Chapter VII

Mr. Clutterbuck was right, and Charlie Fitzgerald had judged wisely.

The first meeting of the campaign was to be held in quite a little hall belonging to the local ethical society. No interest had yet been taken in the election, the greater part of the constituency had perhaps but just heard of it--yet the whole evening turned upon Fishmonger and The Other.

Mr. Clutterbuck's fervid declaration was not enough: one man after another at the back of the hall must take the opportunity, while congratulating the candidate upon his attitude, to make a considerable harangue upon the awful pass to which English freedom had come. Leaflets, printed by the Relief Committee, were in the hands of more than half the audience; and what was more interesting was to see how, the moment the meeting was over, those who had asked questions distributed themselves, as though according to orders, into the various quarters of the borough, visiting the public houses and spreading the news of their candidate's declarations.

This was upon a Wednesday. On the Friday, for which the second meeting had been announced, a much larger hall, the Cleethorpe Foundation Schools, was absolutely full before a quarter past seven, though the speeches were not to begin until eight.

The audience filled the interval with songs concerning political and economic liberty, and more than one ribald catch in contempt of the Fishmonger judgment. The appearance of the platform did not silence them. They sang with a vengeance as they awaited their candidate, and the stout and elderly chairman, Mr. Alderman Thorpe, continually pulled out his watch in his nervousness, noted that the crowd of faces before him were of quite a different sort from those repeated faces which perpetually appeared at the National meetings. The tone of their cries was more violent than the Executive were accustomed to, and the spirit of the hall quite novel.

Mr. Clutterbuck at last appeared. It was unfortunate that he should be ten minutes late, and the accident provoked not a few shouted queries, but his appearance as he stalked on to the platform with Charlie Fitzgerald at his heels, called forth an indescribable volume of cheering, which lasted during the whole of the introducer's speech, and threatened to overlap into that of the candidate himself.

Mr. Clutterbuck was not an impromptu speaker; it was his custom to learn by heart the remarks it was his duty to deliver, nor was he superior to obtaining a general draft or even a more detailed summary of those remarks from the Democratic Speech Agency upon Holborn Viaduct. That evening, however, his heart spoke for him, and he could not forbear repeating some dozen times, when silence was restored, "Upon my word, gentlemen, I am highly flattered--I am highly flattered, I am very highly flattered, indeed!"

He cleared his throat and began the first set speech of the campaign. He knew it by heart; it was therefore in a clear if somewhat high pitched voice that he delivered the opening phrase "the effect of free trade in the past upon"--he was interrupted by another wild burst of cheering and loud applause from the vast audience, who imagined him to refer to the incarcerated Fishmonger and whose thousand hearts were beating as one.

It was so throughout the carefully worded address. His allusion to the taxation of rice produced the chorus of a popular song in favour of the men languishing in Holloway, and his passing remarks upon Consols "which, as a City man he assured them were a matter to him of the very gravest concern," led to repeated cries of "Drown old Harman!" and enthusiastic hurrahs for their candidate's championship of the doomed men.

When Mr. Clutterbuck sat down, in some confusion but in great happiness, and when the customary vote of thanks had been given, a genial publican in the body of the hall who had never attended a public meeting save to protest against the unhappy Licensing Bill of 1908, rose most unexpectedly to support the resolution. In a voice full of nutriment and good humour, he assured the candidate, amid repeated confirmations from all around, that in spite of his attitude upon temperance--and no one saw more of the evils of _in_temperance than the licensed victualler--in spite of that, Mr. Clutterbuck's manly attitude on the case of Rex _v._ Fishmonger and Another would secure him the support of the trade.

A clergyman, who had had the temerity to rise with the intention of congratulating the candidate, was imagined from his pale face and refined voice to be an opponent: he was angrily silenced, and the meeting dispersed with loud cheers for his present Majesty, for the armed servants of the Crown whether military or naval, and--need it be told?--for Fishmonger over all.

It was evidently an election to be taken on the fly and to be run before the machine slowed down. The common National literature sent out from the head offices in Peter Street was soon absorbed. Charlie Fitzgerald implored them for matter upon Fishmonger, but the official press refused. He could not brave the Act nor exceed the statutory limit of expense, but Mr. Clutterbuck was delighted to find that the Fishmonger Relief Committee--to which his wife, his brother-in-law, and even his coachman very largely subscribed--would furnish him with endless tracts and posters. The walls were covered by this independent ally, and the expenditure upon its part of over four thousand pounds associated Mr. Clutterbuck's name with the relief of the poor prisoners in letters six, ten and fifteen feet high and in the most astounding colours.

There were pictures also: pictures by the ton. Pictures of Mr. Clutterbuck striking the fetters from Fishmonger's wrists; pictures of Fishmonger in convict garb sleeping his troubled sleep upon a pallet of straw while a vision of the valiant Clutterbuck floated above him in a happy cloud: this was called "The Dream of Hope." Pictures of Fishmonger on the treadmill pitied by an indignant Britannia and a Clutterbuck springing to his aid, inflamed the popular zeal, and further pictures of a black Demon cowering before an avenging Clutterbuck in full armour afforded a parable of immense effect.

And then there were speeches! Every day saw its meeting, and at the end of the first week its second or its third meeting within the twenty-four hours. Mr. Clutterbuck, by whose side Mrs. Clutterbuck often sat in those wild and happy moments of popular fervour, was permitted no great length by his secretary, and a band of good fellows who were determined to achieve the liberties of England, took care that questions other than those provided them by the secretary or the committee, should not be asked with impunity. It was even, as the unhappy example of the clergyman had shown, unwise to express adhesion to Mr. Clutterbuck's candidature, unless this were done in so unmistakable a manner that there should be no room for popular hostility.

So ended the first week of the struggle; nor had Mr. Clutterbuck showed a single fault save, in his confusion, an occasional lack of punctuality, which was certainly resented and noted more than he knew. His throat was supple, his delivery clear, but he was a little doubtful whether his enunciation was sufficiently vigorous to fill a large hall.

Sunday, I am glad to say, in spite of the woeful inroads Socialism has recently made, was observed as a day of rest by either side; and Mr. Clutterbuck took the opportunity of the holy season to summon to The Plâs, on Charlie Fitzgerald's advice and at an enormous expense, a Voice Producer, who, while complaining of the shortness of the time allowed him, guaranteed his client a considerable extension of vocal power if his rules were strictly observed.

He it was who for three hours upon that holy day elicited from Mr. Clutterbuck at least one hundred times, a loud and increasing roar during which he insisted that the head should be thrown back, the throat widely opened and the mouth stretched to its fullest extent. He it was who, insisted upon the regular use of the Hornsby lozenge, though Mr. Clutterbuck had been persuaded by a friend to make secret use of the Glarges type of emollient bonbon. He it was who taking Mr. Clutterbuck after tea by the shoulders, pressed them back until, at the expense of exquisite suffering to that elderly gentleman, he had caused them to lock behind him. He it was who then compelled the merchant to fill his chest to its fullest extent, to retain his breath to the utmost of his capacity, and to emit, when he could hold it no longer, the syllables

MAH-MUH-MOH-MAY-MYE-MEE-MO-MAH

in the ascending notes of the octave; and he it was who almost rendered the master of the house ridiculous by compelling him to run three or four times round the building and never to cease a loud singsong during his breathless course.

Mr. Clutterbuck could not but feel that the professional adviser had well earned the twenty guineas with which he was rewarded; and if upon rising the next morning he found himself somewhat strained and hoarse, he readily accepted Fitzgerald's assurance that his voice would return all the more strongly in the course of the day.

That Monday morning, the Monday preceding the poll, the first of the open-air meetings was held in front of the Town Hall, and quite 4,000 people from every part of London, among whom were a number of the local electors themselves, must have listened to the short declaration in which Mr. Clutterbuck, now considerably fatigued, insisted, for the twenty-seventh time, in terms with which they were now all too familiar, and in a voice increasingly raucous, upon the iniquity of the judgment he stood there to reverse, and upon the necessity of returning him to Westminster in order to effect the necessary change in the law; indeed it cannot be denied that, as the election proceeded and the excitement grew, Mr. Clutterbuck himself came greatly to exaggerate the power of a private member in directing the course of British legislation. The lengthy procedure of the House of Commons of which he had but a hazy conception, dwindled in his imagination, and as for the House of Lords, he forgot it altogether.

Upon the Tuesday a football match upon Mickleton Common naturally suspended the vanity of speechmaking, and the day was given over to that hard spadework by the canvassers upon which every election finally depends. The canvassing was the more successful and the less arduous from the fact that the heads of families who were cheering upon the Common the fortunes of the Mickleton Rousers, left the ladies at home to pledge the votes of the household, which they did with a complete freedom to the emissaries of either candidate.

Mr. Clutterbuck, his wife, Fitzgerald, and Mr. Maple, the agent, went the round all day till the candidate himself was fit to drop. At one place they smiled and bowed at a little group of lads who replied with glares, at another they steadily worked half a street, only to find at last that it was just outside the constituency. At a third, a seedy man, a most undoubted voter, who had been present at every meeting approached Mr. Clutterbuck and spoke a word in his ear.

Mr. Clutterbuck good-naturedly proffered half a sovereign; the coin had barely changed hands when the agent--who had caught the gesture in the nick of time--pounced on the needy citizen and wrenched his fingers open by main force. The struggle was brief, and Mr. Maple--a man of stature and consequence--triumphantly returned the coin to the candidate.

Whether from the wrestling or some other emotion he was trembling as he returned it.

"Oh! Mr. Clutterbuck--Oh! It would have cost you your seat!" he puffed out.

Mr. Clutterbuck was grateful indeed, but he heard for hours the echo of the angry borrower's blasphemy and his repeated vow to vote for that fallen angel whom an older theology has regarded as the Enemy of Mankind before he would vote National again.

So Tuesday ended--and here my duty compels me to introduce the repugnant subject of the Opposition candidate, lest the reader should forget in the fever of enthusiasm which I have described, the very presence of a man who dared to set himself against the expressed opinion of The People.

Lord Henfield was his name. His hairs, which were of the palest yellow and few in number for a man of but thirty years, were parted down the middle with an extraordinary accuracy which was no more disturbed when he appeared in the early morning after rising from repose than when in the last hours of the night he would withdraw from the critical and angry audiences which he too often had to encounter.

His face was not clean-shaven: contrariwise, he wore long and drooping moustaches of the same character and complexion as his hair, and forming a singular contrast with that virile grey crescent upon Mr. Clutterbuck's upper lip, of which the reader has so often heard.

His eyes were of a very watery blue; he lisped a little, and such decision as he may have possessed was only to be discovered in his apparently complete indifference to the judgment of men poorer than himself.

The deference due to his rank and wealth forbade any assault upon his person; all other forms of opposition he met with a slight and rather mournful smile, and with the regret that there should be any differences between himself and those whom he hoped would soon prove to be his constituents.

The weakness of his position was not, it may be admitted, entirely due to his personality nor even to the wild popularity which the cause of Fishmonger and Another had recently acquired. Indeed he was as ardent a champion of the incarcerated Fishmonger as was Mr. Clutterbuck himself, and differed from his opponent only in modifying his language where it might have shocked the English sense of the respect which we all owe to the Bench.

His principal ally in a struggle which seemed to disturb him so little was his wife. Lady Henfield, a woman of the most captivating vitality, called at every house in the constituency, smiled, flattered, and joked into friendship the hearts of all the women, and fearlessly bestowed upon either sex indifferently the marks of a warm appreciation which, from such a woman, are never thrown away. Many a household could tell, long before the contest was engaged, of deeds of kindness which her genuine sympathy with the populace forbade her to noise abroad, and her known influence upon the Board of Pleeson's Charity, a social work of immense importance in the neighbourhood, lent her a high and most legitimate influence in all that she did in Mickleton. She had had the sense to take a house for her husband in the locality, and though they but rarely slept in this distant quarter of the metropolis, the excellent way in which it was served and furnished naturally impressed her neighbours of every degree.

All this counteracted, to no slight extent, Lord Henfield's insufficient performances upon the platform, and no one acquainted with electoral campaigning will deny that the enthusiasm or disapproval of popular audiences counts little as compared with the domestic effect of private visits and of good deeds coming from the heart. To all this was added on the Wednesday, a false step on the part of Mr. Clutterbuck, which for the first time, and that so near the poll, was a serious setback to the tide in his favour. A gentleman of considerable means, a printer and dyer of the name of Stephens, who had frequently appeared upon Mr. Clutterbuck's platform and had seemed, even to the keen eye of Charlie Fitzgerald, to be an inoffensive plutocrat, insisted upon receiving the candidate and his wife as his guests at Bongers End during the last days of the struggle.

"It will save your husband," he said to Mrs. Clutterbuck, "those long night journeys to Croydon which a man at his age cannot afford to despise, and will give Mrs. Stephens and myself and my two sons and my daughter Clara and Miss Curle the very greatest pride and pleasure."

This apparently innocuous proposal, which Mrs. Clutterbuck eagerly accepted for her husband, was a threefold error. A long-standing rivalry, or rather enmity, existed between their new host and a Mr. Clay, whose engineering works were perhaps the most important industry in Mickleton, and who as a Tory Home Ruler of some years' standing, was now naturally the head of the National Party since the establishment of a Parliament in Dublin and the framing of the new tariff had called that party into existence. He bitterly resented the honour shown to his rival, and it needed all the tact of Fitzgerald to prevent his influence being thrown into the wrong scale. But that tact was well exercised. Fitzgerald called upon Mr. Clay late at night, described Mr. Clutterbuck's intense desire to have been the guest of Mr. Clay, his hesitation to invite himself, the brutal forwardness of his rival, while the whole story was cemented by a description of blood relationship between Mrs. Clutterbuck and Mrs. Stephens, which, in later days, Fitzgerald himself did not hesitate to deny.

To lead the close of the campaign from Mr. Stephen's mansion at Bongers End was still more dangerous, from the fact that a quarrel had arisen between that gentleman and one of his workmen, whom indeed he had almost dismissed: had the tragedy actually occurred, the situation would have been not very different from the famous cause of the strike at Podger's Wharf, and the parallel was often drawn between the one case and the other in the humbler homes of Mickleton. Finally, Mr. Clutterbuck had not calculated, when he yielded to the warm pressure of his host, that his famous declaration upon total abstinence would there be taken in its literal sense. The principles of the National Party--which had now for two years advocated voluntary abstinence as an alternative to predatory legislation against the trade--forbade Mr. Clutterbuck to touch wine or spirits when he was actually present in the constituency, and he knew very well that if he were returned to the House of Commons it would be necessary for him to take his meals in the new rooms set apart for those who not only denied themselves the use of such beverages, but had the stalwart manhood to forego so much as the sight of others who were causing Israel to sin. But he would never have been able to support the fatigues of those wild days had he not carried in his pocket a flask of B.Q. cognac, and had he not been able from time to time to escape from a midday meal to his club, or better still, to some restaurant where he was unknown. He had, further, on returning to Surrey every night, freely restored his energies by vigorous draughts of port, a wine to which he had grown accustomed and whose use he could ill spare.

It was, therefore, no small handicap to find continual allusion made under Mr. Stephens's roof to his valiant and thorough-going principles, nor did it help the situation to see round him every member of the household, including Mrs. Clutterbuck and his secretary, served with the most generous vintages, while he was compelled to choose milk (which he had never yet been able to digest), water, against which he had been often warned, or those aerated substitutes which his doctor had repeatedly insisted to be, in his particular case, no better than windy poisons.

His vigour declined; his voice grew worse and worse; he hesitated in the midst of his speeches; he contradicted himself more than once. The first serious opposition, upon the Wednesday night, threw him into a fever of anxiety from which he had not recovered the next day. He appeared unpunctually before an impatient audience and actually forgot to appear at all at a smaller meeting later in the evening: a piece of folly that cost him fifty votes.

Meanwhile the renewed energies of his opponents rendered his position less and less enviable as the day of the poll approached, although the Opposition suffered in this election, as in every other, from the very grave drawback that it had no fixed name.

Since 1910 a heterogeneous body, in which the old theoretical Free-Traders, of whose exalted principle and vivid intellectual power the _Spectator_ was the voice, the wide sporting interests whose principal organ was the _Winning Post_, the new Socialist group and the remnants of Unionist and Orange following had coalesced; and though no leader of the first rank appeared, an able secretary, Mr. Ephraim, managed to control the old party chest, but upon a name they could not agree, and in almost every separate by-election their candidate appeared under a different label. Their hold upon the electorate depended upon a promise of future reforms which it would take many years to carry out and in which the populace but half believed, coupled with somewhat academic criticism upon the mistakes of the party in office. But this last weapon, the most powerful weapon of any opposition, they could not use with effect against the administration of a young and popular Prime Minister, of little more than forty years of age, whose enormous wealth and well-known delicacy of lung alike endeared him to the reasonable heart of the people.

Moreover, the Opposition lacked an effective party cry: for the editor of the _Spectator's_ admirable epigram, "No fleet, no meat," had offended the powerful vegetarian group, and Mr. Tylee's quatrain in the _Banner of Israel_ was above the heads of the vulgar.

Such was the strength and the weakness of either side when upon Friday, the day before the poll, the last meetings were held, the last placards posted, and the affairs of the opposing parties finally put in order.

To Mr. Clutterbuck's extreme surprise--for the details of our political life were still new to him--a bag of sovereigns was distributed among the stout hearts who had worked so hard in the Cause, and Mr. Stephens, humorously calling himself for the occasion "the Bogey Man"--a pseudonym received with grateful laughter--saw that the hundred good fellows who had toiled from door to door should receive refreshment as well as honest wage. It was distributed in the garage attached to his magnificent villa, and the day wound up finding all, with the exception of the candidate himself, well satisfied.

There was no doubt that Mr. Clutterbuck was pitiably overwrought. Had he dared he would have broken through the convention of so many arduous days and have drunk freely from some revivifying spring. But his conscience and his common sense alike forbade him.

He looked forward in despair to the night as his only chance of solace and relief, and prayed for such repose as might fit him to meet the terrible strain of the morrow; but that night Mr. Clutterbuck, for all his exhaustion, slept ill.

He rose frequently in the small hours to swallow one of the Hornsby lozenges or, when these palled upon him, one of the Glarges. At times he gargled, and at others, filling his chest to the fullest extent and retaining his breath to the utmost of his capacity, he murmured the syllables which he had been assured would strengthen the vocal chords. He could not, in a stranger's house and at such an hour, permit himself the loud roar which the Voice Producer had insisted upon: it would have been discourteous and, what was worse, it might have impaired his now assured reputation for consistency and sober judgment. It was doubtless, however, owing to this unfortunate but necessary omission that he owed, next day, his complete inability to speak above a whisper.

He rose tired out at seven, dressed wearily, and came down upon that fatal day, November 19, 1911. He saw with increased depression that it was raining. He was, I am sorry to say, so distressed during the heartfelt and simple family prayers of the household as to overset the chair at which he knelt; and at breakfast his nervousness was so intense as to be positively painful to his kind host and hostess, who pressed upon him with assiduous hospitality, kidneys, eggs, bacon, haddock seethed in milk, sausages, cold pheasant, Virginia peach-fed ham, and kedgeree. He was indifferent to all these things.

During the few moments after breakfast which our great English merchants devote to glancing at the daily Press, he could not bring himself to look at the papers which lay upon the table. He so dreaded the insults of the one, he dreaded so much more in another the condensed reports of what he might have said, that he found himself longing, in a sort of dazed way, for some news sheet in which the world might be presented to him empty of his own famous name. As it was, I repeat, he dared not open one of them.

Luckily for him his cheery host did not leave him long in this misery. He found him standing listless in the hall, slapped him on the back and said in a loud and hearty voice:

"You've got to come with me! The motor's ready and the Missus'll be coming down at once." Then he whispered as the suggestion required: "Brandy? All's Mum!"

Mr. Clutterbuck refused it, and in a few moments his host had returned with a decanter of the inspiring beverage. Mr. Clutterbuck gulped a great mouthful fearfully, choked, and suffered, but he was grateful, and the more grateful for the rapidity with which Mr. Stephens suddenly rapt the dangerous friend away.

They went out together to the car. Within a quarter of an hour his hostess and Mrs. Clutterbuck had joined them. There was a little byplay as to who should sit in the front seats--a byplay in which Mr. Clutterbuck himself was too dispirited to join--but it was soon decided by the ladies themselves that the hero of the occasion should appear next to the driver, nor did the physical danger to which such a position exposed him enter the minds of these loyal friends.

They proceeded upon the round of the constituency. The streets were empty and the rain continued to fall. At the corner of Mafeking Avenue and Paradise Row, a group of young people upon their way to school cheered loudly upon seeing the National colours, while with childish thoughtlessness some of their number threw petty missiles after the retreating car. As they passed down the smaller streets they were gratified to see Mr. Clutterbuck's portrait, reposing upon a British lion of formidable aspect and draped as to the hinder quarters in a Union Jack, prominent in the windows even of the public-houses.

At the police station Mr. Clutterbuck felt his first movement of emotion at the sight of a policeman who was coming in mackintoshes out of the door, and who saluted with promptitude and respect.

The first polling booth to which they came contained none but the officials, but it was Mr. Clutterbuck's duty to enter, to look cheerful and to shake them by the hand.

"Nothing doing here?" he wheezed with an uneasy smile.

"There've been a few," said the chief with an indifference that did not betray his own politics. "They're not coming very fast. The weather's against 'em."

As he said this, a very short man with a sly, rapid glance and a jerky manner, darted in, carefully huddled himself round his voting paper, dropped it into the ballot box, darted a look of violent animosity at Mr. Clutterbuck, and was out again in a flash.

He was followed by a publican who shook hands heartily with the candidate, said merrily, "Well, which way 'm I going to vote, I wonder?" and disappeared into the hutch puffing and blowing, came out again, shook hands again, renewed his witticism in a somewhat different form: "Well, which way did I vote, I wonder?"--and waddled out.

Mr. Clutterbuck could bear no more. He climbed again into the motor-car after nodding as genially as he could to the officials at the table, and was asked by his host where he should go next.

He suggested Kipling Crescent.

The school in Kipling Crescent, by one of those contrasts which are symbolic of our enduring sense of equality, though standing in the chief residential street of Mickleton, was sure to receive the largest artisan vote, for it was behind the Crescent that the densest and poorest population of the borough lay. Here there was more animation. A steady if thin stream of workmen came in to record their votes. Few of them expressed any strong interest in the presence of their candidate; one or two touched their caps to the man who was to restore to them the rights of human beings; others smiled somewhat foolishly as they passed him: the greater part did not recognise him at all. One man, to whom manual labour had never appealed, and whose pathetic, intelligent eyes betrayed a world of suffering and of want, approached him and murmured a few words. Mr. Clutterbuck caught them indifferently, but they were quite enough. He remembered the fatal half sovereign, and he leapt for the car.

So the morning passed in visiting one booth after another. The rain ceased; there was a trifle more life round certain booths; the coming and going of vehicles bearing the colours of either candidate was continuous. These, as they passed each other, would sometimes indulge in playful sarcasm. Now and then an honest fight arose, but no serious injuries were received, and it was not until the afternoon that the streets began to fill.

Thence onward the scene changed. Many who had come from other parts of London were now free to satisfy their curiosity; the relaxation from labour and the lengthy discussions which already enlivened the public-houses were beginning to bear their fruit. There was a sort of murmur throughout the whole area of the borough, a murmur which in places rose to a roar.

It had been arranged by the agents of the two parties that the car of Mr. Clutterbuck's host should accidentally meet that of Lord Henfield in front of the Cap and Bells. There was some little delay, and it was at first feared that the light would not be strong enough for the photographer who was waiting concealed at an adjoining window. Luckily, before it was too late, and when Mr. Stephens's car had waited less than ten minutes, Lord Henfield's appeared at the opposite end of the street, the two candidates recognised each other after the first moment of surprise, descended and shook hands warmly amid the enthusiastic cheers of the considerable assemblage; it was apparent to all no petty personal quarrel would lessen the majesty of that day's verdict.

As darkness came on the polling began to grow noticeably heavier. Oddly enough the female or lady electors, who had during daylight remained concealed, came out with the fall of evening. The middle classes, to which this class of voter chiefly belongs, have an ample leisure to record their opinion, but even those most thickly veiled preferred a late hour in which to register their votes which, so far as could be judged, were cast mainly in the National interest. In deference to the strong feeling which the sex entertains upon this matter, the returning officer had permitted the presence of pet dogs in the polling booths. It was upon these that the Party favours were most conspicuously displayed, and it must be admitted that in the greater number of cases they were of the popular magenta hue.

Lady Henfield recorded her vote as a lodger in her husband's house a little before seven, and came out full of frisk and smile, having doubtless given her voice in favour of the name she bore.

Mrs. Clutterbuck could claim no such privilege, nor was it the least of Mr. Clutterbuck's many chagrins upon this eventful day to consider the natural mortification which his wife must have suffered, and would very probably express when occasion served, to see Lady Henfield enjoy that Englishwoman's right of which she had herself been deprived.

During the last hour before eight o'clock, there clustered an amazing throng at every booth, and the intoxication produced by the state of public feeling and the domestic habits of the neighbourhood--which were never indulged to a higher degree than upon this occasion--communicated to the best balanced and the most indifferent a certain degree of enthusiasm. Mr. Clutterbuck had snatched a hasty sandwich and a glass of lime juice at the refreshment bar in the Town Hall when the booths were declared closed and he was admitted to the counting-room.

There were few present. He and Lord Henfield were supported by perhaps half a dozen helpers and friends. The Mayor and his young nephew sat in chairs at a table at the end of the long room, to which the bundles of votes were brought as the sorters counted them. They were laid in two long lines, one for each candidate, upon this table, and the lines had all the appearance of two snakes rapidly increasing in length and running a race as to which should be longest when their growth should cease.

During all the early part of the counting the issue seemed doubtful enough. Lord Henfield, spruce, anxious, alert, walked up and down the sorting benches, turned up continually to glance at the increasing pile of votes, and as continually strolled back with an intimate companion to interest himself in the business of the sorting, a sight with which he was unfamiliar.

As for Mr. Clutterbuck, he was numb to every sensation. The day had been too much for him, and he had become quite careless as to whether he lived or died. He stood, well groomed but with leaden eyes, moving very little from his place near the mayor's table, when he chanced to gaze at the two lines of paper bundles and saw that his own was leading. It did not appear to his unpractised eye to be any considerable lead; the one line was now perhaps a yard long, the other possibly forty inches. But to the trained observation of those who had seen half a dozen contests in the borough, it was decisive.

Mr. Maple whispered hoarsely:

"You're in!"

And Mr. Clutterbuck answered without a voice:

"Am I?"

There were but few more bundles to come. The most of them perhaps were added to Lord Henfield's column, but they did not redress the balance.

Lord Henfield's companion, looking as pleasant as he could, pulled out a £5 note which that nobleman pocketed with evident satisfaction. The mayor jotted down figures upon a bit of paper; when he announced the result, Mr. Clutterbuck was elected by the overwhelming majority of 1028 on the heaviest poll the constituency had known. Something like 92 per cent. had voted upon a register not precisely new, and over 19,000--to be accurate, 19,123--votes had been recorded.

The mayor congratulated Mr. Clutterbuck upon the sweeping success, he shook hands with him and repeated the figures. He congratulated Lord Henfield upon the plucky fight he had made; he congratulated the sorters upon their accuracy, the counters upon their zeal, and the borough upon its self-control at a time when feeling had run high. He congratulated the police upon their conduct throughout a very difficult and trying day; and he was in the act of congratulating the borough council in the same connection, when a wild roar outside the building showed that the result had been betrayed or guessed.

They adjourned hurriedly to the great hall over the portico. The window was open, and so far as the glare from within the room would permit them, they perceived an enormous mob, filling the whole square and stretching far into the streets which converged upon it. The deafening noises which had startled them in the inner recesses of the counting room were as nothing to the hurricane of shouts, cheers, and good-natured blasphemy which swirled about them when they appeared at the balcony. In vain did the mayor, with a pleasant smile upon his face which the darkness alone concealed, raise his hands a dozen times to impose silence. The swaying of the crowd, the cries of those who suffered pressure against the walls upon its exterior parts, nay, the occasional crash of broken glass, seemed only to add to the frenzy.

An individual who, I am glad to say, turned out to be a youth of irresponsible demeanour, caused a moment's panic by firing a pistol. The mayor, with admirable promptitude, took the opportunity of the silence that followed to read out the figures. They were not heeded, but the renewed bellowing which followed their announcement was more eloquent than any mere statement of the majority could have been. The populace were wild with joy at their victory, and that portion of them who as bitterly mourned defeat would have been roughly handled had they not numbered quite half this vast assembly of human beings.

When some measure of silence had been achieved, Mr. Clutterbuck and Lord Henfield shook hands for the second time that day in a public manner, to the supreme delight of both friend and foe.

Mr. Clutterbuck recited in an inaudible croak the few courteous and manly words which he had prepared for the occasion, and Lord Henfield, a little before Mr. Clutterbuck had completed his last sentence, delivered, in much louder but equally inaudible tones, his apology for defeat, and his prophecy that he would be more successful upon the next occasion.

* * * * *

Before Mr. Clutterbuck could be allowed to go back to the hospitable roof at Bongers End, he was required to visit his Committee Rooms and to address the workers. His mind was still a blank, but he bowed to them civilly enough and emitted some few hoarse whispers thanking them for their unfailing courage, tact, loyalty, gentlemanly feeling, tireless industry, exhaustive labours and British pluck. For a moment, and only for a moment, the memory of the bag of sovereigns swept over his mind. He was too tired to heed even that memory, and he almost fell into his chair when he had concluded.

It must be confessed that the workers were a trifle disappointed; their honest faces, upon many of which the growth of a three-days' beard denoted their unremitting attention to the duties before them, looked anxiously above their thick neckcloths as though they had expected something more from the man upon whom the eyes of all England were turned, and whose conspicuous position they had largely helped him to attain. The situation was solved by Mr. Maple, who, in a voice worthy of that occasion or of any other, addressed the workers as his fellows and his equals--for had he not himself begun life as a working man?--and reiterated with manly enthusiasm, not only the legitimate praise accorded them by the exhausted Mr. Clutterbuck, but his own frequently expressed admiration of their self-denial, zeal, sincerity, conviction, spontaneous, unflagging hope and indomitable courage.

"Gentlemen," he concluded, and gentlemen was surely the term for these loyal-hearted men, "we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, not because you have returned Mr. Clutterbuck--don't think that! What is a man in such mighty moments as these? No, but because you have saved the great principle that...."

The remaining three words of his peroration were lost in a frenzy of applause. The platform rose and bowed, and as refreshments could not be given (under the "Corrupt Practices Act") within the precincts of the building, the proceedings terminated with a hearty handshake all round and the immediate dispersion of the audience to another place.

When they reached home, Mr. Clutterbuck's kind host, though himself an abstainer, opened a bottle of champagne, not indeed for Mr. Clutterbuck, whose principles he well knew, but for Mrs. Clutterbuck, his wife, to whom was given the toast of honour, for Mr. Maple, for Mr. Maple's nephew and his two sons, and a Mr. and Mrs. Charles, who between them did honour to the bottle, and very soon despatched it; then, in the midst of hearty thanks and renewed congratulations, each party left for its home.

And that night at last, after so many nights, Mr. Clutterbuck was permitted to sleep, and slept.

He was a Member of Parliament.