiser that she should,--let her marry
this young professor, who was, after all, of her own class. Her fortune
would not be wholly alienated from the college interests, should Leigh
continue in his professorship. The young man might be made president
after Dr. Renshaw's impending retirement. He could take orders to
conform with the traditions of the place; and men had taken orders for
smaller rewards. His pride in the institution, which his wife must then
share, would influence them much in the direction of giving.
Leigh's first words upon coming down the hill had betrayed his growing
appreciation of the Hall, his gradual conversion to the ideal of the
church college. Though a scientist, he had taken the degree of bachelor
of arts, and he was an inheritor of church traditions. As for
Felicity--the bishop recalled the times he had seen her with Leigh, and
especially at the lecture at Littleford's. He had divined their mutual
attraction from the first, though he credited them both with more
conscience in the matter than they had shown.
Leigh reached the street and turned southward, following the course that
Emmet had taken with his sleigh when he picked Lena up on that very spot
some two months before. It wanted yet an hour of his lunch time, and he
had come forth with no other thought than to get the fresh air and to
turn over again in his mind the plans of which he had hinted to the
bishop.
After his interview with Dr. Renshaw, he had written to the authorities
of the Lick Observatory and asked permission to join one of the three
expeditions that were soon to be sent out to observe the approaching
eclipse of the sun. It was too early as yet for a reply, but he had
reason to believe that his previous connection with the observatory and
his record there would assure the granting of his request, if the number
were not entirely completed. Already he imagined himself transported to
Norway, or South America, or Egypt. He could not tell which expedition,
if any, he would be permitted to join, but of the three, the last named
was most to his mind.
Felicity had become interwoven with his consciousness of himself, and in
thinking of Egypt he pictured her there with him, a vivid creation of
memory and imagination. Some association of ideas between her and the
country that had given birth to Cleopatra must have influenced him in his
choice, he reflected with a disconsolate smile. The association did
Felicity little justice in one way, but the impossibility of imagining
her at home on the cold heights of Norway or the Andes showed her kinship
with the land of colour and nocturnal mystery.
Sometimes he felt that he must brush aside all opposition of persons and
circumstance and beg her to go with him, leaving the world to gape and
wonder as it might. It was only a fevered dream, but it suggested
another possibility that presently became a definite resolve. At least
he would see her again, and beg her not to go blundering back into the
arms of the man she did not love. He would plead with her not to try to
rectify one mistake by making another more fatal still. Did he not owe
it to her and to himself to make one last effort for their happiness?
Had he a right to desert her in her trouble, to yield supinely to a
conventional prejudice?
He was in the glow of this new resolve when he climbed the hill to the
south of the college and turned to follow the road along the ridge which
Felicity and Emmet had taken that misty night. At the quarry he paused
for a few moments to look down absently at the men working below, and
then began to retrace his steps toward the Hall. His turning brought the
tower of the college and the distant city before his eyes. The absence
of foliage from the trees exposed to view innumerable glinting roofs that
were hidden in summer as by a forest. He picked out the tower of St.
George's Church and the various steeples with which he had become
familiar. Then he caught sight of the pale wings of the figure of
Victory above the triumphal column in the park, poised like those of a
butterfly about to soar into the still, bright air.
Once more the beauty of the country made its great appeal: the
magnificent valleys to east and west swelling upward to ridges of hills
clothed in ever changing lights and shadows; the Hall standing sentinel
over all; the city nestled below, a city of dreams.