The Mayor of Warwick | Page 9

Ossa!" Cardington cried. "How much more impressive it makes us seem than if you had merely stated that each of us was six feet tall! It takes an astronomer to calculate great distances. I quite compassionate those little fellows, our colleagues." His eyes twinkled behind his rimless spectacles. "Just amuse yourself with these photographs awhile. Not in your line, perhaps, but interesting to us glow-worms that flit about in ruinous places. I 'll be with you in a few moments."
Even from the room beyond he continued the conversation in his own odd manner, passing to antipodal subjects by paths of association beyond the guess of an imagination less vagrant than his own. With Cardington conversation was a fine art. He loved the adequate or picturesque word as a miner loves an ingot of gold, yet he was able to display his linguistic stores without incurring the charge of pedantry, much as certain women can carry without offence clothes that would smother a more insignificant personality.
"We still have a few minutes to spare," he announced, when he presently reappeared. "Now, which will you have, a Roman Catholic, or an Episcopalian, or a Presbyterian beverage,--Benedictine, port wine, or whiskey?"
Leigh's mood expanded in response to the hospitality. Here was a little fling of the spirit of which he stood in need, a promise of comradeship that was all the more welcome from the fact that his other colleagues had kept him waiting in the vestibule of their regard.
"I'll drink your health in a little whiskey," he replied with alacrity.
"Quite right," Cardington commented, producing a bottle of Scotch. "I hope you 'll find that this has the true Calvinistic flavour. And here's to you likewise. May you yet discover the length, the depth, and the uses of all the canals of Mars." Over the rim of his glass his eyes began to brighten in a manner which his guest already knew to be a prophecy of something good. "That was an excellent jest of the bishop's you told me of yesterday, calling you Peter when he handed you the keys of the door that leads to heaven. Now what did you say in reply?"
"Nothing," Leigh confessed. "He didn't give me fair warning of what was coming."
"Then you lost the opportunity of your life. If you had only said, 'Thank you, my Lord!' Even a Yankee bishop would have had no objection to being my-lorded, you know. Ah, that would have been the retort courteous, and the story is incomplete without it. By your kind permission I shall tell it with that addendum."
"A footnote by Professor Cardington," Leigh suggested.
"No, no, not at all. I 'll work it into the text as your own. The story must go down in history along with the classic jest in regard to the position of the statue's outstretched palm. The bishop told you that, no doubt, anticipating my own good offices."
"It may interest you to know," he went on, as they began to descend the stairs, "that you are to meet a very charming young lady to-night. Miss Wycliffe is a very remarkable young woman in some respects. Have you yet had the pleasure of making her acquaintance?"
"What is she like?" Leigh asked, wondering whether the answer would suggest in any way the young woman he had met the morning of his arrival.
"I shall not allow my enthusiasm to betray me into an inadequate description," Cardington declared. "I could no more make the subject clear to you than you could explain to me the nth degree of x+z, if there is any such expression in algebra, which I should n't be surprised to discover is the case."
"Then I shall have to possess my soul in patience," Leigh answered, with apparent indifference.
When they emerged from the shadow of the Hall, and plunged between the lines of maples, they were obliged to go in single file, for the narrowness of the way. The young mathematician glanced at the last melancholy glow of the sunset which spread out in a faint, fan-shaped aurora above a dun rampart of clouds. His love of nature was no less keen than his appreciation of people and events. The mathematician and the poet held alternate sway over him. This di-psychic quality was evidenced by the rapidity with which the expression of his eye would frequently change from cold calculation to a certain rapt observation, as if he looked up from a complicated problem to contemplate a glimpse of blue distance. Thus it was that he appreciated to the full the panorama spread out before him, though his mind was intent upon another subject; or rather, it might be said that the sight gave warmth and colouring to his thought. He had passed the place of that first meeting several times during the week, and never without