‘Your husband?’

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘Of course I do.’  He left her on the balcony, and went in search of Mallinson.  ‘So you go to Bentbridge for the election,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ replied the other, lighting up.  ’I am looking forward to it like a schoolboy to a football match.  The prospect of activity exhilarates me—­bodily activity, don’t you know—­a town humming with excitement.’

Fielding cut him short.  ‘My dear fellow, you’re a damned fool,’ he said.

CHAPTER XIII

Stephen Drake had decided to stay during the period of the election at a hotel in the centre of the town, rather than to accept an invitation from Captain Le Mesurier, who lived some miles beyond the outskirts.  He travelled down to Bentbridge on the day that the dissolution was announced, and during the journey Mr. Burl gave him much sage advice.

’Keep the arguments for buildings; they’re in place there.  Mass-meetings in the open air want something different.  Many a good man has lost his seat from not observing that rule.  In the open air pitch out a fact or two—­not too many—­or a couple of round sums of figures first of all, just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your opponent.  No rapier play—­it’s lost then—­but crack him on the top-knot with a bludgeon.  They’ll want to hear his skull ring before they’ll believe that you have touched him.  Phrases!  Those are the things to get you in, not arguments.  Pin a label on his coat-tails.  You’ll see them laugh as he squirms round to pull it off.  And, mind you, there’ll be no walking over, you’ll want all you know.  The man’s a Radical and a Lord!  The combination satisfies their democratic judgments and their snobbish instincts at the same time.  People forget to count the snob in the democrat, but he’s there all the same, as in most Englishmen.  A veneer of snobbishness over solid independence.  That’s our characteristic.  Lord Cranston!  Can’t you hear their tongues licking it?  Luckily, there are things against him.  He’s a carpet-bagger like yourself, and he’s been more than once separated from his wife.  His fault, too—­once it was an opera dancer.  I’ve got up the facts.  He only joined his wife again a few months ago—­probably for the purpose of this election.’

Mr. Burl pulled out a pocket-book, and began to turn over the leaves in search of the damning details, when Drake interrupted him.  ’You don’t expect me to discuss the man’s private life?’

’My dear Drake, do be practical.  It’s no use being finicking.  The essential thing is to win the seat.’

‘Whatever the price?’

’Look here; I am not asking you to do anything so crude as to make platform speeches about the man’s disgraceful conduct to his wife.’  Mr. Burl assumed the look of a Rhadamanthus.  ’But’—­and again he relaxed into the tactician—­’you might take a strong social line on morals generally, and the domestic hearth, and that sort of thing.’  He looked critically at Drake.  ’You’re one of the few chaps I know who look as if they could do that and make people believe they really mean it.’