The Mayor of Warwick

by Herbert M. Hopkins

Those whose lives were happy, drawing their breath with a sense of oppression, imagined impending trouble, while those with real tragedies to bear now found them almost insupportable.

Early in the day, St. George's Hall looked down from its lofty ridge upon basins of mist that presented the appearance of white lakes in the meadows below. Gradually the tide rose above the long, low hall, until the towers seemed to rest on clouds. Finally the whole mass disappeared, to loom up larger than reality to the eyes of one approaching from the city. As night came on, the lights from the windows cut lurid pathways into the surrounding obscurity. A gradual chill crept along the ground, thinning the fog and disclosing at intervals ghostly glimmerings of the moon.

Through this strange medium two figures were toiling up the street that flanked the northern limit of the campus. Under normal conditions, the second could easily have seen the one in advance, but now his view was obstructed, and though he gained rapidly, he had reached the entrance of the maple walk before the mist in front of him seemed to concentrate into a flitting shadow that resembled a woman's form. The young astronomer had been wandering for hours in a vain search for diversion, and the vision before him, embodying as it did the subject upon which his mind had been concentrated, caused him to stand still in a tumult of emotion. The next moment it was gone, and he believed that he had been visited by an hallucination. Recently, that earlier picture of Felicity beside the lamp had given place in his imagination to one associated with a deeper experience. He had just pictured her in her scarlet cloak and hood; then he had looked up to see the same figure vanishing before his eyes.

A moment's reflection convinced him of the psychic nature of the phenomenon. In all the range of human probabilities, what errand could lead her at ten o'clock on such a night to that lonely hilltop, and on down the road into the country beyond? It was manifest that his own mind had shaped the vision from the pale vapours, and he realised how weary and overwrought he had become. His sensation was now almost one of fear, as if he had seen the ghost of a loved one rising out of the mists of a remote and passionate past. A strange impulse seized him to follow the phantom further, but he was shivering with the penetrating dampness to which he had been long exposed, and instead he continued his way toward his room.

Had he obeyed his impulse, he would soon have overtaken the living form which he imagined to be an apparition of the mind. Felicity did not keep straight ahead, however, to the westward, but paused at the brow of the hill, breathing deep after her long climb, conscious that the rapid beating of her heart was not wholly due to her recent exertion. It was the prospect of a meeting now imminent that caused the painful tumult in her side and the widening of her dark eyes as she looked up at the saffron blur which marked the position of the moon. Yet there was resolution in her step as she turned southward and took the road that passed between the college and the cliff. In spite of the long thaw, the gravelled track was firm beneath her feet, and she walked rapidly in the direction of the Hall, her face pale and set, her warm breath mingling with the swirling mist.

Leigh was also progressing in the same direction by the almost parallel path between the maples, but somewhat in advance of Felicity, inasmuch as she had climbed to the very summit of the hill before turning, while the course he took extended diagonally across the campus from a point further down. Thus it happened that he had gained his rooms by the time she came opposite his western windows. As she glanced up at them in passing, their location in the wall became more clearly defined by the appearance of a glimmering light within. She saw Leigh, with his hat and coat still on, come from his eastern room, holding a candle in his hand. He stood under the chandelier, raised the candle, and lighted the jets of gas. Then he advanced to the windows, and pulled the curtains down with a decisive motion, that expressed his inward determination to shut out all ghostly imaginings with the night.

Felicity stood for some time regarding the yellow squares in the murky expanse of the wall. She reflected that he might have been very near her in the mist but a few moments before, since he must have entered the grounds by the maple walk. The other path, by the bishop's statue and across the fields, was seldom used in winter, and was now impracticable because of the soggy condition of the turf. The possible results of the meeting, which had evidently been avoided by mere accident, perhaps only by the thickness of the atmosphere, were incalculable, and sent the blood to her cheeks in a sudden glow.

The memory of their last meeting flooded her whole being warmly, to be followed by a dreary realisation of their present position. The very drawing of the curtains between them seemed symbolical, not so much of his expressed determination to see her no more as of the relentlessness of Fate. She believed that he was strong enough to keep his promise, and knew how gladly she would have him break it. Her actual situation at the moment, shut out from him and standing alone in the night, gave her longing an intensity which she had not hitherto experienced. She wondered whether he would have taken her in his arms and kissed her good-bye once more, had he overtaken her upon the hill. Presently she resumed her way, thinking of the man she was leaving there in his lonely tower rather than of the man she was so soon to meet.

Some quarter of a mile further on, she came to a huge button-ball tree that marked the trysting-place. Its great trunk and long branches, spotted with white patches, like scars on the twisted limbs of a giant, confronted her as a hideous and uncanny thing. This tree, the only kind in all the country that lacked beauty of line and colour, received a touch of ghastliness from the atmosphere that enveloped it which was not without its effect upon her imagination, and when she saw the mayor emerge from its shadow, she started as if she were confronted by a highwayman.

"Is it you, Felicity?" he ventured anxiously. "I thought you were never coming."