‘Alas!’ said Wentworth, ‘I don’t know her. I can only talk of woman as she is—charming, lovely, worthy of all honour, in her own peculiar sphere.’
‘Thank you,’ said the lady haughtily; ‘we want something more;’ and she went out of the room to report to her committee that on Women’s Rights the candidate gave a very uncertain sound.
‘Will you,’ said one other fair enthusiast a little later on, ‘vote for the repeal of the Vaccination Acts?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Wentworth. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because it is an interference with the freedom of the subject.’
In vain he argued all government, more or less, was that, and that small-pox was an awful malady, against which it behoved the nation to take every precaution. He spoke in vain. The anti-vaccinators did not go so far as to say, as the old opponents did, that vaccination made children as hairy as bullocks, or that it led them to bellow like bulls. In our day they have shifted their grounds, but their opposition remains the same.
The Sabbatarians came next. They were Liberals mostly, with a sprinkling of Tory Evangelicals, yet rather than see any mitigation in the severity of the Jewish Sabbath, any attempt made to divert the working man from the public-house on a Sunday, they declared themselves dead against Mr. Wentworth. The loafers, of course, were against him. He refused to treat them to beer. He kept no public-houses open. He did not even offer to stand glasses round when they called. If he was above obliging them, why should they put themselves out of their way to oblige him? He was for purity and independence. Little they cared for either the one or the other. Every hour it seemed to him that his chance grew less. What was the good of talking about an improved foreign policy, about the advancement of the people in political power, about the reduction of taxation, or free trade in land, or land reform, to such men? According to one class, an election was simply an excuse for bribery and corruption. It meant money and beer. A candidate was to be bled to the uttermost farthing, and he was to repay himself how he could, and as best he could, when he got into Parliament. According to another class, a General Election was simply an opportunity for fighting on side issues, and the ventilation of all sorts of fads.
Musing on these things, the waiter came to him to announce another visitor. Mr. Wentworth groaned.
‘Not a lady, sir.’
‘Thank God for that!’ he replied.