Herbert M. Hopkins

“ 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. ”

“ Miss Wycliffe emitted the ghost of a sigh, as if to express her relief and sense of escape, perhaps her weariness. Leigh, following her glance upward, caught sight of a solitary, brilliant star peeping through the triangular aperture, and reflected with keen appreciation that it was the planet Venus. There was an opportunity in this chance apparition, of which, however, he did not avail himself. It was true that she had drawn his eyes down from the stars to gaze into her own, and that the planet upon which they then looked together had been given the name of the goddess of love. ”

“ He did not doubt now that Leigh was in love with his daughter, and for the first time he was seriously doubtful of her attitude toward a young man. Proud and beautiful, she had always held herself aloof, with something of fine scorn, from the frock-coated, silk-hatted, conventional men of her acquaintance, as if she shared her father's opinion of her worth, as if she secretly sympathised with the plans she knew he cherished concerning the completion of the college quadrangle. Was she now to decline to the level of this fortune hunter, this crude young Westerner? ”

“ A great roar ascended to the roof; the nearer seats were submerged by the black mass, which sent out thin streams between the rows, like an advancing tide creeping shoreward between ledges of rock. Leigh and Cardington rose to their feet and stood gazing at the spectacle. For the most part the crowd was composed of labouring men, who looked as if they had just come from the factory or the shop, but here and there could be seen a glimpse of bright ribbon, or a feather, or the silk hat of a pale-faced clerk. ”

“ The musician within added a two-foot stop, the final needed element of brilliancy, crowning the edifice of sound his fingers had reared, so that now the music seemed to burst through the half-open windows and to shake the vines upon the wall. Lover of music as he was, this unexpected and triumphant symphony made a peculiar appeal to Leigh's imagination. Through it, as through a golden mist, he saw the drama of life sublimated, himself an actor of dignity and worth; and a few moments later he entered the president's office with a poise in which there remained no trace of anxious conjecture. ”

“ The resentment which she had scarcely acknowledged to herself had grown during the weeks of unmerited neglect, and its expression had given her an advantage, had filled him with strange pleasure. He would find it harder to stay away from her so long again. From now on she was armed with a new knowledge of her lover.
Emmet too was seeing new light. He did like opposition in a woman, but not that of a superior mind and a higher station. He would have enjoyed the tingle of Lena's little hand smiting his cheek, that helpless little hand which he could so easily control. ”

“ Through this rich and varied scene he sped swiftly, filled with all a Westerner's keen appreciation of a New England landscape, constantly contrasting the arid glories of deserts he had seen with the plenty about him. The farms of the fertile tracts of California were infinitely greater, the methods by which they were worked more modern, but about these smaller homesteads hung an atmosphere of history and romance. Leigh might champion the West in the presence of the bishop, but now, alone with his own thoughts, he paid tribute to the land in which the liberties of his country had been cradled. ”

“ As Lena Harpster drank her coffee and noted her lover's increasing uneasiness, she gave no sign of her resentment, part of which was due to the unwillingness of a sensuous nature to leave a warm corner by the fire on a winter night. Her awakened sense of power made her for the first time rebellious of being hustled out of sight and kept in the dark. The struggle between her and Emmet was on in earnest, and her heart beat fast with a resolve to delay him there until they should be seen together. ”

“ So struck was Leigh by this picture, and by the fact that his hope of meeting again the goddess of the maple walk was about to be realized, that Cardington was well on his way up the stairs before he hurried in pursuit. Unawake himself to modern art tendencies, he felt, without conscious reflection or comparison, the old-fashioned appearance of the house. The severe, dark paper on the wall, the steel engravings that had hung for years untouched, were evidently as the bishop's wife, or as one belonging to a still earlier generation, had placed them. ”

“ Though Leigh was far from sharing the bishop's whimsical indignation at this change, even he felt the chill unloveliness of the long reaches of the barn filled with lifeless cars, where an occasional electric bulb burned like an ignis fatuus in the misty gloom. How much more attractive a railroad roundhouse, with iron monsters on its converging tracks, each with his cyclopean eye of fire, each panting deeply with slow jets of steam! ”

“ To his chagrin, he found that she was not at home. The maid informed him further that she had gone to New York for a week. As he walked slowly away, he wondered almost resentfully at this sudden disappearance, as if he felt that she ought to stay in Warwick and watch the result of her experiment. But he did not consider that if the daughters of men would be clothed like the lilies of the field, they must seek periodically the place most remote from the solitude in which their models grow. ”

“ Suddenly he became aware that Cardington had been talking again, and that he had shown indifferent courtesy as a listener. He roused himself to attention, and detected at once the unusual flavour of his companion's remarks, from which all jest had gone, showing instead a poetical and reminiscent mood.
"The silhouettes of the trees which the electric light throws upon the walk," he was saying, "remind me of a wonderful moonlight night I once spent at Assisi. I was younger then than I am now, and it was my first journey in that land of enchantment. ”

“ In this mood he cared not at all to discuss the events of the evening with his companion; but Cardington was full of caustic comment.
"It was a great occasion," he mused. "We have seen what we came out to see, and what more have we a right to demand? The dear people rampant, the respected mayor quiescent, but biding his time, Cobbens couchant but fanged, the President raised to a sublime apotheosis. It is always a pleasure—is it not?—to witness transcendent ability, even if it be in the line of practical politics. The perfection of each thing is worth observing. ”

“ Yet it was this possibility that struggled dumbly within them for recognition, so that now their mood was one of storm, all the more intense from its repression. They were conscious each moment of the man who stood between them, no longer the familiar figure, but one evoked by their mutual guilt and sublimated by Cardington's prophetic words, strong to avenge himself upon his enemies and betrayers. Leigh, convinced that Emmet would claim his own, suffered already the anguish of renunciation, more poignant that the pressure of her unresisting lips was still felt warmly on his own. ”

“ In front of the City Hall, lately such a scene of busy life, a solitary car stood ready to start upon its homeward trip, its two violet lamps winking in the wind like a pair of sleepy eyes. Only the all-night drug-store on the opposite corner kept up an appearance of wakefulness by means of a corona of milk-white lights that made a brilliant spot in the comparative obscurity of the long thoroughfare.
Whatever poetical or imaginative suggestions might lie in this scene for others, it made no such appeal to Tom Emmet as he strode along, passing belated pedestrians in his course. ”

“ She must have come prepared to play her part. It was her beauty only that surprised him. His mental picture of her was pale compared with the glowing reality, for she seemed to have brought with her all the warmth and colour of the south. Though her eyes were turned in Emmet's direction, the casual observer might naturally have supposed that the President, sitting in the same line of vision, was the object of her interest. Only Leigh, glancing from one to the other, saw her falter slightly as she encountered her husband's fixed and meaning look. ”

“ In his eyes smouldered a dull glow, as of resentment at the limits of the human stomach and the volubility of wives. He woke up as his visitor prepared to depart, to inform him that the thermometer had registered twenty degrees of frost that morning, and to express the conviction that Warwick would spoil him for residence hereafter in any other city. Leigh assured him that there was no doubt of it, and went out into the winter twilight, homesick for the full, crude life of the Middle West, for the picturesque civilisation of California, for the smoke and splendour and roar of New York. ”