“That’s a real gemman!” said a baker’s boy.
William Massarene threw the discerning lad a shilling.
“Dear friend,” said the religious philanthropist with emotion, “how glad I am to see that your immense prosperity has not driven out the warmth of human sympathy from your heart.”
Massarene was sorely tempted to put his tongue in his cheek, but as he saw that the philanthropist’s face was quite grave he kept his own equally serious.
“You’ve an uncommon lot of barebacked poor for a Christian country, sir,” he said in return—a reply which somewhat disconcerted the philanthropist.
CHAPTER XVII.
In the autumn of the year the general election took place, and Southwoldshire returned William Massarene, whilst Limehouse selected a labor member to represent its interests. His majority was smaller than the Carlton agent had calculated and the Conservative press prophesied, but that made little impression on him, though it disappointed his party. A large portion of the country-folks would not hear of the newcomer, who had turned out the Roxhalls. “He’s no more nor us, that chap, and an uncommon ugly jowl he’ve got,” said one old gaffer to another, as they munched their noonday snack under the hedge which they had been cutting down into the hideousness demanded by high farming, or behind which they had been drenching the mosses and lichens of old apple-trees with a solution of lime and sublimate of iron, as scientific experts advise.
He took with the yokels to a certain extent, as the marquis had said, but not in those districts where the Roxhalls were beloved, and where the laborers liked a gentleman and knew one when they saw him. Moreover, the clergy of the county backed him to a man, and that lost him many votes from the rustic population. “Passon knows which side his bread be buttered,” said the old gaffers; and even the influence of Lady Kenilworth and other Primrose Dames, who came down to canvass for him, and who did not scruple to plead and to promise everything possible and impossible, could turn them to the side espoused by the Established Church.
“My cousin Roxhall begs you to plump for his friend,” she assured them; but the gaffers smelt the lie, and were not to be caught by chaff. They were corrupted by political bunkum, weakened in their marrow by a tawdry and trumpery civilization, bewildered by the multitude of their teachers and flatterers, but they were still the descendants in direct line of the bowmen of Cressy and the king’s troopers of Naseby, and they knew good blood when they saw it, and did not like the look of the gold man from Ameriky.
However, by the aid of that man in the moon, whose occult and untraceable influence determines all political elections all the world over, these loyal and sturdy rustics were put in the minority, and the clergy and the county people crowded them out at the polls.