With a hypocritical smile he seized the Judge’s hand, wrung it heartily, congratulated him, and drew him to the platform. Stella sprang lightly up after him, took a rosebud from her belt, pinned it on her father’s slouchy ill-fitting broadcloth coat, kissed him and amid the cheers of the mob retraced her steps and left the ground with Steve Hoyle.
John watched her lift her parasol above her dainty head with smothered curses at his folly. He had unconsciously taken his own hat off and stood bareheaded in the broiling Southern sun of a June day. The bitterness of his mistake stirred him to more dogged persistence. With an effort he turned to the Judge and the Convention—trying in vain to shake off the impression Stella had left. But he found his mind constantly wandering from the scene. Wherever he looked, within or without, he saw the delicate oval face with those great brown eyes smiling as they did the night he met her in the hall of his old home.
At length he awoke from his reverie with his eye resting unconsciously on Larkin, the Judge’s opponent. He had never seen him before, though his name had become known in every county of the state.
He was a man of more than the average height, of powerful build, high intellectual forehead, a full beard, long, silken, snow white. His hair, also long and white, was inclined to curl at the ends, and a pair of piercing black eyes looked out fearlessly from shaggy brows. He carried himself with instinctive dignity, and his whole appearance proclaimed a bold and powerful leader of men.
Rumour said that he had been a Wesleyan preacher in England but had been expelled in some factional fight and had sought his fortunes in America. Darker rumour whispered that he had a criminal record and that he had never even attained citizenship in the country of his adoption. Such rumours, however, counted for nothing in the tainted atmosphere of the riot and revolution of the Reconstruction period. From the sewers of the North, jail birds and ex-convicts had poured into the stricken South as vultures follow the wake of a victorious army.
In two years Larkin had proven himself a party leader of remarkable executive ability and on the hustings had shown himself an orator of undoubted eloquence. He was fast becoming the idol of the more daring and radical wing of his party. He boldly proclaimed and practiced Negro equality and held up to public scorn any man who dared to quibble on the issue.
So bold and radical were his utterances the Negroes were a little afraid of him. Yet he was steadily gaining in his influence over them. He knew that they constituted nine-tenths of the voting strength of the Republican party in the South, and that ultimately the man who pandered most skilfully to their passions must become master of the situation.
He had laid siege to Uncle Isaac immediately on his arrival and had played on his vanity so deftly that the Apostle of Sanctification had been completely fascinated by the Carpetbagger.
The moment Larkin’s eye rested on Isaac seated in the crowd he saw in a flash the master stroke by which he could break the spell of the Judge’s influence over the delegates. He quickly threaded his way to the Apostle’s side and escorted him to the speakers’ stand with his arm around his waist. He lifted him to the platform, forced the Judge to rise and shake hands, and seated Isaac by Butler’s side. The Negroes burst into a frenzy of applause.
So elated was Isaac by his newly found honours he began to interrupt the meeting by fervid religious exclamations to the intense disgust of the Judge who squirmed with increasing anger at each new outburst. When Isaac recognised any of his dusky acquaintances in the crowd he waved his hand and pointed his remarks in that direction.