The Mayor of Warwick | Page 7

but he did n't go as far as the stars. He
tried it once, and fell, like Icarus, into the sea. In other words, he
published something based upon insufficient data, I believe, which
reflected no credit on the college. Then he naturally blamed the
instrument."
"I have done something in astronomy," Leigh remarked, "and hope to
do more."
"Well, I must leave you now," said his conductor. "You must come and
dine with us soon. I would like you to meet my daughter. Say a week
from to-night, at seven. I 'll leave you here, if you wish, to examine the
telescope further. Doctor Renshaw will give you all necessary
information in regard to your rooms, the entrance examinations, et
cetera."
He had almost disappeared down the stairs as he said these words.
Presently his head and shoulders arose once more above the roof.
"And here are the keys," he added. "What did you say your given name
was?"
"Llewellyn," Leigh answered, surprised at the abruptness of the
question.
"Ah," said the bishop, chuckling softly, "so it is. A good Welsh name,
but Peter would be more appropriate under the circumstances."
With this little jest, whose significance Leigh was somewhat slow in
grasping, he once more descended the stairs.
It was now high noon, and Leigh, left alone, paced up and down the
large, sunny square, filled with appreciative thoughts of the bishop. So
benign and humorous was the presence of the man that for some time
his influence survived his actual departure and precluded other thoughts.
In a reactionary glow of hope and confidence the young astronomer
traversed the circumference of his lofty eyrie, pausing from time to

time to gaze through one of the embrasures of the parapet upon the
incomparable scene below. Accustomed as he was to the arid glory of
California, he found a grateful refreshment in this far greener country.
The tower was like a Pisgah, from which he gazed upon the promised
land with eyes that wearied of the desert.
CHAPTER III
CARDINGTON
Leigh stood before the mirror in his bedroom and wrestled with his tie
in preparation for the bishop's dinner. The week had brought in due
course that procession of events which makes the opening of a college
term a period of exceptional activity, but for the first time he had
passed through the trial untaxed. He was slowly recovering from a
sense of disappointment similar to that felt by a metropolitan at some
Arcadian retreat, when he stands on the lonely platform at nightfall,
listening to the trilling of the frogs increasing as the rumble of the train
diminishes in the distance, and experiences a wild impulse to return at
once to the fulness of life from which he has fled.
In the ample leisure afforded by his new position Leigh discovered an
analogous consciousness of loss, with its consequent dismay. He had
known many solitary hours when, as a student in the Lick Observatory,
he had searched the skies for long months together; but the experience
was overlaid by one more recent, so that now, with the varied life of a
great university still ringing in his ears, he looked about and asked
himself disconsolately if this were all. Had he plumbed the possibilities
of the place in so short a time? And, if so, what was left for him in the
year to come?
An answer to this question was suggested by his present occupation. If
he could now and again leave the rarefied atmosphere of the hill for
some such diversion as the one in prospect, he would return better able
to make good use of that solitude in which real achievement is shaped.
As yet there seemed small chance that such diversions would become
sufficiently numerous to interfere with his work. He had met the other

nine members of the faculty, and while he found them courteous, he
became at once aware that their attitude toward him as a newcomer was
one of indifference. The smallness of their number did not operate to
draw them more closely together, as might have been supposed. Each
returned to the city at the end of his day's work, and was lost to view in
his own peculiar circle. Some time, no doubt, their social obligation to
the new professor in the tower would become imperative, but the time
was not yet. Meanwhile, he felt himself regarded warily, an attitude
which to his friendly Western nature seemed to betoken a vague
disapprobation. He did not realise that there was nothing personal in
this aloofness, except in so far as he personified a larger life, whose
hopeful outlook stirred in more cabined natures an unacknowledged
resentment. Here he found no remnant of the traditional hospitality of
the borderland. The conditions of this old