Part 15 (1/2)
”But how will you make them--”
”They daren't refuse me anything,” said Peter swiftly, and tapped his breast-pocket. ”I've papers here that mean stripes for them both. Mind your eye, Larry, and be good!”
He disappeared through the little gate toward the dressing-room, where the officials of the meeting waited vainly for last instructions from their lord. Varney looked after him with a sigh. In Hunston only twenty-four hours and already to be running the town!
He emerged from the alley feeling rather gloomy, and halted on the sidewalk in front of the theatre, idly watching the people as they poured in. The spectacle of this steady stream made a fitting background for his meditations; for he was thinking, absently, of the extreme boldness of Peter's course. Certainly, there was little here to suggest the quiet onlooker. But all at once something happened which checked the current of his thought as effectually as a slap upon the cheek.
In that s.h.i.+fting, waste of strange faces, his vagrant eye suddenly fell upon a familiar one--two, three familiar ones--and his flagging interest sprang to life. There approached, side by side, J. Pinkney Hare, who, though few knew it, might prove the brilliant hero of the night's proceedings; the child, little Jenny Something, who had spent yesterday at the Carstairs house, leading strangers to think that she was somebody else; and Miss Carstairs herself, a fair flower in that moving tangle of weeds.
Hare saw Varney and bowed in his stiff affected way. But Varney's eyes had already gone on to Miss Carstairs, and he did not return that greeting. Seeing the little candidate lift his hat, her look followed his, and so her eye met Varney's.
When this happened her expression did not change, except that, so he thought, she faintly colored. Varney awaited her bow; he half bowed himself: a stiff smile was ready on his lips. But he never gave it. Her eyes rested full upon him for a second, with no sign of recognition, and then moved away; and the next moment she swept past him into the theatre.
There was no shadow of doubt about it. She who only last night had treated him with such marked kindness, had unmistakably cut him. It hardly seemed possible. Why, they had parted like friends!
But he understood instantly what had happened. To her, he was Ferris Stanhope; he himself had given her the right to think that. Since they had parted, some of that unpleasant gossip about Stanhope--of which she had known nothing last night--had made its way to her; and she had believed it as to him, Laurence Varney. Yes, she had believed it as to him. Peter was right, after all. A self-respecting girl owed it to herself, it seemed, not to recognize him. Curiously, so strong was his sense of the personal meaning of the insult that its more practical aspects for the moment altogether escaped him.
But that was only for the moment. In the next breath, it rushed over him that with that cool glance the luncheon engagement upon which his whole mission depended stood canceled; and with that thought he felt his will hardening into iron. What she thought of him, personally, was of course nothing; but no power should keep him from carrying through his plans precisely as he had arranged them. He elbowed his way into the lobby to find Uncle Elbert's daughter and make her retract that look.
But it gradually became evident that Uncle Elbert's daughter was not in the lobby: the most systematic exploration failed to reveal any trace of her. In fact, it was certain that she had pa.s.sed straight on to her seat within the hall; whence a loud roar presently gave warning to stragglers that the oratory had begun.
Two hours later Varney rose from his seat, at once marveling over the splendor of Peter's _coup_ and bewildered by the blaze of publicity which it had turned upon his comrade and co-schemer. The well-laid plans had carried through to brilliant success, and Ryan's meeting had been converted into a triumph for Ryan's deadly enemy, J. Pinkney Hare.
The candidate had sat un.o.btrusively down in the audience with his friend Miss Carstairs and the child Jenny,--spectators all: that was the way they had arranged it. Peter, on the contrary, sat in the great white light of a front seat on the stage, where he had masterfully intruded himself in the galaxy of ”other prominent citizens.” And sure enough, when the set speeches were over, it was the honorable chairman who presented ”a Mr. Maginnis of New York” to the meeting, doubtless having been satisfactorily convinced beforehand that it was to his advantage to do so. But, doubtless also convinced that there would be an accounting to his master for this night's work, he rose to his duty only after Mr.
Maginnis had glared at him through a noticeable stage-wait, and then made the introduction as prejudicial as he dared.
Mr. Maginnis did not appear disconcerted in the least. He began speaking with a pertinence and ease which rather surprised his friend Varney down in the audience, and with words which instantly let the dullest know that something unusual was taking place. However, he had not proceeded far when, the house having become very still, he was suddenly interrupted by a sharp hiss from the rear of the hall, and a raucous voice which shouted:
”Sit down, you! n.o.body wants yer!”
Laughter followed and various murmurs, some approving, a few protesting.
Ryan's good and faithful servants were evidently settling down to work.
Peter's eye roved over the audience, seemed to catch something and lit up with a faint signal.
”The gentleman who made that remark,” he said in tones of great gentleness, ”will kindly leave the hall at once.”
A ripple of merriment ran through the crowd, breaking in many places into ostentatious guffaws. To those who knew the underside of those meetings, the mild request appeared so ineffectual as to be merely ridiculous. The honorable chairman, on the stage, hid a sinister smile behind his hand.
Then a strange thing happened. Four ”ushers” moved silently down the side-aisle, halted at the end of the sixth row from the rear, laid hands upon an angry and wriggling little man who screamed to high heaven that he hadn't done nothing, and dropped him out of the open window, which was just five feet above the ground.
It was rather a clean-cut piece of work, the moral effect of which was in no wise weakened by the strong probability that they had ejected the wrong man. It proved the turning-point in the evening's proceedings.
Ryanism seemed paralyzed by the mysterious absence of its chief, and a few further essays by the faithful, more and more half-hearted in their nature, made it plain that the control of that meeting had pa.s.sed into other hands. Peter, apologizing for the little interruption, told simply but vividly how, coming to Hunston a stranger, he had instantly seen that something was badly wrong with the town: how he had looked about at the dirty streets, the dead business, the empty stores, the good men idling, the good wives suffering for the money that streamed into the big red saloon--
”That's right!” called a shrill, scared woman's voice. ”That's right, Mister!”
”No!” Peter answered steadily. ”It's the _wrongest_ thing that ever was--G.o.d help you poor women!”
Then a burst of hand-clapping, unforced by the faithful hirelings from New York, ran unexpectedly through the house.