Was her pride so exacting that she demanded perfection in return for her condescension? Would she make no allowances whatever? It seemed to Leigh that such an attitude on her part would be inhuman. During his visit to New York he had recovered his grip upon himself, for he was not one to throw away his days like the petals of a discarded flower because he had failed to win the woman he loved. Love, he reminded himself bitterly, was not the main business of life. This mood of renunciation gave him an almost impersonal appreciation of his successful rival; but the tribute left him heartsick. Like all personally ambitious men who have failed of popular applause, the success of another filled him with momentary self-depreciation. To be sure, this popular triumph of Emmet was fleeting and local, while he himself meant yet to win a permanent, though restricted, fame. Of this he had no doubt. The present scene stirred him to grim emulation. To-morrow he would realise that shouting and the clapping of hands are as transient as the wind in the trees; but to-night they were, after all, something well worth winning.
Presently, as if a play previously rehearsed were being acted before the eyes of the audience, the "prominent representatives" of the city and state began to swarm out from the wings and fill the chairs. Senators, judges, millionaires, popular preachers, all sunk to the dead level of a supporting chorus, an impressive illustration of the littleness of the locally great. To all those thousands of intent eyes these were merely the background upon which, in another moment, was to be projected the one figure of national importance.
And now he was standing before them, instantly recognisable, though his appearance magically bettered expectation. The committee, virtuously true to the course of action they had planned, had passed Emmet by without a look, but the people surged to their feet and cheered, as they saw the President pause and take their mayor by the hand. The two stood in front of the passing chorus, apparently chatting like old friends, and as the audience caught sight of the President's famous smile, they laughed aloud. Even those who might later call the President's action shrewd politics now felt that it was dictated by unaffected humanity, and their carefully nursed attitude of criticism melted for the time in the warmth of that solvent personality.
As the confusion began to subside, while the observed and the observers resumed their seats, Leigh suddenly saw Bishop Wycliffe sitting beside the local bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. The proximity of the two men, the easy courtesy of their manner as they exchanged a whispered remark and turned again to glance at the President, stirred Cardington to comment.
"That's a touching picture of Christian charity," he murmured, with a gleam of amusement in his eyes, "our Anglican and Latin ecclesiastical princes side by side, forgetful of the Eve of St. Bartholomew and of Henry VIII. I have n't the slightest doubt that they are more conscious at this moment of those very things and of their respective traditions than of the situation before them."
His companion, looking for the bishop's daughter, scarcely heard what he said. He discovered her in a box at one side of the stage, in the midst of her friends, and was not surprised at the studied unconcern of her manner. She must have come prepared to play her part. It was her beauty only that surprised him. His mental picture of her was pale compared with the glowing reality, for she seemed to have brought with her all the warmth and colour of the south. Though her eyes were turned in Emmet's direction, the casual observer might naturally have supposed that the President, sitting in the same line of vision, was the object of her interest. Only Leigh, glancing from one to the other, saw her falter slightly as she encountered her husband's fixed and meaning look. There was a determination in his aspect that shook ever her fortified resolve. The colour slowly mounted in his face, and his cheek pulsed with emotion. As her gaze fluttered away, he turned himself in his chair with a decisive motion, like one who bides his time, and sat looking upon vacancy. He seemed to forget the scene before him and his own position between the warring forces so dramatically brought together.
The silence of expectancy that had fallen upon the house was pierced by a low hissing sound, for Anthony Cobbens had risen to his feet and advanced to the footlights to make the speech of introduction. As the malignant greeting reached his ears, his face paled and his fingers tightened on the rim of the silk hat which he held awkwardly in the bend of his arm. The scene Cardington had anticipated was about to be enacted. Upon Cobbens, as the mouthpiece of the committee, the fury of the people now turned itself, a fury no less intense because restrained to some extent by the presence of the President. Perhaps the unfortunate spokesman had thought that this presence would save him entirely, for his reception seemed to turn him to stone. As he waited for the hissing to subside, he presented an appearance at once so grotesque and pitiful that his bitterest enemy must needs have felt some twinges of compassion. That tight-waisted and wide-skirted coat, those faultless trousers, served only to give a waspish effect, and to emphasize the insignificance of the figure they were meant to dignify. He wore a solitary pink carnation, selected with solicitous care. His thin face seemed to shrivel under the fierce rays of scorn concentrating from thousands of eyes, and his large, bald crown began to glisten with slow drops of sweat. Even his voice, when he was permitted to speak, had lost its timbre and suggested the voice of a somnambulist.
It was evident that he had prepared a long and elaborate address, for presently in the monotonous mumble of his words familiar phrases began to reach the ears of those who listened,—"when police commissioner of New York"—"the Rough riders"—"San Juan Hill,"—but for once their conjuring power was gone, and they were greeted in silence or drowned in mocking catcalls. Not one in ten of his audience knew or cared what he was saying; not one in a thousand was moved to pity for his plight. The people had been visited with scorn that day through an insult to their elected representative, and now they paid it back with interest. The lion was eating his trainer, and licking his chops with grim satisfaction. The spirit was that of class against class, bitter, ugly, and revengeful.
Leigh's personal interest was supplemented by the curiosity of a comparative stranger, who drinks in every detail of a situation typical of the country in which he has come to dwell. He studied the various faces on the platform attentively, and wondered whether Judge Swigart were now convinced of the existence of the class feeling which he had so blandly belittled in the joint debate; but the defeated candidate, like the majority of his companions, had assumed a studied and enigmatic expression. So great was the tension that no one ventured to look at his neighbour. In a way they were all sharers in the humiliation of Cobbens, and co-recipients of the people's scorn. He saw Felicity and Mrs. Parr putting their heads together in whispered comment. The bishop stirred uneasily and glanced with irritation at the speaker's back, as if he would fain have bid him make an end. In a moment of pardonable weakness the mayor's lips parted in the briefest of smiles. Then he took out his handkerchief to conceal his emotion, and having propped his chin upon the palm of his hand, he gazed abstractedly at the floor.
The President, twitching in his chair, appeared well-nigh unable to control his nervousness. He grasped the arms of his seat convulsively, he polished his glasses, he screwed up his eyes, he smiled, he frowned. Watching him with intense interest, Leigh entirely forgot the speaker. He had not imagined the President's build so powerful. There was a brute strength in the neck and shoulders that would have been no inadequate endowment for a pugilist; yet this suggestion was offset by an expression of which his pictures had given scarcely a hint. It was not difficult to understand how his enthusiastic biographer had been carried away by that probity and sweetness, so that he made both himself and his hero ridiculous and aroused inextinguishable laughter among the arbiters of good taste. The subject was one that tempted men to violent opinions on one side or the other.