The applause on Keble’s appearance was not deafening. After all, Witney was less well acquainted with Keble than the Valley, even though it had pleasant recollections of the compliments uttered by his father from the back platform of a governmental railway carriage. Keble’s address was similar to former addresses, though throughout this final day he had brought together concise counter arguments to new attacks, and had prepared a damaging criticism of his opponent’s latest rosy promises. He was more than cordially received, but again Louise felt the absence of enthusiasm which represents the margin of a majority.
When he had resumed his seat, Mr. Goard, in accordance with a secret plan, called on Mrs. Eveley, to the amazement of Miriam and Keble, and to the wonderment of the big audience, who had had three serious speeches to digest and who sensed in the new move a piquant diversion.
“Last night,” Louise began, “I asked my husband to let me speak at the Valley mass meeting, and he objected. So, ladies and gentlemen, to-night, I didn’t ask his permission at all. I asked Mr. Goard’s, and as you all know, Pat Goard could never resist a lady.”
Already she had changed the mind of a score of men who had been on the point of leaving the hall.
“I wouldn’t give my husband away by telling you he refused, unless it illustrated a point I wish to make. The point is that no matter how hard a man objects,—and the better they are the more they do object,—his wife always takes her own way in the end. Not only that, ladies and gentlemen, but the wife adds much more color to her husband’s public policies than the public realizes. You’ve heard the proverb about the hand that rocks the cradle. I don’t for a second claim that the average wife is capable of thinking out a political platform; certainly I couldn’t; but she is like the irritating fly that goads the horse into a direction that he didn’t at all know he was going to take. What it all boils down to is this: when you elect Keble Eveley at the polls to-morrow, you’ll elect me too. And if you were by any mischance to elect Oat Swigger, you’d be electing Minnie Swigger. Minnie Swigger is a jolly good girl, one of my oldest friends. But the point is, ladies and gentlemen, I can lick Minnie!”
Shouts of laughter interrupted her. Miriam and Keble had ceased being shocked. However much they might deprecate her sops to the groundlings, they were hypnotized by her control of the mass which had a few minutes earlier been heterogeneous and capricious. Her direct personal allusions had dispelled a hampering ceremoniousness that had prevailed all evening.
“Once when we were girls together at the Valley school,” Louise continued, seeing that her audience appreciated the reference to Mrs. Swigger. “I did lick her. I had more hair for her to pull, and she made the most of it. But I had a champion’s uppercut. Now gentlemen, when you go to the polls to-morrow, don’t back the wrong girl.”
She took a step nearer the row of lamps and held them by a change of mood. “A little while ago somebody said that Keble Eveley was a dude. If he were, his wife would be a dude too; and though I’ve come up against a lot of rough characters in my time, nobody has yet been mean enough to call me a dude to my face; things said behind your back don’t count. So now, man to man, is there anybody here who has the nerve to call us dudes? If there is let him say it now, or forever hold his peace.”
There was a silence, then a shuffling sound directed attention to a corner, whence a facetious voice called out, “His father’s a sure enough dude, ain’t he?”
Louise darted a glance to see who had spoken, paused a moment, smiled, and took the audience into her confidence. “It’s Matt Hardy,” she announced. “Matt’s a clever boy (Matt was fifty and weighed fifteen stone), but like many clever people he overshoots the mark. Matt says Keble Eveley’s father is a dude; and his obvious implication is that we are therefore dudes. For the sake of argument, let’s admit that Lord Eveley is a dude——”