“We can’t have him upsettin’ his own election by any interference with the boys,” said Bingham to Horace Williams. “He’s got too long a nose for all kinds of things to be comfortable in town today. He’ll do a great deal less harm trotting round the Reserve braced up against old Ormiston.”
So Elgin was left to the capable hands of the boys, for the furtherance of the Liberal interest and the sacred cause of imperialism. Mr Farquharson, whose experience was longer and whose nose presumably shorter than the candidate’s, never abandoned the Town Ward. Bingham skirmished between the polling-booths and the committee room. Horace Williams was out all day—Rawlins edited the paper. The returns wouldn’t be ready in time for anything but an extra anyhow, and the “Stand to Arms, South Fox,” leader had been written two days ago. The rest was millinery, or might be for all anybody would read of it. The other side had a better idea of the value of their candidate than to send him into the country. Walter Winter remained where he was most effective and most at home. He had a neat little livery outfit, and he seemed to spend the whole day in it accompanied by intimate personal friends who had never spoken to him, much less driven with him, before. Two or three strangers arrived the previous night at the leading hotels. Their business was various, but they had one point in common: they were very solicitous about their personal luggage. I should be sorry to assign their politics, and none of them seemed to know much about the merits of the candidates, so they are not perhaps very pertinent, except for the curiosity shown by the public at the spectacle of gentlemen carrying their own bags when there were porters to do it.
It was a day long remembered and long quoted. The weather was spring-like, sun after a week’s thaw; it was pleasant to be abroad in the relaxed air and the drying streets, that here and there sent up threads of steam after the winter house-cleaning of their wooden sidewalks. Voting was a privilege never unappreciated in Elgin; and today the weather brought out every soul to the polls; the ladies of his family waiting, in many instances, on the verandah, with shawls over their heads, to hear the report of how the fight was going. Abby saw Dr Harry back in his consulting room, and Dr Henry safely off to vote, and then took the two children and went over to her father’s house because she simply could not endure the suspense anywhere else. The adventurous Stella picketed herself at a corner near the empty grocery which served as a polling-booth for Subdivision Eleven, one of the most doubtful, but was forced to retire at the sight of the first carryall full of men from the Milburn Boiler Company flaunting a banner inscribed “We are Solid for W.W.” Met in the hall by her sister, she protested that she hadn’t cried till she got inside the gate, anyhow. Abby lectured her soundly on her want of proper pride: she was much too big a girl to be “seen around” on a day when her brother was “running,” if it were only for school trustee. The other ladies of the family, having acquired proper pride kept in the back of the house so as not to be tempted to look out of the front windows. Mrs Murchison assumed a stoical demeanour and made a pudding; though there was no reason to help Eliza, who was sufficiently lacking in proper pride to ask the milkman whether Mr Lorne wasn’t sure to be elected down there now. The milkman said he guessed the best man ‘ud get in, but in a manner which roused general suspicion as to which he had himself favoured.
“We’ll finish the month,” said Mrs Murchison, “and then not another quart do we take from HIM—a gentleman that’s so uncertain when he’s asked a simple question.”
The butcher came, and brought a jovial report without being asked for it; said he was the first man to hand in a paper at his place, but they were piling up there in great shape for Mr Murchison when he left.
“If he gets in, he gets in,” said Mrs Murchison. “And if he doesn’t it won’t be because of not deserving to. Those were real nice cutlets yesterday, Mr Price, and you had better send us a sirloin for tomorrow, about six pounds; but it doesn’t matter to an ounce. And you can save us sweetbreads for Sunday; I like yours better than Luff’s.”
John Murchison, Alec, and Oliver came shortly up to dinner, bringing stirring tales from the field. There was the personator in Subdivision Six of a dead man—a dead Grit—wanted by the bloodhounds of the other side and tracked to the Reform committee room, where he was ostensibly and publicly taking refuge.
“Why did he go there?” asked Stella, breathlessly.
“Why, to make it look like a put-up job of ours, of course, “said her brother. “And it was a put-up job, a good old Tory fake. But they didn’t calculate on Bingham and Bingham’s memory. Bingham happened to be in the committee room, and he recognized this fellow for a regular political tough from up Muskoka way, where they get six for a bottle of Canadian and ten if it’s Scotch. ‘Why, good morning,’ says Bingham, ‘thought you were in jail,’ and just then he catches sight of a couple of trailers from the window. Well, Bingham isn’t just lightning smart, but then he isn’t SLOW, you know. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘you can’t stop here,’ and in another second he was throwing the fellow out. Threw him out pretty hard, too. I guess; right down the stairs, and Bingham on top. Met Winter’s men at the door. ‘The next time you want information from the headquarters of this association, gentlemen,’ Bingham said, ‘send somebody respectable.’ Bingham thought the man was just any kind of low spy at first, but when they claimed him for personation, Bingham just laughed. ‘Don’t be so hard on your friends; he said. I don’t think we’ll hear much more about that little racket.”
“Can’t anything be done to any of them?” asked Stella. “Not today, of course, but when there’s time.”