The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

did, and the clerks manifestly betrayed their emotion. Melmotte saw that it was so;⁠—but he had expected it, and had come there on purpose to “put it down.”

“We hardly expected to see you in the City today, Mr. Melmotte.”

“And I didn’t expect to see myself here. But it always happens that when one expects that there’s most to be done, there’s nothing to be done at all. They’re all at work down at Westminster, balloting; but as I can’t go on voting for myself, I’m of no use. I’ve been at Covent Garden this morning, making a stump speech, and if all that they say there is true, I haven’t much to be afraid of.”

“And the dinner went off pretty well?” asked the manager.

“Very well, indeed. They say the Emperor liked it better than anything that has been done for him yet.” This was a brilliant flash of imagination. “For a friend to dine with me every day, you know, I should prefer somebody who had a little more to say for himself. But then, perhaps, you know, if you or I were in China we shouldn’t have much to say for ourselves;⁠—eh?” The manager acceded to this proposition. “We had one awful disappointment. His lordship from over the way didn’t come.”

“The Lord Mayor, you mean.”

“The Lord Mayor didn’t come! He was frightened at the last moment;⁠—took it into his head that his authority in the City was somehow compromised. But the wonder was that the dinner went on without him.” Then Melmotte referred to the purport of his call there that day. He would have to draw large cheques for his private wants. “You don’t give a dinner to an Emperor of China for nothing, you know.” He had been in the habit of overdrawing on his private account⁠—making arrangements with the manager. But now, in the manager’s presence, he drew a regular cheque on his business account for a large sum, and then, as a sort of afterthought, paid in the £250 which he had received from Mr. Broune on account of the money which Sir Felix had taken from Marie.

“There don’t seem much the matter with him,” said the manager, when Melmotte had left the room.

“He brazens it out, don’t he?” said the senior clerk. But the feeling of the room after full discussion inclined to the opinion that the rumours had been a political manoeuvre. Nevertheless, Mr. Melmotte would not now have been allowed to overdraw at the present moment.

LXIV The Election

Mr. Alf’s central committee-room was in Great George Street, and there the battle was kept alive all the day. It had been decided, as the reader has been told, that no direct advantage should be taken of that loud blast of accusation which had been heard throughout the town on the previous afternoon. There had not been sufficient time for inquiry as to the truth of that blast. If there were just ground for the things that had been said, Mr. Melmotte would no doubt soon be in gaol, or would be⁠—wanted. Many had thought that he would escape as soon as the dinner was over, and had been disappointed when they heard that he had been seen walking down towards his own committee-room on the following morning. Others had been told that at the last moment his name would be withdrawn⁠—and a question arose as to whether he had the legal power to withdraw his name after a certain hour on the day before the ballot. An effort was made to convince a portion of the electors that he had withdrawn, or would have withdrawn, or should have withdrawn. When Melmotte was at Covent Garden, a large throng of men went to Whitehall Place with the view of ascertaining the truth. He certainly had made no attempt at withdrawal. They who propagated this report certainly damaged Mr. Alf’s cause. A second reaction set in, and there grew a feeling that Mr. Melmotte was being ill-used. Those evil things had been said of him⁠—many at least so declared⁠—not from any true motive, but simply to secure Mr. Alf’s return. Tidings of the speech in Covent Garden were spread about at the various polling places, and did good service to the so-called Conservative cause. Mr. Alf’s friends, hearing all this, instigated him also to make a speech. Something should be said, if only that it might be reported in the newspapers, to show that they had behaved with generosity, instead of having injured their enemy by false attacks. Whatever Mr. Alf might say, he might at any rate be sure of a favourable reporter.

About two o’clock in the day, Mr. Alf did make a speech⁠—and a very good speech it was, if correctly reported in the Evening Pulpit. Mr. Alf was a clever man, ready at all points, with all his powers immediately at command, and, no doubt, he did make a good speech. But in this speech, in which we may presume that it would be his intention to convince the electors that they ought to return him to Parliament, because, of the two candidates, he was the fittest to represent their views, he did not say a word as to his own political ideas, not, indeed, a word that could be accepted as manifesting his own fitness for the place which it was his ambition to fill. He contented himself with endeavouring to show that the other man was not fit;⁠—and that he and his friends, though solicitous of proving to the electors that Mr. Melmotte was about the most unfit man in the world, had been guilty of nothing shabby in their manner of doing so. “Mr. Melmotte,” he said, “comes before you as a Conservative, and has told us, by the mouths of his friends⁠—for he has not favoured us with many words of his own⁠—that he is supported by the whole Conservative party. That party is not my party, but I respect it. Where, however, are these Conservative supporters? We have heard, till we are sick of it,