The Mayor of Warwick Part 11

"I mean to break the spell at once," he declared, and having made a trumpet with his hand, he hallooed loudly toward the west. The result was unexpected. A ghostly triple echo, which the lower tone of their earlier conversation had failed to elicit, answered him from the opposite sh.o.r.e. In broad daylight an echo will suggest mystery and a bodiless, impish mocker, even to an unimaginative mind, but now the effect was intensified tenfold by the silence and darkness that enclosed them like a wall.

"You may laugh," she said, "but I don't wonder that primitive peoples imagined a haunted nature. I 'm an absolute Pagan this very moment. I believe in Pan and Echo and all the rest of them, and I don't like their company a bit."

"Have you noticed how silent it has grown all of a sudden?" he asked.

"It seems only a few minutes ago that we heard the crows cawing in the branches, and the woods were full of small noises of squirrels and birds."

She leaned forward and prodded the fire absently with a stick, gazing into the flames as if fascinated. Presently a whiff of smoke unlike that from the burning f.a.ggots reached her, and she looked up to see that he had lighted his pipe.

"I don't mind your smoking," she commented, smiling, "but if that's a sign that you have settled down for half an hour of solid comfort, I must interpose. You can smoke as we go along."

"It's only half-past five," he said regretfully, holding up his watch to the light.

Her reply was forestalled by a sound, slight in itself, and one that would have pa.s.sed unnoted an hour before, the sharp snapping of a twig somewhere in the darkness behind her. Only when he saw her start, and the widening of her dark eyes, did he realise how much truth had been contained in her jesting confessions of a few moments since. He could see that she was more than startled, that her emotion was one of fright.

"Why, it's nothing," he said rea.s.suringly, rising to his feet. "Any little noise sounds loud in the woods at night. It was only a squirrel, or a decayed branch giving way. I 'll prove it to you." He raised his voice and called "h.e.l.lo, there!" The result was vaguely disconcerting. "I forgot our friend Echo," he said apologetically.

With some idea of restoring her composure by his own unconcern, he began to move in the direction from which the sound had come; but he had taken only a few steps when a blot of darkness which had crouched before him like a huge stone or the stump of a tree suddenly detached itself and rose into the form of a man. Leigh had an indistinct vision of a face, of arms that seemed to ward him off, and then the intruder fled without a word, breaking through the woods like a frightened animal. He stumbled back to the fire, and stood listening till the sounds of flight had died away.

"Well," he declared, "that was a surprise! A mutual one too, it seems.

I don't know which of us was frightened the most, but we got away from each other as fast as we could."

"Oh, I knew it!" she cried, beginning to fasten on her hat with trembling fingers. "I had felt for some time that we were not alone."

"It was only the keeper," he a.s.sured her, "or some tramp, attracted by the firelight and thinking he had stumbled upon the camp of one of his pals. Let's leave him the rest of the grapes, to show that we bear him no ill-will for the shock he has given us. I'll just sc.r.a.pe a ring about the fire to keep it from spreading."

"This is my last picnic," she declared, "for this year at least. I couldn't come here again after that fright."

"Perhaps it's just as well I happened along," he remarked. "That fellow may have been lurking about the woods all the afternoon, hoping to pick up something from late visitors like ourselves."

A moment later he regretted his ill-considered words, for at the thought of the peril she might have been in, she rose to her feet with an evident return of her panic. Without waiting to put on her gloves, she thrust them into his hands with an impulsive movement, almost childlike in its unconscious betrayal of emotion. He put the gloves in his pocket and took her hand to lead her down the slope. "It's slippery here," he explained. But there was no need to apologize for what she by no means considered a liberty. Indeed, though he was conscious of nothing so much as of her hand in his, he was aware that she felt in his own merely a needed support. As she leaned upon him in the descent, he divined that her fear increased, instead of diminis.h.i.+ng, with their progress into the circ.u.mjacent darkness, as if the act of flight intensified an appreciation of the original cause.

He strove to dispel the emotion his own words had done so much to arouse, not without a guilty self-congratulation that his thoughtlessness had driven her to his protection. Feeling his way thus, step by step, he presently saw before his feet, as in a dream, the dim reflection of a star; and then the stream grew upon his vision, like a strip of fallen sky.

At that moment her foot slipped on the smooth pine needles, and with a smothered cry she seemed almost to swoon into his arms at the very margin of the water. Instinctively he held her close, her heart beating wildly against his own. A fragrance sweeter than the fragrance of the woods pervaded his senses, and he felt her hair brush against his cheek. Then she stood released, having recovered herself with a swift impulse, like a wild creature that had felt in time the first touch of the snare. This elusiveness, this sudden recoil from his contact, sobered him. What he might have done, had she remained a moment longer in his arms, must be forever a matter of conjecture with him now; but the intoxication vanished like a vapor from his mind, leaving a keen vision of the situation in its uncoloured reality.

There arose within him a certain sense of shame that he had given so much and received, as yet, nothing in kind. He had pa.s.sed that period of youth when a stolen kiss seems the acme of love's adventure. Such a theft on his part, irrespective of its consequences, would have left him still unsatisfied.

The belt of sky above the stream was sown thick with stars, that were beginning to make themselves felt more clearly each moment as the turning world gradually plunged this part of its surface into deeper shadow. In this wan light the pathway lay dimly discernible before them. The condition of the atmosphere was such as is best described by the word _subl.u.s.tris_, that glimmering radiance which lies somewhere between thick darkness and such a light as is thrown by the crescent moon. It was no longer necessary that he should guide her as before, and as soon as she had freed herself from his embrace, she began to take the lead.

"What a coward you must think me!" she said, with a ghostly little laugh. "Even now I would n't dare go last. As it is, I can see ahead and know that you are behind me."

Her confidence in his protecting power brought him scant consolation.

A spirit of dreariness seemed to rise up from the faint reflections that floated on the stagnant water; it blew stealthily out of the encroaching woods, and was voiced in the stuttering, tentative note of an awakened owl. Familiarity with nature had freed him from that sense of pursuit in the woods at night which oppresses even a stout heart unaccustomed to loneliness, and the flight of the unexpected apparition was sufficient proof that he had no desire to molest them. The incident certainly offered no ground for continued uneasiness, he reflected. Why, then, did she make so much of it? Why indeed, except that her companion was not the one man in all the world with whom she would choose to be there alone. The time and the place were full of romantic suggestions, were the loved one present. That he was not present was indicated only too clearly by the unconscious confession of her next remark: "I would n't have believed two hours ago that this path could seem so long!"

They reached the boat-house at last, but instead of turning up the ravine which he had followed from the spring, she ascended a flight of stairs and came out upon an open road. From this point their way was straight and plain. On their right lay the woods from which they had emerged, and on their left was an un.o.bstructed field. In this free s.p.a.ce the heavens seemed to expand immeasurably, and both felt the influence of the change. She began to make light of her former alarm, and his mood became more hopeful. He told himself that he had nourished impossible expectations, considering their short acquaintance, and that the remnant of their time together could be better employed than by indulging alone his wounded pride. As they walked up and down the platform, waiting for the car, the frogs from a near-by pool trilled intermittently, and they paused to listen.

"They seem to be congratulating themselves upon the prolongation of the summer season," he remarked. "Miss Wycliffe, have you any peculiar a.s.sociations with that sound?"

"Dinners," she returned flippantly. "Heavens! I've had enough of nature for one evening. How perfectly melancholy! But what do they remind you of?"

"I 'm in a reminiscent mood," he confessed. "I can never hear the frogs trilling in the night without being reminded of the marshlands around my native town in the Middle West. Every night, all summer long, I could hear that symphony through the open windows of my room, and because I was then in the adventurous and romantic period of youth, the recurrence of the sound brings back an echo of old emotions. I feel as if I were being called upon to go out into the world and seek my fortune."

"Have you been back there lately?" she asked. "How does it seem to revisit the home of your childhood after having had adventures, and after having done something in the world? I 've never had any home but this, I 've never travelled except for pleasure, and I 've never accomplished anything."

Leigh lifted his head and laughed, but the laugh was not altogether a happy one. "You present me to myself in a new light," he answered.

"So far I have only accomplished the feat of reaching the first rung of the ladder which I used to think I would have climbed by this time.

But yes, I have been back there recently, and found everything changed.

In fact, the West is a symbol of mutation. The marshlands have been filled in; streets extend across the places where I used to go for cat-tails; they have no more batrachian concerts there now. The only reminder of that earlier characteristic of the place is a huge green frog worked out in a marble mosaic on the floor of the new court house.

That is the seal of my native town."

By mere accident Leigh had made that first important step in love's progress; he had succeeded in arousing a personal interest.

"It's quite charming," she commented, "and not lacking in an element of poetry, either."

"Poetry," he echoed, inspired by her appreciation. "It's just those apparently common things that are so full of it, but the poets don't see it, or else they don't quite dare to give it expression. The conventions of the art are too overpowering. Take the railroad train, for example, which stands to most of us for convenience combined with a certain measure of discomfort. There 's nothing more stimulating to the imagination than the whistle of a locomotive in the distance at night, though perhaps only the poor, to whom travel is a luxury, appreciate to the full its invitation and the suggestion of adventure.

Working up from one stratum to another through difficulties, they are attended by a growing wonder as the world expands before them. But to have all experiences open to you from the first by the power of wealth, such as travel and theatres, for example, is the real misfortune of birth. The curiosity of the rich is gratified before it is stimulated by denial. Then what is left to them?"

"Ennui," she answered simply.

"What a blessing it is, then," he went on, "to have no time for that emotion, or rather, lack of emotion. I believe that if I had been born rich, I should have been ruined long before this; but I set myself a long road to travel, a road that reaches, in fact"--he made a wide upward gesture--"to the stars."

"Now what is it," he continued, after a pause, "that makes Warwick so uninspiring, in spite of its obvious charm? Is n't it the spiritual stagnation that comes with wealth and aristocracy? One reads it in the very faces of the people, and recognises it in the things they think worth while. It doesn't need a long observation to discover this. A stranger takes in the impression with his first breath here. Like the first glance at a new face, it reveals the truth. Afterward you get accustomed to an unprepossessing face, and forget what you first thought of it. In much the same way, I suppose, a man could become hypnotised and drugged by the atmosphere of Warwick. All this is in the nature of an explanation of what I meant this afternoon by my denunciation of the place."

She stood silently looking down into the pool from which arose the sound that had brought them to this point. It was evident that she felt no temptation now to indulge in one of those retorts that came so easily to her tongue. Leigh had appealed to her imagination, a thing which the modern man more rarely succeeds in doing with a woman than his predecessor who wore gay garments and rode a caparisoned steed in the lists. Besides, his earnestness had given his thought, though it was by no means a new one, his own personal stamp, and won its acceptance. Deeper than these causes, he had expressed her own convictions.

"A denunciation," he continued shrewdly, "with which you sympathised."

"One must do something," she said, with a little gesture of despair, "or die of suffocation."

"Exactly," he agreed, "even if it be only to take the side of the under dog in a munic.i.p.al election. Can you wonder that your sympathy with Emmet, your evident revolt against the point of view of your own cla.s.s, set me to speculating upon the reason? Have I worked out the problem to its demonstration?"

Her silence seemed to give a.s.sent to his question, though she was apparently so deeply plunged in thought that she forgot to reply in words; and the appearance of the headlight of the trolley-car down the track brought their conversation to a close. Miss Wycliffe herself suggested that they take the front seat beside the motorman, explaining that she always enjoyed the un.o.bstructed view ahead. He handed her up, pleased to think that they were still to be for some time practically alone. At their backs a gla.s.s part.i.tion shut off the rest of the car; the motorman himself seemed a mere automaton, with ears for nothing but the bell, and eyes for nothing but the gleaming track ahead. Leigh suspected that a wish to avoid a possible recognition from some pa.s.senger had influenced her in taking this seat, and he dared to hope also that she shared his appreciation of the further opportunity to be alone together. Their conversation, however, was fragmentary, as if each were deep in incommunicable thoughts. From time to time, as the car swung swiftly around a curve, she swayed against him softly, so that he began to look expectantly ahead for a change in the straight line of the track, laughing happily to himself at her involuntary apology. Their comrades.h.i.+p seemed to have entered upon a stage in which mere propinquity was sufficient to give content without the aid of conversation, and a deep serenity of mood had now replaced the wavering uncertainties of his earlier emotions. This atmosphere of harmony and understanding remained unbroken until they stood before her house; but now an inexplicable change occurred. She suddenly held out her hand with a gesture that seemed to him frankly impatient, as if she were anxious to be gone. "And my gloves," she said. "I think I gave them to you."

He produced them reluctantly. "I had hoped you would forget them, Miss Wycliffe."

"One does n't easily forget a new pair of gloves," she answered in a tone cruelly matter-of-fact, as if she would show deliberately her unconcern. He could now see all too clearly what a fool's dream he had cherished, and the awakening was painfully abrupt. He divined that something was amiss, something of which he had no knowledge or right to a knowledge. During that afternoon he had pa.s.sed through the whole gamut of a lover's emotions, only to strike at last the lowest note of all, and he watched her hurrying up the walk as if she were going out of his life forever.

That evening he turned over in his mind all the phases of their enigmatical relations.h.i.+p, cursing his bland folly as he recalled with keen humiliation his complacent explanation of her to herself while they waited for the car. Her manner at parting appeared nothing less than a decisive rebuke. When at length he fell asleep, he was visited by a ghastly dream, in which the incident in the woods was re-enacted with all the grewsome accentuation that belongs to the realm of dreamland. Again the shadowy figure rose up before his feet and fled away. He pursued and grappled with the intruder in the darkness, demanding his name and trying to see his face. Finally he seemed to prevail, but the figure slipped from his grasp and left him there alone. He turned back then, seeking the fire and smitten with poignant anxiety for the woman he loved; but the light was quenched, and the place could not be found. After struggling for what seemed a lifetime through mazes of darkness and terror, he awoke.

CHAPTER IX

"HER HEART WAS OTHERWHERE"

A few nights after the meeting in the woods, Leigh was hurrying along Birdseye Avenue, like the belated White Rabbit on its way to the Queen's croquet party. He was going to a lecture on Velasquez at the house of one of his colleagues, Professor Littleford. The beginning of the lecture was set for eight o'clock, and it was now past the hour, for he had been detained in the city by the joint debate between Emmet and Judge Swigart, put at half past five that the workingmen might have an opportunity to attend.

The time consumed in returning to the Hall, in dining and dressing, almost convinced him of the advisability of staying at home, but he reflected that to do so was probably to miss a chance of seeing Miss Wycliffe, and this was a risk he was by no means disposed to run. He was possessed by a desire to see her again and to test the permanency of her last mood with him, when she had demanded her gloves and left him in despair. If she were inclined to repentance, he felt that he would know it, even if he managed to meet her for only a moment in the midst of the crowd. But it chanced that fate was kinder to him than he had dared to hope.

As he had antic.i.p.ated, he was one of the last arrivals, but he was not destined to experience the embarra.s.sment he feared from this circ.u.mstance. The wide hallway of the great house was deserted, and he threaded his way through several dimly lighted drawing-rooms in the direction of a voice that indicated the location of the lecturer. Not until he stood in the doorway of what appeared to be an a.s.sembly hall, and was in reality the ballroom of the house, did he realise the reason of the obscurity through which he had pa.s.sed. At the far end of the room, he saw one of the well-known portraits of Philip IV projected by a lantern upon a huge sheet of canvas. The widening shaft of light that traversed the intervening s.p.a.ce dimly disclosed the audience as a series of heads, from which arose a sibilant wave of amused comment as the portrait of the king melted into that of his daughter, a serious infant with corkscrew curls, all unconscious of the monstrous absurdity of her voluminous skirts. This transition from one picture to another was accepted by one of the audience as an opportunity to s.h.i.+ft his chair, and Leigh saw the bishop's salient profile thrown for a moment on the canvas, before he subsided again to the general level.