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She had taken no part in the second, although she had been staying at Tallyn all through it, and was present when Oliver was brought in, half fainting and agonized with pain, after the Hartingfield riot.
Marsham shook his head. "Better not talk," he said, in a whisper, "Drive home." An hour afterward, it was announced to the crowded gathering in the Dunscombe Corn Exchange that Mr. Marsham had been hurt by a stone at Hartingfield, and could not address the meeting. The message was received with derision rather than sympathy.
He saw, printed in full, Barrington's curt letter to himself on the subject of the Herald article, and below it the jubilant and scathing comments of the Tory editor. He read both carefully, and gave the paper back to McEwart. "That decides the election," he said, calmly. McEwart's face assented. Marsham, however, never showed greater pluck than at the Hartingfield meeting.
Marsham left Dunscombe for Hartingfield about six o'clock on an August evening, driving the coach, with its superb team of horses, which had become by now so familiar an object in the division.
The Vicar, it seemed, was no friend of Oliver's would not vote for him, and had been trying to induce the miners at Hartingfield to run a Labor man.
He understood from Lady Lucy that Oliver was no better; the accounts, in fact, were very bad. "Did they arrest anybody?" asked Bobbie. "At Hartingfield? Yes two lads. But there was not evidence enough to convict. They were both released, and the village gave them an ovation." Bobbie hesitated. "What do you think was the truth about that article?" Sir James frowned and rose.
Then Ferrier moved on toward a writing-table with drawers that stood beyond the fireplace. He stooped, and touched a handle. "No!" cried Oliver, violently "no!" He woke with shock and distress, his pulse racing. But the feverish state began again, and dreams with it of the House of Commons, the election, the faces in the Hartingfield crowd.
The paper contained an account of the stone-throwing at Hartingfield, and of the injury to himself; a full record of the last five or six days of the election, and of the proceedings at the declaration of the poll; a report, moreover, of the "chivalrous and sympathetic references" made by the newly elected Conservative member to the "dastardly attack" upon his rival, which the "whole of West Brookshire condemns and deplores."
Alicia was well aware that Brookshire was looking on; that Brookshire was on the side of Diana Mallory, the forsaken, and was not at all inclined to forgive either the deserting lover or the supplanting damsel; so that while she was not loath to sting and mystify Brookshire by whatever small signs of her power over Oliver Marsham she could devise; though she queened it beside him on his coach, and took charge with Lady Lucy of his army of women canvassers; though she faced the mob with him at Hartingfield, on the occasion of the first disturbance there in June, and had stood beside him, vindictively triumphant on the day of his first hard-won victory, she would wear no ring, and she baffled all inquiries, whether of her relations or her girl friends.
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