In that ceremony I took no part; indeed, I spent the next two hours, with the help of another doctor, trying to restore consciousness to Stephen Strong in a little room that opened off the town-hall. Within half an hour Mrs. Strong arrived.
“He still breathes,” I said in answer to her questioning glance.
Then the poor little woman sat herself down upon the edge of a chair, clasped her hands and said, “If the Lord wills it, dear Stephen will live; and if the Lord wills it, he will die.”
This sentence she repeated at intervals until the end came. After two hours there was a knocking at the door.
“Go away,” I said, but the knocker would not go away. So I opened. It was my agent, who whispered in an excited voice, “The count’s quite correct, you are in by seven.”
“All right,” I answered, “tell them we want some more brandy.”
At that moment Stephen Strong opened his eyes, and at that moment also there arose a mighty burst of cheering from the crowd assembled on the market-place without, to whom the Mayor had declared the numbers from a window of the town-hall.
The dying man heard the cheering, and looked at me inquiringly, for he could not speak. I tried to explain that I was elected on the recount, but was unable to make him understand. Then I hit upon an expedient. On the floor lay a Conservative rosette of blue ribbon. I took it up and took also my own Radical colours from my coat. Holding one of them in each hand before Strong’s dying eyes, I lifted up the Radical orange and let the Conservative blue fall to the floor.
He saw and understood, for a ghastly smile appeared upon his distorted face. Indeed, he did more—almost with his last breath he spoke in a hoarse, gurgling whisper, and his words were, “Bravo the A.V.’s!”
Now he shut his eyes, and I thought that the end had come, but, opening them presently, he fixed them with great earnestness first upon myself and then upon his wife, accompanying the glance with a slight movement of the head. I did not know what he could mean, but with his wife it was otherwise, for she said, “Don’t trouble yourself, Stephen, I quite understand.”