"Put a value on yourself, though," she advised him. "It really isn't human nature, you know, to pick up the things that are thrown away by the owners—to pick them up and keep them and value them, I mean. That applies to purses and all other possessions, including hearts and loyalty."
He started to say something to her—even though the throng pressed about them he would have said it; but the voice of the crier at the door announced what all were waiting for.
"His Excellency the Governor, the Honorable Council, and his Excellency the Governor-elect and party!"
They filed along in dignified procession down the centre aisle, the uniforms of the officers of the staff giving a touch of color and brightness to the formal frock-coats.
The Secretary of State announced the official figures of the vote electing Varden Waymouth as Governor, and after his sonorous final phrase, "God save the State of ———," Governor Waymouth repeated the oath of office administered by a gaunt, sallow lawyer who was the president of the Senate.
The clerk of the House set a reading-desk on the Speaker's table and arranged the Governor's manuscript. As the old man read he made a striking picture. He stood very erect. His snowy hair, the empty sleeve across his breast, the lines the years had etched on cheeks and brow gave those who looked on him a little thrill of sympathetic regret that one so old should be called from the repose of his later years to take up such public burdens as he had assumed. But his voice was resonant, his eye was clear. Nature seemed to have given him new strength to meet what he was now facing. And yet, thought some of those who listened, it might be that he did not propose to make a martyr of himself, after all. His address did not threaten or complain. The radicals who sat there with set teeth and bent brows, hoping to hear denunciation after their own heart, were disappointed. The politicians who had feared now took new grip on their hope—it probably was not to be as bad as they had anticipated.
Harlan Thornton listened to the calm, moderate statement of the State's general financial and political situation with growing sense of mingled disappointment and relief. His fighting spirit and his knowledge of conditions, as they had been revealed to him, made him hope that at last an honest man proposed to clean the temple—entering upon his task with bared arms and a clarion call. This mild old man, confining himself to the details of the State's progress and needs, was not exactly the leader he had expected him to be. And yet Harlan was relieved. He looked at the girl beside him, and that relief smoothed away his disappointment. As matters were shaping themselves he no longer anticipated that he would be driven into pitched battle, forced to fight intrenched enemies of reform—Luke Presson's face most conspicuous of all those behind the party wall of privilege. As he listened to the address he comforted himself with the thought that probably political disagreements loomed more blackly as a cloud on the horizon than their real consistency warranted. He was not in retreat—he would not admit that to himself as he listened. But he felt that compromise and a better understanding were in the air. There would be no more occasion for troubled arguments between himself and the girl at his side. He did not understand exactly in what way it would be done, but he felt that Governor Waymouth knew how to win his reforms without such party slaughter as the first engagements hinted at. He put himself into a very comfortable frame of mind, and the girl at his side, by her mere presence, added to his belief that this was a pretty good old world, after all.
He had lost some of his respect for "reform." It had been exemplified for him mostly by such men as Prouty and his intolerant kind—by Spinney and his dupes. He felt that he might call decency by some other name, and arrive at results by the calm and dignified course which Governor Waymouth now seemed to be pointing out. He suddenly felt a warm appreciation of the wisdom of Madeleine Presson as she had made that good sense known to him in their talks.
"For it is by my works, not my words, that I would be judged," concluded the Governor, solemnly, and bowed to the applause which greeted the end.
Neither Harlan Thornton nor any other listener in the great assembly hall took those words as signifying anything more than the usual pledge of faithful performance.