Chapter 19

Polling day broke gloomily on Rye Tories. The country voters were brought into town at the Candidates' expense, having received according to custom printed notices that the Colonel, or the Captain, "would endeavour to ensure to every elector access to the poll free from every sort of insult."

In Rye bells were ringing and bands were playing,[Pg 182] and the town looked quite strange with huge crowds surging through its grass-grown streets, which were, moreover, blocked with every kind of trap, gig, cart, and wain. About three hundred special constables had been enrolled for the occasion, and it was likely that they would be needed, for all the public-houses had been thrown open by the candidates.

In the market-place, where the hustings stood, a dense throng was packing itself, jostling and shoving, and—Reuben saw to his dismay as he drove up to the London Trader—showing strong Radical tendencies. Several Conservative banners waved from the windows of the public-house—"MacDonald the Farmer's Friend"—"MacDonald and Protection"—"Wheat at seventy shillings a quarter"—"Ratepayers! beware of Radical pickpockets." These had all been prepared at the beginning of the contest. The Radical banners bore but one device—"The Scott's Float Toll-gate." It waved everywhere, and any other banner which appeared in the streets was immediately seized and broken, the bearer being made to suffer so horribly for his convictions, that soon nobody could be found to carry one.

Every now and then the crowd would break into the latest rhymings of MacKinnon's poet:
"Who fill their pockets at Scott's Float,
And on their private Toll-gate doat,
While o'er our hard-earned pence they gloat?
The Tories."

Reuben felt his heart sink, and his beer nearly choked him. Soon a vast struggle was raging round the hustings, as the voters fought their way through fists and sticks, often emerging—especially the Conservatives—with their clothes half torn off their backs and quite ruined by garbage. The special constables were useless, for their own feelings betrayed them, and unluckily even in their ranks the Radicals predominated. The[Pg 183] state of the poll at ten-thirty was twenty-seven for Captain MacKinnon and only eleven for Colonel MacDonald.

Speeches were made from time to time, but were lost in the general hubbub. One of the local butchers had delivered over his entire stock of entrails, skin and hoof cuttings, and old blood-puddings to the Radical cause, and Conservative Speakers were soon a sight to behold. When Reuben stood up his voice was drowned in shouts of "Ben the Gorilla! Stop the dirty animal!" while a bleeding sheep's head caught him full on the chest. Too proud to take his dismissal from the mob, he spoke unheard for five minutes, at the end of which he was silenced by half a brick, which hit his temple and stunned him sufficiently for Ditch and MacDonald to pull him away.

At twelve the poll stood at a hundred and one for the Captain and sixty-five for the Colonel. The Tories were getting desperate—they threw into the crowd handbills wet from the printers, declaring that MacDonald's toll-gate should not stand an hour after he was elected. But the crowd only sang derisively:
"Who fill their pockets at Scott's Float,
And on their private Toll-gate doat,
While o'er our hard-earned pence they gloat?
The Tories."

At three o'clock the poll stood at two hundred and twelve and eighty-three. Then came the close—Captain MacKinnon elected by a majority of sixty-nine.

Loud cheers rose up from the struggling, drunken mass in the market-place.

"Hurray for MacKinnon!—Down with the Tollkeepers!"

In the Court-house the beaten Conservatives heard the shouts and turned fiercely—on one another.

"It's that hemmed g?ate of yourn—lost everything!" cried Reuben.
 
"By God, it's not my gate—it's your wheat."

"My wheat!—wot d'you mean, sir?"

"I mean that, thanks to you, we wasted about three weeks talking to those damned fools about a matter they don't care twopence about. You worked up a false interest, and the result is, that when anything that really touches them is brought forward, the whole campaign drops to pieces."

"It's unaccountable easy to put the blame on me, when it's your hemmed g?ate——"

"I tell you, sir, it's your damned wheat——"

"And your damned son!" furiously cried Ditch of Totease.

"My son!"—Reuben swung round on the men who had once rallied under his leadership, but now stood scowling at him and muttering to themselves. "My son!"

"Yes," said Coalbran of Doozes, "you know as well as us as how it wur your Albert wrote them verses about the g?ate, wot have bust up everything."

"You're a liar!" cried Reuben.

"You dare miscall me," and the two men, mad with private hate and public humiliation, flew at each other's throats.

Ditch and the Colonel pulled them apart.

"Hang it all, Coalbran, we don't know it's his son. But we do know it's his wheat. Good God, sir—if only you'd kept your confounded self out of politics——"

Reuben did not wait to hear more. He pushed his way out of the room and downstairs to where his trap was waiting. The crowd surged round him as he climbed into it. An egg burst against his ear, and the filthy yolk ran down his cheek to mingle with the spatter of blood on his neck and shirt-front.

"Ben the Gorilla! Ben the Gorilla! Give him tar and feathers!"

Reuben struck his horse with the whip, and the[Pg 185] animal sprang forward. A man who had been trying to climb into the gig, fell off, and was nearly trampled on. Reuben flogged his way through the pack, a shower of missiles hurtling round him, while his ears burned with the abuse which had once been his badge of pride, but now in the hour of defeat smote him with a sick sense of impotence and degradation. "Ben the Gorilla! Ben the Gorilla!"

He was free of them at last, galloping down the Landgate hill towards Rye Foreign.

"I'm hemmed," he muttered, grinding his teeth, "if I ever touch their dirty politics again—from this day forward—so help me God!"