“What infernal treachery is this?” cried Randal, livid with honest indignation.
“Wait a moment; there is Avenel!” exclaimed Levy; and at the head of another procession that emerged from the obscurer lanes of the town, walked, with grave majesty, the surviving Yellow candidate. Dick disappeared for a moment within a grocer’s shop in the broadest part of the place, and then culminated at the height of a balcony on the first story, just above an enormous yellow canister, significant of the profession and the politics of the householder. No sooner did Dick, hat in hand, appear on this rostrum, than the two processions halted below, bands ceased, flags drooped round their staves, crowds rushed within hearing, and even the poll clerks sprang from the booth. Randal and Levy themselves pressed into the throng. Dick on the balcony was the Deus ex machina.
“Freemen and electors!” said Dick, with his most sonorous accents, “finding that the public opinion of this independent and enlightened constituency is so evenly divided, that only one Yellow candidate can be returned, and only one Blue has a chance, it was my intention last night to retire from the contest, and thus put an end to all bickerings and ill-blood (Hold your tongues there, can’t you!). I say honestly, I should have preferred the return of my distinguished and talented young nephew—honourable relation—to my own; but he would not hear of it, and talked all our Committee into the erroneous but high-minded notion, that the town would cry shame if the nephew rode into parliament by breaking the back of the uncle.” (Loud cheers from the mob, and partial cries of “We ‘ll have you both!”)
“You’ll do no such thing, and you know it; hold your jaw,” resumed Dick, with imperious good-humour. “Let me go on, can’t you?—time presses. In a word, my nephew resolved to retire, if, at two o’clock this day, there was no chance of returning both of us; and there is none. Now, then, the next thing for the Yellows who have not yet voted, is to consider how they will give their second votes. If I had been the man to retire, why, for certain reasons, I should have recommended them to split with Leslie,—a clever chap, and pretty considerable sharp.”
“Hear, hear, hear!” cried the baron, lustily.
“But I’m bound to say that my nephew has an opinion of his own,—as an independent Britisher, let him be twice your nephew, ought to have; and his opinion goes the other way, and so does that of our Committee.”
“Sold!” cried the baron; and some of the crowd shook their heads, and looked grave,—especially those suspected of a wish to be bought.
“Sold! Pretty fellow you with the nosegay in your buttonhole to talk of selling! You who wanted to sell your own client,—and you know it. [Levy recoiled.] Why, gentlemen, that’s Levy the Jew, who talks of selling! And if he asperses the character of this constituency, I stand here to defend it! And there stands the parish pump, with a handle for the arm of Honesty, and a spout for the lips of Falsehood!”
At the close of this magniloquent period, borrowed, no doubt, from some great American orator, Baron Levy involuntarily retreated towards the shelter of the polling-booth, followed by some frowning Yellows with very menacing gestures.
“But the calumniator sneaks away; leave him to the reproach of his conscience,” resumed Dick, with a generous magnanimity.