The house rocked with the storm of cheers, with cries of his name, but he marched straight on, behind his smiling Rankin, who responded to the greetings of men who rose from chairs or pressed themselves flat against the walls to give room in the aisle. The little party disappeared behind the scenes, and the ovation lulled.
Emily felt her throat close and feared the tears that already moistened her eyes. She tried to compose her features, she crushed Dade’s arm in her fingers, then she stole a glance at those about her. Everybody was looking at Garwood, everybody save one, her father; he was looking at her, while Mrs. Garwood, having found her handkerchief, held it in her work-worn hands just as it had come from the iron that afternoon, fresh and clean, keeping her eyes fixed on the stage, watching for her boy to appear again, while tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks.
And then Emily heard Dade whisper:
“Wondah why they didn’t come in by the stage entrance?”
Rankin and Garwood had stepped on the stage, and the applause had broken forth again. Garwood had taken out a big white handkerchief and was wiping his brow. He was smiling now, and greeting the vice-presidents of the meeting, who stretched their bodies across their neighbors’ knees to shake his hand. Rankin, too, was mopping his forehead, and he had his watch out. As soon as he saw that Garwood was seated, he stepped to the front of the stage, his red face round with smiles. Then suddenly his smile died, his face blanched, and he tapped the decorated table with the gavel that lay on it. He took a swallow of the water he supposed was in the glass, and at last his voice came:
“Friends an’ fellow citizens,” he said, though not many could hear him, “will you come to order, an’ I now have the honor of interducin’ to you Judge Bickerstaff, who will preside at this meetin’ as permanent chairman.”
Rankin retired amid a volley of hand-claps, which the rotund judge, advancing to the front of the stage, buttoning his frock coat about him, thought were meant for him. He bowed ponderously, and then, with one hand on the table beside him, began the platitudinous speech of the permanent chairman. The people bore with him in that divine patience to which the American public has schooled itself under this oft-recurring ordeal, and even gave him some perfunctory applause. But the quality of the applause was spontaneous only when he reached the place where he said:
“I now have the very great honor and the very great pleasure of introducing to you your next congressman, the Honorable Jerome B. Garwood.” Jerry arose at the sound of his own name and, advancing to the front of the stage, stood there calm and composed until the applause died away; stood there calm and composed until the silence came and deepened. He looked over the whole audience, at the galleries even, and then his eye traveled unerringly to the spot where his own sat. He looked at his mother, gazing up at him through her dim spectacles, at Dade who smiled, at Mr. Harkness who was stern, at last at Emily. Their eyes met, and as Emily’s fell she heard his voice in low, musical modulation:
“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen.”
And his last speech of the campaign began.