Home > Authors Index > Herbert M. Hopkins > Mayor of Warwick > This page
The Mayor of Warwick, a novel by Herbert M. Hopkins |
||
Chapter 1. The Meeting In The Maple Walk |
||
| Table of content |
Next > |
|
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER I. THE MEETING IN THE MAPLE WALK St George's Hall, situated on a high hill overlooking the city of Warwick, was still silent and tenantless, though the long vacation was drawing to a close. To a stranger passing that way for the first time, the building and the surrounding country would doubtless have suggested the old England rather than the new. There was something mediaeval in the massive, castellated tower that carried the eye upward past the great, arched doorway, the thin, deep-set windows, the leaded eaves and grinning gargoyles, into the cool sky of the September morning. The stranger, were he rich in good traditions, would pause in admiration of the pure collegiate-gothic style of the low hall that extended north and south three hundred feet in either direction from the base of the great tower; he would note the artistry of the iron-braced, oaken doors, flanked at the lintels by inscrutable faces of carven stone, of the windows with their diamonded panes of milky glass peeping through a wilderness of encroaching vines. Nor would this be all. Had he ever viewed the quadrangles of Oxford and Cambridge, he might be able to infer that here, on this sunny plateau above the hill, devoted men, steept in the traditions of old England, had endeavoured to reproduce the plan of one of her famous colleges. He would see, perhaps, that only one side of the quadrangle was built, one fourth of the work done. Here, along the northern line, should be the chapel, its altar window facing the east; on the southern, the dining-hall, adorned with rafters of dark oak and with portraits of the wise and great. To complete the plan, the remaining gap must be closed by a hall similar in style to the one already built. He might picture himself standing in the midst of this beautiful creation of the imagination, taking in its architectural glories one by one, until his eye paused at the eastern gateway to note the distant landscape which it framed. And then, if he were in sympathy with the ideals of which this building was the outward expression, he would wake from his constructive reverie to realise sadly for the first time, not the beauty, but the incompleteness, of the institution; not its proximity to the city beyond, but its air of aloofness from the community in which it stood. About ten o'clock of the morning in which this story begins, a stranger, not quite such an one as we have imagined, left the car at the foot of the long hill and turned his face for the first time towards St. George's Hall. As he passed up the shaded street along the northern side of the campus, his keen, blue-grey eyes swept eagerly the crest on which stood the institution that was destined to be the scene of his professional labours for at least a year, perhaps for many years, it might be, for life. Even a casual glance at the tall, loosely hung figure of the young man, at his clean-cut features and firm mouth, at the nervous, capable hand that grasped his walking-stick as if it were a weapon, would reveal the type claimed by America as peculiarly her own. It was evident that he possessed energy and endurance, if not the power of the athlete. His expression was intellectual, and shrewd almost to hardness; yet somewhere in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth there lurked a suggestion of sweetness and of ideality, that gave the whole personality a claim to more than passing interest and regard. This curious blending of opposite traits, of shrewdness and of ideality, was illustrated by his thoughts as he strode along, making no more of the hill than he would have made of level ground. Nothing escaped his eye or failed of its impression upon his mind. Fresh from the teeming life of a large university, he noted the absence of students from the steps of the fraternity houses on his right, though it lacked but three days of the opening of the college. Already his own university had felt the first wave of the incoming class, a class that would doubtless contain four times as many students as the total membership of St. George's Hall. Instinctively he searched his mind for an explanation of this lack of growth in an institution that numbered nearly one hundred years of life. What was the defect? Where was the remedy? He jumped at once to the conclusion that both were discoverable, and dimly foresaw that the discovery might be his own. He approached the scene where he was himself to be on trial in the spirit of one who questioned, not his fitness for the place he was to occupy, for of that he had no shadow of doubt, but the fitness of the place for him. If he saw promotion, perhaps the presidency, within his grasp, he might deem it worth his while to stay; if not, his professorship should be a stepping-stone to something better. With the history, the traditions, and the ideals of the Hall he was but slightly acquainted; in fact, the institution existed for him at present only in its relation to himself and his possible future. And yet, beneath these thoughts of self ran a current of feeling or impressions which never rose high enough in his consciousness to win definite recognition. If his first view of the college was depressing because of the failure of fruition its appearance suggested, he was not utterly unappreciative of the pictorial effect: the splendid lines of dignity and beauty; the soft brown colour of the stone, relieved by the lighter tone of lintel and window-frame and sill; the dark green of the ivy; the great, black shadow of the tower on the slated roof where every jutting dormer window threw its lesser shade; the wide sky beyond, of a blueness which an artist would have wished to paint. From the meadow below the plateau came the tinkle of cow-bells, musical in the distance; and this sound, combined with the note of a bird and the voices of children from an unseen garden, produced an Arcadian atmosphere which even the harsh gong of the returning electric car could not dispel. As he climbed higher, the houses fell away, disclosing the bare hilltop over which the road seemed to dip down and disappear; and though he knew it could not be so, he was half expectant of the sea when he should have lifted his head above the verge. Instead, he saw a wide and shallow valley, rich in the varied products of the autumn, with here and there a bare, reaped field, with many a white farmhouse and barn of red or grey, till his eye followed the road to the western hill line and noted a patch of small, white objects which might be a group of boulders left by a prehistoric glacier, or the houses of a distant town. The view on the east, when he turned and faced in the direction from which he had come, was one of greater interest and of no less beauty. In the immediate foreground the city of Warwick, in which he had passed the previous night, thrust its smoking factory chimneys, its spires and towers, above the shining roofs and lofty elms. But the final element of charm was found in a broad and sinuous river, blue as the reflected sky, which flowed past the city's wharves, under a fine stone bridge, and on through woodland and ploughed land to the sea. Small wonder that he now forgot for a moment his own ambitions and plans, and thought only that St. George's Hall lifted its head within an earthly paradise! The building, seen from the end, presented the same extraordinary change that is to be noted when a long ocean steamship which has been trailing across the horizon turns, shrinks, and comes bow on. In some such proportion to its length was the width of the Hall; but the tower, viewed from any angle, was still magnificent. With its four supporting turrets it appeared rather a group of towers than a single structure. His immediate curiosity satisfied, the young man now exchanged the bright sunlight of the open for the comparative gloom of two long lines of maples, which flanked a narrow board walk from the street to the college. There was a prophecy of winter in the red and yellow leaves that dropped slowly downward one by one, or descended in rustling showers as a sudden gust of wind seized the thin branches and shook them against the sky. And now, as if to personify the spirit of the place, he saw the figure of a young woman enter the walk from the other end, apparently from the college building. As they approached each other, he noted the fact that she was without hat or gloves, like a lady walking at ease through her own estate, and he guessed that she had some peculiar proprietary right in the premises. For one moment, in passing, he was startled to encounter a cool and observant gaze; then her eyes dropped to the collection of leaves which she held in her hands, as if she resumed an interrupted study of their harmonious shades. He divined, after he had passed her by, that she had seen him from the moment they entered the opposite ends of the walk; and though he could not recall distinctly a feature of her face, he carried with him an impression of charm and colour singularly in unison with the season of the year. Moreover, her gaze, though momentary, was cumulative in its remembered effect, so that he presently turned and looked curiously after her retreating figure. She had now emerged from the shadow of the trees into the sunlight of the open street beyond, where she stood looking westward, as if minded to continue her walk into the country. Even from that distance he could see how the unobstructed wind struggled with her slender figure, so that she leaned against it in resistance. As if persuaded by its force to change her plan, she turned slowly, released the leaves with a gesture of surrender, gathered her skirts in one hand, and with the other raised to her loosened hair she began to descend the hill. The young man stood still until she had disappeared, smitten by an inexplicable sense of the fatality of that meeting. Verging upon the sixth lustrum of his age, he had passed through that vernal period when the face of every woman of more than ordinary charm suggested possibilities of the heart's adventure. With him the main business of life was no longer the seeking of a mate. All books, all arts, all accomplishments, had ceased to seem merely the accessories and the handmaidens of love. Yet never in those days of searching and romance had he been so attracted by a passing face. Beauty alone would have left him cold. The impression he received was far more rich, an impression to which the circumstances of the encounter gave a peculiar emphasis. The adventure seemed a possible keynote of the future, and there was an element of vague disquiet in his hope that he might meet her again, an element akin to fear. _ |
||