A year after he began to drive for Mr. Trupp, he had a second car, a man driving for him, and another on repairing work.
Success sugared his political outlook, just as defeat had soured it. Like most really hard men, he saved himself in his own eyes by becoming a thorough-going sentimentalist. In the course of a year or two, King and Country had become the objects of his ferocious admiration; while the masses of his countrymen were to be dealt with as ruthlessly as expediency and the Vote would allow.
"Traitors, I call em," he confided to his new friend, the Reverend Spink. "All for their fat selves all the time. Never think of you and me. They fair give me the hiccoughs."
At the General Election of 1906 he came out fearlessly for God and the Conservative Party.
The two candidates for West Beachbourne were, as all decent men admitted, the worst who ever stood for a constituency. The sitting member had just received that which he entered Parliament to obtain—a Baronetcy; and his solitary ambition now was to be defeated. Unfortunately an aspiring wife had other views to which her spouse had to give way.
His opponent, on the other hand, had, according to the enemy, recently emerged "from a home of rest" in order to contest the constituency.
At the preceding Khaki Election the Conservative candidate, who was an undoubtedly fine whip, had secured the "Triumph of Right," as Archdeacon Willcocks finely called it, by the simple process of driving a well-appointed team through the constituency.
"I'll vote for them 'orses," had been the general verdict.
The victor now repeated his tactics.
On polling day, as a reward for his strenuous labours in the good cause, Alf was given a ride on the top of the coach among the very pick of England's aristocracy. In that fair company he meandered from public-house to public-house all a winter's afternoon, singing with his hosts hymns and spirituous songs.