Hood’s impetuous movements brought them to the bank of the river and the outer offices of the factory, all of which were covered with the coloured posters of the candidature, and one of which was obviously fitted up as a busy and bustling committee-room. Hood actually met Mr. Low coming out of it, buttoned up in a fur coat and bursting with speechless efficiency. But Mr. Low’s beady black eyes glistened with an astonishment bordering on suspicion when Hood in the most hearty fashion offered his sympathy and co-operation. That strange subconscious fear, that underlay all the wealthy manager’s success and security in this country, always came to the surface at the sight of Owen Hood’s long ironical face. Just at that moment, however, one of the local agents rushed at him in a distracted fashion, with telegrams in his hand. They were short of canvassers; they were short of cars; they were short of speakers; the crowd at Little Puddleton had been waiting half an hour; Dr. Hunter could not get round to them till ten past nine, and so on. The agent in his agony would probably have hailed a Margate nigger and entrusted him with the cause of the great National Party, without any really philosophical inquiry into the nigger’s theory of citizenship. For all such over-practical push and bustle in our time is always utterly unpractical at the last minute and in the long run. On that night Robert Owen Hood would have been encouraged to go anywhere and say anything; and he did. It might be interesting to imagine what the lady thought about it; but it is possible that she did not think about it. She had a radiantly abstracted sense of passing through a number of ugly rooms and sheds with flaring gas and stacks of leaflets behind which little irritable men ran about like rabbits. The walls were covered with large allegorical pictures printed in line or in a few bright colours, representing Dr. Hunter as clad in armour, as slaying dragons, as rescuing ladies rather like classical goddesses, and so on. Lest it should be too literally understood that Dr. Hunter was in the habit of killing dragons in his daily round, as a form of field-sport, the dragon was inscribed with its name in large letters. Apparently its name was “National Extravagance.� Lest there should be any doubt about the alternative which Dr. Hunter had discovered as a corrective to extravagance, the sword which he was thrusting through the dragon’s body was inscribed with the word “Economy.� Elizabeth Seymour, through whose happy but bewildered mind these pictures passed, could not but reflect vaguely that she herself had lately but to practise a good deal of economy and resist a good many temptations to extravagance; but it would never have occurred to her unaided imagination to conceive the action as that of plunging a sword into a scaly monster of immense size. In the central committee-room they actually came face to face for a moment with the candidate, who came in very hot and breathless with a silk hat on the back of his head; where he had possibly forgotten it, for he certainly did not remove it. She was a little ashamed of being sensitive about such trifles; but she came to the conclusion that she would not like to have a husband standing for Parliament.
“We’ve rounded up all those people down Bleak Row,� said Dr. Hunter. “No good going down The Hole and those filthy places. No votes there. Streets ought to be abolished and the people too.�
“Well, we’ve had a very good meeting in the Masonic Hall,� said the agent cheerfully. “Lord Normantowers spoke, and really he got through all right. Told some stories, you know; and they stood it capitally.�
“And now,� said Owen Hood, slapping his hands together in an almost convivial manner, “what about this torchlight procession?�
“This what procession?� asked the agent.
“Do you mean to tell me,� said Hood sternly, “that arrangements are not complete for the torchlight procession of Dr. Hunter? That you are going to let this night of triumph pass without kindling a hundred flames to light the path of the conqueror? Do you realize that the hearts of a whole people have spontaneously stirred and chosen him? That the suffering poor murmured in their sleep ‘Vote For Hunter’ long before the Caucus came by a providential coincidence to the same conclusion? Would not the people in The Hole set fire to their last poor sticks of furniture to do him honour? Why, from this chair alone——�
He caught up the chair on which Hunter had been sitting and began to break it enthusiastically. In this he was hastily checked; but he actually succeeded in carrying the company with him in his proposal, thus urged at the eleventh hour.
By nightfall he had actually organized his torchlight procession, escorting the triumphant Hunter, covered with blue ribbons, to the riverside, rather as if the worthy doctor were to be baptized like a convert or drowned like a witch. For that matter, Hood might possibly intend to burn the witch; for he brandished a blazing torch he carried so as to make a sort of halo round Hunter’s astonished countenance. Then, springing on the scrap-heap by the brink of the river, he addressed the crowd for the last time.
“Fellow-citizens, we meet upon the shore of the Thames, the Thames which is to Englishmen all that the Tiber ever was to Romans. We meet in a valley which has been almost as much the haunt of English poets as of English birds. Never was there an art so native to our island as our old national tradition of landscape-painting in water-colour; never was that water-colour so luminous or so delicate as when dedicated to these holy waters. It was in such a scene that one of the most exquisite of our elder poets repeated as a burden to his meditations the single line, ‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.’
“Rumours have been heard of some intention to trouble these waters; but we have been amply reassured. Names that now stand as high as those of our national poets and painters are a warrant that the stream is still as clear and pure and beneficent as of old. We all know the beautiful work that Mr. Bulton has done in the matter of filters. Dr. Hunter supports Mr. Bulton. I mean Mr. Bulton supports Dr. Hunter. I may also mention no less a man than Mr. Low. Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.