"Ho, ho! What a pugnacious Lily—a sword-Lily! You ought to have had an heroic name—Deborah, or Joan, or Portia! Your eyes gleam like beacons."
"I feel more contented with myself.—Oh, I am told that Mrs. Wade called this afternoon?"
"Yes; anxious to see you. Burning with wrath against female Toryism. She was astonished when I told her of your expedition."
Lilian laughed merrily. Thereupon dinner was announced, and they left the room hand in hand.
That evening it was rumoured throughout the town that Mr. Welwyn-Baker had telegraphed a resolve not to offer himself for re-election. In a committee-room at the Constitutional Literary Society was held an informal meeting of Conservatives, but no one of them had definite intelligence to communicate. Somebody had told somebody else that Hugh Welwyn-Baker held that important telegram from his father; that was all. Mr. Mumbray's hopes rose high. On the morrow, at another meeting rather differently constituted (miserable lack of organization still evident among the Tories), it was made known on incontestable authority that the sitting Member would offer himself for re-election. Mr. Mumbray and his supporters held high language. "It would be party suicide," they went about repeating. With such a man as Denzil Quarrier on the Radical side, they must have a new and a strong candidate! But all was confusion; no one could take the responsibility of acting.
Already the affairs of the Liberals were in perfect order, and it took but a day or two to decide even the minutiae of the campaign. To Quarrier's candidature no one within the party offered the least opposition. Mr. Chown, who had for some time reserved his judgment, declared to all and sundry that "all things considered, a better man could scarcely have been chosen." Before thus committing himself he had twice called upon Quarrier, and been closeted with him for a longtime. Now, in these days of arming, he received a card inviting him (and his wife) to dine at the candidate's house on a certain evening a fortnight ahead; it was the second dinner that Denzil had planned, but Mr. Chown was not aware of this, nor that the candidate had remarked of him to Lilian: "We must have that demagogue among his kind, of course." Denzil's agent (Hummerstone by name) instantly secured rooms in admirable situations, and the Public Hall was at the disposal of the party for their first great meeting a few days hence.
In facing that assembly (Toby Liversedge was chairman) Denzil had a very slight and very brief recurrence of his platform nervousness. Determined to risk nothing, he wrote out his speech with great care and committed it to memory. The oration occupied about two hours, with not a moment of faltering. It was true that he had discovered his vocation; he spoke like a man of long Parliamentary experience, to the astonished delight of his friends, and with enthusiastic applause from the mass of his hearers. Such eloquence had never been heard in Polterham. If anything, he allowed himself too much scope in vituperation, but it was a fault on the right side. The only circumstance that troubled him was when his eye fell upon Lilian, and he saw her crying with excitement; a fear passed through his mind that she might be overwrought and fall into hysterics, or faint. The occasion proved indeed too much for her; that night she did not close her eyes, and the next day saw her prostrate in nervous exhaustion. But she seemed to pick up her strength again very quickly, and was soon hard at work canvassing among the electors' wives.
"Don't overdo it," Denzil cautioned her. "Remember, if you are ill, I shall mope by your bedside."
"I can't stop now that I have begun," was her reply. "If I try to sit idle, I shall be ill."
She could read nothing but newspapers; her piano was silent; she talked politics, and politics only. Never was seen such a change in woman, declared her intimates; yet, in spite of probabilities, they thought her more charming than ever. No word of animosity ever fell from her lips; what inspired her was simple ardour for Denzil's cause, and, as she considered it, that of the oppressed multitude. In her way, said Toby Liversedge, she was as eloquent as Quarrier himself, and sundry other people were of the same opinion.