“Don’t be a fool, Sam. You know that’s nothing to do with the question. And the long and short of it is I’ve promised to step into the breach, and uncommon glad of the chance, too. Why, man, it’s an honour to be permitted to carry the banner of Land Reform right up to the entrenchments of feudalism.”
“Oh, you can keep that sort of talk for the free and independent. Have you counted the cost? There hasn’t been a Liberal member for a county constituency in the whole length and breadth of Staffordshire since the days of Simon de Montfort, I imagine. The Southern Division’s an awfully scattered one and almost purely agricultural.”
“There’s the mining district right in the heart of it,” broke in Beaumont.
“True; and the miners haven’t a vote. They’ll crowd round your meetings, and carry you shoulder high, shout themselves harse, and wring the hands off you in their grimy fists, and sing ‘See the conquering hero comes’ till you feel you can’t fail to head the poll. And when the polling day comes, where are they? No more use than a row of skittles. And while they’re roaring, your quiet comfortable farmer draws up in his gig from his quiet comfortable farm, has a quiet and comfortable glass at his favourite hostelry, and then quietly and comfortably pills you in the polling-booth. Do you think the farmer is such an insensate ass as to fall out with the vicar and the squire and his relations, just to oblige Mr. Edward Beaumont, charm he never so wisely?”
“Well, commend me to you for a Job’s comforter, Sam. It will be a hard fight, I know, but, as the Whip put it, it will give me a chance to show the stuff I’m made of, to win my spurs; and what can a man want more? Anyway, I’ve passed my word, and I’m off to Wolverhampton in next to no time to meet the election agent and arrange for a series of meetings all over the Division. And I want you to cut off for your holidays and come back as fit as a fiddle, for I expect during the next few months you’ll have to do more than your share of the office work.”
“Well, ‘who will to Cupar, maun to Cupar.’ Whom God wants to ruin, He first turns mad; and if ever a man was qualifying for a lunatic asylum, that man’s yourself, Beaumont. Don’t say I haven’t warned you. You’ll think of what I say someday or my name’s not Sam Storth. You’ll spend a lot of money.”…
“I don’t care if it costs every penny I have in the world.”
“You needn’t care. It will cost every penny you have in the world, and more to boot, unless you’ve stumbled across a gold mine in the fens.”
“Better than a gold mine, my boy. The grandest, divinest creature——”
“Exactly. I guessed there was a woman at the bottom of it. But for electioneering purposes give me the gold mine. Well, just run through these papers with me and then I’m off. My name’s Walker, and my address the Highlands for the next six weeks.”