The Wishing Moon Part 40

"All right. Well, what do you know about that? Look there."

"I'm looking."

The latest comers were crowding hurriedly into the entrance hall by this time, and with them, a slender, heavily veiled figure had slipped quickly through the door and out of sight.

"Was that Lil?" Willard said. "Lil Burr?"

"Yes."

"She wouldn't come here; I don't believe it."

"I know it."

"How?"

"She told me."

"What was she doing, talking to you? Why, she won't talk to anybody.

She----"

"You'll be late at Hallorans'."

"Aren't you coming?"

"No."

"But you said you would. I don't want to go if you don't. I don't half like to leave you here, you act so queer to-night. What makes you act so? What's eating----"

"Nothing."

Willard detached himself from the railings and regarded his friend, suddenly breathless with surprise, and deeply grieved. Nothing. The word, harmless in itself, had been spoken so that it hit him like an actual blow, straight from the shoulder. Neil, shifting so that the light showed his face, was returning his look with the sudden, unreasoning anger that we feel toward little sounds that beat their slow way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last.

"Go," he urged, "go along to Halloran's. Go anywhere."

"Well, what do you know about that?" began Willard, offended, and then forgave him. There was a look in Neil's pale face that commanded forgiveness. It was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to do with Willard, and Willard was respectful and inarticulate before it.

"That's all right," Willard muttered, "that will be all right. I'll go."

Neil took no notice of this promise. Up in the hall the waltz had swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. It came clear through the open windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part of what was there. And just then a small closed car swept down through the empty square and stopped. Two men stepped out, and paused in the doorway under the red-shaded light.

One was the Colonel's secretary, waiting on the step beyond range of the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the light on his face, was Colonel Everard.

He was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and clear-cut profile were more effective for that. He stood listening to the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. He turned at last and looked out across the square as if he could feel Neil's eyes upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and disappeared up the stairs.

"Neil," Willard was announcing uneasily, "I think a lot of you. I'd do a lot for you. If you're in wrong, any way, if----"

Willard broke off, rebuffed. Neil did not even look at him. He stood staring at the lighted doorway where the Colonel had stood and smiled, as if he could still see him there. He was a creature beyond Willard's world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to Willard. Willard regarded him in awed silence.

Now Dugan's music had stopped. Some one above shut a window with a clatter that echoed disproportionately loud. Then there was silence up there, tense silence, and the call of the silence was harder to resist than the music. The boy by the court-house railing could not resist it.

He pushed away Willard's detaining hand, and without a word to him or another glance at him, was across the square and through the red-lighted door, and running up the stairs.

"What do you know about that?" Willard demanded, in vain. "What do you know----"

Willard, certainly, knew nothing, and gave up the attempt to understand, with a sigh.

A little later the vantage point of the court-house fence was unoccupied. Of the two boys who had occupied it, one was making a belated and rather disconsolate way toward Halloran's--the one who would be boasting to-morrow that he had spent the last fifteen minutes with Neil Donovan. The other boy stood listening outside the closed doors of the hall.

It was half an hour later and it had been an important half-hour in Odd Fellows' Hall, that uneventful but vital time when the newly made creature that is the crowd is pa.s.sive, gathering its forces slowly, getting ready to fling the weight of them into one side of a balance irrevocably, if it has decisions to make; the most important half-hour of the evening if you were interested in the psychology of crowds. The Honourable Joe Grant was not. He would have said that the first speech dragged and the half-hour had been dull. Dull or significant, that half-hour was over, and Green River was waking up. In the listening hush of the hall the big moments of the evening, whatever they were to be, were creeping nearer and nearer. Now they were almost here.

The Honourable Joe had just introduced Luther Ward and heavily resumed his seat. He sat portly and erect and entirely happy behind the thin-legged, inadequate looking table that held a water pitcher, his important looking papers, and his watch. The ornately chased gold watch that had measured so many epoch-making hours for Green River was in public life again, like the Honourable Joe. He fingered it affectionately, wiped his forehead delicately from time to time with a purple silk handkerchief, followed Mr. Ward's remarks with unwavering brown eyes, and smiled his benevolent, public-spirited smile. This was his night indeed.

Behind the Honourable Joe, on the stage in a semicircular row of chairs were the speakers of the evening, and before him was Green River.

The badly proportioned little hall was not at its best to-night. It was too brightly lit and the footlights threw an uncompromising glare upon the tiny stage. Red, white, and blue cheesecloth in crude, sharp colouring draped windows and stage, making gay little splashes of colour that emphasized the dinginess of the room. Only the Grand Army flag, borrowed and draped elaborately above the stage, showed faded and thin against the brightness of the cheesecloth, but kept its dignity and kept up its claim to homage still. And the ugliness of the room was a thing to be discounted and forgotten, like some beautiful, full-blooded woman's tawdry, and ill-chosen clothes, because this room held Green River.

Green River, filling the little room to over-flowing, standing in the rear of the room, crowding every available inch of s.p.a.ce on benches, window sills, and an emergency supply of camp chairs, impressive as that much sheer bulk of humanity, crowded between four walls, becomes impressive, and impressive in its own right, too; Green River represented as it was, with all the warring, unreconciled elements that made the town.

For they were all here, Paddy Lane, and the Everard circle, and the intermediate stages of society, the Gaynors and other prosperous farmers and unprosperous farmers and their wives, from the outskirts of the town, and citizens a cut above them both, like the Wards, were all represented here. Mrs. Kent, hatless and evening coated, was elbowed by a lady from Paddy Lane, hatless because she had no presentable hat, and wearing a ragged shawl. These two were side by side, and they had the same look on their faces. There was something of it now on every face in the room. It was a look of listening and waiting.

It was on every face, and it grew more intense every minute that Luther Ward's speech droned on, though it was only a dry, illogical rehash of political issues that could not have called that look into any face. It was as if the audience listened eagerly through it because every word of it was bringing them nearer to something that was to follow. What was it? What did Green River want? What was it waiting for? Green River itself did not know, but it was very near.

Perhaps it was coming now. This might well be the climax of the evening.

No more important event was scheduled. Luther Ward, looking discontented with his performance, but relieved to complete it, had sunk into his chair to a scattered echoing of applause, and the next speaker was Colonel Everard.

The Honourable Joe was rising to introduce him. The little introductory speech was a masterpiece, for, though the Colonel had edited every word of it, it was still in the Honourable Joe's best style, flowery and sprinkled with quotations.

"I will not say more," it concluded magnificently, "of one whose life and work among you can best speak for itself, and who will speak for himself now, in his own person. I present to you the Republican candidate for mayor, Colonel Everard."

And now the Honourable Joe had bowed and smiled himself into his seat, and the great man was on his feet, and coming forward to the centre of the stage. The first real applause of the evening greeted him, not very hearty or sustained, but prompt at least. He looked like a very great man indeed, as he stood acknowledging it, his most effective self, a strong man, though so lightly built, erect and pliant of carriage, a man with infinite reserves of power and dignity. He was smiling, and his smile was the same that the boy by the court-house fence had seen, a tantalizing smile of a.s.surance and charm and power, as if he were master of himself and the town.

This was his moment, planned for and led up to for weeks, but Colonel Everard was slow to take advantage of it. He stood still, with his eyes toward the rear of the hall. As he stood so, heads here and there turned and looked where he was looking. Presently all Green River saw what the Colonel saw. A boy was pushing his way toward the front of the hall--a boy who had slipped quietly inside the doors unnoticed fifteen minutes before, and came forward now just as quietly, but held their eyes as he came. Now he had reached the stage, and he broke through the barrier of goldenrod that fenced the short flight of steps, crushing the flowers under his feet, and now he was on the stage confronting Colonel Everard.

It was Neil Donovan.

"Sit down," he said to the great man. "They're not going to listen to you. They're going to listen to me."

After that he did not wait to see if the great man took his amazing advice. He came forward alone, and spoke to Green River. He was not an imposing figure as he stood there, only a lean, eager boy, with dark, flashing eyes, and a face that was very pale in the glare of the footlights. He hardly raised his tense, low-pitched voice as he spoke, but Green River heard.

"You're going to listen to me."

And it was true. Green River was going to listen. In the middle of the hall, where the chief delegation from Paddy Lane was ma.s.sed, a ripple of excitement promised the boy support. It was seconded by a muttering and shuffling of feet on the rear benches, devoted to the youth of the town.

From here and there in the hall there were murmurs of protest, too, dying out one by one, and ceasing automatically, like the whispered consultation that went on behind him on the stage.

But the boy did not wait for support or regard interruptions. He did not need to. The audience was his in spite of them, and he knew it and they knew it. Whatever he had to say, important or not, it was what they had been waiting for; that was what the evening had been leading to, and it was here at last. Pale and intent, the boy looked across the footlights at Green River. The audience was his, but he had no pride in the triumph. He began haltingly to speak.

"It will do no good to you or me, but you're going to listen. I've got a word to say about Everard.