The Mayor of Warwick | Page 4

charm with which a distant view invested it. Though the length of the corporate life of the institution was not unimpressive from an American standpoint, the present building was comparatively recent. A thirty years' growth of ivy was scarcely able to atone for the unencrusted newness of the stones beneath. There was none of that narcotic suggestion of grey antiquity which in Oxford or Cambridge rebukes and stills a personal ambition.
Beyond each small doorway he saw a flight of stone stairs vanishing into the obscurity, and through the open windows he caught glimpses of decorations on the walls, the flags and signs and photographs which everywhere represent the artistic standards of the average undergraduate.
But a compensating surprise was presently in store. As he passed the tower, he heard the deep notes of a pipe organ; the open diapason and flutes of the great, the reeds of the swell, piled one upon another in a splendid harmony. He looked up and saw the lengthened windows that indicated the location of the chapel, which apparently extended the full height of the building. The musician within added a two-foot stop, the final needed element of brilliancy, crowning the edifice of sound his fingers had reared, so that now the music seemed to burst through the half-open windows and to shake the vines upon the wall. Lover of music as he was, this unexpected and triumphant symphony made a peculiar appeal to Leigh's imagination. Through it, as through a golden mist, he saw the drama of life sublimated, himself an actor of dignity and worth; and a few moments later he entered the president's office with a poise in which there remained no trace of anxious conjecture.
A figure rose to greet him as he entered, and though he was himself a tall man, the other loomed above him in the comparative twilight of the room, until he seemed to assume colossal proportions. Then Leigh realized that it was not the height of the man, but his bearing, that gave such significance to the inch or two between them. His grey hair alone suggested years; he held his shoulders like a man of forty. He removed his glasses deliberately, put them on the pile of papers beside him, and stood waiting. There was a courteous enquiry in his very attitude, although as yet he spoke no word. His head was tilted slightly backward, and his smile might have seemed almost inane in its width and in the impression of permanency which it conveyed, were it not for the intellectuality of the brow, the force of the fine aquiline nose, and the watchful perspicacity of the deepset eyes.
"This is Doctor Renshaw, I believe," said Leigh tentatively.
"Doctor Renshaw is here," returned the other, indicating by a slight gesture a figure seated at the far end of the table, which now arose and came toward them. "Doctor, I venture to assume that I have the pleasure of making you acquainted with Mr. Leigh, our new professor of mathematics."
His words were distinctly spoken, but pitched in so low a tone that they produced an odd effect, as of purring.
It was now that Leigh discovered his mistake. The man whom he had taken for the president was Bishop Wycliffe, and it required but five minutes of conversation to show him that the bishop, not the president, was the significant personality.
Doctor Renshaw might have been anywhere in the afternoon of life, and one felt instinctively that his sunset had antedated his meridian. He was like those ancients, spoken of with such disapproval by Cicero, who began to be old men early that they might continue to be old men for a long time. His value to the institution he had served so long, and his safety in his position, lay in the possession of negative qualities. His silence was interpreted as an indication of wisdom, and the firmly cut features of his inscrutable face would have served an artist as a personification of discipline. As he exchanged the conventional greetings the occasion demanded, he might even then have been standing for the portrait of himself that was one day to be added to those of his predecessors on the library wall; or he might have been one of the portraits already there that had stepped from its frame for a moment to take the newcomer by the hand.
In short, the thing of greatest significance in this meeting, the thing which made itself felt by all three participants, was the juxtaposition of the ancient and modern. The young man, clothed in a light grey suit, his soft hat crushed in the nervous grasp of his long fingers, a man whose scholastic training had been disassociated from religious traditions, now stood face to face with mediaevalism, with two elderly men in dark habiliments,