IN WHICH VARNEY, AFTER ALL, REDEEMS HIS PROMISE
From the roaring ovation which followed Peter's brief remarks there emerged again the sudden, clean-cut silence. Mayor Hare—Mayor by the narrowest margin in the heaviest vote ever cast in that town—stood upon the improvised little stand and looked out over the packed square. He rested one small hand upon the gay-clothed rail, and many people saw that it quivered. The showy "demonstration" of Peter's planning, brilliantly launched the moment the count was announced—the imported brass-band, the triumphal procession with the bugles, the streamers and the flag-wrapped carriages, and now the rostrum ready set and waiting in the heart of the dense crowd—all had taken him completely by surprise. His face showed it; yet he was not thinking of that exactly. All at once the Mayor's mind had harked back to another moment, not so many days before, when he had stood in this square to make a speech; and at the rushing thought of the great contrast between that moment and this, there rose in him a sense of gratefulness so deep that it took palpable form, and stuck, suffocatingly, in his throat.
The square swam before his blinded eyes. He took off his glasses and wiped them frankly. Stiff formality left him, without a nod at parting, carrying along the "few remarks" he had nervously thrown together in his Roman progress up Main Street.
"The modesty of the man who has just addressed you," he began unsteadily, "will deceive no one. You all know what I owe to him—what our town owes to him. You all know that if I am almost too proud and too happy to speak at all just now, it is because a kindly chance sent Mr. Maginnis to Hunston."
Cheers, more cheers, and yet again cheers; cheers running on and on as though they never meant to stop; spontaneous waves of applause that meant, what nearly all knew, that Maginnis personally had captured Hunston, and that his efficiency with a chair-leg had reared him into a kind of demi-god among certain rough fellows of the baser sort.
The speaker was resuming, not yet through with his tributes. His eye flitting over the shouting crowd had fallen upon a face.
"I know that both honesty and logic were on the side which Mr. Maginnis, coming here a stranger, elected to support. But honesty does not always make a winning cause, nor does logic. What I may call sympathy is often better than both. The splendid help that we got from Mr. Maginnis received this supplement. Sympathy came to aid Reform. A brutal outrage sullied the name of our town—an outrage which, there is sad reason to believe, was born of politics. The victim of that outrage, and the hero of that terrible night, is happily with us to-day…. I will not offend him with any words of praise. But may I not say in the market-place what is the truism of the committee-room … that when this gentleman did what he did, he brought to Reform the sympathy which … has made me Mayor of Hunston."
Every eye followed the direction of the speaker's glance and his grave bow; and by the chance of good position, it happened that nearly all could see. Upon a dingy porch, a few yards up the Main Street side of the square, stood a tall, young man leaning on a cane, a wide felt hat shading a rather badly marked face. And—there was no possibility of any mistake—it was Jim Hackley's porch that he stood upon, and—yes—it was Jim Hackley himself, a sober and genial Jim Hackley, who stood by his side, in intimate pose, and grinning somewhat sheepishly into the glare of fame which suddenly enveloped him.
What part Hackley had borne in the events to which the orator had referred was never officially known, but it may be said without exaggeration that there had been suspicions abroad against him. His present friendliness with the victim of those events, therefore, seemed the gauge and symbol of penitence and reconciliation.
It was the first time that Hunston had seen Varney since the night he was hurt, and the first time that most of Hunston had ever seen him. The story of his deeds and his sufferings, doubtless considerably embellished and known to every one, made him a figure of keen popular interest, and the cheers and hand-clappings now were thunderous, compelling him to lift his hat again and again. Some even started a swift descent upon the Hackley residence with the evident intention of carrying the young man to the stand on their shoulders. But Hackley came down to his gate to meet them and buffeted them away, explaining loudly, like an old friend and generally acknowledged sponsor: "He ain't up to it to-day, boys! Stand back!"