The Strange Attraction/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV
I
“Well, that’s the last of it, thank God, and you’re no more pleased than I am, Johnson. And it’s a topping good job you’ve done.”
The weary jobbing man’s face lit up with a pleased smile at Dane’s words.
They stood with Valerie and Ryder and Jimmy beside the jobbing machine which five minutes before had run off the last inset ready now to go out with the paper on Monday. It was the Saturday night before the election, which did not take place till the following Thursday, but it was the last inset and the last chance for special pleading because the voting laws of New Zealand have certain regulations peculiar to that land.
With the idea that the voter shall have a period of comparative peace in which to sum up the arguments he has heard, nothing of a coercive nature, nothing designed to agitate his meditative mind, is allowed to be printed in any paper or displayed in any shape or form for two days prior to the polls. The candidates and their official representatives may deliver their speeches up till election eve, but the newspapers may only report them as said without comment. Straight news may be printed, but also without comment. So that the Monday was Dane’s last chance to swerve the wavering mind. And he had done his most humorous and pungent best in the editorial and in the inset, and in putting into shape the notes Bob had sent in from the field.
The pile of insets made a brilliant bit of colour in the drab composing-room, for Dane had insisted on a red sheet for his last fling. In spite of Valerie’s fears that it would look bizarre it was a fine and arresting piece of printing, set up and balanced in Johnson’s best style, and as far as Dane was concerned its arguments were as hot as its colour. He had spent the best part of a day on it. It was mainly an appeal to labour, the labour of the bushes and the mills, and it delicately flattered the workingman by appealing to his intelligence as well as to his emotions. It had cleverly gathered up every good thing that could be said for a change; it neatly recorded the main deficiencies of the Liberal Party in the matter of promises to the worker, but above all it appealed to the northerner to get attention for the land he had made his own.
“That ought to make ’em sit up,” said Ryder in his dry way as he looked at Dane. Both he and Johnson had come to enormously admire him, not only because of his work, which they were quite capable of appreciating, but even more because of the way he had gone about the office. Indeed, the little group was a good deal of a mutual admiration society as it stood there with the curious hesitancy of people who have seen each other through a considerable piece of work with brains and patience and humour, and want to say something about it, but do not know what to say. The feeling seemed to centre about Dane because he was there for the last time in the place of Bob who would be back in his old chair on the Monday morning.
Jimmy gazed at his elders in turn with a boundless admiration and pride in the fact that he was here in at the finish with the rest of them. He had got over his first antipathy to Dane. No boy could have held out long against the subtle flattery of the man’s approval. For Dane took a huge joy in Jimmy, and of them all he most established the boy as man in his own eyes, for he never ordered him about, and he asked his opinion about weighty matters and had once even taken his advice. Indeed, of them all, Dane most clearly perceived the value in the universal cosmos of that which Jimmy was—the exuberant start of fresh vitality into a devitalized world.
Dane gave a last look round the composing-room remembering the occasion on which he had seen it first. He did not look at Valerie, but turned to the men who had reached for their coats.
“I’m leaving to-night. Will you come along and have a drink?” He felt it pathetic that that was all he could say to them.
But Ryder and Johnson did not find it pathetic. They were very thirsty.
II
Many things combined to make that week the most exciting election period that Dargaville had ever known. The whole country was stirred by the possibility, loudly voiced by the Massey Party, that a change was at hand, and that the old Liberal Party which Dick Seddon raised to Empire fame was doomed to an imminent fall. Sir Joseph Ward, one of the cleverest financiers the dominion had known, was attacked for lack of any policy, and his side found little to say to stem the disrupting tide. Every vote was appealed to as it never had been before. Labour, the farmers, the landowners, the women, the factory hands, the city workers, the capitalists, the prohibitionists, the civil service were all alike appealed to to put new life in the country and a new man in the lead.
And the Far North in particular was roused out of a long apathy by the energetic campaigns being waged there by the three Massey candidates. Haines, of Marsden, was a tireless fighter with every chance of going in for the third time. The Bay of Islands man Sloan, up like Roger for the first time, had a good chance against a weak rival, and it was now well known that Roger Benton, who had the hardest row to hoe, had the best chance any man had ever had against Mobray, the old Seddon lion. And so it was that to the delight of the North Mr. Massey gave it his last week, having no need to speak for himself in his own electorate, or about Auckland, which was his stronghold. And to the everlasting pride of Dargaville, he was to make his last speech there on election eve itself.
The two days of meditation and prayer allowed by the laws hardly sufficed to cool the heads of an electorate that had been bombarded with literature and canvassed from house to house many times over into its remotest back-block by all the parties in turn. The dear, gentle old lady who is the object of such solicitude at elections never lost her sense of fluster in spite of the benign intentions of paternal legislation. And though the blatant voice of the last moment agitator was silent throughout the land there was in those last two days a tremulous tenseness in the air, remarked by the oldest inhabitant of every settlement as something unprecedented in his whole experience.
There was indeed little let down in those days for Valerie. On the Monday morning Roger held his final committee meeting in the office. Neither he nor anyone else could think of an important thing that was not covered. The final details for the Massey meeting and for the dinner to him at Mac’s on the Wednesday night were gone over. The arrangements for that night’s meeting at Aratapu and Tuesday’s at Te Koperu were scanned for oversights. Dane’s last leader and inset were loudly praised. But though the committee found their labours practically over the little office hummed with news pouring in by telegram from all over the country, much more news than could be got into the available space, so that it had to be condensed or rewritten. This was where Valerie missed Dane, for Bob was back on the paper that week with the one job on his hands of reporting and writing up the meetings at night, and of helping Roger to prepare his remarks for the same.
Valerie had refused to see Dane the day before and he had told her he would not come into the town that week, but that he would look for her at the week-end. She had wondered in her only leisure moments as she dressed or bathed whether he could keep out of the excitement, for as the great day approached it captured even her, and when Roger invited her to be present at the Massey dinner she found she really did wish to be in the fun. She wondered if Dane would be there, for she was sure he would be asked to go.
The night was, for those who like that kind of thing, an unforgettable affair. As Valerie stood in her room before the dinner, trying to bathe the signs of utter weariness from her face, she heard an exciting tooting of horns and a great fuss down in the street, and guessed that Mr. Massey and his party were arriving from Whangarei. The town seemed to swirl about the hotel. It had been alive all the afternoon with people coming up the river and down the river and across the river and in by train to hear the man who had been the spine of the country party for twenty years. If she had not been so tired, Valerie would have run to the sitting-room to look out, but instead she lay down on her bed for a brief rest.
To her great disappointment there was no sign of Dane at the dinner. Besides herself Mrs. Benton was the only woman present. It had been found impossible to invite women and have room also for the number of men Roger wished to have. No one could object to Mrs. Benton, and of course Valerie was the omnipotent press. She tried to put Dane out of her mind and to enjoy the scene for the expression that it was of a certain side of the male animal. She was amused at the extraordinary emphasis put on politics, on last moment cheerfulness, on forced sensations of every kind. Good fellowship roared itself hoarse at that dinner. Promises enough to bring millenniums to a dozen suffering worlds were scattered about with light-hearted prodigality. It was a gorgeous orgy of optimism. And she looked on at it as she had looked on at family Christmas dinners with a heart cold and a mind aloof. One hour of life with Dane, she thought, was worth a thousand such revels as this.
The meeting afterwards, however, did move her. Mr. Massey had never spoken better in his whole career. For twenty years the Opposition leader had led what was for years a forlorn hope, had fought with extraordinary courage and perseverance a dogged fight against the most powerful premier the country had ever had, and yet he could talk to that packed hall as if life had been for him an unchallenged success. And when the audience rose at him and began to throw up hats and sticks and break the chairs she found she was swirling with it. But the thing that stirred her most was his reference, when speaking of the local situation, to the brilliant work of the little News. And she found herself flushing furiously when heads were turned and nodded at her. She wondered if Dane were there somewhere listening amused and apart.
The meeting was not over till after eleven o’clock, and then there was the ceremony of seeing Mr. Massey and his party off in three motor cars for Te Koperu, where they were to cross the river and go on by cars to Auckland, riding all through the night. This over, Valerie had but one idea, to get to bed, to take aspirin, and to blot it all out, for she knew the next day and night would be even more strenuous. She slipped away from Mrs. Benton, who was staying the night with the Boltons, and she entered the hotel by the side door.
The whole house was ablaze with light and excitement except at the public bars, which in accordance with the law were all in darkness.
As she went up the stairs she stopped electrified. A clear tenor voice rang out above the din, singing a toast. It was followed by a little lull before the tumult drowned it out again.
For a moment she felt a sense of shock and she could not move. Then she went on into her room and stood again in the middle of it, listening. She was no longer weary. She was feverishly alive, burning with hurts, resentments, and futile determinations. She did not know why she was hurt, what she was resentful at, or what she was determined to do. She stood by the window for some minutes till these clashing pains diminished a little.
It took her some time to get hold of herself, and then she told herself she was a fool. There was hardly a man in the town who might not be excused for letting go that night. Mrs. Benton had left Roger to the overwhelming pressure of the occasion without a sign that it worried her. But still she could not bear to think of Dane as drunk. It hurt him more than it hurt other men. She felt he hated himself afterwards, that he could not take it lightly as others did. But she told herself the main trouble was her own imagination, which could not bear to visualize him degenerated in any way from the beautiful thing he was to her when he was well. She could not bear, either, the clouding in any shape or form of the spirit that was in him. It was her sense of beauty, rather than her code of behaviour, that was offended. But her sense of beauty was perhaps the strongest thing about her. It was at the back of all her protests, all her revolts. And her sense of fairness had many a clash with it.
She got through her window and began to pace the balcony. She stopped at times when a louder burst of laughter drifted up to her, or some strong voice was raised in a maudlin challenge. She was prepared to hear Dane’s voice above the noise again, but it did not rise to her. She tried to talk herself out of her mood of hesitancy and speculation. She tried to imagine what was going on down in those closed rooms. She would have liked to see how Mac managed his motley world on an occasion like this, to know who was being put out in those rooms off the yard, to know what he did to keep the constable out of the way, to know whether Doc Steele succumbed, whether Bob was drunk. It was a strange atmosphere, and apart from the servants she was the only woman in it. She was surprised to find that her thoughts had carried her out of her first unhappiness about Dane.
Feeling hungry she wondered if she could get unseen down to the kitchen. There was a fire-escape stair leading from the top hall outside down into the yard. The door was unlocked from the inside. She stole down the steps. She could hear men talking off somewhere in the shadows of the buildings, but the kitchen was empty when she looked in. There was plenty of food lying openly about, and she knew she could have what she wanted. She got bread and butter, and was cutting herself some cold chicken when Mac walked in followed by Dane.
“You see I’m stealing,” she said at once to Mac, hoping he would think her sudden flush was caused by the idea of being caught.
The big Irishman’s eyes were a little bloodshot, but he was the coolest man in the house. He got the full significance of the way in which Dane moved up to Valerie.
“Go ahead. Take all you want,” he said, and turning walked out and down the hall.
Dane took Valerie by the arm. “Where have you been?” he asked in an aggrieved tone, as if she had been eluding him. “I didn’t see you at the meeting.”
As she saw someone cross the hall she drew quickly back. “Don’t, please, Dane. Someone might come in.” Her tone was sharper than she meant it to be.
“Oh, you are angry with me,” he said pathetically. “Don’t be angry with me.”
It was astonishing what an appeal he could put into his voice. His eyes looked at her softened out of their accustomed brilliancy by a slumbrous cloudiness. She wondered just how conscious he was of her and of the situation.
“I’m not angry, Dane.”
“Yes, you are. I feel it. What is it?” He moved up to her and took her arm again.
She saw the forms of two men in the hall. She thought they were coming towards the kitchen.
“Dane, please, somebody is coming. I cannot stay and talk to you here.” She took up her plate. “I must go. Good-night.”
She hurried out of the kitchen by the back door, half hoping and half fearing that he would follow her. But he did not. Up in her room she tried not to be too serious about it. It was nothing more than she had known, nothing more than she told herself she had to accept with him either as a lover or as a husband. She was determined not to let his weaknesses blind her to the other qualities he possessed.
Finding there was hot water, she soothed herself with a bath, ate her supper, and even without the aid of aspirin fell asleep.
III
When she reached the office at half-past nine, very late for her, Bob was there furiously pounding out his report of the Massey meeting and dinner, which Jimmy took sheet by sheet to the composing-room. Bob gave Valerie rather a wan smile, but she gave no sign that she noticed the circles under his eyes. She wondered if he and Dane had met in the bibulous meanderings of the night, and what they had said to each other. As a matter of fact they had met at a stage when all men were swearing eternal friendship and finding the world full of dear brothers. But this Valerie never knew.
She looked at the big pile of telegrams already in, and settled down to it. It was a public holiday and the place did not wake up till ten o’clock. Then it came to life in an hour. The morning trains came in crowded with bush and country people out to take what fun might be going in the town. The shops were open for half a day for their benefit. As there was a constant stream of people going by the office Valerie suggested they post a bulletin of news to draw attention to themselves. Bob thought it a fine idea, and Jimmy was called upon to find a big sheet of cardboard and to do the pasting. In her clear hand Valerie wrote out in blue pencil the first most interesting items. Then at intervals during the day they watched Jimmy go out with a fresh sheet when several people had collected, and flourishing his paste brush solemnly cover up the stale news with the new, guying the lookers-on in his own cheeky fashion. The facts were such as election crowds feed on. It seemed that the weather was generally fine throughout the dominion (the crowd thought this very important and discussed it from various angles), that in the cities especially a heavy vote was rolling up early, that Sir Joseph Ward was confident of victory, that Mr. Massey was confident of victory, that their wives were equally sure of victory, that the prohibition party was sure of national prohibition, that labour was sure of surprising gains, that everybody was sure of something or other. And the crowd watching Jimmy pasting this encouraging information cheered and was sure too.
Valerie grew interested in spite of weariness in the intensifying of the human spirit throughout that day. The office glowed with faces leaning over the counter and beaming down upon her and Bob, who had to exert all their good humour to avoid showing annoyance at the constant interruptions.
As she was changing her dress before dinner she heard steps come quickly to her door, and then a low knock. Throwing a wrapper about her she went to it, opened it a little way and peered through. Dane stood there looking ill and unhappy.
“Let me come in,” he pleaded, as if it were a desperate business.
She was not sure whether he was sober or not, and she expected Bob to come to his room at any moment, but she opened the door at once, and then closed it quietly behind him. Dane faced her and looked at her as if he were asking for his life. He was fastidiously shaved, but his clothes were crumpled as if he had lain in them. His white skin showed patches of sallowness and his eyes were haunted by a fear that seemed to come out of them and twist his features. He knew he had been very drunk the night before. And ever since he had been able to think again, he had been tortured by the vague memory that he had seen Valerie somewhere in the night, and that he had been rude to her, and that she was very angry with him.
Even if she had been angry with him she would have melted at the misery in his face. Impulsively she flung her arms about him and crushed his face against her own.
“Whatever has happened to you, Dane? Cheer up, for heaven’s sake.”
He drew away, looking doubtfully at her.
“Aren’t you angry with me?” he asked, in the manner of a penitent child.
Valerie had kicked herself more than once that day for her manner in the kitchen the night before. If she hadn’t been so tired, she told herself, she would have handled the situation more lightly.
She looked at him, seeing much more than the reaction from a night’s drinking in his eyes. And whatever she did or felt, she knew she must not fail this man in moments when he needed her understanding so desperately.
“I’m not angry with you, not the least little bit. I’ve nothing to be angry about. But I am dreadfully tired, dear. Perhaps that is what you feel.”
She threw her arms about him again and put her lips on his.
“What is the matter, Dane? Please kiss me,” she said, wondering why he did not respond. But he was in a difficult mood, confused, bruised and sick, and hating himself, he could not rise to showing care for anybody else.
They heard Bob come into the next room. Valerie wondered what she could do with Dane. She hated to let him go from her in the mood he was in.
“Are you going to stay here to-night?” she whispered.
“No. I’m going home now.”
“Can you take me with you and get me back by nine?” She saw that he softened and came nearer to her.
“Yes; will you come?”
“I will. The break will help me to get through the night. Pick me up the other side of the railway wharf.”
He looked better at once and slipped quietly out.
As she walked along towards the railway station to meet him she thought of the frenzied counting that had now begun behind locked doors all over the country, in remote schoolhouses, little town halls, creameries, and even private houses, where in the scattered settlements the government considered the convenience of those who had long distances to go. And in the larger centres she could visualize the groups checking and rechecking those columns of figures, so important to the careers of a few men, so unimportant in the great welter of world affairs. It seemed funny that those figures should matter so much.
She passed several people riding and driving in, and she sauntered slowly to let them all go by before she ran for the Diana which she could just see hidden in the rushes. She sat down in the stern with Dane and put an arm round him, and did not attempt to talk. He set his engine at full speed. Round the first turn they saw close upon them a big timber barque riding low, and being towed down on the evening tide, bound for Australia, the men on her decks curiously remote from the fuss of the New Zealand election. They would go out to sea that night oblivious of the results that seemed so epoch-making to the wrought-up feelings of Dargaville.
The sight of that stately vessel filigreed against an opal sky lifted part of the cloud from Dane’s mind. As he ran the launch close past her the friendly faces of officers and seamen grinned down upon them.
Then, oblivious of the fact that men on the barque might be looking after them, he put his unoccupied arm about her and his head against her shoulder, and felt better.
Before he reached home he was trying to forget himself and to think entirely of her, for he saw how exhausted she was. He put her straight into his hammock, and it was there that she ate her dinner and stayed till it was time to go. She felt a good deal better by the time he landed her near the railway wharf.
IV
The News office all in darkness seemed a strange place to Valerie as she passed it. It had been lit at night for so long. But its part in this drama was played. Aside from the fussing of a special night train that had recently come in, there was no sign of life about this end of the town. It was from the centre that the sounds of an excited, waiting crowd drifted along.
The election results were to be shown on a screen outside the second floor of Roger’s store, which had the great advantage, placed as it was on the corner of Queen and River Streets, of facing the two main ways, of being near the post-office, and of being only one block away from the registrar’s office to which the official results all went. Several of the rooms on the second floor had been cleared out to accommodate Roger’s committee and supporters. It was about this building, and gazing feverishly at the screen for the first significant figures, that the largest crowd Dargaville had ever seen clustered good-humouredly.
As she walked on towards it Valerie heard those mild preliminary cheers accorded to the Royal Family and popular statesmen, whose pictures lantern men show before the real business of the evening begins. When she heard a louder and more rousing one she wondered if she had missed the first big announcement, but she saw it was the cheerful face of Mr. Massey that had stimulated the extra roar. Quickening her steps, she saw Jimmy dashing across the street with the first important batch of telegrams, and in a plain white envelope the registrar’s local figures for which the men upstairs were now frantically waiting. She darted after him and seized his arm.
The boy was bursting with delightful importance as the chief messenger of that eventful night. His most reliable runners were stationed at the post-office to carry the press news and such private wires as came to Roger from his friends, but he himself had the great job; he carried the official messages direct from the registrar to Bob, the only figures on which the announcements were based. Jimmy had looked forward to this night as the greatest thing in his life, he knew not why. He tried to be cool, as became a man in a crisis, but Valerie saw with delight that he could hardly contain within himself the emotions that the occasion roused.
“What results, Jimmy?” she whispered hoarsely, as they hurried together down the side of the building to a back entrance.
“Nothing big out yet, Miss Carr. But I think this is Dargaville,” and reverently he indicated the plain white envelope.
They went in by a door carefully guarded by several men, who smiled with the ready smile of friend passing friend on a day of great matters.
“Oh, it’s grand, isn’t it?” exploded Jimmy, half under his breath. “If only Benton and Massey win.” And for a moment the awful possibility that they might not choked him. His heart was with his paper and his side, and he knew that if they lost his heart would be broken.
“They’ll win all right,” said Valerie hopefully, amused to see she was becoming an optimism herself.
They hurried up a narrow stairway lit by smelly kerosene lamps hung from big nails on the wall. Three doors opened upon the landing at the top where several men stood smoking. From all about came the low growl of men’s voices, and the din of women’s pitched high and toned with nervous repression. The large front room, where the two men who worked the lantern were the centre of attention, was filled with friends of Roger and the committee. Through another door Valerie caught a glimpse of a supper table, of baskets and piles of sandwiches, of coffee urns, of cases of bottles, of long rows of cheap tumblers, and of a number of those devoted women satellites who are always ready to get their little thrill on such occasions by being what they call “the faithful few.”
The men on the landing swept aside for Valerie and Jimmy who swung open the third door and plunged head-first into a little room—the real centre of Dargaville that night.
Sitting at a table facing the door were Bob and Roger Benton, with large blank sheets of paper and a small pile of unimportant messages in front of them. Standing about were Bolton and Allison and other members of the committee, two prominent sheep owners, and several of the biggest Massey supporters from near-by towns. Valerie looked for George Rhodes, and then remembered that he was watchdog for Roger at the registrar’s office. So far Mrs. Benton and other women privileged to enter here had not come in. The people now in this inner sanctum were all swayed by anticipative excitement.
Bob seized the batch from Jimmy’s hand, instantly perceived the plain envelope, dropped the others and tore it open.
“Here it is,” he said, and a dead silence followed.
Jimmy meanwhile, realizing his business, had shot back through the door and closed it behind him.
Everybody watched Bob who jotted down figures and frowned over them. At last he raised his face.
“You lead here by 237, Benton. But the figures represent far more than this town. The beggars have come here from other places to vote. That will throw us out now. We don’t know where they have come from. But there it is, a good lead.” He handed Roger the paper.
Those present took it in various ways, doubtfully or enthusiastically, as was their disposition, but all agreed it was a good start. Valerie sat down beside Bob and helped him to open and check the other items.
It is the number and the smallness of the returns in country electorates that provide in any closely contested election a few hours’ wild fun for the waiting crowds. There may often be no more than a dozen votes recorded in a small booth on a gumfield. These are easily counted, but the result has to be got to a post-office perhaps ten miles away, and the thing to do is to get it there before the congestion starts up on the main lines, because once the big places begin to send out their returns the little ones have to wait. And this waiting throws a number of small but very telling results, that have been counted in the first quarter of an hour, right out of reckoning till two or three in the morning. Roger had the largest and most scattered electorate in the whole country, and the bulk of his figures were to come from little places. And only a dozen of these small counts had managed to get through to Dargaville before the wires began to rush through the leads and prospects of men all over the dominion.
Valerie and Bob opened and counted and checked these, and added them to Roger’s local majority. This started him off with a lead of 264, and half the room escorted the slip for the lantern into the front and waited to see the effect on the crowd. Roger moved at once to his wife who stood near the window and whispered the first total into her ear. They gave each other a warm and hopeful look.
The operator received a great deal of attention as he wrote the figures on his slide and slipped it into place. Then from the people outside there went up a heartening roar of approval.
“They’re with you, Roger, old man, they’re with you,” said Allison hoarsely, slapping his chief on the back.
Then back to the little room they all went to await Jimmy’s next appearance.
Through the door he came as if shot from a gun, charging Bob with out-thrust hands so that not a fraction of a second be lost, and back through the door he slid with the precision of machinery. Grins of appreciation followed him. More than one of them were to remember Jimmy as one of the spectacles of that night.
Bob and Valerie halved the messages, tossing aside at once those that related to other electorates till they should be done with their own.
“Aratapu,” said Valerie, jotting down numbers.
“And Te Koperu,” said Bob.
There was a minute heavy with anxiety while they worked. These two places might tell the final tale.
“You lead now by 198.” Bob checked again. “Yes, that’s right, 198.”
The men looked solemnly at each other. Roger had hoped that his two towns would give him a bigger lead than that over Mobray’s stronghold, for he was afraid the farmer vote would come nowhere near balancing the labour vote in the bushes and the mills.
Bob and Valerie went on opening the other envelopes. Whatever happened they had to keep their wits clear.
“Massey’s in,” said Bob.
That caused no excitement. Mr. Massey was always in, as far as his own electorate was concerned, and the putting up of a prohibition candidate against him this time had been a joke.
“Haines leads by a big majority in Whangarei,” read Valerie.
“That means he’s in,” said Roger, wishing it were as sure for himself.
They sent these results to the lantern and listened to the cheers that went up. It was a Massey night sure enough.
Then came Jimmy again through that snapping door.
And a deep gloom settled upon the little room for the first lot of bush returns put Mobray ahead by thirty-six.
“Oh, well,” said Roger valiantly, “that’s all right. I expected that. I won’t carry the bushes. Put it out. We’ve got to take it.”
And it went to the lantern, to be followed by some scattered cheers, but mostly by hisses and groans.
“You’ve got the crowd here, old man,” repeated Allison consolingly.
It was now half-past ten, and the fun was begun in earnest. The next lot of mixed farm and bush votes put Roger ahead by seventeen, and the place rocked with the gambling fever as the men inside juggled with the majorities to make fun for those outside. As the little totals in favour first of one and then of the other seesawed back and forth on the screen the crowd went off its head, drunk not with liquor, for the excitement here kept everyone out of the hotels, but with the frenzy of a big race.
Bob and Valerie were running through a lot of Auckland wires when Mac opened the door. He came in, followed by Doctor Steele and Father Ryan. This was the first indication that the little priest had voted for him, and Roger was surprised, for Sir Joseph Ward was a Catholic, but church votes, like all others, could not be coerced in any given direction.
“Not too good, eh?” said Mac to Roger.
“It’s going to be damned close. The bush settles it now.”
“You’ll get more of the bush than you think,” growled Mac.
“I’m sure I hope so.”
Then Bob read out a number of names of Massey men who were safely in, and the possibility, now becoming more likely with every new set of figures, that Massey would come out with a majority, added to the tempest of feeling surging round them. It would be awful to lose here if the party won everywhere else.
“Sloan is leading well for the Bay of Islands,” Valerie read from her last envelope.
“Oh, I must get in,” groaned Roger.
Valerie was succumbing herself now to the swell of emotion about her. She thought while they waited of Dane, and wondered if he were in bed, if he were asleep, utterly aloof from this madness, utterly indifferent to the result. But she did wish he could have been there to enjoy with her the drama of it, the palpitating entrances and exits of Jimmy bursting with his own grand and glorious feeling as the Mercury of a cataclysmic night.
At half-past two the vibrations in the little room were almost too painful to be borne. There were only six returns to come. At that moment Roger was leading by twenty-one, and of the last places three were country and three were bush.
As for the outside world, it was about certain now that Ward was down and Massey riding to victory.
There was an ominous silence about the counting table, and eyes wandered jumpily watching for Jimmy’s next appearance. They all started at sounds beyond the door, and when the boy did appear lungs went flat for want of air. Two of the next three local returns were country and one was bush. They left Roger with a lead of thirty-seven.
Groans went up as they thought they were likely to lose by so little. The last country result was known to be very small, only about a dozen, while the bush was probably a hundred. They could not tell now.
Roger buried his face in his hands.
Bob went on opening the Auckland telegrams.
“By Jove! The Opposition’s in! Massey’s got a majority of four certain seats, with others leading well!”
“And Haines and Sloan are both in,” added Valerie.
Even the personal was forgotten at this great news. His friends said the next day that Roger was sublime in his darkest hour. He forgot that he was about to lose and led the cheers for the new premier. For several minutes the room was in an uproar, and the people outside thought it meant Roger’s success and heads were stuck in enquiringly. The excitement spread fast throughout the building. At first men could not believe that the old Liberal Party, with its extraordinary record of twenty-one consecutive years in power, could possibly be down. And when the news was put up on the screen hysterical roars shook the town. There were many in the crowd who cared more for this than for the return even of their local candidate. The picture of Mr. Massey, with the words “premier of New Zealand,” scrawled in underneath, was shown again, and it was a matter for astonishment that anyone had voices left to welcome it.
But in the little room the success of the party only threw into more tragic light the possible failure of poor Roger, who was trembling like a boy.
The minutes dragged by. It was the longest quarter of an hour that any one of them had ever known. The men gathered round Roger felt almost as badly as he did. As for him, if he had been waiting to be shot he could hardly have felt worse. He had talked optimistically but not boastfully throughout the campaign, he had borne a manner considerably chastened by the difficulties in his path, personally he had waged a clean fight, and only he knew how much he hoped to win. As they stood waiting, Mrs. Benton with her lips trembling, moved beside him and put her arm through his.
After an eternity, in which no one could trust his voice to break the strained silence, the door moved and Jimmy shot through it as if he were beginning and not ending his dashes for Bob’s hand.
Almost too excited now to see, both Bob and Valerie sorted fast. She was the first to tear open one of the envelopes. It was from the country, and gave Roger a lead of forty-three. But it was Bob they all watched, and he found the last and fateful news at the bottom of his pile. There was a breathless silence, while everyone looked for a change in his expression.
But Bob did not dare to be too hopeful.
“For God’s sake,” began Bolton.
“Keep calm,” replied Bob coolly. “We mustn’t have any mistakes on this.”
He checked and rechecked. Then he bounded to his feet.
“You’re in,” he shouted. “It’s a majority for you. In by seventy-three. Hurrah! Hurrah!”
And at that moment George Rhodes came through the door with the same official final from the registrar.
Valerie was amazed at the scene that followed. It seemed to her that everyone in that room went suddenly mad, and whether she was too tired or too detached to go mad too she did not know. The committee rushed Roger and wrung his hands, and rushed Mrs. Benton and wrung hers, while she laughed and cried alternately, and they sprang at Bob from all the corners of the room, and then she found herself being seized and whirled about. Men jumped on the chairs and down again and danced on their hats and yelled and cheered as only a crazy lot of Englishmen can cheer. Then Bob calmed himself to write the last screen announcement for the night. He did not trouble to open the other envelopes.
“The labour vote split. The labour vote split. That did it,” said Roger, dancing about.
“I thought it would,” said Mac, laconically, grinning at him. “I’ve heard talk of it about the bars for some time. Barrington got them. He knew how to handle them, and they like the way he goes around.”
Valerie was near enough to hear this, but she did not take her eyes off Jimmy who to the delight of two farmers was trying to stand on his head on a chair.
Bob led the way to the front room, yelling the news as he went, so that everybody crowded in to congratulate Roger and his wife. They were almost too excited to care about the raucous cheers that the crowd still had energy to give. And there were more than the roars of delight dying and swelling upon the still morning air. There were loud and insistent cries for a speech repeated from group to group. Members of his committee pushed Roger through the window. When the wild ovation had subsided he tried to speak. But he could only blurt out incoherent thanks, a promise to do his best to be worthy of the great honour done him, and a tribute to the decent campaign run by his opponent. Then calling dramatically for cheers for Mr. Massey, the new government, the King and the Empire, he stumbled back into the arms of his friends.
V
Valerie now meant to sneak out, but a hint to Mrs. Benton on the subject was received with as much amazed protest as if she had declared her intention to commit murder.
“My dear, you simply must stay to drink his health. And it’s champagne, you know.”
This was the kind of thing that always made Valerie want to put her thumb to her nose, but she stayed, meaning to slip away after the first toast.
The supper room was soon so crowded that it was impossible to use the chairs set round it. There was standing room only. But the leaders of the campaign grouped themselves about the table. Valerie manœuvred herself into the background, but she was found by George Rhodes, and dragged to the front again. There was much popping of corks amidst hilarity. And then there was a suspensive pause as the glasses were filled.
But before Bob, who had been deputed to act as an informal toastmaster, could make a start, Roger himself got on to a chair. Excited though he was, he had clear in mind what he wanted to say. The mere waving of his glass provoked an outburst, and when it had subsided a little he began.
“Friends, I want to propose a toast to come before the King and the Empire and the party and all the rest of us. This election has been won for me by the splendid work, the splendid devotion of many people. Comparisons are odious, my friends, but for some time my committee and I have felt that if we won there was one thing that counted more than anything else, and now that we have won I want that thing to know what we think of it. I’m sure you all know that I mean the work turned out by our little paper, the Dargaville News.”
He was interrupted by a spontaneous burst of applause while every head turned to look at Valerie. She felt herself getting light-headed and clenched her hands as Roger went on.
“And we know who has done the hardest work, kept the longest hours, and been the inspiration of that office. Our thanks and gratitude to you, Miss Valerie Carr, who ———”
Valerie dropped back amazed, confused, and overwhelmed by the cheer that drowned out the rest of Roger’s remarks. In a mist she saw excited friendly arms waving glasses, and excited friendly faces beaming down upon her—Mrs. Benton’s struggling to keep back tears, even those of Mrs. Bolton, Mrs. Harris and Mrs. Allison oblivious of the slights of the past, Father Ryan’s a warm glow, Mac’s a shrewd and guarded grin, Bob’s a generous pride, Jimmy’s one shining adoration, and the faces of other men she knew and of men she did not know one broad smile of approval. Then somebody cried “Speech,” and the word was repeated to the beat of feet and the tapping of sticks. The whole crowd was wound up now and nothing would stop it.
Valerie looked round desperately. Did they expect her to make a speech? She had never made a speech in her life. She felt an awful funk. She did not realize that it did not matter in the least what she said. She found herself being lifted bodily off the ground by George Rhodes, while Bob drew out a chair for her to be set upon. Somehow she got to her feet upon it, while the room swung round her for a minute, and the cheers and the stamping went on. She ran her hand over her forehead and tried to do something with her paralyzed throat. Her voice was hoarse enough as it was with weeks of proof-reading, and she was afraid she would never be heard even if she could find something to say. Then she grew calm suddenly and raised her hand. And a semblance of silence settled upon the room.
“My dear people,” she began informally, “I can’t take this for myself ———”
“Speak for yourself. We’ll come to the others presently,” interrupted Roger, amidst laughter and more applause.
“But I haven’t done anything except enjoy it. It was a lot of fun. And I want to tell you it could never have been done without our staff. They did the hard and dirty work without any hope of honour and glory. They have been perfectly fine, never a grumble out of them, I’ll take it for them, the men, the women and the boys ———”
She looked down at Jimmy as she said it, and to his embarrassment he got a great cheer all to himself, while Valerie slipped down into her chair, leaving out the thanks she had meant to add. But the audience did not notice the omission as it applauded her again.
Roger was still standing on his chair. “To continue with the News. I ask all present to drink to the two gentlemen connected with that paper. I don’t have to tell anyone present of the luck we had in getting Mr. Barrington, the most brilliant journalist in the country, to help us out, or of the luck we had in getting a man like Mr. Lorrimer, who after being ill for six weeks could come back and make up for it in three.” Roger bowed to Bob and drank.
The toast was drunk with the wildest enthusiasm, for Bob was the most popular man in the place, and at that moment no one grudged the other his share in the glory of the hour. Valerie dare not look at anyone but Bob, for she felt eyes were upon her as well as on him. He got to his feet steadily enough and spoke lightly.
“Mr. Benton and friends. I certainly can’t claim anything on the work of the News. And as Mr. Barrington does not appear to be present I’m glad to have this chance to pay a tribute to his work on this campaign. He contributed more ideas than all the rest of us put together. I don’t think there is any question that his arguments and influence split the labour vote, and he has made our little News famous all over the country. And I agree with Miss Carr that the News has been a happy family on this job. And I’m sorry I hadn’t more to do with it. My part has been a very easy one. There was nothing hard about going round with a candidate whom everybody liked, talking stuff that everybody seemed to believe. But I thank you just the same.”
Valerie slipped down again into her chair. It seemed to her there was a deeper note in the applause that greeted these words, but no one, she thought, could have any idea what a triumph of character and decency that little speech was. She felt again that eyes were turned from Bob to her, and then she heard his voice in a different tone roaring out the toast of the evening, “To Roger Benton, the successful candidate, the new member for Waitemata.”
In the din that followed, Valerie worked her way from the table.