The Gay Cockade Part 39

"It will be just what you make up your minds now to have it--good and honest and clean, a place that the right kind of people will want to live in, or the place that will attract loungers and loafers."

He laid upon them the burden of individual responsibility. If a town was honest, he said, it was because the men in it were honest; if it was clean it was because its men were clean. It was for each man to decide at this election whether Tinkersfield should have a future of darkness or of light. There were men in that crowd who squared their shoulders to meet the blows of his eloquence, who kept them squared as they made their decision to do their part in the upbuilding of Tinkersfield.

Yet it was not perhaps so much the things that O-liver said as the way he said them. He had the qualities of leaders.h.i.+p--a sincerity of the kind that sways men level with their leaders--the sincerity of a Lincoln, a Roosevelt. For him a democracy meant all the people. Not merely plain people, not indeed selected cla.s.ses. Rich man, poor man, one, working together for the common good.

Back of his sincerity there was fire--and gradually his audience was lighted by his flame. They listened in a tense silence, which broke now and then into cheers. To Jane sitting high up on the benches he was a prophet--the John the Baptist of Tinkersfield.

"And he's mine, he's mine!" she exulted. This fineness of spirit, the fire and flame were hers. "If I know you are there somewhere in the dark I shall pour out my soul--to you--"

The darkness had not yet fallen, but the dusk had come. The platform was illumined by little lights like stars. Back of the platform the eucalyptus trees were now pale spectres, their leaves hanging nerveless in the still air.

O-liver sitting down amid thunders of applause let his eyes go for the moment to Jane. A lamp hung almost directly over her head. She had taken off her wide hat and her hair was glorious. She was leaning forward a little, her lips parted, her hands clasped, as if he still spoke to her.

As Tillotson's sponsor rose Jane straightened up, smiled at Tommy, and again set herself to listen.

The unctuous voice of the speaker was a contrast to O-liver's crisp tones. There were other contrasts not so apparent. This man was in the game for what he could get out of it. He wanted Tillotson to win because Tillotson's winning would strengthen his own position politically. He meant indeed that Tillotson should win. He was not particular as to methods.

He said the usual things: Tinkersfield was no Sunday school; and they weren't slaves to have their liberty taken from them by a lot of impractical reformers. And Lee was that kind. What had he ever done to prove that he'd make good? They knew Tillotson. They didn't know Lee.

Who was Lee anyhow?

He flung the interrogation at them. "What do you know about Lee?"

The pebble that he threw had widening circles. People began to ask themselves what, after all, they knew of O-liver. From somewhere in the darkness went up the words of an evil chant:

What's the matter with O-liver, O-liver, White-livered O-liver?

Ask Jane, Sandwich Jane, O-liver, white liver, Jane, Jane, Jane.

Jane felt her heart stand still. Back of her she heard Tommy swearing: "It's all their d.a.m.ned wickedness!" She saw O-liver start from his chair and sink back, helpless against the insidiousness of this attack.

The speaker went on. It would seem, he said, from what he could learn, that Tillotson's honorable opponent was sailing under false colors. He was a married man. He had deserted his wife. He sat among them as a saint, when he was really a sinner.

"A sinner, gentlemen." The speaker paused for the effect, then proceeded with his argument. Of course they were all sinners, but they weren't hypocrites. Tillotson wasn't a hypocrite. He was a good fellow. He didn't want Tinkersfield to be a Sunday school. He wanted it to be a town. You know--a town that every fellow would want to hit on Sat.u.r.day night.

There were those in the crowd who began to feel that a weak spot had been found in O-liver's armor. Secrecy! They didn't like it. There were signs of wavering among some who had squared their shoulders. After all, they didn't want to make a Sunday school of Tinkersfield. They wondered, too, if there wasn't some truth in the things that were being hinted by that low chant in the darkness:

Ask Jane, Sandwich Jane, O-liver, white liver, Jane, Jane, Jane.

O-liver was restless, his hands clenched at his sides. Atwood and Henry were restless. Tommy was restless. They couldn't let such insults go unnoticed. Somebody had to fight for Jane!

Tillotson's supporters kept the thing stirring. If the meeting could end in a brawl the odds would be in favor of Tillotson. The effect of O-liver's uplift would be lost. Even his friends couldn't sway a fighting crowd back to him.

But they had forgotten to reckon with Jane!

She had seen in a sudden crystal flash the thing which might happen. A fight would end it all for O-liver. She had seen his efforts at self-control. She knew his agony of soul. She knew that at any moment he might knock somebody down--Tillotson or Tillotson's sponsor. And it would all be in the morning papers. There would be innuendo--the hint of scandalous things. And O-liver's reputation would pay the price. It was characteristic that she did not at the moment think of her own reputation. It was O-liver who must be saved!

And so when Tillotson's backer sat down Jane stood up.

"Please, listen!" she said; and the crowd turned toward her. "Please, listen, and stop singing that silly song. I never heard anything so silly as that song in my life!"

Before her scorn the chant died away in a gasp!

"The thing you've got to think about," she went on, "isn't Tillotson or O-liver Lee. It's Tinkersfield. You want an honest man. And O-liver Lee's honest. He doesn't want your money. He's got enough of his own.

His father's the richest man in his part of the state and his wife's a movie actress and makes as much as the President. It sounds like a fairy tale, but it isn't. If O-liver Lee wanted to live on his father or his wife he could hold out his hand and let things drop into it. But he'd rather earn fifteen dollars a week and own his soul. And he isn't a hypocrite. His friends knew about his marriage. Tommy Drew knew, and I knew. And there wasn't any particular reason why he should tell the rest of you, was there? There wasn't any particular reason why he should tell Tillotson?"

A murmur of laughter followed her questions. There was a feeling in the crowd that the joke was on Tillotson.

"I wonder how many of you have told your pasts to Tinkersfield! How many of you have made Tillotson your father confessor?

"As for me"--her head was high--"I sell sandwiches. I am very busy. I hardly have time to think. But when I do think it is of something besides village gossip."

She grew suddenly earnest; leaned down to them. "You haven't time to think of it either," she told them; "have you, men of Tinkersfield?"

Her appeal was direct, and the answer came back to her in a roar from the men who knew courage when they saw it; who knew, indeed, innocence!

"No!"

And it was that "No" which beat Tillotson.

"The way she put it over," Atwood exulted afterward, "to a packed crowd like this!"

"The thing about Jane"--Henry was very seriously trying to say the thing as he saw it--"the thing about Jane is that she sees things straight.

And she makes other people see."

IX

Well, Tillotson was beaten, and the men who supported O-liver came out of the fight feeling as if they had killed something unclean.

And the morning after the election O-liver had a little note from Jane.

"I've got to go away. I didn't want to worry you with it before this. I have saved enough money to start in at some college where I can work for a part of my tuition. I have had experience in my little lunch room that ought to be a help somewhere.

"When I finish college I'm going into some sort of occupation that will provide a pleasant home for mother and me. I want books, and lovely things, and a garden; and I'd like to speak a language or two and have cultured friends. Then some day when you are made President you can say to yourself: 'I am proud of my friend, Jane.' And I'll come to your inauguration and watch you ride to the White House, and I'll say to myself as I see you ride, 'I've loved him all these years.'

"But I shan't let myself say it now. And that's why I'm going away. And I'm going without saying good-bye because I think it will be easier for both of us. You and I can't be friends. What we feel is too big. I found that out about myself that night when you sat there on the platform, and I wanted to save you from Tillotson. If I'm going to work and be happy in my work I've got to get away. And you will work better because I am gone. I mustn't be here--O-liver."

Jane had indeed seen straight. O-liver laid the note down on his desk and looked up at the mountain. He needed to look up. If he had looked down for a moment he would have followed Jane.

X

And now there was no sandwich stand in Tinkersfield. But there was a good hotel. O-liver saw to that. He got Henry Bittinger to put up the money, with Tommy and his mother in charge. O-liver lived in the hotel in a suite of small rooms, and when Atwood Jones pa.s.sed that way the four men dined together as O-liver's guests.