The Mayor of WarwickHopkins, Herbert M. (Herbert Müller)
General
The Mayor of Warwick
Hopkins, Herbert M. (Herbert Müller)
Mayors -- Fiction; New England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Social classes -- United States -- Fiction
"Not for two years or more; but we met from time to time. I can't help
wondering now why nobody suspected the truth. Of course the boys
chaffed me a good deal, and asked to be invited to the wedding, but
they were miles short of guessing the real state of affairs. Sometimes
I noticed her friends putting their heads together and knew they were
discussing me, for they stopped whispering when I came up for their
fares. But even so I heard casual remarks. Some said it was sweet of
her--the way women talk, you know--and democratic, and others said it
was no use trying to do anything for that kind of people."
"Mrs. Parr, for example?"
"Yes," Emmet burst out, his eyes flashing redly, "but I 'll show that
singed cat yet what kind of people I am! I 'll show her and her whole
damned set!" His anger almost choked him, and his face grew crimson.
"She's part of the story, too," he went on, "but she does n't come in
yet. However, if there were two people in Warwick that suspected
anything serious, it was that woman and Professor Cardington."
"Not the bishop?" Leigh asked.
"I don't think so, though he did freeze me in that way of his that you
can't put your finger on. He's as proud as Lucifer, and would as soon
have thought of his daughter falling in love with some little Dago on
the street as with me. But all the same, he did n't approve of her
interest in me, and he managed to make it evident."
Leigh had a vision of the blow that awaited the bishop's pride. He
even wondered whether the disclosure would kill him, but he made no
comment. In his own heart a sense of anger deadened for the time being
his sense of loss. Since his discovery of the fact that she was a
married woman, her treatment of him appeared so much more heartless
that he felt he could never forgive her.
"We were married in New York," Emmet explained. "It was in September.
The bishop was off on a visitation; Mrs. Parr was in Europe. We met"--
"Never mind," Leigh interrupted, shrinking. "Tell me where the other
woman comes in."
"That's just what I 'm coming to now. When we got back to Warwick,--we
didn't come together, you understand,--I found out for the first time
what I was in for. That was when my troubles began."
"You don't speak as if you loved her," the other said harshly. Was it
for this she had thrown herself away? Fortunately Emmet was too much
absorbed in himself to note the suppressed scorn and fury of his voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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