Hilaire Belloc

“ At the police station Mr. Clutterbuck felt his first movement of emotion at the sight of a policeman who was coming in mackintoshes out of the door, and who saluted with promptitude and respect.
The first polling booth to which they came contained none but the officials, but it was Mr. Clutterbuck's duty to enter, to look cheerful and to shake them by the hand.
"Nothing doing here?" he wheezed with an uneasy smile.
"There've been a few," said the chief with an indifference that did not betray his own politics. "They're not coming very fast. The weather's against 'em." ”

“ Clutterbuck was pitiably overwrought. Had he dared he would have broken through the convention of so many arduous days and have drunk freely from some revivifying spring. But his conscience and his common sense alike forbade him.
He looked forward in despair to the night as his only chance of solace and relief, and prayed for such repose as might fit him to meet the terrible strain of the morrow; but that night Mr. Clutterbuck, for all his exhaustion, slept ill. ”

“ Clutterbuck entered. He was suffering—oh! suffering with the pangs men only experience upon reaching the turning-points of their lives. Upon this jury depended, not even his entry into the great council of the nation, but his bare opportunity for presenting himself as a candidate at all.
The chairman, or at any rate the gentleman who sat in the middle of the crescent, was a clergyman of gigantic stature, though of what denomination it would have been difficult to say, for above a Roman collar he carried an immense black beard, wore spectacles, and was bald. ”

“ He found the aged statesman and philanthropist before the Adams chimney-piece, a mass of papers upon a what-not beside him, his telephone mobilised upon the great central table, and a pile of bank-notes standing by the side of it under a paper-weight of bronze representing the Ariadne of Knidos, a bust the poor Master of Kendale had especially admired.
Mr. Bevan stood waiting at the door. The Duke of Battersea with exquisite good breeding waved his aged hand towards a chair, but Mr. Bevan preferred to remain standing, and he was not pressed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had been assured and reassured that it was a common practice admitted in all elections: he knew, upon perfectly good evidence, that another Bogey Man had done the same ritual and necessary act for Lord Henfield. It was without a doubt a fixed custom in every election. The sum was small; it was a fair wage for honest work openly done. Nevertheless the memory of the actual metal weighed intolerably upon Mr. Clutterbuck's ill ease. ”

“ Clutterbuck in some astonishment referred to their conversation of the night before.
Mr. Boyle laughed as soundly as a sick man can, coughed rather violently after the laugh, and said: "Oh, I'd forgotten all about it—it doesn't matter. I've seen Benskin this morning, and there's no hurry."
"My dear Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck warmly.
Mr. Boyle waved him away with his hand. "My dear fellow," he said, "don't let's have any explanations. I saw you didn't like the look of it, and, after all, what does it matter? If one has to carry on for a day or two one can always find what one wants. ”

“ Our political world is ever ready to admit to the directing society of the nation those whose prudence and success in business have shown them worthy of undertaking the task of government. In the height of the season, as Mr. and Mrs. Clutterbuck were sitting at their breakfast, a little lonely in the absence of any guests in that great house, the lady's post was found to contain an invitation from no less a leader of London than the widow of Mr. Barttelot Smith.
Mary Smith had about her every quality that entitled her to lead the world, which she in fact did lead with admirable power. ”

“ He had hardly tasted his glass of sherry when the publican said to him with cheerful respect:
"Well, sir, I see you've started another hare, and I wish you luck, sir. Here's to the People!"
Mr. Clutterbuck turned pale; but when the publican had finished his glass and wiped his mouth with his finger, he did not fail to add:
"Here's to you, sir, and the Putrid Ruby Mines, whatever they may be, and good luck to the lot!"
Oh the agony of an isolated man! Oh, passion of humanity, when it can find no fellow on whom to repose! ”

“ Bailey thoughtfully. "By the way," he went on, "there's another thing; old Clutterbuck's got to have it."
"Oh, damn and blast old Clutterbuck," said the Prime Minister, jumping up from his chair as some men do when they see a black cat. "Oh, it's perfectably intolerable! Whether it's Charlie, or whether it's Mary, or whether it's Bozzy, or whether it's you, you shoot out that word 'Clutterbuck' the moment you've got the range. The only man in London who has the decency to spare me Clutterbuck is the Peabody Yid." ”

“ He was almost incoherent in his rapidity. Charlie was back at the Plâs; he had seen Mrs. Clutterbuck a moment—he had not told her. How had the constituency taken it, oh how had they taken it?
"Like a lot of animals," said William Bailey with vivid memories of the night, "and not quiet animals either; like a lot of wolves," he said.
Mr. Clutterbuck was heart-broken. "Couldn't something——" he began.
"Oh, no!" said William Bailey, really put out by the futility of the phrase that was coming. "No! Nothing! It's all over. When you're defeated, retreat in good order—keep your train intact. ”

“ He was contented with himself, he appreciated, not without justice, the rapidity and the sureness of his judgment; he withdrew the paper from his cuffs, put on his City coat and his best City hat, and determined to afford himself a meal worthy of so excellent a transaction. But genius, however lucid and immediate, is fated to endure toil as much as it is to enjoy vision; and this excellent speculation, greatly and deservedly as it was to enhance Mr. Clutterbuck's commercial reputation, was not yet safe in harbour. ”

“ He went down, at Mary Smith's pressing invitation, to her quiet but historic Habberton upon the borders of Exmoor, found there the society of his boyhood, and was the life of that little party, with his amusing imitations of social customs in the suburbs, his frank pleasure in the champagne which he had chosen for his cousin, his madcap bouts upon the little Devon ponies which were incapable of throwing so large a rider, and his jests which never exceeded the limits imposed by the presence of women, several of whom were devout adherents of the Christian faith. ”

“ Here Purley, which stands at the mouth of the Vale, Kenley, Warlingham and Caterham Stations receive at morning and discharge at evening the humbler breadwinners whom economic circumstance compels to absent themselves from the haunting woods of Surrey during the labours of the day. Some few, more blest, in mansions more magnificent, can contemplate throughout untroubled hours the solemn prospect of the hills.
Here it was that Mr. Clutterbuck was building the new home. ”

“ Bailey had foreseen this or no, he was at any rate content [Pg 220] henceforward to live as a private gentleman in his little house in Bruton Street. But his restless temper still led him from one set to another, mingling with every one and seen everywhere. He wrote, he occasionally spoke, and above all it was his delight, by insinuation or by direct disclosure, to embarrass and expose his fellow-beings; a man dangerous in the extreme, and, I repeat, one whom no society less tolerant than ours would have endured for a year. ”

“ William Bailey, naturally good-natured and thinking to enjoy the mild excitement of a short campaign, was delighted to present himself as an Independent Liberal, and until within a few days of the poll, conducted himself as the situation required, taking care to draw upon himself such votes—and no more—as might secure his brother's election. Unhappily the twisted spirit of the man got the better of him in the last week before the poll, and he fell into a deplorable breach of good taste and family feeling ”

“ No Administration can afford to treat the Bench lightly. Buffle might be in trouble any day. They had, moreover, at least three great measures in hand, commanding no considerable popular support; one which the electorate had not heard of and another quite odious to it. This sudden and spontaneous demonstration by a London borough against a judicial decision which had nothing to do with party or policy was a factor of grave disturbance in that routine of the House of Commons which is as regular in its way as the breathing of a profound sleep. ”

“ Few of them expressed any strong interest in the presence of their candidate; one or two touched their caps to the man who was to restore [Pg 163] to them the rights of human beings; others smiled somewhat foolishly as they passed him: the greater part did not recognise him at all. One man, to whom manual labour had never appealed, and whose pathetic, intelligent eyes betrayed a world of suffering and of want, approached him and murmured a few words. Mr. Clutterbuck caught them indifferently, but they were quite enough. He remembered the fatal half sovereign, and he leapt for the car. ”

“ But when a man's ill he sometimes does injudicious things."
Here Mr. Boyle was again overcome with a very sharp and hacking cough which was pitiful to hear.
"You don't understand me, Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck with dignity and yet with assurance. "If it was a matter of friendship I'd do it at once; but I can see perfectly well it's a matter of business as well, and you ought to allow me to combine both: I've known you long enough!" ”

“ During the last hour before eight o'clock, there clustered an amazing throng at every booth, and the intoxication produced by the state of public feeling and the domestic habits of the neighbourhood—which were never indulged to a higher degree than upon this occasion—communicated to the best balanced and the most indifferent a certain degree of enthusiasm. Mr. Clutterbuck had snatched a hasty sandwich and a glass of lime juice at the refreshment bar in the Town Hall when the booths were declared closed and he was admitted to the counting-room. ”

“ Clutterbuck, "of course; you know what you have to do, Mr. Fitzgerald, I won't expect you back until I hear." But he added in a sort of appealing voice: "But do do something! You see ... it touches a man's pride, and ... to be perfectly frank ... Mrs. Clutterbuck doesn't like it. One feels odd when one's friends come."
The poor old gentleman was perfectly straightforward and it went to Charlie Fitzgerald's heart. Nevertheless a telegram which came for him a few hours later, after he had sent a telephone message to London, detained him yet another day. ”

“ During any mention of that campaign his cousin Nobby looked so thoroughly miserable that it went to Charlie's soft Irish heart.
Nobby had had plenty of money once. He had stood for Parliament when he was barely of age, more as a freak and to please his mother than with serious intentions of political life; but a defeat by over 3000 votes coupled with the gradual dissipation of his fortune had rendered him more sensitive than was perhaps healthy. ”

“ Mr. Bailey acceded as he would have acceded to any other misfortune, and the whole troop of them came tramping in, following Mr. Clay up the rough, improvised steps on to the platform.
The appearance of these notables solemnly filing in and taking their chairs soothed for a moment the angry mass below, but they looked in the procession for the dome-like forehead and the crescent moustache of a Clutterbuck: neither were there. Mr. Bailey watched the seething audience kindly through his spectacles, and marvelled at the numbers who had come.
There must have been over five thousand men present ”

“ The first serious opposition, upon the Wednesday night, threw him into a fever of anxiety from which he had not recovered the next day. He appeared unpunctually before an impatient audience and actually forgot to appear at all at a smaller meeting later in the evening: a piece of folly that cost him fifty votes.
Meanwhile the renewed energies of his opponents rendered his position less and less enviable as the day of the poll approached, although the Opposition suffered in this election, as in every other, from the very grave drawback that it had no fixed name. ”

“ Clutterbuck tore its cover thoughtlessly enough in the expectation of discovering some minor successes or perhaps an unfortunate but necessary surrender of men and guns, when a leaded paragraph in large type and at the very head of the first column, struck him almost as with a blow. With a dramatic suddenness that none save a very few in the highest financial world could have expected, negotiations for peace had opened and the enemy had laid down their arms. ”