The Mayor of Warwick

by Herbert M. Hopkins

He was happily unconscious of the fact that the eyes of many of the students were fixed upon him with keen observation. The self-contained young professor was as much an unknown quantity as any he asked them to find in the recitation-room. They were baffled by the impersonal attitude he had brought from the university, where the individual counted for little, and were inclined to attribute it to a disposition to be severe in his marking.

It chanced that this morning he was free from recitations, but though his time was his own, he had no definite plan with which to fill it. After lingering in his room for some minutes, he descended once more to the walk, finding relief in simulating a purpose by definiteness of action. Instead of following the line of the building northward, he struck out directly across the plateau, past the flagstaff and the great bronze statue of the bishop, and descended the slope along a path that marked the future grand approach.

As he recalled the bishop's elaborate description, he turned and gazed at the towers which loomed ghost-like beyond the ridge. He was now in the midst of the wide field from which he had heard the tinkle of cow-bells on the morning of his arrival. The place was deserted, save for his own presence. The grass was heavy with clinging globules of moisture, and every head of goldenrod seemed encrusted with glimmering pearls. Everywhere there was a curious and oppressive silence, as if the world were deprived not only of light, but also of life. The great towers appeared unsubstantial, carved from blocks of mist only a degree thicker than that which spread about him. He indulged the odd fancy that a rising wind might sweep the whole away, leaving only a bare hilltop beneath the clearing sky.

The clang of a gong from the car barn beyond came like a reminder of his purpose, a summons to make a tentative effort, at least, to achieve it. So he turned resolutely away, leaving academic dreams in the mist behind him.

The street-car barn was perhaps the dreariest spot in Warwick. Its proximity to the college grounds had caused the bishop to view it with disfavour, and already a fine ivy, planted at his suggestion, covered part of the bare brick walls. The bishop would fain have recalled the days that antedated electric roads, before the company had driven this peg at the corner of his academe and stretched therefrom another gleaming thread of its intricate web of trolley lines. Those were the golden days when one drove up to the Hall in a comfortable carriage, when the richer students went horseback riding along the country roads, when the chug, chug of the motor-car and its attendant smell of gasoline were unknown.

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!

The place was comparatively deserted. Far back in the barn dim figures moved, and from the workhouse in the rear came the clang of metal. One or two passengers were waiting for the next car, and Leigh spied a conductor coming to his work, finishing the last few puffs of his morning pipe. He was an elderly man, with a sweeping grey moustache and a gait that suggested the sea. Behind him two small boys came racing with a cart.

"Hello!" cried the conductor, stepping aside with agility. "What 's this? A Japanese torpedo boat?" He turned to Leigh genially. "I 'll have to spread a net before my bows. These youngsters take me for a Rooshyan battleship."

It occurred to Leigh that this man might know Emmet well, and when the car came in, he stood on the back platform for the purpose of engaging him in talk that might help him in his project. The heavy morning traffic was over, and as the conductor was comparatively unoccupied, he accepted his passenger's advances readily. In a few minutes Leigh became aware that the man knew who he was.

"That's nothing wonderful," he explained. "I've been on this line for years, and I know everybody that travels this way. I thought you were the new professor at the Hall, the minute I set eyes on you."