Chapter 18

So time passed till within a week of polling day. The feeling in the district grew more and more tense—no prominent member of either party could appear in Rye streets without being insulted by somebody on the opposite side. Meetings were orgies of abuse and violence, but whereas the Radical meetings were invariably broken up in disorder by their opponents, interruptions at Tory meetings resulted only in the interrupters themselves being kicked out. For the first time it looked as if a Conservative would be returned for Rye, and the Colonel knew he owed his success to Backfield's agricultural party.

Then suddenly the unexpected happened. At the end of one of Reuben's most successful meetings in Iden Schoolhouse, a mild sandy-haired person, whom nobody knew, rose up and asked meekly whether it was true that the Scott's Float toll-gate was on Colonel [Pg 179]MacDonald's estate, and if so, what use did he make of the tolls? He was answered by being flung into the street, but afterwards the Conservative tenant of Loose Farm on the Marsh remarked to Reuben that it was "a hemmed ark'ard question."

Reuben, however, absorbed by his enthusiasm for Protection and a restricted franchise, scarcely thought twice about the toll-gate, till the next day a huge poster appeared all over the district:

"MACDONALD'S GATE"
"Sing ye who will of Love, or War, or Wine,
Of mantling Cups, Bright Eyes, or deeds of Might—
A theme unsung by other harps is mine—
I sing a Gate—a novel subject quite.
O Tolls! ye do afflict us all—a bore!
E'en when by Law imposed on evil slight!
Who has not loaded ye with curses sore
When in this Coat of Proof enveloped tight?
Therefore to what is Law I say 'content'—
But for a Private Man to raise a toll,
To stop the public, tax them, circumvent,
Moves me to passion I can scarce control,
Makes boil the rushing blood and thrills my very soul."

Hitherto any verse that had been written in the controversy had been meant for street singing, and turned out in the less serious moments of politicians who certainly were not poets. But "MacDonald's Gate" impressed the multitude as something altogether different. The sounding periods and the number of capitals proclaimed it poetry of the very highest order, and its prominent position throughout the town soon resulted in the collection of excited groups all discussing the Scott's Float toll-gate, which nobody hitherto had thought much about.

The Tories were a little disconcerted—the toll-gate did not fit into their campaign. Tolls had always been unpopular in the neighbourhood, even though [Pg 180]Government-owned, and it was catastrophic that the enemy should suddenly have swooped down on the Colonel's private venture and rhymed it so effectively.

Of course a counter-attack was made, but it had the drawback of being made in prose, none of the Tory pamphleteers feeling equal to meeting the enemy on his own ground. Also there was not very much to be said, as it was impossible to deny the Scott's Float toll-gate. So the writers confined themselves to sneering at the Radical poet's versification, and hinting that Captain MacKinnon had done many worse things than own a toll-gate, and that all the money the Colonel had from his went to the upkeep of his land, a statement which deceived nobody.

The next day a fresh poster appeared, printed this time in flaming red letters:
"If you'd know what the Colonel is, pray travel over
The Sluice at Scott's Float—and then drive on to Dover—
You'll find yourself quickly brought up by a Gate
Where a Toll they will charge at no moderate rate.
Oh why is a Gate stuck across at this Spot?
Is the Colonel so poor or so grasping—or what?
'Tis that he may gain some more hundreds this way in,
To swell out the purse where his Thousands are laying.
Awake, oh, for shame, ye electors of Rye!
Let the banner of freedom float gaily on high,
Throw your bonds to the winds, ye Electors—for know
That he who'd be free must himself strike the Blow."

Thenceforward the whole character of the election was changed. The Poor Man's Loaf was forgotten as completely as the wheat-tax which should make the farmer rich. Six-pound householders became as uninteresting as anybody else who had not a vote. Nobody cared a damn whether the poor were educated at the nation's expense or not. The conflict raged blindly, furiously, degradingly round the Scott's Float toll-gate.

No one thought or spoke or wrote of anything else.[Pg 181] If at meetings Reuben tried to introduce Protection or the Franchise, he was silenced even by his own party. The Scott's Float toll-gate became as important as the Sluice or the Brede River or the Landgate Clock had been in other elections, and nothing, no matter of what national importance, could stand against it.

Reuben cursed the base trucksters who had brought it forward, and he cursed the scummy versifier who was its laureate—whose verses appeared daily on six-foot hoardings, and were sung by drunken Radicals to drown his speeches. No one knew who the Radical poet was, for his party kept him a mystery, fearful, no doubt, lest he should be bribed by the other side. Some said that he was a London journalist, sent down in despair by the Liberals at head-quarters. If so they must have congratulated themselves on their forlorn hope, for the tide of events changed completely.

The worst of that toll-gate was that the Conservatives could never explain it away. They printed posters, they printed handbills, they attempted verse, they made speeches, they protested their disinterestedness, they even tried to represent the abomination as a philanthropic concern, but all their efforts failed. They quickly began to lose ground. It was the Conservative instead of the Liberal meetings that were broken up in disorder. Colonel MacDonald was howled down, and Reuben came home every evening his clothes spattered with rotten eggs.