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
Attendance at chapel, he had discovered, was obligatory upon the
students and upon those clerical members of the faculty who conducted
the services. Personally he was drawn thither by the peculiar flavour
which the exercises gave his daily life. It was pleasant to sit alone
in his pew against the wall above the tiers of students, to watch the
morning sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows, and to
listen to the antiphonal singing of a fine old Rouen meditation.
Occasionally the services began with a Sapphic ode by Gregory the
Great, whose opening line, _Ecce iam noctis tenuatur umbra_, set to
music from the Salisbury Hymnal, resounded through the arches of the
chapel like a call to the duties of the day. In the institution from
which he had recently come, the jealousy of rival sects had resulted in
the complete elimination of all outward forms of worship; and he found
the change grateful. There was novelty and charm in a service attended
wholly by men, and in the music, as mediaeval in character as the
architecture of the Hall itself. Like most of his contemporaries,
Leigh could by no means have formulated his religious beliefs, but in
all the chaos of modern thought he still retained a certain piety, in
the old Roman sense of the word, a loyalty to the traditions of his
fathers which he would never have dignified by the name of faith.
He was happily unconscious of the fact that the eyes of many of the
students were fixed upon him with keen observation. The self-contained
young professor was as much an unknown quantity as any he asked them to
find in the recitation-room. They were baffled by the impersonal
attitude he had brought from the university, where the individual
counted for little, and were inclined to attribute it to a disposition
to be severe in his marking.
It chanced that this morning he was free from recitations, but though
his time was his own, he had no definite plan with which to fill it.
After lingering in his room for some minutes, he descended once more to
the walk, finding relief in simulating a purpose by definiteness of
action. Instead of following the line of the building northward, he
struck out directly across the plateau, past the flagstaff and the
great bronze statue of the bishop, and descended the slope along a path
that marked the future grand approach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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