"Ho! ho! this is news!" answered Mr. Liversedge, starting up from his easy-chair.
"News, indeed!" said his wife; "but that's no reason, Denzil, why you should make my carpet all rain and mud. Do go and take your coat off, and clean your boots, there's a good boy!"
"How can I think of coat and boots? Here, Lily, fling this garment somewhere. Give me a duster, or something, to stand on, Molly. Toby, we must have a meeting in a day or two. Can we get the Public Hall for Thursday or Friday? Shall we go round and see our committee-men to-night?"
"Time enough to-morrow; most of them are just going to bed. But how is it no one had an inkling of this? They have kept the secret uncommonly well."
"The blackguards! Ha, ha! Now for a good fight! It'll be old Welwyn-Baker, after all, you'll see. They won't have the courage to set up a new man at a moment's notice. The old buffer will come maudling once more, and we'll bowl him off his pins!"
Lilian sat with her eyes fixed upon him. His excitement infected her, and when they went home together she talked of the coming struggle with joyous animation.
CHAPTER XV
The next morning—Tuesday, March 9th—there was a rush for the London papers. Every copy that reached the Polterham vendors was snapped up within a few minutes of its arrival. People who had no right of membership ran ravening to the Literary Institute and the Constitutional Literary Society, and peered over the shoulders of legitimate readers, on such a day as this unrebuked. Mr. Chown's drapery establishment presented a strange spectacle. For several hours it was thronged with sturdy Radicals eager to hear their eminent friend hold forth on the situation. At eleven o'clock Mr. Chown fairly mounted a chair behind his counter, and delivered a formal harangue—thus, as he boasted, opening the political campaign. He read aloud (for the seventh time) Lord Beaconsfield's public letter to the Duke of Marlborough, in which the country was warned, to begin with, against the perils of Home Rule. "It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine.... Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the verdict of the country.... Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, of England in the Councils of Europe."
"Here you have it," cried the orator, as he dashed the newspaper to his feet, "pure, unadulterated Jingoism! 'Ascendancy in the Councils of Europe!' How are the European powers likely to hear that, do you think? I venture to tell my Lord Beaconsfield—I venture to tell him on behalf of this constituency—aye, and on behalf of this country—that it is he who holds 'destructive doctrine'! I venture to tell my Lord Beaconsfield that England is not prepared to endorse any such insolent folly! We shall very soon have an opportunity of hearing how far such doctrine recommends itself to our man 'of light and leading'—to our Radical candidate—to our future member, Mr. Denzil Quarrier!"