Part 66

Jane on the other side of the spotless counter gave him her earnest glance. "Yes," she said; "he told me."

"He did? Well, I'm glad. It wasn't a thing to keep, was it?"

"No," said Jane; "it wasn't. But you mustn't blame him, Tommy, and now that we both know, everything is all right, isn't it?"

"Yes," Tommy agreed; "if Tillotson doesn't get hold of it."

For it had been decided that O-liver was to run against Tillotson in the next election, and beat him if he could.

O-liver had told Jane about his marriage on the night before Tommy came to her. He had asked her to ride with him. "If you'll go this afternoon at four you shall have Mary Pick, and I'll take Tommy's horse."

They had carried their lunch with them and had eaten it at sunset in a lovely spot where the canon opened out to show a shining yellow stretch of sea, with the hills like black serpents running into it.

Yet it was dark, with the stars above them and the sea a faint gray below, before O-liver said to her what he had brought her there to say.

He told her of his father and mother. Of Fluffy Hair.

"I waked up at last to the fact that I was letting two women support me. So I came here and began to work at fifteen dollars a week. And for the first time in my life I respected myself--and was content. And then I met you and saw things ahead. You made me see them."

He turned toward her in the dark. "Jane, I'm finding that I love you--mightily." He tried to speak lightly. "And I'm not free. And because I love you I've got to keep away. But I want you to understand that my friendship is the same--that it will always be the same. But I've got to keep away."

She was very honest about it. "I didn't dream that you felt like that--about me."

"No, you wouldn't. That's a part of your splendidness. Never taking anything to yourself. Jane, will you believe this--that what I may be hereafter will be because of you? If I ever do a big thing or a fine thing it will be because I came upon you that night with your head high and that rabble round you. You were light shining into the darkness of Tinkersfield. Jove, I wish I were a painter to put you on canvas as you were that night!"

They had ridden down later under the stars, and as they had stood for a moment overlooking the lights of the little town O-liver had said: "I make my big speech to-morrow night to beat Tillotson. I want you to be there. Will you? If I know you are there somewhere in the dark I shall pour out my soul--to you."

Was it any wonder that Jane, talking to Tommy the next morning about O-liver, felt her pulses pounding, her cheeks burning? She had lain awake all night thinking of the things he had said to her. It seemed a very big and wonderful thing that a man could love her like that. As toward morning the moonlight streamed in and she still lay awake she permitted herself to let her mind dwell for a moment on what her future might mean if he were in it. She was too busy and healthy to indulge in useless regrets. But she knew in that moment in the moonlight if he was not to be in her future no other man would ever be.

VIII

O-liver's speech was made in the open. There was a baseball park in Tinkersfield, bounded at the west end by a grove of eucalyptus. With this grove as a background a platform had been erected. From the platform the rival candidates would speak. At this time of the year it would be daylight when the meeting opened. Tillotson was not to speak for himself. He had brought a man down from San Francisco, a big politician with an oily tongue. O-liver would of course present his own case. The thing, as Atwood told Henry, promised to be exciting.

Jane came with Tommy. There was a sort of rude grand stand opposite the platform, and she had a seat well up toward the top. She wore a white skirt, a gray sweater and a white hat. She had a friendly smile for the people about her. And they smiled back. They liked Jane.

O-liver spoke first. Bare-headed, slender, with his air of eternal youth, he was silhouetted against the rose red of the afterglow.

When he began he led them lightly along paths of easy thought. He got their attention as he had so often got it in front of the post-office. He made them smile, he made them laugh, he led them indeed finally into roaring laughter. And when he had brought them thus into sympathy he began with earnestness to speak of Tinkersfield.

Jane, leaning forward, not missing a word, felt his magnetism. He spoke of the future of Tinkersfield. Of what must be done if it was to fulfill its destiny as a decent town. He did not mince his words.

"It will be just what you make up your minds now to have it--good and honest and clean, a place that the right kind of people will want to live in, or the place that will attract loungers and loafers."

He laid upon them the burden of individual responsibility. If a town was honest, he said, it was because the men in it were honest; if it was clean it was because its men were clean. It was for each man to decide at this election whether Tinkersfield should have a future of darkness or of light. There were men in that crowd who squared their shoulders to meet the blows of his eloquence, who kept them squared as they made their decision to do their part in the upbuilding of Tinkersfield.

Yet it was not perhaps so much the things that O-liver said as the way he said them. He had the qualities of leadership--a sincerity of the kind that sways men level with their leaders--the sincerity of a Lincoln, a Roosevelt. For him a democracy meant all the people. Not merely plain people, not indeed selected classes. Rich man, poor man, one, working together for the common good.

Back of his sincerity there was fire--and gradually his audience was lighted by his flame. They listened in a tense silence, which broke now and then into cheers. To Jane sitting high up on the benches he was a prophet--the John the Baptist of Tinkersfield.

"And he's mine, he's mine!" she exulted. This fineness of spirit, the fire and flame were hers. "If I know you are there somewhere in the dark I shall pour out my soul--to you--"

The darkness had not yet fallen, but the dusk had come. The platform was illumined by little lights like stars. Back of the platform the eucalyptus trees were now pale spectres, their leaves hanging nerveless in the still air.

O-liver sitting down amid thunders of applause let his eyes go for the moment to Jane. A lamp hung almost directly over her head. She had taken off her wide hat and her hair was glorious. She was leaning forward a little, her lips parted, her hands clasped, as if he still spoke to her.