"Could I have a word with you, sir?" asked Horne Fisher, politely. The
agent stared still more, but assented civilly, and led the other into an office
littered with leaflets and hung all round with highly colored posters which
linked the name of Hughes with all the higher interests of humanity.
"Mr. Horne Fisher, I believe," said Mr. Gryce. "Much honored by the call,
of course. Can't pretend to congratulate you on entering the contest, I'm afraid;
you won't expect that. Here we've been keeping the old flag flying for freedom
and reform, and you come in and break the battle line."
For Mr. Elijah Gryce abounded in military metaphors and in denunciations
of militarism. He was a square-jawed, blunt-featured man with a pugnacious
cock of the eyebrow. He had been pickled in the politics of that countryside
from boyhood, he knew everybody's secrets, and electioneering was the
romance of his life.
"I suppose you think I'm devoured with ambition," said Horne Fisher, in
his rather listless voice, "aiming at a dictatorship and all that. Well, I think I
can clear myself of the charge of mere selfish ambition. I only want certain
things done. I don't want to do them. I very seldom want to do anything. And
I've come here to say that I'm quite willing to retire from the contest if you can
convince me that we really want to do the same thing."
The agent of the Reform party looked at him with an odd and slightly
puzzled expression, and before he could reply, Fisher went on in the same
level tones:
"You'd hardly believe it, but I keep a conscience concealed about me; and I
am in doubt about several things. For instance, we both want to turn Verner
out of Parliament, but what weapon are we to use? I've heard a lot of gossip
against him, but is it right to act on mere gossip? Just as I want to be fair to
you, so I want to be fair to him. If some of the things I've heard are true he
ought to be turned out of Parliament and every other club in London. But I
don't want to turn him out of Parliament if they aren't true."
At this point the light of battle sprang into Mr. Gryce's eyes and he became
voluble, not to say violent. He, at any rate, had no doubt that the stories were
true; he could testify, to his own knowledge, that they were true. Verner was
not only a hard landlord, but a mean landlord, a robber as well as a rackrenter;
any gentleman would be justified in hounding him out. He had cheated old
Wilkins out of his freehold by a trick fit for a pickpocket; he had driven old
Mother Biddle to the workhouse; he had stretched the law against Long Adam,
the poacher, till all the magistrates were ashamed of him.
"So if you'll serve under the old banner," concluded Mr. Gryce, more
genially, "and turn out a swindling tyrant like that, I'm sure you'll never regret