The following morning, Felicity did not appear at the breakfast-table, a circumstance sufficiently unusual to cause the bishop some uneasiness, for she rarely failed to rise at a reasonable hour.
"Lena," he said, "go upstairs and see whether Miss Wycliffe is ill, but don't wake her if she is still asleep."
Left alone, he glanced over the morning paper, too much absorbed in the hypothesis that would explain his daughter's non-appearance to find much amusement in the editor's bland and innocuous comments upon the sensational episode of the preceding night. He recalled her evident excitement and preoccupation when she came in from her walk with Leigh. If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight.
When Lena Harpster received no response to her gentle tap, she ventured to open the door softly and to step within her mistress's room. The lightest sleeper could scarcely have been awakened by her entrance, as noiseless as a shadow or the slow swaying of a curtain. She stood near the foot of the bed, in the dim and fragrant room, looking at the beautiful head upon the pillow, the dark, abundant hair, the half-open lips relaxed from the control of the mind, revealing now more clearly all the promises and passions which when awake they might deny.
Some sense of the awe and mystery of sleep caused Lena to stand thus motionless at gaze, herself a pale, ethereal figure, scarcely less beautiful than her mistress. There was a guilty consciousness also of deliberate intrusion. Familiar as she was with the room, it now took on a different aspect to her eyes. All the objects of art, the tapestries and pictures and statuettes, which she had admired for themselves, seemed in a peculiar way the property of their happy owner, an overflowing expression of her abundant loveliness. What a contrast that lace-covered bed, that nest of luxury, presented to her own simple couch beneath the roof, which served merely as a place where she could lie down and rest! And there was another contrast of which she was unaware. The sleeping face was more instinct with life, though Sleep is said to be the brother of Death, than the shadowed eyes that watched.
Miss Wycliffe, she reflected, had only to wish for a thing, and possession was assured. Above all, it was the thought that she might also have taken her lover from her which kept the girl's eyes fixed in wistful speculation. She had ventured to write again to Emmet, but without result; he had even passed her blindly on the street, leaving her faint, with a whispered greeting dying pathetically on her lips. How could she contend with her mistress, if what she feared were true? Yet how slender her cause of suspicion! Only the incident of the ring, which Miss Wycliffe had explained most naturally; but the final warning against Emmet remained in her mind as a declaration of possession.
It was characteristic of Lena's nature that she yielded to no one in appreciation of Felicity's beauty. Chastened rather than embittered by a conviction of her own loss, she was not without a consciousness of the appealing change which sleep now made in the woman she had such cause to dread. No hint remained of that imperious quality which moulded others to her will. She seemed to have grown softer, and there was something childlike in the position of her arm on the counterpane, in her hand turned palm upward, in her half-curled fingers. A lover, were he a poet, might have likened them to the petals of a flower that had begun to open with returning day. Presently the sleeper stirred and opened her eyes, dimly aware of a retreating presence and a closing door, but when, an hour later, she awoke fully, the impression was like that of a dream.
It was ten o'clock when she rang her bell and ordered breakfast in her room. This order was as unusual as her late sleep, but she seemed to herself to have awakened a different person, one in whom such small changes of action were merely an index of greater possibilities. She received her father's inquiries through Lena with indifference, and sent back word that she had been only over-tired. Knowing that he lingered below to see her, she delayed deliberately until he should grow impatient and leave the house, for she wished to take up again the train of thought that had kept her so long awake the previous night. At present, her sole concern was of herself and of her lover.
Having placed the steaming cup of coffee beside her on the dressing-table, she sipped it from time to time while she fastened up her hair. Like Leigh, she too had come to a new realisation of self, but the revelation was attended with far less of spiritual turmoil. It was as if she were making her own acquaintance over again, and the process was not without fascination. He had called her cruel. Was there truth in the charge? She had never been conscious of intentional cruelty, and yet she was intellectual enough to see that her husband might have good reason to accuse her of it in her treatment of him. But Leigh had no such cause of complaint, unless he would hold her responsible for her beauty. There must be some expression in her face which she herself had never seen, which she could never summon from its reflection in the mirror, an expression of desire, impersonal it might be, but moving the beholder to a personal response.
She was pleased, rather than distressed, by Leigh's condemnation. In spite of his talk of cruelty and vanity, he had said he did not know a woman could be so sweet. She knew she could be sweet to the man she loved, and that no one had ever yet divined how much she had to give. She placed the back of her hand against her lips and tried to imagine how they had felt to him when he kissed them. The youthfulness of the action and the fancy made her smile, and showed her how far she had gone in thinking of him as a lover.
Her sense of guilt was less acute than her realisation of the difficulty of her position. It came upon her that she was one day nearer discovery and condemnation. As yet no plan of action had taken final shape in her mind. She did not know whether she would wait for discovery to come and find her, or take the initiative. Leigh's declaration had acted as a sedative on her unhappiness, and had banished the desire of an explanation with her husband. She would fain arrest time while the situation remained as it was, while Leigh was not yet lost to her for good. What did she mean by allowing him to kiss her a second time? Did she wish to make amends for the suffering she had caused, or was her acquiescence a fatal admission? In the latter case, what hope or consolation could she find in this new discovery?
Cardington too came in for a share of her thought, but scarcely for a share of her concern. Whatever his suspicions or knowledge, she was sure that his affection and loyalty would keep him silent. If his final outbreak at the table the previous evening expressed his indignation at Emmet's treatment, it seemed to tell also his acceptance of the inevitable, and to convey to her in her doubt his advice, almost his entreaty. It was as if he had pointed out to her the path of duty, and warned her against his colleague, not in a spirit of jealousy, but in the spirit of a friend who had readied an absolute renunciation of whatever hopes he might once have cherished, and now thought only of her. For a moment she softened almost to the point of tears, but this indulgence was brief. A vision of her husband's bulldog air, as he sat there baffled and at bay, returned to menace her. She realised that he would not leave matters longer as they were, that he might force the crisis that very day. The mettle of the bishop's daughter was never more apparent than now, as she faced the probable results of her own actions. She was by no means inclined to take her punishment quietly, or to admit that she was in the wrong. Having ruled her husband so long, she would not now allow him to dictate to her, but would fight for her own happiness. Her hands clenched involuntarily, and her breath came quick with militant excitement. Had she been a man, her career, in whatever line she might have chosen, could scarcely have been less than remarkable.
Meanwhile the bishop was frittering the morning away by a desultory attention to his correspondence, hoping each moment that Felicity would pass the open door of his study. He was no longer a busy man, for the onerous duties of his office were now taken by his coadjutor, and he could well afford to wait. He did not know what he wished to say to her, but he would see her face again and observe her manner, that he might examine anew his grounds of suspicion. For him there were no longer golden hours which it were a sin for others to filch from him. In the sunset of his life he dreamed of the active labours of his successors, of the institution which he would leave in a position to feed more generously the ministry of the Church. Should he allow her foolish fancy for a fortune hunter to divert her from the purpose he hoped she would one day cherish? Even if a husband made no attempt to dissuade her, a child would inevitably become an heir, and her plans would be solely for him. Cold and austere by nature, he had married his own position to wealth, and he felt no desire to perpetuate his line under the name of another man. Above all, he shrunk from the thought of his daughter's marriage as from a profanation. She was so like him in certain mental traits and interests that he could not appreciate the temperamental difference that kept them far apart.
As the hands of the clock crept toward eleven, he realised that the morning was slipping away, and that he could wait no longer if he was to see President Renshaw before he went to lunch. A few minutes later, he stood in the hall, a distinguished and old-fashioned figure, with his silk hat, his long cape, and his gold-headed ebony cane. Lena Harpster was there, dusting an antique chair of ecclesiastical design that looked as if it had been imported from the chancel of some English cathedral.
"Lena," he said, laying his letters on the table and beginning to draw on his gloves, "don't forget to give these to the postman when he comes; and tell Miss Wycliffe I shall be home to lunch."
She opened the door for his exit and started back against the wall with a little cry, as if she had seen a ghost, for there, blocking the bishop's way, his hand extended to touch the bell, stood Mayor Emmet. The bishop, too much surprised to note the panic of his servant, was silent for a moment. It did not occur to him that the call could be on any one but himself. How great would his astonishment have been, had he known that poor Lena was almost fainting beside him with the wild hope that her lover had come to claim her at last! How great his stupefaction, could he have seen his daughter standing midway on the stairs, one hand on the baluster, the other raised to her heart in petrifying fear! It was fortunate indeed for Felicity that she had time, unobserved in the shadow of the stairway, to regain her self-control. Had she descended a moment earlier, had she been at the door when Lena threw it open, she could hardly have answered for herself.
The bishop retreated a step, as if he would thereby invite his visitor's entrance, but, busy with his gloves, his cane hugged under one arm, he failed, without the effect of discourtesy, to extend his hand.
"Ah, good-morning, Mr. Emmet," he said in his courtly and deliberate manner, and with that suggestion of a purr in his voice which always betokened concealment and a latent ability to spring. "You find me just about to go out, but I still have a little leeway. Won't you step in?"
He was not without curiosity in regard to the object of the mayor's visit. Speculation glimmered in his eyes, and his wide, affable smile was subtle with anticipation of a diplomatic test. He was secretly amused that Emmet should presume upon his blushing honours in this fashion, but doubtless the man had a plausible excuse for his intrusion, some civic scheme for which he wished to bespeak cooperation. After his humiliation the previous night, he had conceived a plan for drawing some of his opponents into his own camp, and this was perhaps the first movement of the new campaign. So ran the bishop's conjecture, and he was not surprised at his visitor's unmistakable air of excitement, at the pallor of his face. Perhaps his drubbing at the hands of Cobbens had taught him more respect for the class he had been wont to denounce to his followers, and had deprived him of a moiety of his self-assurance.
"Bishop Wycliffe," Emmet returned, coming into the hall and taking off his hat, "I had n't decided to call upon you—yet. It is your daughter whom I wish to see."
It was months since the bishop had given Felicity's advocacy of this man a thought. The election seemed to have killed her interest, for she had not spoken of him since, and besides, his suspicions were centred solely on Leigh. Perhaps, then, the scheme was one of charity, and the mayor had planned to begin with Felicity, remembering her former kindness.
The bishop hesitated, when the rustle of silken skirts caused him to turn his head, but he greeted Felicity's appearance unperturbed.
"Oh, here you are, my dear. I thought you had gone out."
"I overheard I had a caller," she returned, taking her husband's hand and meeting his eyes unflinchingly. "I have n't had a chance to congratulate you, Mr. Emmet, upon your election, for we had to go South the next day on account of father's health. You caught me at the feminine trick of listening over the banisters."
The bishop was secretly annoyed at her cordiality, but still confident that he could trust his daughter to remember the difference between a common interest in charitable work and social equality.
"I leave Mr. Emmet in your hands," he said to her. "I have a little business at the Hall, and shall return for lunch."
And he went out, thinking how like a bewildered yokel the mayor seemed in the face of his daughter's graceful greeting, and imagining with relish his further discomfiture.
The door had closed behind him, and as yet Emmet had not said a word to his wife. Even now it was she who took the initiative.
"Let us go into the drawing-room," she suggested, turning and leading the way. He followed at once, brushing past Lena with cruel emphasis of manner. There she stood, or rather leaned against the wall, like one stricken. The jar of his passing seemed to release the tension of her limbs, and she sank down slowly, noiselessly, in a dead faint. Emmet neither heeded her anguish nor heard her soft fall upon the heavy rug. He hurriedly closed the drawing-room door to prevent his sweetheart from overhearing his interview with his wife, and strode into the centre of the room, where Felicity had turned at bay.
"What have you come for?" she asked in a low voice. Her face was as white as his own, but her self-control was greater.
"For you, Felicity," he answered. "You are my wife, and I 've come for you."
"I did n't know," she returned relentlessly, "but you had come to see that poor girl in the hall to whom you gave my ring. Looking from the stairs, I saw by her manner that she thought so too."
"My God, Felicity!" he gasped, "I believe you 've kept her in this house like a bird in a cage, to torture her as you 've tortured me. Why did n't you send her away, when you discovered I 'd been making love to her?"
"For your greater convenience?"
"Oh, as for that," he retorted, "when you left her here in Warwick and went away, you practically threw her into my arms. But I did n't take advantage of it,—only once,—and then I stopped short. That was what I came to explain. I want you to know how much less cause you have to throw me over in this way than you think. I want you to forgive me, and to keep your promise. She's nothing to me—nothing. She 's no more to me than any one of the dozen men you 've been running around with are to you,—Cobbens, for example, or that young professor up at the Hall."
There was more than a suggestion of scorn in his refusal to mention his real rival by name, and in the belittling adjective. His assumption that she cared nothing for Leigh would perhaps have found acceptance in her mind only the day before, but now a memory of last night's scene made her as cruel to her husband as he had just been to Lena Harpster. She looked at him coolly, aware of her utter awakening from the adventurous and romantic mood she had mistaken for love, wondering also that she should ever have supposed this man capable of satisfying her ideal. The ideal itself had vanished in the personality of the man who had taken her in his arms the previous night and poured his passionate love into her ears.
"It is n't a question of forgiving, Tom," she said, after a pause; and her tone was conciliatory. "It's a question of discovery. I was deceived in you. I did n't think you capable of such—such weakness and vulgarity. It was my fault of judgement, perhaps, but the awakening is fatal. Can't you see that?"
"What do you mean to do?" he demanded, glaring at her helplessly. Their points of view were so different, her expression so unrelenting, that the self-justification he had planned to speak was choked in his throat. "Do you mean to get a divorce? I tell you, Felicity, there 's no cause."
"I don't know yet what I mean to do," she said frankly.
"I 'll call upon your father, then," he declared grimly, "and see what he thinks of it." An ugly gleam shone in his eyes, as he uttered the threat. It was plain now that love for his wife was the least of his motives in demanding her; there was ambition, but, strongest of all, a desire for revenge on the bishop and his class. He would make them accept him at last. They should pay dearly for their scorn. "I 'll not be elbowed out of the way and kept in the closet like a family skeleton any longer," he went on. "The limit of my endurance has been reached."
Felicity now saw clearly what she had brought upon herself. She paled with fear, and flushed with anger, but neither emotion coloured her reply.
"You must give me a few days longer. I prefer to see my father first—alone. I will let you know—I'll write."
So absorbed were they in their own tense feelings that they failed to hear the opening and shutting of the front door, which was left unlatched during the day for just such unconventional calls as the one Mrs. Parr now happened to make. The first intimation they had of interruption was her shrill and terror-stricken cry: "Felicity! Felicity! Your maid is here in the hall—dead!"
Emmet reached Lena's side first. He raised her in his arms and carried her into the room he had just left, where he laid her gently on a couch. Felicity had already run upstairs for brandy and smelling-salts. Emmet, standing over Lena in guilty solicitude, addressed Mrs. Parr.
"Open the window," he said brusquely, "and give her some air."
She obeyed without question, and Felicity, returning with restoratives, found her husband hovering over her maid with tell-tale anxiety written on every feature, while her friend stood at the window looking on in curious conjecture. Together they bent over the girl's white face and moistened her lips with brandy. Presently, Lena's eyelids fluttered and trembled open. The mayor lifted her once more, as if she were a child, and stood erect.
"I 'll carry her to her room," he said to Felicity, "if you 'll show me the way."
"It's two flights of stairs," she objected. "Perhaps she had better stay here for a while."
"She's as light as a feather, poor girl," he returned. "She 's nothing for me to carry."
"You forget, Felicity," Mrs. Parr put in, with double meaning, "that Mr. Emmet is an athlete."
Without further protest, Felicity led the way upstairs, and Emmet followed with his burden. It was inevitable that the gentle clinging of those arms about his neck, the pressure of her golden head, should melt his heart like wax and make temporary havoc of his resolution. Impulsively he bent his face until it rested a moment in her hair. Circumstances had thrown them together once more in their natural relationship, both of them scorned, each needing and understanding the other in a peculiar way. No bold claims or passionate protests could have won the tender consideration her patient suffering drew from him.
Felicity opened the door, and stood aside to let him pass. He laid Lena carefully on her little bed and arranged her pillow, then turned toward the door. It was still open, though his wife no longer stood there, and he heard the diminishing rustle of her skirts. He stood looking first at the door and then back again at the bed, irresolutely. Lena opened her eyes and smiled at him with ineffable sweetness, and the temptation was overpowering. He took one noiseless step and sank upon his knees beside her.
"Good-bye, Lena," he murmured brokenly, the stinging and unaccustomed tears springing to his eyes; "good-bye, my poor little girl. If she were not my wife—my God, Lena, if she were only not my wife!"
The revelation could add nothing to the emotions she had already experienced. She was sure of his love; in her weakness and spiritual exaltation, that was enough. They were now bound together by a common tragedy, and she knew his gain was loss. If he had made her suffer, he had brought no less suffering upon himself, and her eyes shone with a pitiful triumph. His arms were about her, and his cheek was pressed to her own upon the pillow. Too weak herself to speak, or even to weep, her eyes told him all she wished to say.
"Forgive me, Lena," he entreated, "forgive me before I go."
"I do, Tom, dear," she whispered. "You know I do."
Her words fell upon his soul with infinite consolation. He felt that he had received the pardon of Heaven for his sins, and could now depart bravely to work out his penance. Softened and exalted, he little realised that the penance was unnecessary and self-imposed, that the mood which now took on the heroic tone of self-sacrifice was still a mood of self-seeking, that his love for Lena was selfish now as it had always been, and utterly unworthy of the devotion he received. It was true that he loved her, but he loved himself and his ambitions and revenges more. Her forgiveness was but permission to indulge them to the end. Nevertheless, when he found Felicity at the telephone in the hall below, his eyes were still bright with tears. She hung up the receiver and turned to him coldly. One glance at his face told her his state of mind and justified her own. She had never seen him at his worst before. Hypocritical with himself, filled with mawkish emotion that sublimated him in his own eyes, yet still grimly bent upon his original purpose, he had reached the very nadir of unattractiveness.
"I have sent for the doctor," she informed him, in the tone of one who has done her duty. "He will be here soon."
"Your answer," he said hoarsely. "I cannot leave without an answer."
"I will write—soon," she returned, "but leave me now."
Without further insistence he turned from her and ran downstairs. He was out on the sidewalk before he became aware that his head was uncovered. He returned to the drawing-room and found his hat on the floor, where it had fallen from his hand at Mrs. Parr's shrill alarm. She stood there still, waiting for Felicity's return, but neither looked at the other or spoke a word, frankly and mutually contemptuous. The door slammed behind him a second time, and almost immediately afterward Felicity entered.
"Well, Ella," she said, sinking into a chair, "did you ever see such an excitement? I never had a greater shock in my life than when you called out that she was dead. I 'm afraid she's a very delicate girl, but she 's coming around all right, and I 've sent for the doctor." She showed unmistakably the strain she had endured.
"Felicity," her friend broke out excitedly, "there's something here I don't understand. You don't mean to tell me you actually allow that man to call on you!"
Miss Wycliffe opened her eyes in astonishment. "What a goose you are, Ella! He came to see father. I had n't time to find out what he wanted when you nearly frightened me out of my wits."
Mrs. Parr, only partially convinced, was forced to accept the explanation; and though her eyes adumbrated reproach, she dared not say more. She remembered, however, the picture of Leigh and Felicity going off together in the moonlight the previous evening, and was reassured. In fact, she had run in to gossip about the young man, and to sound his praises with design, but the situation she encountered at her entering had revived her old suspicions concerning Emmet. Now she told herself that they were merely a habit of mind, without justification. She recalled the mayor's emotion as he bent over Lena, his averted face when he returned for his hat, and plunged at once into an account of the episode at the inn, which she had hitherto kept to herself. Before long they were discussing the probable nature of the tie between Emmet and Lena with apparently equal interest and conjecture.
About this time, the bishop, coming from Dr. Renshaw's office, met Leigh face to face on the walk as he was returning to his room from a recitation, and stopped to speak to him.
"Mr. Leigh," he remarked, with an observant twinkle in his eyes, "you look as if last night's experience had been too much for you."
"We had enough strenuous excitement to keep any one awake," was the reply. "It was too violent a break in my monastic life."
The bishop's smile widened; his innuendo had been skilfully parried. "When you get to be my age," he said, "you will doubtless take your politics more calmly. I never lose sleep now over the vicissitudes of those whom the fickle crowd has raised to honour. How does the line run?Hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium—but you probably remember your Horace better than I do."
It was one of Bishop Wycliffe's little perversities to quote Latin at the devotees of science, and to maintain an ironical assumption of their appreciation.
"I don't remember a word of my Horace," Leigh declared. It was not the first time he had given the bishop the same information, and this fact lent emphasis to his tone.
"Too bad, too bad," the old man murmured. "I fear the rising generation has no atmosphere." And he went on his way, chuckling genially.
"Dr. Leigh," said President Renshaw, in his gentle and measured utterance, "I sent for you on a little matter of business, for a few minutes of conversation, if you are at leisure."
The young astronomer signified that his time was the president's, and waited for his next words with an oppressive sense of vague foreboding. They were sitting in the room he had first entered, and Dr. Renshaw occupied the chair in which he then sat. As Leigh glanced about the room and back again at the old man's face, that first meeting seemed but yesterday, so unaltered was the scene. The tall clock, the old chair, the black cloth mitre with its tarnished gold insignia, the framed plans of St. George's Hall, were all in the same places. The president had not changed in the interim; it even seemed that he had not moved. But beyond the shapely oval of the old man's head a glimpse of wintry landscape was framed by the narrow window, instead of that earlier vision of the September morning.
In Leigh's alert and sensitive mood, these relics taunted him with their own permanence in the face of change. Those sticks of wood, those drawings, that piece of black cloth, were as ancient in a sense as the pyramids, and would retain their places while generations came before them, laboured their brief day, and then vanished as a puff of steam vanishes into blue sky. The clock had long since run down for good, and seemed by virtue of this very fact to have gained a victory over time.
"You remember, doubtless," the president resumed, "that your appointment was for this year only, and I asked you to come in to—in short, I should like to inquire whether you have made any plans for the future."
The form of the question was such that it might have been merely a preface to an offer of a permanent appointment, but Leigh divined too clearly the doctor's inward distress to give it such an interpretation. The dismissal of which he now felt assured was scarcely a surprise. It seemed but natural that the greater loss of Felicity should include the lesser loss of his position, and he smiled bitterly.
"You mean to suggest, sir, that some such plans on my part are advisable?"
"We might say it amounts to that," Dr. Renshaw returned reluctantly. His age, the kindness of his manner and tone, were disarming, and his listener entertained no more personal resentment toward him than if he were an ancient sibyl uttering of necessity the will of the Fates.
"I had not thought it necessary to make plans for next year," he said, "not being conscious of any shortcomings on my part sufficient to cause my dismissal. I am well aware that you are strictly within your rights, and that I have no legal redress, perhaps even no cause of complaint. I know how subordinates in business are turned away to suit the convenience, or at the whim, of their superiors; but in most colleges there is a sort of unwritten law that promotion shall follow efficient service. As a rule, the one year appointment is merely a safeguard to protect the institution from a man seriously incompetent or depraved."
"I know—I know," the president interposed, raising his hand as if to ward off more words. "And I would not have you think for a moment that we view you in any such light. On the contrary, I may say that personally I entertain for you the highest regard and consideration."
"What is the matter, then?" Leigh demanded. "It seems no more than fair that I should be told definitely where the trouble lies."
The other reflected awhile. "If I were to mention the one definite complaint, Mr. Leigh, it would not sum up the whole situation; it would be an explanation that only partially explained. However, the complaint has to do with your discipline in the class-room."
Leigh stared incredulously. "Discipline?" he echoed.
"Disorder in your class-room," Dr. Renshaw corroborated firmly. "Those passing by have heard laughter and unseemly shouts from within."
"Who could have made such a report?" Leigh wondered, still at a loss.
"The information came through a responsible channel, through one whose duty it is to take cognisance of such things and to report them to the proper authorities."
He was surprised to see that his listener was laughing, not without a suggestion of scornfulness. "I 've heard the same unseemly shouts myself, Dr. Renshaw. They come from class meetings and athletic meetings that are held in my room nearly every day, when the place is not being used for recitations. There is n't a word of truth in the charge against me."
Dr. Renshaw's face clouded, and he cleared his throat uneasily. "Mr. Leigh," he said with dignity, "I told you that the complaint would fail to sum up the whole situation. We may sayQuaestio caditin regard to that, if you like. Let us look at it in another light, in the light of the best interests of the Hall and of yourself. There is a question of general fitness which implies no criticism upon yourself, upon your scholarship or character. We are a homogeneous community here, we understand each other and cherish the ideals which this college was built to inculcate. You are a product of an entirely different tradition. You were educated, and have previously taught, in a large university, and this makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for you to appreciate the needs and the point of view of the small college. The ideal of the professor in a university is self-improvement and personal achievement; but in the small college, the teacher is expected to give, above everything else, personal service and devotion to the interests of his students. He should stand to a large extentsancti parentis loco. I do not say that you have consciously failed to improve this opportunity of service; I would say rather that, because of your previous academic experiences, you have failed to see it. The conviction has therefore been forced upon us, in spite of our personal regard for you and our appreciation of your attainments, that you would be happier and more useful in a larger institution, where the point of contact begins and ends in the class-room. In short, I believe you will agree with us that the experiment has not been altogether a success from this point of view. I accept your explanation of the specific charge gladly, and congratulate you upon correcting an impression that did you injustice."
It was Leigh's first meeting in his professional life with that malign experience, injustice in the garb of plausibility, from which there is no appeal. He could not bring himself to acquiesce in silence, though he knew that explanation and protest were vain.
"Dr. Renshaw," he rejoined, in a voice that showed his deep chagrin and sense of wrong, "the proved falsity of the first charge throws suspicion on the second, which is, after all, mainly a conjecture as to my state of mind in regard to St. George's Hall. I must plead guilty to the sin of personal ambition; but how can you expect a man to become entirely identified with the spirit of a place in a few months? It is evident to me that there are certain men who wish me gone, for reasons best known to themselves, and that they have trumped up these absurd charges." He flung himself to his feet indignantly. "This merely illustrates how easy it is to find plausible complaints against any man, and also that even-handed justice is the last thing one should look for in the world."
The president rose also. They were standing almost in darkness, but the afterglow of the sunset, streaming through the western windows and an intervening door, illumined the old man's face. His expression was one of concern, tempered by an humorous appreciation of the youthfulness of Leigh's last remark.
"Young man," he said, putting his hand on Leigh's shoulder, much as if he were admonishing a student, "I beg you not to allow this experience to colour your views with cynicism, for cynicism hurts only the cynic, and fails to take account of all the facts of life. As you have intimated, even-handed justice, inasmuch as it implies omniscience, is an attribute of God alone, but we have not been consciously unjust to you, according to our light. Personally I regret your departure, and I wish to assure you of my confidence in your future. You will doubtless one day look back upon this apparent contretemps as a blessing in disguise."
Leigh was far from being mollified by this platitudinous commiseration, though he credited the kindness of heart that gave it birth; and he took leave of the president without further remark. Then he went out into the twilight, more deeply humiliated than ever before in his life.
His loss of Felicity had been sweetened by love's triumph. There was in it the sustaining exaltation of tragedy, and a lingering ray of unreasonable hope; but this reverse was harder to bear, in that he suffered injustice without the possibility of appeal, and was deprived of professional importance in the eyes of the woman he loved, of the position which, slight as it must seem to her, was yet all he had to offset her wealth and social consequence.
There are times when even the stoutest hearts are appalled by the cruel handicap of poverty, when they are tempted to throw over their ideal, to rush into the market-place and make money by fair means or foul, that they may return and shake it in the faces of their foes. Leigh knew well that the possession of means would have made him immune from this attack, would have won him consideration instead of contumely, compliments instead of complaints. The Roman satirist, eating out his soul with bitterness against the insolence of wealth, said that poverty's greatest bane was the fact that it made men ridiculous. He was speaking, to be sure, of clothes; but what could be more ridiculous than an assumption of equality, based upon equal education and breeding, between the poor and the rich?
The young mathematician had not yet established a commanding professional reputation. He had given up a position which was now filled by one of the fifty applicants that had rushed to seize it; his present position at St. George's, he knew, could be filled as easily. He had not the consolation of knowing himself to be valuable to the institution. No one would rise up indignantly and take his part; no one would care what became of him, except Felicity, and pride alone would keep him from appealing to her.
He looked up at the great towers, buttressed by deep shadows, as if he bade them farewell. Already they seemed to take on a strange and unfriendly aspect. This mass of masonry had expressed hostility to him on that September morning, he had read a warning in each impassive or grinning gargoyle, and now, as he passed by, he could almost imagine that they gave sibilant expression to their accomplished malice. He realised how completely he had forgotten that first impression and allowed his imagination to be captured by the place. Where now were the dreams in which he had lately begun to indulge, visions of the finished square, of turret and gable and tower, of gothic gateways, of foliated chapel windows glimmering high in the darkened wall at evening?
Like one stunned by an unexpected blow, he continued his walk, until he came to Birdseye Avenue and paused in front of the bishop's house. Did he really intend to keep his promise never to see Felicity again? It so, why was he even now measuring the distance between himself and those lighted windows? Perhaps some chance would yet throw her in his way; but he would not risk her contempt by following the prompting of his heart and presenting himself before her only three days after his expressed renunciation. Besides, the bishop might be there; and what had he discovered since they last met? His consciousness of wrong-doing in regard to Felicity deprived him of the desire to meet the bishop face to face and to demand an explanation. Was there not, after all, reason enough for the bishop's action, if he knew all? This thought robbed Leigh of the satisfaction of a righteous indignation, which until now he had cherished as justifiable. He was fair enough to admit that he had received what he deserved, on other than professional grounds, and having reached the lowest depth of unhappiness, he began to retrace his steps disconsolately toward the college.
A philosopher once said that every man has in him at least one poem which he could write under the stress of great emotion, and that night Leigh unconsciously exemplified the truth of the saying. It was near the dawn when he descended from the tower, having left upon the table by the telescope this fragmentary record of his vigil.
THE MORNING WATCH
Be resolute, my soul,And battle till the day,My strength is manifold,If only thou art gay;Since friendship takes its flight,Since love is far outgrown,Here, in the silent night,I watch alone.
And sing a song, my soul,A bitter song and bright,While fleeting hours unrollThe enigmatic night;The saddest souls must sing--Ah, happy those that weep!So laugh, till death shall bringUnending sleep.
Now let me lie in peaceOn Nature's passive breast.Since human love must cease,And life is all unblest,And watch the stars outspreadWithin the brimming blue--But Abraham is deadWho saw them too.
And millions, ages hence,Shall watch the steady stars,And question Why and WhenceBehind their prison bars;But if no love shall giveA light upon the way,How can they dare to liveUntil the day?
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.