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.