The Mayor of Warwick

by Herbert M. Hopkins

In this way they participated in the slow movement that for some time had been turning toward the dining-room. Through the open door they saw the solid phalanx of earnest eaters that surged about the tables. To disinterested eyes the sight might have appeared one of agonised appetition, in which, as in battle, some particular person or movement arrested the attention for a moment from the general effect: a stout and determined matron planted like James Fitz-James upon his rock; a tall youth with salad raised aloft as he turned to make his escape; the perspiring face of some bewildered darkey, who could have found ample use for the hands of a Briareus in the stress of conflicting orders. Leigh turned to his companion with an enquiring glance.

"Will you allow me to forage for you, Miss Wycliffe?"

She shook her head. "Not yet, at any rate," she answered. "What a spectacle! We might step into the conservatory and rest awhile."

She led the way through a near-by door into the vistas of greenness beyond. There she paused from time to time to call his attention to some rare plant, to lift some blossom to her face, and then went on with the assurance of one entirely at home in her surroundings. Through the thick branches Leigh caught more than one glimpse of a white dress, and heard an occasional ripple of youthful merriment. The vision of one of his students hurrying down a parallel aisle with spoils from the table gave him a humorous sense of fellow feeling.

At length they found a seat of twisted branches, screened by a row of palms. From the hallway of the house the scraping of the violins came intermittently, like the sound of crickets in a distant field, so faint that they could also hear the puffing of the breeze through a raised panel in the slanting roof of glass above their heads. It seemed as if the wonderful Indian Summer night were trying to steal in among the guests through that small opening, to bid them be still. To look up at that vitreous, transparent roof was like gazing into the enchantment of a witch's mirror, so imminent was the mysterious depth of the night beyond. 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. These facts, beautifully coincident as they seemed to him, would not bear expression in words. She would think he was making conventional love to her, and his instinct forbade such an obvious beginning. He spoke, therefore, only of the refreshing contrast of their asylum with the noise and glare of the drawing-rooms, noting with a passing pang as he did so that the lilies of the valley which she had carried with her thus far were drooping in her lap, their expiring odour quenched by the heavy fragrance about them.

Perhaps it was a touch of feminine perversity that led her to acquiesce in his animadversions upon the scene they had just left. It was certainly a function in which she was peculiarly fitted to shine, and she had taken her part with every appearance of enjoyment; yet her comments were more caustic than his own.

"The lecture was the better part," she declared. "I wish it had been longer—but you missed a good deal of it."

"Yes," he explained. "I didn't get away from the debate till after six o'clock."

"The debate!" she echoed, fixing him with an interested gaze. "I had forgotten that this was the evening. Tell me about it. Did your tentative efforts with Mr. Emmet bear any fruit, after all?"

He shook his head, smiling. "It was an extraordinary spectacle," he mused. "The pit and the balconies, the aisles, the space at the back, and the stairs down to the sidewalk were filled with labourers, packed close together, their dinner-pails in their hands and their pipes in their mouths. You could have cut the air with a knife into chunks of tobacco smoke."