O-liver's speech was made in the open. There was a baseball park in
Tinkersfield, bounded at the west end by a grove of eucalyptus. With
this grove as a background a platform had been erected. From the
platform the rival candidates would speak. At this time of the year it
would be daylight when the meeting opened. Tillotson was not to speak
for himself. He had brought a man down from San Francisco, a big
politician with an oily tongue. O-liver would of course present his own
case. The thing, as Atwood told Henry, promised to be exciting.
Jane came with Tommy. There was a sort of rude grand stand opposite the
platform, and she had a seat well up toward the top. She wore a white
skirt, a gray sweater and a white hat. She had a friendly smile for the
people about her. And they smiled back. They liked Jane.
O-liver spoke first. Bare-headed, slender, with his air of eternal
youth, he was silhouetted against the rose red of the afterglow.
When he began he led them lightly along paths of easy thought. He got
their attention as he had so often got it in front of the post-office.
He made them smile, he made them laugh, he led them indeed finally into
roaring laughter. And when he had brought them thus into sympathy he
began with earnestness to speak of Tinkersfield.
Jane, leaning forward, not missing a word, felt his magnetism. He spoke
of the future of Tinkersfield. Of what must be done if it was to fulfill
its destiny as a decent town. He did not mince his words.
"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 leadership--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 classes. 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?