The Mayor of Warwick

by Herbert M. Hopkins

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.