Lord Henfield's companion, looking as pleasant as he could, pulled out a £5 note which that nobleman pocketed with evident satisfaction. The mayor jotted down figures upon a bit of paper; when he announced the result, Mr. Clutterbuck was elected by the overwhelming majority of 1028 on the heaviest poll the constituency had known. Something like 92 per cent. had voted upon a register not precisely new, and over 19,000—to be accurate, 19,123—votes had been recorded.
The mayor congratulated Mr. Clutterbuck upon the sweeping success, he shook hands with him and repeated the figures. He congratulated Lord Henfield upon the plucky fight he had made; he congratulated the sorters upon their accuracy, the counters upon their zeal, and the borough upon its self-control at a time when feeling had run high. He congratulated the police upon their conduct throughout a very difficult and trying day; and he was in the act of congratulating the borough council in the same connection, when a wild roar outside the building showed that the result had been betrayed or guessed.
They adjourned hurriedly to the great hall over the portico. The window was open, and so far as the glare from within the room would permit them, they perceived an enormous mob, filling the whole square and stretching far into the streets which converged upon it. The deafening noises which had startled them in the inner recesses of the counting room were as nothing to the hurricane of shouts, cheers, and good-natured blasphemy which swirled about them when they appeared at the balcony. In vain did the mayor, with a pleasant smile upon his face which the darkness alone concealed, raise his hands a dozen times to impose silence. The swaying of the crowd, the cries of those who suffered pressure against the walls upon its exterior parts, nay, the occasional crash of broken glass, seemed only to add to the frenzy.
An individual who, I am glad to say, turned out to be a youth of irresponsible demeanour, caused a moment's panic by firing a pistol. The mayor, with admirable promptitude, took the opportunity of the silence that followed to read out the figures. They were not heeded, but the renewed bellowing which followed their announcement was more eloquent than any mere statement of the majority could have been. The populace were wild with joy at their victory, and that portion of them who as bitterly mourned defeat would have been roughly handled had they not numbered quite half this vast assembly of human beings.
When some measure of silence had been achieved, Mr. Clutterbuck and Lord Henfield shook hands for the second time that day in a public manner, to the supreme delight of both friend and foe.
Mr. Clutterbuck recited in an inaudible croak the few courteous and manly words which he had prepared for the occasion, and Lord Henfield, a little before Mr. Clutterbuck had completed his last sentence, delivered, in much louder but equally inaudible tones, his apology for defeat, and his prophecy that he would be more successful upon the next occasion.
Before Mr. Clutterbuck could be allowed to go back to the hospitable roof at Bongers End, he was required to visit his Committee Rooms and to address the workers. His mind was still a blank, but he bowed to them civilly enough and emitted some few hoarse whispers thanking them for their unfailing courage, tact, loyalty, gentlemanly feeling, tireless industry, exhaustive labours and British pluck. For a moment, and only for a moment, the memory of the bag of sovereigns swept over his mind. He was too tired to heed even that memory, and he almost fell into his chair when he had concluded.
It must be confessed that the workers were a trifle disappointed; their honest faces, upon many of which the growth of a three-days' beard denoted their unremitting attention to the duties before them, looked anxiously above their thick neckcloths as though they had expected something more from the man upon whom the eyes of all England were turned, and whose conspicuous position they had largely helped him to attain. The situation was solved by Mr. Maple, who, in a voice worthy of that occasion or of any other, addressed the workers as his fellows and his equals—for had he not himself begun life as a working man?—and reiterated with manly enthusiasm, not only the legitimate praise accorded them by the exhausted Mr. Clutterbuck, but his own frequently expressed admiration of their self-denial, zeal, sincerity, conviction, spontaneous, unflagging hope and indomitable courage.
"Gentlemen," he concluded, and gentlemen was surely the term for these loyal-hearted men, "we thank you from the bottom of our hearts, not because you have returned Mr. Clutterbuck—don't think that! What is a man in such mighty moments as these? No, but because you have saved the great principle that...."