Chapter 20. "Punishment, Though Lame Of Foot"----

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_ CHAPTER XX. "PUNISHMENT, THOUGH LAME OF FOOT"----

The bishop sat in his study, awaiting the arrival of Mayor Emmet in a frame of mind that boded ill for the success of the interview. In reply to his letter suggesting a conference on a subject of mutual interest, the mayor had named the third morning as the one that would find him most free from his numerous engagements. The coolness of this reply was exasperating to the bishop, and he thought he divined in the delay a deliberate intention to keep him on the rack of uncertainty. Being a man of ample leisure, he had found plenty of time to formulate the position he meant to take. He and his daughter had threshed out the subject, and now avoided it by mutual consent. Their relationship became unnatural and constrained. They met only at meal-times, and not always then, for each one sought more than one pretext to dine elsewhere. More words on the subject would only precipitate a repetition of the scene that still rankled in the memory of both, and the discussion was therefore closed until Emmet should have stated his own position.

While the situation remained thus stationary, the appearance of the world without had been so completely transformed that a whole season, rather than three days, seemed to have elapsed. Winter had returned in a storm of snow that threatened to assume the proportions of the historic blizzard, which piled such deep drifts about St. George's Hall that the students had leaped with impunity from the upper windows. During the previous night, however, the sky had cleared, and now the air was filled with those familiar brumal sounds, the scraping of shovels and the ringing of sleighbells, that usually make such a pleasant appeal to those within-doors; but the bishop was merely moved to impatient longing for the spring.

The bright sun filled the study with a garish light reflected from the snow without, and the bishop pulled down the heavy shades, introducing thereby an effect of twilight in the room. At the same time the wood fire in the grate, which had previously seemed pale and thin, took on a ruddy and cheerful activity, relieved from the overpowering competition of the sun.

The mayor finally arrived, half an hour behind the time he had appointed, drawn in his sleigh by the pacer that had stood by him so gallantly in his race with Anthony Cobbens. He fastened the mare to the post with careful deliberation, conscious the while that he might be under inspection from behind the drawn curtains of Felicity's room. When he entered the bishop's study, it was evident at once that he came in no very conciliatory mood. The bold glance of his eyes was a trifle more bold than usual and swept the room rapidly, as if he anticipated seeing Felicity there. Something of disappointment and resentment seemed to show itself in his manner, as he took the chair the bishop indicated; and now he waited, with the instinct of the politician, for his opponent to show his hand.

The bishop had always hated this man, and never more so than now. In addition to his special reason for hostility, Emmet's type was one peculiarly distasteful to him. Just as he had catalogued Leigh as a Westerner, and had assumed certain characteristics in him, so he had put Emmet, from the first, into the class of loud-voiced, big-limbed, heavy-heeled centurions. It made no difference that the mayor showed marked deviations from the type; there was just enough of the feminine in his judge to keep him true to his prejudices, and never were they so nearly justified as now. He saw that he must make a beginning, and did so with his usual circumspection. His words were carefully selected to avoid giving offence, but the gist of their meaning was that he waited for his visitor to give an account of himself.

"I should like to speak in the presence of my wife," Emmet announced uncompromisingly.

"My daughter will not be present at this interview," the bishop declared, with marked austerity, "nor at any other interview that may subsequently become necessary, though I hope we shall come to such a satisfactory understanding to-day as to make further conferences superfluous. This arrangement is with her entire consent, or rather, is the fulfilment of her expressed wish. I must protest also against your designation of my daughter as your wife. She is not such in the full sense of the term. She has never appeared with you publicly as your wife, but by her desertion of you at the very altar she emphatically showed that she realised her mistake at once and repudiated it."

"Desertion is no cause for divorce, bishop," Emmet returned, with an ugly gleam in his eyes, "either in your Church or in mine. Your daughter's treatment of me has been such that the only amends she can make is to acknowledge our relationship and act accordingly."

"Come, come, Mr. Emmet," the other retorted, "I need scarcely remind you how far my daughter has already atoned for her mistake by helping you to realise your ambition, by suggesting it, in fact, and by lending you books for your instruction. It seems to me that a manly man would acknowledge this frankly, that he would not strive to hold the woman to the letter of the agreement after discovering that the spirit was no longer there to give it life."

"I could have won without her," the mayor declared hoarsely.

The bishop smiled with exasperating, ironical amusement. "We will waive that point, then, Mr. Emmet. It suggests a fruitless discussion, that would merely serve to distract us from the main question. I was about to say, when you interrupted me, that if you always considered your marriage as binding as you now feign to consider it, you should have come to me and announced the fact. By your acquiescence in my daughter's desertion, you tacitly admitted that you released her, that you had nothing to announce. If you did not consider then that the marriage was binding, you cannot begin to do so at this late hour."

"Allow me to say that your daughter considered it binding," Emmet put in shrewdly. "She did not repudiate her mistake, as you call it, by leaving me at the altar. On the contrary, she intended all along to acknowledge our marriage as soon as I should be elected mayor."

"She did not, perhaps, realise the full significance of her instinctive action," the bishop answered. "A woman is a mystery to herself no less than to others. I am putting the case to you as man to man, hoping to kindle a spark of generous understanding in your heart. Could any woman who really loved a man do as she did? I tell you, and you know, that it was the folly of a romantic girl, a folly that does not deserve the penalty you would inflict. If my daughter did not actually, in so many words, repudiate her mistake in the beginning, she did so in a recent interview with you, and she does so finally now by me."

"And she did me a great wrong!" Emmet cried hotly. "If you are a man, bishop, you must know what it meant to be tricked and disappointed as I was."

The bishop's face grew livid, and he shrank within himself.

"You offer a pitiful excuse, sir!" he retorted. "It depends upon what kind of man you mean--the brute man, who regards women merely as the instruments of his passion, or the chivalrous man, who knows that the woman is the weaker vessel and bears himself accordingly. I confess to you that I am not the former kind."

His eyes assumed a keen, inquisitorial look that required all of Emmet's false fortitude to meet.

"Mr. Emmet, I venture to say that I give you the benefit of a very considerable doubt in assuming that you have not given my daughter statutory grounds for divorce by your conduct with some other woman. It seems passing strange that you should have been so acquiescent under an arrangement which you describe as such a hardship, if you were not kept so by a consciousness of duplicity. But I have no desire to pursue that line of inquiry. This so-called marriage must be dissolved. Let us admit that you have not given statutory grounds; there are other grounds concerning which there exists no manner of doubt whatever. I do not speak now of the eternal fitness of things, of those humane and ethical considerations to which I find you impervious, but of legal grounds. My daughter cannot bring an action for non-support against you, because she left you voluntarily. It remains for you to institute proceedings of divorce against her on the ground of desertion. We will not defend the suit."

There was something almost clairvoyant in the bishop's guess of the mayor's infidelity, for pride had caused Felicity to keep Lena out of her confession. She had told only as much as she chose to tell, leaving her father to imagine himself in possession of all the facts. Had she told all, she would have strengthened her case at the expense of her pride; but this was a sacrifice she could not bring herself to make.

Before the bishop finished speaking, his listener had discerned that the veiled accusation was a guess, and nothing more. This knowledge helped him to remain apparently unmoved. It did more. It showed him Felicity's pride in remaining silent concerning a rival so much beneath her. This had been her attitude all along,--to consider Lena beneath contempt,--and he burned to make her suffer for it. He was filled with fury against himself also for yielding at the last to his passion for Lena, after a long and successful struggle. It was this that made it impossible for him to say plainly that he would not give Felicity up, though he had tormented her father by implying it. This method of revenge was the only one now left him.

"But your religion," he suggested, with a sneer.

"Excuse me," the bishop returned, with patient dignity, "if I feel that I am not accountable to you for the manner in which I defend or fail to defend the canons of my Church. My daughter acts as an individual who is of age, and her reckoning is with the civil law. To clear up your evident confusion of mind, I will explain that I violate no canons of the Church in eliminating myself officially from the situation. I am merely suggesting to you, as one individual to another, a way out of a most unhappy complication. Besides, you evade the hard fact that this was no marriage in the full sense of the word."

Emmet realised that his shaft had fallen short, and the knowledge stung him to fury.

"I will not bring any such action!" he cried recklessly, rising in white heat. "I will not release her!"

"We shall accomplish nothing by violence," the bishop interposed. "Pray, resume your chair and hear me out. A marriage without love is a mere mockery and sham. You do not love my daughter, and she does not love you. We will not argue about that, if you please, for it is not possible to contradict an evident fact. You are an ambitious man, and marriage is only one of the ways by which ambition can be furthered. In this case, the marriage is out of the question; but if you will name a compensation which you deem adequate recompense for your disappointment, we shall be ready to listen to the proposition."

Emmet had taken his seat at the bishop's request, but this cynical proposal to buy him off caused him to spring to his feet again in an indignation that was not altogether unjustified. He was a money-maker himself, and had not coveted Felicity's wealth. From her he had sought only social advantage and revenge upon his enemies; but it was his pride to be the builder of his own fortune.

"If you were not an old man," he said tempestuously, "you would not make such an offer with impunity. You will find I have no price. I wish you good day."

"Wait!" the bishop cried, raising his trembling hand and clearing his throat from suffocating emotion. "Only one word more. You shall not have her--that is all. And this house is mine--you shall not enter it again."

The other's face became diabolical in its passion. He leaned against the jamb of the open door and folded his arms mockingly, as if inviting an effort to eject him.

"You were speaking pretty freely of statutory grounds," he said, raising his voice. "It has n't occurred to you, perhaps, that I may name a co-respondent myself. You ought to have a care, bishop, what kind of professors you employ in your college." With these words he turned and strode from the house.

The bishop's speechless indignation presently gave way to the first touch of pity he had yet felt for Felicity in her trouble. The mayor was more of a brute than even he had thought possible, and should receive no quarter in the future. The front door had scarcely closed when his daughter's figure took the place her husband had just occupied before him.

"Well?" she asked simply.

He searched her face with haggard eyes, and guessed from its pallor that his fears were justified.

"Did you hear what the fellow said," he demanded--"his last words?"

The colour came back to her cheeks with a rush. "I could n't very well help it. I was in the dining-room, and the door was open."

"I 'm sorry," he murmured, "very sorry. I hoped you did not. But there, we 'll not discuss the subject any more at present, Felicity. The interview was fruitless, worse than fruitless, I fear." He shifted uneasily in his chair, and she understood his dumb appeal to be left alone.

When she had gone, he arose from his seat and unlocked a long drawer beneath one of his bookcases, from which he took a mass of material relating to the plans for St. George's Hall. These he spread out on the desk before him and studied with deep attention, turning again to this dream with an instinct of self-preservation. To-morrow he would take up again the fight for his daughter's freedom and happiness, but now he was in sore need of some narcotic influence, of something beautiful and permanent, as a refuge from the passions that had threatened to overpower him. Felicity would live this down; it would ultimately seem but a stormy day in the retrospect. Meanwhile, what could he do about this chapel? Here, in this envelope, was a promise of half the money needed, if he could raise the balance within a specified time. He recalled having read in the morning paper of the arrival from Europe of an old friend and former parishioner. She was a rich woman, and was now alone in the world. Perhaps he could get away in a few days and run down to New York to see her. He began to drum absently on the desk with his fingers, turning over in his mind some details in the arrangement of the chapel which he had never settled to his satisfaction. Presently he realised that something was lacking, and reaching forward, he took a cigar from the open box that stood on the revolving bookcase near by.

It was noon when the mayor returned to the City Hall. On the steps, as he entered, stood a figure long familiar in the streets of Warwick, a blind news-vender, with his cane and smoked glasses and bundle of papers. In the morning, he might be seen at the railroad station, a grotesque and patient form, holding out his papers silently in the direction of the shuffling feet that passed by. He never cried his wares, but his appeal was more compelling than the noisy shouts of his more fortunate competitors. He had become an institution in Warwick. Every one knew where to find him at certain hours: in the morning, at the station; toward noon, taking his way, unassisted except by his cane, toward the City Hall, carrying the first edition of a great metropolitan daily of the flaming variety; in the evening, at the station once more. He had made these two posts of vantage his own, as unfortunates in the Old World take possession of sunny corners beside cathedral doors, and no one ventured to trespass within his sphere.

Each noon Emmet had been accustomed to buy a paper, paying a nickel or a dime as it came to his hand, but seldom the penny that was the price of the sheet. To-day he followed his custom mechanically and hurried on, eager to plunge into the distraction of work as a refuge from the tormenting devil within him. The outer office, lined with chairs for visitors and adorned with pictures of former occupants of the mayoralty, was deserted. He passed into the inner office, where his desk stood, piled with the last mail, and sent his stenographer out to lunch, for his own appetite had deserted him.

He had thrown the paper down, with no thought of reading it, and paused to hang up his coat and hat. Upon his return, he was confronted by a black headline in letters two inches deep, and flinging the paper open with a sharp crackle, he stood rigid while the meaning of it burst upon him.

PRETTY MAID MARRIES RICH SWELL!

ROMANTIC RUNAWAY MATCH. YOUNG
HOLLISTER PYLE OF WARWICK MARRIES THE
GIRL THAT FORMERLY LIVED IN HIS HOUSE.
CUPID NOT TO BE BAFFLED BY THE DIFFERENCE
IN SOCIAL POSITION. PARENTS OF
BRIDEGROOM TELEGRAPH THEIR FORGIVENESS.

Emmet slowly sank into his chair, his staring eyes fixed on the page while he rapidly ran through the startling story--not a seven days' wonder, indeed, in these times of universal publicity, but the gossip of a few hours, until the whirling sheets of the next issue should fling some other story of folly or crime into the hands of its gaping readers.

But Emmet was not comforted by a realisation of the transitory nature of the sensation. He heard the newsboys in the street without, crying it hoarsely, and almost wondered why his own name was not coupled with the others, to be bruited about the sidewalks, proclaiming his guilt. In the first moments, his sensations were those of fear and horror. The bottom had dropped out of his world, leaving him suspended over an abyss. He experienced no relief that this act of Lena's freed his own hands. He was free in one sense, but she had fastened a crime upon him forever by taking herself from his path.

What he had intended to do, he did not know. Some vague idea of providing for her had lain dormant in his mind. He had even gone to the bishop's with a subconscious disposition to give Felicity up; but her father's scorn had aroused his perversity, and had resulted in a declaration of obstinacy that was unpremeditated.

Now he knew that he had loved Lena, had intended to stand by her, even to marry her; and he was struck by her pitiful humility. Evidently it had not occurred to her mind that he might get a divorce. Too late he wished he had been frank with her and had asked her to wait. In reality, he was no sensualist, and Lena's frailty had not made him a cynic; on the contrary, he regarded it as a proof of her love alone. In his agony, he did not judge her; he judged only himself. He had taught her duplicity, but he was aghast at her skill in practising the lesson she had learned. During all this time, he had received no hint that young Pyle had followed her from his house. He could only imagine the facts. When Lena left that place to go to Bishop Wycliffe's, she doubtless had an honest desire to escape from the unwelcome attentions she had told him of. She must have begun to weaken only after discovering that the man for whom she made the effort had played her false.

Emmet threw down the paper with a groan and turned to his desk, moved by a desperate hope that he could force himself to appreciate the reality of the interests those piled envelopes represented. He seized them feverishly, and began to shuffle them over like a pack of cards. His random glance was arrested by a thin, wavering hand he knew well, scrawled on an envelope that bore the picture and name of a New York hotel. Had he been a student of chirography, he might have read the secret of the enigma that tormented him in those pale, uncertain pen-strokes, so unlike the firm, compact characters by which Miss Wycliffe visualised her will. But his only thought was that this letter came to him as a final explanation and farewell, after he had lost her forever.

The epistle was confused, and blotted with tears. She told how Pyle had pursued her, how she had resisted him, how she had finally yielded to his importunities, to shield the man that had wronged her and to save herself. If she had not done this, she would have killed herself, but she was afraid to die, and there was no third way. She wrote no word of reproach, but closed with a final message of love and a prayer for his happiness.

Emmet shrank from the lines, as if each were the waving lash of a whip that descended upon him. When he had finished reading, he tore the letter into minute fragments and threw them in the basket. His heart was swelling with the sense of a tragedy that was not completed, but only begun, a tragedy that he and Lena must share together. She had bound him to her forever by putting this barrier between them. He thought of Felicity only to resolve to free himself from her at once, that he might be in readiness to come to Lena's aid in the future, should she need him. Perhaps God would yet give him a chance to make amends. If her husband would only break his worthless neck in one of his mad rushes with his machine, Emmet reflected savagely, or drink himself to death--

Any moment some one might come in and find him there. He got up and locked the door against intrusion before he should be able to master the outward signs of his emotion. Then he returned to his chair and looked about, thinking confusedly. There was something pitiless in the glaring light of noon that disclosed every crack and stain on the ugly brown walls. It was like the relentless light of his new revelation turned upon the stains and patches of his soul, dreary and terrible. Had the hour been twilight, some glamour of lost romance and self-pity might have fallen upon him like a violet veil, hiding the sordid truth; but he lacked the imagination with which artistic natures may shield themselves, and he saw things as they were. He even wandered momently from his own misery to reflect that he would have this room refitted and painted a more cheerful hue, whether for himself or for his successor. The office was beneath the dignity of a city like Warwick.

He picked up the paper and spread it out before him once more, quivering sensitively at the flippant and vulgar tone of the announcement. That "pretty maid" was just Lena to him, whom he had loved in secret, now haled before the tribunal of public opinion. His sensations could scarcely have been more keen, had he also been billed before the gaping crowd. The fact that he was not so billed made him realise what a small part of any secret ever readies the general ear. The plant is pulled up for inspection, but the deeper roots remain behind, hidden in the earth.

There was the elder Pyle, a dignified man, with a war record, who had been one of the committee that thrust the mayor of Warwick aside as unworthy to welcome the President. Here was a strange, unmeditated revenge! Emmet, through Lena, had done much to wreck the happiness of that household. His deed had gotten away from him, and was working on and on, beyond his power to recall, passing from one social class into another as through a familiar medium. The mayor's straight lines of demarcation between classes became blurred; he saw them shift and waver and disappear, till the whole seemed a confused mass of humanity, confluent and interchangeable.

His only desire now was to make reparation, and reparation was denied him. His success had been so steadily progressive, his growing appreciation of his own power so intoxicating, that he had somehow felt he could control this situation also. Even Felicity had not been beyond him, had he chosen to assert himself. But Lena,--so gentle and acquiescent,--it was she who had taken the bit in her teeth and done this astounding thing!

It would be a relief, he reflected, if he could make open confession and begin life over again, or run away from the daily reminder of his sin; but he must remain where he was, and steel himself to see Lena unmoved, a man with an abiding shadow. _

Read next: Chapter 21. The Mayor Finds Himself At Last

Read previous: Chapter 19. Father And Daughter

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