There was a bustle and a stir, and the outgoing Mayor, accompanied by his deputy, the Town Clerk, and the other officials came on to the platform, accompanied by Abraham Kellet and two or three other aldermen, who passed to their usual seats. I saw Abraham, as he sat down, glance around the crowded hall with that glance which I had noticed in the marketplace. And I saw, too, that he did not see the man who sat over the clock. But now that Abraham was there, on the platform, in his aldermanic robes, the man had no eyes for anything but him. He watched him as I have seen a cat watch the hole out of which it knows a mouse is going to emerge.
The proceedings began. As Abraham's proposer and seconder moved his election, Abraham seemed to swell out more and more and his wife's beam assumed a new dignity. All the civic virtues were his, according to Alderman Gillworthy; it was he who, as Chairman of the Watch Committee, had instituted a new system of clothing for the police; it was he who, as Chairman of the Waterworks Committee, had provided Sicaster with pure drinking water. Mr. Councillor Sparcroft dealt more with his moral virtues, remarking that Alderman Gillworthy had exhausted the list of their friend's municipal triumphs. He reminded the Council that Abraham was a shining example of rectitude, and drew the eyes of the whole assemblage on Mrs. Kellet and her daughters when he spoke of him feelingly as a model husband and father. He referred to him as a Sunday-school teacher of well over thirty years' standing; as vicar's churchwarden for over twenty; he was connected with all the benevolent societies, and the poor knew him. Then the councillor, who was celebrated for his oratory, turned to the business side of Abraham's history and sketched his career in trenchant sentences and glowing colours. His humble origin—his early ambitions—his perseverance—his strenuous endeavours—his misfortune at a time when all seemed fair—his mounting, Phoenix-like, from the ashes—his steady climb up the mountain of success—his attainment of its topmost height—all these things were touched on by the councillor, who wound up a flowery speech with a quotation from Holy Scripture—"Seest thou a man diligent in business?—he shall stand before kings!"
There was no opposition to Abraham Kellet—the Council was unanimous. He was duly elected Mayor of Sicaster—the three hundred and seventy-fifth since the old town received its charter.
I suppose there had never been such a moment of emotion in Abraham Kellet's life as when, duly installed in the mayoral chair, wearing the mayoral robes, invested with the mayoral chain, he rose to make his first speech as chief magistrate of Sicaster. For once the pomposity of manner which had grown upon him slipped away; he seemed to revert to a simple, a more natural self. He looked round him; he glanced at his wife and daughters; he caught my eye—it was a full moment before the applause which had greeted the Mayor's rising had died away that he could command himself to speak. When he spoke his first sentences were nervous and hesitating, but he gained confidence when he began to refer to Sparcroft's references to his career as a tradesman.
"You see before you one," he said, "who never knew what it was to fear a difficulty, who refused to believe in obstacles, who always meant to march on with the times, and who——"
He paused there for a second, for he was troubled with a slight cough that morning, and in that second a voice, penetrating, cold and sharp as steel and as merciless as the implacable avenger's hand when it drives steel home, rang out across the hall—
"And who burned his shop in order to get the insurance money!"
I have never had a clear recollection—no, I never had a clear realization—of what followed. I remember a sea of white, frightened faces, a murmur of voices, of seeing the man behind the clock stretching an accusing finger across the space between the gallery and the platform. And I remember Abraham Kellet, palsy-stricken, gripping the table before him and staring, staring at the accusing finger and the man behind it as one might stare at the Evil Thing. It seemed hours before that second passed and a cry, more like the cry of a lost soul than of a man, burst, dryly, hoarsely, from his lips—
"Aynesley! Come back!"
Then in all his mayoral finery he fell heavily across the table, and the mayoral chain rattled against the mace which had been carried before many an honest predecessor for twice two hundred years.