The meeting at which Lord Sandune was to make his reappearance in politics—and where, it was hoped, he would present the Party with a handsome cheque for their campaign expenses—was to be held in a mining village called Crullan. It was the centre of the coal district, and a large audience might be expected. That morning Magnus was greatly cheered by the arrival of Sergeant Denny and McRuvie, who said they had come to help him. Denny had won eighteen pounds on a horse named Scotland Yet that chanced to be running at Kempton Park, and thereupon he had conceived the idea of assisting the Nationalist candidate and had generously paid McRuvie’s expenses so that he would have company. They were both flattered by the thought of having been in prison with a potential Member of Parliament, and they offered to do anything from bill-sticking to the man-handling of hecklers. They were immediately sent to Crullan to distribute handbills.
That evening began inauspiciously, for Magnus and his party arrived at Crullan, where they were to meet Lord Sandune, at seven o’clock, and found that the meeting was advertised for eight. Captain Smellie made his usual excuses and blamed Mr Bird, who was not there. Lord Sandune, however, proved unexpectedly amiable, and merely suggested they should find somewhere to wait, for it was raining and the Crullan Public Hall was cold as a barn. There was a public house, that called itself an hotel, in the village, and they went there. The landlord said there was a fire in the coffee-room and led the way upstairs.
It was a shabby stuffy little room with a table laid for high-tea at which a corpulent piggish-looking man with small mean eyes and a large wet mouth sat eating ham and eggs. From his complexion and from the untidy way in which he ate it was clear that he was drunk. Lord Sandune looked at him with some distaste, and the piggish man stared back in a stupid way, snorted, and then, as though to assert his independence, lavishly poured tomato-sauce over his ham and eggs and the neighbouring parts of the tablecloth.
Lord Sandune was a tall old man, very slow and portentous of speech, who leaned on his aged dignity as though it were a crutch. Magnus had been accompanied from Kinlawton by Captain Smellie, Mr Boden, Mr Macdonell, and Hugh Skene, who had already spoken several times in Kinluce with great vigour but commendable restraint. Now they talked together in quiet tones and behaved deferentially towards Lord Sandune in expectation of his cheque.
Presently the piggish man said, ‘Hey! Who are you? Are you more of these bloody politicians?’
Captain Smellie whispered to Magnus, ‘Never waste a vote! I’ll have this fellow’s promised before we leave here’; and answered, ‘Yes, we’re politicians, and I hope you’re going to support our party.’
‘What party’s that?’
‘The honest party,’ said Captain Smellie.
‘Sh—!’ said the piggish man, and sucked half a fried egg into his mouth.
‘Oh, really,’ began Captain Smellie, but the piggish man interrupted him.
‘Shut up!’ he said, and rose unsteadily from the table. ‘You’re only an under-strapper, and I want nothing to do with you. I’m going to talk to the high heid yin.’
He advanced on Lord Sandune, hovered in front of him, blew in his face, and suddenly demanded, ‘Here! Can you sing?’
‘I have no intention of singing now, if that is your meaning,’ answered his lordship.
‘I’ve got the finest bloody voice in Kinluce,’ said the piggish man. ‘I should have been a professional. Harry Lauder, Caruso, Madam What’s-her-name—none of the bloody lot of them can hold a candle to me. Would you like to hear me?’
He shook himself, coughed, loosened his collar, tilted his porcine face to the fly-blown ceiling, closed his eyes, and suddenly bellowed in a piercing tenor,
Bonny wee thing, canny wee thing.
Then he stopped to clear his throat again, and finding that the obstruction still lingered thrust a dirty forefinger into his mouth and presently dug from some interstice in his gullet a large piece of ham.
‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘There’s no wonder I couldna sing.’ And he flicked the offending morsel into the fire.
He began again, shriller than ever, ‘Bonny wee thing, canny wee thing.’
Magnus took him by the shoulders and thrust him into his chair at the table. ‘Sit down and be quiet,’ he said.
‘You’re a Conservative,’ said the piggish man indignantly. ‘You’re a bloody Conservative and you don’t give a damn for the working man. You’ll no get my vote, onyway.’
‘You see,’ whispered Captain Smellie. ‘We’ve practically got his vote already. At least Buchanan won’t get it.’
Conversation proceeded in a desultory way. It was interrupted by the piggish man who sang defiantly, ‘I’ll sing thee songs of Araby’, but no one paid any attention to him. Hugh Skene drank several glasses of whisky and waited moodily for the meeting.
At eight o’clock they went to the hall and found it full of noisy, hearty miners, their eyes made bright by coal-dust, their clothes dark and shabby. Lord Sandune spoke first, and his slow, egotistical speech was listened to with respectful attention. Then Skene spoke, and in an instant had his audience afire. A lamp behind him lit his flaming bush of hair, his thin and lovely hands beat the air. He was more than a little drunk, and he spoke of revolution as though man were made only to break through barricades and run with torches down a ruined street. Whether the revolution he advocated was Communist or Nationalist was not very clear, but it was exciting, and the miners cheered him loudly.
Magnus spoke more soberly. His speech was closely argued. He threw some bitter criticism at his opponents and concluded by saying: ‘They speak to you of political parties: I speak to you of a nation. Their parties must dwindle and die, and be blown out like a candle in the wind: but the nation of Scotland, if such is your will, can live for ever.’
A scraggy young man with a raucous voice and a pimply neck rose at the back of the hall and shouted, ‘Comrade Merriman, are you a Communist?’
‘No,’ said Magnus, ‘and I’m not your comrade either, so don’t pretend I am.’
‘Do you believe that work is the only thing that entitles a man to respect and his daily bread?’
‘On the whole, yes,’ said Magnus.
‘Then what are you doing on the same platform with a bloody Capitalist?’ And the young man pointed a scornful finger at Lord Sandune, who sat, very large and dignified, wrapped up in a large fur coat.
Magnus rose to answer, but the young man shouted again, ‘Is Comrade Skene a Communist?’
‘Yes, I am,’ said Skene.
Magnus began to say that in the common cause of Nationalism men of many parties were united, but now a great uproar had risen in the hall, for the pimply young man and his friends were singing The Red Flag, and on the other side of the room an equally noisy party was struggling over the seats to come to close quarters with them and assault them. This second party was led by Denny and McRuvie. The battle joined, and there was a fine scene of confusion. With the exception of Hugh Skene the platform party kept their seats, but Skene appeared to be meditating a descent into the body of the hall to join in the fray. Magnus dissuaded him, and they argued hotly together, reproducing in miniature on the platform the violent dissent on the floor.
Because, in a little while, the more numerous disputants left the hall to fight on more spacious ground outside, the floor grew quiet before the platform did, and the remaining audience were treated to the spectacle of Magnus and Skene fiercely gesticulating at each other and vainly endeavouring to shout each other down.
Skene was the first to perceive this anomaly. He faced the interested electors and cried, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! The vigour with which my friend Magnus Merriman was arguing is typical of the vigour that animates all Scotland, and it is on that vigour that we rely for the victory of our cause!’
Magnus, gallantly following, said loudly, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Hugh Skene is Scotland’s foremost poet. The National Party is the only party that poets are proud to join. If you prefer politicians, vote for Conservatives, Cotton-Tories, or Socialists: but if you are wise, join the poets and vote for the independence of Scotland!’
Lord Sandune was heard to mutter ‘Rubbish!’ but the audience, already excited, cheered loudly, and the confusion of noise could easily be construed as a vote of confidence.
The platform became busy with little acts of courtesy towards Lord Sandune, but his lordship retired to his waiting motor car without mentioning the cheque that he had been expected to offer. Nor was he seen again in the constituency, and whether he fled in fear of so rowdy and vulgar an election, or in disgust—being a practical business man—at Magnus’s references to poets, was never ascertained. But he contributed nothing to Party funds.
Sergeant Denny and McRuvie, however, were perfectly satisfied with the evening’s entertainment. Each had knocked down half a dozen opponents, and occasionally been knocked down in return, and both, when rescued, were in a state of bruised and blissful contentment.
Meanwhile, in Kinlawton, a smaller but more important meeting had been held in Lady Mercy’s private suite in the Royal Standard Hotel.
Lady Mercy had addressed two meetings on behalf of her candidate Mr Emerson. Her platform manner was peculiar but arresting. She would stand up, and, as though she were a Lewis gun, fire off a hundred short, striking, and often irrelevant statements at her stricken audience. Then she would point to Mr Emerson, and say, ‘Here is the man whom you trust, whom I trust, and who must be elected!’ Mr Emerson would thereafter speak in a solid, blustering way, and the hecklers would rejoice and pepper him with questions.
Owing to the genius of Nelly Bly, that charming and most able of reporters, all Mr Emerson’s meetings, as described in the Morning Call, appeared to be triumphal occasions. But Lady Mercy and her regiment of agents, canvassers, and subsidiary speakers, knew better. It had not taken them long to discover that the assistant news-editor’s mistake had been a serious one, and that though Mr Hammerson would have been a very good candidate, Mr Emerson was a very bad one, for he was one of the most unpopular men in Kinluce. He had been far too successful in his career to enjoy the favour of his neighbours, and despite the loud and persistent advocacy of Lady Mercy’s regiment, and the constant trumpeting of his virtues in the Morning Call, it was feared that only a small minority would vote for him.
‘Well, what are we going to do about it?’ said Lady Mercy. ‘I don’t intend to be beaten in a trumpery constituency like this, so you’d better think of something quickly.’
Her audience consisted of Quentin Cotton, her son, who acted as her private secretary; Nelly Bly; and the Earl of Faloon, who wrote acid and vivacious society gossip for the Morning Call and assisted her in the financial direction of her newspapers.
Quentin Cotton said, ‘Do you know, a most curious thing has happened: Hammerson, who’s been a lifelong Conservative, had turned Liberal.’
‘What?’ said Lady Mercy.
‘It’s perfectly true,’ said Nelly Bly. ‘He’s going all over the country denouncing the Conservative Association and saying that old-fashioned Liberalism is the only honest policy left. I suppose he’s jealous of Emerson and wants a bit of publicity for himself.’
‘Perhaps he’s like St Paul,’ said Lord Faloon, ‘and has been convinced by a vision of Mr Gladstone.’
‘He’s got a lot of influence in the county, hasn’t he?’ said Lady Mercy.
‘He would have made a better candidate than Emerson,’ said Quentin.
‘I know that. How many Liberals, regular die-hard Gladstone and Asquith men, are there in Kinluce?’
‘Six to eight thousand,’ said Nelly Bly.
Lady Mercy said, ‘Some of them will vote for Buchanan to keep Emerson out; some will vote for Nimmo; and I suppose a dozen or two will vote for that fool Merriman. Now if their votes could be detached from Buchanan and Nimmo—Merriman doesn’t count—Emerson would still have a chance. With four candidates, an odd thousand votes subtracted here and there might leave him with a majority.
‘But how are you going to subtract them?’ said Quentin.
‘By putting up a Liberal Candidate,’ said Lady Mercy.
‘You mean …?’
‘Hammerson.’
Lord Faloon whistled a few bars of The Wearing of the Green and begged permission to light a cigar.
Quentin said, ‘You can’t do that. Your name would be mud if it were found out that you were backing two candidates; and in any case Hammerson wouldn’t accept your support: he’s pig-headedly honest.’
‘I have no intention of supporting him,’ said Lady Mercy. ‘But your Aunt Agatha will. She has been fanatically Liberal ever since she spoke to Mr Asquith at a garden-party—I cannot imagine what he replied—and she’s as full of plots as a White Russian. Now you’ll go and tell her that there’s a marvellous opportunity for a Liberal revival in Kinluce, and that Hammerson is the man to lead it. She can afford to put up a thousand pounds quite easily, and as she knows all the young Liberals still in existence she can send up a good deal of support. If you play your cards properly—you can say that I’ve sacked you if you like, and that will explain your apparent anxiety to put a spoke in Emerson’s wheel—she’ll jump at the chance, and Hammerson will be led out as a very useful red herring.’
‘That sounds feasible,’ said Quentin slowly.
‘Feasible! It’s dyed in the wool, copper-bottomed, jewelled in every hole, guaranteed against wear and tear, and will keep its colour in any climate,’ said Nelly Bly. ‘It’s a marvellous plan, and you must get busy at once. If you hurry you can catch the night train to London, and fix everything up tomorrow.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Mercy, ‘speed is essential now.’ She turned to Lord Faloon: ‘What do you think of the plan, Tony?’
‘I’m afraid I wasn’t listening to it,’ he answered. ‘Where ignorance is wise, ‘tis folly to be wiser.’
‘That’s good advice,’ said Lady Mercy. ‘Well, Quentin, you’re no longer my private secretary: there’s a cheque for a month’s salary in lieu of notice. Anything you do hereafter you do on your own responsibility. But God help you if you don’t make a good job of it.’
Quentin worked quickly and well, however, and three days later the second bombshell exploded in the constituency when it was announced that Mr Hammerson, that well-known Conservative, had been adopted as an Independent Liberal Candidate. Mr Hammerson set to work immediately, attended by a small but energetic company of young Liberals who, suspecting that their faith was dead, preached it with all the passionate enthusiasm that befits a lost cause. The ghostly voice of Mr Gladstone was heard again; the gospel of Free Trade was cried in evangelical earnestness; the olive branch of disarmament was held aloft like a monstrance on White Sunday. The young Liberals ran through the land like a flame, but for all their heat they set very little on fire.
For now the electors were puzzled indeed and suspicious of everyone. They felt uneasily that someone was making fools of them, and they resented the multitude of candidates and canvassers who were plaguing them for their votes. They had been brought up to believe that their votes had a certain value, and they were naturally averse from throwing valuable things away. But which of so motley a five deserved their confidence? They were asked to elect a Conservative who had lately been a Liberal; a Liberal who for forty years had been a Conservative; a Socialist who condemned the policy of the existing Socialist government; an Independent Conservative who divided his allegiance between high tariffs and Lady Mercy Cotton; and a Scottish Nationalist who was apparently at odds with many other members of his party—for whenever Magnus was questioned about a policy for India he adopted an Imperialist attitude, while Beaty Bracken and Hugh Skene hotly denounced Imperialism and said that India would be far better off if the Brahmins and Mr Gandhi and the Untouchables and the Pathans were left to work out their destiny for themselves.
Lady Mercy did what she could to clarify the issue, for the Morning Call roundly asserted that the only candidates who need to be taken seriously were Mr Emerson and Mr Hammerson. With singular broad-mindedness the Call praised Mr Hammerson for his pure-souled advocacy of Liberalism, and reported his meetings in a very flattering way. But the electors were always reminded that, however much they might admire Mr Hammerson, their duty was to vote for Mr Emerson. And the electors—many of whom sat on chairs presented as free gifts by Lady Mercy, and patronized her chamber pots—thought in the solitude of their homes a broad Scotch thought that might be construed in the universal tongue as Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, and decided to vote for neither. So Lady Mercy clarified the issue despite herself.
Now as Nomination Day approached, and hourly the atmosphere grew more hectic, a rumour spread that the Nationalists, whom everybody despised, were making converts by the thousand. And promptly, the other four candidates, who had a proper notion of their function as politicians, simultaneously declared that they too favoured the idea of Home Rule for Scotland—if the people of Scotland desired it—and heartily promised to promise the electors anything else they wanted; for such was the plain and simple duty of democratic candidates.
The rumour of Magnus’s progress originated in the fishing villages, where he had held a couple of unusually enthusiastic meetings. This success had come just in time to rescue him from complete depression. The adoption of Mr Hammerson had filled him with disgust at having to compete for power among such a crowd of pot-hunters; he was bored by the necessity of repeating the same arguments night after night—for was not the tongue’s ability to range from cockle-shells to Saturn, from madrigals to buccaneers, the only excuse for its employment? Parrots might be content with a pair of phrases, but the talking of men should be variable as the wind; and he felt ashamed of himself because of an experience that was the reverse of his dismal Pitsharnie meeting: he had gone to another village, ill-tempered, and addressed a small audience in hectoring tones, telling them that Scotland’s plight was their own fault, and they should sleep in shame to think of it; then he had looked more closely at his listeners, and seen nothing but kindly faces, sad and noble faces, faces made grave by years of toil, lined with sorrow, and sweetened by virtue, or faith in God, or their perception of winter’s transience and summer’s kind return; and he had been filled with remorse to hear himself blaming these simple, helpless, and lovable people for what was far beyond their power to alter.
In these moods of depression the incompetent ebullience of Captain Smellie was very hard to endure. The Captain pretended that Magnus’s success with the fishermen had been due to his organization of the meetings, and now he was eager to concentrate for a few days on the mining district. But Magnus thought it wiser to establish himself firmly with the fishermen, and told Smellie to arrange a meeting in one of the coast villages for the eve of Nomination Day.
The ceremonies of that day were important, for it was then that the candidates were each required to deposit, by the hands of their agents, the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds as a guarantee of their serious intentions, their honourable behaviour, and their ability to poll at least one-eighth of the total votes cast.—Should any candidate fail to attract that small percentage of suffrages, then his deposit would be forfeit.—On the preceding morning Mr Macdonell came through from Glasgow to confer with Magnus. Owing to the unfortunate back-sliding of Lord Sandune the Party was almost bankrupt, and they were quite unable to find the deposit money. Magnus had previously been assured that he would not be asked to find this sum himself, for his personal expenses in the election would be considerable and he had already generously contributed to the Party’s funds. And he had explained to Mr Macdonell that, despite some semblance of prosperity in his behaviour, he was far from being a wealthy man. But now Mr Macdonell was compelled to seek his help: if Magnus could not produce a hundred and fifty pounds, then no one could, and his candidature would come to an untimely end: and as there was no risk of forfeiting the deposit …
‘Oh, none,’ said Magnus.
‘Smellie tells me that you’re doing very well indeed,’ said Mr Macdonell.
‘I am, in spite of what he says.’
‘Then perhaps …?’
‘Yes,’ said Magnus, ‘I’ll pay the deposit myself.’
Mr Macdonell expressed his gratitude, and Magnus went to a bank where, after telephoning to Edinburgh for authority, the manager cashed his cheque for a hundred and fifty pounds: for according to the regulations governing the conduct of an election the deposit must be paid in actual cash.
Captain Smellie, who had accompanied Magnus, said very cheerfully, ‘Well, that’s your duty done, Merriman. Now I must do mine. You won’t see this money again till the Sheriff gives it back to you: I’ll take charge of it now, and I’ll pay it in tomorrow. That’s my part of the job, so you needn’t lie awake tonight listening for burglars. Ha-ha! I’m the watch-dog, and I don’t think many burglars would care to tackle me.’
Captain Smellie stuffed the notes into his pocket-book and regarded Magnus with an amiably converging stare.
The fishermen’s meeting that night was a great success. Hugh Skene first woke them to enthusiasm, and Magnus maintained it by outlining a scheme for the protection of Scottish seas and fishing-rights, that, he declared, would be the first duty of an independent Scottish parliament. No longer would their inshore waters be invaded by English trawlers and foreign trawlers; no longer would they suffer the destruction of their gear, the ruination of their fishing grounds, the neglect of their harbours; but when Scotland had asserted her sovereignty then Scotland would protect their livelihood and her seas, and foreign pirates would be treated as they deserved.
It was a fighting speech that he made. He was inspired by the sight of the three hundred fishermen who faced him. There were no women in the audience. The men sat close-packed in sombre rows. They were dark and keen of face, blue-jerseyed, solid and strong. They smelt of the sea, and like the sea they could break to storm. He quoted case after case of trawlers that had been sighted in inshore waters—pirates and poachers—and the listeners growled like the sea when the wind is waking. He spoke of the cruisers that were supposed to protect the fishing-grounds, and the fishermen laughed in savage scorn. Then he said, ‘If the English government won’t do their duty and protect our seas, we must take matters into our own hands. We fought for England in the last war: we’ll fight for ourselves in the next one—and God help the first foreign trawler that puts a nose into the Forth, or the Minch, or the Moray Firth!’ Then the storm broke, and the fishermen rose in their excitement like the sea on a winter’s night.
As if on a wave Magnus was borne on their enthusiasm, and the meeting became a Scottish triumph. Nor was he disappointed when he returned to his hotel in Kinlawton, for all the other speakers who had been out had come back with stories of success. His camp had filled, for the last few days of the battle, with Nationalist supporters from Edinburgh and Glasgow and elsewhere. Beaty Bracken had addressed an out-door audience in Kingshouse and led them down the street singing Scots Wha Ha’e. McVicar—still in Meiklejohn’s evening trousers—and Mr Macdonell reported good meetings in several villages. Two or three enthusiastic young men from Glasgow swore they had been asked to give their speeches all over again from the beginning, so enamoured had been their listeners of their eloquence and fine arguments. Sergeant Denny and McRuvie had made a score of converts by the simple process of assaulting them, and Mrs Dolphin, who had been energetically canvassing for a couple of days, declared she had helped to cook fifty dinners in Kingshouse and Kinlawton, and taken Nationalism into every kitchen she visited.
‘Do you know this,’ she said earnestly, ‘there’s scarcely a woman in Scotland knows how to cook a piece of beef. They roast it till every bit of colour and flavour’s gone out of it. I found half a dozen of them spoiling good joints today alone. And do you know why? Because they think it looks indecent if you put it on the table when it’s nice and red. Now that’s a fact, though you mightn’t believe it. But Scotland is so full of bloody Puritans—excuse my French—that they’re frightened even of a piece of beef when it looks in any way naked and like real flesh. I told that to some of the women I was talking to today, and I said, “Now you vote for Mr Merriman, and when we get a government of our own you’ll be taught to cook a decent dinner, not like that brown bit of leather there. And you won’t be frightened to look at a sirloin of beef because it’s red and juicy and naked, so to speak,” I said. “You won’t be frightened of anything, whether it’s naked or not, because we’re going to have a lot of fun when we’ve got a government of our own, and fun’s worth having, so be sure and vote for Mr Merriman, and for God’s sake take that joint out of the oven before it’s burnt to a cinder,” I said.’
With all this encouragement Magnus grew very cheerful and began to think that he was winning indeed. Had it not been for the presence of Captain Smellie he would have been perfectly happy, sitting in the midst of his supporters and supplying them with a handsome variety of drinks. He called to a waiter: ‘Three large whiskies, a crême de menthe, a benedictine, two bottles of Bass, and a gin and ginger.’—How mellifluous an order, and how delightful to gratify the desires of one’s friends with entertainment so robustious and multi-coloured! But it was exasperating to waste good money on buying a drink for Captain Smellie. The Captain was displeasing, in that company, as a penny whistle in a suite for strings. He drew his chair closer to Magnus’s, and said, ‘Well, Merriman, I’ve worked hard for you, and now you’re reaping the benefits of my work. You’re winning, as I always said you would. It wasn’t easy to organize a constituency like this, but I think you’ll admit that I’ve done it pretty well. If I hadn’t foreseen the various difficulties that have risen …’
‘Oh, go to hell,’ said Magnus, and wondered if it was worth while to explain to Smellie exactly how incompetent, boring, and mendacious he was. But the Captain gave him no opportunity to say anything more.
‘That’s all right, Merriman,’ he said in a kind and purring voice. He stood up and smiled down at Magnus. ‘You’re tired, I know you’re tired. I’m tired myself, but my job doesn’t permit me to say so. Now you go to bed and get a good sleep, and you’ll feel a lot better in the morning. I’ll call for you at half past ten. Good-night, Merriman. Good-night, everybody! I’m very pleased indeed with the work you’ve been doing. Keep it up! And don’t let the candidate sit up too late: he’s very tired, and we must nurse his strength. Good-night, good-night!’
On the following morning, shortly after ten o’clock, Mr Boden arrived at the hotel. Magnus was reading the papers. They discussed the news of the day and admired the accomplishment of Nelly Bly in describing the behaviour of a hostile audience with such ambiguity that readers of the Morning Call might easily imagine that Mr Emerson had been accorded a unanimous vote of confidence. At half past ten Captain Smellie had not yet arrived. At twenty minutes to eleven Mr Boden went to the front door and said there was no sign of him. Five minutes later Magnus suggested they should walk round to his lodgings: perhaps he had overslept.
They walked briskly, for the nomination papers and the deposit money—both of which were in Captain Smellie’s possession—had to be in the hands of the Sheriff in Kingshouse, the county town, before half past twelve. And Kingshouse was ten miles away.
Mr Boden knocked at Captain Smellie’s door. His landlady came and said that he was out.
‘When did he go?’ said Magnus.
‘I couldna rightly say,’ she answered, ‘for I was late in getting up this morning, and he was away before I came down. So I thought maybe he’d gone to the Committee Rooms, and I put his breakfast on the table to be ready for him when he came back. But there’s been no sign of him, and I doubt his porridge’ll be cold by now.’
‘Go along to the Committee Rooms and see if he’s there,’ said Magnus. ‘I’ll wait here. And hurry.’
Mr Boden, travelling so fast that his waistcoat leapt up and down, ran along the street. Magnus went into Captain Smellie’s sitting-room and looked about him. In a pigeonhole in a desk he found the bundle of nomination-papers. A thought struck him, and he called to the landlady.
‘I suppose Captain Smellie slept here last night?’ he said.
‘And why shouldn’t he?’ said the landlady.
‘You heard him come in?’
‘Well,’ said the landlady, ‘I was that tired last night that I went to my bed at the back of nine, and I couldna just say that I heard anyone come in later than that, or go out either for that matter.’
‘Where’s his bedroom?’ asked Magnus.
The bed-clothes were thrown back in disorder, the pillows were crumpled.
‘Apparently he slept here,’ said Magnus.
‘Like enough,’ said the landlady. ‘Though now that I think of it his bed wasna made yesterday. I was that tired all day.’
Mr Boden returned with the news that Captain Smellie had not been seen at the Committee Rooms. ‘Perhaps he’s gone to Kingshouse,’ he said. ‘He’s daft enough to forget whether he promised to meet you there or at your hotel.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Magnus doubtfully.
They hurried back to the hotel. A car was waiting for them, and they drove to Kingshouse. A small crowd of reporters and press-photographers waited outside the Townhouse. Magnus did his best to look cheerful. He went in and inquired if his agent had arrived. But Captain Smellie had not been seen. A reporter overheard his question and said light-heartedly, ‘Hullo! has Smellie skipped with the deposit?’ ‘No,’ said Magnus, ‘the deposit’s all right.’ He asked for an interview with the Sheriff, and told him what had happened. The Sheriff said, ‘It’s a quarter to twelve. You still have time to send your other man back to Kinlawton to make further inquiries. But he’ll have to hurry.’
Mr Boden returned to Kinlawton in the motor car, and Magnus defended himself against the reporters, who were now pressing him to admit that Captain Smellie was a welsher and had said good-bye to politics with a hundred and fifty pounds in his pocket. Half an hour later Mr Boden telephoned to say that he had examined Smellie’s bedroom and found none of his possessions except a suit of pyjamas and a tooth-brush. There was no suit-case there. He had evidently packed and gone. He was a welsher: there was no other explanation.
Magnus returned to the Sheriff, who listened sympathetically. Magnus said, ‘Here are the nomination-forms. Will you take a cheque for the deposit?’
‘I can’t do that,’ said the Sheriff. ‘The deposit must be paid in currency.’
‘Then give me time to go to the bank, and I’ll cash a cheque there.’
‘That will make three hundred pounds altogether,’ said the Sheriff. ‘I have no desire to influence you in your decision, but are you sure that you are acting wisely in continuing the contest after this set-back?’
‘I’m winning all along the line,’ said Magnus, ‘and I’m damned if a welsher’s going to stop me now.’
The Sheriff played with his finger-tips a little tune on the table. ‘Perhaps my watch is fast,’ he said. ‘At any rate, I shall give you the benefit of the doubt.’
Magnus hurried to the bank and the reporters followed him. The bank-agent telephoned to Edinburgh. The Edinburgh bank replied that Magnus’s credit balance was twenty-three pounds and some shillings. Magnus spoke urgently and assured his Edinburgh bankers that his publishers owned him a vast sum of money that was due to be paid on June 1st, and that meanwhile he could obtain advances up to five hundred pounds without difficulty. Somewhat reluctantly the bank authorized its Kingshouse branch to cash his cheque, and Magnus returned to the Sheriff, ten minutes late, with a hundred and fifty pounds in notes of various denominations. Then he informed the police of Captain Smellie’s disappearance.
Before evening the news had spread throughout the constituency that the Nationalist Party’s agent had absconded with his candidate’s deposit, and the sound of laughter dominated every other noise of the election. Magnus and his assistant speakers were all asked, at question-time, ‘Can the speaker tell me where Captain Smellie is?’ Not an audience in the country would take them seriously, and to mention national finance was fatal, for immediately someone would inquire, ‘If you can’t look after a hundred and fifty pounds, how can you look after the National Debt?’
It was useless to answer, as Magnus did, ‘It would be a very good thing to lose that too,’ for the joke was against him and the Kinlucians would not let him side-step or forget it. The Morning Call and the other newspapers reported the mishap with gravity or hilarity according to their temper, and though the Edinburgh Evening Star—of which Meiklejohn was Editor—eulogized Magnus for his heroic payment of a second hundred and fifty pounds, that aspect of the case proved less attractive than its comic side, and it became evident that the Nationalist cause was lost.
Magnus himself threw away his last hope a day or two later. In the moment of stress he had been able to make a magnificent gesture, and he had paid his second deposit without a qualm. But in a little while he began to think more soberly about his three hundred pounds, half of which he had already lost, and of which the second half now seemed in considerable danger. For electors who laughed at a candidate would certainly not vote for him. Three hundred pounds represented the sale of several thousand copies of The Great Beasts Walk Alone. It was more than he had made by all his other books. It was a large sum of money, and the prospect of losing it made him both angry and sorrowful. Nor, when he thought of the electors of Kinluce, whose stupidity in not voting for him would be the cause of his impoverishment, could he think of them so amiably as he had done.
He spoke in Kinlawton about the general advantages of small nationalism, and foolishly said that it would encourage individualism. ‘That,’ he said, ‘should prove a welcome state of affairs in Scotland, where every man is at heart an individualist. It is the individual, not the mass of the people, who is responsible for progress, for beneficent invention, and for the production of works of art. It is the duty of a nation to encourage the gifted individual, but in the vast political systems of today the claims of the individual are forgotten in a machine-like conception of the whole. The majority of people are incapable of contributing to the good of humanity, and so it is manifestly absurd to increase the mass and legislate for its benefit: but that is the democratic tendency of the modern world.’
A score of hecklers rose, noisy and indignant. ‘Does the candidate believe in democratic government?’ cried one of them.
‘Less and less,’ said Magnus.
‘Then what are you doing here?’ bellowed half a dozen irate but logical electors.
‘Wasting my time,’ said Magnus.
‘And your money!’ shouted a fellow at the back of the hall.
The audience, its anger diverted, roared with laughter, and Magnus, who had plumed himself on the urbane percipience of his reply, was disconcerted by this crude reminder of a distasteful fact. But he made an effort to appear good-humoured, and said, ‘After all, it’s my own money…’
‘It was. It’s Smellie’s now,’ shouted the jester at the back, and the audience laughed again.
It was impossible to control them, and the few remaining meetings that Magnus addressed were similarly unresponsive to anything but unintended occasions for laughter. Magnus made heroic efforts to save the Nationalist bacon at the last moment, but his nerves were so frayed that he again forgot, on more than one occasion, the democratic rules under which he was fighting, and propounded unwelcome theories of privilege and individualism. His followers were openly disheartened, and went glumly about their work without hope of winning another vote. The other parties finished the campaign with a series of demonstrations so spectacular that all four candidates appeared to be victors, but the Nationalists concluded with two or three subdued little meetings that had the air of relatives gathered together to say good-bye to an only son who was departing to some distant fever-stricken shore.
On Polling Day Magnus attended the final ceremony, and watched the unhappy process of counting votes all cast for his opponents. He derived some amusement from the pallor and nervous sweating of Mr Buchanan, Mr Emerson, Mr Hammer son, and Mr Nimmo, and their determined efforts to appear bluff, genial, and careless of the result; but that was poor compensation for his own defeat. It soon became evident that Mr Buchanan was the winner by a very large majority—in their perplexity the electors had clung to Conservatism like limpets to a stucco Rock of Ages—and that Mr Nimmo was the runner-up with about nine thousand votes. Mr Hammerson and Mr Emerson had a couple of thousand votes apiece, and Magnus had six hundred and eight.
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