During the last hour before eight o'clock, there clustered an amazing throng at every booth, and the intoxication produced by the state of public feeling and the domestic habits of the neighbourhood—which were never indulged to a higher degree than upon this occasion—communicated to the best balanced and the most indifferent a certain degree of enthusiasm. Mr. Clutterbuck had snatched a hasty sandwich and a glass of lime juice at the refreshment bar in the Town Hall when the booths were declared closed and he was admitted to the counting-room.
There were few present. He and Lord Henfield were supported by perhaps half a dozen helpers and friends. The Mayor and his young nephew sat in chairs at a table at the end of the long room, to which the bundles of votes were brought as the sorters counted them. They were laid in two long lines, one for each candidate, upon this table, and the lines had all the appearance of two snakes rapidly increasing in length and running a race as to which should be longest when their growth should cease.
During all the early part of the counting the issue seemed doubtful enough. Lord Henfield, spruce, anxious, alert, walked up and down the sorting benches, turned up continually to glance at the increasing pile of votes, and as continually strolled back with an intimate companion to interest himself in the business of the sorting, a sight with which he was unfamiliar.
As for Mr. Clutterbuck, he was numb to every sensation. The day had been too much for him, and he had become quite careless as to whether he lived or died. He stood, well groomed but with leaden eyes, moving very little from his place near the mayor's table, when he chanced to gaze at the two lines of paper bundles and saw that his own was leading. It did not appear to his unpractised eye to be any considerable lead; the one line was now perhaps a yard long, the other possibly forty inches. But to the trained observation of those who had seen half a dozen contests in the borough, it was decisive.
Mr. Maple whispered hoarsely:
"You're in!"
And Mr. Clutterbuck answered without a voice:
"Am I?"
There were but few more bundles to come. The most of them perhaps were added to Lord Henfield's column, but they did not redress the balance.