THE CONFESSION
An hour later, Emmet approached the college through the maple walk with very different feelings from those he had entertained when he watched the sunset behind the towers. Then he had felt the glory of individualism, his own vivid power as opposed to the lethargy of institutions. But his recent experience had started the pendulum back, and now it swung to the other extreme. His self-confidence had been followed by an exhibition of weakness. He who could defy and control men was helpless before the eyes of a woman; he who had burned with indignation at the corrupt politics of his enemies, who had sacrificed his interests to principle by showing Bat Quayle the door, had gone forth and sacrificed his principles to his pleasure at the very first opportunity.
Though by nature objective rather than introspective, his experiences since his first meeting with Felicity were teaching him by hard blows the rudiments of his own psychology. Had he been unmoral, he would have remained unscrupulous and unreflecting, but the claims of right would not down. He saw the better way and approved it, but followed the worse, and his knowledge of this inconsistency was gall and bitterness to his soul. He was as genuinely repentant as it is possible for a healthy man to be while the taste of life is still sweet; yet without doubt a large measure of his repentance was the fear of discovery. In the recesses of his mind lurked a hope that Leigh would be able to show him some way out of the labyrinth, would somehow help him to escape the consequences of his misdeeds.
Born a Catholic, his instinctive attitude toward the established order of things was that of a dissenter. Yet here were religion and learning coming back, and not in vain, to claim their penny of tribute. He had defied the authority of the Church, and had nevertheless accepted her doctrine of the sanctity of marriage; he had scorned the College, and now he turned by preference to one of her representatives, influenced, in spite of prejudice and disillusioning experience, by respect for her ideals. There she loomed, seeming monolithic in her solidity, a part of the rock on which she was built, her windows sending out shafts of light into the surrounding darkness, an allegory in stone.
As he passed the windows, he saw within characteristic glimpses of college life. Half a dozen students were gathered about a fireplace with their pipes, clothed in every variety of garment from the sweater or bath-robe to the evening dress of one who had dropped in for a chat on his way to a dance. In another room a game of cards was in progress; in still a third a thoughtful plodder sat close to his shaded lamp, his head resting upon his hand, an open book before him. Somewhere above he heard a piano played with brilliancy and dash, and the rollicking chorus of the college song:—
Then we 'll drink to old St. George,
(By George!)
Then we 'll drink to our valiant knight,
With his trusty spear,
And never a fear,
And the dragon pinned down tight, tight, tight,
And the dragon pinned down tight!
Emmet listened to the refrain with a curious mixture of envy and contempt. Many a time these fellows had taken his car and discussed football news with him, but at no time, in his hearing, had their conversation indicated intellectual interests or risen even to the level of the socialistic problems that were dear to his heart. He had yet to learn more of college life than is disclosed by the sporting clique to a street-car conductor; but with characteristic self-assurance he thought he had penetrated to the very heart of the machine. The quiet and unobtrusive student, the leaven of the loaf, the future poet or statesman, had never attracted his attention or that of men of his kind. They saw only what was on the surface. It was the froth of college life that gave him a not unwelcome excuse to form caustic generalisations upon a privileged class.
He hurried along, relieved to meet no one on the walk, for there were few who would not have recognised him, and his mood was all for concealment. Observing from without that the light in Leigh's windows was dim, he concluded that he was still upon the tower and went on up the stairs, striking match after match to guide his steps. As he paused to extinguish the embers, he encountered the blank darkness of the walls, relieved by ghostly slits of windows holding here and there a star; and the hollow drumming of the wind was like the sea. It was a release to emerge at last from this series of aerial prisons and to stand beneath the wide sweep of the sky. In answer to his knock Leigh opened the door and confronted him, clothed like a Siberian Cossack.
"Still at it, professor?" Emmet inquired. "I should think you would be frozen out."
"Come in, Mr. Emmet," Leigh answered. "This is a welcome interruption. I 've been working at a problem now for a month, and was just beginning to get a little lonely."