Home > Authors Index > Herbert M. Hopkins > Mayor of Warwick > This page
The Mayor of Warwick, a novel by Herbert M. Hopkins |
||
Chapter 12. The Confession |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XII. THE CONFESSION An hour later, Emmet approached the college through the maple walk with very different feelings from those he had entertained when he watched the sunset behind the towers. Then he had felt the glory of individualism, his own vivid power as opposed to the lethargy of institutions. But his recent experience had started the pendulum back, and now it swung to the other extreme. His self-confidence had been followed by an exhibition of weakness. He who could defy and control men was helpless before the eyes of a woman; he who had burned with indignation at the corrupt politics of his enemies, who had sacrificed his interests to principle by showing Bat Quayle the door, had gone forth and sacrificed his principles to his pleasure at the very first opportunity. Though by nature objective rather than introspective, his experiences since his first meeting with Felicity were teaching him by hard blows the rudiments of his own psychology. Had he been unmoral, he would have remained unscrupulous and unreflecting, but the claims of right would not down. He saw the better way and approved it, but followed the worse, and his knowledge of this inconsistency was gall and bitterness to his soul. He was as genuinely repentant as it is possible for a healthy man to be while the taste of life is still sweet; yet without doubt a large measure of his repentance was the fear of discovery. In the recesses of his mind lurked a hope that Leigh would be able to show him some way out of the labyrinth, would somehow help him to escape the consequences of his misdeeds. Born a Catholic, his instinctive attitude toward the established order of things was that of a dissenter. Yet here were religion and learning coming back, and not in vain, to claim their penny of tribute. He had defied the authority of the Church, and had nevertheless accepted her doctrine of the sanctity of marriage; he had scorned the College, and now he turned by preference to one of her representatives, influenced, in spite of prejudice and disillusioning experience, by respect for her ideals. There she loomed, seeming monolithic in her solidity, a part of the rock on which she was built, her windows sending out shafts of light into the surrounding darkness, an allegory in stone. As he passed the windows, he saw within characteristic glimpses of college life. Half a dozen students were gathered about a fireplace with their pipes, clothed in every variety of garment from the sweater or bath-robe to the evening dress of one who had dropped in for a chat on his way to a dance. In another room a game of cards was in progress; in still a third a thoughtful plodder sat close to his shaded lamp, his head resting upon his hand, an open book before him. Somewhere above he heard a piano played with brilliancy and dash, and the rollicking chorus of the college song:--
He hurried along, relieved to meet no one on the walk, for there were few who would not have recognised him, and his mood was all for concealment. Observing from without that the light in Leigh's windows was dim, he concluded that he was still upon the tower and went on up the stairs, striking match after match to guide his steps. As he paused to extinguish the embers, he encountered the blank darkness of the walls, relieved by ghostly slits of windows holding here and there a star; and the hollow drumming of the wind was like the sea. It was a release to emerge at last from this series of aerial prisons and to stand beneath the wide sweep of the sky. In answer to his knock Leigh opened the door and confronted him, clothed like a Siberian Cossack. "Still at it, professor?" Emmet inquired. "I should think you would be frozen out." "Come in, Mr. Emmet," Leigh answered. "This is a welcome interruption. I 've been working at a problem now for a month, and was just beginning to get a little lonely." His eyes shone bright in the dim light and his face was somewhat thinner than Emmet had remembered it, but his manner was buoyant and alert. The visitor took a chair and glanced about him with interest, noting the changes that had been made since he last saw the place. He observed an improvised windbreak of canvas, and a charcoal brasier in the corner. "And how do you manage to work that sliding roof in snowy weather?" he asked. "A broom, a shovel, some salt to melt the ice, and a little oil for the wheels"-- "Well, I saw your telescope rising up above the towers about half-past four, and was so surprised to think that you were still taking observations that I came up to see how the place looked." "I 'm making observations for the parallax of Arcturus," Leigh explained. "The atmosphere is clearer in winter, you know." "How long might it take, now," Emmet asked jocosely, "to get at the facts?" "Who knows? Others have been working at the same problem for twelve years." Emmet emitted a low whistle. "What does it all amount to?" he demanded. "Suppose you do find the what's its name--parallax? It sounds like the name of some kind of weapon. Why don't you go in for some other line of business, before it's too late? There's the law, now--a short cut to politics. You could get somewhere in the world, if you did n't shut yourself up on this tower and spend your time in looking through that telescope." The reproach was in reality a compliment, and Emmet would have been disappointed had his suggestion been received with favour. "Since we 're comparing politics with astronomy," Leigh answered, "let me ask who was the governor of this State fifty years ago? Perhaps he spent a lifetime struggling for the place, and after his two years of office he was down and out for good, with the privilege of hanging his portrait among a hundred others on the walls of the State Library. But take any name connected with a scientific discovery, and it lasts as long as the world endures. Take even a lesser name--never mind your Galileos and Herschels. There's Asaph Hall, who discovered the moons of Mars, and already, before his death, he is enjoying his immortality." "But I thought you told me the instrument was no good," Emmet persisted. "Not as bad as that. It is n't what I should like, but a man must do something, even if it's only to keep in practice. It might stand him in stead some day in a larger place." Emmet was too much absorbed in himself to catch the hint of restlessness these words conveyed. Leigh's profession, like the ministry, made him, in the mayor's eyes, a being apart from the life with which he was familiar. It naturally did not occur to him that the astronomer had been driven back to his duty by the scourge of suffering, much less that his own wife had wielded the whip. He saw only an inexplicable devotion to an ideal pursuit. "Well," Leigh continued, with a sudden change of manner, "and how is the mayoralty getting on?" Emmet's face darkened. "I had it out with Bat Quayle this morning and turned him down hard. He 'll get back at me sooner or later. But that is n't what I came up to see you about. The fact is, I 'm in trouble." Leigh glanced tentatively at the sheets of paper on his table, covered with unfinished calculations, and hesitated; but his visitor's manner implied an urgent need. "If I can be of any help to you"--he suggested. "I'm not so sure of that," Emmet answered gloomily, "as that I want to tell some one what an awful fool I 've made of myself." "There are others," Leigh replied, with a bitter grin. "I know a triple-expansion ass not a hundred miles from here; so fire away." Emmet went over to the brasier and warmed his hands, as if embarrassed for words with which to begin. Leigh fumbled in the pocket of his greatcoat and produced his pipe, then drawing up his chair opposite, he sat down to listen. No premonition came to him at that moment that the story his visitor had to tell in any way concerned himself, or would deepen the even melancholy of his present days. He settled himself comfortably, with a sense of justifiable relaxation from toil. The troubles of another might arouse his intellectual sympathy, but they could add no burden to his heart. He even experienced a pleasurable curiosity. Emmet was to some degree a mysterious character to him, though he no longer thought of him in connection with Felicity. Her departure from Warwick had put an end to that suspicion, and made it something of which he was ashamed. He divined indeed that the trouble concerned a woman, but not the woman who had gone away with such evident indifference to any man in Warwick. "Well, Emmet," he said at last, "here I am, all ears. Perhaps it will help you to a beginning if I suggest that there's a woman somewhere at the bottom of the trouble." The other placed his chair snugly in the corner, buried his hands deep in his pockets, and looked at the brasier with a fixed stare. "It's not one woman," he began, with a sensible effort, "it's two. I don't know any better way to give you an idea of the tangle I've gotten myself into than by going back to the beginning of the story. About five years ago, I hadn't any more idea of going into politics than you have now. I was playing baseball in the summer and running a car in winter, and saving my money. My parents were both dead, and I was thinking that it was pretty near time for me to get married. I was never one to throw away my money with the boys,--it came too hard,--I didn't even smoke or drink, and"-- "That's a bad beginning," Leigh interrupted, shaking his head with mock seriousness. "No small vices--women." Emmet took the comment with good humour. "No, I was n't an easy mark for women, either. I tell you my main idea was to get ahead, to save some money. I could n't stand poverty; I had seen too much of it. When I was a boy, I carried the washing for my mother after school hours. In summer I played baseball and hung around the race-track. If I had n't been so heavy, I 'd have become a jockey and made my fortune quicker; but anyhow I had ten thousand dollars salted away by the time I was twenty-five. I 'm thirty now." Leigh was secretly somewhat amused by this prologue, which seemed to spring partly from the egotism of a self-made man, partly from an instinctive unwillingness to embark upon the confession to which he was committed. However, he was far from being bored. "I'm about thirty myself," he remarked, "and I'm worth about thirty cents. But that's a digression." "Well, as I was saying," Emmet resumed, "I wasn't an easy mark for women. I had too much at stake to get tangled up that way, but I was thinking that it was pretty near time for me to find a wife. There's a lady in this town--you 'll hardly believe it--I did n't myself, at first--that took a fancy to me. She was rich and fashionable, and all that, the sort of woman I would n't have thought of in any such way; but gradually I began to notice that she took my car nearly every day. Even when she told me straight out that she preferred to ride with me, I did n't suspect anything, for she always had a pleasant word for all the boys. But after a while I woke up to the fact that she knew just when I would be at the City Hall, and managed her shopping so as to ride home with me. After that I began to take particular notice. When I took her fare, I was embarrassed by the look in her eyes. She had fine eyes, and a way of sizing me up that seemed to mean something. Sometimes our hands would touch for a moment, and then it was n't by accident; and by Christmas time I knew as well as if she had told me that if she was n't in love with me, she thought she was." "You were a lucky dog," Leigh said, filling an impressive pause with the first chance comment that came to him. Afterward he wondered at the obstinate torpidity of his mind, for not even the reference to her deliberate look and fine eyes gave him the clew. All this talk of early hardship and of street-cars had put the narrator for the time on another level from that he now occupied in the world, and made his past seem his present. The very confession, and the manner of it, belittled the confessor, and Leigh took his characterisation of his admirer as rich and fashionable with a grain of salt, making some allowance for the point of view, some for natural vanity and a desire to impress him. "I did n't think I was so lucky," the mayor answered simply. "Of course I was pretty well set up, but I never thought it would amount to anything, and it was a dangerous game to play. I was n't sure how far I could go, or how far she wanted me to go, and besides, I had mighty little chance to see her alone. There was always somebody near, and I thought if I overstepped the mark she might be offended, or her father might get on to it and have me fired for impertinence." His listener suddenly abandoned his semi-recumbent position for one of alert attention and ceased smoking, not yet fully aware of the reason for his dawning excitement, except that the last words had called up a vision of Bishop Wycliffe to his mind. He was in a state of suspended perception, trembling upon the brink of a discovery he was loath to make, waiting with painful tension for more light. "So I did n't even meet her halfway," Emmet was saying. "She kept asking me questions about my life, until little by little she knew all about me. But the thing that interested her most was the fact that I belonged to a union, and that I had read a good deal of political economy. Well, at Christmas time I got a box of books without any clew as to the sender, but of course I knew who sent them. They were Plato and Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and John Stuart Mill, and books of that kind. After that she began to talk to me, right before her friends or her father, of my studies. I read at the books, at first to please her and to have something to say about them, and then because I became interested. Her friends regarded me as one of her charities and began to patronise me, but all the time I knew she felt differently, though no one suspected it but ourselves. "Just before I left the car to play ball in the spring, she said she hoped it would be the last time, for I was fit for something better. Several times she happened to be in Warwick that summer when we played there, and I saw her in the grand stand; and once, when I knocked a home run, I saw her wave her handkerchief to let me know she saw me do it. When I came back in the fall, we began with a new understanding. I had thought a good deal of her during the summer, and I knew she had of me. There was more between us than before, and it was only a question of time and opportunity before we should come together. We happened to take the same car one evening when I was off duty. All the way up we talked like two old friends, and when she reached her street, I helped her off and then walked over with her to her house on Birdseye Avenue." A sharp crackling sound startled him into silence. Leigh had unconsciously been clenching the amber stem of his pipe with increasing intensity, and now it was ground to powder between his teeth. The meerschaum bowl fell to the floor, scattering a trail of sparks as it rolled away. "Hello!" Emmet cried. "You 've broken your pipe." Leigh was groping for the bowl and stamping out the sparks. "The cold weather," he muttered, "makes the amber brittle. There must have been a flaw somewhere." Long before Emmet had mentioned Birdseye Avenue, he had known the worst; but only then, when he remembered the two lovers whom he and Cardington had overtaken after the evening at Littleford's, did his emotion culminate in this unexpected expression. She had gone from his side, after he had made love to her and had taken the lilies of the valley he still cherished, to walk with her real lover, to congratulate him upon the triumph she had made her dupe describe. Now every incident connected with her fell into its proper place and appeared with its true meaning. He understood how he had been used from the first; the lurking figure by the fire in the woods was no longer a mystery; the scene on this very spot, when she had bent down to hand Emmet the candle, was explained. The whole story, in which he played the part of a meddler and a fool, was unrolled before him. Emmet--Emmet--Emmet--that had been her theme, and apparently her chief interest in life. Still, with a pitiful hope, he must needs have the final proof before believing. There was yet some remote possibility of a mistake, some question at least as to the extent of her infatuation for this man. He had spoken of two women. Perhaps Miss Wycliffe's abrupt departure was connected with a discovery of his unfaithfulness to her, and meant that she would cast him off forever. A wild hope that this might be so displaced his first despair. If that were all,--a mere ideal fancy which really did her credit,--perhaps she would return disillusioned, convinced of her mistake, and eager to bury its very memory forever. He regained his seat, pale as a ghost, but with a wonderful effort he managed to smile. Emmet reflected a moment. He had gone too far to retreat. "Perhaps if her name were still Miss Wycliffe," he announced, "instead of Mrs. Emmet, it might be better for all concerned." Only the semi-darkness of the place prevented him from seeing the effect of this disclosure. During the silence that ensued, the canvas of the windbreak flapped audibly, like the sail of a yacht responding to a rising breeze. "You did n't expect that?" he demanded, gratified by the sensation he had created. "No," Leigh heard himself reply, in a voice that sounded far away. "That makes it all the more--interesting. Then you were married secretly?" "Not for two years or more; but we met from time to time. I can't help wondering now why nobody suspected the truth. Of course the boys chaffed me a good deal, and asked to be invited to the wedding, but they were miles short of guessing the real state of affairs. Sometimes I noticed her friends putting their heads together and knew they were discussing me, for they stopped whispering when I came up for their fares. But even so I heard casual remarks. Some said it was sweet of her--the way women talk, you know--and democratic, and others said it was no use trying to do anything for that kind of people." "Mrs. Parr, for example?" "Yes," Emmet burst out, his eyes flashing redly, "but I 'll show that singed cat yet what kind of people I am! I 'll show her and her whole damned set!" His anger almost choked him, and his face grew crimson. "She's part of the story, too," he went on, "but she does n't come in yet. However, if there were two people in Warwick that suspected anything serious, it was that woman and Professor Cardington." "Not the bishop?" Leigh asked. "I don't think so, though he did freeze me in that way of his that you can't put your finger on. He's as proud as Lucifer, and would as soon have thought of his daughter falling in love with some little Dago on the street as with me. But all the same, he did n't approve of her interest in me, and he managed to make it evident." Leigh had a vision of the blow that awaited the bishop's pride. He even wondered whether the disclosure would kill him, but he made no comment. In his own heart a sense of anger deadened for the time being his sense of loss. Since his discovery of the fact that she was a married woman, her treatment of him appeared so much more heartless that he felt he could never forgive her. "We were married in New York," Emmet explained. "It was in September. The bishop was off on a visitation; Mrs. Parr was in Europe. We met"-- "Never mind," Leigh interrupted, shrinking. "Tell me where the other woman comes in." "That's just what I 'm coming to now. When we got back to Warwick,--we didn't come together, you understand,--I found out for the first time what I was in for. That was when my troubles began." "You don't speak as if you loved her," the other said harshly. Was it for this she had thrown herself away? Fortunately Emmet was too much absorbed in himself to note the suppressed scorn and fury of his voice. "I did n't get much chance for love, or much love from her, either," he said bitterly. "She kept me just where I was before. What did I get? A stolen interview and a kiss now and then, but plenty of advice and books and plans. She put me up to running for mayor; I 'm bound to say that. But she was n't to acknowledge me as her husband until I was elected. That was the plan, and I was fool enough to agree to it. You would n't believe it, but I did n't see her sometimes for weeks together. Last winter she even sailed off to Europe as cool as a cucumber, and left me alone to work out my salvation, as she called it. I worked it out, too. I worked the union for all it was worth. I got to be president and formed a secret league with the other unions, and we captured the Democratic nomination before the opposition knew what we were up to. All that took time and work, and gave me something to think about besides my married life. But when I saw Felicity after that, it was mostly to report progress and to get advice. God! It was more like going to my teacher than to my wife, and the thing became intolerable. She grew more mysterious to me all the time. She did n't seem like a natural woman, and I could n't understand her at all. Then I met the other woman at a lodge dance. I took her home and kissed her at the gate, partly because she was a pretty girl, and partly because I thought she expected it. I thought that would be the end of it, but it was n't. You know how those things grow into something you did n't expect. You can understand how I got in deeper and deeper, intending to break away all the time. If you 're the man I take you to be, you can't help understanding. You can't help seeing both sides of the question, and how I gradually got mixed with this girl without meaning any harm, until I discovered that we loved each other, and that my wife had kept me waiting till she had killed the love I once had for her, and the gratitude, too. "The situation came to a head all at once. Just before the election, this girl goes to work for Felicity, and while there she wears a ring I let her have, which my wife had given me as a sort of kismet, or talisman, as she called it. Felicity sees it on her hand, follows her to her room, and gets it back, after having found out all she wanted to know, but without telling anything herself. Then, instead of coming to me after the election, she sent me a note to let me know that she had found me out, and off she went to Bermuda with her father." "I see," said Leigh coldly, "but I don't see yet where I come in." "I want your advice, as a friend," Emmet returned. He was still unsuspicious of anything amiss in his auditor, and went on to tell of the adventure that followed his good resolutions: of his race on the avenue; of his unexpected meeting with Lena and his sudden fall; of the encounter at the inn. Something of the eloquence which Leigh had heard from him on the platform glowed in the apologetic passages of his narrative. If the astronomer had never known and loved Felicity himself, he could not have failed to be impressed by the man's evident struggle; he would have appreciated his repentance; he would have blamed his wife for her conduct, and would have realised that her need of sympathy was less than Lena's in proportion as her love was less, in proportion as her resources and her pride were greater. As it was, he would have been more than human had he taken such a comprehensive view of the tragedy, and his judgment went bitterly against the man who had dared to esteem lightly the gift which he felt he would have given his all to possess. "Now," Emmet said, in conclusion, "you 're a friend of mine and a friend of my wife's, and I thought--perhaps"-- "You want me to be a go-between?" Leigh demanded. "You want me to help you win her back?" "That's what I was thinking of," the mayor replied. "Tell her I mean to do the right thing, that I meant to all along. Somehow I think she 'll understand better if you tell her. You stand halfway between us, and can see both points of view. Now that I 'm mayor and established in life, the bishop need n't feel that he 'd be disgraced by the marriage. I can hold my own with the old gentleman now. She 's my wife, and I want her to acknowledge it. The account is pretty even as things stand, I take it." Leigh smiled scornfully at Emmet's claim of social equality with the bishop, based upon his position as mayor. Not that office, but only the fact that he was Felicity's husband, would give him an entrance into the bishop's house, and the claim seemed to him boastful and vulgar. He rose abruptly to his feet, every muscle tense. "No, I can't see both points of view," he said hoarsely. "I can see only her point of view, what she is, what she meant to do for you, what she gave you"-- "What she gave me!" Emmet echoed, springing to his feet in turn. "Hold on, professor. Be fair to a man. She gave me nothing that a wife should give, I tell you, nothing! She left me at the very door of the church and went off alone"-- "What!" Leigh cried. His revulsion of feeling was so great that he tottered and leaned against the wall for support. Only one thought possessed him, that she was not in reality this man's wife, after all. In the face of her desertion, the mere words of the marriage ceremony were as nothing. "Why, man," he said, taking Emmet suddenly by the shoulder, as if he would shake a comprehension of his words into him, "you're not married, before God you're not married. What priestcraft notion has gotten hold of you? I tell you it's all a mistake. You've both made a mistake--and you've both found it out. Do you suppose, if she really loved you, she would have gone away like that, without giving you a chance to explain? If you really loved her, would you have kissed the first pretty girl that came in your way? I help you to win her back! Get her back yourself, if you can. I hope you can't do it. I don't wish you the luck you don't deserve. Don't come to me with your troubles!" Emmet wrenched himself violently away and stood aghast. "You love her yourself," he said, in a voice of wonder. "And if I do," Leigh retorted defiantly, "what is that to you?" "Nothing," Emmet answered, "nothing." And turning like one stupefied, he walked slowly away without another word. _ |
||