And while the sun rose higher and the brilliance of the June morning deepened, and the crowd grew larger and more impatient, the man who had caused all this interest sat in the cool shade of a veranda, looking steadily out before him through deeply brooding eyes.
It was a beautiful scene of wide, luxuriant cotton fields, stretching out before him. Nearby, a garden of luxuriant flowers, guarded by smoothly clipped box hedges, filled the air with a delicious fragrance.
Beside him on the veranda, comfortably lounging in a spacious rocking chair, sat his host, Colonel Pickram; a portly old gentleman, bluff and hearty, and red of face. Beyond, through the open window, came the laughter and gay chatter of the two daughters of the house, healthy, comely girls who moved about the room, giving directions for what was to be a sumptuous dinner.
Colonel Pickram gazed at his guest under questioning brows. The great lawyer was not to-day as he had known him before. The virility and life seemed to have lessened in him since the last visit; he was no longer the sparkling conversationalist he had known before; the winning humour that had drawn every one to him was gone. As he sat there silent, his hands clasped en his knees, his eyes full of a sad expression of yearning, even the dull perception of the self-satisfied farmer was aware that he was not himself.
"Mr. Everett," Colonel Pickram broke the long silence, "you've been working too hard on the campaign. It's telling on you. I reckon you're mighty glad to-morrow's the last day."
Everett looked up abstractedly.
"Yes—I'm glad to-morrow sees the end of this trip—and yet," he drew himself together responsively, "it has been a wonderful experience. Whenever I get nearer to the people and begin to like them all the more after I know them, and find them liking me—I feel that I have accomplished so much more than merely winning their votes. That is what I love in this work—the winning of friends. And then, Colonel," he glanced almost affectionately at his surroundings, "being in a home like this always gives me such pleasant memories to carry away with me. Still, it makes me very homesick at times." His voice lowered again and the sadness crept back into his eyes. "It takes me back to my old home days. I'd give almost anything to be back there to-day. But this ambition!" He sighed, a half humourous, half sorrowful expression twisting his lips. "It is wonderful what it will make us give up."
The Colonel crossed one leg deliberately over the other, blowing a long line of smoke between them.
"Well, sir, I've often wondered if the game of politics was worth the candle. Here I am, with my two fine lassies, as good girls as you'll ever find in any country, and a plain home, but it's comfortable enough, and plenty of slaves and mules to make a crop and pay my bills. It's all I want and I'm right happy—just as contented as if I owned the world. But then—I'm old and you're young. I look back and you look forward. That's what makes the difference, I reckon."
"But you are right, Colonel, and I am wrong. All a fellow works for in this life is a happy home; and it seems I'm never going to have that—at least the kind I mean, the complete one. It gets further and further away as I get older. I used to say that when I was thirty I would have all those I loved about me. Look at me now!" He spread out his hands futilely. "I'm nearly thirty, living alone, a bachelor, and many times, for all my gay spirits and friends, terribly lonely."
"You ought to get married. Why don't you? There are plenty of nice girls everywhere."
Everett winced and turned abruptly away. When he spoke again his face was towards the cotton fields. "But they don't want a cripple for a husband," he answered the old man's remark. "They want a man of fine proportions, who will do them credit when they are seen together. They want one who—" he narrowed his eyes a moment, and in them came the tenderness of bygone days, "—who will go to church with them, and send them beautiful nosegays and take them to dances." He ended, smiling upon the Colonel's surprised countenance. "I once heard a woman say, Colonel," he began again, more seriously, "that she chose her husband because he looked well in a ball-room. And I don't blame her—perfection and beauty are the greatest factors in our lives."
The old Colonel smiled over his pipe.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Everett, that you are a much better lawyer than a judge of the ladies. I have a higher opinion of them than you have. They are not half so silly as you paint them."
"You misunderstand me, Colonel," Everett answered hurriedly. "I revere them more than any man. But they love the beautiful in life, and they are beautiful themselves. My bitterness comes only from my inability to give them what they demand."
Colonel Pickram grunted sarcastically.
"You can give them a good deal, I think. I'd like to see the woman who wouldn't be satisfied to be a Congressman's wife and spend her winters in Washington. The trouble with you, Mr. Everett, and you'll pardon me for saying it, is that you've never been in love."
Sargent rose from his chair almost abruptly. Walking to the end of the veranda and back again, he faced Colonel Pickram, smiling down into the rough old fellow's face as if he were much his elder.
"Perhaps you are right, Colonel," he said, taking out his watch. "Time's up, however, so we had better drop dreaming and be on our way to grapple with politics."
Squaring his shoulders and throwing back his head, a gesture of his earlier days that clung to him still, Sargent threw off the melancholy of the past day, and became once more the man who charmed people by the thousands. Colonel Pickram noticed the quick change and pondered over it. "Big men were curious creatures," he reflected. "They could jump from one mood into another just as easily as a travelling magician he saw last week, could change a rabbit into a pocket handkerchief."
As they passed across the meadow, towards the village, the signal of their approach was given. The multitude left their lunches, and hurried towards the platform from which the speech was to be made.
Every one's neck was craned to catch the first glimpse of the two men as they approached. One they knew well, though in his linen waistcoat and Sunday stock—which had already wellnigh brought on an attack of apoplexy—Colonel Pickram did not look familiar. They noticed the slow and pompous dignity with which he moved beside the stranger, and felt instinctively that he considered this the proudest day of his life. The man beside him walked with the aid of a cane and dragged one foot slightly after him. The crowd stared. Was it possible that this unobtrusive young man, in a black coat and chimney-pot hat, could be the one they had heard so much about? They looked at him curiously, drawn unconsciously by his kindly dark eyes, and the winning smile upon his handsome face. But he did not represent to them a political champion. Some mistake had been made. They were evidently the dupes of some jest that had been played upon them.
While they speculated over the matter, Colonel Pickram led the young man to a place before the platform where the crowd pressed closest. Here a few introductions were made, after which the word went over the gathering, that the small, limping man was really Sargent Everett.
As they waited, he climbed the steps of the platform and looked down into the crowd of faces. With the removal of his hat, his aspect changed suddenly. He looked taller, the high polished forehead lent a dignity and breadth to his whole physique. The enthusiasm and intellect that always glowed in his eyes when he faced an audience gave out sparks of magnetism that quieted the waiting throng into an inspiring audience.
During the ensuing moments of waiting it seemed to them that the warmth and friendliness of his glance was shed upon each one of them individually. When his lips parted and his opening words came forth—
"FELLOW CITIZENS! By the Father of Waters I have used this greeting; on the banks of the great Ohio I have spoken it; here I say it again, and many hundreds of miles east of us, west of us, north of us, I can still employ these words and thrill with the knowledge that before me are—'My fellow citizens.'"
—the crowd fell under the spell of the man's electrifying talent and listened with bated breath.
Seeing him then one would have said that he was the same as when he had made that wonderful speech that convicted the highwayman; the one who had led so forcibly in the Legislature when the State's new Constitution was formulated; who had thrilled many audiences in New Orleans; who had made his name sound far into the North when he had conducted a famous trial in Kentucky. And he had been the same, years making no change except to deepen and intensify his genius, until a few months before, when, almost indescribably, yet vividly discernible to his intimates, a difference had come. The world did not know; he was still lighthearted and buoyant to it; but to those who loved him best when alone with him, there was a strange loss of youth in his countenance, an abstraction, almost a lessening of that spontaneous sympathy which was such a potent ingredient of his charm. But in his public life there was no difference. Standing before a crowd, and meeting its warm, inspiring glances, any thought of personal effort was lost. He became a wonderful machine which throbbed and pulsated with the dynamic force of a great mind.
So it was that day before the gathering in the little village. Though before his speech he had sunk deep into a valley of shadows and knew well it would be the same again when the excitement had died out, now that he was facing them, he was only aware of the powerful influence that always made him charm his audience.
He made only a few gestures as he spoke, and even then, the expression of his face and the movement of his hands were perfectly attuned to the subject. There was nothing theatrical; one saw and understood the general effect only. There was no time for any criticism or thought. The words came in a constant flowing sound and through them the magnetism of the man glowed, reaching each listener with an irresistible force that drew him with a surrendering of beliefs, of convictions, of desires, often even against his personal wish. His face, illumined by the inward fire of his imagination, grew steadily in beauty and nobility, until it became fascinating with the brilliance of the thoughts reflected through it. His well moulded features, showing clear-cut and perfect in the ivory whiteness which had recently come to them, drew even those who did not understand the wonderful flow of words; indeed, in all his speeches this look of idealism was ever uppermost—an expression which none of the portrait painters of his day were able to reproduce. When he realized that the attention of the audience was his, he paused. Then, with renewed energy, he plunged deeper into his subject, and was reaching the height to which his forensic talent swept him, when an incident on the outskirts of the crowd caught his attention. Some one had just ridden up on a horse and was trying to force his way through the crowd. Evidently there was resistance on the part of the listeners and voices were raised in protest against the newcomer's insistence. Then, several men pushed aside and made a path for the man, and Sargent saw a negro making his way slowly through the crowd towards him. As he drew nearer he recognized Jonas. Climbing up the ladder to the platform the negro did not hesitate one moment until he had thrust a letter into-Sargent's hand.
Sargent stopped in the midst of the speech and looked at Jonas, half frowning, half smiling at the negro's temerity in reaching him through the crowd.
"Marse Sargent, please sah, read dat lettah—right now, sah! Hit's a mattah ob life an' death, sah!"
Sargent turned back to his audience, smiling. "One moment, please," he said, laughing down into the sea of upturned expectant faces, "I think my opponents have put up some joke on me. I want to read it to you and then we can laugh over it together." Then he tore open the letter indifferently.
"Lawdy, I sho wuz glad ter heah yer voice, Marse Sargent. I'se been er gwine ober dis heah kentry fer three days er sarchin' fer yer. Ole Dicey tole me fer ter git out on de road an' fin' yer an' ter gib yer dis heah lettah. She done said hit wuz a mattah ob life an' death," Jonas ended panting, looking around on the crowd and grinning with the success of his quest.
Sargent did not hear his words. At the first glance at the handwriting he had started. While he read the crowd waited breathlessly. When he had finished he turned to Colonel Pickram, his face flushed deeply, his words coming with a rush.
"Colonel Pickram, I want your fastest horse. I must be in Natchez by Sunday."
"Of course you can have anything I've got. Has anything happened?"
"Yes—a great deal—for me."
Colonel Pickram noted the strangely flushed face and was more deeply puzzled than ever.
"You forget to-morrow at Canton. You are going to meet your opponent there. It is the deciding day. You can't afford to miss that! It's your big chance!"
Everett shook his head smiling. When he answered his eyes were full of the expression of a man who is drunk with joy.
"No," he said, "my chance lies in Natchez next week—the great chance of my life!"
Colonel Pickram looked at him amazed. Had the man lost his mind!
"But the people here! Your speech! They are waiting for you to finish it!"
Sargent had already picked up his hat and cane.
"Tell them I am ill—that I cannot go on. Tell them anything, Colonel, I don't care what. I can't say anything more. I haven't a moment to lose. Good-bye to all of you!"